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A place for pointless news and disjointed personal musings. |
| This blog is merely for tracking my progress and keeping my potential readers up-to-date on the things going on with my work. |
| I just wanted to write to say that Chapter 4 of The Krimson Traitor might not come out this week. I'll still try to work on it, but my main focus this week is going to be a short story that uses the same setting as the original novel I've been planning, Mythryn. I might even enter it into a contest if it doesn't end up being too long to qualify, but mostly I just want to have something in my portfolio besides fanfiction. The short story in question is going to be a love story about two eagles. The plot will be largely tangential to Mythryn, as the two stories take place in entirely different cities. |
| I love talking animal stories. Whether it was books, movies, or cartoons, I was basically raised on tales of exceptionally intelligent furry critters, and that love has carried over well into my adult life. I just want to take some blog time to highlight some of the works I've enjoyed over the years: -Redwall: Duh. I don't think I need to say much more about this, considering the existence of The Krimson Traitor. Curiously, I actually didn't start out reading the books; my first experience with Redwall was with the animated series. That animated series is kind of terrible looking back on it now, but my younger self wasn't so discriminating and absolutely fell in love with it. When I saw the books in my school library later on I decided to check them out, and the rest is history. -The Secret of NIMH: Out of all the other major Don Bluth films (All Dogs Go To Heaven, An American Tail, The Land Before Time), this was the one that had the biggest impact on my childhood. I remember spending a lot of time daydreaming about magically being turned into a tiny mouse, and imagining how I'd use natural materials and human refuse to make awesome things, and most of that almost certainly came from this movie. Funnily enough, I haven't actually read the book this was based on, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, but I have read the sequel, Racso and the Rats of NIMH. -Guardians of Ga'Hoole: This is one of the more prominent series that carried me through Middle School. I actually haven't read anything past the eleventh book (I entered High School at the time, and the library there didn't carry many books for that young of an audience), but I thoroughly enjoyed most of what I read. I didn't like how crows were depicted as a bunch of idiot thugs, though. That's partly why I've got that crow detective story in the works. Oh, and I've seen that movie with the incredibly awkward title directed by Zach Snyder. It's actually a pretty solid film. -Warriors: Kitties! This is another of the series that carried me through Middle School, although I haven't read much beyond the first story arc. I still enjoyed what I read all the same, and wouldn't mind trying to finish the series one day. -Silverwing: You know, bats are my favourite animals. They're just so awesome and adorable, and they're fuzzy, and they have cute wiggly ears, and they squeak, and some of them eat fruit but others catch bugs, and they come out at night, and they're just so... Umm, sorry. I got a bit carried away. Anyhow, Silverwing. It's a pretty awesome series. Similar to Redwall, this was actually a case where my first contact with the books came through a terrible animated series. I still haven't had the chance to read the prequel book, Darkwing, but I want to. -The Deptford Mice: I've only gotten the chance to read past the first two books of this series, but I quite enjoyed what I got. I was slightly surprised by how dark the story got at times, but I actually kind of liked it for that, even as a kid. Looking back on it, my experiences with this series might be part of why I took to the low fantasy genre so well as an adult. -Watership Down: I first read this book (and the sequel, Tales From Watership Down) in High School, and I enjoyed it immensely. I've also seen the fantastic animated films for both this and Richard Adams' other novel, The Plague Dogs (I haven't read The Plague Dogs, but I own a copy of it). -Animals of Farthing Wood: I have not read the books at all for this series, but I have seen the first two seasons of the animated series. My experience with this series is kind of unusual in that I didn't grow up with it at all (I wasn't even in High School when I first watched it), but it still held up as an enjoyable cartoon when I finally saw it. -Mouse Guard: This is one of my favourite comic book series for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the utterly gorgeous visuals. There's not a whole lot that could make me happier than if they someday made a video game out of this series, preferably some sort of Skyrim-style open-world RPG, with cel-shaded graphics, and some sort of Shadow of the Colossus/Dragon's Dogma-esque boss climbing mechanic. That would just be so awesome. -Lackadaisy: My favourite web comic. Beautiful art, smart writing, likable characters; it's just an all-around great series. Maybe even better than Mouse Guard, but comparing a Prohibition-era crime drama about cats to a Medieval fantasy tale about mice is pretty "apples and oranges." ... And all the rest. The Fox & the Hound, Balto, The Lion King, Courage the Cowardly Dog, My Little Pony, The Aristocats, The Great Mouse Detective; I could go on practically forever. These stories are just a huge part of my life, and probably always will be. Oh, and before I leave off, I should mention that I have heard of the Welkin Weasels series. I haven't gotten the chance to read it, but I want to some day, because it looks pretty good. I would also like to give a shout-out to White Fang, which is disqualified from the list due to being about a perfectly normal, non-talking wolf-dog, but which is still one of my favourite books ever. |
| I'd like to take a moment to talk about the topic of "subversiveness." I quite enjoy reading fantasy stories that set out to subvert the more prevalent tropes of the genre (A Song of Ice and Fire is pretty awesome, and Richard K. Morgan's Land Fit For Heroes series may in fact be one of my favourite things ever). There is a time and place for it... But I don't think a Redwall fanfiction is one of those places. That sentiment may be surprising coming from someone whose current project is, in fact, a Redwall fanfiction that stars a fox as the protagonist. Making a vermin character the protagonist might seem to be about as subversive as it gets for Redwall, but that's not the point. I'm not writing this story with the intention of being subversive or of "fixing" Redwall's nonexistent racism problem; I'm writing this story to write the best Redwall story I can. I'm also not writing this story for grown-up, mature adult me. I'm writing this for little me; for the small girl who liked to sit around daydreaming her own Redwall stories about a heroic white rat. I'm also writing this story for the same reason my favourite Digimon characters always seemed to start the series on the bad guy's side (Gatomon, Wizardmon, Ken, Impmon, etc.), which is because I've just always thought that stories about evil characters turning around and becoming good were interesting. Now, a few blog posts back, I mentioned that I have looked up other Redwall fanfiction in the past. What I didn't mention was that I never actually finished either of the stories I tried to read. In fact, I stopped reading both of them for the same basic reason; they just weren't fun. I won't name either story out of respect for their authors, but I just couldn't stand to finish them. Both stories seemed far too preoccupied with being edgy and subversive to bother to actually tell a proper Redwall story, and that's not what I intend to do with The Krimson Traitor. Does The Krimson Traitor play with expectations a bit? Well, of course it does. If it didn't, it wouldn't be worth writing because it would just be one of the Redwall stories that we already have. But it's not strictly deconstructionist either, and even if it is, at least I'm trying my best to actually build something equally light and fun in place of what I've torn down. |
| Just as I promised last night, Chapter 3 of The Krimson Traitor has been released! This chapter marks my first attempt at an action scene, and I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out. |
| I spent most of the day with my boyfriend for Valentine's Day, so I didn't get to write as much of Chapter 3 as I would have liked. I did get a huge chunk of it written, though. So, assuming nothing big comes up to distract me, I should be releasing Chapter 3 of The Krimson Traitor tomorrow. Some major stuff happens in this chapter, so I'm pretty excited about that. |
| I've just discovered another reason why starting myself off with a fanfiction was probably the best thing that I could have done. You see, I recently writing a passage of The Krimson Traitor where I had to describe a piece of clothing for one of the Krimson. To write that passage, I had to ask myself "well, what would they use to make their cloth?" "Well, they're from the Redwall world's equivalent of North America, so they'd use cotton; easy." Then I had to ask myself "in contrast to what? What do the Mossflower creatures use to make cloth?" And that's when I had to stop myself, because I didn't know. A decade-and-a-half of my life spent reading this series and I hadn't the foggiest idea how to answer a question as simple as "what do Redwallers use to make cloth?" It was a realization that was both humbling and a little embarrassing, but it was also one that I needed an answer to if I wanted to have a complete picture of the setting. So I decided to hit the books (by which I mean Wikipedia) and do some research. I had to force myself to learn about something that it had never before occurred to me to look into ("What plants did people in Medieval England use to make their cloth?"). If I was writing something wholly original, it would have been so easy to just not bother. It would have been so easy to just write my story and construct my setting around things I already know. But this isn't my setting. If I run into something that I don't understand, I can't just bury my head in the sand and ignore it; I have to learn the thing I don't know so I can keep writing. Now I just have to remember to keep this in mind when I get around to writing original work. I should grow and learn with the needs of my story, not mold the story around my own little comfortable bubble. |
| Poetry. It's a pretty integral part of the Redwall experience, isn't it? Reading as characters break out into a variety of heartfelt ballads, marching chants, silly nonsense songs, and clever riddles all served to give the world and its inhabitants a lot of added texture and personality. One of my struggles when I was planning The Krimson Traitor was with whether or not I would actually continue in that tradition. Now, I have written poetry before, and even received some compliments for my work, but all that was back in my high school English classes. I haven't dabbled in poetry since, as my writing interests simply lie outside that format. But a Redwall story just wouldn't be the same without the songs, and my secondary purpose for doing this fanfic in the first place is to force myself outside of my writing comfort zone a little, so I've decided to get back into it. Here's a taste of something I whipped up last night: Oh, faithless dark fox, What promises to break? Whose blood will you shed? This perilous choice, Yours to make; When from far western lands, Sails a fated foe stained red, Shall Mossflower weep or rejoice? The answer, swordbearer, Lies down this treacherous path which you tread. This is meant to be spoken by the Badger Lord of Salamandastron when our protagonist meets him later on in the story. I also have a dibbun's nursery rhyme that I'm working on, and I'm even considering trying my hand at a song written by bats, written by bats. So, yes, there will be the traditional Redwall songs and poems. Whether they'll be as good as anything Mr. Jacques could have ever composed is not for me to say, but they will be there. |
| Okay, it's random Krimson Traitor trivia time. I just got done hammering out a timeline for the story, to help me keep better track of things like character ages and whatnot (something I probably should have done before I actually started writing, but hey, better late than never). Now, once I'd gotten done laying everything out ("Okay, well this character has to be this old when the main plot happens, and this other character has to be this old, and her mother has to be this old when she gave birth to her, and she has to be this much younger than this other character, and that other character has to be this old when this happens to him, etc. etc.") I ended up with a very interesting, entirely unintentional coincidence: Nihil (the protagonist) was born in the same exact season that Azrahai (the main antagonist) had the prophetic dream about his own death in the Prologue. It's so perfectly poetic, I almost wish I'd been smart enough to do it on purpose. But nope; total accident. Oh, and the season was a summer, hence the Shakespeare reference in the title for this blog entry. |
| Now, while I have no plans to halt or even slow my progress on The Krimson Traitor, I have been considering starting work on Mythryn (my original detective drama about a talking crow) soon. There's still some prep work to do (notes and research to finish, plot points to outline, etc.), but most of it should be pretty simple to do. There is, however, on fairly major aspect of this story that I'm not sure what to do with; I don't know what sort of tone Mythryn should have. Now, the obvious main inspiration for Mythryn is Guardians of Ga'Hoole, which is a children's high fantasy series about talking owls. The original intent for Mythryn was for it to be "like Ga'Hoole, but with crows" and to switch the genre from high fantasy to detective noir. Now, a detective noir story about talking animals is actually not a new concept (Felidae), and fantasy noir is also not a new concept (The Steel Remains), so there are plenty of other works to draw inspiration from. It's just that most of those works are very, very adult. And so I come to my main dilemma; which end of the spectrum do I want to swing towards? Will Mythryn be straight children's fantasy tale with some light noir flavouring, or will it be me doing to talking animal stories what authors like Richard K. Morgan and George R.R. Martin have done to heroic fantasy? And if the second option, how far do I take it? Should I tackle any complex religious or political issues? How much violence should there be? Should there be any swearing? Should there be sexual references? It's a tough call for me to make partly because I have little preference one way or the other when it comes to my own entertainment; I'm the sort of person who can find as much enjoyment in an episode of My Little Pony as I can reading Game of Thrones. Something being child-friendly doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be dramatic or meaningful, but likewise, something being adult doesn't preclude it being fun. I was thinking of maybe just splitting the difference and targeting a more young adult/teenage audience, similar to Garth Nix's Abhorsen series, but I'm still not certain. |
| Funny thing; I'd intended for there to be a little more excitement in this chapter, but instead it ended up being a very low-key chapter of nothing but dialog, characterizing, and relationship-building. I have no idea how that happened. Anyway, there'll be some non-domestic violence-related bloodshed in Chapter 3, I promise!  |
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