Monday, November 28, 2005
 
Okal Rel Universe Anthology 1, published by Windstorm Creative, with editors Virginia O'Dine and myself, launches Dec 7 at 7 p.m. in Prince George, at Books & Company, 1685 3rd Ave. Authors Elizabeth Woods, Sarah Trick and Amanda da Silva will be on hand to do five minute readings from their stories. We will also have refreshments and a few door prizes (other ORU publications naturally!) and I will discuss the next anthology briefly. So far we have 3 of the five stories spoken for. :-) The theme of the next anthology will be "Personal Combat in the Okal Rel Universe" in honor of Horth's tendancy to get into that sort of thing in "Righteous Anger", the next mainline series book coming out from Edge.


Sunday, November 27, 2005
Righteous Anger Submitted to Edge
 

The Saga Marches On


Book #2 of the Okal Rel Universe saga is complete and in to Brian at Edge, as of last night. Any Horth Nersal fans will be glad to know the story is all about Horth: the "marriage between enemies" that defined his childhood; his quirky combination of combat genius and linguistic limitations; fertility manners for a young Vrellish male; and how he became Liege of Nersal over a critical military and moral decision brought to a crisis by the nefarious info blit of Amel's memories that perturbs relations between Rire and Sevildom.

ETA for "Righteous Anger", from Edge, is fall of 2006. Brian told me at VCON that he's working on cover ideas.

I'd also like to register a big "thank you" to Craig Bowlsby, the video artist behind The Commander's Log, and a western Canadian fencing champ, who was technical advisor and "Horthowich" stunt man in the literary sense, for the fencing scenes; Alison Sinclair, of course and always, for many phone call conversations and giving me the benefit of her medical knowledge (and Mira's unique grasp of Sevolite medicine in particular ); and Elizabeth Woods of the Norspec Writer's Workshop for helping with a preliminary bug hunt of the draft manuscript. Norspec also gave me input, as a group, on some early drafts of Horth childhood scenes. Thanks to everyone for your support and continuing interest in the Okal Rel Universe!



Graphic credit for Nesak shield, Virginia O'Dine



Friday, November 25, 2005
Thought of the Day
 

You haven't arrived until someone tries to send you back.



quote by Paula Johanson, lifted from encouraging advice to a fellow author on the SFCanada mailing list.



Thursday, November 24, 2005
 
Hi, it's Brianna

sorry i haven't been on for so long! I forgot my password to my email and I haven't been able to get the link i had to this site for awhile. :S

Anyways, I finally figured out how to post a review at Amazon.com, so it should be coming up soon! :)


Wednesday, November 23, 2005
 

Came across "Potter Series Casts a Spell Over Entire Genre" story via SFCanada list, where S.W. Mayse, author of Merlin's Web and Awen (Welsh historical novel), posted the link. The article reports a 10-15% increase in book sales for heroic fantasy type fiction (Martin and Jordan in particular) and attributes it to the popularity of the Harry Potter books.



I have two thoughts about this. First, that writing and reading is a community affair not a commodity market, which means that the success of one author can spill over into success for others because the market grows. I seriously like that concept. It feels right to me. My second reaction is that finally people are showing signs of being fed up with doom, gloom and darkness and enjoying heroes again: heroes that sometimes fail, and stories with darker streaks than my generation encountered as young adults, but at the very least stories that do not frigging glorify "the dark side". That trend has always disturbed me. It reminds me of the syndrome in which victims identify with the abuser because they desire the powerful role not the weaker one, and thereby trumpets the morally discredited cry of "Might Makes Right". Which is bullshit. Might is just might. Right is something that history, and each and every one of us with the brains to tackle situational ethics from a wholistic point of view, still have the job of figuring out long after the bombs have dropped and the swords rusted.


As far as realism goes, and idea often touted as justification for the triumph of evil over good, I would like to register another "bullshit", for the record. That may be true in the short term but usually depends upon a betrayal of trust, for success. Like stealing, it works only so long as the victims have some trust left to be violated. In the long term, a society without shared values and trust-worthy operating assumptions, is nothing more than a society at the end of its rope. Plenty of injustice can cloak itself in those laws, justifying criticim, and power gets abused in the best of worlds, but productivity in a setting where no one can trust anyone else is pretty much nil. Unless, I suppose, the sort of labor to be performed is so unskilled that people can perform it out of sheer fear for their lives and in a chronic state of either terror or depression.



Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Another fun webthingy
 
I have of late been playing around with Tiddlywiki, which is a Javascripted-to-the-max, standalone (no server), OS independent wiki - it's written purely in HTML, Javascript and CSS, and saves the entries in the file itself. It has a considerable aesthetic advantage over the one big text file (it was in one of the comments to this network of posts that I saw TiddlyWiki mentioned). Here's a particularly classy example of its use by a philosophy lecturer.

TiddyWiki and a copy of Cross-platform Portable Firefox on a USB drive gives me a micro database that can be moved from Macs to Windows boxes at will. It works fairly well, if you don't try to challenge it as I did by going cross-platform and throwing in Citrix.

Initially I wondered how people could put them out on public servers without them being vandalized, since it's possible to hide the edit function, but not from someone who knows where to look to turn it on again. But it dawned on me that on a properly configured webserver, sure someone can get into the edit box but they can't SAVE their edits - they don't have the permissions to write to the server. So the webpage can be edited locally by the author and uploaded to the server.


Encouragement for Writers
 

From SFCanada Mailing List


The December Readers Digest quotes a recent survey for the Department of
Canadian Heritage, March 2005.


87 % of Canadians reported reading a book last year.

53% of Canadian males and 41% of females read some Science-fiction,fantasy,horror last year.

The highest category was Mystery,suspense,detective,adventure with 66% women

and 57% men, followed in second place by "How-to-Books."

Apparently, one out of eight Canadians reads more than 50 books a year!

That's a lot of working writers.


The above posted by Steve Stanton on SFCanada mailing list, (11/21/05)



Sunday, November 20, 2005
The evil overlord list
 
Remember this?


Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Anthology Launch
 
ORU ANTHOLOGY BOOK LAUNCH
Books & Co, 7pm, Wednesday, December 7th.

Hear readings from the ORU Anthology by authors & editors. There will be goodies and door prizes, such as Throne Price and Neo-opsis Magazine.


Sunday, November 13, 2005
 
Thrilled to be notified of the
Review of Courtesan Prince by Bobbie DuFault on amazon.com. I've copied the text below.


"The author Lynda Williams has given significant thought to this first book of 10 planned in the Oka Rel universe. In this book on a broad level we see 2 distinct cultures that have arisen from the ashes of a terrible civilization collapsing war which happened thousands of years previously. From the ashes of the previous earth like cultures we see one group who embraces technology and one who does not. The groups are pitted against each other in cultural, social and technological ways.


On a deeper level her ability to develop characters with enough depth to seem real gave me characters I could love and wanted to see "win" and others who I found myself loathing.


In exploring the differences and similarities Lynda has given us new ways of thinking about the world around us and the culture driven moralities that exist in our current world.


Her presentation and delivery really sucked me into her world and carried me through the book causing me to want more. I look forward to her next books in this series."

by Bobbie DuFault from Amazon.com, Nov 2005




Tuesday, November 08, 2005
One more rant
 

From a post by myself to the RFF (Readers for the Future) mailing list


The topic here was the lack of innovation in modern Science Fiction as one possible answer to the question "What is Wrong with Sci Fi Publishing?" My response is reproduced below. Since I have all these rants in me, I figure I had better get them out! Better out than in. :-) Bottled up rants are not good for the soul.


No heart and soul, I'd say, is a big part of the problem. Maybe that's
what Berman and Brin meant by lack of innovation and positive SF. My
work addresses the question of how cultures can stop short of mutual
assured destruction, and how different solutions cause problems because
the systems are mutually incompatible. Nearly every con I go to, someone
says to me, "Yeah, sure, but come on -- someone's going to pull out that
gun or use that rel-ship in a terrorist way or go for the
killer-mass-destroy-it-all virus." It is almost as if it is an
illegitimate thing for a science fiction writer to ask whether any
solution but an arms race is possible. I exclude multi-media addictions
from my work, for the most part. Reetions distrust the power of
presentation to skew rational analysis. Gelacks don't like artificial
things that repeat themselves identically every time they are
experienced. I am often challenged on that. As if no one can believe
that any decision BUT headlong obsessive "more more more" attitudes can
prevail when it comes to what technology to use and which to set aside.
I have a lot to say, as you can tell, about what's wrong with science
fiction these days. But I think a lot of it could be summed up with a
single plea: "no more drug-culture". A lot of nanotech, future dystopias
and dark elf/vampire stories strike me as nothing more than that. No
values. No social contract. Unimportant personal relationships or ones
that lead to nothing but pain and betrayal in the quest for another
"hit". There is plenty of pain and death and nasty things in my work.
But I'm fed up with the message I keep getting that this should be the
goal of writing, not the tools by which one tells a story. That
ACTION-ACTION-ACTION rather than having a story with a message, is all
important. I seriously doubt a lot of modern sci fi writers could
construst a single meaningful sentence about what they are trying to
convey thematically, or in terms of net emotional effect, or anything
else, if you asked them about the underlying tensions or motivations in
their work. Collectively, I think too many writers are afraid to be
innovative. Writers are "market-whipped". The penalty for being
different is not fitting into that narrow slot allocated for you on the
marketing shelf.



Nothing original, insightful or large spirited can come of pressures
like that! Long live the small press.



Monday, November 07, 2005
Rant (written as post to RFF list)
 
Speaking of rants, Virginia, here's my latest -- posted to an RFF list in connection with a conversation about why SciFi isn't as popular as fantasy these days.

**********

I believe -- and tackle in my own writing -- that the important things
for SF to address are no longer techie ones. I purposefully create a
universe in which there exists a technology so destructive that those
human cultures that survived are the ones in which culture has adapted
to restrict human excesses in the area of all-out power struggles. (For
better or for worse, in terms of other good things, naturally.)

See
http://okalrel.org/contest/themes.htm

My feeling about "dark" sci fi and its nano-dismal relatives is that we
are like junkies looking for another "wow" hit of cool tech or mass
destruction. Writers are afraid to be meaningful. To say something as
unpopular as "gee, maybe it isn't cool to have an arms race". Or to make
human relationships more than a flickering gesture that detracts from
the ACTION-ACTION-ACTION. Writers are supposed to be original. But there
are rules Sci Fi writers seem to be locked into. Rules like. "break
every rule and destroy more of civilization for the kick of it." Maybe
we shouldn't just break every rule. We live in a world that is far more
permissive than the one in which "rule breakers" became cult heros. We
should cultivate more sense of mutual responsibility and common sense
survival of the species.

And we should let people come away feeling a bit better about being
humans beings, despite our limitations and stupidities.


 
The SF Canada site managed by Edward Willett has up a rash of new interviews by and about Canadian science fiction writers.


Thursday, November 03, 2005
 
A blog post that echoes some of Lynda's sentiments - well, her rants - concerning money issues and being a professional author. I love the sentiments Scott has expressed on what being a professional means to him. I wholeheartedly agree.


Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Book Two: Righteous Anger - Draft 1
 
A quick and weary "hurrah!" -- finished first draft of Righteous Anger, the second book in the Okal Rel Universe, last weekend.

Some excerpts to whet appetites. (ETA for publication is Summer or Fall of 2006)

From the prologue




    Vrellish clans had met on Cold Rock for a thousand years, coming from all across Red Reach to settle their differences by the sword, because swords were safer than space battles and habitat far, far more precious than any cause that might inspire battle. That was the great truth of Okal Rel, the religion that -- for a thousand years -- had made reality skimming a survivable technology through the substitution of duels for space wars. But Sword Law required shared courts of honor. Sometimes cultures diverged too far, and war--the enemy of souls--erupted, disease like, and raged as it had now.



A Family Outing on Fountain Court



      "That's enough, all of you," said Hangst. "Branst, you will keep an eye on Horth. Is that understood? I promised your mother someone would, and I will need Zrenyl with me more often than you."
     Without waiting for an answer, Hangst nodded to the family herald to open the doors at the end of the Entrance Hall, and led their party out.
     "It's not fair," Branst complained, once he figured his father was no longer in earshot. "Just because Zrenyl is older, he gets to do what he wants."
     "Nothing's fair in life except a witnessed duel," Hara told him. "And Zrenyl isn't merely older. He is better at most things than you are. But cheer up! With those good looks, you'll be popular with all the women, once you grow up."
    "I don't want all the women," muttered Branst.
    "Hush," Hara admonished him more harshly. "Stop sounding like a Nesak."



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