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Darrendrakar Genetics

A fan asked me how Darrendrakar genetics work. Well, it’s more complicated than *I* can understand completely, but let me at least tell you a few things.

If you’ve read my young adult Unexpected Heroes fantasy series, set on the world of Kaiatan, you’ll know that the shapeshifters in the country of Darrendra have one alternate form that is as natural to them as their two-legger form. (You can’t call them human. “Human” is a Terran species, and “humans” can’t change shape, sorry. Darrendrakar do go by “man, woman, or person,” though.)

In book one, Wind of Choice, the shapeshifter we get to know the most is Ludik. His alternate form is a black jaguar. (Trivia: any of the big cats, when black, can be called panthers.) He comes from the kindred (tribe) of cats, called Felid. Furthermore, he comes from the sub-group of “big” cats, which includes lions, tigers, jaguars, leopards, and the makarodonts that include such lovely specimens as sabre-tooth tigers (although the Darrendrakar call them something else).

In Darrendra, any of the big cats are cross-fertile, as is evident from Ludik’s mother being a tiger and his father being a lion. This is different from Terra (our Earth), where you almost never get that sort of thing, except for mules. (But sometimes…  http://ligerworld.com/shasta-the-first-ever-liger-in-America.html ) On the rare occasion you get a cross on Earth, the child is not fertile. In Darrendra, they are. In fact, you can get all sorts of results, depending on what genes run in the family. The Darrendrakar don’t have “mixed” children, like ligers. The genes will fall out on one side or the other, or select from other ancestral genes. Ludik has two brothers that are lions, a brother and sister that are tigers (one orange, one golden), and a sister that is a jaguar (but spotted instead of black).

Oddly, Ludik’s identical-as-two-legger brother is a lion (not a jaguar) when he changes shape. Why they look so similar as people and so different as cats is one of the mysteries of Darrendran biology that I can’t explain. And if you ask a Darrendrakar, he’ll just shrug and ask why not.

What you DON’T get in Darrendra is the big cats crossing with the small cats (not housecats, but cheetahs, mountain lions, ocelots, etc). Well, they could mate, but they either wouldn’t have children (most likely), or their children would be sterile. (Within the small cats, they are cross-fertile between types, just as the big cats are within their own group.)

The same difficulty works across Darrendrakar kindreds. Sure, a Felid and a Canid could marry, but they wouldn’t have children. Add in the typical uneasy peace between kindreds, and an interkindred marriage would be pretty difficult. Even without being “forbidden,” that kind of reality tends to discourage most interkindred romances.

This is also why you hardly ever see marriages between the four different peoples on Kaiatan. The winged Iojif, the shapechanging Darrendrakar, the gilled Nokai, and the solar-powered Iskri almost always marry someone from their own kind. And you never, never see an avian with gills or a solar-powered shapeshifter. The genes do not mix that way.

So, what did I leave out that you want to know? Leave a question in the comments, and I’ll do my best to answer it!

M. C. Lee

© 2018 M. C. Lee LLC. All rights reserved.

Favorite YA Fantasy Books

Here are juvenile and young adult fantasy books that I really like. Some of them are better classified as beast-tales or science fiction, but I’ll leave them here, anyway, since fantasy is also classified as “speculative fiction.”

Some books cross categories.

Fantasy with Princesses, Dragons, or Magic is now moved to its own post

“Historical” Fantasy is now moved to its own post (some have a trace of magic)

“Contemporary” Fantasy is now moved to its own post

“Contemporary” Science Fiction (not all set in current day, but less intense science) and “Heavier” Science Fiction now have their own post

Now that I’ve updated everything, this post is just for redirection. Go ahead and check out the detailed lists, though. 🙂 Enjoy, and feel free to comment if you found something you liked or if you think I’ve misclassified something. 🙂

Happy reading,
M. C. Lee

© 2018 M. C. Lee LLC. All rights reserved.

Writing Process, Book 1 (Part 3)

As I made changes in my book, my critiquers and beta readers started to give better and better reviews. Not perfect, sure, but better. Even the people who started off telling me that I can’t do four POVs (points-of-view) came back at the end and said, “But I loved all your characters so much!”

I was feeling pretty good until people finished the book and complained about the ending being much too slow. At first, I thought it was just an isolated opinion until almost everybody started saying it. (And those that didn’t, also did not say they liked the ending.)

I asked for suggestions for fixing it, based on where they saw the problem. Almost all of them advised chopping off the last three chapters “because the story is obviously over by then (see climax HERE), and your wrap-up is taking too long.”

Well, that was not going to work. Contrary to popular opinion, the “climax” was only the crisis, the real climax wasn’t until the next-to-last chapter, and the story wasn’t over until the last chapter. Obviously, something was indeed wrong, but it wasn’t where the story ended. If I hacked off the last three chapters, the theme would be ruined, the main story question would remain unanswered, and the promise would be unfulfilled. Nope, can’t do that.

Back to story structure research.

Ah, there’s something. Sometimes an ending will fall flat because it hasn’t been supported and set up properly in the middle. Okay, let’s hypothesize that I identified the problem. Time to revise again. (I bet you predicted that.)

So I rewrote half the book in “minor” but very important ways, and tweaked the ending while I was at it. Then I ran it past betas again.  Nope, still broken.

I rewrote it several more times. Still broken.

It’s possible I considered screaming.

Deep breaths…

Around this time, I was going to a writing conference and was notified that there were editorial consulting slots available. That seemed like a great idea, so I signed up. I spent that day of the conference reminding myself to calm down because the consultation was a job interview and *I* was hiring. Talking to an editor shouldn’t be so nerve-racking, but if you ever find yourself in the same position, feeling the same way, remember that you’re not the only one.

I brought a simplified synopsis (minus subplots that didn’t affect the problematic ending) and a writing sample with me, and sat down to talk about my ending. The non-scary editor flipped through my papers and then talked to me. My hopes sank pretty quickly as I discovered that her suggestions were also unworkable. Some of them revealed that she didn’t even understand the story. Okay, yes, I know she hadn’t read the whole thing, but I did give her the synopsis, including a lot of detail on the ending.

She suggested I hire the editing company to actually read the book and make detailed edits. I looked up her prices, and let’s just say, that wasn’t an option. Besides, I wasn’t impressed with her off-the-cuff answers and wasn’t convinced her in-depth answers would be any better. Perhaps that’s unfair, but we all make decisions based on what information we have.

So I went home, torn between screaming and crying. I might have considered giving up, since obviously, I was no good at this writing thing.

And that seems like a nice, dramatic place to stop for now. 😉

Don’t worry; it gets better.
M. C. Lee

© 2018 M. C. Lee LLC. All rights reserved.

Favorite and Least Fav of Writing

I got a question (thanks!) asking about my favorite and disliked parts of writing. That topic is a great idea for an actual post, so here it is.

Let’s start with what I don’t like.

I don’t like outlining. I do it. Sort of. More than I used to. I’m learning! I’ve always outlined, in my own opinion, but my “outlines” don’t look anything like those of actual Plotters. They look more like scribbled notes in a margin, a little bit for each chapter. Or maybe marking the plot beats. Some combination? I was so proud of myself for actually working out a sentence for every chapter when I got to book 3, with beats & POV all worked out beforehand.

I don’t like writer’s block. Who does? It stinks. Enough said!

I don’t like being wrong. Yeah, that exposes a much bigger topic than just writing. It’s also a little misleading. Let me explain. I don’t actually mind being wrong or making mistakes. (Good thing, since I make a LOT of mistakes.) I don’t mind being corrected, either (politely). I just don’t like finding out I’m wrong when I’ve worked really hard on something and think I’ve finally, finally got it right. Then I find out it’s still broken, and that’s sad. 🙁

You might be thinking I don’t like editing, especially after what I just said. You’d mostly be wrong, though. I don’t mind editing my own stuff, as long as I can figure out how to fix things. If I can’t figure out how to fix the problems, well, see my earlier rant. As for editing someone else’s stuff, it depends on how much frustration I have to wade through. If the grammar is so bad I have to struggle through the sentences, then I’ll probably start growling. The occasional typo or misuse, eh, whatever.

Now, what DO I like?

I like dialogue. It’s fun to think of what different people will say in different situations. I’ve been told I’m good at it. It might be, possibly, because I’ve always spent so much time writing conversations in my head. I used to rewrite real conversations, which I choose to think is imaginative rather than crazy. Now I write fictional ones, which is much easier to explain to people.

I like language. I like words in general. I like big words (although I try not to inflict them on people without cause). I like fun words. I like putting words together in interesting, enlightening, surprising, moving, and just plain fun ways. I like finding the right word to say exactly what I want to say. Even better, I like making my words the right ones to hijack your brain and make you think what I want you to think. 😀 Yes, writing is a subtle form of mind-control. Mwahahaha! Don’t worry–I have absolutely no desire to control your mind in real life.

I like finally figuring out how to fix the problems in my writing. The eureka moment for an amazing scene is so very sweet. I don’t even mind if somebody else gives me the bright idea and leaves the dirty work for me to do. When the scene is perfect (or close enough), it’s worth the struggle. (You should remind me of that the next time I complain about something being broken.)

I love my characters. They are just so much FUN. They are so different, but all delightful. Some are serious, some funny. I have easy-going ones and *cough* difficult ones. They play in my head in idle moments, and sometimes when I’m supposed to be paying attention to something else. Bad me. I love thinking up amazing scenes with them. I know what you’re thinking: I’m biased. You might be right. Then again, maybe you aren’t. You could read about my characters and find out. 😉

And after thinking about this for a long time, my very mostest (that should be a word, right?) favorite part of writing is creating something new. New world, new characters, new scenes, new story. And it’s ALL MINE! Mwahahahaha! But I’ll share with you, if you like. 🙂

Now, what are YOUR favorite/not parts of writing or reading?

M. C. Lee

© 2018 M. C. Lee LLC. All rights reserved.

Writing Process, Book 1 (Part 2)

Last time, I described how I started writing my first book, up until the point where I split the chapters for point-of-view (POV) and thought I had fixed that problem.

To make a long story somewhat shorter, it turns out there are at least two more levels of POV to consider. One is consistency. Three years later, I think my revisions might have caught all the times I accidentally slipped POV for a sentence or two. I hope. Sigh. It is harder than you think.

The final(?) level of POV is also called “character voice.” This is what makes it easy for the reader to identify when character A is speaking/thinking instead of character B, even without the author saying so. Of course, the author should still say so, but if one character speaks like a cowboy and thinks like a cowboy and moves like a cowboy, while another character speaks, thinks, and moves like a scientist, the story will be more realistic and authentic as well as easier to read. I’m still working on this level.

Okay, back to the story.

I now had 33 chapters of “POV-corrected” story. I’m ready to go, right? This is about the time that I heard about plot beats and story structure. I thought a story was structured however it was made, wasn’t it? And I had beats. Look, I could prove it.

So I took several different story structuring methods that mostly made sense to my warped brain and smooshed them together into my own little chart. Then I reverse-outlined every chapter of my book and marked every beat. I also marked whose POV was in each chapter.

Yep, that led to a round of revisions, too.

Then I learned about chapter goals for characters (I already knew about chapter goals for authors) and chapter twists/questions/cliffhangers/pageturners (whatever you want to call them). So I added those to my little reverse-outline chart, too.

That was a sad day. That was the point that it became very, very obvious why my story slowed down in the middle. I had four– FOUR!– chapters that had the same– boring!– chapter goal. Oh, sure, there was good stuff in the chapters. There was important stuff. There was funny stuff. There was… too much stuff without enough actually happening. Sadness.

It took me a week or three to go through those four chapters and slice them into little bits. This part stays, and all these parts go, and this part stays… It might have been around here that my “deleted scenes” file became my best friend. I told myself, “It’s okay to cut it because it’s going in the deleted scenes. If I end up needing it back, it’s a simple cut-and-paste.” In the process, the book dropped to thirty chapters.

Then, of course, I had to redo my reverse-outline.

I’d been taking my half-chapters to critique group all this time, and I’d gotten a few beta readers, too, but now seemed like a good time to get some more. So I did, which is a story all by itself, but I’ll spare you.

Early feedback complained about certain chapters having no conflict, no interest. “Boring!” So I took a deep breath and started revising. Again. Some of them ended up with (relatively) minor revisions, some with major facelifts and all-new scenes.

I was reading through a chapter myself and noticed that I actually said, “and over the next week they became friends.” Yes, just like that. Um… their friendship is actually a plot point for a character’s motivation. Did I really just brush over it like that? Face palm. Talk about unbelievable! What kind of author am I, anyway? (Don’t answer that.)

So I gutted the chapter and wrote an all-new middle where they actually had reasons to become friends. Just to make the rewrite more painful, this is a chapter I had ALREADY completely rewritten three times, in three different POVs, trying to get it right.

And on that painful note, I’ll end this segment. See you next time!
M. C. Lee

© 2018 M. C. Lee LLC. All rights reserved.

Language of Flowers

My YA fantasy series has a culture that communicates with their goddess and each other by using flowers and their cultural meanings. I’ve been asked if I invented that idea. Well, the goddess part, yes, but the flower part, no. Here are some articles you can read about the well-established practice of sending messages with flowers, including a list of meanings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_flowers

http://languageofflowers.com/flowermeaning.htm

http://thelanguageofflowers.com/

https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/archives/parsons/publications/flowers/flowers.html

http://www.stranges.com/language-of-flowers/

You might notice a few discrepancies between the websites, or between the sites and my books. In that case, please consider my books to use the Darendrakar version of the flower language, translated to the best of my ability.

Agrimony (go look it up),
M.C. Lee

© 2018 M. C. Lee LLC. All rights reserved.

Writing Process, Book 1 (Part 1)

I’ve been thinking a lot about how my writing process has changed. If I record the development of my writing, maybe it will help someone else the way it helps me to read about other writers. Here we go!

I didn’t grow up convinced I was an author. Sure, I dabbled in stories and poetry, but they were either for school assignments or my own personal pleasure.

Then I had kids. Children change your life in so many ways. My middle child changed my writing life when she found some old paragraphs from a non-existent story and asked for the rest of it. I had to tell her that’s all there was.

That was purely unacceptable, so she quizzed me for at least an hour about my characters, world, and possible plot. When she thought I had enough for a story, she ordered me to write it. I protested I didn’t remember all my answers. She wrote them all down. Nope, no excuses.

So I “plotted” all six chapters of the short story I had in mind, and I started writing. From the beginning. One very slow paragraph at a time, starting in July 2013. Most of the time, I wrote strictly in order, following the simple notes I called a plot. On rare occasions, I’d skip around a bit to avoid difficult parts, then circle back to fill in the blanks.

At this point in my writing life, I had no intention of EVER going professional. In fact, I didn’t even tell my friends I was writing. This story was for my daughter, that’s all. Okay, fine, my husband and other children could read it, too.

As I wrote, I had to keep bumping plot notes from one chapter to the next as the middle of the story expanded. Pretty soon, I had eight chapters, and I wasn’t even finished. Then twelve, fifteen, twenty! It was now March of 2015, and I had myself a complete novel clocking in at 104,000 words.

Somewhere in the middle of 2014, I finally told a few select friends about my book. Then in late 2015, months after I finished, I decided that I ought to join a writer’s group and get some real critique. Just to make the book as good as possible for my daughter, you understand. I still wasn’t going pro.

So I found a group and shared my first half-chapter (word count limits), feeling like I was baring my soul. Sharing a creative baby is scary! It didn’t help that the guy who was critiqued right before me was told to kill his chapter and go back to the drawing board…

I shared anyway, shaking in my chair, and sure, I got LOTS of comments to fix things, but the readers also said they liked the story. I took their suggestions home and revised almost every day until the next meeting. Then I took in the next half-chapter, with similar results.

After several months, I started noticing trends in the comments. One frequent comment was “head-hopping.” It seemed I didn’t really understand point of view (POV). Oh. Okay. Hello, library, let’s do research. (I love the library.)

After a lot of reading and discussing and thinking, I decided I needed to split my chapters and stick firmly to only one POV per chapter, with the POV character named first.

One very long and tiring revision later (read “weeks”), I had thirty-three chapters that I thought were now single-POV. So now the big revision was over, and I could just work on the minor edits. Right?

I bet you experienced writers out there are now shaking your heads…

I’ll stop there and pick up next time.
M. C. Lee

© 2018 M. C. Lee LLC. All rights reserved.

Kinship

I write about different fictional cultures, and I like that. I do use some ideas from real (Terran) life, as well as some ideas that I make up (or don’t realize come from real life). And I do research lots and lots of things. I find it fun, most of the time.

One of my story characters, Nia, comes from a culture with pretty loose family rules and infrequent marriage. She led me down a path of kinship research that was highly entertaining, except when I couldn’t find the right term for a kinship relationship. (After trying several exotic terms, I finally settled on the simpler “near-sibling” and “far-sibling” terms for some of her brothers and sisters.)

If you like dabbling in anthropology, here are some fun kinship articles for you.

An explanation of kinship terminology, and a glimpse at several different systems (how families are set up and who is considered related): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinship_terminology

Kinship terms (what relatives are called) in different languages. Click on each language to explore: http://www.omniglot.com/language/kinship/index.htm

The particular character I was telling you about has a highly complicated family due to her culture, so I had to draw a genogram to keep track of her family. It isn’t a standard genogram, because I didn’t bother with dotted lines, and I had to break some rules in order to get everything down. (If you can do better, let me know how, & I’ll adjust.) It does, however, allow me to know who’s who and how they’re related, as well as random facts I threw in for my own writing convenience.

But before you look at her family tree, here’s an explanation of genograms in general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genogram

And a look at the rules used to create them: https://www.genopro.com/genogram/rules/

And now you can scroll back up to my current best attempt at Nia’s scrambled family tree. 🙂

M. C. Lee

© 2018 M. C. Lee LLC. All rights reserved.

 

Favorite Adult Fiction Books

Here are some of my favorite adult fiction books and authors. (And yes, I have enjoyed many, many more books that are listed here. These are my very favorites, for one reason or another.)

In random order:

Fantasy is now moved to its own list

Romance is now moved to its own list

Science Fiction

Diane Duane (also found in YA fantasy) Character-based sci-fi, but with enough science to be fun.

Final Frontier, by Diane Carey This is a Star Trek book, but not related to the movie of the same name. It’s about Captain Kirk’s father in the first (highly classified) encounter with the Romulans that resulted in them inventing the cloaking device. Spoiler: It was Kirk’s fault.

Nor Crystal Tears, and the Flinx series, Alan Dean Foster Character-based sci-fi, because that’s what I like. 🙂 Foster does aliens very well.

Mary Robinette Kowal (yes, she gets around the genres). The Lady Astronaut series, for instance.

Mystery

Donna Andrews Contemporary mystery with humor.

Laurie R. King (imo, the best new Sherlock Holmes series that’s actually about Sherlock) Recent-historical rather than contemporary.

Ellis Peters, medieval mystery

Dorothy Gilman. Ah, Mrs. Pollifax. What would we do without our favorite geriatric spy?

Frank Shaw series, by John D. Brown. This series isn’t finished yet (I hope). Contemporary amateur-sleuth.

Contemporary or Historical

The Diddakoi, by Rumer Godden. Recent-historical. The main character is a child, but this is not YA. When her grandmother dies, the young gypsy must find a home in the regular village.

The Lance of Kanana, by Harry W. French. Historical, Middle East. When people want a story about integrity, this is what I recommend.

A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman. Contemporary. I cried ugly tears. The movie doesn’t do it justice.

Mary Robinette Kowal (yes, she gets around the genres).

Comics (not to be confused with Graphic Novels, which I find difficult to read)

Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson

Family Circle, by Bil Keane

Enjoy, and feel free to comment if you found something you liked.
M. C. Lee

© 2018 M. C. Lee LLC. All rights reserved.