An Introduction to a Gren

Saying that I’ve been working on a story for almost 10 months makes it sound like a pretty impressive story, yes? As if for these past 10 months, I’ve been hunkered over my keyboard, tweaking sentences in an artistic quest for just the right word to make my audience burst into spontaneous applause there in their distant cubicles and home offices. The truth is somewhat less thrilling. The story whiled away most of its ten-month life sitting unloved and untouched. Oh…I spent a great deal of time thinking about it in my car or as I drifted off to sleep. But actual work has been pretty sparse. Unlike previous stories I’ve attempted, however, I never lost my love for the characters or the story premise. See…some one had asked me, early in my life as a blogger named Moksha Gren, what in the world “gren” meant. After mulling over the best way to answer that, I fell in love with the idea of simply introducing everyone to the twisted, little creature called a gren. So, after a few months of neglect, I would always slink back to my computer and peck a few extra words here and there before drifting away again. Then, I made a deal with myself. Since the events told in the story take place in October, I figured October would be a good time to post it. And since I came to this conclusion in July or so…it fit nicely into my natural inclination toward procrastination.

And suddenly it was late September and I hadn’t opened the story in months. Panicked, I began rushing around, squeezing in writing time wherever I could, forcing my poor wife to edit at a frantic pace. My cousin Tony out in Reno had agreed to draw some sketches to accompany the story. But my lack of time management now means the story will be posted sans artwork since Tony hasn’t even seen the story yet.

But……the story will be posted.

And that in itself is an amazing thing for me right now. It’s the first story I’ve completed since I was in college. And though I tried valiantly to follow my usually routine…I did not let this one slip silently into the forgotten recesses of my brain without ever seeing the light of day. I’m proud of that. True, it’s got some cumbersome sections. The linguistic artistry is not what I had hoped and I don’t think I was able to capture everything I had wanted. But, I still love the story and my wife tells me that it’s “better than she expected.” I’m taking it as a complement.

So, I’ve set up a new blog called From Erebus to house this and any future fictional writings I do. It’s just an empty shell as I type this, but on October 11th I’ll lift the curtain on the first section of my first story, Piper and the Gren.

I’m a bit nervous.