Following on from Wednesday’s Teaspoonful of Luck, today we have a Teaspoonful of Excitement — because next Monday, dear readers, both the US and UK COVERS for Daughter Of Blood shall be REVEALED!

And I have to say, I am REALLY looking forward to it!

Because although I have been telling you all that there is a book and it’s going to be published in January, having covers makes it all seem so much more Real. (Even if logic asserts that it will, in fact, be no more or less real after Monday than it was before. 😉 )

And, just to add to our teaspoonful of excitement, because the Wall of Night series is being re-released (and re-jacketed) in the US, that means this cover will be breaking step with what’s gone before. A wee bit of extra excitement indeed!

So if I don’t see you before then, do drop by on Monday — or otherwise rock on over to either the Orbit (UK) or Voyager (US) sites and check out the goodness there.

Hill Tower, Jaransor; art by Peter Fitzpatrick

In yesterday’s post on “Keeping Fantasy Fresh — & (With A Teaspoonful Of Luck!) Interesting”, I opined that “The second part of keeping Fantasy real (and fresh, and interesting) is developing those fantastic worlds…”

So in the spirit of that statement, and because I see it’s been generating a few visits lately, and because I am still deep in the mire of copyedit, I have decided to revisit the backlist and re-post “Place As Person.”

If you’ve read it before, I hope you may enjoy it again. If you’re reading it for the first time: enjoy!

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“Place As Person: What Does It Mean When Telling Story?

I first became consciously aware of the interface between place and character as an undergraduate, when writing an essay on the city in literature. As soon as I began researching the topic, I quickly realized that whether Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria or Italo Calvino’s invisible city, these places were so vital to the story being told that they were more than simply setting or backdrop—they were “characters” in their own right.

Of course, utilising the benefits of 20/20 hindsight, I can see that an unconscious awareness of place as character began a great deal earlier—with the snowy forest and lamp-post that was my first experience of Narnia, the encroaching darkness of Alan Garner’s Elidor, and the lonely reaches of Earthsea. Yet ‘place as character’ only implies that locale must be strongly enough drawn to pervade the unfolding story. I believe the premise of “place as person” takes both reader and writer a great deal further and that to realise it fully the place must have an actual personality, i.e. it must in some sense be sentient, or at very least a conscious player in the story’s game.

I wrestled with this premise when writing The Heir of Night and developing both the Wall of Night and wider Haarth world. I believe there is no question that the Wall of Night is “place as character”—its bleak, windblasted, and literally dark physical presence dominates The Heir of Night. But we get no sense that it is either sentient or conscious. On the contrary, its brutal physicality is almost the opposite, a monolithic indifference mirrored in the Derai people who garrison its keeps and holds. But toward the end of the book the world begins to open out for the central characters and they find themselves in a new place, known as Jaransor. Once again, I believe Jaransor exemplifies “place as character”—but if I have done my writer’s work well then the reader may begin to question whether there is not more to the matter:  if it might, in fact, be possible that Jaransor is not just a chaotic force, but a personality, albeit a fractured one, that has consciously entered into the conflict being played out.

The Heir of Night ends with this question unanswered, but I pick it up again in The Gathering of the Lost when Malian, the central protagonist, is forced to ask herself whether not only Jaransor, but the world of Haarth itself, could be aware…

To say any more at this point would be a spoiler, and in fact the jury is still out on how Haarth’s role, if it is indeed a personality, could play out through the series. But I do feel that in order for either the world or a particular place within it, such as Jaransor, to be said to be “place as person” then it must be a conscious participant in the story. And even the possibility—but not necessarily the certainty, because that would be ‘telling’—of that being the case is an exciting notion, one that introduces a Gaian consciousness into my epic fantasy.”

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"Place As Person" first posted on Mary Victoria's Chronicles Of The Tree blog in 2011,
as part of a series celebrating release of the anthology River, edited by Alma Alexander.

Wall storm

Keeping storytelling fresh is always a challenge, simply because there are very few distinct stories: two people meet, a farm boy/girl finds a destiny (Carnivale, anyone?), families fall out and come together again, star-crossed love, an ordinary person is faced with an extraordinary challenge…

These are the stories that speak to us in every generation and not just in Fantasy. The difference in Fantasy is that we add magic…(Then stir!)

This is why I argue that the secret to great storytelling is not necessarily about finding the “new”, but about how we tell stories that are already—if not quite as old as time—at least as enduring as the human race. In short, it is about authenticity. And authenticity is about keeping it real.

A big part of keeping it real in all fiction is developing authentic characters. It’s even more vital with Fantasy because the characters operate in a fantastic setting, which may be completely “other” worlds, or our own world, but with magic added. To believe in the world, we first have to believe in the characters at an emotional level. Their hopes, dreams, and fears have to be real for us as readers.

Jaransor; art by Peter Fitzpatrick – used with permission

One way I strive to achieve that, as a writer, is to understand that no matter how large or small the part in the story, a character is always important to him or herself. Even the most minor of characters will have a history and a life that matters to them, and as the writer I have to convey a sense of that, even if the reader will only ever catch the most fleeting glimpse of the character on the page.

The second part of keeping Fantasy real (and fresh, and interesting) is developing those fantastic worlds—which I believe is what distinguishes the SFF genre from any other form. Other literary genres are all bound to the world-as-we-know-it, whether in its contemporary or historical context. Perhaps all fiction asks “what if?” But speculative fiction asks, “What if a world could be like this, or this, or that?” While fantasy adds the coda, “What if there really were magic? How would that work?”

It’s the infinite variety of possible “what if’s” that keeps Fantasy exciting.

The Wall Of Night series—I’m currently copyediting the third book, Daughter Of Blood—is set in a completely “other” world, that has been described by readers as a compelling ‘character’ in its own right. It’s also a story of magic and adventure, roof top pursuits and tourneys, hidden identities and springtime love. The heart of the story, though, is always the characters: Malian, the Heir of Night, and her comrade-in-arms, Kalan, and their tale of honor, ambition, and duty, as well as responsibility: to each other, to the world in which they live, and to their families, whether of blood or friendship.

I believe these are matters that not just speak to, but compel us in every generation. And you don’t get any more interesting than that.

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*In the interests of copyedit progress, this post was adapted from a guest article 
on Marianne De Pierres site, ca.2013.

Hour glass

she was a corsetière
threading whale bone

through cloth

placing herself close
to the ocean

became lucrative

when whales surfaced
she saw

bustles, derrières,

the amazement of men
on their wedding night

she scraped her learning
from medical notes

collapsed lung
block and tackle
.

© Frankie McMillan

Hour glass first appeared in Turbine (2012) and is included in There are no horses in heaven, Canterbury University Press, 2015.

Reproduced here with permission.

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About the Poem:

I am currently engaged  in the process of re-posting poets who have had multiple poems featured here on “…Anything, Really” , or by me on the Tuesday Poem Hub, since I joined the Tuesday Poem community in June 2010.

Today I am delighted to continue featuring the “unique and insightful” (Beatties Bookblog) poetry of Frankie McMillan. I featured this poem earlier this year, on The Tuesday Poem Hub, which you should check out if you would like to read a fuller commentary. But it’s nonetheless a pleasure to have the opportunity to highlight both it, and Frankie, again today.

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About The Poet:

Frankie McMillan is the author of The Bag Lady’s Picnic and other stories, and a poetry collection, Dressing for the Cannibals. In 2005 she was awarded the Creative NZ Todd Bursary. In 2008 and 2009 her work was selected for the Best NZ Fiction anthologies. Other awards include winner of the New Zealand Poetry Society International Competition (2009) and the NZ National Flash Fiction award (2013). In 2014 she held an Ursula Bethell writing residency at Canterbury University. Her second book of poetry, There Are No Horses in Heaven was published by Canterbury University Press in March, 2015.

Very recently, Frankie both won and also took third place in the National Flash Fiction competition. You can read all about it here: A National Flash Fiction Heroine: Congratulating Frankie McMillan

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To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here.

The copyedit rocks on.

In lieu of more weighty Monday morning reflections, here’s one copyedit-derived reason for thinking that those who maintain that one should ‘write what you know’ may just — er — know a thing or two…

After all, if one only wrote what one knew thoroughly, think how much less research would have to be undertaken when embarking on a writing project. It would certainly reduce — or if one really got the “write what you know” thing down, possibly eliminate altogether — the need to painstakingly check facts in areas so diverse as medicine, military manoeuvres, and animal behaviour, to name a few that are currently on my copyedit plate …

Notwithstanding, as one innocent inquirer said not long ago, “But I thought you wrote fantasy-fiction. Can’t you just make everything up however you want, or say it’s magic, or something.”

If only, indeed … 😉

“It is important to know when you are fretting it; when you are fretting it because it is not working, it needs to be scrapped.”

~ Toni Morrison

—

Usually, I feature these quotes because I am in 100% agreement with the sentiment being expressed. With this one, though, I am somewhat less certain, because at what point does one decide that something that is not working needs to be scrapped?

From my own point of view, sometimes when a piece of writing appears not to be working, all that means is that I have to work harder, writing and throwing away until I finally hit the right story track through the creative jungle. So I feel it’s important to distinguish between a particular line of approach to a story, that may well need to be dispensed with in favour of another, and scrapping the story altogether…

It’s that time…

“Got what?” you may inquire, puzzled at my authorial exuberance.

“A continuity error,” I shout, waving my arms about, “caught right there in the act, plain as the nose on Pinocchio’s face, in the Daughter of Blood (The Wall Of Night, Book Three) manuscript.”

Which is, of course, exactly why authors and publishers copyedit manuscripts. Matters of “style”, i.e. comma placement, spelling, and punctuation may all figure, but the really important aspect (imho) is this: the copyedit is effectively the “last chance” to identify errors of detail embedded in the story itself.

So what does a continuity error, caught brazen-faced in the vasty wilds of a manuscript, look like?

The copyedit rocks on.

In the case of Daughter Of Blood, the issue related to time and connectivity. A character was reflecting on two past events—but had them the wrong way around, chronologically, in terms of the story-as-written. So the second event—in the character’s “recollection”—had happened before the first. An error a reader could be expected to notice, since they will be privy to all the same information as the character.

So I call that “Aha: gotcha!” moment a great copyedit save. 🙂

Other great copyedit saves so far? Spotting a point in the manuscript where text—approximately a paragraph or so, as it turns out—was missing, must count as one, I feel. “Hmm, that reads a little oddly,” I thought…

Sometimes, though, it’s just silly stuff — like referring to a character as being a “solitary” figure (in  a physical rather than an emotional sense), when the text has just described him/her as being closely surrounded by others.  Um, ah, anything but “solitary”, in fact…

And yes, you are quite right: copyediting is really and truly close attention to detail territory.

A very different mode from writing the book in the first place, where the author really has to be in touch with the big picture—like where the story will begin and end, plus all the stations of the story in-between, just for example. Not to mention characters and the infinite nuances of their development…

Question: Oh, you want to know where I’ve gotten too with the whole shebang?

Answer: As of the close of play last night, I’d just pushed past the 75%-of-the-way-through-the-manuscript mark.

You may stamp, toot, holler, and whistle, at will. 😉

As you know, the 1st of every month is when I post on the Supernatural Underground.

Being under the copyedit hammer right now, this month’s post focused on that—not surprisingly, perhaps, since both my blog and the Supernatural Underground are writers’ blogs!

One might say, in fact, that posting about what’s happening in the writing life stands to reason. 😉

However, I did mention a few other things…

…like a whisper, among the hedgerows, that my USA and UK covers for Daughter Of Blood may be revealed Very Soon. [Claps hands!]

To Come: “The Chaos Gate”

And that although there is a proofing round yet to come (the “first pass proof”) the copyedit is really the author’s last major round in terms of working on a book.

It’s always the point (when finished) at which I feel: yep, this particular book is really done. In story terms, it’s a wrap.

Conversely, concluding the copyedit is also the milestone after which I really feel freed up — to concentrate fully on the next book. In this case, as mentioned on the Supernatural Underground, that book is The Chaos Gate (working title), otherwise known as The Wall Of Night, Book Four.

And as we all know, The Wall Of Night Book Four is also the final book in the WALL series.

So next time I do a copyedit, I won’t just be saying it’s a particular book that’s really done; I’ll be calling it a wrap on a series.

However, that day is still quite some way off yet. (Think Aragorn at the Black Gate: “Not This Day”!)

So in the meantime I’ll be sticking to my knitting and staying focused on getting to the moment when I can say that the copyedit for Daughter Of Blood is a wrap.

In an update on that, at present I’m just over 70% through the manuscript.

UK/AUS/NZ

I wrote this post for the BookSworn authors’ site in 2013, but I still consider it very relevant to contemporary Fantasy and Science Fiction.

For this reason, I am re-posting it today for those of you who may not have caught up with it awa’ aways back in 2013.

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When Characters We Love Die

“Recently, a reader who had completed reading The Gathering Of The Lost, the second novel in my The Wall Of Night series, wrote to me that:

“…my only gripe is you write great characters I love and then you kill them!”

A frequent criticism of epic fantasy is that it romanticises war, focusing on the glamour of combat and weaponry, rather than presenting the real consequences of armed conflict, i.e. US Civil War General Sherman’s “war is hell.”

One aspect of romanticising is that unknown faceless masses die, while the main characters largely sail through unscathed, not only surviving every encounter, but never ending up maimed, or suffering PTSD. The Star Trek “Redshirts” have become shorthand for this phenomenon, the term deriving from the apparel of the nameless crew members who accompanied the main (named) characters on their adventures, pretty much for the sole purpose of dying.

USA

So although The Gathering Of The Lost is heroic fantasy, it also reflects my personal philosophy of epic storytelling: people who matter, people those in the story love and care about, are going to get injured and killed in the armed conflicts—because that is what happens in war.

Even where violence may be necessary to defend yourself and those you love, it exacts a price that you and your friends may well have to pay. So as part of achieving realism, I try and make sure that those caught up in the conflict are real people for the reader, not just “redshirts” who can be killed off with zero emotional cost.

So yes, sometimes that means characters we love are going to die.

The master of this approach, of course, is George RR Martin in his A Song Of Ice and Fire series. Since the first truly major character died at the end of A Game Of Thrones, we have learned as readers that no one in this story is sacrosanct.

Another aspect of Martin’s storytelling (which I like) is that not only will characters we love die, but sometimes the reason they die is because they are trying to do right. The notion that people prevail because they are the ‘good guys’ finds no foothold in the Westeros world. In terms of reflecting the realities of war and conflict, I have always felt this gives Martin’s storytelling authenticity.

I do not, however, believe a high body count in and of itself, whether of major characters or not, gives a story authenticity. War may be Sherman’s hell of “dead and mangled bodies … the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated,” and people we love and care about may well be cut down alongside strangers.

But even in the most terrible conflicts that have wracked this planet (for example, in the Thirty Years War, it’s estimated that up to 50% of the population of what is now Germany died) people—many people, even—have survived. Some will even have survived unscathed physically, if not emotionally. So in an authentic story of war and conflict, characters we love may also live.

In the end, authenticity will never be about how many people die or live, or whether they are major or minor characters. Authenticity derives from the realism of the situations portrayed and the emotional believability of the characters’ response to them. In other words, the integrity of the story should drive every aspect of the narrative, including who lives and who dies.”

~ by Rebecca Fisher
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Introduction:

It’s funny watching trends come and go in the YA market. First the Harry Potter franchise resulted in a surplus of kids with magical powers, while Twilight wrought a seemingly endless supply of broody vampire romance fiction. We’re currently the in the midst of a dystopian influx, with books such as The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner and Divergent paving the way for shows like The 100, the latest to jump on this particular bandwagon.

But hey, if something is popular, then why not join in – especially when you have a solid premise on which to build on.

Premise:

Based on a book series by Kass Morgan, The 100 (pronounced “the hundred”) takes place ninety-seven years after a nuclear apocalypse made Planet Earth inhospitable. Since then the surviving population has lived in an orbiting space station known as the Ark, with conventional wisdom stating it’ll take four more space-locked generations before anyone can go back to Earth safely.

The Ark: humanity’s current home

But the Ark is becoming unsustainable, even with drastic measures taken to cull the population. Criminal offenders over the age of eighteen undergo swift execution in the attempt to preserve resources, but the Ark’s life-support capabilities have only three months left before they start failing.

So the Ark Council comes up with a solution: to send all their under-eighteen reprobates on a drop-ship to Earth to see if the planet is habitable. If they survive, the rest of the Ark’s population can return. If they die, it’s not like they were valuable members of society.

Story:

In the space of a few hours the one hundred teens of the title are herded onto a drop-ship and deposited on Earth. The show is clearly inspired by William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies, as power structures form immediately after the teenagers hit the ground. Some characters gravitate into the roles of leaders, others into anti-authoritarian rebellion. Some are only concerned with their newfound freedom, others have agendas that are not immediately clear.

But perhaps the show’s greatest strength is its awareness of the major flaw within its own premise: that entrusting the fate of humankind to a bunch of teenage delinquents is a really bad idea. As such, most of the injuries and fatalities that befall them can be chalked up to the impetuousness of youth. Not only do they have all the raging hormones of your average group of teenagers left unsupervised, but they’re all a little nuts from having been incarcerated in cells for so long.

There’s plenty of other obstacles to keep them busy: hostile “grounders” that strike without warning, an acidic yellow gas that kills instantly, and a variety of aggressive animals that seem to have mutated over the past hundred or so years, but the writers never lose sight of the collective immaturity of their characters, and how this poses the greatest threat to their existence.

Characters:

Among the central cast is Clarke Griffin (Eliza Taylor), a responsible young woman who naturally falls into a leadership role and struggles with all the moral compromises it requires of her, and her best friend Wells Jaha (Eli Goree), the Chancellor’s son who deliberately committed a crime so that he could accompany Clarke on the voyage.

Clarke and Octavia make a run for it

There’s also Bellamy Blake (Bob Morley) who – like Wells – has also tricked his way on board the drop-ship for the sake of another. In his case it’s his little sister Octavia Blake (Marie Avgeropoulos) whose very existence is a crime considering the Arc’s One Child Policy. Then there’s Finn Collins (Thomas McDonell) walking the thin line between loveable prankster and insufferable jerk, and Jasper Jordan and Monty Green (Devon Bostick and Christopher Larkin) playing the dorky nerd and the nerdy dork who seem permanently grafted to each other’s side.

But the show doesn’t neglect the adults (many of them agonized parents) that are left behind on the Arc, and all the political machinations they must negotiate when it comes to monitoring the teenagers and breaking the news of Earth’s survivability to the rest of the Ark population.

Conclusion:

After a few contrivances in the first handful of episodes, and the prerequisites of any teen drama (the inevitable love triangle is present and accounted for, and everyone looks like a supermodel), The 100 eventually emerges as a genuinely suspenseful (and addictive) show. The cast is comprised of solid actors, and the plot deals with some pretty hefty questions, such as: How far would you go to survive? Is torture ever justified? Is it responsible to put weapons in the hands of children? Would you murder one person to save hundreds more?

They’re not easy questions, and the show doesn’t provide easy answers.
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Next Time: Salem

In 1692 the small Massachusetts town of Salem became struck with fear and paranoia over rumours of witches in their midst. What followed was a notorious witch-hunt that ended the lives of twenty people, which has since provided ample inspiration for several adaptations (most famously Arthur Miller’s The Crucible). But in 2014 the television show Salem speculated that there were real witches creating chaos in the small township, and explores what their motivations might have been.
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About The Reviewer:

Rebecca Fisher is a graduate of the University of Canterbury with a Masters degree in English Literature, mainly, she claims, because she was able to get away with writing her thesis on C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman. She is a reviewer for FantasyLiterature.com, a large website that specializes in fantasy and science-fiction novels, as well as posting reviews to Amazon.com and her They’re All Fictional blog.

To read Rebecca’s detailed introduction of both herself and the series, as well as preceding reviews, click on:

Big Worlds On Small Screens

Rebecca has recently won the Sir Julius Vogel Award 2015 for Best Fan Writer, for writing including Big Worlds On Small Screens.