K.M. Alexander's Blog, page 32

Watch Roxanna Walitzki’s Stunning “In der Fremde”

My friend and mezzo-soprano vocalist Roxanna Walitzki is currently touring Europe with her sibling Redd (who I’ve featured in the past.) While they journey, Roxanna has begun to record classic acoustic performances in urban ruins wearing ethereal fashions created from found materials sourced on site. The results are as evocative as they are beautiful. You can see her acoustic performance of Robert Schumann’s In der Fremde (In a Foreign Land) below recorded in an abandoned paint factory in Pula, Croatia.

This is a small part of a broader ongoing collaboration between the siblings that pushes us to confront what we consider trash and disposable with the intent of encouraging us to reevaluate our own impact on the natural world. You can find out more about the project here and read the statement behind this video here. It’s a unique and thoroughly fresh approach to raising environmental awareness. I’ve enjoyed watching it come together and it’s made me pause and think about my own impact.

As an artist, Roxanna is quite prolific, and you can watch more videos and listen to more of her previous work on her official site. I recommend buying some of her music from her Bandcamp as well. She’s also a fantastic photographer so follow her on Instagram.

Support this work

Want to journey with the Walitzki siblings across Europe? Redd has set up a Patreon where they share insights, artwork, and experiences from their adventures. It’s very much worth checking out (and the perfect use of the platform.) You can find out much more over on Patreon.

Buy My Books, Leave Reviews, and Tell Your Friends

I’m nearing the end of draft zero for Gleam Upon the Waves, (note the significant update to the tracker in the sidebar) and as a result, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Bell Forging Cycle as a whole. I’m immensely proud of the series so far, and I think you’ll be surprised where it’s about to go.

I don’t do nearly enough self-promotion these days—mainly because I find self-promotion boring and I like to keep the stuff I post here as interesting as possible. But occasionally I feel it’s important for me to remind everyone that I write rad books and you can buy them pretty much anywhere. It would be swell if you did. It supports me, my work, and the series.

To make it as easy as possible I’ve included direct links to purchase below.

Book I: The Stars Were Right


[image error] Paperbacks: Amazon • Barnes & Noble • Powell’s • BAM! • Direct

eBooks: Kindle • Kobo • Nook • iBooks • Google Play • Direct

Raunch Review: Red Dwarf

Raunch Reviews is a series about profanity. Not real profanity, but speculative swearing. Authors often try to incorporate original, innovative forms of profanity into our own fantastical works as a way to expand the worlds we build. Sometimes we’re successful. Often we’re not. In this series, I examine the faux-profanity from various works of sci-fi and fantasy, judge their effectiveness, and rate them on an unscientific and purely subjective scale. This is Raunch Reviews, welcome.

[image error]Raunch Review: Red Dwarf
The Author: Rob Grant & Doug Naylor
Work in Question: Red Dwarf


The Profanity: “Smeg”

In the annals of science fiction and fantasy, it’s hard to think of a faux-profanity more beloved than “smeg.” There isn’t any other fanbase I can think of that has adopted a series-specific faux-profanity as a moniker. But the “smegheads” who adore the BBC science fiction comedy Red Dwarf use the term unabashedly.

Controversy surrounds “smeg,” with some questioning its faux-status, and it is difficult to pin down answers. Some of the cast (Robert Llewellyn) claims it’s rooted in the real world whereas others say the opposite (creators Rob Grant and Doug Naylor). In fact, on the interview CD from the Six of the Best box set, the creators are quoted as saying, “we wanted to invent a futuristic curse word which had the right sort of consonant and vowel arrangement to make it sound like a genuine… curse word.”

Whether you believe it to be real or fake, it’s easy to appreciate its simplicity and it works in plenty of uses throughout the show’s run. I wish there were some hints to its meaning within the writing or at least nod toward its orthographic or semantic drift. As a vulgarity, it captures the right tone, and it doesn’t feel like a skip around censors (looking at you, Battlestar). So, “smeg” on smegheads.

Score: [image error][image error][image error][image error] (3.5)

Previous Raunch Reviews

“Burn Me” from Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time
“Slitch” from Robert A. Heinlein’s Friday
“Yarbles” from Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange
“Cuss” from Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox
“Feth” from Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts from Warhammer 40k
“Shazbot” from Garry Marshall’s Mork & Mindy and Dynamix’s Starsiege: Tribes
“Seven Hells” from George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire/Game of Thrones
“Mudblood” from J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series
“Frak” from Glen A. Larson’s, Ronald D. Moore’s, & David Eick’s Battlestar Galactica
“Jabber” from China Miéville’s Bas-Lag series
“Storm it”/”Storms”/”Storming” from Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archives

Have a suggestion for Raunch Reviews? It can be any made up slang word from a book, television show, or movie. You can email me directly with your recommendation or leave a comment below. I’ll need to spend time with the property before I’ll feel confident reviewing it, so give me a little time. I have a lot of books to read.

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Started with a Map

“I wisely started with a map, and made the story fit.”

—J. R. R. Tolkien

And what a map it was…

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The map above is one of Tolkien’s original sketches and is a part of the Bodleian Libraries collection at the University of Oxford. Tolkien was a prolific sketcher, and many more of his drawings can be seen in Ethan Gilsdorf’s 2015 Wired article aptly named: See the Sketches J.R.R. Tolkien Used to Build Middle-earth. It’s worth checking out.

Blaeu: A Free 17th Century Cartography Brush Set for Fantasy Maps

When the British crown was restored in 1660, King Charles II received an enormous atlas as a gift from Professor Joannes Klencke. Enormous is not an understatement here. The Klencke Atlas is one of the largest books in the world, standing nearly six feet tall and over six feet wide when opened and weighing in at over four-hundred pounds. It’s impressive. But it’s not the atlas itself that we’re looking at today, it’s one of the copperplate maps tucked away inside. It’s the last map in the atlas that served as the source for my latest free brush set: Joan Blaeu’s beautiful Terræ Sanctæ.

As best I can tell, Terræ Sanctæ (“Holy Land” in Latin) is essentially a tourist map of what is now Israel and Palestine. With a unique style, Blaeu details events, sites, and cities made famous in the Bible and he does so with flair. Each city feels distinctive, and the mountains and hills are meticulously rendered. Each object fits within its family but each feels unique. Despite the difficulty of conversion I vowed to make this a useable brush set. After hours of labor, I’m happy to announce Blaeu: an enormous brush set (over 500 brushes in total) with a wide variety of options and variants.

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Most of the symbolism on the map was clear. But there were a few ideograms I couldn’t figure out. Blaeu didn’t include a key or legend, so I had to do my best translating. I took Latin way back in High School and weirdly retained a lot of it so I was able to fumble through, but I know I missed a lot. There were also quite a few symbols never explained.

Be warned, there’s a lot here, and the list below is enormous with quite a few unique elements you don’t find in other sets. That said, inside Blaeu, you’ll discover:

15 Wells
15 Monuments/Sepulchers/Tombs
3 Individual Tents
8 Tent Camps
10 Ruins

(This is my best guess for these symbols based on my previous map research. It’s possible these could mean something else entirely.)
10 Elevated Ruins

(FWIW, going forward “elevated” means: on a hill/mountain.)
3 Unique Ruins
20 Small Towns
3 Elevated Small Towns
50 Basic Cities
25 Elevated Basic Cities
2 Unique Basic Cities
20 Starred Cities

(It’s possible the six-pointed star represents synagogues, but I haven’t been able to confirm that.)
4 Elevated Starred Cities
13 Imperial Cities
3 Elevated Imperial Cities
8 Ecclesiastical Cities
4 Elevated Ecclesiastical Cities
8 Mixed Cities

(A combination of the above)
7 Elevated Mixed Cities
4 Large Walled Cities

(Big boys)
4 Destroyed Cities

(I love the detail in these)
15 Forts
15 Elevated Forts
4 River Crossings
5 Unique Religious Settlements
4 Leper Colonies

(These would be useful for Inns as well.)
3 Unique Buildings
15 Scrub Bush
7 Grape Vines
3 Vineyards
8 Palm Trees
1 Palm “Forest”
30 “Leafy” Trees
4 “Leafy” Tree Forests
2 Orchards
25 Hills
15 Ranges of Hills
6 Caves
20 Mountains
40 Mountain Ranges
3 Unique Mountain Ranges
4 Tree Cartouches

(Bigger than the flora tree.)
25 People Cartouches
5 Water Cartouches
12 War ( HUH ) Cartouches
1 Sheep Cartouche with a city on its head and another on its butt

(It’s real weird.)

There is so much and it’s all rendered in Blaeu’s charming style. Plus the cartouches help add a touch of authenticity to a piece, and there are so many to choose from. This has quickly become one of my most favorite sets and it works really well with my other brushes. So don’t be afraid to mix and match.

The button below links to a ZIP file that contains a Photoshop brush set  (works in GIMP as well) and a group of transparent PNGs in case you’re using a program that doesn’t support Adobe brush files. You can also view the PNGs in your browser. Because of the complexity, I’ve divided this set into four transparent images: Settlements, Flora, Landforms, and Cartouches—be warned, they’ll come up black if viewed in Chrome, but they’re all there.

DOWNLOAD BLAEU

As with all of my brush sets, Blaeu is free for any use and is distributed with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License that means you can freely use it in commercial work and distribute adaptations. All I did was convert it to brushes, Joan Blaeu did all the real work—so giving him credit would be fantastic, but it’s absolutely not necessary.

Enjoy Blaeu! It took a lot longer to put together than previous sets, but I couldn’t resist. I wanted to see the style live on. I think it’s unique in the world of maps, and it would give any fantasy maps a fresh yet grounded feel. As I say with all my brush sets, a connection to history can really make a project feel alive.

Feel free to show me what you created by sending me an email! I love seeing how this stuff is used and I’d be happy to share your work with my readers.

Did you think it was over?

What if I told you that everything that had come before was only the prelude? Grin at the sun all you want, it’s only a false dawn. Shadow dwells within the cracks and crevices of the worlds, and it can only be temporarily banished.

A letter has arrived for you, and you might find its contents familiar.

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There are portents hidden in plain sight, revealing much to those brave fools willing to study the signs. The repository is the simplest way to track those elements which have come before, but there are other sources as well. Take heart, my friend, in time much will be revealed.

See you soon, roader.

Want to stay in touch with me? Sign up for Dead Drop, my rare and elusive newsletter. Subscribers get news, previews, and notices on my books before anyone else delivered directly to their inbox. I work hard to make sure it’s not spammy and full of interesting and relevant information.  SIGN UP TODAY →

How to Understand the Image of a Black Hole

I thought this quick video from Veritasium was an excellent explanation on the “why” behind yesterday’s historical announcement. Being able to present such a complex topic so simply is a talent that I admire. So sit back, watch, learn, and join me in staring in awe.

Looking for more?

Want more information on the telescope? Check out the Event Horizon Telescope’s website and learn about this marvel of technology.
Also, be sure to read the Time Magazine profile of Katie Bouman one of the scientists who worked on the EHT project.
One of my favorite webcomics, XKCD , posted this great piece showing the scale of the black hole in comparison to our solar system. Spoiler: it’s very big.

Her Own Successes

“All her life she had made her own mistakes and her own successes, both usually by trying what others said she could not do.”

—Vonda N. McIntyre, Aztecs, 1977

Requiescat in pace, Vonda. Thank you for all of the incredible worlds. (For me personally, I discovered her work through 1981’s The Entropy Effect, one of the first Star Trek novels I’d ever read—though, I wouldn’t find it until the early 90s.)

Cyberpunk is Reality

Yesterday, I came across a tweet from Carl Zha (okay, technically it’s from his auntie) that included a video clip of evening skyline above the city of Chongqing in southwestern China. There is a cyberpunk quality to the city that enthralled me. I felt as if Chongqing was plucked from the pages of William Gibson’s Neuromancer or Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash. Below the tweet, Zha also linked to the following video which goes even further, giving the viewer a close-up view of the city which only further cemented my opinion, check it out below.

The slick soundtrack and artistic jump-cuts only add a level of depth that expands the ultra-cool visuals of a city of the future. For a Westerner, it’s almost hard to imagine Chongquing as a real place. Our own cities are dull by comparison. This is the stuff of anime and Hollywood blockbusters, not reality.

It’s easy to become absorbed in the sleek aesthetic and forget that the cyberpunk genre was meant to serve as a cautionary tale about the dangers of unregulated capitalism, economic inequality, and the rampant abuse of technology. Warnings we’ve mostly ignored. I hesitate to prognosticate on the ramifications we’ll face. As Gibson once said, “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.”

At least Chongquing looks cool.

Raunch Review: The Wheel of Time

Raunch Reviews is a series about profanity. Not real profanity, but speculative swearing. Authors often try to incorporate original, innovative forms of profanity into our own fantastical works as a way to expand the worlds we build. Sometimes we’re successful. Often we’re not. In this series, I examine the faux-profanity from various works of sci-fi and fantasy, judge their effectiveness, and rate them on an unscientific and purely subjective scale. This is Raunch Reviews, welcome.

[image error]Raunch Review: The Wheel of Time
The Author: Robert Jordan
Work in Question: The Wheel of Time (Eye of the World, specifically)


The Profanity: “Burn Me”

There is a cohesion in the faux-profanity used throughout this series, which is a positive. But, Robert Jordan falls into a common faux-profanity pattern that crops up all too often, where common words and phrases are conscripted into obscenity. (Looking at you, Stormlight Archive.) These often fall short for me; in one moment they’re ordinary words and phrases wielded by characters with standard use and then the next moment they brandished as profanity. That’s… odd.

“Burn me” is a perfect example of this. A burn is a reasonably common occurrence in our real world, just as it is in Jordan’s Westlands. The word is used as a descriptive by Jordan where one would expect. There’s even a character named Burn (a wolf). This common use affects the faux-profanity phrase, by attaching it to the everyday it draws out any suggested coarseness. It’s profanity robbed of the profane.

Throughout Eye of the World, the phrase is often wielded as an oath — but it’s implied to have the same effect as an intensifier, which is linguistically confusing. Many oaths get shortened to intensifiers over time, but no one is naming their kid (or wolf) after either of them. To that point, “burn” isn’t used on its own, although it would make sense linguistically, especially for an intensifier.

But, the consistency gives it some value. Fire and the results thereof clearly hold some place space among the population. And similar phrases crop up. Plus, this is a reduced version of a longer and more interesting oath, “the light burn me” which — while not entirely fresh as far as fantasy oaths go — reads much better. I’d argue that while it wavers on any perceived offensiveness, and although it works well enough as an oath, it’s better as an intensifier.

Score: [image error][image error][image error][image error][image error] (2.0)

Previous Raunch Reviews

“Slitch” from Robert A. Heinlein’s Friday
“Yarbles” from Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange
“Cuss” from Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox
“Feth” from Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts from Warhammer 40k
“Shazbot” from Garry Marshall’s Mork & Mindy and Dynamix’s Starsiege: Tribes
“Seven Hells” from George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire/Game of Thrones
“Mudblood” from J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series
“Frak” from Glen A. Larson’s, Ronald D. Moore’s, & David Eick’s Battlestar Galactica
“Jabber” from China Miéville’s Bas-Lag series
“Storm it”/”Storms”/”Storming” from Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archives

Have a suggestion for Raunch Reviews? It can be any made up slang word from a book, television show, or movie. You can email me directly with your recommendation or leave a comment below. I’ll need to spend time with the property before I’ll feel confident reviewing it, so give me a little time. I have a lot of books to read.

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