“What a writer is intellectually, morally, spiritually, emotionally will radiate through the work, like the light on an overcast day in which there is no visible sun, so that all things appear illuminated equally.”

–Joyce Carol Oates

Started a new devotional this morning, and a quote from the first lesson brought me back to my novel:

“Man’s perennial efforts to take himself in hand, however he attempts it, lead to the greatest bondage in which man misses what he was meant to be…. He only gains this as he denies himself. Paradoxically, the free man does not belong to himself. He belongs to him who has set him free. “

–J. Blunck in The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology

This quote so intrigues me because for a long time it has been established that the djinn (by their nature) are bound in obedience to their parent(s), until such time as they owe someone else more.  In my story it is exactly true that each individual belongs to the one who freed him or her.

And it can be argued the result is not race-specific. As in (at first blush), this affect seems to hold true for humans as well.  (Does that count as a spoiler?)

A few questions and answers for anybody who wants to know more about my novel.

1. Does nothing happen in the first fifty pages?

No. Action starts page one.

2. Is your main character a young farmhand with mysterious parentage?

Nope

3. Is your main character the heir to the throne but doesn’t know it?

Nope

4. Is your story about a young character who comes of age, gains great power, and defeats the supreme badguy?

No, but she has to defeat the supreme bad guy; that’s sort of the point of fantasy: full closure.

5. Is your story about a quest for a magical artifact that will save the world?

Nope.

6. How about one that will destroy it?

Nope. This story is based on what might technically be called a female-centered folktale.  That means that the emphasis is more on the progression of action and relationships rather than attaining a specific goal (e.g., the gold the girl or the glory).


7. Does your story revolve around an ancient prophecy about “The One” who will save the world and everybody and all the forces of good?

No. I’m still looking for a modern fantasy whose inclusion of allegory or messianic elements isn’t cheesy.


I think the difficulty in finding that has to do with the original story being both so powerful and (face it) absurd, that any attempt to retell it really shows the outrageousness of God’s amazing plan.

8. Does your novel contain a character whose sole purpose is to show up at random plot points and dispense information?

No, but I’m mentally preparing a post I want to write someday about “useful” characters, and the know-it-all (think Hermione from Harry Potter) makes the list.

9. Does your novel contain a character that is really a god in disguise?

Does a demi-god not-in-disguise count?

10. Is the evil supreme badguy secretly the father of your main character?

Not secretly. And not the main character.

11. Is the king of your world a kindly king duped by an evil magician?

I despise dupes. My characters make their own stupid decisions. (ETA: oops. I think I do have one dupe. But he’s not a king.)


12. Does “a forgetful wizard” describe any of the characters in your novel?

Nope. Actually, I don’t think anyone is forgetful. Might need to work on that– could be residue from the version where everyone was perfectly rational (Hey! Let me have at least one draft for my own fantasy!)


13. How about “a wise, mystical sage who refuses to give away plot details for his own personal, mysterious reasons”?

That is a total cop-out based on a throwback to an earlier draft when even the author didn’t know what was going on yet. Get to the story or get out of the way! ROAR!

Um, I guess that could be reading into things a bit, huh?

14. Do the female characters in your novel spend a lot of time worrying about how they look, especially when the male main character is around?

No. Anyone consumed by appearances is an equal-opportunity worrier: it’s part of who they are, not where they are.

15. Do any of your female characters exist solely to be captured and rescued?

Only one. And she gets to do some capturing and rescuing of her own before the end.


16. Do any of your female characters exist solely to embody feminist ideals?

I hope not.

17. Would “a clumsy cooking wench more comfortable with a frying pan than a sword” aptly describe any of your female characters?

Nope.

18. Would “a fearless warrioress more comfortable with a sword than a frying pan” aptly describe any of your female characters?

Hmm, I might imagine this applying to the Queen, a few decades back, but for this story, no.

19. Is any character in your novel best described as “a dour dwarf”?

No dwarfs, sorry.

20. How about “a half-elf torn between his human and elven heritage”?

No elves. Sorryer.

21. Does everybody under four feet tall exist solely for comic relief?

Um, did anybody find the toddlers funny? They’re my only characters under four feet tall.

22. Do you think that the only two uses for ships are fishing and piracy?

No boats. Cut that part of the story. We’re all grateful. Trust me, you are.


23. Did you draw a map for your novel which includes places named things like “The Blasted Lands” or “The Forest of Fear” or “The Desert of Desolation” or absolutely anything “of Doom”?

I have been holding my breath, hoping I’m never required to produce a concrete map.

24. Does your novel contain a prologue that is impossible to understand until you’ve read the entire book, if even then?

Nope. Though I have two very different and equally intriguing prologues, they would set up stories different than I wrote; both in scope, theme, and choice of main character(s).


Fascinating to think about, though, considering it’s the same action.

25. Is this the first book in a planned trilogy?

No NO NO! I’m fine. Thanks for asking.

26. How about a quintet or a decalogue?

I’ll pretend you didn’t ask that.

27. Is your novel thicker than a New York City phone book?

Never seen one. But I might make Twilight. (Amazon lists its word count at +/-115,000. I’m not there yet, but I did break 110,000)

28. Does your novel contain characters transported from the real world to a fantasy realm?

My folks are all in their own world. I’ve always felt sorry for the other kind.

29. Do any of your main characters have apostrophes or dashes in their names?

Only if they come from an Arabian-Nightsesque source.

30. Do any of your main characters have names longer than three syllables?

Not longer.

(ETA: I got called on this one. Cecillia is a major character with four syllables.)

31. Does your novel contain orcs, elves, dwarves, or halflings?

Nope. Sorry.

32. How about “orken” or “dwerrows”?

Nothing invented. Everything established. Have I said I’ve been feeling very uncreative lately? That everything I “invent” seems merely like a recombination? Yeah.


Good thing there’s already some pretty fascinating stuff out there.


(Yes, I was one of those kids that read the encyclopedia. And, yes, I have authoritative fantasy encyclopedias now that tell me exactly what powers to expect a half-djinn to have).


33. Do you have a race prefixed by “half-”?

No, that would be perpetuating in my fantasy an emphasis I both dislike and see as unnecessary in my own world.

Actually, I do have half-djinn, but I try not to make the half-ness an us-versus-them thing. The reason I think I didn’t go the prophesy route, is the same reason I don’t like parentage-pulling-at-me message. We are shaped by our biology and environment, but also from within.

And in a story I think the emphasis is supposed to be particularly on the within.


34. At any point in your novel, do the main characters take a shortcut through ancient dwarven mines?

I hate maps too much to have epic travels in my stories.

35. Do you write your battle scenes by playing them out in your favorite RPG?

No, but I think I should watch more action movies.

36. Do inns in your book exist solely so your main characters can have brawls?

No, they exist for warm places to talk. That they are also warm enough to take one’s gloves off, well…


37. Do your characters spend an inordinate amount of time journeying from place to place?

I told you, I don’t like maps. Distances are determined by how soon I need the next plot point to arrive. And even that’s flexible with certain characters (Hurrah for super-speed!).

38. Could one of your main characters tell the other characters something that would really help them in their quest but refuses to do so just so it won’t break the plot?

I think I got rid of all of these.

39. Do any of the magic users in your novel cast spells easily identifiable as “fireball” or “lightning bolt”?

My magic-users are more about manipulating matter than shooting or pulling power out of the air. I think that’s how I’ve made myself comfortable with magic in an almost “our” world.


40. Does anybody in your novel ever stab anybody with a scimitar?

Uh, no.

41. Does anybody in your novel stab anybody straight through plate armor?

Trying to think if anyone armored gets stabbed anywhere. I cut the battle scenes (despite setting up some awesome-yet-unresearchable armor), because the story without them was long enough.

42. Does your hero fall in love with an unattainable woman, whom he later attains?

That would prove the initial definition inaccurate, negating this question. But, no. One of my favorite things about this novel is skipping that whole illusion and wasted energy and moving on with the story. They get married.  Way before the end.


Sorry, should have said [SPOILER!] I just assumed anyone reading here would have guessed that already from the story blurb.


43. Does a large portion of the humor in your novel consist of puns?

I’m supposed to have humor in my novel? Krapp.


44. Is your hero able to withstand multiple blows from the fantasy equivalent of a ten pound sledge but is still threatened by a small woman with a dagger?

{hicoughed HA!}


Then it’s because she’s a woman and not the dagger that he finds threatening.

45. Do you really think it frequently takes more than one arrow in the chest to kill a man?

Do you realize that a bullet (or arrow) wound often doesn’t often mean instant death?

46. Do you not realize it takes hours to make a good stew, making it a poor choice for an “on the road” meal?

Yet another reason to stay home: I’m a notoriously poor meal planner.

47. Does your main villain punish insignificant mistakes with death?

No. Most of his lackeys are pseudo-immortal.

48. Is your book basically a rip-off of The Lord of the Rings?

Nothing like.

49. Read that question again and answer truthfully.

There are thousands of mythologies to delve and combine that go much farther back than LOTR. Lindorm is one of those.

This month’s opportunity to write for days uninterrupted by reality (other than hunger and the occasional dog) made it clear that imagination was a fantasy. Not only have I learned things over these four years (personally and skill-wise) that have made Lindorm a better book, but it really does take a lot of time to go through this many words.

I did get just over half way, and am almost done with a second pass through those chapters. Why? Because a formatting glitch in Word removed all the tab-indents.

While at first I was going to search for a mass cure, I found that the high-speed cruise was turning up some embarrassing useful things to fix, so I stopped fighting it and treated it as an opportunity.

~ ~  ~

I am delighted by the maturing I see with each revision, and correspondingly frustrated at my own blindness to the remaining immaturities that I see so plainly later.

But maybe I can just categorize that as regular living, and not something unique to the Writer’s Burden.

I saw this guy a while back and he reminded me of Ivan, but seemed too young. This is more the look I have in mind. I expect when I Google him again in a few years he’ll fit even better.

• Finished through Chapter 10
• 349 pages to go
  • Plus 9 scenes to either write or revise (or explain away as unnecessary once I get there).

  That’s over 100 pages/day plus three fresh scenes a day.  No play time here.

I’ve stopped worrying about word-count, and I think it’s helped.

I also was able to cut my Inn chapters from four, to two.  Which makes me feel better. I’ve never been comfortable with how long that series of exchanges takes.

Have addressed two main questions already:

• how is Rickard connected, and
• where did Linnea’s baby come from.

Very reasonable progress.

The comments have been mostly positive (they’re my friends, after all), but, in one person’s words, “I feel like I’m outside an ‘in’ joke. That there’s something to know that I don’t know.”

This week I am working to do my final clean-up, and I’ve decided to make it one book after all.

Jay pointed out that if it’s too long for a first-timer to be picked up, I can at least have it done and ready to be my second book published.

Lots of work I expect to get done this week.  (Prayers welcome.)

God is so. good.

I’ve never understood why that truth makes me cry.

This morning I got a phone call from my lone 16-year-old beta, and it was *everything* a hungrily waiting author could want to hear.

She adored the story, “couldn’t put it down.” She could tell me the exact page where she fell in love with my hero. And a couple things that confused her.

So, as I continue to wait for thoughts from my other readers, I have some decisions to make. Primarily, how clear do I want to make certain people.

Tanith and Rickard (for those of you who’ve already read the story) are morally ambiguous characters. They do some really bad stuff. And they do stuff that’s the opposite.  Because most of their character-revealing stuff happens in the part of the story I’m saving for later, I have to decide whether this story is still solid with such confusing characters so close to the center.

Any applicants for a 87,000-word folktale-based fantasy?

I will expect to know you before I release it, but I’m keen for input on this version, as this is the one I expect to query before the end of summer.

If you’re new to this project, here’s my best-effort to fill you in:

The story is about a teenage mother who decides a dragon would be easier to live with than her stepmother, and ends up disenchanting a prince only his parents knew was missing.

Unlike most YA novels the main characters are married (part of the disenchantment).

I’m still working on a coherent “blurb” (a challenge for most writers), but here’s what I have so far:

When Linnea faces the grey-skinned man unearthing her father’s coffin, she has no idea it is about a knife. When Tykone uses that knife to attack a dragon-like snake, the lindorm, he has no idea he’s wounding a missing prince. And the perfect Prince Torbjorn, who believes he is to inherit the throne, has no idea when he dutifully goes off to wed his arranged bride that she might have to train Linnea to be queen in her place. The grey-skinned stranger guesses, only he has come North to leave behind the world of magic in the hot lands.

But evil magic has followed him—and under the unsetting sun of summer it will seek new entertainment.

If you have any questions feel free to ask them here, or e-mail me. I’m especially interested in readers 14-17 years old, since that (in theory) is my target audience.  If you can share this info with friends that will be a help. Thanks!