Comments | sga_flashfic: Tower, by Ellex, for city exploration challenge

ellex42 in sga_flashfic

Tower, by Ellex, for city exploration challenge

May 21, 2005 22:07

Title: Tower
Author: Ellex
Rating: PG
Summary: It was a whim that brought him to the tower.
Challenge: City exploration
Notes: I seem to remember reading something vaguely similar, once...but I may be mistaken, since I had night terrors as a child that were like this, so any plagiarism is completely unintentional.

( Tower )

challenge: city exploration, author: ellex42

Comments 17

_bettina_ May 22 2005, 18:10:33 UTC

Creepy, but good.

casspeach May 22 2005, 18:11:02 UTC

Ooh, this is creepy and nightmarish and I liked it a lot.

Like the way he kept going down a few more hundred steps and still no bottom...and another hundred and still no bottom, very restrained writing, and all the more powerful for it.

misspamela May 22 2005, 18:29:38 UTC

Spooky and very well done!

(The comment has been removed)

ellex42 May 22 2005, 22:30:18 UTC

Seriously?! *blushes*

Wow, what a compliment. Thanks much!

(The comment has been removed)

ellex42 May 23 2005, 00:29:53 UTC

How I wish I could write purple prose! Or Austen-type prose. But the more words it takes to get my point across, the more I feel like I'm *missing* the point.

If you like Lovecraft, you should read Algernon Blackwood. His prose is *much* better, if still fairly complex, and his stories are just as creepy and more sophisticated, and oddly more optimistic.

Tower - Possible Additional Concept Source lyansidde January 18 2006, 07:59:33 UTC

Your story is beautiful and definitely not copied from anyone. However, since you comment on your memory (outside of dreams) of something similar, I wondered if you had ever read Patricia McKillip's Riddlemaster Trilogy, particularly the final book "Harpist In The Wind."

This trilogy is incredibly good and in the closing chapters of that book there is a tower scene that could have lingered in your mind.

Just thought you might be interested, the scene and it's purpose is very different but the outline is similar.

Thanks again for your story.

Re: Tower - Possible Additional Concept Source ellex42 January 19 2006, 00:43:25 UTC

I have read McKillip's 'Riddlemaster Trilogy', but that wasn't what inspired my story. It was a short story I read years ago in an anthology of short horror stories for kids. I spotted the anthology at my local library, and to my surprise, found my own bookplate in the front of the book! I had donated it a long time ago.

But thanks for reading, and for brainstorming about where I might have gotten the idea.