The Story Left Behind

I am the worst kind of reader.

Now, I love to read and read enough books to make a seasoned librarian blush.

But I am not a linear reader.

I look at the words on the page.

I see corners and shadows.

I see the paths not taken, the stories hinted at and never filled.

We do not write all the stories.

I would argue that the best stories are those that take place in a world that is alive and breathing.

Those worlds are full of other tales, appearing and vanishing on the turn of a page, caught in their own trajectory.

These are the stories underneath the story.

The stories that weave around the shadows, the corners.

The stories that remain when the book is closed and forgotten.

I look at the scenery and see the words weaving behind, cut-off in the foreground.

I look to the neat path ahead.

The tangle spreads from my pen, the clean road ignored.

A story half-told, enticing

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If you would like to see a fuller exploration of the tangle on the side,  I have also written a fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor. It is available here.

 

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On the Rails

There were two of them that summer.

I heard about them later, through friends-of-friends.

A couple of kids wanting to get across the bridge and using the tracks rather than the highway.

The things with trains is that they need a long time and a lot of space to stop.

There’s a head of pressure that builds when you have a massive machine moving.

It’s got a set path, a known destination, and a specific time to get there.

The sights it passes are beautiful and there is a comforting heart beat to the sound of each evenly spaced track.

But there is no exploration, no side movement, and, when the way ahead becomes obstructed, no way to stop.

There is a value to certainty, in both life and writing.

But maybe our heads of steam should be tempered with the passing world around us and the awareness of a single moment of disruption.

Of a bridge on a hot, lazy day, concealed by a corner.

The straight view before the corner

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When I’m not staring down the tracks ahead, I have also written a fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor. It is available here.