• The Dark Lady, Main Page.
 • The Dark Lady, Part One.
 • The Dark Lady, Part Two.
 • The Dark Lady, Discussion.

Discussion pages are post mortems for my stories, with notes about writing the tale, observations on what I think worked and didn't work, replies to reader mail, and more.  There are always massive spoilers on these pages, so it's a very bad idea to read these before the tale, since you'll find it confusing, not knowing what I'm talking about, and you'll also ruin most of the surprises in the the story for yourself.

Notes on the Story

The Dark Lady I wrote quite recently, for Halloween 2001, so it's not so old in my memory to be effectively autopsied.  Feedback on this one when first published on the D2 site was mixed, which was a change for me, since my first three Halloween stories posted were all-but unanimously beloved.

Everyone said they liked this one, and thought it was well done, etc, but a lot of people didn't care for the ending, feeling it was too sad, I guess.  They didn't elaborate much, just that they didn't like it.  I often dislike stories where serious events miraculously wrap up in a "happily ever after" conclusion, and I very seldom do that in my stories, preferring somewhat ambivalent endings, or outright tragedies, where the evil go free and unpunished.  I virtually never tie everything up in a neat little bow, preferring them to be more realistic and open to interpretation.

In this case, I wasn't unhappy with the ending upon rereading it for the first time since I wrote it in a mad dash to get it done in time to post for Halloween 2001.  I've rewritten it a bit here, not changing any of the events, but fleshing it out a bit, and lowering the melodrama setting a bit.  This story was written almost entirely the day of the 30th and 31st, just hours before it was going to be posted, and like most of my short stories, I had only the faintest idea where it was going or what would happen on the way.

I think most readers figure authors go over their own work endlessly, and perhaps some do, but these four fantasy tales I wrote for Halloween were all rushed through very quickly, often posted with zero proof reading (typos!  ugh!) and then not looked at again (by me) for months or years afterwards.  I got emails from people who said they'd read some of my stories numerous times, and laughed to myself that they probably knew them far better than I did.  Not that I'd be the first author to come to that realization.

I certainly don't recommend this sort of tactic for writing. Proofreading is always a good idea, and generally the better touches on a story are added in proofing.  Polished dialogue, better characterizations, fixes to wandering PoV issues, improved prose, clarification of complicated topics, and other such things are what should be done in proof reading.  It's sometimes hard to not redo things totally when proofing, and sometimes that's for the best, but often you're putting down raw material again, material that will need to be proofed again, and on goes the vicious cycle, if you aren't careful.

Innocence and Humor

Rereading Haunted Castles recently, I  laughed many times, mostly at the reactions of townsfolk to the family, Tugg's superhuman strength and innocence/ignorance, the neat little touches in their world, some of Saraha's comments (Saraha replied in a cold voice, "No doubt the way seems shorter when riding a broom.").  There is little of that in this sequel, written two years later and without rereading the first one.  I don't know where the humor went, mostly I'd just forgotten there was so much of it in the first story, and there's not really much room for it in this tale, with them alone in a wagon for the first half, and then in a serious struggle for most of the second half.  I think Tugg got a lot smarter here, and I fell into using Tambor for much of the PoV, making him way too smart in the process.

The element of the kids are what make these stories interesting to many, since most fantasy is entirely populated by adults, doing adult things.  Having the kids as major characters, and them doing kid-type things, rather than being serious little mini-adults, I think works well, and makes for a distinctive tale.

I seldom have children in my stories, but they worked well in this setting, though I think I handled them much better in Haunted Castles than this one, where they were more or less just baggage, literally, at times. I have no children in my life, no kids and no real desire for them, and have never been around any kids as an adult.  I mean no friends with kids around, or cousins or that sort of thing, so I really have almost zero first hand knowledge of how they are.  I've read lots of stuff with kids as characters though, and of course seen movies and TV and such, so it's not hard to fake it.  Writing convincing adult female characters is much more interesting to me than children, but there are things you can do with kids that you can't with adults, mostly in terms of fresh eyes seeing things, new reactions, etc.

As a reader I'd probably be disappointed in this story if I came to read it after loving Haunted Castles, since this one has such a darker theme and mood, and not so much joy of discovery and humor.  I had initially intended this one to be more of a Hallow's Eve thing, with the family somewhat reprising their misunderstanding battle to the death from Haunted Castle, only this time with evil Paladins.  However that obviously didn't really happen, and in fact this story ends before Hallow's Eve even begins.

I have a vague memory of an early story idea where Tugg and Tambor are looking for Treats, and somehow Tambor is killed or kidnapped or something like that, and Tugg goes berserk, destroying most of the town single-handedly, before perhaps dying himself, or just sinking down in sorrow.  I don't recall anything about what became of the older brother, or the mother or sister in that version of the story though.  The idea of one of the kids dying tragically turned up in the final tale, but in a very different way.

Semla was the one who was to be kidnapped, and I didn't initially plan any misfortune for Torok.  I didn't decide what Torok would do until he did it, but him dying tragically wasn't really anticipated, it just sort of happened. I think I was initially going to have him betray his family and stay with the Paladins, or perhaps he would have lead the Paladins after the Dark Lady herself, once she kidnapped Semla.  But from somewhere the concept of the Assassin/Dark Lady being a sort of female sexual Rasputin came in.  I took the idea of Assassins being mage-hunters from the Diablo II story, put in some elements of the Whitecloaks hatred of the Aes Sedai sorceresses from the Wheel of Time series, a dash of good old fashioned witch hunting, and some typical male hypocrisy/hatred/fear for women with power, and thus was born the tale as it stands today.

Semla's Fate and Sequels?

So what does happen to Semla, as so many emailers fearfully inquired? Well, I'm afraid that she's not rescued by her parents and a miraculously reincarnated Paladin brother.  Torok is dead, reincarnation is in computer games, but it tends to ruin stories, unless maybe it's the evil bad guy returning years later with new powers.  If anyone who gets cut down can get right back up again, it's somewhat pointless to have them die at all.

I doubt I'll write another story of this family, but if I did it would probably be the two parents and Tambor, some years later.

I've long had an idea for a longer story in this same world, where a mysterious sorceress with some major issues, and tantalizing bits of knowledge is found in a slavers' whorehouse by the main characters (of that longer story) and joins their party.  At some point during the writing of Haunted Castles Beat Treats, the prequel to The Dark Lady, I realized that the daughter could be that mysterious sorceress, in about 10 years, but I didn't see how she'd get from there to the wrecked woman in the brothel. I still had that in mind when I began The Dark Lady, and part way through it the rest of the pieces fell into place.

In proofing the ending of this one for posting it on this site, I added a bit more detail to the abduction, and made the finality of it, and the almost certain futility of trying to catch up to the Assassins, more clear.

This is the first notes page I've written, and as such the format is a bit different, since I've already gotten much feedback on this tale, and recently enough that I remember it.  It was commented on through the notes above, rather than in direct quoted replies below, which is how I'll be doing future story notes pages, I think.

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.