Featured Post - Ninja Writer's Story Club - Lyda Morehouse

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Of all the stories I've read by Lyda, her first published story is both my favorite and her shortest.

Irish Blood

A dying soldier is visited by someone darker than death. 

Some French pasture is the last place I should be doing my dying. It irks me especially to be dying for a foreign king...ah, still, it seems unavoidable. The shrapnel from the mortar bomb sliced clean through something major in my chest. Blood is everywhere. I can feel its warm, stickiness on the hard ground beneath me. I wouldn't be so worried, except the pain disappeared an hour or more ago. Now, all that's left is a sort of gut-wrenching, floating feeling. Off in the distance, beyond the artillery fire, I can hear some birds singing. Between their twittering and that warm breeze bringing the smell of sweetgrass, a guy could get to feeling peaceful.

Read it.

Comments

[a rose is a rose]

what's NOT to like?

irish
vampire
green
blood
fae (my personal favorite)

[CV Rick]

It's complete . . . and that's what I've been studying this week: how to write a complete story succinctly. I tend to get very complicated in my plots and I think it's because I look at people and their decisions/motives/backgrounds as an infinitely complex problem. So I've been studying how to distill a simple story out of the myriad of possibilities. Lyda does this well.

[a rose is a rose]

rick, not all stories have to be succinct. some stories SHOULD ramble. the above story is perfect BUT it still left me wanting more. you might say that's a good thing. it may very well be IF lyda did write further and she went off on tangents she had no bid-niz going off on. on the OTHER hand, she could have stayed on the path.

we shall never know.

my comment is NOT a criticism of ms morehouse's story. just the opposite i think.

some of your stories are very short indeed and some do go on. i think most of what i have read by you is perfectly paced and never rambling

[lyda morehouse]

I dunno. I've always felt this story was flawed. Structure is too simple: a guy is dying and then he dies. Whatever. What kind of story is that?

Obviously, I was trying to write an idea story. The idea being: wouldn't it be cool if fairy blood killed vampires? Also, I had a bunch of bits of information about the IRA that I found fascinating and thought would make for good story bits, if you will.

[CV Rick]

But that's what a short story is, Lyda - a single idea explored, a single conflict analyzed. Anything more is just a teaser for something larger, not a story unto itself.

I didn't really feel the IRA in it, though. It felt older - like any battlefield in any time. I know you brought up the priests and the IRA and whatnot, but to me it could've been a hundred years ago, a thousand, or more. It was a piece about Vampires and Fey and the trappings didn't distract from that central core.

[lyda morehouse]

Well, the soldier does mention Flanders, doesn't he? Or was that only in my mind?? (I hate when that happens.)

I suppose you could be right about the idea of a single idea explored, but I've always found these kinds of short stories problematic when I read them from other people. Dying and then becoming dead doesn't feel like much of a conflict to me, you know? It's like when novice writers write a story whose entire thrust can be summed up: "a storm blew through, and then it was over." Okay, sure, there's movement, but nothing happens that's terribly interesting or unexpected. That feels more like a vingnette than a short story to me.

Of course, I'm not sure I'm the best critic. I can't think of a short story of mine that I've ever really felt satisfied with. I don't think of myself as a short story writer for that reason.

[CV Rick]

Oh, the details are there, but to me the story feels like the battlefield the reader wants to envision because the setting isn't on the distance, it's on the direct interference of the vampire. In fact, the way it's written I think the narrator's vision has already blurred as he's dying and all he can see is that which is foremost.

I didn't pick this story because I know you, I picked it because I think people will enjoy it and I wanted to examine a short story which really works as a short story without distraction. I'm sorry that you're wrong about the story you wrote, but it's quite good.

[a rose is a rose]

it felt VERY old to me as well. it was shocking to hear it as current. then i thought, perhaps the soldier doesn't really ever die. the fae blood brings him back over and over........

that's how i chose to see it at any rate

[lyda morehouse]

I'd intended it as World War I, but I like A Rose is...'s idea that the soldier is eternal.

I appreciate that you think the story works and is "fat free." It's my most reproduced story, so I suspect other people agree with you.

[jane]

Normally I don't like short stories (that's weird, I know) but since Lyda herself has piped up with her humble feelings about this story, I will print and read this. And I'm looking forward to it!

[lyda morehouse]

Oh, and I should point out that the term IRA is actually incorrect. I think what the soldier refers to himself as is a Feinnian (Sinn Fein), which was kind of a precurser to the IRA (it's a seperate entity, but that's another whole story.) I'd been reading a lot of polticial Irish history at the time that I composed this short, and I've since forgotten almost all of it. Anyway. I just wanted to clear that up.

And, oh, I'm glad I inspired someone to read my story.

[jane]

You did inspire me! And I liked your story. To be maybe overly forthcoming, I still am not a short story fan, but yours was good: nice and short, had a good beginning, tension, and end.