Sandra Hurst's Blog, page 8

But I Want To Have It Now!

There has been a shit-storm of venomous bloggery lately both attacking and defending the independent (indie) publishing industry and the authors who choose to self-publish this way.  I will confess that I’ve been guilty of contributing to the recriminations and jumping in to support my view that self-publishing is not only viable but in some cases preferable. But then, this happened . . .

Earlier today I was speaking with an author who has recently released her first book on Kindle and who was upset because someone on Amazon left a very negative review. Certainly, it could have been worded a bit better, but the reviewer had obviously found serious difficulties with not only the story, but also basics like grammar and spelling. This is unacceptable.

[image error]If you follow this page, you know that I love doing book reviews. Some books are good, some are bad, some are brilliant, but I love reading them all.  The one thing that will make me put a book down faster than anything else is the lack of coherent editing.

For the love of language, PLEASE, your mother, your grandmother who used to teach English or your three best friends from your writing course are not competent editors. I use language for a living and still I pay a professional to comb through my books for grammar, editing, and context mistakes and she always finds them! One of the few advantages to books that have been traditionally published is that you can at least guarantee that the words are spelled correctly!

I know that money is hard to come by for starting author, at times it seems almost impossible.

I know that the drive to see your baby out on a shelf somewhere so that you can point and say, “I did it,” can be consuming.

It’s tempting to rush, to just hit KDP and publish rather than go through the slow process of sending one chapter every payday to an editor. That’s not even thinking of time and effort it takes to re-write with her corrections, then resubmit, rewrite, beta read, re-write, re-edit,  it seems endless. It’s not, believe me, it’s not.

Take your time walking towards that final publish button. Once you’ve pushed it the baby is born and you can’t correct congenital defects.  If it takes an extra year you’ll hate every minute of it, but doesn’t the dream that took hundreds of hours to rough out deserve the time to be polished and perfect on its birthday?

Time to pimp things out!

After discussing life, the universe, and everything, with my publicist, the amazing Micke[image error]y Mikkelson, we’ve settled on a release date for Y’keta in early May.

So it’s time for pimping posts.  Starting, oh NOW, I’ll be posting once or twice a week just to remind everyone that Y’keta is coming. I cant wait to see what you think of his world!

It’s an ancient and magical place, but not always a pretty one, as Y’keta discovers. But sometimes pain is the greatest teacher.

Just assume your reader is stupid!

[image error]Really?!

This is one of the first things I was told when I talked to people about writing Y’keta. I was told to keep it simple, make it move fast, and assume that your readers are stupid.

As an example I was given a few ‘teen’ books to read. They weren’t bad books, but if I they had been meals, they would have come from the diet section of the menu. The lack of nuance and depth-HEAVENS Sandra! Don’t use such big words!-would have had me yawning and reaching for a ‘real’ book.

Young Adult and New Adult readers deserve better.

I think people underestimate the intelligence and interest of Young Adult and New Adult readers. The books I loved as a Young Adult were books that made you think something, or feel something, not just stories. I grew up on Tolkien,  Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke and the tales they told stretched my mind, made me think of possibilities and worlds beyond high school and college. They had well thought-out  characters doing amazing things, words and sentences that made you feel, and were written in worlds that engaged the imagination. These are the books went back to as a younger reader, these are the kind of books I want to write.

So, to the alpha reader who said “I was writing above my audience,” I am sorry, but I choose to believe that character, nuance and solid world-building are what my audience wants.

This is a sophisticated, at times even jaded, generation they have grown up with the ‘real world’ plastered on their eyeballs. Every news station, iPod, and cell phone feeds them 24/7 reality. They know what the world is, they need to see what it can be. I hope to give them a good place to dream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let There Be Hope!

I’ve talked to many people today who are looking at tomorrow and the events in the US and feeling anything from uncertainty,  to fear,  to desperation. No matter which side of the political spectrum you come from, you see the great gulfs that divide ideologies and governments getting wider as more and more people fall into the darkness between.

LET THERE BE HOPE.

The world was ending when the Visigoths marched down the Appian Way and sacked Rome. The empire thought their time was over, but they continued on to become one of the most influential civilizations the world has ever known.

LET THERE BE HOPE.

Darkness was inescapable when Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany bringing a philosophy of hatred and cruelty on a level that the world had not seen before. Thousands sacrificed to ensure that the light survived, and it did.

LET THERE BE HOPE.

We stand at an uncertain point in time, not knowing what a Trump Presidency will actually mean once the rhetoric and bombast have died down. Many of us are afraid for our American friends and family and worried about the worldwide political and economic fallout that such a dramatic shift in a super-nation could create.

But again, I will say:

LET THERE BE HOPE

I’ll borrow a line from someone much wiser than I, who began one of the most important documents in human history by saying “We, the people….”

We are the people, we are the ones who can create the little lights that breech this great darkness of fear and umbrage.

Each time we take a stand instead of mutely accepting someone’s right to walk over people and principals;

-We are the light.


Every time we step out of our self absorbed worlds to offer kindness and caring to another human lost in the darkness;

– We are the light.


Any time we choose to build where others would tear down;

– We are the light.

So while many people sit in anger and darkness, judging each other and filling the air with condemnation.

LET THERE BE HOPE – AND LET IT BE ME.

[image error]

A beautiful fire

I’m at the point in writing now where my main character is head over heels in love. For a respected elder this presents a bit of a problem. The newcomer  is quite a bit younger than D’vhan and – despite D’vhan’s best efforts – definitely the take charge man in this relationship.  Sooner or later the tension has to break and when it does sparks will fly. Until then here’s a snippet of dialogue and the song that plays in my head when I’m writing for these beautiful people.

‘What are you so afraid of,” he said. “Why does it frighten you that I’m ten cycles younger?” His light tenor voice carried such a weight of authority that a part of my very soul wanted to step into the hunger in his eyes.  But I knew if I moved, even a step closer, that I would be lost forever. I wasn’t a youngster to play with a beautiful Warrior and then walk away unburnt. This fire would consume me if I … I stepped forward stopping with the smudge fire between us. 

 

A Goddess for every moon.

[image error]

In working on the story for Y’keta, I  unwittingly included a triad of powerful women who shape my hero in different ways. One of my beta readers pointed  out to me that I was following a classic maiden-mother-crone progression. I think knowing that my female characters held such archetypical power, made them stronger and gave me a more rounded story. Knowing that strong feminine (not necessarily traditionally female) characters built themselves into my world made me smile.

Some scholars think that the triple goddess myths-the divine feminine appearing as maiden, mother and crone-come out of pre-Christian Europe, while others date them as far back as Paleolithic times. The exact dating really doesn’t matter so much, unless you are the scholar who is trying to publish a paper on dating them.

What is much more significant, is the sheer number of myths, stories, and legends that have built the maiden-mother-crone progression into our histories and collective psyche. Their symbol, the triple moon, has been found in ancient and modern texts worldwide.

The new moon is the maiden.

She is the symbol of hope, purity, curiosity, and discovery, the the image of femininity at it’s first blush, learning about the passions within herself and exploring the world around her. This is a very powerful image. The maiden can be a young warrior (Ruby Rose, Joan of Arc), a priestess (Diana, Siann), or a young lover (Anna from Frozen, Juliet) meeting her handsome prince. So if I say warrior-maiden, virgin-priestess or ‘young girl in love’ you will automatically know the type of story you have fallen into. In Y’keta the virgin-priestess is Siann, a sixteen year old girl studying to be a shaman. Just when she decides that she no longer believes the legends of her people, she is thrust past her cynical view of the world and into a the reality that myths walk among us.

As powerful as this symbol is, the maiden’s dark side is equally strong. She is out to discover a new world and find a place in it, and can, if not careful, walk across a few mangled corpses to find it. Fanaticism and obsession, whether with a person, place, or ideology can fester if the maiden builds her identity around what she loves rather than forming a solid sense of herself apart from her cause.

May we find something to love with astonishing passion

– yet not become consumed by it.

The mother- full and fertile.

In Greek mythology, the mother goddess is Demeter, she represents ripeness, fertility, fulfillment, stability, and power. As in every culture the Mother is the life giver, nurturing and compassionate she is also the fierce protector of her children. A mother grizzly is ferocious, a mother human is deadly! The Mother in my book is called Matra, a powerful shaman and the leader of her village. She occupies the central space in the village power structure and-well it’s too much of a spoiler to go further.

As a caregiver the Mother figure is universally recognized, but so is it’s shadow clone – the Martyr. A martyr pushes her own needs away to meet the needs of others, not for their benefit, but to create a dependency that makes her ‘necessary and worthwhile.’ This kind of caregiver becomes so wrapped up in their charge that they don’t have an identity of their own and will even enable unhealthy behaviour just to have someone to ‘care for’

May we always care for those we love

– but add our own name to that list.

The waning crone

The crone has spent her life accumulating wisdom to pass on to the maiden. This wisdom and experience makes her the teacher of the young ones, the keeper of lore, and the upholder of tradition.

Looking at her life, soon passing, the crone faces two options. Repose or rebel. She can either release her wisdom and compassion to the young and accept the setting of her moon as part of the cycle of life, or become shadowed. A shadowed crone is one who has taken the learning and experience life gives and has used it only for her own benefit. She has armoured herself with rules and laws that leave her feeling above everyone else, superior, yet cut off and isolated. She becomes the bitter fruit that falls from a tree of her own planting.

May we learn to let go

– accepting the changing of seasons with peace and wisdom

and seeing each stage as the  blessing it can be.

 

May You Dance.

My character Siann stepped off the Sky Road this year.

Raised as the only child of the village Elder she knew from birth that her life was a straight road to responsibility. She would study, learn, take over her mother’s position and never leave the expected path. Then in one brutal night her mother was dead, her home was shattered and her life, for the first time, was her own to steer.

Like a cloud that has always been driven by a strong wind she foundered aimlessly when asked to chart her own course. The path before her suddenly seemed so narrow and confining. She didn’t want to be her mother. She didn’t know what she wanted, but that wasn’t it.

In the middle of this came an unexpected voice, Ren, one of the warriors sat beside a hopeless Siann and pointed at the northern lights.  These are her words, they brought Siann comfort and honestly, they’ve helped me as well.

[image error]

The bonfire that was 2016 is slowly burning out and I’m looking to it’s embers to ignite a fire in 2017.

Whatever  comes your way in 2017 may it bring you joy!

 

 

 

Myths, Monsters and the Marvel Universe.

If you ask someone of my father’s generation who Thor or Loki were, you would get this for an answer. “They were ancient Norse gods.”  Ask a young person that question now and you will get a twenty-minute history of the Marvel movies, the alternate timelines involved in the Infinity War, and a treatise on why Loki really isn’t so bad.

Are people learning more about Nordic history in school? I doubt it. So what happened? In one word…. Comics.

Whether it’s the old gods of Asgaard or the newer heroes of Gotham and Metropolis, what surrounds us are, I can maybe get away with calling, ‘Supermen.’

Why does it feel like we are living in an age of mythology?

We live in a moral grey zone and hunger for the certainty of knowing who the heroes are. Is it any wonder that young people seek out heroes and myths in an age that deifies the pragmatic, and the profitable and if we’re honest, dismisses ideas and ideals as childish fancies?

Marvel, DC, and the anime companies have all have tapped into this need to sit and hear the hero saga’s, to know once again why it is worth suffering through the darkness to make sure the light returns.

Robert Heinlein, the grandfather of modern science fiction, had an explanation.

We live in an era where exploration is done, the world has been mapped, traveled, and factory farmed. There is no wild west, there is nowhere, outside of fiction, for young minds and hearts to peer into the darkness and ask the big questions.

What is right and wrong?    Does it matter if I do the right thing?   Can I make a difference?

These are the questions that make us human.

“…you would have made a banker or lawyer or professor and you could have worked out your romanticism by reading fanciful tales and dreaming about what you might have been if you hadn’t had the misfortune to be born into a humdrum period.”

  Heinlein, Robert A. “Tunnel in the Sky”

Legends around the campfire

I know my voices tend to overrun me at times. Between the writer, mother, wife, and worker there is just too much to process for just one human. How do you think Y’keta will assimilate all the voices that howl in his mind?

I Myth’d

Hi, My name is Sandra Hurst, the author of the upcoming fantasy novel. Y’keta.

As a child growing up in England stories and legends surrounded me. My mum made me understand at an early age, how important imagination was.

We had an old set of encyclopedias that contained sections called ‘stories from around the world’ and I would put on readings of these legends or pieces of poetry for my incredibly patient parents. It’s funny, but when I think of those shows I can still smell the books, see the tatty burgundy bindings and even remember the illustration that they used for one of my favourites, a Celtic story of a young boy captured by Vikings.

When I was 8 we moved to northern Canada and the legends changed. Stories of the Fae and the little people were replaced by legends of the Thunderbird and stories of Cree warriors.

I never stood a chance. What could I be but a writer?

I wrote on birthday cards, in letters and on any scrap piece of paper or diary page that I could find, and it was all fantasy, legend, or myth. The valiant but flawed hero and the world who needed him.

As I got older, chasing these legends brought me to, what I consider, the ‘hardcore’ mythmakers of the modern age. Guy Gavriel Kay, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Neil Gaiman. They are the authors who can make words dance and sentences MEAN things. I would give my left ovary (not so dramatic a thing since at 53 those parts are hardly crucial) to sit down with either of these gentlemen or even better their writing notes, for an afternoon!

They don’t tell stories.. they become them.

Listen to this line from one of my favourite fantasy authors -Guy Gavriel Kay

“There are kinds of action, for good or ill, that lie so far outside the boundaries of normal behavior that they force us, in acknowledging that they have occurred, to restructure our own understanding of reality. We have to make room for them.”

Myths give us a way to interpret the world past our normal experience. To ask questions and explore answers in a larger-than-life game of ‘what if.’ In my novel, Y’keta, the question is about identity. Is Y’keta willing to give up his identity to please his father? Is he willing to risk being honest and possibly losing everything he has grown to love.

The answer to these questions grew into the beautiful, although I say so myself, world of Y’keta. Loosely based on the Thunderbird of North American legend, Y’keta is an epic fantasy set in an ancient world where legends walk and the Sky Road offers a way to the stars.

We need to make room for myths and mythmakers in our fact driven world. For worlds that are brighter and clearer than our own. For it is in doing so that we have room to become more fully human.