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!

Next on my Writing Agenda: "Children of the Music"

Known as a serpent, this antique musical instrument
looks like the trumpet that plays such a significant role
 in Children of the Music. 
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Serpent%C3%B3.jpg
By Sguastevi (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

    First off, let me say that from now on most of my posting will be on this blog.   My Termitespeaker blog (entitled "The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head") has lost relevance because I have now completed the series.  I had also used that blog as a vehicle to discuss myth, especially myth in literature, but I've kind of moved away from that, so I'll reserve Termitespeaker mostly for book reviews of the series.

    Today I'm going to talk about Children of the Music.  It's one of those manuscripts that has been stored in a drawer for 30 years and has now been taken out and dusted off.  That's supposed to be a no-no, but I see no point in trashing something that I believe has merit.  Here's how it came to be written.

    I started writing in 1969 and I churned out an unending manuscript over a period of years.  It got way out of control for length, because of my propensity for improvisation in the middle of books.  I always have a beginning and an end, but how in the world do you get from here to there?  And since this was the first thing I'd ever written, I kept going back and rewriting the beginning, which never made it shorter.  Finally I threw in the towel.  The book could never be finished.  I have shelves of manuscript for this book, which bore the title To Sing with the Wind (somebody once said to me, "You should just call it 'Sing with the Wind,'" but you see, that's the wrong connotation.  I'm not ordering somebody to sing (imperative) -- I'm emphasizing the process of learning how "to sing with the wind."  And yet to use the infinitive really does weaken the impact).  

    But that's beside the point.  When I gave up on my Tolkienesque first novel, with its evil sorceress, white-bearded wizard, young female heroine, and tragic young hero, I decided I needed to write a prequel.

    That prequel is Children of the Music.

   It features the past history of the two peoples who exist at the beginning of the humongous piece and depicts the families of the parents of To Sing with the Wind's hero and heroine.  And it benefited from my "million words" -- the amount you're supposed to have written before you can call yourself an author.  It turned out really well -- it had an appropriate beginning, middle, and end, and some really intense storytelling and compelling characters.  And it's a reasonable length of 118,000 words.

   Now I'm planning to publish it after some revision.  My problem is, I don't anticipate ever completing the book that was supposed to follow it.  Children is complete in itself, but it does contain some prophecies that foreshadow the main book, and it kind of leaves things hanging at the end.  Am I capable of writing a totally different book to follow it?  I somehow doubt it.  I simply don't like the book I originally wrote.  My original idea in To Sing with the Wind was to investigate a race of beings who were immortal, and somehow I don't want to do that anymore. These days, I'm not much into magic -- seers and prophecies are fine, and hints of the interference of gods, but my worlds are always real worlds, not governed by magical principles that have nothing to do with scientific reality. And my characters are always human.  (And if you say, well, giant termites aren't human ... just ask the people who weep over their story whether or not they have human appeal.)  

    But Children of the Music really does have sufficient merit to stand on its own.  Until I complete its revision, I'm going to blog about the book from time to time, and probably post excerpts.  I also have some questions I want to throw out to anyone who is interested.  But that will have to wait for another day.

    (Sorry I have no drawings yet for Children of the Music.  I do have some planned, however.  And take a gander at the great serpentine trumpet at the top of this post.)

Journey of a Writer

     I have been observing writers lately at all stages of development, mostly through the Facebook posts of my fellow indies, and I've been relating some of their comments to where I was back in 1969 (wow -- 47 years ago!)  Shortly after I began to publish in 2011, somebody made a comment that I seemed so confident.  I guess that's because I already had over 40 years' experience thinking of myself as a writer and I really didn't feel insecure about the craft.

     I did go through some of the same stages, however, that neophytes experience.  I'll present them here, along with some advice for beginners.

1. Hey, I just discovered that I really can write a story!

      It's such a thrilling novelty to discover that you CAN construct a story and write it down. This happened to me in 1969, after I first read Tolkien. The idea that his elves were immortal struck a chord and I began to wonder what an immortal race would really be like -- how would it affect their view of life (you can see that the psychology of the human, or elvish, condition was already something I was interested in).  I became fixated on the idea of immortality and it dominated my writing all the way through two constructed worlds (see The Blessing of Krozem -- FREE on Smashwords).

2. Becoming obsessed with writing

     It's all you want to do, 24 hours a day if you could, and you resent anything that gets in the way, which can make life stressful for the people you live around.  Believe me, I've been there.

2. Dissatisfaction with the results

     My first efforts resulted in an endless and out-of-control plot.  I discovered that it's not enough to have a beginning and an end -- you've also got to have something decent to put in the middle.  I discovered what is my bane (maybe not other people's) -- the curse of improvisation:  too many subplots, too many fascinating new characters who just beg to be developed.  This leads to endless editing, frustration, and a final recognition that that first story can never reduced to anything publishable.  Unfortunately, that problem still persists for me, although not as uncontrollably.

3.  I see a lot of people who don't realize that this first effort isn't good enough to publish.

      There is no shame in abandoning your first piece.  A major piece of advice I would give the beginner is ... don't be in a rush to publish!  When I began, there wasn't any self-publishing except vanity presses and no real way to promote those boxes full of printed books.  Fortunately, I didn't make the expensive mistake of employing a vanity press -- I just kept sending out to regular publishers and collecting rejection slips.

    Anyway, my advice to the beginning writer (especially ones young enough to be able and willing to wait a few years) would be to let your book cook!  Don't just assume that this story you love so much is the great American novel or even a respectable piece of writing that will be enjoyed by a decent number of people.  It's fine to employ beta readers as long as you can keep the relationship friendly!  Or set the book aside -- write something else. Then go back to the first one.  Try editing it, changing some things (I rewrote the beginning of my first piece so many times that I now can't remember which version was supposed to be the finished one).  Try to look at it critically.  If it never really grabs you or moves you after a period away from it, it probably isn't as good as you thought it was.  Avoid those nasty one- and two-star reviews by being absolutely sure that what you've produced is worthy of critical analysis.

4.  Practice, practice, and then practice some more!

     It's not only musicians who need to pay attention to this advice.  It doesn't matter if you accumulate a drawer full of manuscripts, or I should say a computer full these days.  You might be able to go back and resurrect some of the earlier material after you've developed better technique or better insight.  In fact, I'm in the process of doing that right now.

5. So what kind of books should I write?

     This depends on what you want to achieve.  If you're looking to be wildly popular and make a decent amount of money, then write whatever is trending at the moment.  Vampires -- zombies -- dystopias -- space opera -- whatever.  Just be sure you have some kind of twist that sets your book apart, and don't forget the importance of characters who aren't cliched, because if a reader can't muster up some affection for that handsome space captain or that sexy blonde vampire, you'll get indifference or some of those one- and two-star reviews that stress writers out.

     But if you want to be different, then go for it.  You may never become widely popular, because you have to find other people who think like you do, and frankly that's not always easy.  But you will feel more satisfied with what you've achieved.

6.  Develop a routine and a methodology that works for you.  

     Find a routine that suits your lifestyle and leaves you time for the other people in your life.  Right now, I have nobody in my life and haven't had any since 1997, and frankly I don't think I could have written what I have (mainly the termite stories) if I had still had family responsibilities.  But if you do, just make sure you keep your priorities straight.  I think the hiatus I took from writing from 1983 to 1997 probably benefited my later efforts.  I certainly ended up with a more complex outlook.  I gave up on the immortality theme, for one thing (I discovered that Highlander: The Series had just about covered all bases on that subject).  And my termite series turned out to be a real joy to write, and (according to some reviewers) to read.

7. Finally, don't be a slave to the rules of writing.

     I was an English major, with considerable graduate work in the subject, but I never took a course in creative writing.  I never had any intention of becoming a writer until I was 29 years old.  I think the best background for a writer is familiarity with well-regarded books down through the ages, from Homer to the present day.  Also, knowledge of the English language (usage, grammar, punctuation, spelling -- the whole nine yards) is so important. Make the dictionary your best friend!  And utilize the internet!  A Google search of a grammar question usually will yield an answer.  Just yesterday I checked out the rules for how to form a possessive with proper names ending in "s" and I found that the jury was still out.  I decided in my case that "s's" was the way to go.

       As for the rules of style, I break a lot of them.  Frankly, I had never heard of the "show, don't tell" thing that everyone is so hung up on these days.  I write in a manner that seems proper and necessary to the context and to what I'm trying to achieve.  If you become too self-conscious about what you're doing, it will probably make your work stiff, boring, and artificial, although you should be sensitive to anything that feels awkward.  I'm not going to apologize for including pieces of historical explanation when it's the only logical way to bring the reader up to speed about the past.  I also don't apologize for using lots of dialogue.  People communicate through dialogue and one thing I'm always interested in is communication.  As for POV, I agree that one should try to be consistent, but sometimes a shift is the most effective way to move the story along and reveal character.

       So those are some of my thoughts on the subject of becoming a writer.  Pontification over!

What a Difference Thirty Years Makes!

Tentative cover for Part I of MWFB
I have no artwork for Children
of the Music yet.

I'm in the process of formatting The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars for publication, and at the same time I'm scanning into the computer my early piece called Children of the Music. Yesterday I worked on MWFB in the morning and then scanned and edited another chapter of Children in the afternoon.

Viewing both books in such close succession caused me to be impressed by how my style has changed. Children was written in the late 1970s and MWFB was written somewhere between 2006 and 2010, after I had written the termite books. In the late '70s I was still under the influence of Tolkien -- heroic fantasy was the order of the day. Children is laid in an imaginary world with two races of humans who exist at a level of technology that is fairly primitive, agricultural or pastoral in nature. My style at times verges on the grandiose, and I use a lot of description of setting (I was impressed by how successful these descriptions turned out to be). By 2006 I was definitely a realist, writing about the future of Earth. This started in The Termite Queen and persists into MWFB.

And yet I feel both styles are equally effective for the purpose intended. In fact, I was impressed by the chapter of Children that I worked on yesterday. It depicts the invasion of a pastoral people by a horde of "barbarians" and it stirred me emotionally, which is a good sign. (It's been more than thirty years since I read the manuscript.) It has a feel of both high fantasy and realism.  And I consider the straightforward narrative technique of MWFB to be equally compelling. I'm going to give you an example from each book so you can compare them.

From Children of the Music:

The good weather held, with a flawless blue sky above their heads and a dry northwest wind from the mountains that blew briskly down the neck and whipped the long manes across the horses’ eyes.  At night the cold sharpened, but the days warmed enough to have made life pleasant if only the wind could have dropped.  In the early morning the east was hazed with river mist, but elsewhere and at other times the air was like crystal.  Always the white bluffs barred the west, drawing closer as the caravan progressed southward, and in their breaks the Epanishai could see the ruffled horizon of dark silver mountains. 

In his impatience Daborno pushed the caravan faster than usual, only to suffer on the morning of the fourth day a broken axle on one of the oldest wagons.  After heated contention with the wagon’s family, he ordered it to be abandoned.  “We haven’t time to repair it, by the god of this world!  Where do we get seasoned ash for an axle, tell me that?  What do I care if this wain was made in the south?  Load your goods on the oxen, curse it!  Disperse them among the other vans!  Sirrah, I don’t suggest – I command!  Get this line moving, you snails’ spawn!  “

“What’s the rush, Daborno?” asked Leftis irritably, when they were underway again. 

The Chieftain glanced darkly at Rashemia and made no reply.  Leftis followed his eyes and did not repeat the question.  The High Codian had uncharacteristically taken no part in the altercation and now she rode three or four paces ahead of them, head held high, face pale and eyes farseeing – hoodless, with the wind tearing at loose strands of her hair.  The sight of her imperious otherness made Daborno quake with apprehension.  So they rode, past midday, into the afternoon. 

Suddenly, in a silence of weariness, a low cry came from Rashemia’s throat.  She drove her heels into the brown gelding’s flanks and dashed toward a long, sere brake of alder and birch that seemed to mark the line of a dry watercourse.  After a moment’s hesitation Daborno spurred after her, with Leftis and his wife not far behind. 

The Chieftain crashed through the brush and reined up beside Rashemia, rising in the stirrups to look where her hand pointed.  Before them lay hay fields, with neat, round ricks ready for winter.  Some eight furlongs beyond, in the valley of a lucent silver stream, was a shepherd village surrounded by its frail palisade, its flocks scattered over the slightly rising ground to east and west. 

Along the bluffs not half a league from the village, the woodland of bare birches and hazel thickened, punctuated by the brilliant darkness of cedars.  Amidst the white and gray hatching of the trees, against the chalk brightness of the bluffs, an indistinct lattice of heavy, black shapes teased the eye. 

It was into that distance that Rashemia’s sight strained, but Daborno’s was nailed southward, on the broad, bare knob of land that rose beyond the stream. 

“Aftran.  Aftran!  Rashemia!  Is this it?” He clawed at her arm, her horse’s mane, its reins, half beside himself. 

“Yes.”  The confirmation came, blunt, toneless, crushing down the emotion. 

“Aftran!  Aftran!  We are here!” The words roared from Dabornos throat as he pivoted his astonished stallion.  Then the rowels were buried in the beast’s side and it leaped forward, streaking across the fields, with the other three behind. 

On the north side of the brake, the caravan heard and there were whoops and war cries of disbelief, of elation, of ecstasy.  Everyone who was mounted coursed through the trees and followed the Chieftain.  The drovers screamed at their cattle, stampeding them into the brush; the wagoners beat the oxen with their goads, heaved the wains with shoulder and hip and hand, slashed at the trees with axes to clear a path – shrieking, weeping with frustration at being left behind – abandoning the more hopelessly wedged vehicles to pound on foot after their lord. 

Through the fields east of the village the ragged line of riders and wagons hurtled, hoofs shaking the earth, cloaks flying in the wind, the bound hair of women loosening and streaming behind like black banners.  The wild yelling scraped across the ancient, sunlit air, raw and terrifying as the music of an untuned viol.  The foremost horsemen dashed helter-skelter through the stream; the drovers and the wagoners gave up their charges on the north side and forded on foot; every human creature of the Axe and Owl beat their way up the slopes of the round, bald hill. 

The cavalcade had passed not two furlongs from the easternmost flocks, paying no attention to the two shepherds who rose up with fright on their faces, stared momentarily upon the careering wildmen, then turned and sprinted toward the village to the west.  

Now here is a scene from The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars (a little background   will help: The SkyPiercer Project, flying a starship beyond the solar system for first time, has just been made public.  Robbin Nikalishin, who is to pilot that mission, feels compelled to call his mother after this revelation.  His relationship with her is strained and difficult, owing to a dire misunderstanding that took place during his adolescence):

Robbie called his mother when Kolm wasn’t there, because he knew his public charm would vanish the minute he had her on the link.  When she came on, she said immediately, “Congratulations, son.  I know this is what you always wanted.  You made it happen.  Like you said in the news conference, you saw the stars and you never let anything stand in your way.”

“That’s – not exactly what I said, Mother.”

“Well, it’s the truth, isn’t it?”

There was a silence.  Then Sterling said, “Are they going to give you any leave before you fly in August?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think so.  I don’t think they want us having open contact with the public.”

“So … you won’t be able to come home then … ”

“Probably not.  I’m – sorry … ”

He heard a sound at the other end that he couldn’t identify.  “Mother?”

“What if you get killed?” she said harshly.  “You could, I’m quite sure.”

“Mother, a person can walk out the door and fall down stairs and get killed.”

“Don’t give me that trite old probability crap!” she retorted sharply.  “The chances are much greater of dying in what you’re doing and you know it!”

He made no answer, clutching the side of his head, feeling paralyzed of will.  Then he said, “Mother … how can you … really want to … keep seeing me … after all that has … ”  His voice petered out.

It was her turn to be silent.  Finally she snapped out, “I want to wish you a lot of luck, son.  I’m gratified that you’re accomplishing your dreams.  It makes all my hard work and sacrifice worthwhile.  I only hope the rewards you reap will be as great as you think they will.  And just in case something does happen to you out there, I’m going to say ‘Goodbye’ and I suggest you do the same.  You may never find the time to ring me up again before you go and it would be a shame for a son to die without having said goodbye to his mother.”

“God almighty … ” said Robbie in utter misery. 

“Goodbye, son,” said Sterling.  “Say it!  Say ‘Goodbye’ to me.”

“No, I won’t!  I won’t say goodbye …  Dammit, I’m not going to die, Mother!”

But she had cut the connection.  Robbie stood for a moment clutching the com piece, and then he turned and threw it as hard as he could across the room.

When Kolm tapped on his door later that afternoon, Robbie didn’t answer.  Alarmed, Kolm banged harder.  “Robbie, are ye in there?”

“ … ’s not locked … ”

Kolm opened the door and came to a dismayed stop.  “Holy cry, man, what are ye doing?’

“Working really hard … at getting rotten drunk … ”

“Damnation.”  Kolm hastily closed the door.  “Where’d ye get that bottle?”

“Over at … Base Exchange.  … sell the stuff, you know … ”

“Ye walked right in and bought it, afore god and everybody?  What if somebody reports you to Lara or to Teeter?”

“Yeah, I walked right in … could do it then.  Don’t much know if I could do that at the moment … ”

Kolm went to where Robbie was sprawled on the couch and jerked the whisky bottle out of his hands.  “Whatever in Mairin’s name provoked ye to break training like this?”

“They have no right … tell us we can’t drink.  Sometimes a man has to do something … sometimes there are things … a man can’t stand … ”  Robbie squeezed his eyes shut, his face contorting.

Kolm knelt beside his friend.  “Robbie, did ye ring up yer mother?”

Robbie twitched his head.

“Man, this is the worst.”

“That’s right.  The worst.  Goody, I’m never calling her again … don’t care what you say to me.  I can’t stand it.  I hope I never talk to her again … never see her the rest of my life.”

Kolm took Robbie’s head hard between his hands.  “Robbie, I don’t understand, but I feel terrible bad for ye.  If it takes such a radical thing to keep ye from goin’ to pieces like this, I guess I’d have to say I’m for it.  But it’s a terrible sad thing and I wish I understood about it, but I know I never can and that’s all right.  Now, are ye just gonna lie there, or are ye going to get up and let me pour some coffee down ye?  It’s for sure that ye’ve got to be over this by tomorrow mornin’, or the jig’s up.”

And so Kolm was able to pull Robbie together and no one was ever the wiser about his lapse.  But Kolm remained on guard, and if Robbie got particularly moody or seemed to be withdrawing into himself, Kolm made a special effort to stay close at hand.  Robbie knew this and was deeply grateful.  He understood all too well that the masonry on which his character was founded was not the most stable and he relied heavily on his friend to be his keystone.

So do you like one better than the other?

Or do you like them both?

Can You Make Your Readers Cry?

Sentimental -- what does the word mean?

I found this picture at  North American Victorian Studies Assoc.
http://navsa.org/2012/07/06/display-victorian-sentimentality-at-the-tate
No artist was given or further credit,
but it certainly sums up Victorian sentimentality

       According to Dictionary.com, sentimental means "expressive of or appealing to sentiment, especially the tender emotions and feelings, as love, pity, or nostalgia [as] a sentimental song."  But the entry goes on to give another meaning: "weakly emotional; mawkishly susceptible or tender [as] the sentimental Victorians." It's that latter meaning that critics commonly employ when they condemn a book as sentimental.  I was always taught as an English major to avoid sentimentality at all costs.

       Yet as a writer I agree with that only up to a point.  I certainly believe that excessive, unjustified emotion should be avoided.  The story that dwells on the "tragedy" of a dead kitten or emotes for pages about how much a mother loves her dying child is not my cup of tea.  And of course I think many stories don't require any sentiment -- for example, murder mysteries or crime stories, especially the kind where the fun part is solving the mystery; or straightforward adventure tales, like the Indiana Jones movies; or a lot of science fiction, particularly the space opera variety.

       But any story that focuses on character needs to bring the reader to tears at some point, because that demonstrates that the author succeeded in making the reader care about the character.  If you read straight through and close the book and say, "That's an OK story, but now I'm done at last and I can forget about it" -- or worse, if the reader abandons reading halfway through, saying, "Ho hum, I just can't get involved emotionally with these characters," then I fear the writer has failed.

     
       Can you believe that a number of people who have read my series The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head, and also its precursor, my novel The Termite Queen, have told me they have teared up or even wept at certain points of the stories?  I take that as a great compliment.  My characters are mostly giant extraterrestrial termites (called the Shshi) -- bristly, rather stinky bugs with no facial expressions beyond what their antennae can convey and strange habits like eating their primary dung in order to extract all the nutrients and also recycling their dead by eating them and thus conserving the protein.  How can you cry over such repulsive creatures?
       The fact that you can proves that I made them "human" -- I made them relatable to the human  psyche.  I read a SF book once (and frankly I can't remember the name of the book or its author now) that had an extraterrestrial race that was amphibious -- big frog-like creatures that spawned in water.  It was narrated from the point of view of the humans who had made first contact with that race, and I never could feel any relationship to them -- they remained remote and just too "alien."
       I think mine is successful partly because I tell the story from the point of view of the Shshi.  In The Termite Queen the point of view switches between the human anthropological team and the Shshi with whom first contact is being made, but the Ki'shto'ba series is narrated entirely from the Shshi perspective, allowing the reader to delve into their essence.  The reader can identify with creatures who have moral principles (or lack them, or are misguided), who care deeply about each other and the foundations of their way of life, who work together, rejoice when something good happens and grieve over loss.  They live full, realistic lives, which means not everything can always work out the way the reader might like.  That can make the reader say, "Not this character!  How could the author do that to this innocent character?" and that can bring on tears.
       I consider tears of that sort to be genuine emotion, and genuine emotion cannot be characterized as sentimentality.  Just killing off a character does not make me weep -- you've got to care about the character that was killed.  That's why we have "red shirts" -- because we need a surrogate for the main characters in whom we have a lot invested.  I can't give anybody instructions on how to make the reader care -- I'm not much of a teacher of writing skills -- but I seem to have succeeded with everybody who has read the entire Ki'shto'ba series.  Heck, I even succeeded with myself -- if I read some of the painful parts after being away from them for a while, I end up weeping over them every time!

       Why don't you give my books a try and see for yourselves if I succeeded?

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Genres Revisited: What Genre Do I Write?

So what genre would you assign
to this book?  Oh, I know!
It has to be about an
exterminator named
Ki'shto'ba who labors at
destroying termite colonies
 by abducting their Queens! 
Right?!

What genre is this?

Hmm ... hard to tell from the cover.

In fact, I call it speculative

literary science fiction, future 

history, psychological fiction, plus a 

rumination on future religions.
With a provocative theme and

 great characters-- 

don't forget that!

READ AN EBOOK WEEK

at Smashwords!

March 2-7, 2015

All My Books

are 50% off,

so none is over

$1.50!

Jane Dougherty recently wrote a blog post entitled Does Literary Have to Mean Dull and Boring?  She defines literary fiction as "something that could never be accused of being genre fiction."  She goes on to say, "since authors are obliged to fit their work into a genre when pitching it to publishers and agents, or just to sell it on Amazon," anything that didn't fit in a genre was disqualified as poor literary production, in effect. "In the label 'genre' writing there is an implicit sneer," she says.  She mentions "magical realism," saying, "our magical realism is just plain fantasy (I wrote that with a sneer)."

       In her final paragraph she says, "Why can't we go back to the good old days when there were just books and children's books?  I like to think I write books.  I don't like to think that they are so similar to other people's books that there is a handy tag for them."

       I couldn't agree more, Jane!  And I want to elaborate on this idea a bit.  I originally planned to become a college professor of English literature, so I spent the early part of my career reading "literary" fiction.  Frankly, I didn't even know that was what I was reading -- books by Jane Austen, William Makepeace Thackeray, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, James Joyce, William Faulkner -- they were all "just books."  I daresay those authors are all considered writers of literary fiction.  But they are definitely not boring, for starters!  Lately, I've read several books that are "literary" -- The Great Gatsby, for one, and a recent book by Simon Gough (a grandnephew of Robert Graves) entitled The White Goddess, in which Graves is a main character. (The links take you to my reviews of these books.) Boring? Not on your life!  (Parenthetically, I should point out again that I consider all significant books to contain elements of fantasy -- see my post Defining Fantasy According to TermiteWriter.  To impart a shiver of wonder can only enrich any "genre.")

       In midlife I discovered Tolkien (is he literary enough for you?) and I started to write somewhat similar fantasy.  I also started to read a lot of fantasy and finally got into science fiction.  It never occurred to me that I was somehow betraying my educational background -- that I had sunk low in matters of taste.  I was just looking for good books and I kept the same standards.  Thus, although I read a good deal of Marion Zimmer Bradley, I considered her a pretty pedestrian writer.  But then there is Ursula K. LeGuin, who is one of the most skillful writers around.  And there  was C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams (one of the Inklings)  and other older writers like E.R. Eddison (The Worm Ourobouros et al.) and William Morris (The Well at the World's End) and ... well, I could go on and on.  They definitely cross genre lines and nobody seems to condemn them for it.
       As for "magical realism," I've only read one example -- Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits.  It's full of fantastical elements, of course, but it's also very dark and not particularly comfortable to read.  It's never boring, though.  I would say, if having seriousness of purpose makes a book boring for you, well, then most literary fiction would fall in that category.  And most of my books have a serious purpose, even the termite epic, so I guess I have the only literary termite people in existence!

       When I started to write again in 2000, it never occurred to me to worry about the genre I was writing.  I didn't realize at that time that I was supposed to fit my fiction into a category.  I was just trying to write exciting and fascinating books. I happened to enjoy both science fiction and fantasy, and obviously a tale laid in the 30th century with extraterrestrials who are giant intelligent termites cast The Termite Queen in the SF mold.  But it also includes the tale of Kaitrin Oliva and her enigmatic lover.  One early reviewer called my works literary science fiction and stated that they reminded him of Mary Doria Russell (I see Wikipedia calls her a writer of "speculative fiction" novels -- I presume that designation elicits more respect.)

       I was always taught not to write in cliches, so why in the world would I want to pump out books that were carbon copies of other people's books?  My aim was never to get rich selling millions of books to thoughtless readers looking only for sensation or escape -- I wanted to attract some attention for my ideas and gain some respect and a following.  Those are still my goals.  I wouldn't even know how to write a stereotypical vampire romance or a nasty zombie tale or a cliched space opera or one of these sword-and-sorcery Tolkien rip-offs.  If I tried, the characters would soon develop all kinds of psychological complexities and gain a back story to explain it, and probably the outcome of the whole thing would be tragic.  Even my termite characters fit that picture.  It's just the way I write, and I have no intention of changing.

If you're interested, I addressed this genre question before, way back in 2012, from a slightly different perspective in a blog piece called What Genre Do I Write and Whom Do I Write For?

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.

To Rewrite or Not to Rewrite: Go with Your Gut

       I'm in the process of revising The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars (yes, I'm actually thinking about publishing it, long as it is).  There was one scene I wanted to change.  It's an important and dramatic scene where we learn why a particular character acted as he did, producing disastrous consequences.  I have a friend who read all my books as I was writing them and she presented the opinion that the motivation in this scene was too old-fashioned -- that is, too old-fashioned for 21st- century sensibilities, to say nothing of the 28th century.  I do want this scene to seem urgent and believable, so I decided to adjust some of the elements to make what had happened more seriously horrendous.

       Does that make sense?  I can't tell you the details -- they shouldn't be revealed until you read the book.

       I ought to say parenthetically that when I decide to start preparing a story for publication, especially when I plan to divide it into volumes, I never work with my original construction.  I make a copy and divide into what I call Master Copies of the final forms, and then revise those.  Therefore, I still have the original piece for reference, with all the annotations, dates inserted, etc. 

       So yesterday I rewrote the scene in question, changing certain aspects.  And it came out all disorganized -- the plot points are more terrible and destructive, but the focus was diverted from the person who has to be seen as the guilty party.  It becomes more complicated -- the blame is not clear-cut.  Frankly, it just didn't work in my opinion.  Didn't feel right.

       This morning I took out the rewritten part, placed it in a document where I keep deleted segments (just in case), then copied the original from the basic manuscript and stuck it back in.  Then I started over.  I kept the same storyline but I beefed up some of the motivations and character aspects.  What happened may seem old-fashioned, but still, given the characters as they are presented, it makes a stronger and more striking case than my revision did.

       Just call me Jethro Gibbs.  My gut told me the old way was right in spite of my friend's opinion.  Sometimes you have to go with your gut and stick with what you wrote in the beginning.

 

       What problems do the rest of you have with rewriting?  Do you listen to what your gut tells you is right, or is it all intellectual analysis? 

Man Who Found Birds: In Which a Writer Confesses Her Sins

       I naturally write long stories!  Mea culpa!  No matter how good my intentions are, this is something I cannot overcome!  "Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder" (about 19,000 words) is the aberration.  The Termite Queen ran to two long volumes, but it never seemed long to me.  The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head was planned as a three-volume series, but I'm chopping it into at least six moderately long volumes.  This works quite well because my termites' adventures are episodic.

       But then we come to The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars.  It is a hopeless, unfinished sprawl, with a middle where I started improvising, bunches of characters (each of whom shouted "Hey, you, I've got a story of my own!"), and an experimental effort in a later part that I'm going to have to abandon and completely rewrite.      

       So why does this happen?  It happens because of the reasons why I write.  I want to express what's inside of me.  I don't write intending to produce a commercially popular book or to appeal to a particular group of people, like young adults or fans of a particular genre such as paranormal or horror or romance or even generalized science fiction, although MWFB does fall into that genre.  In fact, I don't really write for other people at all, although of course like any author I want my books to be read and relished. But I can't compromise my own way simply to make people buy and read the books. I can't write in a particular form on demand.  Therefore, I will probably continue on my path of sin.

 

       So if MWFB is so imperfect, why have I decided to work at least part of it  into something capable of being published?  Well, I acquired one serious fan in the process of posting early chapters on this blog.  Those posts also received many page views, if that means anything.  People did seem interested.  I've had a few other favorable comments as well.  Maybe this book could actually be my break-out piece!

 

       The book is cast as biographical fiction written to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of Capt. Robbin Haysus Nikalishin, who commanded the first mission to a nearby star system and while doing so made humanity's first contact with intelligent extraterrestrials.  So there's my signature nod to scholarship:  the book is really authored by Prf. Tania Barden of Oxkam University in the Islands of Britan.  For comparison, The Termite Queen is laid in the 30th century, when interstellar travel and contact with extraterrestrials has become commonplace.  In MWFB, you'll get an occasional aside mentioning how things were done differently 50 years before, in the 28th century; otherwise it's a quite straightforward narrative.  I purposely tried to write a more colloquial style than what I used in TQ or in Labors (my termites are quite formal little beasties, as I've said elsewhere). 

 

       Now comes the painful part of my confession: the facts about the length.   The first 37 years of Robbin Nikalishin's life has consumed about 780,000 words, and that doesn't even get him to the stars.  I'm working on reducing that awful length, but I think this early part of his life will require three or four volumes (still undecided).  My tentative titles are v.1: Eagle Ascendant; v.2: Eagle Falling; v.3: High Feather; and v.4: Survivor.  It would be nice if I could shorten vols. 3 and 4 enough to make only one volume out of that, called Survivor.  If you've been reading my posted chapters, you'll recognize that those titles derive from the "Prologue."

       Volume One started at 179,173 words and after an initial cutting effort, it's now 175,203.  That's shameful!  I'm about to start a second pass-through, trying to look at each chapter objectively and determine if any huge chunks could be cut.  The best place to cut would be in the technical aspects -- my take on future fictional physics.  The problem here is, my fictional temporal quantum physics plays an enormous part in the unfolding of the plot, so I don't know.  I'm comforted by the fact that v.2 of The Termite Queen is 196,000 words, running to 572 published pages.  At least this one won't be that long!

 

       Now you may be saying, if this book is worth publishing, then why don't you hire a professional editor to cut it?  Arrgh!  Then it wouldn't be my book any longer!  I don't care how much better it would be -- I would have to disown it!  So I'm going to plow ahead and we'll see what happens.  The cover will be a problem, however.  No termites in this book -- it's all about human characters -- and I'm not much good at drawing anything but termites.  I might be able to do something with eagles.  If not, I might have to get some professional cover art.

       So please bear with me.  I think that in the long term you may just find this story compelling and captivating!  I know v.1 has the most exciting and suspenseful ending I've ever written for any book!

       Here is a facsimile of the title page of the "original edition," published in 2849:

THE MAN WHO FOUND BIRDS AMONG THE STARS

A Biographical Series

Issued in the year 2849 as Part of the Commemoration
of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Death of
Capt. Robbin Haysus Nikalishin
(10 May 2799)by
Prf. Tania Barden
Fellow, Brassnose/Queens’ College
Oxkam University

VOLUME ONE
EAGLE ASCENDANT

I decided to embarrass myself further
and post a cover I drew way back in 2004.
I got better at drawing faces as time went along, but these are not the best
and I have no intention of publishing with this cover.
Note that I originally entitled the early volume Ikarus.   
That's Robbin Nikalishin in the middle, of course.
Otherwise, the characters are, clockwise from upper left:
Sterling Nikalishin (Robbie's mother)
Robbie's friend Kolm MaGilligoody (horrible -- eyes aren't anything like right)
Dr. Madeline Souray (the Project's Medical Officer)
Wilda Murchy (Robbie's most enduring friend)
At the upper left is Robbie's toy space plane
and at the upper right is Kolm's medal of Mairin and Jaysus.

 

Books I Read as a Child: Influence or Reflection of My Personality?

      

I copied this from Amazon and
I apologize for the fuzziness; it
didn't copy well.

Recently I got to thinking about the books that were my favorites when I was a child, and I began to wonder how those books might either have influenced me or might reflect the kinds of material that I'm writing in my older years.  I've turned up some interesting relationships.

       My mother read to me every day when I was a toddler and preschooler.  I would meet her at the door with a book when she would come home from teaching school, and she would immediately sit down and read for 30 minutes.  Like most children, I liked to experience the same books over and over.  Strangely enough (for a two or three year old) I adored Billy Whiskers, by Frances Trego Montgomery.  My well-worn copy of the book is sitting over here on my shelf; I found it when I cleaned out all those stored boxes after my mother died.  Apparently it was a very popular children's book for its time (early 20th century) because the cover says "One Million, One Hundred Fifty-two Thousand Copies of This Book Sold."  It sometimes has the subtitle "The Autobiography of a Goat" and it recounted the adventures of a billy goat who was trained to pull a cart and ends up in the circus.  Frankly, I don't recall the plot at all, but I do remember the line "the agonized look on the face of Billy Whiskers."  For some reason that line fascinated me.  I used to go around spouting it because it never failed to make adults laugh and praise me for being precocious.  It seems I've always loved the sound of words, even if I wasn't sure what they meant!  I really need to read that book again and see what all the fuss was about.  And something else my fascination with that book demonstrates is that I always liked non-human protagonists from early on.

       When I was in fourth or fifth grade I read at least 50 books.  Our main classroom had a table with books on it and every day I picked a different one.  We had to write little reviews.  I liked most of what I read, but much of it didn't stick in my mind.  I know I never cared much for Mary Poppins, although I couldn't tell you why.

       My first big love among books that I read to myself was The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.  I read it when I was eight years old (I think somebody gave it to me while I was recovering from chicken pox).  I read it 14 times and had the whole first chapter memorized.  Later I also read and relished the same author's A Little Princess.  Two things about these books strike me now:  They both have ailing male characters who are helped by strong female characters.  In my book The Termite Queen, the characters are not children, of course, but the male lead is a conflicted introvert who is struggling to cope with his past, something like Colin's father in The Secret Garden or Sara Crewe's father in A Little Princess; and Kaitrin Oliva is equivalent to Mary Lennox or Sara Crewe.  I have always thought of Rochester in Jane Eyre as more the inspiration for Griffen in The Termite Queen, but it seems the inclination to be fascinated with the vulnerable male character has been with me from the beginning.

       Then I discovered historical fiction.  Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Janet Gray was my first venture into that area on the level I was supposed to be reading (about 10 years old).  I was fascinated by the depiction of medieval life.  However, even before that, I had discovered The Three Musketeers.  I know I met it when I was eight years old, the same year I read The Secret Garden, but I think it was in a version abridged for children.  I fell in love with swashbuckling adventure, and in the year I was twelve I read every one of the sequels to The Three Musketeers.  I also read The Count of Monte Cristo in its original form when I was ten and was completely mesmerized.  Unfortunately, I learned the word "infanticide" from that book and was pretty shocked by the episode where the villain buries the baby.  I also learned the word "hashish," which I understood vaguely only as something bad that shouldn't be messed with.  I was fascinated by the paralyzed man who could only communicate by blinking his eyes, and by the drug that simulated death, allowing the heroine to escape.  And the whole revenge motif, which proved in the end not to be the right answer ... I'm sure that had an influence on my thinking.  But certainly none of that damaged my psyche -- it just opened up the possibilities of wonderful, exotic adventures, both physical and psychological, and it fed a long-standing interest in French history and the French language.  And while I always loved the rascal D'Artagnan (a trickster character for sure), my favorite musketeer was Athos, the sober intellectual.

       Another influence where I see a connection to what I write today came from the Doctor Doolittle books.  I know today they are castigated as racist, but actually only the original volume contains much of that nature and it's one I never read!  I don't own any of those books; I read them all from the library and so I just plucked one off the shelf one day and then another and another and paid no attention to reading them in order.  My favorites and the only ones I really remember were Mudface the Turtle and the Canary Opera (I don't remember the exact titles).  Do you see a thread here?  Both are about animals (comparable to aliens) who are intelligent and can talk.  Mudface also introduced me to the ideas of archaeology, paleontology, and anthropology -- how did humans really get to the New World?  Well, how else but by having a male and female pair get rescued during Noah's flood by a giant sea turtle who deposited them in the Western Hemisphere?  I thought that was the neatest idea!  I also loved Dr. Doolittle's parrot and the canary in the Canary Opera.  Talking, intelligent birds -- hmm. 

       These are not the only books I read as a child and teenager, of course.  Quo Vadis was another of my historical finds (stimulated by seeing the movie at the age of 10) -- it got me interested in Roman and classical history.  I loved Little Women and proceeded to read all its sequels, also.   I paid my dues reading nursing stories (Cherry Ames and Sue Barton), and I got into mysteries about the age of twelve.  I inhaled the entire collected Sherlock Holmes canon that year, and in high school I read a lot of Ellery Queen.  Later in my life I particularly liked Dorothy Sayers and a few other authors.  But I never found the mystery genre as a whole compelling.  It was always realistic books with a psychological twist that captivated me, or else a lot of fast-paced, swashbuckling adventure with trickster characters.  And this summary wouldn't be complete without a mention of Shakespeare, who falls in both of the above categories.  When I was fourteen, my mother bought me a complete Shakespeare.  We read Julius Caesar in school that year (feeding my interest in ancient Rome) and of course my mother taught English literature, so I started reading the plays and actually memorizing passages.  That can't have hurt my literary development.

       One more little anecdote involving historical fiction:  I had seen a movie at some early stage of my life where I was appalled and horrified when a character's eyes were gouged out.  I practically had nightmares about that scene, but after a few years I couldn't recall what movie it was from.  And then in high school I read The Prince of Foxes by Samuel Shellenbarger, and lo and behold!  There was the same scene!  Actually, it's a trick; the character only pretends to gouge out the eyes and substitutes grapes for the eyeballs.  But I don't think I understood that when I saw the movie at the age of seven or eight; I thought that was really somebody's eyeballs!

       You may note that I never read any science fiction as a child, and the only fantasy I can recall were the Oz books.  We had a friend who had adored the Oz books when she was a child and she bought me a whole bunch of them.  I have eight of them over here on the shelf.  My favorites characters were the Patchwork Girl (another intelligent non-human) and the Glass Cat ("I have pink brains - you can see 'em work!"). I also liked one tale where dinosaur bones come to life.  There you see my fascination with paleontology and it presents again the strange alien lifeform that exhibits intelligence.  I really didn't get into epic fantasy at all until I read Tolkien at the age of 29.  After that, the ball started rolling.  But after my writing hiatus from 1983 to 2000, it seems I turned back to my roots.