Post #123 May 21, 2018

“Storytelling as a Tradition”

Where did storytelling come from?  How did it start?  Why do we need…and love stories? 

I went to Wikipedia for some answers and found this:

It is likely that oral storytelling has been around as long as human language. Storytelling fulfills the need for human beings to cast their experiences in narrative form. Our ancestors probably gathered around the evening fires and expressed their fears, their beliefs and their heroism through oral narratives. This long tradition of storytelling is evident in ancient cultures such as the Australian Aborigines. Community storytelling offered the security of explanation; how life and its many forms began and why things happen, as well as entertainment and enchantment. Communities were strengthened and maintained through stories that connected the present, the past and the future.

Telling stories is a nurturing act for the listener, who is connected to the storyteller through the story, as well as for the storyteller who is connected to the listeners through the story.

Early storytelling probably originated in simple chants^[.  People sang chants as they worked at grinding corn or sharpening tools. Our early ancestors created myths to explain natural occurrences. They assigned superhuman qualities to ordinary people, thus originating the hero tale.

Early storytelling combined stories, poetry, music, and dance. Those who excelled at storytelling became entertainers, educators, cultural advisors, and historians for the community. Through storytellers, the history of a culture was handed down from generation to generation.

The importance of stories and storytellers throughout human history can be seen in the respect afforded to professional storytellers today.

 Stories help us to explain and understand the world around us.  They illuminate our experience and help us organize it. 

Today, we have so many ways to take in stories, individually and in groups, but in the beginning, stories were mostly experienced communally.  Not unlike today’s moviegoer, stories were a form of theater, whose effect was often entertaining but whose purpose was to find meaning in our daily experience.  Why did this person kill that person?  What happened when the tribe undertook the long journey across the mountains?  Why did the last hunt produce so little meat?

Now we can enjoy and ponder stories through so many different kinds of media.  Printed books, pdf files, audiobooks, downloads on your laptop, phone or tablet.  Storytellers are the conscience of a people.  Storytellers remind their readers and listeners of what’s important, what should be paid attention to.  Storytellers take the raw material of life experience and heighten it for us, season it, compress and amplify it, so we get to experience faraway places and times and people and conflicts without actually having to be there.

Writer Leo Widrich tells us why stories are so important:

“For over 27,000 years, since the first cave paintings were discovered, telling stories has been one of our most fundamental communication methods. Recently a good friend of mine gave me an introduction to the power of storytelling, and I wanted to learn more.

“Here is the science around storytelling and how we can use it to make better decisions every day:

“We all enjoy a good story, whether it's a novel, a movie, or simply something one of our friends is explaining to us. But why do we feel so much more engaged when we hear a narrative about events?

“It's in fact quite simple. If we listen to a PowerPoint presentation with boring bullet points, a certain part in the brain gets activated. Scientists call this Broca's area and Wernicke's area. Overall, it hits our language processing parts in the brain, where we decode words into meaning. And that's it, nothing else happens.

“When we are being told a story, things change dramatically. Not only are the language processing parts in our brain activated, but any other area in our brain that we would use when experiencing the events of the story are too.

“If someone tells us about how delicious certain foods were, our sensory cortex lights up. If it's about motion, our motor cortex gets active:

"Metaphors like "The singer had a velvet voice" and "He had leathery hands" roused the sensory cortex. […] Then, the brains of participants were scanned as they read sentences like "John grasped the object" and "Pablo kicked the ball." The scans revealed activity in the motor cortex, which coordinates the body's movements."

“A story can put your whole brain to work. And yet, it gets better:

“When we tell stories to others that have really helped us shape our thinking and way of life, we can have the same effect on them too. The brains of the person telling a story and listening to it can synchronize, says Uri Hasson from Princeton:

"When the woman spoke English, the volunteers understood her story, and their brains synchronized. When she had activity in her insula, an emotional brain region, the listeners did too. When her frontal cortex lit up, so did theirs. By simply telling a story, the woman could plant ideas, thoughts and emotions into the listeners' brains."

“Anything you've experienced, you can get others to experience the same. Or at least, get their brain areas that you've activated that way, active too:

“Now all this is very interesting. We know that we can activate our brains better if we listen to stories. The still unanswered question is: Why is that? Why does the format of a story, where events unfold one after the other, have such a profound impact on our learning?

“The simple answer is this: We are wired that way. A story, if broken down into the simplest form, is a connection of cause and effect. And that is exactly how we think. We think in narratives all day long, no matter if it’s about buying groceries, whether we think about work or our spouse at home. We make up (short) stories in our heads for every action and conversation. In fact, personal stories and gossip make up 65% of our conversations."

“Now, whenever we hear a story, we want to relate it to one of our existing experiences. That's why metaphors work so well with us. While we are busy searching for a similar experience in our brains, we activate a part called insula, which helps us relate to that same experience of pain, joy, or disgust.”

We love stories because we’re wired by Evolution to love stories. The next time you watch a TV show or a film, read a novel or tell your neighbor how what those wacko-head drivers out there did on your way to the store, you’re engaging in an ancient tradition that marks us humans as a quite distinct from our knuckle-walking forefathers.

We’re all storytellers.



The next post to The Word Shed comes on May 28, 2018.  See you then.

Phil B.

 

 

 

 

 

Post #122 May 14, 2018

“Seven Habits of Highly Effective Writers”

You’ve all heard of the book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People.”  The title got me to thinking that there are also a number of good habits and practices that writers should follow to give themselves the best chance to be successful at their chosen craft.  With that in mind, here are my seven habits.

1. Read.  Read widely and read every day.  Writing as a career or even as a hobby requires what I call word sense.  This is the ability to choose the right word for the situation and manipulate words to mean what you want to mean and say what you want to say.  Yes, of course, you learned all this is grade school, along with other ‘useful’ things like diagramming sentences. But a lot of word sense comes from seeing how other writers do it and copying them.  I often run across turns of phrase in some story or article that somehow becomes embedded in my memory and often pop out just when I need them.  You can’t read too much. 
2. Write.  Every day.  Writing is like a muscle.  Use it or lose it.  You have to be in the mode of choosing words and putting them down to exercise that muscle.  It really doesn’t matter that much what you write: a diary, an article, a few pages of your novel, a recipe for a neighbor.  Just get into the habit of putting words down in some coherent order every day and keep doing it.  There’s a hoary old saying, for writers of fiction, that you have to write a million words to flush out all the crap from your writer’s brain and get down to the real you.  I think there’s lot of truth to that.
3. Be ruthless in editing.  I always think of editing as a lot like flossing your teeth.  Nobody likes it but you’d better do it and do it well and regularly if you want to avoid problems.  Being ruthless requires putting on a different face and learning how to back away from your precious words and scenes and characters and ask yourself: does this really work?  Does this move the story, illuminate character, provide setting or in some way advance the story?  If it doesn’t, delete it!  Learn to love your delete key. 
4. Make outlines.  I am a diligent outliner.  I make extensive outlines ahead of time for my story, with scene descriptions and transitions and details that I need to know where I’m going in the story, every day.  I do deviate from my outlines when it helps the story but I rarely deviate far and I always come back to my outline, to stay on track.  As a consequence of this, I can truly say I’ve never suffered a single day of writer’s block or had any real fear of the blank page.  With outlines, you always have a way forward.  And you can always change it later.
5. Do your homework.  Let’s face it: nobody likes homework.  Doing your homework, as a writer, means researching details of your background and setting and characters in enough depth to make it all come alive.  Over-research, if possible.  That doesn’t mean you have to include every single detail of your research in the story.  You’re not writing an encyclopedia.  Include enough to give the story a feel of realism.  You’re trying to put your reader in other times and places and you should include just enough to magically transport them to your fictional world.  I like the word verisimilitude.  This means ‘the quality of appearing to be true or real; resemblance to the truth.’  If you write fiction, as I do, you only need to do whatever it takes to make the reader think what you’re describing is or could be true.  The reader’s imagination will do the rest.  But to do this, you’d better do your homework and get it right.  Readers love to call you down on factual inaccuracies.
6. Read your own work like a reader.  This is part of editing and re-writing.  Read over your work and try to read it as if you just bought the book and have settled down for an hour late one night, with a glass of wine, to read it.  I like to read over each 100 pages I’ve just written.  Does it engage you?  Does it make you want to know more, to keep turning the pages?  Does the story hold together?  Are there gaping holes or inconsistencies in the plot?  Do the characters do believable things?  If any of this is not true, you’ve got something to fix.  The proof of good writing is in reading. 
7. Know your readers.  Know who reads your stuff or who you want to read your stuff.  Know your genre, if you’re writing fiction.  Study your audience.  Are they mostly middle-aged white guys with a yearning to be Rambo or Navy Seals?  Are they teen-aged girls?  What’s expected?  Maybe make a little twist on that.  Know how your readers want a story to unfold…fast, with lots of action or unique ideas or lots of richly detailed characters or maybe an ersatz Downton Abbey?  There’s nothing wrong with writing what may be called a ‘trashy novel’ if people will buy it and be entertained by it.  It’s an honorable profession, maybe honorable than most.  Storytellers have a long history with us human beings.  They hold the collective wisdom of the tribe.  They explain or demonstrate or illuminate things that are important.  They give words to our feelings or hopes and dreams and our fears and horrors.  They’re part of what separates us from apes.
    
   These are my ideas on some attributes you will need to succeed as a writer…of anything.  There are more.  People will disagree on some of these.  You may want to add your own ideas.  But I’ve found all these to be useful and helpful hints on what it takes to be successful in putting words down for a living…or even just for fun.
    
   The next post to The Word Shed comes on May 21.  In this post, I want to take a closer look at the tradition of storytelling and the role it has played in making us humans what we are today.
    
   See you next time.
    
   Phil B.
    
    
    

Post #121 April 30, 2018

“Here Comes The Specter”

In about a month, I will be uploading my newest ebook to Smashwords.com, a horror story called The Specter.  I’ve posted before on how this story came to be.  Below is an excerpt from the story. 

 

  Lucille Perry’s house was dark when Alex stopped by the curb and cut the engine. He looked at his watch: a little after 10 P.M.

Rita must be as tired as any of us.  She ought to be asleep.

   He got out of the car and shut the door slowly, letting it latch with as little noise as possible. The street was deserted except for a few cats prowling the sidewalk. One of them, a black and white tabby, stopped by the car and glared up at him, eyes gleaming yellow-green in the light of the streetlamp.

   Alex opened the wrought-iron gate and walked the twenty paces up the brick walkway to the front steps. He stopped there, listening, for what he wasn't sure.

   It was a three-story affair, Lucille's house. A Georgian row house, built in the latter 19th century. There was a small balcony at the third floor, opening onto the master bedroom. his grandmother's since 1932. Ornate black wrought-iron trim. Brass dolphin-shaped rain spouts. Massive bay windows by the steep front stairs. The stonework had been painted recently-- by the light of the streetlamp, it was a dull, lifeless gray. He listened again.

   Nothing.  Nothing but the faint gurgling of the creek-canal behind the block. The sound was the same as it had been, fifteen years before.

   Alex had a key of his own, that Rita had given him and he used it now. The door was a sturdy oak slab but it opened easily and Alex stepped into the dim candlelight of the foyer. He shut the door carefully and a rush of memories came flooding back.

   He shuddered and felt his way to the banister of the stairs. Its heavily lacquered post was a welcome sensation in his hands and he rubbed a little sweat off on the wood.

   Rita would be upstairs.

   The wood groaned a bit under his weight but Alex didn't stop. He held his breath at the top--a faint murmur could be heard. To the left. He stared for a moment at the double doors shut tight at the end of the hall.  The nautical design carved into the face of the door was invisible in the darkness but he could still see it nonetheless. In his mind. It was the shipwreck and serpent's head crest that had once frightened him so badly. He could laugh at it now, all these years later but back then, it hadn't been so funny. Even Grace admitted that the red-daubed reptilian eyes and flaring nostrils of the monster gave her goose bumps.

   But Alex didn't venture into that pool of black at the end of the hall. Instead, he moved cautiously into the short hall at his left. The murmuring grew louder.    Rita's room was dark. Alex placed his fingers around the door knob and gently nudged the door back. Through the crack, a faint shaft of light from the high window cast a twilight pall on everything in the room. He moved the door back another inch and saw a hand and arm, draped limply across the edge of the bed.

   Thank God, she's asleep.

   Alex listened. The murmur was a voice. an indistinct whisper issuing from the pale amber face of a clock radio on the nightstand.

   He breathed a little more easily and yet felt vaguely disappointed too. He had come here not knowing what he expected, a feeling perhaps, a freshening of the memory of that terrifying yet captivating night in the fetid sewage pipes under the back yard. It was fifteen years ago and could have been fifteen centuries in a way. Grace would not speak of what they had seen anymore, at the end of that pipe, behind the iron door of the cellar. He was no longer even sure it had happened. Time was a trickster when you got a few years on you; it reshuffled memories like a deck of hot cards.

   Alex eased the door shut and felt like the prize fool of the day.

   The funeral’s got us all cracked.

   It was somewhere near the bottom of the stairs, along about where the great picture of his gaunt, sour-faced grandfather Jacob would have been, that Alex heard it.

   He stopped immediately, his left foot inches from the floor beyond the last step. It was what he had been expecting, what he had been hoping for, and fearing. What he knew had to come.

   The low growl returned.

   Alex caught hold of the banister to steady himself. He hadn't the slightest doubt that he would investigate the sound. And he didn't even have to listen--though it came again—to know where it came from. But he took a moment to collect his wits, to get a breath and calm his racing heart. A rush of blood made his face hot and flushed.   He found himself standing before the cellar door with no memory of having moved a muscle. The brass knob was cold to the touch.

   He opened it.

  There was a string dangling in his face and he pulled it. Instantly, a single 60-watt bulb on the wall flooded the wooden stairs with light.  The steps were black and splintery with age, disappearing into the well of darkness at the bottom.   Alex stepped through and descended, his left hand squeezing the balustrade tightly.

   At the bottom, his loafers made a reassuring thump on the cement. He stood still and listened, not daring to move, even to blink, until he was sure.

   The rattle and hiss of labored breathing swelled in his ear.

   He turned around and stared hard into the musty depths of the basement. At the limit of vision, he could see the cement ended in a ragged line, running off into a dark brown bed of dirt.  As he followed the edge further around to his left, his eye was attracted to the dull sheen of something metal, a post it seemed from where he was. A column.

  He felt his mouth dry up as a human-like shape shifted slightly, silhouetted in the glimmer of that post.

   Another growl, this time deeper, with volume.

  Alex paced forward, a step at a time, his skin tingling. His eyes never left that shape and, as he stared with mounting horror, it moved again. The growl softened into a voice, recognizably human, almost a whine.

  He was at the edge of the cement now, his shoes poised above the dirt. He took another step.

  The thing jerked violently and a sharp clank rattled through the cellar. Alex froze and veered sideways, along the edge of the cement, unwilling to approach until he could see it better.

 He realized that his own shadow was blocking the light from the bulb by the stairs.

   He bumped into another post and hurt his shoulder. Rubbing it, he took a step forward, letting his foot find purchase in the loose dirt.

   Suddenly, the thing charged him.

   Alex couldn’t move.  His muscles failed him and he stood stiff and still, blood roaring in his ears.

   The thing burst into the tiny pool of illumination and squatted in the dirt on its haunches, unable to come any closer.

 He could now see the dull glint of metal that had first gotten his eye—manacles. It was manacled to a post by the far wall.

  And the face! Alex turned his head involuntarily and fought back a wave of nausea.

   It was human, he saw. Or at least, had been at one time. Maybe four feet in height, almost as wide around, the creature had no arms, merely scarred stumps of pale, shriveled tissue.

The thing did have legs but they were gnarled, misshapen skeletal bones, blood-encrusted and covered with fiery red pustules and sores.

  The worst part was the face. What eyes it had were no more than pinpricks, scabbed over and surrounded with a thick webbing of scar tissue. Even as he watched, the beast gouged at its face, opening a wound which dribbled fluid freely. Its nose was sunken back into the skull and its mouth was sealed partly shut with gray, fungus-like skin growth and more scar tissue.

  The whole effect was that of a decaying skeleton or some kind of hideous caricature of a large human fetus. Blood veins stood out clearly at or near its skin, especially around the tiny eyes. Many of them were burst, giving its face a cruel blotchy look. Its skin was otherwise a waxy yellow, where it was visible through the gray crusty mold at all and its legs were smeared with foul-smelling dung.  Alex couldn't bring himself to look at the thing for more than a few seconds at a time. His mind railed from the thought that it might be human.

   Yet it was. Once.

 

And that’s the excerpt.  I hope this will intrigue you enough to take a look at the whole book, sometime in late May or early June of this year.

The Word Shed will be taking a two-week hiatus for spring break after this post.  The next post to The Word Shed comes on May 14.  In this post, I will be discussing some details of good writerly working habits and practices, for your best chance at success as a full-time writer.  Stay tuned and don’t be shy about commenting on anything.   

See you then,

Phil B.

 

Post #120 April 23, 2018

“Downloads and Excerpts”

As promised, I am showing below the latest updates on all my downloads through Smashwords.  I’ve organized the data by book series (as of 4-16-18).

Tales of the Quantum Corps = 4998

The Farpool Stories = 1461

Nanotroopers = 6473

All Others = 1204

Of special interest to me is the following statistic: since I uploaded my last ebook (The Farpool: Exodus) on 2-2-18, all titles have enjoyed a cumulative increase in downloads of 1088.  Somebody out there is downloading and presumably reading my stuff, for which I am grateful.  Now, just a few more reviews would be nice…

My next book uploaded will be a horror story entitled The Specter.  Look for it at the Smashwords store or at other fine ebook retailers by the end of May, 2018.  My next science fiction novel is entitled The Farpool: Convergence.  It should be available in June or July 2018.

Both books will be free.  Check ‘em out.

To prime the pump for downloads a little more, I’ve included below another excerpt from The Farpool: Convergence….

 

The Farpool finally spit jumpship Majoris out right into a shallow, steaming lake beneath a blood red sky, a sky thick with the sulfurous fumes and fat rain drops drumming on the hull.  After the vibrations subsided, Chase checked with the PSO, Alicia Yang.

“How close to our target coordinates, Alicia?”

Yang studied her board and its plots and displays.  “Best I can make out, we’re within a few decades of the temporal focus, based on your maneuvers and our physical landing point is here—” she pointed to a map.  “Southeastern edge of this big continent, about six hundred forty kilometers from the equator.  Majoris will auto-confirm once she takes sky sightings.”  Yang peered out the porthole at the steam and fog enveloping the ship.  “If she can even take sightings in this crap.”

Chase studied his own map display.  “It’s called Pangaea, according to this.  Supercontinent.  All the Earth’s land masses have come together like a big puzzle into this one continent.  Let’s get outside and see if we can detect any Coethi presence.”  Chase then got on the ship’s 1MC and said, “Okay, troops…let’s consider this an opposed-entry visit.  Get all your gear together, arm weapons and button up.  We leave the ship in ten minutes.”

Navigator Marco Kumar watched the bright red-yellow tongues of lava flowing down the slopes of a distant mountain.  “Ours not to reason why….”

Majoris’ lockout was cycled and the Genesis 3 team exited, two at a time.  First order of business was to set up some kind of defensible perimeter around the ship, out to a distance of several hundred meters.  This was done by Tulandra klu, the Ponkti amphib, serving as their Containment Systems tech. 

Tulandra plopped down into the shallow lake they had landed in and was immediately brushed by a large lizard-like creature undulating its way across the surface.  “Cyclops says it’s a tetrapod, probably Hylonomus.”  She adjusted her headgear slightly to get more annotation in her eyepiece.  “Sauropsid reptile…can move at high speed land or water.”

Win Blakey had a somewhat jaundiced view of all amphibs.  “Tu, that’s just one of your older sisters.  Say hello.”

The rest of the team followed Tulandra across the shallow lake, sloshing their way up a low bank to drier ground.  The Ponkti extracted a small capsule from her web belt and thumbed its control stud on top.  Instantly, a fine mist issued from the capsule, flickering slightly over their heads.  Tulandra waved it about her head in a circle.

“Launching ANAD sensorbots now,” she announced. 

The mist dispersed and vanished from view.  But now, Genesis 3 had eyes and ears to probe their surroundings and warn them of approaching danger.

Dr, Macalvey splashed up onto the bank and made a face.  “Ugh.  Like a Scottish bog, only hotter.”  He took a few deep breaths, did some deep-knee bends.  “Oxygen content is higher here.”

Yang concurred, ‘sniffing’ the air with a probe she extracted from her web belt.  “Reading O2 levels now at thirty-five percent…that is higher than what we’re used to.  Earth normal in our time stream is about twenty-two.”

“Must be why my throat’s so dry,” Chase decided. 

“Wow,” muttered Kumar, grabbing a small rotted stump for balance.  “Check out the wind gusts.”

“That one was over forty kph,” said Tulandra.  “The Earth was rotating faster in this time stream.  Cyclops is saying the sidereal day is about twenty-two hours versus twenty-four.”

“That explains the wind,” Chase decided.

“And the high oxygen levels explain all these fires,” Macalvey added.  “Feels like we’re inside an oven.”

All around the lake, the rolling terrain was host to dozens of fires, spiraling wind-blown ashes into a thick blanket that coated everything.  Mountains ringed the lake and their landing zone.  Raucous screeches caught their attention and all eyes turned skyward.

A V-shaped formation of long-winged creatures soared out of the ash and fog, swooping down on them, pulling up from their dive at the last moment.  Yang aimed her own head-mounted Cyclops at their tails and wings as they disappeared into the fog again.  Seconds later, annotated text scrolled on her eyepiece.

“Meganeura—“she read off.  “Believe it or not, those were giant dragonflies.  Eighty- centimeter wing spans.  Ugh—”

Macalvey muttered, “Just another beautiful day in the neighborhood.  Edinburgh this is not.”

Chase said, “Win, you got anything yet?”

The QT1 checked the displays on his own Cyclops.  “There’s something just tickling the sensorbots…can’t quite grab it yet.  Tu, can you run your bots a little higher?  I pinched off ten percent of your swarm…give me twenty percent.  That should make resolution better.  Go higher and spread out.”

Alicia Yang was grim.  “Any kind of decoherence wake around here should be cause for suspicion.  I can’t imagine anything quantum occurring naturally in this hellhole during the late Carboniferous Period.”

Kumar and Macalvey went with Angie Gilliam to a small hillock nearby for a better view.  Angie was sweating profusely in the hot, humid air and had to rest against a nearby stump, which promptly shuddered, growled and moved off on four legs, startling everyone.  The tetrapod headed for a nearby pool and plopped in. 

Kumar checked his Cyclops.  “Looks like you disturbed a Labyrinthodontia.  It says here they can grow to five or six meters.”

Angie made a face.  “I’ve seen gators in creeks around Scotland Beach smaller than that.  How long do we have to stay here?”

Just then, Win Blakely uttered a sharp cry.  “Got ‘em!  Bingo!  Big deco wake disturbance…something out there is really snapping spacetime, just like a wet rag.”

“Heading and range?” Chase asked.

Blakely walked around like a blind man in a drunken fog as he adjusted his Cyclops for the feed from the bots overhead.  “I make the heading that way—“he pointed into the sun, to the northwest.  “Best heading is three two five degrees.  Locus is at least six hundred klicks from here, diffuse but strong.  Really strong.”

“Got to be artificial,” Yang decided.

“Okay,” Chase waved everybody to come back.  “Re-board the ship.  We’ll have to make a short flight along Win’s vector.  Grab all your gear.”  He stepped carefully into the shallow lake and sloshed his way to the hatch.  “And watch where you step.  Everything around here is alive.”

One by one, the Genesis 3 crew climbed back into Majoris and the hatch was sealed.  Moments later, the jumpship lifted away from its watery landing spot and rose into the fog-shrouded sky.  Chase put them on Win’s heading and the ship lurched forward, gaining altitude. 

“Half propulsor,” Chase told Yang.  “I don’t want to fly past the target.  Win, give me a count when we’re close.”

“Copy that, Skipper.”

Majoris cruised along at several thousand meters until the land below began to shift, from a plain dotted with smoking mountains and steaming lakes and fire columns and fumaroles to a sandy shelf and then a broad blue-green sea, extending to the horizon in all directions.

“Paleo-Tethys Sea, the map says,” Yang observed, occasionally taking a peek out her side window.  “We must have originally landed on the edge of a place called Gondwana.  This ocean will eventually become part of the Atlantic.  Pangaea is rifting apart now.”

Tulandra was intrigued.  “Just think, three hundred million years from now, a big waterspout called the Farpool will put twenty-thousand refugees from Seome down there somewhere.”

“Land up ahead,” Chase announced.  He studied the terrain through the clouds below them.  “Looks like jungle too.  This should be fun.”

“Start descending, Skipper.  Target locus is less than a hundred kilometers, dead ahead.”

Chase manipulated Majoris’ speed and altitude to bring the jumpship to a dead hover over the edge of a vast swamp.  “Tell me the target’s not down there, in that swamp.”

Blakely shook his head.  “Sorry, Skipper.  Main source is just ahead, along that shoreline.  Below those big trees.”

Angie had started wearing a Cyclops herself.  She read off the annotation on her eyepiece.  “You mean the Lepidostrobus?  It says they can grow thirty meters high and two meters in diameter.”

“That’s the one,” Blakely said.

Chase took a deep breath.  “If I can squeeze us through the branches…I’ll put the ship down on that far shoreline.  I’m not too keen on landing in the swamp itself.  I just hope the ground is firm enough.”

Down they went.

They came through a low hanging steam bank to the very edge of the swamp.  Majoris settled down to a rattling landing and was still.  Overhead, lightning veined in sharp bursts across purple and rose-colored clouds, thick and steaming overhead.  The ground trembled and through the trees, they could see the red glow of another volcano, simmering and smoking.  It seemed about to blow.

The swamp was extensive, filled with moss-covered trees, low-hanging branches and mossy patches on rocks surrounding the edge of the water.  Cypress knees looked vaguely menacing in the twilight.  A faint mist hovered over the water’s surface. 

Nothing moved.  No screeches, no howler monkeys.  No birds cawing in the air.  Steam and smoke and shuddering ground were all that gave movement to the swamp.

“Looks like the Everglades,” said Angie.

“Right.  Let’s get to work. Win, it’s your show.”

They scouted along the swamp banks for a few minutes.  It was a vast wetland, thick with ropy vine and large, lobe and ear-shaped leaves, damp with moisture and humidity, hanging nearly to the soft spongy ground.  The Genesis 3 crew picked their way carefully through leaf piles and clinging vine, occasionally hacking and whacking their way through heavy underbrush, wary of slithering things underfoot, but they found none.  Nothing living at all, not even flies or mosquitoes.  Still, Angie nearly turned an ankle in a small sinkhole nearly hidden between two tree trunks.

Finally, Macalvey begged for a halt.  They stood over a narrow bubbling, foaming inlet, clearly the water was flowing somewhere from here.  The Scottish virologist rubbed his ankle for a moment, wincing in pain.  “I think it’ll be all right.”

Blakely probed for more decoherence wakes, the tell-tale signature of quantum entanglement. 

“Not far,” he announced.  “Maybe three hundred meters around the shoreline.”

Chase had already primed his own HERF rifle.  “Set weapons to level one.  Tulandra, do we have eyes and ears?”

“ANAD away,” she announced.  The mist of the botswarm was soon lost in the steam and humid air, its flickers and light pops vanishing overhead in the low-hanging limbs and branches.

The ground rumbled and all of them looked through the trees.  There were tall mountains in the distance.  The summit of the nearest one glowed orange-red in the cathedral gloom of the forest.

“Looks like we might have a blow soon,” Yang said.  “I don’t like the looks of that one.  Could that glow be part of our target…Coethi at work?”

“Could be,” Chase said.  “My question is: how do we get the hell out of here if we have to?”

“If we’re actually here,” Kumar muttered.  “Wherever here is.”

“Hey, what’s that?”

At the same time, they all spied a fog bank roiling across the top of the swamp.  Tendrils of steam drifted in patches.

“What’s what?”

“That.”

Now, the fog bank had taken on a more menacing look.  As they looked more closely, they could see small flashes and pops of light within the fog, as if it were thick with fireflies.

“Those aren’t fireflies, Skipper.”

The hairs on the back of Chase’s neck stood up.  “And that’s not fog either.  Unless I’m seeing things, that a swarm of some kind.”

“Yeah and it’s coming our way.”

Blakely’s eyes almost popped out of his head.  “Uh, folks…massive deco wakes there…massive signal…dead ahead, closing on our position.”

Helping Angie and Macalvey stumble through stagnant pools and thick underbrush, they moved sideways along the bank of the swamp but the swarm swelled and soon blocked their way.  Chase figured they would just backtrack the way they had come but the swarm filled in behind them and they soon found themselves trapped on a narrow spit of dry land, surrounded by cypress knees and piles of moss-covered rocks.

Though the swarm had nearly enveloped them, at least it hadn’t closed any further.

“Look!’ Tulandra pointed at several patches of swarm, now dropping down closer to the ground.  As they watched, the light flickering inside changed pattern, becoming more intense, pulsing faster, almost like a strobe and the fingers of the swarm swept right across the moss covering on top of the rocks, pausing momentarily at each moss patch.

“Fantastic,” Macalvey breathed.  “It’s writing genetic code, Chase, right into the cells of that moss.  Injecting something directly into the cells.”

“Maybe this is how life got started,” Angie said. 

“No,” said Macalvey, adjusting his own Cyclops.  “This is where life got changed.”

“The Coethi,” said Chase.  A cold chill ran down his back.

Then, Yang spotted something.  “Look…look there, though the fog.  That sandbar—”

Startled, Chase squinted to see better.  It was clear they had unexpected visitors.  All along the sandbar, shapes and figures like wraiths moved silently, stooping and bending down to collect something, bagging their prizes, then moving further along the sandbar. 

It was Tulandra who first recognized one of them.  “He’s Ponkti,” she cried out.  “In a mobilitor… I’d know that hoarse breathing anywhere.”

Yang had already recognized two others.  “And Chinese…with them.  There--!” she pointed to some human figures among the group.  “Those two are Chinese!”

Chase had a growing suspicion that his Genesis 3 teammates were right.

Somehow, in some way he hadn’t yet figured out, a small team of Ponkti and Chinese explorers had come through the Farpool to the same time and place as Majoris.   Now they seemed to be assisting the swarm of Coethi in some unknown task, perhaps making an alliance with the Bugs, perhaps trying to learn the secrets of their technology.

The mission of Genesis 3 had suddenly become much more complicated.  

 

That’s the excerpt.  I hope it intrigues you.  Look for the full story early this summer. 

The next post to The Word Shed comes on April 30.  See you then.

Phil B.

 

 

Post #119 April 16, 2018

“Are Writers’ Groups Worth the Time?”

Recently I joined a small writers’ group.  There are 5-6 in the group and it’s led by a lady who is a professional, published writer, specializing in YA and children’s picture books.  Many of the others are novices to the world of writing; some are there to gain ideas for how to put their family histories or memoirs into book form. 

I’ve been in writers’ groups before.  I have mixed feelings about them, though this group seems like a good fit for me at this point.  In the past, I’ve encountered dilettantes, people who just want to be around writers and talk books, people with detailed agendas, people who want to pontificate about everything under the sun, and assorted others.

In the past, I found many of these groups to be a waste of time.   But not this one, so far. So why bother with writers’ groups at all?

I can think of several reasons why joining and attending a writers group might help.

1. Fresh eyes
   It never hurts to let fresh, and reasonably impartial eyes take a look at your work.  Other writers who make a daily habit of struggling with words will often have good suggestions for editing or making a scene work.  Sometimes, they’ve encountered the same situation themselves and can offer a way out, if you’ve written yourself into a corner.  This alone may be worth going to a writers’ group.
2. Networking
   I don’t think anyone would deny that, to be successful in this writing and publishing business, who you know is important.  Contacts are important.  In any given writers group, someone may know someone who can offer a referral, or some market insight.  Writers can and should help each other navigate the jungle that is today’s publishing world, with agents, editors, book packagers, etc.  Sure everyone has their own agenda, but a little help now and then can’t hurt.
3. Emotional support
   Let’s face it.  Writing in inherently a lonely, solitary business.  Andy Weir, before his success with The Martian, was a software engineer and quite outgoing in personality.  When he gave up his first job and concentrated on writing full-time, he said he missed the people, the camaraderie, the jokes, and the meetings and get-togethers more than anything.  He had to work to build into his new schedule time for social gatherings and the kind of social stimulation we all need.  A good writers group should provide emotional support, social stimulation, encouragement and a sense that there are people out there who know what you’re going through.
4. Fellowship
   Maybe this is part of emotional support.  I think of fellowship as friendship, companionship, a union of equals, at least this is how it’s defined in the dictionary.  Fellowship could be walking around the neighborhood with a neighbor and your dogs.  It could be coffee or a lunch with a fellow writer.  It could be taking in a play or a movie or a church function with your spouse.  I recently was asked to become an elder at our church.  This adds ready-made fellowship and a lot more social stimulation to my schedule of activities. 
    
   There are probably more reasons to consider joining a writers’ group than I’ve listed here, but these points seemed key to me.  Not every writers group is the same and not every writers’ group will work for you.  But it’s worth investigating as you look for ways to live a fuller life as a wordsmith.
    
   And it may just make you a better writer too.
    
   The next post to The Word Shed comes on April 23, 2018.  In this post, I’ll provide an update on current downloads and a peek at upcoming projects.
    
   See you then.
    
   Phil B.
    
    

 

Post #118  April 9, 2018

Character, Action and Tom Swift, Jr.

One of my great joys as a teenager was Tom Swift, Jr. books.  In the early and mid-1960s, they were produced as trade-sized hardcovers, priced at $1.25 and came out every four months.  I’d buy the latest one on a Saturday morning and be finished with it that evening.

I loved them for the science adventures and for the fact that there was lots of action.  And story action is the subject of this post.

Action should be thought of as what the main characters do to solve their problems.  Some stories are marketed as action-adventures, where the action is all there is…continuous action, without the characters spending a lot of time contemplating their navels or expounding on deep philosophical matters. 

One of my goals in writing the Nanotroopers serial was to involve the reader in lots of action, right from the start.  To make this happen, the main character(s)…in this case Johnny Winger…has to be an action-oriented person, or a person in an action-oriented position.  Winger is a nanotrooper with Quantum Corps so he’s always fighting off bad guys and spies and trying to keep the peace in the world of atoms and molecules that is Quantum Corps’ theater of operation.  Keeping Winger involved in some kind of action hasn’t been too much of a stretch.

But action for the sake of action actually gets old, after a few chapters.  The action has to be in the service of the story, it has to advance the story.  Which means that in addition to fighting off bad guys, Johnny Winger has to occasionally run into roadblocks, problems he can’t resolve in his usual head-banging, slam-‘em- up- side-the-head fashion.  The action has to have a purpose.  In these cases, the purpose is show Johnny Winger as a person and how he reacts to different situations and scenarios, in other words to reveal and develop character.

Action doesn’t happen in a vacuum.  It happens or is caused by character.  I found this on Wikipedia concerning adventure stories and the role of action:

Critic Don D'Ammassa, in the Introduction to the Encyclopedia of Adventure Fiction defines the genre as follows:

.. An adventure is an event or series of events that happens outside the course of the protagonist's ordinary life, usually accompanied by danger, often by physical action. Adventure stories almost always move quickly, and the pace of the plot is at least as important as characterization, setting and other elements of a creative work.^[1]

D'Ammassa argues that adventure stories make the element of danger the focus; hence he argues that Charles Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities is an adventure novel because the protagonists are in constant danger of being imprisoned or killed, whereas Dickens' Great Expectations is not because "Pip's encounter with the convict is an adventure, but that scene is only a device to advance the main plot, which is not truly an adventure."^[1]



So danger is an important element of action adventure stories.  In Nanotroopers, there are several sources of danger.  Johnny Winger is often at risk to life and limb from Quantum Corps’ principal enemy Red Hammer.  Sometimes, the autonomous assembler technology at the heart of the series comes back to bite him, and his fellow nanotroopers.  Sometimes his own actions and headstrong impulses cause bad things to happen.  And ideally, as this serial story advanced through its 22 episodes, Winger learned his lesson from being in all this danger and approached future conflicts and problems with a smarter approach.  In other words, the main character was changed somehow as he encountered problems, conflicts and dangers. 



This is one of the reasons, though we don’t always like to admit it, that so many readers like action adventure stories.  They can live and experience vicariously the action and dangers of the main character and still live to read another day.  In fact when you get right down to it, this is one of the key reasons why we like stories period. 



Another aspect of any good action-adventure story is the pace, the speed of the action.  Our hero is constantly in and out of hot water, one close escape after another.  How do you keep the reader from going numb or zoning out through all this?  Vary the action.  Vary what happens.  Make the reader care about the character.  This means that the pot-boiler action sequences should be interspersed with quieter moments…the character reflects on what he has just escaped, tells his buddies what just happened, gets laid or goes to the grocery store…things that can endear the character to the reader…hey, he’s just like one of us…I’ve done that very same thing.  An interlude between rock-‘em, sock-‘em action is necessary for the reader to take a breath, for the character to recoil and reset before the next escapade, and most importantly, for the character to gain some perspective on what is happening…in other words, to grow and change.



If this doesn’t happen, the reader won’t buy it and will find your character just a cardboard cutout to which things happen.  The story won’t be very satisfying.  Even furious action becomes tiresome if the character lets the same damn things happen to him again and again and doesn’t learn from the experience.  Different things have to happen, or the character’s own actions to resolve a problem cause a new problem…that’s real and your readers will experience it as real.

Action and character are closely intertwined in any fictional story and particularly so in action-adventure.   But the action has to have a purpose and the main purpose is to lead the character to growth, change or valiant defeat…not just fighting off the same monster day after day.

Just ask Tom Swift Jr. and his Super-Duper Electrohydraulic Flamajing.  He couldn’t have defeated those pesky Brungarians without it.



The next post to The Word Shed will focus on details from some other series I have written.

See you on April 16.

Phil B.