August 29, 2013

A PINE IN THE CITY, ALONE WITH A BOY 5

From where I sit on the back yard steps, I can see a pine tree we left behind after we first bought our house. There were four others, but they’d grown so close together, we had to have them cut down as they were killing each other as they competed for soil space, water and sunlight.

Where we live, at the intersection of Great Plains, Deciduous Forest, and Coniferous Forest, there’s a wild mix of trees and grassland. But what would happen if you went further south? What would happen if a migrating bird dropped a seed of, say, a Jack Pine in Oklahoma City? What if a little boy, from a near-destitute white family, discovered it, found out about it, nurtured it…and that’s what this is about.

The pine alone could grow no more.

The soil around it was the wrong kind.

It was missing something the pine needed.

It was missing the sour taste of home.

August 28, 2013

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 124

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them.

H Trope: The Adjectival Man
Current Event: http://ktla.com/2013/08/08/suspect-in-murder-of-fontana-father-commits-suicide/#axzz2dD6in844

Ajdin Paixão shook his head and said, “Are you sure we should be here?”

Magdalena Aggrawal made a face – as if she’d accidentally bitten into an orange that had been sitting on a warm shelf in a closed refrigerator for three weeks. “’course. You afraid?”

“Yes. Very.”

Magdalena – who did NOT go by “Maggie, Meg, or any other American abbreviation of my name” – shook her head. “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”

“The worst? It turns out that The Creeping Man is real and he’s mad at us for spying on his private life.”

Magdalena snorted. “It’s not like he can run us down. That’s why he’s called The Creeping Man.”

Ajdin glanced to either side then lifted his chin at the clean, dark lab in front of them. “It’s not like monsters usually inhabit science labs. They’re more associated with dungeons with dripping water and cobwebs.”

She snorted again, “This might as well be a dungeon. I don’t think I’ve seen a bar or restaurant since we started school.”

His voice lowered as he muttered, “Not like I haven’t tried...”

She slugged him just as the sound of a heavy object, like a refrigerator or a filing cabinet ground loudly across the plastic sealed concrete floor. Filing cabinets having gone extinct decades earlier – even their fossil-of-a-professor only had two in his office – that left only one of the lab’s six refrigerators. Magdalena whispered, “He lives under a refrigerator?”

“If you were The Creeping Man, where would you live?”

“In a penthouse apartment?”

“That would make Creeping really difficult, don’t you think?”

“Shut up!” she stood up, peering over the lab table, Ajdin mirroring her every move.

The Creeping Man saw them the instant they saw him. He was emerging from under a fridge which was tipped back as if it was glued to the trapdoor The Creeping Man held up with one hand. He squeaked a wet, gargled exclamation, lurching forward, releasing the trapdoor with the refrigerator attached to it.

It slammed down, cutting him in half, spattering blood and entrails and gore on to the refrigerator’s white surface and across the gray floor.

Magdalena screamed, “We killed him!” Ajdin stared then gagged as The Creeping Man – or rather half of him – began to creep across the lab’s floor toward them…

Names: ♀ Liechtenstein, Portugal; Bosnia/Herzegovina, India
Image: http://www.sherlockian.net/graphics/cree.gif

August 25, 2013

WRITING ADVICE: Julie Czerneda’s Writing Workshop! #2 -- The Idea

In 2005, whilst perusing the shelves at the Hennepin County Public Library, I stumbled across CHANGING VISION by Julie Czerneda (say it: chur-nay-dah), an author I'd never heard of, and was intrigued by the aliens on the cover by artist Luis Royo. It didn’t matter that the book was the second in a series, the cover entranced me and so I read. The book was spectacular, I read others, and fell entirely in love with another series of hers called SPECIES IMPERATIVE for its fascinating aliens and superior characterization. A teacher deeply at heart, Julie Czerneda shares ideas and methodology wherever she goes. On her website, http://www.czerneda.com/classroom/classroom.html she shares ideas for writers. I want to share what kind of impact her ideas have had on my own writing.  They are used with the author’s permission.

“...instructions for activities...the perfect way to practice talking about writing...Email, text, posts, chat are writing about writing. Talking to someone is another beast altogether...if you have a chance to do them with...writers...give them a try. Email me if you have any questions.”

The What if ...? Scenario

“Read through a popular science article. Based on the ideas presented in the article, decide on a question you could pursue in a science fiction story. Consider the following approaches...an extrapolation of this science into the future.”

I did this and my short story, “Peanut Butter and Jellyfish”  appeared on the ezine, CAST OF WONDERS in December of 2011. This is how it worked for me.

I am a science geek, actually. When I write SF, I make sure the science is as accurate as possible. I had created a world in which a kind of mobile plant – a plantimal – that had descended from a euglena-kind of organism was both the dominant life form on the world Wheet as well as competition for Humanity. Human and WheetAh are at war and in the timeframe of my novel, near the end of the war, we are the horrifying alien invaders.

While reading various science sites, I stumbled across four bits of information:

1) “Top Scientific Breakthroughs of 2009” #6, “Jellyfish stir the oceans”
2) “Jellyfish May Help Keep Planet Cool”
3) “Jellyfish Are the Dark Energy of the Oceans”
4) “How jellyfish may be stirring the ocean”

Another goal I had was to write intelligent science fiction for young adults. I confess my dream would be to become the New Robert A. Heinlein of Middle Grade/Young Adult/New Adult Literature...as I have quite a bit of experience working with them.

At any rate, applying Czerneda’s advice, I wanted to show the WheetAh/Human conflict from an adolescent point of view.

 Since none of them could be soldiers and I’m saving the point of view of young college students for another WheetAh/Human story called “Small Battles”, I hit on a variation of the Romeo & Juliet (or Peace Child, for a religious reference point closer to the idea) meme of putting youthful representatives of warring factions together in hopes of fostering understanding that might lead to peace.

I had setting, motivation, and character – last of all I needed conflict. What would drive the story; drive the characters to not only clash, but that would lead to a resolution that would bring all involved together?

That was where the ideas above came suddenly into play. A simple afternoon of skimming through science news led me to the jellyfish research. What if I put my characters on the high seas and the WheetAh kids-on-Earth were taken with their Human counterparts, to a research experience together? What if the science not only turned out to be true but also had implications that might help the WheetAh home world? What if the kids brought the ideas back and Humans turned out to be able to help the WheetAh?

Other characters – Khalid, Antoine, and the rest – grew out of the initial idea in order to fulfill particular plot necessities. But without the science and its extension into the future – the “What if…? scenario”, this story would not only never have sold, it never would have been born.

Thanks, Ms. Czerneda.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111346982
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/07/jellyfish/
http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2009/07/29/how-jellyfish-may-be-stirring-the-ocean/

August 22, 2013

LOVE IN T ATIME OF ALIEN INVASION 5

The Cold War between the Kiiote and the Yown’Hoo has become a shooting war. The only way to stop it is to lock Kiiote, Yown’Hoo and Human into a matrix of need – to create “super beings” capable of not only living together, but combining three different technologies into one.

The Triads are made up of the smallest primate tribe of Humans –two.

The Triads are made up of the smallest canine pack of Kiiote – six.

The Triads are made up of the smallest camelid herd of Yown’Hoo – eleven, a prime number.

On Earth, there are three Triads – one in the US, one in India and one in China.

Protected by the Triad Corporation, they intend to integrate not only the three peoples and stop the war that threatens to break loose and slaughter Humans and devastate their world.; but to stop the war that consumes Kiiote economy and Yown’Hoo moral fiber (literal in their case) – and eventually confront the extra-Universe aliens who created the Interstice.

According to the best and wisest of the Triad Societies, the Merger of Human-Kiiote-Yown’Hoo into a Congenic will produce a stable construct capable of incredible expansion, creativity, longevity...and wealth – for it seems that it is the Three alone who inhabit the Milky Way, though unknown to them, there is another called the Hive which must complete the Triad – hold it if you will.

Earth-Free Activists plan to blow up one of the Nurseries – places where the Yown’Hoo and Kiiote can actually breed and the young survive far from their homeworlds. One such is south of Winnipeg on the Canadian Prairies. It falls to the North American Triad to move to stop them without letting them know that they have been betrayed...or discover that Humans know that the entire Milky Way has been betrayed.

It’s really dark here outside of the Center of the city – ours used to be called Minneapolis – because what power there is, is rationed.

“Why’s it so dark?” asked Zie-go. He was an immature male in the Kiiote Pack that we here Tribe to. He’d gotten big enough though that he felt he could speak for the rest of them.

Kashayla, the other half of our little Human Tribe of two, said, “The city authorities only power private houses for a couple hours after sunset. It’s way past that now,” she said, looking up at the sky.

“The city is lit,” said Doj, a pack member who hadn’t decided if it was a male or female yet.

I said, “Public lights stay on all night so the cameras and satellites can make sure everybody’s staying calm. It’s just dark inside of people’s houses.”

The voices from up the street had gotten louder. Someone shouted, “Why should I listen to you?”

Another voice shouted back, “Because I’m better than you are!”

“That’s racist shit!” the first voice shot back.

“We ain’t different...” more voices raised in bellows and cursing until they finally blurred into an incoherent roar as the sound of breaking glass and something large and wooden falling added to the sound of a riot.

‘Shayla grabbed me and pulled, leaning to my ear and saying, “We have to go or we’ll get caught up in the police dragnet!”

“They wouldn’t dare...” I began as the street lights suddenly flared to life, far brighter than even the Dome lights where we lived.

It was surreal as Humans who had been fighting froze in mid-punch or kick or clubbing. In the distance the sound of fire engine horns honked like a flock of monstrous geese. Dao-hi, Herd mother shouted her youngsters into action to pick me up.

The Kiiote pack – except for Qap and Xurf, the pack leaders – did their creepy bone and muscle rearrangement squirm.

Kiiote could walk on two legs like a Human, and usually did. But when they wanted to move fast on four legs, they had to rearrange their bodies. They crouched as one, shoulders down, tails in the air. Rear legs were forward bent as in Humans, but their hips tightened as the ankle bent in a hideous way as if it were going to break, but didn’t, becoming a dogleg. Their faces relaxed, the muzzle sinking back until their faces became more dog-like as the chest muscles relaxed as well. As they leaned forward, he could see bones moving under fur and muscle. Each one bent its neck with a snap, shoulders slid forward at the same time bending and wriggling four slender digits as two others folded up the forearm and dropping on paws. Chest muscles loosened, tilting the head and neck forward where it swung side-to-side, nostrils on the muzzle twitching, sniffing the signals in the air. With a final shake, the Pack moved forward.

“You must come with us,” Qap said. Upright, he motioned to two of the others who dove between my legs. His paw snapped out, helping me keep my balance. I almost cussed him out except that Xurf had done the same with ‘Shayla.

Dao-hi snapped her tentacles and the Herd formed a cordon around us just as the thump of helicopters sounded low over the trees. She said, “We must get you out of this situation. Your arrest will break up the Triad. No one knows what will happen...”

The helicopters swooped in and opened fire on the crowd – the race riot. I screamed as trees exploded overhead. The shouting changed abruptly to shrieks and the fight dissolved into panicked flight. The Herd raced away, corralling the Pack with me and ‘Shayla on top.

I thought we’d made it to safety when a Human Tribal fighter, rare in the skies of Earth as we’d had to buy it on the weapons black market. It was old and whined loudly with antigravity repellers and energy grabbers and swung shakily out of the sky, ignoring the police helicopters and heading straight for us…

Image: http://bc5f8655ec0d8ce3b16c-67245749e7a5dacabb139b9ac5e160a3.r91.cf3.rackcdn.com/V67.jpg

August 21, 2013

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 123

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them.

 F Trope: “jerkass gods” (CS Lewis Till We Have Faces and Neil Gaiman American Gods)
Current Event: http://www.wftv.com/news/news/local/9-investigates-dolphin-manatee-deaths-indian-river/nZYSx/

Abril Molina stood with balled fists on her hips. “They did this, you know.”

Santiago Ribeiro pursed his lips and said in a low voice, “It’s the easier answer. You know, blaming jerkass gods rather than taking responsibility for polluting the lagoon ourselves.”

Abril bristled, “You blame Humans for this?” She grunted, “I know you hate all of us who are pure blooded Humans…”

“Please! Don’t bring magism into this! I may be three fourths elf, but I can no more conjure poisons from the water than you can conjure a will-o’-the-wisp to light your way to bed!”

Abril turned to belt him. He caught her fist but was powerless to stop her words, “How dare you! I am no magist! We’ve been friends since...oh, I don’t know, since I had to change your nest litter! I am no more magist than you are thoughtful.”

Stung, he released her and returned to the side of the lagoon. Squatting, he reached out and spread his fingers, lowering his hand until it was centimeters from the surface. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and stilled himself. After a few moments, the same stillness seemed to flow from his hand and across the surface of the lagoon, traveling from shore and farther and farther into the water.

The stillness spread until the air seemed to stop gusting; even the light grew gellid, thickening until the image of near-elf and water appeared to be a painting.

After some time, dark began to creep upward from the water. Boats, barges and skiffs collecting dead animals slowed until the stopped moving. Abril felt her breath congeal in her lungs and could not breathe.

Then Santiago stood up, turned to her and said, “We are both right.”

“What?”

“True war brews and this is but the first skirmish.”

“There’ve been other die offs! Twelve years of them – how do you explain that away with magic?”

“It’s the dolphins and the manatees.”

“What?”

“It’s the dolphins and the...”

“No, no! I know what you said, I mean to say, ‘What have dead dolphins and manatees...”

“And the pelicans and the algae and other microscopic life,” he interjected.

She nodded, adding, “…and pelicans and phyto and zooplankton have to do with magic and pollution?”

He lifted his chin to the farthest reaches of the lagoon, the water between a barrier island complex, “There is a war brewing.”

“Between who?”

“I can’t tell, but the gods jerking the strings have stuffed each dolphin and each manatee with a spirit and they are the front line – and the manatees are losing.”

“Which side is the good side?”

Santiago turned to look at her, his gaze boring deeply into her own. Abril shuddered as he said, “In the war between these gods, their only good is their entertainment.”

Names: ♀ Uruguay, Spain; American Hispanic, Portugal
Image: http://www.charmsaddict.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/ohm-dolphin-manatee-killer-whale-300x195.jpg

August 18, 2013

Slice of PIE: Coaching Young Writers

I have been a science teacher for over 32 years and have never ONCE taught an English class.

Over the last 16 years, I’ve taught roughly fifty writing-to-get-published classes that were one or two weeks long, as well as something like 100 writing workshops in which I taught the finer points of writing like plot structure, dialogue, and flash-fiction writing.

Of the kids who participated, at the very least four of them have had something published that was highly visible. Of course with coaching young writers, it takes a village of coaches to shepherd one writer from their first story through to a serious publication.

I will be the first to confess that my methodology was more of the “what feels right” variety than any kind of rigid program. Over the years, my classes developed into a series of writing experiments in which I would have a classroom discussion about the form I wanted the kids to play with – poetry, essay, how-to, fiction, script, and flash fiction – the workshops would focus tightly on some particular aspect of writing science fiction and fantasy.

In all those years, my evaluation of the student’s writing was casual as well as visceral – I could tell a kid what I liked or didn’t like about a piece and that’s pretty much it. The hard part was then coaching them into REWRITING.

*whew* Rewrites are hard enough for ME to do, how do I motivate a kid to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite? Thus far, I haven’t except via exhortation.

#experience a shift in the timeline#

Two weekends ago, I was at a teeny-tiny speculative fiction convention called DiversiCon because their guest of honor was a science fiction writer I hold in the very highest esteem – Jack McDevitt. (http://www.jackmcdevitt.com/)

He was funny, thoughtful, kind, and insightful. I took copious notes whenever he held court and while he said much that was noteworthy, during a session on How To Sell Your Fiction, he said something that will change how I run the classes and workshops I teach from now on.

He said, “We underestimate our talents because of authorities...we are much better writers when we are confident.” To that end, when McDevitt was an English teacher for ten years and he graded papers, rather than mark what was wrong, he would underline or circle sentences, paragraphs, or pages with the intent of saying, “This is right – do more like this!”

Do you know what a paradigm shift is? By definition: “...according to Thomas Kuhn, in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, [it is] a change in the basic assumptions, or paradigms, within the ruling theory of science. ‘A paradigm is what members of a scientific community, and they alone, share’, [Kuhn says], ‘a student in the humanities has constantly before him a number of competing and incommensurable solutions to these problems, solutions that he must ultimately examine for himself’

Once a paradigm shift is complete, a scientist cannot, for example, reject [the paradigm]. In contrast, a critic in the humanities can choose to adopt an array of stances...which may be more or less fashionable during any given period but all regarded as legitimate…[However,] since the 1960s, the term has also been used in numerous non-scientific contexts to describe a profound change in a fundamental model or perception of events...though Kuhn himself restricted the use of the term to the hard sciences.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift)

[Hmmm – the global warming community attempted a paradigm shift that sometimes appears to be unraveling...]

For me, I take the non-Kuhnian definition as my new methodology for commenting on the writing of young people. I’ll begin next summer when I teach the Writing To Get Published class – and Serious Writers Workshop if it happens again. I’ll make sure I update you all in August of 2014...

August 15, 2013

MARTIAN HOLIDAY 45: Paolo West

On a well-settled Mars, the five major city Council regimes struggle to meld into a stable, working government. Embracing an official United Faith in Humanity, the Councils are teetering on the verge of pogrom directed against Christians, Molesters , Jews, Rapists, Buddhists, Murderers, Muslims, Thieves, Hindu, Embezzlers and Artificial Humans – anyone who threatens the official Faith and the consolidating power of the Councils. It makes good sense, right – get rid of religion and Human divisiveness on a societal level will disappear? An instrument of such a pogrom might just be a Roman holiday...To see the rest of the chapters, go to SCIENCE FICTION: Martian Holiday on the right and scroll to the bottom for the first story.

Paolo Marcillon bit his lower lip as he studied the viewscreen on his marsbug. Burroughs the Benighted Dome loomed behind him. His pulse pounded in his ears and his breathing still came in ragged gasps. Even though he’d done what he could, the persecution of Christians and anyone else the Five Councils didn’t like still teetered on the brink of pogrom.

While he knew his history of Mars best, he knew enough of Earth’s sad history to understand that the times here were not only looking grim, they’d just become more complicated. The Cydonia Fellowship of Free Martians itself had incontrovertible proof that something had lived on Mars and left its complex bones behind – something that had a fin like a dolphin. There hadn’t been oceans on Mars for three and a half billion years. Given that the Solar System was only four or five billion years old, that left no time at all for complex life – let alone intelligent life – to have evolved on Mars. The Free Martians believed that the dolphin things had come from somewhere else.

The promulgation of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and all the other religious flavors of Humanity, as well as a uniquely Martian abolitionist movement in the more liberal Robinson City that had started a campaign to allow that artificial Humans deserved rights…he shook his head. Add that to evidence that Humanity had been subjected to the scrutiny of some alien overlords a zillion years ago...

Mars was in trouble. He was in trouble. They were all in trouble.

He goosed the marsbug. The young man he’d met here – what was his name again? Stepan – with the rooftop garden and the odd following on the Rim; he might be a key to changing things in Burroughs. He also might become a martyr for Christ as well. Everything was beginning to depend from a thinner and thinner thread. Paolo hoped it would remain strong enough. Maybe the legendary carbon monofilament cable that was supposed to make the Tsiolkovsky elevator possible would be sufficient to hold everything up long enough for Mars to figure itself out.

At least he’d been able to connect Lewis and Stepan as well as leave them the name of the woman in the floater chair, Procula Fitzsimmons Aurelius Mann. A prominent Robinson City socialite, she might have the credits and the political weight to held them if they needed to disappear before the possible pogrom...

He shook his head slowly. How had he become so involved with Martian politicking? He was a simple man...he laughed then. Hardly simple. His parents had been heavily invested in the initial effort to bring Artificial Humans to Mars. They still held enough voting shares in CorporateAH, Inc. to influence the Board. He was their only child and had enough stock of his own to be someone with whom the Board had to deal. Even so, he was certain God wasn’t calling him to fight the battle between CorporateAH and the abolitionist movement.

He was to win souls for Christ. He floored the ‘bug’s accelerator. He needed to make it to Bradbury first. Then Ares Station between Bradbury and Cydonia. Last stop would be the Face On Mars – at least it was traditionally called The Face. What it was, was a rock; possibly a volcanic dome. No one had taken the time to dig much deeper than the surface.

Then again, the bones had come from there, so someone was running an excavation. The question he was going to try and find out before he reached Cydonia, was WHO?

August 13, 2013

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 122


Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them.

SF Trope: Dystopia Is Hard
Current Event: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/28/us-korea-north-pyongyang-idUSBRE96R0BB20130728

Adéla Stoica hung her head. She’d practiced abject submission just like all the other teenagers in the Orientation Class did. Beside her, Enio Cassar did the same thing.

What the Master before them didn’t see was Adéla open her eyes and shoot a sideways glance.

This time she beat Enio to the punch and could barely hold in the giggle that bubbled up inside of her when he opened his eyes an instant later. They were supposed to be contemplating the worthlessness of their own lives in submission to the Great Cause. She sighed – an acceptable sound – because the Masters of the Great Cause thought they’d beaten everyone down.

Standing before the class, Master Farkas scowled at her. He said to the class in Esperanto, the Language of Submission, “Estas bone ke vi kontempli vian propran senvaloreco ĉiutage, kaj konsideru la grandecon de la Lando anstataŭe.”

This time Enio sighed. It was the motto of the regime, “It is good that you contemplate your own worthlessness every day, and consider the greatness of the Country instead.” The education of the youth after fourteen years of the Society of the Great Cause was predictable. Master Farkas continued, “It should make you feel the weight of that responsibility so deeply that your spirit groans with the burden of it. It is only through sacrifice to society that the individual might live best. It is only through society that all wisdom, all knowledge and all discovery might be directed by the National Science Foundation. Through that wisdom, humanity might live again in the luxury to which it had become accustomed.”

Enio muttered, “Ai mund të marrë zbetë e tij idiot horseshit gojën dhe të fus atë deri gomar e tij, ku ai erdhi nga." Like everyone else at the camp, their mother language was the one they cursed and made love in; Esperanto was the language they learned to mock in; English was the language everyone could communicate across ethnic walls in. Of course, there were to BE no ethnic walls because the Great Cause united all of North America into one Cause – the betterment of humanity.

It was too bad Master Farkas was also a linguist from the Old Order. His gaze arrested Enio and he said in the same language, “Merrni ass tuaj i dobët këtu lart tani, ju mut pak.” Enio’s eyes bulged as Master Farkas added, “Your girlfriend can come up here, too.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Enio blurted.

Adéla elbowed him and they stood their ground. The line behind theirs shoved them forward and the lines in front of them opened up. She looked at them and said, “Cowards.” But none of them looked the slightest bit afraid. They looked bored. Like they wanted something interesting to happen; kill the mold growing on their lives of dull sameness. Like jackals. When Master Farkas looked up at them though, their faces transformed to slack idiocy then morphed into hanging heads.

He gestured to them and led them out of the classroom, his white lab coat flapping behind him. Two other technicians wearing the shorter, lower-ranked blue lab coats went into the classroom to take his place. Leading them down a half dozen short flights of stairs, he stopped at a metal door and used his passkey to unlock it. Pushing it open, Adéla and Enio could see that a huge screen covered one wall and that a face filled the screen, looking at them. Master Farkas grabbed Enio’s arm and shoved him into the room. Enio sighed and walked in. “I can’t believe you’re doing this…” The door slammed ponderously.

He touched Adéla’s shoulder and said, “You’re next.”

She knew exactly what was coming and shook her head, remembering the really fascinating books she’d read as a precocious two year old. First she grabbed her older brother’s copy of THE HUNGER GAMES and read it, then the other six sequels. She fell in love with Scott Westerfeld’s UGLIES books. Devoured Haddix’s  THE HIDDEN. Every dystopian book she could find from HG Well’s TIME MACHINE to the seven LAST SURVIVORS books; she read and cherished in her heart.

Then the Great Cause overtook the countries of North America – and her life had been tedious boredom ever since...

Names: Czech, Romania ; ♂Albania, Malta
Image: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-I5mmeznTlfY/UBf2g2-Kh2I/AAAAAAAABwQ/IDK6ASqBS6k/s320/wotw_villain.jpg

August 11, 2013

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Comparing SZ & JC

I recently returned to an old novel that was once one of my favorites. Written by SZ and published in 2000, its 432 pages look at how alien intelligences whose world is dying find a new home in the clouds of Venus just as humans set out to colonize those same skies. It explores the question of what it is that cedes a world to intelligence – usefulness or location. The aliens, while extremely strange in biology are very understandable psychologically.

Not long before that, I reread another old novel that is one of my favorites of all time. Written by JC and published in 2004, its 464 pages begin with a salmon researcher who is drawn into a mystery with the visit of an alien who is a fellow researcher but who believes that her work will shed light on the disappearance of all life in a section of interstellar space. It explores the question of whether or not an intelligence that devours all life in its path has a right to continue to exist. The aliens have evolved from their worlds of origin and respond to their environment in ways consistent with that – no matter how strange they are to us.

I found myself completely dissatisfied with the first after this second read and I have reread the second with joy three times.

Both are written by women. Both are published. Both deal with aliens. Why am I bored with one yet return to the other over and over?

After I put the first away, I sat down to analyze the two books: 

1)      The first book flips from the alien’s point of view (more than one) and the Human point of view (more than one). [NOTE: This is what I did in my novel at BAEN, INVADER’S GUILT, though I dropped the alien POV in one of my revisions.] While it doesn’t always bother me, there has to be a compelling reason to show the story from multiple points of view and while there was here, I think the fractured point of view and various internal voices (in a sense there were EIGHT characters here…) pulled me out of the story rather than illuminating it. The second book has a single point of view and allows for interesting internal monologue [NOTE: I’ve done this with my current work in progress, OMNIVORE’S DEBT.] This also had the effect of me getting comfortable “in the skin” of the protagonist and understanding her so well that I could say when something happened, “Well, she’s going to hate that!”

2)     The first book draws the alien world of Venus intimately and after the first fourth of the book, I felt like I knew it well. The author also worked out the biology and ecology of the alien’s homeworld and the depictions of it dying of something that is never revealed clearly implies that it is something that they brought on by themselves (as we have polluted and abused our world and supposedly caused global warming. The warning is subtle but clear.) The second book takes place mostly at Norcoast, a research station in the Pacific Northwest/Canada, so the depiction of alien worlds isn’t necessary. Where SZ spends time developing a world, JC spends time developing character – and it shows. However, the state of Earth is such that it’s obvious that we barely caught ourselves in time to keep from destroying the place – and ourselves – forever. I feel very much a part of the world here and even though it’s nowhere I have ever visited, I feel close to the land and the details with which it is described allow me to create the place vividly in my mind. [NOTE: I’ve done the same in my own two books, IG and OD – one takes place on the alien world Wheet, the other in northern Minnesota near Ely.]

3)     The first is a stand-alone novel and while it needed to be, it left me wanting more. That’s why I continued reading this author’s science fiction – until she stopped writing it. The second is the first in a trilogy, though the author has hinted that the main character might come back and the writer is still writing science fiction though she’s currently working on her fantasy novels. For this reason, perhaps it isn’t fair to say that while the main character in the first book has disappeared from memory, the main character in the second is an imaginary person I’d love to meet. On the other hand, I still remember Charley from FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON and that is a stand-alone novel as well.
 
I looked at other aspects of the books as well, but these two are the most obvious to me – as well as the most useful to me becoming a better writer. To wit:

a)      Use a single character POV whenever possible and depart from that advice only when the STORY demands it.

b)     Springing from the old adage, “Write what you know.” Use worlds with which you are familiar if at all possible. If it’s not possible, then work on the fictional world by setting short stories there first to hammer out details. [I’ve done this in my CONFLUENCE OF HUMANITY vs THE EMPIRE OF MAN universe.]

c)      Write every novel so that it can stand alone.

Anything else anyone wants to add?

 

August 8, 2013

SHORT LONG JOURNEY NORTH #52: July 22, 1946

This series is a little bit biographical and a little bit imaginary about my dad and a road trip he took in the summer of 1946, when he turned fifteen. He and a friend hitchhiked from Loring Park to Duluth, into Canada and back again. He was gone from home for a month. I was astonished and fascinated by the tale. So, I added some speculation about things I've always wondered about and this series is the result. To read earlier SHORT LONG JOURNEY NORTH, click on the label to the right. The FIRST entry is on the bottom.

Edwina Olds, Lieutenant, WACS (ret.) slid out of the truck and down to the ground, shutting the door as quiet as possible, but the boys could hear the voices clear as a bell in the cold, very, very early morning Canadian air.

A man’s voice said, “You know we got a radio call about someone making trouble all the way up the western shore of Lake Superior, ma’am.”

Edwina said, “Really? Round about where?”

“Starting in Duluth and making their way from there to Two Harbors...”

“What’d they do in Two Harbors? My brother’s a pastor there!”

There was a long pause, then the man said, “I heard from the radio that they ran through the church buck naked and scared all the...”

“Who was buck naked?” Edwina interrupted him. Tommy Hastings had to leaning against Freddie Merrill on the floor of the logging truck cab when the younger boy tried to squirm free and give the man speaking a piece of his fist.

“Well, I don’t rightly know, ma’am...”

Another voice interrupted. It was a woman’s voice. The Witch of Anoka. She said, “It’s not for us to ask, ma’am. That’s just what the…”

“Certainly it is for me to ask, whoever you are! I see you’re not wearing a uniform, so you’re a civilian so you’re no more authorized to conduct this ridiculous interview than I am!”

“I’ll have you know, ma’am, that I am...”

“And I’ll have YOU know missy, that I’m a retired lieutenant of the United States Women’s Army Corp and have served in New Guinea! So, if you value your good looks, you’ll back off and let me speak with this Custom’s Officer.”

The Witch of Anoka sputtered then said, “I have half a mind to curse you, woman!”

Edwina laughed out loud for some time before catching her breath and saying, “First of all lady, I don’t believe in witches, I don’t believe you are one and I don’t believe you cursing me will do anything but make you short of breath.”

“How dare you! My curses...”

“Aren’t worth the air it takes to breathe ‘em. I’m a good Christian woman with a good, solid relationship with Jesus Christ and I will thank you to cast your curses in a direction where they might actually do some bad work. Now, since I figure you’re the one making this youngster so uncomfortable and you’re the one pushing him to hassle me, I’m going to say good night and get back into my truck.”

“You have two boys in your cab!” she cried out. “They’re the real reason for all this trouble! Just give them to me and I’ll leave you alone.”

“Why would I give them to you, missy? You their momma?”

“No, of course not, I’m too...”

“I can see you ain’t their daddy.” The customs officer let loose with a guffaw. The Anoka Witch scowled at him, but he was now standing closer to Edwina than her and he had one hand on his gun. She saw a narrowing of his eyes and stepped a bit away. Edwina continued, “Are you their aunty?”

“I’m...I’m…”

Edwina lifted her chin, “Don’t think I’ll be giving you enough time to make up some sort of slightly believable lie. I don’t think this customs agent is going to believe you anymore. Besides,” she jerked open the door of the cab. “I said I was traveling alone. I am and if the main cause of your trouble is two boys, you’d best be getting back on the road again and looking for them.

The floor was unoccupied, the door was close and even after she shrieked and ran around to the passenger’s door, she found it closed and locked and no tracks left by mischievous boys teenaged boys. She ran around the back of the trailer for good measure then stopped in front of Edwina and exclaimed, “What did you do with them?” She spun to the customs officer and pointing at Edwina, exclaimed, “She killed them! Dumped their bodies in the Lake! Arrest her! She’s a murderess!”

Edwina looked down at the woman, scowled then turned an climbed back into the cab.

The Witch of Anoka screamed and threw herself after Edwina, but the officer caught her by the arm and yanked her back. The witch screamed, “Unhand me young man!”

He dragged her away from the cab, saying, “I think you’ve had enough to drink tonight, lady.”

“Drink? How dare you…” her rant was drowned out by the revving of the logging truck as it pulled away from the customs stop. Edwina stuck her arm out and waved as she crossed from the United State of America and into the Canadian wilderness.

August 6, 2013

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 121

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them.

H Trope: Haunted Castle/Mansion
Current Event: http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/31105/cold-spots-glensheen-mansion

“No! Really! I saw the ghost!” said Enzo Solem. His wild hand waving came more from the passion of his French forebears than the stolid formality of his Norwegian. First generation from both sides, he’d been born and raised just north of the Twin Ports of Duluth and Superior.

He also had a wild passion for the paranormal.

Weayaya Aguirre sighed. Enzo was her best friend but sometimes he bugged the living daylights out of her. Shaking her head, she said, “Why can’t you just accept that the world is the world and that’s all there is?”

 He stared at her incredulously and exclaimed, “You work here, too! How can you say that? You’ve seen the apparitions just like I have!”

Shaking her head, Weayaya – Wee-ah to the rest of the staff at the Glensheen Mansion – said, “I’ve told you a dozen times that I don’t know what you saw that night. I saw some kind of heat shimmer from the furnace.”

“And I’ve told you two dozen times that I talked with Elizabeth Congdon!”

“A woman who’s been dead for half a century?”

“She’s not dead...” he scowled. “Exactly. Her spirit is trapped here because her son suffocated her under a pillow and then banged the night nurse over the head with a candlestick.” Wee-Ah sucked in her lower lip and bit it gently to keep from responding how she wanted to respond. He added, “All I’m asking is that you come with me tonight. It’s the night of June 26...”

“You want to see her ghost, right?”

“Nope.”

Wee-Ah frowned and looked at him. This was not the answer she’d expected. “What?”

“I want to see the ghost of her daughter. Her son-in-law confessed to her murder and was sent to jail, getting out five years later. His ex-wife, Elizabeth Congdon’s sociopathic adopted daughter never gave him any of the money she inherited from her mother’s murder. He killed himself five years after his release from prison – though I’ve heard people whispering that Congdon’s daughter did him in.”

“So you want to see if the ghost of one of Congdon’s ex-son-in-laws comes back here?”

“Yep. Marjorie died in prison in 2022, five years before the fiftieth anniversary of her adoptive mother’s murder.”

“And you think that that is significant...how?”

“It’s obvious! Marjorie-originally-Congdon is buried in the family plot.” Wee-Ah nodded. That much was true. “It’s now half a century after her mother’s murder by her second ex-husband Roger Caldwell.” Wee-Ah nodded, not even realizing she was encouraging him. He went on excitedly, “So I figure the psychic energy will be so powerful that not only will Roger’s ghost appear, so will Velma’s; her third husband Wally was murdered as well as his ex-wife; plus some old guy she defrauded of all his money in a nursing home in Arizona. His same was also Roger, though his last name was Sammis. Her first husband – with whom she’d had seven children – was Dick LeRoy and he died the same year she did – 2022. So it’s 2027, fifty years after someone murdered Elizabeth Congdon. I would say that Marjorie Congdon LeRoy Caldwell Hagen has some serious psychic reckoning coming.”

Wee-Ah found herself nodding in agreement before she could think things through. That was how she found herself kneeling in the bushes near the Congdon family stone marker in the Forest Hill Cemetery on this dark and stormy night, cold summer rain dribbling down the back of her hastily donned poncho.

Enzo leaned over to her and whispered, “It’s five minutes to midnight…”

Names: Sioux, Spanish; ♂ French, Norwegian
Image: http://kuws.fm/images/glensheen%20mansion.jpg

August 4, 2013

WRITING ADVICE: Julie Czerneda’s Writing Workshop! #1 -- The Courage

 
In 2005, whilst perusing the shelves at the Hennepin County Public Library, I stumbled across CHANGING VISION by Julie Czerneda (say it: chur-nay-dah), an author I'd never heard of, and was intrigued by the aliens on the cover by artist Luis Royo. It didn’t matter that the book was the second in a series, the cover entranced me and so I read. The book was spectacular, I read others and fell entirely in love with another series of hers called  SPECIES IMPERATIVE for its fascinating aliens and superior characterization. A teacher deeply at heart, Julie Czerneda shares ideas and methodology wherever she goes. On her website, http://www.czerneda.com/classroom/classroom.html she shares ideas for writers. I want to share what kind of impact how her ideas have had on my own writing.  They are used with the author’s permission.

When I say someone with courage, I mean you. You wouldn’t be looking at these pages if you weren’t interested in writing. Not just writing, but writing you intend to hand to someone else to read. Trust me, the mere thought gives all of us the same combination of ‘wouldn’t it be wonderful’ anticipation and ‘oh, my, I couldn’t, ever!’ dread. Those feelings never go away. As for the dread? Your courage will see you through.”

What is courage? The simplest of definitions actually suffice here: “...the ability and willingness to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation.”

At first read, you might be tempted (as I was) to think that Julie Czerneda could NEVER feel nervous about sending her work to her publisher. “She don’t need no stinkin’ courage!” might run through your head as it ran through mine.

 As I was, you would be surprised to find out that she feels that dread every time she submits something. I should also define ‘dread’ as well, though less formally than ‘courage’. When I first read it, I thought of the image above, and that does represent an aspect of dread.

But another form of dread comes out of the near-certainty that an editor is going to send your story back with a standard rejection. A lot of things in publishing have changed since I started submitting stories in the 1970s as a kid, but rejections haven’t changed much. They just happen faster now. I think the dread has its roots in fact that every story is a small part of me that I’ve fashioned into a message I want to send to the rest of the world. If I’m any kind of good author, I’ve exposed a bit of my heart to another person – a scary proposition even when you’re in love with someone! – and they have to take the story on its own merits. I’m not there to comment on or coddle the piece.

I can see how that wouldn’t change no matter how many manuscripts I’ve sent out or how many award-winning novels I have on the shelves. (In case you were wondering – the answer is NONE!) It’s a new story every time; a new part of my heart exposed; and so the dread can’t diminish much.

That kind of dread is hard to avoid. But there's another kind of dread to struggle against and that is the kind that freezes me. Maybe I start a story then stop, dreading the investment of time and effort that might produce something not even worth the paper it’s printed on or the broadband it occupies. Maybe I finish the story and then bury it in a file, dreading the rejection I might get (and don’t get me wrong, the chances are good that it will be rejected – my own record stands at 80 acceptances for 875 submissions since 1990…an acceptance rate of just over 10%). Maybe I send it and spend the next few minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months dreading its return. Or I send it and get it back and now dread sending it out again for more of the same. Or it’s published and I dread the response of readers. Or readers love it and I dread critical reviews. Or the reviews are great and I dread the nominations list. Or I make it on the nominations list and I dread the vote. Or I win the vote and, prize in hand, dread that I have nothing left to say and my career is over...

Whatever the source of our dread at whatever stage of writing we’re at, the only way any of us can overcome that dread is to be brave and keep writing things and sending them out to editors.
 
Julie Czerneda has obviously taken her own advice, so I feel confident that I can take it as well: “Your courage will see you through.”
 

August 1, 2013

A PINE IN THE CITY, ALONE WITH A BOY 4

From where I sit on the back yard steps, I can see a pine tree we left behind after we first bought our house. There were four others, but they’d grown so close together, we had to have them cut down as they were killing each other as they competed for soil space, water and sunlight.

Where we live, at the intersection of Great Plains, Deciduous Forest, and Coniferous Forest, there’s a wild mix of trees and grassland. But what would happen if you went further south? What would happen if a migrating bird dropped a seed of, say, a Jack Pine in Oklahoma City? What if a little boy, from a near-destitute white family, discovered it, found out about it, nurtured it…and that’s what this is about.

The boy was the only one of his kind.

Where his family lived – he could see just fine.

But the place he lived now felt wrong.

It should have been warmer, he should have had love.

Image: http://cdn-ugc.cafemom.com/gen/resize/316/252/80/2011/06/17/07/9t/ms/po2kayao84.jpg