I've been struggle-bussing a bit over the last few days about struggling to find a home for my novel, and a lot of people have expressed interest. Obviously, since I'm trying to publish it, I can't share.
I started a different novel shortly after finishing it. About 10,000 words done, but shelved indefinitely because I've got SGW and other stuff to write. I like it a lot, but I don't and won't have time in the foreseeable future to keep working on it.
@BioWD Thank you! I think so too. Working on a good sense of staging and the ability to convey kinetic-feeling action was something I really wanted to develop when I was working my way up to skill.
@Impossible_PhD I don't think I have the time for reading much right now, but I want to make sure you know I'm still very interested in that Minneapolis novel whenever it's available, in any form.
@miriamrobern Here's a fun bit: everything Tam said about bookmarking is both true to the real world and period-accurate to the time that inspired the setting! All of the terms are, and were, used at the time in the printing process.
@Impossible_PhD I'm like really extra excited because well I worked on a novel for a long time and I never finished it. I think I came out instead of writing the novel, which is a good thing because I was originally writing the novel to avoid coming out. But still I love that you wrote a novel. And I want to read it no matter what stage it got to.
@Impossible_PhD@Dani@doctor_bimbo@OftOverthinking initial thoughts on reading it just now (I read fast) - the setting seems solid and well constructed; the writing is actually really very good. I like Tam, although I think you maybe tip your hand a bit about why they could do what they did (and certainly to anyone who read Tolkien), but I am also a naturally suspicious reader and have outside clues. I do really like the characterisation! It's much better than my scrap of an early novel :D
The book isn't a mystery, and the folks round here are very well primed to know exactly what's up from the get-go. Tam figures it out by the end of the first act, so in maybe another ten or twenty thousand words.
The story is about what Tam can manage to do about it. =)
@Impossible_PhD Yeah, absolutely, I get that - the separation of internal and external information is really good in that sense, too. The antimagic bit was just leading me to think that maybe we were going to have a more extended bit with the mages going down a "magical theory" route and ignoring less physical sciences possibilities...
But tell me--did you catch the other trans character in what I'd written? Or, perhaps, the fact that he's come to suspect something that Tam hasn't figured out yet?
I wonder how a fellow of his talents might quietly manipulate things to give Tam a bit of a clue, if his suspicions are right, without revealing a thing about himself.
I've got the novel pretty much plotted out. Just... no time to write it.
@Impossible_PhD
OK, I want to know more about Tam - I feel like Cedore has them?her? figured out, Odel maybe not yet... honestly a lot of the perspective from Tam feels Right, rather than sorta, temporarily embarrassed protagonist in waiting if that makes sense?
Overall setting feels fantasy Victorian, which is intriguing in the sense of... I'm burned the absolute fuck out on medieval fantasy. 😅
@Dani@doctor_bimbo@OftOverthinking Cedore has suspicions. Strong ones. Odel has no clue, because of Plot Reasons you don't know yet. Nor does anyone else, for now.
I'm not sure what you mean about Tam's perspective being Right. Tam isn't going to be becoming heroic in the classic sense. There's no marching off to save the princess, so to speak, if that's what you mean. There's a different path ahead. (And yes, I am avoiding using pronouns for Tam. 😜)
@Dani@doctor_bimbo@OftOverthinking The setting is actually the late Enlightenment, so the messy ferment that gave way to the laced-up, stiff-necked sensibilities of the Victorian era, so think more Johnathan Swift than Charles Dickens. Everyone forgets that the first steam engines appeared right around 1700, and printing presses were just about the very first thing automated.
@Dani@doctor_bimbo@OftOverthinking I'm putting my thumb on the scale here because I find the Victorian setting to be desperately dull, especially compared to the Enlightenment, during which famous poets wrote entire epic poems to say in verse and in excruciating detail not just that those they didn't like were full of shit, but what it smelled, sounded, and tasted like.
Seriously, the Dunciad and the poems it inspired are bizarre and hilarious.
@OftOverthinking@Dani@doctor_bimbo Pope is hit and miss. He's much more of a classicist than Swift was, but more importantly the two were very good friends, and as two sstirists publishing in the same places at the same time, worked hard not to step on each other's toes.
They even co-published some stuff, believe it or not.
@Dani@doctor_bimbo@OftOverthinking anyway, yeah, feel free to pick my brain about whatever you're curious about. I've got the book basically all plotted out in my head--just no time to write it.
@Impossible_PhD
I was being very approximate in historical parallel; regardless, Not Medieval Fantasy. 😆
Funny thing is Enlightenment era reminds me of Stephenson's Baroque Cycle now, so feel a little silly for mind not going there first.
I just meant Right in the sense of... Tam knowing the precarity of their situation, thinking a lot in details of brooms and the cleaning of the mess afterwards for example... not Grand Dreams or the like you know?
@Dani@doctor_bimbo@OftOverthinking That's very much the case on Tam. Tam will find dreams to drive towards, but right now? Tam is just trying to hold things together, as a member of the lowest lower class.
As a setting note, Tam's literacy could've been, by itself, a ticket to a clerkship and the middle class in-setting, in the same way it was during the Enlightenment. Thing is...? Tam has learned from the work houses that dreaming bigger can be very dangerous, and has shied away from such.
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