Primitives

Prehistoric humans of various sorts have shown up in some of my stories. Although the dwarfs and trolls of my fantasy work would seem to be related to Neanderthals, we ignore this in the tales so I’ll do the same here.

We do meet Neanderthals in my time travel science fiction novel, ‘When Man Was Young.’ These are straightforward denizens of Italy, c.60,000 years ago, so there is no fantasy element involved. I endeavored to be realistic with them instead, and probably succeeded reasonably well.

Then we have the Larnagians in the sci-fi novel ‘Alienese’ (written as Oliver Davis Pike). These are the descendants of ancient Earth humans who learned how to teleport via their brain power and went off to colonize elsewhere, forgetting the way home. A hundred thousand years ago? Two hundred thousand? Who can say? They definitely look like humans of an earlier time, heavy of brow, robust of build (especially the men). They could be Homo longi (Denisovans) or perhaps they come from around the time when Heidelbergensis morphed into ‘modern’ humans. All these I consider to be races* of Home sapiens, actually, and the Larnagians are mutually fertile with Earth humans.

Now the ‘First Children’ of the Malvern novel ‘Valley of Visions’ are almost certainly Heidelbergensis, or closely related. Again, able to breed with modern humans. And, as the Larnagians, not quite as bright** as us, on average (but not that far off). These are a much more gracile sort; that may be their ancestry or they might have evolved that direction during their residency on Exura. The Wizard-Lord Hurasu has kept them under his protection in a sort of reservation high in the mountains, but all are gone — at least from that spot — in a couple thousand years.

They, and the Larnagians, are dark of skin. Not so the ‘beast men’ encountered on an island in a later Mora novel, ‘Warrior of the Moon.’ These are rather hairy with pale skin beneath. With the protection from the sun provided by a heavier pelt, plus a somewhat dim forest environment, dark skin serves no particular purpose (as with chimpanzees). They are far more primitive than the First Children, building rude huts and not knowing fire. Probably some sort of Homo erectus? That would be a good guess but I’m not saying one way or another. After all, who knows what sort of humans and near-humans exist out there in the infiniverse?

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*True races or sub-species — all humans today are one race, from a scientific view.

**This was for the sake of the stories. I would not be at all surprised if the real ‘primitive’ humans were every bit as intelligent as us — or even smarter.

Utility

Utilitarianism believes in the greatest good* for the greatest number of people. This is something with which I totally disagree. Every person is equally important. Their needs are not to be subordinated to those of some hypothetical ‘humanity,’ but neither should they be elevated over those of another.

This is, to be sure, more difficult in practice than in theory. We are bound to place the needs of our loved ones ahead of those we don’t know. Humans have a certain amount of built-in tribalism, both for better and worse. The dynamics of all this is certainly useful fodder for the fiction writer. I rarely write of actual politics in my stories but one can probably detect an undercurrent of a left-libertarian (that is, anarchist) viewpoint.

Fortunately, most of my protagonists are practical sorts and can work with this.

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*Not that anyone can agree what this is. Some say ‘happiness’ but I can be quite happy being unhappy at times.

Lifetime World Building

I’ve been world-building all my life. Or, at least, going back to when I was four or five and laying out large scenarios with my toy soldiers and dinosaurs and usually a few native Americans too. I could find roles for all of them.

I’m told when I was seven or eight I was creating similar fantasy worlds for my playmates at school. I do not believe they took them as seriously as I did. A few ideas took on more concrete form eventually. I think the first to actually ‘exist’ as a world, one where I wrote things down, drew maps, etc. came when I was about fourteen. That would have been the South Seas fantasy world. Basically a ‘lost world’ sort of thing at that point, an undiscovered island. I was encountering such worlds in my reading, E.R. Burroughs and others.

Then there was my apocalypse world, post-atomic war style. It grew in all sorts of directions and became fairly well-developed eventually, with quite a lot of it on paper. Did I attempt to actually write stories in either of these worlds? Sure, but I never really followed through very well on them. I suppose I just wasn’t ready to write fiction yet (poetry was quite another matter and took much of my attention for a long time).

In time, I abandoned the post-apocalypse concept in favor of another world, and went to moving all those ideas there. And, since there was room for it, the South Seas ideas followed them. So was born the ‘Izan’ world (or infinite worlds, actually) in which the bulk of my fantasy is set.

Thus my Mora novels (beginning with ‘Coast of Spears’) derive fairly directly from that earliest South Seas world-building. Before I wrote any of them, however, I turned out the four short novels (or one long novel — one can look at it either way) that make up Donzalo’s Destiny. There’s no denying that my maps of the region in which they are set were originally based on the southeastern USA. I changed them quite a bit, including flipping east and west, adding mountain ranges, and so on, before the geography became set. And, while I was at it, I drew up the rest of the world.

Too late to change any of that now — I’ve set too many stories in that world. To be sure, I’ve built other worlds since, some for multiple novels. Any well thought out world should be capable of supporting almost endless story-telling.

Incidentally, I still have the map (included here) I drew of the unknown island when I was like fourteen or so. And it is the basis of part of that complete world map. The beautiful Polynesian princess I imagined then also survived. All that’s in the tales; best to just read them if one wishes to learn more.

 

Maturing

I wrote the four relatively short books that make up the Donzalo’s Destiny series over something like fifteen months time yet I can, rereading them, see that my style very much matured — improved, I would be inclined to say — during the course of their creation. It became something much closer to what I would call ‘my’ voice. I’m not about to go back and rewrite them or anything of that sort. They’re perfectly acceptable as-are. These were my very first fantasy novels and mark the creation of the entire Izan mythos. It has certainly grown since, and the somewhat murky magic system introduced in Donzalo has become downright scientific in its explanations.

They are also the only novels in which I have used a semi-omniscient point of view. Ultimately, it’s more a matter of multiple POVs but the narrator does occasionally intrude. Not enough to hurt anything; it’s still pretty much the way the characters see things. For the most part, I managed to avoid head-hopping, though in fiction since I have largely restricted myself to one point of view per scene — and, generally, per book.

Catholic Writer

I am prone to quipping that I am a Catholic writer despite myself. There is some validity to the description; that I will admit. I grew up Catholic, I understand Catholicism. And, as the cliché goes, write what you know. Unfortunately, many who label themselves Catholic are woefully ignorant of their faith. Even those who attended parochial schools.

Yes, some of the nuns who taught us weren’t much better. But I imbibed Catholic social teaching at school and still respect those teachings. I am fond of the writings of Belloc and Chesterton (while also finding things to criticize), and am attracted to Distributism as a social and economic system.

So these things have shown up in my fiction. I write Catholic protagonists because I understand them better than those from other backgrounds. Some are admittedly not so accurate in their own understanding of their religion.

Though, inevitably, I take at least a partially Catholic view of events, my work in no way proselytizes. Having any agenda is deadly to good fiction writing. Moreover, I enjoy poking fun at just about everybody. I do not spare my Catholics.

There are no Catholics—nor Christians of any sort—in most of my fantasy writing. I’ve gone out of my way to make sure no invented religion too closely resembles Christianity. This does not mean my outlook on life changes. Here, again, I am a Catholic writer despite myself.

That, I suspect, will never change.

Tamarind

Tamarind is a fictional Florida town that serves as the main setting for my novel ‘Asanas’ (available from Arachis Press in print or as free ebook). This is not the same Florida as that which Ted ‘Shaper’ Carrol inhabits, the Florida of the three Cully Beach novels and ‘The Middle of Nowhere,’ as well as a number of short stories. The two differ in too many respects for any sort of crossover between them. Nor is it the Florida that pops up in the Wilk adventures nor in the Women in the Sun novels I have written under the name Sienna Santerre.

So where is this Tamarind? It is situated near the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, somewhere north of Punta Gorda and south of Sarasota. I have disguised the area a bit, flipping some of the geography north and south, to create a place that can not be found on any map. But I did draw up a map of Tamarind for my own use. One should be able to find ones way around with it, although I think the description in the book is actually adequate.

One sees there is road out to Leawood and the beach. Leawood is, to some degree, patterned on both Englewood and Englewood Beach but also on other beach communities I have known, including Vanderbilt Beach just north of Naples and even Keaton Beach up in the Big Bend area (I stole ‘The Hot Dog Stand’ from there). This does not mean Tamarind is in any way based on Englewood. I created it from bits and pieces of Florida towns I have known.

Out west of town lies Consonante Springs. This also is completely fictitious but I did base the spa there, to some degree, on the one in Bonita Springs Florida—a place where I myself taught yoga, long, long ago. And beyond the Springs one finds the US Highway 41 and Interstate 75. Those I didn’t need to invent. Nor did I invent any other of the towns mentioned, up and down the coast. I did, however, make up Singer Lake, up in the lake district of Florida.

I do intend to revisit Tamarind. There are many other projects vying for my attention but I do have a good idea of where the sequel should go. We shall see if I get to it.

Word-Driven

A question that pops up with some regularity in ‘author talk’ is whether ones writing is ‘plot-driven’ or ‘character-driven.’ I’ve never been inclined to think too much about this; I just write the stories the way I feel they should be written. But, were I required to make some sort of statement on it, I would say neither. My writing is ‘word-driven.’ My first interest is language and its use.

That may or may not shove my writing in the direction of ‘literary fiction.’ I do not really care much. Labels are road signs, not the road itself. Still, an emphasis on language is a mark of literary fiction. As does ‘commercial’ fiction emphasize plot and ‘up-market’ focus on characters.*

All three—plot, characters, and language—are necessary components of fiction. The rest, setting and so on, is peripheral to these. Which we choose to emphasize is our personal choice though, to be sure, our chosen market or genre will have some bearing on it. I do feel the very best fiction finds an appropriate balance.

Perhaps I occasionally find that balance myself.

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*Commercial, up-market, and literary, as used by the publishing industry at this time, are essentially marketing categories, separate from ‘genre.’ Genre tends to be more about subject matter (though not always!).