Brutus the Elf and Thinking About Writing More Fiction

Maria, an amazing friend, has been helping my charge create his own dungeons and dragons character so he can have his first D&D adventure. So he's made all kinds of decisions and wrote his backstory.

This week Maria, who will be the dungeon master,  suggested I also create a character so i can also go on this adventure.
The realization I need to write a backstory gave me a reason to do something I haven't done in a while, namely write fiction.

Growing up I always planned to write, with early career plans to become a best-selling author then, when realizing not every author can be a best-seller, i'd write fiction and hope it was a hit. By high school I, a very shy kid at that point, did something brave: I began writing and distributing at school pieces of fiction and satire I wrote. These got handed around and when even teachers told me how much they enjoyed my writing I began to see that I had some mad skills.

But I also learned that trying to have a career of fiction writing was too chancy and so I made two decisions: One was that I would go into journalism, which seemed a good way to get paid for writing and second, maybe i can become either a great opinion column, somewhere between Dave Barry and Molly Ivins,  another was maybe I can write book reviews and author interviews for newspaper.
I did get to write an opinion column, Butki's Babbles, for the college newspaper,the Poly Post and later, occasionally, for other newspapers.

I published book reviews, and later some author interviews, for at least 5 of my years in journalism and continued author interviews ever since, lately for BookPeople's Mysterypeople section.
You can find a collection of my reviews and interviews here. At one point I interviewed the thriller editor for the Washington Post and told him "you have my dream job!"

Anyway, I've written less fiction in recent years and gave up writing satire upon realizing how hard it is to make up things crazier than the world today.

Writing the following reminded me how I enjoy writing fiction and so I made a vow last night that I would do more of two things in 2019 that give me joy, writing fiction and doing more photography.
I will post the fiction here in this blog.

So... Brutus. I like to write fun fiction so creating an elf named Brutus meant I could have some fun with it as well as find a way to connect "et tu, brutus" in there

so here's what I came up with:


101 years ago Brutus was born. His parents - one an elf, one an orc - had high hopes for Brutus. They were hoping he'd be a strong  boy, who could protect them from violent villagers who took their money and treated them awfully.

They, when choosing a name, imagined him telling the villages: "I am Brutus and I both look strong and am strong and will  defend all who are good, especially my family."

Brutus was big... with emotions.
Big... with dreams...
But big.. in size? Not so much. He was an average sized elf. He got along poorly with others in the village, who gave him a hard time about his size and name and the contradictions. He tried to play games with them but often lost. He'll never forget the time he gambled and lost and when he came home his father chastised him pointing out his younger brother, Seth, had also gambled away money.

"Et tu, Brutus?" He had no idea why his dad sometimes spoke in Latin but he took a personal pledge then and there never to gamble again.

Brutus, well, he had issues.
He had plans to leave the village and go out as part of a group, one that would include folks stronger than him but not  as clever as he was. This group would slay evil monsters, save folks in distress and find treasures.

He would return to the village one day, with expensive garb and prove his worth.

Brutus did not like looking in mirrors for they reminded him of his size but when he did look what he saw was a man with thick brown hair, bright blue eyes, big ears (which he tried to hide with the hair) and a small nose.

While he had hoped to leave on adventures long ago his mom convinced him to stay for several decades helping care for nieces and nephews, to whom he would tell stories, do magic tricks and, yes, sometimes help  with the laundry and other tasks that he felt he was too important to be doing.
.
But now... he is ready.