Monday, April 21, 2025

This is the twenty-sixth installment of West Wind, your daily drop of thoughts, ideas, and info for this Season. Please take a moment to pray for Pope Francis, who passed away this morning.

Today is story release day! Or rather, story re-release day! “End Quotes Save Lives is a thing I did coming on two years ago now, as an entry for the first-ever LegendHaven short story contest. LegendHaven is an online convention put together by LegendFiction, which is a group that I’ve been a part of for some time now, and is designed for Catholic and Orthodox fantasy authors. And this story is really something of a fanfiction of the group as a whole.

As a group-building effort, came up with four houses, each focused on a different aspect of creativity and writing, with a quiz for you to sort yourself into them. I fit in best as a Chalimancer, though I felt inspired by all of them and the system as a whole, with four groups that could be mapped to the Seasons very easily. When the short story contest was announced, with the only real requirement for there to be a place called the LegendHaven in it, I knew exactly what I would do.

A long while ago, I came up with an idea for a story about an academy that taught the art of spirit scribing, or writing a book that could be experienced by the reader (or multiple readers) in an immersive manner, like a shared dream that they could all interact with. In the original, the main character was in the process of writing a book but hadn’t finished it, and one of his friends started the story without realizing that and became trapped, unable to get out. He had to go in the book and use his super-user author powers to skip ahead to the end and get her out safely, ultimately having to write the ending while still connected mentally to the book.

If you’ve already read EQSL, you know that’s pretty much what happens in the final story, I just added the trappings of the LegendHaven and the four houses, with permission from the creator. I added a lot of details to the concept of the houses, like giving them all specific, singular powers like I tend to do, and adapting the idea of them verifying spirit books before letting others experience them. The colors that they wear are also a little different from what’s shown on the media now, but the main ideas are still the same.

And, now, to the reason why I’ve been going on about this, is because I’ve finished the narrated version! This story is unique in that it is the only one which has been read aloud publicly by someone other than me, when Dominic read it during LegendHaven 2023. During LH24, Callie Sioux of 1232 fame held another contest where the winning story would be turned into a narrated audio drama by their team. EQSL didn’t end up winning that, but no matter, because I went and did it anyhow!

Please enjoy the narrated, music’d version of “End Quotes Save Lives. If you want to follow along with the text, you can do so with the original post, which also has the audio attached to it. If you want a high-quality downloadable MP3 of the story, you can get one with a CSL Subscription!