Noise in the Attic

The other day, I posted a list of things I was thankful for in my life.  An important item on that list is: “Driving to work under a dawn sky”.  This is why that is important:

That starts the day off right.

Clarity of vision is both a blessing and a curse to the creative mind. Writers, and artists of all other forms, see the things that “normal” people dare not. We see the gods and demons, angels and monsters, the things that live beyond the mundane.

Along with the vision, though, comes a heavy responsibility. It is not enough just to be a witness to the larger world, we must also testify to what we see. It is our duty to the human race to show the glories and tribulations that lie beyond the veil.

Why? That is up to each artist to decide individually. I only know that I am compelled to write about the things I see, to transcribe the voices from other worlds. I am compelled to improve the world by creating beauty and, maybe, touching other lives.

What do you think? What is your sense of the artist’s* responsibility?

*Yes, I believe that writers are artists. Stories without art are just words — full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Each word is a note in the symphony, each sentence a line of color in the painting, each paragraph a shape on the sculpture, each scene filmed through the creative eye. Your opinion may vary, but I cling to mine with a strength born of the faith that my toil and tears will not be in vain.

To be an artist means never to avert one’s eyes. — Akira Kurosawa

This is another theme that recurs in my mind frequently. The problem with having a creative mind is that it is sometimes too creative. I spend so much time thinking about unrealities and fictions that I have trouble seeing the core truths that are necessary to make them meaningful.

Once again I find that I have stalled out on Washed in the Blood for the simple reason that I refused to see the truth.  I flinched.  I averted my eyes.  I have been trying to make the story conform to my ideas about what, when, where, and how, and it stubbornly refuses to go there.

I have to let the story grow naturally from the characters and situations and follow its own course to its inevitable ending.  Once more, I find I have to let go of a cherished idea in order for the story to continue.  I have been thinking about a sequel instead of finishing this one.  Can’t do it.  Have to just let go and move forward.

I stand on the brink of a chasm.  To one side is a rope bridge.  Below, I hear rustles and growls, hisses and slithers.  I see the orange glow of lava, the blood-brick of embers.  The stink assaults my senses.

I know the bridge will get me across.  I built it myself.  I know the ropes are sound, the knots tight.  Maybe it’s not the sturdiest way to go, and I might get scared along the way, but I know, at my core, that I will get across safely.

The only problem is that my feet won’t go that way.  No matter how hard I try, they just will not budge.  I know I will have to go into the chasm and cross it the hard way.  That way is dirty and dangerous.  The monsters are real.

I look at the bridge again, try to take a step, go nowhere.  I look across at the treasure on the other side.  I take a deep breath.  I step forward…

Heard on the radio this morning:

“Do y’all stuff your turkey?”

“Uhhh, no.� We bake it.”

Urrrr?

In any case, don’t just stare at a blank page, put something down.  A bad idea on paper is much better than no idea, because a bad idea is a reference point.  It can help you find what you’re looking for.  Put ten bad ideas on the page and you’ll know ten things that what you’re looking for is not.  And if you know ten things it’s not, what it should be will soon reveal itself.  James Bonnet.  Stealing Fire From the Gods (Michael Wiese Productions, 2006, 1-932907-11-4)

Aye, there’s the rub.  A simple concept; sounds easy — get pencil, get paper, write, write, write.  For me, though — and I’m certainly not unique in this — this passage clearly illustrates an obstacle I have struggled to overcome my whole life — perfectionism.  This is not just a hurdle, it’s a sheer 10,000-foot cliff with an overhang.

“You can do better.”

“You’re not even trying.”

“We expect better of you.”

Voices from my past that echo down to my present. I know they’re only words.  I know that no one else ever need know what I write, but I know, and that voice in my mind knows, and that’s 2 too many.  Many years ago, I developed a defense mechanism for these situations: if I am not sure I can do something extremely well, I don’t start.  I guess you could say I would rather suffer failure by omission than failure by commission.

I try.  I really do try, and I do write some complete dreck sometimes.  Then, i get disgusted and discouraged and have a very hard time even thinking about writing for a long time.  That sucks.  To have that drive inside of me, the words trying to get out, but being so afraid that I keep the doors closed, that really sucks.  Sometimes the pressure builds up to the point almost of an explosion.

That mountain is intimidating.  It is very, very large and very, very threatening, yet I have to climb it.  Inch by painful inch.  Don’t look down.  Don’t look up, either.  Look straight ahead and concentrate on the next inch.  I am most thankful that I have a very patient therapist to coach me along and friends to lend me a hand.

A few things I am thankful for:

- Driving to work under a dawn sky

- Driving home from work under a sunset sky

- Walking by the river at sunset sometimes

- Coming home to a wife, dogs, and cats that love me unconditionally, even when I grump and grouch. Or cry for no apparent reason.

- Having time on my morning and evening commutes to relax and fling random thoughts at each other to see which ones stick.  This is what come to me this morning.  It will be fun to see where it goes:

The flamingoes were the first sign that something was terribly wrong.  They roosted in the trees, swam in swimming pools, stood on lawns and in gardens.  One even sat on a chimney.  Ten thousand bright pink one-legged plastic lawn ornaments that sprouted overnight all over Oak Ridge.  Deepening the mystery was the fact that pink flamingoes are not a common sight in East Tennessee.

- Having a job I love where I am treated as an equal and allowed to exercise my professional skills and judgment without overbearing supervision.  Been there, done that, not going back.

I truly do have a great life.  I wish I could enjoy it more than I do.  What can you find to be thankful for on a cold, rainy November day?

A lot of my readers, the few who are left, know that Winter is a bad time for me, especially December.  It looks like I have started early this year, probably because of the election.

The two words that best decribe my mental condition right now are anxiety and irritability.  I dread December.  It’s a long, dark time with a long, dark history.  I have also come to hate Christmas (at least the way we celebrate it nowadays) with a passion of blast-furnace intensity.  Crass commercialism and forced merriment make me angry.  Let me ask one more time: where is the “Spirit of the Season” in January?  Don’t the poor and hungry and needy count any more after December 25?

Put that together with the recent debacle that we call an election, and I am just not doing too good.  Six months of drivel and mud-slinging and lies leading up to a non-choice between the Republican sock-puppets and the Democratic sock-puppets has just left me empty.  Don’t get me wrong — I voted.  I vote every chance I get, and I hope you do too.  I also write my Representative and Senators regularly to let them know what I’m thinking.  I hope you will do that, too.  It’s the only chance we have.

I do have some other things to talk about, but right now, I’m running on empty.  Soon, I hope.

Wrong!  I seriously doubt there are many people with as Southern an accent as mine.  At least they got it right on the graph.

Link from Jean.

Valley of the Soul (Bantam Spectra, 2006, ISBN 0553587110) is the third novel by Tamara Siler Jones, the third book in her series about Dubric Byerly, Castellan of Faldorrah, and her third book in the subgenre she invented — forensic fantasy. With forensic fantasy, Jones combines mystery, police procedural, horror, and fantasy into a unique and quite tasty blend. The forensics never violate the technology of the pre-industrial society, and Jones avoids the temptation to use magic or to have a Sherlock Holmes clone. Good old-fashioned police work, mud-slogging footwork and attention to detail, is Dubric’s method for solving crimes.

This latest volume follows Dubric, his squire Dien, and his page Lars as they try to solve a mystery involving missing and dismembered animals, a mystery that soon turns into something far more deadly. When people start turning up dead, all the signs point to a mage on the loose. Not just any mage, though, a blood mage — the deadliest and most evil of all. Although all mages were supposedly killed in the War of Shadows fifty years previous, it appears that at least one still lives, and it has a bone to pick with Dubric personally.

Trust, responsibility, consequences. These themes and more infuse Valley of the Soul with a richness and depth found all too seldom in modern fantasy. Actions have consequences. Even those things you did fifty years ago will come back to you. When they do, the interest you have to pay on their principal can be bankrupting. The trust of your friends and co-workers can be lost for good, usually right when you need it the most.

Consequences. Dubric’s actions during and after the War were taken with the best of intentions. However, when these chickens come home to roost, they are more like large hawks with bad attitudes and a score to settle. A frantic hunt for a blood mage who may be on the verge of regaining power is not the right time for these birds to come swooping down. Dubric has not only earned the enmity of the mage, but carries some secrets that will have a profound effect on his relationships with the people around him.

Responsibility. Dubric’s responsibilities as Castellan are a burden to him in his old age. Murder investigation and mage-hunting are a young man’s game. Now he also has the responsibility of explaining why he did what he did during the War and since. Explanations are not easy, and time and circumstances do not permit a leisurely conversation about them.

Trust. The real problem is that Dubric may lose the trust of Dien and Lars when he needs them the most. Worst of all, he will not even be able to trust himself at the crisis. This small band stands little enough chance against a powerful mage as it is. If the team is broken, the mage will win, and the world will once again enter a Dark Age of mage-magic and evil. Can Lars accept the truth about himself? Can Dien trust Dubric to do the right thing about Dien’s daughter, Jess, Lars’s intended? Can Lars and Dien learn to trust each other again as they dance around some sticky questions and misunderstandings? Can Dubric do the right thing, even at the cost of his beloved Maeve, the true love he has finally found nearly fifty years after he took the lives of his wife Oriana and their unborn child? Can he even trust himself as he falls under the mage’s control? They’d better, or they die and the world with them.

Dubric and his assistants are just normal people thrust into very abnormal circumstances and trying to do their jobs the best way they can. You will not find elves in Faldorrah, no dwarves, and the only wizards are evil. What you will find are real people: people who puke, who bleed, who do the wrong things for the right reasons. People who suffer and die. Magic is no help to them. The side-effects and consequences of using magical items are just too serious. The only people who could control such items are long dead; no one now alive understands them enough to use them effectively.

I strongly recommend that anyone new to the work of Tamara Siler Jones read her first two novels, Ghosts in the Snow (Bantam Spectra, 2004, ISBN 0553587099) and Threads of Malice (Bantam Spectra, 2005, ISBN 0553587102), to get a handle on the backgrounds and baggage that each character carries before reading Valley of the Soul. This history is essential to understanding why the characters behave the way they do and feel the emotions they do. Though these three novels are about the same time and place and characters, they are as different as three children who share the same mother. The series shows Jones’s growth as a writer and as a person, her journey through life, and her explorations of some of the deeper, and darker, regions of the human psyche. If you want oatmeal reading, stay away from these novels. Each is rich and dark, but in much different ways.

Ghosts is violent, but mischievous, a child taking delight in its wickedness. At the climax, the things happening in the background had me laughing myself into a fit of hiccups, while still worried sick about the outcome. It won the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel of 2004.  Threads is much, much darker–black as unforgivable sin–and deeply disturbing. The violence is much more graphic, and the suffering more intense and personal. This is the angst-ridden teen-ager of the bunch. It has been nominated for the Gaylactic Spectrum Award for Best Novel for 2006.  Valley is the adult. It faces issues of maturity, responsibility, and judgment. Though still violent, Valley is disturbing on a deeper level. The questions it leaves unanswered lead me to believe, indeed hope, that there will be at least one more story to come from Faldorrah.These novels all explore dark themes and are unflinching and liberal, though never gratuitous, when it comes to blood, gore, and violence.  Jones’s skill at creating multi-threaded plots and real characters has only increased over the course of her three books. Valley is tightly woven, fast-paced, and full of so many twists it might make you doubt your own sanity. The author’s sanity is, of course, undoubtedly compromised. Any mind that can conceive a story so devious, so devilish, must be unbalanced. Let us all hope and pray she never recovers. She does deliver good value for your money, though. Her books are all hefty, in the neighborhood of five hundred pages each, and tightly packed with fast-moving prose and Gordian-knotted plots.

I heartily recommend Valley of the Soul for those readers who like to explore the darker reaches of the human experience. Be advised, though, Tamara Siler Jones does not write stories suitable for children. These are books for mature adults, and will leave even them with disturbed dreams. The humor is dark as a murderer’s heart, and the horrific images will settle into your mind for a long stay. Fans of murder mysteries and horror will like these books; fans of light, escapist fantasy will not. I hope you enjoy Valley of the Soul and its compatriots as much as I have.