Well, perfect for me, anyway. Because I suck at most controller-based video games (not Wii, though, where my tendency to jerk around like a twitchy idiot actually helps), and I compulsively sing along to music and I really like playing it, too. Or, in this case, pretending to play it. Add to that the ability to make and play dress up with avatars how who cool hair options and I'm done for.
It all started last month when I went home to Texas for a week or so. First it was "hey guys, nice to be back."
Then: "Oh, is that a plastic baby guitar used for that game with the flying notes and what have you?"
Then: "Hey, I'm kind of not sucking at the drums, here..."
And finally (over and over): "So...if we're not doing anything...WHO'S UP FOR SOME ROCK BAND?! IAMIAMIAM!!"
And it hasn't really stopped. I sent jon out for an Xbox 360 literally the day we flew back into Michigan. I can now play most songs on hard on all three instruments (and a couple of songs on expert. The really easy ones, but still) for both Rock Band 2 and The Beatles: Rock Band. And sometimes I balance the microphone on some jars on the coffee table and sing along while I play my plastic baby guitar. Sometimes, people walk by my window and I feel terribly conspicuous about it, but...I mean...I'm still sitting there doing it anyway. Turns out I do a mean Ringo Starr impression. In the right octave and everything. Thanks, man voice.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
What are all those things on the sidebar, anyway?
Just in case you were wondering, since I never did break it down or anything, here's a fairly comprehensive of what I've been writing/what stage it's in/etc:
The Border Wars:
Ah, the genesis of the Jarthenverse. This set of stuff is the most closely tied to Jarthen, the Border Wars, and where this whole thing began.
Border Wars: Book 1
Finished, for the most part! Being read by fabulous beta readers all over and getting last minute feedback before it's finalized. It has a storied career, starting from the infamous prologue and eventually getting totally torn apart. Still needs a good title, though.
Border Wars: Book 2
In the late stages of some pretty intensive planning right now (stay tuned for a more fully fleshed out post on this). I have written a decent chunk of it, but who knows how much of that will actually make it into the actual text? Look for posts of the first draft to start popping up over here sometime in the next two-three months. I think this book is going to kick ass, I really do.
Border Wars: Book 3
Still sort of in the primordial ooze stages. We do have an ending in mind for it all and know who survives until the end and who doesn't, so that's something.
The Raven and the Dove
This is really Moshel's story - it tracks him from adolescence up through the end of the Border Wars. I rather like it (despite the fact that it's a sweeping grand romance sort of thing and aside from Dr. Zhivago those don't really tend to be my bag) but it definitely needs work. But that work really has to wait until the actually Border Wars books are done, since it overlaps with them a good deal. The ending is my favorite ending I've ever written, though.
Jarthen's Travails novella
Book 2 is starting 2-3 years after Book 1 and Jarthen's had a bit of a time of it in the interim (he gets found at a slave market in the Elvo-Felintark Empire...how does he get there? This novella hopes to answer that question!). It's got some loose outlines to its name already, and there are plans to publish it along with a truly fabulous memoir of Atelon Scrudton Jon's been writing the hell out of in the lull between Book 1 and Book 2.
The Satyr Novita:
This is a set of four interrelated novellas that span several generations and track the changes undergoing satyr society. The gist is that they're from the mountains and space there is tight, so they send people into exile whenever they've had a child. The satyrs are stuck down with the rest in the Jarthenverse until their kid has grown up enough to have their own kid and comes down to tell them they can go back. And eventually, this whole cycle gets totally undermined. It's a little wacky for that alone, I guess, but it's also all written in a series of scenes done in first-person present tense (because I felt the satyrs had a sort of peculiar way of experiencing the flow of time) with no chapter breaks or what have you. I think it works. This one, by the way, is actually ready for other people to start reading it. So if you feel like it (no pressure) and you don't mind a few spoilers regarding the Border Wars, drop a comment and I'll send it to you (but, seriously, no pressure).
Johannes
The first novella centers around Johannes's exile (he's the satyr Rethnaki and company hitch a ride back across the Fethil with, by the way) and it overlaps a good deal with the Border Wars books. He doesn't quite see the end of it all but he gets pretty close and a lot of it hasn't appeared in the Border Wars books as of yet. But it's all really a backdrop for him more than an actual plot. The actual plot revolves around his attachment to a few non-satyrs which is a sort of no-no to begin with, but especially his relationship with Parlandor (an elf), who it turns out, can speak his language. Which he and everyone else were always taught no one but them could learn. Johannes is easily one of the most cereberal and articulate characters I've ever written.
Abraham
Abe is Johannes's son, and this one tracks his exile, too. He runs into Parlandor and eventually teaches him everything his father didn't teach him -- something that he's pretty sure will lead to the other satyrs either excommunicating him or killing him (because the satyrs? totally have their own badass assassins).
Yohanni
Yohanni is Parlandor's daughter. She inherited her father's ability to speak the satyr's language and ends up spending most of her formative up in the mountains with them, and they have very ambivalent feelings about her being there since she's an elf and all. Half-satyrs, see, are totally not kosher, so to live with them she sort of has to give up having a family (or even, really, anything more than friendship). While she's in exile, she manages to secure more land for them which she hopes will ease the pressure and make exiles unnecessary, which doesn't go as well as she hopes. She eventually founds her own village in the mountains where she takes a husband of her own and ends up adopting a half-satyr brought to her by an assassin.
Kellibin
The half-satyr Yohanni adopts grows up and essentially exiles himself, of his own free will. He ends up running with pirates, having a whole mess of children, and adopting a bunch of half-satyrs the assassins start bringing to him. And when they start refusing to kill the half-satyrs, the cycle has fundamentally broken down. There's a lot of references to The Tempest scattered throughout this one, it felt appropriate.
City of Mages -- First Generation:
So, the City of Mages is introduced in the first Border Wars book very breifly as a happening, cosmopoliton, culture-clashy sort of place. The kind of place ripe for identity issues and interesting cultural interactions -- in short, my kind of place. This set of stuff centers around a group of what are essentially street urchins (most of them mixed race) living in the City around the end of the Border Wars.
Kellidion Novella (Prequel)
Kellidion (a full red elf) used to be the leader of the Natives, that band of street urchins mentioned above that the bulk of the characters involved in this set of stuff are part of. But at some point, he decided to skip out fo the City and join up with the Rebel Army. This novella tracks his reasons for it and develops him as a character through the perspective of those around him. Kellidion, by the way, is a supporting character in the Border Wars: Book 2. This one's pretty much done and polished.
First Book
This takes place in the space between Border Wars Books 1 and 2 (and was originally conceptualized as a set of short stories that could be posted on the Jarthen blog in the lull between them. That has not come to fruition). The planning for this was very, very different than the planning I do for the Border Wars books, and the first draft was definitely internally consistent, and readable, but ultimately, I think it was just too much book for one book. Three loosely related plot lines developed (plot 1: Dran, a red elvish gambler, pisses off the wrong people and gets assassins set on him; plot 2: Ezra, a half-human, half-red elvish violinst falls for a satyr named Gabe which gets a bit awkward when it turns out that this is a big no-no and Gabe gets an assasin set on him; plot 3: Dran gives up gambling and turns into a private investigator), each of which could be unraveled and developed more fully into their own books or novellas. So that's what I'm doing now -- splitting it apart and trying to figure out what to do with it all. Right now, I'm rewriting Plot 2 (surprise, surprise! It's a gay love story. Because I love branching out, obviously) from multiple perspectives and beefing up a subplot involving a kid with drug issues related to it. I think it will turn out well, but it's an organic, slow thing that looks like it's going to require me writing about three times more text than will actually make the final cut.
Second Book
This centers around the same basic group of characters as the first book, but right after the end of the Border Wars, so it's set about ten years later. I'm still very much feeling out where this one if going, because the original dominant plot line I thought I was going to use wasn't working. There's a couple of subplots (one, actually, involving Moshel. He gets around.) that are developing nicely, but I can't say there's really all that much to say about it yet.
Pirate Book
Alright, so this is that plotline that I thought I was going to use for the second book and didn't. It's now developing into it's own self-contained story. I cut it out of the other book because it was turning into a very narrow narrative focusing on a guy named Nuri (a silver elf who ends up the business partner of that red elf who stops gambling) and his past catching up with him in the form of a pirate he knows a lot better than he wishes he did. It just wasn't gelling with the sort of ensemble-cast thing the other book has. But it's coming along pretty well, I'm about 80 pages in and approaching the final chunk of it (I'm letting that final chunk of it percolate for a bit). There's a lot of interesting things going on with the fluidity of identity and the various instrumental uses of sexuality and things like that.
Po and Ezra Novella
Ok, so I stuck this one here but it really works as a bridge between the first generation stuff and the second generation stuff. It's a fairly in depth exploration of the relationship between Ezra (that halfie violinst from the first book) and Po (a healer introduced as a supporting character in the first book) pretty far down the line. Remember those exiles the satyrs go through? Well, eventually they end, and eventually Ezra's satyr lover's ends and he goes back up to the mountains and leaves Ezra behind. This novella jumps back and forth between Ezra and Po's perspectives as the two of them deal with the fallout this major shift causes in both their lives and their relationship with each other as they approach middle age. It's very much finished, and pretty polished.
City of Mages - Second Generation:
This set of stuff traces the lives of the children of the folks from the first generation of the City of Mages and othersaround that age group. It's taking place a good 100-200 years after the end of the Border Wars, so the lay of the land is a bit different. A number of characters in this set were first introduced int he Po and Ezra novella.
The Refugees
Remember how I said I meant for that first City of Mages book to come out as a set of short stories and it didn't? Well I meant for this one to be a novel and it came out a set of short stories. Funny how that happens. Anyway, it's a bout a set of mixed-race young adults in the City of Mages from all sorts of backgrounds, and the stories more or less deal with their relationships with each other. But it also shows a burgeoning movement to claim their identites as mixed-race individuals, develop a community, assert themselves through various forms of expression as well (Jon keeps referrring to it as the "Elvish Harlem Renaissance"). Each of the stories is from a different persepective, but the same cast of characters shows up over and over again, so there are a few plot threads that get played out across a number of stories. This has sex, drugs, and what passes in a pre-industrial society for rock and roll. And it's finished and polished enough for someone other than me to read it if you're interested.
Reader and Apprentice
This one's a bit of a doozy. It features the single most autobiographical character I've ever written and it's not the easiest thing for me to write, actually. Well, no, I take that back, it's really easy for me to write, but the stuff of the writing itself is not always things I really want to admit to myself. That said, I think it could turn out to be very, very good. I generally feel about the stuff I'm writing that it's entertaining and well-executed but not that it's really 'good' by some imaginary litrary ruler. This one might be. With a bit of patience and elbow grease, it could be. I'm working on finishing up the first draft, though, so I'll let you know if I still feel that way after it's all done.
The Border Wars:
Ah, the genesis of the Jarthenverse. This set of stuff is the most closely tied to Jarthen, the Border Wars, and where this whole thing began.
Border Wars: Book 1
Finished, for the most part! Being read by fabulous beta readers all over and getting last minute feedback before it's finalized. It has a storied career, starting from the infamous prologue and eventually getting totally torn apart. Still needs a good title, though.
Border Wars: Book 2
In the late stages of some pretty intensive planning right now (stay tuned for a more fully fleshed out post on this). I have written a decent chunk of it, but who knows how much of that will actually make it into the actual text? Look for posts of the first draft to start popping up over here sometime in the next two-three months. I think this book is going to kick ass, I really do.
Border Wars: Book 3
Still sort of in the primordial ooze stages. We do have an ending in mind for it all and know who survives until the end and who doesn't, so that's something.
The Raven and the Dove
This is really Moshel's story - it tracks him from adolescence up through the end of the Border Wars. I rather like it (despite the fact that it's a sweeping grand romance sort of thing and aside from Dr. Zhivago those don't really tend to be my bag) but it definitely needs work. But that work really has to wait until the actually Border Wars books are done, since it overlaps with them a good deal. The ending is my favorite ending I've ever written, though.
Jarthen's Travails novella
Book 2 is starting 2-3 years after Book 1 and Jarthen's had a bit of a time of it in the interim (he gets found at a slave market in the Elvo-Felintark Empire...how does he get there? This novella hopes to answer that question!). It's got some loose outlines to its name already, and there are plans to publish it along with a truly fabulous memoir of Atelon Scrudton Jon's been writing the hell out of in the lull between Book 1 and Book 2.
The Satyr Novita:
This is a set of four interrelated novellas that span several generations and track the changes undergoing satyr society. The gist is that they're from the mountains and space there is tight, so they send people into exile whenever they've had a child. The satyrs are stuck down with the rest in the Jarthenverse until their kid has grown up enough to have their own kid and comes down to tell them they can go back. And eventually, this whole cycle gets totally undermined. It's a little wacky for that alone, I guess, but it's also all written in a series of scenes done in first-person present tense (because I felt the satyrs had a sort of peculiar way of experiencing the flow of time) with no chapter breaks or what have you. I think it works. This one, by the way, is actually ready for other people to start reading it. So if you feel like it (no pressure) and you don't mind a few spoilers regarding the Border Wars, drop a comment and I'll send it to you (but, seriously, no pressure).
Johannes
The first novella centers around Johannes's exile (he's the satyr Rethnaki and company hitch a ride back across the Fethil with, by the way) and it overlaps a good deal with the Border Wars books. He doesn't quite see the end of it all but he gets pretty close and a lot of it hasn't appeared in the Border Wars books as of yet. But it's all really a backdrop for him more than an actual plot. The actual plot revolves around his attachment to a few non-satyrs which is a sort of no-no to begin with, but especially his relationship with Parlandor (an elf), who it turns out, can speak his language. Which he and everyone else were always taught no one but them could learn. Johannes is easily one of the most cereberal and articulate characters I've ever written.
Abraham
Abe is Johannes's son, and this one tracks his exile, too. He runs into Parlandor and eventually teaches him everything his father didn't teach him -- something that he's pretty sure will lead to the other satyrs either excommunicating him or killing him (because the satyrs? totally have their own badass assassins).
Yohanni
Yohanni is Parlandor's daughter. She inherited her father's ability to speak the satyr's language and ends up spending most of her formative up in the mountains with them, and they have very ambivalent feelings about her being there since she's an elf and all. Half-satyrs, see, are totally not kosher, so to live with them she sort of has to give up having a family (or even, really, anything more than friendship). While she's in exile, she manages to secure more land for them which she hopes will ease the pressure and make exiles unnecessary, which doesn't go as well as she hopes. She eventually founds her own village in the mountains where she takes a husband of her own and ends up adopting a half-satyr brought to her by an assassin.
Kellibin
The half-satyr Yohanni adopts grows up and essentially exiles himself, of his own free will. He ends up running with pirates, having a whole mess of children, and adopting a bunch of half-satyrs the assassins start bringing to him. And when they start refusing to kill the half-satyrs, the cycle has fundamentally broken down. There's a lot of references to The Tempest scattered throughout this one, it felt appropriate.
City of Mages -- First Generation:
So, the City of Mages is introduced in the first Border Wars book very breifly as a happening, cosmopoliton, culture-clashy sort of place. The kind of place ripe for identity issues and interesting cultural interactions -- in short, my kind of place. This set of stuff centers around a group of what are essentially street urchins (most of them mixed race) living in the City around the end of the Border Wars.
Kellidion Novella (Prequel)
Kellidion (a full red elf) used to be the leader of the Natives, that band of street urchins mentioned above that the bulk of the characters involved in this set of stuff are part of. But at some point, he decided to skip out fo the City and join up with the Rebel Army. This novella tracks his reasons for it and develops him as a character through the perspective of those around him. Kellidion, by the way, is a supporting character in the Border Wars: Book 2. This one's pretty much done and polished.
First Book
This takes place in the space between Border Wars Books 1 and 2 (and was originally conceptualized as a set of short stories that could be posted on the Jarthen blog in the lull between them. That has not come to fruition). The planning for this was very, very different than the planning I do for the Border Wars books, and the first draft was definitely internally consistent, and readable, but ultimately, I think it was just too much book for one book. Three loosely related plot lines developed (plot 1: Dran, a red elvish gambler, pisses off the wrong people and gets assassins set on him; plot 2: Ezra, a half-human, half-red elvish violinst falls for a satyr named Gabe which gets a bit awkward when it turns out that this is a big no-no and Gabe gets an assasin set on him; plot 3: Dran gives up gambling and turns into a private investigator), each of which could be unraveled and developed more fully into their own books or novellas. So that's what I'm doing now -- splitting it apart and trying to figure out what to do with it all. Right now, I'm rewriting Plot 2 (surprise, surprise! It's a gay love story. Because I love branching out, obviously) from multiple perspectives and beefing up a subplot involving a kid with drug issues related to it. I think it will turn out well, but it's an organic, slow thing that looks like it's going to require me writing about three times more text than will actually make the final cut.
Second Book
This centers around the same basic group of characters as the first book, but right after the end of the Border Wars, so it's set about ten years later. I'm still very much feeling out where this one if going, because the original dominant plot line I thought I was going to use wasn't working. There's a couple of subplots (one, actually, involving Moshel. He gets around.) that are developing nicely, but I can't say there's really all that much to say about it yet.
Pirate Book
Alright, so this is that plotline that I thought I was going to use for the second book and didn't. It's now developing into it's own self-contained story. I cut it out of the other book because it was turning into a very narrow narrative focusing on a guy named Nuri (a silver elf who ends up the business partner of that red elf who stops gambling) and his past catching up with him in the form of a pirate he knows a lot better than he wishes he did. It just wasn't gelling with the sort of ensemble-cast thing the other book has. But it's coming along pretty well, I'm about 80 pages in and approaching the final chunk of it (I'm letting that final chunk of it percolate for a bit). There's a lot of interesting things going on with the fluidity of identity and the various instrumental uses of sexuality and things like that.
Po and Ezra Novella
Ok, so I stuck this one here but it really works as a bridge between the first generation stuff and the second generation stuff. It's a fairly in depth exploration of the relationship between Ezra (that halfie violinst from the first book) and Po (a healer introduced as a supporting character in the first book) pretty far down the line. Remember those exiles the satyrs go through? Well, eventually they end, and eventually Ezra's satyr lover's ends and he goes back up to the mountains and leaves Ezra behind. This novella jumps back and forth between Ezra and Po's perspectives as the two of them deal with the fallout this major shift causes in both their lives and their relationship with each other as they approach middle age. It's very much finished, and pretty polished.
City of Mages - Second Generation:
This set of stuff traces the lives of the children of the folks from the first generation of the City of Mages and othersaround that age group. It's taking place a good 100-200 years after the end of the Border Wars, so the lay of the land is a bit different. A number of characters in this set were first introduced int he Po and Ezra novella.
The Refugees
Remember how I said I meant for that first City of Mages book to come out as a set of short stories and it didn't? Well I meant for this one to be a novel and it came out a set of short stories. Funny how that happens. Anyway, it's a bout a set of mixed-race young adults in the City of Mages from all sorts of backgrounds, and the stories more or less deal with their relationships with each other. But it also shows a burgeoning movement to claim their identites as mixed-race individuals, develop a community, assert themselves through various forms of expression as well (Jon keeps referrring to it as the "Elvish Harlem Renaissance"). Each of the stories is from a different persepective, but the same cast of characters shows up over and over again, so there are a few plot threads that get played out across a number of stories. This has sex, drugs, and what passes in a pre-industrial society for rock and roll. And it's finished and polished enough for someone other than me to read it if you're interested.
Reader and Apprentice
This one's a bit of a doozy. It features the single most autobiographical character I've ever written and it's not the easiest thing for me to write, actually. Well, no, I take that back, it's really easy for me to write, but the stuff of the writing itself is not always things I really want to admit to myself. That said, I think it could turn out to be very, very good. I generally feel about the stuff I'm writing that it's entertaining and well-executed but not that it's really 'good' by some imaginary litrary ruler. This one might be. With a bit of patience and elbow grease, it could be. I'm working on finishing up the first draft, though, so I'll let you know if I still feel that way after it's all done.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
No spring chicken, me (but that's alright)
I turned the big 2-5 yesterday, which puts me solidly in my mid-twenties. Last year, when Dani hit this milestone, I taunted her mercilessly and informed her over and over again that she was old. There were many jokes about broken hips made. And so, this year she returned the favor.
This is only underscored by the fact that I have been introduced around the psych department as "one of our advanced doctoral students." When did that happen? I don't think I was advanced last year. There's a similar thing happening in my grad union, for which I am one of two Solidarity and Political Action co-chairs. And one of three of the officers who actually remembers the last contract negotiation. So it's always like, "well, you, X and Y were there. Let's ask the old-timers."
This whole old-timer thing isn't bad, understand, I'm having no crisis about the fleeting nature of youth or anything. It just...sort of...snuck up on me. Damn you, time, and your unstoppable forward progression!
OK, now that that's out of my system...birthday news! Since Friday, I have done exactly three things: play The Beatles: Rock Band, watch Planet of the Apes and its numerous sequels of varying quality, and get this tattoo.
old-timey quote for an old-timey gal
It's from (not so shockingly, considering) Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville (no whales are involved), which I highly recommend if you've never read it. It's brilliant. And I like it, especially the end (which is where the quote is from) and the dead-letter office passage, because it brings up a lot of interesting questions about the insignificance of life and the paradoxcial myopic importance it holds for us anyway. Why does polite society matter? Because we think it does. So, does it really matter at all? Perhaps not, suggests Bartleby, but it is sort of the only thing holding us together. Maybe that makes it matter enough. As a psychologist, I find it to be a work of fiction that addresses the underlying motives for social constructions and why we tend to get so profoundly disturbed when someone doesn't buy in to said social constructions. I have to admit, one reason why it resonates with me so much is that there's as much Bartleby in me as there is the lawyer. It's a tension I face every time I go to (what I consider) another useless meeting and one of the underpinnings of my now-legendary avoidance of my phone. In any case, it seemed a fitting if highly nerdish tattoo to get.
A final note: I will update this blog! It will happen! I have posts planned, see?
This is only underscored by the fact that I have been introduced around the psych department as "one of our advanced doctoral students." When did that happen? I don't think I was advanced last year. There's a similar thing happening in my grad union, for which I am one of two Solidarity and Political Action co-chairs. And one of three of the officers who actually remembers the last contract negotiation. So it's always like, "well, you, X and Y were there. Let's ask the old-timers."
This whole old-timer thing isn't bad, understand, I'm having no crisis about the fleeting nature of youth or anything. It just...sort of...snuck up on me. Damn you, time, and your unstoppable forward progression!
OK, now that that's out of my system...birthday news! Since Friday, I have done exactly three things: play The Beatles: Rock Band, watch Planet of the Apes and its numerous sequels of varying quality, and get this tattoo.
old-timey quote for an old-timey galIt's from (not so shockingly, considering) Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville (no whales are involved), which I highly recommend if you've never read it. It's brilliant. And I like it, especially the end (which is where the quote is from) and the dead-letter office passage, because it brings up a lot of interesting questions about the insignificance of life and the paradoxcial myopic importance it holds for us anyway. Why does polite society matter? Because we think it does. So, does it really matter at all? Perhaps not, suggests Bartleby, but it is sort of the only thing holding us together. Maybe that makes it matter enough. As a psychologist, I find it to be a work of fiction that addresses the underlying motives for social constructions and why we tend to get so profoundly disturbed when someone doesn't buy in to said social constructions. I have to admit, one reason why it resonates with me so much is that there's as much Bartleby in me as there is the lawyer. It's a tension I face every time I go to (what I consider) another useless meeting and one of the underpinnings of my now-legendary avoidance of my phone. In any case, it seemed a fitting if highly nerdish tattoo to get.
A final note: I will update this blog! It will happen! I have posts planned, see?
- a discussion on Rock Band in general and how I'm terribly addicted to it
- Fat Girl Face Off '09
- the Decemberists in concert
- the planning of Jarthen: Book 2
- how writing an autobiographically-based character unnerves me
- many, many socks (a week of socks! huzzah!)
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