Wrangling Fictional Characters

I've begun to write the sequel to The City Darkens, and I won't say very much about that specifically, since it is one my rules never to talk about a story before it's finished. But what I will say is that I decided to go with a different narrator than Myadar. Ginna has lived most of her life in the Undergrunnsby--I felt like Myadar's story really only showed one perspective on the city, and that I needed to have the next story flip that and look at it from a completely different angle. So this has presented two unexpected challenges.

First, Ginna has a distinct voice, which is great, in a distinct dialect, which I can hear clearly in my head most of the time. At first, I had a real struggle because Ginna kept insisting on switching tenses and telling her story sometimes in present tense and sometimes in past tense. Eventually I figured out how to handle this: she'd tell the events of the story in past tense, and anything she considered to be a constant truth she'd tell in present tense. Now the only trouble I'm having is with some of her to-be verbs, which I can't seem to find a consistent way of conjugating. I'm going to have to study up on existing dialects. The nice thing about creating your own fantasy world is that you can take liberties when you invent a dialect. You're not required to represent how real people talk in a certain region of the real world. But you do have to be consistent.

The second unexpected challenge is that Ginna is such a strong personality right from the get-go. I feel like she's just using me to get her story out. (Stephen King attributed an idea to Native Americans--I don't think he was specific about the tribe and I don't remember where I read this--that stories stalk the writer until the writer is ready to tell them, or some such. It's like that.) Actually, a few times it's been like she slapped me upside the head and said, "Hey! What kind of ninny do you think I am? I'm doing this instead." And sometimes I don't really like what she does, but there's no way around it. She's going to do things that way, because that's who she is. For one thing she can be incredibly and remorselessly violent. Not all of the time, but basically she's got a lot of rage from some of the experiences she's been through. I've written before about violence, and how ambivalent I am about representing it in fiction. I look at George R. R. Martin's stories, which granted I've only experienced through the show, Game of Thrones, and I think he goes too far. Don't get me wrong, I'm addicted to the show. But I really could do without some of the images it has put in my head, and it disturbs me when people come to the defense of its violence with reasons like, "It's historically accurate." Westeros doesn't exist, people. It never did. There can be no historical accuracy there. And if you're referring to a depiction of medieval England, let me tell you that the ways in which GoT is historically inaccurate far outweigh the ways in which is may be accurate--for instance, there's no Catholic Church, and you really can't talk about the history of England without including the Catholic Church.

Not exactly a Catholic priest.

Okay, end history-nerd side rant.

Anyway, the point I was actually trying to get to is that since I've begun dealing with Ginna, it's caused me to wonder if GRRM might actually not have really planned to be quite so brutal when he started writing. Maybe his characters slapped him upside the head and said, "HEY. WE ARE JUST THAT EVIL." Or something. Then again, one of the people I watch GoT with claims that when GRRM was a kid, he had pet turtles, and used to write stories about the turtles torturing each other and plotting to murder each other. So quite possibly he's just that much of a sadist. Who knows?

I'm actually not complaining about Ginna's domination over the story. It's quite wonderful when characters take over and the story grows from them. I'm a pantser, though. I can see how if you had a whole outline written, characters slapping you upside the head and demanding that the story go in a direction you never intended might become a problem. You'd get quite lost without your map.

Have you ever experienced a character running loose from your control? What was that like for you? Did you enjoy it, or were they a royal pain in the ass? How did that story turn out?

Vanguard of Hope, by Kathy Steinemann

Vanguard of Hope, by Kathy Steinemann, the first in her Sapphire Brigade series, is a melodrama set in the late 19th century. I have had quite an internal struggle over how to rate this book. Because I determined that several of the problems I had with it were probably personal taste issues, I'm giving it three stars instead of two.

One thing that Steinemann could easily clarify at the beginning with a quick edit is the location of the story. I was very confused--there were references to "Free Negroes" and the 13th Amendment, implying the United States, most likely in the South. But the spellings are often British, there is a reference to British tutors, and Peter, the husband, is described (too far in) as having a British accent.

There are also some other editing issues like verb tense inconsistencies and confusing shifts in focus from crucial plot points to details about a secondary character's appearance and personality.

But now, on to the major issues I had with the novel...

[Warning: Spoilers abound in the next few paragraphs]

First off, Steinemann sent me the book to review, and she probably didn't realize I am a historian, or she might not have. There were a few distinct, well-researched passages, but the book had so many anachronisms as to completely throw me out of the story. Finally I decided to pretend that it was set in 1958 instead of 1890, which took care of almost all of the problems. For one thing, the term "paedophile" was not in common use until the 20th century. I am not convinced that people in the 1890s would have reacted to Hope's confession about her secret as they did. Perhaps one or two exceptionally advanced thinkers might, but the vast majority would have labeled her "hysterical" and locked her away in a room with yellow wallpaper.

The concept of "racism" as a bad thing is also far more recent than the turn of the century. At that time and well into the first half of the 20th century "racism," and specifically "scientific racism," was widely accepted as an appropriate world view, not as something to condemn. Read some of Teddy Roosevelt's writings on the topic of race sometime. By the mid 1920s literally millions of people, including a half a million women, belonged to the KKK. It became something you had to do in order to make it in a career--even Harry Truman joined for a brief time. Had the novel been set in the late 1950s or in the 1960s, after the Civil Rights movement had begun, it would make a lot more sense to me that Hope would want to reject racism. And it would still make a lot of sense to me that she and those around her might suffer retaliation for it.

Terms like "cheating" and "stalking" are also later 20th century terms, for what it's worth. The book is full of language inappropriate to the time.

Another issue I had was that I thought I was reading a romance, and as romances go, Vanguard doesn't follow the rules. Some readers may enjoy this as a step away from convention. However, I like romance conventions. Introduce the main love interest at the beginning and that's who I want the main character to end up with. But Hope had not one, not two, but three loves. Hey, I'm all for polyamorous love stories, but this really wasn't one of those (way too much talk of offending God for that). The introduction of Owen in the last third of the novel really threw me off. I never trusted him. It didn't help that he kept breaking into her house and surprising her when he 1) knew she was a victim of sexual assault and 2) was a doctor who counseled her sister about her own assault and should have been a lot more sensitive to the repercussions of violating Hope's space and safety like that. On top of that, Hope's reactions to this violation didn't ring true for me. She wasn't the least bit unnerved. Maybe if she had met Owen before Solomon or Peter, if there had been established sexual tension with him from the start, I might have been able to hang in there. And it didn't help that I found their playful sexual banter awkward (they had names for their body parts) and tiresome (there was far too much of it).

Click on the image to purchase on Amazon.

I was disappointed because in the beginning of the novel I got hooked despite the anachronisms and minor editing problems, which is saying a lot for me. I get frustrated with that sort of thing usually. But I was impressed because the story of Hope's affair with Solomon was compelling and I thought that would be the focus of the book. Also, Steinemann has a good grasp of how to throw twists into a plot. In fact, I think she does it too much (he was murdered, no, he killed himself, no, he's not actually dead--that one annoyed me particularly because I was invested in the hate crime aspect of the murder scenario). But by the last third of the novel, I felt that the tension just wasn't there. The only looming threat was Hope's illness, and that wasn't enough for me. I needed something else to threaten her--the illness was just saddening, not exciting.

Anyway, I think others may enjoy this novel more than I did. Anachronisms really bug me (unless it's an alternative history) and I don't think they bother non-history buffs nearly as much. So if you like melodramas with lots of twists and prefer romances that stray from the usual conventions, you may enjoy Vanguard of Hope.

What is Dieselpunk?

After my recent blog post on Captain America: The First Avenger, I got a couple of questions about the terms "dieselpunk" and "decopunk." There's a pretty nice description of dieselpunk here, but I thought I'd talk a little about what it means to me.

I've come across a forum post where someone described dieselpunk as a scene rather than a genre, mainly, if I understand correctly, because of the dirth of actual dieselpunk fiction out there. I'll grant you that there aren't as many movies and TV shows with the elements that make up dieselpunk than there are capitalizing on the popularity of steampunk, but I think it's incorrect to say there aren't very many. In the last few months I've watched eight movies and two anime tv shows (notably Last Exile, which perhaps due to the fact that I watch it at 3am when I'm giving the baby his bottle and I have the sound turned almost all the way down, has come to a point where it is incomprehensible to me, unfortunately. I still really enjoy the soundtrack, though)--and of those eight movies, none were in the Indiana Jones series. There are also quite a few books that qualify, at least according to my definition.

So I should probably get to that.

To me, dieselpunk is fiction genre (or, more broadly, a scene) that draws on sci fi from the 1920s-1940s. Dieselpunk differs from steampunk in that its machines have internal combustion engines. You don't see airplanes in steampunk--at least, not unless they are some sort of steam-powered clockwork. You do see airplanes in dieselpunk--prominently so. But you also see other, weirder vehicles like the vanships in Last Exile. Also, very often you see robots. The idea with dieselpunk is that the tech is retro-futuristic (a combination that I find delightful). Lots of dials, knobs, gauges, levers, and grease, but I could see a story where these old-fashioned machines allow for (minor) space travel or teleportation--much like Telsa's inventions in The Prestige are steampunk yet futuristic.

The time period encompasses the decades of history I find most interesting to study--the 1920s, especially in the U.S. due to Prohibition, are fascinating because they represent the moment when westerners entered the modern age. Probably because of that, much of the pulp fiction of the time involved exploration of nonwestern parts of the world--the exotic, mysterious places most threatened by extinction in the modern age. More on that in a moment, as it raises a rather thorny problem.

The 1930s provides the concept of noir--film noir, detective stories, and the rise of fascism in several locations around the world.

And the 1940s gave us World War II--a terrible time, of course, but also a time people remember as a golden age of victory gardens, radio programs, and shared purpose. In our memories, everyone was in agreement in the 1940s--the Allies were working together to oppose the evils of the Axis Powers, who in turn were working together to destroy everything good in the world. Through a simple lens, World War II is the most ethically accessible war, because there are such clear bad guys, especially in Europe. (Please understand, I'm saying this as a writer, not as a historian. As a historian, this sort of thing does not fly.)

So dieselpunk has a rich playground to run around in. Add to that all of the bright optimism and faith in science that preceded the dropping of the atomic bombs and the discovery of the death camps. Think of the excitement of the World's Fairs. And to top it off, dieselpunk has its own artistic style: art deco. In fact, a subgenre of dieselpunk (itself a subgenre of steampunk, of course) is decopunk--basically everything dieselpunk is without such an interest in the machines.

But back to the exotic lands, for a moment, and the problem they pose.

I may eventually devote an entire post to this minefield, because it's a doozy, and it's one I'm particularly concerned with because I'm liable to get caught in the middle of it one of these days. Orientalism.

What, you ask, is orientalism, and what does it have to do with dieselpunk?

In a nutshell, orientalism is the representation of nonwestern cultures (most often Middle Eastern, but it's just as valid for various Asian areas as well as any other part of the world where people are predominantly brown, in my opinion) through the filter of western ideas, desires, opinions, prejudices, etc. It's a form of racism with a long history in fiction. Probably one of the best examples of a movie that is both dieselpunk and orientalist: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. One of the big problems with orientalism is that writers who fall prey to it often misrepresent cultures or conflate two or more cultures. In the case of Temple, for instance, the goddess Kali is depicted as evil and ruling the underworld, which is inaccurate. Much of the cuisine is probably closer to Chinese than Hindu, as well. The attitude in days gone by among writers and fans of orientalist fiction was to shrug and say something along the lines of, "It's all the same anyway." (In case that's your attitude, try turning it around and imagining what it would be like for a Hindu or Chinese film to depict your culture as the same or at least jumbled with some other culture--usually belonging to a historical enemy. Now imagine that happening over and over in every book and movie that depicts your culture for hundreds of years.) For more on Temple's issues specifically, go here.

Nowadays I see a deep uneasiness in movies like Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow--they so desperately want to be able to depict grand adventures like those of Allan Quatermain (a character who was originally more steampunk than dieselpunk) but they don't want to come under fire for racism. It's a pickle. I love stories of treasure hunts, dungeon crawls, scary jungles and survival in ice storms. But how do you write about exotic lands without othering those people the main characters, who by nature of being dieselpunk characters will be westerners, will encounter there? How do you portray a culture respectfully while simultaneously making it mysterious, sinister, and, in many cases, somehow mystical? What's a white writer in love with the retro-futuristic fiction of the1920s-1940s to do?

The best I've come up with is to take the story off of planet Earth altogether, and set the dungeon crawls, barroom brawls, and mystical encounters on other planets entirely (Firefly, anyone?). And don't even think about basing the alien cultures on specific (stereotyped and misrepresented) Earth cultures. Lucas did that and it's painful to watch. Of course, the real problem with that solution is that you've pretty much left dieselpunk behind once you leave Earth or at least an Earth-like setting. Yes, it's sci fi, but it's limited sci fi. Dieselpunk is not atomicpunk, and I can't see diesel engines powering even the most fun retro-futuristic space ships farther than a trip to the moon, maybe.

What do you think about dieselpunk? Do you like stories set in the 1920s-1940s?
How would you handle the orientalism problem?

Writing & Not Writing

William Tecumseh Sherman

The next couple of days are all about MA homework (I'm taking two courses this trimester: the Civil War and the 20th century). I've decided I'll be writing my final research paper--due in August, but the proposal was due last Sunday and I'm turning it in late--for my Civil War class on technology in Sherman's March. Which should actually be pretty interesting. I'm not a big Civil War buff--I tend to be much more interested in 20th century stuff. But so far I really like my professor for the Civil War course, so that helps, and I have been interested in the way technology evolved in the Civil War for some time now. It started with muskets and ended with repeating rifles and to a small extent, Gatling guns, you know. It's like it went from the Mexican-American War to World War I in the span of four years.

I'm less enthused about my 20th century course than I anticipated, though. It's super heavily weighted toward political history, which, on the whole, I find to be a big snooze. And we're barely going to talk about WWII or Vietnam, both of which I really want to learn more about. So I may tack on a couple of courses to my MA. I only have two required courses left after these: constitutional history (ick) and media and cultural history (or something to that effect--interesting, but kind of what I've been into for years, so probably not terribly enlightening--we'll see). I checked out the graduate certificate in WWII studies, and it looks fascinating, but it's 18 units and I don't know if I can really justify that expense. I'd stay a student forever if I could, though.

I haven't been working on the WiP at all these last couple of weeks. My sleep schedule has been messy--the baby started waking up two to three time a night for a while there, and still does every so often, etc. etc. So fatigue is part of it. His erratic nap schedule is also part of it. The excitement over constructing a garden is a part, and so is just plain falling out of the habit. But school is out for summer tomorrow which means after tomorrow, my husband will be around a lot more. That means sleeping in, and maybe being able to get away for a few hours at a time a few times a week to really get some writing done. Fingers crossed.

Just a quick update on the goal...

Last week I announced my goal to write 10,000 words by tomorrow, March 16. I just wanted to check in and say, got there! The difficulty is I promised myself See's Candy or Trader Joe's chocolate-covered pretzels and I will probably not be able to fulfill that, at least at the moment. We live in the boonies and either treat requires a drive of at least an hour, and we're trying to save money.

But next week we're probably driving down to the Bay Area for a few days, so I'll just consider this a postponement, not a cancellation. I will have a scotchmallow, dammit.

The serious upside is that the story is moving along a lot better now, and really, that's the reward I wanted most of all. I didn't get to write today because I had homework to do for the MA program (although technically that's writing too, although it's for history), but tomorrow I'll dive back in. I'm almost to the end of a first section. I'm not really sure how many sections there will be--I'm a weird hybrid of pantser and plotter where I outline some parts and have little idea where I'm going with other parts. But I have been considering releasing the novel in parts as a serial... priced at 99 cents each, and then several parts together for some lower amount (like 4 parts for $3 or something). I do think I'll need to have the first few parts done before I release anything, though, as I'm likely to go back and make changes to part one as I move along.

Am I crazy, as a partial-pantser, to consider doing a serial?

Have you ever written a serial? Do you like reading serials?

Never in Single Spies, or: Why I'm not writing

I'm living through a rather complicated time right now. I'm trying to stay positive about it, but some days are hard. My husband and I were not laid off this year (we're both teachers), and that's a very good thing. The downside is, we both have the jobs nobody else in the district will touch. Jeff is especially burnt out but even I don't see doing this for longer than another year. What I want to teach is history, and I'm thinking of doing an online program to get my MA in history (I did all of my MA coursework at San Diego State and never finished my thesis) so people will maybe more inclined to hire me for my history credential rather than my English credential. I've actually had a school bait and switch me--I drove 20 hours (20 hours, people!) and paid for a hotel and everything for a job interview for history, and when I got to the interview they informed me that they had filled the history position--but would I like to interview for the English position they also had open? I was not amused.

Anyway, Jeff is trying to switch over to slightly less onerous position which would also allow him to be closer to me next year, something I'd very much appreciate with the whole I-might-go-into-labor-at-any-time thing I anticipate happening in the late fall. So here's problem number one: our district doesn't do things in an orderly fashion. they just sort of pick and choose who they want in which positions. Seniority means nothing to them. For example, a man at my current school who has been with the district for 29 years wanted to move over to the big high school when a position opened up there. They gave it to a guy who's been with the district for 4 years, instead. We've heard some things about Jeff's situation that make us think the district may screw him over and keep him in the VERY CRAPPY position he's in now (for the teachers among you: he has 8 different preps and he's "teacher in charge" which means he's acting principal 4 out of 5 days--for no extra pay). I won't go into it more than that, but if that happens, it's going to make staying here pretty hard. But with the pregnancy, moving to a new district (we're far from any others) would probably be close to impossible--I don't see anyone hiring me knowing they're going to lose me for two months or so.

The other thing about staying here (Mount Shasta, CA) that is becoming increasingly depressing to me is the length of the winters. It is SO BEAUTIFUL here, but the forecast for next week, the week of May 16, calls for more snow. More snow! I don't think I can do it. I can't live in a place where is snows from October to MAY.

The biggest stressor right now, though, has to be the owner of the house we rent. She's had some hard times, and I was feeling pretty sympathetic. Her partner died of a heart attack without warning. She had other family issues that were very hard, and she got laid off. As a result, she decided to sell the house we live in. Since January, we've had realtors walking people through our house an average of once a week. We hired a housekeeper to come in twice a month, but Barbara, the owner, also decided to bring someone in on the days of showings before the realtor would arrive to clean the house. The problem: I guess in the last month or so, she thinks she smells an increasing odor of cat pee.

I don't, but then, my sense of smell isn't great. Jeff (known for having a "supersniffer") doesn't, other than from the cat boxes when they need to be cleaned. But Barbara is convinced that a cat is peeing on the only carpet in the house, in our bedroom. You'd think we'd smell it if it was in our bedroom, but we don't. And even if it's really happening, it would be because strangers are spending hours at a time in our house, often running vacuums, with terrifies the cats and causes them to hide under the bed for hours at a time. Anyway, I don't think they are, and we've got a black light, which I need to buy batteries for, and I'll use it to confirm that this weekend. So at this point Barbara, who is a very nice lady, is totally panicked that the house won't sell. She's hired a guy to be the rental manager for her, and he's been throwing around words like "eviction." We have been nothing but accommodating to her from the beginning of all of this, and I think what's really going on is that she wants us out of the house early so she can foreclose. Our lease goes until July 31, and the manager tried to have us sign a paper saying we'd be out by June 13. Which would leave us exactly 3 days after school gets out to move. I've called a lawyer and left a message. I'm hoping he'll get back to me today.

So it's all stressful, and on top of everything else, I may have a complication with the pregnancy (I don't think it's anything dramatic) which I'll find out more about when I have my physical and my second ultrasound next week. At this point, though, I've had enough of it all, and I'm ready to run away to France and live with my mother. Sigh.

With the fatigue of the pregnancy, and all of these others things, I haven't been writing. I did write on Saturday (3000 words--not bad). But the rest of the time I sit on the couch and watch movies. And Glee. This weekend Jeff's driving four hours to do a gig with some old band mates and I can't decide whether to go with him. I probably will, although I need to find out where we'd be sleeping. No floor for this pregnant woman, thank you very much.