Edward Hoornaert's Blog, page 87

Celestial Fireworks Celebrate Mr. Valentine’s Upcoming Release

It’s an omen!

Definitely, it’s an omen for Mr. Valentine’s upcoming release (scheduled for February 2014), The Tribulations of Tompa Lee.

The star of Bethlehem.

The Star of Bethlehem signaled Christ’s birth. According to one version of the story, a new star suddenly appeared and guided the wise me to Bethlehem. A nova or supernova?

Other versions claim that other anomalies such as an unusual alignment of planets might have guided the Magi, but nonetheless, an astronomical omen of some sort was responsible.

Halley’s Comet (upper right) on the Bayeux Tapestry.

A millennium later, in 1066, Halley’s Comet was seen as a good omen for William the Conqueror. It is said that William felt the comet heralded his success, and thus the comet was embroidered on the Bayeux Tapestry, which chronicles the invasion, in William’s honor.

And a millennium after that, Mr. Valentine is stunned to find his very own heavenly omen, henceforth to be called the Star of Tompa(tm).

While finalizing the cover for my upcoming release, The Tribulations of Tompa Lee, I Googled the galaxy which provides the cover’s stunning backdrop:

The Tribulations of Tompa Lee, with the Cigar Galaxy in the background.

The galaxy in question is Messier 82, whimsically known as the Cigar Galaxy. In an article dated just a few days ago (January 22, 2014), Universe Today  describes the sudden appearance of a massive supernova, which can be seen with by any amateur astronomer with a 4-inch telescope, though without the delightful (enhanced) colors on the book cover.

The supernova in the Cigar Galaxy

While Mr. Valentine is, naturally delighted by this explosive celestial enthusiasm for the release of Tribulations, he wishes to apologize to the inhabitants of any worlds that formerly orbited the star in question.  Furthermore, he declines any legal responsibility, either real or implied, for damages caused by the supernova to nearby planets.

Complaints should be directed to my lawyers.

Beauties of Nature

It’s often humbling to me as a writer to realize that no matter how beautifully I write, Mother Nature is going to kick my butt.

Take sunsets. Spectacular sunsets are free, and they’re all around.  The one above is from my backyard.

Beauty abounds even in the most unexpected places. Take swamps. An international team voted Dusk by the Frog Pond (below) the most beautiful sound in the world.  Do you agree?

The Beautiful Now website is devoted to the beauty all around us … including food. Butter Crunch is one of their food picks for its combination of sight, sound, and taste.

Beautiful for its sight, sound, and of course taste!

Unborn baby Wesley, Mr. Valentine’s first grandchild, due in early February.

How about an unborn baby seen inside the womb? Now that sight is a miracle! Case in point, this ultrasound of Mr. Valentine’s first grandchild, who is unborn as of this writing.

Of course, there’s also the beauty of the adult human form, which has been celebrated by painters and sculptors since before history began.

Ever noticed how the Venus de Milo isn’t an emaciated preteen? I think maybe the old-timers had their priorities more correct than does the modern fashion industry!

For a final, definitive word on beauty, I leave you with Helen Keller:

Helen Keller gets the final word

At their best, storytellers can make us feel with the heart. Maybe I shouldn’t be so jealous of sunsets after all!

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If you’re a writer, what unexpected touches of beauty have you described in the worlds you’ve created?  If you’re a reader, what is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever come across in your life?

A Dream Message and Dreamy Music

A message from a dream

The alarm on Mr. Valentine’s clock radio starts out quietly and gradually swells in volume. I never hear the alarm at first; it crescendos up to ‘LOUD’ before I hear it.  And then, of course, the radio has to hop over and hit me on the head a few times before I get up.  :-)

The other day, in that grey stretch between the alarm starting and me hearing it, I had a dream in which my laptop flashed the following message:

This message has been flagged as unfair!

Goes to show what my subconscious thinks of alarm clocks!

NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month is nearly over, and once again Mr. Valentine is a ‘winner’, with 64,000 words.  Nothing like an external deadline to squeeze those creative juices out a stone.

And Finally, the Dreamy Music

As some of you know, Mr. Valentine moonlights as a symphonic oboist.  I’m one of the few non-waiters you’ll meet who owns a tuxedo.

That’s why, in The Trial of Tompa Lee, aliens give earth the secret to interstellar travel in exchange for a symphony orchestra. Not just any orchestra, either–a group I played with for ten years, the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra.

I recently learned that my current group, the Civic Orchestra of Tucson, is playing Bizet’s Symphony in C in March, 2014.  Cool, cool, cool!

You see, the second movement features a long, spectacularly gorgeous oboe solo that recurs several times during the piece. When you listen to the Adagio below, imagine my face instead of the guy playing the oboe.  (Hint:  I have more hair, but it’s white.)

The famous solo starts at the 1:00 mark and comes back several times. (If you’re unsure what an oboe is, the still picture prefacing the movie shows this orchestra’s oboist.)

The Glories that Inspire Science Fiction

The 2010 winner of the Royal Observatory’s annual photography contest

Science is about wonder and amazement.  About seeing beneath—or above—the ordinary and into the divine mysteries of this astonishing universe.

That sense of wonder is a huge part of why I write and read science fiction.

In this spirit of wonder and amazement, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, UK, sponsors an annual photography contest that celebrates the glories and beauty of our skies.  The exhibit is free if you’re in the neighborhood.

If not, you can still soak up the splendor of the skies via online pictures.  Here are a few examples to tease your sense of wonder.

Guiding Light to the Stars

“Guiding Light to the Stars”

Mark Gee of Australia captured this stunning photograph of the sky of the Southerern Hemisphere, highlighting the Milky Way.

 

Saturn in all its glory

“Saturn at Opposition”

Amateur astronomer Damian Peach’s photograph shows marvelous detail in the jewel of our solar system.  You can see the subtle banding that results from the planet’s weather, the famous ring including the faint inner D-Ring and the Encke gap, and the storm at the pole.

 

The Perseid meteor shower

“SnowyRange Perseid Meteor Show”

Photographer David Kingham created an impressive composite of 23 individual pictures to convey the dynamism of this famous meteor shower.

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See more Royal Observatory photographs here.

Rho Ophiuchi and Antares Nebulae

Look at these beauties and try to imagine not just tiny dots of light, but star with worlds—and worlds with stories.  I can just about make out the star orbited by Zee Shode, the planet where my Tompa Lee adventures are set.  Can you find it?

The universe is full of stories.  All you have to do is find them.

And just think … what might the people watching the scene at the top of this page be doing? What conflicts or revelations might they experience?

Science is cool.

Thoughts on the End of Breaking Bad

Reviews sometimes open with spoiler alerts, right?  While this isn’t a review and I’m not about to spoil anything for anyone, I’ll post my own version of a spoiler alert: Mr. Valentine rarely watches television.

Time for writing and music has to come from somewhere.  One of the best and, I’ll admit, hardest decisions I made was to drastically pare back the time spent with television.  It’s great advice for every aspiring writer, BTW.

Oh, I still watch baseball and hockey games once every couple of weeks (Go White Sox!  Go Canucks!). The wife and I watch Survivor together every Wednesday night.  Aside from the an occasional movie, that’s about it.

So while I’ve seen Breaking Bad a couple of times I’m neither knowledgeable nor a fan. My son Brett loves the show, though, and has prompted me to watch it several times.

One thing I’ll say for the show, however, it has prompted moments of wisdom from people other than me.  First, Miley Cyrus.

I can hear you now, even with my computer speakers turned off.  ”Wait jut a darned minute!” you say.  ”Wisdom from Miley Cyrus, of pasties fame?”

Yup.  Wisdom from Miley Cyrus.

One of the advantages of novel writing, as opposed to television, is that if I use ‘fuck’ (which I do only if the situation or character really calls for it), it doesn’t get bleepin’ bleeped!

The next bit of wisdom comes from a cartoonist, Christopher Keelty.  Wisdom from a cartoonist should surprise no one.  They’re some of the modern world’s wisest and sharpest tongued satirists.

All this may seem as though I dislike Breaking Bad.  Au contraire!  It is, above all, an extremely well written show.  If anything, I’m jealous.  So color me green with envy.

Science Fiction Jokes, Part 4 – Special Feline Edition

The new July-August edition of Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine features a cat on the front cover.  To my twisted mind, that’s a perfectly logical segue into another of Mr. Valentine’s sporadic posts devoted to science fiction humor.

As you may have heard, writers like cats.  I’m no different.  In fact, I just finished brushing Willie’s black and white fur off my clothes, because in addition to liking cats, I’m also allergic to cats.  Sigh.

And of course, some writers ARE cats:

SF folk love cats, too.  They must, to have produced the following delicious works of hairball humor.

The next aren’t, strictly speaking, science fiction cat jokes: they’re science cat jokes.  If you haven’t heard of Schrodinger’s Cat, Google it.

One of my all-time favorite novels is Frank Herbert’s Dune.  I’ve lost track of exactly how many times I’ve read it, but it’s over twenty.  You probably need to have read Dune to fully appreciate the following, which to me is the funniest of all:

Do you know any good (or bad!) cat jokes?  Share them in the comments.

My Next Big Thing

Time for an update on Mr. Valentine’s latest big thing.  A bunch of writer friends are writing similar posts about the books we’re currently writing, so be sure to check out their blogs, as well:

Celia Breslin, author of Haven
Amber Belldene, author of Blood Vine
Paula Millhouse, author of Dragonstone
Tricia Skinner, author of Angel Bait

1:  What is the working title of your book?

Purple Cow   (as in the doggerel poem by Gelett Burgess)

2:  Where did the idea come from for the book?

It is the result of the collision of a couple interests of mine:

The relationship between creativity and madness
The wilderness island I recently wrote about.

3:  What genre does your book come under?

Science fiction with (as usual) generous dollops of romance.

4:  Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

In their youths: Shelley Long for the female lead, David Suzuki for the Japanese-Canadian male lead.

5:   What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Ursula K. LeGuin pops to mind, though no specific book.

6:  Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The book Touched with Fire by Kay Redfield Jamison. The book’s subtitle tells it all: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. I read many other books, too (I’ve never researched any novel so thoroughly) but that’s the main one. In my near-future thriller, I postulate the following:

A incurable, degenerative illness that partially mimics Manic Depression. Like Manic Depression, it increases the creativity of a minority of its sufferers–if it doesn’t kill them first.
A wilderness island where sufferers are dumped. Slowly at first, then faster, works of genius flow from the quarantine island.
Wannabe creative geniuses bribe their way into the quarantine, willing to risk their lives to improve their art. One of these is my heroine, Janet Davis, who had given up her literary dreams for a cheating husband.

In a salute to my Belgian heritage, my hero is inspired by Saint Damien of Molokai, once voted the greatest Belgian of all time. (Nobody but me, and now you, knows or needs to know the inspiration for Kendo Carlisle!) Janet admires and has a crush on Kendo; if he wasn’t The Saint of Gilford Island, she wouldn’t have gone there, creativity or no creativity.

7: What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

How about a selection? Here’s how the manic phase of my imaginary disease affects another major characters, Billy Seaweed.

Standing with his toes over the edge of the sea cliff, fourteen-year-old Billy Seaweed squinted into the misty drizzle so typical of Gilford Island at this—or almost any—time of the year.

“I’m a totem pole,” Billy said to the wind.  The hood of his bright orange jacket made his voice sound odd, as though it belonged to someone else.  “My legs are cedar, solid and immovable.”

From his vantage point, alone atop the cliff, Billy saw the supply boat pass the sophisticated electronic buoys that imprisoned the island.  He ignored the boat, just as he ignored the drizzle, the complaints of the seagulls, the chill in his fingertips and the wild energy that mushroomed inside him like a marshmallow zapped in a microwave.

“Unmoving,” Billy chanted, “unbending, unblinking, untouched by time, wind or rain.”

Or fucking disease.  But he didn’t say that aloud—it’d be bad luck.  And he was in a tough place to invoke bad luck: the edge of the cliff that gave EchoBay its name, with his toes hanging over a twenty meter drop to the submerged rocks at the base.

“Eagle,” he said louder, moving his lips as little as possible.  “Raven.  Beaver.  Salmon!”

The energy growing inside him was becoming difficult to control.  Soon, then, soon.  Like shaking a pop can, pointing it at a meddlesome asshole who hadn’t yet learned to leave Billy Seaweed alone, and then stabbing the can with a pocketknife.  Whoosh!  And then pointing the knife at the asshole and staring with the expressionless face that always sent white guys running in fear.

Soon.  Just concentrate and bottle up the whizzing unrest churning through his body.  Concentrate, and then boom.  Yeah!

Boom.

Boom.

Boom, he could fly….

But the supply boat?  Two days early?

“Concentrate, damn it!”  Billy fingers writhed at his side.  He wanted to laugh from the fucking energy, and at the same time cry because he was losing the battle to bottle it.  Battle to bottle to boodle to beetle….

“You stupid fucker,” he shouted at himself.  “Concentrate!”

Billy stiffened his arms and legs like a mythical creature carved on a cedar pole, stiffened his limbs until they hurt.  If he didn’t concentrate he couldn’t fly, and if he couldn’t fly, he might die.  Like a guy cooked in a pie, he’d die in the sky.

Shit.  This wasn’t working.  And he didn’t want to die like a fucking spy in a pigsty.  The tide was low, which meant the rocks were near the surface.  Water pounded the base of the cliff, thrusting watery fingers toward him, beckoning him to its chilly embrace.  So concentrate, motherfucker!

“Tsonkwa!”  Billy hoped that sheer volume would give him the energy of the creatures his ancestors had carved on totem poles.  “Sisiutl!  Komokwa!”

But the supply boat coming early meant another eager, soon-to-be-dead, crazy white guy who had paid to get himself smuggled through the quarantine.

 He tried not to think about that.  Instead, he imagined himself one of the three watchmen that the Haida up the coast used to carve atop their poles.  Each watchman looked in a different direction: left, right, or straight ahead.  In the old days, people didn’t need a watchman to guard the back of their poles, which faced home.  Nowadays, that was the most dangerous direction.

He wondered who was in the boat.

“God damn you, boat!”  Billy’s adolescent voice cracked, low then high then low, robbing the cry of any hope of magic.  He exploded like fireworks gone mad, lashing out at the red berries on a nearby soopalallie bush, kicking rocks over the cliff, spouting a black torrent of swear words taught him by the endless stream of crazy white guys who’d died as he watched their chests for the stillness of death.

He ended on his hands and knees, his concentration gone.  He was mere flesh and blood, not mighty thunderbird.  Jesus, he acted as crazy as a white guy, sometimes.

Speaking of which, the new crazy white guy would have stuff he could borrow, if he got to him first.  Billy popped to his feet, propelled high in the air by the wild energy that fizzed through his limbs.  The supply boat had reached Hotel Point.  Soon someone in EchoBay village would see the boat and dash out to borrow the crazy newcomer’s good stuff.  Living near the mouth of the bay, Billy usually got first crack, but this time he wouldn’t get to borrow anything, and that fucking sucked a mucking buck.

Unless he flew down.

Yeah.  Yeah!

Except that in the past, he’d survived the jump before by harnessing his explosive burst of energy until the last possible moment.  It was hard to leap past the submerged rocks.  None of the white guys could do it.  They all went splat, turning themselves into itty bitty squishy fishy food.

Not him, though.  He was Billy Seaweed, the last of the fucking Mohicans.  He was Kwagiulth, not Mohican, but the principle was the same.  He could fly, man.  Fly!

With as whoop that startled gulls off the cliff, Billy backed into the bushes clogging the edge of the forest.  He was enough in control of himself to brace one leg against a lodgepole pine so he could push off.

“Not dumb,” he shouted.  “Not fucking crazy.  Not me-ee-ee-ee-ee!”

And with that he ran as hard as he could for three meters, until suddenly there were no rocks under his feet or moss or kinnikinick or bird-dropping stains, only rain and air and wind, and he was flying through the mist toward the supply raft, shouting and laughing maniacally.

Notes from the Past

Live in the moment, philosophers and gurus tell us. For a novelist, that is rotten, horrible, no good advice!

The past fills the present and the future.  Its tracks and traces are everywhere, if we can but read them.

Remember that whack I took from a baseball bat when I was nine?  I sure do.  The scar is faint but visible above my right eye, and my vision on that side has never been the same.
My dad came from a long line of bakers and my mother was an artist with dough. (Not the money kind, though!) My teeth, alas, bear witness to yesteryear’s sweet tooth.

Trivial examples, sure.  But a novelist’s task is to use a character’s past to create the character’s present.

Leave the Past in the Past? No Way!

In thinking about a character’s past, ask yourself “How has the character  been wounded?” Once you know the wound, you can either use it as a fatal flaw, a weakness to be fixed or overcome or as motivation for a character’s actions.

I recently reread Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Both Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth were wounded by the abrupt end of their engagement, seven years before, and the wounds still ooze. Austen spend 300 pages overcoming her characters’ unhealed pain so they can love again.

In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy has been so wounded by threats to take away her dog, Toto, that she runs away from home.  By the end of the movie, the wound heals and she realizes that there’s no place like home.

In my own The Trial of Tompa Lee, Tompa has been scarred by having to live by her wits on the streets of Manhattan.  She has both an inferiority complex and a huge chip on her shoulder. Throughout the book, her powerful reactions to this scar from the past determine many of her actions and help to make her a vivid character.

The Past Fills in the Details

Another use for the past is to fill in a character’s interests, hobbies, and preferences.  A character without a past is a character without a present.

This is (or should be) so obvious that I won’t bother you with examples from literature.  Instead, I’ll circle back to my own youth, which I started with.

Back in high school, I fell in love with the sound of a symphony orchestra.  I wasn’t interested in playing in the school’s band.  I wanted the orchestra, which is why I learned to play the oboe. And I still play it in the Civic Orchestra of Tucson.

While I like classical music in general, it’s probably more accurate to say that I am in love with the infinite variability of the orchestra. As an example of that sweet variability, here is a rather unclassical example: The Witches’ Dance from John Williams score for the movie The Witches of Eastwick.  Enjoy this gift from my past to your present!

Late Night Thoughts on an Eagle Feather

It’s late, past midnight.  I should be asleep.  But the eagle feather shown below sits on my desk, bringing back memories.

When I was fresh out of school, I taught at a one-room school on a small island up the British Columbia coast. No TV, no radio, no roads.  The students came to school on a school boat, the Kingcome Queen. I set my third novel, Nobody’s Bride, on that island.

More than once I stood  on the dock, watching an eagle soar off a nearby cliff and ride the air currents up, up, up, never bothering to flap its wings, soaring until it was barely a dot.  Why so high? I wondered. The simple answer would be’looking for salmon’, but it never swooped down like a hungry dive bomber. (Too bad; I would’ve loved to have witnessed that!)  No, the eagle just kept rising and rising.  Enjoying itself, I like to think.  Enjoying its strength and power and glorying in being an eagle. Because an eagle is a grand thing to be.

More than once, I followed games trails to the top of that cliff. One time, I surprised that eagle out of a tree not more than thirty feet away.  Its wings were directly above my head, huge and frightening, and when then they flapped, they made a deep, bass rumble far too loud for any mere bird. The First Nations people would have called it a Spirit Eagle, but my mind being what it is, let’s just say that the eagle transcended my mental category of ‘bird’.  I knew then, if I hadn’t before, that an eagle is, beyond doubt, a grand thing to be.

Recently I went to Vancouver to visit my son who is a researcher at the University of British Columbia.  That’s eagle country, though several hundred miles south of the eagle of my youth.

I brought the eagle feather back with me to the Arizona desert.  It’s nearly 2 feet long, and it’s made out of wood.  Cedar, to be exact. I love Northwest Coast Aboriginal Art, so I bought it from Alex Mountain, a Kwagiulth carver from Alert Bay, who was working on the streets of Gastown, the oldest section of Vancouver.  The carving was freshly made, as you can see from the artists’ signatures on the back:

I named the Kwagiulth hero of “Alien Contact for Idiots” (one of my manuscripts) ‘Eaglesbrood’.  Because an eagle is a magnificent thing to be!

Out of this World!

The Science Fiction Romance Brigade’s annual midsummer blog hop

As a proud member of the SFR Brigade, Mr. Valentine is participating in this year’s midsummer blog hop.  The theme of the hop is Out of this World.

What is it REALLY like to got Out of this World?

Wales and Ireland from the International Space Station (Chris Hadfield).

Well, unlike Justin Bieber, who has already booked a flight on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip Two, I’m not likely to ever know by personal experience. But I can dream.  And I can read.

For a gallery of pictures taken recently by Chris Hadfield, commander of the International Space Station, click here.

What does outer space smell like?

After a 2003 mission, astronaut Don Pettit attempted to describe the smell clinging to an astronaut after a space walk:

The best description I can come up with is metallic; a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation. It reminded me of my college summers where I labored for many hours with an arc welding torch repairing heavy equipment for a small logging outfit. It reminded me of pleasant sweet smelling welding fumes. That is the smell of space.

What does it feel like to look down on the earth?

For most astronauts, it’s like a religious experience. The phenomenon is common enough that is has a name: The Overview Effect.

Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell described being completely engulfed by a profound sense of universal connectedness. Without warning, he says, a feeling of bliss, timelessness, and connectedness overwhelmed him. He became instantly and profoundly aware that each of his constituent atoms were connected to the fragile planet he saw in the window and to every other atom in the Universe.

Is there life on other planets?

In science fiction romance, yes, of course there is! Examples abound.  Mr. Valentine’s science fiction novel with romantic elements feature interaction with aliens on distant planets. The Trial of Tompa Lee has both friendly aliens (the Shons) and inimical aliens (the Klicks).  The aliens in The Midas Rush are in the midst of deciding whether to befriend or annihilate mankind.

Tell me about the SFR Midsummer Blog Hop

Lots of great and near-great authors of science fiction romance have created out-of-this-world posts.  On each page, you can enter a Rafflecopter giveaway.  Prizes include:

1st Prize – $150 Amazon or B&N gift card (winner’s choice) and an ebook library.

Books include Ghost in the Machine, Bayne, Recast Book 1:Wither, Recast Book 2:Clash, Alien Adoration, Switched, Reckless Rescue, Wreck of the Nebula Dream, Keir, Terms & Conditions Apply, The Key, Marya, The Iron Admiral, Sashas Calling, Trouble at the Hotel Baba Ghanoush, Winter in Paradise, Once Upon a Time in Space, the Telomere trilogy, Winter Fusion, Blue Nebula, Demential, Wytchfire, Maven, Fires of Justice, Interface, Girl under Glass, and Breakout. Bonus books Ghost Planet, The Iron Admiral: Conspiracy and Deception, Games of Command, The Plan and Starburst.)

2nd Prize – $50 Amazon or B&N gift card (winner’s choice)
3rd Prizes – two $25 Amazon or B&N gift cards (given to separate winners and their choice)

Be sure to check out the other blogs by clicking the goofy blue alien below: