D. Hart St. Martin

I make female heroes badass AND believable

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REVIEW – Cadoc’s Contract by Chris Rosser

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Cadoc’s Contract:

I’m a fan of Chris Rosser. His The Weaver’s Boy was a delightful look into his forthcoming The Lords of Skeinhold, and Cadoc’s Contract, a prequel to The Weaver’s Boy, does not disappoint as a new addition to the series.

It’s a rough tale peopled with soldiers whose lives, like those of all soldiers, have not been easy. The story begins on a ship bringing Captain Cadoc and his men back home from war, and Rosser has a gift of phrasing that puts the reader on the ship as it fights its way through a storm with our hero on board. We can feel what Cadoc feels, and as we learn more about the bargain hinted at in the title and then the first chapter, we begin to recognize he’s paid and is still paying a high price for his own survival in the war, and it’s begun to wear on him.

Rosser is a consummate wordsmith. His metaphors and similes are perfection, and his ability to draw us into the moment with the hardened-soldier voice of his narrative evokes all the right emotions. Cadoc is a warrior returning home from war. It’s Ulysses in brief, and although he’s only been gone a year, it’s as though a lifetime has passed.

In brief, Cadoc’s Contract is one fun ride.

Ramblings on What It All Means

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A cat picture to lure readers in, not my cat

I fell into deep despair about the followers of this blog this week. I strive to communicate—with my books, with my social media postings and with this blog. But this week I hit a funk. The worst of my better nature told me my blog clearly fails to pique people’s interest at all. Nor does my web site. It’s very disappointing to have worked so hard to create interest-piquing content and then come to the realization that you’ve failed utterly at that task.

We writers are an awkward lot. Many of us, as I’ve discovered on Twitter in the #WritingCommunity, are introverts who’d rather stay at home and write than get out and actually commune with people. We prefer sticking our noses in books to reveling at parties. We’d rather burn our eyes out staring at a computer screen calling up action and plot and characters than wander around a shopping mall. Thus, putting ourselves out, even on the interweb, can be tiresome and even frightening to many of us wordsmith types. Promotion? Are you kidding? And what is a blog but self-promotion?

Let’s get this clear. I write my books for myself. If I manage to draw someone into my world, I’m thrilled, but my books are my refuge, my peace place (despite the death and mayhem I often visit on my characters). But my blog represents my effort to represent me to the world. If I have few subscribers, that world is small indeed.

And what’s the trick? What’s the trick to kicking the meter up a bit and gaining followers? Self-promotion. But I thought that’s what the blog was supposed to do—promote me and my work. If I have to promote it in order to then promote that other stuff, what is the f#%$ing point?

So there you are, this writer whining about her failures and, in truth, hoping my defeat will blackmail new readers into following me. Am I a horrible person? I’ve always thought so. Hence, the self-promotion thing being such a bust. But I’ve now written the post I swore I wasn’t going to write this week. I guess that’s success, right?

Extending the Proper Invitation to the Story

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Beginnings are delicate things. First line, first paragraph, first chapter all require meticulous attention on the writer’s part. They serve as layers of an invitation to the reader to join the writer on a journey, and if the invitation fails to ignite the reader’s passion, they will get up and walk away, leaving the writer behind. No matter how amazing that journey may be, if an author can’t draw a reader in, they’re gone. So where middles and even endings can survive the sin of losing their bearings now and then, beginnings must be perfect.

I am about to slash my first chapter to shreds. I generally don’t go back and read something from earlier in a book while I’m in the process of writing or editing—I am, by nature, a linear writer—but in this case I took a look at chapters 1 and 2 last night because I’ve sent those chapters to a friend. I finished up chapter 1 with “meh” and “it’s too long,” while chapter 2 garnered my thumbs up. Why? Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?

I didn’t want to dwell too heavily on it, not while I’m neck deep in a complicated rewrite of changing both the point of view (from limited 3rd to 1st) and the verb tense (from past to present). (I wrote about this a few weeks ago.) I am immersed in this and pushing to get it done, so I didn’t want to get myself hung up in perfecting chapter 1, not now, not while I’m making good progress.

But I couldn’t help it. I went to bed, sat on the mattress edge and thought about it. It was then it occurred to me. I may (or may not—the jury’s out) safely eliminate reference to a particular entity throughout that first chapter and give it its due in chapter 2. Will I be able to make it work? I don’t know. And I won’t know until I return to chapter 1 on my next rewrite. I’ve placed a large Post-it® on the cover page with some brief notes of what I want to do, and that’s going to have to be it before I get back to it.

Sometimes we have to kill our children. It’s a writer’s adage. Editing sucks, and what sucks more than anything is when amazing phrases or metaphors must be sacrificed for the sake of better storytelling and better prose. But we do it. And I’ll do it when the time comes to rip that chapter apart, throw away chunks, saving them for use in chapter 2 but knowing I’ll likely use very few of them, if any at all.

Why do we put ourselves through this torture? It ain’t the money, that’s for sure.

Interview – Wendy Steele

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Wendy Steele

Wendy Steele is a writer, dancer, healer and advocate of love and kindness to all living things on this magical planet, including the earth herself. I met her years ago via Facebook during one of those mad rushes for author page follows, and we haven’t looked back. She’s a friend and confidante as well as a great beta reader. She has her own blog which includes posts about her books, her dancing, her life journey and her whole-food, plant-based diet. You can find it on her web site here. (And have I mentioned she lives in Wales? I am so jealous.)

Hart: Your work falls predominantly in the Witch Lit genre. What attracted you to that genre? Do you read more books in that genre, or do you indulge in genres outside your specialty?

Wendy: I read both inside and outside my speciality. After devouring Moon Magic and The Sea Priestess by Dion Fortune, I wanted more books about real people and real magic, but I couldn’t find any, so I decided to write them myself.

I’d already penned over 100k words of another novel I knew needed work, but I had a new idea and two years later, I published Destiny of Angels (the first book in The Lilith Trilogy), the story of Angel Parsons, a successful woman despite a difficult past, who returns to the scene of her childhood trauma to face the perpetrators and offer them the chance of redemption.

I enjoy historical fiction, mysteries and fantasy, but shy away from crime and violence.

H: With Witch Lit being a genre based more in the feminine, how do you see the role of women in fiction these days?

W: Female characters in fiction are sometimes the heroes we know they can be, but like the film industry, there are fewer “juicy” parts for women. Often a woman still needs a man to save the day.” I write about women who have confidence and belief in their own lives and don’t need a man to define them.

H: Do you schedule time for your writing? Or do you just grab the odd minute or hour when it makes itself available to you?

W: If you’d asked me last year I would have said “yes, writing time is scheduled,” but I’ve started 2019 in a different mindset.

Book four of my six part Lizzie Martin Series is written, leaving me two more to write, but I want them to be right and I’ve a lot of loose ends to carefully tie up. With plans needing to be put in place for work on our property, a new dance class and expansion of our dance performance wise, I’m writing short stories, articles and blog posts while I get plans underway and get through the paperwork.

I’ve attempted novel writing before under pressure and I get exhausted and run down, so I’m being kind to myself. I’ve handed in my latest story, “The Butterfly Door,” for the Witch Lit anthology, and finishing another for Zimbell House at the moment.

H: What research do you find absolutely necessary to keeping your story authentic?

W: I love research! At my twenty minute careers interview when I was sixteen, I grasped the card marked ‘BBC Researcher’ and thrust it before the teacher, but she suggested I become a secretary and got married instead!

Research is a big part of my writing process. I may not have visited every place I write about, but most of them, and when my MC (main character) needs to instigate a spell, prayer or ritual, if I haven’t personal experience, I’ll scour books for ideas, often performing the spell or prayer myself first to see how it feels.

While researching The Lilith Trilogy, I walked the kabbalah paths before writing about them.

H: Do you have a current release you’d like to promote? Tell us about it.

First 3 books of the Lizzie Martin series

W: My latest book is book three of the Lizzie Martin Series, The Flowerpot Witch, but why not start at the beginning? The Naked Witch is available as an ebook for less than the price of a skinny vanilla spice latte. Enjoy.

The Naked Witch Amazon UK

The Naked Witch Amazon.com

H: Thanks, Wendy. It’s been great talking with you.

Celebrate the Women Part 2

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A silly start to world building

The members of my writing group are all confused. They keep expecting Lisen’s Garla, but we’re not in Garla anymore. Last week I wrote about the process of creating Garla, of what it took to make the absence of sexism, the elevation of women to absolute equality, work. This week, I’ll tell you about the creation, in the wake of that revolutionary society, of a world that isn’t a cookie-cutter imitation of Garla, a world that can stand on its own without leaving me yearning to return to that world where I spent so many years rather than staying with my new world in progress. A world called Azzur.

The story of Mari Spencer, the protagonist of my current project, begins on earth, just as Lisen’s did, but where Lisen had a destiny and her life had not begun here on earth, Mari is all human with no prophecies to bind her. I started with a magical forest. In order to move from one world to another, there must be a portal, and the forsaken forest is that portal for Mari. She also has a guide, a woman named Tula who lives within that forest. Now all of that was easy, but where could I go from there? Where was the fantasy world I wanted Mari to discover?

City of Afra with pencil notations

The world Mari ends up in is Azzur. Actually, that’s the name of a city state with Afra as its capital. I wanted something not entirely typical of fantasy settings, nothing medieval, thank you, so I settled on the fertile crescent, the cradle of civilization—Mesopotamia—as my jump-off point. That was the easy part. Plop a river down, place cities on its banks and move on from there. The physicalities were not at issue.

What was at issue was how men and women related to each other in this world. In my research, I was pleased to discover that during King Hammurabi’s time, his code may have restricted married women from participating in commercial pursuits, but many women engaged in business anyway. Property was left to them by their husbands, and they then left that property to their children. Now this may seem like a given these days, but back then, it was a very big deal.

So how was I to make this world palatable to my feminist sensibilities without simply duplicating Garla? It took a while, as it always does, but here’s what I came to. I began with Azzur having a ruler whose eldest child inherits regardless of gender. Men and women are equal in their spiritual life with the priesthood in the Temple open to both. In addition, the higher the social class, the more equal women are. But why? Why the upper classes but not the working masses?

Eventually I discovered—because world building is a process of discovery—that the existence of only female serpents (read, dragons), which are bonded to the royal family, triggered this effect. When I decided these female serpents would be parthenogenic—able to reproduce without the aid of a male—I realized this had motivated the royals into a belief that the bodies of females of any species knew somewhere deep within how to reproduce without the assistance of their corresponding males.

With their survival at risk, the male royals took their cue from the female serpents and started treating their own female counterparts as equals. The closest upper classes, including the priests in the temple, followed suit. On the other hand, the further down the social ladder a person lands, the more likely they are to think of the serpents as only a myth and—if they’re even aware of the serpents’ unique method of reproduction—parthenogenesis as part of that myth. Therefore, this equality of the sexes only goes so far, but in the upper stratosphere of Azurian hierarchy, it is a given.

If this sounds a bit contrived, it is. At this point. Book 1 of this series is in the midst of rewrite, and more will likely be revealed as I reach completion of this first story. World building is a process, with each step dependent on the last, and all steps open to reconfiguration, if necessary, until they’ve been permanently enshrined in print. We’ll see how things change by the time I publish this book.

Celebrate the Women

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The final volume of Lisen of Solsta

Okay, so since it’s Women’s History Month. And since I’m a card-carrying feminist—okay, I used to have a card, but I lost it. And since I write YA fantasy with female heroes, I got some explaining to do. How did I build the world in my Lisen of Solsta series? A world that my women’s-rights soul can tolerate? Well, let me tell you.

I began with a promise to myself. I decided to create a world where men and women were absolutely equal. Where labor wasn’t divided up based on gender-specific roles. Some might see this as easy. Just make the women tough and badass.

Uh, no. That wasn’t going to work for me. You can’t simply morph women into men with breasts. Because generally that turns into a situation where these kick-butt women wear skimpy outfits with lots of cleavage. Believe me, I’ve checked these books out. This is what proponents of patriarchy do. They have female heroes trussed up in outfits that inspire a hard-on. And that, my friends, is the easy and misogynistic way out. Let’s try again.

Garla, where Lisen of Solsta unfolds, had to represent my vision of equality. No stereotypical male or female tasks. No teenage heroines climbing trees and running down stairs to the shock of their elders. No soft ladies waiting for their gentle men to save them. But in order to make this world exist in any believable manner, I had to figure out why. And how.

I began with the most basic of questions. Has it always been this way? Or did the world evolve into this? My decision was based on a personal theory that when one “-ism” dissolves (in this case, sexism), the rest (e.g., racism) will fall like dominoes in its wake. I don’t believe societies, on earth at least, can find a way to accept all people as equal at one locus of division without coming to realize rather quickly that other divides are abstract constructs that are equally as meaningless. Therefore, no misogyny → no hatred of people of a different color or religion → the next reason to hate. And on and on and on they’d fall. This would make for a relatively perfect world, leaving little room for conflict. And what is a story? A series of conflicts. So, women and men are equal and always have been in Garla, and all other “-isms” persist.

After I made that decision, the questions became more detailed, more complicated. Physically, the women had to be taller and carry more muscle mass with compensatory changes in the men, making them of equal stature and strength. You see, in my opinion, women are at the mercy of men for several reasons, one of them being physical. Evening up the playing field would give women a chance. So I did.

To that I added a more balanced emotional sensitivity between the two sexes. But what would teach men to carry a bit more of the emotional load? (I figured, because I’m a woman, that we female types would have no trouble with barebones logic and reason, but maybe that’s just my misandry showing.)

Anyway…

The answer was simple. The nurturing of children. Put a man in the position of nurturing a child, invite him to the cradle, and he’ll pick up the load. In our world, men now participate in the labor of the mothers of their children, but that’s a social thing that’s evolving into the norm. How was I to make it something that simply happened in this world from the “beginning of time”? How could I give my male characters the natural-born instincts of a mom?

In early times here on earth, men were the hunters. They focused their skills on two goals—seek out, find and kill food for dinner and stand between the group and predators. Women, on the other hand, gathered berries and nuts, cooked the meals, sewed hides together for clothes, all while balancing a baby on a hip and keeping a toddler out of trouble. They did the nurturing. They had to be soft.

So how would I translate that to Garla?

Teach men nurturing from the womb. And there I had it. In quick order I reconfigured the method of procreation in this world, gave men and women pouches like marsupials have on earth and allowed men to be the bearers of children before birth. It sounds odd if you haven’t read the books, but it’s a beautiful process, with sometimes the mother pouching the child as it emerges from the womb, and other times, the father.

All of this figuring out took years, each solution engendering yet another question along the way. I’ve only included the most basic back story here because it would take a book I don’t want to write to explain it all.

So happy Women’s History Month, both female and male friends! Let’s continue to fight to make all persons equal. And while we’re waiting for that, ___check out Lisen’s world here.

Coming next week: My current dilemma of creating a world that’s not free of sexism the way Garla was without losing my lunch. And the week after that, I am pleased to present an interview with the inimitable Wendy Steele, author of the Lizzie Martin witch lit series.