I Wrote a Dinner Scene

I just sat down and worked for 1.5 hours. In that time I produced 1,252 words. About a typed page and a half. It’s the first time I have sat down an written in days. That’s been my problem this year. I’m not having too many plot or character problems. I don’t see my output petering out. However, it seems that I have not made NaNoWriMo a priority this year. I’m constantly thinking of another errand that could be run or another project to work on. Seriously, I haven’t thought about knitting in months but today I went to a knitting store and bought some new needles for this project I have in mind. Why now? Who knows…

By now I should have 15,003 words.
My current count is 6,573 words.

Ramble On

I did decent work today. Mostly I just spilled various ramblings out onto the page, but I think that is okay. I am starting to get some voice for my different characters. I am starting to see how the different voices will interact. I am also getting my head (a little bit) around what I want to wrestle with in the story. Really this whole plot is a vehicle for my own ideas about the world. I don’t want to be so obvious about it, though. I might be seeing the first glimmer of how to do that. Still excited. Still see potential. Just got to spend more time writing!

By now I should have 6,668 words.
My current count is 3,613 words.

Uh…

Yesterday’s in-auspicious beginning continued today. I wrote nothing. I still plan to. So, um, let me get started on that...

By now I should have 5,001 words.
My current count is 1,879 words.

Year Four Begins

I won’t take long as this blog is eating into my noveling time, but I would like to report that I have actually started my NaNoWriMo for this year. I am off to a slow start. I didn’t write at all on day one. I spent 4 hours at my desk today getting only 1,879 words down. Part of that time I was deciding on names for all my characters and the rest I worked very in-efficiently owing to it being so cold in my office. Although now that I have wised up and put on a sweater things are much better. This year I’m going for the win!

By now I should have 3,334 words.
My current count is 1,879 words.

A Review: God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

4 / 5 Stars
An evocative blend of compassion and cynicism. Vonnegut loves people. His compassion for humanity is evident in the character of Eliot Rosewater. Rosewater is heir to the Rosewater fortune and he spends it on helping anyone and everyone who calls him. Vonnegut hates a good many cultural institutions. In short, thoroughly arresting prose passages Vonnegut dismisses nearly all of the systems by which wealth is acquired and passed on in America. The passage about the “Money River” is the key passage of this nature. It’s painful to feel so helpless before the crushing weight of cultural tradition. But there is hope, because people, individual humans, still live and love and have sex and fall down and cry and stand up and carry on. If you have read Vonnegut, you know his message. This book is, perhaps, the most distilled version his message. Dresden and the Tralfamadorians are mentioned, some characters from other works get cameos and this is the first book in which Kilgore Trout appears. It’s the perfect place to start (or continue) your torrid love affair with Vonnegut’s original voice.

Han Has it Just Right

As I mentioned in my review, I could not stop reading A Dictionary of Maqiao by Han Shaogong. I think it fits within the definition of magical realism. The story is based on personal experience, so there is some amount of reality to it. But Han is not exactly writing his memoirs, he’s trying to convey the voice of the people of the village. What they believe about dream-women and maple demons and purple-teeth soil is real for the purposes of the story. It’s stronger than that, even, because belief is as good as reality to the extent that people act on their beliefs (and who doesn’t). Belief IS reality from each person’s point of view. In that way, all reality is constructed. The very best of magical realism makes one question one’s own point of view. That’s my understanding of what magical realism is.

My point is this: Han’s book has served to convince me that I want to use magical realism for this year’s NaNoWriMo. It’ll be the Iceland / melting glacier / Norse Mythology idea I mentioned before. Is the glacier melting because of climate change? Yes, for the daughter. Is the glacier melting because the kids don’t visit anymore? Yes, for the father. Is the glacier melting because it’s time for the Age of Fire and Gravel? Yes, for the older son. Something like that.

A Review: A Dictionary of Maqiao – Han Shaogong

5 / 5 Stars
A gigantic Impressionist mural painted in words. This novel is presented as a dictionary. Each word is explained in a story (sweet, funny, tragic, disturbing…), many of them several pages long. Each story reveals just a little more about one of the village’s central figures. Each character is another facet in the overall character of the village of Maqiao (ma-CHI-ow). A work of brilliant little glimpses, this one adds up to much more than the sum of its parts. Han was a young man during the Cultural Revolution, when he was sent to Maqiao (a mountain village in southern China) to learn from the peasants. He did. He kept notes on how language was different for the rural villages than for the urbanites he was used to. That, and decades of reflection, resulted in this book. A Dictionary of Maqiao is something of a coming-of-age tale, something of an old man’s lament for the loss of innocence, something of a search for the Chinese soul and something of an investigation of how all reality is constructed by our perceptions. Perhaps it is that the distant time and place invoke a feeling of the exotic, perhaps it is that each character in the ensemble cast is a compelling study of humanity or perhaps the dictionary format just appeals to the part of me that loves non-fiction. Whatever the reason, I could not stop reading this book! I recommend it for anyone interested in Chinese culture or in Magical Realism.

A Review: Mao II - Don DeLillo

3.5 / 5 Stars
More like the beam of a flashlight than a novel, and that’s not a bad thing. This is the first DeLillo book I have read and I have no idea why I decided I wanted to read it. Mao II has a healthy dose of that “20th Century rejection of plot” movement. Not a whole lot happens. There’s not even a lot of character development. Everyone is pretty much the some from beginning to end. It’s hard to say what the book is even about! This leads me to the beam of light analogy. DeLillo gives the reader a series of intimate interactions between strangers and friends. There is a bit of back story and some changes of scene to weave it all together, but the things people say to each and do with each other are the focus. Why live off the grid? Why take pictures? Why help homeless people? Why kidnap a poet? What exactly is wrong with me, medically? The light of this novel shines on all these questions (and more) and provides answers. Not the answer, but an answer. An answer from the specific people in the story. This novel is glimpses of the world around us, brilliant little glimpses. However, it all adds up to less than the sum of its parts. Contemporary literary fiction is a new thing for me, so I don’t think I can say who should or shouldn’t read this. The best I can do is say, “Give it a try. You might like it.”

A Review: Hope Beyond Hell – Gerry Beauchemin

2.5 / 5 Stars
A great theology that wants for better explaining. This is a book for anyone who as ever wondered how an all-loving God fits with the Dante-style image we have of Hell. The two don’t fit, because that idea of Hell is wrong. To say it simply; the word commonly translated “everlasting” is more properly translated “an age.” Also, the world that is translated “punishment” in those same verses is more closely related to the word for pruning trees. Thus, eternal suffering in Hell is not a Biblical concept, but something Christians have cooked up on their own. The Bible promises someday “every knee shall bow” and how will this be achieved? A period of painful correction is due for those that have strayed, but that’s all. No one is lost, because not even death can stop God’s redemptive purpose. This is what Beauchemin calls the Blessed Hope. This is great news! So why the low rating? The book is just poorly written. It jumps around a lot, tackling bits of Christian theology like Election, Justification and the meaning of “Gehenna” in a somewhat random fashion. Beauchemin quotes copiously from scripture and from many other authors but it all comes across like a mere listing of facts. He also focuses a lot of attention on things that just don’t need it. There are focused parts of the text (particularly Chapter 1), but the balance is so haphazard. This is a message that needs to get out there, but someone else needs to present it.

A Review: The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 1 – Lee Gutkind, ed.

4 / 5 Stars
Every piece in this collection is top notch writing. What is “creative nonfiction?” It is an essay format that relates real events (or emotions) by using writing techniques more commonly used in fiction. This union is a great thing. The content gets a snappy presentation and the techniques get wider use. So if you want to write about an attempted seduction you could structure it as a series of statements about your feelings. Or, if you wanted to assess the current state of a particular science you could project it a little forward in time and introduce us to people affected by its development. If you really want to know what it’s all about, read this book. It is an introduction to the wide world of creative nonfiction. More than one piece in this collection prompted me to exclaim, “Mmm, that was good writing!” If there is a drawback to the collection it is that the sort of real events (or emotions) that most often inspire written reflection are intense interpersonal experiences. I mean, how many essays about bad mothers can one read? The best of these best are “The Pain Scale” by Eula Bliss, “Pimp” by Olivia Chia-Lin Lee, “The Woot Files” by Monica Hsiung Wojcik, “The Answer that Increasingly Appeals” by Robin Black and “Wild Flavor” by Karl Taro Greenfeld.

Mid-Month Check Up

So, how am I doing with the whole Write Fifteen Minutes a Day challenge? Well, fifteen minutes a day for seventeen days is four hours twenty-five minutes. I haven’t kept a record of the time I’ve spent writing, but I think I’ve done at least that much writing. I have worked on two different fiction pieces, written a slew of book reviews (they will post over the next couple of weeks) and composed a poem. What I have not done is write every day. I think that is the more important point of this exercise. I have taken time to sit down to write about every third day. I guess that’s better than nothing…

A Review: The Bhopal Syndrome – David Weir

3 / 5 Stars
An introduction to a world of deeper issues. Weir, an investigative reporter, wrote this book in the wake of the Bhopal Disaster – where poisonous MIC gas leaked from a Union Carbide factory in India and killed thousands. To some extent, the book attempts to capitalize on the media attention the disaster generated to reveal that the potential danger of modern industrial chemicals is even greater than what happened at Bhopal. The Bhopal Syndrome has little to do with Bhopal, the syndrome is the modern world’s reliance on complex systems we can barely control. Something is bound to go wrong. The book is mainly a litany of horror stories about large, Western-owned chemical factories operating in the developing world releasing all kinds of things into the air, water and soil. The unseemly and altogether too-intimate connection between government officials and business interests is also highlighted. As I read the book in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a lot of Weir’s points about openness of information, lust for profit and government culpability still ring true; 23 years later! This book has a bit of a “historical” feel to it now given that it was written right at the beginning of the environmental activism movement. Near the end there is also what has to be one of that earliest warnings about the potential dangers of genetically-modified foods. This is not a solutions kind book, this is a “get the information out there” kind of book. What is left unstated is Weir’s belief that in a democracy, once the information is out there, people will act on it in a powerful way. You have the information. How will you act?

A Challenge for August

One of my writing buddies has clued me in to the Write Fifteen Minutes a Day challenge. The gauntlet has been thrown down by Laurie Halse Anderson and I am going to pick it up. Every day in the month of August, write 15 minutes. That’s the only rule. As others have pointed out, it’s more than a little like a warm-up for National Novel Writing Month in November. I accept the challenge! I have just finished a Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. book (a review is coming…) and I can’t help but be inspired by his artfully compassionate cynicism. The last time I read a Vonnegut I was inspired to emulate him in my failed 2009 NaNoWriMo. This time around I had also begun a story inspired by Vonnegut. I already had a page or so about a mundane anti-hero and his strange connection to a pseudo-science movement when I learned about WFMAD. It’s a natural fit. The stream of consciousness style I am going for with this probably can’t be (shouldn’t be?) maintained for too long anyway.

A Review: Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth – J.R.R. Tolkien

4.5 / 5 Stars
Oh, if only The Silmarillion was this good! Well, let me clarify. The “best” of what Tolkien left unpublished upon his death was cobbled together into the book known as The Silmarillion. That would be the stories about the making, marring and bending of the world and the epic of the elves’ war against the first dark lord. Unfinished Tales contains the second tier of that unpublished oeuvre. This book is full of the unknown adventures of the also-rans, alternate versions of cannon events and author Tolkien’s after-the-fact musings about how exactly his story world was put together. It’s all good stuff, but with the exception of the first piece (a detailed account of Tuor’s journey to Gondolin), it’s not great stuff. That being said, what makes it a better book for me is that editor Tolkien as left well enough alone. Admitting from the title page on that everything is “unfinished” frees him to keep his editorial presence to a minimum and present each piece essentially as he found it in his father’s papers. There is no need to jury-rig it all into a “readable” whole; it’s just a collection of unfinished tales. I appreciate that raw, clipped and cut-short feeling. It fits perfectly with the “this is a collection of documents I found” writing style that author Tolkien used in his published works. You can leave The Silmarillion for later. When you finish The Lord of the Rings and wonder, “What’s next?,” this book is the answer.

A Review: Eyes of the Calculor - Sean McMullen

4 / 5 Stars

A pleasant coda to the trilogy. This is in some ways the most successful book of the series. The scene switches back to Australica but picks up chronologically right where The Miocene Arrow left off. The novel is smaller in terms of the main events. There are no wars and there is only a drop of the humanity-is-doomed feeling. This smaller stage allows McMullen to focus on what is probably his best exploration of characters yet. A densely tangled web of new characters and new machinations is the focus but there are a few significant appearances by people you’ll remember from the pervious books (and one very surprising re-appearance). The story of the intertwined lives of Martyne, Velesti and Samondel is the most realistic yet of McMullen’s efforts. It is a very satisfying story of people interacting. There are a few points where I question his use of characters form the previous volume. McMullen is a literary nihilist. That is to say nothing from the previous novels is sacred. He throws previous characterizations of central characters out the window. Whether this is simply for the sake of convenience or is an effort to present the same people from another point of view is unclear. Mostly those few characters that receive this kind treatment read as different characters with the same names. I can accept all these changes though, because the progress of the central story is so well crafted. If you loved the heroes of Mounthaven more than cake, you might want to leave it at a duology, but if you are ready for more Libris and more Avids this book is pretty much a must. You can read set of very thorough reviews of the Greatwinter Trilogy (with a slightly different opinion) here.

A Review: The Great American Pin-Up - Charles G Martignette & Louis K Meisel

4 / 5 Stars
What can be bad about 902 pin-ups? This is a huge collection of pin ups from the 1890s all the way through to the 1970s. Most of them are from the pin-up golden age of the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s. This is primarily an art book by the well-know Taschen. The colour reproductions are very high quality. Many of the images get a full page. Four images per page is another common layout, but all kinds of lay outs are used to really squeeze the images in. Much less satisfying is the text. After a fine introductory essay on the history of the pin-up (sharing its title with the book) the quality of the writing fades. The other initial essays are forgettable. The great bulk of the book is divided up by artist with each getting a brief biography. Other than the basic information on birth dates and schools attended these biographies all fade together into glowing praise of each man’s (or woman’s) brushwork, colour and luminosity. I’m not sure what I expected out of a book about pin-ups, but except for a few gems of information I was underwhelmed. Avoid it if you are looking for “scholarly” stuff about the place of the pin-up in the American psyche or the history of sex appeal in advertizing. Get it if you like to look at pin-ups.

A Review: Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes – Robert Louis Stevenson

3 / 5 Stars

A quaint but somewhat flat travel log. A famous author takes a few weeks and hikes across the southern French mountains. He relates what he ate, whom he met, the scenes he saw, the things he felt. I’m sure it sounded different when it was first published over 100 years ago, but today it all reads as rather pedestrian. And I’m not just saying that because Stevenson walked. It’s a loose narrative with no clear flow and hardly any striking passages. That’s probably how it really was to walk across the mountains of southern France, so it’s accurate at least. Of a bit more value are the bits of history that are woven into the account. He discusses the “Napoleon of Wolves” and the Camisard revolt. If you are a big-big fan of Stevenson’s globe-trotting or of Victorian travel logs then it’s worth a look, otherwise just go watch the 2001 film Le Pacte des loups.

A Review: China’s Cultural Revolution, 1966-1969: Not a Dinner Party – Michael Schoenhals, ed.

4 / 5 Stars

A remarkably clear window into another time and place. This is a collection of primary sources related to the so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Many of the documents are from the government. Many others are from the people themselves. There are selections from both the students (Red Guards) who carried out so much of the ground work of the Revolution and from their targets (party persons in power who are taking the Capitalist road). Particularly powerful are Document 20, the transcript of the “struggle” against Wang Guangmei, and Document 64, a brief anonymous autobiography. Since it’s all primary sources there is very little in the way of commentary. That’s just fine since the documents speak well enough for themselves. They are well-arranged and the translations are very readable. The whole progress of the Cultural Revolution unfolds quite clearly. It was not a dinner party, it was an act of violence. Just as Mao proclaimed.

A Review: The Miocene Arrow – Sean McMullen

5 / 5 Stars

A superior follow-up. Book two of the Greatwinter Trilogy is a lot better than the first. This is not a novel built from two novellas as the first book was. This is a long novel from the get-go. That solves the consistency problem of the first. It also allows everything to be bigger. Bigger conflicts, better technology, more factions, more characters. That is not to say things are top-heavy. McMullen has done his work at every level to support the bigger story. Happily, there is a more even distribution of female and male characters and their interactions throughout are far more realistic (read: the thick sexuality of the first book is a bit thinner this time). McMullen does all of this without loosing any of the elements that made the previous volume so good. His world-crafting remains impeccable and his characters move in that world as if they have grown up there. He maintains a complex interplay between politics and relationships. He also continues to explore the limits of technology (if there are limits). I think by every literary measure, this is a better book. And the plot? Here McMullen gives us a look at North America in the 40th Century and lays out yet another complex dueling culture. This time duels are fought in fabric and wood airplanes called gunwings. Such duels decide matters of honor and the outcome of wars between the Airlords. Or they should. Avids from Australica are about to teach the Americans about total war.

A “Full Day’s” Work

I have been writing some on Jaws of Empire in the last few days. Today I did 1500+ words. I was trying to think of as a NaNoWriMo day. When you are just starting out on a story you can make up essentially whatever you want and just make a note to explain it later. Once you have several chapters down and the characters are starting to interact with the story elements you’ve left hanging you can’t get away with that anymore.

That’s the point I am getting to in this story. I think I need to take some time to work out the political structure of each Empire – at least a sketch of them. I also need a chronology. What day is this all happening? Does Jundah have enough time to get from where he was in the last chapter to be in on this meeting I am writing? I can just decide, “yes, yes he does,” but that will effect the timing of other events I have planned! Ga!

On the other hand I am rather happy with the slow reveal of the mystery and the scene I wrote today has a lot of different characters bringing different points of view to piece things together. I like it as of right now.

A Review: Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World – Jack Weatherford

4.5 / 5 Stars
A highly readable account of the life, death and legacy of Temujin. This book should have been called “A Short History of the Mongol Empire,” because that is what Weatherford presents. From background on the Mongol cultural milieu to Temujin’s early family struggles, to his conquests of China, Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe to the rapid dismembering of the Empire under his heirs this history is fast-paced and precise. Information is drawn primarily from the less well-known (in English) Secret History, written by the Mongols themselves, but Persian, Chinese, Russian and Franciscan sources are also used. Weatherford adds details from his own experiences in modern Mongolia. This book does an excellent job describing just how Temujin came to think like the Great Khan he is remembered as. This is also a great look at the military techniques that made the Mongols so successful across 5,000 miles of Eurasia. This is not a book about how everything good was invented by the Mongols or how their policies are still in use today, but it is a persuasive argument that they deserve more credit for laying the groundwork of the 1500s (in East and West) than they currently receive. Fans of history generally and of Asian history especially should give it a read.

A Review: Souls in the Great Machine - Sean McMullen

4 / 5 Stars
A post-apocalyptic tale with more twisting than a ‘50s dance hall. McMullen has created the most fully-realized and most unique post-apocalyptic story world I have ever come across. Nearly everything in this tale is presented in stages so I can’t say much without spoiling the reveals. Suffice it to say that in Australia thousands of years after Greatwinter human power (both muscle and brain) is used for just about everything. Everything. This is actually a combination of two shorter novels and that really shows. The first half of the book is tightly focused on a small group of characters in Libris, the central and most powerful library in the Southern Alliance, and their struggles to create a machine called the Calculor. The story then expands dramatically to a sprawling (almost rambling) story about the continent-spanning adventures of this same group (along with a host of others) and their interactions with the mysterious Mirrorsun. This second half is almost as interesting as the first, but there are so many threads to follow that they all loose their potency. The motivations of certain parties become impossible to follow. McMullen’s tendency to skip six weeks between paragraphs and as much as ten years between chapters does not help to keep things in focus. I can’t decide if this is book about relationships that plays out against a background of technology and politics or a book about technology and politics with a heavy focus on relationships. Either way there is a lot of interplay between the two. It makes for a great read as you can see how people’s choices are going to play out on the international stage, except for all those times that you can’t follow the motivations and things end up all deus ex machina. I’ve wanted to read this for a long time and had really built it up in my mind. It’s not quite as good as I’d hoped, but it is good. It’s the first in a trilogy and I’ll be reading the others soon.

A Review: Life Along the Silk Road – Susan Whitfield

3 / 5 Stars
A bit of a gimmick that almost works perfectly. Taking the form of a series of biographical vignettes, Whitfield presents a wealth of information about Central Asian culture and politics between the years 700 and 1000 CE. The diverse points of view bring to light the less-well known aspects of this particular time and place. The first chapter is the Merchant’s Tale and this is perhaps the best place to start because the Silk Road is most famous as a commercial highway. However, Central Asia was also a place of conflict (the Soldier, the Horseman), skillful political and legal machinations (the Princess, the Widow, the Official), religious fervor (the Monk, the Nun), and cultural flowering (the Artist, the Courtesan). Much of the stories told by Whitfield are true. The paper ephemera of administration and letter-writing recorded glimpses of these ancient lives. The paper was then re-used for religious purposes and stored away in vaults full of sacred scrolls. The cool, dry climate has preserved all of it for modern scholars to sift through and bring to us. And yet it doesn’t quite all come off perfectly. The characters are in no way fully-realized and compelling all on their own so those seeking something more like historical fiction will be disappointed. For the more scholarly-inclined, the jumps in time and place and all the asides about politics, cosmetics, geography and animal husbandry make the book feel rather unfocused. It is a window into that world, but not a history, that is, no over-all meaning is assigned to the events related in the tales. In trying to bridge the gap between the scholarly and the popular literature I think this book succeeds but makes for a rickety river crossing.

A Review: Past Worlds: Collins Atlas of Archeology

3.5 / 5 Stars
A survey of world history as told by the artifacts. After a section illustrating the methods used by archeologists this book gives excellent two-page spreads covering nearly every time and place up to the industrial revolution: "Europe after the Ice," "Minoan Crete," "The Aztecs and their Ancestors," "The Trading Kingdoms of East Africa," and so on. As a general survey whole epochs are summed up in a single paragraph. This sparsity is fine because all kinds of archaeological remains are the main focus. Plans of palaces, elevations of temples, maps of mining areas and photos of everything from Peking Man to the Callanish stone circle to Persian rhytons to the Gundestrup cauldron to Maori patus to Custer's shell casings. The point is made over and over again that what scholars know of the past comes from what past people have left behind. Kings and empires are mentioned in passing but this is not a political history. It is, if anything, an economic history. Artifacts are always the focus and so goods made for export and moved by trade routes are most commonly discussed. At this point, the book is rather dated. It's most recent sources are from the mid 1980s. This is not a major issue for me as Scythian tattoos and Ottoman plates are the same now as then. However, if you can't stand the use of "AD" or references to the Soviet Union, stay away. Also, the material sort of abruptly ends in the 1800s without any real conclusion or final thoughts. On the plus side, the pages are matte finish and so there's no risk of getting fingerprints in the middle of your map of Ming Peking. A worthy "shallow but wide" supplement to any collection of the "deep and narrow."

A Review: The Nomad of Time – Michael Moorcock

Since I feel compelled to write them, I am going to start posting my (usually short) book reviews here. Everything I read, I review. And you’ll hear about it all here. Enjoy!

3 / 5 Stars
A one-two punch of steampunk and pastiche. Actually, it's a bit more complicated than that because this is a foundational work in those genres. Perhaps it's better to call it retro-pulp adventure. In addition to the airship battles and the polemics from various warlords, much of the subject matter deals with different perspectives on colonialism and war. The stories’ strongest points always come from the way that the Twentieth Century as we know it is juxtaposed to the alternate worlds Bastable visits. The 1960s and 1970s is when Britons first came to grips with the reality that their Empire was over and I think these books grow out of that to some extent. The main character is from Edwardian England (as in “the sun never set on”) and comes with all the turn-of-the-century conventions of that time. However, the author is writing in post-WWII England and cannot help but include references to the war, imperialism, racism and decolonization. Throughout the series there is a resonance (almost, but not quite, a dialogue) between these two perspectives. It’s Gilded Age optimism versus Post-Modern pessimism. As Captain Bastable says, "...perhaps I had been selected by providence to be involved in a countless series of what might be called alternate versions of the Apocalypse - that I was doomed to witness the end of the world over and over again and doomed, too, to search for a world where man had learned to control the impulses which led to such suicidal conflicts, perhaps never to find it.” Enjoyable as a genre romp with a few hints of deeper things. This omnibus edition collects:
The Warlord of the Air
Captain Bastable, soldier of the British Raj in 1902, finds himself in a 1973 where the Great Powers are all about to go to war over China. Yet a capable Chinese nationalist has other plans for his country.
The Land Leviathan
A singular genius creates the technology to achieve a world utopia at the start of the Twentieth Century. Instead, the world ends up plague-ravaged and destitute. Then “The Black Attila” begins empire-building in Africa with the last of the fighting machines.
The Steel Tsar
In 1941 Japan bombs Singapore sparking a war with Russia. On a remote island Bastable makes the acquaintance of a mysterious airship captain. This captain is somehow connected to the war and to a revolution raging on the Russia steppes.

Published!

I have been published. A friend of mine (and now an official writing buddy) and I published some supplemental material for one of our favorite role-playing games. Palladium publishes a quarterly sourcebook with additional and alternate rules for its many games. This is mosly fan-submitted material which is a great way to draw in new talent and it gives us fans a chance to contribute to "the Megaverse." It’s a pretty nerdy achievement but still an achievement. Palladium Books is a small (-ish) company but has a big reputation in the industry. You can support them by picking up a copy. Hopefully, this is the first of many such announcements.

Stirrings

So, as you could have guessed, I did not win NaNoWriMo 2009. I wound down and despite encouragement (and then justified chastisement) by my writing buddies I never got started again. This last year is the worst I have done yet. Well, there’s always next year… Speaking of which I have already started planning. I have too many ideas. I think I want to write a magical realist piece. Something set in an identifiable time and place but that doesn’t hold itself strictly to reality. Maybe it could be called symbolist historical fiction?
Current ideas:
A semi-biography of three Chinese pirates. It seems that in the early years of the Nineteenth Century the Pirate King of the South China Sea had both a wife and a male lover. After his death (accident or murder?) this bereaved duo teamed up and ruled the waves together. This is based on real events! Go read about Ching Yih and you’ll know as much as I do.
I also like (again loosely based on reality) the idea of an Icelandic family that takes a traditional New Year’s Eve trek to the foot of a local glacier. Except the glacier is receding farther each year. The changes in the landscape reflect the breakdown of multi-generational traditions in the modernized world. (Oh wait, did I tip my hand too early?) There’s Ma and Pa, the “good” son, the “bad” son and the daughter with her American lawyer husband. I know “the journey is a metaphor for life” type stuff has been done; but not in Iceland! There’s the opportunity to mix commentary on environmentalism, the debate about aluminum smelters and American thrill-seeking with references to Viking mythology! I’ve tentatively called this one “Twilight of the Gods.”
Lastly, the American Southwest desert. I’m a big fan. I’m thinking of a tale set in three or four times. A Hohokam, an early Anglo settler and someone in Phoenix circa 1970. There is something that resonates about that place for all of them an even back and forth between them. It’d be kind of an exploration of “the more things change the more things stay the same.” The desert is the symbol of that. Saguaros are so slow growing and just outside of the blacktop of today’s Phoenix the scrub looks the same now as it always has. There’s something powerful in that kind of ever-present landscape. Something…
In other news, I have something really close to fruition that isn’t at all related to writing novels all on one month. Official announcements to follow before too long.
Anyway, that’s all the news that fit to type. TTNF.