A Fanfic Celebration

It's been a whole month since I posted - and one of the busiest I've ever seen.

You probably remember that I launched my first attempt at NaNo, with not 50, not 30, but 20,000 words as my goal - and just baaaarely squeezed in a win. Not that I stopped there, because the plot decided it wasn't finished with me and I bashed out another 4,414 words. Meaning I have to trim down the draft 4,414 words. I sent out the first draft of it to my readers yesterday evening and am refreshing my inbox obsessively. *cough*

This is a cover I made for my short story. I may or may not have been procrastinating when I made it.

It kind of counts as fanfiction because it's a retelling of Cinderella for this contest: http://anneelisabethstengl.blogspot.com/2013/05/five-glass-slippers-writing-contest.html
Yes, I probably have too much on my plate. Do I care? No.

December is going to be pretty busy too, because I have promised Certain People that the draft of my first novel will be to them by Christmas. So don't expect the posting rate to pick up again right away. I'll be guest posting in a couple places in the near future, though, so look out for that!

As a sort-of celebration of my sort-of return, I'm going to post my very first piece of fanfiction that I wrote for Stacia's contest over at her blog: http://sjaisling.com/2013/07/01/artwriting-contest-when-imaginary-worlds-collide/

Yes, it involves Iri, who is very glad to be back and is already waiting to soak up the fangirls' accolades. It also involves Stacia's character Rykel, of whom I have been a fan for some time.

(That is Stacia's sketch of le Rykelface. Gah, I wish I could draw my characters like that.)

I had the time of my life writing it, nibbling peppermint chocolate in my bedroom floor and toasting my toes in front of a space heater. (To those of you who are inevitably wondering, this falls right after my prologue.)

Without further ado - Iri-Rykel fanfic!

            Iri’s fingernails whitened round the edges of a snow-white scale as his other hand pressed a rag to the rift in his dragon’s colorless hide. A phantom pain throbbed in his left forearm and Snow whimpered, hanging her great head down in a fervent desire to lick the wound. ‘No,’ Iri snapped, glaring up at her.

            She swung away, eyes screwed shut. ‘Iri, it hurts!’

            ‘Be still.’

            Something nagged him about his bad mood. Maybe it was because he wished he hadn’t used his magic up and could heal her instantly instead. Maybe because he’d assassinated a princess yesterday and left her body to rot in that abandoned temple. Or maybe he was just tired from the battle.

            Tiredness. That was it.

            “Sir!”

            Iri turned and felt the swift, immediate movement behind him as Snow pulled the wound out of sight to nurse it. Damon, a fair elf and one of the few other Carseldians in Klista’s service, bowed in deference to Iri’s new status as head of the Riders. A bit of the pleasant glow from his promotion reignited in his tired limbs. He straightened, stretching his cramped fingers. “What is it, Damon?”

            “There is a…stranger at the gates asking to see you. Seems to know you.”

            “I can’t take visitors now.” Iri let his head sag to the side in exasperation. “Besides, practically everyone knows me.”

            Damon’s eyebrows seemed to hunch forward in confusion. “He’s asking quite…forcefully. When the guards apprehended him, he threatened to…blast us. Or something of that nature.”

            “Magic?” Iri scowled, wrapping the bloody rag round his palm. “Is he a Rider?”

            “He – he – doesn’t look like any Rider I’ve ever seen.” Damon glanced down as if to check his information against something and found his empty hands to stare at. “He also mentioned” – his voice fell to a near-whisper – “a world called Earth.”

             Iri tucked his chilled fingers into his palms. Earth.

            He brushed past Damon and strode toward the gate.

            The Riders moving through the courtyard bowed to him, greeting him briefly in the Andunian language, but no one wanted to get in his way. Even the dragons coiled up stray wings and tails from his path.

            He realized at the gates that Damon still trailed him and waved the Rider off with a flick of his fingers. His sword hung on the rack in his rooms – he thought to have no need of it today – but his dagger still sat firm and cool in its sheath against his thigh. His finger arched over the top of the curved pommel, back and forth, as the guards parted at the door of a room adjoining the gates. Usually their captain shared this room with an absurdly small desk, but today an altogether bizarre young man lounged against the edge of said desk, tattoos cascading over his crossed forearms.

            When Iri entered, the stranger flicked a ragged edge of hair out of his eyes and levered to his feet. The guards’ spear shafts clacked together in front of his chest. The stranger lifted a pierced eyebrow. “Tell them to buzz off, would ya?”

            Iri shifted weight from his sore leg, enjoying his advantage a little bit longer and using the delay to study his visitor. The eyebrow wasn’t the only piercing – he had some kind of rings in his ears, though Iri had only ever seen women wear them there – and he wore a curious tunic with ragged tears at the shoulders where the arms should have been. Blocky markings crossed the front of it. Letters, but they spelled no words that he could make out. Ac, dc. Aack duc. Who put words on their clothing, anyway?

            Despite all his oddity, Iri’s first thought was that he knew him.

            His second thought was that he would like to see whether the muscled youth would put his solid-knuckled, calloused hands to good use. The weight of the rank pin at the breast of his uniform checked him. He had responsibility now; he couldn’t start fistfights for no reason. But still…

            Pay attention. Act like the leader you are. “Threats aren’t the best way to put them at ease.”

            The stranger shrugged. “They messed with my Indian.”

            “Your – what?” There went the poise. It reminded him too much of his father, anyway.

            “Oh, don’t tell me.” The young man raked scarred fingers through his mop of overhanging hair. “Dangit. You don’t have those here. Yeah, I know – some of the kids at Poly read fantasy novels. Pretty freaky stuff if you ask me. But I had to get here somehow. Not my fault if you’ve never seen a motorbike before.”

            Iri frowned, curling his first finger round the dagger pommel. Familiar or not, what Iri knew of Earth and the people there gave him more than enough reason to be wary. “Who are you?”

            “Jack Rykel. You can call me Rykel. Now can you tell ‘em to buzz off?”

            Iri hesitated only for a moment. Strangeness aside, this Rykel seemed well-connected to Earth, and ill treatment of a representative could lead nowhere but trouble.

            Besides, he seemed already far too comfortable in a world different from his own, and Iri wanted to see what he thought of dragons.

            “Stand down,” he ordered. The guards lowered their spears, their narrow eyes sharp with interest. Iri shot a smile at his visitor as he turned to the door. “Whatever magic you may have, you’re in the Riders’ headquarters now. Watch what you do.”

            “Dude, it’s not magic,” Rykel said to his back. Iri grinned and led the way out into the courtyard.

            The first dragon they met was relatively small – a blue belonging to an Elvarian desert-dweller named Nyvien – but she was impressive enough as she reared her angular head up out of the recessed pit lined with rushes for padding. The courtyard bustled with dragons and their Riders – larger fighting beasts resting from the takeover three days ago, small couriers coming and going, the two or three broody females rustling their wings protectively over their eggs as others passed.

            Iri glanced back at the stranger sauntering behind him – sauntering truly was the best word – to gauge his reaction. Rykel’s mouth had narrowed to a pucker which presently let out a low whistle. His eyes followed the path of a green courier as she circled the courtyard and dived out of sight behind the walls of the compound. “Don’t have those where I come from.”

            Snow raised her head guiltily when Iri stepped to the top of the recessed pit where she sprawled, her impressive, serpentine bulk set off by the dark rushes patterning the light stone beneath. He jumped to the bottom, turned back to face Rykel, and leaned against her side. She curved slightly to accommodate him, her tail flicking between him and the newcomer, a motion that said mine, mine. Rykel stood at the top of the steps, hands on hips, feet set wide.

            Rykel had the high ground, but Iri had a dragon.

            “So you haven’t told me what you’re doing here.” Iri crossed his arms, letting the weak sunlight glance on his gold armbands.

            Rykel shrugged again and settled into a comfortable crouch, digging a packet of something out of a pocket in his tattered pants. “Your author’s had my info on her laptop for ages.” He methodically placed a slender paper tube between his lips, lit the end of it with an odd blue device, dragged a breath on it, and said in a puff of acrid smoke, “I figured I’d come meet you.”

            “That can’t be the only reason.” Iri tapped his fingernails on the armbands; he knew it was a mannerism most people hated, but it helped him think.

            “No, you’re right.” Rykel rested one elbow on his knee and waved his hand, trailing a streamer of smoke across the watery blue sky. “So I thought I’d do a little snooping while I was here. I have no restraint. It’s a curse.”

            It wasn’t, Iri thought, watching the upward tilt of his square chin, a curse he was particularly eager to remedy.

            “Your author leaves stuff everywhere. Notes, plans, timelines.” He placed the cylinder in his mouth again. The end glowed with fragments of fire. “It wasn’t hard to figure out.”

            “You don’t want me to decide that you’re wasting my time.” Iri examined his fingernails, blue-crusted as they were with his dragon’s dried blood. “I have an evening scheduled with a courtier who’s a lot prettier than you.”

            “You really don’t listen well.” Rykel bounced once on his toes, his hair flopping up and down again. “Fine. In plain language, I’m trying to warn you.”

            “Warn me?”

            “Whatever you’re doing, believe me, you want to stop.” Rykel’s startlingly blue eyes narrowed for an instant, in something like concern. “I read ahead, man. It doesn’t end well.”

            “And why do you care?” Iri stifled a thought that was beginning to sound a lot like Why would anyone?

            “Because.” Rykel’s knuckles paled on the white cylinder. “You don’t.”

            Iri was suddenly, inexplicably angry. “It’s not as easy as you seem to think,” he snapped.

            “Changing? Oh, I know.” Rykel huffed a short breath and leaned forward so the white letters wrinkled across his chest. “Heck no, it’s not easy.” He rose in a smooth motion, shrugging the shoulders of his odd tunic straight again. “But –”

            “Go back to your own blasted story!” Iri shouted, blind with an anger that struck faster and hotter than lightning. Snow, reacting, rolled half to her feet and hissed a cloud of chill air, ruffling the edges of Rykel’s tattered sleeves.

            “Easy, snowflake, I’m not gonna hurt him,” Rykel said in an offended tone, backing a step. “Gosh, you people take things so seriously.”

            “Take your warnings and your motor-bike and go back to Prolly –”

            “Poly.”

            Iri gritted his teeth. “Wherever you came from!”

            “Dude, I can take a hint.” Rykel raised both hands in surrender. “Don’t overreact, okay? Just – for what it’s worth.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I’ll, uh, see myself out.”

            Iri watched him swagger away, winking at a female Rider who had no idea who he was. His eyes narrowed.

            ‘Iri?’ Snow’s wings spread over the floor, enclosing him in a blanket of warm, scaled leather. ‘Who was that?’

            Iri caressed his dagger hilt. ‘An enemy.’

So, what do you think? Does fanfic suit me? ;) Are you happy to see Iri back, or should I do a different character next time? Who should it be?

For Want of a Horse

So Jennifer Frietag over at the Penslayer recently did a post about the horses in her novel cast. Me, being lazy and also a copycat, thought "Oh, that looks fun. I think I'll spend way too much time looking for pictures of my own horses."

So either my mind was stuck in an earlier draft, or absent altogether, because after scraping all over the internet looking for pictures of one horse, I found the right one and turned back to my list - only to find that I have a mere six named horses in my current draft of 250,000 words plus. Six. That splendid Frietag woman also has pedigrees and histories and what-have-you for all of hers. Dang.

Not to be deterred, I dug up some horses from earlier drafts and figured I'd use them. Some of them were actually indignant at being bothered. Nevertheless, here are the most prominent horses in the Wings trilogy. (No, none of them are pegasi. I would have a lot more to post if we were doing dragons. Hence the wings part.)

Cascade is the first horse we meet. She, along with the next two, were bought on the black market by a desperate Arionwyn. The seller swears up and down she's been trained for battle, but Cascade is just an all-around sweetie. She was originally Aaron's horse - their personalities suited each other - but he gave her to Iri in an emergency and after that Iri refused to ride another horse into battle. Big-boned with plenty of stamina, she's a good one to have around when you're running from something.

 Lyric is the second of the three horses bought on the black market. To buy a decent horse in the Andunian-occupied city, you must have identification and valid travel papers, of which Arionwyn has neither.  Which is why she went to the black market and risked being sold nags. Lyric is no nag, but her wall eye doesn't exactly bode well - many consider it bad luck and with a personality like Lyric's, it's no wonder she ended up in the Underlevels. She and Earis tolerate each other - barely. She's feisty and unpredictable, but if you get her riled and point her in the right direction, you'll have a fast ride. Like, really fast. For a long time.

This is Spear, Arionwyn's mount throughout the trilogy, when she's not riding Smoky. He's big and friendly and easygoing, but can't be broken of the habit he has of nosing into your pockets looking for treats. He's a good match for Arionwyn because he tolerates everything, from depressing mood swings to overdone affection. Unfortunately, we don't see as much of him once Arionwyn gets a dragon. Earis does threaten to drown him in the river once, though, and that has to count for something.

Paintbrush is one of the horses I dug up from a former draft. Also the one who complained the loudest. A shaggy palomino pony with the typical shaggy-pony personality, he served as the comic relief on the now-obsolete Great Dragon Egg Quest. When the party came short of horses due to a wolf attack, it was immediately suggested that Aaron ride Paintbrush. I'll leave it to your imagination whether he let that happen.

Whisper, Fairivel's battle mount, is a light draft red roan and an oxymoron. Fairivel confessed in my interview with him that Whisper is one of the loudest horses he's ever heard and that whoever named him should be sold to the pirates. Despite that, Whisper is a very dependable horse and trained exceptionally well. He's quite fearsome (and loud) in battle.

Amulet, on the other hand, is Clark's battle mount. A huge bay stallion, he plows through just about anything you put in front of him, including enemy armies. The big problem is stopping him. He's one of the finest palace-bred battle horses until the second battle, when Klista used weird magic on him and makes him go crazy. After crushing Clark's left wrist, he's retired to stud - but many of his foals carry a tendency to go insane at just the wrong moment.

                                                                                                                                             Galaxy is Clark's backup horse, so to speak. With Amulet out of commission, he turns to her - a sometimes-skittish mare with a swirl of quite spots on her rump. Despite her refusal to go anywhere near dogs, stained-glass windows, or fallen logs, she's street smart and takes care of her royal rider.    

Well, that's it. All six of the ones that exist and one that doesn't. (Now the pony is complaining.) Perhaps next time I do one of these, I'll have more than seven...

Intelligence

I've given in. I've become Sherlocked.

It wasn’t entirely my fault. Pinterest and my friends kept giving me perfectly logical reasons for doing so, and no one gave me a good reason not to, besides the unlikely one that my heart would be ripped out and I would be left to die on the floor. (Although, now that I have watched the last episode, I find this very nearly true.)

But Mr. Sherlock Holmes has got me thinking. He always does. I have no illusions about my powers of deduction – they’re pretty weak. But when I started reading the stories and watching the series, I would always wonder what he would see if he met me, came to our house. What he would be able to read in us that others never see.

I imagine him darting round my room, possibly studying my lifeless body crosswise across my wrinkled bedcovers with his neat little collapsible magnifying glass, looking very tall in his long black coat under our short ceilings. He’d straighten up and turn to John Watson, who’d be waiting patiently or not-so-patiently in the doorway for an explanation. “Clearly, a young writer.”

“But – how do you know that?”

Sherlock would turn back to my room, pointing his long fingers at various objects as he grudgingly clarifies things. “Dust on the shelves, the books, but not on the laptop, suggesting frequent use by a forgetful or distractible person. A large collection of music on CDs as well. An enthusiast, maybe, but there’s dust on those too; she migrated to digital music soon after the purchase of her laptop. Likewise with the notebooks. They’re well-used but dusty. From the fingerprints on the mirror – two or three younger siblings, one of whom she shared the room with. Once a horse enthusiast but she grew out of that, since most of those books are gone except her very favorites, which are on the top shelf, not easily accessible but still there to admire, but that's irrelevant. From her sedentary lifestyle, the contents of her laptop and the callus just in front of the first knuckle on her right middle finger, she’s a writer.”

In a way this relates to our characters. We always see things in them that the readers never will – little flaws that aren’t visible, pieces of backstory that aren’t really important. But Sherlock got me thinking about my characters in a different way.

As a character, Sherlock is pretty much the epitome of the trait of intelligence. He blows us away with the pure power of his brain. He’s insulted when people around him cannot see – pardon me, observe – the details his mind takes in and intersects so easily.

This is not a post about a fandom, nor about the subject of the fandom. This is a post about intelligence.

in·tel·li·gence

noun
1.capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc.

I was reading a post on Holy Worlds about allowing for stupidity, particularly within the field of military operations. The example the author made was one where a group of soldiers was set to march at a certain time, but decided to go earlier instead. It ruined a lot of stuff. The point she made – that we should make our characters human enough to blunder and spoil things out of stupidity or ignorance – stuck with me, combined with the opposite example of Sherlock, who uses his intelligence to fix things (well, usually.) This led to several points I thought it would be prudent to make about intelligence.

1. Intelligence is relative.

My dad is pretty much a genius. As a civil engineer, he daily processes things I can only imagine – advanced geometry, mathematical gymnastics, laws and ordinances and all the little things that make street plans work. But he’ll look at me playing the piano, shake his head, and say “That looks like magic to me.”

There’s no doubt in my mind that my dad is intelligent. Quite visibly so. But intelligence is relative depending on your location and what is happening. This is apparent in many stories just after the New World is introduced. This is the part where your hero encounters a whole world of possibility he never knew and isn’t prepared for. Imagine sending Sherlock through a portal to Middle Earth. What use would his specialized intelligence be there?

Often, intelligence is an overarching trait. It is an ability that helps your character to adapt to, learn from, and thrive in new situations. I can’t see Sherlock taking very long to figure out the new world and how it works, because he’s smart.

This point also applies to characters who are being compared to other characters. Dr. Watson is a prime example. He’s intelligent – as a doctor, he pretty much has to be – but next to Sherlock, his intellect pales. He is intelligent in a different area, and since his area is not the one being focused on, he usually only acts as a foil for Sherlock – someone on the level of the audience who is just as lost as we are.

This is another tactic commonly used for the introduction of the New World. If you have a character who is in some way equal to the audience enter the new setting, you can use him or her to explain things the other characters already know. Be careful to balance this, however, with your character’s already-existing specialty, so you don’t risk him looking stupid (something I’ve seen far too often.)

       2. Intelligence is dangerous.

Another somewhat unconventional example of intelligence is Haymitch. In this excerpt from Catching Fire, Katniss and Peeta ponder how Haymitch, whom they know as a crotchety drunkard, became a victor in the Hunger Games.

            Finally Peeta says, “That force field at the bottom of the cliff, it was like the one on the roof of the Training Center. The one that throws you back if you try to jump off and commit suicide. Haymitch found a way to turn it into a weapon.”

            “Not just against the other tributes, but the Capitol, too,” I say. “You know they didn’t expect that to happen. It wasn’t meant to be part of the arena. They never planned on anyone using it as a weapon… It’s almost as bad as us and the berries!”

It’s the same kind of intelligence that brought Katniss and Peeta out of the arena alive the first time. Quick adaptation to their position, then use of the available resources. And that’s part of what makes them so dangerous to the Capitol.

It’s not only the Powers That Be who are threatened by intelligence. The villains fear it too. A quick-thinking army captain with a small force can trounce, slow down, or harry a larger force with relative ease. A sharp commoner can cause trouble for the noblemen. And a brilliant detective can catch even the most furtive criminal. Fellow allies may be threatened as well - the intelligent character may make them feel incompetent, unimportant, or downright useless. Alienated allies are almost as dangerous as the baddies your hero is working to take down.

       3. Intelligence is exclusive.

The title of this point makes it sound like there’s some kind of club or something that no one can get into but exceptionally intelligent people. There’s a sense in which that’s true, but my real point is this: Intelligence excludes.

Think of how many intelligent people and characters you’ve heard of who are incredibly lonely. The artists, the geeks, the weirdos. The freaks. It also seems that the level of intelligence is relative to the level of exclusion. The ones who can pretend that they’re normal often pass themselves off as such, but the further up the scale you go, the harder it is to pretend.

            There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. His parents called him Eustace Clarence and masters called him Scrubb. I can’t tell you how his friends spoke to him, for he had none.

One of my favorite things about the movie The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is how smart Eustace is. He keeps beetles in jars and has the mindset of a lawyer and speaks with a remarkable vocabulary. He also has no friends, not unlike a certain detective we all know and love. There is one stark difference between Eustace’s story and Sherlock’s, however. Eustace gains friends because he changes; even though he’s still smart, he’s less arrogant and superior. Sherlock gains friends (or a friend, singular) not because he changes, but because John comes to see him for who he is.

I’d like to draw another example, from a couple of my own characters. Iri and Fairivel. Father and son. Both are very intelligent. They're about as different as they could be. Fairivel is the ruler of Laecla, land of the elves, and he is known to be a fair man, an excellent ruler, and a superb diplomat. Iri is restless, always chasing after what will excite him next, extremely charming, and uses people shamelessly to get what he wants. Both are using their intelligence in a different way, but both have distanced themselves with it. Neither of them have many, if any, people who genuinely care about them for who they are.

     4. Intelligence is blinding.

How could I write a post about intelligent characters without mentioning a few of their faults? The blinding aspect of the title is meant to apply to other players in the story - and to the character themselves.

Think of Watson when he first met Holmes. He couldn't stop complimenting Holmes on his genius. But that wears off pretty quickly and we, through John, start seeing some of Sherlock's faults. He's arrogant, has no idea how to behave around people, and lacks basic knowledge of the solar system, among other things.

Then there's how the intelligent character views himself, especially in relation to other people. With a superior view of themselves, they may treat ordinary people with impatience or even scorn. (For a more complete list of intelligent characters and their positives and negatives, refer to this post over at The Bookshelf Muse.)

There's a more complicated type, for which I'm going to use yet another Sherlock example. When we meet the villain of the first episode, he is a singularly disappointing middle-aged cabby. But as the writers expound on him, his personality, his methods, you forget his exterior. You begin to see the mind behind it. By the time the episode ended, I'd forgotten how disappointed I was that the villain turned out that way. I was utterly fascinated by the twists of his mind. His intelligence had blinded me.


5. Intelligence is underused.

Before I stopped reading dystopian and the like, a friend recommended an interesting little book called Variant. Beyond the mysterious plot and the intriguing setting (an experiment disguised as a walled school where, once the students were in, they never got out and had no contact with the outside world) I remember that the main character, Benson Fisher, set himself apart from other heroes in YA literature in my mind. Because he was smart.

            The whole time we sat there I kept an eye on the trees. There were Society kids out there. One was at the tree line, patrolling on the back of a four-wheeler. I could hear a second one, but couldn’t see it.

            What would make them act like that? Why wouldn’t they just make a break for it?

            As I watched them I thought about what they’d need to have to keep the four-wheelers running: gasoline, oil, tools. All of that could help my escape.

As soon as he learned what was happening, he did exactly what I would have done. He started plotting to escape. I connected firmly with him through the book. He tried to break the other students free of their lethargy. He never missed an opportunity to gather supplies and investigate the terrain for his escape. I wanted to cheer for him.

Benson also lacked another common element of fictional heroes. He had no clever mentor hovering over him, pointing out his every flaw. While this is an effective way to introduce the reader to the world (a tactic often linked with the one I mentioned in the first section) I wish I saw more characters who could interact with the mentor on their own terms.

I'm not sure why I perceive a severe lack of intelligent YA characters. Maybe it's a result of the watered-down literature of our day and age. Maybe no one wants to write an intelligent character because they're simply hard to write. But implementing an intelligent character doesn't mean you have to write a superhero. You just need to do your research.

(I also compiled a list of characters I wanted to use for examples, but didn't get to. Since I didn't want to waste it, here they are:

            Kieran from The Restorer’s Son by Sharon Hinck

            Temeraire from His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik

            Claire from Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

            Kelsier from Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson)

So what about you? Who's your most intelligent character? Do you recognize or use any of the methods I've mentioned here? Do you have anything to add?