Another Year Falls

Finally! Finally I see some signs of autumn emerging from the caustic heat of summer from which I've hidden for nearly five months. This moment, this seasonal threshold, is significant to me, my psyche, and my life. Of course it marks the start of the new school year (or a few weeks into it), but it also marks the beginning of the end, a metaphor I've carried with me for decades and often imbed in my writing.

So I sit back and feel the turning as I think of what to do next. A new project.... Something which will spark my interest, jump-start my creativity, give me a reason to get up in the mornings or stay up late at night. Some activity which will keep me going, for these are the last autumns I will see. After I sent my latest novel, THE MASTERS' RIDDLE, out into the world, I swore to everyone that it was my final novel. I knew I would still write something, perhaps try to complete some works left unfinished, or start something new. However, I would not dare myself to finish it, much less publish it.

Because that's how time is. I've sat back since July (when The Masters' Riddle came out), reflecting on the writing I've done. Mostly it has been for my own enjoyment, I have to admit. Someone famous said, and it has been often repeated by writing teachers, that we should write the stories we want to read. For the most part, I've done that. Which is the reason I still enjoy going back and reading them again. It is rather like returning to a favorite movie; you know what happens but you want to re-experience it all again. Like you're at a carnival and you want to go around again on that big Ferris wheel.

And so, one night a couple weeks ago, I pulled from my shelf one of my novels: EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS. Why this one? I'm not sure. Perhaps I had a dream which, upon waking, left a smudge of something in my consciousness which dovetailed strangely with an episode in that epic fantasy novel. So I wanted to go to that scene in the book, like picking up a piece of candy, but instead of jumping right there I started from the beginning. Suddenly I was determined to read it straight through, all 660 pages of daring do, merry mirth, strange cities, and all the damn dragons! 

I was pleasantly surprised. The novel opens with our hero in his element: hunting dragons. I've always recalled that it started slow, and despite many revisions, I continued to believe that. Upon re-reading it, however, I found it moved along quite well. It had been just long enough that I had forgotten many small details which upon reading again seemed quite delightful and clever. I enjoyed the troubles our hero gets into and how dragons or magic save him, or else,  sometimes, others manage to help him save himself. 

At any rate, the scene I was heading toward when I started reading the novel again is the argument between our burly hero and the new girl, literally a woman warrior who will not let our hero be the leader. They are camped for the night while on the road, escorting a lady ambassador back to her home. And it goes a little like this:

The woman [warrior Naka Wu] squatted and sliced off some meat, then extended the dagger to him [our hero Corlan], a juicy cut dangling from the tip. He reached over and plucked it off the blade and plopped the morsel into his mouth.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, chewing.

“We must work together now,” she said. “Like a clan. Everyone to do a part, sharing.” She shot a glance at Rupas [sidekick hunchback] across the spit from her. “We could call ourselves the Wu clan.”

Rupas laughed. “Corlan might object to that. He started this clan—if that’s what we should call it: a clan. He is a Tang by birth. It should be the Tang clan.”

“That’s right,” Corlan muttered, chewing.

“Now I am in charge, you say. I wish to call us the Wu clan. There is a beautiful sound to the words.”

“Why are you even riding with us?” asked Corlan in a sour voice. “What of your rebellion?”

“Fa Mei led the rebellion. She rules in Covin now,” said Naka Wu. “I did my part, as you saw. I will return and be part of her reign. She has promised me a high command. With my sisters, we initiated the first step. Now I am bound by my code to escort the ambassador home.” She regarded Jemma [ambassador], sitting beside Rupas. “However long that may be.”

“Another detour from our original journey,” Corlan muttered.

“So many detours,” Rupas mumbled. “It’s a wonder we are not all dead. We’d better avoid cities from now on.”

“The Wu clan is not afraid of cities,” said Naka Wu boldly.

“The Tang clan is smart enough to avoid unnecessary dangers,” Corlan countered.

“You two should work together,” said Rupas. “It doesn’t concern us what we call ourselves. Let it be the Tang-Wu clan and we will all be satisfied.”

“Let us be the Wu-Tang clan,” said Naka Wu. “And we will not be afraid of any city yet we shall not be so bold as to enter any city without caution.”

“Danapo is a safe city,” Jemma cut in.

“Fair enough,” said Corlan, tightening his jaw.

“Then it’s done: we are the Wu-Tang clan,” said Rupas, clapping his hands. “Compromise!”

Amusing perhaps, even if you don't know the reference to a pop music group. The novel is full of puns and malapropisms. It's part of the fun I had writing the thing. At the time, I called it my tour-de-force, declaring that I had said in it everything I wanted to say about life, death, civilization, men and women, law and religion, and the value of dragons. I had nothing more to say on any topic after this novel. That is the goal, I think, of anything deigned to be called "epic". Meanwhile, I seem to have started a new novel, the post-apocalyptic plague story, different from the one I started in March 2020 but soon gave up when real life became too much like art.

So it goes....

I think I might reflect on past works, share some insider information, reveal some quirks or problems I had in writing it, critique my own efforts. It's always good to return to once important things and see them again in what may be a new light. That process is helpful when put in order the materials of one's life and lifeworks.

Read more about EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS in this blog post and this one.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2021 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.

DeConstructing the Language of Sebbou

My latest novel is out now. THE MASTERS' RIDDLE is a science fiction epic in which an alien being is captured by members of a mysterious race. The bulk of the novel is this alien's attempts to return home...to his home planet of Sebbol. Although the novel is in English, of course, there are moments when the alien speaks - which I do partly for flavoring the scene, partly for expressing emotion, partly for fun. I like alien languages.

I first encountered alien languages in my science fiction trilogy, THE DREAM LAND, set partially on the planet of Ghoupallesz. There I had the principal language most residents used, plus three languages used by peripheral societies. With a background in linguistics, I relished the opportunity to create full-functioning languages (and even included some quirks so they were not so perfect...like real languages). (Read more about inventing languages here.) I used them where relevant whenever we have:

1) the names of things with no equivalent word in English;

2) the phrases spoken by the native speakers;

3) the phrases spoken in reply by Earth characters who know the native language;

4) the words/phrases which are added here and there to help lend authenticity to the scene.

I recognize that having extensive passages in other-than-English is tedious for a reader. Thus, I try to limit myself to following a few rules when writing with alien languages (or Earth languages other than English, for example the Hindi spoken by Indians in my India novel about tiger hunting).

Rule 1. When the character hears spoken words which happen to be in the other language, I write out some of it. This is literally what the character hears, even if he doesn't understand it.  I can then explain what it means, as appropriate to the scene. For example, an announcement over a loudspeaker.

Rule 2. When a character literally speaks in a language other than English - because the character does not know English or chooses to speak in another language - I either provide a simple unobtrusive translation or otherwise tell the reader what was said. I do not want to give up the authenticity of the scene by avoiding the foreign language. For example, whenever it is vital that the character speak his own native language (which I give at least a clue as to what it means).

In THE MASTERS' RIDDLE, there are intelligent beings from several worlds. I give each its own language although for the most part I tell the story in English. How can they communicate with each other? An advanced species would have elevated means of communication. First, there is vocalization...which is not going to be understood no matter how well heard. Next is the attempt to communicate visually with facial expressions, hand gestures, and making marks on a surface or circumscribing designs in the air. I have them doing the 'Vulcan mind-meld' in some instances, where one being touches the other and through that neural network connection they can communicate. And a few other clever methods.

But what do they communicate? Not a system of language which one of them would not know. They can only communicate raw ideas - simple ideas, basic information without nuance. No metaphors, idioms, or slang. Even when two beings knowing different languages communicate through telepathy (no physical contact; mind to mind) the effect can only be this fundamental level of ideation: e.g., 'Go, sit, there.' rather than 'Would you please step over to that rock and have a seat there?'

When I worked on Ghoupallean, the main language used on Ghoupallesz, I devised the complete grammar and lexicon, made a thick dictionary of the language, learned to speak some of it - to the dismay of people around me in public venues. For THE MASTERS' RIDDLE I held back. Sure there are a few phrases our hero speaks in Sebbou, the native language of Sebbol, described variously as chirps, squeaks, and squeals. Not a commanding language at all. It is difficult for this alien to lead the ragtag gang of other species but he possesses a unique feature which gives him an advantage: his inner Ru. 

The inner Ru is a homunculus-like entity inside the mind, a miniature man, which both advises and translates. I imagined this little being much as I pondered the drawings of Plato's allegory: a cave with someone writing on the walls. Much of the writing was actually drawing, a visual language, thinking in images rather than abstract marks that made up a formal script to represent the phonetics.

Therefore, Sebbou takes the form in the novel mostly as category 1 above: things which do not directly translate into English, primarily the names of flora, fauna, and geologic features of planet Sebbol. There are a few direct phrases which help show the way of thinking of the Aull who live on Sebbol, the way myth informs their society.

In one scene of instruction, the mentor speaks a Sebbou phrase taken from our hero's mind:

“The Process is what you do with your mind to tear space apart and project body through tangent opening. Do with power of mind, which can be greatest force in the universe. Bio-chemical, electro-chemical energies created in the brain of an advanced creature, applied to engineering problems, can move mountains—sometimes planets. Or, as you say on your world, to ‘raise the stars’.”

Toog’s face flashed bronze. “^sT’_n Ra’_q.”

“You remember expression from childhood? Took from your mind, from memories of childhood training, so can understand. Is true. This power, when focused on right spot and increased to right magnitude can rip curtain between two sides of universe. At such a moment, while rending this curtain, step through to other world.”

The phrase is a common expression and means something significant to our Aull friend and it makes him press on with his lessons. The initial /s/ is a polite hiss which initiates all speech in Aull society. The /T/ with apostrophe represents /t/ with a trailing vowel huff. The falling /n/ is a gutteral utterance. The /R/ is a strong consonant followed by a longer vowel represented by /a/ and the same apostrophic huff. The final /q/ is an emphatic grunt which acts as a conclusion in Sebbou. Therefore, 'Tin rai q'  means “raise the stars”. 

Let's try it:  s (high-pitched hiss) T (with a huff) n (deep in throat) R (almost trilled) a (normal vowel, add huff) kh (unvoiced growl)

Not bad. It's easier if you have the oral apparatus of the Aull throat and mouth. They are, after all, descendent from amphibians. If you can't do it, don't worry. You got the idea. (A glossary is included at the end of the book, if you're curious about Sebbou.)

I wanted to get on with the story rather than indulge in linguistic play, so these kind of direct expressions of Sebbou are kept to the minimum. I tell what they all say, as they communicate mostly through mind-meld or telepathy. The languages are not the main point of the story but are something real that needs to be accounted for in the story. We cannot pretend beings from different planets can all speak the same language. That would not be realistic. I am not a member of Starfleet and I do not possess a handy communicator device (although the Masters in one scene do employ a similar machine). 

But supposing these various characters happened to be in this setting with this problem? How would they communicate with each other in order to solve their problem? That's the point we have to operate with throughout the book. It's all about what's real.

NEXT: Summer vacation reading list.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2021 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.

DeConstructing the Aull of Sebbol in THE MASTERS' RIDDLE

After a lifetime of imagining and the past 12 years of publishing, THE MASTERS' RIDDLE is my first novel with a non-human protagonist - not counting the tiger in my previous book Year of the Tiger who had a human-like way of thinking. I've always liked to set challenges for myself just to see if I can pull them off (see my effort in Epic Fantasy *With Dragons, or perhaps check out my vampire trilogy). For the most part I think I succeed. In every one of my novels, whether contemporary literary or science-fiction/fantasy, I delve into the gray areas of the human condition, exploring the why and why not of the situation. In part, that may be my own attempt to understand why we do what we do. Sometimes the best way to explore the human condition is through the mind of a non-human.

Our hero is called Toog, a member of the species called Aull living on the planet they call Sebbol. (You can read about the origins of The Masters' Riddle in my previous blog post.) As you learned in my previous post, our hero originally was basically a human from the same world I used for my Dream Land trilogy, then gradually transformed completely into a non-human entity as I wrote the story. Here I will describe Toog as the kind of Aull he/she became by the mid-point of the novel.

Artist's rendition of Sebbol

The planet Sebbol is in a system many light-years from Earth, a lucky find for the mysterious Masters who arrive through interdimensional portals and capture whatever beings interest them. Toog is caught in one sweep and brought back to the Masters' home world, a frozen place he soon discovers. Sebbol is a warm planet, tropical, full of watery resorts and lush in foliage - at least in the district where Toog lived. Like most planets, the terrain and climate vary from north to south. With only a 6 degree tilt (compared to Earth's 23 degrees), Sebbol turns on its axis in 30 "short-cycles" which equate to hours. The planet revolves around its sun, which they call Uf, in 668 "long-cycles" which equate to days. One revolution of their sun is called a "sun-cycle" (translation from Sebbou). All of this makes for a world with little change in seasons and long days and long years.

Because of its watery nature, the Aull evolved from amphibious ancesters. The Aull continue to conceive and are born in a nutrient-rich swamp they call a "skarg" - as opposed to a more open water area called "abo". The skarg is dense water, usually choked with plants and usually containing other fauna, but it is to these murky bogs that the Aull go for mating and return to deposit their "orb" when it transmigrates out of the female's belly to become a self-contained sphere. The orb absorbs nutrients from the skarg until it has grown sufficiently that the parents retrieve it and bring it to their abode.

At first, the "springling" is only a translucent sphere with rudimentary arms and legs, living in a swinging basket which simulates the ebb and flow of the water in the skarg. The arms and legs continue to grow until everything is transformed into an upright being able to walk and swim, called a "midling". Young Aull, like children and youth in most societies, learn the rules of their community and learn skills which are useful to the community. When an Aull has reached the milestone of no longer birthing new orbs, they achieve an emeritus status and are sought for their wisdom.

Aull society is divided into villages which tend to specialize in food production. Toog's village focuses on gardening, bringing vegetables and fruit to market. Other villages keep animals used for food. There is much trade among villages. The society is rigidly ordered, headed by a shaman - who is led by a high shaman in the district - and members of the village each have a role. If an Aull cannot work they are shunned or exiled, or the family may feed them from their own portions. It is not a cruel method; rather, it is necessary so that food stocks are not needlessly given to members who cannot contribute to the village - as happens in the story.

The Aull are born androgynous, neither male nor female, and it is the village shaman that determines whether the springling will be male or female - depending on the village's situation, trying to keep the sexes equal in number and to provide for the skills needed. Toog happened to be designated male, although it is the female whose sexual appendage is longer when unfolded (see the appendix in the book for further explanation).

The Aull are a pre-industrial, mostly agrarian culture with religion and myths and customs, generally a pacifist society who are forced to prepare to fight the Masters. However, Aull are ill-equiped for such battle - unlike other beings captured by the Masters that Toog encounters. The adult Aull has sleek silvery skin over the head, torso, two arms and two legs. The rubbery arms end in hands with two pairs of opposing fingers, the second finger a knuckle longer and tipped with a digging claw. A heel pad can project to act as another finger or as a defensive weapon. The legs end in feet which seem too large for the body but serve well in watery situations where swimming is required. Each foot has four clawed toes which may flatten as the soles harden depending on the environment.

Moving from the warm, tropical environment of Sebbol to the harsh, arctic clime of the Masters' world causes an Aull's skin to change from silver to blue. Continued stress will cause the blue skin to fade to dull gray, even white, and become nearly translucent when in dire conditions such as starvation.

The body of an Aull is roughly humanoid - that is, looking like a human - but is not classified as human. The globe-shaped head features two large eyes in round sockets, no eye brows or brow ridges, and the eye lids open and close in a spiral motion like a camera lens. The nose does not project but has two flaps which can close it while underwater - or in a gaseous environment. The mouth entrance is small and round, even rows of uniform planet-cutting teeth inside. Due to the round head, there is no chin and the neck is limited. Inside the body, the skeleton of an Aull is more cartilage than bone. It has been noted by scientists that the Aull has a heart with three chambers and a stomach with three chambers. The Aull also has three small organs for which there are not equivalents in humans. 

A poor representation of an Aull

It is also noted that in times of stress, the Aull's suppressed defensive measures may become operative. Barbs and spines may erupt. A noxious gas may be produced to halt attackers. Electricity may be compiled and "shot" out at attackers. The best weapon, however, may be the extraordinary breadth of knowledge of the Aull's "inner Ru" - the homunculus which every Aull carries inside its head. (I have provided an appendix in the book which explains the latest examination of this phenomena. Another appendix explains the mating ritual in more detail than above here.) 

A few times, another being refers to Toog as a "frog" or "toad" or notes his/her amphibious heritage - but this is not to say that there is a direct correspondence. Some of Toog's features are more congruous to an octopus, for example. It is generally impossible to say that this is like that or the Aull is just an intelligent "frog" walking upright. The Aull is a separate and unique species of intelligent being who simply wish to be left alone - certainly not harassed by the Masters.

Other beings captured by the Masters run the gamut of other upright, two-legged creatures to worm-like beings, four-legged beings, reptilian and mammalian mostly. In the early days, the Masters took whatever seemed interesting. Later they took only the kind of beings that were best suited for certain uses. For example, the Xmburrhaltin beings, large fur-covered ape-like creatures were a good fit for the slave labor camps. Other beings had properties from which medicines could be developed - or industrial strength glue. Yet the being called Ra'aa'al was merely a spirit that inhabited other creatures' bodies. It is an iguana-type creature who Ra'aa'al inhabits when Toog meets the being from Ra’a’am’mas’sandiit. While many modern sci-fi films tend to employ insect-like alien beings as the ugly enemy - I do have one mantis-like creature just for show (and an out of place human for comic relief) - the Masters would likely kill first any such insect things they encountered rather than bring them back.

Some of the captives, once free, are determined to fight the Masters while others just want to go home. Yet how can they go home if home is on another planet? The only way is through the interdimensional doorway guarded by the Masters. 

I looked far and wide for artwork which most closely resembled the creatures in my head but, of course, did not find. I tasked my cover artist with making a collection of the main characters like a movie poster but that idea proved too ambitious. We decided to focus on Toog, the main character, but drawing him as described was daunting also (and given my artist's other commitments). So we opted for the single-image cover: a clawed hand, looking rather ominous, which may to some readers suggest a horror story but which is only meant to suggest a non-human protagonist.

Anyway, it is done now. I know how it ends. Are the Masters destroyed? Do the beings from other worlds get home? Is balance restored in the universe? Are the Aull of Sebbol saved from extinction? Only Toog will know the answers when he solves THE MASTERS' RIDDLE.

NEXT: The language of the Aull, Sebbou

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(C) Copyright 2010-2021 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.

Independence Day: Not the Movie

Dear Independents,

Most of the past several Julys (Julies?) I've been posting your summer reading list and then fleeing to parts unknown. Not this year. Last July was the lockdown. Before that I did a driving tour of Canada. Prior to that I went to China four Julies in a row to teach at a university. Before that I taught a class at my own university. Earlier Julys have faded but I remember a lot of summer classes as a student, a few days near a beach, more days indoors next to the air conditioner, and a little dip in a pool or two.

However, as fate would have it, I have a new book launching today. It's a science fiction novel about an alien (undocumented non-human being?) who through no fault of his (her? its?) own is captured by a mysterious race (species?) that tortures and enslaves him. This cruel treatment leads him to want to escape, moreover to return to his home and be with his family. But there are obstacles, of course, or we wouldn't have a good plot. 

There is no direct connection between this story and Independence Day, commonly known as 4th of July. I looked back to past July blog posts and found none that had an American holiday theme. So I suppose I'll have to start one since I'm still around today.

Yes, it's been a tough time lately. Almost everyone has suffered in a multitude of ways. I think I've skated by fairly well unscathed by all the happenings, both viral and social. I've never been a big rah-rah kind of guy but I can get choked up by some displays of patriotism, the same bald-faced nationalism that most nations have on their birthdays.

Then part of me says "now wait a minute" and I can easily list some things "we" (people long gone ahead of me?) got wrong, did wrong, or failed to do when it should've been done. It's a complicated history, we understand, and one that cannot be told in black and white. We try, but the grays (not the aliens!) are overwhelming. Take any geographical area, any group of people, any planet of intelligent creatures, and there will be the good and the bad - and for movie buffs also the ugly. 

There: I said it. Now let us work toward returning to the righteous path, staying the course, keeping to one's lane, and/or being the best we can be. It's not too difficult. Some people I know like to say we should treat people how we would want to be treated. This may seem a bit narcissistic to some of us. Or not. All is in the mote of the eye of the beholder. But we can still dream, can't we?

(No, I'm not drunk. Just short of sleep and typing too fast. But you get the idea.)

So why not give my latest novel a good read, be filled with the wisdom of First Goddess and hope you return home before it's too late, as our friend Toog wishes. It's kind of like The Shawshank Redemption but with aliens. Actually I've never seen more than a passing minute of it. And, yes, an interdimensional portal. And alien languages, some inter-species seduction, and new military hardware on a frozen, dying world. Perfect for a read beside the pool or on the beach.

Note: there is an actual human among the captives, but this is just for comic relief.

Thanks in advance. Enjoy!

Sincerely,

The Author

Here is a handy dandy link to the Kindle version (click on the word 'Kindle').

Here is a professionally designed link to the Paperback edition (click on the word 'Paperback').

NEXT: The insider info dump about THE MASTERS' RIDDLE.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2021 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.

How to make a Monster

We learn from Mary Shelley's use of the word in her novel Frankenstein that 'creature' is not something hideous and prone to violence but that which has been created. A crucial distinction. The word 'monster' similarly means not a vile and dangerous creature but something of a larger than usual size. 'Monstrous' is the adjective form which describes a large animal, for example. And yet, in our modern day these two terms have taken on and held frightening connotations.

I actually did not read Frankenstein until I was an adult in graduate school. I had seen many versions of the story in film form, however - and unfortunately. In fact, for my Romantic Literature course, I made a project of comparing how the story and its themes were twisted in different films, from the fairly faithful to the absurdly deviant. Man playing God was the main theme portrayed, and the consequences of doing so, a warning to us all.

As a teen reader, I pored through the science fiction library, the more fantastic the story the better. Many of them involved astronauts exploring alien worlds, often encountering unusual life forms which challenged them. The astronauts would call them monsters. The fact that earthlings met the normal beings of another planet and considered them monsters was both amusing to me as a young reader and to me as an adult, as words are my special interest and the foundation of my career as an English teacher.

As a young adult, I read Michael Moorcock's great fantasy novel The Eternal Champion, in which the hero is drawn from his normal everyday life into a fantasy world where he is expected to fight - literally lead battles - for one kingdom against a rival kingdom. Besides the questions of How did this happen? and How can I get back home? are questions about doing the right thing. Eventually he is captured by the "bad guys" and comes to learn that they are actually the "good guys" and he should be fighting against the side that he initially was supposed to fight for. So he does. Then, instead of returning home in a flash-bang moment, he is pulled to his next adventure, and on and on through a whole series.

That turnabout situation blew my mind as a youth. The way one side was portrayed as good, the other evil, and only the rugged outsider could tell the difference, or see the truth. This twist or flip-flop made the book monumental for me. It stuck with me and perhaps surreptitiously influenced my current forthcoming novel THE MASTERS' RIDDLE. One difference is that I tried to employ only non-humans in my cast of characters. Another is the transition of the "bad guys" from a cruel mysterious race reduced to a pathetic, sick individual who needs the help of one which his race has enslaved and tormented. Yes, the ol' switcheroo.

At one point in the story, one of the creatures declares that they are not monsters. This could be determined to mean they are not dangerous or undesirable or unintelligent - in contrast to how the Masters treat them. I recall the tagline from the film The Elephant Man, about a Victorian-era man so deformed he was put in an institution until it was discovered that he was quite intelligent and erudite despite his hideous appearance. At one point in the film he cries out to his abusers "I am not an animal!" 

Now take the idea further: a race of interplanetary explorers - accessing other worlds via an interdimensional doorway - who collect creatures from across the galaxy, at first for their amusement, then for experimentation, for slave labor, and when they have more monsters than they can use, keep them locked up in prison cells until they can be used. Because I like a good twist, let's follow through this story seeing it from the point of view of one of those creatures that has been captured. Like the hero of The Eternal Champion, this captive doesn't understand why they were captured and doesn't know how to return home. Getting home is the driving force in the story. It is also a tale of survival, revenge, and what it means to not be human.

More inside information next time. 

THE MASTERS' RIDDLE is coming soon!

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(C) Copyright 2010-2021 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 Idle of March

Time is fleeting if I am to include a blog entry for March. This may be my last chance to pen a few words on something arguably trivial. Or it may serve to jab a blade into precisely that niche where it will do the most damage. Sort of wake you up. But that's March for you. Never know what you'll get.

So I looked at posts in March from past years of this blog. The way those posts have gone, I was well underway in new novels, vampire stories for the recent years. Before those years was an epic fantasy novel. Usually I would get the idea for a novel in the fall and dabble with it, working out the plot and doing research, so that by spring it had form and function. Then I would write fast and furiously through the summer and edit/revise during the fall. 

However, the great swath of sloth I experienced during this past year threw off that timetable. Because of the general malaise impacting the reading public, I delayed the launch of a new novel (EXCHANGE) from March (pre-spring break) to late May (pre-summer vacation). That shift threw off my next novel, which had been written years before, thankfully, but had been undergoing recent revision so that I believed it was finally ready. I put out YEAR OF THE TIGER in October, keyed to the time at the story's climax. 

Thus I did not get a new idea to play with for Christmas. What I did do, while working on the publication details of the other two previously mentioned books, was to work on finishing a novel I started in a National Novel Writing Month  competition a few years back. I've blogged about that process previously. What this all means, however, is that I have nothing ramping up for the coming summer rush. This new science fiction novel will come out by the start of summer, just in time for pool and beach (or cabin and motel) reading. More on this exciting new book next time.

Given these time-adjusting events, I mistook yesterday for Friday. I also mistook Friday for Saturday. Everything is mixed up now. March begins with Pi day, which I only acknowledge by helping myself to a reasonable slice of pie. Or three. Then comes St. Patrick's Day when I serve myself corned beef and cabbage. Then comes my school's spring break. No break this year. Many schools elected to skip the week off and eliminate a week at the end of the semester. The thinking is that it is better to not have students go away, pick up some infection, and return to campus with it.

But I digress.... As I've been working on edits and revision of my forthcoming sci-fi novel, titled THE MASTERS' RIDDLE (mind the apostrophe placement), I've gotten ideas here and there for other stories. So I open a file and jot them down. Barely three sentences for most of them. I note that I've now collected about a dozen during the past year. One of them may interest me enough to give it a go, and perhaps it will prove to be novelworthy. One never knows. That's the drawback of being only one. 

So here it is, a blog post at the end of March. Enough, I dare say, to qualify, yet short enough so as to not waste too much of one's time. While I wait patiently for book cover art, I shall wish you and yours a very merry April - which happens to be National Poetry Month, thus providing me with ample blog post fodder in the form of doggerel I shall dabble anew!

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(C) Copyright 2010-2021 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 Skinny on Anthropomorphism

The clock is ticking on my chance to post a blog in February, so here it is: something weighing on my animal brain. What am I talking about? Animals acting like people. How? Why? Why not?

My last novel YEAR OF THE TIGER and my forthcoming novel THE MASTERS' RIDDLE both make use of that ten-dollar A-word writing gimmick we learned back in 5th grade: Anthropomorphism. 

Don't be afraid. We have all experienced anthropomorphism since our earliest days of toddlerhood. We grew up on cartoons. We had to read books full of animals that talked like people. It's all around us. Some of us speak to our pets as though they were our children. Others speak to children as though they were animals - probably. Sometimes we assign human qualities to inanimate objects, too, but that is more likely personification. 

Think of such famous works as Animal Farm by George Orwell, a description of the Russian revolution - which wouldn't have been nearly as understandable if it had not involved farm animals. Think of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and the talking animals in that book. Think of the movie The Lion King - essentially Shakespeare's Hamlet reset in Africa. Or Pinocchio, in which an inanimate doll comes to life! Read more here.

Why do it? I never understood the tendency to make children's books and movies feature animals or objects acting and speaking as people. Who first thought that children could relate to those substitutes for people better than to people themselves? There must be some twisted psychology behind that decision. But it stuck and we grew up on Saturday morning cartoons: Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, and other Looney Tunes, up to the introduction of anime - about the time I turned off the TV. (I also grew up watching the original Flintstones but they were humans not animals.) My guess is that animals (soft-focused, cheery hued, dull-toothed) are kinder, gentler for children to relate to - unlike the evil human adults in their lives.

How? The process of anthropomorphism requires that we imagine how a certain animal would think if it could think as a human. Of course, the variety of ways a human could think is myriad anyway, given the wide ranging cultures we have in the world, so...well, uh, anyway.... Let's take a dog. What fills a dog's average day? What might you think about throughout the day, following your usual activities, if you were a human? Try to think of yourself in the four-legged, long-snouted body of a dog. What would that be like? Talk about your life as a dog. There are movies and books where that happens. 

I think the purpose, in many cases, is to try to engage some kind of empathy in the reader or viewer. We get to understand another "person" who is even more different than us acting in our normal situation because that "person" is not even a person but an animal with all of the animal characteristics zoologists have enumerated for that animal. Introducing a character who is an animal adds a special new angle on the events of the story. That angle can be merely metaphorical, as in the case of most animated tales, or can be realistic and sincere - as I have done with my two novels.

Obviously a novel involving a tiger can go only two ways: let the tiger be a tiger or have the tiger be confused by some human characteristics. You can read about the origin of this novel here, but I will add that back in those early days I was reading a lot of Roger Zelazny and also books about Hinduism and reincarnation so it's entirely possible my idea came from that mix: an animal who had somehow gotten a bit of human when born into his next body. Then the age-old mantra takes over: What would that be like? 

YEAR OF THE TIGER has parallel story lines which eventually merge. In the tiger's arc, he acts like a tiger should act (I did lots of research on tiger behavior!). Then I gradually introduced anomalies which the tiger doesn't understand - not until it is too late. This allows readers to follow the tiger's journey, empathize with the tiger, and get a sense of what it is like to be a tiger, especially once it decides to hunt men. It was never intended as a trick or gimmick but, rather, me incorporating a cast member on equal billing as the human characters. How do I know how a tiger would act if it had human-like thoughts? Well, there's a Disneyland ride where you get to pretend you're a tiger and.... (Kidding!) I'm a writer, a professional imaginer, that's how!

Then, just to make life even more of a challenge, I had to go full-anthropomorphism by writing a character who is not human at all, also not exactly an animal. That required a kind of deep-imagining in a deliberately uncomfortable way. THE MASTERS' RIDDLE involves an intelligent being, living on another planet with a different civilization and different ways of being and thinking, who is captured and must fight to escape and find his way home. The difference is that with a tiger, I have recorded tiger traits I could use and I had human traits to employ with the tiger. Here, however, I have an alien who must, by definition, be very different from our everyday human. It is a kind of anthropomorphism although we have the equivalent of a human being, hence not an animal. Our alien hero encounters other captured aliens, many of whom are not the typical two-legged upright humanoid beings often considered to be the intelligent ones. We have been trying to address diversity, after all. The entire novel is a study in what it's like to not be human.

Probably my next novel, if I should have the strength to write one, will return to having ordinary people living in an ordinary neighborhood somewhere in an ordinary pandemic-free preserve far from any crumbling cities. What would that be like?

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(C) Copyright 2010-2021 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.

Why I'm not joining the Nanowrimo cult!

It pains me to use the word cult but perhaps that is the most accurate word. Let's try to keep things in perspective, however: it's a good cult. You might say it's "cultilicious"!

November is the month of worship in the cult of Nanowrimo (what the uninitiated may call the "National Novel Writing Month"). It is chiefly for those whose nervous fingers cannot avoid the succulent keys. I have never been able to participate because of its unfortunate scheduling. You see, November is the fattiest meat of the fall semester and tough to cut; it's when I have the most day-job work to do. Sure, I could write a draft of a novel in a month--if I had no day job to tend to, if I had no other disruptions, and if I had the idea in advance. But that is really the challenge of it.

That sticker was from last year, when I did participate. I had no idea but grabbed an unfinished sci-fi novella that had been sitting around for years and plunked it into the microwave for 90 seconds. Then served it to my Nanowrimo muse. I "won" by completing 50,000+ words during the 30 days of the month. Granted, I started with a couple thousand and an outline but I finished with more than 55,000 words, anyway, thus earning me another cool sticker.

November for me is typically the lull season. The past few years I have had ideas stew during November and take root in a Word file sometime in February. I pound the keyboard through the spring months and cruise into a final page in the middle of the summer. I revise and edit into the fall and voila a new novel is born. Then it hits me: the lull. Writers know what this is and dread it. The Lull Month is full of doubts. Did I just write a bunch of crapola? Will I ever get another idea? What in the world will happen to me if I can't write anything more?

Then spring comes--although, for me, it's usually in December or January. And the process starts over again. November? Not the best time for me.

In 2014, I wrote my medical thriller vampire novel A DRY PATCH OF SKIN on the above schedule. This year, I wrote a new novel about an orphaned Inuit girl who grows up and saves the world (forthcoming), A GIRL CALLED WOLF. But now I am in the lull month again and have no ideas. I still have not finished the sci-fi novel from last year's Nanowrimo but it would be unfair to try to use that again to achieve some dubious fame. 

There is nobody in my circles who would be impressed at me writing 50,000 words in a month. Those who know me, know I can do it. This past summer, I wrote 55,000 words on a laptop while sitting in a hotel room in Beijing and teaching a class on the university campus across the street twice a week. (I blogged about that experience here.) However, I've always been a quality over quantity type of person and go through many waves of revision, tweaking a word here or there until I cannot contain the urge more.

But I digress....

I shall cheer on those who dive once again into uncharted waters--for what could be more uncharted than the lexical spaces within the gray matter of a twisted mind? 

The goal for celebrants of NaNoWriMo is to create from sacred mind-fire a 50,000 word book. By definition, that is the minimum length for something called a novel. That seems to be easy enough. My previous novels have been in the 72,000 to 128,000 range. However, let us not forget the time factor: one month--with the day job looming precariously over all.

When we are embroiled in the vagaries of daily life, we cannot simply sit down at a given moment and type out a story! 

Good luck to all, and to all a long night!

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(C) Copyright 2010-2015 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.

Are You a Winner, too?

As many of you know, November has been a particularly arduous month, mostly because I chose was compelled to join in all the fun of the National Novel Writing Month. I've had to decline in previous years because November is a busy month in the academic calendar.

However, this year I needed something to jump-start the writing juices after giving birth to my Vampire novel A DRY PATCH OF SKIN--which is still viable even a month after Halloween. (Get it for your loved ones for the holidays; they'll scratch you for it. Makes a great gift for relatives who have skin issues.)

So into #NaNoWriMo I dove with an opening scene and some notes of how it proceeds leftover from junior high school. I started off at a good pace, then that day job and its attendant duties reared its ugly head as I knew it would. I struggled to add a few paragraphs between classes. I worked in the evenings to cobble a few pages more. Weekends were all writing time. Suddenly I was hooked on the story and the writing became an obsession. 

My simple sci-fi tale of the little alien guy captured and taken away from his home world for no apparent reason, forced to work hard labor, who learns and grows, and is determined to escape and return home, filled my mind for most of every day. Part of the fun (of making him suffer, ironically) was inventing his home world's landscape, flora and fauna, social life, and religious beliefs. I tried to rethink how this society would see the universe and how they would communicate. I did not want to invent a whole new language as I had done for THE DREAM LAND Trilogy (e.g., Ghoupallean, Zetin, Roue, and Danid). (Makes a great #CyberMonday gift or a nice box to stuff under the tree!)

Inventing a new world slowed down my writing so I gave myself permission to write crap. Just get the story out...err, umm, down. Tell what happens, toss in a scene here and there, charge ahead to that 50,000 word goal line. And so I did. In fact, I hit the 49,999 word mark just three weeks into November and rested with my toes barely touching the line for a couple days. Then I leaped ahead. I always knew I'd have the final week free to write thanks to a full week holiday break from school. I knew no matter what I achieved in the month, I could catch up then. I even dared to edit out a few hundred words, lowering my word count. Cocky, I know.

By the time I entered this extended Thanksgiving break, I was past 50,000 words. I dared take a couple days off. I knew this story would not be finished at 50,000, not even at 55,000 words. I settled at a comfortable total of 55,555 words but upon validation on the NaNoWriMo website, I was credited with only 55,396 words. However, based on where I am in the story, I predict about 75,000 to 80,000 to finish it. And the final two twists will Blow Your Mind! (This is the fun part of writing: blowing readers' minds.) 

Originally, I was setting the story on the same world that I used for THE DREAM LAND Trilogy but in its NaNoWriMo incarnation, I made it an entirely new world, a warm, lush, vibrant planet where the indigenous intelligent life runs around half naked. Too bad for our mild-mannered hero Toog that he is taken to a cold, frozen wasteland to labor with a menagerie of beings taken from many different worlds or kept in a frosty stone-walled prison cell until he is needed--or that he must hide in a chilly cave after he escapes the prison and the work camp. Now how will he get off the planet to return home to his family? 

That is THE MASTERS' RIDDLE, of course. (Spoiler: It involves an interdimensional doorway, similar to that central trope used in THE DREAM LAND Trilogy.) And if Toog does make it home, what will he find there? Will his society have left him behind? Or will he suffer the same kind of time-differential the astronauts in the film INTERSTELLAR experienced?

Coming to an ebook reading device near you probably sometime in 2015.

And so I won...like everyone does who plays...similar to a youth soccer league, I suppose. And here is my certificate to prove it! 

Also available for your #CyberMonday consideration are two non-sci-fi novels that will leave you tearful and distraught by the final page: AFTER ILIUM and A BEAUTIFUL CHILL.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2014 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.