'The Midpoint' #1 - Novelizing a short story

Original fiction, WIPs, behind the scenes from Zoraida Córdova

Welcome to THE MIDPOINT. This is my monthly series in which I will share original fiction, including snippets from what I’m working on, genres I want to experiment with, and more.

This month, I want to talk about novelizing a short story. I love a short story, even though I don’t write them as often as I used to. When I was a teen writer, and then in college, this was the way to get your feet wet and experiment with voice. On an episode of Deadline City, the podcast I used to host with Dhonielle Clayton (one day we’ll bring it back!?) we talked about short stories. It’s been a while, but I think I said something like, “a short story is a a slice of a pie. A novel is the whole pie.”

In hindsight, this no longer feels as true. Not always. In my experience writing (mostly Young Adult) short stories, the perception is that this scene can be a novel, but not every moment can go on for 323 pages. Some moments are simply that, moments. Readers in YA and adult Romance in particularly are the ones who leave comments like, “this needs to be a whole novel!” “two stars because it was only 15 pages long.” Or something like that. Some moments are simply that, moments and I’d like to start thinking how to write more of these pieces of flash fiction.

Heh, even calling it a “piece” of something feels like it should be part of a bigger whole. Maybe it’s me, I’m the whole of it.

The first instance in which I novelized something was when I wrote The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina. The original was called “Divine are the Stars” and it was published in Toil & Trouble: 15 Tales of Women and Witchcraft. It followed a young woman named Marimar Montoya. (For the Millenial Latinas, yes, she was named after Thalia’s character in the telenovela Mari Mar.) My Marimar Montoya was returning home with her cousin to witness her grandmother’s passing. I started with an image: A woman transforming into a tree.

The "original" short story title and first page

My first editor at Atria bought an idea of a novelization. And let me tell you, it was hard to do. I knew I wanted to expand on this moment, but what if it was just a moment? Instead, it became like a bread starter, this mother dough blob of promise. (I am not a bread baker so wtf am I even talking about.) What followed was. figuring out where the story was going and where it came from. I zoomed out, not just in the scope of the setting, but through the lives of every character. It evolved from the first 15 pages of text. Character names changed, the setting changed completely, new timelines were required, and by the end of it, it felt like an entirely different entity.

Pinterest vibes

This is my most successful novel, and so it worked. I don’t think I could do this for every short story I’ve published. They don’t all need it. But there is one that I keep thinking about after its 2022 publication in Reclaim the Stars (I really like stars okay?) an anthology I edited. This story, unlike Orquídea, isn’t an idea that evolves into a different shape. Instead, it goes back to my first metaphor. It’s actually a slice of the pie. The biggest and only real change is character names. Maybe I had the world building more solidified it. Maybe it was less vibes. Maybe I became a stronger writer during the four year gap in which these two anthologies were released. Whatever it was, I put together the first few chapters and a proposal, which is out on submission right now with editors. It’s crossover fantasy. A gender-bent Hades & Persephone by way of a South American inspired kingdom. A farm boy willing to unleash an ancient darkness, all for true love. The short story is a condensed version of parts of chapter 1 and what is now Act II-part I, so I was able to fill in the blanks. To be honest, my short story clocked in at 15,000 words and my editor helped me trim it so it felt like that slice.

I want to share with you some (a prologue and two chapters) of what this story is now. But first, some vibes and house keeping.

I’m running a promo on my monthly fiction, so support if you can. It’s all appreciated. February’s THE MIDPOINT will feature a monster romance.

A serial monster fucker romance…

Now…to this month’s fiction.

TAME THE WICKED NIGHT

BOOK 1

by

Zoraida Córdova

SUMMARY: A gender-bent Hades & Persephone meets The Princess Bride. When twenty-year-old Leonidas Saturnelio offends rejects a marriage alliance from a powerful family, he must set off on a quest known as “taming the wicked night,” to restore honor to his family. The quest requires him to bring back the head of a mythical beast, something no one has returned from—dead or alive.

PROLOGUE

This isn’t the story of war, though the kingdom of Lutríste has been clashing on some distant border for decades with no signs of stopping. Nor is it the story of the worst drought ever experienced by the provincial town of San Miguel de las Palmas, though it does play a part in the events. No, this is the story about the boy who would unleash an ancient power for the desperate sin of true love.

I was that boy.

My name is Leonidas Saturnelio and I am to be executed at dawn. This is my confession.

ONE

Leonidas

I have a collection of bad days, but on occasion, I’ve had a few bad years. There was my eldest sister’s wedding day, when I vomited all over her dress. In my defense, I was merely ten months old, but I’ve heard about that incident going on twenty-one years. There was the day my classmates stole my clothes while I swam in the lake, which might have been a hilarious prank if I hadn’t had to walk, naked, through the town square, all the way home. Then there was the entire year I turned fifteen, followed by my disastrous courtship of Rosalinda Nuñez. Now, my twenty-first year could go either way. Time will tell, though I may be running out of it.

I’d like to make it clear that I did try to have good days. (Who wants the opposite?) So when it was my turn to work my family’s farm stall on the eve before the Feast of San Mercurio, I hoped, at the very least, for an uneventful one.

The market was empty while every good citizen sat through a long afternoon sermon in the holy cathedral. Each family in our parish was required to send at minimum one person to mass or draw notice from the deacons who served the High Priest. My sister Marcella represented the Saturnelios that weekend, while our parents ran the household in preparation for the following day’s festivities. Though I would much have preferred sweating and kneeling on a wooden pew in reverent silence than making small talk with the whole town.

As it had for three hundred and ninety-nine years, the feast heralded the beginning of spring and consumed every aspect of life in our town. For days leading up to it, the market square overflowed with decadent bouquets and gas lamps strung in magnificent arches. Tourists from all over the kingdom descended on San Miguel de las Palmas to buy artisanal glass baubles, glittering gems, fine leather sandals, lace hand-made by the cloistered nuns in the Order of Perpetual Mercy. Revelers queued up for local goat stew said to cure all ailments, gorged themselves on buttery caramel, and downed vials of our famed burnt rum. More betrothals were announced on record than any other day of the year, and the maternity ward always prepared for overcrowding in exactly nine months.

The quatercentenary meant every extravagance would be quadrupled accordingly, and so would every family’s yearly tithe. But the drought had ravaged through every corner of the Kingdom of Lutríste going on two years, forcing many stalls and shops, restaurants and cantinas to shutter. Even luceres mass had low attendance as families risked moving closer to the capital citadel for work, despite its proximity to the front lines. As fortune would have it, my family’s stall was open because despite the scorching sun, and lack of rainfall, our farm thrived. Our trees were always in bloom, our grass never yellowed, our crops never spoiled, and our well spring never dried out. It was as if by a miracle, but my family’s legend told us we were blessed by the saint himself.

As the cathedral bells signaled the middle of the day, and end of mass, the gilded doors opened to let out the parishioners. I readied for the oncoming rush by finishing my tepid, bitter cafecito. I tucked my tunic into the waistband of my linen trousers and straightened my leather suspenders. I finger combed my black waves, damp from the heat, before plopping my wide-brim straw hat back on. Then I tossed my pile of orange peels on the cobblestones as a snack for my helper—Pulga the Immortal—my scruffy goat, then faced my first customer of the afternoon.

“Buen dia, Leonidas!” Don Teodoro shouted, plopping his basket down between us, loaded full of fruits and a few heads of purple corn. He was deaf in one ear, from his turn at the draft. Thin scars spread from his ear like an intricate spider web against his bronze, brown skin. He jabbed at his hip and said, “Haven’t seen you were yay tall. Shot up like a palm tree, didn’t you?”

I had, in fact, seen him at luceres mass the previous week, but still, I humored him, and accepted the handful of sucres he handed me. “Just trying to catch up to you, señor.”

“Oh, you’ll have a crackin’ good time tomorrow night, I bet.” He wagged an arthritis-swollen finger at me, and smirked like we were in on the same joke. “Take it from me, take a step back before you jump into marriage.”

“I’d have much to think of before jumping anywhere,” I said, and handed him his wicker basket back. The season made everyone, even old veterans, speculate about the impending matches coming up. No one had to worry on my part. I’d proposed to one person two years before, and after quite the public rejection, I was not in a rush to try again…