September writings

School has started up again!
This unfortunately means that there is a lot less time for writing other stuff at the moment, or at least the creative part of my brain has taken a short holiday... But it'll be back in time for teatime, don't you worry!

I've started up a new blog, over at Tumblr.com, which is updated daily. The content ranges from images and quotes to journal-entries and poems, so it might be worth checking out. I spill some of my creativity there now, whilst on my unintended hiatus from Storywrite. Head on over to http://dracudian.tumblr.com/ to see it! (Hopefully it'll get a proper domain soon, but that's the link for now)

In writing news, a free online magazine has shown interest in my story Cassandra (the revised version), which is awesome! I'm currently writing a bio and stuff like that, and hopefully the story will feature in their October edition (I think). A link to the website will come shortly, in a post of its own! They aim to share art and creativity, so their goals are admirable, and their magazine looks great.

2009 - A Summary

So, a short summary of the year 2009

- I moved and started university after the summer, the first step on my journey towards becoming a teacher in history. I've made a lot of new friends, but also had a lot of school-work to do. A lot of reading!

- I've posted a record low 13 items on storywrite during 2009

- One of those stories is a rewrite of an old story

- Five of the stories are parts of series (3 different series), and do not have proper endings

- According to the SW word-counter, my 2009 items makes up about 21 500 words

- My stories of 2009 have had 157 comments, though my own replies are counted

- Cassandra (revised) has had 76 comments, Kain, Hunted, the second in the series of Kain, has had no comments at all

- 5 of my 2009 items were tagged 'Adventure', 3 tagged 'Dark', 5 were tagged 'Fantasy' and two 'Semifantasy', 3 were tagged with variations of 'Gore', 5 are tagged 'Horror'... No stories are tagged 'Curious Orange'. One was tagged 'Love' and 'Tragedy'.


- To compare a bit, I posted 14 proper items during 2008 (+ 2 non-proper contest entries)
- In 2007 I posted 84 more or less proper items.



Here's all the things I posted in 2009, and a short description of what they are:

Lucy and the Rainbow (posted January 1.)
A short story about a girl who loses her virginity. Told mostly through metaphor/her drunken dream about the event.

One Man's Meat Is Another Man's... Treat (posted February 6.)
A story about a homeless man caught in the middle of a zombie-apocalypse, and how he comes to adapt to the situation in a bit of a strange way. Warning, contains attempts at humour.

The Featureless Face (posted March 7.)
A horror story with grisly murders, gory descriptions and a properly weird end.

Buccaneer Sky - Part 1: The Cage (posted March 11.)
The start of a planned adventure-series. Set in a steam-punk universe with both hack-and-slash and zeppelins!

Buccaneer Sky - Part 2: We sail The Jolly Roger (posted March 11.)
The (much worse) follow-up to the previous story. The adventure continues with hastily written characters and a poor gunfight. This part put me off writing more in the series, though I wish to come back to it in time.

Fall of Paradise (posted March 13.)
A gory horror-fantasy piece about the murder and rape of angelic beings, and the invasion of paradise by those unfortunate enough to have been shut out.

Fear Of Death In A Vision Of The Future (posted June 6.)
A spiritual follow-up of sorts to Retrospectives In A Vision Of The Future from 2007. It's set in a sci-fi universe, and follows a woman heading home from a friend in the evening.

The Doll (posted June 18.)
A girl is shown an old dancing doll by her grandmother. That night, the girl and the grandmother is visited by the man who once gave the grandmother the doll. He calls himself Lightbringer.

Kain, Nighthunter (posted July 14.)
The longest story of the year with it's 4811 words. It's another adventure story intended to become a series (though this one has potential, and will hopefully and probably be continued). It's about Kain, a 'nighthunter' who hunts rogue monsters while taking work from more 'friendly' monsters.

Kain, Hunted (posted August 3.)
The follow-up to the previous story, this one is more based around combat while taking away a lot of the descriptions and dialogue that sort of made the first part. A few new characters are introduced, most importantly Kains wife. The third part is supposed to follow this one directly, but hasn't yet been finished.

Three Sisters and The Sea (posted October 18.)
Featuring some characters from Kain, this is supposed to go into the Kain story, but also stands on its own. It's written as a myth, inspired by greek mythology. Inspired by an Inkubus-Sukkubus song.

Cassandra (revised) (posted October 24.)
It's one of my own favorite stories, revised more than two years after the original was written. I think it's a lot better, without really changing anything. The story is about an author who writes about a shipwreaked girl, who then comes alive.

Garden of Time - Chapter One - "The Marble Hall" (posted December 29.)
My most recent story at the time of writing, it's another adventure-type story that's supposed to become a series. It's about five people from different timeperiods being summoned by a mysterious stranger who sends them on a journey to find the Garden of Time, giving very little explaination of his motives and what they are really embarking upon.

So, that was 2009. Very few stories, only 3 written after I started university. Hopefully, I'll manage to write more during this year... Even the Charlotte (dreams of) project that I wrote about in my last post here.

So, cheers for 2009, now let's welcome 2010 with open arms.
- Drac

(Why the picture at the top? Well, I spendt the entire writing of this entry listening to the song Kurious Oranj by The Fall, and I just watched some Curious Orange clips on youtube. Then I spendt half an hour looking for a good 2010 or 2009 picture online... When I came across this one, combining the Curious Orange and 2010, I had to go for it ;D There you go)

Cassandra - The Second Coming

my rose has withered
it will never bloom again
the soil is dry
time has come to die

Trying hard to write something these days, as usual, but it's still hard. Hoping that christmas will abolish this block, and make me write something new and good again.

Lately, I've been trying to cook up a sequel of sorts to Cassandra, while still thinking about how to actually expand on the original story itself.

I have a few ideas about how a sequel might happen, and I've even started writing some early drafts, yet I'm not completely feeling it yet. Hopefully, it'll come in time. Here are some of my ideas, for now:

- The sequel takes place in an entirely different era than Cassandra (envisioned somewhere between 1400's-1700's), such as medieval Europe, ancient Egypt, 40's Germany, present modern city or somewhere sometime in the future.
It's about a similar deal, where someone has a limited amount of space to write upon, but what he/she writes comes alive and provides a life-companion.
This sort of sequel could take on an entirely different feel than the original, and maybe even evolve in omnious ways. However, it'll most likely follow the tragic path trodden by its predecessor, let's be honest.
This kind of sequel could lead to another sequel (if successful, mind you, unlike the sequels I mention in my Sequel Post), all taking place in different times, having different twists to them.

- A story like the one above, but that connects the events of Cassandra to the new age in some way or other. This I've written part of, but it didn't turn out real well (I'll post it at the bottom here, for all to see)

- A direct Sequel or Prequel to Cassandra, that reveals something previously unknown about the original story, distorting the original view of the story (however, seeing how much I love the original, I doubt this'll happen ;p But it'd be a fun experiment).

my journey's over
I'm standing on the edge
and close my eyes
to this world of lies

my will is broken
it's the end of all my dreams
my soul yearns
for the valley of the queens

The song that the above lines are take from is called 'Valley Of The Queens', by the amazing 'Ayreon'. I highly recommend that everyone listen to Ayreon, you won't regret it for a second. And 'Valley Of The Queens' is a really beautiful song that I just can't stop listening too, so check it out! I'm sure I'll get much of my inspiration from Ayreon in the future (the only problem being that I can't afford to be that ambitious in my projects ;p).

Oh well, for those waiting for it, here's the hastily scribbled thing that might evolve into a story interlacing with Cassandra. I guess it could have the working-title "Catherine".


From the top of the cliff, the view of the world changes. All you see is the violent ocean, the beautiful colors and its beconing sound. For a second, I thought I saw a red dress floating in the water, but in an instant it was swallowed by the sea again. I hear the whisper of a familiar name, spoken by a familiar voice. A tear traces the outline of my face, dripping from my chin, at once stolen by the wind and brought down to the sea.

In my hand, I was holding a book bound in red leather. An old book, it had been one of my only companions for years, as I had searched for the cliff. The cliff was different from what I had imagined, the author of the book had never really described it fully. The house on the edge however, was exactly how I imagined it to be. It was the only house I'd seen for miles, and it was clearly abandoned. The town mention in the book, Mirror Breeze, was long gone. When I passed the former town, only ruins still stood, and even though I searched for days, I couldn't identify the hovel that had once belonged to the old lady in the book. Perhaps it had been for the best.

Searching in records for a ship called Ophelia, gone missing, yielded no results. But I had found the house now, and the cliff.

This is where he jumped, this is where she dissappeared. Maybe then, this is where my Catherine dissappeared too. I threw the leather-bound book off the edge.
"Cassandra" a voice shouted from the sea, as the book was grabbed by the waves.

From my inner jacket, I pulled a machine-written manuscript. It was two hundred and fifty pages long, four years worth of fond memories. The title was Catherine, and the end was yet to be written. I smiled, as I stepped off the cliff. The pages of the manuscript flew around me, filling me with a peace I thought I'd never again feel.
"Catherine" I whispered, as I could swear I saw her waving to me from the top of the cliff. Next to her, a girl in a red dress stood, waving to me as well. Then I hit the water.

Cassandra - revised

I wrote some time ago about editing my story Cassandra from early 2007, and I was actually in the process of doing so when I moved, forgetting all about it until I bought a new computer. Here on my new computer, I obviously didn't have the 'editing-cassandra' file, so I started over. With the strange process of re-writing the story paragraph for paragraph, I wrote my new version and posted it on SW as Cassandra (revised).

The first version of Cassandra features one of my own favorite plots, and I've always liked the story. It has also always been my most read and commented story, and it has for a long time been somewhere on the first few pages of top-all time SW popular stories. However, as many commentors said, the story was flawed, the layout was strangely messed up, and some parts of it didn't make sense. Even though I'm not entirely pleased with the new version either, I think it's a definate upgrade, and I hope people will read it, even though they read the first one. In time, I hope to be able to re-write it again, perhaps even in the way I've always wanted, making it a much longer story.

The first Cassandra was the 67 463'th story posted on SW, and Cassandra (revised) is number 348 700! I've posted about 86 stories in between the two versions, and more than two and a half years have passed! In the meantime, the story also grew more than 300 words. Hopefully, the added experience has made the story better, and will make it even better in the future. I still think the story holds up, and is still somewhat original, and I hope it'll stay that way.

Thanks for reading =)

(My next project? Maybe I'll try to revisit some other old stories, perhaps 'The beauty of a witch' or 'Purgatorial Pain')

The Names Are In The Music

A lot of my inspiration come from music, as I am always listening to music when I write. Sometimes I listen to heavy metal, sometimes it's 80's pop, and sometimes it's irish and celtic music. I listen to a lot of different music, and I'm usually able to draw some sort of inspiration from most of it. However, I do find that I also like to draw character names from songs that I like. If I find a characters name in a song, I can often get other inspiration for that character from the same song or the same band. Here's an example of characters I've named after songs, or fund inspiration for in songs:

Mephisto - The main character of my unfinished novel was not named after a song, but after hearing the song 'Mephisto' by Moonspell, I incorporated parts of the song in the character, such as the line 'I am an angel who dresses in red', leading to the idea of him wearing mostly red and black clothes. (The fact that he was a fallen angel however, I established earlier).

Cassandra - The titular character of my short story 'Cassandra' is named after the song by the same name by Theatre of Tragedy. In the song they sing 'She hath no life but the one he for her wrought', which led to the idea that the character had no life, but the one 'he' for her wrote, the whole basis of the story.

Messalina and Nightwing - These two characters from Kain, Nighthunter are both the titles of songs by Inkubus Sukkubus, and alongside the song 'Sanctuary' by the same band, they helped establish several ideas I incorporated into the story.

Characters from Mephisto - In mephisto I had a character named Cassandra, named after the same song that named the short story. I also had a character named Lillith, partially inspired by the song 'heart of lillith' by Inkubus Sukkubus. Another of their songs inspired the character Atrocity from Mephisto, and made me create a backstory based on the song. The character Beltaine was also inspired by one of their songs. A character called Luna/Lisa was named after the song 'Luna' by Moonspell and 'Lisa' by Lita Ford... And yes, in the story it makes sense that she has two names. The idea for this novel was that I'd pay homage to some of my favorite bands and authors by naming characters, locations and such after them or their work, without copying of course, so I mainly stuck to first names. Some characters however, like Azrael, Lucifer and Lucifierra were harder to link to any particular piece of work, but all of them were in turn inspired by pieces of music I was listening to while writing. I could probably make a soundtrack for each character and chapter at the time of writing =)

So yeah, to sum up, I use a lot of music to inspire my writing, and in particular my characters. I've found that Inkubus Sukkubus is a great band to look at when I want a character-name that suits the sort of mythology I'm going for in works like Mephisto and Kain, Nighthunter. And yes, the picture on top is of Inkubus Sukkubus. I thank them for all the inspiration they have given me so far when listening to their albums, and all the inspiration they will continue to give me in the future =D

Editing Cassandra

Sometimes, I like to go back to my old stories and read them through, either to find out if I'm making progress as a storyteller, or to find inspiration for new stories. One thing I've often thought about is to go back and edit older works, especially one I like very much myself, called Cassandra.

I wrote the story back in February 2007, just a few weeks after joining storywrite. The story is about an author who writes about a young girl, and as he writes about her, his story comes alive (because of some sort of enchanted book). He comes to love the girl like a daughter, but has to write small texts about her in order for her to stay alive. However, what will he do when the pages of his 'magic' book runs out?

So yeah, I decided to read this story again about a month or so ago, and to my horror I found a lot of flaws =P Firstly, the structuring of the story is awful, and could easily be made better. Secondly, there are a lot of minor flaws and errors, grammatically and otherwise. And thirdly, it's just not really as good as I used to think it was =p

I'm not really blowing my own story down here, I still think the story itself and the premise is good, but I would like to edit this into something better. The lack of detail shines through the story, and it almost reads like a summary or a synopsis rather than a complete story.

So, what I did was to sit down and start editing Cassandra. At first it was easy, correcting the flawed structure and the grammatical shortcomings, followed by taking use of several tips and corrections that readers had left in the comments of the story. Suddenly, it didn't only look better, but it read easier as well. Then came the hard part...

When it was time to add things or take things away, I found that it was hard for me to do so. It's a story I've always loved myself, and one of my most read stories posted at storywrite. It's quite high in the most popular stories list at SW, coming in at nr.112 out of a whopping 141,583 stories. People have always liked the premise of the story, though I think many agrees that it could have been done better with more detail and some extra things added or taken away from it. In the end, I just couldn't really do much about it... At least not for the time being...

So, I'll probably get around to replacing the existing version with the slightly edited one soon, and I hope that one time I'll manage to further expand upon the story, and write it the way it deserves to be written =)

Thanks for reading ;D