All posts by Lars Walker

Publishing, Writing

Writing pains, prolonged

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Demonstration of Proper Writing Position, from Hill’s Manual of Social and Business Forms. Wikimedia Commons.

Nearing the end of my formatting/proofreading of The Year of the Warrior text, in hopeful pursuit of a new paperback edition.

I approached this project with some trepidation. I had fond memories of writing the book, and I didn’t want to be disillusioned by the reality. I had an awkward idea that parts of it must be pretty bad, and I didn’t want to stare into that void.

Overall, I’m pleased. Where the book is good, I think it’s pretty good. Sometimes my prose can soar. I make interesting use of poetry, both original poetry and psalms, and I think those passages function a little like a movie score, raising the emotional level of the whole exercise. I am my own John Williams.

But there are flabby spots. I’m way too preachy toward the beginning of Part 2, The Ghost of the God-Tree. I don’t think I’d make that mistake today – I wrote this more than 20 years ago, and I hope I’ve learned a few things about my craft. I think I won’t be entirely ashamed to sell this book. A little ashamed, yes, but also proud, overall.

Today was a beautiful day in Minneapolis, 70 degrees and sunny, as we all watch reports of the Chauvin trial from the corners of our eyes. We hope for the best, but it’s hard to imagine a scenario that isn’t pretty awful. A Chinese restaurant I patronize quite a lot opened for indoor dining again today, and I was there for lunch. It was nice, but I had a sense, as I sat there among a multi-ethnic crowd, that we were all uneasy.

At times like this, one is tempted to ask, “Does novel writing matter?”

And I answer, “Of course it does.”

I have a delusion that somewhere in Heaven, Erling Skjalgsson is pulling for me. And Father Ailill, or someone like him.

Writing

Writing pains

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Writing a book has sometimes been compared to giving birth. I can’t speak to the comparison; it’s for female writers to comment on such matters – not that I generally listen to female writers these days.

But I was in metaphorical labor last night, working on the new Erling book, King of Rogaland. As I’ve already mentioned, I’ve finished the first draft, but that’s very far from finishing the job. I’ve been particularly concerned about the second half, which seemed to cover the plot ground way too fast, and to be insufficiently linked to the first half. So I took one character, whom I’d sent offstage at about the half-way point, and signed him on for another tour of duty. I also decided I needed some more fantasy action. All yesterday, when I wasn’t working on proofreading The Year of the Warrior, I was thinking about a scene to insert.

Thinking is the embarrassing part of writing. It doesn’t look like you’re doing any work. It also doesn’t feel like you’re doing any work. It only amplifies that voice in your head that keeps telling you you’ve lost it… if you ever had it at all.

In the C.S. Lewis story collection, The Dark Tower and Other Stories, there’s a story called “Ten Years After.” It was, I believe, the last attempt Lewis ever made to start a novel (it’s about Helen of Troy). But it’s very short. By the time he wrote it, Lewis was near the end of his life. His health was failing (something glossed over in both filmed versions of “Shadowlands”), and he’d never really gotten over his wife’s death. He just couldn’t find the energy or creativity to write fiction anymore. He decided he was past it.

That was how I was feeling yesterday, when I set about plotting my new scene. I’m several years older than Lewis was when he died, after all – although my health is better, and I’ve insured myself against bereavement by successfully avoiding almost all meaningful relationships. But I was still wondering if I had it in me to write an imaginative scene.

But I came up with something. I think it’s good. It took a lot of thought, and it took time to gel, and it didn’t come together until I’d gone to bed, so I had to turn the lamp on to note it down, but I have a scene. I’ll get on it tonight.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Ghost of a Chance,’ by Dan Willis

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Will it surprise anybody if I tell you I’m kind of a snob when it comes to my reading? Probably not. I mean, I don’t read only Russian or French books, but I sometimes pre-judge novels, especially by genre. I think of myself as a high fantasist, both in my reading and writing. Light urban fantasy, I’ll confess, feels a little like slumming to me. But I must confess, I’m enjoying Dan Willis’s Alex Lockerby novels. They’re fun.

At the end of the previous novel, Alex, a runewright/private eye in a 1930s New York City where magic works, saved the city from a sorcerous disaster. But there was a price – he drained a lot of his life energy in the process. Now his hair has turned white and his hands shake – which is deadly for his bread-and-butter business, drawing precise runes to help people find lost dogs or spouses.

But he hasn’t been forgotten. In Ghost Of a Chance, when a “ghost killer” starts murdering people in locked rooms, one of the tabloid newspapers starts claiming Alex is showing the police how to solve the crimes. It’s not true, and it only makes the cops more hostile to him than they already were. Meanwhile, a woman whose husband has disappeared hires him to find him, and an eminent sorcerer/industrialist makes a bet with Alex to locate an experimental motor that’s been stolen from him.

Alex can’t draw his runes anymore. Which means that he’s going to have to rely on plain deduction to do the job the old-fashioned way. Is he up to it? Or will he find himself locked up for interfering with the police, as they keep threatening? Or even dead?

The prose in the Alex Lockerby books is not of the very highest quality, but the plots move right along and the characters and colorful and lively. Your entertainment dollar will not be wasted. I wish the author had studied up more on one of his characters, though, one who is supposed to be an actual historical figure. I won’t say who he is, but he seems to have changed a lot of his skills and philosophy in this universe.

Publishing, Writing

The return of ‘The Year’

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I hope I’m not raising cruel hopes among my millions thousands hundreds dozens (!) of longsuffering fans, but I guess I can tell you I’m in the process of trying to produce a new paper version of The Year Of the Warrior. Ori Pomerantz helped me out in the early stages, and now I’m proofreading a file to submit to a printer. (As you may be aware, Baen Books continues to sell the e-version, but our contract gives me the right to produce a tangible book. I note that the cover above was designed back in 2018, so this has been a long time coming.) It’s always a little awkward, when I’m selling books at Viking events, to tell people that the one Erling book I have for sale in dead tree form is Number Two in a series. TYOTW on paper will mean I’ll have books One and Two both (or One, Two and Three if you count TYOTW as a double. Which it is.). I think that’ll go over well.

Assuming there is a Viking Season this summer. If there isn’t, the money I plan to pay a printer will be sunk costs in my basement for a while.

So I’m re-reading The Year Of the Warrior for the first time in… a decade? Two decades? A long time. What do I think of it?

All in all, I’m pleased. There’s some weak spots, some sentences I’d recast or streamline. And the plotting, especially at the beginning, is occasionally forced. But a lot of the prose reads just fine to me, even moving in spots.

There are errors of fact. Some things I got wrong about Viking life, which have been clarified for me in the many years since. I wish I’d known that Erling’s father, according to a saga I’d never seen when I was writing, was killed in a thrall uprising while he was a boy (I spackled that story over in West Oversea). Other errors I won’t mention, because I’ve already repressed them.

I’m not fixing any errors in this version. “What I have written, I have written,” as a not-so-great Roman said. I think I need to own my mistakes along with my successes. It’s all on the record.

I’d forgotten some details. Erling’s shield shows two eagles (I need to mention that again; it’s thematically important). Father Ailill has a box bed in his house.

Anyway, I haven’t gotten an estimate from the printer yet, but I expect it won’t be cheap, especially with that beautiful cover by Jeremiah Humphries. So that’s where my stimulus money is going. Which is too bad, because I just got brake work done on the car…

Fiction, Reviews

‘Those Who Disappeared,’ by Kevin Wignall

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Kevin Wignall is always an interesting novelist, even when I don’t entirely care for some of his plotting choices. His latest is Those Who Disappeared, which had challenging moments, but was a very satisfying reading experience overall.

Foster Treherne is a young artist with a world-wide reputation, very famous and very wealthy. English and American by heritage, he lives mostly in Berlin and keeps a low personal profile. He’s generally disconnected from humanity, except for his staff. His father disappeared before he was born, and his mother committed suicide while he was a baby. His grandparents saw to his physical needs and education, but kept him at arms’ length. His essential view of life is, “People leave.”

Then he gets the news that his father’s body has been found, frozen in a Swiss glacier. With the help of an embassy employee, an attractive woman named Daniela with whom he cautiously begins a relationship, he gets the opportunity to see his own father for the only time in his life – in mummified form. Suddenly he conceives an obsessive desire to learn about this man. He studies his personal journal, found wrapped in plastic with the body, and goes through his old photos and documents. He makes contact with his father’s once-close group of post-graduate student friends, and is puzzled by their reactions. They tell contradictory stories, and lie about one another. They all say the same thing about Foster’s dad – “He was fun to be with, but had a dangerous side.” Are they trying to protect Foster from some harsh truth? Or is one of them actually guilty of murder?

Those Who Disappeared is a splendid example of a story which contains no shootouts or fist fights, but keeps the tension high and the reader fascinated. What’s better (for this reader) is that it’s the story of a man re-integrating with life. I love that kind of story, as it’s an experience I expect I’ll only ever have vicariously.

Anyway, I highly recommend Those Who Disappeared. There’s one problematic plot element for Christians, but it’s not preachy or implausible.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Night Gate,’ by Peter May

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I had actually thought that Peter May had wrapped up his Enzo Macleod mystery series with the previous installment. But Enzo rides one more time (if a little gingerly) in The Night Gate, which is advertised as the series finale.

Enzo, a Scotsman resident in France, has slowed down since the last book. He’s 65 now, and constantly on guard against the Covid-19 virus. He’s retired as a forensic science teacher and consultant, but when a skeleton is uncovered in the roots of a fallen tree in a picturesque town in the French Pyrenees, and that skeleton is dressed in the remains of a German officer’s uniform, the skull containing a bullet hole, Enzo is asked to take a look. He travels to the town with Dominique, his wife, and notices crime tape across the door of the house next door. There has been a murder there recently – a prominent art critic died inside of a slashed throat – but the local police ask Enzo to give them the benefit of his expertise. Though the culprit seems to be obvious – a German art broker was seen fleeing the crime scene covered in blood.

Enzo, however, is not sure about the man’s guilt. As he looks into the history of the murder house, he discovers that a former resident was involved in an audacious scheme to protect no less an artwork than the Mona Lisa, during World War II. A series of flashbacks tell us the story of Georgette Pignal, a young woman tasked by General de Gaulle himself with substituting a perfect copy for the original.

The Night Gate provided an enjoyable ride, relating a harrowing World War II adventure, along with the present-day heroics of a hero somewhat diminished by age and quarantine. I was left unsatisfied at the end, though – the resolution of the mystery was kind of a downer, and the extra surprise at the end was ambivalent.

If you’ve been following the series, you’ll want to read this one to cap things off. If you haven’t, this isn’t the place to start.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Blood Promise,’ by Mark Pryor

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I was very much impressed with the Mark Pryor’s first Hugo Marston novel, The Bookseller. I liked the second one, The Crypt Thief, with certain reservations. Number three, The Blood Promise, lost me completely. I say it with regret.

In a rural house in France, an old woman is murdered by a burglar, who makes off with an antique sailor’s chest. Not long after, Hugo Marston, head of security at the US Embassy in Paris, is assigned to “babysit” a visiting US senator scheduled to negotiate a minor dispute with the French government at a palatial country chateau. Hugo isn’t enthusiastic about chaperoning Senator Charles Lake, an unvarnished character who may have been intended to suggest Donald Trump. But a minor crisis arises when the senator insists that someone has entered his room in the night, and insists that the invasion of privacy be investigated. Their noble French host, insulted, refuses more than the minimum cooperation, and the talks break down.

But to everyone’s surprise, one fingerprint found in the room turns out to match one left behind at the earlier murder scene. Soon Hugo, along with his CIA friend Tom, his policeman friend Garcia, and his journalist girlfriend Claudia, are on the hunt for a ruthless killer who will blow their lives apart.

I liked the characters in this series, and the writing wasn’t bad (except for Americanisms in the use of the word “like” that don’t really work well in a French setting). But there were also elements I liked less. One was certain suggestions of progressive political leanings – which up to now were not made explicit. This time out, in a plot choice that will shock readers, author Pryor removes one beloved character and replaces them with a new character who has an Agenda – one which a fair amount of word count is spent explaining. This is an Agenda I don’t really care to spend time with, and that means I’m dropping the series on grounds of a fun deficit.

But a second problem is non-ideological. I noticed it before, in The Crypt Thief – the villain’s motivations make no sense to me. The plot involves a blackmail threat over a secret that I can’t see as scandalous in the least, and I don’t think anyone would care much about it in the real world.

So I’m done with this series, which started out with a lot of promise.

Authors, Fiction, Religion

‘Rings of Love’

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The other day somebody on F*cebook shared a fine article on J. R. R. Tolkien from the archives (2002) of Touchstone Magazine. It’s about love and happens to have been written by Dale Nelson, a Tolkien scholar and a close personal friend of mine:

Tolkien told one of his sons about his young love for Edith in a letter, written after her death. “I met the Lúthien Tinúviel of my own personal ‘romance’ with her long dark hair, fair face and starry eyes, and beautiful voice” in 1908, when he was 16 and she was 19. Very soon after they married, he was captivated by his wife’s dancing, for him alone, when he was an army officer on leave from the Great War, in 1917, and they slipped away to “a woodland glade filled with hemlocks” in Yorkshire. And that moment was the origin of the myth of Beren and Lúthien, Tolkien wrote to another of their sons.

Read the whole thing here.

Fiction, Reviews

‘In Plain Sight,’ by Dan Willis

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I’m not a big fan of modern wizard books (you may have noticed I failed to succumb to the charm of Jim Butcher’s Dresden novels) generally, but someone suggested I check out Dan Willis’s Alex Lockerby novels. I read the first, In Plain Sight, and found a lot to like.

Alex Lockerby is a private eye/rune writer in 1930s New York City, but in an alternate universe. In this universe, magic substitutes for science. Pretty much everything runs on electricity, and the electricity is provided by a small number of great sorcerers, who are the plutocrats of the day (Rockefeller is one of them). Rune writers like Alex are far more common, doing smaller-scale magic at various levels of expertise.

One day a beautiful young woman comes into Alex’s office to ask him to locate her brother, who has disappeared. He was a rune writer too, and she fears he might have gotten into magical trouble he couldn’t handle. Alex takes the job, and falls for the girl.

Meanwhile, a personal tragedy strikes, in the form of the mysterious deaths of a number of people in a church homeless mission, including the priest. That priest was the man who raised Alex, and the police (reluctantly) allow him to consult on the case. He lends his expertise to the hunt for a secret journal belonging to Leonardo Da Vinci, rumored to contain a few complex runes that would give their owner almost unlimited power – power for which certain foreign agents are hunting.

I liked In Plain Sight much more than I expected. It transposed a lot of good old hard-boiled tropes, and there was a pretty neat surprise at the end, involving a major character. The tension with Christian theology that tends to go with books about magic is softened here by the fact that Alex is close to a Catholic priest who has no objections. Apparently the rules are different in this universe. Here magic is like science, and spiritual beings don’t seem to come into it.

If you like urban fantasy and hard-boiled mysteries, In Plain Sight is a pretty fun way to spend your reading time. Recommended.

Poetry, Writing

Snow and poetry

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Photo credit: Andrew Small @ andsmall. From Unsplash.

Remember that snow I said we’d probably still get, because you can’t get out of March in Minnesota without an encore or two? It came last night. A couple inches, and it’s already starting to melt. I guess some’s coming tomorrow too. But Spring has the big momentum now. Even if the snow keeps coming back, it’ll be in short, vicious snaps, like a rat dying in a trap.

Here’s something I don’t think I’ve written about before here. Poetic prose. I am, as I’ve often said, a poor poet, even when I bother. (I was fairly well on in years before I even started to figure out what poetry is.) But over the years I’ve picked up some ideas about adding poetic touches to my prose. Father Ailill in the Erling books, stage Irishman that he is, is particularly prone to poetic flights, which is one of the things that makes him fun to write. And with St. Patrick’s Day coming up, this might be a good winter’s day to discuss the subject.

A while back I was in a gathering where someone mentioned, cautiously, that they’d been writing poetry, and what did we think of it? And they read some of it. I think that person was hoping I’d say it was great, but I said nothing. Because it wasn’t very good. I wished I had the opportunity to talk to them about it one-on-one, but I didn’t get that.

Here’s what I wanted to say to them:

You think you’re writing poetry here, but what you’re actually doing is just writing prose, the way you’d write prose any time, and then breaking the lines up. Poetry is more than just the way you lay your words out on the page. It’s about using words, and loving words, and manipulating words, marshaling the power of words to say more than bald prose can.

When I think of good poetry, one line comes to mind – my favorite line of poetry in the world. I’m not generally much interested in Dylan Thomas, but his poem, “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower,” amazes me. Just the first line (which is also the title), actually. I think it’s almost perfect.

“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
“Drives my green age…”

Look what Thomas does with that first line.

Eleven syllables. Of those syllables, each is single word, except for the last one.

Such a sequence constructs a picture in the listener’s mind:

Dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-double.

Which translates, semi-visually, to:

Stem-stem-stem-stem-stem-stem-stem-stem-stem-FLOWER.

It’s a picture of a flower.

But then the poet takes that picture of a flower and manipulates it. The stem becomes a “fuse.” “Fuse” is obviously a loaded word. Slightly sinister. Suddenly, instead of a mental picture of a flower, the picture is of a fuse burning down toward a dynamite charge. And when the fuse gets to the end, the charge explodes, and that explosion is a flower.

Suddenly we see the flower in a whole new way. It’s not just a pretty (kind of effete) plant sitting in the ground, looking decorative. It’s a little explosion, driven by some kind of a “force.” The rest of the poem expands on that idea of a life force. This is not one of Wordsworth’s daffodils. This is a dangerous flower, a flower from a rough neighborhood.

That’s what poetry is. It exploits the sounds of the words, the rhythm of the words, the associations of the words, and even the way the words look on paper, to turn ideas into little explosions in your head. You think in a new way, and you see in a new way.

It’s like a workout for your brain. And your spirit. It makes the muscles stronger, capable of doing things you never knew they could do.