Category: Stories

This is the beginning of a piece I have been playing around with.

***

What crawled into your clamshell and pissed all over it?” Ryker swam over to her, his powerful purple tail pushing him forwards.

Marlowe paused in her path towards the palace, looking him over as he effectively blocked her way. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Captain,” she said, her golden eyes daring him to prod her any more.

Ryker smirked, crossing his arms across his broad bare chest. “You aren’t your usual…chipper self.”

This earned him an eyeroll, and Marlowe stretched her long maroon tail out, trying to work out some of the soreness. “Today I’m wearing a lovely shade of ‘I slept like shit, so don’t piss me off’,” she told him, narrowing her eyes at him. “Don’t you have an army to train?”

A bark came unexpectedly from Ryker, and he shook his head. “Marlowe, I hate to tell you this, but you wear that shade every day.” He chuckled again, then backed out of her way. “Don’t worry, it looks good on you.” The Captain gave her a flirty wink, before swimming off in the direction that Marlowe had come from.

She sneered as he passed by, then continued towards the palace. Not only did she sleep awfully and was feeling the effects of it, but she had been called to a meeting with the Queen, which was terrifying in itself. For years, she’d been the personal guard of the Prince and Princess, sixteen year old twins. As she swam forward into the palace, she was rethinking the past several days with the twins, trying to pinpoint any moment that something had gone wrong. What could she have done that would cause the Queen to call her forward? She’d started some combat training with them and allowed Claire to be a little more brutal with her brother than she probably should have, mostly to teach him self-defense. They’d snuck out of the castle and Marlowe allowed them to think they were alone, and she’d followed them to watch them play in the wreckage of a sunken ship. Still, even as she listed all of these things in her mind, she couldn’t figure out what would be bad enough to earn herself a meeting with the Queen. Marlowe neared the throne room and nodded to the two guards standing watch over the broad doors, who nodded back and opened the doors for her. The room was long and empty, which held minimal surprise to her. If this was to be a sentencing for something she’d done wrong, surely the Queen would have a witness present?

Marlowe bowed appropriately before looking up at Queen Qo’oral. “Your Majesty,” she said in her usual monotone, trying not to convey the nerves that she felt by standing here in front of the Queen. It seemed like nothing to follow the royal twins around every day and to be the head of their security, but their mother was a completely different beast all together. She was thin and lithe, her long glittering silver tail curled beneath her as she sat delicately on a throne of elaborate carved coral. Her lavender hair hung straight down her shoulders, a crown perched on top of her head. The Queen lifted her finger to her lips, silencing Marlowe, and she nodded down to the deep green seaweed wrapped around her torso. An infant was nestled on his mother’s chest, sleeping peacefully tucked into the seaweed.

“You wanted to see me?” Marlowe asked, her voice lowered so she wouldn’t wake the youngest Princess up.

The Queen nodded, giving a sweet smile. “How have you liked working with the twins, Marlowe? I hope they haven’t bored you during your duty.”

“Your children are far from boring, Your Majesty. They have a way of…keeping me on my fins.”

A soft chuckle escaped the Queen, and she nodded, seemingly understanding. “They are quite characters, aren’t they?” She sat up a little straighter, which only made Marlowe recheck her posture and stand a little taller in front of the Queen. “You’re aware of Kelo’s retirement?”

Kelo was one of the elder guards, who had started training Marlowe when she was old enough to hold a spear. It was surprising to most of the guards that he would be retiring now. “I am.”

“His position for the past few years has been organizing the care of Prince Gabriel. He has recommended you for his position. I am inclined to agree with him.”

Marlowe froze. “Me?” she finally stammered, looking at the Queen with wide eyes. “Are you sure? I’m not exactly good with children of that age.” Mostly she liked the teenaged Prince and Princess, she could watch them from afar and teach them to fight and not worry about breaking their delicate bones like she would a three year old.

Queen Qo’oral stood from her chair, her long tail flicking from side to side in the cool water. “You’ll start tomorrow, Kelo will show you the ropes before his retirement. I’m sure you’ll do fine.” With those parting words, the Queen nodded a good day to Marlowe, who bowed, and swam off to go to her next appointment.

“Your Majesty, there is someone here to see you,” the footman said as he poked his head into the dining chamber.

Gregory sighed. There was always someone who wanted to see him. Ever since he became King. Couldn’t even let him finish breakfast. It couldn’t be helped, he supposed. “And who would this ‘someone’ be?” he asked. Continue reading “The Dragon’s Call” →

Everything was ready.

The Queen’s guards were standing by, watching the door carefully.

The Queen herself sat on her throne, dressed elegantly in a green gown, her long black hair cascading down her shoulders, those sharp blue eyes staring at the door warily.  Her only protection was her intricately woven chainmail beneath her gown, and her sword leaning against the side of the throne. Continue reading “Dragon Queen” →

Yeah. This one. You knew we were going to have to talk about it eventually. I know, many authors (possibly even most) don’t like talking about copyright, but it’s something you need to think about when you self-publish. If you’d rather read about the actual writing, you can still find the main Road to Self Publishing page here. Still with me? Good.

First, a little disclaimer. I am not now, nor am I likely to ever be, a lawyer, so take everything in here with a grain of salt. If you’re unsure what do do when it comes to copyright, it wouldn’t hurt to talk to an actual Intellectual Property lawyer. Also, I’ll only be speaking about U.S. copyright here. I know next to nothing about copyright in other countries. Some of the things here might be applicable to them, but others will not. Proceed with caution.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s talk copyright. I’m sure many of you haven’t thought about your copyright before, and probably won’t think about it after this. That’s not a bad thing.  You should think about it for a little bit, though, as your choices with copyright will affect other publishing decisions going forward.

The first question is; should I even register a copyright at all? The good news is, in the U.S. it’s not necessary to register the copyright. As soon as you create the thing (like this post) the copyright goes to you. The only real use a registered copyright is if you end up going to court. During a lawsuit, the registration acts as a hard date-of-creation and can make the case that the work is actually yours that much stronger. That being said, if you’re planning on staying out of court, a registration is possibly unnecessary.

One of the reasons you might not want to register the copyright is if you choose a more permissive license than “all rights reserved”. One option on that front is Creative Commons. I actually use Creative Commons for all my posts here. Specifically, I use the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You can check you the copyright notice for all work by Eldiste (me) here. All Creative Commons licenses and many others, are part of a family called “Copyleft”. Copyleft licenses aim to ease up on the current copyright paradigm by specifically granting the public some, or all, of the things that typical copyright would normally restrict. For example, the license I put on my work here specifically grants everyone the right to copy, remix, or incorporate my work into their own, as long as they properly credit me. It is also what they call a “viral license”. This means, if you remix, or incorporate my works, the license comes along for the ride. This does not mean that your entire work would fall under the Creative Commons license, only the portions of my work that you incorporated into your own. It does, however, mean that you can’t put any extra DRM on your work, as it would also lock-up the portion of the work covered under Creative Commons with restrictions that the original license didn’t have. There are other copyleft licenses that don’t have viral elements, so dig through the Creative Commons site, and find one that’s right for you.

Of course, if you want to give the people maximum freedom, you can always put your work into the Public Domain. That means, anyone can do literally anything with your work they want, including publishing it exactly as you had it but without your name and profiting off it. I personally like the Public Domain, but for those of us who are smaller, it can be a challenge. Since someone with a larger marketing budget could take your work and use it to get your potential audience, it’s harder for us to use the Public Domain and make money. If that doesn’t bother you, by all means put it in the Public Domain.

But what if you don’t want to deal with copyleft and viral licensing. What if the Public Domain is scary? Well, good news! Like I said above, if you’ve written the thing, you have an “all rights reserved” copyright. This means the only way a somebody can use your work is with your express permission, or if it falls under fair use. So, how do you know if something falls under fair use? Well, sadly, in the US, there is no hard and fast test to tell if something falls under fair use. The only way to know for certain is to go through the courts. There are a few ways you can make an educated guess, though. If it uses a very small portion of the overall work, say one or two lines. If the portion used is not what makes the work unique. If it’s for educational or news reporting purposes. If the use of your work falls under multiple of those cases, there’s a good chance it’s fair use.

Have I cleared up copyright for you? Or just muddied the waters? Either way, I hope this nearly incoherent rant has been informative, and maybe helped you a little bit. Stick around for more nuts-and-bolts publishing in the next one.

It was a light green, brightly glowing orb.  He held it between his hands, never actually touching it, letting it float there.  His wide set blue eyes bore into me, watching me stare at the orb.

“What’s the catch?” I asked, folding my arms over my chest.  I was betting it was something I wouldn’t want to do.  It seemed like an odd thing, for him to be standing there in my kitchen, looking at me with that strange glint in his eyes. Continue reading “Playing with the Devil” →

There was to be a hanging today. It was a strange sense of calm that had washed over the room as the sun rose, even though she knew what was coming. The gallows waited below, the final punishment for her crime. She stared down at it from her castle window, watching the soldiers secure the perimeter of the velvet ropes to keep her citizens close but far enough away that they didn’t interrupt anything. Everyone loved an execution; especially when it was the execution of the criminal princess. A slow smile slid over her dry lips. It was too bad her people would be disappointed today. Continue reading “Freedom” →