Windseeker

Many  years ago, in fact, last century (that sounds a bit strange, but is technically correct), I was (and still am) a member of an online community called Tamson House, which consisted of various fans of the works of the author Charles de Lint, named after the fictional setting of some of his stories. Since many of us had aspirations towards writing ourselves, we formed a writing circle, where carried out various writing exercises and gave each other feedback. Two of the stories that resulted from that are loosely linked, henceforth referred to as the Windseeker stories.  Many years after this, I joined a virtual writer’s community on Second Life, in which we have various writing exercises. The results of some of those exercises are also set in the Windseeker universe.

The Windseeker stories concern a modern-day nurse called Martin, who practices a form of shamanism (At the time, I had participated in a number of workshops on Celtic Shamanism held by John & Caitlin Matthews), and his adventures in the real and spirit worlds (where he is known as Windseeker). They also concern  a woman, Jane, who may well take up the practice herself, though at the time of writing, she and Martin have only briefly met at the bowling alley where she works.

Storm Friends

Storm friends was one of the first exercises in the Tamson House Writing Circle.  The prompt was “Raggedy Ann in a Storm“, which was mildly confusing to this Brit, who had never heard of Raggedy Ann. Having availed myself of some research, and discovered that Ann was a rag doll character, I decided to set a story featuring a young girl who has such a doll. How a young girl in Britain came to have what is largely an American toy is as yet unexplained.

Ten Pins

The next prompt was, rather more mundanely, “set in a bowling alley“. Having vaguely conceived that part of Martin’s journey would involve him taking on an apprentice of sorts, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce said apprentice. The portrayal of Jane as somebody bowed, but not defeated, by circumstance was informed by things happening in the life of a friend. I also wanted to start to build the contrast between the very mundane nature of Jane’s life and the spirit world she is soon going to be entering.