What's It All About?

In my last post I promised to tell you about THE LAZARUS GAMBIT—the story, that is. I don't know about you, but one of the hardest things I've ever had to do was to create a short description of what the book is about. I mean, how hard could it be? I wrote the darn thing! You'd think that would make it easy, right? Ha!

I think part of my problem stems from being too close to it. I simply find it difficult to boil the story down to its essence. Well, that, and I'm, you know...wordy. I have a tendency to want to throw in everything, including the kitchen sink.

Here's a version of the brief description I provided for my blog post at The Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood:

THE LAZARUS GAMBIT is a Steampunk Romance set in New Amsterdam, an alternate version of Manhattan, and features ley lines and aether, a secret society of aether users, a clockwork dragon, a mysterious death, a heroine who’s aetheric abilities are on the fritz, and a pragmatic cop who doesn’t believe in magic.

That description lists the main elements, but doesn't really give you a feel for what the story's about. Here's a longer, back-of-the-book type of blurb:

Tess Faraday wants her life back as a Fixer for the Aetherium, a secret society dedicated to protecting the world from the misuse of aetheric magic. Most of all, she wants revenge on Garrett Norwood, the man who seduced and betrayed her by stealing the Lazarus Precept, one of the Aetherium's most closely guarded secrets. When Tess discovers a mummified corpse at the center of an aetheric disturbance, she's convinced Norwood is involved. And if that weren't enough, she finds something else she can't explain--a cop who's unaware that he's surrounded by an unusual aetheric aura...

Chief Inspector Jack Kilgaard is a pragmatic, down-to-earth copper who's dedicated his life to making New Amsterdam a safe place to raise his younger sister. He wants nothing to do with aether and thinks anyone who believes in aetheric magic is delusional. Though he can't deny his growing attraction for a certain crazy aether-chaser...

Norwood's playing a dangerous game with New Amsterdam's aether, and the corpse is only the beginning. Tess is on her own in a strange city without Aetherium backing, her aetheric powers are on the fritz, and if she's to stop Norwood from destroying them all, she'll need the help of a man who refuses to believe in his own aetheric abilities...

So, what do you think? Is there enough description? Too much? Does it intrigue you? Exhausted minds want to know!

World-Building: It's Never Just One Thing

In my last post I promised I'd write about my Golden Heart^® finalist manuscript: THE LAZARUS GAMBIT. TLG is a finalist in the Novel with Strong Romantic Elements category, which, frankly, doesn't tell you anything at all about the story or genre, except that the romance portion is a (major) sub-plot.

In this post I'm going to start with the foundation of the book: genre and world-building. I promise to get to the actual, you know, story in my next post. THE LAZARUS GAMBIT is a STEAMPUNK novel set in New Amsterdam, an alternate version of Manhattan. Before I wrote a single sentence of the story, I spent a great deal of time world-building (though hopefully most of that world-building lurks below the surface in the book). My goal was to create a world which was "similar but different" from our own.

While I love the late Victorian/Edwardian era, I wanted the freedom to make the differences in my world from that era pronounced. I was struck by something I read on Wikipedia while researching Queen Victoria (about her suitors): "William IV, however, disapproved of any match with the Coburgs, and instead favoured the suit of Prince Alexander of the Netherlands, second son of the Prince of Orange." It turns out Victoria made the better choice; Prince Alexander died at the age of 29.

Just like that, I had my hook for the differences I wanted to make in my world. I went all the way back to William and Mary (1600s) and created new royal alliances and genealogical charts, removing the Hanoverian Georges from the line of British kings and creating a succession which culminated in Alexander, Prince of Orange-Nassau (of the Netherlands) becoming King Alexander I of Great Britain. And, Alexander I marries...Victoria of Hanover (in my world, Alexander dies at 52). I still get my Queen Victoria, but in my world, she's queen through marriage and her role, while important, is diminished.

Of course, once you make such a major change, it's like starting off knocking down a long line of dominoes. The face of Europe--scratch that--the entire world changed, as well. Different rulers, different alliances, different decisions. I ended up having to create an historical timeline of events, just to keep track of everything.

There's one event that plays a major role in the history of this world, and which forms the underpinnings of the plot of THE LAZARUS GAMBIT. In the 1700s, this Earth has a close encounter with a mysterious comet, which changes the Earth forever. At one point I wrote a prologue to TLG explaining the Comet. I ultimately discarded the prologue, but here's an excerpt from it, to give you an idea of the Comet's importance:

The comet appeared as a tiny speck of light among the northern stars. Over the course of months it grew bigger and brighter until it dominated the night, a cold fireball with a glowing tail stretching halfway across the sky. The superstitious called it a harbinger of doom and believed the end of the world was nigh. The rational-minded saw it for the rare astronomical event it was and marveled at its unearthly beauty. Scientists worked feverishly to accurately predict its path and privately wondered if the superstitious might not be right after all.

For six months the earth traveled through the comet’s tail. The sky blazed with an aurora from exotic gases streaming into the atmosphere, and cometary debris flamed across the sky in a nightly spectacle. At first only the occasional larger bit of rock survived the journey through the atmosphere, but over time the meteorites increased in size and frequency, often impacting with devastating results. The worst event occurred in mid-October in the early morning hours when hundreds of meteorites bombarded the northern hemisphere, leaving more than just death and destruction in their wake.

The meteorites contained Carolinium, a previously undiscovered element named in honor of Caroline Herschel, the astronomer who first discovered the comet. Carolinium combined with the aurora gases in a volatile reaction that charged particles lying dormant in the earth, creating a new substance. While scientists raced to investigate these new phenomena, the more romantic thinkers of the day named the new substance Aether. And since the charged particles tended to collect in narrow bands that criss-crossed the globe, they were dubbed Ley Lines. To the chagrin of the scientific community, those terms stuck.

Many believed aether had a dual nature: one part science and one part magic. Bizarre comet cults sprang up overnight around charismatic charlatans, attracting thousands of followers despite fierce condemnation from world and religious leaders. For weeks rioting by panic stricken citizens, inflamed by end-of-the-world rhetoric, swept through the capitals of the world. Only the inevitable and inexorable retreat of the comet allowed the world’s governments to promote calm and restore order and stability.

The vast majority of the Carolinium vaporized in the reaction that charged the ley lines and created aether. Approximately seven percent was out of reach, lost somewhere in the great plains of North America behind an impenetrable barrier, dubbed the Great Aetheric Curtain. The Curtain appeared without warning on the night of the first winter solstice after the meteorites fell, cutting off the middle of the continent from further European encroachment. The remainder of the Carolinium was scattered across the northern hemisphere.

This rare element was said to have amazing properties that scientists couldn’t measure in their laboratories or test tubes. Carolinium, true believers whispered, was beyond the ken of science; it belonged to those individuals who possessed an innate affinity for aether. For those few, Carolinium enhanced the ability to manipulate aether, making even the smallest of talents great. And the person who could control and manipulate aether, could control the world.

So, that's a tiny look behind the world-building curtain of THE LAZARUS GAMBIT. I tried to create a world which was rich in its own history, but familiar and recognizable at the same time. In addition, I wanted a world which I could possibly re-visit in a sequel (or prequel). I guess time will tell if I was successful!

Debbie
www.Deborah-Wright.com
Twitter: @DeborahBWright

Researching The Impossible

Let's face it, researching in person isn't always possible for a myriad of reasons. I don't know about you, but the vast bulk of my research is done via the internet and books. It's amazing what you can find on the internet -- not just facts and figures, but so many amazing things that you and I might never get the chance to experience in person. For instance, take a look at this (be sure to click on the image and move it around--in particular look at the ceiling). Tell me you didn't just imagine yourself as the pilot or commander of the shuttle with an emergency and having to remember which switch to flick. (o-kay, just me then...)

This is all well and good, but what do you do when you need to research something that doesn't exist? Anyone writing paranormal, fantasy, or science fiction understands what I'm talking about. Although, if you're writing hard SF you're probably trying to extrapolate as much as you can from what's considered possible in science today (and good luck with not driving yourself crazy with that).

I'm currently writing steampunk romance and my story has an emphasis on fantasy rather than science (though that's in there, too). How do you research ray guns and aether and clockwork familiars? Well...you don't. You can't. Contrary to what I'd really like to believe, they don't exist.

What you can do is research technology that you plan to use that does exist, along with just about any other topic that might be useful. Look, In the last few months I've read more than I should probably admit about a lot of topics: airships, European royal families since the 1600s, history of ferries, steam engines, physics, electricity, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Caroline Herschel, comets, Queen Victoria, and the nature of invention, just to name a few.

Mostly I needed to know what is (or what was) in order to figure out what I wanted to change for the alternate history of my story world. Turns out I changed a lot of things. I still think it was easier to create my story world this way than to build a world out of whole cloth, but your mileage may vary.

That can only go so far, though. What about all those gadgets and widgets and clockwork devices? What about the magic? This, quite frankly is where I step off the Research Bus into terra incognita and, ahem, Make Stuff Up. There are rules to how magic and technology work in my alternate world and I try to make sure that the Stuff I Make Up doesn't violate those rules. So long as there's internal consistency, I'm good.

So there you have it -- I research the impossible by Making Stuff Up! There are days, though, when I really, really wish that ray gun actually worked...

Genre: A Home for Your Story

Current Project: Blindsight
Status: 87% First Draft

I don’t believe in chasing trends. However, if a genre or subgenre seems to be on the rise and a story or character you’re developing fits like ice cream in a cone, there’s nothing wrong with tweaking the story to fit the genre, IMHO.

For example, a few months ago I was in the process of prewriting what started out to be a Contemporary YA with a strong mother/daughter conflict. I’d come up with plot twists and characters and my protagonist’s internal and external goals and conflicts. Included were a mad-scientist mother; a rebellious daughter; an accident with a time machine; zombies (of a sort); a missing father and brother; and a love interest who turns out to be half-alien (revealed at the end, which leads into the sequel).

But there were ways in which the story didn’t quite fit into the contemporary world. For instance, I couldn’t seem to come up with a believable way for two twelve-year-old boys to break into the mother’s lab. Nowadays, with the security available in top-secret government laboratories, nothing seemed to work. Then there were the ‘zombies’, who seemed to move the story into the paranormal realm. But the time machine and alien boyfriend gave the story a science fiction-ish feel.

Then I took an online class to learn more about an up-and-coming genre: Steampunk.

Although I’d taken the class out of simple curiosity (I roomed with a steampunk writer named Mae Pen at the Emerald City Writers’ Conference), by the end of the first week of class, I knew I’d found the right genre for my story.

Talk about excited; I was thrilled! Mad scientists and zombies are perfectly acceptable characters in steampunk tales. Home laboratories were the rule in the Victorian era, and steampunk stories most commonly have a Victorian setting. Girls rebelled against society’s restrictions – think Suffragettes. Wild scientific theories and inventions abounded. Everything clicked.

Descriptions, settings, dialogue, manners, perhaps even history will all change from my original vision. New elements will be added. My inspiration for the entire story, a title that popped into my head one day while I was feeding the dog, sadly has to go. ‘The Fixer-Upper Boyfriend’ no longer fits. *SIGH*

But I’m okay with that. Maybe ‘the fixer-upper boyfriend’ was never supposed to be a title; maybe the phrase was meant only to inspire one heck-of-a-good story!

What do you think? Am I chasing a trend?