Looking forward: Peace and Prosperity

Right after I finished up writing about Wonder and Whimsey, a group of thoughts bubbled up into “what do earthlings want?” Peace and Prosperity.

Peace. Prosperity. Freedom from strife, worry. Less panic gripping your heart and making your blood race and ears ring. Oh, yeah. I get panic attacks. Crippling bouts of anxiety. Night terrors. But anxieity won’t really help me recognize what it is about peace and prosperity that might just drive the ideas tumbling around in my brain into a coherent plot with well-formed characters stumbling through it.

Recognizing that the characters are each working towards the ultimate goal of peace and prosperity just might.

So where’s the conflict? I can’t write about starlight and unicorns. When people’s ideas of what is peace collide, when the means of reaching prosperity are at odds instead of collective. How do our characters reach a place of peace and prosperity? By walking through the fires of hell. By facing their panic, their anxiety, their demons, and fighting the good fight.

At writing camp, another student strongly recommended the Hero’s Journey, and I think it is a good model for the stories wandering around in my head. I recognize the model very quickly in animated movies — Rango, in particular.

Things this story needs: A world. Characters. For each character: how do they seem themselves? how do they see each other? How do they see the world? Action, conflict. A goal. A beginning, a middle, an end. A swordfight. A spaceship. And humor. And an author.

 

ArmadilloCon wrapup: Wonder and whimsey

Another takeaway from ArmadilloCon: Bella, our heroine in Twilight, and Harry Potter have a baby. You do that, you’ll be a published author! Most sessions discussed one or the other or both books as if they are the gold standard of published fantasy books, the holy grail of residuals and royalties.

And the market is odd; published authors whose paperback series were very popular in the 80s have finished books that may or not be picked up. And oddly enough, I can’t find a link to the story he read; a story of a secret society that does good for mankind.

At the same time, another acquaintance is a first-time author with a reasonably good deal on his first book, Those Across the River. His secret group of evil dark folk tortures people who fall into their clutches.

Dang. So I gotta conclude: there’s money in boring books for Young Adults I can’t bring myself to finish. There’s money in blood, torture, monsters. Dark secrets from our past threading through to the present. Those Across the River is very very good, poetic, literary, stunningly good, enjoyed it, and I’m happy there’s a second book.

Still, Doom and Gloom reign. Happy hopeful stories? Not so much.

We live in scary times, times where the US soldiers come home and drink and explain how they were trained to fight wars and ended up feeling horrible about their mission and actions, breaking into people’s homes in the middle of the night and taking people from their beds. These same soldiers come home and serve as our police. Suspected insurgents? Civil rights? How can we keep it all separate when, in reality, time and space overlap?

Talking with my chief, my superhero, the Denis. News, the very nature of what is News, has changed dramatically in 25 years. And topics on the TV for entertainment. Remember In Search Of?  We grew up in a time when Leonard Nimoy occupied a space somewhere between the Twilight Zone and Walter Cronkite, told us spectacular tales from the edge of physics and fantasy.   But the nearly real supernatural psychic possibilities aren’t spoken of any more. They’ve been supplanted by the endless news of the stock market and nonsensical political debates months before the first primary.

So instead, I’m going to look for ways to promote Wonder and Whimsey. It’s true to my nature, it’s my purpose in life. I want to write a story that opens your heart to wonder. Shows how along the central texas creeks, or anywhere, time and space overlap, and they’re crowded with whimsical possibilities.