Gryffyd Eamonn Dempsey » Writing

Journals

Gryffyd — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 17:09:20 +0000

Mrs The Fyd alerted me to this blog, where the blogger is transcribing his father’s family journal a day at a time. The entries start in February 1945 in New York City. I was almost startled to read this:

Eugene saw “Heil Hitler” written on a bus by some prankster and wanted to know what it meant.

It almost seems anachronistic to think of some disaffected teenager toward the end of WWII hoping to shock the normals in that fashion, but I suppose every age had such types. I look forward to the series, and to more adjustments to my notions of the past.

Old habits

Gryffyd — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:09:36 +0000

I was reading this article and was immediately bugged by the assertion of “the following grammatical rule: there is only ONE space after a period.” First, it’s nothing to do with grammar; it’s a typographical rule. Second, I’ve been double-spacing after periods since I learned to type, way back in the wooly mammoth days when we learned on actual typewriters (electric, at least; it wasn’t like they were steam-powered). Apparently these new-fangled word processors obviate the need for a double space after a period, but there’s very little chance I’m going to change. My thumbs automatically twitch twice after I type a period, and I’m afraid the neural pathways are not to be rerouted. At least I don’t feel the urge to reach for the carriage return as I approach the end of each line. Ding!

Into the clouds

Gryffyd — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 00:10:19 +0000

I have been unable to interest any literary agents in my novel Anti-X. Perhaps I just don’t know how to write query letters, or else the book is just not right for anyone to represent. I have had a couple of requests for sample chapters, but nothing more beyond that. So I am putting the novel up at HarperCollins’ Authonomy website. You can find the book here.

Anyone who stumbles across this post can read a free book by following that link. Additionally, anyone who wants to can register at the site and vote for the book; once a month the top five rated books are read by HarperCollins editors themselves. This is no guarantee of publication, but I thought it’s worth a shot. So, the book has been set free; read or not, as you choose.

Stumptown

Gryffyd — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:32:24 +0000

Nancy Rommelmann writes about tragedy with great skill, in this piece that explores where the latter exploits the former. Do read it.

A Story

Gryffyd — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 19:40:38 +0000

What better way to begin a year’s blogging than to share another story with the internets? Here’s one I dashed off last month, another bit of flash fiction. It was rejected by the one magazine I submitted it to, and I’ve decided it doesn’t need to accrue the indignities of numerous rejections required to find a home at some obscure and short-lived zine. Might as well be published on this obscure but stable site.

My Children

by Gryffyd Eamonn Dempsey

Our goblin has taken the children. Trussed them like totems. Dog fur has been hateful to us for many years. Tufts of fluffy tail are glued to my little girl’s forehead. She looks like a devil with a summer’s velvet on its horns.

My daughter carved spells to convince people that foul strong smells were faint and far away, like toiling peasants carting night soil to fields just visible from your luxury sedan speeding along the freeway.

“Has it harmed you?” I asked her. I did not want to kill a child myself.

I looked past her, at the goblin sitting behind its garden fence of dragon bones. Its stench wavered on the border but could not overwhelm me.

My daughter does not love me. Her other spells misrepresent me to gluttons.

Not many of you could be the sort who had led the revolution, fighting underground when many thought me a dead man, fingers warped by Interior Police torture, mind strengthened and honed by long ordeal and determination baked like old hardwood. Not many had that to backstop their credibility. I am a man of action and you always misjudged me.

As usual you acted irrationally, such that when I withdrew you were meant to approach, and vice versa. When I came into the room I naturally opened a window for your escape. You invited me to reciprocate, then when I acted, you simpered that two wrongs do not make a right.

Goblin gas seeps past us. Where the holly tree had been was now an almost perfect circle of thatch and detritus in the middle of the lawn. The several stumps seemed too small to have provided a skeleton for that erstwhile bulk, the massive shiny green thing that had shielded a secretive busy world, now denuded and destroyed for no discernible reason.

My father kept me fed but traumatized my sisters on the other side of the wire fence as he spent hours on preparation of greasy brown stew, taking tastes from a wooden spoon while wiggling his bushy eyebrows at the women.

The little boy was dead — in the night rats had gnawed through his stomach too eat the sugar in his belly. He might have survived without a stomach but these rats defecated into his blood and their poisons showed how the care of dead orphans who look into the living world for help are treated.

The father sat in the cold room in a bathrobe, shins hairy and bare, feet shod in slippers. He cast an air of a gloom Christmas morning as he raised a hand to beat me.

A dead, naked child, standing stiff, pointed at me and mocked my failures.

“Pig-killer sacrifice,” he said.

In each room of my father’s house a wall held a framed section of a map, so many rooms and so intricate the geography that no one could, by moving from room to room, say where they connected and if they all described the same land. I found a map leading to the underground and lost myself there and when I left the house the reek of dragons was upon the land again.

They say I slew the dragon but let it live too long in its dying. It bred a poison that infected the world. Goblins bred and planted our children in the fields surrounding their dens.

I reached down and touched my daughter’s hand, then lifted it lightly. She flinched as her innards grated against the stake. She had no spells to save us and I no killing left in me.

Our goblin has taken our children. I know they are dead.

Free Original Content!

Gryffyd — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 17:40:24 +0000

Yes, here is a very short story I wrote, derived from a impression of Robert Browning’s “A Death in the Desert”. Since that is a very long poem, obviously my impressions were of a specific point — ‘Was John at all, and did he say he saw?’ is the relevant line, and that’s the mystery of St. John the Apostle in brief.

Was John At All

by Gryffyd Eamonn Dempsey

        They walked in from under a hot desert sky. The lobby inside was cool

and dim behind smoked glass windows.  A counter directly in front of the main

entrance guarded access to corridors and doors beyond.  A woman wearing medical

scrubs sat at the counter, writing.  She looked up and smiled.  "Hi there!  And who

are we bringing in?"

        "I found him on the old State Road," he said, tugging slightly on the

leash to present the dog forward of him.  "Was out hunting."  He tugged again to pull the

dog back from snuffling at the base of the counter.

        "Such a cutie."

        "Yeah.  Well I took him home and fed him, took him to the vet yesterday."

        The woman walked around the counter.  She squatted in front of the dog,

who sat down on the man's foot.  "Did he have any identification?"  She put one

hand out for the dog to sniff, then felt along its withers.

        "No.  No tags.  Nothing on the scan.  No collar or nothing even.  So he

says, the vet, I should bring him by the shelter, see if anyone reported a lost

dog of similar description."

        "Well that was really kind of you to go to all the trouble and care for

him so.  I'm sure that such a beautiful boy has a home?  Hmm, don’t you?  Are your

peoples worrying about you?  Don’t worry, for sure we'll find you a home right away."

She ran her fingers through his thick, long coat.  Her voice modulated from sweet to

soft.  "He looks like a purebred golden retriever.  Such beautiful, friendly dogs."

She scratched him under the chin.

        The man cleared his throat.  "Well, I was thinking that if no one's reported him

gone, then I'd like to keep him."

        "Of course!  You'll have first dibs."  She ran her fingers through the fur over

its brisket, parting it as if looking for fleas.

"Some owners have a bar code put on their dogs. If he's unmarked and doesn't match

any missing reports, why then he's yours."

        The man kneeled beside the dog and scratched his head as she searched his chest.

The dog's tail thumped on the linoleum floor.  "Weird," she said.  "Take a look at this."  The

man shuffled on his knees to her side.  She held the fur out of the way with one hand.

Beneath, on a shaved or depilated patch of skin near the breastbone, was a small

tattoo.  It showed the head and upper body of a robed man.  The details of the

face were crude, as if unimportant, but clearly outlined were the man's halo,

a book he held in one hand and a cup in the other; over one shoulder hung a serpent

and over the other loomed an eagle.  In the calm light of the lobby it looked

other-worldly and the woman leaned back as if she suddenly recognized it as evil.

        "Yeah, weird," said the man.

        The woman was silent for a moment, her happy disposition now displaced by

worry and fear.  She looked around as if someone might be looking.  "This is

some kind of crypto-catholic icon, I’m sure of it.  I had heard that they tattooed

communion medals on themselves.  I didn't know there were any around here anymore."

She stood and looked around again.

        "Who would do that to a dog anyway?"

        She shook her head and walked back, putting the counter between herself

and the dog and man.

        "Maybe I should just take him with me now?"

        She frowned, as if biting on her lip had pulled her scalp down.  "I don't

think you want to invite trouble."

        He shook his head.

        "And I don't even want to think of what would happen if the people who

did this come in to claim him.  I don't want to have anything to do with that.  Do you?"

        He shrugged.

        "It's a slow day.  No one's seen you come in.  We're short-staffed anyway, so

we can be quiet about this."  Her perkiness returned.  "There's usually a euthanasia

fee for drop-offs, but I think we will just waive that since we're being hush-hush, right?"

She walked around the counter, took the leash from the man.  "Come on puppy,"

she said brightly.  She led the dog behind the counter.  As they went through

one of the doors the dog looked back at the man.  The dog’s brown eyes showed

white crescents of fear.

        "Sorry, dog," the man said.  "Don't say you saw."

-END-

Fat Cat Wins

Gryffyd — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 23:59:10 +0000

Congratulations to Chris Onstad on Achewood being named Time’s Graphic Novel of the Year. Onstad has a talent for writing that makes me go cross-eyed with envy, but only briefly until I need to relax and uncross my eyes so I can enjoy the strip.

You’ve Got Mail

Gryffyd — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 20:33:13 +0000

Virtue may be its own reward, but the true benefit a writer receives arrives with the affirming correspondence of a reader. Without this, a writer is merely whispering into the void.

Finif

Gryffyd — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 22:14:55 +0000

In which I receive $5 for writing an “abstract” of a Washington Post column. In my high school days we might have called that a précis. Either way, you too could earn a half-sawbuck or several, and I will introduce you to the opportunity by way of my work:

http://www.brijit.com/abstract/6352/The-Globe,-Politically-Corrected.

That it was a Geoffrey Wheatcroft column was just gravy.

Putting me in a new tax bracket

Gryffyd — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:25:35 +0000

I got an email this morning alerting me to a paypal transfer of $0.13. This is a royalty for a short story of mine that is on fictionwise.com. Images of Scrooge McDuck swimming in money naturally come to mind.