day 1

Writing, for me, is about having someplace to go.

I have random ideas all the time. Well, not all the time. If I had them all the time, I’d never get stuck thinking that I never have any ideas at all. Which isn’t true, though they don’t come as often as I’d like (no doubt in part because I haven’t exercised those particular muscles in a long, long time).

Anyway, I figure, the only way to do this and keep myself honest is to post whatever I write, whether it’s short or long, whole or a fragment. Somedays I’ll have more time to write than others, or be more inspired, but I’ll try to put something down. I figure there’ll be more and more focus the more I do it. But for now, it’s going to be a mess.

So preamble out of the way…

You guys remember that story about the dude breaking into the Vatican vault? … I was watching Raiders of the Lost Ark last week and had an epiphany about it. I’d always imagined that scene as the beginning of the book/comic/movie. But it’s not. It’s maybe the middle, or at least the beginning of Act 2/3…

Originally, I just had him as a thief with some urban magic stuff at his fingertips, but I really never came up with anything to explain why or to expand the world a bit. In fact, I focused more on the sword than I did on the magic. But Indy enlightened me. 

One of the topics I’ve always been intrigued by is the idea that there’s all this lost knowledge. Think about the burning of the library at Alexandria for instance. Or think about the idea that they now think Homo Sapiens have been kicking around this blue rock for more than 300,000 years. Could not there have been other advanced civilizations in this time, something that’s come and gone and been buried by time. Think about Atlantis for a minute. You had the ancient Greeks writing about it as though it were already an ancient society. 

So… my “urban magic Indiana jones” setting goes something like this … 

All the great historical artifacts are locked away in the vaults of rich fuckers. Possibly a loose league of magicians who’ve used arcane arts to stay alive for thousands of years. Egyptian kings, Roman caesars, etc. 

Fits with my petty thief. Works with a museum, or perhaps secret curator. Panhandles as a street magician. Maybe moonlights as a security “consultant”. Studies martial arts (funny how this guy was doing kali before I ever knew anything about it – go reread the original story). Lives in a shitty loft in … New Orleans (because I could actually write about that slightly). 

13 Magicians in the world; they’re some sort of circle. They horded all the magical tomes. They have apprentices. Different schools of thought on magic. Different approaches. They hire him and his crew to steal books they don’t already have? He reads everything get can get, always looking for extras. He’s teaching himself magic because he was basically too curious to keep his nose out of the things he was stealing.

Beginning of “act 2” is the Vatican raid for book & sword

Not sure I want to totally expound on the premise just yet. I’m still trying to find my way into it. But here goes… (and yes, life does influence art). Anyway, this is a doodle, more or less. Gotta try to figure out how to write about hand-to-hand fighting (never really tried that before). 

I also don’t really have plot points yet, which goes back to the beginning where I mentioned I need to know where I’m going. I don’t do well with that Stephen King style of writing (dude apparently just starts typing and figures it out as he goes). Of course, he’s prolific enough to have figured this shit all out by now….

>>>>>>>>>>>> 

His phone chirped at him from the top of his black gym back against the wall. 

“You going to get that,” she asked. 

“No,” he said, then fired a straight lead, followed by a jab, cross, then a lead hand hook into her focus mitts. The echoes of the punches faded after he stepped back and dropped his stance. “It’s just Moritz again.”

“What’s he want this time?”

“He’s got a job he wants to sell me on, but it’s crazy.”

“Crazy?”

“Like Rome crazy.”

“Oh, that crazy.” She blew a black bang out of her face, then threw a back fist at him from her waist. He stepped left, parrying with the same side hand, pushing her arm down and firing another straight lead at a mitt. Two hit in rapid succession. She backed up following the second, checked his leg with her back foot. He paused, dropped his hands and gulped a breath. 

“So what next?” 

“Sticks? Knives?”

“No,” she said, laughing. “What’s the next job?”

“I don’t know yet. Jimenez mentioned something about having a lead on a fifth century tome on summoning he wanted me to go after.”

“What? Like demons?”

“I didn’t really push for details. Not really into the whole Summoner school of thought.”

She fired a straight at his face. He leaned his head to the left to avoid the punch, his left hand already up, parrying the straight to the inside, the knuckles on his right flashing up into the bottom of her tricep. His left hand slapped her arm down and out of the way as his right retracted, then fired back out straight like a piston. The impact on the mitt echoed loudly. 

She smiled. “Almost got you with that one.”

He smiled back. “Enough for the day?”

She nodded.