Seeking Answers at the Ends of the Earth

Time for another creative challenge! Take a look at the image below:

Source

I love pinning images like this on Pinterest. It's from my "Landscapes for Inspiration"  board. These kinds of pictures get my creative juices flowing. I always stop and think, what kind of story would take place in this picture?

So, you tell me. What do you think is happening in this scene?

Here's my take: A man is travelling into a dangerous, magical place to get answers. It's accessible only by water, and he's paddling into a darkness he can't comprehend... This could actually work well in my Dragon Magic story. Eventually, many volumes from now, one of my characters will go on a journey, seeking something specific. He'll travel nearly to the ends of the world to find it. This could be him. His name is Gadrin.

How about you? What story would you tell about this image?

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Elana Johnson's Blogfest: Never Surrender

In honor of Elana Johnson's newest book, Surrender, the second installment of Possession, she's hosting a blog fest in which each blogger need only post about a time when they didn't surrender.

The experience I had was actually very recent. My debut novel will be out this fall and I have just gone into the cover art phase of the process.  Prior to that, of course, was editing. One thing my editor really wanted me to change was my title. I decided to call the book Persistence of Vision. This is a physics term.  It means something that you continue to see, even when it's gone. It's like when you look at the sun, then close your eyes and you can see a purple sun against the insides of your eyelids.  What you see is an after-image. The phenomenon of seeing it is called Persistence of Vision.

I used this term because in my story, Maggie Harper loses a year of her memories in a mysterious accident. Yet, there are things from that year that keep coming back to her, specific memories of a particular man. It's not possible for her to remember these things--they aren't in her head anymore--yet somehow she still does.  Thus begins the romance, adventure, mystique and all-around awesomeness of Maggie's journey.

This is the first book in a futuristic, dystopian fantasy series, and I'd wanted to name each installment after a similar scientific phenomenon that the characters encounter. These are fun to mess around with because my books aren't 'hard' science fiction. They focus much more on the characters and their emotional experiences than on technology or socioeconomic agendas. These phenomena, then, can work on many levels in the story: one for the phenomenon itself; another for the way the characters experience/apply it emotionally; and yet another one for the way it figures in the plot. It's perfect!

My editors didn't like the title. They said that when they mentioned the title to people who had no background information about the book (story, genre, etc.), most people thought it was a non-fiction Christian living book.

Well, no offense to my editors, but I don't think this was a fair test. The people they 'experimented' on with the title were those they worked with. (a.k.a. people who work for a company that publishes mostly Christian-themed books). They are bound to have certain prejudices. Besides, there's the cover to consider, and I don't think many people will walk into the fiction section of the bookstore, pick up a novel from the scifi/fantasy section and go, "Hmm. I wonder if this is a nonfiction Christian living book..."

Anyway, long story short, I fought for my title and got to keep it. As the book won't be out for a few more months, I have yet to experience any validation, but I'm glad I fought for my title. I will be able to do the series the way I want to, now, and I think the titles will make the story richer and more satisfying.

That's right: Never Surrender! ;D

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Bloody History and Frying Pans Part 2

Thanks to everyone who read and hazarded guesses as to which evil ruler I was thinking of. No one guessed it, yet, so I'm going to give you another post with some more clues. I'm participating in Elana Johnson's blogfest, so that post will go up tomorrow, but if no one's guessed it by Thursday, I'll tell you who he is, I promise.

The clues I'm going to give you today will be more specific, and yet not. They come in the form of a poem I wrote when I was in college. I learned about this dictator from a college history course and became fascinated with him. At the same time, I was also taking a poetry class. And you write what you know, right?  So anyway, here's the poem. It has enough cultural words that you may be able to figure him out more easily. Good luck!

(BTW, I named the poem after the ruler, so I'm totally not giving you the title. That would be an extremely blond move on my part!) :D

Lightning strikes the Kremlin Wall
A baby wails at birth.
Learns survival, climbs through intrigue, hides in deceit
The infant cries

Village-pillage; innocent-ravage
Young animals on spikes
The child laughs

Love. Matrimony.
Tranquility is almost skin deep.
Loss is rage, rage is frenzied brutality.
The building blocks of Red Square bleed.

Games of torture--play in Novgorod
Bodies swim through red water
The River is clogged.
Oiled frying pans and human skewers
Blood and steam and death and heat
The man laughs.

War against foe.
War against friend.
There is no friend or foe, only war.
The autocrat kills.

Son follows father.
Anger begets anger begets death.
Death of the royal line, by the king's own hand.
The father mourns.

No heir--will be the Trouble of the Times
The Tsar breathes harder.

Pieces in motion on a pious chessboard.
And the man dies.
                             --LKHill

That's it! Any more guesses?

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