Post 4, January 8, 2024
In 2023, I decided set myself a challenge in my writing life. I decided to work on two different writing projects at the same time. I wanted to see if I could do it successfully, switching from one book to the other. I decided to try working on one project one week, then switching to the other the next. I knew that doing so might interfere with the momentum of one or the other, the energy on one story being different from the other. So, if I could, I worked to a good stopping point, then switch, knowing that sometimes Project 1’s week might would run into Project 2’s
Of course, I knew the rest of my life might just interfere as well. What’s the old saying? Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making plans? This proved to be all too true. More on that in a moment.
Here are the two projects:
First, a new story collection: The Great Forest and Other Love Stories
Why Love Stories, rather than the more typical Other Stories? everything I write does seem to a be a love story of some kind or another, especially gay love stories, love between men. I chose Love Stories because I chose to foreground the love story, as opposed to having the love story be one of connected plot lines and subplots. Yes, the lovers do have other complications of one kind or another, from one being drafted for a seven-year term as the servant of sentient trees to one lover demanding the other work a dark magic for him. Even so, the love story is the heart of each story, pun intended.
I have tried to do in all my fiction, give my lovers a HEA, a happily ever after, or sometimes a HFN, happily ever after for now, or rather love yes, but long term happiness, remaining to be seen. This does not mean that their lives, after resolving various difficulties, are free from worry or trouble. These lovers are men, human beings—sometimes werewolves—with all the pain and joy of being just that. I still see television programs and movies, and read stories, as well, in which the gay characters somehow get left out of permanent relationships. This doesn’t happen as often as it used to, but it still does. Travis, the gay firefighter on Station 19, just can’t seem to have a relationship becomes a permanent story line. Levi and Nico, on Grey’s Anatomy, get together, split up, repeat, and the last time I checked, Levi is now alone, and Nico is gone. But things have changed: the romance, relationship, and wedding of T.K. and Carlos on 9-1-1 Lonestar was, and is, often foregrounded.
But I digress.
The second project is the sequel to In Light’s Shadow (JMS Books, 2022). I haven’t yet decided on a definite title. The working titles include Shadow’s Light, Lights in the Shadows, Finding Raoul, and …. Final title, TBD.
Possible spoilers ahead, if you haven’t read in In Light’s Shadow.
The sequel starts six years after the apocalyptic conclusion of In Light’s Shadow. It’s Samhain 2006 and Torin is flying home to his husband, Gavin, and Cooper Road Community’s celebration, when the community is attacked by die-hard Empire loyalists. He survives to find Gavin has dreamed of Raoul. They manage to “watch” another dream together and learn that that Raoul is not only alive but he is danger. But where is he? Can they find him? What are the risks? The hazards? Can they bring him home? Should they? And Grey and Sophia, where are they? Where is Eleanora, Gavin’s long-missing mother?
So, how did my two projects-at-the-same time work out? Yes, for a while, it did work. One week with the love stories, the next, with Gavin and Torin, in their post-Storm Night world. I made progress. The energy of the two projects fed each other. I liked going from one fictional world to another, the necessary research (which I love), the revisions, and rethinking, the ideas that bubble up as one is deep in a fictional world. Then, life intervened. Pain in my right shoulder got worse and worse. We took a trip to visit relatives in Colorado and New Mexico at the end of April, and I came back to see my physician’s assistant at the UVA Orthopedic Center, who sent me to get an MRI. The result: a torn rotator cuff that needed repairing. Surgery was scheduled for September 14. I had outlined the novel, started on Chapters 1-3. I had started revisions of the stories in the collection.
My husband also wound up needing surgery. His left knee needed to be replaced. That surgery on July 18. He needed looking after.
I decided then the two project plan had to be shelved. I focused on the revisions for they story collection. I hoped at the very least, they would be done before surgery. I just made it. After surgery, with my right arm in a sling for six long, long weeks, I first attempted to write anyway. My surgeon thought that would be okay. He was wrong. For a while, it was just too hard and painful. The first week post-op was a wash: instead of getting ahead of the pain, I wound up chasing and never catching it. Some sleepless nights, more pain meds, which made me sick. Eventually, I got past the pain and managed to transcribe the edits using my left hand. My left hand complained, and I stopped, rested, came back.
To make things even more interesting, we decided to move. My husband and I have talking for over a year about needing a bigger place. We liked where we were, Stone Creek Village, just outside of Charlottesville, VA, but the rents were going up and up. My husband reads Zillow like he reads a magazine, and he started looking. We knew we had to go away from Charlottesville, and starting looking in Crozet, about 13 miles further west. We thought we had found a place there, but it fell through. But then, unexpectedly, in late October, he found a townhouse in Crozet. We loved it. Yes, it was insane to move and recuperate from two surgeries but we thought if we don’t, we would regret it.
Eventually, I two more rounds of revisions for The Great Forest, and sent the book to an editor, who has it now. I took a deep breath and I picked up the novel, read through what I had, and did some serious thinking about pacing and the necessity of complications. I got to work on rewriting the first chapter and just finished it. Chapter 2 awaits. As I write this, I realized that I needed to change one more thing in Chapter 1 …. There were other writing projects in 2023, of course. I entered an annual flash fiction contest. My story, “Silver Rising,” didn’t win, place, or show, but I was so taken with the idea and the two characters, Oliver and Geoffrey, I decided to write a full-length short story, which is now in The Great Forest. And the occasional poems, and meditations and reflections in my journal.
My right shoulder is a lot better. No sling, glory hallelujah. Physical therapy. My right arm told me quickly it wasn’t crazy about all this exercise. I’m dealing with it; the book is moving forward. So, what does this tell me? It’s more that what I knew was reinforced. Writing is essential for me. It is a matter of self. And life is complicated, to say the very least
Post 3
May 22, 2023: Some Thoughts on Jewels of Darkover, edited by Deborah Ross
The title of the latest Darkover anthology, Jewels of Darkover, is aptly fitting. One opens up this collection of short stories, all inspired by the Darkover series, to find a box of jewels. Inside, of course, are the blue matrices, or starstones that helps those gifted with laran to use their powers. Readers will find other gems inside: some golden and dark, others small and rare, some set in necklaces, others, the colors of flames. Readers will find treasures.
The range of the stories here is remarkable. For example,”Golden Eyes” is set about a hundred years after the first humans come to the planet. The protagonist of “Little Mouse” is a young blind woman who borrows the eyes of mice. Other protagonists include woman of the Sisterhood of the Sword, a man and a woman, strangers to each other, marrying to preserve their families. One story is told by a woman of a certain age. And not all protagonists are human.
Somewhat at random, I wanted to go into more detail about two stories in this rich jewel box. I hav easily selected two different ones. “Pebbles,” by Rhondi Salsitz, introduces Paulin, a twelve-year-old poor boy, an orphan, and a double minority on Darkover: brown-skinned, and the grandson of a Terran. His one friend, Tyrmera, is a Traveler, another outsider on Darkover. But Paulin, is Comyn, and gifted with laran. His gift is the ability to hear voices from the future, a rare gift, if not a unique on, and thus the Comyn want him as one of theirs. But what does Paulin want? And others–do they want him, or what he represents? Can this boy and his friend, both outsiders, find a place on Darkover? “Berry-Thorn,” Berry-Thorn, by Leslie Fish, has a nonhuman protagonist, Toshmi, a Kyrri, and like Paulin and Tyrmera, another outsider. Something is happening. Toshmi leads other Kyrri to find out what’s going on, and, if necessary to stop this “great work.” But what is at stake, for Toshmi, for the kyrri, for Darkover itself?
Darkover fans, take note. Jewels await you.
And other note: sadly, this is the 20th, and apparently the last, Darkover anthology. There will be other Darkover novels, Arilinn, by Debrah Ross is forthcoming. But such tales, from the many writers who find inspiration under the red sun, alas, no.
Post 2, June 2022
My fifth novel, In Light’s Shadow: A Fairy Tale, is forthcoming and will be released on September 3, 2022, by JMS Books, LLC. This novel has been a long time coming. It had its genesis in a 2003 short story, “The Golden Boy,” published in The Silver Gryphon, eds. Gary Turner and Marty Halpern, by the late and lamented Golden Gryphon Press, in 2003. “The Golden Boy” was a finalist for the 2004 Spectrum Award for Short Fiction.
And here it is, 2022, and the novel based on this short story is due out in a few months. The story was well received. Gary Turner, the publisher of Golden Gryphon Press, suggested I turn it into a novel. So I did. I started sending out The Golden Boy no later 2007. By 2022, The Golden Boy had been sent to thirteen different presses. Yes, thirteen. The responses ranged from nothing, not even an acknowledgment of receipt, to a long and detailed letter. Each time the novel, I edited and revised–and often, when it came back, more editing and revising.
Now, you may be wondering how it took 15 years to get to print. Life sort of intervened. Harvest of Changelings came out in 2007, its sequel, The Called, in 2010, from Golden Gryphon Press. Not longer that, Golden Gryphon had to close its doors. I did get the press’s logo tattooed on my left shoulder. The Werewolf and His Boy was published by Samhain Press in 2016–and sadly, a year or so later, Samhain closed its doors. Small independent presses all too often don’t have long lifespans. But, that said, of the thirteen to which I sent The Golden Boy–and I did not send it to Golden Gryphon or Samhain–eleven still seem to be alive and well.
In addition to sending various incarnations in the past 15 years, I was busy teaching at the University of Mary Washington, which had its own academic writing demands, and the lesson plans, conferences, classes, and all the rest. Sometimes the book just sat there. Then, ahhh, I’d try again. And again.
Then came 2020, another revision, out to Mirror World in Windsor, Ontario, three chapters, a request for the rest, and then, a long, thoughtful, and detailed rejection letter explaining why, with suggestion for improvement. All right …. but 2020 intervened. I was already on track for retirement, then the pandemic, going online to teach, moving from Fredericksburg to Charlottesville, and finally in 2021, I got back to the novel. A revision. Then, my extraordinary friend and free-lance editor, Ellen McQueen, went to work on The Golden Boy.
Now here we are, with a new title, In Light’s Shadow: A Fairy Tale, and a signed contract with JMS Books, whom I contacted to re-release The Werewolf and His Boy in 2020. The golden boy is still alive and well, but over the years, some things have changed, and Gavin Bookers is a far more active hero. The novel is about him, and about their relationship, as it evolves from their boyhood to adulthood in a dystopian world. The motifs of light and dark, shadow and light, multicolored lights, are sharper, and more vivid.
I hope you like the novel.
Post 1, January 2022
If you are reading this post, then my website, Kingdom of Joria (https://kingdomofjoria.com) has gone live.
Welcome.
This is my second website. The first I created with the assistance of Jim Groom, former head of DTLT, at the University of Mary Washington. Well, more like I assisted him. For various and boring reasons, that website has been buried in a local cyber graveyard. Thank you, Jim!
Here, you will find descriptions of and excerpts from my published fiction, cover art, and buy links. There is a calendar of upcoming events, as they are scheduled. Also, you will find a writer’s bio and contact information.
I want to thank Digital Learning Support’s amazingShannon Hauser and Jerry Slezak. Without their support, hands-on assistance, and troubleshooting, and answering questions, I could not have constructed this website. I want to especially thank Shannon, who directly shepherded me through this process.
So, what can you expect to find here in these occasional posts? Raves and rants, reflections and musings on writing–my writing and the writing of others, for starters. Thoughts on storytelling and the craft of writing, on language, on metaphor. On science fiction and fantasy, on fairytale and folklore, especially gay-themed science fiction and fantasy, as this is mostly what I write. Gay SF and fantasy I see as rhetorical acts, and ongoing arguments for their inherent value, their essential nature, their truths,
Yes, I know not to expect a large audience, or an audience period, especially not at first.
So be it. Thanks for stopping by.
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Kingdom of Joria 