Another Direction

I’ve been stymied on my work in progress, Avatar of the Maker. I’m in the section where things are ramping up to a battle, and uncertain as to how to make the action actually ramp up (or should it be the calm before the storm as I am currently writing it?)

I feel like I have lost my bearings, that I have lost my flow. This is why I’ve gone back to the beginnings (even though I’m not done with the book) to edit and get a feeling for what comes before. I’m hoping this will give me a jumpstart for the flow of the second half of the book.

After going through the first 4 chapters, I have a good feel for the beginning. Now to go through and see where the flow bogs down.

Here’s Chapter 4: The Great Loss

In a place where humans had never set foot, a group of beings sat in a room. Its black crystal walls twinkled with light from the molten white floor, from the white table, and from the participants themselves. The shortage of light did not lessen the sterility of the surroundings.
“The Apocalypse proved that we, the Archetypes, no longer take our protection of the human patterns seriously,” Luke said, his hands tented in thought. His ruggedness, in contrast to the unlined faces of the others, announced that he had, unlike most Archetypes, committed evil — in his case, for the sake of good. Also, unlike most Archetypes, he had repented, which gave him a perspective that could be called almost human.
“But they still embrace evil.” The Baraka Archetype, short and spare like his people, leaned forward. “They fight wars. They envy each other and they commit crimes out of greed.”
“Or out of want, or madness, or a dozen other things.” Luke grimaced, reflecting a view of reality that had wavered from the neutrality of an Archetype. Su, his consort and the Oldest of the Oldest, watched impassively. She knew how to play the game, Luke noted, something he had lost in his long association with humankind.
“If we give them the full impact of their cultural histories — not just the facts, but the fear, the hatred, the xenophobia.” The Bering Strait Archetype looked at his hands.
“How do you know it will make them worse? They already hold the oral tradition of their peoples’ pasts, and those seem to inspire xenophobia, it’s true. But what if they remember the full impact of the losses of war and weigh it against their hatred — would they decide to fight more? Or would they lay their weapons down?” Luke took a breath, to calm himself down, to wear the gravitas of the Archetype instead of the passion of humans. “What if gaining their cultural histories changes nothing at all, given that they are vast hybrids of cultures? The point is, if the humans kill each other, millions of them will not die with each death. If we keep holding the patterns of the humans — “
“One of our deaths will kill millions of humans through the loss of their patterns,” Su said. “Which is why the Maker created us nearly immortal. Yet the Triumvirate, Archetypes themselves, almost killed Lilith, who held the patterns of all women. Can we guarantee this won’t happen again?”
Suddenly, the residents of the room stopped speaking. Luke felt as if a wind had cut through his immortal bones and chilled them. Then he felt the weight, a weight of the history of countless descendants of the people of the seax, the knife that gave its name to the Saxons. And then his burdens vanished, and he felt a hollowness inside. The gasps from the others at the table echoed him.
“What — what was that?” The Ibero-Maurusian broke the silence.
“I think — Su, did you notice anything?” Luke asked, noting the puzzled look on his consort’s face.
“Nothing.” Su looked at the others at the table. “Except that all of you around me froze for a moment and slumped forward. As if something took something weighty from you.”
“As it has.” The Bering Strait Archetype pressed his lips together. “I think — I think we lost our patterns, and if so, the Maker has taken them from us.” He sounded bewildered, as if he lost something more than the weight of patterns.
“I must…” the Ibero-Maurusian said, then paused. “No.” She spoke slowly, as if weighing each word. “We may be the only ones whose have lost our patterns.”
“But what does this mean?” The Baraka pounded a fist on the table.
The Yolnju Archetype spoke. “I think this means that the Maker decided for us — He will take our patterns from us whether we are ready to relinquish them. And we’re the harbingers of this big change.”
The discussion broke down into discordant declarations of confusion.

Later, Luke felt a hollowness in his entire being as he shimmered into the chilly dawn at Barn Swallows’ Dance. His feet materialized on the beaten green surrounding their Commons building. In the early morning, none of the residents — the human residents, that is — wandered the grounds. Luke sought his daughter Lilith and her consort Adam, both Archetypes, to share the latest news from the Council of the Oldest. He set toward their little blue cottage, his boots treading on the fallen gold and red leaves of a maple tree.
Adam and Lilith lived as humans in the community of humans, to the consternation of the Council. They, and Luke and his consort as well, served as patrons of the collective. Giving — what? The residents showed more courage than the enemy and noncombatants in their fight to protect humanity. Humans proved more clever in the strategies they employed, subterfuge and illusion rather than brute force. Humans saved themselves, with the final sacrificial act of the Archetype Boss Aingeal merely a reflection of the compassion he saw by the humans. Or so Luke believed.
Humans, Luke thought, do not need us anymore. They do not need us to protect their cultural memories anymore. They can fully face their ancestors’ raw emotions of fear and hatred and pride and belongingness.
Humans are the future. Archetypes will fade into the past as the Maker decrees. Other than as repositories for human ancestral memory — the souls of cultures — Archetypes served no purpose.
Luke thought about the differences between Archetypes and humans. Humans lived Earthside in buildings they created with sweat and toil, which they adorned with mementos that reminded them of important things. The building — the house — protected humans from the elements, and the humans’ ingenuity and intelligence protected them from many more hazards. Humans grew efficient enough in protecting themselves to possess leisure time to dream, create, and cherish each other.
Archetypes dwelt in InterSpace, a nothingness of black crystalline walls and floors like milk glass. The Maker created Archetypes to need very little, not even each other’s company, but immortality and idle time weighed heavily on the soul. To fill their time, Archetypes fabricated what they furtively glimpsed Earthside from the stuff of InterSpace, and those artifacts would dissolve into their component molecules before too long, which kept the Archetypes from tiring of their material acquisitions.
Luke knocked on the door of the little blue cottage.
Luke, Adam said into Luke’s mind. You could have mindspoke us first.
I didn’t want to interrupt you from doing human things.
Adam opened the door, one eyebrow quirked. He wore the unrelieved black he preferred, which set off his pale gold skin and cinnamon brown eyes. Archetypes resembled superlative examples of the cultures they represented, and Adam’s Han and Proto-Celt heritage created a rare masculine beauty.
Adam looked Luke up and down. “What’s up?”
Luke hesitated. “Has anything — happened — to you? Strange feelings, or…?”
Adam shrugged. “No. Should it have?” He opened the door of their cottage to Luke.
“The Council just met, and I need to talk to someone. In person — this is not a matter of mindspeech.” Adam’s eyebrows raised, and he opened the door to Luke and stepped aside. Luke looked around at the house, at the decor in soothing blue, the comfortable couch and chair. On the wall hung a frame with two braids of hair — one black, one the golden blonde of his daughter’s hair — in the shape of a heart. A very human artifact, shaped by hands and not by thought in InterSpace.
“Luke?” Lilith asked her father, as he followed Adam into the living room. “What’s wrong?” A smile formed and faded on Luke’s face as he studied his daughter, noting as he so often did how his features reflected in his daughter’s face shone so radiantly.
“Nothing — I don’t think. At least I hope my vague worries are for naught.” Luke settled himself in a chair, feeling the whole of his six thousand years. “Well, the Council has been meeting for these three years since the Apocalypse. As you know, immortals take their sweet time deliberating on anything, especially immortals with as little imagination as Archetypes.” Luke steepled his hands.
“Deliberating on what?” Lilith asked, leaning forward.
“Whether humans should possess their own patterns, their cultural DNA. With us Archetypes carrying the collective cultural memory, the bone-deep emotions of culture, we subject large swaths of humanity to extinction if one of us gets killed.”
“Such as what almost happened in the Apocalypse because I held all the women’s cultural DNA.” Lilith stood. “It seems a simple decision that we should divest the DNA patterns to the humans. Each one gets a piece of that memory and there’s no mass die-offs.”
“I agree,” Luke mused, “but…”
“But?” Adam interjected.
“But just now, I sat in Council debating why humans earned the right to experience their full cultural memory — the Baraka and I debated whether cultural memory would exacerbate human nationalism — when I felt a great weight fall from me. From the collective gasp I heard from the others, I guessed they had experienced the same thing. The event stunned us into silence, rare for the Council.
“Su spoke out of the silence that fell upon us, asking what happened to the rest of us. She didn’t experience any of the disorientation, the lightening of our being, because her charges, the Denisovans, died millennia ago. That was how we reasoned we lost our charges’ cultural memory. Those patterns we held.”
“How?” Lilith inquired. “You said the Council hadn’t decided.”
Luke waited a beat, then two. He didn’t know how to say the suspicion in his mind —
“Yes?” Adam asked.
“I would guess the Maker reclaimed them.” Luke felt that vague, floaty feeling that had plagued him since the incident.
Adam and Lilith broke out in consternation. “The Maker? Does our Maker even exist?”
“Su remembers the Maker, who created the first of us. Su never saw Her after that, and the legend is that the Maker created us to do His work, and She left to create the clockwork of another world. Until, apparently, now.”
“Why now?” Adam inquired, brow furrowed.
“I would guess it’s because we’ve fallen down on our job.” Luke looked down at his hands. “Which we have, given that at best we’ve been indifferent to our human charges, and at worst —”
“Some of us plot to kill them.” Lilith grimaced. “It doesn’t matter that we — the people in this room — fought against those who planned to annihilate the humans. We, as a race, failed humans.” Lilith dropped her hands in her lap.
The three sat in silence. A luxurious black cat, another sign of his daughter’s growing humanity, stropped Luke’s ankles. He reached down and idly petted the cat.
“How do you know you’ve lost your patterns, Luke?” Adam pressed, leaning forward.
“You just know — it’s as if I’ve lost some weight, some substance suddenly. I feel strangely bereft without the weight of the humans’ patterns on me. Like I’ve lost my purpose.”
“But you have a purpose,” Lilith argued. “You’re on the Council. You help support Barn Swallows’ Dance.”
“I can’t explain it.” Luke rubbed his forehead. “It’s a feeling, a very human feeling. At least, being close enough to humans to understand feelings, I can name what’s happening. But I don’t know what to do with myself.”
The Bering Strait Archetype spoke in Luke’s head. We need you back up here.
“Excuse me,” Luke nodded to his daughter and her consort. “It’s time to face the music.” And Luke shimmered away.

“Luke.” The Bering Strait Archetype shot a pointed look at Luke as Luke re-materialized in the dark chamber. “Glad to see you again so soon. We’re not impetuous beings. Does this come from your exposure to humans?”
Su spoke. “What do we need to do to warn the other Archetypes of what will happen?”
The Baraka hesitated. “I don’t know that we should warn them,” he mused, his hands clasped in front of him, fingers interlaced. “If we warn them, they may speak to each other and magnify the issue far beyond reason. I think it’s in our best interest to keep this quiet, and let each Archetype believe he is the only one.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Su asked. “You assume our Archetypes make no contact with each other? Although we are an introverted people, it doesn’t follow that there’s no communication between us. All it would take is a daisy chain of acquaintances trading observations before several Archetypes would know it wasn’t just them, and our lack of warning would be suspect.”
“You mistake us Archetypes for humans,” the Baraka Archetype argued. “We are less volatile, more rational. I believe we will take this much more calmly than humans might.”
“You felt what happened,” Luke pressed. “You felt the hollowing out of your being. How did it make you feel? Rational? I think not.”
The Ibero-Maurusian jumped in. “I think the Baraka is correct. Besides, we hold no power over the divestment of human patterns, as it’s being driven by the Maker. Therefore, we possess no responsibility.”
In the end, the Council voted to keep secret the divestment of human patterns from the rest of the Archetypes. Luke took a deep breath against the very real turmoil churning in his stomach.

My Road Warrior Setup — Update

I’ve had my iPad Air/Logitech keyboard/Logitech mouse for over a month and have taken it on road trips. I have blogged with it, written on my work in progress, and surfed the Internet. I’ve given it enough of a workout that I can review my experience with it.

Weight and heft. Compared to a Surface Book 2, the components of my travel setup are lighter and easier to carry. They fit in the leather smaller-than-a-briefcase bag, and they’re still lighter than my Surface in a canvas messenger bag. Or least I perceive them as lighter — that leather bag isn’t light.
Screen size. The iPad screen is a little smaller than the Surface. Decently smaller, with the Surface 13.5” vs iPad’s 10.2”. Because this is a secondary setup, this doesn’t bother me. At home I have two old display screens at approximately 22”. If I need big screens, I dock to those. On the road, I’m more about function than form.
Looks. That being said about form and function, my setup is ridiculously cute. The logi keyboard and mouse in lavender lemonade match my case. Of course, this doesn’t really figure in my satisfaction with the setup. Really it doesn’t.
Function of the peripherals. How comfortable are my peripherals to use? The keyboard (Logitech K380) is responsive but sometimes needs to be re-added to Bluetooth. This is likely a Bluetooth thing. The mouse (Logitech Pebble) works superbly and is made for the hand.
Function of the iPad. I keep the iPad plugged in if at all possible, because playing with it too much will wear the battery down. I do not notice any lags, glitches, or quirks. There are glitches and quirks, but they seem more about the interaction between iPad, keyboard, and apps.
Pulling it all together. Overall, the iPad setup acts exactly like a computer, or at least exactly like an iPad acting like a computer. Where the computer would require to get rid of a screen by clicking the little x, the iPad has you click a bar at the bottom (or you could use your finger.) There is an occasional quirk where the keyboard will not scroll your screen up or down all the way (only with specific programs such as Jetpack. You can move the screen with your finger.

In conclusion, there’s a lot of good and very little trauma in using the road warrior setup of iPad and entry peripherals. I take it with me everywhere just in case I want to write, which is something I never did with my Surface. I won’t give up my Surface, because there are some things the Surface does better (like hooking up to the big screens). There are some things I haven’t tried on the iPad (Photoshop and other graphics) mostly because I can’t afford Photoshop on the iPad. Big productions will be better on the Surface, I suspect, but for everyday use I’m very happy with my iPad setup.

In Remembrance of Shrimp Creole

Which food, when you eat it, instantly transports you to childhood?

Shrimp Creole, out of the Betty Crocker cookbook. Shrimp with minute rice, tomato, green peppers and a touch of Tabasco sauce. Now and again I run into the recipe, and I am carried back to …

My most hated dinner meal.

I’ll admit I was a picky eater. I went through a “white” period in my tastes and preferences. Cottage cheese, mashed potatoes, and tater tots. I did not like vegetables. But I hated green peppers, overcooked green peppers, olive drab-colored peppers, the most.

Add to that the overcooked, rubbery shrimp and the minute rice. The Sixties and Seventies were an area of kitchen sacrilege. My mother was a good cook, but that recipe … that recipe was evil.

There is a Tiktoker who makes vintage recipes and critiques them, B. Dylan Hollis. I would like to see him make some shrimp creole and commiserate with me. I think he’d stop at the chewy, tasteless shrimp and exclaim loudly about the bitterness of it all

I know there are good things my mother cooked, but I can’t remember any of them. All I can remember is the bane of my existence, shrimp creole.

Incense

I’ve been feeling uninspired by writing today, even in my blog. I’ve spent the morning and much of the afternoon doing laundry, writing emails to students, and drinking a Starbucks venti brown sugar oatmilk shaken iced espresso (which reminds me of this.)

I enacted one of my writing rituals, incense. Not those cute little incense sticks or cones you see (so I’m told) at the local head shop, but the real thing: frankincense tears. The kind you have to burn on self-igniting charcoal. Church incense (if that church is hard-core; most of the church incense I’ve been seeing is myrrh and rose).

It’s a fine ritual: get the goblet-shaped censer (or the thurible if you’re high church), put a puck of charcoal in it and light it, let the sparks burn through, and add the incense.

But something happened differently this time.

I put the usual amount of incense in, the amount that gives a small trickle of smoke, but that’s not what I got. I must have accidentally found the formula for optimizing the amount of smoke, because that’s what I got — billows of smoke. So much smoke I thought the smoke alarm was going to go off. So much smoke that the Brothers at the Abbey would tell me to knock it off. So much smoke that I was getting a contact frankincense high.

It was lovely.

Growing up Catholic, I remember the thurible brought out on special occasions by the priest. A thurible has long chains and the priest can swing it back and forth. I remember smelling the incense and wishing more would waft into the back of the church where I invariably sat. My friend Les, not a priest, had a thurible and would swing it 360 degrees, but only in my peripheral vision so I didn’t see it. (The little imp.) I got my love of incense from him, and still have a couple ounces of myrrh incense from him I only use on very special occasions.

The quality of my day has changed because of the incense. I haven’t written any more yet, but there is a softness to the day I didn’t notice before.

Daily writing prompt

What’s your favorite thing about yourself?

View all responses

I just about avoided this prompt. I have fallen back into what I like to call “Midwestern Female Syndrome” — the internal need to be perfect and the external seeming of mediocrity. Don’t promote yourself, deflect all praise, don’t draw attention to yourself. I don’t know why I’ve fallen back there, except I think it might have to do with my upcoming 60th birthday. Women my age are supposed to be (according to society) invisible.

I decided to answer this question precisely because of the discussion above. I need to fight being invisible. I need to have a favorite thing about myself.

So here goes: My favorite thing about me is my sense of humor.

My sense of humor is dry. And sardonic. And silly. And quirky. And sometimes snarky. In rare moments, a bit dark.

Humor helps me cope through rough times. I find laughter reduces both physical and emotional pain and takes my mind off things that disturb me.

Sometimes I laugh for no apparent reason. I’m laughing at the ludicrous moment that has just passed — an accidental pun, a facial expression, a droll witticism. I find humor in places other people miss.

Sometimes I make people laugh to break the tension that fills a room. It has to be done carefully, so as not to offend anyone or make them self-conscious. Humor does not exist to avoid communication, but to make it easier. Best things to joke about in this situation: 1) myself; 2) something in the surroundings. When I joke in class, 3) something about the class material.

My husband is my partner in humor. We throw funny things at each other, and find things funny that nobody else would because of the context. This is a thing possible among friends.

I don’t know what I would do without my sense of humor. Life is, above all, really funny.

In the Wilds of Des Moines

I haven’t been writing enough lately because I have been on internship visits all week. The first trip was Lexington/Liberty/Kansas City MO, and the other Glenwood/Des Moines IA.

Richard and I have gotten to stay overnight because of the mileage involved in visiting 3 interns. So we explore the places we’re staying given the energy we have left. This usually means food places and coffeehouses.

Notes for the Des Moines part of the trip:

Gursha Ethiopian Grill: we ordered this Door Dash. Two drinks and one entree on my 5-item Vegetarian plate went missing. The lentil and split pea dishes were somewhat under spiced. On the other hand, Richard ate the 5-item meat platter and said it tasted exceptionally good. Consensus: don’t eat here if you prefer vegetarian.
Hotel Renovo: This is a “country” themed hotel, but does not come off like Cracker Barrel and its aggressive nostalgia. There are design elements, such as one set of sliding barn doors to shut off a conference room. There is an overall feeling of space and comfort, created by big windows and not cramming spaces with too many couches and tchotkes. One startling use of a window is where the second floor hallway opens out into the breakfast nook. Keep an eye out for the deer in the headlights — the bad pun version — in the lobby.
Waveland Café: Where has this been all my life? The café is a breakfast place. And superlatively so. The atmosphere is quirky. The walls are signed by famous people who have visited, mostly newscasters and their crews, as Iowa is a news making state during primaries. The breakfasts themselves are wonderful, although I’d rate the coffee as “ok”.
Mars Cafe — our coffee and writing stop. The conceit here is outer space, and the cafe does it well in a mellow space with joyous music. Mars has the usual fare in a coffeehouse — coffee, lattes, etc. But they have their own creations; I’m drinking a Sputnik revisited, which is a latte with browned butter, walnut and cinnamon. My husband is drinking a Space Pioneer Miss Baker, which is a non-alcoholic cocktail with espresso, sparkling water, walnut bitters, and rose water. I’m feeling inspired to write this blog!

The mini-vacation ends this afternoon, when we have to drive the 2 1/2 hours back down to Maryville and deal with four very grumpy cats. But my mini-working vacation has been a very good one.

A Fun Work Trip

I’m on day two of a trip to Lexington/Liberty/Kansas City visiting interns. This also means I get to hang around interesting places we don’t have in Maryville. My husband is working remotely while I go to my internship sites.

Lexington, believe it or not, has an indie bookstore/cafe with a real ambiance to it, which is better than we have in Maryville. It helps that Lexington is a town with history, although I’m not quite sure what their history is*. Liberty is more urban, given that it’s closer to Kansas City. We didn’t do much in Liberty.

Kansas City is one of my favorite places. I keep insisting if we win the big lottery, I want to move here. (Richard is pushing for a smaller town. Which is fine, but it better have an indie cafe.) We stayed in KC overnight so we didn’t have to drive the 2 hours back down to visit our third intern. So far, we stayed in the 21c Hotel (based around art), ate an entirely too expensive and utterly magnificent steakhouse (Anton’s), and ate breakfast at our favorite breakfast place (eggtc). Now we’re waiting at Broadway Cafe for my appointment today, and from there we’re going to Whiskers Cat Cafe!

After this, I am going to need a rest, and I’ll get one for one whole day. Then I will drive to Iowa and spend the night in Des Moines. And have more fun.

* Lexington history features being the first booming town west of St. Louis, and for confederates. I don’t like the Confederacy.

Mostly Harmless

Daily writing prompt

If humans had taglines, what would yours be?

View all responses

If I had a tagline, it would be the tagline for humans in the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is “mostly harmless”. I’m pretty innocuous, being almost 60 and overweight and thus doubly invisible to the general public. I write relatively light romantic fantasy (If I weren’t female I don’t know if it would register as romantic at all, given gender biases). I have a silly sense of humor. My only vice is sweets.

I didn’t say entirely harmless. That suggests there is some small fragment of dangerous in me. After some soul-searching, I’d have to say that it’s my ability to argue. I have logic, metaphors, and a great bullshit detector on my side.

I consider my ability to argue dangerous because it can change minds. Sometimes. There are some people who don’t want their minds to be changed, who cling to falsehoods and spurious sources. They want to argue to convince themselves they’re right. I will find the truth in their statements and abridge my arguments, and if they’re right, I will change my mind.

Truth is dangerous. This is why little old me is “mostly harmless”.

The Ideal Place to Write

I am, as you might have guessed from my content, a writer. As a writer, I have favorite places to write, and not-so-favorite places to write. I don’t pretend to be representative of all writers, but I think I have commonalities with many other writers.

I have three criteria when it comes to writing: comfort, space, and activity level. I look for optimal levels of each, not necessarily maximum level. And when I find an optimal place, I really can write better.

Comfort

I look first at comfort. There is an optimal level of comfort that is neither too little nor too much. That may sound counterintuitive, but there is such a thing as too much comfort. Too much comfort and I fall asleep in my chair, which is not conducive to writing. I find the chairs at my local Starbucks, especially the ones at the round tables, friendly to my back. The other corporate coffee place in town has chairs that are at best indifferent, while the booths are downright hostile. Nothing says “Grab your coffee and get out” quite like those booths. At home I have a Serta desk chair (used; love those bargains!) that makes my office very comfortable, and a couch downstairs that’s slightly less comfortable.

“Office Desk” by Bench Accounting/ CC0 1.0

Space

My second criterion is space. This refers both to the confines of the room and the physical atmosphere. Despite the Serta desk chair and the dual large screens, I have trouble writing in my office for very long because of the space. The office is a small, cluttered room where one can’t stretch out without hitting something. The desk (actually a library table) abuts the wall and I find myself staring at the wall when I need to think between words. My eyes take up the clutter and it makes me grumpy. I’m just not going to warm up to the office to write unless this is fixed. The living room loveseat is a far better place to write space wise. I am not crowded unless I let too many books pile up. Coffeehouses have wonderful space, neither too crowded nor too spacious. There is art on the walls, textures in wall coverings and furniture.

Activity Level

Third, I pay attention to activity level, the stirrings of things around me. At home, on the loveseat, there are cats to help me write and short breaks to check the mail or drink hot beverages. The office is quiet and no cats allowed. Music helps, but it gives me nothing to look at during breaks except the Internet, which is a black hole my attention gets sucked into. Writing in public — cafés, hotel lobbies, libraries — usually gives me the right balance of activity level to quiet. Public places, such as my aforementioned Starbucks, can get too noisy at times but overall are just busy enough.

Conclusion

First off, I need to do something with the office to make it more conducive to writing. I’m talking with my husband right now about this. Working with the door open (which increases perception of space and allows cats inside) may be helpful. Playing music may help. Getting a coffee machine in there might be asking too much.

Second, Starbucks will be a regular destination for me as long as they have comfortable seats and coffee drinks (which is part of their corporate mission, so forever).

Finally, I will need to keep going on writing retreats (to places with excellent coffeehouses or lobbies with computer tables).

There are ways around the disaster of an uncomfortable place to write: fix up the place or go elsewhere. I can do some of both.

List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?

Three books that have had an impact on me. Hmm… I’m glad the prompt is not “THE three books that have had an impact on you” because there have been many more than three.

The three I’m thinking about right now are all in the fantasy genre because that’s what I’ve been reading most of my life, and because I write in those genres. Keep in mind that I’m almost sixty years old, and so are some of these books. I consider them foundational in my life.

The first book is not just a book, but a series: The Dark Is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper. Before we had categories like young adult and middle school, these books appeared in my small town junior high library. Our librarian recommended them to me, and my life changed. People my age facing mythological beings, trying to stop the forces of evil — I know, it sounds like a thousand stories. But dressed in British folk custom, with evocative descriptions, I could read it again as an adult.

The second book was one I was turned on to in college, and it has stayed with me as if I’d read it yesterday. The book is Godbody by Theodore Sturgeon, in which an itinerant man leaves interpersonal miracles in his wake. Is he the second coming of Jesus? The parallels of the narrative suggest so. The book advocates a less hierarchical, more personal relationship with God, and a view of love that transcends the restrictive culture of man. This book has informed my view of religion and spirituality and continues to do so.

The third book is, again, a series, and a lengthy one. The series is Darkover, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and I cannot post this without mentioning the serious and credible allegations against Bradley made by her daughter Moira Greyland. It’s with some uneasiness that I put Bradley’s books on my list.

Darkover isn’t just a series, it’s a world. Not a perfectly realized world, but one where characters recur from book to book, where the reader can trace a family tree over a few hundred years. There’s lore and reputation and conflict — this has been as attractive to its fans as its sword and sorcery, with psychic powers substituted for the magic. Darkover fans have done genealogy with the characters, developed persona in the world, and made a role-playing society of it. I have taken my love of character development, convoluted relationships, and my dream of creating an all-absorbing world from Darkover.

So there are my three books. As I’ve said, there are many others. But these are perhaps the most influential of the fiction items.