A Love Letter to Stormy Weather

We’re coming into my favorite season in my favorite part of the world. Autumn in the Pacific

Northwest means gray days, vibrant leaves, cottony mist, and the intoxicating smell of rain. Growing up on the edge of the Capitol Forest in western Washington, I spent many a rainy day under the cover of the towering cedars riding dragons, displaying amazing swordsmanship, and going on quests that stretched on for weeks and even months.

I’ll readily admit that I never really grew up. Whenever autumn comes and the rain starts to fall, I still want to go outside and play make-believe. There’s something in the smell of the air, in the weight of moisture I feel against my skin, that just sparks my imagination like a sunny summer day never could. Writing is the closest thing that I have to being that uninhibited child again.

Rain at the beach is even better. I love stormy days by the sea, watching the frothing rollers being pelted by heavy raindrops. My favorite memory of my honeymoon is kissing my new bride on a seaside cliff standing in the shadow of a lighthouse as a rolling storm approached  from a turbulent sea. I have never been unable to write when it’s raining at the beach.

I would suspect that many writers feel the same way about some familiar, atmospheric setting. Whether it’s the hypnotic allure of an electrified city nightscape or the meditative calm in a field of wildflowers filled with the droning song of insects, a writer that can convey the emotion and mood of one of these magical settings has accomplished real literary alchemy, transforming plain words into a visceral experience for the reader.

I recently read the manuscript of a good friend who demonstrated a deep appreciation for the harsh winters of the high deserts of Wyoming. The image of frozen sagebrush and snow dancing in the wind for an eternity before falling gave his novel an atmosphere and emotional setting that complimented his writing style like a cup of cocoa on a chilly day. I felt like I had been somewhere after reading his book, and longed to return almost as soon as I put it down.

I sometimes wish I could have it rain all the time in my stories. I wish I could give each chapter and episode I write the same dream-like backdrop that I had when I played make-believe as a child. As it is, I probably already cheat a little by describing sunny days less frequently and with fewer details than when I write a scene with stormy weather.

I can’t apologize for it though. I may have played on sunny days, but I don’t remember them. All the memories I have of playing make-believe happened in the rain. All the memories I have of moments when I couldn’t breathe for the beauty all around me have happened in the rain. I think that no matter where I go in my life or what I do with the time that I have, I will find that whenever I escape to my imagination, it will always be raining there. 

All photographs by Elicia Schopfer 

Creature Profile: Crawler

Creature Name

Crawler

First Appeared In

Lost Under Two Moons

Physical Description

Crawlers are about the size and body mass of a small deer, though they’re somewhat lower to the ground. They have one pair of muscular legs and large wings that are useless for flying which they instead use like a second set of legs, crawling forward with the wings folded back. Despite their apparent awkwardness, they can move surprisingly fast, and use their large, predatory beaks to catch and eat prey. The crawler is covered in bluish green feathers to better blend in with its environment.

Natural Environment

The crawler is native to the Sea of Grass, where its aqua-marine plumage serves as excellent camouflage in the long, flowing grass. Its preferred prey is the small, slow meal-bird, though it will also frequently hunt banded runners. Its camouflage and prowling abilities also allow it to take down much larger prey such as the sailbeast or scissorleg. The crawler’s biggest danger on the plains are the roaming packs of bigamouths, which are a constant threat as the dominant predators of the Sea of Grass.

Behavior

Crawlers are territorial and often solitary creatures, the main exception being when a mating pair are hatching and rearing their young. Crawlers usually lay a single egg and take two years to mature after hatching. While crawlers will usually avoid fighting with each other, preferring displays of plumage and aggressive posturing, they will not hesitate to attack even a full-grown double-throat if their egg or fledgling is threatened.

Additional Background

When agitated or threatened, the crawler makes a strange, low buzzing noise by vibrating a special membrane deep in its throat.

Inspiration

The idea for the crawler came from a nature documentary I saw that featured a particular type of predatory bat. This fascinating creature, while still capable of flight, did all of its hunting on the ground, due to a lack of other small ground predators and the plentiful supply of beetles and other prey on the forest floor. I was intrigued by the idea of a flying creature that stalked its prey on the ground, using its wings as a second set of legs to crawl forward. It was always my idea that the crawler bird had originally been an aerial predator, but had returned to the ground so that it could support the bulk necessary to bring down larger prey.

I hope you enjoyed this month’s Creature Profile. Next month’s feature will be the shrew snake from Lost Under Two Moons. If you’d like to contribute artwork to the profile, send your pictures to lindsay@lindsayschopfer.com and put “Shrew Snake Picture” as the subject. Deadline is October 20.

Juggling Multiple Stories and Characters

For the last year or so I've had four writing projects all in the works simultaneously. While the specific projects may change, I always try to do some work on all four stories each week while giving the majority of my time to whichever one I have the most ideas for. I've written before about how I manage my time in handling all these different projects, but I thought this time I’d talk about keeping all my stories and characters distinct and separate from each other in my head as I’m writing them.

To be honest, I usually don’t feel like this is a big problem for me, and I think the main reason is because I try to be sure that all of my stories are as different from each other as I can make them. While all my stories have common themes and may share my particular storytelling style, I try to make each story feel different from anything else that I’m working on. To me, each project has its own emotional color that tints and shades everything that I write in it.

One way I get that emotional color is by doing my best to make all my major characters distinctive. This is especially true of each POV character, since it is their personality, motivation, and thoughts that will have the greatest effect on the narrative. Sometimes, when I’m worried that my POV characters are getting too similar to each other, I try looking at some event in one of my stories and asking myself whether all my POV characters would react to it the same way. This allows me to examine not only my characters’ actions, but also their emotions and their motivations, and often reveals how little nuances can be used to define any character.

I also try to spend as much time and effort as possible on the world-building and backstory for each project. Of course, there are times when I’ll have plenty of ideas for just one of my stories, and it can be a real temptation to skimp on my other projects by using stereotypes, clichés, or even material lifted from another of my stories. My best answer to this is usually taking a break from the trouble-project for a little while, and sometimes even putting it away entirely if necessary. Usually though, I’m able to identify what it was about the story that intrigued me in the first place, and I’m able to focus on what makes it unique and special.

Of course, all of this would do me little good if I couldn't remember which details go with which story. This is especially difficult when each story takes place on a different world, each with its own rules, personalities, and locations. Luckily, I have a pretty good memory for story details, and whenever I think there’s something that might be too complex or detailed to remember, I write it down. In fact, when I give my world-building workshop to sci-fi and fantasy writers, I usually recommend that they create an encyclopedia file for each of their stories. This file should be filled with everything that is distinctive and unique about the story’s characters, setting, and history. Keeping this file as organized and up-to-date as possible has been my best solution to avoiding mistakenly mixing together any of my story elements.

While this may all sound like an awful lot of work, I feel like I’m not the only one who benefits from it. Just like authors, readers are sensitive to stories with too-similar details, and while I do want all my stories to have similar themes and be lots of fun, the last thing that I want is for all my books to sound exactly the same. It may take a lot of work to avoid that, but I think it’s definitely worth the extra time and effort. 

Rejected Titles for Lost Under Two Moons

Norman Mailer said “if you have to pick [the title] after the book is done, it’s like trying to buy the right wedding ring.” This was definitely the case with my first novel. In fact, the book didn't even have a working title until the first draft was finished. For the longest time, I called it Other World: Survival, but I never really liked the name.

It wasn't until I started assembling a BETA read team that I finally decided to pick a title. I knew it would have to be something unique while being easy to remember. I started brainstorming any titles that might even remotely work. Vague, obscure, clichéd… it all went into the list that I then sent on to my test readers to vote on.

After I sent out the list, I realized that I was actually hoping that one title in particular would win. I started to worry that no-one else would like it, but when the results came back I found that it had gotten the second-most votes from my readers. That was good enough for me, and the book was known from that point on as Lost Under Two Moons.

Having said all that, I thought it’d be fun to share some of the possible titles that were sent to my BETA readers to consider. Here are some of the more interesting ones:

A Journal from Another World

Alone In an Alien Nowhere

Alone With The Bigamouths

Cry of the Bigamouth

How I Survived Other World

I Want to go Home

 “I’m Not on Earth Anymore”

Journal from Another World

Letters from Another World

Lost on an Unknown World

My Life on Other World

No Man’s Land

Other World Castaway

Planet Stranded

Stalked by Bigamouths

Survival on Another World

The World of Mr. Screech

...and perhaps the oddest of all...

Utility Knife On Another World

The Spell of the Yukon – Inspiration for The Keltin Moore Online Serial

As part of my research on gold rushes for The Keltin Moore Online Serial: Into the North, I read a lot of stories, poems, and songs penned about and by the prospectors of the Yukon Gold Rush in the late 19th century. Just for fun, here’s one of the shorter pieces that I found.

The Spell of the Yukon

 I wanted the gold, and I sought it;

I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.

Was it famine or scurvy - I fought it;

I hurled my youth into a grave.

I wanted the gold, and I got it -

Came out with a fortune last fall, -

Yet somehow life's not what I thought it,

And somehow the gold isn't all.

No! There's the land. (Have you seen it?)

It's the cussedest land that I know,

From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it

To the deep, deathlike valleys below.

Some say God was tired when He made It;

Some say it's a fine land to shun;

Maybe; but there's some as would trade it

For no land on earth - and I'm one.

You come to get rich (damned good reason);

You feel like an exile at first;

You hate it like hell for a season,

And then you are worse than the worst.

It grips you like some kinds of sinning;

It twists you from foe to a friend;

It seems it's been since the beginning;

It seems it will be to the end.

I've stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow

That's plumb-full of hush to the brim;

I've watched the big, husky sun wallow

In crimson and gold, and grow dim,

Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming,

And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop;

And I've thought that I surely was dreaming,

With the peace o' the world piled on top;

The summer - no sweeter was ever;

The sunshiny woods all athrill;

The grayling aleap in the river,

The bighorn asleep on the hill.

The strong life that never knows harness;

The wilds where the caribou call;

The freshness, the freedom, the farness -

O God! how I'm stuck on it all.

The winter! the brightness that blinds you,

The white land locked tight as a drum,

The cold fear that follows and finds you,

The silence that bludgeons you dumb.

The snows that are older than history,

The woods where the weird shadows slant;

The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,

I've bade 'em good-by - but I can't.

There's a land where the mountains are nameless,

And the rivers all run God knows where;

There are lives that are erring and aimless,

And deaths that just hang by a hair;

There are hardships that nobody reckons;

There are valleys unpeopled and still;

There's a land - oh, it beckons and beckons,

And I want to go back - and I will.

They're making my money diminish;

I'm sick of the taste of champagne.

Thank God! when I'm skinned to a finish

I'll pike to the Yukon again.

I'll fight - and you bet it's no sham-fight;

It's hell! - but I've been there before;

And it's better than this by a damsite -

So me for the Yukon once more.

There's gold, and it's haunting and haunting;

It's luring me on as of old;

Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting

So much as just finding the gold.

It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder,

It's the forests where silence has lease;

It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,

It's the stillness that fills me with peace.

The Collected Poems of Robert Service

Copyright 1907, 1909, 1912 by Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc.