Valentine's Day is a special day for me. Not in the roses and mushy poetry sense of the day. I don't go for that sort of thing. (I do go for chocolate, though. Good quality chocolate, please, none of that minimum-amount-of-cocoa-solids-legally-required-to-call-it-"chocolate" garbage.)
No, February 14th is a special day for me because it's my one-year anniversary. One year ago today, in the small hours of the morning, I sat hunched over my laptop and watched Smashwords.com convert some files for me. That evening, the files had their cover art and their listing telling people about my story. Valentine's Day was the day I self-published Remedy.
And it might not have been a hot date, but it was pretty emotional. I was taking a step toward a writing career, and a step away from the people who told me my entire fantasy premise was worthless. Sure, I could always take Remedy down if things didn't work out. But I would always know I had made the attempt. I was putting my work out there to see if anyone would like it, instead of taking the traditional gatekeepers' word that my premise is unusual so clearly no one will want to read it.
Where do I stand now, one year later? Well, approximately 200 people (other than my friends and family) own a copy of my novel. Some said they were confused and put off by the non-human characters. Some said that Remedy needed more editing, or that I was arrogant for thinking anyone would understand this thing I had written. But some said they were genuinely moved by the story of Peregrine, Tillian and Rose -- sometimes even moved to tears. That's all any book can hope to do: connect with a fraction of the people who pick it up. I've accomplished a small portion of what I set out to do.
So in 2012, while the traditional publishing industry panics that Amazon is devouring them, I look forward to the future. Not all self-publishing authors will make millions -- heck, I'll be delighted if and when I make grocery money. But on this day of romance, I feel quite fuzzy indeed when I think about putting up more novels. I'm going to stick with this particular relationship. And maybe eat some chocolate while working on the next story of Aligare.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
The ways of wild ferrin
While writing Render, I've arrived back at a favourite draft chapter of mine. It's a scene where Felixi the prickly loner dragon visits a forest clearing to meet with a group of wild ferrin. They look forward to Felixi's visits because he trades delicious prepared food for their scavenged forest materials, and trades generously on top of that. Felixi and the ferrin speak to each other in a mixture of commontongue and gestures, with the most language-gifted ferrin acting as a translator when her fellows don't catch on right away.
As much as the whole setup tries Felixi's patience, these little weasel folk are possibly the only people in the land he considers his friends and feels right indulging. The scene redeems Felixi -- which is good because he's been kind of a jerk so far in the story. I also like this scene because it's a great chance to explore the ferrin race's attitude toward civilization. The three Aligare races have lived together and built towns for thousands of generations, but there are still populations of wild ferrin living in the forest in their ancestral way. They forage for fruit and nuts, communicate mostly through gestures, and keep few, if any, material possessions. When wild ferrin encounter town-dwelling people, it's a moment of culture shock. Well, culture shock is too strong a term. Culture "oh wow, this is interesting", maybe, since ferrin have very strong tendancies of curiosity and social cooperation, and because town-dwelling aemets and korvi know ferrin as reliable allies. The wild ferrin often make a friend of the town-dweller and learn some commontongue for the sake of learning it, and they often end up following the town-dwellers back to the town.
It's not necessarily a permanent change. Some of those ferrin find that they like the wild ways better. Even ferrin who were born and raised in towns sometimes choose to stash their clothing somewhere and go live in the trees. Town-dwelling life isn't a step up or down from anything; it's just an option.
I've wanted to look deeper into this lifestyle since writing Remedy and its variety of ferrin characters. I hadn't really noticed what I did with wild ferrin culture until I noticed that I sort of liked what I had. Ferrin adaptability is one of the ways the Aligare world is different from Earth cultures. I'm sure we can all think of an example of human cultures being elitist snobs at each other. And I'm sure we've all looked at a different lifestyle and thought, "I couldn't live like that". As a race, ferrin can not only switch fluidly between living off the land and working service jobs in towns, but they can adopt korvi or aemet culture to any degree they're comfortable with. They can be anything they choose and no one finds it odd. It's been like that for as long as anyone can remember, for as long as stories have been passed down.
So there'll be awkward language barrier scenes in Render. And scenes of "how do you translate this word/concept?". And glimpses of how other characters live. Because I like writing that sort of thing, and because it's fun to imagine finding new friends in the trees.
As much as the whole setup tries Felixi's patience, these little weasel folk are possibly the only people in the land he considers his friends and feels right indulging. The scene redeems Felixi -- which is good because he's been kind of a jerk so far in the story. I also like this scene because it's a great chance to explore the ferrin race's attitude toward civilization. The three Aligare races have lived together and built towns for thousands of generations, but there are still populations of wild ferrin living in the forest in their ancestral way. They forage for fruit and nuts, communicate mostly through gestures, and keep few, if any, material possessions. When wild ferrin encounter town-dwelling people, it's a moment of culture shock. Well, culture shock is too strong a term. Culture "oh wow, this is interesting", maybe, since ferrin have very strong tendancies of curiosity and social cooperation, and because town-dwelling aemets and korvi know ferrin as reliable allies. The wild ferrin often make a friend of the town-dweller and learn some commontongue for the sake of learning it, and they often end up following the town-dwellers back to the town.
It's not necessarily a permanent change. Some of those ferrin find that they like the wild ways better. Even ferrin who were born and raised in towns sometimes choose to stash their clothing somewhere and go live in the trees. Town-dwelling life isn't a step up or down from anything; it's just an option.
I've wanted to look deeper into this lifestyle since writing Remedy and its variety of ferrin characters. I hadn't really noticed what I did with wild ferrin culture until I noticed that I sort of liked what I had. Ferrin adaptability is one of the ways the Aligare world is different from Earth cultures. I'm sure we can all think of an example of human cultures being elitist snobs at each other. And I'm sure we've all looked at a different lifestyle and thought, "I couldn't live like that". As a race, ferrin can not only switch fluidly between living off the land and working service jobs in towns, but they can adopt korvi or aemet culture to any degree they're comfortable with. They can be anything they choose and no one finds it odd. It's been like that for as long as anyone can remember, for as long as stories have been passed down.
So there'll be awkward language barrier scenes in Render. And scenes of "how do you translate this word/concept?". And glimpses of how other characters live. Because I like writing that sort of thing, and because it's fun to imagine finding new friends in the trees.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Mantis shrimp: really cool crawlies
When I'm browsing the Internet for unusual animal abilities, I always seem to pick invertibrates. Why do insects, arachnids and mollusks seem to have all the cool superpowers? I don't know, but I sure do think that Earth's small, crawly things are underrated.
Take shrimp, for example. They're delicious. We think nothing of eating a few dozen of them with butter. We call someone a "shrimp" when we want to belittle them. But take a moment to consider the stomatopods.
Better known as mantis shrimp. These sometimes-colourful little fellas have highly specialized eyesight. They can detect 10 times as many colours as a human can, plus ultraviolet and infrared light. Combine this with the shrimp's ability to fluoresce to communicate with each other. Mantis shrimp can also see polarized light, which lets them accurately determine the direction and nature of light. A mantis shrimp underwater can tell which phase the moon is in, which relates to tide patterns and mantis shrimp mating behaviour. Humans have only recently understood these things; mantis shrimp have been using them in practical ways for 400 million years.
But a wide visual spectrum isn't their only superpower. Some varieties of mantis shrimp (referred to as "smashers") have an incredibly fast and powerful jabbing strike. Specialized structures in their claw arms let them ratchet back the limb, store muscle energy, and unleash it like pulling a trigger. That lets them launch a 50 mile-per-hour punch almost instantaneously, with such fast acceleration that the water in front of the claw is depressurized and brought to boil. Pressure change like that is essentially a second powerful punch to the target. Which means that these four-inch shrimp can easily smash through crab shells -- or aquarium glass.
It sure sounds like science fiction material to me. Even scientists have been known to call these creatures "shrimps from Mars". But mantis shrimp are perfectly real, living in our oceans and beating up fish bigger than they are. Just another quiet little marvel crawling around on Earth.
Take shrimp, for example. They're delicious. We think nothing of eating a few dozen of them with butter. We call someone a "shrimp" when we want to belittle them. But take a moment to consider the stomatopods.
Better known as mantis shrimp. These sometimes-colourful little fellas have highly specialized eyesight. They can detect 10 times as many colours as a human can, plus ultraviolet and infrared light. Combine this with the shrimp's ability to fluoresce to communicate with each other. Mantis shrimp can also see polarized light, which lets them accurately determine the direction and nature of light. A mantis shrimp underwater can tell which phase the moon is in, which relates to tide patterns and mantis shrimp mating behaviour. Humans have only recently understood these things; mantis shrimp have been using them in practical ways for 400 million years.
But a wide visual spectrum isn't their only superpower. Some varieties of mantis shrimp (referred to as "smashers") have an incredibly fast and powerful jabbing strike. Specialized structures in their claw arms let them ratchet back the limb, store muscle energy, and unleash it like pulling a trigger. That lets them launch a 50 mile-per-hour punch almost instantaneously, with such fast acceleration that the water in front of the claw is depressurized and brought to boil. Pressure change like that is essentially a second powerful punch to the target. Which means that these four-inch shrimp can easily smash through crab shells -- or aquarium glass.
It sure sounds like science fiction material to me. Even scientists have been known to call these creatures "shrimps from Mars". But mantis shrimp are perfectly real, living in our oceans and beating up fish bigger than they are. Just another quiet little marvel crawling around on Earth.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
"Creative" should mean something
As a kid, I went to a lot of summer-camp-type programs. Not all of them were actually camps in the woods -- some were just arts and crafts projects hosted by the local college. But all of these programs were meant to ensure that only children like myself didn't spend the whole summer in a lightless basement playing video games.
One of these college-hosted programs had me in a classroom with about 20 other kids. We were given a challenge: using an allotted supply of tape, paper, drinking straws and paper clips, make a construct that would allow a light bulb to survive an 8-foot drop. It was a standby activity that got kids thinking and building for an hour.
While fiddling with the paper and straws, my assigned group didn't seem to have any good ideas springing forth. Or any ideas at all, really. So I threw out, "Hey, what if we wrap the paper around the lightbulb base like this? So it makes a cone, and the open end of the cone acts like landing gear." Everyone agreed, in the blasé but curious way of kids who don't know what to do. I basically led the exercise and my lightbulb construct ended up looking like a prototype lunar lander. The paper cone bristled with drinking straws -- so the cone wouldn't fall over, you see.
The other groups of kids made the simple models frequently seen in this exercise: crumpled balls of padding encasing the lightbulb, or landing pads to be put on the floor under the bare, falling bulb. Most of the day's constructs successfully protected the light bulb. A few failed and were followed by broken glass cleanup. My lunar lander performed perfectly, landing on its open cone end with a quiet click and holding the light bulb se.
Afterward, the program leaders stood in front of the chalkboard and graded each construct. We got scores out of 20 points in several impressive-sounding categories. This was a farce, of course -- it's not like a casual summer program is going to give a child a failing grade in arts and crafts. At the time, I was just waiting excitedly to see if my clearly awesome construct would get the best score. Getting the highest score would mean that I won, right? Or at least that I was good at doing assigned things in a cool way.
In the category of Creativity, most of the other kids got score of 16 or 17. Drawing a design on your crumpled ball of paper was enough to get a score or 19 or 20 and be called very creative. So when a program leader arrived at my lunar lander and held his chalk near the Creative category, he hesitated. His face scrunched up with thought, and he hemmed and hawed something about how he had never seen a design anything like what my group did. Reluctantly, he wrote "21/20".
And somehow, that was the most disappointing grade my teacher's-pet self had ever received. 21 out of 20? What the heck was this noise? If actual innovation broke the grading parameters, then the grade was meaningless. I could sense that even though I just wanted to be the smartest kid in the room. The program leaders had watered down the term "creative" until it meant little more than "I acknowledge that you made something".
Nowadays, I think of that experience when I'm reading reviews of mainstream fantasy. There's nothing wrong with enjoying a clichéd story about a destined farmboy, but I wince when I see those types of stories called "creative". Like there's something exceptional about redoing a well-worn trope. Sure, it's creative in the strict sense that magical quests don't happen in our real world and there aren't any dragons in our skies. But if we call a hero youth with a sword "creative", what will we do when a project comes along that shatters all our expectations? Give it 21 out of 20? Or 500 out of 20, because that's about as meaningful?
I think it's important to say what we mean, and keep our expectations high. Book grading is never anything but subjective, I know. People who are dazzled by the special farmboy probably just haven't read much fantasy, so to them, it seems like a truly creative spin on an adventure quest story. But I expect a "creative" story to break rules or try something really out there, not just put a bit of window dressing on something familiar. Personally, I write about bird-dragons on peaceful quests for personal truth and I often feel like I'm not reaching high enough. There are new models to try, if we're willing to wander away from the more obvious choices. And they might just work exceptionally well.
Our modern mainstream media shows a strong preference for safe ideas. Things that have been done before and can be doodled on to make them look new. Just look at all the franchise reboots and sequels available for us to read and watch. Creativity is something I don't think we can get enough of: we should be building strange constructs whenever possible, just to see if they work. And as a consumer of ideas, I'll always be expecting 20/20 creativity to surprise me.
One of these college-hosted programs had me in a classroom with about 20 other kids. We were given a challenge: using an allotted supply of tape, paper, drinking straws and paper clips, make a construct that would allow a light bulb to survive an 8-foot drop. It was a standby activity that got kids thinking and building for an hour.
While fiddling with the paper and straws, my assigned group didn't seem to have any good ideas springing forth. Or any ideas at all, really. So I threw out, "Hey, what if we wrap the paper around the lightbulb base like this? So it makes a cone, and the open end of the cone acts like landing gear." Everyone agreed, in the blasé but curious way of kids who don't know what to do. I basically led the exercise and my lightbulb construct ended up looking like a prototype lunar lander. The paper cone bristled with drinking straws -- so the cone wouldn't fall over, you see.
The other groups of kids made the simple models frequently seen in this exercise: crumpled balls of padding encasing the lightbulb, or landing pads to be put on the floor under the bare, falling bulb. Most of the day's constructs successfully protected the light bulb. A few failed and were followed by broken glass cleanup. My lunar lander performed perfectly, landing on its open cone end with a quiet click and holding the light bulb se.
Afterward, the program leaders stood in front of the chalkboard and graded each construct. We got scores out of 20 points in several impressive-sounding categories. This was a farce, of course -- it's not like a casual summer program is going to give a child a failing grade in arts and crafts. At the time, I was just waiting excitedly to see if my clearly awesome construct would get the best score. Getting the highest score would mean that I won, right? Or at least that I was good at doing assigned things in a cool way.
In the category of Creativity, most of the other kids got score of 16 or 17. Drawing a design on your crumpled ball of paper was enough to get a score or 19 or 20 and be called very creative. So when a program leader arrived at my lunar lander and held his chalk near the Creative category, he hesitated. His face scrunched up with thought, and he hemmed and hawed something about how he had never seen a design anything like what my group did. Reluctantly, he wrote "21/20".
And somehow, that was the most disappointing grade my teacher's-pet self had ever received. 21 out of 20? What the heck was this noise? If actual innovation broke the grading parameters, then the grade was meaningless. I could sense that even though I just wanted to be the smartest kid in the room. The program leaders had watered down the term "creative" until it meant little more than "I acknowledge that you made something".
Nowadays, I think of that experience when I'm reading reviews of mainstream fantasy. There's nothing wrong with enjoying a clichéd story about a destined farmboy, but I wince when I see those types of stories called "creative". Like there's something exceptional about redoing a well-worn trope. Sure, it's creative in the strict sense that magical quests don't happen in our real world and there aren't any dragons in our skies. But if we call a hero youth with a sword "creative", what will we do when a project comes along that shatters all our expectations? Give it 21 out of 20? Or 500 out of 20, because that's about as meaningful?
I think it's important to say what we mean, and keep our expectations high. Book grading is never anything but subjective, I know. People who are dazzled by the special farmboy probably just haven't read much fantasy, so to them, it seems like a truly creative spin on an adventure quest story. But I expect a "creative" story to break rules or try something really out there, not just put a bit of window dressing on something familiar. Personally, I write about bird-dragons on peaceful quests for personal truth and I often feel like I'm not reaching high enough. There are new models to try, if we're willing to wander away from the more obvious choices. And they might just work exceptionally well.
Our modern mainstream media shows a strong preference for safe ideas. Things that have been done before and can be doodled on to make them look new. Just look at all the franchise reboots and sequels available for us to read and watch. Creativity is something I don't think we can get enough of: we should be building strange constructs whenever possible, just to see if they work. And as a consumer of ideas, I'll always be expecting 20/20 creativity to surprise me.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
What's going on
So, here we are in 2012, forging on into the future and cracking a lot of Mayan apocalypse jokes. What have I been up to? Ah, working and playing video games and cleaning up the holiday fallout. And writing the opening of Render -- the actual opening of Render, or at least a closer version.
I've taken a few shots at Render drafts so far. They weren't all coherent, but each version made it a little farther into the story and laid more pieces down. I have a better idea now of what Render will end up like. I've spent enough time with the protagonist, Rue, enough to feel like I can do a good job writing her. And now I'm shuffling sentences around in the first chapter, adjusting the way characters meet and the plans they lay, trying to make all the information line up.
I'm never sure what to discuss on my blog while I'm at this stage of writing. The characters are in flux, getting tweaked whenever I have a better idea, so talking specifics about the people in Render probably wouldn't be accurate for long. And my plots never trump my characters, so the story events are up in the air, too. (Frankly, I'm just glad I don't have a deadline carved in stone for any of this.)
So if Render's mystery story is mysterious even to me, I guess I'll have to chat about other things! Stay tuned for video game plots or my life experiences or something!
I've taken a few shots at Render drafts so far. They weren't all coherent, but each version made it a little farther into the story and laid more pieces down. I have a better idea now of what Render will end up like. I've spent enough time with the protagonist, Rue, enough to feel like I can do a good job writing her. And now I'm shuffling sentences around in the first chapter, adjusting the way characters meet and the plans they lay, trying to make all the information line up.
I'm never sure what to discuss on my blog while I'm at this stage of writing. The characters are in flux, getting tweaked whenever I have a better idea, so talking specifics about the people in Render probably wouldn't be accurate for long. And my plots never trump my characters, so the story events are up in the air, too. (Frankly, I'm just glad I don't have a deadline carved in stone for any of this.)
So if Render's mystery story is mysterious even to me, I guess I'll have to chat about other things! Stay tuned for video game plots or my life experiences or something!
Friday, December 30, 2011
How to think a large thought
I found a blog post about a particularly intelligent species of jumping spider. Not intelligent in the sense that they think with mammalian ease. No, these spiders have physically tiny brains -- and they just sit there grinding away at complex mental processes for however many hours it takes.
That's certainly an interesting way of looking at intelligence. We humans tend to assume that to qualify as intelligent, a creature needs to have mental capacity similar to ours and be able to run thought processes the same way we do. But it's not that tiny-brained animals are incapable of complex thought: it's just a matter of how they go about it, and how how long the process takes.
I'm reminded of a scene from Star Trek: Voyager where Captain Janeway works with Leonardo da Vinci. Da Vinci is having a hard time grasping the idea of energy weapons, never mind the fact that he himself is a computer program in a mobile holographic emitter. So when da Vinci demands an explanation for all this, Janeway makes an analogy. A sparrow, she proposes, would be able to never understand French politics. A songbird's simple world and simple thought process mean that there are things beyond its comprehension. Knowing that, can da Vinci accept that there are things beyond his own comprehension? Da Vinci is humbled by this answer and he continues trusting in Janeway's incredible technology.
Really, the only reason the sparrow can't understand is that it has more mundane things on its mind. Food and mates and such. Maybe those determined jumping spiders could understand French politics or holographic programs, if they could live long enough to grind through the mental process. The spiders would need augmented memories to remember the things they figure out. Concepts like individual identity might be difficult for them. But the actual process of breaking down ideas into smaller pieces? It's not impossible. Or we can take the theory in a different direction: what understandings could a human achieve if zie could live a long life and spend it in vigorous thought? What puzzles could our mere ape brains work out?
I just like the idea that anything can think if it works hard enough.
That's certainly an interesting way of looking at intelligence. We humans tend to assume that to qualify as intelligent, a creature needs to have mental capacity similar to ours and be able to run thought processes the same way we do. But it's not that tiny-brained animals are incapable of complex thought: it's just a matter of how they go about it, and how how long the process takes.
I'm reminded of a scene from Star Trek: Voyager where Captain Janeway works with Leonardo da Vinci. Da Vinci is having a hard time grasping the idea of energy weapons, never mind the fact that he himself is a computer program in a mobile holographic emitter. So when da Vinci demands an explanation for all this, Janeway makes an analogy. A sparrow, she proposes, would be able to never understand French politics. A songbird's simple world and simple thought process mean that there are things beyond its comprehension. Knowing that, can da Vinci accept that there are things beyond his own comprehension? Da Vinci is humbled by this answer and he continues trusting in Janeway's incredible technology.
Really, the only reason the sparrow can't understand is that it has more mundane things on its mind. Food and mates and such. Maybe those determined jumping spiders could understand French politics or holographic programs, if they could live long enough to grind through the mental process. The spiders would need augmented memories to remember the things they figure out. Concepts like individual identity might be difficult for them. But the actual process of breaking down ideas into smaller pieces? It's not impossible. Or we can take the theory in a different direction: what understandings could a human achieve if zie could live a long life and spend it in vigorous thought? What puzzles could our mere ape brains work out?
I just like the idea that anything can think if it works hard enough.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Ravel is now available!
I have triumphed over the formatting beast, and now I bring you Ravel.
Ravel: A story of Aligare
Ravel is a romance story, although it's an intellectual romance more than a sexual one. It's about 15 000 words long and available in .epub, .mobi and .pdf formats. Download a copy from Smashwords! It's absolutely free! And if you know someone who might enjoy the story, please spread the word.
Ravel: A story of Aligare
Aster Hane has all the things her insectoid people cherish: a hard-working husband, new children, and a talent for her family's traditional craftwork. What Aster doesn't have is what she senses in the wind: the knowledge of the world beyond her small village.
Then she meets Llarez of Arkiere, an avian storyteller. With his jester's approach to life, Llarez doesn't mind doing an errand for Aster -- and he doesn't mind when Aster accidentally asks for more than she intended. With new thoughts planted in her mind, Aster begins to question whether her race's ideal life is what she actually wants for herself. Llarez is glad to help her find the answer, but that only makes the choice harder.
Ravel is a romance story, although it's an intellectual romance more than a sexual one. It's about 15 000 words long and available in .epub, .mobi and .pdf formats. Download a copy from Smashwords! It's absolutely free! And if you know someone who might enjoy the story, please spread the word.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
