Ye Olde English

A short update for now, since I have to (gasp) venture out of the house to procure sustenance.

From the South English Legendary, a medieval collection of stories about saints, comes this passage that may or may not (hint - may) prove relevant to Daughter of Eve. (Many, many thanks to Mr. Holden for his services in translating from Middle English to Modern English.)



Ake huy þat heolden sumdel with him : and nouȝt fulliche so faste, 
Out of heouene he drof heom : and In-to þe lofte heom caste,
Al here bi-neþe toward þe eorþe : þare mest tempeste is:
And þare heo schullen in tempest and in pine beo : to þe daye of dome, i-wis;      
And ase hore gult þe more was : heore pine was al-so,
þe worse stude heom i-take : heore penaunce for-to do.
Ake to helle huy ne schullen nouȝt : are domes-day i-wende;
Ak þare huy schullen after-ward : bi-leue with-outen ende.      
Oþure þare weren þat for heom : sumdel in mis-þouȝte weren,
Ake natheles huy heolden betere with god : and vnneþe fur-bere:
þulke wenden out of heouene al-so : and a-boue þe oþure beoth,
An heiȝ onder þe firmament : and godes wille i-seoth,      
And so schullen sumdel in pine beo : a-non to þe worldes ende,
Ake huy schullen at domes-day : a-ȝein to heouene wende.
In eorthþeliche parays : some beoth ȝeot al-so,
And in oþur studes on eorþe : heore penaunce for-to do.
For heore defaute in heouene : þoruȝ ore louerdes grace
Man was formest on eorþe i-wrouȝt : to fulfulle þulke place


But they that hold somewhat with him, but in no way fully so firm,
Out of heaven he drove them: and into the air he cast them,
All downward toward the earth, where most of the tempest is,
And where they should truly be in tempest and in pain until the day of doom.
And the more their sin was, the more their pain was also,
The worst state for them was taken: in order to do their penance.
And to hell they owe nothing of their doomsday recourses;
But there they afterward owe belief without end.
Other tares were there for them – somewhat in error they were.
But they nevertheless held better with God, and they scarcely let alone
Those who also went out of heaven.. And above the others there is,
A high place under the firmament, and they see God’s will;
And so they should be somewhat in pain from now until the world’s end,
But at doomsday they shall go again to heaven.
Some of them are also in parts of the earth
And in other places on earth for to do their penance
For their default in heaven. Through our Lord’s grace
Man was first made on earth to fill this place.

What could it mean??

Problematic Chosen Ones

Hello again, readers...

Work on the 2nd draft (well, draft 2.5 or 3 at this point) of Vatican Vampire Hunters continues nicely, and I'm still juggling what to work on next. Leaving aside the vague "semi-realistic superheroes" idea that watching Avengers yesterday inserted into my brain, there's the full fantasy I've been talking about the last few entries on one hand, and on the other a sort-of-sequel to VVH - a work set in the same not-quite-real world. It's something I started a few years ago, and got maybe 10k words in before losing steam. No big loss, because at the time, it was a bit of a mess, and I didn't have a clear idea of how to get the plot from Point A to Point Z.

Anyway, the main character of said work is that beloved, or at least frequently used, staple of fantasy/horror fiction - a Chosen One, heralded in prophecy and burdened with a great (and dark) destiny, etc. etc. There are pitfalls in writing about any kind of Chosen One - how to make them interesting in their own right, as who they are instead of what, for instance. There's also the risk of the story being boring because it's blatantly inevitable the protagonist will win.

This is a real problem when God is literally on your side, as He is in the case of my story's heroine. How does one work around being the champion of an omnipotent God? In VVH, the characters serve God, but aren't directly empowered by Him, so the issue isn't as important. It's a little different when the heroine is the direct matrilineal descendant of Eve, chosen (cursed?) by God with the inherited duty and power to fight against monsters of all sorts (vampires, ghosts, Leviathan, angry sasquatches, etc).

(Any resemblance to a certain SoCal cheerleader character is all in your imagination. Really.)

I know how I'm going to address the issue in the book, if (when) I get around to it, but what would you the writer do under similar circumstances? Have at it, ladies and gentlemen!

Mythology

Hello again, loyal readers...

Every fantasy setting has its own mythology and features that make it a distinct setting, unlike the real world.

In Vatican Vampire Hunters, there's not too much in the way of mythology. The story is set in what's mostly the real world. Vampires and the supernatural exist, but otherwise, it's the same (the approach used by The X-Files, White Wolf's World of Darkness games, and many, many other works). As far as the vampires themselves are concerned, nobody is really sure of their origins. It doesn't come up (at least in the current draft).

But, weaned on fantasy like Lord of the Rings, that's not enough for me. I want to create worlds!

My probable next project, White Queen's Tribute, lets me do that. It's an original fantasy novel. I haven't given too much thought to the setting's history, geography and mythology yet, but there are two elements that I want to play with.

The first is the (as yet unnamed) world's counterpart to Satan. In the Judeo-Christian tradition most Westerners are most familiar with, the Devil has a few popular images - the horned, hoofed demon and the snake in the Garden chief among them. On this world, instead of a snake, the most common animal form of their Devil is a bat.

As their version of the Fall of Man goes, the second generation of humans (children of their Adam and Eve) were lead astray by the Bat. He seduced them with stories of a Great Beast out beyond the boundaries of their garden (an island in an inland sea, perhaps) and, driven by the desire to gain glory in a righteous cause, almost all of the children left the island to follow the Bat after the Beast. Of course, the Bat was the Beast, and their hunt ended in misery and judgement from on high, a rough parallel of what happened to Adam and Eve in the Bible.

The other element of the World's mythology is that instead of picturing Hell as a place of endless fire, the people view Hell as eternal imprisonment in ice (much like the deepest pit of Hell in Dante's Inferno). The souls of the damned are buried in a huge ice-filled chasm that reaches to the very heart of the world. Each new soul rises the ice just a little bit higher. The End Times will begin when that chasm fills up all the way to the surface and the damned spill out to fight a terrible Last Battle against the loyal sons and daughters of "Adam" and "Eve" (not all their children followed the Beast; the ones that didn't are preternaturally strong, wise and powerful... and nowhere to be seen by mere mortals)

That's just scratching the surface, of course. We'll see where it goes...

Until next time!

Characters

Hello again!

There are two big hurdles I need to overcome for the British version of Vatican Vampire Hunters. The first is smoothing out the plot and making the villain's appearances and role more straightforward. We'll cover that in a later entry. Today's topic is the second hurdle - the characters.

Transitioning the action from Italy to the UK demands some changes to the heroes and villains of the piece. Lucy, as an outsider and the viewpoint character, remains intact. Father Gelasius is likewise unchanged. Everyone else, though...

Brazilian Sister Ana Branco is now Sister Anne Howley, a native Englishwoman. Aside from the name change, not too much is different about her. I may dial up her slightly otherworldly feel a little, as long as I don't go overboard.

Lucy's fellow American, Marty Black, is now a British fellow of Asian descent named Joe Kottayil. His American football mania and Texas twang are gone with the old name, but he's still basically the same guy.

The last hunter, Nathalie Dumont, is probably the most changed from the first draft. A French Canadian really didn't work with the UK-centric team that's assembling for the new version, unfortunately. I briefly considered keeping her the same just from Belgium instead of Quebec, and making her an immigrant (there's a small Belgian British community, per Wikipedia at any rate) but that version of the character wasn't really working very well in my imagination. She's now become Lily Sweeney, an inner city English girl of Irish ancestry. Writing a Liverpool accent will be an interesting challenge (by which I mean it will take a few runs through with my British friends to make it non-laughable), but personality wise, I'm on solid ground, as Lily is based on a character I've played in PBEM for a few years now.

As far as the villains go, the vampire formerly known as Liana Negri has a name change to Elizabeth Masterson, and a few background tweaks to bring her from Italy to England. Kirya the vampire remains Kirya, but she's a proto-Celt instead of proto-Arab now. And that pretty much brings us up to speed... Now back to the second draft!

Speed writing and second drafts

We meet again!

The NaNoWriMo process emphasizes speed - daily word count targets, the 50k goal - which is a mixed blessing, I think. Having a deadline is a good idea, since it's a wonderful goad (I probably wouldn't have finished VVH without it), but it results in a lot of telling instead of showing. In my case, at least. YMMV, as always.

Going back over VVH to work on the second draft, I'm realizing how sketchy, breathless really, much of the material is. As an example, in the first draft, Lucy's announcement to her family of her decision to return to Italy, scene of her vampire assault, and her actual departure from the US, is covered in about 3 paragraphs. I tell the readers it happens, and go into as much detail about her flight from NYC to Rome than I do about how her parents react to what she tells them. 

Here's how it reads now. Substitute Italy, Rome and Texan for Britain, London and English, and you have the first draft version:

A month passed. 

Lucy had been released from the hospital and left Britain under an already-fading media eye. And then a couple weeks back home, and calls to London on the sly. 

(Twice she'd talked to the English guy, and somehow hadn't managed to find out his name.)

And the announcement "I'm going back" much to her parents' shock and dismay. There were long, loud arguments in the Manning family house. In the end, baffled and worried, Mom and Dad had come to accept it, probably only because Lucy swore, on her immortal soul, she wouldn't do anything stupid, and she'd be as careful as humanly possible, and she'd call them every day.

Not a lot of meat on those bones, is there? Lucy's already made her decision and accepted her new calling in the previous chapter, but deciding and doing are two different things. I need to show more - a lot more - of what happens in the month that passes. Practically every sentence up there could become a scene in its own right.

* Lucy leaving the hospital and going home.

* One or two of the phone calls to London

* The big one - Lucy telling her family she's going back to Britain.

I don't want to go too far the other way - this is a supernatural action story, not a Lifetime Presents movie - but these are important events, and they'll help make Lucy a fuller character, and give her family, who barely appear in the first draft, more of a presence.

And now, because pictures are fun, here's one of Mary Elizabeth Winstead, the actress who served as my mental model of Lucy as I was writing.

Signing off...

Introduction time

So, I have a blog now, on top of Google+, Facebook, Twitter and a seldom-used Livejournal account. Bear with me as I get used to the formatting and other technical elements of all this, I implore you.

Many, if not most, of you already know who I am, but for any strangers who come by - welcome, btw! - I suppose an introduction is in order. Who am I? What am I all about?

The first part is easy. Me llamo Paul Leone, graduate of the University of Maryland at College Park (class of 2000), resident of Western New York, and self-employed proto-writer trying to break into the world of published writers. This blog will focus on those efforts, which really began last November when I entered into the annual NaNoWriMo competition. Unlike my previous effort, back in 2009, I managed to finish my project last year. My prospective novel, Vatican Vampire Hunters, came in just shy of 48K words. That's not a  very high word count, but it was the first original novel I'd actually completed, beginning to end.

And now it's time to get off my butt and get to work on the second draft, which I began earlier this week after putting aside another project for the time being.

What is Vatican Vampire Hunters about? Just what it says on the tin, as they say over in the UK - a small, secret group of vampire hunters who work for the Catholic Church. It's inspired a little by Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I hope there's at least a trace of Whedonesque style in the dialogue, but much more by the late John Steakley's Vampire$, which covered similar ground. As it stands in the first draft, VVH is set in Rome and focuses on Lucy Manning, a young American woman who survives a close encounter with a vampire and subsequently joins the titular hunters.

For the second draft, I've decided to adjust the setting and (to a lesser degree) the plot and characters. I'm moving the action from Italy to the UK. Why? Mostly because, while I've been to Rome a few times, I'm really not that familiar with it, to say nothing of the rest of Italy. As I went back through the first draft of VVH, I realized that, among other flaws, it was pretty thin when it came to actual Italians. I'm hardly an expert on Britain, but I have been there many, many times - London, especially, but several other cities and towns from Scotland to the South of England. (You can, in large part, blame my musical muse Hayley Westenra for this). "Thou shalt write what thou knoweth" is the First Commandment of writing, and I know Britain a lot better than I do pretty much any part of the world outside the USA. Hopefully I can at least present a reasonable facsimile of the UK in VVH version 2.0, one that doesn't induce winces among people who actually live in or are intimately familiar with Britain.

And now back to work... chime in if you like. Comments make an angel get his wings.