Miami Beach

In the first Wilk adventure I wrote, ‘The Dictator’s Children,’ I have Wilk spending part of the novel in southern Florida, in Naples and in Miami, though the home base of the narrative is Havana and there is a foray into the fictional Central American nation of El Plantio. All this takes place in 1948. The pictures here are postcards of Miami scenes from the period.

The two hotels are much like the fictional Hibiscus in which some of the action is set—a smaller hotel, three stories, in the Art Deco style, and on the beach. One could imagine the Hibiscus looking like either the Pelican or Somerset here. In pink. We never get much of a look at the outside; either the action is at night or indoors.

But it is nice to have some idea of the appearance. The third postcard is Lincoln Road, the swank shopping area. Wilk and Elena Guzman stroll up the street (in a bit of a lull before the storm) and purchase Beretta handguns in one of the stores. Those come in useful very soon after!

Incidentally, the Pelican is still there on Ocean Drive, though more closed in by its neighbors now.

A note: I probably will not write about writing much at this blog from here out, but focus on the books and stories, the characters and world building. I’ll save the thoughts on writing for my Eggshell Boats blog (eggshellboats.com).

Real Places, Fictional Places

Many of my stories are set, in part or whole, in Florida. This is not necessarily the ‘real’ Florida nor do they all visit the same fictional version of the state. Scenes in the Wilk novel ‘The Dictator’s Children,’ for example, do take place in the real Naples Florida. I attempted to keep the narrative and description historically accurate—the tale is set in 1948—but was willing to bend or invent as needed for the story.

It may be noted that the Women in the Sun novels, written under the pen name Sienna Santerre, are set in that same Naples but the details vary to fit a different fictional timeline. There are definite parallels between the two; indeed, I originally thought to tie the two series together but chose to go with a completely different vision of Naples. The decision to use the pen name brought a final division between the two.

My Shaper novels are set in a fictional Cully Beach Florida, a place that draws from a number of Atlantic coast towns but especially from Flagler Beach. It is not Flagler, however! It is Cully Beach and exists in its own fictional space. These novels are set in the same Florida as my novel ‘The Middle of Nowhere’ and a number of my short stories.

The Ruby of ‘Middle’ is somewhat loosely based on Steinhatchee Florida. Again, it is not Steinhatchee, nor are the neighboring towns the same, though they have resemblances. I ‘flipped’ a few of the locations there. The town of Genoa, from which some of my characters hail in this version of Florida, is pretty much a disguised Naples. But I also visit real places around the state in the stories—including White Springs to attend the Florida Folk Festival in the Cully Beach novel ‘Smoke.’

‘Asanas,’ the first (but I hope, not only) Tamarind novel, is set in yet another, different Florida. The town of Tamarind is completely fictional, though nearby Leawood is, in part, based on Englewood. But there is also something of Fort Myers Beach to it, and certainly other places I know. As with Ruby, I flipped some of the geography. Most of the places around it are real Florida locations; I invented nothing beyond the Tamarind area itself, aside from Karen’s ‘farm’ on an invented lake somewhere north of Sebring. There are a whole lot of lakes there! I will admit that Consonante Springs and its spa/hotel is loosely based on Bonita Springs, which is located quite a bit further south. And the Hot Dog Stand derives from a beach-side restaurant in faraway Keaton Beach.

I’ve done somewhat the same sorts of things in my novel set in southern Ohio, ‘These Remembered Hills.’ I’ve moved things about just a tad in the Hocking Hills region where the tale is set—not any towns or such, but the valley where the Fry farm is located. That is based on a very real place.

I am entirely likely to draw from a hodgepodge of remembered places and events when writing my stories, mixing them up and altering them to best fit. There is no need to stick strictly to the facts in a work of fiction, as long as the result is believable and consistent. Then the world we create is just as ‘real’ as that of our everyday lives.

Yet, if we name a real place and get some detail wrong, there will be those to pick at it. This is a pretty good argument in favor of changing the names. I’ve no doubt someone will see something in my versions of Naples that they think is not quite correct. I myself have found things in stories set there. Like getting the dry and rainy seasons reversed! If it doesn’t hurt the story, it’s no big deal, but major blunders can impact our willingness to believe.

Ultimately, any setting is fictional, no matter how closely it is modeled on reality. It comes from the author’s mind and it is for the author to make it seem real. Tamarind and Cully Beach must be places the reader can believe exist, places where they can live for a few hours. The same is true of ‘my’ Naples.

But the goal is not to make the reader see those places as I see them. It is to let them see as the characters see. That is the final step to making it real.

Beast Men

The ‘beast men’ Malvern and his band of Mora encounter in ‘Valley of Visions’ are probably what some call heidelbergensis—the stock that split to become Neanderthals, Densisovans, and modern humans. I say ‘probably’ because they exist in another world and, even if their ancestors came from this one, there could be considerable change and interbreeding over the several hundred thousand years since.

The mighty sorcerer Hurasu named them the First Children. Early in his long life in Exura, he lived for a while among them and fathered offspring. That he could should be expected; if moderns and Neanderthals were mutually fertile, then so should be those from whom both are descended.

By the time of the novel, a small tribe lives in a high mountain valley, the ‘Shrouded Valley,’ somewhat under Hurasu’s protection. Are there other First Children elsewhere in Exura? It would seem likely but we’ve seen none in my other books. Of course, they definitely exist ‘elsewhere’ in infinite existence.

Physically, they look little different from us. Except for their heads—there, the heavier brow, the lower brain-case, the lack of chin, mark them as another people. But perhaps our own species, none the less? If Neanderthals are Homo sapiens, then so would be heidelbergensis. I’ll leave that for others to argue. But they are intelligent, perhaps little less so than we, on average.

We encounter quite another sort of primitive human in ‘Warrior of the Moon.’ These, living on a somewhat remote jungled island, are some variety of Homo erectus. They seem much less ‘human’ than the First Children, though still recognizable as such. I made no mention of language (Um-um-um, the First Children girl who attaches herself to Malvern’s band, chatters constantly) but suspect they have some. They also have the typical tools and skill sets of erectus, though they use them to unfriendly ends when others visit their home!

As an aside, though I’ve not said so outright (in the fiction), it is implied that dwarfs and trolls are at least partially Neanderthal in ancestry. Those Neanderthal (and possibly Denisovan, as well) ancestors would have passed from our world to Exura via the gate in the Ural Mountains. As would pretty much any land-dwelling animal (except birds, to be sure) up until sea-going vessels appeared and the Pacific Gate became a viable portal for humans and whatever animals they might carry with them.

By the time of ‘The Walls Between the Worlds,’ set some two thousand years after Malvern’s adventures, the Shrouded Valley is empty of the First Children. The encroachment of civilization, of modern humans, made it no longer a safe haven. Did they find their way to other, more isolated refuges? That is not something I have explored, as it has little bearing on any of my stories, finished or still in progress. But maybe we’ll find some of that folk again somewhere. Exura is pretty large world.

Asak’s Dogs

The Hounds of Asak that appear in THE SONG OF THE SWORD are related—but not identical—to the hounds kenneled by the cult of Dekata in northeastern Lorj. The beasts that attack Donzalo are not from his world, but drawn from another by the sorcerer Radal. From Asak’s realm itself, perhaps, though Asak would have little interest in raising such creatures.

The goddess Dekata might, and she dwells in that same world as her father, the world of the Ildin gods. Those hounds from another world could have any origin. There might even be divine blood somewhere in their ancestry (deities are known to have sex with just about anything). It is certain that blood is shared by the packs of both world. Someone would have taken one or more of the dogs through a gate, one direction or the other. Or both; there could well have been breeding back and forth. But the Dekatan dogs of Exura, the world of Donzalo and much of my other fantasy fiction, are much more like the canines we know—ultimately and simply, dogs.

Thus, it is not surprising that Marana befriends a couple and takes them home with her at the conclusion of THE JEWELS OF THE ELEMENTS. The heritage of those dogs is spread widely over the centuries to come. I suspect some of it is to be found in the ‘warden dogs’ of Count Mussago, including the one named King he gifts to Donzalo’s son.

As to the Dekatan kennels, it is likely the dogs there were dispersed after the Great Devastation, and their lineage melded into that of other breeds. And, now and again, those pale green eyes that mark that heritage would show up and make their owners wonder.

Conlang

The language I dubbed Zikem in my fantasy novels is a double conlang (constructed language), in a sense. That is, not only did I create it but it is a language the sorcerer Hurasu created for his subjects (much as did Sauron for his orc minions).

Neither it nor any of the other languages that appear in my books—whether or not they are part of the Annals of Izan mythos—is a fully realized conlang. I have neither the interest nor time to create one. There is more to Zikem than any other I’ve introduced; some are no more than a few words, with no hint as to structure (I’m not necessarily sure about that myself). Some of the tongues are rooted in languages we know in our world, as most of the folk of Exura are descended from individuals who passed from one world to the other. Some languages, to be sure, are much further from those roots than others.

The closest to its origin would be the tongue of the Mora, whose Polynesian ancestors passed through a portal only centuries earlier. Though there has been some mixing in their new world, the old language survives in something fairly close to the Polynesian dialects of today. I wouldn’t label it a constructed language at all. There is, of course, drift in pronunciations and it is not identical to anything their Polynesian relatives might speak now. I attempted to keep it from hewing to closely to any of these and keep the Mora’s exact origin unknown (though Tahiti or the Marquessas might be good guesses).

As for the rest, there are traces of Turkic languages, and Proto-Indo-European, and Basque, among others; these would all have been spoken by those who passed through the gate between the Urals and the large island know as Nagi. The other portal is on the other side of the world, in the South Pacific, so we get a variety of Oceanic languages from which to borrow.

And, to be sure, there are languages that have no relation to those of our world. Those spoken by the various fay, trolls, demons, and so on originated in very different universes. These have little effect on the human languages but inevitably a word has been picked up here and there.

But Zikem: being an invented language, like Esperanto, it is quite regular and logical in it construction. Hurasu chose not to use words from his own native language (spoken in the world of Atlantis) but borrowed from languages he learned when he sojourned for some three centuries in our world. In particular, many words derive from Etruscan. He chose to do so because he did not wish to draw the attention of anyone from his own universe, the world he had fled. This was probably wise.

Not surprisingly, Zikem changed over the millennia after he taught it to his people. The sorcerer could do no more than shrug over that; languages will drift. That is true of all the languages in the stories. We can not expect the Muram of the Donzalo’s Destiny tetralogy to be the same as that of the Devastation books, set some thirteen hundred years earlier. This is a good excuse for not bothering with fully-formed conlangs. Moreover, there are going to be all sorts of local dialects that develop. It’s best just to suggest these things rather than trying to work them out in detail.

It is unlikely I shall ever go into much more detail with any of these languages. A new word now and again, in keeping with those already coined, should suffice—I might enjoy these aspects of world building but writing the stories does take precedence.

Soft Magic, Hard Magic

Fantasy fiction typically uses either a soft or hard system of magic (with, to be sure, overlap). Soft magic is pretty much without any firm rules or explanations, as in Tolkien or Rowling, where hard magic may have quite strict rules, as in Sanderson. This does not mean the mechanisms of hard magic need be explained; the wielders of it may have only empirical knowledge—they know this works and that doesn’t.

However, there is type of hard magic which can be explained. I like to call this scientific magic because it truly is science rather than magic as we usually understand the term. Some claim taking the mystery out of magic ruins fantasy, turning it into a sort of science fictions. I understand this. I also know that I like to know why and how things work, so my magic has solid ‘scientific’ underpinnings. That still leaves a lot of room for the truly magical, the enigmatic, the not understood (except by the author!).

The magic of my main fantasy sequence, the whole Annals of Izan into which most of my fantasy novels fit, is scientific. It is based on the concept of infinite worlds and the ability (hereditary in humans) to access them by physically entering them—in part. One can never move entirely from one to another unless one is a god or travels via a portal. I’ll admit to having had a fairly rudimentary system when I wrote the first Donzalo’s Destiny novels but the basic ideas have remained in place. They have only been expanded and refined, and never contradict the mechanisms I created then.

Have I written using soft magic? Sure, some of my short stories do not attempt to follow any rules at all or perhaps I should say they follow the traditions of myth and fairy tale. Invisibility? Why not a cloak to hide beneath, as in Harry Potter, and not explain how it works? In most of my novels, however, such a cloak could not work nor even exist (although somewhere in the infiniverse, of course, it would). I would say something like the wizard pulled shadow from another world to hide himself (not all that well, sometimes!). Easier is borrowing smoke or fog, but also rather obvious and not invisibility at all.

Logical, even scientific, rules set boundaries for the author. There are things the characters can do and things they can not, and we must work with that. No easy outs! I have nothing at all against soft magic systems, as long as they aren’t simple laziness. I won’t complain about Gandalf mouthing spells, even if we have no idea of how they work. I won’t complain about Le Guin’s ‘naming’ magic in the Earthsea books; that magic’s a little harder but there is no real explanation of why knowing a name gives one power. And the supernatural does impinge on those books, as when Ged pursues the dying child’s soul. I carefully avoid any souls, ghosts, or anything of that sort. All the magic is physical, there are no spirits, and even the gods don’t know if there might be an afterlife.

But then, if there are infinite worlds with infinite possibilities, we would have to continue to physically exist ‘somewhere.’ Or infinite somewheres! A resurrection of the body, to borrow a Christian concept. If so, neither the wizards nor the gods of my tales know where it is. Nor do I ever intend for them to—it is enough to stick with the magic I have created and keep away from that sort of thing.

Hemlock Map

Although I did not include it in the book, I created a simple map of the Hemlock Creek Valley for my mystery novel These Remembered Hills. This was, to be sure, as much to help me visualize and keep track of locations as anything else. The approximate locations of the Sever Caves and the Fry and Bone farms are shown but not the contour of the hills. The Pell apple orchards would probably be located on the east (right) edge of the map if included. This invented valley is loosely based on a real one in the Hocking Hills, where I spent part of my childhood.

Zombies

I am not a fan of the ‘modern’ zombie—the version largely based on those that appeared in Romero’s ground-breaking horror film, “The Night of the Living Dead.” These are not controlled by anyone, the way the classic zombie was, but are simply reanimated dead with their own agenda. Typically, that agenda is to eat us.

That is the zombie variant seen in the long-running and popular “The Walking Dead” series. Typically, some sort of disease or other natural cause is cited and the zombies may or may not actually have returned from the dead. As an aside, I’ll mention I did not like the Walking Dead show, at least in part because of the atrocious ‘science.’

In folklore, the zombie is—usually—controlled by some sort of sorcerer. This zombie is not necessarily a reanimated corpse. It can be a living human controlled via drugs and/or hypnosis, but with no will of its own it may certainly seem without life. This is the zombie of Haitian legend though similar incarnations of the concept are found in many cultures.

I’ve never used it in any of my fiction, though there is no reason why I could not. I’ve nothing against it nor even the flesh-eating zombies of the more modern sort. There has been no occasion and, honestly, no particular desire. I have, however, dropped a variety of zombie into a couple stories. This is the possessed corpse.

No, not possessed by a demon. That wouldn’t work with the magical system of my main fantasy world. Spirits of any sort do not exist. What is possible is for a powerful wizard to send a physical part of themselves into a body and control it. Clumsily, perhaps, but they do become its brain. This would involve sending themselves through another world and back again—something requiring great skill and power. It is also dangerous to mesh ones consciousness with that of a decaying body; one could become ‘trapped’ after a fashion. Not permanently, to be sure, as one is always pulled back from other worlds after a time (all things are). But it could be decidedly unpleasant and maybe even damaging to one.

I first used this idea in the second Malvern novel, “Valley of Visions.” There the body of the slain warlord Ko is reanimated by a wizard in an attempt to keep his army together. It is decidedly demoralizing when the old soldier simply falls apart while strutting before his troops! I returned to it in the recent “The Plain of Silver.” There we have an assassin zombie controlled from some distance by a malevolent sorcerer. Of course, I’m not going to tell you how successful it was in its attack, but it certainly did disrupt the wedding of Viscountess Fachalana and Sir Blen. Its stench didn’t help things.

The zombie is not to be confused with any variant on the vampire, which has also never appeared in my novels. Chances are, it never will—there are plenty of other, more sensible menaces I can come up with. I’ll admit, however, that a vampire sprite flitted into one of my short stories. That had nothing to do with my primary fantasy world so we can ignore it.