Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 9

Update: Argh, Tedious Proofing is Tedious

Okay, so,

A) I GREATLY APPRECIATE ALL EARLY READERS; TALENTED PROOFREADERS ARE PEARLS BEYOND PRICE

But, wow, if I expire from boredom during the coming week, you’ll know exactly why.

I am in fact still proofreading and tweaking HEDESA myself, which is juuuuust about exactly as boring as scanning through comments from someone else and correcting and tweaking the manuscript. Which is to say, extremely boring. I’m very, very ready to be finished with this book ….

B) Which is why I have been working on FAR less boring projects in the mornings.

Yes, that slows down proofing etc. for HEDESA, but on the other hand, I haven’t actually died of boredom, which was starting to feel like the merciful option. One of those projects is SEKARAN, which is sensible since it’s about half finished. (Or who knows, at least the first 100 pages or whatever is sitting there, whatever proportion that turns out to be.)

However, I have to admit that I also started Tuyo Book Eleven: The Thing That Happened In The West, which people are going to be very curious about when they hit a certain moment in HEDESA. I chortled my way through the first few pages, which is about as far from dying of boredom as you can get. I wouldn’t necessarily call this one started-started, but on the other hand, I do have about 9000 words here, so that’s getting close to enough to declare I’ve started it.

***

So, when will I drop HEDESA at my Patreon?

Answer: as early as July 2. I have one more chapter scheduled to drop, which will happen tomorrow. The next Tuesday after that is July 2. If I can’t hit that, then the next Tuesday after that, which will still be three weeks before it goes live at Amazon.

Oh, I better ask for a paperback cover. And the hardcover cover! And put together an audition script and see about the audio version! Aagh, stuff to do!

Anyway, it’s under control.

***

How ABOUT that title for The Book That Will Not Be Called World of Tiers?

I like a good many of your suggestions, but not necessarily for this book. I guess I should file a lot of these suggestions for later. In particular, I have a book I’ve started which would be a PERFECT fit for Ascend the Glittering Winds. I mean, I would need to make sure to tweak the book a tiny bit to make sure, but this would be super easy for this particular book, and this is a neat title, so … filing it. Maybe I should show you a snippet of that one, but it is immensely far from finished and I don’t want to tease with something that might not be finished until heaven knows when.

ANYWAY

I still like Thirteen Petals. I don’t actually care if that implies fragility. Worlds can be fragile; indeed, in fantasy novels, they often are. It’s fine if that image suggests a non-linear structure to the world; the world can be imagined in a non-linear way, particularly because the idea that the world has a center is important. AND, I personally just like the title. Throw a dragon and the hint of a nightmare tiger on the cover, plus lotus flowers, and boom, it’s fantasy. In other words, I agree with whoever pointed out — ah, Tuyo-fan, yes — that the cover image is important in combination with the title, AND that the vibe changes quite a lot if you put “the world” in the title.

By the way, Elaine, “Boys of Bedlam” has been running through my mind continually since you got me to look up that poem. This isn’t bothering me … yet … but we’ll see how long it continues.

***

MEANWHILE

It’s now full summer and I’m dying, or I would be if not for air conditioning. Schedule now includes: take dogs out at dawn, the only time it’s remotely cool enough to tolerate. It’s hard to believe humans evolved as endurance hunters in Africa.

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Maybe it’s aliens

‘We’ve got a new mystery on our hands’: Titan’s weird wobble just got even stranger

Titan’s atmosphere doesn’t rotate in sync with its surface. Instead, it tilts and shifts like a spinning top that changes its orientation with the seasons.

“The behaviour of Titan’s atmospheric tilt is very strange,” Lucy Wright, lead author of the new research and a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol in the U.K., said in a statement. “We think some event in the past may have knocked the atmosphere off its spin axis, causing it to wobble.”

Scientists thought the direction of the tilt would be influenced by either Saturn’s gravity or the position of the sun, as is often the case in planetary systems — meaning it would change as Titan orbited Saturn and the sun. But observations show that the tilt direction doesn’t move. Instead, it stays pointed the same way in space, as if unaffected by those external forces.

Well, if the atmosphere isn’t affected by THOSE external forces, maybe it’s affected by OTHER external forces, and I think we all know who’s responsible, don’t we?

Varley’s Gaia trilogy is excellent. The first book was published back in 1979, long enough ago that this trilogy and this author are largely forgotten, which is a real shame.

Though I don’t as a rule much like short stories, Varley’s were an exception and I have a collection of his short works in my library. I have his near-future SF novel Red Thunder on my TBR shelves, but I’ve never read it — near-future is a hard sell for me; I wouldn’t have got it at all if it were by someone else. Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m making a note to find it and bring it upstairs. I mean, doesn’t this sound like fun?

As Chinese and US spacecraft compete to be the first to land on Mars, a former astronaut, his cousin, and four teens from Florida decide to take matters into their own hands. If they can quickly build their own space-worthy ship using scrap metal, appliances, and power tools, they have a chance to come from behind—thanks to an inventive new power source that can propel them to the Red Planet within three days. No guts, no glory . . .

Honestly, I think this sounds great.

AND, of course the weird stuff going on with Titan’s atmosphere must be aliens. What else would it be?

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Poetry Thursday: Perhaps the Greatest Anonymous Poem in English

Elaine T mentioned this poem with regard to looking for book titles. Obviously I looked the poem up, and it turns out that although I thought I was familiar with it, I was actually thinking of a different poem. The link above goes to a post where the poem is discussed; the link below to a different post that presented it in a form easier to copy with different comments. “Easier to copy” didn’t mean that I liked the way it was done in either post; I took the notes off the lines and put them in as footnotes instead. Footnotes are a little bit obtrusive, but not nearly as much so as having the notes actually added to the lines! Here’s the discussion at the Poetry Foundation.

Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song
Anonymous ballad, circa 1620

From the hag and hungry goblin
That into rags would rend ye,
And the spirit that stands
By the naked man
In the Book of Moons1, defend ye,
That of your five sound senses
You never be forsaken,
Nor wander from
Your selves with Tom
Abroad to beg your bacon.

    While I do sing,
    Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink or clothing?
    Come, dame or maid,
    Be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.

Of thirty bare years have I
Twice twenty been enragèd,
And of forty been
Three times fifteen
In durance soundly cagèd
On the lordly lofts of Bedlam
With stubble soft and dainty,
Brave bracelets strong,
Sweet whips, ding-dong,
With wholesome hunger plenty.

    And now I sing,
    Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink or clothing?
    Come, dame or maid,
    Be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.

With a thought I took for Maudlin2,
And a cruse of cockle pottage,
With a thing thus tall,
Sky bless you all,
I befell into this dotage.
I slept not since the Conquest3,
Ere then I never wakèd,
Till the roguish boy4
Of love where I lay
Me found and stripped me nakèd,

    And now I sing,
    Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink or clothing?
    Come, dame or maid,
    Be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.

When I short have shorn my sow’s face
And swigged my horny barrel,
At an oaken inn
I impound my skin
In a suit of gilt5 apparel;
The moon’s my constant mistress,
And the lowly owl my marrow6;
The flaming drake
And the night-crow make
Me music to my sorrow.

    While I do sing,
    Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink or clothing?
    Come, dame or maid,
    Be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.

The palsy plagues my pulses
When I prig your pigs or pullen7,
Your culvers8 take
Or matchless make
Your Chanticleer or Sullen9.
When I want provant10, with Humphry
I sup, and when benighted,
I repose in Paul’s
With waking souls,
Yet never am affrighted.

    But  I do sing,
    Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink or clothing?
    Come, dame or maid,
    Be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.

I know more than Apollo,
For oft when he lies sleeping
I see the stars
At bloody wars
In the wounded welkin11 weeping.
The moon embrace her shepherd12,
And the Queen of Love her warrior13,
While the first doth horn
The star of morn,
And the next, the heavenly Farrier14.

    While I do sing,
    Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink or clothing?
    Come, dame or maid,
    Be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.

The Gypsies, Snap and Pedro,
Are none of Tom’s comradoes,
The punk15 I scorn,
And the cutpurse sworn,
And the roaring boy’s bravadoes.
The meek, the white, the gentle,
Me handle, touch and spare not;
But those that cross
Tom Rynosseross
Do what the Panther dare not.

    Although I sing,
    Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink or clothing?
    Come, dame or maid,
    Be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.

With an host of furious fancies,
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear
And a horse of air
To the wilderness I wander.
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to Tourney;
Ten leagues beyond
The wide world’s end:
Methinks it is no journey.

    Yet will I sing,
    Any food, any feeding,
    Feeding, drink or clothing?
    Come, dame or maid,
    Be not afraid,
    Poor Tom will injure nothing.

********

[a book of astrology][Maudlin = Mary Magdalene][England’s defeat in 1066][Cupid][“gilt” may be a pun on “guilt”][“marrow” suggests “mate” and “semen”][prig = steal, pullen = chicken][culvers = pigeons][i.e., leave your rooster without a mate][provant = food] [welkin = sky][the Moon loved Endymion][Venus loved Mars][Venus cuckolded Hephaestus, the smith god][punk = prostitute]

Here is a spoken version, the only version I found (I didn’t look hard).

It turns out that the poem I actually thought of when Elaine mentioned the one above was a different but related poem called Mad Maudlin. This refers to the Hospital of St. Mary Magdalen, which was the women’s version of Bedlam — Bethlehem Hospital.

Mad Maudlin

Favorite, Folk, SCA

To find my Tom of Bedlam,
Then thousand years I’ll travel
Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes
to save her shoes from gravel

Yet will I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys,
Bedlam boys are bonny
O they all go bare and they live by the air
And they want no drink nor money
I now repent that ever
Poor Tom was so disdained
My wits are lost since him I crost
Which makes me go thus chained

My staff hath murder’d Gyants
My bag a long Knife carries
To cut Mince-Pies from Children’s Thighs
With which I’ll feast the Fairies

My horn is made of Thunder,
I stole it out of Heav’n
The Rainbow there is this I wear
For which I thence was driv’n

I went to Pluto’s Kitchen
To beg some food one morning
And there I got Souls piping hot
With which the spits were turning

Then took I up a Cauldron
Where boyl’d Ten Thousand Harlots
T’was full of Flame yet I drank the same
To the Health of all such Varlets

A Spirit hot as Lightning
Did in that Journey guide me
The Sun did shake and the pale Moon quake
As soon as e’er they spi’d me

And now that I have gotten
a Lease than Doomsday longer
To live on Earth with some in Mirth
Ten Whales shall feed my Hunger

No Gipsie Slut or Doxy
shall win my Mad Tom from me
We’ll weep all night and with Stars Fight
The Fray shall well become me

And when that I have beaten
the Man i’th’Moon to a Powder
His Dog I’ll take and him I’ll make
As could no Daemon louder

A health to Tom of Bedlam
Go fill the seas in Barrels
I’ll drink it all well brew’d with Gall
and Maudlin drunk I’ll quarrel

********

And this was set to music; there’s a Youtube version here. This is the version I was familiar with, though I don’t remember which CD (or even tape) I own that includes this song.

Here’s a blog post that tackles this compelling but extremely weird poem.

The canon of folk music originating from these islands is littered with strange artefacts. Sometimes the strangeness is conferred by the music, sometimes by the lyric – occasionally both align to create something strange beyond the sum of its strange parts. Such a strange and auspicious alignment occurs on ‘Boys of Bedlam’, a track on the second Steeleye Span album Please to See the King, released on 1/3/1971.

This is at least very close track I remembered and the one I linked from Youtube above, but I definitely do not have this album in any form, so the version I have must have been collected somewhere else or performed by someone else. The post goes on:

On first hearing it in my teenage years, the eldritch nature of the track appealed greatly to me. On repeated playing certain phrases stood out: “Satan’s kitchen”/ “staff has murdered giants”/ “howl no demon louder”/ and the absolute clincher in the strangeness stakes – “to cut mince pies from children’s thighs, with which to feed the faeries”. I tried unsuccessfully to unravel the narrative, to figure out not only who was telling the story, but also what was the story  and what were these “bonnie Boys of Bedlam” and exactly why did they “all go bare and they live by the air, and want no drink or money”

I did not investigate any of this, but the author of the linked post did. Much more at this link, and because the link to Part II is not live in this first post, here is Part II, which addresses the first poem, Tom O Bedlam.

And there you go: your dose of extremely surreal poetry for this Thursday.

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Ongoing Effort to Re-Title “World of Tiers” (Not, Apparently, Its Real Name)

Thank you all very much for your multitude of comments and suggestions!

I agree that The Thing of Thing and Thing is horrifically cliched as the form of a title in YA fantasy novels. I also agree that

Thresholds of Air and ShadowDoorways of Air and Shadow

Or some other variant is not terrible, despite fitting the X of Y and Z format.

I also agree with Sandstone that anything with “doorways” runs the risk of recalling “Every Heart a Doorway,” which is not desirable for several reasons, so thanks for pointing that out, Sandstone!

I’d be fine with something to do with tigers and dragons, but had somehow forgotten about Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, though I did feel like I was forgetting something. Therefore, anything that combines tigers and dragons is unfortunately a no-go.

So I was playing around with all this last night, particularly with suggestions to just ditch every suggestion similar to the above and do something else.

Here’s what I’m thinking of at this point:

Twelve Gates to Midnight

I don’t especially like that for this book, though in fact I might like it for a different book. That is, I like it as a book title, but perhaps not for this particular book. Among other things, the midnight tier is not in fact all that important. The nightmare tier is — but I am NOT putting nightmare into the title in any way whatsoever. This isn’t horror! Nothing could more forcefully shove the general impression toward horror than a title containing the word “nightmare.” Also, the nightmare realm isn’t twelve steps from the center of the world.

So then I thought: How many layers of the world are there? Thirteen. What can I do that might suggest something sort of SE Asian flavored? I don’t want to evoke China; the setting isn’t Chinese-flavored. Therefore, not “jade” or whatever else particularly calls China to mind. So …

Thirteen Petals of the World

or just

Thirteen Petals

How does that strike you ? I sort of like it. Add a waterlily or something on the cover —

Image from Pixabay

The lotus flower is, it turns out, the national flower of Vietnam, so it seems like a flower of this kind could evoke the setting. The national flower of Thailand is the goldenrain tree, which is lovely but doesn’t have the same single-flower-with-lots-of-petals thing going for it. Jasmine, Hibiscus, there are various possibilities, but count the petals above. A lotus flower like this can be pictured with thirteen petals.

The tiers are listed right there, up front, before the story opens, anybody can count them if they are so inclined and note that there are thirteen, even before any character explicitly thinks anything about the number of tiers of the world. And, in fact, I could perfectly easily have a character refer to the world as “thirteen petals” or as “a flower with thirteen petals,” though if I did that, I would look for just a small handful of other poetic metaphors to add to the story. Which is not a terrible barrier.

So that’s what I’m leaning toward now. Comments?

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Letting Go

A post at Jane Friedman’s blog: When to Let Go: Recognize the Point of Diminishing Returns in Revision

This is a good topic in general, but it’s especially interesting to me right this minute because I’m currently doing tiny revision and polishing both for Hedesa and for The World of Tiers (not sure that’s its actual title) (Yes, I know Philip Jose Farmer wrote a series by this title; that’s one reason I wouldn’t mind coming up with something different.)

Anyway, as I write this post, I’m doing final-final revision for Hedesa and final primary revision for the other book that might be called World of Tiers, and both will soon be tossed out of the nest into the wide sky. As you know, the release date for the former is August 2 (sorry! I hate that it’s so late!), and I strongly suspect that the release date for the latter will be September 2, unless I decide to space out releases and make that October 2.

I still do plan to put serious work into a No Foreign Sky sequel this year, and who knows, if it goes fast enough, it might come out this year, but no guarantee. Also I should write the other half of Sekaran sometime soon-ish. But those are beside the point right now; what I’m thinking of is this when do you let go question. This always does make me think of authors I’ve talked to who have complete, polished books, plural, sitting on their hard drives, but they haven’t been able to bring themselves to either query or publish. One Great Truth of being a novelist is, you can’t succeed unless you eventually put your books out in the world where strangers can read them, so … how about it? When is a book ready? How can you tell?

Usually, I feel pretty darn confident about a book by the time it goes live. I’ll tell you why:

Because early readers are enthusiastic.

This, for me, is really important. If most early readers love it, then I quit worrying. So the question for me is:

Is it ready to send to early readers?

And the answer can go, let me see, three different ways:

A) No.

B) Nooooo, but I have gone blind and can’t see anything about it accurately anymore and please, early readers, point vigorously to stuff that isn’t working so I can re-calibrate my vision and finish the dratted thing. This was Hedesa, and sure enough, much vigorous pointing ensued. It was also Rihasi, and in that case I was wrong and every single early reader say, “Yay! It’s great! Tiny comments appended.” So when I say I’ve gone blind, I mean really, it can be very hard for me to tell how close to finished a novel is if I’ve been doing a great heaping gob of back-and-forth revision for two months, which was the case for both those titles.

C) Yes, it’s polished. It works. No doubt early readers will have comments, but it’s fine. This was Marag, and it’s also World of Tiers. Honestly, I was very startled at how polished it is. Yes, it needed a little bit of revision, but what it needs is clear — nothing like a seven-year break to re-calibrate vision — and it’s trivial revision.

So far, I’ve never thought a novel belonged to category (C) when in fact it was in category (B), and it would be nice if that never happens, but who knows.

MEANWHILE, how about the linked post? What does the author of this post suggest with regard to deciding whether you’ve hit the point at which the book is fine and you should stop fussing and send it out?

You have entered the trap of endless pointless revision when:

You’re changing words back to what they were two revisions agoYou feel intense anxiety about the manuscript but can’t pinpoint specific problemsSmall changes consume hours as you obsess over minute detailsYou can no longer tell if your changes are improving the work or merely making it differentEach revision session leaves you feeling more depleted rather than satisfied

I’ve never encountered the first item. I’m not sure I’ve encountered the second, because “intense” is a strong word. I don’t mind obsessing over minute details. BUT, I’m right there with the fourth point. You can no longer tell if your changes are improving the work. This is exactly what I mean by “going blind.” That’s what I think is, for me, a key realization that means –> Send this puppy to someone who can actually see it.

The alternative strategy is apparently –> Put this sucker away for seven years. I suppose five or three would probably do, but long enough that you’ve forgotten a lot about it and most especially have recovered your ability to see the story as it actually exists on the page.

The linked post offers solutions that don’t include either of the above strategies, including setting deadlines and resolving never to backtrack to an earlier stage of revision — I mean, once you’re doing proofreading, don’t backtrack to revision of character arcs. But this post also says: Solicit a final read-through from a fresh reader. That is identical to saying: Send the manuscript to someone who can see it.

Here’s the nearly-final word:

When good enough is truly good enoughThe primary structural issues have been addressedThe main character arcs are complete and coherentThe pacing feels appropriate for your genreYou’ve fixed the issues that you yourself identified as problemsThe writing is clean, clear, and free of major errors

If your manuscript meets these criteria, it’s likely ready for the next step, whether that’s querying agents, submitting to a publisher, or self-publishing.

I only disagree with one thing in the above list:

Your manuscript is NOT ready to self-publish when it is free of MAJOR errors. That is when it is ready to send to a PROOFREADER, who will help you clear out the MINOR errors, which are awful and it’s your job to get rid of as many as possible. I mean things like “was” when it should be the subjunctive “were” unless the character speaking would say “was,” and things like spotting that a comma should be a period because you changed your mind and used a “spoke” instad of “said” tag. Or one letter of a phrase not being italicized, that one sentence where there’s an ambiguous pronoun referent … you know, all the little things that most readers won’t see but some will notice and find jarring. Don’t hit publish until you’ve done your very best to clear out ALL of those minor errors.

And here’s the final word:

Trust that you’ve done the work. Trust that readers will connect with your story. And most importantly, trust that by letting go of this manuscript, you’re making space for the next one, which will benefit from everything you’ve learned in the process.

The greatest gift you can give your writing isn’t one more revision—it’s the chance to be read.

Well put! Good post. Click through if you’d like to read the whole thing.

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Fine, not “World of Tiers,” so then what?

You all startled me by saying No, no, ugh, don’t give your book the same name as PJF’s exceedingly old series, which apparently a high proportion of you not only read, but remember rather clearly.

FINE.

Gates of Air and ShadowGates of the WorldThe Tiers of the World — see what I did there? It’s a different title! Sort of!Thresholds of Midnight and DawnMidnight Tiger, Dawn Dragon

OMG, this is terrible. No wonder I gave up and said World of Tiers.

You know what, I’m going to tell you a little about the world, because it’s not like this is secret or gradually revealed. It’s right at the top of the story, before chapter one. The names of these tiers might be simplified, but maybe not, I’m thinking about it.

The realm of the gods, a divine realm, the roof of the worldThe realm of dreamsThe eternal-dawn tierThe bright-starlight tierThe glittering-winds tierThe clouds-and-air tierThe center of the world, the human realm: the stone-and-earth tierThe hollow-iron tierThe obsidian-and-glass tierThe dust-and-ash tierThe eternal-midnight tierThe tier of nightmaresThe tier of demons, a divine tier, the root of the world

Nightmare tiger, dream dragon, gods, demons, doorways that lead up and down through the world, setting is strongly flavored with SE Asian ecosystems and architecture and so forth, but is secondary world, not remotely historical or anything like that.

Might as well try to come up with something moderately acceptable as first-pass back-cover copy right now, since that is relevant. Let me see.

***

Long ago, Vích took her little brother and fled the mysterious but terrible fate their mother intended for them both.

Bound together by his gift and her curse, they have never feared any of the ordinary dangers that beset mortal people, but they have never been safe from those who would use them both in pursuit of power beyond life and death.

Now those enemies have found them.

The world will never be the same.

***

This is a little misleading in some ways, but whatever, it’d do for now. Go for it, come up with a title that isn’t World of Tiers and I would be ecstatic to consider your ideas.

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The Arc of Time

A post at Writer Unboxed: The Arc of Time:

I’ve just finished working on a novel whose story takes place over about twenty years, following the main character from college to his mid-forties – plus a prologue  that takes place when he’s seven.  I’m also working on a science fiction novel whose action takes place over the course of a few weeks.  The two of them have me thinking about how the time scale you choose affects how you tell your story...

I laughed, because yep, the contrast in those stories would probably make any author think about time.

One Night in Boukos by Demas is a great example of a story that takes place in (a bit more than) one night, with the resulting breathless feel to the action, though actually the story does let the reader relax now and then. Briefly. It’s a delightful story, very neatly put together, with a plot that spins off in different directions and then clicks back together.

The Good Shepherd by Forrester is an absolutely amazing naval battle story that takes place in 48 hours with no breaks at all. It is one of the most nonstop books I have ever read. My favorite detail is that the captain who is defending the convoy of ships against Nazi submarines heads for the bridge without taking time to change from bedroom slippers to regular footwear, and never has time to change. I think he’s in slippers just about the whole time and I think this is a brilliant detail. Wow, this is such a great, high-tension story. Acclaimed as one of the best novels of the year upon publication in 1955, The Good Shepherd is a riveting classic of WWII and naval warfare from one of the 20th century’s masters of sea stories, it says at Amazon, and I can see why.

Then on the other hand, we have books like the Mars Trilogy by KSR, which covers a tremendous amount of time, from the early terraforming of Mars to the time that’s finished and most of the solar system has been settled. I’m not sure how much time it covers, but over a hundred years, surely. There’s a longevity thing going on that allows Robinson to keep some of the same characters all the way through.

Or, how about China Court by Rumer Godden. This is a great example of a generation story.

For nearly one hundred and fifty years the Quin family has lived at China Court, their magnificent estate in the Welsh countryside. The land, gardens, and breathtaking home have been maintained, cherished, and ultimately passed along—from Eustace and Adza in the early nineteenth century to village-girl-turned-lady-of-the-manor Ripsie Quin, her children, and her granddaughter, Tracy, in the twentieth. … Brilliantly intermingling the past and the present, China Court is a sweeping family saga that weaves back and forth through time. 

I do love Rumer Godden. I have some of hers I’ve never read. I should pull one of those off the shelf and bring it upstairs where I’ll see it.

Or how about Cloud Atlas, there’s one that covers a really long span of time.

Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. The novel careens, with dazzling virtuosity, to Belgium in 1931, to the West Coast in the 1970s, to an inglorious present-day England, to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok, and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history. But the story doesn’t end even there. The novel boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, David Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.

According to the linked post: In broad terms, shorter timelines favor dramatic tension that’s based on action.  If it takes place over a short timespan, your story gains immediacy and urgency.

I think that’s true. It’s hard to see how this could fail to be true. It’s probably easier for the author in a lot of ways, because there’s no need to compress time at all. I suppose this kind of short-time-scale story offers other challenges — where do you break the action? — I think this can be fun, though. Putting in chapter breaks that compel readers to turn the page immediately is a fun thing to do.

The author of the linked post adds: Something to watch for while you focus on the action, though — even the most fast-paced stories benefit if your characters have grown by the end.  It’s how events affect them that makes your readers care. 

I think, well, maybe. “How events affect them” does not equal “They have changed,” it seems to me. I’m thinking of The Good Shepherd here. I don’t remember the protagonist changing, except in the sense of getting more and more tired. I think he’s pretty iconic. On the other hand, in One Night in Boukos, a huge amount of character development takes place in that one night. That’s pretty impressive, now that I look back on it. But it’s true you have more room to stretch out if days, weeks, months, years are passing.

Not as much time as it necessarily seems, though, because if a whole lot of time is passing, you’ll almost certainly have to compress time, probably a lot, repeatedly, and honestly, I don’t think it’s possible to do character development while also compressing time. That’s the exact reason Hedesa expanded to twice the length of a normal novel (normal for me): because I felt I had to put in the character development and that is truly impossible to do if you slide across a two-month-long journey with a “then we arrived” paragraph.

From the linked post: If your hero has a life-changing epiphany by the end of the story, readers need to know enough of his background to really feel how monumental the change is.  It simply takes time to sketch out the emotional landscape where the real action of the story takes place.  And because of this more leisurely pace, it’s easier for readers to immerse themselves in these stories, to settle back from the edge of their seats and just let events unfold.

This seems right to me. Mostly. Partly, anyway. The Good Shepherd is immersive in a nail-biting kind of way. But the “sinking in” feeling probably depends on a slower pace and a calmer story. Good post, and certainly it’s well worth paying attention to how authors handle time in a story — let’s say, time and character arcs. Time, place, and character arcs. Big topic for sure!

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Update: A Lot is Going On Behind the Scenes

Okay, so last week, I kept thinking, “Also this! And that as well!” with the complete fantasy novel from seven years ago. BUT, all this was trivial, basically, even though I wound up revising the climactic scene kind of a lot. And foreshadowing stuff that was going to happen. and realizing that probably various characters needed to know some stuff earlier, and it went on and on, basically, but in this case “on and on” meant “for a week of largely trivial fiddling,” so that’s comparatively excellent.

I’m now ready to send it to early readers, which is why I wish very much I had pulled it out and read it earlier this year. All I can say is, the BACK HALF of 2025 is going to be when everything comes out, one, two, three, and I hope four, in quite rapid succession. I feel like there’s no time to write anything else this year, BUT, it is actually only June. It just feels MUCH later in the year than that because I’m looking ahead toward release dates. If whatever I write next is cooperative …

… crossing my fingers there …

… then there’s plenty of time to write, revise, and polish something else this year. So we’ll see.

Meanwhile!

Still very much involved with tweaking and polishing Hedesa. I should schedule a promotion around its release date, but everything takes time and I haven’t gotten to it. But I should. So we’ll see.

This other book’s working title is World of Tiers, which is also the title of that series by Philip Jose Farmer, published back in … let me see … wow, the first book of his series came out in 1965! That is a LONG TIME. Gosh, it took almost thirty years for him to finish this series, which I also hadn’t realized. Anyway, I think I’m going to use the same title because (a) it’s a book title; his is a series title; (b) it’s really suitable; (c) his series is not well known at this point. My book is different in basically every possible way, except for the idea that the world is layered.

Oh, and the idea of two souls — people have two souls, I should mention — at least two — anyway, the essential notion of two souls comes from the Egyptian ka and ba souls. Though in my book, this works totally differently, this is still the inspiration for the basic idea. This struck me as an amazingly cool mythological system when I ran across it a zillion years ago.

Have I mentioned this is a complicated world? It’s a complicated world. There are hooks in case I want to ever write a sequel, though it’s perfectly self-contained and I don’t know that I will ever decide to do that.

So, coming up this week —

–Continue tweaking and polishing Hedesa.

–Pick up something else, and I am very much aware that I had better start the No Foreign Sky sequel if I hope to bring that out this year, or even next year. I mean, if I EVER plan to bring that out, I had better start it. So that will probably be the next thing I pick up, beginning with re-reading No Foreign Sky. But I’m glad I picked up World of Tiers first because that was very fast to handle once I took a look at it.

I am sobbing inwardly, by the way, because I don’t have a dozen more complete novels sitting around gathering dust. I have ONE, and it would be a bear to revise, requiring near-complete rewriting from front to back. I do have half a dozen things started, some of which I feel pretty enthusiastic about. All of that will have to wait for next year, probably. This is why I feel the year is just about over even though technically about half the year is still to come.

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Recent Reading: Ocean’s Echo

Okay, so this stuff about architects is just irresistible:

Tennalhin Halkana arrived at the party fashionably late, which might have meant something if he’d been invited in the first place. Tennal often set out to make trouble, it was true, but this evening, he was genuinely here for a drink and a good tie.

That was a lie. He also wanted an architect, and this party would be filled with architects.

Ocean’s Echo has an absolutely brilliant opening.

I thought that opening was brilliant the first time I read it and I still think so. Would a guy like Tennal appeal to me without the architects? No, he wouldn’t. Or, I mean, he might, if the next paragraphs appealed to me for some other reason, but a protagonist who is basically out to make trouble, and for that matter a protagonist who is focused on having a drink and a good time, usually doesn’t engage my interest.

But that line about architects sure did. It’s surprising, it’s clever, it’s interesting, I love it –

– and then the story turns out to turn around mind control and mind reading, and the forced subjugation of a reader (meaning is obvious) to an architect (and here we get an idiosyncratic definition: an architect can “write” a person, meaning compel them to do something. And suddenly I love this barely-begun story a lot less.

This was not a surprise at all. The publisher makes no attempt to disguise this aspect of the plot:

Conscripted into the military under dubious circumstances, Tennal is placed into the care of Lieutenant Surit Yeni, a duty-bound soldier, principled leader, and the son of a notorious traitor general. Whereas Tennal can read minds, Surit can influence them. Like all other neuromodified architects, he can impose his will onto others, and he’s under orders to control Tennal …

Extreme ugh, which I grant is kinda hilarious coming from me, but possibly one difference that matters is that in the Tuyo world, sorcerers are terrifying because they’re always evil (fine, almost always), but at least there aren’t a lot of them; while in this world, you trip over architects everywhere and they can all do this mind control stuff, some a lot more powerfully than others. But don’t worry! Actual long-term compulsions aren’t THAT common, and after all, you can tell when someone is forcing you to act against your will, so it’s not THAT disturbing! Really!

This is obviously very disturbing, especially since another difference between the Tuyo world and Everina Maxwell’s world is that here, in this book, the Legislator (planetary ruler) is an awful person and the military is also filled with a huge number of awful people. I don’t think a single person in a position of authority is non-awful in the entire story, and by awful … this is a minor spoiler, so heads up, here comes a mild spoiler …

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… by awful, I mean that it’s not nice to set up soldiers under your command to be murdered in order to straighten out a political inconvenience, for example, and it’s also not nice to go along with commanding officers who think that’s fine. The reason this is a minor spoiler is that it’s totally obvious that this is happening. I mean obvious to the reader. It makes sense the protagonists don’t catch on because it’s not easy to suspect something this bad is going on, plus they’re distracted.

But my response to this plot element was: Don’t you think someone in the chain of command might say ick, no, when a superior orders them to force a mind-meld between two non-consenting participants and then murder the junior officer forced into this? Did the Legislator really think everyone involved would say Yes, sir, onward with this obviously illegal and also appalling abuse of power when faced with this kind of plot? There’s no hint that she went out of her way to pick especially corrupt officers; instead, there are various hints that this is just how everyone in the military is – I mean everyone remotely senior. Even the medical officers were participating in this plot. It’s frankly astounding.

Luckily for Tennal, Surit Yeni is approximately the least awful person in the entire universe.

And then Everina Maxwell is good at writing snappy dialogue and neat relationships. Tennal is an extreme, and I mean extreme, extrovert who is thoroughly screwed up; Surit Yeni is an extreme introvert crossed with Simon Ilyan, and Maxwell really shines with this kind of dialogue and these types of characters, which is perhaps why they’re broadly similar to the protagonists in Winter’s Orbit. The major difference is that in the latter, the extreme extrovert is also really competent and not nearly as self-destructive as Tennal, while the introvert is the one in a horrible situation. Plus his situation has improved immeasurably; it’s just not totally clear to him that this has happened for a long time. But the personal dynamics are similar. Which is fine, because as I say, Maxwell is good at this kind of relationship.

Here’s another minor spoiler. Here it comes …

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Interestingly, not only the dynamic between the main protagonists is similar in this book as in the first, the plot is also very similar in one important respect. Quick tip! If everyone knows the Tau field / true brainwashing is impossible, I bet it turns out that actually it’s very possible and lo! this will be an important component of the climactic scenes. If I were Maxwell, in my next book, I would set the reader up to expect something just like this to happen yet again, and then whoops, no! The climax would hinge on something else and no, really, in a surprise twist, the Tau field or brainwashing (or whatever) actually is impossible. Or at least, not the big problem the protagonist’s face at the end.

I don’t honestly think anything above this paragraph constitutes a real true spoiler because both the plot to kill Surit and the looming threat of brainwashing are obvious to any reasonably astute reader.

Let me see. All right, compared to Winter’s Orbit, Ocean’s Echo has:

— A very similar m/m romance involving a forced relationship between an extreme extrovert and an extreme introvert, though this time they realize they’re on the same side a lot faster and the romantic angle is a less dominant plot element;

— A mind-bending telepathic merger that has a significant downside, so you can see why the romantic angle takes a back seat, because whoa, there’s a lot to handle already;

— Dialogue that is just as fun and witty;

— And, in this case, a possibly over-ornate plot. I’m tempted to outline this book just so I can better evaluate whether I think the plot is in fact over-ornate, because I’m honestly not sure. I was distracted by the telepathic merger with the significant downside. But I sort of felt that some plot elements were cobbled together in ways that didn’t entirely make sense.

I’m trying to decide if I should lay this out because this wouldn’t be limited to minor spoilers. But okay, I’m going to, and seriously, this time, big spoilers coming up …

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*****

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In order from least to most important:

A) I really don’t understand Governor Oma’s early line about if the Legislator gives her another order to stand down her troops she’s going to resign. In the moment, this is funny and gives the reader an idea about Oma’s character, but nothing about that line makes sense given how the plot unrolls or how the polity appears to be organized. Maybe I missed something huge and crucial about the worldbuilding that causes this to make sense? Because Governor Oma is not remotely under the Legislator’s control, given how she treated the Cavalry unit as enemy troops, right? So if something explains how this made sense, I sure missed it.

B) I get that Tennal is extremely self-destructive, but nothing about the opening scene in the party makes sense to me, because this doesn’t seem to be consistent with how he reacts to all sorts of other things in the plot.

C) I was surprised that the crew of Retriever Two were are not only this competent but also this willing to go out on an increasingly thin limb. I mean, I understand this is handy for the plot, but I’m not totally sure I bought it.

D) I felt the author, not merely the Legislator, was working on the presupposition that naturally all senior military personnel are perfectly fine with murdering junior officers because a politician told them to, because there’s no pushback against the assumption that everyone involved would just offer a snappy salute and carry on with this obviously insane and thoroughly illegal plot. Everyone goes along with this nefarious plan! Even though it’s insanely stupid!

And the reason this is insanely stupid as well as evil is that nobody seems to realize that this secret plot is certain to get out given that the plot isn’t even secret.

I mean, three can keep a secret if two of them are dead, right? And in this case a whole bunch of people seem to have been involved, so how was that even supposed to work? Worse, the author apparently thinks that a whole crowd is going to keep this secret, because ALL the characters apparently think this could work, even though it obviously could not work!

So, for me, this whole thing constituted a pretty serious problem with suspension of disbelief.

E) It’s all very well to explain that you can force a link between a reader and an architect, and then killing the architect will allow the reader to walk away with architect abilities. This doesn’t remotely justify the Legislator’s actions, and I don’t mean morally, I mean I don’t see the point. If her nephew is this impossible to control, why not, say, frame him for some sort of crime … or come to think of it, arrest him for a crime he has actually committed, if that’s more convenient … and drop him in the sort of prison that is surely already available, the sort of place you put rich people’s sons when they’re annoying, but too well connected to drop a bigger hammer on them. What is the point of all this stuff with military conscription and setting him up with a disposable lieutenant you plan to have murdered? Do you think he will be easier to control after all this? Why would anybody think that? So to me this ALSO involved a fairly huge suspension of disbelief.

F) Why are mind readers also able to sense the structure of space? I don’t get why these two wildly different abilities should be linked. I understand why this was necessary to make the plot work, but I’m not sure it was justified in a way that worked for me in worldbuilding terms. I’m not sure the author saying “alien remnants” and waving her hands really fast worked well enough for me in this story.

This is what I mean by saying the plot seemed overly ornate and I found myself wanting to outline the story to see whether it actually makes more sense than it seemed to while I was reading it. Maybe it did and I just missed things that justified the above.

Overall:

I liked the story – truly! Witty dialogue is really important! I loved Surit Yeri, who is just my kind of super-responsible, highly competent, totally honorable introvert. I even liked Tennal, though self-destructive extroverts are a (much) harder sell for me. The relationship between them worked for me, pretty much, though it would have worked better for me personally without the romance, which I honestly did not feel was necessary or even particularly useful in this story.

But that’s fine. I enjoyed the story, and I’d pick up another book by Maxwell when and if she writes another one. Meanwhile, I’m re-reading Winter’s Orbit, which imo is a more successful novel. I did honestly like Ocean’s Echo, but I didn’t love it or want to immediately re-read it.

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Poetry Thursday: Cue Ominous Music

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

***

Did you know Yeats was born in June? Turns out he was born June 13th in 1865. I have featured Yeats before, and on top of that I realize the above is as far from obscure as you can possibly get. Everyone has seen this poem. It may be the very first poem I ever memorized, and I think I might still be able to recite the whole thing, though I admit I have not tried. Unlike various other extremely famous poems, I have not gotten bored with this one. Offhand, I’d say that’s one possible mark of a real masterpiece.

I might say that this poem is topical, but frankly, I think it’s always topical, which may be a big reason it’s so famous.

What is a less famous poem by Yeats?

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The Sorrow of Love

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves,   
The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,   
And all that famous harmony of leaves,   
Had blotted out man’s image and his cry.

A girl arose that had red mournful lips
And seemed the greatness of the world in tears,   
Doomed like Odysseus and the labouring ships   
And proud as Priam murdered with his peers;

Arose, and on the instant clamorous eaves,   
A climbing moon upon an empty sky,   
And all that lamentation of the leaves,   
Could but compose man’s image and his cry.

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Here is one of which two versions survive:

—: The Moods (1893) :—

Time drops in decay
Like a candle burnt out;
The mountains and woods
Have their day, have their day;
But, kindly old rout
Of the fire-born moods
You pass not away.

—: The Moods (1899) :—

Time drops in decay,
Like a candle burnt out,
And the mountains and woods
Have their day, have their day;
What one in the rout
Of the fire-born moods,
Has fallen away?

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Do you have a preference? I prefer the later version.

Many splendid poems by Yeats! I should get an ebook such as, oh, this one, and add it to the books I open briefly, at bedtime, when I just want to read something very short for five to fifteen minutes before turning off the lights. Poetry is great for that.

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