Recently I started writing fiction. It might not be perfect or something special but to me it is a milestone. The point when you decide to write and you actually are writing is a huge step in my opinion. Here is a ‘sneak peak’ of my work:

In the year of 1374 on the darkest day of the year. A day of stark and ominous nature. Full of horrors and morbid creatures of the unnatural. A full, white moon was reflecting the false light unto the lands of an isle in the Baltic sea. The island was large in size. Old, ruined, lifeless castles, towers and villages loom the land. Countless ages have past until man refound the isle. And so, on this night a group of German knights lead by Lord Toten Wulfenburg, an exiled noble of the Holy Roman Empire who was excommunicated for sodomy and hedonism. While in truth, his ambitions got the better of him and during a failed coup he ran away with a group of loyal knights and followers. Wulfenburg was large and burly – bull of a man with long blonde hair, striking sky-blue tired eyes and a dishevelled beard. The exile was hard on him. Few injuries here and there, a walking stick reflects the injuries of a leg. His appearance has definitely seen better days. Tattered ta bard and cloak, dented and dirty armor. His sheath hides the chipped, blunt sword and blood-stained blade. His followers and companions fared a lot worse. One of the knights got his hand severed. A makeshift bandage hides the ugly stump. The other got blinded by a man-at-arms in a small skirmish with a royal patrol – the emperor`s men. Most of them bore minimal injuries. While a common soldier might have abandoned their feudal during such dark and hard times, but these men are loyal men – knights, squires and servants and even some of the ladies. Exiled as they may be they still follow their doomed lord. Lord of the homeless, the exiled, the forgotten, the forsaken, the pariah. During a huge raid of a small port city on the coast of a Baltic sea the exiles managed to commandeer two small merchant ships and a huge supply of food, cloth, general goods and precious metals. They took to the sea. The pagan sea. While the Scandinavian lands to the north have been united with the Christendom and while the Baltic coast to the east is controlled by the Teutonic order there is still something ominous and doom-filling about the sea. Lord Walsenburg and the exiles sailed the calm sea for three days until they came upon the ISLE. The landing was chaotic and panic filled. In a small amount of time the servants and knights erected makeshift tents. The isle gives off a dark and atmosphere and the lord feels it. The isle itself is not charted on the merchant maps. The exiled lord sees an opportunity to disappear from the Christian world by settling the isle. Still staying in one of the ships he look over the isle. Right then one of the knights – the one with a stumped hand, comes to the lord and asks: “What are your orders, lord? We have unencumbered both of the ships. If I may ask…” ” you may” the lord answers. “Are we going to stay on this isle? I noticed that the isle is unsettled by people as far as I can tell. I have dispatched a couple of squires to scour the isle. My thoughts are that we should find a suitable place and set a more permanent encampment there.” The lord remains silent. Thousands of thoughts flood the mind. Something summons him, calls him, teases him to go forth, to explore, to find the source, the summoner. Toten descends the ship unto the soil of the beach. ” It needs name.” He whispers and ventures forth toward the camp.

1) Why do people try to avoid darker, more real or bad things, problems, themes?
2) Why it is hard for some people to share their creative works? Is it fear of criticism?
3) If you had to create a poem or a song would you make it dark, bright? Why?

Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse 5 Book review

Kurt Vonnegut the creator of the Slaughterhouse-five novel was an American writer. In his long career he published 14 novels, three short story collections, five plays and five works of non-fiction. He is most famous for his best-selling semi-autobiographical novel Slaughterhouse-five that I will be reviewing for you. To make things clear, this novel may be considered a semi-autobiographical, because narrator of the story is the author himself, as he shows narrators identity when he says: „That was I…That was me…That was the author of this book…“. So let’s get back to business and talk about the novel. First of all, Slaughterhouse-five is the story of Billy Pilgrim‘s life, that is framed in World War 2, to be more specific in the dreadful bombing of Dresden time frame. Billy Pilgrim is a slender looking guy that was born in Ilium, New York, that was drafted for military service in the World War 2. Well, the most interesting thing about Billy is that he is not interesting character at all. He is not a hero who saves his comrades in the heat of war. He is nothing like that in this story. Billy Pilgrim is rather a dull character who is pushed through out the life without making any decisions. After witnessing these horrors of war, Billy struggles to move past the self-destructive human nature and he starts to travel through the story by jumping into different parts of his life. From this point the story becomes quite strange and absurd. He starts to jump in time when he experiences memories associated with the war. Then, Billy becomes „unstuck in time” and „has no control over where he is going next“. Due to these time jumps, he witnessed how he became wealthy optometrist, how he got married, how his children were born, how he survived a plane crash. But the most absurd thing in this story is that he believes that he was abducted by aliens. He thinks that aliens abducted and took him to their home planet Tralfamador through some kind of a time warp/black hole. Then, Tralfamadorians placed him in a zoo as an exhibit for other extraterrestrial life forms. The aliens taught him about their concept of time and how everything, even every second of time exist at once. They also taught him that death is just an unpleasant moment. Due to Billy‘s ability to jump around in timeline, he already knew these lesions when he was in bombing of Dresden. Finally, at the end when Billy was assassinated he tried to show this message to the world. He knew that he is going to die, but he did not mind it. I think that Vonnegut created a perfect portrait of a young man with the help of Billy’s character. Billy, who was drafted, thrown into the heat of war, captured, starved, yet managed to survive the terrible bombing of Dresden, while being 18 years of age. Due to this, war traumatized him so much, that in order to deal with all these horrific memories he started to hallucinate and invented an alternate reality in which he is able to jump in time. Due to these time jumps, the whole book is written in small chunks of Billy‘s life from random points. In other words, the story is not told in a chronological order. Also this novel explores themes of war and how war can affect an individual, or innocent peoples in a really tragic way. Theme of death is also quite common in this novel. But not in a sense of mourning for the dead, or fear of dying, but as a certain part of a whole existence of a person, and that we need to celebrate it while we are still here. On top of that, K. Vonnegut‘s writing style also helps reader to imagine those horrific events quite vividly.

To sum up, I know this novel sounds complex due to absurd Billy Pilgrim‘s world and all those time jump shenanigans, but it is full of irony, sentimentality, black humor and absurdity. I would recommend it to people who tend to like various science-fiction stories and have quite dark sense of humor.

immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” “The Picture of Dorian Gray” – a story of a fashionable, evil and scandalous young man named Dorian Gray. He was a beautiful man, but very corrupt and looking only for beauty and material things in his life. This story shows us how young man’s desires can ruin whole his life and what the desires make Dorian Gray to give up for eternal youth and beauty – his soul. The story of Dorian Gray is the most popular Oscar Wilde’s book sold all over the world. In 1890 the tale of Dorian Gray and his immorality caused a big scandal back then. As the author of the novel said, Dorian Gray had a very big moral in himself, but did not explain what exactly he meant. A few years later, Oscar Wilde appeared in trial because of his homosexual liaisons. Everybody started wondering if author portrayed himself as Dorian Gray, O. Wilde had only one answer to that: “Basil Hallward is what I think I am; Lord Henry – what the world thinks of me; Dorian what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps.”

“She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. ”

In my opinion, this books is a marvelous piece of art. When I read this book I couldn’t do anything else until I finished it. The story is engaging, has a certain dark and supernatural Gothic period feeling. All in all, this story of Dorian Gray shows people what most people seek more in life – beauty, fame and materialism. But within the lines you can see a lot of beautiful and strong lines about our lives, strong ideas and quotes.

The Voice is proud to present a new rising author Lėja Tubinytė, check this great story out and share your thoughts in the comment section below 😉 

Maybe I’m not the only one? Maybe there are more kids like me?

I was locked in my house. I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything. No one told me why… Why couldn’t I leave this boring place? They were hiding something from me and I knew that! But what was it?

It all began in 1944 when the war started. We had to move so I wouldn’t see my homeland ever again. My mum was really scared so she could barely breathe. Dad had some friends that helped us move. They really deserved medals! Although my sister wasn’t happy that these guys were helping.

When we were almost there someone stopped the carriage. My dad got out. It all happened so quickly. They were yelling and throwing stuff at him. Then we heard a shot. Mum started crying. Some of the helpers ran out. But it was too late. Dad was lying on the ground. I also ran out too see him. He smiled at me. His eyes were still shining.

‘Sweet daughter, I wish I could see how you grow up. I believe in you,’ these were his last words.

Tears didn’t leave my eyes. ‘I know you will always be there,’ I whispered into his ear. Then I hugged him so hard, I thought I could never let him go.

‘It’s time to go,’ I felt someone’s hand touching my shoulder. ‘I know it’s hard.’

‘I don’t really know what to say… How is mom? Is she suffering a lot?’ I asked.

‘She is… Let’s go… You must be freezing…’

I stood up. It was time to go back to the carriage.

Mum was finally asleep, now I could rest too. The day was so sunny when we arrived. The house looked pretty big. And the day I stepped into it, I never came outside….

All I could see were just white walls… maybe some paintings too. The house was pretty old. At first I thought it would be fun staying at home but then I realized one thing…

Every day I learned more about it. When I was alone the chairs used to start changing colours. Once I saw a black cat running in the house. I tried to tell my mum but she didn’t listen. Everyone thought I was CRAZY! Crazy was just not the word. How about TERRIFIED!

My mum didn’t want me to go to school. ‘You will be a great housekeeper. Never fear the dust!’ she used to say. ‘Why do you need school when you have a job already?’

These words drove me crazy! All I wanted was to be a doctor! She never listened to ANYBODY! I wished that my dad was here. He would understand me. He would let me go to school. But he was not here…

The bell rang. That meant it was time for school, but not for me. Sister packed her food and ran out. Why couldn’t she be the housekeeper? Oh, yes, she always used to break stuff.

Alone. The chairs started changing colours. I got used to that…

Only the cat used to scare me. I didn’t know why but she looked sad and lonely just like me…. I had an idea to take her into my arms one day.

‘The dinner is served,’ that was what I used to say eating alone. Waiting for someone to come back was really hard. Especially when the house was full of secrets.

The cat didn’t appear. It seemed that she knew everything. Especially when I was thinking about her.

Finally, I saw the cat and picked her up. Her face was so sad that seemed she was about to burst into tears. She reminded me of someone. But who?

A few days later the cat became my best friend. I called her Amy. Now the house became not that empty.

I was brave enough to go to the pantry and look around. There were many old statues, paintings, boxes, some clothes too. But only one thing couldn’t leave my mind. The necklace. Red, big and sparkly necklace. It was weird enough that I found statues or painting but now… How long has it been here? It looked fresh and new! Maybe the family that lived before us accidentally left it. I looked around and took the necklace.

My eyes couldn’t believe what I found. I just didn’t want my sister to find it so I hided it.

‘Can you believe what I found?’ I asked Amy. ‘This gorgeous necklace!’

When I showed it to Amy she got scared and ran out. But why? What’s wrong with it? I really wished I could talk to Amy… She would tell me all the secrets…

It was a long day. I had to rest because the next day I planned to sneak out of the house! Yes, you heard me right SNEAKE OUT! Sorry, Mum…but the house was just so BORING!

The next day was so rainy and that scared me a little. I hoped it would get better soon because if not…

DING-DONG the door randomly opened.

I looked at the opening doors. Why did I do that? A scary man jumped into the house. I almost passed away. ‘Give me the necklace now!’ he started giggling.

‘What necklace? Get out of here! Help!!!’ I started shouting.

‘No need to shout, girl… I just need the red necklace you have. Don’t lie…’ he didn’t give up.

‘No! Get out!!!’ I shouted again.

He pushed me away and got into my room. No words, no lies stopped him. He even pushed the bed upside down. He won’t find the necklace because it was not in my room…

When he finally noticed that it wasn’t here he looked at me. He was so angry… But why did he need the necklace so badly?

To be continued…

becoming colder and colder, when one evening, the missing body of Rebecca is finally found. After this revelation Maxim has no other choice but to admit to his new wife the truth. Rebecca was a horrid person, who cheated on him constantly and disrespected him through out their whole marriage, so Mr.de Winter lost his patience and shot his wife. After this revelation, a lot of troubles has yet to come to the heroine and her husband, but at least she finally finds peace with herself and shakes off the long stuck Rebeccas image. She once again starts to believe in her husbands love and finds the strength to help him overcome the problems that await.

This book shows us how strongly people love and how love changes them, sometimes for the better,and sometimes for the worse. Our heroine presents us how far one can go for a person they love, how many things they can refuse and leave behind only to have the warmth of a loved person, as well as if you find the right person , many frightening things and situations can become a little less scary with them by your side.