Desert Child

Poem - Love Among Girls

2019-04-28T05:00:00Z

For the twenty-eight day of National Poetry Month, the theme is forbidden lesbian lovers. Why? Because my desert culture is aggressively homophobic for the sole reason I am not. This will come up in Desert Child but the seeds are still there.

Love Among Girls

She has the sweetest smile
That I want to kiss so badly.
I want to touch her hand
And rest my palm on her hip.

I tried, I tried so many times.
I've been beaten and caged.
My father no longer speaks.
My mother won't see me anymore.

I want the girl and she wants me.
But was even the hint of our desires
Enough to ruin our families?
To cast us among the clanless?

If I turn back, I might have a chance.
My family may speak to me again.
My clan name could return to my breast.
I'll have a home and a bed.

If I don't, what will she do?
Will she return and leave me?
Does she need her family more than me?
Is it love or just lust?

Can I survive alone in this desert?
With the hot sands burning my feed?
With no one to hold my hand
And no lips to caress in comfort?

She has the sweetest of smiles
Laughter that brings joy.
If she leaves, I have to accept it.
If she remains, then I will kiss her
And hold her until the end of days.

Poem - Burnt Hills and Embers

2019-04-11T05:00:00Z

I've organized much of my planned ideas for future novels and stories around three phases related to a world war that marks the passage of Fedran from a world of magic to one of industry and steampunk.

Phase one are the stories that happen before the battle that heralds the world war, the The Betrayal of Kosòbyo. This is the battle hinted by in Sand and Bone and will be written in more detail in Desert Child. All of my stories at this point, including Second-Hand Dresses are phase one.

Phase two are the events during the war itself, up to and including the point where things settle down.

The last phase, which is technically phase zero, are stories that don't really have a place in the world war. I suspect most of them will be placed in one of the other phases.

Now, one of the things with both my style and my interests is that the world war is not going to be “pretty”. I'm not sure how far I go, but there were will be scenes that show the horror of battle, much like I write about the damage abuse can do in my more recent stories.

This poem is related to the phase two stories.

Burnt Hills and Embers

Stench of burnt wood
Scorched centuries of growth
Crumbling away in burning winds.

The sharp taste of melted wood
Still glowing cherry red
Inside ruined forges.

The gamy scent of burning leather
From the mountain of books
Now only ashes in a pile.

Sweet and savory corpses
Mothers reaching for the children
And children clutching toys.

The salty sting of tears
As I walk among the carnage
On my way to kill the murderers.

Idle Thoughts, Worn Ideas, The Choice, and Sand and Bone 27

2017-04-18T05:00:00Z

I've thought a lot about my master plot, the different threads and stories that weave together into where I'm going. Even thought Sand and Bone is a single point-of-view novel, it is part of a master plot that I hope to see some day. I'm just doing it novel-by-novel instead o scene-by-scene. However, there is a drawback of thinking about stories too much and I'm afraid of burning out the idea before it can be pried out of my skull.

This week's entry has a spoiler for the rest of the book.

Idle Thoughts

I can't help but imagine what it is like running constantly for hundreds of miles. This isn't much difference than a long drive, where the mind wanders. A couple times a year I head up to northern Wisconsin. It is a six hour drive and I usually pass the time thinking about stories, novels, or working on code. It is both peaceful but frustrating at the same time, my thoughts are boiling around in my head as I think about endless plots and can't write them down.

This is pretty much the same for Rutejìmo. Hour after hour of running with relatively little physical effort. There isn't anything to do but think.

I really like introspection scenes. Coupled with the overwhelming fear of being hunted down and slaughtered by far more powerful clans, there is still a limit of how much terror someone can experience. There has to be a moment of silence otherwise he would break.

Worn Ideas

One of the drawbacks of spending hours thinking about stories is that they lose their impact for me. I think one of the reasons I struggle with Flight of the Scions is because I've mulled and worked out the plot of that novel for years. That and the sequels have been polished and worked and I'm afraid to the point it will be nearly impossible to write.

One reason I really want to get the next series written is because it will probably be the hardest. I've thought about it through too many drives, too many lunch walks (before my ankle broke), that I'm afraid all the excitement has faded.

I know what happens in Pack Daughter, Son of Vo, and Desert Child. I've probably gone over every related plot, at least a dozen of the side character's stories over the events, and basically have an idea of every single major person that happens.

Now I have to get it out of my head. That is the part I hate. It is also the part I'm afraid I'm going to fail.

The Choice

Spoilers in this section.

There is one important foreshadowing in this chapter:

An unwanted picture flashed across his mind, Piròma wearing all white as she stood before a bonfire. A kojinōmi.

Rutejìmo stumbled and lost precious speed. He threw all his concentration on pushing past the flash of agony and regaining the steady beat of running. Tears burned in his eyes, but he bore the pain until he could run again.

This makes a lot more sense with the following from Sand and Ash:

Mapábyo straightened. “What about Rutejìmo?”

Gichyòbi looked at Rutejìmo. His hand rested on his wife's hip and he stared for a long moment. “I'm strongly suggested to save him.”

Rutejìmo felt a shiver of something coursing along his skin. “A suggestion?”

“It isn't a compulsion, it isn't Wamifūko, but something else. I respond as if you are clan, but I know you aren't. I've seen other warriors do the same. You,” he pointed to Rutejìmo, “will never be a warrior, but there is more than one clan looking out for you. Maybe every clan that walks the sands?”

I like this scene, mainly because of the foreshadowing but also because I've always planned on her fate. She actually has a quote in the Flight of the Scions, which gives some ideas of her greater fate.

Sand and Bone 27: A Longer Day

Haunted by the clans chasing after him, Rutejìmo throws everything into running as fast as he could. As he did, the typical euphoria can't keep his mind from wandering to what was waiting for him at the end, his family and clan. The hope of seeing his boy and daughter are the only things that keep him running.

Read the chapter at https://fedran.com/sand-and-bone/chapter-27/. If you like it, please become a patron or review one of my previous books. Subscribers get access to all my novels, including the first book of my next series and my high-society romance novel.

Sand and Bone 9, a little lesson on Miwāfu, gender in the desert, and speaking for the spirits

2016-12-14T06:00:00Z

The phrase “I speak for” is a common one in the desert culture. It declares authority to speak on the behalf of the entire clan though there are some complexities in how this phrase is written, one that I had chosen not to translate into English while writing the novels.

The base word is sèku.

oi sèku
[begin-sentence, verb] speak
I speak.

The clan name is actually an adverb but with gi- in front of it for “my clan”.

oi shimusogo gisèku
[begin-sentence, verb] shimusogo clan-speak
I speak for Shimusògo.

Now, there is also the accent. There are two forms of giseku: gisèku and giséku. Following the general guideline that feminine vowels are restrictive or controlled while masculine is powerful or uncontrolled, we have two definitions of this word hinted by the accent.

The feminine version, giséku, is the restrictive one. It means, “I speak for the clan present right here.” This is the most common form of the phrase when entering a city or in the case for this chapter.
The masculine version, gisèku, is the uncontrolled. It is rarely used but implies that the speaker speaks for all of that clan, regardless of where they are located. This is used for when Desòchu kicked Rutejìmo from the clan.

As a side note, the easiest way to remember the gender accents in Miwāfu is include some of the sexism inherit in the language. The downward accents (grave) are masculine. A hint of remembering this is two guys seeing each other naked usually involve certain… parts pointing down. Likewise, the acute accent is for females and feminine and those parts start to point up.

Now one might ask about non-heterosexual relationships. Well, this is one place where the culture isn't very open. Society only acknowledges one form of relationship, male and female. This is mainly driven by the need for procreation in a very violent world. This drive is embedded into the language and the culture.

Now, there are individuals who don't follow the gender binary. The easiest for the culture are the transgendered but even they are expected to pair up or have long term relationships with transgendered individuals of the opposite gender. In other words, a female-to-male would be expected to marry and procreate with a male-to-female. Society handles the pregnancy much like how Rutejìmo was ignoring while he was “dead,” everyone looks the other way.

The more open societies, like the areas around Kosòbyo, relax many of those rules. Urbanization breaks down perceptions and helps with establishing more open mores; this is one reason why cities in our world are typically more open to different cultures, religions, and lifestyles compared to our homogeneous regions such as the rural states.

Around Kosòbyo, an individual can present themselves as either male or female. Their choice of lovers or marriage needs to be the opposite gender to avoid social pressure, but the more open-minded regions allows a lesbian or gay relationship as long as one is a femme and the other is a butch.

Now, that isn't to say all Kosòbyo are open-minded. Mioráshi from Flight of the Scions is violently homophobic but we won't really find that out until Desert Child.

There are others who even deviate from those limitations and sexual modes. My best example is Mikáryo who is demisexual. She chose to isolate herself in the desert to avoid conflict with her sexuality and her world view. It was that or be murdered by her own clan for being a deviant. If that goes well, you'll see that in her unnamed novel. There are others I hope to write about, this is one topic that I like to explore in writing even if I don't do “naughty” scenes.

After that little diversion on sexuality, I need to get back to the entire point of this discussion. In this chapter, Rutejìmo almost speaks for Mifúno but pulls back. He doesn't know it, but he already has the right and ability to speak for her. No one has told him he could yet and he doesn't know how to hear the desert giving him permission.

What stops him are the endless stories that all children in the desert are told: no one speaks for Mifúno. In those stories, everyone who even jokes about it ends up dead. The desert kills anyone who tries, usually by some gruesome slaughter that takes out everyone in the area. I usually see these as the Brothers Grimm story tales, complete with blood and gore from the original version.

Unlike Tachìra and Chobìre who effectively claim every clan in the desert by their virtue of granting powers, Mifúno has no desire to be “in charge” of anyone. Or, I see it in a different way that she is the source of all power in the desert by granting it to Tachìra and Chobìre who then passes it on. The intermixing of powers and relationships between these three spirits is the entire source of “magic” in the desert.

Sand and Bone 9: Greatness

In Sand and Bone, Rutejìmo finishes his purification rituals after helping the little girl die. As he walks alone, he encounters the great-grandfather of the girl searching for revenge for her death.

Read the chapter at https://fedran.com/sand-and-bone/chapter-09/. All of my books are free downloads at https://fedran.com/. If you like what you read, please consider becoming a patrons. Even if you don't want to send me money, reviews and chatter on social networks would be highly appreciative and only cost your time.

Sand and Bone 1, Flight of the Scions 35

2016-10-04T05:00:00Z

Well, time to start something new just as we are getting near the end of something else.

Sand and Bone 1: Running Away

Writing series is hard. The first book is easy because there is so much potential but nothing already set in stone. Characters can be whatever they want because they haven't been written except in the author's head. Each book after the first is held down by the weight of the books before it. With this one, I'll admit, I was encumbered by the previous two books both in the characterizations of the individuals of the story but also in the story.

This novel takes place five years later. Rutejìmo is a father now, a happy one that has “found his way” as it were. He knows who is he is and what he is willing to do. Of course, that doesn't mean I'm not going to disrupt it. This also means that the novel is fifteen years, a lifetime, after the events in Sand and Blood. It is five years after Sand and Ash.

This “weight” will cause me problems with my plan for R5-D4 plots but not as much. This series is tightly coupled to the stories before it, but there are other ones that are only loosely touching it that have a lot more leeway in how they mesh together. We'll find out, there really isn't much connective plot at this point though there are hooks in all three of Rutejìmo's stories.

This novel has a number of influences like the first one (Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye) and the second (Deeds of Paksenarrion, Wizard of Earthsea). In this case, it is the Seven Samurai or its various incarnations such as the The Magnificent Seven. This isn't a romance, it is action and tragedy with strong samurai drama influences. It will also dove-tail into Desert Child when (and if) it is written.

Read Sand and Bone 1: Running Away at https://fedran.com/sand-and-bone/chapter-01/.

For the $1/month patrons and higher, I've release the entire novel.

Flight of the Scions 35: Enthusiasm

This chapter is one that reflects the stress that the three teenagers are underneath. Maris, when Damagar threatens her family, foolishly rushes forward even at the risk of ruining their transportation. Kanéko lashes out because it is the only thing she knows how to do.

These are kids who are cracking and falling apart.

Damagar also understands a lot of the philosophy behind the Art of War and The Price though, and separating the teenagers makes them a lot easier to control.

Read Flight of the Scions 35: Enthusiasm https://fedran.com/flight-of-the-scions/chapter-35/ (subscribers)

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What is in a name?

2014-07-03T05:00:00Z

The main character in Sand and Blood has a foreign name for most English speakers, Shimusogo Rutejìmo. There were a lot of reasons I picked that name and, I feel, in the long run it will fit well with my future plans for stories in Fedran, but out of context the name is… well, let's go with a review on Reddit from today:

Especially because the protag's name is kind of an eyesore.

The Miwāfu names started with my novel, Flight of the Scions. This is the novel I've been working on for years but never finished. There were a lot of things that never really meshed. Then, about four years ago, I went to the most unlikely of conventions for me, WisCon.

Despite the fact that convention makes me incredibly uncomfortable every time I go, it has also been a wonderful source of things that just “felt right” when I heard them. It's the only time a panel on writing has really inspired me to write instead of making me feel like I have failed everyone by not finishing things.

It was two panels. The first was on naming characters and how most authors have similiar names. I remember going through David Eddings' Belgaraid and struggling with the names blurring together. Same with Tolkien's books and a score of other authors. The names were all English-sounding names that were palatable to the ear. Naturally, the panel was also about how breaking from that could be important.

The other panel was on the silent racism of fantasy writers. Too many novels have purely white people in all of the key roles. In Earthsea miniseries, the non-white roles were given to white people. Tolkien? That movie was rather pale, you could say. Same with almost every other fantasy.

Well, when I listened to those panels, it pushed me to think beyond what I had written. I had done the same thing. People from different countries? Almost identical names. Skin color? Well, I didn't define one so most people assumed white. The main character, Welf, fit what I realized was wrong.

So Welf, a rather bland character, became Kanéko Lurkuklan, a half desert girl trying to bridge two cultures while struggling with her lack of magic in a fantasy world. Her story isn't really important, what became important is that I found something to fall in love with the character. Between the gender, racial, and name change, I found a combination that I could hang a story on and really get passionate about it.

Actually, there were a few iterations of the name, but the final version was Kanéko. I picked that name for a couple of reasons.

Contrast

Dylan says something about my heritage, but not everyone realizes it. The “Dy” is more common with Welsh and English names than say… French or German. The same with Sven. When you hear that name, you'll probably pick Norwegian or Sweden when you see it. Or Pierre or August. There is a subtle thing with names that places them.

However, I don't have the rich history of well-established names and languages. Readers aren't going to know that Ruben could be a name in two of the cultures in my world but Ronamar could only be in one. So, I needed something a bit more obvious to show the differences. Hence, using Japanese syllables (with some modifications) coupled with gender markers. It looks different, though I underestimated that people panicked when they saw even Japanese (which I think is logical).

I'll fully admit, I've been the last twenty years working with people from non-romance or Germanic languages. Today, I work with people from India, but I've also worked with people who came from China or Japan. Their names are utterly foreign to me and “not short.” When you see a name like Kobayashi, it's going to say a lot.

And that is where Kanéko came from. It was compatible with Lojban naming but the accent made it obvious that there was a different. When everyone else has names like Ronamar Lurkuklan or Meris Germudrir, Kanéko Lurkuklan not only shows a hint of the contrast in her life, but also gives an indication of her cultures when you know that Miwāfu names are always clan first and only the final name, the given name, is accented. For example, Kanéko's mother is Kosobyo Mioráshi.

If you are curious, the telepath's names are always a combination of five letters grouped together in a CVCVC pattern. So, Ruben is actually short for Ruben Habor Kalis which is short for a much longer name. But, Ronamar could never be that name since it didn't fit with the constructs of the language. Much like you don't find “mru” in English names.

Constructed Languages

Another reason for the name is I created a language for the desert. This came from my interest with Tolkien's creation of Elvish, which I both adore and hate, but also other authors. Language is one of the many ways of adding depth to the world and I have a thing about all elves speaking Elvish and all humans speaking Common. Blame D&D for that one, but I want regional languages.

And if someone is going to have a regional language, they are going to be named in that language. This year at WisCon, one of the panelist talked about using the Latino or the English version of his name. The difference, though spelled the same as far as I know, pointed out something that I never really thought about: pride in how your name is spelled.

I have a fair amount of effort in Miwāfu, the language that Rutejìmo and Mioráshi are named from. I think it represents their culture and their homeland, all the while showing they are different from the others. It also, I hope, will help to establish the stereotypes (brown skin, green eyes, probably a bit on the barbarian side, spirit animals and themed powers, etc).

Context

So, where does that leave Sand and Blood. Blood was written while Flight was sitting at a publisher. The novel that focused on the contrast was locked in decisions, so I decided to write a parallel novel to help refine Kanéko's desert side, the culture she doesn't really know about. It was suppose to just be a twenty thousand word story, not a three-part series of novels, but that just worked out that way. I fell in love with that culture as much as the others.

But, Blood doesn't have the contrast. Everyone speaks the same language and it isn't English. And, more importantly, it can't be English because Sand and Bone circles back to tie into the fourth book in Kanéko's series. And if I use English-friendly names there, I'll lose that precious contrast when those two series rejoin.

Difficulties

So where does that leave me? Sand and Blood was finished before Flight of the Scions, when it was suppose to be the other way around. By the time I got Flight back from the publisher as a rejection, I had already finished Blood and had a cover made. I couldn't sit on it for another year, mainly because I was terrified to publish it. Just so the books came out in the right order.

So, I sent Blood out into the wild, a novel that didn't have the context. I also, in effect, committed to having Sand and Ash and Sand and Bone released before Flight because authors should finish the series before they move to the next (personal peeve).

I'm sure that Rutejìmo's name is one of the reasons why the novel won't sell well. It doesn't have the supporting world around it to give it context. The problem is, if I didn't publish it, I probably never would have. This also means that the main character's name is always to be an eyesore for a long time.

My hope is that the novel will become less cumbersome once the other series gets written and I build out the world more. It's like a chess game, I have one piece in place but I can't get the other in the right position for a few more turns.