I Is For… Ivan – or, Russian Naming Conventions

Noon and Wilder Posted on by

The main character in Sealed by Fire is Ivan Demidov, but he goes by Vanya.  I love using Russian naming conventions because they’re so different than the ones that I grew up with in my culture of origin.

In the old days, in Russia, one would have three names.  The first is the public, formal name.  It was the first name, what’s called a “patronymic,” and the family name, or what we call in the States the “last name.”  So, Ivan Mikhailovich Demidov.  The “ov” or “ev” at the end of the family name generally means “of,” and the rest of the name refers to something – perhaps an ancestor, or a river, or something else.

The patronymic refers to the father:  “patro” for father, “nymic” for name.  It’s literally the father’s name.  Boys take the suffix “ich” and girls “ovna,” so Vanya is Mikhailovich and his sisters are Mikhailovna.

And finally, we come to Ivan:  it is “John,” in Russian, and the use-name, or short-name, or nickname, is Vanya.  In the old days, no one would call him by that name except family and very intimate friends.  There are suffixes to indicate endearments; yuchka to indicate beloved, which would be used by a wife or close, older, family members; and yuckenka, which means “little beloved one,” which would be used by much older relatives like grandparents.  So, Vanyuchka or Vanyushka, and then Vanyuchenka.

Clear as mud, eh?

What about you, Dear Reader?
Did you, or do you now, go by a nickname?

H Is For… Hunter!

Noon and Wilder Posted on by

emeraldkeepEmerald Keep is now available!  Very exciting.  You can find it at Torquere Press, here.  In celebration, I thought I’d share a little bit about our world and one of the jobs in it, that of Hunter.

First, we decided that jobs all have capital letters.  There are jobs that are obvious like Healer and Driver, and less obvious like Seeker, or lawman, and Hunter, or miner.  We settled pretty early on in the writing process on the convention of using “er” at the end of all our job descriptions; I don’t recall the reason for it but it became a “rule.”  It’s interesting to have to fit within that structure when coming up with new positions.

Hunters originally were the ones who went out and found animals for food, but in the process, they discovered the stones that are native on Persis.  One of the rarest is used to power electrical systems of all kinds, and there is a gold-colored stone called simply “goldstone.”  There is also a type of stone that, when a catalyst is applied, provides liquid water, called a “waterstone.”

At night, the stones glow various colors.  When there is a patch of them in an area, they look like multi-colored fox fire.  They are found typically in dry, sandy patches or near stands of local vegetation, and one of the points of the first book is that our main character figures out a more reliable way to find them.

What about you, Dear Reader?
If you had to start over on a distant planet, what job would you like to have?

G Is For… Gendre – Our Favorite Not-Words

Noon and Wilder Posted on by

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They say you can always tell a reader by how they talk.  They have large vocabularies, but mispronounce things – sometimes with comical results.  I remember once asking my father about “Pur-gate-ory”.  He couldn’t understand.  I repeated it, getting more and more frustrating.  He has a B.A. in Theology and was raised Irish Catholic, for heaven’s sake.  His eyes got really wide and he asked, “Do you mean Purgatory?”

Shaddup, you.

My coauthor and I both do this ourselves a lot.  We, for example, have discussed the word “genre” at length.  There is no “d” in “genre.”  Maybe there should be, but there isn’t.

What about you, Dear Reader?
What word should be spelled differently than it is?

F Is For… Emerald Fire!

Noon and Wilder Posted on by

Emerald_Fire_Cover_webI’m really proud of this series, and that we are able to bring out book two this Wednesday. Since today is “F,” I figured I’d feature the book that started it all.

When Rachel and I set out to write Emerald Fire, we had a specific idea in mind.  We were exploring the idea of romance tropes, and the beloved Harlequin “white covers” that Rachel grew up reading as a young adult.  Many of their themes are tame to modern readers, but they still hold a regal place in the history of the romance genre:  the wealthy sultan and his harem girls, the billionaire playboy and the secretary/down on her luck heroine of some kind, etc.  Flashdance.  From rags to riches, swept off her feet and into his heart.

But we wanted to write a M/M romance, so we looked at this tropes with a new twist – what about a sultan with his harem boys?  Now, coauthoring being what it is, her ideas met mine and merged into a synergy that is now what we know of as Persis and its Keeps.

But that begs the question:  where shall we put our Sultan and his harem, I wonder?

What about you, Dear Reader?
What beloved tropes do you remember from your favorite books, past or present?

E Is For… Emerald Keep!

Noon and Wilder Posted on by

 

emeraldkeep

I am very excited.  This Wednesday, our book Emerald Keep is out into the world.  In celebration of its release, I figured I’d take today and share a little bit with you.  If you are a long-time reader of ours, then you may already be aware of the book’s release; if this is your first visit, then hello, and welcome.

The most exciting part, to me, about writing a science fantasy novel is that I get to create a world.  My coauthor, Rachel Wilder, and I worked hard to build a place that is both foreign and familiar.  We asked ourselves, what would it be like to live somewhere, 400 years or so after humanity colonized the place?  What would the culture have evolved to be like?  That required us to know something about the culture of the original settlers.  That’s a good question.  What kind of a person travels for long, long distances, probably years, and lands on a hostile planet with few easily-accessible resources other than breathable air?  The surface of the planet is blisteringly hot all year round, and completely uninhabitable one month out of every year.

Which begs another question:  how long is the year?  A year on Earth is twelve months.  A year on Mars?  687 days.  Jupiter?  Twelve years.  (Well, okay, twelve Earth years.)  So we had to know how long the Persis year is – which we decided, incidentally, is fourteen months.  It’s punctuated by Daymonth and Nightmonth.  Those of you living near the poles will be familiar with a month of sun, and a month of moon; because of the planet’s tilt, that happens up there (you’ve heard of the Russian White Nights, yes?).  Daymonth, like it sounds, is a month of days: and because the surface is so hot, the residents have to live underground, much like they do on Earth at Coober Pedy, a town in South Australia and the hottest one, by all accounts, on our planet.  The homes there are built underground.

Not so alien after all, then, this Persis of ours.  When one looks at a problem objectively, as a logic problem, one is able to world-build more easily.  Ask yourself, if I had to go somewhere to settle, somewhere completely new, like the wagon trains did when settling the American West, what would I bring?

Well, Dear Reader?  What would you put in your imaginary colonizing go-bag?

And, especially for you, I also want to remind you that the Rafflecopter is open until April 8th; please feel welcome to join in even if you are here for the A-Z Challenge and not for the book tour.  Whatever your reason for visiting, we’re glad you’re here!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

 

D Is For… Delete

Noon and Wilder Posted on by

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What with internet kerfuffle this, crazy news that, and more in-flow of information than ever before, the Delete key is the most important one on the keyboard.  A good friend of mine, who’s name also happens to begin with the letter “D,” pointed out that each email exerts a silent pressure on us to read them.  I followed her advice and have started unsubbing from newsletters that I haven’t been reading.  I do find it easier to open my inbox and not feel pressured to read through stuff to delete it.

That got me thinking.  How much of our daily round is simply that, sorting through things to delete them?  Watching ads on television that we don’t like?  Throwing away advertising circulars and junk mail?  Double-checking our spam filter to make sure that we aren’t missing something we actually want to read?  Reading our Facebook feed for news we don’t really want?

Another friend said something to me recently, that she is becoming interested in “stillness.”  That word caught fire in my mind and has been filling my thoughts lately, as I decide what to do with my spare time.  I’ve been paring down, and clearing the decks so that I can hear myself think.

What about you, Dear Reader?

How much quiet time do you give yourself in a week?

C Is For… Cat’s Cradle

Noon and Wilder Posted on by

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The holidays are over.  March Madness is now April Fool’s.  And Cat’s Cradle, one of the Chicagoland Shifters novels, is coming this summer.  I figured I’d give you a sneak peek – Mitch gets to settle down.  Or does he?

When you’re an ex-Marine tiger shifter, love comes with a high cost – is it too much to pay?

Mitchell Brayden is an ex-Marine tiger shifter looking for love in all the wrong places. When he decides to rescue a young ocelot shifter from a rich, spoiled playboy, he embroils himself in a conflict that goes back generations.

Guadalupe Salazar grew up as a pampered pet of a benevolent patron. After his patron’s untimely death, he stays on with the patron’s son – a self-centered, weak man who got ensnared by the drugs and fast living in the States. One night, it goes too far and Lupe is beaten nearly to death. He is taken to a secret shifter clinic where he meets an unlikely knight in tarnished armor.

Together, Mitch and Lupe confront the playboy and his friends – but will their actions draw the rest of the jaguar familias, not to mention the ocelot clans, into a battle over Lupe’s future? Will the delicate balance of power destroy everything that Mitch’s small band of tiger shifters has built in Chicago?

What about you, Dear Reader?

What book or movie are you looking forward to this summer?

B Is For… Books!

Noon and Wilder Posted on by

20141201_193155Books.  That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?  Life, the Universe, and Everything?  (Yeah, yeah, 42.  But I’m serious, here.)  Books are refuge, friend, and opiate.  They console, engage, and educate.  They can change the world and, sometimes, end it.  Endings lead to new beginnings, and so it begins again.

When Rachel and I started writing together, we talked about length.  We still do, periodically.  “Oh, this will be a short story.”  (Which became the Chicagoland Shifters series.  Of novels.)  “This one is a quickie.”  (Said four years ago about a book we’re finishing to submit now.)  In the intervening time, I’ve realized that I am a novelist, in particular.  I am also other types of writer – essayist, diarist, poet, etc.  But my favorite fiction medium is the novel.  I love the format, the way one can tell a story, the blending and interrelationships of characters to each other, the setting, and the plot, all of it.

There are others who like short stories.  It’s not that I don’t like them, particularly, it’s just that I read so fast that it’s over before I’ve had a chance to engage with the story.  I think that’s why I like series:  even though one book is over, there are others to eat.

I admire writers who can do short.  I’ve tried.  By the time I get through saying what I have to say, nine times out of ten it’s not enough room.  Rachel and I have done shorts (under 8,000 words) and they were, I felt, very tough to write.  I couldn’t add any of the layering I wanted to, or follow side plots back to the main one.  The discipline of learning to write short has been useful, but at the end of the day, I like a good, long novel.

What about you, Dear Reader?

What’s the “right” length of story for you?