Hot Off The Presses

I'm happy to announce the publication of my short story 'Last Laughter,' now appearing in the current issue of Silver Blade Fantasy Fiction. The entire site is very attractive, and my story has a terrifically scary/funny/witty cover, plus other illustrations.

There are a few corrections that will be made in the next day or so. A phrase in the first paragraph should read "Whenever his behavior became simply too appalling."

Another short story, 'The Kind Gods,' will hopefully be hitting print fairly soon. And I've finally gotten around to finding the right ending for another yarn that I've been fussing over for ages, 'The Heart's Desire.' The two couldn't be more different: one is a Vikingesque afterlife dilemma from a warrior's perspective, and the other's set in an all-too-near future involving a government scryer and her discovery of the ultimate secret language.

I'm having fun.

CK

Flowering Fortunes

In the Byzantine calendar, September 1 is the beginning of the new year. Since I was born on that date, I always (or at least since I became familiar with the Byzantine calendar) consider it my personal New Year's Day, promising another fresh start.

This could well be one of the best creative years I've had in a long time. Last week, the rights to my two novels reverted exclusively to me, and I've decided to make both books available solely as digital versions for the time being. No sooner did they appear on Mobipocket the other night than they began generating sales. Today, Smashwords (which carries my short story 'Regenerated') sent me an e-mail announcing their affiliation with Barnes and Noble, for which my books will apparently qualify. My short story 'Last Laughter,' to appear in a few days as part of the fall issue of Silver Blade, will be yet another birthday present.

I'm now working on combining Wysard and Lord Brother into a single volume as they were originally meant to be, including in the text all the passages that fell to the cutting-room floor because of page constraints in the paper versions. Many other projects are competing for my attention, though, and I'll try to give them all quality time.

Among those projects will be a story dedicated to a friend who recently passed away. Anne Braude, better known as Talpianna to the numerous acquaintance that cherished her, affected my life more than her gentle whimsical nature would have ever taken credit for, and I know I'm not the only one so privileged. Namaste, Anne.


CK

Coming Soon...No, Really

One of the most macabre yet sincere compliments I've ever received came from a friend about half my age who read my books soon after their publication, and commented that the emotion they most evoked in him was sadness, because someday fairly soonish I'd be dead and he wouldn't be able to read any more of me. Charmed, I assured him that by the time the Reaper came to collect, I'd have a dazzling oeuvre of at least a dozen more tomes to swell my legacy.

Now it's a decade later and I'm tired of feeling guilty. Making Wysard and Lord Brother available for the Amazon Kindle has gained me many new readers and I'm very grateful, but only guys like Homer get away with just two books to their credit. Yes, there were reasons, some of them dire, for my lack of output, but that was then. I have four novel manuscripts in varying stages of completion, and they will be completed, but I was hankering for the sweet taste of some immediate recognition, so to that end I dusted off a short story that had been moldering in my skull for years, finished it, and sent it out into the world. 'Last Laughter,' a fable involving a wicked court jester and his comeuppance, will appear in Silver Blade Quarterly at the end of this month. It's a free read, and I welcome comments.

Lots more to come. Finally.

CK

On Shining Brightly

This last month of summer makes me want to hold on to the heat and never let it go. The inevitability of another year's demise makes me restless and brooding, ironic in a time of harvest. The Zen way, which I admire, is to give one's full mind to the Now and to treat every action as a ritual; I've been trying very hard to be as conscious as I can of every moment, and in doing so I realize just how necessary reflection is to the health of the spirit.

When speaking of reflection, I don't mean the current hyperactive obsession to make oneself an object of dedicated perpetual scrutiny. There is nothing more limiting than self, and when it comes to the things of the mind, people desperately need to get out more. It's crucial for the betterment of the world, which is quite literally dying for a dose of sublimity. The worst of what we are is being exalted. Popular entertainment is mining our baseness and reaching rock bottom. Most of what purports to be uplifting is doing it for the dollar, and is cloying and condescending. It's bafflingly, appallingly childish, this joy in kicking over what was built with care, in smearing and scrawling, in the gleeful obsession with the low and the vulgar.

When a toddler tries to run out into the traffic, it's testing the gentle caring arms that will pull it back into an embrace that is meant to sustain as much as restrain. The current state of societal arrested development both annoys and disturbs me, but more babysitters isn't the answer. We need to be better parents to ourselves, and grow not only up, but outward. We need to quit stuffing our selves with junk and defacing our minds and bodies and deliberately putting ourselves in harm's way simply because there's no one there to stop us. Little children are precious beings full of promise; why should that be any less true all their lives?

CK

The Way Of The Sword

(Note: information about my other writing can be found here.)

I'm ferrying over the last of my Amazon posts here like Robinson Crusoe, because I'd wanted to include the description of my butsudan now that I'm in the midst of watching Musashi, where those little shrines feature frequently. (Photo of my butsudan appears at the top of this page; click for larger image.)

Having enjoyed the 2008 Japanese public television drama Atsuhime (described a few posts down), I moved on to Musashi last week, expecting the same gorgeous, decorous inaction. I couldn't have been more surprised...or thrilled. Musashi takes place in a man's world, where the way of the sword is exalted and all other considerations are deemed secondary, if not worthless.

Musashi, the story of Japan's legendary fighter, began as a nearly 1000-page novel written by Eiji Yoshikawa in 1935, and has gone on to sell 120 million copies and inspire 36 films. Watching the 50-hour televised version (2003) is like enjoying the novel as it had been conceived, in serial format.

I knew I wasn't in the Shogun's Ooku (women's quarters) any more when the story opened with the aftermath of the Battle of Sekigahara (1600), and the young soldiers Musashi and his friend Matahachi struggled their way out of heaps of dead bodies steaming in the cold dawn. The action follows the novel with faithful attention, all the performances by the numerous cast are flawless, and the gritty realism, especially coming after Atsuhime's courtly decorum, is often startling. The lead is played by a rivetingly charismatic young Kabuki performer, and the rest of the cast make up a Who's Who of Japan's acting talent.

So far I'm at Episode 28 and have witnessed every kind of desperate peril and deadly combat, along with tender devotion, offhand lust, remorseless hatred, gnawing inner anguish and hilarious broad humor, all amid striking scenery, engagingly ramshackle towns, and those exquisite interiors, rustic, regal, or religious, that Japan is famed for. The plot teems with ronin, thieves, magicians, brigands, ninja, madmen, warrior monks and nobles. The women range from demure maidens to brazen harlots, vengeful hags to dauntless warrior-lasses. The swordplay's constant, vicious, and uncannily graceful.

But I'm enjoying Musashi most because the underlying theme is love, the kind that makes great sacrifices without regard to self, denying one's own happiness for a greater good. Miyamoto Musashi only gradually becomes a hero, owing his transcendence to the wise and gentle people he meets in his wanderings, who teach him that without beauty, life is meaningless, and that the creation of beauty is man's best employment; that the way of the sword is an empty, futile path. The final showdown looms, but I'm taking the story slowly, savoring a world that seems alien to the point of fantasy to my Western eyes, and yet so fundamentally, placelessly, timelessly human.

How I wish I could read the novel in the original! Ah well, perhaps next life.

The portal to all of Musashi's online episodes is here.

CK

Terry And The Bumrolls

(Information about my other writing can be found here. Happy reading!)
...............

I love costume. Not mere clothes, especially not the current mode best described as Goodwill Meets Frederick’s, but beautiful dress-up garments. The other night I watched Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch A Thief, and the gold lamé gown worn by Grace Kelly at the climactic ball, baring superb shoulders and trailing acres of glittering panniered skirts, had me palpitating far more than did the film’s famed rooftop chase.

Gorgeous dress is part of the historical periods I prefer, which explains my particular fondness for 1400 to 1700. Few clothes are more becoming to both genders than Van Dyck’s, but I’ll admit that late Elizabethan togs are the last word in bizarre. They distorted the body in freakishly perplexing ways, and getting into them was a major feat. William Harrison, writing in 1577, long before matters got totally out of hand, railed in Holinshed’s Chronicles:

“…then must we put it on, then must the long seames of our hose be set by a plumb-line, then we puffe, then we blow, and finallie sweat till we drop, that our clothes may stand upon us…In women also it is most to be lamented that they doo now farre exceed the lightnesse of our men …What should I saie of their doublets with pendant cod peeses on the brest full of jags and cuts, and sleeves of sundrie colours? Their galligascons to beare out their bums and make their attire to sit plum round (as they terme it) about them? Their fardingals, and diverslie coloured nether stocks of silke, ierdseie, and such like, whereby their bodies are rather deformed than commended?”

The 1570s were the heyday of the bumroll, a stuffed fabric ring worn under skirts to give the illusion of wider hips, and hence a smaller waist. I’d never really gotten up close and personal with a bumroll until 2002, when I attended WorldCon in San Jose. Among the con’s plethora of parties was a crush given in honor of Terry Pratchett by the Costumer’s Guild. (I call it a crush rather than a bash, because in consideration of Mr. Pratchett’s following among very young persons, there was no alcohol present save for the whacking big snifter of brandy that the guest of honor, dapper in a crimson velvet Edwardian smoking jacket, held in one hand as he greeted his guests.) The Guild’s membership was, as I recall, entirely female, and I inadvertently stepped on many a brocaded train as I mingled, sipped the innocent punch, admired the Discworld chess set that was to be auctioned off, and asked the costumed ladies about their garments, which were beautifully made and often exquisitely whimsical. The gown I recall most was an Elizabethan farthingale that combined two contrasting aloha-shirt fabrics, red and blue, worn with a choker necklace composed of a row of tiny plastic palm trees sewn onto a velvet band, jutting out fronds first. The young woman wearing this piquant confection was silvery blonde, slim, lovely and charming, and it was she who enlightened me as to why her skirts belled out with such angular symmetry, inspiring the title of these reflections.

Later on in the Virgin Queen's reign, for reasons not readily explicable, the simple bumroll evolved into a vast wheel big enough to break a cutpurse on, the bodice elongated into a point that makes today’s viewer wince to behold, sleeves swelled into blimp-like enormities, ruffs reared up behind the head like the back of a peacock chair, and, given the scant hygiene that prevailed, waking life must have been close to unbearable. Below is a portrait of Her Majesty rigged out in this bizarre and mercifully short-lived fashion. (Regarding WorldCon, I’d made Terry Pratchett’s acquaintance the day before the party, and a rum encounter it was; bittersweet to recall, now. I’ll write about it soon.)

CK

Unexpected Treasure

3:05 PM PDT, May 20, 2009

I was lucky this year. My pink Minuet peonies were fat spheres packed with promise, on the point of bursting into huge cabbagy bloom right as I was about to leave for a week-long jaunt to Florida, and I deeply regretted that I'd miss them at their peak; but fortunately the weather was unseasonably cold, and kept the flowers in stasis until I got back. Today they're in full perfection, and I have two of them in a vase here at my desk, where I can admire their Fragonard lushness and heavenly fragrance.

To the Chinese, the peony was queen of the garden, a sentiment I share. I can't grow roses because the deer eat the buds, but I add to my peony collection as much as I can. So far all I have are the bush varieties that flaunt their splendor far too briefly, but a friend recently told me that there's a tree version which yields longer-lasting flowers. I shall find, select, and plant straightway, to enjoy at next year's springtide. Mono no aware is an increasingly painful sensation as time passes, and All Now is becoming more and more my slogan.

CK

The TMI Age

7:17 PM PDT, May 8, 2009

(For my short fiction and novel chapters, click here.)

I spent far too much time today ridding my computers of the obnoxiously ubiquitous New Folder virus, and now know more about regedit, msconfig and autorun than I ever expected or desired to. But that's the price one pays for having a second self--and the computer has become just that, prone to its own versions of all the frailties human flesh is heir to. I shrug, and cope. Read the Merck Manual, and you'll wonder that anyone's alive at all.

The Police had it righter than they could ever have wanted to know, back in pre-Internet 1981 with their all too prophetically titled album 'Ghost In The Machine' featuring the eerily apropos 'Too Much Information':

Too much information running through my brain
Too much information driving me insane

Overkill, overview
Over my dead body
Over me, over you
Over everybody

Never in mankind's bewildering history has communication become so rife. I'd call it a global group hug, but it often feels more like a desperate grasp. Look at me. Listen to me. Make me matter.

I'm on Facebook, Goodreads, LibraryThing, Blogger, discussion forums, this site, my site...the other day I was actually thinking of becoming one of Stephen Fry's nearly half-million Twitterfollowers, but fortunately the yearning passed. Time is very flexible, but even Silly Putty snaps.

And now I'm thinking of another Sting song, about the hundred million bottles washed up on the shore...all with a message in them. Did the castaway feel the need to read every single one?

Islanded,

CK

Who's also Kindled, and loves her books being digitized.

Love, Honor, and Inspiration

9:50 PM PDT, April 30, 2009

Before I get down to blogging about my topic, I’ll note that the Kindle editions of my books are now on sale, and will be priced at .99 each for the entire month of May. It's always a pleasure to acquire new readers, and that sensation will, I hope, be heightened when both volumes are available on Mobipocket in the near future. Established reviewers are invited to email me for complimentary pdfs of both Wysard and Lord Brother; the address is on my website at A Writing Life, along with links to synopses, first chapters, and media commentary.

Regarding my subject matter, inspiration comes from anywhere, and I can't specify my wysard Ryel Mirai's origins. I was an adolescent when I envisioned him, and I didn’t know his name; he had none. He was then as he is now: about 24, slender and tallish, heroic and kind, with long dark hair and features mingling classic Greece with Mongol steppes. I made him the protagonist of a Victorian-flavored short story and a whimsical narrative poem, both of which are still extant in some shelved box or other; eventually I’ll type them up as Word files.

I more or less forgot about my wizard after that, immersing myself in Tolkien and Eddison and Burroughs along with less fantastical classics. But not until college did I encounter John Dryden’s two-part play ‘The Conquest of Granada,’ written in 1672 when Charles II ruled Britain and Louis XIV France, and not much else in the world mattered. Its influence has stayed with me ever since. It was really and truly magical, and ensorceled me entirely. I recently re-read it, and even though I’m older and wiser and have been rigorously trained to recognize all its faults, I love it still, as I will always love that which is magnificent and brave.

Like all extremely serious things, ‘Conquest’ is easy to make fun of, and was hilariously lampooned in its day. The dialog is exclusively rhyming verse, the subject matter is entirely love and honor, and the characters are without exception noble even when behaving deplorably. Its plot deals with the power struggle between the ruling Spanish Moors and their Christian enemies in 1492, but the beating, bleeding heart of the story concerns the hopeless passion of the heroic warrior Almanzor for the beautiful Almahide, wife of King Boabdelin. There are striking lines in it, like Almanzor’s taunt to the king:

“No man has more contempt than I of breath,
But whence hast thou the right to give me death?
Obeyed as sovereign by thy subjects be,
But know, that I alone am king of me.
I am as free as nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.”

Despairing in her adoration of the bold hero, Almahide laments:

“How blessed was I before this fatal day,
When all I knew of love, was to obey!
'Twas life becalmed, without a gentle breath;
Though not so cold, yet motionless as death.
A heavy quiet state; but love, all strife,
All rapid, is the hurricane of life.”

King Boabdelin, cankered with jealousy, breaks into bitter distichs:

“Marriage, thou curse of love, and snare of life,
That first debased a mistress to a wife!
Love, like a scene, at distance should appear,
But marriage views the gross-daubed landscape near.
Love's nauseous cure! thou cloyest whom thou should'st please;
And, when thou cur'st, then thou art the disease.
When hearts are loose, thy chain our bodies ties;
Love couples friends, but marriage enemies.”

Granada with its gorgeous oriental court became Wysard’s Almancar, with some Renaissance Venice and Edo-era Yoshiwara and the Empire of Trebizond thrown in.

The play in its two parts can be found here. No one would think of performing it now, for excellent reasons; but it’s wonderful to envision a world in which people flocked to watch it, and to imagine being part of that rapt audience.

More to come about influences, inspirations and defining moments.

CK