What to say...? or I keep changing things!!!

How does one go on after a silence of two months? A strange thing it is to disappear so abruptly - all I can say by way of some manner of compensation is that there has been A LOT of good work going on for the next Half-Continent story (rather than the much anticipated Harlequin romance set in outback Australia... sorry about that folks, I know you were all longing for it so :) - a synopsis written, various passages penned and muchas muchas muchas research and invention going on.

The upshot right now of this is that in going much deeper into the construction and function and crewing of a ram I have discovered that some of the information about gastrines and rams given in MBT is now revised. I must confess myself a tad perplexed: how am I to proceed?

The normal process is to present your world full-formed upon the world, an unshakable rock of continuity and consistency. Yet here I am tweaking and changing and - more properly - refining ideas all the time, as I have always done.

What concerns us here are gastrines and just how it is that they work. Here are the variations:

OLD IDEA AS PRESENTED IN MBT ~

• dog box & gears
• 5-20 year life span
• jointed leavers everywhere
• put into the vessel individually

NEW IDEA AS I WORK IT THROUGH MORE ~

• muscles work straight to screw; "gearing" is simply the amount of effort gastrines put in and the number of gastrines put to the screw
• 30-50 year life span - I like the idea of them living as long as a generation of vinegars (& notwithstanding death due to sickness or injury or being eaten whole and entire by a ravening kraulschwimmen)
• straight wooden beams and levers
• grown within the vessel (though this one I am not so sure about)

My thoughts are that none of this actually varies things too much, that the previous information can be easily incorporated into the revisions and vice versa - well that is what I hope anyway... Is it appropriate to simply alter things as I go and expect you all to just keep up? Is it actually a good thing for the whole process to be evolving right out there in publicland?

Where I will draw a line is at the total reversal of an idea: what I intend is only the kind of fluctuation that will occur as a I think an idea through all the more deeply, and discover some real-world fact that adds to the whole.

So, there, I am back, fretful as ever - if anyone is still reading :/

Most earnest mae culpa for so long a silence.

Oh, and just to speak into any suspense, my current project is (at this stage anyways) a new story with different characters set in HIR 1602 - the very next year after MBT. Events in MBT have an affect on it, are part of its own motion - because, verily, they are events more particularly in the Half-Continent - but it is its own tale.

Thank you for all your - well, "suggestions" is to little a word for the depth and passion of your thoughts but it will have to do... maybe "advice"? - it helps a whole heck of a lot, even if I seem to be going in some other direction, your thoughts and ideas go with me all the same.

Final inkling: I reckon this will be a stand alone story - no multiple volumes...

OK, this one really is the last thoughts: Rossamünd's story does go on, whether a write about it or not, so let your minds run free with that one; & Europe is indeed too "cool" to let go, but I reckon I need time to ponder just how to tell about her next... & I reckon, though I seem to "avoid" or digress for now, that the Half-Continent might indeed be working up to some kind of dissolution, though do not mistake the movements in one small part of the Sundergird (as seen in MBT) to equal a threat to the greater part of it - just see how small an area we cover in the story so far; I reckon folks in Hamlin or Gottingen could not give two hoots what happens in Brandenbrass (bar the impact on trade, I suppose.. hmmm...)

It must be said though that cataclysmic dissolution is a bit of a genre cliche, too, and though I keep finding myself in my inexperience committing them , I am trying not to do so, and all conquering baddies threatening the existence of everything seems an obvious one to avoid. The original premise of the Half-Continent was that the existing relationships were/are enough to generate stories without then needing to break the idea.

Apart from a certain LoTR, the few genre novels i have read always seemed their best at the start with the original concept of the world, before everything gets broken - it was where I wanted to stay, and I haven't and continue to put all this work into figuring just how the H-c works "now" to bust it all up again. That said, I do think there does need to be some manner of larger and obvious conflict... hmmm.

...& Aphrodine, expect to find "rumsibol" in some form in the next book too, if i may, simply brilliant!

On and on I go...

First, I want to point you to an interview (yes, another one!) with Drew Bittner over at SFRevu for your perusal. There is also a glowing review at selfsame site also written by Mister Bittner, (WARNING: this is a little spoilery, so, if you have NOT read Factotum head over there at you own peril.)

Now, the following was caused by but has only some connection with the comments previous about art being work or reaction. On I go...

Dare I admit I actually have very little truck for the whole post-modern, "It's all the the eye of the beholder/ reader interpretation is supreme" thing.

Reader reaction/participation is vital: I write very much to create a particular set of reactions in you all - of brand new vistas, of wonder, of adventure on an adult scale, of (I hope and strive) some small portion of the life-changing wonder I had when first reading LotR as a 12 year old.
As an illustrator it always struck me that the intent of the creator and the reaction they are looking to provoke was/is the primary point. Heck, half the time I was just filling the requirements of a brief, but then would have folks insisting to me all these wondrous "artistic" notions in my work that I never meant, nor knowingly put in.

The counter to this is, obviously, the "Freudian" one, that I could not help put deeper elements into my work. While this may be - and is probably - true, the alchemy of my "stuff" with theirs seems to also bring about an element of fiction within my viewers reaction too, an attributing to me things not necessarily so. Yet who am I to deny such response?! Without the reader/viewer what is the point? What is MBT without your participation? A bunch of ideas rolling about my head. For years I tried to show people H-c stuff, to which the common response was bemusement or boredom. Though i might have been making stuff up for the fun of it - for myself - I was clearly looking for an audience, for participation, reaction, validation.

So I suppose we find ourselves with a synthesis. Creations are made to be participated in, reader/viewer response is vital (unavoidable, indeed, sought after!), yet the creator's intent surely has a place, surely what I wanted to make deserves some respect, some consideration?

Oftentimes I have not (and I quote from Amazon):

"that was the worst book i have ever read. dm cornish is a hack. never read this book. " (the author's punctuation/capitalisation)

OR

"Someone please tell me how anyone (ANYONE!) can get past the truly awful title. And after you achieve that monumental goal, how can you navigate the vinegar seas and bleeble blabble names that are intended to justify this as a truly unique creation and world? I, for one, couldn't manage the feat."

So who is right here?

The post-modern response would go something along the lines of, "well, for these readers that is what MBT is..." i.e. rubbish. But IS MBT rubbish just because they say it is. Again, p-m thought will assert that for these too folk it is. Indeed, my stories are not perfect (despite the flarings of my ego insisting otherwise) and I can understand how they might not be everyone's cup o' tea, but surely my intent in penning rates some contemplation and even merit from even the harshest critic?

So who is right?

There seems to me to be another factor at play here, one very hard to fix down, even dangerous to do so: the notion of something having merit in and of itself regardless of opinion. Yet what/who(!) arbitrates such a reckoning? Are not humans the deciders of such things? Yet - for example - as we see with the Amazon quotes, there are those who revile MBT, though many of you here think it worthy. Who is correct? Is it the majority voice? Is it that if we get enough saying it is "good" then it is, and the few who did/do not like it are free to their opinion? In a way this works, but what if the majority say that something bad is good, as in the citizens of the Haacobin empire holding all monsters as bad? There are only a few who dare to acknowledge otherwise, yet we find that the majority are not in line with what is actually the case, but the minority.

So what happens then?

Our majority model has collapsed.

Who arbitrates what is so here?

The issue maybe, in the end, is that we in this age of pluralism, dare not say another's sentiment or notion is wrong for genuine fear that we ourselves might be subject to such a charge; that in some close held idea, we too might be wrong, and this is intolerable (I sure don't like holding the thought for too long!). So rather than let this dread event occur we say instead everyone is right, formulate theories to maintain the same, and remain in our cocoon of "rightness"...

There seems to me something going on here that is beyond neat theories.

My word I bake my own noodle sometimes... :\
(I have probably made no sense at all... ACK!)