How to use this Page

We started production on the Daemons in the Mist Visual Novel this past week. The novel engine was designed by the fantastic team at CWS Software and with their help I will be creating the vast majority of the Visual Novel myself.

Yes you heard that right, I will be the writer, artist and coder for the visual novel version of Daemons in the Mist. This means I had to learn the game engine that CWS uses for their games. So I spent the better part of two days reading the manual and working with one of the lead programers. I was able to walk away with a least an understanding of how to code the visual novel. I’m not saying I’m an expert or anything, and I’m sure that once I actually start coding the VN I may run into some problems. But that’s true of learning any new computer language or engine (trust me I know four already).

Aside from learning the needed coding I also started breaking down the book similarly to how one would break down a book that is being translated into an animated film. Because other than movement visual novels and animated Features are pretty much the same. Good thing I have all those “art of” books right? The text all has to be broken down into script form since the text will be similar to close captioned shows and movies. And just like an animated show or movie I have to figure out how many backgrounds will be needed, how many expressions for each character is needed and how many outfits they all wear during the course of the story.

On a side note, because Daemons in the Mist is a long YA novel (over 90k words) we have decided to release the visual novel in serialized sections. We are still discussing whether to release the 55 chapters individually or in chapter bundles.

1 Comments | Previous | Top | Next

By: Claudette Young, on 6/25/2010
Blog: Claudsy's Blog (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:  SF, Writing and Poetry, recommended reading, Hellspark, Janet Kagan, Add a tag

Today did not start well. Until December of ‘08 I’d been without internet service for many years, all because of economics. Where I lived required satellite service which required a small fortune to set up. So, like many of the invisible people, I went without.

When I returned to the ether zone, it was to find a world that surpassed anything I’d known previously regarding using the internet. Protocols had shifted, techniques had blossomed into a field of wildflowers that I simply didn’t recognize. It’s taken this long to become remotely comfortable with the entire world of ether surfing.

I give this as background to lay the foundation for what happened this morning. For more years than I care to remember, one of my favorite authors had been awol from the publishing world for no reason that I could find. I had her books. I read and reread them each year. I loved them. I still do.

This morning I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I googled her to find out her status. That’s when I wept, for my worst fears had been realized. Janet Kagan had died in March, 2008. Something in the back of my head had told me that an author like Janet couldn’t stop writing without a very good reason. She had one–COPD that finally took her life.

If you’re never read her books, please do so. My personal favorites are Hellspark and Mirabile (a collection of short fiction surrounding continuing characters). You’ll never be disappointed.

Janet had a brilliant writing style filled with humor and that niggling little knife that gets you right where you live–that let’s you see your species as ones from elsewhere would. But always in a gentle way of poking your ego-bubble.

Her first novel–okay, her only novel–Hellspark, is a classic that combines linguistics, sociology, psychology, and mystery into a neat package and serves it up in such a way that will never really let you go.

The collection of short stories, Mirabile, will have you laughing from beginning to end and have you wanting to join the colonists on the next ship out. It’s astoundingly marvelous.

Uhura’s Song, of Star Trek fame, is quintessential SF with a dash of biography thrown in that gives the reader a backstory that few others could have managed.

I don’t have words for the story, The Nutcracker Coup. You’ll just have to read it for yourself.

This lady of words taught as easily as she stunned readers. Her many students continue to miss and revere her generous spirit and loving heart.

And I, this lonely writer, know how deprived my life is that I can never speak with her, never have the chance to learn a jewel of wisdom from her experience. Though I suspected that she’d gone on to other worlds beyond our sphere, learning the reality of her departure slapped me in the face with finality.

I can only hope to approach some semblance of writing competency compared to Kagan’s. Wherever she might be, I hope she gets a giggle or two out of my offerings.

With the internet as it is now, access as easily gained to writers, teachers, and the like, please do yourself a favor. Find those favorites of yours–the author who taught you how to grow as a person, the teacher who showed you that potential is what you make of it, the person who influenced your future. Find them and tell them. Not for their benefit, but for your own, so that you don’t have sit where I am today and regret that you didn’t take the time to make contact before it was too late.

That’s all for now. A bientot,

Claudsy

1 Comments on Passing The Torch, last added: 6/26/2010

Lauren, Publicity Assistant

We were thrilled when Brave New Words won the Hugo Award. And we were overwhelmed with excitement when Jeff Prucher, freelance lexicographer and editor for the Oxford English Dictionary’s science fiction project, revisited the blog with his picks of words that may seem to come from science, but really originate in science fiction. Now that Brave New Words is available in paperback, we’ve asked Jeff to write for us yet again. Below are his picks of mainstream words with fannish pedigrees, as coined by science fiction and fantasy fans.

Previously, I discussed words coined in works of science fiction that one might think came from the sciences instead. This time, I’m going to look at words coined by science fiction (and fantasy) fans which have entered the broader lexicon. Specifically, these are terms that are part of what is sometimes called fanspeak, the lingo of science fiction and fantasy fandom. This is probably not an exhaustive list, since definitions of what constitutes fanspeak, and what “entering the broader lexicon” actually means are open to different interpretations. I present these in no particular order:

1. Fanzine. This is one of the most successful terms coined by SF fans, and has gone from referring specifically to amateur periodicals relating (however vaguely) to science fiction and fantasy, to periodicals for fans of just about anything you care to name. The term has been around since at least 1940 in SF fandom, and since at least the 1960s in general use. (The earliest clear citation I’ve found for a non-SF usage is from 1968, which is almost certainly too late.)

2. Fanmag. This is another (of many) term that SF fans used to describe fanzines. It’s less common (I haven’t seen it in any mainstream dictionaries), but has also been used for non-SF zines.

3. Which leads me to zine, the other big success story. Zine was originally just a synonym of fanzine, but sometime in the late Twentieth Century, it was adopted to describe amateur publications of all sorts, not just those limited to one fandom or another, and an entire subculture has grown up around the publication of these zines. Zine can also be used as a suffix, to denote a particular type of zine (such as newszine, a zine that publishes primarily news, or mimeozine, a zine that is produced with a mimeograph machine). SF fans used the suffix profligately, and most coinages have stayed within fanspeak, but a few of the -zine words have seeped into wider zine culture as well, notably perzine (short for personalzine, a zine published by a single person, and often containing personal, journal-like content) and crudzine (a cruddy zine).

4. Completism. The desire to possess all of a set of something. Someone afflicted with completism is a completist. These originally referred primarily to the collection of books and magazines (which is pretty much what there was available to collect in the early days of SF fandom), and is now applied to comics, music, you name it.

5. -con. Another suffix. This shows up in the names of conventions and conferences. In use in SF fandom since at least 1942, this spread to related fandoms such as comics and role-playing games, and is now reasonably common in the names of other types of conventions, particularly computer and tech-related ones.

6. ish. An issue (of a magazine or fanzine). My own family has used this shortening for years, and we were completely oblivious to the existence of SF fandom when I was growing up, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this has an SFnal origin. What hasn’t made it into the broader lexicon is the use of ish as a combining form, in words like nextish, lastish, even thish (the next, last, and current issues of a magazine or fanzine, respectively).

7. fan fiction. Most people outside of the fanfic community probably think (if they think about it at all) that fan fiction is the exclusive domain of SF and fantasy fans. While this was once true, it’s certainly not true any more, and both the name and some of the associated terminology of fan fiction originated in SF fandom. Some of these associated terms are slash (fiction that depicts a sexual relationship between two characters) and Mary Sue (a character that acts out a blatant wish-fulfillment of the author or a story featuring such a character), both of which originated in Star Trek fandom. Curiously, fan fiction was originally used to refer to amateur fiction written about fans themselves, rather than amateur fiction written using the characters or settings of an existing work.

8. sci-fi. This is probably the most contentious word in the fannish vocabulary. It was coined as a simple shortening of science fiction by Forrest J Ackerman, by analogy to hi-fi, and originally had no particular connotations. The term eventually came to be viewed with opprobrium by many fans, however, probably in large part due to its perceived overuse by outsiders, especially the mainstream media. It can sometimes serve as a shibboleth, as well, and in some contexts will identify the user as an outsider. (Despite this, many fans have always happily used the term sci-fi; as I said, it’s contentious.) The term has also undergone reanalysis in the SF community, and can now be used to refer specifically to bad SF (especially movies and television shows); in this sense it is usually pronounced “skiffy.”

Student-run publication Speculations Magazine (Ottawa, ON) is accepting submissions of science fiction (including hard SF, dystopian fiction, and other speculative works) and humour stories for its premiere issue (September 2008). Length: 500-5000 words. Deadline: August 1, 2008. More details...

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks. Library copy.

The Plot:
Zombies. They attack. They almost win. Now, a decade later, an oral history has been assembled, from the doctor who treated "Patient Zero" (the first documented Zombie) to the American soldier who fought at the Battle of Yonkers, from the feral child who survived on her own to the South African who invented the notorious plan that ensured human survival at the cost of millions of lives.

The Good: Zombies!!

What else? Since the war is over and the survivors are being interviewed, we know that people lived. But how? At what cost? And how exactly do you survive when a zombie attacks?

Part of what I liked is how both the "back story" of those with knowledge is told, along with the suburban mom who didn't realize the threat until the Zombies came thru the living room window. As with other oral histories, the book moves from narrator to narrator.

Would you survive? According to the official web site, I have about a 35 percent chance of survival. The website keeps up to the "real" attitude of the book by including podcasts of those "interviewed" for the book.

This isn't a zombie gore-fest; it's rather a fear-fest, and I guarantee you by the end of the book, you'll be contemplating a home renovation to include steel doors, shatterproof glass, and disappearing stairs.

Who would like this? It's for fans of horror, science fiction, adventure, and survival fiction.

Brooks is the author of The Zombie Survival Guide. Which, according to the book jacket, "formed the core of the world's civilian survival manuals during the Zombie War."

It was published last year, making it one of the Best Books Read in 2007.

Links:
The review at Rock and Roll Librarian.
The Zombie Survival Guide Website.
Movie info (it's been optioned for a film; I think a miniseries on HBO or Showtime would be best.)

Bloodsong by Melvin Burgess, sequel / companion to Bloodtide. Copy supplied by publisher. The first image is the UK version; the second is the US version. Review based on uncorrected book proof.

The Plot: Sigurd is born to be a hero; and Bloodsong begins with Sigurd facing the classic hero quest: slay the dragon.

The Good: Loved it. A Best Book for 2007.

Bloodtide and Bloodsong are set in a future that's barely recognizable. It's a post--apocalyptic world that is as bloody and brutal as anything out of the medieval past. It's a world of death and violence. Science has made magic real; with cloning and machines, and "magic rings" studied under microscopes.

Yet magic is not lost; gods such as Odin and Loki are real (or are they the result of some high tech machine?) For example, Sigurd says he is born to do great things: "You think I'm arrogant; I'm not. I was made for this -- literally. My father designed me for it. Every gene in my body was picked for this purpose. My mother brought me up for it; the gods shaped me as the keystone for this time and place. It's no credit to me. I have less choice than anyone." Magical swords coexist with people that are part pig and part dog because of DNA manipulation.

Bloodsong is about adventure; love; greatness; weakness. It is bloody and violent and heartless. And it's realistic, in the sense that things don't always work out they way you think they should or the way you want them to. Bloodsong takes some unexpected twists and turns, changing the story entirely. I never knew what was going to happen next, which is refreshing. And it's why I won't tell anything of the plot beyond Sigurd is off to slay a dragon.

Burgess often shifts POV; mixing it up, so sometimes it's first person, other times third person, and it's not consistent. It's a bit unsettling at first; but it works because it means that, despite the UK cover ("one hero. one kingdom. one chance to make it his own"), there is no one hero; we see Sigurd's view of himself, as well as how others view him; we get into the heads of all the characters, as well as seeing them more objectively. Which makes the violence, the betrayals, the hope and lost hope all the more real and all the more heart-shattering.

The US cover says "a legacy's final heir. a country's only hope." As mentioned above, Burgess provides a slick mix of Sigurd being the heir and the hope not just because the gods say so, but also because Sigurd himself has been genetically engineered to be heir and hope.

Do you have to read Bloodtide to read Bloodsong? No; I read Bloodtide when it first came out and had forgotten much of the details. While I want to reread it, I didn't have the time. No worries; while there are some connections I may have missed, for the most part Bloodsong stands alone. Actually, anyone reading Bloodtide expecting a true sequel may be disappointed; Bloodsong does not continue the story of Bloodtide, but rather tells the story of Sigurd, son of Sigmund, one of the characters in Bloodtide. It's like first reading the story of Henry II and then reading a book about Richard I.

While my copy of Bloodsong didn't mention it, these books are based on the Volsunga Saga. Many of the names are the same; others are close: Sigurd is a Volson, for example. Those of you familiar with the saga will be less surprised than I at the twists and turns of Sigurd's story, and instead will take greater enjoyment at how that story is reborn, retold and reimagined.

Links, all of which refer to the source material so all are highly spoilerific
The Story of the Volsungs (Volsunga Saga)
More on the Volsunga saga.
Interview with author. (video interview)

Stormwitch by Susan Vaught. Library copy. 2004.

The Plot: Ruba has been raised by her maternal grandmother, Ba, in Haiti; but Ba has died so Ruba now moves to Pass Christian, Mississippi, to live with her paternal grandmother, Grandmother Jones. It's August 1969, and Ba raised Ruba to be proud of her African heritage, to be strong, to be a fighter. Ruba has a hard time adjusting to the segregation and prejudice in Mississippi, and a harder time adjusting to life with her grandmother. She sees none of the pride found in Ba; and Grandmother Jones, a devout Christian, frowns on the spells, potions and magic taught to Ruba by Ba.

The Good: Holy Hannah, it's not just tradition -- Ba and Ruba really are witches! Or war women or storm chanters or whatever you want to call them. Basically, the spells and chants and potions work; they are part of the wisdom and tradition of the Dahomey Amazon women. And they are real.

Which means that this changes from a book about a teen adjusting to life in a racist world to a book about a teen who can kick some racist ass.

Ruba's particular blend of magic is tied to weather -- and her enemy is the stormwitch who controls the hurricanes. The stormwitch is coming, turning regular hurricanes into killing monsters, and it's up to Ruba to stop this from happening. But first she has to battle racism and her disapproving grandmother. And then she is left to wonder: is she strong enough? Old enough? Before she always had Ba; now she does not.

Grandmother Jones is a remarkable character; at the beginning, we see her as Ruba sees her, but as Ruba's knowledge of the older woman grows, so, too, does our understanding, so we see someone who is strong and proud, just in different ways than Ba and Ruba. In the moment when Ruba understands that, she actually sees Grandmother in a different way: "Grandmother Jones's rockface makes sense to me now. It's not hatred or lack of feeling, anger, or even distress. My Grandmother wears the stern expression of a warrior, simple as that." The women in this book celebrate tradition, strength, and wisdom.

The book is set in 1969; which works not only because of the civil rights struggle, but also because the real Hurricane Camille is the storm witch that Ruba battles. It's hard to read this book and not think about Hurricane Katrina.

Finally, it is great to read a fantasy that has an African American protagonist. Ruba's struggles are real, her power is awesome, and you root for her every step of the way.

Links: Stormwitch Has African Roots from Sci Fi Wire.
Info at the author's website.
Winner of the Carl Brandon Kindred Award.
Wands and Worlds Review.
Nose Stuck In A Book review (seventh one down).
The Endicott Studio for Mythic Arts review.