THIS IS WHAT COMES FROM puttering about in a small morning with nothing else to do (thanks, PKD, for the reference): “Little-t truths for our and every time; a considerable consideration of considerings.” Pithyisms is, thanks to Smashwords, my second…
Category: Writ
My own serious stuff; the craft itself; literary (and authorial) inspiration; the art of reading.
Prosatio Silban and the Sacreantal Reflex
IT BEGAN WITH A SIMPLE question: “What is the most challenging place you’ve ever visited?” “The place where I learned not to drink,” Prosatio Silban replied, raising a glass of blue duliac. “But you are drinking now!” pointed out his…
Prosatio Silban and the Forgotten God
IT WAS A DARK AND stormy night, and Prosatio Silban, thoroughly soaked, could feel a watchful gaze upon him as he parked his galleywagon under a crumbling iron roof. He shivered, searching for the source of his unease. But nothing…
Prosatio Silban and the Advertent Appetizer
AND THEN THERE WAS THE time Prosatio Silban sold a meal for a song – literally. The beefy cook had set up his galleywagon in the small, quiet, and mostly indifferent marketplace at the village of Taverner’s Luck, but had…
Prosatio Silban and the Royal Fete
EAST OF THE UULIAN COMMONWELL lies the shaggy, semi-marshy expanse called by Commonwell-folk the Emerald Incessance. Few of those outsiders traverse it without purpose, or dread, or both; its green depths do not long hold even well-known paths, and what…
Workman’s Wages (A Prosatio Silban Tale)
ALL GOOD THINGS MUST EVENTUALLY be replaced, though not without some effort or expense – so Prosatio Silban discovered on a cloudy summer’s day in stony-hearted Tirinbar, whose inhabitants were the most reputedly avaricious in the Uulian Commonwell’s Three Cities…
Day’s Life (A Prosatio Silban Tale)
IT IS SAID THAT WERE it not for the leather-lunged hawkers of epicurean Pormaris, the sun would not know when to awaken. But whether or not that’s as true as it sounds, the great island-city’s markets are indeed its economic…
Prosatio Silban and the Difficult Patron
FROM THE INEXORABLE RULES OF mercantile interplay comes the inescapable principle: “There’s Always One.” “With what may I please you?” Prosatio Silban asked the stoop-shouldered man sitting down at one of two tables-and-chairs in the lee of the beefy cook’s…
We Interrupt This Blog …
… FOR THE FOLLOWING PUBLIC-SERVICE AGGRANDIZEMENT: The current plan (and behind-the-scenes task) involves formatting all 90+ Prosatio Silban stories for an independently published paperback and e-book titled Across the Rimless Sea; as a size comparison, the collection so far (‘prox.…
Prosatio Silban and the Professional Contretemps
THERE ARE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES to every collegial association: protective fellowship on one hand, and tedious bureaucracy on another. And as a more-or-less “free spirit,” Prosatio Silban sometimes found it a difficult balance. The beefy cook was also a Freehander…
Prosatio Silban and the Dread Reckoning
WHEN SOMEONE THREATENS YOU WITH a knife at close quarters, your options may not be so limited as you might think. “Do you know who I am?” the intruder asked. “You mean, aside from my potential assailant?” Prosatio Silban replied.…
Prosatio Silban and the Birthday Party
IT ONLY CAME ONCE A year, but for Prosatio Silban, once was almost too much. His galleywagon was parked in the small marketplace at the village of Whistleshoe, and he had begun this particular day by staring into his berth-side…