The North Wind Speaks (part 24)

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But when we ask

(continued tomorrow)


And mea culpa . . .

I lost my phone yesterday. The leaf-story pictures were on it, so I was not able to upload them to my blog in a timely manner. I apologize for that. Today's (Fridaay's) blog will be posted this afternoon.


And today's diagrams . . .

These are the last of the lot. After this, I know where the plot is going and don't need to scry into the future with diagrams.

The top diagram shows the relationship between Aerth, Faerie, and the Empyrean. Souls move from Aerth to Faerie, dragons from the Empyrean to Faerie, and trains connect the three worlds. It didn't occur to me until just now that the three worlds are engaged in their version of the triangular trade that is the chief cause of America's original sin--slavery. But the past extends its roots deep into the present.

The middle diagram shows a simplified relationship of Earth, Air, and Sea. Though, as my notation says, in actuality The relationship goes beyond complex.

The bottom diagram plots Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos.  As the notation says:

One spews

 One chews

     One mops up

All three diagrams are probably simply aspects of the One True Diagram. But I'd be lying if I said I could map the elements against the worlds against the fates. So that will have to remain unexplained.

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Tales of Old Earth -- E-Book Sale Saturday!

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I've just been told that the e-book of Tales of Old Earth will go on sale this Saturday for one day only.

So on Saturday, October 25, you can buy it for only $2.99.

This is a great opportunity for ebook readers who are not familiar with my short fiction but would like to be. You know who you are.

Here's the table of contents:

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The Very Pulse of the Machine

The Dead       

Scherzo with Tyrannosaur   

 

Ancient Engines         

North of Diddy-Wah-Diddy 

The Mask      

Mother Grasshopper 

Riding the Giganotosaur  

      

Wild Minds  

  

The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O 

Microcosmic Dog

In Concert   

   

Radiant Doors

Ice Age         

  

Walking Out   

The Changeling's Tale

Midnight Express    

  

The Wisdom of Old Earth     

Radio Waves

Which I feel, and I hope you agree, is a lot of fiction for the money.

And "The North Wind Speaks" (part 23) . . .

there is

to know.

And today's diagram . . .

This is a simple diagram showing Cat's and Raven's jaunt into the past. It starts and ends at the Witch House,  descends into Brocielande Station, proceeds to the Great River, crosses the Bridge and finally comes to the Village, there to encounter both Enna and the elders. You can tell I have a good idea of what is to come by how tidy it all looks.

Various thoughts are thrown off by the diagram and at teh bottom of the page is a rather rudimentary sketch of the Ruins of Ys. I had not yet a clear idea of what Cat would find when she gained her goal.

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The North Wind Speaks (part 22)

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We know everything

(continued tomorrow0


And today's diagram . . .

Here, scrawled because the writing is coming fast, is a quick diagram of the Bombing of Bocielande Station section, which is, as I wrote inside the red circle, the atrocity at the heart of the novels. It begins with The last Esso station , its back-lit [sign] sinking below the trees like the setting moon. (Extra points to anyone who recognizes that pop-art icon.) Then it goes Into the Fairy Tale Woods and into the past to Brocielande Station. From there, the action goes into the Debatable Hills and then makes a return to the Fairy Tale Woods, of course.

Not that I call them that in the novel.

All of which is in order to introduce Will to Blind Enna.

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Home from Capclave

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I'm home from Capclave and can report that I had a very pleasant time. Some of my seven panels were better than others but impartial witnesses told me that they were all good. (This is not bragging on my part; it takes all the panelists working together to make one of these things fly.)

I heard that part of the reason the panels worked so well was that the Program committee removed one track of programming, resulting in larger audiences at all the panels. And there is nothing that will make a panel work half so well as an engaged audience. Except when two of the panelists get so angry with each other that they threaten to begin slamming each other with the folding chairs. But I haven't been involved in that kind of melee for years.

For my money, the best panels were the two dinosaur panels featuring paleontologists Tom Holtz and Michael Brett-Surman. Partly because they're both engaging speakers but mostly because their knowledge of the subject was encyclopedic. I was on one panel and Robert Sawyer (who, remember, originally intended to become a paleontologist himself) was on both. Before the one we both sat on, we agreed that our role was mostly to keep our mouths shut and ask respectful questions.

Not easy for either of us, but we managed.

And "The North Wind Speaks" (part 21) . . .

posed by a sphinx?

(continued tomorrow)


And today's diagram . . .

In this diagram I show all the major influences on Cat (and Helen) at the point shortly before she journeys to Ys. Esme and Raven, of course. Barquentine and Saoirse, regrettably. The Baldwynn and the Goddess inevitably. Remarkably, Fingolfinrhod and Dahut merc'h Gradlon haven't been factored in. Even more surprisingly, I seem to have been toying with the possibility of dangling a romance between Cat (at that time Kate Gallowglass) and Barquentine before the reader. Anybody who's read the The Iron Dragon's Mother knows how implausible that would be. (Though I was playing with the tropes of the Romance genre there.)

And the purpose of the diagram? To make certain I wasn't overlooking anybody. There were a lot of characters in play by then.


Above (l-r) Tom Holtz, dodo, Michael Brett-Surman.

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The North Wind Speaks (part 20)

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a cunning riddle

(continued tomorrow)


And today . . .

There is no diagram today.  Consider this a day of rest.

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The North Wind Speaks (part 19)

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The answer to

And today's diagram . . .

This one's easy. It's an organization cart for the Conspiracy.  If you haven't read the novel, you should avoid reading the chart because it does give away some of the plot.

At the top is an absentee Chief Conspiratorial Officer. Under whom are two co-equals, the Chief Acting Head and the Temporary Chief Officer.  (They became the Acting Chief Conspirator and Temporary Head Conspirator in the novel.)  Beneath them are Shipping and REceiving, Employee resources (Lord Pleiades) , the Department of Corruption (A. Frowst) and the Department of Persecution (J. Squarefoot) The departments of Research and Blackmail are under the Department of Corruption. Clerical & Data Entry (Missy Argent) answers to both Corruption and Persecution and thus can play one off against he other. At the very bottom are Clerical Services (Lolly Underpol) and Computers.

Back when I worked for the National Solar Heating and Cooling Information Center, I was answerable to two dotted-line bosses and, let me tell you, it was a strange situation to be in.

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"Cloud" in Asimov's Science Fiction

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I'm in print again! This time, it's "Cloud" in the November/December issue of Asimov's Science Fiction.

I'm afraid the cover is a little misleading. "Cloud" is not a hard-science tale of survival featuring an astronaut descending through the atmosphere of a gas giant, reliant only on quick wits and a vacuum suit. Alas. After seeing the artwork, I can't help feeling a little guilty about that. Maybe I should write that cover story someday.

Nevertheless, I am proud of the story. It wasn't easy creating a world that exists on the surface of an enormous cloud with New York City at its apex. In fact, it took me a couple of years to write--or, rather, to discover exactly why I was writing a tale of World-as-Cloud. But it came out well, I think, and now readers have the opportunity to make up their own minds about it.


And today's diagram . . .

I've mentioned before that a common development in recent-ish literature is the fantasy novel where the hero/heroine one by one acquires a surrogate family. If you doubt this is a real thing, just take a look at Phil and Kaja Foglio's ongoing online graphic novel Girl Genius (you can find it here) and count the number of allies currently surrounding her.

I did something similar with The Iron Dragon's Mother. (I could hardly avoid it, given that it has a substrate of commentary on what fantasy is and should be.) But I flipped it by using the myth of Inanna as a structural model for the second half of the novel. When the goddess Inanna descended to the underworld, she had to lose, one by one, her armor, her sources of power, her clothing, and, ultimately, her life. Only then could she rise again.

This chart (a timeline reading from top to bottom) catalogs everything that Cat has lost and gained, in order to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything. Because it's only when she's lost everything, including her new name, that she can find a proper resolution to the novel.

Mind you, when that resolution arrived it came as a surprise to me. But given all that Caitlin had paid for it, it was the only one that made sense.


And as always . . .

I'm on the road again. If you're going to be at Capclave this weekend, be sure o say hello.

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