Book Launch
This is about me and my books, so here's your chance to pass--
Treason's Shore has its release day today. This ends the story arc I just called Inda, as so many story arcs end up being called after the central figure. I started writing it ten years ago, was revising desperately in spring. I've learned a lot while doing this arc--and I also have learned how much more I have to learn. I do wish I could have learned some things forty years ago, but hey.
First image was around 1970, might even have been earlier, when I was making my world map. I always go into the zone when I do maps. I put the Elgar Strait where two continents almost touch (and had, much earlier in the world's history, leaving behind a scattering of rocky upthrusts called The Fangs) and thought, "Everything they said about Elgar was wrong, including his name." That evolved over the years to "Legend said he was a pirate but he wasn't, and nobody really knew where he was born, so a lot of lands claim him, except where he's a total villain, and it was a he, not a she."
That was all I had until the mid-nineties, when I got this vivid image of kids in the courtyard of a castle made of honey-colored stone (which meant I knew where it was), and a cheerful boy's voice piping "Let's go fight the girls!" Not out of enmity at all--the one he was attacking was his intended wife--it was practice for defense. And she would one day be the castle defender.
From there the images do what they do, cascading into story, and I dove in. Because this is the history of the timeline I've been working on longest, there was a parallel game, or bit of fun, which was laying down the tracks for the future stories--or sometimes bringing up even older tracks and showing how they shaped events farther on. Including the midpoint between the present-day stories and the Inda one, which is where Banner of the Damned comes in.
We writers have these things running in our brains alongside real life. The toughest part for me is to try to wrestle the words into capturing, or at least suggesting, that inner landscape. The second toughest has been the awkward transition back and forth to real life. When I was a young teen my dad once smacked me right off my chair onto the floor because I was sitting at the dinner table with a stupid, vacant expression, not tracking the conversation. It was years before I understood the parental fear that I might be like my schizo uncle. And who knows, maybe I'm one chromosome away, or I made one decision this side of sanity as a kid--because I do remember the intense struggle to figure out what was real and what wasn't, and the sorrow when the real world's rules proved to be so disappointing. If I can fly in my dreams, and it feels so real that my teeth get cold and the wind tangles my hair, why can't I do it in real life? Anyway, that smack is one of the things that taught me early on that being a writer in no way made me a special flower. Writing was somewhat of a covert act for many years, until as life went on and I proved capable of supporting myself, the attitude toward my writing evolved into benign disinterest. I was a dork doing dorky things, but at least I could hold down a job.
The transition between the inner life and the outer unfortunately does take time. Books don't write themselves overnight. We talk about seeing an inner movie, but actually, at least for me, the inner movie is a series of fast glimpses, kind of like a vid, or a trailer fast-forwarded showing the highlights, unless I consciously pick one to look at . . . and if I do, time is inexorably passing. Leaving me sitting in my chair with my fork in the air, cold food on the plate, and one of my kids saying "Mom? Did you hear me?"
The world comes back--and if it was my kid's voice bringing me, there is a cascade of guilt behind it. Joy in creation, striving to hone one's craft, hoping to reach others with the vision, because community is what makes life so good . . . but there is that cost, that sense that when one checked out one might have missed something important to a dear one.
Well, anyway, anyone who wants to know more about what happens directly after this one, I did put a lengthy epilogue up on my website.
ETA: This usually falls with a resounding splat of ringing silence, but in the offchance anyone has any questions about this story arc or anything appertaining thereto, here's the place to ask.
Treason's Shore has its release day today. This ends the story arc I just called Inda, as so many story arcs end up being called after the central figure. I started writing it ten years ago, was revising desperately in spring. I've learned a lot while doing this arc--and I also have learned how much more I have to learn. I do wish I could have learned some things forty years ago, but hey.
First image was around 1970, might even have been earlier, when I was making my world map. I always go into the zone when I do maps. I put the Elgar Strait where two continents almost touch (and had, much earlier in the world's history, leaving behind a scattering of rocky upthrusts called The Fangs) and thought, "Everything they said about Elgar was wrong, including his name." That evolved over the years to "Legend said he was a pirate but he wasn't, and nobody really knew where he was born, so a lot of lands claim him, except where he's a total villain, and it was a he, not a she."
That was all I had until the mid-nineties, when I got this vivid image of kids in the courtyard of a castle made of honey-colored stone (which meant I knew where it was), and a cheerful boy's voice piping "Let's go fight the girls!" Not out of enmity at all--the one he was attacking was his intended wife--it was practice for defense. And she would one day be the castle defender.
From there the images do what they do, cascading into story, and I dove in. Because this is the history of the timeline I've been working on longest, there was a parallel game, or bit of fun, which was laying down the tracks for the future stories--or sometimes bringing up even older tracks and showing how they shaped events farther on. Including the midpoint between the present-day stories and the Inda one, which is where Banner of the Damned comes in.
We writers have these things running in our brains alongside real life. The toughest part for me is to try to wrestle the words into capturing, or at least suggesting, that inner landscape. The second toughest has been the awkward transition back and forth to real life. When I was a young teen my dad once smacked me right off my chair onto the floor because I was sitting at the dinner table with a stupid, vacant expression, not tracking the conversation. It was years before I understood the parental fear that I might be like my schizo uncle. And who knows, maybe I'm one chromosome away, or I made one decision this side of sanity as a kid--because I do remember the intense struggle to figure out what was real and what wasn't, and the sorrow when the real world's rules proved to be so disappointing. If I can fly in my dreams, and it feels so real that my teeth get cold and the wind tangles my hair, why can't I do it in real life? Anyway, that smack is one of the things that taught me early on that being a writer in no way made me a special flower. Writing was somewhat of a covert act for many years, until as life went on and I proved capable of supporting myself, the attitude toward my writing evolved into benign disinterest. I was a dork doing dorky things, but at least I could hold down a job.
The transition between the inner life and the outer unfortunately does take time. Books don't write themselves overnight. We talk about seeing an inner movie, but actually, at least for me, the inner movie is a series of fast glimpses, kind of like a vid, or a trailer fast-forwarded showing the highlights, unless I consciously pick one to look at . . . and if I do, time is inexorably passing. Leaving me sitting in my chair with my fork in the air, cold food on the plate, and one of my kids saying "Mom? Did you hear me?"
The world comes back--and if it was my kid's voice bringing me, there is a cascade of guilt behind it. Joy in creation, striving to hone one's craft, hoping to reach others with the vision, because community is what makes life so good . . . but there is that cost, that sense that when one checked out one might have missed something important to a dear one.
Well, anyway, anyone who wants to know more about what happens directly after this one, I did put a lengthy epilogue up on my website.
ETA: This usually falls with a resounding splat of ringing silence, but in the offchance anyone has any questions about this story arc or anything appertaining thereto, here's the place to ask.