Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 146

Poetry, not for titles

I just thought I’d share my favorite Swinburne poem, because why not. I could not even think about using lines from this poem as book titles because the powerful, memorable lines, “As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead” are one hundred percent wrong for the Tenai trilogy. But I regretted that because as I say, it’s my favorite. I absolutely love the rolling rhythm of the lyrics. I memorized this poem when I was in high school, just because, although, alas, I have since lost the ability to recite it.

A Forsaken Garden

In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,
       At the sea-down’s edge between windward and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,
       The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses
       The steep square slope of the blossomless bed
Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses
               Now lie dead.

The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken,
       To the low last edge of the long lone land.
If a step should sound or a word be spoken,
       Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest’s hand?
So long have the grey bare walks lain guestless,
       Through branches and briars if a man make way,
He shall find no life but the sea-wind’s, restless
               Night and day.

The dense hard passage is blind and stifled
       That crawls by a track none turn to climb
To the strait waste place that the years have rifled
       Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time.
The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;
       The rocks are left when he wastes the plain.
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,
               These remain.

Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not;
       As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry;
From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not,
       Could she call, there were never a rose to reply.
Over the meadows that blossom and wither
       Rings but the note of a sea-bird’s song;
Only the sun and the rain come hither
               All year long.

The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels
       One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath.
Only the wind here hovers and revels
       In a round where life seems barren as death.
Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping,
       Haply, of lovers none ever will know,
Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping
               Years ago.

Heart handfast in heart as they stood, “Look thither,”
       Did he whisper? “look forth from the flowers to the sea;
For the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms wither,
       And men that love lightly may die—but we?”
And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened,
       And or ever the garden’s last petals were shed,
In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened,
               Love was dead.

Or they loved their life through, and then went whither?
       And were one to the end—but what end who knows?
Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither,
       As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose.
Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them?
       What love was ever as deep as a grave?
They are loveless now as the grass above them
               Or the wave.

All are at one now, roses and lovers,
       Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea.
Not a breath of the time that has been hovers
       In the air now soft with a summer to be.
Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter
       Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep,
When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter
               We shall sleep.

Here death may deal not again for ever;
       Here change may come not till all change end.
From the graves they have made they shall rise up never,
       Who have left nought living to ravage and rend.
Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing,
       While the sun and the rain live, these shall be;
Till a last wind’s breath upon all these blowing
               Roll the sea.

Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,
       Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,
Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble
       The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,
Here now in his triumph where all things falter,
       Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,
As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,
               Death lies dead.

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The Sphere of the Winds: Cover Reveal

The cover’s been completed — wow, was that fast! I didn’t expect to have that ready yet. I’m not even finished proofreading! Shoot, I even revised one scene last night! I guarantee this book is coming out in February, probably early February.

Meanwhile, I thought you might like an early look at the cover.

Here’s the initial sketch:

Obviously I said No, no, the dragon must have FEATHERS. I also suggested changing the palette from all blues to warmer colors by using sunrise or sunset colors. Here’s the final version —

I think that’s very attractive, very eye-catching — I do love the warm colors. The cover artist even tracked down the unusual font used on the Floating Islands cover, which is great.

Here’s the website of the cover artist, by the way.

Keep an eye out at Amazon and wherever. I’ll let you know when it drops, of course.

Also, I will be putting this one out wide, not enrolling it in Kindle Unlimited. That’s what I think is best for a book that is the sequel to a title that came out via traditional publication and is available everywhere. So Sphere won’t be in KU, sorry, but it will be broadly available. I do need to actually remember to go over to Draft to Digital and put it out through them as well as through Amazon, but even if I don’t get that done the same day I hit “publish” at KDP, it should at least happen the same week.

Again, still proofreading, but I will aim for the first half of February.

Also, I’ve now ordered the first cover for the Tenai trilogy …

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“Nocturne”

According to google, “nocturne” means:

a) a short composition of a romantic or dreamy character suggestive of night, typically for piano.

b) a picture of a night scene.

Doesn’t the second definition seem broad enough that it could justify the series title: The Tenai Nocturne? Which does sound good to me, and I am inclined to use it.

If I decide I’m satisfied with the titles, I will be NEARLY ready to ask for the cover art. For that, I need back cover blurbs — which I think I can base off the versions posted here, and thank you for your comments on that, everyone — and something close to final page numbers for the paper versions. So, I’m adding an epilogue to Book 1 — thanks for the advice to do that, Kim A. — and then I will be able to drop the books into the KDP template and get a good idea about the page numbers.

So it’s all coming along pretty well!

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The Sphere of the Winds

Well, the cover is coming right along. I love the version the artist sent me this morning, so I think we’re nearly there.

That means I better think about back cover copy. Good thing I’ve now read through most of the manuscript so the story is fresh in my mind.

How about this …

The Floating Islands are under seige.

Trei, Araene, and their friends saved the Floating Islands once, thwarting the Toulonn Empire’s attempt at conquest. But everyone knows the Toulonese haven’t given up, and the same trick certainly won’t work a second time … especially when the Islands unexpectedly lose their special connection to dragon magic.

Then it turns out that Toulonn is not the only, or the worst, enemy the Floating Islands face. As peril mounts, Trei, with his connection to Toulonn, and Araene, with her gift for an unusual style of magic, will need all their strength and resolve if they are to once again find a way to safeguard the Islands.

What do you all think? How does that sound?

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Unstuck!

So, some weeks ago, I posted this about writer’s block and indecision:

I’ve been stuck at 80,000 words or so for a particular SF novel for, I don’t know, it seems like practically forever and is certainly more than a year. … A good many things are opaque to me, unfortunately, including not only the specifics of the ending but also the details of the secret plan of the pov protagonist AND the details of the secret plan of the other protagonist. I do know everybody has a secret plan; that part is quite definitely true. … Wow, am I stuck.

Well, I’m not at the point I’m willing to share a snippet from this book, but I AM REALLY HAPPY BECAUSE I KNOW WHAT TO DO TO MAKE THIS BOOK WORK! Or at least, I’m pretty sure.

Whew, I thought this plot was NEVER going to work itself out, but I honestly think it has. As far as I can tell, two things contributed to this sudden forward progress: my brother made a suggestion (What if they’re not at war?), and my laptop was forcibly removed from my hands (I’m glad something good has come out of this otherwise infuriating situation). Once I was forced to stop working on other things, well, one thing I COULD do was think about this book. I now have two pages of (handwritten, ugh) notes about everybody’s secret plans.

I will tell you a little about this story, even though I don’t want to post a snippet until I actually have finished a complete draft.

It’s science fiction, not fantasy. The title is Invictus, which is the name of the ship on which almost all the story takes place. Invictus means unconquerable and I love that as a ship’s name and a title, so wow, am I happy the title is taken care of! Also, I guess that’s a reason not to use Latin titles for the Tenai trilogy. Anyway, the setting for this story is rather far future; whatever traces of our current societies remain, those are just traces.

The protagonist (Syova) and the other protagonist (Ila) and the initial situation are set up to deliberately echo Tuyo, except that in this case the older person is a woman. I actually was intrigued by that suggestion for Tuyo, and this story grew out of that idea. Of course, despite the echoes, this situation is different in a zillion ways. I mean, among other things, in this one, nobody is a sorcerer, but everyone has secret plans. There’s a definite thread of romance through this story, with major, major obstacles that (I’m pretty sure) I now know how to resolve.

And I guess that’s all I’ll say at this point. Except that now that I’ve figured this stuff out (probably! pretty sure!), this story has moved up in the queue of projects for this year. I hope and expect I will be posting a snippet from a finished draft well before the end of the year. Honestly, it shouldn’t take that long to write the rest of it now that I know what I’m doing!

Wow, are projects piling up.

1) First, finish reading through The Sphere of the Winds and correct typos. Get the cover (I’ve seen a sketch so far) and release this book.

2) Second, and actually kind of concurrently, finish coming up with titles and back cover copy for the Tenai trilogy plus finish some revision and correct typos. Get the covers (I hope I will decide to ask the same artist who is currently working on The Sphere of the Winds cover for me) and release those books.

3) Promote the audio version of Tuyo and in fact all editions of Tuyo as heavily as possible (ongoing all year) (my God, marketing, ugh).

This link here, by the way, should let you listen to an audio sample.

4) Revise Tarashana and send that out for proofreading; correct typos and get a cover (yes, an eagle, I emphasized the eagle after thinking about the cover and now there is a pretty great eagle in the story). Release that book. Start production of the audio version, which I’m happy to say the audio producer for Tuyo asked about, so I know that unless something dire happens, I can count on him to do it.

And from here on down the rest of this list, not sure what takes priority, but:

5) Finish Invictus.

6) Play around with books 4 and 5 for the Tuyo series — I want to at least get them started this year.

7) Write three Black Dog novellas and release the 4th collection.

8) Think about the 5th Black Dog novel.

9) There is this interesting and complicated fantasy novel I’ve started which I definitely want to go on with.

My goodness, that is NINE things. Wow. What a year it’s going to be!

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A Nocturnal Upon Saint Lucy’s Day

Saint Lucy’s Day is the shortest day of the year — or if it isn’t, quite, it was when Donne wrote the poem and that is the idea of the poem. Hence, “the year’s midnight.” That fits for the Tenai trilogy because the veil between the worlds is thinnest at midwinter, on the shortest day of the year, and that’s when Tenai first came through the veil from her world to ours.

I read this poem as about grief at a great loss and the transformation that grief may effect. I hope that there is also a suggestion of recovery, because that would be appropriate to the story, but I have to admit the poem is a bit impenetrable as far as I’m concerned. However, abstracting “As Shadow, a Light” implies recovery, and so does the whole line — As shadow, a light and body must be here — if a reader is familiar with the poem, or looks it up and reads that line.

Also, “The Year’s Midnight” just sounds good to me — I agree with Mary Catelli about that. Also, I guess I do like punctuation in titles — at least some titles. Louise makes a good point about the second and third possible titles matching in form, and I do think that’s a plus as well. So — I think I will go with those titles, and thank you very much for your feedback, everyone!

Now I just (“just”) need to think of a series title . . .

Meanwhile, here’s the complete poem by John Donne if you’d like to read it and see what you think:

‘Tis the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s,
Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
         The sun is spent, and now his flasks
         Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
                The world’s whole sap is sunk;
The general balm th’ hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed’s feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr’d; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compar’d with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring;
         For I am every dead thing,
         In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
                For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness;
He ruin’d me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that’s good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;
         I, by Love’s limbec, am the grave
         Of all that’s nothing. Oft a flood
                Have we two wept, and so
Drown’d the whole world, us two; oft did we grow
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death (which word wrongs her)
Of the first nothing the elixir grown;
         Were I a man, that I were one
         I needs must know; I should prefer,
                If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love; all, all some properties invest;
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light and body must be here.

But I am none; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
         At this time to the Goat is run
         To fetch new lust, and give it you,
                Enjoy your summer all;
Since she enjoys her long night’s festival,
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year’s, and the day’s deep midnight is.

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Poetry as titles, part two

Okay, I looked through a whole lot of poetry written by people who died more than a hundred years ago, with an eye to shortish phrases that might work as book titles. I was trying to find three phrases per poem, preferably from poems with topics that are somewhat consonant with the actual stories. Quite a challenge!

See what you think of the following, and if I’m persuaded that none of these sets of phrases would work, I will give up on poetry and come up with a completely different idea.

From “A Nocturnal Upon Saint Lucy’s Day” by John Donne

The Year’s MidnightOf Absence, DarknessAs Shadow, a Light

From “The Vanity of Human Wishes” by Samuel Johnson

Time Hovers O’erSuch Age There IsAs the Day Returns

From “The Eternal Gates” by William Blake

The Eternal GatesA Land of SorrowsThro’ Valleys Dark

From “The Seasons” by Swinburne

For Winter’s RainsThe Light that LosesAnd Time Remembered

I’ve always liked Swinburne, I must say.

So, reactions?

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Line editing vs proofreading

I’ve never really thought too much about the difference, but here’s a post at Jane Friedman’s blog: The Differences Between Line Editing, Copy Editing, and Proofreading

Okay, fine, I’m curious. I’m running through The Sphere of the Winds right now, doing one or the other or all three of these things. It’s been so long since I read through this manuscript that I’ve actually been surprised by a couple of scenes. But I don’t know what I’d call what I’m doing, other than reading through it and smoothing it out. I can’t really call it proofreading — well, I CAN, but I know perfectly well I will be missing some egregious, idiotic typos because I ALWAYS DO. I expect this post is going to mention “proofreading is meant to catch idiotic typos,” because that’s certainly how I think of it.

Now that I’m looking at these three terms all together like this, I feel like they should mean something like this:

a) line editing is about correcting awkwardness and improving the style of a sentence and maybe the flow of a paragraph, plus typos.

b) copy editing looks for errors of fact (the animal you are describing is NOT a mink), continuity errors within the manuscript, and things like a character standing up twice in one paragraph, plus typos.

c) proofreading looks for actual typos and that’s it.

I’m doing all of that. I wonder if this is close to the distinctions the article is going to make. Let’s see …

What to Expect with a Line Edit

In a line edit, an editor examines every word and every sentence and every paragraph and every section and every chapter and the entirety of your written manuscript. Typos, wrong words, misspellings, double words, punctuation, run-on sentences, long paragraphs … everything is scrutinized, corrected, tracked, and commented on. Facts are checked, name spellings of people and places are confirmed. This is the type of edit I perform most often.

So the author of this post is an editor, and she considers that a line edit combines all three of the components of editing I split out above. She doesn’t mention style and awkward phrasing, but I bet that is included because this seems quite complete. In fact, from the further comments about this kind of editing, it looks like it can overlap quite a bit with a developmental edit. That is the top-level editing when the editor suggests cutting chapter eight entirely or other big things like that. This editor seems to include even stuff like that in “line editing.”

Oh, interesting — the author of this post, who is Sandra Wendel by the way, also shows a paragraph before and after line editing. Wow, the first version of the paragraph is pretty terrible. I hope that most of the time, line editors do not have to work with writing as bad as that. The first version is so bad, I’m not sure the example is fair.

But moving on:

Yes, a copy edit looks pretty much like I thought. Typos and cleaning up formatting and noting when the character’s name is spelled differently three times in the book and so on and so forth. Wendel does also say “streamlining punctuation.” That apparently includes removing exclamation points and things. Hah, she says she allows five exclamation points per manuscript! That’s funny. I have a lot more than that in some manuscripts. It depends. Natividad is an exclamation-pointy kind of girl. Also, I can tell you, when people are flying and calling to each other across a distance, they do it with a lot of exclamation points. Especially if they’re also tired. I can’t think of any other realistic way to manage dialogue when people are in that situation. It would be the same if people were calling to each other from the backs of galloping horses. You can’t use periods in a situation like that! People have to raise their voices and shout! Or at least, that’s how I’m doing it.

Okay, but I will say, all this stuff with punctuation would fall between smoothing out awkwardness and fixing actual typos, probably. There is a little more here than JUST catching typos. That part must be what is meant by proofreading alone. Let’s see …

This person [the proofreader] brings a fresh set of eyes to the work and scours for absolute error such as name misspellings … double words, missing words, and those crazy stupid errors you as the author have missed and your editor missed, and you question your sanity. Those errors.

Ah, yes, THOSE errors. Yes, that is exactly what I think of as proofreading. Oh, Wendel includes reading through the print version (or a pdf) for things like widows and orphans and “hyphen stacks” — great phrase — and so on and so forth. Yes, that’s such a pain in the neck! I personally split that off from actual proofreading because (as you know) I ask some of you to proofread for me, but I skim through the print version myself looking for these formatting issues.

The post finishes up:

As Random House copy chief Benjamin Dreyer said in his exceptionally fascinating book, Dreyer’s English, “My job is to lay my hands on that piece of writing and make it … better. Cleaner. Clearer. More efficient. Not to rewrite it … but to burnish and polish it and make it the best possible version of itself that it can be.”

I like that! Burnished and polished, yep, that’s the ideal.

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Generation ships where things more or less work out okay

A post by James Davis Nicholl at tor.com: Five Stories About Generation Ships With Happy(ish) Endings

Nicholl starts his column this way:

We’ve all read about it: after decades of construction, a shiny new generation ship is loaded with a crew of bright-eyed optimists. Once the sun is just another bright star in the sky, mutiny and civil war reduce the crew to ignorant peasants…unless something worse happens. 

Yeah, usually something worse, is my impression. I’m certainly up for generation ships where things work out at least somewhat better. I can think of one possible example, but first let’s see what Nicholl comes up with …

Rite of Passage (1968) by Alexei Panshin

Riding the Torch (1974) by Norman Spinrad

The Dazzle of Day (1998) by Molly Gloss

An Unkindness of Ghosts (2017) by Rivers Solomon

Escaping Exodus (2019) by Nicky Drayden

Wow, I haven’t read ANY of those, even though Nicholl spans fifty-odd years in his selections. Some of these stories sound pretty unpleasant, although I suppose one must grant that the colonists don’t necessary descend to barbarism. The one that strikes me as most inviting is The Dazzle of Day. Here’s the description:

A former space station equipped with vast solar sails, the Dusty Miller takes almost two centuries to reach its extrasolar destination—long enough for any number of horrific social or physical setbacks! Alas, the Dusty Miller’s long voyage was orchestrated by Quakers . . . Everything keeps working. Not only are the Quakers relentlessly reasonable people, their customs allow them to face disagreements directly and resolve them peaceably. These peculiar arrangements suffice to get the ship across the light years and ensure that their response to the forbidding exoplanet that awaits them is a constructive one.

That strikes me as a good deal more appealing than the grim dystopias that appear to exist on the more recent selections above.

In addition to the ones Nicholl selected, how about this:

This is my favorite out of all the Foreigner covers. Bren looks like such a badass diplomat in this image!

Sure, the ship wasn’t meant to be a generation ship, but it wound up that way. Granted, the crew who stayed with the ship wound up in trouble, but they didn’t turn into barbarians or cannibals or whatever — and now that they’re heading down to the atevi world, I expect they’ll be fine. I’d call that at minimum a happy-ish ending.

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Out today —

Just out this moment, TUYO as an audiobook!

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