Dirk Flinthart's Blog

I have been working hard lately. People who know me will know this is not a good sign for the world because when I am driven to concentrate in one particular area, my brain immediately hurls itself in all possible directions in the hopes of escape. Now, most of those escape thoughts are harmless things, […]

What follows are two short stories. One I wrote over twenty years ago. It’s a bagatelle. I use it now and again to help guide newer writers on the concepts and structures of a basic short story. For my money, it’s a little mawkish and sentimental, but it’s effective enough and it serves its purpose […]

‘Lo,’ said Jack Rabbitt to his spellbound audience of children. ‘Once the Mighty Testikles and his doughty companions destroyed the dreadful Xardorok Sunblight, they turned their attention to the Ten Towns for they knew that Sunblight’s terrible construct would smite the peoples with dark and vile powers.’ One of the children sniffled and began to […]

With Sunblight totally dead you’d think Alea could be less of a bitch. But even while Milo was trying to get over the disappointment of that dickhead Testikles smashing up all the cool Shartlyn stuff, there she was banging on about all the idiots out there in Ten Towns and the bad-ass Shartlyn dragon that […]

The thing about being a battlemaster was, in Alea’s opinion, that you were the fucking master of the fucking battle, and other people ought to fucking listen to you. But did they? Like fuck they did. So. Instead of pressing on to catch Sunblight offguard after the battle in the forge, they all just threw […]

They were having a little rest in the room with the elevator that Milo wrecked. Soon they’d have to go down to the bottom to kill Xardorok Sunblight, but right now they had nice snacks and big drinks of water, and the only thing they didn’t have was fun mushrooms. It had been a while […]

They watched the colossal crystalline construct disappear into the distance, wings clashing as it flew. “Now what?” said Milo. “The dragon’s buggered off!” Iledove set her jaw. Evil was on its murderous way to the Ten Towns of Icewind Dale. And even if the Ten Towns were a bunch of shit-holes full of inbred, mouth-breathing […]

After a particularly pleasing night and day of singing, drinking and laughing with the bards and performers of Easthaven, Testikles realised there was a reason for his good mood. Bidding farewell to his musical friends, he went to the room of Jeoff Moonlifter, the wise Elven sorceror. Jeoff sat in the middle of the rented […]

The wind wailed out of the north, blasting tiny shards of ice into her face. Alea shivered, and turned her back – for all the good that did. Better get back into the shelter with the others, no matter how irritating Milo might be at close quarters. She crawled through the entrance, pushing aside the […]

Neil Gaiman began writing ‘The Sandman‘ more than thirty years ago, back in January 1989. His run on the character continued — so Wikipedia says — to 1996. That original effort was a bit of a tour de force in fantasy story-telling, to be honest. Gaiman, still relatively new on the scene, mixed mythology, occultism, […]