Daniel M. Bensen's Blog, page 31

Willow Leaves Tumble

Willow leaves tumble

Until they find a surface

Water from a spring

October Newsletter: The Bread of Doom

…or how tracking my life told me I was abusing coffee and social media

So there I was, my nails digging into my palms, my right molars pressed into each other. The air hissed in through my nose as my vision narrowed to a point. It was like hurtling down a roller-coaster. It was was terrifying, and I had no idea why it was happening.

I’d be doing nothing especially ominous – sitting down on the couch, carrying my younger daughter, thinking about bread – and suddenly I’d be gripped by this intense sensation of danger. BREAD! The image of a whole-grain loaf gained the mass of a church bell. DOOM! It rang. Toll the yeasty knell, oh brazen fate, for all men shall one day die. Die, oh, mortal flesh. Die and meet thy baker.

(whoo! I am so sorry about that pun. Deep breaths now…)

Tiny drops of steam

Ebb and flow before the light

With each of my breaths.

It was ridiculous, but of course knowing that it was ridiculous didn’t help. I was like a cat, freaking out for no reason. Or was there no reason? Aren’t I supposed to listen to my body, now that I’m meditating and whatnot? But what exactly was my body supposed to be telling me? Avoid carbs? Run from the couch? Something about my daughter…? Yeah, If I searched hard enough for a reason to be terrified, I’d surely find one. Now there’s a reason for fear.

So I meditated more. I stopped using social media. I took my daughters to the park and watched the sky as it changed from brass to rose and the street lights blinked on. I talked to Pavlina. And I realized that over the course of the past month, I’d gone from drinking two cups of coffee a day to four.

The trees turn black and

The sky, indescribable.

Look up and it’s changed.

Scheduling is hard. My older daughter’s in first grade now, and school starts at 8:10 in the Center. The younger one’s in kindergarten, which starts at 8:30 in Levski G. At some point, it would be nice if Pavlina and I could go to work, which is back in the Center. If we want to have breakfast and drink our coffee in peace, we need to wake up at 6:15. Three hours later, I’m finally in the office and I’m tired. That scares me because I associate being tired with being sick. Fatigue=death.

I’m supposed to listen to my body, but my body is a stupid animal. It’s not going to say, “you’re drinking too much coffee.” It says “coffee reminds me of being happy!” and “not being productive scares me!” It says “I’m tired! I must have cancer again!” It’s up to me to keep track of what I’m doing, cut out the distractions, and give myself enough mental room to notice the patterns.

Right. So that’s why I’m not doing social media any more. Because part of the reason I was too distracted to notice I was drinking too much coffee was the last newsletter I wrote. I posted it on facebook, which made me want to check facebook for likes and comments. And once I was on facebook, why not see what other people are posting? Oh. Oh. That’s what they’re posting. Oh no.

I debated writing this explanation. Why not just stop using social media? Why talk about it on social media? But my litmus test for whether I should write something is “will this help people?” Maybe this is helpful: social media is distracting and depressing. It fills my head with noise. Maybe you have the same problem and this is the solution.

The sky at seven

The color of hope that hurts

And the crying swifts

I’ll continue to post my work on my website (including these newsletters) and mirror or link to those posts on Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook. Readers are welcome to like and comment, but I’ll only read those comments once a week (Friday seems like a good day). Comments on my website, PMs, and emails to me will get my attention earlier. I won’t read any content that isn’t sent personally to me or that I didn’t sign up for. Hopefully that means I’ll still get news from people I care about, but not about tragedies that I have no power to solve. That way, I can continue to function from hour to hour.

What do you think? Is this going to work? Can I stay connected without sacrificing my mental health? Let me know in the comments. Or even better, email me.

In other news, I had some good writing stuff happen this month. Interchange has hit its 2/3 mark and, more importantly, its rhythm. I’ve managed to block off a fairly reliable 90-minute chunk of time in the mornings, which I use to meditate and then “speedwrite,” which means writing without thinking about what I’m doing. I generally end up with a single element of a scene, such as the conversation the characters are having, how they feel, what’s going on in the environment, or what actions the characters are taking.

Then I usually have some time after lunch (and my second and final coffee), and I can layer those scene-pieces onto each other and smooth the edges. If I have more time, I do research, which usually involves shooting messages to generous experts. In this way, the inestimable and inspiring Thomas Duffy helped me tie a ribbon around the center of my book, in which a biologist’s subconscious belief that she owns the environment she’s studying leads her to destroy it. As the forest crumbles around her, she blames herself…then makes exactly the wrong decision about what to do next. Yeah! Fiction! Thomas, I’m going to send you roses or cacti or something.

Another new tradition I’ve instituted is spending my Friday mornings not working on Interchange. It’s a little release of pressure, a chance to play and remind myself that writing isn’t just another chore I have to do. The first week, it was a short story. That one turned out so well, I’m going to try to publish it. It’s called “The Sales Event” and it’s about smart phones and general relativity. Do you want to beta-reader it?

I got another couple of “no”s from publishers about The Sultan’s Enchanter, but one of them was that very gratifying “no” that comes at the head of a long list of things I could do to fix the story. Making those fixes will be educational, even if that particular publisher still passes. Wealthgiver is rather like The Sultan’s Enchanter, after all, and the lessons I learn from one will be important for the other. The world needs more books about amoral Balkan people!

Yeah, I’m still working on Wealthgiver’s neo-Thracian language. I even posted a little of it on Tumblr. But don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten my little goats!

Kapt kapēnon ainē kesa / byźai darsai ypo dēsâ.

Ēbron, aiźi, byźâs kâ / skalmon, bleptē, bystâs kâ,

As tae yper iatśikan / kapâ pe ta ve abbrinkan.

There were at one time / brave goats under heaven.

A kid, a nanny, and a billy goat / clever, loyal, and tough,

Who would dance up / a hill for to make themselves fat.

Dâ ispilsen opē rinkon strymē / parân ân, śân târâ dymâ.

Iśē iserpa źēryntē / źymlē mērē urdēnē.

Byźulâs ada pyrân źilmân / dâ bolvarâs pia rhobton saimân.

But a quick-flowing river blocked / the path with an evil guard.

There coiled a beast / a great water-dragon.

A goat will eat green grains / but a serpent will slurp blood

Peskēnon ērga ēbron do. / Pliskon ērga śân negō.

Źymlē zē semân iglytsa. / “Kis ēs tu?” Neston iglâtsa.

“Semâs manon ēm ēźo.” / “San ar ēsti? Abadam so!”

First comes the kid. / It splashes with its hooves.

The dragon heard this. / “Who are you?” she roared.

“This only am I.” / “Is it so? I will eat you up!”

Things are heating up! I’m still not entirely comfortable with the articles and deitics, but I do like that last line. And the orthography is shaping up nicely. I love googly things over letters.

Another potential conlanging project for that other hundred years I plan to live: Western Hellenism. What if the Greeks had conquered Iberia?

And finally, PROTECTOR! This is the comic project I’ve been working on for literally six years. Words by me and Simon Roy, inks by Atryom Trakhanov, colors by Jason Wordie, and lettering by Hassan Otsmane-Elhadu. What a crazy, fun, glorious process this collaboration was!

Protector is a post-apocalyptic scifi story about a slave who stumbles across “a demon of the Profligate Age,” a military cyborg who’s been in hibernation for the past thousand years. The post-human robots who are terraforming the Earth are not amused, and send in some sweaty future-vikings to put a stop to these shenanigans.

There will be five issues, and issue one comes out in January. If you’re interested, please order a copy, or better yet, tell your local comic or book store to order lots of copies! Give us some numbers that will convince Image to ask for a sequel

A Thracian Curse

 

https://danbensen.tumblr.com/post/188704867130/nicdevera-danbensen-agapta-vetai-pi-shalmai

Five Star Book Reviews: …And I Show You How Deep the Rabbit Hole Goes

…And I Show You How Deep the Rabbit Hole Goes by Scott Alexander

This one is just a short story, but what fun it is!

A bunch of twenty-somethings take magic pills that give them superpowers, based on a meme that was floating around on tumblr a while back, based on the movie The Matrix. The green pill gives you animal powers, the pink pill gives you love powers, etc. Then Scott Alexander got his hands on the logic of the superpowers and extended them to the end of the universe. Perhaps some of these characters should have considered their choices more carefully. My wife and I quote this one to each other: “But I didn’t mean to become the king of Saudi Arabia!”

Protector

Finally I can talk about this! Image Comics has just announced the post-apocalyptic sci-fi comic series PROTECTOR. Written by Simon Roy and Daniel M. Bensen, drawn by Artyom Trakhanov, colors by Jason Wordie and letters by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou.

#1 cover by James Stokoe! It is fnarbing gorgeous, everyone.

“Of all the tribes that dwell in the hot ruins of far-future North America, the Hudsoni reign supreme, but even they fear and obey the godlike Devas. When the Devas warn of an old-world demon in the conquered city of Shikka-Go, Hudsoni war chief First Knife decides to deal with the threat personally.”

DEMAND the PROTECTOR in your local comicarium with this code – NOV190012

And get more info here:

imagecomics.com/solicitations/solicitations-for-january-2020

imagecomics.com/comics/releases/protector-1

5 Star Book Reviews: Cetaganda

Cetaganda by Lois McMaster Bujold

I re-read this one for I believe the third time. Miles Vorkosigan untangles terrible interstellar political machinations, this time without a fleet of mercenaries. Just with his cousin Ivan.

You probably could jump into the series here, but I’m not sure if I’d recommend Cetaganda as your first Vorkosigan book. You probably ought to read at least one earlier one, if for no other reason than to get a picture of what everyone thinks of the Cetagandandans. They’re portrayed (by their enemies) as pretty evil – “practicing eugenics with plasma torches.” But of course 24-7 evil wouldn’t work to run an interstellar empire. They must have family squabbles and career aspirations just like everyone else.

Bujold extends enormous compassion to her series’s main bad guys. There’s this one guy in particular, a horrible space-ubermensch genetically engineered to conquer planets, but all he really wants is for you to like these perfumes he’s distilled. He worked really hard on them. And of course the science, politics, and psychology all rings true. A damn fun book!

Western Hellenism

Here’s scenario I spun a while back on the Constructed Languages list serve:

Philip of Macedon isn’t assassinated. As Hegemon of the League of Corinth, he invades the Achaemenid Empire. Under the command of Alexander, the invasion is successful.

Philip then does what’s worked for him before: redistribute seized land and wealth (esp. gold) to his favored men. Of course to keep his allies sweet, Philip has to seize more gold and land and so on. His empire must always expand.

Because of the nature of his cavalry/phalanx army, expansion works best in flat areas with lots of gold. That means Egypt is next after Persia, then Iberia. Italy is neither flat nor wealthy, and so Philip ignores it except to use the southern tip as a staging area for the Iberian campaign. In the long run, this will have the amusing result of Hellenic languages spoken everywhere but northern Italy, where there is a strange Indo-European isolate, somewhat similar to the Celtic languages…

Anyway, upon Philip’s eventual death, Alexander inherits an empire including OTL Turkey and Iran, northern Egypt, Albania and Croatia (at least the coasts) Crete, Corsica, Sardinia, southern Italy, southern France, and most of Iberia. This will be the core Hellenic Empire, and the future home of the Hellenic Language Family. There are also Greek outposts scattered across the northern coast of Africa and the Atlantic coasts of Africa and Iberia.

The empire is run according to Aristotelian principles, where the basic political unit is the polis and the citizen is a land-holding man who can equip a cavalry officer and infantry brigade. Different poli are run differently, but generally have three counterbalancing groups of hereditary royals, rotating generals, and elders voted in by the wealthy families. The economic system is mostly concerned with the manufacture and hording of treasure.

The people on top speak Athenian Greek in public and Macedonian or Thesselian at home. Thracian, Illyrian, and Paeonian mercenaries are all over the place, and most scribes and low-level bureaucrats speak Persian or Egyptian (there’s quite a bit of competition there). Non-Greeks are generally slaves. Over time, these slaves are more likely to be owned by the polis, rather than individual citizens, and rented out for whatever purpose.

It’s not a stable system. Problems in the 100s BC include black-market gold, ambitious local governors, wealth concentration (in the form of gold and slaves), revolting slaves, and the Phoenicians, who are sitting the rest of the Mediterranean’s wealth. There is a push to conquer the lands around the Danube and Alps, but for now, the lack of a stable land route between Anatolia and Iberia divides the empire culturally into east and west, with the east further divided into Persian-influenced Anatolia, Egyptian-Influenced Africa, and Core Greece. It seems like the only thing that will keep the empire together would be a common enemy.

The Sky at Seven

The sky at seven

The color of hope that hurts

And the crying swifts

The Trees Turn Black

The trees turn black and

The sky, indescribable.

Look up and it’s changed.

Tiny Drops of Steam

Tiny drops of steam

Ebb and flow before the light

With each if my breaths