What, no crows?

 Like... ummm...

A little scary, yes? Don't worry, it's just this:

Artwork around the corner from my house.

 As far as I can tell, there are no crows in Chiang Mai. There are crows in Thailand, a few species in fact, but evidently they have not taken over the urban environment the way Pacific NW crows have. No giant murders roosting in the downtown buildings and streaming across the sky at dawn and evening... 

I don't have any pictures of Chiang Mai birds (birds are hard to photograph!) but I did a little exploring with the help of the Merlin Bird ID app. One of Merlin's nice features is it can identify birds by sound. Sadly, the database is not very complete: it said it could only sound ID about 30% of the birds in the Chiang Mai area.

Anyway. Boring birds first: rock dove (pigeon), common myna, red jungle fowl. No, seriously. People all over Chaing Mai keep chickens in (and out of) their yards, and a lot of them look just like this: 

(image from Wikipedia)

Very close to wild type.

Spotted dove: this is a SE Asian endemic, very common in the city, and seems to coexist easily with the pigeons. This was the first bird I got by sound ID, the very first morning in the city. Picture from Wikipedia.

 

 Red-whiskered bulbul

 

 Also ID'd this one by sound: it seems to be quite common. I did get a good look at one but this image is also from Wikipedia.

Common kingfisher. I actually ID'd this one by sight. Can't mistake that flash of brilliant blue. Wikipedia image

 

Oriental magpie-robin (this is a very strange name for a bird, in many ways): also ID'd by sound but I did get to see one. Wikipedia image.

Miscellaneous swifts and swallows, all along the river: couldn't get a good enough look to tell what kind, and sound ID was not helpful.

And this:

 

This purports to be an Asian Koel. These birds are apparently everywhere in Chiang Mai: any place, any daylight hour, you're likely to hear them. But they're fiendishly hard to see! Merlin and other sources describe them as preferring the interiors of large trees with thick foliage - you don't see them sitting out on telephone wires, or anything like this.

This led me to declare, about three weeks in, that there is actually No Such Bird. I complained about a recurring auditory hallucination and muttered darkly "Birds aren't real..."

We did finally see one on our last full day in the city. 

Back in Portland, I saw an old friend today whom I'm really going to miss...

This fella lives at 18th and Alberta and has watched over the neighborhood for many years.

Take care, buddy...

Canals, rivers, floods

 Mentioned earlier that I had no idea about the canals, and generally there being water everywhere. I have to remember Thailand is in the wet tropics, not the dry tropics.

Case in point: The Mae Ping River flows through Chiang Mai from north to south. It doesn't look like much: significantly smaller than the Willamette, for example. But this river flooded in October 2024, and put a huge swath of Chiang Mai underwater.

Once we knew to look, the damage was visible everywhere. Sidewalks were heaved, storm drains filled in with silt and debris. The Mae Ping, unlike Pacific NW rivers, carries a huge amount of silt, and once the water receded there was a thick layer of dirt everywhere.  In places you can see big mounds of it shoveled up out of the street and out of people's homes, and just left .

In the park where I took the picture of the flame tree, there's a small canal with fountains. The first few times we went there, the canal was dry and the bottom was full of dried mud, which was being dug out (bucket by bucket). The last time we stopped by there, the canal was full of water and the fountain was running again.

Here's a thing: Chiang Mai is flat. It's the flattest place I've ever lived, except maybe Minneapolis. We walked a lot (a lot even for me), and google maps walking directions inevitably said "Mostly flat." Topo maps of the city show basically no relief. So when the river came over its banks, which are diked up above the surrounding streets, it spread out... and spread out, and spread out.

And all the canals. I'm not kidding, there are nearly as many canals as main streets. They all apparently connect back to the Mae Ping, but with so little slope I am not sure how they maintain flow. There are pumping stations on at least some of the canals, for example around the old city and in the little park, so I guess the whole network keeps itself moving somehow.

Chiang Mai’s Canals

Little dragons, sleeping in the sun

you seem so tame. What works of hands,

what years of labor shaped this land?

Who knew when to call it done?

Do these sleeping dragons dream

of flowing free across the valleys

where now wind crooked streets and alleys?

Do canals remember they were streams?

Little dragons, sleeping in the mud,

caged in canals cut to human shape

do you hold a long longing for escape?

Do you dream thunder and wake in flood?

 

 I cannot find anything about the history of these canals but I'm guessing the local peoples have been digging for irrigation and flood control since the beginning of the agricultural age. Chiang Mai was founded in 1296, and presumably the canal that moats the old city (which was the original city) was started around then and completed some years later. But I'm guessing the canal that brings water to the moat, called Khlong Mae Kha, at least partially predates the city, and was extended and expanded to supply the moat.

The Old City

 If you pull up Chiang Mai on google map and zoom in a little, you'll immediately see a perfect square. In the middle of a city whose streets are emphatically not straight. What's up with that?

It turns out the old city of Chiang Mai was surrounded by a canal that served as a moat, and inside that, was a massive brick wall. The wall is now mostly ruined, but the canal is still there.

Old City. northeast corner:

You can see a bit of the brick wall on the right. Same, but further back:

These trees are along the east side. I worry about the second one, it looks like it's going to fall into the canal if it isn't propped up or something.

 

And about that wall...

 not everyone obeys instructions...

 But you have to admire the camouflage.

Old City, North Gate:

 Ruined, yet stately, ancient monument. With cute cheesy plastic elephant statues - because that's how this city rolls. How could I not love it here?

Lastly - this is a relief map of the old city, with several of the important buildings shown in miniature. A little difficult to make out in the mix of light and shade.

 

Trees in Chiang Mai

Something in my bones feels at home in the tropics. And some trees greet me as old friends.

 This is a Madagascar flamboyant. When it blooms, it will be crowned with fire. These trees carpeted the hills in parts of Tanzania.

Indian almond, called mkungu in Swahili. They seem to grow taller here. Noted for being one of the few tropical deciduous trees: you can see here that half the leaves are red, and many have fallen.

 

Frangipani. Lots of it around town, and many of the trees are like the ones I remember from Tanzania and also common ornamentals in Hawai'i. But the kind (species? cultivar?) that is most common here is a little different than I remember: the trunks are thicker, and the bark is a very shiny silver-grey, leaves more oblong and less pointed.

And some new friends...

 This is called Indian flame tree. This is in a park not far from our hotel. The roof belongs to a little pavilion where Todd and I practiced martial arts together.

 Female fig tree: look at all the fruit!

 Male fig tree. On the right is part of the canal around the the Old City: more on this in the next post...

Yesterday We Saw Elephants

 

 

This is at an elephant rescue and sanctuary in the mountains to the west of the city. Getting there was... hair-raising. I have not seen hairpin bends like that since the Rift wall through northern Tanzania.

But the road was paved (at least nominally) the whole way, which is more than I could say for most of the roads in Tanzania. They were doing repair work in places, as it's clear the roads wash out during the rainy season.

So many temples...

 According to Wikipedia, Chiang Mai and the surrounding area are home to more than 300 temples. Certainly we have seen a lot: in the old city, there was one literally every couple of blocks, and they're sprinkled thickly throughout the rest of the city.

Gate to a temple complex, Wat Chai Mongkhon, built to resemble a stupa. Many of the temples we've seen have old (ancient) stupas on the grounds. Here's what that gate looks like from the inside:

 

The amount of land occupied by, and the labor and expense of maintaining, these temples... it's phenomenal. And what's more, they seem to be mostly working temples not just tourist attractions. We've heard sutras being recited and seen people praying. We joked that you could earn a lifetime of merit by visiting and praying in every temple in Chiang Mai - if you did it all on foot, it could take weeks.

Besides the religious functions, temple complexes seem to serve as neighborhood market and gathering places. This is a view of the courtyard at Wat Chai Mongkhon:

Food and merchandise stalls in the background on the left. Parking spaces to the right. Further around to the right there's a shop that sells candles and incense for people to offer in and outside the shrine:

 

You can see there's a constant flow of people lighting candles here. The candle in the front row of the left-hand burner, near the center, is one I lit to pray for our safe and speedy return to this place.
 

 

Religion seems woven into daily life here, in a way I have not seen anywhere else I've traveled. Many houses have little shrines in the front yard, like elaborate birdhouses, lovingly decorated, and often with fresh offerings of food or incense. And there are public shrines dotted around, at major intersections or in the parks and plazas where the night markets happen. Again, you often see offerings there: people use these shrines.

 This shrine happens to be outside the Chiang Mai Marriott:

 

I don't have a lot of temple pictures, because... visually they're, well, kind of overwhelming. Thais have apparently never met a color they didn't like. The proportions of the buildings and statues are exquisite, but the colors are dizzying until you get used to it. This is from the grounds of a temple in the old city:

Temple and Town

Temple courtyard

Village square

Place of commerce

House of prayer.

House of worship

Marketplace

Daily life in

Sacred space.

Street views

 Our hotel

The street it's on

It seems to be a pretty typical neighborhood street.

First full day in Chiang Mai

 So... Coffee. So far, seems to be high quality. We guess that it's largely imported from Vietnam. They have all the espresso drinks you find anywhere, plus f course the famous Thai iced coffee. Plus, something we have not seen anywhere else: Orange coffee. Coffee with some kind of orange concentrate - it's not orange syrup, it's unsweetened, which is nice.

Also, many many tea drinks and bubble tea drinks.

Chiang Mai reminds me of Dar es Salaam, in being a city that was not really built for cars. There's nothing resembling a grid, and many of the streets are tiny. Also, there's something about the architecture that I can't quite put my finger on.

This is a typical house - on a side street not far from our hotel

And because I promised - this is a bridge over the Ping River. It runs through the city from north to south. Much smaller than the Willamette.

We've been making some observations about the sense of ornamentation on display in Chiang Mai, that I will post about later.

View from my office window

 looking almost straight up

A rare sunny January day in Portland. This view inspired my poem "Paper Birches."

What to keep, what to keep...

 A couple times per year, I go through all my stuff. By "stuff" I mean desk ornaments, trinkets, all the little things that decorate my personal/work space. Some things I like to have handy, to run my fingers over when I'm thinking, or just idly. Some I like to have around, but don't need to have within sight or within reach all the time.

Items get rotated in and out of storage, though there are a few that are always on my desk.

Winter break and New Year is one of the times that this usually happens; another is during summer, when I have some free time and the days are long. This year, it's all different. I'm looking through my stuff and deciding: what am I going to keep?

"Keep" means - eventually - "take to Thailand." At some point there will be a big crate or something shipped over. For this trip, we're of course limited to what the airlines will carry without charging us an arm and a leg (not much). So really, it's premature: nothing need be disposed of yet, and I can wait to make these decisions until after the pathfinding.

But that doesn't mean I don't think about it. 

Willamette

 Before you read any further, say it aloud: "Wi-LA-mut"

The name is apparently either Clackamas or Kalapuya in origin, and one possible meaning is "Where the river ripples and runs fast." This river has been my companion in many contemplative hours.

Looking west across the river: Steel Bridge to the right, the north end of Waterfront Park across the way with downtown beyond. I'm standing on the Esplanade, at the top of the stairs leading down to the Steel Bridge's lower deck and pedestrian/bicycle crossing.

Looking south from the same spot: Burnside Bridge in the middle distance. Stormy day.

The Tilikum Bridge seen from the east end near OMSI. Public transit, bike, and pedestrian only.

To me this bridge represents so much of what we aspired our city to be. At the same time, how far we've fallen. I don't see funding for a project like this being available again any time soon.

Visiting Tilikum reminds me... three lines of my poetry are engraved in sidewalk blocks alongside the Orange Line light rail that passes over this bridge. One is at this stop: "electric lines charged full of souls."

Looking south from Tilikum. Ross Island Bridge, Ross Island, and the Willamette.

At the coast this summer

 The sun was setting...

...and the reflections twinkled like candles underwater

This was at Rockaway Beach, a little north of Tillamook.

My beautiful, but sociopathic, rosebush

I am serious. Every time I go near it, it tries to kill me. It's an heirloom variety, smells wonderful, has razor-sharp hooked thorns.

These photos are from August 2021, the first day of rain, the drought-breaker:

 

It starts blooming in May/June and would bloom straight through the summer if I watered it. Since I don't, it usually goes dormant when it gets really dry, and then starts up again in the fall. This photo is from December 2021:

The water tower in the background is a local landmark.

A new adventure

I started this blog to track my fiction writing (as opposed to my poetry). But I haven't written much fiction in a long time, and it was never really more than a sideline for me.

So I'm repurposing the blog to chronicle a real life adventure: My husband and I are going to Thailand. In a couple of weeks. Probably permanently.

This is... big. I first came to Portland in the fall of 1982, for college. That was (does math) 42 years ago. I went away to grad school and came back; overall, though, I've lived in this city for nearly forty years and that's two-thirds of my life. We've lived in our house since 1998, I've been at my job since 2001, I've been involved in different community volunteer stuff on and off since at least 2012. That's a lot of roots.

On the other hand, I grew up as an expatriate in Tanzania and part of me has never really settled, here, or anywhere. Part of me thinks the sun should be overhead at noon, and tolerates cold weather only grudgingly. Part of me yearns for warm oceans (have you ever tried the Pacific off the Oregon coast? Brutal!) and coral sand and fresh tropical fruits.

And part of me just wants to go somewhere new. The last time that happened was fall 2019, when I went to Vancouver (BC, not WA). Even that wasn't really new, I had been there before though not in a long time, but I was there long enough to explore and see new things. Before that, I have no idea.

Adventure!

I feel that I should capture the starting point: as a data scientist and evaluator, you must have baseline data. So, expect some pix of our house and neighborhood before the trip starts.

The New Vanport Flood

For interest's sake. Below is a piece I wrote back in 2006:

All that summer our neighborhood echoed with the sound of trucks. West of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and north of the Alameda Ridge, cranes were pulling down buildings; bulldozers tore out foundations and filled in basements. Dump trucks rumbled along all the major eastbound streets, carting salvaged building materials, utility poles, and giant coils of wire to the temporary housing camps that were springing up on high ground in Gresham and Troutdale. Other trucks carried rubble and fill away to the new dikes that were rising along the Willamette and Columbia.

Downtown would be saved, but the neighborhoods of North Portland were being sacrificed. Most of the families were gone already, either to the refugee camps in the East County or to relatives elsewhere in the country. Still, every day I saw groups of people clutching bundles of belongings, stumbling along the sidewalk, dazed and dislocated. It was like the aftermath of a disaster, before the disaster itself.

Meanwhile, as if to mock us, the Willamette lay shrunken between its banks in the sweltering summer heat. Drought gripped the Northwest; fires raged in the Cascade forests, smudging the sky to the east even as cement dust plumed up to the west.

One evening, driving along the bluffs above Swan Island, I looked up and felt my heart stop: The St. Johns Bridge was being dismantled. The massive suspension cables were gone already, the graceful steel towers were being torn apart—next, I guessed, they would tear up the solid piers that supported the towers. Iron and stone, too valuable to lose to the hungry waters.

Dry weather lingered into the fall. As the Southern Hemisphere heated up, an uneasy quiet settled over the city. The north quarter (Portland had had five quarters, once upon a time) had been levelled, and only dust clouds moved over the desolate rubble. Even the rats had forsaken the area for better cover and feeding grounds. Seawalls built from the wreckage of Kenton and Portsmouth homes and Interstate Avenue businesses snaked along the banks of the river downtown, diverging to protect the endpoints of the Broadway Bridge, then widening out to meet the 200-foot contour line.

The Antarctic ice cap melted and flew apart in chunks. Satellite images limned rapidly melting areas in angry red; the South Pole looked like a drunkard’s eyeball, bloodshot and rimmed with crimson. (The Arctic ice had been gradually thinning for many years, like a cataract forming in reverse.) Giant icebergs steamed away north, with icy rivers cascading down their flanks.

There was no fanfare. Silently and stealthily, the river rose, reclaiming its winter dimensions and then expanding over its banks. One morning I looked out from the bottom of Prescott Street, west across the rubbly flats, and saw it: water, gleaming darkly in the distance. It was salt, or at least brackish; it was the new mouth of the Willamette. The ocean had risen high enough to swallow the Willamette/Columbia confluence—Sauvie Island was underwater—the Willamette was no longer a tributary but a river in her own right. Everything downstream was now a vast estuary framed by new wetlands that had once been part of the Coast Range.

Portland is a busy saltwater port these days. The new coastline is too steep for good harborage, and forests of skeletal treetops line the shallows. US 101 is long gone, the new coastal towns reachable only from the interior, by old passes over the Coast Range from I-5. So it’s here they come to load and unload, the giant deep-water freighters. Their wakes lash the dead beaches west of Martin Luther King, at the feet of Prescott, Alberta, Killingsworth.

North Portland is gone, gone. It’s the Vanport flood come again, but this time it’s forever.

Here's the same piece, cut down to 350 words for the 350 Words page. The original was 600+.

All summer our neighborhood echoed with trucks. West of MLK, north of the Alameda Ridge, cranes pulled down buildings; bulldozers filled basements and foundations. Dump trucks rumbled away, carting rubble and fill, salvaged building materials, utility poles, giant wire coils. Seawalls built from wreckage of Kenton and Portsmouth homes and Interstate Avenue businesses snaked south, diverging to protect the Broadway Bridge, then out to the 200-foot contour.

Downtown would be saved; North Portland neighborhoods, sacrificed. Most families were gone already, to East County refugee camps or relatives inland. Yet every day, groups of dislocated people stumbled along the sidewalk, clutching bundles of belongings as though a disaster had already happened.

From the bluffs above Swan Island, I looked up and felt my heart stop. The St. Johns Bridge was gone. The graceful suspension cables and steel towers were just a memory against the sky. Even the massive piers were being uprooted.

Drought gripped Oregon; fires ravaged the Cascades, streaking the sky as cement dust darkened the air. The Willamette lay shrunken in sweltering summer heat. Uneasy quiet settled over Portland's leveled north quarter. Only dust stirred above desolate rubble, forsaken even by rats.

The Arctic ice had thinned to nothing, like a cataract in reverse. As fall heated the Southern Hemisphere, satellite images limned rapidly melting areas in red, turning the Antarctic into a drunkard’s blood-rimmed eyeball. Giant icebergs steamed north, sweating icy rivers.

With no fanfare the river rose, drowning its winter banks. From the bottom of Prescott Street, I looked west across rubbly flats and saw distant water gleaming. It was salt. The ocean had swallowed the confluence-- Sauvie Island was underwater-- the Willamette was no longer a tributary, but a river. Downstream was a vast estuary framed by wetlands that had been part of the Coast Range.

Portland is a saltwater port now. Treacherous forests of skeletal treetops line new coastlines. US 101 is long gone, coastal towns reachable only by passes west from I-5. Wakes of giant deep-water freighters lash dead beaches west of MLK.

North Portland is gone. It’s the Vanport flood, again and forever.

It amazes me how much I was able to cut without sacrificing anything I thought was really important. Not to say the piece is unchanged: the short version has a much different texture, it's less expressive, it's a bit rough and abrupt in places.

Rejection and submission

Asimov's rejected Killing Time I thought it was a long shot given the length. I'm resubmiting KT to Damnation Books. If that doesn't pan out, I think I'm going to try selling it as an e-book.

No joy from F&SF

but a fast response, which is nice. This weekend I'll try to get the manuscript out to Asimov's.

Recapping Drumheart and the use of outlines

Had a conversation with some friends a couple days ago in which we shook our heads over the (apparently increasingly common) practice of writing novels without outlines. I suffered a twinge of conscience, as I didn't think I had a formal outline for Drumheart, so who was I to talk? Then I remembered this post and decided to go back and look at it.

I actually stuck to it pretty well. A couple of things changed: Akshadhen somehow became Akshedhen. I wrote "Nitsur lives as a slave with Akshadhen's family for several years", but it ended up only being about a year and a half. "Nitsur alerts Akshadhen and his father to the secret practices of the temple"-- not exactly, A. and father were out of the city at the time, but N. does alert the authorities and events proceed as described. (This is important, because it sets up A's father's arrest.) So N's section is relatively unchanged.

In M's section I wrote "Along the way, they acquire a motley group of companions: ... even a Kesset who had been stripped of his rights and condemned to slavery for crimes" There is such a character, but he ends up traveling with A. and friends rather than N. and M.

The order of events at the end of this section is substantially rearranged: M's fight with W. occurs closer to the time of their arrival, before the rains and the (re)appearance of A.

A's section is really only hinted at in the outline. Unsurprisingly, it's the part that changed the most in the writing and editing. I notice that there's no mention here of the Locust People having taken Ahon ken Tai.

Overall, I was pretty faithful to the outline as far as it went. What amazes me is what's not in the outline: the tangle of interlocking motivations and event consequences that moves the story forward. Like the Sun temple raids leading to the disorganization of the city, that causes it to fall pretty much without a struggle to the Locust People. The stuff from M's youth feeding forward into W's actions as senior priestess. A's struggles with his nascent status as an Old Man.

I don't remember, now, how much of this was in my head when I wrote the outline: I think actually a lot of it was already implicit. For instance, A's conversation with N. at the gate of Ahon ken Tai-- where he talks about his ambivalence toward the Old Man cult-- I wrote that years before the rest of this.

What can I conclude? I don't think I'd want to set out to write a novel without an outline that's at least this well developed. I see also that the early posts to this blog contained a fair amount of background material, character sketches and the like. All good stuff.

For comparison, I pretty much wrote Killing Time off a plot outline that I spoke to Todd shortly before I started writing; I never wrote it down anywhere but I had it in my head the whole time. Of course, KT took less than a month from start to finish, so it's not as if I had time to forget what I was doing.

In the Mail

Killing Time went in the mail this afternoon, to F&SF. They say about an 8-week response time, so I should hear from them by mid-September or so.

Final edits

and a thumbs-up from Steve Perry. Thanks, Steve.

Counting words per line and multiplying, I came up with about 18,300 words: OpenOffice's word counter gets 18,770. Make of it what you will.

It's a wrap

So I finished the rough draft of Killing Time last night and put a few finishing touches on this morning. I'm still going to let it sit for a week and then go back and look-- but I truly don't think there'll be any substantial editing. It's an intense piece of prose.

It wasn't fun.

Less than a month from start to finish, and well over 3/4 of it in one weekend: Thursday evening, all day Friday, most of Saturday.

I'm going to send this one out to F&SF, if no joy there, Asimov's, then work my way through Duotrope's list of mags that take novella-length SF or fiction.

Progress report

Well, I was right about the productivity and wrong about the intensity. I took yesterday off from work and spent most of the day writing. Same today. I'm cruising. Inshallah tonight or tomorrow, the first draft will be finished.

Then I won't look at it for at least a week.

Then editing. Of course I've done some as I went along.

I realized that not working on this was preventing from writing poetry. There's no way out but through. But God, I really, really didn't want this one...

Bad and Scary

Killing Time is not like anything else I've ever written. It's a bad, scary, evil piece of shit. It's so easy to imagine how a person would go about manipulating other people, especially when they're already in the grasp of some overwhelming, irrational fervor.

I'm not, obviously, doing the intensive, words-per-day thing with this story. I've let whole weeks go by without writing more than a few paragraphs. I think I'm about to kick into a more productive mode and inshallah finish it up by the end of the month. But I'll never get up to anything like the 2000+ WPD I did on Drumheart.

There are a couple of reasons for that. One, the prose is much more intense, in fact more like poetry. That means I can't produce it nearly as fast. With simple expository prose, which is what Drumheart was mostly written in (there were a few spots of descriptive prose that rose above that level), the translation of idea to prose is pretty straightforward and tends to occur at a more-or-less fixed base rate. (It might be slower if I was tired, faster if I'd had extra coffee. But it seemed to me that those were physiological conditions independent of the creative process.)

The kind of prose I'm using for Killing Time takes longer to produce and requires a lot more... something per word. Energy. Creative effort. I want the text to come out spiky and brilliant, seductive yet uncomfortable to read. Disturbing. It's a matter of much more than just getting the idea across.

Overstylish? Maybe. But that's not uncharacteristic of clockpunk/steampunk/cyberpunk: always a very style-conscious genre, in a way that I think repudiated the style-neutral or even anti-style esthetic of earlier SF. Way back in the Campbell era, the Idea was the thing: niceties like plot and character development, let alone prose style, were actively denigrated. (There were exceptions, like the immortal Ray Bradbury, but Campbell's editorial influence pretty effectively marginalized newer writers with pretension to style. Look up Manly Wade Wellman's attempt to publish his novel about Leonardo da Vinci.)

New Wave authors like Zelazny, Delaney, and Davidson broke the style barrier, but the idea that style is important, that the form is part of the message, is still far from universally acknowledged in the field. Gene Wolfe and the aforementioned Bradbury (if you don't have Farewell Summer, the sequel to Dandelion Wine, go out and get it) are probably the pre-eminent (living) senior stylists around; John Crowley turns out amazing stuff; China Mieville and Jay Lake are some of the newer writers with style to burn and things to say.

(I guess that's what offends me the most about the Campbell philosophy, as a writer; the idea that there's a necessary trade-off between having things to say and saying them well. Put that way, it makes no sense at all.)

All of which is a long digression to keep me from mentioning the second reason Killing Time proceeds slowly.

I hate living inside that character's head. It scares me.

What to do with it? As I mentioned earlier, it's going to be an awkward length, probably unpublishable by normal means. I'm thinking seriously about selling it off my blog, for a fairly nominal amount, as a Word or pdf file. We'll see about that after I finish the damn thing.

A new ?

? because I don't know how long it's going to be. Probably not novel-length, but long for a short story.

It falls into the genre Todd and I have been referring to as "clockpunk", which is a variant of steampunk but tends to be organized around the image of a clock, or clockwork. Good recent examples are The Clockwork Heart by Dru Pagliassotti and The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia. Also the ongoing series by Jay Lake which began with Mainspring and continued in Escapement.

Clockpunk has interesting antecedents. Steampunk began as a spin-off from cyberpunk, via books like Gibson and Sterling's Difference Engine and Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age. Cyberpunk itself was born out of what was then called the "New Wave", which included authors like Philip K. Dick and Harlan Ellison. (Dick, by the way, may bear the distinction of having appeared as an important character in more novels written after his own death than any other writer: for the most recent example see Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory.)

Ellison, of course, was the author of "'Repent, Harlequin' said the Ticktockman", one of the classic anti-authoritarian works of the genre. But the imagery of the clock as enemy, the clock symbolizing the devouring, dehumanizing nature of industrial totalitarianism, goes back further than that: cf. Metropolis, both the novel by Thea von Harbou and the silent movie version by Fritz Lang, and Chaplin's immortal Modern Times.

The story I'm working on right now was mostly inspired by The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson's fascinating account of the construction of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, and of the life and times of America's first documented serial killer, known in Chicago as H. H. Holmes. If you haven't read it, you should: each of his narratives is fascinating in itself. I wrote about it on KFI some time back.

Addendum: Jay Lake kindly points out Zelazny's Jack of Shadows as a clockpunk precursor. An inexcusable omission on my part.

Queries

So I've written query letters to four agents that Steve recommended. They'll go out in Monday's mail. If one of them bites, the next step would probably be to send sample chapters, and eventually the whole manuscript.

It'll take months, especially with the holidays coming up. That's OK. I seem to have a lot of fish to fry in the poetry world right now.

Next...

So, no joy from the agent I sent Drumheart to: she says she liked the writing, the characters, and the concept, but didn't think there was enough dramatic tension. Said she would be willing to read it again if I rewrote it, but it didn't amount to "change this and this, and I'll back it".

My choices now are: rewrite and resend to her, look for another venue, or..? Steve suggested possibly writing the second book, shopping it around, and then seeing if there would be interest in a prequel.

Right now I think I'm going to do nothing for a while: sit on it, see how I feel after the first of the year. Partly because I'm pursuing a whole bunch of new stuff on the poetry side and I only have so much attention to spare. Partly because I know it'll be easier for me to look at starting a big project once the year turns. (Why in the world did they pick November as NaNoWriMo? Looking back, I don't know how the heck I ever made it through the month.)

Watch this space.

Brother's Keeper

So Write Anything, which is the successor to Write Stuff, has posted another link to a Writer's Digest short story award winner. This story was a winner in the thriller/suspense category.

Here are their questions about it and my answers:

1. Explain the title. In what way is it suitable to the story?
The title may actually be ironic. Solomon saves the life of Evan, a man to whom he owes nothing personally. But his remarks afterward make clear that he's concerned that Evan's spectacular and gory murder would cause publicity that might lead to Solomon's unmasking as a Union agent. It's not possible to conclude that Solomon acted out of a feeling of responsibility for Evan as a "brother" or fellow man.

2. What is the predominant element in the story - plot, theme, character, setting?
Mostly character, although setting plays its part. This story would not work without the unique cultural matrix of American slavery and the Civil War.

3. What sort of conflict confronts the leading character or characters?
In Evan's case, the conflict (of which he's completely unaware) is between his philandering ways and the outrage of the community's men. Solomon lives with a myriad of conflicts, but I would guess the one that has the most impact on his daily life is the need to appear stupid, slow and ignorant, when in fact he is none of these things.

4. How is the conflict resolved?
Neither of these conflicts is really resolved. Evan's life is saved and his attackers disposed of by Solomon, but we can't believe that they were the only two who knew what was going on. If nothing else, Maybelle's father and aunt certainly know that she has been with Evan and may be pregnant by him. Retribution has only been postponed.

Solomon's situation has changed: Evan now knows that Solomon is not what he seems, and should be able to figure out that Solomon is a Union agent. As noted above, Evan really has no secret to keep any more. It's hard to see why Evan wouldn't simply turn Solomon in, except perhaps for gratitude's sake. Or, Solomon may decide that now is the time to leave town and try to get to Union territory. In any case, no resolution takes place inside the story.

5. How does the author handle characterization?
a. by description?
b. conversation of the characters?
c. actions of the characters?
d. combination of these methods?
For Evan and Solomon, primarily c. For the two attackers, a mix of b. and c.

6. What is the high point, or climax, of the story?
Solomon's rescue of Evan.

7. Does this story create any special mood?
Not particularly.

8. Is this story realistic or true to life? Explain your answers by giving examples.
I'm dubious that (a) Emile and Rafe won't have told anyone what they're up to (b) no-one will figure that both of the murdered men are family of women who've been sleeping with Evan. Too much of the plot is predicated on the idea that no-one knows what's going on-- which suggests to me that the author has never lived in a small town.

9. What is the general theme of the story? What is the underlying theme?
I would say the theme is the contrast between careless young Evan and responsible old Solomon. Evan gets himself (and various women) into trouble through sheer thoughtlessness, and almost pays with his life. Solomon voluntarily and knowingly enters into danger as a spy, for a cause he believes in: he accepts the risk. In every way, the two men are opposites.

10. Did you identify with any of the characters?
No; they're remote from me in time, place, and culture.

11. Does the story contain a single effect or impression for the reader? If so, what?
None that really strikes me.

12. Name one major personality trait of each leading character, and tell how the author makes the reader conscious of this trait.
In Evan's case, thoughtlessness, reflected in the statement "But Evan was young. And he enjoyed the delights of the flesh too much to pay any attention." Also reflected in the fact that we never see him considering the possible consequences, for himself or the women he sleeps with.

In Solomon's case, decisiveness. This is hidden in the early part of the story, but is revealed very dramatically in his rescue of Evan.

13. Does the story have a moral? If not, what do you think the purpose of the author was?
Difficult to say. As noted under question 1, any moral statement about caring for one's fellow-man, regardless of how they treat one, is undercut by Solomon's other motivation.

14. Did you like it? Why or why not?
I like it better than the previous winning story that was posted on Write Stuff.

As a thriller/suspense story, I have to say it falls flat. Except for the attack on Evan and the rescue by Solomon, the pacing is pretty slow, and the climax is frankly completely predictable.

Overall, I think it's a well-meaning story, though the execution leaves something to be desired. The author's rendering of Southern dialects, both black and white, is clumsy and unconvincing, and the white characters are rather offensive hillbilly stereotypes. This may have been done to strengthen the hero Solomon by contrast, but I'm afraid it ends up having the opposite effect.

15. Finally, why do you think this story placed in the top five in the Short Story competition?
It's impossible to answer this question without seeing the other contestants.

??

All my old posts went to single-spaced. Weird.
Testing.
Testing.
Testing...
And I can't seem to fix it. What's up with that?

Sequels... maybe

Iron Girl for sure. It looks like that one will take place mostly on the steppes. Featuring Tamishena and a tribe/clan of Iron Men... shamanism, ironwork, fighting arts. Tami is a partly-trained Dancer. There needs to be a Drummer with her.

I like Iron Girl, but will probably use a different title for sales: something with "Drum" in it. Maybe Drumming up Iron. Keep the "Drum" constant in the series.

Later: the Raft People story. Tentative working title, Worse Things Happen at Sea. Though it will probably end up being called Ocean Drums, or something like that. I may find a place there for some of the stuff I developed in "Riding the Sea Dragon"-- certainly the Indo/Fili culture will work with it.

Another step...

XXX (I'm still withholding details) has asked to see the rest of the manuscript. We'll be printing and sending over the weekend.

Iron Girl

I have some ideas for things that may happen in the next book, though none yet for what the main story thread is/are likely to be.

Given that Tamishena is the main character, the developing relations between the Delta and Ahon S. are likely to be important. I see an uneasy alliance, always strained over the issue of slavery. During the course of the novel, relations may break down completely.

Gidhambal is now a very old man, perhaps blind or in failing health. Tami will go visit him, though it's not entirely without risk to her. He doesn't recognize her, or mixes her up with his long-dead daughter when he's not entirely lucid.

Another thread: I think Tami will be one of the main players in the development of a true battlefield art that uses pasaörana'e principles. She of course is fostered by A. and S. and wants to go into the guard. The priestesses identify her talent and want to train her as a priestess or as a Dancer. N. and M. will be involved in this somehow. Tami will bridge the two in some way. Perhaps an attempt is made to kidnap/enslave her in Ahon S. Perhaps it's even successful, and she's forced to develop the art in order to survive. Perhaps she takes over an entire tribe of steppe nomads.

It's Just Not The Same

I think I've figured out one of the reasons people are averse to rewriting. It's because it's much harder to access that flow state when you're rewriting (editing, polishing, call it what you will). And make no mistake, flow state is addictive. It's a high. It'll turn you into a junkie same as any other drug.

This has a couple of consequences. First, it means rewriting isn't fun. It's not necessarily harder work than the original writing, but it feels like much harder work because I'm not getting the high. When I write in flow state, I get up from the keyboard just as tired as when I don't write in flow state. But as long as I'm sitting there hammering away and pouring out words, I don't notice it.

Second, and I think this is behind a lot of the blather about spontaneity and freshness that people employ against revising: The writing I generate in flow state always seems better to me than the writing I generate at other times.

I'm not sure why that is. I suspect that when I reread such a piece of writing, I remember what it felt like: I actually get the high (in an attenuated form) all over again. Maybe a year from now, when those memories have faded, I'll reread Drumheart and that won't happen. In the meantime I have to take it on faith that the scenes I've struggled with, where I had to force out the words according to my best judgment rather than just letting them pour through my fingertips, can look like just as good writing to other people. 'Cause they sure don't look that good to me.

This is one of the reasons it's important to have other people read your MS. It's hard, at least it's hard for me, to look at Drumheart and figure out which are the "good" bits. To me the "good" bits are the ones that came easily. But, personal preferences aside, the fact that I worked harder on the other bits may actually translate into a higher quality of prose. At least, I have to take it on faith that that' spossible.

Officially an MS

So I spent all day yesterday doing a final line edit, spellchecking, and rendering the MS into the format Steve P. gave me. Printed the first three chapters, a plot summary of the rest, and a cover letter, which will be shipped off tomorrow to XXX (I don't want to disclose anything until I hear back one way or another).

Now the waiting, rejection, resubmission, etc etc etc... Luckily I've been through all this with poetry already. The difference is mostly a matter of scale. (Case in point: the poem that recently got accepted in The Lyric went out last July. That's 9 months ago.)

I'll track events associated with the publication process here, but it's not gonna be anything like daily updates...

And the rewrite is off...

to Steve P. for another look-over.

Added some more stuff to Part 3. It's better. Good enough? I don't know. I could tinker with it forever, but I feel like I'm at a point of diminishing returns.

Anyway I'm not going to mess with it until Steve gets back to me.

Update Mar 18: Steve approves the rewrite. (What would I do without him?) One more spellcheck and line-edit pass, and he's going to start helping me find an editor.

Rewrite finished

at least for now. I'm going to let it sit for a bit, then look it over one last time, probably in a week or so, certainly before the end of the month. Make any last tweaks I need to-- but I really think it's there.

I've posted a new word count in the sidebar. NB: this word count includes words like CHAPTER 26. Also, I did this word count completely in Open Office's Word doc format, which gives slightly different results than the Google Docs word counts I was using back in Nov/Dec. So all numbers should be considered approximate.

Still, I've written a pretty good chunk of new stuff. It's almost all in Part III, which is where it was needed.

There will be a sequel

though I have no idea when and very little idea of what's going into it.

Here's what I know so far: The main character will be a half-Kesset, half-Ta'arane girl who is the granddaughter of Gidhambal, the Iron Man of Ahon Sarkhamine who makes a brief appearance near the end of Drumheart. I'm expanding that section. It'll turn out that G's daughter had an affair with a slave in her husband's household. She's dead and the father was sold to the mines.

At G's request, A. takes the girl (legally a slave-- G. doesn't want her to grow up in Ahon Sarkhamine) away to the Delta. She'll grow up as a Drummer. She'll be the main character in the sequel, which I'm calling Iron Girl for the moment.

Iron Girl may incorporate some material that I originally developed for the short story "Fear the Dark", which has mostly been assimilated into the first part of Drumheart. Or maybe not. I have no idea right now.