I was staring out the diner window, watching it rain, when Jimmy the werewolf slid into the booth behind me. “We got trouble, boss,” he said, and I spilled coffee over the back of my hand.
“Asshole,” I said, not turning around. “How about a little warning next time?”
“Don’t want to let on I know you. Because of the trouble.”
“How can we be in trouble? We haven’t done anything yet. What kind of trouble?” I probably sounded a little petulant, but I was annoyed about the coffee.
“Wizard trouble.” That’s a whole lot worse than spilled coffee.
“Where?”
“Across the street, bus stop.” I did my best to look at the bus stop without obviously looking at the bus stop. An enormously fat woman talking on a cell phone was taking up most of the bench inside the shelter, and what room she wasn’t occupying herself was filled by her two kids, engaged in some sort of punching game. Pushed out of the shelter by this little domestic scene were two young women with umbrellas, glaring daggers at the serenely oblivious woman inside, and a bedraggled little man in a tan raincoat, who was attempting to keep himself dry by holding a newspaper over his head, like you see in old movies. It doesn’t work nearly as well as it does in Hollywood.
None of them looked remotely wizardly. “Who?”
“Tan coat.”
“Him? He’s no wizard. He doesn’t have enough sense to stay out of the rain, for Chrissakes.”
“Yeah. One thing, though: why’s he carrying an umbrella?” I looked again, and sure enough. His left hand was holding the newspaper aloft, but down by his side, clutched in his right hand, was a long, narrow, fabric-wrapped object that looked like a golf umbrella.
Magic’s a tricky business at the best of times, but combat magic is a bitch and a half. The usual way to make it easier is to pre-load a bunch of stuff into some object, traditionally a long wooden stick. When the time comes, you trigger it, and hopefully wreak some havoc. And if magic doesn’t do the trick, well, you’re holding a nice solid chunk of wood, and can always hit the other guy with it.
Problem is, it’s not exactly inconspicuous. It hasn’t been fashionable for healthy young men to carry walking sticks for nigh on a century now, so if you want to openly carry a staff, you have to either fake a limp, or raise a lot of questions. Or, you can wrap your wizardly stick in a piece of nylon cloth, and it looks for all the world like a large umbrella. Problem solved—you just look like you’re cautious about the weather.
Until it actually rains. At which point, you look like a dumbass standing in the rain holding a closed umbrella.
I stared across the street at the bus shelter, looking at that umbrella. And at its holder, who on, closer inspection, was clearly watching me back.
“Shit,” I said. “Wizard trouble.”
————
This is the opening scene of an urban fantasy caper story I’ve been poking at for a good long while now, when I need something frivolous and morale-boosting to do. It’s pretty much finished now, but I lack the patience to actually shop it around to places that publish such things. So, since I’m feeling a little sluggish after a very busy weekend, and my writing schedule was thrown off by a change in SteelyKid’s routine, I’ll post this tease here.
The full thing is a bit over 9,000 words, so I don’t want to paste it all into a blog post and deal with fixing the inevitable formatting screw-ups. I’ve been toying with trying to paste some blog posts together as an ebook; maybe I’ll use this as an excuse to figure out how you do the formatting for an epub, and put the file up somewhere. If there’s any interest in seeing the rest.
But, for now, here’s this.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1P1c8IK
I was staring out the diner window, watching it rain, when Jimmy the werewolf slid into the booth behind me. “We got trouble, boss,” he said, and I spilled coffee over the back of my hand.
“Asshole,” I said, not turning around. “How about a little warning next time?”
“Don’t want to let on I know you. Because of the trouble.”
“How can we be in trouble? We haven’t done anything yet. What kind of trouble?” I probably sounded a little petulant, but I was annoyed about the coffee.
“Wizard trouble.” That’s a whole lot worse than spilled coffee.
“Where?”
“Across the street, bus stop.” I did my best to look at the bus stop without obviously looking at the bus stop. An enormously fat woman talking on a cell phone was taking up most of the bench inside the shelter, and what room she wasn’t occupying herself was filled by her two kids, engaged in some sort of punching game. Pushed out of the shelter by this little domestic scene were two young women with umbrellas, glaring daggers at the serenely oblivious woman inside, and a bedraggled little man in a tan raincoat, who was attempting to keep himself dry by holding a newspaper over his head, like you see in old movies. It doesn’t work nearly as well as it does in Hollywood.
None of them looked remotely wizardly. “Who?”
“Tan coat.”
“Him? He’s no wizard. He doesn’t have enough sense to stay out of the rain, for Chrissakes.”
“Yeah. One thing, though: why’s he carrying an umbrella?” I looked again, and sure enough. His left hand was holding the newspaper aloft, but down by his side, clutched in his right hand, was a long, narrow, fabric-wrapped object that looked like a golf umbrella.
Magic’s a tricky business at the best of times, but combat magic is a bitch and a half. The usual way to make it easier is to pre-load a bunch of stuff into some object, traditionally a long wooden stick. When the time comes, you trigger it, and hopefully wreak some havoc. And if magic doesn’t do the trick, well, you’re holding a nice solid chunk of wood, and can always hit the other guy with it.
Problem is, it’s not exactly inconspicuous. It hasn’t been fashionable for healthy young men to carry walking sticks for nigh on a century now, so if you want to openly carry a staff, you have to either fake a limp, or raise a lot of questions. Or, you can wrap your wizardly stick in a piece of nylon cloth, and it looks for all the world like a large umbrella. Problem solved—you just look like you’re cautious about the weather.
Until it actually rains. At which point, you look like a dumbass standing in the rain holding a closed umbrella.
I stared across the street at the bus shelter, looking at that umbrella. And at its holder, who on, closer inspection, was clearly watching me back.
“Shit,” I said. “Wizard trouble.”
————
This is the opening scene of an urban fantasy caper story I’ve been poking at for a good long while now, when I need something frivolous and morale-boosting to do. It’s pretty much finished now, but I lack the patience to actually shop it around to places that publish such things. So, since I’m feeling a little sluggish after a very busy weekend, and my writing schedule was thrown off by a change in SteelyKid’s routine, I’ll post this tease here.
The full thing is a bit over 9,000 words, so I don’t want to paste it all into a blog post and deal with fixing the inevitable formatting screw-ups. I’ve been toying with trying to paste some blog posts together as an ebook; maybe I’ll use this as an excuse to figure out how you do the formatting for an epub, and put the file up somewhere. If there’s any interest in seeing the rest.
But, for now, here’s this.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1P1c8IK
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