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Write What You Know…Except When You Can’t

Normally I’m a big proponent of “write what you know.” That’s why you’ll see a lot of Pacific Northwest settings in my work, along with horses and things I’ve taken the time to learn. Most of the time my inspiration comes from incidents, or thoughts that pop into my head when out and about. And all that political and corporate stuff which shows up into my stories?

You guessed it. I spent several years as a complex securities litigation paralegal, and my spouse worked in sales for an aerospace-oriented foundry. I saw and read a LOT of stuff, though what I picked up from the paralegal days often falls into the category of “you wouldn’t believe it even in fiction.” I was also a political activist and organizer for a number of years. Some of those stories have fallen into the “stranger than fiction” category. Others are just cooking and waiting for the right plot to come along. A couple of them…I’m not sure I’ll ever write, though those experiences definitely shaped some of my perspectives. Let’s put it this way…for me, the eye-opening parts of Careless People (one person’s memoir about working at a particular social media company) elicited the reaction of “this isn’t news to anyone exposed to the Jack Welch school of corporate thought, except for the degree of hedonism involved.” Even then, I wasn’t wildly surprised.

But…I was a middle school special education teacher and case manager for ten years. Part of that experience included walking the picket line on strike as well as being on the union local’s board.

With a few exceptions, however (my short stories “Aspens” and “Witch Trails”), teaching is the one experience that doesn’t want to lend itself to fiction. Oh, I’ve written nonfiction based on my teaching experience, primarily a series of essays about learning disabilities and working with learning disabilities. One of those essays explaining the Patterns of Strengths and Weaknesses method of learning disability identification was recommended reading by a professional association.

But fiction?

Not really.

I recently read a review of the one book of mine that lightly touches on my teaching experience. The reviewer wished I had gone the route of cozy fantasy and focused on the struggles of teaching cryptid children, instead of the story choices I made, which backgrounded that aspect of the book.

Well, I wish I could have written that story.

I was a big fan of Zenna Henderson’s “People” stories back in the day, which focused on teachers who encountered alien kids and the impact on the teacher/the kids. I’d love to write my own version of those stories, and to some extent wanted the book to lead to that kind of tale. However, that particular story (which needs some serious reworking for a second edition, especially to set it up for potential sequels) didn’t want to go in that direction.

My teaching work, except for isolated inspirational moments, overall falls into the category of some of those political experiences I probably won’t talk about even in fiction, except perhaps face-to-face and maybe not even then.

Why is that? Why can’t I cross that line?

Part of the reason, I suspect, has to do with the nature of those experiences. In the case of politics, one of those stories involved powerful people, a bit of corruption, and significant political scheming by nearly everyone involved. Plus I’ve lost touch with a couple of the main people who were a part of the story, and I don’t want to get much more explicit than a wee bit of vibes without getting their permission first. Let’s just say that the experience in that case and a couple of others ripped apart any illusions I might have about political purity, in both partisan and issue-oriented politics.

The story has shaped some of the darker political moments I write about, but…the details will not be written.

Teaching has a different element involved. I was teaching during the era when blogging was big (as in Blogger, Blogspot, LiveJournal…). For a while, teacher blogs were everywhere. I read them because I was in the trenches and found reassurance that what I was seeing in the classroom was not necessarily unique. I used techniques from those blogs, thought about issues raised, and otherwise used them as a lifeline while doing a very challenging job.

Then the crackdown began, primarily tied to critiques of No Child Left Behind. The union issued warnings about watching what you said on social media. Holding a drink in a casual social media picture could be grounds for getting fired in some school districts. Disgruntled parents and controlling administrators combed social media (which wasn’t that much at that time) to find reasons to get rid of teachers criticizing the status quo.

Teacher blogs started disappearing. A few exist, a very few, although I’m starting to see more appearing on Substack, usually from teachers who have passed their probationary years (which vary from district-to-district and state-to-state—my district had a three-year probationary period) and have some protection.

So why didn’t I put my teaching experience into fiction, except for those limited pieces? I’ve been out of the classroom for a number of years, and I certainly don’t have a job to protect these days.

I’d like to say that writing about teaching is similar to those political stories I won’t write. Confidentiality. Concern about the story veering too close to real life. Overcoming a filter that still exists in my own mind, despite being years removed from the actual experience. Not wanting former students to pore over my work to see if they are in it.

But I think there’s more to my reluctance to write about teaching in my fiction.

Teaching for me was a very heart-rending process, especially the case management side where I needed to advocate for my students. One of my principals cautioned me about this deep emotional involvement, warning that it could lead to burnout.

It’s part of who I am, but…I find I just can’t write about it, and the reluctance goes beyond concerns about confidentiality and related issues. I’ve not tried to push it, but the block still exists. I suspect I’m not the only writer out there with “things I can’t write about.”

Sometimes you just can’t write about what you know—and there are darn good reasons why.

We’ll see if that holds when I turn back to the major rewrite that one book needs, especially if I consider it for a series. It’s been six years or so. Maybe I’m done processing the experience…or not.

For now, writing about teaching is just something I can’t do in fiction. And I just have to live with it.

(recently fallen Douglas fir—of its own accord, not something we did! We can’t legally cut it up for firewood—besides the green needles, it’s too big in diameter. But it’s an example of what firewood cutting on the national forest is about.)

Getting old ain’t for sissies.

Never have I felt that statement more than in the past few months, when we’ve been working on a house to sell (long story, not going into it here) and now, with woodcutting season upon us.

Ten years ago, when we retired, we figured we’d be able to keep up the active lifestyle which also involved cutting our own firewood for maybe five years, perhaps eight years. Well, here we are, ten years later, embarking on our eleventh season cutting firewood in the spring. Sure, we ended up buying some last year for health reasons, but this year we’re back in the woods, racing to get our firewood cut for the season in the spring.

There are several reasons why we prefer to cut in the spring. It gives time for the wood to cure and burn better. The temperatures are better for several hours worth of exertion. There’s less danger of triggering a fire because everything’s still damp. And…there’s also the prospect of coming across these darlings.

But it’s also not just about harvesting wood and morel mushrooms. Spring flowers are popping up everywhere. We’re likely to see wildlife—on our last trip, we spotted sandhill cranes, deer, elk, mountain bluebirds, and turkeys.

It’s a chance to shake off the limitations of winter and get out into the national forest around us. See what changes the winter has brought—what trees survived the winter wind and snow, whether some of our backwoods roads are still clear, and just get out and explore everything around us.

Because of last year’s issues, we didn’t get into this section of the woods then. We generally don’t do the majority of our woodcutting in this area—it’s farther from town, therefore a longer drive and longer time spent cutting. As it is, even the closer locations end up taking most of the day. This area just adds a couple of hours of drive time on gravel roads to the time spent out.

Not that it isn’t rewarding. When we got out the first day, I exhaled heavily, not realizing until then the degree to which I’d been craving this expedition. Seeing familiar stringers of trees. Favorite rock formations. Little spots that hold meaning for the two of us, perhaps not to others. Here’s the grove where we spent several years thinning out dead white fir and Douglas fir. There’s the place where we kicked up a big herd of elk. That’s the backroad where we saw a big cinnamon black bear who took off running.

The spot where I worked on a particular book (there are several of those places) while the husband cut down a tree. The place where we had to resort to pulling the tree down with the pickup because it hung up on other trees (we don’t do that sort of thing anymore; that happened when we were younger than late sixties and early seventies). Favorite flower patches that bloom at a certain time of year.

We end up chasing the flowers and mushrooms to higher elevations. The closer location tends to hold snow longer, so we don’t go there right away. That spot also holds hunting season memories, where we camped for a couple of years with a friend (until a fall rain and wind storm knocked the tent’s center pole down and we had to scramble to keep everything off of the wood stove until we could get it set back up). The particular place where we found grouse for a few years.

With all that, the clock is ticking. We’re well aware that this could be the last year—but that’s been a concern for many years now. So I drink in the surroundings, the forest, the canyons, and the prairie land that feels so much like home. Cruising down the old road that follows an infamous horse and cattle rustler’s trail. The trees. The grasses. The flowers. Enjoying it now, before age/politics/fire/logging takes it away from us.

This land strikes that deep chord of home within me. Even though I didn’t grow up here, even though I lack ancestral connection to this sort of land. What European connections I know about lived on coastal lands. But coast doesn’t resonate with me. Not like the mountains. The forest. The high ridges and deep canyons. Those are more home, more the sort of place I enjoy than the coast.

We’re moving slower these days. What we consider a full load in the pickup bed is less than it would have been before now. We’ve added a backup heating system to the house, for various reasons. But we take the time to savor what we’re doing (well, as much as one can when lugging an armload of firewood to throw in the back of the pickup). Workaholics, both of us, but we’re learning to slow down.

Firewood cutting isn’t just about providing for winter. It’s a time for reconnecting with the land we love to be in. For assessing the health of the lands we love. Over the years, we’ve seen more and more dead trees from a species that is fading from these forests (white/grand fir, because the winters aren’t as cold as long as those trees prefer). We’re doing our small part to remove wildfire fuel, because at some point those trees are gonna burn. Better they burn in a wood stove with a catalytic converter than provide more fuel for a wildfire.

Or so we tell ourselves. Reality? Not reality?

No matter.

However one wants to cut it, we’re staying active, we’re out on the land. The two of us, together, after forty-five-some years of dating and marriage.

I’ll take that any day.

Warning: potentially controversial opinions ahead.

It’s no secret that I am not a big fan of generative AI/LLM use in any aspect of the creative process. I’ve become increasingly distressed as I see more and more people admitting to their usage of LLMs and genAI to create their fiction—especially when I hear people who I used to respect talking about how they use it in fiction. They seem to see it as no big deal where…I have issues with these uses, especially those who claim it helps their prewriting processes. That’s a huge “OH HELL NO” red flag for me.

I’m not just talking from my own biases as a fiction writer who has had her work scraped for AI training. My special education Master’s degree project focused on remedial writing, and I spent ten years working as a resource-level learning specialist and case manager at the middle school grade levels. The more time I spent working with students who were struggling with reading and writing, the more I learned about the value of the prewriting process, not just for good writing but for reading comprehension. The same skills used for prewriting also are connected to reading comprehension.

So how does that combination of skills work? It’s tied to how humans handle language. Language processing is a complex mixture of receptive and expressive language usage. Receptive is what you read and hear. Expressive is what you speak and write. An ability deficit in either area can lead to problems in both reading and writing. If your receptive language processing has a deficit, then it becomes hard to understand what you’re reading—and causes difficulties in your ability to express your understanding of what you’ve read. If your expressive language processing has a deficit, then of course you have issues describing your understanding of what you have read. But expressive language deficits have further challenges, because often part of the problem is the ability to organize your thoughts in order to share them in a manner understandable to others. Someone can be operating at the genius level in receptive processing while struggling with expressive processing—but no one is going to know it because of their difficulties in being able to express their knowledge and understanding!

(And yes, this mixture of high receptive/low expressive ability can and does happen.)

The link between prewriting skills and reading comprehension is surprisingly simple when you think about it. Prewriting is a cognitive process which expands an individual’s ability to analyze, compare/contrast, and assess how information fits together. These are the same tools a good reader applies to whatever they are reading.

This ties into reading comprehension as well. Part of understanding what you read is the ability to follow along with a writer’s thought thread. The same tools used for organizing writing also work for making sense out of someone else’s writing, whether you use mind mapping, graphic organizers, or the like. Take any graphic organizer and fill it out using a short story. A novel. A film. An essay. Prewriting skills are also structural analysis tools for reading comprehension

The key is that the more that you wrestle with understanding something you read, the more you think about it and sit with the concepts a particular piece of work presents to you, the deeper it will imprint upon your memory processes and be available to you for later reference. The same is true with writing, where you have wrestled with the concepts and characters and points you want to make long before you start typing, or put pen/pencil to paper.

It doesn’t matter if you are an obsessive planner who writes in a linear fashion, someone who writes sequences out of order to put them together later, or someone who feels their way along with the story. Part of the drafting process involves the creation of a coherent thread of thought that makes sense. Handing the foundation of putting those organizational pieces together to a LLM, even if it’s just generating prompts or ideas, undercuts the formation of that thought thread in later drafting. Otherwise, you risk not thinking about discarded notions, the messy planning pieces, or the research rabbit holes that might end up in the work after all because the generation process didn’t come from your brain, but from the LLM, so you haven’t spent time contemplating all the information that gets buried in your brain. You miss the rewards of the exploratory process, such as the “aha!” moment that pulls it all together because one of those discarded concepts ends up fitting into the work after all.

For me, that’s the biggest red flag when it comes to the seductive lure of genAI for prewriting, especially if you’re wanting to grind work out quickly. Yes, the LLM has access to a lot of data. But what it doesn’t have is the ability to combine that data into an intuitive leap that makes your work different. Sure, when the time crunch hits, it’s tempting to use LLMs for the sort of brainstorming you might otherwise do with selected others. Heck, thanks to the massive amount of scraping of writers’ work out there, you could even ask the LLM to generate ideas from the perspective of your favorite writer. Sounds intriguing—but.

How much have you lost by spending your time creating appropriate prompts?

Wouldn’t that time be better served by doing research on your own? Immersing yourself in the appropriate readings, so that your backbrain starts generating its own notions? Wrestling with the idea that doesn’t want to come to life just yet? Laying the foundation for that intuitive leap that lifts your idea above tropes and clichés?

That’s the thing. To me, all the tasks that people say they want to outsource to genAI are important, integral parts of my writing process. Yes, it’s a slower way of writing. However, after writing twenty-five books and a number of short stories, I’ve found that it is worth the extra length of time required to do my own planning rather than outsource it to a plagiarism machine that relies on brute force memory association and is unable to take that creative, out-of-the-box intuitive leap that human brains are capable of making.

It all comes down to that sweet, sweet discovery moment when you realize that your subconscious has been simmering its way to a solution for that dilemma you’ve created for yourself. That’s as much a part of the writing process as putting down the actual words—and to omit it risks sliding into mediocrity and cookie-cutter story sameness.

Why take that chance?

One of the things I’ve been doing these days is updating all of my backlist. In some cases that just means correcting typos and adding some neat formatting pieces that I didn’t have access to when I was first putting out these books. I’ve gotten past most of the books that were Scrivener-formatted (just have a couple more to do) which makes life a lot easier, because it’s just checking for typos, adding the new bells and whistles, and updating the back matter. Not a complete reformat.

Inheritance was one of the easy ones. I look back at it and, for the most part, find myself happy with what I turned out here. Did I expect it to expand into a multiverse with four separate subseries (or three if you count People of the Martiniere Legacy as part of the main Martiniere Legacy)? No, not really.

It launches the whole world with a bang–Ruby Barkley is going into a streaming video competition with the biobots she’s been developing and refining for over twenty-four years, three of those years with her ex-husband Gabe Ramirez. She and Gabe made a big splash in the first AgInnovator competition with these biobots, but when Gabe disappeared from her life, unexpectedly demanding a divorce and leaving her as a single mother juggling the ranch, her research, and their kid–that set back her work for years. But Ruby has a vision, and those biobots capable of not only providing soil and plant condition feedback down to square centimeters of land as well as adding nutrients and the ability for drought resistance are her dreamed answer to the problems presented by climate change.

Winning the AgSuperhero with $3.75 million dollars a year for five years, no need to show progress, is exactly what Ruby needs to push her over the top with the RubyBot (named by Gabe all those years ago). It gives the ranch a future.

But there are complications. One of her opponents is Gabe. Another is the woman responsible for breaking them up, Mariah Meyers. Meanwhile their son Brandon, who is a producer of the show, seems determined to force them back together.

And things just keep…happening. Sabotage. Blackmail. Then the unpleasant discovery that a well-intentioned but stupid choice by Brandon leaves her with no options but to at least pretend to make things up with Gabe, or risk all three of them being forced into lifetime indentured servitude.

Which…opens another can of shadowy secrets as the reasons for Gabe’s abandonment surface, after twenty-one years. Gabe has a hidden history which Ruby and Brandon need to know about, for their own safety. A heritage stolen from him by mind control technology, wielded by people who won’t hesitate to hurt those close to Gabe in order to cause him pain–and destroy Gabe as well.

Gabe isn’t who Ruby thought he was. And that–leads to choices that Ruby needs to make about their own future.

I’ve decided to put Inheritance at $2.99 permanently as a series introduction. I hope you’ll check it out.

https://books2read.com/themartinierelegacyinheritance

After twenty-five or so books, you would think I’d have this whole novel-writing process down solid. Have a viable strategy, be organized, go about the development of constructing characters and plot in a somewhat coherent manner.

Ha! (she laughs bitterly)

Every book is its own process. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to have a series that uses the same methodology for each book, but that isn’t always the case.

That happened with my first two series, the Netwalk Sequence and Goddess’s Honor. Granted, they were early works, but as I progressed through both series, I ended up changing things around. What became key for both of those series was a very detailed scene matrix where I literally identified where every major character was in each scene and what their motives were within that scene. I did the basic outline by hand before writing, then went back and analyzed each scene as part of my revisions.

I had several reasons for organizing myself in that manner. First, as it turned out, I was alternating writing books in both series so that I had two books coming out a year, one book in one series, the other in the other one. Second, I had multiple character viewpoints, so I wanted to ensure that the voices in the book were balanced. Third, those characters were scattered across the continent (and across the ocean) in Goddess’s Honor, while characters were on Earth/the Moon/space stations in the Netwalk Sequence. Fourth, we were in the process of a long distance move to a second home.

Well, lessons learned.

First, I vowed that I was NOT going to have four POVs in future work because it just got too complicated and, I fear, weakened the impact of the story, though—looking back, those multiple POVs were necessary. At least for those particular story arcs.

Second, I decided that I was not going to switch between series, but would write a series all at once, then release the volumes close together. I cheated a little bit doing this with the assorted Martiniere sub-series because I also ended up writing a couple of unrelated books as well as a couple of novellas during that time. But—Kindle Vella had just started up and I had appropriate ideas that would be good for that market. An allowable reason.

Writing a series all at once helped me deal with problems in book continuity within a series, though those darn characters kept twisting things between the beginning of the first book and the last part of the last book (glaring at The Cost of Power, which really tried my patience with last-minute discoveries, such as the linkage between the Martinieres and the Carolingian Mythos. When Durendal appears in the last third of the third volume of Power, Redemption, I wanted to scream. Then I took a deep breath and revised everything).

I also came up with a new strategy involving Scrivener and Word which dealt with some of the travel issues. Years ago, I wrote in WordPerfect and took advantage of its master document formatting setup, which allowed me to draft chapters as separate files, then link them so that I could call them up in one big document. My Word drafting was all one document which…got annoying when I needed to refer back to earlier sections for continuity’s sake.

I was already starting to consolidate my research notes and my character notes in Scrivener. Then it dawned on me—why not draft a chapter in Word, then paste it into Scrivener? I already was keeping Scriv open to access my outline and character notes. Putting the book into Scriv chapter-by-chapter allowed me to a.) appropriately version the story, and b.) made drafting continuity a lot easier.

Solved that problem, but—then it became an issue of story organizing.

I am sometimes a hard-core plotter, and sometimes…not. For the last batch of books, I started writing chapter-by-chapter synopses. As continuity tweaked things, I’d edit the chapter synopses in Scriv with dates and notes in bold. Well, it worked—for those books.

Then I started drafting the current work-in-progress, Vision of Alliance, the first book of Goddess’s Vision. This series, a sequel series to Goddess’s Honor in what I’m now calling the world of the Seven Crowned Gods, has been my bane for over five years now. I started working on the Martinieres to avoid it because while I knew I wanted to write what happens next, I just couldn’t find the opening. Shades of the first series, because it took me years to find the opening for Pledges of Honor, the original first book of Goddess’s Honor (the official first book, Beyond Honor and Other Stories, is made up of stories I wrote later).

When I finished The Cost of Power trilogy, I flailed around trying to poke at other ideas. Nope. None of them wanted to do anything. It was time to start work on Goddess’s Vision. The Martinieres were done unless I wanted to write the next generation and…I couldn’t do that, either.

Very well. Goddess’s Vision it was. But I couldn’t come up with ideas for more than one book. Well, I figured it would come. Time to start writing.

I got to about the fourth chapter, then had to take time off for business stuff. When I came back to the story, I read what I had written and…dear God, it was packed full of telling. I was skipping over far too much in the story and…I made myself go back and rewrite. Drafted several chapters and—oopsie, guess what. Glossed over story stuff once again. So now I’m juggling several chapters-to-be-written as well as revising already-written chapters to reflect the breaking out of important scenes.

At least I’m at the experience level where I recognized a developing problem before I got too far along.

All of this is new ground for me, because the only other time I had to tear apart a draft like this was with the first Netwalk book. And that came about because an editor saw problems in a second draft. Again, darn good thing I saw the problem developing before I got too much further along.

At this point, though, I’m definitely not worried about having enough material for a trilogy. I even know what the resolution is going to look like. It’s just…getting there.

Each book has its own process, and am I ever being reminded of that.

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Hey, everyone! Just a reminder that your humble writer here appreciates comments, book purchases (one of these days I’ll figure out Linktree and have a single place you can go to find all of my work besides Amazon and Smashwords), or Ko-fi donations.

Welcome! This year I’m creating a set of posts/blogs/whatever you want to call them about the “story-behind-the story” for my backlist. This month, Bearing Witness, a neoWestern multiverse novella, is one of my featured backlist books.

Stories start in weird ways, and Bearing Witness happens to be one of those. We were driving through the Willamette Valley near Eugene when I got the image of several Native people striding into a field to confront a settler using a sickle bar mower that was, somehow, forbidden technology. When the settler refused, they turned into wooden statues.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how this story could work. It’s one of those settings I wrestle with, because much as I would like to combine historical Pacific Northwest events and settings with science fiction and fantasy, there are a lot of pitfalls. A LOT.

Some of this wrestling comes from my own background. I come from early Pacific Northwest settlers on my mother’s side. They came to Oregon in 1846, and let me tell you, trying to find out more about them is a real challenge. I’ve joked before that my ancestors specialized in obscurity because the most prominent stories I can find about them is one being a founding member of a Presbyterian splinter church in Ashland, and another dying due to being crushed in a barn collapse after a heavy snowfall. Other than that, despite family members marrying into the prominent Applegate family?

Not much. Granted, my ancestors didn’t go into politics. They farmed, and lost farms. I don’t think any land remained in the hands of the next generation for very long, if at all. Basically, poor dirt farmers, until my mother’s generation.

The other piece is that there’s the entire mythos around Oregon and Pacific Northwest white settlement. I was an adult when the Oregon Trail game came out (although I vaguely remember my son playing it), but I grew up on kid books about early white settlement (including the Little House books but, oh dear God, NOT the TV series. I ended up really disliking that TV series).

Actually, I grew up when the vibes started to shift from unquestioned support of Manifest Destiny to “you know, there were problems and Native peoples weren’t treated fairly.”

I really can’t glorify the settlement process, even though I descend from it.

So, the image simmered in my thoughts while I considered how to approach it. I came up with several different versions but nothing really came together until I thought of Adam Thornton. Then I thought about universes where magic could happen…and the idea of these events happening in a refuge within multiple universes started coming together.

Therefore, Kalosin. A world dominated by Native peoples on its analog of North America (and, presumably, elsewhere), except where the Russian Tsar rules. And a few other nasties.

But the biggest threat to Kalosin comes from outside. Malign entities called Soulers seek to consume every universe they encounter. Life under the Soulers is…not particularly good. Until a mysterious time traveler named Jedidiah Pruitt appears in the world that Abigail Nelson lives, in roughly 1850s Kansas, there’s no escape. Jedidiah has magical abilities, even if he can’t travel back to his original world, and is pursued by the Soulers across the multiverse. He marries Abigail and yanks her across multiverses using the Vortex. They have children and gather allies, known as Wild Colonists.

The Soulers eventually destroy Jedidiah. But his oldest son Jesse has all of the magical powers that Jedidiah possesses—and more. When Jesse guides the Wild Colonists to the world known as Kalosin, they work together with the natives of Kalosin to create a magical shield. For a time they’re safe, until dangerous technology intervenes from other worlds and leaves people vulnerable to Souler attack. Jesse works with the Kalosin to cut off all Vortex access. Presumably, that should leave Kalosin as a safe refuge.

Presumably.

Then Adam Thornton gets his hands on technology that proves to be dangerous…and that’s where the story begins.

This universe is one that I keep contemplating and poking at. I know there will be more stories involving the Vortex Worlds. I just don’t know when, where, or how just yet.

But they will happen.

Meanwhile, enjoy a visit to the Vortex Worlds. Bearing Witness is an attempt at mixing up some Western elements with fantasy. I think there’s more possibilities there, and someday I’ll tell the story of Jedidiah and Abigail.

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Bearing Witness is available at all major ebook retailers for $2.99. Link here.

And if you just want to toss a couple of coins to your writer, here’s the link to my Ko-fi here.

Welcome! This year I’m creating a set of posts/blogs/whatever you want to call them about the “story-behind-the story” for my backlist. This month, my “cozy apocalypse” book, Beating the Apocalypse, is one of my featured backlist books.

Sometimes it really takes a while for a story idea to develop into book form. I have several of those notions rattling around in my backbrain right now, little nuggets that might come together to make up a story one of these days…or not. Not everything falls together as quickly as the original Martiniere Legacy books did, or as slowly as the Goddess’s Honor (and now the Goddess’s Vision) books have.

Beating the Apocalypse falls in between the Martiniere books and the Goddess books when it comes to the time it took to become a viable story. It’s one of the books that has quite the tale behind it.

The original concept of Canaries, genetically manipulated human weather trackers, happened back in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. Back then, there was a fellow in the Portland area who was pushing the concept of cheap, palm-sized, novelette books and looking for writers. I knew Steve Perry (the writer, not the musician) through some other writer friends and he was on board with the concept, and had sold one or two things to this fella. Perry—or the other writer friend, I forget now which one it was, or perhaps it was both—strongly suggested that if I had something that might work, to send it off to this guy and run with it early on.

(I never forgot their overall advice to take advantage of opportunities like this early on, when the money’s still flowing. At the minimum you get paid and if it takes off—then you have the advantage of being the early bird and could end up being catapulted into greater visibility. This advice paid off big time for me when Kindle Vella came around because I was in the position to take advantage of it and, well, those lovely Vella bonuses put me over the top for qualifying for SWFA membership.)

I wrestled with the Canary concept but couldn’t quite make it work. The publisher flamed out and I put the idea aside. Ten years or so later, I fleshed it out into a short story which ended up as a Writers of the Future Honorable Mention. Can’t remember what year or quarter that was, but…that made me feel good. Even though I couldn’t find a market for the darn story.

That was one piece. Then there was a novella call and I ended up grabbing the characters from “Canaries” to write a novella about a Canary’s encounter with a dangerous, all-woman gang called the Pink Cats. The novella didn’t get accepted but…as the result of ending up in an anthology that was a contest finalist, I ended up with a potential book contract for the Pink Cats novella—it just had to be made longer. So…I put the Canary short story together with the Pink Cats story, and added to it.

Well, that whole publication story is a tale to be told elsewhere, as while it led to the first variant of Beating the Apocalypse, it was also a rude awakening to how sometimes small presses can be really problematic. I eventually got my rights back but even with the contract on my side it took time and threatening to go to SFWA’s Griefcom to force compliance, first to get royalty reports and payments, then to get my rights back even though I had a solid reversion clause.

(The original version is called Seeking Shelter at the End of the World and it should not be available ANYWHERE. Considering the publisher only put out a PDF version, I’m surprised I earned what royalties I did in the late ‘10s. And that particular story is very different from Beating the Apocalypse, including the fate of one main character.)

When I got the rights back, I kept poking at the story because I wasn’t satisfied with the darn thing. I didn’t like the original ending, the original relationships, and the original bad guy. Plus sticking those two stories together didn’t work in the original version.

I tore the story apart. Mark LeBrand ended up not being the villain but a well-meaning scientist haunted by the death of his little sister, and being manipulated by those in charge. Rianna only thinks her love Bobby is dead, but Bobby is saved by his brothers. Rianna, Bobby, and the other characters actually manage a happy ending. And…I start the story a lot sooner than in the original version.

The other piece is that I’m still handwaving the technology. Essentially, North America is left to stew in its own polluted mess (and there may be other tech involved as well) by means of some sort of barrier that keeps pollution in. As a result, toxic killer Clouds periodically form, and satellite/drone technology is such that there’s no access to accurate forecasting. The best means for predicting Cloud formation is data gathered by hypersensitive people who react before the rest of the population to those substances.

But the Portland setting is somewhat realistic, and Camp 84 is definitely a dystopian projection of what could happen with homelessness. Add in some vicious gangs, as well as political scheming….

On the other hand, Rianna and Bobby have the power of love (okay, is that a cliché? Probably. But it’s my story and I’m gonna have them in love). LeBrand has love as well, even though he’d deny it to his dying day.

I might write a sequel to this story. Someday. Maybe. But for now, I’ll leave these characters where they end up—still coping with an apocalypse, but they aren’t alone, and they might have actually ended up solving a few problems along the way.

Beating the Apocalypse is on sale for $2.99 at all major ebook vendors throughout April. Link below.

Buy Beating the Apocalypse now.

And if you’ve already bought the book, but want to tip me…feel free to donate to my Ko-fi here.

Welcome! This year I’m creating a set of posts/blogs/whatever you want to call them about the “story-behind-the story” for my backlist. This month, the Goddess’s Honor series, my non-European high fantasy books, are the focus.

Housekeeping note: all related posts will be linked at the bottom on the Substack links.

I’ve never been a fan of hard and fast magic systems with a set of consistent rules. In part that’s because consistent, hard magic systems might as well be technology, at least in my opinion. Hard magic systems are simply a different form of technology and, well, if you want those, dig into the ties to tech (and right now creative brain is saying well, aren’t the systems you wrote into Netwalk and the Martiniere books hard magic under the guise of tech? Maybe…but while Netwalk rules are discoverable, there’s a lot in the mind control and digital thought clone realms that slides into magic under a different name…and we’re not talking about those books right now).

For me, one of the consistencies about a magic system is that it can be unpredictable. In the world of Goddess’s Honor, part of that unpredictability comes from the divine sources of magic. The pantheon in Goddess’s Honor, the Seven Crowned Gods, squabble and love just like the assorted pantheons one encounters throughout many religious structures in our world. Success and failure can come through divine whims and moods.

But there’s another source of magic in Goddess’s Honor, and that comes from the land itself. Each nation has a tutelary spirit of sorts which can help or hinder its leadership, depending on that leadership’s relationship with the land. If the land turns its face from the Leader, the Emperor, whoever holds the title of power…their rule will eventually fail. Given that a lot of magical tools come from the land—magic-infused wool, magic-infused berries, magic-infused wood, for three examples—for this to happen to a ruler becomes a significant turning point in their leadership. Lose the favor of the land and…that leads to first, failures of the magical crops, then the mundane crops.

Does this mean everyone can wield magic? Only to the degree that magical tools and a mix of magic and technology exists. There are still practitioners of magic. For some, their primary role is to serve as a representative for the God they serve. For others, magic is a part of their working role, whether as Healer, ruler, cook, or maker, amongst others. These magics are more constrained and focused upon specific tasks. Their magic is more predictable because they serve a necessary function within society and it’s rare that those practitioners will be called to do more than their daily functions.

(Unless the Gods decide to get involved. Which happens.)

A handful of practitioners possess the ability to wield magic beyond their work. Even then, abilities vary.

But magic is a part of everyday life, especially in the nations located in the land of Varen. For someone living in Varen, the potion whipped up by a local healer might possess some magical elements. Certain clothing items might be woven from magical wool to improve durability while traveling or working outside. A protective charm for a child. Wooden boxes to hide important items. A charm to keep bugs and rodents out of food supplies. Magically skilled people have speaking squares and communicators made of magic-infused wool or wood, spell-locked to certain people.

In the Darani Empire, magitech is even more pervasive. A combination of magic and internal combustion drives vehicles—prohibitably expensive, of course. Magic does run out so alternative fueling also is needed. But even these devices are failing within the run of Goddess’s Honor because the land rejects its Emperors, so magic is less durable.

Then there are the sorcerous sailships that travel the oceans. Sailships are made from magic-infused wood, and piloted by Sorcerer-Captains who go through a secretive initiation (described in The Goddess’s Choice) for which there are only two alternatives—succeed or die. Sorcerer-Captains are dedicated to Terat of the Waters, the Sea-goddess whose influence extends inland not just because of her ties to water but to sap within trees and other plants.

Which leads us to the Seven Crowned Gods.

First is Artel, the Judge, who breaks ties and evaluates the hearts of the dead. Then are Two-faced Staul, the Balancer and Destroyer, and his love Dovré. Staul and Dovré share a role in healing, with Staul’s acolytes often being the ones to guide the dying through their final passage. But Staul as the Destroyer can be horrific should that role completely control an acolyte. It often takes Dovré’s intervention to rebalance Staul. Terat of the Waters, beloved of all those whose work is with water but who also blesses the inland realm of Clenda, where rumor has it that she first emerged from a lake sacred to her hidden deep in the Clendan mountains.

Then come the problematic three. Nitel is the Lady of Vengeance, and it is only her deepest, evil blood-red side which appears in Goddess’s Honor. Her children Karnoi of War and Cirdel of Disorder are problematic, whimsical, and can either create or destroy. They can and will turn on their mother.

The Seven make periodic appearances in Goddess’s Honor, and their current feud shapes many of the events that the protagonists face. They’re not shy about manipulating those humans dedicated to them, and particularly prominent humans in life may end up becoming the Voice, Speaker, or Messenger for their patron after death, especially in appearances to family members. They operate according to their own rules and traditions, and there are times when a God is deposed in favor of a recently dead human who steps up to Godhood. While some sorcerers believe they can manipulate magic and events to make themselves Gods—it isn’t that easy.

But the thing to keep in mind is that the Gods have their own standards, and humans are not aware of them. The Gods are also very aware that at some point they, too, could be replaced, just as many of the current Gods replaced a predecessor. Replacing a God is rare but…when one of the Seven begins to overreach and seek dominance over their peers…that’s when they are at most risk of replacement.

Which ends up being a factor in Goddess’s Honor.

Gods and Goddesses can also be banished from a nation for a generation or so. Most of the Seven keep this in mind and modulate any dominance desires accordingly. But Nitel, Karnoi, and Cirdel….

To say more gives away far too much of the story. But, essentially, the thing to keep in mind when reading Goddess’s Honor is that the magic system is a soft one, not a hard system, and not all of the rules are known or disclosed.

The books of Goddess’s Honor:

This month these books go on sale for a week except for Beyond Honor, which is permanently at $2.99. This week Pledges and Challenges are $2.99. Next week will be Choices, and Judgment the week after. Click on each title for a universal ebook link that gives you a choice of which distributor to buy from (in other words, you have an option besides Amazon).

Beyond Honor and Other Stories

Pledges of Honor (can be read as the first book)

Challenges of Honor

Choices of Honor

Judgment of Honor

Welcome! This year I’m creating a set of posts/blogs/whatever you want to call them about the “story-behind-the story” for my backlist. This month, the Goddess’s Honor series, my non-European high fantasy books, are the focus.

Housekeeping note: all related posts will be linked at the bottom.

Where to begin when I start talking about the Goddess’s Honor books, especially now that I’m releasing the third edition? For one thing, they’re drawing from the oldest work I started doing, way back in high school (aka a long time ago in a universe far, far away from now). I had just finished reading The Lord of the Rings for the—oh, I don’t know how many times I read and reread LOTR. That kicked me off into E. R. Eddison during my high school days which…can be kinda interesting. I developed a fascination for Eddison’s plots, especially A Fish Dinner in Memison. But a big part of my fascination for Fish Dinner had to do with the absolutely amazing Fiorinda, coupled with Lady Mary Lessingham.

That said, another issue was location. I didn’t travel much as a kid simply because my parents were working and when they weren’t working, they were busy on the small farm or else hard-core fishing at a Central Oregon reservoir where the goal was to catch as many trout as possible to be frozen, canned, or smoked. My exposure was either the Willamette Valley or that small section of Central Oregon near Bend. Visualizing European settings just didn’t work for me because they were just something I’d seen in pictures (the closest I’ve come to seeing an actual castle even now? The Louvre. The Rijksmuseum. A castle-like structure in the Southwest built at the Hovenweep site by Native peoples).

The first versions ended up being quasi-science fiction because I discovered McCaffrey’s Pern as well as André Norton, along with Sylvia Louise Engdahl. The story really didn’t go anywhere, so I started looking at other parts of that world.

That…was pretty much the way things went for years whenever I tried to write something in that world. I grew up, did some more traveling, but the core of the story was set in the Pacific Northwest. When I first saw a picture of Wallowa Lake I was gobsmacked because that was part of the world I was visualizing. When I finally visited the place, it was just as I had thought it would be.

All the same, I kept wrestling with the story. I had settled on a strictly fantasy notion, finally, writing about the descendant of exiled nobles who faced a dire situation when the Empire suddenly remembered that they had this colony over the ocean that might, y’know, need to be forced back into compliance with the Empire. Try as I could, however, I couldn’t get the main character, Alicira ea Miteal, to talk to me. She just didn’t want to come clear.

So I moved on to writing other things. Hunting and camping trips both to the Wallowas and the Ochocos gave me more ideas for settings. Pages and pages of notes. I realized that Alicira had fled to the high desert mountains to escape her captor from the Empire, and ended up in a throuple that ruled the Two Nations of Keldara and Clenda. But how had she made it safely to Heinmyets and Inharise? I just couldn’t figure it out.

I finally started writing short stories set in that world. One of those stories was about a roving village healer named Katerin who ended up in a mysterious village with a Healer gone rogue. The last rejection for that story said “this reads like the first chapter of a novel.” And the rejecting editor had the same name as the teacher working in the room next to me. I was pretty sure that wasn’t the same person, but all the same, the coincidence caught my eye and made me think, “perhaps this story might work as the first chapter of a novel.”

Once I started working on Katerin’s story, suddenly things started coming clear in this world. Seven Crowned Gods, feuding and arguing while using humans as their pawns. Katerin moving from being just a bit player in what was going on to becoming a significantly important person who had the potential to be a game changer. That broke everything loose, though it took a while before I could write Alicira’s story, which is why Pledges of Honor was written and published before Beyond Honor, even though Beyond Honor is now listed as the first book in the series.

Rekaré, Alicira’s daughter, was equally challenging. Oh, I finally broke through to her but it also took Katerin to make it happen.

However, by the time I reached Judgment of Honor, the story had completely shifted on me. I didn’t anticipate events twisting in Medvara (Alicira’s homeland) the way that they did. I didn’t anticipate the role of the Gods, or Katerin’s daughter Witmara. I somewhat knew what Rekaré’s fate was going to be, just not how she got there.

The Goddess’s Honor series, however, was the one that convinced me that no matter what, in the future I was going to write a series all at once before releasing it. Continuity became a huge issue toward the end, and I had to figure out how to retcon things I had set up in the earlier stories.

Well, writing is a learning process. I’m happy to say that Pledges of Honor is my “little book that could.” I first sold it to a small press, then took the rights back before it even entered editing due to several issues. It sold well in its first edition, enough that its earnings were a big chunk of my qualifying for full membership in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. This release is now the third edition for the series, in part due to some formatting changes and new covers.

I hope the whole series manages to sell in this new edition, because it is close to my heart in so many ways. It features magical horses that act like real horses (Mira, Katerin’s first daranval, is loosely based on a school horse I rode for a couple of years, Porsche). I start introducing combinations of magic and technology in Choices of Honor and Judgment of Honor. Katerin’s traumatic return to the land where she grew up, Waykemin, in Choices of Honor was a tough book to write.

Which…is also happening as I begin the work on the saga of what happens after the Goddess’s Honor series. The threat of the Divine Confederation, which emerges in Judgment of Honor. What becomes of the Darani Empire after the events of Judgment. At this point, I’m leaving Katerin behind, but Heinmyets of the Two Nations has a big role to play in this next installment.

But that’s the future. I hope you seek out the Goddess’s Honor books, or at the least their connected short stories (which can be found in the appropriate order at the end of each Goddess’s Honor book or purchased independently).

Find Beyond Honor and Other Stories here.

And hey, if you already have the books but want to toss a few coins to a struggling writer, buy me a coffee!

Making notes now for future reference.

I think we’ll all agree that this past winter in the Northern Hemisphere has been…something. Between atmospheric rivers, horrendous fires, wobbly polar vortexes, and more, it’s been a wild ride (some might say it’s reflective of the current international political scene and far be it from me to disagree with that).

Locally, it’s been something. While the mountains started getting snow in October, the high mountain valley was…well, something to be worried about because neither rain nor snow was happening in any amount, definitely enough to be concerned about with regard to groundwater supply. It got cold and the ground froze. Oh, we had moments of light snow followed by ice, enough to be a concern for me about riding Marker at anything more than a walk or fox trot because the ground was hard enough to emulate concrete.

Then we got a wet spell where everything turned soggy. I became concerned about old Mocha’s feet–for good reason because she developed a small abscess in one hoof, enough to set off a significant limp. Her history of white line disease made me worry even more as we progressed through December, then January, without significant snow.

Well, that started changing in late January/early February. We started getting snow, and temperatures plunged below zero degrees Fahrenheit. Depending on the location of the reporter, those temps ranged from -4 F to -27 F.

Quite a variance.

February was the month of snow. We ended up with about a foot and a half of it.

But now it’s almost March, and the weather is warming up. It’s almost as if February was, basically, our entire winter. Which…the rapid warming creates its own issues. A foot and a half of snow doesn’t go away quietly, especially when the ground is still frozen. It runs off. It pools in every low spot possible, including under existing snowbanks. Encountering a sudden squish-squish that means there’s a bunch of water hiding under that snow is always entertaining…NOT.

Plus with all that water sitting in places where it can’t run off quickly ends up being nervous-making when the temperatures drop. We’re not likely to have another intense cold spell where 32 F is the high, turning everything into a dangerous ice slick, but…

Until we get consistent warming and the ground thaws, I’m nervous. In part that’s because it’s clear this is old Mocha’s last winter. Her knees have gotten even bigger with arthritic changes, and a veterinary examination confirmed what I was thinking–this is her last winter. When I go to pick up a front hoof she can barely bend the lower leg to a 40 degree angle. Not good…and that portends the likelihood that she may go down and not be able to get up again without help. Especially if things ice up again.

That leads to all sorts of potentially awful situations, especially since old mare has made it known that after spending her first fifteen years in a stall, she doesn’t want to have anything to do with one ever again.

Ideally, her trip over the Rainbow Bridge will happen on a warm day with lots of love and treats beforehand before that last walk to the burial hole. Or she’ll go to sleep in the field during the summer and not wake up. In both those scenarios, while getting her body out of a pasture might prove to be a challenge, it’s not as awful as the possibility that she would go down in a storm when the ground is frozen, and freeze to death.

Right now she’s on a painkiller and moving better. That’s not a good long-term situation because those meds can be hard on a gut. So she gets extra probiotics and attention, along with a heavy blanket and neck wrap. All the same, it’s a sad time because I know what’s coming. She’s had a good twenty-five years, and the last ten have allowed her to live outside like a horse should, in a herd.

Anyway. That’s a reality I’m going to be sitting with throughout 2025.

Now I’m watching for signs of spring. There’s one ambitious daffodil bulb in the front yard that may be growing even faster than crocus. Soon I’ll be exchanging insulated boots for mud boots. Marker may be getting his road riding boots on regularly soon.

I’m not quite ready for spring yet but–I am looking forward to it. For Mocha’s sake as well as my own.

Like what you’ve read? Want to help defray the cost of treats for the horses? Feel free to drop a contribution to my Ko-fi here.