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Status Report (11 May 2019)

May 11, 2019 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

There have been some recent developments. In particular, I’ve finally come out the far side of a roughly six-week period of really busy time at the office. Next week I’m helping to teach one of my own courses, and then there’s not much on my calendar for the rest of the summer. While I will still have plenty of other projects to occupy my day-job time, I won’t be putting in so many long days, weekend hours, or business trips for a while.

Meanwhile, the creative juices seem to be flowing again at home, so I’m starting to get some world-building and writing work done again.

In particular, I’ve been experimenting with a new approach to world-building for the literary projects I have on the docket. My preferred tabletop game for many years has been GURPS, flagship RPG from Steve Jackson Games. That’s not likely to change, but recently I’ve turned to another “generic, universal” game to do basic world-building. That game is FATE, published by Evil Hat Productions, a sophisticated and highly polished version of the venerable FUDGE system.

GURPS is deeply simulation-driven, largely derived from the tabletop wargaming thread of the origins of roleplaying games. FATE, on the other hand, is deeply narrative-driven, encouraging its users to do only as much world-building as they need to generate cool characters and drive their stories forward. Definitely worth considering for someone like me, who tends to fling himself down the world-building rabbit-hole to the exclusion of actually writing and publishing stories.

Unfortunately, while I understand GURPS inside and out, FATE is a pretty different approach to the problem of world-building and story prep. I’ve had trouble in the past wrapping my head around how it works. In the last few weeks, though, I’ve made a concerted effort to force myself to go through FATE‘s world-building and character-creation processes, with one of my literary projects in mind (the gritty-fantasy setting I’m calling The Curse of Steel). The results are starting to feel fairly promising. More about that over the next few days, I think.

None of which is to say that you won’t be seeing anything more from me about GURPS in the future. Still, if this experiment pans out, I may end up doing a lot of literary prep work with FATE instead. I might then come back and write things up in GURPS terms, but only after I’ve made good progress with a story that’s on track for publication.

It has also not escaped my notice that it would be a lot easier for me to self-publish material for FATE than to do the same for GURPS. Self-publishing GURPS-based material for profit certainly isn’t impossible, and I do have a long (if rather stale) history as a published GURPS author if I wanted to make a proposal to Steve Jackson Games. On the other hand, the FATE system is available under an Open Gaming License or a Creative Commons license. To be explored if and when I have something that might be worth publishing.

The Curse of Steel: Rough Timeline

March 29, 2019 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

To review the bidding: I’m working up some background notes for a novel I’ve started but gotten stuck on, with the working title of The Curse of Steel. Last time I set down some ideas for specific peoples and ethnic groups to be found in the setting – rather Tolkienesque, with quite a bit of input from the paleontological fantasy of Michael Scott Rohan. Today, here are some notes about a rough-draft timeline that can serve as a high-level framework.

Age of Myth (until about 9000 years before present):
- The world spends many thousands of years in a deep glacial age. Gods hostile to human life dominate the world, led by a powerful and malevolent deity (the first Great Enemy). Benevolent gods come to the mortal world to battle the hostile deities, eventually killing them or driving them into the outer darkness.
- During the wars, the benevolent gods ally with Elders and Smith-folk, helping them to create the first sophisticated kingdoms (but not civilizations, since they don’t involve cities) in the world. In response, the malevolent gods create the Beast-folk to serve as shock troops. Humans and the Sea-folk remain primitive, barely surviving in small refugia and taking little or no part in the wars of the gods.
- Once the malevolent gods are finally defeated and the world begins to warm, the Elders withdraw to the divine plane to live with the benevolent gods. The Smith-folk remain behind, some of them reverting to primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyles, others looking for opportunities to practice their crafts now that the wars of the gods are over.
About 8700 years before the present: Several groups of Smith-folk settle in a region analogous to the Fertile Crescent, striking up a mutually beneficial relationship with the human hunter-gatherers of the region. The Smith-folk teach humans primitive agriculture and Neolithic-level technologies, helping to build large cult-centers (megalithic architecture).
About 8200 years before the present: Rising sea levels encroach upon a low-lying region in the far northwest, undermining the connection between the continental mainland and a “Northern Isles” region that will eventually become analogous to the British Isles.
About 6700 years before the present:
- Foundation of the world’s first pseudo-city, a Neolithic population center on the edges of the “Fertile Crescent” region which grows to about ten thousand inhabitants. The settlement remains organized along hunter-gatherer lines, with no social stratification, civic cult, or record-keeping.
- A malevolent goddess, the second Great Enemy, enters the mortal world, remaining hidden, spying out the state of the world. She becomes disgusted with the “crowding and swarming” of humans, and seeks out ways to eradicate them through infectious disease.
About 5700 years before the present: Farming communities begin to spread slowly in all directions from the agricultural urheimat, possibly driven by the need to avoid crowding and disease. While they migrate across the Great Lands, these farmers intermarry with and displace the original hunter-gatherer peoples.
About 5400 years before the present: A large landslide takes place adjacent to the northern seas, causing a massive tsunami. The last remnants of the “low country” are overwhelmed, and the Northern Islands are cut off from the continental mainland.
About 4900 years before the present: The first great pseudo-city collapses, wracked by disease and social upheaval. The collapse accelerates the spread of Neolithic technologies and society across the Great Lands, as farmers seek to spread out and bring more land under intensive cultivation.
About 4200 years before the present: Neolithic peoples have reached the far northwest of the Great Lands, and the coasts of the western sea. Farming expansion pauses for about a thousand years.
About 3700 years before the present: With the aid of the Smith-folk, a small population of Neolithic farmers in the central Great Lands develops bronze metallurgy. The technology is jealously guarded and fails to spread.
About 3200 years before the present:
- Human farming societies cross the strait to settle in the Northern Islands, also spreading into far northern regions. The Great Lands are now dominated by farming communities, although the older hunter-gatherer populations still survive in reclusive enclaves. The Smith-folk thrive in this environment, setting up small communities and bands of itinerant craftsmen, offering technical services and maintaining long-distance trade networks.
- Just as farmers come to dominate the Great Lands, the second Great Enemy reveals herself, openly seeking to do away with humans and return to the world to its “natural” state. Her first gambit is to encourage a series of plagues in the Neolithic populations, decimating many communities. Human populations throughout the Great Lands remain depressed for centuries afterward.
- The incipient Bronze Age society in the central Great Lands is a victim of the Great Enemy’s activity. Bronze metallurgy is lost for several centuries before being reinvented in the “Fertile Crescent” region.
- A large contingent of the Elders departs the divine plane to pursue the malevolent goddess, resulting in several centuries of warfare in the northwestern region of the Great Lands. The Elders recruit Neolithic-level humans as adjuncts in their war, sometimes as soldiers, more often as serfs who can raise food and supplies for the war effort. Humans still benefit from the relationship, learning a great deal from the Elders and coming to speak a pidgin version of their language.
About 2700 years before the present: Humans in the Fertile Crescent analog develop Bronze Age metallurgy, with some help from local Smith-folk communities. First development of true civilization (intensive agriculture, record-keeping, social stratification, organized religious cult, cities). Bronze Age technologies begin to spread across the Great Lands.
About 2600 years before the present:
- The war ends with another intervention of the benevolent gods, who deliver a final defeat to the second Great Enemy. Some of the Enemy’s lieutenants (minor gods and demigods) escape the defeat and hide in the mortal world for centuries to come. One comes to lurk among the nascent civilizations of the Fertile Crescent analog.
- With the enemy defeated, most of the surviving Elders return to the divine plane, although a small remnant population remains in the Great Lands for many centuries.
- The human societies who directly aided the Elders in their war are rewarded with the opportunity to migrate to a very hospitable minor continent amid the western sea. There, they develop their own civilization based upon all they have learned from the Elders and the benevolent gods.
About 2500 years before the present: In the wide plains east of the Great Lands, a human pastoral culture domesticates the horse. This development gives these humans an advantage over their neighbors, and they begin to spread more widely.
About 1600 years before the present: Another of the malevolent gods (the third Great Enemy) begins to actively interfere in the development of human civilizations in the “Fertile Crescent” region. This deity is more subtle than his predecessors, seeking to manipulate humans and rule them rather than eradicate them. His activities provoke no obvious response from the divine plane for many centuries.
About 1500 years before the present:
- First Bronze Age societies appear in the northwestern region of the Great Lands, and in the Northern Isles.
- The first ships from the mid-ocean civilization begin to visit the Great Lands, although they make no permanent settlements and never remain for long. Contact with the Bronze Age tribes of the region is friendly and mutually beneficial.
- The first human empire is established in the “Fertile Crescent” region, with the third Great Enemy lurking in the shadows behind the human kings.
About 1200 years before the present: The horse-breeding people in the plains east of the Great Lands develop a new set of technologies, including the spoke-wheel chariot and the composite bow. These Chariot People discover they have an immense military advantage over their neighbors, and their society becomes structured to exploit that advantage. They begin a centuries-long process of moving into new regions, taking over as a warrior elite, then imposing their language and customs on the prior farming societies they have conquered.
Present Day:
- The peoples of the Great Lands, especially those in the “cradle of civilization” regions, have made the transition to an Iron Age technology. Only in a few very peripheral areas are some people still lingering at a Bronze Age (or Neolithic) level.
- The Chariot People have invaded and infiltrated as far as the Northern Isles, and have come to dominate the Great Lands. Krava’s people are among these later arrivals, resembling early Celts (Halstatt culture).
- The third Great Enemy remains hidden, slowly building up the power of the human empires under his sway.
- The mid-ocean civilization is the great power of the world, sailing all around the planet, trading with everyone they find. In recent centuries they have contacted the Sea-folk and have done much to spread the “little people” all over the planet. Unfortunately, they have also gotten a taste for power, and their relationships with other cultures are becoming less gentle or benevolent.

Okay, with that I’m ready to start working on a revised version of the map, focusing on the “Great Lands” regions. If get really ambitious, I may use that map to construct a variant board for a tabletop game that I can use to generate the history in a bit more fine-grained detail. With any luck, that will help me envision Krava’s world more fully, so I can get that novel unblocked. More to come.

The Curse of Steel: Some Background Notes

March 27, 2019 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

The setting for The Curse of Steel is a region whose name will translate as The Great Lands (the constructed-language word is probably something like Mortalani). This is a region roughly analogous to western Europe (or north-western Middle-earth, if I’m being honest) which has just about completed its transition to the Iron Age.

The primary inspirations here are Tolkien’s legendarium, and the fantasy of another British author: Michael Scott Rohan. From Tolkien will come the general shape of the world map, and a few pieces of back story. From Rohan will come a more Darwinian approach, in which the divine powers aren’t all so benevolent to humans, and societies are rooted in the long prehistory of a world that wasn’t created for their benefit.

The Peoples

At present I have five “races” (more accurately, hominid subspecies) in mind for this setting.

Elders

The Elders are a very ancient population, ancestral to all the others. Think of these as highly evolved and sophisticated homo erectus.

Elders tend to be shorter and more gracile than humans, but they are strong and quick for their size, and are immune to aging or disease. They are not by nature more intelligent than humans, but they have many ages of traditional wisdom to draw upon, and they have considerable natural talent with magic. Their natural lifestyle is that of intensive hunter-gatherers. When they have the opportunity, they will sometimes maintain small sedentary communities in order to practice more advanced arts and crafts.

The Elders are almost extinct in the mortal world. Most of them departed from the world long ago, to live in the divine sphere with the benevolent gods. Some return from time to time on specific errands, always apparently arriving by sea, so individual Elders and even small groups are sometimes seen.

Smith-folk

The Smith-folk are about as tall as humans, but they are stocky and extremely strong. Think of these as resembling homo neanderthalensis, although with better manual dexterity and more advanced material culture.

The Smith-folk learned advanced crafts from the Elders in ages past and are now known as the best stone-workers, wood-workers, and metal-smiths in the world. They are very clannish and insular. They tend to live in small communities within reach of agricultural society, where they can trade their craft-work for food. When that doesn’t work out, they will often revert to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle (or turn to brigandage).

Sea-folk

The Sea-folk are small hominids, about half the size of humans, not very strong but quick and nimble. Think of them as homo floriensis who have taken to more advanced tools.

Sea-folk originally evolved on a chain of islands far away on the other side of the world, where they followed an intensive hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Centuries ago they encountered human sea-farers, and took to that life with great enthusiasm, making themselves so useful that every sea-captain sought them out. Today, they can be found in coastal communities everywhere.

Sea-folk are very gregarious, curious and imitative, good at picking up languages and mimicking local customs. They are superb sailors and fishermen, but are also known as thieves and rogues.

Humans

Humans are the default population from which my protagonist and most of her peers and rivals come. They are biologically and sociologically identical to homo sapiens sapiens, modern humans from Earth. They are the most diverse of the peoples of the world, following many lifestyles and living at a wide range of levels of technology.

In ages past, some human populations interacted with the Elders and learned a great deal from them. Transplanted to a minor continent amid the Western Sea, these were among the first to develop an advanced civilization. Today they are great sea-farers, traveling all over the world to trade with the peoples they find. In the Great Lands, they have begun to establish permanent settlements on the coasts, and their relationship with the indigenous peoples is turning greedy and exploitative.

Other humans developed civilization independently and are beginning to establish large empires of their own, but these have generally fallen under the domination of cruel and greedy gods. My protagonist is from a more “barbarian” culture, technically advanced but still at a tribal level of organization. Most human societies in the area where the story takes place are blended from ancient hunter-gathers, farmers who moved into the area in more recent millennia, and a warrior elite who arrived even more recently with their distinctive customs, language, and military technology.

Beast-folk

Beast-folk are the “youngest” of the major hominid subspecies, bred by malevolent gods in the last few thousand years. They have no close analogue in our own prehistory.

Beast-folk were bred to be carnivorous pastoralists, living on herds of horses and cattle on the broad plains east of the Great Lands. They’re also not above eating members of the other four subspecies when opportunity arises. They are larger and stronger than the other peoples, and raised from birth as warriors. They don’t make particularly good soldiers, since their logistical requirements don’t allow them to form large armies. On the other hand, they make excellent raiders and shock troopers.

Beast-folk were created to be destroyers of civilizations, and many of them remain hostile to all outsiders, feared and hated. They are somewhat variable, however; some beast-folk are less necessarily hostile, and a few have even assimilated into human societies.

Final Notes on “Races”

Yes, if you tilt your head and squint, you end up with “elves,” “dwarves,” “hobbits,” “men,” and “orcs,” but I’m hoping to play those themes in a different key, as it were.

One note: when it comes to who can interbreed with whom, humans and the Smith-folk are the ones who have been known to intermarry, while the Elders and the Sea-folk are more biologically distinctive. No one is quite sure whether the Beast-folk can interbreed with any of the others; no one really wants to make the experiment.

Villains

The stories I have in mind are likely to have a variety of villains and conflict-sources. Given that I’m aiming for a pulpy, Conanesque feel, there should be plenty of corrupt kings and evil wizards to go around. On the other hand, the big, world-shaking villains are all going to be gods.

Most spirits and gods are benevolent – or at least not interested in interfering with the mortal world. Occasionally one of the gods decides to be malevolent, emerging onto the mortal plane to pursue their own goals, actively interested in killing, tormenting, or just ruling mortals. The Elders call these malevolent beings the Great Enemies. So far in history there have been three of these:

The most powerful of the Great Enemies, a god of deep cold and ice. He fought to preserve the mortal world as a place of quiet, austere beauty, free of the “corruption” of sentient life. Held sway for many thousands, if not millions of years, and was only defeated by the direct engagement of more benevolent gods.
A goddess of disease and pestilence, who thought of herself as a champion of the natural world. She sought to protect forests and animal life around the world by using virulent plagues to eradicate sentient life. Opposed by the Elders, and eventually by a brief period of divine intervention.
A god of fire, iron, and warfare, who seeks not to eliminate sentient life, but to rule it “for its own good.” Currently active in the world in the present day, not apparently opposed by the Elders or by the benevolent gods.

Okay, that’s a taste of the backdrop. Next time, some notes on the initial draft timeline for the setting. Then I’m going to start working on a new version of the map, which I may also use to set up a worldbuilding-by-simulation exercise to develop the timeline in more detail. More to come over the next few days.

Reviving an Old Project

March 17, 2019 Sharrukin Comments 3 comments

I’ve been rather blocked for the past month or so, as witness the lack of updates in this space for about that long. So I’m going to try something that often works for me: turn to one of the other projects that’s currently on the back burner, and see if I can push it forward for a while. By the time I run out of steam on that, I usually find I can turn back to the first project and make progress with it once more.

One of the items I’ve had on the back burner for a while is a novel, possibly first in a series, with the working title of The Curse of Steel. This is a foray into writing Robert E. Howard-style pulp, set in an Iron Age world that’s reminiscent of our own prehistory without being tied to it.

The protagonist is Krava, “the Raven,” a female warrior from a pseudo-Celtic society, kind of a younger Boudica. After a battle against orc-like raiders, in which her father is slain, Krava comes into possession of a magic sword. She soon finds it an uncomfortable weapon to own, one which pulls her into a struggle of ancient magic and foreign gods. Eventually she leads her people in a fight for their freedom and independence, against several more “civilized” nations.

I have maybe 25 kilowords of the first novel down, including a first chapter that I posted here a while back. Unfortunately, I got blocked on that because I couldn’t converge on a consistent picture for Krava’s world beyond her immediate homeland. Back in 2017-2018 I tinkered with several concepts, including a late Stone Age Europe in our own world, and a completely new world map, but none of those quite came together to my satisfaction. I also did some language construction, which will probably be useful eventually.

Yet as often happens, since I’ve left that set of ideas on the back burner for a while, now I think I can clarify and push them forward a bit. I’ve got a plan to develop some back story and a more focused map, enough that I can move ahead with the first novel when time permits. The plan involves some research, and a little worldbuilding-by-simulation, and I’ll be working on that and making posts about it over the next two or three weeks.

Status Report (9 February 2019)

February 9, 2019 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

I’m still plugging away on Twice-Crowned, although I seem to have lost some of my momentum on that project. I may spend a few days working on other items so as to stay fresh, then get back to the novel.

In particular, I’ve taken the first steps to move all of my archived content out of the Sharrukin’s Archive site and into this WordPress framework. For the moment, all I have is a parent page (visible on the sidebar to the right, under the “Sharrukin’s Worlds” link). I plan to hang several child pages from that, each covering a specific project or setting that I have in the process of development. For example:

The most recent draft sections for Architect of Worlds
Setting notes, maps, and short fiction for the Human Destiny space-opera setting
Setting notes, maps, and short fiction for Ancient Greece and the Danassos historical-fantasy setting
Setting notes, maps, and short fiction for the Tanûr planetary-romance setting
World-building articles I’ve written that aren’t tied to a specific setting
Any new projects that rise to the point of active development

This should give interested parties a chance to look at the content I’ve developed without having to dig through months of blog posts. It should also be far easier to maintain than the Sharrukin’s Archive site, which is frankly a royal pain in the nether regions to do anything with. Finally, I suspect this kind of structure might also be a convenient way to collect content on the way to developing books for publication via Amazon or a game-centered platform like RPGNow. Watch this space for further developments.

Some More Greek Translation

January 20, 2019 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

Here’s another of the Homeric Hymns in English translation. This time I was a little more free with the translation, to make it fit the needs of my story more closely. Even admitting that, I’m not entirely confident in the translation – ancient Greek grammar is a bear if you’re not experienced with it – but it will do for a rough draft. This is #30 from the canonical list: To Earth the Mother of All.

I will sing of well-founded Earth, Mother of all, most revered,
Who feeds all creatures that walk upon the lands,
That voyage in the paths of the sea, or that fly in the air,
All these are nourished from thy bounty.

From you, O Queen, come fine children and bountiful harvests,
You who grant life to mortals and can take it away.

Happy are the people it pleases you to honor!
Your bounty is there all around them.

Their tilled fields are laden with corn,
Their flocks thrive, their houses are filled with good things,
In good order they rule their cities of fair women,
Happiness and prosperity are with them.

Their sons walk proudly in vigor and delight,
Their daughters dance with joy in garlanded companies,
Playing and skipping across the flowers of soft grass,
All those whom thou honor, revered goddess, with bountiful spirit.

Hail, Mother of gods, Queen of star-filled Heaven,
For this, my song, freely bestow life upon me to uplift my heart.
I shall remember thee, and now another song as well.

Thinking about Danassos

January 15, 2019 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

More forward progress on the rough draft of Twice-Crowned. As of this morning I’ve got just over 17 kilowords down.

I’ve been going back to the beginning of the story, to set up Alexandra’s situation and the reason why she has to flee from her home city to Athens. I think the first section of the novel is going to take place all in a single day, beginning with Alexandra about to succeed to her mother’s throne, and ending with her fleeing for her life with a single companion.

I’m still evolving my novel-writing technique. Decades of being a failed novelist have shown me several approaches that don’t work, at least not for me. Now I think I’m getting somewhere with the strategy of just dumping scenes and bits of business onto the page, with the assumption that I’ll whip the results into a coherent story later. When I work from extensive outlines and world-building notes, I tend to over-think everything.

One result of this strategy is that I don’t always see potential conflicts and themes until I’m already in the middle of them. That seems to be happening here. A bit of explanation may be in order.

This story has always been driven by the idea of writing a “return of the true king” tale, while turning the usual trope on its head. My protagonist is a very young woman who would be pretty helpless in a battle. She has to think her way through situations, calling upon her mental and magical talents, instead of just charging forward with a big shiny sword.

So, how do I get a story set in Classical Hellas, in which a woman has any chance of being a ruling monarch? I mean, that did happen once in a great while – we have the example of Queen Artemisia of Karia – but it was extremely rare.

I did it by setting up an alternate history, based on some of the more sensational interpretations of Bronze Age Greece. It’s not clear whether Minoan Crete or the pre-Greek societies of mainland Hellas were ruled by women, and it’s not very likely. Still, if you go with Robert Graves or Riane Eisler, those societies were probably more gender-egalitarian than the Hellenic culture that followed them. (Admittedly, this would not be at all difficult.) So let’s arrange for a survival of pre-Greek civilization into the Classical era. As I’ve documented elsewhere, what I ended up with was a city founded at the end of the Bronze Age by Minoan refugees, at the site of what we know as Syracuse. Although this city (Danassos) eventually became more or less Hellenic in culture, it remains the most gender-egalitarian society in the Greek world, and it tends toward female rulers.

Meanwhile, Robert Graves gave me one possible model for how a pseudo-Hellenic society might manage female rulership. That’s the idea of a “year-king,” in which the ruling queen selects a different male partner each year. That way, no one man could dominate, and the queen could keep various factions among the people in line by favoring one, then another. At least it might work that way in theory. No doubt, in practice, the system would tend to break down whenever a particularly ambitious year-king came along. Mary Renault’s novel The King Must Die, which is based heavily on Gravesian speculation, does a good job of showing us how such a system might fail.

There’s even some precedent in real-world Greek political structures. In Athens, for example, there was the office of the archon basileus (the “king archon”) who was elected or appointed each year. The archon basileus didn’t have that much of a role in actually governing the city, but he (and his wife) took care of some of the religious duties that had once been carried out by the kings.

So in Danassos, at least in Alexandra’s time, there is a ruling Queen who is essentially a constitutional monarch. She is the foremost religious and legal authority in the city, she has an important role in forming foreign policy, and she presides over meetings of the democratic assembly. Each year, at the spring equinox, she selects a new year-king; no man is permitted to serve more than once. The kingship doesn’t carry a lot of authority, but it’s considered a great honor, especially if the partnership results in the birth of a new member of the dynasty. Meanwhile, the city’s other administrative and military offices are filled by some combination of royal appointment, selection by lot, and democratic election. The whole structure is probably rather baroque; most Greek city-states had pretty complex systems of government.

At the beginning of the story, Alexandra is just days away from becoming the new Queen of Danassos, with all that implies.

So far, so good. It occurred to me, though, that in the real world this kind of monarchy would have rather unsettling implications. Just how does the Queen of Danassos select a king each year? She probably has lots of political implications to think about. Does she select a man from this faction or that one? Which candidate will do the most to support her rule and defend the city from its enemies? What if the best candidate for the city is a man she finds personally repugnant? What if a given Queen just isn’t all that fond of men in the first place? Does the Queen ever get a chance to pick a candidate just because she is attracted to him, or because she loves him? And even if she does, it’s just for a year, and she has to give him up at the next spring equinox.

Are the Queens of Danassos the most powerful women in the Hellenic world, or are they the most expensive prostitutes?

I’m going to have to think about that, while I keep working on the rough draft. There’s some good conflict there, and good potential for character development for my protagonist. There are also a lot of land-mines I’ll have to watch out for.

Some Greek Translation

January 5, 2019 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

The *Diana of Versailles*, Roman copy of a Greek statue by Leochares

As part of the novel I’m writing, I’ve had occasion to look for a bit of Ancient Greek religious poetry that I could quote in the story. I ended up settling on #27 from the canonical list of the Homeric Hymns, To Artemis. Rather than use an existing translation, I went back to the original Greek text and roughed out my own. Not the easiest job, given how wobbly my Greek is. Still, I’m not too unhappy with the result, and it seems to be within striking distance of the canonical translations I’ve compared it to. Here it is:

I sing of Artemis with the distaff of gold, the terrible one,
Worshipful maiden, huntress of deer, fierce archer,
Own sister to Apollo of the golden sword.

Over the shadowy hills and windy mountain heights
She delights to draw her golden bow
Sending out grievous shafts. The heads of lofty mountains
And the deep-shadowed forests tremble
With the fearful cries of her prey, shaking both the lands
And the seas full of fish: bearing a brave heart
She turns to every side to destroy the family of wild beasts.

Yet when she is satisfied, this archer who pursues the hunt,
Her mind made glad, she sets aside her well-bent bow
And goes to the great hall of her belovéd brother
Phoibos Apollo, in the rich land of Delphi,
To oversee the dance of the beautiful Muses and Graces.

There she hangs up her crescent bow and arrows.
Commanding and setting them in order all around
She leads the dance: with divine voices
They sing of Leto of the lovely ankles, who bore
Immortals supreme in both thought and deed.

Hail to thee, children of Zeus and fair-haired Leto!
I shall remember thee, and now another song as well.

I’ll probably come back to this again when I start polishing up the compete rough draft of the novel, but for now it seems to work well enough.

2019: Looking Forward

January 3, 2019 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

So I’ve long since gotten out of the habit of making New Year’s resolutions. For one thing, life is too unpredictable to nail down that way, and for another, it takes more than a line on the calendar to change habits. Still, the first few days of the year is a good time to at least try and make a few plans.

I’ve got a fairly crowded agenda for my day job, where I have several course-development projects lined up for the coming calendar year. I’ll also be “on the platform” to lecture more than I was last year. So there’s one irony: out of all my writing output for the year, most of it won’t be fictional and isn’t likely to be mentioned here.

Meanwhile, I’m taking steps to improve my health in the coming year. I’m an overweight guy in my fifties, and a controlled diabetic as well, and that means I have to pay a certain amount of attention to personal maintenance. At least, I do if I want to live long enough to enjoy a few years of retirement, subject as always to the whims of our lords and masters downtown.

Recently I resumed my membership at a local gym, and while I’m never going to be slim and athletic again, I hope to build up a bit of strength in my legs and maybe lose a few pounds. Possibly more productive is a suggestion my podiatrist made, not long ago. Apparently there exist compact elliptical machines that are ideal for putting under a desk, so you can be working your legs and burning calories even while you sit at a computer. I’ve got one on order for my home office, and if that works out I may order a second one to take to work.

As far as creative writing goes:

First priority is going to be producing the first draft for the current novel-length project, a pseudo-Hellenic alternate-history fantasy with the working title of Twice-Crowned. As of this evening, I’ve got close to 11 kilowords down, which should finish one long chapter. The total length of the story will probably be about 120 kilowords in rough draft, and I’m hoping to have that finished by summer. Whether I’ll get the novel actually self-published this calendar year depends on how much revision it needs.
Second priority is going to be getting at least one Aminata Ndoye story out the door, and possibly another short piece as well.
Third priority is to get back to Architect of Worlds and push that project forward through another big section. I want to revisit some of the material I’ve already written – the model doesn’t seem to be handling “super-Earths” very well yet – but the main objective will be to write the section that describes individual planets in some detail. If I can get that finished and tested, the main “game mechanics” sections of the book will be done.
Fourth priority is to finish a couple of fan-fiction projects. In particular, I’ve got a Silmarillion fan-fiction piece that got started and looked promising, but which has been on hiatus for a while so I can work on those other bullet items. There’s also a Dragon Age story that I abandoned in 2018 but that won’t quite let go of my imagination, so I may go back to that at some point. Of course, all of this is subject to Zeigler’s Iron Law of Prioritization: “Any item that falls to fourth on the priority list will never be completed.” I can hope for an exception.
Fifth, any continued blogging I may find to do on worldbuilding, writing, or the state of my muse.

Another thing I’m considering is shutting down the Sharrukin’s Archive part of this site, in favor of just placing any “persistent” items in this WordPress framework as permanent pages. Honestly, the Archive as it’s structured is an enormous pain in the ass to maintain, and I’ve never managed to populate it as densely as I originally planned.

Honestly, that seems like enough to keep me busy for the next few months. Watch this space for progress reports.

2018 in Review

January 1, 2019 Sharrukin Comments 0 Comment

I remember the night that I very nearly turned my back on writing for good. I abandoned my writing blog, shut down my Facebook and Twitter accounts, put away every project I was working on at the time and didn’t even think about any of them for months. One of my best fan-fiction stories, in particular, got an enormous hiatus. Tuesday, 8 November 2016.

It wasn’t just the election and the results of that, although that certainly did feel like a blow. I’d been getting increasingly frustrated with what I was doing as a writer, too.

Story after story was almost getting into the short-fiction markets, getting immediate attention from lead editors who were sending me non-boilerplate feedback, and yet I couldn’t actually seem to close the deal and sell something. The best opportunity I seemed to have gotten was from a literary “contest” that vanished like a thief in the night, claiming the rights to my story but never actually doing anything with it. Even my fan-fiction was getting less and less of a response, although at least people seemed to still be reading it . . . silently. It was beginning to look as if the height of my creative career would be a handful (as in, less than five) nominating votes for the Campbell Award one year.

In short, I wasn’t in a very good place even before my fellow countrymen chose to elect the most manifestly corrupt and unfit candidate in a century to our highest office. After that, I pretty much lost all interest in creating anything. For months I went silent. I concentrated on my family and my day job, went weeks at a time without writing a word. It didn’t help that the Sharrukin’s Palace domain name lapsed and some domain squatters grabbed it for a year. The thought of starting a writing blog over from scratch just made me tired.

I got better, of course. I eventually finished the fan-fiction story I had abandoned in mid-stream (with an ending I would never have written before, but which I think is actually superior to what I originally had in mind). I started working on other stories again, off and on. I picked up the Architect of Worlds project again and started researching and revising that.

I suppose it helped that, although the world has been going down a lot of dark and very dangerous paths in the past couple of years, the worst has not happened. Come on, I’m a student of history and a speculative-fiction writer. I imagined a lot of things that – well, let’s be honest, they may yet come to pass. But they haven’t yet, and there are signs that a lot of decent people are pissed off and starting to fight back. So I began to feel creative again.

In March of this year, the Sharrukin’s Palace domain escaped the grubby paws of those domain squatters who had grabbed it. I pounced on it and brought it back into my own control. By April, I was ready to start this iteration of my writing blog. I self-published a novelette, and at least started a few other writing projects before I settled on the one I’m currently working. I did a bunch of new work on Architect of Worlds.

In short, I’m back in business. There’s some balance back in my life, between my family, my day job, my health, and the chance to do creative work. Let’s hope that lasts.

So, with respect to this blog, let’s look at the top ten posts for 2018:

None of that counts the large plurality of visits to the blog (about 45%), which just hit the home page and scroll down from there.

I can probably explain most of these results by observing that posts which get linked from Reddit seem to do well. So do GURPS-related posts that get linked from Doug Cole’s Gaming Ballistic blog – thanks, Doug! Still, I keep getting perennial visitors to the site looking for the Architect of Worlds project. Also, the biggest worked example of worldbuilding that I did all year also keeps getting hits months later.

Noted and logged – I’ll have to see if I can push Architect forward in 2019, and do some more extended examples. But tomorrow is the big day to look forward and maybe make some resolutions, so I’ll come back then.

In the meantime, I hope the coming year is fruitful and productive for all of us.

Sharrukin's Palace

Building fantastic worlds of the mind

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