Alternative writings

Item the first: In LA Weird Weather News snow is predicted for some areas at the 1000 foot mark. Not much. But still. Snow. Best thing, I am actually going in the area where snow is maybe going to be happening tomorrow.


Item the Second: Short story I was writing is inching towards fifteen thousand words. I don't know if that qualifies as a short story any more. It is definitely heading into novella territory. It's about a man who becomes the Fool to save himself from a man who sold his soul to the devil.

The world is pretty cool, I think. It takes place in Victorian London and involves these beings known as the Forgotten. They were created when man first learned to put names to fears. For examples: There's the Blind King who is the fear of death. He's the king of all and he doesn't see the difference between one person or the other, they all coming to death. He has two sons, the Thief in the Night whose mother was the first woman who committed suicide and The Shadow of Death, whose mother was the first woman killed. The Ashling is the fear of fire and burning to death. Here and There are twins and the beginnings (Here) and endings (There) of journeys. The Ashling and Here have a relationship because when fire is here in the home, it must be tamed so it won't burn anyone it isn't supposed to.

The Shinning ones, on the other hand, are what the Forgotten call angels and demons. They are made of the hopes and dreams of humanity and live in the light. When a dream is crushed, then the angel falls. But it is still a dream and a hope, not a fear, so both demons and angels are part of the light.

There's a lot more, of course. But that's the basic gist of some of the mythology.


Item the third: Oceanic elephants. I am currently reading "The science of the Discworld: the Globe" which is fascinating. In it there is a brief discussion on elephant lungs and how they, unlike other mammals don't have viscus fluid around them. The writers say that the theory is that elephants left the ocean, like most mammals did. But then they went back into the ocean before coming back out again a second time.

And I thought. Oceanic elephants! That's so cool! And I'm going to stick them in my world.

Obviously, there requires more thought to it than just ELEPHANTS IN THE OCEAN, but yeah.

I'm sitting in my bedroom at my parent's house right now. In front of me, on the wall, is a painting I did of Jehrik the Dragonslayer. He's very 90's looking. With huge feathered wings, a cloth mask kind of like Grifter and miss-matched boots. He was originally going to be an antagonist in the Alec book series. He was a dragon slayer. Alec was married to a dragon. The sword was intelligent and would protect its wielder from any harm that could come from a dragon's magic as long as the person was bonded to it. It also compelled the wielder to seek out and destroy dragons.

I haven't thought of the poor guy in years. I had a nifty sort of back story for him and everything. But he just fell by the wayside, no longer useful.

Jerhik had feathered wings because I wanted to play with the idea of having an evil character with angel wings. This was something I came up with before I even knew about subverting cliches and stuff like that. I swear I must have been born an English literature major.

( quick sketch of him )

I feel kind of bad he got written out. Perhaps I shall spin him off into his own thing.

A while ago I mentioned that I felt that Alec's culture seems rather Victorian era that "traditional" Medieval era found in fantasy novels. The rest of his world is leaning more to the traditional, but his particular corner of it does not. Then I started thinking recently. Well if they're Victorian era then maybe they'd be like Steampunk, but with magic. Magic-punk maybe? I'm trying a story with this idea in mind to see how it fits.

I'm not sure if it'll work though. Only way is to try though, yes?

Writing is a strange thing. Especially when you try to explain stuff that happens. I've had Alec in one form or another since 1992. In 1994 the Age of Apocalypse came out. A lot of the heroes had these nifty tattoos on their faces. I was all NEAT I want!

So, Alec got one.

At that point in time, in Alec's infancy, he was still a reality hopping author avatar for my poorly written fan fiction which is collected in notebooks and shall never ever see the light of day until after I'm dead, and I didn't need any other reason for having that tattoo except that he was in the AoA and that's what all the cool kids had.

Time passes and I add a nifty sword because swords are cool. I give the sword a dragon etched in gold on it, because that too is cool.

Then I started to write out canon. This came around the time when I realized I wanted to get published but also realized that you can't get published using other people's works as the background for where your character is hanging out. (DARN IT ALL!) Alec was still with the Tattoo and the Sword, but I came upon the problem of well that's a pretty darn obvious tattoo and no one else has one, how did he get it? Also, that's a nifty magical sword (because they're always magical) and how does that fit into the world?

After several trials and errors and more trials and errors in about 2001 I decided that he got the sword from the fey (cause the Gargoyle fey were awesome and not at all pansy like) and that it was a lineage item. So, he must have gotten it from the previous user. The short story I wrote to show him getting the sword (which later became the basis for Call of the Champion, and that scene not even managing to get into the book) involved three trials and meeting a woman, Marlina. She was an old blind woman who has been waiting for a thousand years for someone to claim the sword so she could die. She gives him the tattoo using magic paint and the sword. I was Huzzah! I have an answer to the question! And I went merrily on my way.

However, I now had two Champions of the Fey: Marlina and Alec. But Marlina was dead so I didn't have to worry about it. I write out Love Lust and the Apocalypse have Alec as the Fey Champion, which was a known entity in that time period and they were surprised that Alec was that Champion. Lah, lah, lah.

Then I decided that I'm going to expand the short story that I wrote into a full novel to explain how Alec became the Champion. It would give his back story and would be all sorts exciting. So! I typed merrily along and realized that the Fey, being the devious creatures that they were, wouldn't put all their eggs in one basket. Or in one Champion. Besides, there were five kinds of wizards, so why not five kinds of champions?

Suddenly my list of Champions blossomed from two Marlina and Alec, to six! Marlina, Alec, Darian (water), Hellena (earth), Zela (fire) and Brenith (air). That was fine. I continued typing along.

Now comes this year. I'm working along on the third novel (Into the Rifts) and I thought to myself, well what happened to the other Champions in Alec's time? The element wizard champion is Alec, the water wizard champion is currently non-existent because the lance is stuck on another world, but that leaves three others. And so now I have Elana (fire), Tera-Lyn (air) and Oliven (earth) who've shown up.

All of these characters have shown up because I decided I needed to explain my OOOH SHINY moment. It's made my world a lot richer - I suppose - and complicated, because now Alec has to deal with these three new people as well as learning the responsibilities of being a Champion. PLUS traditionally he is the leader as the sword bearer, but is the youngest of the group and not even an adult yet and Eliana has taken over as leader. She's bossy like that. Also, it's turning out to be the driving plot line in two of the four novels I've planned using Alec. It may just end up being the driving plot line in all four now.

I don't think anyone would realize that the whole concept of the Champions would have come from the Oooh SHINY! Moment in my reading of the Age of the Apocalypse comic books. I've fully taken the idea of the tattoo and made it my own, leaving no connections between the two beyond in my own head. Instead, I've ended up with (as of now) eight new characters and an important plot line.

One of the hard things I've noticed about writing characters is trying not to put my particular moral views into theirs. The biggest problem I have is when it comes to eating. Jews have Views on what sort of foods it's okay to eat. Keeping Kosher and that fun stuff. My characters are not Jewish. My characters either come from a world where there's no such thing as Judaism or some of them just aren't Jewish. This means that they don't have to follow the rules of Kashrut. They can eat pork. They can have meat and milk products. They can enjoy a lobster. Now, I could come up with reasons for why the fellows who aren't from a world that has Judaism to keep similar rules to keeping Kosher but I don't think it fits into their particular society. Also I feel like it would be putting my beliefs into their mouths.

It'd be like making the elves in the Inheritance Cycle vegetarians. I would make the rules close enough to make me feel "comfortable". Which, I think, would be dangerous. After all the wizards believe that they're superior to every other humanoid on their world so they would believe their view of eating is correct. Thus they would be pushing my views (since the main POV characters I tend to use are wizards) onto the rest of the world. By doing that it would look like I was pushing my views -for I am Jewish and keep Kosher- as a I suppose the term is straw man argument. Which is not something I want to do.

Because of this I've had to make a conscious effort in food choices. It makes me feel squeamish, but I have to remember, my view of the world isn't the only view of the world. The things I value aren't things that other people would value. Especially when it comes to religion.


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In regards to NaNo.

It's strange how stories can wander off on you. I thought I was going to be writing a straight fantasy this time around, as I usually do. But I was sort of stuck on where to go after a certain point, so I decided to switch to the other side of the Rift. See, the goal of the characters was to go through a rift and retrieve an item. The world where the item is was a science fiction type world. They have technology and were able to build a gate to open portals to other worlds.

The world turned out to be very interesting and out of six thousand words-ish, four thousand have been on this world. I've learned all sorts of things. It's an Earth colony on a world with rings. The sky tends to be green and red. There are psychics but not magic users. The psychics tend to end up in the government. This particular group of psychics are part of an MiB type group. Well a cross between the MiB and Torchwood. Also that some of them have counterparts on the first world. Different names, but still, counterparts.

I just wish I knew where things were going. Mostly. It is sort of fun to be exploring uncharted territory in my universe.

Moshti Hearts socks by ~Kippur on deviantART

GLOMP Attack by ~Kippur on deviantART



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Two bits of randomness

1. I posted the first three chapters of Call of the Champion at alternatesworld which is a community I created a long while back. You need to be a member to see it though.


2. I have a second community that was intended for role-play in my particular world, but I never really did anything with it. I wonder how feasible it would be to actually do that though. Hurm.

Brain Chewage.

Not quite an essay rant thingy.

A friend of mine, obadiah gave me some critic on the three chapters of the novel that I'm going to send out to the Tor editor. One of the things that he mentioned in the critic was how the magic of the world felt "humdrum". It was an every day thing that everyone had and everyone used. He wanted to have the magic more magical and fantastic. For it to be more mysterious. He felt it would make it more exciting. For me though, I want the magic to be purely a "background" thing taken for granted. That way the threat of having the magic taken away and not being able to do things like turn on lights would be more acute. And besides the non-wizarding lands aren't so magic reliant.

But it got me thinking. If in a technology heavy world magic is seen as amazing, wouldn't it be the same the other way around? If magic were everyday then technology would be a novel thing. In my world technological growth has been seriously stunted by the fey. The fey fear that technology will lead to greater iron usage which would prevent them from manipulating and existing in the "human" world.

Which now that I think about it is rather opposite of what other fey and elves do where instead they generally allow themselves to fade away and be trapped in Fairie because of the iron that men make. My fey actively cause technology to not be worthwhile to keep their hold on the human realms. Basically if anyone starts making a big production with iron the fey send them a warning of stop. If that doesn't work BOOOOOOM. After all if the fey are so powerful, why would they just let themselves go and fade away? I mean humans wouldn't do it. It's rather suicidal of the fey/elves to do such things. (My elves are different?)

Anyway, I digress. So I think I will try and make technology the sort of magic that a magic user would find magical and novel. Alec's older brother, Greywolf, is already fascinated by technology and is a tinker. Which will likely lead into trouble. But he's one of those people who want to know how things work. So, I'm going to try and interject that sort of thing into the world as the writing progresses.

In the mean time, I got one of the new eggs!

Work in progress


HELP I'M TROPING MY OWN NOVEL