Barbara Hambly's Blog, page 46

Sex and Violence

THE LADIES OF MANDRIGYN

            This was my karate book.

            I remember very clearly the moment of its inception. Sensei Ray Dalke – who at that time taught at the University of California, Riverside – offered a Women’s Self-Defense Class sometime in the early ‘70s. I was a brown-belt, I believe, at the time, but training with the Women’s Team at the downtown dojo: non-contact, old-style Shotokan. Sensei asked me and the black belt women to be on hand for the class, to use as demo-dummies and for crowd control, since it would be a huge class and all beginners.

            We seniors were sitting around on the floor of the dance-room, warming up, as all these brand-new young ladies come in, in their gis and white belts, TALKING. Chattering. Like the twitter of birds (since none of them were warming up or anything). More and more of them came in, all twittering amongst themselves, and you could just about feel the level of estrogen in the room rising to the ceiling. At last Sensei yelled, “I can’t STAND this! Everybody get in a line!”

            And I thought, Hmmn.

            And the whole book fell into place in my mind.

            The Ladies of Mandrigyn, like The Walls of Air, is principally about training. For a number of years, my life was about training, the same way it has been about writing for decades now. In the dojo, we all understood each other because that was where we all were. We were also a fairly hard-partying dojo, and I’m not going to go into the dojo party stories: it was the ‘70s, we were all very young (including Sensei, who was I think 34 when I started training), and we all did some fairly stupid and irresponsible things. It was a pretty educational experience for me.

            At one point I did a huge oil-painting of a group of barbarians sacking a town, with portraits of Sensei and the various black-belts. That was how it felt. (I traded it to Sensei for a year of training, I think).

            One of the things I never forgot was how the women pulled together in the face of training against the men. Sensei always had the women spar against men as well as women, and every woman in the dojo, from #1 blackbelt Anne down to the newest white-belt girls, knew which men were good to spar with, and which men got off on hitting women. There were guys who would push you – HARD – without malice, without ego, without hurting you: gentlemen who knew that they were there to help you learn how to deal with someone who was physically stronger and had a longer reach. There were others who came to class and you could smell alcohol in their sweat. We ladies were always pretty pleased when one of these got his ass thoroughly kicked by one of the Men’s Team. One thing you learn in karate, at a visceral level, is that there’s ALWAYS somebody out there better than you are.

            Another thing you learn is that who you are inside is going to come out in the dojo, whether you want it to or not. It was direct, non-verbal, and very intense, and under those circumstances, you can’t hide. Not even from yourself.

            The women got very close to one another, and mostly looked out for each other. Sensei called us the Broad Squad (after the old TV show the Mod Squad); some very close friendships were formed. I don’t think there was any of us who hadn’t had a night when we came off the floor in tears. It brought out one of the essential differences between women and men. One of the guys on the Men’s Team told one of us (I forget who) that they sometimes envied this closeness among the Women’s Team because the guys – being guys – were VERY much into, who could kick whose ass. The competitiveness among the men never let off. Everybody KNEW that Ed was #1 bad-ass on the Team. (And a total gentleman – a joy to spar with). I still remember when John – the smallest of the team at about 130 pounds, and the only guy I believe could actually have killed someone with his bare hands – broke his leg. He’d train with the team – 3 hrs on Friday nights – with his leg in a cast, propped up on a chair. We were all impressed.

            It was a place to do crazy things, to let out your craziness.  I look back and think I must have been crazy to put myself through all that, but I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything in this world.

            Sun Wolf, by the way – the mighty-thewed barbarian mercenary of Ladies - isn’t based on any single person. He’s a rough amalgam of several of the instructors, though some of the mercenary troop – Ari and Penpusher and Dogbreath – are pretty much straight take-offs on various of the guys in the dojo. The women of Ladies aren’t straight copies either. The book is about the feeling, the atmosphere I lived in for eight years: sex, violence, and calluses on your feet.

That went well...

Well, that all went well. No disasters in the preparation of lunch (despite the untimely death of the Magic Thermometer - fortunately I'd purchased a cheap Chinese knock-off last year and that worked great). To my astonishment the custard gelled up just fine and was delicious (especially when sandwiched between surprisingly spicy gingerbread and ludicrous quantities of whipped cream). I got pillow-cases, hankies, a butter-dish, and sufficient cash gifts and gift certificates to get a couple of DVDs and a used copy of Red Dead Redemption. Then everyone went away and the cats came pussyfooting out of the back of the house to sit on every chair in turn, just to make sure.

Next Saturday is the Parental Anniversary: 63 years.

But tomorrow I can actually get back to work, which will be a relief.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Sleep in Heavenly Peace

Well, the house is set up for Family Christmas Luncheon - I get to rise EXTREMELY early to make custard, something I haven't done in years. (It needs to be chilled, and allegedly can't be done tonight because it tends to separate by morning). This is for the butterscotch-gingerbread trifle described on Laurie's party blog, partyknowitalls.wordpress.com. The gingerbread smells phenomenal.

At least two friends of mine are traveling today to the Frozen North - one to Michigan, the other to Chicago (Why would ANYONE want to live in Chicago???) (Well, no, I know there are some lovely people who live there, but WHY?). I'm just glad I'm not doing that. It's been a difficult and stressy holiday, mostly due to Apollo's medical issues - he's much better, and allegedly the stitches come out Wednesday. It wasn't until yesterday that Christmas seemed even real. Decking the Hall always does it for me - even the moderate version I do these days makes the house look very cheerful, and getting out the good dishes always lifts my spirits, knowing I'll have my family here (topaz Depression Glass - a pattern called Spoke, for those of you who track such things).

(Due to the presence of a member of the household who is both nimble and destructive, I've given up stringing a garland around the ceiling-molding. Too easy to make a flying leap from the top of the Chinese cabinet and haul the whole business down. Instead, rosettes of icicles, ornaments, and curly ribbon hang from the nails that supported the garland in other years.) Some of my neighbors are far less conservative, and when I take my walk I am hugely entertained by the displays: Santa's helicopter, ferris-wheels of lights that actually turn, a tilt-a-whirl of lights, and what George used to call in-flates, which always remind me of something one would encounter in World of Warcraft: enormous grinning snowmen or penguins or unidentifiable threats.

A thousand and one minutiae to be done: making sour-cream-horseradish goo for my dad, putting flowers in the vase only when I can make sure Certain Members of the Household aren't going to eat them, doing the salad, doing the veggies. None of the gifts I've bought now seems worthwhile - they all feel shabby and inadequate.

Sunday I get to return to work on a) the galleys of Ben January #10 (The Shirt On His Back) or the very-soon-due Ben January #11 (Dark Souls)... not to mention prepping for Spring Semester.

I'm reminded again that Christmas is the midnight of the year, a time of darkness and ghosts. The point originally, I suspect, was not so much to celebrate as to make sure that through that night everyone was in the same room with the lights on. I watched George C. Scott's phenomenal version of "A Christmas Carol" and will probably - after returning from the neighborhood block-party - watch my second-favorite Christmas movie, "Love Actually." (Or possibly my third favorite, Dr. Who Meets Charles Dickens...)

Certainly I'll be asleep long before the animals all acquire human speech at midnight. ("Mommie, Jasmine's sleeping in my spot..." "Is it time for breakfast yet?") That's probably just as well.

Holidays

I really will get back to posting about books...

Busy times right now. Apollo is home from the vet's, but has to be isolated for 2 weeks while he wears the Cone of Shame and waits for his stitches to heal up... meaning, a certain amount of extra work (and time) looking after him, and making poor Damsel sleep in a cage. (The alternative is making her sleep downstairs - all my dog-owner friends said that'll make her wonder what she's done to be exiled from the bedroom).

But, it's being a lovely Christmas season. A friend gave me a ticket to the annual Messiah Sing-Along at Disney Hall last night: pouring rain, frightful traffic, and the place was still packed to its architecturally significant rafters. Choirs from all over Southern California make it an outing; across the hall, I could see parents sharing songbooks with their kids. I only joined in on a couple of the choruses - the one about "And his name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor..."  My singing voice is as erratic and truly terrible as my spelling and I cannot carry a tune. At the insistence of the audience, we sang the Hallelujah Chorus three or four times. Then most of the audience went down to the Founders Hall (I think - it's that place where they have the wine and cheese parties, that looks like a box-canyon in Utah) and sang CHristmas carols.

I suppose there's a whole meditation somewhere about how singing together unites peoples' hearts - whether it's Silent Night or Deutschland Uber Alles; like all magic, it can be used for good or ill. I wonder about the generation of students I'm teaching, who don't know words like "coup d'etat" or "encirclement" (these are honors students)... Will even the Christians among them understand what's going on in The Messiah?

A Merry Christmas Indeed!

Just got word that Open Road, a new e-book company, has picked up almost all of my old Del Rey Fantasies for e-publication, probably starting in spring.

The only absence seems to be Dragonsbane and its sequels - I'm not sure whether they didn't take it because the sequels are held by Bantam, or what the deal is.

But, as far as I know:

Vampire Novels:
Those Who Hunt the Night
Traveling with the Dead

Darwath Series:
Time of the Dark
The Walls of Air
The Armies of Daylight

The Windrose Chronicles:
The Silent Tower
The Silicon Mage
Dog Wizard
Stranger at the Wedding

Sun Cross:
The Rainbow Abyss
The Magicians of Night

Sun Wolf/Starhawk Series:
The Ladies of Mandrigyn
The Witches of Wenshar
Dark Hand of Magic

Stand-alone novels:
Bride of the Rat God
Search the Seven Hills

Needless to say, I am beyond delighted that things like Rat-God and Dog Wizard (which I consider one of my best) will be available for e-readers. As I understand things, Severn House looks on-track to do the new vampire and January novels as well. Whoo-hoo!

Now, back to work...
 

help!

That wretch Jasmine did SOMETHING to my keyboard, so that the contents of my Internet Screen have been "scootched" up on the physical screen - that is, the top 10% of the contents of the screen have now gone up and out of sight. (This includes the regular Internet toolbars).
I realize the solution is extremely simple. I just don't know it. (Turning off the computer did nothing to reverse the problem).
Any suggestions? It's a PC, Windows Vista.

Who Are These People?

First, apologies for disappearing for awhile. The day before Thanksgiving one of my cats began displaying unmistakable symptoms of distress, which resulted in 8 days in the vet hopsital and an extremely stressful holiday (and an extremely stingy Christmas, I'm afraid). Apollo is home now, but has to be 1) isolated and 2) monitored, in between working on a severe deadline and reading class papers and finals.

In the midst of all that I did get to a wonderful tea at Toad Hall (you can read more about it on Laurie's party-blog, partyknowitalls.wordpress.com) at which I did NOT eat the gingerbread-butterscotch trifle, which certainly helped my outlook on the world. And Apollo, God bless him, is a perfect gentleman about taking pills. He'd open the bottle for me if he had an opposable thumb. (The last time I tried to pill Jasmine she bit me so badly we both ended up on antibiotics).

But thinking about writing, especially in the early phases of my career, made me think about what it is that gets me writing and keeps me writing - which is the characters. People are what I look for in books that I read - one reason that I'm seldom interested by a thriller. I've read in that genre, and although an effort has been made to make the characters 'colorful' they frequently don't feel real or human to me. I don't know what makes the difference.

I'll write about characters again - I realize I didn't touch on using someone else's characters (Star Trek, Star Wars, etc) - but here's some of my thoughts about them for starters.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

            So, who are these people I write about?

            They’re the reason I write – to spend time with them. The plot is just so they’ll have something to do for 315 pages.

            I wasn’t kidding in the short story, “Quest For Glory.” I do sort of have a locker-room in my head, and I know these people, have known them for years. Have told stories about some of them since I was 11 or 12 years old.

            Most of them are amalgams of several people, traits and characteristics I’ve observed, hooked together in what feels to me to be a logical fashion. Sometimes the starting-point was a character in a movie or a book or a TV show – not necessarily the hero - but it’s never a straight take-off. (The only straight one-to-one take-offs I’ve ever done were the three Pekes in Bride of the Rat-God). They grow inside my head as I get to know them better. That’s one reason why I didn’t settle onto a regular series right off, but started five or six (which drove Lester Del Rey crazy, since like all editors he wanted his author to do one single series: even in the early 80s they were looking for a guaranteed pre-sell). But it’s so much fun getting to know these people, and there were so many people who needed serieses of their own.

            A lot of the fun is with the minor characters – walk-throughs, sidekicks, innkeepers – some of whom are the early, or sketched-in, versions of people who later become heroes in other books. If I’m not careful, I over-paint minor characters, and end up with these huge Dickensian casts, which drive editors crazy. But I have to know that these people don’t just sit on the sidelines when the action shifts elsewhere. They all have their own lives, their own relationships with each other, and now that I’ve started revisiting all the old fantasy serieses, I have to make sure they show up again where and when they should. (Like that gang of argumentative snobs that inhabits the Keep of Dare). I have to know what their voices sound like, even when they're only talking amongst themselves off-screen.

            Perhaps this is because the thing that interests me in my books is friendship and community. The Keep is about community. The Winterlands is about community. The Ben January books aren’t just about January: they’re about his sisters, his nephew who’s a phenomenal cook, about Hannibal and Shaw and all the folks at the Back of Town, and the way they come into and out of Ben’s life.

            The oldest characters – the ones I was writing about when I was a kid – were the Icefalcon, John Aversin, the Demon Queen Aohila, and Don Simon Ysidro (though at that point Don Simon wasn’t a vampire, just a very strange person with a snotty attitude). Mostly back then I’d do stories about guys, probably because I didn’t have particularly interesting literary models for female characters. I wrote numerous really terrible Star Trek stories that featured a very early version of the character that eventually evolved into Hannibal Sefton, although Hannibal as a character was hugely influenced by my husband George. Asher and Lydia were another early pair, from my undergraduate days in college. From the same era dates a very unshaped Victorian adventure story that is still around here somewhere, with the main character recognizably King Oryn II of the Yellow City, though (as I say in “Quest For Glory”) in that tale he’s a very Wildean dandy named Charles.

            Karate brought me into contact with a lot of people with whom I would not otherwise have associated, and aspects of them – traits, voices, incidents I remember – agglomerated themselves into a number of characters, most notably Sun Wolf, that mighty-thewed barbarian warrior. (About whom more later). Others I glean from history: there are aspects of Louis XIV’s younger brother in Silent Tower’s wicked Prince Regent, fragments of Eleanor of Aquitaine in the same book’s Lady Rosamund. For all of them, the thing that stands out most clearly in my mind is their voices; I have to know what they sound like as they speak. That Hannibal’s voice is a light, scratchy almost-whisper; that Starhawk has a soft and slightly hesitant alto; that King Oryn’s is pure flamboyant RSC… and though James Asher is 100% British, for some reason I always hear him with an American accent. (What’s THAT about?)

            A lot of characters have traits or behaviors I’ve borrowed from myself, though probably not the ones you’d think. In Time of the Dark, yes, Gil Patterson is a grad student, and, like me, is obsessively single-minded, but the character that I always felt closest to in that epic was the evil bishop Govannin.

            And, quite frankly, a lot of the most interesting characters… I haven’t the slightest idea where they came from. Aunt Min. Thoth the Serpentmage. Minalde. Alec Mindelbaum. John Aversin's half-brother Sergeant Muffle. January’s atrocious mother.

            The people who keep me doing what I do.

Thursday afternoon

Well, that went well.
Aside from one of the cats coming down VERY sick yesterday morning just as I was off to the college... so he's at the vet and I've had a little trouble focussing all day...
The brined turkey worked like a champ. It looked AWFULLY crispy and dark on the outside and was beyond delicious. The insulated-wire thermometer really makes a difference as well, but brining is definitely something to do again next year. We killed most of an 18-pound turkey with small quantities of leftovers. Everyone brought good things. The table looked lovely. Mom was happy it wasn't her doing the hostessing. Nieces helped clean up. So lovely to see everyone, though mostly what I did was chop and whisk and periodically shout "Let's get a wench in here!" while everyone talked in the front room.
I'm tired. My back hurts like a bastard. LosCon is tomorrow and Saturday, I have work yet to do tonight (both school-work and editing The Shirt on His Back), and all I want to do is... nothing. Play half a level of Tomb Raider and watch old Dr. Who episodes. (Does anybody remember which incarnation of the Good Doctor it was who had a big ol' dragon tattooed smack on his forearm?)

Mystical rites

Whew. Just finished what feels like some kind of mystical rite of water-process mummification: I brined Big Bird, tied up the plastic trash-bags around her, and put her in the ice-chest sarcophagus in the garage, with the lid weighted down with old paint-cans. Got the dog dry-cleaned. Now it's time to make gravy-base and sauter veggies for the dressing. I work tomorrow night - leave the house 10 am, get home 11 pm - so everything has to be pretty much set up to rock 'n' roll by tonight.

And of course the nice folks at the grooming parlor insisted on giving Damsel a hair-bow AND a foofey clown-collar around her neck. I took these off her before the cats could see them and laugh. (Not that she's in the slightest sensetive about what she looks like. She's perfectly happy being clipped in the summer, whereas poor Nicky - her elderly husband when I first got her - would go hide after he was clipped, he was so embarassed).

Nicky was like any old guy who suddenly acquires a pretty young thing for a companion. She'd mount him and he'd just lie there smiling: "Anything you say, dearest..." She used to try to mount the cats, too.

Armies of Daylight

But first... my friend Laurie has opened her blog, about recipies and theme parties and how to throw phenomenal parties on a do-able budget.

Here's the link: http://partyknowitalls.wordpress.com/

The first theme-party is going to be a post-Thanksgiving brunch: menus and advice about what happens if you want to invite more people than you have dishes?

I remember back in my Riverside days, inviting friends to dinner and asking not only that they bring their own dishes, but their own CHAIRS.

And on the subject of my Riverside days:

THE ARMIES OF DAYLIGHT

             I was still living in Riverside, still training with the West Coast Karate Association (Sensei Dalke’s organization, which is now the AJKA, I believe); going to karate camps in the mountains near Idylwild and partying with the karate group, an instructive experience in group dynamics as well as in breaking boards with one’s bare hands. Every year we’d have “Spirit Week,” a sort of boot-camp-at-home during which they’d have really hard basic classes at 6 in the morning, and then you’d go on with the rest of your day in a fog. More about that when I get to The Ladies of Mandrigyn, but I do remember helping to build Sensei Dalke’s downtown dojo – laying the training-floor, painting bathrooms. Since I’m an artist as well as a writer, they’d get me to paint the front windows with poster-paint at Christmas time.

            During this era also I started Regency Dancing, and attending science fiction conventions. I never attended conventions as a fan – had never even heard of them until I was a pro. The Los Angeles fan group also included some serious Jane Austen fans, so they’d do dancing in the style of the English Regency at the conventions: still do. And, they had an all-day Regency event, to which I went dressed in the awfullest tinkered-together Georgian gown (I’ve always much preferred the Georgian style to the Regency, which makes me look like a fire-plug), and an honest-to-God powdered wig – as in, a wig I’d done up with talcum powder. I met Larry Niven there for the first time and didn’t dare say a word to him. What could I have said? Gee, Mr. Niven, I love your writing and someday I’d like to be a writer, too?

            An awkward start to what has turned into a long-standing friendship.

            When I finished Armies of Daylight – which has a spectacular fight-scene between Gil and the villainous Alwir in the snow – I packed up the manuscript, and went off for the weekend with my friends to a cabin in Big Bear, where it actually WAS snowing. A lot. After a weekend of slipping, tripping, falling, and exhaustion (it is REALLY tiring to flounder around in deep snow) I came meekly home, unwrapped the manuscript, and re-wrote that scene… and every other scene in it that involved snow.

            I’m a Southern California girl. I’ve never lived in deep snow. My friend Laurie – who grew up in the Bitterroot Mountains of Idaho in an actual cabin due to a back-to-the-wild dream of her father’s – sneers at me when I complain of the cold down here. (And her advice is very useful for things like cooking on a wood-stove, and how difficult is it to skin a deer?)

            When I finished Armies, I was hit for the first time by something that has been with me ever since: that awful sense of grief at finishing a story. I’d been with Gil, Ingold, Rudy, and Minalde for two and a half years by that time – longer than a lot of marriages. (Longer than mine, anyway…) Leaving them filled me with sadness.

            Around that time I did try to put together a lightweight science fiction tale called Karate Masters Versus the Invaders from Outer Space, but it never really went anywhere. This was just as well.