Siren’s Song: behind the scene
Siren’s song is released online now, so go ahead and see what I am so happy about (actually, right now I’m happy about it. I suffered a short bout of anxiety, but I made myself to reread it and figured it’s just fine).
Seriously. Go ahead and read it. If you’re really curious (or Latvian) see the Latvian version too. (The English is better though.)
And when you’ve done that, come back for the spoiler-y treats.
I’m not going to explain what the story is “about”, but its first impression came from Carlos Castaneda, one of my favorite writers when I was a teenager, and blissfully unaware of what a creepy sect his followers were/are. That makes sense though; I’m thinking if Maurice had a sect of followers they would definitely be creepy. My Trusted Reader says that Maurice reminds him of Fritz Perl, and yes, Perl could definitely be an influence, although I surely didn’t realize it then.
“A bucket of fresh piglet blood,” Maurice said. – this and further payments come from Celtic legends where witches always demand weird things as payment. I still think it’s absolutely beautiful form of payment–imagine, if you came to somebody for ad campaign and they asked for three echoes from a distant mountain as a payment?
“Fecked your mind, didn’t he?” – just a casual note: I didn’t know that “to feck” was a legitimate slang word; I was just looking for something that would throw the balance off.
“Most people, they do themselves in their wake, and undo themselves in their dreams. You go all the way, never stopping.” – this actually comes from old Latvian legends. There are some about cursed castles. They are built by day, but by night, the Devil destroys everything that has been built and in the morning, they have to start it all over. (Until they sacrifice a virgin to satisfy–or scare off–the Devil.)
–not much, I know, but hey, thanks for reading the story! I owed you something.
I found your story via the HtTS forum. I really liked it — I liked the sparseness of it, the simplicity and depth at the same time, the way you described the characters, like seeing them extremely close-up. That said, I’m not one to over-analyze; I just go with first impressions and gut feel, which was good in this case
PS: Your English is impeccable, better than most people who actually ARE English. I’m “English as a Second Language” too, so kudos to you.
Thank you! I had a lot of help with my English, actually. And I think it’s just logical for us to have better written English – we are beating ourselves for our mistakes, unlike people who think they know a language just because they were born in it. (This is the same about every language, I think – you have to learn it to know it well, something natural speakers can forget.)
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