Kamanthian Characters: Obsession's Cold Comfort -- Larina

The Kamanthian characters have long-standing passions central to their  life-quests, and what they face in the Lair of Beasts impacts each of them at a deep, personal level as well as Kamanthia as a whole. 

But first things first.  Catalystica brings them together and into the Lair. Transformations of heart are possible but choices in the Lair aren't always what the characters expect. 

Larina:

Feed it or let it starve. 

That's what my father told the Kasana priestess when he and mother surrendered me to the orphanage.  They wanted a boy-child, but I was a girl.

When I was old enough, they had to fulfill the obligation of surrendering parents. They took me to Academy and apprenticed me to the sword instructor, Manion.

Teach her so she doesn't cut off her own feet.

They didn't look back as they left.

But I know how to win their love. I've excelled with the sword beyond anything they could imagine, and Sunsheen is the perfect blade. I only need to find and kill a dragon, just like the hero in Chants of Charred Bones. 

Mighty the valor, mighty the sword

Great the renown, great the reward

to one who brings the dragon down ...

I'll prove I wasn't a waste of birthing sheets.

I'll prove I'm worthy of their approval, worthy of their love.

If not love, then fear.

 

                 

Kamanthian Characters: The Man with Anger Issues -- Ratchen

Back in April, the MC of The Kamanthian Chronicles: Catalystica was included in the Character Tour hosted by Ralene Burke  http://www.raleneburke.com/2013/04/character-tour-the-kamanthian-chronicle/

Although this was supposedly a one-time thing, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed right to give each of the Kamanthians a chance to have his/her say.  So, beginning with a repeat of Ratchen's "voice", the next few posts will feature the characters of Kamanthia, the wild and strange world where the Lair of Beasts is hidden in the canyon complex of the Kahall.

Ratchen:

"Prove to me, Ratchen. Bring me the horn of a unicorn so I know your love is true."

                                     

Kor, how I loved Anina. And how I loved our son, Scayne, who'd taken his first tottering steps only days before she kissed me and spoke those words. We'd been wed for just over a year, but neither of us had reached our second decade. Why did she do it? Why would she betray me?

"Bring me the horn of a unicorn..."

I was young and I believed such a beast roamed the forests of the northern Kamanthian ranges. She told me she'd spotted one just beyond the traveler's bell at Yerrick Pass . She lied.

A Regent patrol captured me, and they laughed as they shackled me. They said she'd reported I was poaching the dun fell deer.

Numbers matter in prison. Five years for poaching. Five years of hard labor in the Provincial quarry. Five years of springvine floggings. And when I protested innocence, when I defended myself from other prisoners, when the warder had a liomm headache, or when the prison consul wasn't  happy with his whore—then a three-day or week in solitary. In a rock cell— two paces from side to side, from front to back. Utter blackness but for a slot uncovered daily for food and water. Stifling. Cold. A living burial. I could scarcely breathe, but I could scream. I thought I would die. I didn't, but love did.

"Bring me the horn of a unicorn..."

I've hunted the width and breadth of Kamanthia for the last ten years. From the inland sea in the northeast, to the grasslands, to the Beacons of the western coast, to the deserts and deltas of the south. I worked on cargo ships for passage to the minor continent and along the island chains. Along the way, I earned a reputation: violent, amoral, black-hearted, unpredictable, mad. Maybe I deserved the epithets and curses aimed at me, but nothing, nothing was getting in the way of what I sought.

Then, in the great slash of canyons called the Kahall, I found the fabled Lair of Beasts.

Once I learn how to enter the Lair, I'll kill a unicorn. I'll bring Anina the horn she wanted badly enough to destroy our life together, to take my son from me as well as my freedom.

And I'll spear it through her treacherous heart.

Booting out the Children of My Mind

The Kamanthian Chronicles: Catalystica, published by The Cross and the Cosmos, is available  atSmashwords (released there in Feb) and its several outlets. There were formatting glitches, so although it released on CreateSpace and Amazon this month, it had to be pulled for repairs.   Once fixed, there will be a re-release.

Under Every Moon is available on Smashwords.  I saw it listed at Barnes & Noble  in the Nook store – cool!  I shouldn't have been surprised—SW does distribute there for Nook books. Although this e-version was self-published, an indie publisher has already expressed interest in producing a print version, possibly an illustrated one.
 
A reprint of "Ley of the Minstrel" and its sequel "Spider Dance" is also available on Smashword.  The anthology they were in has become available on Amazon. The Cross and the Cosmos Anthology Year 1, published by  Marcher Lord Press, contains all the first year's  Cross & Cosmos ezine stories plus sequels/additional stories by the authors (four stories by me). There are links to both MLP and Amazon where the anthology print edition can be ordered, and I'm hoping that by releasing Ley and Spider alone, there'll be renewed interest in the print anthology.

The Book of Sylvari, coming from Port Yonder Press, contains stories by me. It's release is still in to be announced status.

Other stories are making the rounds through submissions.  And more are in work. As nice as it is to see those finished stories available, the call of writing more stories is too insistent to ignore.  Regarding the children of my mind, I'm probably a bad mom. I can't  spend a lot of time cooing over them.  When I finish with one, I make sure it's dressed, shoes shined, and teeth brushed, then I boot it out into the wider world.  I nit-pick at it when it comes home, then boot it out again so I can spend time with the next mind-child(ren). Because...  

Because the  story volcano between my ears is  still erupting.  Publication hasn't cooled it in the least.

For a writer, that's as it should be.

To find any of the books released thus far, the links are as follows:

The Kamanthian Chronicles is at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/286124
 Under Every Moon is at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/314490

Ley of the Minstrel is at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/317978

The Cross and the Cosmos Anthology  is at either http://www.amazon.com/Cross-Cosmos-Anthology-Year/dp/1935929712

or

http://www.marcherlordpress.com/bookstore/fantasy/the-cross-and-the-cosmos-anthology-year-1/

Prelude to a Poetry Collection

Why do readers so often cringe at the word "poetry"?

I have two not-always-so-humble opinions.

The first is that, at some point during education, too much analysis destroyed the enjoyment.  Some teacher made poetry harder than it needed to be. What is the poet saying?  What symbols did the poet employ? What is the deeeeeeep meaning of this poem? What form, what techniques did the poet use?  

Or the psycho-lit question: what meaning does this have for you, the reader?

(This one also requires self-analysis—possibly for people too cheap or too broke to afford a shrink.)

I like the snapshot story of words and its afterimages. I like the way the arrangement rolls off my tongue or the beat I can't quite shake after reading it. It says something to me personally, lifts my spirits, or leaves a sense of wonder (or delicious chill) with the final lines. Maybe it lingers for reflection when I do some other terminally boring activity.  And/or maybe I enjoy it enough to memorize so I can revisit at will, any time I can't have a book or e-reader in hand.     

                                                                                                                                    

Opinion #2 is that lot of poetry either doesn't make sense at all or it's the sense of the troubled poet psychoanalyzing him/herself.  A confession (heh-heh): most confessional writing, including poems, bores the snot out of me.  By the time I've wandered through someone's self-absorption or self-flagellation, I no longer care whether the teakettle was copper (sorry, "cupric"), the pencil was a 2B stub, and the booze spilled on the floor. I'm glad I only had to plod/slog/trudge through 24 lines of it. (Terribly unsophisticated of me, I know.)  

So, I write the  kind of poetry I like.  I like the challenge, the discipline of writing form poems, rhymed and unrhymed, and doing them well.  I like the liberty of free verse,  of exploring new ways to express a moment or idea cleanly, crisply, creatively.  And since I like poems that also tellor hint a micro-story, my poems lean toward my favorite genres: fantasy and science fiction.

Within the next few days/weeks, my poetry collection, Under Every Moon, will be available, first in an e-version, later in an illustrated print edition.  This collection explores edges where the mundane and uncanny parallel or converge, where ordinary and extraordinary intersect, and where reality and fantasy sometimes collide. In it is the voice of sand, of birds, of the tarot's charioteer, of the crone who spins and weaves dreams and nightmares.  In it is the talismanic beat of a drum, heart, or hoof, and the clatter of dice; there's discovery of a name,  dancing ghosts, and secrets of the sea.  

"Will you join in the rollin' of the bones?"

  

The Kamanthian Chronicles: Catalystica

The Kamanthian Chronicles: Catalystica by G.L. Francis (that's me) is scheduled for release from The Cross and the Cosmos in February.     

"Kamanthia --
where the fabled Lair of Beasts is hidden

Ratchen wants only two things: find his son and avenge a betrayal. He needs a unicorn's horn to deliver vengeance for the treachery, and the end of his long search is close. He's found the Lair of Beasts where a unicorn surely dwells.
But he has to enter the Gateway, which can't be done alone.

Kamanthia --
where creatures of myth are real and choices are timeless."

                  

And some images based on parts of the book...



                Bring me the horn of a unicorn so I know your love is true.

                                  

  Beware the eye, for a basilisk hath a thousand hells in a glance.

                              Kamanthian proverb

                                     

                       

                 To power the pattern-winds:
                  feathers and talons of the dual monarch,

                  king of beasts and king of birds ... 

                                  from The Journal of Pattern Cyphers

                                 

                       Mighty the valor, mighty the sword

                      Great the renown, great the reward
                       to one who brings the dragon down ...

                                 from "Chants of Charred Bones"

                                     

Bulldozer Restoration

The gutter needs fixed and there are new places to patch on the roof before winter.  I'm itching to paint bright colors on the walls — soooooo tired of off-white, eggshell, and linen blah—but can't do that until sheetrock repairs are done.  Oh, yeah, and there's some carpet I'd love to send on a permanent camp-out at the landfill.

Time doesn't agree with me. Time makes sure lessons of patience are thoroughly understood. So, I inch along such renovations rather than bulldoze through them.  I'd rather bulldoze even if it looks messier for a while.  But bulldozing usually illuminates some part of a project I didn't consider or didn't know was a problem until sub-surfaces revealed their not-so-shiny faces.   

A particular writing project — chronicles set on a world called Kamanthia — seemed an excellent candidate for  bulldozer editing.  I love the story, the concept, the characters; but I followed some less than good advice. It turned into a thinly disguised sermon rather than a story.  And though there were aspects of it I thought might be enjoyable for a Christian-only audience, those aspects diminished the impact and explorations of the core story.  Those aspects might later wind up in a parallel side-story, but it'll be  a separate project. Not this one.  

Restoration time.  Easy peasy, sure.  Just remove the POV sequences of the Christian character (I'll call her S— for now) and bring the story back to the POVs of the original characters living on Kamanthia.  Bulldozing went fine for the first four chapters as I simply lifted out S—'s chapters. 

I hit the first boulder.

A scene vital to the story is told through S—'s POV.  **deep breath**  Most of it was dialog — not too hard to shift the POV to R—, the original main character.

The next boulder was bigger.

Again, a scene vital to the story, but this time descriptions and perceptions  as well as dialog were in S—'s POV.  Major rewrite.

And, scrolling ahead through chapters, I find more scenes like that.  Eeek!

The easiest solution would've been to simply pull up an archived file with the original story in it.  Except for the fact that it's not possible. The original version is forever buried in a computer that died sadly and badly before I could move all its files to a newer computer.

I've learned a lot since the story's original version. I'm reasonably certain this restoration will result in a much better, more intense story.  But it would've been nice to have the original for reference rather than relying on my own occasionally glitchy memory.

  

Parking the bulldozer.  Inching my way through the landscape of Kamanthia.

Behind "Tools of the Trade"

One of my steampunk stories, titled "Tools of the Trade", will be in the upcoming anthology of elf stories, The Book of Sylvari, from Port Yonder Press.

Notes coming back from the beta-readers looking over the anthology had comments and questions about "Tools..."  Since I don't know who the beta-readers are, I'm answering a few of the questions here, not really in any particular order.

"Tools of the Trade" is set in 1899 Kansas City, MO.  When I created the story, I wanted to make it as historically accurate as possible to make the Russian elf battling demons more believable.  Research was inevitable.

Fiction: Sophie (the MC) and her brother Bruce were adopted as children.

Fact:  The Orphan Trains from the east coast carried hundreds of orphaned, abandoned, and parent-surrendered children west to be adopted.  Some of their stories turned out well — the children were cherished and cared for by their adopted parents. Others didn't fare so well — they were treated as little more than extra farm hands and servants. 

Some of them processed through a church orphanage called "The Little Sisters of Mercy Asylum" in New York City.  Nowadays, we think of the word "asylum" in terms of mental institutions, but the broader meaning is a place of refuge, a shelter, a haven.    

Fiction:  One of the minor characters is taken to St. Luke's Hospital in Kansas City, while another is taken to a children's clinic.

Fact:  This hospital did indeed exist back then but at that point it was called All Saints Hospital (est. 1885).  It didn't actually change names to St. Luke's Hospital until 1903, four years after this story takes place, but the shift of time is creative license.
The other clinic mentioned was founded by one of two sisters (Dr.  Alice Berry Graham and Dr.  Katharine Berry Richardson) who set it up to help children of those too poor to afford medical treatment.  At the time, women doctors weren't common and there was some (a lot!) bias about hiring them to work in hospitals — another reason for founding their own.  That clinic a few years later became Children's Mercy Hospital.

Fiction: The elf cauterizes a wound with an "untinned" brazing bit.
Fact: "Untinned" means that it hadn't been covered with the solder mixture of tin and lead which helps transfer the bit's heat so the solder will flow properly to make a good joint.  Essentially, the elf is using the equivalent of a bare-metal branding iron to cauterize the wound.

Fiction: The elf has an instrument called a dioptra in his toolbox.
Fact:  A dioptra is an astronomical as well as a surveying instrument.  Its earliest use dates back to about the 3^rd century B.C. for astronomy, but the armillary later became the more favored instrument — greater accuracy, more detail.  For surveying, the dioptra was later replaced by the theodolite.   Because the elf in the story has a traceable lineage going back several centuries, he's also inherited tools &  instruments (even obsolete ones) from his ancestors.

Fiction:  Sophie thinks "Wake up, prince" as she kisses the elf to disrupt a demon's hold over him.

Fact: The elf character isn't a prince, nor is Sophie particularly infatuated with him at this point in the story. But published fairy tales had been around for quite a while, so Sophie would've been familiar with them. The Brothers Grimm published their first volume of collected fairy tales in 1812 and a second volume in 1815.         

Fiction: Sophie, Bruce, and Kazimir set out from the Kansas City Yacht Club building to battle the water demons.
Fact: This one surprised me!  As I was researching the railroads running through KC, I happened upon a sketch showing a building with the sign Kansas City Yacht Club.  After some archive digging, I found it really did exist and had a lively membership among the local boaters.  They held regattas and fish fries, and they even bottled their own beer. There were a number of smaller clubs in and around the city, but the KCYC seemed to be the largest.

Too cool not to include in the story!