Marketing Idhua Part 1: Mission Statement

So, I have been working on my strategic plan - which is turning out to be a lot more fun than I thought it would be.  My sister, N, and I have observed to each other that often our challenge is not finding a way to do things, but to decide what we want to do in the first place.  It took me over fifteen years to decide I wanted to become a published author, but now that I have I am having fun figuring out how to make that happen.  I like the clarity the exercise of doing strategic planning brings to my process and the way I can go from distant goals to current steps to take towards them.  Here is my mission statement - I welcome any feedback people may have on it.  Leave a comment or email me at tannara.young@gmail.com.

Author Mission Statement for Tannara Young   My mission is to write, publish and promote mythopoeic high fantasy, set in the world of Idhua, for readers who desire such works. My stories are intended for an audience who is looking for high fantasy with a strong focus on lyrical prose that contains mythological depth. These stories will challenge some of the more conservative elements in fantasy by incorporating non-traditional characters and narratives, including female characters, non-white characters and characters of differing sexual orientations placed in atypical roles.

Finished Orin

I have finished both the entry and the rough draft of the short story for my next country: Orin.  The short story, titled “The Summer Valley” is being read by my kind and generous beta reader, M, whom I hope will not be quite as despairing about it as I have been feeling.  The reason I am being gloomy about it is that the launch party for Orin is set for June and it is going to be a big one.  My mom, my dear friend E, and my sister’s boyfriend are all going to be up from CA to see my sister graduate and will be here for the party.  In addition, when I sent out a “save this date” invitation I had a lot of positive responses, a number from people who will be coming for the first time.  So it’s not that I don’t like “The Summer Valley” but rather that I have been feeling that it should somehow be extra special for an extra big party with VIPs.


Orin is a country which spans a temperate and Mediterranean climate – in the north above the Idessa Mountains it is cooler and wetter, though it rarely snows, while in the south there are vineyards and orange and lemon orchards.  It was limping along a bit until I decided that they needed a legendary king to focus on with both their history and their legends and folk-lore.  I glanced over the Arthurian and Carolingian cycles, not only for inspiration, but also as an example of how such bodies of literature and legend work on a patriotic consciousness.


Here is the current map of Idhua: It is entirely coincidental that I have been working on the purple countries.  Apparently, I colored a number of the countries which were settled earliest (which is my criteria) purple without planning it.

Tav'uresk Launch Party

A tent in our living room

Last night was proof (if there was any doubt) that I have yet to grow out of making pillow forts.  My original idea had been to put up a canopy to give the impression of a tent - but once I started I couldn't stop.  Good thing I have so many sheets and random lengths of cloth!

Key structural detail: Rice Paddle

 I used an entire box of straight pins - several dozen safety pins, a ball of yard, a length of chain, several books, several chairs - but the most important structural detail was a wooden rice paddle.

 

Our Tav'uresk Launch Party was, therefore, held in a tent in our living room.  The menu was delicious - I still don't much like deep-frying, but the results were great.  The repast consisted of:

Egg Noodles with Shredded Greens, Ginger and Basil
Perfumed Rice (Jasmine Rice cooked with ghee, and a broth of lemongrass, ginger, mint, basil, onions, black pepper and cardamom)
Seitan in Curried Yogurt Sauce

Cucumber, Carrot and Radish salad with Tamari-Sesame Dressing
Pickled Onions
Apricot Chutney

Curried Kabocha Samosas

Green Peas with Paneer Cheese
Turkish Donuts with Rosehip and Honey GlazeCream Cheese Stuffed Dates, Candied Almonds, Dried Apricots

and to wash it all down:

White Grape Juice with Ginger, Mint, Cardamom and Pepper

One of the fun elements was that I made my own curry powders and spice blends.  This was partially to use as little pre-made food as possible, (I made the Paneer too,) but also because one of the guests can't have coriander/cilantro which is a big part of many curry mixes.  It was fun researching and mixing the spices!

The evening continued with a reading of The Silvered Swords and then extended congenial conversation.  I highly recommended making a fort and a feast! 

Here are some pictures of the guests:

On a quest to the Renaisance Faire

M, N, D and I had an adventure trying to get the Renaissance Faire yesterday.  We started out by checking out a smaller festival that turned out to be a bit of a dud.  Then, since we were all dressed up, we decided to go to the bigger fair that (luckily) was also happening this weekend.  With a lot of getting lost, getting found, calling friends to look up directions and maddeningly slow people on country highways we made it to the Faire – about an hour before it closed.  We still had fun though, wandering around, eating pickles and ice cream. 

I love the feeling of being dressed up in costume and among so many others in costume.  It is also really fun to people (or, perhaps, character) watch at the Faire.  Sometime it would be interesting to go and take four or five pictures of different characters and then write a story based on them.  Here's a picture of our costumes:

Organizing!

I just moved last week.  Moving is always an exhausting process – but I am excited about this one.  Our new apartment is full of light, and has lovely large double-glazed windows.  I am still living with my sister N and our housemate M, but our other housemate S, is now in a studio of her own, a mile or so away.  My new room is tiny compared to my old one…but I really like it.  It has south and west facing windows, one of which overlooks the balcony where all my potted herbs are living.

I took the opportunity of moving to organize my writing-self:  I have a file box dedicated to writing and three wall pockets for manuscripts in various stages.  My notebooks have a place to live – that is not just a stack – and I even have a spot to put my computer case.  Now all I need is the internet to be hooked up and I will be set.
I also discovered a coffee shop in my neighborhood – in my search for WiFi – which is my new favorite coffee shop.  It is under an apartment building and is long and thin, with a coffee counter on one end and fireplace on the other.  The whole north wall is windows and there is a pair of comfy chairs that I can sink deeply into.  I haven’t liked a coffee shop this much since The Dragonfly in Portland, OR.  Check it out if you are ever out that way.

Lovely inside too!

In writing, my next country is coming along.  I spent a while yesterday designing a flag for it.  It is called “the oak and stars.”  The country is Ariceda, which is the setting for the novel I have in very rough draft form.  I know that manuscript needs a lot of work – if for no other reason than I have done a massive amount of world-building since I wrote it.  The short story I am working on for Ariceda is a sort of prequel tale for the novel and will, I hope, flesh out some of the secondary characters.
 

Despite being worn out from the move, I have been full of energy for writing.  I am plugging my way though editing and am collecting places to submit some of the more polished pieces too.  I hope I will be announcing some sort of publication in the next year or so.

Beading Mania!

I am usually fairly organized about giving myself enough time to do something, but I have sort of failed this time.  Back in November I decided that I did in fact want to make a costume to wear at Norwescon, at least to the evening events and parties.  It took me until February to decide to pursue a peacock-themed masquerade costume, which has been in the back of my mind for a while.  I dithered about fabric for a while and finally got it in the middle of March.  All good – I had over a month to sew the thing.  But then last weekend, when N was helping me fit the bodice, I decided to bead the trim for it myself.  So now, just a few weeks before it is to be worn, I am madly beading some 84 inches of trim!  Listening to books on tape or to television shows, at a dinner party for M’s visiting parents, when I am having tea with a friend, so far the beading is following me most everywhere.  I don’t know if I will get it done in time, but I find it somewhat amusing none the less.  Next time I will start the beading in November!

Enchanted Forests

Nisene Marks, CA

During my sister, N’s, spring break last week, we went to visit family and friends in central California, where we grew up.  There is always something a little heartbreaking about returning to a place that is not home anymore, but was once.

The coastal forests of California are the foundational forests of my imagination; the landscapes which are written bone-deep on me – the ones that don’t just fill my dreams, but scent them too.  While I can identify far more plants in that ecosystem than in others, even the ones I don’t know the names of, or uses for, are familiar to me.  I have seen them season to season, in all moments of their growth and death.  

Hoh Rainforest, WA

In visiting that forest, I am reminded of how little I know the forests of the Pacific Northwest.  There I am a visitor, who marvels at the sights but does not yet know the language.  In a strange sense the forests of the North are more accessible to me through the mediums of literature, photography or film.  In California the woods are familiar because they are inside of me.  Where I live now the experience of the forest takes the reinterpretation of the artist’s eye, my own or someone else’s, to allow me to recognize that what I am seeing corresponds to something I know.

Me, playing dryad

The Forest that lies at the heart of Idhua grows from that soil that grows the redwoods carpeted with wood sorrel; the tangle of hazel, thimbleberry and bramble that shadows a trickling creek.  The first description of the Forest I wrote (when I was in my early twenties) was both consciously and unconsciously the woods I walked in:

It was well after midday when she came to the first of the great trees.  It reached up and up in majestic grandeur towards the soft sky, high above.  Her heart leapt and she stopped to look more closely at the vast ancient tree.  There was a rich, sharp fragrance in the air of bark and leaf.  The dizzying height made her feel as though she were but a mouse creeping through a vast, living cathedral.  She walked in silence between them and at last, when the light was turning rich and golden, she came to a grove of giants that grew in a circle and in the center of them was a mossy mound.

My sister, playing dryad

The Forest of Idhua, besides being infused with enchantment, stretches from northern mountains wrapped in ice, to southern lakes, shimmering under a brilliant sun. My intention is that it contains many different forests – from cedar to redwood, from oak to maple – yet, I think it is inescapable that its primeval layer this first forest of my memory.  C. S. Lewis wrote that a reader “does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted” (29-30).  It is an interactive process for me, as a reader, writer and lover of trees; it is impossible to say whether the enchantment springs first from the forest itself, the trees I read about or those that grow in my imagination.

Works Cited:

Lewis, C. S. Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories. 2002. Boston: Mariner Books.

Epic Dream Inspires Writing

    Occasionally, I have dreams which have many qualities of an epic story.  I usually jot them down – some of them I have used as bases for stories or am saving for ideas.  As I was finishing my work on Eonia and began to turn my thoughts to the next country (which at the moment is still unnamed) I had one such dream.  I had already begun gathering bits and pieces of this new country in stories I had written, but the elements I was toying with didn’t yet fit together.  The bits I had come up with was that there were a people who were nomadic and very secretive.  They had a martial magic which was unique in Idhua, yet it didn’t make sense that they would be in any kind of lasting conflict with their neighbors.  I was just beginning to puzzle over the elements I had already given myself, when this dream offered some interesting solutions to some of the problems. 

    In the dream there was a kingdom, ruled by a Queen (who in the dream was my housemate M) that was plagued by demons.  I was some sort of sorceress who was trying to help the Queen save her country.  In an episode near the beginning of the dream I received a magical crystal sword which I gave to the Queen’s champion, who was my brother.
So far our battle against the demons had not been going well as our weapons were fairly useless against them. Our only reprieve was that they had not figured out how to stay in this world for any length of time.  The Queen’s champion went to fight the demons with his new sword and I, as the royal sorceress set up a sort of monitoring spell to help him.  The new sword was very effective, but, while they were fighting, the demons were pulled back to their own dimension and the champion was pulled too.
 

     However, somehow my spell on him remained intact and I went running off to find my sister, N.  She was also a sorceress and we began preparing a spell to summon our brother back from the demon’s realm, while at the same time helping to prepare an evacuation for the entire castle, which apparently was about to fall off a cliff because the demons had weakened the foundation.  Our spell was successful (which was surprising, seeing as how cause and effect can be very warped in dreams,) and having rescued our brother, we turned our attention to the evacuation.
 

    At this point the dream sort of degenerated into a common trope for my dreams: organizing things.  Most of the people were out of the castle (or house as it had become), but I had a vague sense that we would be heading out on the road in a quest like manner, rather than meeting up with the other evacuees. I determined we would need to take camping type gear. I was in the kitchen of the house and I was getting a little hung up on making sure we had silverware, a cutting board and knife, napkins, dishtowels and soap and an oven rack to prop over a fire for an open flame cooking rack. I was a little frustrated at our lack of useful rations – but when I grabbed the peanut butter I remembered the Emergency Kit I had made up for winter (a real project and I dreamt of the exact plastic crate I used).  My epic dreams often have an episode like this – everybody else will be discussing how to sneak out of the city, or retrieve the magical artifact and I am off making sandwiches.  :)

    But back to the point: I felt there were the bones of an interesting story with the demons, the magic sword and the different realms.  I was also intrigued by the sibling element, as I have not written about siblings for a while.  But besides the elements of one story, I found that idea of a people plagued by demons gave some interesting answers to a nomadic, warlike people who nonetheless were not fighting their neighbors.  The idea that I am exploring now is that in the distant past their ancestors started summoning demons to do their bidding, but at some point the demons figured out how to cross into the human world on their own, though they could never stay for long.  They are attracted to the blood of the sorcerers who first summoned them and so the people keep moving to prevent the demons from getting a “fix” on their location.  Obviously, the idea needs a lot more thought and fleshing out, but at the moment I am enjoying trying it on – and enjoying that my dream gave me some solutions to this next phase of writing.

Roses at the Beach - Photo Shoot

Last Sunday we grabbed some costumes and props (mainly some gorgeous roses) and went to Golden Gardens on the Sound to take photos.  I did a romantic sort of get-up and M did steam-punk.  My sister, N, and other friend, S, didn’t want to do the fantasy thing, so they wore more normal clothes.  It was really cold – I was fine in all my layers but that bluish skin on my sister – it wasn’t just the light!  Sadly, my camera was on the wrong setting for a while so the picture of me came out too dark – but then we figured it out and the rest were much better.

Sunset

Roses at the Beach

"I must go down the the sea again..."

Across the sea

M dreaming

On some distant shore

S laughing at the cold