Monthly Archives: April 2016

Switching POV–The Writer’s, Not the Character’s

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YamadaEmperor-600If I ever knew who said it first, I’ve long forgotten. But the phrase had reason to kick me in the butt again this week—“I don’t know how to write a novel. I only know how to write the last one.” Which in my case is profoundly true. Every book is different, even if they’re in the same series concerned with—mostly—the same characters. It is a different book, or else why bother to write it at all? Yet writing other books in the Yamada series does not help very much with this one. Ask me how to write The War God’s Son and I could tell you, because I’ve already done it. Ask me how to write The Emperor in Shadow and I’d have to say, honestly, I’m still figuring that one out. Worse, I’m putting obstacles in my way.

Among my many failings is a natural gift for complexity. By which I mean that I have a habit of taking something inherently simple and turning it into something complicated. I don’t mean to do this, it’s just something that happens, given half the chance. It applies to home DIY as well as writing, though in both cases it makes accomplishing a goal harder than it needs to be. The current project is a prime example. Continue reading →

Leaving the Diamond Mine, Back to the Salt Mine

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Herkimer Diamonds Mixed with Dolomite in Matrix

Herkimer Diamonds Mixed with Dolomite in Matrix

Took a break from everything else in the whole damn world yesterday to go mining. We live in Herkimer County, New York, which is famous for a special sort of quartz crystal commonly referred to as a “Herkimer Diamond.” Naturally, it ain’t a diamond, but it’s normally a clear, double-terminated crystal, meaning it has what looks like faceted points on either end, giving it a diamond-like appearance, especially for the shorter, stubbier stones.

I’ve been quartz mining in Arkansas (Mt. Ida), and I’m here to tell you that mining for Herkimer Diamonds is a bit different. While both sorts of mining open to the public usually  involve working the leftovers from commercial mines, in Arkansas the matrix is rather loose and easy to dig through with no more than a screwdriver. If you want a Herkimer Diamond, otoh, you’re most likely going to be breaking rocks. They grow in pockets within the stone, and the larger the pocket, the larger the crystals. Lacking the equipment to dig into the side of the mountain, you’ll probably be sorting through the rocks knocked loose when the heavy mining equipment moved through. You look for a rock with a visible pockets on the surface, or obvious quartz veins, you put this rock on a bigger rock, take a 3-5 pound hammer, and break the rock. If you can. If you’ve picked a good rock, it will open for you, and if you’re lucky, there’s a pocket with crystals growing inside.

Our best find of the day was one such. Only a few centimeters long, but beautiful. Carol found the rock, I broke it, there was one fat little crystal within. The one pictured is a rarer find from a rock already broken by the machines, with several growing and visible, in among squarish crystals of dolomite. I decided to leave them in place, and just keep the rock. It’s sitting on my desk.

I think it’s saying “Get Back to Work, Slacker.”

Heroes: Andre Norton

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Perilous-Dreams-AndreNortonWhere the heck was I? Oh, right. Heroes.

Andre Norton. For those too young or otherwise disadvantaged to know, Andre Norton was a prolific science fiction & fantasy writer who started publishing in the 1930s and continued to do so into the next century (at the moment, this one). I’m not going to even attempt to summarize her career, since this is about one of my writing heroes, and therefore this is Andre Norton in relation to me. If you’re curious, and you should be, a decent place to start is her entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

Now then, here was the situation—I grew up in a very small southern town, and I was a reader. This was a problem for many reasons, not least of which being there was no bookstore within twenty miles and little money for buying books in the first place, and no library. Well, okay, the local school I attended had a library…only, for the first few years of its existence, students weren’t allowed to use it. And no, you don’t need to tell me how &%%# crazy that was. I know. In my one glorious term as a member of the Student Council, I complained about this in our very first meeting. The principal thanked us, and never called another meeting. He learned his lesson and I learned mine. The problem remained.

My only salvation was the county library eight miles away. Every week they sent out a bookmobile to the less fortunate towns in the county, mine included, and there…

Robert Heinlein

Isaac Asimov

Andre Norton

Ray Bradbury

Those were the top four authors I first discovered in the Newton County Bookmobile, so for better or worse, that mobile library is part of the reason I am the way I am. That’s a debate for another day. Yet as much as I enjoyed Heinlein and Asimov and especially Ray Bradbury, it was Andre Norton’s work that resonated the most with me at that time and place, at least partially because there was so much more of it.

I’m not really sure when I discovered that Andre Norton was born Alice Mary Norton. It’s not as if I was plugged into sf fandom or even knew it existed, but it was well before I graduated High School. I don’t even remember for certain which of her many, many books I read first. I believe it was either Galactic Derelict or The Time Traders. Not that it particularly matters. I got my hands on every single one of her books I possibly could, but to this day I have read barely a fraction of her work. So I’d like to talk about one in particular—Perilous Dreams.

This was from a time I was in college and buying my own books, when DAW Books was the place to be for the type of work I was looking for. John Brunner. Tanith Lee. Thomas Burnett Swann, for heaven’s sake. Those yellow spines and George Barr illustrations were practically a trademark. Perilous Dreams was a book about a woman who could move between worlds through dream. It wasn’t so much a novel as a series of linked novellas, given a handwave of genetic dispositions and technology, but basically pure fantasy and I read it that way.

This was a key book, and what I mean by that is this book was one of the ones that opened the door between the reader I was and the writer I was going to be. It resonated, as did The Gods Abide, Lord of the Rings and The Earthsea Trilogy a little later. It was one of the books that made me think about being a writer. Why? If I could explain that I’d be a lot smarter and wiser than I know I am. It wasn’t a perfect book by any means. Perhaps overly romantic, a bit disjointed. Don’t care and didn’t matter. Anyone who’d read both would know that my own A Warrior of Dreams, while certainly different, is me paying tribute to Perilous Dreams. You assimilate your influences and move on, sure, but it serves one best to understand what they are and who they are.

Andre Norton is one of mine.

Brief Update: Yesterday I passed the 60,000 word mark in Yamada Monogatari: The Emperor in Shadow, so I’m about 2/3 done, if I’m right about what’s left to tell, and I think I am.

We Could Be Heroes…But Probably Not

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WRITING 02

Not everyone is entirely comfortable with the idea of heroes. They too often have feet of clay, or in these days of the media creature, turn out to be fabricated out of whole cloth, or at least a cheap polyester. Yet we all have them, and writers are no different. The difference is in what inspires us—the words on the page, not necessarily the people behind them. Writing heroes. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt when you discover that one of your heroes, known for his gentle and optimistic fiction, is a right wing fascist at heart or another with a unique and powerful voice is a virulent racist. Such things usually kill off normal heroes. As a hero, that is. Writer heroes usually survive, not always, but usually, since it is the words on the page that matter, not the imperfect, venal, or just plain unworthy person behind them, but more so because there’s a secret that the process of writing fiction eventually teaches.

You write better than you are.

I’ve touched on this before, but it’s especially relevant, I think, in the genre today. We all do it, if we’re any good at all. What comes out on the page is smarter, wiser, usually more together than, well, we are. I don’t know how it all works, I just know that it does. So I’m not usually so surprised when it turns out that the writer behind books and stories I love is a deeply flawed human being. Someone you might even cross the street to avoid if you saw them coming.  It happens. It doesn’t matter. Any decent work we produce is, at its core, a reflection of our better selves, maybe even who we’re trying to be, not necessarily who we are. Which is probably why I’ve never been driven to meet writers I admire. Most of the writers I call friends are ones I met even before I discovered their work, and got to know and like them as people first. That way generally works. Someone you only know from their work? Not so much.

Oh, sure, there are exceptions. There are even times when I regret, say, that I never got to meet Fritz Leiber, even though I did have the chance, once, at a World Fantasy Con way back in 1987, and I will always treasure my one and only meeting with Parke Godwin, who turned out to be as grand a human being in person as he was on the page. It’s great when that happens, but I don’t expect it. No one should.

I started this blog post with the idea of talking a little about one of my writing heroes, but I got pulled in another direction. It happens, so I’ll save that one for next time. I never met her, but then again, see above, I didn’t need to. The books and stories were all I did need, or had any right to expect.

So, if you ever want to meet me and manage to do so, I apologize in advance. That is all.