I lost access to my Twitter account. There were a combination of email and access issues that I could not resolve.
But Twitter did not spark joy.
As such, while I can’t delete the account, I won’t use it anymore.
Chapters
Some of the recent bits of the Nine have been small because I’m really trying to get these moments right.
I’ve never much liked how many people belabor fight scenes. Most combat is quick and brutal, so the writing should be too. As such I’m taking two or three days to write 1000 words. But that doesn’t mean things aren’t significant, for later chapters will exist largely as responses to events in these. Most of this narrative is going to be consequent actions.
What’s more I’m trying to evolve some people and keep others the same. Characters like Julian are complex, whereas Tatianna is changing. It’s hard to get right. Author’s who do it effortlessly are masters of the craft.
Trump Gates
Later in the first series Corwin opens a gate and moves a detachment of fighters into Amber.
Why didn’t he do that in his attack with Bleys at the beginning, Bleys being a master trump artisan?
Zelazny, everybody. Now I gotta make something up.
Spam
I get so much spam on this website that by now I automatically delete all comments that don’t reference the post. The way to overcome this filter is comment useful information that addresses whatever point the blog-post addresses.
There’s an XKCD about it.
Dragons
The best part of writing is stuffing dragons everywhere.
Dragon Law: If you have a problem, you just need more dragons!
Character Perspectives
I prefer 1st person POV. One reason why is that as an author the separation between character viewpoint and writer viewpoint is more clearly defined, and can be expressed without constantly writing ‘he thought/she thought.’
Suppose Bob thinks all orcs should be killed. In 1P POV from Bob’s perspective, I can just write ‘All orcs should be killed,’ and that’s clearly an opinion of the character. Statements like that should be supported by having Bob live that opinion, and it can be undercut easily with narrative elements. If orcs are always chaotic evil, than scenes of orcs doing so can be shown. If I want to demonstrate that the all orcs should be killed opinion is wrong or flawed, narrative elements showing orcs being good, or at least worthy of living, can be shown too. That also leads to narrative conflict which is the pulse of a story.
But if I’m in 3P POV and Bob’s getting genocidal, that opinion is difficult to reveal without either having dialogue or a bunch of ‘he thought’ tags. Now the dialogue introduction of opinion is fine, but it’s a hoop to jump through. Writing constant thought attribution tags gets cumbersome, and sometimes I don’t really want to reveal a character’s thoughts. If there’s a murder mystery and the victim is an orc, I might not want to reveal Bob’s murderous impulses.
This is not to say any of those things cannot be done and done well, but they are often cumbersome. More specifically, they’re set of problems I don’t enjoy solving. I much prefer writing opinions that are wrong and subverting them.
Pet Peeves
I’ve probably never told you how much I hate being right all the time because I love it. It’s delightful.
Good sentences
Want a good intense sentence?
But the ring would not be denied.
That’s a good one. JRRT dropping a banger.
It’s got some aspects worthy of consideration. The ‘But’ beginning establishes conflict. The sentence isn’t too wordy. The final ‘denied’ is a good, strong one, and supports the implicit conflict of the opening, augmented by ‘not be’ denied. There is a lot of conflict within that sentence purely grammatically, and the ring as a focus of the narrative is a tool of conflict.
Furthermore the ‘would not be’ implies a desire and a will. Both are good for the narrative, but also support the conflict. The ring wants something, and that’s pretty clear.
That’s what you do to make a sentence intense. Make it short but laden with conflict. Give it a clear meaning, and leave the implications nebulous. It sets up later events.
More Continuity
The problem with Amberfic is that Zelazny wasn’t always certain who’s related to who and how.
In 9PiA Corwin says Random is his full brother and Eric a half. In GoA, he says Eric is his full brother, albeit with different legitimacy. Which is right?
I’m trying hard not to pick sides.
In 9PiA Random also refers to ‘your sister’s sister,’ right before he, Corwin, and Deirdre (using that spelling) descend into Rebma (p 47, GBoA). I read that as referring to Moire via Llewella, and thus take Moire and Llewella to be half sisters by different fathers (Oberon and someone unnamed). The ladies are both green. But why ‘YOUR sister’s sister,’ emphasis mine, instead of ‘our sister’s sister’ or something? Why disavow her? Random and Deirdre have different mothers and the same father, and R and C have the same father and possibly the same mother, so they’re related as closely as R and L. Why disavow her?
No idea. Z’s dead and not talking. Welcome to fanfic.
The Moon
The Moon appears flipped upside down in the southern hemisphere vs the northern.
In cosmological terms (cosMOlogy is the study of the universe, cosMETOlogy is makeup and cosmetics) there is no predefined up and down, but more humans live in the northern hemisphere than the south. As such a lot of popsci refers to north as up and south as down, and this is the convention for immobile maps. Those of the big pieces of paper kind usually use put north up, whereas computer maps often have north rotating around as the mobile device moves. Google Maps lets you lock north to up, but will free spin otherwise.
This up-down ambivalence is not found everywhere. For example a boat has a definite top and bottom, and getting the two confused will make the thing sink. Tree branches grow up, roots grow down, and there isn’t a lot of confusion between the two. People have their heads on top and feet on bottom, usually. These are what we call preferred reference frames. One can, via math, make any reference frame up or down, but some are much more work than others. By convention, down is the direction the gravity force vector points, and up is the other direction.
Cosmology doesn’t have such preferences, so up is whichever way we pick. The more pedantic among us will eschew terms like up and down to refer to directions unencumbered by gravity.
North of the Equator our heads generally point more north than south. Up and north do have some overlaps. South of the Equator our heads generally point south. Up and south have some vector overlap.
The Moon is the same Moon in both north and south, so the part of it we think of as the top, the bit that is furthest ‘up’ in our personal reference frame, depends on where we stand. At the North Pole this bit, the uppermost part of the Moon, will be the northernmost part of the Moon. At the South Pole the uppermost bit is the southernmost part of the Moon. Inbetween ‘up’ will point to an edge, and where that direction points depends on our latitude on Earth.
All of that is a long bit of saying that in Chile the Moon will look upside down compared to the Moon in Alaska. You can see this by following Moon pictures on Instagram. Look for some southern city’s hashtag and #moon, and compare the moon to how it looks in the north.
This would not happen on a flat Earth. If you really don’t trust Insta, and if you don’t I understand, a plane ticket to Chile is about a thousand bucks. You can prove it to yourself and have a great vacation. You might need a lens for your camera or phone depending on resolution and focus, but a decent one is less than a hundred bucks and will give decent lunar resolution.