Year: 2016

#atozchallenge: A is for Akaina and Ashyntoya Shalei

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[Apologies for the delay…I had quite the full schedule yesterday and was not able to post until today.  Thus we’ll have multiple entries today.  Woo!]

Welcome to Jonc’s A to Z Challenge!   I’ve chosen to have some fun and post about the stuff that goes on behind the scenes in the Mendaihu Universe; character backgrounds, FAQs, behind-the-scenes production, and more.  Hope you enjoy!

Q: First off:  how do you pronounce their names?

A: Last name first:  Shalei is shah-LEY, even if it’s a distant relative that has the extra ‘i’ at the end.  It’s an extremely common Meraladian surname, as it’s one of the largest clans to come from Trisanda.  They do sometimes get queries about if they’re all related; some do find it irritating, others merely brush it off with a quick answer.
Ashyntoya is ahsh’n-TOY-ah.  He’s named after his great-grandfather who was quite the epic Mendaihu, and a major player in the Fifth Season of Embodiment of the One of All Sacred.  Someone he feels he’s expected to live up to, but he doubts he’d even be fit to stand in that great man’s shadow.  He prefers to be called Ashan (ASH-ahn); he usually explains that it’s just a nickname, but in truth he borrowed it from another less known and much older ancestor who was connected to an uprising at Bann Currin on Trisanda.
Akaina is ah-KAH’ee-nah (although I admit my brain still sometimes reads it as ah-KAY-nah).  She understands cultural differences in speech origins, so she’s totally fine with people pronouncing it either way.  She prefers people call her Kai (kah’ee, rhymes with ‘sigh’).  She’s named after her aunt on her mother’s side; the two sisters were best friends growing up and are still extremely close.  Her aunt is one of her favorite relatives; she was the one who first taught her about the Mendaihu and the Shenaihu.

Q: How did you come up with the twin Mendaihu agents for the Bridgetown Trilogy?

A: That’s a good question…they just sort of evolved, really.  If I’m not mistaken, Kai originally showed up as a humanoid AI in The Phoenix Effect, and Ashan was one of the background AIs.  I dropped nearly all the AI ideas during the 2000 reboot and kept those two, giving them a completely new background and purpose.
They weren’t twins at first; originally I was going to have Ashan as the older brother.  However, I realized both characters had an almost exact equal purpose in the story; it made more sense for them to be not just physical twins but spiritual twins as well.  There’s no special psionic connection between the two; they merely know each other’s soul so well they work perfectly together as a team.  And of course, as siblings, they do get under each other’s skin now and again.

Q: Are they based on anyone in particular?

A: When I create characters, I often picture various actors playing them, just to get an idea of what they might look like or how they’d act.  In this case, however, I never really thought about it.  I purposely didn’t base them on anyone famous.  I wanted their characters to feel like that person you meet where you can’t quite put a finger on who they remind you of, and instead you find yourself attracted to their uniqueness.

Q: What do they look like?

A: In A Division of Souls I described them in general terms as Meraladians; they are human in form, though larger in height and size.  Their skin color is a very light brown, which is common for Meraladians.  As they are fraternal twins, they look similar to each other in certain ways, though Kai’s face is more oval and Ashan’s is narrower.  Ashan is slightly larger in frame.  They both have very dark brown eyes; from a distance it looks like their pupils are fully dilated.  They have small rounded and smallish noses and wide mouths.  They both have long black hair that they tie back in a triple tail, often threaded with small beads near the ends — this is an old cultural practice of the Shalei clan.

Q: Where do they come from?

A: They’ve been NewCanta Province citizens for almost all their lives.  [NewCanta Province is northwest of Bridgetown, and is the center of government for the Upper Midlantic Range.  Bridgetown is the second largest province in this Range.]  Nearly all of their extended family have been lifelong Mendaihu.  They have no other siblings, though they have quite a large extended family of relatives and close friends.

Q: What are their personality types?

A: Ashan is often misconstrued as being standoffish, maybe a little arrogant, but in truth he’s just not entirely sure how to act in front of others.  That’s not to say he doesn’t understand people, far from it; he’s just a little too self-conscious about whether or not he’s doing the right thing.  His anger does get the best of him sometimes, though after the fact he will apologize immediately, even sending out a small sensing thread to invite them closer to his spirit to show his true emotions.  He’s truly loyal to his friends, acquaintances and fellow Mendaihu agents.
Akaina is more open with her emotions and thoughts.  She has a bright demeanor, but when angered her words can be extremely barbed.  She loves meeting new people; she loves getting to know them on multiple levels so she can understand their many quirks and inconsistencies.  She’s also quite loyal to her friends, acquaintances and fellow Mendaihu agents.  She fully trusts what her soul sings to her, sometimes to a fault, but she understands the problems that might cause, and is willing to work through them.
They both absolutely love a good feast with friends, especially if a warm beverage of tea or coffee is served afterwards.

Q: Anything else?

A: Bits and bobs:  Both are often seen in their Mendaihu agency uniforms — long black dusters with a gray patch on their right shoulders, on which is stitched the Mendaihu sigil of two intersecting circles.  They choose to do this because they like to show they are always performing their Mendaihu duties at any time of day.  Both graduated from their Mendaihu training with very high marks.  Ashan has a long thin scar on his right forearm, the result of a training exercise accident.  Kai’s night vision is weaker than Ashan’s.   During the Bridgetown Trilogy, they share an apartment in the Pullock Street Heights Sector, not that far from Pullock Street Park.  Kai won’t tell him, but Ashan snores like a freight train.  Neither have ever traveled to Trisanda, though they are well informed of its history and what goes on there.

*

Want to know more about the Mendaihu Universe?  Leave a question below in the comments, and I’ll be happy to answer it or expand on it in a future post!

Returning Back to the Fold!

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naruto dive
My life over the last month and a half.

FINALLY!

Yes, I have returned from the shadows and back to the land of the living!  I’ve been so busy as of late, it took me a few days to realize that I didn’t have any pressing OMG deadlines weighing me down!

The last few days have been spent mostly doing project clean-up and getting everything back to some semblance of order.  This meant an often precarious balance of Day Jobbery-related fires to put out (and there were many), doing the post-production and release prep for The Persistence of Memories, and generally just taking time to BREATHE again.

So now that it’s midweek and my brain has stopped spinning some, what do I have on tap for the close future?

Glad you asked!  A partial list:

— The Persistence of Memories to be released in ebook on 4/15!  WOO!  It’s available directly from Smashwords in all kinds of formats, including Kindle, for $4.99.  And for a brief time, you can buy the first book ABSOLUTELY FREE!  Two for the price of one!  [Note: As before, since the formatting of the physical book takes more time, I’ll let you know as soon as I can when it’ll be available through CreateSpace/Amazon.]

— I shall be taking part in the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge this year, here at WtBT!  It’s a fun blogging exercise that I’ve done a few years in the past on my LJ, and thought I’d give it a go here.  I was thinking of doing an A-to-Z of the Mendaihu Universe, partly to get me to talk about it more (as I’m sure you’re all wondering, what the hells is he talking about in these books?), and partly to get me back into the blogging habit.  Hope you enjoy what I have in store!

— And speaking of blogging, I’m still planning making good with my ‘alternate plan’ for the Walk in Silence project by turning it into an ongoing series over at the WiS blog.  This series will start the third full week of April (around the 20th or so).  Stay tuned!

— Returning to the whiteboard schedule.  I purposely put it aside a few months ago when I chose to focus solely on the TPoM revision/edit/remaster/release, and now it’s high time to return to it.  Which means more practice words at 750 Words, more WiS entries, and maybe even some words and music elsewhere.  Truly looking forward to that.

 

So yes!  Definitely looking forward to returning back to the writing and the other projects.  It’s going to be a fun and creative summer, that’s for sure!

naruto ramen
Ahh…now that everything’s back to nor–

On Writing: Unlearning the Process

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I subscribe to a handful of writing magazines, many that I’ve been picking up for a good few decades.  Over the years, they’ve helped me rethink how I look at my stories.  Sometimes they’ll point out the blatantly obvious that I’d been ignoring for one reason or another (weak prose and word repetition for a start).  Sometimes they’ll provide insight on what agents and publishers are looking for and how to contact them.  It’s all helpful, and over the years their advice did help me get a lot farther than just guessing or assuming I was doing it right.

On the other hand, I’ve been quite contrarian lately, and I’m not entirely sure why.

Well, maybe I am sure; I think it has to do with self-publishing my work.  Also that I’ve been a nonconformist at heart since I was a kid.

Thing is, lately I’ll read these advice articles and think, ‘well, why can’t I do it that way?’  For example, I saw an article earlier this morning regarding a novel having too much plot.  I get where they’re coming from, don’t get me wrong; the example they used was bombastic and ridiculous (some litfic plot regarding way too many characters causing way too many plot twists and coincidences that even reality gave it the side-eye), and in that instance, it’s probably for the best that you back it up a bit and maybe narrow the focus.  My reaction, however, was this: well, how is it that apparently readers don’t like way too much plot, and yet we love reading doorstop novels from George RR Martin, Kate Elliott, Neal Stephenson, and so on?  How can I write the plot-heavy book and still make it readable and enjoyable?  The kind of doorstopper that makes readers go ‘damn, that’s some great world building!’  In other words, the kind of books I love to read.

That’s when it dawned on me: it’s not that the writer of the article is stifling creativity; they’re just trying to keep your novel’s highway from gridlocking.  If you’re going to write a doorstopper, just make damn sure it’s navigable.

 

Getting back to my bit about nonconformity, here’s an ironic admission: I’m also a pathetic conformist as well.  Let’s just say that even though I touted my individuality in my high school years – sometimes to annoying extremes – and tended to question authority when needed (again, usually in the form of “well, why can’t we…?”), I also found myself desperately trying to fit into the status quo at the same time.  I’m a proud self-contrarian in that respect.*

[* – A good example of my proud self-contrarianism:  Yes, I am aware of the irony of using a Psykosonik song in a blog entry about writing my sf trilogy, considering that one of the band’s principal songwriters was one Ted Beale, aka Vox Day.  I’m not a fan of his politics in the least, but I did love the Unlearn album when it came out in 1995, so I’m fine with keeping the two separate.]

 

With regards to my writing, I went through quite a few phases of trying to shape my novels into something that agents and publishers would enjoy.   The truth is out: one of the reasons it took me so long to self-release the Bridgetown Trilogy is that I spent a good number of years trying to figure out how to revise it so that it was more commercially acceptable to agents and publishers.  Suffice it to say, I never successfully figured out how to do it.  I didn’t want to give up on the Mendaihu Universe, I just wanted to make it marketable.

I could never figure out why nobody was biting, though — and that’s the downside to the form rejection letter.  No one is telling you why.  I understand the reason behind the process…most agencies and publishers are actually quite small in crew and literally can’t respond personally to thousands of submissions.  At the same time, though, it doesn’t help the writer one bit.  It’s like being trained at your workplace for a new system, and when you’re baffled and stuck and ask for clarification, the trainer responds with “Well, what do you think it does?”  My initial response to that kind of question is almost always “How the fuck should I know?  That’s why I’m asking you!”**   I get that they’re trying to make you think it through, but some need a frame of reference first before they can answer that question.  If I’m not doing it right, I want to know how I should be doing it to your specifications.  I’m a writer: asking that question of me provokes about 3,425 different responses.  I have no idea which one is the right one or which would bring me success.  I have nothing to base it on.***

[** – Yes, this has actually happened at one of my day jobs.]

[*** – I am aware that this is what writing groups and beta readers are for, but they’ve never quite worked for me.  They’re great for talking out ideas and suggestions and I love the camaraderie, but more often than not they end up doing little more than confirming problems and issues I’ve already noticed and hadn’t yet acted upon.  I’ve come to the conclusion that I just happen to work better solo and should trust my instinct more often.]

 

And the nonconformist in me, after so many years, finally decided that DIY seemed like a more viable and entertaining option.  The time was right, the field has been quite strong, and I’d already done my research on it.  This time I listened that rebel in me.

I’ve mentioned here before that music is an incredibly huge influence in my life, and I took that to heart this time out when I chose to rethink how I viewed publishing.  I’ve read so many music bios about punk bands scraping by on a meager pittance and a beat up van yet absolutely loving the lifestyle; I’ve read about their wonderfully creative ways of getting their singles out to radio stations and audiences.  There’s a reason why the image of a telephone pole covered with the bark of a thousand nightclub flyers is so iconic; that was punk’s social media of the time, to let all and sundry know that you were in town and were going to play at some seedy bar close by.

So this is what happened in 2015: I chose to unlearn the process of publication as I knew it.  I already understood it all too well…if I want to publish commercially, I already know what steps I need to take, and I think I have a bead on how I can make my lighter stories marketable.  What I had to do for my self-published work, though, was think like a nonconformist: what makes sense to me, first and foremost, and be consistent in that belief.  I taught myself to react to moments of weak prose and plot.  I learned to completely trust my creative instincts.  I taught myself the mathematics of creativity (thanks again to music), of being aware of what makes a pleasurable work.  And most importantly, I taught myself to ignore any self-doubt that popped up.  I’m proud of the creative things I can do; I love writing and drawing and playing music, always have since I was a kid, so it was about damn time I followed through with those long-held dreams and make them realities.

I won’t lie…sometimes the DIY route can be daunting.  It can be emotionally nerve-wracking.  It can also be expensive.  But I really do think unlearning the process of trying to be a commercial writer was one of the best moves I’d ever made.  I’ve never been happier and more excited about being a writer.

 

TPoM: Cover Revealed! Coming Soon!

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tpom bg b1a pm

It’ll look a bit better when I redo it with the real non-watermarked picture I just downloaded from Shutterstock not that long ago. The picture creator is Marcel Clemens, whose collection on that website is full of lovely spacey images.

The Persistence of Memories will be released mid-April! Stay tuned for more info as we get closer to the release date! 🙂

Get the Balance Right

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I’m not entirely sure how the concept of balance popped up in my trilogy, it just sort of happened naturally.

I think it’s because, when I was writing The Phoenix Effect back in the late 90s, I’d become fascinated by yin-yang relationships in life, and especially how neither side is inherently heroic or villainous.  Each side has good and bad qualities, perfections and impurities.  It’s up to each individual to decide how they want to act (or react) to their surroundings, or to the other’s actions.  Some go with the flow, some do what’s expected of them, some are rebellious and still others refuse to do anything at all.

Originally the trilogy was going to focus mostly on the Mendaihu, with the Shenaihu relegated to textbook villain.  But the more I tried writing that, the more I felt it was horribly contrived.  What if the Shenaihu were doing what they do for a legitimate reason?  Maybe the Mendaihu aren’t all that perfect and awesome after all?  And with Earth stuck in the middle of it all, how are they affected?

 

It’s not just the character balance I watch for when I write, though.  I pay attention to the plot arc, and where the characters’ defining moments are placed.

A day or so ago while revising/editing The Persistence of Memories I hit the exact midway point.  I was curious as to what that scene would be, as I’d subconsciously put a pivotal Denni scene at that point in A Division of Souls, a point where the book is no longer ‘starting up’ and is now in full acceleration mode.  It seems that I did the same exact thing here as well:  another main character’s pivotal scene that sets the tone for the rest of the book (and the trilogy).  I’ve yet to see if I did that with The Balance of Light, but we shall see, once I start revising/editing that one.

That’s not to say the pivotal now-or-never scene needs to be smackdab in the middle of the book; this just sort of happened organically for me.  Another character’s defining moment won’t show up until near the end of TBoL, with mere chapters to go until the end.  The point here is balancing the character’s evolution.  They start at one level and ascend (or descend) to another, somewhere within the timeline, because otherwise they’re boring.

Point being, by the end of the trilogy, everyone, even the most stubbornly static characters, have changed somehow.  The trick as to when they change is in the pacing.  Don’t just think about how you want the character to change, but how they’d act afterwards.  A character’s evolution too soon might render them boring for the rest of the book; too late and it looks forced.  Think about their timeline within the context of the entire book (or series): what would be the perfect time for them to change, and how would it affect the rest of the plot and the other characters?

Again, with the music parallel:  where would the chorus of the song fit best?  After the first verse?  Just after the bridge?  (Or like Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'”, waaaay over at the end of the song, after the guitar solo?)  It’s completely up to you, the writer.  As long as you do it right.

Make it pleasurable not only for you, but for the reader.  Creating balance in your creation is a trick on the subconscious level; we feel pleased by a perfectly balanced shot in a film or painted image.  We’re equally pleased by the slow build of an arc that finally explodes in glorious 3D at the perfect moment (again, think the “Don’t Stop Believin'” solo and chorus, or maybe even The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” when it finally hits the “na na na” coda).

The trick is to figure out where to best place it so you achieve the perfect balance.

 

I Won’t Share You

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The decision to pull out of a writing project is a strange one.  It’s never a knee-jerk reaction.  More often than not, it’s a laborious, emotional, drawn out process.  All kinds of questions arise, whether it’s worth soldiering on or cutting losses.  The feeling of frustration and irritation due to wasted time.  And even the relief (and the guilt of feeling such, despite the decision) when the deadline is no longer hanging over the writer.

I say this now, as I seem to be on the fence on a current long-term project at this time (don’t worry, it’s not Mendaihu Universe related).  I won’t go into detail just yet, as I’m still debating on what move I’ll take, but suffice it to say, the end result is different than what I’d expected it to be.  It’s starting to feel less like a publishable book and more of a private ‘vanity’ book…something that would appeal to me, but probably not to too many others.  Will I finish it?  I most likely will, given that I’m close to the end of the initial rough draft anyway.  I just may not self-publish it.

It’s a tough decision, and one I’m not taking lightly.  It’s not exactly frustrating that it may take this direction…just that it feels weird, signing off something that had potential at one point.

So, fellow writers….ever have this quandry?

Still Editing, Still Busy

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image
No, really, I’m getting stuff done! Honest!

Hey there, everyone!  Lots of movement here in Spare Oom.  The Day Job has been keeping me busy, though I’ve been sneaking a few minutes here and there to edit.

At this point, it looks like the release of The Persistence of Memories will more than likely be end of March rather than February…I do apologize for the delay, but this edit run is taking a bit longer than expected.  I’m still about a quarter of the way through, but I’m making good headway.  I’m giving myself a bit more of a buffer so I can do the formatting and the cover, and so I can release both the e-book and the physical version at the same time.

I’ll have more to blog about my editing processes to date, but that will be after everything is done.  Yay, future blog posts!  And thank you for your patience, as always!  I promise, it’ll be worth the wait.  This one’s still my favorite of the three.

But seriously, I’ve been taking extra steps to make sure I get all this work done on time and with minimal distraction.  I’m still utilizing the habit of closing down all web browsers when I’m not using them for something important (like checking my word choice against the Merriam-Webster website).  I’m even doing this during the day when I’m editing during slow moments, as you can see from the above picture.  Making good on my plan to scale back on my internet usage in general has worked out just fine.  I’m more productive and less distracted.*   Once I post this, I’ll be closing down the browsers again.

* – Okay, I may have returned to my FreeCell playing habits, but the trade-off is worth it.  A five-minute game is a lot better than a half hour of Twitter.

Oh — and if you’re curious, here’s the wallpaper I currently have.  I took this out Spare Oom window with my nice camera during a rather spectacular sunset late last year.

End of the day, 8 October 2015
End of the day, 8 October 2015

The Gang’s All Here

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I blame Stephen King.

Okay, actually I blame my ex from ’94 for handing me a copy of The Stand while we were working on True Faith, but the point remains:  I blame Stephen King for introducing me to the Large Ensemble novel.  I read a wide assortment of his novels in 1993-95, intrigued by his style and his characterizations, and it was The Stand that grabbed me the most.  I’m extremely picky when it comes to stories with End of the World themes (they don’t bother me, I just have very little interest in them), but this one fascinated me, because it was such a sprawling piece of work.  A doorstop.  And the edition I read was the expanded version that had just been released.  And I loved it.  Still do…specifically that version.

I loved the idea of a large ensemble in a novel, because I was fascinated by how each character’s life intertwined with the others, even if they never met face to face.   I loved the idea of each character’s unique development and evolution throughout the course of the novel.  I especially like how each evolution had a specific role within the main plot, whether it was a large role or a small one.

That’s one of the reasons the Mendaihu Universe novels are always an ensemble affair.  Like the purging and repopulating of the human race in The Stand, I wanted to show that the awakening and ascension of spirits in the Universe weren’t merely relegated to the main characters, but to everyone in the world.  Not that future MU stories will also have a large cast; I already have some ideas focusing on a minimal number of characters that we may see down the road, and I’m quite sure I’ll have a Tales from the ARU sequence soon enough.

Writing large ensembles is tricky work, because you need to be a really good note-taker, or at least have it down really solid in your head.  Switching from one POV to another is simple enough; you just need to pay attention when you do it.   More often than not I kept with a single main POV character throughout an entire chapter to keep it simple — and in the process I got to play with that character’s evolution within that length of time.   And on a higher level, I had to make sure the main plot kept moving.  It was quite the juggling act, but it was a hell of a lot of fun.

I know a lot of people who aren’t big on ensemble casts, or doorstop novels for that matter.  They prefer a slimmer cast (and a slimmer spine!) in their books.  Shorter, more concise stories, ones that don’t meander or take forever.  Events that affect a small group rather than the entire planet.  I tend to switch between the two; one of my favorite novels is Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves, which essentially has two main characters and about six secondary characters, and the plot mainly focuses on how the house affects the characters.  And on the other hand, I also love Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto manga, which spanned 700 chapters and has an incredible array of main, secondary and tertiary characters who all have unique personalities and play an important part in the overall plot.

I say all this because I know that some readers may find the Bridgetown Trilogy a bit long; A Division of Souls is nearly 150k words, which is quite long even for a genre novel.  This made me think about playing with convention, maybe taking the opposite approach that the 1994 edition of The Stand took:  what if I created an abridged version of the trilogy, and leave it up to the reader to choose which version they’d like to buy or download?  I’m totally fine with taking that step, because I learned from Douglas Adams: there’s always more than one way to tell a story.  I could conceivably edit out some minor characters and leave out a few scenes here and there and still have the same story.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that I’m refusing to listen to reason by whinging that severely edited versions of the books lead to them being less than pieces of art.   Yesterday I bought a copy of one of my favorite 90s movies, Wim Wenders’ Until the End of the World.  The original 1991 version Warner Bros released is around two hours long; the director’s cut, which I picked up, is 288 minutes — that’s over four and a half hours long.  I get that Hollywood needed a much shorter movie.  I was fascinated when I watched the first twenty minutes and noticed something:  at the 20 minute mark in the Hollywood version, the main female character (Claire) meets the main male character (Trevor/Sam).  In the director’s cut, they haven’t even met yet, let alone Claire getting to the destination where they meet.  There are number of short establishing shots, bridging scenes, and emotional moments that are there to show how the world looks and behaves in this fictional 1999.  Each version tells the story: one is crisp and concise, the other is slow and deliberate.  Both work the way they’re supposed to, and both are enjoyable to watch.

And like any director’s cut of any movie, there are going to be fans and detractors.  Some audiences hate long films.  Others love the idea of an ‘alternate’ version of their favorite movie.  This is where I started thinking:  why not alternate versions of my novels?  Am I willing to spend all that extra time playing around with different versions of my stories?  Am I dithering in wanting it both ways?  And realistically, would anyone really care either way?  Well, some of those questions really don’t matter all that much in reality.  I’m not looking for Hugo nominations here.*  I’m not looking for scores of fans; I’m just looking for readers who’ll have fun reading my universe, whichever version they so choose.

 

* — Yes, as a matter of fact, A Division of Souls can be nominated for a Hugo!  Go ahead and nominate if you want, I’m cool with that. 🙂