Monthly Archives: October 2014

What More About Villains?

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Imaginary History, Narrative Methods, Villains

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Dear Readers,

Happy Halloween! This is a great holiday for people interested in fantasy and adventure. After all, you’ve got witches, ghouls, vampires, and even a Headless Horseman– villains!6960244159_7f66a0d317_z

(Or just children in really great costumes.)

And speaking of villains, we will.

In our last, we talked in a general way about our villains– Frenchmen and other. Now, we want to talk more specifically about Other.

Because Terra Australis is based upon the real Antarctica, the idea of cold, in some form,  was a ready influence. And so, there appeared the Atuk, the servants of a god who embodies cold. This led us to imagine what they might look like. At first, we thought perhaps something like Inuit: all furs and big boots and slitted wooden sunscreens. And that might be an idea for the next book, Empire of the Isles. Here are a couple of those possibilities:

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For Across the Doubtful Sea, however, we decided to imagine what they might look like underneath those wintry clothes. For models, we chose an extreme contrast– Ottoman Turkish and Persian– like the images below.

ottomanboss      ottoman_empire_2_by_byzantinum

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With them in costume, we wondered what they would sound like. What would their names be like? Would they speak a language like the Inupiat of our original models, or something Turkic or Persian?

For now, however, imagine dressing as one of the fearsome Atuk for next Halloween…

Thanks, as always, for reading, and save some candy corn for us!

MTCIDC,

CD

What About Villains?

24 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in Imaginary History, Narrative Methods, Villains

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Dear Readers,

Villains– a big question, and something which needs more than one post.

There are so many kinds, from Sauron to the Joker. All of them, however, produce friction– that which produces problems and demands solutions. As well, it allows for heroes to be defined and to define themselves.

For this series, we have two kinds of villains so far: those native to our hero’s homeland and those who are entirely alien to everything our 18th century understands. The former include corrupt officials within the royal government, and the latter, those who might appear human, but who also have powers over nature which seem superhuman.

Corrupt officials are pretty easy to create– they’re everywhere, but we believe that we’ve given ours an extra twist. As for the others, we’ll talk about those in our next post…

Thanks for reading,

MTCIDC,

CD

Terra Australis?

14 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Imaginary History, Terra Australis

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Dear Readers,

What about Terra Australis?

Why write about a parallel 18th century world instead of the real one?

Certainly, we’re not against doing research in our world to use in that other world we’re creating. In fact, we very much enjoy it. The historical 18th century provides physical structure– real ships, period technology, even period ideas, upon which we can build. Thus, we take real places like England and France, and real political situations, like the struggle between France and England. Then we add something theoretical from the 18th century– Terra Australis, and we make it (selectively) real.

We say selectively real because, on the one hand, we’ve based it on the actual Antarctica, but, on the other, we’ve changed its climate and we’ve populated it. We have made much of it green, and only some parts, ice. By doing this, we have generated a strong plot element: why is this place, Terra Australis, cold in one place and warm in another? Is it possible that someone or something creates that cold? And, if so, are we on our way to mystery and villains?

MTCIDC,

CD

Where Did We Go From There?

09 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in Imaginary History, Terra Australis

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Dear Readers,

Terra Australis. Although this looks like it might be Australia, and the name Australia comes from it, in the earlier years of the 18th century, it wasn’t. Instead, it was another continent thought to be in the far south, where our Antarctica is. The idea for such a continent was as old as Aristotle. His idea was that, because there was a northern landmass, there should be an equal one to the south.

In our fictional world, Terra Australis really is a continent in the south. Unlike Antarctica, it is not totally covered in ice and snow– but some areas are. Why this is so forms part of the story of our series of three novels. Here are three images to give you an idea where we started. The first, as you can see, is a very old map, and it imagines Terra Australis the way Aristotle must have.

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The second and third are maps of our Antarctica– but imagine it without those huge ice fields, and you can see the rock underneath. Our Terra Australis is founded upon the rock of Antarctica.

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MTCIDC!

Thank you for reading,

CD

Beginning(s)

07 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Writing as Collaborators

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Dear Readers, 

We didn’t start out to be co-authors. In fact, we were going to study English and American Poetry and the writing of it. So we sat in Barnes and Noble, surrounded by books and the roar of the coffee machine, and read poems and talked about them. Then, one day, quite early on, D said to C (out of the blue), “I’d like to write a novel about something new, something I don’t know anything about.” Without thinking, C said, “South Seas exploration in the 18th century. Do you know anything about that?” 

And that’s the moment we became collaborators.

And that’s the moment when we both realized that neither one of us knew much of anything about south seas exploration in the 18th century. It meant research, and lots of it, not only about the south seas, but about the 18th century maritime world, among other subjects.  

We also wanted to write fantasy/adventure/romance: how could we combine our research-to-come with that desire?

And then we discovered Terra Australis. 

MTCIDC,

CD

A Bit More

02 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in Terra Australis, Writing as Collaborators

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Dear Readers,

In our first blog posting, we spoke a little about what we’re doing and intending, but now we want to add to that a little more about our first projects. As we said in our first, we are joint-explorers of adventure fiction, writing about exploration in a parallel 18th-century world. To heroes drawn from the French and English navies of the period, we have heroines whom we’ve created from elements of fantasy and South Pacific culture, with our goal the addition of more fierce and able women to the world  of fantasy/adventure fiction.  The books are in English, of course, but include names based upon Polynesian models for heroines and the world around them, and upon the languages of the far north for their opponents, the strange, silent Atuk and their god, Haleiheia Teiheifata, “he who drinks breath, is twisted in cold” (as their enemies call him).

To create this new parallel, our work combines research into the actual (well, one actual) 18th-century and its ideas about the ocean to the west of South America and about what they believed to be a continent-of-balance far to the south (Antarctica in our world, in fact). We have also had to teach ourselves as much as we needed about the complex world of 18th-century naval technology, as well as about the history of Polynesian culture and colonization of the Pacific. In coming blogs, we’ll discuss that research and provide some bibliography and links for anyone who would like to follow us–and we hope that there will be many. 

And, because we enjoy mystery along with collaboration, we have decided to emulate some of our literary ancestors, like the early Brontes and Louisa May Alcott and even Boz, and publish our work under a joint pen name, CD.  Perhaps we’ll offer a prize for anyone who can guess why we chose those initials…