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Checking in: end of year plans

November 17, 2023November 15, 2023 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

Oh hey I still have this blog, don’t I? Yes I do!

Hi all, just checking in to let you know that I’m still here, still doing a lot of revision work on Queen Ophelia’s War, and it’s coming along quite nicely. I have a long way to go, but I’m going in the right direction and that’s what really matters. And while I haven’t been blogging, I’ve been thinking about what I’ll be doing here and at Walk in Silence in the coming weeks as 2023 winds down.

Right now my plan is to return here in December to start my end-of-year thoughts and reviews. Whether that will be at my regular twice a week schedule or just once a week depends on a few things.

Firstly, it depends on how busy I am at the Day Job — it is holiday season and I am in retail, after all — and one of my new resolutions is to Slow the F*** Down. [More on that in a future post.] I survived last year’s Q4 quite handily and my commute is still eight blocks long, so I should be able to do two a week. I’m purposely not holding myself to it however, because I don’t really need to force myself now, do I? One a week is a comfortable and doable goal.

Secondly, it depends on how busy I am with work on Queen Ophelia’s War. I’m still planning on this one being my next e-book release to get back on my one-book-a-year release schedule. While I don’t have a set deadline for it at this time, I don’t want to be spending forever on it, either. I still have work on Theadia and a few other open projects as well that are waiting in the wings.

That said, I’ll try to aim for December 1st as my return for this blog. See you then! And thanks for stopping by!

Fly-by: brb, going on short hiatus to write stuff

October 16, 2023October 15, 2023 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

Oh hey there! I’m going to be taking a short hiatus from the blogging to get some work done on Queen Ophelia’s War, as I’m falling behind and seriously need to get caught up. Not sure how long this will be, but hopefully not for too long. Maybe a month or so? At least until I’ve gotten myself into a better writing schedule for it.

I’m also limiting my footprint on the birdsite these days so if you want to find me online, I’ll most likely be popping up every now and again on BlueSky instead. [I have a few invite codes if anyone is not yet on there and might be interested!]

See you soon!

Outside

October 9, 2023October 8, 2023 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

A lot of my novels spend a considerable amount of time outside, and usually for a reason other than transitioning between scenes. Which is interesting, considering how much time I spend inside in real life, for one reason or another. In Queen Ophelia’s War a lot of it takes place either on wide grassy plains, rolling hills or deep woods; part of it is to evoke a strong sense of natural settings important to the story, but part of it is also to show that what takes place inside isn’t always about safety and security.

I like using the wider world as precisely that: there’s a wider world out there, bigger than what might be going on in front of you. It keeps several characters in check, from feeling completely alone. [I sometimes use the complete opposite of that for emotional punch, too. If you recall my posting of the first chapter of MU4 some time ago, there’s a world beyond what Eika sees, but as far as she can tell it’s completely devoid of any other people, giving a profound sense of desolation and abandonment.]

It keeps the plot from feeling insular, that nothing else happens outside of this one setting. I also get to use nature as part of the plot; in In My Blue World, magic is literally a part of nature in Zuze’s universe. Even in Theadia, which takes place on a planet surface, on a nearby satellite station, and in deep space, all of those locations are important to the plot in one way or another.

Do I go out of my way to write outside scenes? Not always. More often than not, they just end up there, and I’m thrilled when it happens. It means that the scene is important not just to the characters we’re focusing on, but possibly to anyone else out there, just offscreen.

Keeping an eye on things

October 6, 2023October 5, 2023 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

A funny thing happens when Jules sees a bird outside Spare Oom’s window. I have my two acoustic guitars in front of it, so when she gets excited her tail will start wagging furiously between them, and every now and again I’ll hear a twaaang twaaang twaaang behind me. She’s might not be the quickest cat (unless she has the zoomies) and she’s a calm kitty when it comes to new experiences and enrichment moments, but birds will excite her like nothing else.

What does this have to do with writing? Well, nothing all that much, but I really love this picture of her shooting daggers at two crows back in late June and wanted to share it, but if you really want to stretch a metaphor, I suppose it would be that I’ve been looking at my writing in a similar way. I’ve been making considerable efforts to turn away from distractions, which has always been one of my worst habits. And in doing this, it’s helped me become more focused on what I should be focused on. I’ve been doing my best getting work done on Queen Ophelia’s War, even despite the the day job shifts.

Other than that? Yeah, I’ll totally admit I’ve been distracted by Jules and Cali, but they’re distractions I’m willing to accept.

My favorite time of the year

October 2, 2023October 1, 2023 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I haven’t really been able to appreciate autumn like I used to. I suppose part of it is that I now live in an area that doesn’t see vividly changing colors nearly as much as one would in New England…but I think it’s more than that. I think it’s also because I haven’t allowed myself to appreciate the season, usually due to personal and day job things going on.

This year, however, it seems things are falling into place. In working on Queen Ophelia’s War I’ve made a conscious choice to focus on what I feel, see and hear during that time of the year and insert it into the novel accordingly. The changing of the season does lend itself to the novel’s theme of the changing of life. The dichotomy of witnessing the past fade into memory and the future approach unknown. The weather becoming colder and darker. And yet on top of all that, a desperate hope that things will turn out okay despite it all.

And yes, I’m currently searching for the perfect mixtape/playlist to go along with it, and Cocteau Twins will most definitely be on it. [Any other song and band suggestions in a similar style are quite welcome, of course.]

Creative…privilege?

September 29, 2023September 27, 2023 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

So some AI-leaning techbro this week posted something on social media about artists, writers, musicians, etc., having the unfair advantage of “creative privilege” because they allegedly came to their craft with some gods-given blessing, and it’s unfair that the rest of the non-creative world has to actually, y’know, work at it, and it’s all unfair that we creatives have that advantage.

Or something like that. Either way, he’s currently getting roasted in response.

I’ll be honest, my first reaction to this complaint was that it kind of reminded me of high school. It reminded me of being a non-sports kid in a school where most extracurricular funding went to the boys’ football team, no teacher wanted be an advisor for school plays so there weren’t any, and the funding and printing for the school newspaper got pulled the year before. So me, my friends Kevin and Kris, and a few others, decided to use our creative privilege to edit and put it out ourselves, using Pagemaker on the school’s Mac and the gracious help of the printing class teacher who ran a few hundred copies off on printer paper and collated them for free. We used our creative privilege by figuring out a workaround and doing most of the work ourselves. Sort of self-publishing it, in a way. And it was a success! We kept it going the entire year on a consistent basis, got several other students to write articles, and kept it alive when no one else bothered.

If there’s such a thing as creative privilege, it’s the ability to move past roadblocks and obstacles. There’s no One Right Way or One Weird Trick They Don’t Want You To Know to do it either, because it’s different for everyone. It’s what works for you, and it’s most definitely not just about finding shortcuts, either. Running a complicated algorithm that essentially mashes up other people’s creative works and then slapping your own name on it is a shortcut, and a dishonest one at that. Figuring out your own style and voice takes hard mental and emotional work, and you need to put in that work, because those who see the end result can definitely tell the difference.

A good example: remember those music mashups of the early 00s? Some of them were amusing and entertaining, and I have a collection of them in my music library. But there’s a big difference between what’s known as the “A + B” mashup (one song over the other with minimal separation or creativity) and the actual DJ mixing (seamlessly sliding one song’s separated vocal lines onto the instrumental of another song). This so-called “AI art” and “AI writing” is, for the most part, the former. And it’s not artificial intelligence, despite the label it’s been given. The computer is merely running software and mashing up different parts the user chose, that’s all; any ‘mixing’ is also the computer doing a bit of barebones touch-up. And yes, you can definitely tell the difference.

So my answer? Sure! I’ve got creative privilege, and I’m proud of it because I worked hard for years at it! I may not be raking in the money and the prestige, but I’m still getting the occasional ebook sale and that’s pretty damn cool in itself. That’s all I’ve really wanted.

And I’m sure you can make it happen as well. You just need to do more than run an algorithm, have the computer do the mashup work, and say ‘there, it’s done’.

Into the woods

September 25, 2023September 24, 2023 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

One of the motifs in Queen Ophelia’s War is the forest. I suppose it could be seen as me channeling my years back in New England, growing up in a densely wooded valley and driving all those tree-lined back roads in the 90s and early 00s. But to be truthful, I think this is more about my visits to the actual nature areas to the north of San Francisco. Muir Woods, Armstrong Redwoods, and the hills between Ukiah and Mendocino. And even the little hideaways in Golden Gate Park, Land’s End and the Presidio nearby.

Sure, ‘entering the forbidden forest’ is a classic fantasy trope, but I’ve always been fascinated by it. More to the point, I’ve loved the idea of a mystical passageway between worlds ever since I first saw that animated version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in the late 70s. [This of course is one of the reasons my writing office is called Spare Oom.] The idea that just past the edge of the known is an extremely vast unknown is something I knew as a kid, and I’ve often had dreams about it. With Queen Ophelia’s War I finally decided to latch onto that idea as a whole: it’s not just about entering a different world, but about discovering oneself in the process.

As I’ve said before, I’ve written an almost complete rough draft already that I’d worked on during the height of the pandemic, so now what I’m doing is giving it more life and color. Going deeper into the forest, perhaps. Discovering what’s beyond.

Coming back again

September 22, 2023September 21, 2023 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

I think I can safely say I’ve come back around to working on Queen Ophelia’s War again. I’ve done a few single pages’ worth of work on them these last couple of weeks. Fine tuning the opening for the most part, just to get my bearings. I’m happy with what I have so far, as this has helped me figure out the pacing and the style I’ll be using throughout. There’s a deliberate flow going on here, much like Diwa & Kaffi: unrushed, but not glacial.

This novel, like Theadia, is new territory for me. It’s closer to a straight fantasy novel than In My Blue World, I think. I read a lot of that genre during the Belfry years of the late 90s and early 00s. I’d always wanted to write it, though at the time I didn’t think I’d be able to pull it off. In my usual fashion, I take the genre and give it my own personal twist: it’s less about the monsters, legends and magic and more about what’s going on within. Why the characters are who they are, and what they need to do to change for the better.

And if all goes well, then I’ll be thrilled to share this novel with you when it’s done!

Understanding the (created) world

September 18, 2023September 17, 2023 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

I’ve come to realize that out of all the moving parts in my novels, I think the strongest and most vivid part of each one is the world I’d created for it. I just find worldbuilding to be my most favorite part of writing a novel. Mind you, I’ve learned not to get too lost in it while writing, but just enough for the reader to have a visual idea of where the story takes place. But I’m not merely using it for a brushstroke or background color…a lot of the time these places are the way they are for a reasons very important to the story.

Such as in the Bridgetown Trilogy, which takes place in multiple locations: Bridgetown itself (a sprawling and crowded metropolis, signifying tension and imbalance), Bann Dassah on Trisanda (a quiet and remote area near an ocean coast, signifying peace and balance), and several other places. Or in the unnamed location of In My Blue World, seen both as a quiet small city (signifying stasis, safety and eventually boredom) and as an overpacked sprawl (signifying movement, excitement and impermanence). The world of Diwa & Kaffi uses a slightly different twist: it generally takes place in several linked areas that are already known by the characters; the role for their world here is in their experiencing these areas on a deeply personal level for the first time.

In both Theadia and Queen Ophelia’s War the worlds continue these ideas: the generally known versus the experienced, safety versus threat, the group understanding versus the vividly personal. It’s one of the most important things I always need to remind myself when writing new novels: I rarely ever want to place these characters in a setting that could be anywhere; the location needs to have some kind of purpose, either directly or indirectly, and often obliquely. It not only makes the story more relatable to the reader, it also makes them feel the same underlying tension the characters are feeling.