Onwards we go with Economous then \o/

Thank you all for your continued thoughts and reactions. I wondered too about having a more conversational start, to reveal some things about EM through chatter at an alehouse with fellow spedigraphers and other arterly types. We shall see - info-dumping is a common first draft symptom, so perhaps - if this goes to a second working - such an issue will be resolved.

I am thinking to post 1000-1500 words every Monday (Oz Monday that is, so this may vary for other parts of the world, late Sunday in the US and its neighbours for example). How does that grab you?

Economous Musgrove Chapter 1 Part 2

Here we are with the next instalment of Economous Musgrove - a Half-Continent tale, that I hope to be releasing with regular frequency. What do folks think: twice weekly? Once? Thrice? 

Thank you everyone for your encouragements, I shall press on and let the cross-fertilisation go on.

Economous

musgrove

    

© D.M.Cornish

PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH OR REPRODUCE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION

Chapter 1, part 2

His most recent employment at a grand gala held a month past by the Duchess-in-waiting of Naimes – in which he performed the required entertainment of spedographer – hasty portraitist – he thought he had gained a reference of the truest excellence. Yet it turned that even so exulted a recommendation as that of the Branden Rose – surely one of the great lights in Brandenbrass society – actually produced opposite outcome of spoiling the interest of patrons. 

“Oh, that’s not much chop,” potential customers would say with the same sour yet subtle sneer. “She takes on just about anyone these days…”

All Economous knew was that it had been a glorious night brimfull with swirling noble souls of the highest of high stations, each one costumed in glittering fancies of such gorgeous magnificence the would-be fabulist was certain the cost of just one could probably cover a year of his own expenses. It had been a bizarre, gleaming, all-to-brief moment to punctuate his ceaseless run of dogged days and every “customer” had declared themselves well pleased with his spedigraphs. Were it not for the first-rate sum the would-be fabulist was paid for his portraits of the gala guests – one month’s wage for a single night’s work – Economous would be pinched and starving and desperate indeed.

As it might be, geese aren’t fatted to be kept, he reminded himself with a second sigh.

Rumour – learnt only yesterday from a supercilious underwriting clerk at the Letter & Coursing House  – spoke of strange excentricities amoungst the Branden Rose’ staff and even some dark disconcerting hint of the crime of sedony, that is of kindness or an inclination of the same towards monsters. This was as grave as rumour could get, for in Brandenbrass – as in all decentsocieties – the monster was the supreme foe utterly bent on the ruination of the kingdom of everymen and deserving only of expulsion and destruction. To be found a sedorner – a monster-lover – was to be guilty of the worst stripe of betrayal known to all history and civilization, of which death – usually prelonged or painful – was the only just and fitting consequence. Economous had seen such poor souls exposed at the edge of Lo or on the road in to Brandenbrass languishing in gibbet-cages or strung spreadeagle upon tall Catharine wheels grown about with thorns to prevent their families from rescuing them.

No one would surely dare such a blatant and dangerous accusation with the great woman herself about, but the Branden Rose was no longer in the city and tongues were free to wag. And so her sanction proved Economous’ disadvantage, and he was back to much as he was when he first arrived in Brandenbrass two years ago.

With Lestwich – year’s end – nigh upon him, he was all too aware that even so handsome a figure as five sous would not last him longer than two or at best three months, certainly not now that his rent had been raised by the second time that year. He also knew that the steady income of steady – that is, dull and wearying – employment was not his lot. Yet without some proof of constancy and income how ever was he to impress upon Madamine Grouse, his landlady, that he was a good match for her beautiful daughter, Asthetica.

His soul soared upon misty mooning admiration for the raven-haired magnificence that was Asthetica Grouse with her flashing grey eyes, fine manners and then plummeted at the thought of her demoralizing string of suitors… The most recent and most daunting of all of these pretenders: Monsiere the Lord Sprandis Fold, Reive of Lot-in-the-Hole, man-about-town, weak of chin, so very fine of dress, heir to some fine mercantile concern and a peer of state. Though Economous could plainly see that none of her daughter’s beaus meant truly well for Asthetica – the Monsiere least of all – Madamine Grouse happily encouraged such acquaintence. For she bore high hopes that Asthetica’s fair face and fine figure would make her an eligible for a match to some gentleman of elevated station and deep purse. As properly book-learned and handy with a cudgel as he might have been, to Madamine Grouse Economous was a parish-born bumpkin, irredeemably obscure and “… poor as poorhouse rat!” as she so often reminded him.

What I need, Economous confirmed to himself with dark determination, is some great exploit to join that pays handsomely at the outset, or a wealthy patron to commision whole bodies of work like they do of the great master illuminators.

That very week Economous had gone to apply to join as an official recorder in the champaign being planned against the nickers occupying the fortress of Winstermill up north – a calamity presenting to him glittering opportuinty. Unlike – it seemed – many of his fellow citizens who had never known of the place until the report of its attack barely a month ago – Economous had some idea of the place. Serving as the main staging for a battalion of Imperial Lamplighters, it was a minor Imperial bastion much vaunted as being inpregnable, built upon old Burgundian foundations of Winstreslewe. Yet, clearly, Winstermill had been “pregged” after all, and worse still, by vicious monsters. Now its fall was all anyone ever sought to talk about: the great and dread threat of the north, the blighted nicker come to swallow the precincts of everymen at last! If so unbreechable a place had been breeched, how long could Brandenbrass several rings of lofty walls hold such a ravening at bay? The entire city was submerged under a pall of heavy and anxious watchfulness as if the entire world of monster-kind might at any moment surge upon Brandenbrass’ mighty walls and bring ruin to them too.

Much vexed by a recent Imperial Bull altering the naming of the last months of the year in honour of yet another Imperial Grandson, the sneering clerks at the grand knaving house were especially venemous as they refused him. “The Arch-duke and his supporters have imagineers enough for the purpose and are, I am sure, more concerned with fighting the monsters than scetchingthem!”

So, for Economous the Mouldwood had become the best of places to the escape the endless searching, the dour and frettful speculation, the demeaning clerical disdain, and forget, if but for a moment, the grim futility of his own life. 

An idea... (or: Economous Musgrove Chapter 1 Part 1)

I just had a crazy thought: I have an m/s that has not gone anywhere for a long while so perhaps I could share it with you all 500? 1000? words at a time. Perhaps feedback might get it moving? Perhaps it might be cool to let you all roam the Half-Continent again?

It will be un-edited, first-drafty (draughty - holes in it, get it?), and like un-spellchecked (not a real verb) but what do you think? Will the format of this blog make it too hard to read? 500 words? 1000 words? Any other problems? Benefits?

Here is a sample to get things rolling and see how it works... (about 1100 words, too much?)

Economous

musgrove

© D.M.Cornish

DO NOT PUBLISH OR REPRODUCE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION

1^st Draft, June 2011-August 2013

1 ~ In the Park

fabulist ~ an imagineer – a maker of images by stylus, paint, charcoal or any other medium – employed by monster-hunting teratologists to go with them upon their dangerous exploits, observe their daring and make drawings and etchings of the same to prove to safe-living city folk of their praise-worthy prowess. Being a fabulist means therefore sharing all the dangers and hardships of your patron teratologist, and with it some hope of a healthy share of the accompanying rewards. For the true imagineer, however, it is not the promise of wealth that is the greatest draw, but the challenge of placing yourself in the very midst of the danger to draw a duel between patron and monster, and capture the as truly as possible at the very height and thrill of the violence.

Economous Musgrove, illustrator, some-time concometrist and would-be fabulist, sat quietly on a simple bench a little way in from the east gate of the Moldwood Park in the grand and ancient city of Brandenbrass and drew. He was well aware of the cleveland’s solemn reputation as a queer and unpleasant place, preserved by some ancient bond and stubbornly threwdish, despite centuries of encirclement by one of the world’s great cities. Indeed, surrounded by buzzing bugs and drifting pollens, he could feel a subtle watchfulness that he now called normal, brooding from the dark spaces between the olives and sycamores and black turpentines shaggy with yellowing lichens. It did not seem so unpleasant a sensation to him as most other folk complained upon. In truth – though he dare not admit it to anyone not even Asthetica, his true love – Economous actually liked the feeling of threwd here, as slight as it may have been. He found it a small but important thrill, giving him a taste of life as perhaps it ought to be: deep, perhaps impenetrable and impossibly vital – the stark opposite of the frustrating inertia that seemed to drag at his own days.

Barefoot, Economous sat now – shoes under his proofed frockcoat on the bench beside him – drawing nooks and boles, birds and all manner of crawling things that came his way. Most of all though, he drew the myriad rabbits great and small that so famously and helpfully infested this city-bound woodland. Loping from shadow to shadow, ears switchin ceaselessly forward and back, they grew bolder the longer he sat there, venturing from folds of thick cabage weed to wriggle their stunt noses at him. Though never able to pay him for his trouble, these nervous restless creatures were far less self-conscious or suspicious or given to offence than the people of this fair city, and they made excellent subjects to draught.

In dull blue-grey weskit and cotton shirt sleave rolled to elbow in the late spring heat, Economous strove to get every rabbit he spied down in the very midst of motion with both the speed and accuracy required for  the drawing of teratologists and their deadly exploits. He could have sat on any street or lane in the city itself to observe these, for Brandenbrass was famously over-run with the creatures, even to the obvious and peculiar exlusion of the far more usual rat that gnawed away at other cities. But where they were furtive, twitchy and quick to flight in the common ways, in the cool calm of the Moldwood the city-living rabbits were – contrary to all cause – calm and almost tame.

Today, however, his usually quiet, long-eared companions seemed unusually restless, making themselves hard to draw as they scampered among the roots and leaves, bounding over each other, breaking out in energetic scuffles Economous had never previously witnessed. They were bolder too, some daring to graze and frolic right up by his seat, while out of the deeper shades of the park more rabbits emerged, playing all about him now in such numbers that set Economous to marvelling.

Perhaps their spring-time broods have come out to join them?

Yet he could not see any small-bodied, big-eyed, short-eared bunnies among the great variety of creatures gathered, nor even one slender leveret. They were all – as far as he could reckon it – full grown rabbits.

Economous paused for a moment, leaning back and rubbing his eyes against the strain of concentration to which they had been subject for the last two hours.

Though rigourously schooled as a concometrists at the athenaeum, he spent much of his apprenticeship drawing rather than measuring or reading or recording as he was supposed to do. And though he had at the end of his five years there been granted a numrelogue to record measurements and earned his calibrator – the thick yard long ruler that was both weapon and tool of a concometrist’s trade, much of what his exasperated masters had sought to squeeze into his intellectuals had simply gone in his ears and run out of his eyes. Little now seemed left behind of his learning but some vague reckoning of the tribes into which habilists divided all beasts, a modicum of Tutin – the language of scholarship and the Empire – and page upon page of unauthorised drawings. It had felt like a false start as he left the athy and made for the great and shining prospects of Brandenbrass and after missteps and blank leads, it still felt like it now.

For, no matter how he tried these two years gone since departing Athingdon Athenaeum, he had failed to gain any momentum as a full-fledge fabulist: drafting, etching and daubing his way from one client to the next upon the headway of an ever-increasing set of references of ever-increaing excellence. Though he had been considered many many times, he had only been on three true hunts. He had thrilled at the chase and stood astonished at the wonder and dread of the snarling cornered beasts they sought, capturing the wild things with far greater passion than he drew the exploits of his actual human patron. Unfortunately, upon the last hunt – now nigh on a year gone –in his eagerness to fully render the small, wizzened, almost pathetically child-like bogle they were chasing, he thoughtlessly got in the teratologist’s way thus allowing the little creature to win free and escape. Though they searched for a week it was never to be found again. Foiled, the hunt had returned to the city empty-handed where – deprived of his prize – the teratologist gave Economous so bad a report that it swiftly spread into an awkward reputation. This poor name went well ahead of the would-be fabulist, so bringing him to this present paucity of work. Still, Economous was not about to let himself be so simply prevented. Ever since his earliest years his way had not been as every other soul’s, and regardless of anyone else's interventions, he was not about to let one mistake ruin his own chosen course of life.

Brandenbrass, or: there was a time once when I blogged often...

Still here, still battling on: if there was an award for World's Suckiest At Self-Discipline (and blogging), I would surely be a contender.

Where I am at creatively, atm? What does a soul do with creativity and inspiration? With the flow and the necessary ebb of productive humours? Do you put them in a box, a routine that allows them daily expression? Do you wait until they burst in fiery generating glory then suffer the long slow down-swing before the next up-swing? Is it something in-between? Is this in-between even possible? As an author of three books, should I have not already figured this out?

While you chew on that cud, please be entertained by a glimpse of a current WIP: a map of Brandenbrass.

Brandenbrass: Work-in-progress.

Brandenbrass: a detail.

Of course, is doing a map of Brandenbrass useful? Perhaps leaving it uncharted and open to interpretation would serve better?* I do love a good map tho, and figuring out how in Photoshop I can achieve an antiquated look has been a grand adventure.

Also, for those not connected to the Book-of-Face, I have an anthology of two stories (if a pair of tales can be called an anthology) before my publisher atm: the first being The Corsers' Hinge, the second a story of a country girl come to the city to make coin for her family back in the parish of Broad Trim with a working title I will not divulge because i think it gives away what happens. These are awaiting acceptance, and if by God and my publisher's grace they go ahead, it will clock in at about 50,000 words - so not as long as Foundling, but still with some substance. Here's to praying/hoping this might be available next year.

As to your observation about far-seeing Idaho, Mr Alyosha, this is indeed an insight for Idaho was indeed extraordinary woman carrying much of the vigour and clarity and inspiration of the mighty, self-destroyed Phelgms. She alone of all the survivors of her original nation's fall managed to establish a new empire, and only the hard hearts and selfish ambition of her ministers finally brought that empire low by the betrayal of her equally dynamic grand-daughter, Dido, the reputed founder of the Sceptic/Haacobin dynasty. Thus, this is why the aristocracy are so keen to align themselves with such a vaunted bloodline.

How do I speak about the Derelands, Simon? I want to spout on and on, but also want to save it all for actual stories. Can I ask you what ideas you might have about it?

Time to log, cheers to you all.

*My word, I am full of questions today...

John Cleese on Creativity

I have just watched this vid on John Cleese speaking on creativity, it is a bit old now (1991 I believe) but I have only discovered it myself - infact, it was sent to me by my very creative cousin, Josh Lock: electronic music of all kinds and photographer with a true eye.

Very helpful to hear creativity described in such a cogent way; I hope it helps me write on.

A link out of the silence...

Hello everyone, your friendly neighbourhood imposter-author here.
(ref: previous post - thank you to everyone who commented, I do read your comments, laugh, smirk, nod my head with paternal sagacity at them all.)

Just a quick post to point you all to an excellent article over at Lobster & Canary where fellow author, Daniel A. Rabuzzi, waxes wise upon Mister Mervyn Peake and a more southern fantastical tradition. I am finding it very helpful (I speak in present tense for its help is still with me) in remembering that with all my Tolkienesque desire to make the Half-Continent firm (hello explicariums!!!), it was always intended to be also grotesque, a place where caricature is its normal - I had forgotten this. So Thank you Mister Rabuzzi, for reminding me of my first love, as it were.

(You might notice that this humble imposter is also mentioned in the article, which is in truth not why I recommend it to you, but because it is a subject so close to my heart: for Peake is the reason we even have the Half-Continent at all, that we are even communing, you and I)

Time to confess: it seems I am not the author of MBT after all...

Well, it appears that I am not the writer of the Monster-Blood Tattoo / The Foundling's Tale series after all.

Apparently - if you can credit it - it was THIS person!

It seems I have been tricking you all along - either that or I look remarkably like Michaela Conlin of the TV show Bones.

Maybe this is why I do not post upon this blog as often as would be good to do!


*Just for the record: I AM the author of Monster-Blood Tattoo / The Foundling's Tale series, what this other person is on about eludes me entirely - some form of online role-play perhaps? Anyone else got any idea?


Also, thankyou to all of you gave an opinion about the two word choices for rams: I will be using both: Achmë  for an over-gunned frigate, Lyonne (I agree that this is a better spelling) for an older standard gunned frigate... though Scion also is a rather good name... Hmmm...


I do not mind at all of the Looney Tunes association of Achmë  one bit - that is part of the fun of the whole process: taking s well used/context specific word and giving it a new handle to hook on to. Think on it: I gave a major character the name of an entire continent and managed to get away with that :D