So, you asked… what exactly is a tengu?

Posted by LediaR on May 14, 2012
Posted in: Creative Writing, Fantasy, Japanese Culture, Japanese Mythlogy, Ledia Runnels, Magic, Shape Shifter, Tengu. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 2 Comments
Eucleian Raven

Raven (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

They fly on ebony wings. They walk on both bird‘s legs or human. Tengus can look so much like a human that they could fool another human. Or they can look like several combinations of avian and human in between. They are shape-shifters that can appear as a crow or a raven, only larger than the ones you see outside your window. One of their favorite disguises is to take on the appearance of a Yamabushi, mountain warrior priest. They can also look something like Pinocchio with a red, clown nose. (Strange!)

Intrigued? The reason most people in the western world know nothing about tengu is because they come straight out of Japanese folklore, from the Shinto religion. Known as tricksters, the tengu can prove a helpful ally if they decide they like you enough not to pound in your head. If they think you are worthy of their good intentions, you could learn the craft of wielding a sword. Just ask Yoshitune. Hmm, well, that might be difficult, since he’s been dead for centuries now.

Still, you might find out that you are the half-human child of a tengu. Now, that can get complicated. Just ask Karasu Hinata. Who is he; you wrinkle your forehead in thought, trying to remember just where you heard that name? He’s the son of the tengu king, Sojobo-sama. Karasu appears in the fantasy, action/adventure novel, Legend of the Tengu Prince.

In the meantime, if you happen to see a tengu, for goodness sake, don’t annoy them. They have been known to do very nasty things. Speaking of nasty tengu, just wait until you meet Sojobo’s older brother, Magatsu. Now that is one giant black bird that you do not want to get on his bad side.

Sh-h-h! I think I see one of them staring in through my third floor window… or maybe, it’s just a crow… The strange thing is, this crow has human eyes.

Enjoy!

Legend of the Tengu Prince — Available
on
&
(Use this coupon code UT96N to obtain the special price on Smashwords until May 15.)

Synopsis:

Fantasy Action Adventure set in feudal Japan.

During a time of civil war, Karasu Hinata is born the son of a powerful warlord. When he is still a child, his family castle is taken by a rival clan. His father and mother are murdered right before his eyes.

Barely escaping with his life, he is spirited away by the king of the tengu. The shape-shifting raven leads him to the hidden mountain retreat of a sect of mystic warriors. Mountain priests who practice the magic of Shugendo.

Ten years have passed. The time has come for Karasu to leave the mystic’s protective lair and face his demons in the world beyond. But the fiend that haunts his nightmares is also the one that shattered his life. More than a bad dream, it wants him dead.

In Legend of the Tengu Prince, nothing is as it seems. Shape-shifting creatures, both good and evil, populate the magical world of feudal Japan. And a young man will pay the ultimate price for a deadly rival spawned in the mists time. This riveting first volume of a epic fantasy adventure will leave you stunned and begging for more.

USA TODAY Author Credit!

Posted by LediaR on May 13, 2012
Posted in: Adventure, Ledia Runnels, Nature. Tagged: , , . 16 Comments

For a while I wrote for an online company called Demand Studios. In that time, I produced several travel related articles for them. I just found out that I have 4 ARTICLES that were published on usatoday.com!  Here are the links:

Oregon rocks and irises.

“Camping Trailers in Salem”

 http://traveltips.usatoday.com/camping-trailers-salem-50487.html

Sunset over the Hudson River

“RV Parks in the Hudson Valley“

 http://traveltips.usatoday.com/rv-parks-hudson-valley-51450.html

There's lots to do on your trip through California.

“Full-Time RV Parks in Southern California“

http://traveltips.usatoday.com/fulltime-rv-parks-southern-california-50325.html

Dreamcatcher

“RV Parks in Smithville, Oklahoma“

http://traveltips.usatoday.com/rv-parks-smithville-oklahoma-51888.html

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! HAVE THE “BEST DAY” EVER…

Posted by LediaR on May 13, 2012
Posted in: Ledia Runnels, Mother's Day. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 14 Comments

A couple of years ago, my daughter, Shayla sent me this video for Mother’s Day.

So far, it is the best present I could have gotten.

Hear is the link to Taylor Swift’s “Best Day”

If the link doesn’t work, try copying and pasting. It’s worth it.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!

(This is my daughter Shayla with me)

This is when Shay was a toddler. Cute, huh.

My Girl!

This is my son, Adrian. He is the handsome guy on the far right.

He is training to be an officer. So-o-o proud of him!

Adrian as a toddler

Adrian age 7

Adrian is the one in the middle with “Attitude”!

Tengu: Mountain Goblin (Japanese Folklore)

Posted by LediaR on May 12, 2012
Posted in: Creative Writing, Japanese Culture, Japanese Mythlogy, Magic, Shape Shifter, Tengu. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 2 Comments
Folk-hero Kintarō climbing a tree to disturb a...

Folk-hero Kintarō climbing a tree to disturb a nest of small tengu. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You find yourself beneath the grandfather Cryptomeria, the giant evergreens that cover the sloping sides of Mount Kurama. It is spring, when the dawn goddess‘ dance lures Amaterasu, the goddess of the sun, back from winter exile. You have chosen this time to make a pilgrimage to the mountain of the tengu king.

Through the dense overgrowth, shifting light stirs the morning mist. You close your eyes to better hear the voice of the forest sharp and crisp. Pop! Snap! The crack of high branches echoes against the whirring wing-beats of a crane in flight.

You open your eyes to see its elegant neck extended as the magnificent white bird rises above the canopy into a graceful glide. Its quavering voice is a haunting trumpet.

Near the lower branch, from where the sleek bird took flight, a raven perches. Its ebony feathers glisten like emeralds, as if jewels shine beneath the dark pinions.

“Did you frighten the crane?” You smile, pretending the sassy bird can understand your words.

Head cocked to one side, the bird waits, as one shrewd eye seems to watch your every move. The next instant, the brute flies at you face.

The tip end of one black wing flicks your nose sending a shock wave of surprise roiling down your spine to quake in the pit of your stomach, while the raven’s sharp beak snaps close to your ear. Then in a swooping motion, it flies away only to double back, diving, and then grabbing onto the slope of your shoulder. The unruly fowl digs its claws into you for an unsteady perch.

The peppery scent of pine needles fills the air as you wait with expectation, for the sharp talons to pierce your flesh. They never do. Still, you stare in wonder because the almond eyes of the raven, too close for comfort beside your own, are not what you would expect. They are human-like.

The pungent scent grows in intensity making your nose itch. The next instant, the fiend lifts off into the air and settles on the ground a short distance from your feet.

A gathering mist shifts around the bird, settling like smoke from an incense bowl the priests use to call out their incantations. It reminds you of dregs left from a magician’s spell cast in the purple dawn.

In the raven’s place, there stands a man, or at first glance what seems to be a human man. A circlet of gold lies atop his black hair flecked with glistening emerald lights feathered across elfish-point ears.

His jeweled eyes sparkle with mischief as they watch you from above a beak-shaped nose that juts from the center of a scarlet-blush face and a smirk that pulls haughtily at the creature’s lips. Blue-black wings, crimson tipped, fold against his broad shoulders, where muscled arms hang crisscrossed against his chest. Powerful legs stretch from a human torso ending in bare feet where the nails of the creature’s toes curl under, more like claws than fingernails.

You gape in wordless wonder, for you stand in the presence of a tengu mountain goblin. Choose your next words and actions very carefully. Although the tengu like to make mischief rarely do they enjoy turn about as fair play…

A Day in the Brick House

Posted by LediaR on May 11, 2012
Posted in: Award Winning, Creative Writing, Nursery Rhyme, Short Story. Tagged: , , , . 3 Comments

This story has just won an award at the Oklahoma Write’s Federation in the “Prose Humor” category!

English: A picture depicting the pig who had r...(I spend much of my days, Monday through Friday, with an adorable preschooler who loves singing nursery rhymes. When asked to do acreative writing assignment concerning one character that wants to leave and one that wants to stay this story came readily to my creative writer’s mind.)

Hey diddle, diddle, the day started out like so many others. The sun shone over London Bridge and all seemed right with the world. Then I walked into the kitchen and saw that the cupboards were bare. I couldn’t even find the poor dog a bone.

So, I went to locate Agatha, sitting in the parlor eating bread and honey, and said to her, “How about the two of us go to the market to buy some curds and whey? I mean, Caradoc over there is eating roast beef, but Digory, poor piglet, has none.”

So what did my beloved wife do? She got this pained expression on her face. You know the kind I’m talking about, where her ears turned down at the ends while she shoved her snout up toward the sky.

I really hate when she does that.

“I’m tired,” Agatha grunted. “and my hooves are killing me!”

So now it was my turn to give her the look. “You know, Aggie that was not the deal we made when we built this house of bricks. We promised to share all the responsibility.”

So she sat up straight and turned those beady, black eyes on me. The ones that used to make me quiver, but now they make me shiver. And she said to me, “I have had a really terrible day. You remember those four and twenty black birds? Well, I tried to bake them in a pie. But when the pie was open the birds began to sing, the wretched things.”

Agatha trembled as she pointed toward the fence that led to outside. “One of the black devils,” she sniffled. “attacked Freda while she stood in the garden hanging out the clothes, for goodness sake.”

Then a loud snort blew from her snout in this pitiful, annoying sort of way. “Oh, Balthazar,” she wailed, “I ended up calling in the village doctor. And you know how queasy it makes me feel when he drags out those nasty leaches. Call me piggyunish, but I don’t see how letting the little suckers chew on poor Freda’s back helps get her nose back on her face.”

All the while Aggie was oink, oink, oinking at me I thought, what’s she gonna say next? That the cow jumped over the moon?

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw our little dog laugh. And then I cringed because Aggie got this gleam in her eyes. I mean she looked absolutely blissful.

“Balthie, dear,” she began ever-so-sweetly. “you could take Emrys. He loves going anywhere with you.”

And you don’t? I wanted to squeal. I may be a boar, but that last comment got me right in the pork ribs. I could feel this deep frown wrinkling my brow as I shoved my fists on each side of my shank.

“I love our youngest son, I do. But the way he always has to shout… I, well, I’ll be perfectly honest, Agatha, after a while, it starts to get on my last nerve. I don’t understand why he can’t just sit in the cart and sing a song of six pence instead…”

So, to make a long story short, I went to the counting house to count out some money and ended up taking the youngest piglet with me. We were so hungry by the time we got to the bazaar that we ended up buying out half the vegetable, fruit and flower stands. I bypassed the poultry stalls though. I wasn’t about to buy any more of those confounded black birds.

Personally, I enjoy a good prickly thistle. Just love the way it tickles my throat all the way down.

When we got home, Agatha was asleep in our little corner of the sty. She looked so darn cute and tasty with her curly tail tucked under that I didn’t even mind that the memory of Emrys’ tinny voice still squealed in my ears. “Wee, wee, wee…” all the friggin’ way home.

Copyright by Ledia Runnels 2012

Enjoy!

English: Illustrations from the novel A Book o...

Mountain Goblin

Posted by LediaR on May 8, 2012
Posted in: Creative Writing, Dark Fantasy, Haiku, Japanese Culture, Ledia Runnels, Magic. Tagged: , , , , . 3 Comments
Ideha jinja pathway 日本語: 出羽神社 参道

Ideha jinja pathway 日本語: 出羽神社 参道 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The spring morning calls

into the haunted forest

forgotten secrets.

(Haiku from Legend of the Tengu Prince)

Enjoy!

Legend of the Tengu Prince — Available
on
&
(Use this coupon code UT96N to obtain the special price on Smashwords until May 15.)

Synopsis:

Fantasy Action Adventure set in feudal Japan.

During a time of civil war, Karasu Hinata is born the son of a powerful warlord. When he is still a child, his family castle is taken by a rival clan. His father and mother are murdered right before his eyes.

Barely escaping with his life, he is spirited away by the king of the tengu. The shape-shifting raven leads him to the hidden mountain retreat of a sect of mystic warriors. Mountain priests who practice the magic of Shugendo.

Ten years have passed. The time has come for Karasu to leave the mystic’s protective lair and face his demons in the world beyond. But the fiend that haunts his nightmares is also the one that shattered his life. More than a bad dream, it wants him dead.

In Legend of the Tengu Prince, nothing is as it seems. Shape-shifting creatures, both good and evil, populate the magical world of feudal Japan. And a young man will pay the ultimate price for a deadly rival spawned in the mists time. This riveting first volume of a epic fantasy adventure will leave you stunned and begging for more.

“The Cuckoo’s Nestling” Part Four

Posted by LediaR on May 4, 2012
Posted in: Creative Writing, Dark Fantasy, Fantasy, Ledia Runnels, Magic, Modern Fairy Tale, Shape Shifter, Short Story. Tagged: , , , . 4 Comments

Several weeks later, Jenny stood with him beside the front door of a house he had never seen. His suitcase gripped between bone-white fingers, he squinted down at a tiny crack in the concrete porch beneath his feet.

He heard Jenny say, “Well, don’t you want to go inside?”
His feet felt as if they stood in hardening cement. He couldn’t move even when he heard the door creak as Jenny pushed it open.

Obediently, he followed the back of her brown, leather shoes over the threshold. When they stopped, he stopped just inside the foyer.
The scent of raisin, oatmeal cookies, just baked, filled his nose, making his mouth water as Jenny’s shoes disappeared, replaced by a pair of pink-glittered ones looped with white laces that pointed directly toward him.

Slowly, he raised his gaze to the girl’s blue eyes. Dark hair framed her pale face.

Around his one age, she smiled and looked questioningly over at Jenny. “Is this my new brother?”

“It is,” said Jenny, from the kitchen where she stood next to a smallish woman with blue eyes and dark hair like her daughter’s. Jenny cocked her head to one side, giving him and the girl a playful wink.

The girl’s face beamed toward him as she took his hand between her warm fingers. “I’m Maggie. I’ll show you to your room. It’s just down the hall, this way,” she sang out, guiding him toward the back part of the house.

As they passed the sliding glass door in the family room, he saw the backyard where a trampoline stood next to a porch swing, and a built-in barbecue pit. On the other side of the wooden fence, the woman watched through dark-colored glasses. Her rust-brown hair pulled into a messy ponytail beneath a black and gray striped ball cap.

“Leave them alone,” he whispered and narrowed his eyes in warning, though she stood too far away to hear him.

A strong gust of wind blew the ball cap off the woman’s head and she stepped back to retrieve it. Then she melted into the forest that grew a short distance away. A moment later, the cuckoo bird flew out from the same place the woman disappeared only moments before. The striped bird flew into the sky. When it did not return, he heaved a fleeting sigh of relief.

At the door to what would become his room, the girl rushed in and returned holding a set of acrylic paints and a paper pad out to him. She chirped, “Jenny said that you are an artist. What types of pictures do you like to paint? I like to draw birds, all kinds of birds.” The girl seemed to talk nonstop, barely taking a breath between sentences as she swung her body to and fro.

He took the offered gifts and smiled, genuinely happy for the first time since the baby magpies flew away.

That night he dreamed that the terrible cuckoo bird transformed into an angel, dressed all in white with flowing black hair and gentle blue eyes. And he knew upon waking that humans could decide their own fates. Only the birds and the beasts of the earth must follow instinct alone.

The End

Hope you enjoyed the story!

Links:

Image above from “European Magpie” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pica_pica1.jpg manipulated with Photoshop filters.

 
Legend of the Tengu Prince — Finally Available on Amazon.com!

http://www.amazon.com/Legend-Tengu-Prince-Volume-1/dp/1453853308/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335789431&sr=8-1

Synopsis:

Fantasy Action Adventure set in feudal Japan.

During a time of civil war, Karasu Hinata is born the son of a powerful warlord. When he is still a child, his family castle is taken by a rival clan. His father and mother are murdered right before his eyes.

Barely escaping with his life, he is spirited away by the king of the tengu. The shape-shifting raven leads him to the hidden mountain retreat of a sect of mystic warriors. Mountain priests who practice the magic of Shugendo.

Ten years have passed. The time has come for Karasu to leave the mystic’s protective lair and face his demons in the world beyond. But the fiend that haunts his nightmares is also the one that shattered his life. More than a bad dream, it wants him dead.

In Legend of the Tengu Prince, nothing is as it seems. Shape-shifting creatures, both good and evil, populate the magical world of feudal Japan. And a young man will pay the ultimate price for a deadly rival spawned in the mists time. This riveting first volume of a epic fantasy adventure will leave you stunned and begging for more.

Related articles

Manic Mode! “Self-Publishing in Free Fall” Part One

Posted by LediaR on May 3, 2012
Posted in: Creative Writing, Ledia Runnels, Self-Publishing, Techniques of Fiction. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 9 Comments
Cover of "Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway&...

Cover of Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway

Dangling… free-falling… that is how it feels. Alone, brave heart shaking, I wake up wondering what is this sensation? My breath catches in my chest. It feels as if the world is coming to an end. I search for the reasons.

Now I remember, it’s because I released my baby into the unknown. It took years of nurturing, research, writing, rewriting, choosing just the right cover. Feeling bold and brave to do this thing all by myself. Now I want to curl up in a ball and disappear. Succeed or fail, it’s all so terrifying!

And it’s not just the fact that I decided to self publish my book. It’s also because the rent it due and the refrigerator looks very empty. If I don’t pay the car payment, they will come and take it away. So, I work to pay my bills and then I come home and write and plan and dream of the day when work and writing fall under the same column.

I can’t give in to the fear. I tried that before and it left me frustrated and empty. But this fear is almost overwhelming, like I’m standing at the edge of the abyss and it looks very dark below.

So I close my eyes and draw in a deep trembling breath, believing that “I can succeed. All that is possible to anyone, it possible to me!” Wallace D. Wattles wrote that near the beginning of the twentieth century and it still holds true today.

“Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway,” Susan Jeffers Ph.D. wrote that and I listened to her words of encouragement over and over on the audio CD of her book by the same title. So, why am I still afraid?

Because I pulled away from the pack. I had the audacity not to follow the status quo and work at a job that I do not really like, doing something for the rest of my life that I don’t really want to do. Instead, I dared to follow my dreams. And my dreams are big and life is precious and short. Each day is a gift that I want to open and relish and be glad about.

It is terrifying, yes. But the alternative is monstrous! So horrible in fact that I run as fast as I can from it. To not follow my dreams is, frankly, unthinkable.

Some of you may be asking, what process brought me to this terrible, wonderful place? If you stick around, I will tell you. But be forewarned, this is not an adventure for the weak of mind or heart. You have to be very brave and completely determined. If you think you are ready, follow me.

Continued… http://creativemusingsoflediar.com/2012/05/17/manic-mode-self-publishing-in-free-fall-part-two/

“The Cuckoo’s Nestling” Part Three

Posted by LediaR on May 3, 2012
Posted in: Creative Writing, Dark Fantasy, Fantasy, Heartbreak, Ledia Runnels, Magic, Modern Fairy Tale, Shape Shifter, Short Story. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Every day after that, he and Jenny kept the tiny, green-blue and speckled eggs warm. And every day he stood beside the picture window, watching the black banded cuckoo. Perched in the nearby trees, it kept a militant watch over her banded baby that sat with greedy mouth open in the magpie’s nest. Until, one day, a tiny fracture appeared from inside the first green-blue egg. Another and another quickly followed as a naked birdling with blind eyes flopped out from between the cracked shell. The second infant magpie hatched soon after.

Feeding the babies all the right food and doing all the right things, he and Jenny soon took the two fledglings, fat black and white with blue iridescence on the lower edge of their wings, to the open window beside the pine tree. Their now empty nest lay in tatters by force of wind, rain and a belligerent cuckoo.

“OK,” he whispered to the birdling that sat cradled in the palm of his hand. Its blue eyes with pitch-black centers, gazed with love and trust up at him. “You can do this. I have complete faith in you.”

He released his fingers and gave the toddler a gentle nudge. Spreading its wings, the young bird lifted toward the pine tree. Along with its sibling flying free from Jenny’s out-stretched palm, the magpies made the sky their own.

Jenny stood beside him, squeezing his hand with her warm fingers laced between his. Happiness swept through him like warm butter until he saw the woman standing a short distance away, her rust brown hair fluttering curly and loose in the late spring breeze. Suddenly he wanted to cry as the all too familiar, sickly sweet sensation rushed over him.

Jenny’s warm fingers brushed against his hair as she pulled him against her side. “What’s wrong?” she asked her voice so sweet, it made him want to sob. “I know,” her words wove a hypnotic spell that sought to wrap him in downy comfort. “we need to find you a new family.”

In the ten years since his mother had left him wrapped in the drab blanket and screaming on the orphanage doorstep, four families had taken him home. They explained, hands twisting in guilt and frustration, that it was his bizarre behavior followed by the terrifying images of crazed birds painted on the walls and sidewalks that made it impossible for them to let him stay.

“They’re just cuckoo birds and can’t help how they are,” he tried to explain his drawings, but to deaf ears.

From gossiping tongues, the stinging words taunted him about how each family that gave him back, had then suffered a tragedy. “Because of me?” he sobbed into his pillow, tasting salty tears, streaming into the cracks between his pinched-closed lips.

Now, standing beside the open window, his gaze shot toward Jenny’s round, honeyed face. “No. No. Don’t,” he pleaded and turned to run back into the bowels of the orphanage, while the baby magpies soared toward the forest canopy and out of sight.

Continued… http://creativemusingsoflediar.com/2012/05/04/the-cuckoos-nestling-part-four/

Enjoy!

Links:

“Young European Magpie” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pica_pica1.jpg

 
Legend of the Tengu Prince — Finally Available on Amazon.com!

http://www.amazon.com/Legend-Tengu-Prince-Volume-1/dp/1453853308/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335789431&sr=8-1

Synopsis:

Fantasy Action Adventure set in feudal Japan.

During a time of civil war, Karasu Hinata is born the son of a powerful warlord. When he is still a child, his family castle is taken by a rival clan. His father and mother are murdered right before his eyes.

Barely escaping with his life, he is spirited away by the king of the tengu. The shape-shifting raven leads him to the hidden mountain retreat of a sect of mystic warriors. Mountain priests who practice the magic of Shugendo.

Ten years have passed. The time has come for Karasu to leave the mystic’s protective lair and face his demons in the world beyond. But the fiend that haunts his nightmares is also the one that shattered his life. More than a bad dream, it wants him dead.

In Legend of the Tengu Prince, nothing is as it seems. Shape-shifting creatures, both good and evil, populate the magical world of feudal Japan. And a young man will pay the ultimate price for a deadly rival spawned in the mists time. This riveting first volume of a epic fantasy adventure will leave you stunned and begging for more.