Using the story to explore the world: Benjamin Tate on Leaves of Flame

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(KE): Today, a guest post

 

by Benjamin Tate

HIS novel, Leaves of Flame, is out this week.

 

Once upon a time I started a novel.  I was in high school, I’d just decided that I wanted to be a writer, and so I tackled a novel (after a few half-hearted attempts at short stories).  I had an idea after all, and I had a map I’d drawn in U.S. Government class, and I could see the world in my head.  So off I went.

Ten years and five drafts later, I had a book.  During those five drafts, the world and the map and the magic fleshed itself out, not to mention I managed to teach myself how to write.  I sent it out and got rejection after rejection after rejection.  Most of those were actually good rejections, saying the writing was good, but the idea behind the novel just wasn’t quite there, not for a debut novel anyway.  It was disappointing . . . no, that’s a lie . . . it was heart-rending, but I sucked it up and started work on other books, other novels, other ideas.

And now, five published novels later, I’m looking back at that initial book.  Why?  Because the current series—in fact, all of the books I’ve written—have been set in that same world.  My first trilogy, the “Throne of Amenkor,” was set at about the same time as that first book, but on a separate continent.  The current series—including Well of Sorrows and the just released Leaves of Flame—is set on the same continent but at a much earlier time period than that first novel.  However, both series are connected to that first book in significant ways.

That’s one of the most interesting parts of writing for me, actually:  how writing one novel ends up churning the creative juices and producing thoughts and ideas that, while not appropriate for that particular book, end up expanding the world in which it is set and often produce new stories, ones that deserve their own book or perhaps their own series.  This is where my ideas come from:  the act of writing itself.  And this is how I worldbuild, letting the world expand and deepen on its own, as I write, all of the intricate little parts coming together to create a much larger, and much more complicated whole.

For example, while writing that first book I introduced a magic that I called the White Fire.  It was a wall of white fire that spread out across the world, touching everyone, changing them.  I also had my characters wandering a museum, which I needed to fill with strange, cool artifacts.  One of those artifacts was a throne that, when approached, appeared warped and caused those near to hear thousands of whispering voices.  Both of these ideas—not important for that first book—combined and gave me the genesis for my “Throne of Amenkor” series.  How would this White Fire affect someone on the other side of the world, someone who had no idea where the fire originated or what it was for?  How would it change them, personally, and what kind of an affect would it have on the society?  These questions piqued my interest and the trilogy that grew out of that became an extension of that first unpublished novel.  It expanded what I knew of the world, because I hadn’t spent much time thinking about the cultures on the other side of the world yet, and it deepened my understanding of the White Fire itself and the consequences of its use.

For my current series, the extension from that first book was a little more blatant, but also harder to deal with.  The characters in that first book were dealing with the actions that their ancestors had taken in the past, those that resorted to the White Fire as a last, desperate act to save themselves.  As the book progressed, I learned more and more about those ancestors, what drove them, and the history of the world I’d created.  That history deepened with each revision, became more cohesive and more complicated, until I suddenly realized that the history itself could be a trilogy of its own!

That’s the series I’m currently writing:  that history.  And I’m finding that as I write, the history that I felt was so detailed before was actually lacking.  Not in facts, but in the character details that make a story come to life.  Those characters don’t always react and behave the way that you want them to, so one of the challenges I’ve run into is letting the characters come alive without having them change the “history” already written.  What I’ve discovered meeting this challenge head on is that history is full of layers.  There’s the rote “this is what happened” history, which is all that I really touched on in that first book.  There’s the “this is why we think that happened” history, in other words, the perception people have of history, based only on what they’ve been told or read.  And then there’s the “this is what REALLY happened” history, where the skeletal outlines of what happened is the same, but the characters who actually created that history have added their own layer of flesh and blood and sinew, making that history come alive.

As I write this new series, keeping that first book in mind and where the world ends up after the events of this story, I find that the world I created way back then has so much more depth than I ever could have imagined.  I’ve also discovered that getting all of the threads of all of the stories and books I’ve written to weave together is not only hard and challenging, it’s also a great deal of fun.  I now consider that first book “research.”  I was using that story to explore my own world, to spend time there and get to know it.  Will that first book ever see print?

Possibly.  The world is full of wonders, after all.  *grin*

 

 

Joshua Palmatier (aka Benjamin Tate) is a fantasy writer with DAW Books, with two series on the shelf, a few short stories, and is co-editor with Patricia Bray of two anthologies.  Check out the “Throne of Amenkor” trilogy—The Skewed Throne, The Cracked Throne, and The Vacant Throne—under the Joshua Palmatier name.  And look for the “Well” series—Well of Sorrows and the just released Leaves of Flame—by Benjamin Tate.  Find out more about both names at www.joshuapalmatier.com and www.benjamintate.com, as well as on Facebook, LiveJournal (jpsorrow), and Twitter (bentateauthor).

Links of Interest

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Aliette de Bodard writes about her story “Scattered Along the River of Heaven,” now available at Clarkesworld. I really love it when people talk about where stories came from or how they were written.

This one started with poets: to be more specific, Aimé Césaire and Qiu Jin. . . .

The whole Qiu Jin angle tied in with some thinking I’ve been having about revolutions and wars of liberation; and about messy transfers of power. Mainly, that revolutions always have a losing side, and that they create exiles . . .

I wanted one of the strands of the story to be poems: the idea was that Anshi’s life would be seen through her writings; and what better writings for a scholar than poems? Most scholars in Vietnam or China composed poetry; and the ability to do so was widely praised; in a quasi-Asian future, it made sense that poetry would still be very important.

 

I linked to this on Twitter but it’s worth linking to again: What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success.

Decades ago, when the Finnish school system was badly in need of reform, the goal of the program that Finland instituted, resulting in so much success today, was never excellence. It was equity.

 

I meant to link to Malinda Lo’s post A Year of Thinking About Diversity back when she posted it about 2 weeks ago, but here it is now, ever relevant.

So, writing from personal experience is important. Writing about people who are different from you is important. These two beliefs sound like they’re contradictory, but they’re not; they’re complementary. Diversity is complex. It’s slippery. I think there’s room for more than one way to negotiate it — something that is both wonderfully flexible and frustratingly difficult.

 

There were some other brilliant things, but I was visiting relatives over the holiday and did not do a good job of keeping track.
Tomorrow I will have a guest post from Benjamin Tate whose fantasy novel, Leaves of Flame, is just out.

Ways of Struggling with Gender

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YA writer Mette Ivie Harrison writes an excellent post on Gender Masquerades (mostly focusing on the tv show The Mentalist but with wider applicability):

As it is now, any romance between them I think is simply too uncomfortable for a modern American audience which, for all our talk about equality between men and women, still clings to very stereotypical views of what is feminine and what is masculine. I wish that I believed that we would come to accept that labeling certain behaviors as “masculine” or “feminine” is just silly and ultimately confining to both men and women in the real world. We should not choose our behavior based on what is allowable to our gender, but on what is authentic to our feelings and to the person we want others to see us as. All gender, in my view, is in the end, a masquerade.

Her thoughts have a lot of resonance with me and my experience (as does a story she tells from her own childhood) for a number of reasons.

I’ll just mention one, reflecting the current series I’m working on, Spiritwalker (Cold Magic and Cold Fire, with Cold Steel still a-writing). [If you are extremely sensitive about spoilers, the following may be construed to have them in the most general sense.]

One of the elements I’m struggling with in Cold Steel is, as always, the baggage of my youth sliding in unannounced and unheralded to warp what I think I’m trying to do (what I’m actually doing is probably beyond my ability to parse).

I’m a feminist. I’m an athlete. As a child I was what was then called a “tomboy,” which to me means merely that the things I was told were “boy” things, like playing outdoors, climbing trees, being active, and wanting to have adventures, were the things I did and wanted to do.

I try very hard to write stories in which there are as many female characters as male characters, with as much agency and importance in the plot. Yet I often have consciously to go back through later drafts to make sure that my female leads aren’t being more passive than I actually want them to be, aren’t letting others make decisions for them or devise all the cunning plans (unless there is a specific reason because of experience, competencies, or social roles), are showing leadership, and are present as confident individuals with a strong sense of themselves (as long as that is within character).

Yes, even with Cat, who is one of the most forthright characters I have ever written.

Curiously, I had less of this problem with the character Mai, in the Crossroads Trilogy, who is certainly my most stereotyped-gender “feminine” protagonist. In an odd way, this suggests to me that I may have been to some extent unthinkingly “comfortable” with the limitations she and others saw in her role, enough so I was always able to write her as a strong-minded character who grows into her full potential without any unconscious backsliding on my part. One way to describe it is that she fit a role I never did, although I was told often enough by the society around me that it was a role girls ought to want to fit. Obviously Mai’s journey has its own unique path, but regardless, I find that the more I dig down, the more baggage I find.

With Spiritwalker one of the interesting struggles I’ve had is with the American ideal (and I want to be specific here by citing American culture) of the male warrior hero. I’ve written warrior heroes before (Sanglant from Crown of Stars is an example of this type). Andevai is not a warrior hero. He can in some ways be described as essentially a geek. I grant you that he is an extremely competitive young man who takes any assault on his status so personally that he will go out of his way to make sure you know that he is better than you at whatever it was you challenged him at . . . albeit mostly within the context of his expertise, which is cold magic, and almost exclusively in the context of other young men.

Cat is the one with the killer instinct (which I mean literally). When Andevai says, “That is what I want. No killing.” in Cold Fire, does that make him less manly, by these standards? She’s the effective fighter who thinks on her feet. He’s the methodical thinker who prefers to plan everything out. They’re both very physical, by which I mean they both live very much in and think about their bodies, but his physicality is mostly described in the context of his manual labor, his fixation on his appearance, and the mentions of his love of dancing (which culturally for him is a masculine activity) while hers is mostly described in athletic terms, like punching sharks, out-racing soldiers, and playing batey. Her capacity for violence is much higher than his. I keep slamming up against my own knee-jerk reaction that I have to make him more violent lest readers think he is not “masculine” enough while at the same time I deliberately riff on “beauty and the beast” variations to flip these expectations.

I go on about this because I’m trying to understand how these underlying message creep into my ways of struggling with gender in my fiction. I don’t have an answer, nor do I think there really is one except for the constant need to be alert, to be present, to try to keep one’s eyes open and learn and do better. It’s a constant, changing process, just as living is.

Do you struggle with gender issues in your work? Do you struggle with gender issues in work you read? To go back to what Harrison said, where do you find your authenticity?

 

ETA: I want to flag Cora Buhlert’s really excellent post responding to Mette’s post as well as (to a lesser extent) my own.

Hmm, looking at all this I wonder whether the rather rigid gender role pattern in the US (which is a lot more rigid than in Germany) is gradually breaking up.

The Serpent Sea, Martha Wells, & talking up the books you love

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Last year on the advice of Steven Gould I read The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells.

Some years ago I had given Martha a quote for the first of her Ile-Rien trilogy:

Martha Wells writes fantasy with a unique twist and a modern sensibility. The Wizard Hunters drew me in with strong characters and an intriguing setting and kept me reading as the plot raced headlong into a marvelous adventure. A great read!

I lost track of the subsequent books in that series. In fact, they were not widely available. Wells’ career went through what we writers call a crash. She writes about it in this really excellent post over on The Night Bazaar:

This year, 2011, was supposed to be my last year as a writer. In January of 2010, I was in a really bad place. It had been five years since my last new fantasy novel, three years since my last published book. . . .

 

When writers have career crashes like this, the big important true piece of advice that you get from other writers who have been in the same position is not to give up. But I was beginning to think my time would be better spent becoming a personal trainer, a job I had been interested in for a while. That maybe the world was telling me my time as a professional writer was over.

If you are a publishing writer or if you are an aspiring writer or if you are a reader and general human being wondering about some of the gritty reality of the writer’s life, read the whole post. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

I picked up The Cloud Roads because, as I said above, a person recced it to me. Otherwise, quite honestly, I might not have noticed it was there because there are so many novels published every year.

I loved it unreservedly. The world and characters and story ate me whole, just swallowed me up. I love being overtaken by story in that way.

The novel is unrepentant science fantasy with a fabulous world that felt so real I wanted to go there (even though I think I would be eaten within the hour) and with a thoroughly relate-able story that combines a tale of finding one’s identity and home with a lot of layered social and gender complexity that I truly enjoyed.

Over the year, as people have read it and recced it, The Cloud Roads has continued to gain new readers.

Now, the second book in the trilogy, The Serpent Sea, has been released (although I would start with The Cloud Roads if you haven’t read either).

But there’s another comment I want to make.

If, in this age of social media, you ever wonder if talking about a book online, in person, over the phone, or anywhere, really — whether writing a review on your blog or up on goodreads or LibraryThing or Amazon — makes a difference: It does.

Visibility matters.

Visibility particularly matters for writers who don’t often fall into the territory of bestsellerdom or persistent critical or award acclaim. It’s hard to buy a book if one doesn’t know it exists.

By the way, I wrote up a quote for The Cloud Roads, too:

I loved The Cloud Roads so much that I begged Ms. Wells and Nightshade Books to let me tell you–Yes! You! You, the one who is looking for a new book to start!–to read this marvelous science fantasy series. With excellent, inventive world building and wonderful characters I adored spending time with, it is completely fabulous.

 

One of the great things about the new world of social media is how easy it now is to talk about books with other book lovers. So don’t be shy: Talk up the books you love.

 

 

2012

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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!

 

2011 becomes 2012

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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!

Giveaway: ARC of Touchstone, by Melanie Rawn

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I recently had the pleasure of reading an ARC (advanced reading copy) of Melanie Rawn’s forthcoming novel TOUCHSTONE (Book One of The Glass Thorns).

It’s due on the shelves in February 2012.

Because this time of year in the USA (and other places as well) is the season of gift giving, I’m giving away the ARC.

Rules (ETA: Yes, it’s open internationally)

1) Post a comment to enter (either here or on my LiveJournal mirror)

between now and midnight on December 25.

2) On December 26 I will announce the winner (drawn randomly from all entries) on this blog (they’ll then need to contact me so I can mail them the ARC).

 

Here is the back of the book description:

Cayden Silversun is part Elven, part Fae, part human Wizard–and all rebel. His aristocratic mother would have him follow his father to the Royal Court, to make a high-society living off the scraps of kings. But Cade lives and breathes for the theater, and his troupe is something very special.

The four of them intend to enter the highest reaches of society and power, but not the way Cade’s mother thinks they should. They’ll be the greatest players of all time, or die trying.

Come experience the magic of Touchstone: wholly charming characters in a remarkably original fantasy world. You’ll never want to leave.

 

Here’s what I said:

Melanie Rawn is in her usual fine form with a vivid world and thoroughly captivating characters. A masterful blend of plot, character, and setting makes reading seem effortless in this tale of four young men devoted to the magical theater of their world. Rawn’s skill as a writer brings you right onto the stage with them.

 

And here’s the Publishers’ Weekly review:

Rawn takes heroic fantasy to its logical conclusion, creating a lived-in world where the scars from magical wars still linger and pure blood is a thing of the distant past. Cayden Silversun is the playwright and manager of the up-and-coming magical theater group Touchstone, alongside his friends Rafe and Jeska and the startlingly talented Mieka Windthistle. Despite their differences, wild Mieka and sensible Cade become fast friends. Shunned by his family, Cade is driven to prove himself, pushing Touchstone to ever greater heights. But as their fame grows, so do Mieka’s drug abuse and self-destructive behavior. Cade, troubled by prophetic visions of Mieka’s possible futures, wonders whether he has the right—or the obligation—to interfere with his impetuous friend’s choices. This strong, heartfelt, and familiar performer’s tale is full of astonishing promise, powerful but co-dependent friendships, insecurity, and addiction, and it will appeal to fantasy fans and theater lovers alike. (Feb.)
Reviewed on: 12/05/2011

 

 

 

2012 Blog Goals: A Survey

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This is in the nature of an experiment with a cool new utility called Urtak, a simple but elegant survey mechanism.

I’m currently thinking about what sort of things I might want to do with this blog for 2012, when I hope to do a lot of fiction writing and back it up with other material as well.

The questions come in a Yes/No/Don’t Care format. I’ve posted some basic ones and I already have a couple more I may add. Best of all, readers can suggest questions which I can then add (or not). Also, please feel to comment as per the usual way if you have any thoughts either on things you would like to see on this blog in 2012 or on using a survey to ask questions in general.

Here we go:


2012 Kate Elliott Blog Goals

Rory gets his own story, plus a giveaway

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For months now I have been promising a short story about Rory, Cat’s half brother who is a sabertooth cat.

It is now finished, and you can find it right here on this website by clicking through onto the Extras page. Or by clicking here.

Also, until Dec 17 there is a giveaway on this guest post now up on the excellent book blogging site, BookSmugglers.

I also mention three 2011 books that were among my favorites of the year as part of Book Smugglers’ Smugglivus celebration.

An interview, alternate history, reading, & Anne McCaffrey

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Over at The Ranting Dragon site & forum, an interview with me just went up.

Among other things, I talk about some aspects of the world building of the Spiritwalker books;

Additionally, the legal system in the world is not the same as in ours. There is no English common law here; law is based on a rough amalgamation of Roman civil law, what we know of Celtic law, and some very basic elements drawn from reconstructions of the famous Mali charter called the Kurukan Fuga. I also made an attempt to show family structures as they might have evolved out of different culture traditions. In book two, I try very imperfectly to portray a conception of rights that is more community-based rather than individually-based because of the differing nature of community and relationship in West African and indigenous Native American societies.

I also answer the questions if I prefer to read female writers (over male writers) and why I value diversity in genre fiction. And more! Much more!

I have struggled to think of what I might say about Anne McCaffrey’s work. I read the first Dragonflight trilogy, the Dragonsinger trilogy, the first Crystal Singer book, Restoree, and The Ship Who Sang. If I read other of her books or stories I don’t recall, as the ones I list are the ones that stayed with me. I’ve not re-read them.

It’s really difficult for me to quantify what the books meant to me, harder than I thought it would be because her death has forced me to consider the part her novels played in my development as a writer. I never met Anne McCaffrey, and I never wrote to her. But she is one of the women who made my career possible because she helped forge that path.

These were the books in which girls got to have sfnal adventures. I think it’s easy to ignore how revolutionary they were — but they were.