Evolution or Extinction?

Now that I’ve passed a major decade-mark in my life, I find myself using the expression, “back in the day…”. Those who are older than me laugh—sometimes scoff—but those who are my age share in a knowing smile just before we embark upon a rant about how things used to be. I imagine everyone goes through this at some point when they reflect upon the differences between “then” and “now.”

I consider my exposure to “then” and “now” moments a more frequent occurrence than many of my friends. I work with kids a lot. At the Metroparks, we face the growing problem of N.D.D. (Nature Deficit Disorder)—a different can of worms related to my topic. Kids who are not exposed to the outdoors suffer a range of “symptoms” from depression to obesity. At my community center, the appearance of portable video game systems literally sucked away the attention of the kids, and when game systems were taken away, the resulting fits were astounding, if not downright disturbing.

All right, now let me have my “then” moment. As a kid, I had the spectrum of indoor/outdoor activities. Outdoors, I played in the creek, caught butterflies, climbed trees, raced through fields, and made dandelion stew. Indoors, I drew pictures, listened to my radio, wrote stories (ha—you didn’t see that coming, did you?), and read books (another shocker). Yeah, there was some T.V. in there, and I do remember my very first Nintendo game system in the late 1980s. There was a balance, though, between active and sedentary, indoors and outdoors.

What has changed drastically between the “then” and the “now” is technology. No big secret there. In an effort to promote convenience and entertainment, we have developed a gambit of gadgets and diversions in the electronic fashion. You can do virtually anything with your phone, find anything on your computer, and spend hours on your better-than-life video game. You can even read a digital copy of your favorite novel on a portable reader device.

Now I don’t want to knock convenience. And any device that promotes literacy is great, but does anyone else think something is missing? I’ve tried to justify to my tech-savvy husband why I’m so bothered by portable readers. In the end, I think it’s because like everything else, they contribute to an absence of experience. (Just my opinion. Argue away, but at least hear me out).

We live in a virtual, digital world. Texting, Facebook, and other electronic means of communication seem to open doors to social avenues. I think they close just as many. When was the last time you had a REAL phone conversation—one where you talked for hours to an old friend? When was the last time you hand-wrote a letter that required a postage stamp? How about nestling down with your favorite paperback novel? Note, all these activities take time, and convenience doesn’t necessarily factor in here.

When you take the time to engage in an activity, you experience it in the fullest. When you write a letter, you need to practice good grammar. You pick your favorite pen, select some stationary. You scratch out your mistakes and try to make your cursive legible (they do still teach cursive in school, right?). All part of the experience.

Same idea with books. Pick up an old book, and you smell the yellowed paper, feel the texture between your fingers. You find the Kool-aid stains where you knocked over your glass. When your bookmark accidentally falls out, you utter some choice words before you hunt for the right page. And my favorite is flipping back to read an exciting scene at least three or four times just because it struck you in such a way.

Books are fading away. I like to think they will never be obsolete, but the truth is, we have sold more Kindle copies of Raven’s Heart by a hundred fold compared to the physical book. Publishing companies are in deep trouble. Book stores are vanishing. I used to have my choice of competing chains—at least three or four in a half-hour drive. Now I have to travel to find one. They have all closed down. Even libraries have had to adapt to become media centers (which isn’t necessarily bad, but it is a sign of change).

From an author’s vantage, I wonder how the art will survive. It was tough to be a novelist “back then”, but now when you sell a copy for $2.99 on Kindle, how do you make a living? Better keep that day job (or day jobs, as in my case). You can pay to publish your book, but again, the art form suffers from writers who do not bother to have their works edited, do not bother with grammar, and do not go the length to present a masterful creation. The bad books speak just as loudly as the good ones.

Before I digress too far in my rant, I will close with a rhetorical question. Leaving “then” behind, and looking at “now” or even “soon”, are books evolving to become a new experience in our lives, or is it an extinction of an experience and a pastime that will be remembered only by old-timers like me? I hope that like day-glo socks, G.I. Joe®, and Unchained Melody, books will return one day to be just as popular as back in the day.

-Stefanie

In The Beginning...

I’m not afraid to admit that I’m a late bloomer. When it comes to reading and writing fantasy, I wasn’t doing either until after high school. Sure I wrote plenty of crappy short stories and played tons of fantasy video games, but as for actually creating an entire world and characters, the thought never crossed my mind. By the end of high school, I was certain that I would go into computer graphics, i.e. Disney. The mid nineties produced some of the finest animated films: Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King, to name a few. I wanted to be a part of that. Then I got to college….

You might infer from the ellipses that college brought about a change in my life. I learned quickly that if you want to be an animator for Disney, you have to be a go-getter and something of a phenomenon. I forgot to mention that you need to go to an actual art school. I dabbled in computer graphics, but I didn’t have access to any cutting-edge animation tools/programs. I was passionate about art, but I never took it seriously enough to decide how I wanted to employ my skill. This all led to my departure from an art-related career.

As many of you might already know, I met Stef in college. No, she wasn’t the reason I became a fantasy author. We both enjoyed writing, but the thought of writing together never occurred to us. I have a T.V. salesman at the now-defunct Sun Television and Appliances to thank for my journey into the world of fantasy. Sadly I don’t remember his name, but I do remember what he was reading at the time: Stone of Tears, book 2 of the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. It was in tatters, and was quite possibly the thickest book I had ever seen: 982 pages. Despite its condition, something about the summary on the back of the book caught my attention. I had always been fascinated by fantasy and the giant books within the genre, but I wasn’t fond of reading.

At this point in my life, I was elated to have made it through all six novelettes of Stephen King’s Green Mile. Those were the first books I ever bought, because they were each about one hundred pages in length. I knew I could stomach the length. The first eighteen years of my life were spent NOT reading books. Somewhere in my upbringing I had decided that words on paper were evil. Don’t know why that is, because I grew up watching my dad read countless science fiction novels. Despite my reservations about purchasing a novel that could easily double as a brick, I took a chance and picked up my first epic fantasy.

Wizard’s First Rule. Anyone who reads fantasy has heard of this book. Love it or hate it—and there are those who do—this book changed my life forever. It was better than any video game I’d conquered, more enjoyable than drawing fictional comic book characters, and most definitely better than reading Herman Melville’s Billy Budd. I was transported to Terry Goodkind’s fantasy world, and I LOVED it! I couldn’t read the subsequent titles fast enough—there were only four published at the time—and I couldn’t wait to write my first attempt in the genre.

Like most newbie fantasy authors, my first story, Rise of the Dragonknight, was complete and utter dreck. I didn’t know it at the time; I was too busy writing and planning the sequels. Eventually I gave up on my “masterpiece” and started another one. I can still hear Tolkien rolling over in his grave when I think about my untitled schlock-fest. It wasn’t until Stef wrote me an e-mail from college that I truly began to understand what was missing from my writing. HER!

Fast forward about ten years, and we come to the present. While “Verish” might not yet be the prominent name in fantasy I had hoped it to be, my wife and I continue to plug away at the laptop and build our own world for future readers. Many things have changed since those humble beginnings, but my dedication to the art has remained consistent. Writing is my passion, and I’m glad to be living in a fantasy world.

-Matt

The Season of the Witch

Halloween. A liminal time where the boundaries between our reality and the world of the spirits dissolves into the unknown. A time when the dead walk amongst us, and darkness presides in the coming of winter. This is a dangerous time. A time for ghosts, demons, witches, and other maligned creatures.

We love to be scared, and we love mystery. It’s fun to believe in the darker side of our reality, because that sense of danger excites us. There was a time, however, when such frivolities were the foundation of religion. Remnants of old Pagan beliefs can still be weeded through trick-or-treating, horror films, and the donning of costumes to disguise ourselves.

Ever-popular is the witch. She has been acknowledged through every era of history, from the Ancient Greeks to the Middle Ages, from the colonization of America to present day. She has taken many forms: the frightful but knowledgeable old crone to the benevolent and beautiful, and even the sexy sadistic sort. In every instance, however, she is reputed to have powers beyond what mortal men and women can fathom. That makes her mysterious, maybe a little dangerous, and practically semi-divine. Certainly she is not like us, and that opens the possibility for an interesting character.

At this point in our latest novel, I am writing in the setting of Mystland, a territory where witches and wizards live in exclusivity. In a land where magic-users (we call them “medori”) are common folk, how does one distinguish a particular witch? Dark or “black” magic has been outlawed in Mystland, but those who practice it can be culled no more than the drug-dealers from our own society.

So here we have the beginnings of our character. She will be a foremost expert in dark magic, but because she is so knowledgeable, the Mystland government makes use of her—overlooks her illegal practice to remain “in the know” of other such activities. But she is like a venomous pet snake: a healthy and warranted fear exists between her and her correspondents. Keep your distance, and you won’t be bitten. Another key trait: she is enshrouded in mystery. No one knows of what she is capable, how powerful she truly is, the truth behind her seemingly ageless face. Anything or anyone old or ancient has secrets long forgotten.

I want to experiment with this witch and give her inhuman qualities. Her corporeal form is nothing impressive or unusual, but the little things hint that she is more than a woman. A deadness in the eyes, a smell of lifeless flesh that remains animated by its wearer only because she takes the pains to keep her worldly façade. She is a monster in disguise. Can the other characters sense it? And if they can, will they listen to the screaming of their instincts, or will they be tempted by the power and knowledge she offers to them? You know those gifts don’t come without a hefty price. What will she ask of them?

She has to be creepy, to be sure, but everything I’ve listed thus far is nothing new in the realm of witches. How will she be unique? First, I intend to make her two people, not one. A mother and a daughter. I envision them living in a labyrinth of an ancient temple in the midst of a desolate and rotting forest where even the shadows are threatening. I think of the temple of Medusa in the original Clash of the Titans. These witches won’t be ugly or beautiful, but their nondescript appearance will hint at the evil you do not see upon superficial inspection.

How will I do all this—make my witches and the setting eerie and frightening? I have no idea. I’m not a master of horror; I can’t even watch those movies or read those books. I will draw on the elements that frighten us all: the dark, the unknown, the unlikely. A little poetic description goes a long way. Most of all, I hope to use the main characters as an extension of the reader. Feel their tension, their unease; know their thoughts, and witness their reactions. Seems like a rather grand undertaking, but I’m ready for it. ‘Tis the season for supernatural mayhem, and just about every classic fantasy is graced with a memorable witch.

-Stefanie