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.

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.

YEAR OF THE TIGER Launches!

Yes, tonight is Halloween, which still comes every October without fail. The customs and rituals remain the same. The weather may be different (we suffered through an ice storm here a few days ago), and nobody has invented new candy. If you want to read a Halloween post, I can recommend one I wrote previously (click here).

Instead, because nothing is normal this year, I've launched my latest novel, YEAR OF THE TIGER, an action / adventure story about the hunt for a man-eating tiger in 1986 (which was, in the oriental calendar, a year of the tiger). Of course, it is much more than that simple straight-forward plot, as compelling as it may be. The theme of hunting can also be taken as the search for pride, power, revenge - anything a human desires and is willing to fight for, including love.

What makes this story special (you may quote me in your review) is the magical realism aspect in which the main character and the tiger seem to share a consciousness. I say "seem" because we are left to wonder whether it is real or if it is only the man's delusions. In the end, does it really matter? Or does it make everything that has happened up to the end matter deeply? 

One Beta reader (two revisions ago) remarked that everyone in the story is corrupt and unlikable. I took exception to that characterization of my characters. Everyone has good reasons for the way they are and why they act the way they do. I chalk it up to basic human foibles which in some of us are taken to extremes. They all have some redeeming quality, too, whenever the situation allows.

Not even our tiger protagonist (part of the story is told through the tiger's point of view - yes, anthropomorphism run amok!) is saved from the curse of being a bad actor. He is, after all, a man-eater - but not without plausible reasons which drove him into that role. Still, he wrestles with himself over his actions and whether they are right or wrong. A tiger that shares its consciousness with a human mind can do that.

Some have described this tale as a "slow burn" while at least one colleague has elsewhere eschewed the "slow burn" description for wasting readers' time setting up the final section which actually is interesting. Yes and no. In the case of YEAR OF THE TIGER, tension does build more or less continuously throughout the story as our heroes get closer to achieving their goal, but events interspersed throughout ratchet up the violence and anticipate the next event. There is no wasting of readers' time with trivial side tracks. That is what revision is for. 

If you like your Halloween with a side of something scary, this novel has its frightening moments - scenes as visceral as any I have ever written, and, perhaps more unsettling, the moral dilemmas which unfold as a result. In the end, we all die a little and yet feel strangely reborn.

Of course YEAR OF THE TIGER is available on Amazon in both ebook format for Kindle and in paperback. In time, the paperback may be available from Barnes & Noble's website - but not in their brick and mortar stores despite me being a "local author". You can read more about the history behind this novel in previous blog posts beginning with this one.

(Note: There seem to be a few other books on Amazon with the same or similar title. Do not be confused. Mine is the only one, it would seem, that actually involves hunting a tiger. You may need to scroll down a bit - or just click on the link at the top right corner of this blog page.)

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(C) Copyright 2010-2020 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.

YEAR OF THE TIGER coming soon!

In my previous blog post, I gave you the whole sordid history of the story that became a novella then a screenplay then a novel and finally a Much Better Novel (read it here). It is the story of obsession, of desire, and of desperation as one man fights to possess his soul, a soul he believes he shares with a man-eating Bengal tiger. 

Don't you just hate when that happens?

As a young sci-fi aficionado, I asked the what-if question that started it all back when I was a teen writer with a big imagination. What would it be like if a regular guy shared his soul with an animal. Of course, it is more (or different) than sharing a soul; it is sharing a consciousness - the ability to see each other's world, share each other's thoughts. 

The story of working out a scientific paradox could only be expanded into the hard realities of a hunt for a man-eating tiger. Lots of reading and a lot of research later, I learned about hunting, about the lifestyle of tigers in the wild, all about India, and the operations of a mental hospital in the 1980s. Once the central conflagration is sparked - by the act which makes our feline hero into a man-eater - the hunters begin to converge.

So here is the blurb - now that I've pre-explained it - which goes on the back cover of the paperback.

In the lottery of souls sometimes mistakes are made. Sometimes one soul becomes split between two bodies.

Karl has strange, violent dreams. He sees the world through the eyes of a Bengal tiger and it's driving him insane. Fortunately, his sexy wife knows a hunky doctor who can help - help her have Karl committed, that is. Locked up, the nightmares worsen as the tiger hunts down the men who killed its mate.

Karl has a plan to save himself. All he has to do is escape, get to India, find that one tiger and kill it. Only then will he have the mind they share all to himself.

But others are interested in joining the hunt. The doctor who put Karl in the mental hospital, fearing Karl will reveal his crimes. And famous big game hunter Colonel John Barrington will come out of retirement, with worldwide media in tow, for one last chance at a man-eating tiger!

And the first page of the text, a prologue of sorts, which sets the stage and the theme: the hunter vs the hunted.

YEAR OF THE TIGER is in press as I type this and should be available soon - like, umm, before the end of this month. Because in a pandemic all we really have is a to-be-read pile which needs to constantly be restocked.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2020 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.

Origins: Year of the Tiger

Remember back to those heady days of high school science fiction? After reading everything I could get my hands on, mostly set off-world or in make-believe worlds, I decided I wanted to write science fiction stories, too. I wielded a non-electric Smith-Corona typewriter in those days and typed out all kinds of stories late into the night. Father was happy to hear the constant clicking of keys all evening but Mother had to knock on my door repeatedly and tell me to go to sleep. But I couldn't stop. I had stories the world needed to read.

My longest typewritten effort was a "1984" rip-off that went 66 pages, single-spaced. I double-stapled the pages together and passed it around among my circle of science fiction aficionados at my high school. Of course they loved it. That was not a time for criticism. I was encouraged to write more. One story I wrote was probably the result of cross-pollination of four stories I had read, likely by Robert Silverberg, Brian Aldiss, Roger Zelazny, and Isaac Asimov. Who can say for sure now?

That story had a regular guy - an adult, rather than a teenager - fighting with himself over a monster that torments him every night, haunting his dreams. (Shades of teen angst?) To rid himself of the unpleasantness of his sleeping hours, he becomes determined to go kill that monster. The problem is that the monster lives on another planet. Also, people on Earth think he is crazy and so he is locked away. (More teen angst, no doubt.) But in the futuristic setting, anything is possible and he does escape and boards a spaceship for a hunting expedition on an alien planet. I titled the story "Doubles".

I used that story in a Creative Writing class in college and got all kinds of constructive criticism. I got a B overall on it, along with praise for my great imagination. The professor suggested that I relocate the story to Earth because, with the amazing setting of the original story, what the protagonist does doesn't seem so difficult - and we want the protagonist to struggle. So I took my 35-page single-spaced typewritten manuscript and did a very hard rewrite to set the story on Earth. I thought of what creature on Earth would be close to the monster on that alien planet and I came up with... a Bengal tiger.

I tried. I really did. But such a drastic shift proved too daunting for a typewriter, even the refurbished IBM Selectric my parents got for me for Christmas. However, graduation and a return to college to learn something else gave me the opportunity I needed. I took a Screenwriting course with an adjunct professor who had worked in Hollywood. We all had dreams of getting a movie deal from our screenplays. (I actually got my "1984" rip-off turned into a screenplay optioned for a year; then the script was dropped.) I used what I learned in class on my "Doubles" novella and it became a feature film screenplay.

Long after the class had ended, I was still working on that screenplay. With my parents away on summer vacation, I pushed myself to finish the remake of the hunting story, staying awake 5 hours and sleeping 3 hours...for five straight days. I thought I would be famous just for that determined effort. Fortunately, the result was a fully reset story opening in New York City and ending in India with a tiger as the antagonist. I was proud to have made the switch - even though it was no longer science fiction. Later I would learn about the genre called "magical realism" and feel much better about the whole project.

But wait! Not even close to half way yet. Not getting any interest from Hollywood, I realized I should turn the screenplay into a novel. The prospect of crunching out 60,000 words scared me. That's why a screenplay was so much better to attempt. Now I just had to fill in the scenes that were already outlined in the screenplay. Easy-peasy. Of course I worked on other stories through all of this, plus I was working at a full-time job, too. Life took a lot of my time but I returned and returned again to the "novel" many times during my young adulthood.

When I got the opportunity to live in Hawaii (Thanks, U.S. Army!), the tropical scenery sparked my imagination and the writing of the novel progressed rapidly. (Yes, I could not put my writing on hold for several months of full-time duty, so I packed my manual typewriter and a spare ink ribbon cartridge in my suitcase and my fellow soldiers in the barracks enjoyed the key-slamming after duty hours almost every night.) Out in the wild areas of Oahu, I could see a tiger and feel what it would be like to hunt and be hunted. When I returned home, I was close to finishing the manuscript. When I did, I sought an agent for what I had renamed YEAR OF THE TIGER, having learned about the oriental calendar while in Hawaii.

In those days of yore, still pre-internet, we printed out the manuscript, double-spaced, and put it all in a box and included return postage if we wanted it returned. (Later, agents would state up-front that they would "recycle" the manuscript rather than send it back.) Mailing a box of paper cost about $25 at the time, plus the $25 in postage stamps for the return, slipped inside the box - with a self-addressed stamped envelope for the letter accepting or rejecting the manuscript, sent separately from the 4th class postage returned box of paper. Sending that baby around took a lot of time (6 months was average) and costs added up.

Finally I got an agent who was interested and, after paying a modest reading fee because I was an unknown author, they offered to represent my novel to publishers. Hot diggity dog! My agent tried for a year to push it, then gave up. A list of criticisms had to be addressed. I fixed everything and sent it back - but that's not how real life works. No do-overs. Once rejected, always rejected. So I put the manuscript away and worked on other things. I let life take over, let it come close to ruining me. I moved on to other science fiction stories - and in my MFA program also contemporary, literary stories to broaden my oeuvre. 

Much happened. Then, in 2011, I got excited by Amazon's novel competition (ABNA) and submitted what I thought was my best novel, A BEAUTIFUL CHILL, a campus relationship story that was my MFA thesis. I got a little ways through the competition before failing. Next year, same deal, different novel. I went sci-fi, using my interdimensional novel THE DREAM LAND, and got a little further before failing. But I got noticed and - long story highly shortened - I hooked up with a publishing group and my first novel, AFTER ILIUM, a contemporary adventure with age-gap romance and an exotic setting, which had been rewritten from a novella inspired by a graduate course in Classical rhetoric, was published. Thus, I was encouraged to go back to my manuscripts and see what else would be good to publish.

I gave them a good revision and sent them off. I finished a long-forgotten book and I wrote completely new books in several genre. But YEAR OF THE TIGER still sat on the shelf while newer ideas took my attention. When I went to Beijing, China to teach a summer class at a university there, I had plenty of idle time in my hotel room. I had seen the sites on two previous vacation trips so my desire to write and revise was stronger than my desire to go out in the smog and heat to see places I had already seen. So I took out that manuscript - on my laptop - and read & revised. It was pretty good in this iteration, just needed some polishing, some tightening. I felt it was ready to go.

But then I got involved with the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) competition and started something new. I put the tiger tale aside. A couple years later, I returned to it and gave it one more pass. A beta reader had some concerns so I addressed them. Magical realism covered some of them. My earlier research on India and tiger behavior was supposed to cover others. But I double-checked everything anyway. I checked the characters' accents, too: American, British, Scottish, Australian, and Hindi. (I'm a linguist, after all.) I decided on a new format which, I felt, would make the story more mythical - the "magical" part of magical realism.

Put it aside again to work on EXCHANGE, a contemporary crime thriller, based on an idea that suddenly hit me in 2019. I had to work on it Right Then! Ok, now it is YEAR OF THE TIGER's turn to hit the websites. For reals. It's finally going to happen. The long-awaited second-cousin of my all novels.... 

In fact, it was the first novel-length manuscript I ever produced. I did have a long post-nuclear apocalypse story (call it a novella) prior to YEAR OF THE TIGER. As an early work of mine, it is a favorite; perhaps that was the reason I keep returning to this story of madness in its many forms. There is a deeply human element embedded in the story which I kept pulling out a little more with each revision. I like how its beauty juxtaposes its visceral aspects. I like the obsession of its characters. I like the final twists. Now it is ready.

NEXT: The Blurb

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(C) Copyright 2010-2020 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.

Re-Writing the Vampire Genre

In the world of vampire stories, there are two kinds: the purists who insist that vampires must be this and that, have this and that, and be able to do this and that. Or those who believe vampires can be something different than the so-called traditional creature the purists put on stage. For most of my reading life the genre of the supernatural has not very much interested me. I've read some I've seen movies, and they always seemed hokey. Yes, I went there.

As a science fiction aficionado, anything that did not seem based on science or scientific plausibility was phony and fake. I could not enjoy something that did not resonate as possible. Even fantasy novels (The Amber Chronicles, etc.) I could enjoy only if the explanations of "fantastic" phenomena made sense within the context of the setting. In my career of encountering vampire literature, mostly tangentially, I did like the story possibilities but they seemed more like "magical realism" than anything else: a realistic story that relied on one significant "magical" feature. Now, if the magical element could be explained in medical terms.... Then add cyberpunk, dystopian tales, and the push of YA literature, and the urban horror genre was born. (In my opinion.) Certain tropes became required - which is a challenge to me; I must go differently!

So in 2014 I had little interest in writing a "vampire novel". My academic colleagues had a good laugh when I stood up to announce my publication - anathema to their scholarly work, of course. The reason for A Dry Patch of Skin to even be written was my outrage (yes, outrage!) at the latest incarnation of the stock character in the Twilight novels and subsequent movies. My young daughter was hooked and I tried to explain to her the true nature of the affliction. A real disorder I had seen a report on years ago. I tried so hard to explain that I began writing a story to illustrate the transformation, basing everything on research into legends and into the medical side of it.

Most readers (including 4 doctors) have been satisfied with my realistic depiction of a normal guy being cursed with poor family genes which cause him to transform into the hideous creature visually identified as a vampire. And he was all set to start enjoying his life, with the love of his life, when the first symptoms of the transformation appeared. What a tragedy! One other feature of the book was that I was writing it in the same time and place as the story, as the story was unfolding: Oklahoma City in 2013-2014. The story literally ended a week after I finished typing the draft. (More about the research in this blog post.)

So, one and done, I thought. I had shown everyone how vampirism actually works. It had none of the supernatural powers many stories employed. But it was horrific nevertheless if the reader could empathize with the hero's tragic transformation. Satisfied, I went to work on other books in other genre. However, the ending nagged me. Tragic, yes, but what would happen to this fellow (a surrogate for myself, too obviously)? Eventually I began dabbling in the future. How would he be, say, ten years in the future from when Book I was published? More interestingly, how would the world be in ten years? Thirteen years on the calendar from when Book I ended; that is, 2027-2028.

Thus, the one-and-done became a trilogy. Once I started Book II, Sunrise, I knew it would have to be three. As any good author does, I put myself in the place of my protagonist, thinking as he would think, then allowed him to carry me through his adventures as I took dictation. I was never quite sure where he was taking me but I found the adventure interesting. As I kept to the dictum of "medically accurate", the story became more difficult to realize. I tried to keep it within the borders of biological plausibility (and I believe I succeeded), but the plausibility of world events was more unsettling in the future. (More about Book II in this blog post.)

Now Book III, Sunset (coming in February 2019), concludes the trilogy by taking readers further into the future to 2099, and with that timeline, more change in the world and less "medically accurate" elements. But I've not gone full-blown purist! In 2099 vampires are a distinct version of humanity, genetic superiors, worthy rulers of a subjugated "bloodling" underclass. Thanks to the Lord of Evil Himself, who has made the world over to benefit His vampire brethren, with help from His mistress. But that is not good enough (bad enough?) for others among the nobility of the Empire of Europa (encompassing the whole of Europe from the English Channel in the west to the Dnieper River in Ukraine, from southern Sweden south to Portugal and eastern Turkey), its skies blackened to prevent sunlight from ruining a perfectly good day. Most shocking is the abandonment of technology, the tool of surveillance and oppression of the prior generation, ugly symbols of the non-vampirian past.

However, all is not as it seems, scheme upon scheme in play, and I trust the reader will not be onto the true nature of the plot too easily. In the end, order must be restored, of course, or else there would be a fourth book. And yet, as I like to do, I left a twist upon which I might someday take up the keyboard once more....


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(C) Copyright 2010-2019 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 Wonderful World of Projection

In the world of science fiction writers there is the trope of the present reality being projected into the future. Take what is happening now and extrapolate how it might develop logically ten or twenty or a hundred years in the future. H.G. Wells did this with The Time Machine, speculating how humanity would divide into Eloi (dumb surface dwelling cattle) and Morlocks (hideous underground consumers of Eloi). Writers of both utopias and dystopias have done the same thing, as far back as Plato and The Republic. Why?

Perhaps it is a desire to assure ourselves, in the case of the utopia, that good times are coming, or, in the case of the dystopia, that our lives could be far worse than they are now. In fiction, when writers try to predict the future (in my experience as a reader), there are two ways: 1) leap far ahead in time so that nothing of today remains and there is no need to consider a timeline of progression of social, political, technological development. Or, 2) start with the way things are today and project them into the future in a logical way. The former works well if the story is set, say, ten thousand years in the future; the latter works best for a 20 or 100 year setting advancement. The point in this latter method, I believe, is expressly to show how today will become tomorrow.

So I've tried that method with my so-called medically accurate vampire trilogy. My point then was to expressly illustrate the medical aspects of vampirism. Book 1 starts in 2013-14, the same time period in which I was writing it. In previous blog posts I explained how I took the issues of today and projected them 13 years into the future for Book 2. In Book 3, we go to 2099 - not a huge leap in time but a significant chunk to deal with in terms of showing the changes that are possible. So a Book 1 which was grounded in science had to stretch a bit for Book 2, and now Book 3 is allowed to speculate much further and by necessity introduce some good ol' sci-fi (i.e., "speculation based on science"). 

And then there are the usual vampire tropes, or features, readers expect to see in vampire novels. There is a lot of blood, of course, lots of throat biting, lusting for blood, blood starvation, hibernation, etc. There is the trope of vampires being associated with bats - when the "vampire bat" was named after the fictional character and lives far away from Transylvania. There is the attempted explanation of the origin of vampires, of the legends which circumscribe the phenomena. There have been glittering vampires and those who have become hideously disfigured. There have been alternate histories written based on vampires rising to power in real places. In the genre it seems there is a vampire style for every reader. And we can enjoy them all.

I chose from the start to take the "disease" seriously, a genetic disorder which runs in families - which fits many of the ancient reports of vampire-like people (research!). There is also a curious correlation with the ethnic group residing in the isolated tracks of Transylvania, an area settled by large numbers of Hungarians, and that is the propensity to have Type AB blood - so rare that only 5% of people in the world have it. (Read Book 1 of the Stefan Szekely Trilogy for an explanation of how their blood type can change back and forth - and with the change comes physical abnormalities.) 

Then there is the projection: what is now becomes what will be. For example, take politics. Nationalism seems on the rise in the United States and in Europe, a backlash against recent government policies and the results of those policies. Regardless of how you may feel personally about such matters, for the sake of the story - the sake of a good, realistic, plausible story - let us say that trend continues. We then would find nations breaking out of the European Union and going their own way. Geographic and political pressures may force the breakaway nations to ban together. Project a little further and that group becomes an empire. 

Take another example: technology. We love our social media so much today but already we are seeing problems with data collection and misuse, with identity theft, with other internet-related commerce such as cryptocurrency. It would not take much for that grid to come crashing down. An electromagnetic pulse in the atmosphere would wipe out all electronic systems for miles around, crippling banking and utilities. Back to the pre-electronic age we go. In another way, social pressures could result in rebellion against such systems, or a government might ban the internet (already being limited to citizens in several countries today). It is easy to imagine - to project from today - a society where the modern, the electronic, the technological has been rejected. People would go about by horse and carriage again instead of electric cars. But I digress . . . 

"In the multiverse all possibilities can be projected simultaneously."

It makes for interesting thought experiments. The what-if scenarios are played out. The thinking goes that by projecting a situation into the future, we can see where problems today exist and repair them so the "awful" future that could happen will not happen. Projection of happier times and a more pleasant world, even a paradise of free love and ice cream for everyone, is also a scenario which may have dire consequences. For example, everyone is so comfortable that nobody works, nothing gets done, society falls apart, blame ensues, people form blocs and fight against each other, thus transforming a utopia into a dystopia within a generation. Or is that just me observing our world today? 

As one great writer reportedly said, "Every work of literature [regardless of its setting's time and place] is a reflection of the author's [present] situation."


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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.

The Deep Dark Secret Truth

Lots of people ask me why I write and how I write. Well, I can never seem to understand exactly what is going on behind the scenes but I'm glad the muses are hard at work on my behalf. I think it all began with the first sparks of a story in my childhood which became, in 2012, my second published novel The Dream Land. As the story continued through a trilogy, this first volume was re-titled Long Distance Voyager, or The Dream Land Trilogy Book I: Long Distance Voyager ...if you want to be accurate. Just this week I happened to pull a copy of it off my shelf and began reading it for the giggles. Nostalgia, I suppose. I am rather enjoying reading it, amazed at my youthful self and the strange stuff I thought up back then. 

The Dream Land Trilogy began as a simple YA story, safe and innocent for adolescents. It was a tale of a boy who was visited one day by "aliens" - the aliens in the story resembled mice, or perhaps, the hamster he once had as a pet. In actuality, the boy was me and I was not actually visited by alien mice. 

Well, that's one of the secrets. What that boy did do was to take some pipe cleaners and yarn and make some play creatures that looked like mice: clawed feet, fuzzy bodies, tiny ears sticking up out of their fur, and a yarn tail. Evolution then caused them to gain clawed hands and lose the tails. The boy's mother told him that his story was like one she had read long ago: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. The boy had never read it - and refuses to read it or see the film version even today as an adult, chiefly for political purposes - because he feared people would say he was just copying the idea.

As the boy grew, he kept the story secret, lest anyone steal his idea or accuse him of stealing someone else's idea. And as he grew into a high school student, the alien mice further evolved into more human-like beings, though still small in stature, something akin to child-sized adults. They described their world to him and explained all of their customs, and this allowed the boy to create maps of their world and flags of their nations. He was even able to design football helmet logos for their football teams - which was a shocking development inasmuch as they did not play the sport on their world.

And speaking of their world, the boy-turned-teenager somehow heard the name incorrectly from the alien mice visitors, something like "Gupal". He used the word to indicate the visitors themselves ("I played with the Gupals all afternoon.") and their planet ("My friends all came from the planet Gupal.") and so on. In high school, however, as the teenager was becoming more widely read (but never The Hobbit!) he began to decypher the language of his Gupal friends. His more sophisticated understanding of linguistics allowed him to be more correct, more precise in his construction of the language. Thus, "Gupal" became the significantly cooler word "Ghoupalle" and the planet whence his companions originated became "Ghoupallesz" and their language was "Ghoupallean."

Then, one dark and stormy night, a story began. It was years later and he was a working adult, far from his stories. While home for Christmas vacation from his job teaching English in Japan - after high school, after college, after a few years working at a dead end job (during which he continued to develop the world of Ghoupallesz and its features, including beginning a bright colorful new map series and creating dictionaries of Ghoupallean and other languages of the world) - he had a dream. 

He had long wanted to tell the story of his Ghoupalle friends and their adventures, of course. Yet as the boy turned into an adult, his interests also changed. Now the adventures of Ghoupallesz consisted of political intrigue, wars, magic, and sex. There was no longer a YA planet to write about. Prior to that dream - of course, that is the origin of the series title - he had been looking for a starting point to get into the story, a story he already was expecting to be a series of books, each about a separate adventure his alter ego would partake of.

In that dream, he saw a Zetin maiden riding the kind of horse-like creature (the "Jepe") that they have on Ghoupallesz, high in the mountains (well, that's where Zetin people live, as opposed to the Ghoupalle people living down along the coast) and she caught him watching her. The image stuck. Back in Japan, he set out writing the story, beginning with that scene on the mountain. That was something new, he realized, something that was not part of the adventures of the earlier mice-like Gupals. Instead, he was inventing new adventures...which eventually allowed him to introduce the "original" story, not of alien mice visiting a boy on Earth but of a well-intended teenager and his girlfriend finding a portal, an invisible doorway, through which they stumble quite surreptitiously and thus discover a new world.

Thus began The Dreamland, as it was originally titled, was completed in 1993 and sent out to a few agents. Shockingly, they all rejected it. A couple of them did add handwritten notes of encouragement. One even said it was "well-crafted" while another said the protagonist was not sympathetic. Because the protagonist was based on the teenager-turned-adult himself, that hurt. He understood the reason: the protagonist is a quiet, anti-social fellow but I did not reveal why he was that way. 

So he set about recrafting the story to make the hero more likeable - and more distinct from the author. Since the hero suffers many tragedies in the course of his adventures, the tragic qualities of the hero needed to be introduced closer to the beginning. But how does one get to know a character who is aloof, private, solitary? Lightbulb! Have his co-workers talk about him, speculate about his life, and even tease him!

As the rewriting continued, another heartbreaking discovery was made: "The Dreamland" was already being used as the title of a book about Area 51, the infamous location of alien crash victims. So he reluctantly changed the title to The Dream Land - which meant changing that phrase everywhere it appeared in the novel. Instead of the characters saying Ghoupallesz is the Dreamland, they had to say, in order to be politically correct, Ghoupallesz is the Dream Land. It was a big hassle. But he finished a major edit of the novel and was so excited that he rushed right into the next novel: The Dream Land II. 

The second book picked up right where the first ended: Did our hero safely escape back to Ghoupallesz through the interdimensional portal, or did he actually catch a bullet from the pursuing police and fall into a coma? Fifty or so single-spaced pages in and he ground to a halt. A plot conundrum stopped him cold. He was becoming busy with other matters of an adult life, anyway, and eventually the second book - and the first book - were left to languish on a dusty shelf somewhere in his computer. 

The boy-turned-adult went away to graduate school and became a professor who was tasked with teaching college students how to write essays and research papers. He still enjoyed creative writing - he had picked up an MFA degree by producing a slew of short stories with contemporary settings and a thesis consisting of a novel about a doomed campus romance (A Beautiful Chill). He dreamed of getting back to The Dream Land.

So he encouraged his students to write whatever they were interested in, something about their lives. One student happened showed him a story that superficially reminded the boy-turned-professor of his Dream Land story. Not too much, however, just enough to cause the professor to be curious and search for it on his computer. He read through what he had written of The Dream Land II, then continued writing right where he had left off ten years before. The plot conundrum that had stopped him now was cleared. He marched on to the end of the novel - all the while conducting research and writing his Ph.D. dissertation.

He managed to get the first book published. As he prepared the second book for publication, he immediately started writing the third book. The idea arrived fully formed in his head one bright afternoon. Like all good sci-fi Book III would not only wrap up the loose ends of Book II (Did he die again or survive?) but also deal with the universal question: What to do about an approaching comet that is likely to hit our planet? He also had grown as a writer, confident enough to let his female protagonist, who had major but short-lived appearances in the first two books, take the stage solo to answer this great question.

That brings us, humbly, up to the present era. Being busier than ever before with life and all its coquettish foibles, he turned to trying once again to deal with a publishing world that had changed so dramatically he no longer recognized it, nor knew what to do to get the first two books published. Good friends and their advice helped and the encouragement provided has sustained him. Book III practically wrote itself. The interdimensional portal still exists, however, and as the hero of The Dream Land ages, he has taken on a protege who can lead readers through the third novel of the series and perhaps into a fourth book. The universe is endless, after all - at least, according to the rules of the Dream Land. Imagination is the key...and the map...and the compass!

Note: I have not actually traveled through an interdimensional doorway of any kind, although some people I know suspect I have, I am quite familiar with theories involving the phenomena. I attempt to education the public about interdimensional doorways via this Facebook page. Thanks for your support.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2017 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.

Naming Names in Epic Fiction

As a kid, I never liked my name. It was too easy for other kids to deliberately mispronounce just to tease me. So once I started writing stories, I thought up several cool pen names to replace the name my parents had foisted upon me. However, I gave up pseudonyms eventually because I decided I needed to use my real name so family and friends would believe I actually wrote the books.

The subject of names continues to impact my life, especially my writing life, because as writers know, names are important. After all, Adam was tasked with naming the flora and fauna of the Garden of Eden, and with each pronouncement, it became real. Each time we cast a label on something, we could be said to name it. And naming creates powerful associations. Our characters’ names are no different, never more so than in fantasy. 

In contemporary fiction, however, names are easy (supposedly) because they are familiar words friends and neighbors might bear. I used to read through baby-name books to find just the right name for a character. Surnames were tougher. I looked in phone books.

Perhaps not every character fiddles with his or her name. Thank goodness they seldom complain. I imagine, however, that characters do what real people do, and fiddling with and changing and using just the right name is as important to them as it is to a lot of us. Sometimes a name is actually a crucial element of a character's psyche, motivation, or raison-d'être.

For example, in my contemporary novel A BEAUTIFUL CHILL, the heroine, Íris (note the accent mark), is from Iceland and the correct Icelandic pronunciation of her name matters to her. As it turns out, her name is about all she has that is truly hers, so she firmly corrects anyone who speaks her name with the English pronunciation; her friends know how to say it and by that quirk she marks them as friends. “My name is Íris. Like the letter E,” she scolds the male protagonist early on. It is literally a defining moment for her: 'Get my name right, or we’ll have nothing to do with each other.' Her name is a major motif throughout the book.

In another example, the young man in THE DREAM LAND science fiction trilogy who in the last book takes over the story from our hero is named "Chucker". It's a nickname used by his mother since he was a little boy, and since he is now searching for her on another world, it has meaning to him. Visiting Earth on his travels, he meets up with a detective who agrees to help him.

“What do they call you in school? Is it Chuck or Charlie?”

“Chucker is what they call me—but I hate that name. Mom was crazy naming me that. Chuck R. Tucker. The ‘R’ stands for René. Sissy name, ain’t it? That was her dad’s name. Her name was Tucker, and after she got married it was McElroy. Then she changed it back to Tucker. My dad’s name is Chuck. That’s what Grandma said. So everybody calls me Chucker Tucker—ya know, like Chuck R. Tucker? Hate it.”

(For more instruction on naming the characters in THE DREAM LAND Trilogy, click to this blog post.)

And in the ultimate example, Alex Parris is in love with everything about the Trojan War in AFTER ILIUM. In fact, when he meets an older woman named Elena on a cruise ship bound for Turkey, where he will tour the ruins of Ilium, he cannot help but imagine himself as young Paris carrying off his prized Helen to the storied walls of Ilium. That name association is the start of a whole lot of trouble for Alex. Bearing the wrong name is as bad as being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In my Japanese romance novel AIKO we again place a name at the center of the story. Of course it has to be a Japanese name. "Aiko" literally means "love" and "child" (愛子) - not an unusual name in Japan but one with other associations to English-language readers. Aiko's mother's family name also has meaning. Nakamori means "in the middle of the forest" if you translate the kanji symbols to their basic meaning. And, yes, our protagonist does search for her in the forest of northern Japan.

Names are important in another recent novel A GIRL CALLED WOLF. The young heroine's birth name means wolf in her native language. After struggling on her own after her mother dies in the harsh landscape of Greenland, she treks to the nearest village. In time she adopts a new name, a Christian name, Anna, but she continues to carry the "wolf" associations with her no matter what name she uses. The associations with "Wolf" are an important feature of the character - a character based on a real person whose real name was "Wolf".

So let me suggest, when you select a character’s name - whether it’s some common Anglo-Saxon name, a Biblical name, or something Chinese, Indian, or whatever - keep in mind the associations the name may have. Think about how the character carries his/her name. How picky is your character about the name? Also, what nicknames may ensue: Elizabeth is a noble name but it boils down to Lizzy. How does the character react to other people using or misusing their names? Will people see Stephen and pronounce it Stefan? Names become another element, another layer, of a character’s identity.

Because what is a name but a marker of identity? It's proof of existence, and for a fictional persona brought magically to life in the pages of a story, existence is everything.

Your homework for next time is to come up with names for the following stock characters in an epic fantasy:

• The brave, burly hero who is good with swords
• An old woman who mixes potions in her cave
• Two little boys who like to play pranks on villagers
• A beautiful prized mount (which may not necessarily be a horse)
• The charming princess who may or may not have magic powers

NEXT: Naming Names in EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS

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(C) Copyright 2010-2017 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.