Of all the nations of the Third World, Inja has been the hardest to find a story for. They are the unconquered people. They were never assimilated into the empire and thus suffer no repercussions from its collapse. They are isolated on a peninsula between a great plateau and a plain so vast that its inhabitants think they're the only people in the world. While I could do a stranger in a strange land story, I already have one of those and doing a second would be lame.

Conversely, skip back to the days of the Haen Empire when the Injari were fighting for their freedom, and plenty of interesting stories arise (including DAMINI, which I mentioned earlier). So what's the mistake I've made? There are two, actually. They're all alone and they're absent an enemy. But the Haen are all but extinct. Should I just arbitrarily create a new villain?

Oh no, my friends. May I present to you THE LOST LEGION. This group of Haen soldiers are duty bound to conquer the Injari peninsula or never return home. Cut off from their supply chain, they never received word of the empire's collapse. They built a fort in the middle of the jungle, a few villages, and bolster their numbers through the ancestors of their foot soldiers and underlings (as Haen are extremely long-lived, perhaps even immortal). I am incredibly enthusiastic about this development as it now puts this area back into play and I've wanted to work here since the very beginning (a flash fiction piece starring Damini was actually the first thing I ever wrote for the Third World).

Woo hoo!

I hate "x is the new y" statements. This is unfortunate because it's used all the time in writing. Currently, it's "x is the new vampire." "X is the new vampire" has been around for awhile, so truly, "vampire is the new vampire" is perhaps the most appropriate. Still, with influences from movies, I thought "zombies are the new vampire" was a fair assessment of a new trend, but a dark horse seems to be making a play for first. "Angels are the new vampire."

This bugs me because I actually have angel stories in my queue (two that I'd like to be part of a series, but really, I only have titles and a general sense of a story). I don't think I've actually mentioned them here before because I don't really have a story, just a general premise and titles that stoke my creativity. Originally inspired by a KoRn song, the first novel is called "The Mortal Earthbound" and its sequel "The Dearly Departed." The general premise is that angels that refuse the will of heaven fall to hell, but hell turns out to be an office job on earth. There is no fiery pit, Earth is hell, which is why it never gets better despite our best efforts. I need to make it feel less like a Matrix clone and find a genuine story to pursue, but I love the title and have to write a story to match it.

We had a long drive today. In addition to recounting the above to Jen, I had time to ponder a short story I had planned for the Third World. The Injari don't get much (any) attention in my currently planned novels, but they're one of my favorite cultures. For that reason, I decided to write the short story "Damini," a Romeo and Juliet story in the Third World. I pondered this today. It started as a day dream, really, using the story to fulfill a request for an anthology. First it was an anthology of love stories that I was invited to contribute to. Then it was an anthology of LGBT love stories. And that's when a light bulb went on above my head. The story I had planned was pretty lame. It didn't reimagine the Romeo and Juliet story, it just transposed it to the Injari Peninsula. And sure, I won't be the first to explore this concept either (reminds me of the first half of Chutney Popcorn, in a way), but it still seems more exciting than anything I had considered before. In fact, this has opened up so many story ideas that I might turn it into a novel. Damini is the alpha female of her village, but an alpha female in a patriarchal society (okay, it's actually a matriarchal society, but even then, the women are expected to remain alone. You'll have to read it to make sense of all that). Damini does not realize she's gay. She's never been attracted to anyone, male or female. Villages exchange youngsters so they can learn the ways of the different villages and diversify the breeding pool. A new group of exchanges arrives. The alpha male of that group takes a shine to her. He asks female character X to talk to her, and Damini falls for X rather than alpha male.

I'm currently enthused enough about that story that I might write it after Wanted is finished. I was going to go back to Sandwich Notch. We'll see.

Huzzah for writing! I need to hurry up and finish so I can start another one.

I'm at the Smithsonian Museum of African Art. 15th century Portuguese missionaries distributed crucifixes in an attempt to convert the local Congolese. The crucifix became a sign of power for tribal leaders, as the cross was the symbol in local cosmology for where the real world and the spirit world meet. The statue I saw had no wooden cross or representation of Jesus, but was an African in a crucifix-like pose to demonstrate his power.

Struggling with the mythology of Aman'Brin, I had always thought to say Sign of theSpear, a moment when God-as-Man thrust his spear into the ground and ascended. It seemed to narrowly avoid saying cross for a religion that is steeped in Christian and Jewish samples. Reading this, I believe I'll use sign of the cross for the Amani south and sign of the spear for the Brinish north.

It was a throw-away line I inserted to answer a question I asked myself. Where do adventuring parties come from? They're never fully explained in the context of setting in most RPGs because that's a fundamental element of the game. It just has to be. But I'm not writing an RPG, I'm writing novels, so why would there be adventuring companies in the Third World? How do they fit into the various social dynamics that I've created. Some nations fit the classic depiction of adventuring better than others, specifically the Naissani city-states (really, they fill the classic RPG fantasy mold better than anywhere else in the setting).

The catch with that is that the Naissani are a seafaring people. Working-class men are more likely to become sailors than any other profession. What happens to their women? Well women are treated kind of like property. But they're intelligent property whose husbands are gone for months at a time. What do they do in that time? They adventure.

And that was where the throw-away line came, when Valis was speaking to Bear about his new adventure and he mentioned a Naissani woman's opinion of his adventure. So I gave this a larger consideration, what are adventuring companies like in Naissan? How did they evolve?

Adventuring companies are predominantly female (males may be different ethnicity, dependent on the women somehow, or otherwise a vagabond willing to ignore social norms in an effort to eat). They use fake names and wear costumes to hide their true appearance, returning home before their husbands make port to maintain the illusion.

So you might have an adventuring company named the "Daughters of Mara." Among its members you would have Alessandra Quickblade, Pia the Wicked, Selvaggia Two-Penny, Invisible Cansaleta, and Bloody Bella.

I'm thinking of turning this into a short story, as I don't think this fits into any of the stories I have planned right now. But a short story about a young bride terrorized by her husband who finds her true self by joining the Daughters of Mara could be a nice story to tell.

I'm getting my ass kicked! I was quite enthused when I left this morning. Eat some Jackie's, do some writing, go to the library and do some more writing. It was going to be a productive day. I had compiled Imsikwatash's chapters into two short story documents, "The End of Bliss" (from his introduction to the murder of his wife by the apothecary) and "The End of Nothing" (which includes Goyathlay's introduction and will track their journey across the Kimaya plains). Look, a short story that's already finished! Woo hoo! How is that not cool?

And now I have room to slow things down and really fill out Bear's story, build some character, show the world, and rock the house.

The problem with this is twofold. Originally the book was split between two main characters which meant I was essentially writing a book in half the expected space. That's not just fast pacing, that's incredibly fast pacing. In the original draft, Bear dealt with Bishop Tayfan Aster by chapter 25. Now he deals with him by chapter 8. Chapter 8? You can't have such a major character poisoned and thrown into a box by chapter 8! What the hell is up with that?!?! Where's the missing story? And how do I push it all in without making everything suck donkey balls? (I'm considering giving the Prologue to Aster and moving Pi Fu's chapter to chapter 1--or even later.)

Second, I figured an easy solution to slow things down would be to find those chapters where I accomplished a lot and split them in two, focusing on character and then dramatic action. So Bear's return to Woodbend would not immediately yield the revelation that Young Mahli was the daughter of Tayfan Aster. While this is still a good idea, in my opinion, I haven't edited those chapters. Some of them just suck. Some of them are wrong because I've changed things since then. And some of them suck and are wrong.

Today is proving incredibly difficult to write. I can't overcome my own crappy manuscript.

Oi!

I'm not too keen on renumbering my chapters now that Imsikwatash and Goyathlay have been cut from the book. I just lost at least 6 chapters and I'm going to add some to slow the pace a little. So this was chapter 32. Now I don't know where it is. I'll figure it out eventually and when I do, I'll let you know. :)

( Cause and Conviction, chapter ? )

Okay, so lots of thought on titles. I don't write without titles, even if they're just working titles.

The three books for this trilogy were named
The End of Bliss
Cause and Conviction
What Know You of Peace

I think I'm going to change the titles so they are
Cause and Conviction
Sepsis
What Know You of Peace

I just thought of Sepsis and it describes that book well, but I am not fully decided. Any thoughts on your part?

I will expand this list as I begin to think of new titles, but want to make sure to write them down so I don't forget.

Was: The End of Bliss

Is: __________________

Possible options:

After the Fallen Empire
Before the Fall
High Way
The Second Age of Prophets
Skere Rising

Last week I printed out my manuscript to date. It was reinvigorating to see such a large stack of paper. Even though I'm only 1/3 of the way finished with the ms, the mountain of dead trees reminded me what I have accomplished so far. My intent was to use the printed chapters to separate out and reorder, kind of like note cards. Then I discovered the outline feature and reordered everything fairly quickly. I also determined the remaining chapters dedicated to Rian Inkwright, Skere Khane, and Pi Fu. I still need to hash out how many chapters I need for Bear, Imsikwatash, and Goyathlay. Since Bear and Imsi are the main characters, I'll just write until their stories are finished and see what the total is. Goya is perhaps the most insignificant secondary character, a little one dimensional, so that creates a whole different challenge to determining how many chapters I want to give him because I don't know what's necessary to make him a better character. We'll see after I'm done writing, eh?

So what I've been doing is using the hardcopy to edit. I know I said I wouldn't edit previous chapters until I was finished. It's an easy trap to fall into. I'm not sure if I've fallen into it. I have one foot in for sure, but I'm alternating between writing and editing and that is satisfying. I made moderate changes to the prologue (now available in the Inkwell) and significant changes to chapter 1. I chopped 3 pages at once in chapter 1. It's hard to go on when you realize you wrote for 3 pages and nothing from those pages is salvageable. But what I replaced it with (or am in the process of replacing it with) is so much better. I'm very pleased. In fact, that oppressive feeling I have when I'm writing, knowing what I've created previously is such crap is lessened a little bit because I know now that what I have is less crap than it was before. Yay for that!

...umm, okay, that is all. :)

I'm not sure what made me decide to do it, but rather than just bolding my chapter number and titles, I've actually been using the document styles and making them headers. This was an invaluable decision, I learned today, as I viewed my entire manuscript (nearly 300 pages) as an outline collapsed down just to the headers. I am able to move each of these sections (header 1 and subordinate body text) with the click of a button, rather than cutting and pasting a chapter that would otherwise be 12 pages long. This allowed me to reorganize the document in a fashion that was much more coherent than it had been previously (e.g., chapter 2 is now chapter 14).

While I haven't done a lot of writing this weekend, only half a chapter, I did reorganize the flow of the entire ms as well as revise the prologue. I'm pleased with this progress.

Also, as a bit of a revelation, after seeing the success of the Twilight series (a horribly blatant rip off of Angel), I could care less if Stephen King has a character called the Hanged Man. I'll be using him in Jehovah's Hitlist without the slightest concern. The character is entirely original and only the name is the same. If Twilight can be a best seller, I can reuse a name.

It occurred to me the other day that my writing has actually gotten poorer working on The End of Bliss than it was on A Circle of Crimson Stone. I suffer from the "show don't tell" flaw to a greater degree than I did on that manuscript. What the hell is that about? When you write and read more, you're supposed to get better, not worse. I had gotten so bad, in fact, that I was tempted to restart my manuscript for Bliss. Extremely tempted, but that is a wholly separate trap. It's easy to never finish a manuscript, claiming you're revising and then you'll finish it when things are better. What actually happens is you just perpetually revise and never finish. So I compromised. I went off-script for the last chapter I wrote and revised heavily. Remember just a couple months ago when I said I would plow forward and write whatever was written to keep up the pace? Well, I didn't quite do that with this last chapter. There was just WAY too much telling and not enough showing. The revised chapter may still be crap, but in comparison to what it was, it's at least a start. We'll push on and once the book is done, we'll gut the entire thing and make it not suck. I am frustrated with how much better my writing was when I started Crimson Stone. I didn't have to think about it; I just did it. What the hell happened?


( The End of Bliss, Chapter ? )

So, The PodgeCast took a lot of my time last week, but once Independence Day holiday came around, I started writing again. Reading so much has been both invigorating and distracting. I worried that it might have a negative impact on my writing (like when I was reading The Name of the Wind and found my writing went to shit while I was reading it). Thankfully, it has proven invigorating. I've written two and a half chapters this weekend and I'll be finishing that third one this evening.

I don't know if I'm going to post them, though. It's not that they're bad. In fact, I'm quite pleased with one of them in particular. I don't know. We'll have to ponder this. (These new chapters do not include the final outcome of Bear and Tayfan Aster at the church. I skipped over that and will return to it later.)

Boy has it been difficult to start writing again. I tried Thursday with little success. What I wrote was pretty shitty. So I thought maybe I should go back and start revising some chapters until I felt like I was on a roll. But looking back at those chapters, they seemed shitty. Everything just felt bad, amateurish, as if I had never done this before (which technically speaking I haven't, if you want to get as specific as a novel, but writing stories is something I've been doing since first grade and I expect more of my first drafts). So I decided to go to a chapter that I was already have trouble with, one that I hadn't been able to finish before.

So I went to chapter 13, deleted about half of it, and then wrote another 1800 words. What you see here is the result of that effort. Still not amazing, but good enough that I can confidently move on to the next chapter.

( The End of Bliss, chapter 13 )

This chapter was a little rushed. I was trying to keep the word count in a similar range of my other chapters and maintain an adequate pacing, but it may grow during revision. In fact, they may all grow during revision. We'll see once we get there. I took a break from writing about Imsikwatash now that I've gotten his story caught up and about the same length as Bear's current storyline. I wrote instead about Rian Inkwright, a character that was originally only going to appear in one or two chapters who has now become an integral element of Jhon Prester's storyline. This is also the first of two times we meet Jhon in this novel, even though he is the main character of the trilogy. Originally, I wasn't going to have him speak at all in this chapter only exact punishment, but to do so would have made him too evil, I believe. So you get to hear him and see that he's not a sadistic zealot. Hopefully I can pull that off, otherwise I'll have a lot of work in the next two books to make him look like a good guy.

( The End of Bliss, Chapter 22 )

It's a common strategy among writers to place a synopsis of a chapter on an index card and then reorder them until they create the best order possible for the book. I tried doing this with a screenplay once, but I never finished, so all I had was a bunch of paper that constantly got in the way.

I have reached that point where I can't immediately state where the best location of a chapter should be, hence the question marks in my subject line. I have certainly changed the order of chapters. A lot. I've even had to renumber posts in this journal. The catch here is that I'm putting a number of character specific chapters in order for dramatic effect, but I'm ending up with long swaths of one character and then the next, which I don't want to do too much. We'll see where this one finally ends up.

( The End of Bliss, Chapter ??? )

So I realized how bad I am at taking a compliment if I'm not prepared for it. I love compliments. I really do. But I tend to show humility by being self-deprecating, which can be incredibly insulting to the person paying me the compliment. I received such a compliment this weekend about the chapter I posted recently. There was genuine admiration in his voice and I replied with essentially "It wasn't that good." Strangely, both chapters that have earned me the most praise are the two I always saw as the poorest. Perhaps I am losing sight of what makes a good story. I'll have to ponder this during my revisions.

So for any others who may have received an unsatisfactory reply to a compliment, I do appreciate it.

And now, here is some more work I did on my trip to St. Louis.

( The End of Bliss, Chapter 14 )

Now that I'm finished with my commitments to Living Greyhawk, I can work on my novel again. Rather than focusing more on Bear and Angelique, I thought I'd give Imsikwatash some attention. He has been much ignored.

One thing I discovered today, when you have a culture that worships the sun as a god and calls it "the Great Father" rather than "the sun," you have to wonder if their vocabulary would include words like sunlight, sunrise, or sundown. This poses some challenges. Something to ponder at least. In the mean time, here is Chapter 12. I've also written 780 words on Chapter 14 as well.

( The End of Bliss, Chapter 12 )

I'm officially done with my adventure. Now to work on the interactive and then I can get back to my novel! I went down to Jackie's for a late breakfast this morning. I find that by the time I'm done, the library is open and I can just go down the street and get a few hours of writing in. It works fantastically. I had to do treasure division and the epilogue paperwork such as AR content (with a fun little item I came up with the other day that just tickles me).

I couldn't do any of that at Jackie's, though, and I write while I'm at the counter. What to work on? That's right, novel baby! It was time to answer the one question that I kept avoiding. Why does Bear take Angelique south? I know why Skere Khane follows them, but why did Bear take her to begin with? Certainly playing on the death of his mother that early in the book would be cheap. You can't just introduce it and then immediately use it. That's what television is for. This is literature!

And that's when it came to me. I do each chapter from one POV, so a chapter name will be "Bear in Watertown." Well, the chapter where he rescues Angelique was so named. And that was a mistake! It is now "Angelique in Watertown" and is written from her perspective. Not only does this allow me to come up with a way for her to convince Bear to take her south (she is Haen, and thus innately magical), but it also allows me to add a dimension to her character I would not have otherwise added. Take that false accusations of sexism!

So here are the ~180 words I wrote tonight. I hope you enjoy.

( Chapter 15: Angelique in Watertown )

I wish I could remember who it was, but I read the other day a very competent essay on sexism in writing. I found it honest, fair-minded, and compelling. I was happy that it wasn't a "the Man is keeping us down" piece. The general concept was that, while gender equality has made great strides over the past few decades, we have simply moved from explicit to implicit sexism. You're more likely to find a heroine rather than a damsel in distress than you were 50 years ago, but usually that heroine is given masculine traits to allow her to be heroic.

That made me stop and realize that the first main character I ever wrote for the Third World follows that mold precisely. In Maya's case, she lives in a harsh environment and if she isn't hard, she'll die. But I would like to have another female character that could be more effeminate and still be heroic. But I'm having trouble finding a place to put such a character. (I may use Poet from The End of Bliss in later books, but she'll never attain main character status.)

This flows into her second point, and this one my reaction to was "nuh uh!" but I think I may have proven her right without meaning to. Even when the author has no intention to cast gender roles, he will equate genders to particular character traits and will fundamentally gravitate toward his or her preferred gender. So of my current main characters, all of them are male except for one. The one female character exhibits masculine traits. I've become a statistic!

lurkerwithout had a good critique in his journal about sexism in comics and how women are so frequently used merely as plot devices for the men. This is tremendously true and I'm guilty of this myself. What I'm worried about, and the impetus for this post, is that I may have overdone it in The End of Bliss

There are four primary women in this book: Mahli, Ayime, Poet, and Angelique.

Mahli: Raped by a bishop, spurring Bear to kill the bishop.
Ayime: A tribute to Robert E. Howard, she hangs out in her birthday suit
Poet: A simple flower girl that tempts Rian Inkwright to break his vows
Angelique: Covered head to toe, soothsayer, there to have Bear fall in love before she dies

How disappointing is that? Most of them have little less than one dimension and none of them are anything more than a plot device. But I like the story I'm crafting. It's epic fantasy with a dash of sword and sorcery and a garnish of pulp. I like it. I just wish I could find a way to maintain what I like about the story without perpetuating the cycle. (I'll have to see if I can't make Poet a better character. If I do, though, that probably won't happen until Cause and Conviction if not What Know You of Peace. I hope I haven't been pigeonholed by then.)

I'm touchy on the subject. I get accused of being a sexist more often than I like. When I ask them why they would ever call me that, what I had done, they're answers always start "well I just assumed..." What about me says "sexist"? Should I be judged by the actions and statements? Look, he's short and fat! He's a sexist! What the fuck is that about? (The most recent occasion I was told it's because I always think I'm smarter than women. I had to correct her and tell her that I always think I'm smarter than everyone and gender has nothing to do with it.)

If you're 30ish or younger, if you're from those generations where television truly permeated American society, but you're a writer, you have the potential for deficiency. It's a broad assumption, as I've seen it in older writers as well. Visual media has overtaken text media and our understanding of story and character is derived more from what we see on the screen (whether television or movie) than what we read in a book.

Characters on screen have to be built and established in a short amount of time. Serial dramas have the luxury of longer exposure, but they still have to be able to relate to the viewer in a set time frame. That's perhaps the greatest strength of a book (along with the absence of budget restraints keeping you from going to the most exotic locales, of course) is that you can see the full depth and breadth of a character.

Of course, if you grew up watching more than you did reading (like me), you may find that your characters are too two dimensional. They may seem dynamic, but if you step back from your work and analyze them, what you'll find is that you've molded them into an archetype or worse, into a cliché. The stalwart hero, the conflicted antihero, the seductive sociopath, blah blah blah. Dramatic actions don't necessarily equate to character. They equate to dramatic actions. And while you might drape our characters in the robes of heroism or pride or whatever, rarely will you meet a person that is composed of one or two, but rather filled with a spectrum of all the virtues of vices known to man.

The character I worry about most is Bear. He's one of the two main characters of my first book (although in the larger story he's actually a secondary character). And of the two, he's my favorite of the two characters. You've read about him here (if you read what I post) and you've already seen what little character I've given him. He's a Friar. He's an Advocate. His mother was stoned to death. He takes pleasure in killing religious authority. Awww, angsty rebel as part of the establishment!

And that kills me! Because that's not even the character I'm writing. Well, sort of, but more than that drivel. It's meant to be the conundrum that his faith in god is so strong that he's made the ultimate oath, while his faith in the institution that supports that god is hollow. The trick is, unless your Kevin Smith your characters don't stand around talking about their feelings. They have a task at hand and they set about that task. What tasks they choose to pursue and how they pursue it is how you display character. Showing my TV influences, I begin and end my stories with a properly evocative moment (like Fox wanting to start Firefly with the Train Job, even though I thought shooting Dobson was evocative enough to earn my allegiance). My pacing is visual pacing not textual pacing and I have to work on that.

I have no sage advice or words of wisdom. It's a problem I have that many other people do too (maybe even you). I have to work on that. That is all. :)