Rob and Joan Carter’s MEET THE AUTHOR interview Snippet 11 – The Inheritors

I mentioned Rob and John Carter and I chatting on their MEET THE AUTHOR show in previous blog posts.

This is post #11 in a series of thirteen snippets taken from the full interview video. You can also listen to the interview via podcast

Today’s snippet deals with my upcoming science fantasy novel, The Inheritors, scheduled for release this coming June 2023.


Enjoy!

 

Foreshadowing

I recently reread John Crowley’s Beasts and am reading James Dickey’s Deliverance and am recognizing something I’ve known for a long time and today, for some reason, is being hammered into me – Foreshadowing.

Adjective: foreshadowing
1. Indistinctly prophetic
Noun: foreshadowing
1. The act of providing vague advance indications; representing beforehand
Verb: foreshadow
1. Be a sign of something to come, esp. something important or bad

Foreshadowing is something I ususally recognize after the fact. Sometimes I’ve read something and am surprized by the climax/outcome, except I’m really not.

“…the story fails because you can’t completely, unexpectedly surprise a reader and expect to get away with it.

 
A story which completely surprises leaves me going WTF?. If I didn’t see something coming, if it happens totally out of nowhere, if there’s no precedent for it, if it’s not foreshadowed, the story fails because you can’t completely, unexpectedly surprise a reader and expect to get away with it. You’ve violated the promise you made when the reader agreed to sit down and read your work.

However, a story which surprises me, even causes me to say, “I didn’t see that coming,” but simultaneously satisfies me, that’s different.

I’ve often said and written one of my joys when talking with my readers is their sharing how my story resolutions catch them by surprise, but when they think about it, everything was foreshadowed somehow.

Regular readers know my style, voice, and technique well enough to notice when something is foreshadowed. They don’t know what it is, but do recognize a particular phrase points to something.

Reading Deliverance and knowing the outcome, I’m quickly recognizing a different kind of foreshadowing and something I will practice – now that I recognize it – because I believe it’ll take my writing to the next level.


Greetings! I’m your friendly, neighborhood Threshold Guardian. This is a protected post. Protected posts in the My Work, Marketing, and StoryCrafting categories require a subscription (starting at 1$US/month) to access. Protected posts outside those categories require a General (free) membership.
Members and Subscribers can LogIn. Non members can join. Non-protected posts (there are several) are available to everyone.
Want to learn more about why I use a subscription model? Read More ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes Enjoy!

The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 5 (New)

The Alibi – Chapter 5

 
Sean Davitty’s head still ached from Cousin Seamus’ all Irish wedding. He slept most of the flight back from Shannon, although Inis Mór to Shannon was a series of puddle jumpers and windups that hadn’t helped his hangover.

But Seamus was his favorite and he was Seamus’ Best Man and Dia could that man go on about his research and studies.

Archeo-linguistics. First Languages. Paleo-linguistics. Languages before there were languages. Going back before France’s Trois-Freres.

Sean smiled, nodded, and drank up another glass.

Besides, if he couldn’t dive in it, Sean wasn’t interested. Even while back home he twice brought his gear down to the harbor to practice. Seamus helmed his father’s boat out to deep water and Sean would go down down down, deep deep deep, and come up laughing at Seamus’ panic stricken face.

“It’s free diving, Seamus. I’m next in line for ONR’s DSEND testing and this puts me near the top.”

Seamus answered with a thick brougue. “I never thought my cousin would be working for the Yank’s Alphabet City.” But on Sean’s second dive, he drew some symbols on his tablet and told Sean to look for them when he was way deep. “Can you do that for me, Sean?”

“What do I get if I find them?”

“Ah, you’re too long among the Yanks, for sure you are.”

“Is this that Sheila Na Gig thing you use to do when we were kids?”

“Aye, them’s pretty stones we found as childrens were carvings of the Mother Goddess and we didn’t know. I’m still on the hunt, but now with the Uni backing me all the way.”

Sean was thrilled his cousin’s childhood fancies were financing his adulthood quest. And when he met his cousin’s bride-to-be, he smiled and nodded; his cousin’s found his Mother Goddess at last.

But Sean came up from the deep with nothing.

Now back in Boston and with a remedial throbbing head to remind him of his week in na hÁrainneacha, Sean practiced the techniques he spent a year learning from the Bajau. He didn’t have their genetic disposition, but he came close – his best dive was ten minutes at two-hundred feet. His teammates shook their heads at him. “You’ve already got all the certifications you need, Sean. You working at being a whale?”

You have to be a paying subscriber (Muse level (1$US/month) or higher) to view the rest of this post . Please or Join Us to continue.

Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery)

OOh OOh Ain’t I Pretty?

Continuing with my sexist pig rambling started in Lucky Tom (and what a sexist thought), I digress a moment to recognize the costly signalling of mating behaviors.

Care to calculate the biologic cost, the sheer energy demands upon a Tom’s system, to create and maintain their mating display?

It is staggering.

Signal Theory is a pet study of mine. It deals with the economic (in the true and broader concept of “economic”) cost of some action, behavior, speech, whatever, it doesn’t matter, put it into Signal Theory and you discover the real reason for the behavior and that reason, my readers, is so far and away from what someone’s stated reason for acting, behaving, speaking, whatevering, is as to be astounding.

A Tom’s display, for example, is really no different than the young Two-Legs male purchasing a flashy car, buying flashy clothes, having a posh flat, spending hours at the gym, so on and so forth.

Both are attempts to Signal their appropriateness, their attractiveness to some interesting other.

What’s truly wonderful about Signal Theory is, figure out what’s really being signalled and why and you learn more about the person than one could hope to imagine.

For example, women who are avid (I was tempted to write “rabid”) Trump supporters.

I, personally, can’t understand why a self-respecting woman would be a Trump supporter. He’s a blatant, misogynistic idiot (that last part’s all on me. The first two are from public record).

So what does a woman gain by supporting him?

Signal Theory suggests we look at it from a mating perspective (not all Signal Theory deals with mating behavior, but it is handy, isn’t it?).

Women as a class are long-term investors who favor stability over excitement (something research, my own and others) has demonstrated.

Male Trump supports tend to be staunch and rabid republicans.

Male republicans as a class are conservative, stable, and have solid financial presents and futures.

Things, by the way, for which Trump is the poster child.

Especially considering his multiple bankruptcies.

So why some women support Trump?

Because it increases their desirability in the eyes and minds of stable, conservative, financially solid males.

Yeah.

Signal Theory.

Gotta love it.

 

Rob and Joan Carter’s MEET THE AUTHOR interview Snippet 10 – Victims

I mentioned Rob and John Carter and I chatting on their MEET THE AUTHOR show in previous blog posts.

This is post #10 in a series of thirteen snippets taken from the full interview video. You can also listen to the interview via podcast

Today’s snippet deals with my recognizing and sharing an aspect of victimhood which, when I first mentioned it publicly – wasn’t well received.

Enjoy!