Snape Showcase!

I am participating in the 2016 Snape Showcase.  This is a writing event celebrating the wonderfulness that is Severus Snape for all of us who appreciate the complexity and depths of his character as written by J. K. Rowling.

Yes, in case you didn't know it, I am a shameless Snape fan.  If you think he is the most wonderful thing since sliced bread, too, consider participating in this event!

Though the Showcase is hosted on LiveJournal, you need not be a member of LiveJournal to participate.

snapecase: Celebrating Severus Snape throughout his ages!

What I Learned from Darkover

Author's note:  In part, this post will be understandable only by people who have read Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels. 

Last Friday night, I got nostalgic about a Darkover role-playing game that I used to write in on LiveJournal.  The game is long defunct now, but it was set among the Cadet guards of Thendara, the capital city of Darkover.  I played/wrote the character of a second-year cadet who was part of the MacAran family. Last night, I created a new version of that character's father because I have been itching to write about him for some time but had no excuse to.  Per the Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust, it is illegal to write even unpublished Darkover fiction without a contract from them, so I will need to create my own setting for him, as the Darkover anthologies are open to submissions by invitation only.  That might explain, at least in part, why the RPGs have died.

During the course of writing his new character sheet, I did some reading and refreshing of my memory of certain aspects of Darkover, in particular its map.  Apparently, while J. R. R. Tolkien incorporated an exhaustive degree of detail in his worldbuilding and map of Middle-Earth, Bradley was a different style of writer.  According to Thorsten Renk, a fan who invested a lot of time, energy, and research into constructing a map of Darkover, Bradley had a general idea of where things were, but distances were not consistent, and she placed things as they were needed for her stories.  Edelweiss might be north of Armida in one book and south of it an another, for example.  Though I distinctly remember seeing a map in which the Domain of Ridenow and the Drytowns are located in the west, Renk places them in the east.  Because I know the extensive amount of research he conducted, I am trusting Renk's map.

I learned two things from this:

1.  Create a map of your world, and know the general distances between places so that you can be consistent with them from book to book.  Know how long it takes to travel between these places using different modes of transportation, in different weather, and in different seasons.
2.  Account for changes not only across distance but also across time--in different seasons as well as over the course of centuries, if your series extends that long.

Yes, this ought to be obvious, but until you develop a story enough to need to know your setting through various centuries, it is not something you necessarily think about--at least, I didn't.  While I have several ideas for novels, I am concentrating on short stories right now.  Thinking about centuries-long changes in my novels' settings is not foremost in my mind at this moment--but it is something I will now be keeping in mind as I work on them.  It's nice to be able to plan the work I will need to do.

The other thing that my recent thinking about Darkover has taught me is something that I actually realized back when I read the short story, "A Man of Impulse," but I did not articulate it to myself until this weekend.  The general idea is, "A corpse flower can tell you it's a rose all it wants to, but that doesn't remove its stench."  If you write a character who abuses people, you can write a story from that character's point of view.  That character can even, as is proverbially said of Hitler, think of him or herself as a good person.  But in the end, it's going to come across as abusersplaining.  It might be a good story, but the reader will still know the character to be the type of person he or she truly is.  In the case of "A Man of Impulse," there is a deeper layer to the story and to the character Dyan Ardais that makes that story horrifying to me and tragic beyond what it would have been in the hands of any other author.  Bradley is a writer I mourn for but am also sickened by.

Gee, how do you continue a blog post after a statement like that?  Erm.  Awkward.

Anyway--Yes, I believe I will write about Garydd MacAran (name to be changed to protect the guilty) in Ravenwood.  I'm not sure when it will appear, but it is now on my radar.

Story Submission Update

Not a whole lot to tell.  "An Arduous and Beautiful Duty" was declined by Phobos Magazine.  I'll tweak it some and send it back out.

I submitted "Oh, Shoot!" to Morgen Bailey's 100-Word short story competition for August.  Given the prompt for this month, there just was no other story in my heart to tell.  Members of my family, alas, will know what the title refers to.  I miss you, Aunt Frances.  You were an awesome woman, and one hundred words were not nearly enough to tell the world how awesome you were.

Aside from that, I have been working on "The Witch of Braighe."

Food Blog!

This weekend I decided to do something I have wanted to do for a long time.  I have started a food blog called Bus Rides to Flavorville.  The restaurants featured in it can all be accessed by Houston's bus and light rail system.  That is literally the only criterion--that and me having an opinion about the place, one way or the other.

I don't distinguish between chains and family-owned businesses.  I don't care if it's farm-to-table or whatever.  One of the places I plan to mention is the Houston Greek Festival, which isn't even a restaurant, at all.  But it is the best place I know of to find delicious, home-made Greek food.  I love going every year, and it's reachable by bus, so it is on the list.

My only sorrow is that S. W. Tookie's cannot be on the list.  It is the best burger joint I've ever been to, and I grew up loving it.  But it is way down on Highway 146, and Metro doesn't go there.  *cries*

I have only written the introductory post for this blog.  I've been to a restaurant that I plan to review, but I want to take some time to do the review up right before I post it.

July 2016 Morgen Bailey Competition

This evening, I was excited to open my email and learn that I placed second in the July 2016 100-Word Flash Fiction Competition run by British author Morgen Bailey. She runs these every month, and I have been entering mostly consistently since January. This month my submission, "A Lively Imagination" was chosen from among 23 flash fiction stories to be in the top three. You can read it here.

Each month has its own prompt, which can be integral to or superficial to the story. You have from the first day of the month to the last day of the month to submit a 100-word story that is somehow related to the prompt. Prizes include a choice between certain of the online writing courses Ms. Bailey offers, or a story critique.

Try it out; it's fun!

Update as of 07/29/2016

Story submissions so far this month: 3

1. "A Lively Imagination" to Morgen Bailey - Pending.
2. "Choosing Chains" to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction - Declined.
3. "An Arduous and Beautiful Duty" - Phobos Magazine - Pending.

I have gotten at least one reason as to why "Choosing Chains" keeps getting declined: It begins in a tavern, which is where all good (and bad) thinly-disguised D&D campaign stories start, with the assembly of the party. Doing this was a completely newb mistake.

Now, I am well aware that editors don't want to see thinly-disguised D&D campaign stories. It honestly never occurred to me that the story starting in a tavern might be a problem. Tarran lives in a tiny riverside fishing village. Its tavern is where people hang out--either there or at the well on laundry day. Every year on his sister's birthday, Tarran goes to the tavern to grieve, because he is always otherwise obligated on the anniversary of her death each year. He goes, and he drinks a pitcher of their strongest alcohol. It never helps him to forget, and he goes home once he's done drinking the contents.

It just never occurred to me that the location where he does this would be considered so much of a cliche that the mere use of it in the beginning scene of a story might turn anyone off. I had thought people might be turned off because the story is dark, bitter, sad, and horrific at various places. I also think it's funny in places, but that's sick, twisted me.

So one of my upcoming projects will be to redesign the story with the beginning in a more original location. I have no idea if that will help, but it certainly can't hurt. Many thanks to C. C. Finlay for pointing this out to me, or I would never have even thought of it.

* * *

"An Arduous and Beautiful Duty" is what I finally decided to call my Fomorian story that takes place in the waters of the Minch, off the west coast of Scotland. Hey, at least it's a more original setting! I am still not entirely satisfied with this story, but deadline was too close, and I will be busy this weekend, so I wanted to get it out. There are always other places I can send it if Phobos declines it. I haven't mentioned this story by name previously in my blog because I didn't have a title for it, and I try to categorize my stories by title so I can look up posts in Blogspot easily.

* * *

I read in an interview of him in Deep Magic that Brandon Sanderson often writes the endings to his stories first.

You all might not know this, but Sanderson is the god before whom I bow down and cry out, "I'm not worthy!" That used to be Marion Zimmer Bradley, but, well...ahem. Anyway, Sanderson's Mistborn novels blew me away with how good they are and with how he uses a common fiction trope to make the reader think one thing is supposed to happen when, in fact, the complete opposite is the case. Seriously--read Mistborn. You will never see the plot twist coming until it smacks you in the forehead with the force of a sledgehammer. I am still in awe. Mistborn is the best novel I have ever read.

Part of the difficulty I have with writing stories to deadlines is in figuring out what the story is that I want to tell. I do a plot outline based on the submission criteria for whatever market I'm submitting to, but very often it doesn't satisfy me. I have always thought that I needed a road map, but maybe what I really need is to see the solution so I can work backward from there. So I'm going to assign myself the task of writing three or four endings a week, using story ideas I want to write about, and see if those satisfy me (and potential editors) better. I like that this will force me to think very hard and in some detail from the outset about my characters and their motivations.

Have any of you ever tried this technique? How has it worked for you? Has it helped?

Progress on the Fomorian Story, A Submission, and Amazon Author Page

I now have an author page at Amazon.

I'm still working on the Fomorian story. I read more about Fomorians. There's not a whole lot to learn, and information varies wildly. Are they hideously deformed giants, or are they small, dark-haired people? I decided to do something completely different with them and went the sea-demon route, whole-hog.

What I'm finding more fascinating is reading about the genetic ancestry of the Irish, who have recently been found to be descended from Basques and from people of northern Spain and eastern Europe, presumably the Milesians mentioned in the Book of Invasions.

I decided it was time to work on tension and stakes in the story, so that's what I'm doing now. I want a good, satisfying ending.

Regarding the recycling of my character Kiernan: It looks like the chief of the Blue Men is not exactly Kiernan MacAskill of Braighe. I was surprised that that happened. It's fun when the story or the characters surprise you.

Submissions: "Choosing Chains" to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.