Another year ...

Another successful Cincinnati Celtic Fest. One set with Amy Roark-Oblak on the flute - White Orchid - and another with "Tri Werin," which means three folk and is a Welsh group. Technically, there are four of the latter, but the Welsh word for four is a sadistic tongue-twister.

I am exhausted, my fingers still feel like sausages, and I do not want to think about anything for a while.

But it was good.

Anatomy of an Idea: Ten Cities Down

Ten Cities Down initially started as a writing exercise. I took a handful of randomly generated names that intrigued me and wrote short scene snippets. Other names chosen include Kallistrate, Vasilka and Jory. Timur's included the core concept, the idea of a multi-tiered city and an escape from the afterlife. This piece sat for some time before I decided to write a story from it ...

I knew I needed another character to complicate the journey, and particularly a pretext to divert him back downwards. I decided to use his daughter, and things were never the same. Civine ... well, she took over, running my story and my narrator ragged.

I've always been fascinated by the wisdom and resilience of children ... while still, of course, showing the impatience and inexperience of their age. This is a story which is very muted at heart, with a repressed emotional tone. Were it left up to Timur, it might be cold. Civine provided (I hope) my balance.

Ten Cities Down

To my surprise, this story is already posted at Labyrinth Inhabitant, here: http://www.labyrinthinhabitant.com/stories.html

Pleasurable sense data! Share and enjoy.

Also, the editor provides officially the best log-line for a story ever. I would not have thought of it, for certain!

The Opposite of Despair

I just received word that Abyss & Apex want to reprint my story, "Hour By Hour" in their Best Of volume for 2007.

... well, of course I said yes!

But it gets better. They'll be launching the anthology at the World Fantasy Convention. Which means I'm there! Even if it's just the first time it sees sales, that's still pretty cool.

Cover art here:

http://ericreynolds.livejournal.com/31864.html

Despair

One of the exercises for my boot camp today - the one I chose - was to contrast despair with a time of contentment. This is about three quarters of what I came up with. The implication is meant to be that she was in a political (albiet loveless) engagement, which was just broken:

Saerin turned the ring over in her fingers, the inscription catching against her nails. “To a fruitful union and two successful lives.” Not a romantic inscription, but the nexus of calculated hopes formed with a man who had understood her priorities. What had seemed very logical and reserved then now drew her down out of – so it seemed – all proportion with her loss.

If that round hollowness inside her crumbled, she worried what else would fall. Into it, she poured the memory of scattershot days, madcap days before she had been elevated to the rank of judge. Unreasoning hope like white-hot barbs kept her surging forward, sleepless, ceaseless, always championing someone for whom there could be no success.

Those were the days of her greatest pleasure.

She guided that foolishness down into the deep and had no idea whether it would ever emerge. The gridwork of ambition surrounded her, this action necessary, then this concession – a sound political marriage … the ring was the same shape as that space she was trying to fill, but her fondest recollections would not substitute for the chances she needed.

Standing in stasis, unfamiliar, balanced on a brink without a bridge – when she had once not cared about the width of the abyss. She whirled, dizzy, snatching at the moments. Happiness … but could she even hold onto why she had been happy? It seemed arcane now. What pleasure in meals that could not fill her, in learning to write by stars when she could no longer afford candles?

Saerin mocked her younger self as she buried the memories. She had known the carter was innocent of running over the young nobleman, but how grateful he would have been for a light sentence, to save face, to remember the dewey-eyed lawyer later. Never mind the twin sons who clung to him and his bustly wife who rubbed her almost-flat stomach anxiously.

She stopped her work of mental reconstruction. It was the blurry sensation of examining a stranger’s life, a woman she could not remember being. A woman who had been happy – and by that extension, she could not recall the emotion. It was a part of another existence. Was it something she could regain? Or, like a quirk of personality, out of reach the same way reshaping herself would be?

“To a fruitful union and two successful lives.” Saerin flicked the ring to the floor, watched it bounce, heard the final click of the gavel when she was not the one wielding it. The pounding of her heart. A wet, hot rush of absolute experience.

Mother of Lies

I just finished "Mother of Lies," the second in a duology by Dave Duncan (no relation), and I can wholeheartedly recommend both of them. In general, the story is intense and intriguing, with some enjoyable twists, realistic and flaw people, and - again - the sense that what occurs is less a plot as an organic exploration of events. Characters who have been hinted at and mentioned throughout the first book finally surface in solid portrayals. And once more, Duncan (no relation) manages to pull off showing an event I knew was coming while making it effective and surprising.

I did have some quibbles. One romantic relationship in the story just seems to happen out of nowhere. There were a couple bits in both dialogue and internal narrations that seemed like modernisms and thus out of place. One of the main antagonists was degraded in such a fashion that I thought it did a disservice to the entire storyline. I didn't want to see her reduced before the final showdown. In part due to this, in part just due to portrayal, this same showdown felt anticlimactic to me (though it wasn't the only showdown in the book, and the others were superb). One plot-thread was never resolved. And though the unusual physical design of the world was touched upon, it didn't seem enough - particularly as the book ends with an appendix discussing how the physical geography would (not) work.

That aside, I recommend these two books heartily. They're well worth the read.

Emotions ...

So far, my boot camp has included exercises on Anger, Anxiety, Apathy, Confusion and Contentment.

I really enjoy doing boot camps. They have several advantages: I get a secondary exercise fitting the parameters into fantasy (though in a couple cases, I haven't done that), I get to explore aspects of settings I've written in or am working on without dry summary or the obligation to write a full story, and I can play with ideas or concepts in snapshot - again without having to feel pressured to complete a work.

In the case of the script boot camp, I didn't have the "relaxation" of not having to create a finished work, but in compensation, I got to work with a new medium and compress stories into a (relatively) streamlined form.

How do ...

... dogs drink water?

Here's a link to a rather interesting video that answers that question:

http://videos.komando.com/2008/08/29/dog-drinks-water/

It's not what you think.

Reading Recc Updated

I just added a new reading recommendation to my site: Children of Chaos, by Dave Duncan (no relation). I was going to comment more here, but I got most of what I wanted to say in the clip. Be warned, though - have Mother of Lies on hand before you read this one. I'm flailing because I need to go pick up book two now ...

Actually, I do have more to say! I was disappointed that Duncan (no relation) didn't do more with the unusual shape of his world, but given the course of events towards the sequel, I think that is on its way to being corrected. I also found myself consulting the glossary at the front of the book. Whoever green-lighted its inclusion was shrewd. The world isn't hard to understand, but for some reason, I found myself consulting a lot to make sure of terms.

Ten Cities Down

... sold to Labyrinth Inhabitant Magazine. This is a story I'm very proud of, and features one of my favorite child characters.

Writers' Boot Camp: Session Three

Converting a script into a story was a pleasant surprise: it was easy and smoother than I had anticipated, though I ran into a POV issue and I think I will need to strengthen the emotional arc a bit. That's for editing, however!

As I decided earlier, I'm going to start another boot camp session, this one by following "Creating Character Emotions" by Ann Hood, with one exercise chosen from each emotion per day. I've already read the introduction and am ready to start with anger.

... no, I'm not annoyed, that's the first emotion.

Boot Camp Addendum

I finally decided which script to convert into a short story, and it was one of the first. Specifically, this one:

Script 7/3-4 (Carl Rugman, film producer; hair brush; "When you say it like that, it's almost poetry." Superhero): Harried Carl Rugman interviews three superheroes - Rapunzel, the Sybarite and Dolphin Lass - for inclusion on a reality TV series. This was so ridiculous and so insanely fun to write. Almost eight pages long. I probably will convert this one into a story.

Hmmm. I guess I was right about that. ;-)

My dog ...

In the past few days, she's had dramatic barking confrontations with her reflection, a soda can and a watermelon.

Due Thought

"I hope I never do anything without due thought - even if the thought sometimes has to shift its feet pretty briskly to keep up with the deed." -- spoken by Brother Cadfael in Ellis Peters' One Corpse Too Many

Nextian Geography

I just finished Jasper Fforde's First Among Sequels and have a few comments - spoiler-free! I want to start off by staying that Fforde is one of the few authors who makes me genuinely happy just reading. There are some beautiful explanations, puns, situations ... and a diabolical cameo by one of my favorite fiends, Aornis Hades. The book ended with a few plot threads dangling and one (large) new one just opened ... well, it *is* the first among sequels.

This is the first book in the Next series, however, that felt like a sequel in the Hollywood sense - as if Fforde went back, analyzed popular elements, and made a point of continuing them on popularity, not so much whether they fit a story he wanted to tell. Now, this could be just my vibe, but it is particularly ironic in a book that deals - as part of its plot - with pandering to the demographic. I'm not disappointed by any means, but it struck me peculiarly.

On another highlight points - Thursday's family rocks, and the jump forward to Friday's teenagerhood is far from just a gratuitious gap. Landen, her husband, could so easily be a cardboard character, and yet his page-time is realized with skill.

Also amusement is this novel features the series' first cameo of a character from a series of a living (and active) writer - apparently with permission! Cool.

Lexi Pictures!

A couple new shots of Lexi:

http://aiara.deviantart.com/art/Lexi-s-Lair-94896372
http://aiara.deviantart.com/art/Lexi-Playing-94896737

Acceptance!

... is not just a philosophy.

It is what has just happened to my story "The Seeds of Profit." Hurray! Details forthcoming for an untitled anthology approximately April 2009 ...

Sorry for my quiet of late. Haven't really been able to think of anything to say.

Anatomy of an Idea: Soul Siblings (reposted)

You may want to read this story (http://www.sorceroussignals.com) before you read the following. There are considerable “spoilers” in here. This is actually a repost (somewhat edited) from the previous run of the story.

The Gedden (originally the Geneb) are a fantasy race I've had on my backburner for a long time. They date back to my first "epic" multiple plotline novel, a schlocky disaster which I divided into three parts (still one book) at end of February, 1997. Though I can't place an exact date on it, I would have started sometime in late 1996. I was fascinated by the idea of a literal, physical third eye, of a race of soul twins ... and the penalty for their meeting. In book two or three - I forget which, and I never wrote either - my Geneb character was supposed to be forced by the villains to confront his soul sister. He lived and hooked up with the story's token werewolf, but his opposite died. There is no direct causal connection between Kenri and Delanor and Tarivan and Evyelara.

Flash forward to a more sane and better written era. I wanted to revive the Gedden, but wanted to do a story about mages. (Tarivan was originally supposed to be a different kind of sorcerer.) So I tried to think of what kind of magic might be particularly useful with a third eye, and lit upon the idea that it might allow you to see two different things at once. This would help if you were a seer and would otherwise be "engulfed" by the vision. The general form of the plotline fell into place quickly - the siblings on the same job, the capture, the rescue, the eventual denouement ... though in my original plan, it was Tarivan who died. The situation with Quirilan was inspired by a historical precedent - I'm not sure if it was Roman noblewomen and gladiators, but it probably was.

This story sat in my idea file for a while, marked uncertain as to whether it was a novel or a short. I finally decided to write it specifically for Black Gate magazine after I received a glowing rejection for Summer in Sadria, which was essentially a fantasy mystery. I lined out the story in general terms and started writing. When I got into it, though, I realized that I had made my villain just a stereotypical evil overlord and at least wanted to provide him with a concrete desire and a reason to resist him that was SLIGHTLY unusual. Imitating a god came to mind, I decided it would be appropriate to make Tarivan devout to contrast with his otherwise rootless personality, and this conveniently provided my (somewhat) happy ending.

It found its initial home at “Afterburn SF,” and is happily reprinted in Sorcerous Signals now. Months (years?) later, I’m still quite proud of this one.

Writer's Boot Camp: Clean-Up and Next Plan

Two more scripts. I decided this time to try a couple less ambitious concepts:

Script 7/29 - 30 (Holiday Film; Ingrid Malaise, shoe salesperson; a roll of toilet paper; "I'll have to ask my mother."): Ingrid, unsuspecting shoe salesperson, ends up trying to sell heels to Santa Claus' daughter. The Clauses have bought rolls of toilet paper to give in lieu of lumps of coal. Ingrid remains skeptical despite multiple "proofs" of who she is dealing with, but Christmas morning erases all doubt. Five and a third pages. This was just pure fluff. I don't really see it as a story, though some of the bits were fun.

Script 7/31 - 8/1 (Sci Fi; Ken Moore, painter; one half of a swimsuit; "What were they gonna offer you for it?"): Ken Moore hangs out on his porch with buddy Jack, discussing a bizarre alien visitor who tried to buy half of his ex-girlfriend's bikini. His friend dismisses it as a tall tale ... then goes into the kitchen to warn his own alien visitor that his fellow citizens are being a trifle too obvious. Five and a half pages. I'm sure I've seen or read this story before in some form. It just feels tired.

I enjoy my self-imposed boot camps - I think they do a lot to strengthen my writing, give me a sense of discipline, and give me some fodder that I might not have otherwise come up with. This in particular was a blast and gave me a chance to try a new style of writing. I'm thinking of picking one of these scripts to convert into a short story. After it's written, then I'm starting on another boot camp run, through the book "Creating Character Emotions" by Ann Hood. It should be a little over a month as there are thirty-six emotions listed, with exercises for each.

Soul Siblings - now up!

My story "Soul Siblings" can now be found at Sorcerous Signals: http://www.sorceroussignals.com/

Read it! Vote for it! ... mostly the latter. ;-)