Kevin L. O'Brien's Blog: Songs of the Seanchaí, page 39

New eBook: Shenanigans

I have just published my latest ebook:

Shenanigans

Sir Differel and Lady Margaret--aka Dribble and Maggot--are best frenemies, though why even they don't know. Despite a facade of antagonism that can make it appear that they are ready to scratch each others' eyes out at any moment, they respect and trust each other, they confide secrets they won't tell anyone else, and they each help the other when necessary, whether it be working on a school project or fighting monsters.

Dribble and Maggot share frequent visits, usually consisting of sleepovers at Differel's ancestral manor. During one of those, Maggot encourages Dribble to lose her virginity, and when she expresses reluctance, they sneak into the buttery off the butler's pantry to steal a bottle of liquor. However, to avoid being caught they must hide out in the catacombs under the house. There, Maggot reveals the real reason for her visit: she fears she may be pregnant.

However, they soon discover they have worse problems, when they are attacked by a horde of goblin-like creatures and become trapped, unable to flee. And no one knows where they're at!

Can they survive long enough to be rescued, or will the goblins drag them back to their secret lair to subject them to unspeakable acts?

This ebook is free and can be downloaded from Smashwords.

Hi Fantasy, Lo Fantasy, and Sea Fantasy

[The title comes from a Looney Tunes gag that starts off singing the praises of the hibiscus, only to then compare it to the "lobiscus" and the "seabiscus". If that doesn't make sense, the gag is based on the word-play between the real flower, hibiscus, and two fictional flowers, the "lobiscus" and the "seabiscus". If that STILL doesn't make sense, the name "seabiscus" is derived from the name of the racehorse, Seabiscuit. Hence, Hi Fantasy, Lo Fantasy, and Sea Fantasy....

Never mind.]

When discussing the various sub-genres of fantasy speculative fiction, you often hear the terms high fantasy, low fantasy, and sword & sorcery bandied about. But have you ever wondered what these really mean?

In one sense, they don't really mean anything, because whether a story is high or low is subjective; in the mind of the reader, to paraphrase a popular cliché. As well, for many people, fantasy is fantasy, regardless of the tropes, character types, creatures, and cultures involved. Nonetheless, there are specific definitions, so for those who prefer organization and classification (like me), they are as follows:

High Fantasy -- Stories that take place in an alternate fictional world separate from our own, with its own rules and physical laws; that involve a primary hero undertaking a quest; that usually involves an epic, world-threatening clash between good and evil. Also known as Epic Fantasy.

It should be noted that the "secondary" world can either be completely cut off from our "primary" world, with no crossover ability, or it can be a "world next door" that the hero (or narrator) can visit. Also, many stories portray "fellowships" that gather around the primary hero, allowing for changes in POV if these characters become separated, and often a series of stories is set in the same secondary world, whether their plots are linked or not.

By this definition, the Land of the Dreams of Men is a high fantasy setting; however, not all of my stories in that setting are themselves high fantasy.

Low Fantasy -- Stories that take place in our rational world, or a fictional rational world that obeys the same rules and physical laws as our own, which portray non-rational happenings and fantastical, often magical elements; can be described as irrational events occurring in a rational setting where they are not supposed to occur. Sometimes called Magical Realism.

It should be noted that in this case "low" refers to the relative level of fantasy contained in the story, not its quality, and that the intrusion of fantasy can have comical or horrific affects. Also, role-playing games define low fantasy differently, as fiction that concentrates more on realism rather than the mythic. See sword & sorcery below for clarification.

By this definition, most of my Team Girl stories set in the primary world in our contemporary setting are low fantasy, in that the world is mostly rational except for the fantastical elements that occur in each story. As well, the setting for my Medb hErenn and Sir Differel stories can be considered low fantasy, but the stories themselves may be quite different.

Sword & Sorcery -- Stories set in a mythic or fantastic setting, that primarily focus on personal battles rather than epic quests; often have fast-paced action-rich plots; settings tend to be exotic, and the characters morally ambiguous; protagonists also tend to find dangerous adventure preferable to a safer but dull life. Also known as Heroic Fantasy. Related sub-genres include Sword & Sandal and Sword & Planet, but only if they contain fantastical elements.

It should be noted that theoretically these stories can take place in either high or low fantasy settings, though the former is more common. As well, the stories mostly portray sword-wielding adventurers involved in violent conflicts. Also, it should not be confused with Cloak & Sword, which is historical adventure, or Cloak & Dagger, which is international espionage.

By this definition, most of my Dreamlands stories, especially those involving Team Girl and Differel, are sword & sorcery, since the motives and goals of the protagonists are personal, based on more mundane, realistic concerns, than epic battles of good against evil. Since many role-playing scenarios involve players trying to get rich or just stay employed, this is why gamers tend to define low fantasy in terms of sword & sorcery, but a story that portrays a hero seeking revenge against the petty warlord who killed his family, or who just sets off in search of fun and excitement in the nearest city, is sword & sorcery rather than low fantasy. Some of my Sir Differel Caerleon Order stories would also be sword & sorcery, because they involve personal dilemmas and conflicts, but many would be low fantasy because they involve protecting the United Kingdom from evil paranormal forces.

Now, none of this should be misconstrued as being a laying-down of the law. It shouldn't make any difference whether a writer calls his story high or low fantasy or sword & sorcery, as long as it's a damn good story. However, this does help explain why I prefer writing sword & sorcery over high fantasy, because frankly I find conflicts based on mundane matters more interesting, and I believe they are more sustainable. It would get deathly boring if every Dreamlands story I wrote involved epic, world-shattering conflicts between desperate heroes and wicked dark lords, not to mention implausible. I mean, even human history had long, stable periods of peace and prosperity between horrific disasters and wars. And what can you say in such stories, except evil threatens, hero(es) ride forth, evil is defeated?

(Though, to be fair, I use epic fantasy as an excuse to introduce readers to a new character or a new setting.)

Instead, I find it more plausible, and more interesting, to imagine Eile and Sunny sitting in Ulthar, getting bored to tears, and deciding to have some kind of adventure, such as:

* loot a ruined temple for a wealthy collector
* collect medicinal plants for an apothecary
* trade with wilderness tribes for animal furs
* help a prospector search for a lost gold mine
* escort a rich merchant to a trade fair
* transport letters of credit for a banker
* or act as secret agents to infiltrate a black market for a king

Of course, something has to happen in these stories to put the Girls in danger and force them to fight for their lives, but they also allow me to explore some aspect of the physical or social nature of the Dreamlands in greater detail without engaging in long expository descriptions that don't advance the plot. Ultimately, I just consider a story about a merchant trying to establish a new trade route more interesting than one about a heroic knight questing to save a kingdom from barbaric invaders.

I guess that, to me, what makes a story worth reading is the characters, what they do, how they interact with the setting, and how they deal with the plot conflict. As such, it makes no difference whether the hero is seeking to destroy the Scepter of Power of the Dark Lord of All Evil or searching for the little princess's lost puppy. Though, frankly, if the latter tells me something interesting about the setting I never knew before, I prefer that to a mythic battle that reads like any other.

Iron and Steel Making in the Dreamlands

Iron and steel production is probably the best example of industrialized activity in the Dreamlands. "Industrialized" as used here must be taken with a grain of salt. The total output for the whole of the Dreamlands for an entire year would not equal the output of a modern Waking World industrialized nation for a single day. Even so, the output does exceed that for local needs only, with the access being used for commerce. What is perhaps even more amazing is that this activity is sustained using pre-sixteenth century power sources and technology, yet some of this was pretty extraordinary even in the Waking World.

Read the rest of the article.

Double Your Pleasure; Double Your Fun

Magdalene "Maggie" Ingrid King, "Miss Primary" and Manager of the Order

In Differel's line of work, she sometimes has to make people, especially enemies, believe that she's one place when she's really somewhere else. For that she uses doubles: three women codenamed Miss Primary, Miss Secondary, and Miss Tertiary, who appear in public while Differel acts clandestinely behind the scenes. They are all volunteers, they have all had plastic surgery to make them look identical to Differel, and they have all been extensively trained in her behavior and mannerisms. They have also been trained in pistol marksmanship and fencing, both to better impersonate Differel and so they can defend themselves.

It's considered light duty: Differel only needs them a few times a year; the rest of the time they can live on their own. Differel gives them a generous salary and benefits package, including a flat and a car free of charge, in exchange for risking their lives on her behalf. However, the need to able to slip into her character at a moment's notice, their need to be available twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, and the requirement that their jobs must be kept absolutely secret, makes it almost impossible for them to have any kind of personal life. They are all orphans with no known family, single and unattached, and loners, but they still have the normal human needs for company, so their profession can nonetheless be rather taxing. As well, they must find some way to keep themselves busy that won't attract attention. Miss Secondary writes children's and young-adult books under the pen name Ida Christenson, while Miss Tertiary runs an internet porn business selling access to amateur videos and images.

Maggie King, codenamed Miss Primary, was the first. She was educated at Somerville College at Oxford and graduated with a degree in estate management, but was unable to find work. She did a serious of odd jobs until she landed a waitressing position at The Royal Boar and Hound, a historic public house converted into a "gentleman's" club. Despite the fact that she wouldn't "accommodate" the customers, she became popular and rose to be head "bar wench".

Shortly after the Grendel Invasion of Britain, the Order received a report that a fleeing Fomorian was hiding out at the pub. Being as the Order had no suitable female field agents, Differel infiltrated the pub herself. Maggie at once recognized that she was no working class girl, but she helped her fit in and to deal with her duties. Differel was struck by how much she looked like her. They became friends and Maggie helped her find and destroy the Fomorian.

Afterwards, Differel asked her to be her double, and she agreed. She moved into the manor as Differel's new lady's maid. That gave Differel and the others the time to train her, and Dr. Carmichael performed the plastic surgery needed to make her look identical to Differel. Meanwhile, Maggie immersed herself in the running of the Order, so as to strengthen her impersonation. Once her transformation was complete, Maggie the Maid left Differel's employment, and Miss Primary took up residence in a flat in nearby Denver, keeping busy by helping Aelfraed and Sharona Turing process reports and records.

Maggie has proven to be Differel's best double, both because she is willing to completely take on Differel's own personality, and because she is herself extremely tough and resourceful. Several times she has nearly been killed playing decoy, with half of those times surviving only because of her quick wits and willingness to fight back. She is willing to die in full persona rather than save her life by revealing that she is just a double; she feels she's owes it to Differel. Differel meanwhile has come to rely on her so greatly that she won't squander her in routine roles or hazardous assignments. She had Maggie supervise the training of the other two doubles. Before Differel met Team Girl, Maggie was her closest friend, and they sometimes hung out together, though the nature of their partnership precluded their socializing more than just occasionally.

Maggie's role at the Order changed after Differel reconciled with her son Henry. She decided to reopen the position of manager, to take some of the burden of the day-to-day operations off her shoulders. Her natural choice was Maggie, and as before she agreed. Though she still occasionally serves as Differel's double, now most of those assignments fall to Misses Secondary and Tertiary while Maggie runs the Order.

Snowshoe Kitty: Lady Adventurer

Snowshoe Kitty is a female Snowshoe cat. She was fourteen months old when the girls found her after a blizzard, almost frozen to death. They nursed her back to health and she became their pet and mascot. Later, they help her raise her kittens until they were old enough to be adopted out.

Like all cats in the Medb hErenn universe, Kitty is a sapient, self-aware being, but she hides it from Humanity, preferring to live as a mere pet. She even hides it from the girls, though they know the truth, and they maintain the pretense for her sake, saying only that she is very clever.

Read the rest of the article.

Next eBook: Shenanigans

The next story in my schedule to be published through Smashwords will be:

Shenanigans

[Sorry, got mixed-up over what day it was yesterday.]

Sir Differel's best frenemy, Lady Margaret, wants her to lose her virginity. To help put her in the mood, they sneak down to the buttery to pinch a bottle of spirits, but to avoid getting caught they must hide out in the catacombs below the house. Little do they realize there are other things prowling around down there at night, things that could catch them and drag them away to secret lairs, and no one would realize they were gone until it was too late.

This will be another free ebook.

The Way of the Barbarian

There can be no doubt that Medb hErenn is a barbarian. Yet, as with everything else, she does not conform to the stereotypical view of who is a barbarian and how he should act. Just about the only point she agrees with is that a barbarian does not act like a civilized person, but she rejects the belief that barbarians are uncivilized savages. As she herself has often explained to anyone willing to listen, "There is a whole philosophy behind being a barbarian, a way of thinking, feeling, and acting that is different from the behavior of civilized men or savages. In a manner of speaking, being a barbarian means blending both extremes into a balanced and coherent whole that borrows the best from both worlds while rejecting the worst."

Read the rest of the article.

Cold Iron

Occasionally, in fantasy fiction, you'll see statements like this:

"She pulled sixteen inches of cold iron from her scabbard."

Or, like this:

"The witch recoiled in fear at the sight of the amulet of cold iron hanging around the young girl's neck."

In both cases, the object of interest is described using the term "cold iron". But just what does that refer to?

In the first example, the term is based on the fact that iron tends to be cold to the touch and it serves as a poetic reference to iron or steel weaponry that cut or stab; "cold steel" is the modern form of this term. In this sense, it is similar to such Homeric references as "the wine-dark sea", or "wily Odysseus". In the second example, it serves as a reference to the folkloric belief that iron, being a symbol of life and the earth like bread and salt, can repel supernatural creatures such as witches, faeries, and ghosts.

Even so, the term "cold iron" had to come from somewhere. What exactly is cold iron?

The answer derives from ancient times and involves the changeover from bronze to iron. Up until roughly 1200 BCE, the area we now call the Middle East--which included Anatolia (modern Turkey), Syria, the Levant (modern Lebanon and Israel), Greece, Mesopotamia, and Egypt--was dominated by cultures and empires--the Mycenaeans, the Hittites, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Canaanites, and the Egyptians--who used massed chariot formations and bronze weaponry in warfare. Infantry played a secondary role in support of the chariots, mostly as skirmishers who finished off opposing chariot crews after their horses had been slain by the chariot's primary weapon, the composite bow, but who also attacked opposing chariots that became disabled, or broke through defending lines into the rear to attack the encampments. Bronze predominated because long-established trade routes made copper and tin plentiful, and bronze foundries were producing weapons and implements on almost an industrial scale.

The collapse of the Bronze Age in that region was precipitated by the fall of most of these civilizations, except the Assyrians and Babylonians who came through more or less unscathed. Even the New Kingdom of Egypt, which held out the longest, finally fell a century later. Though there are almost certainly numerous reasons for this collapse, the one that has the greatest bearing on this discussion is the theory that these civilizations succumb to invading hordes of barbarians, such as the Dorians, Phrygians, Armenians, Scythians, Arameans, Libyans, possibly the progenitors of the Hebrews, and the enigmatic Sea Peoples. According to this theory, the barbarians succeeded because of two factors.

The first was three key military innovations. The first was massed infantry units, supported by cavalry and archers. This could overwhelm chariots by sheer force of numbers. The second was the manufacture of spearheads by casting instead of forging, which allowed for mass production with less effort. This permitted the formation of large armies. The third was the introduction and widespread use of new weapons, primarily the javelin and the longsword. The javelin was not new; it had been used by the skirmishers who supported the chariots, because it was the best weapon a foot soldier could use to bring down a charging chariot horse. However, its use in coordinated mass attacks was new. The longsword was new, because bronze swords had been mostly short and thick, being as bronze wasn't strong enough to support long blades. Bronze swords were primarily used for stabbing and chopping, whereas the longsword had a longer reach and could be used to slash. It proved devastating against opposing chariot crews and skirmishers equipped with shorter bronze swords.

The second factor also helped to make large infantry armies possible, and explains the invention of the longsword and the mass production of spearheads: the barbarians used iron weapons. Now, bronze has a number of advantages over iron. It is harder, it holds an edge better, and it can be cast into a wide variety of weapons. However, iron had two distinct advantages over bronze. One was that iron ore was more abundant than copper or tin, especially tin. In fact, tin was so scarce that the kingdoms and empires monopolized the mines and trade routes to maintain control over it. As such, local peoples had virtually no access to it. Iron, on the other hand, was plentiful enough that many local areas could smelt and work iron.

The second advantage iron has over bronze is that it is easier to work. Copper and tin need to be smelted, purified, melted, mixed in the right proportions, and cast into molds, then polished and sharpened. Iron, on the other hand, can be worked as soon as it's smelted. Iron has a lower melting point than bronze, and it can be worked while hot but not yet melted. Iron is softer than bronze, but stronger; it can support a longer blade. Also, an iron blade tends to bend, whereas a bronze blade tends to break. And if an iron blade does break, it can be forge-welded good as new, whereas a broken bronze blade must be melted down and recast. Finally, heated iron absorbs carbon, which makes steel, and steel is both harder and stronger than bronze.

However, the one thing that makes iron more desirable than bronze is that it can be worked at room temperature. As such, you don't need a forge, just an anvil and hammer. In other words, iron can be cold-worked. This is from where the term "cold iron" derives; it indicates any iron tool or object that has been cold-worked rather than heated until plastic and then worked. The malleability of iron, similar to copper and gold, made it seem magical, and its seemingly ubiquitous availability in almost any outcrop of rock strongly associated it with the earth. Hence, its folkloric protective ability, and its modern poetic association.

Building Materials in the Dreamlands

In the Dreamlands, buildings can be constructed from just about any material available. While some, such as synthetic composites, are too modern to exist, others, such as wood framing, are either older than they seem or are simple enough ideas that they can exist despite having a post-1500 origin. Also, some more primitive forms of unavailable materials are present, such as drywall.

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Aelfraed Dalton Walters

Aelfraed Dalton Walters is Differel's faithful butler, and her Chief of Staff for the Caerleon Order. He was her father's butler before her, and before that his valet. He took care of her after her mother died, and helped raise her after her father died. Despite their opposite genders, he acts as her valet as well as overseeing the house staff and the Order personnel. And despite their social differences and aristocratic propriety, he's part friend, part mentor, and part father-figure. He can tell her things no one else dares; only Dracula is more forthcoming. Though he teases her and tells her the facts of life, he's always tactful and respectful. He would give his life to protect her, but she will risk her own to save him.

Though Differel has a master chef, Aelfraed is Cordon Bleu trained, and prepares most of her personal meals. In his younger days he was boxer, and he occasionally spares with Eile. For relaxation he reads noir private eye novels, plays the clarinet, and does crossword puzzles. He is celibate and has never been married, but he carries on a mutually tumultuous and affectionate relationship with Madam Trumbo, the chef. His sister is the housekeeper. He dreams of one day retiring and opening a pub, but never quite gets around to it. He adopted an orphan and brought him into the household as hall boy, and has been grooming him to replace him as butler one day.

Aelfraed displays knowledge and training of SAS commando tactics, including armed and unarmed combat, parachuting, scuba diving, survival, and counter-terrorism, some of which he has taught to Differel. He is especially expert with the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife, and prefers that over using a gun. How he acquired this knowledge, no one knows, because he has never been in military service.