Sorry it took me so long to get back to this...


In a message dated 7/19/02 3:27:31 PM Eastern Daylight Time, mamiller@vt.edu 
writes:

Ill get to the more minor stuff first:

To Clear the Earth

By

Jeremy Harper

Notice - This is a work of original fiction, copyright 2002 Jeremy 

Harper.
It is not to be archived or distributed without express permission of the
author.

Some days after his emergence from his most recent hibernation Asmodeus

discovered a fresh, unsoiled village of mortals, nestled in a dry valley at
the periphery of his territory. He wondered briefly how such a delicacy
could have escaped his notice, but dismissed it as irrelevant- his
fractured, fetid mind possessed but little capacity for intelligent
conjecture. He concealed himself on the valley's stony slopes through the
force of his will and for three days watched the village inhabitants go
about their routines, tending their fields of corn and patches of
vegetables, maintaining their domiciles, raising their offspring. Sometimes
he would send out his thought and follow closely one mortal or another for
hours at a time, an invisible voyeur delighting in the observation of the
most private and intimate moments of these tiny lives. Asmodeus masturbated
vigorously several times during his watch, taking immense pleasure in the
anticipation of the sport to come, when he revea!

led his magnificent, sublime presence. How he would glut and satiate

himself on them...

Id put a 'would' in there before 'reveal his magnificent presence', and id
make 'during his watch' into something objective, like 'during that time' 
or
something, because you seem to be using too many personal refernces at that
point in the paragraph. Just my opinion, but thats how it seemed to read.
I like the way you jump right into this without any kind of tricky opening
sentence or paragraph. It makes it a fable or myth right off the bat.

On the early morning of the fourth day, as the village men walked to the

fields to begin their day's labor, Asmodeus exercised his will and
transformed each kernel of corn into a locust. The newborn insects moved
about as they pumped ichor into their wings, rustling through the stillborn
corn husks, chirping lustily.

Again, completely IMHO, id drop 'newborn.' You want to have these first
several paragraphs hit fast and cause the reader to accept a large amount 
of
information without questioning it. Thrust out asmodeus first part here as
one big uncompromising 'fact' which can be dwelt in and considered later

       I'll take these first two suggestions into consideration.

The sudden, unexpected cacophony stopped the entire village stock-still.

The villagers looked about with wide, fearful eyes, knowing what this
impossible event portended and hoping against hope they were wrong. A woman
fell to her knees, crying as she frantically clutched at her children. An
old man mouthed a prayer to the Uncaring God. The locusts took flight, 
their
wings beating out a deafening, stentorian hum, invading the village, 
sending
all into mad flight. It pleased Asmodeus to inflict an anthropophagus
craving on a select number of the insects. These actively sought out 
mortals
instead of harassing them by circumstance. Their victims' screams sharply
pie!

rced the general clamor as they were torn into bloody rags

id make 'into' just 'to'

       I think you're right about this. 

then reduced to blood-drenched bones, stripped of all flesh with appalling
speed; on the valley slope Asmodeus brayed goatish laughter, rocking back 
on
his hairy haunches, slapping his thighs, shaking with sadistic mirth. He
clapped his hands once, the sound resonating like a monstrous thunderbolt
and his locusts turned into fine, gray dust, which blew away on the errant
wind he summoned. The surviving villagers gasped and wept, shocked into
stupor by this apocalypse. Asmodeus descended the slope, a beige blur, and
pranced into the village, naked, rawboned, his face coarse and caprine, his
massive erection bobbing grotesquely before him.

great  

       I take it you liked that one. 

As one the villagers screamed, recognizing him for what he was: a Mad God, a
ruler of the world. Some attempted to flee, others fell on their knees,
babbling out oaths of obeisance or begging for scraps of mercy. Other ran
for their huts to snatch up impotent weapons, praying for the m!

iracle they knew would not come.

maybe make 'knew' into something like 'intuited'

       No, that sounds clumsy and a bit forced to me. 

Asmodeus ignored his new and sudden converts, turning his depraved

attention to the fugitives. He reached out with his thought and invoked
forth gnomes. Rude, inchoate forms burst from the ground before the runners
and caught them in unyielding grasps. A few gnomes Asmodeus molded into
earth-brown satyrs, as lusty and tumescent as their master. They threw down
their captives, fell upon them and raped them. Shrieks of pain, terror and
shame reverberated against the valley walls. Asmodeus brayed

brayed, good word

       Very appropriate too, considering Asmodeus's nature.

in pleasure, jumping up and down, stroking himself in glee- he was an

ultimately infantile creature, almost monomaniacally

I'd certainly drop the 'almost'

       I agree.

obsessed with the most warped facets of sexuality. A depraved id, black,
twisted, by unhappy chance given both divinity and flesh.

A few men came out of their huts with antique hunting rifles, taking aim

at their tormentor and firing. Asmodeus leered and reduced the density of
his body, becoming as immaterial as air, the shots passing through him,
harmless. The men reloaded desperately and fired again. Asmodeus casually,
contemptuously danced through the volley unscathed. He snatched a bullet
from the air and popped it into his mouth, savoring it as if it were the
sweetest of candies. The men cast down their rifles, fell to their knees 
and
wept, all save the youngest among them, who loaded another bullet and took
aim and fired. Asmodeus, growing bored, waved a hand, reversing the flight
of the shot. The young man fell on his back, blood poring from his 
forehead,

pouring     

       Thanks.

his last expression a look of bovine astonishment. The Mad God chortled, and
cast around for a new diversion. He spied a young, prepubescent girl, 
pretty
and blond haired, standing in the threshold of a hut, watching him with the
wide, fearful ey!

es of a trapped rabbit. Asmodeus licked his thick lips and capered 

towards
her, clenching and unclenching his hands eagerly; a nearby woman - the
girl's mother - screamed in horror and rushed to block his path. A new idea
rose atwisting in the fevered maelstrom of Asmodeus's brain. He seized the
woman by her arms and thrust his pelvis at her, once, twice, three times. 
He
ejaculated, smoking black semen splattering on her, eating through her
humble dress and burning her flesh. She shrieked in pain as he let her go,
falling to the ground, writhing. Her tanned skin faded into a sickly gray
pallor as her limbs began to elongate and twist, the bones popping as they
grew. Horny claws formed on her fingers and toes, her mouth thrust out,
becoming a canine muzzle, her hair fell out in great clumps. The woman rose
to her feet, transformed, meeping and whining. Her red, rheumy eyes fell on
her daughter and she leaped at the young girl, catching her up and carrying
her into the huts.

i like this, the thrusting sort of being a sick spell

       I've thought about toning this section down a bit. Keep the thrusting 
part but not having As. climax all over the poor woman. A bit over the top... 
And this coming from a guy who just had some hapless souls devoured by 
locusts...

The!

 girl screamed once, truncated by a gurgle. Wet tearing sounds and 

hideous
slavering emanated. An old man moaned and attacked the Mad God with a
walking stick. Asmodeus caught him by the throat, implanted a small spark 
of
power into his body and twisted his head completely around. He threw the 
old
man to the ground, where he flopped and howled in agony, unable to die
because of the filthy energy fueling his body. Asmodeus threw back his head
and closed his eyes and laughed long and hard...

Then, suddenly, without warning, silence, save for the braying laughter.

wouldnt use it twice though

       I feel that I put enough space between the repetitions, but I'll 
probably take your advice.

Asmodeus stopped and looked around in confusion, his bulbous eyes blinking.

The screams of terror, the moans of fear, the pleas for clemency, all so
pleasing to his deviant sensibilities, had quieted. The villagers stood
frozen in various positions and tableaus, unmoving as iron, statues of
flesh. Bewildered, Asmodeus touched a nearby woman with his knobby finger.
The color of her hair, her flesh, her clothes leached out of her in an
instant. She crumbled apart, falling into a pile of fine soil. In chain
reaction the rest of the mortals followed suit, desiccating into dust. The
gnomes searched stupidly for their captives, the satyrs stood, seeking 
fresh
flesh to ravish. With a confused snarl Asmodeus banished his minions. They
became one with the dirt their prey had become.

"Where are they?" Asmodeus yelled in a shrill, whining tenor, like that 

of
a petulant child denied his want. "Where are my toys, my diversions, my
sweetmeats?" He stretched out with all his senses, seeking and prying-
cutting through veils of reality with nigh omniscient perception. The crude
wood walled, mud plastered huts around him wavered and dissipated,
shimmering out of existence like heat-wrought mirages. A hum filled the 
air,
resonant and crackling. A dome of translucent, prismatic power encompassed
the grounds of the illusory village. Asmodeus screamed in outrage; this
imprisonment was not of his will. "What IS this?" he shrieked out in 
demand.

"Oblivion."

Asmodeus whirled at the sound of the deep, hoarse baritone. An unfamiliar

god stood before him, broad, massive, a good half foot taller than he. He
wore an outfit of red and black, trimmed with gold, his flesh was tanned
bronze- a striking contrast to the toad's belly pallor of Asmodeus. Strong
looking arms were folded across a broad chest. His hair was a thick, wild
shock of black, bound in a ponytail that fell to his lean waist, thrown 
over
a shoulder. He stroked at it with one hand as he looked with stoic contempt
at Asmodeus with piercing, icy blue eyes. A momentary apprehension 
fluttered
in the Mad God's chest, a short-lived butterfly, killed as insanity
reasserted.

Agin, more opinion: since 'John' has to do things the hard way, actually
work for what he gets and limit himself to the bounds of his honor, i would
imagine him to be smaller than asmodeus and skinnier, though with the same
lean and tough proportions. As if an ounce of his metal is worth a pound of
the demon's.

       I feel that you're on to something here. Plus it'll give me the chance 
to use 'wolfish' or 'pantherish economy'. 

"So," he whinnied, leering at the stranger, lolling his long, sinuous

tongue. "I might have known another god was interfering. I've never seen
your like before. You have a strange... scent about you. It is sharp and
chill, alien yet familiar. I think you are an expatriate, one of those who
made exodus to the stars so very long ago. Why have you returned, and what
have you done with my morsels?"

good introductory paragraph. straight to the point. Asmodeus shares his
inner dialogue with everyone, because no one in his realm, his space of
awareness, could be a threat.

       Most of the Gods of Earth suffer from this arrogance, though they are 
usually a bit more circumspect in their dealings with other deities, whether 
native or alien. Asmodeus himself is practically solipsistic, and I hope that 
that is reflected in my characterization of him.

"They never existed," the stranger answered, ignoring the first question.

"They were simulacrums molded from the earth, like your abominations. They
were bait, nothing more, existing only to excite a Mad God's lust."

"I see. You are powerful... or at least... subtle... to be able to fool 

me
so well. But it shall avail you not." Asmodeus lunged at the stranger,
transforming as he leapt. His outline wavered, stretched, arms shriveling
and retracting, legs merging together. He became a gigantic serpent, his
coils as thick as an ancient oak's trunk. Venom bubbled along his fangs,
smoking in contact with the air.

i can see that clearly

       Then I'm doing my job right for once.

His scales were jeweled hue, shimmering, hypnotizing, lambent in the

sunlight. He became the very incarnation of Damballah,

who? (for the uneducated)

       A god or spirit from the Voodoo religion associated with serpents. 

and with lighting speed wound around the stranger, catching him in a

crushing grasp. The stranger did not flinch, did not even make an attempt 
to
dodge, but simply stood still, expressionless, unbowed by the great weight
of the serpent entrapping him.

Asmodeus giggled, an obscenity begot by an obscenity.

yeah

His bowed his blunt nosed, arrow shaped head to his captive's ear and

whispered, "I have you. You are trapped, encompassed by both my form and my
will. You can neither escape nor defeat me. But I am merciful, and will
offer you salvation. Swear fealty to me, sacrifice a tithe of your power,
and I will use you but gently and briefly, then let you go. What do you
say?" Asmodeus was lying, of course. He was no more capable of
forthrightness as he was of chastity. The stranger did not answer. He 
looked
out at the far horizon, emotionless and unwavering.

"Then suffer for your stoicism," declared Asmodeus. "You will beg me for

mercy, before all is over." He began to constrict, exerting a strength that
could break the bones of the earth in time. The stranger exhaled sharply,
closing his eyes. Asmodeus giggled sibilantly, and applied greater 
pressure.
He suddenly felt the flux of an energy pulse. The stranger transformed
himself into a statue of solid, burnished adamant, blazing in the sun,
inviolate and indestructible. Asmodeus goggled. This was impossible. The
stranger was entrapped both physically and spiritually. There was no way he
could be able to perform such a feat of power.

Then the stranger exuded razor-sharp spikes from his metallic body,

impaling Asmodeus in two-dozen places. The Mad God hissed loudly, more from
shock than from pain. The spikes grew barbs.

i see this as a fast, mushrooming fractal expansion that expands itself 
into
the very spaces betwixt his atoms and eddy's

       I wish I had thought of that. :/

Asmodeus writhed, agony coursing a lighting trail, from nose to tail and

back again, all thoughts of impossibilities banished from his mind.

The spikes began to rotate, twisting in their wounds.

maybe 'writhe', as if they had now senced the quality of their surroundings
and became displeased and frightningly disgusted

       Doesn't match the image in my head. 

Asmodeus screamed.

maybe a short sentence hear about the quality of the scream

       I'll think about it. Maybe I'll emphasize it by giving it its own 
paragraph. 

The sound of the Mad God's pain split the open the valley slopes, shattered

stones to powder. In desperation he transformed, converting from solid to
gas, becoming a cloud of mist that wafted free of the ripping spikes. Pain
receded quickly from his consciousness, until all that remained was a 
bitter
memory of humiliation and a burning anger. He hovered above the stranger,
cursing him with silent thoughts that nevertheless charged the air. The
stranger retracted his spike, transparent reddish blood sloughing from 
them,

great

       Thanks.

and looked up almost casually at the cloud of vile black vapors hanging
above. Asmodeus transformed again, gas transmutating into liquid; an acid,
one hundred times stronger than any natural to this world. He rained down 
on
the Earth, but not on the stranger- he vanished into thin air.

     Asmodeus howled in outrage- a strange, burbling hiss like a thousand

cauldrons of molten steel boiling over. He scourged the Earth in his anger,
burning through the loose topsoil, the packed dirt beneath, finally
scorching bedrock fifteen feet deep. He returned to his original form, his
goatish countenance flush with wrath, nostrils flared and white-rimmed. He
leapt out of the pit he created and glared around wildly for his tormentor.
There was no sign of him; save for the energy dome he had risen, still
encompassing the area. Screaming, striking at his thighs with clenched
fists, pulling shocks of coarse hair from his skull, Asmodeus ran hither 
and
you, searching for the slightest trace of the stranger, determined to
destroy him utterly, down to the last atom, even if the act consumed all of
his might. He heard a whistle and he pivoted, clenching his will in
preparation for unleashing his, distilled as a bolt of pure energy.

A hail of stones struck him full in the chest with the force of a flurry

of hammer strikes, throwing him down on his back. He leapt to his feet in 
an
instant, somewhat stunned but unhurt. His daze evaporated when he saw his
foe, standing some yards away, arms still folded across his chest,
expression indifferent. Snarling and spitting, Asmodeus threw back a hand,
clenching his will, swearing to strike the stranger down with main brute
force. Raw energy surged in his palm and he threw. The bolt crackled and
hissed instantly out of existence.

     Asmodeus looked at his hand incredulously and attempted to summon

another bolt of force. Energy crackled and sputtered in his hand and then
extinguished with a pop. The stranger was walking towards him and the first
time since his apotheosis Asmodeus felt fear's touch- a cold and slender
hand slipping through his ribcage, grasping his racing heart with 
merciless,
chill fingers. In a queer way his jaundiced sensibilities enjoyed the
novelty of the experience.

yes

       You like this one? Why, please.  

He gathered his power and willed a transformation upon himself. He felt his

energies pulse and drain out of him to the four winds. He dropped to one
knobby knee, weakened and uncomprehending. That is when he noticed the
stones that had hit him.

They were crystalline in composition, and varied in form: spindles,

decahedrons, rectangles, multi-faceted spheres and more. They glowed with a
subtle light, silvery and chill, akin to starlight. Satellites in 
miniature,
they swiftly orbited around him, caught by the gravity of his power.
Asmodeus snatched one from the air and it burned him with a coldness that
made the pain inflicted by the stranger's spikes the lightest of
discomforts. He released it and shot a force bolt to obliterate it. The 
bolt
split into shards, each flying to a stone, which absorbed the energy
unharmed. Each stone glowed briefly, emitting an almost inaudible hum of
contentment.

Asmodeus knew now he was trapped, immured by a crystalline prison more

secure then any subterranean dungeon. He was rendered impotent, another
situation novel to his existence. Asmodeus could not help himself; he began
to laugh. Low chuckles first, graduating to loud laughs, then to ear
splitting peals more hysteria than mirth. He was screaming now as he dashed
his head against a stone embedded in the ground, splitting open his head,
spilling out his blood and brains out on the dry earth, his skull knitting
back together and his brain regenerating as fast as he could crack and 
spend
them.

The stranger stood but a stride away, watching the Mad God in his

self-destructive frenzy. Suddenly his face twisted in a sudden violent
expression of emotion: abject disgust. He spat on the ground and gestured,
balling his hand into a tight fist, and a sphere gray opaque energy
enveloped Asmodeus. The stranger gestured again, opening his hand and 
waving
it upward in a slicing motion. The sphere and its inhabitant shot upwards
into the sky, leaving a crack of thunder in its wake. It burned through
clouds and tore free of the atmosphere, rushing through the cold, uncaring
void between worlds, until it settled in the belt of stellar detritus
between Mars and Jupiter, once the remains of a planet, now a prison for
gods.

The stranger stared up momentarily after the wake of Asmodeus's flight

then made a strange twisting motion with his hand, thus accessing a
dimensional pocket he commanded; his hand disappeared, thrust through a
small spiral of swirling, dark energy. He took quick inventory and grimaced
at the results. His stores were diminished- few ioun stones remained.

like I.O.U. maybe?

       No, ioun, lifted from Jack Vance's Dying Earth novel Rhilato the 
Marvelous.

He would have to mine more, and did not look forward to the tedious,

wearying task; diving into the hellish heat of a star, tearing chunks of
heavy matter out of its core, carefully splitting the chunks into small,
gray fragments, polishing and refining them, and most importantly of all,
imprinting his will upon them so that they could not be turned against
him... But it could not be helped. The stranger shook his head in
resignation, withdrawing his hand and closing the pocket. He gestured in 
the
air before him and a narrow pane of translucent force materialized, red
burning hatchmarks emblazoned upon its face. He cut a new !

mark with his forefinger and counted them: they totaled fifty. He 

banished
the plane and walked to the valley slope. He moved with a deliberate
slowness, as if weary and in great pain. He sat down heavily on the slope
and buried his face in his hands.

Fifty gods. He had captured fifty gods so far, condemned them to eventual

oblivion in the coldness of space, imprisoned by the insatiable capacity 
for
absorbing energy of ioun stones. They would drift in the void until their
minds and wills withered from deprivation, or they destroyed themselves by
attempting to overwhelm their guardians, draining away their power until
they were exhausted, snuffed out like a guttering candle flame. Fifty gods,
steeped in madness and cruelty, trapped; a grueling task difficult beyond
all previous measures he had ever known. He felt as if he could hibernate
until Entropy fulfilled its maximum and the current universe dispersed into
shreds of nebulous matter. Fifty gods, banished from earth for eternity...

Yet how many more remained to be defeated and exiled? Hundreds? 

Thousands?
He could sense them - their exact number uncertain, but vast - as they 
tread
upon the world- raving, ravening, murdering, ruling, terrible and awesome 
in
the eyes of the mortals that were their chattel. He was as mad as they if 
he
thought he could vanquish them all and claim dominion over the earth. His
suppressed the rationality screamed at him to leave, to plunge into the up
and out of space and wander amongst the infinite wonders of the universe 
and
its adjacent dimensions. Yet in his mind's eye he could see himself rising
from his seat, lifting off into the sky, shedding off the gravity of earth
like a man sheds a cloak, attaining such speeds that time and space twisted
and bent in his wake. He wanted to, but he could not. Deep inside of him, 
in
the most secret part of his well-hidden soul, a ragged wound gaped, clawing
at his consciousness so that he could find no ease, howling for surcease. 
He
co!

uld not leave until he sealed that wound once and for all.

The stranger cast his mind back through the time that had past since his

apotheosis, streaming through centuries, through millennia, through eons...
or perhaps just through scant years; divinity and his travels through the
universe had all but destroyed his sense of mortal time. He had once been
but a man, plain and ordinary, with the plain and ordinary name of John, 
one
mortal amongst a teaming mass of six billion. He remembered how in his 
early
adulthood the normality of life had been obliterated when the inexplicable
holocaust wracked the Earth. Millions perished - Death's hand sparing
neither prince nor proletariat - while scant hundreds somehow ascended, 
Fate
granting godhead to saint and sinner evenhandedly. John had been one of the
few; Jessica was one of the many.

John closed his eyes tight and bowed his head down to his knees. It still

hurt, despite the passing of time, despite his apotheosis, despite all the
wonders and terrors he had seen and experienced. Jessica's passing had left
him spiritually crippled, for as much as he consciously loved her he had
been unaware of how thoroughly she fulfilled and completed his soul. And 
her
loss was all the more cruel, for it had seemed that she had joined him in
godhood. He remembered the day vividly: they flew through the sky, playing
tag like children, reveling innocently in their power, laughing and loving,
ignoring the horror stalking on the Earth below.

this i really like

       Thank you. 

Perhaps that is why he lost her, a punishment for their callousness...  He

could see her slowing to a stop, suspended between clouds like an angel, a
look of distress shadowing her exquisite face. He approached her
questioningly and she screamed. He could still hear it, echoing in the dark
corners of his memory. She screamed and fell apart

maybe, he realized that he could suddenly see through her, that the things
she held together as herself and translated for him, now were freed and
bouncing around in their ignorance. depends on how it would sound
stylistically.

       Maybe something to that, but I'm not sure I could get it to work to my 
satisfaction.

, disintegrating, rendered by the forces that scourged the earth down to

trace molecules, which scattered to the four winds as he watched helpless.
Moments later he fled Earth screaming in near madness, becoming unwittingly
the first of Earth's expatriate deities, a Star God. He lost himself in the
currents and corners of the Universe, trying to heal, to forget, but the
wound in his soul refused to mend, tainting all experiences with ineffable
grief.

Then he discovered a way to resolve his situation. At the feet of an

ancient, alien deity he learned that the souls of gods and mortals did not
perish with their material forms, instead traveled beyond the influence of
the Universe to dwell in a shadowy plane inaccessible to even the mightiest
of powers.

yes

       Liked this? Why, please. 

There they awaited reincarnation, waiting for the proper time and place to

take shape again. If John had patience, he could reunite with Jessica.
However other conditions had to be fulfilled before this occurred. Earth 
had
become a hell, ruled by gods who did not take part in the great exodus. 
Mad,
sadistic and deviant almost to the one, the surviving mortals suffered
underneath their reign, mere playthings, less than slaves. The souls native
to Earth sensed this and refused to return. In order to have her back John
would have to clear his home world of all other gods and powers, freeing 
men
to rule themselves once more. In his naivety John vowed to do so,
uncomprehending of !

the enormity of his quest. He understood now, understood with a vengeance

as he sat bent in the valley of Asmodeus, weary and near-broken.

John slowly raised his head, his eyes half-closed, and gathered his will,

projecting it at the ground. A figure slowly arose up out of the Earth,
bulky and featureless at first. He sculpted it with his mind, smoothing its
texture, sliming it into a woman's lithe figure, delicately shaping its
face. He blew a puff of breath on it and its dull brown hue became vibrant
tones of living flesh. The simulacrum of Jessica gazed upon John with 
golden
eyes that flashed brightly in the sunlight. Her hair poured in waves from
her head down to her waist, a cascade of red-gold silk. Full lips quirked 
in
a playful, loving smile. Small, firm breasts rose and fell slightly in a
simulation of respiration.

yes, she always seems to be a shade brighter than she was at the pervious
moment

       ? I'm a bit confused here.

John gazed yearningly at the simulacrum, fortifying his flagging
determination with this more than memory. He closed his eyes and inhaled
sharply, trembling a little. He rose and gently touched the faux-Jessica's
cheek.

"I love you," he whispered, hoping that somehow she could hear him,

despite the insurmountable distance. "I love you. One way or the other we
will be together again." He removed his hand and Jessica returned to the
earth.

John looked at the light blue sky, towards the pale Moon but faintly

visible in the daylight. He would first rest there, burying himself beneath
the pale land before plunging into the Sun to mine ioun stones. "One way or
the other," he vowed quietly. He negated the gravity binding him to the
Earth and hurled himself up and out. From a distance he seemed a fallen 
star
returning to heaven.

Author's Notes: This is the first original story I've written (and even

completed) in a long, long time. I doubt that I'll be writing much fan
fiction in the near future, though it's not outside the realm of 
possibility
that I could fall back into a Ranma 1/2 mood and change my mind. I tend to
be a creature of cycles. For right now, at least, I'd rather concentrate my
energies on original work that I can perhaps profit from (this story will
probably go through one or two more revisions then its off to Weird Tales,
along with the haiku I posted a week or two back). If I write any other
stories that I feel are appropriate for the FFML I'll give thought to
posting them. I somehow doubt I'll be missed much, though.

Any comments, criticism or questions can be directed to DorianVal@aol.com

or sent directly to the list.

Thanks for your time and tolerance,

Jeremy Harper

I had forgotten until this moment that the Gun God Haiku had been yours,
which I had replied to as well. This was great, it struck me as something
that wrote itself very quickly while anesthezing the rest you for an hour 
or
two, demanding its chance to speak, then finally throwing up its hands and
allowing the seas to rush back together. Very nice. Cant tell you how much 
I
like seeing these things written out and dealt with. Keep up the good work.

       Well, at least one person likes my work. You're the only one who's 
responded to either this or The Gun God's Haiku (which, in a certain way, was 
one of the hardest things I've ever written, even though it only took me two 
hours, tops, to compose, including revisions). I know original fiction tends 
not to incite much public commentary, but its frustrating as all hell to see 
this work, which I feel to be the best story I've written in a long time - 
better than Key of Inverse or even Dreams... - not get a peep on the list or 
in private, while a throw away piece of shit liked Doomed triggers six or 
seven public responses. And so it goes...

Thanks for your time and tolerance. I appreciate the commentary.

Jeremy Harper






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