Category Archives: writing

December 26, 2013 · 7:09 am

What the label says

During the Christmas hiatus I’ve been revisiting the manuscript of Mountains of the Moon, tightening it up. I will be sending it to my Beta readers soon, preparatory to the final edit. In the meantime I have still been searching for cover art – my head has an idea of what it needs to be, and I haven’t found it yet, nor have I created the right blurb, although I’m getting close–we want a short, intriguing, sell-the-book sort of blurb.

Huw The Bard progresses slowly–some things just can’t be rushed. I had hoped to have him ready this spring, but that may not happen. The cover is ready, the blurb is ready, but editing is going more slowly than I had anticipated. That is one area I will not rush, so it will go on the back burner for a while. I still plan to enter Huw in the ABNA Contest this year, if and when it is announced, in the genre of Fantasy, as I hope it will be ready to go by then. Nothing is sure or certain in this business, however.

The editing of Julian Lackland is progressing at a good rate–he may be ready for publication before Huw. His cover and blurb are also finished, as is his book trailer. Huw still needs a proper trailer, but we are rolling toward victory!

In the meantime, I am still writing Valley of Sorrows, and it is going really well. All the threads in my mind are coming together well on paper. That may be a finished novel yet!

One thing that is a bit difficult is trying to decide what genre my work falls under and what labels will get my books to the people who most want the sort of tales I write. Huw the Bard and Julian Lackland are Historical Fantasies, but there is no genre to cover that! The Tower of Bones series is Epic Fantasy, or so I think, so that is easy (?).

But I’ve never had any luck with my labels.

And labeling is critical–many people won’t look at work that is not in their favorite genre, so they may not stumble upon a work they might enjoy. Conversely, if it is mislabeled, a reader might buy it, find it is not their cup of tea, and write a stinker of a review, based on the fact it is really not at all a historical mystery and what was the author thinking anyway?

So this is my goal for this coming year year: Write good books, label them properly, and perhaps sell a few.

I’ve learned many amazing things about this craft over the last year, things I never knew I had a knack for. I sourced the art and designed my own covers for two books, and Alison DeLuca (our fearless leader at Myrddin Publishing Group) says they will be good covers when the books go to press. I have helped several authors get their work ready for publication and I managed to make it through another NaNoWriMo as a Municipal Liaison unscathed.

A new year looms, bright and shiny. My ambition is to get the hang of the trickier parts of the marketing of my work–properly labeling it, and making it available to prospective readers. After all, if they can’t find it, they can’t read it!

I hope your Christmas was a warm and cozy thing with good food and family that puts the fun in dysfuntional. I hope the new year brings you everything you need, and some of what you want. I wish you long life and happiness, and the wisdom to appreciate it!

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Tagged as adventure, Art, battles, blurb, books, dragons, fantasy, Julian Lackland, literature, writing

December 20, 2013 · 10:13 am

The long and winding road

I love road trips. One of the best road trips I ever went on was with my husband, Greg. We drove to Grand Marais, Minnesota for his 94 year-old grandmother’s funeral — 1830.01 miles each way — 3 full, 12-hour days on the road from Olympia, Washington, and another three days for the trip back home.

The first night out, we stayed in Bozeman, Montana. We didn’t have a lot of time for sight-seeing, but we did stop in the Badlands on the western border between North Dakota and Montana, as there is an amazing and dangerous feeling to the landscape, and we shot a lot of pictures on the cheap digital camera we bought when we realized we had left the good one at home. (More on how that turned out later).

Of course, the Badlands were created by the Yellowstone Supervolcano, but at the time I didn’t know that. The second night we stayed in Bismark North Dakota. On the third afternoon, we checked into our hotel and met up with Greg’s sister, Eileen.We tootled around town, and had a great time. The funeral was scheduled for 1:00 p.m. the next day.

We ate the free breakfast at the Best Western, and to kill time until the funeral, we hiked around the shore of Lake Superior all morning. It was the second week of May, and there was still snow in the shady places. We had a great time, trying to keep our then twelve-year-old nephew, Sam-the-dare-devil, from falling into Lake Superior and drowning.

After a leisurely lunch, we walked up to Bethlehem Lutheran Church where the service was scheduled. The church there is the same as any other Lutheran church in America–from the inside it looks like an upside-down viking-longship and the comparison is intentional, a traditional style of architecture in ELCA Lutheran Churches. It’s a comforting place with an air of Lutheran prosperity but not too ornate.

Yes, it was comforting—but empty.

Really, really empty.

Apparently the funeral actually took place at 10:00 a.m., and the email we Pacific Northwesterners had all received had teensy little typo–just one small digit. 1:00 or 10:00 not really that large a mistake when you look at it, but it’s quantum physics we’re talking here. Just one teensy atom, more or less, changes everything.

It was quite upsetting, but how can you be angry at an 85 year old lady who very kindly tried to notify you a loved one had passed on? She had done her best to let us know, and we should have checked in with the church when we arrived in town. We missed seeing the cousins from South Dakota by two hours–but we now have their phone numbers, just in case they ever want to do a road trip with us.

The irony of having driven well over 1800 miles to accidentally blow-off a loved-one’s funeral was not lost on us. It’s a good thing that sort of thing doesn’t happen in books.

“Wait–where’s the rest of the story? You were supposed to meet the Evil Minion of the Bull God! What do you mean your prophets got the time wrong and you missed him by three hours, so oh, well, sorry…!”

So about all the lovely pictures we shot on the way to and from Grand Marais – The little thing didn’t have a viewing window, so we had no idea what our photos looked like. Also, apparently the capacity for storing images on the cheepo camera was 20 shots – anything over that deletes the previous ones. All we had to show for our trip was 20 wonderful shots of our nephew Paul’s high-school graduation, which we had made it home in time to attend.

Unfortunately, it was impossible to tell who was in the photos, or what they were actually depicting, so I found this image on the City College of San Francisco website, which I think totally commemorates the experience.

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Tagged as adventure, battles, Bismark North Dakota, Bozeman, fantasy, fiction, Funerals, Grand Marais, Lake Superior, Montana, North Dakota, road trips, writing

December 17, 2013 · 8:00 am

Many’s the Fool

I’ve been working full speed on fleshing out the fourth book set in the World of Neveyah. It is the third and final book in the Tower of Bones series.

One of the things I’ve learned as I’ve progressed as a writer is to cut the backstory into manageable chunks. I, as the author, am totally into the backstory, but you as a reader may not be. In my previous work, my readers have to slog through a long lead-in before the real action begins. With each successive book, that lead-in has become shorter.

In order to avoid this tendency, I have been working to an outline. Because I have the final half of the book nearly complete, all I am working on is the first half of the book. I have given myself a strict number of pages to accomplish all of this in, which means it is forced to be all action, with the backstory slipped in incidentally.

The first half of VOS happens concurrently with Forbidden Road, and some of the incidents from that tale are viewed through the eyes of those left at home. This book must detail what happened at home and wrap up Forbidden Road. I want it to be a stand-alone book, and it can’t give away the core of Forbidden Road. Thus, it can only reference what the characters know of the incidents that occurred in Mal Evol as they affect this tale.

Fleshing out this tale is requiring a lot of incidental backstory for me, 90% of which will not make it into the book, but which serves to cement characters and how they act and react in a given situation. Hence, the outline:

First 1/4 chapters must address:

The redemption of John Farmer
The arrival of bad news and Dane Bransson’s descent into depression and anger
The premature delivery and death of the baby.
Marya’s descent into madness
John and Garran journey to Braden

Second ¼ chapters must address:

Building the wall
Zan’s concerns re: setting the truth geas on Christoph
The resettlement of Braden to Aeoven and other areas,
Attack by the Hounds of Tauron
Completing the Wall
Arlen and the road to High Point Camp/ Jaxon
Edwin’s anxieties
Friedr’s worries re: his disfigurement and how Aeolyn will see him
Lourdan’s Remaking

This is the first half of the book and must be complete at the 50% mark. By giving myself this road map, I am not completely nailed down creatively, nor am I completely winging it. I am forcing myself to stick to the meat of the matter and be sparing with the fluff.

I have set an arbitrary length for the book, and the second half was dealt with the same way. I actually wrote the second half first during NaNoWriMo 2012, because it picks up where Forbidden Road Leaves off and I was in the zone.

Writing the character of John Farmer has been fun. I’ve written a kajillion anecdotal stories for him as a novice and a young journeyman that won’t make it into VOS, but which will possibly be used at a later date in a volume of short stories. By virtue of having these tales, I know who John is. I know what makes him tick, and, most importantly, why he is who he is.

Both Agatha Christie and Anne McCaffrey were geniuses at conveying that sense of history with an economy of words. When I think of each character in the compelling books written by these women, the characters I loved and who stuck with me most had a sense of history. The author knew them, even the most minor of characters. HOW they knew their characters, what their style of writing was, I don’t know, but me — I make a little personnel file for each.

In this post I have just been talking about the fourth book, but I hope to publish the third book set in Neveyah, Mountains of the Moon, by summer. It’s hard to say if it will be through the editing process by then. I will never rush to publish anything ever again, knowing what I know now about this business.

Some indies have this idea that they have to get it published NOW, regardless of whether an editor has told them it is not ready, and this is bad. Plot holes, threads to nowhere, these are bad, even if you are intending a second book in that series. Even worse is the nearly overwhelming urge to just add a bit to the tale before you click the publish button. Has anyone else seen what you wrote? How do you know that what you think you wrote is what you really did write? And did you make your revisions by hand, or were you using Dragon? ALWAYS key your revisions by hand if you are physically able.

As an editor, I have seen some interesting manuscripts written using Dragon Naturally Speaking Software. Words that are technically correct but make no sense until the editor realizes the words actually rhyme with the intended word…you see where this is going.

Many’s the fool who rushed to publish and rued it later. I was one of those with my first book, but just like many other firsts, I learned a great deal from that experience. Thus I use the map, the calendar and the editor – the three most important parts of any tale.

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Tagged as adventure, Agatha Christie, Anne McCaffrey, Dragon Naturally Speaking, dragons, literature, maps, writing

December 14, 2013 · 8:22 am

Negotiating the SpaceTime Continuum

Keeping it all straight sometimes requires a good calendar. But what if, when first you wrote the first two books, you created a world in which the calendar was a lunar thing? Not only that, but you went all astrological when you named the months, and Norse God when you named the days? And to top it off, a small portion of the third book follows events that took place parallel to events in the second book…and your protagonist must rendezvous with the protagonists of the other book on a certain day so they can complete the … … …. *DOH*

Talk about a walk through the space-time continuum–this would be it. In my current work in progress I realized I would need to keep things organized if I wanted to make sense, and not accidentally contradict myself.

In cosmology, the concept of space-time combines space and time to a single abstract universe. Apparently we all move through this, and time either passes us, or we pass time. It’s all relative (Einstein humor) to how fast you are going and a lot of sub-atomic particle stuff I can’t really take the time to explain here.

But if we make a picture of that abstract concept our tiny human brains can grasp it. We call that picture a ‘calendar,’ which makes it all rather simple. My characters will progress through their space-time continuum at a rate I can comprehend, because I am their appointment secretary, and I am in charge of their calendar.

I am a retired bookkeeper, so I use the spreadsheet program called Excel to do things like that, but anyone can draw a calendar.

Time and Calendar of Neveyah

Each year consist of 365 days, and is divided into four seasons: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Harvest. The last month of the year is Holy Month.

Each season consists of three months, making twelve months that equal 28 days each, plus a Holy Month. Autumn and Winter are separated by the ‘Holy Month” of 29 days. The Holy Month is called Solstice and the actual winter solstice falls on the first day of the month following, or the first day of Caprica. This is a month that is sacred to the Goddess Aeos, Goddess of Harvest, Hearth and Home. It is a time when people travel to visit family, and simply take time off for a small vacation, often taking two weeks to do it. On the last night of the Solstice Month each family holds a ritual feast in their home, a feast of thanks-giving and prayers for the New Year. Every four years an extra day is added to Solstice and that day is a festival day all across Neveyah. That year is called a Long Year though it is really only one day longer.

The months are as follows:

Caprica, Aquas, Piscus, (Winter) Begins on actual day of Winter Solstice

Arese, Taura, Geminis (Spring)

Lunne, Leonid, Virga (Summer)

Libre, Scorpius, Saggitus (Harvest)

Holy Month (Has no season, but would be winter)

Days of the Week:

1. Sunnaday – Minimal business is conducted; each family’s tasks for the Temple as a whole are completed, such as chopping firewood, quilting, making clothes, and preserving food. The members of the temple clergy assemble in work gangs to accomplish these tasks from which they all benefit.

2. Lunaday

3. Tyrsday

4. Odensday

5. Torsday

6. Frosday

7. Restday – no business is conducted, and only minimal work is done on farms and other places where some work must be done seven days a week. This is a day for people to spend with their families or to pursue their personal interests.

I am a good secretary–my calendar is is adjustable. If I find something doesn’t work in the time-span I am writing it for, I can adjust accordingly. Book three is the only book in which the dates are important, but I have to be conscious of the fact that they are important, and try not to screw it up.

Now if I could only keep my own calendar straight…I know I had something planned for today…but what? Apparently I forgot to put it on my Google calendar.

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Tagged as adventure, battles, Calendar, Einstein, fantasy, fiction, humor, literature, particle physics, Space-time Continuum, writing

December 12, 2013 · 9:30 am

Thursday, thy name is dysfunction

I have a construction site not far down the alley from my back yard, where the evergreen trees in this picture are, actually. Sadly, the trees are no more–an apartment complex is going up, with stores on the ground floor. This is good use of the land, and I am all for high-density planning in cities and towns, but the dulcet sounds of machinery and metal against rock and hard-pan in this glacial valley are not conducive to writing, unless I happen to be writing a war. In this photo you can see the boulders that the landscaping lads pried out of our yard when they put in the sprinkler system three years ago.

Hopefully the contractors up the way will be done digging through the boulders left behind by the last ice age to make the foundations of that behemoth of a building soon. Hammers and air guns I can take, but the constant banging and pounding of heavy machinery chipping away at the glacial till is distracting. Once I get the music playing it helps.

I live in a strange part of the world geologically, speaking. We have been shaped by fire, ice and earthquakes. Just down the road from my house are the Mima Mounds, low, flattened, circular to oval, dome-like, natural mounds that are composed of loose, unstratified, often gravelly sediment. These mounds range in diameter from 3 to more than 50 m; in height 30 cm to greater than 2 m; and in density from several to greater than 50 mounds per hectare, at times forming conspicuous natural patterns. Many people thought they were Native burial mounds, but they are just strange rock and gravel formations.

We also have Ramtha just down the road, but that is a whole different sort of natural phenomenon. Apparently we have ley-lines running beneath our soil out here in rural Thurston County. Who knew! (Spiritual tourism is big business out here. Bring your money!)

Anyway, this whole area is in the shadow of the biggest thing on the west coast–Mount Rainier.

That’s a pretty awesome sight, looming at the end of my street, just saying.

So my neighborhood was formed by mountains of ice and rivers of fire–and thanks to the machinery bashing their way through the rock here, I’m still not getting any writing done.

I wonder what’s on YouTube?

OOHH!!! Eric Whitacre’s Fly to Paradise! (I’m sure they mean the Paradise on Mt. Rainier so it’s in keeping with my theme today!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8oDnUga0JU

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Tagged as evergreen trees, fantasy, heavy machinery, humor, Ley lines, Mima Mounds, Mt Rainier, Paradise, Ramtha, sprinkler system, writing

December 10, 2013 · 10:37 am

Unnatural Disaster

We live in a rather rainy part of the world, and the path to our front door is muddy. We have not yet traded our builder-grade beige carpet for hardwood, so we remove our shoes when we come in. A shoe rack stands just inside the door, and for a home with only two people, the rack is quite full.

Yesterday we had an unnatural disaster when the shoe rack collapsed –apparently under the weight of the shoes.

This is strange, in a way. When I grew up, I only ever had two pairs of shoes at a time. One was the traditional saddle-shoe all schoolgirls of my generation wore, and the other was for church–black Mary Janes, perhaps with a bow on the toe, but most likely not. My mother didn’t waste money on things that were

a. fads or

b. likely to fall apart.

We were an average middle-class family, and it was a sign of our wealth that I had two pairs of shoes. In the summer we would have cheap white or navy blue canvas shoes to play in, as we had outgrown our saddle-shoes by the end of the school year, and mother would wait until the week before school to buy us our next pair.

We couldn’t really go barefoot, as we lived in a rural area where tetanus was still an issue, and even though we had been vaccinated against it, our parents had grown up during the Great Depression and still worried.

So, the minute I graduated from high-school and went out into the world, what is the first thing I did? My sister and I rode the Greyhound to Seattle and went to the navy surplus store where we bought two pairs of woolen navy bell-bottom trousers with the double-buttons down the front and the lace-up back.

They were very hip and were the envy of our friends.

My sister and I shared most of our clothes, but she had a better sense of style than I did, so when she said we had to go navy, I went. We also bought navy pea-coats. While we were there, I bought a pair of Waffle-Stompers, leather hiking boots with rugged soles. I was pretty naive, a total country-girl. There were so many stores with hundreds of shoes, most of which I could afford on my salary as a babysitter–in Olympia the selection was rather limited so Seattle was the place to go.

Somehow, once I bought that pair of hiking boots, I was unable to walk past a shoe display without jonesing like a junkie. If I didn’t get a new pair of shoes when I wanted them, I would feel quite deprived. Soon I had red shoes, blue shoes, tall shoes, flat shoes. Shoes for walking, shoes for sitting and everything in between.

Shoes were crack–and I was addicted. How could such a thing happen? It made no sense to me, and when I had my first child, I was suddenly financially unable to support my habit. Suddenly I was back to having one or two pairs of shoes and feeling quite lucky to have them. For the next fifteen years, I had only three pairs of shoes at most. One pair was for work, one was a dusty pair of black pumps for dress (hardly ever worn) and the third pair was flip-flops.

So what happened that I should once again have gained so many shoes that my shoe rack would collapse under the strain? I gained weight, I lost weight. I worked in an office and had to wear dress-shoes, then I was retired and needed comfy shoes. Somehow the shoes landed on the rack and never left. The rack became a repository for abandoned shoes.

Both my husband and I really only wear three pairs each and one pair is flip-flops. So today is weed-out-the-fluff day, and many shoes will go to shoe heaven.

But not this pair… or this pair…and this is my favorite pair…and not these–I can’t throw these away because I might wear them….

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Tagged as fantasy, fiction, humor, Shoe addiction, shoe rack, shoe rack collapse, Shoes, writing

December 9, 2013 · 7:13 am

Inspiration, where art thou?

Over the last few months I have spent a great deal of time searching for cover art for Mountains of the Moon, a book, set in the world of Neveyah, and one that takes place in a rugged mountainous area. A lot of the action at the end of the book is in a ruined keep. I have four heroes, five bad guys, and great deal of hilarity to cover, and it’s hard to know just what will work.

I have no idea what to commission, if anything, and I have been unable to find the right combination of stock pictures, so here I am, writing a fourth book set in that world, with no idea of what sort of cover is appropriate for the one that is currently on hold.

What ever I get, it has to be colorful and eye-catching and SIMPLE.

So this takes me to another cover dilemma–writing the dreaded blurb. So what do the professionals all do? By “blurb” I mean a condensed, concise, and compelling description of your book, in other words, a book advertisement. The blurb is a book publisher’s description, or even a review comment (but I hate those.)

Back Cover of Mage-Guard of Hamor by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

I went out to several books on my shelves, and discovered that the big publishers don’t write blurbs any more. They just put glowing descriptions of the author’s other work on the back. I feel that is a bit disrespectful to the reader on the part of the big name publisher–expecting the purchasing public to just blindly follow the well-known author. After several recent expensive disappointments at the hands of authors whom I quite respected, I have decided I am not going to buy your damned $25.00 book unless I know what I am getting, no matter WHO publishes you. I will stand in that aisle and read as much of the book as I need to, if that is what it takes to get an idea of what is inside, proprieties be damned.

ANYWAY–a blurb like that won’t help an indie, because your other work won’t sell your book–the book has to sell itself. BUT some of the older books on my shelves have great blurbs, little teasers that sold me that book back in the day.

1. Who or What is your book about? Choose either the idea of the book or the main character and stick to that. If you choose the character, use only the main character in your description, and forget the others, because it is that character’s story that you are trying to sell. (I personally am always intrigued by the idea of the book, and a good example will follow below.)

2. Run it past your reading group, your friends, and your online author buddies. Run it by someone, anyone! Ask them if it makes them want to run out and buy the book, and heed their answer. Ask them why it works or why it doesn’t.

3. Keep it short! I have found that a little exercise currently popular in online writing groups is really helpful – getting in the habit of writing 100 word flash fiction. I write a 100 word flash fiction nearly every day, because you really have to choose your words wisely, if you want to tell your story in such a short space. It is a warm-up exercise for my real work, and I have quite a good backlog of ideas that will become short-stories or novellas, all written this way.

Let’s look at the cover and the blurb on ‘Roadmarks’, a classic sci-fi fantasy written by the late Roger Zelazney. It was published in 1979 by Del Rey Science Fiction. The cover art is awesome–and it really caught my eye. It is simple, with plenty of visual room for the graphics.

The blurb is intriguing too, as the publisher sold me the IDEA of the novel:

“The Road runs from the unimaginable past to the far future, and those who travel it have access to the turnoffs leading to all times and places–even to the alternate time-streams of histories that never happened. Why the Dragons of Bel’kwinith made the Road–or who they are–no one knows. But the Road has always been there and for those who know how to find it, it always will be!”

I have the cover design for Huw The Bard, and the blurb. That book is covered! But Mountains of the Moon–not so much. Finding the art for that book is proving a challenge, but I have six months at least so something will turn up.

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Tagged as Art, cover art, dragons, fiction, indie publishing, Roadmarks, Roger Zelazney, writing, writing a blurb

December 5, 2013 · 8:45 am

Christmas O’clock

It’s December–Christmas is coming! We have found some awesome presents for the grandchildren and two of my short-stories were published in an anthology of children’s stories. I actually had my bout of Christmas spirit in July when I wrote A Christmas Tail!

This anthology, Christmas O’Clock is available at Amazon for the very reasonable price of $2.99 for ebook OR $9.49 for the paperback. The book also includes hilarious tales by authors like Sean Allan, Allison Deluca, Irene Roth Luvaul, Nicole Antonia Carro and Mary K. Mitchell. It is a collection of holiday-themed stories including magic, space travel, and Rudolph. With two complete chapter books, lots of stories, and plenty of spirit, this anthology is great for kids of all ages.

And best of all, all proceeds go to Water Is Life to help children and families in an international effort. What could be better than being a part of something that helps so many people? Millions daily go without that most fundamental of necessities: clean drinking water. Every time I turn on a tap in my home, I am grateful to have such a wonderful, valuable commodity so easily available to me.

I shudder to think of what it must be like for the countless people in this world who do not have such a miracle in their homes. For millions of people, the wells where they daily draw their water are nearly dry, and are frequently diseased. Clean water is a rare and precious commodity, but we can help to make this gift a reality by making a small donation. Buy a copy of the book and not only will ALL the proceeds go this wonderful charity, but you will have a great book. If you are a Christmas story nut like me, you will read it for yourself, not just for the kids.

SO where was I going with this – oh yes – the fabulous Jaspersons have been dragging decorations out of the garage in an attempt to show the neighborhood some sort of holiday spirit. Unfortunately, we had an incident of…well, lets just say mythical proportions.

From my Facebook post of last evening: “…just went out to the garage to get my genuine artificial Christmas tree. It is in the big zipper bag that has handles for hauling it in and out of said garage. As soon as I picked it up, several somethings went sort of crazy in side the bag.

Sorry kids–mama doesn’t really like mysterious moving somethings in the Christmas tree bag. The bag and the tree are still in the garage where mama dropped it. This looks a job for that super-hero for all seasons—>DAD!!!”

It turned out that it was a “2 beer” mouse – my husband earned his beers and the tree is now in the living room. Unfortunately, the middle section of the tree does not light up, so rather than buy a new tree, today I am going to the local sundries store and getting a string of lights. Tonight, there will be a tree shining in our window!

(edit) We now have a tree up in our living-room (no mice were harmed in the decorating of this tree):

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Tagged as adventure, Art, artificial Christmas tree, battles, charity, Christmas story, Christmas Tail, Christmas tree, Clean Water For Children, humor, Irene Roth Luvaul, literature, Nicole Antonia Carro, Water Is Life, writing

December 1, 2013 · 9:34 am

Knights Running Bare

One thing we don’t really think about when we first sit down to tell a tale is the attire our characters will be sporting. (Or not sporting, as the case may be.) But it does eventually come up, and how we get that across to our readers without boring them to tears is important.

Much of the time, my characters wear armor, the men and the women both. I’m an equal opportunity author–I think women deserve to be encased in gleaming tin as often as men, so there you go.

When I am reading a historically based novel, I want to be able to picture the characters in the right style of clothing, but unless I am reading the curtain scene in Gone With The Wind, I don’t want exact details. In most cases, a sentence or two giving us a general description is all that is really necessary.

Some of you may say, “But clothes are an essential aspect of the culture I am trying to describe!” I agree – every culture is rich in the way their clothing is decorated, and in what is considered appropriate for each gender. But again, a sentence or two here and there will do the trick. If you give the reader the general idea they will fill in the blanks with their imagination. Too much detail may cause the reader to lose the momentum of the tale.

As a reader, unless we are talking armor, I want to know what they are wearing, but don’t waste my time giving me more than a few sentences.

However, if we are talking armor, while I, as the reader, don’t need too many details, you as the AUTHOR, do need to keep some details in mind when you are writing the story. Your knights are not running bare–they are fully clothed in steel. That affects HOW they move.

First of all, it’s important to note that ‘fully armored’ means the characters are wearing:

Helmet: a form of protective gear worn to protect the head from injuries
Gorget: a single piece of plate armor hanging from the neck and covering the throat and chest.
Pauldrons (or spaulders): a single large dome-shaped piece to cover the shoulder
Besagews: circular defenses designed to protect the armpits
Couters: the defense for the elbow in a piece of plate armor. Initially just a curved piece of metal, as plate armor progressed the couter became an articulated joint.
Vambraces: forearm guards, defenses for covering the forearm
Gauntlets: several different styles of glove, particularly those with an extended cuff covering part of the forearm
Cuirass: back and breastplate
Fauld: bands of metal surrounding both legs, potentially surrounding the entire hips in a form similar to a skirt.
Tassets:a piece of plate armor designed to protect the upper legs
Culet: a piece of plate armor consisting of small, horizontal ribs that protect the small of the back or the buttocks
Cuisses: to protect the thigh.The word is the plural of the French word cuisse meaning ‘thigh’. While the tassets of a cuirass could protect the upper legs from above, a thrust from below could avoid these defenses. Thus, cuisses were worn on the thighs to protect from such blows.
Poleyns: armor that protected the knee
Greaves: shin armor
Sabatons: covering for the foot. Fourteenth and fifteenth century sabatons typically end in a tapered point well past the actual toes of the wearer’s foot, following fashionable shoe shapes of the fourteenth century. Sabatons of the first half of sixteenth century end at the tip of the toe and may be wider than the actual foot. They were the first piece of armor to be put on.

That’s a hell of a lot of steel and it took some time to put on. The very fullest sets, could be configured for a range of different uses, for fighting on foot or on horse. They were complicated and took a while to get on correctly, and a man needed help with some of the more involved things, like lacing them on.

The reader doesn’t need to know this, and they don’t care. But what the AUTHOR needs to know is how this sort of attire affects what your character can actually do!

Realistically, most medieval soldiers did not wear full sets of armor as their daily attire. In general they wore the minimum amount of metal they could get away with unless they were going into a situation that could result in a battle. When your characters are out riding around, if you have them only partially armored, they will be more able to move around in a logical manner, than if you have encased them in a gleaming sardine can.

Some readers (like me) are quite savvy–they will know you haven’t thought it out well if your fully armored knight is suddenly indulging in a moment of passion with fully dressed Lady Gwen.

Think about the many layers of what your characters are actually wearing–it can’t be done! For that you must undress them, and it is a bit involved, so they must plan ahead for their romantic trysts and leave the armor at home.

When writing historical fiction it is important to remember that people are not really that much different nowadays than they ever were. They get cold, so they wear clothes, in many layers. The warmer the weather, the fewer the layers. Inside a warm building, they may be lightly clad. Keep that in mind as you are writing, and convey the idea of their attire with a minimum of words, and your reader will get more enjoyment from the tale.

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Filed under Battles, Books, Fantasy, Humor, knights, Literature, Uncategorized, writer, writing

Tagged as battles, books, characters, humor, knights, literature, medieval armor, medieval warfare, plate armor, romance, writing

November 26, 2013 · 6:53 am

Phil’s Cosmic Roulette Wheel

Photograph courtesy of RL5 Photography via www.spaceneedle.com

Photograph courtesy of RL5 Photography via http://www.spaceneedle.com

Today I want to discuss Phil’s Cosmic Roulette Wheel. Perhaps it’s fate, perhaps it’s the universe–whatever it is, it steers us down the path to perdition, and throws the almighty wrench in the works just when everything was going so well. In my world of Neveyah where the Tower of Bones series is set, Gods have a direct hand in the action.

The strange part was naming them. I’ve a friend, a Leo, named Phil. Phil is a lion among men and I thought, why not name a god Phil?

It turns out that if you write fantasy you should probably give your gods names that evoke omnipotent power. Apparently Phil is a bit too neighborly for a good ‘god-name,’ go figure. So I have opted for less comfortable names for my gods.

Phil is a longtime friend of mine, a man who will argue the opposite side of any topic you choose, and he will do it with passion and will even have some evidence to back his position. He also enjoys the occasional rant on Facebook, but hey–who doesn’t? I figure he should get a blog and rant to his heart’s content, but what do I know.

Any way, Phil was on a rant about something, and I forget exactly what it was, but the upshot was he is a bit of an atheist.

Well, that takes all the fun out of blaming the gods for everything that’s wrong in your life!

But I’m not here to argue about religion. Religion is like sex and politics–everyone has their own version, and other folks don’t want to hear about how great it is.

Phil got me to thinking about how events seem to occur, driving us to a specific moment in time. There is a sense of destination in the way events occur, as if the only place you could have found yourself, no matter how you tried to avoid it, was at that stop light.

The upshot of all of this is the epiphany I had– the realization that Phil the God (who is an atheist) uses this giant cosmic roulette wheel to determine the fates of each denizen of his universe. There he is, sitting in his heavenly bathrobe, watching movies on netflix and spinning his cosmic roulette wheel.