#SoCS: “Eco”

It’s a bit late to be thinking about posting for the Stream of Consciousness Saturday, but…  it technically is still Saturday (an hour before midnight counts, right?)

Seems good enough for me.  So here goes…

This meme/blog hop hosted by Linda Hill happens every week.  (I guess there is also something else going on called “Just Jot it January” as well.  This isn’t one of those posts, though, barring a small bit of typo-fixing and spelling correction, this is scarily raw stuff).

For a bit of background, Parvenu the name of the first set of books I started writing, a trilogy of Release, Soulclaimed and Moon-called.  The main character’s name is Kieri. 

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The first thing that came to mind as I read the prompt was Parvenu, or at least the first book of the series. Not sure why… Maybe because the initial fanfiction stories that lead into the development of Kieri Vestimorn’s character evolved from a cartoon involving a massive ecological disaster on a galactic scale. There were other reasons, of course. I’d noted in the story itself how Daryl was so happy and proud to call Kieri his son when the birthrate on Acaria had suffered so much after the pollution and deforestation the planet had suffered during its industrial age and as its budding space-faring economy developed. How so many girls seemed to be born as opposed to boys and the survival of those few sons was a challenge, even with advanced genetics researchers on the planet and medical facilities that drew patients from all over the galaxy because of their skill and success rates

Acaria could cure the ills of universe, but seemed helpless to save the lives of their own children….

I did have a reason for this built into the storyline as well. it also explained why genetics research was such an obsession in Acarian society and why crossbreeding of different species worked.  I think I developed some even on the economic reasons for this situation (too many of which revolve around the patriarchal underpinnings of Acarian society and the fact that Acarian women… at least until recent times, outnumbered Acarian men by a 1:3 ratio [technically, I guess that is supposed to be 3:1 not the other way around ]; with numbers like that, then the decreased birthrate, boys just were valuable—no other way to say it).

So yeah, I guess I can see why Release (and all the books in the Parvenu trilogy I was laying out would fit into an “eco” themed post. Even the later two books, when Kieri tries to deny his father’s place in his life and Andy finds his place in society and as Kieri’s equal… The same ecological disaster had harmed the world these two boys ended up growing up on. The same economic forces pushed them there, away from their families or anyone who might have been able to protect them from the abuse they suffered.

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That’s all I have for you tonight.  If you’d like to read more about the fan fiction that inspired the series, here’s a good start.

Another #SoCS post: Yule, You’ll, Yul

I had a lot of fun last week with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, and though I’m running a bit late this week (holidays!  very busy for the holidays, but at last in a somewhat good way), I still wanted to post something, as I won’t be doing a WeWriWa post (I’ve decided to only do those every two weeks, for sanity’s sake) tonight.

The SoCS bloghop is to post something (anything really, picture, meme, story, etc.) on a prompt that Linda G. Hill sets out for people Friday evening, link it back to her website, along with a link to the rules, and to visit other participants.  The full story, plus rules can be found here at Linda’s blog.

Today’s prompt is to use Yule, you’ll or Yul somehow as the first word in a piece, and to not plan it very far ahead…

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Yul is a hard name to come up with for a character.  I wanted to write something relating to my stories, but today…  nothing.  They don’t know anyone named Yul.  They don’t celebrate “The Yule”, not the way we do.  They do have a Midwinter-like festival, which they call the Wintersong, when they sing great songs to waken the lesser gods and goddesses, joining their voices so-to-speak with that of their Great Mother, the Singer of All Songs, so that the work needed to return light and fertility to the land can be done.

Some of the “lesser deities” can be pretty lazy folks.  Though…  there are some, like Kéline, the Death’s Head as she’s also known, tends to relish the slower, darker seasons of the year.  Some say she prefers these days because man has kept her busy enough in the summer and fall months with his wars and sacrifices.  In the Spring, she seems to step back and the world blooms anew, animals bear young…  things fill with hope.

It’s not a new concept.  It is the mythology as my characters tell me, a slightly merged version as there are distinct sects.

But they don’t follow the Yuletide in the Christian sense.  I guess one could say they do technically, if Yule is used like the jól of Norse mythology, related more to Odin, the Yule Father, relating more to feasting…

The name Yul though?  Well, except for Yul Brynner (one of my favorite childhood actors), I can’t think of anyone named that.  A quick Google search finds it to be known as:

• English name meaning Born at Christmas
• Chinese or Mongolian name meaning Past the Horizon
• IATA airport code of Montréal–Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport

And there were a lot more famous people named Yul than I’d realized.

But my characters still insist they don’t know anyone named that.  I get a feeling their holding out on me.

A New Thing: #SoCS (Stream of Consciousness Saturday)

Today I’m trying something new because two of my favorite writing people (Shan and Fallon) have participated in this bloghop for a while and caught my curiosity with their creative posts.  So…  here I go, trying something new.

Following the rules (found here), this piece is raw.  Not even WIPpet raw, where I’m usually posting a piece that I’ve sketched out and done some minor edits on.  Typos will be fixed, but that’s pretty much it.

The prompt for today is “contrast“.  Either I must use the word or the post itself must involve contrasts in some way.

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Vartanian walked toward the ruin, the dark stone round and worn in the twilight shadows.  Behind him, he heard the rest of the men murmuring softly to their mounts, settling their packs, the relaxed bustle of a hundred other evenings.  A camp like any others, three walls and a ceiling tumbled to the sky…

But it wasn’t like the others, not really.  Vartanian supposed he should have expected it.  After all, he’d heard the rumors too.  But after all these years seeing the lad grow up, knowing how gentle he was—he’d sworn his life to the service of this young man, so sure he had been of Alanii Vestimiir’s noble heart!—, now Vartanian held his wounded arm tight against his side, staunching the bleeding, knowing as second in command he had to take charge of the men and hold them back.  Knowing, and dreading, that he had to protect Alanii now, despite the creature that had filled the man only moments ago.

Creatures that he’d helped hunt down only ten years ago.

Just ahead of him, he heard a snap, then saw a small flame build and take, chasing away the oncoming night.  Light against dark, hope against despair…  life against death.  He knew where his loyalties lay.

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Hope you enjoyed this piece.  The characters are from the world of my Swan Song Series books (this scene came to me because I was editing photos from our England trip this past Spring).