Myth, the Universe, and Everything

According to Random.org, last week's winner (with a twitter feed from HeldenSiegfried) is holmes_iv. Congratulations! Let me know the best way to get you the book. :)

I have to say, I really enjoyed the Trickster love that showed up -- from Coyote to Anansi to Sun Wukong (lyster, is he the Monkey King?). I also liked the idea of Q, who is arguably a Trickster figure (and certainly as verbose as kattw suggests). There really is just something about Tricksters, whether they're gods or culture heroes or just the lovable rogue archetype (aka Han Solo) that makes life fun.

And sometimes also terrifying. But that's their job.

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In other news, I met what I think was my one major resolution this year: I finished "The Dark Is Rising" sequence by Susan Cooper. The last two books were read-aloud family books, so that Bug could be included in them, and we wrapped up Silver on the Tree today. I have to say, the last chapter is hard for me to swallow, as it contains something of a bitter pill for several of the characters. (I'm trying not to spoil the ending here, since if I'd gone this long without reading them, someone else may have, too.) Mind you, it's not the same kind of trouble I had with Philip Pullman's very well-written but ultimately not-my-thing The Golden Compass and sequels, where I realized two-thirds of the way through the last book that he was telling an entirely different story than I'd thought he was, which ruined the books for me. Cooper's story is fantastic, and the ending has some qualities reminiscent of both Tolkien and Lewis. But one of the final consequences is not sitting well with me (much like Susan's fate in the Narnia books made me angry as a child), and I wonder how I would have reacted to the ending had I read them when I was the same age as the characters. I suspect that, like Narnia, I would have rewritten the fate I didn't like in my head, and believed the story ended a different way, at least, in my telling of it. Now I'm too caught up in the authorial decision -- why was a certain fate chosen for the characters? what does that imply about the rest of the story? -- and can't just imagine my own way out of it because I'm stuck in the analysis.

Which is to say, I highly recommend the series. I hope Bug loves them when she's growing up. But I'd love to hear (in a spoiler-filled way) from others who have read the books about the consequence I'm discussing, and their interpretations. So, gang, comments to this post are not spoiler free. Please, please, have at, and I'll respond.

But on to the contest. Tell me about a children's book that you either a) read as an adult and thought you'd have experienced it differently as a child, or b) rewrote the ending in your head. This week's prize is a double whammy: two "Death Gate" novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Fire Sea and Into the Labyrinth. Good luck!

Yesterday sartorias posted about her recent collaboration with rachelmanija, and I thought I'd talk a little bit about my own experiences with collaborating. In some ways, I feel like I'm almost always collaborating on my storytelling. As a kid, I played a lot of let's pretend with my surrogate big sister and my actual little sister, saving the world as a space hero (using a swingset as our space ship -- I remember one time we got medals from the president), traveling across the prairie as pioneers (a boulder in the back yard was our wagon), and running bad guys (I don't remember what kind) in the winter by sliding down a big neighborhood snow pile.

And when I started writing, I played in other people's worlds. The first fiction I remember writing was based on an old comic of my mom's from when she was a child. I wrote a play featuring Mickey and Minnie Mouse when I was in upper elementary school, using the style I saw on the shorts on the New Mickey Mouse Club. Shortly thereafter, I wrote a script for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. In middle school, I worked on a long Star Wars novel that, naively, I expected to submit to Lucasfilm; I was devastated to learn you had to be invited to write for the franchise.

It was while writing the Star Wars piece that I started writing an original story. I'd read about a contest in Disney Adventures magazine for a new super hero; I designed one that I got so attached to, I redesigned her (rights to the entries were owned by Disney after submitting, so she had to be revamped) and wrote my first novel. I discovered as a high school freshman just how many publishers didn't want to look at stories with anthropomorphic animals, and since one of her main powers was talking to animals, well, that was a stumbling block. There's still some good material in the young writing, though I'd rewrite the entire story now in a different setting if I ever got back to it.

In high school, I started writing short stories about children with dragon powers; I shared them with a friend and he wrote some short stories back. It was my world -- I'd made the rules -- but he played in it. I shortly thereafter joined his D&D group (after being, at the time, the youngest invited), and I started group storytelling in D&D, which is a fabulously collaborative format.

I collaborated once on a short story in college, which I still think is quite a good piece, and wonder if I shouldn't contact my cowriter and see if we should send it around. We only ever submitted it to the L. Ron Hubbard "Writers of the Future" contest, and now I wonder if, as a co-written piece, it was even eligible. In that effort, we took turns writing sections, but since we were local (just across campus), I remember talking out quite a bit of it as well, and editing each other's sections. I don't know that it would have worked long term as a collaborative relationship, but for the duration of the assignment, it was fun.

Though I've done plenty of other non-collaborative writing, it didn't surprise me to end up first published with shared-world fiction. Into the Reach and Departure (and the still sitting in my drawer conclusion, Regaining Home) take place in someone else's world -- albeit one I helped flesh out quite a bit. My ownership rights are dubious (hence the drawer) because I didn't create the world. The writing experience, however, was great -- I liked the whole goal of the novels not only being a good story, but also being designed to make the world more appealing, to tie in aspects and characters from the setting as wink and a nod to the roleplaying audience.

And now I'm writing Blood and Tumult back and forth with lyster, both of us playing in a world we didn't create. I've really enjoyed writing in the world of Baeg Tobar; I feel like it's a strong setting with really great elements, and I hope that our serial novel both embraces and enhances the work that's gone before. It's a huge privilege to work with lyster, who I really believe is destined for stardom (his manuscript that's making the rounds right now was easily in the top five books I read last year, and probably in the top two -- and that without the benefit of an editor). He's not only a motivating factor (I keep his message that he's sent me a new chapter as an "unread" message in my inbox, so my e-mail reminds me that I need to send him a chapter back every time I open it). He's also keeping the story fresh for me -- we were required to work from an outline, which always takes some of the excitement out of the actual writing process for me, because I know what's going to happen next. So having his take on things every two chapters makes it a lot more fun to see the twists and turns. I think stylistically he has a better sense of prose than I do, and so I'm striving to make my prose live up to his. Of course, I'm sure my own style comes through as well, and I hope that by the time it's finished, we'll both have mimicked each other's styles so successfully that the whole thing will blend into a complete piece.

So, yes, collaboration. I enjoy it. :)

October is my favorite month, so I'm a little sheepish that I entirely missed it here at livejournal. We managed to fill our social schedule to the gills and then collapse thereafter because we were quite exhausted with the hullaballoo, and as I'm sure many of you lj users know, once you stop blogging, getting back in the habit is a challenge.

But here I am, back in action. Over the past month I have (in no particular order):

* turned 29
* applied for a grant for my library
* applied for a grant for myself
* turned in my first ever history article
* had a visit from first-reader Arielle
* had a birthday party, complete with red velvet cake
* had a murder mystery party
* played some role playing games
* worked on writing assignments
* read most of The Immortals series by Joy Nash, Robin Popp, and Jennifer Ashley
* gone to a wedding
* gone to a Halloween party as Death from the Sandman (see below)
* cut my hair
* visited urgent care only once (much better than last month where I was in and out)
* had a cold
* watched The Muppet Movie
* actually relaxed a little bit
* missed a deadline on an essay that I'll be getting to fellow lj user randyhoyt in the next few days :)
* watched Ironman with friends
* watched Hero with friends who are also LotRO pushers
* run the second session of my 4e Mythic Greece game
* voted
* read a really cute article in PW about a fifth grade class's votes for literary characters
* played through Knights of the Old Republic again
* various and sundry other things that I'm forgetting off the top of my head

Also, on a completely different note, the area behind my apartment today, usually a parking lot, looked like a wuxia movie set. The ground is covered in yellow leaves, which are the same color as the trees from which they fell. I was ready for someone to do some wushu in my yard, just because the colors were perfect.

And now, me as Death:



I hope you've all had a good month! I'll be catching up on blogs slowly, so if I missed a big life change for anyone, I'm very sorry. I'm sure I'll catch on as blog posts continue.

The New Yorker has a really interesting article about reading (and reading as part of the evolution of consciousness--plura will be happy to know that they actually cite Ong) and what consciousness might look like if the statistics are actually correct. You can read it online here.

Everyone's talking about Kindle, but did anyone take note of the Sony Reader/Borders match up? You can read about it at Publishers Weekly.

In music news, one of Common Shiner's singles, "No Melody, made the national charts. Congrats, guys! Their newest CD, Viennas, is still going for $6.99 at CDBaby. For you iPod people, it's also available, track by track, at iTunes.

And for your Star Wars edification:

The two hour Star Wars Holiday Special edited to just five minutes.

And the "lost intro": film clips of Luke's life on Tatooine that had to be cut in the final, put together here. I'm actually bummed that Lucas didn't include this stuff on the remastered DVDs as an extra. It would have let Luke start with a little more depth.

I don't know how much I'll post over the next week, as I'll be spending time with family; since they live far away, I'm going to try to revel in their company as much as possible. If I don't post before then, I wish you all a Happy New Year!