Not that I don’t want other people to read my writing…I do. Eventually. And it’s not that I don’t have readers in mind while I write. I’m always thinking, “Okay, is this going to interest anyone other than me?” and “This is going to bore people” and things like that. But ultimately I write these stories because I want to see them on paper. I suppose I’m writing the sort of book I’d like to read. Even if everyone else thinks the book stinks, I’ll still want to read it. Bit narcissistic, I guess. My point is, I’m not really doing this FOR anyone else. I want people to be interested, but I’m not going to write stories just to please them.

Now art, on the other hand, is a whole different thing with me. And when I say “my art”, let me clarify that I’m talking about the art I do that doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m writing. If I’m drawing book stuff, I’m still technically in writer mode. Other than story-related pieces, I really don’t make art for myself. I’m not one to make stuff that I’d hang on the wall…unless I was creating the piece specifically TO hang on the wall. I think my wands even fall into this category. I like making them, but I’m not so much making them for me as I am making them for Someone Else.

And when I do make art for a specific purpose, or for a specific person, I work much faster. What would probably take me a week doing it for myself, I can create in a day for someone else. The whole process just becomes easier. I don’t know why that is…I’ve only recently observed THAT it is, for me. I don’t do art for its own sake. I don’t just draw because I “feel” like it. I have to have a purpose in mind.

And on the other hand, when I try to write something for someone else? The process bogs down. I hate writing essays, for instance, and how-to’s. Even if it’s a subject that interests me, it’s just never as satisfying as working on my novel. Have anyone else noticed that book and movie reviews on this blog are few and far between? I don’t enjoy writing them. Because it’s the sort of writing one does more for other people than for yourself (after all, you’ve read the book or seen the movie…you don’t have to tell yourself what you thought about it). It’s difficult, and the result is not satisfying. I have to write for its own sake; trying to squeeze an objective in there is hard.

So I have two creative outlets which I enjoy and am fairly skilled at: writing and visual art. My writing belongs to me. My art belongs to the world, I guess. I wonder if I was always like this, or if choosing to pursue writing over art caused my brain to wire itself this way. If I’d chosen to concentrate on art instead, would it be the other way around?

Has anyone else with multiple creative interests noticed something like this about themselves?

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One, our culture really doesn’t allow people to grieve in public. Nobody wants to watch people get emotional; it makes everyone else uncomfortable. But I was struck, yesterday, by how much unnecessary pressure this puts on people. It’s a whole lot harder to hold back grief than it is to let it out, and I would imagine it’s not healthy to hold back. Yet this is what our society demands of us. Makes me appreciate certain Middle Eastern cultures, where weeping and wailing in public is accepted and in fact, expected. I mean, when they grieve, they go all out. They cry out, and beat the ground, and tear their clothes, and cut their hair. It seems over the top until you’ve actually experienced grief like that…then you understand how freeing such actions are.

Two, I can never know for certain what it’s like to experience something without actually experiencing it for myself. I know that I as a writer…and maybe a lot of fiction writers do this…will find myself thinking that I’m more in tune with how people think and how people really feel than they are themselves. It’s an arrogant state of mind, and yesterday I was confronted by what utter bullshit it is. I can’t fully imagine that kind of grief because I haven’t been through the circumstances. It was potent enough being on the fringes of it…actually experiencing it? I can’t imagine. It’s a humbling thing for me as a writer to have to admit.

My job is to put myself in my characters’ shoes, but sometimes I do need to step back and admit that sometimes I don’t know what a particular feeling or thought or event is really like. I certainly don’t have the right to assume that because I habitually put myself in other people’s shoes, that I possess a surer grasp of an emotion than someone who’s actually gone through it. I’m good at guessing and mimicking how people think, and of course I know how I think. But I was struck yesterday by how much of what I know about people is simply outside observation, and not internal knowledge.

The only person I can ever truly know is myself.

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Anonymous(5)piglet

Right now I’m working on Inkheart, another book that I’ve seen the movie of. Pretty good so far.

I have a ridiculous weakness for M&Ms. In case the blog itself doesn’t give that away.

You might notice that I’ve tweaked the sidebar a little bit. That picture (and yes, that is me) is one the hubby took while we were in North Carolina. It was a nice foggy day, which made for some very neat photo opportunities. I also finally figured out how to eliminate the search thingy at the top. I never liked it there. I’ll probably put it somewhere else in the sidebar, so the blog is still easily searchable.

I’ve been thinking about the logistics of the coup Raphel is planning for the city of Aschera. I’d only given it so much thought the first time around, and I’m realizing that I really need to know how it’s going to work. I need to know how the government functions. I need to know how Cowls occupy the cities they conquer. I need to know what they do with the cowan citizenry of conqured places. I need to decide what they will do with the majahel students at the school who don’t escape. I need to decide how many cabals it would take to occupy a large city like Aschera, and how Raphel is going to contact these cabals. I need to figure out all the complications that will arise when Raphel basically bails on his cabal right after they’ve captured the city.

Aschamon’s professors are also the governing body of Aschera. The High Priestess is the High Priestess of that entire region; her role as headmistress of the school is really more of a side job for her. As commander-in-chief of the forces from the Aschera region, she is occasionally called out into the field, and thus absent from the school for days at a time. Donnevan, the Angelic Studies professor, acts as head of the school in her stead. A group of nine or ten professors make the larger decisions for the city as a whole, and each has a number of guild heads and craftmasters that report to them.

Students pay a tuition to attend Aschamon, but those who can’t afford it are generally taken on scholarship anyway. (This only applies to local students…student from outside cities like Chisge pay tuition, and it tends to be a little higher). The city tithes to the school, and provides for scholarship students and generally what tuition doesn’t cover. Aschamon students are encouraged to work in the city, offering services only majahel can provide. The more a business or trade donates to the school, the cheaper majahel services become for them. In the last couple of decades, Aschamon also began demanding a tax on top of the tithe, to better fund the war. After the capture of Iadnah, the last really big Cowl stronghold, the war turned in the Mantles’ favor. Thus they stepped up their efforts, hoping to finish it in a few short years. However, the tax began to really hurt some Aschera businesses, which led to closures and the price of certain items rising. Fewer families could afford to pay for their young majahel to attend Aschamon, but since the war was “almost over”, Aschamon felt they really couldn’t turn any aspiring student away. Thus, Aschamon began to have a surplus of scholarship students, which then put more pressure on the city to provide for the school’s needs…and thus more business and families began to hurt, financially. It’s a vicious cycle that Aschamon’s professors are aware of, but choose to ignore…because they are still hoping that if the Mantles can just push a little longer, the Cowls will be defeated once and for all.

I need to decide how many people live in Aschera. Luckily I had already sat down at some point and worked out all the logistics of Cowl raider culture. A typical cabal of raiders has anywhere from 15-40 members, average being 20 or so. Raphel’s cabal has 17-18, but these are very, very good, because Raphel has the reputation to be selective in who he allows to join. I’m deciding that Geris’ cabal has closer to 40, but he tends to attract the scum of Cowl society and as such, his crew is more of a rabble or mob than an trim fighting unit.

When Cowl cabals join together to accomplish a bigger mission, the operation is called a raid. Yes, I totally stole that from Warcraft. The term works. The ras from each cabal get together and decide who is going to lead the raid, by duel if necessary. The other ras in the raid function like suras to the ras in charge of the whole operation, but maintain control of their own cabals.

I think there needs to be two, possibly three more cabals involved to effectively occupy Aschera. When both Raphel and Mora disappear through Saeli’s portal, Raphel’s cabal is probably going to be taken over by a fellow named Jaime. (If the ras of a cabal dies/abdicates/is captured/etc., command of the cabal goes to the suras. In the unlikely event that both the ras and suras are killed/abducted/whatever at the same time, command goes to whomever is strong enough to take charge.) The fifteen of them will probably be nominally in charge of the whole occupation effort…until Raphel returns, that is. Thus, Jaime will be ras of the Aschera raid.

We’ll have Geris’ cabal still there, under the command of Egan, their suras. However, Egan is going to be killed by the student resistance, and I think after that the whole cabal is going to fall apart. Some of them might migrate to the other cabals, but on the whole, they’ll probably just take what they can and slink out of the city in the night.

We’ll have Teja’s cabal. I didn’t introduce her until the third book in the first draft, and I may still save her for then. Teja has a relatively large cabal, let’s say 30 or so, and she’s reasonably competent. After Egan is killed and the remnant of Raphel’s cabal abandons Aschera when Raphel returns, Teja will claim leadership of the occupation and become ras of the Aschera raid.

So we need at least one additional cabal, possibly two. Maybe two smaller ones of about 15-20. These are probably going to be Cowls that Raphel or possibly Mora knows, and trusts. I haven’t decided which of them knew Teja.

Now, the occupation itself. As a rule, majahel don’t kill cowans if they don’t have to. It’s kind of like the soldier/civilian dynamic…you don’t kill civilians if you can help it, and you certainly don’t target them. Killing cowans is bad form. Using cowans as cover is cowardly. Etc. Thus, the Aschera raid isn’t going to kill everyone in the city. Also, Prof Micah and Prof Lo do manage to get a sizable chunk of Aschera’s citizenry away from the city before the other cabals get there, so probably large parts of the city are going to be empty.

The students are somewhat of a gray area. On one hand, they are all majahel. On the other hand, a lot of them are not trained enough to really be a threat. The senior red cords and the Anjahel students are obvious threats. Probably any student sixteen or older will be treated as a threat, though the Cowls might decide to imprison them instead of executing them. The younger Mantle students would be treated like cowans. The gray students may be given the opportunity to take the Cowl.

Aschera’s going to get looted and torched pretty bad. Cowls are more accepting of looting than Mantles. (Not that Mantles don’t loot. They do. They just pretend they don’t, or they call it something else.) Aside from Geris’ mob, many of whom are thieves anyway…every Cowl that enters the city is going to take stuff. Plus, taking Aschera is the ultimate payback for Iadnah, and I’m sure the raid is going to destroy everything they don’t need, simply for revenge.

Aschamon is going to become the staging ground for the raid, and as such, the dormitories are probably going to be where they all sleep.

This is what Saeli is going to come back to. Not to mention a very pissed roommate who blames her for it all.

Alas, it is late, so I must give off my brainstorming for the night.

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Or maybe it’s because I’m writing a Saeli/Brendan conflict scene, and that’s harder to do from Saeli’s head. I dunno. It ought to be easier, because I’ve got a solid pipeline to Saeli’s internal state of mind. But for some reason, I’m having a hard time generating the necessary emotion to make this scene work. The scene needs to happen, and it needs to happen onscreen. It escalates the tension between Saeli and Brendan, so that Brendan’s later drug experimentation and subsequent explosion at Saeli makes sense. Otherwise, Brendan is going to look like he’s overreacting, and the reader isn’t going to have a clear idea why.

However, maybe I’m trying to milk it too much. Maybe it needs to be extremely short, and maybe Brendan actually holds back a lot of what he’d like to say. I was going to have this fight undermine a lot of the confidence Saeli has just gained in Raphel…but reading that just now, I’m realizing that I can’t do that. I mean, we’ve just had a big reveal in the story. I’ve turned Saeli’s world upside down, and she needs to ride that for a while. Her thoughts need to marinate before I dump the next big thing on her.

And to some extent, I want Brendan’s blow-up at the graduation party to shock Saeli. She needs to know he’s upset, but I don’t think she or the reader needs to know just how much the boyfriend thing has been eating at him until it all comes out. Brendan’s pain is a major consequence of her joining forces with Raphel, and as such, it needs to hit her at the appropriate time.

So this little fight needs to be short and bitter, but not too intense. What needs to be revealed at this point?

-Brendan thinks Saeli has a boyfriend. Because:

-Brendan ran into Cara while looking for Saeli. Cara, concerned because Saeli hasn’t returned to campus yet, and feeling guilty about lying to Brendan in the first place, tells him the truth and sends him after her. This, perhaps, will also create a little tension between Cara and Saeli. Saeli’s going to have to keep lying to keep Raphel a secret, and this will have the effect of isolating her from her Mantle friends.

-Brendan was coming to tell Saeli that he’s earned the gold and white, and that they’ll be Anjahel together. Finding out that she tricked him in order to sneak off campus to meet a boyfriend has completely ruined this much anticipated moment for him. Thus, he is not happy.

However, the crux of his anger is not specifically that Saeli has a boyfriend. Rather, he thinks she had a boyfriend when they talked in the infirmary, and he thinks she deliberately kept it from him. He also assumes that’s why she tricked him in order to sneak off campus. Brendan is feeling like he’s being played by the girl he likes, and that really hurts. I think that’s the reveal I need to save for the graduation party. Let Saeli assume Brendan is mainly mad about the sneaking out, and then let the truth come out later, at the worst possible moment.

I think I know where this scene needs to go now. Note to self…if a scene is going slowly, maybe there’s something functionally wrong with it, and I need to step back and analyze what I’m doing.

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My ideas keep spawning bigger ideas. My queue is getting a little ridiculous.

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Once again I’ve laid out Raphel’s explanation of why he needs Saeli, how the war started, and his idea of how to bring down the gods. During the last draft, I had done some brainstorming on Verre’s history, specifically about the Cursing, because I needed more information on Scisaxar’s character. One of the ideas I had come up with was that there existed a group of majahel who belonged to neither Scisaxar nor Yuril, and they could use both sattva and rashas qi. The gods destroyed them. The war between Mantles and Cowls began soon afterward.

Raphel thinks that the gods were threatened by the grays, because the grays knew how to travel to other worlds and they knew about the Keeper. He thinks the gods started the war to cover up the true reason for the Cursing of the Midplains.

What he doesn’t know was that the grays were actually delving in some very dangerous things, and the gods had very good reason to step in and stop them. However, due to some personal drama, the gods admittedly did not handle the situation very well. That’s info for the sequel, incidentally. Saeli actually reestablishes the Grays as an actual Order at the end of Shades, and makes an effort to uncover their lore. Or course, some of the new Grays rediscover the dangerous stuff the old Grays were doing, and try to recreate it. As creator of the new movement, Saeli has to uncover the truth of the movement she’s been emulating, which will mean revisiting some of her pain with Raphel. Anyway…back to Shades.

The gray majahel are new to this draft, and that’s become the primary hook Raphel is using to entice Saeli into this plan to overthrow the gods. Secondary hook: ending the war is all about justice, and knowing the truth. That’s a big deal to Saeli, who’s never really liked the war. Raphel is giving her reasons to hate it. Third hook: Raphel is seducing her. It’s subtle, but it’s there. He’s observed her weak spots. He knows she’s intrigued by him, so he’s playing up his atypical-ness as a Cowl. He knows she’s an outcast, so he’s enticing her with a grand vision of saving the world from itself. He knows how she’s struggled to earn the Mantle, so he uses that to undermine her loyalty to Scisaxar. He knows she has a compassionate heart, so he throws out some of his own painful history to illicit sympathy from her. He also knows how to touch her hand or face in such a way as to deliberately make her stop thinking too hard.

Anyway, they are having this conversation in a cafe, where Cara had previously ordered tea. So the teapot and cups are still sitting there on the table, and once or twice I had Raphel messing with them. Just for something to do with his hands while he’s talking. There was one point where Saeli was considering how logical Raphel’s arguments were, and simultaneously watching him trace a circle on the rim of the teacup. The symbolism of that really struck me: how Raphel can sound all logical and straightforward, and all the while he’s actually leading you around in a circle.

So all of a sudden I had this really neat, subtle metaphor I could use during this scene. The teacup is actually a gauge of what Raphel is mentally doing to Saeli.

When he tells her he’s going to teach her rashas qi, she jumps up, bumps the table, and accidentally knocks the cup off its saucer. If you think about it, Saeli has literally been knocked off her Mantle foundations, and the last straw would be her learning rashas. And who picks up the cup and sets it back on the saucer? Raphel. Because what is he doing but setting up a different foundation for Saeli to rest on?

He plays with the cup some more while he’s telling her about the gray majahel. When Saeli finally asks if he can prove he isn’t making stuff up, he sets the cup back down on its saucer and says “Yes, I can prove it.” (He then proceeds to pull out an old scroll and do just that.) Foundation, again. He’s plucking her out of her old beliefs and setting her back down in his.

When Raphel claims the gods destroyed the grays, he spins the cup on the table. That’s because he’s departed from actual history and is conjecturing. That’s what he thinks happened. He doesn’t know what really happened…no one does…but he’s spinning the story that way because he knows Saeli will fall for it.

Raphel points out that the gods fear the Keeper, and knocks the cup over again. He says he thinks the gods were afraid the grays would bring the Keeper to Verre. This time, Saeli picks up the cup. Because ultimately, it’s Saeli who is going to save the gods, not from the Keeper…but from Raphel.

While Saeli is wondering how Scisaxar could have been part of the Cursing, she’s studying the dregs in the teacup. When Raphel finally tells her that they’re going to overthrow the gods, she drops the cup and it spills. This time it stays spilled for a little bit. This is no small thing he’s just told her, after all.

He picks it up while talking about his past, and grips it hard enough Saeli is afraid it will crack. That’s the part of Raphel that could destroy her, after all…his anger over his past. It’s what ultimately forges him into the villain of the story. In her sympathy, she takes the cup away from him…because she will, at the end of the story, pull herself out of his clutches, and she’ll do it out of love.

He finally pins her down with a question of whether she loves Scisaxar or not. To give herself time to answer, she mops up the spilled tea on the table. White cloth, brown stains. This is what her view of Mantles has become. What she thought was pure is actually stained.

Raphel takes the napkin away from her. He folds it up into a little square, and clinks the teacup down on the saucer. Pretty decisive. It’s after this that he really ramps up the seduction bit, cupping her face and telling her he can’t do this without her, that sort of thing. He switches from “you’re going to do this because it’s a good idea” to “you’re going to do this because you really like me”.

Who knew you could pack all that into a teacup. I love symbolism.

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I think, I think, that the scene I’m currently working on will be one of the last to involve significant changes to the storyline itself. It’s the scene where Saeli meets Raphel in the Sari Cafe…only now she’s already been given her Mantle, she has to sneak off campus in order to meet him at all, she and Cara had to deceive Brendan in order to pull off the escape, and she’s got a two hour time limit to get back (before the school gates close for the night). Thus, the whole dialogue will have to unfold in a different order to accommodate the changes. Plus I’m bringing over a shortened version of the dedication discussion, since the first thing out of Saeli’s mouth is going to be something along the lines of “Uh, they kind of made me a Mantle”…which isn’t going to make Raphel happy.

The next major event is the graduation party. I’m sure Saeli will be able to get official permission to go to that. She’ll also be able to tell Raphel about it, since she’ll have a sorarc by then. Plays right into his hands, that…

At the party, Saeli has to have her confrontation with Brendan. I think I still need to have a short scene with him after Saeli gets done talking to Raphel at the Sari…if only to establish some complication in their relationship. First of all, Saeli and Cara had to have his help in getting Saeli through the gates. The school gates have student guards to keep track of who goes in and out, and the High Priestess has given orders that Saeli is not allowed to leave. The gates also have a pair of qi-sensing panels embedded in the school-side entrance that glimmer if qi is used near them. (Of course, they are only set up to recognize sattva qi, because they were designed to catch students sneaking out, not Cowls sneaking in. The school assumes that any Cowl sneaking in is going to be caught by the anti-intruder ward, or the Anjahel guards on duty [who can sense the presence of rashas qi in a person, not just when it's in use]. That hole in the system allowed Raphel to sneak in cloaked, with a student’s name on his lips.)

However, Saeli doesn’t know any rashas qi yet, so she’d have to use a sattva cloak to sneak out. That’s where Cara comes in. Cara is also going to cloak and try to sneak through the gate, but she’s going to purposefully get caught. She’ll then explain that she was sent to test the qi panels, and to make sure the guards were paying attention. Such tests are somewhat routine. While the guards are distracted with Cara, Saeli will slip by. However, both girls know that the guards will report the incident, so they need to obtain actual permission to conduct the test. That’s where Brendan comes in. He’s a senior red cord, and on very good terms with Professor Lo, the Advanced Forms teacher and the head of campus security. He’s also known for his honesty. If Brendan were to go to Lo and say he thought the panels needed testing, and the guards needed a wake-up call, he could probably get the permission they need.

Only problem is, Saeli can’t tell Brenden she’s going to sneak off campus, because Brendan would never allow it. Barring that, he’d never go along with it. So Saeli and Cara go to Brendan and pretend that they saw the guards goofing off, and that it’s making Saeli nervous. Saeli suggests sending Cara to test them, but they need permission. Brendan, already vulnerable to any plea from Saeli and already worried about her safety, agrees and gets the permission they need.

The sneaking out goes over without a hitch, except that Cara ends up going with Saeli to the Cafe. Saeli just can’t persuade her otherwise. They get to the cafe, and Saeli doesn’t see Raphel right away. She gets more and more nervous, especially with Cara there, and finally needs a moment to herself. She excuses herself and goes to the hallway outside the bathrooms, and of course there’s Raphel, dressed in street clothes and waiting for her. They have a kind of frantic, whispered conversation, which is interrupted by Cara, who comes looking for Saeli. So Cara meets “Aiden” and is completely and utterly charmed. She now completely understands why her roommate would risk getting in trouble to see this guy again. I need Cara to not be suspicious, because Brendan is about to become suspicious enough for both of them.

Brendan, meanwhile, is pulled into the High Priestess’ office that evening and given the gold cord. The first thing he thinks to do, of course, is to tell Saeli, so he goes looking for her. He doesn’t find her, and he learns that Cara went on into town after testing the gate guards. Well, Brendan’s a pretty smart fellow and he quickly realizes that Cara must have been helping Saeli sneak out. That pisses him off, because not only is she endangering herself by going outside, she tricked him into helping her do it. So he goes into town looking for her.

He finds her inside the Sari, just as she’s about to leave (time’s almost up). Saeli tries to shoo Raphel away before Brendan sees them, and Raphel is quite willing to leave, but Brendan’s already spotted them. Raphel leaves without speaking, and Saeli and Brendan are left alone. Well, now Brendan is triply pissed, because apparently Saeli tricked him into helping her sneak out so that she could meet a guy behind his back. Ouch. And there really isn’t much Saeli can do to persuade him otherwise, without revealing who Raphel is and why she was really meeting him. Problem is, there’s just enough truth to Brendan’s suspicions that Saeli feels too guilty and wretched to tell the truth. Confronted with Brendan’s hurt, the truth actually starts to feel like an excuse. She does like Raphel. She did meet him before she and Brendan spoke in the infirmary. And her own fascination with Raphel was part of the reason she met him again.

So that’s where Saeli and Brendan stand going into the graduation party. It’s probably enough to push Brendan over the edge enough to indulge in a little tanathe weed.

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Today’s motto was God’s Word is True. Now, when I read a phrase like that, my hackles automatically go up because it’s so easy for people to misunderstand. Not all truth is factual truth, and a story doesn’t have to be historically, factually real in order to be “true”. However, these are kids we’re talking about. How do you explain the concept of genres in the Bible to a fourth grader? Simple answer: you really can’t. Wait until they get into junior high, and then maybe you can start explaining how the various parts of Scripture are true.

However, there is a vast difference between saying “everything in the Bible is true” and “there are no made-up parts in the Bible; all the stories are all true”. Heaven forbid you start saying things like “Everything that’s written in the Bible actually happened in history, and happened exactly as it is written”. See, I’d agree with the first statement and need to majorly clarify the second, and I think the third statement is blatantly false and is entirely missing the point of entire sections of the Bible.

It seems like many Americans have this notion that factual truth is the only truth worth knowing. In other words, if it didn’t actually happen, it’s meaningless. It’s “make-believe”. It’s not real. It causes people to turn their noses up at fiction writing as “fairy tales”, or worse, “lying”. It causes people to decide that certain movies and books cannot possibly contain truth because they’re about talking animals, or people who can do magic. It’s why some people won’t watch anything but the History Channel. In this worldview, only facts have value…mythology and legends are “just stories”, and are therefore of no use whatsoever. (Even though a people’s mythology can often reveal more about who they are and what they believe than their history can.)

Therefore, if the events in the Bible are not all historically, factually true, they conclude that the entire Bible is meaningless. Thus, when people outside of the faith encounter such Bible-believing Christians, they conclude that all Christians must be mindless morons, if they really think everything in the Bible “actually happened”. In trying to maintain the “factual reality” of the events in Scripture (which they mistake as The Truth), such literalists are actually destroying the credibility of the overall message (i.e: the Actual Truth) to people who, you know, actually understand how to properly read various genres of literature.

How can I put this delicately? Ever heard of an allegory? A poem? A metaphor, for crying out loud? The Bible has all of them! People who dismiss any story because “it’s not real” are missing the purpose of the story. People who read a myth the exact same way they read a historical document, and require the myth to have the same factual information as the historical document, and automatically dismiss the myth as not being worth their time when it inevitably doesn’t have the same factual information as the historical document…it becomes obvious that they don’t know what a myth is for. Basic reading comprehension fail.

For example, personally I think Genesis is an allegory of creation, not a factual account of creation, and here’s the kicker: it doesn’t have to be factual to be in order to be true. The story employs archetypes and uses allegorical language to describe humankind’s fall away from God. (Come on, the people’s names were Man and Mother of All Living, and they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The language is rhythmic and poetic. Allegory!) On the extreme opposite pole, there exists a relatively modern movement in America called Young Earth Creationism, which maintains the God created the world in seven literal days around 6000 years ago, despite the veritable mountain of evidence to the contrary. I think such “literalism” stems from this need for every Bible story to have happened “in real life”. People try to convince YECs that Genesis cannot be factually true, but all the YECists hear their critics saying is “Genesis is meaningless”. And if Genesis is meaningless and therefore false, than the whole Bible is meaningless and God is a liar. And this is all because in their reality, stories that aren’t historical fact are meaningless, and therefore false. Fact = Truth. NotFact = Falsehood. It’s simple, black and white…and utterly blind to most of humankind’s collection of Truth in the form of poetry, allegory, metaphor, parable, fairy tales, and bedtime stories.

As a writer, I could not live in such a world.

Not everything has to exist in real life to be true. “Made up” stories can still be “true”…that truth simply exists in a different form. Jesus himself made up stories to make a point, and I don’t think many people are suggesting that the events in those little stories actually happened. That wasn’t the bloody point. Stories don’t have to be real to be true. The truth is not in the provability of the events. The truth is in the message conveyed by the events. It doesn’t matter if Genesis never happened. It doesn’t matter if Revelation never happened, or never happens. Those stories are still true, in that they contain universal truths that aren’t bound by fact or history.

This sort of thing is obvious to me because I write fiction, and so I find myself boggled when other people don’t understand. Maybe it’s because I write fantasy fiction, which is both “fantasy” and “fiction”…a double dose of unreality, as it were. I have a more ephemeral notion of Truth, I guess, which is based less on the “real world” and more on what sorts of things are worth believing. In my mind, some facts are True. Some Truth is factual. But not all Truth is factual, and not all facts are True. The nightly news about all the horrible stuff that goes on during the day might be fact, but such things are not expressions of Truth…and in my mind, the news is not more worthwhile than Lord of the Rings just because the news is “real life” and LOTR is “make-believe”. Sometimes fiction is truer than real life.

In fact, I think I write fiction because it’s actually easier to write truth when one isn’t confined to fact. We live in a messed up world. It’s far easier to tell the truth when you don’t have to tell things exactly as they really happened. And given the sheer amount of poetry and metaphor and allegory and parable and storytelling in the Bible, I think God understands that.

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Geris takes particular delight in being from Lanschport, but then, he’s a weird, perverse kind of guy.

What would Raphel call his cabal? To the larger world, the name would be mostly irrelevant. Raphel is so famous that his cabal is simply going to be known by most people as “Raphel’s cabal”…they aren’t going to care what he himself calls it. But still, they must call themselves something…every group needs an identity.

I’m inclined toward something like “New Iadnah”, or something like that. The Cowls in Raphel’s cabal, or at least a good number of them, are survivors of the Siege of Iadnah. Raphel met Nasira in Iadnah during the siege, an event which definitely changed his life. It’s an identifying point with them…gives them particular reason to want to assassinate high-ranking Mantles. Only New Iadnah sounds a little presumptuous to me. But I dunno, maybe Raphel would name his group something presumptous. Maybe he did it when he took it over from Nasira when he was 18.

I’ll just have to think about it some more.

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So a month or two ago, there was this author that had been recommended to me, and I kept telling myself I should check her out. Then, at the Cassandra Claire and Holly Black event in Vero, that same author was recommended yet again, by those two no less. I said to myself, “I really do need to look into that.”

Then, of course, I completely forgot the author’s name. I knew she had two books, and that the second one was called Fire. Let me tell you, there are a whole stinking lot of books on the market with “fire” in the title…which makes searching in the library almost impossible. Especially without an author. So…I gave up, in the hopes of eventually running across the name again and remembering it.

In a completely unrelated series of events, I ended up checking out a book called Graceling from the library. (Are you laughing yet?) It was one of those few books I pick up, not because I know anything about them, but because the back cover sounds interesting. Most of those are disappointments. This one was not.

It was imaginative, and exciting, and unpretentious. I would have built up the world a little more, if I’d been writing it, but the story didn’t suffer for lack of detail. Reading the inside flap, I was surprised to discover that the author lives in Jacksonville, FL. Yay, fellow Floridian! I enjoyed Graceling enough that I went online to see if the author had a blog or something. I started on Amazon, where I was excited to discover that there is apparently another book in the series.

Can you guess what that second book is called? Yep.

Fire.

Proving that yes, apparently I really should have checked Kristin Cashore out when I still remembered her name, because her first book was interesting enough for me to pick up AT RANDOM. Craziness.

In other news, I’m about halfway through the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris. Those are the books that apparently inspired the TrueBlood series on TV, which I know nothing about. But I’ve discovered that if a book spawns a movie or TV series, the book is at least worth checking out. (With the possible exception of Vampire Diaries. I tried to read those and it was like reading Twilight all over again. It was just…meh.) Anyway, I’m quite enjoying the Sookie books. They have a nice balance of mystery, sensuality, solid worldbuilding, and fun, and I really like the protagonist. She’s one of those perky southern women who don’t have a lot of “book larning”, but has a good head on her shoulders nonetheless.

I really need to update my to-read list, as I’ve finished a lot of what’s on it, and have added some stuff. I’ll probably do that in a different post.

The Shades rewrite is going very well. First person works a lot better than third ever did, I’m discovering. Much easier to introspect. But really, I think the best thing I did was starting at the fight scene. It just makes everyone’s motivations and conflicts so much clearer, and make so much more sense. Saeli, instead of starting things off with a dubious and rather stupid plan to meet with a Cowl, is immediately thrown into a conflict with one through no deliberate fault of her own. Yes, she ends up in a mess because of her decisions, but one could argue that there was little else she could do in those circumstances.

No, she didn’t have to sneak into the Temple to get a better look at a Cowl. But her doubts drove her there. No, she didn’t have to jump out to defend the High Priestess against Raphel, but her good heart wouldn’t let her do otherwise. It’s actually the only thing she does all night that a real White Mantle would also do.

She didn’t have to get into a conversation with Raphel, but her own doubts and curiosities, and Raphel’s strange manner, made it inevitable. This is where Saeli’s sense of what’s right departs from White Mantle philosophy. A Mantle would attack, and never give the enemy a chance to speak…no matter the circumstance, no matter how different or fascinating the enemy was. If Raphel had attacked her the second she appeared, that’s probably the course she would have taken, because it’s what she’s been taught. But Raphel tried to talk her away first, and that was enough to shock her out of reacting. Saeli’s own doubts compel her to try and find out why this Cowl is different.

She certainly didn’t have to take Raphel up on his compromise, and let him go when he asked…but it was the only thing she could do to save herself and the High Priestess’ life, given what she knows. (If she had known how much Raphel would risk to keep a gray her age alive, she might have been in a better position to bargain…but as far as she knows, Raphel’s going to kill her unless she does what he asks). She chooses saving lives over the morals she’s been taught, and that is significant. She’s willing to take circumstance into account. She follows her own inner sense of what’s right. This is what makes her so vulnerable to Raphel, but it’s also what will ultimately allow her to break free from him.

Raphel, instead of for-some-mysterious-reason deciding to meet an unknown student just because she asks, is thrown into a conflict with Saeli because of where he was and what he was trying to do. He spares her initially because he’s just killed Denys and is not happy about it, and he really doesn’t want to do it again. And before you start thinking that Raphel isn’t really such a bad guy after all, as Saeli does, know that Raphel objects to killing bystanders not out of the goodness of his heart, but as a matter of pride. He’s an assassin, and normally he’s good enough to get in and out of a place without having killed anyone other than his target. He’s more annoyed with himself at this point, because having to kill a student is embarrassing. Killing two would be unbearable, not to his conscience, but to his pride.

When she follows him up to the tower, he admires her for her tenacity. Mind you, he’s still going to kill her…perhaps even more so at this point, as it’s obvious she’s not going to leave him alone. But he’s curious enough about this Mantle who is acting so un-Mantle-like that he’s willing to hold back for a few minutes and see what she does. It’s when he figures out that she’s gray that the stakes change for him.

He realizes that he has a golden opportunity in Saeli to realize a plan that he’s been concocting for years. But, of course, now he can’t kill her. Hell, he can’t even hurt her in any significant way, as that would destroy any future trust she might have in him. But if he kills the HP, he knows he’ll have to fight Saeli, and thus probably hurt or kill her. However, if he doesn’t kill the HP, he’s going to face hell from his cabal, who are counting on him to take down the Mantle leader. And if he doesn’t choose quickly, he’s liable to get caught anyway. Saeli’s presence in this scene actually puts Raphel in a very difficult position, although of course, Saeli won’t know any of this.

He chooses Saeli, because even a faint hope of taking down the gods is worth the risk for him.

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