Today’s little piece is from early in Swan Riders, the sequel to Children of Peace. In this scene our narrator has just met the titular riders for the first time. It’s not a brilliant paragraph but I kinda like how it’s structured.
*I considered the two Riders. They could have been picked for contrast. Francis Xavier was big and broad, with a face as round as the moon. Sri was as narrow as if she’d shut herself in a door, her face almost comically tapered and intense, like a heron’s face: bright eyes and beak. He was thoughtfully slow; she was delightfully quick. They were both murderers, of course.
*
One of the upsides of reading other writers’ blogs: realizing you’re not crazy. Or at least, you’re not alone. On reflection I suppose “not crazy” does not follow.
A case in point: many, many writers seem to have playlists for their books. I was so glad to learn this: I didn’t know anyone else did it! I always have, for fiction. I’m fairly literal about it, too. For my abandoned World War Two book (which eventually became Ghost Maps, my first book of poetry), I listened to scratchy old Glen Miller recordings — the “lost records” they recorded in German and broadcast into Germany in a “Radio Free Europe” sort of way. Ever hear someone try to cover “Is You Or Is You Ain’t My Baby” in German? The clash of civilizations has rarely been so audible.
For Plain Kate, I listened to a single album over and over again: Burkene Bruse’s Stone Chair. This, for instance, is Kate’s “main theme,” the song that instantly transports me to the foggy wood and the river, the rough-hewn granduer and the soft sadness of the Russian and Northern European tales from which KATE borrowed its flavour.
The books I’m drafting — Children of Peace, and its sequel The Swan Riders — take place in a far future, in a depopulated Saskatchewan. In the Children of Peace world, they’ve lost the car, the suburbs, the principle that collective punishment is wrong, and (apparently) the electric guitar. I want a to evoke a world where AIs ride horses: modern bluegrass is obviously the way to go. Or, actually, I started out listening to Basia Bulat, and Pandora took me to modern bluegrass from there. This, for instance, is the love theme (GUYS! I wrote a book that needed a love theme!) for book one, where the hero realizes that a) quietly preparing all one’s life to be ritually murdered in a good cause may not in fact be a good thing and b) she may be in big scary love.
But the book I’m editing, Sorrow’s Knot, is so far mostly music-less. I do have a playlist, but I’ve never found the music, the music that takes me right into the story. This may, in fact, have been part of the problem when it came to getting the book out of the box. (See this blog entry, in which my book is STUCK.) LIke Plain Kate, it’s a high fantasy, so the usual moody rock (Van Morrison, Cowboy Junkies) and gospel soul that populates my iPod seem like obvious nos.
It might make sense to go geographically near, but that has proven problematic. The Sorrow’s Knot setting got its start from ancient North America. That is, the same way the people in Plain Kate are NOT Polish, the people in Sorrow’s Knot are NOT Mandan. They may build the same houses and live in the same landscape and grow the same food, but the whole bit about the disembodied zombies is not, to say the least, historically accurate. But the traditional music of the Great Plains is hard to come by, and most modern interpretations of it that I’ve found have a faint whiff of recreational ethnicity — you know, white people hanging dream catchers from their rearview mirrors and visiting sweat lodges on vacation. To idealize and romanticize (and steal parts of) a culture like that is nearly as problematic as demonizing it: both treat the culture as something less than human. That’s something I’m acutely aware of, as a white chick writing about not-white people, and maybe that’s why I haven’t been able to sink into that music.
I think drumming might be the way to go. One of the characters in the book is a drummer, and I love drum music. (I bought my first djembe this year; my bodhran sadly needs reskinning.) I could listen to this guy below forever, but he doesn’t seem to have an album. I don’t know that my blog readers constitute a crowd, but I’m tempted to crowd source here. Anyone want to recommend some music? Something world-beat — not necessarily North American. (Taiko, for instance, would be fine.) Something with some force and energy, though slow is okay. Not too crystal-healing-dolphin. No orchestral windchimes tinklers need apply.
(This is from the novel I’m drafting, The Swan Riders, a sequel to Children of Peace)
“So,” said the thing that had not yet decided on a name. Michael? Michael, from the Hebrew מִיכָאֵל, Mikha’el, “who is like God.” Michael, the warrior angel. The leader of heaven’s armies. Michael, slayer of dragons. Michael, patron of soldiers. Michael, the body on the slab in front of him. Michael.
“So,” said the thing: “This was billed as ontologically disturbing. And I’ve gotta say, it’s living up.”
A body, a human body. His body. A flop of hair, strong cheekbones, bit of a scruffy jaw, lips almost girlish. He’d looked clever when he was alive. He didn’t look clever any more.
Across the body, Aranjinda stood hunched up in a lumpish cardigan. The thing checked and found that, yes, the room was cold.
Well, it would be.
His ceramic fingers pulled up and twirled a lock of the sandy hair. It was longer than he usually liked to let it get. “I had pretty good hair, though, didn’t I?” he said.
This is from The Swan Riders, the novel I’m drafting: a sequel to Children of Peace..
The stillness of my previous life was punctuated by whirlwind trips to Halifax, where I was sent so that I might keep up with my country’s affairs, and so that my parents might continue to love me. More the later than the former. If one holds royal children hostage, if one hopes that the prospect of their death will deter their parents from declaring war, it does not do to let those bonds weaken. It is better if the parents must occasionally look the children in the eye. It is best if the children are loved.
I believe, for what it is worth at this late date, that my parents did love me.
The king my father did, certainly. It was easier for him: he was consort, not ruler. It would not fall to him to make the decision that would kill me. As for the queen my mother: between us it was never easy. But it was her duty to love me and she did her duty.
I am pleased to report that my fledging novel is flapping along.
This is the second book of Children of Peace, which for now I’m calling The Swan Riders. I’ve added a few thousand words this week. Specifically I wrote the opening chapter, and the climax for the first act. Unfortunately, while I know the beginning and end of the first act, I don’t know the middle, don’t know my way from A to B. (I do know they go by horse and existential crisis, but that’s about it. Speaking of: shoot, I think I’m going to have to take a riding lesson or two. At least it will add some variety to the rather gruesome research I’ve been doing into sucking chest wounds.)
It’s possible when I do take that A to B journey that makes up the middle it won’t end up where I think it’s going to and I’ll have to scrap the first-act-crisis chapter. But oh well. The important thing for now is that I like it. I have one character who’s a hoot to write for. I am always trapping myself with emotionally closed characters who are interested in things like order and restraint (Greta Stuart, I’m looking at you) so when I get over the top characters it’s delicious change of weather. This one is prone to replying to little questions like “Are you all right” with: “A list of the various ways in which I am not all right, Greta, would top the Oxford English Dictionary. The unabridged one. With the little magnifying glass.”
Anyway, I write every spare second and think of the book when I’m not wiritng. When you start daydreaming about your own stuff, you’re on to something.
I’m setting a #wipmadness goal for July of 15,000 words total. I’m at 7,000 now.
Tuesday I was driving alone on a quiet highway. The clouds were high puffy storybook clouds, with lots of blue between them. When I was almost home I drove into the shadow of a cloud, and saw then saw the front edge of the shadow sweeping along ahead of the car: as if by driving I was pushing the light ahead of me.
The whole week has been like that: a delicate week of edges, beginnings and strangeness of light. It began last Friday when I finished the first draft of Children of Peace, a book that tumbled out of me in less than six months. I’m doing a few last minute edits, and hope to send the whole thing to my agent before the week is out.
I also got a new job. Starting Monday, I’ll be a writer/editor for the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics — a gig so cool it nearly sounds fictional. I’ll be halftime, working for PI in the mornings, and retiring to The Bordello (my novel-writing office) in the afternoons. I probably will continue to say not much about my professional writing here (it’s not the venue) but I must at least mention this, because a) it’s a permanent job and b) PI is amazingly awesome place. I glimpsed Leonard Susskind, an inventor of string theory, today. Fortunately I was too far away to fangirl him.
Finally, Plain Kate has been showered with honours this week — not just the TD Canadian Children’s Literary Award, which I gave its own headline, but the Sunburst Award honouring Canadian literature of the fanastic, and the Rocky Mountain Book Award, which is Alberta’s children’s choice award. With the Sunburst I’m keeping short-list company with Charles de Lint. With the Rocky Mountain Book award, thousands of kids across Alberta will read the nominated books and vote. Once this sinks in I’m sure I’ll be thrilled.
So it really is a strange time for me: liminal, a threshold time. I feel vulnerable and happy; at a loss and excited. Ready to try something new.
I don’t know about your month, fellow mad ones, but my June went fast. So fast that I need a quick visual check-in:
Big grant deadlines on star post-its, little word count and what-I-wrote notes, and (in case you thought the #wipmadness stickers were merely metaphorical) STICKERS, for my 1000-word-and-up days. I did indeed hit my goal of adding 15K and completing a first draft — or very nearly. I’m down to entering proofreader’s changes (two-thirds of the book yet to go) and completing this stack of edits:
But, yes, I still hope to be done Thursday.
Anyone else have visual keep-on-track tools they want to share?
Okay, but, so — I finished my book! I got yet another late start, and the outer office was yet again being painted (this time the trim, so I couldn’t even close my door), but I did it. I took yesterday’s chapter apart and took a bit here and a bit there and built a whole new chapter around it. Almost 2000 words, and some of them — even most of them — snapping good. I was determined to finish. Dance class tonight started at 6:15, and at 6:08, I typed: “The End.”
Of course, there are various values of done. My index card riser is full of notes, some of them easy (“check the season for cottonwood seeds; include”) some of them very difficult (“X is attracted to Y. Seed.”). And the capstone scene — the one I wrote hopped up on paint fumes with pole dancers practicing this new (and eye-opening) thing they do with hula hoops — came hard and will need another draft.
But I think I will send it to the proofreader today, and try to tackle the index cards (in parallel to the proofing) next week, and try to get it to my agent in earliest July.
Remember when I said Monday more good writing day would finish off Children of Peace? And Monday was not that day, but was instead a day for antibiotics and napping? And Tuesday was not that day, but instead a day for the landlord to paint the outer office while playing “La Vida Loca” at top volume?
But TODAY …. Today was not that day either.
I did have a good writing day. Though slowed by sick-kid late start and made dizzy with paint fumes and heat, I did a kicking little piece of revision, and then found a foothold on the first scene in the last chapter, and took the heck off. I wrote almost 2000 words, and had just called my husband to say “order pizza because I’m not coming home until this book is done: good luck!” when the pole dancers I sublease from (really) showed up to teach their evening class.
But it was perhaps just as well. As I paused to call my hubby I had a realization. The writing had been good but wasn’t building to anything. All at once I saw how to fix that, but it wasn’t a small thing: it was a couple of hour’s work. I’ll give it a try tomorrow. If I’m right, tomorrow may be the day I finish this book.
Remember when I said one more good writing day would finish off Children of Peace? And yesterday was not that day, but was instead a day for antibiotics and napping? Yeah? Well, today was not that day either. Today was a day for the landlord painting the outer office/dance floor Barney pink and purple and listening to Ricky Martin. Nevertheless, I wrote a very fine chapter. And maybe TOMORROW….
It’s exciting (though a bit frustrating) to teeter near the brink of done.
Anyway, it’s Tuesday, and I wanted to show you … Chapter Titles! This is just a me thing, isn’t it? No one else is excited? Well, it’s my blog.
Children of Peace did not initially have chapter titles, just some placeholder titles to help me find my way around the Scrivener document. But then I saw an electronic book for the first time, and it had a table of contents that listed clickable chapter titles. So it seemed to me that chapter titles had utility — and that they should be short, intriguing, and spoiler-free. The poet in me (which sometimes wants to be an ad-man) was completely up for that. Here are the existing titles:
Plume
Lull
Guinevere
Spartacus
Goats
Royal Visit
Greta Chooses
The Grey Room
Pressure Valve
Dreamlock
Elián Chooses
Class Two
Shock Ship
Shot
Consent
Terms
Three
Two
One
Zero
Search
About this Archive
This page is an archive of recent entries in the Children of Peace category.
