Author: marianlthorpe

Not content with two careers as a research scientist and an educator, Marian L Thorpe decided to go back to what she’d always wanted to do and be a writer. Author of the alternative world medieval series Empire’s Legacy, Marian also has published short stories and poetry. Her life-long interest in Roman and post-Roman European history informs her novels, while her avocations of landscape archaeology and birding provide background to her settings. As well as writing and editing professionally, Marian oversees Arboretum Press, a small publishing imprint run as a collective. Marian is currently writing Empire's Heir, the sixth title in the Empire's Legacy series.

Book Review: Dear Comrade Novák, by Silvia Hildebrandt, with an introduction by the author.

I asked Silvia Hildebrandt to write an introductory piece to Dear Comrade Novak, her second novel, published in 2018. In it, she explains how she came to write the book, and its effect on her personal identity.

We fled Romania for Germany in 1990, after the revolution and the civil war between Silvia HildebrandtHungarians and Romanians. For the most part, we were looked down upon as poor, illiterate gypsies. So I denied I was born and raised in Romania, in an attempt to assimilate with German culture. Over the years, my teachers recognized my talent for writing. Somehow, I always wrote stories set in the USA. But my 6th grade literature teacher encouraged me to write something about Romania. ”You have so many unique stories to tell,” she said. But at that time, I’d buried my identity deep within me. No, never. Never would I write a novel set in Romania.

Twenty years later, after my first published novel – A Century Divided, set in New York City – I needed a new idea for a second. By happenstance, I landed back in Romania. I wanted a story set in Eastern Europe because I loved Russian novelists like Tolstoy and Pasternak and their very own strong, melancholic narrative. And because I’m a lazy bitch and didn’t want to do research on Russia, I decided to set my next piece in Western Romania, where I was born. As the plot developed over the weeks, I was stuck in the middle and in order to finish a novel, I need to know the end in an early stage of writing. But I didn’t know where it should lead, so I reached out for the writer’s best friend. Google.

“Romanian History 1980s” was my search query. And if an old agent of the Securitate monitored me, he would’ve thrown up his hands in despair as to my ignorance. “Romanian Revolution 1989” was the first answer and I nearly fainted. Of course! I had totally forgotten. Like a black hole in my memories and my brain, this event no longer existed in my life. Slowly, from an author’s point of view, I dug into the Romanian history and into my own. While writing, I had to remind myself that I was there; in that scene, with my characters walking around in Timișoara and in that Romanian village they call their hometown; this wasn’t just their story, but my own as well.

It’s borderline crazy describing such a feeling. Like living in two alternate universes, I re-discovered my own heritage. Near the end of writing Dear Comrade Novák, I watched Ceaușescu’s last speech conserved on youtube. The piece of footage every Romanian knows and love-hates to this day. The footage my beta readers and editors still remember, shown on US and British TV. But for me, it was the first time I witnessed that confused old man become lost in the sudden uprising of the people he oppressed for so many years. To this day, the turning point of my own childhood had always been the opening of the Berlin Wall. I didn’t know anything about the events in December 1989 in Romania. But with every documentary I watched while writing Dear Comrade Novák, I felt like reclaiming my own identity. No, not the Berlin people dancing on the ruins of the Wall had shaped me, but the December events of 1989. Ceaușescu, the last bastion of communism in Europe, fleeing in his helicopter. The Romanian flag with the cutout communist sigil in the middle. The people in Timișoara lighting a thousand candles for the murdered masses, shot on 17th December. There: forty kilometers from my hometown, the bloodiest, most epic of the 1989 revolutions began.

“Why wander into the distance, when the good is so close?” is a popular German saying. And it’s true. I’m excited what future ideas I’ll have in my writing career. But I know one thing: Romania will continue to play a big part in it.

silviahildebrandt.wordpress.com

My Review

Dear Comrade Novák is one of the most devastatingly honest and brutal books I have Dear Comrade Novakever read, yet I could not put it down. I read the last 65% of it in one sitting.

Set in Romania in the 1980s, Dear Comrade Novák follows three school friends: the ethnic Hungarian Attila; the Romanian Tiberius, and the Roma Viorica, through the last decade of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s despotic rule, culminating in the Revolution of 1989.

Hildebrandt is unsparing in her descriptions of the functioning of the country under the eye of the Securitate (the secret police). Who is a friend? Can family members be trusted? Can lovers? And when a man carries a secret – that he is gay – something that is not just forbidden in Romania, but denied completely – what does he do?

Weaving major events of the 80s – Chernobyl, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the devastating rise of AIDS – into the narrative, Hildebrandt paints a bleak and unwavering picture of people trying to find a way forward in a corrupt and cruel society, a society layered by ethnicity and political allegiance. Some may stay true to their inner selves; others cannot; heroism is easy to imagine, but personal survival is a strong imperative, even when the violence and fear of everyday life overwhelms happiness.

Dear Comrade Novák is not escapist fiction. It is an uncomfortable book, one that should leave you shaken. I will remember it long after I have forgotten many other books I have read or will read. Five stars.

Amazon.com link.

 

Of Dreams and Thorns, by J.C. Salazar: an interview and review

Salazar author photoJ.C Salazar, the author of Of Dreams and Thorns, grew up as the child of immigrant parents in Houston, Texas. With a B.A. in English, a MS in Linguistics and another MA in Literature, plus some  doctoral courses in English, Salazar values language and writing. Of Dreams and Thorns is his first novel. He is also the author a book of poetry, states of unitedness.

I spoke to Salazar recently about what inspired Of Dreams and Thorns, and the process of writing the book. Following the interview is my review of his novel.

The book reads very much like memoir. How much of it is based on your own experience?

I wanted to write a novel that would capture the essence of my ancestors and their immigrant experience. I decided to center the story in a biography of my father and the things and folks that most influenced his life. I purposely avoided trying to recapture events or scenes exactly, so much of the biography is fictionalized. I considered writing a straight biography of my family, but there was too much opposition because they are quite private and far from understanding literary stuff.

Is there one character that is basically you?

The narrator is some version of me, and my doppelgänger is the boy Carlos.

How much of the settings and events are thing you actually remember, and how much comes from stories your family told you?

My rough estimate about settings and events is that about 35% I experienced or witnessed, about 40% was told me by some elder in the family or a sibling. The remainder are made up by my imagination.

Did you look for a traditional publisher and/or agent, or was indie your first choice?

When I began to write for publication in earnest, I was spending half a day writing and half a day learning all about agents, publishers, self-publishing options, etc.. I began sending out agent queries when I finished my first draft. I sent out about thirty queries to agents and a few publishers. My queries went out in batches of 7-10, and I waited six to ten weeks to hear back. Some rejections were quick, some took six weeks to much longer. Among them, I received a couple with much encouragement, but maybe they were just polite. I soon realized that the time involved to secure an agent and then get a publisher would average three years or longer. That’s when I shifted to self publishing. Just as I was about to begin that process, an editor asked for my full MS. I waited six months and never heard back. I wrote them that I was withdrawing my MS and I then went full steam ahead with independent publishing.

How long did the novel take, and how many iterations of it were there before you finalized it?

It took me six months to write the complete first draft and another year to get through all the editing. I had been doing editing all the while as per beta reader feedback. On my own, I had edited each chapter some four times also. Then I hired a professional editor for structure and another editor for proofreading. Of course, I hired a cover designer, and fell in love with designing covers. I would say that my novel never lost its initial essence, but the final version is easily a fourth iteration.

Anything else you’d like to tell readers?

I published the novel on February 2018. In April, I had an extremely successful book signing at Houston’s River Oaks Bookstore. That was just about as close to the version of a dream come true. Writing this book has become the single most rewarding experience of my life. I do not regret for one minute having published it on my own. My writing skills, not to mention my publishing knowledge, have grown considerably since the publication of Of Dreams & Thorns. I now have no qualms about or hesitancy calling myself a writer/author/novelist.

My Review

Those of us born to parents who grew to adulthood in another country, but gave birth toof dreams and thorns us or brought us as babies to North America share some experiences, regardless of our parents’ native languages, religion, or the shade of our skin. Among our common experiences is the clash between the adults’ wish to maintain traditions, and the children’s wish to assimilate.

Of Dreams and Thorns, J.C. Salazar’s fictionalized memoir of his family’s migration to the United States from Mexico in the late 50’s and early 60’s, is an account of the life of a young husband and father who chooses separation from his family in order to earn money to fund his dream: a small farm in his home village. The story of the brief fulfilment of that dream, the factors that lead him to abandon it, and to move his family to Houston – with the inevitable collision of cultural expectations – is told in immersive detail.

The story is told in third person omniscient, so while we know the intentions and motivations and emotions of Ramiro, the central character of the book, we also know what other characters are thinking and feeling. But the omniscience is sometimes tentative, as if the narrator is deducing what these emotions are, increasing the strong sense I had that the narrator is one of Ramiro’s children looking back on his family’s life.

As a memoir, even a fictionalized one, Of Dreams and Thorns is a comprehensive look at a hard-working, ambitious, flawed man building a life for his family, and doing his best to maintain the traditions of his home culture and country in a new and confusing land. Within the small farming community I grew up in, many of the schoolmates of myself and my siblings were first-generation children, their parents searching for a better life than what Hungary and Germany, Italy and Portugal, Yugoslavia and Poland could offer. I saw the dichotomies and conflicts played out in my friends’ houses; I knew a few myself, because even England and Canada were not the same in all values and expected behaviour. Salazar’s book resonated with my experiences, one or two lived, many observed.

For anyone looking to understand the economic and social forces of that era that made people reach for a perceived better life in a new country, or to glimpse the price that was paid by adults uprooted from their communities and cultures, Of Dreams and Thorns serves well. It is a story told with deep love and respect, and, I believe, with clarity. As a novel, though, narrative choices undermine its effectiveness.

The immersive detail that is a strength if this book is considered as a fictionalized memoir overwhelms the plot in parts of the book. While the purpose of most scenes in either building character or motivation can be deduced, the degree of detail detracts from the building tension. As well, because of the scope of the story, taking place over more than 40 years, much is told to the reader. While this can be, and is, necessary, Salazar tends to warn when a significant occurrence is about to happen, e.g., “What happened next was the unthinkable for Eliza and a doom for Ramiro.” For me, this device reduces the rising tension, instead of increasing it. Action and reaction would be enough to show the significance of the event. In a similar way, unneeded explanations are added to actions: “But (the children) did not rush to their father as might be expected.”

In his best passages, Salazar lets his characters show us their thoughts, and conveys their emotions through their actions. There is strong dialogue in parts, and effective description. But Of Dreams and Thorns will remain with me as memoir, not as a novel; its characters and setting never quite became real to me as a novel’s should, but were perceived as the author’s memories of people and places dear to him.

Of Dreams and Thorns and states of unitedness are available from Amazon.

J.C. Salazar’s website: https://www.jcsalazarwriter.com/

 

 

 

First of Their Kind, by C.D. Tavenor: A Review

Cogito, ego sum, Rene Descartes wrote in 1644. Is it the ability to think that make us44569168 human? And if so, what is a synthetic intelligence that learns, reasons, extrapolates, infers, and doubts?

That question is at the heart of C.D. Tavenor’s debut novel First of Their Kind. Centred on the birth of the first true synthetic intelligence, Theren – their self-chosen name – faces both acceptance and hatred as they become known to the world and takes on a role in its future. Within this context, Tavenor asks hard questions about exactly what constitute personhood and identity, echoing human rights debates from the 18th to the 21st centuries – who is human? who is a person? who decides identity?

But First of Their Kind is more than an allegory of human rights history. Reflections of creation stories and spiritual belief systems resound. Even Theren’s choice of pronouns – they – can be construed differently as they learn to interact with the world around them – both the physical and virtual worlds – with multiple, simultaneous consciousnesses: the omniscience of a god. Other examples could be given from throughout the book, and perhaps particularly the ending, but I won’t go further into this analysis, to avoid spoilers.

Tavenor has woven these ideas seamlessly into a literate and well-plotted story. Character development, voice, pacing, world-building: all are done with skill, and his projection of the world 30 years in the future is completely believable. First of Their Kind kept my interest from the moment I began reading it, and I am impatient for its continuation. Five stars.

Harvested: How will AI determine our future? a guest post by Anthony O’Brien

I believe it’s the work of an author that is of interest, rather than the author, for it holds coverthe key to the inner workings of one’s mind. My latest novel Harvested is a dystopian sci-fi that reflects my inner fears.

I guess the first question anyone would ask is why I wrote such a disturbing piece of work in the first place. I do have an agenda; it’s through the medium of storytelling that I express my concern for humanity, and the consequences that could occur if we continue into the future on our projected course.

I quote Elon Musk, the American business magnate, investor and engineer, who is at the cutting edge of AI: “Artificial intelligence will crush us in the end. When it’s all over, we, the unlucky ones of flesh and blood, will always be the ones who suffer.”

Today AI is outpacing the intellectual capabilities of its creators, and we have to ask ourselves, at what point does this higher intelligence become our master? Are we in the process of creating a God or a Demon destined to rule humanity? History has taught us that the elites, the most cunning, intelligent and psychopathic control civilization. Those that oversee our diminishing resources are Gods who will decide who has and has not. AI will inherit this power. What happens once we have depleted Earths resources? What happens if we do not make it to another planet? I throw the what if question out there, it’s liberating for me, but only when you reach the final chapters of my novel will you realize what a terrifying prospect my conclusion is to the what if question.

Harvested is my take on what artificial intelligence will do with humanity under the circumstances outlined above …clean up the mess perhaps? Imprisoning our minds, or letting us escape, it depends on your view, into a digital world when the flesh starts to decay. It will be the only escape from the decimation, where humanity can forget the real and the nightmares. The Earth of the future will no longer be able to sustain life.

We follow the lives of two people, Jon and Tori, scientists and resistance members fighting AI for the right for humans to survive. At this point is seems reasonable to leave you with my Amazon description:

The year is 3716. Earth’s resources are depleted. Humanity has been forced into a 21st century computer simulation, controlled by Ikelos, AI at its most terrifying. A seedbank lost to time in the frozen wastelands of a Norwegian island is mankind’s last hope for survival.

Jon Stone, a New York physicist, has been extracted out of the simulation by another scientist, Tori. With no memory of Tori or his past life, Jon must trust her as they re-enter the simulation to locate, somewhere in this dangerous, illusionary world, the island’s co-ordinates.

Can they avoid the traps in the matrix, find what they seek, and return to the 38th century in time to save humanity before the final extinction?

 

 

What can writers learn from visual artists? World-building and the Elements of Design, part 1

 

A random interaction on Twitter earlier this year began me thinking about how the Elements_of_artelements and principles of design can be linked to writing. I’m trained in design, both for graphic art and landscape design, so the concepts were known to me. But I’d never thought about applying them to writing.

In this first analysis, I’m going to be considering them in the context of world-building, in preparation for a talk I’m giving in May, I’ll be doing a series of blog posts on this concept…and this is the first one. I won’t be talking about all the things that should be included in world-building – there are dozens (hundreds?) of resources for that, but rather  how the design concepts can be used to integrate world building into the narrative.

Today, I’ll look at how the element of line can be used. In visual art, line refers to linear marks, or edges where shapes or positive and negative space meet. There are two ways to consider this in world-building.

The equivalent of visual art’s linear marks in writing is movement: journey, regardless of the method. Journeys are prime places for showing us the world: what is the traveller experiencing? What are their senses telling them, and how are they reacting? (I wonder sometimes if this is why fantasy worlds and hero’s journey story arcs go together – there is so much scope for world-building!) If these reactions or impressions add to the character’s growth or reveals things about them – either directly to the reader or to another character – then the world-building slides seamlessly into the story.

In this snippet from Book 1 of my Empire’s Legacy trilogy, Empire’s Daughter, here is the protagonist Lena at the beginning of a physical journey:

The track widened, allowing Garth and me to ride abreast, behind Casyn. Looking back, I could no longer see even the smoke from Tirvan’s chimneys. Stop that, I told myself. Look around you. This is new. The plateau we rode on was rocky, heathland and bog, without trees. A raven croaked from a boulder.

We came to the road. I had expected a cobbled track, but the builders had made it wide enough for two wagons to pass. Paved with squared stone, it spoke of permanence and age. Casyn signalled a stop. We rode up beside him.

“North,” he said, pointing, “the road goes to Serra and Delle, and beyond it to Berge where it turns east again to run below the Emperor’s Wall on the northern border. South, it meets the sea near Karst, and then again turns east to Casilla. The closest inns are an easy day’s ride in either direction.”

A map nestled in my saddlebag, drawn by Casyn, showed the villages and inns on the road. If no one at the first southward inn had news of Maya, I would accompany Garth to Karst, riding northward again as spring approached. The northern road, Casyn had counselled, would be treacherous for a lone traveller in a matter of weeks.

“Is there an eastern road?” I asked. When Casyn had brought me the map, I had focused on the inns, knowing that I was most likely to find Maya—or at least hear word of her—at one of them.

We learn a number of facts about Lena’s land in this passage: a bit about its ecology and its comparative eco-region: ‘…heathland and bog, without trees. A raven croaked…’ Most readers will be able to picture this and relate it to a northern setting. But we also learn that it is new for Lena: a short ride from her village, and she’s never been there. It tells us about the insularity of her upbringing and the expectations of her village.

“I had expected a cobbled track, but the builders had made it wide enough for two wagons to pass. Paved with squared stone, it spoke of permanence and age.”  Here we learn that this country has a history, a past that is still to be revealed – but one that the character Casyn takes for granted, while Lena does not.

“North,” he said, pointing, “the road goes to Serra and Delle…. So we have map of Lena’s country laid out in words, grounding both her and the reader. Lena has this map, she’s seen it, but we also learn the geography isn’t her focus: she wants to find Maya, and she’s looked at the map only in relation to that goal.

World-building, using the linearity of the journey as the vehicle, has given the reader insight into the northern setting of this world, hinted at the age and technology of the culture, revealed a bit about the limits of Lena’s village’s worldview, and provided an brief overview of the settlement structure of the country – and shown us there is another country to its north. But because it is in the context of Lena’s experience, it blends into the narrative.

 The second way to consider the concept of line is the intersection of shape or space: edges. In writing, the equivalent is meetings: the edges of culture, personality, gender, religions, politics, language…. Again, showing how protagonists react to these edges combines the world-building with character development.

In this excerpt from much later in Empire’s Daughter, Lena has reached a crowded southern inn, another new experience for her:

Only women occupied the tables and benches. The men had a separate room. Here in the south, where villages and farms crowded closer together, and with regular traffic on the road between Casilla and the Emperor’s camp, custom kept men and women apart. Voices and bodies filled the room. I went to the serving bar to order ale and food. When it came, I paid, then made my way to an empty place at the far end of a table. My room-mates sat at the opposite end. They each raised a hand in greeting but made no effort to include me in the conversation. I ate my stew, listening.

I heard talk of crops and herds, of a good year for wine, of births and deaths. Women bet on a dice game at a table behind me, and someone played a stringed instrument of some kind in the far corner, quietly and without accompaniment. I thought of the map Casyn had drawn for me, trying to picture this inn. As far as I could remember, it sat at the hub of several roads, leading out to a semi-circle of villages—Ballin, Karst, two or three others. When I finished my food, I turned slightly to watch the dice game behind me. It seemed friendly, with much laughter and joking. One of the women looked up. “D’you want to join us?”

I shook my head. “I’ve never played. May I just watch?”

“Sure,” she answered. “But where are you from, that you’ve never thrown the dice?”

In this scene of meetings – a new space, with different rules, new people, a new game – there are lots of opportunities for world-building. What do we learn?

Only women occupied the tables and benches. The men had a separate room. Here in the south, where villages and farms crowded closer together, and with regular traffic on the road between Casilla and the Emperor’s camp, custom kept men and women apart.

Fairly self-explanatory, and in all honesty if I were writing this book again, I might leave out that last sentence and just let the first two show us the difference in cultural practices between the south of Lena’s country and the north. (Or reframe the last sentence as Lena’s direct thought).

I heard talk of crops and herds, of a good year for wine…While the reader is picturing Lena sitting alone, listening (which gives more insight into her character), they are also learning that this is an agricultural area; coupling that with villages and farms crowded closer together tells the reader that the south is a more fertile area, with better conditions for crops, and warmer, if wine can be produced.

As far as I could remember, it sat at the hub of several roads, leading out to a semi-circle of villages—Ballin, Karst, two or three others. Here, as Lena remembers, the reader is reminded of the geography and infrastructure of roads and villages; the sentence also reinforces the higher population of the south.

The dice game gives the reader insight into recreational pastimes (as does the instrument being played quietly in the background); the fact Lena does not know how to play again emphasizes the cultural differences between north and south. It’s also a jumping-off point for a conversation that will lead the narrative (and the journey) forward.

Lena’s experiences here are mostly that of hearing and sight. I could have included other sensory information – the taste of the food, the smells in the air, the temperature of the room – but I’d done that in other inn scenes, so while repetition (a principle of design, rather than an element) is important, so is variation within that repetition. More on that in another post!

 Elements of Design graphic By Mtpanchal – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74316457

Storytellers, by Bjørn Larssen: A Release-Day Review

Set against Iceland’s harsh but beautiful landscape in the late 19th and  early 20thStorytellers-cover century, Bjørn Larssen’s debut novel Storytellers explores the multi-generational effect of the evasions, embellishments and outright lies told in a small village. The book begins slowly, almost lyrically, pulling the reader into what seems like situation borrowed from folktale: a reclusive blacksmith, Gunnar, rescues an injured stranger, Sigurd. In exchange for his care, Sigurd offers Gunnar a lot of money, and a story.

But as Sigurd’s story progresses, and the book moves between the past and the present, darker elements begin to appear. Gunnar’s reclusiveness hides his own secrets, and the unresolved stories of his past. As other characters are introduced and their lives interweave, it becomes clear that at the heart of this small village there are things untold, things left out of the stories, purposely re-imagined. Both individual and collective histories – and memories – cannot be trusted.

The book was reminiscent of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, in both theme and mood. Both books deal with the unreliability of memory; both are largely melancholy books. And perhaps there is allegory in them both, too. Storytellers is a book to be read when there is time for contemplation, maybe of an evening with a glass of wine. It isn’t always the easiest read, but it’s not a book I’m going to forget easily, either.

Now, for details:

Cover: definitely pulled me in. Some may see a disconnect between the cover font and the mood of the story, but I did not.

Production (e-book): Excellent. If there were any errors, I didn’t catch them.

Writing: Very good. English is not the author’s first language, but I wouldn’t have known.

Story Structure: you need to be paying attention as it jumps between times and characters…but this is a book that needs attention paying to it, not a light beach read.

I’ll post this review to Amazon & Goodreads, where I will assign a star rating. But I am no longer rating books on my blog, just giving you my opinion. I recommend Storytellers to readers willing to give time and thought and focus to a book, and who are comfortable with being challenged by what they read.

 

The Elves of Iceland

 

 

Today’s post is by author Bjørn Larssen, author of the wonderful Storytellers, set in Iceland. I’m about half-way through the book, and I’ll be posting my review soon, but until then, here’s Bjørn with some background on the setting and genesis of the novel.

(Storytellers on Amazon.com:  https://amzn.to/2OgxUiW)

The Elves of Iceland

I started working on my first novel, Storytellers, on January 1st, 2017 – an easy date to remember. The novel was inspired by a dream I had. Writing down – rather than writing – the first draft took me two weeks. The second draft took two months, but I still had one problem. The setting was “a village”, which didn’t seem precise enough for historical fiction. What I described was a community both isolated and widespread, living largely from fishing, in a place where nature was not calming and pleasant, but actively trying to kill people.

arnarstapiAt the same time, and in the previous few years, I’ve been obsessed with the singer Ásgeir, whose debut album Dýrð í dauðaþögn (Glory in the silence) was my album of the year… for two years in a row, since nothing better came out. The English version, In The Silence, featured lyrics so beautiful they almost hurt, translated by John Grant. As I was listening to In The Silence for the 150th time, it dawned on me that there was a country called Iceland, which was cold and produced both Björk and Ásgeir. So I decided to investigate it a bit.

The first two books I picked up were a novel by Halldór Laxness, Independent People, and an introduction to Iceland’s more recent history – Sigurður Gylfi Magnusson’s krysavikWasteland With Words. Everything came into place. Iceland was not only a perfect setting for my novel, it felt as if the country was created especially so that I could write about it. It would take a while until I realised that the Old Gods worked the other way round, but at that point I started doing serious research. “A village in Iceland” still wasn’t enough of worldbuilding. I needed to know more. Whilst most Icelanders wrote diaries and memoirs, most of them were never translated to any language other than Icelandic. I realised I needed to go there – and talk to someone who would know much more than me.

geysir (2)We went for four days. I needed to spend a day in Árbærsjafn, the open air museum the name of which I couldn’t even spell at the time, much less pronounce. Other than that, we intended to see the touristic parts – Thingvellir (which my husband still calls “the Game of Thrones place”), Geysir, and other attractions by the Golden Circle. I met up with a wonderful historian, Helga Maureen, got answers to most of my questions, then we drove around until all of a sudden a wave of heavy depression fell upon me. My husband and my friend went to see the Öxararfoss waterfall, I stayed in the car. And then something unexpected happened. Twenty minutes later, when they returned, my depression was gone and I was in the perfect mood to continue driving around.

*

According to a survey conducted in 1998, 54% of Icelanders declared that they either believed in elves or at least did not want to deny their existence. The second option feels like a perfect definition of an elf: a creature whose existence can be neither denied, nor proven via scientific means.

In December 2013, the elves and Icelanders’ approach towards them made the front pages of worldwide newspapers. The local authorities decided that a new road needed to be built between the towns of Hafnarfjörður and Álftanes. The road would lead through the Garðahraun lava field – where a large rock or pillar of lava was a well-known church for the elves dwelling in the area. This was enough for the foreign journalists. “Iceland’s Hidden Elves Delay Road Projects,” declared the articles. At the time, this only caused me to raise my eyebrows politely before moving on to the interesting stuff (politics).

The truth was much less exciting, at least for the foreign journalists. A group called Hraunavinir (“Lava Friends”) protested against causing massive damage to one of the few completely untouched parts of the country. Their protests were ignored, and activists arrested. The protest against disturbing the elves’ settlement was simply one of the ideas they came up with, but surprisingly it proved to be the most difficult one for the authorities to ignore. Whilst no official statement was issued declaring the road impossible to build due to the elves’ presence, the authorities didn’t dare to simply announce elves didn’t exist. Gunnar Einarsson, the mayor of Álftanes has contacted Ragnheiður Jónsdóttir, a well-known psychic, to communicate with the elves. It was announced that the elf church was relocated, and the elves moved out. Work on the road commenced, and has been completed by now.

*

Snorri Sturluson, a scholar who wrote down most of the Sagas and myths as weheidmork2 know them today, came up with two possible origins for the elves. One of them was that they were the “unclean” children of Eve, hidden from God when he came to visit (those are not my words). God, who was not pleased with this turn of events, decreed that what is hidden from Him will be hidden from everyone else as well. This is where the phrase “hidden folk” came from. The other story was even better, as it suggested that Eve was such an – ahem – lively lady that neither Adam nor God could control her. After some deliberation, God created a second man for her, naming him Elf. Therefore humans are descendants of Adam and Eve, and elves – of Elf and Eve.

Obviously, none of those stories appear in the Bible. My personal theory is that kleifarvatn-lakeSnorri had to come up with something to avoid danger. The thirteenth century was not a good time to announce the existence of mythical beings that had nothing to do with the Christian God. Yet the belief in elves was widespread in Nordic countries even before Iceland became inhabited in the 9th century. The heathen faith lists Nine Worlds, one of which is Álfheim (the home of the elves), and another – Svartálfheim (the home of the dark/black elves). Back when the Old Gods ruled the worlds, their subjects did not use the phrase “hidden people”, but regarded them as natural spirits, same as the many species of wights guarding homes, land, trees. They had no need to come up with explanations why the elves existed. They simply did, same as Odin, Freya, Thor, and everyone knew that.

*To quote Gunnar, the blacksmith from my novel, elves are beautiful, colourful, always happy, and they also don’t exist. The elf who haunts Gunnar doesn’t particularly care about his non-existence. He is, however, miffed by the idea that Gunnar might not find him beautiful, and the blacksmith quickly apologises. It’s not wise to argue with supernatural beings.

Storytellers was never intended to be the sort of book that featured supernatural beings, but the elf not only didn’t care for Gunnar’s feelings regarding his existence. He had no interest in my opinion regarding his presence in the book either. I briefly considered forcefully removing the elf, but at the end I didn’t dare. After all, who was I to deny his existence? I was rewarded with a show of the Northern lights and ran back to rewrite the chapter that was previously based on my YouTube viewings and photographs.

The elf church in the Garðahraun lava field was moved to accommodate the elves’ needs. The psychic, Ragnheiður (Icelanders address each other with the first names, rather than the paternal names) was able to discuss things with them and come up with a compromise. Where humans demanding to preserve the lava field failed, the elves ultimately won. And I got out of depression so rapidly that no doctor would be able to explain what happened.

Of course, I don’t believe in elves. That would be silly. I am not going to deny their existence, though. Just in case.

Bjørn Larssen

raypool

Worldbuilding: The Role of Small Details

I was reading Madeleine Bunting’s thoughtful, thought-provoking travel memoir, A Hebridean Journey, earlier today. I’m reading it for two reasons: because I love books that look at landscape and their meanings, and, for setting and cultural research for my work-in-progress.

One chapter is on the island known as Lewis and Harris, and the famous, beautiful 540px-UigChessmen_SelectionOfKingsLewis Chessman. If you don’t know the Lewis Chessmen, they are intricate, oddly beautiful 12th century chess pieces, carved from walrus ivory. Found in 1831 on Lewis, they are now mostly in the British Museum (I was looking at some of them only a couple of weeks ago) and the National Museum of Scotland, plus a few on permanent loan on Lewis.

These chessmen are the model for a xache set in Empire’s Exile (a game I never define, but can be considered to be like chess. It’s played throughout the series.)

‘He opened the skin bag he carried, to take out intricately carved game pieces. They must be part of Irmgard’s treasure, I thought. How did he convince her to let him use them? Cillian took one, turning it in his fingers. “Hálainn[1],” he murmured.’

The purpose of this set was really two-fold: to show Irmgard’s wealth, and to allow my characters to play xache in the setting they were in at the time. I didn’t really mean them to be anything else.

But today, well into to the new book, which is a sequel to Empire’s Exile, I realized I can use them as a tiny bridge between the two books, adding continuity. I won’t say exactly how, because that would give away a little of the plot: suffice it to say that those beautiful walrus-ivory game pieces will end up in Sorley’s hands again, and from him to Cillian.

Repeated details like this, small, and not dwelt-upon, are important in world-building, especially in a series. They make the created world a little more familiar to readers, immersing them a little further into the world, creating a sense of comfort. They can deepen connections between characters and events, and trigger memories in both our characters, making them more human, and our readers.

In my series, xache is not just a game, but a metaphor, and perhaps too the move from the plain xache sets earlier in the series to this intricate set with its own messages about power and influence carved into the stances and dress of the pieces has its own meaning. I still need to think about that, and it’s for a different discussion than one about world-building.

I welcome your thoughts and ideas!

 

[1] Beautiful

Crystal and Flint: Book 1 of the Journey Missions, by Holly Ash: A mini-review

A fast-paced sci-fi adventure with competitive, clashing female leads. The story isCrystal and Flint well-crafted and delivers all the tension expected of this genre, moving both the main plot and subplots along nicely to the explosive climax and a denouement that leads into the next book in the series

So why not five stars? The setting is an earth colony, 300 years in the future, where humans have interbred with the local hominid species. Why, oh why, does almost everyone have a British-derived name? Grady. Flint. Thompson. Stiner. Cummings.Wolf.  I’m happy to suspend disbelief to accept alien abilities to exchange oxygen through skin underwater like frogs, or to blend almost invisibly with surroundings like octopus. I’m not able to accept that all the settlers, scientists, engineers and military personnel in the future don’t have names from all over the world. The cultural homogenization may have changed the expression of ethnic background, but I can’t believe everyone’s adopted Anglo names.

I see this as a failure of not just imagination, but of not extrapolating current reality into future world-building, and one that is not restricted to this book but has been apparent in other books of this genre. It doesn’t reflect either the world I live in, or the one I project for the future.