Sarah Paige Berling

Some people enjoy writing just to get the written word on the page.  Some people enjoy writing for the sheer unholy joy of it.  And some people write as a business – this is the career they want to make.

I’m a little bit of all three.  Especially the unholy part.

You might notice that beneath my name at the top of my other blog, it says “Kinda Like Spiderman.”  Have you figured out what I mean by that yet?

Spiderman works at the newspaper as a photographer to pay for his saving-the-world addiction.  I work at the newspaper to pay for my writing habit.  I also freelance write for the Outlook, an OKC magazine that is distributed to Edmond, North OKC, Arcadia, and Deer Creek.  I do feature articles and business articles for them.  It’s good work and it’s fun, but it’s not my end goal.

My end goal is to rule the world.

Or, you know, be a published author.  Whichever comes first.  I’m not picky.

Goddess of Wisdom/Goddess of War is finished.  Done.  Finite.  And all those other wonderful adjectives.  So now comes the anxiety-inducing part: querying agents.

I have a query letter all written up and polished.  If it snags an agent, you’d better believe that I’ll post it here.  I find that there are too few examples of successful query letters on the internet.  There’s just “how-to” guides without any proof in the pudding.  Mmm.  Pudding.  My husband makes an excellent rice pudding, I have to say.  He makes it with coconut milk and love.

Anyway, as I was saying (before I got distracted by rice pudding), query letter = complete.  Synopsis = finished (although it’s a bit long at four pages. . . might have to shorten it).  Novel = done, edited, and ready for consumption.  (Damn, there are those food metaphors again).  What else do I need?

Oh, yeah.  Luck.  Lots of luck.  And maybe a smidge of confidence.  I could take that or leave it, though.  I’d much rather have the luck.

Are any of you at that query stage of your writing career?  Is it something you even want to do?  If it is, how have agents/editors reacted to your query letter?

Lots o’ love,

Sarah

And so the story, with beautiful illustrations, continues, courtesy of the amazing Tiffani Noelle Turner.  Enjoy!

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Part II: The Commander

“Commander!” the young soldier shouted.  “We need more wood!”

The Commander sighed.  “Why are you telling me? Do I look like a bleedin’ tree?  Find some!”

And the boy ran off, stumbling in his haste to get what he needed, and, more importantly, to get away from the Commander, who was in a foul mood.  Lately, the Commander was always in a foul mood.

He knew he must look a fright.  He hadn’t had a chance to shave in nearly a week and he guessed that if he happened to look into a reflective pane of glass, he’d see bright white bristles glaring against his ruddy skin and rust-colored beard.  He also suspected that his hair, usually kept in a tight ponytail at the base of his skull, looked less like hair and more like a vulture’s nest.

But his appearance was the least of his worries at the moment.  If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.  Last week, the Hero had come to town, back from a campaign against some country or other, and the parties had lasted for days, leaving the Commander with three cells packed to the brim of Drunken Disorderlies and a handful of the City Watch with terrible hangovers.

And now, the half-mad, half-evil, wholly obnoxious sorcerer, whose name was lost to the annals of Time and who simply went by Thanatos, was raising the dead and marching down on the Commander’s peaceful town.  Again.

He hated this job.

Granted, Thanatos had really outdone himself this time, raising hundreds of dead to march by his side, and arming them this time!  And to judge by the horrid screeching that was giving the Commander a blistering headache, he’d brought along the banshees.

Usually, when Thanatos got an idea into his head, all the Commander had to do was wait patiently until the madman forgot what he was doing.  Hell, the last time he had raised the quiet dead from their deserved rest, intent on attacking the town, he had forgotten that the town was surrounded by stone walls twenty feet high.  The dead walked into the walls, stumbled back, became confused, and milled about a bit, while the townspeople laughed and hooted and called out insults to Thanatos.  Some of them threw rocks and rotten fruit.  The poor old man was so humiliated that he wept, called off his dead, and ran away.

The Commander had been hoping that that was the last time they’d ever see the sorcerer.  Why couldn’t he have done something useful, like crawl into a corner and die?

But no, Thanatos was back, and he was prepared this time.  The dead had a variety of weapons, and the voices of the she-devils were nearly debilitating in their pitch.  It would be a harder fight this time.  Still, not impossible.

And, of course, since the Hero was back home, the village idiots (which were all of them, so far as the Commander was concerned) were clamoring for him to take on Thanatos one-on-one, destroy him, destroy the dead, prove to us you are The Hero!

The cheering grew louder and the Commander knew, without turning around, that the Hero was walking down the main road, headed for the city gate, armed with his shining bronze sword, his gilded armor and his reckless smile, prepared to turn the demented old man into one of the dead he so loved to raise.  The crowds lining the street parted to let the Hero through, shoving the Commander roughly to the side.  This was no way to run a city.

Then something unexpected happened.  As the Hero passed the Commander, the former gave the latter a world-weary look, a look that said, “Well, what can you do?”  An instant later, the look was gone, the Hero was gone, and the shrieking of the banshees was all-pervasive, matched in volume only by the cheering of the townspeople.

The Commander really wanted to go home and drink heavily.

But curiosity spurred him to force his way through the throngs and climb to the top of the wall, to watch the Hero work his Heroic magic and Save The Day.  Shoving aside men and women indiscriminately, he looked on.

The gate opened.

My amazing friend, Tiffani Noelle Turner, has beautifully illustrated my story, Das Bose.  She has finished the first two installments (the story has five parts).  I am posting the story below.  Enjoy!

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Das Böse

Part I: The Plan

Mad, they called him.  Mad!  Insane, relegated to the asylums, where no one would think of him again.  He would disappear, vanish into dust, and his genius, his brilliance, would never see the light of day.

Mad!

The City, the Capital City of the Great State of. . .Something. . .was mere miles away.  The city had a name, he knew that (he was not mad, after all), but he couldn’t recall it.  It was less important than his Brilliant Plan.  The Brilliant Plan to destroy those who sought to minimize his successes in life, to destroy that which sought to oppress him.

Sane.  What was that anyway?  What was sane about living, cramped, in a city where you were constantly watched by city guards, who would throw you into jail for the smallest infraction, for the tiniest explosion in city center?

With the City just miles away, and the knowledge that its Doom was near at hand pushing him into a deeper fervor, he returned his gaze to the graveyard.

And graveyards.  What a foolish idea!  Why bury a perfectly good body when it has so many uses?  Why, with a minor spell and proper maintenance, a corpse could serve its master for years.

He had tumbled one of the statues of some winged beast or other, smashing it into hundreds of pieces.  Waste of masonry, really.  The stone that had made the statue would have made a better house, in his opinion.  But he didn’t care one way or the other about the statue.  What he needed was its base.  A large, flat surface upon which he could start a fire and begin his magic.

He had already done the hard part –  summoning the banshees.  The thralls were there, in thrall, (my, wasn’t he clever?), adding their high-pitched shrieks to his booming chants.  The words he spoke were not words from any tongue of man, but that didn’t matter, did it, because he was mad, wasn’t he, and madmen can do what normal men cannot.

And so, with the red fire burning brightly, he began again, screeching and wailing and muttering and chanting, with his banshees echoing him at every turn, til it must have seemed to the humans, huddling in their poorly-made houses just miles hence, that an entire choir of demons haunted this useless, now useful, plot of ground.

As he chanted, he danced.  It was not a graceful dance.  His knotted white hair flew about his face wildly and his tattered grey robes almost tripped him on several occasions. Someone told him once that all great wizards wore grey robes.  He wore no shoes, but didn’t notice when he stubbed his toe against the edge of the statue’s base, so intense was his dervish.

And one by one, the dead began to rise.

Their grunts were muffled by the dirt, dirt that filled their mouths and nostrils and buried them six feet deep.  But slowly, and with great deliberation, they climbed from their graves and stood before him in more-or-less neat rows, numbering into the hundreds.  As each one climbed from his particular hole in the ground, he added his voice to those of the banshees and the sorcerer’s magic was strengthened.

Finally, the graveyard looked less like a graveyard and more like the playground for monstrous hell-beasts.  Or groundhogs, he reflected.  Groundhogs would enjoy it, too.

But, the point was, the job was completed.

He jumped up onto the flat podium where his fire, no longer red but instead a dull yellow, burned.  Continuing in the strange tongue, he spoke to his legions.

“I am your Master!” he commanded.

“Master,” they repeated.

“The City is three miles away, down this road.”

“Road.”

“We will take it by force.  Because we have one thing they do not.  We cannot die!”

“Die.”

Technically, that wasn’t true.  He could die, and if he did die, his undead legions would be nothing more than shambling corpses.  They needed his magic, they needed his cunning, and most of all they needed his commands, in order to destroy the City and all those who dwelt within.

He smelled something burning and found his mousy robes smoking.  He jumped off the flat, fire-filled plane, and stomped on the back of his robe, before marching up the road, his undead hordes following.

Mad, they called him.

Let me show you “mad.”