Strange Talismans

Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island, Florida, is the venue each March of the Amelia Island concours d' elegance, so I've been going there for about twenty years. Apparently, Amelia Island is the type of barrier island that was once far out to sea, and has migrated towards the coast, trapping marshland, and for some reason, this means that a great many fossilized sharks' teeth can be found on the beaches.

I could provide references... but I've just realized that Google Books is giving away free an entire ebook copyrighted in 2004 that is for sale as a Kindle on Amazon for $25.99. I'm not going to assist in ripping off the author!

Anyway, this year, I had the amazing fortune to receive the best shark tooth hunting lesson ever from one Nasif who works for the Ritz Carlton. Nasif drew wide circles with his finger in the gritty sand, and tell me to find the tooth. I found three --eventually-- thanks to him.  I also found a quite large fossilized tooth just tumbling in the surf. What a thrill.

Since then, I did a bit of pondering, and wondered why tourists obsess (as they do) over finding shark teeth and turning them into necklaces. There's probably an ingrained superstition about wearing fierce bits of creatures we fear in life... that's why we call them amulets, talismans, charms, juju, totems.

Hercules wore a lion skin. Crocodile Dundee wore a whole lot of teeth. Viking Berserkers wore bear skins and bones. (For a list of types of villains  http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Types_of_Villains_A-C ) The Kurgan villain in Highlander wore a scull as a helmet.

But why on earth do people make jewelry out of turds? Out of moose poop or deer poop to be specific?  I first heard of that charming custom when visiting Saab in Trollhattan, but apparently, they make earrings and necklaces out of moose do in Maine, too.

Other strange dangling ornaments available online include rings and earrings made of human molars, bat bits, mouse fetuses, coyote claws, cat claws, small fish (in liquid), squid bits (in liquid), bird skulls, and more besides.

So, in an alien romance, what totems might an alien sport? And why? Is there anything new under the sun?

Rowena Cherry

Becoming Alien

At ICFA, I picked up an old issue of ANALOG from the freebie table. It included a review of BECOMING ALIEN (1988), by Rebecca Ore. Thanks to the miracle of the Internet, it was easy to find secondhand copies of this paperback. It's an unusual, thought-provoking first contact story.

As the novel begins, the narrator, Tom, lives with his drug-manufacturing older brother, Warren, in rural Virginia. When a spaceship crashes nearby, Tom rescues the sole survivor, with his brother's grudging consent. The alien, whom Tom calls "Alpha," is essentially a quasi-humanoid, marsupial bat who lives mostly on blood and milk. (There's no vampire activity in the book, though.) Although unable to learn each other's languages, the two of them become friends of a sort and develop a crude form of communication. Unfortunately, Warren remains suspicious of Alpha and fearful that the alien's people will show up. He eventually shoots and more-or-less accidentally kills Alpha. When Tom is eighteen, the aliens do land in search of their lost comrades. By then, Warren has been imprisoned for drug-dealing and, because he raves about aliens, declared criminally insane. Learning that the dead ET wanted Tom to take his place as a cadet at their Federation's Academy, to be trained as a translator and diplomat, the visitors offer Tom that position. The alternative is to have his memory wiped, since civilized beings (unlike the people of Earth) don't kill sapients. Having nothing left for him at home, he agrees to go. At this point, about one-sixth of the way through the book, the real adventure begins.

In addition to the species evolved from bats, Tom finds himself surrounded mainly by birdlike and bearlike people. He also meets a few races outwardly similar to Earth humans. To all of them, he's a "primitive" and probably a xenophobe, judging from the way aliens are depicted in Earth media. As the title of the novel implies, in this environment HE is the alien. He discovers that to be considered civilized, he has to learn Karst, the lingua franca of the Federation. If he refuses or proves incapable, he'll be confined to a reservation with other primitives. So of course he accepts the surgical implants that enable him to learn the language. The process is fast but not automatic or instantaneous; he still has to study, a detail that feels more realistic than the universal translator or instant language mastery often seen in film and fiction. He finds it very disturbing when, early in the procedure, his ability to speak English has to be suppressed for a while. Although we're given almost no Karst vocabulary, the text conveys the impression of an alien language by showing alternate or parenthetical translations for many of the words in sentences that represent Karst dialogue.

Tom gets a new name, Red Clay, and has to learn new customs and body language. Among the bat people, for instance, nodding signifies anger. Beyond cultural variations like those he might find on Earth, different species perceive the universe through different senses, such as the bat people's perception of ultrasound and polarized light. Also, the bat folk bond by singing into each other's throats. Tom's thrill at traveling among the stars and meeting exotic creatures is soon overshadowed by the disorientation of total strangeness. His adjustment difficulties go deeper than getting used to odd furniture, clothing, and food. (How a species can get nourishment from plants or animals that evolved on a different planet is finessed without explanation, as in most SF.) Early in his adjustment, he feels physically sick at the sight of a particular ET. He reflects at one point, "How do dogs stand it, that never see another dog all their lives? I felt like a smart puppy dragged into a world of super-intelligent bats and bears." His mentors worry that he might "xenofreak," a possibility that feels very real. Tom manages to resist falling into that irrational behavior, but a human-appearing female he meets does succumb, failing her orientation. She views all the aliens as "monsters," including Tom despite his outward similarity to her. Later, a biologically fully human female is repelled by his body hair and beard growth. And the aliens aren't totally free of xenophobia among themselves. Avian sapients refer to mammals as "hairy lactating monsters." Moreover, the delicate issue of different species smelling "wrong" to each other is directly confronted. I've never come across another work of fiction that focuses so intensely and believably on the problems a human immigrant would have with fitting into a society of even the most intelligent and benign aliens. Yet he does form close friendships with his bird roommate and a few of the bat people.

The last lines of the book declare, "So we're all Mind together? I don't know if it is true, but I can believe it right now." This novel vividly portrays how hard it would be to maintain the ideal of IDIC while struggling with deep-rooted instincts. There's no romance in this story (except for a hint near the end) but plenty of Intimate Adventure.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Integration Part 8 - Would Aliens Share Human Fallacy And The Religious Impulse

Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Integration
Part 8
Would Aliens Share Human Fallacy And The Religious Impulse?
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

A few months ago there was a Video going around where Yale students were asked to sign a petition banning the First Amendment (and they did it).

It was a hoax kind of thing, but the student reactions distressed some people because the First Amendment to the US Constitution protects the citizen's right to petition.

That's right, college students at a prestigious school with world class Law School signed a petition to eliminate their right to petition the government for redress of grievances.

After I saw that, I found this tweet on Twitter:
------------
John Scalzi ‏@scalzi  27m27 minutes ago
John Scalzi Retweeted Alex
This is almost certainly likely to be accurate.  John Scalzi added,
Alex @Spazz676
@scalzi @ppppolls Ask democrats if we should ban food with agrabah in it and I guarantee its at least 30%. Stupid people are everywhere.
RETWEETS
14
LIKES
32
Ryan SteinbergHam BoneB J. WitkinBB-801Lars HarperAndy ClickHyrinaJohn HouckPaul M
8:55 AM - 18 Dec 2015 · Details
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John Scalzi is one of the smartest people working in the fiction field today.  Google him!  Buy his books. Read them.

He's also all over social media.  He's seeing flows of posts from people I'm not following, and he's seeing something I have been trying to define.

I'm trying to define reasoning from fallacy.  The contemporary reader's cherished fallacies determine whether that reader will see your Characters, their conflicts, and the resolution that ends the conflict as "plausible."

If you the writer fail to identify the cherished fallacies of your readership, your byline will be dismissed and your work tagged ridiculous.

The contemporary reader's cherished fallacies have to be embedded in your Worldbuilding, which means they must be components of your Theme, your Plot, and your Characters (and their conflicts, especially internal.)

Now that does not mean you must adhere to the reader's fallacies, nor does it imply that you must advocate such fallacies as valid universe views.

The point of good fiction has always been to challenge readers' cherished fallacies, cognitive errors, or "normalcy bias" (the human tendency to assume that the longer a situation remains static, the more likely it will remain static, when statistically the opposite is true.)

Go reread the opening to the Hobbit for a lesson in how to handle that "normalcy bias" fallacy.

So we see a trend focused on the eager acceptance of the concept "ban" -- i.e. prevent the actions of others by force of Law.

Here's a book I have not read, and a quick excerpt of mis-used words that the book highlights

http://www.businessinsider.com/a-harvard-linguist-reveals-the-most-misused-words-in-english-2015-12

The article emphasizes that with English there is no "right" way to use or define a word, no central authority to dictate right language as many other languages have.

We may be looking at a trend taking hold under the umbrella concept PC (Politically Correct) speech, dictating by threat of verbal violence and screaming-pile-ons (like a flock of ducks attacking the crippled duck -- yes, ducks do that, and I've seen it; they kill their weakest) what may be said, what words or labels may be uttered, and what label will be plastered upon those who break that rule.

Is PC speech and its mob-enforcement a manifestation of a yearning for structure, for rules, boundaries, and organized authority?

Because of the violent pile-on enforcement, it becomes more socially efficient to talk like everyone else because functionally, the social matrix has "banned" a certain word or phrase, or application of speech.

Thus when you are creating dialogue for your characters, you have to take the reader's expectations into account.  You may challenge those expectations or even blatantly disappoint them, but first you must make it clear to the reader that you, the writer, knows the reader's expectations.

Then you can defy them, argue against them, hold them up to ridicule, bow down to political correctness so low the sarcasm drips, and handle all the reader's expectations any way the Art requires.

But first you must establish rapport with the reader and telegraph who the Characters are.  That's the core of the advice in SAVE THE CAT!  You introduce the protagonist you want the viewer to root for while he/she is doing an action that the viewer respects, applauds, and uses to "measure" the depth and strength of that Character's character.

So, would you open a College Romance with the entrapment into signing a petition to "ban" something (almost anything seems to do the trick.)

We seem to have released the basic human urge to control the behavior of others in the name of FREEING ourselves.  

Would introducing a protagonist embracing a movement to "ban" others from (whatever -- anything will do from owning or carrying guns, to abortion rights, absolutely anything is worthy of "banning.")

Our social structure right now appears to have abandoned "encourage" and "approve" for "ban" and/or "mandate."  "Encourage" and "Approve" are more related to Jupiter than Saturn. (see below for astrology discussion).

Absolute control of the behavior of other people seems to be a necessity of life for a lot of people.

Does it make you angry when you see me write that?

Good!  That is exactly the right mood in which to create a novel.  Go write something!

Now let's think harder about where this "banning" and "mandating" trend is coming from in human nature.

Once identified, that source can then be used to create an Alien Hunk for your Alien Romance novel.

There used to be a pop culture phrase with which to scorn and scoff at anyone you didn't like:  "Oh, he's such a Control Freak."

Wanting "control" was touted to a generation as a major character flaw that eliminated you from all social situations.  Control freaks were shunned, excluded, and sometimes beaten up on the way home from school.

What is "control?"  Regulation.  Boundaries.  All teens test boundaries established by their parents, and consider such boundaries immoral. But studies show that the only way to raise a teen into a responsible adult is to keep tight boundaries on the teen.

Boundaries establish norms of expected and sanctioned behavior.

You see the phrase, "I was raised to ..." and fill in the blank, "respect elders" "stand my ground" "refuse to be bullied" "keep my room neat" "keep my promises" "give to charity" etc.

That phrase reveals the structure of the boundaries the parent had imposed on the teen.

A more modern phrase is, "Such behavior is frowned on in this establishment ..." (e.g. don't run in the house, don't hit your little sister.)

The basic primate nature is to copy behavior. Parents must model correct behavior --  whatever behavior they model will transmit to the teen. Children learn to do as you do, not as you say.

If you need a Character with a hot internal conflict, give him parents who espoused one set of values verbally, and modeled a conflicting set of values in behavior. That will produce a troubled adult who does not realize he/she believes what the parents modeled, not what they taught. This produces the Character who is "his own worst enemy."

So controlling the behavior of others is just modeling the good parenting you recieved.

Your Aliens aren't going to be Earth Primates (well, you could go back in time like Clan of the Cavebear).

So when you invent an Alien physiology, you have to include this "banning" element if there is to be any hope for a Relationship of any sort across the Human/Alien interface, never mind hope for Romance.

Astrologically, the human Character gets the sense of structure and discipline, of boundaries and norms, from the position of the planet Saturn by House, Rulership and aspects.

But we all have a Saturn in our natal charts somewhere.  What do your Aliens have instead? What about Aliens (like Gini Koch's
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/03/reviews-24-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg-of.htmlwe talked about last week) born on Earth?  How would they differ from their counterparts born on their distant homeworld?

So "banning" and all the urges we experience to ban, clean, rid, expunge, control and GET ORGANIZED, is an expression (one of many) of the astrological symbol Saturn.

What else does Saturn symbolize?  Well, it rules the sign Capricorn, which can be understood as the Power Behind The Throne -- not the King which is Leo but the King's right-hand-manager, the "prime minister" (except today that title is equivalent to President or Head of State).

Saturn is not the Head of State, the policy maker.  The Moon in your astrological chart represents your Needs, and all your life-policies are methods (Saturn) of fulfilling those Needs.  Saturn organizes the various talents, attributes, and energies of your Natal Chart to fulfill the Needs as described by your Natal Moon (by Sign, House, Aspect).

Saturn is the organizing principle and thus defines what to exclude from your life so you can get organized. (Jupiter defines what to include).

So Saturn is about banning certain influences.

Capricorn, which Saturn Rules, is the Natural 10th House, the purpose of your life, your career more than the job you hold at the moment. Saturn represents what's "important" in your life.

So Saturn is associated with "Organized Religion."  This is different from the non-verbal "spirituality" that still pervades society.  Spirituality is represented by Neptune (rules Pisces, the 12th House).

Saturn takes the unstructured aspirations and ideals of Neptune (which denotes Romance) and imposes structure.

Saturn is the story of the lovers after the honeymoon, setting up housekeeping, allocating bedroom space, drawers, closet space, take-out-the-garbage and clean the bathroom chores. Who does the shopping, who picks the color of the window treatments -- that's Saturn in operation.

Saturn works in the scene where new husband brings home a puppy, and new wife stands up and screams, "Get that thing out of here!"

Saturn is also representative of "The Church" as opposed to communing with Nature on a hike and having a "religious experience."  Religious Experience is Neptune -- the third eye opens, the world seems different.  Complying with rules and regulations made up by men (and only men) thousands of years ago is Saturn.

Saturn "imposes" structure.

To have structure, there must be exclusion.

Today's modern religions mostly require adherents to go out and "preach the gospel" or "witness" or convert others.  Judaism is a conspicuous exception as Jews consider that you're fine just as you are, provided you live within the 7 Noachide Laws.

So why is Judaism so out-numbered by so many proselytizing religions?

There's that element of Primate Nature, the impulse to CONTROL THE BEHAVIOR OF OTHERS, by whatever means necessary, in order to gain freedom.

To codify and sanctify a basic animal trait of the human body -- the need to CONTROL others (but not the Self) -- into a Religious Doctrine gives that trait a force, a righteousness.

Judaism codifies and sanctifies, with the same do-or-die ferocity, the achievement of Self Control and a complete hands-off policy to the behavior of Others.  Of course, there are many sub-divisions of Judaism that codify forcing certain people to do certain things (such as a recalcitrant man who refuses his wife a proper divorce).

You see the "self-control" trait in some stringent Christian sects, too.

So the Primate trait of CONTROLLING OTHERS -- or Self -- has become codified into various religions, all for different reasons and to different degrees.

What happens to humans raised in an Atheist culture?

Does the absence of God in any form eliminate all need to CONTROL OTHERS?

What sort of Alien would develop an atheist culture and see it actually eliminate all inner need to control the behavior of others?

Does the presence of God as an axiom of a culture cause the ferocious and aggressive tendency to control others? Or is the God thesis an excuse to let loose a Primate tendency?

The answers to those questions form the basis of a THEME.  A theme is a statement which the rest of the work will explain and illustrate from various angles.  A theme is formed of the answer to a question, but presents to the reader only the question, not the answer.

You as writer must know what answer your Characters arrive at during the climax scene at the end of the book.  But the Character's answer is not your answer, nor is it your Reader's answer.  The important thing about a THEME is that it posits the question.

The question here is why are those born in the mid-1990's so eager to use the force of Law (the biggest bully in the room because being charged with something, even when innocent, can ruin your life) to ban almost anything?

Why would anyone want to ban the First Amendment cutting off Free Speech and the right to Petition the Government for redress of grievances?

What is it about the mid-1990's birthdays that connects Islamic suicide sects to Yale Students who want to BAN (almost anything people do).

I've done a lot of posts on PLUTO and how writers can use knowledge of its generational forces to target a readership, or explain one readership's proclivities to another readership (which is what STAR TREK LIVES! did, explain to parents why kids loved Star Trek).

Here's one post I did listing where Pluto was transiting since 1939, explaining a lot if you think about it.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

In 1995, 21 years ago, Pluto moved from transiting Scorpio (which it rules) to transiting Sagittarius.  Pluto is now in mid-Capricorn.

Saturn rules Capricorn - Pluto is the upper octave of Mars, force and male sexuality.  Mars is a fist-fight while Pluto is World War.

Pluto is change, usually by violence.

Pluto is now bringing ferocity, determination, do-or-die, to BREAKING CONTROL represented by Capricorn. Capricorn is order, control, government, and Pluto is change, revolution, ruling Scorpio, the Natural 8th House, other people's resources (e.g. taxes) and sexual power (as opposed to love).

In one of the Presidential Debates in December 2015, Governor Jeb Bush labeled Donald Trump, "The Chaos Candidate."

All credible reports say that the objective of Islamic Extremists (another misnomer to add to the list of beloved fallacies) is to bring CHAOS because by doing so, they will trigger their version of the Messiah to come and fix up the whole world.  Creating CHAOS has some kind of appeal to these current 18-25 year-olds whose Natal Pluto is end-of-Sagittarius beginning of Capricorn.  Of course whether Chaos Creation has a visceral appeal that will cause you to be willing to sacrifice your life to achieve it depends on which House Pluto is in, and what aspects it makes, and what other transits you might be experiencing when you hear that message.

Very few will be susceptible, and not all who are susceptible to "let's create chaos for holy purposes" will have any connection to these positions of Pluto.

But a writer who is able to spot a manifestation of a major force working in the world, whatever you call it, however you define it, will be able to use it in fiction in such a way as to grab major attention.

Pluto transiting Capricorn stirs up the desire for revolution against existing structures, especially governing structures, structures that have existed for generations.

One such structure is national borders. Note the prominence of "defend our borders" or "build a fence" -- note how Israel has built border fences, and in the Balkans fences are being built to "ban" torrents of refugees from the middle East wars.

Note that the Middle East situation is a Religious War, and it is against the prevailing, existing STRUCTURE that has prevailed for decades. They are moving country's borders, and exterminating (banning) Christians, and "the wrong kind" of Muslim.

Most of that killing is being done by recruits who are 16-30 years old.  They are enthusiastic about dying for a cause. Do or die.  And their objective is the "ban" non-Muslim behavior.

Note what a tiny fraction of Muslims have any interest in any of that violence!  It's all confined to a very specific slice of humanity, but look closely and you will find that same impulse to "ban" or "control" the behavior of others not just at Yale, or in the Middle East, but all over the globe.

The need to "ban" behavior is about the anguished misery that must be cured by PREVENTING what others are doing to cause it.  The assumption is that misery can not be something you afflict yourself with -- if you are miserable, it is someone else's doing that causes it.
Therefore BAN with full force of law any behavior that makes you miserable.  It is all their fault, not yours.  Any child will tell you that is true -- because they are helpless victims of their parents' unreasonable rules.

The explosive decompression (Pluto through Capricorn) of this anguish is High Drama, and you can use it in almost any Alien Romance you can think of.  All human readers will understand the need to CONTROL OTHERS, regardless of what opinion they hold of what actions are permissable and which are not.

So, look at the urge to control others, at how it manifests in Religions (of all sorts), and then in Atheist society.  Most Atheists consider the ills of the world orginate in Religion, and especially loathe all proselytizing aimed at them.  Only religious nuts go around "banning" others from various activities.

See if you can find an instance of banning promulgated by Atheist tendencies.

Build your World around a Theme, and find a Character torn between two answers to the thematic question.  When your Character acts to "ban" whatever external situation is causing him/her anguish, you have the beginning of a Plot.

Plot is the because-line of a Conflict. Your Character sees something that needs banning, wades in and attacks it in righteous indignation.  Because your Character hit it, it strikes back.  Because it had the temerity to strike back, your Character hits harder.  That's a plot integrated with character, world and theme.

In the finished story, it will all be of one indivisible piece, and readers will not be able to factor it back into its components.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Copyright Concerns

The Copyright Office solicited comments on how well or otherwise the DMCA takedown system has worked.  I submitted my own comment in the early hours of March 31st 2016.   If you must know, I wrote it between 4 am and 5.30 am while sitting in a Cleveland hotel bathtub, so as to not waken my family.

However, my comments may not have been received. The comments site was hit with what some would call a denial of service attack, allegedly by a webform which allegedly allowed individuals to comment repeatedly using a pre-written comment.

Here is my one and only comment.

Comment:"Congress intended for copyright owners and internet service providers to cooperate..." In my experience as an author, Congress's intentions have been ignored. Many ISPs do not cooperate. Some actively work to undermine copyright owners' rights.

"Safe Harbor" has been turned into a license for piracy and for search providers to profit from advertisement funded piracy or subscriptions. Many sites post the required DMCA verbiage, and then ignore it when takedown notices are sent, or have their own rules and guidelines that contradict the DMCA wording (either requiring the original uploader to re-up anything that is taken down, or else replacing the link that was taken down with a mirror, or duplicate). 

Otherwise highly respected sites refuse to post the name of the DMCA agent. EBay requires authors to "join their club" in order to send a NOCI...a time-consuming process which often results in an illegal auction coming to a profitable end for the copyright infringer and for EBay without the copyrighted material being removed or prevented from being re-sold in a subsequent auction. Other sites require all comers to sign up and often to subscribe before it is possible to view the content. This means that authors must expose themselves to identity and credit card theft and to downloading malware, or else must submit a good faith (but possibly erroneous) Takedown Notice.

Sending a Take-down notice is time-consuming for the copyright owner, especially for an individual author. Many sites make it difficult to file, especially if they require that the notice is submitted online, on their own proprietary form, and filling out the form requires that the copyright owner has several different internet windows open at the same time, and often the form cannot be printed off or screen captured so the author has a record of the submission. Many sites will not inform the copyright owner when the infringing material is taken down (so multiple follow ups may be necessary), and many sites will not inform the copyright owner what action if any has been taken against the uploader. In some cases, prolific uploaders can upload tens of thousands of infringing ebooks and be a moderator or celebrated uploader rewarded with WRZ$.

Some ISPs say that posting a link to where copyright infringing work is stored is fair use, some will claim that their own storage cloud does not count as storing the pirated files. Some say that telling would-be illegal downloaders where to find whatever they want to illegally download is "compliance" with the DMCA and protected by "Safe Harbor". Some say that, if a print book is not available as an e-book, it is fair use for a pirate or search engine to create that ebook and monetize it. Congress does not require that a diesel version is available of every electric car or vice versa. Congress does not require that peanut butter must be available in a peanut-free form. Why are internet denizens permitted to deny copyright protection to authors who--for good reasons--chose not to publish in e-form?

Google uses its "transparency" pages to republish links that it ought to know are infringing. For instance, if I Search for some of my works for which I have sent takedown notices, Google posts "In response to multiple complaints we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 2 results from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaints that caused the removals at LumenDatabase.org: Complaint, Complaint." The words contain links. Clicking the links takes interested persons to a LumenDatabase page where the "removed links" are published, and can be used to go right back to the mobilism page where my copyrighted works are still being published and distributed by the site that circumvented my takedown notices. Meanwhile, Google, on its LumenDatabase site posts a big green box inviting anyone at all to "create a DMCA counter notice."

The trouble with DMCA counter notices is that, if one is created --even if bogus-- the copyright owner must sue in Federal court. It is very expensive to sue, especially if the entity to be sued is anonymous. And, if one does sue, quite often the costs are not recoverable. Imagine an author earning $6,000 a year or less from writing trying to sue Google, or an EBay user, or someone funded by EFF? The entire Safe Harbor and DMCA Takedown process is stacked against the individual. Please, Congress, make "takedown" mean "take down and keep down" and provide some real penalties for OSPs and ISPs that do not cooperate as Congress intended.

Rowena Cherry  

If You Value Your Domain....

We've heard of "eminent domain", but I'm considering a pun on "imminent domain", as in "imminent domain name expiration".

According to a Walker Morris LLP legal blog entitled "Jeb Bush, Donald Trump and a domain name" (which you can read by clicking here....  the eminent domain enthusiast (Mr. Trump) had keen-eyed staff looking out for the status of his GOP Presidential candidate rivals' domain names.

Apparently, Jeb Bush's campaign team lacked the enthusiasm to keep on top of the domain name "jebbush.com" or perhaps they lacked the imagination to consider what could conceivably happen to "jebbush.com" if they did not renew it. The Trump campaign paid for it, and now, Walker Morris LLP tells us, "jebbush.com" folds into "donaldtrump.com" and anyone wanting news about Jeb Bush finds themselves reading about Donald Trump's latest and greatest exploits.

For alien romance writers (science- or any other genre of fiction writers), it is important to register your own author name --or names-- before a would-be cyber-squatter gets them. If you invent a niche genre, you might want to buy the domain name for that. If you have the foresight and a career arc in mind, you might want to buy the domain names for your future book titles. You cannot copyright a title, and nor can the person who thought of a killer title that you hope to use one day, but if you own, for instance "Knight'sFork.com" at least no one else can own that domain name.

Just for the fun of it, I typed President Obama's "dreamsfrommyfather.com" into a search bar. It folds into PenguinRandomHouse, so don't bother.Hillary Clinton's "HardChoices.com" on the other hand seems to be redirected to a site advising elderly people on end-of-life decision-making. "TheArtOfTheDeal.com" gave me a service 503 message. "ArtOfTheDeal.com" took me to a static page. "ATimeForTruth.com" ....is for sale.
Ted Cruz is exposed. What an opportunity...  But, I've looked at 2 authors from each side, so I think I've been fair and even-handed.

It's also smart to occupy your own authorname on any social network. You may never actually use that network, but in theory it prevents the site from setting up a robo page about you, that is not run by you.

Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

Modes of Thinking

One of Robert Heinlein's characters declares that conscious thought is like the display window in a calculator, showing the result of a process that goes on underneath, in the preconscious or unconscious mind. I think he's probably right; nevertheless, most people (as far as I know) do experience thinking as a conscious procedure. Suzette Haden Elgin often wrote about "preferred sensory modes" in learning and interacting with the environment—some children learn best by sight, others by hearing, some by touch. (And the last group suffers a distinct disadvantage in our public school system.) Likewise, people seem to have different "thinking modes."

I've always been highly verbally oriented. In my early years, I took it for granted that "thinking" MEANT "formulating thoughts in words." Mental verbalization, "talking to yourself," was the only process I recognized as thought. It was quite a revelation to learn not everybody's mind works that way. C. S. Lewis, one of my idols and certainly a brilliant wordsmith, was a strongly visual thinker. He said all his fiction began with "pictures." THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE, for example, sprang from an image of a faun carrying packages through a snowy forest. Lewis described his writing technique as something like "bird-watching." Various "pictures" would appear in his mind, and eventually he would sense that a group of them belonged together as part of a single narrative. Only then would the conscious work of devising a plot to link them begin. Only after Aslan "came bounding" into Narnia did it occur to him to include Christian content in the story (contrary to the popular belief that he intentionally set out to write "allegory"). Animal scientist Temple Grandin describes herself as so much of a visual thinker that words are her "second language." I'm so much the opposite, so non-visual, that I have trouble connecting faces with names and, in movies, telling characters apart if they look similar. This tendency also means that as a writer I struggle with creating vivid descriptions.

It's clear to me now that verbal thinking and even abstract thinking aren't the only processes that can legitimately be classified as "thought." Aren't animals thinking when they solve problems, even if they don't have the capacity for abstract thought? When our dog extracts a treat from a hollow toy or a cat bats at the swinging closet door until she can wiggle inside, they are clearly acting from intention, not trial-and-error. So I have to label their mental processes "thinking," even if that definition contradicts the narrower assumptions I used to hold.

How can we be sure of recognizing "thought" among extraterrestrial aliens who may not think anything like the way we do?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Reviews 24 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg of Alien In Chief by Gini Koch

Reviews 24
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Alien In Chief
by
 Gini Koch 

There are 11 prior posts where I mention or discuss Gini Koch's Alien Series.

Well, no, not discuss -- more like rave.

I have included spoilers below but these are the kind of novels that you can't spoil by knowing what will happen in advance.

Gini Koch has indeed been extremely prolific, and in the process of telling this long, complicated story, with many characters,  interstellar settings, and science tantamount to fantasy, she has become a much better writer.

The most bizarre setting Gini Koch has tackled has been Washington, D.C. complete with "wives" club to instruct spouses and establish the social whirl, all the way to vociferous (sometimes dangerous) picketers on Embassy Row.  So far, only K Street has been treated from a great distance, an occasional Lobbyist mentioned

If you step into this series with Alien In Chief, then go back to read the first one, ALIEN
http://www.amazon.com/Alien-13-Book-Series/dp/B014J8VFNY/
you will see the styling difference immediately.

If you read my reviews of these (terrific) novels, you will note I highlight the wordiness and "loose" styling.  The proportions in terms of words spent dwelling on this or that, the repetition of points, slowed the pace and vitiated the penetratingly vivid characterizations.

Little by little, that effect has been tamed, and this book ALIEN IN CHIEF, zips along at the pace of events without awkward pauses.  The improvement makes it easier to follow the action and the motivations.

Alien In Chief is Book 12,

 

...which details the events that we have seen coming for several books now as the bad-guys close in.  Finally, the ultimate doomsday weapon is deployed, a disease that takes down a trainload of high USA government officials.

Jeff, Kitty's husband the Alien we met at the beginning of Book 1, has been Vice President for a while.  Kitty, a human with altered DNA, has been the Ambassador to Washington from the AC Aliens.

Now, at least for a time, Jeff becomes President of the USA and Kitty has to drop everything to become First Lady.

Given what we know of her personality from the previous 11 Books, this will be a unique era in American history.  Already, she has taken the field, kicked butt, vanquished villains galore, managed media relations, and survived a bout of plague.

This is a science-fiction-urban-fantasy blend with strong elements most beloved in the Video-gaming and Comic communities.  But the blending is seamless, from Book 1 onward.

And yes, it is your favorite kind of series -- Human/Alien Romance where all the sex scenes are supercharged.  (And don't forget, they now have 2 very young, very precocious children who won't stay out of Adult affairs.)

I'm sure a lot of fans will want to duplicate the music playlists Kitty uses to inspire her fighting style, wishing that a super-alien would jigger the song sequences to give clues about what's about to attack.

And that's the only advantage Kitty has, a clue, not an actual briefing full of information.  She does have her altered DNA which gives her some Alien powers, but in this novel we see how she performs when these new powers fade away due to the disease.

As we come to the end of ALIEN IN CHIEF, we find the well known characters discussing who should be Vice President and who should take over the C.I.A.  Meanwhile, they are hosting a delegation of Aliens from a coalition of planets far-far-away, planets Kitty & Company saved from a brutal civil war.

There will be Washington Parties to inaugurate the new President, and there will no doubt be vigorous opposition to an Alien presiding in DC.  There might be a few left-over villains and a number of mysteries which, when solved, will create greater perils.  And since they saved a lot of humans who had caught the plague, there may be after-effects of that plague that appear later -- it was synthesized using some DNA from some as yet unknown planet.  Yes, it's a space plague.  You have to read this book to believe it.

Read these novels anticipating great, good, rollicking fun, and you won't be disappointed.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Copyright Matters

Should we have a named and registered copyright agent for our blog? One hopes not, because we moderate Comments, and that is the only way a third party could potentially upload copyright infringing material.

However, there are Blogspot blogs that do give the appearance of infringing copyrights. If in doubt, this article by the law firm FisherBroyles has some excellent advice in the segment "Have a Website? Got a Copyright Agent? If not, You May Have a Problem!" (scrolling down the page a bit). 

This week, the law firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP posted an analysis of what the Ninth Circuit ruling in the "Dancing Baby" case might mean for all copyright owners. That means, this affects authors, too.  We now have to "consider fair use" before sending a Takedown Notice when we see our works apparently being published and distributed without our consent and without payment to us.

The problem for authors is that a good proportion of what appears to be copyright infringement is designed to entice folks to click on links that often lead to malware-infested sites. According to the USPTO, we are not required to give our credit card information to a site we suspect is a pirate site, and we are not required to download potentially dangerous files in order to substantiate our good faith belief that our work is being illegally exploited. However, the Lenz "dancing baby" case is not helpful, and this author believes that that was exactly what Google funded EFF wanted.

I've shared this before, but here are some tips on navigating illegal download sites. 
http://forum.mobilism.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=649944

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

Irregular Reminder For European Visitors

Dear European visitors, 

Happy Easter Sunday, and thank you for visiting!

We are required to make sure that our European visitors are aware that European Union laws require us (the authors) to give European Union visitors information about cookies used on our blog. (Not by the authors. We have no control over the cookies. We don't even know what the cookies are! They are Google's cookies). In many cases, these laws also require us to obtain consent. 

If you follow this blog, we assume that you consent.

Google tells us that, as a courtesy, the good Google folks have added a notice on our blog to explain Google's use of certain Blogger and Google cookies, including use of Google Analytics and AdSense cookies.

Google tells us that we are responsible for confirming this notice actually works for our blog, (but we have no idea how to go about confirming whether or not this notice actually works, short of asking European visitors to leave a comment telling us!) and that it displays (but we don't know how to do that, unless European visitors kindly leave a comment to that effect). If we employ other cookies, for example by adding third party features, this notice may not work for us.  I don't think we do, but I'm not omniscient.

What I do to avoid being tracked by Google is to go into my Safari Preferences every day, and I delete every cookie that I don't want.  Also, when I am in motels using public wi-fi, I have found that turning off the wi-fi --often!!!-- cuts down exponentially on the influx of spam.

This blog will repeat from time to time.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

ICFA 37

The theme for this year's International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts was "Wonder Tales," with particular focus on fairy tales. Since I'm a big fan of retold fairy tales, I was excited about this theme. Sadly, the Guest of Honor, Terri Windling, couldn't attend because of health problems. Ellen Kushner read her luncheon speech, a moving discussion of the value of wonder. It drew on Windling's personal experience of longing to step through a doorway into a different world, which resonated deeply with me. On Thursday evening, special author guest Holly Black read from a work in progress called THE CRUEL PRINCE, which I definitely want to read when it's published. The guest scholar was Cristina Bacchilega, a specialist in fairy tales and folklore.

The Lord Ruthven Assembly, our vampire, revenant, and Gothic division, recognized the following works with awards: Fiction, JACOB, by David Gerrold; nonfiction, a bibliography, THE VAMPIRE IN FOLKLORE, HISTORY, LITERATURE, FILM AND TELEVISION, by J. Gordon Melton and Alysa Hornick; other media, the movie WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS. In one of the author reading sections, I read a story from SWORD AND SORCERESS XXII, "Vanishing Village," which was very kindly received. I attended several stimulating panels. The session on "Remix Culture" had a lively discussion on where to draw the lines with regard to fanfic and other adaptations and reuses of existing works. "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Read Them," set up as an informal round-table conversation, covered a wide range of topics related to animals in fantasy. The panel on the "Brave New World" of publishing offered much valuable information and advice for new as well as veteran authors. In the final time slot of Saturday afternoon, a panel on the latest STAR WARS film packed the room, with strong opinions expressed on such topics as gender and race issues and the commercial policies of the Disney empire.

David Hartwell, Tor Books editor, the author of the pioneering SF study AGES OF WONDER, and prolific, highly influential anthologist, died earlier this year. He was a faithful attendee at ICFA, running the book sale room for many years, so the conference featured several tributes to him. Also, each membership packet included a book of reminiscences compiled in his honor.

As usual, I came home with a bunch of free books. The weather in Orlando remained beautiful for most of the con. Thunderstorms were predicted for the weekend, but they didn't materialize, only a few showers. I enjoyed smooth airport experiences and flights in both directions. In fact, I would have declared it a perfect week except that, for the first time ever, my suitcase didn't get aboard the homeward plane with me. What a horrible, sinking sensation to stare, empty-handed, at a vacant luggage carousel when all the other passengers had gone! Fortunately, I must say the airline dealt with the problem efficiently and delivered my wandering bag to our house Monday night.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Worldbuilding From Reality Part 4 - Creating A Story Canvas by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Worldbuilding From Reality
Part 4
Creating A Story Canvas
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts on Worldbuilding From Reality:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/07/worldbuilding-from-reality-part-3.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/02/worldbuilding-from-reality-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/worldbuilding-from-reality.html

Here are some previous posts related to Worldbuilding

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/06/worldbuilding-link-list.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/11/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-10.html

In addition, there are long series of posts about integrating Worldbulding with each of the other skill sets we've discussed.  

Working with the developers of the Sime~Gen Videogame, who are worldbuilding in a Universe I created, I've been following developments in mapping our Galaxy and the stars beyond.

The Game developers want to take the narrow window on Future History I used to showcase the Characters I used and open that window wide -- taking humanity of the far future into the Galaxy on adventures flung far and wide. 

So I have been collecting posts on the advancing edge of astronomy and astrophysics and putting them on my Pinterest Board

https://www.pinterest.com/AmbrovZeor/entertainment-information-sources/  

I also park some on Flipboard and some on Facebook. 

https://www.facebook.com/jacqueline.lichtenberg

https://flipboard.com/@jacquelinelhmqg

In particular, the videogame company that has licensed one of my series, Sime~Gen, is planning to create an Interstellar setting for the character-driven story.  It will start with exploring this solar system, then expand to discovering Aliens "out-there."

But WHAT is "out there?"  

You all know that the fashion in science has been, for decades, to assume that there are no intelligent Aliens "out-there."  That idea went out of fashion with old-style Science Fiction.

Guess what. It's back!  Speculation began sizzling and then exploding in mid-2015.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/07/09/ancient-exoplanets-raise-prospects-intelligent-alien-life.html

And now comes the NEW orbital telescope called the James Webb Space Telescope, expanding on what Hubble has found, it is just inevitable we'll find whatever there is to be found out there.

http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/

That new orbital instrument will let us expand the map of all galaxies, solve mysteries of things like "dark matter," gravity, Black Holes, and maybe find some "Intelligent Life Out There" -- of course, what we see will be millions or billions of years old, but still useful information.

Here is a video of a map of galaxies, showing where in this mess Earth is located: 

https://youtu.be/rENyyRwxpHo

The Video says Earth is not the "center" of the universe -- but know what?  Maybe we'll discover otherwise.

You may have seen that video around.  It contains this blond-hair like image in the middle of the video and takes some patience to get there.

The red dot you see in this still from the video is us -- our GALAXY, not the Sun.  That's the structure of the Universe -- at least of a tiny slice near us that we've mapped parts of.

Then there are all the 2015 articles about Dark Matter with more papers due all the time now.

Definition from Astronomy:

(in some cosmological theories) nonluminous material that is postulated to exist in space and that could take any of several forms including weakly interacting particles ( cold dark matter ) or high-energy randomly moving particles created soon after the Big Bang ( hot dark matter ).

For example:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/01/110114-galaxy-x-space-dark-matter-dwarf-satellite-science-chakrabarti/

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ambitious-dark-energy-project-probes-mysterious-cosmic-expansion/

So our notion of the cosmos is expanding, and mysteries are appearing out of the nooks and crannies of Math and Astrophysics.  The gravity generated by Dark Matter is theoretically responsible for giving the Universe (that branching yellow hair type image in the video) its shape.  

The Hadron Collider will be making a lot more news in 2016.

http://phys.org/news/2015-10-latest-large-hadron-collider-results.html

So what is a science fiction writer to do?

Well, story telling is about focus, about a selective recreation of reality, not about reality itself.

By factoring out all the other variables, the writer focuses the reader's attention on the singular point of this particular story.

Stories are about people who are symbolically represented by Characters.

Characters are not "real" people -- but they trigger a recognition response in readers who then fill in all the gaps to create in their own imagination a Person derived from the writer's depiction of a Character.

That's how a reader puts him/herself into a story -- by filling in what the writer left blank.

So, to create your story canvas out of this vast-vast Universe we are now able to glimpse, you first need a story.

To find the story, you need a Character who will live that story.

Find the Character in your imagination, figure out what bit of that Character's life is that Character's story, then SELECT a bit of the vast-cosmos of reality to wrap around that Character.

Set the Character free to roam your slice of real-space.

For a long series of long books, you can use a bigger canvas -- a larger slice of what the James Webb telescope will be discovering.

You can move your Characters between Galaxies if you can intuit a space-drive that might be able to traverse such distances.

In the 1930's and 1940's Edward E. Smith, Ph.D., posited that the factor limiting our space-drive possibilities to sub-light "speeds" was INERTIA.

So he just posited that humans invented a device small enough to put on a space ship that eliminated inertia.  He called it an Inertialess Drive. I don't recall its fuel or energy source.

Gene Roddenberry came along in the 1960's and posited a Wormhole Based space drive powered by antimatter, focused by dilithium crystals.  Look up the history of science as understood in the 1950's and you'll understand what Roddenberry did there.  

So now it's 40 years later, and science is puzzling over Dark Matter and Dark Energy and Black Holes that swallow stars and burp.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/11/27/scientists-just-caught-a-black-hole-swallowing-a-star-and-burping-a-bit-back-out/

What are you going to base your star drive on?

And how far do your Characters have to travel?  How big a government do they need - how many people, how many different kinds of people?

C. J. Cherryh has done a wonderful job of depicting interstellar civilization in her FOREIGNER SERIES which I keep rave-reviewing here and everywhere. It is up to volume 17, now. Here's Amazon's page listing the books as a series.

http://amazon.com/gp/product/B0159KHS5A/ref=series_rw_dp_sw

But now we have all this new information about the map of the Universe -- how many galaxies there are, where they are in relation to each other, and what is between them (e.g. Dark Matter and Dark Energy).

So naturally, writers will be exploring what they can do with a star drive based on Dark Matter.  

Say, a ram-scoop technology based on scooping up Dark Matter and converting it to Light Energy?  

Or perhaps "sails" designed to capture Dark Energy?

There is more "Dark" than "Light" out there -- and nobody knows what can be converted to what or used for which.

That does not mean you, the writer, can just randomly postulate any old thing.

Whatever you postulate for the solution to the mysteries faced by particle physics and astrophysics today, it must symbolize, explicate, illustrate, or explain your theme.

In other words, the Characters you create have to "belong to" the World you build around them -- in a manner similar to (but different from) the way human beings belong to our world.

You create imaginary physics, as Gene Roddenberry did, to tell a story of a Character.

Read this short comic, and see how  Captain Kirk was a part of Gene Roddenberry's real life character.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/plane

Now look at the Universe Roddenberry created to wrap around James T. Kirk -- to set Kirk loose into that wild west setting.  

Even now, there's new Star Trek.

http://www.startrek.com/article/new-star-trek-series-premieres-january-2017

Note how Roddenberry set the TV small-screen Series mostly on the Bridge set, and occasional quarters or sick-bay, and the transporter room -- all interiors. And a lot of the planet exteriors were inside sets on a sound stage (and looked like it).

Making what the reader "sees" very small in comparison to the total environment the Characters "know" is "out there" is a dramatic device to engage the reader's imagination, get the reader to invent all the details and thus invest themselves in the dream.

Doctor Who did this for decades -- there was a Gallifrey out there, we knew it, but the story never went there, so we had to invent it.

Use that technique. Start your vast-enormous-intergalactic canvas in a small, tiny, slice of the Reality your Characters live in.

Book by book, expand the stage, explore hidden parts, romp among galaxies like grains of sand.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

What Are We Putting In The Ocean?

I'm just back from a short vaction in Florida, and I cannot say that I came away feeling very proud of people.

The signs say, "Keep Off The Dunes". Do people keep off the dunes? No. They sit on them for an elevated view. They let their dogs play on them. They sleep on them. They take a short cut across them instead of using the boardwalks.

Dunes are important and fascinating, not only for protecting the coast from winds and storm surges. Specialized creatures live in them, and specialized plants grow on them. The roots of sea oats help to keep the sand from being blow inland.  Beach grass dies if people walk on it and break its stems.
More info http://www.dnrec.delaware.gov/swc/shoreline/pages/duneprotection.aspx

The signs say "No Dogs" (between certain hours). One sees dogs during the no-dogs hours. The rules say that dogs must be on a leash during the hours when dogs are allowed. Are they?  In most cases, not.  I was harassed by a large excited dog as I stood in the shin-deep surf.

Apart from that, the beach was littered with glass, aluminum, styrofoam, and plastic trash. Alas.  It all contributes to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. or the Great Atlantic Garbage Patch. But that's nothing. I should have been in Seattle.

What is it with Seattle? Perhaps the people there are more stressed than Americans anywhere else. Or perhaps, they think they aren't because of all the drugs they ingest and excrete.

http://www.aol.com/article/2016/03/18/salmon-full-of-cocaine-and-antidepressants-study-finds-puget-so/21330104/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl12%7Csec3_lnk4%26pLid%3D1115464555

"Researchers found cocaine, Advil, Prozac, Lipitor, Benadryl and dozens of other drugs in the tissue of juvenile chinook salmon caught in the Puget Sound in September 2014, the Seattle Times reported in February. The salmon likely picked up the drugs from wastewater in the area that's a "[cocktail] of 81 drugs," as the Seattle Times put it."

Alas. That is wild-caught Pacific salmon. And, I thought that I was okay if I avoided the farmed Atlantic salmon.

"Other drugs found in the wastewater include (but aren't limited to): Aleve, Flonase, Paxil, Tylenol, Tagamet, Valium, Zoloft, Darvon, OxyContin, caffeine, nicotine fungicides, antiseptics, anticoagulants, Cipro and other "antibiotics galore," the Seattle Times reported."

Imagine, though, the science fiction (I almost typed fishion) possibilities of self-aware, laid back, buzzed, sleepy, obese, bacteria-resistant, indigestion-free sea life! They didn't mention the sexually stimulating drugs, but one might expect that among the 81 drug cocktail, something of the sort would be there.

Toilets of the future ought to be designed with their own reservoirs... like back to cess pits!!! Or a water feature wall of their home, on the other side of the home from an Elon Musk-like solar/battery recycling power wall.  Come to think of it, if one churned one's greywater, one might create hydroelectic power, too.  Bill Gates was recently on TV drinking recycled urine. Perhaps, if people drank their own recycled pee, they would get better value from their drugs as a side effect.

A possible solution for the future might be to have two toilets in every bathroom. #1 and #2  One would save a lot of water that way.  And, keep the juvenile chinook salmon in better health.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry

Greetings from Orlando; Zootopia

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This week I'm at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in balmy Orlando. I'll report on the con next Thursday.

By the way, have you seen ZOOTOPIA? I was highly impressed and definitely want to own this movie and watch it repeatedly. Almost as much of a winner as INSIDE OUT! One intriguing feature is the way this latest film confronts the issue of carnivores and herbivores living together in society, as most worlds inhabited by intelligent, anthropomorphic animals don't. The closest analogue might be Brian Jacques's Redwall, but that series portrays predators as uniformly, simplistically, and irredeemably evil (a deliberate choice on the author's part, but I prefer the way ZOOTOPIA handles the problem). It's also interesting that ZOOTOPIA keeps the sizes of the various animals roughly to scale, so that when the rabbit heroine ventures into the section of the city called Little Rodentia, she strides among the buildings like Godzilla in Tokyo (but of course more carefully).

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Reviews 23 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg - Stone and a Hard Place by R. L. King

Reviews-23-by Jacqueline Lichtenberg Stone And A Hard Place by R. L. King


R. L. King is one of the writers highlighted on my page of writers who have been influenced by my writing.
http://simegen.com/jl/influencedbyJL/

I want to point you to Book 1 in R. L. King's series The Alastair Stone Chronicles,  because I truly admired the strong, disciplined structure of this novel.

It's an easy, quick read -- great kind of thing to read on an airplane but you won't toss it in the trash when you get to your destination (or delete it from your phone -- paper and Kindle versions on Amazon).

  http://amazon.com/gp/product/B00UGBEQYY

Besides being a great story about a master of Magical Craft taking on an Apprentice while dealing with a cross-dimension incursion by a genuine Monster Entity, this novel is worth any writer's time to study.

It's not a Romance, but the plot is driven by Relationships and a good, solid sexual relationship, too.

All the Characters (except the Monster) do things because of how they "relate" to the other characters.

We see what it means to hold someone in contempt.
We see what it means to think you should hold someone in high regard.
We see what it means to acquire high regard for those who supply "strokes" or good feelings, who      bolster your self-esteem whether you should have any self-esteem or not.
We see what it means to perceive an elegant devotion to Charity and  throw down in support of that  lofty goal.
We see what it means to be self-critical.

This novel creates an interlaced web of Relationships all of which contribute materially to the plot.  There's love, contempt and even embryonic hatred.

We can see all of this in one panoramic perspective because of the underlying structure of the novel.

That structure is invisible to the consumer, the casual reader, which is just as it should be.  The casual reader should swoop through the story eager for "what happens next" -- and indeed that is exactly how this book reads.

The strict, disciplined structure reminiscent of Hollywood movies or network TV shows causes the page-turner effect.

After you've read the book, check the beginning then check the ending.  Also check the middle.

Spoiler:
SPOILER
SPOILER

But the truth is the following analysis does not spoil the pure enjoyment in this novel.

There is an unexpected death near the end.  It is not foreshadowed, except poetically.  You keep asking yourself how in the world is the writer going to keep this character alive after all this -- but all indications are that the writer will keep that character alive.

But no.

Poetic Justice is served up cold.

Here's the relevant 3-part series on this blog on Poetic Justice and how to use it as a device.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/poetic-justice-in-paranormal-romance.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/poetic-justice-in-paranormal-romance_15.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/poetic-justice-in-paranormal-romance_22.html

Now, given that the plot calls for that shock-scene of the death, and a huge Karmic Reveal, together with (all in a couple of paragraphs) a glimpse into the future lives of this character, and possibly the past lives of the Main Character who survives, maybe into the Relationship between them established over lifetimes, -- how can the opening of such a Paranormal Action-Mystery novel be structured so the ending makes sense, but is not telegraphed to the reader?

If the opening telegraphs to the reader too much, then the reader will become bored and stop turning pages.

Well, the genre is "Mystery" primarily (not Romance).

If it were a Romance it might be classed as Paranormal Action-Romance and the opening would be the first meeting of the two characters who would fall in love -- very likely opening on them fighting each other, maybe in Arcane Combat.

This is clearly a MYSTERY.

But it partakes of the elements of Science Fiction, too.

The mystery in question is the arcane equivalent of a science mystery -- a piece of data that doesn't fit accepted theory.

So as the author says, it is an Urban Fantasy because the setting is contemporary (sans cell phones), and the science involved is Magic.  From my NOT SO MINOR ARCANA series on Tarot:

 
I think it is much more than just Urban Fantasy -- mixing many genres seamlessly, including hints of a coming Romance.  Some major publishers still shun this type of mixture -- but of course it is my own personal favorite.

So as the novel progresses, investigation shows there are some theories that cover the observation, but no big detailed reference works to cookbook through fixing the problem.

Since paranormal mystery genre is to be the envelope, the writer chose to open the plot as you do with a mystery, and to close with the solution, and a denouement as you do with a mystery.

The typical closed-form detective novel, or TV show, starts with the discovery of the body, or a bit of evidence that a crime has been committed.  This kicks off the Plot -- but not yet the Story.

Stone and a Hard Place starts with a prologue, and a wildly gorgeous opening line.

"Adelaide Bonham was convinced that her house hated her."

The whole novel is about that House, it's hatred for Adelaide, what kind of person she is, how she manages to accept an unacceptable explanation of what she has observed, and what she does both because of that acceptance, that observation, and what she does in spite of that acceptance, and what becomes of the House because of it all.

Adelaide an old, frail, infirm woman, a widow who has inherited the house passed down to her husband by his ancestors.

She is not a typical old widow.

She's courageous, exemplary, set in her ways but willing to accept new ideas.

But she is not the Hero of this Story -- not the Main Character.

That's why her conviction that her house hates her is in a prologue, not the opening of Chapter One.

Stone And A Hard Place is not about her, not her story, not her destiny.

She, like the first character you see on a TV Series episode opening where the week's body is discovered, is part of both plot and story -- she is obstacle, goal and enabler, even perhaps Protagonist, but not Hero, not Main Character.  She both prevents and then instigates plot events.  But the novel is not her Story.

Many readers of this blog know I usually send back (mostly unread) any manuscript sent to me for evaluation that begins with a Prologue.

The art of the prologue is incredibly difficult to master.

Artistically, the prologue must be a major narrative hook -- draw the reader into the story.  But at the same time, it must not fix the reader's attention and present the reason to read this novel.

The reason to read the novel is paragraph 1 of Chapter 1 -- it is not the prologue, which as it's name indicates is the "log" (like Captain's Log) of "what came before the story" that instigates the plot.

Be advised, most readers routinely skip anything labeled prologue, so usually it's better to call it Chapter One and make it the springboard into Chapter Two.

In this case, though, what you have here is a perfect example of a novel that must have a prologue, and a perfect example of a prologue that contains nothing but prologue material.

You find perfect examples like this in Mystery and Police Procedurals -- the Event that the Main Character must investigate.

The beginning writer tends to grab at the prologue to solve a writing structure problem no other tool in that writer's toolbox seems suited for.

Usually, that is the beginning writer's up-welling urgency to write the story, shoving aside anything that would slow down the writing -- including learning new techniques necessary to tell the story in just the way that the story demands.

That is not what happened here in Stone And A Hard Place.

This prologue is a precise example of not only when to use a prologue but how and why.

This prologue is part of the formula of the Detective Story, and sets out the main problem The Detective will have to solve.

The plot has "reveals" about the way the Reluctant Detective gets sucked into solving this problem, what he discovers that's vaguely suspicious, what he learns that is definitely suspicious, what makes him very wary of the size of the problem (tip of the iceberg and he knows it) -- what and how he researches, what is known about this problem, what he thinks about what he discovers, what he decides to do about it, what happens (not as a consequence of his decision plot-wise, but as a consequence poetically, karmicly, of who and what he is).

Each bit of information about the mystery, about why this old woman thinks her house hates her, what she does about that, what the Detective ( a master Magician named Stone who is facing a very hard place in his life) does as a consequence of what the old woman does, is Revealed at exactly the correct place in the narrative all the way to The End and the epilogue.

The precision pacing is not just the order in which information is revealed, but also how many words are devoted to revealing each piece and giving the reader time to absorb and understand that information.

The information feed in this novel is perfect.

The Mystery Plot begun in the Prologue forms the backbone of the Plot.  The Mystery Formula sets the pacing.

The Story begins at the Chapter One opening.  (for a Mystery formula this is exactly the correct choice.)

Chapter One introduces our Reluctant Detective with his awareness of the karmic problem of his life, the life-stage he is passing through at this very moment.

The opening line is perfect:
"Alastair Stone suspected the Universe was conspiring against his desire to keep the two sides of his life separate."

And at the end of the novel, we see that is indeed the case -- poetic justice, karma, has overwhelmed and transformed his life, and he is complicit.

The next few paragraphs of the opening (brief, hard-punching paragraphs perfectly crafted) convey the information that Stone will now take on an Apprentice at the behest of a figure who is an Old Friend.  That figure is thought of many times throughout the novel, and then tinkers with Stone's destiny again in the Epilogue.

The epilogue is titled appropriately Chapter Forty-Six, Two Weeks Later, instead of epilogue.

Why is this not titled epilogue?  Because it does not cap the prologue with a final bit of information completing the plot begun in the prologue.

It is not an epilogue, but a denouement to the mystery, dealing with the damage left in the wake of resolving the conflict.

Chapter Forty-Six delineates the wrap-up of the Story (not the Plot) and indicates what the Reluctant Detective will choose to do next because of the losses sustained in this adventure and the scars only beginning to form on his psyche as the two parts of his life have been smashed together with the force of karma.

Within the first few paragraphs of Chapter One we also meet Stone's "magically oblivious girlfriend" -- who later figures in the story significantly, particularly in saving Stone's life.  They're sleeping together but  not living together -- lots of romantic tension that isn't yet a romance.

Then Chapter Two introduces Stone's everyday life (as a Professor of the arcane at a regular university where the topic is treated as a mythical curiosity), and his first meeting with his new Apprentice.

The main characters are all introduced in the correct order, the order of their effect on the ending.

The body of the novel is all about juggling responsibilities to train the Apprentice while dealing with the Monster In The House, and with the overcoming of the personal angst caused by Stone's inability to keep the two sides of his life separate and still keep his self-respect.

The Point of View shifts, but never wanders.  The writer does not use point of view shift because she doesn't know any other way to get the information to the reader.  She chooses Point of View Shift because it is the correct tool for this information feed at this specific point in the novel.  It is all very disciplined, very precise.

The entire composition follows the "Beats" delineated in Blake Snyder's Save The Cat! series on screenwriting.  Scene structure, climax points, each one is placed exactly where it belongs by adjusting the number of words necessary to move the story and the plot ahead.  That word-count discipline is a big factor in the page-turner effect.

Read this novel, enjoy it, then dissect it beat for beat, count paragraphs, words, and how dialogue is mixed in tempo with narrative, exposition, and description.  There is a firm hand behind this novel, and a very high precision sense of structure and pacing.

As Save The Cat! points out repeatedly, structure and pacing make the difference between an "Opens Everywhere" film and a campus Arts Playhouse showing or two.

Structure and pacing are all about audience size.  But though both structure and pacing are necessary conditions for wide distribution, they are not sufficient conditions.

This novel has the potential to reach and please a very large, very broad audience given the right kind of publicity and promotion.

In today's world, that kind of publicity and promotion is rarely possible for a work of mixed genres like this one.  Urban Fantasy is one of the labels that allows for such a mixture.

If you are writing a mixed-genre -- or perhaps think you are writing a very pure genre -- study this novel's ingredients.  It is a smoothly blended mixture of all my favorite genres.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com