28 January 2018

Men Reading Women

With the passing of science fiction and fantasy author Ursula K. Le Guin, it seems a good time to reflect on the women authors of my life, especially in science-fiction and fantasy where the percentage has been more skewed. I realize now how influential they all have been, not only in my development as a writer (often of sci-fi and fantasy) but also as an ordinary, thoughtful human of the male persuasion.

When I was a young reader, science-fiction got my attention. Imagining other worlds, traveling in space, or dealing with futuristic possibilities was my thing. I started at a young age reading such sci-fi authors as Ben Bova and Robert Silverberg. Also an author named Andre Norton. Mostly these were short stories, often in an anthology edited by Silverberg. One day, though, I was surprised to learn that one of my favorite authors was a woman. I thought Andre was a boy’s name! It made me think. 

Boys tend to want to read stories of other boys or men doing things, heroic things. At that age I honestly didn't care what the girls did in stories. More to the point, it mattered little to me whether the author was male or female. It was just that male authors tended to write about men doing manly things (I'm generalizing, of course), so I had no reason to even try female authors. I also did not have much knowledge of how difficult it was for female authors especially in the genre of science fiction and fantasy; I just wanted a good story. My mother pushed A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle on me, one of her favorites, telling me it was a good story, but as a young boy I was not so interested in reading a story about a girl!

Thank goodness, I grew up. Focusing deliberately on a wider range of fiction, literary and decidedly non-SF works, many of them were written by women. I enjoyed them: I got to experience life as a female character, got to understand the issues they dealt with, and perhaps gained from perspective I did not previously know. It was educational. Whether or not the authors were women still did not matter to me as a reader more than what the story itself was. Marion Zimmer Bradley’s books about Arthurian legend interested me, not because of the author but because of the Arthur. Nancy Kress and her sci-fi and books on writing mentored me for a time, as well.

Classic women authors starting with Mary Shelley and continuing through the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen entered my experience in college by making me play along as the man in the pages of their books. I could empathize, to a point, with the women in the novels. That experience helped develop the Romantic qualities which have eventually ruined me. I can’t confidently say, just from reading, that I now “get it” or that I understand all the characters endured and could cheer as they rose up and took whatever position they deemed in the story to be a success. Yet my empathy continued to grow.

In grad school, read Francine Prose and Annie Proulx, partly to see a view of life which I could not see without the lens of a woman author writing about a woman protagonist. A couple years ago I read a teenage romance series by Stephanie Perkins, not so much for the thrills of young love and relationship conundrums but to understand how a young girl thinks and acts. I used what I'd learned from those books for my own novel which featured a young girl. More than research, I deliberately tried to learn to see what I could not with my own experiential eyes. And then a film on cable TV one night prompted me to check out Margaret Atwood’s novels, starting with The Handmaid’s Tale. Now, of course, it has returned in a new series.

Having a daughter further instilled in me the urge to seek women authors for her to read. The Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer became a milestone in my daughter’s life. Inspired, she even wrote fan fiction herself. No matter what word or label you may apply to me and my experience with women authors, I want the best for my daughter, and for her to understand other women’s lives and times, struggles and triumphs. J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series did not impress my daughter. Although written by a woman author, the protagonist was a boy, which turned the problem back around to me.

More recently, as I worked on my own epic fantasy involving dragons, I returned to the novels of Anne McCaffrey. While her dragons and their world are remarkably different from the ones I was writing about, I very much appreciated the craft, the imagination, the pure exhilaration of the world she invented in Pern.  Then the sci-fi/dystopian trilogy by Marie Lu caught my attention as something my daughter might like to read...but I read it first. Before reading these authors, Marian Perera, a fellow newbie, came out with Before the Storm, which wonderfully taught me how women think and act in sci-fi romance. It was liberating just as I was busy composing my own sci-fi trilogy.

Now Ursula has passed on, never to write another novel. Yet we remain blessed to always have the products of her mind, the outpouring of words that frame and construct and fulfill our own hopes and aspirations in years past and for years to come...for the world of make-believe is our world, today's world, forever in disguise. 



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(C) Copyright 2010-2018 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.

07 January 2018

A New Year Full of Blogging?

Well, it seems it's finally that time of year again! Time for the new semester to begin, mere hours away, for I am, as close followers of this blog may recall, one of those of the teacherly persuasion. And, thus, the new semester dawns once more.


Sure, I had the usual holiday/slash/winter break but
 it is never enough to recover from a fall semester which, as usual,is filled with mountains of papers to grade and lessons to prepare and conduct. All part of the plan, of course. I have accepted that plan. After all, teaching writing is the second best thing I know how to do. Writing itself would be the first best thing, by my humble estimation. However, even those marks may seem pale compared to many other writers' marks which I have encountered in my life. Nevertheless....

I like to begin a blog year with a reintroduction. To those who know everything already, I beg your indulgence. 

This blog has no real rhyme or reason to it; it is more often than not the musings which come into my head and go out through my fingertips willy-nilly. On occasion, I endeavor to offer some writing advice, some technique examples, discussions of grammar issues, or similar authorical esoterica. At other times, I will update blog followers on my latest writing efforts or publishing achievements. I may wax poetic on the woes of me whenever the mood strikes me. Sometimes I may have a guest blogger or share someone else's news or book. I may, if you are the lucky few, also bore you will my various travel adventures.

First, you will note the name of this blog. What could it possibly mean? The DeConstruction of the Sekuatean Empire? When I first hammered this blog from hell's own fire and brimstone, I had in mind a place to post the "back material" for THE DREAM LAND Trilogy. Because the trilogy is set partly on another world, the chief political entity of that world, known as the Sekuatean Empire, becomes a focal point. Hence, the title of this blog would make sense: taking apart the history, geography, culture and customs of the place where much of the action of the story occurs. However, as time has progressed, other books have come to the forefront which have nothing to do with Sekuate or its hard-working rebels.

You will also note the list of book titles with convenient hyperlinks in the upper right corner of this blog page. They are not simple decoration but actually serve as keys that open doors to my dementia. Experience them and be enlightened forever more! Or, at the least, be entertained. My writing strives to enfold profound truths of the human condition within pages of action and adventure, liberally marbled with sex and romance and sprinkled with haughty pontifications and jokes best left on the cutting room floor. That sounds a lot like a warning, doesn't it? But it's all in jest. I can assure you that 99.9% of the words are spelled correctly and good grammar is always in use - except for the dialog of those characters who have not been well-educated and then only for the sake of authenticity.

Behold my current cache of verbiage: everything from serious literary introspective relationship drama to exciting sci-fi/ steampunk/ interdimensional adventure or contemporary action/adventure with romantic themes, to the semi-biography of an Inuit orphan girl. I've also delved into the horror genre with a vampire novel (soon to be a trilogy). For further information, click on a book link to the upper right of this blog page. Thanks.
To update you now, I am working on the revision of the sequel to my vampire novel, A Dry Patch of Skin (2014). Approaching the end of the story, I realized the possibilities for further adventure, thus creating a trilogy. This vampire trilogy focuses on medically accurate vampirism and, with Book 1 set in 2013-14, Book 2 and 3 will necessarily be set in the future - 2027-28 and 2099-2100, respectively. I expect Book 2, titled Sunrise, will be out this year (aka 2018). Book 3 will be titled Sunset, which seemed appropriate.

Furthermore, I strive to post a new entry once a week, all the better to take advantage of Twitter hashtags (@StephenSwartz1) such as #SundayBlogShare#MondayBlogs, #TuesdayShares, #Wednesdayblogs, and #Blogorama. I do not hold to this schedule religiously, however - as this month's fare will attest. But I try. You know how life tends to interfere with your best intentions? It's doubly so for writers and teachers. Worse yet if one is both a writer and a teacher. But I'm not complaining. Not really.

In keeping with a "best practices" model of book promotion, I shall attempt to keep blatant marketing efforts to a minimum - except when something new is launched. As always, I expect followers of this blog to read everything I produce and go forth to gather all their family members and friends, coworkers, and just about everyone they encounter in their daily lives, and make them also followers of this blog, readers of these books, and all-around nice people who live to love and love to live, helping all of us enjoy this wonderful world we occupy and yet still be prepared to battle the interstellar aliens who will invade us circa 2345. Or not. The choice is yours, as always. But I have high hopes for you.

Thanks for your attention to these matters. Now carry on making the world a better place for me. And I shall return the favor!

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(C) Copyright 2010-2018 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.