Triempery and Nom

The Phillies won the World Series and immediately car horns started honking up and down my quiet suburban street. Half the neighbors screamed as if someone was attacking them, or they were being attacked. It was hard to tell. People poured out into the street just to share the joy.

This is a town that suffers soulfully, often colorfully on talk radio, and rejoices from the bottom of its working class heart.

I'm not a huge baseball fan. I go to games when the tickets are free or the husband insistent, and then I go mostly for the people-watching. A couple of hot dogs and a watered-down root beer can't hold a candle to listening to some oblivious, annoying twenty-something chirp about the love lives of her countless friends, none of whom would be friends for long if they knew how she talked about them where dozens of total strangers could listen in.

I was a Brewers fan, sort of, for a long time. When I moved to Philadelphia and married the love of my life, I adopted his sports teams. It was part of the marriage contract. In sickness and in health, losing seasons and winning seasons, good umping and bad.  Philadelphia takes its sports seriously, even if that means the entire population wallows in wholesale euphoria, delusion and depression. Mostly depression, because in recent years the local teams haven't been winning very much. Hopes generally get pinned on the Eagles, a football team that's prone starting out promising but always ends up disappointing. I'm allowed, by virtue of having been born and raised in proximity to the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field in Green Bay, to continue cheering for my Packers. But only if they're not playing the Eagles that week.

Yesterday I sat beside a man I married but seldom see: a steely-eyed, grim-mouthed, set-jawed male whose intense gaze somehow manages to stare straight through a glowing TV screen directly into the environs of a baseball field ten miles away.  This man can tell me the batting average of every player in both leagues.  He mentally adjusts pitcher stats during games.  He knows who's in the minors, whose contract negotiations have stalled, and who will be on another team next year.  He has only two words for the announcers on Fox News.  "They suck."  He points out that they only show the "magic box" that displays where pitches are in the strike zone during Tampa Bay's at bats (I kept track and... he was right).  He wanted a Philly victory so badly he sweated an aura of yearning that, combined with all auras of yearning sweated by all the natives gathered around all the television sets in this metropolis of several million, covered a few hundred square miles of the eastern seaboard in a thick cloud of unrequited hope.  One kiss from the beloved and it would ignite into an orgy of love.  Just give 'em a win.  Just one.  This one.

And they won.  And the fireworks exploded, and the town and the streets and the people ran Philly red with joy.  I never saw anything like it.  It was beautiful.  I can only imagine the rampant victory boffing taking place.

I'm still not much of a baseball fan, but I think I'm starting to get it.

I just finished a story I'm pretty sure I'm incubating to be a novel.  By that, I mean I could turn it into one with very little effort.  I love the characters, can envision expanded scenes, and sure as heck can craft a longer story arc.  I turn stories into novels while washing dishes.

Wouldn't you know, I decide to write another story of the Andes and come up with a romance.  But it's fantasy, too.  Or horror.  Something.  While writing it I rediscovered my love for conquistadors.  Don't get me started.  I've always had a thing for conquerors.

It was kind of neat, though, taking an old idea of mine scribbled on a scrap of paper, combining it with a post-conquest setting, star-crossed lovers, the world's richest silver mine, Aymara beliefs that pre-date the Incas, and research into amalgamation.  Sometimes (okay, often) I think research is the most fun any author can have with a story--except, of course, for seeing it in print or (better yet) fan letters.  Everything else is pure work.

Here's a pic of one of the salt lakes in the story.  It looks redder in person.

I just get a kick out of stuff like this.

Newly Invented Words in English

While researching the Aymara language's propensity for generating neologisms, I came across this collection of English's most recently coined words. I scratched my head for a while over the writing ones.

Instead of saying "Stop overusing commas," perhaps I should be telling my critting partners to "Stop your virgu,ex,yusa!"

Few people in the U.S. follow what's going on in South America. I do, closely, thanks to having been married to someone from that region. The marriage left me with three children and a lingering interest in, and understanding of, affairs way south of the border.

This latest round with Venezuela, for example.  I've seen it play out before.  They kick out our ambassador (or someone), we kick out an ambassador or someone of theirs.  Or there will be a cycle of TV ads aimed at letting Americans who our real friends are and, by the way, our government is not looking after us properly.  Or bring in some old Cold War boogie man for joint military manuevers and see if they can scare us into line.  Or suddenly some government--Bolivia is always good for this--begins harping that unless the U.S. government changes somehow (cough... vote out the Republicans), there is going to be trouble.

It's ham-handed, and fascinating.  I'm not sure why, exactly, but these guys are sure--certain, absolutely convinced--that there's a gulf greater than the Pacific Ocean between the American public and the government.  If they could just get us to understand what we have to do... 

I wish I could believe they're well-meaning, but I can't be, because I really don't believe Chavez or Morales have our best interests at heart, and it sounds awfully like a threat when they start promising how there'll be trouble if we don't change our government.   Al Quaeda issues similar ultimatums every so often, and I don't see the logic in doing what they want, either.  Ironically, these same leaders call foul when Washington does it to them.   It's all politics and quite interesting.  It most likely will amount to nothing more than hot air.

So the sabers are rattling and the veiled threats are flying.  Must be getting close to an election.  :)

Just to be safe, I have forbidden the offspring from traveling to Bolivia until December.

I'd forgotten what a thrill it is to see my words in print. 

The other day I received my contributor copies of the The Pagan Anthology of Short Fiction, and it's lovely.  Beautiful book, and a great collection of magical stories.  I just love the company I'm keeping in the TOC.  :)





I started reading right away, of course, because I'm voracious.  But when I saw my own story, I thought: "Wow, did I really write that?"

I felt the same way when my novel was published years ago.  The words were amazing because I couldn't believe I'd arranged them.  Stories always feel so organic to me, I like to think they wrote themselves.  They're creations, and when they're published, take physical form, they stand apart from the author, exist outside the author.   That so totally cool.  The only other thing I have ever done that feels like that is giving birth.  My kids still astonish me.  It's like, "Where did you come from?  Oh yeah, me!"  Of course, kids are different, because I can't take full responsibility, but still.  It's strange wonderful.

I'm also pleased that my story made it into this anthology because it's one of the few alternate world fantasies the editors chose.  I wasn't sure the pagan element would be what they were looking for, but the foreword zeroes in on the story's themes of family tradition and healing.  They "got" it, and that makes me ever so happy.

My short story "Snake Eater" has been accepted by Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine.  It will appear in issue #39.  I just love this publication, so couldn't be happier.

I'm particularly happy about selling this story, because it is the first of my Andean fantasies to find a home.  I've recently been writing two other stories set in the Andes among the native Aymara and Quechua people, so this sale is encouraging.

In other news: I have finally defeated the evil head cold from Canada (although I have begun to suspect it was given to me by the eldest son, who picked up something nasty in London).  In any event, the invader has been repelled after five bottles of cough syrup, several packets of Thera-flu, and four entire boxes of tissue.  Had I known ahead, I could have bought stock in Kimberly-Clark.

And my eldest son is moving to London.  This may be the first step in his world-takeover...

I never thought I'd have anything in common with Salman Rushdie, other than knowing someone wanted me dead.  Maybe that was the reason I've always felt particularly at home with his fiction.  But then I realized just this morning that we both employ character pairing.  Many of his main characters are paired with an alter-ego, a Jungian shadow.  I use this technique also, with Dorilian and Stefan in my Triempery novels being the main examples.  Both are struggling with self-identity, and being presented to readers as characters in search of themselves.  Neither can see himself in the other, but I hope readers can.  It's a puzzle, not unlike real life, I like to think, where no man is truly an island, nor a unique evolutionary example.

I think some of this fondness for using alter-egos may stem from being migratory.  Rushie was an immigrant, something I cannot claim, but my childhood was a continual upheaval, and I seldom spent more than a couple years in any given location.  First grade was Virginia, second grade was Colorado, third grade Massachusetts, fifth grade Texas... constant cultural shift, even if within an overarching culture.  I was forever trying to figure out how a new city/school/regional ways worked.  Look at all the angles, try to see how life fits together.  Always the outsider, and I still tend to see myself that way.  So do many of my characters.

By pairing characters, they can illustrate two or more aspects of a problem.  I try to make these characters complex, so the reader can identity with both aspects.  Neither character can stake claim to the one "correct" viewpoint.  That's for readers to decide and I am delighted when readers tell me they sympathized with the antagonistic character, or realize the protagonist is about to do something totally wrong, even though he's sure he's totally in the right.  That's how terrible things happen.  People absolutely certain they have the right of it.

I also tracked down Mr. Rushdie's first novel, Grimus, published in 1975.  It's billed as a mix of science fiction and folktale.  Interesting.

More precisely... Civilization Revolution.

I've been playing this PS3 game with Steve for a month or so now.  It's tremendously addictive, and loads of fun.  What happened this past weekend, though, illuminated something about my personality.

I'm the person you want defending your empire.

My eldest son, Mike the Conqueror, stayed over the weekend and we played a game of Civilization.  Steve and I had not won militarily at that level and we wanted to try, so we started a game as the Germans, who come with military bonuses.  So the guys crank out one group of warriors and start exploring in one direction; they take the next group of warriors and explore in the other direction.  And I'm, like, "Guys?  Berlin is completely undefended."  Do they listen to me?  No.  They've discovered the Aztecs to the east and Alexander's Greeks to the west and, oh yeah, we have Japanese to the south!  They need warrior armies... everywhere. 

"We can take them!" cries Mike the Conqueror.
"Who first?" queries Steve the Controller.
"Hey, how about giving Berlin a damn archer unit?" pleads Linda the Defensive.

So the guys, rolling their eyes, generate an archer unit for Berlin.  I am placated... slightly.  We're still woefully underdefended.  Fortunately, our enemies are stupid and don't try to attack Berlin.  Maybe because Mike the Conqueror is urging Steve the Controller to attack Osaka. 

I continue plotting out our tech so we can stay ahead and not get annihilated by superior units.  Oh, and maybe we can get to space...

They make pretty short work of the Japanese, mostly because we discover catapults before anyone else.  I argue that we should leave Kyoto in place, crippled and pathetic as it now is, because it strategically blocks another civilization: France.  Why fight them if you can block them? 

"We can take them!"  says Mike.
"Maybe Linda's right," says Steve.
"Linda's right," says Linda.  "Berlin only has one archer.  All of our troops are in Osaka and Yokohama, and Montezuma may be acting all peaceful, but I don't trust him.  He's up to something.  He's winning the culture race."
"We can take him, too!  They've got nothing!" 

By then, we have tanks.  Three turns later, the guys have wiped Japan off the map and are invading Napoleon's France (this is not a real world map, you may have noticed).  They only need one unit of tanks for that... the rest have been shipped off to the eastern border to take on Montezuma's Aztecs.  They've never caused us any problems... which is probably why he's unprepared for Mike the Conqueror and Steve the Controller, gleefully delivering armies of tanks to blast him away. 

I set our new cities of Osaka and Yokohama to doing something useful, like building factories.

Several turns later, no more Aztecs.  Having discovered the Atom Bomb and wanting to demonstrate the cool graphics to Mike, Steve launches it at Paris.  Napoleon is annoying anyway (fear not, we're equal opportunity, having nuked Washington the week before because Abe Lincoln is just as annoying).  The French are weakened and Alexander the Great is getting worried.

He should be.  Mike the Conqueror has decided it's time to take him on.  He's always wanted the opportunity.

"Come on!  Look at the guy's troops!  They're wearing sandals and carrying sticks!  We've got tanks!"
I sigh.  "I've seen guys with sticks take out tanks!  It happens.  And Berlin still only has one archer!" 

I put the Aztec cities on more production and building space parts for the shuttle I plan to launch since they won't let me defend Berlin, or anywhere else.  Rather than listen to me complain, they give me a rifleman unit and a plane to protect Berlin, which doesn't need protecting because clearly our enemies are more worried about other things.  Athens will soon be toast and the French are clinging to Orleans...

And then we start launching space parts into space.  Yep, we're building an interstellar space ship.  The Germans are going to Alpha Centauri.

Mike the Conqueror belatedly notices that if our space ship reaches Alpha Centauri, we win the game.  Which is the point.  But he still wants to take out the French and the Greeks.

Not a shot.  But the guys do have fun with a few more full scale military engagements before our ship triumphantly colonizes a new planet.

Germans win!

If we'd been playing again a human being and not a computer, though, we'd have been in trouble, because I just know a human being would have attacked our capital city and its one archer. 

Mike and Steve joke that if we ever play each other in a multiple player game, I will only have one city but it will be impossible to take.  That's probably true.  Not the one city part.  I believe in expansion.  But my cities will be defended to the teeth.  Those guys are going to wear themselves out attacking me... and then I'll launch my nuke at whoever's annoying me most.  :)   Mike the Conqueror will never know what hit him.

I have yet to meet a vacation that didn't yield valuable research.  Even familiar destinations harbor a few surprises just waiting to be unearthed.  Just last winter in Milwaukee, I toured a microbrewery and learned how root beer is made.  But I am fondest of journeys to points more distant.  I can't think of greater pleasure than talking with people who've lived lives different from mine, and seeing geology, architecture and history that are new to me.

Granted, Canada isn't exactly the height of foreignness to a Yank like myself.  Sharing a border fosters a degree of similarity, and there's lots of cross-fertilization in the immigration and historical arenas.  Even so, every time I go to Canada, I return wanting to live there.  The people are so darn nice and I find their opinions refreshing, and their country lovely.  Something tells me I will buy that condo in Halifax someday.  Until then, I simply pay a visit every other year or so.  Next year, Vancouver.

The last two times I visited the Maritime provinces, I saw mostly fog.  Last year, our cruise ship docked in St. John, New Brunswick, and... seriously, from the deck it was pure pea soup.  Nary a sign of the city.  I had no clue how far we might be from habitation.  Well, this time no fog and look...



Yep, straight from the deck of the ship.  Right smack in downtown St. John (bigger buildings off to the right).  Never saw it first two trips.  Similarly, we finally got a good view of the Bay of Fundy from the Martello Tower.  And of the tower itself, which is where the research comes in, because the tower was cool.  Not unique, by any means.  There are scores of these towers still standing around the world, the British being prolific tower-builders and having an extensive empire to boot.  This is, however, the first I have explored.



Trust me, there was a great view.  I also got to peek around inside the tower, thanks to the nicest docent, who didn't insist I pay for a proper tour (I was on a guided tour already that did not allow time for a proper tower visit).  She explained quite a few things, actually.  I have Steve to thank for any pictures, because I spent most of my time poking around inside and learning about how the tower's construction allowed it to resist cannonballs.  The ugly top, by the way, is a modern addition from WWII.  As the tour guide wryly noted, though the tower was manned so as to detect any German U-boat incursions into the Bay of Fundy, the Bay is so often shrouded in deep fog the Germans could have sailed their entire fleet into it without anyone the wiser. 

Here's a shot of the interior of the tower, where the men lived:



Spartan, but somehow comfy. 

Anyway, I'm back from Canada.  Back from the cruise.  Nursing a nasty cold.  That's not Canada's fault, though.  I spent a week on a cruise ship with 4,000 other people, and you can just bet a bunch of them had viruses to share.

Thought I'd share this favorite essay by Peter H. Myers.  He's an artist, a photographer, but what he has to say about new artists trying to make it today applies just as much to new writers.

From the Big House to the Outhouse

A recent conversation got me thinking about the power of fiction to offend people, even when it's not the writer's intention to provoke, and whether a writer has a responsibility to write fiction others will find acceptable.

So whose values define acceptable?

Should a writer frame a story so as to offend no one?  Impossible.
Should a writer frame a story so as to NOT offend the most vocal?   Not if by doing so she walls off entire categories of fiction or characters.
Should a writer frame a story so as to offend as many people as possible?  Sometimes, particularly if by offending them the writer also challenges them to examine something that merits examining.

The thing is, any time a writer takes on prevailing societal hot spots--pedophilia, gender issues, ethnic perceptions, genocide, among others (and there are a lot of these)--that writer runs the risk of offending someone.  Maybe lots of someones.  An entire generation of Americans despised William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch, and another generation embraced the book. 

One of my novels took on gender perceptions.  I wrote the book with the intent of looking at a few different issues surrounding a female dominant society.  One of these was that reproduction was bound to have a place, and the right to reproduce, and how these women went about it (they were alien humanoids) was going to have a female focus.  In my society, reproduction was the prize.  These females craved to be mothers.  Well...

I found out at Wiscon that I'd offended a large number of feminists who despised that motherhood should be a defining factor in a female led society.   I found myself under attack by them AND by men who thought because of the way I dealt with male characters in the book, I must be a man-hater.   And the funny thing about these attacks was that I considered myself a moderate feminist and I most definitely like men.  Love 'em, mostly (there always being exceptions, and not only in men).  To be called a man-hater and disloyal to feminism was crushing.

And when it came time to write the sequel, I kept thinking about how I might write it so as not to offend either of those groups.

I couldn't.  My own concepts of these issues had driven the writing of the initial book.  My philosophies had shaped the characters, society and prose.  Having a censor on my shoulder interfered with every aspect of the writing.  I eventually worked it out, but that was lost time.

I don't blame the critics.  They did what critics do, which was challenge my ideas.  I blame myself, because I'm a pleaser, and by wanting to please all of the readers who might possibly read my work, I forgot to be a thinker, a communicator.  I hobbled myself until all I could write was drivel.  And I knew it was drivel.  That's why I decided to stop caring what people think.  While writing, I don't give a rat's patootie.

I still care what people think, of course.  I'm  still a pleaser.  And I want to communicate the complexity and beauty of human nature, but not have my attempt misinterpreted.  I polish until I think I have it right.  And then I care about it afterward.  I care about it when I look at markets to which to submit.  I care about it enough to feel bad if someone says they think it insensitive to their point of view.  I don't set out to offend people, but I can't afford--as a writer and as a thinking human being--to care so much I don't address sensitive issues in my fiction.  The point at which that happens is passive censorship, and I don't cotton to that.

The only values a writer must follow absolutely are her own.

While I'm suffering post-partum depression after finishing up a novel, I've been reading in the blogsphere.  I'm a lurker, not a commenter, but I get around.  One thread led to another, which led to another, and I found myself reading a conversation about the injustice of publications that want their submissions snail mail, which devolved into one about non-pro writers having to jump through hoops that pros don't, etc, etc.  That's an ongoing complaint.  But one thing about the poster's argument irritated me, which was that this person apparently writes for plenty of other publications in a specialized area of interest, for more money, and therefore his opinion has extra weight.  Well... not really.

The term "on spec" was bandied about in a misleading way.  As if it was equivalent to what a fiction writer does.  In non-fiction, there's a bias toward solicited work (requested by the publication) and willingness to look at work written on spec (in hope a publication will want it).  Until quite recently, I supplemented my income nicely by writing medical articles--new surgical procedures, devices, practices, treatments.  A single article could net me hundreds or, sometimes, thousands of dollars.   I wrote many of them on spec and never had trouble finding homes for my articles.  I wrote the bulk, however, by request.   Once I had a few articles under my belt, these magazines started asking me to go on assignment.   That's often the case.  There are LOTS of trade publications specifically geared to doctors, hospital administrators, nurses and other health professionals, and these publications are enriched by bountiful dollars from drug companies (mostly), medical device manufacturers and brokerage firms.  They pay well because they can afford to, and there's a small pool of skilled writers producing the content they need to fill their pages.  It wasn't hard for me to place my on spec articles because the need for content was great and there wasn't a huge supply.

Fiction is a whole different animal.  Except for rare commercially oriented publications like the New Yorker, Cosmospolitan, or Playboy, fiction doesn't even inhabit the same world.  Advertising dollars for literary or genre fiction magazines are scarce.  Payment for authors is, alas, skimpy.   As for supply... there's a surplus of fiction chasing those few markets able to pay more than the cost of a stamp.  Someone has to read it and, let's face facts, some of these editors aren't getting paid much, either.  If they get 10% fewer submissions because they insist on snail mail, it's unfortunate but not a deal-breaker.  Ask them nicely, maybe they'll do it your way.  But if they don't, don't hit them over the head with how you do it with your non-fiction.

Apple, meet Orange.

I was reading elsewhere the criteria folk have for where to submit and the criteria used to make these decisions.  So I started thinking about my own.

Do I send to higher paying markets first?  Absolutely.  I'm writing as a professional, so why shouldn't I get paid as much as possible for my work?  So I do usually send to the pro markets first.  I'm getting personal rejections in lots of cases, so that keeps me wanting to continue knocking at the door.  After that, though, it gets a bit intuitive.

The middle rungs consist of markets that appeal to me because I respect the editors, like the artwork (always more points for good artwork), the works/authors they publish and how I feel my work would benefit from being showcased there.  Some modest-paying or token payment publications consistently present excellent fiction, or have a knack for "discovering" new talent.  Being published by them, even if for very little money, would be something to get excited about.

Other markets are the ones I just like reading, for whatever reason.  They may not even publish my usual kind of story, but if I ever have anything up their alley, I'll send it their way just to test the waters.  Because I like 'em.  If they ever say they really like my work, we're buds for life. 

At the bottom of the submission ladder are 'zines I don't even consider because of certain factors.  They're so not my flavor of the genre that I don't see the point of reading or submitting to them.  I don't like the editors.  I don't like the stories they choose.  Or they pay nothing. 

The latter is a stance some people might say is silly.  Does it really matter, if I can't sell the story elsewhere?  Umm... maybe not, if the publication falls under the heading of being one I just plain like.  I'd do that.  Otherwise, if I'm going to be giving my work away anyway, then I might as well just publish it myself by putting it up on my website, or on one of my sons' sites.  Yes, I know getting my name "out there" should mean by any means possible, but I'm not convinced at this point that a "for the love" publication accomplishes that.  I'm open to the exceptions.

Doing much research on agents and those that might be interested in my magnum opus.   Interesting side note: contacted the agent who is still sitting on a full for another novel (a year later) and asked about its status.  Still hasn't read it.  She asked if I had written any other novels, and I said I did, so get this... she would like to see this one, too.  But she wants (another) exclusive.  I told her I've already sent it out.  She asked to see the first three chapters anyway, no exclusive, and I'm okay with that.

Also, got some lovely comments from aliettedb on said novel, and insightful discussion about the prologue, which I still don't know what to do with, and other plot and character things.    It's always fun to hear which characters readers end up liking or simply "getting".

Ordered a couple of fun zipper pouches from Etsy, these from Norway.  The fall of the dollar has an upside, namely that I am finding wonderful prices for non-US goods!  Even the postage is very reasonable.   Last month I ordered a favorite condiment (peppery orange preserves for my morning toast) directly from Italy for less than it would cost buying from my usual Michigan vendor.  Have yet to meet a penny I'm not willing to pinch.

I've had the delightful pleasure recently of reading novels written by friends and in workshops.  I admit I had a terrible backlog, caused by my inability (well, deep reluctance) to read novels by anyone when I am in the middle of writing or deep-editing one of my own.  So after editing Sordaneon within an inch of its life, I took time out to read those I had promised.  What a delicious treat!

I'm actually happiest as a reader.  Well, I'm HAPPIEST as a writer.  But with other people's work, I'm happiest as a reader.  I love delving into their imagined worlds and going along for the ride.  And while I'm quite comfortable wearing a critter's hat (maybe too comfortable, some folk might say), it's more natural for me to link with the characters and chase the plot.  The real joy of fiction for me is not its perfection (there's a place for that, and I am always thrilled to find a work I think achieves it), but in what it allows me to discover: a character I love, a setting that enthralls me, a plot I find compelling.  I've read published works that fall flat on all three, including one that's up for a Nebula.  So it's a pleasure to read an unpublished novel that has me eagerly turning pages to find out what happens next, even if it might not yet be as polished as the published ones.  All the polish in the world can't make a lame story shine, and a few rough edges can't take the sparkle out of a good one.   I'm not talking about rough draft efforts here, but stories that are well-written and ready, or almost ready, to go out the door.

I truly expect these books to see print one day, probably sooner than my own.  I'm looking forward to that, because if there's one thing I love more than reading a good story, it's seeing a cover artist's interpretation!

Merciless Steve finished the book, lopped out another 5,000 words and pronounced it A+.  In fact, I got raves from him about the new, improved climax.   Steve NEVER raves.  The last scene he raved about was in a book by Harlan Coben, the title of which I forget.  So I'm quite pleased.   He also said he doesn't think anymore can be cut without totally butchering it.  I agree. 

He then proceeded to give my synopsis a D.

I'm not surprised.  I have yet to produce a synopsis for this book that I truly think does the job.  He suggested focusing less on the plot and more on the characters.  Hmm... maybe he has a point.  Though it has a cool plot, this is a character-driven novel.  I'm going to take another stab at it.  Not much good sending out a novel with a synopsis that sells it short.  I know from previous submissions that the query grabs and the five sample pages work.  I just want that total package.

I'd actually call this a sunken temple, but archaeologists call it subterranean, or semi-subterranean.  The native Aymara people insist on calling it subterranean, and I found a woman to tell me why.  "Because it has a gateway to the cities underground." 

Underground cities have a way of catching my interest.  According to native legend, the Andes are crisscrossed by underground passages and host to a number of underground cities from which supernatural beings emerge to conduct their business.  These underground men are small, hunchbacked and not particularly fond of humans, but neither are they malevolent.  Legend further states that humans can open the door to the underworld if they are 1) pure of heart, 2) stand in the subterranean temple and 3) sing sacred songs to the gods.  The songs, I was told, belong to a special group of native shamans, but no one seemed to know where I might find them.  Not being particularly drawn to possibly spending the rest of my life underground among little hunchbacked men, I didn't make a concerted effort.

The walls of the subterranean temple are lined with stone heads.  Two distinct types can be seen: noble, human looking heads of the usual stone, and spectral or skeletal heads of some other, whiter stone.  These latter, I was told, represent the supernatural beings of the underworld.  No one knows for certain why these heads dot the walls of the temple.  They could represent specific deities or classes of deities.  Scholars speculate the area was used for some kind of game, and perhaps the heads played some part in the game.  Did they get special points for striking a phantom with a ball, or tossing a ring around the god?  We probably will never know.

The temple has long since been stripped of its gold and silver, but it's still pretty impressive.  Looking to the east, the immense stone gate way of the Apakana palace rise to frame a monolith.  The monolith looks a lot like a space man.  Seriously, the dude has a space suit on, or something that looks like a space suit.  More on him later.



And a few of the heads:

One of the great joys of writing is research.   Heck, research is one of the great joys of living!  It's filled with those wonderful moments where you say, "Hey, let's find out more about this!"  That's how I came up with that profound collection of trivia my family loves to snicker at, except of course when I'm winning at Trivial Pursuit.  Take THAT, siblings!

Like last week, when a scene with Deben and Dorilian needed something more going on than talking, so I decided to give Deben a hobby.   Every man needs a hobby.  Deben being Deben (both passive and agoraphobic), it couldn't be anything outdoors and I wanted it to be more interesting than, say, stamp-collecting.  So I harked back to my father, whose love of aquariums, ponds and exotic fish is now the stuff of family legend, and thought Deben was a fine candidate to be into the Triemperal equivalent of raising and breeding koi fish.  Of course, the fish won't be koi, nor do I get deeply into the details, but I began researching koi and why this pastime developed, and what's the appeal and what all's involved. 

I always end up learning tons more than I will use.  In this book, Deben feeds the fish, we see a few of them, Dorilian ponders why a man who has been shaped by captivity is himself so drawn to maintaining captives.  That sort of thing.  It's set dressing.

Who knows, though?  Research enriches the grist in the mill.  It mutates.  The ins and outs of koi fish will show up elsewhere, in some other form I hope readers will find interesting.  The same way my research into obstetrics (when I was pregnant) and parasitism led to the prologue to Sordaneon and, indeed, some of its core concepts.  Or the way my research over the years into subjects like metallurgy, runes, Aymara shamanism and Earth Mother worship led to "The Rune Hag's Daughter." 

So now, excuse me, I'm off to do more research on ancient Greek wine storage and vessels.

One of my favorite places to visit in Bolivia is Tiawanaku, or Tiahuanaco, depending on whether one prefers the Aymara or Spanish spelling.  Doesn't matter, pronounced the same.  These ruins inhabit the Altiplano some miles south of Lake Titicaca.   The lake once reached the city, about fourteen hundred years ago, when it was thriving.  By the time of the Incas, the city was in decline, but it was so monumental the Incas believed it was built by the god Viracocha himself.  The Spanish, of course, completely looted the place of its treasures, and they also took a lot of the stonework to build roads and churches, leaving very little for us today.  Even so, the ruins are pretty impressive, with a pyramid, sunken temple and some nifty stairs and doorways.  A couple of features stand out.  One is this door, the Door of the Sun (see below). 

The monolithic doorway, carved from a single 44 ton piece of andesite, is situated so the sun shines through its aperture at the winter solstice. The niches on the side are probably for offerings.  The top is carved with a famous image of Viracocha.  I've always found a few things about Viracocha quite fascinating.  According to myth, he's an old, bearded white-skinned man . . . but Europeans didn't show up until the 1500s, and Tiawanaku was built around 700 AD.  Also, Viracocha is depicted with tears running down his face.  He's known as the Weeping God, the Lifegiver.  His tears are the source of life, and life--as we all know--is a sorrowful business.  He's a compassionate, not warlike, soul.  Another thing that struck me is that viracocha is a term of respect still used by the Aymara people for a man of high esteem, not unlike the English Lord, or the Spanish Don.  As gods go, he sounds like a decent sort.

One of the things I love about my husband is his utter willingness to call out crap. He has no patience with authorial laziness and makes big bold pen marks in my margins showing me how to get to the point.

Getting to the point is something I can always do better. It's cultural, in part. Folk from Wisconsin tend to be indirect. "Being nice" is a virtue in Wisconsin, and we learn early on the fine art of pussyfooting around just about everything. It's not that Midwesterners are bland and pleasant, it's that we learn to approach nearly everything specifically to avoid offending anyone. It comes from a desire to not be misunderstood.

Trying to avoid being misunderstood leads to redundancy in some of my exposition and dialog. I often say the same thing two or three different ways, in different places, every time I think I need to clarify.  Merciless Steve likes to attack such instances because he believes clarifying once is enough and any attentive reader already gets the point.  And he's right.  Every time I make those cuts and run the chapter(s) past a reader or several, my readers understand what's going on just fine.

Getting to the point cuts out a lot of words.  It can leave my writing a little spare in spots, in which cases I go back and embellish, but not by repeating what was taken out.  That usually fixes things.  But I like the clean flow my stories achieve when Merciless Steve unmuddles my prose and lets the characters out from under layers of words.  They move faster, speak crisply, feel more passionately.  The latter is the most important to me.  Passion, when verbose, becomes thick and deliberate.  Sometimes action is self-explanatory.  Sometimes passion just needs to explode.