K.S. Nikakis's Blog
June 12, 2021
When the Hero Menstruates – Writing Authentic Female Fantasy Heroes
The Physical Needs of the Fantasy Hero
Humans need to eat, drink, urinate and defecate, and female humans of a certain age usually menstruate. As fantasy heroes are often on quests that require journeys far beyond the home, the need to find food (and shelter) is central to their undertaking, and this need often generates dangers/conflict that drive the narrative.
When to Include Physical Functions
It is fine for a hero to be exhausted, frozen, boiling, starving, wounded, dirty, sleep-deprived and even vomiting (although not too graphically), so the question becomes when, if ever, is it fine for the hero to step behind a tree and lower their breeches, trews, leggings etc (and even more unspeakably, search about for the equivalent of toilet paper). And the answer to this question is it is fine when this act helps drive/or adds powerfully to the narrative.
Readers Know Heroes are Human
In many respects, narratives are about eliminating the mundane to highlight the important, and so empower it. Readers do not need descriptions of heroes waking up each day, washing, finding the aforementioned tree, combing their hair, lacing their boots etc before they confront the unspeakable terrors deep in the Wildwoods. These activities are a given and explicating them only slows the narrative and risks the bored reader skipping ahead or worse still, giving up. But is menstruation in the same category?
Female Heroes as Male Heroes in Drag
It may be an obvious thing to say, but women are not men. Regardless of the nature/nurture debate, women and men do not think alike, feel alike, and their bodies certainly do not function alike and yet, very often, female heroes in both visual and textual narratives are presented as glammed up versions of male heroes. They fight the same, they kill the same, and they most certainly do not menstruate.
The Taboo of Menstruation
There is still reticence about acknowledging menstruation in the media, advertising, or even in more private polite conversations, so why bring it up as a writer of fantasy? Well, writers don’t have to, of course, for the same reason defecation and urination can be ignored, but this blog is about building authentic female heroes and depending on the narrative, including menstruation can be part of this process. Thus, menstruation, or its lack, is important to three of my female heroes: Kira (in The Kira Chronicles serieshttps://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B07D63Z91H Severine (in Messenger: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B07CTPNW23; and Viv in the Angel Caste series: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B01MXBVFRI, one of which will now be explored in more detail.
Empowering the Female Hero: Kira of The Kira Chronicles series
Brought up by a cold and distant father, it is only a helper/servant who comments on how rarely Kira bleeds and admonishes her to ‘put some flesh on your bones, or you’ll never carry.’ Kira is unconcerned; mothering ‘the last thing on her mind.’ Later, after falling in love with the male hero (Tierken), Kira has a brief interval of happiness where she reaches a healthy weight and menstruates but by then the relationship is fraught. Out on patrol, she asks for time alone, a euphemism for relieving herself, and follows Tierken away from the men into the trees and starts to remove her trousers and underwear. Exasperated, he demands to know why. “‘I bleed, Tierken.’ Comprehension dawned and for the first time since they had set out, he looked other than angry.’”
The reference to menstruation serves a number of purposes. Firstly, it reminds the reader Kira is female, and so fundamentally different to the males who surround her in the series. Secondly, it raises the possibility of pregnancy, given Kira is in a relationship with the male hero. Thirdly, it strengthens Kira’s bond with the widow of the enemy leader who is also a victim of male aggression. And lastly, while avoiding spoilers, it is fundamental to how the prophecy unfolds and the story ends.
In terms of Deep Fantasy, with its focus on the hero’s psychological journey, it highlights Kira’s potential to create life as well as save it (as a Healer), and to finally heal herself, and more broadly, to heal her rift with Tierken, mend her own fractured people, and ameliorate the breach that continues to feed warfare.
Menstruation, Pregnancy, and Rape in Fantasy
Acknowledging menstruation inevitably highlights two other differences between female and male heroes: the potential for pregnancy and the potential for rape (although less commonly, male heroes might also be raped). I have utilised both elements in other of my Deep Fantasy narratives that feature female heroes, and will explore them further in future blogs.
July 18, 2020
Welcome to Newsletter #5 - 18 July 2020
Hi everyone! Welcome to Newsletter #5. And a special welcome to new subscribers. Make sure you read your free short stories and check out the rest of my website. I hope you are all keeping safe in these difficult times. When Newsletter #4 came out, Melbourne, like the rest of Australia, was in lockdown due to COVID-19. The number of infections dropped and things briefly opened up again but now we have another spike in infections, so Melbourne is back into lockdown. (sigh)
But hey, being stuck at home gives me plenty of time to write, so what have I been up to?
My mysterious project with the working title of SOO is still sitting in random scenes on my computer and in a folder full of scribbled notes and pictures. But I do know more about the story because bits of it keep popping into my head. It means it should be easier to write when I do start and as a pantser, I need all the help I can get!
My lovely husband is using his lockdown time to turn The Emerald Serpent and Heart Hunter into print books for me, so I have spent a lot of time on the final careful edits of these books. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, Amazon US is not sending proof copies (the print copy I need to check for mistakes before the books are available) to Australia, so I am having to work with Amazon UK which, again due to COVID-19, is taking months. Many readers tell me they prefer print books to ebooks so all my books will eventually be available in paper form. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, I have been working on the poems I wrote on my 10 week, 15,000 kms (9,320 miles) camping trip into the Outback wilderness of Australia. In Newsletter #4, I revealed that I had pledged to write a poem a day and I did, and had intended to publish these 73 poems as a book. But as I have been working on these poems over the last few months, something else has emerged, and the poems have become part of something bigger; a story that uses excerpts from my novels too.
The poems made me wonder what we learn about ourselves when we journey deep into the wilderness and the book I have been writing to explore this question is just about to be launched. See Giveaways for more about this exciting project.
I only ever work on one book or project at the time because I get excited by the new ideas that jump into my head would probably never finish anything if I did not. But I do take little breaks to write other (short) things. I recently noticed that an anthology wanted short stories where two fairy stories are written in a third form. For example, Jack and the Beanstalk and Cinderella written as a horror story. It sounded fascinating so I wrote The Frog Prince and Snow White as a Deep Fantasy story. I really enjoyed the challenge and if the anthology folks do not like the story, it will join my other 99c short stories on Amazon KDP.
In Newsletter #4, I promised to reveal some exciting news about my novel: I Heard the Wolf Call my Name and my short story: Glass-Heart, both launched in 2019. Da-da. Both have been short-listed in the 2019 Aurealis Awards, Australia’s premier speculative fiction awards. Winners have yet to be announced but whatever the result, I am thrilled to be among the final six in each category. As a former judge, I know categories can have more than a 100 entries. So, fingers crossed!
May 17, 2020
Author Thoughts
So, 2019 turned out to be a year of travel and I am really glad we (my husband and I) made the effort to leave home because, thanks to COVID-19, 2020 is turning out to be a year of no travel. Australia’s international borders are presently shut; its state and territory borders closed; regional travel prohibited; and in Melbourne, we are in the second month of a lockdown. That means leaving home only to buy essentials; no visiting friends; no visiting the (vulnerable) elderly; no social gatherings; and only an hour or so of exercise per day: running, walking or biking, limited to groups of two (unless family members), and maintaining 1.5 meters social distance.
In 2019, none of this was on the horizon but a great deal of travel was. We had an overseas trip planned for August, starting with the World Fantasy Convention in Ireland, but then we had the opportunity to spend two and half months camping in the Australian Outback. The whole lot meant we left home with the caravan on May 23, returned on August 6, then flew out on August 13 for Ireland, England, the Netherlands, Spain, Egypt, Jordan, Crete and then home via Rome and Singapore at the end of October.
I was super keen to finish I Heard the Wolf Call My Name but we were camping with friends and sitting alone in a caravan writing isn’t very sociable. Nor did I want to miss out on the Outback experience which includes wonderful sunsets, starry nights, and chats around the campfire.
Instead of trying to work on the novel, I decided to brush up on my poetry. I bought a lovely new notebook with a pretty cover, and made a public pledge (to keep me honest) to write a poem a day.
And I did write every day, although I’m not pretending all of it is poetry or will ever be poetry, even at final draft stage. Yet the writing was fun, despite me grumbling some nights when I was about to flop into bed and remembered I had to write something. Poetry and prose; poetic prose; free-form poetry; the differences can be very blurred but writing every day is a great discipline. It meant I had to really look at what I passed, and really think about what I experienced, and this kind of attentiveness can throw up all sorts of story ideas.
At the end of the ten week trip, I had a notebook full of writing that forms the basis of my present WIP (work in progress). More information in Newsletter #5.
As for my international travels later in 2019: I unpacked and packed my laptop countless times at airport security check points but only worked on I Heard the Wolf Call My Name in Crete, right at the end of the trip in October, where we stayed in one place for a mini ten day holiday. Carrying a laptop was a nuisance on lots of levels and when the borders open and I hope we can travel overseas again, I will be buying a nice new notebook and using it for different types of writing instead.
Welcome to Newsletter #4
Hi everyone! Welcome to Newsletter #4. I did say in Newsletter #1 I had no strict schedule for releasing newsletters, but I am mortified to realize I last chatted to you in November 2018. Wow! All of 2019 has gone missing! It was a very busy year with lots of travel (lucky me) and lots of trying to fit writing in between, but no excuses!
So, what happened in 2019? Many of my ‘current projects’ were actually revisions of older projects. I mentioned in Newsletter #3 that I revised and augmented The Kira Chronicles trilogy, and released it with new covers, as the six book The Kira Chronicles series.
In 2019, I went one step further and released the six book series as a single book, to make the six books more economical for readers. The Kira Chronicles – Complete 6 Book Series also got a fabulous new cover that I really love.
Angel Caste was another of my revision projects for 2019 and, like The Kira Chronicles, all five individual books are now available in a single book: Angel Caste – Complete 5 Book Series. It also got a wonderful new cover.
I love the original The Kira Chronicles covers (when the trilogy was published by Allen & Unwin); the covers I used for the six book series; and the five Angel Caste covers, but these new covers are definitely a better fit for the genre as well as being gorgeous.
All this revision work was time consuming and didn’t produce any completely new stories. In Newsletter #3 I mentioned a new series I am planning, mysteriously called SOO, and although I have added ideas and bits of dialogue to the SOO folder, SOO remains just a collection of ideas.
This is because, as I also mentioned in Newsletter #3, my writing time was hijacked by a story with the working title of I Heard the Wolf Call My Name. It was this phrase popping into my head that started me writing the story. Well, the title stuck, and I worked away on the story during 2019 between our various trips, and was proud and relieved to launch the novel in November 2019 (available on KDP Amazon and KDP Select).
I have since had some very exciting news about I Heard the Wolf Call My Name, which I will share with you in Newsletter #5 (which won’t be too long after this one).
So, in 2019 I managed to complete two big revision projects and a novel, but wait! There is more! I also published two short stories: Dragon Sprite and Glass-Heart (available on KDP Amazon and KDP Select). And if my news about I Heard the Wolf Call My Name isn’t exciting enough, I have similar news to share with you about Glass-Heart (coming soon in Newsletter #5).
December 2, 2018
The Pitfalls of Writing of the Animal/Other
A few years later, I read Sonya Hartnett’s Forest, a story told through the viewpoint of cats. Probably Hartnett is one of the few writers with the skill to pull off such a tale while avoiding anthropomorphism and stumbling into sentimentalism.
Writing aliens effectively might actually be easier than writing of the animals we are already familiar with in their anthropomorphized forms, but none of it is easy given the limitations of our human consciousness.
The Cuteness of the Internet Creature
Children’s books are full of ‘mischievous’ rabbits, ‘gallant’ toads and ‘adventurous’ possums, stories that aim to charm and entertain, which of course, is absolutely fine. But it does add to the illusion that non-human animals are like humans, or rather, lesser versions of humans.
Likewise, the internet is full of pictures of dogs looking ‘guilty’ for destroying toilet rolls, cats ‘gleefully’ attacking Christmas trees, and bears ‘protecting’ fauns. In a similar vein we have race horses that ‘love’ to win, cows ‘grateful’ to be rescued from slaughter houses, and pigs ‘enjoying’ their release from factory farms.
The Cultural Worth of Animals
The way (Western) culture depicts animals also sets up a hierarchy of worth. The extinction of certain insect species tends to elicit less anguish than the possible extinction of elephants or rhinoceroses, while in Australia, we are more likely to go into bat for a koala than a shark.
While some animals have a better ‘PR system’ behind them (think panda), and some are more appealing to our mammalian human eye (particularly baby animals whose large eyes and foreheads, and rounded features resemble a human baby’s), all animals have worth, bestowed not by their attractiveness or usefulness to humans, but intrinsic to them by virtue of their animal selves.
Human Consciousness and Writing the Animal/Other
The non-humaness of animals and the other (such as aliens), and the limitations of our human consciousness throws up all sorts of challenges to the writer. We can only ever operate within the limits of our humanity, but the Arts (almost by definition, I would argue), is about enlarging these limits and, in one way or another, throwing open doors to reveal strange, and sometimes confronting views of things we thought we knew.
Thus writing about animals and/or the alien other requires the building of a narrative that is familiar enough for us to access and engage with, and one that provides new, fresh and enriching insights.
Deep Fantasy and the Animal/Other
Writing the Animal or Other (such as aliens and mythical creatures) is a challenging task when the aim is to avoid anthropomorphism and sentimentality, and one well-suited to the aims of Deep Fantasy, namely to make the hero’s psychological journey explicit. It is a task I’ve tackled in different ways in four of my novels.
The Physical and Psychological Spaces
In The Emerald Serpent https://www.amazon.com.au/Emerald-Ser... the serpent might inhabit the physical realm, the psychological realm, or the spiritual realm, or all three. It might be in a specific place, or in all places. It might be in the present, or in all times.
The novel’s setting is spread between three planes: one of which is recognizably a physical landscape, and two that are most likely psychological or spiritual landscapes, but these settings can blend, or invade each other. Operating between and within the physical and psychological allows the serpent to remain sacred, amoral and powerful, but also accessible via its human-like demand for creation over destruction.
Bears (berian in the novel) are central to Heart Hunter https://www.amazon.com.au/Heart-Hunte.... Fleet’s settlement is called Berian-tur (literally bear-home) and bears are a very real threat, as bears in the wild can be. One of her friends is killed by a bear and she adopts submissive behavior to escape a bear attack herself. Fleet’s people are respectful of bears, but do not worship or vilify them. Bears are simply a natural hazard of their environment.
But bears also merge into the psychological space. When Fleet is in a hypothermic state, in a blizzard, high in the frozen mountains, a bear appears.
The air is so full of snow that land and sky blend and the bear seems to walk on air, merging and re-emerging from the snow. The dissolution of the physical landscape places Fleet in the liminal, and the bear might or might not be physically real, but desperate for any aid, Fleet follows it and plunges into a cavern (the unconscious) where she finds her way out by following bear scent (which is real). Thus, bears act according to their natures in both the physical and psychological spaces.
The Lefer, bird-human blends (in the Angel Caste series, Book 2 Angel Breath https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B06XFC4XMX), remain in the physical space and one (Roaith en-Leferen) is a view-point character. In creating the Lefer, I was very conscious of the intrinsic worth of non-human animals (including created ones) and of them behaving in accordance with their natures. I created a list of bird verbalizations (caws, cheeps, whistles, chirps, warbles and so on) and assigned each an emotional or situational context.
I also ensured I knew the Lefers’ feeding, flocking and nesting habits; the rookery’s power structure; their human-like and bird-like attributes, and how they interacted. To ensure they didn’t merely end up as lesser humans, I gave them super-human attributes, such as the ability sense a tree’s sap-flows through the soles of their feet. The Lefer’s behavior is explicable within the bounds of their nature at all times.
One of the initial ideas behind The Third Moon (https://www.amazon.com/Third-Moon-K-S...) was a love affair between Warrain, the human settler on the planet Imago, and one of the planet’s sentient life-forms, pejoratively called maggots. I quickly abandoned the idea. They would have to have some sort of psychological similarity (including shared notions of love) and a physical compatibility (if the partnering was to be consummated).
I didn’t want to replicate the sex scene between Jake and Neytiri (in James Cameron’s Avatar) which between kissing and the hinted at intercourse, seemed all too human, and which completely ignored the intimacy of tsahaylu, a neural connection achieved by connecting queues.
Again I wanted the planet’s sentient life-forms to be true to their natures, not behave like a degraded or enhanced form of human. I achieved this by making Warrain’s link to the female maggot empathetic, rather than physical. He fights for her because he is plagued by inherited memories of his own peoples’ dispossession on Earth thousands of years before, and because the maggots are now suffering the same fate.
At no time does the maggot thank him or acknowledge his aid, in keeping with the essence of her species, and nor does Warrain expect it, knowing what she is. But in aiding her to complete the physical cycle of transformation intrinsic to her species, he transforms himself psychologically, which of course, is the core of Deep Fantasy.
To explore Deep Fantasy further, visit my website at www.ksnikakis.com.
The Pitfalls of Writing of the Animal/Other
It is many years since I read Brian Caswell’s Deucalion but I can still remember the shock of discovering the viewpoint character wasn’t human. Apart from a masterful piece of writing, it planted the seeds of my fascination with writing the Animal/Other. A few years later, I read Sonya Hartnett’s Forest, a story told through the viewpoint of cats. Probably Hartnett is one of the few writers with the skill to pull off such a tale while avoiding anthropomorphism and stumbling into sentimentalism.
Writing aliens effectively might actually be easier than writing of the animals we are already familiar with in their anthropomorphized forms, but none of it is easy given the limitations of our human consciousness.
The Cuteness of the Internet Creature
Children’s books are full of ‘mischievous’ rabbits, ‘gallant’ toads and ‘adventurous’ possums, stories that aim to charm and entertain, which of course, is absolutely fine. But it does add to the illusion that non-human animals are like humans, or rather, lesser versions of humans.
Likewise, the internet is full of pictures of dogs looking ‘guilty’ for destroying toilet rolls, cats ‘gleefully’ attacking Christmas trees, and bears ‘protecting’ fauns. In a similar vein we have race horses that ‘love’ to win, cows ‘grateful’ to be rescued from slaughter houses, and pigs ‘enjoying’ their release from factory farms.
The Cultural Worth of Animals
The way (Western) culture depicts animals also sets up a hierarchy of worth. The extinction of certain insect species tends to elicit less anguish than the possible extinction of elephants or rhinoceroses, while in Australia, we are more likely to go into bat for a koala than a shark. While some animals have a better ‘PR system’ behind them (think panda), and some are more appealing to our mammalian human eye (particularly baby animals whose large eyes and foreheads, and rounded features resemble a human baby’s), all animals have worth, bestowed not by their attractiveness or usefulness to humans, but intrinsic to them by virtue of their animal selves.
Human Consciousness and Writing the Animal/Other
The non-humaness of animals and the other (such as aliens), and the limitations of our human consciousness throws up all sorts of challenges to the writer. We can only ever operate within the limits of our humanity, but the Arts (almost by definition, I would argue), is about enlarging these limits and, in one way or another, throwing open doors to reveal strange, and sometimes confronting views of things we thought we knew. Thus writing about animals and/or the alien other requires the building of a narrative that is familiar enough for us to access and engage with, and one that provides new, fresh and enriching insights.
Deep Fantasy and the Animal/Other
Writing the Animal or Other (such as aliens and mythical creatures) is a challenging task when the aim is to avoid anthropomorphism and sentimentality, and one well-suited to the aims of Deep Fantasy, namely to make the hero’s psychological journey explicit. It is a task I’ve tackled in different ways in four of my novels.
The Physical and Psychological Spaces
In The Emerald Serpent https://www.amazon.com.au/Emerald-Serpent-Karen-Simpson-Nikakis-ebook/dp/B016GGTUXO the serpent might inhabit the physical realm, the psychological realm, or the spiritual realm, or all three. It might be in a specific place, or in all places. It might be in the present, or in all times.
The novel’s setting is spread between three planes: one of which is recognizably a physical landscape, and two that are most likely psychological or spiritual landscapes, but these settings can blend, or invade each other. Operating between and within the physical and psychological allows the serpent to remain sacred, amoral and powerful, but also accessible via its human-like demand for creation over destruction.
Bears (berian in the novel) are central to Heart Hunter https://www.amazon.com.au/Heart-Hunter-K-S-Nikakis-ebook/dp/B01M98H3HC. Fleet’s settlement is called Berian-tur (literally bear-home) and bears are a very real threat, as bears in the wild can be. One of her friends is killed by a bear and she adopts submissive behavior to escape a bear attack herself. Fleet’s people are respectful of bears, but do not worship or vilify them. Bears are simply a natural hazard of their environment.
But bears also merge into the psychological space. When Fleet is in a hypothermic state, in a blizzard, high in the frozen mountains, a bear appears. The air is so full of snow that land and sky blend and the bear seems to walk on air, merging and re-emerging from the snow. The dissolution of the physical landscape places Fleet in the liminal, and the bear might or might not be physically real, but desperate for any aid, Fleet follows it and plunges into a cavern (the unconscious) where she finds her way out by following bear scent (which is real). Thus, bears act according to their natures in both the physical and psychological spaces.
The Lefer, bird-human blends (in the Angel Caste series, Book 2 Angel Breath https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B06XFC4XMX), remain in the physical space and one (Roaith en-Leferen) is a view-point character. In creating the Lefer, I was very conscious of the intrinsic worth of non-human animals (including created ones) and of them behaving in accordance with their natures. I created a list of bird verbalizations (caws, cheeps, whistles, chirps, warbles and so on) and assigned each an emotional or situational context. I also ensured I knew the Lefers’ feeding, flocking and nesting habits; the rookery’s power structure; their human-like and bird-like attributes, and how they interacted. To ensure they didn’t merely end up as lesser humans, I gave them super-human attributes, such as the ability sense a tree’s sap-flows through the soles of their feet. The Lefer’s behavior is explicable within the bounds of their nature at all times.
One of the initial ideas behind The Third Moon (https://www.amazon.com/Third-Moon-K-S-Nikakis-ebook/dp/B071F77KMX) was a love affair between Warrain, the human settler on the planet Imago, and one of the planet’s sentient life-forms, pejoratively called maggots. I quickly abandoned the idea. They would have to have some sort of psychological similarity (including shared notions of love) and a physical compatibility (if the partnering was to be consummated).
I didn’t want to replicate the sex scene between Jake and Neytiri (in James Cameron’s Avatar) which between kissing and the hinted at intercourse, seemed all too human, and which completely ignored the intimacy of tsahaylu, a neural connection achieved by connecting queues.
Again I wanted the planet’s sentient life-forms to be true to their natures, not behave like a degraded or enhanced form of human. I achieved this by making Warrain’s link to the female maggot empathetic, rather than physical. He fights for her because he is plagued by inherited memories of his own peoples’ dispossession on Earth thousands of years before, and because the maggots are now suffering the same fate.
At no time does the maggot thank him or acknowledge his aid, in keeping with the essence of her species, and nor does Warrain expect it, knowing what she is. But in aiding her to complete the physical cycle of transformation intrinsic to her species, he transforms himself psychologically, which of course, is the core of Deep Fantasy.
To explore Deep Fantasy further, visit my website at www.ksnikakis.com.
November 24, 2018
2018 AFL Draft, Deep Fantasy, and the Hero Journey
The Voice and the Hero Journey
I have blogged previously about the talent show called The Voice. The contestants are introduced with footage about their previous lives, which often reveals some trauma they have suffered or some on-going challenge they are struggling to overcome. From this emerges their dream to be a singer (the Call to Adventure). We then see them approach the studios of The Voice, flanked by family/supporters.
They enter the studio and wait. Selected family and friends wait with them. This is the point immediately before Separation or Departure, the jumping off point. They have already entered a strange realm, they are on the cusp of the liminal, the place between their old selves, and their new selves to come. It is here, in the liminal, that the Trials of Initiation take place.
In The Voice, this jumping off point is the studio; in The Lord of the Rings it is The Prancing Pony, the Inn at Bree; in Star Wars, it is Mos Eisley, the spaceport town on Tatooine. In The Voice, the doors open and they walk on alone to the stage, leaving the known behind them, to face the Trials of Initiation.
Sometimes getting through the song is transformational, sometimes getting through round after round of the competition is, sometimes mastering a new style of singing gives birth to the new self, so that the singer who exits the stage, or exits the competition, Returns to their previous existence in a new state.
Campbell’s Hero Journey
Campbell’s 17 part Hero Journey, at its simplest, consists of Separation or Departure, Trials of Initiation, and Return, but these stages are not necessarily discrete; they can overlap, or loop back on themselves, and in some senses, contestants on The Voice may have passed through the three stages multiple times just to reach the studio doors.
Campbell argues the Hero Journey is relevant to both male and female heroes (something I tested in my Ph.D), but I find it is more often replicated in popular media with a male hero, and this was very evident during the 2018 Australian Football League (AFL) draft, televised on November 22. It is particularly powerful when it forms part of a culture’s initiation rites intended to transform a boy to a man.
Boy to Man – The AFL Draft
Would-be draftees, nominate earlier in the year and attend the AFL Draft Combine, a camp where their physical skills are tested, so they have already replicated Separation or Departure, and Trials of Initiation by attending this event, but the actual Draft, is imbued with a lot more ceremony, and therefore ritual power and significance.
The would-be draftees/initiates enter the aptly named Marvel Stadium with their families, with whom they sit. This is the jumping off point. Various machinations go on by the Elders of each club, who sit apart from the initiates, dressed in their clubs’ ceremonial colors and exchanging mysterious information denied the viewer and initiate.
The highest-place Elder (CEO of the AFL – Gillon McLachlan), appears from behind a screen, reads out the Draftee’s name, and disappears. The Draftee rises from his seat and embraces each member of his family in turn. In essence, this is a farewell to his old state/life. He then leaves them, and the other initiates and their families, and walks up on stage (Separation or Departure).
An Elder from his new club appears and welcomes him (to the liminal). He then offers the initiate the colors of his new life (the team jumper). They stand for a moment and hold it between them. The Draftee is ‘between’ neither boy nor man. Then the initiate takes full possession of the jumper (symbolic of his new state) and disappears behind the screen with the Elder. The next time we see the initiate, he is wearing the jumper. He Returns in his new state, but of course, the journey isn’t over. It starts again with his new club.
From the Female to the Male Domain
Many of the mothers cried to see their sons go. These were tears of pride, but also tears generated from the understanding that the babe they had carried in utero; the little boy they had birthed, raised and nurtured; the sweet, gangly adolescent they had craned their necks to look up at, was gone, replaced with the man. Some of these boys would indeed be physically gone in the next few days, drafted by inter-state clubs.
The movement of the male initiate from the female domain of the mother, to the male domain of the father, is common in many initiation rites, particularly those of Australia’s First Nations, but that is a blog for another occasion.
In the meantime, the 2018 AFL Draft provided an interesting spectacle and a powerful one, when considered in the context of Deep Fantasy.
November 19, 2018
When Planning is Poison
So, for the first time in 15 books, I decided to begin by writing a chapter by chapter outline of my WIP, a stand-alone Deep Fantasy novel. I diligently (but not enthusiastically) worked away to complete 30 chapter summaries, and when I had finished, I felt relieved but not excited. I had a story that would work, so I had obviously done a sensible thing.
The trouble was, I was way past the point in life where doing sensible things held any appeal. Still, I had an excellent plan, which would enable me to write quickly and efficiently to smoothly complete a satisfying and well-constructed story.
And so began the slowest, most sigh-inspiring book of my entire time as a writer. Looking out the window, exploring the kitchen for food, playing on my phone; I did them all. And referring to my plan just made things worse, because then I was anxious too.
Where were the exciting bursts of energy that saw me write deep into the night on my other projects? Where were the emotional highs and lows which saw me laughing and crying with my characters? Simply gone. But were they gone for good?
The terrifying thought came to me that maybe I had written all the stories I had in me, and was done. Maybe I would become ‘normal’ (ha ha). Maybe when folk who hadn’t seen me for a while asked whether I was still writing, and I would choke back the narky retort: ‘Am I still breathing?’, I would instead confirm that I had indeed given up my dalliance with words and was now an avid fan of Keeping up with the Kardashians (and if you are, good, but it ain’t me).
Of course, my WIP might have had the same sigh-worthy start had I stayed a pantser and it wasn’t long before I reverted to type. By the time I had grouched and grumbled my way to chapter 3, my outline had become buried under the usual pile of papers on my desk: papers covered in scribbled questions, crudely drawn maps, and dodgy time-lines.
I had opened the doors of my self-imposed planning prison and set the characters free to go off and do as they wanted. And then, for the first time, I became very interested in them, and by extension, in how their stories might unfold.
So, was my foray into planning a failure? It certainly produced a story, but not the one I wanted to write. In the process, it probably helped me think through, in a more organized way, some of the story elements that might emerge in the story that I am writing.
Will I plan again? The jury is still out on that one.
If you want to read more about my WIP, visit my website at www.ksnikakis.com to subscribe to Newsletter 3 where I discuss it, and you can read an excerpt in the Newsletter too.
You can also learn more about Deep Fantasy on my site.
November 17, 2018
My Life in Pictures
Hot Hawaii and the helicopter ride that helped set the scene for my work in progress:
I heard the wolf call my name.
Giveaways
Tamati or Jax? Check out the YouTube links to see if you can guess which singer helped inspire Tamati, and which one Jax.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e94dst20C9Y – You are the only one - Sergey Lazarev
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-msutN_OkU4 – Heroes - Måns Zelmerlöw
Be the first to get a sneak peak of my work in progress: I Heard The Wolf Call My Name
Excerpt from Chapter 1
Far below Anahera’s cliff-side perch, the alpha strutted backwards and forwards, head low and then thrown back in challenge, its blue throat-feathers as brilliant as the lightning that danced across Moana’s waves in summer storms. The lesser birds followed the alpha’s lead, but she was barely aware of them. It no longer mattered whether the alpha was the shifted form of Tamati or Malo, or a shia in birth-form. Its beauty shone as brightly as Whetu, reducing the lesser birds to shadows as Tihi’s soaring majesty reduced Iolana’s smaller peaks to hills.
The shias’ music built to a crescendo, the drum-beats of calls like the great storm-waves Moana sent pounding into Iolana’s cliffs. Anahera’s blood pounded too as the alpha held its wing displays longer and longer, extended to their uttermost breadth and flashing with crimson and emerald green.
And then a throbbing staccato erupted overhead. It jarred Anahera from the dance’s all-consuming trance and for a moment she had no idea where she was. Her head swam and she lost her grip on the stone. Adrenaline speared through her, hot as fire, as she clutched at the cliff-face, and missed. And then she was falling, a scream of terror torn from her throat as she plunged into oblivion.
