El Borak's Myopia

Kill the King

2018-12-04T07:56:00.001-08:00

The prince raised Colter to his feet and placed a hand atop his head as if to give his servant a royal blessing. “Do it quickly,” he said, “before such damage is done that I cannot mend it in a lifetime. My father has given the nobles two days to assemble their men for his invasion of Tannin. He must be dead before those troops reach the border, or his kingdom will die shortly thereafter.”

Colter was glad the prince had not mentioned payment. You don’t kill the king for money.

Latest short story published* at Men of the West.

* Previously published in The Monster Maiden of Westering Slough.

Strumplets

2018-08-24T10:33:00.002-07:00

The girl lay in the road, clothed only in dirt. Her tongue, caked with dust, pushed out of her mouth and her limbs lay twisted. The soles of her small feet were scraped raw.

Dawen, kneeling next to her, noticed that her pale skin was crisscrossed with half-healed welts and cuts. Those weren’t what killed her, Dawen thought; they were old wounds. Whatever stole her life had left behind no more than a frozen mask of fear and exhaustion; it hadn’t touched her, at least not in any place Dawen could see. She glanced up at the bystanders, seeking a face that showed something other than curiosity or dread. None of them seemed to recognize the girl any more than Dawen did...

Latest short story published* at Men of the West.

* Previously published in Huntress and Other Stories.

Snarl

2018-04-19T07:25:00.001-07:00

Sometimes dragons need a good laugh, too:

In the outlands there lived a dragon named Snarl. Snarl never received a proper dragon’s upbringing, and as a result, he was kind and gentle. Oh, the nearby farmers did not think him either of those things, because Snarl was notorious for carrying off their sheep at night. Even kind and gentle dragons must eat, after all. And though he had quite a bit of treasure for a young dragon, it had come from the hoards of other dragons or from forlorn places where the owners had hidden it. He was always careful to protect it from other dragons and could make a little treasure go a long way.

Latest short story published* at Men of the West.

* Previously published in Huntress and Other Stories.

Beggar's Choice

2018-02-05T06:26:00.000-08:00

Sometimes beggars can be choosers:

Larvik brushed away the flakes of skin that fell like black snow upon his table. He deflected the waitress again; the pockets of his faded cloak held nothing of any use to her. If the little man arrived, Larvik would be able to pay for the mug of ale he raised to his lips. Better make this one last, he thought. It’s still early...

Latest short story has been published* at Men of the West in 3 parts (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). Enjoy!

* Previously published in Monster Maiden of Westering Slough.

A Test of His Metal

2017-10-26T16:34:00.001-07:00

Of swords and werebears:

Dominic raised his longsword into what he hoped was a threatening stance: blade high above his left shoulder, his right elbow pointed forward. He tried to slow his breathing, lest it reveal his fear. First one foot right and then the other, he slid from the forest road, careful to avoid the fallen limbs that lay in wait just below the floor of ferns. The short man he kept in his sights, but the taller man, the one with the club, was getting behind him...

Latest short story has been published* at Men of the West in 2 parts (Part 1, Part 2). Enjoy!

* It was previously published in LC Mortimer's Anthology Swords of Darkness, FWIW.

A Zombie Paragraph

2017-07-07T11:59:00.002-07:00

Cremation used to be against our religion. All of God's people were to receive a proper burial following the custom of Abraham, David, and Jesus. Then one night our late pastor returned with his favorite deacons in tow, ripped the church door off at the hinges, and killed old Widow Punkard while she prayed. We cremated him for his own good as much as ours. When Jesus rose from the dead He did it right: with His mind clear and His wounds closed up tight. No one since has pulled it off half as well. So we wrote pyre into the hymnals where grave used to be, and we all sleep better for the change.

Toadstone

2017-06-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

I did not invent the Toadstone

A groan reached Kayda from the rocks to her left. She quickly scanned that area; no man was in sight, though she now knew the red hillocks held at least one she could not see. She wondered if others lay hidden among the cacti and chipped stones, if the lament was but bait in a trap laid for her. But there was no reason for such a trap: as a woman alone in this desert she posed no threat except to the stones she hunted and the cacti that quenched her persistent thirst and occasional hunger. Kayda had taken care to ensure she had been neither followed nor watched, and her confidence in her own abilities remained unshaken. No, whomever lay beyond that outcrop was unaware of her presence, at least for now. Checking that her dagger was loose and her stone-purse tight, she turned toward the sound and began to climb the barren slope.

The camp before her served one man. She could tell from the single hammock, the tiny fire, and the deep cleft in which they were hidden, that the man wished to remain unseen. He had failed in that attempt. The Tanaki lay alone, writhing near a small pile of twigs that had provided his campfire with life. She guessed that the pile had also held life less helpful. For in these deserted places dwelt serpents that could snuff a man’s life with a single bite. But the end came not before the bitten wished for death, called for death, begged death to rescue him from the flames that burned within his every joint, his every vein. The purple skin that shewed beneath the Tanaki’s hand told her that he had met one such serpent. His whimpers told her that the desert would be quiet again soon. With a quick glance behind her, she slipped over the cusp of the barren ridge and swam down the rocks into his camp.

Kayda knew that even now she could save him. Though his limbs lay twisted and his swollen tongue thrashed his cracked lips, her toadstone had pulled worse from the brink of death. Her left hand clasped her stone-purse, fingers tracing the stone’s rough corners, measuring its unnatural heat. Until his final breath, she could ensure that he lived.

She shook her head. He was Tanaki, an Other. A Tanaki was an enemy. She had not watched her brother die screaming at the bloody hands of Tanaki, had not suffered humiliation beneath the loins of Tanaki, to rescue one now. Especially one who did not respect her desert.

The Tanaki’s frantic eyes met hers, holding them, and she released the toadstone that still warmed her fingertips from beneath the leather of her purse. His eyes then rolled back, his mouth expelled a wan breath, and the Tanaki shrunk into a limp pile before her. Now it was too late anyway, she thought.

Kayda searched the Tanaki for anything of value he had carried on his final journey. His tent surrendered food enough for her to last a week in these barren lands. His copper canteen would serve her for a lifetime unless she decided to sell it. She would not sully herself with his clothing, and none would give three coppers for his hammock. But upon his swollen finger lay a silver ring, carved into a snake eating its own tail, with what she guessed were rubies for the serpent’s eyes. She grinned at the possibility that the snake upon the ring represented the same manner of serpent that had slain its owner. And as she worked it from a calloused finger and dropped it into the leather purse that contained her toadstone, she hoped that it would bring her better fortune than it had him.

Climbing from the cleft and returning to her hunt, she pondered the silver ring, its self-destructive serpent, and the gems that gave it vision. But the sun’s heat soon beat from her any thoughts other than those of home. Making a best guess at the direction of her own village, she pulled her cloak over her head and willed her tired feet forward. Still, her eyes scanned the ground in front of her. For there were toadstones here. And with such stones one could save a life. Or not.

Good Hater is now out in paperback!

2016-10-07T09:19:00.002-07:00

You can get it at Amazon here.

If you buy a deadwood edition, you should be able to download the Kindle version for free. Let me know how that goes, ok?

A nice review

2016-03-14T19:51:00.000-07:00

Of Swords of Darkness:

Some stories are certainly better than others, Bill Hoyt's "A Test of His Metal" is well developed with a satisfying twist, and Charles Jake's piece, "The Price of Ambition" is an enjoyable read that begs to be turned into a longer and more developed work and "Dance of Swords" by JC Kang is a well written slice of something clearly larger in scope that we can hope someday to read in entirety. A few other stories seem less skilfully woven, however overall Swords of Darkness does not disappoint.

FWIW, I also thought Jake's and Kang's were among the best of the lot. If you like swords, why not give LC Mortimer's first fantasy anthology a look?

Officially a best-selling author

2016-02-12T10:37:00.003-08:00

One more off the bucket list.

UPDATE: #1 in Slavery Biographies as well, just ahead of Twelve Years a Slave. And I didn't even get a movie deal.

If you were an actual story, my love

2016-01-04T19:07:00.001-08:00

If you were an actual story, my love, you would have a plot, that structure of narrative points that makes a tale comprehensible. It might be a light and airy plot, like the joyful flight of a lark on a clear summer morn. Or it might be dark and dreary, the slogging of the last dragon, dying in an endless slough. But it would not be hidden away from sight, beneath paste and powder, like a pimple on prom night.

If you were an actual story, my love, you would have characterization. Some of your characters might be good people (or even dinosaurs, brrrr…) that sometimes do bad things if even for good reasons. And a few might even be bad people who do good things on rare occasions. But they would never be limited to cardboard victims and free-floating Hitler mustaches drawn in crayon.

If you were an actual story, my love, you would reward the reader for the small portion of his life he invested in you. You would never drive him to check his watch, first every stanza, then every sentence, then every blank space that appears, like a cool desert oasis, between each tiresome word. You would never make a thousand words seem as wearisome as a thousand years on the rack, nor feel as rancid as a thousand maggots burrowing out of the reader’s living belly.

If you were an actual story, my love, you would read and feel nothing like “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love.”

UPDATE:

Hi Bill,

Your account was recently brought to our attention. Upon review, we have decided to remove it from the site. You are banned from using Goodreads in any capacity going forward.

Sincerely,

The Goodreads Team

I guess they liked it.

Author Interview: Bill Hoyt

2015-10-26T18:55:00.000-07:00

Author's Note: What follows is a reprint of an interview I did with Beth Jones of The Hungry Freelancer in mid 2013. It is published here for archival purposes only.

Bill Hoyt is the author of Good Hater and, most recently, The Monster Maiden of Westering Slough (Tales of the Red Brethren). He took the time to share some of what he's learned about the importance of indie publishing, the fantasy genre, and how writers can start to improve their craft.

Your most recent book features a young girl who was brutally scarred by a fire. What was the inspiration behind this book? How difficult was it to capture the essence of her character?

Many writers believe that a story should be about who hurts the most. So for the Monster Maiden of Westering Slough I started with a generic character and gave her some real pain, just to see how she reacted to it. But during that process, I recalled the number of times I've been absolutely astonished at how well young people seem to handle unfathomable setbacks or tremendous pain. We've all seen the kid who is dying of bone cancer at 15 and thought, where does she find the strength to deal with that? In those cases, it's often those around who suffer most. The kid is dying – and knows it – but it's a parent who cries herself to sleep every night. My character reacted sort of like that. So I made her father suffer even more by making him responsible for her being burned. After all, he raised the dragon that did it. She has forgiven him, but he still feels guilty.

In the end, she's a talented girl who has a good sense of fairness and a bit of a temper and who is understandably hurt and frustrated by people who abuse her. But her father is a scarred man who doesn’t always do the wise thing when it might provide a shortcut to restoring his daughter's face, and thereby relieving the guilt he carries. So the story in the end became more about him, because he was the one who had the pain.

What is your favorite genre to read? Do you find yourself leaning toward this genre in your own writing?

After history, without a doubt my favorite genre is fantasy, both to read and to write. But I'll admit to being very opinionated about what makes up that genre. I enjoy Tolkien and LeGuin and Feist and Saberhagen; good stories featuring magical swords and wizards and dragons are, to me, fantasy. An erotic novel in which one of the characters just happens to be a mermaid is not. A romance novel about menopausal werewolves that could be told just as well without werewolves is not. So I tend to skip a lot of modern fantasy. You cannot read everything, and it makes little sense to read what holds no appeal to you. Unless, of course, you're reading it in order to improve your own writing in some way. That’s always a good idea. But then it's work and not play.

What advice would you offer to new writers who want to break into indie publishing?

Indie is an immediate way to share your expertise, to tell your story, to make some money.

I also believe that it is the future of publishing. The current book publishing model, with its corporate publishers and distribution channels designed to move physical books, is being broken upon the wheel of technology. Those who are publishing indie and electronically today (and learning the necessary companion skills, like self-marketing) are building the next model. It will likely be one in which the phrase “published author” is redundant or perhaps even meaningless – what is a “published author” in a world without corporate publishers? So I would say that if you think others will enjoy your work, publish it yourself. Everyone will soon be doing it.

But we also need to be honest with ourselves about why we want to go indie, because if we’re not, we’re liable to get hurt or embittered very quickly. What I mean by that is that there are a lot of authors who believe they have written the Great American Novel. They are certain that it’s not published only because every editor they have sent it to is an incompetent jerk. But readers of that book are quite likely to agree with the editors and have no qualms about saying so. Seeing your beloved work mauled in public is far more painful than reading a rejection on crème-colored cotton paper with nice letterhead in the privacy of your own home; at least there you can burn the letter. So if a person is going indie to avoid the pain of rejection by professional editors, they would be well served to learn the craft better first. Learning to write well is hard work. Indie publishing does not relieve authors of the responsibility to do that work.

You're also a blogger and have been for some time. Have you found that regularly writing in your blog has improved your skills as an author?

Without a doubt. Blogging forces you to capture the essence of a story in only a few paragraphs. It's almost like writing a micro-story. I have found that practice to be especially helpful for writing history, in which I need to form small stories into the building blocks that will make up a bigger one, whether I’m writing a biography or the story of a railroad strike.

Even though I found it most useful for non-fiction, it cannot hurt a fiction author to have one more outlet for writing. It is the practice, not the end use, which helps us the most. Just don't give your best ideas away to strangers for free.

Would you recommend that new writers take advantage of social media sites to promote their books, or are these sites overrated?

Yes and yes. I do think that Twitter and Facebook and the like are overrated. Unless you already have a million followers, you're not likely to send out a tweet that brings a thousand readers to your new book. But I think you need to be in those places anyway. New writers should make themselves available to their readers, and social media is a great way to do that. Maybe when you're selling like Dean Koontz you won't have the time to interact with those who read your books. But for now, access to you is a service you can provide your readers for very little cost. Any way you can keep them thinking about you and your books is going to benefit you in the long run.

Read more about Bill and his current books at El Borak's Myopia or Facebook.

Author Interview: Bill Hoyt

2015-10-26T18:51:00.003-07:00

Author's Note: What follows is a reprint of an interview I did with Beth Jones of The Hungry Freelancer in late 2012. It is published here for archival purposes only.

In the upcoming weeks, I'll be posting a series of author interviews. I've chosen several Kindle authors who have successfully published their work online. If you're looking for some new books to read or just want to learn what makes indie publishing work, check out these posts.

Today's interview is with Bill Hoyt, author of Good Hater: George Henry Hoyt's War on Slavery. You can buy Good Hater exclusively on Amazon Kindle for $2.99.

What is your book about?

Good Hater details the Civil War career of a young Massachusetts lawyer who became the most feared guerrilla hunter on the Kansas Missouri border, George Henry Hoyt (no relation). That career is bookended by two speeches, one delivered to the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-slavery society before the war, and the second delivered to a group of freed slaves in Kansas near its end. I compare these speeches and demonstrate how the bloody realities of war changed the lofty ideals of the first speech into the brutal cynicism displayed in the second. I also demonstrate how the abolitionist legacy of John Brown was carried on in Kansas by many surrogates after his execution in Virginia.

What made you decide to publish as an Indie writer, rather than opting for trade publishing?

There are really two reasons. The first is purely selfish: I'm not a big fan of gatekeepers. I knew the book was good or at least was filled with good information, and I had no intention of waiting around, possibly for years, for an editor to decide that money could be made on it. As an indie publisher, I maintained total control of the publication and marketing process, from picking the cover to pricing the book and deciding where it would be available. As an author primarily interested in making the story available, the decision was easy.

The second reason goes back to my historical training. One of my assignments in my first class as a history graduate student was to utterly shred a history book written by a Harvard professor and published by Oxford. The exercise was designed to help us overcome our fear of "credentialism." But I learned a second lesson: despite the persistent reputation that books published by reputable presses are good (or in the case of history books, accurate), it's not necessarily true. Independently published books can be better than books published in a standard manner, and I believe over time, the public's perception will reflect that reality. So independently publishing a good book helps that process along.

What was your favorite part of creating your book?

This is going to sound strange, but it was actually finding old pictures that illustrated the content of each chapter. Research was a blast. Writing was fun - and if it's not fun, you should be doing something else. But once it was 99% done, adding that little something that made it "done" was the most rewarding part. I love to finish things, and in this case, finishing meant adding the material I could not include when it was a stuffy grad school thesis.

If you could tell new writers one thing, what would it be?

Write. It sounds simple, and it is deceptively so. But so many people refuse to write until they know precisely what they want to say, therefore they never really start. Write a story, write a paragraph, write a description of a particularly ugly nose, but write something and edit it later. You can always throw stuff away (and you will). You can always expand, and you will. But often, you will never know exactly what you want to say until you have said it - then the editing process helps you to say it better. But write something every day, even if you have nothing to write, and maybe especially if you have nothing to write. Writing is a discipline, and you must discipline yourself to do it by doing it.

Want to learn more? Visit Bill Hoyt at El Borak's Myopia or "like" Good Hater on Facebook.

The God of tipping footballs

2007-06-22T20:33:00.000-07:00

Perhaps it can't hurt to ask:

DESTIN — More than 300 people with a keen interest in the Emerald Coast’s real estate market gathered Wednesday at Destiny Worship Center to ask for God’s blessing.

The Real Estate Prayer Luncheon was organized in hopes of breathing life and positive thinking into the area’s slumping housing market...

“We need to think positively and get everyone on the same page,” Duke said. “Positive things that come out of your mouth will end with positive results. If we lose hope, we lose everything.”

I guess I can't ever complain too much when people come together to ask for God's blessing. After all, the worst he can say is "No." But it does smack a bit to me - looking from the outside, of course - like the equivalent of asking God to tip footballs for your favorite team. Really big footballs perhaps, but footballs nonetheless.

We've all seen the football-tipping prayers, "Please, God, let the Vikings* win this one." And the logical result was illustrated recently on an edition of MXC where the Christians were taking on someone (ad execs, maybe?) and one of the Christians told the announcer that she was sure to win because she had asked God for help. After a nearly miraculous run, she was eliminated right at the end. When asked about it, she sheepishly responded, "Well, I guess maybe He had to go help someone else just then." And it's funny because believers should** understand that God is not going to tip footballs just because you'd like to win something that is ultimately meaningless. Besides, what would he say to those on the other side making a similar request, "Sorry, your opponent asked first"?

But aside from the fact that asking God to move a market you happen to be selling in is merely asking Him to convince those who otherwise would not buy to buy at a price convenient to you, as with a lot of impromptu gatherings of this nature, it seemed to quickly devolve into an attempted application of mental magic. "We can turn this thing around if we all think positively," as if our focused mental power forces God's reluctant hand, as if faith is some kind of a spiritual weapon we can point at God to get him to do our bidding. It's not***. Ultimately faith is a spiritual weapon that allows us to do God's bidding when it otherwise seems humanly impossible. Faith is, as it is written in Hebrews, the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, and without context it sounds like we get to be the definers of what is hoped for. But I think in application (as in the examples that follow that statement) faith only "works" when our hopes are aligned with God's promises and desires.

So all that being said, will have any effect at all? I think in some cases it might - which is why I'm tiptoeing around here a bit - assuming (and this is a big assumption) there are people whom God wants selling homes and their faith gets them off dead center to do what God wants. But I suspect that God would and must have a larger purpose in mind for that individual that just earning another commission, and I suspect it would come about because of an individual change in heart, not a collective ritual - in other words, if it's done it will be done to change a life rather than a bank balance.

But is God going to move a market just so people who make a living selling houses are not inconvenienced by having to go do something else? Is he going to set aside the perfectly reasonable and predictable consequences of the human action that has caused the current slump, meaning that Americans can avoid the consequences of our foolish monetary policies and a culture of all trying to get rich by selling our houses to each other? I guess you could call me a bit skeptical**** on that count.

* Maybe it works for other teams, but not them obviously.

** and unbelievers unfailingly do

*** Why does "He's not a tame lion" spring to mind here?

*** It seems to me that God is often far more interested in teaching wisdom than in providing material comfort, and the aftermath of foolish bubbles can be a heck of a teaching tool, provided we learn the correct lessons. It is another issue altogether that we so seldom do.

There's no reply at all

2006-03-14T21:09:00.000-08:00

The Skeptic's Annotated Bible notes a contradiction:

Acts 7:4 says that Abram didn't leave Haran until after his father died.

Gen.11:26 says that Abram's father was 70 years old when Abram was born, and Abram's father lived to be 205 (11:32). Clearly, then, Abram was at least 135 when he left Haran.

Yet Gen.12:4 says he left Haran when he was only 75.

Most interesting is their note that they have "Christian Responses (none yet)". Allow me to provide one.

SAB correctly notes an issue that bothered me when I first studied the genealogies of Genesis. Yes, a straight-forward newspaper reading of Genesis gives us an issue to deal with.

Before I deal with it, let me say that there is the possibility that Stephen, whose speech is quoted in Acts 7:4, is just flat out wrong in his rendering of Jewish history. Luke, the author of Acts, is recording for posterity a speech given by Stephen, and as a recorder is only responsible for ensuring that the recording is accurate, not that the original material is. A parallel example might be the New York Times reporting that a politician said something that turns out to be incorrect. Does that make the NYT wrong? Not at all. So long as their recording of the statement is accurate, then the NYT is not in error. Such a politician DID say such a thing, and it's the politician, not the NYT, on the hook when that statement turns out incorrect. Same for Acts. There are no guarantees that every statement recorded is accurate. But I do expect that Luke has accurately recorded what happened and what was said. I'll let the others work out that theology.

Now I don't believe that Stephen is wrong; it's just a possibility that must be admitted before we start.

But here's what I think is really going on here:

The SAB misquotes (or at least truncates) Gen 11:26 when they say that "And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram." with a period at the end. What it actually says is that "And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran." That might seem a small thing, but I think the existence of the other names in the genealogy is significant because it parallels another passage with a similar problem (Gen 5:32) which I'll examine first and then back therefrom into my solution. Though the vast majority of the genealogies name one son (at age x, y fathered z), these two both allege (on the surface) triplets. We shall see that beneath the surface we have clues that explain what's happening.

Gen 5:31 says that, "And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth," leading us to think that he had triplets that year. But such is not the case. Ham is noted as the youngest (Gen 9:24) and Japeth as the eldest (Gen 10:21) and that might be fine for triplets, except for this:

"Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood" -- Gen 11:10.

If Shem celebrated his centennial 2 years after the flood, then he was 97 when the flood came. Yet Noah is said to have fathered Shem at 500 with the flood at 600 (Gen 7:6) so Shem should have been 100, not 97, when it came. The fact that Shem is not the eldest give us the possibility that the 100 years was the age of the elder brother only, and that the author did not bother to give us as much detail as we'd like.

We have a similar pattern in Abram's case: Abram, Nahor, and and Haran all born in the same year (from a straightforward reading). Yet it's likely that Haran is older than Nahor, since Nahor marries Haran's daughter (Gen 11:29). If, as Josephus alleges, Abram's wife Sarai is also Haran's daughter, then Haran is likely older than Abram as well.

In each case we have these similarities:

An allegation of triplets.
The person in the main Jewish line is named first.
The person named first is not the eldest
The person named first has demonstrable chronology problems if alleged to be the eldest.

So the simple solution is this: the author of Genesis, in cases where only one son is part of the story (c.f. Gen 5:4-28 for a whole busload of them) the age "at birth" is the age of the father when that specific son was born and the others are subsumed under a note that he had "other sons and daughters". In the two cases where multiple sons come into the story they are named together, but the age "at birth" is the age of the father at the birth of the eldest of the three.

Applied to Abe, that means Abe probably left Haran at 75, meaning he was born when Terah was 130, the 70 referring to the birth of Abe's brother Haran, Terah's firstborn.

Is it the correct solution? I don't know. Does it fit the data? I think it does. Does it resolve the contradiction? Yes. If it is a correct reading then Genesis is not in error, we have simply failed to understand the method of the author. I think that's very likely, and in a lot more cases than just genealogies. There are many, many passages where we are assuming that a newspaper-like reading explains everything even as it gives us seemingly insurmountable problems.

But those are a speculation for another day.