Tag: (book) Honestly

Flash: Ancestral Warrior

Erin Penn

Photo by Thao Le Hoang on Unsplash

The silent scream woke Troy, the claw scrapes against the non-existent tiles in the dirt floor screeched against his nerves.

A nightmare, to end a nightmare, to wake to his ongoing nightmare.

Fever burned at his sanity, hiding his loss temporarily in the flames. A solider outside a war zone, but never completely escaped from the war zone inside, the damaged black man searched with combat-sharpened eyes. The dark Vietnam medical shelter didn’t rate the name hospital, but it was all his father’s side of the family had available near their home, after forgotten landmine had found him. The dirt floors and makeshift walls left a haze of dust hanging in the moist night air.

There was … something.

He tried to leverage himself up to see further into the dark, a struggle with the damage along his side and his missing leg.

There.

That.

It hovered over one of Troy’s distant cousins, taking.

An apparition. Not solid, but more dangerous than despair.

Adrenaline flooded Troy’s system, and he swung his legs over the side of the bed and promptly fell. One leg remained missing and would for the rest of his life.

His very short life, as the apparition had noticed him and left the local behind. It floated-crawled over the beds of moaning men.

Troy pulled himself up on one knee to face his death, hoping it’s all a fever dream, but something deep within said no. The same something that drove him into the army instead of suicide when his mother died. The same something that pulled him through the sand when he got shot in the Middle East. The same something that had him throwing a child aside from where they had been playing in the jungle right before his world exploded.

The incorporeal soul-sucking nightmare closed and hovered just feet away while Troy gritted his teeth and growled.

When it leaped, so did Troy – right out of his body into a new one, fully formed and encased in ancient bronze armor with a sword in his hands. His destroyed body left behind for now, dying without its soul. He had only seconds, maybe a minute, to act. Fortunately his time in Uncle Sam’s army made him an efficient killer.

 (Words 375 – first published 1/5/2020)

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words 8/17/2009

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Multipedia at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Magic Systems

Last month, the Magical Words posting from A.J. Hartley talked about Too Much Power. This week I thought I would circle back to an old post from David B. Coe on magic systems.

Magic in fantasy and powers in superheroes contain an affinity for exponential growth, reaching Too Much Power without much effort. The challenge is reigning in the power systems to make the story as much fun to read as it was to create the powers. 

Mr. Coe suggests three structures to control the systems:

  1. Limitations – Example, planetary gravity wells are limited to a certain distance from the planet.
  2. Costs – Example, escaping gravity takes propellant.
  3. Rules – Example, all matter is affected by gravity. Energy is not affected by gravity.

Be careful introducing exceptions to the rules to make your life as a writer easier. Gravity doesn’t get to change its rules. Well, it shouldn’t. I am sure some physicists will have a conversation with the universe creator someday about the deus ex machina of light which is both energy and matter.

The full post is here:

WRITING EXERCISE: Create one power or take one from a work in progress (WIP), just one power, for a fantasy, sci-fi, or superhero world. Define a limitation, cost, and two rules. Write a flash of 50-1000 words based on it.

***

Ancestral warrior. Limitation – most powerful in the ancestral lands, close to normal outside of the lands. Cost – obligation to protect all those of the tribe from those lands. Rules – (1) Lineage/blood-line only. (2) Peak physical, but not natural spell caster.

Look for the story Ancestral Warrior to be published Sunday 1/5/2020. You may recognize the protagonist if you have been following this blog for a while. This is where Honestly meets its Atlantis Wardens beginnings.

Geeking Science: The Aliens Among Us

Erin Penn

Photo by Thanh Tran on Unsplash

Why do I love writing about children so much? Because they are the closest to alien thinking we adults experience. Concrete vs. Abstract thinking is such a big gulf.

I love the mene of working with children (babysitting, being a kindergarten teacher, being a parent) is like being an ambassador to beings from another planet and teaching them how to assimilate to our culture.

No, eating fire or dirt is not the best nutrition option on this planet. Sorry, your ambassadorship, but gravity works a bit different here – if you throw something, it will break. Your excellency, I don’t mean to imply anything, but what exactly were you thinking when you did this?

Part of it is everything really is new to them. They are still testing if gravity is consistent everywhere, why are some things good to eat and others not, and what is all this history that happened before they got here that they are expected to understand. Children really need diplomatic attaches to survive in the alien world they’ve been thrust into.

Terrell (in Honestly and Home Cooking Part 1) reacts differently to Mr. Troy’s disability, and very much needs all the adults in his life to keep him together and dressed. Scott (in It’s Dirty and Memory of a Lifetime) is slightly younger than Terrell and goes off the rails a lot more. I don’t think I will ever do a POV inside a child’s head simply because I cannot conceive what they are thinking. 

Things like – a child believes that by staying out of their bedroom, bedtime won’t happen. Because bedtime is associated with the bedroom. Or how my niece K (mentioned in my editing rant this month) didn’t want to write the character having problems because she really couldn’t dissociate herself from the character and she didn’t want to deal with the problems.

The cognitive difference between concrete and abstract thinking is fascinating. I love using fiction to explore it. And I sometimes let the difference in thinking bleed into exploring alien creatures, such as in Grass.

All of the amazement and exasperation in the differences between adults and children especially comes out in classic teen question “What were you thinking?” We expect the adult-sized children to understand cause-and-effect (which they do) and apply it to every situation, especially complicated ones (which they can’t) that we adults know from experience and shared stories is a beyond-dumb idea. They don’t have experience, their friends haven’t survived through the experience to tell the story, and they just don’t think that many steps ahead.

“Look mom, we did think it through. I made sure there was a mattress for when we fall.” “But mattresses have springs. You bounced!” “Mattresses have springs?”

These aliens live among us.

How about you? Are there aspects in children – from baby, through toddler, to teen – which make you geek? Do you have any stories to share?

Bibliography

“Cognitive Development in the Teen Years”. Stanford Children’s Health. Last viewed 10/2/2019. https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=cognitive-development-90-P01594

Other Cool Blogs: Civilian Reader August 1, 2017

Erin Penn

Photo by Jens Lindner on Unsplash

Plans Change

“But-but-but…,” I stare at the screen, “You are not following the outline.”

The character looks back at me, smirking, “You want real characters, then we get to decide our own actions.”

Book Cover for Honestly

In Honestly, I had carefully set up a sexy encounter in the laundry room. And I waited, and I waited. Nothing happened. Eventually, Kassandra and Troy take Troy’s laundry down to his room. Whatever. I just kept typing. Suddenly, when I – the writer – have forgotten about things and Kassandra starts up the stairs again Troy stops the story.

“But…you…grrr….(sputter unintelligible things)” and then I typed.

The reason that scene is so organic is it just happened. I didn’t write it. My characters did.

Joshua Palmatier discusses the issue of the characters running off with story in a guest post on Civilian Reader. He had it much worse than my little hiccup. They didn’t change just one scene, but the whole final book of a trilogy to the point he needed to talk to his editor because the book he was writing wasn’t the book he sold them.

Important take away: “…if the characters don’t at some point take control and do unexpected things, then the book isn’t succeeding.“

Blog: Fail (Part 2)

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So my Fail. I failed the Bechdel Test. This test was developed in 1995 to measure movies for inclusion. It goes like this:

  1. The movie must have more than one woman in it.
  2. They have to talk to each other.
  3. And their talk has to be about something other than a man (male).

Honestly and Threshold Sanctuary (the short published in WeAreNotThis) both fail at the first step. I tried to console myself with, well, they are romances where the main activity is between the romantic leads thereby limiting the cast. Except for Honestly, I have Dewayne, Fred, and Boulder all talking to each other about something other than the opposite gender, and they are secondary characters!

Further, during my recent sociological studies, I ran into two more terms “The Smurfette Principle” (1991) and “Women in Refrigerators “(1999). In both of my published works I have only one female appearing on screen, Kassandra and the witch. And the only offscreen character to suffer created solely for character development of an onscreen character was a woman for the male’s background (Troy’s mom).

(expletives) I am completely a product of my society. Especially the entertainment biz.

Therefore I am going to do a writing exercise right now to figure out how bad I am doing.

WRITING EXERCISE: Go over your body of work using the Bechdel Test, the Smurfette Principle, and Women in Refrigerators. If you need to understand the Women in Refigerators better, the video from Feminist Frequency explains it well.

READING EXERCISE: Watch two movies which passes the Bechdel Test and Smurfette Principle – one movie using these two tests based on gender and once based on melanin. If you watch movies in theatre, the movie should be in theatre. If you are NetFlicks watcher, then NetFlicks and chill. If part of your mind goes, but “I don’t wanna watch a chick flick” clearly you need to work outside your comfort zone. People always tell writers they need to read outside their genre; approach it with this mindset if it helps. Also who said anything about a chick flick? For example “Hidden Figures” could cover either the gender or melanin portion of the exercise.

ME DOING THE WRITING EXERCISE:

Remember, the point of these tests is not if one of your works fails but to study systematic problems over a body of work – a consistency of issues. So really my failing the Bechdel Test and the Smurfette Principle in two publications of romance isn’t bad. I will have a problem if I look at a statistically significant body and still have the issue. So 2016 blogs here I come!

First the 2016 non-fiction blogs related to specific people: 9 book reviews, 12 author spotlights, 18 magical word posts, and 12 other blogs – total of 51. (The book review included three multi-author publications which I am not counting.) Melanin split – one immigrant and one foreigner. No one of color. If going by appropriate ratios for American demographics at least 7 blacks, 2 Asians, and 6 immigrants.  Gender split – 33 to 18 (65% to 35%) favoring women (several of the blogs were by more than one person) with the author spotlight and book reviews by design and conscious choice evenly split between male and female. I had been working to have the magical words and other blogs also being an even split, but women tend to blog more than men about writing so the pool to draw from curtailed my options. So Fail on the Melanin and a “D” on the Gender splits for non-fiction even when actively trying to address the know issues.

For my 2016 flashes I am not including the one appearing in the writing exercises, just the flashes – a total of 52. I am limiting myself to on-screen characters who are more than scenery; they do not need names, but they do need to have a level of agency. Gender Split – In 52 flashes, I had 118 characters – 60 male, 53 female and 5 unspecified – 50%, 45%, 5%. Not perfect but not bad – a “B” grade. For the Melanin split I end up with the clearly defined whites at 57%, blacks at 11%, Asians at 2% and undefined at 30%. I often deliberately choose to not clearly define skin color. In addition I have 2.5% clearly defined as Hispanic and 1.5% defined as immigrants – the immigrant is a gray area since not all the stories are set in America. Melanin is fine. Grade of an A-.

Now the two I am really scared of – the Betchel and Smurfette tests. Since flashes rarely have more than two characters, this limits the options. For the Betchel test I have only included flashes with two people if both are the same gender, otherwise 3 or more people are needed. Twenty-one flashes meet this requirement and only 7 pass the Betchel test. A higher ratio than big entertainment, but less than 50% pass. On the other hand, I should see if we just switch the gender on the Betchel test, how many would pass. Ordinarily it would not be necessary, but because flashes restrict interaction so much, a better comparison in this case is seeing of the 21 flashes the female to male Betchel test passes. How many times do just men talk to each other? In this case 9 pass vs. the 7 for women. In only one case does a flash pass for both the men and woman Betchel test. Again a “B” rating because they are close, but I still am showing an unconscious preference for the dialogue to center on man-to-man. I will need to look over the statistics again next year simply because the statistical pool for the Betchel test was low.

Now smurfette. With only 17 flashes with 3 or more people, the pool is even smaller than for the Betchel test. It takes three to create an outnumbered gender. In this case I have 7 times where the story only had one woman and 6 times where the story only had one male. I pass!

Final review – For 2016, I did not do perfect with the flashes and non-fiction, but the larger review does indicate for first fears after the review of my published works are manageable. I do need to work harder. And I should review this next year; this is something I should monitor if only because I love numbers and sociology and the easiest person to “experiment” on is myself. Right now I give myself a C with a “B” for the fiction area and a “D” on the non-fiction.

Your turn – comment below on your Writers and/or Reader’s exercises.