I need to know where I stand.

That’s true in many different ways, along numerous axes, of which landscape is one.

Many years ago when I was writing the earliest attempts at Cold Magic, with its blended Afro-Celtic setting, I asked myself why not set the story in West Africa, perhaps at a seaport on the coast in this alternate universe? There were a number of reasons I decided against doing it this way, but the deciding factor was that I had (at that time) never set foot in West Africa and I have this thing–I wish I had a better word than thing–that I have to have a physical sense of the land in order to write it.

Given that much of the Jaran books are set in a steppe/plains setting with many nods to and borrowings from the history of the Mongols and other steppe peoples, you may wonder how I could then write Jaran?

That’s easy: The landscape is Wyoming, where I spent a summer during high school (at an astronomy camp, of all things).

Obviously it is not that the landscape IS Wyoming but rather than the plains/plateau landscape of the American west is the one I could draw from for the Jaran novels’ setting. In the same way, there is a little bit of London in Adurnam (Spiritwalker), and a bit of Puerto Rico in Expedition. The landscape of the Crossroads trilogy is a melange of the California Mediterranean climate, the Tierra Caliente of Guerrero (Mexico), Japan, and even Hawaii (although it is not an island setting), plus bits and pieces of the Oregon where I grew up, which is a far more varied landscape than many people realize who only think of its famous coast and the central Portland to Eugene river valley.

On Twitter, writer Susan Elizabeth Curnow (in response to me begging for a good topic for this week’s Spiritwalker Monday) asked me how the weathers and flowers of Hawaii influence my writing, which made me think about landscape and how much I feel the need to be grounded in place. Living in Hawaii (where I wrote all three volumes of the Crossroads trilogy) definitely influenced the novel in that there is very little cold weather, and the people who live in the Hundred call “cold” what others would call “warm.”

There is another way Place influences me. Before we moved to Hawaii, we lived in State College, Pennsylvania, aka Happy Valley, a place I never felt comfortable and certainly never loved (as, for instance, I loved the rural Willamette Valley of Oregon where I grew up) or felt any form of deep connection.

Hawaii has that sense of deep connection for me. If I walk out the door I am always happy to see the Waianai Mountains, and the clouds pouring over the Ko’olau Mountains, and the gulch, and the green, and the ever present vastness of the ocean that surrounds this old eroding extinct volcano.

So for me I thrive on a sense of place both in terms of needing to feel a physical sense of understanding the landscapes I’m writing about and to feel a physical sense of feeling well being about the landscape I live in.

I say this not to suggest that everyone else must feel this way, only that I do.

How much does a sense of place — in either of these ways or in some other way — figure into your writing? Or your reading?

I’m not usually one for memes, but I’ll make an exception for this one. I saw it on Jo Walton’s Live Journal.

Tell me about a story I haven’t written, and I’ll give you one sentence from that story.

ETA: The meme is any kind of crazy idea, not a specific story (this is meant as for fun). Although a few people know some history of things that actually have not yet been written. 🙂

Three really interesting links today;

Mysterious seasonal black flecks on Mars. If you haven’t read this, do. It’s fascinating, and the photos are stunning.

Sex work in pre colonial Nigeria (Igboland):

Sex work as we know it today, in modern Africa, is a vestige of colonialism. As Luise White, who wrote about sex work in colonial Nairobi put it “sex work as a full-time form of labour was invented during the colonial period”. This is not to say that there was no sex work in the pre-colonial period, only that it was entirely different from how we know it today.

Sex work existed in Africa in the pre-colonial era. Back in the day, the female sex worker worked out of the house she was born in. She was a single woman, a woman who was never going to marry, and her clients were usually men who wanted to have affairs (as in most communities, and all but a few situations, it was taboo for a man to have sex with a married woman).

Finally, this illustrated time line of Vietnamese Clothing (women’s).

She’s also done Hats and Hair Fashion History of Vietnam.

Which reminds me I need to collate my photo-essay Hairstyles of Angkor Wat from my trip of oh so long ago.

If anyone has links/references to historical clothing timelines and/or just good links for historical clothing, please feel free to share. I can really never get enough illustrations of clothing in an historical perspective and just in a general sense.

I have probably unreasonable and hugely ambitious goals for 2012. Therefore, I will keep them to myself except to say this:

I’m hoping to get a lot written. I’m hoping to maintain an optimistically assertive attitude. These two things go together.

Here’s the administrative part of the post:

The ARC giveaway for Melanie Rawn’s forthcoming novel, Touchstone, was won by Heather S. Email me, Heather!

Now, for the kvelling portion of the post:

My daughter made a short story sale last year to Arcane, an anthology edited by Nathan Shumate and published by Cold Fusion Media. On the site the anthology is described as “thirty macabre, unsettling and weird tales to tickle that spot behind your eyes you just can’t reach.”

Arcane is now available in print and ebook editions.

Besides being a writer she’s also an artist (finishing her BFA this year at Portland State University). She has work in this non-profit fund-raising calendar for dance group BodyVox, about which she says:

The annual BodyVox dance company fundraiser calendar is on sale now, which I mention because I have a piece of art in it! It’s a cool concept, where they have artists modify photographs of the dancers in the company into fantastical hybrid art pieces. The calendar can only be ordered online through a slightly arcane system but is on their website

On Dec 20, 2011 I posted a survey via the new “question and answer tool” Urtak, a means to do a fairly simple survey via Yes/No questions.

I got over 1000 responses, which means over 100 people who answered. Mostly I found fairly universal agreement with my basic questions, all of which were relevant to what people might want (or not want) to see on my blog in 2012. Respondents liked posts that offered scope for discussion, felt it was okay for me to post links to reviews or to do some promotional content on my blog, and were interested in posts on world building, my work in general/specific, and (slightly less so, interestingly) in reviews of books/film and pop culture.

I got closer to a 50/50 split on the question of whether people wanted me to talk about politics, so I think I will stick with my longstanding general avoidance of politics as a blog topic. It’s not that I’m not politically engaged or that I don’t have strong opinions; I do. I’m not particularly interested in political wrangling on my front porch, and in the sense that I consider Twitter the water cooler of my work life, I consider my blog my front porch.

I’m probably a bit more political on Twitter than I am here (and by extension Facebook, to which all my Twitter posts autofeed). In general, though, brought up in rural/small town Oregon and in an ethnic household with an immigrant mother, I learned early that you didn’t discuss politics or religion in general company. I’m not at all against people discussing politics or religion in general company, I should add. I myself quite enjoy reading political content. I’m just saying that, on the whole, I’m not going to do it here very often.

I do plan to do future Urtak surveys, but they won’t be about the blog. I may come up with a set of questions about reading likes and dislikes, or some such, something that combines being serious and fun.

One of the interesting aspects of the Urtak tool is that respondents can add questions.

A question was asked:
Do you plan on uploading extra stories about your various existing series’ to your website?

I’ll answer it here:

I have added the Cold Fire Bonus Chapter 31/5 on the Extras page.

I have also added the story featuring Rory, To Be A Man, on the Extras page.

I don’t have any other stories written within my existing series, because I am not really a short story writer. In fact, I have written three times more novels than short stories. I am thinking of trying to write more short stories this year (I have a couple more in the Spiritwalker universe I would like to tell, from the point of view of characters other than Cat, like the two above). If I do that, however, I will likely offer them in ebook form and charge a (modest) amount (depending on length, probably $0.99 or $1.99): a woman’s got to eat and pay for her outrigger canoe paddling obsession. I do plan to write more about my various worlds here, and in some cases I may post additional material or, in some cases, cut material.

So we will see what 2012 brings. One really never knows.

Happy New Year!

I’m in the enviable position of living in one of the last places on the globe to celebrate the end of the day, so I can amuse myself watching the new year tick over every where else. Although actually I spent much of the day traveling, and am now home.

I have little to say about 2011 except that it was a very hard year in several ways, mostly to do with a death in my extended family (not in my immediate nuclear family, I hasten to add) but also to do with some other things. My confidence was badly shaken for reasons I’m unlikely to discuss except to say that, in writing terms, as common as it is to cycle between peaks of triuumph and troughs of despair, it is (unfortunately) a not uncommon part of the longer term (across the years) writing process to hit greater than normal chasms on occasion triggered by any number of things. It’s okay. It happens. The hard part is to dig out and keep going.

So I resolve to not be silenced by anxiety and doubt in 2012. Or, to put a positive spin on it: I resolve to trust in my own voice. And I hope that for you, as well: May 2012 be a year where you can speak in one form or another with a strong, true voice.

I hope also for a generous heart, and for good health, for all, as far as that can go, for these are no little things.

It can be so hard sometimes.

But to quote one of my favorite writers, Tricia Sullivan:

We must press on.

So here’s to a new year of pressing on resolutely.

I leave you with a link.

My sister gave me a CD of a local Eugene (out of Montana) folk group. Well, you know, local folk groups. This could go any way at all. But I trust my sister’s musical tastes, and indeed, Betty and the Boy is a fabulous and wonderfully interesting duo with some lovely melodic work.

Their web page.

Here’s “Moth to a Light”

Happy New Year!

In the wake of the release of Cold Fire, two different readers have (independently) written to me with songs they felt captured the emotion of the often tumultuous relationship between Cat and Andevai. One, in California, suggested I listen to “White Blank Page” by Mumford & Sons. An Aussie recommended “Draw Your Swords” by Angus & Julia Stone. Not only do I think both songs work in terms of emotional resonance, but I also like both (and now have them on my computer so I can listen to them over and over again).

I do have an extensive playlist of music to create mood as I write. And I realize that not all writers can or wish to write with music on, nor should they need to; that’s not what I’m discussing here.

I’m interested in songs whose lyrics or tonal qualities evoke a moment or emotion or relationship from a book.

Is there a song or are there songs that specifically create that feeling for you? For one of your own books? Or for books (and characters) you’ve read? And if so, in what way or for what aspect?

NaNoWriMo:

Cold Steel: 445 — Short of goal, but I also now know how to fix the sequence I’m writing, which I’ll start rewriting tomorrow.

Secondary Project #2: 793 — I’m poking at several secondary projects; I’ve had a really hard year and I’m experimenting with writing a selection of opening sequences in different styles and approaches to get my flow back.

Project List: 564 — Not fiction but synopses for three projects.

That’s just shy of my overall goal of 2000 words, but I’ll take it.

Travel day!

I’m reading Sherwood Smith’s Banner of the Damned, still in manuscript. I’m reading to make comments. Smith’s writing in this novel shows a writer at the height of her powers: beautiful prose plus a bone deep understanding of the cultures through which her characters travel. A novel like this one could be required reading in world building. I believe it’s due for publication in 2012.

Because reading to comment (beta-reading) is a different kettle of fish from reading for pleasure, I’m also reading J. Damask’s  Wolf At The Door (urban fantasy set in Singapore by a Singaporean writer) and Noble Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee’s memoir (with Carol Mithers) Mighty Be Our Powers.

What are you reading? And why?

Over at Tor.com, Kate Nepveu has written an interesting post about depictions of pregnancy and childbirth in sff.

I’m not great at coming up with examples on the fly (it takes me a while to sort through the bookshelves of my mind), but if you have examples either from work you’ve read or work you’ve yourself written, please go over there (or mention here and I’ll post it there) about sff that has non cliched or unusual depictions of pregnancy and/or childbirth and which don’t rely on the same few common tropes.

Over at Cold Moon Violet Books, Cat and Andevai as My Little Pony fictional characters. You know you want to go look.

I had not until today realized the great gaping chasm in my life because of the lack of MLPonies versions of all my main characters.

To read my post on “The Big Idea” that led to Cold Fire, go to John Scalzi’s always excellent Whatever blog.

A brief excerpt:

You know how teenagers are: Always coming to their mom and saying, “MOM! We’re making up a world with our FRIENDS! Want to WORLD BUILD with us?”