In my opinion, most dreams, like most stories, don’t require analysis; they require retelling.

If a friend has a humorous or frightening dream, it’s often the verbalization of it (rather than any external examination of the dream in the context of the dreamer’s life) that is satisfying to both parties. I find external, highly detailed analysis of dreams to be much more about the analyzer than about the dreamer. But we mustn’t completely throw out analysis: there’s a baby in that bathwater.

One of the many languages I find beautiful and fascinating is American Sign Language. The ASL sign for dream is performed by placing the right index finger on the forehead, slowly pulling the finger away from the head while rapidity flexing and extending the fingers. (The sign should be seen to be appreciated.) The evocative nature of this sign lies in its ability to dramatize the both the rapid movement of thought inherent to dreams and how those thoughts seem to extend beyond our own minds. The English word “ecstasy” is derived from an Ancient Greek word perhaps best rendered into Latin letters as “Existanai.’ It’s broken into two parts: Exi- ‘exiting’ or ‘outside of’ and –stanai related to a Latin –status ‘to stand’ or ‘to exist.’  Dreams are, to some extent, ourselves outside of ourselves.

Vivid situations make for vivid dreams. For example, puberty. This one classically presents with the “show up for class naked” dream. But there’s also the “suddenly have to take a chemistry midterm you forgot to study for” dream.  They might change slightly as we grow older—substitude ‘work’ for ‘class’ or ‘work-related task’ for ‘midterm’—but otherwise these dreams follow us for most of our lives. In the Odyssey years of my 20s I had versions of these dreams pertaining to being a teacher, a football coach, a technical writer, and so on. But then, in medical school I discovered new, strange, vivid, sometimes frightening, sometimes hilarious flavor of dream.

This first one’s funny but requires a bit of an intro. It belongs to a exhausted Neurology fellow who was on call in the Emergency Department, henceforth the ED (no one says ER unless you’re referring to the TV show). A Neuro doc on ED call lives in dread of being paged for non-neurological maters, usually relating to Things That Are Not Seizures. For example, as I understand it, there is a particular pain peculiar to neurologists who are woken at 3AM to see a seizing (having a seizure) patent who turns out only to be very cold and hence is shivering. The neurologist then puts another blanket on the patient (or more likely tells a nurse to do it) and then will lose an hour of sleep or so to paperwork documenting that this was one of the Things That Are Not Seizures.

So, our sleep-deprived hero fell asleep in the On Call room and then had a dream that she’d was awoken by an urgent page that a patient was in status epilepticus (an unending and dangerous seizure). Our dreamer rushed to the ED, into the patient bay, and discovered the nurses and med students frantically working over a gurney…that held…a fish…that was flopping around on the vinyl cushions.

The medical student tried to “present the patient” (describe what was happening in doctor speak) but was too frightened to make sense. Our dreamer explained, in a calm voice, that it was quite normal for a fish out of water to seem as if it were seizing. But the nurses and physicians kept freaking out. One went to page the dreamer’s attending (i.e. the physician above her on the totem pole). She tried but couldn’t stop them and became terribly embarrassed when her attending showed up and with a frown looked at the flopping fish. He calmly explained that the fish was not having a seizure, that the fish was only out of water, and this was a natural reaction for fish in such situations. This time the nurses and med students listened. With a disapproving tone, the attending told our dreamer that she only needed to put the fish back into water and she should not have wasted his time by paging him. So, shamefaced, she carried the struggling fish to the fountain outside the Stanford hospital and let to go swimming away.

She woke up at 6AM relieved that it had only been a dream.

The next set of dreams are not so funny. If you’re squeamish skip this paragraph: these are the dreams I collected during gross anatomy class, that is to say the dreams I or my friends dreamt when we were spending several hours each day with embalmed corpses. During dissection of the head, a friend admitted to me she had a nightmare about plants growing out of her estuation tubes. After discovering my cadaver’s massive uterine cancer, I had a dream that large glands were growing out of the epicanthal folds of my eyes and sending shocks of pain into the back of my head. The symbolism of both dreams is quite apparent: sights and sounds invading the eyes and ears and causing horror. Another friend dreamt he woke up in his bed to discover it was a giant, unnamed organ and his sheets, which were holding him tight, were actually the organ’s adventia. Finally, when dissecting the penis a friend claimed he felt no revulsion or disquiet, but that night dreamt he reached into his coat pocket, withdrew his own dissected penis, and woke up with tears in his eyes. As upsetting as these dreams were, there was something equally upsetting about their eventual disappearance. The part of us that had sensed the horror of death and disease was sensitive no longer.

So let’s finish with something lighthearted. I dreamt this one last night. Likely it was informed by the neurology fellow’s dream.

I had finished up the Spellwright Trilogy and begun my clinical year. As a third year clerk on an Internal Medicine service, I was desperate to win the approval of my attending, who just so happened to be my current MD/novelist mentor: Abraham Verghese (who’s now on paperback tour for his amazing novel Cutting for Stone).

Day one on service, early AM rounds, Dr. Verghese asks me to go to room B12A and take a full history and physical on a newly admitted patient.

In my dress clogs and with a tie tight around my neck, I clomp in to B12A and discover, lying in bed, an ice-cream sandwich. I’m a little freaked out, but I carefully examine the sandwich and discover it is melting. I’m very worried, by the time I present this patient to Dr. Verghese, the patient will be soft and gooey. I try to write up an order for the patient to be put in the refrigerator in the nurse’s station. However, I’ve been out of the med school writing novels for so long that I’m too slow with the order. In that horribly just-not-fast-enough-motions of nightmares, I fumble with the order until at last the patient is little more than two soggy chocolate wafers sitting in a vanilla puddle. Fortunately, I wake up before I have to tell Dr. Verghese.

No analysis necessary: I’m worried about losing my medical knowledge as I hammer away at these novels. But now that I’ve told you about it, I’m feeling much better. For those of you in medicine, I hope this proves that, yes, there is someone else out there in our strange world who’s as weird or weirder than you. For those of you not in medicine, apologies about disillusioning you about the medical life, reality, and Gray’s Anatomy (though, likely you already figured that one out on your own). And to anyone so moved, I’d love to read in the comments about your weird dreams. Partly because I’m interested, partly because it would provide fodder for my thesis: Most dreams, like most stories, don’t require analysis; they require retelling.

Hotel Bar

You are standing in the primordial soup of the World Fantasy Convention 2009 bar. Exits are north and west. The bar is dimly lit. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

There are fantasy authors here.

>Look at primordial soup.

It is strongly alcoholic.

>Look at fantasy authors.

They are strongly alcoholic.

>Which fantasy authors are there?

I don’t understand that.

>Talk to fantasy authors.

They’re talking to each other.

>Join fantasy authors.

I don’t understand that.

>Introduce self to fantasy authors.

I don’t understand that.

>Dance like a drunken gorilla.

The fantasy authors throw peanuts at you.

>Wait…how did you know ‘dance like a gorilla’ but not ‘Join fantasy authors?’

I don’t understand that.

>Fuck!

Such language in a high-class establishment like this!

>God, I forgot how annoying infocom games are about obscenities.

I don’t understand that.

>Listen to Fantasy Authors.

They are complaining about continuity errors, late royalty checks, and Margaret Atwood.

>HAHAHA! Give them a high five!

You’re standing there with your hand up. They’re looking at you.

>Put hand down.

Smart move.

>Befriend fantasy authors.

After the high five incident?

>Network with fantasy authors.

You’d like that, wouldn’t you?

>Charm fantasy authors.

You don’t have the necessary CHA.

>Bitch, please. This isn’t Dungeons and Dragons.

Just…deal with it.

>How do I get fantasy authors to accept me?

I don’t understand that.

>Buy fantasy authors drinks.

You are sitting at a table with BRENT WEEKS, PETER V. BRETT, and THE LOVELY AND PATIENT MRS. WEEKS.

PETER V. BRETT has a video camera and is looking to start trouble.

>Wait, Brent Weeks?

Yes, the New York Times Best-seller of the Night Angel Trilogy.

>Is Brent Weeks wearing a robe with a hood?

Not at World Fantasy Convention. That’s a different Con, man.

>Is Brent Weeks the reason why everyone pokes fun at my UK cover?

Yep.

>Be dramatic.

YOU’RE THE FRACKEN REASON THERE’S A HOODED GUY ON MY UK COVER!!!

BRENT WEEKS points and laughs nefariously. THE LOVELY AND PATIENT MRS. WEEKS pats him on the arm and reminds him to be less nefarious.

>Give Brent Weeks Advance Reading Copy of Spellwright.

He takes it.

>Wait 5 months.

BRENT WEEKS has enjoyed your book. He gives you a quote.

>Read quote.

“Read Spellwright for its words, magic, word-magic, and wordplay. Inventive, but in a traditional vein: good vs evil, deathmatch.”

>Promote Brent Weeks quote on internets.

**RECURSION ERROR**

You have been eaten by a grue.

**GAME OVER**

ANCILLARIA

As is likely obvious from the above post, New York Times Bestseller, Brent Weeks has given Spellwright a quote. There has been much rejoicing.

I some how snuck my snark onto The Big Idea feature on Demigod of the Internet John Scalzi’s uber-popular blog Whatever.

The book tour is gathering steam. Would love to see you at any of the events.

The book launched in the US last Tuesday. Shawn Speakman at Suduvu.com did a fun, quick launch day interview. Thereafter, I dropped by a few bookstores to see the hardback in the wild. Very exciting.

Dyslexic Advantage featured me in a recent post, which is wonderfully flattering.

Harry Markov at Temple Library Reviews took the time to interview me (during which I spilled the first beans about Spellbound). And then reviewed the book and found Spellwright to be “February’s top read and in my list of all-time favorites.”

Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban over at MyShelf.com reviewed the book: “Spellwright puts a new spin in the epic battle of good versus evil by creating a unique system of magic that works from languages. The worlds, past and present, that Blake Charlton describes are richly imagined, and the complex plot advances at breakneck speed without leaving the reader behind…[H]ighly recommended for all fantasy lovers.”

SFRevu.com examined Spellwright and noted that the book “develops a magic system sure to surprise and delight readers.”

The inspiration for this post came to me when convincing an actor friend to record an excerpt of my novel Spellwright. We did everything we could to make sure the result was lovingly, if not professionally, produced. It might not win any awards, but it’s still free and (hopefully) fun. If curious, have at the embedded vid below.

I relish nothing so much as listening to a good book. So when working on this sample, I got to thinking about the unsung history and importance of spoken stories.

The first stories were told and heard, not written and read. All that stuff with letters, punctuation, and (finally) spaces between the words? New fangled gizmos compared to the ancient technology of the story–which was invented God knows when, by God know whom, but probably beginning with well-fanged megafauna, frantic running, passionate screaming, and ending with an excited Homo sapiens retelling the now lost tale, “Hunting Saber-toothed tigers with unsharpened sticks and why we are TOTALLY FRACKEN DONE WITH THAT SHIT!”

One would think that, given this esteemed origin, the spoken story would hold a venerated position in humanity’s hearts and minds. At least in my modern American world, it is shockingly not so. Around here, human hearts and minds (and possibly other major organs) venerate the written story above the spoken.

Oh, hey, now that I’ve served you a steaming (crack)pot full of theory, would you like a side order of fanciful anecdotal evidence? Thought so. Here goes:

Yesterday I was walking in a lush, green North California field and I came across this scarecrow. We struck up a conversation. Really. No drugs or anything. Like, for serious.

SCARECROW: (scratching chin) Hey, Blake, how many books did you read last year?

BLAKE: Like maybe, twenty.

SCARECROW: Holy more books than I read last year, Batman! When do you find the time?

BLAKE: I listen to audiobooks while jogging or folding laundry or lying in green fields and wondering why this time of year all the clouds take the shapes of uncompleted tax forms.

SCARECROW: (nodding) Ooooooh, I see. You didn’t read any of them; you listened to them.

BLAKE: Yeah, great stuff out there nowadays. Actors, directors, and producers all specializing in audiobooks. Styles developing.  Affordable to download.  It’s a golden age.

SCARECROW: But I didn’t ask you how many books you listened to last year. No one asks how many books you’ve listened to. Everyone asks you how many books you’ve read.

BLAKE: That’s only because audiobooks used to be prohibitively expensive and clunky in cassette tapes. Society just needs time to catch on that excellent audio content–books, short stories, podcasts–has never been so widely available and portable as it is now.

SCARECROW: But authors don’t write novels with the intention to be heard, they write them to be read.

BLAKE: You met any authors that don’t ‘intend’ for their novels to do so well that they become audiobooks?

SCARECROW: Low blow, man. Low blow. You know I’m stuck on this post; I can’t meet anybody.

BLAKE: The authors I know are thrilled when their work is performed. I’d be thrilled if Spellwright were performed. It’s a different world out there, new technology and new content, ipods, brilliant podcasts, it’s—

SCARECROW: Don’t get me started about technology. That crap is ruining literature. The igeneration doesn’t have time to take fiction seriously. Everyone’s on the go and doesn’t care enough to stop and read. So they listen while commuting or doing chores. Modern technology is destroying the literate public.

BLAKE: But…like…homie, the written word is also a technology, made up a long time ago to record the best stories, refine them, and disseminate them. Until around AD 1000 all reading was done aloud because the technology of adding spaces between words hadn’t been invented.

SCARECROW: You should say something like “technique,” rather than technology becau–

BLAKE: With spaces between words, we could read silently. That meant that stories were even more accessible.  You could read whatever you want without everyone around you going apeshit because you do the female characters in falsetto.

SCARECROW: Man, I hate that. Or when women go all groaning-baritone to do men. Give me a break, sister!

BLAKE: Thing of the past, homestraw. Narrators are subtle these days. And consider that when the codex replaced the scroll, it made stories even more portable and reproducible. And then there was the printing press and paper and paperbacks and on and on. Technology has always made stories more portable, more accessible. Don’t you see? The written word and the spoken word are not competitors; they’re allies. Written stories and spoken stories are different but equally valid. Portable audio technology isn’t undoing prophecy; it’s like completing it, man.

SCARECROW: WTF, I have a North Californian Fantasy author talking in metaphors. If you’re wearing Birkenstocks, I’m fracken out of here.

BLAKE: Hey, how’s that post feel?

SCARECROW: Oh, you’re so damn cute with your witty reply.

BLAKE: You might even call it my “witty repost.”

SCARECROW: After you discovered puns, how often did your mother try to drown you?

BLAKE: There was just that one incident on the Golden Gate, but it turns out harbor seals are very friendly creatures. Anyway, back to the point: Admit it, man, fiction is all about story, character, and language: you’ve got all of those in audio performance. Shakespeare wrote for the stage more than the page.

SCARECROW: It’s funny…as you say that, I have this sense of my hitherto unconscious prejudice against audio fiction: as a wee scarecrow people read to me; now I read to myself.  Venerating spoken stories wouldn’t allow an unconscious part of me to feel superior to children and those people not privileged enough to learn to read.

BLAKE: Huh, because I’ve always suspected that some people who look down on audio fiction harbor those same unconscious prejudices.

SCARECROW: Yeah, and when I say that, the post in my back kinda itches. I’m…like…very aware of the post all of a sudden. And…and…I feel compelled to point out that big shot professors of literature venerate written rather than spoken literature. I must quote Yale professor and Minor Deity of Academia, Harold Bloom: “Deep reading really demands the inner ear as well as the outer ear. You need the whole cognitive process, that part of you which is open to wisdom. You need the text in front of you.”

BLAKE: Who says Harold Bloom doesn’t suck at listening? It sounds astonishingly pretentious to assume that his brain is wired the same as everyone else’s.

SCARECROW: (feels face with hands, bits of straw fall out) As you say these things…it’s strange… I’m becoming more and more aware of this post in my back. And yet…it’s odd, I start to wonder who I am. Because…I feel as if I must keep making these arguments about the superiority of written stories which you then knock flat.

BLAKE: Well, your stance really isn’t that tenable. I mean, Neil Gaiman agrees with me.

SCARECROW: Fuck! I oppose the powers that Gaiman?

BLAKE: Yeah, he did a NPR piece about audiobooks. Used that same Harold Bloom quotation, in fact. So did Steven King in an Entertainment Weekly article about the spoken word.

SCARECROW: (looks at hands) Wait…wait…that gives me an idea…maybe I do know who I am.

BLAKE: You do? Oh, hey look, I have to go. There’s this…thing.

SCARECROW: And you’re a novelist.

BLAKE: Well, I will be on Tuesday. Spellwright’s pub date, and all that.

SCARECROW: But you don’t have an audiobook?

BLAKE: Well, no. And it’s odd you should ask, because just last week I coordinated with my old high school best friend who’s now a professional stage actor, and we produced an amateur but still really enjoyable first hour of my novel that I’ve published on my own blog in today’s post.

SCARECROW: Post?

BLAKE: Well…yeah, but it’s a different kinda post…I mean like…homonyms, man.

SCARECROW: But I’m on this post spouting off arguments you can easily take apart, and I’m a bloody scarecrow! (Shakes hand at BLAKE and bits of straw fall out.)

BLAKE: Umm….yeah…

SCARECROW: I’m your fucking straw man post!

BLAKE: Well… you’re just saying that’s just you posturing–

SCARECROW: DON’T YOU EVEN TRY TO FINISH THAT PUN ON POST-URE!

BLAKE: Sorry.

SCARECROW: Like hell you are. God, I’m so pathetic.  Literally, all I do in this written post is pose lame straw man arguments so that you can knock them down while I’m stuck on a wooden post. I don’t know what’s worse, your shoddy rhetoric or your STUPID BLOODY PUNS.

BLAKE: I think the phrase ‘double entendre’ does a better–

SCARECROW: Bitch, please. Like French is going to save you. I got an entendre for your meta fiction right here.  If you add one more meta element to this post, I’m going to explode.

BLAKE: You know, that’s interesting because the French word “entendre” used to mean ‘to understand,’ but in modern French it means ‘to hear.’ It’s like there’s a historical conflation of meaning and hearing that supports the idea that listening–

SCARECROW: (explodes)

(Long pause. Wind blows. A rabbit hops by. Birds tweet.)

BLAKE: (looks up at the sky) You know that one looks just like a the 1040ez form I should be filling out now.

So there you have it: untrue, anecdotal, unsubstantiated proof of the veneration of written stories over spoken stories. If you’d like to make your inner weirdness more egalitarian, consider venerating both about the same. You might even celebrate the present Golden Age of Audio Content, vibrant with audiobooks and podcasts.

At this part of the program, in addition to admitting to using straw man rhetoric, I should disclose that as a dyslexic person I have a special attachment to audio content. Like many people with learning disabilities or visual impairment, recorded books played a vital role in my education. Perhaps this prejudiced my opinion of spoken stories. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. Unclear. Regardless, I owe a debt of gratitude to the non-profit Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic. If you’d like to make a difference in the life someone facing a difficult educational situation, consider getting involved. You can learn more at rfbd.org.

Also, feel free to read this post again, out loud.

In any case, Mark is brilliant. He’s performed in the nation’s premiere Shakespeare festivals and theaters. He was also gullible enough to be talked into kind enough to record a performance of Spellwright’s prologue and first four chapters (a whole hour of content!). I’ve just listened to the completed file and am thrilled. Many audiobooks use a flatter narrator, often with good reason; however, Mark’s Shakespearean training has brought a vivacity to the performance that is reminiscent to the radio plays of yesterday. This is a first time for everyone (him, me, and the producer), so don’t get your hopes up for professional quality file. However, it’s still going to be a lot of fun…and free! If you’re curious, look for it next Monday…the day before publication!

NEWS & ANCILLARIA

Fitting for today’s theme of audio content, I made me podcast debut over at the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (hosted by SFF guru’s David Barr Kirtley & John Joseph Adams). I had a blast with the interview and folks seem to have liked it. After the interview David and JJ have a wonderful discussion about the use of “rules in magic.” Very much worth a listen!

Two wonderful Spellwright reviews came out today. Both entertaining and thoughtful. Actually, as I ponder how to make Spellbound a better book than its prequel, I found both reviews highly constructive. Both review sites are excellent and a great way to find new reads.

Bona Fide or at Only the Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy:

“If you want to read one of the promising 2010 debut novels which is exceedingly charming, offers passion, breathes magic with every syllable and twist you around the little finger within minutes then there is no way out to read Spellwright.”

Mad over at The Mad Hatter’s Bookshelf & Review:

Blake Charlton has done the extraordinary with Spellwright. He has managed to use all the tired tropes of classic Epic Fantasy (magical books, dragons, a school for wizards, and a boy who didn’t fulfill his destiny) and make them all feel fresh and engaging…If you’re a fan of classic style Epic Fantasy this will be a must for you. I give Spellwright 8 out of 10 Hats.”

In other news, Shellie over at Layer’s of Thought has previewed Spellwright and prepares for a reading and review. In addition to having the most interesting banner graphic I’ve ever seen in a book review site, Shellie’s review site is indeed thoughtful and examines books from many different backgrounds.

Also, Wednesday’s post “Write about What You Fear” has sparked a lively (and one time blush-inducing) comment exchange over at Magical Words, which is a wonderful resource for writers of all stripes.

Imagine that someone asks you to have a long, serious discussion about writing. Imagine you care about this person. Imagine you are not feeling snide. Imagine you are not (very) drunk.

When you respond, you will invariably say “Show, don’t tell,” and “Write about what you know.” Depending on how Romantic (capital R) you’re feeling or how romantic (sans capital R) the other person is making you feel, you might add “Write about what you love.” Solid. You had to say those things. If you didn’t, clowns would eat you in your sleep. For serious. There’s a reason why, when approached by clowns, toddlers go apeshit. They know.

So, you’ve now avoided death by Steven King and given your friend the fundamental pearls of writing wisdom.  Strong work. Though I’m scratching my itch-to-be-flip as I write this, I don’t want to dismiss these statements. Showing is more powerful than telling; clear prose results of clear, informed thinking. Of course, these imperatives are not universally true. Some story elements must be ‘told’ for the sake of brevity, plot, characteristic opacity, etc. Likewise, if a story requires the author to write outside of expertise, the story must be humored. Research and consultation can revise such ventures after they’re written. If curious, you can find essays about the shortcomings of canonical writerly wisdom scattered across the internets. So let’s just stop at saying they’re useful up to a point.

The groin of conventional wisdom I’m trying to kick here (and hope you too will kick in the comments) is not that the conventional wisdom is too limited, but that it is incomplete. “Show, don’t tell,” and “Write about what you know and love.” That sounds really pleasant, but screw it. You’re in danger of producing familiar, beloved, saccharine mush.  I say we make a third ingredient mandatory: “Write about what you fear.”

No, man, not the clowns. That was only like…metaphorical.

Write about what you fear. Find within your setting, plot, and characters those things which make you squirm. There’s an inherent power to these things. As you explore them, you’ll be forced to explore your discomfort. At first, you’ll write to describe violence or injustice or mortality or whatever. But over time, your writing will discover the nature and cause of your discomfort and provide the thrust of your story.

Oh look! We’ve come to the part of this idea-tour where I feed my crackpot theory an example-book-I’m-sure-you’ve-all-read-and-admired. Keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times. And please don’t pet the crackpot theories; they bite.

Consider The Great Gatsby: Fitzgerald’s admiration and knowledge of contemporary aristocracy and American ambitions are manifest. Show, don’t tell, what you know and love. But what keeps the story from reading like an anachronistic episode of The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous is Fitzgerald’s fear of the materialism and the meaninglessness that surround a lifetime pursuit of material wealth and social status. Our narrator rather cryptically alludes to this fact when he sets up the plot:

Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

Then we get the compelling story of Nick, Gatsby, and Daisy. Romance and intrigue and materialism are wonderfully conflated: “Her voice is full of money” and all that. Finally, Fitzgerald’s love for and fear of the materialistic American Dream (capital D) is heartbreakingly culminated with the final paragraphs:

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further… And one fine morning -

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

“Oh my God, Charlton,” you say. “You’re a fantasist who writes about wizards and dragons and you didn’t use an example from Science Fiction or Fantasy? I hate you so much right now that if hate were people speaking languages of the Indo-European or Dravidian phyla, I’d be the Indian subcontinent.”

To which I would say the word “please” so it has two syllables and argue that drawing a bright line between genres is artificial and snobby.

“I still hate you for serious, Charlton,” you reply. “You’ve demeaned SFF. If hate could be a surface with only one side and only one boundary component, I wouldn’t just be a Möbius strip, I’d be a Möbius strip on fire and tattooed on to the heart of a ninja who’s about to assassinate you while he’s on fire.”

Fine! Consider Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea books and their lovingly created magic-system that gives magic-users the ability disrupt the natural balance and satisfy their desire for immortality, a desire she clearly finds disturbing  if not outright frightening. Consider Robert Jordan’s magic-system that both celebrates the war-of-the-sexes and fears it (practitioners of the male magic go violently doolally). Consider any fracken thing Philip K. Dick wrote. ever.

Hopefully this is enough to halt your tirade. It might not be. It’s all very unclear. However, now that your grandiloquent rage has perhaps abated, I’m going to write the obligatory description of how my new (and highly purchasable!) novel obeys my own imperatives. Being severely dyslexic, I fear nothing so much as disability. Being a pedant, I love nothing so much as language. Spellwright is an epic fantasy that takes place in a world in which the written word can be peeled off of the page and made physically real. Such magical texts, if written correctly, are called spells. Our protag, Nicodemus Weal, is a young wizard who’s especially good at producing magical language but has a severe disability that causes any magical text he touches to misspell with dangerous results. Everything sucks in a bearable way for Nico until a powerful wizard is murdered by a misspell and suspicion falls on him. Pursued by investigators and a hidden killer, Nico has to race to discover the truth about the nature of magic, the murderer, and himself…while giving his author the chance to write about what he most fears.

Funny how that last bit just hopped right in there, huh?

Anyway, now that I’m done with the shameless self-promo, let’s take a last look at my crackpot theory for the big finish. So, if you write about what you fear, you must put yourself in danger. Your prose is going to cut close to a nerve, maybe through it. Prejudice, betrayal, injustice, whatever, it’s personal now. For that reason, pains must be taken to ensure that the protag isn’t a carbon copy of you. But do that and you’re playing with literary fire. Readers have a fine sense of when authors put something of themselves at stake. If an author doesn’t, the work comes off dry. Critics often fuss about being “unique.” And, that’s a wonderful thing to be.  Very intellectually pleasing. But any day of the week, I’ll rather read an author whose prose and characters are heartfelt. And, of course, I believe the best way to be heartfelt is to tell the story at the intersection of what you know, what you love, and what you fear.

March 14th, 2:00pm: Mysterious Galaxy, San Diego, CA (event page)

• A wonderful wonderful indie book store. If you’re anywhere near SD, you have to stop by and meet the ppl who work there.
  • N.B. Daylight Savings Time begins on that day, be sure to adjust your clocks!
• So far, this is the only event planed in SoCal. I’ll be LA for a few days before hand. Should you happen to be a bookseller, reading club, person who sometimes wonders what it would be like to play D&D with Bill Shakespeare and Chris Marlowe (answer: gratuitously awesome!) drop me a comment here and we’ll hang out.

March 19th, 7:30pm: Kepler’s Books, Menlo Park, CA (event page)

• This’ll be the big hometown event. Introduction by my mentor, the wonderful Dr. Abraham Verghese. Come meet Stanford Medicine folks, my high school Latin teacher, &c, &c.

March 27th, 3:00pm: Borderlands Books, San Francisco, CA

April 7th, 7:30pm: Books Inc., Mountain View, CA

April 8th, 5:00pm: Medicine & the Muse, Stanford, CA

• Come see other local talent and me headline for keynote speaker Malcolm Gladwell!

April 17th, 7:00pm: SF in SF, San Francisco, CA

• I’m honored to read with the charming, witty, best-selling Steampunk Princess Gail Carriger. The two of us are old writing friends and scheming for a ridiculous and hilarious performance. SF in SF might never recover!

April 21st, 7:30pm: Clayton Books, CA

Anyway, for the questioning parents, I trot out some advice about bringing science and social awareness into conversations at home, praising the child for being hardworking as much or more than for being intelligent, encouraging reading for fun, and all that good stuff I picked up back when I was a teacher. But really, in my heart of hearts, I want to tell the parents to get their kids to play D&D.

“But, Blake,” You might say, as you have been saying in so many of my posts lately, “that’s an awfully geeky game that—if I’m going to be honest with you, Blake—kinda dates you. Most fantasy games are now computer based.”

You’d be correct, though D&D is experiencing a renaissance. And there are few good connections between computer RPGs and medicine. For instance, managing your half-elf sorcerer’s inventory lists, stats, and skills-tree really isn’t too different from managing a patient’s “Electronic Medical Records.” Just exchange a few phrases like “hit points” for “vital signs,” “skills-tree” for “past medical history,” and “magic spells” for “current medications.”

But don’t even get me started on the EMR; that post…not so funny.

Anyway, a good old fashioned, sit-around-a-table-tossing-dice D&D game is the best possible training your child can have for medical school. Why? Because both environments might be weird, but they’re weird in similar ways. Here’s a brief list of the medical skills D&D will impart to you:

1) Learn to Oppose the Forces of Evil

Imagine a once-mighty realm that has become corrupted by mysterious, faceless, inhuman entities that—with callous disregard for human dignity and social justice—are bleeding the livelihood out of the commonfolk and causing them undue suffering and death. Once you’ve done that, you’d be imagining either the kingdom setting of your D&D campaign or the FUCKING AMERICAN HEALTHCARE SYSTEM. *cough* Sorry. I’ll calm down. *cough* It’s just that whatever your alignment (lawful liberal, chaotic conservative), you know that something in this kingdom needs saving by a party (hopefully an army) of heroes. Time to strap on a chainmail or white coat, depending on your plane of existence.

2) Learn to Respect Painful & Arcane Initiation Rituals

It’ll probably be a good thing if you get excited by the years of solitary temple dwelling, arcane language learning, and semi-humiliating rituals your monk character had to endure to gain the ‘arrow-catch’ skill. Think being woken at dawn every morning by screaming sword-wielding devotees sounds stressful? *pffft* Wait until you take the MCAT or (God help you) the USMLE Step 1.

3) Learn What Dice to Roll

Gonna hold off on that skin-to-stone attack on that half-orc ranger? Yeah you are because you’re sizing up what you might roll and how likely it is he’s gonna make his fortitude saving throw. Strong work, wizard. Now you’re all set to start pushing ampicillin on that healthy twenty five year old male with strep-positive pharyngitis because you know the number needed to treat is high. Welcome to evidence based medicine, my friend, there are no actual dice here, and (most of the time) you don’t bump into too many gnomes, but otherwise same shtick, new suit.

4) Practice Creating Origin Myths

Every physician has some weird story that justifies their choice to become a cardiologist or surgeon or dermatologist or whatever. An ophthalmologist once told me he went into optho because he always got excited when he saw an eyeball opened and was thrilled to learn that he’d be really well paid to do so. Hey, man, makes as much sense as Thorg the Barbarian descending upon the lowlands to poke eyes out of the horselords and steal their gold. And…probably…being an ophthalmologist would gain you more gold. Just check the “pay me in doubloons” on the insurance forms.

5) Gain Familiarity with Professionally Important Characters

This is a big one, and I could go on and on for days about this. But, to let me get back to work on SPELLBOUND, I’ll just list a few D&D characters you’ll become familiar with and the analogous characters you’ll be working with in the hospital.

D&D Character: Master swordswomen who is forced to suffer the company of male colleges who don’t realize she’s better with a blade until it’s too. damn. late.

Analogous Hospital Character: The Badass Female Surgeon.

D&D Character: Telepath who peers disturbingly deeply into your eyes and nods as if hearing the Wisdom of the Ancients even when you’re only complaining that your jaw sometimes makes that funny popping sound when you chew.

Analogous Hospital Character: The Very Quiet Psychiatrist.

D&D Character: Ethereal humanoid who cannot stand the daylight and posses huge eyes that can see right through you.

Analogous Hospital Character: The Pale Radiologist.

D&D Character: The noble but unsung town hero who saves the day.

Analogous Hospital Character: The General Internist / Pediatrician / Geriatrician. For serious! Look it up.

What little modesty medical school has left me prevents me from publishing (but not snickering at) the analogous D&D Characters for Urologists, Proctologists, & OB-Gyns. Have fun coming up with them on your own.

Suggestions for further characters welcome in the comments, but please don’t get…too graphic

PS photoshop a reflex hammer in for that guy’s broadsword and I’ll love you forever.

Love this community! I can’t tell you how happy these make me. Props to Seth for the first and David C for the second!

More than anyone, Mom and Dad deserve the credit for any success I’ve had overcoming my disability. Their devotion, kindness, and patience were truly amazing. I am keenly aware of how privileged I was to be born to parents with the both the desire and financial means to help me overcome dyslexia. The awareness of how much has been given to me  inspired me to go to medical school and to write fiction that might, in some small way, give back to the world that has given me so much.

That said, Mom and Dad are way-out-there strange. For serious. She’s a Freudian; he a Jungian. If you know what that means, you’re laughing your head off right now. Add these two wonderful but really fucking weird flavors to a childhood already peppered by disability, special ed, and countless reruns of The Princess Bride and you have the primordial stew of a budding med student / fantasy author.

Obviously. How could you have anything else?

So then, let’s take a quick stroll through the labyrinthine neighborhood of my memory I call  “Puberty.”

MOM: So, FIRST GIRL BLAKE EVER BROUGHT HOME TO DINNER, tell us about your relationship with your mother.

FIRST GIRL BLAKE EVER BROUGHT HOME TO DINNER: Umm…well…it’s good I suppose. She’s a lawyer.

DAD: A lawyer?

FIRST GIRL BLAKE EVER BROUGHT HOME TO DINNER: Yeah, she has to work really hard up in the city a lot. Which is too bad because I don’t get to see her enough.

DAD: So, your disappointed that your mother works so hard up in the city?

BLAKE: Guys, no Rogerian therapy at the dinner table.

FIRST GIRL BLAKE EVER BROUGHT HOME TO DINNER: What’s Rogerian therapy?

BLAKE: It’s more or less when they repeat everything you say in open question format so you’ll eventually reveal all major emotional processes going on in your head.

DAD: So you’re upset that I want to discover all the major emotional processes going on in your head?

BLAKE: DaaaaAAaaad! You’re doing it again. Oh, FIRST GIRL BLAKE EVER BROUGHT HOME TO DINNER, I’m so sorry about this.

FIRST GIRL BLAKE EVER BROUGHT HOME TO DINNER: Oh, no! I used to worry that my family was the strangest one ever. But…(looks around)…I’m feeling much better about them now.

So, I hope that gives you a flavor of how odd yet sometimes strangely wonderful it was to growing up with two headshrinkers for parents. “But, Blake,” you say, “I don’t think I understand it to the full experience yet. It might sound strange, but I’m craving the sum total experience of being raised by two psychiatrists represented in…say…oh…I don’t know…a brief, surrealist cartoon featuring a Victorian Englishmen and a Toucan.”

Well…funny you should ask…because I just happen to have found exactly that:

NEWS & ANCILLARIA

The manuscript for Spellbound is currently at 72,000 words. I’m feeling optimistic about it just now, but the characters are cooperating. As me again in a week.

Here in North America,

• you can hop over to Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist to win a copy of Spellwright.
• Stomping on Yeti puts the EYE on 25 authors to watch in 2010. I’m flattered to be among such amazing company. A more in depth look at my authorial kick off along with those of several others can be found here.
• Ellen Scordato of the Barnes & Noble bookclub Unabashedly Bookish is inspired by this website to write about Commas & Cannibalism!
• Sean Melican of BookPage puts Spellwright at the top of their Sense of Wonder feature.

Across the Pacific, Australians & New Zealanders still can enter a contest to win a  copy of Spellwright from Voyager AUS!

Across the Atlantic, Temple Library Reviews reacts to the first 100 pages of Spellwright: “Spellwright’ exceeded whatever expectations I had about it. The writing is a balanced blend between scholarly and lyrical, which is all the while enthralling and kept me scrolling pages on the screen.”

Today, Gentle Reader, I am pleased to present a not-so-normal interview with my regular writing-buddy, Mr. Blake Charlton. Someday I will tell you all the story of how we met, what a lost and pathetic big-eyed innocent he was when Phran and I rescued him from the yearning maw of his first science fiction convention. Little did I know then what an infuriating (yet sometimes endearing) little piss-ant he would turn out to be. Here’s a bit of advice: never feed stray fantasy authors at conventions; they’ll end up sitting across from you at cafes mocking your technological incompetence and cracking bad puns for the rest of your writing life.

Gail Carriger: Right, Mr. Charlton, here we go. Do, please, try to behave.
Blake Charlton: Yes, Ma’am.
GC: You’re a medical student who’s completed his classroom years but not his clinical years. Is your proper title ‘mister’ or ‘doctor?’
BC: Mr.
GC: Except for me. I refer to you as My Personal Physician.
BC: Then I’ll refer to you as my Book 2 Romantic Plot Line Councilor.
GC: You say the sweetest things.

GC: If your brain were a vacation destination what would it look like?
BC: Venice at Carnival: crowded, festive, spiritual in purpose but celebrating creativity and the body, brightly colored, and a little—but in that good way—dirty.
GC: Pedant
BC: Guilty as charged.

GC: Naproxen, ibuprofen, or acetaminophen?
BC: Yes. Especially after a long run. Take with food though to avoid gastritis.

GC: If you were to be magically turned into an animal that had your physical traits and mannerisms, what animal would this be?
BC: A bald eagle.

(Gail suggests this may be more appropriate)

GC: Would you rather make the NY Times best seller list or win a Hugo Award?
BC: I just emailed you a copy of my student debt statement.
GC: Wow, is that your real name?
BC: Sadly, Blake Randolph Charlton it is. Despite being descended from a proud and poor family from the Louisiana bayou, we all have names that sound like aristocratic characters who were cut from an early draft of Pride and Prejudice for overly admiring Ms. Bennet’s crumpet…or something. Anyway, I narrowly avoided being named Randolph Seville Charlton III.
(GC: And here I was thinking it sounded like a porn name.)

GC: Sell your book in three words.
BC: Language comes alive!

GC: How many pairs of shoes do you own and did any of them cost over $200?
BC: Do soccer cleats, cycling shoes, hiking boots, or skis count as shoes? Otherwise, three and no.

GC: If you had to pick one book to read out of in public, not your own, what would you pick?
BC: Unless I’m reading in a bar, a book of poems by John Donne..well…actually now that I think about some of his early stuff…especially if I were in a bar.

GC: Chose your combination (no deviations): Chocolate or vanilla ice cream, on sugar or plain cone?
BC: Chocolate, plain cone.
(Gail’s diagnosis: Accordingly Blake, despite what you may think at the interview’s end, is not actually insane. I have made a study of ice-cream choices, you must be very very careful of those people who choose vanilla on a plain cone.)

GC: If you came to my house, and I offered you a hot beverage, what kind would you opt for, how do you take it, and what would you drink it out of?
BC: I’d ask for a large mug of strong coffee with milk. A recent study presented at American Association for Cancer Research found that men who drank one cup of coffee a day were 60% less likely to develop prostate —
GC: Thank you very much, Mr. Charlton. That will do.
BC: Wait…wait…how did you just interrupt me? This is an emailed interview. Was it because I mentioned prosta —
GC: Mr. Charlton, I will have to ask that you restrict yourself to topics of conversation appropriate to a lady’s delicate sensibilities.
BC: But it’s important men known about cancer risks. Men’s health (not the magazine) is a developing area and has a lot to learn from how advocates of women’s health educated the population about breast —

GC: All right. Moving on. The next question is “Biggest pet peeve?”
BC: …what happens if I write “Email interviewers who interru—

GC: Right then, final question: Who (or what) is your nemesis?
BC: Well, apparently, y—

GC: And, thank you very much for stopping by, Mr. Charlton. We wish you the best of luck with Spellwright and hope —

</gail>
Holy shit!1!~! that worked?

Dood! Basic HTML commands FTW!

Gail? are you gonna stop me?

like, for serious, you’re not going to interrupt me at all?

*ahem*

Prostate Cancer?

Breast Cancer?

dood! i so win!

*clears throat*

Colorectal Carcinoma

*clears throat louder*

Nasolabial Folds

there on the face by the way. the nasiolabial folds are. it’s not like I just wrote something…

nvrmnd.

anyway, yeah, i so won.

and this fits perfectly into the whole “text coming alive” thing for Spellwright! i mean it was such a switcho from what you were doing with the interrupting me.

gail?

you’re not there…like, at all?

hello?

haloooooooooooooooooooooooooooo?

it’s really not that much fun to just turn you totally off.

well, actually, it kinda is…hahahahaha!

…

Gail?

Oooookay

Fine.

<gail>
GG: MR. CHARLTON, I SAY. I mean REALLY! That is NOT ON. In my very own blog, and everything! How could you? You will never EVER do that again or I will personally see to it you never drink another cup of that revolting beverage you call coffee! Why I OUGHT to –
</gail>

well, that didn’t work out so well.

hrmmm…

oh hey, not to be totally random

but i’m going to be totally random.

i was meaning to ask you, is there a wikipedia page about you yet?

hold on, i’ll go check.

well…given that when i enter “Gail Carriger” into wikipedia, it asks me if i mean to enter “mail career” i’m guessing you don’t.

here’s a thought

bc you’re not supposed to create a wikipedia page about yourself and all

but what if I created a wiki page for you, and you created one for me

and then in the wiki page we linked to this interview as evidence of our existence

and in this interview we link to the wiki page

it’ll be like a snake swallowing its own tail

but as…like…a…webpage. okaynvrmndaboutthesnake.

but what do you think?

<gail>
GC: Wouldn’t that be the world snake from Celtic mythology? The ouroboros?

BC: I think you mean Gnostic mythology.
GC: Pedant.
BC: Sorry. I keep doing that.
GC: And you have this thing about not using proper punctuation. Most egregious of you. It’s almost as bad as text speak or shorthand in a blog. Oh wait. BLAKE! ARGH! …
In any case, I like the wiki idea, but isn’t there some kind of authentication process to become a contributor? I don’t think you and I are authentic. Isn’t that something readers should do?
BC: Sure, whatever we made would be deleted, but for a few days it could be quite hilarious. We could write humorous bio’s for each other linking to various absurd things and and and…
GC: Really, I think this would be best left to fans.
BC: Says the author who has fans.
GC: Can’t be helped.
BC: Cute.
GC: In any case, we should be ending this interview sometime soon. You, being such a one for self-referential puns, might be able to wrap up this interview with some kind of play on the Oroboros. “Come see Gail and Blake go head to head, or eat each other’s tails, at SF in SF April 17.
BC: Eat each others tails or tales?
GC: I’m trying to figure out if your being witty or extraordinarily dyslexic.
BC: I strive, when not in the hospital, to always be both.
GC: Well dear, everyone has to have goals in life, I suppose. So shall we go on to make a play on the tale versus tail?
BC: The Taming of the Shrew, act two, scene one, lines 207 to 214.
GC: Wait, which one of us is the shrew? And when I look that up, will I develop the overpowering urge to beat you about the head and face with my designer handbag?
BC: Without a doubt.
GC: Then I’ll put a brick into said handbag.
BC: Oh…um…well thank you so much for having me on your blog for –
GC: Don’t even try to play gracious interviewee ending this interview as though it were all your idea. We’re going to settle this April 17th at SF in SF.
BC: I’ll put the Emergency Department on notice.
GC: Why bother, you’re a doctor, aren’t you?

Blake Charlton’s book, Spellwright, comes out from Tor on March 2, 2010. It’s almost as tongue-in-cheek as he is.

Most fantasy readers know that Tolkien invented his own languages, drawing from his knowledge of Old English, Old Norse, Finnish, and Welsh. Fewer readers realize that he dreamt up his stories of Middle-earth for his languages, not the other way around.

The invention of languages is the foundation. The ‘stories’ were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows. (Letters p.219)

I discovered this fact just when I started writing Spellwright. It made me queasy. I’d found Tolkien’s untranslated passages of Quenya or Sindarin to be beautiful, certainly. They commanded my admiration for their intricacy, beautiful calligraphy, and linguistic viability. But I loved Tolkien’s work, not for his use of invented languages, but for his use of English. It was the characters and stories as told in modern English that touched me. And yet here I had discovered that Tolkien felt that they derived from—and therefore seemingly less important than—his synthesized languages. That’s not to say I thought he disregarded characters or story; clearly he had a masterful control and appreciation of both. But still, that he should exalt synthetic language over character upset me. Tolkien is the Homer of our literary tradition. Would Homer have honored another language above his Greek? The more I thought about this, the more it bothered me.

Before I could finish writing the Spellwright, I needed to reconcile myself to the greatest author in the tradition. I did some research into Tolkien’s relationship to modern English. In the foreword to his excellent analysis, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, Tom Shippey provides an overview of Tolkien’s conception of language before going on to provide hundreds of pages of evidence for this overview:

Tolkien was the holder of several highly personal if not heretical views about language. He thought that people, and perhaps as a result of their confused linguistic history especially English people, could detect historical strata in language without knowing how they did it. … [He also thought] that philology could take you back even beyond the ancient texts it studied. He believed that it was possible sometimes to feel one’s way back from the words as they survived in later periods to concepts which had long since vanished, but which had surely existed, or else the word would not exist…However fanciful Tolkien’s creation of Middle-earth was, he did not think that he was entirely making it up. He was ‘reconstructing’, he was harmonizing contradictions in his sources-texts…he was also reaching back to an imaginative world which he believed had once really existed, at least in the collective imagination.” (Shippey xiv-xv)

When I first read this sentiment, I found it bizarre. But I had grown up nearly a century after and half a world away from Tolkien’s quiet Midlands. I’m a native of a young, Pacific, and cosmopolitan city filled predominately English and Spanish but flavored by Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Samoan, Tongan, and others. In my conception of the world, languages are constantly moving, constantly borrowing from or resisting each other. To me, language is in far too much international flux for anyone to intuitively suss out the historical vicissitudes of one in particular. My world was, and still is, more like medieval Britain when the Old Norse, Old English and various flavors of Celtic were all a tangle, stealing words from each other or resisting the urge to do so.

Though I found Tolkien’s linguistic beliefs strange, understanding them changed the way I saw both Tolkien and fantasy literature. Much in the same way that a hard SF novelist might cleave closely to the principles of physics of computer science to project us into a possible future, Tolkien was using his scholarship to project—not the reader forward in time—but himself backward in time. His characters and story (both of which he believed, in some way, actually existed in his homeland’s collective imagination) could only be reached through linguistic creation. Tolkien, like Homer, wanted to create a story that was ‘original’ in an ancient sense of “coming from the origin;” not in the modern sense of “starting a new origin.”

One of the delights of Tolkien’s work is that seeking to be original in the ancient sense, it became original in the modern sense. The list of epic fantasy authors to follow in our Homer’s footsteps is long, and the vast majority of them created (at least parts of) fictional languages to improve their world building. It must be admitted that many, lacking Tolkien’s expertise, failed at this endeavor. But there are glorious successful examples. Most inspiring to me were Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea books, which created a world in which those who could glean the ‘true name’ of a person, object, or animal could exercise power over it.

In writing Spellwright, one of my primary goals was to create an epic fantasy that added something original, in the modern sense, to the tradition of epic fantasy and language. In attempt to do so I drew upon my personal experiences as a dyslexic and upon my studies of the molecular languages of DNA and proteins, first as an undergraduate then as a medical student. Using those experiences I asked myself, what the world would be like if you could peel written words off the page and make them physically real? Tolkien created Middle-earth for his languages. But could I dream up a world built by—not around—its languages? More importantly, could I intertwine a character’s story into this world? Instantly, my disability provided the answer.

Citations

Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter with the assistance of Christopher Tolkien, London: Geroge Allen & Unwin, 1981; Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, Tom Shippey, 2001; New York, Houghton Mifflin, 2001.