Tag Archives: fiction

What happened next…

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Author’s note: I have been encouraged to continue my sequel to Labyrinth. Understanding that what I write on my blog comes directly out of the files in my head—and therefore is completely unedited and unpolished—I’ve decided to undertake the challenge this month and post the story, serial-style, right here on my blog. So, direct from my brain’s writing den, here are a few more paragraphs chronicling the adventures of Sarah and her misguided brother Toby. If you missed the first part of the story, you can find it at the end of this post: Writers write…even when they’re not at a computer.

Sarah feverishly stuffed the backpack with all the things she wished she’d taken into the Labyrinth before. Water, protein bars, tissues. Thirteen hours was a long time, and Toby would make sure the Labyrinth didn’t supply any of her needs. Quietly cursing Toby for getting her into this mess in the beginning, she shouldered the backpack and turned.

Stephen stood in the doorway, his expression concerned. “Sweetheart, there’s someone here to see you.”

She forced herself to take a deep breath. She’d already told her husband she didn’t want to see a doctor, didn’t want a sedative, didn’t want to rest. Would he never give up? Why wouldn’t he leave her alone to do what she had to do? “I won’t take any drugs.”

“It’s not a doctor.” Her husband squeezed her hand and stepped aside.

Another man entered the room after him. Older, graying, a cloud of worry hanging over his face. He summoned a little smile for her—cautious even now. After all the years that had passed between them, he still looked ready to cringe away from a fight with his daughter.

“Dad.” Sarah nodded. “Hi.” She turned back to her packing. “I’m really sorry I don’t have time to catch up right now. I’m a little busy.” She considered telling him she was going after Toby, but knew it was useless. He hadn’t believed her back when Toby disappeared. He wouldn’t believe her now.

“Sarah.” Her father spoke so gently, she closed her eyes. Why did she still want his approval? Why did it matter anymore?

In spite of herself, she turned. “Dad.”

“Stephen says you think Toby took Davey.”

“I do.” She nodded. “Actually, I don’t just think he took him. I know he did.”

“Honey.” Her father stepped forward and put his hands on her shoulders. “Your brother has been gone a long time. He…he’s probably dead.” His features twisted a little in remembered pain.

Sarah knew her father had accepted Toby’s death long before. Drugs, he thought. A tragedy, losing a son to drugs, but Toby had been withdrawn for a long time before he disappeared.

Only Sarah knew the real reason for that. Only Sarah knew Toby had gone looking for the man who’d kidnapped him as a baby, answering a call he didn’t quite understand until she told him the story of the Goblin King who took him…because she asked him to.

Damn Jareth.

She should say, Toby’s not dead, Dad. And you have to stop blaming yourself. You aren’t to blame. I’m the one who did it. I’m the one who asked the Goblin King to take him and I’m the one who went to get him back. And now he’s looking for revenge. Probably Jareth, too.

Instead, her heart full of remorse and worry and guilt, she gritted her teeth and blamed the only person she could think to blame right then. She shook off her father’s hands. “He’s not dead, Dad. He took Davey, and I’m going to get him back.” She shouldered her backpack and turned to face them. “Spoiled brat always was taking my stuff.”

Stephen caught her hand. “Sweetheart—”

But it wasn’t him who stopped her. Her eyes were caught by a face in the mirror. A face she recognized though she hadn’t seen it in more than two decades. She froze, her heart beating so wildly she couldn’t hear her father or her brother. She couldn’t even hear her own voice though she thought she called out.

Jareth.

And then everything around her went black.

“What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever been given?”

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In the course of Googling something else the other night, I ran across an article on a blog that intrigued me. The blogger devoted his entire time to tearing down a very successful author, whose name I shall not mention. In a nutshell, the blogger said she loved this particular author UNTIL she started following him on social media where said author made a number of missteps. Her main complaint, however, was that he never offered anything to the aspiring writers who clustered about him waiting for a morsel of genius to fall on them.

Instead, the author in question would fill his Twitter feed with his daily word counts, bits from his new books, or his favorite quotes from his old books. Why doesn’t the author just be himself? the blogger asked.

(Ahem. Possibly because he might not be his actual self. Lord knows, if I ever get to the point he’s at, I’m going to hire someone to handle social media for me. It’s part of the job of being a writer, but if you can afford to pay someone else to do it for you so you can keep doing what you really enjoy doing—writing—well, who can blame you…much?)

But I digress. This article got me thinking. Have I ever gotten any actually useful advice from a successful published author? I’ve seen several speak. Some tell stories about how they became successful. Sometimes you can glean some bit of something useful out of that, but for the most part, you’re left wondering, Why couldn’t that happen to me? Every now and then, though, somebody says something that sticks with you, that really helps.

Unfortunately, I honestly can’t remember who said the most useful writing tip I ever got from a published writer. I think it was a man, and I believe it was while I was in college. Other than that, I’m at a loss. At any rate, what he said was, “Tell you readers your secrets.”

That startled me. My secrets. He was talking about writing fiction. Novels. Not true stuff. Why would I tell my secrets? Real stuff. But I’ve found over the years that he was right. If you mix a little bit of reality into your fiction, it makes it live and breathe in a way that purely made up stuff could never do. And the great thing is, you don’t have to tell your reader what bits are true. You just write from the heart, mix in things that are true with things that you wish could be true or you fear ever coming true and what results is so much more than fiction.

Here’s a bit of writing advice from me, a published, if not yet successful, author. Don’t expect too much from your heroes. No matter how successful they are, they’re caught up in a balancing act, just like the rest of us. They may not have to make ends meet financially (well, the top 1% don’t, anyway), but they are trying to balance marketing and social media and family with what they really probably still want to do—writing. So don’t expect too much, but listen when you’re lucky enough to hear one speak. They might just give you that tidbit you’ve been waiting for.