Edward Ashton's Blog, page 12

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Guest Post: Bishop O’Connell, author of THE RETURNED

Do you want proof that God has a sense of humor?

I’m a writer, and nothing drives me battier than the sound of typing on a keyboard. I can handle it for a little while, but after five minutes or so, it’s like nails on a chalkboard. Oh, and when I’m not writing (day job), I do a lot of developing and programming. Yeah, the irony is palpable.

This, combined with the fact I’m very visual in my writing—I “see” the stories like a movie playing in my head, and transcribe what I see—is why music is so important to me when I write. What’s a good movie without a killer soundtrack? It’s a bonus that it also drowns out the maddening sound of striking keys. Argh, even thinking about it puts my teeth on edge!

For every book I’ve written, I’ve made multiple playlists. They typically surround characters, or specific scenes. Sometimes, when I’m working on a particularly powerful scene, I’ll put a single song on a loop and listen to it continually till I’m done. Music is so important to me that all my characters have favorite musicians and songs. Listening to those artists fuels me emotionally and also helps me get into my characters’ heads. Edward is a Tom Waits fan, followed closely by Diana Krall, Leonard Cohen, and Dave Brubeck. For Caitlin it’s Gaelic Storm, The Elders, Sarah McLachlan, and The Cowboy Junkies. Brendan leans towards The Pogues, The Wolfe Tones, and, despite his anachronistic tendencies, Dropkick Murphy, Flogging Molly, and Flatfoot 56. Dante is more eclectic as a result of his age, and his tastes range from Vivaldi (he’s a sucker for a solid cello concerto) to Daft Punk and The Crystal Method.

Wraith was a bit more complicated. As I worked on The Forgotten, the music was more about the story. The songs were dark and brooding. “Ain’t no Grave,” by Johnny Cash saw quite a lot of play, and if you’ve read The Forgotten, you’ll understand why. It made sense I wasn’t focused on music for Wraith as a character. After all, she was a homeless kid struggling to keep sane from one day to the next. She didn’t have a lot of time to listen to music. That changed when I started writing Three Promises. Wraith came to life in a way I never imagined, or dared to hope.

Her story opens in the aftermath of The Forgotten. I knew she’d be battling severe depression and trying to find a sense of purpose. As someone who struggled with that as a teenager, and still do at times, I know personally how much music can help. I wanted Wraith to have the same experience, to find refuge, and possibly hope, in music. But what songs? What artists? When I found not just the artist, but the song, it was so perfect, that I knew I had to include some of the lyrics in the story itself. The song was “Wonder (Wonder Woman Song)” by The Doubleclicks.

I was introduced to The Doubleclicks through John Scalzi’s blog when he posted the video to “Nothing to Prove.” It’s perhaps their most famous song; an anthem for geek girls. The song is great, and the video is not just powerful, it’s empowering. Fans of Angela and Aubrey, the sisters who make up The Doubleclicks, know that most of their songs are all kinds of nerdy fun. They sing about cats, board games, dinosaurs, burritos, lasers… well, you get the idea. But some of their songs are more personal, and are deeply moving. Their song “Bad Memories” really resonated with me and their cover of “In the Middle” is fantastic. I thought about using “Nothing to Prove” to give Wraith hope, but it just didn’t seem right for her. Then I heard “Wonder (Wonder Woman Song)” and I knew that was Wraith’s song. How does a song about a super-powered Amazon inspire a homeless girl fighting depression? You’ll have to read the story, and I suggest listening to the song as well. Not because you’ll need to know it, just because it’s an awesome song.

For The Returned, I wanted something that fit the broad mix of amazing music New Orleans—the setting for the book—had to offer. I chose songs you might hear street musicians playing on the corners of cities anywhere; songs filled with power and emotion. Wraith however is still a diehard Doubleclicks fan. So when a particularly important scene came up, I knew where to turn. This time it was the song “Godzilla.” The song is sad, but tinged with humor, and fit who Wraith was becoming perfectly. For both The Returned and Three Promises, The Doubleclicks were good enough to let me license the lyrics, and I was thrilled to be able to (legally) include them in the stories.

I’m sure I’m not alone in my love of music. Like any art form, it’s emotionally evocative. Most people know the shameless joy of singing to a favorite song at the top of their lungs while driving, not caring who sees you. We find solace and comfort in songs when we have a broken heart. We celebrate with music and dancing; though if you’re like me, it can only loosely be called dancing. We find comfort in our sad times with the perfect track. Songs mark the passing of the years like signposts. And sometimes, just sometimes, you hear a song and it reaches into your soul from the very first time you hear it. For me, those songs tend to be the bittersweet ones; sad, but filled with hope, and the promise of tomorrow, a new day where anything is possible. What can I say, I’m a romantic. The emotion, the magic, the power of music fuels me, both in my life and in my creative endeavors. Music, books, every kind of art, it all serves to connect us. When the artist creates, that creation is imbued with some of their soul, an emotional snapshot of them at that moment in time. The stories in my books are my snapshots and The Returned feels like my best work yet. I hope you read it, and that you enjoy it, maybe connect with it or the characters within. If you’d like, I’d be happy to suggest some music to set the mood before you start reading.

MORNING SUN • by Edward Ashton

MORNING SUN • by Edward Ashton:

Got a piece up this morning on the newly resurrected Every Day Fiction.  Give it a peek if you have a chance.

Here are some things that I did not previously know about heat stroke:Heat stroke can occur in...

Here are some things that I did not previously know about heat stroke:

Heat stroke can occur in otherwise healthy athletes who are exercising in hot weather.
Heat stroke can be brought on by a lack of hydration, lack of training, and the use of alcohol or caffeine.
The first symptoms of oncoming heat stroke are cramping and profuse sweating, but in later stages the victim will stop sweating, may become confused, and often feels cold rather than hot.
Left untreated, heat stroke can lead to kidney damage, brain damage, and death.
If someone you are with begins showing symptoms of heat stroke, people will judge you harshly if you abandon that person in the woods.

Some stories come pouring out of you like a garbage plate after a two day bender. Some have to be...

Some stories come pouring out of you like a garbage plate after a two day bender. Some have to be pried out of your brain, one word at a time. Working on one of the latter right now. Hoping to finish before the sun turns into a tiny black cinder in the sky and the earth is buried under a mile of frozen nitrogen.

Daily Science Fiction :: Pencils, Rules, Bones, Heart by JT Gill

Daily Science Fiction :: Pencils, Rules, Bones, Heart by JT Gill:

Not sure why, but this one got to me.

Attend to the Parable of the Ungrateful Father. Once, very near to the end of all things, there was...

Attend to the Parable of the Ungrateful Father.

Once, very near to the end of all things, there was a foolish old man. He had a daughter, strong and proud and beautiful, who should have been the joy of his life—but he mistook her strength for arrogance, and her pride for conceit. Her beauty, which should have brought light to their dark little home, only made him fear that someday she would be taken from him.

And then, one day, she was.

This parable has no lesson—or at least, none that I have the heart to tell.

Three Days in April

Not sure how Tumblr works … just wanted to say that I just read Three Days in April. Thought it was fantastic. Sort of a cross between Keith Laumer and Richard Morgan (but your own voice of course). Thanks very much.

Daily Science Fiction :: Lilacs Out of the Dead Land by Matt Mikalatos

Daily Science Fiction :: Lilacs Out of the Dead Land by Matt Mikalatos:

Just gonna put this one out there.

Fun Science Fact #31: Young Men are Idiots for a Reason.

A week before my twenty-second birthday, at one o’clock in the morning, I found myself handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser in West Palm Beach.

Also, I was naked.

Twenty minutes earlier, I’d been standing at the end of a fishing pier, maybe three hundred yards from the shore and twenty feet off the water. I was with a boy who I really didn’t like much, and a girl who I liked a lot.

“So,” the girl said. “Think you could make it back to the beach from here?”

The boy shook his head.

“Sharks. They hang around the piers, you know.”

I looked at him. I looked at her.

“Yeah,” I said. “I could do it.”

Strictly speaking, this was true. I was a varsity swimmer. I’d already done almost ten thousand yards in the pool that day.

The pool, of course, was sharkless.

I looked at the girl. She raised one eyebrow. I shucked off my clothes, climbed up onto the railing, and dove.

Here are some ways that evening could have ended up for me:

Dead in the water, broken neck.
Dead in the water, eaten by sharks.
Dead in the water, sucked out to sea.
Dead on the beach, murdered by homeless guys.

Given those possibilities, the way it actually turned out was probably something close to a best-case scenario. The woman working the booth at the entrance to the pier called the cops. They were waiting for me when I waded up onto the beach.

“Boy,” the one who cuffed me said. “You’re lucky you didn’t just get your balls bit off.”

The interesting question here is this:  what was I thinking? The answer, of course, is that I wasn’t. It has been known since our distant ancestors first climbed down from the trees that young men are idiots. They do things like raiding neighboring villages and challenging people to duels and diving off of fishing piers to impress random girls.

Recently, neuroscience has caught up with conventional wisdom, and we know why this is. The region of the brain that’s responsible for impulse control, anticipating consequences, and regulating behavior isn’t fully functional in late adolescents. In most people, those functions don’t come fully on-line until the twenty-fifth year or later. That, however, is what we refer to as a proximal cause. The question of root causes is much more interesting:  why would millions of years of evolution gift us with a brain that doesn’t really work properly until we’re well into our breeding years?

The scene at the end of that fishing pier gives us an important clue here.  I was a foot taller than the girl I was trying to impress. That was an extreme example of our species’ gender differences, but the average man is about six inches taller than the average woman, and roughly fifty pounds heavier. These differences are referred to as sexual dimorphism, and the degree that a particular population displays them is driven largely by that population’s mating patterns.

In particular, if only a limited number of one gender or the other are permitted to breed, the individuals of that gender tend to be larger and stronger. This is a result of the fact that only the largest and strongest members of that gender in each generation are permitted to reproduce. Our cousins the gorillas provide an extreme example of this sort of pattern. In gorilla society, one silverback dominates a band of females, preventing any other males from breeding with them. As a result, male gorillas are roughly twice the size of females. Orangutans, on the other hand, who are solitary and do not need to fight for mating privileges, have no difference at all in size or strength between genders. Humans fall somewhere in between these two extremes. This likely reflects the fact that we’ve spent some but not all of our evolutionary history practicing gorilla-like polygamy.

So, what does this have to do with young men’s brains? Well, consider this: every one of us is descended from some skinny nineteen-year-old who looked at the guy who was running the tribe and said, “yeah, I could take him.”

Most of those idiots probably didn’t get to reproduce. They wound up with broken necks, just like I very well could have that night in Florida. What about the sensible ones, though? What happened to the young men whose brains worked perfectly well, who looked at the silverback and decided that discretion was the better part of valor?

None of them got to breed. As far as human evolution is concerned, they might as well never have been.

So, the next time you see some dimwit kid rock-climbing without a safety harness, or juggling machetes, or drinking something that someone at a frat party mixed up in a garbage can, don’t look down on him. Try to remember that there’s a perfectly good evolutionary reason that he’s doing what he’s doing. He’s not acting like an idiot. He’s just doing what his genetic heritage has primed him to do.