Story Details
Published on 2023-09-05
Categories Fantasy
All the undead necromancers, the evil stepmothers, the Nothings, the Dark Ones, the World-Devourers, the various Whoever-Shall-Not-Be-Named, they all come to call on Guff’s goblin market at one point or another, along with the occasional Chosen One. But the people he sells to are not necessarily the customers he serves.
Author Details
Darrin Bright Goblin Market
Darrin Bright works as an accountant by day, and scripts missions for starship bridge simulators by night. The smell of petrichor and rotting tomatoes reminds him of home (Woodland, California). His current physical manifestation is a carbon-based biped that resides in Cleveland, Ohio, which is... (checking) not currently on fire. STORY NOTES FOR "GOBLIN MARKET" With my fiction, I like to subvert genre tropes and pick apart how stories are put together. Part of that is my English degree trying to deconstruct how and why the stories work the way they do, particularly when the characters in the story are self-aware of the tropes and are either trying to avoid or subvert them as part of the story. If the main character runs into Death and Death says OH, I'M SUPPOSED TO MEET YOU IN SAMARRA TOMORROW, can that character, knowing how that story ends, use the tropes to find a different ending? But another good chunk of it is so I can make cheeky jokes about the tropes at the genre's expense. "Goblin Market" is my piss-take on the Wizarding School genre. When I first submitted it to my writers' workshop, it was only two scenes long. The feedback I got back from the workshop was they wanted to know more about this shopkeeper. What was his story? What was his motivation in all this? I pushed back on that a little, because I thought the story was done. But against my not-so-better-judgement, I went back and added another scene, and I'm glad I did. While we don't quite get the shopkeeper's full backstory, I was able to connect things back to the fairy tale roots of the genre.
Goblin Market by Darrin Bright
Author Details
Darrin Bright Goblin Market
Darrin Bright works as an accountant by day, and scripts missions for starship bridge simulators by night. The smell of petrichor and rotting tomatoes reminds him of home (Woodland, California). His current physical manifestation is a carbon-based biped that resides in Cleveland, Ohio, which is... (checking) not currently on fire. STORY NOTES FOR "GOBLIN MARKET" With my fiction, I like to subvert genre tropes and pick apart how stories are put together. Part of that is my English degree trying to deconstruct how and why the stories work the way they do, particularly when the characters in the story are self-aware of the tropes and are either trying to avoid or subvert them as part of the story. If the main character runs into Death and Death says OH, I'M SUPPOSED TO MEET YOU IN SAMARRA TOMORROW, can that character, knowing how that story ends, use the tropes to find a different ending? But another good chunk of it is so I can make cheeky jokes about the tropes at the genre's expense. "Goblin Market" is my piss-take on the Wizarding School genre. When I first submitted it to my writers' workshop, it was only two scenes long. The feedback I got back from the workshop was they wanted to know more about this shopkeeper. What was his story? What was his motivation in all this? I pushed back on that a little, because I thought the story was done. But against my not-so-better-judgement, I went back and added another scene, and I'm glad I did. While we don't quite get the shopkeeper's full backstory, I was able to connect things back to the fairy tale roots of the genre.
