Forward: Delicate beginnings

This story began its life in reaction to a challenge on a mailing list for writers, long defunct, called The Spoon. I no longer remember the exact wording of the challenge, but it was along the lines of "create a story whose first line is, 'The box was waiting on the porch when I woke up that morning...'".

The prologue, "Some Days", no longer begins with that sentence, as I rewrote it recently for LiveJournal's "Rabbit Hole Day", and then rewrote it again when I decided it was time to get off my ass and start writing the rest of the story. Beyond that, the prologue is pretty much what I wrote for that initial challenge.

For the most part, this "blog" will consist of episodes of the story. Occasionally there will be news and babble from your entirely not-humble author.

If you like your fantasy serious, you may not like this story. It's not that it lacks complexity or darkness or violence or sex or any of the other gritty things of "serious" fantasy. It's just that I think the real world is often very silly. Realism, therefore, requires silliness.

If you like your fantasy silly, you may not like this story, either, because I think it will get complex and dark and violent and occasionally involve sex (probably never more than a PG-13 rating, though, because frankly, I'm not sure I can write a sex scene. I've never tried).

Personally, I think you should read it anyway, because I think I'm going to enjoy writing it a lot, and therefore, being un-humble, as I've mentioned, I think you'll enjoy reading it.

Hope I'm right!