Saturday, September 22, 2007

A preview of Star Shadows

It was one of those days that it hurt to be alive. The beauty of it inspired you to live life to the fullest. But it also made you feel as if you could die from it.
At least on the inside.
Arielle Phoenix, one day short of her eighteenth birthday, looked at her twin brother Alexander and grinned.
“How long before they figure out we’ve escaped?” she asked.
Zander shrugged as if to say he didn’t care and flashed a grin of his own. Elle grabbed onto the back of their friend Boone’s shirt with a shriek as he kicked the jet cycle off the ground and set off over the waves.
Zander was right behind them as they headed straight out to sea and hopefully out of sight distance of the villa that hung on the side of the dormant volcano. The “borrowed” jet cycles hovered just over top of the waves, kicking up spray as the ocean rolled beneath them, revealing swirling colors of bright blues, shimmering greens and the purest aqua.
A pod of dolphins joined them as they headed towards a small spit of sand and coral that only appeared at low tide. It was another remnant of a volcano, one that had long ago caved into the sea leaving behind a veritable garden beneath the glass-like surface.
Elle moved her arm up and down as if she were skimming it over the waves. The dolphins swam closer, racing beside them, jumping over the wake fanning out behind the jet cycles and then diving beneath the surface, only to come up again in a race against the humans.
Elle didn’t understand how she could speak to the dolphins. She just knew that they, somehow, understood each other. The dolphins tossed their heads with a smile and agreed to join them in their get-away.
It seemed there were no limits to what she could do with her mind.
Zander couldn’t do anything with his. At least not anything extraordinary. Their parents seemed to think that he should be capable of great things. Their parents were both telepaths, and their father could move large objects with his mind and had the ability to see in the dark.
Yet no matter how hard their mother probed into Zander’s mind there was nothing there. At least nothing that answered back to her. After countless attempts and endless frustration he begged their mother to stop wishing for something that obviously was not going to happen and she did, reluctantly. Not that she had much choice. Zander might not have the ability to project into minds but he knew how to protect himself with the litany their parents taught them.
Elle knew that he felt like a disappointment to their parents. All she had to do was look inside his mind to know how he felt.
She looked because he wouldn’t talk about it. But in the past year or so it was harder to see what was inside him. His mind was not able to reach out as Elle could do with hers, but it was very good at keeping things hidden. And Zander kept a lot of things hidden from his sister and his parents.
The truth was that Zander was normal. Like Boone. Boone’s mother had some of the physic abilities, and his sister showed some promise but his father Ruben, and the twin’s grandfather Michael, and the servants were all just normal, everyday people.
Elle wondered what it would be like to be normal. To live a normal life and not live under the constant security and scrutiny. She also wondered what it was that made her so special.
Elle did not understand the fear that consumed their parents. Both of the twins chaffed against it. They felt as if they were prisoners in their own home. In their entire life time they had never left the villa, except for short jaunts down to the beach, and only under the watchful eyes of unseen yet heavily armed guards. The guards whose jet cycles they were now riding across the waves at breakneck speeds.
If only they knew why they were so protected.
Their parents were very good at shielding their thoughts from their children. At least Zander had inherited that talent or else he wouldn’t be so good at hiding things from his sister.
And Elle was very good at convincing their parents that she and Zander were completely innocent.
Until they found out they were missing from the villa.
But until then, they were free.
The wind poured through Elle’s waist length hair, spreading the ash brown locks behind her like a banner. Her strangely pale gray eyes, identical to her brother’s, crinkled against the salt spray and the bright sun reflecting off the top of the water.
“Faster,” she said into Boone’s ear. He stole a quick look over his shoulder at Elle and her heart did the little flip that always resulted when his bright green eyes were on her.
“Hold on,” he replied and the jet cycle jerked forward as his thumb pressed a button on the handle.
Elle shrieked with joy as they sped up and the dolphins raced beside them.
Zander, up to the challenge, flew by on his craft and leaned sideways, spraying Boone and Elle with water.
“No!” Elle screamed as Boone went after him. Her protest was half-hearted at best. She knew she’d get the wettest when the two started battling but she didn’t care. She’d be soaked through soon enough when they dove into the coral garden that grew beneath the surface of the water.
Zander’s cycle moved directly in front of them and Boone bent low over the cycle. Elle moved with him but still got a face full of spray. She felt Boone’s lean, muscular frame move with laughter as she held on tight. She tried to pinch his abdomen, but could not find enough loose skin to grab. His two years at Academy has erased any softness left over from his boyhood.
“Get him!” Elle yelled.
“I will,” Boone said. The velocity of the wind snatched the words from him but Elle recognized the intent in his eyes. She had seen that look many a time in the past. They had grown up together after all. And mischief was not a new or sudden concept.
The dolphins moved away, content to follow along at a distance as they realized the play was getting serious. Zander’s cycle sped away, hopping waves, and Boone moved even lower over the engine.
Elle, pressed against his back, was sure she felt the pounding of his heart against her cheek. He moved his hand from the control to brush against hers and she knew he that he was allowing her to enter inside his mind.
“We’re carrying more weight.” The words formed inside him. ‘It will be hard to catch him.”
“You will.”
The craft skipped across the wake fanning out behind Zander as they gave pursuit. Zander toyed with them, veering across from left to right and then back again, knowing they would be slower, knowing they would have to fight the chop, hoping that they would…
Elle felt her body fly through the air as the nose of their hover cycle got caught in a wave and stalled against it. The craft flipped up on its end and both of them were dumped into the water.
Elle immediately kicked to the surface and a dolphin nudged her side with the tip of its nose as she rose.
I can do it…
The dolphin responded in kind, it’s smiling face inches from her own as she broke through into the warmth of the sunshine that danced across the water.
Zander circled them and waved cheerfully when he saw that she was safe. Elle was tempted to send him a blazing, torturous thought but lost it when she was jerked back under from below.
She twisted and found herself caught in Boone’s arms as he moved up from below. Even though the water was cold, her insides warmed as their bodies slid together beneath the water. Strange sensations coursed through her as his eyes moved level with hers.
“We might drown.” She sent the thought into his mind as they bobbed just below the surface.
“I could…easily…or… we could try this. ‘
His lips touched hers, tentatively then more forcefully as she opened her mouth against his and closed her eyes. Elle’s stomach gave a sudden lurch and she realized that she needed to breathe but didn’t really care.
This was better than breathing.
It wasn’t the first time Boone has kissed her. They had shared a few awkward, embarrassing moments the first time he left for academy and then again when he was home on his breaks.
But this was different. It was almost as if he’d been…practicing?
Her eyes flew open and she shoved him down and away as she kicked towards the surface. Zander was waiting on his cycle, a concerned look on his face.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Elle spit out the words with the water she had swallowed after her quick trip into Boone’s mind.
“That wasn’t fair,” Boone yelled as he came up beside her.
Elle splashed water in his face and swam towards Zander.
“What is wrong with you?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said as she held her hand up. “Help me up.”
Zander looked over her head towards Boone, who was trying to right the craft in the water.
“Zander,” Elle hissed. “Pull. Me. Up.” Her words were threatening and she knew that he knew better than to toy with her when she was angry. Zander jerked her up and she settled herself onto the seat behind him.
“You’re soaked,” he said.
“Shut. Up.”
“Did he kiss you?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you so mad?”
Elle looked over her shoulder at Boone who had righted the craft and was now following them. It wouldn’t take him long to catch up since they were now the heavier ones.
Why was she angry?
Because Boone has kissed a lot of girls. She had seen their faces in his mind as if she were watching a parade and each one had been more beautiful, more mature, more self assured than she was. He had practiced. A lot. And more than kissing.
Boone was no longer the boy that they had played with in the dark tunnels beneath the villa. He was a man. A man who had the capability of traveling the universe. Her father admitted that he was already the best pilot he had ever seen. He processed numbers and equations in his head as if he were a machine. He had been to more planets than she could count and had the type of freedom that she and Zander dreamed of.
And he’s here…with you…
Elle felt her anger dissipate a bit. After all, if all those girls were so wonderful why wasn’t he with one of them?
And the kiss had been nice.
She glanced his way and quickly recognized the stubborn tilt to Boone’s chin. He was looking straight ahead. The sandbar was in sight. The dolphins swam merrily between them.
He was right. She shouldn’t have looked inside. It was an unspoken agreement between the three of them and something her mother had pounded into her head since she began her training.
She should never use her abilities to take advantage of her family and friends.
But it was always so tempting. And easy.
Zander cut the engine back to idle and they coasted in to the narrow curve of sand. Boone pulled in beside them and jumped from his cycle with a quick, jerky, motion. His green eyes rounded on Elle and sparks seemed to fly from them as he stared down at her.
“I think you two need to talk,” Zander said. He got his pack from beneath the seat and walked towards the opposite end of the spit.
Elle turned to watch him go. She was avoiding Boone, which despite the wide open spaces around them, was hard to do. The spit was barely wide enough for them to stretch out on but was long enough that Zander’s body diminished in size as he moved away.
It suddenly struck Elle that her brother seemed lonely as she watched him shrink against the horizon. Her heart ached with a strange emptiness as she watched him jump up and down three times and move his neck from side to side as he always did when warming up his muscles.
Elle felt Boone move up behind her and dismissed the thought of Zander’s feelings from her mind as other strange and bewildering things flooded in.
“It’s hard to be away from you Elle,” he said. “And it’s lonely at Academy.” She was surprised. She had expected a fight, not this strange gentleness.
He was so close that she felt the rise of his hand, as if he were about to touch her. Elle crossed her arms and kept her eyes on her brother as he peeled off most of his clothes and sliced into the water.
“I have no claim on you Boone,” she said. “We’re friends, nothing more.”
“What if I want it to be more?” he said.
Elle’s heart jumped into her throat and she turned to face him.
“What do you mean?”
His hair, a warm rich brown shade, was already dry from the wind. The academy required that he keep it short but Elle could remember a time when it hung over his eyes and flipped wildly around his ears. His eyes, all the greener against the vivid blues that surrounded them, looked down at her with a strange yet familiar glow.
“You know what I mean Elle. You are all I ever think about.”
“Strange way to prove it,” Elle said defensively.
His hands gripped her upper arms and pulled her a step closer. Elle placed a hand on his chest to stop him and Boone looked down at where it rested gracefully against his chest and a slow smile spread over his face.
“My heart has always been yours Elle. Since the first time I saw you.”
“You were only six,” she said with a wry smile. “and I was four.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I love you. I always have and I always will.”
Elle looked up at him, her pale gray eyes searching his. “How can you know that?”
“I just do.” He lifted her hand from his chest and placed it against his temple. “Look inside and you’ll see.”
Her hair whipped around them with the strengthening of the breeze as she closed her eyes and let her mind flow into his.
She saw the girls again and quickly dismissed them. She saw the pranks he pulled at Academy. She saw him studying with his comrades and she saw him practicing the fighting skills that his father and hers had taught him along side Zander.
She saw shared memories from their childhood and she saw the places he had been with his father and with his uncle Stefan. She saw the love he felt for his mother Tess and his sister Zoey, who was several years younger.
But there were some places he would not allow her to search. He knew the litany that her mother had taught them. He knew how to protect his mind. Elle wondered what he kept hidden but quickly dismissed it because of the surprise she felt as she realized that with all the memories she saw there was one constant.
She saw her face staring back at her.
Elle felt Boone’s forehead touch hers as her mind floated with his. He truly loved her. But how did she feel? She had nothing to compare her feelings with. Boone was the only boy besides her brother that she had ever known. What if there was someone else out there that she was supposed to love?
But all thoughts of anyone else left her as Boone kissed her. She couldn’t imagine kissing anyone else. Kissing Boone was all she ever dreamed about. All she ever thought about. And there was more than kissing; she had seen that very clearly in his mind.
She wanted that too. She wanted Boone to show her what it felt like. Her arms snaked around him and she felt his sudden intake of breath as she pressed against him.
“Elle.” He groaned her name and moved the lower half of his body away from her.
“What?” she asked. She felt dazed, breathless, and warm yet twisted up inside.
His hand smoothed the wild tendrils of her hair back into place. “Maybe we should go for a swim,” he said. He tossed his head towards the water. “Zander.”
“Zander,” Elle sighed. For the first time in her life she wished that she didn’t have a brother.
Boone quickly turned away as she looked at Zander, who was playing in the water with the dolphins. He handed her pack to her and moved to the other side of the cycle and turned his back to her as he pulled of his shirt.
Elle couldn’t help but admire the contours of the muscle in his back as she wondered at his sudden shyness around her.
She skinned off her shirt and kicked away the baggy pants that she wore. She adjusted the hem of the short revealing top, checked the tie around her neck and made sure that her bottom half was properly if not scantily covered.
Her father would certainly raise his eyebrows at the cut of her attire but she didn’t care. What could he do to her? Lock her away from the world?
“Ready?” she asked Boone as she adjusted a set of shields over her eyes.
“Right behind you,” he said, settling his own shields into place.
Elle took off at a run for the water and flattened herself out to dive beneath the gentle lap of waves with Boone close behind her.
The sand bar ended suddenly as the rim gave way to the ancient crater and a world of bright colors and exotic plants opened up beneath them.
The water felt warmer, as if the volcano that had once been here still burned down in the deep. Elle was certain parts of it were inside her. She felt the brush of Boone’s body as they swam side by side and was certain that the water around them would boil.
Boone pointed out a pair of brightly colored fish that darted from behind a trumpeting piece of coral. From below a ray moved up as if it were part of the water and barely missed their heads with its tail.
They turned and grinned at each other and as one moved to the surface for air. The dolphins quickly circled them and chattered as Zander joined them.
“I see you two made up,” he said.
Elle pushed her goggles up and looked at Boone.
“Kissed and made up,” Zander added.
Elle splashed water at this face and Boone rose up with a yell, placed his hands on Zander’s head and pushed him under. The dolphins headed for cover as the three of them splashed, wrestled and dunked each other as they had done since they first knew each other.
But it was different now. Zander knew it and he swam away as Boone pulled Elle under again.
He’s lonely…
The thought once again faded as Boone’s lip’s found hers and they twisted away from Zander, moving as one beneath the surface and they breathed air into each other’s lungs.
They kissed until Elle thought she would pass out from lack of oxygen. Her ears roared as she felt the blood rushing to her head. She pulled her head away and opened her eyes to look at Boone but saw that he was looking up.
A shadow fell across the water and as they swam to the surface Elle knew they were in trouble.
Her father had come looking for them.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Animal Rights

No, not the kind for which PETA advocates. I'm thinking about the rights of hypothetical animals with genetically enhanced intelligence, brought to mind by the TV adaptation (this summer on the anthology program MASTERS OF SCIENCE FICTION) of Robert Heinlein's story "Jerry Was a Man."


This theme goes back at least to the Darwinian nightmare of H. G. Wells' ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, in which the mad scientist operates on animals to make them quasi-human. Although the artificially evolved beasts have a culture based on the Law given to them by the doctor, with decrees along the lines of, "Not to walk on all fours; are we not men?" they inevitably devolve into parodies of their original subhuman natures, echoing the late nineteenth-century horror of "degeneration." Science fiction master Cordwainer Smith's story "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" focuses on the struggle for equal rights for the Underpeople, humanoid beings developed from animal stock. C'Mell, for example, is a cat woman.


The TV script of Heinlein's "Jerry Was a Man" disappointed me because the adaptation made the enslaved laborers into androids rather than apes, as they are in the original story. I suppose this decision was made in order to minimize special effects costs and permit the "Jerry" of the program to become his wealthy advocate's lover at the end of the show. Aside from making the inclusion of other artificially designed animals (a miniature pegasus and a tiny elephant) irrelevant, the way the androids are used in this version is just silly. For the sake of pathos, the job Jerry has been retired from (with the prospect of being destroyed as no longer profitable) consists of shuffling in a grid across a minefield to trigger buried mines. A technologically advanced industry capable of building semi-intelligent, completely human-looking androids would waste them by blowing them up, when a simple robotic device could do the same task much more cheaply? Heinlein's Jerry is a genetically modified ape with near-human intelligence and the ability to speak, although on a rudimentary level. When the rich woman who has come to buy a designer pet discovers the "retired" apes are destined for euthanasia, she buys Jerry and hires a lawyer to establish human status for him. The TV show, in its most telling departure from Heinlein's original, has the lawyer prove the android's humanity by demonstrating that he is capable of lying and cheating to save his own life at the cost of the life of one of his android co-workers. In Heinlein's story, Jerry proves his humanity first by showing that he understands the concept of honesty and refusing to lie under oath, then by singing “Dixie” to illustrate his appreciation of music and his yearning for freedom. Given a choice between those two ideas of the essence of humanity, I must say I prefer Heinlein's.


If some species of animals were genetically enhanced in this way, for the express purpose of performing complex tasks and made just intelligent enough to enable them to perform their functions, would they then be so human that it would be immoral to force them to perform those functions? Would they be entitled to paychecks, fringe benefits, and voting rights? Sticking to robots would be ethically simpler! Real-world questions arise about our treatment of chimpanzees and gorillas when we consider that some of them have reportedly mastered the rudiments of language, traditionally assumed to be the ability that sets Homo sapiens apart from other animals. Many people believe dolphins have a language of sorts and a level of intelligence nearly equal to ours, although possibly different in kind. Notorious bioethicist Peter Singer would assign more rights to a healthy adult ape than to a human newborn with severe medical problems. If “humanity” resides in the mind and soul rather than the physical form, such questions are bound to arise at some point in our real-world future.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Six of Swords - Love Conquers All

As noted previously, this is a chapter in a book about the Tarot aimed at Intermediate students, not beginners or advanced students. It is particularly aimed at writers.
The Series is: The Not So Minor Arcana by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, now on Kindle.


Updated and expanded compilation of all these Tarot Just For Writers entries is now available on Kindle:
The Wands and Cups Volumes and  the Swords and Pentacles Volumes, are now all available separately on Kindle.  The 5 Volumes combined are also available on Kindle as one book, cheaper than buying them individually.
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The Not So Minor Arcana: Cups Sept. 11, 2015 99 cents
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This series is designed not for the beginner or the advanced student, but for the intermediate student and specifically for writers doing worldbuilding..

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The principle of discovering the real meaning of a Minor Arcana Tarot card is based on the blend of the numerological meaning of the number of the card combined with its Suit.

The quality of Six-ness can be discovered from its location on the Tree of Life diagram - right in the center balance point, Tipheret.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life_(Kabbalah)

The image on the Waite-Rider deck 6-Swords is of a man in a boat poling across a river with ragged refugees in the boat -- choppy water on one side, calm on the other, approaching a distant shore. Tradition has it, this is the crossing of the River Stix with the Boatman.

That's a beginning at finding the meaning, but it doesn't even scratch the surface of the process of Six of Swords.

Six is Tipheret -- Beauty or the beautifying adornment.

It is at the center of the Tree, the balance point, the heart and thus Soul.

One of the purely human gifts of perception is the ability to discern beauty. One of the components of beauty acknowledged across all cultures is composition -- the harmonious relationship of shapes, masses, colors, textures -- how things go together and relate to each other in harmony.

The very concept "harmony" isn't something you're going to be able to teach your dog even if he "sings" (cats, well, all bets are off). Harmony is a very human sort of perception.

Perceiving your own place in the scheme of things is an experience in perceiving the beauty of the universe, its overall composition as one whole, unity.

Swords are thoughts, words, deeds, and even opinions.

Six Swords is the result of the process described in 5 Swords -- in 5 Swords Egos met, in 6 Swords Egos have blended into a composition, and that composition is beautiful. That composition is a Relationship.

If 3 Swords is the wedding, 4 Swords the Honeymoon, and 5 Swords the first fight, 6 Swords is the settled, routinized relationship (image of the breakfast table, he reads the news, she packs the kids' lunches).

The days are routinized, the arguments are scripted ("Where the H did you put my keys!") every behavior is predictable including the complaint about dropping used towels on the bathroom floor. The cliches of life are an artistic composition.

But steady state is not a story, so writers listen up!

6 is love. Swords is Action. The 6 of Swords is LOVE IN ACTION. It is the action of love.

This process is the heart and soul expressing itself.

Swords are about Action -- and when a soul's action is thwarted, resisted, put off or denied, then the Action will burst out somehow.

People who have fallen into a routine will want change. That's the nature of life and the nature of the Suit of Swords. Change.

If the family has fallen into failure, in Six Swords they will move to another town, looking for other jobs, other schools, new opportunities.

If the family has been wildly successful, Six Swords becomes the TV Show Dallas -- the corrosion that wealth inflicts to sober people up and make them reach into their souls for something worth while.

We say we "fall" in love -- to indicate a change.

These processes we've been tracing from Ace to 6 of Swords are in the order of the "Lightening Flash" path down the Tree of Life from highest abstraction to concrete manifestation. It is a "fall" -- a decreasing of potential energy by actualizing it.

In 5 Swords we might see an encounter with a Best Enemy, combat, whacking off parts of the ego that don't fit, whipping the relationship into shape, and from the 5 of Swords you FALL (look at the Tree of Life diagram, it's DOWN to the 6) into love.

The Six of Swords is that thing guaranteed in the USA Declaration of Independence -- THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. Not happiness itself, but the pursuit. That's where they're going in the boat -- someplace they hope/expect will be better.

When you finally get a glimmering of an idea of the composition of the world and where you fit into it (at this person's side, leading an army, planting trees), you begin to evaluate your life in terms of the rightness and beauty of it. And you make changes to improve the composition of your life.

The Six of Swords Reversed represents that long, steady state when nothing changes. It won't change until you start feeling stuck in a rut, stultified, trapped in a dead-end job or relationship, repeating habitual actions that go nowhere.

As you criticise every imperfection in your life, you build up a head of steam for change.

Eventually, you will make (actions = swords) a change.

You will make this change because you can see the composition of your life as a whole as it is now -- and as it could be.

Out of love, you will leave where you are to go somewhere else and make a new start, clean up your act, begin success, make it all new and better. It may, however, as the card image suggests, take horrendously deteriorating conditions where you are to blast you out of your rut and make you a refugee.

The Waite-Rider drawing illustrates what the person caught up in striving to change doesn't see.
Swords are actions, but more than that. By the time the project (writing a book, crafting a marriage, raising a kid, whatever) has reached the level of 6, these actions have become habits, coping strategies that become your "baggage" in life.

The astrological association of 6 on the Tree of Life is the Sun. The natal chart's Sun position describes how that individual uses energy.

The Six of Swords is thus how you, individually, habitually utilize your personal energy resources. And that characteristic methodology is behind your habitual actions.

Your habitual actions add up to the shape of your life.

"Every single time! Every time I get close to a promotion, I get fired." Or "Every time I get engaged, the girl dumps me." "Every time I clean up my desk, it's heaped again in two days!"

To utilize this insight into the "every time I" composition of your life, you have to be over a certain age -- usually 29 years old begins the process, and 36 reveals the shape of it -- sixty years and you really see it. (1 Saturn cycle; 3 Jupiter cycles; 2 Saturn cycles.)

Each of the Swords in that boat image represent a habitual action pattern -- the boat represents leaving, trying to flee the consequences of actions. And all actions have consequences.

Fleeing doesn't work. Never once, no matter how much love drives this process, will it work. Why? Because the action of love is to preserve and protect.

Move to another city for a job - your habits will reconstruct the life you had in the old city.

Divorce this dud and marry a nice new person - same fights all over again.

Why do people do that? Change everything but what's really bugging them?

Love.

It has so many facets, aspects, textures, components and manifestations the word is almost meaningless. Yet we all know exactly what it means. At core, it is perhaps the universal human affinity for the experience of perceiving beauty.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as the saying goes. It is, however, also an attribute of our material surroundings. There is always beauty in our world, but we aren't always capable of perceiving it.

Once we have experienced that perception of beauty in conjunction with a thing, person, or action, we develop an affinity for the thing that becomes an attachment. We want that experience of beauty again and again, and cling to the circumstances or actions first associated with it.

If you have a vivid memory of a marvelous Thanksgiving family weekend, you will love Thanksgiving and try incessantly to recreate those special conditions. Failing at that endeavor produces what's known as the "Holiday Blues." And the blues can become a habit you take with you.

Humans early on in life develop coping strategies -- ways of succeeding, getting pleasure, being psychologically reinforced, methods of dealing with adversity. When a method works more than once, it is repeated -- and eventually becomes so ingrained the adult isn't aware of that habit.

That is one of the things the swords in the boat symbolize -- the unconscious coping strategy actions that we take with us when we think we are breaking free of a stultifying trap, or successfully fleeing an intolerable situation.

We love our actions, our companions, our opinions, the sound of our own voices, and ourselves. We resist change. We love the people in whose presence we see beauty. We will cling to those things with all the power of our Sun Sign. In Astrology, the Sun represents the Will and physically the heart of the body, the pump that powers our actions.

If the trap or the situation was the result of our habitual actions, we will recreate that same trap and mysteriously that battle will confront us anew.

The 6 of Swords represents that cliche scene in every horror movie where the menace is vanquished, the Hero turns away, and just as he thinks he's free, there is the menace again right in front of him.

That menace is actually inside himself.

If the image on the Waite-Rider deck is taken to be the River Stix -- then the card is telling us we can't even get away from our ingrained, habitual actions by dying and reincarnating. These habits are part of our Soul, and manifest in each personality we wear in successive incarnations.

These habits are old, familiar friends, what we perceive as our Identity, and thus beautiful to us.

So in 6, Swords manifests as the action of Soul Growth, or incarnation to perfect a particular Sword, a particular habit or way of thinking.

The attribute that lets us develop habits is not bad. The content of the habit might need adjusting to fit the composition. (writers: rewriting is the key to success.)

The 6 is about love - about giving one's whole self, about blending into a Unity (yeah, two hearts beat as one; two people, one soul -- there's a reason why cliches are cliches).

The 6 of Swords is telling us Love Conquers All.

Remember the 6 of Wands -- the man on the horse leading a Victory parade (as I said, the Waite-Rider pack is rooted in the zero-sum-game view of the universe). That man is a leader -- his men follow him for love of his vision, values, and objectives. But he is a conqueror driven by love of an idea. (Wands are Ideas). He is an idealist whose ideas are loved.

As Swords manifests through 6, Love becomes an actual action, not an emotion (that's 6 Cups). Love becomes an transitive verb, not passive or reflexive. (Yeah, I know, you can't do that in English.)

By finding and unifying with your Soul Mate you can unlock that white-knuckled death-grip on your old habits and let yourself grow to the next level. And of course, this has the same effect on your Soul Mate, who also grows.

The way love conquers all is through the changes wrought at the level of those unconsciously held coping strategies, the habits dragged with us from incarnation to incarnation and re-created to suit each of our new Natal Charts -- like the menace in the horror movie, appearing before us again and again until we stop doing whatever it is that projects that menace into our surroundings.

You (and only you) can change those habits you drag with you from life to life.

I said under 5 Swords:

---------------

Thoughts are Swords.

Thoughts are weapons. Thoughts can hurt others. (this is mysticism, remember?) Merely thinking something nasty about someone can do actual damage to the universe, and it does not matter whether the thinker has a lot or a little magical power gained by Initiation. On this, everyone is equal. Every thought, word and deed no matter how small alters the universe.

----------------

And that's the mechanism whereby you project your personal menace or nemesis or ideals of beauty and happiness into your surroundings. What you hold in your heart (Sun, Tiphereth) projects into your world, for good or ill.

The 5 of Swords will try to beat it out of you -- the 6 of Swords will succeed in loving it out of you.

Love is growth. Love spurs you to let go and give to others.

That isn't really "sacrifice" which has such negative and painful semantic nuances.

It isn't sacrifice when you don't actually give up anything of value.

When you love, your definition of Identity, of Self, expands to include the Other. So when you give to the Other, you haven't given up anything -- you still have it because your Self still includes it. You can give up your life for another, and it isn't a sacrifice at all. It doesn't hurt. It isn't a loss. If life is not a zero-sum-game, then there are no losses.

Understanding that concept is what lets people allow themselves to be loved -- to allow another to include them in the other's Identity.

To do this on an individual basis is what allows the soul to love God and be loved by God. That's a biggie and takes a lot of practice with smaller things.

The 6 of Swords Reversed represents the situation where there isn't enough energy to get out of the current habitual circumstance. That's not necessarily bad. It just means the way out of this trap has more than one step. And it means the objective can be achieved only by approaching it stepwise, with a lot of practice, by forging yourself some new swords.

That's all right because you have more than one life. If you're in a trap, find the beauty inside it and love your way out of it. Improve your habits; the trap will dissolve of its own accord.

There's one other property of 6 that we should notice here.

In the Jacob's Ladder diagram

(Google produced this URL
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~maggyw/treeladder.html )

On that web page, count up from the center bottom circle of the long Jacob's Ladder diagram -- 5 circles up, and that is the circle we've been discussing as the 6 of Swords. Its Tree (the Swords Tree) has the black background.

Note that 6-Swords is ALSO the 1 (or Ace) of Pentacles (the red background).

These two vibrations or processes are actually the SAME THING. Remember the guitar string analogy, two notes the same but an octave apart. That's why it's called the Music of the Spheres -- the universe is made out of vibration.

6 or LOVE is always the connection point between one of the 4 Trees and the next.

6 is always at the heart of something and also at the start of something.

At LOVE pure energy transforms from one level to another.

The whole of Creation is about LOVE.

Love holds everything together. Love connects everything to everything.

Think about that. Love doesn't really have to do any conquering because the universe is not a zero sum game where winning creates losers. Love doesn't conquer. Love is.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Monday, September 17, 2007

QUESTIONING KEL-PATEN

I’m going to filch a page directly from MAGIC LOST, TROUBLE FOUND’s author, Lisa Shearin, and offer to put GAME S OF COMMAND’s Admiral Branden Kel-Paten on the hot seat for the next two weeks. It’s an idea I’ve been thinking of for some time but until Lisa convinced Paladin and spellsinger, Mychael Elliesor to ‘fess up on her blog, well, I had a snowball’s chance in the deserts of Ren Marin of getting Kel-Paten front and center.

It’s not that he’s shy. I mean, a 6’3” human/cyborg fleet officer and acknowledged killing machine shouldn’t be shy, should he? And he did very begrudgingly grant me an interview several years back. Of course, that was an interview with me, his author. Submitting himself to the scrutiny of total strangers is something completely different. Or so he tells me, and not in a happy tone of voice.

However, since Mychael folded, uh, that is, so graciously agreed to respond to questions from Lisa Shearin’s readers, I felt I could put a little more pressure on Kel-Paten. That is, Sass and I could put a little more pressure on Kel-Paten. She has far more sway with him than I do.

So think of what you’d like to ask the indomitable admiral, post your questions here or email them to me via my site, and next Monday I’ll get Branden front-and-center and in the hot seat.
Sound good?

Remember, you can catch up with the some after-the-last-page scenes here and here.
~Linnea

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Shapeshifters of the sea

Although my head is in outer space --where else?-- as I struggle to meet an extended deadline for the fourth of my alien romances KNIGHT'S FORK (Prince Djarrhett's story, which takes up where INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL left off), I'm also counting down to an internet radio special.

What kind of sexy, inter-species-loving aliens prowl in the icy blackness of our deepest seas?

In celebration of Sea Otter Awareness week, the "Cherry Picking" occasional show will run from 9.00 pm (Eastern Time) until midnight on Sunday 23rd September. We will be talking about shapeshifters of the seas and the environmental issues that affect their lives, their food chain, their passions.

Alyssa Day,
Jeff Dwyer,
Barbara Karmazin,
Marjorie M Liu,
Deborah MacGillivray,
Jacquie Rogers
Skylar Sinclair,
Dawn Thompson,

will be joining Rowena Cherry to speculate about selkie, dolphin-men, sea otters, sea lions, man-whales, and other salty sea-lords who make a splash in the midnight surf....

or wild wet hunks that go hump in the night, if you prefer.

Find out how to tune in for this, and all PIVTR programming at

http://internetvoicesradio.com/Rowena.htm

With best wishes and apologies for the promo,

Rowena
Http://www.rowenacherry.com
http://www.internetvoicesradio.com/CrazyTuesday.htm

Saturday, September 15, 2007

The process

I just finished Twist this week. The past six weeks of writing have been hard to say the least due to my father being in and out of the hospital several times. It has made me realize how much of writing is about the mental process, especially when you get down to the last few chapters of a book.

Writing is not something you just sit down and do. There's so much mental preparation that is involved. I guess the easiest way to say it is you have to get your head in the zone and it is so easy to get knocked out of the zone.

I took my lap top with me to the hospital and went down to the main lobby to write. I found a nice cozy table, turned my back to the TV and wished I'd brought my noise canceling headphones along. The scene I was working on was fairly easy to drop into because it had been formed in my mind since the character, Shane, evolved in my mind.

Then I was graced with the visit from the little old lady with the walker. I recognized her as a hospital volunteer from the aqua coat she wore. There were several empty tables and chairs in the lobby but no, she had to come and sit down right next to me with her walker and oxygen tank. Then she preceeded to stare at me. I felt as if I was being stalked by Darth Vadar.

Out of the story immediately. Instead of writing about Shane's brother's tragic death I'm like what is up with this woman? So I move to another table but my mind is on the woman. Especially when I realized she'd moved into the exact chair I vacated. Guess I missed her name on it.

This is just one of the interruptions I had while trying to find quiet corners to write in. And after a week of running back and forth to the hospital and waiting on test results and getting my dad back home it's not easy to trudge the stairs to my office and just sit down and write. There are too many things rolling around in my exhausted mind.

It takes us so long to write a book. I wrote this one in a little over four months. But so much happens in four months that its hard to remember what you wrote when you were first starting the story. I spent the entire day yesterday, rereading. Why? For continuinty. For flow. I wrote this chapter in the car. I wrote this chapter while on vacation. I wrote this chapter at the hospital. How many different moods was I in while writing? One thing I found, that when I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open I made Abbey tired too. At least we could relate to that.

I'm happy with what I wrote. Twist was a bit different for me. A first person urban fantasy. Time Travel, alien races, lots of kick butt action and a love story. And lots of Abbey's witty observations. I think that was the best part of the whole story. It will be out in February. And now I have to totally switch gears and write a colonial period historical and prepare for the release of my next sci-fi romance, Starshadows.

Yes, my mind is spinning!

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Rationalized Fantasy


This Saturday the SciFi Channel will broadcast a new Highlander made-for-TV movie. I'm looking forward to this one because it stars Duncan McCleod, from the TV series, whom I always liked better than Connor. When the HIGHLANDER program had its original run, it was fun to speculate on the origins of the Immortals and the reasons behind their powers and vulnerabilities. For example, what would happen to an Immortal buried alive or left to starve in a desert? Would he keep dying and reviving over and over, indefinitely? How long would he stay alive after each revival? Why are Immortals sterile? And who says there can be only one? How did this lore begin, and how do we know it isn't a deliberate lie or a baseless legend? If Duncan and Connor had been the only remaining Immortals, would they have fought to the death? Suppose they didn't want to—who or what could make them? The only origin story in Highlander canon was offered in the abysmally dreadful second movie, which I prefer to pretend never happened. (I don't think many fans of the series acknowledge that disaster as canon.) The "Immortals as aliens from another planet" plotline was not only hokey but illogical. Extraterrestrial invaders have spent millennia seeding Earth with "orphaned" babies? (If I remember correctly, the whole foundling children motif was ignored in that film.)


In my opinion, the clue to the secret is found in Duncan's ostracism from his clan as a "changeling." If the Immortals are in fact fairy changelings (most cultures in the world have some analogue to fairies in their folklore), their unique traits make sense. I like to imagine that they are hybrid children of fairies and human lovers. Unacceptable in the society of the fae, these babies are cast out to be adopted by human families. That explains why all Immortals are foundlings of unknown parentage. Their elvish heritage accounts for their near-immortality, with decapitation being the sole means of killing them. (Yes, they also might be thought of as vampires. After their first death, they cease to age, and decapitation is one of the traditional vampire-slaying methods. Also, they drain energy from their own kind by killing. However, I'm not going in the vampire direction right now.) The fact that they are hybrids explains why they're sterile. What about those lethal longswords they seem to have at hand all the time, yet nobody ever notices? Fans have theorized that the swords are stored in a pocket dimension known as “katana space.” :) Obviously magic! As for the "there can be only one" lore, I think that was promulgated by malicious fae who loathe and fear the hybrids and therefore want to encourage them to kill off each other. Someday I might write a story along these lines, although of course if I don't want to make it Highlander fanfic, I'd have to file off the serial numbers (to quote a favorite saying of Heinlein's).


I've always enjoyed fiction that provides explanations for its fantasy motifs, whether magical or scientific. Magic should have rules and rationales, just as science does. I especially like scientific, or at any rate systematic, explanations for traditional folklore monsters such as vampires and werewolves. I much prefer a werewolf who's born that way, because of evolutionary forces that have created a human-beast blend, rather than one who is "cursed." Jack Williamson's classic DARKER THAN YOU THINK offers an enthralling "unified field theory of the supernatural" (as I think of it) to explain witchcraft, psychic powers, werewolves, and vampires in terms of a near-human subspecies that split off from Homo sapiens in prehistoric times. No pure specimens of this strain exist today, but their bloodlines have spread throughout the human race, some people carrying far more of the "Homo lycanthropus" genes than others. Many authors have created detailed explanations of vampires as another naturally evolved species, such as Suzy McKee Charnas' THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY, George R. R. Martin's FEVRE DREAM, Jacqueline Lichtenberg's THOSE OF MY BLOOD, Elaine Bergstrom's SHATTERED GLASS, and Octavia Butler's FLEDGLING. Vampirism as an infectious disease is meticulously explored in Richard Matheson's classic I AM LEGEND (which will have a new movie adaptation released this winter), Dan Simmons' CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT, and Scott Westerfeld's PEEPS. Arthur C. Clarke famously told us that any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic. Likewise, any creature with strange enough traits appears, to casual observers, a supernatural entity. Think of all those "deities" encountered by Captain Kirk and his crew, only to turn out to be super-powerful aliens with inflated egos.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

5 of Swords - Co-dependence

As noted previously, this is a chapter in a book about the Tarot aimed at Intermediate students, not beginners or advanced students. Read my posts for the last 4 Tuesdays to catch up, or pick up the Kindle books updated and expanded:

Updated and expanded compilation of all these Tarot Just For Writers entries is now available on Kindle:
The Wands and Cups Volumes and  the Swords and Pentacles Volumes, are now all available separately on Kindle.  The 5 Volumes combined are also available on Kindle as one book, cheaper than buying them individually.
The Not So Minor Arcana: Never Cross A Palm With Silver Aug 30, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0108MC26O

The Not So Minor Arcana: Wands Sept. 1, 2015  99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106RVPKU

The Not So Minor Arcana: Cups Sept. 11, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106SATX8

The Not So Minor Arcana: Swords  Sept. 17, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0100RSPM2

The Not So Minor Arcana: Pentacles  Sept. 21, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106RVKF0

The Not So Minor Arcana: Books 1-5 combined Sept. 24, 2015 $3.25
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010E4WAOU

This series is designed not for the beginner or the advanced student, but for the intermediate student and specifically for writers doing worldbuilding..

--------------

The 5 of Swords is the first (in the Waite Rider deck) to have more than one figure on it. The 5 is the first point in the process of "action" where others are encountered -- i.e Re-actions to your actions.

Previously, all the "actions" (Swords are actions, choices, thoughts, words, wishes, prayers, curses, or just nasty silent criticism of another's appearance, speech or choices) have been internal to the actor.

For a writer, this process starts with deciding to write a particular novel, putting down some words on the screen, seeing the characters or story take shape as a thing external to the self, making commitment to finish it, and then a long period of quiet growth as words are produced, but not ready yet to show to anyone.

To discover the core essence of the 5 of Swords, we have to grasp the concept of word or thought as an action in itself, and express that through the essence of 5-ness.

What is 5?

Notice on the Tree of Life diagram I found on wikipedia - , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life_(Kabbalah)

Keter = 1
Hokhmah = 2
Binah = 3
Da'at is in another "dimension" (i.e. above the plane of the Tree) and doesn't have a card for mystical reasons.
Hesed=4
Gevurah = 5
Tiferet = 6
Netzah = 7
Hod = 8
Yesod = 9
Malkuth = 10

The Hebrew letters on the "spokes" of the diagram can be represented by the Major Arcana of the Tarot -- each Hebrew letter is both a number and a philosophical principle of existence symbolized by something (door, shepherd's goad, window, staff, etc)

5 is right under 3 and above 8. They form a "pillar," one of the three polarities that underlie the structure of all reality. (in Astrology: triplicities and quadruplicities, the principles of 3 and the principles of 4 which we discussed last week and the week before.)

3, 5, and 8 are all about what you are being defined by what you are-not.

In the process of passing through the Gates of Life and Death in 3 Swords, you decided (a Latin root word for cutting in two) to do this project -- and therefore not-do that project -- which means you committed resources, reached for one thing at the expense of something else. It hurt, but you did it anyway, you took a "loss" to make a "gain."

In the 5, you are doing exactly the same thing, on another arc of the process.

The great, huge, mass of words you've produced as your novel must now be exposed to -- (eek!) criticism.

You will see your work through the mind and eye of another person. You will "encounter" the actions, thoughts, words, deeds, habits and choices of another person.

In the 4 of Swords you invested your ego in your work, and you let it grow in quiet solitude.

The ego investment is now huge, personal, and tender for lack of calluses developed by rubbing against others' ideas. It's very private (fan fiction hidden under the mattress for sheer embarrassment), and it's very personal. Your whole identity is tied up in what has grown in 4 -- because of the price paid in 3 when part of your identity was cut away so that the rest could grow. You have paid a huge price, so what is left to you is valuable beyond words.

Thoughts are Swords.

Thoughts are weapons. Thoughts can hurt others. (this is mysticism, remember?) Merely thinking something nasty about someone can do actual damage to the universe, and it does not matter whether the person thinking has a lot or a little magical power gained by Initiation. On this, everyone is equal. Every thought, word and deed no matter how small alters the universe.

The Waite-Rider deck depicts this as all bad. But it's just as easy to make it all good.

The study of Tarot is the study of how to alter yourself so that all your ideas, feelings, thoughts and creations beautify the universe. You can't do that by "control" -- you must "become." The Suit of Swords delineates that process of becoming, because in Swords "control" just does not work (hence the terrible reputation of these cards).

If you live a life where the highest virtue is to resist temptation -- Swords is where you'll come a-cropper.

In the 5 of Swords, the thoughts of one person encounter the thoughts of another, two egos engage in a sparring match.

Words driven by thoughts are weapons. How many of us have been "cut low" by a snob? How many have encountered a back-stabber, a character-assassin? How many writers have broken down in tears when their manuscripts were criticized?

Words are also defenses -- we defend our ego with excuses, dodges, denials, explanations of what we really meant to write.

Writers, pay attention here. The 5 of Swords contains all the secrets to writing great dialogue you will ever need to know. It is reparte incarnate, subtext, innuendo. The duel of words is all here in this one process.

5 is all about conflict. The 4's image is the King on his Throne dispensing Justice (all kinds of Jupiter and Saggitarius associations.) The 5's image is the King in his Chariot riding to war.

The 5 is about the aroused ego dealing with a threat. Astrologers associate Mars with the 5's -- the god of war. The ruler of Ares, the First House, -- all about the Self and the energizing spark that gets the Self moving.

Very often, even a depressed person will swing into action when something dear to them is threatened by another. Maybe they'll dash off a scathing reply on a blog, phone a talk show, challenge a speeding ticket in court: "I've got rights!" screams the person whose thoughts have encountered opposing thoughts.

As I mentioned in discussion of 4 Swords, the 4 of Swords is the pause between the wedding and the first fight -- and the 5 of Swords is the first fight.

In the 5, what has grown huge, self-indulgent and shapeless in 4 is whittled down to shape and size to fit into the social or relationship framework. As in 3 something is lost, but also as in 3 what is left is the better for the loss.

5 is the dynamic process of ego relating to ego. There are all kinds of ego-driven relationships -- marriage, master/slave, favorite enemy, arch-rival, strange bedfellow alliances, favored nation status, your supply-chain businesses, birth family to put up with, chosen family to cling to.

5 is where the Ego begins the process of fitting into a group - any group.

Refer to the first book in this series (available on Amazon) THE BIBLICAL TAROT: NEVER CROSS A PALM WITH SILVER. There is a discussion of the model of the universe and of life as a zero sum game -- for there to be a "winner" there must be a "loser."

The Tarot based in Kabbalah uses a totally different model of the universe. Thus in Tarot, the blending of the notions connected to 5 and the notions connected to Swords doesn't necessarily lead to fighting.

Combat, arguing, fighting, dominating and denigrating are not signified by the 5 of Swords. But when you attempt to play (play = Swords) a zero sum game, you inevitably are pushed into strife when passing through the 5 of Swords process.

Thus 5 is associated with pain, strife.

When actions manifest through 5-ness, you get strategy, tactics, warfare, brute strength, bullying, but also leadership, problem solving, bright ideas gallore, problem solving by optimizing rather than compromising.

The Waite Rider deck (based in the zero-sum game view of the universe) depicts a man who has disarmed two retreating figures and remains holding their weapons.

This could be taking the credit for another scientist's discovery. It could describe arguing against someone using their own arguments against them. It could represent taking a free will gift from someone then using it as a weapon to destroy them.

In the 5 of Swords you find actions that are both directly aggresive, and (5 Swords Reversed) indirectly aggressive.

You see the passive-aggressive type of relationship, where one person sneaks a punch at the other, then denies it -- leaving the victim feeling helpless. ("Oh, I was just kidding! What? Can't you take a joke?")

Using one's intellect (swords) to disarm another person -- to use your power to overcome another person's weakness -- leaves your victim feeling helpless. The normal human response to being disarmed and made to feel helpless is hatred.

The 5 of Swords includes the co-dependent relationship where, possibly one person's words and deeds supports another's self-destructive behavior, or possibly one person uses words and deeds to support another person's healthy spiritual and personal growth efforts (support, not command).

It's called a co-dependent relationship because it works both ways. Each person gives and gets in equal measure forming a dynamic but stable relationship -- and that's not necessarily bad. The usefulness depends on what habits are being encouraged and supported for what reason.

All relationships of this shape, though, are included in the 5 Swords, even the good or neutral ones.

The 5 of Swords also covers the situation where one person challenges another to prove what they are saying, or to prove themselves worthy. "Put up or shut up!" The teen initiation of proving yourself, taking a dare, etc.

The 5 of Swords also describes the kind of relationship where one person turns the other person's only defense (rationalizations, excuses) against them, then laughs at their natural fear of their own childhood nightmare of being helpless.

Another word for this process is "button pushing" for the purpose of manipulating another person's actions. People will do amazing things to avoid feeling helpless, disarmed, defenseless.

The 5 of Swords represents the sorts of relationships that form along the axis of degredation, sneering, devaluing.

The worst in human nature is brought out by the 5's -- and Swords then manifests that worst in words and deeds. When you blurt out something hurtful that you didn't mean to say, it's a 5 of Swords moment.

The 5 of Swords also describes the behavior of the coward with power exceptionally well.

But as with all the so-called minor arcana, it really bespeaks the very best in human nature if you don't operate in the zero sum game model of the universe. To get through the 5-Swords process unscathed you must "become" not "resist." You must become the kind of person who simply is not tempted to harm others.

To become that kind of person, you must be at peace within yourself, have your own internal conflicts resolved. If you're not, then passing through the 5-Swords process will boost you on the way to becoming just that, a person who can love whole-heartedly.

The ego, the sense of self, can here be brought to fit together with the other egos in your group. Together you make a whole far more powerful than the sum of the parts. For one to win, it isn't necessary for another to lose. In the Tarot model of the universe, there is no such thing as winning or losing and thus no such thing as a "draw" where nobody wins.

The 5 of Swords is where your most private (and possibly overblown) assessment of yourself and the value of your actions gets re-shaped, sifted and sorted, discarding what isn't sound and re-arranging what is. It is a healthy and refreshing exercise, not a win-lose situation.

The 5 of Swords is the forging of a contract, an agreement, about the group's dynamic.

Remember, in the zero sum game model, 5-Swords is the King in his Chariot going to war. It doesn't have to end in battle. A show of force could be enough.

The 5 of Swords could also be the establishing of a pecking order, deciding who is top dog by chewing ears off, or it could be "Put me through medical school and I'll see you live on easy street the rest of your life." 5 Swords is the unspoken contract behind all relationships.

The first fight in a marriage may define the way the relationship works for the next fifty years.

In Reverse, the punch is pulled, the victory by backstabbing, underhanded, button pushing or manipulation. In Reverse it's the avoiding of the direct, clean, nose-to-nose conflict to reshape both parties' egos, and the result is that the relationship becomes undermined.

The 5 of Swords clean and direct conflict is the defining moment of an intimate relationship, and it does not have to be victory for one and defeat for the other.

It doesn't have to be an unethical victory. It doesn't have to be beating up on the other until they knuckle under, then seethe with hatred for years.

For more on that, see the book The Intimate Enemy: How To Fight Fare In Love And Marriage by Peter Wyden.

To transform the 5 of Swords experience from a fight to problem-solving requires that both parties have solid, healthy egos that don't fear attack but welcome the view of the self from a different perspective and welcome the change that new view brings.

Think of the growth in the 4 of Swords as bread rising -- and the process of the 5 of Swords as punching it down so it can rise again with a finer texture. The 5 of Swords is not destructive -- it's part of the creative process. An essential part.

So writers - don't fight with your first readers. Don't explain what you really meant. Don't defend what you intended to write. Don't go into the process of letting someone see what you've written with expectations of acceptance - or of rejection.

Go into the process of exposing your ego-child with the intention of discovering what needs changing -- because something always does. It isn't about winning or losing. It's about finding yourself inside others.

Use the 5 of Swords as a model for every dialogue based scene you write because here, in this process, not only is strength of character revealed but your character's true motivations -- possibly unknown to him -- become clearly evident.

What's true of characters is true in life as well. That's why stories are so engrossing.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Monday, September 10, 2007

SAME BUT DIFFERENT: Building Memorable Characters while Breaking Boundaries

I’m going to be in Tampa, FL next week, teaching a characterization workshop at the Wizards of Words conference, so I thought I’d toss out a few of the ideas and concepts I’ll be using. Because this is the Alien Romances blog, I’m going to confine myself here to the speculative fiction genres. In the Tampa workshop, I’ll be talking all across the board.

So, what’s makes a memorable character in commercial genre speculative fiction? What can an author do when crafting her male protagonist, her female arch-villain, her you-name-it, not-of-this-universe sidekick and make that character seem real enough that the reader wants to add him, her or it to her holiday card list?

One of the first thing you have to know when writing fiction is that there is no one perfect, one-size-fits-all answer. You’re never going to create a character that everyone adores. It’s just not going to happen. What you should be trying to do is craft a character that the readers of your kind of story will understand, relate to and either want to befriend or kill. Figuratively, speaking.

That means you have to understand 1) the expectations of your reader and 2) the expectations of the genre. What makes a protagonist work in a cozy mystery might not be the same thing that works in a quest fantasy.

Readers (and agents and editors) often say they want something new and fresh, but it still has to be new and fresh without the constraints of the genre because people—readers—are creatures of habit. You walk into a Chinese restaurant, you expect to be served Chinese food. If the waiter plops Baked Ziti with Bolognese sauce in front of you, and a glass of chianti, you’re not going to be happy. (Well, the glass of chianti would make me happy no matter where I was, but I digress…).

It’s the same thing with genre fiction. Fantasy stories—let’s stick with quest here—are often populated by characters in medieval type garb, bearing medieval type weaponry and espousing medieval type philosophies. That doesn’t mean you can’t write a quest fantasy unless you write medieval. It means know when you’re working to type, and know when you’re working against it. Know the expectations of the genre before you go and break them because readers seeking a fantasy quest story will expect a certain type of character—they’re actively seeking that type of character to identify with. Chocolate is supposed to taste like chocolate, you know?

But, ah—then—there’s black raspberry chocolate chip. Same thing but different. Fresh, original and yet the same. (And if you don’t know where to find black raspberry chocolate chip, which I recently discovered whilst visiting my brother-in-law in Columbus, Ohio, go to http://www.graeters.com/ . But I digress…)

So how does a writer create a black raspberry chocolate chip kind of character in a fantasy story or a space opera adventure? First, know the expectations. Second, morph ‘em.

Notice I didn’t say obliterate ‘em. I said morph ‘em. Stretch them, push them, warp them while at the same time keeping a basic essence that readers of that genre will resonate to.

Two examples: Lisa Shearin’s characters in her MAGIC LOST, TROUBLE FOUND (and its 2008 sequel, ARMED & MAGICAL), and Elaine Corvidae’s characters in WINTER’S ORPHANS and sequels (PRINCE OF ASH, etc.). I’m using these because they’re fantasy and yet very different from each other. But both have intensely memorable characters.

Shearin’s female protagonist is a sorceress/private detective named Raine Benares. Raine’s not the most accomplished sorceress and is prone to act first and think much, much later. But bumbling magicians in fantasy are nothing new. But ah, Raine’s family is also part of organized crime. A medieval mafia. Now, that’s original backstory for a fantasy character! The impetus for much of what Raine does—and the impetus for how other character’s react to her—is solidly built on the fact that she comes from a lineage of pirates and thieves and con-artists.

Shearin does other fun, memorable things with her characters. The setting is dragons and dungeons but her characters speak in a contemporary, very snarky manner. (Why do we always assume and create fantasy as if it was OUR past? It’s the character’s present and who’s to say they can’t have contemporary-sounding slang expressions?)

Shearin also takes the usual notion of goblins and makes them sexy. Yes, they’re still scary and yes, they have fangs. But they’re down-right sexy. Raine even has a goblin lover.

Same but different, you see?

Corvidae’s SHADOW FAE TRILOGY, which starts with WINTER’S ORPHANS, takes the usual medieval and/or wooded setting for a fantasy with elves and sidhe and other fae and sets them in the city. A dank, dark, Victorian-era industrial waterfront city, in fact. There are elevators and hansom cabs. There are brick factories—sweat shops—belching smoke and unwashed workers. There are chimney sweeps. And there’s magic.

One of her key characters is wheelchair-bound. Her fae smoke cigarettes.

Corvidae takes a number of fantasy expectations and morphs them, and morphs them well. And wins numerous awards for doing so. (I also recommend her barbarian—yep, BARBARIAN—fantasy/magic series that starts with TYRANT MOON. Don’t think “Conan the Barbarian” or you’ll be doing yourself a disservice.)

The other thing you’ll notice is that Corvidae matches her world, her setting to her characters. Her setting fully supports her characterization. That’s why a reader becomes fully immersed in the books.

The key to creating memorable fantasy and SF characters is to craft a character that in essence meets the needs and expectations of the genre while at the same time offers a fresh and original perspective on that type of “person.” Shearin’s Raine Benares could have been just any old sorceress who finds a magic amulet of great power. It still would have been a fun story. And Corvidae’s Mina Cole could have been just another orphan unaware of the fae powers inside her. It still would have been a fun story. But Shearin and Corvidae made sure Raine and Mina were so much more than that. They broke boundaries, they took the given expectations and made them different. They created memorable fantasy characters.

~Linnea

Saturday, September 08, 2007

Don't judge a book by its cover!



Linnea sent me an email with a copy of her cover for Down Home Zombie Blues (see below) Yes there is a resemblence between her cover and my Shooting Star cover.

Which means two great minds in two different art departmens at two different publishers think alike. I have to admit I liked the Red cover for Down Home Zombie Blues also because it reminded me of the heat in the story. The temperature in south Florida where the story takes place is hot and so is the chemistry between Theo and Jorie. I got to read the story before it hits the shelves and it is great!

Its also funny that Linnea mentioned that her publisher is moving her into the romance market. I recommended Games Of Command to one of my readers and finally found it in Sci-fi. I automatically thought romance because of the relationships she builds in her stories. Great world building, great romance and great covers. It all sounds like a complete package to me.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

The Dilemma of Free Will

The October-November issue of the MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION includes a story called "The Star to Every Wandering Barque," by James Stoddard. It begins, "The age of conscience arrived on a Thursday evening in June." Some unknown force (God? benevolent aliens? we aren't told) instantaneously transforms the minds and emotions of every person on Earth. People experience a quiet joy in the beauties of the universe. They feel kind and forgiving toward everyone. In the following weeks and months, all military forces are disbanded, individuals and nations with abundant resources eagerly share with the less fortunate, and money eventually becomes unnecessary because people's needs are fulfilled by willing, rational cooperation. Representatives from all countries work together to address the remaining problems such as disease and natural disasters. Politicians and media outlets tell the truth. (Now, that sounds like a real miracle.) In theological terms, we might say that the effects of Original Sin are obliterated, making everyone perfectly unselfish. Reading through this warm, moving story, I kept waiting for the punch line. What's the catch, I wondered? Surprise, there isn't one. The story ends with the launch of Earth's first starship: "Now. . . we're ready."


And yet this tale raises an unsettling question: Does every individual on the planet spontaneously respond in the same positive way to the mystical experience that begins the story? Or has a powerful entity actually rewired their brains? If the latter, isn't that a violation of human free will? Or would it more closely resemble providing medication to a person suffering from mental illness, thereby restoring the patient to normal and effectively setting him or her free to find his or her true self?


Aldous Huxley's classic BRAVE NEW WORLD portrays a society of perfect happiness brought about by conditioning individuals from birth to be content in their assigned roles and harmoniously related to everyone around them. As you'll remember if you've read the book, a few characters begin to question this ideal world. One of them asks why everyone isn't designed as an Alpha (the group with the highest intelligence). The World Controller replies that an experiment along that line has been tried. A group of Alphas were settled on a deserted island to form their own community. They were far from content, fighting constantly among themselves. The novel inquires whether it's preferable to be perfectly happy as a scientifically designed unit in a planned society or to have free will even at the cost of potential unhappiness.


Behaviorist psychologist B. F. Skinner seemed to think free will was overrated, if not an illusion to begin with, as illustrated by the provocative title of his book BEYOND FREEDOM AND DIGNITY. The fictional counterpart to this treatise is his utopian novel WALDEN TWO, which presents an experimental community of perfectly conditioned people as a thoroughly positive thing.


Venturing into theology, we've all read explanations of the world's miseries in terms that attribute them, at least in part, to human free will. The Deity presumably considers sin and unhappiness a rational price to pay for giving our species the dignity of free choice. Mark Twain, in one of the essays in his posthumous collection LETTERS FROM THE EARTH, seems to think free will is overrated, too. He sardonically asks why anyone would prefer a watch that's sure to go wrong over one that can never go wrong. Would the Creator—or a group of super-powerful, benevolent aliens—be justified in overriding our freedom of choice in order to make (as an old hymn says) “all men good and wise” and presumably happy? Or does the freedom to make our own mistakes constitute an essential part of being human?



Tuesday, September 04, 2007

The 4 of Swords - Gestation

Folks:

This is the 4th blog installment (see previous Tuesdays) on the Tarot.

Updated and expanded compilation of all these Tarot Just For Writers entries is now available on Kindle:
The Wands and Cups Volumes and  the Swords and Pentacles Volumes, are now all available separately on Kindle.  The 5 Volumes combined are also available on Kindle as one book, cheaper than buying them individually.
The Not So Minor Arcana: Never Cross A Palm With Silver Aug 30, 2015 99 cents
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The Not So Minor Arcana: Wands Sept. 1, 2015  99 cents
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The Not So Minor Arcana: Cups Sept. 11, 2015 99 cents
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The Not So Minor Arcana: Swords  Sept. 17, 2015 99 cents
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The Not So Minor Arcana: Pentacles  Sept. 21, 2015 99 cents
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The Not So Minor Arcana: Books 1-5 combined Sept. 24, 2015 $3.25
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This series is designed not for the beginner or the advanced student, but for the intermediate student and specifically for writers doing worldbuilding..

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As you brought your idea-energy through the Three of Swords, you made the commitment to this project -- whatever it is.

For a writer it's a story. In order to write this story, you must not-write all the others in your idea-file. You are going to invest the irreplaceable capital of your life, the hours of your day, your creative juices, into this one project and therefore not in any other.

Completing this project will change you, your identity, and narrow the field of choices before you for the rest of your life.

As it is for an actor who becomes "type cast," your life will never be the same again You have "lost" something, or sacrificed something, narrowed your options in order to bring this artwork into existence.

Swords represent thoughts, decisions, words, and deeds - actions.

The project that is committed to in the Three of Swords could be a marriage, having a baby, adopting a child, buying a house, being your parent's executor, buying a car, saving to take a trip around the world after you retire, choosing a major in college, taking a magical Initiation, floating a loan to open a business, etc.

Any project requires commitment for success, and therefore requires forsaking all other projects. You make that sort of choice when you choose to take this particular incarnation -- a choice you can't change until it's all done and over with and you get to go back and start over (in Kaballah reincarnation is the norm). But you don't start over free and clear -- you still have this life on your record. And in this life, you still have consequences from past lives to deal with.
If you have not been capable of commitment before - the 4 of Swords may be a totally new experience for your soul. (writers: consider the dramatic potential in that!)

In the Three of Swords the field of action is narrowed, focused, brought to a white-heat of intensity. The energy is squeezed through an aperature and comes out fast and hard -- visualize a wide river squeezing down to spill over a narrow waterfall.

Now visualize that waterfall hitting a pond, and spreading out into a wide placid lake.

That wide, placid lake is in the process that the 4 of Swords represents - the action of growth.

Or take the reproductive analogy, gestation. There is flirting (Ace of Swords), courtship (Two of Swords), Commitment/marriage/consumation (Three of Swords), and now in 4 of Swords, pregnancy, gestation. A long, quiet time of growth.

Writers often say, while they are spending ridiculously long hours at the computer, that they are "with book." It is a compelling, absorbing, monopolizing experience, just like being pregnant.
In the chapter on the Three of Swords, I noted --

"The Jacob's Ladder diagram, the basic structure behind the Tarot deck, is a cascade of 4 interlaced Tree of Life diagrams (see The Biblical Tarot: Never Cross A Palm With Silver) - one diagram for each of the four "worlds" or levels of reality represented by a Suit.

There are four Worlds of the Kaballah, four letters in the Divine Name, four variables necessary to create a Boolean algebra and four forces that hold the world together (the forces physicists want to combine into a Unified Field Theory).

Our manifest reality has three spacial dimensions and Time. See my reviews column

(http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/

for January to June 2007 for a series on how the Soul enters manifestation through Time."

The core non-verbalizable meaning of each Minor Arcana Tarot card is a blend of the Gematria (or numerology) behind the number of the card and the "World" or Suit of the card.

Other disciplines, such as astrology, have symbols that represent such combinations of symbols.
For example, astrologers associate the Fours of the Tarot with the kind of influence they expect of the planet Jupiter: growth, inclusion, benevolence, The King on His Throne dispensing Justice, making treaties, including foreigners in relationship.

Jupiter is associated with Saggitarius -- the natural 9th House -- which is all about higher education, foreign travel that "broadens" the mind, philosophy, and a jovial sort of pure honesty that comes from affably including everyone in your Identity.

The 9th House (and thus Jupiter) is about the thought processes of other people, of society, of the group minds you belong to. The 9th House and thus Jupiter is about the expression of the philosopical and religious values of society -- the larger group you, as an individual, must include yourself in -- and be included into.

Four is the foundation of our "four-square" manifest reality. Therefore, when you bring energy down to the level of FOUR, you hit a resonance that induces vibration in every level of reality, and every level of your life.

Think of a perfectly tuned guitar. Pluck one E string and the other E string resonates -- i.e. picks up energy and begins to vibrate and produce sound even if you didn't touch it.

That's how the universe as a whole works. Touch one thing -- other things on the same wavelength absorb energy by induction, without being touched.

In the case of the guitar, the medium that transmits the energy is air. In the case of the universe, it's something else -- maybe "soul" would be the best name, maybe ectoplasm or phlogiston -- but it's the substrata of the universe.

For more on how this musical analogy works with the structure of fiction that lets authors convey emotion to readers/viewers, see my April 2007 review column:

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2007/

So here in the 4 of Swords action sets off ripples that reach to the four corners of the the world.
Swords are Actions. The "action" that can be expressed in the 4 is GROWTH.

Growth is a thing you do when you're apparently sitting still (kids grow during sleep; people sit still to study and grow mentally).

Thus the image on the 4 of Swords is the warrior retired from the field of battle but he's not actually doing nothing. He's healing. Healing grows new muscle and skin, new bone. What's been cut away in Three Swords regenerates here in a new form - scar tissue, stronger, harder, more durable - i.e. Strength of Character.

As the novel you are writing grows, the pagecount gets longer and longer. But you still don't have a novel to send to market. It's just growing. You feel like you're standing still.

Think of the large, placid lake receiving the waterfall. More and more water enters the lake, spreads out, and grows the lake. There may be fish living in the lake, more and more fish as the lake gets bigger. Birds, insects, other animals come -- the lake LIVES, but it is stillness incarnate.

After you buy a house, there is a long period of stillness where you are adjusting the budget to include that mortgage payment. Fewer dinners out, movies, plane trips. Life quiets down -- but assets are pouring into equity in the house. That's the stage of 4 Swords.

After you have a child, life likewise becomes more "quiet" amidst the noise -- assets are pouring into raising this infant to school age.

After you get married, there's the quiet period of growth in Relationship that precedes the first real fight (5 Swords).

After you choose your major in college, there's the quiet period of long hard study days when all the rest of your life gets put on hold (except for frat parties of course -- eventually, you'll see that period as "quiet" too).

After you open a business, there's the long hard pull when you put all your strength into building the business but see nothing much happening.

After every major life-choice, there is this FOUR period of stillness during growth, a stillness that is pregnant with potential.

And that stillness can become so wearing that you begin to feel you've made the wrong choice in the Three of Swords process.

Every last bit of your life blood and substance is pouring into this project, and you see no change, or (as in pregnancy) you're so exhausted from it that you can't wait for it to be OVER already!
That is the point at which you know a good part of the energy you've poured into your project is energizing the entire universe -- like trying to heat the house with the windows open to a snowstorm.

Every choice, every action, every thought, every decision echoes throughout all reality like the guitar E string induction process.

Every single flickering thought affects all of creation -- that's the theory behind the Jacob's Ladder diagram which is the foundation of Tarot. Your efforts are indeed moving the whole world. That's not my theory, just my way of stating a pervasive Kaballah theory to get you ready to take the leap into advanced Tarot study.

Consider how much easier it is to do anything in a group that's focused on doing what you're doing -- Weight Watchers' meetings, Breast Cancer support groups, political rallies, exercise classes. Their thoughts are energizing you as your thoughts are energizing them.

In a novel plot, the writer has to handle this 4 Swords-process carefully because the apparent stillness can get boring.

If your plot explores 4-Swords stage in too much detail, you can generate a "hung hero" (a protagonist who can't do anything to change his situation.) The trick to handling the 4-process part of a plot is to let the protagonist LEARN -- (i.e. include; Jupiter) -- learn a philosophical point of view, learn how another person feels, learn some hidden truth of the situation -- all of which eventually changes his/her own plans.

Let your protagonist "include" more in his/her world-view and grow because of it, and your reader will not get bored. (In script writing, this is called the character Arc.)

When GROWTH has become complete, gestation is finished, the last final exam is taken, the first year of declaring a profit is here, you've written The End, then Tarot readings will produce the FOUR OF SWORDS REVERSED.

That huge placid lake fed by the floodwater runoff over the waterfall -- gets too large for its basin and spills over the next cliff down the mountain, or breaks its banks and becomes a river heading out across a meadow, cutting a new valley in the world.

Because of the nature of GROWTH (Jupiter), the transition from absolute stillness to furious activity can be a powerful, even violent, outburst - like a busting balloon. This happens if the transition has been resisted too long and too much energy has poured in.

The Four of Swords stage of activity -- the building of potential energy by pouring all resources into a project -- can end gracefully if it ends at the right moment.

That moment is often marked on the unseen or psychic level by the return or splashback of the energy that bled away into other 4's out at the ends of the universe.

Remember the E strings on the guitar transferring energy by induction? When some of that energy that moved from the struck string to the unstruck string comes back to the struck string, it's time for the next note in the song.

When the Universe starts to give you feedback on your efforts on any project which is in the stillness phase of growth, it's time to start moving again.

Three years after you buy a house, you've gotten some raises, made some extra payments on the mortgage, paid down your credit cards -- now go out for dinner and a movie, take a vacation, support a charity, become active again.

When you've written THE END, go celebrate, then dig in to the rewrite phase and start looking hard at current markets to shape the material for them.

When the baby finally enrolls in kindergarten, go job hunting with an eye to a new career.
But now that growth is finished, don't expect to move on without meeting opposition.

The opposition met in the 5 of Swords will test the validity and completeness of this gestation process -- have you produced something of value or only grown soft, fat and lazy?


Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Monday, September 03, 2007

The Down Home Zombie Blues gets a Facelift

Inevitably, just when I finish a bunch of promo shhhhtuff for my upcoming release, The Down Home Zombie Blues, I'm informed by my publisher that I have a brand new cover in a completely different style and color. (This is Welcome To My World of Being An Author, Part 10000...). All those bookmarks and business cards I ordered with the old red cover? Ads I bought in magazines--all showing the old red cover? Ka-ching. Ka-money down the drain. Okay, not completely. I was blessedly fortunate to catch two mag ads just before "closing date" and stayed up into the wee hours redoing them with the new cover (one of the advantages of being a graphic artist AND an author).

But all the promo material already OUT THERE... Ah well.

I really like the new cover. I liked the old cover but Bantam's trying to reposition me into the romance market and I think the new cover accomplishes that. (Do you? Post your thoughts.) At least, it's BLUE. I always wondered why I had a red cover for a book entitled THE DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES. (I know--red sells, but still).

Here's the new cover:

and the old one:


I've been told the new cover will be the template for all future Linnea Sinclair covers, so that's kinda of cool (I think--do you?).

I have redone the book video posted on my site but not the one on MySpace. I'm deep in deadline hell on SHADES OF DARK and there's only so much artwork I can get done in one fell swoop (working with large art files is very time-consuming and makes my computer utter strange grunting and groaning noises...)

So that's Monday's scoop, from where I lounge, poolside, at the Home For the Perpetually Confused.

Hugs all, ~Linnea

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Want sex... with Wolverine?

Of course, I am not in a position to offer you the Hugh Jackman mutant character, but he's a better example of a man with an abnormal hand than the prosthetic or bionic hands of Darth Vader and cool hand Luke Skywalker.

If you look carefully, you'll find characters with warhands in all my books going back to my 1995 copyright of Forced Mate, and to Mating Net in 2004, but they are not heroes, and no heroine is asked to go to bed with them.

Are romance readers ready for a hero equipped like some species of male crab, (where the claw used to beckon and threaten is larger and more brightly colored and more sharply serrated than the other claw)?

Well, are you?

Male readers, this question isn't really aimed at you! But I'd be happy to know if you could identify, and whether you think having one big hand with spikes sticking out, and a erectile leathery cuff-frill (imagine having a umbrella on one wrist) would interfere with your prowess in the sack.

I need to know right now because in the book due to my editor tomorrow (I have revision time) I have to either give the hero of the next book a warhand, or else explain why he does not have one.

Saturday, September 01, 2007

Back to the Future

I'm back. The past month has been hard. I've been out promoting my historical release, Rising Wind, trying to finish up Twist and spent a lot of time sitting in the hospital with my dad who got suddenly sick. He's fine now. But my time, so precious, suddenly got away from me.

Time is like money. You spend what you got. My former boss used to compare life to a ride. Everyday you get on the ride. Every day you pull a ticket out of your pocket. One day you reach in your pocket and there's no ticket. No more ride. You're out of time.

So I'm having all these time dilemnas while writing Twist,a time travel story. Yep, ran out of time. My deadline is today and I still have another 10,000 words or so to write. Luckily my editor gave me a bit more time to finish it. Time which is cutting into my next deadline.

I often wish I could stop time when I'm writing. Just long enough for me to get the book done so I could do some other things. Like unpack all the boxes piled up in my office from the move last summer. To finish all my crafty projects like quilting and scrapbooking. To go on trips.

If only I had more time...