Raccciman’s World

Went to my in person crit group today, and listened to comments on Chapter 2 of Talking With Winds. The chapter is very slight, and they pointed this out. They wanted conflict, but I don't see any conflict to be had there, it's just a “jumping straight into the next bit felt wrong so I have a little connecting material here” chapter. Maybe I can introduce some tension by having Samanth talk about fighting Trolls, and maybe have her discussing what problems her people might be going through? Or maybe when read in a chunk with one and three it's fine pretty much as it is. I dunno.

The revised chapter one is up on critters this week. So far I have two responses, but I haven't managed to get around to reading them yet. I still have to do *my* critters critting too.

I sent “Dark Moon Light” back to the editor who has seen it three times before already. (No, not bunch of tweaks called for, just one straightforward re-submission with permission after revisions, and a bit of a comedy of errors in the loosing of manuscripts department.)

I critted some stuff.
I did some research into markets, but need to do more.

Nobody at Chymera has gotten back to me on “Princess of Waves” yet. 🙁

Boyd watched me put up my Prince of Winds image and was moved to comment that when I was done I should find some way to get the Viashi cards professionally published with rules for a variety of games to go along with.
Naturally I've been thinking that very thing for a decade or so, but I'm the dreamer. It was nice to have the sensible one suggesting it.

Rules for the games already invented can be found at my Writer's Website, in the World Notes for Racciman's World.

At long last, the latest addition to my Viashi deck, the Prince of Winds.
His borders were created using PhotoShop Essentials instead of PhotoStudio,
and are much nicer. Obviously I will eventually need to upgrade all the card borders to match.

(Check out the Viashi Page in my Writer's Sketchbook for a link to the full sized image.)

I haven't really been neglecting my writing as completely as it looks. (No blog entries for a month. Oops!)
I've been trying to collect reader comments on Talking With Winds, and I've been doing a bit of critting myself. Also I wrote a short story and entered it in a contest for Julie Czerneda's newsgroup at sffnet. I came in fourth place! I even won something. (I'm not sure what, exactly, a used PDA, supposedly. That's what the contest was for, it was an excuse to give away some PDAs the the owners didn't need anymore.) My entry was called “Princess of Waves”. It takes place in Racciman's World, and is based on the Viashi Cards.

Here's the picture for Harp & Gyre I have been working on.

I've done 8 out of nine God cards, and I'm leaving it there, due to wardrobe problems. I'm not entirely happy with them, but I figure I'll do a better job of redoing the ones I don't like, if I finish the rest of the set first. So I've moved on to the first card in the white suit: The Priestess

Here's god card 7. It's the sixth one I've done, because I had to skip 6 for now, because I couldn't find the right clothes for God 6.

I'm working on artwork for my Viashi deck, (the cards I invented for Racciman's World) for no particular good reason that I can think of. Well, I know what inspired me — my mother in law came over and Ben wanted to teach her the card game he had invented for the Viashi deck, and I mentioned that there were supposed to be pictures, not just colored borders on the cards. But there's no *reason* to be making the artwork. The odds that I will actually ever get a deck of cards printed up with them is miniscule. 54 pieces of artwork is way too big a project. I might actually get the God Cards done, though.

Here's the first one…

Word Count: 8311

Was reading comments on Talking with Winds.
'Too generic, if you want to sell it you are going to have to insert something unique.'
I could make fairly major changes to Cantata and all it took was a bit of thinking to see what would fit. But they were changes because the story was obviously broken, and I knew it was in trouble while I was writing it, and I hardly had to change anything in the first half to fix it, either. Trying to come up with a change to make to “fix” a story that isn't inherently broken sounds… less doable.

Besides, for me the delight of Racciman's World has always been the “generic done right” aspect of it. There is a *reason* why there are elves and humans and dwarves and etc. There's even a reason why they all speak the same language. Samanth's talent isn't supposed to reveal animals that, because the linguistic barrier has been breached, now sound just like humans — but animals whose communications are realistically limited to actual animal communications. I can't do “generic done right” without also being generic.
So maybe Song of Asolde will never be published. Or maybe it will only be published after I've made a name for myself with other books. I dunno, but at the moment I'm very dubious that I will be able to add in some gimick to make it more publishable without, for me, ruining what is the point of the whole thing.

Next question. Is Eyes sufficiently “un-generic” to get published?
Once again, I'm playing with standard genre conventions… although in a different genre.

I *like* reading typical stuff done well, I don't, as a reader demand something usual or unique in every book. I read *regencies* for heaven's sake, where I go… “Oh look, another wife won in a card game plot,” or “oh look, another gentlewoman forced into business plot” and so forth. It's the details and the quality of the writing and so forth that make the book worth reading, not some new “gimick”. I mean, gimicks are cool when you meet them and they work, but I get tired of the “gimick of the month club”. And you, know, I think there's a bit of a scarcity of straight forward gimickless adventure coming out. Whenever I think I've found one I seem to discover that it's been gimicked with some new form of ickyness. “S&M sex, hey, that ought to sell… child abuse — that's a good twist.” Gack! It makes me think maybe I'd rather buy another Burroughs than risk anything new.

At least Cantata doesn't strike anyone as being generic.
But I would rather not find myself writing *only* Cantata type stories. I like more variety than that.