Year: 2020

The Dark Wizard Of Donkerk, Chapter 6: The Wayward Princess

Rowan had learned much about dark magic through first principles. First and foremost, the social aspects of dark magic must largely be about trust. If he followed a ritual which had been described in a book, he had to take the author at their word that their descriptions were full and correct. If any of […]

The Dark Wizard Of Donkerk, Chapter 5: The Castle Spirit

The castle finally got a spirit when Sofia was fifteen years old. She had imagined the spirit for a long time. Most of the books said that every place and every thing had a spirit, from the cobbler’s shop to the temple gardens, and from the forests to the trees. The spirits themselves stayed in […]

The Dark Wizard Of Donkerk, Chapter 4: The Separate Paths

She knew the names of all of her guards, but she only called them by their nicknames. Walrus had a thick mustache, and Egg was completely bald. Leech was pale, like the blood had been drained from his face, and Cyclops had a scar across one eye, though he could see with both. One of […]

The Dark Wizard Of Donkerk, Chapter 3: The Drowned Witch

Sofia was faster than him, and that bothered Henry. She sprinted across the short grass with bare feet, her red hair floating on the wind behind her. He couldn’t keep up. He’d thought that she would tire herself out, but instead she just kept running, running in circles around him, or running away from him, […]

The Dark Wizard Of Donkerk, Chapter 2: The Kidnapping

“We need money,” said Omarr. After they’d put Henry to bed, they’d cracked a small cask of ale and drank from the large mugs. A fire crackled in the fireplace. Adrianna had come to like the two men, somewhat despite herself. They had taught her much. While their theft of Henry had soured her opinion, […]

The Dark Wizard Of Donkerk, Chapter 1: The Orphan

Author’s Note: This work is essentially stuck in ‘first draft’ state until I can find the time and incentive to put other things aside and devote myself to fixing the numerous typos, restructuring the plot a bit, punching up the prose, and some general tidying up to make it the novel that it’s meant to be. […]

Narrativism vs. Simulationism

Definition: Simulationism In the simulationist approach to writing fiction, rules are defined and then outcomes are decided upon. These rules can be fundamental rules far removed from human/story scales (“there is no up quark”) to something that can be intuitively grasped and whose first order effects are somewhat obvious (“people die of an aneurysm when […]

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