A Perfect Book for an Imperfect Father’s Day

Having last blogged for Mother’s Day (on my author blog), it seems only fair to blog here for Father’s Day. Not too much direct experience with the mother thing, granted, but I do have experience with being a father. In 2014, I launched my novel AIKO, about a man who discovers he is a father. However, before he can celebrate Father’s Day, he must overcome a lot of obstacles to claim his child. Perhaps it is a simple story. The details make it special. And yet, it is strangely similar to one of the grand opera stories of my youth: Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini. (Here is the Metropolitan Opera’s synopsis.)

As a music student in college, I was not averse to attending an opera or two. Some were more interesting than others. My mother, who always promoted my musical interests, took me to my first opera when I was a boy: Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, about a ghost ship doomed to sail the seas forever. (Why is there no movie version today? It would make a great paranormal film.) But it was Madama Butterfly that became my favorite, and the only opera I can enjoy just listening to without having to see the stage production.

In the opera, an American naval officer visits Japan and because he is staying there a while on business, he arranges to have a “temporary” wife. The inevitable happens: his business is concluded and he leaves, promising to return, and later she discovers a child will be born. He does eventually return, but with his American wife in tow. He is surprised to find his Japanese lover has a child but he is determined to bring the child home to America. The Japanese woman is so distraught over that verdict that she commits suicide in one of opera’s most tragic scenes.

While I was living in Japan in the late 1980s and early 90s, teaching English to the students of a small city, I wrote the story of an American man who meets a Japanese woman. They have a relationship then must inevitably part. A child is born. Eventually the man learns of the child’s existence and wants to do the right thing. Despite his American wife’s objection, he goes to Japan to check things out. I’m skipping over a lot of details, of course, but you see how the plot is similar to the Madama Butterfly story. That was purely unintentional.

Seeing that similarity, I decided to exploit it and revised my story to use some elements of Madama Butterfly more overtly. First, I wanted to tell the story from the man’s point of view. The opera is all from her side. Before I knew much about Japanese history and customs, I had always wondered why Cho-Cho-san (literally “Madame Butterfly”) decided to kill herself to solve the problem. She should have killed him for trying to take away her child! Not to say killing is acceptable, of course. In my Western mindset, I could not understand her motivations. Now I do. So in telling the story from his side, I would need to show him as a rational, responsible, do-the-right thing kind of guy who has all the best intentions while dealing with the situation.

The next thing I wanted to change was the time period. The opera is set at the turn-of-the-century when American naval forces first begin to rule the Pacific. In changing the setting to the late 1980s and early 1990s (the same time period I wrote it), I could exploit the new “internationalization” focus of Japan. Because of a booming economy and criticism of Japan’s unfair trade practices, the government initiated (among other acts) the importing of foreign English teachers from the USA, UK, Canada, and Australia. I was part of that influx of teachers who went to Japan. I was there at the exact time of the story, and I described the clash of generations: the older World War II seniors and the pop culture youth who knew little about the war. It was an interesting yet awkward time. And it fit perfectly for my version of the story.

So there you have it: Art imitating a life which imitates art.

Being a guy, of course I wanted my male protagonist to not be a jerk, to do the right thing. But he is human and thus has flaws. He also faces the clash of customs, lost among people who think differently, where the acts that make no sense to him seem perfectly logical to the local folk. Japan in the 1990s is a modern place, but in inaka (the rural, “backwoods” regions), the old, traditional ways still hold sway. So our hero, Benjamin Pinkerton (yes, I borrowed the name from the character in the opera, just to make the connection more obvious), tries to do the right thing: save a child he never knew he had while risking everything in his life back home. It is another stranger in a strange land scenario I like to write.

April 10, 2018

Sunrise, sequel to A Dry Patch of Skin, launches!

SUNRISE …the end of the workday for vampires…

For Stefan Székely it is a fate worse than death: To be a vampire yet stuck with his vampire parents. After 13 years Stefan can endure it no more. He wants a castle of his own. But first he must visit his family’s bank in Budapest.

With endless strife rumbling across Europe, Stefan hardly recognizes Budapest, now capital of the Hungarian Federation. The world has changed. Nevertheless, he embarks on the reign of terror he always denied himself, living the vampire playboy lifestyle. Until he gets a stern warning from the local vampire gang. He is not welcome – unless he plays by their rules.

Should Stefan fight for his right to party like it’s 2027? Or will an unexpected encounter with a stranger change everything? As clashes between vampire gangs and State Security escalate, Stefan realizes he just might be the key to changing the fate of Europe forever! . . . If he can survive three bloody nights in Budapest.

In 2014 my medically accurate vampire novel A DRY PATCH OF SKIN came out to a couple rave reviews. My main purpose then was to counter the hysteria of the Twilight experience with some medical research crossed with an understanding of established legends. I wanted to tell a realistic vampire tale. I even set the story in my own city and the action in the story followed the actual days and months I was writing the story. The story and my writing of the story ended the same week. Of course, I revised and edited after that.

Then I thought . . . what might possibly happen next? So I chose a gap of, say, 13 years (the number seems significant in horror stories). Now, where did I leave my protagonist? How is he doing? What could have happened since the end of the first book? What has changed in the world during these 13 years? How would what’s different in the world affect his own corner of the world? How would he cope with these changes?

As I started on another vampire story I quickly realized that I had to also write essentially a science-fiction story. A futuristic story. If I were setting the story 13 years after the end of the previous novel, then this sequel would be set in 2027. And it would be somewhere in Europe, which is where our hero was at the end of the first book.

What do I know of 2027? Not much. Like many science fictioneers writing about the future, I took the present circumstances, the way things are now (good and bad), and extrapolated how they might progress. Remember that novel by George Orwell, 1984? It was published in 1948 just as fears of a Communist takeover gripped Europe. It was supposed to be a warning. Orwell imagined how the concerns of his present might play out in the future.

With the current strife in Europe, mass immigration, refugees coming to Europe from the Middle East and Africa, the increase in crime, warfare between left and right political groups, I could see all these happenings extending, continuing and growing through the following decade. The moral question that arises is whether an author should follow his/her own beliefs; that is, how the world should be, a Utopian view – or choose a path of development which would be the best setting for the story, however the society might become – or try to take an honest look at current events and let things fall where they might, for good or ill.

I chose both. If I have to make a choice, I will lean toward what makes a good story over what my own beliefs might be. For the sake of this story and for the way I think society will continue to progress/digress or develop or evolve over the next 10 years, I’m letting the European conflicts play out in the sequel: my now less-medically accurate vampire novel, titled SUNRISE.

In this sequel, the new Hungarian Federation is a strictly run Euro-centrist society. The State Security apparatus runs a tidy ship and getting in is very problematic. Staying in if you are a “diseased” resident such as a vampire is dangerous. However, our hero, Stefan Székely, is already within the boundaries of the Hungarian Federation at his family’s estate in the former Croatia; therefore, I, the author, must deal with the vagaries of that location. It was not an unpleasant effort. I love to travel vicariously.

Needless to say, our hero has difficulties – or there wouldn’t be a story. Yet as I charged through the final chapters and then undertook the revision stage, the look and feel, the horrors, and the dystopian ambiance seemed right. Will Stefan escape from the repressive Hungarian Federation? Or will powers greater than himself and the vampire gangs of Budapest have the final say?

In SUNRISE the world gets darker before the light shines again. Book 3, to be titled SUNSET, picks up the story even further into the future. By then, we are in full-fledged Dystopia territory. But, hey! I’m sure everything will work out just fine…if you transform into a vampire in time.

January 24, 2018

Men Reading Women

With the passing of fantasy author Ursula K. Le Guin, it seems a good time to reflect on the women authors of my life, especially in science-fiction and fantasy where the percentage has been more skewed.

When I was a young reader, science-fiction got my attention. Imagining other worlds, traveling in space, or dealing with futuristic possibilities was my thing. I started at a young age reading such sci-fi authors as Ben Bova and Robert Silverberg. Also an author named Andre Norton. Mostly these were short stories, often in an anthology edited by Silverberg. One day, though, I was surprised to learn that one of my favorite authors was a woman. I thought Andre was a boy’s name! It made me think.

Boys tend to want to read stories of other boys or men doing things, heroic things. At that age I honestly didn’t care what the girls did in stories. It was just that male authors tended to write about men doing manly things (I’m generalizing, of course), so I had no reason to try female authors. I also did not have much knowledge then of how difficult it was for female authors especially in the genre of science fiction and fantasy; I just wanted a good story. My mother pushed A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle on me, telling me it was a good story, but as a young boy I was not so interested in reading a story about a girl!

Gradually, I grew up. Focusing deliberately on a wider range of fiction, literary and decidedly non-SF works, many of them were written by women. I enjoyed them: I got to experience life as a female character, got to understand the issues they dealt with, and perhaps gained from perspective I did not previously know. It was educational. Whether or not the authors were women still did not matter to me as a reader more than what the story itself was. Marion Zimmer Bradley’s books about Authorian legend interested me, not because of the author but because of the Arthur. Nancy Kress and her sci-fi and books on writing mentored me for a time, as well.

Classic women authors starting with Mary Shelley and continuing through the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen entered my experience in college by making me play along as the man in the pages of their books. I could empathize, to a point, with the women in the novels. That experience helped develop the Romantic qualities which have eventually ruined me. I can’t confidently say, just from reading, that I now “get it” or that I understand all the characters endured and could cheer as they rose up and took whatever position they deemed in the story to be a success. Yet my empathy continued to grow.

In grad school, read Francine Prose and Annie Proulx, partly to see a view of life which I could not see without the lens of a woman author writing about a woman protagonist. A couple years ago I read a teenage romance series by Stephanie Perkins, not for the thrills of young love and relationship conundrums but to understand how a young girl thinks and acts. I used what I learned from those books for my own novel which featured a young girl. More than research, I deliberately tried to learn to see what I could not with my own experiential eyes. And then a film on cable TV one night prompted me to check out Margaret Atwood’s novels, starting with The Handmaid’s Tale. Now, of course, it has returned in a new series.

Having a daughter further instilled in me the urge to seek women authors for her to read. The Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer became a milestone in my daughter’s life. Inspired, she even wrote fan fiction herself. No matter what word or label you may apply to me and my experience with women authors, I want the best for my daughter, and for her to understand other women’s lives and times, struggles and triumphs.

More recently, as I worked on my own epic fantasy involving dragons, I returned to the novels of Anne McCaffrey. While her dragons and their world are remarkably different from the ones I was writing about, I very much appreciated the craft, the imagination, the pure exhilaration of the world she invented in Pern. Then the sci-fi/dystopian trilogy by Marie Lu caught my attention as something my daughter might like to read…but I read it first. Before reading these authors, Marian Perera, a fellow newbie, came out with Before the Storm, which wonderfully taught me how women think and act in sci-fi romance. It was liberating as I was composing my own sci-fi trilogy.

Now Ursula has passed on, never to write another novel. Yet we remain blessed to always have the products of her mind, the outpouring of words that frame and construct and fulfill our own hopes and aspirations for years past and years to come…for the world of make-believe is our world, today’s world, in disguise.

September 12, 2017

The Hero as Social Justice Warrior

Do you write what you preach?

Are fiction authors supposed to promote their personal values? Or is the story supposed to be a self-contained entity with its own political views and separate from the author’s? Must (or should) the author reveal personal positions on every social and political issues undergoing discussion in the public arena? Or is the story just a story and everything political is thrown to the wind for the sake of the story?

The writer is supposedly imbued with a welter of imagination, able to leap tall plots in a single bound, about to stop dastardly antagonists with bare hands (obviously, on a keyboard). So it should go beyond the “write what you know” –shouldn’t it? It is the mark of a true author if he/she can make you believe he/she knows what he/she is writing about.

However, there are plenty of instances where readers get in the way. I mean that in a wholly innocent sense. If writing for a particular category of reader, the writer may shape the story in certain ways to appeal to those readers. Part of that may be, say, to use initials instead of a name or to use a pen name completely to hide the gender of the author. Because a Romance author cannot be a man…in theory. And a hardcore sci-fi author cannot be female…traditionally.

If an author is against guns…would the story be gun-free?

If the author believes in a nation having a strong military and the government protecting its citizens by militarizing city police forces, would that idea be reflected in the author’s latest book? If the author is opposed to abortion, would the character in the story who gets pregnant have an abortion or have the baby and offer it for adoption? It starts to get complicated. Or perhaps it’s very easy. Do your characters act as you would act?

And then there is the marketing question.

If an author writes books in which characters act as he/she would, hold views the author holds, act as the author would act with regard to a whole host of political and social issues, views, and positions, where does that leave the reader? Could that reader like a story enough to buy it and read it even though that reader and the book’s author may have different views on, say, immigration reform? Or do we authors censor ourselves so as to be as mild-mannered as possible and not offend anyone who just might be tempted to buy our book? Do we write so as to not alienate half the potential readership, or do we go forth boldly proclaiming where we stand on this or that issue, and hope or expect that we will be praised for our stance(s)? Tough questions–or non-issues?

Perhaps many writers, authors, dabblers in words, whatever the label, just don’t care about such matters because just writing an interesting story is hard enough and we don’t have time to be concerned about things outside the story. Or are we politely disingenuous, hiding our true nature and our true beliefs and values for the sake of that interesting story, afraid to speak out about something we feel strongly about because we worry about offending fellow authors and potential readers. Compare the statistics of recent voting and decide which half of the book-buying population you will market to.

I don’t believe fiction writers, as a clan, deal much with pushing agendas. Or do we? Or should we? Or…why shouldn’t we? When I’ve written sci-fi and fantasy, I’ve invented political systems which run the spectrum from left to right, not as a reflection of my own view of “how things should be” but only for the sake of plausibility in the story and influence on the plot.

Sure, the literary canon is full of authors who pushed agendas, who wrote dogmatic tales, who gave us strongly-worded suggestions of how we should behave, what we should think, what we should do or stop doing–woven more or less subtly through a fictional narrative that served to entertain us long enough to get the message across. And others wrote to warn us of possible future scenarios we may not wish to experience.

The world of literary imagination is both a safe space and a war zone. Reader beware.

Or are they simply stories which only in hindsight do we see a message or a warning? And if the warning may be too strong, too upsetting, too triggering, then such a book might be moved into the banned book pile. Fearing the ban, authors may self-censor, keep it clean, water it down, set it all in a land of make-believe where nothing is actually meant to be real or serious, certainly not as a commentary on the present political climate, oh no!

And yet, in this present day world of saying the right thing, being politically correct or decidedly not, what is the author’s responsibility…or compulsion? Must a novel follow a political agenda? May a work of fiction illustrate differing views on particular social issues?

Should our protagonists be social justice warriors?

December 21, 2016April 3, 2017

When you get what you want …and it’s Winter!

Winter

Once there was a time

when the snow finally fell,

spreading like diamonds across the yard,

back when winter was a reason

to light the fires and embrace one another.

I counted the days

through the spring and summer,

watching the flowers bloom,

seeing people shed their clothes,

feeling the warmth cut through me.

I counted the weeks

through the falling leaves

watching them sweep my path,

seeing them blow casually away,

feeling how life fled from me.

And winter returned

as forever I prayed it would:

when all the birds take flight

yet there is one that remains,

willing to brave the cold

and shiver to death rather than escape,

wanting to believe rather than deny.

[Stephen likes to write about winter. His most wintry novels are A Beautiful Chill and A Girl Called Wolf.]

August 17, 2016April 12, 2017

The Little Princess

EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS is a forthcoming novel about the quest of a dragonslayer banished from his home. But wait! This novel is wrapped around a novella which follows the story of a little princess who has her own problems. This excerpt concerns the birth of Princess Adora.

The story is clear to all who live on Sannan Island.

A palace guard captain bearing the name Yvik stood tall and straight one day after the mid-day meal, checking the correctness of her charges. In a bright yellow uniform, crimson epaulets and trouser stripes, a tall crimson cap with yellow bill atop her head, the woman made a wonderful sight when Queen Dorothea rounded the wide turn in the palace corridor, the passage between the Great Hall of Talk and the smaller Hall of Show.

The guard captain Yvik was fair and square, and sporting very yellow hair, her jaw in full alignment with the latitudes of the world. When the queen appeared in the corridor, Yvik had swung her sword up in salute, blunt edge against her shoulder. Her mistake was to allow her lips to part and her gleaming teeth to show, what some might call a grin.

The queen halted, and her procession crashed against themselves behind her in the corridor.

“What is your name?” asked the queen of the captain.

“Your Majesty, I am Yvik, captain second-class, first of the fifth, of the palace guards,” she replied in formal manner, keeping herself tall and rigid.

“I dislike the name yet your face pleases me,” said the queen with a flick of her fan. “You shall arrive at my slumber chamber at the edge of night.”

“Tonight, Your Majesty?” she asked, overwhelmed by duty.

“Did I fall over my words?” the queen retorted. Her staff chuckled for her. She turned to her note taker. “See that she is properly attired. And give her a better name. I won’t be calling my painful delights to the name of Yvik!” Her eyes returned to Yvik. “Oh. And bring your pet.”

“Pet, Your Majesty?”

“You have a pet, don’t you? Most upper level staff have one, I hear. I’d think a guard captain, even being second-class, would be able to afford one. If not, I’ll need to raise your wage.”

“Yes, Your Majesty, I do have a pet.”

“Then bring it!”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

So at the designated evening hour, Yvik arrived—briefly renamed Destina. She arrived dressed in a floor-swishing crimson velvet robe with golden flourishes provided by the queen’s staff and smelling of the spice-laden perfumes and the musk of wild rutting beasts which, the queen’s body maid knew, never failed to excite Her Majesty and made her body quiver, respond in heavenly fashion, and in the end assured that she would achieve success in the ancient ritual.

Destina was let into the chamber, taken to the edge of the slumber seat, and was ceremoniously unrobed. Beside the woman knelt her pet, naked but for a narrow cloth wrapped around the dirty parts.

“There’s my lover!” cried the queen from atop the stack of eight mattresses. She pressed them down to the height of five.

A single golden sheet covered the queen save for her rounded head and coiled hair and the tops of her meaty shoulders. Her chubby hands and rotund arms rose and clapped the air above her chest, the signal to begin the ritual.

Her body maids assisted in maneuvering Destina and her pet into the proper positions, her perfect un-uniformed body aligned over Her Majesty’s great wealth of flesh.

Beside Destina crouched her pet, a short, thin man formerly of the stables, having the name Gup or Gunt, not that it mattered. She had bought him from the stablekeep about a year before, when she dared believe she owed herself a small measure of enjoyment at the end of her duties each day. Fortunately, he had proven worthy of her choice. Now she must give him up. When Her Majesty invites you to visit her slumber seat, you do not arrive without a pet to share.

As everyone assembled in the queen’s slumber chamber knew, it was the time of the great mating, when a woman chooses a pet for her slumber seat. A bow to ancient ritual was all it was. Otherwise, the few men allowed in Sannan worked the fields and the farms and kept to themselves as best they could, awaiting a welcome respite in the service of a mistress. However, twice each year a festival was held and men were let into the city. Much mating occurred during the festival weeks, despite the laws allowing only the officially arranged unions. The remainder of the year, many of the high-born ladies kept a pet for an occasional evening’s dalliance. Her Majesty, however, could not abide such a poor, dirty thing being in the palace anymore than might be absolutely necessary for nature’s briefest call.

Thus, ointments and oils were applied by the queen’s body maids, and after some time a union was made. The pet shrieked and grunted and the wildness of its actions delighted both the queen and Destina, who had never shared her pet with anyone. The queen, too, squealed in something between a cry of pain and a plea for mercy. The strained voice Destina shared with the queen when the peak rolled over her was similarly a combination of animal noises and a strange, annoying whistling. The women shared a gasp.

“What is that?” the queen asked, huffing and puffing.

“My pet has made a noise, Your Majesty. My greatest apologies!”

“It smells so foul!”

“A thousand pardons, Your Majesty!” cried Destina.

“Only a thousand? I would think a million might get you closer to saving your position in the palace guards.” The queen regarded her body maid. “Remove the dirty thing this instant!”

Two beefy women grabbed hold of Destina’s pet, pulling him off the queen’s wide body.

“Then we have finished? It’s done?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Thank the goddesses! I don’t know how much more I could have taken.”

The pet was promptly pulled from the slumber chamber and no one knew or cared what became of it.

Destina was wiped clean, put back into the robe, and dismissed to some new location where she was unknown yet again called Yvik.

The queen’s body maids wiped her prodigious skin, washed her in the inward places, then set about testing the success of the ritual. It was a delicate procedure. After several hours in which the nursing staff pushed a long, thin tube up and inside the queen, measuring the dripping at the top of each hour, listening for just the right gurgle, just the right pop, just the right hiss, the chief nursing maid finally was able to pronounced success.

“Thank the goddesses!” the queen repeated at the bottom of each hour. She hated the testing but knew it was necessary. Better that than the need for a repeat performance. Pets could be so disgusting. Palace guards could be so quirky. If only the goddesses could flick their holy fingers and make a child appear fully formed.

On the fourth day after the ancient ritual, a royal announcement was made, stating for all the people in Sannan that the queen had, in this time of union, achieved royal success. And the word success was the golden prayer all who performed the ancient ritual hoped to speak and dared to hear. Obviously, a great cheer arose throughout the city. At last, their queen would bear a royal heir, already ten years since the passing of her mother, Queen Marvala.

And so, after some time, like in all stories big and small, whatever was required for the goddesses to mix together the perfect specimen of ladyhood, it was Queen Dorothea who opened her mighty thighs and with great effort and pain pushed out the perfect babe.

The fleshy thing was immediately identified as a lady and given straight into the arms of Her Majesty.

“She looks so adorable!” the queen was heard to say. “I shall call her Adora.”

“Hail Princess Adora!” the nursing staff cheered.

[Read the next section here on the Edgewise Words Inn blog, concerning when Princess Adora is nine years old and gains a baby brother.]

April 13, 2016April 3, 2017

Three Stories We Keep Reading over and over and over

Throughout the past three years, I have been able to ascertain that there are three stories, types of stories, or story memes retold again and again which nobody is willing to welcome any longer, and henceforth should be exiled to the dustbins of hosiery! Here they are in all of their unspoken glory – and beware the variations, too. Unfortunately, I have written each of them.

The love story. Emotional linkage. Moreover, two young romantics slathering over each other. Worse yet if one of them is of some special, protected category such as ghost, gremlin, zombie, homeboy, vampire, wolfboy, fairy, fairy tale meme, or absent-minded English teacher. It is enough that we recognize that people have this flaw, this need for completion, but must the rest of us read about it? see it splayed open across the grand screen? discuss it through the night on social media- as though it were a traditional recipe for disaster? Sure, we have the so-called “anti-romance” – but isn’t that just another sheep of another color than black? Let them do what they do in private and leave the rest of us alone, thank you very much.

Variation: The love story set in a dystopian society where good is evil and black is white and everyone is out to get everyone else because that is the way of the world and nobody is better or worse than anyone else and the equal ones are slightly more equal than the others who are not. Often they must play a game to determine who is most equal.

Example. A Beautiful Chill is an example of the oft-repeated cliche of campus unions and reunions where Art & Letters rejoice in unyielding depravity up to the final revelation of emotional slaughter. Woe is me, sayeth the love-lorn Author. (Credit for keeping it real; that is, on Earth and in modern times.)

The discovery of a new world. In this avenue I would add all the doorway, portal, gateway, wardrobe, tunnel, and wormhole stories where one of “us” goes somewhere else and woo-hoo it’s almost like where we came from (or it’s quite different) and aren’t we amazed! And what does our hero/heroine do there? Exploit the darn place to within an inch of its history! Such stories have been foisted upon us usually as warnings of what we have become or shall become if we do not pay attention, pay through the nose, or pay the first-born child of every family in debt to our fanatical financials and lords of leisure! And yet we take no heed and continue to fall into our dubious inheritance. No more! “If it ain’t here, it ain’t real,” quoth one long-lost quotation master. Who should care for a world of pure invention?

Variation: The parallel universe, the time travel story, the dystopian tale – all of them are poor representations of the main theme, us doing whatever me must, all relying on knowledge of our existing set of circumstances in order to make pun of all that we hold close to us and dreary. They mean to trick you. Smoke and mirrors, just smoke and mirrors. Mind not the poor excuse that is what you have now, for life could be far, far worse over there. Be glad you are here.

Example: The Dream Land, a lengthy tome [read ‘trilogy’] ostensibly of interdimensional [read ‘doorway, portal, etc.’] intrigue [read ‘political skulduggery’], alien romance [see above complaint], and world domination in volving two high school science nerds who grow up to become far too dangerous. Too many giant war rabbits for my liking, also. And a comet just for overkill.

The medieval family clash. As a variation on ‘new worlds’ is the ‘old world’ meme. I speak here of our vainglorious return to days of yore. Either said stories are poor recreations of history mismanaged or they are faux pas histories which serve the purpose of greasepainted stages of perversity. Need we more of that? There is good reason those days of yore are done – and none too soon: we who represent the greater good of our species are simply too embarrassed by what we are capable of bestowing upon our peers. We seek atonement, forgiveness, or another round of the merry-go-round. While we may wish to relive the highlights and lowlifes, the sum total of our aspirations is a rousing return to that which never was and cannot be all in the name of trying it again for the better and falling, indeed, crashing from great dragon-borne heights to the fire-pit below!

Variation: The story that hides in a return to mythological creations and through them and their unfolding narrativity seek to impress us with the sheer drudgery of life in those days. Be glad of the life you have now and forget those of long ago. Yet such creatures and the winsome gods and goddesses themselves make for poor judges of our modern tastes. Be not fooled or made a fool!

Example: After Ilium, where the narrative necessarily parallels the standard liturgy yet is viewed through the rose-colored lenses of a neophyte (often called ‘the lucky loser’) for the purpose of excising tears from unwary readers. It’s a quite dubious in the depiction of an infamous battle: the wooden horse and the glimmering walls and the shiny gold.

There is a solution. Seek not for such misguided diversions but instead search out only fair and acceptable solutions to the diversions you crave, for they do exist. Break free and live a life beneath a tree, in the fields of the locust, all barefoot and squishy, with fluffy-bunny clouds overhead and the wind in your hair – like all good little munchkins who have survived remakes of wizard-themed films. And if that fails you, then there likely is little hope; you might as well embrace your day job (night, whatever) with hardy gusto. Good day to you!

I plead guilty, charged or not. I have dabbled in the literary arts and dared sail among the gods and goddesses of my imagination, no matter the fatigue in my wings. I saw the light above the clouds, heard the creak of heavenly gates, and yet, in the end, as imagination faltered, I flew on. And here I am . . . for what it’s worth.

“We are all little stars,” said someone on Twitter yesterday.

November 18, 2015

The Top 10 Reasons to Make a Top 10 List

How to make a Top 10 List in 10 easy steps!

They’re all the rage these days: the lists, the numbers, the numbered lists, and all the advice given out in the form of lists of 10 or 7 or 5 or 3 things you need to know about anything, absolutely anything at all!

Here are the 10 steps to making a Top 10 List:

1. Type the number 1.
2. Type one example of your idea, or whatever you want to make a list about.
3. Add more numbers and more items until you have compiled ten of them.
4. Arrange in order of most important to least important, or, if you wish, put them in reverse order.
5. Go have lunch, or, in the alternative, a drink of your favorite beverage.
6. Review the list; edit, proofread as necessary.
7. Take a nap. In the alternative, daydream.
8. Practice reading your list aloud; if bored, use a voice with a foreign accent or as a beloved cartoon character.
9. Run spellchecker; or, if you choose, start the entire project over from scratch.
10. Sit back and admire your list. If flexible enough, pat yourself on the back.

Seems easy, right? Anyone can do it. The beauty of such lists, of course, is their flexibility. Say it with me: Flex-I-Bil-I-Ty! Stay flexible. Practice flexibilizing. Anticipate changes. Embrace alternatives. Reward yourself for absolutely anything you can. And always count to 10 before and after making such a list.

Lists of 10 are useful for many different things. For example, steps to do something.

To demonstrate (etymology: “to strut like a demon”) the process, I shall construct a list of the 10 steps I go through when I am writing a novel. I choose this topic because it’s one of the few things I actually know how to do.

1. Get idea, write for fun, see where it goes.

Usually it’s something I read, hear about, or a life experience that gives me the idea that something may make a good story, hence I should write a novel about it. For example, AFTER ILIUM began in a Classical Rhetoric class where we studied the Encomium of Helen, a speech in support of Helen being a victim and not a co-conspirator in that Trojan War mess. So I thought: Wouldn’t it be weird (i.e., cool) if a guy named Parris met a woman named Helen today on the way to see the ruins of Troy?

2. If it goes somewhere, keep going, form longer idea.

Like the step states, I write and see if it goes anywhere. A fruitful idea will go and go and never stop until I just plain get tired of typing. A weak idea will usually run out of steam rather quickly; then I’ll dismiss it and get on with my day.

3. Pause to research, write a little.

Eventually I’ll get to a point where I cannot write further without checking some facts, doing some research, making sure I’m on the right track. So I’ll pause in my writing to do that research. I’ll continue writing, of course, but usually in smaller portions and with longer intervals between the writing sessions.

4. Repeat step 3.

Yes, I do repeat that step. Because it’s an important step. I cannot write if I do not know what I’m writing about, so in this stage I am switching back and forth often between the researching and the writing. While writing THE DREAM LAND Book III, which involved a comet’s approach and a planet-wide evacuation plan, I researched spacecraft requirements, life-support systems, astronomy and inhabitable planets, and comets, all rather extensively…and continued to write pages while researching.

5. Write longer portions using research.

After sufficient research has been done and the relevant knowledge incorporated, I’m able to writing in more extended sessions because I now know the details. I still might pause to check some facts. When I wrote A DRY PATCH OF SKIN, my vampire novel, I researched skin diseases and then wrote a scene set in a doctor’s office where the doctor tells my hero what is wrong with him…using the long list of diseases and their symptoms I got from medical texts.

6. Keep going until done.

Now comes the long haul of writing. Writing sprints are helpful. Also helpful is no distractions or disturbances or poor health. On a good day I can write forever. It’s fun and I am reading a new story as quickly as I am typing it out. What happens next? No, don’t tell me, Brain; I want to find out on my own….

7. Edit.

Yes, I usually edit a bit as I go. In fact, each writing session I begin by editing the previous portion of text as a warm-up to the fresh composition. But here, in this step, I do a serious deep edit from start to finish. Much rewriting may occur, including cuts to some “darlings” and additional text added.

8. Research, check everything for technical correctness.

In this step I tend to get a little paranoid, worried that some expert somewhere may read my book and shake his/her head at the facts I present. So I recheck crucial data, facts, and information–just to be sure. Also, sometimes new questions arise in the writing and so I return to research late in the process. This is also where I check for technical consistency. (If the spacecraft is designated V-77 in chapter 23, I need to also call it V-77 in chapter 29, not V-75.)

9. Edit for style.

I check for the voice of characters, vocal quirks, grammar, and so on. I make sure the voice of the narrator is consistent. I play with the wording of key phrases and sentences, choosing the best word(s) for the effect I want. This is a long step involving repeated readings of the same passages.

10. Proofread.

Beyond spellchecker. I read everything with my own eyes several times…and yet I still miss things and, embarrassingly, find them at the last moment while reading a proof copy of the book. A few tips to catch such errors: 1) read aloud; you will hear what your eyes do not see; and 2) read from the last sentence forward to the first sentence, at least within each chapter; forced isolation of the sentence, taken out of the flow, helps pinpoint any flaws in syntax or grammar, as well as checking spelling and punctuation.

Then I am finished–at least with the writing! There is certainly another 10 List for publishing a book. Perhaps it has 20 items. I lose count after a while, anyway.

Oh! I almost forgot to give you the Top 10 reasons for making a Top 10 List. Sorry for that slip. That’s probably worthy of a list itself. Well, here they are–but I’m sure you’ll find them quite mundane.

1. People like Top 10 lists.
2. Compartmentalizes information in an easily digestible form.
3. People can count to 10.
4. Counting creates excitement.
5. People are often bored.
6. Counting prevents boredom.
7. People hate boredom.
8. Counting gives people a sense of progression.
9. People like the word ‘top’!
10. At the conclusion of a Top 10 List, people are likely to debate whether the items should be on the list or not.

Stephen is the author of AFTER ILIUM, THE DREAM LAND TRILOGY, A BEAUTIFUL CHILL, A DRY PATCH OF SKIN, AIKO, and a forthcoming novel, A GIRL CALLED WOLF.
He also blogs at DeConstruction of the Sekuatean Empire

August 26, 2015August 25, 2015

The Rules of Write Club

There are a lot of people in the world who write. Some of them publish what they write. Good for them, I say. I’ve managed to do that, too.

However, there are plenty of people who write who stop writing. Sometimes they run out of ideas. Sometimes they get distracted by other business. Sometimes they give up, unsure of themselves. Or they doubt anyone would want to read what they write.

I’d like to remind those people, the ones who worry about readers, exactly what the rules of Write Club are.

The first rule of Write Club is always write for yourself.

It’s your idea, after all. Please yourself first. Explore the interesting aspects of the story that has intrigued you enough to want to write it. A famous person whose name I can no longer recall once said “Write the story you want to read.” I follow that advice religiously–without actually writing anything religious. My entry into writing came from my reading; I soon believed I could come up with a better story, so I tried.

Now I’m stuck with it. Stories come into my head, kick off their shoes, prop up their feet on my nice upholstered brain and dare me to write them. Sometimes I do, sometimes I let them stew a bit hoping they will write themselves. My current work-in-progress stewed for a year before it reached a boiling point and had to be written just to get it out of my head and make room for something else.

So go ahead and write the story the way you think is best, the way it suits you. Make it the story you want to read. You’re a decent human being, a fair reader, a nice person, right? So why wouldn’t someone else want to read something that YOU want to read? If you put your heart and soul into it and you’ve gone through all the checklists of revision and editing, who can say it won’t be suitable for others to read? Then you can entertain thoughts of whether others would enjoy reading it.

And if you decide nobody else would like reading it, then…well, then you have some free time to start writing another story. Because…

The second rule of Write Club is never stop writing.

STEPHEN SWARTZ is the author of several Myrddin novels: AFTER ILIUM, THE DREAM LAND (Trilogy) (Book I, Book II, Book III), A BEAUTIFUL CHILL, A DRY PATCH OF SKIN, and AIKO.
More of his twisted sarcasm may be encountered on his “other” blog: DeConstruction of the Sekuatean Empire and follow him on Facebook (Author Stephen Swartz) and Twitter (@StephenSwartz1).