Cool Books for Hot Summer Nights

So often we use metaphors of heat: "hot off the press," "hot new author" etc. to create excitement about a book we want to promote. Yet right now, with a dome of unbearable heat settled over so much of the US, it just doesn't seem to be appropriate.



A Man and a Plane by Joseph T Major

Who could stop Hitler? Germany in 1933 tottered on the brink of revolution, dissolution, and destruction. The Nazis were some kind of a solution.
There was no one who could be an alternative.
A stroke of fate took from the scene one man who could have made the difference. In that fateful April of 1918, Germany's hero fell from the skies.
And if he hadn't?

(I read this one in draft, or rather, several different drafts in the course of transforming it from idea to novel).



Bitter Weeds by Joseph T. Major

"There are bitter weeds in England." The Dunkirk Evacuation was a great deliverance. But some of the soldiers did not make it. If someone had only known . . . A troubled man, a man divided between two nations and several natures, delivered from the continent, pursues a twisted course in a wilderness of mirrors to serve his masters. A woman staging a great pretense that is almost true finds herself in the heart of darkness, seeing the advance of evil. Their relatives and connections each struggle with his or her own burdens as the horrors of war spread. The simple kindness of stopping to give the dead some small dignity begins a wave of change that will wash across the world, in this first volume of a series highlighting the great and the petty, the powerful and the victims, and finding both pain and hope.

(This is the first in a series that is currently up to five volumes: No Hint of War, The Road to the Sea, An Irresponsible Gang and The Ten Just Men. I've read the first and half of the second, and would be reading faster if only I had no obligations in life to attend. Unlike A Man and a Plane, it's a story of small changes that build in significance through the course of the story arc.)



Fleeing Peace by Sherwood Smith

Siamis said, “Your young friend Liere is not going to enjoy the trap she’s walking into, I fear. But you figured that out, did you not? Why didn’t she listen to you?”

“To snap her fingers under your nose,” Senrid retorted.

“Irresistible.” Siamis smiled gently. “But it’s going to cost.”


Fifteen-year-old Senrid is newly king of the difficult warrior kingdom Marloven Hess . . . just in time to lose it, and find himself running for his life. When Senrid is captured he overhears a secret—one he can use against the enemy, a charismatic, handsome man named Siamis who can read minds, and who enchants people just by talking to them.

Liere has always known she was special, which just increased her loneliness and sense of isolation. She can hear others’ thoughts, and she senses the real emotions below the façade. When a golden-haired man named Siamis comes to her village and enchants the entire town around her, she finds herself on the run.

Liere and Senrid couldn’t be more different, but their goal is the same, to locate the powerful magic that will unravel Siamis’s world enchantment.

Chased by powerful enemies, Liere and Senrid are tested to the max as they form an alliance of kids to aid them, and gain magical support from surprising sources.

Neither ever expected to discover something even more powerful than magic: friendship. First written when Sherwood Smith was fifteen, this is the story of how Senrid and Liere first met.

(This is another story I read in draft over the course of its development, from photocopies of fragile hand-written notebooks through typescripts and printouts to digital files. JRR Tolkien was not alone in discovering that it is not easy to reconcile the visions of one's youthful exuberance with the work of one's more mature older self).



Poor World (CJ's Notebooks Book 4) by Sherwood Smith

CJ and the gang of girls from Mearsies Heili like their adventures fun and villains to be defeatable by a well-thrown prune pie. In fact, they laughed at the very idea of stories about kids who have to Save the World . . .

Until it happens to them.

Written when Sherwood Smith was a teenager, this is the story of the M girls up against the toughest challenge of their lives so far.

(Another novel I got to play auntie to, as it went from that first draft in a crumbling notebook to polished prose).



Eldritch Embraces: Putting the Love Back into Lovecraft by Michael Cieslak

Combine the mind splintering horror of the Cthulhu Mythos and the heart shattering portion of that most terrible of emotions - love - and what do you have? You have Eldritch Embraces: Putting the Love Back in Lovecraft. This collection of short stories from some of the best working in the fields of horror and dark speculative fiction blends romance and Lovecraft in a way which will may make you sigh, smile, weep, or leave you the hollow shell of your former self.

(I have a short story in this one: "Beach House on the Moon.")



Ice Storm by Leigh Kimmel

Everywhere Evangeline looks, a thin coating of ice makes objects gleam in the sunlight. Yet the beauty proves deceptive, for it hides a deadly secret, one only she can recognize.

In her youth, Evangeline had aspired ot master the powerful magics of her world. Those dreams died the day her Gift awakened uncontrolled and plunged her into a vision of a full fleet battle. The Admiral's Gift will not be denied, and for Evangeline there was no choice but to trade her mage's robes for Navy blue.

Now she is faced with an enemy she cannot fight save by magic. Except those who bear the Admiral's gift are forever barred from working magic.

(A nice, chilly selection, this short story was one of the finalists for a writing contest at LoneStarCon II, the 1997 World Science Fiction Convention.)



The Workhouse War by Leigh Kimmel

An afternoon for sketching in peace – that was all Nadine Darby wanted. She thought she was taking a shortcut to get past an overgrown levee and gain a better view of the Mississippi for some landscape work. Instead she ended up somewhere else. A place called Elyssium, where the past walks alongside the present. Where you can see a modern car pull up and a Confederate Navy officer climb out, talking on a cellphone.

On the riverbank Nadine met a strange little man who told her he was an artist as well, and showed her his sketchbook to prove it. But no sooner had Nadine made her first friend than she discovered all was not well. She watched in helpless horror as a young man was pursued, arrested and beaten by thugs from an institution that goes by the official name of the City Orphanage, but is generally called the Workhouse by the inhabitants of Port of White Fleet.

Nadine can count herself fortunate that she fell into the company of a man who has little use for this organization. But his efforts to help her attain her artistic ambitions instead attract the attention she must avoid, and draws her into quarrels that have simmered for decades.

Can Nadine thread her way through the myriad perils of this world and save herself and her new-found friends? And even if she defeats the Workhouse, will it be at the cost of losing everything she's found here?

(A little Christmas in July).

If you read and enjoy any of these selections, please consider rating and reviewing them on Amazon.com -- reviews are critical for getting onto recommendation lists, which are critical for indie authors.

PS: I'm hoping to make these promotional posts a recurring, if irregular, feature of my blog. If you have indie or small press

(Crossposted at The Starship Cat and The Billion Lightyear Bookshelf

Parallels

As I'm working on Steam Heat, the story of the 708 Rebellion in Codyland, I'm noticing just how many parallels there are between it and the story of the young King Rene XIV of the Swamp Kingdom and his battles with his uncle Sebastien, who usurped the Cypress Throne.

In particular, I was fiddling with the question of just how important Archbishop Coquinael, the papal nuncio to Codyland at the time, was in the 708 Rebellion. Sidor, nuncio to the Swamp Kingdom, is a major figure in the novel of Rene and Sebastien, but I really didn't know how much Coquinael did in the 708 Rebellion, or if he was even nuncio yet. I just knew that by Where the Madwinds Blow, the planned sequel to Steam Heat, he and Ligo Rafferty do not get along well, but have to work together professionally.

However, I'm beginning to think that I will be finding out a lot more of him as I go along.

Drilling Into History

I've been working on some of the family history of Rene XIV for his novel. As I did, I have broken into a whole new layer of the history of another of the major nations of Ixilon, New Avignon.

Now I'm discovering that their royal family has a very interesting history, torn by an accusation of adultery that may have been false. An embittered prince, certain that his mother has been falsely accused and wrongly executed, flees rather than submit to the king's command to enter a monastery.

Thus begins a pirate dynasty that troubles the Great Lakes for generations, until they finally displace the original royal family, thus vindicating the original prince's claims.

Of course the lake pirates are quite a bit different from your standard pirates of the Spanish Main. They're on fresh water in a temperate climate, so they're going to have to have safe harbors in which to hide when the lakes freeze over for the winter. And since there are several major waterfalls in the Great Lakes in Ixilon, just as there are in our world, they've got to be able to masquerade as respectable merchants in order to get through the locks.

One of these days I'm going to have to write the stories of the lake pirates. But of course first I need to have time.

Mirror, Mirror

As I'm working on Young Rene XIV, I'm realizing that the 708 Rebellion in Codyland is almost precisely contemporaneous with Sebastien's usurpation of the Cypress Throne and Rene's ouster of him. Which makes me want to work on Steam Heat in parallel with it.

There are strong parallels between the two novels, which make them an interesting study in contrasts. Both of them are about struggles against tyranny, and both stories are resolved by the restoration of a rightful leader. But what constitutes the rightful leader is very different in the two countries.

The Swamp Kingdom is a heriditary monarchy. Thus, Rene's primary claim to legitimacy rests upon his being the eldest son of the previous king. By contrast, Codyland traces its heritage to the United States and the tradition of popular sovreignty, even if formal republican government has been submerged. Thus, the legitimate ruler is the one who represents the people's will.

Hopscotch

Some people write novels by starting at the beginning and writing steadily through until they reach then end. Others jump around, doing the chapters that interest them, then going back and knitting everything together.

I find that different novels lend themselves to different approaches. Some, particularly those with multiple diverse threads that slowly draw together, are easy to write out of sequence. Others need to be written one chapter at a time, because I can only see each chapter as I come to it.

But whatever kind of novel I happen to be working on, I've learned that I can't be too rigidly wedded to a particular approach. If a novel that I'm working on by doing chapters all over the storyline starts to unravel in my hands, I may have to go back and actually write some of those chapters that I've been skipping over. Equally, if I get balked by a chapter in a novel I'm writing sequentially, but I have a clear view of the chapter that follows, it's often best to simply jump over the offending chapter, then come back and work it out once I have a clearer idea just where the novel is heading.

Young Rene XIV is something of a mix. I've been doing it largely sequentially, but more than once I've jumped over a problematic chapter, or scene within a chapter, in order to keep from being left stuck. Recently Chapter 10, which deals with events in the hinterland of the Swamp Kingdom, was giving me trouble. I just couldn't seem to get a feel for where it needed to go. However, I had a much clearer idea of what Chapter 11 should look like, so I decided to jump ahead and write it. So now the novel's moving again.

Milestones

Today I broke 50,000 words on Young Rene XIV, which is a significant milestone. That's the number of words you try to produce in NaNoWriMo (although I have yet to be able to participate -- every November it seems some obligation always comes up to devour all my available time). I'm figuring that I'm somewhere between a quarter and a third of the way through the overall storyline, although the overall form of the novel is still shaky in my mind.

Still, it was cool to add up all the chapter wordcounts and realize that I'd made the mark -- and I still have scenes I need to add to or complete in both Chapter 3 and Chapter 5, and may be adding one more scene to Chapter 2. Not to mention that I'm still extremely dissatisfied with Chapter 1, at least partly because significant parts of it strike me as idiot plot as written. So it's quite possible that the 50,000 word mark may shift backward somewhat before I get a complete draft written.

How long that may take will probably depend upon what other obligations come my way. Although right now it seems that non-fiction projects are rather scarce on the ground.

Looking for a Key

A key element, that is.

I'd been able to push the first scene of Chapter 3 of Young Rene XIV forward a few pages, only to run into a fresh block. This time it was a logical one -- I knew Benoit du Rocher needed a way to get a message to his wife, but couldn't take it himself. I'd originally thought to have him send a messenger, but if he did that, why didn't he order the messenger to accompany her and the children on the road?

Not to mention, if he couldn't get through, why did he think a messenger could get through in his place?

So I was stuck, trying to figure out how to logically bridge the gap. It was too short a distance for a carrier pigeon, but perhaps some other animal might be suitable -- and equally, not suitable for taking on the road, which would rule out a dog.

Did I want to go for something ordinary, if a little wild, like a raccoon? Or perhaps something exotic, like a small raptoral dinosaur or some really alien critter imported from the Outer Worlds?

And then I recalled that Ixilon's cats enjoy greater intelligence than those we're familiar with, and there are personal connections with a historical hero whom Benoit greatly admires. Suddenly everything came together and I knew how to take care of that critical juncture.

However, I'm now faced with the question of whether I need to have cats and their strange gifts in Ixilon figure again in the story.

Returning after Time Away from a Project

I was happily surprised when I recently picked up the young Rene XIV novel after having set it aside for over a month, and discovered that the time working on other projects did indeed allow me to get a fresh perspective on it. Things that had been insurmountable barriers suddenly came clear to me, and I was able to outline a large number of chapters.

Unfortunately, I'm now getting to the point where I need to actually write the chapters in order to get the necessary perspective to push the outline forward to the end. Which of course means actually having the time to write, not always a commodity in great supply. But I've just finished one major non-fiction project, and I'm hoping that will translate into some more writing time than I've experienced of late.

On the other hand, it's also possible that my clearing my desk will be rapidly followed by someone else writing me and asking if I'd like to pick up a project for them, on a very short deadline. And there will go my fiction writing time again, because we need that money.

Papers Please

As I'm writing the story of young Rene XIV and Sebastien the Usurper, I'm getting steadily closer to the point where Rene's blasted into our world and falls in among a group of teenage skiffy fen who help him integrate into our world when they think the worldgate may well be a one-way, one-time event, and then defend him when Sebastien's goon comes hunting for him, and help him get back to his own world to regain his throne after it's obviously possible to reopen the gate.

But as I'm doing it, I'm discovering just how hard it would be to insert a kid into the school system who has absolutely no backtrail, no identity documents, no record whatsoever of his existence before the moment he appears in Cynthia's family's backyard in the middle of a pouring rainstorm. The obvious cover is that he's a refugee from the hurricane that's just torn up the Gulf (and probably is the source of the rainstorm he arrives in). This would explain why he has no documents -- he got up here with nothing but the clothes on his back, and was separated from his family and isn't even sure they survived.

However, there's the question of whether the school system would let him in on even a temporary basis with no documents without his putative guardian actually coming into the office to sign paperwork and speak with the administrators. The kids don't want to clue Cynthia's mom in on the situation because she runs a beauty shop and is a notorious gossip -- and the beauty shop also provides the obvious excuse as to why she can't come in for face time with the administration, since she can't just cancel her customers' appointments and close her beauty shop so she can go jump through bureaucratic hoops. That is supposed to give the opening for the late-twenties older sister of one of Cynthia's friends to call the administrative office on her cellphone, pretending to be Cynthia's mom in the middle of her beauty shop, and tell the administration to just send the necessary paperwork home with the kids and she'll sign it and send it back the next morning. But if they're going to insist on face time, it's going to get a lot tougher. Either Sandy comes up with fake ID with her face and Cynthia's mom's name on it (and thus commits criminal identity fraud), or she arrives as herself and then has to explain just how a Greek-American should be guardian to a Louisiana Cajun with a noticable French accent.

And even if I can get them over the initial hump and get Rene into school, eventually they're going to want to see some documentation. It's believable to say his school records and immunization records are irrevocably destroyed and there's no way to obtain copies, since schools and doctors' offices don't typically maintain offsite copies of their records, so if the schools and doctors' offices in question are completely destroyed by the hurricane, those records could be wiped out. Even a baptismal certificate could believably be impossible to obtain if parish churches don't routinely send their records on baptisms, marriages and deaths to the diocese to be kept in the central chancery archives. But believably claiming that his birth certificate has been irrevocably destroyed in this day and age is pretty close to impossible. Once there was a time when a fire in a county courthouse could wipe out all those vital records -- but at least in Indiana all hospitals send birth and death records to the central vital statistics bureau in the Department of Health on a daily basis (my husband works with the ISDH computers, and has told me how these things work). Louisiana probably follows a similar protocol, and since Baton Rouge is well inland, it'd be hard to believe that a hurricane could retain enough strength to destroy the state vital records center. And even if it did, with the practice of keeping duplicate data centers in remote locations, it's likely that even complete destruction of the one in Baton Rouge would still leave duplicate records in Montana or Wyoming or suchlike. And then there's the problem of a Social Security number -- and Social Security records are kept in Federal record centers in Washington DC, and probably duplicated in multiple secure locations, so even if his Social Security card was reduced to a pulp in his wallet, the record would be there in the Federal government's files -- and when the local Social Security office can't turn it up, there's going to be a major problem.

So if Rene's going to be on Earth for any length of time, either his teenage protectors are going to have to get involved in criminal identity fraud, or his story is going to fall apart for want of documents that can't plausibly have been irrevocably destroyed, and aren't going to be there.

Yes, we really are that tightly documented from birth to death these days, and every important step of our lives requires producing those documents, to the point that it's impossible to operate without them. The present is most definitely not a friendly place and time for a visitor from another universe.

Going Back

As I'm writing the novel of young Rene XIV and Sebastien the usurper, I'm thinking ahead to the ending, and specifically to Cynthia Delacroix having to go back to Earth and her old life after she's had extraordinary adventures with the boy king.

It's something almost no world-crossing adventure novels address -- having to go back to the child role after having made adult decisions and shouldered adult responsibilities, and being given adult respect for doing so. When young people shoulder adult roles in an emergency in the mundane world that puts normal adult authority out of commission, at least they're recognized as heroes, and perhaps even accorded a little more respect, a little more latitude. People understand when they have trouble resuming the child role, if they aren't always quite as deferential, quite as quick to assume that adults are right by definition.

But if all those adventures have taken place in another world, and you're returned to your own world just moments after you left it, nobody knows what you've gone through. And you can't even try to explain, because it will only get you dismissed as delusional. If you have trouble slipping back into the child role after having been treated as an adult for what may have been months for you, it'll simply be assumed that you're being stubborn or sassy, as opposed to having trouble going back to ordinary life after extraordinary adventures.

Yet at the same time, I don't want to create a downer ending, in which Cynthia despairs of ever being able to fit into a world in which she is going to be but an insignificant, interchangable cog. Because realistically, there's no way she's ever going to rise in this world to anything comparable in status to what she briefly enjoyed in Ixilon, being a counselor to a king, helping him regain his throne from an evil usurper, and generally being one of the movers and shakers. Most likely she will be expected to slot herself into an ordinary, workaday job for the rest of her life, doing as she's told, perhaps rising to a middle-management position, but certainly never being one of the great decisionmakers.

I may be able to suggest at the end that somehow Rene did find a way to open a gate that would allow Cynthia to move permanently to Ixilon, but somehow that seems like sidestepping the very real problem of how can Cynthia ever return to ordinary life after her extraordinary adventure.

Hurrying

As I'm working on the novel of young King Rene XIV and the usurper Sebastien (as of yet untitled), I'm beginning to get the feeling that there's simply too big of a jump from Chapter 2 to Chapter 3. At the close of Chapter 2, Rene and his brother Alexandre have made contact with Eigun Eiderveyen, who is going to help them get out of the capital as Sebastien's forces are rapidly taking it over. When Chapter 3 begins, Rene and Alexandre are on the royal flagship, well out to sea, and Rene is reflecting on their escape.

I'd originally thought that the process of getting to the flagship and getting it out of the harbor probably wasn't of that great of interest, and it would be best to jump ahead and cover it only in a brief flashback. But as I tried to get Chapter 3 moving, I realized that there's just too much material there to cover in a brief flashback, and it really does need to be covered properly.

So now Chapter 3 is going to become Chapter 4, moving everything that follows forward one chapter, and I add in another chapter of events in Ste. Genevieve as it's falling to Sebastien's forces. I'm hoping this will prove satisfactory, and I'll be able to move forward on this thing.

On Seizing the Moment

So today I finally get some writing time, and decide to pull out the novel of King Rene XIV of the Swamp Kingdom and his wicked uncle Sebastien the Usurper. I'm figuring that the words are going to just come pouring out, since I know the story so well and it's a pretty straightforward action-adventure fantasy. Not a lot of intricate philosophy or social dance, just the slam-bam of a coup d'etat and a boy king fleeing for his life to another world and teenage allies.

But when I sit down to write, it's a real struggle to get the words flowing. I push out a few sentences, and then I'm wandering around the house before I can sit down and put out a little more. I did manage to turn out almost 1500 words, but I'd been hoping for so much more.

I think it's that old problem of holding in and letting out. After having to hold back so long because of the press of non-fiction deadlines, it's hard to let go and let myself write. There's the pull of multiple other novel and short story projects that all want my attention. But there's also the sense that I ought to be doing something else. I do have two other article projects, even if I don't have the right books for either of them right now. And this house is anything but spotless and ready for the realtor to show Right This Minute, so there's the guilty sense that I Really Ought to be busily cleaning and getting it Just Perfect.

All of which makes it difficult for me to make the best use of this wonderful chunk of time that suddenly presents itself for me to use. It's so frustrating to produce so little, when there's so much to be told and so dreadfully little time.

Back to the Beginning

I should be working on a set of articles that are due January 16, but I haven't been able to get back into it and get going again on it. Frustrated with my inability to find a new entry point into the project, I got some of the Ixilon materials out again.

However, I do think I finally found the proper entry point to the whole sequence that deals with Eigun Eiderveyen and Jan-Pawel Trzetrzelewski. It's the story of the boy-king of the swamps, Rene XIV, and how his wicked uncle Sebastien thrust him into exile on the yonder side of a worldgate in order to usurp the Cypress Throne. However, the world into which he was thrown is our own, and there young Rene found allies of a most surprising sort.

I've written the prolog, in which Sebastien sets forth his plans, and a few sentences of the first chapter. I'd really like to push ahead on this novel, but at the same time I know that Ihave a moral obligation to get to work on the article project, since I've signed a contract promising that I'd get them written and turned in on time. And it doesn't help that the pay is really lousy on these articles, so there's not really that much to help motivate me in the face of a thorough lack of inspiration on how to turn these assignments into finished articles.