Writerly goodness

The things you learn when you look into your family tree

/ Melanie Marttila / 3 Comments

Or … the duty of a bard

This week, I thought I’d write a little bit about genealogy.  I’m not going to post any of my family trees (I have three, though they’re incomplete and slightly out of date) … I’m just going to write about the wonderful things you can learn when you do a bit of digging.

The first is this: genealogy is one of the duties of the bard.

Whether you think of a bard as a bard, or filidh, or ollamh, a bard wasn’t just a collector of tales, a memorizer of songs and poems, but they also held the responsibility to guard the family history and bloodlines.  They were scholars, doctors, law-givers, and just darned cool, and as a writer, I feel that I have some connection to that tradition, and some responsibility for the history of my family.

I’m a Celtophile, and unabashedly so (hence the interest in filidh and ollamhs), but the family I can trace is Finnish.  Yes, Marttila is a Finnish name.  You can generally tell because of the three consonants together.  That, or the double vowels (e.g. Saarinen) are pretty clear give-aways.

The larger family name in my genealogy is Wiirtanen.  There is a large Finnish community in the Sudbury area, many of them coming from the Long Lake area of town and the Pennala subdivision there.  That’s where the Wiirtanens settled.

One of my Wiirtanen relatives still lives out at Beaver Lake, a bit of a drive out of town.  He’s a trapper and owns a farm.  Other Finnish families moved into town around Lake Nepawin (Maki Avenue was named after one of them) and there have been a few books published on the Finnish roots of Sudbury.

A number of years ago, a genealogist visited me out of the blue.  I sat with him for a few hours in an afternoon and he taught me a few things about my family, which happened to be part of his family tree, which is why he looked me up.

In Finland, at the beginning of the last century (give or take a few years) families gave up their names, and took on the names of the farms or cities where they worked.

There’s a city in Finland called Marttila.  My uncle Walter and aunt Margaret visited it years ago.  Here’s a wee map and the city’s crest from their Web site:

Notice the image on the crest: It’s St. Martin of Tours cutting his cloak in half to give to a beggar.  So Marttila roughly translates to St. Martin, not a particularly Finnish icon, but at least I know where my family name comes from.

So I started keeping a few files on my family tree.

Something else I did was to look into the kalevala, the national epic poem of Finland.  It’s a creation myth, set of legends, and features magicians and the mystical sampo, which could be, among other things, an analogy for an instrument that could track the precession of the stars.

It’s no wonder I’m into the fantasy 🙂

My mother was adopted and has no interest in looking into her family, so I’m kind of stumped there, though she tells me that she was Irish, something my grandfather liked to tease her with.  So maybe there’s a reason, I’m so enamoured of all things gaelic.

Have you delved into your genealogy?  What did you discover?

The endless, stuttering, intermittent draft

/ Melanie Marttila

As promised, I’m taking a break from worldbuilding, itself a fairly endless task, to talk about my most recent draft.

Officially, this is number six (oh gawd, will I ever be finished?) but I’ve actually been through the MS once, and now I’m editing in fits and starts between critiquing and platform-building, and working.

I’m so tired, I feel like I’m sleepwalking.  With my somnabulant history, maybe I am …

I started honing number six in January when I joined my critique group on Author Salon.  The focus, at first, was my profile, which only featured about six pages of my writing, plus a short synopsis, hook line, conflict statement, protagonist, antagonist, and other character sketches, unique world, climax and denouement.

I still haven’t got the hang of it.

In February, AS announced their first Showcase, and I submitted my bits and pieces, only to be advised that my novel was far too long to be considered.  This happened at the same time that my original blog, labbydog, was hacked.

Faced with two fairly substantial pieces of bad news, I was initially paralyzed.  As I cobbled together my online life, I tried to figure out how I was going to compress a 250,000 word novel into 110,000 words (the AS upper limit).  I sat in a stunned boggle for days trying to think of what I could cut without sacrificing the story.

When my mind stopped spinning long enough to have a coherent thought, I realized the solution was simple, and had been staring me in the face the whole time: cut the bloody thing in half, revise, and edit down from there.  It was a far less daunting task that the one I was considering, and eminently doable.

So I cut, and went through the whole thing, tweaking as I went.  My mid-point was actually a little more than half-way through the original MS and even after that first review, I was still at 150,000 words.

In March, I also posted my first 50 pages to the AS critique group.  Well it was supposed to be the first 50 pages, but mine was close to 90.  The feedback I got was great, but meant that I would have to rewrite a fair chunk of my first act.  I started thinking about how I was going to do that.

Then life got a bit crazy.  March 14 would have been my dad’s 71st birthday, followed in quick succession by the anniversary of his death and funeral in April.  I wanted the world to stop at that point, but the crazy continued with some unexpected kudos at work and a new position in May.

At that point, I was just struggling to keep up, treading water and taking big gulps of air while the waves washed over me.  I know I was overwhelmed.  I knew it even then, I just didn’t have the time to feel it.  I didn’t work on my novel for the entire month of May.

Since then, I’ve conquered the rewrite, revised 30 pages out of the first part of Initiate of Stone, and just recently returned to the critiquing world.

So I haven’t finished this strange draft yet.  I have to work through the three remaining parts of the novel and cut the words/pages to the point where IoS is a streamlined machine, within the AS word limits, and hopefully suitable for a future AS Showcase.

I also have to revise my profile (again) to try and reflect the unique angle my novel presents.  This is a challenge, because IoS is a straight up, traditional fantasy.

What this process has taught me so far:

  • Life continues to happen while you’re making other plans.  It doesn’t stop because you want or even need it to.  The good and the bad crop up at the most inconvenient times and you just have to deal, take care of yourself, and stop worrying about what everyone else thinks.
  • Balance is the thing.  Time and project management skills come to the fore when you’re under stress.  Do what you can and don’t feel guilty.  It is enough.  You are enough.  All will be well.
  • Don’t stop writing.  Even though I wasn’t working on my novel, I was still writing, critiquing, and blogging.  Return to the words every day, and they will reward you every time.
  • Have a plan, or, if the plan you have isn’t working, change it up.  You can be the most meticulously organized person in the world, and something will always happen that sets everything awry.  It’s not a failure unless you quit.  Sometimes you just have to angle into the wind a bit more to keep sailing in a straight line 🙂
  • Write what you want to write, but then you have to find a way to make the concept of your novel interesting to an agent or publisher.  I’m still working on this one.

Will let you know how it goes.

A wee side note here: I’ve started using the super-cool journal my friend Margaret gave me for Christmas.  Embossed leather cover with a nifty semi-precious stone embedded in the leather, home-made, recycled paper laced into the cover.  I even have a refill that I can lace in when I’ve used up all of these pages.

Isn’t it just the coolest writer-gift ever?  I think so.

How is your creative project going?

Ten things I’ve learned from giving and receiving critique

/ Melanie Marttila / 5 Comments

You may remember from previous posts, that I’m part of an online critique group in Author Salon.  It’s intense.  AS does not want thin-skinned writers who wither and whine, nor do they want wimpy critiquers.  They have stringent guidelines and templates to follow.  The questions to answer make you think critically, analyze, dig deep, and justify every comment.

It’s hard as hell, but it’s also teh awesome (misspelling intentional) 🙂

I’m not going to blog about finding a critique group, group dynamics, or any of that stuff.  I’m just focusing in on what I’ve learned from being on both ends of the process.

I’ll start on the giving end, and really, the way to think about a critique is that you are not just giving one, but gifting one.   I’m not saying I’m all that and a bag of chips, but if you do the job well, and put your heart and soul into it, you’re giving your absolute best to your partners.  You’re giving them a gift.  It takes me forever to do what I think is a good job, and I’m still not great at it.  I apologize at some point in every one, because ultimately, it’s just my opinion.

And away we go!

Five things I’ve learned from giving critique

  1. Be honest.  If you like what you’ve read, great, but don’t stop there.  Figure out why you like it and explain your thinking honestly to your partners.  If you don’t like something that you’ve read, that’s fine too, but you can’t leave it there.  Figure out why it bothers you and articulate those thoughts honestly to your partners.
  2. Be specific.   Rather than writing, “S/he needs to figure this out sooner,” again, explain it in detailed and concrete terms.  So, “The character you’ve written is smart and thinks on her feet (you may want to summarize an example from the piece).  You’ve placed several clues in his/her way (again detail the clues) but she’s/he’s not picking up on them.  Your protagonist needs to be at least as smart as the reader.  Have him/her connect the dots along with the reader.  It will be a more immersive/engaging experience.”
  3. Be reflective.  One thing I discovered almost immediately is that as I started analyzing the work of others I figured out a few things about my own writing.  Make notes to carry back to your own work in revision.
  4. Be consistent.  This is about bringing your A game every time.  Feeling tired/uninspired?  Write through it anyway.  The words will come just like they do when you’re writing your novel.  You can always edit out the unintelligible crap later 🙂
  5. Be better.  The more you critique, the better you get, the deeper you can go, the more articulate you can be about why a certain change will improve your partner’s work.

Five things I’ve learned from receiving critique

  1. Be grateful.  If you’ve given your best, expect that your partners have done the same.  Thank them for all their hard work.
  2. Be receptive.  You won’t like everything your partners tell you about the weaknesses in your work.  Get out of your own way and consider every point.  Then …
  3. Be selective.  You don’t have to enact every change your partners recommend.  In doing that, you’ll try to please everyone and end up pleasing no one.  But …
  4. Be critical.  If you choose not to accept the blood, sweat, and tears that is the advice of your partners, then start digging again.  Find the compelling reason that this won’t work in your novel.  Defend your decision, but don’t get defensive.  Finally …
  5. Be honest (redux).  There comes a time when all your justifications and refutations fall apart into the random collection of words that they are and you have to admit that you still have work to do.  You could see this as a defeat, but I’d rather reframe it as an epiphany.  When you finally understand what needs to be done and can see how to do it, the way forward will appear as a glowing path through the darkness.  It won’t be easy.  It never is, but if you keep the path in sight and walk it faithfully, it will lead you to a better novel.

Do you have any critiquing experiences to share?  What have you learned from them?

Like, comment share, subscribe!

Writerly Goodness, signing off.  Good writing to you all!

Related articles

How the magick works

/ Melanie Marttila

Last time on Work in progress: I told you how I came up with my idea for Tellurin’s magic system, and the dark history of the craft.

But how does it work, you ask?  We all have Robert Heinlein to thank for that.

Ever read Stranger in a Strange Land?  Excellent, then you’ll know what I mean when I say “grok.”  You might even grok it 🙂

Grokking was what Martians did.  They raised Valentine Michael Smith and taught him how to do it.  When Val eventually came to earth, he started to teach humans how to do it too.

Grokking, is not just understanding a thing, it is understanding it in every way possible, through all the senses, emotionally, intellectually, physically, and sub-atomically.  Val could grok something so completely, it would cease to exist, having achieved its greatest purpose in having been so completely understood.  Yes, extreme grokking means understanding something into non-existence.

It’s not exactly the same thing, but sourcery and magick work in a similar way.  Sourcerors manipulate a thing by understanding its nature.  They understand a thing in its molecular structure, by its DNA, though they don’t call it that, and perhaps even to its atomic structure, but no further, and this understanding works on an instinctual basis.  No sourceror ever thinks in terms of modern science.  It’s just not a part of their vocabulary.

As I wrote in last week’s post, the source is a special kind of energy, but it’s still energy, and everything in Tellurin possesses its share.

Those born with a talent are also born with the innate understanding of how to use that talent.  The Agrothe magi have attempted to subvert those talents to their own ends.  They delay the expression of latent talents through their arduous initiation process and indoctrinate their students into thinking that their powers must somehow be “unlocked.”  If left to their own devices, anyone with talent could figure out how to use it on their own.  The Agrothe just want to ensure that the talent develops in an ethical framework.  Theirs.

Georges Merle’s The Sorceress.

As a child, the first creatures Ferathainn understood were the spirits of things: grass, flowers, rocks and trees all “talked” to her.  Because of this talent, Ferathainn understands the spirits of things well enough to evoke their qualities.  She can summon them too, though Aeldred hasn’t explained that what she’s doing is summoning.  He doesn’t want her to run amok.

With people, this understanding takes the form of being able to use thought speech.  Though she does not know it, Ferathainn can also read minds and project her thoughts into the minds of others.  Aeldred, not being a skilled mind-mage, has discouraged this avenue of Ferathainn’s development to the best of his ability.

Ferathainn’s understanding of spirits is also what makes it possible for her to excel at spirit travel.

Ultimately, her understanding of spirits will enable Ferathainn to master all of the elemental powers and talents, beginning with the earth, geomancy.  Hence, Initiate of Stone.

A note on source theft, farming, or poaching

As I mentioned last week, a person’s share of source is attached to their spirit or soul.  It’s part of what makes each person what he or she is.  Because of this, the soul and source may be called at the moment of death and taken by another sourceror.  This is usually accomplished by calling the source by its name, which for most people, is their everyday name.

Clever sourcerors have adopted source names, but these can easily be discovered by an adept mind-mage and so are no guarantee of protection.

In taking another person’s source, the sourceror risks taking not only the victim’s power, but also their personality and memories.  This can lead to insanity unless the sourceror can figure out a way to filter out the undesirable bits of the victim.

Waterhouse’s The Sorceress.

So … everything Ferathainn does is magic 🙂

Next week: a worldbuilding vacation.  I’m going to write about my most recent draft of IoS and what it’s taught me.  Stay tuned.

Related articles

A virtual tour of Mel’s office

/ Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

I was inspired to blog this after seeing two similar posts from people in my writers’ learning network (hey professionally I can have a personal learning network, or PLN; why can’t I have a WLN?) Brian Braden, one of my critique partners from Author Salon, and Diana Gabaldon, one of my favourite authors.

I’d intended to do this as a vlog, or video blog, but I haven’t figured out my new tablet sufficiently to do a creditable job.

I’m going to do this a little differently than my compatriots though.  As with everything I blog, there’s a little story to go with this virtual tour.

Starting with the street on which I live.

My intent was to go out and take a picture of the street sign, but someone crashed into the post on which the sign used to hang last year, and while the post has been replaced, the street sign hasn’t.  So Googlemaps is the best I can do.  You can go there yourself and get the street view, but it’s from a few years ago.

But … did you notice anything about the street name?  That’s right!  It’s my last name.  It provides endless entertainment for just about everyone, and then I have to explain: yes, my grandfather bought the property that became Marttila Dr and then subsequently sold the lots to the city, who named the wee street after him.

And it is a wee street.  Please don’t go assuming I’m rich or something.  I don’t “own” the street, nor does anyone in my family.  I own the little house on the corner with the chunk of pre-cambrian shield in the unfinished basement and my mom owns the house next door.  Poor financial decisions on the part of a number of our family (myself included) mean that the house is all I have.

Sure, I’m gainfully employed and so is my husband, but all we have to show for our collective life’s work is a 2 bedroom bungalow on one of the busiest street corners in town.

We’ve made the best of her though, slowly renovating, inside and out.

Before we head inside, I’d like to point out my summer office.

When it’s not insanely hot (like it’s been this year), I’m outside most weekends, days off, and even evenings with my lap top.  If you’ve ever heard that relocating for revision is a effective way of shifting your creative mind out of writing mode and into editor mode, I’m here to tell you it’s abso-frickin’-lutely true.  Works a charm for me at any rate 🙂

Now let’s move into the office itself.

The first thing that every office needs is a door.  Right now, my office door is one of the originals that came with the house and is painted white … over blue … over white … over ?  When I have a significant period of time off, I want to strip the door and polish up the brass handle like I did last year with the door to our bedroom.  So this is what it eventually will look like when I get it done 😀

The first thing you see upon entering my office is this. Yes, it’s an altar.  I have distinctively pagan-ish, shamanic leanings.  What you may notice if you look down is that it’s also a bookshelf.  Another one of my stripping and refinishing projects, this cabinet used to hang on the wall of my mother’s  sewing room.  Originally, it was from the local school board.  My grandfather used to work there, and when they dismantled one of the schools, he nabbed this cupboard.  It’s crammed, top to bottom, with paperbacks.

Also, in the lower right corner of the picture, you’ll see my honourable mention from Ron L. Hubbard’s Writers of the Future contest.  Having just refinished the room (down to the studs and rebuilt from there) I’m still reluctant to poke holes in the walls, even for cool stuff like degrees and awards.

On the far wall are my three additional bookshelves, purchased to harmonize with the massive desk (in a moment, hold your horses …) I inherited from my mother-in-law when she moved about ten years ago.

The first shelf from the left houses historical and spiritual research books.  The bottom row is devoted to books on gardening and herbalism.  The middle shelf is overflowing with fiction I don’t want to store away, or haven’t read yet.  Like the paperback bookshelf, it runs the gamut from fantasy and SF, YA, classics, UF, to mysteries and literary fiction, etc.

The final shelf is populated with a number of my books on the craft.  Interspersed on the shelves are a number of objects I value: artefacts from family and friends, old tins, kerosene lamps, masks, my degrees, my picture from the alumni address I gave a Laurentian University a few years ago, and a couple of framed poems, “Fire and Ice” which was featured in the ekphrastic art project Fusion, and “The Art of Floating,” the poem I wrote for my dad.

The rest of my books are stored in approximately twelve Rubbermaid tubs in the basement.  Yup.  I’m a book addict, and happily so.

In the corner, you will notice three staves.  Actually, it’s one poplar staff, and one birch and one maple stang. All generously donated by the trees in my back yard (resulting from lightning strikes and wind storms).  Another project for the future: stripping the bark from these lovlies and waxing them to preserve.

Now comes the organized chaos I call my desk.

The first picture shows a collection of journals (the ones I write in and the ones I have subscriptions to), a few key reference books including the Guide to Literary Agents and Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market, research DVDs, binders containing three earlier versions of my novel, my BIG binder of AS critique material, my Brother inkjet printer, and various pens, pencils, highlighters, clips, push-pins, and other tools that I make use of at my desk.

The keen observer may notice the ashtray and the wine glass.   Yup.  You caught me.  I’m a vile smoker and I drink wine on occasion.  Once again, unapologetic about it.

The second picture doesn’t look quite so chaotic, but shows the rest of what’s on my desk.  My computer, whatever project I’m currently working on (in this case, Rachel Walsh’s The Last Scribe) underneath which hides my laptop, my colour printer/scanner/copier (currently on the fritz), a couple of my poetry books, my African violets (green things essential), and my i-pod (in the corner, also essential).

Behind my desk, on the wall, are my cork board and white board.  On my first and second revisions (after the draft has been completed) I use these extensively to map out my story and make notes.  As each piece of paper is addressed, it comes down for shredding and as each note is incorporated into the novel, it’s erased.

Right now, the board it just reminding me of outstanding submissions I haven’t heard back about yet, my blogging schedule, and calendar.

And that’s it.  I didn’t clean up on purpose, because I thought I’d let everyone see what I really work like.

So I hope you enjoyed this little tour.  Take comfort in the chaos!  My office is as much a part of my process as a writer as anything else.

What does your office/writing space look like?  How does it reflect your process?

Mage or magus, magi or mages?

/ Melanie Marttila

Last time on work in progress: The dull detailing of days, weeks, months, and years in Tellurin.

As promised, here is my theory of magic in Tellurin.  It actually starts about thirty years ago with me in confirmation class …

You may think confirmation a strange place for this, but I started theorizing things that had nothing to do with Christianity.  And you know what?  I was indulged, even encouraged by my instructors, two wonderful, open-minded people.  Shout of gratitude going out to Rick Shore and Marg Flath!  For them, it was healthy to question, explore the questions, and come to your own conclusions.

One of the things I theorized about was the nature of energy, consciousness, the soul, what might be termed miracles, and what might happen after we die … to me it was all connected.

In science (incidentally one of my confirmation instructors was also my grade 9 and 10 science teacher) we were learning that matter and energy were the same thing.  We learned about the laws of thermodynamics, including: energy can never be created or destroyed, but only changes form.

So to me, it wasn’t that far a leap to think that if we, humans, were made of matter (therefore energy) that thought, the soul, and all the wonderful things that made each of us uniquely ourselves was a kind of energy.  It couldn’t be destroyed when we died, it could only change forms.

So how does this relate to Tellurin magic?  Well really this species of thought contributed to both the magic and religious systems of my world, but here’s what I drew from my theorizing about magic: it could exist, just like any other kind of energy.  It would all be a matter of trial and error to figure it out.  It would be a kind of scientific experiment …

You may remember from my post about the cosmology of Tellurin that my interpretation of the big bang was that something within the homogeneous whatever that existed before the universe (I called it the One) recognized its independence.  In that moment, everything else within the One had to become distinct.  Boom!

But in my universe, not all kinds of energy are distributed equally.  The thing that recognized its independence (what became Auraya) carried more than its fair share of a specific kind of energy, and Tellurin, the planet, bore an equivalent amount.  That’s why the world has its own spirit and consciousness.

So Tellurin is a magic-rich world, and potentially any of the beings living on or in Tellurin can access that energy if they have the talent.  Talents are another group of senses that allow their possessors to recognise source and influence or manipulate it in specific ways.

Aside from Auraya, Tellurin, and the other gods of the world, everything holds its own share of the source of all things, or, simply the source.  In the people of Tellurin, this energy is bound to the spirit or soul.  It’s part of what makes them what they are.

When the primitive Tellurin first discovered their talents and their ability to manipulate the source, they called themselves sourcerors.  They learned in communities, experimenting with their various talents and expressions of source, categorizing and naming them as they went.

Along came a man named Halthyon Morrhynd.  He was actually an eleph from Elphindar, crossed over into Tellurin through one of the Ways Between the Worlds.  Incidentally, these Ways are just another expression of the source in Tellurin, a natural phenomenon.   If worm-holes could exist and function in a stable manner without affecting the matter and energy around them, that’s what the Ways would be.

Halthyon, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, is a bit of a megalomaniac.  In Elphindar, he’d tried to stage a coup against the anathas, or council of elders, and institute a kind of magocracy.  The eleph called source in their world the kaides esse, or the powers that be.  Sourcerors were called kaidin.

The result of Halthyon’s attempt to wrest power from the anathas was that he failed and was ostracized, or made shuriah.  The eleph were the only people in Elphindar.  Ostracism was generally a death-sentence.  Elphindar has no gods either, only the kaides esse, and those in significantly lower amounts than source in Tellurin.

Elphindar would not satisfy Halthyon’s ambitions, but once he found the Way and made it through to Tellurin, Halthyon saw this new world as a paradise.  He instantly made the connection between the source of all things, the kaides esse, and the gods of the new world.  He understood that if he could find a way to contain enough source within him, that he could transcend mortality and become a god himself.

The source existing in the things around him wouldn’t do.  He’d have to expend nearly as much source in the destruction of inanimate objects as he would receive from said destruction.  The gain would be negligible.  The people though, them he could use.

So he found the fledgling sourcerors of Tellurin and taught them.  In time, they “grew ripe” and he was able to “harvest” them by killing them and stealing the source carried with their souls.  The way to do this, was to call the deceased sourceror by name, and thus summon his soul.

Sourcerors began to take source-names, secret names to prevent Halthyon from learning the name that could call their soul and source to him, but Halthyon was skilled at telepathy, and could discover their secrets.

As he waited for some of them to ripen, other sourcerors grew powerful in their own rights, learned what he was doing to their fellows, and mimicked the practice to accrue their own stores of source.

The brothers Kane and Jareth were two of these surprising sourcerors.  Kane was as obsessed with gaining power as Halthyon, but he was also concerned that Halthyon would murder him before he could get very far, so he started to develop defences, the chief of them being binding.

His early experiments were with animals.  He bound his soul and source to a creature, and if he was killed, so the theory went, his soul and source would remain safe in the beast.  These he called familiars.  Kane was a good scientist, and decided to test his theory after sharing it with some of his fellow sourcerors.

Unfortunately, the consciousness of the animal interfered with that of the bound sourceror, and the animal hadn’t the capacity to use source, and so quickly fell prey to the predatory sourceror.

His next experiments involved people who had no noticeable talent.  These he referred to as homunculi.  Sadly the same thing happened with them as did with the animals, and these too, he discarded as a failed experiment.

Then he started playing with constructs, which he called golems.  These experiments were never wholly successful.

In the meantime, Kane’s brother Jareth, whose primary talent was geomancy, or manipulating the earth element, conducted experiments of his own.  He decided that inanimate objects would make better subjects for binding.  There would be no consciousness to interfere with the bound sourceror’s, but this would necessitate having a partner who would be able to release and restore the sourceror after the death of his or her body.

Jareth’s experiment was much more successful than Kane’s and was widely adopted, even by Kane himself, but no solution was perfect.

Sourcerors like Halthyon and Kane, after killing another sourceror, would search out the partner, and torture them until they revealed the secret of unbinding their victim.  If the partner was stubborn enough, or faithful enough, to keep the secret, then they could simply be killed.  Although the murderer would never benefit from the source of their victims this way, their victim would forever remain trapped in whatever object they’d bound themselves to.

This is eventually what happened to Jareth.  Halthyon slew him in sourcerous combat and went in search of his partner.  Kane got to her first.  Laleina was not only Jareth’s binding partner, but they were also lovers, a relationship that Kane always envied.

Laleina wasn’t cooperative and would not divulge Jareth’s secrets.  Kane knew, to his regret, that he could not keep her alive.  Halthyon would eventually come calling and Kane wasn’t ready to face the eleph.  In a twisted bit of experimentation, Kane bound Laleina’s soul and source to one of his failed golems.  He’d noticed that metal tended to dampen the effect of source.

And so Laleina was trapped in the thing that would eventually become the Machine.

The sourcerous world continued along the same violent lines for centuries, but Auremon eventually decided that he couldn’t let things go on this way.

His idea was to voluntarily surrender his godhood, and his god’s share of source, to Tellurin, hoping that more source in the world would allow Tellurin to even the playing field among the sourcerors, and keep the power-hungry ones from victimizing the rest.

It didn’t work out as well as he thought.  Too close to one of the Ways Between the Worlds, he tore it open and half the population of Elphindar was sucked into Tellurin before the Way could be repaired by Auraya.  The sourcerors didn’t behave any differently, and Auremon had to concede his failure.

The only thing he could think to do, was to teach young sourcerors how to use their powers responsibly.  So he set himself up as a sage in a mountainous island off the western coast of the main continent.  Auraya created a great castle for him there, and eventually all sourcerors found their way to Auremsart.

Auremon taught ethics more than anything else.  It was the sourcerors themselves who thought that if they changed the names of things, that they could change the way people behaved more effectively.  So source became magick, sourcerors became magi, and they instituted a rigorous initiation process that would so instil Auremon’s ethical code into their students that there would be no risk of any of them becoming monsters.  They called their new discipline Agrothe, the followers of the code, in the old language of the land.

They policed themselves too, and started setting up schools of magick in other cities.  Business was booming.  And then Yllel came in disguise and killed his father.  Auremsart crumbled, became the Spire, and two kindly elementals from Elphindar resurrected Auremon and bound his spirit to the stone that was all that remained of his earthly home.

How the Agrothe functions in Tellurin at the time of the novel:

  • As soon as the prospect’s talent begins to manifest, training begins.  This can be anywhere between five and thirteen suns of age.  The prospect becomes an aspirant.
  • This period is one of intense theoretical and ethical training, highly structured, lasting thirteen suns. This phase of training does not guarantee initiation.  If evidence of cruelty or insanity is detected by the Master, the aspirant is taken to a mind-mage, and their talent crippled.
  • The aspirant is initiated.  This phase of the training introduces the initiate to their talent(s) in a gradual, disciplined fashion, and also lasts thirteen suns.
  • The initiate is apprenticed, gains some autonomy and is allowed to experiment in a limited fashion.
  • After thirteen more years, the apprentice could become a master in his or her own right.  If further training is deemed necessary, an interim period of guided practice could be instituted.  The mage operated independently, but under the watchful eye of their master.  This period could also last thirteen suns.
  • At any time, if the student decides, they can withdraw from training, once more having their talent crippled so that it cannot be used in an unauthorized or unethical fashion.
  • This is why most women, wanting a family and life outside of the Agrothe, never make it to initiation.

Aeldred sensed Ferathainn’s potential at the eleph ceremony of Shir’Authe, when she was only a day old and newly abandoned in Hartsgrove.  Her talent was prodigious and he began her training when she was four suns old.

Most aspirants only evidence one or two talents, the rest developing with age and experience.  Most full-fledged magi might have five talents at their disposal, but it will be the one or two that showed themselves first that will be the mage’s primary talents.

Ferathainn possesses aliopathy, or the ability to speak to the spirits of things, which in turn feeds into her talent at evocation and summoning.  She is uncommonly talented in mind magick, able to communicate through thought speech with those who do not share the talent, and can travel in spirit with ease.

Aspirants are not allowed to use their talents prior to initiation, but Aeldred does not want to lose Ferathainn as a student, so he allows the girl latitude.  Besides, mind-magick is not one of his stronger talents, and he cannot prevent her from doing what comes naturally to her.

He does not want to call one of his Agrothe brothers in for fear that Fer will be taken away from him.  Further, he fears reprimand for his unorthodox training methods.  For similar reasons, he has not prevented Ferathainn from becoming betrothed or married.  He feels that if anyone can balance a life of magick and domesticity, it will be Ferathiann.

He hasn’t explained much of this to Ferathainn.  He hasn’t even explained her talents to her.  In truth, he’s a little afraid of what she might become, and that his lenience may lead her to the forbidden ways of sourcery.

She will be the first Agrotha initiated in two hundred suns.  That’s too great a prize for Aeldred to resist.

Next week: Everything little thing she does is magick!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Some of my favourite books on the craft

/ Melanie Marttila / 4 Comments

Several months ago, I read a post called “Confessions of a Craft Book Junkie.”  I had no choice but to comment, because reading books on the craft of writing is an addiction for me.  I’m always buying more!

I have no idea what brought this issue up for me again, but having thought of it, I’ve decided to share some of my favourite craft books with you, and may you reap their myriad benefits! I don’t care if you get them as ebooks, or from a used book shop.  Just get ‘em 🙂

In the beginning …

There was Natalie Goldberg.  Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind were the first two books I read about writing, and they’ve stuck with me through the years.  Goldberg espouses a philosophy of “first thoughts.”  Writing in your journal first thing when you wake up.  Sound like morning pages to you?

Goldberg introduced me to free-writing, and weaves in wonderful exercises for journal writing with Buddhist philosophy.  Monkey mind and wild mind is a concept I come back to again and again.  Monkey mind is the nattering, distracted place in our heads we occupy most of the time. 

Wild mind … well, draw as big a circle as you can on a piece of paper.  Put a wee speck of a dot in the middle of it.  The dot is monkey mind.  The rest of the circle—you guessed it—that’s wild mind, the cosmic consciousness that will endow your writing with greatness.

The key is to let go.  Don’t worry.  Don’t pin all your hopes on the greatness you might achieve.  Just be in the moment and do it.

Word after word

Heather Sellers two books: Page After Page and Chapter After Chapter really changed my writing game.  It was time for some tough love, and Sellers delivered.  She was the first author I read who asked the question: do you want to be a writer, or are you a writer?  She made the distinction very clear.

Wanting to be a writer means that you’re letting things get in the way, making excuses, because the phrase is always followed by the word “but.”

If you are a writer, you write.  You write every day.  You’re dedicated to your craft and you don’t let excuses get in the way.

Sellers also writes about her struggles, how the disapproval of peers and professors affected her, how relationships, good and bad, can influence your work, and how serious life incidents like car crashes and disease can change things forever.

In the end, you can only keep writing, word after word, page after page, and chapter after chapter 🙂

The Maass Oeuvre

Donald Maass is an industry expert and he turned his expertise into several wonderful books.

His first, The Career Novelist, delved into the changing face of the publishing industry.  No longer the land of monster advances, runaway auctions, and multi-book contracts, Maass discussed the kinds of writers, the kinds of agents, the kinds of editors, and publishers that were emerging, how they might survive the new era, and he offered a lot of practical advice about the mathematics of publishing (what do the numbers mean and why should I care?).

In the current market, this book has lost some of its relevance, but I would argue that it is still an important read.  Understanding the changes that led to the current state of publishing offers the reading writer insight.  Learning from history, we hope not to repeat it.

Writing the Breakout Novel gets more into the mechanics of how to write a damn good novel.  Using his personal experience and that of some of his well-known clients, Maass explains what agents and publishers are looking for, and gives the reader tools to achieve their goals.

The Fire in Fiction is more of the same, but deeper.  Maass really asks the writer to dig deep in this one and offers exercises to deepen your understanding of exactly what it is you’re doing.  Analysis.  Critical thinking.  If you’re willing to work for it, Maass tells you how to write a novel that will WOW.

Finally, The Breakout Novelist, Maass’s most recent publication, is more of a workbook and reference than some of his other books.  It combines the best of Writing the Breakout Novel and The Fire in Fiction with extra exercises.  If you’re having trouble with a particular aspect of your novel, flip to that section and start working through the exercises.

Obviously, I’m a fan.

I’ll have more of these coming in future months.  I just thought I’d start with what I think are the best of the best 🙂

What are some of the craft books that you value and why?  How did they speak to you?  And as always, like, comment, share, subscribe!

Related articles

World info, or the boring stuff that worldbuilding sometimes entails

/ Melanie Marttila

Ok, so now that I’ve announced that I’m going to bore you all to death, you can all run away and do something fun with your Friday nights …

Last time, on WIP (before we were so rudely interrupted by the outage): The history be done!  For now.  You never know, I may have to go back a write a novel about the past of Tellurin someday …

As I’ve mentioned often, I’m a pantser.  I start with an idea, I write though the first draft, then I go back and start playing.  I do character sketches first, then history, then I start getting into the systems.  This post is about how the world works.

In reality, I know that a world like this probably can’t exist.  It’s too convenient.  Everything lines up exactly.  But this is a fantasy people.  And these are the rules as I’ve made them.

Tellurin has:

1 sun, very similar to earth’s sun, a young ‘un.

1 sunspan (or sun) = 364 dayspans, or days (exactly 13 moonspans of 28 days a piece)

A day is 24 hours, an hour is 60 minutes, a minute is 60 seconds … Gotta have something familiar!

1 moon, large enough to have the thinnest of atmospheres, completely covered in ice.  Looks blue because of the reflected light from Tellurin.

1 moonspan (or moon) = 28 days

There are 13 moons in a sun and they are called:

Isto, Sein, Terza, Quade, Cinquo, Sexta, Septo, Octa, Ninte, Dente, Isten, Seinen, and Terzen

The seasons are:

Shoudranya, the season of spring forth (most people don’t use the old names—they’re considered “stuffy”) comprised of Isto, Sein, and Terza

Zaidranya, the season of the bright sun comprised of Quade, Cinquo, and Sexta

Mardranya, the season of leaf fall comprised of Septo, Octo, and Ninte

Vedranya, the season of storms comprised of Dente, Isten, Seinen, and Terzen

And here’s where my paganish leanings enter the picture.

The sun begins in Shoudranya when the rains stop and the growing things begin to spring forth again.

On the first day of Isto, the festival of Kiestaya the awakening is celebrated.  Imbolc-like.

On the first day of Terza, the festival of Anestaya, the engendering or sowing is celebrated.  Day and night are equal.  Somewhere between the vernal equinox and Beltaine.

On the first day of Cinquo, the festival of Huostaya, the early harvest, is celebrated.  The longest day.  Summer solstice and Lunassadh-like.

On the first day of Septo, the festival of Uistaya the second harvest is celebrated.  Day and night are once again equal.  Autumnal equinox and Octoberfest-like.

On the first day of Ninte, the festival of Sestaya the final harvest is celebrated.  This is when the final slaughter is accomplished.  Samhain-like.

Vestaya or the closing, the only moveable festival, is observed on the first full day of storms.  Occasionally it can even occur before the final harvest.  Remembrance day-like.

The last festival of the year is celebrated on the first day of Seinen: Reshtaya the turning.  The longest night, though no one living can tell with the persistent cloud cover of Vedranya overhead.  Winter solstice-like.

Ferathainn is born on Sestaya.

Each moon is comprised of four seven-day weeks:

Selneth, the full week; Gebbeth, the waning week; Kiereth, the dark week; and Ebbeth, the waxing week.

The days of the week:

Sunday, Moonday, Stoneday, Windday, Waterday, Fireday, Spiritday

The older names for the days of the week:

Zaides, Azures, Telles, Zephes, Auges, Flames, Spirites

A date might be read Kiereth Zaides of Cinquo (Sunday of the third week of the fifth moon).  This also might be more commonly called Dark Sunday of Cinquo.  Most people no longer remember the old names or bother to keep that knowledge alive.

This was one of the things that I had to know about my world.  No one ever states or writes a date in the novels.  This is just for me to be able to keep things straight.  I even have a document in Word that I’ve set up as a calendar, so I can keep track of when things are happening.

I actually enjoy stuff like this.  I’m that much of a geek.

More systems next week (I can hear the screams already), but these systems will be more interesting.  I’ll get into the magic system, and this will be a little bit more like a story than a list of stuff 🙂  If there’s room, I might even fit in something about the religions of Tellurin.

And if I can get my brilliant man to fix my scanner, I might even share my rudimentary map of Tellurin.

I plan a little worldbuiling holiday too.  I have things to share about my current draft and the bizarre way it’s panning out.

So there’s good stuff ahead on WIP.  Stay tuned.

Writerly Goodness signing off.  Have a fan-tabulous weekend!

Dream a little dream … and go from there

/ Melanie Marttila

I was going to write something about where I get my ideas from because a lot of people out there have done that recently, but it really depends on where I am, what I’m doing, and what the idea ends up becoming. So I think I’ll focus on one of the best places I get my ideas: my dreams.

When I was a kid, I had very vivid dreams. The earliest I can remember, occurred after I had my tonsils out. Actually, it occurred after my stitches ripped open and I was rushed back to the hospital for emergency surgery.

In the wake of that experience, I had a dream in which I actually died in the process of that surgery, but I still woke up the next morning.  Only, in the world I woke up in, I dreamed of this one.  It’s hard to explain.  Essentially, I dreamed that this world was nothing but the dream of my sleeping self in another world.

Pretty multidimensional/existential for a four-year-old, eh?

I had insomnia, the kind where you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep.  I’d lay there and rehearse my dreams, or tell myself stories until I eventually got back to slumber town.

When I dreamed of falling, I woke up several inches off the bed.  What I know of dreams now tells me that the sensation of falling in the dream was so intense I felt that I was still falling when I woke.  I wasn’t actually levitating 🙂

A visit to a Christian book store led to me reading a comic book about an African missionary.  The barbarism with which the artist depicted the rituals of the native tribesmen made such an impact on me that I dreamed of the scar-faced man, had nightmares about him really.  You know the ones, where there’s a man standing at the foot of your bed, staring at you?

I often had out of body experiences (OBEs) when falling asleep, or waking.  I remember these distinctly.  I was like a balloon, tethered, but being flung around (or was I trying to escape?).  That’s how my young mind interpreted it, but when I later delved into meditation and eastern spirituality, I realized that this is classic OBE.

I didn’t keep a dream journal then, but many of my childhood dreams and nightmares have stayed with me nonetheless.  I often dreamed of being abandoned: driving in a van with my family and then one by one, everybody but me disappeared, and I was too small to drive the van (couldn’t reach the pedals).  Stuff like that.

I actually dreamed in story sometimes.  Full, 3-act drama.  If my dreams stayed with me long enough, I wrote them down, but often the delay meant I lost critical pieces.  I’d tell my dreams to my friend Margaret at recess as a way to keep some of them alive.

I started to record my dreams (among other things) when I went away to university for the first time.  I have a number of story ideas that have emerged from those journals.

In university, my room mate, Sandra, enlightened me regarding another aspect of my nocturnal life.  I talked in my sleep, and often sat up and did things as well.  Once, she reported that I sat up in bed, said, “It’s really not that bad … ,” reached around to open the closet door (right beside my bed), looked frowning into the mirror on the door, looked at her, then closed the door, and went back to sleep.

I had night terrors too.  Once I dreamed that something (what I can’t remember) was escaping from me.  I reached up to snatch it back, and when I woke up, I’d torn down a mobile that was hanging in the window.  I dreamed of insects (or other things) crawling on me, or of not being able to find something important.

The first time I went to camp (Southerners read cottage) with my boyfriend (now husband), I sat up and started searching the bed frantically for something.  I kept saying, “I can’t find it.  Help me find it.”  That kind of freaked Phil out, but it wasn’t the most bizarre thing I did while I was sleeping.

When we were living in Married Students’ Residence at Laurentian University, we had a 1-bedroom apartment.  In the middle of January, I got up in the middle of the night and opened all the windows. Phil woke up at 4 am shivering, realized what I’d done, and rushed to close the windows before the radiators burst.  It was a very cold night.  I had no memory of doing that.

One of my favourite courses was one regarding the Surrealists (writers primarily, but artists to a lesser extent).  I really fell in love with the way the surrealists let loose with their subconscious and tried to capture the world of dream on the page.

Since I started working full time and sorted out my depression (that’s another story), my dream life has been less vivid.  I dream more of stress and work-related issues (repetitive loops of action) or of terrible things happening to me or someone that I love.  I still have insomnia, but it’s more troublesome because I can’t afford to sleep in to catch up, and I don’t like what sleeping pills do to me …

I’ve started reading before I go to bed and have noticed I’m having more creative dreams.

I don’t necessarily want to start sleepwalking, having night terrors, or fall into depression again, but it would be nice to have the old story-dreams back again.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

An interesting book about writers and their dreams:

A selection of dream/depression/creativity links:

A dreamy soundtrack:

  • California Dreamin’ – The Mamas and the Papas, 1966
  • Dream a Little Dream – Mama Cass, 1968
  • Dreamboat Annie – Heart, 1976
  • Dream On – Aerosmith, 1976
  • Dreams – Fleetwood Mac, 1977
  • Dreaming – Blondie, 1979
  • Sweet Dreams – Eurythmics, 1983
  • These Dreams – Heart, 1986
  • Don’t Dream it’s Over – Crowded House, 1987

There are hundreds more, but these are my favourites 🙂

How have your dreams influenced you as a creative person?  Have your dreams/sleeping habits  changed over the years?  How has that affected your writing?

Related articles

Overview of the geo-political history of Tellurin, part 2

/ Melanie Marttila

Last time on Work in progress: The first Kas’Hadden saves the Parimi.

The Parimi now occupied the western coastal mountain region of the continent but they were happy.  Having brought with them the best and brightest of their people, they took root and created a province like no other.

The Haldani and Espanic peoples, also persecuted by the Caldone, settled on the western coast as well, but in smaller settlements, though, these two, became provinces in their own rights. The Haldani and Espanic espoused the Faithful religion.

The Parimi continued in their spiritual belief as well, and when the Caldone finally realized that they could no more eradicate the Parimi Faithful than they could the Haldani and Espanic survivors, they relented and struck a balance.  The Holy Mother Church established its own religious centre and their own archbishop in Impiranze, Caldone’s capitol city on the eastern coast. Still, it was the holy city of Aurayene and the Archbishop there that became the spiritual centre of the continent.

Each area and culture within Tellurin developed its own language and way of life.  Each developed its own economy and its own ruler.  Whether king or osire or emperor, Tigernos, Chieftain, or Horselord, each country had its own leader and its own soldiers.  They fought with each other to a greater or lesser extent.  Those displaced or exiled due to the fighting inevitably found themselves trickling through the mountain passes and establishing towns and villages and small city forts on the western side of the continent.

Each had its own sourcerors, though they may have been called witch doctors, shaman, druids, spirit walkers, or other things.  Tellurin developed and grew.  Its people developed and grew as well.

Eventually, they negotiated truces and trade routes.  Aurayene in the west and Drychtensart in the east became the two largest cities and began to amalgamate power (religious and political respectively) in those two centres.

Auremon’s mistake brought the eleph into Tellurin.  Their bitterness at being “trapped” in Tellurin caused them to turn every help away: Auremon, and delegations from Aurayene (the Parimi), Mersea (the Espanic), and Pax (the Haldani).  Their desire for isolation and distrust of outsiders was spread far and wide and the people of Tellurin decided to let the eleph live as they chose (so long as they didn’t cause trouble).

The Agrothe was established and its adherents prospered.  Soon nearly all developing persons of talent were sent to Auremsart off the western coast to be trained in the official art of magick.

The Saxon began to assert themselves as the new power in Tellurin.  Politically, things were moving slowly but inexorably toward a centralized government and high king in Drychtensart.

When Auremon was killed and Auremsart crumbled into the sea, the Agrothe magi on the mainland consolidated in Dychtensart, another coup for the increasingly powerful king.  King Druckert (later called the wise) established the King’s University in Drychtensart and the Agrothe disciplines survived there.

Then the Cataclysm happened.  This was the battle between Auraya, Tryella, and Yllel.  As described in a previous post, the world was shaken by natural disaster in every form.  Vedranya in its new and terrible incarnation came to be.  Millions of people died.  Much of the written history and accumulated knowledge of the previous centuries was lost or destroyed.

In the years following the Cataclysm, the world rebuilt.  The Saxon, the strongest nation before the Cataclysm, was the first to recover afterward.  The king in Drychtensart was the de facto king of all Tellurin, though there were kings and lords scattered throughout the lands.

The gods were silent and though the religion of Auraya still existed, in both its liberal (Aurayene) and fundamental (Impiranze) sects, it was a changed religion.  The Kas’Khoudum and the Rada’Khoudum had both been miraculously saved, but much of the scholarship on the ancient texts was lost and many of the elder scholars had not survived the Cataclysm.

New schools and scholars made it the work of their lives to try to find old texts and recover their knowledge.  They spoke to the oldest of the old, the wisest of the elders.  But there were pieces missing and there was no context for the pieces of history that were recovered in later years.

Some ambitious scholars tried to recreate history as they thought it should have occurred.  A new speculative branch of scholarship arose.  Many of them were simple fabulists and their fictions were transparent.  Others were more convincing and only served to confuse things further.

The Agrothe had also survived more or less intact, but they too had been changed by the Cataclysm.  In the same way as history was being reinvented, the Agrothe too experienced a queer kind of renaissance.  The knowledge of the sourcerors that they had so long tried to subsume with their own training and lore was now actively set aside and with the trauma of the Cataclysm so recent, it was a much easier thing to forget about the sourcerors than to try to deal with them.

As for the sourcerors themselves, they survived, but found it far easier to do so without the constant harassment of the Agrothe.  They were happy to be forgotten, and yet, new sourcerors continued to be found, quietly whisked away for training, and then set loose on an unsuspecting world.

At the opening of the novel, the political world is ruled by King Romnir Raethe in Drychtensart, High King in all but name.  Each of the other countries still have their own ruler, but most of these (Nubia, Caldone, Hussar, and the Island Kingdoms) sit on a council that advises King Raethe.  The Parimi are represented by Archbishop Hermann Manse, special advisor to the king.

The Caldone archbishop does not advise.  The Sami and Skaldic rulers sit on the council when they choose to go to Drychtensart, which is rarely.  The Saxon are represented only by King Raethe.

The Shooksa-Nai and the Saanzu never had representatives on the council, though trade envoys appear from time to time.  The eleph of Rosingthiel keep to themselves and by and large, most people are happy with that arrangement.

The dwergen and dwergini likewise have their own self-sufficient kingdom beneath the earth, their own king, and trade envoys. The deep-dwellers are more regular in their attentions, however, and visit Drychtensart twice each sun, once in Shoudranya and once again in Mardranya to trade raw ore and enchanted weapons and armour.

The favrard live scattered throughout Tellurin (though some remain on Tahesakhi), serving their dark lord.

The western lands, bordered by the mountains in the east, the Deep Forest in the south, Parime, Haldane, and Espania on the western coast, and The Wilds in the north, are largely independent settlements and free towns that owe fealty to Drychtensart, but pay annual tributes to the surrounding lords and provinces to ensure their safety.

The king doesn’t bother to enforce this fealty, however, with the exception of the mountain keeps, which were Saxon to begin with, and Gryphonskeep, the sole settlement with ties to the Island Kingdoms in western Tellurin.

The Caldone are secretly plotting to eradicate the Faithful and supplant Archbishop Manse with their own archbishop as the religious leader of Tellurin.  They are also plotting to take the throne from Raethe.  With both religious and scular power secured, they want to cleanse the known world of such blights as magi and eleph, really anyone who doesn’t adhere to the Holy Mother Church.

Everything else is being set in motion by Yllel and Kane.  Yllel directs the drogadi to place source bombs strategically throughout the dwergen empire.  Drogadi sourcerors detonate the bombs remotely and trap the dwergen in their own kingdom.

His people among the Faithful place the Rada’Khoudum firmly in the hands of Archbishop Manse so that he uses its spells to bind Auraya’s source to kill Callum, the rising Kas’Hadden.

The drogadi rise to the surface and foment chaos in the west.  The other enslaved races muster for the coming battle.

The okante, and otherwise peaceful, tribal people, usually live in harmony with the Shooksa-Nai in the Northern Steppes and in the southern part of the wilds, south of the Glass Sea.  The krean are sea-faring folk who still call Tahesakhi home for the most part.  The bakath live in the Southron Spine, and the grunden in the Northron Spine.  The blinsies harass the Saanzu in the Deep Forest, but steer clear of the eleph.

Kane’s sourcerors infiltrate the Agrothe into the very capital and the king’s own university.

Map of Tellurin

Map of Tellurin

This is my cartographically-challenged map of Tellurin. At least you’ll get the general lay of the land.

Next week: What’s a Tellurin year?  A month? The days of the week?  The seasons?  Calendrical mysteries revealed.  This stuff will likely never appear in the novel, so Writerly Goodness will be your only chance to see such arcane material 🙂

Until then, good luck and good writing.