Evoking the Fantastical Milieu: Naming

This post will focus specifically on names and words.

Names are powerful. Glance over the two following lists of names:

• Daniel, Samuel, Adam, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Joshua, David, Zach, Aaron, Benjamin, Jonathan
• Abdon, Dishon, Jerah, Maher-shalal-hash-baz, Phallu, Urijah, Vophsi, Zeror

If you were raised in a biblically influenced country, the first list will likely seem mundane to you. However, the second list will immediately transport one to a land far away and so unlike our own. In case you didn't guess, all of the above names are from the Bible. If you know your audience, you can evoke impressions and emotions by choosing the right names.

In The Dinosaur Lords, Victor Milan lifts names straight from Spanish (Spañol), French (Francés), German (Alemán), English (Anglysh), and Russian (Slavo). He references countries and principalities in approximately the same locations as Spain, France, Germany, England, and Russia. The primary difference from our world is that they use dinosaurs for warfare. I personally would have preferred an alternate world rather than just an alternate history, but Milan did what he did so that he could immediately put impressions of these countries in our heads without having to devote much time for cultural backgrounds. A shortcut, if you're not looking to build a whole world.

Your names need a sense of uniformity in their foreignness. One option is to pick a language and lift all your names from that language. For Stoneslayer I used Hebrew. I made some rules, like all B's became V's. I often changed A's into E's. The particle 'om' means god (instead of 'el'), so lots of names end with that. Some other things like that. By my count, there are 96 separate names (some are used more than once though). Evrom, Matek, Shaleyu, Verutz, Lahilokh, Hayam. They have a sense of coherency, yet none are familiar to the reader.

For Orluvoq I used Greenlandic. It's a base I've essentially never seen in the books I've read. Orluvoq, Naalagaa, Ikingut, Nunapisu, Arsarneq, Arpap, Paarsisoq, Sinik. Once again, all very foreign, but all similar.

If you have multiple cultures, you need to make sure your naming bases are separate. Choose phonemes (basic units of sound) and some rules, then apply them to your names. In Augmentals I have one language that has a sound where they kiss the M. To represent it I use 'mm'. They also have the voiceless lateral fricative, which I represent with 'tl'. These are things that the reader will likely never consciously know, but their subconscious will pick up on the uniformity and whisper to them, "This is a solid book."

New Novella: Orluvoq

I know I never update this and no one ever reads this, but just in case here we go.

Yesterday I finished writing my novella Orluvoq. It's 30,600 words long (which correlates to about 120 printed pages) and inspired by Inuit (specifically Greenlandic) culture. Here's the blurb:

In the highest north, the world has an end. Black oblivion gapes out forever beyond the plains of rotting snow, the two separated by the infinite drop of an ice cliff holding all the world’s dead.

In the highest north, hunters ride kites into the aurora to fell narwhal from out of the sky. Chandlers set the beast’s tusk in columns of tallow. Shamans exact powers from the burning candles—powers to walk with shadow or the wind, to turn away frostbite and fever, to stay warm on the darkest night in deepest winter.

But the narwhal’s tusk has other powers. Darker powers. When consumed, it floods the devourer with an inimitable high. Once consumed, the devourer will never be satisfied with anything less. Every shaman is taught not to eat the tusk. If forced to choose between healing and warmth or the high, the shaman can’t always be trusted to be stronger than the addiction. 

But not every shaman does as they’re taught.

And so, we follow Orluvoq, a drug-addicted, eight-year-old shaman, as she climbs down the ice cliff at the end of the world to find her dead parents. Will she find answers, or will she only find that her hope is all gone?

 I don't have any information on a publishing date, but I'm sure I'll post here once I do. In the meantime, you can read the beginning here.

I found this picture and thought, "That's Or lu freaking voq."

A Shortage of Princes

A discussion in a writing forum came up about what makes 50 Shades and Twilight popular. I thought it might be worth it to catalog my thoughts here.

"It's about power. The only reason Fiddy Shades is successful is because the dude was rich, which is hot (money on a man is like makeup on a woman). Imagine if instead of a billionaire it had been a homeless guy.

The attraction comes in feeling special. It's the Disney narrative ("someday my prince will come"). It's the idea that there's a guy who could have any amount of women, but he chose me. A homeless guy couldn't have any amount of women, and therefore wouldn't make the protag feel special; rather she'd feel like an object of desperation.

In Twilight, here's a guy with superhuman strength, youth, etc. and he wants me. He wants to drink my blood really bad, but since I'm so special to him he won't.

As you pointed out, the series are popular because they're designed to let you vicariously live the experience of being special to men far beyond what you'll ever achieve. But deep down, you know that some day your prince will not come. It will be a fairly normal guy with a fairly normal job who fancies you. Reading these types of books is just suppressing that reality."

I'm not trying to say that there's anything wrong in wanting a good man. It only becomes unhealthy when a woman lets the fantasy (of the unachievable) delude her of reality. The inverse can be overlaid on men. Men, however, typically just want a/many hot girl/s (indicator of a healthy potential mate) and partially fulfill this desire through porn.

In short, there is a shortage of princes (and billionaires) in this world. Deceiving yourself into believing that you deserve one of them by the simple fact that you were born is untenable. It can be traced (somewhat) back to an increasingly entitled society. A society that has warped letting someone live with the negative consequences of their actions into a form of abuse. A society that would rather wallow in self-absorbed gluttony than affect positive change. Our society.

Us.

Give me my desires, for such is my right.

Absolve me of past mistakes, for the past is poor grounds for identifying patterns.

Accept me as I am, for I have already rejected who I could be.

Oneironauts 2 Cover

So I had a grandiose idea about the cover of the second Oneironauts. It was going to involve nice cameras and paint in water. Unfortunately I couldn't muster a fish tank for the photos, so it turned out out to be only a dream...

It was at this point that I decided to take matters into my own hands. I fired up GIMP yesterday and came up with the following. It likely won't be the final draft of the cover, but it's a big step in the right direction. I'm going to try and finish everything tomorrow (interior included) and order a proof. If everything looks good, I'm going to publish These Apparitions next week. Until then, enjoy the cover. Please comment with any feedback.

FYI: the word count for this book is about 97,000 words. It will be 344 pages (not including front and back material).

Update (6.16.15): I've finished the interior. The chapter names took quite a while. Luckily I learned some good lessons from my first time around so creating the interior was a fairly smooth process. I also posted my cover on an authors' forum and have gotten some feedback which I'll be implementing.

Update 2 (6.18.15): The final cover is nearly complete. I just need to get a picture of my own model (as I don't have rights to the one I used). I'm in talks with some people right now, Hopefully I'll have the shots before the end of the week.

Update 3 (6.19.15): I ended up just using myself as the model for the cover. I would have preferred someone else, but meh. I can change it later if I want. I spent all day yesterday doing the eBook for book 2 and fixing the eBook for book 1. My proof is on the way, so it should be published next week! Anyway, here's the final cover:

The Economics of Judging a Book by Its Cover

You've heard this metaphor recapitulated time after time your entire life. Don't judge a book by its cover. But I'm here to argue that that's exactly what you should do.

You see, publishing houses are involved in a thing called business. One of the principles the majority of businesses try to adhere to is maximize profit. So obviously all book companies are idealists who believe that a book shouldn't be judged by its cover. They spend as little as possible on the book's appearance, trusting that readers will be enchanted by the content.

Publishers spend an average of $3,000-5,000 on a book cover. In the video below (start at around 0:50 for the quote), Brandon Sanderson states that the highest paid cover he's heard of was $15,000. Fifteen grand. That sends a very clear message that publishers are worried about how their books look.

And for that very reason you can, should, and do judge books based on their outward appearance. Another poignant observation that Sanderson makes in the video is that publishers don't worry about whether or not the cover represents what's inside. To them, it's basically a movie poster for the book. In that sense, if you've written a fantasy novel, your cover has to appeal to fantasy readers! If it doesn't, your sales will suffer.

I'll make a comparison to the literary world. Most publishers won't take a look at your manuscript unless you have an agent representing you. To them, if you can't even manage to convince one person who's educated in how the literary world moves to stand by your project, they don't want to waste their time on it. For the same reason, someone who's on the lookout for a new title won't consider making the time investment on your novel if you can't even make it look exciting.

Next time you're at the bookstore (or at your bookshelf) examine which covers entice you and which ones turn you off. A nice fantasy or sci-fi cover always intrigues me, but the romance covers turn me off. That's okay, I'm not the target audience. It doesn't mean that I won't enjoy every single book whose cover isn't particularly exciting. It just means that I'll have to be introduced to those volumes through another source.

I'll end with a series that I was attracted to by the cover, the Bartimæus Trilogy. It had excellent payoff as well!