I don't know how I did it.
And another blogger who I read regularly did some creative writing. So I had to quit procrastinating and do something.
I've added a new section to my other blog project called "Fragmentary Fiction." It's for fragments and works in progress. Nothing under that section should be considered permanent--it's all subject to major revision or even complete scrapping.
For a long time I have wanted to try to write either a series of connected short stories or perhaps a novella sort of thing set in a world similar to the Old West but incorporated with elements of fantasy and horror. So here's a link and a teaser.
Prelude: The Weird
The stranger had come through last autumn. He had passed not far from her house, a pair of mules hitched to a peddler’s wagon, traveling in silence. She felt him coming when the sun was still low in the morning sky, and by noon she had walked out to meet him as he rode past. He said nothing, merely looked at her. His glance had sent prickles up the back of her neck, and she had shivered in the noonday sun. She did not try even to speak to him, only strode as quickly back to her cabin as her old bones would move, shuttering the single window and staring into the shadows. Listening to the world move, and seeing what creaked. It was something her own grandmother had taught her, when both she and the world seemed young.
Why now? There had once been a time when she could conjure fire with little more than a snap of her fingers and a wisp of her own red hair. Now her hair was as gray as the morning fog, and she could kindle a flame far more easily with flint and tinder. The powers she had once aspired to as a young girl, had even commanded for a time, had long since faded behind the passing years.
