Music to My Eyes

So one of the exhibits at Old Sturbridge Village is a building full of firearms and textiles. It is interesting to see the evolution of muskets and eventually rifles over the course of two centuries, but what I really found interesting was a few items in the textiles section of the building. There used to be a frugal wife's guide published by a woman that taught women how to do things on the cheap, like dying fabric. Seems bread was wrapped in purple paper and you could leech the color out of it and use it to dye paper. That sort of thing.

One of the last things you see on your way out are a selection of patterns and some yellowed paper. Now, the first time I went there it was the end of the day and we were in a bit of a rush. I thought it was music. Going through it again, I saw that it wasn't music, it was notation on how to make the pattern. Some looked like music. Some looked like an accountant's ledger. None of them looked like instructions on how to make fabric patterns, but people understood them! The gears started turning.

What if a people's sewing patterns were a means of communicating, but not just a single intent like "we are at war" but an entire song and that song had meaning. You could tell the tales of your great deeds or the deeds of your ancestors, singing a song that all your people would understand.

I really thrilled to that idea. It really gets my brain to swimming in a new and exciting culture.

Good Ken is Good

My friend Good Ken1 Braun is in town. We are leaving for Canada today for he has never been out of the United States and I will pop his international cherry. We go to Montreal for a couple days and then Quebec City. This is the first vacation I've had in years. While money is still tight, it'll be nice to get away. ...or would be if I hadn't gotten sick. Stupid germs.

Now, you may ask, why do I care that Good Ken has come to visit, Joe? I don't know this guy. I don't even know if he's good2. You care, gentle reader, because when Good Ken comes to town, our conversations inevitably lead me to new novel ideas. It was a conversation with him that prompted the original idea for WANTED: CHOSEN ONE, NOW HIRING (that has since become WITH A CROOKED CROWN following agent feedback).

And he has not disappointed! I took him to Old Sturbridge Village and we looked about the cemetery because old cemeteries are awesome. He says what a growing number of people think, cemeteries offer peace for families, a glimpse to the past, but are otherwise a colossal waste of space. He'd rather be cremated3. Then take his ashes and turn them into a synthetic diamond.

If my brain had sound effects, it would be the dive alert horn from a submarine. AWOOGAH! AWOOGAH! Story idea! Story idea! AWOOGAH!

So here's the situation. It's the future and wealthy people are turned into diamonds when they die. Their names are laser-etched into the gem. The family weaves those gems into a necklace. The most prestigious families have massive necklaces that show they are the best of the aristocracy.

And one of them is stolen! Duh duh DUHHHHHHH!


1 When we first met, there was another person who I was friends with also named Ken. Things were not well between us. To keep others straight about whom I was referring, I named them Good Ken and Bad Ken.

2 He's so good. O.O

3 I can't find a burial ritual I approve of. You're not allowed to be buried in wooden coffins any more so how are the worms and the beetles supposed to eat me? And cremation is nice but all that fire energy is wasted. Hook up the crematorium to the grid and generate some power with my passing. One last good act for mankind!

Secret Passages

There are few things I like better in adventure storytelling than secret passages. In fact, the two middle grade novels I have in mind (one written, one started a few times but never finished) both are heavily reliant on secret passages. I think that's a dream of a lot of kids, to live in a house that has secret passages.

Did you ever see the movie Candlestick with Jodie Foster when she was a spunky kid? I can't tell you how many times I watched that movie as a kid. I want to watch it now and see if it holds up the test of time.

Walking around Old Sturbridge Village with my wife, she saw a hill in a field, most likely just piled dirt that eventually had grass grow over it. She sees it and says, "That needs a hobbit hole." Well, on one side of it is a dead and dry tree stump. And I say that there is a hobbit hole. It's beneath the tree stump and the whole thing opens up.

This causes the magnesium flash in my brain where ideas start flying up like fireworks. I LOVE secret passages. What if hobbits lived in a less friendly place than the shire? If they had hidden the doors to their hobbit holes, would Saruman been able to scour the shire as he did? They could have hidden and who would have worked the fields for him?

So this is what I want. I want underground houses like hobbit holes, but I want natural landmarks like tree stumps that no one would think twice of when they saw them, but open up to reveal the actual entrance to their home. When they're closed, it just looks like hills.

I need to figure out how to make this happen.

A New Adventure!

Groupon Queen discovered that we lived near the nation's third largest living history museum, Old Sturbridge Village. This is a village as you would have found it in 1835 New England, and many of the buildings are actually from that period transplanted from one of the various states. Actors/educators are in period dress and conduct themselves in particular professions, so there's a printer, a tinsmith, a potter, etc. This was REALLY cool and I learned a ton! (My understanding of how a grist mill works was informed by Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow and 19th-century mills did not use a rotating millstone of that fashion, if that fashion ever existed. Also, I learned how a sawmill works and a schoolhouse and...and...who the hell can fit 12 people in a house that small?!)

There was also Fife and Drum corps there today playing a variety of music. And some of the early 18th-century muskets are as tall as I am. How the hell could anyone aim with something that large? You'd need a stand to rest the barrel on! (They also had a seven-barrel musket that you might recognize if you've watched the Richard Sharpe miniseries. I don't know if it appears in the novels.)

Inevitably in these places, I end up taking pictures of the placards instead of the actual structures because I want to be able to go back and reference their information later. (I did this for a map at a Greek Fest for the Middle East c. 2nd millenium BC and it was pretty awesome.)

The one I was most enthused about today was the information on the mill. Aside from showing the proper way to turn the millstone (they laid on top of one another like two donuts whereas I had thought one vertical rolling around the other), they also explained how millers kept their business. People brought their grains that needed milling and would pay the "Miller's Toll," 1/16th of the milled grain that the miller could then sell to those people who did not raise their own crops.

I love the phrase "Miller's Toll" and am devoting considerable effort to finding a story that will fit with it. I'll let you know if I come up with anything.

Damn You Robbie Coltrane!

Aside from the theme song, I don't think there's a line I identify more with the Harry Potter franchise than Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid saying "You're a wizard, Harry!" It was used in so much promotional content. I heard it over and over again. And it's a great line. I tells a new audience to a new franchise what the story is about. This kid over here? He's a wizard and he didn't know it. Let's go have some hijinx!

Perfect. So what's the problem? Well, the kid who doesn't think he's special discovers he's extra special! is a pretty established trope in children's fiction. Hell, it's pretty frequent in adult fantasy/sci fi as well. Big things in little packages and all that. Oh no, I'm crippled! or No one likes me! or whatever and then bam, I have magic powers that more than compensates for any shortcoming I previously had (often erasing that shortcoming in the same stroke).

As with all my other writing, I am

tired

of these kinds of things. They're not bad, not necessarily. They can still be awesome if the writing is awesome, but we've seen it SO many times. You're a wizard, Harry!

So here I am writing my first middle grade fantasy, and I make sure I have a completely mundane main character. His name is Mirza. He works in the stables as a groom. You know what? I'll go one better. He's a runt. He's small for his size, has trouble handling the horses, and the other grooms don't like him. (This should have been my first warning because now I've given him a deficiency to overcome.)

This was the character that was going to save the shahzadi. He did not have magical powers or any kind of special skills. He wasn't a thief. He wasn't a fighter. He knew how to raise cats to be good mousers and he got beat on by his father and the other grooms, so he was tough but psychologically scarred. And that little guy was going to have to do great things!

...but as I started writing, a whole sub-plot with Mirza's mother surfaced that I had not even thought of. My original plan was Introduction > Inciting Incident > Action > Resolution > The End. Somehow > Character Development snuck in there and all these things happen that I had never planned to have happen and a character says, "You're a wizard."

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That's the sound of a 20-car pile-up on the highway after someone dropped Robbie Coltrane right in the middle of traffic. Mirza can't be a wizard! Everyone's expecting him to be a wizard! Just knowing it's a middle grade fantasy, there's a high probability that the kind is going to end up having some kind of magical powers. He's supposed to be different. He's mundane. He's the everyboy character! If every boy was short and beaten by his dad.

The problem? The story's better for it. The sub-plot is an awesome one and has directly affected the climax. He's a better character and I'm trying my damndest not to fall into that bottomless pit of cliche. I will have either walked the tightrope or just don't realize I'm already falling.

So here's my question to you. Is it possible in a MG/YA novel to have your character be a wizard and to actually call him a wizard? Or has Harry Potter ruined that for the next decade? Do I need to call him something else? Sorcerer, magician, magus, djinn, or what not?

Food in the Future!

I'm from the Midwest. A historian might argue I'm from the South. Either way, I'm from the land of cows and pigs and chicken. Fish came in two varieties, cat or sticks. I cannot stand catfish. It is the most bland, boring, flimsy fish known to man and it looks pretty disgusting beforehand (my fish should not have whiskers). After a Tyson fish stick debacle when I was seven that had me trying not to vomit on the stairs and my mother screaming at me for "faking it," I'm not a fan of those either.

So I moved to New England where the fishes1 are. You cannot go to a restaurant without seeing calamari and crab cakes as appetizers. Fish and chips and baked/fried haddock will almost certainly be in the entrées. Lobster of some kind, either by the pound or in a roll (and they put it in pasta too, blarg). Scrod2, mussels, salmon, scallops, swordfish, and so on and so forth.

I come from the land of cows and sausages, but here everything is from the Atlantic Ocean. It has taken some adjusting and a little bit of courage on my part. I overcame the scars of my childhood and tried fish again. The lesson? It depends on the restaurant and how they prepare their fish. (And the sauce they put with it. I'm not a fan of dill and they can really go overboard with the dill.) My preference is blackened swordfish.

Well today my wife made tilapia tacos. Onion, sour cream, lime juice, a spicy concoction of spices, sliced avocados, and grilled tilapia on a wheat tortilla. This is the first time I've tried tilapia, and I discovered something. Tilapia doesn't taste like anything. It has such a mild flavor that really, it's just there for texture. You taste the spices and the condiments, but you don't the fish. As someone who doesn't much care for fish, one might think this to be a great find. But in truth, I discovered that if I must suffer through fish, I want to suffer. How can I wear eating fish like a badge of courage if the fish doesn't taste like fish?

"This is like tofu!" I complained because I hate tofu, but tofu eaters always tell me how it can taste like anything. (It can taste like anything because it tastes like nothing. Someone just made a much cube and convinced people it was good.) "It's firmer and has a different texture than tofu," was my wife's answer. That was all.

And that's when it struck me. In science fiction stories when man is populating deep space and traveling lightyears in ships like Serenity, they eat protein. We'll ignore star trek that has molecule resequencers/computer replicators. Matrix, Firefly, and so on and so forth all eat protein bars that are infused with minerals, vitamins, and everything else.

This is all well and good, except they CALL them protein cubes/squares/bars. And with that, I call shenanigans. No one would eat protein cubes. They eat brand names. If Kellogs or Kraft hasn't smacked a name on the box that carries those protein cubes, then those people didn't come from Earth.

And so, I introduce to you gentle reader, the future. Tilapia® brand protein cubes! Have Tilapia® for dinner tonight and get all the necessary vitamins and minerals for your space voyage.3


1 Grammatical curiosity: The plural of fish is fish when all the fish are the same. When you have different species of fish, the plural is fishes.

2 Scrod is almost always cod, but I can't order something that sounds like it's a euphemism for shit.

3 Obviously that's not really a registered trademark, but I'm definitely going to use it in a story some day.

When it's not epic

I've participated in a couple of Writer's Digest online seminars, one featuring Kristin Nelson and one feature Sara Megibow both from the Nelson Agency. During Kristin's presentation, she mentioned that the main plot of your book, that first serious hook, should occur within the first 30-50 manuscript pages.

Now this took me back. Having come up in epic fantasy (even though I'm currently not writing epic), the plot often started well past 50 pages. Often it doesn't start until the second book! :) Was it possible to drop the hook that early?

So I looked at the various single-volume fantasies I was writing at the time and with the exception of one, they all dropped their hooks in the first fifty pages. That one that didn't? It ended up getting rewritten and conforms to that as well (in Times New Roman, Courier pushed me over by a couple pages). It has proven to be not so much an invaluable rule as it is an obvious rule. With an average-lengthed novel (so we're not including epic), a story without a hook at the beginning just feels like a meandering exploration of the writer's imagination. That's all well and good, but we're reading the book for a story and eventually we need to start down that path.

Keep in mind I'm just talking a hook here. We don't necessarily need to blaze a trail down the story (though I fall mostly in Twain's camp1 on what should happen in any given chapter). Just something to promise the reader, "Yes, this is going somewhere."

And that was so exciting about PRINCE OF CATS. I didn't just have the hook, I came up with a good chunk of the story all at once. (Surprisingly, it's the end that eludes me as I keep debating whether I should kill a bunch of characters or not.) The thing was, once I started writing, the hook kept getting farther and farther away. Hello page 80. I'll get to the hook soon. I promise. Just 20 more pages or so.

And it wasn't working. I had all these dramatic moments that weren't that dramatic because there were no stakes involved. Unless we're reading this thing just so we can watch Mirza and find out his uncle-turned-father2 has been lying all these years about how his mother died, in which case we're all set by chapter 12.

So I took chapters 8-12 and shoved them back. They'll still appear. They're good stuff, but first I need a hook. Because once there's something at risk, then we're not just learning about Mirza, we're seeing how Mirza responds to what he learns and wonder as to the fate of Shahzadi Parisa. Then all these secrets about his mother have the heft they deserve.

Unfortunately, turning the uncle into the father and then shoving 4 1/2 chapters back has really thrown a wrench into the gears of my rhythm. I have been cranking this story out, and now I've come full stop while I insert the separator and crank everything apart. Then I have to go through and make sure everything fits together. Usually this is saved for the second draft. But hey, it'll save me reweriting in the future. Hopefully when I'm back at work and not staying home to deal with construction people3, I can get make to a more acceptable level of progress.


1 Mark Twain famously said that each chapter should advance the plot or advance the story else it should be cut from the story entirely. While I don't hold to this 100% of the time, I hold to it 99.5% of the time.

2 I realized the other day that I had fallen into the MG/YA cliche of making my main character an orphan. In adult work, I try to stay away from all the character tropes that have been bludgeoned to death over the years. I don't have characters that are orphans. I have characters that had loving, well-adjusted parents, so their own eccentricities are just that. No need for the orphan who's sworn an oath to hunt down his paretns' killer. Batman has had that covered for near on a century.

3 We had a furnace leak that grew a healthy amount of mold in our basement. This has been an incredible headache. I do not advise it.

Collaboration!

I will admit that I'm not a fan of collaboration. But I realized today that it's not a matter of not being a fan of collaboration, it's just that collaboration has never been presented to me in a fashion that I particularly cared for. But then I got linked to a video of Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing Nirvana's Lithium at a show in Seattle. And from there I got linked to hitRECord. Holy balls! This is genius!

Now I will say that I have not yet registered for this site (but I will) or participated (but I will). I will also admit to having a huge man-crush on JGL. He's one of my favorite actors. I will go see a movie if he's in it because I trust the quality of his work (he owes me big for GI Joe). But take a look at this video and tell me that doesn't make your creativity bone tingle. It tingles right down in the coccyx.

Can I Do This?

If you were lucky enough to be Liz Poole, a hotel night auditor named LurkerWithout, or an agent with incredible literary sense, you would have had the opportunity to read my manuscript JEHOVAH'S HITLIST. This is a manuscript where I explain why just because the protagonist is 15 years old doesn't make it a young adult novel. The thing is anything but a young adult novel. ...depending on how you wish to raise your children. If you're okay with intense amounts of violence, profanity, nudity, sex, and drugs, then perhaps this is a YA book. Otherwise, we'll just assume it's not.

I've mentioned that before, so why am I saying it again? Because now I am writing a young adult novel. More specifically, I'm writing a middle grade novel (for a younger audience than YA, if you don't know the difference). Things are going swimmingly. I've only been at it for a week and I'm about to hit the 20,000-word mark. That's progress! Things are going great!

Well...yes, but I'm starting to run into something the euphoria of being so prolific has to date kept at bay. I've never written for this audience before! I write hard, cruel adult content. How am I supposed to write for 10 year olds?!?! Here I am cruising along and they have THE HOBBIT and A WRINKLE IN TIME and HARRY POTTER to read. What is this? PRINCE OF CATS? It's nothing. It's tiny. It's not my market!

*pulls out hair*

Who would have thought that the hardest thing for me to write would be content for kids. You wouldn't think so until you try it. But once you try it, you're all ooohhh, now I see.

Like if I were to write Sesame Street, this is what you'd get:

Things I Like Other than Writing

I finished my rewrite, began PRINCE OF CATS (which is going awesomely--beyond awesomely really, I'm flying), and the summer crush is over. Obviously you can tell that because I'm blogging, thus my hours are not filled with making content to educate the next generation of politicians who will hopefully ben an improvement over our current crop.

ANYWAY

As this is the end of he busy season for a few months, I have time to not only write, but to do other fun things as well. I can take days off and stuff. I'm told the funs happen on days off.

So what do we do? Well, New Hampshire keeps a lot of its funs outside, so I'll go there to find them. My buddy Britt taught me how to play disc golf and I've been practicing. I could do more of that. Especially since the local putting green was rebuilt after a really bad storm tore up the baskets.

I could...go sailing! My wife spoiled our anniversary surprise and mentioned we're going sailing. I learned how to sail through Naval ROTC my freshman year in college and absolutely loved it. It was my favorite thing about the entire experience. She's the queen of the groupon and got a good deal that we can go sailing down on the Charles River (I believe that's where it is).

Another groupon she got me for Christmas is horseback riding. I learned to ride when I was four. My family used insurance money from my father's death to go to dude ranch and mourn/cope/stop trying to kill each other. I have loved riding ever since. I do it every year and if I had enough money, I would love to have a horse of my own. Well, she got me a groupon for a two-hour trail ride and I'll be cashing in that puppy this week. I'm so excited! Woooooo!

But there is more! I need to shed about 20 pounds, but Alpine Adventures, the zip lining place up in Lincoln, NH, has a new course. What's zip lining, you ask? Watch this video of my wife zip lining from a couple years ago. She got me a gift certificate a couple Christmases back and I need to use that puppy. Once I'm less fat.

Kimball Farm in Westford, MA

We have a tradition here in the Selby household. My wife's birthday is a month and a half before mine and our anniversary is in between. We make a birthaversary event out of it. For each of our birthdays, we choose a place we want to eat and an adventure we want to go on. This year, Jen wanted to go to an awesome Greek restaurant named Amphora in Derry, NH. For her adventure, she wanted to go to Kimball Farm in Westford, MA. She's wanted to go on a hot air balloon ride for awhile, but they're incredibly expensive out here (maybe everywhere). Kimball turns out to have an "aeroballoon" ride. It's a big helium balloon tied to a passenger ring that holds twelve people. They raise it on a winch and you fly 300 feet in the air.

They also have two mini-golf courses (that were a lot of fun), batting cages, an arcade, animals, and bumper boats. You get the right idea when you hear bumper boats, bumper cars but on water. But it is SO much more fun! Take an outboard motor, put it in the center of an intertube, drop a seat over it, and go to town!



I could do this for hours! If you're ever in the area, you should definitely give it a try. It was an awesome adventure.

A Triumphant Return

So here I am. :) The busy season has passed. At least until it arrives again (which for me will be January). This year (in my new department) hasn't been even half as bad as the two previous where I was expected to work 14-hour days with weekends and basically go balls to the wall until the summer was gone. I love New Hampshire weather because it has four seasons, but I was skipping one of them and that wasn't as much fun.

I have continued to write, another thing that was difficult in the summer. I have been rewriting Wanted: Chosen One which is now titled With a Crooked Crown. Let me tell you how much work that has been. I thought it would be an up-front slog while I bent the first half of the book like a contortionist and then just some mopping up to clean up the dust. Not so! Change the main character to a person that was a secondary character and that takes a lot of work. More over, change one of the negative characters to someone less negative and you start to realize he had to get his bitch on in every chapter he was in. Every time I say I'm almost done, I have to stop and rewrite entire chapters.

This weekend I did some prep work on my next book. I don't always do character designs and such before I start writing. Often I don't know the characters to be involved and those I think will be of use end up never fitting into the evolution of the story. But I have a very clear picture of this story. Very clear. I already have names for ten characters and that never happens! So that's kind of thrilling and kind of frustrating at the same time because I can't work on it until I finish my rewrite. So close! So far away! (I spent the morning rewriting a chapter and have spent my lunch hour rewriting the rewrite to change the POV to a different character. :)

And I will leave you with this. My wife just read A DANCE WITH DRAGONS, as we are both fans of the series (books--we haven't seen the HBO show yet). By the end of A FEAST FOR CROWS I had picked up on Martin's chapter template: introduce characters, eat/describe what they're wearing, have something important happen. So I would read the first page to see who was around and then the last two pages of a chapter to see what happens. I'd skip all the description because after four books, I got it.

Well, according to the missus, he's actually increased his description of food, which may be difficult to comprehend. Her question was obvious? Why?! To date, I had just assumed it was his style, but then I wondered, is he doing this on purpose?

The answer slapped me like a person that's been sitting next to you on the couch for the entire movie and you didn't even know they were there. Yes he's doing it on purpose. In the very first book Ned Stark says people aren't saving enough for winter. Summer had gone on too long and people forgot how much food they needed to save for winter. So here is all this opulence, all these people feasting and gorging and being all disgusting. Why? Because the next book is named THE WINDS OF WINTER and you want to guess how hungry they're going to be then? It's a 50-calibre metaphor shot through five books so the sixth one can properly juxtapose their situation.

It's the opposite of the soft touch. It's the jackhammer. Or it's just his style. We'll see.