The Loneliness of Vision

(Alan Lee's Túrin Turambar surrounded by the outlaws who dwelt south of Brethil)

I am trying to read new Fantasy, Children's, YA, and Adult. I've noticed a trend I find very sad, a trend toward very gritty, quasi-horror kind of Fantasy, not vampire fantasy, but Medieval in the sense of gore, lice, torture, corruption, and a Conan type religious mask put over on a parody of the Middle Ages. This is not to say that the fiction does not work; some of it is masterful, as in George R. R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" series. But it is depressing, very. It's depressing because much of it has a very nihilistic, hopeless sense of life.

I think it is vital, when writing tragedy or about humans in extreme conditions, that the fiction "message" should be: that it is not human to accept the tragedy or the conditions; it is human to keep fighting. Tolkien's story of Túrin Turambar is an excellent example in that you can't get more Gothic, tragic, or oppressed than this story. And it is uplifting. Why? Because, although he is a tragic character, Túrin is heroic. Tolkien understood, first hand, from his experiences in the worst war ever fought (trenches of WWI) that HOW a man acts in the face of impossible tragedy decides everything. He becomes angelic if he refuses to let tragedy defeat his spirit. This was demonstrated over and over and over so many many times in history that the message should be clear, or so I think it should.

I've just finished "Firethorn" by Sarah Micklem. This book was lauded by everyone, and I mean everyone. Picked up by the top agent in the field, first time writer, etc., etc., etc. and the book is evil in a way I find almost impossible to describe. I spent two hours this morning trying to tell Sky why I found it so. It is written by a masterful storyteller, and I will not quibble about her details and how her society is untenable or any of my other petty complaints about world building. I won't go on about how if one does something "realistic" it had better damn work on the larger scale, not just the way the cloth is woven. I really, really, really wanted Micklem to save the book and save the character. Instead, she let me down. In shorthand, this book is an SP, Nomad, Gen X book that substitutes the lowest of human animal traits for anything noble or heroic. I will not mince words. Sarah Micklem has no reason to heed my comments; she's obviously wildly popular and successful. The book gave me nightmares.

(One of my favorite artists: Chmiel, who does quite a bit of Tolkien work.)

Okay. To go on. Entirely depressed by Micklem's book, unable to tear myself from it, I started having that terrible sinking feeling that my own work was lousy and that even if my intentions were good, I was going to fail and fail badly. Ad nauseum. I will not go on and whine about my own severity to myself that demands that I keep trying and trying and trying when it's obvious that I'm missing the gene that will get me published. It's not anything with my work; it's a kind of feeling that my work doesn't have.

But I pushed through the depression even though I am really sick today on top of being depressed, and was sorting through my art collection (some of which you see here) trying to think of a style that will work for my own book. I opened up the ms to go through the basic visual elements of each chapter and skimmed.

To my surprise, this book is light years beyond "Firethorn," for all Micklem's talent. It needs to be combed more and polished more, but the backbone is there. I have no confidence in it, no hope that anyone at all will see what I see, but that doesn't mean that it is not there. The book is shining. This has not happened to me before; I've always only seen the flaws, not the light of it, the shape of it, shining there, despite the flaws.

All during the work on this book, especially since joining Facebook, I've realized that this work that I have chosen to do completely isolates me. I have chosen a very, very hard road. I have chosen to speak from the heart and from my mind, no matter how subtle, no matter how complex, no matter how sublime. I have chosen, not to try to get published or to sell a book or to write something that people will read; I have chosen to give the best within me to the best out there. I suspect that if the series ever does sell that most people will like it for wrong reasons. But if only, if only, they will somehow sense what I am trying to set down on paper...

I feel cursed for this work, for this desire to do this work. Maybe not cursed, but cast out. I don't talk about it, fearing to bore people. I don't even like to allude to it or brag about it or complain about it. I'm completely obsessed with this work, so much so that I've almost destroyed my life over it, and I cannot even tell people, whisper to people, "do you understand?" I feel so completely isolated and cut off, more and more and more so as the series rises up out of "hopeful wannabe" to a sledgehammer of accomplishment, and I want more and more to hide it away, to keep it from people, to pretend that I am not doing anything. Part of me finds this shameful and so I'm trying to write this blog about it.

But I cannot possibly go to Facebook for what it is and say, "I am so filled with passion over this work that I am shaking as I sit here." How can one say that? It is like being a closet something--a friend of mine once said it was just like being an alcoholic. The most sublime thing in my life, the great Joy, is, to others, like being an alcoholic. Is it any wonder I cannot speak of it? I retreat into technical discussions to pretend I don't care.
(Tony Dezuniga, a magnificent comic artist)

And so, I've decided (as you might can deduce from these three drawings) that these are closest to what I want as the style of the artwork. Dezuniga's warrior here is stunning, not because he's a barbarian, but because Dezuniga has the ability to gesture. I do not want to do photo-real art or cartoon art or polished art, but to give the allusion of emergence out of the page like Lee's picture at the top of this entry. Chmiel does this with marvelous skill.

I want now to go on. I have the backbone, both in drawing and in writing. I want now to do to my art as these three pictures will indicate and to my writing the same way. I want to learn when to leave something white, unfinished, raveling off. Rand was hard and clean, Vermeer. I do not want the complexity of Dickens or George R. R. Martin--I want this emergence, this drawingness feeling.

I am in complete and utter pain, unable even to talk about the vision that I have. I am so completely and utterly in the grip of it, struck dumb with Joy, and I feel like a babbling idiot. I walk so softly now, so afraid that just as I am gripping it, I will slip up, mess up, somehow not be able to show the light. I feel that it is also so important to talk of the importance, to try to express the complete and utter pain and joy of the creation, of the making of the best within me.

And my question to Sarah Micklem is: how can such effort have been for this book you have written? To make the effort alone is so heroic, and to make it to show art that despises the Will, the Joy, the Beingness of this--how is it possible? Does she feel responsible? Does she even know? How can she live it it and know? Are her values so completely different, so utterly hopeless and nihilistic? Does anyone else see this or will I just sound like a fool? An old fuddy-duddy. Somehow concerned with heroism and morality in a world that scorns such things.

A hard day today. I am saved only by the Will within, my own pigheaded stubborn love of this vision, a desire to keep trying to bring back the fire of God.

Creating Worlds - Tales of Anieth

What I do is create worlds. I wanted to do this ever since I read The Lord of Rings when I was nine. I decided at the ripe ol' age of twelve, that my greatest fear in writing was that some artist would get to interpret the characters and the world visually. Since I wanted to create a WORLD and not a novel, I decided that I had to draw my own pictures. This meant drawing people.

At that time, the art world was in love with abstract art and impressionist art. Realism was out. So I had to flounder around for a long time. I had to teach myself until I got a couple of lessons at the Boulder Academy of Art with Elvie Davis, a student of a student of John Singer Sargent who was still teaching in the classical style. I eagerly absorbed much of what he could teach and he must have thought I was a bit bonkers!

It is only now that I am getting competent enough at art to be able to draw my characters and the scenes from this particular world to the degree of realism that I want. Being a long time fan of the Romantic school of art and writing, and a fan of Ayn Rand and Victor Hugo, I wanted to write fantasy that would mean something. I also wanted to write "fan" fantasy, or fantasy that would have a world attached to it. This required an enormous amount of work, for I was not satisfied with the stereotyped Medieval world for a fantasy background. I backed my world up twice: first to Classical times to get out of the witch/Christian thing, and then to 2000 BCE on an alternative Earth. I took some liberties in that my world's people are from about 1000 BCE, proto-Celts and Persians. My world is as if Darius the Great had conquered Europe and was getting ready to invade Britain for tin and gold. My Zelosians (Persians) had already destroyed Gallicia in Northern Spain for the tin there.

The reason I wanted to write about the Celts was that they were a large, stable confederation that had a high degree of development, similar to the Mongols, the Vikings, or the Lakota, all of whom were too late for my purposes. I learned many eye-opening things as the world learned them: that the world of ancient Europe was not a world of barbarians living in skins, but maybe more highly developed than Classical Greece. The level of technology uncovered rocked the world of anthropology and lent pathos to my world. I came to understand that the world of 2000 BCE was of a greater level of "tech" than the Medieval world and that there had been a long "Dark Ages" as the greedy empires of the Mid-East and then the Mediterranean destroyed much of what had been learned. What a rich background for a world!

But, before I go on (and on) my celebration today is of the creation of the entry book for The Tales of Anieth. I have written (cover to cover) and even published some of the books of this world, none of which worked as "entry" books or first books into the series. There are ten other books written, but none of them worked as first books; all of them were too complex or too late in the history of the series to stand alone without too much back story.

I'm allowing myself the luxury of being proud. This is a new one for me, for I'm NEVER satisfied with my work. But the creation of Raol Aveldonacc as a young man has worked extremely well and I've written the best book I have ever written and I think it works. Pause. I've said this over the years, but this time, I may be right. Why? Because the story works. Usually my stories were good, certainly good enough, but they had some flaw. This story is a small story, a story of passion and tragedy, a story about a single man that takes place over the space of about a month.

But, more than this, I cannot express to you the joy I feel in walking in this world. The creation of a proto-Celt language was enjoyable; the discovery and extrapolation of archeoastonomy was delightful; the creation of a complete world that was real, yet also magical was fulfilling in a way that most projects are not.

And the creation of the characters has been wonderful. Here is Raol again. Just as a note: Anieth is from the Gaelic "an Aiath" which means "the land" and is pronounced "AWN-ya" or a pun on my name, which is pronounced the same way in Gaelic. It would also be correct to say "an-YA". Raol could mean many things in Gaelic or Welsh, depending on how it is pronounced, reel, rile or rail. His name could mean "sustained effort" "stellar" "ruler" and etc. Aveldonacc means "son of Veldonacc" and Veldonacc is a morph of Faol Daoine which means "people of the wolf."

I had to create a different picture of Raol for the cover to keep consistent with the eye look. (See below)

Raol was a difficult character. He began as a bad guy, the key man in the Invasion. In much of history, there was a chieftain or a king who "sold out" or made a pact with the devil (an empire) to attack his neighbors. Raol started there. A long journey!



I am very happy with what is happening in this world. I'll keep sharing as I get time.