Loyal Friend and Visitor Award-Winner

I had a different post idea for today -- it was going to discuss cyborgs in a steampunk setting and how science fiction/fantasy can bend science fact -- but yesterday Natalie Bahm gifted me with the Loyal Friend and Visitor Award. Of course that threw everything completely off, and required me to make today's post about that instead of my original plan. Ah well, such is the life of a blogger.

If you haven't checked out Natalie's blog yet, by the way, you should really make your way over there. Go ahead ... I'll wait. Are you back? OK then.

Unlike the other blog awards I've gotten, this one didn't have any rules, strictly speaking, so Natalie passed it along to 15 blogs she enjoyed reading.

Well, here's my list:

L.T. Host at Quest:Published is always worth a read, especially for her MadLib Fridays feature, where she chooses the top NY Times article of the day and inserts our suggested words. With hilarious results. She's also good for stories about her evilly adorable cats, horses, and as an abiding love for wallabies. Yes, wallabies.

Bane of Anubis maintains Bane's Blogging Blues which is, according to him, "A self-proclaimed realist's musings about whatever strikes his nerve." Be forewarned though, milk might shoot out your nose from the unabashedly smartass commentary he makes on everything from what hoop earrings mean to the meaning of having your own picture as your Blogger avatar.

I hesitate to call Rick Daley, of My Daley Rant and Public Query Slushpile fame, one of the busiest commenters on the internet, but he certainly manages to share his insightful (and sarcastic) thoughts with a whole lot of people. And some hysterical anecdotes about his sons too.

The next honoree is a blog team -- The Literary Lab's Davin Malasarn, Lady Glamis, and Scott G.F. Bailey. Davin and Glam are occasional posters here (we haven't managed to get Scott visiting yet, but I think it's only a matter of time). If you haven't read their always erudite posts on characterization, plot, and a mess of other topics, then it's well worth your time to do so. I know I've become a more thoughtful writer because of them. And you will too.

K. Marie Criddle's "drawgs" at C'MERE are easily one of the most innovative ways to blog I've ever seen. She was a friend-of-the-blog before there was a blog, and has a sense of humor bordering on sheer ridiculousness that makes our critique group meetings entertaining in the extreme. Oh, and she's a good writer too.

Next on the list is one Adam Heine and Author's Echo, particularly for his Positive Waves Week, but because he's an all-around cool person. Especially when you consider he and his wife are Americans living in Thailand and taking care of four children. And, oh yeah, he's a fellow steampunk aficionado. Which is always a plus, of course.

Stephanie Thornton at Hatshepsut: The Writing of a Novel is an Alaskan history teacher who writes historical fiction set in Ancient Egypt, and loves sharing the off-the-wall analogies and metaphors students include in their essays. She's also an evil Alaskan idea-generating dictator-for-life.

You can always count on Renee Pinner for a pick-me-up when you need it. Many of her posts deal with motivating yourself in the face of the odds, and staying on track in this writing game of ours.

Steph Damore is a new discovery, but she's already proven herself a talented wordsmith and a semi-regular commenter. Oh, and she loves Star Trek. So she gets points for that too. ;)

Anita Saxena at Anita's Edge relates her love of ice skating and the perils therein to the perils we all face as writers. Even though she's a Steelers fan, I love reading her thoughts on the process and her Gossip Time posts about all the books she's read.

Guess I only found 10 blogs to pass the award along to. Ah well. That's the problem with getting these awards though ... a lot of times the people you want to give them to already have it. Which is of course my problem because Susan R. Mills and Natalie herself are also thoughtful blog-friends, and I can't very well pass the award back to them now can I?

EDIT: Though I suppose I could double-award Susan, since Natalie gave her the same award yesterday. But that's just silly. :)

SECOND EDIT: Remember to enter the Ten-Word Novel Contest!

Day 2 of Contest Pimpery

I admit to being eager about the results of the Ten Word Novel Contest. We've already got a total of twelve people who have entered or said they were going to enter*, with an unlimited number of entries per person (it's ten words, why would I limit it to one entry each?). Oh, and remember to post your entry in the comments of yesterday's post.

I also have a panel of judges willing to help me select the lucky winner(s) from the available ten-word novels. These are folks whose writing talent I admire, people that I respect, and also the ones that I know how to persuade (read:bribe).

As I said before, the contest will close on Thursday, December 31. You have two weeks plus a day to get those entries in.

Overwhelm us.

* EDIT: Because I realized I said that wrong.

Perhaps a Contest is in Order

Everyone seems to be doing contests lately, so like the joiner I am, I figured I might as well do one of my own.

I have the contest idea all set, but I didn't know what the prize would be (except that warm fuzzy feeling you get from winning, of course). I can't offer manuscript critiques, seeing as I'm not an agent/publishing professional, and I don't have any published books with my name on it to offer. Hmm ... a conundrum.

How about this? I will purchase a novel (or nonfiction work), for the winner*, of the winner's choice. Simply leave your choice in the same comment with the contest entry, and we'll go from there. The contest will close on Thursday, December 31, 2009, with the winner(s) announced a week later on Thursday, January 7, 2010.

Oh, you wanted to know what the contest was? Hmm ... that does sound like a good idea.

So without further ado I present:

The Ten-Word Novel Contest

Many years ago, Ernest Hemingway was challenged to write a novel in six words. The famous line? "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

Since six words seems kind of short to me, I figured I'd add a few on gratis. The challenge to you then, dear readers, is to compose a novel that consists of ten words.

It can be quirky, dramatic, funny, introspective, or any other adjective that I can't think of right now. The only rule, and I do mean the only rule, is that it has to be ten words or less. Oh, and you have until the end of the year to enter (two weeks plus two days).

Paste your entry and choice of prize into the comments section of this post. Happy writing!

* Edit because Adam felt the need to point out the original sentence was unclear. :-P

Keyword searches and the weirdness thereof

I've been using Google Analytics to study blog traffic since about October, after I'd been hearing about it for awhile and decided "ah, what the hell?"

Anyway, I tell you this so I can relate the two most unusual searches that brought people here. They're not unusual as in weird, but unusual in that Free the Princess has absolutely nothing to do with the search terms.

They are: www.bountyhunteracademy.com and intel(r) celeron(r) cpu 2.66ghz can play wow?

... Yeah, I can kind of see bountyhunteracademy.com bringing people here seeing as Moriah (CaN MC) is a bounty hunter, but that's it.

I don't know if an intel celeron 2.66ghz computer can play World of Warcraft though. I don't even remember mentioning Intel or their Celeron processor at all in any of my posts or comments on here.

One of the other things I noticed is people like to spell Delman with two LLs. That's not unusual, and in fact happened so much that my mom was briefly known as Double-LL Delman (something only we find funny).

Still loses to Gary Corby's epic weird keyword -- "who will pick up my dead dog aberdeen scotland." I don't think anything can top that one.

Anyway, thought you'd like to know.

Cultural References in Fiction

One of the more entertaining facets of Terry Pratchett's writing is his ability to work cultural references into Discworld's fantasy setting. By this I mean he mentions things that either a) are actually happening or b) have actually happened. For example, in the Moist von Lipwig-centered novel "Making Money," he uses a line actually told to him: "hemlines rise during times of national crisis." Which, he says in the acknowledgments, might explain why miniskirts have been consistently popular for so many decades.

I love trying to work cultural references into my fantasy worlds. Moreso with SON OF MAGIC than CALLARION AT NIGHT, because SoM takes place on Earth's "sister world," but CaN does not. My reasoning for including these cultural references is twofold:

1) "Easter eggs" for people who figure it out
2) I think it's funny

Let me give you an example. I plan on renaming the main character of SoM, which isn't all that unusual for me to do, but this time I realized that I had the possibility of something amusing if I did it right. The new name I chose was Fionn Cinnabar (sounds cool doesn't it?), and the amusing bit came because "cinnabar," as some of you might know, is the ancient name for mercury sulfide. The character name thus partially translates to Fionn Mercury.

Get the possible joke yet? No?

Perhaps if I named the character Friedrich Cinnabar instead? Freddie Cinnabar?

Why yes, I am a huge fan of Queen. However did you guess?

The problem, of course, with doing something like this is you run the risk of having it be an author nod to the reader. When done correctly though, including cultural references in a fantasy world divorced from our own is a good way to reward the observant and faithful reader, while proverbially "sticking it to the man" in such a way that you can't get in trouble with it. It's almost allegorical in a sense. Except not nearly as dramatic.

So tell me, my fine blog readers, what works have you read that do cultural references well?

The Fun and Stressful Nature of Worldbuilding

I'm a fantasy writer through and through. This was true before I got into the steampunk game, and will be true if I ever decide to not write that subgenre anymore (doubtful, but it's a possibility). Now, one of my favorite (and simultaneously least-favorite) things about writing fantasy is that I get to create an entire world wholesale. But wait, you ask, how can you both love and hate something at the same time? Well, the answer to that is simple:

Worldbuilding is effing hard.

There's a laundry list of factors you have to consider when creating your fantasy world. These include, but aren't limited to, language, history, mythology, religion (which is not always the same thing as mythology), countries, peoples, weapons, level of technology, politics, and social mores.

And then comes what is perhaps the most annoying part of the whole worldbuilding process: Much of the work you do will never be seen by the general public. Ever. To be quite frank, much of the time you spend worldbuilding is only of interest to you the author. And that's the only person it'll ever be useful to. Well, unless you're the next J.R.R. Tolkien, Terry Pratchett, or George R.R. Martin (hey a guy can dream, can't he?).

Let me use an example from my own work. SON OF MAGIC (which is woefully underrepresented in these posts) takes place on a world called Haldor, which is peopled by twelve sentient and semi-sentient races (sentient means thinking, for those who aren't huge sci-fi geeks like Adam, Bane, and me). The eleven races that aren't humans are based off either animals or creatures from myth (yes, there is the obligatory race of elves -- no dwarves though).

There's a total of (I think) 20 countries, each with a culture based off one that currently exists on Earth, with a current level of technology placed at about the 15th Century (the tech level will change when it becomes steampunk). I spent nearly a year concurrently researching and writing in order to get the details I needed for the world, and even wrote a semi-mythical history that stretches back 25,000 years for purposes of the hero. And yes, I do have the ancient race that vanished without a trace. There are some tropes you just can't ignore. *grin*

To give you an idea of the mass of worldbuilding -- I have 20+ files on my computer devoted to this world's backstory, including timelines, legends, organization charts, political relationships, tribal splits, lineages, and capsule descriptions for each of the 15 gods and goddesses. And don't even get me started on how many printouts I have of baby names.

Am I crazy for going through all this just to write a story? Probably.

Am I having a blast and a half crafting new worlds out of whole cloth? You bet your sweet bleep I am.

My theory is thus: any writer who says they don't have an teeny little god complex is a liar. How can you not enjoy putting fictional people through their paces? Or crafting new worlds and new civilizations, boldly going where no one has gone before?

Yes, worldbuilding may stress me out. Yes, it's annoying with the amount of detail it requires. But it's a heckuva lot of fun regardless. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

On Writing Heritage

The post title's only slightly misleading. "Slightly" because this post is about my writing heritage, but more about my family than anything. This one's going to be a downer, folks, so stop reading here if you want to keep your mood peppy.

My grandfather died on January 12, precisely a week after I started the job I mention in my profile. He was 83 years old, and had suffered from lymphoma for months; it got so bad that all anyone could do was make him comfortable for the end. I've seen pictures from Christmas 2008 and all I remember thinking was "That's not Pop. Pop's not that skinny." I'll spare you any more details (mostly because I don't want to gross you out, but also because it's stuff I'm not comfortable sharing on the Internet).

Of all the people confident in my writing talent, and there are a good number, Pop's voice was the loudest. And no wonder.

Pop was a consummate storyteller; he told tales about his childhood in the Depression, about my mother and her brother and sister when they were kids, and even about worlds he made up wholesale in the furnace of his imagination. He told me my great grandmother -- his mother -- wrote plays that were performed on stage in Philadelphia, and he talked about the short stories he published before going off to World War II.

Pop told me once that he'd had the chance to write full-time. A magazine offered him a contract to write more of his short stories, and he would've taken it, except he had other responsibilities then, so he started working at Bethlehem Steel instead. As far as I know, he never tried to publish another story. By the time he retired in 1978, and had time, he was already deep into a list of family responsibilities that stretched as long as my arm. Pop never thought twice about taking care of his family, and for that I respect him.

He's the only one who ever read ROSEFIRE (the original version of SON OF MAGIC) front to back. My aunt (mom's sister) said that he was reading it every time she turned around. The "book" was just a printed draft that I'd signed and put in a 3-inch binder for him. He loved the story, and was absolutely floored when I said my first published novel would be dedicated to him. That's how humble he was.

I've said before that I write because I can't not. Well it's also because of Pop. I want to see my name in print so I can see his name there too. That's the best gift I can give the old man, even though he's passed on.

How about you, my loyal readers? Have you already planned your first dedication? Or have you not even thought about it yet?

P.S. http://www.matthewdelman.com is mostly up and running. I'm still trying to work out some design kinks, but everything's set otherwise.