Michael Swanwick's Blog, page 71

The North Wind Speaks (the story to date)

.At Marianne's request, here is the text of The North Wind Speaks to date:


The North Wind Speaks

My sister comes rustling through the birch leaves. Gentle she is, but restless, aloof, and intent on her search. What is the East Wind looking for? If only she'd tell us!

Which brings us tidily up to date.
And The North Wind Speaks (part 9) . . .

She has a thousand brothers 

(continued tomorrow)

And today's diagram . . .




A very careful diagram here of the entire novel as I then understood it. On top, the introduction of characters and major events. Those to the left are the written parts of the novel. The dotted lines below indicate events happening that neither Caitlin nor the reader know anything about yet. The events to the right are those at the end which I had figured out, more or less correctly. The arc over it represents Fingolfinrhod's life between his disappearance and reappearance.


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The North Wind Speaks (part 8)

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 If only



she'd tell us!
(continued tomorrow)


And today's diagram . . .




My first two efforts to clarify Caitlin's relationships with all six of her mothers. Each one, you'll note, crossed out as I failed to get them right.



And here's what it properly looks like... Caitlin's relationships with her mothers, Aerth, Faerie, the physical and the spiritual and of course her (adoptive, in some ways symbolic) daughter, Esme. Because to understand her mothers completely, she has to have a daughter herself. At this point, at last, the entire novel is so clear in my mind that I can encapsulate it in a single diagram.

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Tales of Old Earth E-Book! On Sale for $1.99! Wednesday Only!

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Good news for e-book readers who either like my short fiction and would like to give it a try. This Wednesday, for one day only, my collection Tales of Old Earth will be on sale for $1.99.

Here's the info that Open Road Media, my e-publisher gave me:


ISBN13TitleAuthorPromo TypeCountryStart DateEnd DatePromo Price9781504036511Tales of Old EarthSwanwick, MichaelORM - Early Bird Books NLUS2019-10-092019-10-09$1.99

Open Road will promote the feature via social media. We hope you can share the deal with your network as well. You can subscribe to the newsletters at the links below so that you will get the direct link to the deal on the day that it appears.

NewsletterLink  Early Bird Books    Subscribe Now  The LineupSubscribe NowThe PortalistSubscribe NowMurder & MayhemSubscribe NowA Love So TrueSubscribe NowThe ArchiveSubscribe NowThe ReaderSubscribe Now

Please let us know if you have any questions. We are thrilled to be part of this promotion; hope you are too!

(Michael again:) This book contains 19 stories, including some of my very best. Two ("The Very Pulse of the Machine" and "Scherzo with Tyrannosaur") won Hugos. One ("Ice Age") was animated for Love, Death, and Robots. Another ("The Dead"), almost became a TV series. And if your mother catches you reading "Midnight Express," you're in very big trouble.

All for less than two bucks. But, as I said, Wednesday only.

And only in the US. I'm sorry about that. But there are legal reasons.


And The North Wind Speaks (part 7) . . .


looking for?

(continued tomorrow)

And today's diagrams . . .



The sequence of events here is pretty much the same as in the last diagram. I've roughed out my understanding of the plot's direction and the introduction of characters in order to give myself space to throw out ideas.


And on the facing page (recto), are the thoughts thrown out. Some were used. Most were not. (A girlfriend named Pogue Mahoney? Really?) But buried in the middle is the very useful "Someone to make her fugitive status explicit to her."

Which became the reappearance of Ysault and Sibyl and once they appeared the novel turned a corner and started to resolve itself.

That's not a spoiler, incidentally. Those who have read the novel understand what I mean. Otherwise... no clue. I had no notion myself at that time.


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The North Wind Speaks (part 6)

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 What is


the East Wind

(continued tomorrow)

And today's diagram . . .



You can tell when the writing's going well because the diagrams get slapdash. Here, Caitlin's left the hobo camp, jumped a train, and is about to play a major part in the birth of a locomotive (here labeled "fire birth." Fata Narcisse still has no name--she's just "elf." So I've come to the ride onward in a luxury coach and am speculating what happens next.

So... "elf betrays her" I speculate, and then "Esme enables escape." A question mark indicates that I haven't decided whether to use those elements. Also feeding into the luxury ride is "Raven?" and an attached note "Too early?" and attached to that, "No! Raven doesn't care about Cat's well-being."

All those elements later came into play but because there was so much else going on, they got pushed into later chapters.

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The North Wind Speaks (part 5)

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and intent on


her search.

(continued tomorrow)

And today's diagram . . .


Back to the plot. Up top, the first section of the novel has been blocked out into innocence, persecution, escape, hobo camp, and train. With a great comment which, in the fact, nobody ever makes: "You've got a mother problem." 

With introduction of a new character. That might be Esme but is more likely Fata Narcisse.

I'm not sure why there's an upside-down blocking out of the first section of the novel below it.

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The North Wind Speaks (part 4)

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 but restless,

aloof, (continued tomorrow)


And today's diagram . . .



Here I have at last what looks to be a map of the entire novel from beginning (top) to end (bottom). The main characters are introduced in a flurry of activity. Caitlin is driven from the military. The dragon dies and disappears from the novel for most of its duration, only to reappear later [in those lines going off to the right, then down and back again to the main line]. She has encounters at the jungle and with the locomotive. Esme makes her appearance and then Raven.

BUT if you look carefully in the middle are two ellipses and in them is all the central matter of hte novel, which I don't know yet. However, as the plot has been moving forward, my understanding of how the book will end has been expanding backwards. So I know now that blood will tell, that Finn dies (or transcends), that House Sans Merci is a majority holder in the Conspiracy, have gotten a glimpse of the glass coffins and know that a great deal comes together in Ys.

So a great deal of progress is being made. All that needs to be understood is how Caitlin moves from crisis to resolution.

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"Ghost Ships" Interview for F&S's 70th Anniversary Issue

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Because I had a story in the 70th Anniversary Issue of F&SF, I was interviewed by Stephen Mazur about that story and related matters for the F&SF website. The interview went up yesterday and I think it came out pretty well.

Here's the first question and my my response.

Tell us a bit about “Ghost Ships.”

“Ghost Ships” is one of those stories where the writer claims that “this story is different from all other ghost stories because it all really did happen to me.” Which, of course, nobody ever believes. But unlike all those other stories, every word of this one is true. I didn’t see the ships myself but I knew the people who did and I believed them. The ships were seen on the ocean in broad daylight on a calm and clear day, and I never came up with a rational explanation for them. The incident niggled at my imagination for over forty years before I found the right context for it.

You can read the entire interview here.


 And here's The North Wind Speaks (part 3)




 Gentle she is, 
(continued tomorrow) 

And today's diagram . . .

You can tell that I'm writing quickly because I don't take the time to draw out a careful diagram. So I put the major scenes of Chapter 3 (whose secret title is Clever Gretchen, incidentally) in boxes and connected them with arrows. So it begins with Caitlin's arrest, goes through the moot and a clinic(al) exam with various encounters with Rabbit and her Lawyer. It all leads to three forms of escape, all stacked on top of each other, though Caitlin only experiences them as one.

At this point, I was considering breaking the action into two separate chapters. The diagram helped show that, though a little cluttered with event, the sequence didn't contain enough detail to support two chapters.

Even at this late date, I'm still thinking of Rabbit as a love interest for Caitlin. Amazing how blind I was!

"Wake up!"  is good, though. Had I not scrawled it by the diagram, it might not have made it into the novel.
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The Once and Future Rye - Chapter 1

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The following is a lightly edited reprint of a blog post I did some while ago. I began a serial on the history of rye whiskey and then--mea culpa--got busy and abandoned it. It is my intention to continue this series up to the present day. And so here is the second installation (after the introduction, which can be found here) of the history of the Whiskey That Was America--the Once and Future Rye.)


If you and I are to explore the history of Rye Whiskey in America (and that is certainly my intention), we must begin at the beginning. And that beginning is, amazingly enough, Rum.

The American Colonies, before the War of Independence were not peopled by teetotalers. Far from it! Life was hard, pleasures were  few, and the water was dangerous to drink. So, from the earliest colonists on, American society was awash in beer, hard cider, applejack, and distilled spirits. Some even sank so low as to drink wine -- though American wine was dreadful and imported wine so expensive that only Thomas Jefferson could afford it regularly.

But while American would drink pretty much anything, in the Colonial era the tipple of choice was rum.  Not the smooth and delicious drink we now know but a cruder version distilled from the by-products of the molasses industry. Still, it was the best of a bad lot and prodigious amounts of it were made and sold.

There were two problems with rum.

The first was that it was a major component of the "triangular trade." The Americas sold sugar and rum to England, which sent cloth and manufactured good to Africa, which sent slaves to the Americas. So it was a part of our great nation's Original Sin. Not that this bothered many American at the time. Which is also a part of our collective national guilt.

The second problem is that rum at that time was pretty rough stuff. Which is why so many Colonial drink recipes involved massive amounts of fruit and sugar.

One of the best of these drinks was invented at a gentlemen's fishing club on the banks of the Schuylkill River, not far from the world headquarters of the American Martini Institute. It is named  Fish House Punch, after the august institution in which it was first concocted

Most recipes involve bottles of each ingredient and sacks of sugar, because they were meant to be served in enormous punch bowls to large groups of hard-drinking men and women who had no idea how soon they would become our Founding Fathers and Mothers. With perseverance, however, you can find more manageable recipes. Here's one:

Fish House Punch 

1 shot rum
1 shot cognac
3/4 shot peach brandy
1 1/2 shots simple syrup.
juice from 1 lemon 

directions: Mix, Chill, and serve with a spiced cherry. Serves two.

And the results? as you might guess, this is an intensely sweet drink. Also very, very fruity. But anyone mixing this cocktail is going to know that going in. At the taste test, Fish House Punch won over even the skeptics. It is flavorful, bright, and festive. A terrific party drink and far superior to the dreadful things that are usually served in punch bowls.

Also, it packs a punch. Our Colonial forebears certainly knew how to party!

So for one bright, warm moment, everything (if you could ignore the slavery part, that is) was good.

But then -- spoiler alert! -- came the American Revolution and everything changed, changed utterly. Including what kind of alcohol Americans drank.

More on this will be published here later.


And The North Wind Speaks (part 2) . . .



through the birch woods.
(continued tomorrow)

And today's diagram . . .



 This is an interesting one. Not a plot diagram per se, but an attempt to figure out exactly how many mothers Caitlin has. The top diagram was botched, so I began again. Starting at the top and going counterclockwise she has S (her stepmother, the dowager), D (her dragon), H (Helen V), M (Caitlin's birth mother), H (her nanny Hempie, who raised her), and G (the Goddess).

So Caitlin has six mothers. I want all my female readers to contemplate what a blessing that would be.


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The North Wind Speaks

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It's October,  which is to say that the season in which I write on leaves has begun. All month, I'll be serializing a flash fiction--or, more aptly--vignette, as I write it. The serialization of The North Wind Speaks begins here with the first four words:


My sister comes


rustling

(continued tomorrow)

And today's diagram is . . . 


This is a relatively clear one, putting all the incidents in Chapter 3 in order, from Caitlin's meeting with Rod, through the wailing of banshees and the near-fatal dinner all the way to Rod's escape. Which suggests that most of it is already written and included simply to make sure the chapter's balance is correct. 
As always, I scribbled thoughts about he plot that come to me while creating the diagram above and below it. Only the pure of heart can go to Kitezh, so that's where Rod disappears later turned out to be incorrect. Though I liked the notion that Fingolfinrhod, polymorphously perverse though he is, is essentially pure of heart. On the other hand, Have you tried the pâté? is wonderful and went right into the chapter.
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In Which I Am Interviewed

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I was interviewed recently by Jonathan Thornton for The Fantasy Hive. On the whole, a good interview, I think. I have got to teach myself to speak cleanly in these things, though. I'm so used to being able to revise and polish my first drafts that when it comes to demotic speech, I forget that it's "first draft, final draft."

Still, you may find it interesting. Here's a sample.

Well it was 1966, my sister sent home from college a box full of books she was done with, and one was The Fellowship Of The Ring. I picked it up one night after doing my homework, and I read it—I did not sleep a wink that night. And that turned me into a writer. That gave me the determination; I wanted to write that book. Not something like it, I wanted to write that book. It also turned me into a Fantasy reader. I started reading every piece of Fantasy I could find. It took me about two years to read everything that had been published. And at that point, because there was so little else, I started reading science fiction, because it gave a Fantasy-like kick.

If you're interested in the rest of Thornton's interview, you  can read it here.


And today's diagram . . .


Three diagrams today, all in service of creating Chapter 3. I didn't give the chapters titles in the book because I thought they would slow the flow of writing. But all 21 chapters have titles. This chapter's title is The Unicorn Hunters.

The top diagram shows the plot moving from left to right. The stretch limo comes up the allee. I have annotated that the mood is ominous and unhappy. Caitlin arrives at the castle. The servants come out to meet her. Rod appears and there is a squeal, spin, joy. He tells her "Don't single her out" in a whispered aside.  Caitlin meets her mother and, later, Aunt Hempie will appear.

I briefly toyed with the idea of Hempie having had an affair ("if you can call it an affair) with Caitlin's father, but discarded it as unlikely.  I also compared approaching the dowager to a gatherint storm, a thunderclap, and a downpour.

Those odd marks to either side of "Aunt Hempie" are uncertainty marks, by the way, a punctuation mark I created to mean "probably not" or "purportedly" or "a placeholder" or to indicate irony. Ironically enough, Hempie is one of those few characters whose first name stuck.

The second diagram starts with a triangle between Caitlin, her brother Rod, and their mother. Caitlin is also in a triangle with Hempie and a Bad Servant. (The bad servant never materialized, probably because the servants had been glamoured to be invisible to Caitlin) Then the diagram is extended to include Caitlin's Father. The dotted lines indicate that the relationships (or you might call them power dynamics) have not yet been defined.

To the side, I wrote Think Gormenghast.

Finally, the third diagram shows the relationships between Caitlin's Father, the Dowager, Caitlin, and Hempie. The Dowager and Father have been circled because one is facing a good reincarnation and the other a bad reincarnation. Two eggs is written below because whenever someone high-elven comes close to transcendence, they appear as an egg of light.

To the side, I wrote:

Father loved me.
Not as much as he did me.
Every bit as much.
Did he ever...
What? No! Ick. You're lying.
I liked it. You wouldn't have. That's the difference between us.

This is another possibility I decided against. The ick factor was too high. Also, Fingolfinrhod has an underlying sweetness that would preclude it. At any rate, I couldn't do that to him.

But you have to be willing to consider things that would be terrible mistakes if used. Otherwise, you never know where the boundaries are.


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