Tag Archives: Historical fiction

Two New Stories!

I’m pretty excited!  Gypsy Shadow Publishing has just put out two of my steampunk stories at the same time.

Let’s start with “A Steampunk Carol.”  That stuffy Victorian inventor, Stanton Wardgrave, is back again, eight years after inventing holograms and meeting the American Josephine Boulton…Within Victorian Mists.  Married now, with a son and daughter, he’s dealing with rather too much balderdash and poppycock this Christmas Eve.  Conversing with his dead father?  Expecting three visitors?  It all seems so very Dickensian.  But he knows he’s not at all like that Ebenezer Scrooge fellow…is he?  What, this story asks, would Christmas be without a bit of steampunk in it?  This story (published in time for the holidays…hint!) is available here.

The other story is “The Six Hundred Dollar Man.”  Wait, is that a smokestack over his right shoulder?  What’s with his left hand?  Sonny Houston, cowpoke.  A man barely alive.  “I can rebuild him, make him the first steam-powered man.  A darn sight better than before. Better, faster, and a heap stronger, too. I’ve got the know-how.”  A century before any bionic man, a doctor in the Wyoming Territory attached steam powered legs and an arm to a man trampled in a stampede.  Get ready, Pardner, for a rip-roarin’ steampunk adventure!  This story is available here.

I’m proud of these two stories and pleased to bring them to you, thanks to the great folks at Gypsy Shadow.  Today’s indeed a great day for—

                                                            Poseidon’s Scribe

November 22, 2012Permalink

Conveying a Sense of Wonder

One of the things that drew me into fiction as a child was the sense of wonder I experienced when reading certain fiction, notably that of Jules Verne, Arthur C. Clarke and later science fiction writers.  The question is, how does a writer evoke that in readers?

First, let’s try to define it.  The book Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction defines it this way:  “a feeling of awakening or awe triggered by an expansion of one’s awareness of what is possible or by confrontation with the vastness of space and time, as brought on by reading science fiction.”

Although often associated with science fiction, that emotion needn’t be.  Rachel Carson’s book The Sense of Wonder was about sharing a love of nature with a child.

I like the associate with childhood.  To children the natural world is new, and they experience that sense of wonder more often.  Then it fades as we age and it takes more than mere nature to astonish us.  Here’s an example of that fading-with-adulthood phenomenon.  How many times have you heard the finale of the William Tell Overture (the Lone Ranger theme) by Gioachino Rossini?  Ho hum, right?  But do you remember the thrill of that first time you heard it?  Can you image what audiences of 1829 felt the first time that finale ever played, anywhere?

Up until Jules Verne and authors who followed him, adults most often experienced the sense of wonder in religious contexts, or in fantasy literature.  Through his writing Verne showed the world what engineers and scientists of the time were bringing about—a better understanding of the natural world, and the amazing things man might do to achieve his ends.  Verne showed readers something new and vast, and it had nothing to do with God or dragons, but with people.

Arthur C. Clarke was another science fiction author who captured the sense of wonder better than most.  He carried the science far beyond Verne did, and showed a future humanity achieving, through engineering, the capabilities of gods or wizards.  It was Clarke who said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

For writers seeking to induce the sense of wonder in their readers, then, how do you do it?  I think there are four elements involved:

  • A “thing” that is new in some way, or an old thing in a new context
  • A powerful description of that thing, emphasizing its newness
  • One or more characters confronting the thing
  • A depiction of the awe felt by one or more of the characters.  How does the thing make the character feel?  Again, you’re striving to recreate in words the amazement a child feels for something new.

If you do this well, if your characters are compelling, if the thing is truly worthy of awe and you’ve described it and your characters’ impressions well, then your readers will feel the wonder of it right along with the characters.

In my fiction, I strive to create this sense of wonder, most often in association with technology.  Many of my stories are historical, so the characters see something outside their experience, but not necessarily beyond that of modern readers.  I confront my characters with such things as a flying trireme, a clockwork lion, a giant mechanical elephant, a steam-powered oared galley in the 1st Century, and steam-powered human limbs (coming soon).

Is there anything to this “sense of wonder” stuff, in your opinion?  Have you experienced that feeling from reading fiction?  Have you tried writing it into your fiction?  Leave a comment and let me know.  Wondering about the answer to these and other questions, I’m—

                                                           Poseidon’s Scribe

November 18, 2012Permalink

Writing “Against All Gods”

In a previous blog post I’ve explored how writers take a basic idea and build it into a story.  Here I thought I’d show you that process at work in the development of one of my tales.

Recently, Gypsy Shadow Publishing launched my story “Against All Gods.”  It’s the latest tale in a series called What Man Hath Wrought.

How did I come to write that story?  I’ve long been fascinated with ships, ship design, and the beautiful vessels of the past.  Among these is the trireme of Ancient Greece and Rome.  Well suited for naval warfare in the Mediterranean, triremes sailed and fought for hundreds of years using a basic design that changed little during that time.  If Hollywood made a movie featuring the adventures of a trireme crew, I’d stand in line when it opened.  Can’t you just see the deadly ram; the painted eyes; the jutting prow; the churning rows of oars; that single rectangular sail; and the graceful, upward curve of the stern?

As an engineer, I’ve also been enthralled by the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  Using only the simple materials available to them, Bronze Age people of the Mediterranean constructed architectural marvels whose memory lingers across the millennia.  Six of the seven are gone, but that only heightens their grandeur, for our imaginations build them anew to a magnificence the originals probably lacked.

How, I thought, could I write a story featuring a trireme and the Seven Wonders?  Clearly a sea voyage to each of the Wonders seemed in order.  Moreover, it must have some appeal, some relevance, to modern readers who might not share my interests.  As to that, it had not escaped my notice that my only previous romance story, “Within Victorian Mists,” had been selling rather well.

Could I manage, then, a tale involving a trireme, the Wonders, and a romance?  Time for a mind map to brainstorm various plot ideas.  First, all seven Wonders had to be in existence, and since that was only true between 280 B.C. (when the Alexandria Lighthouse was built) and 226 B.C. (when the Colossus of Rhodes collapsed), those dates roughly fixed the story’s timeframe.  Early on I abandoned the notion of bringing the woman character along on the voyage as being too far-fetched.  That meant my two lovers would be separated for most of the story.  And what should the woman do at home while the man voyages on his sea adventure—strum her lyre and pine for him?  No.  Today’s readers seek strong and independent female characters.

Think, for a moment, about the story you might have written given those constraints.  As for me, I explored a few options in my mind map, considering pros and cons of each, rejecting ideas with unsolvable flaws, weighing the remaining notions, and finally selecting the one I believed held the most promise.

As it says in the book blurb, “In ancient Athens, trireme commander Theron and the woman he loves, Galene, have each earned the wrath of jealous gods.  To marry Galene, Theron must voyage to all seven Wonders of the World.  At every stage the immortal gods test their love with all the power and magic at their command.  While Galene suffers anguishing torment in Athens, Theron faces overwhelming challenges at every Wonder from Ephesus to Rhodes to Babylon.  Theron and Galene may be devoted to each other, but how can mere mortal love survive…against all gods?”

There it is…a glimpse into the mind of a creative writer at work.  Comment if you found it helpful.  Or unhelpful.  It’s all part of the service provided by—

                                                     Poseidon’s Scribe

 

August 20, 2012Permalink

Change the Past in 5 Steps

Some time ago I blogged about historical fiction, but today I thought I’d discuss Alternate History fiction, or AH.  In this genre, the author supposes some historical event turned out differently and it affected all subsequent history; the story then takes place in that altered world.  Other names for this genre are Uchronia, Allohistory, and Counterfactuals.

To find out more about AH definitions and terms, go to this great site.  For lists of AH stories to read, go here, where they’re listed not only by author name, but also by the date of historical divergence.  The Uchronia.net organization also issues an annual Sideways Award for the best AH fiction.

The alternatehistory.com site distinguishes AH from other genres, such as Secret History, Future History, Time Travel, and Parallel World stories.  Many of my short stories are Secret History, where the altered event does not affect subsequent history.  I would classify my stories “Alexander’s Odyssey,” “The Sea-Wagon of Yantai,” “The Vessel,” “The Steam Elephant,” “The Wind-Sphere Ship,” and “Leonardo’s Lion” as Secret Histories.  More about that genre in a future blog entry.

My story “Within Victorian Mists” is AH, since it features a Nineteenth Century inventor coming up with lasers and holograms, and demonstrating them on a large scale.  I chose to have the story take place at the Point of Divergence (PoD), but I could have set the story at some later time.

Would you like to write an AH story?  Here are some steps you might follow:

1.  Choose the Point of Divergence.  Select a historical event and imagine it turned out some other way.  Many people choose wars, since much is known about them and they have clear and significant influences on history.  Instead, I generally choose events associated with technological development.  I suggest you avoid the over-used events such as World War II and the American Civil War, or come up with a unique take on these.   Consider opting for a time in history you’ve studied to some extent.  It’s a good idea to select a plausible outcome for the event, or come up with an explanation that makes it plausible.  Having the Incas sail east to conquer Spain, for example, would take some explaining.

2.  List as many consequences for the new historical outcome as you can.  How would this altered event affect national boundaries, culture, language, technology? What subsequent events might happen as a result?  Start to map out a logically consistent chronology of subsequent history along the most probable and plausible lines.

3.  Figure out when and where to set your story.  It can take place around the time of the PoD or relatively long after.  For a story set long after the PoD, keep in mind no empire lasts forever, and cultures and languages always change.

4.  Write the story as you would any other, with engaging characters, vivid settings, tight plots, a conflict for your protagonist to resolve, and the aim of passing the So What? test.  The story can be a romance, steampunk, western, horror, mystery, or anything, really, but it must take place in the alternate world you’ve created.  You need to be consistent with the norms of that world.  There’s no need to show the reader the PoD, or even refer to it in the story, so long as the reader can understand it from context.

5.  Avoid the AYKB trap.  Also resist the urge to have characters speculate on how things might have been if the PoD event had turned out differently.

AH is a fun genre, with infinite possibilities and good readership.  Did this blog entry help you understand how to write an AH story?  Do you disagree with things I’ve stated here?  Leave a comment and let me know.  In the meantime, there’s a new version of the past about to be written by–

                                                                       Poseidon’s Scribe

 

July 22, 2012Permalink

Book Review – Tree Soldier

A relative suggested I read Tree Soldier by J.L Oakley, ©2010, and I did so.  Usually I read books on CD, but I read the paperback version of this book.  Yes, I read the “dead tree” version, and yes, I see the irony in that, considering the book’s title.

The novel takes place in 1935 in the Pacific Northwest.  It is mainly about the character Park Hardesty, who hails from Pennsylvania, but joins the Civilian Conservation Corps, partly to escape the guilt over some events of his past.  He falls in love with a girl who lives in town near the CCC camp, but there is a rival for her affection and Park’s past eventually catches up to him.

The book seems to be well researched, and gives a vivid picture of life at a CCC camp in the state of Washington during the Depression.  It seems a realistic portrayal of the interactions of a quasi-military camp of young men from various parts of the country living in close quarters, and their interactions with each other and with the “locals.”  We see their rough behavior, rough language, jealousies, and developing interests in some detail.  It’s clear the protagonist is trying to make a new life and put his past behind him.  The romance between Park and Kate seemed realistic and blossomed with the right mixes of thoughtful tentativeness and emotion on both parts.  The ending is exciting and well-paced.

Before I review the novel’s weaknesses, I should note I read the book in brief snatches over a period of months.  It’s possible a more concentrated reading of more than a few pages at a time would have yielded a better impression.

Although the beginning and ending are both thrilling and action-packed, the rest of the book is very slow.  It’s as if the author wanted to include all her research in the book to give it credibility, but much of it ends up slowing down the plot.  Also the work suffers from poor editing, with word errors, missing quotation marks, a name spelling change, and anachronisms (people didn’t say “no way” in 1935).

For me the most maddening part involves what happens following the commission of a vicious crime.  The entire town seems to leap to a conclusion about who did it; that’s just human nature.  However, the victim comes out of her recuperation to announce a fact about the prime suspect.  Not a peep about who might have done the crime, and no one seems interested in asking her.  The authorities launch into an investigation of footprints and combing the territory with search parties, etc.  All the while I’m wondering why no one is asking the victim any questions.  Perhaps she has some clue about the perp, or even knows who did it.  No mention of any of that until the scumbag is caught and locked up.  Then we learn the victim remembered the smell of his breath and one facial feature.  The only part important to Oakley’s plot is that announced fact about the prime suspect.  After that, there’s no point in concealing the victim’s knowledge from the reader.  In fact this reader began to suspect the town of being populated by idiots.

Tree Soldier is getting excellent reviews on Amazon and Goodreads and has won some awards, but I’ll have to dissent from that majority.  If you have an interest in that historical period, or setting, or the CCC, you might enjoy it.  It is a nice romance between two strong and well-drawn characters.  But the weaknesses lead me to give it a rating of 2 on my seahorse rating scale.

Whether you agree or disagree I’d like to know your comments about the book.  Leave a comment for–

                                                       Poseidon’s Scribe

July 17, 2012Permalink

Book Review – The Clan of the Cave Bear

Go ahead and chastise me now.  Yes, I’m one of the few who hadn’t read Jean M. Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear © 1980.  Until now.  Along with the rest of the world, you read the book, and perhaps the series, long ago.  You already formed your opinion.  What follows is mine.

I listened to the Brilliance Audio CD version, narrated by Sandra Burr.

In brief, an earthquake collapses a cave containing a clan of Cro-Magnon people and the only survivor is a five-year-old girl named Ayla.  She is taken in by a clan of Neanderthals and her differences from them complicate all their lives.

The novel seemed, to this listener, to be authoritative and well-researched.  I liked how the author didn’t paint the lives of these prehistoric people as being simple; these characters had complex lives and traditions, as well as sophisticated knowledge of their environment.  I found the characters to be distinct, memorable, and intriguing.  Descriptions of the settings and characters were vivid, making the events of the book easy to imagine.

I thought the conflicts in the novel were clear and challenging, both the inter-character conflicts and the conflicts with the environment.  The conflicts posed bedeviling problems for the characters, especially Ayla.  I thought the book contained profound lessons about leadership, with both positive and negative examples.  Anyone aspiring to lead a team would do well to emulate Brun, the clan leader through much of the novel.  Moreover, Jean M. Auel wrote in an easy-to-read style that flowed well.  Sandra Burr did commendable job of narration.

However, I found the novel repetitive, as if the author felt she had to remind the forgetful reader of previous events and who the characters were, on a frequent basis.  In addition, for every big decision made by any character, the entire deliberative thought process was described.  The author presents detailed pros and cons for every choice.  Once the reader understands the motives driving a character, it’s no longer necessary to drag the reader through the careful weighing of pluses and minuses.

I found the point-of-view changes distracting at times.  Auel did a fair job of signaling which character’s POV we were in, but it’s not necessary to describe how each major character feels about significant events; the reader can discern a good deal of that from expressions and actions.  In fairness to Auel, it’s possible she also signaled POV changes using breaks in the text, something I couldn’t tell from listening to an audiobook.

A few events in the book strained credibility, though these events were necessary, perhaps, to make the novel relevant to our present and to help readers identify with Ayla.  They included (1) Ayla becoming a huntress despite strict clan tradition against that; (2) Ayla learning, with apparent ease, every Neanderthal skill including cooking, medicine, weapon-making, tool-making, as well as hunting; (3) Ayla reasoning out the connection between sexual intercourse and pregnancy as well as the fact that people are products of a father as well as a mother; and (4) the holy man Creb foreseeing the end of the Neanderthal people.

Taking strengths with weaknesses, I’ll give the book a rating of four seahorses using my much-coveted book review rating method.  The novel deserved its good reputation and popularity.  I don’t need to recommend you read it, since the only remaining person who hadn’t read it was —

                                                        Poseidon’s Scribe

July 2, 2012Permalink

Book Review — The Lost Goddess

I just finished reading The Lost Goddess, by Tom Knox.  I listened to the Recorded Books version on audiotape, narrated by Christopher Evan Welch.  This is the first book I’ve read by Knox.  From the blurb, it promised to be an interesting historical thriller.  I’d say it delivered.

The book follows the lives of two people whose paths are destined to connect.  Julia Kerrigan is an American archaeologist digging at a site in a French cave.  Jake Thurby is a British photographer trying to snap money-making pictures in Southeast Asia.  The novel alternates point-of-view between these characters throughout.

The novel is exciting, gritty, and packed with mystery and adventure.  The scene-setting is very good, especially the detailed descriptions of Cambodia and Laos.  The author really puts you right there, close to both the beauty and the ugliness.  I see by his website that he conducted considerable research on that region.  I thought the Julia character was well drawn; she seemed strong and had believable motivations.  There’s some interesting sexual tension, though not between Julia and Jake, but this is no romance.  The secret mystery of the book is compelling and fascinating; a great weaving together of some historical facts into a grand and fairly believable theory.  I won’t spoil anything for you, but you won’t put it all together until near the end.  Some readers might find the mystery’s explanation morally objectionable, but I’d encourage them to lighten up and remember this is a work of fiction.

On the negative side, I found the title a bit of a misnomer.  Oddly, the book is sold under a different (and better) title in the United Kingdom — Bible of the Dead.  While I said Julia was a strong character, Jake is not.  He seems almost pathetic and stupid at times, always asking for explanations, seemingly swept along by events.  Not the kind of character I care much about.  Normally I have kind things to say about the narrator readers of audio books, and it’s not a bad performance by Mr. Welch.  It’s just that sometimes it’s hard to tell that he’s speaking in Jake’s voice when Jake is speaking.  The book’s ending seems to drag on a bit long.

Although I’m giving the book a rating of three seahorses according to my unique seahorse rating system, I recommend the book to lovers of mystery-adventure books set in exotic locales.  Those readers will really enjoy The Lost Goddess.  I enjoyed it, but I can only speak for–

                                                                                  Poseidon’s Scribe

 

 

 

March 21, 2012Permalink

Book Review — Remarkable Creatures

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.  To that I’d add “or its blurb.”  I just finished listening to a book on tape, Remarkable Creatures, © 2010 by Tracy Chevalier, put out by Recorded Books Productions, narrated by Charlotte Parry and Susan Lyons.   More about that blurb below.

The novel is the story of a lower class woman in England in the early 1800s, and her dealings with an upper class spinster.  The story starts with the first woman, Mary Anning, as a child when the spinster, Elizabeth Philpot, is in her twenties.  They end up sharing an interest in gathering and understanding fossils.  Fossils had caused a stir in the scientific community since many seem to be from animals that no longer exist, which called Biblical teachings into question.  The two women develop a knowledge of these fossils that equals or surpasses some of the learned men of Europe, but it is a time when women were sadly powerless in many areas, including science.

The author really puts you in the timeframe, and you come to care about the characters.  If you don’t think you’re interested in fossils before you read the book, you might well be fascinated with them when you’re done.  You’ll be drawn in as the two women become frustrated with their inability to be recognized by the male scientific community, and with their lack of success in finding husbands.  All they really have is each other, and the author  skillfully leads you along the ups and downs of their relationship.

What I didn’t know when I began reading is, these women were real.  There really was a Mary Anning and an Elizabeth Philpot.  In fact, most of the characters and events in the book were real.  I had thought it was just a historical setting with made-up characters, but that is not so.

The narrators, Charlotte Parry and Susan Lyons, did a fine job in this audiobook.  The book alternates in point-of-view between Anning and Philpot, and the narrators take turns.  I wondered, at times, if it would have been more effective to have the ‘Mary’ narrator speak Mary’s actual lines and the ‘Elizabeth’ narrator speak Elizabeth’s lines, but Recorded Books chose the point-of-view method instead.

On the negative side, there is not a lot of action in the book.  Moreover the conflicts and problems of the characters are not well defined.  Fiction is about conflict and the attempted resolution of problems.  I understand it can be difficult to force such a fictional constraint on real historical people, but there is a reason real life tends to be more boring than fiction.  Fictional characters have well-understood goals and passions, and really important problems to solve.  It’s my understanding that someone has bought movie rights to this book, but if a movie is made, they’ll have to put more action scenes in it and make the conflicts more apparent and dramatic.  Either that or opt for a straight historical documentary.

I was enticed into reading the book by the blurb on the Recorded Books cover, including this intriguing sentence.  “Mary discovers she has the ability to ‘see’ and locate fossils buried deep in the cliffs near her village.”  That certainly makes it sound like she has some supernatural x-ray ability to see through rock, right?  Nothing of the sort.  Mary’s good at locating fossils, but due to the shifting of land in the area and the action of waves on the beach, new fossils become exposed on the surface quite often and it is these Mary can spot.  Although it was a good book, I feel a little cheated by the misleading blurb.  I can’t really fault the author for that, though, since she probably didn’t write it.

A surprisingly good book, I’ll give it a rating of four seahorses.  Whether you concur with my opinions or differ, I’d like to hear from you.  Just click on ‘leave a comment’ and you’ll get a reply from–

                                                                          Poseidon’s Scribe

February 25, 2012Permalink