My Rejected Topic

Someone asked for a post on world-building, so I proposed this topic sentence:

When you set a story on another planet or in another culture, there should be differences between that culture and ours, and those differences should be consistent and of some consequence.

As you see, it deserved to be rejected, because it isn’t about world-building as much as it is world-realization.

I think what they had in mind was more along the lines of If your world has two moons, how does that affect the deep sea fishing? or something like that.

So let me talk about my topic here and now.

An imagined world has to have some familiarity to it, or the reader has nothing to hold onto, I grant you that. Something familiar gives the reader a way to enter into sympathy with your characters. It gives the reader some feel for what’s safe and what’s dangerous, when which emotion is appropriate, when your characters are behaving well and when they’re behaving badly.

But, if the characters and action could be lifted from your book and plunked down in mid-town Manhattan in the early 21st Century, why bother imagining a different world?

That’s what I mean by cultural differences. That’s why Tolkein had hobbits live in snug rounded homes tucked inside hills and elves live in treehouses. That’s why Jasper Fforde has home DNA-sequencing kits (among many other differences) in his Thursday Next novels. There are differences between those worlds and ours, and those differences are not just cosmetic.

Your differences must have consequences. Terry Pratchett has dwarves moving to the big city, so he has restaurants and fast-food purveyors expanding their menus to cater to dwarvish tastes. In STARSHIP AND HAIKU, Somtow Sucharitkul has the Japanese people learn that they are direct descendents of whales and the consequences are enormous.

Possibly most important, the differences must remain consistent. By that I mean that, if your warrior and your poet end up sounding and acting exactly like Generic Hero Character instead of thinking and acting uniquely, that had better be a conscious decision and not just a lapse in concentration.

I thought that was worth writing about. I hope you do, too.

Marian Allen
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

Mermaids Ahoy!

I’m on Tybee Island this week, off the coast of Savannah, Georgia. The Mermaid Cottages are running their first annual writers’ retreat, during which they’ve given a free week’s stay during the winter to qualifying writers. The Southern Indiana Writers Group, of which I am a part, came together and we have a cottage together.

Because of that, and because the top search term for my blog is “mermaids in peril”, I had to go look up the history of mermaids.

I’ve always heard that sailors mistook manatees, sea cows, seals and walruses for mermaids. I’ve always been, “Really? Seriously? I mean, even if these guys haven’t seen a woman for five years, they’ve seen, killed, skinned and eaten enough sea critters to know the difference. And, no matter how long it’s been, how much grog you’ve quaffed and how close to closing time it is, a manatee doesn’t look like a woman. It just doesn’t.”

So I was intrigued and delighted today to stumble upon a site called Woman Thou Art God and an excerpt from William Bond’s book MERMAIDS, WITCHES & AMAZONS, in which he puts forward another and much more believable explanation.

I just bought the ebook with color illustrations, but you can read the mermaid bits on a blog page Mr. Bond put up a few years ago called Mermaids Are Real. In a nutshell, he believes — and he has convinced me — that the “mermaids” sighted were naked female divers. Women can dive deeper, stay down longer and tolerate colder water temperatures than men. Men from or in a culture that considered women “the weaker sex” would be likely to attribute supernatural explanations for strong women. If they healed, they must be witches. If they excelled in the water, they must be mermaids.

This is especially compelling when you know that mermaids have been depicted and described as looking just like human women, or like fish with human arms and legs, or like human women with two fish-tails, or as women whose fish tails become legs when they come out on land.

His argument is fascinating and, as I say, it’s convinced me. I love it!

Oh, and the search term? It probably has to do with an excerpt I posted from my eBook EEL’S REVERENCE, in which an elderly woman puts her life on the line to save The Eel’s mermayds from the bigotry of a brutal false priest.

Marian Allen
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

Once Upon A Very Grimm Time

What are the odds of two fairy-tale shows airing the same season? The writer in me imagines the originator pitching the concept, being turned down, pitching it elsewhere and being accepted, and the place that turned him down tweaking the concept and developing it in-house.

But that’s just my inner Wicked Stepmother talking.

There’s been some debate on lists I follow as to which one to watch, which one is better — Kind of a Team Grimm v Team Emma thing. I like both of them. They’re very different, for all the similarity of concept.

ONCE UPON A TIME:  Somewhere in the multi-verse, there’s a world in which all our childhood storybook characters are real and interact. There seems to be some connection to Disney and Barbie, based on the costumes, characters and commercials. I find this rather amusing, actually. The Wicked Queen (Snow White version) curses everybody to live in a horrible world (ours) in a small town named Storybrooke (ha ha), where time stands still and nobody remembers their past except The Wicked Queen (modern name: Regina). The modern names also amuse me: Snow White is Mrs. Blanchard, Jiminey Cricket is Dr. Hopper, Rumplestiltskin is Mr. Gold.

And another thing: Rumplestiltskin is played by Robert Carlyle, who played Hamish MacBeth on BBC. Any show that can make Robert Carlyle look BAD has some serious makeup mojo going.

OUAT is a soap opera, with a story more-or-less wrapped up every episode but a long arc plot that thickens satisfactorily.

GRIMM: In our very own world, the monsters from the old fairy tales — as well as ones that didn’t make the cut and we’ve never heard of — are real. Grimms are a bloodline of humans who can, if their aunt is sick or something (I didn’t get that quite clear) can see the monsters who walk among us, pretending to be people. Our Grimm is a cop who acquires two partners: his regular cop partner, who knows nothing of this, and a reformed werewolf, played by Silas Weir Mitchell. Forgive me, I have to pause and giggle because the werewolf is played by a guy with Weir as his middle name. I’m sorry. Yes, I really am that childish. He does a brilliant job, as he always does.

GRIMM has a tendency to bloody violence, although of the heat-of-battle and necessary-victim kind. Like the werewolf going berserk and tearing a bad guy’s arm off and then being all “Oops….” It really tends to be a little dark for my taste, but I’ll squint and watch it for Silas and for the kick-ass babe battles between two female monsters, each of whom claims to be “the good one”.

I recommend both, if only because I love the fantasy riffs, especially two such different riffs on the same basic theme.

Marian Allen
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

Redemption by J.R. Turner (On Sale Now)

Half-angel Savannah Mantas smells the sulfuric stench of wrath when it enters her city, Iron Point. Resurrected by the archangel, Michael, she’s hunting for redemption and half-demon Nico Montenegro is her prey. He comes from the Fringes, the border between the city and the toxic wasteland beyond.

When they meet, Nico tells her a story, one of genocide and confiscated bodies. Not revenge, but justice is his purpose and his target is the most admired family in the world–Commander Hathaway and his daughter.

Hathaway’s soldiers are slaughtering Fringers and secretly feeding them to Revenants, mutants who survived the bio-bombing of 2120. They have a twisted idea they can train these clever creatures like dogs and keep them out of the city long enough to mobilize an evacuation for the wealthy and well connected.

Savannah knows better. Revenants are what killed her. When they attack, the last of humankind may be wiped out completely. Stopping Hathaway might just be enough to gain her redemption and escape a hellish fate.

[Smashwords][OmniLit]

When Bad Guys Are Good

I just got a series of brief Facebook messages from a reader who is also an internet friend. She won my “get your name in a story” contest last year (her name is Holly Jahangiri), and ended up starring in the short story, “By the Book“. The idea behind that story was to promote the novel, FORCE OF HABIT, and Holly is now reading it.

She talks about Pel Darzin, the cop in the story and the book, as if he were really really real, which is nifty enough, but then came this series of messages about two of the bad guys:

Holly: Oddly, I kind of like Morgan and Foy.

Me: Good! I like them, too.

Holly: I think that shows.

Connell Morgan is a con-man from Earth making a precarious living on the planet Llannonn by, among other things, selling Earth names to Llannonninn with a taste for the exotic. He kidnaps Our Heroine, Bel Schuster, under the mistaken impression she’s a VIP he can ransom for immunity and passage off the planet.

Eddie Foy, Jr. is a Llannonninn petty criminal who met Morgan when Morgan caught him trying to steal some of Morgan’s papers with names on them. He’s willing to broker Bel into slavery if she doesn’t arrange for Morgan’s demands to be met.

It’s true that there are people–and I’ve written people–who have psychologies and motivations so alien to me I find it difficult to recognize the humanity, let alone the divine, in them. But I much prefer human bad guys of whatever planetary origin, bad guys you can like, even while you’re glad you don’t actually have to deal with them.

Marian Allen
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

Keeping It Real

I did a report on Terry Pratchett at the Woman’s Literary Club of Corydon yesterday, and it set me thinking about why I like some fantasy novels and not others. My clue came in a quote from Mr. Pratchett about his Discworld novels:

“The twist is that it is taken seriously; not taken seriously as a fantasy, but taken seriously as a world.”

By that, he meant that the Discworld functions the way the real world functions … if the real world had citizens who were trolls, werewolves, zombies, dragons and the occasional talking animal.

The thing that blew my mind about Roger Zelazny‘s Amber series wasn’t the fantasy alone, but the reality of the fantasy. Mud was sticky. Grudges could be petty. People didn’t just feast on roast pork; somebody tended the pigs.

I’m not a big fan of dark and gritty, but I’m not a big fan of Tolkien-type elves, either. I mean, fair enough, he wrote ‘em, he can make ‘em as noble and ethereal as he likes and have that be their reality, but I’d like ‘em better if I got a glimpse of the underclass. Surely they have an underclass. Elves that cook the elfbread? Elves that empty the chamberpots of all the rainbows eliminated during the night?

Anyway, I like a bit of an anchor to the world as I know it in order for the fantasy to feel convincing to me. Lloyd Alexander is brilliant at this. I firmly believe it’s what made the Harry Potter series (no link necessary!) such a success before it was pushed by the publicity machine: It started out as a school story with magic in rather than as a fantasy story with school bits.

I try to integrate reality into my fantasies and science fiction. In EEL’S REVERENCE, the mermaids (mermayds, in the book) are not magical creatures; they’re another form of sentient life. There are good priests and bad priests, rich merchants, mercenaries and cooks. In FORCE OF HABIT, there are cops and criminals, bartenders and bailiffs and bookkeepers and diplomats.

What do you think about my opinions of good/bad speculative fiction in general and the ones I mentioned in particular? Agree? Disagree? Just keep it polite. And, of course, real.

Marian Allen
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

Crossing Genres and Mashing Stuff Up

Although mash-ups have gotten a lot of press since the advent of the classic-and-monster version of recent years, genre crossing or mixing is not really new.

Some works of fiction are entirely one thing or another, but most contain elements of multiple genres.

Harlan Ellison’s work is usually classified as science fiction, but some stories are more fantasy than science. Some are horror. At least one (“Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes”) is romance.

Lynn S. Hightower’s ALIEN BLUES and its sequels are classified as science fiction, but they’re equally police procedurals; the police are just part of a future Earth and (before the production of ALIEN NATION) have partners from outer space. There’s also a strong love interest or two and heapin’ helpin’ of dystopia.

How do you label (assuming you’re a Labeler) books about vampires with a scientific explanation for the condition and romantic/erotic relationships, like Denise Verrico’s Immortyl Revolution series?

Personally, I like crossover/mash-up/multiple-genre books. I like to see the way the different elements play off each other and enhance each other. If I’m not into erotica (and I’m not–blehh), I can get into the puzzle or the cop work or the romance or the whatever.

My forthcoming novel, FORCE OF HABIT, is a cross-genre book (You figured something like that was coming, didn’t you? You’re so smart.). It’s a cop/sf/farce, in which alien criminals from outer space (from Earth and Stokk) make trouble on the planet Llannonn. A Terran teacher on holiday leaves the zone reserved for tourists and is swept up in two separate criminal schemes and two separate criminal investigations. Each person involved has his or her own different conviction about what is going on, and each person is–have you guessed it?–WRONG.

Hop on over to my web site and read the first chapter of FORCE OF HABIT. The release will be announced here, at my web site, and anywhere else nobody stops me.

Marian Allen
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

A Story Goes With It

Coming August 15, 2011

As I was saying last month, my upcoming sf/cop/farce novel, FORCE OF HABIT (release date August 15, 2011) began life as a Star Trek fanfic short story. And, as I said back in February, I decided to write a short story to go with the novel.

The story, “By the Book”, is now finished and edited, and is at Echelon awaiting publication.

My requirements for the story were: must contain the names Holly Jahangiri, Kurt Maxxon and Devra Langsam (friends and/or contest winning names) and must be set in the world of the novel and be told in a voice not incompatible with the voice of the novel.

Here’s my three-sentence encapsulation:

There’s trouble on the planet Llannonn. Living books–people who can recite the exotic texts of distant Earth–are disappearing. Book-turned-PI Kurt Maxxon, Constable Pel Darzin and Librarians Devra Langsam and Holly Jahangiri team up to find the missing books and bring their captors to justice.

photo found on a l'allure garconniere on tumblr -- Click to enlarge

Pel Darzin–risen to the position of District Criminal Investigator–is a main character in FORCE OF HABIT. I’m very fond of Pel Darzin. He looks like a young Peter Lorre. Not the one in M. Not Joel Cairo. This one, maybe, only Pel Darzin would be playing with alley jammers, not Siamese cats.

While you’re waiting for the story, why not visit my web site and enjoy some Free Reads, or (better yet, and) buy my previous Echelon publication: EEL’S REVERENCE?

Marian Allen
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

The Theory of Everything by Verna Clay

Buy eBook Now!

Mariel Dorian, Psychic, already has enough trouble; the town’s “do-gooders” want her gone. The last thing she needs is to hear a disembodied cry for help from a soul that has partially detached from its body.

The death of Professor Rafe Benton’s wife has left him a lonely, grieving man. To distract his mind and emotions, he consumes himself with the search for “The Theory of Everything.” Does it exist? The scientific community has never proven its existence.

The Watcher, hit man for The League, is keeping a close eye on Professor Benton. If the Professor’s research brings him too close to the answer lost in antiquity, his orders are to terminate him. Complicating matters, a meddlesome psychic has joined the mix and is proving to be quite a nuisance.

Following a strand of enigmatic clues in their quest to solve the riddle of the ages, Rafe and Mariel, with an assassin close behind, embark on a journey that will lead them to exotic locations and into perilous situations.

Meet Verna:

Born and raised in California, Verna Clay has resided in several States and Baja California. A love of adventure leads Verna and her husband to new locales and new experiences. Her passion for researching enigmas and mysterious places has found a home in her writings. Her stories blend fact with fantasy and create explanations that make the reader go…hmmm.

Verna’s goal is to find an enigma, research it thoroughly, fill in the blanks by creating a fantasy that’s relevant to her audience, and finally knock their socks off with an incredible ending.

Visit Verna at: www.vernaclay.com

More Than Filing Off The Serial Numbers

Coming Soon

Back in February, I posted here about a short story I was beginningas a promotion to Echelon’s upcoming release of FORCE OF HABIT.

The story is finished (yay!) and edited (more yay!) and will be released soon (extra big yay!).

But where did FORCE OF HABIT come from? As I posted on my own blog yesterday, it started out as a Star Trek fanfic (fan fiction) story I wrote many years ago. Turning a piece of fanfic into an original story is called “filing off the serial numbers”, but that isn’t really representative of what I did.

I’ve read “original” fiction that was so obviously derivative that the reader would have no trouble placing the work that inspired it. This includes a delightful Regency Romance that stood beautifully on its own but was laugh-out-loud funny if you realized where it began.

Naturally, I couldn’t get off that easily. The only characters who survive unchanged from my fanfic are the ones I made up in the first place–and Tetra Petrie, who was the invention of my friend and fellow writer, star writer/illustrator of Star Trek fanfic, Jane Peyton. She very kindly gave me the character, and I’ve enjoyed working with the formerly Vulcan, now amphibious Gilhoolie (I speak of Tetra, not Jane) very much.

The other characters flatly refused to translate one-to-one. They wanted to be new guys. The irascible Dr. McCoy? No, an Empathetic Diagnostician from the planet Bhat, warm and fuzzy with long sharp teeth. The impassively passionate Mr. Spock, who controls his fiery emotions by force of will? Not so much, although Tetra’s brother, Quatro, did get the height while Tetra got the personality. The married-to-my-engines Mr. Scott? Hmmm…. Let me see…. Uh, no; a multiply-jointed, red, sarcastic liquor-mooch named Hessaphess.

These are the voyages of the St. Bennedetta Jesuits, folks, and they’re more Keystone Kops than Star Trek. I also had more fun writing FORCE OF HABIT than I did writing the fan story that started it. Hope you have fun reading it.

Marian Allen
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes