THE BASHFUL COURTESAN

THROWBACK THURSDAY and the anatomy of a story

On June 6 of 2022, I had a total of 13 subscribers.

That was back in the days before we had NOTES, and long before there were Followers. This was the 2nd story I put up on my ‘Stack. I started this ‘stack on June 2, putting up THE AFRICAN SONGBOOK: A Tragedy In 5 Acts, all at once. This is the story of Yevgeny the Dwarf and spans the two World Wars, taking place in Vienna and Paris.

It’s the story of a painting, based on an Icon that has supposedly been passed down in the family, on my Mother’s side.

It’s a small little thing, maybe 6 x 4 inches, and hung in my Mother’s bedroom for years. She was a great proponent of “the Living Will.” She gave as much away before she died, as she could. I looked at that little painting and imagined all sorts of things about it. I began exploring the world of Icons, and came across the word Iconoclast, and everything that entailed. Eventually, it evolved into a story. And that led to all sorts of different painting styles, and following those little nuggets of information led me to the War and the stripping of paintings from the houses and museums of Paris. Originally, it was a linear story that took place in Vienna. It was about 7,000 words, and then worked its way up to around 12,000, and I thought I was done with it. But some things that you write have a way of eating at you. That’s how I came back to the story about four years later and told myself it needed something more. I wrote the second part.

I love the creative process.

I loved the idea of tying the two stories together. I loved the “movie” that was playing in my head. I love how the “bad” guys are bad and the “good” guys are questionable, and how circumstances and coincidence play into a story without even realizing sometimes that they’re even there.

So this is long, and for that I apologize. I’m only putting up the first chapter. If you want to read it all, simply follow the links. It’s a love story of a different sort, I think you can say. I mean, I don’t want to say that the only way a beautiful woman could fall in love with an ugly, misshapen dwarf is if she was blind, but it didn’t hurt.

So here it is. If you like it, please, pass it on to your friends, Followers and Subscribers, by restacking it, or Cross-posting it, or simply Recommending my ‘Stack. You don’t realize sometimes, as your page starts to grow, how few people you actually had when you first started out. I’ve managed to grow this page mainly through word of mouth. With my Followers — those are people who are not subscribed, but read my NOTES — I now have over 1200 people who are reading me. That’s pretty heady shit for a guy who spent his life working in a sawmill.