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? 

Publishing Update: The Valley of Thorns

 

       Volume Three (The Valley of Thorns) of The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head has been successfully published on Amazon, both paperback and Kindle, and on Smashwords!  The Smashwords went easier than it ever has (unless they find something to quibble about in considering it for the Premium Catalog).  You can download a 25% sample on Smashwords, which will include the preliminary material and approximately four chapters.  Amazon hasn't linked up the paperback and the Kindle yet, but ultimately you will be able to get a Kindle version FREE if you buy a paperback.

       I'm having an Anniversary Party as a Facebook event on November 15.  Two years ago I published my first book, Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder, on that date.  Now I have six books published, plus the little free novelette on Smashwords, "The Blessing of Krozem." All my Facebook Friends are invited.  If you're not my friend yet but are on Facebook, go in and friend me, and I'll invite you.

 

Why would you want to come to my party?

 

Witty conversation, free virtual food,

information about my books,

maybe a surprise reveal of the unfinished

cover for v.4: Beneath the Mountain of Heavy Fear

 

Plus, I'm going to have special prices on all my books,

as well as a drawing for a couple of paperbacks

from the names of the people who attend.

Go to TermiteWriter's Anniversary Party

and check it out!

 

Reminiscences about Old Libraries by an Old Librarian, Part 2

       After three years at Colorado College, I decided I wanted to continue working on my PhD after all.  I was very interested in the literature of the Romantic period at that time and I read something about the Miriam Lutcher Stark Library at the University of Texas, a rare book library that specialized in the Romantics.  I got all fired up about going there and I applied for a half-time position in that library with the idea of  taking graduate classes the other half time. 

       This worked out well.  I was hired as a cataloger of rare books and although I ended up dropping out of the PhD program after one year, I continued to work at UT through the sixties and into the seventies, both in rare books and in the regular catalog department. 

       My first experience of a really big academic library was Cornell, where I got my MA in English literature.  My second experience was at UCLA (Master's in library science).  UCLA's library was a formidable, older set-up with closed stacks, that is, if you wanted a book, you got the call number from the catalog and then somebody paged it for you from the stacks.  However, as a library school student, I had stack privileges and I spent lots of time roaming those dark, gloomy, and somewhat intimidating environs.

This picture is from 2005, but it looked exactly
the same in 1966.  Whitman fired from the
observation deck at the top.  The Stark
Library was in the red-roofed level on
the fourth floor.

       Still, the UCLA library didn't hold a candle for weirdness to the University of Texas.  Here is a picture of the Tower.  It's a famous symbol of UT and at the time I was there, it housed the main library -- yes, most of those floors you see in the tower itself were occupied by stacks.  Most of the books are now housed in other, more up-to-date venues, but my memories are of the Tower. 

       I've written before of how my mother and I arrived in Austin one day after the Charles Whitman Massacre, where a young man went up to top of the tower and opened fire with a rifle on the courtyard below.  These days we've gotten kind of hardened to that sort of atrocity, but it wasn't so common in 1966.  Only two days after the massacre I was walking across that same area.  If we had arrived two days sooner, I might have been one of the people who was shot!

       My official employer was the Humanities Research Center, which not only administered the Stark Library but was building its own collection of rare materials, many of which were contemporary first editions, manuscripts by well-known authors, etc.  The HRC had its offices in the tower, so I immediately had to go up in the very same elevator that Whitman had taken two days before.  The Administrative Assistant in the HRC told me she had actually held the elevator door for Whitman so he could bring in a footlocker.  It contained his rifles, but she just thought it was a load of books destined for the collection.  You can imagine that security got a bit tighter after that!
       The collections in the Stark Library were a donation by the eponymous donor.  I won't go into the history; if you're interested, go here http://www.utexas.edu/tours/mainbuilding/interior/main400/
and here http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/collections/books/holdings/stark/  You can see on those sites how grandiose was the venue where I worked!  I later worked in new HRC library.  By that time the Stark Library had been dismantled and turned into an office for the President of the University of Texas.  The pictures on the two websites are from that period (I couldn't find anything from the sixties), but I'm confidant that the view on the right below is of the room where I usually ate my lunch.  The furniture was all shabby Victorian, taken from Mrs. Stark's home.  The books were housed in locked cases around the periphery and on the balcony.  There were long windows with heavy Victorian drapes and there was a tall painting of Mrs. Stark which we staff members faced as we ate seated on a worn velvet settee and clustered around a coffee table.
       There was a funny story about the painting.  It showed Mrs. Stark standing by a table in 1890s dress and the Head Librarian, whom I will call Mrs. M. (things were very formal -- not even the student workers were called by their first names), pointed out a strange horizontal line across the center of the portrait.  She said Mrs. Stark thought she looked too short in the picture, so the painter cut it in two and lengthened her from the waist down.  If you thought about, it really was out of proportion.  Where her waist was and where her floor-length skirt ended would have made her legs impossibly long!
       The Stark hired its own cleaning staff, usually a student, so Mrs. M. could keep tabs on who came and went in this place that housed such a valuable collection. When I was there, the janitor was a young man who wasn't quite with it (this was the sixties, you know). He was not what you would call energetic. Mrs. M. talked about how he sat down to run the vacuum cleaner, and I saw him do it with my own eyes. Frankly, I do that sometimes myself these days, but this kid wasn't 73 years old!

       The Stark Library also had a rooftop terrace.  In the picture of the Tower, it's the area in front of the red-roofed structure.  The grassy part had a resident tortoise named Epicurus.  My cataloging friend used to feed it lettuce, but one time she fed it a butterfinger, which it ate with relish.  Then it disappeared for a long period of time and she was afraid she had killed it, but it finally turned up no worse for wear.
       The library had its own cataloger and catalog department, which actually was the kitchen.  The whole place was very cramped for space.  It was a tiny room with a sink and cooktop, perhaps oven, too (I've forgotten), and refrigerator, and that's where the food for breaks or events was kept.  It also had two desks.  The long-time catalog librarian resented my intrusion on her space in the beginning -- she liked things done certain ways, and here comes this young whippersnapper with three years' experience being thrust into her world.  However, I'm very good at following instructions and I soon learned her ways.  In the end we became the best of friends and remained so even after I went on to other things, until she died in the 1990s. 
       The cataloging was not like anything done in an ordinary library.  The books were all 18th and 19th century imprints, and we collated every last one of them.  That means you page through and record the signatures from the bottom of the page, checking for errors in paging or missing pages.  You also looked for stubs where pages have been cut out and for tip-ins where new pages might have been inserted.  Handwritten marginalia and autographs were noted, and inclusions in the books, like notes or drawings, were extracted and sent to the manuscript collection.  Once, in a book from around 1815, I found a beautiful paper cut-out of a lion with a putto on its back playing a harp and my boss said I could keep it.  I still have it.  I framed it in a gold frame against a red background and I just love it.  Who has the patience to do anything like that these days?
       After I quit my PhD work, I went to the regular UT catalog department, but later when the Stark Library was dismantled, I rejoined my rare-book cataloger friend in the HRC Library.  I was just in time to help them move.  What a job!  I'll say only that she and I worked as a team unloading book trucks in the new library and shelving the books.  I ran into a first edition of E.R. Eddison's The Worm Ourobouros.  It was the first time I'd ever heard of it.  I had already read Tolkien and begun writing fantasy, and that helped me take off into other books of that genre.
       I have one more story to tell about my regular cataloging days at UT, but I'll put that in a third part to this post.

Reminiscences about Old Libraries from an Old Librarian, Part 1

       I have worked in really old libraries and in brand new libraries and in some of a middle age, and while the new ones were more roomy and convenient, it's the old ones that I have the fondest memories of, and also some of the weirdest.  All libraries have their eccentricities, but the old ones are like pixillated little old ladies and gentlemen.  You never know what they will do next.

       The first library I ever worked in (and the one where I studied as an undergraduate) was the one below.  I attended Colorado College from 1957 through 1961 and during that time I worked as a student assistant for the summer after my sophomore year (the summer after my junior year I took beginning German and I never tried to work and go to school at the same time -- I've never been a multitasker).  Then I worked again as a circulation assistant the summer after I graduated, before I went to Cornell to study for my MA.  In 1962 CC's brand spanking new Charles Leaming Tutt Library opened and I worked there  that same summer (starting only a few weeks after the building opened -- they were still laying carpet) before I headed to UCLA for my library science degree.  I was to return ito the new library in 1963 as Catalog Librarian, but that's a whole different story.

Coburn Library, Colorado College, 1894-1962
A Postcard View
From http://www.cardcow.com/103698/coburn-library-colorado-college-springs/

       Here is some information on Coburn Library from

http://www2.coloradocollege.edu/library/SpecialCollections/Walk/Coburn.html

The building was constructed of "peachblow sandstone quarried near Aspen."  It's a beautiful red stone and several of the early buildings on the campus were constructed of that material.  "Coburn cost about $45,000 to build. The major donor was the Hon. N. P. Coburn of Newton Massachusetts, a childhood friend of CC President Slocum. In 1940, to make room for the growing collection, a four-story addition with room for 60,000 volumes was built for $20,000."



Interior View of Coburn Library, ca. 1895

Thanks to
http://www2.coloradocollege.edu/library/SpecialCollections/Walk/Coburn.html

       "The building, judged inadequate even after the addition, was razed in 1963. The statue of Winged Victory of Samothrace, seen here in an interior view ca. 1895, disappeared around that time. We hold out hope that it will come back home to roost one day."

       This interior view may be from 1895, but when I was in college, it looked exactly like this, except the addition at the back had done away with that half-moon window.  Everything was decked out in beautiful warm-hued, polished woodwork. The rare book collection was housed in a locked closet in the upper left hand of the picture, reached by a metal circular staircase.  Nike was still there in my time -- when I was pondering my reading at a table, I used to look up at that statue in some fascination.  The circulation desk was always over there at the left, and I presume the small card catalog seen at the left in the picture included all the books the library contained in 1895.  By my time the library had maybe 100,000 books (I honestly have forgotten, so I don't swear by this figure) crammed into that small space.

       You see those balconies at the upper right?  By my time bound periodicals were shelved there, and sometimes a little old lady would ask you so sweetly to get a volume down for her. What can a student assistant do but comply?  You had to climb up a really tall ladder while dangling halfway out over the edge of the balcony.  Honestly, it was scary! 

       Not seen in this picture (which looks north) is the balcony at the southern end of the main room.  It housed the materials in the historical ranges of the Dewey Decimal system and it seems like I was always stuck with shelving books there.  Of course there were no elevators.  You had to load up a tray of books (you know how heavy books are) and carry them up a steep, cut-back staircase, and then keep going up and down a ladder with a few books each time.  Maybe that's why I have so much arthritis in my shoulders now!  I've hauled books around all my life!

       The 1940 addition was bare-bones -- just metal stacks in about four levels -- but at least the ceilings were low and it was supplied with carrels with slit windows, so you could look out over the quadrangle when you were studying.

       Do any of you remember the smell of old libraries?  New libraries smell like fresh paint and plaster and carpet chemicals, but old libraries smell like musty, unsunned storage caves -- paper dust and old crumbling leather bindings and book glue and a touch of printing ink and furniture polish and maybe some disintegrated bookworms thrown in for good measure.   A wonderful, nostalgic smell that I can still conjure up for myself!

       Now, the spookiest and most aromatic part of Coburn Library was the basement.  It contained storage for government documents.  I presume you all know that many libraries are repositories for government documents; they automatically receive at least a selection of everything printed by the GPO.  You know how much paper the government produces.  Any academic library worth its salt has a librarian solely in charge of government documents, and those materials take up a heck of a lot of space.  In Coburn it was the basement.  It was lit only by drop lights and they didn't stay on all the time.  There were no centralized switches for the lighting, so in the evening when the library closed up, somebody had to sweep the building, turning off the lights.  If somebody requested a document in the daytime, you would have to go down there and find it for them, turning the lights on as you went.  Some of the aisles were piled with overflow from those sections of shelving. 

       There is a cartoon that I think came from the New Yorker, but I'm not sure.  I've been trying to find it online but without any luck, alas, so I'll describe it.  It shows a female librarian between two stacks with a bunch of books piled on the floor just like I used to see in the Coburn basement.  Sitting on top of the books (with a drop light overhead) is a skull draped with cobwebs and the woman is regarding it with the most horrified expression.  I used to feel just like that when I had to go down there.  It wouldn't have surprised me at all to find a mummified body!  Murder in the Library!  I think that's been done in more than one mystery novel! 

       It pained me that they demolished this quirky old building.  I would have liked to see it preserved and put it on the Register of Historic Buildings.  But the college needed the land for a new administration building and auditorium, so ... Coburn is gone never to return.

       And by the way, if anybody out there knows the location of that Winged Victory, please get in touch with me!



New Goodreads Review of The Termite Queen!

       Adam Walker is one of my conlanging and conworlding associates (he's writing a book of his own that I really looking forward to because it's going to be full of fascinating aliens), and he's written a review of the two volumes of The Termite Queen.  He didn't like everything about it, but here is some of the good stuff he mentioned:

 

       "The Termite Queen (vol. 1) and The Wound That Has No Healing (vol. 2) really are one long novel in two volumes. Volume one has a logical conclusion, but the story is far from over till the end of volume two. Each of the two volumes contains two parts.
       "Personally I found volume 2 more satisfying, because I found the aliens, the "termites", more interesting than the humans. The Shshi are strange, as aliens should be, but relatable -- they plot against each other and have their customs and rituals and ways of doing things. Several of the Shshi are really fun characters, the scheming chamberlain, the child-like queen, the clever seer. Several of the warriors are especially complex as they are caught between duty and conscience trying to decide where their loyalties lie as the leadership of the termite city fractures."

 

       [I like that because nobody before has noted the complexity of the psychology of Commander Hi'ta'fu, Chief Lo'lo'pai, and Lieutenant Ni'shto'pri.]

 

       Adam goes on mention how he didn't like the romance part of the plot and then continues saying that nevertheless he really likes the book:

 

       "Languages. I love languages. I invent languages as a hobby. And the Shshi language in this book is incredible. Not only is it alien, using a non-verbal modality (radio waves!), but the version we see in the text is actually an invented language that Our Heroine invents during the course of the book as in interface between the humans, who can't detect radio waves, and the Shshi who can't detect our languages."

 

       [I like that because Adam is the first person to mention the language element that plays such a large part in the book -- the process of understanding how we really might communicate during humans' first contact with intelligent extraterrestrials.]

       Adam gave it 4 stars and recommended it.  Most of the reviews of TQ have been 4 star (I've had one 5-star on each of the two volumes, and a couple of 3-star on v.1 -- nothing lower).  I'm satisfied with 4 stars because this book does have so many elements to it (romance, a journey into human psychology, emphasis on future history, space travel, several types of extraterrestrials, conlangs, a low-tech alien culture with a tradition of heroic single combat, etc.),  With a book so heterogeneous, I'm sure everybody will find something that annoys them, but (I trust) also something to like!

 

       Give it a try here: Amazon

       Or here: Smashwords 

A Tangled Web?

Young Lochinvar Carrying Away His Love
From Misrepresentative Women by Harry Graham  (c1906)
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42407/42407-h/42407-h.htm#Lochinvar

       Remember the old quote "Oh, what a tangled web we weave / When first we practise to deceive"? Bet you don't know what it's from. Shakespeare? (Isn't everything from Shakespeare?) The Bible (less likely!) Well, I didn't know either, so I looked it up. It's from an epic poem that's pretty obscure these days -- Marmion, a Tale of Flodden Field, by Walter Scott, first published in 1808.  It's a tale of romantic intrigues involving nuns who break their vows, wronged heroes, duels, revenge, deaths at the battle of Flodden Field in 1513, etc., etc.  Modernized a bit, it might actually have something going for it! It was immensely popular in its day, although it was not a critical success; according to Wikipedia, it was castigated for the "unwarranted intrusions" of the letters to Scott's friends that head up each canto and its poetic style was called "flat and tedious." There was also a complaint that it was written solely to show off Scott's erudition.  However, the poem also contained the "Lochinvar" section that people used to read in school.  I remember that galloping anapestic rhythm very well -- and with some nostalgia ...

O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,
He rode all unarm'd, and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar ...

       Does anybody read that poem these days?

 

       So where was I?  What was my point?  Oh, I remember -- the tangled web.  First, however, let me say that some might criticize my writing for some of the same reason they criticized Scott's (although I don't write poetry):  That my stories have "unwarranted intrusions," that my style isn't spectacularly original (although I really wouldn't call it "flat and tedious"), and that I like to show off my erudition (which isn't as mighty as I wish it were).  That's still not my point, however. 

 

       My point is, everything I write is interconnected -- a bit of a tangled web.  I really hadn't thought about that until lately.  All of my books share characters and allude to events or people which exist in my other books.  The Termite Queen is the seminal tale.  It introduces Prf. Kaitrin Oliva, who is also the main character in "Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder," which is laid thirty years later.  Kaitrin is also the editor of The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head series, which begins hard on the end of The Termite Queen.  The series contains many references to events in The Termite Queen, because after all it was the coming of the Star-Beings to the termite planet that precipitated the New Time (doesn't the arrival of aliens always change things?)  Kaitrin mounts several expeditions to the termite planet after that fateful first one, and these are mentioned in footnotes throughout the series.  And Kaitrin actually does make a physical appearance as a character in the series but only near its end.

       Then of course two of the major characters in the series -- Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head and Di'fa'kro'mi the Remembrancer -- were introduced in The Termite Queen, so that's an essential interconnection.

       See how tangled it's getting?

 

       I also have a number of unwritten books that increase the tangles.  Something I plan to call The Dark Leopards of the Moon (title from a poem by Yeats) will be the story of the remainder of Kaitrin Oliva's life, and then there is an episode of her life alluded to in "Monster" as "my experiences with the Etúmanoi on the fourth planet of Foraka 3."  That one I mean to write as a separate novel (entitled The Hard, Bright Crystal of Being, from a poem by Conrad Aiken), and it also includes a couple of other characters from Termite Queen whose names I won't mention for fear of spoilers.

 

       The only story I've written that isn't tangled up with the others is The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars.  It's laid in the 28th century while TQ is laid in the 30th, and its only association with The Termite Queen lies in the fact that first contact with the bird aliens (Prf. A'a'ma's people) occurs in MWFB.  That's important, of course, but it does allow the plot of MWFB to pretty much stand on its own.

 

       I say all this only because the tangling of my characters and plots may make them a little problematical to read.  You may have read TQ and found some things not to like about it.  It has a double plot line, so you may like one plot and not the other.  Besides, it contains all that conlanging gobbledegook, which is a little bit of a specialized interest.  (However, I can't imagine anybody who wouldn't be curious about how we're going to communicate with aliens when we finally meet them.)  So I would say this: if you enjoyed the termite people in The Termite Queen, please do go on and give the Ki'shto'ba series a try.  And even if you haven't read TQ, it's summarized sufficiently at the beginning of The War of the Stolen Mother, so don't be deterred from jumping right into the series. 
       I hope to meet you there!

      

Some Random Thoughts, and a Cover Reveal

     I've been posting more regularly on my other blog lately, because most of what I've had to say involves either the Ki'shto'ba series or material about myth.  I have a special ongoing at the moment:

THE WAR OF THE STOLEN MOTHER

 (v.1 of The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head)

will be priced at only 99 cents through Sunday, Sept. 8,

for the Kindle version at Amazon or for the Smashwords edition.

 

       I just participated in Tidbit Tuesday, a monthly event run by Patrick O'Scheen on Facebook, and I ended up increasing my likes on my FB page from 45 to 98 (at this moment of writing). A really nice reward!

       That brings up a question.  People always seem interested in my work and my ideas, and they say nice things about my drawings.  But none of this produces any sales, particularly of my Ki'shto'ba series, which I still say is superior to anything else I've written, especially for its originality. 

       Why is this?  I think I might have some idea.  My termites naturally talk is a high style -- they simply don't speak colloquial English.  That is, to preserve the fiction, Kaitrin Oliva envisions them as talking is an elevated, literary style (I had nothing to do with it -- ha, ha!) and she translates them that way.  And probably the scholarly apparatus, which I so love, puts people off (the footnotes, in particular, and possibly the asides between Di'fa'kro'mi and his scribe, something I find really entertaining, and also maybe the "difficult" names).  One person told me he didn't like the narrative form -- the fact that somebody was telling the story.  My opinion of that is that it's a personal quirk.  Lots of books are written in the first person, including The Great Gatsby.  And Di'fa'kro'mi is a Bard, after all -- it's his job to tell tales.  He participated in Ki'shto'ba's quest and it makes sense to have him tell the story as a reminiscence, as his own memoirs.  We may know he survived, but that doesn't mean that anybody else in the quest made it back home (after all in the present moment in which Di'fa'kro'mi is speaking, we never see a single other person who went on the quest), so it doesn't damage the suspense.

 

       Now a random and disconnected remark ...  I've noticed lately that a lot of book covers show closeups of one or two heads with serious, strained, or possibly lustful expressions on their faces.  Hmm.  That would work only for books in The Man Who Found Birds series (yes, it will be a series).  I may have to find somebody to do the covers for those, if I can find somebody who won't charge me thousands of dollars.  I'll repeat, I can do termites and I can make my own maps, but real people?  Forget it!  The faces I've attempted improved with practice, but they are still basically cartoons.  I don't think anything I could do would work.  So stay tuned.

 

       And now I present the back cover for The Valley of Thorns.  It was Marva Dasef who suggested I incorporate the map so I could employ a colorized version.  I did a detail showing the region around the battle area.  For the full black and white map, go here. 

 

Click for larger view