the deep moans round with many voices

Way back in 2004, I attempted to write a fantasy novel for NaNoWriMo. The Sum of Things stalled out around 20,000 words -- which is sadly typical of my life -- but it's still alive in the back of my mind and I go poke at the rough draft or my background files every now and then.

Here is some world-building on the royal family of Kanos, which I feel like posting partly as a public kick in the pants to myself, and partly just because I think it's pretty nifty and want to show it off. *wry*

Background: Kanos is a semi-feudal multi-ethnic empire ruled by queens who are always descended from Deyrilea Nishal Mordrin (one of the empire's two founders; the other, Daluran Silverblade, abdicated and his requirements for a successor were deliberately impossible to fulfill) but who must be elected and confirmed by the Assembly of Nobles. Their direct power is also extremely restricted by the time of "The Sum of Things," but this doesn't mean Kanos has become a functional democracy; it just means the empire is a disorganized mess. The current queen -- Ranna, one of my two main characters -- had no interest in the position, but since she wound up with the title, she's trying her best to actually fix some of the problems with her country... whether her country particularly wants to be fixed or not.

( Inheritance Rules in the Mordrin Line )

I managed to get Iruka into "Guardian" -- granted, he's on the other end of a phone conversation so you don't get to 'see' him, but still. He's there!

(I'm not sure if Konoha has telephones, but I accidentally mentioned phone numbers as an aside back in "Apartment Manager," so I went with it. However, the Konoha phone directory is interesting, since it doesn't always list a street address to go along with the phone number -- ninja are paranoid that way. Civilians may or may not list their addresses, and businesses almost always do, since they need to be easily locatable. *sigh* I think too much about these things.)

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I also twiddled away at my novel, "The Sum of Things," which is now at 21,500 words, give or take a little. I've finished the revisions to the parts I wrote in 2004, and am back to forging ahead into new territory. I had to revise things for several reasons:

1. I finally worked out the magical system, and had to adjust some things based on it.

2. As I wrote, more of the sociopolitical structure of Kanos and the Eastern Lands came clear, and I had to retroactively incorporate it.

3. I had to differentiate Talin's and Ranna's narrative voices. This was the big one.

Talin seems to think in terms of nature metaphors and similes. He pays attention to the weather, the scenery, the position of the sun, and things like that. He also thinks in religious terms, is fatalistic, and can get extravagant with figurative language -- in his mind, not out loud. Ranna, on the other hand, thinks in terms of games, secrets, and webs of relationships and influence. I can get descriptive in her POV sections, but the imagery is more concrete. There are also a couple of dialect/accent differences between Talin and Ranna that I needed to refine. Ranna is from a region with a residual, distinctive twist on verb tenses -- she's worked to erase that from her speech, but she slips sometimes, or lapses deliberately in certain situations -- whereas Talin uses some word choices and ways of beginning sentences that are peculiar to the middle south of Kanos.

There's also a perspective difference in the ways they relate to other people. For all that she's focused on interpersonal relationships, Ranna has very little compassion -- her reaction to a brewing war is to think that it's a waste and the government is stupid, not to worry about the potential devastation and loss of life. On the other hand, Talin, who holds himself apart, is empathetic and sympathetic. It's an interesting contrast. I wanted to write a practical, ruthless woman, and a sensitive man, even while I forced Ranna into a role where she has to work indirectly and shoved Talin into a traditional warrior role. I like the effects on their characters.

So. I actually sat down a couple days ago and worked out the magical system for "The Sum of Things," so I would know once and for all what is and isn't possible in that world, and so I could adjust various social systems to account for the effects of magic. I'd already known it was a fairly subtle sort of magic and not much useful in war (I declared that at the outset, because I wanted to write a story about people slashing at each other with swords, not people hurling fireballs or what have you) but now I have wonderful little knock-on effects like the high value of copper and the prominance of glassblowers in the Eastern Lands, and further differences between cities and the countryside. Plus, I have invented the magical equivalent of Edison's lightbulb, which amuses me greatly.

However, this left me with a slight problem: in the original conception of the story, I used a spell to move Talin to a certain place and make him meet certain people... but that sort of spell is now not permitted. It literally does not exist.

I beat my head against that for a while until I realized that I didn't need magic. I can do the same damn thing -- well, produce the same effects -- with completely non-magical means. And the new plot point works even better, because it gives Talin and Bren some actual characterization and motives instead of 'guy in grip of mild compulsion spell' and 'faithful sidekick.' Besides which, the more I think about it the less convinced I am that Talin would be particularly amenable to subtle suggestion spells. He's a quiet guy, but he's very determined to be in charge of his own life and to not let anybody else determine his choices anymore. Now I can have Bren trying to figure out a mystery of sorts, and Talin going along because A) Bren knows how to persuade him into things and B) he thinks going to Arre-Lus will be a useful bit of misdirection and will let him and Bren vanish quite handily into the thousands of people who live in the city.

Naturally his plans don't work out, but he has no real way of knowing that. (Or rather, he refuses to admit the possibility, because he is in denial, the poor silly boy.)

Ranna and Shae have proceeded not to cut a deal after all, but have at least opened the avenue for future dealing. It would, I suppose, be too much to ask for them to trust each other at this point, but it never fails to irritate me when my stories/characters up and do things I haven't planned for. Yes, it usually makes things better in the long run, provided I can keep hold of the reins and make sure all the new ideas merge smoothly into the overall structure, but it really makes me wonder why I (subconscious) can't tell myself (conscious) what I'm doing before the words appear on the page and flummox me.

Grr. And in the course of their conversation scene, they proceeded to reveal various fashion trends of Kanos (specifically of the nobility of Alland and the citizens of Arre-Lus) and standards of beauty which I will have to go back and incorporate into Ranna's previous scenes. Well, at some point I'll have to do that. But I now have a legitimate excuse for her to wear heavy cosmetics when she's wearing her 'queen' persona, to the point where she looks quite different from her natural appearance.

See, Kanos is a multi-ethnic country. Part of this is because it's composed of various regions that were conquered or assimilated through marriage treaties, but part of it is because the land itself was invaded and settled by several waves of people from across the western mountains and plateaus... and those people were later culturally subsumed to some extent by the natives of Corthia, Alland, Damiland, and Tobal. (Okay, so Tobal isn't part of Kanos. Geographically it could be, but Kanos began falling apart internally before the queens got around to successfully grabbing it. And there is less assimilation in Auvern, but the westerners are very much the ethnic majority in Auvern.) So their ideal of feminine beauty is based on the dark hair, dark eyes, and pale skin of high-class Allandish women, instead of their own lighter hair and darker skin. So Ranna powders her hair dark and her face white, because the queen is supposed to look like that.

*beams* It's nice when plot requirements actually make sense in the cultural situation.

I love playing around with little cultural things. Like, for instance, there's a name, Merika, that originally comes from the west and has been turned into Marika in most of central Kanos, and adapted into Meirhicha in Orifan. A lot of the male names that end in -ek or -ik come from the west, as do most -ika female names. Female names ending in -ie or -ae are native to Alland and Corthia. Anything ending in -et is probably female Manakardit, from Damiland and Kididama (which conveniently lets me spell things -ette if I want to adapt those names for central Kanos). Things with -in, -ed, -en, or -ain are probably from Orifan, Caermarin, or Dorin Rhae. There are rules for converting southern names from male to female (Arhed to Arhedden) and vice versa (Bren to Brennan) but I haven't fully worked them out yet. Oddly, names ending in -a are usually female in southern and central Kanos, but male up north in Damiland or over the border in Sheneska and Halo (Jonoma Topio being the immediately obvious example).

Clothes amuse me as well. I don't really like describing them in great detail, but the general patterns are interesting, especially in the way they intersect with class boundaries, or professional requirements. The Manakardit don't wear dresses, but Ranna's honor guards (who happen to be Manakardit -- they don't happen to be female; that's a requirement, since they need to always be near her) wear a sort of slit-seamed tunic that reaches their knees and thus offers the illusion of a skirt over their pants.

Those are the little things that aren't immediately relevant to the plot, not the way the system of warfare is, or the symbiosis between daylight politics and the shadow world of thieves, spies, and assassins. Warfare in the Eastern Lands is very structured and formal, with a number of conflicts actually being settled by professional duelists. Even when open war breaks out, it's constrained to certain times and places, there are rules about prisoners, objectives must be carefully set forth in the declaration of hostilities, etc. And yet, underneath that where everybody carefully 'doesn't notice,' rules are broken like crazy. People are poisoned or strangled or stabbed to death. Blackmail is a thriving industry. And so on.

It works, more or less, but there are very practical reasons Talin doesn't want to draw the attention of the Great Houses to his home, not just a general reluctance to leave home or serve someone his father seems to like.

And we bring "The Sum of Things" up to the end of my currently completed scenes. Still a rough draft, I'm afraid. :-)

( The Sum of Things, Chapter Two, Part III )

Am going to my parents' on Thursday, and returning to Ithaca next Monday. Am planning, once again, to make shameless use of their washer and dryer, since it saves me $8-$10. (I save up my laundry and usually do three or four loads in one go, which eats most of my afternoon and a ridiculous number of quarters. My next apartment will have laundry facilities in house. Or else.)

Still no job nibbles. My current evil plan is to apply as an after-school counselor at the local YMCA, which is seriously not what I want to be doing long-term but could easily pull me through the next few months. *crosses fingers*

The first chapter of "The Way of the Apartment Manager," my new Naruto story, is finished, and the thing as a whole is thoroughly plotted and outlined. I'm somewhat baffled by its sudden appearance and development, but I guess I shouldn't look gift stories in the mouth.

"Harvest," my half-finished Ekanu story is poking along, as are my HP fics. I think with some luck I may have "Paint the Town" finished in another week -- that is, if I can keep "Apartment Manager" from eating my brain the way "Heritage" did this summer.

And speaking of "Heritage"... there is no Gormenghast section at ff.net, but they do have a Miscellaneous Books option. I will try posting it there and we'll see what happens. I don't expect much by way of readers -- it's an obscure series, and I'm writing a pre-book story (the origins of Steerpike, my favorite character) -- but it will be nice to at least have it publicly available.

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So I hear Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is coming out next July. Cool, I guess.

Oddly, while I still do the majority of my fanfiction writing for HP, I seem to be less and less emotionally involved in that fandom. I'm also reading less HP fic than ever. And I find it hard to get wildly enthusiastic about this news. I mean, the new book's coming out. Fine. Great. But it's over SIX MONTHS AWAY. People, get a grip, take a deep breath, and relax.

I'll get excited in the summer.