Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Continuing at the beginning

Last week I mentioned the book Witch World by Andre Norton as one of those inspiring me to write.  Maybe that dates me a little bit, the book was copyrighted in 1963, but I can’t be certain when I read it.  Likely it was some years later.  In my previous blog I also made the mistake, due to memory compression in my head, of setting the two words of the title into one… Witch World… two words, not connected, sorry. 
After I posted that blog I realized there was a lot more of the story that stuck with me, used as soil or fertilizer to nurture my imagination.  The essence of the story involves a guy who is trying to escape the untenable situation of his life, leaving the mistakes or triumphs of his life when everyone else turns against him.  None of this is elaborated and you don’t know if he’s a good guy or bad, but you have the feeling that he’s good.  That is what is interesting about the story; there’s enough data given that you gain a feeling of what he is… a good guy.  Even though he is on the run you take his side.
As faulty as my memory has proved, I’m fairly certain that in the sixties the idea of using the anti-hero as the protagonist was rarely used in genre fiction… not to the extent it is today, for sure.  In those days the good guy was good and what secrets he harbored were for good reasons.  White hats and black hats, easily recognized characters.
Maybe that was part of my basis for assuming that Simon Tregarth was a good guy.  A soldier who killed for the sake of duty or to protect the unnamed woman being hounded in the new life he found.  Good.
She was a witch and introduced us all slowly to the facts of the Witch World… Even after reading the book again there was only a loose sketch of a world.  This was something else that worked well for Ms. Norton… the worlds she created did not need details of their economic structure, caste system, politics, and astrological information to work.  Of course the details emerged to the extent they were necessary, within the narrative.  She didn’t swamp readers with facts, details or extensive exposition.  There was enough detail to hold the reader and keep them in the moment.
I believe her method evolved over the years but the essence of her storytelling remained the same.
I can’t say that my writing makes use of all I appreciate of Ms. Norton’s.  I know primarily that her books got me started.  I still have many of the early stories I wrote and hope to have time in the future to rewrite and edit them to where I feel they’d be ready to publish.  Some of my earliest attempts were so close to pla… copying others… that I trashed them.  It took time to create my own style.  Of course my style has changed over the years.
Over the years I didn’t focus on any attempt to publish my material, occasionally I would try directly or try to find an agent.  With the current market so tight I chose to publish my stories as Ebooks, trusting that those who find them… readers, like myself… will enjoy them and perhaps tender some feedback.
Currently I have three of what is called Urban Fantasy… (Urban Fantasy is something I prefer to call Monsters Among Us, since that’s mostly what the distinction is, US being our current civilization)… this series is called The Merged Worlds.  The first book of the series is Too Much Magic, introducing Pepper Paull, a good witch.  The second is Vampire’s Magic with Stacey Bowen as a vampire.  The third goes back to Pepper in Pepper’s Magic.  In science fiction the first book of a series which got labeled Sea Scape, is titled Sea’s Dance, it is set in the far future and the next, Sea’s Turn, is coming out soon.
Yes, I am promoting myself here for a minute since while I make the claim to be a writer a blog is not sufficient proof; therefore the above mentioned books establish the fact.
            While I have a rather large collection of books of the physical-paper-pages-between-two-covers type of book I think that ebooks are the logical next step.  That doesn't mean that I'll give up on paper but I noticed a lot of old books are coming out in this format and for the sake of the stories it is a good thing.

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