Escapism, Writing, and Life: A Guest Article from Linda Robertson

I know Linda Robertson from a lot of angles in the writing world. I helped with her publicity when her book Jovienne first released, she’s been a guest at the Gen Con Writer’s Symposium a couple times, and now, she is one of the great writers whose stories appear in the anthology, Once Upon the Longest Night: An Anthology of Vampire Stories. Vampire mythos and romance couple with the magic of the winter solstice, this book is not to be missed! It’s currently on Kickstarter, so if you want to help this book happen, head over there and back it!

In this article, Linda talks about escapism! I hope you enjoy. —Melanie R. Meadors

***

Everyone knows that reading can be a gratifying escape. Immersing yourself in the adventures of fascinating characters or in a gripping other world gives your mind something to do instead of scrolling through social media’s endless opinions and memes, or links to watch another handful of commentaries that rehash the ‘story of the moment’ with new voices. A book, a warm-blanket, and cup of cocoa at hand, can provide a much-needed respite from the overwhelm of reality.

Of course, reading is not the only means of escape. Some folks go to the gym or meet up to shoot some hoops with friends, while others gather for a dinner out or serve as a volunteer in their community. Some folks simply get that freezer pizza out of the oven and hit play on Lord of the Rings because watching Frodo and Sam again provides a comfort equal to hanging with old friends.

   “Humans had built a world inside the world, which

reflected it in pretty much the same way as a drop

of water reflected the landscape. And yet... and yet...

   Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all

the things you might think they would want to escape

from — hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was

intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of

themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them

further in.”

― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

Reading was something I enjoyed from a young age, but looking back, it is evident that when seeking escape my mind turned to writing. This increased as a mother of four boys, because playing in my made-up world where all the control was mine was like a mini-vacation on Fantasy Island. De plane! De plane! However, my boys are mostly grown now – only one high-schooler is still in the house. I’ve grown and changed as much as they have, coming more firmly into my own via the challenges and triumphs of raising those young men, and these soft but jaded eyes see the world differently. Being headstrong and finding my own way through the late 80’s to arrive in the present so close to fifty is one thing. Helping my progeny find their way through the new millennium while learning to step back in the face of their own headstrong ways, has been quite another thing. 

So, it’s no surprise that the escapism I once found in writing has changed.

    “Hence the uneasiness which they arouse in those who, 

for whatever reason, wish to keep us wholly imprisoned in 

the immediate conflict. That perhaps is why people are so 

ready with the charge of "escape." I never fully understood 

it till my friend Professor Tolkien asked me the very simple 

question, "What class of men would you expect to be most 

preoccupied with, and hostile to, the idea of escape?" and 

gave the obvious answer: jailers.” 

― C.S. Lewis, On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature

In recent years, nerves and anxiety about many things, personal and business-wise – i.e. reality – kept me restless, non-productive, or inactive entirely. Sitting still and focusing became more difficult than it should be. Largely for that reason, the work to be done on the seventh Persephone Alcmedi book loomed like Poe’s pendulum swinging over me, hissing at my lack of progress. 

Then, the opportunity to write something for the Once Upon the Longest Night Anthology came along. 

It was not a novel, so the commitment felt smaller and doable. While the theme was similar enough to my body of work to give me confidence, the strong romantic element required a shift that held some challenge.

It was a perfect distraction.

Charissa Weaks, who envisioned this anthology and lead the charge, coached me through my ignorance of the romance genre and the predictable flaws in my first draft. She helped me see another way to shape a tale, I embraced the challenge before me. I learned much from that process and am quite proud of my story, Blooded. Being included in such an impressive line up is a thrill – the Once Upon the Longest Night anthology truly has so much to offer!

   “{…every form of fiction} can be a safe place you go, like

going on holiday, and it can be somewhere that, while

you’ve escaped, actually teaches you things you need to 

know when you go back, that gives you knowledge and 

armour and tools to change the bad place you were in.” 

― Neil Gaiman

With renewed hope – and a fire I promised myself I would keep kindled, my work on Persephone’s seventh installment resumed. I have found myself asking, ‘How do the main characters find the strength to keep stepping up to the plate after all I’ve thrown at them already?’ And an exploration of those lesser characters who are still on the stage has begun, assessing who has something more to give, but haven’t yet. ‘Why not?’ I wonder, ‘What is their tipping point? What bad thing has to happen that makes them step forward and say, Enough!’

I blame my personal life for these questions. There are things afoot where I have an expectation of extended family stepping up to, as Samwise put it, “share the load.” After searching through my characters for someone with the skills to be important in the #7 story arc, it is clear that I am rehashing and reexamining my real life through this other lens in the world where my control is absolute.

Escapism by writing has become therapy for those aspects of life I wish were different but cannot change. Viewing a different fantasy situation with theoretic and applicable similarities, then gauging all the possibilities and motivations the other characters bring to the table, has helped me find not only distance from the overwhelm of the real situation, but a means to work towards satisfying resolution.

Happy reading, writing, or however it is that you spend your ‘escape’ time.

  “There is nothing more to be said or to be done tonight,

so hand me over my violin and let us try to forget for half

an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable

ways of our fellowmen.”

― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Five Orange Pips

Linda Robertson is an internationally published author with seven novels in two separate fantasy/speculative fiction series. She also has a handful of short stories to her credit, and four more in four separate anthologies coming over the next year. Also a musician, she composed and produced an orchestral score of original music for her most recent novel, Jovienne.  www.LindaRobertson.com 

Learn more about the Once Upon the Longest Night anthology here:

https://onceuponanthologies.com/

Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/onceuponanthology/

Check out the backer options at the official kickstarter page here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/onceupon/once-upon-the-longest-night-an-anthology-of-vampir?ref=discovery&term=Once%20Upon%20Anthologies 

Time Meddling, Doctor Who, and the Vikingverse!

Ian Stuart Sharpe’s new book, The All Father Paradox, is like a Norse love child of American Gods and Doctor Who! Please welcome Ian to Once and Future, where he explains the connection. And be sure to check out The All Father Paradox, book 1 of the Vikingverse series!

MONK: Mischief? No, no. A master plan. A master plan to end all master plans. 

DOCTOR: Oh, is that so? 

MONK: The whole course of history changed in one single swoop. 

DOCTOR: By wiping out the Viking fleet? 

MONK: Exactly, Doctor, exactly. Of course, obviously, I don't have to remind you that the main reason William the Conqueror won the Battle of Hastings, was because King Harold had to march to Stamford Bridge and defeat the Vikings first. 

DOCTOR: So you plan to save him the journey? 

MONK: That's right. Precisely. A fresh army, no desertions. Why King Harold will kick William back to Normandy before knows what happened. It's quite a plan, eh?

The Summer of 1965. William Hartnell’s original Doctor Who confronted Peter Butterworth’s Meddling Monk over a dastardly plan to rewrite the course of English - and therefore World – history. Arrive in Northumbria. Position atomic cannon. Destroy Viking fleet.

The writer of the episode, Dennis Spooner, had great success writing for Thunderbirds, The Avengers and even Remington Steele but it was his story The Time Meddler that really changed the paradigm of Sci-Fi TV as we know it. A gag in the previous story, The Chase, had been that Daleks were responsible for the disappearance of the Mary Celeste. In The Time Meddler, Spooner made the whole plot revolve around actual historical events, the battles of 1066 becoming a backdrop for a contest of wits between the Doctor and his opponent (Trivia fans might like to know that the serial also represents the first time that another member of the Doctor's race, not yet identified as the Time Lords, appeared).

My own novel, the All Father Paradox, features a similar plan to rewrite history, although in my case, to the benefit of the Vikings.  Any alternate historian has to find a suitable POD or Point of Divergence, and with the closeness of the subject matter (“Omniscient Being Meddles with Time”), I was intrigued as to how much thought had Spooner had put into his “master plan to end all master plans”. Would changing the timeline in September 1066 really make a huge difference?

Let’s evaluate the first premise, that the Battle of Hastings was lost because Harold had to defeat the Vikings first.

Harold’s ascent to the English throne as Harold II had taken place just a few months the events in this episode. The new king had hardly begun to enjoy his rule when he was faced by enemy invasion: the famed Viking Harald Hardrada landed in the north, marching in collaboration with Harold’s rebel brother Tostig.  No sooner had Harold won a stunning victory at Stamford Bridge, which left both Hardrada and Tostig dead, than news reached the English king of a second invasion, this time in the south, by the Norman Duke William “the Bastard”. Harold raced from Yorkshire to Sussex to meet the challenge and the armies clashed at a site known to this day as Battle.

William’s defeat, and death, was certainly a plausible outcome even if the Monk hadn’t interfered. Hastings was an unusually long-lasting and hard-fought battle, with two evenly-matched armies. Harold was an experienced general commanding battle-hardened soldiers, and unlike the Normans, who were isolated in hostile territory, he could have expected reinforcements as further Saxon troops arrived from Yorkshire. Remove the long march from the equation, and, assuming the Monk had a plan to deal with rogue arrows, the POD is very plausible.

The next question is why the Monk wanted to make Harold king. The plan was altruistic, it seems. The Monk states that Harold would be a good ruler. “There wouldn't be all those wars in Europe, those claims over France went on for years and years. With peace the people'd be able to better themselves. With a few hints and tips from me they'd be able to have jet airliners by 1320! Shakespeare'd be able to put Hamlet on television”.

What, then, if it had been Duke William’s lifeless body stretched out on English soil, not Harold’s? Had Harold survived and won, would he be celebrated today as one of England’s greatest warrior kings, on a par with Richard Lionheart and Edward I?  Would we be talking of King Harold the Great, and the great dynasty of the Godwinsons?

The English language would be different, certainly, shorn of French influence – much more Norse in tone and content. And it is true, England as a whole would have been much less focused on continental Europe and countries like France and Spain. As in Canute’s time some fifty years earlier, the nation would have been a part of the Scandinavian political sphere. Harold’s sons would have intermarried with Nordic princesses, rather than French heiresses like Eleanor of Aquitane. Ironically, having eliminated the Viking fleet, the Monk might have given birth to a Great North Sea Empire, with the resources and appetite to explore far off Vinland, discovered just decades previously by Leif Erikson. 

But the peace the Monk hoped for might still prove elusive - King Harold II after Hastings would have faced dangerous enemies and rivals – not least the young Edgar, a grandson of the earlier king, Edmund II Ironside, and so a direct descendant of Alfred the Great – with a strong claim to the throne. And because Harold had been excommunicated by Pope Alexander II, who supported the Norman cause, had the Godwinson’s remained on the throne, there’s every likelihood that the relationship between England and the Catholic Church may have strained to breaking point far earlier than the 16th century. The Monk would have to meddle further to ensure that 1066 was not a short-lived triumph, riven with civil war and religious strife.

It is ironic that, considering the Monk was trying to advance England, without King William’s conquest we might know much less about the country and its people. The single greatest store of information about 11th-century England, Domesday Book, was made to record the victor’s winnings. King William had a blank slate – he created a new aristocracy that owed everything to him and delivered new laws to the ancient land. 

If there is one lesson to be had from all this meddling in time, it is that it is hard to see all of the repercussions.  As we learn in the All Father Paradox, time isn’t a river, flowing from one place to another. It is a great, eternal ocean, lapping on all our shores at the very same time. Like ripples emanating from a single, solitary drop, the waves will roll through history.  A really effective Time Meddler starts at the source…

About The All Father Paradox:

What if an ancient god escaped his fate and history was thrown to the wolves?

Churchwarden Michaels thought it was just a run-of-the-mill crazy old man who stood in the graveyard, hellbent on studying the 1,000-year-old Viking memorial there. But when things start changing and outright disappearing, Michaels realizes there is more to this old man than meets the eye. Now, Michaels finds himself swept up in an ancient god’s quest to escape his destiny by reworking reality, putting history—and to Michaels’s dismay, Christianity itself—to the Viking sword. In this new Vikingverse novel, storied heroes of mankind emerge in new and brutal guises drawn from the sagas:

A young Norse prince plots to shatter empires and claim the heavens...
A scholar exiled to the frontier braves the dangers of the New World, only to find those “new worlds” are greater than he imagined...
A captured Jötunn plants the dreams of freedom during a worlds-spanning war...
A bold empress discovers there is a price for immortality, one her ancestors have come to collect...

With the timelines stretched to breaking point, it’s up to Churchwarden Michaels to save reality as we know it...

About Ian Stuart Sharpe:

Ian Stuart Sharpe is the CEO of a tech start up. As a child he discovered his love of books, sci-fi and sagas: devouring the works of Douglas Adams, J.R.R. Tolkien, Terry Pratchett, and George MacDonald Fraser alongside Snorri Sturluson and Sigvat the Skald. He once won a prize at school for Outstanding Progress and chose a dictionary as his reward, secretly wishing it had been an Old Norse phrasebook. He lives in British Columbia, Canada.

Doctor Who! New Trailer, Mean Tweets, and More

I don’t know about you, but I am SO EXCITED about the new season of Doctor Who, starting on October 7th. And yes, I say that every time a new season comes up, but seriously, this is the first season where we will have a FEMALE Doctor in the form of actress Jodie Whittaker.

A new trailer has just been released, which has a definite mixed reception. And no, it’s not just because of the feminine Doctor. It’s because of the MUSIC. What is up with that? I felt like it just distracted from the otherwise epic scenery of the trailer. Why not have some form of the theme music or some dramatic symphonic stuff? Meh. But even with the music, the trailer has me pumped for new episodes.

It will come as no surprise to fans and members of the science fiction and fantasy community that the new Doctor has had to face some serious criticisms for the mere fact that she is a woman. Well, OK, let me rephrase that—there has been criticism. I can’t use the word “serious” to describe man-babies crying because someone got girl in their fandom. But yes, here, in the twenty-first century, there still exist people who think that girls can’t do things as well as boys can, or that by putting a woman in a role, it “ruins it.” To be honest, I rather look forward to losing them as part of the fandom. It will certainly make things more enjoyable for the rest of us. And…how can you claim to be a fan of something so weak that it gets ruined by putting a woman in it? That’s pretty lame.

Stylist Magazine had Jodie read some of the nasty (and not so nasty) tweets about the new Doctor, and it’s pretty amusing.

When Jodie Whittaker's role on @bbcdoctorwho was announced, the internet had something to say about it. Here's her reaction to some of the best (and worst) responses... @bbcpress pic.twitter.com/ScMRlh37Ty

— Stylist Magazine (@StylistMagazine) September 19, 2018

Of course, my favorite one, which echoes my thoughts exactly, is this:

What about you? Are you looking forward to the new season, the new Doctor, and new adventures?

Melanie R. Meadors writes about goblins, science, magic, superheroes, and other nerdy things. She was part of the dual degree program for physics and astronomy at Northern Arizona University until she discovered that her evil super-genius powers were useful for writing fiction as well. She is a blogger and general b*tch monkey at The Once and Future Podcast. You can learn more at melaniermeadors.com 

The Elusive, Inspirational Soul – by S.E. Lindberg

Please welcome guest author S.E. Lindberg to the blog this week!

For most artists, including writers, the act of creating attempts to capture and share some emotion, or conversely, evoke an emotional response from an audience. Often, we draw inspiration from our past experiences, traumatic or enjoyable, to deepen the impact. As a scientist, I find the entire transaction of emotions oddly inspirational and terrifying. Feelings are ubiquitous, but cannot be measured objectively; they do not seem to adhere to any law of conservation like energy or mass obey (is there any limit to sorrow or joy?).

Could we better our craft if we knew how emotions flowed from an object (fine art or prose) to a person (or vice versa)? Let us examine the sources and sinks of emotion: our souls. In playful art, this is quite easy to simulate; heck, consider the soul-currency for crafting in From Software’s Dark Souls videogame series—if only we could see as the undead do! In real life, studying the soul is harder.

Many ‘Renaissance Men’ were inspired to find the soul while the art of anatomy flourished. The prevailing Church did not permit the dissection of innocent believers, so criminals or ‘sinners’ were often studied. Bodies were considered divinely sacred and were thus difficult to obtain; acceptable corpses could not be refrigerated, so one had to work fast. Nor were there cameras or video to capture the observations, so artists and alchemists convened in the dissection theaters to document the microcosms of life.  Leonardo Da Vinci provided detailed notes along with his drawings (from The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. Oxford World's Classics, 1998):

 "I have dissected more than ten human bodies, destroying all the various members and removing the minutest particles of flesh which surrounded these veins, without causing any effusion of blood other than the imperceptible bleeding of the capillary veins. And as one single body did not suffice for so long a time, it was necessary to proceed in stages with so many bodies as would render my knowledge complete; this I repeated twice in order to discover the differences. And though you should have a love for such things you may perhaps be deterred by natural repugnance, and if this does not prevent you, you may perhaps be deterred by fear of passing the night hours in the company of these corpses, quartered and flayed and horrible to behold; and if this does not deter you, then perhaps you may lack the skill in drawing, essential for such representation..." p151

 Da Vinci determined that the senses were linked to a ‘common sense’ that led to the brain. But no actual soul was discovered. He yielded the goal of managing the soul to religion.  Below, from his treatise on painting, he spoke how the artist must deal with this and impart the soul into its subjects otherwise: 

"A good painter has two chief objects to paint, man and the intention of his soul; the former is easy, the later hard because he has to represent it by the attitudes and movements of the limbs.” p178 

Anatomical artists had to grapple with documenting macabre scenes of opened bodies while remaining 'artistic'.  For the dignity of the specimens and to satisfy the surgeons' needs, artists often found harmony by posing their subjects. Perhaps most famous are Johannes de Ketham's Fasiculo de Medicina (1491), Andreas Vesalius's De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543), and Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks (1500). The contemporary Bodies: The Exhibition continues this controversial tradition of displaying the dead artistically.

 With the most promising connection to our souls being the senses, it follows that the next great promise of discovery came when optical technology allowed scientists to see new worlds. Pioneering microscopists had to draw their observations. In 1664, Robert Hooke published a large treatise entitled Micrographia or Some Physiological Description of Minute Bodies, containing an encyclopedia of detailed drawings of his microscopic views. In his preface, he explains to the reader that optics have enabled a spiritual quest: 

“… by the help of microscopes, there is nothing so small, as to escape our inquiry; hence there is a new visible world discovered to the understanding.  By this means the heavens are opened, and a vast number of new stars, and new motions, and new productions appear in them, to which all the ancient astronomers were utterly strangers.”

The soul has never found, however.  Despite ‘the opening of heaven’ with microscopes, the soul still eludes us.

 Ernest Haeckel (1834-1919) was another famous artist-scientist fascinated with the aesthetics of nature and the elusiveness of the soul. His 1904 set of lithographs Art Forms in Nature brilliantly exhibit his obsession with the symmetrical beauty of biological microstructures, and his extensions into comparative embryology brought him controversy. He argued this in his support of his own monistic religion that scientific adventures continually uncovered the beautiful designs inherent in nature (monism generally supports that ‘body and soul’ are one connected entity, not separate as many dualistic religions profess): 

“The remarkable expansion of our knowledge of nature, and the discovery of countless beautiful forms of life, which it includes, have awakened quite a new aesthetic sense in our generation, and thus given a new tone to painting and sculpture. Numerous scientific voyages and expeditions for the exploration of unknown lands and seas, partly in earlier centuries, but more especially in the nineteenth, have brought to light an undreamed abundance of new organic forms... affording an entirely new inspiration for painting, sculpture, architecture, and technical art.”

In 1900, Haeckel published his scientific, spiritual book Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century in which he explains his monistic philosophies.  He shares elegant philosophy on the soul's lack of participation in the "Laws of Substance" (conservation of mass and energy); below, he discusses how many related the nonexistent soul to that which is tangible:

“Thus invisibility comes to be regarded as a most important attribute of the soul.  Some, in fact, compare the soul with ether, and regard it, like ether, as an extremely subtle, light, and highly elastic material, an imponderable agency, that fills the intervals between the ponderable particles in the living organism, other compare the soul with the wind, and so give it a gaseous nature; and it is this simile which first found favor with the primitive peoples, and led in time to the familiar dualistic conception.  When a man died, the body remained as a lifeless corpse, but the immortal soul ‘flew out of it with the last breath.’”

 Indeed, the many myths of preserving a dead man’s soul, or gaining its powers, is pervasive. The notion of relics is common across cultures and time. It assumes that the soul is a contagion remaining attached to the body postmortem. Hence, the power of a Saint could be absorbed if one obtained his or her bones; this gave rise to the theft and desecration of many crypts and catacombs. Many crypts remain with the bodily relics on display. The crypt of Saint Munditia of Munich and the Vienna Imperial Crypts are fine examples. Other famous examples include the shrines of Capuchin monks in Rome and Palermo, Sicily (>6,000 bodies) and the Kostnice 'Church of Bones, Kutna Hora, Sedlec Ossuary, Prague (~40,000 remains).

Alas, we cannot study the soul directly yet, but the journey is inspirational. H.P. Lovecraft summarized our human condition best in his opening to “The Call of Cthulhu” (Weird Tales, 1928):

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age…”

S.E. Lindberg resides near Cincinnati, Ohio working as a microscopist, employing scientific and artistic skills to understand the manufacturing of products analogous to medieval paints. Two decades of practicing chemistry, combined with a passion for dark fantasy, spurs him to write graphic adventure fictionalizing the alchemical humors (primarily under the banner “Dyscrasia Fiction”). With Perseid Press, he writes weird tales infused with history and alchemy (Heroika: Dragon Eaters, Pirates in Hell). He co-moderates the Sword & Sorcery group on Goodreads.com, and invites all to participate, and regularly interviews authors on the topic of Beauty in Weird Fiction.

Monster Fiction: The Fact Is, Well, Facts Help--by Lee Murray

Please welcome guest author Lee Murray to the blog today! Lee writes fiction about monsters. Here she discusses how one might use facts from the real world in their monster-y tales!

When it comes to monsters in contemporary fiction, one of the biggest tasks of a writer is to achieve that magical nirvana we call suspending disbelief. We have to breathe life into our monsters and make the reader truly believe that such a being could exist. Happily, for me, I live down under in a country where monsters are part of our everyday dialogue. No, I’m not from Australia where there are cantankerous blue-headed birds who could eviscerate you with a single swipe, kickboxing roos, snakes that can turn doorknobs, and spiders the size of your face. Don’t even get me started on their drop bears. Instead, I’m from further south, in New Zealand, a country which has none of the monstrous creatures of our neighbours. Okay, so that isn’t quite true. We do have the poisonous katipō spider, a tiny fellow in a batman suit who lives under mouldering driftwood, but who is so shy that I think I’ve only seen one in my entire lifetime, and yes, we have some largish wētā-beetles who can get rather ornery if they’re disturbed, some not-so-nice jellyfish, and the ubiquitous wasp. Although, these creatures don’t exactly have kaiju-esque proportions. I can see you thinking how I must be really stretched for monstery inspiration down here in the land of the long white cloud. And you’d be wrong. We have an entire menu of wonderful monsters to choose from.

Take the poua-kai, for instance. Polynesian peoples, including New Zealand’s Māori, still tell stories of these enormous bird-monsters with their glossy black and white plumage, green wingtips and a blood-red crests. Swift and deadly, the man-eating poua-kai is said to have swooped from the air at speeds of eighty kilometres an hour (50mph), smacking into its prey with the force of a small truck, before plucking them up in their razor-like talons. So, it was exciting when, in 1871, Julius von Haast described an extinct species of eagle, the largest known to have existed, which had been previously been discovered in a South Island marsh. With a shortened wingspan adapted for its forest habitat, the Haast eagle (also known as Te Hokioi) was a raptor capable of taking down the mighty moa, a now-extinct flightless bird which stood over three metres (10ft) and could weigh up to two hundred and fifty kilos (550 pounds). Claims that this monster could carry off people occurs frequently in the oral histories of the Māori people, convincing accounts which were also recorded by several European scholars, including Governor George Grey. In recent years, Japanese geneticists began extracting DNA from moa remains with a view to resurrecting the species, a notion that one of our local politicians suggests could be achievable within the next fifty years. Not wanting to wait that long, I wrote a time travel adventure for children, BATTLE OF THE BIRDS, a “my-first-monster” story that pits the gentle moa against a ferocious Te Hokioi antagonist in a battle for supremacy playing out a millennium ago between New Zealand’s flying and flightless birds. 

Then there are the magnificent taniwha, perhaps the most famous of our local monsters. Typically associated with bodies of water, these legendary creatures take various forms including dragons, whales and sharks. Often touted as guardians, they are also thought to have been fickle and proud creatures, sometimes luring people to their deaths and eating them whole. Over time, Māori historians and storytellers, have used the term as a metaphor to describe a powerful chieftain, one who is not to be trifled with. Today, in their role as guardians, taniwha still impact on our local affairs and development.

But the existence of these lizard-dragon-serpent monsters isn’t just the stuff of legend and metaphor, not since palaeontologist June Wiffen discovered fossil evidence of theropods in the Te Urewera forest back in the 1970s. Hard scientific evidence that T-Rex-like monsters once roamed these lands. In fact, since the first Taine McKenna adventure, INTO THE MIST, was released, the New Zealand government has funded a two-year search for further fossil evidence in the Ureweras ‒ the novel’s setting. The results of the study are expected to be reported shortly. But what about those giant lizard taniwha that Māori chieftains warned Captain Cook about during his third voyage to the country in 1777? Don’t those sound a lot like our national taonga-treasure, the tuatara (a Māori term meaning ‘peaks on its back’)? It’s interesting that the tuatara shares a classification with no other species. What if a larger Sphenodon existed in that same forest where other therapods are known to have roamed? Let’s just say that some of the connections, I uncovered in my research are so compelling, I’m not sure I’d recommend walking New Zealand’s famous Waikaremoana track without a military escort!

In INTO THE SOUNDS, my most recent Taine Mckenna thriller, I called again on Māori histories of the taniwha, this time in its sea serpent form. It should be remembered that Māori mythological tales aren’t simply stories, but deep-seated cultural beliefs. They are integral to our identity as a people, and as such any use of these accounts in story must be treated with sensitivity and tact. However, what’s fascinating is that so many of the stories about kraken are supported through oral histories of other cultures, historical accounts of encounters with kraken, and actual scientific observations because colossal squid do exist and can be found in the Southern Ocean. While writing INTO THE SOUNDS, I took a research trip to New Zealand’s National Museum, Te Papa, and observed the only colossal squid specimen in existence, which (despite having shrunk) weighs just under five hundred kilograms (1100 pounds) and measures approx. five metres (15 ft) in length. A female, this squid is the biggest scientists have preserved to date; but it’s possible that larger ones exist... For a storyteller, the temptation was simply too great.

It’s easy to dismiss the legends and stories as being just that: cautionary tales to teach and entertain. But where do these stories come from in the first place? Is it that people have conjured up fictions that have later been found to be true, or are they empirical truths immortalised in fiction and mythology? For a storyteller, the blurry line between hard fact and best-loved fiction is where story possibilities abound and any connection to fact, even a tenuous one, can help to suspend our readers’ disbelief and create credible living breathing monsters. Because, when it comes to monster fiction, the fact is, well, the facts help.

Further reading:

https://www.independent.ie/world-news/asia-pacific/maori-legend-of-maneating-bird-is-true-26566198.html

https://www.stuff.co.nz/science/81779686/scientists-and-tuhoe-to-hunt-dinosaur-fossils-in-the-urewera-range

http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Bes02Reli-t1-body-d4-d6-d2.html

https://www.tepapa.govt.nz/about/past-exhibitions/2018-past-exhibitions/colossal-squid

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=3002585

More about INTO THE SOUNDS:

On leave, and out of his head with boredom, NZDF Sergeant Taine McKenna joins biologist Jules Asher on a Conservation Department deer culling expedition to New Zealand’s southernmost national park, where soaring peaks give way to valleys gouged from clay and rock, and icy rivers bleed into watery canyons too deep to fathom. Despite covering an area the size of the Serengeti, only eighteen people live in the isolated region, so it’s a surprise when the hunters stumble on the nation’s Tūrehu tribe, becoming some of only a handful to ever encounter the elusive ghost people. But a band of mercenaries saw them first, and, hell-bent on exploiting the tribes’ survivors, they’re prepared to kill anyone who gets in their way. A soldier, McKenna is duty-bound to protect all New Zealanders, but after centuries of persecution will the Tūrehu allow him to help them? Besides, there is something else lurking in the sounds, and it has its own agenda. When the waters clear, will anyone be allowed to leave?

About Lee Murray:

Lee Murray is a multi award-winning writer and editor of fantasy, science fiction, and horror (Australian Shadows, Sir Julius Vogel). Her titles for adults include the acclaimed Taine McKenna series of military thrillers (Severed Press) and supernatural crime-noir series The Path of Ra co-authored with Dan Rabarts (Raw Dog Screaming Press). Among her titles for children are YA novel Misplaced, and best-loved middle grade adventure Battle of the Birds, listed in the Best Books of the Year 2011 by New Zealand’s Dominion Post. Dawn of the Zombie Apocalypse, the first book in a series of speculative middle grade antics will be published in 2019 by IFWG Australia. An acquiring editor for US boutique press Omnium Gatherum, Lee is a regular speaker at workshops, conferences and schools. She lives with her family in New Zealand where she conjures up stories for readers of all ages from her office overlooking a cow paddock.

Speculative Fiction as Resistance, by Jason Sizemore

Please welcome guest Jason Sizemore! He is the son of an unemployed coal miner in a tiny Kentucky Appalachian villa named Big Creek (population 400) where fought his way out of the hills to the big city of Lexington. He attended Transylvania University (a real school with its own vampire) and received a degree in computer science. Since 2004, he has owned and operated Apex Publications. He is the editor of five anthologies, author of the short story collection Irredeemable and For Exposure: The Life and Times of a Small Press Publisher, a three-time Hugo Award loser, and an freelancer. He can be found on Twitter at @apexjason.

One of the goals of the Do Not Go Quietly: Victory in Defiance anthology is to add to the tradition of speculative fiction functioning as an effective way to embrace resistance and reject tyranny. My co-editor (Lesley Conner) and I want to entertain while we inspire. We want to educate while we encourage you to stand up. It’s an important balance, but achievable.

The Kickstarter to fund Do Not Go Quietly is active until September 9th. Please consider backing our ambitious project.

In the spirit of Do Not Go Quietly here are five stories that I feel exemplifies quality short fiction that also has something important to say.

“Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™” by Rebecca Roanhorse (Apex Magazine, issue 99)

Full disclosure. I edit Apex Magazine and published Rebecca’s story. But the work has won the Hugo and Nebula Awards so I’m comfortable suggesting it. It’s a sharp critique of stolen culture and stolen identity. Author Rebecca Roanhorse’s darkly funny and chilling story will leave you reconsidering the nature of authenticity and the other.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (The New Englander Magazine, 1892)

Gilman’s story is a near-perfect piece of horror fiction. It’s female protagonist falls deeper and deeper into insanity due to a gaslighting husband, an inherently misogynist medical doctor, and severe isolation. Is the protagonist really sick? What the heck happens at the end of the story? It’s all masterful composed and symbolically portrayed by the titular wallpaper that fades and cracks over time.

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson (The New Yorker, 1948)

Many will consider this an obvious example. However, I don’t believe there has been a period of time since its publication that this story hasn’t been relevant. Jackson’s story reflects the danger of inaction, of complicity when you blindly (intentionally or not) follow mob reasoning.

Think about the culture that exists now. Our president leads bullying campaigns via social media mobs. But Trump isn’t the only one duplicit of such actions. It is easy to cast that first stone and unleash a pack of angry online followers.

From McCarthyism to social media justice. Shirley Jackson saw it all coming. She stood up, but we have failed to heed her warning.

“Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorn (The New England Magazine, 1835)

I first read this one a few months ago in an anthology of Gothic fiction. It is set during the Salem witch trials and is a direct challenge against the New England Puritanism of the time. At least that’s how I read it (interpretations vary). Read it yourself and come to your own conclusion!

“Paskutinis Iliuzija (The Last Illusion)” by Damien Angelica Walters (Interzone, 2013)

Damien Angelica Walters is a writer of singular skill. She’s one of the best at drawing out heartbreak and loss I’ve encountered. In this story, she uses the bond of a father and his little girl to show the unnecessary cruelty of war. “The Last Illusion” hits me every time I see an image of a family separated I think of this story.

Do Not Go Quietly is now on Kickstarter! Head over and pledge your support for this amazing collection of stories from some of the best authors in the genre!

Mythology in Modern Fiction: How to Make It Your Own, by Annie Sullivan

Please welcome guest author Annie Sullivan to the Once and Future blog! Annie is the author of A Touch of Gold, a new novel both teens and adults can enjoy from Tor Books. 

Mythology is not an easy subject to tackle, especially when you’re dealing with Greek mythology, just because of the sheer number of individuals and backstories and myths. When I set out to write my debut young adult novel, A Touch of Gold, which is about the cursed daughter of King Midas, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. However, there are ways to work mythology into your current novel without it feeling heavy-handed, outdated, or overwhelming. 

1. Do your research. 

Find out what you want to include and why. Is this an all or nothing situation where you have to take the entire mythos, or can you pick and choose a few characters to add to your text. 

In A Touch of Gold, I kept quite a bit of the Greek mythos, making mentions to characters like Poseidon and Triton that we never meet. This made the mythology feel more robust without having to add more characters. 

2. Are you altering characters? 

Decide early on whether your characters will stick exactly to their original stories or if you’re going to add/change elements about them, their histories, or their plots. 

Discover who your character is and if you can fit them into your story with small alterations. If you can’t, then you may need to create a new mythos for your world instead of using an existing one. In my book, I took some liberties with characters like Dionysus, making him a darker, more chaotic character because it enhanced the plot. 

3. Make it fully-formed. 

Make sure your mythology has threads throughout all aspects of the society you create. It’s going to affect what people value, how they worship, their rituals, their sayings, their enemies, and so many more elements in your characters’ lives. 

Throughout A Touch of Gold, people uses phrases like, “Triton take us.” These phrases act as a reminder of the world in which the readers find themselves and adds to the mythology. Make sure you include small details to make the world come to life. 

4. Be careful with all-powerful beings. 

One problem that it’s easy to run into when dealing with mythos and gods is having characters that could easily solve all your characters’ problems with a flick of their wrist. Give your powerful god-like creatures either reasons not to help, don’t have them interact with the characters at all, or find another way to make sure they don’t become a convenient solution to every setback. 

In my case, the gods were the ones who created the problems, so they weren’t going to just come along and fix everything. If anything, they added more tension because you never knew when they’d show up and make things worse. 

5. Magic must be consistent. 

If your mythos has magic, make sure you know who has it, where it came from, who can wield it, and how it can be used. It’s really difficult to have a world where just one person has magic (unless they’re the last of their kind.) Convince the reader your magic system is real by making it be believable and applicable across the entire society you created. 

In A Touch of Gold, the gods have power, and they can give powers (usually in the form of a curse) to humans. However, different gods have powers over different things, so their abilities differ. 

These are just a few ways to make sure the mythology you’re creating reads well and stays consistent throughout your work. Overall, have fun, don’t be afraid to play with the characters and the world to make things more interesting. 

About the author:

Annie Sullivan is the author of A Touch of Gold. She grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana, and received her master’s degree in Creative Writing from Butler University. She loves fairytales, everything Jane Austen, and traveling. Her wanderlust has taken her to every continent, where she’s walked on the Great Wall of China, found four-leaf clovers in Ireland, waddled with penguins in Antarctica, and cage dived with great white sharks in South Africa. You can follow her adventures on Twitter and Instagram (@annsulliva) or on her blog: anniesullivanauthor.wordpress.com.

STAR WARS: CLONE WARS RETURNS!!! With a catch....

Holy cow, have you folks heard?? At Comic Con International, it was announced that after five years, the animated Star Wars series Clone Wars is getting a revival to complete the series after it's cancellation in 2013! That's right, there will be twelve new episodes of Clone Wars, which will supposedly answer a lot of questions fans might have had, such as, "What the heck happened to Ahsoka in those years between Clone Wars and Rebels?

So what's the catch?

Well, if you really want to see the new episodes of Clones Wars, they won't be on Netflix or even Amazon right away. You'll have to subscribe to Disney's new digital subscription streaming service. There also is no specific release date, the series just having been announced as part of the Star Wars: Clone Wars anniversary panel at San Diego Comic Con. 

The episodes themselves look interesting, and I'm excited to see them--no one was a bigger Clone Wars fan than me. Can I afford to watch them, though, if I have to subscribe to yet another streaming service? That remains to be seen, and kind of feels like a cheap shot. 

You can see the trailer for the new episodes here:

Melanie R. Meadors writes about goblins, science, magic, superheroes, and other nerdy things. She was part of the dual degree program for physics and astronomy at Northern Arizona University until she discovered that her evil super-genius powers were useful for writing fiction as well. She is a blogger and general b*tch monkey at The Once and Future Podcast. You can learn more at melaniermeadors.com 

Cataclysmic Impact on Younger Uranus Explains Tilt, Temps

A team of international scientists centered at Durham University, UK, has done research suggesting that a giant collision by an object about twice the size of Earth caused Uranus to tilt on its side and might also explain why the planet is so cold.

These astronomers did the first high-resolution computer simulations showing varying massive collisions with the ice giant planet to try to figure out how the planet might have tipped onto its side. Via these simulations, they found that a massive object, probably a protoplanet made of rock and ice, smashed into Uranus about 4 billion years ago during the solar system's formation, and likely the caused the planet's tilt.

“Uranus spins on its side, with its axis pointing almost at right angles to those of all the other planets in the solar system. This was almost certainly caused by a giant impact, but we know very little about how this actually happened and how else such a violent event affected the planet," says Jacob Kegerreis, a PhD researcher at Durham University's Institute for Computational Cosmology. “We ran more than 50 different impact scenarios using a high-powered super computer to see if we could recreate the conditions that shaped the planet’s evolution. Our findings confirm that the most likely outcome was that the young Uranus was involved in a cataclysmic collision with an object twice the mass of Earth, if not larger, knocking it onto its side and setting in process the events that helped create the planet we see today.”

But if such a violent collision occurred, how did the planet manage to keep its atmosphere? In other occurrences, such a collision would have caused the planet's atmosphere to be spewed off into space. The simulations explain this by showing that an impact object striking at an angle, a glancing blow, could have enough strength to change Uranus's tilt, but the planet would still maintain it's atmosphere. 

Such a collision could also explain the formation of Uranus's rings and moons. When the big smash took place, rocky and icy matter would have been jettisoned from both the bodies, and this matter would have been captured by gravity into orbit around Uranus. Eventually this matter would coalesce into moons, and may have altered the rotations of any pre-existing moons Uranus had.

Uranus isn't just tilted onto its side. Its magnetic field is off-center, as well, and if the collision caused lumps of rock to form lopsided within the planet, it provides a reasonable explanation for this. 

Image via NASA/Hubble

How can a collision explain Uranus's extremely cold temperatures? If debris from the impactor formed a thin shell near the edge of the planet's ice layer, it could trap the heat emanating from the planet's core. Because the heat is prevented from escaping, the outer atmosphere would not be affected by it, and this can explain the super cold -357 degree Fahrenheit temperature of the outer atmosphere (as a comparison, Neptune is further from the sun than Uranus is, and its lower temperature is -360 degrees Fahrenheit, with it's average temperature actually being warmer than Uranus's at -353 degrees [via Cal Tech/Cool Cosmos]).

Luis Teodoro from  the BAER/NASA Ames Research Center, who co-authored the research paper, says, "All the evidence points to giant impacts being frequent during planet formation, and with this kind of research we are now gaining more insight into their effect on potentially habitable exoplanets.”

All the findings of the Durham team's research can be found in paper "Consequences of Giant Impacts on Early Uranus for Rotation, Internal Structure, Debris, and Atmospheric Erosion," in The Astrophysical Journal.

You can learn more about Uranus on NASA's website!

Melanie R. Meadors writes about science, magic, superheroes, and other nerdy things. She was part of the dual degree program for physics and astronomy at Northern Arizona University until she discovered that her evil super-genius powers were useful for writing fiction as well. She is a blogger and general b*tch monkey at The Once and Future Podcast. You can learn more at melaniermeadors.com 

'Star Wars: Ahsoka' Gives Fan-Favorite Character Spotlight She Deserves

As a huge fan of the Star Wars: Clone Wars series, I enjoyed watching Ahsoka Tano grow up as a Jedi Padawan, apprenticed to Anakin Skywalker. I really liked seeing Anakin through her eyes, and also seeing how Anakin himself developed because of his relationship with her, his struggles and his slow, inevitable descent to the Dark Side. Seeing the Jedi order and their rules and views from the eyes of an apprentice was a valuable way to see how events in the future could come about. By the end of the Clone Wars series, however, Ahsoka fans were in for a heart-wrenching ride, as things began to fall apart with the Jedi order and as Anakin went further and further to the Dark Side because of it. Anakin became a truly sympathetic character in part because of Ahsoka's presence in the series. But her role in the series ended on a low note, faced with betrayal and lies and deception, being stabbed in the back by the entity she had most faith in. Of course, without getting too spoilery, Ahsoka fans are offered a boon in Star Wars Rebels, but there is a huge gap where we are wondering, what on Earth happened in the years between Order 66 and the birth of the Rebellion?

E.K. Johnston answers some of these questions in Star Wars: Ahsoka. 

Ahsoka takes place a couple years after Order 66 happens, after the birth of the Empire. Ahsoka has grown up, but is the same character with visible influences of her Jedi Masters Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi. Johnston manages to capture Ahsoka's personality well, from the quips to her self-dialogue. Post-Jedi Ahsoka still has a connection to the Force, but it's become dangerous--deadly--to use the Force now that the Empire is actively hunting Force-users down. Still, Ahsoka is on the side of good, and the plight of farmers on a planet where she tries to hide out for a while becomes too much for her to bear. She tries to help them resist the Empire's encroachment on their moon, but in doing so, exposes herself as a Force-user and puts herself and others in danger because of it. The book follows Ahsoka on her path of self-discovery, to find what role she is to play in this new world after the fall of the Jedi. 

Part of the point of this book is for Ahsoka to be alone. For her to reach out in the Force, and for the first time in her life, to not feel the presence of her former masters and friends. We do, however see some familiar faces and have a connection to the larger world of the Rebellion, and we can see the gears turning of the events that will lead to the story lines in Star Wars: Rebels. 

This is a young adult book, and I think younger readers will enjoy seeing how Ahsoka comes into her own, grows up into her own person with goals that matter to her, without just following orders that are given to her. Her struggle between taking care of herself and just surviving versus helping others do the same is genuinely portrayed, and a lot of the themes presented in the book are very timely for today's youth. Toward the end of the book, Bail Organa comments on Palpatine's actions and ploys, saying, "He kept us so busy jumping at shadows, we didn't realize which of the shadows was real." It's not just fictional rulers who do this, and I find that Star Wars in general, especially with the Clone Wars series, does a good job at portraying how evil can get the upper hand, how governments can be manipulated, how people can be tricked and betrayed by their own leaders. 

Fans of Clone Wars and Rebels will find this book to be an excellent addition to the series. Fans new to Ahsoka will enjoy this tale of self-discovery and re-awakening. Ahsoka is a character many readers will relate to, and she is captured extremely well by E.K. Johnston.

Melanie R. Meadors is a writer of fantasy stories and comics, her work most recently appearing in the anthologies Champions of Aetaltis and Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters. She is the co-director of the Gen Con Writer's Symposium and the publisher at Outland Entertainment.  Melanie also edits anthologies, including Hath No Fury, Knaves: A Blackguards Anthology, and Tales of Excellent Cats: A Monarchies of Mau Anthology, which is set in the world of the popular role playing game, Pugmire. She is a content editor and publicity specialist at the RPG game company Mechanical Muse, and has written game settings for the RPGs Tiny Dungeons 2e and Tiny Frontiers 2e. She is a blogger and general b*tch monkey at The Once and Future Podcast. You can learn more at melaniermeadors.com 

COMICS REVIEW: Marvel's Star Wars Kanan Series

I'm a big fan of the Star Wars Rebels series, and recently finished watching it. Kanan Jarrus is one of my favorite characters of the series, and while we get some teases about his background in the show, we don't really learn much beyond that.

That's where this comic comes in. In the two volume series, Star Wars Kanan, The Last Padawan, and then in First Blood, readers learn Kanan's backstory, and how he went from being cocky Jedi padawan Caleb Dume to the Kanan Jarrus we came to know and love in Rebels.

The story is framed within a storyline from the Star Wars Rebels timeline, where we can see connections between Kanan's past and present. While the comic stands alone, I think readers could benefit from knowing the characters of Rebels beforehand, both to know who they are and to feel a stronger connection with them. The story is fast-paced and because I already knew Kanan from Rebels, I was instantly engaged. I often don't like backstories, because so often the characters are obnoxious in their youth, but with Kanan, the writers did a good job straddling the line between portraying a young character who still has a lot to learn with a character who will grow up to be responsible for his crew/family and who will play an important role in the rebellion. Even the one line that usually drives me nuts, "Don't call me kid!" leads up to a really emotional and poignant moment, where Kanan/Caleb says, "Don't call me kid. Not anymore." I also appreciate reading about young people who fight for what they believe in, who grow into heroes. 

This is an exciting and at times, emotional read that is an excellent addition to the Star Wars story. We learn more about characters we love (and hate), and are introduced to new characters who ties storylines together. Highly recommended for readers both teen and adult!

Melanie R. Meadors is a writer of fantasy stories and comics, her work most recently appearing in the anthologies Champions of Aetaltis and Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters. She is the co-director of the Gen Con Writer's Symposium and the publisher at Outland Entertainment.  Melanie also edits anthologies, including Hath No Fury, Knaves: A Blackguards Anthology, and Tales of Excellent Cats: A Monarchies of Mau Anthology, which is set in the world of the popular role playing game, Pugmire. She is a content editor and publicity specialist at the RPG game company Mechanical Muse, and has written game settings for the RPGs Tiny Dungeons 2e and Tiny Frontiers 2e. She is a blogger and general b*tch monkey at The Once and Future Podcast. You can learn more at melaniermeadors.com 

Gwendolyn N. Nix on What Inspired 'The Falling Dawn'

Gwendolyn N. Nix is the author of The Falling Dawn, a fantasy novel about a celestial warrior named Eos, who is charged with the task of finding a sacred book in order to stop an all-out heavenly war. She joins us as our guest today in order to talk about some things that inspired her to write this book!

Halting a heavenly civil war wasn't exactly what The Falling Dawn's protagonist, Eos, had in mind when she was swept up on a quest scouring the oceans for a holy book, but books are exactly the tools I expected to mine for all my inspiration while writing the Celestial Scripts. Luckily for you, dear reader, this won't be a laundry list of research books. I realized I had a lot of things that influenced The Falling Dawn besides the stacks upon stacks of lore I accumulated—whether it be in an aesthetic sense or for world-building.

1. Angels: Celestial Scripts in Art and Legend by Jacqueline Carey  Okay, maybe just one book. I found this gorgeous book while researching angelic lore and it was monumental in shaping some of the characters and themes of the novel. Beyond being the gateway drug that eventually led me to the Kushiel's Dart series, I spent hours pouring over the snippets of myths that led me to craft Rahab, the Master of the Oceans, who holds secrets ultimately dire to Eos' plight. Not only did the book explore the classic commonly-known stories, it hinted at the apocryphal texts—sending me further down the rabbit hole, desperate for more. The artwork elevated my perception of what an angel looked like—beings with wings, sure, but also as massive sublime giants, terrifying to behold, monsters crafted from fire compared to us humans, creatures of clay. 
2. "Ghost Love Score" by Nightwish One of my favorite songs of all time, "Ghost Love Score" premiered on the album Once by the symphonic metal band, Nightwish. It's a ten-minute ride full of a beautiful orchestra, operatic vocals, and grinding guitars and whenever I hear the flutes trill at the end, I get all tingly. Whenever I hit a writer's block, I'd give my brain a dose of that song and it felt like my creative side lit up with lights. It captured the aesthetic of how I wanted The Falling Dawn to be—layered with complexity, legends, and at its heart, an exploration of love and the lengths people and creatures will go to keep that love. 
3. The Little Mermaid I've been told I'm more of a Belle Disney princess—you know, the books, the library, it makes sense—but I'd always loved Ariel. Her passion, her collector's tendencies, and even her recklessness became something I admired and incorporated into Eos' character. That red-haired spitfire went after what she wanted and she even had the adventuresome free spirit to boot that took her where those under the sea would never go: the surface, the sea witch's lair, even into a shipwrecked Spanish galleon where great white sharks hunted. Yes. I might have a degree in marine biology and yes, I've studied and swam with sharks, but for a good long time before all that I hid beneath the covers when that great white peered through the glass as Ariel marveled over her dinglehopper. Let's just say that oceanic fear and fiery spirit are recognizable traits within The Falling Dawn.  
4. Resurrection It's a broad word to geek out on, but the idea plays a heavy role in the Celestial Scripts. One of the basic tenants of Eos' world revolves around resurrection. Her soul was at the beginning of the world and would be at the end of it. Yet, as she discovers the strength of her unknown powers, she meets a secondary entity—a creature that gains personality, autonomy, and vitality—who is somehow tied to her. Could this creature be a split-personality entity, a past self, or even a future rendition of Eos? I love the idea of recycled souls, but find the aspect downright terrifying. How much of the you in this lifetime remains? Can that facet of the resurrected spirit that is wholly you somehow live on and break off from its original resurrected soul? Questions abound and The Falling Dawn seeks to answer them. 
5. The Coast There are two places that embody The Falling Dawn to me. The first was Makoshika Park in Glendive, Montana where on a family vacation, we were caught in a huge thunderstorm. Caught between the thunder and the rain, the golden streaks of lightning looked like falling angels. The second is a piece of beach along the Long Island Sound where I saw a group of smooth, rounded mossy boulders that looked like a pod of whales rising gently the distance. Both these scenes became heavy visuals that influenced The Falling Dawn and if you keep an eye out, you'll find them. 

About The Falling Dawn:

Stopping a heavenly war isn’t exactly what Eos Azzapardi had in mind when Enoch, scholar and mentor, wiggles his way into her heart and fills her head with gods and angels. He sweeps her on a quest for the Lost Book of Raziel, a book containing all the divine secrets of the god Adonai. Enoch plans to use the Book to stop an imminent civil war between angels in Heaven and release the imprisoned Watchers, an angelic sect who fell from grace because they loved humans. 

After a chance meeting with the prince of the realm, Ciriacus, who reveals he is one of Enoch’s disciples, Eos realizes she must find a balance between obeying the demands of her newfound family and coming to terms with what Ciriacus and Enoch require of her. As jealousy deepens a rift between Eos and Ciriacus even as a prophecy threatens to encompass them both, Eos discovers she has an uncanny ability. Using her gift has consequences, specifically heralding the arrival of a split personality entity named Madame Decay. Madame Decay transports Eos’ mind into an underworld similar to Enoch’s Hell. There, she learns that there is more than one god at play, and sparks fly between her and a psychopomp of death.

When Enoch’s faith begins to border on zealotry, Eos discovers he plans to trade the Book for the Watchers’ salvation, while using Eos as a bargaining chip to seal the deal. Hurt from this revelation, Eos seeks revenge by attempting to sully her soul, all the while uncovering that her unexplainable powers stem from the secrets of her bloodline. As Enoch manipulates her to his own ends and the angels begin to fall, Eos realizes that she must make a choice: fall in line with Enoch’s demands, or lose what little soul she has left to the machinations of Madame Decay.

About Gwendolyn N. Nix:

Raised in the wilds of countless library stacks, Gwendolyn N. Nix has forged her skills in writing and science in the shark-infested waters of Belize, by researching neural proteins, inducing evolutionary pressures in green algae, and through the limitless horizons of her own imagination. A born seeker of adventure, she saw her first beached humpback whale on a windy day in New York, met a ghost angel in a Paris train station, and had Odin answer her prayers on a mountain in Scotland. Her short fiction appears in The Sisterhood of the Blade anthology. The Falling Dawn is her first novel. She lives in Missoula, MT. Find out more at www.gwendolynnix.com.

You Like Me Because I'm a Scoundrel: Guest Post by Alana Joli Abbott

Alana Joli Abbott is co-editor of the new fantasy anthology KNAVES: A Blackguards Anthology, now in it's final days on Kickstarter. She is also the editor in chief at Outland Entertainment. Here, she talks about the allure of scoundrels in fiction. If you like rogue-ish characters, be sure to check out the Kickstarter for KNAVES--lots of awesome rewards available, and only a couple days left to claim them! The Once and Future Podcast host Anton Strout will have a story in there, and O&FP blogger Melanie R. Meadors is co-editing with Alana! Plus, there will be stories from Mercedes Lackey, Maurice Broaddus, Anna Smith Spark, Cat Rambo, Shanna Germain, and many more!

I remember watching Phantom Menace in the movie theater wondering what the movie was missing. There was awesome Jedi action (and way better choreography than the original trilogy). The music was fantastic. Tatooine looked pretty much the same, and pod racing was pretty nifty. (It was even more fun as a segment in later Star Wars video games.) But there was some core element of Star Wars I felt was just absent.

It didn't take me more than a few times watching it to realize that what the film didn't have was Han Solo.

I don't mean Han Solo literally. What I wanted was a loveable rogue. (You'll note that I found a TV Tropes link for the character type--that's how common it is.) It's all well and good to have the earnest hero in the center of things. That's kinda their job. But there needs to be someone around with a smirk and a wink and a hard edge—a little too cynical to believe in the mythic importance of everything around them (even if they're later proven wrong). Sometimes it's their job to undercut the narrative, to give it a little breathing room so the audience can laugh. Pretty typically, their witticisms are the ones people leave the theater quoting. They're not in this story for the higher mission of the plot. They're in it for some selfish reason.

But not really. Because when the chips are down, they show up to help save the day.

Or, actually, they don't.

Even though I grew up with the Han Solo type of scoundrel, and grew into the Malcolm Reynolds kind of scoundrel (as a freelancer, "I do the job, and then I get paid" became a mantra for me), I've developed a bit of a taste for the varied palate they can offer. Around the time I was loving Firefly, I was also reading Steven Brust's "Vlad Taltos" series. Which centers on a character who is, effectively, a crime lord in at least a portion of his novels. He's an assassin. He's not a nice man. But he's affable, the kind of narrator you want to follow on whatever mission it is he's undertaking. And, even when it's not really the right thing, you want him to win.

I followed Mark Henry's "Amanda Feral" series, which is narrated by a zombie socialite. Who eats people. Sometimes they're not even bad people, it's just that she's a zombie, and. Well. It happens. And while the whole experience of hanging out with Amanda is kind of like being a spectator to a train wreck, it's a glorious spectacle.

More recently, there's Marvel's Loki, whose Road Movie-like dialogue with Thor was the best thing about Thor: The Dark World. Never quite knowing what side Loki is on is a big part of his appeal—but, even moreso, that he's ambiguous with charm. If you want to talk about a fan favorite character—I think it's probably a safe bet that there's more fan fiction about Loki on the Internet than any of the Marvel heroes. (I'm not going to actually go count them, but I stand by my suspicion.)

And while characters like Kate Daniels and Curran Lennart from Ilona Andrews's "Kate Daniels" series are absolutely the heroes—they've got a bit of a edge on them as well. Kate, a former mercenary, private investigator, and also the daughter of one of the universe's big evils, isn't always good at playing nice. Curran, who for much of the series is the leader of all the shapeshifters in Atlanta, creates a code for his own people, but doesn't always play nicely by the rules of non-shapeshifters. They're a pair for whom the default response is to hit the problem with a sword, and to do so with a gleeful, maniacal smile that makes bystanders scared for their lives.

Fantasy and science fiction thrive on the morally ambiguous characters who can reel you into their stories and make you want them to win, even when they're the bad guys. While I'm no psychologist, I suspect there's something cathartic about rooting for the scoundrel. When you're part of a community (a family, a town, a nation), it's important to follow the rules—but it's not always fun. Diplomacy is hard. Sometimes just getting along with other members of your community is hard.

Rooting for the guy who doesn't have to follow those rules? Sometimes, that's exactly what we need. In all the varieties possible.

As Han says, "There aren't enough scoundrels in your life."

Alana Joli Abbott has been an editor for eighteen years, working on a variety of projects including biographies, news articles, reference books, role playing games, and fiction. At Outland, she has served as co-editor to anthologies, including Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters.

Alana is the author of the novels Into the Reach, Departure,and Regaining Home, the interactive multiple choice novel apps Choice of Kung Fu, Showdown at Willow Creek, and Choice of the Pirate, and she has written for the comics including Cowboys and Aliens II and Ithaca. Her game writing has been featured in Steampunk Musha, the award winning Serenity Adventures, and Dungeon and Dragon magazines. Alana has visited ancient ruins around the world; sung madrigals semi-professionally; and earned her black belt in Shaolin Kempo Karate.

COMICS REVIEW: Jim Henson's The Power of the Dark Crystal, Vol. 1

As a big Dark Crystal fan since the movie first came out, I admit to feeling some trepidation about new developments with the franchise. I don't want people messing about with things too much in my beloved worlds. I don't want my heroes to be ruined, I don't want the magic explained too much, especially by people who weren't involved at the story's conception. But at the same time, I get excited about the new possibilities, and I really want more stories about the characters I love. So I picked up The Power of the Dark Crystal cautiously.

This comic takes place many years after the events in The Dark Crystal. Peace has been restored to Thra with the healing of the Crystal, and Jen and Kira rule as King and Queen. But as often happens, power has made the gelfings complacent and in some cases, corrupt. We see at the beginning that the world is becoming sick, that the light of the crystal is fading. When the gelflings see this, they demand more offerings from the people of Thra, to make the crystal happy. People line up every day to make offerings to the crystal in order to get a boon, such as healing. We meet a new race of people, the Firelings, who are ailing. They live within the planet, near the core, and a young Fireling, Thurma, has been charged with stealing a shard of the crystal in order to heal the Firelings. The only problem is...well, remember what happened the last time the crystal broke? She breaks the crystal, and boom--instantly we hear the mewling "mmmmMMMMMmmmm" of Skeksis. 

So, we have Gelflings who are jerks--corrupted by being the ruling race, to the point where they are bullying other Gelfings, etc. We have an aging King and Queen, who seem to still be kind-hearted, but who are sleepy and complacent, and are letting others become corrupt. We have an adventurous Fireling, who will do anything to save her people, and we have a new Gelfing hero, Kensho, who wants to help do good things, but what IS good? For our old friend, the wise Aughra, knows of a prophesy that says if the Firelings are saved, the world of Gelflings will be destroyed. Yet if the Gelflings are saved, the Firelings will die. How can there be a balance? 

Well, the aging and tired King Jen, along with his companion Fizzgig, are about to go on a quest to find out. And as Jen says himself, "...I'm not sure we're the heroes this time."

I was pleasantly surprised with this comic, over all. The writer and artists managed to keep the feeling of the movie, and the personalities of the characters we've known from before remain intact. I'm really intrigued as far as how the problem is going to be resolved in a way that will help both the Gelflings and the Firelings. And I hope the Gelflings mend their ways and discover kindness again. We can see some hope for that in Kensho. It's a great balance of old characters and new that I think will bring in new fans as well as keep existing fans happy. I really enjoyed reading this, and can't wait for the next installment. 

Also worthy of a mention is Sana Takeda's chapter break artwork, which has an art deco type feel to it. Gorgeous work. 

Melanie R. Meadors is a writer of fantasy stories and comics, her work most recently appearing in the anthologies Champions of Aetaltis and Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters. She is the co-director of the Gen Con Writer's Symposium and the publisher at Outland Entertainment.  Melanie also edits anthologies, including Hath No Fury, Knaves: A Blackguards Anthology, and Tales of Excellent Cats: A Monarchies of Mau Anthology, which is set in the world of the popular role playing game, Pugmire. She is a content editor and publicity specialist at the RPG game company Mechanical Muse, and has written game settings for the RPGs Tiny Dungeons 2e and Tiny Frontiers 2e. She is a blogger and general b*tch monkey at The Once and Future Podcast. You can learn more at melaniermeadors.com 

COMICS REVIEW: Ladycastle from Boom Studios

I did a review of the very first issue of Ladycastle when it came out, as well as an interview of writer Delilah S. Dawson. I loved issue one and couldn't wait to read the rest...but of course, as happens, life got in the way and I didn't get a chance to review the whole collection--until now. 

What the heck was I waiting for? 

Issue one was a great set up, and the rest of the four issue series delivers perfectly on any expectations I had. Ladycastle is a standalone, four issue story that is now collected in a single volume via Boom Studios. When all the men of the castle are killed by a dragon and leave the rest of the population under a curse, the women take up arms to defend themselves, and learn about themselves as individuals, and what life is like out from under the shadows of the men. The story looks at a lot of issues, such as independence, identity, abuse, strength, emotions, different abilities, body image, etc, in such a way that it's part of the story. The messages aren't heavy-handed but are definitely there. Yet, story trumps all, and readers will love the women of Ladycastle right off the bat for their unique personalities and personal struggles that are very relatable. Characters learn lessons such as, "I don't have to be something for someone else," and "I don't have to be hidden away because I'm different," and "Killing everything isn't always the solution." Yet there is a definite fun thread running through the entire storyline which makes this a very enjoyable read even while it's moving and inspiring.

One fun thing about the comic? The Easter eggs. Between Monty Python, Hamilton, Disney, and more, as well as the varying degrees of toilet humor, there are plenty of laughs and fun moments between the serious ones to really make this a perfect story for any mood. The characters make great company, and like I've said about other comics as well, it's very refreshing to see positive relationships between women happening more in fiction and comics. Life isn't a competition, people don't have to be catty and bitchy to each other. Ladycastle is a great example of this. The women support each other, and find strength together. 

Do yourself a favor and grab this comic for yourself, your daughters, your sons. It really is a comic for everyone! 

Melanie R. Meadors is a writer of fantasy stories and comics, her work most recently appearing in the anthologies Champions of Aetaltis and Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters. She is the co-director of the Gen Con Writer's Symposium and the publisher at Outland Entertainment.  Melanie also edits anthologies, including Hath No Fury, Knaves: A Blackguards Anthology, and Tales of Excellent Cats: A Monarchies of Mau Anthology, which is set in the world of the popular role playing game, Pugmire. She is a content editor and publicity specialist at the RPG game company Mechanical Muse, and has written game settings for the RPGs Tiny Dungeons 2e and Tiny Frontiers 2e. She is a blogger and general b*tch monkey at The Once and Future Podcast. You can learn more atmelaniermeadors.com 

COMICS REVIEW: Heathen, Volume 1

How can I describe Heathen, by Natasha Alterici (who both wrote and did the art), from Vault? Frankly, it's the comic I've been waiting for for a long time. I honestly got chills when I read the description on the back:

Aydis is a viking, a warrior, an outcast, and a self-proclaimed heathen. Aydis is friend to the talking horse Saga, rescuer of the immortal Valkyrie Brynhild, and battler of demons and fantastic monsters. Aydis is a woman. Born into a time of warfare, suffering, and subjugation of women, she is on a mission to end the oppressive reign of the god-king Odin. 

But even though I expected a comic that would kick ass, I was still surprised. Yes, Aydis is the comic book heroine I've been looking for, and how can I NOT love the Norse setting and plot? But this isn't just a tale about a warrior fighting the powers that be. It's also a story about love and acceptance. About fighting so that other people can find love and acceptance. It's about throwing off the shackles of those who tell you who you can be and who you can love, and staying true to yourself and your own power. 

One thing I liked about the comic, which was unexpected was that the female characters work together. They are opposed at times, but they aren't petty or "bitchy" toward each other, as I've come to expect often times. I went into this expecting to have to choose sides, especially when Freya came on the scene, but I didn't have to. Freya is exactly how I think of her in my mind, just as the goddess of love should be. The women care for each other and look out for each other. At the same time, the men aren't just looked down upon as the enemy. There are men who are portrayed as wonderful supporters and heroes themselves. Male readers will still feel included and they definitely have a part to play in the story.

The artwork of Heathen is amazing, harsh yet lovely at the same time. Aydis is so expressive, eevn the animals' personalities shine through (though there is more to many of these animals than meets the eye). 

I can honestly say this is one of the top comics I've read in the past couple years. PLEASE, comics publishers--more like this!

Melanie R. Meadors is a writer of fantasy stories and comics, her work most recently appearing in the anthologies Champions of Aetaltis and Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters. She is the co-director of the Gen Con Writer's Symposium and the publisher at Outland Entertainment.  Melanie also edits anthologies, including Hath No Fury, Knaves: A Blackguards Anthology, and Tales of Excellent Cats: A Monarchies of Mau Anthology, which is set in the world of the popular role playing game, Pugmire. She is a content editor and publicity specialist at the RPG game company Mechanical Muse, and has written game settings for the RPGs Tiny Dungeons 2e and Tiny Frontiers 2e. She is a blogger and general b*tch monkey at The Once and Future Podcast. You can learn more atmelaniermeadors.com 

Visit the Kickstarter for KNAVES! Includes stories from Mercedes Lackey, Anna Smith Spark, Anton Strout, Cullen Bunn, and more!

The Mother Hero in Speculative Fiction: Guest Post by I.L. Cruz

Mothers are some of the most resourceful people I know. I know this because I’m a mom—I’ve entertained my daughter for hours with nothing more than stuff I find in my purse and no electronics. We hold positions of authority. We shape new generations. We work inside the home and outside it. It’s been proven time and again that we can do it all. Then why don’t we go on quests?

I’ve read (and written) a lot of speculative fiction and not once do I remember a woman tucking up her children into bed before sharpening her sword by the fire. Have you ever read an urban fantasy that began, “She waved the children goodbye at the drop-off, hoping she hadn’t missed the window for the trans-dimensional portal,” or a space opera with, “Rey knew she was meant to find the last Jedi, if only Ella would get the hang of potty training?” I’m willing to bet a whole stack it’s never been written. Motherhood is when you hang up your spurs and tell the tales of your youth because maturity and experience are a hinderance on quests, right?

But why? As I mentioned before, whose more resourceful than a mother? I’ve gone weeks without sleep, confronted countless unknowns and dangers—anticipated, searched and deduced the indecipherable. Aren’t those key elements to a good chosen one? In Greek mythology Demeter brought the world to a standstill and descended into the underworld just to find her daughter. That’s a Mother Hero. 

As writers of fantasy we love to imperil the young and immature, still uncertain of their responsibilities. We delve into the realm of firsts and watch as they grow with each misstep or triumph. Harry Potter grew from a neglected eleven-year-old boy to a seventeen-year old chosen one, but still a boy. Could Molly Weasley have taken on the Dark Lord instead? Imagine the story of a woman with seven children and little money taking on the greatest evil.

Heroic loners have nothing to lose other than a chance to be remembered. A mother can save the world but lose her family. How powerful would Spock’s speech in The Wrath of Khan about “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few—or the one” have been if he was a mother? Is there really so little inner conflict with a character who has to weigh the fate of the world against the safety of her child that writers ignore the possibility? 

The likely culprit of this oversight is worldbuilding. A fantasy writer can commit thousands of words making the world in their mind come to life for the reader. It can read like a Nathaniel Hawthorne novel, spending an entire chapter describing a wild rose bush. The modern reader finds this tedious (at least I do). To get to the story, we create a shorthand for the accoutrements. Or we prefer to visualize magic working at a time when science was scarce. Therefore, many fantasy stories take place in a medievalist recreation—men in hose with swords, women in gowns and corsets—including all the prerequisite baggage. We can believe a young woman, still untouched by the demands of her society (or normally just on the cusp of being pushed into it) will steal her brother’s chain mail and seek out the “item of destiny” or inherit the “power from prophesy”. Meanwhile her mother hounds her to sit up straight and fix her hair or she’ll never catch the prince’s eye (who invariably marries her because he likes her moxie). What about her mother? Doesn’t Wilhelmina Baggins taking on a mission with a wizard and some dwarves and getting more than she bargained for sound plausible if she needed a little “me time”? Wouldn’t portraying a mother going on a quest be a perfect parallel to the mother who must decide whether to continue chasing her outside career or staying home? 

I’m guilty of it, too. I rarely considered mothers in stories to be more than queens, who hold power, but do none of the heavy lifting. They spar with words, wit, guile and rule worlds. The young and untried risk life and limb for a chance to save the world. What if a queen chose both roles? I don’t have an easy answer for this. I’ve been a mother for ten years now and all my protagonists have been unencumbered females searching for a place in their worlds. I submit that mothers should join the search as well. Katniss Everdeen was young and maternal, but she could have easily been mature and maternal. I’d read that. 

Mothers can be fierce and brave as well as nurturing and kind. They know all about sacrifice and patience. Giving birth demands Herculean strength and taking on a child you didn’t bear takes epic bravery—traits of a hero. Let’s celebrate that in the real world and in literary ones, too.

I.L. Cruz wants to live in a world where words are chosen with care, shoes are as comfy as socks, and reading time is sacred. As someone who’s taken the plunge into writing, she’s been working on a fantasy series, posting on her blog and searching valiantly for her perfect writing tribe.

When she’s not distracted by the voices of characters in her head you can find her wrangling her daughter and a super-mutt named Dipper, indulging in her guilty pleasure of costume dramas and fanboy flicks, and planning European escapes with her husband (where we always end up in a park). Her book, A Smuggler’s Path, will be available this summer. You can learn more at booksbyilcruz.com or her blog, Fairytale Feminista.

COMICS REVIEW--Rose: Volume One, The Last Light

Rose is a young woman who grew up in a world where magic has become not just frowned upon, but outright banned. Entire villages are burned and people killed for even associating with Guardians, the people who use magic. Children suspected of having magic are hunted down and killed. Traditionally, when the world was at peace, the Guardians had companions called khats--giant sentient cats that were bonded with their human counterparts. But all of the khats were wiped out years ago, save one, Thorne. Volume One of Rose is the story of how Rose discovers her powers, and how she and Thorne find each other. 

I really loved the concept for this comic, as well as the artwork. Rose comes into her power by accident and has to be on the run, to escape the power-hungry evil Queen Drucilla, who wants all the Guardians destroyed. We are introduced to a band of people who are resisting the queen, and see indications that there is a movement brewing. It's a traditional fantasy story that deals with familiar themes, and I think high fantasy fans will enjoy it. A lot happens in the space of the first volume, alliances made and broken, promises made, and characters grow. We can see that Rose is a charismatic character who has potential to lead the entire movement against the evil Queen, and by the end of the volume, she's already won a person to her side. Volume 1 ends with a bit of a cliffhanger, and so I'll definitely be picking up the next volume to see what happens. 

One criticism that might be made is that Rose could be considered a bit of a Mary Sue character, but really I think the creators handled this well--we can see that Rose has a lot to learn still, and her magic isn't refined, even though she has the power. Now that she is united with her khat companion, who is older and knows more about magic, it'll be interesting to see how she develops. 

Rose, Volume One: The Last Light is exciting and action-packed, with heroes you cheer for and villains you want to see defeated. It's definitely one you'll want to read straight through. All in all, I highly recommend for fantasy lovers!

Melanie R. Meadors is the author of fantasy stories where heroes don't always carry swords and knights in shining armor often lose to nerds who study their weaknesses. Her fiction has most recently appeared in the anthologies Champions of Aetaltis and Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters. Melanie is the co-director of the Gen Con Writer's Symposium and the publisher at Outland Entertainment. She's the co-editor of the anthology MECH: Age of Steel and editor of Hath No Fury, and she is a blogger and general b*tch monkey at The Once and Future Podcast.

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Anna Smith Spark, On Writing SFF: A Celebration of the Human Soul

Please welcome guest Anna Smith Spark to Once & Future! She is the author of the Empires of Dust series, and also has a story in the new anthology KNAVES: A Blackguards Anthology, now on Kickstarter! She's also eligible for this year's Gemmell Award! 

At NineWorlds last year, I was interviewed for a television programme. The first question I was asked was about whether events like this might be able to ‘reclaim’ the word 'geek’. As though it was something insulting that needed to be ‘reclaimed’.  I had no idea what to say to that, flannelled about saying very little, made an annoying nervous laugh. I thought of this again recently when a controversy erupted in the genteel world of British publishing, after an article in The Bookseller (THE UK publishing trade newspaper) described Gollancz’s current role as an SFF imprint as a ‘tragedy’ given the history of the name.  Gollancz responded furiously, of course, pointing out the The Iliad, 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale etc etc etc are technically ‘SFF’. The article’s author made one of those classic non-apologies that only people with an absolute sense of their own superiority make. Every word of it screamed that the saddos at Gollancz should be bloody grateful the author was even deigning to reply to them.

I’ve lived my entire life with mental health issues. Body issues, crippling shyness, a deep conviction that I was ugly, clumsy, stupid, fat.  The one thing I’ve never been ashamed of, seen as anything but a mark of superiority over others, is my love of SFF. 

‘I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate’

‘I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning.’

‘We dream of light and shadows and the glory of something far greater, the old wild powers of the world. Gods and demons parading. The secret things we cannot see that fly somewhere far beyond our human eyes.’ 

That last one’s by me, from The Tower of Living and Dying. It’s my favourite line I’ve ever written. I make no apologies for quoting it. It sums up my life and why I love SFF. And why I feel contempt for those who claim to dislike it. And why I feel pity for them. 

I am reminded of a recent blog post by my friend and agent-brother Ed McDonald, who wrote of the feeling of inferiority he’d feel standing in a room full of bankers and admitting that he was a fantasy novelist. I did see what he meant – these men (sic) are the masters of the universe, Ed and I write about imaginary people with magic swords. The whole basis of liberal democratic society is that the former is ‘the best and brightest ‘, the latter is ‘childish’. The pinstriped men in the City … yeah, they’d look at Ed and me like dirt. But they’re wrong. The world would be a better place without them. The world’s a better place because people like Ed and me exist. Shelley, who knew a thing or two about the fantastical, wrote in A Defence of Poetry that poetry ‘awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought’. SFF shows us gods and wonders. Beauty. Re-enchantments. Sublime, numinous things. Bankers just make a bigger pile of cash. Weber wrote about the disenchantment of the world, the impact of modernity in stripping the magic of the world away. SFF brings the enchantment back.

I am gazing idly out of a train window as I write this, see a may tree all in bloom. I see the White Tree blossoming in Minas Tirith. I see the May Queen and the Corn King of British folklore. I see beautiful, wonderful, glorious things. I walk the world and I see dragons in the clouds, krakens sleeping beneath the waves of the North Sea, the door to the Otherworld in the hollow hills of the South Downs. I look up into the night sky and I see distant civilizations a thousand light years away, unreachable; I see vast space creatures that can swim through the void like fish through water; I see other sentient beings unimaginable in their alienness. 

I would bet a lot, somehow, that the banker masters of the universe don’t see any of that. 

Gollanzc’s response to the article in The Bookseller argued that ‘Political commentary, social critique, empowerment, standing up for others and freeing your imagination lie at the heart of SFF and—if you’ll forgive us for drawing on the genre here—aliens visiting our planet could learn everything there is to know about our race and society from perusing the pages of Terry Pratchett, George R R Martin, Joanne Harris, Ursula Le Guin, Stephen King and Iain M Banks’. Which is all true, and another reason to feel intense pride in our genre. There’s more human truth in one page of Le Guin’s The Farthest Shore than there is in million economics textbooks. But.

There was a recent discussion in The Guardian about the idea of placing monetary value on the environment. Persuading capitalism that nature is important by assigning a value to it. We do that already, of course, we argue that we need to save the rainforests ‘because they’re the planet’s lungs’; the Artic melting will be a disaster ‘because sea-levels will rise and flood New York’; insects numbers must be protected because of ‘eco-systems’ and ‘food-chains’.  Which is all true, and very important. Oxygen’s kind of useful. Pollination is fairly important if you want to grow anything. I’ve never been to New York; I’d kind of like to see Lady Liberty before she sinks. But.

But these arguments are all unnecessary. These things do not need rational justification. These things are important because they are wonderful. Trees are wonderful. Bees are wonderful. SFF stories are wonderful, to me at least. In a better world, that should be enough. How small must your mind be, for that not to be enough?

In the bankers’ world, the disenchanted world, nothing has wonder. Everything is a thing to be used, bought and sold. It’s the banker’s world that’s a tragedy, that should be ashamed of what it is, that’s childish, in the sense of children as selfish and egocentric and convinced their own little wants are the centre of everything. What use is this thing? Can it make me money? Can it make me more successful? Everything must be quantified, given a value, a purpose, a job.

In my geek SFF world, I care about the world because the world is vast and full of wonder and I love wonderful magical things. The world of SFF is numinous. The divine is there in everything. It is childlike, in the sense of children finding new joys and new terrors in the world every day, never ceasing to revel in the glory of just being alive, of knowing that the world is. I sink away into SFF and I realize again and again how extraordinary and precious the world is, and how extraordinary and precious life is, and how much we need to care for it.

What must it be like to lose that wonder? To no longer be able to see the dragons dancing on the morning wind?   What must it be like never to have been able to see them? 

What a small, sad, mean place the world must be, if you do not see wondrous things.

I’ll end this with a quote from Flecker’s Samarkand that encapsulates everything I love about SFF:

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go

Always a little further: it may be

Beyond the last blue mountain barred with snow, 

Across that angry or that glimmering sea,

White on a throne or guarded in a cave

There lives a prophet who can understand

Why men were born: but surely we are brave, 

Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand.  

Anna Smith Spark is the author of the critically acclaimed Empires of Dust grimdark epic fantasy series. The Gemmell Awards shortlisted The Court of Broken Knives is out now with Harper Voyager (UK/world) and Orbit (US/Can); The Tower of Living and Dying will be published in August 2018. Her favourite authors are Mary Renault, R Scott Bakker and M. John Harrison. Previous jobs include English teacher, petty bureaucrat and fetish model. You may know her by the heels of her shoes.

www.courtofbrokenknives.org

Twitter: @queenofgrimdark

Facebook: Anna Smith Spark

You can vote in the Gemmell Awards here: http://www.gemmellawards.com/award-voting-2018/

COMICS REVIEW: Scales & Scoundrels, Vol. 1: Into the Dragon's Maw

I picked up Scales and Scoundrels, Volume 1 because it looked like a fun sword and sorcery type comic with a fun style of artwork that kind of reminded me a bit of Lumberjanes. And in this case, judging the book by its cover worked--it WAS a fun romp in fantasy land, that readers of all ages can enjoy. 

Immediately I got a good laugh, when on page one we have a meta situation where characters are in the middle of playing a fantasy game. Right away, when we meet main character Luvander, we can tell it's going to be a fun ride of treasure hunting and thrills. When she teams up with a prince, his protector, and their dwarf companion, the adventures really begin. 

Volume 1 does a good job at introducing the characters and getting readers to care about them. Even though Koro, the bodyguard, doesn't trust Luvander, and normally readers might give her the side eye, we can understand why when we see her backstory. All the main characters are well developed and aren't just walking cliches--even though that could have worked with this sort of story, the story is much stronger because the writer didn't take the easy way.

The creators have a great, diverse cast of characters here, and they aren't just painting some characters with darker skin in order to have token characters of color. There is culture and tradition here, decisions are not just made arbitrarily. Again, this points to the excellent character development, which is what makes this comic rise above others.

The volume ends with a couple of mysteries at hand, and leaves readers wanting to know more. I'll definitely be picking up Volume 2 to find some answers to the questions raised in this book.

Also, I want an isp!

Melanie R. Meadors is the author of fantasy stories where heroes don't always carry swords and knights in shining armor often lose to nerds who study their weaknesses. Her fiction has most recently appeared in the anthologies Champions of Aetaltis and Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters. Melanie is the co-director of the Gen Con Writer's Symposium and the publisher at Outland Entertainment. She's the co-editor of the anthology MECH: Age of Steel and editor of Hath No Fury, and she is a blogger and general b*tch monkey at The Once and Future Podcast.

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