Mithril
Snowmane
Gabriel
(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog September 26 2008, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)
Friday Cat Blogging
The flying saucer people were delicious! Moar?
I am delicious.
Say what?
I ated something delicious, and it killed me ded.
You look delicious…come here and let me lick your camera lens, big boy.
Story Dreaming
I’ve talked here before about my plot-dreaming or story-dreaming, and I thought you might like to see an example (in italics below). For those unfamiliar with earlier posts on the subject, this is where my subconscious either does the heavy lifting on writing something I’m already working on, or on creating a new world for me to play in. I had one of the latter types of dreams last night (mostly this morning really).
I staggered out of bed as soon as I woke up out of the middle of the dream and I went straight to my laptop to write it down. These are the only circumstances under which Laura will not send me back to bed when I’m as groggy as I was then—staggering into walls, etc. I really like this particular idea and I might well turn it into a book after I write the 2-5 that are higher up the list. I’m going to bold the parts that I inserted as I was writing down the dream to make things make a touch more story sense. Everything else is exactly as I dreamed it. This is both the raw product of my unconscious mind and an unedited first draft chunk just as it came out this morning when I was still so incoherent I was running into things.
The Flake:
Cornflakes dipped in dark chocolate and piled together into a black tower a half mile tall (Actually flat stones, very nearly round with a finish like obsidian and feel like river rock, maybe ten inches across). Huge natural-looking/unnatural looking geological structure. Half is buried below the surface of the Earth. A ruined prince and his people have taken shelter there after a usurpation (evil sorcerer). It’s on land he owned as Prince of something like Wales. As a boy he used to climb through the structure for hours and days on end. No one knows it like he does.
He and his remaining knights take shelter there, putting in a couple of gates at key points to make an impregnable fortress. Have held out for months when a night assault up from the roots takes them prisoner. Something like dwarf/troll hybrids (hated by everyone and nearly wiped out by prince’s father) hired as mercenaries by the sorcerer. Turns out they can manipulate the flake (thought to be permanent/unbreakable) by use of special something or other because their ancestors built the tower.
The sorcerer arrives and kills most of the company and the dwarves, throws the prince and a few of his followers (+ betrothed) in the dungeon. In the absolute darkness the prince receives a gift from one of the dying trolls–key to his cell.
He slips out into the depths still without light and starts making his way by the sound of the wind that always blows through the structure as he used to as a boy. The different sound of the wind on people and stuff allows him to track upwind to find his followers as well as eventually to lead his band out into the night by an entrance down at the seaside. Eventually makes deal with trolls that will restore them to some of their rightful lands lift price on their head in exchange for their help.
An after-note on my sub/un—conscious mind. I know myself well enough to see from the title I gave this and the physical structure of the tower that this is at least partially inspired by a British candy bar type (the flake stuff is very like a bar I’ve had there a few times), and, that in my dream I was literally wandering around inside the chocolate (it was a good dream). It was quite probably triggered by having a different types of chocolate (Legacy truffles) last night which, in turn, reminded me of our recent trip to Winnipeg where I had yet a third kind of chocolate (Aero) that I associate with Edinburgh and the flake stuff.
So, if you’ve ever wondered how I make this stuff up, there it is: weird dreams brought on by chocolate. Or, this story was brought on by the letters c-h-o-c…etc.
(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog September 24 2008, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)
The Plot Synopsis Strikes Back
As part of Joshua Palmatier’s Plot Synopsis Project II I’m posting the proposal synopsis for CodeSpell, the third book in the WebMage series. Links to other writers’ synopses will be at the bottom of this post.
For my full thoughts on how to write one of these you can see my posts on the subject. Pitching and Synopses parts 1, 2, and 3. Plus, what a synopsis should do.
Update: For those who have read CodeSpell you may notice that while the overall sequence of events and emphasis follows the book, there are any number of minor but significant departures. That’s pretty typical and expected. Enough so that this book went straight from delivery to the copyeditor with no revisions. For comparison here’s the synopsis for WebMage written after the book was complete.
Book Proposal for WebMage III (CodeSpell)
The story begins a few days after the end of Cybermancy with Ravirn receiving an invite from Zeus. The big guy is throwing a party of divine proportions. Among the reasons for the party is the coming-out of the newest power in the pantheon, Raven, so Ravirn’s attendance is not subject to negotiation.
The party is held on Mount Olympus in a huge outdoor venue. Ravirn attends with Cerice and Melchior in tow. During the course of the afternoon he encounters Cerberus, Hades, Persephone, the Fates, Dionysus, the Furies, and his own parents. His mother snubs him, his father does not, and in the process we find out that his father is the son of one of the Muses. He also runs into Dairn (last seen being dumped unconscious into a faerie ring in WebMage).
Something is horribly wrong with Dairn, though Ravirn is unable to decide what. This becomes much more important to Ravirn in a few minutes, when Dairn tries to kill Ravirn using powers beyond anything he’s ever previously exhibited. Ravirn is able to escape the attack, but only by the skin of his teeth.
There are a number of things going on that Ravirn doesn’t know or find out about for some time:
1. In the process of falling through the faerie rings, Dairn lost big chunks of his personality and memory. As he was wandering the worlds over the next year by randomly leaving and reentering faerie rings he became merged with the goddess Nemesis. Mythologically the role of Nemesis has a lot of overlap with the Furies, though she is less constrained, because she is without any controlling authority. She is also a bodiless entity, something like a non-replicating computer virus. In merging with Dairn she’s developed a powerful hatred of Ravirn.
2. Zeus is not the buffoon that Ravirn believes him to be. The sex-addled idiot thing is a carefully cultivated and personally rewarding act he uses to help throw his enemies off and reduce his workload. He is not fond of work if it can be avoided.
3. The damage to Necessity in Cybermancy includes a number of things that pose problems for the pantheon in general and Ravirn in specific. Among those is the loosing of Nemesis. Previously she had been confined both in location and power. Also, the resource locator forks for Tartarus (the prison of the Titans) have been destroyed. This last means that Zeus can no longer maintain a tight watch and leash on them, and that they are likely to free themselves and restart the Titanomach (the ten-year war with the gods that ended with the imprisonment of the Titans). Another major result of the damage is severely restricted access to Necessity, both electronic and physical. Not even the Furies are able to access her physical location and they can only speak with her intermittently. There are many other points of damage, but these are the ones of primary interest for this story.
4a. In order to prevent the escape of the Titans Zeus needs to arrange for the repair of Necessity. He believes he could take them in battle again if he had to, but it would be better if he didn’t have to. Fortunately, he sees a perfect out that involves a minimum of effort on his part——make Ravirn fix Necessity.
4b. His method for doing this is to nudge Nemesis into an encounter with Dairn and then to provide an opportunity for the merged being to have an unsuccessful shot at Ravirn, hence the party. Thereafter, in order to get rid of Nemesis Ravirn will be forced to repair the portion of Necessity that also contains the Tartarus forks.
4c. Zeus is also concerned about the increased power of the Fates in the computerized era and would like to see them taken down a peg or two. By framing them for the creation of Nemesis/Dairn he hopes to set the Furies, who are very jealous of the role of Nemesis, against the Fates. He also hopes that in the course of fixing Necessity Ravirn will introduce an anti-Fate bias that will come into full effect once Necessity’s powers are restored.
The initial attack by Nemesis is quickly followed up by further attempts, forcing Ravirn into a running battle with Nemesis while he tries to figure out some way to stop her. Because of Zeus’s machinations Ravirn becomes convinced that the Fates in general and Clotho in particular are responsible. This puts Cerice in the position of either joining Ravirn in direct opposition to her grandmother or of recusing herself. While she is being torn about this decision, Fate intervenes, literally. Clotho acts to remove Cerice from the equation, imprisoning her. Without Shara, who is still trapped within Necessity, Cerice is unable to resist effectively and is largely removed from the scene.
This is the opportunity Tisiphone has been waiting for, and because of the opposing roles of Furies and Nemesis, she is able to act as a desperately needed ally. Nemesis is a full-fledged goddess and her powers are nearly as great as those of Eris or Hades. Only the combination of the fact that she has to work through the relatively fragile medium of Dairn’s body and the intervention of Zeus allowed Ravirn to escape the first attack in one piece.
Over the course of the next several days Ravirn and Tisiphone discover that it is the damage to Necessity that unleashed Nemesis. A significant part of this discovery process results from communications with Shara from within Necessity. These communications are only possible because of Tisiphone’s tight connection to Necessity. Shara literally has to speak through Tisiphone. We also learn here that something truly strange happened with Ahllan’s disappearance in Cybermancy.
Once this is all established, it becomes clear that Ravirn is going to have to try to repair Necessity. He’s going to need to figure out some point of access. He’s also going to need more computing power. Necessity is simply too big a job for Melchior’s current specs. It’s time for a major (i.e. risky) upgrade. Melchior’s goblin shape and personality will remain the same, but he’s getting a new case and (in line with Ravirn’s chaos powers) a new quantum computing architecture that will make him significantly less mweb dependent.
Just as Ravirn completes the upgrade and reboots Melchior, Nemesis arrives. It’s touch and go, but at the cost of a really severe beating, Tisiphone is able to buy enough time for Ravirn and Melchior to escape. Unfortunately, they are now without the link they need to reach Necessity. In a stroke of apparent coincidence that is simply too much for Ravirn to buy, Megaera show up and offers to provide the missing link. She says she’s doing it for Tisiphone’s sake, but Ravirn realizes there’s more going on here than he thought, and he makes the conceptual leap to link it all back to Zeus.
Tired of being manipulated, Ravirn heads out to confront Zeus with Melchior vociferously arguing that it’s a bad idea. The whole way. Zeus’s role is revealed in the plot, including his actual nature. Ravirn is stunned beyond words, and deeply angry with Zeus, but he admits that at this point their goals coincide and he will go through with the scheme to fix Necessity. Scene ends with an accommodation similar to the one Ravirn enjoys with Eris, affection tinged with fear and grudging respect.
When he arrives at the physical location of Necessity however, he discovers that Nemesis, using Tisiphone as a link, has preceded him. A pitched battle takes place, one that Ravirn is able to win with the aid of Tisiphone, Melchior, and Shara-who can act directly for him in the House of Necessity. The fight is won with the death of Dairn and the apparent destruction of Nemesis through the physical destruction of portion of some of Necessity’s hardware.
Then Melchior and Ravirn proceed to repairing Necessity. Unfortunately, complete repair is far beyond their limited resources at the time. They are able to tie up Tartarus, but the Nemesis portion of the system is totally inoperable and the Furies are going to need do considerable hardware repair over the course of the next several years in order to get Necessity back into a state where Ravirn can take a true crack at the software problems.
The book ends on the first day of spring when Shara is ejected from Necessity. Ravirn is triumphant, but a number of loose ends leave him with a great deal of work to do and food for thought. Necessity is still controlling the mweb, but only portions of the destinies of the gods. Cerice and Ravirn parted under very stressful circumstances and Ravirn has developed further feelings for Tisiphone over the course of their conflict with Nemesis. This is further complicated by Tisiphone’s anger and grief over the damage done to Necessity’s physical form in the battle. She feels personal responsibility for that and her fellow Furies also blame her, but she also holds Ravirn partially to blame. And, where is Ahllan? All of which will lead into WebMage IV, MythOS.
Alma Alexander (Will post on the 20th instead.)
Jay Lake’s comments and his synopses
(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog September 19 2008, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)
Retro Friday Cat Blogging
Friday Cat Blogging On Thursday!
Hey folks,
Crazy busy today and I’m posting writing stuff tomorrow as part of Joshua Palmetier’s synopsis project part two. So, rather then step on that, I’m going to cat blog very briefly today.
One pair of fuzzy lumps:
(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog September 18 2008, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)
1983
Do you remember 1983? If so, what were you doing in July?
Because that’s the month that marks my last serious connection with one of the main drivers of American mass culture: Television. I could push the date further back, to spring of ’82 perhaps, when I first started dating. Or later, to fall of ’94, when Laura and I formally disconnected the antenna on the television we hadn’t watched more than once a month in the four years we’d been living together. But August 12th 1983 is probably the best date. That would be the day I got my driver’s license and was formally free of being stuck at home in any meaningful way. That’s the day I stopped knowing what was on on any given evening.
This comes up because over the years I’ve had any number of conversations that follow a certain pattern.
1. Someone will ask me something about television, a program, an event, something.
2. I say I don’t watch television.
3. They say, “oh really?” or “I don’t watch it either,” or something else that acknowledges that they’ve heard and processed what I said.
4. A bit of time goes by and then they make some reference to something on television and are quite surprised that I don’t know what they are talking about.
5. Repeat steps 2-4 up to half a dozen times before it sinks in.
Sometimes this will happen more than once with the same person. It’s understandable really. Television plays a central role in American culture and most people watch at least some television, often without even registering that they’re doing so. I have no moral or cultural objections to television, it just doesn’t interest me all that much.*
The only non-DVD** television shows I’ve watched since 1994 are scattered episodes of Myth Busters,(~15-20) The Daily Show,(~5-8) Muppets Tonight (~5-10) and Whose Line is it Anyway, (10-20) all seen either while staying in hotels or because friends taped stuff and insisted we would enjoy it.***
From ’83 to ’94 I watched occasional episodes of Night Court, (~5-10) Next Generation, (~5-8) Deep Space Nine,(~5-8) The Young Ones (~15-20) and Cheers (~6-12), mostly because it was on when I was visiting someone.
I’ve never seen a single episode of Friends, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, or The Drew Carey Show. Nor have I seen Voyager, Buffy, Angel, Babylon 5, Xena, Hercules, BSG, or any other f&sf favorites of the last 25 years. I have never seen an entire episode of reality tv of any kind.****
I am not plugged into television culture and haven’t been for 30 years. But it is so pervasive that even people who’ve known me that whole time and know that I haven’t been watching television are often surprised when they talk about some show, or a star or director of same, and I don’t have a clue who they’re talking about.
I find the phenomena fascinating and occasionally frustrating.
—————————————–
*Let me repeat in the firmest possible terms I have ZERO moral or cultural objections to TV. It just doesn’t interest me. I got a lot of pushback on this post when I originally put it up from people who felt that I was judging them for watching TV. I wasn’t, and I don’t. I do however find it fascinating how many people assume that my not watching TV means that I condemn the idea. Not true. I really really really don’t care if other people watch TV.
The reason I blogged about it is right there in the post–Americans talk about TV shows on a regular basis and when I explain to them that its not a subject I can really participate in because I have no frame of reference, many of them either don’t believe me or don’t process the information and keep asking me questions that could just as easily be in Sanscrit for all the sense they make to me. I find it to be a fascinating phenomena.
**On DVD we’ve watched four new shows: Dr Who Seasons 1-6, The Big Bang Theory, Sherlock, and Downton Abbey. We’ve also watched two shows from my childhood: Soap and The Muppet Show, but those don’t add anything to my post ’83 cultural literacy.
***and they’ve been entirely correct.
****not quite true, I did watch one episode of the Nineteen Hundred House because friends thought Laura and I might be interested.
(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog September 16 2008, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)
Retro Friday Cat Blogging
Post-op kitteh is tired
Do you want to play string with meh!
Turn on the heater, dammit! I’m old and cold.
You can haz mah game controller when hell freezes over.
Good Morning Campers!
(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog September 9 2008, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)
Dear Feline Collective Re: Autumn
It has come to managment’s attention that the days are growing shorter and colder. The precipitating factor for this phenomena has to do with the Earth’s axial tilt and the changing angle of our position on the planet relative to the incoming light and heat of the sun. This is not, repeat not a plot on the part of the two-legged members of the household intended to end in the feline collective becoming a small herd of fuzzy ice blocks.
Further, though there are rumors going about that this facility’s h-vac system may soon be switched over to an artificial heating-centered approach, we must emphasize that’s all it is, rumors. The heating will not be turned on until after all air-conditioning units have been removed and placed in winter storage.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the drop in facility temperatures are not to be considered sufficient justification for open warfare over possession of lapspace in regards to the writer-in-residence. Yes, management knows that it is cold. Yes, management understands that the lapspace has both built in heating (see attached document on human body temperature) and auxiliary artificial heating (see attached specs for laptop processor temperature) but there are other seats in the house and the writer-in-residence has not been granted a cold-kitty workload reduction exemption—quite the contrary.
In closing, please consider the use of insulative materials such as blankets or duvets as a first resort. Also note that the sheepskin lined catbeds were provided with the heating needs of the feline collective specifically in mind. Don’t make us break out the electric blanket.
Thank you,
The Management
(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog September 9 2008, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)
On Being A Reader
My friend Jen asked a question in a thread on my friend Nancy Pickard’s blog about what all of us wanted from a book in terms of being readers:
…forget about genre, plot and characters, as a reader, what are your favorite elements of craft to encounter in novels?
She then went on to stipulate that the writer is doing all the basics (plot, character, etc) right and narrowed the focus to other stuff. I find it a fascinating question. Perhaps what lifts a competent book to the level of a fantastic book? Or maybe, what delights you as a reader beyond just finding something you can like?
It’s very difficult for me to answer. How do I come up with criteria that encompass the best of Terry Pratchett, Robin McKinley, Tim Powers, Martha Wells, Tony Hillerman, Lois Bujold, six or seven literary authors whose names I can never remember, etc?
Well, one thing that springs immediately to mind is depth of world. Every one of these people is writing stories in a place that feels real to me, one where there is a sense that the set extends beyond the scenes we’re seeing and into the distance where other stories are playing of which we know absolutely nothing.
Another is clarity. The writers I like best don’t leave me wondering what really happened in a scene. Nor do they leave me saying things like, wow, what poetic prose! Here’s a music analogy. I may occasionally pick out a note as very funny, or beautifully written, or particularly sharp, but mostly I don’t hear the notes, I hear the song. The prose serves the story. It doesn’t dominate it.
Illumination. This one is harder to lay out. What I’m talking about are moments that light up the inner workings of the characters in a way that makes me believe in them as people. They can be funny moments, a la Pratchett, or poignant moments of the Robin McKinley sort, or simple nothing-but-the-facts moments of the sort that Hillerman is so good at. They can even mix and match as Wells so often does. The main thing is the a-ha moment were I can really understand and empathize with the character.
Speaking of which, likeability is very important for me. I know it’s not everybody’s bag, but if I don’t like the characters I’m spending time with, I stop spending time with them. Life is way too short for me to want to stand around and watch people self-destruct, even if they do it in really fascinating ways. I saw enough of that shit when I was in theater. Sure, Jane Doe is possessed of a fascinating set of neuroses and makes for great soap opera. Sure, I’ve done six shows with her before and I’d really like to see her finally get her comeuppance. Sure, she’s about to go head first into the chum grinder that is the director running out of patience. No, I’m not going to have anything to do with it. I’m going to go have dinner with the three other people in the cast who also have better things to do. If I’m not rooting for you I’m gone.
Finally, it has to matter. The characters have to be striving for something that I can agree is important. It can be big and important; the fate of the world. It can be small and important, getting onto the path back from personal hell. Whatever the scale, it has to be an important goal. Also, they have to achieve something important. It may not be what they set out to do, people may die in the attempt, it may not be what you would call a traditionally happy ending, but if I don’t feel that all the stress and pain the characters have gone through has been genuinely worthwhile, I will put the book down and never come back to the writer.
So, I realized, looking at this again, that I need to make a distinction between obtrusive beautiful writing and beautiful writing that serves the story. Wyrdsmith’s own Bill Henry does the latter better than any other writer I know. When I read something of Bill’s it’s so clean and clear and bright that the occasional clunky sentence is really surprising.
(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog July 21 2008, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)
Friday Cat Blogging
Your laptop is huge!
That’s no laptop? I am a laptop!
May I be your lap top?
That’s kind of a bizarre theme you’ve got going on there, dude.
Themes schmemes. Still the prettiest!
