Baffu's First Story Complete.

For your reading convenience, the whole story is in the comment section of this post. Strictly rough draft, completely off the top of my head -- but I think it's a solid start.

That said, I have no idea what the title is.

Baffu's First Story: Part Nine

“Good enough,” Doctors said. “Good enough.” Then he looked at the potted plant and got up from his couch. While he had been speaking the rain had thinned and then stopped, though clouds still hid the world beyond the sky. “I think the buds have been softened enough for the blossoms to…”

Baffu got up and went to the plant. Doctors was right; one of the buds was splitting. Baffu held his finger out and the blossom crawled onto it, seeming grateful for the warmth. Its cluster of crinkled petals pulsed and swelled, turning into wings. Its eyes glowed with the internal light of coals under ash.

Full text in comments.

Baffu's First Story: Part Eight

“You mean whore’s paisley,” Baffu said. “I’ve heard that after a time it turns women into men.”

“Not so, not so,” Doctors said. “But it does have certain… unfortunate cosmetic effects. Thusly, it is only used on the lowest grade of prostitute, one whose employer intends to use and discard them. Now if I may return to the story – and I trust you’re paying attention?”

Baffu nodded.

Full text in comments.

Baffu's First Story: Part Seven

Doctors stared out at the potted plant with its struggling luminous buds in silence, then drained his cup. Baffu picked opened a third bottle and poured for both of them.

“So?” he asked.

“So, indeed,” Doctors said. “The next time the Justice of Black and Gray saw the student the young man lacked the modest dignity that had formerly been his hallmark; the student turned this way and that, his scholar’s robe open so that his private parts were displayed to any who cared to look. That is because his sash was around his neck and he hung from a rafter in his room. It was the restauranteur who found him when the smell of the student was stronger than the smell of cooking."

Full text in the comments.

Baffu's First Story: Part Six

He gestured to a plaque on the wall; it was much like the one Baffu had seen in the court where Doctors acted as judge but older and simpler in design. Carved out of fine-grained ivory and inlayed with colored wood and shell, it showed four figures, posed close together; a tall stern man with a dour face, a calm woman with a look of keen intelligence, a dark angry youth, and a gently smiling girl with downcast eyes.

“Kneel before them,” Doctors said. It was a command.

Full text in the comments.

Baffu's First Story: Part Five

“Older brother, I need your advice,” he said. “You know I keep the peace out in the market. Well, now they’re asking me to settle disputes and I fear it won’t be long before I’m working your main line of business.”

“So I hear,” the old man said, and curled his lips in a shape that only resembled a smile.

Full text in the comments.

Baffu's First Story: Part Four

There were no lanterns, no candles. The square patio and the porch surrounding it were lit only by the steady pink-and-yellow glow from the buds of the potted plant that was the evening’s focus. It was Doctors’s (so-called because of his meritorious degrees in medicine, literature, engineering, and of course jurisprudence) first blossom viewing since he’d been exiled to the City of Wealth (so-called because of the wealth it brought to the Four Empires, its name a cruel joke to locals like Baffu).

Full text in the comments.

Baffu's First Story: Part Three

“Spend night?” First Wife asked.

“Depend drunk, we,” Baffu said.

“La, la,” First Wife shook her head, then broke into the language of the poets. “My beloved younger brother, our venerable repository of justice and wisdom is anxious for your company.” She hooked a thumb in the direction of the patio and lapsed back into Market. “Out there, got bottle. Food soon.”

The complete version of this page is in the comments.

Baffu's First Story: Part Two

The giant Baffu crawled through the service entrance, scarred knotty knuckles pounding the bone floor like mallets. First Wife rushed toward him holding a towel and once he was fully inside he sat cross-legged and bent forward so she could dry his hair.

“Walk in rain, you.” First Wife spoke in Market pidgen and her voice had a companionable, familiar nag to it.

“Try fly, older sister. Don’t work,” Baffu said. He extended his hands and flapped. Carefully.

The full section is in the comments...

Baffu's First Story: Part One

No pictures today. Sorry about that...

So I want to apply to this writer's workshop, Viable Paradise. They want somewhere in the neighborhood of eight thousand words of fiction -- one or two stories or a chunk of a larger work. What makes this tricky is that what you submit is what you work on over the course of the workshop.

I want to get in, so I want to send my best work -- but if my best work works, why would I want to spend a week having it prodded at? It seems as if I'd rather spend the time working on something that needs help.

I thought about it and realized that I have a story that contains some of my best stuff -- but the story isn't quite there. It was good enough to be published in issue seven of Monday Night but it still feels as if it's not quite there. Nothing that's in submission to a pro market is allowed but Monday Night is strictly small press. So that takes care of story number one.

That leaves me with story number two. And that problem has been driving me out of my mind. See, Viable Paradise is a SF/Fantasy-oriented workshop. That appeals to me because my genre side has been a wee tad hampered by the writers I work with. It's great to have had so much of a mainstream/literary influence on my work but genre fiction is important to me as well.

But my first story, God's Tourists, is about five thousand five hundred words long. And I don't have any fantastic fiction that's short enough to fit into the remaining space.

I wanted to do something really SF-y for the second story. I wanted to do something action-oriented.

I haven't been able to come up with an idea.

So in casting around I remembered a story idea that I should be able to write within the permitted word count. The thing is, is that the story uses character and setting details from what I intend to eventually be my Big Work, the series of novels that I want to write for my bread and butter in the long run. I've been working on it both mentally and on paper since I was a kid. It was the subject of my first attempt at game design -- I tried to write it as an adventure game before there was Dungeons and Dragons.

The shape of the thing has changed radically over the years, going from goofy far-future SF to weird fantasy, from being intentionally escapist to being a tool for confronting issues both personal and political. It's really, really ambitious and I wasn't going to try and tackle it until I had at least one successful (in the artistic rather than the commercial sense of the word) novel under my belt.

Thing is, there's still a lot of work to be done. A lot of world-building is still ahead of me. Much of what I'm going to do is gonna have to be changed because I cannibalized a good chunk of the material for my current novel-in-progress...

And part of this story touches on elements that are central to my pal Allison's big work in progress. They actually predate my friendship with Allison but I'm nervous about working her side of the street, especially on issues as sensitive as this.

But I need a fucking story. So here's the deal.

This is a test boring. This is an experiment. This is the first attempt I've made at working with these characters since I've achieved any success with my writing.

So I'm gonna liveblog the story. Gonna do a draft of the whole thing today and then send it out to my Monday night writer's group. I'll post each page (ending at the last completed paragraph) as I go. I'll lead each post with a sample paragraph and then put the rest of the page in the comments section.

See you next post...