Advice to Neophyte Writers: Don't Try This at Home!

       

Cover of Part One

       I'm getting good results after publishing The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars, Part One: Eagle Ascendant.  I've already had six reviews, all of them 5 star.  It seems my friend Neil Aplin was right in maintaining it would be a success.  I had my doubts about publishing any of the book, because the entire piece is way longer than any book should ever be.  Neil didn't think so -- he read it in manuscript and he wanted it to be even longer, and it was his enthusiastic support that convinced me to publish the beginning of it.

       Part Two: Wounded Eagle is in the works; I'm revising like mad, trying to shorten it.   Part One is a long book, but at least it covers the first 31.5 years of Capt. Nikalishin's life.  Part Two only covers 2.5 years and it's even longer than Part One.  There will be at least six more parts after that so you see my problem.  The ultimate conclusion isn't even written yet.

       You might be saying, how in the world could you let this happen?  I've written a bit about my writing history before, but now I have new readers and Facebook friends who may not know how my writing came about, so I need to construct an apology, in the sense of a justification.

Sneak peak: cover for
Part Two (tentative)

        I've always been inclined to write long.  In college when the professor would assign a 20-page paper, the other students would be groaning -- how would they ever be able to make it that long?  And I would be wondering how I could keep the paper under 40 pages.

        I started to write fiction after I read Tolkien in 1969, and I had no real thought of publishing at that time. I simply found the act of writing to be tremendous fun.  So I wrote my first endless story. It was somewhat Tolkienesque imaginary-world fantasy and it was my million-word learning process.  It will never be finished and I will never publish it, but in case anyone is interested, my novel Children of the Music was written as a prequel to that long piece.

       From 1983 through 1999 I took a hiatus from writing because of family responsibilities.  Then in January of 2000 I bought my first computer, which made the act of writing infinitely easier.  And I had a sudden surge of literary inspiration, beginning with "Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder" (a novella! Amazing!) and then The Termite Queen and the rest of the termite stories (I've discussed them plenty elsewhere, mostly on my other blog The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head).  I completed the sixth volume of Labors in July of 2003, so you can see that I wrote furiously for those 3.5 years.  By that time I was a little tired of termites and even though I needed one more tale to complete the Quest, I wanted to do something else for a while.  (I did manage to compose the sequel volume for the Ki'shto'ba tales in 2015 while I was on chemo.)

       I should say that during this time I also never contemplated publishing -- I was simply enjoying myself too much.

       And then I got the idea for The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars.  I had invented the Bird People of the planet Krisí’i’aid, along with their language, for The Termite Queen, and I decided it would be interesting to write about the first contact with the Krisí’i’aida, which had occurred a couple of centuries earlier.  How about writing a biography of the spaceship Captain who made the first contact?  This would also give me a chance to develop my future history to an extent greater than I had been able to do in TQ.  I never intended for the piece to be so long or so detailed, but it was one of those stories that just grew like a clump of mushrooms.  And again, with no intent to publish, I paid absolutely no attention to the length. (A really serious mistake -- again I say to beginning writers: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!)   I started writing in November of 2003 and worked on that thing until January of 2011, when it suddenly hit me that I was 70 years old.  If I ever wanted anyone else to read my books, I'd better suspend writing and focus on publishing.  So I began to work up "Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder," self-publishing it in November of 2011, and that was followed by The Termite Queen and the Ki'shto'ba series -- and the rest is history, as they say.

       So what was I going to do with all that manuscript for The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars? (By the way, that was not the original title, but I don't seem to have recorded the original title anywhere and unfortunately I can't remember what it was.  Once I thought of MWFB, it seemed perfect and I never looked back.) I decided to publish excerpts from the book on my blog -- those excerpts are still here, on this very blog, but they've been radically altered in the final form of the book.  My friend Neil Aplin was mesmerized by those excerpts and so I agreed to email him longer pieces of the book.  He continued to be crazy about it and finally he convinced me to begin to working over the piece for publication.

      At one point I considered getting a professional editor to shorten it.  I'm sure a professional could do that -- just take shears and whack away.  But then it wouldn't be my book and I think I would have an apoplexy trying to deal with that person no matter how tactful and truly interested they were. Nope, that doesn't work for me.  I'm not concerned with becoming a bestseller, and it costs me nothing but time to self-publish, especially since I do my own covers.  However, I do like for people to read what I write and enjoy and comment on it.  I'll take my chances that the lengthiness may exhaust my readers' patience.

       So I think the world is stuck with something no writer is supposed to do -- an interminable novel cut into many segments, each one too long in itself.  That's why I call them Part One, Part Two, etc.  It suggests a single story rather than a series.  I made that mistake with The Termite Queen.  It was too long for one volume, but it is really all one story, and by designating the halves v.1 and v.2 rather that Pt.1 and Pt.2, I made people think it was a series and too many people have stopped reading after v.1 and so don't get the full effect.  The Ki'shto'ba books really constitute a serial rather than a series, but the volume designations seem to fit OK in their case.

So here are the upcoming volumes in the endless progression of MWFB:

Part One: Eagle Ascendant (already published)

Part Two: Wounded Eagle (being edited)

Part Three: High Feather

Part Four: Survivor

Part Five: Phenix (this is the one that requires drastic cutting -- Fathers and Demons was extracted [and will be cut] from that section)

Part Six: Rare Birds (still experimental)

Part Seven + : ??? not written yet!

       Do you think any reader can survive all that?  Do you think I can live long enough to actually accomplish the required editing?  I had some other books I wanted to write, too. Sounds hopeless! Anyway, I just wanted everyone to know how this all came about and warn them about what might be coming.  I beg your indulgence!  At least you've seemed to enjoy Part One.  Who knows?  Maybe you'll enjoy the other parts just as much!

The Valley of the White Bear: No. 5 in my New Series of Mythmaker Posts

Starving Polar Bear 
Kerstin Langenberger Photography
from https://www.thedodo.com/emaciated-polar-bear-1330557679.htm

     The best introduction to this universally acclaimed Mythmaker drama is contained in the following extract from The Termite Queen, v.1.  Griffen Gwidian is an entomologist and chief of the expedition to the termite planet; Kaitrin Oliva is the linguistic anthropologist charged with learning how to communicate with the termite extraterrestrials.  The two of them are falling in love, and during this time they attend several stage productions, including one of The White Bear.

       The Valley of the White Bear was an intense allegorical fantasy of the responsibilities that human beings bear toward one another and toward the world that gives them life.  It was the most beloved of all the literature in the Mythmaker canon, and the most widely studied.  The present rendition was a holotheater production; the settings and fantastic characters were holoimages while the human parts were performed by live actors. 

Kaitrin and Gwidian emerged from the performance discussing the technical merits of the show, including the effectiveness of the hologram of the god/goddess Hasta.  Gwidian found it to be static and lacking in warmth, while Kaitrin felt that the size and austerity ensured the correct overpowering effect.

“I’m never comfortable when gods intrude into Mythmaker lit,” Gwidian said.  “The agenda of those writers was to persuade humanity to take ethical responsibility for its own actions rather than to blame its transgressions on infractions of arbitrary rules laid down by some religious or political entity.  A principle of behavior that our kind tended to ignore in ages past, to Earth’s detriment.”

 “I don’t know that one ought to apply the word ‘agenda’ to the Mythmakers,” said Kaitrin.  “There were so many of them, living over such a long period in so many different parts of the Earth, that it’s doubtful many of them even knew of the others’ existence, let alone exchanged ideas.  They didn’t compose the Precepts, after all – those were a later formulation extracted from a study of the whole Mythmaker canon by a bunch of social philosophers.  The writers with the loftiest imaginations, like No. 96, produced works that stand beautifully on their own without a lot of sententious reinterpretation.  And the god-figures are all symbolic.  As I recall, when Hasta first appears, the stage directions say only something like ‘Ingreaf sees on the top of the mountain a shape with a light in it, which speaks to him.’  That’s why so many different interpretations of it are possible – why producing it on the stage never gets old.  But basically it embodies the overarching Principle of Life.

“And then the White Bear itself is the form the soul of nature takes so that human beings can interact with it.  It’s generally acknowledged that The White Bear was the foundation for Precept No. 20 – Everything in the universe shares in the principle of life, hence we have a moral obligation not to destroy life in our infinitesimal portion of the universe.  I’ve always found the end of the play to be so moving – that juxtaposition of destruction and regeneration!”

“You explicate the play very well!  But if it’s all symbolic, why call Hasta something as concrete as god/goddess?”

“Well, isn’t the Principle of Life sort of what a deity is supposed to be?  Something larger than ourselves – larger and more powerful than anything we can know even with the most advanced science.  The Mythmakers weren’t hidebound atheists, you know.  None of them ever rejected deity categorically; they simply averred that neither its existence nor its non-existence can be proved.  That’s why this trend toward deifying the Mythmakers seems misguided to me.  I’m quite sure they didn’t see themselves as beings whose existence could be neither proved nor disproved!  Although they did succeed spectacularly well in remaining anonymous!”

There is more to this extract, but I’ll save it for a later post.  As an aside, let me just quote the following from MWFB:

Robbin Nikalishin’s Professor of moral philosophy Alise Doone (whose hobby is acting) says in MWFB, Part One: “I’ve done the voice of Hasta in The White Bear three times for the Consortium.  Apparently our director prefers to interpret the esteemed god/goddess as a sexless hag with a quirky Scotts burr, although once I played it as a moon figure with a quirky Scotts burr.” 

It’s my plan to actually write The White Bear someday, although I’m not sure I’m up to writing something that’s considered equivalent to Shakespeare!  But I also intend to write the story of the author of The White Bear, which will be my only dystopian tale.  I’m not sure I’ll ever get that written either, but I’m still not going to tell you anything about that sad story because I don’t want to spoil it in case I do write it.  I’ll only say that The White Bear’s author became fascinated by the story of how Earth’s polar bear was destroyed when climate change eliminated its habitat and he turns this into a whole set of symbolic circumstances. 

The play exists in only two slightly variant manuscripts, discovered within five years of each other in Archivists’ caches. The first was found in what is called in the 21st century New Mexico, and the other came to light much further south in Mexico.  Given that the setting is the far northern reaches of the North American continent, it’s assumed that the author lived somewhere in the middle of that continent and that Archivists carried his/her works south during a migration.

While I won't tell you any more about the author, I am going to summarize the plot of the drama itself.  I have quite a few notes on that subject.

This plot line came to me on 11/24/04, with some additions at 2/7/06. 

Ingreaf (the names of the characters all have symbolic significance) is a technical scientist working in the domain of the Great Northern Techno-Warlord; his name is Stranja (pronounced “strange-uh” because his kind should be considered alien to the Earth) and he rules all of Noonavik and parts of Midammerik.  He holds a competition to develop an invincible robotic warrior, so Ingreaf concocts a mechanical bear that he covers with fake white fur because he has always been fascinated with the tales of a time before the Sun-Scorch when magnificent white bears roamed the now-vanished ice sheets of the North.  He names it Luco, from the ancient root meaning “light,” a name people ridicule – a robotic warrior should be dark and menacing.

He doesn’t give this robot the power of speech (note Precept No. 18, specifying what it means to be human:  Humans speak, form symbols, share emotions), but he does give it the power to understand and obey voice commands.  But as he lives with this monstrosity, he begins to get fascinated with it and it begins to become more human to him.  They form a sort of reluctant bond.  Ingreaf is a lonely man and he keeps Luco in his bedroom and talks to it, coming to wonder why it doesn’t respond. 

Finally the day comes for the robotic-warrior competition, where the Warlord requires that the robots kill a man.  Luco does this so easily that it wins the competition, but as Ingreaf watches, he realizes he’s made a terrible mistake – he should never have created a killer. 

He takes Luco and flees into the wilderness, ending up in a valley at the foot of a peak called Hasta’s Mountain, named for a mythical god/goddess.  (Hasta in Spanish means “until,” emphasizing the fact that Life is a process, not a static given.)  The valley is inhabited by the ghost of a real extinct white bear, a cadaverous apparition which obviously met its death by starvation.

As Ingreaf and Luco wander, they keep catching glimpses of something in the forest, haunting them, shadowing them.  They catch glimpses of something glimmering pale among the trees, and they hear noises, growls, whimpers.  One night it’s particularly bad and there is a scrambling in the bushes and Luco runs off in protective mode and leaves his master alone.  At that point, Luco is representing the survival instinct, the desire of Life to survive at whatever cost.  While he’s gone, Ingreaf sits by their fire terrified, and then there is this long silence (Ingreaf may speak part of his on-going soliloquy at that point).  When Luco returns, he no longer has just red lights for eyes, he has acquired actual bear eyes. 

This is the beginning of the metamorphosis – the merging of humanity with the natural.  And it’s after this that they first hear Hasta speaking to them.  Gradually Luco acquires more and more characteristics of the ghost as the metamorphosis continues.  And then finally Ingreaf develops to where he can actually see the Bear – the emaciated, dying bear as it was before it became only a spirit.  Luco has merged with the actual Bear, staring at its Creator and pleading for understanding.  Finally, Luco attacks Ingreaf, who by now had come to accept his role as sacrificial victim. He saves the humanity of the world by allowing Luco as White Bear (nature incarnate) to eat him and become strong again, affirming the renewal process of nature.

When Ingreaf decides to save the Bear by feeding him with his own body, he stretches out his hand and cuts the wrist with his knife and the Luco/Bear laps the blood, then approaches and seizes the hand in his mouth.  The stage goes black, except for a glow where Hasta lives, and there is absolutely silence.  Finally the lights are gradually brought up again and the Bear stands there triumphantly at full living strength on its hind legs while a naked, emaciated, and semi-transparent Ingreaf sits on a rock, a ghost himself now.  Between them is a collection of bones and bits of clothing.  They stare at each other and then the White Bear swells larger and vanishes into the forest, symbolizing the impossibility of destruction of the natural.  Ingreaf cries out, “Luco, come back to me!  I have given you my all – will you abandon me?”  But a compassionate Hasta says, Ingreaf, come to the top of the mountain and let the Bear pass on its way.  The cock is about to crow.  The sound of a crowing cock is heard, symbolizing a return to reality, and Ingreaf rises slowly and commences to trudge up toward the light.  Final curtain.

Another parenthetical note to close:  I use the crowing cock symbolism in MWFB, in a later section that isn’t even remotely ready to be published.

In the next post, I'll present the Precepts and begin an analysis.

Previous posts in this series:

No. 1: What Can We Expect from the Future?

No. 2: How Will Humanity Lift Itself out of the Second Dark Age?

No. 3: Humans Are All the Same Species!

No. 4: The Mythmaker Canon

What Can We Expect from the Future? My New Series of Mythmaker Posts

The current stressful political climate in the United States has stimulated me to make a new  attempt to expound on my concept of future history and how the Mythmaker philosophy fits into it.  The best (and most painless) way to learn about my thinking is to read my books, particularly The Termite Queen, v. 1 and 2, and Fathers and Demons.  The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars still hasn’t been published, but it will contain the best exposition yet of my vision of the future.  Even my termite series The Labors of Ki’shto’ba Huge-Head contains passages that reflect my thinking. 

The Termite Queen contains a somewhat lengthy section that encapsulates the future history of Earth.  I’ve excerpted that in a separate page of this blog.  Find it on the Pages cross-column above.

Lately I’ve seen three foreshadowings of elements that I predicted in my future history.  The first is obvious – the prevalence of religious fanaticism leading to vicious wars. To quote my own writing in The Termite Queen: “The militant religionist movement that began early in the 21st century resulted in a succession of conflicts known as the Zealot Wars.”  I’ll address that problem in later posts. 

 The second element is what I called the Fractures, and the third is the rise of the TWLs (the Techno-Warlords).  To quote again: “In the 22nd century the period known as the Fractures began, when time-hallowed nation-states – the ironically named ‘Great Powers’ – of Earth began to break apart and make war with each other and within themselves.  It was the time of the Techno-Warlords – the TWLs – dictators who sought to seize for themselves the remnants of the petroleum reserves and who lived by advancing technology exclusively for the purpose of producing an increasingly horrific war machine.”

So are the Fractures already beginning?  The European Union is in trouble, and lately there has been secessionist talk in California, which is certainly big enough to be a country to itself.  Texas has always wanted to be its own country.  French-speaking Canada might like to go it alone if it were encouraged. 

And then comes Donald Trump, who wants to wall off the United States and ban immigration as much as possible (or at least so he says – no telling what he will really do).  At a time when we should be encouraging globalization and a unified Earth, he and a lot of people whose livelihoods are threatened want to retreat from it.  We need to become expansive and inclusive – to learn to work together, not bicker with each other and fight and kill our own kind.

Fractures encourage the rise of the TWL.  In my conceptualization, Hitler is considered the first Techno-Warlord because he was the first to use rockets as weapons.  There is a passage on this in Fathers and Demons (laid in the 28th century), where Chaim Oman is recounting the history of the Jewish people post-20th century:

Everybody stirred a little, because the atrocities of the 20th century were tenaciously included in the history curriculum.  Linna said, “That marks the onset of humanity’s descent into the Second Dark Age.  It’s not only because the first radiant bombs were exploded then.  It’s also because of that Uropian dictator – I don’t recall his name right off – who set out to cleanse the human species of elements he judged inferior.  I think he murdered around ten million people.”

Dr. Yow added contemplatively, “His name was Hitler.  He used the primitive technology of the time for his racial purification and he was the first tyrant to use rockets as weapons.  For those reasons he’s known as the PTWL – the Proto-Techno-Warlord.  He wasn’t the one who exploded the first radiant weapons, though.  That honor goes to the government of the Old Ammeriken States.”

That’s why anybody with a sense of history is afraid of Donald Trump, because he has seemed to encourage his followers to commit violent acts and to hate those who are unlike, and because he exhibits demagogic tendencies, to want to be able to dictate rather than cooperate and legislate (his overweening battle cry “I alone can fix it.”)  Again, I’m not really sure whether he is serious in these statements or whether he is a clever actor, playing the “sucker born every minute” card, and playing it very well.  After all, Mr. Bloomberg didn’t call Trump a conman for nothing.

Basic to my future history is the depletion of the Earth’s oil reserves.  When I first wrote my future history (around 2002), I checked on the amount of oil that was left and it was about 50 years worth.  I was appalled.  Do you know how short a time 50 years is?  It passes in an eye-blink!  I’m 76 and it seems like just the other day that I was 26.

So just now I checked the figure again to see if it had changed.  See this post from BP where it is stated  “In June, BP provided an intriguing update to its global oil reserves estimates in the company's yearly review of energy statistics. It raised its reserve estimate by 1.1% to 1,687.9 billion barrels – just enough oil to last the world 53.3 years at the current production rates.”

So I figured that unless the Earth gets its act together, we’d better find other means of producing the power that our ultra-high technology consumes, or we’ll be in real trouble.  My view is pessimistic.  We’re going to use up all the oil and have nothing ready to replace it by the beginning of the 22nd century.  At that point the electrical grid collapses, communication and transportation break down, and we head for a return to the Stone Age, or very near.

Of course, run-away climate change plays its part, too, with coastal cities disappearing under the sea, along with drought and water-famines and the rise of mutated disease organisms ...  However, I’m not getting into all that here.  Let me just say that all that will feed into the Fractures and the rise of the TWLs.

So, yes, I’m a pessimist about the future of Earth – in the short run.  But I have not been pessimistic about the nature of humanity (although I’ve been having my doubts lately).  There will be people who keep the best aspects of humanity alive throughout the coming Second Dark Age.  And that will be the subject of later posts.

Heroes, Fathers, and Mothers

Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head
The greatest epic hero in the galaxy!

   
     In a recent blog post by E. C. Ambrose, Kylo Ren and the Question of Parental Succession, she discusses how fictional children cannot become heroes in their own right until their parents are gone and they have nobody to rely on but themselves.  I found this to be an interesting premise and it got me to thinking about the heroes in my own books.  It also made me wonder if the same thing applies to female heroes -- are their heroic capabilities suppressed by their dependence on their fathers, or their mothers, perhaps?  And what about male heroes and their mothers?  

     I'm a big fan of Xena: Warrior Princess, so that character immediately came to my mind.  She never knew her father, as I recall, but her mother certainly played a big part in her development.  Xena engaged in much evil activity before she became a hero, and that might have had something to do with her father, whom her mother killed in order to protect her daughter. Furthermore, her father might have been Ares -- a problematic possibility, since Ares is Xena's love interest.  But aren't most Greek-style heroes fathered by a god?  So the situation can get quite complicated.

      Now to my own books.

     In my signature novel, the 2-part Termite Queen, I have a heroine and a hero.  Kaitrin Oliva has a close relationship with her mother and doesn't know who her father is because she is the product of artificial insemination from a sperm bank.  I don't think her relationship with her parents has anything to do with the strength of her character -- she was born to do great things, and her mother nurtured her in that direction.  She had a step-father, but he is dead by the time our story starts.

     Griffen Gwidian, our "hero" (or anti-hero, a term I'm sure would suit some of my critics better) is another kettle of fish altogether.  The loss of his parents did nothing to make him a hero -- in fact, it prevented him from reaching his heroic potential.  It took a lot of experience to drive him in the direction of heroism.  And that's all I can say without spoiling the plot.

     
     However, I don't feel The Termite Queen is a good example, because it isn't fantasy; it's realistic science fiction with a literary feel.  So what about my termite series, The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head?  We definitely have Greek-style heroes here!  Ki'shto'ba and a few other heroes are said to be offspring of the King (read Zeus) of the Shshi's Mother Goddess.

     Termites don't have parents in the traditional sense.  They all have Mothers, of course, whom they revere their whole lives, and they have male progenitors, but they are expected to live lives apart from their "parents."  In some cultures the Mother has more than one King, so the offspring may not even know who their father is.  Is'a'pai'a (the Jason character) lives the early part of its life not even knowing which home fortress engendered it, so in a sense Is'a'pai'a is an orphan.  But once Is'a'pai'a discovers the story of its past and its destiny, it is catapulted into full-fledged hero status (a Champion, as the Shshi call it).

     Now to two of my other books (actually WIPs, since neither has been published yet).  Robbin Nikalishin in The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars is a hero for the modern world -- eager to perform heroic deeds and capable of great things but often totally inadequate in dealing with his problems and tormented by events in his life that he can't wrap his mind around.   His father, whom his mother divorced when he was eight, was a poor example of a man.  Robbie never saw him again and he always rejects his father as a role model.  It is Robbie's mother who has the greatest influence over him, and even after she is gone, he is tormented by things he can't understand.  Perhaps the concept does apply that a hero never reaches his potential until he is orphaned, because ultimately Robbie gets his act together, overcomes his inadequacies, and achieves one of the greatest heroic acts in modern life -- making first contact with extraterrestrial intelligent life.

       And finally the WIP I'm working on right now:  Children of the Music.  This piece is much more in the traditional fantasy mold, laid in a constructed world where two branches of humanity come together in a disastrous confrontation.  One of the peoples could be considered traditionally heroic -- a barbaric horse-people composed of clans of male warriors and their retainers and women, some of whom are Priestesses and Seeresses of their sacred tree.  The other people are meek, peaceable shepherds and farmers who don't even have a word for "murder" and for whom Music represents all that is Sacred.
     I made Nebet an orphan.  He is the seven-year-old boy who plays such an important role in the first section of the book,   He isn't a hero except as a symbol, but still I find it interesting that I used the orphan aspect.  (Actually, I had a prosaic ulterior motive, which was to keep Nebet a little separate from the rest of his family so he could get left behind at the end.)  Daborno, Chieftain of the invading Clan of horse-people, is also an orphan, but his father remains Daborno's own hero, someone to be emulated.  Unfortunately, Daborno never completely rises to the challenge of becoming a hero in his own right.
       Interestingly enough, the second part of Children of the Music (laid 285 years later) opens with the death of the father of Horbet and Ondrach.  It is the orphaned younger brother Ondrach who must rise to a semi-heroic status, making decisions and confronting dilemmas that are not natural for his pacific people.  He would have never done what he did -- rebel against his people's way of life -- if he hadn't lost his father.  And in an interesting parallel the Chieftain Cumiso and his own younger brother Sembal have also just lost their father when the section opens.  Cumiso is not much of a hero in anybody's book, I fear, but again it's his younger, scholarly-minded brother who achieves a status much closer to heroism.
     

The Madness of Ki'shto'ba
Huge-Head
(alternate cover for v.3)

     After considering all these points, I think I have to conclude that I never write about heroes  in the traditional sense of somebody like Superman, who goes about the world doing good, fighting on the side of the right, performing superhuman feats, and gaining glory.  I suppose that's why Xena appeals to me -- all heroes should have their dark side.  I'm more interested in those dark twistings and turnings that go on in the human mind.  Ki'shto'ba is the closest to a traditional hero that I've ever written and even the Huge-Head has feet (or claws) of clay, sinking into madness at one point and committing murder just like its counterpart in my Greek sources, namely, Hercules.
       I'm going to conclude with a quotation  from a later part of The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars, where Capt. Robbin Nikalishin, who is suffering from PTSD after a space disaster where he lost a third of his crew, is giving a speech on the occasion of being awarded Earth's highest honor, the Crimson Ivy medal.

     “Now, I’m no philosopher, gentlemen and ladies, and I’m no expert at formulating philosophical definitions.  But it seems to me we ought to take a few minutes to contemplate what makes a human being a hero.  And it seems to me that a hero is somebody who reacts with courage in an impossible situation so that a positive outcome is produced. ...
      “But there’s a downside to any definition of a hero – it has a corollary, so to speak.  It’s not enough that a hero win – a hero inevitably has to lose something.  He has to lose something and react nobly in the face of that loss." ... 

     Robbie elaborates at length as to why he himself isn't a true hero, but I think I've said enough for my purposes.  By Robbie's definition Griffen Gwidian is a hero, and so is Kaitrin Oliva.  My Champions in the Ki'shto'ba series are heroes, and so is the small boy Nebet and his grandfather Leys, and so is Ondrach the Siritoch shepherd.  And certainly Robbin Nikalishin and certain other characters in MWFB fit that definition. as well.
      So it seems I do write about heroes after all.                                                                                                                                 

TermiteWriter Is Being Interviewed on Internet Radio!

Annette Rochelle Aben kindly invited me to be interviewed on her program "Tell Me a Story" on the internet radio channel "The Magic Happens."  The interview will be live at 1:30 pm EDT, or you can access the Archive after the program airs.  Here's the URL for both the live broadcast and the Archive:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/themagichappens/2015/10/23/termite-writer-lorinda-j-taylor-on-tell-me-a-story

There is also a Facebook event running simultaneously.  The URL for this is

https://www.facebook.com/events/102978683396844/ 

Furthermore

I've made the ebooks of both volumes of The Termite Queen and 

v.1 of The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head (The War of the Stolen Mother)

only 99 cents

at both Amazon and Smashwords from today through Oct. 25!

So you have no excuse not to get acquainted with my writings!

Here are links for all Amazon outlets for the three books:

The Termite Queen, v.1: http://bookshow.me/B007RFYSWC

The Termite Queen, v.2: http://bookshow.me/B0084NKIR0

The War of the Stolen Mother:  http://bookshow.me/B008PGVGIG

I hope you'll join Annette and me!  I'll try hard not to bore you!

Body Language in TermiteWriter's Books

       I'm still having the same reaction to the chemo (see my last two blog posts), but I decided to forget about it for now and write on a more entertaining topic.

       I just read this article about the use of body language in fiction. http://imogenbellwriting.com/2015/01/14/body-language-in-fiction and it has prompted me to write a post about how I use body language in my writing.  I'll give examples.

From v.1: The Speaking of the Dead

Chapter 8 (using body language to change another's opinion of a character):

       “You impressed Prf. Jerardo at the Yakuta symposium.  He says you debate with a real instinct for the kill.”

       Kaitrin looked at Jerardo in surprise; he was grinning and rocking on his heels.  So he really had noticed that she had trounced him!  Maybe she had been selling him short.

Chapter 7 (Kaitrin observes the enigmatic but disturbingly attractive Griffen Gwidian in a social setting for the first time.  We learn a lot about Griffen's reputation for womanizing from how he and the other woman interact, and we learn something about Kaitrin from how she reacts.)

       Kaitrin stared at the distant table.  Gwidian was not alone; his companion was someone Kaitrin had seen in the XA Database Lab – an exotic-looking, dusky-skinned woman with hair dressed in the currently trendy lion’s-mane style, frizzed out in points tipped with colors, in this case a mix of silver and blue.

       “What is the matter?  Your mouth is open.”

       Kaitrin closed it.  “He’s with somebody.  How did he get to know that person so quickly?  He’s been over here to anthro only a couple of times.”

       “I have to look – just a peek …  Oh, I know that woman!  Her name is Meka – do not know the second name.  And they think I am strange-looking.  But she, too, has a reputation.”

       Kaitrin was having trouble taking her eyes off the pair.  Gwidian was laughing, leaning intimately toward his companion, who bent closer in response.  She knuckled him playfully on the forearm, inclining her head sideways.  He raised his right hand, slipped it around the back of the woman’s neck in a seemingly practiced gesture and ran his fingers up into her hair.  Her head bent a little farther forward with the pressure.

       Then Gwidian’s glance shifted and he saw Kaitrin looking at him.  For a moment their gazes cleaved together as if no one else were present in the crowded dining room.  Then his hand dropped back to rest on the table, his glance slid away, and Kaitrin lowered her own eyes in confusion.

       “What now?” asked Luku.  “You have that where the blood goes to the face.”

       “He saw me looking.  He has the most intense eyes.  Damn.  Let’s finish up here and get back to the lab.”

Chapter 11 (The first spontaneous "date" between Kaitrin and Griffen is going swimmingly, until one of his old flames shows up.  Another example of how to suggest character through body language and how to merge into suggestive or sarcastic dialogue.  This and the previous example also show how you can use clothing to delineate character.) 

       “Griff!  Imagine running into you over here!”

       Gwidian’s face gathered into a frown.  Kaitrin looked up to see a dark-haired woman standing at his elbow, glancing between them.  She was clad in a low-cut yellow leotard and black mesh tights.

       “Margit,” said Gwidian, looking sideways at her.  “It’s been a while.”

       “It certainly has.  Have you lost my relay code, Griff?”

       Kaitrin sat frozen, staring at this interloper with the amused black eyes and suggestive smile. 

       “I’ve been off-world,” Gwidian said.  His voice was tight.  “Asc. Oliva, this is Margit Terrie.  Margit, Asc. Kaitrin Oliva, a colleague in my latest project.”

       Margit cocked her head at Kaitrin, swaying her hips slightly.  “A colleague!  How special!  Too bad you can’t use a dance instructor in your projects, Griff!  Your latest one requires a visit to the Arts campus, does it?”

       “Asc. Oliva and I were about to view the faculty art show.”

       “I didn’t know you were so interested in art,” said Margit.  “You never told me that, Griff.”  She gave him no time to answer.  “Message me some time.  I never went away.”

       “If I can,” replied Gwidian coldly.  “I’m going off-world again.”

       “Again?  Too bad!  And, Asc. Oliva, you’ll be going off-world with him?”

       Kaitrin was never sure afterward how she had replied.

       “Well, I’m so happy I ran into you, Griff.  Asc. Oliva, nice to meet you.  Good luck on your expedition!  See you later?”  With a little flurry of hip and shoulder, she was gone.

       There was a glacial silence.  All the rapport, all the warmth, had departed with Margit Terrie.

     Then Gwidian muttered something unintelligible and pushed back his plate.  “Perhaps I should be returning to my office.  I seem to recall a matter that requires attention.”

       “What?  And miss out on nurturing this unprecedented interest in art?” said Kaitrin acidly. 

       He puffed his cheeks, gestured impatiently, and stood up.  “You’ll enjoy the exhibit a good deal more without me, I’m sure.  I’ll possibly see you before the committee meeting."

       Not if I can help it, went through Kaitrin’s mind.  How could I possibly have let down my guard this way with this – this promiscuous stud?

       Gwidian had turned back.  His expression of distress appeared genuine.  “Kaitrin, I feel I owe you an explanation … ”

       Kaitrin was not buying it.  “What for?  Your recreational activities are of no concern to me.  And my name is Asc. Oliva.”

       Gwidian hesitated, then threw up his hands and walked away swiftly toward the door.

       I'm discovering that hardly a chapter goes by without using body language in my writing, and so I think I'll just stop there.  Doesn't every writer use body language?  Anybody who doesn't had better figure it out.

A good example of
body language at the
moment Ki'shto'ba and
Kwi'ga'ga'tei receive
the Speaking of the Dead.

       But do my termites use body language?  For sure!  The eyed Alates use visual cues to emphasize what they are saying and even the blind Warriors and Workers use postures (for example, threat postures) because rearing up causes pheromones to come from a different location.  Here are some more examples of termite body language.

From The Termite Queen, v.2: The Wound That Has No Healing

 Chapter 21 (Kaitrin is engaged in telling the Queen A'kha'ma'na'ta and her "court" the tale of Ulysses and the Cyclops)

       “The Zin’tei woke up and commenced making such a commotion that it could be sensed all the way through the stone over the door.  Friends who lived in other caves nearby came running to see what was happening.  They asked him, ‘What is the matter in there?  Is somebody harming you?  Who is it?’

       “But, of course, here is what the Zin’tei answered:  ‘It is Nobody’s work that is doing this to me!  Nobody is doing me harm!’”

       As this sank in, Kaitrin experienced a very strange phenomenon.  The Shshi commenced to bounce themselves up and down with little springs of their forelegs, spinning their antennae in wild circles so that any words they were transmitting were broadcast unintelligibly in all directions.  They swung their heads in U-shaped motions.  Even Kwi’ga’ga’tei participated in this exercise, and the Commander Hi’ta’fu was somewhat ponderously caught up.  Mo’gri’ta’tu, however, only gave a couple of tiny hops and held his antennae motionless.

       Clever! said Di’fa’kro’mi.  Most entertaining!

       ‘Nobody’ did it to me – That is quite humorous! said Ki’shto’ba, using a word Kaitrin had never encountered before, but whose meaning seemed clear from the context.

       It was a revelation.  This must be how they laugh!  The Shshi have a sense of humor!  I never would have thought it!  What a gift to discover this!

From The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head. 

Vol. 1: The War of the Stolen Mother, Chapter 1 (Di'fa'kro'mi is droning on about how he invented writing in an image language and his scribe Chi'mo'a'tu gets bored.  Handling body language in a first-person narrative is a little different, because it has to be completely relevant to what the narrator is thinking and feeling.)

       What?  Why are you stamping about and flaring your wings?  I am well aware that you know all this already!  I suppose I am boring you!  But I am not finished analyzing my thought processes.  A Remembrancer should always finish what he has begun to tell – that is a cardinal rule!  That is the trouble these days – you young ones are in too much of a hurry, impatient to be finished.  You have never learned how to pay attention, and words do not have the fascination for you that they should.

Please do not display such indignation, Chi’mo’a’tu – I am well aware that you know how to pay attention.  Would I have chosen you as my principal scribe for this undertaking if I had thought you could not pay attention?

Vol. 4: Beneath the Mountain of Heavy Fear, Chapter 18 (The Companions are visiting the southern fortress of Ra'ki'wiv'u and the fortress's Remembrancer is telling the tale of the Great Bird Hunt [think of The Hunt for the Calydonian Boar]):

Huffing, we all relaxed back into our seating places.  It was a rousing tale and Fi’frum’zei’s animated delivery had enhanced the excitement.  She had hopped around the room, flapping her antennae so wildly that at times her words became unintelligible.  When someone in the tale hurled a spear, she hurled a mock one, and when Thel’tav’a shot her dart, she mimicked that motion.  When Ist’u’mim’zei fell into the hole, she pretended to trip over her own feet and thrashed around on the floor.  A mandible-slash demanded a vigorous shaking of the head.  I had never seen a tale told in quite that fashion – physically imitating the action.  It was quite effective but not very dignified!  I wondered if all the Remembrancers in these parts told tales that way, or if it was an effect of the trol’zhuf’zi| [a fermented leaf]!  If the former were true, I doubted my static delivery style would provide any chance of winning a prize at the upcoming competition.

       I hope some of you will have found these examples enjoyable.  If you want to read more, check out the covers in the sidebar or  go to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords.  I'm still trying to get somebody to buy a book at Smashwords.  I only need 10 cents to qualify for a royalty payment.

Two Weeks' Worth of FREE Books!

Sorry, folks!  The coupons have expired!
But the regular price on all my ebooks is only $2.99
except for Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder,
and it's only $1.99!
and if you buy a paperback, you get a Kindle FREE!
Amazon

I don't want to commit a lot of time to a Christmas promotion because I have no idea what I'll be required to do over the next few weeks, so I'm having a SMASHWORDS COUPON GIVEAWAY.  Starting Monday, December 1, 2014, I'll be publishing coupon codes for different books each day.

I've changed my mind!  I'm going to be tied up for the rest of the week!
So I'm adding all the codes at the end of this post.

 

Back and front cover of v.1

 

Monday and Tuesday, I'm featuring both volumes of
The Termite Queen,

because, since it's a two-volume novel and not a series,

you really need to acquire both volumes of the book.

All coupons will expire on 12/14/14!

 

Codes

 

Volume One: The Speaking of the Dead

SC86E

 

Volume Two: The Wound That Has No Healing

LA29P

 

Go to Smashwords, buy the book,

enter the code at checkout,

and voila! 

You are the proud owner of one of my books!

Here are the rest of the codes,
which make all the books free!

You can find all the books in the series
The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head
in the Smashwords series entry:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/byseries/1028

v.1: The War of the Stolen Mother
MJ62Y

v.2: The Storm-Wing
VF99S

v.3: The Valley of Thorns
XA28F

v.4: Beneath the Mountain of Heavy Fear
KM63V

v.5: The Wood Where the Two Moons Shine
EQ75F
v.6: The Revenge of the Dead Enemy
HW33T

Again, offer will expire on 14 December 2014

Download the books, read, enjoy, and review!

 

How Do My Books Fit an Agent's Criteria?

Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head
Stands Guard
In the foreground (from left):
A'zhu'lo (Ki'shto'ba's twin),
Wei'tu and Twa'sei
(the smallest Worker),
Di'fa'kro'mi the Remembrancer
(a Star-Winged Alate)
 

       On his excellent blog Nicholas Rossis recently published a post entitled The Worst Way to Begin a Novel. His criteria are excerpted from The Write Life and enumerate complaints of agents that can cause rejection.  I decided it would be interesting to consider some of my own books in relation to these criteria, so here goes!
 

"Prologues: not so much! Agents find them boring and think that it’s much better to include the description of the prologue in the actual story plot."

       I have only one book with an addition called "Prologue" at the beginning.  It's my WIP entitled The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars.  I extracted this and published it in the first Read for Animals book (proceeds going to support animal shelters) because it deals with a wounded eagle.    I'm thinking if I ever publish that humongous novel, I might retitle the Prologue as Chapter 1, because it relates directly to something that happens early on in the book and also to the book's broader theme of the eponymous Captain as a wounded man.  Furthermore, it's quite absorbing in itself.  I wouldn't want to omit it.

       However, all of my Ki'shto'ba books have introductory matter, specifically, a Translator's Foreword, because I've set up a scholarly framework.  These are tales written by an extraterrestrial and they require scholarly explanations. 

 

"No dreams in the first chapter: it makes readers identify with a story plot and/or a character/situation and then realize there was no point it, since it was not real. This can make them feel cheated."

       Not sure I agree with this premise, because dreams can be quite revelatory of a character's psychological state, so they can enrich the reader's understanding.  Why would that make you feel cheated?  That said, I've never written a dream in a first chapter.

"Too many descriptive adjectives: 'overwriting' is considered the mark of amateurish writing, as is language that’s too rich for its good.  As I always say, don’t let your writing get in the way of your story."

       I think Nicholas and I agree on this one.  I may occasionally violate it, although I'm not going to dig for an example.  You'll just have to read my books and decide for yourselves.

"No long descriptions: it’s all a question of balance between plot and description. You want to create a setting, but describing the colour of the flower in the vase for three paragraph could be dull."

       I think I deal with that pretty well, most of the time.  In Chapter 2 ("In the Nu'wiv'mi Marsh") of the second volume of the Ki'shto'ba series, there is quite a lot of description of the Companions' surroundings, including the plants and animals. I think any conworlder would appreciate that -- how can you construct a world and then not describe it?  And this watery environment is new to the characters in the story as well, so it fascinates them.

      

"Action: literary agents want action in the first chapter so that they -- and the readers -- get hooked."

       I sometimes violate this one.  I think I handled it OK in The Termite Queen, v.1, because the first short chapter is an internal monologue of the captive termite, and the second chapter introduces some characters in a way that doesn't explain everything (Who is this strange being on the other end of the com link?  Why does he talk in musical notes?  I want more!)  However, I confess that in the Ki'shto'ba series, I sometimes open with a chapter where Di'fa'kro'mi is simply talking with his scribe about his present life, his old age, how he happened to invent writing, etc.  The books often don't have much action until the second chapter or even later because that's where our narrator begins the actual story.  But when you get to that point, things pop. 
 

       Here are some sample openings of the main part of the text:

       Vol. 2: The Storm-Wing:

“We are lost.  I mean, we are quite lost!  Yes, I have to admit it.  I am not at all sure of the way!”

Ra’fa’kat’wei’s confession did nothing to improve my mood.  I was covered with mud, my wings were encrusted with drying shreds of water-weed, and I was sprawled on my belly huffing with fatigue.  So my rejoinder was tart.

“A fine guide you have turned out to be!  You said you knew all the paths!”

 

Vol. 3: The Valley of Thorns (this sets a tone of nostalgia, an anticipation of something that will be lost, including a bit of foreshadowing):

As travel-weary as they were, the Marcher Commander Gri’a’ein’zei’a disdained to rest its company long, saying that the situation demanded speed.  The following day we spoke our final farewells to our good friend Sa’ti’a’i’a, girded on our gear, and regretfully allowed No’sta’pan’cha to slip into our past.  When we came to the Ya’ur’akh’on, I looked down the valley toward the land where that river had another name.  My home fortress of Lo’ro’ra lay somewhere out there, past the distant haze that eternally hung upon the swamp Nu’wiv’mi, down the river called Rim’pol’bu, between the volcanoes, beyond Za’dut’s home fortress of Kwai’kwai’za.  I would not come even that close to the place of my hatching again in many season-cycles … so many …

 

Vol. 4: Beneath the Mountain of Heavy Fear (where  the Companions first encounter Bu'gan'zei, the Orpheus character):
       A wind had sprung up – the tree limbs seemed to be dancing and from a nearby overhang some stones broke loose and skittered down …
       Is’a’pai’a was the first to receive the sending and it stopped so abruptly that Wei’tu and Za’dut bumped into its posterior.  Then we all took the sensation – an antenna-buzz at once penetrating and delicate, so unusual that we were all entranced.  Simultaneously there was the smell of a male At’ein’zei Alate, along with the rank odor of reptiles and the feather-stench of birds!
       “Holy Nameless!  What can that be?” Ra’fa’kat’wei exclaimed.
       And then we detected words in the sending …

 

Finally, my latest publication, v.5: The Wood Where the Two Moons Shine (also an example of my description):

       After safely negotiating the daunting bridge that crossed the Sho’gwai’grin at the Great Waterfall, we found ourselves descending an ancient zigzag path that had been hollowed out by the scraping of countless claws.  Off to our right, the escarpment, an impassable precipice layered with gray and white and brown stone, stretched westward until it vanished into the distance.  To the southeast, beyond the end of the spur, we could see the glinting line of the river, with cliffs continuing to abut it on the east.  If we were to follow the west bank of that river, it would bring us into Gwai’sho’zei country and lead us quickly to the sea.
       Our immediate destination lay southwest, however.  In that direction we could see stubby hills thickly covered with dark trees and hung about with mist.  I always associate mist with these lands in which we would spend the final days of Ki’shto’ba’s quest. 
 

Personally, I think those are pretty good opening paragraphs, but I could be prejudiced!

"Make the reader want to learn more: the literary agent wants to see something captivating about the character, something that will make her read more in order to discover the plot and how the character unwinds."  And I'm combining with this: "Characters that are too perfect."

       Character is all, in my opinion!  Well, not all, of course -- a good tale needs many layers and aspects -- but still, if the characters are crudely drawn, cliched and commonplace, the whole story falls flat.  The good guys and the heroines need to have flaws and quirks that make them human (even if they are alien termites! -- "human" is in the eye of the beholder!)  And the villains ...  well, it's nice to have a villain that has redeeming qualities -- whose motivations are comprehensible -- although I confess to finding few redeeming qualities in Mo'gri'ta'tu (the villain who wreaks such havoc in The Termite Queen).  But then I based Mo'gri'ta'tu on Iago in Othello, who is frequently criticized for having unclear motivations.  The villain in The Wood Where the Two Moons Shine is possibly a little easier to understand, although he is even more devious and evil than Mo'gri'ta'tu, if that's possible.

"Don’t describe your characters fully in the first chapter: a), it’s boring, b) you really need to leave mystery for the rest of the book."

       My characters never emerge all at once; after all I've written some 600,000 words in the Ki'shto'ba series (averaging about 100,000 words per volume).  If they all emerged in the first chapter, nothing would be left to write!  They change and grow as the series progresses -- every single one of them.

"Unrealistic situations: literary agents feel that however inventive and imaginative a book can be, some things have to remain genuine and authentic, especially when it comes to human reactions."
       So how do you remain "genuine and authentic" when you're writing about giant alien termites?  You do it just as I said above -- you make them as close to human as you can.  You show that extraterrestrials -- aliens, if we must call them that -- may very well share the human qualities of compassion, caring, loyalty, self-sacrifice, adventurousness, joy, grief, and humor.  They also share characteristics  like intelligence, stupidity, anger, betrayal, sibling rivalry, a desire for revenge, and the ability to forgive.  It doesn't matter if they have three Castes and all of them are deaf and two Castes are blind.  It doesn't matter if they can only speak through their antennae, if they breathe through the sides of their bellies, if the Warriors can't feed themselves, if some of the species eat their own dung, or if all of them are necrophages.  What really matters is what is in their guts, or as humans might prefer to say, in their hearts -- their several hearts.  That is what makes them "genuine and authentic" and I'm egocentric enough to think I achieve that.  Whether a literary agent would ever think so is irrelevant.

Thanks again to Nicholas Rossis for giving me the idea for this blog post.