Riversong - Expanded Horizons
I used to be a member of Critters, the online critiquing group for spec-fic writers. (Actually, it's just been expanded to all genres. It'll be interesting to see how that works out.) Though I've dropped out now, no longer having the time to keep up with it, it was crucially important at a time when I'd all but stopped writing. Critters got me started again by providing a community of people who were interested.
One of the projects I started at the time, in the company of a like-minded writer (who'd actually studied the epic), was a series of Mahabharata-inspired stories. The Mahabharata, probably best-known in the West by Peter Brooks's play, is a seminal epic, comprising hundreds of characters. The stories are universal, but the Mahabharata itself is deeply Indian, and layered in context and tradition. What I wanted to do is pull out some of those universal elements and let them stand alone, as they must have done when the stories were first told.
The central conflict of the epic is between the five Pandava brothers, and their cousins, the one hundred Kaurava brothers. But, in the tradition of epics, the story starts a generation or two before the Pandavas are even born...
Riversong, just published by Expanded Horizons, is the first story.
At first, King Shantan was not sure what he saw. Something moved on the bank of the river. A buck, perhaps?
The winter mists still swamped the forest in a white fog. Shantan had given up the hunt, unstrung his bow and turned his horse for home. Over the protests of Rai, his attendant, he had ordered his party to fall back so he could ride alone.
One of the projects I started at the time, in the company of a like-minded writer (who'd actually studied the epic), was a series of Mahabharata-inspired stories. The Mahabharata, probably best-known in the West by Peter Brooks's play, is a seminal epic, comprising hundreds of characters. The stories are universal, but the Mahabharata itself is deeply Indian, and layered in context and tradition. What I wanted to do is pull out some of those universal elements and let them stand alone, as they must have done when the stories were first told.
The central conflict of the epic is between the five Pandava brothers, and their cousins, the one hundred Kaurava brothers. But, in the tradition of epics, the story starts a generation or two before the Pandavas are even born...
Riversong, just published by Expanded Horizons, is the first story.
At first, King Shantan was not sure what he saw. Something moved on the bank of the river. A buck, perhaps?
The winter mists still swamped the forest in a white fog. Shantan had given up the hunt, unstrung his bow and turned his horse for home. Over the protests of Rai, his attendant, he had ordered his party to fall back so he could ride alone.