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Exploring Other Worlds

11/26/2018

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I did warn you that I might not be able to add to this until Christmas. If my work schedule develops as the bosses seem to think it will, then, yeah, that'll be the case.
On a positive note, I was able to finish and submit the holiday short story I was working on, and I was also able to submit another story to another contest. The best thing about those was that there was no entry fee!
Surprise! Had an eight-hour day on Sunday and Monday. I have time to do this!
On the reading front, I'm still enjoying Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I'm now about half way through Book VI, Song of Susannah. This book gives us a surprise character: Stephen King! King includes himself as a younger man, encountering his own creations. The meeting is a bit traumatic, as you may imagine, not only for King, but for Roland and Eddie Dean as well.
King does not portray himself in a particularly favorable light...which is good. I think he honestly tries to imagine how his younger self would have reacted to such a situation.
I want to bring up one point...well, at least one. Might develop into more. This volume, plus the one prior (Wolves of the Calla) explores the idea of characters in fiction actually existing in their own worlds...that each world may be completely real to the characters even though they are "created" by a writer. He introduced the idea of multiple worlds, with death as one of the doorways between them, in The Gunslinger. The idea of "leakage" between Earth and Midworld continues throughout the series, but is seldom seen as more than a sidelight.
This concept was explored pretty thoroughly, and differently, in Robert Heinlein's The Number of the Beast and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. I must include that many of the characters and settings for those two books are introduced in his Time Enough for Love. These do not constitute a series, exactly. Except that TCWWTW ends in a sort of cliff hanger that nevertheless serves as an adequate ending, yet is wrapped up in the following book, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, which was Heinlein's final novel...except that he had four books published after his death, though one was with Spider Robinson collaborating by finishing an unfinished work...which I have not yet read. Another of those four is a resurrected novel Heinlein wrote much earlier in his life...in fact, his first novel. The other two books published post mortem are non-fiction.
Whew! Sorry about that tangent. I'm a big Heinlein fan. To continue the tangent (unapologetically), for those that are not familiar with Heinlein's name or work, I here offer a quote from the back jacket of his novel, Job: A Comedy of Justice.
"Following World War II Robert Heinlein emerged as not only America's premier writer of speculative fiction, but the greatest writer of such fiction in the world. He remains today as a sort of trademark for all that is finest in American imaginative fiction." ---Stephen King
All right, back to the original subject.
Obviously, there is much more to those excellent science fiction novels than just that theme. There are interesting characters (including some from Heinlein's earlier works), romance, war, mystery, and sex. But if you want to explore this particular idea, reading those novels will give you a real look at some of the possibilities. Like, seeing a character literally erased from a scene.
More about King's work, my reading, and who knows what else next time.
Be well, be kind to each other, and READ!
 

  
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Revisiting

11/3/2018

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I have a confession to make. I read comic strips every morning, about two dozen of them. That's not the confession. I've been reading the comics since I learned to read.
The confession is that after I've read one, I read it again.
I'm sure some one (or many ones) immediately thought that I need to read it twice to understand it. For those of you that thought that or something similar—good for you!
When I was a pre-teen I encountered some story where a character was reading a book he wrote. I wondered then why would anyone reread their own book? They know what's in it. The particular book in question was a memoir of sorts.
Now I understand. Earlier this year I read my own fantasy novel, Prophecy of Honor. It was published in the fall of 2015 and I hadn't read it since. I wanted to see if it still appealed to me, (it does—it's really good, just shorter than your typical fantasy novel) but also I was curious to see, as a reader, what I could have done better.
It was for recreational reading, but also for learning.
Now I'm reading Witchery, my fantasy novel published in 2016. It's been over two years since I read it last and I'm curious, again, if it's as good as I thought it was when I finished it.
So far, I'd have to say yes...and no. The story is still excellent. The four main characters are well developed, the plot is solid and not too complicated, but not too simple, either.  
As I believe I've written before, I could have made this into a two- or three-book series. Or even more. I'm pretty sure that an author whose experience and talent run to producing a series instead of a single novel would have stretched it out. There is so much backstory available for all the characters except Teyla that visiting those stories would easily expand the novel into two or three. The question, though, is, could all that backstory-ing maintain the interest of the readers?
In some of the fantasy series I've read I find myself losing patience with all the unnecessary extras. I want to get to the showdown that's been intimated since almost the beginning.
In Witchery I made no concerted effort to disguise the showdown. Heroine and villain were destined to meet. And if you assume there's going to be a happy ending, then the hero—Teyla—will be victorious in the conflict.
But how? And what of the battle of everyone else? How will that play out? Could I have visited all those back stories of the supporting characters...and the villain, and maintain the readers' interest?
At that time, probably not, at least not as the main plot is approached. It was published in 2016, but I started writing it in 1990. I finished it in '91 or '92, but collected nothing but rejections. I determined that it needed a major overhaul of the magical elements—what the magic could and could not do. One of the characters also needed a major change.
I did not get around to doing that until 2015 and basically rewrote most of the second half of the novel while not changing the plot. Plus the necessary changes throughout. It is absolutely much better than the original.
I could, though, have been a little more stylish in the writing. I could have used more metaphors, similes, alliteration, etc. But I was not yet to that level of my writing...and besides, I don't use a lot of that anyway. But I try to use more than I did.
I am now almost embarking on a fantasy series. I say almost because with my required work hours, I don't have the time I need to make much progress. But we'll see how I do with a project of that size.
Thanks again for reading, and please...VOTE!!
And if you vote my way, all the better.

 
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    I'm a former teacher and current warehouse grunt that loves writing.

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