I wrote this as a stream-of-consciousness tidbit from my novel, Scoundrels and Liberators. This may be a draft, a tidbit, a part of the story, or I might erase it and start over. I just was proud of myself for writing for the first time in ages, even if it was just this silly thing. I'm aware there isn't any context, so for those who haven't read the rest of the novel, this will likely make little sense.

But damnit, I wrote something.

--

Keys stared out the window blankly, trying to collect his thoughts.

The group had managed to get away - barely, once again - at the cost of...a lot of people. Too many people.

The thought unnerved him. Andrometus had gone to incredibly great lengths to make the mission a success. While he was no doubt happy to be alive...he and his friends, both - the sacrifice of others frightened him. How far would the dragon go in order to succeed? What happened if he didn't?

What happened if he did?

Towers was already the largest corporation in the world. Demolishing Solaryut would end the suffering of millions, but the consequences - especially if the dragon went back on his word - would be catastrophic. Even if all he intended was noble, it would be a nightmare trying to piece society back together after an upheaval like that.

He sighed, turning away from the window. He needed to go get a snack, maybe something to drink to get his mind off his thoughts...

...the same thoughts being interrupted as the door swung open. The luminari's breath caught in his throat as a familiar figure strode in.

Nyomi.

The feline had shed her leather coat for a simple blue tunic and pants, though the thief could see the outline of weapons still by her side. Her expression was deadpan as always. Keys had never seen her smile, never seen her laugh or cry or look angry. She always had that same expression of indifference. Her voice had always been flat.

"...Hi." He found himself saying, automatically. It seemed like the right thing to do.

"Hello, Sylvir." She did not look back at him, merely striding over to take his place at the window.

"...it's just Keys, now, I haven't been Sylvir in a long time..."

"Keys, then." She did not turn.

He frowned. "Do you ever speak more than a few words at a time?"

"Yes."

The luminari paused. It was not the answer he anticipated.

"W-well, why don't you?"

"I'm not asked to."

"...well, what if I asked you now?"

"What would you have me say?"

"...well, um, at least...something about you?"

"I am Nyomi. I work for Andrometus as an assassin."

"Well, I knew that, I meant...like, you as a person."

"Such as?" She turned, now, her dark eyes now focused on the luminari's. Keys felt himself swallow nervously.

"...how'd you get to be where you are now?"

"I was hired."

"When? Why? How did you get the...talents that you have today?"

"Seven years ago. I was hired after Havlock was destroyed."

"Havlock?"

"A group of mercenaries. The best"

"I haven't heard of them before."

"They did not exist in corporate records. Their secrecy was what made them as dangerous as they were."

Keys raised an eyebrow. "How'd you get your talents, then?"

"Through Havlock. I was trained from birth."

"Your parents were assassins?"

"Yes."

"What happened to them?"

"I murdered them."

Keys flinched instinctively. "Whu...Why?"

"They were monsters. Products of the group that made them what they were."

"But still, they were your parents, weren't they...?"

Keys flinched again as Nyomi took a step closer. Her deadpan expression had faded somewhat - the faintest flicker of emotion. A twitch of one ear as a venomous twitch ran through her features.

"Yes."

"...what made them...the way they were...?"

"The desire for power. It wasn't the money that drove them."

"Then wha..."

Nyomi interrupted. "The control. They wanted to crush people. To hold what was most precious - their loved ones, their most prized possessions, their hopes and dreams...just out of reach, just to watch them struggle. To make them know that they controlled them. That their lives were never their own - they were merely playthings of those more powerful than they."

The luminari fell silent for a moment.

Nyomi turned away to finish her explanation. "They would have empowered those like Sivar - given people the power to utterly dominate others. They would have held the world in their grasp, only so that everyone might despair."

"...what happened when you...when you...did...."

"I joined them on a punishment job. A family had lost a gamble and owed them money, so they were going to kidnap his daughter and torture her into insanity before returning her so that the parents would despair and commit suicide. They had taken her back and tied her down, leaving me to guard the place. They assumed that their indoctrination of me was thorough. They were wrong."

"And then you killed them?"

"Yes."

"What happened...after that?"

"I let the daughter go."

"What happened to her?"

"She perished. When Havlock learned of my treachery, they did everything in their power to find me. They failed. So they vented their rage on the only source of good I had done. The family was eradicated. They hunted everyone who had ever been related to them and killed them all."

"How did you escape?"

"Andrometus found me first. He used his resources to ensure that I survived."

The luminari opened his mouth, but the unbidden question did not come through. At the cost of how many others?

"...so that was why you joined."

"No."

He raised his eyebrows. "Why, then?"

"Because he destroyed Havlock so that I would not do so."

"But you're his best assassin. Surely you could...?"

"No. I was merely one performer in a theater of murderers. If I had gone forth to kill them, I would have failed."

"But he had enough troops to...?"

"No. He knew where they were. It was their secrecy that kept them alive."

"...you told him where to find them."

"Yes."

"So why do you still...kill people?"

"I believed in his dream. Was that not why you followed your leader?"

"...yeah. I guess." He looked away. The reality behind the stereotype - that she was not quite as cold and heartless as he had assumed...had knocked his perceptions askew. Each time he had thought he knew what everyone's roles were in all this...

"Is there anything else?"

"...n-no, I suppose not." He stepped away. Nyomi still stared out the window, the only movement showing that she was still awake being a twitch of her left ear. The luminari hesitated, waiting for some sort of parting comment, something that might explain all that he had just learned. It did not come.

"...I guess I'll see you later." He hastily closed the door behind him. He dared not stare back at the impassive assassin.

Nyomi was grateful that he had missed the reflection in the mirror. She brushed away the droplet in her eye, then resumed her impassive stare, watching over the city below.

(I'm not even gonna try to justify the lapse in entries. Back to work!)

Next, we have the crystal garden. This is probably my most frequent daydream, and yet the one that I have the hardest time describing.

This land is one of perpetual twilight - the skies are a swirling mixture of deep blues and purples with the occasional flicker of red here and there. The moon is a gorgeous silver disc, always full, and it seems to skitter across the sky - one hour it's off to the east, and the next it might appear to be toward the north. The wind whispers every few minutes, and, oddly enough, it is visible - small swirls of white smoke unfurl, then blow outwards, showing where (and how quickly) the wind is crossing the landscape.

The landscape itself, however, is the focus of the daydream. The garden is a wilderness hundreds of miles from civilization, a verdant field that stretches far into the mists of my imagination. The intriguing thing about the garden, however, is that everything is made of crystal. The grass is made of slim strips of emerald, while the flowers are delicate beryl stalks tipped with diamond-and-topaz flowers. The trees are massive hunks of amber with sapphire leaves and ruby berries that occasional tumble onto the ground. The gems feel strangely flexible - falling onto the grass would simply cause it to flatten underneath you before springing back to life, and I'm able to pluck flowers with ease. They bend easily, like plastic, and yet tapping them with my fingernail rewards me with the faint tink of solid stone.

I haven't any idea why the garden exists, what world it grows upon...anything like that. I just find myself there all too frequently, where my only company are gleaming, gem-like plants. It is a strangely peaceful land, as unusual as it is.

Anyway, this is a little shorter than usual, but it's been too long since my last entry and I needed to put something down. Also, there's the part that it's nearly 6 AM.

I opened up my resume and I realized how depressing it looked, so now I'll go back to what I have on the writing front.

Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the fallout of Scoundrels and Liberators, I haven't written much at all. Very, very long story short, I originally wrote S&L as a fun little gift story to some friends of mine. I included their characters and some of my own in a fun little action romp that lasted about ten pages. Not only did they love it, it got passed around and my other friends enjoyed it too! As a result, I was inspired to continue and ended up turning a simple short story into a novel.

Sadly, there was fallout over how the story was going versus how the characters were progressing, so the story was stopped. Instead of taking it in stride and reworking the characters (I essentially had created everything but name and appearance), I got depressed and stopped writing anything seriously. Generally, the cycle was that I'd get excited about a concept, write out an outline, then get bummed out and throw out the idea because I'd never be able to finish it.

So! Let's go back to why I was writing S&L in the first place.

S&L was an idea largely born from reading TVTropes for hours at a time and recognizing what happened in most fiction. I wanted to write something in a unpleasant, corporate-controlled future where much of the population is coerced into working for minimum pay, and a lawless population desperately fights against a system despite knowing that in the end, they're helpless against the overwhelming power of corporate-backed mercenaries and gangs designed to keep the system in check. Roughly as stereotypical as you can get, right? From there, I designed each character to come from their own separate background and have interesting personalities, instead of just one group of 'badass' characters that would be able to take down anything. Certainly, some <i>are</i> pretty hardcore in their own right, but a few are cowardly, some are nervous and introverted...but each is very, very good at what they do.

Eventually, I worked towards a plot twist that undid a great deal of the 'stereotype' the story was based around, and intended to go forth and see how things worked from there...which was when the story crashed.

Rather than dwell on 'oh man, I was so happy working on this thing, but I just haven't been inspired', I wanted to focus on what I could do in order to bring the story back to life.

There were several main problems with the story (other than the mistake of writing it with other people's characters):

Things moved too quickly:

One of the things that bugs me in a lot of stories is that they move too slowly. The author spends an age and a half describing the beginning environment, the characters and their lives before the action started, and generally set a leisurely tone that slowly builds up to when things start going wrong. While this works for those who prefer a more leisurely pace, I wanted to hit the ground running. I wanted to build character through firefights and sneaking around, through planning and conspiring to get the bad guys. And while things did start off exciting, my constant need to keep the tension high meant that I revealed things too quickly - major backstory revelations ended up coming out after a very short period of time, and I didn't give the characters enough time to breathe in order for such revelations to actually have the impact they should have.

My solution here is to start earlier. The characters start off having already met one another and have already worked a few jobs together, so while they know one another quite well, the audience does not. While I nodded to the audience by showing some of the original meetings through flashbacks, my main assumption was that people would know that these guys are great buds and thus empathize with them when the major revelations came through. In the rewrite, I'll move it back about six chapters so we can see the characters struggle through their first few shenanigans together, making the times when things finally break down all the more important.

My transitions (and grammar) sucked:

Generally, to move from one scene to another in the same chapter, I faded to black (by using -- to indicate 'hey, this is now another scene') and transferred over.

This would usually happen, oh, say, four or five times a chapter. Not exactly an acceptable writing thing to do!

Unfortunately, I'm still adjusting to fixing this, along with fixing my terrible grammar (I overuse hypens, misuse semicolons, and use adjectives to personify things that should not be personified). To that end, I will credit Nyomi, my girlfriend, who continues to edit my subpar work and shake her head, all while nursing me into being a better writer. With her help, I'm hoping that I can improve to the point where I don't break an important scene by an improperly-worded sentence.

Plot holes:

As much as I'd like to think I did a good job making sure they didn't happen (especially since the major plot twist wasn't even in the original script!), they did show up. I forgot about Keys' broken arm almost immediately, and while he wasn't doing anything too impossible without it, I still missed it. Tyraeil recovered entirely too quickly as well, and the 'miracle medicine' I used would've left a gaping plot hole in an important part much later in the book. Point is that I need to write a complete outline this time, then get started, instead of doing stuff as I go. Even then, it needs to be a first draft until I've had enough people to read over it so that if I publish it, I'll know that it works.

I may end up writing the outline in this journal, though I'm not sure yet. I think I'll stick to writing the other story in here, which I'll discuss in my next entry. For now, though, it is now 4:30 in the morning, and I'd really like to get some sleep.

To bed with me!