Valentine Snark

The sending of Valentine's Day cards became a mass-market phenonmenon in the nineteenth century, especially after the introduction of postage stamps in 1840. In early decades, cards were often decorated with real ribbons and lace. Later, as they began to be mass-produced, paper lace came into use. Here are a few images of elaborate nineteenth-century valentines:

Vintage Valentine's Day Cards

ClickAmericana Victorian Valentines

We readily associate sentimental, romantic images of hearts, flowers, and Cupids with that era. Lesser known are the negative-message cards also popular among the Victorians, often downright mean missives called "vinegar valentines." Originally they were labeled "comic" valentines, a category that still exists today, but not quite so harsh. Nowadays we can find funny, sometimes sarcastic cards alongside the serious, sentimental ones, such as birthday cards with jokes about getting old, but we seldom see cards as openly insulting as some of the Victorian examples:

Victorian Vinegar Valentines

Here's a page of authentic cards in that category:

Vinegar Valentine Images

They're relatively hard to find, it's said, because people tended not to save them. No wonder! Hard to imagine who'd send acquaintances cards mocking their looks, personalities, and failures in love, yet apparently there seems to have been a substantial market for those products.

Like Victorian pornography, some of which was as hardcore as ours, vinegar valentines remind us that the popular image of Victorians as pure-minded, romantic, sentimental, and wholly devoted to family values is an incomplete picture of the realities of the era.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Worldbuilding For Multiple Alternate Universes Part 4 How To Make Ghosts Vampires and Demons Real

Worldbuilding For Multiple Alternate Universes

Part 4

How To Make Ghosts, Vampires, and Demons Real 

Previous parts in this series are:

Part 1 - Star Trek Fan Fiction

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2021/01/worldbuilding-for-multiple-alternate.html

Part 2  - Find Some Crazy Ideas

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2021/01/worldbuilding-for-multiple-alternate_19.html

Part 3 - What Makes and Idea Too Crazy

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2021/02/worldbuilding-for-multiple-alternate.html

Here is an article from 2020, targeting the Halloween readership -- about ghosts, and the scientific explanations for what people are "really" seeing or feeling but interpreting as "supernatural."  You've read a lot of these, I'm sure.

https://www.grunge.com/162385/why-people-see-ghosts-according-to-science/

The multiple universe worldbuilding for very long series of very long novels is usually done "on the fly" by authors who accidentally write the first book in a series thinking it is a stand-alone -- only to have it sell so well that the editor asks for another book.

This has happened to me. It's REAL.  

It happened to me also on submission.  Here's one story:

My Agent told me I needed to establish another byline, so I thought about it, and found I could write one of the action-action-action novels such as we discussed in Part 3 of Worldbuilding For Multiple Alternate Universes.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2021/02/worldbuilding-for-multiple-alternate.html

So I submitted a very short novel to my Agent which he said was too short for the market he had in mind, and I should make it longer.  So I added more action scenes - combat, unarmed combat, space-battle, but that didn't satisfy my standards for story.  So I added more story, more Relationship and Character to bring it up to the length he wanted.  He liked it, and submitted it. 

My Agent called me back shortly thereafter with good news and bad news.  He had an offer from a Mass Market paperback original editor, but they wanted a sequel.

There was a chance for even more books in the series, so I needed to add more worldbuilding - creating a sprawling galactic war backdrop that could support many sequels if needed.  

As it turned out, the publisher and editors all shifted jobs (as happens constantly in Manhattan Publishing) and the third book was never sold, but the two hit the stands and sold very well.  I retrieved the rights, and posted Hero and Border Dispute,  on Amazon Kindle as a single volume because they are very short novels by today's standards.  You can read free on Kindle Unlimited.

https://www.amazon.com/Hero-Border-Dispute-Jacqueline-Lichtenberg-ebook/dp/B002WYJG0W/

By expanding the world building behind the story of HERO I  learned a lot about how the Setting and the Story interact with the Plot of a novel, or a Series.

Hero and Border Dispute both occur in a single level of reality, no alternate universes, no "supernatural."  But those elements are in there, behind everything, hidden, and easily to be revealed if necessary.

The structural integrity of the world building behind the Setting bespeaks the author's intentions, values, understanding of Real Reality, and scope of Imagination.  

The world you build reveals more about you than what you wear, how you speak, what makes you smile, or whether you believe in God.

And most of the time, as you write, as you cast the outline of a story into a sketch, you have no idea just how much you reveal.

Are you precise, organized and goal directed?  Are you helter-skelter, mess churning, haphazard, and amateurish?  Are you an artist or an artisan?

Are you able to see the paranormal dimension in your own everyday reality?  And if you can see it, can you explain it? Do you understand it? Have you studied it? Are you master of the state-of-the-art material all humanity has generated over centuries of study of the Paranormal?

The answers to those questions are the bare bones of any fictional world you build to tell a story against.

Who are you? 

That is the essence of Worldbuilding -- building a world broad enough, strong enough, coherent enough, deep enough, and variegated enough to support a long series of long novels -- or a series of long stories broken into shorter novels, shorter books, books designed to fit into any publishing environment.

I like to depict "Aliens" -- people who maybe aren't very human, but have enough in common with Earth's humans to be recognizably people.

The question that generated the premise behind the novel HERO -- was simply, "What if an Alien species, allied to humanity to fight a vicious war, regarded heroism as a horrendous crime against their species?"  

What if heroism was a stigma?  

What if well meaning, big hearted, humans awarded such an Alien some supreme accolade for heroism? And what if he/she/it then went home?  

That's the story.

What's the plot?  Well, there has to be a common enemy and it has to be righteous and proper to slaughter them, maybe even to the point of genocide.  And there has to be a reason it's not easy.

What traits in an alien species could qualify them to be exterminated?  (Yeah, I know, so I'm a Star Trek Fan with a lot of Doctor Who included.)

So in this case, the book idea started with a Character feeling horribly embarrassed about something the reader would regard as an Honor.

And the plot, and the world (and other Characters) unfolded from that overwhelming embarrassment.

But if you look closer, you'll see that the World (the galactic war situation) these characters live in make a thematic statement you find you most of my other work -- what if what you think you see isn't actually there?  

What if you think you see ghosts -- but actually they're just real people living in another dimension?

What if Vampires (complete with blood lust and apparently magical powers) are just Aliens from another Planet stranded on Earth and struggling to get home?  

I wrote that as THOSE OF MY BLOOD and the

parallel novel DREAMSPY, and was pleased with the hardcover editions, except for the covers. The subsequent publishers took a little of my advice, and I ended up with these covers, that at least show it's a Relationship Story.   

https://www.amazon.com/Those-My-Blood-Tales-Luren-ebook/dp/B00A7WQUIW/

https://www.amazon.com/Dreamspy-Tales-Luren-Book-Two-ebook/dp/B00BFGG1RO/

What if Demons are REAL???  What if a Vampire's human friend was haunted (and viciously targeted) by a demon?  I have a series of Vampire short stories about a human/Vampire pair who have demon problems -- reprinted here:

https://www.amazon.com/Through-Vampirism-Jacqueline-Lichtenberg-Collected-ebook/dp/B004MPRUZM/

I've rarely used the "demon" character in my own work even though I have followed with rapt attention the way other writers, especially Romance genre writers, have developed the common, ordinary, symbol of pure Evil, the threat to the humanity of a human, into a varied and unpredictably almost-good-sometimes Plot Moving Character (i.e. a point of view Character).

And in the series we looked at in Part 3, the Cassie Palmer series about a time traveling guardian of the timeline titled a Pythia, we have a fully rounded depiction of demons, gods, half-breed god/demon and human/demon and god/human mixes as people trying to just live "normal" lives, and having to morph into Heroes.

The Demon, Ghost or Vampire -- the Evil One -- as the best of the Good in humanity, is actually what Science Fiction and Romance are really about.

You will find that in all my novels -- the world building is predicated on the assumption that the universe is rooted in the Fountain of Love in such a way that LOVE DOES CONQUER ALL.  

The essence of solving any problem humanity might encounter will always be the emotional bond between one human and another -- no matter the details of the species each human belongs to.

In other words, the essence of my worldbuilding is a philosophical idea about the nature of reality -- that all the universe we call "real" is fabricated from the musical note of Love.  

But to solve problems, we have to figure out what is really happening, and ride the wave of reality by understanding what is "right" and what is "wrong" in the situation we are in -- do righteously, and Love will bring an optimum solution to the problem.

So that science article about Ghosts cited above is in hot pursuit of the solution to some problems.  It poses the question gnawing at most of us -- if Science can't analyze it, then is it actually Real?  Or put another way, "What exactly is Reality?"

When you build a world to house multiple alternate Universes where the same Characters live through different plots - becoming different people because of their choices and the results of their actions - you, the writer, must know what is "right" and what is "wrong" in each of the universes and why that is so.

What property of each of your alternate universes (pocket realities, or whatever) determines the laws and rules of righteousness?

The answer to that will depend on your take on what property of our everyday reality determines what the laws of morality and ethics are.

For example: if God is real, and has revealed his Rules of Order in the Bible, then the rules of this Earth's reality are known to most of your readers (or they can Google it).

If your world uses different Rules - how does God manifest in that Reality? 

Whether the Characters know it or not, there has to be a "scientific" explanation that you know for the existence of these various orders of beings in your various alternate universes - Magic Users, gods, demons, vampires, ghosts, hostile and friendly -- for reasons.  Everything that shows on the surface of your narrative has to be consistent with those premises.  Just as in Mystery Genre, you must play fair with the reader and be sure there is a way for them to figure out what the "reality" is even if the Characters don't know it (well, especially if the Characters are clueless.)  

If God is not Real, and was just made up by bossy humans who wanted control over others, then who made up the Rules of your well built world?  What would the Rules of morality be in a world created by "Demons?" 

What do the peoples of your built world think sets the Rules, and what Rules do they argue over? (very hot wars can ensue from such a premise).

As a writer, you don't need to know the answers to these questions consciously. Most of the synthesis of all these variables will be done by your subconscious - but the resulting novels will be incoherent and incomprehensible to readers if you don't train your subconscious and fill it with the Collective Wisdom of Humanity.

You can find a whole lot of different Collective Wisdoms recorded throughout History (and pre-History) and around the Globe.  Set them against one another and you have Conflicts vast enough to support a long series of long novels.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Thom Tillis And The Whack-a-Mole Problem

If Thom Tillis is the Harry Potter of Copyright protections for authors, who would you cast as Lord Voldemort? Another Senator? Or someone in Big Tech?

Our sprightly hero (Thom Tillis) has proposed legislation to rescue creatives from a maze of dead ends and aggressive-root-like red tape involved in trying to take down user-generated copyright infringement, and also

of whomping willow-like protections for OSPs and ISPs.

https://www.tillis.senate.gov/2020/12/tillis-releases-landmark-discussion-draft-to-reform-the-digital-millennium-copyright-act

The current situation, whether with EBay or our gracious hosts here, or Twitter, or other social media sites is that it takes a while to send a take down notice, one has to reveal a great deal of personal information, and if the information seems valid, the specific copy of the infringing material may be removed, but the take down notice and partial link to the infringing material may be posted elsewhere "for transparency", and the take down does not apply to other copies of the same work on the same site, or to subsequent uploads of the known-to-be-infringing work on the same hosting site... even by the same user.

The Lumen site is better than its predecessor, Chilling Effects, but it still reveals which pirate site is very likely to still have a whack-a-mole copy of the copyright infringing work that should have been taken down.

 

Creatives are invited to comment on Thom Tillis's proposed reforms, and so the commentary battle begins. The hugely powerful dark forces of the established order will obviously comment in disfavor of changing the status quo.

Intellectual_Property@tillis.senate.gov

Kudos and thanks (if that is not tautologous) for the heads-up to legal blogger David Oxenford of Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP

https://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2021/01/articles/proposal-for-reform-of-copyright-act-released-for-public-comment-including-changes-for-the-safe-harbor-for-user-generated-content-the-status-of-the-copyright-office-and-orphan-works/#page=1


What the EFF wants:
https://www.eff.org/wp/eff-transition-memo-incoming-biden-administration

EFF manages to sound reasonable and persuasive, but their view of the whack-a-mole problem seems to be that it does not exist, as if take-down-and-stay-down is the current situation. "Excise" is a terminological inexactitude.

 
"In a nutshell, Section 512 shields intermediaries from copyright liability for content their users upload, as long as they promptly take down infringing material that is brought to their attention. In exchange, content holders got a powerful tool to police infringement, known as “notice and takedown”: by sending an email or filling out a form, they can excise infringing content."

Also, "excise" in the surgical sense is not apt. In surgery, the cut out growth is not put back in its original state if someone files a counter notice, nor is an identical growth copied and pasted back onto the host within hours.

I'm going to have to write to Thom Tillis to warn him about the weasel words.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ http://www.rowenacherry.com

The Value of Friendship

Here's a guest post in LOCUS by Mike Chen, discussing the undervaluation of friendship in contemporary culture, particularly in fiction:

Like a Friend

He praises friendship as "one of the cornerstones of our lives," especially in the past year of unprecedented isolation, and mourns the frequent neglect of its importance. As he puts it, in stories friendship is "often presented as a lower-tier relationship, something given to a secondary character to help the main character achieve their goal of family connections or romance." He deplores this attitude and offers examples of a few strong friendships in popular media, expressing the wish that such fictional relationships were more common. He also celebrates friendship as a relationship of choice, different in that way from familial bonds and the swept-away emotions of erotic love. The concept of friendship and its portrayal in storytelling "should show the power of choice over the given defaults of blood family, the power of steadiness over the intensity of romance, the power of consistency over flings that come and go."

This essay reminds me of the friendship chapter in C. S. Lewis's THE FOUR LOVES. Lewis would agree with that remark about choice. He begins by stating that any discussion of friendship in modern times must start with a "rehabilitation," because nowadays most people don't think of it as a love equal to affection or eros (romantic attraction), or even a love at all. For Lewis, friendship (as opposed to affection, such as parent-child or other family ties or any attachment that simply grows out of long, comfortable association) arises from mutual interests and deeply shared values. Sometimes it's situational, as between classmates who grow close by bonding over schoolwork, sports, or hobbies, and sometimes it lasts a lifetime regardless of outward circumstances. Lewis had a lifelong friend of that type in a boyhood neighbor with whom he maintained ties until death severed them.

Chen's article discusses whether men and women can be true friends without romance. Lewis takes the rather traditional view that, unless one or both of the friends is/are otherwise committed, male-female friendship is likely to develop into eros. His own life took that direction after he united with one of his best friends, Joy Davidman Gresham, in a civil marriage-in-name-only to allow her and her sons to remain in England legally. He later fell deeply and passionately in love with her. "Friends to lovers" is a favorite trope in contemporary romance novels, understandably, since a solid friendship makes a firm foundation for a lasting union.

In my life, friendship has tended to be situational. I've had church friends, writing friends, convention-attending friends, and, when I worked at a day job, office friends, and during my husband's military career, Navy friends. For the most part, I didn't keep up with the latter two types (aside from occasional Christmas cards) after the respective situations changed. If challenged by Mike Chen, I would have to admit that in my own fiction—mostly paranormal romance in recent years—friends usually play the role of secondary characters there to act as confidants for the protagonists (as Chen mentions in his essay). As for books and other media, on THE X-FILES Mulder and Scully remained loyal friends for many years, but eventually they became lovers; how much that shift was driven by pressure from fans, I don't know. One of the most memorable friendships in popular culture, of course, is the trio of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. Similar non-romantic friendships developed on STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. Currently, we can find friendship separate from romance in ensemble-cast TV shows such as NCIS, where the core investigative team displays strong bonds among its members. As for novels, in the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, Jamie and Claire have a devoted friend in Lord John Grey, who was originally hopelessly in love with Jamie but now accepts the platonic friendship with no indication that he regards it as second-best.

So celebrations of friendship are not quite so rare in modern storytelling as Chen pessimistically suggests.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Worldbuilding for Multiple Alternate Universes Part 3 - What Makes an Idea Too Crazy

Worldbuilding for Multiple Alternate Universes

Part 3

What Makes an Idea Too Crazy? 

Previous entries in the Worldbuilding for Multiple Alternate Universes Part 4 are:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2021/01/worldbuilding-for-multiple-alternate.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2021/01/worldbuilding-for-multiple-alternate_19.html

And if your Idea is "too crazy" even for a novel crossing multiple alternate universes, how do you sell the novel to traditional publishers?  

Some people view "Love Conquers All" and "Soul Mates" to be ideas way too crazy for mass market.

But reader appetite for types of stories evolves faster than the editorial willingness to invest all that money in manufacturing books and spreading them around where readers might randomly stumble over them (Supermarket shelves, book stores even).

It costs a lot to publish a novel, and the economics demand the prospect of selling a number of units that would return the investment plus a nice profit for the company.

Long before the 1960's, a "profit for the company" was the last thing publishers wanted.  Publishing companies were owned by bigger corporations specifically to lose money, and to be a tax write-off.  This changed when the tax laws were rewritten to classify books stored in warehouses in the same tax category as hammers and tools -- so every year a book is stored, the company that owns the company pays an additional tax.

The whole economics of fiction and non-fiction was changed by a tax law.  

Now books don't get published because they "ought" to be (because of the content), but rather they get published because an acquisitions editor sees a market for them.

If the market isn't visible, the author doesn't get an offer.

So in the last couple of decades the market for what used to be called "everything and the kitchen sink" plotting has become visible.  

This is the sort of novel with worldbuilding that depicts a reality even more complex than our real world.

Classic Soap Opera ladle's onto characters one massive disaster after another - until viewer credulity is stretched almost too far.  These are the sorts of personal disasters that do happen in real life (being widowed while pregnant, being jailed for a crime you didn't commit ) but they happen once to one person, not every few months to the same person year after year.  

Classic Science Fiction depicts an ordinary individual handed an impossible task and accomplishing it by discovering or inventing something that didn't exist before, render the formerly impossible possible.

Classic Romance depicts the forming of a Relationship as a life-altering event, which just like the Science Fiction discovery, renders the formerly impossible life-achievements into possible ones.  

Classic Soap Opera leaves the Characters few free-will choices, few chances to act to change their lives for the better, and when they do have such an opportunity, they choose incorrectly (but the viewer doesn't see the error at first).  

When you combine all three Classic forms with the all-male style Action-Action plotting (fight scene, after chase scene after mortal combat scene, after dire threat scene, after unarmed combat scene, etc), you get a story that you could never have sold into the 1960's market for Science Fiction.

The current editors have been rewarded for acquiring and publishing long series of long novels blending all three Classic forms with action (the more action, the better).

I have reviewed Gini Koch's ALIEN series (16 very long books) consistently, with recommendations to read and study them carefully.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074C6WPPK

Now, contrast/compare the structure of the ALIEN series with Karen Chance's Cassie Palmer Series, book 10 published in 2020.  

Then contrast both of those with the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher (book 17, Battle Ground,  published September 2020).

FROM AMAZON PAGE:

---quote---

THINGS ARE ABOUT TO GET SERIOUS FOR HARRY DRESDEN, CHICAGO’S ONLY PROFESSIONAL WIZARD, in the next entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling Dresden Files. 

Harry has faced terrible odds before. He has a long history of fighting enemies above his weight class. The Red Court of vampires. The fallen angels of the Order of the Blackened Denarius. The Outsiders.

But this time it’s different. A being more powerful and dangerous on an order of magnitude beyond what the world has seen in a millennium is coming. And she’s bringing an army. The Last Titan has declared war on the city of Chicago, and has come to subjugate humanity, obliterating any who stand in her way. 

Harry’s mission is simple but impossible: Save the city by killing a Titan. And the attempt will change Harry’s life, Chicago, and the mortal world forever.

---end quote--

Gini Koch's character Kitty Kat has an Alien (on Earth) fall madly in love with her -- and she reciprocates vehemently -- and that changes her life, handing her (unbeknownst to her at the time) the impossible task of making peace in the galaxy.  Classic Love Conquers All because of Soul Mates meeting.

Karen Chance's character Cassie Palmer is handed the impossible task of freeing humanity from the ancient gods (Ares, Apollo,), and her love is torn between a Master Vampire and the ancient Merlin, a vigorous Incubus.  She teams up with the Incubus and kills a god, then goes on to settle things for humanity, all because of the power of love in her unique relationship with an Incubus. Classic Love Conquers All, not sure about the Soul Mate aspect.  

Jim Butcher's Dresden Files #17 (Sept 2020) I have yet to read, but I've read all the prior ones in this (absolutely magnificent) Fantasy Series about Harry Dresden, Professional Wizard (hard boiled detective crossed with Have Gun Will Travel gun-for-hire-but-the-good-guy).  Harry is driven by bone-marrow-deep affection for various people in his life, but seems more a free-radical, living a life without his Soul Mate.  Even so, his love does conquer pretty much all the problems that come at him. 

All 3 of these long series of long novels have fascinating main characters pursuing impossible goals against impossible odds and succeeding.

And although the characters are marvelous, the real star of the series is the world building.

Around every plot turn and twist lies a revelation about the true nature of the world the characters live in -- knowledge often won in the heat of battle, magical and otherwise -- and those revelations drive the plot into new vistas.

Keep in mind these series of long books all start with the very close, very tight focus on a character with one, or maybe five, problems to solve just to survive the current threat.  The reader doesn't know how vast and varied the protagonist's world actually is.  The character may have an inkling, but is off by orders of magnitude.

If the first book (or trilogy) doesn't sell well enough, the next contract won't be offered and the series dies.

Keep in mind that how well a first book in a series sells doesn't depend on its content or anything the writer has power over.  

How well a book sells has to do with promotional budget allocated by the publisher - and part of that budget is the cover art, another part precisely where it is distributed and advertised.

How well subsequent books sell has a lot to do with word of mouth (or Facebook) among readers who love that sort of novel.  

Hooking the specific market on a particular novel is the writer's first job.  

Today's market loves scrambled up, competing artistic symbolism, confusion, doubt and what appears to be winning by random thrashing rather than skilled planning.  

It may be too late to start writing a series with these traits embedded in the world building, as the market always shifts with the generations, and with the impression new generations have of the everyday world around them.  

In ten or twenty years - the time it takes to deliver a 25-novel series - tastes will have shifted.

Today, we see a world that just doesn't make sense unless there is some hidden under-layer seething with power and motion, surfacing in apparently random events and disappearing again.  So novels like the Harry Potter Series, and the three mentioned above, all postulate such a parallel or hidden reality unknown to ordinary humans.  All these lavishly built worlds seem completely plausible to today's readers.

What exactly will be next?  What will these series look like to readers 40 years from now? 

Are you writing for that far future reader?  Is your too-crazy-idea simply ahead of its time?  

Consider that in the days when my Romantic Times Award winning novel, DUSHAU, ...

Dushau, Farfetch and Outreach on Kindle:  

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0753LLYTR

...was first published (my first novel that was distributed on supermarket shelves and such stores as Walmart, not just book stores), Science Fiction publishing absolutely rejected adding "Romance" tropes to a Science Fiction novel -- because you couldn't sell it to a defined and identifiable market.  

It was way too-crazy-an-idea.  

But just as Gene Roddenberry sold Star Trek as, "Wagon Train To The Stars," I sold DUSHAU as a galactic political adventure.  

That's what you do to sell an Idea that's just way too crazy - you repackage it as something familiar to the acquisitions department, hiding the hook you are planting to grab your intended market deep inside where only the reader will see it.  

Being too crazy to sell means being first with an idea.

If you're first with an innovation in story-telling, you may only make it to a trilogy (or as with Star Trek, 3 seasons, the minimum necessary for syndication in reruns), but subsequent authors may be able to drive the unfolding flower of a new genre to 25 novel series (or as with Star Trek, many other series and movies in that and parallel universes).

Do you want to be a pioneer, and change the world while being changed by it, or do you want to ride a wave started by previous authors?  

Do authors start these waves -- or do readers?  

In our interconnected, online world of social networking, maybe the origin point of the energies of change will continue to shift from the investing business to individual consumer (fanfic readers and writers?).

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com 

NFFF

NFFF sounds like a something you'd see in a grunt bubble in a comic book fight scene, and perhaps that is why the .org is also known as N3F.

Have you heard of it? The acronym-free form is The National Fantasy Fan Federation, and it is very well run by George Phillies.

"The mission of N3F is to help members enjoy and discuss science fiction and science fiction fandom, in all media.  The N3F welcomes the membership of fen of all nations, backgrounds, and political persuasions."

One of many good reasons to subscribe is that, "...if you are a dues-paying N3F member, and if you have recently published a novel, we will be happy to publish as a teaser the first chapter or so.  Please forward it to George Phillies, phillies@N3F.org."

Few people write thank-you notes any more, but Keith Kupferschmid of the Copyright Alliance has made it very easy to thank your Congresspersons for passing the CASE Act. The draft note can be edited, toned down (it is a mite exclamatory) and otherwise personalized, which is a nice touch.

https://p2a.co/21l3imn

Assuming that giving thanks where it is due is a good habit, Angela Hoy of WritersWeekly has a wonderfully helpful article this week about freelancing: Four Fundamental Habits To Develop For Long Term Successful Freelancing, by Jennifer Brown Banks. 

All the best,

Rowena Cherry  SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

Portraying Animal Viewpoints

Recently I've read several bestselling first-person, canine-viewpoint novels by W. Bruce Cameron, the trilogy A DOG'S PURPOSE, A DOG'S JOURNEY, and A DOG'S PROMISE, plus a stand-alone book, A DOG'S WAY HOME. (I've watched three movies adapted from them, too, and I recommend those films. They stick as close to the novels as practicable within their running times.) The latter is realistic, aside from the literary convention of having the canine protagonist narrate her experiences in articulate, grammatical English. The author's afterword mentions the extensive research he did to ensure that her 400-mile cross-country travels would be plausible and also discusses two important motifs in the story, breed-discriminatory legislation and therapy dogs for veterans. The trilogy is fantasy, since it deals with a dog's many lifetimes, reincarnated over and over as he/she strives to fulfill his/her purpose. (Even if I believed in reincarnation, I'd classify these novels as fantasy, since we have no way of knowing what the afterlife is like or exactly how the rebirth process would work.) These books portray the world through a dog's mind and senses, smell and hearing preternaturally acute by our standards, but an understanding of human words and actions necessarily limited. The canine narrator acts like a living video and audio recorder. He or she sees and hears everything that goes on within sensory range, but a lot of it goes over the dog's head. Therefore, the reader understands what's happening even when the narrator doesn't. The dog recognizes many words but is often puzzled by the context. For instance, why do people frequently mention the names of other people who aren't present? Why don't humans appreciate the importance of chasing squirrels or checking out intriguing scents? In a funny scene in one of the books, the dog thinks his owners are encouraging him to bark louder when they yell at him to stop barking. The dogs in Cameron's works don't talk among themselves. They infer the moods, motives, and emotions of other dogs from smells, nonverbal vocalizations, and body language. I highly recommend these novels. Yes, they're tearjerkers with sentimental happy endings, but I love that if it's done well, and the human characters have believable, non-trivial problems.

Fictional animal autobiography goes back at least to BLACK BEAUTY in 1877 (and earlier, according to Wikipedia). Again, the horse narrator tells his life story within a framework of equine perceptions and concerns. Human actions are described and interpreted as they directly affect him. Like Cameron's dogs, he and his animal companions don't talk. Aside from having a horse tell the story, BLACK BEAUTY sticks to events that could actually happen. Indeed, the author's principal purpose was to awaken people to the real-life sufferings of horses and incite reforms in the treatment of animals.

There's a similar level of animal verisimilitude in BAMBI (Felix Salton's novel, not the Disney animated film). The main difference is that the deer do converse verbally. Otherwise, they behave like normal woodland creatures.

The rabbits in WATERSHIP DOWN represent a step away from completely naturalistic wildlife behavior. They have not only a language but culture and mythology. The author, however, researched the actual lives of rabbits, making his characters behave like their nonfictional models. For example, extreme fear can make them go "tharn," paralyzed with terror.

Diane Duane's feline wizard trilogy, THE BOOK OF NIGHT WITH MOON, TO VISIT THE QUEEN, and THE BIG MEOW (the latter available only through the author's website), being fantasy, depart further from strict realism. This series features cat wizards with human-like intelligence and a complex feline language. Nevertheless, aside from their wizardly duties, they view the world and human society from a feline viewpoint. For instance, they make a sharp distinction between neutered and sexually active members of their species, and intact males, even cat wizards, still act like tomcats.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from BAMBI and Cameron's dog stories, we have books such as George Orwell's ANIMAL FARM. Although the pigs and other farm inhabitants retain many animal traits, they essentially serve the function of satirizing human political structures rather than attempting to portray the actual lives of domestic livestock.

At its best, deep-dive immersion animal viewpoint fiction can allow the reader imaginative access to minds unlike our own that we can nevertheless empathize with.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt