It can now be revealed! (The Long Game Plot)

When I was thirteen, I imagined a grand epic with a medieval setting. (I had been an avid reader of Roger Zelazny's Amber Chronicles around that time, full disclosure.) The story I came up with involved twin brothers, princes of the realm, who grow apart and then are forced to battle each other, winner take all. I dabbled with starting the story as a novel (when I had barely written short stories by typewriter or by hand). I quickly realized it was too big a project for me to write at that time. Sadly, I set it aside with the intention of working on it when I retired and had lots of time. (Now retirement has come....)

One major feature of my medieval epic was that the setting was in the future, around the year 3000 AD, as I determined. And the place of the story was in a collection of city-states or kingdoms formerly known as the good ol' USA. So we have the Kingdom of Chicago at war with the Kingdom of Cincinnati as the main focus, with other kingdoms coming into play, as well. From the 1970s and 80s - when I got the idea and planned it out, through my effort to get the story down in some complete form by writing it as a screenplay - I believed that after some disastrous event it would take about a thousand years for civilization to devolve to something akin to a medieval society. (I would take no responsibility for said disaster....)

[This will have been well-documented soon after my demise, I shall presume.] 

Here is the revelation part of this blog post: I've been sneaky.

In 2015-2017, when I was dared by fellow authors to write an epic fantasy, which would have to include dragons, titled EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS, I conceived of a future world - again set in what characters called "the Americus", a collection of small realms. I set my epic fantasy tale there, basically a quest where an exiled dragonslayer seeks the dragons' nesting grounds so he can wipe them out all at once and win his return home. Along the way, as fantasies tend to go, he has various encounters and meets different people. However, it comes out in pieces what occurred in the era prior to his own. Reference is made by the characters of a great war between five brothers and how the result of that war shaped the era he now found himself in. Ah hah!

Yes, folks! That same story I invented in my youth reappears as a backstory in my epic fantasy novel. The five princes consist of the twin brothers who are at odds, their two younger brothers, and an older-&-wiser cousin who may be their illegitimate brother. I borrowed my original story and put it into my 2017 novel. Scandalous, I know. Apologies!

But guess what happened next. We experience a pandemic in real life, and we know what that did to society. Yet it ended fairly soon. After initial hesitancy, I started a new novel in which I imagined an extended pandemic which would bring a lot more trouble to society. What would that be like? The characters suffer through much worse situations than most of us did, to a desperate degree, enough to make them finally flee the chaotic city. (Main character kept thinking it was about to end only to find it continuing....)

And so the FLU SEASON trilogy was born, beginning with what was expected to be a single, stand-alone, one-off novel titled The Book of Mom. In what became Book 1 of the series, a teenage autistic boy narrates what he and his never-married mother, a tuba player and music professor, do in escaping a ravaged city for the hope of survival in the countryside. Plan A doesn't work out, of course, nor does Plan B, so they have to head to a coastal island where the family has a vacation home. They will wait out the pandemic there....

So far, so good, as disaster stories go. The first book birthed a second book, forcing me to plan a trilogy. I knew by the run up to the conclusion of Book 1 that a second novel would be necessary; I wanted to know what happens next. I knew what would happen in Book 2: The Way of the Son. The autistic son is on his own in the pandemic-stricken world, fighting for survival, on a harsh journey to sanctuary. As I closed in on the conclusion of that book, I knew what Book 3: Dawn of the Daughters would be about: the next generation's story. It became a tome in itself - my second longest novel after Epic Fantasy *With Dragons - covering the end of the pandemic, the decades of lawlessness, a civil war, and the rebuilding of society, plus the reinvention of "modern" gadgets and utilities. I felt it was a bit like Gone With the Wind but set in post-apocalyptic times.

However, that reconstruction period allowed those who were in position to grab power to build a new society in the mold of an authoritarian regime that worked to repress its citizens, forcing people to believe that the pandemic never happened, like a perverted mirror of Orwell's 1984 novel. In Book 4: The Book of Dad [coming June 2024], the youngest son of the Book 3 heroine tells how the next generation of their family struggles to endure the repressive city. But, as is the case each time, another story springs forth....

Book 5, which I'm calling The Granddaughter's Tale (with a wink at Chaucer), follows the daughter of Book 4's tragic hero as she attempts to start a children's band in a small western town called Skinner Canyon, set on the edge of the wilderness. As it nears completion, I'm pleased that I've managed to keep it significantly lighter than previous novels in the series. I've borrowed a plotline from the old musical The Music Man but flipped it on its side. Later in the story, when our heroine travels east, she learns of the advancement of armies from Quebec down across Ontario and over Michigan to claim the city of Chicago and rename it Chicageaux. What? Mon Dieu! Quelle folie! You see, in that story of the twin princes, the Quebecois have indeed conquered the northern tier in the future, requiring the combined armies of the Americus to push them back in the 2900s; however, the city of Chicageaux retains its by then centuries-old name.

Over the course of the whole FLU SEASON series, we have lived through more than 130 years since the pandemic started.

And now you know the rest of the story! I have tied in once again the vast timeline of the long-planned medieval epic of my youth. This is how that timeline begins. 

Back as a teenager, amidst the on-going oil crisis, I had imagined a lack of oil destroying civilization. The idea still works: the collapse of society because of the long pandemic shuts down all industries, including drilling and refining. There is no more fuel for vehicles, as we experience in FLU SEASON Books 1 & 2. In Book 3 everyone is using what horses remain yet uneaten. In Book 4, we have reinvented electricity but its use is limited to the major cities. In Book 5, moving out west, we have even more restriction on electricity - almost as though we had returned to the 1890s.

This is how my grand timeline begins. Although I avoid stating years in the FLU SEASON series, I measure the pandemic (real and in the series) as beginning from 2020 - and six years into the pandemic, it would be 2026 when Book 1 starts. Several generations tell their stories. It is therefore around 2150 when Book 5 ends. More happens, thus preventing civilization from truly returning to what it was before the pandemic, and by the years approaching 3000 we find the land divided into city-states that battle each other over resources. My vision is thus rewarded, rekindled, and fulfilled. Now (already into my retirement), I still have the opportunity to write that youth-created novel - if I am not seen as copying G.R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series, a worry which has put me off from digging into my epic. 

However, I will need something to work on in the final years lest the final years hasten to their end before I am ready.

There could be a Book 6. I have ideas - two, in fact. I might even merge them. That would take us further into the future, say another 50 years, to about 2200. That should be far enough ahead in time that I won't be tripped up by real events happening or not happening within the publication window of the book.

Anyway, happy reading and, for me, happy trail writing!

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(C) Copyright 2010-2024 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

To Blog or Not to Flog (the Romantasy Question)

I almost did not write this. The frustration at trying to get the ol' computation device to agree to work, minus the hassle of it updating itself always when I just want to start writing, is a major obstacle and can zap my ideas right out of my head. Plus, there is a thunderstorm this morning which usually would cause a delay in starting up the electronics. But I have to blog - have to write another blog before the month ends, just to keep the streak alive.

It's become an odd ritual: the need to post something at least each month. Sometimes I have something to say which I think might be interesting to others. Other times it's just me playing with words. I know that all blogs must end sometime or other. It's the nature of blogs that they lose meaning, falter, and eventually die a slow, wordless death. 

For today, I had thought to write about "what readers want to read" because on a distant day I had the idea to give my opinion on this topic. Now I can't recall what I was going to say. The prompt likely came from writers posting on X (formerly Twitter, as we all have to say now), giving the usual complaints. I think it targeted Romance writers or writers writing the latest new genre Romantasy, a fantasy story with strong relationship elements or even a full romantic storyline. Half wanted to keep the genre separated, the other half were fine with mashing them.

I've written an epic fantasy (EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS, if you are curious) which had a relationship in play aside from all the usual fantasy tropes. I thought it worked well: not heavy-handed, not gushy-lusty, just right and it doesn't go on the whole book but only in one arc (it's a big book). People will meet and then a relationship is born. How it may develop is the arc, take it or leave it. Things happen in epic fantasy which push characters apart or bring them ever closer together, following the natural, human proclivities.

I've also written a kind of Romance in which they do not stay together at the end although most other tropes of the Romance genre are present. I dubbed these as anti-Romance. The trick is that one character must grow and "win" while the other one fails and thus becomes a "tragedy"; you have a satisfying ending because one character triumphs in her own way, not actually defeating the former lover but growing out of a rut, let's say. I wrote a classic in this subgenre called A BEAUTIFUL CHILL. It follows a tumultuous relationship set on a college campus (it was my MFA thesis).

I have even put a Romance at the center of my Vampire trilogy, beginning with A DRY PATCH OF SKIN. Two people meet, are impressed enough with each other to want to keep meeting, and there you have it. The problem is one is turning into a vampire, following his family's genetic tradition while the regular human woman struggles to keep wanting to be with him in his increasingly disgusting form. That sounds like a subgenre, right? A kind of Romanurbanvampiretasy story, right?

Which brings me to my latest series, the FLU SEASON trilogy, beginning with THE BOOK OF MOM. I have to call it science fiction because it is set in the near future, in a long pandemic, and has apocalyptic tropes. But it is about the relationships of the characters mostly: how they meet, how they get along, how they survive or do not. It's really a series of overlapping romance arcs on top of the survivalist apocalyptic setting (but no zombies; we keep it realistic). As in nature, people get together, make babies, the babies grow up and meet other grown babies and there come more babies who grow up, and so on. Until marauders and militia come by. Real life happening on every page.

So what about reading? Lately, I've been drawn to biographies and family sagas. Perhaps it's related to what I'm writing, trying not so much to get ideas for my writing but to get myself into a frame of mind where I come up with my own ideas. Same with seeing a movie: I don't draw ideas from it but seeing it opens that part of my mind where I can create my own ideas. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. I loved the film Maestro (had some nostalgic music school connections, etc.) which opened up a writing flood for my own novel. I recently saw Dune part 2, but had no similar writing explosion afterwards. Yet Dune is a family saga, I'd argue; about a romantic relationship, too - albeit thwarted by political demands and environmental challenges. But it did not transfer to my work-in-progress.

In my MFA program, I arrived with a handful of plot-driven stories in hand, but I was taught to put characters first. I learned the lesson ...eventually. I can say with some degree of confidence that my novels have focused on who the characters are, what their problems are, how they try to solve those problems (all within a particular setting which comes with its own special problems). They also tend to have some kind of romantic relationship(s) within them because it is a natural human thing to do, regardless of what else is going on in the story. My cranky professors (long passed by now) would be pleased with how my bookshelf has turned out.

UPDATES: 

FLU SEASON 4: THE BOOK OF DAD is ready for the publication process, having passed through the hands of my favorite beta reader and a few adjustments made to this 1984 mirrored twin ("Big Sister" etc.).

FLU SEASON 5: SKINNER CANYON BLUES (or similar title yet to be determined) is more than half-finished with a plan for how to end it already in place. This final volume should be available in December or next spring.

Wait, what? Final volume? Well, I do have an idea for another story based on the same set of characters (pick a side character, get a new story). We shall see what develops. At any rate, writing something, anything keeps me going, so saying I'm done writing is not a good thing to do. Not realistic, either.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2024 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

What An Amazing February! More music & updates!

What a month! The shortest month is always full of so many events I can hardly keep up. First was the Day of the Groundhog (not the horror film), in which I simultaneously began the process of moving to a new 'writing studio' (at which I shall also eat, wash, sleep, and collect mail). Next came my child's birthday, which is no longer a big deal now that she's well into adulthood. Then, be still my quickly  anticipating heart, the Kansas City Chiefs, my hometown team since I was a little boy (I watched Super Bowl I live on TV), played in and won the Super Bowl, which was their second in a row and third victory in four visits in five years, an incredible feat! That after a 50-year absence from the final contest. 

Then their celebratory parade which followed was forever marred by tragedy when two youths who should never have had handguns decided to settle their personal dispute in a crowded place. The month continued with more moving (great exercise, all this lifting of heavy boxes of heavy books) and more writing/revising/ editing on the latest works-in-progress (more below). Lastly, comes my annual visit to doctors and receptionists to prove I am still, for now, alive.

Nothing I write next can possibly beat the month I've had so far.

In my previous blog post I spoke of how music had inspired me. In fact, I have used music to inspire my writing far more than any writing has inspired my music. As a music student I looked for texts I could set to music but did not apply them to many songs. My own music tended to be purely instrumental, although I did manage a fair setting of *Coleridge's long poem "Kubla Khan", using four singers, a woodwind quintet, piano, and a gong. Another text setting of a poem eventually lost its text when I couldn't find a singer but did find a violinist willing to play it (with piano accompaniment) for my senior composition recital.

It may be no secret that I listen to music constantly while writing and revising - anytime I'm working on a novel. I choose music which fits the story, often that which fits a particular scene, and play it over and over as I see the story in my mind and try my best to describe what happens. I've never really paused to think about how that works. It's both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing to be able to see a story unfold like a movie playing in my head. It's a curse when I can't shut it off to sleep or do other things I need to do.

In my more recent novels I've included lists of the music I listened to while writing the novel, believing that readers may also enjoy it. I suppose my music listening began with my first published book, AFTER ILIUM (2012). Began, I mean, in the sense of selecting particular music to aid my writing. For After Ilium, which is the sordid tale of a young college graduate who meets an older woman on a tour of the ruins of Troy (also known as Ilium), I listened to the CD of Secret Garden's Songs from a Secret Garden (1996), which to me provided the ideal soundtrack if the story were to be made into a movie. The sweeping, often soaring melodies, and intimate, vaguely exotic harmonies fit the setting of the story perfectly.

Another example is my MFA thesis-turned-complicated novel A BEAUTIFUL CHILL (2014). This story, what I deem an anti-romance, involves the up-and-down relationship between the new professor on campus and a self-absorbed art student. She is from Iceland, so I immediately listened to Icelandic music, or music which could be Icelandic in feeling. Yes, Bjork. Yes, Sigur Ros. But other music as well, like Miriam Stockley's album Miriam (1999), which features evocative music that put me right there in the scenes of ancient Iceland (part of the subplot). And music from other Scandinavian musicians which created the spiritual space for me to create in.

For a science fiction novel (actually a trilogy) like THE DREAM LAND, which is partly set on another world via an interdimensional portal, I struggled to find the right music. In fact, I struggled finding the best way to start the story which had boiled in me for years. It wasn't until I happened to purchase a cassette of Enya's album The Celts (1987) that I could proceed. The music was for a documentary about the Celts, but for me, well, I saw the mighty Zetin warriors on the wild moors of Tebbicousimankale in what would be the opening scene. Other music I came across which might not have seemed to fit, actually did. I found that film music works especially well: no lyrics to get into my head and all the drama I need for the scene. Video game music also works the same way. The soundtrack for Silent Running (a 1972 film about a lone gardener on a spacecraft) composed by Peter Schickele was a major influence on the writing of the first novel. I did see the movie but it was many years prior to me rediscovering the music and using it to inspire my writing. Also, the music of The Moody Blues, especially the albums Seventh Sojourn (1972) and Octave (1978), provided several cultural references (e.g., interdimensional travel, etc.) which I used to support two teen nerds becoming rulers on another planet.

You get the idea. The music is not simply a lovely background for my hobby but a key that unlocks and opens the mind. For me, it is necessary and I can rarely write new material without the right music. Yes, when I'm far enough along in a new manuscript I may write without listening to music if I have to; probably the music, having heard it previously, remains in my head. To this end, I maintain a large library of CDs and digital (MP3) tracks in every style, genre, mood, and instrumentation. I recently, in my moving, carried five boxes of CDs from one place to the next. I have as much more music thankfully on portable hard drives, flash drives, and on my computer itself. I will never run out and continually add more.

UPDATE

I finished my pandemic/family saga trilogy FLU SEASON (click for the series page) and immediately started in on a fourth book, which I dub a sequel to the trilogy. 

FLU SEASON 4: THE BOOK OF DAD is complete and undergoing revision at the moment. I expect it to be available by summer. Revision was delayed because I immediately began a fifth book in the series, following the grown daughter of the Book 4 protagonist. It is about half-way at present. I know how it will end but I set it aside to revise Book 4 and get it ready for publication. I look for Book 5 to be available in December 2024. 

Will there be more books in this series? I don't know. If a compelling plot presents itself I may pursue it. Otherwise, I try to end every book as though the reader could stop there and be satisfied. But we shall see.

*See the error on the score? Samuel Coleridge Taylor is a music composer; Samuel Taylor Coleridge is the famous poet.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2024 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The Musical Life of an Author

Greetings for 2024!

I hope you had a lovely holiday period and are rested and ready for all the new year has in store for you. As for me, I continue dabbling at yet another novel in my FLU SEASON series, revising Book 4 and starting Book 5.

However, for those of you who may only know me as a writer of dubious fiction, in my previous life I was actually deep into music and known as a tuba player and composer. A strange set of circumstances indeed! I was reminded of that recently with the Netflix film MAESTRO, concerning the life of Leonard Bernstein. This blog post is not so much a review of that film, which I enjoyed very much, but the odd connections seeing this film brought back to me of my previous life.

Not long ago I watched another orchestra conductor movie, TAR, which turned out (after googling some info) to be entirely fictitious. I still enjoyed the film and it brought similar memories back to me. So I couldn't help but compare them and my own sordid career in music. Truth be told, after high school I became a music student at the Conservatory of Music in Kansas City. My goal was to become a Classical music composer at a time when rock'n'roll was king and top-40 pop ruled. I had written some music during high school and arranged others for our concert band, jazz band, and choir. (I also had a knack for writing stories at the time, mostly of science fiction or fantasy.)

At the Conservatory, I studied music theory and the related courses which had me composing more music. My instrument there was the tuba, which I had been playing since junior high school after starting on French horn at age 7 before switching. I was the principal tubist in the wind ensemble, the only tuba player in the orchestra. As part of my education, I learned to play several other instruments, including harp, mostly so I would know how to write music for them. Later, when I transferred to my parents' alma mater for my final two years, I also played in brass ensembles and had my music played in different situations and performed in  concert. It was a big thrill for me but I knew I was not up to the standards of the composers I admired.

At the Conservatory, I worked in the music library where I had easy access to all the music of the world. I knew Leonard Bernstein as a famous conductor and knew he had written West Side Story, Candide, and three symphonies - I listened to all of them, following along with the scores. This was a common way for me to learn how to compose and orchestrate music. One day I found a set of recordings titled The Unanswered Question, which was a series of lectures by Bernstein linking music and language which I found utterly fascinating. I listened to the reel-to-reel tape as I followed along in the accompanying booklets; I had no access then to the video version of the lectures, which are now available on YouTube. That was the limit of my Bernstein knowledge: conductor, composer, music teacher - nothing more about his life, relationships, provocations, and so on ever entered my understanding in those days as a music student.

So I eagerly anticipated the film and was pleased when I first watched it. It was not so much a documentary of his career but more a study of his relationship with his wife and their children during his career. This presented much that I hadn't known or considered wanting to know previously. Throughout the film excerpts of Bernstein's music filled the soundtrack, as appropriate. I didn't recognize many of them. One that caught my attention was the scene where Bernstein is sitting at his piano composing a new work. We hear the music as we see a close up of his pencil drawing notes and lyrics on the score paper set on the piano, an experience I, too, had often done in my youth. The music we hear is from his composition Mass, a re-envisioning of the traditional Latin mass. That music caused me to recall that I, too, had written a mass and I rushed to the nostalgia trunks in the basement to dig it up.

Not to toot my own horn, but... I scribbled out what I called a mass on green score paper, marking off the sections of instruments and chorus, using the traditional text. I was not a religious person wanting to create a mass so much as a composer who found inspiration in other masses, particularly by Berlioz, Mozart, and a few others. I recalled I had titled my mass the "Brass Mass" because it began with a magnificent brass fanfare. I got obsessed with finding it and twice I pulled out music I thought was it only to find as I read through it that it was not the Brass Mass but something else. Eventually, I concluded that "Brass Mass" was only my nickname and not the true title written at the top. At any rate, there it was: most of a mass, ready to be copied neatly from my scribblings! Oh, but that was long ago and far from where I am today as a scribbler of novels.

From the movie, I had to look for my CDs of Bernstein music. I opened the first of several boxes which I knew contained my collection of CDs and there - right on top - was the double CD box of Bernstein's three symphonies. It seemed to be an omen. Of course, I listened to them once more. I followed the scores on YouTube. I watched performances on YouTube with Bernstein conducting. I ordered a CD of Mass and went through it several times. I became a little obsessed with my music career that had been put away for so many decades as I switched to English and became a professor of English instead of Music. I feel a little sad that I made that turn, but it seems now is too late to dive back into that pool and hope to swim again. I still have that trunk full of music manuscripts, most of them never played even in a read-through session. I include here a few excerpts as a kind of proof. 

"Only the Music Moved" was a composition class assignment: we had to set the text to music. This is my version. You are welcome to play it, perform it, and enjoy it.

As for the subject of the film Maestro, I can see and perhaps understand the creative drive that pushed him, confounded him, and gave him pleasure. His was an uncanny life and career, so unlike those who preceded him (conductors and composers) and so forward-thinking in many respects in forming a particularly American musical genre (musical theater). Reviews have pointed to flaws and inaccuracies, but as a film focusing on the singular relationship at the center of his life, I think it was well-done and compelling as its own work of drama. It definitely is not a documentary or even a docu-drama but truly a work of film art. And I, too, had my period involved with film, once considering being a cinematographer.

But, alas, in Kansas City there were few opportunities I knew of or was willing to pursue. I expected them to open for me, to be invited in, rather than working hard and making connections, schmoozing and galavanting to get a project green-lighted. I was rather shy in those days, although I meant well and had, by my own admission, good ideas. C'est la vie! I had my chance. Nevertheless, I did succeed in my new career: switching to English, writing stories instead of music (but always using music to inspire stories), and when the publishing world evolved past sending a box of paper around to offices hoping someone might read them and make me famous, well, I happened to get something published. That began a new career for me.

Now my eighteenth novel is soon to be available (part of the FLU SEASON series) and, for what it may be worth, I am happy just to complete it to my satisfaction and make it available to readers. The rest, the remaining steps of the process, is up to readers. I could have written music to make myself happy, and shared it with those who might also enjoy it. But I learned early on how much trouble it was to copy out the parts for an orchestra work versus typing a single copy of a novel manuscript then taking it to Kinko's for additional copies to send out. I'm reminded of a 66-page single-spaced novelette I typed out during high school that I offered to a friend who passed it to another friend who passed it on around the school. Everyone loved it (a rip-off of 1984). I doubt that a piece of music would have been heard by as many fellow students as that stapled manuscript was read. Such is life. The experiences we have somehow inform other experiences and we reach a point where we see those connections and life makes sense.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2023 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.