Blog Posts

SUE Bolich - A Voice Not Silenced

10/12/2016

It seems to happen nearly every day now; I log onto Face Book or open my e-mail, and get a notice that someone I know has died. A week or so ago, it was my friend and fellow writer, Sue Bolich; S.A. Bolich to her many, many readers.

Sue and I only met in the flesh twice, when we were both on horse-oriented panels at a Norwescon and again at a SpoCon a few years back. This was the beginning of a long and pleasurable e-mail correspondence that leaked over into Face Book on occasion.

In 2013, I contributed an article about jousting for her "Horses in Fiction" blog (http://blog.sabolichbooks.com), and continued to check the site and read her posts every time she made a new one. I didn't always comment; in fact, I think I only did so once or twice. But I always enjoyed her posts and found them informative and well-written. She had a wry sense of humor and a deep well of wisdom and common sense I very much enjoyed tapping into.

We kept promising we'd get together at the next convention and spend time getting to know one another better, digging into our mutual interests, of which there were several aside from horses and writing. She invited me to visit her home, back before her health began to deteriorate, to meet her menagerie and spend a day or two shooting the breeze. One thing after another always seemed to get in the way. "Oh, well, next time," we'd say.

"Next time" is never going to happen now. And now that the opportunity to spend more time with her is gone, the only way I can honor her memory is by turning more people on to her books. Her physical presence may have passed, but her voice continues to speak through her stories. Her mind, imagination, and artistry still shine through on every page.

Sue wrote primarily Fantasy, but it wasn't like anyone else's. Everything she wrote was unique, filled with unexpected twists and turns…and yet richly fulfilling.

I read The Mask of God when it first came out largely because it was a gift. The blurb on the back led me to make all sorts of pre-judgments about it. Not only was I wrong, I was delighted to realize how wonderfully wrong I was. The book sucked me in and held me by the throat the whole time. I was frustrated to discover that the next one was two years away. Now that the entire Fate's Arrow series is out, I'm re-reading the earlier ones before moving forward, and finding my original impressions haven't changed. Sue masterfully blended SF and Fantasy, and layered the plot with subtle tension and vivid action sequences in often brilliant prose. The elaborate, initially baffling machinations among the mysterious deities—or creatures worshipped as deities, anyway—that drive and control the action behind the scenes was weirdly intriguing, and grew more so with each book.

Better yet, the very real, compelling, and genuinely loving relationship dynamic among the three brothers who in the first book comprise the ruling family of Ariel was a wonderful change from the cliché of back-stabbing, Machiavellian sibling rivalry that seems to be the standard in novels. I can't really describe the plot, because the best I could do without giving too much away would make it sound like many other, more familiar and far lesser books out there, and it is nothing like any of those. I promise. Read them for yourself. See what I mean.

I don't read romance. Not even so-called "paranormal romance." But the concept of In Heaven's Shadow convinced me to pick it up, and, again, I found the book impossible to put down. Sue's background as a historian brought the Shenandoah Valley of the Civil War to life, creating a place and time filled with horror, and yet achingly beautiful. Her ability to weave a lovely, haunting story out of so many odd and disparate threads, to put you firmly in Lilith's POV and hold you there no matter how alien her thoughts, beliefs, cultural viewpoint, and pure innocence of character might be, was nothing less than spellbinding.

I could go into raptures about her Masters of the Elements series, but it has already been extensively praised by readers on Amazon, Goodreads, and many other review sites, far more thoroughly than I have room for her. Ditto her short story collection, Out of the Vaults (which reminded me of The Librarian or Night at the Museum film series, only done much, much better). Her other short stories, in anthologies such as No Man's Land, Wolfsong, and Gears and Levers, are among the best offerings in the books, each entirely different from the others, but all of them marvelous reads.

Sue is gone. I can't talk to my friend anymore. But I can still enjoy her humor, her wisdom, her sometimes mischievous sense of irony, her craftsmanship, her poetry, the sheer brilliance of her spirit, every time I open one of her books. Her gift lives on, and always will. So long as her work is read, enjoyed, and passed on, her voice will never truly be silenced.

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From the vaults: What makes a triad?

8/17/2016

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Looking for my next blog topic (and still obsessed with the volumes of essays I'd written about human society in Tir na n'Og prior to writing any of the books), I dug up one of my initial references to Triads, and what makes a Triad a Triad. Since my Triads of Tir na n'Og novels pretty much revolve around Triads and their importance in Tir na n'Og, it seemed like a natural topic for this month's post.

Triads are the single most important cultural icons in Tir na n'Og. If we were born in the land, we grew up hearing stories about them. We played with our friends at being Triads, taking turns playing the parts. Storytellers regale audiences across the land with tales of their exploits. Bards write poems and songs about them all (except, perhaps, for the Orange Triad), which we continue to sing and enjoy long after all the members are dead. These characters, if they survive any length of time at all, are legends.

Simply put, a Triad is a team of three people hand-picked to serve a specific Fey Faction. The creation of a Triad is the province of the Greater Fey. There are many Factions among the Fey, but there can be only one active Triad per Faction at a time. These agents serve their Patrons exclusively, marked, initially, by three small dots in a triangular pattern on the forehead in the color of the patron Fey's Faction. Being chosen brings with it many benefits: greater hardiness, strength, and other abilities among them. Being chosen also renders the new Triad members sterile or barren, ensuring that their loyalty remains undivided. The Greater Fey can and sometimes do reverse this condition, but never while the Triad is still whole and able to serve.

When a person is Chosen, he or she has 7 days to reach the Temple of Ohma in Tir. There, he or she will usually meet the rest of his or her Triad and the Triad's patron Fey, who will then offer further instruction. As often as not, however, the individual will encounter the rest of the Triad on the way to Tir, and a Fey from the patron Faction will make an appearance, mark the newly Chosen, and give them their first quest.

Often, the quests of a Triad will benefit all, but this is not always the case. We cannot know the deeper purposes of the Fey, and while it is true that many of the Greater Fey care deeply for their Human charges and use their Triads for the mutual benefit of Mankind and Fey, it is equally true that there are Fey who use their Triads solely for their own amusement or to further some hidden agenda. Patrons will even send their Triad to interfere with the quests of a Triad that serves a rival Faction, sometimes resulting in the destruction of both Triads. In a sense, the members of a Triad are the patron Feys' own private gladiators. They live or die at a whim.

Once chosen, a Triad member's life belongs to his or her patron Fey. Triad service is almost always brief and fatal, but since the Fey only choose those already "as good as dead" — whether from wounds or because they are in a situation where death is the certain outcome — it is considered the greatest honor, a desperately hoped-for chance to die gloriously and have one's name remembered in song and story for all time. To be chosen for a Triad means you are about to become a legendary figure, if you live long enough. Ordinary people are not chosen for Triads.

This theme pervades the art and culture. For instance, there is a famous painting in the Triumphant's Hall in Drachenfel that depicts a mysterious figure roaming a battlefield, searching among the dying for three people worthy of saving in order to serve. It is based on an old, historically inaccurate but very popular, poem about an early Red Triad (which spawned several popular songs as well, but we won't go into that). Phrases like, "chasing the pipes," or "following the music," which are used to mean pursuing your dreams or goals, originated from one of the legendary ways in which Triads are chosen.

The Fey make their selection from among all appropriate humans and their derivative races, but always choose only one each of the available Cavaliers, Rangers, and Mystics, the three "warrior classes."

The Cavalier
The Cavalier is the heavily armored warrior/knight. The Cavalier's honor rests in his or her sword, and the loss of that sword is a grave affront. Usually the leader of a Triad, he or she is, ideally, the embodiment of chivalry. To the Cavalier, honor is all that is important, to the point that life without honor is not worth living. By and large, it is the Cavaliers who most ardently dedicate themselves to living for, and by, the Code of Ohma. To a Cavalier, the Code, the quest for individual perfection, is almost a religious calling. Cavaliers are neither monks nor hermits, but they have much the same dedication. The Cavalier strives to become the living embodiment of the Code of Ohma and is, to the native humans, a paragon; the ultimate in Human behavior.

To best understand the Cavalier, try to imagine the Codes of Chivalry, the Code of Bushido, and the mores of Victorian gentlemen all combined with the ways and honorable beliefs of the Sioux warrior. If that boggles the imagination, add in the fact that not all Cavaliers are men and that not all armored men and women are Cavaliers, and you can understand why following the Codes of Ohma can be a tricky and uncertain endeavor, and why the life of a Cavalier is a difficult one. To the Cavalier, however, it is all part of the challenge.

The Cavalier is usually well armed and armored, and generally either came from a well-to-do family or came to Tir na n'Og as a knight errant. This is because only the wealthy can provide their offspring with the quality of weapons, armor, and training that meet the impossibly high standards to which all Cavaliers aspire.

Although dueling is strongly discouraged in many city-states (even against the law within the walls of most of the cities themselves), dueling remains commonplace throughout Human society, regardless of station. For the Cavalier, however, the duel is elevated to the level of a sacred obligation. A duel is not only the favorite way of settling disputes or points of honor between individual Cavaliers, it is also the primary way of showing one's mettle. Cavaliers duel to test their skills, try out new weapons or tactics, for the pure pleasure of it, or for almost any reason one may imagine. A friendly duel is often a way to get to know a fellow Cavalier, and may take place without any rancor or ill feeling at all, ending with nothing more dire than cheerful respect and mild chagrin on one or both sides. Dueling is not usually used as a method of punishment against transgressors; after all, most lawbreakers are not honorable, and therefore are unworthy of dueling. For Cavaliers, formal duels are a privilege reserved for fellow Cavaliers.

A formal challenge is the usual method of instigating a duel, and is strictly ritualized. The challenger must say to his prospective opponent, "By the Seven and by the Three, for Honor and Glory, I Challenge Thee." The correct response is: "For Honor and Glory, I accept," though some individuals may add their own variations. It is possible to refuse a duel, but sometimes difficult to do so without losing face. Depending upon the circumstances, it may even be dishonorable to refuse a challenge. Stakes, weapons of choice, or other conditions, are then decided upon according to the Code of Ohma.

Most duelists construct, and then contain the fight within, a dueling circle, or a 30-foot diameter circle drawn in the dirt. This is to protect onlookers, and also to prevent accidental interference. Because the Cavalier's honor is involved, no outsider — even fellow Triad members, if the Cavalier is a member of a Triad — may interfere with a duel once it has begun. To do so is to invite dire punishment, even death, at the hands of one or both Cavaliers.

The Ranger
Just as the sword symbolizes the Cavalier, so the bow symbolizes the Ranger. Though not all Rangers are archers, most are skilled in the use of distance weapons of some sort. They are the woodsmen, the hunters, or the street-wise fighters who have learned to survive by their wits. It generally falls upon the Ranger to provide for his or her Triad as they travel on their quests. Those who seek to become Rangers spend long hours practicing a wide range of skills.

The Ranger is a bit more pragmatic than the Cavalier and is more likely to be from a lower station in life. Though they are sometimes as dedicated to the Codes and the quest for personal perfection as any Cavalier, they are unlikely to have had the benefits of upbringing and education to assist them, and have learned to adapt to a different mode of life. This doesn't mean that every Ranger is automatically a liar, thief, and sneak, either, but one should not dismiss the possibility.

These hardy souls come from many walks of life and often have an actual trade as well as their skill with a bow or sling. Some Rangers have even been raised on the streets, where they developed certain abilities useful in acquiring items for their Triads. The smart ones quickly learn to take care that these extra talents are not noticed by the honorable Cavaliers.

Though some Rangers are swordsmen/women equal in skill to any Cavalier, they do not usually fight with swords. This is because many Cavaliers look upon the sword as a weapon of honor and will kill any Ranger daring to use one. Long knives, short swords/archers' swords, or axes are the hand weapons most often found hanging from a Ranger's belt.

The Mystic
The Mystic's symbol is the staff. It is also the Mystic's usual choice of weapon. There are several reasons for this, but the best reason is that most of a Mystic's powers are channeled through the hands, which makes picking up a weapon that takes a lot of attention or manipulation a foolish thing to do. Staves are effective where magic is inappropriate, easy to discard, and easily replaced. And most Mystics can channel ki through wood quite easily.

The Mystic is one of the most powerful of all the humans. At some point in the Mystic's life, he or she became aware of strange abilities manifesting themselves within, and in attempting to understand these discovered how much more there was to learn. The abilities of the Mystic are not truly "magic" in the same sense as Fey abilities, but a combination of psychic abilities and alchemy. While an education in herbology and alchemy is usually acquired through apprenticing to another Mystic, the ability to channel the energy of the world is born within.

The average citizen has only the sketchiest idea of what Mystics are capable of; for this reason, Mystics are often treated with as much wariness as respect. Though their ability to heal is highly valued, their other abilities are often looked upon with a great deal of suspicion — particularly their telepathic abilities, such as the power of Suggestion, or the ability to influence and even control the minds of others. Rumors of other strange and frightening powers abound, and many of these have at least a kernel of truth. Most people believe that a Mystic can tell when someone is lying to them, and that Mystics can enter the dreams of ordinary men and women and possess them. And anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of a ki-bolt knows how effective and unpleasant a weapon that is.

Mystics come from all walks of life and all levels of society. They may have been born to wealth and influence, or in the gutter. It matters little; the talent born inside them drives them to develop along certain paths. While not everyone with the "second sight" can become a true Mystic, no amount of desire or study will make up for the lack of it. Many Mystics have tried to guide their own studies in harmony with the Code of Ohma and take the Codes as seriously as any Cavalier. Others have taken the more pragmatic approach adopted by the Ranger, and as a result have learned some of the same skills.

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More Thoughts on Tir na n'Og

7/16/2016

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My last post got me to start looking through the bulging electronic folders of information I collected for my Triads of Tir na n'Og series. Over the years, I've written volumes about life in Tir na n'Og. Some of it was actually intended as background for the books. Some started life as tidbits in Dameon's original rule book for the Triad LARP games he ran for TFA. Much of it, in one form or another, ended up as part of the rulebook for TRIAD: The Game (available from TFA Press).

Originally, however, I wrote much of this stuff for my fellow Seattle Knights and our fans from the early years. Though these days the clients who hire us want more traditional joust shows, which means straight-up, more-or-less historically-based, swordfight-and-joust performances like everyone else does (despite the fact that most people in the audience know and care nothing for history and hands-down prefer fantasy), waaaaay back in the beginning, all our shows were set as fantasies. We had elves and other "Tainted" creatures, Fey, magic, Mystic duels, evil spirits, ancient deities, and always, always, a plot revolving around the peculiar culture and history of Tir na n'Og as we'd re-envisioned it. Audiences ate it up.

It was loads of fun for us as well, of course. Sometimes storylines ran for whole weekends, each act moving the story along toward its inevitable conclusion on the last day (which usually involved Sir Charles, the Dark Moriah, and their allies, having it out in a grand finale). Dameon and I would get e-mails (and sometimes *gasp* real letters) from fans wanting to know more of the story, the parts they missed or didn't understand. We had whole groups of fans who would follow us from show to show just to catch the next "episode", or to share in the exploits of their favorite characters. Some fans came unglued the one or two times we "killed" popular characters (because the actor playing him/her wanted to retire that character and play someone else) and we had to scramble to find a way to placate weeping children or assuage adult feelings of loss and betrayal.

People drew portraits of our characters, dressed in their favorite character's colors, painted their faces or bodies to show alignment with their favorite factions. It's a strange feeling, certainly flattering but also oddly moving, to know that your artistic endeavors have touched someone else to such an extent.

And, of course, we were constantly getting queries from people who wanted to know more about this weird and wonderful world they thought we'd created. Which, in some ways, we had; the Tir na n'Og we played in bore only a passing resemblance to the undying fairyland of Irish mythology.

Anyway, in response to enthusiastic fans as well as to educate my fellow SK so they could play their parts effectively, I wrote dozens of essays about many aspects of life in Tir na n'Og. Some were used in publications such as program books and brochures for certain shows or faires. Others appeared only in the private section of the Seattle Knights website, for our eyes only. As I said earlier, much of it is now in the TRIAD: The Game rulebook.

But I still love some of these pieces, and they're worth re-visiting, if only for my own amusement. So, I will be posting them over the next few months, every couple of weeks or so. Hopefully you'll enjoy them, too.

Tir na n'Og:
In every culture of every land, tales of people who mysteriously vanish — sometimes while in plain sight of their family and friends — abound. Many are the stories of ancient heroes, wanderers, and simple folk who set out upon a journey, or took a strange path out of curiosity, or went up into the mountains, and were never seen or heard from again. Even within the last few centuries, tales of people who simply went for walks and never came home again are remembered. Each time they are repeated, tellers and audience ask one another, "Where did they go?"

The answer: they came to Tir na n'Og.

Tir na n'Og, Isle of Youth in the ancient Gaelic or Celtic tongue, has had many different names in many cultures. Most often known as Faerie, it is the land that was given to Lilith when she and Adam parted ways. Since the time before the Great Flood, it has harbored strange and wondrous creatures, magical and otherwise, and many other beings that could not, or would not, live in a world that humans, in their stupidity, were destroying. Collectively, these other-than-human beings are known as faeries, or the Fey. The most powerful of these were the Children of Gaea, or the Tuatha Dé Danann, as they were known to the Gaels.

The Fey are the children of Lilith, and so are related to humanity, Eve's offspring. The Fey and Humankind went their separate ways, the one following the science of magic, while the other delved into the science of technology. The resulting sibling rivalry was to have far-reaching consequences.

Though for thousands of years the Fey freely crossed the borders between their land and that of Humankind, as time went on and the separation between Human and Fey grew greater, these visits brought about great woe to all concerned more often than not. More and more of the faerie folk retreated into Tir na n'Og, leaving Earth to their human cousins. The borders became more strongly guarded, and finally were closed altogether, leaving only a few gateways where magical passage was still possible. Even these were finally closed in 1492 A.D.

No one of this world who went looking for the way into Tir na n'Og could ever find it. Shielded by powerful spells that are as old as the land itself, the gateways can only be reached by following ley lines, the invisible lines of energy that criss-cross the earth, until they culminate at a nexus, or a place where two or more ley lines connect. Some say ley lines are magnetic in nature, some say magical. Whatever their nature, ley lines can be tapped for their energy by those with magical abilities, and used to open magical Gates at the nexus.

It has often been thought that Tir na n'Og was everywhere, since a person could find themselves within its borders at any time, from any place, without warning, in the days before the Fey closed the Gates. Actually, Tir na n'Og is no longer part of this world at all. There are some places that lie closer to it than others; for instance, in a large section of the Australian outback, where the famous Ayers Rock corresponds to the great Temple of Ohma in the city of Tir. It is no coincidence that both these places are the nexus for major ley lines. The Australian Aborigines know more of the secrets of Tir na n'Og than any other earth culture, but they do not speak of them.

Although the human-inhabited part of Tir na n'Og has a radius of approximately 100 leagues, or around 300 miles, the Mists are always shifting, which continuously changes the face of any map one would care to use.

Originally, as human tales warn, humans who found their way to Tir na n'Og were unlikely to find their way out again. Faerie was not a good place for the children of men, for the Fey never forgot that they had been driven from the earth by mankind. The legend of the Wild Hunt, where the Greater Fey ride out, laughing, to hunt down their hapless human prey, is still a dark and terrible story told throughout the world. For thousands of years, the refuge of the Fey was a place of death for mankind. Ohma, a half-Human, half-Fey woman, changed all that, by creating a chivalric code of behavior that re-shaped Human and Fey destiny.

As more and more humans found their way to the land, Ohma, with the support and guidance of the Powers (the three greatest of the Greater Fey; some say the three first-born of all the Fey), directed them to areas where they could settle. Villages, towns, and later cities, sprang up, each with its own predominate culture. Each of these city-states is ruled by a special trio of human regents called a Triumphant (a Triad that has achieved Ironlord status). The Triumphants, appointed by the Fey, administer the laws of the Fey and enforce the Code of Ohma in their jurisdiction to the best of their ability.

While most of the Human cultures transplanted to Tir na n'Og clung to what traditions they could, societies as a whole underwent drastic, necessary changes. Perhaps the largest change was the elimination of Human aristocracy. Kings, Queens, and hereditary ruling classes exist only in Fey society.

While the Fey, by and large, do not interfere directly with human affairs and may allow individual battles, skirmishes, feuds, and raids to go on unchecked, the horrors of warfare such as those that have so often torn the Outside world to bloody tatters have been circumvented. The Fey, aware that war has an unfortunate tendency to cause humans to become more inventive in their methods of destroying one another, did not wish that terrible cleverness to take root in their land. Without kings, it was reasoned, there would be none of the overweening pride that drove tribe against tribe, neighbor against neighbor. Humans would have to earn the respect of their fellows by their own efforts, and not by any privilege of birth. Only their rightful overlords, the Fey, were entitled to that.

It is not known whether the Fey have ever seen the irony in this.

There are Lords and Ladies among Humankind, to be sure, but these are made, not born. They may be merchants who create their wealth through successful commerce and go on to manage vast estates not unlike small kingdoms, or former adventurers who discovered great wealth and survived to retire with it. The most honored of the Human nobility, however, are those special individuals who are members of, or have served in, Triads, and so have earned the privileges they enjoy.

Humans being what they are, attempts to establish Human dynasties have been made time and again. They always fail, for the laws governing the city-states — notably the one stating that all but the eldest child of each house must make a pilgrimage to the Temple of Ohma in Tir upon reaching their 16th birthday — make it difficult for even the most ambitious of families to plan such a future. The dangers of travel and the vagaries of time within this strange and mystical land do the rest.

Tir na n'Og now has a Human population of approximately 300,000, scattered throughout 13 city-states and Tir itself. There are 13 major ethnic groups, as well as the various tribal groups, including the Koshka (an unfortunate human who has been altered by magic to resemble a lion-or-cat-like humanoid), Sobaka (an unfortunate human who has been altered by magic to resemble a wolf-or-dog-like humanoid), and the Elves (singular: Elf; an unfortunate human who has been altered by magic into a small, slender, pointed-eared humanoid with some magical abilities. Most elves do not consider themselves unfortunate).

Although there are common trade languages (English and Latin), most of the city-states' populations are made up of at least 70% of one ethnic group or their descendants. Over time, the cultural influence of the Fey has modified many of these societies into something the original settlers would not recognize. Most city-states now hold stronger allegiances to the ideals of the 7 major Fey Factions, represented by 7 different colors, than to the traditions of their ancestors.

The central city-state of Tir, which occupies a huge island in the center of the Inland Sea, is a mixture of all cultures and peoples, and is therefore not considered one of the 13 city-states. Also, Nilka and Magdan, while separate cultures, actually occupy much of the same physical territory.

The Fey's efforts to modify Human society have been successful, due almost entirely to a Fey Princess known to humans as Ohma, and the Code she composed in an attempt to allow Human and Fey to share Tir na n'Og in peace.

Well, that's it for this month. Should I publish the essay on Ohma and her Code next? Or the one on what Triads are and their importance within the culture of Tir na n'Og? Or…well, tune in next month. Feel free to write me and let me know which you'd like to see.

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Behind the Mists of The Triads of Tir na n’Og

6/29/2016

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Frequently at readings, I get asked about the background of my The Triads of Tir na n'Og series, how it came to be, etc. I usually answer with something flip and funny, but that short-changes the whole creative process and, especially, the other people who contributed to its genesis.

I wrote up a more extended answer to post on my original webpage, but it was lost somewhere between my old site and the new one. A new version now appears on my "Q&A" page. But I recently found a copy of the original, and found I prefer it, even though it's far too long and touches on subjects that have nothing to do with the books. So I'm leaving the second version where it is. But I thought I'd post an updated version of the original on my blog, since I now have a whole new generation of readers who have started asking the same questions:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for The Triads of Tir na n'Og series?
A: Okay, I confess: I didn't come up with all this on my own. Huge, vast, inflated amounts of credit go to my husband, Dameon Willich.

The Triads of Tir na n’Og series and the stories from Tales from Opa are based on the world and concepts invented by Dameon. Back in the 80s, he, along with a few old friends, created the first version of this universe for a series of LARPs (Live-Action Role Playing, for you non-gamers) for The Fantasy Alternative (TFA), wherein a large number of hard-core and hyperactive role-players, survivalists, martial artists, ex-navy seals, and other elements of society best kept safely occupied, ran around in the woods in full armor and elaborate costumes shooting arrows at one another, laying traps, casting spells, and bashing one another with shanai. It was all good, clean fun, and almost no one got hurt. Well, not often, anyway.

TFA was the longest-running continuous LARP in the US for many years, a record I believe it still holds. Out of the hundreds of games held by the TFA, the ones Dameon wrote are widely remembered as among the most fun and exciting. I am still amazed by the number of people, many of them adults now with children of their own, who come up to us and tell us of games they vividly remember playing when they were kids growing up in TFA.

At the time, Dameon was an artist for DC comics, working with Mike Grell on a number of different titles. He wrote up a proposal for a comic that was to be called The Ironlords, based on the history he invented for his game world. DC passed on the idea, but Dameon held onto it. He developed a tabletop RPG based in the same world, honing and refining some of the concepts. When I met him, he had been running Triad games in Tir na n’Og around the gaming table (as well as in the LARPs) for several years.

Once we married, he enlisted my help writing scripts for the Seattle Knight shows based in the same universe. I found it complex and fascinating, filled with endless story potential. But it seemed incomplete. I started asking questions. “If everyone leaves home at 16, who keeps society going?” “Are Triads ever just Broken by the Fey without anyone dying?” “Where is Anagni in relation to Killaloe?” “How does the whole ‘time’ thing work?” “What do the color Factions actually stand for?” Dameon re-thought some of his initial concepts and together we refined the society, the culture, the world. Some of those show scripts would make great stories for the Tales from Opa series. Who knows? They may show up there.

One day, while digging around for information to use in a script, I came upon his story treatment for The Ironlords. I was hooked. I asked him if someday I could write a story based in his world, and he said yes.

It wasn’t for another couple of years, after The Strawberry Roan had been snagged by an agent willing to peddle it, that I picked up the idea again. I wanted to do a story that would introduce readers to a lot of the world’s background. “What if,” I thought, “a young priest from, say, the 1300’s, was to find himself in Tir na n’Og, dealing with this incredible kaleidoscope of strangeness that would violate his entire sense of reality?” Eventually, the young priest became a young religious scholar named Jean LeFleur, an admirer of Jean Froissart. I turned him loose in Tir na n’Og to see what he’d do. I think I learned as much along the way as he did. Eventually, the story became “Heart of a Cavalier,” the first story in Tales from Opa.

The second story, "Sign of the Golden Archer," I wrote mostly for laughs, but the third one, "Westmere", was actually based on a real-live (sort of) incident. Dameon wrote a LARP game for friends of his, and we spent the weekend at their property -- largely forest and swamp out in the middle of nowhere -- with better than a dozen good friends, playing it out. It turned out to be the most memorable and riveting game I've ever participated in, one the participants still talk about whenever we get together.

Unfortunately, due to a torrential rainstorm that started Saturday night and never let up, we were unable to finish the game. So Dameon gathered us all into "the bar," and told the rest of the tale.

We'll never know exactly how it would have ended -- after all, the players decide how the story goes once it gets started -- but I came away from that game with the basic germ of the story of Westmere. The only problem I had in writing it was sticking with one person's point of view. There's so much Ton-Kel never witnessed or knew of. Still so much of the story untold. Ah, well. I did what I could.

The Triads of Tir na n’Og was the second book I wrote about this world, after Tales from Opa. It started as a treatment for a movie script; a long-standing ambition of Dameon’s. We based it on the original story from The Ironlords, but, thinking we had a great idea for an ongoing series, we decided to keep that original main story thread as a background, and weave different, multiple story lines through it, each of which would be a single episode. I still think it was a great idea.

However, the proposal was turned down (I forget by which production company now) and the treatment moldered in the computer for a year or so before I looked at it and thought, “Hmmm. There’s a book in there.”

In those days I was still heavily involved in the actual performance end of the Seattle Knight shows, being one of only four women jousters, and very much in demand. Being on the road 6 months out of the year for the shows played havoc with my writing schedule. Never prolific, I stopped even trying to write during show season – which generally ran from May to October.

Thus, it took me at least 2 years and a bit to write a book each time. Once I finished Tales from Opa, I decided to give myself a leg up on the next project by tackling the script treatment, figuring that with an outline already in place, it would speed things along. I was so wrong. Ah, well, live and learn.

Eventually, I completely departed from the original movie outline – sometimes an idea that sounds good on paper doesn’t work out when you turn the characters loose on it. I’m more interested in the characters and what they endure and learn than in the sword-swinging and blood-letting, so those elements take first place. I pulled in some characters I'd created for other stories who were just too good not to use, and cautiously borrowed a few of the characters created by various actors in the Seattle Knights and players in TFA. With permission, of course.

So far, only one person has ever made me promise not to kill them. Most people have given me more-or-less free rein. The usual caveat: "just so I die well, with piles of bodies around me."

The Triads of Tir na n’Og you can read today is almost completely divorced from the movie treatment that spawned the idea. It was originally the first book of the series of the same name, and I sold it as such. The publisher that bought it didn’t follow through, however, and eventually I got the rights back and started sending it elsewhere.

Then another editor from a major publisher asked me to write a prequel, so I did. It took me sixth months, a record at that time. The result was Ironwolfe, the action in which takes place around ten years, give or take, before the events in Triads.

The editor didn’t buy it after all, but Ironwolfe became Book One of The Triads of Tir na n’Og, and The Triads of Tir na n’Og turned into Book Two. The Red Triad is number three, The Green Triad the fourth, The Blue Triad fifth. The last two books, The Ironlords and The Gate, were originally one book, but it was just too big; I didn't want to produce another expensive doorstopper like Ironwolfe, so split it into Book Six and Book Seven. I'd intended to have the whole series finished before 2012, for reasons that are obvious to anyone who has read the series. But that didn't happen. The Gate finally came out very early in 2014. Dameon published the official tabletop version of TRIAD: The Game around the same time.

There are still a number story threads I'd meant to weave back into the central tale. I'm still rather disgruntled that I had to drop some of the elements, such as where DeVasa's staff actually came from and how it got into that tomb for him to find, or how Yaqut's soul ended up in Tohil's scepter. Or what the necklace of bells has in store for Bae Twan, and the true extent of the power plays going on within the Knights of Ohma. And exactly what was keeping all the Fey factions so preoccupied that they didn't contact their Triads or notice the Trolkien invasion until it happened, and so forth. But alas, such things will have to remain tantalizing, unanswered questions for the reader. Unless I turn some of them into short stories. Hmmmm…

I write a bit faster these days, now that I’m out of the saddle and have hung my sword on the wall.

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My Favorite Misunderstood, Misused, and Abused Words

1/5/2016

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Every day, I start out my morning with an exercise workout video, part of a series put out by a very popular weight loss and fitness program. The bouncy, enthusiastic instructor is, as one would expect, very obviously fit, perky, and glowing with health (notice my cunning use of the Oxford comma there), and looks and sounds like your average American girl-next-door. But every time I play one of the workouts, she makes me cringe. It's not just the unconscious sexism in the way she sometimes chides the men for using "girl weights" or having "perfect little ballerina arms", both of which intended insults wring hoots of derision and laughter from everyone else in the room, including the women. It's also the way she barks instructions such as, "We're going to lay down on our backs" and "Raise up on your toes".
Okay, I, too, am a victim of the public school education system in America today. I regularly cringe when reading through some of my older works and finding misunderstood, misused, or abused words, the correct use of which I was sadly ignorant at the time. But I keep trying to improve, working toward winnowing down the list of errors I'm likely to make every time I write. Like an ex-smoker or a reformed alcoholic encountering someone who still imbibes, I twitch when I find easily avoided mistakes in manuscripts I'm editing or critiquing. So I've made a list of some of the most common:
All right/already: It's become popular to use "alright" in recent years, but there is no such word. It's supposed to be two words: "All" and "Right", which, when used together, means that all is well or correct. It's short for "All is right with the world."
"Already" on the other hand, is a perfectly valid boiled-down contraction for "All is in readiness" or "all is ready."
Aught vs. Ought: "Aught" is used more often in historical and fantasy writing these days, but it's still a perfectly good word that means, "a quantity of no importance." For instance, when that demure heroine of yours states, "Aught may be done to mend matters, sir; your apology is useless."
"Ought" on the other hand, is still widely in use, and expresses a duty or a necessary action: "You ought to apologize to her." "I ought to get the butter out to soften."
A while vs. awhile: I'm one of those Neanderthals that insist that "awhile" is not a word. After all, you can say, "A long while later…" or "After a little while…" but you can't say "a little awhile later…" There are those who disagree, and insist that "awhile" can be used to indicate a short period of time. But I still say "awhile" is not a word. Use "a while."
Farther vs. Further: Contrary to popular belief, farther and further are not really interchangeable. I know; I was surprised to find that out myself when an editor nailed me for it years ago. Farther refers to matters of distance: "The bottom of the ravine was farther than he'd imagined; he gulped and backed away from the edge." "I've gone farther down this road than I intended."
Further refers to a matter of degree. "Further action is necessary to repair the damage."
All right, sometimes they can indeed be used interchangeably, such as when your demure heroine warns your hero, "Go no further", which can refer to both distance and degree at once. But after all, you wouldn't have someone say, "That's fur enough" unless they were speaking in dialect, even if they are referring to a matter of degree rather than distance.
Lie/Lay/Laid/Lain: During one of my period bouts of insomnia, I once entertained myself by coming up with a mnemonic rhyme for the correct usage:
The insomniac gave a long sigh through his nose.
"If I lie down now I may sleep, I suppose."
He lay on his bed for a time, reading prose,
laid his head on the pillow in attempted repose.
When he'd lain there an hour, he gave up and rose.
Hey, at 4:30am, it was funny. Anyway, it does not address the present tense use of "lay" referring to an object: "Lay the fork on the table." But feel free to steal it if it works for you.
That vs. Which: The full explanation for this is kind of long and complicated, but the correct usage is not. If removing words would change the meaning of the sentence, use "that." If not, use "which". Here are two examples:

Horses that are healthy and well-kept smell wonderful.
Horses, which can easily weigh 1200 lbs, are too large to sit in your lap.

Basically, using "which" implies that whatever follows is additional information and can be left off without changing the meaning of the sentence. There should be commas bracketing said additional information. Use "that" when whatever follows is necessary to the sentence.
I recommend reading the fuller, far more erudite explanations offered at the Writers Digest site: http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/which-vs-that
Or at Grammar Girl: http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/which-versus-that-0?page=all.
I could go on. But why? The point is: English is a wonderful language, filled with ways to trip yourself up. We use this wonderful, rich, endlessly varied tool to communicate, to tell stories, to enrich the lives of ourselves and others. So, why not try to use it as correctly as possible? If you find yourself hesitating or uncertain about how to use a word, hey—look it up! These days, it takes virtually no effort to look up something on the internet, and wonderful sites with examples, explanations, and everything else you need, are everywhere. Happy writing!

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Paris

11/17/2015

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Below is a re-post of something I originally put on my FaceBook page the day after the Isis attacks in Paris. Like everyone else, I watched the news unfold with shock and horror. But not, alas, disbelief. I've been expecting something like that to happen. For some reason, seeing it happen in Paris, the City of Light, hit me especially hard.

The next day, I watched my friends change their profile pictures to show solidarity and sympathy with the French. I thought long and hard about doing the same. After a while, I decided I just couldn't. So I posted the little essay below to explain that my refusal was not due to any lack of sympathy or a rejection of any sign of compassion. I've made a few small edits, because I'm a writer and can't stop doing that...

11/14/15: I respect those of you who have made the choice to post the French flag in a gesture of solidarity in the wake of the Paris attacks. I am not putting the French Flag over my profile picture for several reasons. First off, there are just too many atrocities being committed by numerous Islamic terror groups all over the world, all equally horrible and tragic. These days, I'd have to be changing my profile picture every other day. How can I pick just one as the most horrible? I love France and have many warm memories of the people I met there (even a few in Paris, where I'd been warned time and again how dreadful they were to Americans). So, yeah, I feel the attacks there more strongly, since I have a personal connection.

But the murder of 150 Kenyan University students made me want to hurl. So did the rape and kidnapping of 200 African schoolgirls. I remember clapping my hands over my mouth to stifle a scream when I saw the news about that brave, doomed Jordanian pilot caged and burned alive. The rape and slaughter of children and wholesale murder of Christian communities throughout the Middle East wakens murderous impulses in me. I didn't change my profile picture for any of them, so not going to now, much as I grieve for Paris.

I think so many of us are reacting more strongly to the Paris attacks because we have, on some level, come to sort of expect the ongoing mutual slaughter and atrocities in Third World countries; we cringe, shake our heads, and say to ourselves, "How can people live like that? Why won't they stop?" This time, it happened in an advanced, ancient, and supposedly enlightened European capital, one many of us have visited or lived in. That somehow makes it more personal, brings it home.

There are many reasons for the current rise in Islamic extremism and the terrorist movements it spawns. Some of it goes back nearly to before recorded history, to cultural paradigms that can't be easily changed, or maybe changed at all. Some of it is a direct response to US and other foreign governments' intervention in the Middle East. Some of it is due to the darker side of human nature. Regardless, it's not going to stop. It will, in fact, get worse before it gets better. And sharing a flag on FaceBook is not going to change that.

I pray something does. And soon.

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Restart: The Price of Doing business

10/5/2015

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Much as I personally prefer good old fashioned print books made out of real paper and so forth, I've had a few of my books and several short stories available on Smashwords (www.smashwords.com) and in Kindle format at Amazon for some time now. For those who have never used it, Smashwords is a retailer that converts your books to almost every conceivable e-book format so people who didn't jump on the Kindle bandwagon can download and read your stuff.
    Sales have been modest; since I suck at marketing and don't do a lot of it, I really didn't expect anything else. But after receiving several nagging notes from readers asking when my entire Triads of Tir na n'Og series was going to be available for Nook (I'd only put the first book, Ironwolfe, up), I finally decided I needed to finish uploading the rest of the series. It seemed like a good opportunity to do another long-overdue marketing push anyway.
   Then friends of mine (Michael "Tinker" Pearce and his lovely and gregarious wife, Linda) who are also authors told me about another publishing platform called Draft2Digital. They found it much more user-friendly for authors and swore their sales had risen almost immediately after they'd gone ahead and uploaded a couple of their books. (If you want a really fun read, try their Dwarven Rifleman series: michaeltinkerpearce.com). So I decided to give it a try as well.
    After going through all the the Smashwords and Draft2Digital pages, I couldn't find anything that actually said I had to use either one or the other but not both. So I went ahead, made a few minor changes between the editions, and uploaded the series onto both. Draft2Digital does not run a store; it sells to other e-book retailers. Smashwords sells books directly to readers, but it also distributes to most of the same retailers as Draft2Digital.
    Sure enough, Draft2Digital is much, much easier to use for the authors. Sales reports are also obviously displayed and pretty much readable by anyone with more than a third-grade education. It's newer and not as well-known as Smashwords, but hopefully my books will fare well through them. I plan to wait and see how things go, then unpublish from whichever platform is doing the fewest sales.
    Although Smashwords has been pretty good to me, I'm rather hoping it loses this little competition. This is based solely on the differences in the way the two platforms offer their sales reports.
I am a reasonably well-educated person, but I confess I've had ongoing issues with the comprehensibility of the reports I can download--sometimes only with extreme difficulty–from Amazon and Smashwords. In the first place, computers and I are not natural allies. Yes, I've had to use them almost exclusively for work for the past 20 years or so, but it's never been a happy partnership. They hate me, and I remain uncomfortable with them. This is no joke; at my last job, my co-workers used to laugh at my seemingly magical ability to crash almost any program I worked in. My very touch could bring about the "blue screen of death" faster than anyone's. I'd like to think this has more to do with my personal electrical/magnetic output (we are all living batteries, after all), which also stops almost any watch I wear for any length of time, than with my intelligence or general competence. On the other hand, that may just be a comforting lie I tell myself. Dealing with computers for more than the most standard tasks puts a knot in my stomach. Nothing can make me feel as if my I.Q. begins with a decimal point faster.
    Amazon and Smashwords were designed by people to whom computers are extensions of their own psyches. I'm sure to them and others like them, which seems to be most of the rest of the world (and certainly almost everyone younger than I am), the reports are clear, efficient, and easy to use. Not so much when I go to look at them or download the specific time periods I want.
    Then there are the numbers themselves. While I understand about lending libraries and free downloads and all those special circumstances that change the prices various consumers or outlets pay for each book, how on earth do I get a royalty of $2.37 on one sale and $.24 on another of the same book? And no royalties at all on what the same charts insist is another dozen sales? Deciphering all those often highly misleading headings and numbers is sometimes a horrendous chore that gives me a headache and makes me too often skip what I should dutifully work out to the last detail. Which leaves me to do the whole year in one fell swoop at tax time, making it all an even more horrendous chore.
All part of the price of doing business. But this particular re-start is going to have to signal a change in the way I do it. If I'm going to continue to run this business, I have to start treating it seriously as a business. And that means tackling my arch-nemesis.
*sigh*. Okay, Metzger, welcome to the computer age. Now sit up and quit gibbering.

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Re-Awakening the Voices

8/14/2015

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I finished my last book more than a month ago, and yet I still haven't started the next.

I've gone reading through story ideas, fragments I started and abandoned ages ago, trying to figure out what I want to do next. The Operation Magic Carpet book has so consumed me for so long that now I feel like I've just come out of a box and am standing around blinking in the light, trying to make sense of what I see around me. I'm reaching inside and listening for the voices that used to be there whispering stories at me.

So far…they're staying mute. It has me a little worried.

For years, while I wrote the Triads of Tir na n'Og novels, other stories were clamoring inside to get my attention, crying to get out, hit the page, come to life. I got used to shutting them out, ignoring them, however reluctantly. I couldn't afford to get sidetracked. I was afraid if I did, I'd never finish what I was working on.

It takes me an average of two years, more or less, to write a book. It's not just that I'm a slow writer. Until recently I also had a day job and, on top of that, I perform in, write for, and help run a show troupe, a small business my husband started more than twenty years ago with a heavy performance schedule between May and October. That doesn't leave me a lot of writing time.

Nevertheless, every once in a while over the years, I'd try to set aside whatever Triad book I was on and write something else, just to keep things fresh, do something different. To prove to myself that I could write something else. After all, between one thing and another, it took almost fifteen years to write and publish the entire Triads of Tir na n'Og series. That's including a second, re-written edition of The Triads, which was traditionally published as Book One in its first edition. That's a very long time to stay with one set of characters and one story, however convoluted.

But trying to change horses in midstream almost never worked; I'd start a different book, get a few chapters in, and find I absolutely could not continue until I'd gone back and finished the current Triad book. And then that one would always dovetail into the next, and so on…. There were times when I thought I'd never reach the end; it was like serving time in my own personal purgatory.

Don't get me wrong: I'm proud of those books; they're damned fine reads, and they've done well for me. But writing them over so many years forced me to put aside nearly every other story that struggled to be born during that time. I had to silence every creative voice vying for my attention unless it was whispering to me about the characters and situations from the Triad books.

And then, when those were at last behind me, I turned all my writing attention to working on the Operation Magic Carpet book. Except for a couple of short stories, nothing else was even lurking in my peripheral vision, so to speak.

Well, now that's behind me too, and at last I can let all those stories that have been waiting all these years out to play. Except…where did they go?

Someone once said that every writer has only so many books in them. I've always scoffed at that. Now I'm really hoping it's not true. That silencing those voices all these years hasn't killed them. That they'll come out and whisper to me again.

I'll listen this time, kids. I promise.

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When to stick a fork in it.

7/8/2015

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When I started my current my non-fiction project (working title: On Wings of Eagles: Operation Magic Carpet), I set specific goals for myself. One of these was to have my first draft off to my first readers by 5/15/15, have their comments back by 6/15/15, and, using their comments, have my second draft ready to go by 7/1/15.

Only one of my first readers made that deadline, but another came pretty close. The other three…well, I have started getting comments drizzling back from one of them. The other two are hit-or-miss. One has never done this before and didn't understand the whole "first-draft-second-draft-deadlines" concept. The last, well, love him dearly, but I may never hear from him again. But I was sort of half-way expecting that.

But I can't blame the fact that I'm still working on it on my first readers. Truth is, I'm having trouble letting this puppy go. For one thing, I'm second-guessing myself. Did I actually get everything right? What if I got this part wrong? What if I overlooked something, forgot something, made a major error? What if I did a disservice to these people?

Besides that, the work has been grueling, but fascinating and rewarding. I've had the almost unique experience (in my life anyway) of waking up in the morning and actually looking forward to going to work every day. I've learned a lot. It's been – dare I say it – fun.

Part of this is just separation anxiety; empty nest syndrome. I've gone through some version of it with every book I've ever written. Wait; did I do this part right? I should have had hero do this on this page instead of back here. Oh, this would be so much better if so-and-so did this instead of that… I can spend the rest of my life writing and re-writing my stories. I've learned to grit my teeth and send them away, but it's always hard.

And mostly…I'm not ready to leave this world, this time, these people. They're almost all dead and have been for years, but they jump out of the notes at me, shout from log books and faded documents, laugh from letters. Their voices, grumbling out of old and very poor recordings, resound in my head, as familiar to me as the friends and family I deal with almost every day. They sound so alive, so vital, so real. How can they be gone?

But all good things, they say. It's time. I must move on. There are other stories to tell, and this one has to start earning its way.

On the other hand, there really is one thing I absolutely have to fix before it goes out…

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When is a Tale not a Tale? Walking Off the Beaten Path

5/22/2015

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So, after spending the past twenty years or so writing however-many fiction novels and short stories, I girded my loins and tackled a non-fiction project that has been eating at me for the past 8 years. Even as I write this, the first draft is in the hands of my "first readers" who have offered to very kindly donate their time and attention to give me their impressions of my efforts. I'm planning on having the final draft ready for the mail by July 1st.

It's been enormously satisfying and challenging in many ways, and I've learned a tremendous amount. But I'm still somewhat at sea on a few of the differences between writing fiction and writing non-fiction. For instance:

1.     How do you put the reader into the characters' heads? It's so easy to write dialog, show a character's thoughts, the small, telling details that let readers know what they (the characters) are thinking/feeling when you can make it all up. When you can't make it up? Sure, I can infer all kinds of things from letters and other documents, but people didn't used to display their innermost feelings before the world the way they do these days. How the heck do you really know what those people thought/felt/experienced when there's no one you can ask?

2.     Are you ever allowed to "fudge" where you don't have a direct or definitive answer? I tried it once or twice, and discovered that an inner alarm started going off if I strayed too far from the path of what I could document in some manner. It got so I had to go back and take out all my "what if" meanderings. And yet, there were huge gaps in the narrative where no one at the time had thought to comment or record ANYTHING. I had to fill in those moments. When you're making up stories, you never think of yourself as lying. When you're writing about real history, that suddenly puts a huge damper on your creativity. At least, it did mine.

3.     In this era of excessive "political correctness" and hyper "offensensitivity" (yes, a made-up word, but one I love. Thank you, Berkeley Breathed), do you need to modify real history to avoid offense? What if a certain organization or group of people really were jackasses? What about heirs? I could have been a lot rougher on some historical figures than I was; I found myself back-peddling on some issues because they might still have living relatives. But wait; they actually did do those things, say those things…when does veracity trump sensitivity?

4.     When you have two accounts that contradict one another, and can't find sufficient evidence to give a clear "win" to either, how do you choose? Or, what do you say about it?

5.     When do you stop researching and just write the story? I'm realizing now that I may have to do another entire review of all my notes, all the tapes, all the interviews, the books, etc., before tackling my re-writes for the 2nd draft. It intimidates the hell out of me. But I know full well there were things I overlooked, answers I found and lost but that I might find again on yet another pass, if I wait long enough to let my memory fade a bit. But OMG, the work involved. Arrgh.

I've also come to the conclusion that Laura Hillenbrand is a goddess. There's no other explanation. I've studied "Seabiscuit" and "Unbroken" page by page, trying to figure out how she does what she does. I've used her as my "high water" mark, knowing I'll never reach it but just to have something to aim for.

Well, we'll see how this all plays out; wish me luck.

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SUE Bolich - A Voice Not Silenced

From the vaults: What makes a triad?

More Thoughts on Tir na n'Og

Behind the Mists of The Triads of Tir na n’Og

My Favorite Misunderstood, Misused, and Abused Words

Paris

Restart: The Price of Doing business

Re-Awakening the Voices

When to stick a fork in it.

When is a Tale not a Tale? Walking Off the Beaten Path

Darragh:

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