Two Years of Blogging + A Peek At The Past // Announcement

The Benefield Bookmark has come a long way since my first post on April 16, 2020. As I showed on my first anniversary, that post consisted of only sixty words and a very brief explanation of how I was writing a fantasy book with my cousin. That story was never completed as we both realized how terrible the entire premise was, and now it’s a great source of amusement for us to revisit the dusty old Google Doc and read what we once thought was the height of literature.

So with the advent of the Benefield Bookmark turning two years old (which is technically tomorrow, but close enough) I want to do something a little different. You’ve probably seen my recent fiction writing, which is being posted weekly, but chances are you’ve never seen what I started with. Today I open up the archives and explore some of my writing projects from over the years with the goal of providing you some entertainment and perhaps encouragement that all writers will be bad before they’re good.

I was around eight to ten years old I wrote my first book. This nameless story was scribbled in illegible handwriting in a spiral-bound notebook, complete with a table of contents, an index of characters, and several stick-figure illustrations. It follows Mike the spy and Ninja the ninja as they set out to overthrow the Evil Alien Guy and the faceless hoards of dark knights. The entire book is less than 1,000 words, which is shorter than a single chapter in the average novel.

The table of contents reads as follows:

1. Stranded
2. A mysterious friend
3. The journey
4. Fight of justice
5. The trap
6. The final battle

As you can infer from my character and chapter names, I was not a very creative child.

Parts of the book are as mediocre as you’d expect and other parts are completely nonsensical, but I’d like to highlight the first chapter and a portion of the second.

   “I’ve been stranded here for days!” said Mike. “The Evil Alien Guy is still trying to kill me!”

   Mike was a spy. He was spying on a lighthouse when he got sucked into a portal! He’d been on the island for the last week! “If only there was a McDonalds around here,” he said. “OR a helicopter.”

   Then he saw something in the air. It was a…a…a…shark! Then he heard a whack! Then he saw a person in black.

   “Who are you?” said Mike.

   The person said, “I am Ninja. You should be careful around here.”

   “Are you a spy too?” said Mike.

   “No,” he said, “I used to be.”

   “What do you mean?” asked Mike.

   “I got sucked into a portal too,” he said. 

   “How did you know I was?”

   “I was there the whole time.”

   “Well anyway,” said Mike, “Are you going to help me?”

   “I already did.” Ninja said.

   “Oh right.” Mike said, “Hey, why don’t we hitch a ride on that sea monster?”

   “NO!” said Ninja, “That is an extremely poisonous animal!”

   “Well, do you have a jet?”

   “No”

   “Hang Glider?”

   “No.”

   “Donkey?”

   “No.”

   “Then how do we get across?”

   “I’ll show you.”

Doesn’t that chapter ending leave you on the edge of your seat? Here’s how the duo gets across “25 miles of water.”

 Ninja pulled a balloon out of his robe.

   “How’s that supposed to help?”

   “Watch and learn, watch and learn,” said Ninja. He blew up the balloon…and then all a sudden foooooooooooooooooom! Ninja flew to the docks.

“Hurry up!” he said, “There’s one boat left!”

  “Okay!” Mike blew up his balloon. Mike must be scared, about to fly over 25 miles of water and a sea monster. Foooooooooooom! Mike flew to the docks, he hopped into the boat and they sailed and sailed and sailed and sailed and sailed and sailed and sea monster!

As you may be able to tell, they engage in an epic battle with a sea monster that lasts a riveting 28 words, ending with the monster’s head lying on the boat’s deck.

After finding gold floating in the ocean, buying a helicopter, and wiping out a camp of dark knights, Mike and Ninja finally find the Evil Alien Guy—but not at all in the way they expected. The villainous extraterrestrial rigged Ninja’s base to drop the two heroes into cages hanging above a pit of lava!

(Don’t ask me to explain any of this.)

Suddenly, when all hope is lost, Mike discovers he has hidden powers and transforms into a super ninja, flying to Ninja’s cage and rescuing him. Then Ninja also turns into a super ninja and they decimate the Evil Alien Guy with their newfound powers.

“Get them!” said the strange voice, and for the next 30 minutes this is all you could hear: Clash! Bang! Pow! Boom! Boom! Kapow!
When the dust cleared you could see dark knights everywhere. (well laying)
“I guess I’ll deal with them myself,” said the strange voice. Something jumped down. It was the Evil Alien Guy! “Prepare to die!” he said.
“Hey that’s my line!”
“Huh?” said the Evil Alien Guy.
Kaboom!“Hey where’s all the people that want to interview you?” said Mike.
“Really?” said Ninja.

Those are the closing words of the book, bringing the journey of a lifetime to a close.

My next attempt at a book was a Minecraft fan fiction, and because it won’t much much sense unless you’re familiar with Minecraft I’ll keep this section brief. I have no recollection of when this was written; my best guess is that I was approximately twelve years old. It’s about 1600 words long, quite close to the average novel chapter length, but it’s also unfinished.

The Adventures of the Shadow Knights is the riveting story of six futuristic warriors who live in a spaceship, traveling around the Minecraft world and saving the day wherever they’re needed. In many ways, it’s an obvious improvement over my previous book. The first chapter opens with the Shadow Knights playing spleef, a Minecraft mini-game in which competitors try to dig the floor out from under each other until only one is left standing. During this game the narrator, a knight in red armor named Falcon, introduces all the members of the crew.

Oh, by the way, my name is Falcon, The Red Knight. Tiger is, well, orange; Blue is…do I really need to tell you? Then there’s Ranger, who is green. There’s Hornet (yellow) and Ash (black), but they’re boring. They stand in the cockpit and do nothing.

Soon, the Shadow Knights receive word of three dangerous creatures, known as Withers, terrorizing a nearby village and head off to stop them. All the creatures are destroyed within three short paragraphs, leaving the knights time to have lunch with the residents of the village that they just saved. The villagers tell them that groups of monsters and more powerful variants of Withers have been attacking them. And as the knights voice their confusion about these strange Withers, the very same creatures appear on the horizon.

Anyway, all three Withers were destroyed, so the villagers invited us over for lunch. It was pretty good, and when we were done they told us about groups of wither skeletons and endermen. Among the groups were strange Withers.
“An Ender-Wither?” said Ranger, puzzled.
“I don’t know, but it’s true,” said Blue. “Look!”
It was just like the villagers said, wither skeletons, and endermen. Tiger was begging to go.
“Come on, we’ve got to do something about it!”
“Wait, Tiger, it could be dangerous,” I said sarcastically.

To summarize an already short chapter, the “Ender-Wither” is lured away from the village and the Shadow Knight spaceship drops a bomb on it. However, in a turn of events, the creature teleports out of range of the bomb and right next to the four knights who are on the ground.

The team leaders, Ash and Hornet, spring into action, ordering all the knights back to the ship immediately. On the way up, Ash fills them in on his genius plan to stop this menace.

“We will drop a bomb so big it can’t teleport away.”

Hopefully this bomb was also small enough not to flatten the village they just rescued.

After a massive explosion and no sign of the Ender-Wither, they decide to investigate the location they presume is the creature’s origin—a barren, rocky alternate dimension known as The End. All of the Shadow Knights, excluding Falcon, rush off to fight the massive dragon that rules the land. But the battle doesn’t go as planned. Five more Ender-Withers are protecting the dragon and, before the knights can even touch the winged lizard, the creatures teleport them away.

Falcon is left standing in the team’s underground hideout, stunned. But while contemplating his friends’ disappearance, he comes across another group of humans hidden underground, safely away from the land’s dangers. And they know exactly what happened to the rest of the Shadow Knights.

Just as the plot thickens, I dropped the book and never bothered to explain what happened to the five knights.

The medieval fantasy book The Dawning Age, co-written with my cousin (who has done some guest reviews for me, here and here), is what got me into writing seriously. The current draft is 56,000 words, but through its many, many rewrites the word count went as high as 80,000 (an average novel length).

The story hits almost every fantasy trope, almost like we were trying. You’ll find dead parents, a chosen one, a prophecy, a dark lord, rebels hiding in the forest, an epic and drawn-out final battle, and even some unashamed plagiarism.

The Dawning Age is the story of Josiah and Luke, orphaned brothers struggling to make due with poorly-paying jobs, as they decide to follow the King (God) and gather an army to overthrow the evil king Argadom. The extent of the book is the brothers traveling the known world, recruiting more and more soldiers to their cause and experiencing resistance from Argadom.

Out of the many people and places they visit throughout the story, some of them are actually not half bad. One character in particular, Sir Bollick, still has a fond place in our memories.

The first rays of light filtered through the small window of the clay house in Kapnos. The young adventurers woke all feeling nervous but anticipating the excitement that would no doubt befall them.
The young knight wasted no time in coming. Breakfast had hardly been finished when they heard a sharp knock at the door, followed by the whine of a horse. Josiah opened the door to see several of them tied up in front of the house.
A young, handsome knight stood at the door. His stature was not much more than Josiah, and he looked like a very juvenile, but wise companion. He had close-cut brown hair and was dressed in Tight breeches, knee high polished black boots, and leather armor.
“Ah, you must be Josiah,” he said, his golden-brown eyes twinkling. He flashed a bright smile and shook Josiah’s hand.
“And you must be the knight Joce told me of. Luke is over there reading,” Josiah pointed to a corner of the room where Luke sat on his bed, reading.
“Yes, I am Sir Bollick, slayer of fierce beasts, tamer of skreel, and defender of Kapnos. Did you know, I once… ” Josiah stopped listening after that. Joce was right, Sir Bollick really liked to talk. “…and they have fled from my presence ever since,”
“Fascinating,” Luke said in monotone, “Shall we begin our quest?”
“Yes, certainly. Gather your things, and let us be off!” Upon saying “off,” he pulled his sword from his sheath and waved it in the air.

There are many things I could recount from this book, both stories about the writing process and stories from the book itself, but to prevent this post from getting too long I’ll leave it at that.

I’m always encouraged when I look back at my old writing. It’s a reminder that, though slowly and imperceptibly, practice does make perfect. Hopefully this trip down memory lane entertained you.

Thank for reading, and I’ll write you in the next one!