Category: noblebright

Tunes and Writing

Some new tunes and some new writing. That’s what I have to show for myself today. If I had the freedom to do so, I’d spend most of my time writing songs and stories. However, life…

Life is messy. And persistent. After a while you become the metaphor for a hastily made-up sad clown failing at juggling dozens of chainsaws and Limoges porcelain while unskillfully riding a unicycle and trying to escape from a maddened mob of IRS agents, honey badgers and robotic squid armed with cusinarts. And, of course, while all this mayhem is happening, there is a beautiful slow motion sunset going on–so incredibly slow that that single sunset begins, evolves and dips down past the horizon just once for your entire life.

The sunset never ceases to amaze and awe you, every time you glance over during your frantic unicycle escape.

What’s the moral of this story? That life is short and time is even shorter and, if we firmly believe in the existence of the four dimensions of length, width, height and time, someone possesses a measuring tape in their pocket that exists outside of time but with which you can measure time. Or perhaps the object is simply a very, very tiny ruler. But still big enough to measure time.

New Inflatable Hippies Music!

Which brings me to my latest tune. Blackbird, as written by me and performed by alter ego band Inflatable Hippies and executed by hired AI studio musicians. I simply cannot perform and record at their level. Plus, I find myself content enough to just write the song. Also, for the video clip below, I tried to put together some AI lip-sync of a portion of the song. I used some Magica tools to rough success. Definitely not perfect.

Which brings me to my latest tune. Blackbird, as written by me and performed by alter ego band Inflatable Hippies and executed by hired AI studio musicians. I simply cannot perform and record at their level. Plus, I find myself content enough to just write the song.

New Humorous Epic Fantasy!

And… the latest story. The Ruin Raiders series. Books 1 and 2 are out. Book 1 is Rise of the Farmboy, and book 2 is Westward to Ravelock. The series follows the story of a farmboy named Ben who runs away from home in order to find adventure. And, boy oh boy, does he ever find adventure. Way too much. He ends up joining a ruin raiding crew who plunder old ruins to find treasure. Wizards, elves, dwarves, monsters, magic, ancient evil, etc etc etc. All of the above.

3 through 6 should be out shortly as well. This is fairly lighthearted writing, in comparison to the Hawk and His Boy series. I wrote Hawk very carefully, as I was deliberately trying to examine themes of sacrifice, death, family and truth. I rewrote and edited those three books for years before I was content enough to publish. Ruin Raiders is the exact opposite: quick, fun, write and move on. Another thing to note is that the Ruin Raiders book exist in the same world as The Fury Clock, but they aren’t written from such a complete lunatic perspective as Clock is.

All for now. I have to get back to land use and water policy. California.

The Legacy of Light

Son #2 just finished a new song called Legacy. It’s available at most of the usual places. In terms of light and darkness, his music is full of light and shadows. You can’t avoid the shadows down here on Earth if you really want to see how bright the light is.

Contrasts are necessary for context.

In writing news, I’m about 90% done with a new epic fantasy. It’s currently around 170,000 words. Once the draft is finished, I’ll go back through it to adjust things–(probably) mostly character arcs and sub plots.

I find the revision process more enjoyable than the first draft process. Polishing, nudging, refining, deepening, adding in narrator perspective, all that sort of thing. The danger for me in the revision process is allowing perfection and good to get in a protracted battle. Those can be lengthy battles, kind of similar to the Hundred Years War between England and France in the Middle Ages. Edward III should not be allowed a hand in any writing.

The new fantasy is about halfway in between the Tormay trilogy and the Fury Clock in terms of the mix of seriousness versus humor. Maybe an inch or two closer to the South Pole of humor. It contains all of the necessary characters: a semi-delusional farmboy, a dwarf (see photo–yes, I took a photo of him), a wizard, a bad-tempered (but pretty) elf girl, a unflappable swordsman, a stolen map to an Ancient Place You Should Not Visit Unless You’re Fine With a Horrible Death, an extravagant amount of treasure, the Darkness (definitely with a capital D), several psychotic aristocrats, cold ale, and lots of roast boar (in honor of Asterix and Obelix–if you have not read Asterix and Obelix books, you need to get some immediately, as they are pretty much the pinnacle of comic literature).

Speaking of Darkness, the world seems a darker place these days. All the more reason to curl up on the sofa with a good book and an endless supply of snacks. And hopefully not a psycho cat strolling by at random moments to sink her claws into your leg. We just acquired a new kitten who still has not learned when it is appropriate to use claws and when it is not to appropriate to use those same claws. Her name is Pepper and she’s proving to be in the Ghost Pepper-Carolina Reaper category for now. We assume she will mature and make wiser choices sooner than later.

 

Fen Gawinn

I’ve been slowly writing a book that takes place after my Tormay trilogy. Several years after the end of The Wicked Day. Judging from how the plot is going and what the characters are demanding of me, I’d say I’m about 3/4 of the way done with the first draft.

The main character is Fen Gawinn, the adopted daughter of Owain and Sib Gawinn. She’s about seventeen in this story and, as luck would have it, she’s forced to leave the city of Hearne and deal with some rather dark characters. If you remember, there’s a certain individual towards the end of The Wicked Day who ends up… entranced, or perhaps frozen is the right word after picking up a very unusual book. That individual also figures in this story.

Anyway, here’s a concept art piece of Fen. Worried, unsure of herself, but determined. I’m going to do some more concept art for a few of the other characters in the story. Helps to wrap my mind around who they actually are.

The Taller Mountains

When I was a boy, I often had the sneaking suspicion that the mountains were actually taller than they usually appeared. This only occurred when the storm clouds came down and obscured the mountaintops. At those times, the usual, everyday peaks vanished behind the grey. I would look at them and think, “Perhaps the real heights of the mountains are now revealed within the clouds, even though I can’t see them. Maybe they reach higher and higher, up into the stratosphere and into some strange realm.”

I never climbed the mountains in a storm (or any other time, for that matter, as they’re private property), but that would’ve been the time to climb them. Doubtlessly, the path would’ve gone higher than the regular humdrum mountaintop.

YOU ARE OLD, FATHER WILLIAM…

Now that I’m an aged adult, one would assume I’d put such childish ways behind me. But, looking out my office window today at the rain clouds lowering down over the mountain range, the same thought enters my mind. I suppose I’m just a very aged boy.

There’s a similar idea in Lewis’ The Last Battle, toward the end of the book. The children and their various companions have finally entered the real Narnia. The heart of it is further on and higher up. The real truth behind mountains (and stairways, ladders, steps and apple trees) is further on and higher up. You can certainly climb a ladder down here on Earth, whether it is a corporate ladder at the XZY Widget Company or the ladder to fix the chimney, but the ladder that is even more real than your ladder goes on quite a bit higher. Pro tip: exercise your lungs so you can breathe easily at higher altitudes.

It’s an interesting thought to muddle on, and I suppose I’ll have to write about it in a book or perhaps just a song (almost have a whole new album done with the band I belong to–Inflatable Hippies–watch this space for announcement). In the meantime, I’ll leave you with wishes for a peaceful and merry Christmas, regardless of the doom and grumpy gloom seeping out of the White House like curdled milk spilling from a over-stuffed garbage bag (will they never learn?). Please enjoy a great deal of good food, good conversation, good music and good cheer. And may Heaven keep the beast from slouching to Bethlehem to be reborn. At least for a while yet.

Here’s a photo of our cat enjoying Christmas in the best way cats can.

Fantasy Series for Children

All of my kids have learned to love to read. Thankfully. That’s not always a sure thing these days. Throughout the week, there are a lot of competing magnets for a kid’s time: video games, social media (we don’t allow our kids on social media–feel free to argue/disagree with me on that), Disney Plus, sports, legos, hobbies, etc., as well as the ubiquitous demands of school. Some of that competition, of course, I’m happy to see, such as sports and hobbies and school. And even lego (even though I can’t bear thinking about how much money we’ve spent on legos over the years).

There’s nothing I like better than seeing my kids curled up on the couch reading a book.

However, one of the problems is that it isn’t exactly easy to find excellent books for them to read. Over the last few years, I’ve been mining all the books I enjoyed as a kid and recommending them to my kids. It isn’t always a guarantee that they’ll like the same stories.

Here, try Narnia, Prydain, The Princess and the Goblin. Or, how about an Alexander Key story, Roald Dahl, Danny Dunn, The Great Brain? Sadly, none of my kids like the Great Brain books. I’m still stunned by that; though, one of them might undergo further brain development and suddenly realize John Fitzgerald is one of the best American writers ever to have walked the Utah landscape.

One of my kids was delighted by Harry Potter. He blazed through the series in a matter of weeks. And then re-read it. Now, I’m wracking my brain, trying to find a fantasy series followup for him. He wasn’t too impressed by Narnia. Enjoyed The Hobbit. LOTR is probably too much for him this year, but he might be ready in a year or so. Fairly ambivalent toward both Peterson’s Dark Sea of Darkness and Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles.

Any ideas? I’m definitely not offering him George Martin (too adult) or Robert Jordan (too uneventful and endless–perhaps that series should’ve been called The Endless Wheel of Time?–truth in advertising). I’ll try Spiderwick and Eragon. But, other than those, I can’t think of anything else that is currently age appropriate (12 years old).

I realize there’s been a ton of new youth fantasy written in the last ten years, but, to be honest, most of it is quite suspect. I try to read and sample and dip in here and there in order to stay abreast. There are some disturbing trends in anti-hero protagonists, adult themes that should have no place in writing for youth, nihilism as core philosophy, etc.

Rather dreary.

As I get older (not necessarily wiser, but just older), I have less patience for such messages. I find them sad and unhealthy, and largely a waste of time. Life is hard enough as it. I have no issue with dealing with such issues via the medium of literature (see most of everyone from Dickens to Dosteyevsky, etc.–all amazing writers, and they understood balance and priorities), but there’s no need to glorify it.