Reading Notes: Narayan's Ramayana, Section C

With my reading notes for the Ramayana so far, I’ve just been marking quotations or passages that nab my interest, rather than looking at the piece as a whole. So for the first section of notes this week, here’s what I’ve got:

When Sita asks the disguised Ravana why “a saintly one like you” has chosen to live among the demons, “leaving cities where good men are to be found,” I wondered what kind of character would do a thing like that. Probably someone who has more in common with the demons, or who has something to gain from it—someone who sells the demons some good or service or something. I’m not quite sure yet. But I’m intrigued, which is a start.

This line about Ravana didn’t really trigger much of a plot in my head, but it does inspire the feel of a character, which could be used to figure out the plot: “All this only amused Ravana, who laughed and bantered and uttered reckless pleasantries.”
I also really, really love characters with some blind, self-destructive issue at their core, which is possibly why I loved the following snippet so much. There’s this young demon going around wrecking stuff, so a god appears to him and says, “You are shaking our foundation. What is your wish?” In response, the youth says, “I want to fight forever. Please grant me that power.” And that kernel of the character—I want to fight forever—suggests so much about him, and is totally the kind of person I’m interested in.

I’ve also had a Death personified/Grim Reaper concept I’ve been sitting on for a bit, and this response of Yama, the god of death, to Yali, is the perfect opportunity to revisit the idea and revamp it for this: “...with such stubborn strength that even Yama, the god of death, stood back, nodding his head in admiration.”

When Yali was taking Rama to task, he made an interesting point: “[A]re virtues intended to be practiced only on weaker creatures? When strong men commit crimes, they become heroic deeds?” I’m always down for a good crime story, and this could give me the chance to play around with one to some real meat to it.

Also, at one point the army stumbles across an isolated underground city, inhabited by one lone woman. When they wake her, she reveals that she used to be a goddess, but “for some mistake committed had fallen from grace and had been condemned to dwell underground” for a certain amount of time. The army ends up fighting its way out of the underworld, and freeing the woman from her punishment at the same time. I’m interested in the concept of someone stripped of godhood and cast down to live among the mortals, and how that would work out for them and the mortals around them.

Finally, the last thing that caught my eye was Jatayu’s brother’s story about their childhood, when he spoke about them being the sons of the charioteer of the sun god. I’m vaguely interested in doing a story about a couple of kids born to a similar rank/situation, who are tired of living in the sun, in the light. I’m not quite sure yet what they’d do about that, but I could be curious to find out.

Bibliography: The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic by R. K. Narayan.

Image Credit: Lens Flare Behind Tree by Pexels. Source: Pixabay.

Feedback Thoughts

The first article I read was Megan Bruneau's "5 Tips for Taking Feedback." I've always been an overzealous perfectionist, so the main point that hit me from this article was Bruneau's point that room for improvement is actually a good thing—which fits really well with the Growth Mindset teachings we've been focusing on in this class. As Bruneau says, "having growth areas is a good thing— it means you haven't maxed out on your potential." I find that it's all well and good to say being a perfectionist is counterproductive and self-defeating, but that's one of those to file under the "easier said than done" column. If I think about it in terms of still having room to improve, though, it really is easier.

I also appreciated William Treseder's "Using Harsh Feedback to Fuel Your Career." He made several points that resonated with me, but the most striking one was something I'd never even thought of before—a point about how striving for well-roundedness is a waste of time on certain projects: "Over a few painful years," Treseder says, "I’ve learned to look for collaborators when I’m not good at something. The upside is incredible. What takes me ten grinding hours will take them ten minutes, be higher quality, and they will enjoy doing it." It's an excellent point, and something I'm going to try to keep in mind as I move forward in life.

For the articles on giving feedback, the first one I checked out was "The Difference Between Praise That Promotes Narcissism vs. Healthy Self-Esteem" by Poncie Rutsch. But the article I got the most out of was "Try Feedforward instead of Feedback" by Marshall Goldsmith. He ran a study that found giving feedback about how to improve in the future (rather than looking back at what could've been done better in the past) is more efficient and better-received than traditional feedback. I wouldn't have thought of this, but it makes a ton of sense, and it's something I'm going to try to use on the project feedback this semester.




Image Credit: Laptop by parthshah000. Source: Pixabay.

Week 2 Story: What Comes Around

I was sitting in Trig class, one ragged dress shoe kicked up on the chair in front of me, when Brendan Russ leaned over my desk.

“Tyler, man,” he said, glancing warily across at Mrs. Ramirez. “I need to talk to you.”

I lifted an eyebrow. Russ and I weren’t exactly friends. We got along just fine, and we were next to each other on Ramirez’s assigned seating chart, which also made us occasional math partners. But that was about the extent of it.

It really wasn’t in Russ’s best interests—short, curly-haired Russ, with his polished dress shoes and just-so school uniform—to talk to me.

“Shoot,” I said, unwrapping a piece of gum, only halfway disinterested.

He said, “It’s about my life before,” and I felt my disinterest plummet another few notches. Together, we turned and looked back at his shadow.

Brendan Russ’s shadow was a thing of nightmares—much bigger than he was, hulking and hunched over itself, gnarled and snarling. It had spines and wicked edges and too many arms that never seemed to stop moving. The kind of thing that bewildered you at first—what could a simple creature like Russ have ever done to earn a Shade like that—but that everybody eventually got used to.

It didn’t really matter what he’d done in his past life. Something pretty nasty, sure, and a whole lot of it, if the embodiment of all his sins looked like that.

But in this life, Russ would probably have trouble maiming a fly. So nobody worried too much about it.

“I think I’ve got a lead on what exactly I did,” he said eventually. “Who I was before.”

I snorted. “I think you’ve got a pretty good idea who you were before even without any digging, man.”

“I know.”

He was quiet for a minute, and at first, I didn’t think he was going to answer. I turned back to my trig assignment. Not that it was any more entertaining, but the cost of tuition at Ashford Prep was obscenely high, and I wasn’t letting it go to waste.

Then he said again, stronger this time, “I know. That’s why I have to find out for sure. I need you to track this person down for me. Ask your drug dealer people or whoever.”

I laughed, maybe a little harshly, snapping my gum. “My drug dealer people. Christ, Russ.”

“I’m serious. This is important.”

The bell rang. I looked across the room at Laurel Wesson, who was standing and straightening the lapels of her Ashford blazer. She scowled when she saw me.

“So will you do it?” Russ asked. “Everybody says you’re the guy to go to. I have money.”

I glanced at him. Normally, I’d found it was best to stay out of situations like this. But he looked obstinate in that desperate, teeth-set way people got, and the money was always nice, and I was kind of curious about his Shade despite myself.

“I’ll think about it,” I said absently.

Then I stood and followed Laurel Wesson out of the classroom.

***

Fourth period, I had World History with Mr. Dennis, but I headed across the Quad to Laurel’s study hall instead, keeping pace with her. Eventually—probably when she realized I wasn’t going away—she whirled around, face pale.

“What do you want?” she snapped.

I smiled pleasantly, reaching into my backpack. “I think the real question here is what you want.”

She actually flinched when she saw the manila envelope. At first, I didn’t think she’d touch it, but then she lunged forward at the last second, snatching it out of my hands. Like if she was holding it now, she was suddenly holding all the power, too.

“That’s your copy,” I said. “You can go ahead and keep it.”

I watched her shaky hands as she lifted one of the photos out, but I didn’t look at the picture itself. I didn’t need to see it again.

“The question,” I said again, “is if you still want to be valedictorian.”

She stared across at me, dead-eyed. A blotchy flush was rising up her neck.

“And how much you’re willing to pay to make sure that happens,” I added.

She snorted. “You’re scum, Tyler Strauss. Literal scum of the earth. I didn’t think lowlifes like you actually existed. You’re—”

“Ten minutes late for class,” I interrupted, checking my invisible watch. “Which means I’m fifteen minutes late to the headmaster’s office.”

When she didn’t say anything, just slid the photos back into the envelope and folded the little metal arms firmly closed, I grinned.

“A thousand dollars,” I said. It was a lot of money, but rich kids like her always managed to pay up when it mattered. And Ashford Prep was expensive. “Cash only. All of it by the end of the week, or the headmaster gets a copy of all this too, and the end of the year looks a lot different for you.”

She looked like she was about to cry, and I really didn’t have time for that, so I turned and walked back towards World History.

Beside me, my shadow was mild and amicable, hands in his pockets.

***

Russ tried to corner me at my picnic table after school. When I saw him coming, I nodded at the small ring of guys I’d been talking to, and they scattered. Russ hesitated, fidgeting at the other end of the table.

“Well?” he said. “Think you can get that info for me?”

I looked at his Shade again, all looming menace, and at mine, thin and relaxed and easygoing. I even halfway thought about telling him it was better for him if he didn’t know all the things his past self had done in that other life, that that Russ probably wouldn’t have wanted future versions of himself to know anyways. I knew I wouldn’t.

But he looked determined. And Ashford was expensive.

“What do you want to know?” I asked.

Author's Note: While the Ramayana’s main plot is interesting itself, when I read it with the weekly retelling in mind, I find myself focusing more on small, random details than on the bigger picture. This week, for instance, I was struck by a throwaway line of Sita’s, just after she’s first glimpsed Rama.

Though the pair haven’t even spoken in this life, they knew each other in a previous one, and that connection sparks something that feels like love at first sight. Love, as it turns out, is kind of miserable, and pretty soon Sita is irritated by every happy thing around her, since she can’t be happy herself without Rama. When a bird starts singing outside her window, she cries at it, “The sins I committed in a previous birth have assumed your form and come to torture me now!”

I was really struck by this idea of a physical embodiment of somebody’s sins from a former life, so that’s what I explored with my retelling. More than that, I was curious what kind of impact that would have on people, literally being followed around by all the mistakes they’ve ever made. Through Russ and Tyler, I was able to look at both extremes: someone who desperately wants to know what he’s done wrong, and someone who desperately wants not to, because he already knows what he's doing now.

Bibliography: The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic by R. K. Narayan.

Image Credit: "Money" by 401kcalculator.org. Source: Flickr.

Reading Notes: Narayan's Ramayana, Section B

In this section of the Ramayana, one of the things that really struck me—remember, I’m a sucker for sibling stories, especially brother dynamics—is the fierce protectiveness of Lakshmana towards Rama. I love the fact that it’s the ultra-loyal younger brother who’s always up in arms, ready to fight for his big brother. Like when he learned that scheming was going to prevent Rama from being crowned king, and he picked up his sword and bow, put on his battle dress, and aggressively roamed the streets swearing, “Rama shall be crowned, and whoever comes in the way will be annihilated. Let the whole world come, I’ll destroy everyone who opposes, and pile up their carcasses sky high. I’ll seize the crown and will not rest till I place it on Rama’s head.” I’d definitely be open to taking that fierce younger brother, the older brother he puts above everyone and everything else, and transplanting that bond to a fantasy or sci-fi setting with a more modern feel.

Then again, when Ravana’s love-struck sister was trying to find any way to get to Rama, I also started thinking about doing a story with some kind of enemy alliance, a team-up of two characters who should be number-one enemies and still feel that way themselves, but are more pressured to team up against some other mutual nemesis. The demon promised Rama, “If you marry me, I will teach you all the arts and tricks, magical and others, that make my people superb and invincible. I can teach you how to defeat them, but you must treat me kindly. You must accept me.” And I love the idea of a human and a monster teaming up to go after other monsters, with the allied ones spilling all the trade secrets in exchange for immunity and maybe a little something extra, something a little more sinister. We’ll see.

I also dug the line that Ravana gives here: When Ravana recognized the moon as the moon, he swore at him, “You are worthless, pale-faced, constantly worn out and trying to regain your shape again.” Naturally, I’d twist it around a little and make the moon in question into something a little more complicated—a ghost or wraith or some kind of creature that used to be a person once, trying to pull herself together and get herself back, be human again. Be everything she used to be. It’s a story that would let me play with it on different levels, too: It’s a metaphor, see.

The last line that really struck me was this one: “I am like a fish in a poisoned pond. Sooner or later I am bound to die, whether I stay in it or get out of it.” I don’t care about the context or the character who said it, and I’d leave all those trappings behind. But it seems like the perfect wrapper for some kind of noir-flavored story (read: my favorite), a character with nowhere left to turn and only bad options to choose from. Maybe some kind of crime story with family drama and connections tied into it; not sure yet.

Bibliography: The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic by R. K. Narayan.

Image Credit: "Dark Alley" by Tom Francis. Source: Flickr.

Reading Notes: Narayan's Ramayana, Section A

The first thing in the notes to catch my interest was something that a poet told Rama: “Owing to the potency of your name, I became a sage, able to view the past, present, and future as one.” That’s an interesting brand of clairvoyance—seeing all the times at once, jumbled together, something you have to untangle to make sense of—rather than the usual “glimpses of the future interrupting the present” thing. It would also be a lot harder to live with, which means it has nice potential for a character complication.

I also find the situation that Ravana’s engineered pretty interesting. He and his brothers, “through austerity and prayers,” were granted “extraordinary powers” from the gods. But then the brothers turned right back around “and now threaten to destroy our worlds and enslave” the gods. Because the gods granted the powers, they can’t take them back again or do much to combat them. It’s even more interesting if you view the entire situation as one long con carried out by Ravana and his brothers, which I’m inclined to do.

Early on, the story also mentions that Rama and his brothers were born to the childless king only after the king performed a complex sacrifice—and I love the idea. Instead of being a miracle baby or being brought about by lots or prayer or good karma or whatever, imagine knowing you owe your entire existence to some dark and costly sacrifice. I’d be really interested in seeing the boys born out of that, blood and blades instead of love and hope.

I was also struck by the description of the desert wasteland Rama and the others come across—the cursed land: “Bleached bones lay where animals had perished, including those of monstrous serpents with jaws open in deadly thirst; into these enormous jaws had rushed...elephants desperately seeking shade, all dead and fossilized, the serpent and elephant alike.” It’s a setting with plenty of potential, and it would give me the freedom to tell a whole range of stories this week, which I find appealing.

Then there’s the fate of the mother and her two sons who went around destroying everything after her equally destructive husband was killed: He met their challenge by cursing them. “Since you are destroyers of life, may you become asuras and dwell in the nether worlds.” (Till now they had been demigods. Now they were degraded to demonhood.) The three at once underwent a transformation; their features and stature became forbidding, and their natures changed to match. The sons left to seek the company of superdemons. I don’t actually know if a story inspired by that would fit the weekly format, so I may have to save it as inspiration for something else, but that’s so up my alley.

At another point, when Sita’s miserable and a singing bird irritates the heck out of her, she exclaims, “The sins I committed in a previous birth have assumed your form and come to torture me now!” I’m interested in taking that idea and making it quite literal, just swapping out the bird for another person.

Throughout the king and Kaikeyi’s exchange, I also kind of loved their dynamic: he was so dramatic about everything, while she was cool and collected. I think it could be really fun to give that to another pair, either a couple who’s been together forever or just work partners, with a drama queen for the guy and a matter-of-fact ice queen for the girl.

Finally, I was also interested when Kaikeyi explained the situation with the king’s old vows to Rama, and said: “It is your duty to help your father fulfill his promise. Otherwise he will be damning himself in this and other worlds. You owe him a duty as his son.” And Rama just accepted it, realized he needed to do this for his father’s sake, and went on. I’d probably use that as the basis for a story about a son or daughter carrying out something unpleasant for the dad’s sake, since the same bones are all there.





Bibliography: The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic by R. K. Narayan.

Image Credit: "Ravana" by Sachin Nagar. Source: Indian Epics: Reading Guides.

Growth Mindset: To Thine Own Self

To grow yourself, you must know yourself.

It's a saying I've heard before, and it's the saying I chose from the Growth Mindset Cats blog, and it's even a saying I agree with.

To an extent.

Because the thing is, knowing yourself is key to growing yourself—it's kind of the key to everything. I'm pretty big on the idea that if you want to make anything of yourself or be your best at anything, you've got to know yourself better than you know anyone else. Better than you know anything else.

But this is one of those swords with two edges—because that way of thinking is essential, but it's also a trap.

Constantly growing means constantly relearning who you are. Not in the sense that you should sell yourself out or anything, but that it's important to keep in mind that the you you are today isn't the you you're going to be for the rest of your life. Just like going back and reading a journal entry or school essay written by your fifth-grade self is in some ways reading something written by a totally different person, a list of things you're good at or capable of is going to change as you do.

The trap, I think, is when you fall into the trap of the idea that you know yourself, and you know your strengths. It's an issue I've been trying to work on since I first learned about the Growth Mindset concept in Mythology & Folklore last semester: Instead of just doubling down on my strengths, things that seem like more efficient time investments, I need to work on other areas, too. I need to invest in myself.

Sometimes, yes, that means honing skills that're already there, practicing stuff that's important to me and that informs the way I view and know myself.

But sometimes it means relearning who I am, too, and not just thinking I already know who I am, which means not thinking I already know what I'm good at, capable of. That's how I kick down the walls of the fixed-mindset box I've traditionally lounged around in, and it's how I learn to flex muscles I've never realized I have.





Image Credit: "To Grow Yourself, You Must Know Yourself" by Laura Gibbs. Source: Growth Mindset Cats.

Time Strategies: 2017

After taking Mythology & Folklore last semester, I have a better idea of what approaches do and don't work for me. Possibly the most notable thing I learned is that I need to have a couple of days to stew over the readings and let the idea for my retelling percolate for a bit. Last semester, because I was doing the readings on Monday and Tuesday, that meant waiting until early Thursday morning to sit down, pull all my thoughts together, and get something down on the screen. But sometimes that didn't work out too well—like the time my Internet connection decided life wasn't worth it took a flying leap at 11:30 AM—and it was kind of stressful besides that.

So. This year, it might be fun not to do that.

I'm addressing that by scheduling the readings for the week for the Sunday before they're due: that'll give me more time to think about how I want to retell them, and also free up some time during the week for other assignments.

I'm also commuting this semester for the first time, which means I want to plan my days out so I have plans for the time between classes and the tools to tackle those plans. My main goal for the semester is finishing up this draft of the novel I'm working on, do revisions, and then send out query letters by the end of the school year or early summer. That means buckling down and churning out chapters faster than I have in the past; recent writing classes have taught me that I can actually write much faster than I'd always thought, but I need to have a clear idea of where each scene is going—in other words, I need an outline. I don't like feeling shackled by outlines or anything, but I have found them pretty useful as loose roadmaps, so my first step is to finish my outline so I can set clear goals of 1-4K words per day, depending on my schedule.

I ended up reading all the articles, but the two that struck me the most were "The Important Habit of Just Starting" and "The Myth of 'Too Busy.'" They were both excellent reminders of what I always know but don't always necessarily keep in mind: that little snatches of spare time add up, either for you or against you, and that a lot of things that clutter up everyday life don't actually matter—and they especially won't when I look back years from now. They're just filler. I've actually bookmarked both those articles to my browser homepage, and the plan is to reread them in the morning when I wake up and crack open my laptop, so I can keep that jaw-set determination at the front of my mind.

I'm also attempting a thing this semester where I take my usual to-do list and section the tasks off into time blocks. With timers and everything. I might decide I hate it and end up nixing that, but I've heard some people say it helps them a ton and they love it, so it's worth a shot.

After all, it's like the Narrator says.

This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

Image Credit: "Tyler Says:" by Jamiecat. Source: Flickr.

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Reading Options

For weeks 2-3, I've decided to go with the R. K. Narayan version of the Ramayan. I initially decided to look further into it because of its modern, novelistic approach, which lines up nicely with my  tastes. When I read reviews for it on Amazon, though, it was this snippet from reviewer Joshua Grasso that sold me: "His little asides where he explains, 'And here the poet described the scene so touchingly...' are at once reverent and amusing, as Narayan wisely omits anything too excessive or poetic that might derail his narrative." Not only does that remind me of the frame-story narration of William Goldman's The Princess Bride, one of my favorites, it tells me this is the adaptation for me, since I'm not one for flowery language or excessive description. The reading guide should be a nice resource if I need a refresher on anything when I go back to write my stories, too.

For week 4, I'd love to read the graphic novel adaptations. I love the graphic novel format anyways, but the covers of these books caught my eye, and they look much more my speed than the comic books do. Also, as someone who wants to publish both novels and comics some day, I think it would be really interesting to look at the same basic story adapted into those two different formats, and to look at what works better in which format, if that makes any sense.

At this point, I’m especially looking forward to the graphic novels, because I love the idea of such old stories being adapted to such a relatively new medium. (Also, yeah, because I’m shallow and the covers are amazing.) Based on the browsing I did, though, I’m also really interested in all the complicated-looking family dynamics of the Mahabharata: stories involving family relationships in some way are almost always my favorites, and it looks like these have plenty of extra drama and conflict thrown in. The “traditional legends” section of the heroes/heroines tab of stories on the ACK blog really caught my eye when I was going through and reading the descriptions for everything, too.

I’ve never taken a class on epic literature before, but I have read a little of it. I’ve never tried Game of Thrones, either—to be honest, I prefer urban fantasy to epic fantasy. But that kind of makes this even better for me, since I’ll be getting to read the epics and then spinning them off into more urban/ modern takes, if I want. The Iliad and The Odyssey are probably the first things that spring to mind when I think of mythology and epics, because I went through a huge Greek mythology phase in middle school, and the roots of that prompted me to take the Mythology & Folklore class (and then this class) in the first place. I'm still really interested in mythology these days, so I hope to explore more about Indian mythology, too. I know next to nothing about Indian history or culture, but I’m pretty confident this course will help with that.

Because of that lack of knowledge, I didn’t recognize anyone in any of the images on the site, either. I actually ended up choosing one of the graphic novel covers as my image. It first caught my attention because of how raw and dynamic the coloring and pose were, and when I gave it a closer look and saw that it was called Ravana: Roar of the Demon King, I was even more interested. I love it when stories swivel to show the antagonist’s side of the story—what’s that quote? Every villain is the hero in own mind?—and that seems especially important in such a large-scale story like this.





Image Credit: "Ravana" by Sachin Nagar. Source: Indian Epics: Reading Guides.

Week 1 Story: Burnt Offering

“You know, Liv,” Eastman says, kicking lightly at one of the reinforced cardboard boxes we’ve lugged to the woods behind the house. “When Mum said to finish unpacking, I’m pretty sure this isn’t what she meant.”

I kneel beside him, slitting open a taped box with the pocket knife Uncle Lewis gave me. The knife itself is another thing Mum would lose it over if we gave her the chance, but it seems pretty insignificant compared to what we’re about to do.

Besides, these days she could witness us commit ultra-bloody murder and still not notice us.

“What’s Dad’s favorite saying, again?” I ask, rooting through the box, pushing aside a stack of family photo albums. “‘What Mum doesn’t know can’t hurt us’?”

He scowls and slicks back his blond hair, apparently not amused. Which makes sense, I guess. After all, he knew about Dad’s affair way before I did, maybe even before Mum did. It’s probably been festering inside him all this time.

But that’s what today’s about.

Eastman gathers up half-rotten logs and fallen branches, arranging them in the middle of the clearing. We’re not that far into the woods—the holiday home Mum won in the settlement is just visible from here, all dark rock and glossy windows. But we didn't want to drag the boxes too deep into the trees, and something about having our new prison in view of this whole thing is more satisfying.

Eastman jogs over to our supplies and grabs a gas can, douses the logs with it. He spills a little on one sleeve, and the smell’s already strong enough that I know it’ll give me a splitting headache before too long, but I don’t complain.

Once he’s got the fire built up enough, we bring the boxes over and start unloading them. Family photos. Stuffed animals I got on family vacations. The baseball Dad caught for Eastman when we all went to a Yankees game ten years ago. A painting our parents got for their last anniversary. All of it goes into the fire.

It should feel cathartic, watching it burn. Eastman got the idea from some book he read about wicker men—big effigies built to use in sacrifice rituals. We’d build our own effigy, made of memories instead of wicker, and then we’d stand back and watch as it burned. We’d sacrifice the cause of our troubles to right all of them.

Fire is supposed to be cleansing, after all.

Eastman pulls out a lighter and a couple of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, passes one over to me. I wrinkle my nose—smoking still makes me cough, and the smell’s terrible, even worse than the gas fumes from his sleeve. But I take one of them from him, and we stand there together, smoking twin cigarettes to burn all the badness out of ourselves, too.

“Olivia,” he says after a minute, frowning. The exhalation of my name comes wreathed in smoke, wreathed in sins. I frown, too. “I have to tell you something.”

I consider that for a minute, holding my cigarette with one hand, feeding sentimentality to the flames with the other. Neither of us has ever been particularly sentimental. Mum says we have good heads on our shoulders. Dad says we’re just missing a chip.

“What is it?” I finally ask.

East shifts slightly, turning to face me but not meeting my eyes. He takes up a little toy guitar and reaches out to drop it in the fire—but at that exact moment, a stiff wind stirs up out of nowhere, and the flames shift too.

At first, I can only stand and watch as they snake out and bite into my brother’s gas-soaked sleeve.

The smell of burning skin is worse than the gasoline or the cigarettes.

Then something inside me snaps out of the daze, clicks into place, and I’m shoving him away from the fire, onto the ground. He’s screaming, and it’s terrible, but something in him must whir into gear too, that stop drop roll training from elementary school.

I throw my cigarette to the ground, then dig out my phone and call 911.

*** 

It’s a while before I get to talk to Eastman again.

Even once the hospital releases him, Mum and Dad keep him locked away in his room, insist he needs his rest. But as soon as I can, I slip in to visit. He’s awake.

Before I can open my mouth to apologize, he says, “It’s my fault.”

“We were standing too close to the fire,” I say. “You don’t control the wind.”

He shakes his head. “The divorce. I told Mum he was cheating on her.”

“That’s...” I start to tell him it’s stupid—that if anyone’s to blame, it’s apparently Dad, or whatever sleaze-haired mistress he picked up. That the only thing he did wrong was not telling me.

But then I look down at his face, pale and guilty and creased with pain, and his arm, hidden away under bandages and blankets like a bad secret. It’s true that Mum never would’ve left Dad if she hadn’t found out. Eastman had been trying to do the right thing for once, but sometimes the right thing is a bad thing.

I sink down onto the chair beside him. My twin brother. My partner in crime.

My wicker man.

Outside the window, Mum and Dad are actually talking. Not screaming or accusing or throwing things. Like their problems have been burned away.

Maybe Eastman’s right. It’s not fair, but maybe he’s right, and there never would’ve been problems if Mum had never found out. It’s hard to tell.

I reach into the pocket of the cardigan tied around my waist, fish out a lighter and our last cigarette. It’s a little bent, and when I straighten it and light it for him, he accepts it wordlessly.


We sit in silence as he breathes out his sins, and look out the window at the conversation his sacrifice bought us.





Author's Note: This week, I decided to use Tom Gauld’s “Map of the Area Surrounding our Holiday Home” as inspiration. It’s a drawing of a holiday cottage surrounded by all sorts of pleasantries, like an ax murderer, a slaughterhouse, and a Japanese soldier unaware the war has ended.

Options like that made it a little tough to choose which element to incorporate into my story, but when I looked up what the wicker man was supposed to be, that one caught my interest the most. As it turns out, wicker men were once believed to have been used by Druids as part of human-sacrifice rituals; apparently, Julius Caesar wrote that some Celtic peoples built effigies out of sticks and filled them with living people, then burned the structures as sacrifices to gods. I took that concept of fire and sacrifice and played with it a little bit here, set against a backdrop of family dysfunction and—apparently—teenage pyros. The biblical idea of fire as cleansing has always been interesting to me, and I wanted to explore that with a slight element of self-sacrifice too, which is partly where the cigarettes came in. As for Gauld’s holiday home itself, I used it as the vacation home the twins’ mother won in the divorce settlement.

Bibliography: Map of the Area Surrounding our Holiday Home by Tom Gauld.

Image Credit: Lighter by Matlachu. Source: Pixabay.

Storybook Favorites

While I stumbled across plenty of interesting storybooks in the course of this assignment, I’ve selected the following three because each of them represented something I’d like to aim for with my own project. So with that thought in mind, here are my selections.


Rama and the Other Avatars

While working on the week-to-week story retellings in Myth & Folklore last semester, I realized that my favorite stories to read and write were those that took the fantastical and transplanted them to contemporary settings. This storybook does that very well, following a protagonist who learns he’s an avatar of Vishnu and is charged with assembling the other avatars so they can team up and fight a demon army. It reads like the premise of a YA series, and I like how that brings a mainstream, genre angle to the epic stories.

Onboard the Spaceship Pushpaka

More than anything else, this project caught my attention because of its genre-bending approach. By taking story elements from the Indian epics and adapting them into a sci-fi story set in space, the writer instantly freshened up the source material, and I like the effect it gives. Beyond that, I also think the writer did a great job on giving the site a specific, consistent aesthetic: the cool greys and black of the color scheme give the pages a sleek, clinical feel, while the techy font looks like something straight out of a space captain’s log.

Sita's Soul

While the other storybooks so far have contained elements that line up with what I’m looking to do with my project, this one actually influenced the way I want to approach mine, which is why I’ve saved it for last. Last semester I decided I wanted to do a storybook with connected stories that told a single narrative in multiple parts, so that I would have more room to develop the characters and story world and plot arc. That’s still something I’m interested in, and it’s something this storybook does too. But while my storybook last year was composed of separate episodes that built up to a “myth-arc” finale, TV-style, this storybook features instalments that all point to the same goal: restoring the soul of someone close to the protagonist. It’s more of a quest format, with different steps and obstacles along the way, than episodic. I’d like to keep that in mind when I select the inspiration for my storybook this semester, because it would help me do something different and diversify a bit from my previous project—and also help me avoid needing to write extra “episodes” in order to finish the season arc, like I did last time.

Image Credit: "I'm a Lonely Soul" by Zura Shamatava. Source: 500px.

Introduction to a Story Hoarder

So. The name’s Jenna.

I write young adult speculative fiction, obsess over all things superhero (the X-Men will always be the best, even if they wound up with the cinematic short stick), and lament the deaths of my favorite characters. My entire material bucket list consists of a 1967 Chevy Impala, and if a word exists, there’s a 97% chance I’ve mispronounced it at least twice.

I’m a Professional Writing major and a Film & Media Studies minor—which is fitting, I guess, since for as long as I can remember, stories have been the fiery star my life revolves around.

My current project is a young adult crime novel with a fantasy bent, centered around a group of brothers raised as living weapons for a blood-magic crime syndicate. When their estranged dad turns up dead, the boys come together again to solve and avenge his murder. But after his own years embroiled in the crime outfits, Dad had a lot of enemies who could’ve wanted him dead—and now that he’s gone, those enemies have taken a renewed interest in his sons.

I’ve still got a ways to go before it’s finished, but I’m having quite a bit of fun with it so far; the plan is to finish it up and submit it to literary agents, then publishers. Fun fact? This project is actually based on a weekly story I did for the Mythology and Folklore class last semester. So I’m definitely a fan of these courses, and I’m looking forward to what this semester brings.

I also like to read YA fiction, which is what led me to writing it in the first place. The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater, along with Holly Black’s The Curse Workers trilogy, are my favorite series of all time; I also read The Demon’s Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan over the break, and it’s been added to the best-ever list. My favorite movies include Fight Club, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., What We Do in the Shadows, and Stand By Me. If you’ve got any recommendations—books, movies, TV, whatever—definitely bring them on.

Image Credit: Shadow of Pedestrian Walking at Night, by StockSnap. Source: Pixabay.

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Favorite Place: Moonlight Drive

The world at night is made of dark corners.

It’s even more noticeable—more striking, more true—on the road at night, when your headlights carve a tunnel through the darkness and there’s no real way of knowing what’s waiting on the other side of it.

I guess that’s why a vehicle at night is my favorite place in the world to be. Not the driver’s seat—being that aware of the destination takes some of the mystery out of the whole thing—but the window seat. Any window seat. Any vehicle. Any place. A family road trip to visit my grandpa in Houston, a late train from Wales to England, just a quick dash from my house to the convenience store and back again—it doesn’t much matter where points A and B are when the distance between them feels like magic.

In the end, I think that’s why I like these nocturnal trips so much. It’s best out in the middle of nowhere, where there aren’t many streetlights and the darkness around you looks like it could belong to anywhere in this world and nowhere in this world all at once. Riding around, gazing out my window, it’s like the night is made of potential: a new, mysterious place where anything could happen. Even every song on the radio feels new, each one a slightly changed, slightly charged version of the same tune I’ve known for years. Riding around, gazing out my window, it’s like my imagination is the one choosing where I’ll end up, and I’m just along for the ride.

It’s the one time in life I don’t worry about where I’m going.

I can pull my knees up into the seat, watch the headlights make shy guesses about the world around me, and wait to find out.





Image Credit: "Night Driving" by Joe Goldberg. Source: Flickr.SaveSave

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Kick off your shoes and stay awhile.





Image Credit: "Welcome Mat." Source: Wikimedia Commons.

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"It's like God gave you something, all those stories you can make up, and he said: This is what we got for you, kid. Try not to lose it."

—Chris Chambers, The Body by Stephen King