New Publisher - New Romance Novel Contest

Romance Novel Contest Link:

inkitt.com/swoon

This below is from an email that came to Jacqueline Lichtenberg on January 11, 2016.

---------quote-------------

I was looking for romance authors on Goodreads, and found your contact through a website link. Here is something you might be interested in:

Inkitt is using data analysis to determine and predict the success of a novel. We are also working together with some of the world’s biggest publishing houses to publish any potential best-sellers we find. We are just about to sign a massive deal for a fantasy book series.

We are now looking for our next novel to publish - this time from the romance genre.

In partnership with the Rebecca Friedman Literary Agency, tomorrow Inkitt is launching a brand new romance writing contest. With a publishing deal and a $500USD prize on the line for the contest winner, this is a huge opportunity for romance authors. The judging panel is made up of bestselling authors Laurelin Page and Melody Grace, as well as literary agent Rebecca Friedman herself.

Here is the contest link:

inkitt.com/swoon

Even if you are not interested for yourself, you could help many authors by publishing a blog post and by sharing the contest link on social media. This could be someone’s big break in the book world.
Best,
Mihaly Borbely
inkitt.com


-------------end quote-----------

I don't know anything about this publisher, but if you have a property in the drawer, you might try it here. Be sure to read the fine print to see when you can market it elsewhere.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Mediacracy

Did you know that the word "mediacracy" exists? It does, although the Blogger spell check, and the AOL spell check put red squiggly lines under it.

References were reluctantly revealed by a Google search, after helpful suggestions that I might really be looking for "mediocrity" or perhaps "mediocracy" (which latter, btw, contained politically biased suggestions that mediocracy referred to the most recent Republican administration.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediacracy
Mediacracy is a situation in government where the mass media effectively has control over the voting public.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mediacracy

Noun[edit]. mediacracy (countable and uncountable, plural mediacracies). Rule by the media; a situation in which the media dominates or controls the populace...

 

www.unwords.com/unword/mediacracy.html

Definition of mediacracy :. 1. (n.) Government, usually indirectly, by the popular media;

 

And there were three or four more sources. Apparently, great thinkers have been opining about the media controlling the voting public for several years. In former times, the great newspaper barons were allegedly thought to be potentially dangerous opinion makers and kingmakers.  

If newspaper barons interest you, there are some vigorous discussions of the part played in UK political elections using this search   However, I'm more interested in the types of social order that might inspire world building in a steam punk, cyber punk, science fiction, futuristic or fantasy novel. 

 

In a past blog post, I've opined about a Pharmacracy, and for a compendium of almost all the forms of government from acracy to xenocracy, go here:http://phrontistery.info/govern.html

I particularly like Stephen Crisomalis's term "kakistocracy" and the excessively polite explanation for a word surely derived from "poop". 

(See http://www.heptune.com/poopword.htmlhttp://www.heptune.com/poopword.html )  And, by the way, the top ten pages of a Google search led me to a Brazilian football player. I had to know the scatological synonym for "kaka" and search for "kaka + ...." in order to find the poop-word site.

 

It must be said, the phronitistery site's excellent list does not include "Pharmacracy", nor does it include "Mediacracy", but "pharma-" and "media-" may be of Latin origin, and "-cracy" is Greek.

 

 How did I get onto this train of thought? A confluence of blogs. One was a blog post by Chris Castle which discusses the power of Search, and asks how far, in theory, a search engine with a monopoly and flexible morals could influence an electorate.

https://musictechpolicy.wordpress.com/2016/01/07/the-devils-greatest-trick-after-canada-could-google-throw-a-u-s-election/

 

One of many interesting speculations in the piece is what would happen if, for example, a search engine gave users the option to filter out the name of a political candidate that they disliked. Such as "Trump".  What if the Search engine imposed a filter without being asked... such as making rapid encounters with "kaka" of the excremental kind  hard to find?  Or the helpful attempts to direct me to "mediocrity" or "mediocracy".

Chris Castle's blog post also discusses the power of the media to influence pharmaceutical drug taking by a suggestible populace. Drug marketers create a drug, and then create a need (or the perception that there is a need), for what the drug does. A solution in search of a problem!

 
http://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/CJR-2005-07-Bitter-Pill.pdf

 

The next article was Philly Law Blog, ostensibly partly about the erosion of The First Amendment, or at least of free speech. (I usually follow the law blog for information on current doings relating to copyright matters.)

 

https://phillylawblog.wordpress.com/2016/01/09/this-is-the-article-central-high-school-doesnt-want-you-to-see/

I googled The First Amendment: 

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Perhaps the loophole is the word "Congress".  It seems that the press itself, also various universities, and a State department of education or two are able to abridge freedom of speech without the assistance of Congress.

As a writer and a logophile, I am bemused and offended by the continual banning of words, and dictionaries dropping words, and the touchy feely folks who tinker with politically incorrect words in the worlds' most important religious texts. There is quite a difference between forgiving "trespasses" and forgiving "debts"  for instance.

 

The final blog article was by Richard Russo for the Authors Guild, among other things comparing the permissionless innovativeness of Google to that of the scavenging seagulls in Finding Nemo.

https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/richard-russo-on-authors-guild-v-google/

Not only does the word mediacracy exist. Some might suspect that a mediacracy has been established, and we never noticed.

 

Rowena Cherry

Colorful Vocabulary

Contrary to the popular belief that using lots of profane or obscene language demonstrates laziness, limited linguistic skills, and lack of imagination, a new study suggests that copious swearing correlates with having a larger vocabulary in general.

A Good Sign If You Curse a Lot

The experiment tested "general verbal fluency" by asking people to produce lists of words beginning with certain letters, names of animals, and taboo words. The first two positively correlated with the last. According to the WASHINGTON POST article, "These findings suggest the idea that 'fluency is fluency,' as the researchers write. People who could recall a lot of bad words also tended to be more eloquent in general." People who are truly at a loss for words come out with place-holders such as "um" and "er," not profanity.

I'm a little dubious of the conclusion. Simply because an individual can "recall a lot of bad words" tells us nothing about whether that person habitually uses the words in everyday conversation. The article also cautions that most people still have a negative view of those who swear a lot. Anyway, it's an interesting angle on the topic.

Psychologist Steven Pinker's book THE STUFF OF THOUGHT includes a long chapter titled, "The Seven Words You Can't Say on Television." (That rule was invented before cable, of course.) The criterion by which the notorious seven were chosen is puzzling. Our language has lots of words equally offensive that aren't on the list. And one that is, as Pinker remarks, doesn't seem to belong—"tits." Although slightly vulgar, it's hardly obscene. The chapter explores in detail the kinds of words labeled profane or obscene (mainly terms related to religion, sex, gore, and excrement) and queries why certain combinations of sounds are taboo while their neutral or euphemistic synonyms can be spoken in polite conversation. Pinker points out that cursing constitutes a sort of verbal assault; it forces listeners to think about the unpleasant aspects of the subject (sex, excrement, etc.) whether they want to or not.

Personally, I don't use the taboo words in conversation. I wasn't brought up hearing them (I didn't know the worst of them even existed until adulthood, when I encountered them in books around the time they ceased being considered "unprintable"), and because of that early conditioning, they still make me wince. I associate them with anger and abuse. When upset, I resort to phrases such as "dang it," "rats," and "heavens to Murgatroyd." I'll write the once-forbidden syllables—sparingly—in fictional dialogue if they suit the particular character's personality and situation. After all, my characters don't have to be (and shouldn't all be) just like me. Nevertheless, if subjected to the experiment described in the article, I think I could produce a fairly long list of such words. The seven that used to be banned from TV only scratch the surface.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World - Part 17 - Make Your Living At Non-Fiction

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World
Part 17
Make Your Living At Non-Fiction To Support Fiction Writing
by
 Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Last week we heard from a Guest who works as a High School teacher, clueing teens in on the secrets of analyzing novels for the moving parts we talk about on this blog.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/guest-post-star-trek-fan-fiction-writer.html

The previous parts of this series on Marketing Fiction in a Changing World are indexed here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/index-to-marketing-fiction-in-changing.html

Today let's look at how fiction writers actually make a living.

In "reality" the life of a writer is not like in the movies.  There is no background music except the din of the telephone as collection agencies swarm.

A living wage is something far different from the national minimum wage.  As a writer of original material, not a work-for-hire, you are not working for wages.  You are a business owner working for yourself, as a self-employed executive.  You make a contract with the publisher, licensing your product, not "selling" it.  But very often, the owner makes less than the employee whose wages he/she is paying, just as publishers make more than the writers.

As you noted, Leslye Lilker is the originator of the enchanting, famous, and utterly riveting character of Sahaj, Spock's son in an alternate universe Star Trek.  That's fan fiction, but it is professional quality writing.

Most of us who write fiction, fan fiction, or any form of genre fiction including science fiction novels, Romance stories within science fiction, or actual blended Science Fiction Romance, Paranormal Romance, or any variation, find the author's portion of the cover price just way too little to live on.

Unless you sell over 150,000 copies of every title your publisher issues, you just can't make ends meet.  Writing pays less (way less) than minimum wage if you just write stories of novels.

That is why authors are re-issuing their own books as self-published after they retrieve the rights from the original Mass Market publisher.  We all need suplemental income.

Intermittent, full-time-temporary employment is often the answer to this problem.

Here is an example of where writers get that kind of work.

NPR put this estimate up in the middle of August 2015.  Check out the amount of money being spent, and understand commercials are like little movies -- they need WRITERS.

http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/19/432759311/2016-campaign-tv-ad-spending

--------------QUOTE-----------
The 2016 election is already providing a lot of eye-popping statistics about the ballooning spending candidates will do in the 2016 election. Among them:

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's superPAC has already raised more — in the first half of a non-election year — than Obama's main superPAC did in all of the 2012 cycle.
The latest big TV ad buy in the 2016 presidential election — on Ohio Gov. John Kasich's behalf, totaling $375,000 — is worth more than seven times the annual median U.S. household income.

There have already been seven times more political ads in the 2016 election than at this point in the 2012 election, according to Elizabeth Wilner, senior vice president at Kantar's Campaign Media and Analysis Group.
Or just try to digest the aggregate numbers. For instance, political TV ad spending will top $4.4 billion for federal races this year, up from $3.8 billion in 2012, Wilner estimated.

Yet TV ads seem to have only small effects on how Americans vote. So why do campaigns spend such huge chunks of their budgets on television spots? It's the need for name recognition, at first. Later on, fear, habit and the hunger for the small sliver of votes at play also drive the huge spending.
-----------END QUOTE------------

Writing for a political campaign is intermittent full time work using and honing skills similar to fiction writing.  Moreover, moving around inside a political campaign will fill you up with story ideas -- with material that directly connects to your intended audience.

Politicians need to reach an "everybody" audience, so your personal fiction audience will be represented among those who work for candidates and those who listen to the messages.

These numbers are about the National Presidential Campaign.

You don't land one of those jobs the first time you venture into non-fiction writing, copywriting, advertising copy writing.

In fact, there are courses in advertising writing, and there's a long apprenticeship.

So consider volunteering with a local political campaign, write local driveway-throw-away newspaper articles about a candidate, get a toe in the door by writing "letter to the editor" or op-ed, write on blogs for the candidate.

Start small, local, and working for people you know personally.  If you can work up the ranks of unpaid volunteers, and become a paid writer -- next election cycle you might land an actual worthwhile job, a paying job, for a State office candidate.

Paper newspapers are dying, as we've noted in this series of posts.  But local advertisement papers still exist -- they don't pay much, but they are a resume item credential.  Learn to handle social media and keep up on all the changes -- remember to tell your political advocacy story in pictures.  Those folks on YouTube who advocate for candidates freelance are using professional video production tools and talents.  But you can start a channel and put up your own advocacy, displaying your writing skills.

More and more money is going into politics -- that won't last because Congress is going to re-do the laws (again) to get around the Supreme Court, but while the money allowed into politics is unlimited -- grab your piece of the action.

Become a VOICE -- but be sure to use a different byline than you do for novel writing.

Here's a discussion of when to use a pen-name:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/06/reviews-15-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

The most successful, best-selling writers I know of began their writing careers in journalism.  It is still the training ground.  If you didn't major in journalism in college, you can attain the skills and reputation by volunteer writing.

Remember, every word you see or hear about candidates was WRITTEN.  And some of those writers got paid a lot more than you'll make on a Science Fiction Romance title.


Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Will SCOTUS Hear The Authors Guild?

Last week the Authors Guild filed a petition with the Supreme Court asking it to review an October decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Authors Guild v. Google, a case that began in 2005 as a result of Google’s wholesale copying of millions of copyright-protected works.

Please read the press release here.

https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/authors-guild-petitions-supreme-court-to-rule-on-google-copying-millions-of-books-without-permission/

The Authors Guild is encouraging authors to help raise the visibility of the petition and of the issue in general by promoting our press release and any positive media coverage. Additionally, the Authors' Guild put together a sequence of questions and answers highlighting why it’s so crucial for the future of authorship and copyright law that the high Court weigh in to redress the Second Circuit’s alleged misinterpretation of fair use. 

You can find it here.

https://www.authorsguild.org/authors-guild-v-google-questions-answers/

Here are two examples of the important Q & As.

Why is the Authors Guild still pursuing this case against Google?Google copied 20 million books to create a massive and uniquely valuable database, all without asking for copyright permission or paying their authors a cent. It mines this vast natural language storehouse for various purposes, not least among them to improve the performance of its search and translation services. The problem is that before Google created Book Search, it digitized and made many digital copies of millions of copyrighted books, which the company never paid for. It never even bought a single book. That, in itself, was an act of theft. If you did it with a single book, you’d be infringing.

How complicated can it be for Google to ask an author permission to use her work?Exactly our point: the rights are eminently clearable. The court refused to acknowledge this point or take it into consideration. For example, our sister organization, the Authors Registry, as well as the Copyright Clearance Center, find authors for royalties from overseas uses with little difficulty or expense. And there are innumerable collective rights organizations around the world who do this all of the time—without much difficulty, and with much less money than Google.

Happy New Year!

Rowena Cherry

Time Travel and Language

The season finale of THE LIBRARIANS (on the TNT network) illustrated this problem. Two members of the team jump back to early seventeenth-century England and meet Shakespeare. Flynn, the genius polymath head librarian, priding himself on his mastery of dialects, addresses the locals in sentences randomly peppered with thees, thous, and forsooths. His strange speech patterns convince them he's a foreign spy. His partner salvages the mission by claiming they talk oddly because they're from Flanders.

One of my "pet peeves" is reading a tale of travel into the distant past that doesn't confront the language issue.The Librarians manage okay in Shakespeare's era because that falls into the early modern period. Although their vocabularies might include words strange to each other, basic understanding is no problem. When an author sends a character any further back without explaining how he or she can communicate, my suspension of disbelief is (as Marion Zimmer Bradley would have said) hanged by the neck until dead. Oddly, the TV series SLEEPY HOLLOW goofs badly in the opposite direction in one early episode. Ichabod and Abigail encounter descendants of the "lost colony" of Roanoke, sealed into a pocket dimension for the past four centuries. Their dialect is unintelligible to the modern heroes until Ichabod figures out that they're speaking Middle English! No!! That's at least a hundred years off. The earliest English colonists arrived in North America in the late sixteenth century, contemporary with Shakespeare and not long before the King James Bible, which many ordinary laymen still read today. I didn't give up on the series after that critical research failure, but it was close.

One time travel romance I've read that sent the heroine back to the medieval Scottish Highlands completely flubbed the language issue by having the Highlanders speak broad Scots, as if they lived in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. In the unlikely event they spoke any English at all, in this case it WOULD be Middle English, and most likely the northern dialect, not the London version in which Chaucer wrote—therefore incomprehensible to a twentieth-century American with no background in that subject. Since this novel was a fantasy rather than science fiction, all the author had to do would have been to drop in a sentence stating or hinting that the heroine understands the local language by magic. But she didn't. In E. Nesbit's classic THE STORY OF THE AMULET, the children travel to many different places at various points in the distant past. They understand and speak the local languages in every case—but they have a magic amulet, so the reader can easily accept this ability.

Connie Willis's series about time-traveling Oxford historians (DOOMSDAY BOOK, TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG, BLACKOUT, and ALL CLEAR) features the well-known SF trope of a device that packs needed information into the subject's brain in a few hours of intensive treatment, languages included. SF stories can use technology similar to this or a variation on the familiar "universal translator." Or they can have their protagonists learn languages the old-fashioned way, as Hugh and his family have to do when a nuclear blast throws them from about 1960 to the far-distant future in Heinlein's FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD. Heinlein also considers this issue in DOOR INTO SUMMER (whose narrator skips thirty years ahead by "cold sleep") and TIME FOR THE STARS (whose narrator ages only a few years during a near-lightspeed interstellar voyage while about eighty years pass on Earth); both protagonists are puzzled by later generations' slang and other newly coined words. In fantasy time travel fiction, as in THE STORY OF THE AMULET (or stories such as the Narnia series, where travel to other dimensional planes is no barrier to mutual intelligibility), magic can always be invoked. I just want authors to recognize there IS a potential problem and address it somehow. They should also keep in mind that linguistic change doesn't apply only to English. An American heroine who speaks modern French wouldn't necessarily get along any better in twelfth-century France than she would in England of the same period. A character fluent in Hebrew, if transported back to first-century Palestine, should manage fine in synagogue and Temple services, but conversing with people on the street would require Aramaic or ancient Greek. An author could also have fun with a character who prepares in advance for travel to the first-century Mediterranean world (for example) by studying classical Latin and Greek—only to be tripped up by colloquialisms and slang not taught by the standard textbooks.

Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series shows awareness of linguistic issues even though Claire travels back only two centuries. Although she has no trouble talking to the eighteenth-century Scottish Highlanders—those that speak English, anyway—language change does cause a few small misunderstandings. When she tells the men who capture her on arrival that she's a nurse, they think she means a wet-nurse; the profession of "nurse" in the medical sense didn't yet exist by that name (or, if it did, wasn't well-known as such). She has to explain to Jamie what a sadist is, quite accurately, because the Marquis de Sade didn't write his notorious books until near the end of the century. When at one point she jokingly tells Jamie, "Go directly to Hell, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars," he's naturally baffled (though of course this is more of a cultural than a linguistic lapse of communication).

Jumping back to the present, Happy 2016 to all!

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Guest Post - Star Trek Fan Fiction Writer, Author of Sahaj, Leslye Lilker

Guest Post

Star Trek Fan Fiction Writer, Leslye Lilker 

Author of Sahaj Commenting On 

Kraith, House of Zeor, and New Sahaj Stories Now Available

Let me introduce Leslye Lilker.

She is one of the Greats of Star Trek's original fan fiction writers.  Her series of stories about Sahaj, an original character she created, has the same stature as Kraith, Night of the Twin Moons, and half a dozen others that are still famous.

After I sold my first science fiction story, I became a Star Trek fanfic writer, and now I have been quoted in academic books on fanfic, and on Star Trek fanfic.  My fanfic is more famous than Sime~Gen.  I have done articles for many academic publications on Star Trek fanfic as well as being mentioned in other academic books about Star Trek.

www.amazon.com

 
http://www.amazon.com/Fic-Fanfiction-Taking-Over-World/dp/1939529190/

In August, 2015, I got a call from France -- yes, the country!  A producer doing a TV documentary on Star Trek fandom in the USA called me because she had read my article in Anne Jamison's book, FIC.  She called to make an appointment to interview me at my house for her documentary.  Fan Fiction is alive, well, and still having a growing impact on the whole world, and what is old is new again.  Hence, Science Fiction Romance writers can benefit from studying the fanfic origins of the peculiar blend of science and fiction that is now evolving into a new field.

The most quoted Trek item I've done is Kraith, such as this one in New York Magazine recently:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-very-cool-development-kraith-in-new.html

Kraith is an alternate universe aired ST:ToS series that was printed on paper.  The various stories appeared in a multitude of fanzines, and were then collected in Kraith Collected -- a 5 volume series now on the web for free reading.

http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/kraith/


In her comments here below, Leslye mentions the Kraith -- a large ceramic cup, handmade and no two-alike, a Vulcan artform.  Kraith Collected covers each have an image originated by contributing artists, so here are the images that were used.

During the years the 50 or so Kraith Creators who contributed ideas, stories, poems, artwork, etc were working, other fanzines like Night of the Twin Moons by Jean Lorrah, and the Sahaj Universe series of stories by Leslye Lilker, (now Leah Charifson) were also being published.  I read them all, of course.

As you know, Jean Lorrah and I partnered on Sime~Gen, so we never lost touch the way so many of the people involved in the Star Trek fanzine scene did. Recently, many of these disconnected souls have turned up on Facebook and reconnected.

Leslye Lilker found so many of us interested in more Sahaj stories that she broken out her outlines from the 1970-80s and has begun to write those stories. She has already produced several new ones about Sahaj's teen years, and one that has him at age twenty-seven.

In the intervening years, she has been teaching students to dissect and understand novels in the basic terms of conflict, resolution, main character, theme -- the functional components that have always made stories compelling.

The original Sahaj stories exhibited professional grade writing craftsmanship, and the new ones shine with "best seller" vibrations.  As I have maintained all these years, just because it's not a Mass Market paperback doesn't mean it's not perfectly crafted.

Sahaj is, in Leslye's alternate universe Trek, Spock's son by a vindictive Vulcan woman, "now" off the scene.  You really have to read the stories of how all that happened. Then you need to read all the stories about how poor Spock, already in conflict with his human side, attempts to parent his oh-so-emotional son. In 1983 we left twelve-year-old Sahaj in a fairly stable environment as he’s settled into growing up in Sarek's household, with Spock coming to visit as much as he can.

Sahaj is learning the “whys and wherefores” of Vulcan culture, but is acutely aware that he doesn't quite belong and he may choose another path, but he has a plan which will eventually bring him his lifelong goal: to live with his father full time, which would be on the Enterprise or some other Starfleet home.  This is a much better life than he was headed for when he was born, so for all the awkwardness of his position, he's comfortable in it, hatching ambitions as any pre-teen would.

So this is the ongoing saga of a child we meet early in his life, and now watch grow into adulthood. It is a compelling story that hooks readers, whether they are Star Trek fans or not.

So far, it's not "Romance" -- but it is a grand science fiction story setting up something very romantic indeed.

Reconnecting with old friends, Leslye found others still shared her interest in classic Trek, and when one of the Sime~Gen folks on her Facebook Group posted the URL for Kraith, she reread "Spock's Affirmation" -- and sent me the following commentary, which she has edited once.

Keep in mind that she was talking to me, and we both know that Kraith was written as writing exercises for a class on writing, and as commentary on aired-Trek's dodging away from what I knew was "real" science fiction.

I added an alien dimension to Spock -- truly a non-human -- and to Vulcan culture.  And I added so much Worldbuilding that reviews of Kraith by academics peg the Hero of the series not as Spock or Kirk, but as Vulcan Culture.

I can't argue with that.

Note: "Spock's Affirmation" was written many years before they invented and added kolinahr to the official Star Trek Universe.  Copies of Kraith Collected had been seen around Gene Roddenberry's office at Paramount.

Here in her own words is how this Kraith story struck Leslye Lilker on re-reading.

-----------QUOTE-------------

Upon rereading "Spock's Affirmation" some 40 years later, I found myself unable to analyze it the way I teach my students to analyze literature. Yes, the main plot is Kirk must get the Kraith, Spock, and the dancers to their destination by a certain time. There are hints of subplots but they are mere skeletons, waiting for the tendons, muscle, and flesh that come later in the series. It adds intrigue but the reader’s mood (the feeling the reader has at the end) is less than satisfied. For example, the subplot of 'what happened to Sarek?’ is not addressed in this story. Everyone assumes he’s dead except for Spock, but we don’t get that answer at the end of “AFFIRMATION”. That’s okay, though, because we know how sagas are.

Characterization: the most interesting character to me was the one Jacqueline invented:  Ssarsun. He/she/it/?? is, multileveled, flawed, totally believable (if you can believe a telepathic lizard raised on Vulcan - and I can). Ssarsun has a sense of humor, can drink Scott under the table, and is determined to save Spock’s life. What more could a reader want? Spock, usually my favorite character in anything I read, has morphed, without motivation or reason, from the Spock we saw on TOS, to an alien, a Vulcan who maybe has already achieved kolinahr, a complete purging of emotion. Since this was why Jacqueline wrote “Affirmation” I would have to say she achieved her goal. If I pretended that this was a new character, I could accept him as I could accept Michael Valentine or other alien SF personas. So the role Spock played worked. I just didn’t like him much as Spock. His dialogue was more informal than I was used to. There didn’t seem to be a real connection from him to Kirk or McCoy. I think the worst part for me was when he came back from the Affirmation with the news that not only his newly taken wife but his still in utero son were dead. The son would have been the next “kaydid” (which is what my eyes saw instead of the Vulcan word Jacqueline created) and Spock’s only reaction was to say he was tired and needed a day to recuperate.  But that is imposing my own needs on this character. As Professor Thomas Foster states in How To Read Literature Like A Professor, don’t read with your own eyes. Read from the author’s eyes.

The point of view was difficult to describe, as the story was written the way John Steinbeck wrote OF MICE AND MEN, as a screenplay. With the exception of McCoy and Ssarsun, the reader can only judge by what the characters do or say (character traits.)

I get that Spock is the last of his line to be a katydid, which is how I think of your word for the Vulcan in his line who can conjoin many in a mindmeld. I am uncertain of why this would be important, but then, I was quite tired and slightly overwhelmed by personal matters when I read it. Yet I got it.

The tone of “Affirmation” (the writer’s attitude toward the subject) comes across loud and clear: critical of the way aliens were being portrayed on the screen.

Since “Affirmation” is the beginning of a saga and because it was written for a TV show, theme is difficult to express. We teach that theme comes out of conflict. The conflicts in “Affirmation” were many but the resolutions were few, so I cannot define a theme at this point.

I’m going to have to say that Kirk is the protagonist because he’s the one who has the goal to achieve. I’m not quite sure who the antagonist is. I suspect it is the portion of Vulcan society who wants Sarek’s line dead.

Now, all of this you spoke of in your introduction but I didn't read your introduction until after I read the story. What you did so well, was hook your reader into the big story. There’s a huge alien Universe hulking just behind the curtain. Will I go back for more? Of course. I mean, I already have, in my previous life. This is just rereading, with a somewhat more professional eye.

I do have to laugh though. When I described the bottle of Tembrua in my rewrite of "The Bronze Cord" it sort of  looked like the picture of the Kraith cup.  It wasn't intended, but we are all touched by what we read, what we see, the politics going on around us, the technology we have at our fingertips, and all of that may come out in your own writing, even if it is from a subconscious level.

I liked what I read well enough to want to read more. That's a very good thing.! And it is also a very good thing that this story can hold up after all these years. It’s a definite hook, which captures the attention of your readers and leaves them wanting more.

---------END QUOTE--------

Here is further commentary by Leslye Lilker on the Sime~Gen Novel, House of Zeor, which was written concurrently with Kraith.

------------QUOTE-----------
I dragged myself home after another ‘first day of school’ today wanting nothing more than a nap, but in my inbox was a little reminder that I had promised to compare House of Zeor to “Affirmation.” So I took my kindle to bed with me and flew through Chapter One and started Chapter Two but I had to force myself to stop and rest. And that, dear friends, in my opinion, is the best thing one can say to a writer: “I couldn’t put it down.”

That same Professor Foster mentioned above also has a book out called (you got it!) How To Read Novels Like A Professor.  He states that a decently written piece of fiction will foreshadow the entire story in the first few pages. And Zeor does. As a matter of fact, I think I’ve pieced together enough evidence to put it in the archetype of a quest story.

Let’s start with the quest. Your quester is Hugh Valleroy. His stated reason for the quest: to rescue Aisha Rauf. The stated place to go: Sime Territory. Obstacles along the way: first and foremost, Klyd, the channel, didn’t want him as a partner. It would be a dangerous journey, and the danger started with Klyd drawing selyn at an intensity enough to burn and nearly kill him. The real reason for going: self knowledge.

The point of view is third person limited, my personal favorite, although it does bring in the possibility of bias and unreliability. Unlike “Affirmation” the reader immediately sinks into Hugh’s head, feels what he feels, understands his thoughts. This makes for a dynamic character who is affected by what is happening around him.

The conflict is already clear: Sime v Gen: both human mutants who must learn that they need one another (okay, so I read the book a long time ago and it stuck with me.) So out of this man v. man conflict comes a theme of infinite diversity in infinite combinations combines to create a greater truth and beauty.

I think that the reason Zeor is a better crafted book is because the author was telling a story that she wanted to read. She created the characters (and I don’t deny I see Trek footsteps in this -- and that’s okay) but the novel is not contrived just to prove a point, the way “Affirmation” seemed to be. After reading just the first chapter, I can tell you I can see these people. They are real. I like them. I want more. I want to know what happens next.

I just have one question: is his name pronounced KLIDE (long I) or KLID (like lid)? I never did know.
-----------END QUOTE----------

Klyd Farris is with a long “I” – here is the page with sound files of the Nivet Territory accent for a number of words and characters in the Sime~Gen Novels.
http://www.simegen.com/jl/nivetsoundfiles/

---------QUOTE-----------

BIOGRAPHY: Leslye Lilker

My mother hooked me into Trek when it first aired. I watched a few of the first season and liked the show, but I was 15 and dating. In fact, I was headed out on a date the night the second season started, and she stopped me at the door. “You have to watch this show. You’ll like the guy with the ears.”

Mothers know best. I never did go out on the date that night, but made him stay home and watch “Amok Time” with me.

Another eight years or so would pass before I renewed my interest in the reruns. I distinctly remember watching “This Side of Paradise” and wondering why our heroes were running around the galaxy with all the girls and no one was procreating. Then I thought of writing a “what if Kirk” had a kid and decided immediately that he probably had dozens and who cared? But Spock? My Spock? My Spock who suffered so with his half human side? What better way to help him resolve his own issues by having him help his own child resolve his? And why should it be easy? Why not have the kid be old enough to express himself clearly? Why not have him brought up with all emotions engaged, even though he was 3/4 Vulcan? Why not have his first words to Spock when, at ten years of age, he meets his biological father for the first time be: “Take your logic and shove it widthwise!”

And thus Sahaj came into being, and a series was born.

   (Sahaj Collected turns up on Amazon for as much as $200 as a collector's item. JL)

Of course, it took years and years to flesh things out, to learn how to create scenes that popped for readers. I have published the very first scene I wrote about Sahaj in IDIC #1 in 1975. Then I put it beside the rewrite I did in 1977. Then I added the rewrite I started in 1995 and finished in 2015. Anyone who wants to demonstrate the development of a writer is free to use those three versions. But understand: I am not holding myself up as the model. I am still learning every day.

I’ve had many careers over my life, but when I was 55 I decided to become a certified English teacher, and have been spending the last ten years teaching HS sophomores at all levels how to communicate through their writing. This is a good example, I think, of learn one, teach one, because it is in the teaching that the lessons are really learned.

I’ve just released a new Sahaj story -- one of humor, which I will use this year in teaching my kids the benefits of puns. It is currently available though Smashwords, and once they approve it for their catalogue, it will go to Amazon, Apple, and wherever else they market their stuff. Oh, Barnes and Nobel, too. As time allows, I will offer the original zines, rewrites of my stories in the original zines, and more new Sahaj stories. If you want to keep updated, friend Sahaj Xtmprsqntwlfb on FB and he’ll let you know when there’s something new.
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010152360445&fref=ts

“Nothing Fishy Going On Here” https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/569672

LL&P
Leah (Leslye)

--------------END GUEST POST----------

If you want my advice, go read as much Sahaj as you can lay hands/Kindle on.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Boxing Day Notice For European Visitors

Thank you for visiting, European visitors!

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.

My real blog follows, but this blog will repeat from time to time.

Best wishes,

Rowena Cherry

Alternate Histories

Kate Hill's guest blog inspired me to some thoughts about the Alternate History subgenre. Two of my favorite series fall into that category, S. M. Stirling's DIES THE FIRE universe (as well as his stand-alone novel THE PESHAWAR LANCERS, with one related novella) and Naomi Novik's Temeraire series (Napoleonic War with aviators on flying dragons). Alternate history has gained new popularity in recent years with the rise of steampunk. If not set in an author-created secondary world, steampunk stories are usually alt-hist versions of the Victorian era. One of my favorite vampire authors, P. N. Elrod, recently released a novel in that subgenre, THE HANGED MAN, featuring a female psychic investigator in a nineteenth-century England somewhat different from our own. Neil Gaiman's delightfully bizarre short work "A Study in Emerald" places a Sherlock Holmes spinoff in an alternate nineteenth century where eldritch Lovecraftian entities have taken over the world, with Queen Victoria herself one of them. Human society muddles along well enough under the allegedly benign rule of the Great Old Ones, but resistance movements do exist. I'm also a big fan of Kim Newman's ANNO-DRACULA and its sequels, in which British and European history as we know it takes a dark twist when Count Dracula, instead of being slain by Van Helsing and company, defeats them and forcibly marries the Queen, thus becoming Prince Consort and de facto ruler of the realm.

I agree with Kate that an advantage of alternate history fiction is its visible connection with our own world. I confess I started to lose interest in Stirling's "Island in the Sea of Time" trilogy, well-written and engaging though it is, when the characters (thrown back thousands of years by an Event that transported the entire island of Nantucket through time) sailed to the Mediterranean region in the Bronze Age and commenced altering the entire future history of Earth, potentially beyond recognition. Good story, but a different kind of story.

Alternate history should be distinguished from what's often called "secret history," in which the publicly acknowledged events of the past aren't changed, but major influences act behind the scenes to subvert the truth as we know it. For example, in Katherine Kurtz's TWO CROWNS FOR AMERICA, occult forces on both sides conspire to support or undermine the American Revolution, with the full knowledge of George Washington and other leading figures of the time. The eighteenth-century flashbacks in the TV series SLEEPY HOLLOW fall into the same category.

How close the point-of-departure falls to our own time heavily affects how far the result will differ from our timeline. Consider how much time the "butterfly effect" has in which to operate. For instance, the twenty-first century in the world of Stirling's "Island" trilogy, after thousands of years of divergent development, would look hardly anything like ours. On the other hand, Jo Walton's "Small Change" trilogy (beginning with FARTHING), eight years after England made peace with Germany early in World War II, reveals Europe under Nazi rule and Britain leaning toward fascism, but the setting has recognizable similarities to our own 1950s. Speaking of Nazis, Norman Spinrod's rather odd novel THE IRON DREAM takes a metafictional approach to twentieth-century history. The book is framed as a commentary on a book-within-the-book, a science fiction novel written by a minor German author named Adolf Hitler, who failed as an artist and, instead of entering politics, moved to the U.S. and became a writer. So authors can create many different types of "gateways" into alternate histories.

The further in the past your point-of-departure occurs, the less likely it is that any historical characters from our own timeline will exist in the alternate world. After all, a day's difference in the date of a baby's conception would result in a different individual, because a different sperm cell would fertilize the egg. "Butterfly" one such timing change into millions. Those historical characters often show up anyhow, though, because it's just more fun that way. I'm perfectly willing to suspend disbelief in order to enjoy spotting parallel-world incarnations of real-life statesmen, generals, authors, and other notable figures.

Near-future science fiction involuntarily morphs into alternate history when overtaken by real-world events. Heinlein turned this inevitable development to his advantage in his Future History series. In his later novels, he establishes that the books in this "history" represent only one of many different timelines in the development of twentieth-century Earth.

Check out Uchronia, a website on alternate history with a huge bibliography:

Uchronia

Merry Christmas and Happy Yuletide!

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Index to Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Integration

Index

to

Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding

 Integration 

Posts in this series:
Part 1 -
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

Part 2 -
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding_14.html

Part 3 - index to Monthly Aspectarian Reviews
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding_21.html

Part 4 - Sidewalk Superintendent
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/05/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

Part 5 Murderer In The Mikdash
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/05/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding-part.html

Part 6 - Fallacy, Misnomer and the Contradiction
NOTE: Fallacy and Misnomer have been discussed separately, links in this Part 6
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

Part 7 - The Legacy as Motivation
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/03/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Part 8 - Would Aliens Share Human Fallacy and Religious Impulse?
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/04/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

Part 9 - Convincing Elder Characters
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/05/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

Part 10 - How To Marry A Billionaire
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/03/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

Part 11 - Arranging Marriages
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/06/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

Part 12 - Character Driven Plot
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/06/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding_25.html

Part 13 - Historical Verisimilitude

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/07/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

This Week In Copyright

Is the worm beginning to turn? The "worm" of internet piracy is rather like an aircraft carrier. It has massive inertia, and it has government backing. It took a jury this week to send a powerful message to ISPs that allegedly profit from piracy and exploit the loopholes in "Safe Harbor."

Allegedly, a manager at an internet company instructed employees how to handle "customers" and "subscribers" who were alleged repeated copyright infringers.

https://phillylawblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/19/the-truth-about-bmg-v-cox/#more-6297

"Notably, Cox’s Manager of Customer Abuse Operations, wrote in an email:

As we move forward in this challenging time we want to hold on to every subscriber we can. With this in mind if a customer is terminated for DMCA, you are able to reactivate them after you give them a stern warning about violating our AUP and the DMCA. We must still terminate in order for us to be in compliance with safe harbor but once termination is complete, we have fulfilled our obligation. After you reactivate them the DMCA ‘counter’ restarts; The procedure restarts with the sending of warning letters, just like a first offense. This is to be an unwritten semi-policy… We do not talk about it or give the subscriber any indication that reactivating them is normal. Use your best judgment and remember to do what is right for our company and subscribers… This only pertains to DMCA violations. It does not pertain to spammers, hackers, etc."

The musician-and-songwriter related blog, The Trichordist, has an excellent summary of the week's top copyright-related news, not all of which is good for singers and songwriters and other creators whose income is controlled by government bureaucrats in the Copyright Royalty Board.

http://thetrichordist.com/2015/12/19/artists-rights-advocates-make-gains-in-2015-webtech-admissions-laid-bare/
"DMCA abuse that has been used as a shield against copyright infringement liability by the internet and web/tech communities. Many businesses including many ISP’s and content hosting platforms such as YouTube have used the DMCA to build massively profitable businesses that are largely comprised of infringing works, otherwise known as User Pirated Content. That may be about to change thanks to this ruling."

All the best,
Rowena Cherry

Guest Post by Kate Hill: Writing on Alternate Earths

The Main Benefit and Challenge of Writing a Story Set on an Alternate Earth

The idea for my latest release, Blow by Blow, formed while I was plotting a book about the vigilante who appears in this novel. The vigilante's story was originally going to be a science fiction romance, but as I worked on the outline for Blow by Blow, I decided that a futuristic setting would be better for both stories.

Setting the book on a planet that is radically different from Earth might distance us too much from some of the issues encountered by the characters. Rather than ask readers to completely suspend their disbelief, my goal is to make them feel like the events of the story could happen or, in some cases, are happening in the world we live in.

To me, that's the main benefit of writing a book set on an alternate Earth. It resembles our world, therefore the characters' actions, traits and surroundings are similar to our own. It's also in some ways easier to write in this setting than to create a world with a completely different environment and alien cultures. This benefit, however, is related to what I believe is the main challenge of writing in a futuristic setting.

If there are no noticeable differences between the world in the book and our world, then it would be more sensible to make the story a contemporary romance. In Blow by Blow, I renamed major places. All the rules and laws of the fictional world are not always identical to those on our Earth. The biggest change is the second civil war that happened in the States. The challenge is to include enough differences to show readers that it's not the world as we know it, but it could be.

Readers, how do you feel about stories set on an alternate Earth? Authors, what do you feel are the major challenges and benefits of writing a book using this setting?

About Kate Hill

Always a fan of romance and the paranormal, Kate Hill started writing over twenty years ago for pleasure. Her first story, a short erotic vampire tale, was accepted for publication in 1996. Since then she has sold over one hundred short stories, novellas and novels. When she's not working on her books, Kate enjoys reading, working out and spending time with her family and pets. She also writes as Saloni Quinby. Visit her online at:

Kate Hill

Blow by Blow

by Kate Hill

M/M Futuristic

A hunky former heavyweight champ and an ass-kicking beauty fight for their lives and their love in a futuristic world of MMA.

Theo "Little Raven" Fisker, is a bantamweight with attitude who plans to make a name for himself in the Radical Warrior Tournament, a prestigious mixed martial arts event. The problem is no team will sign a male fighter who walks out in silver and pink with nail polish to match, until he meets Master Jesse.

Impressed by Theo's talent, Jesse welcomes him onto his up and coming team. Fists and sparks fly when Theo meets gorgeous Valentin Merrickson. Theo draws Valentin out of his protective armor and sparks hope for a life the tough heavyweight never imagined possible. Their love grows, but threats from extremists and an injury that ends Valentin's career in the cage might tear them apart.

Excerpt

"I spilled an entire tray," Theo said, raising his eyes to the heavens. Waiting tables wasn't exactly the cake walk he'd expected.

"Nobody's perfect," Valentin said.

Theo turned to him, his gaze sweeping him from head to toe, and said, "I'm not so sure about that, Sunshine."

Valentin's expression turned stony. "Why do you keep calling me that?"

"Because just looking at you is enough to brighten anyone's day." The words left Theo's mouth before he could stop them. That had always been one of his biggest problems. A thought popped into his head and he had to say it. He rarely considered the consequences.

"Ohhh." Liz smiled and glanced at Valentin. "Now that's a line I need to remember."

Valentin glowered and finished his drink quickly.

"Should you be drinking while you're training?" Theo asked. "We have a tournament coming up at the end of the month."

"It's water with lemon in it, not that it's any of your business," Valentin said, but his faint smile belied his rude tone.

"Just thinking about the team," Theo said, deliberately using a flirty look. He removed his apron with the words Panoramic View embroidered across it in silver and embellished with a black skull.

"Nice belt." Valentin nodded toward Theo's waist. "Looks almost like a chain whip."

Theo glanced toward Liz, who stood at the other end of the bar. He wasn't sure how his new boss would feel if she knew the dual uses of his attire. He probably shouldn't even admit this to Valentin, but he said softly, "It is. My father was an artist--a martial artist--and he made jewelry as a hobby. He liked finding ways of making weapons fashionable." Theo gestured toward his belt.

"What else does he make?"

"He's dead," Theo said quietly. Though his father had been dead for years, thinking about his loss still hurt.

"I'm sorry," Valentin said. "That belt must be pretty special to you."

"It is." Theo sighed. "I really need to catch the bus and get to sleep."

"No car?"

"Not yet, but I'm working on it. I used a rental to drive here, but I returned it yesterday."

"Want a ride?"

"Didn't you just get here?"

Valentin shrugged. "I'm done with my drink and I'm in training, too. Ready to go?"

Narrowing his eyes, Theo considered the offer. Just sitting next to Valentin in a car, smelling his cologne, would be enough to make him horny all night. This guy would not be good for his training. Why did he have to join a team that had the most gorgeous man in the universe as its heavyweight champion?

"I'm ready. Just let me get my bag."

"Right here." Liz, who had approached, picked up his black bag from behind the counter and handed it to him.

Theo took it from her.

From the corner of his eye, he noticed a news headline on the widescreen TV above the bar.

"Hey, Liz," said one of the waitresses, stepping behind the bar to turn up the volume. "The Spellman Hill Vigilante strikes again."

Theo listened to a brief report about two guys who had been knocked unconscious by a helmeted figure while attempting to mug a woman on her way home from work the previous night.

"Spellman Hill Vigilante?" Theo asked.

"Yeah. Over the past year or so a guy in a black helmet has been on the streets stopping crime in and around Spellman Hill. He seems to focus on crimes against the gay community, but not always," said the waitress. "A few of his victims claim he attacked them at random, but I'm not so sure. Cops don't like him for obvious reasons, but I feel a little safer knowing he's around."

"I wish the news would stop sensationalizing this guy," Liz said, shaking her head.

"Hey, in a way he's a hero," Valentin said.

Liz raised her eyes to heaven. "Just as long as he doesn't try to be a 'hero' near my club. If you ask me he's just a wacko."

After saying good night, Theo and Valentin walked out of the club together. Valentin was more than a head taller than Theo, so even with his high-heeled black boots Theo needed to look up to him. He kind of liked it. Hell, he loved it.

Outside they climbed into Valentin's sleek black sports car. It probably cost more than Theo had made fighting over the past couple of years. Still Valentin could probably afford it with little stress. He'd done well in his career and Theo had read several articles in sports magazines that mentioned Valentin's wise business investments.

Smiling, Theo stretched his long legs and leaned back in the leather seat. "I could get used to this."

"I know what you mean," Valentin said under his breath. His blue gaze lingered on Theo's legs and crotch.

"Are you flirting with me, Sunshine?"

"Why not? You've been doing it all day."

From Siren Publishing

Blow by Blow

Love Among Other Species

Recently PBS aired a program on "love" in the animal kingdom. It was really about courtship and mating behaviors of various animals, but it did devote a few minutes at the end to the question of whether attachments between animal mates should be called "love." The animal planet network occasionally shows programs about attachments between animals of different kinds. Some are cases of mothers adopting and nursing orphaned babies of other species, but many are animal "friendships" that provide no obvious, tangible benefits to the two parties. Surely it makes sense to apply the word "love" to those relationships.

In the seventeenth century, Rene Descartes maintained that nonhuman animals were mere biological automata with no internal life at all, no consciousness of pain or pleasure, much less thoughts or emotions. He forestalled objections that the same principle could be applied to human beings on the grounds of our capacity for complex, innovative actions. Nowadays, we know many animals have similar abilities.

Twentieth-century behaviorists would have agreed with Descartes that since we can't directly perceive feelings, only actions, we aren't justified in attributing emotions to "lower" animals. Strictly speaking, though, again on the same principle we can't assume other human organisms have emotions (or any kind of inner life) either. In practice, because we witness other people reacting to stimuli in the same ways we act when we feel certain emotions in response to similar experiences, we accept that those people have emotions like ours. We make the same assumptions about pain, pleasure, fear, anger, joy, etc. in preverbal babies (again, think of the movie INSIDE OUT), even though they can't discuss their feelings. The most parsimonious assumption, it seems to me, is that if animals react to external events in ways similar to us, they probably have similar internal experiences (especially "higher" animals that clearly have the brain structures to embody those feelings).

You've probably seen web pages that question whether your dog or cat really loves you and offer checklists of dog or cat behaviors that indicate "love." For instance, here's a slide show of actions that prove your cat loves you:

9 Signs Your Cat Loves You

Personally, I don't believe our dog and cats snuggle up to us only because we feed them. They show affection to everybody in the house, not just the habitual food-dispenser (me). I vote for the "love" label.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Integration Part 6 - Fallacy, Misnomer and the Contradiction by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Integration

Part 6

Fallacy, Misnomer and the Contradiction

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Previous posts in this series:
Part 1 -
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html
Part 2 -
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding_14.html

Part 3 - index to Monthly Aspectarian Reviews
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding_21.html

Part 4 - Sidewalk Superintendent
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/05/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

Part 5 Murderer In The Mikdash
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/05/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding-part.html

These 4-skills posts are advanced material.  But that doesn't mean you can't start reading them first.

December 1, 2015, we started discussing ways to depict Wisdom, an abstraction, and we have to tackle the issue of how to depict a Wise Character.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/depiction-part-13-depicting-wisdom-by.html

That post has a link at the top to the index post for the depiction series.

A "Wise Character" -- a Yoda or a Gandalf, (note not usually a Point Of View Character) a teacher of ancient wisdom or a role model to emulate -- is a feature of most novels that live from generation to generation.

Often the character, or his/her name, will become part of a quote bandied about by future generations who have no idea where that quote came from.

Creating a character to ignite the thirst for wisdom in the other characters, perhaps even in the reader, is easy.  Getting the character you have created down in a text based story is very hard.

What seems like Wisdom to one human, seems like Folly to another.

Brain researchers may have nailed the reason for the Wisdom/Folly flip/flop in point of view.  They have found why one single person can see, hold, articulate, and advocate two incompatible points of view at the same time.

The capacity to believe six impossible things before breakfast is rooted in the linguistic faculty of the brain.  It's just science.

Philosophers have known and used this (as have poets and artists) for thousands of years.  Suddenly, it's a scientific discovery!

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-language-changes-views-of-the-world-2015-8

--------Quote From that article-----------
Just as regular exercise gives your body some biological benefits, mentally controlling two or more languages gives your brain cognitive benefits. This mental flexibility pays big dividends especially later in life: The typical signs of cognitive ageing occur later in bilinguals – and the onset of age-related degenerative disorders such as dementia or Alzheimer’s are delayed in bilinguals by up to five years.

Read more: https://theconversation.com/how-the-language-you-speak-changes-your-view-of-the-world-40721

-----------END QUOTE------------

The article goes on to point out the different ways German-only speakers and English-only speakers describe a short-video.  Then it describes how a bilingual German-English speaker describes that same video, first when the observer is thinking in German, and then when that same observer is thinking in English.  The article concludes:

----------QUOTE---------------
People self-report that they feel like a different person when using their different languages and that expressing certain emotions carries different emotional resonance depending on the language they are using.

When judging risk, bilinguals also tend to make more rational economic decisions in a second language. In contrast to one’s first language, it tends to lack the deep-seated, misleading affective biases that unduly influence how risks and benefits are perceived. So the language you speak in really can affect the way you think.

Read more: https://theconversation.com/how-the-language-you-speak-changes-your-view-of-the-world-40721#ixzz3hxuczPys
-----------END QUOTE---------------


This article and the science behind it are vital to any writer of Science Fiction Romance who wants to depict a relationship between a human and an alien blossoming into love.

In this science article you find the origin of the fallacy, the misnomer, and the contradiction, all rolled into a brain function.

And once again (and again and again) this classic visual image is worth a thousand words on the subject of language.  Consider it while reading the article on German-English speakers describing a video.

The gist of it is that when thinking in German, the description of the video includes the goal of the depicted action, but when thinking in English ONLY THE ACTION BY ITSELF is considered relevant to a description of the video.

That's just one difference between two cognate languages, and a small one at that.

But the research shows what the brain is doing when parsing a moving image using different language frameworks.

It's a good article because it brings to the surface a principle that Romance novels working to convey not only the bonding love between Soul Mates but also the novel-generating, super-heated conflict that drives the plot.

In a great Romance, there has to be an obvious affinity between the individuals forming a couple, but also an even more obvious reason why "it will never work."  And then a not-at-all-obvious pathway to how to get it to work, and not only to work but to lead to the stable, renewable, and eternal Happily Ever After Ending, our prized HEA.

At least half the general public believes firmly that life can not ever deliver an HEA.

It may be that in "real" life, we are not integrating our life's Theme with the Plot of our life, with our Character, and with the world we have been thrust into willy-nilly.

Humans in such a disintegrated psychological condition can't believe that their real life has an HEA -- a sweet-spot that can be attained by hard work and the right life-partner.

If that's true of humans today, does that have to be true of your Aliens?

Or what if your human character could firmly envision the HEA she wanted, but your Alien character was speaking a different language and knew for a fact that there is no such thing as an HEA?

If you have studied anthropology, you know that there really is such a thing as women's language and men's language.  It's not just a joke.  It's a very real thing.  Nobody knows the reason for that (yet), but there are a lot of theories.

Some say it's culture that divides the genders and forces them to learn different ways of speaking.  Some say it's biology that shapes their language.

Study of how humans (and Bonobos and Dolphins etc) use language is absolutely essential for any writer, but especially a writer of Paranormal Romance, or any Romance story built around the odd or different bit of science.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33731444

That story is about Bonobos using squeaks for language.

The more we learn, the more we see that animals and humans are built on the same platform, and just have different apps installed.

Who's to say Bonobos don't have Wisdom?

As a writer, spinning a yarn about love, you need to figure out what you think Wisdom is.

Romance stories are about how just plain right life feels when you finally encounter that singular individual who lights up your world, reveals the best part of yourself to yourself, and responds to you by revealing their own best part

We experience love through another Character, see through their eyes, learn their language, and flip-flop between our own language and theirs.

The HEA comes into possibility when you meet that special someone who, when you tell them how you feel, they understand what you said.

Whether the HEA exists in your world -- or not -- depends entirely on language.

Just as with the German-English experiment, the language inside your head reveals one world, and the languages you have learned reveals other worlds.

That idea -- that language shapes perception -- is a THEME element.

The idea that perception creates Wisdom is a THEME element.

What exactly Wisdom might be is a THEME element.

What exactly a Wise Character might say is a CHARACTER element (discussed also under DIALOGUE).

What exactly a Wise Character might do (or resist or refrain from doing) is a PLOT element.

The problems that such a Wise Character might encounter that would trigger such a speech and action (Theme-Plot-Dialogue Integration) are the WORLDBUILDING elements.

You can see from this German-English experiment that the Character, the Wisdom-Theme, and the Plot are absolutely integral to the WORLD element.

How you, as the writer, present the world you have built depends on Point-of-View (PoV) -- from which Character's eyes is the reader "seeing" the world you have built, and the "languages" your world features.

The research is regarding established, living languages, shared by many.  Narrowing like that is essential to Science, but not necessarily to Art.

An artist or writer can think of it all another way.  The language you invented before your parents taught you to say mama and dada, before your brain developed synapses to connect cause and effect (you drop your bottle; it falls DOWN every time!) so you could build an image of the world you had been born into, is your Native Language.  All the rest are added.

Each language you add lets you perceive the world around you with different emphasis, different value-systems, different ideas of what is real and what is not-real.

Each THEME you use as the foundation of a romance novel bespeaks one such set of values, and excludes others.

That's embedded in the fundamental definition of Art: Art is the Selective Recreation of Reality.

The operative word is "Selective."

You must select the perception embedded in the "language" of your Characters.  What is real to them will be real to your reader, no matter how alien to your reader the idea might be, if you teach your reader the language that Character is thinking within.

Most writers do this subconsciously, intuitively.  You have this fully realized world and its Characters in your imagination, and it really is good!  The difference between what you imagine and what your reader imagines can be narrowed by craft skills, but never eliminated.

The point of Art is not to argue, but to illustrate and experience.

A romance story can evoke the language of love so powerfully that a reader sees the real world differently -- at least for a while.

The suspension of disbelief can dissolve the mental barriers that prevents us from seeing the whole story of something like that German-English experiment video.  The HEA can be seen by the reader as the Goal of all the busy action in the romance.

Romance and Science are both all about Language.

Bonobos may have sex, love, even bonding -- but not Romance which is rooted in the hypothetical and extrapolates into a possible future that wasn't possible "before."

And so far as we know, Bonobos don't have Science.

When you dissect and examine the anatomy of a Romance scientifically, you get science fiction romance.

Let's explore an example - a novel to write.

THEME: Home For The Holidays

PLOT: Gretchen Wilder brings her boyfriend Mark Underwood home to meet her somewhat religious parents.  Unknown to them, she's 7 months pregnant with a child that is not Mark's and he knows that.  Can their Love Conquer All without an abortion?

CHARACTER: Gretchen has lived the life of an apostate, and firmly believes a woman has a right to make her own reproductive health decisions.  Mark, raised by Atheists, thinks he has fully internalized that value - it's her decision - but he's worked as a Medical Technician and knows it's a baby human.  He's now plowing through medical school, and can't afford a child disrupting everything.  Gretchen has just been laid off when a company went bankrupt.

WORLDBUILDING: 2016 USA. Gretchen's parents are staunch Catholics (but used birth control and see no reason women can't be ordained priests).  Gretchen's siblings run the gamut from atheist to devout, and a few cousins and in-laws may be Hindu, Jewish, Confucian, maybe Native American, even Muslim?, a nice variety.

Everyone is gathering at the Parent's house to cook, clean, decorate, and party because the father has survived his first heart attack.  They are doing all the work for the parents as a present.  They run the gamut of the political spectrum, and at least half of them feel the recent election turned out all wrong.

INTEGRATION: the writer's job is to DEPICT all these clashing points of view in such a way that the reader's emotions resonate to each one.

Get the reader believing in and agreeing with each in turn, feeling the urgency of the decision that must be made soon (to have the child, put it up for adoption?, go for an abortion, get married, not get married, in the Catholic Church?)

You have a wide variety of Characters, each of whom may speak different languages, parse situations in different ways.  Some may arrive late, others leave early in a huff.  Some are staying in the house, others in a hotel.  They all have smartphones.

Perhaps one present the children are giving the parents is a wireless speaker system throughout the house for TV, Radio, Netflix, podcasts, intercom, so there's the ongoing tech issues across generations.

There's the HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS theme manifesting in LANGUAGE - computer language, app language, Apple vs Android, etc.  What language you speak shapes your perceptions -- "home" is a perception and has its own language, the language of Nostalgia.

CONFLICT: all these tense undercurrents and roaring disputes are taking place in a household where an Elder has just had a heart attack -- medical advice is for calm, warm-friendly family interaction.  (Ever gone home for the Holidays?  You know the odds!)

Your job is to depict a Character thinking in one language, then thinking in another language, and seeing "both sides" of the problem in different ways.

This multi-language Character should be your Wise Character.

Usually, the Wise Character is not leaping into every conversation with opinions, ideas and solutions to everyone else's problems.  But Wisdom sharpens the ability to detect lies.

One signature behavior of the Wise is that they don't say much, especially not when others are yelling.  Thus the Wise Character is your source of the zinger one-liners that will be remembered.

So you take your reader on a roller coaster ride from one end of the spectrum to the other and back again with regard to the problems posed in our society today regarding abortion.

For example, some of the family may be Progressives, proud of that label and absolutely convinced that the Progressive agenda coincides with the very best values of Catholicism.  In other words, you can't be a good Catholic unless you are a Progressive.

Progressives are dedicated to kindness to animals, gentle treatment of the Earth's resources and human environment, healthcare for all, raising the minimum wage so the least among workers can live decently, and can argue persuasively that every ethical point in the Catechism is found in the Progressive Agenda.

A woman's freedom to choose is a natural and necessary extension of the highest Values ever promulgated among humans.

That's an absolute that is beyond question.  Therefore anyone who questions it must be against everything good that humanity has ever known.

That thinking is built into the English language -- just like the focus on ACTION to the exclusion of DESTINATION as illustrated by the article on German vs English.

English is an amalgam of many historic languages, very largely derived from Ancient Greek and Ancient Latin.  Modern American English has many structures and borrowings from other languages brought to the U.S.A. by immigrants.

One perception feature of English is the reliance on either/or paradigms, the zero-sum-game, or in sports the Winner vs Loser.

In English, "There Can Be Only One" (from the TV Series HIGHLANDER) is easily believed.  All the action in that Series was predicated on the assumption that you couldn't change that Rule.

The T.V. Series BEAUTY AND THE BEAST -- not the current one, but the 1987 one with Linda Hamilton and Ronald Perlman ...

http://www.amazon.com/An-Impossible-Silence/dp/B0126NA4V8/

...also used a premise that declared the couple could never be together.  That premise was not challenged.

Your current readers have been conditioned for generations not to question premises.

So when, in our example romance story, the devout Catholic parents get wind of the possibility that their pregnant daught does not plan to marry the boyfriend she's just brought home, and is wondering if she should have an abortion so that they can get married -- oy veh!

The parents in this scenario have also been conditioned not to question the premises of their very existence, their life and practice of their religion.

Gretchen knows their attitude.  She expects support from her siblings.  She assumes she has Mark's support, no matter how she decides.

Your job as a writer is to depict Gretchen gaining an understanding of her Parents' attitude that is deeper than the Parents' understanding of their own attitude.  You may need to add the local Catholic Priest character -- who might be a young replacement of the Parents decades long confidant, a young man who is not the Wise Character yet.

Your Wise Character in the family has to be able to teach the language of Souls, Eternity, Mysticism, and the non-falsifiable hypothesis of a Creator and how that hypothesis can lead to the conclusion that abortion is a very dicey choice.

For example, the Wise Character might be a High School History teacher bemoaning Common Core to anyone who will listen when he's been tippling a bit -- or maybe he's just pretending to tipple so people won't think he's pontificating.  He might refer the customs of the Ancient Greeks and Romans of "exposing" unwanted babies on "the wall" (of the city).  Some such babies were "rescued" or "adopted" for good or nefarious purposes, but their fates were never known to the parents.  In any event, the Progressives are actually Regressives in freedom from reproduction.

 He might take a dig at the Progressives by noting that the advocacy for "the woman's right to control her reproductive health" gave government another increment of control over reproduction (via who pays for the medical procedure).  Government control of the individual is tyranny - regressive.  Being fair, he'd point out that before tyranny of Kings and Oligarchs or Theocrats, there was Anarchy, a kind of freedom from government some today advocate.  In an Anarchy, you can murder people if you can get away with it.  Revenge rules.

Control of reproduction, he would pontificate as a historian, is the central ingredient in "domestication" -- breeding animals for a particular trait - which he can see government doing to today's women by skewing their values.

You can just imagine how well that would go down in this mixed family (don't forget to include at least one Gay -- maybe someone willing to adopt this baby).  The prescribed calm-happy-reunion for the Holidays honoring the parents and celebrating the father's survival would be out the window in two seconds flat.

At that point, even the most Wise of Wise Characters might be incensed enough to keep on talking.  (silence is the signature of Wisdom, remember?)

So he/she might note that, given the way psychologists have developed the mathematics of controlling the behavior of large masses of people (PR) to get them to buy a particular product (or vote for a particular person), perhaps large numbers of women were being swayed toward a particular opinion with regard to unwanted pregnancies and what to do about them.

In other words, Gretchen's opinion and decision might not actually be her own -- not a choice her Soul is making, but imposed by distant dictators trying to gain control of humanity. (of course, maybe Aliens -- at least one of the family or in-laws should instantly be thinking Aliens trying to control humanity.)

Someone would surely whisper in her ear that her parents' God was that sort of control freak, so she shouldn't listen but make her own decision.  That whisperer would couch the suggestion in the Language of Religion -- putting another perspective on the scene, just as the German-English Video experiment did.

Learning the language of Religion as a "second language" as the article on German vs. English discusses, the family will be able to discuss alternatives in a risk-assessment framework different from their usual thinking.

It's the 'second language' aspect that makes alternatives possible that were not possible with only one language to think in.

Spirituality has its own jargon which is so obtuse that it has to be regarded as a "language" by the artist if not the scientist.

As the German speakers always noted the goal of the action in the video, the Spirituality speaker will note the goal that is utterly invisible to those who do not have that language.

Do not confuse Spirituality (the awareness of a non-physical component to the human being) with Religion which defines one or another causative force and a specified creation-paradigm through which one must view reality.

Each Religion has its own "language" too.  Imagine if this Mark Character was raised Muslim. Imagine him at Midnight Mass with the family he ever so much wants to join.  Suppose he fears rejection over the decision Gretchen is making.

In the novel outline of Gretchen & Mark, you have dramatic potential all the way up to and including pure Soap Opera -- another heart attack, a near-miscarriage, the old family Priest having been a boy-molester, or Mark raised Muslim and converted to Catholicism being murdered during Midnight Mass by his righteous father.

There is plenty of material from which to spin a plot to go with the story of "must decide if abortion is an option."

Pick point of view characters according to whose story you want to tell, and imagine how this multiplex modern family might work through this issue while interacting with the Holidays.

The glue that holds plot and story together with Character and the world they live in is THEME.

That's why I write so much about THEME as a craft element.  It is the hardest of all to master because it requires being "multi-lingual" or polyglot.  The writer must be able to see why this Character can not see what that Character sees, then explain that reason to the reader in show-don't-tell.

The best way to show-don't-tell is to build the theme into the world, then turn the Characters loose to live in that world.

Here are posts on Fallacy and Misnomer:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integraton-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/index-to-theme-worldbuilding.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com