The Captain of the Lamprey: Sjora Kahn'dyr

"...most people are either powerless, ignorant or misguided. But the powerless are aware, the ignorant are able, and the misguided are nevertheless willing. Between the three of them, they could accomplish what was needed, but only if they worked together." - Sjora Kahn'dyr

Her name is Sjora Kahn'dyr, captain of the former fishing vessel Lamprey, an airship now more acquainted with trading and the occasional act of piracy. Named Sjora by her parents, the surname Kahn'dyr came from the oldspeak meaning Sky-charmer, so named for her tendency to charge straight into an oncoming stormfront only to find naught but blue skies at their horizon.

From an early age, Sjora left her home among the Sky People of Jaaris B'kaan, preferring instead to ride the winds in a vessel of her own choosing. Having stolen her very own ship at the age of eleven and rechristening it the Lamprey, she became a silent terror of the Steel City tradewinds, able to pilfer the gold teeth from a Warmerchant or capture the loot from a frigate caravan right out from their noses.

But all recklessness must come to an end, one way or another. For Sjora, her choice to move towards a more legally sound career came in the arrival of Daris Faol, the young Sheharid Pa'amul (potential shepherd) with whose safety she was charged. This young ward reminded Sjora far more of herself than she was content, and as a result Sjora moved more into conventional messaging services, trade and transportation. The rising threat of familial responsibility hounded her, though. Would she eventually have to trade in the freedom of the sky for the inherited role she knew she would not be able to outrun forever?

It's a question I think all of us must face at one point, yes? Do we grow up? Will we set aside the dreams and adventures of our youth in order to accept the mantle which awaits us? And how does caring for the protection of another rush us towards that end?

Or will it, as it does for Sjora, only heighten the risk of such adventures? Especially as the Song-Mistress of the Sky People summons Sjora to perform one, important task for them - the acquisition of a Isaad Morquith - the prophesied Dead Man, whose presence either secures or threatens all their lives?

It's just one mission, Sjora concedes. One more task to buy herself a few more years of liberty among the clouds.... or so she hopes.

Read more about Sjora, Daris and more in book one of the Tales of the Dead Man: Steel & Sky, and, coming soon, book two: Sun & Stone!

Time and Time Again

It's a new year! 2018! Parades! Confetti! Champagne! Bad puns about "hey, I haven't seen you since last year!" You know, all that.

Seems a bit fitting that I should say something here about the passage of time. Like, why do we celebrate tonight as the new year? What makes any one spot on the earth's orbit of the sun any more spectacular than another? Wouldn't it make more sense to have that new year's day fall on a spot when the earth is closest or furthest from the sun? Or when the moon has completed a proportional number of orbits around the earth or is in a certain phase in relation to the sun's position?

Well, it wasn't always so - in fact, the first January 1st didn't even happen until year 45. Talk about a retcon!

Before that, the first of the year was celebrated at what is now the vernal equinox (or autumnal equinox for my fellow travelers south of the equator) to coincide with the halfway point between the solstices.

Calendars are weird things, really - focusing as much on celestial events as they do with terrestrial ones. Monarchs and religion play equal parts in their design, but most of us have forgotten their origins. Like, November and December were originally named as the 9th and 10th months, until Julius and Augustus decided to get squeezed into the summer. Or how about the days of the week being tributes to the Norse gods?

Yeah, it's all a whole thing, really. And effectively useless for time traveling. You can't just tell your time machine to go back to last thursday or set the dials so you can travel back to November 15, 1955. It's more than just flipping back the pages of a calendar - because we're talking about more than just a blink back against pages in a book.

The earth spins (at the equator) at a speed of nearly 1000 miles per hour; not even taking into account the shift in our rotation, it orbits the sun at about 67,000 miles per hour. Our solar system rotates around the star-flecked spirally arms of the Milky Way at about 490,000 mph, as we all move towards the Great Attractor at a relative speed of 1,000 kilometers per SECOND.

So, yeah. We're moving along at a brisk little jog, there. But if numbers are just too much math for a New Year's weekend, then how about if we slap a groovy little drum riff atop a bunch of monks singing and watch the way the worlds move?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucLYUYDhgos

Okay - I'm going to just leave that here while I go contemplate calculating the requirements for the specificity of time travel. Future projects and all that.

OH! I was going to ask. What are you doing this year? Let me know, please, if you so choose.

Fans and Fandoms

or, "How to make a Star Wars movie that makes everybody happy".

Short answer? You can't.

Little background, here. I don't consider myself an Expert on Star Wars - mostly because I'm not really paid for that - but my history with that franchise is pretty substantial. I saw the very first movie, back when it was just called "Star Wars", when I was 7 years old. 1977. I was there, man (if you can read that in a "I was in 'Nam" voice, that'll be perfect. Thanks.). George Lucas had attended my high school, I grew up a block away from where he'd grown up, blah blah blah. For years, Star Wars was my oxygen, the Force was my faith. I was a pretty adorable little nerdling - now I'm just a middle-aged nerdist. And though I've mostly grown out of breathless adoration for a science fiction movie franchise, I am still deeply fond of the films, and, with their addition of two new ones, I have become even more appreciative of the scope and breadth of the movie's cultural and entertainment impact.

Oh, I lived through the whole thing - the original trilogy and the shock of Vader's identity; the re-release of the original films with the enhanced CGI content, the prequel trilogy, the books, the cartoons, the new movies... and each time, the vocalizations reverberated across the galaxy with the ripples of a blasted Alderaan.

People screamed at or about George Lucas, and these angry voices just got louder and louder.

And then, of course, there was the internet.

Like, I remember those old monster movies - especially, like Frankenstein, where you had literal torches and pitchforks carried aloft in a visual demand for justice. I thought that was just a "then" thing, but now.... well, if people figured out a way to tangibly raise those things across the net, I'm sure we'd see them all in bulk.

And now the latest Star Wars film has come out - "The Last Jedi", which has shown me a peculiarity in fandom response. When "The Force Awakens" was released, there were two general camps of dissenters: those who didn't like that the main character was (gasp) female, and those who complained that it was too reminiscent of the original Star Wars (now called Episode 4: A New Hope). Somehow, this second group has failed to recognize that the movies thus far have been an intentional exercise in poetic symmetry, right down to the titles, etc. Don't know how they missed that, but oh well. The funny thing is, with the newest film, the director took some liberties with these patterns and deliberately played against expectation. Where the second movies have been about dramatic revelations, this movie was about an intentionally non-dramatic revelation; where the second movies are typically about the discovery of a more potent villain, this one was about the development of a new villain and his struggles to live up to his (and others) expectations. This film knew what the expectations would be, and specifically turned in different directions. It took mythical characters and showed them as mere mortals. It showed that the heroes' journey is not one taken by a lone, single person, but is potentially pursued by any who seek the courage to succeed.

In short, it recognized the formula, knew its audience expected that formula, and used that knowledge to surprise us.

And of course, people screamed about it. Not a lot, but the few who screamed did the best they could to make their voices heard.

Which made me think.... why should they be angry? If a film isn't what you expected it to be, whose fault is that? Is it ANYONE'S fault? It's a movie. Go see a film, be entertained - that's the deal we make, yes? But we're seeing a movie with potentially millions or billions of other people - do we get to insist that the movie conform to our lone expectations? Have we that right?

You go into a restaurant, you order your food, and you expect the food be made to your expectations - but you're not eating the same food as everyone else - and if you were, do you have the right to demand that they all eat the same food as you? Of course not.

As an author, I think about this all the time - I worry that my books, my characters, my little stories are told in a way that delights and surprises you. I want you, yes, to like my books. But I know not everyone will. Maybe you won't like that so many of my characters are female. Maybe you won't like that so many are "people of color". Or you don't like zombies. Or steampunk, or giant robots. Maybe you won't like the subtle political and philosophical threads woven throughout the pages. Who knows? I mean, I really hope you'll like them, and I do try to write them in a way that they'll be enjoyed - though of course, I don't expect you to agree with me all the time. That's totally cool with me, and I actually like that.

But at the end of the day, I have to write stories that I like writing. I must try to write good, entertaining and enjoyable books, but at their heart they are stories I want to share. And for all authors, all songwriters, all moviemakers and artists of every time - at the end of our chapters, we must create what is created out of our toils and footsteps. The ink is our blood, the winds are our words, the rainfall our tears, the pages our flesh. We hope you'll enjoy the journeys as well, but please kindly remember - we loan these visions with you, but they are always ours first.

Anachronology

Traveling through time.... it's been the stuff of science fiction for over a century, yes? But did you know the concept of individuals skipping over great periods of time goes back much, much further?

In the late 1800s, machines were the means by which people could find themselves freed from the constraints of the 4th dimension, but stories date back hundreds of years further. Hindu and Buddhist mythologies speak of people traveling into the realms of gods or wonders, only to return to the world hundreds of years later. In the Japanese fairy tale Urashima Taro, a fisherman is pulled into the deep and comes back 300 years later. They explored the possibility and mutability of time, the relative flow of years across different dimensions, and considered the effects of being exposed to traveling through space and time well before the first episodes of Doctor Who were even imagined.

Modern (ish) literature presented us with angels passing through time, and later, with the increasing inventiveness of the late 1800s age of industry, machines provided us a link into the future and to the past. With our increasing dependency on computerization, the possibilities of our consideration of what possibilities spanning the centuries might hold for us.

But the science and philosophy of traveling through time are not the alpha and omega of it. Time travel.... here's an experiment for you to try at home:

Think back to your earliest happy memory. Picture it all, each detail. Who were you with? What were you doing? Was there music? Was there food? Recall those details - the sounds, the sights, the flavors. Draw them into a focus, with all the clarity and resolution of the moment itself. Hold that moment. Freeze it in your thoughts. Feel it.

Or imagine something you'd like to do. Travel to Disneyworld, or slow dance with the love of your life, or so on - - create those same details, down to the last little bit. Own that reality. Fix it within your mind.

And just like that, you've traveled through time. It can be, in its own way, just that simple. Memories, hopes - these are the simplest and faintest manner in which we can burst free from time to time from time itself.

But as to physically tearing free and finding yourself in the past or the future.... now that's a story for another day. I'll see you there!

Snips and Snails

"Where do ideas come from?"

I hear that question a lot. And I think sometimes I take it for granted - sometimes I feel like I'm just drinking from a fire hose, or trying to pluck fish from the stream with my bare hands. Or maybe it's bear hands. I don't know.

But ideas don't just happen, they don't just appear on the page in front of you; there are things you can do to help the process along, and I thought I'd share a few of the tips I've picked up along the way.

1. Pay attention. Ideas are everywhere. Billboards, song lyrics (misheard or otherwise), conversations, books, fortune cookies... the list goes on and on. Watch everything. Read everything. If you're supposed to "write what you know", then know as much as you can. Stuff it all into your face holes and you'll be surprised how much of it will start to take on a life of its own, connecting and interconnecting and .forming new relationships. That bumper sticker? That friend of yours from sophomore math class? That song you loved back in 2008? These are all details that might form into something interesting. It's okay to people-watch, just don't be creepy about it.

2. Take Notes. Some of these observations will stick with you, but don't rely on "I'll never forget that" - it's not always true. Jot this stuff down, file it and organize it. And chances are, you'll come back across it when you really need it. This is also a good idea if you tend to dream a lot. Building up a habit of writing down your dreams in the moments after you wake up (the times you're most likely to remember them) is a great way to come up with ideas, concepts, phrases that you might not always come up with in the middle of the day. Good for song lyrics, too. If your subconscious knows the pen and paper are waiting for your ideas, it can make it easier to transition the ideas from your dream and onto the page.

3. Have weird friends. For the record, "weird" is good. You can also substitute the word "interesting" and "amazing." Surrounding yourself with a collection of fascinating and though-provoking people is an excellent way to challenge yourself to be imaginative and clever. This can, in turn, help reinforce habits which encourage you to think and stretch your potential. Plus, having a lot of weird people around you can provide you a good source to bounce ideas off or generate conversations which may trigger good ideas all on their own. But also, weird people are the best people, I think.

4. Test drive your ideas. Just like buying a car or a pair of shoes, give your ideas a test drive; take them around the block and see how you like them. They may be good for now, you may need time to grow into them, or they might need time to grow onto you. I've got entire folders worth of randomly jotted-down bits and baubles, and I may never even use all of them, but someday they'll find a place, and I'm fine with waiting. And a lot of the ideas I've used before sprang from little seeds of ideas. They needed time to germinate and develop. Some of them ended up being pulled from what grew out of other ideas, and so forth. You never really know.

When I was much younger, I was camping in Zion National Park in southern Utah, and on my last day I was hanging out by the parking lot before leaving, and a crow landed on the ground near me. He cawed at me, and I asked him how his day was going. He cawed again, and then pecked at the ground. Whatever it was he picked up, he tasted it, spat it out and pecked at something else. He did this over and over until he found something he liked, ate it, and, looking at me again, cawed again. He repeated this process, pecking, spitting out, pecking, swallowing, cawing, over and over until the area around him was pretty cleared out, and then he hopped to another spot and repeated the entire process. Each time, he would pause to caw at me, and I imagined he was asking if I understood him.

By the third time, I laughed. "Okay, brother, I got you." He cawed again, and flew off.

The moral? Sample it all. Spit out the stuff that doesn't work, and take in the stuff that does.

Works for me, and it'll work for you.

How about you, fellow travelers? What sorts of tricks have you found help you with ideas for your stories, songs or whatever?

Star Wars: random thoughts

Watching Star Wars 4: A New Hope, and a few thoughts have crossed my mind...

Like, was Darth Vader just really worn out from having taken out all those rebel soldiers at the end of "Rogue One"? Like, did he turn to that division of stormtroopers before boarding the Tantive IV and say "hey, you guys can take this one, right? I've got like this massive post-force headache just now...."

Also, do a lot of droids happen to stroll down that one gully on Tatooine? Because it seems like those Jawas get a lot of business in droid theft just by hanging out there.

Also, I realize R2 is a bit of a sociopath, but Threepio is REALLY a jerk. If I were a droid, I would not feel safe around either of these two.

Uncle Owen is a REAL jerk, though. And, in his defense, Beru didn't need to remind Luke to remind him. He knows he needs a droid that speaks Bocce. Don't get between a tatooine man and his droid shopping, apparently.

Luke, know your droids. That's an R5 unit, not an R2. Jeez, come on.

You can totally imagine R2's subtext. "Dude! Don't tell this human dude about our secret mission!"

"Who is she? She's beautiful!" Dude. It's a tiny blue blurry hologram. You really need to get out more.

C-3PO is a serious guilt tripper. "No. I don't like you either." Damn, man. That's cold. And not two minutes ago you called yourself a "human/cyborg relation" - - well, yikes.

What's blue milk taste like?

Oh, never mind. Owen's the guilt tripper.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the amazing orchestration of John Williams.

Never trust Threepio to babysit your droids. That's the moral of this story. Basically, you can kind of blame/credit him for the next 3 or 4 movies. But then, who built him? Am I right?

Yes, Owen. There WILL be hell to pay, you cranky old prophet you.

Don't get me wrong, but those Banthas are SLLLOOOOOW. You'd think a tusken raider could move faster on foot.

Luke's alone with Threepio for like five minutes and gets ambushed. I'm really not trusting Goldenrod, the more I think of it. Trouble follows him like flies to a jawa face.

Ah, old Ewan MacGregor. At last, the voice of reason. Except this desert looks like the wrong place to wear that many layers of wool. And wait a minute. You totally know R2! You just know R2 is giving you the side-eye.

Not making this up, but the first time I saw this movie, I totally thought they said "cologne wars". I was really confused by that.

I honestly don't know how Luke didn't accidentally chop someone in half in those first 30 seconds of waving his new lightsaber around. "Here, hold this powerfully destructive weapon and just wave it around all willy nilly." "Will do!"

Artoo never asks for identification before playing the holographic message. Luke could've taken him to any old weirdo in the desert and played like he was Obi Wan, and they could've gotten that message played. Not a very good example of computer security, if you ask me.

There's a great short story in a book called "From a Certain Point of View" which addresses a letter sent to the Death Star HR department after Vader force-chokes this guy. Hilarious. All I can think of on this scene now is that going walking back to his office in a huff. "Oh, that does it! I'm getting HR involved! Force choke me, will you?"

This scene - with dead Owen and Beru - really freaked me out as a kid. Burning fleshy skeletons, man. That's rough for a 7 year old.

It's science fiction. Where floating droids torture people with.... needles. Wait, what?

"I want to learn the force and be a jedi like my father." (NOTE OBI WANS FACE)

I don't really like this weird CGI scene here. I think Lucas really jumped the gun - it stands out as being not-quite-good-enough-CGI. And a little pointless. Sorry, man.

Watching this one force-influenced Trooper just obediently going along with Kenobi's words, while the other Troopers just go along with it... this is how people act around their friends who tell racist or sexist jokes. Everyone gets a little awkward, nobody says anything. Yes, Trooper. Those WERE the droids you were looking for, and WE ALL KNEW IT.... but we didn't say anything.

Okay, look. If you have the death sentence on seven systems, you really shouldn't advertise it. That's just poor form. You sound a little bit like a poser - - - ooh. Sorry, now you have bigger problems, huh?

Luke's giving me serious "Wesley Crusher" vibes now.

I think they made action figures for like half the people in that cantina. And we bought them. Now they won't even make figures for the female characters in the movies. Who makes the decisions on that sort of thing, anyway? Look, we bought walrus man, hammerhead, we even got that little bug eyed dude that you only see on screen out of focus for like 10 seconds. But, yeah, no, we don't need a Black Widow figure, nah.

Cut back to the Death Star, where a group of old white men are discussing women's rights. Suddenly feeling a bit less science fiction and a bit too timely.

R2 should have his own subtitles.

I don't even want to talk about this new Jabba scene. Okay, no, I could talk for an hour about that.

Considering they're being chased by various imperial ships, Solo seems happy to break into fits of angry exposition whenever Luke opens his whiny mouth.

Tarkin. Damn. He's such a well-played character. Seriously, even though he's written as little more than an evil military politician, he is played SO WELL. I'm legitimately more afraid of him than of Vader at this point. He's elegantly wicked. Also, dude has MULTIPLE sonic screwdrivers in his pockets, so you KNOW he's a badass.

I've played a VR lightsaber game, and I'm definitely worse than Luke at this. I'm clearly too old to begin my training. That being said, you're in a spaceship, deep in hyperspace, so, yeah, let's blindfold the kid with the laser sword and tell him to practice. What could go wrong?

okay, more later.