With the feeling of a wasteland, complete with death and intriguing inquiries about life, sleep, and the meaning of the desert all around.


shufflng.deviantart.com/art/We… Prologue, Chapters 1-3
shufflng.deviantart.com/art/We… Chapters 4-5
shufflng.deviantart.com/art/We… Chapters 6-8


I hope to make more, which I'm sure I will.  Something tells me the opinion of the community is what will take this story in the right direction.









There is usually a set course with my work.  I get started and I feel really great about the whole thing.  I get a few thousand words under my belt and then I start to lose control of it, unable to discern the worked-out pages with the ideas.


When I hit these famous roadblocks, I revert to the deviants I've come to know and love.
Those deviants who have anonymously helped me develop my style and overcome these blocks in creativity.


This is what I've written for the last week or so, and for it being a week I'm proud

For it being held up when it was on such a roll, I'm not so pleased,





Please tell me what you think about the pieces, about the characters (who's important to you, who's intriguing to you, whose peculiarities seem to reflect the best and worst of humanity most clearly, whatever you've got.)








I seem to have stepped on a landmine with this allegory, so I want some help scraping off the shrapnel.  All comments will be considered and potentially help turn this project from a fledgling comment into a complete satire, or better.








Thanks, for everything, whenever you gave it for whatever reason.  This has the chance to be my deviantART opus, so if you feel like you've participated and you'd like a cameo, I'd like to hear how you dress yourself before stepping in Doc Brown's time machine headed for 1885.

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courtesanHaughty, naughty courtesan.  Mistress to power.
Your beauty binds and twists in the hearts and the loins
of those for whom you would be out of reach, flower
in a garden where every trespass is marked coin
to an anguished death.  Your very fragrance, desire,
flames licking the taut ropes that bind the heretic
who finds you an icon, martyrdom to the fire
a small price to pay for but a breath all too quick
and then to the price of surrender to your charm:
To flee and be forever haunted, your beauty
a scar burnt into my soul.  I mean you no harm
and only will linger as it pleases you, we
are not so disalike, you and I, the trouvare
and courtesan, trading our arts for who we are.
William F. DeVault.  all rights reserved.

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 SilverInkblot recommended Black Swan for a Daily Literature Deviation and they accepted it, as you can see in the comment by DailyLitDeviations  This is very exciting for me, since the Daily Deviations seem geared toward visual art which can be digested superficially as people scan the bottom of the page through their normal site rummagery but Literature has a distinct disadvantage within this short attention span forum of sharing art. Therefore I hold the Daily Literature Deviation has the highest possible status I could ever achieve and after all these years I was damn sure I would never get one. I'm happy to finally be producing things which are getting recognized by the people I spent my first few years here idolizing and envying for the acceptance of their work by the general community --the portions of the community that read.  It's been a long road from my lamentations of unrequited love to here and this community has made me the writer I am today.  I am stunned and incredibly honored.  Gosh.  Thanks.

It seems appropriate to link the feature, really the least I can do for the provided exposure. Daily Literature Deviations for January 26th. I've read all the pieces, really some remarkable talent.  I'm humbled to be included.




P.S. If anyone wants to school me on my hyperlinking, I would be indebted and appreciative.

Note: thanks to what I'm sure will be a lifelong attempt to understand the intricacies of code embedded in the culture of HTML over the last fifty years, I found the FAQ which renders the included distraction and request moot.