Jim N. Duncan
My writing & other miscellaneous writerly stuff
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Queen Kaliegh
 
This story comes from my love of time travel, not just as a story construct, but just as a cool subject in general. It also involves medieval times, an era much beloved by storytellers, but also misrepresented, over-glorified, and not understood very well by most readers. I wanted to come up with a story that dug into the nitty-gritty of what it was really like to live back in 1400 Britain, while still retaining a lot of the magic and myth that pervades the times. So, I found an event I thought would make for a very interesting setting, and a situation that would bring some myth and magic to the story, and came up with Queen Kaliegh.
 
The story takes a young woman, the daughter of a brilliant physicist, and puts her in the position of carrying out his mysterious plan to travel back in time via a wormhole he's opened up and change the course of history to alter something catastrophic that is going to happen in the present. Only problem is, he's not clear on the what or how of this, and the wormhole isn't just a doorway through time, but a passage through something far greater.
 
Kaliegh finds herself caught up in the Glyndowr Revolt, the last great war between Wales and England, when the Welsh nearly pulled off one of the greatest upsets in the history of wars. Is this the event she was suppose to alter? Just how a single woman in medieval Britain is suppose to do this appears singularly unclear, but someone who knew her father, a mysterious and powerful pagan woman, seems to know, or is there an agenda even beyond what her father had wanted? It is all Kaliegh can do though to just survive and get along in a world where the only person she can effectively communicate with is a village priest who can speak latin, and believes her to be an angel sent by God. To complicate matters further, Kaliegh discovers that she isn't the only one who traveled back in time to 'fix' things, and his agenda seems to involve her burning on a flaming stake.
  

 

 June 2112

 

Being able to speak with the dead has pushed Forensics Specialist June Parson's career to a level she never dreamed possible, but when a dead man with gills in the side of his neck disappears from her morgue, she finds her new life threatened by her superior's efforts to make the case disappear. Mermaids in NYC? It's too intriguing to let it get swept under the rug, so June enlists the aid of gruff but charming PI Darek Bryce, a man who makes his living in the watery depths of lower Manhatten, where a whole new criminal underworld has taken shape since a global warming catastrophe raised the sea level by fifty feet.

 

But even the mermaids ghost is tight-lipped about the circumstances of his death, and Darek is far too interested in a case he appeared to have no involvement with. When the mafia becomes interested in their lives or lack there of, June and Darek begin to uncover a conspiracy involving the mob, the government, and the fate of her beloved city. From the seedy depths of Manhatten up to the elite, seperated world of the Upper Forty where everyone lives their lives above the fortieth floors of NYC's skyscrapers, the two fight against greed and corruption, and magical forces to save the lives of New York's newest immigrants.

The Bare Dirty

 

This story came out of a dream I had, which was really little more than a wandering around looking for something. Like most dreams I have of this nature, I could not recall what I was looking for or why. The substance of the dream was a vast wasteland of stone buildings, apartments, shops, and whatnot, built all together and on top of each other such that it was a utterly confusing maze of passages, walkways, stairs, and courtyards. The only thing that I remembered beyond the setting from this dream, was seeing this 'thing,' a humanoid creature or perhaps something that was once human, but now some freakish undead, writhing away on dusty ground below me. It acted as though it were experiencing convulsions, bucking, rolling and twisting in the dirt, but what struck me most was that it was little more than loose strands of muscle connected over some sort of skeleton, like someone had become tangled in an enormous skein of gray, fleshy yarn. Needless to say, it was a bizarre image. When or as I woke up from this, it came to me that this place was called the Bare Dirty. Yes, it was my brain functioning in that muddled state between sleep and awake, but I found it a rather cool, evocative name, and decided then and there that I would have to use it in my writing somehow.

 

The thoughts I've had on this one have changed over the months, from crime/horror to urban fantasy to what I now have, which is something of horror/redemtpion/lovestory. Honestly, not sure if the horror part truly applies. Paranormal might be just as appropos. Our MC, who was not a terribly nice guy in real life, acting as a cleaner for the mob or whomever was willing to pay enough to take out troublesome people, finds himself in the Bare Dirty, and kind of purgatory for people needing redemption or those who are just waiting for things to resolve in the living world before they move on. Only things aren't what was expected, as there is a war going on between those who don't care to be redeemed, and the forces controlling the Bare Dirty whose mentality is be redeemed or destroyed. The hero choses redemption and goes back to the living world to help redeem a woman whose life is more bleak than his ever was. He develops a friendship with the woman after much trial and error, but she dies before she can achieve redemption, and so our hero must travel back the the Bare Dirty to face those irredeemable ones who want her to join their ranks in the war against the angels and demons who control their lives.