Legendary Creatures

Interview with Jim C. Hines about "The Mermaid's Madness"

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:51:00 +0000

I'm so excited about this book. I absolutely loved "The Stepsister Scheme" and have been impatiently waiting for this second book in the series. I'm also excited about this interview. Jim is personable and encouraging to those of us who want to be authors when we grow up. He's also a damn good writer. So read the interview and go enjoy the book!

*****

What struck me about The Little Mermaid was how totally messed up that tale really is. I'm ashamed to admit I hadn't read the original Hans Christian Anderson tale growing up. Like so many tales, if you've only been exposed to the Disney version, you're missing a lot.

In this case, when I got to the end of The Little Mermaid, where the prince hooks up with another woman and our mermaid sacrifices her life so that he can be happy, I had a visceral "Hell, no!" reaction. I just had to mess with this one.

Of course, this meant writing a novel in which 90% of the action takes place at sea. When I started writing, my experience with sailing was pretty much limited to the toys my kids played with in the bath. So I spent a lot of time reading up on sailing ships. After that, I wanted to come up with a really interesting ship, one which would make this more than just another sailing story. I think I accomplished that with the queen's ship, the Phillipa, but I'll let the readers be the judge of that.

I also did a fair amount of reading about the ocean, trying to figure out what it would be like to navigate the different currents, and how the merfolk would have to function in order to survive. Things like needed an extra layer of body fat, or crying more in order to rid their bodies of excess salt. I read as many mermaid stories as I could find, trying to incorporate more of that mythology into the story. Mermaids have a strange obsession with souls, which turned into an important plot element.

Hopefully the result is something both new and familiar. I'm happy with the result, and I'm very much looking forward to hearing what readers think.

Thanks for giving me the chance to chat about the book!

-----

Web site: http://www.jimchines.com

Blurb: There is an old story — you might have heard it — about a young mermaid, the daughter of a king, who saved the life of a human prince and fell in love. So innocent was her love, so pure her devotion, that she would pay any price for the chance to be with her prince. She gave up her voice, her family, and the sea, and became human. But the prince had fallen in love with another woman.

The tales say the little mermaid sacrificed her own life so that her beloved prince could find happiness with his bride.

The tales lie.

Where should readers buy the book? Wherever is convenient for you. Independent booksellers have been good to me, so I try to support them when possible. Barnes & Noble has also gotten behind the princess series, so I'd happily send readers their way. But in the end, I get my $.48 whether you buy it from Borders or Amazon or Walmart, so do what works for you.

Creature #4 - Rakshasa

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:17:00 +0000

I've hesitated to tackle any primarily Hindu creatures because they all seem to be individual gods or demons. But then I remembered the Rakshasa. I first heard of Rakshasa years ago when I played Dungeons and Dragons. It has been used quite a bit more in pop culture, most notably video and role-playing games, than some of the other creatures I've written about, but it isn't a creature that most people readily recognize.

In D&D, the Rakshasa was depicted as an anthropomorphic tiger. I remember a drawing of one in a smoking jacket, lounging in a wingback chair. I can sort of see where they got that depiction, but the legendary Rakshasa is certainly no mere humanoid tiger.

In Hindu and Buddhist mythology, the Rakshasa is a goblin, demon, or evil spirit noted for shape shifting, magic, and eating humans and spoiled food. In the great Hindu epics, they are depicted as powerful warriors as well as skilled magicians and illusionists. Their hobbies are disturbing sacrifices, desecrating graves, harassing priests, and possessing humans. Their demonic form is usually described or shown as humanoid, yellow, green, or blue with catlike eyes, potbellies, large fangs, poisonous fingernails, and a reek of rotten meat. Some note that they are most powerful at night, especially during the new moon, and are dispelled by sunrise, but in the epics they are noted for participating in huge battles, which I assume took place during the day.

There are a couple differing ideas about their origins. In the Hindu epic, Ramayan, it says that they sprang from Brahma's foot. In other epics, they are descended from the sage Pulastya. The Vishnu Purana, one of the most important Hindu religious texts, calls them descendants of Kasyapa and Khasa, through their son Rakshas. Early Sanskrit texts say they are the children of the Vedic goddess of death, Nirriti. And in some legends, they are the reincarnations of extremely wicked humans.

Interestingly, the Rakshasa appears to be limited to the Hindu and Buddhist cultures. The argument could be made that the Jewish and Christian Satan bears resemblance, but Satan is an individual archdemon rather than a race of creatures and more complex.

Well-known Rakshasa

Ravana - King of the Rakshasa, had ten heads, was said to have paid homage to the Buddha.

Pūtanā - Rakshasi (female Rakshasa), attempted to kill the infant Krishna by offering him milk from her poisoned breast. Krishna sucked the life out of her, literally.

Vibhishana - Ravana's younger brother, was not evil, helped Rama defeat Ravana and was made king of Lanka.

A group of Rakshasi - followed the Buddha, protected the Lotus Sutra, and taught magic (in the form of mantras) to the followers.

Rakshasa in art

If you ever get the chance to visit Cambodia and see the temples of Angkor (one of the places on my wish list to see), you will find many carvings of Ravana and even one of Vibhishana. There is even a bas-relief of the Battle of Lanka in Angkor Wat.

Rakshasa in modern books and comics

• Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny - The now-bodiless natives of the planet are Rakshasa.
• Song in the Silence by Elizabeth Kerner - The demons are referred to as Rakshasa.
• American Gods by Neil Gaiman - Rakshasas appear briefly.
• The Iron Ring by Lloyd Alexander - The villain turns out to be a Rakshasa.
• Rakshasa by Max Overton - The entire book is about Rakshasa.
• Resurrecting Ravana by Ray Garton - A Buffy the Vampire Slayer original novel with Rakshasa as the bad guys.
• Game World Trilogy by Samit Basu - Rakshasas are one of the major races.
• Gold Digger manga-style comics by Fred Perry - One of the characters is a Rakshasa.

Rakshasa in video games

• The Exile and Avernum games - Rakshasas are one of the magic-casting enemies.
• Linley's Dungeon Crawl - The Rakshasa is one of the monsters.
• Final Fantasy for PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, and PlayStation Portable - The Rakshasa is a magic-casting, tiger-headed creature.
• Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne - Rakshasas are Haunt class creatures.

Rakshasa in role-playing games

• Dungeons & Dragons - Rakshasa are tiger-headed necromancers, enchanters, and illusionists.
• The Palladium Fantasy RPG - Rakshasas are a race of demons (spelled Raksasha in the game).

Rakshasa in movies and television

• Kolchak: The Night Stalker episode "Horror in the Heights" (A great TV series, btw even though it aired so long ago.)
• Supernatural episode "Everybody Loves a Clown"

As always, please use this article to inspire you to write about or visually depict the month's creature. If you do and would like your artwork or fiction (around 500 words) posted, please email me. I would love for people to see your work.

New Flash Fiction

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:04:00 +0000

We have another story, this time with Leviathan.

Keys
by Chrissa Sandlin

The leviathan’s groaning farewell wavered through her head, shuddered down her arms, and shifted the sand beneath Karina. She pulled at the shawl around her shoulders, a dark-dyed offering from years ago meant to enhance her coloring and now tangled with but darker than her own grey hairs. Another human gift turned goad. She stepped toward the flesh lying above the water, trying to determine if this was the head of the creature.

“How do you speak to it?” The elf-woman called, tending her bonfire of keys. Her fingers tangled in the smoke, seeming to yank at the flames. “What if it will not carry us? What if it is dying and we have to go back?”

“You would stay? With the forest falling around you, axes at every root?” Rough skin slid up and Karina looked into an eye like a cave. She responded to the elf, but spoke to the eye. “I’ve been walking for days with its goodbyes rolling through my gut. It will carry us to the forever seas and I will finally own myself, flesh and soul. Look at me!” She pulled back the shawl. “They’ve made me old, dried and wretched. She came to me, the Queen of the Castle Beyond Breath. She laughed at their shriveling of my skin in thinking of her. She thought I’d be ready…as if I would serve in a dead land, who used to be a goddess in these branches!”

“Your skin is no more real than that creature is visible to those axe-wielders from the villages. The leviathan is leaving, but we don’t know where it will go. And you have become a witch, my girl. We’ve seen them give you flesh. What if they crinkle it to their beliefs?” The elf twisted the smoke again and cast away the fire, burning her fingers on the ashes to tell one last time the houses and families by the carved surfaces dissolving beneath her fingers. “The windfall houses will become as downed trees without our care. We’ve no way to enter them again. You promised that we would have passage.”

“I’ve made new keys,” Karina said, lifting her wrist and tugging two silver shapes from her skirt. One looked like an ornate tap and the other a house key, stone and bone bound with a fine wire. Her elven companion shivered. “One to open my home and the other to unlock a soul. Both cast from moonlight by balefire under the tutelary eye of that pale Queen.” Karina twitched her face over her shoulder, casting away the name as she spoke it. She took the tap and, moving away from the eye, pressed it lightly against the flesh and twisted. A drop of the soul Earth gave these largest of her children fell into Karina’s hand and she drank it quickly.

Words tolled through Karina. The same farewell chant in words the span of hours. She looked into the cavernous eye and made her plea.

Elves ringed the shore, watching the keys to their houses smolder, watching the key-maker caress each one to dust. Karina’s voice and the voice of the leviathan billowed over them for hours, until the sun began to sink. Karina’s voice shrank from sea on which it rode as she addressed them.

“Leviathans become islands. We could find anything on that flesh land.” Karina crested another low wave of sound, finally looking back into the great black eye shot through with the fires of its birth. “Enough magic to remake me.”

New Flash Fiction

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:45:00 +0000

I know it's a day late, but here's a cute flash piece I received yesterday. I hope you enjoy it and let the author know.

PETER LEARY AND THE HOOP SNAKE
by T.M. Riddle
Paperwaster

As soon as Deena Martin got out of the schoolhouse, she took off her shoes. She hated being cooped up in that place learning things that a body truly didn’t need to know. At least she didn’t. Without looking behind her, she knew that Peter Leary was right on her heels.

The Learys and the Martins had always hated each other, that was a fact, but nowhere was that hate more fierce than between Peter and Deena. Deena’s Momma said they had hated each other right out of their cradles. Deena agreed. She couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t loathe the sight of Peter Leary.

One day, Deena didn’t run fast enough. Peter stepped on the back of her heel and she stumbled. That wasn’t enough for Peter. He wouldn’t be happy until she was face down in the dirt. He grabbed the back of her dress to shove her down, but she pulled away. The dress tore and she ran. She never looked back. Deena ran all the way to her house, through the orange grove and to the back porch. She didn’t want Momma to see that her new store bought dress had been ripped, so she snuck in the back to Grandma’s room.

Grandma saw the rip in her dress and knew exactly what had happened without Deena saying a word. As Grandma sewed up the tear, she asked, “Do you want to be well and truly done with Peter Leary?” Deena nodded.

Early in the morning, before anybody else was up, Deena and her Grandma went to the edge of the orange grove. Grandma had a way of calling animals to her. Deena had never questioned it; it was part of who Grandma was. Grandma called a long black snake out of the sandy grasses. Grandma and the snake talked for a while. Then the snake swallowed his tail.

“You put this in your pocket now and you do what I told you.”

After school, instead of running, Deena went up to Peter and said, “I got something to show you out by the heap. “

“What?
“You want to see, come out to the heap.”

Peter followed just like Grandma said he would. When they got there Deena climbed to the top of the highest heap.

“I got power over snakes, “ she said, “and if you don’t leave me alone Peter Leary, I’ll make one eat you up.”

Peter Leary and his gang laughed. Deena whispered to the snake and let it go. It rolled down the heap headed straight for Peter Leary. He held his ground for a moment and then started to run. He ran for the scraggly pines just as the snake flung itself at him. The snake stuck to the tree for a minute and then fell off and went on his way. The next day everybody knew about Peter Leary and the snake. He never bothered Deena again, just like Grandma promised.

Something new! Call for fiction.

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:36:00 +0000

In the interview Dorlana Vann did with me over on Supernatural Fairy Tales yesterday, I mentioned that I wanted to add a new aspect to this blog. I want to see what I inspire in you.

I want fiction from you. Here are the guidelines:
1) Submit fiction of 500 words or less between the time I post the creature article and the 15th of the month.
2) The creature of the month must play a major part in the story.
3) What you submit may be a complete story or an excerpt from a longer piece.
4) Email it to me via the link in my profile.
5) I will post all the fiction on the 15th of the month.
6) Include a link to your blog or website so that people can see what else you do.

Keyboard ready? Let's see what you can do.

Creature #3 - Leviathan

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:32:00 +0000

Leviathan. What a great name for a creature. Close your eyes and say it slowly. It's a conjuring name that fills my mind with pictures of stormy seas and a monstrous creature lurking just below the surface. It's anger and hatred and chaos in fleshly form. Interestingly, I never picture the creature itself, which isn't too surprising when you know its background.

Unlike the previous creatures, Leviathan is almost exclusively associated with religious lore. It first appears in early Hebrew writings as a sea monster/serpent which represents the powers of chaos and destruction which manifest in floods and ocean storms. However, it seems to be based on Canaanite mythology where the fertility god Baal fights the seven-headed sea monster Lotan and scatters the remains and the Babylonian epic Enuma Elish about the storm god Marduk who defeats the sea monster/goddess of chaos, Tiamat.

The Hebrew legends say that God created a male and female Leviathan then killed the female because if the two multiplied they would destroy the Earth. In the Talmud it says that the preserved flesh of the female Leviathan will be used to feed the righteous at a banquet celebrating the coming of the Messiah and that her beautiful skin will be used as the tent cover over the banquet. In another account, the flesh and skin for the banquet will come from the male Leviathan after it is killed, along with Behemoth which it is battling, by God.

Leviathan is generally described as huge enough to swallow creatures three hundred miles long, eats a whale a day, its eyes give off bright light, and it can make the waters of the ocean boil. Similar to the legend of the elephant being afraid of a mouse, the Leviathan is supposedly afraid of a small worm called a kilbit, a mythological parasitic worm which is deadly to its fishy hosts.

Due to the various descriptions, some scholars have speculated that Leviathan was based on the Nile crocodile with its vicious teeth and prized hide. Others suggest a whale or Megalodon.

In Christianity, Leviathan became a representation of evil, chaos, and sometimes Satan. It is still a sea monster and sometimes depicted as a giant mouth which will suck the souls of the dammed down into Hell on Judgment Day. Most of the mentions are in the Book of Job and Psalms of the Old Testament. It seems to have become less and less important over the centuries.

Then came Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan. He named Leviathan as one of the four crown princes of Hell, and used it to represent the element of water and the direction of west in rituals. Leviathan seems to have been quite important to Satanism.

Appearances in Pop Culture
I haven't been able to find any major use of Leviathan in modern entertainment. I'll be posting more on this in a few days.

The painting is Destruction of Leviathan by Gustav Dore

Beast #2 - Hoop Snake/Ouroboros

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 14:07:00 +0000

When I was growing up in Southeast Missouri, I heard stories about a lot of strange creatures. Most of these critters lived west of my home town, where it was hillier and more forested. One that I remember is the tale of the hoop snake.

Now, hoop snake lore can be found in Australia and the US from Pennsylvania to Louisiana, and it all sounds pretty similar. It can also be found in the histories of Norse, Phoenician, Greek, and Egyptian mysticism. We’ll refer to those as Ouroboros. These versions appear to be related in a basic sense though the American versions lack the symbolism of the older ones.

A hoop snake story usually starts out with someone saying their grandma, or other older relative, told them about someone who was out working in the field one day (or skipping school or work in some versions) when he heard something that caused him to look up the hill. Rolling toward him at high speed was a hoop snake.

At this point there is a pause to explain to those unfamiliar with local wildlife what a hoop snake is. Descriptions range from short to long, slim to fat, and mud to rainbow colored. It lies in ambush at the top of a hill and when prey comes along it takes its tail in its mouth and rolls down the hill like a barrel hoop.

The intended victim sees the snake rolling down the hill and takes off running... always down the hill. The hoop snake gains on him and just as the snake lets go of its tail and whips that horned stinger through the air, the victim leaps behind the tree at the bottom of the hill. The snake’s stinger strikes the tree. Sometimes the snake is stuck there until it dies at sunset and sometimes it slithers away. The tree always dies about three days later from the poison injected into it.

An interesting note about American hoop snake lore is that it seems to have originated with European settlers. A large amount of American folklore in general is adapted from American Indian legends and lore, but not the hoop snake.

Some researchers think the legend comes from encounters with the mud snake, also known as the stinging snake. When held in the hand, this little snake coils up and probes its surroundings with the tip of its tail. This action is often interpreted as stinging even though the tail is a normal snake tail.

*****

Older than the American hoop snake is the Old World Ouroboros. In some ways, the Ouroboros has more in common with the Phoenix than the hoop snake. The name is Greek and translates roughly to "tail-devourer". Depictions of the Ouroboros as a serpent, either snakelike or dragonlike, in a loop with its tail in its mouth have been found in China, Ancient Egypt, Phoenicia, Greece, Medieval Norse cultures, West Africa, the Aztecs, and the Toltecs where it represented ideas such as: eternal rebirth from destruction, cycles, unity, and completeness.

It was also an important symbol in religion and mysticism. The Gnostics saw it as a symbol of time, eternity, the soul of the world, and the continuity of life. It sometimes bears the caption Hen to pan - 'The One, the All'. The early Christians used it as a symbol of the limited confines of the material world, and the self-consuming nature of a worldly existence, following in the footsteps of the preacher in Ecclesiastes 3:9-14.

In some of this lore the thought was that if the Ouroboros succeeded in consuming itself, the world would end.

Because so many cultures shared similar images and symbology of the Ouroboros, psychologist Carl Jung declared it one of his archetypes.

In alchemy, the Ouroboros was used as a purifying sigil. However, in modern science, the Ouroboros can be used as a symbol for the flow of energy and entropy in living beings.

In some circles it's believed that Ouroboros was inspired by the Milky Way Galaxy. There are myths referring to a serpent of light residing in the heavens and the Milky Way is thought to be this serpent. When viewed at galactic central point near Sagittarius, the serpent eats its own tail. The Milky Way galaxy keeps a great time cycle that ends in catastrophic change. The sign of the Suntelia Aion is the sun rising out of the mouth of the Ouroboros, which will occur on the solstice December 21, 2012 which links with the Mayan Calendar as a symbolic date the evolution of consciousness in the alchemy of time. This also goes to Quetzalcoatl and accelerating Earth changes in the Ring of Fire.

Appearances in Literature
• In the comic series "Bone" by Jeff Smith, the dragon queen Mim is an Ouroboros that kept the world in balance until being possessed by an evil spirit.

• In Larry Niven's "The Magic Goes Away", the 'World-Worm', a dormant world-circling snake god, whose body has turned to stone from lack of magic to sustain it, is an Ouroboros.

I wasn't able to find many instances in pop culture of this creature appearing as itself. It is, however, frequently used as a symbol for organizations in film, book, and games.

Interview with Maggie Stiefvater about "Shiver"

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:39:00 +0000

In case you haven't heard, Maggie Stiefvater's novel "Shiver" just came out. It's about werewolves, but she gave them a very interesting twist. It's always fascinating to find out how and why a legend evolves, and this was a chance to catch one in the act. I asked Maggie why she chose werewolves and why she made the changes she did.

Maggie is one of those authors who manage to insert their fun personality into something as mundane as an interview. I hope you enjoy this and let her know.

*****

Okay. So, werewolves. Honestly, I never intended to write a book about werewolves. I thought they were a dead creature, a useless monster. The thing about myths and monsters is that they reflect the current fears and hopes of the times, and werewolves -- they were irrelevant. At least, written in their present-day iteration: a man who shifts into a hybrid creature, sheds his inhibitions faster than a frat boy in a bar, and then proceeds to savage the villagers. Originally, the werewolf legend spoke to people who lived on the edge of humanity, vast forests and real wolves populating their real lives. The line between what separated humans from that wildness was thin and nebulous, and could be shed as easily as your skin.

But we live in a suburban jungle now, and there is no wildness left among we. We have to specify which bits of woods we’re not going to raze to build subdivisions on. Our wolves -- our monsters -- are endangered and kept on preserves. What threat is there to becoming a wolf now? There is no savage in our world anymore. We’ve domesticated our monsters thoroughly.

Clearly you can see that I was not inspired by them at all. But my editor at the time had suggested I poke around for some short story contests to possibly draw attention to my novel. The only one I found with a fairly close deadline and a paranormal theme was a contest that was devoted entirely to lycanthropic fiction. That would be werewolves. I didn’t think I had werewolves in me, but I thought I might have 2,000 words to say on the subject. So I put my thinking cap on for the day and . . . .

Got absolutely nothing. I thought for 8 hours straight of a way to refresh the myth, and nothing came to me. But that night, when I went to sleep, my subconscious kept working, and I had a vivid dream about wolves in a winter wood. They looked like wolves, acted like wolves, but they were werewolves. And when they became humans, they were undeniably human. There was nothing in between. No middle ground.

And when I woke up, I had my werewolf myth. The threat was not becoming a monster. The threat was becoming a wolf with none of your human thoughts, none of your human memories, no goals, no dreams, no thought other than survival. The threat was losing yourself, the way we lose our identities all the time in the slick, homogenized world we’ve made for ourselves.

So now I had my metaphor, my reason for werewolves, and I was psyched.

Onto the rest of the myth. I didn’t really have any particular bone with the full moon/ night catalyst (though I did think it was pretty cheesy). But it didn’t really serve my plot very well. If the threat was losing your identity, it wasn’t very scary to only lose your identity for a night or a month. I needed a logical, cyclical trigger that would give my protagonists a long time as human and wolf. I racked my brain for days, mulling over various natural cycles, and it took me longer than you’d expect to land on temperature. But -- duh -- the changing of the seasons was something that happened every year, was very regular, natural, and logical, and added built-in and easy to understand tension.

It also satisfied my desire to pay homage to the way the werewolf myth has evolved. It gets colder at night, so that explains how people might have thought that night was the trigger for the shift. And the fact that my werewolves are fully wolves instead of hybrids hearkens back to the very oldest origins of werewolves, when crazy German guys would strap on “wolf straps” so that they could transform into wolves and grab some of the neighbors’ sheep for dinner.

So now . . . now I thought I had something. I thought I had a creature that had been updated to please my modern sensibilities. Hopefully something that was less savage, as we’re less savage, but still terrifying. Those are the wolves of Mercy Falls, Minnesota.

SHIVER: For years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf--her wolf--is a chilling presence she can't seem to live without. Meanwhile, Sam has lived two lives: In winter, the frozen woods, the protection of the pack, and the silent company of a fearless girl. In summer, a few precious months of being human . . . until the cold makes him shift back again.
Now, Grace meets a yellow-eyed boy whose familiarity takes her breath away. It's her wolf. It has to be. But as winter nears, Sam must fight to stay human--or risk losing himself, and Grace, forever.

Find out more about my work at http://www.maggiestiefvater.com, or at my blog: http://m-stiefvater.livejournal.com.

Buy SHIVER at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Indiebound.

Also available at bookstores everywhere August 1st and in the UK on October 1st.

Interview with Emily Short about Alabaster

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:29:00 +0000

Alabaster is an interactive fiction project created by Emily Short. After reading the interview, I hope you all go check it out and give it a try.

I asked Emily to tell us about the project itself and answer one question: Why did you choose this creature for your story?

Here's what she said:
"Alabaster is a twisted retelling of Snow White, in the form of interactive fiction.

It starts from a simple hook: you're the woodsman, in the woods with Snow White, and you have to decide what to do. Out of pity, you might want to help the princess. Then again, she's a bit suspicious: that very white skin, the very red lips, the very black hair. She doesn't seem to like mirrors very much either; and then there's the whole business of being apparently dead in a coffin, before coming back...

Did the Queen maybe have a good *reason* to want Snow White's heart in a box?

This idea has been with me for two or three years at least -- I'm not sure quite when it occurred to me, but I've been playing with alternate readings of fairy tales for a while. In particular, I enjoy asking whether there's an alternative way to read the villains' behavior that makes it not just an expression of pure evil. What if there's something else going on?

It turns out (though I didn't know this until after I started the project) that there's actually something of a mini-tradition about Snow White-as-vampire. Neil Gaiman has a short story called Snow, Glass, Apples with the same premise, and I've found several images (1) (2) (3) (4) of vampiric Snow Whites, a Yahoo question on the topic, only some of which is specifically Gaiman-inspired. There's even one person with a goth-themed Etsy shop called "Snow White was a Vampire".

I think the appeal is obvious: you have a character who is apparently innocent, vulnerable, and beautiful, and you subvert the story by making her secretly be the one with the power. Besides, so many aspects of the Snow White story tie together neatly when you view them this way that it's hard to resist the idea once you've thought of it.

The hook was also a good one for my purposes, because I knew I wanted to write an interactive story where the protagonist was in some amount of danger, but needed to resolve that danger through conversation (at least at first) rather than combat. The question of vampirism was appealing because vampires start out as people -- sometimes people the protagonist knew and cared about -- and that provides fertile territory for horror that involves character relationships rather than just physical fear.

Alabaster was also a collaborative project, and that took it in some unexpected further directions. I started out by sending my collaborators an unfinished game where the protagonist is worried about Snow White's identity and can ask her anything they like. The participants then added dialogue of their own -- things for the player to say, and things for Snow White to say in return.

As you might imagine from the starting premise, different participants had different takes on whether Snow White was likely to be innocent. Some of them made her sound lost and lonely, unfairly libelled by the Queen; others made her sound decidedly scary. And a couple of them introduced a further twist on the story and the nature of Snow White by bringing in another legendary character. I won't go into detail about that because it would give away the story. Once all the collaborative elements were in, I went back and worked out some endings (eighteen in all) to combine all the different strands that people had contributed.

Whether Snow White is or is not really a vampire is a question you'll have to resolve for yourself.

If you're interested in trying Alabaster, the project website is here:

http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/Alabaster/index.html

It's a free work that runs under Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. If you've never tried interactive fiction before, don't worry: there's a built-in tutorial to demonstrate how to play."

So, go try it out and let me know what you think!

New Book Release

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Mon, 11 May 2009 11:02:00 +0000

In the Tor newsletter this morning was an article about a new book released on the 28th of April. Secret Artifacts and Truly Haunting Muesums by John Schuster sounds like a great book. It's not about legendary critters per se, however, some of the stories should give insight to past beliefs about myths and legends and show some examples of how research has changed our views of what is real and what is legend. The blurb says the book is full of stories about museums, past and present, all over the country.

"What is it about museums that send tens of thousands of people through their doors every year? Is it the “touch me” kiddie-centric exhibits? Is it the chance to look at someone else’s valuables, or the opportunity to stand before the odd and unsettling? Or are we tantalized by a supernatural pull that draws us to certain special and, sometimes, cursed artifacts? While books and movies, from Preston and Child’s Relic to the blockbuster Night at the Museum and the forthcoming sequel Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, have offered glimpses of these little-known mysteries, Haunting Museums reveals the secrets behind many of the world’s most memorable artifacts, those whose legacies refuse to die."

What a fun and interesting sounding book. I hope you all think so too.

If you haven't signed up for the monthly newsletter and would like to, go here: Tor Newsletter It's at the bottom of the list.

Beast #1 - Phoenix

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:21:00 +0000

For the first creature article, I thought I'd start with a fairly familiar creature. Everyone knows what a phoenix is, right? It's that bird in the Harry Potter books that burns itself up then hatches from an egg again, right?

Well, kind of, there's more to it than that.

The modern Western version of the phoenix is fairly simple. It is an incredibly beautiful bird with flame colored plumage that lives for a very long time. At the end of its lifespan, it settles into its nest and goes up in flame. Almost immediately, a new phoenix emerges from the ashes and repeats the cycle.

In other parts of the world, and previous centuries, the tale is sometimes much more complex. The phoenix has not always been an attractive creature in either habits or appearance (some of them are downright ghastly sounding), but has consistently represented positive attributes.

Persia
One of the oldest versions of the phoenix appears to come from Persia where the it was called simurgh and was depicted as a female (complete with womanly human breasts), supernaturally large, bird of prey. Its feathers were usually copper colored, and it had the head of a dog and the claws of a lion. Later it was sometimes depicted with a human head.

The simurgh was peaceful, wise, and usually lived on a mountain near water. It was said to be so old that it had seen the destruction of the world three times and possessed all the knowledge of the world. In a lovely little creation myth, the simurgh lived in the Tree of Life which grew in the middle of the ocean. The simurgh's launchings and landings knocked the tree's seeds into the ocean where they spread throughout the world and became all the plants that have ever existed.

It appears in many Persian tales as a helper of the hero either providing wisdom, healing, magic, or wealth. It is actually a common theme in cross cultural mythology to have a hero assisted by a supernatural creature in these same areas either as thanks for a good deed or for a price.

It's mortal enemy was the snake, which is notorious for eating birds' eggs and chicks in the natural world.

Egypt
In ancient Egypt, the phoenix was called Bennu and was usually depicted as a purple heron. It was most often associated with the sun god Ra, Osiris, the Nile, Heliopolis-the city of the sun, and the calendar. It represented the sun, resurrection, and renewal. It is also depicted in the "Book of the Dead". At one point the Bennu was so important that it had its own temple, which was known for being full of calendars and clocks.

There are two generally accepted mythical origins of the Bennu. One version claims that it burst from the god Osiris' heart. The other claims that the Bennu created itself from a fire burning in a tree in the temple of Ra.

The most commonly accepted inspiration for the Bennu is thought to be a now extinct, giant species of the heron that used to live in the area.

A lesser known possible inspiration for the Egyptian phoenix is the East African flamingo. This bird nests on the blazing salt flats where it builds a mound high enough to keep its eggs and chicks cooler. The reasoning behind this seems to be that when a person looks out over the salt flats and see the convection currents between themselves and the birds' mounds, it looks kind of like flames.

The Middle East/India
The Sufis of the ancient Middle East told tales of a bird that flew invisibly over the earth, never landing, never resting, called the Huma. Every few hundred years the bird would ignite and emerge from its own ashes. It was described as a bird of paradise with one side of the body being female and the other male. Some tales claim that the Huma did not like to kill and ate carrion instead.

Unlike the phoenix in other cultures, the Huma was not captured or even pursued in Sufi stories. Catching a glimpse of the creature or being touched by its shadow was enough to change the life of the hero. Having the Huma's shadow touch a man's head or shoulder bestowed kingship upon the man, or in the case of spiritualism, made him a high mystic.

Th Huma represented spirit, air, and water to the Sufi and good fortune to some others.

East Asia
In the previous cultures, the phoenix was a single entity, living and reproducing all by its lonesome. In Asia, this was not so. In ancient China the phoenix was a pair of male and female creatures called Fenghuang--Feng being male and Huang being female. Over the centuries they have been combined into one feminine creature which is often depicted with the masculine dragon to satisfy the concepts of yin and yang. They were supposed to live in the Kunlun Mountains, be the leaders of all birds, and to be immortal.

The oldest descriptions of Fenghuang are a bit bizarre. It was made up of the breast of a goose, the back of a tortoise, the hind legs of a stag, the neck of a snake, the forehead of a fowl, the face of a swallow, the beak of a rooster, and the tail of a koi. Not exactly my idea of beauty, but I imagine the various parts symbolized important things to the ancient Chinese. In modern times it is described as a combination of beautiful birds with the head of a golden pheasant, the tail of a peacock, the body of a duck, the legs of a crane, and the wings of swallow.

The Fenghuang is associated with the direction south, divine power, loyalty, honesty, virtue, grace, and is a representation of yin-yang.

Like the Persian simurgh, the Fenghuang's greatest enemy was the snake, and it is frequently depicted in art attacking serpents.

The Fenghuang is another creature that scholars think might be based on a prehistoric bird. In this case, the Asian Ostrich with its long, snake-like neck.

Russia
In Russian folklore, the phoenix is referred to as Zhar-Ptitsa, or the Firebird. It is a large bird with brilliantly glowing feathers from a far off land. In more modern times it has been depicted more and more like a peacock. The feathers keep glowing even after it falls off the creature.

The Firebird's role in myth and legend is as the object of a quest for capture rather than as an advisor or helper of the hero. In some tales capturing the Firebird is a blessing, in some a curse, and in others both. It is also frequently associated with stealing apples, usually from a king's garden.

It seemed to represent the payoff after a struggle.

Greece and Rome
The Greek and Roman tales are intertwined and share sources, so I'm going to present them here together. They are also where we get most of our modern view of the phoenix. In fact, the name phoenix seems to come from the Greek word a certain shade of purple, which seems to have come from the fact that the Phoenicians were known for creating a particular purple dye and nicknamed "the purple people".

In the basic version, the phoenix lived in India and flew to the temple in in Heliopolis, the city of the sun in Egypt, every 500 years where it immolated itself on the alter. Over the next three days, a new phoenix emerges from the ashes and then flies back to India to live.

There are several variations regarding the creature's appearance. It is anywhere from the size of a hawk up to the size of an eagle. The colorations mentioned are like gemstones, or with a gold band around the neck, a purple body, and a blue tail, or gold and red.

Sometimes the story explains that the phoenix builds a nest on the alter, which is sometimes sprinkled with sulfur, usually from myrrh or cinnamon sticks. The nest then ignites either from the sun or by the phoenix striking the alter with its beak. Within three days, the new phoenix transforms from a worm or maggot into the glorious phoenix.

In earlier forms, the phoenix died in India, Egypt, or Arabia by either burning or an unexplained method. The body or ashes were then carried to Heliopolis by the new phoenix with an egg made of myrrh.

In another version the phoenix eats only incense and cardamom sap. When it's life is at an end, it builds a nest of fragrant barks and twigs and dies. The new phoenix emerges from the body of the old one then carries the entire nest, with the remains of the dead phoenix, to Heliopolis.

The phoenix was a symbol of fire, the sun, regeneration, divinity, and eternity.

Christianity
Christians adopted the legend of the phoenix fairly early on as a representation of Christ and it continues to be popular in that aspect today. The early Catholics justified this representation by pointing to Psalm 92:12 which used the word "bennu", but it was actually being used to refer to a type of palm tree and has been challenged over the centuries. Later, Job 29:18 became the more favored justification based on the use of the word "hol" which can mean "sand" or "phoenix" and the reference to a nest.

The symbology of the phoenix to Christians is fairly elegant. Various writings present the following associations and lessons:

1. The idea that there is only one phoenix matches the idea that there is only a single god.
2. The phoenix' birth from its ashes represents the resurrection of Christ.
3. The three days it takes the phoenix to become itself matches the number of days it took Christ to be reborn.
4. The use of aromatic plants represents virtue.
5. The story of the phoenix' rebirth is seen as proof of Christ's resurrection arguing that if a bird can do it, so could the Son of God.
6. The idea that the phoenix lives its entire life in one place is an example of how Catholics should live their life, not wandering and searching for greater things but finding reward in faith and the Church.

Appearances in Pop Culture:
Books and games where the phoenix creature appears as itself.

Fiction
*Feersum Endjinn, a science fiction novel by Iain M. Banks: The simurgh appears as an avatar.
*Xanth, a fantasy series by Piers Anthony: The simurgh appears as an immortal and wise bird.
*Rostam, a comic book series by Hyperwerks: The simurgh appears as an immortal and wise bird.
*Harry Potter, a fantasy series by J.K. Rowling: The phoenix appears as Professor Dumbledore's patronis and his "pet" named Fawkes, who assists the main character.
*Phoenix, a fantasy novel by Steven Brust: The phoenix flies over members of the House at their birth.

Film
Fantasia 2000

Games
*Final Fantasy X & XI, computer games by Squaresoft: The simurgh appears as enemy and notorious enemy respectively.
*Yu-Gi-Oh!, the trading card game by Upper Deck Entertainment/Konami: The simurgh appears as Simorgh - Bird of Divinity, Simorgh - Bird of Ancestry, and Dark Simorgh.

Further Reading
*The Myth of the Phoenix - According to Classical and Early Christian Traditions - R. Van den Broek
*Entry for the Phoenix in Wikipedia
*Entry for the Phoenix in The Aberdeen Bestiary
*Dave's Mythical Creatures and Places: Phoenix
*The Medieval Bestiary: Phoenix
*SurLaLune Fairy Tales Site

Report on Monster Museum??

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:33:00 +0000

Are you going to Scarborough Faire... par... Ack! Actually, if anyone is going to or has been to Scarborough in Waxahachie, TX and checks out The Mythical Monster Museum housed in Nocturne Keep, I would dearly love a report on it. It looks to be less like a haunted house and more like a... museum.

In fact, if anyone has been to ANY monster museum or something similar, I would love to hear about it.

Please contact me at wishwords@gmail.com

Clash of the Titans Remake

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:01:00 +0000

This isn't what I was expecting my first creature post to be about, but I can't miss the opportunity.

Warner Brothers has just begun work on its remake of "Clash of the Titans". You can read more at The Geek Files.

What the heck is this blog about, and what can you get out of it?

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 11:36:00 +0000

The short answer is: cool information to inspire you to write or read about legendary creatures that you may not have heard of before.

In each regular future post you will find the following things:

1. The basic description of whatever supernatural creature I decide to focus on. It could be popular or something less common.
2. The oldest information about the creature that I can find.
3. What scholars think gave rise to stories about the creature or what inspired it.
4. Any significant changes that the creature has gone through since its origin.
5. The modern version of the creature.
6. A short list of modern instances of the creature (books, movies, music).
7. A short piece of original fiction (by myself or a guest) that includes the featured creature.
8. An invitation to write your own short piece or create your own visual image and submit a link in the comments.

Inbetween the regular posts there will be:

1. Interviews with fiction authors who feature creatures and other interesting people.
2. Links to news stories, websites, and forums that discuss supernatural creatures.
3. Announcements of books, TV shows, and movies that will feature supernatural creatures.

I have been fascinated by supernatural creatures since I was very small. There are so many out there that most people have never heard of, and I want to remedy that. So please enjoy my obsession.

Huge changes coming

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:28:00 +0000

The focus of this blog is about to change. There are a million blogs out there by new writers about writing. There's no need to go there again.

This blog will now focus on supernatural creatures.

"For centuries, storytellers have told tales of creatures living secretly alongside humanity. Just Out of Sight explores those creatures and tales from origins to modern incarnations in the hopes of inspiring modern storytellers to look 'round the bend and give life to monsters and heroes with their telling."

The first post on the new subject should appear soon.

News, news, news

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 18:51:00 +0000

You can read my latest published story on-line for free at Crossed Genres all this month. It's a humorous story about an unemployed fairy godmother.

Also, I've signed up for 31 Days to Build a Better Blog presented by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger. That means you should be seeing some changes here and hopefully more content.

Speaking of changes, what do you think of the new layout?

Critiqueing poetry

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:29:00 +0000

In my writers' group there is a member who occasionally submits poetry for critique. Frequently, the response to a poem submitted for critique (not just in my group, but in any writing group) is low or is prefaced with "I don't know much about poetry..." which can be kind of disheartening. Instead of giving up, C decided that if she is going to get more critiques she needs to help the other members be more comfortable with critiquing poetry. After all, it's just another genre, but there are mental blocks in place for a lot of us. And I agree with her.

I never, ever read Romance, Christian lit, or gory horror for enjoyment, yet I don't hesitate to critique them for my group. Yes, they follow the same rules as other prose genres, but they are still areas I'm not overly familiar with and don't usually enjoy. I have to set my prejudices aside in order to give a helpful critique to the authors. Poetry is similar with a couple significant differences.

Poetry critiquing is hard for me, partially because I don't read or write it, partially because feel like so much more emotion goes into poetry than prose from the writer's perspective, but also because I find beautiful language enjoyable on its own. I can get lost in the language and not notice that I don't know what the poem "means". The rhythm and rhyme can carry me away and I finish reading with a smile on my face even if the poem doesn't tell me what the author wanted.

She thanked me for always trying to critique her poems and for trying to help her teach the group. (I found some guidelines for critiquing poetry and posted them to the group then commented on how I had used them to create what I hoped was a helpful critique.) I had to admit that my reasons were partially out of guilt and partially selfish. See, if a poet is going to take the time to write these lines and brave presenting them to the group, then I feel like I owe it to her to at least try to critique her work just like I would any short story submitted. Besides, I expect her to critique my crappy prose. That's the guilt part.

The selfish reason is that poets are masters of evocation and imagery. They use language in a way that most prose writers don't normally (especially beginning ones like me). I figure if I can learn by recognizing how a poet's words affect me and how that differs from the effect she intended, I will be a much better writer.

To me, a prose writer is a storyteller telling a tale with words. A poet is a painter and composer using words to create a melody of images.

The best writers are both. I want to be that.

And I think I've utterly failed in the composition of this post. Geez, can I ramble?

Goals?

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:03:00 +0000

A comment by a friend of mine got me to thinking about goals, critique groups, and the changing publishing industry.

Sitting at a point two years gone from joining a critique group and reading all the uproar about the publishing industry and how in Japan they are not only selling stories written for cell phones but written ON cell phones, and how Important People are predicting the end of print and a time when all stories will be free on blogs for reading, a fledgling writer such as myself might wonder just why the hell I'm bothering. I might question why I meet with the critique group other than for the camaraderie. And that's perfectly valid.

But if I sit back and look over the past dozen years, I get a much different view.

Writers like me, join critique groups because they want to get feedback on their writing and become better writers. Quickly after joining, we discover that we also want to help others become better writers because this is a journey that is better when accompanied.

As we spend time with our groups, put more work into our writing, and get encouragement, it's not abnormal to begin to think that our goal is to see a book with our name on it in bookstores and on a bestseller list. We start thinking that the only proof of our value as writers is to be In Print. This is even easier when other members of the group get published. We get that itch to catch up and prove we are as worthy as the others.

But that is false thinking, at least for me. The core goal is still to become a better writer. Everything else depends on that and is simply tasty icing.

Right now the publishing industry and everyone connected to it is having purple-striped, fire-breathing kittens. In some corners, the sky isn't just falling, it's throwing chunks of the moon and space junk at us on its way down. But that's not so either. The industry is changing. That's a given. No one knows exactly how it will change even though there are plenty of Experts willing to tell you that They Know. They don't Know; they speculate. And that's fine. It's good to look toward the future and consider possibilities.

One thing I can guarantee (Yes, you can quote me; I Know) is that storytelling is not going to disappear. The oldest profession is supposedly prostitution, but I would argue that storytelling is damn close. Humans can not live without storytellers and the dreams they weave.

I don't know if my first book will be published in print, as an ebook, on the web, or as a podcast. I don't know if my first paycheck will be in dollars and cents, virtual money, credit with on-line stores, dinner coupons, or word fame. But I know I will write it, and I know people will read it.

The critique group continuously helps me realize my core goal. Because of that, I feel like I will realize my dream goal, whatever form that might take.

Review of "The Stepsister Scheme" by Jim Hines

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:25:00 +0000

This is a very entertaining book. I'm not much of a fan of the Disney princesses, but I'd heard that these princesses were different. And they are. These ladies are quite competent in their areas of expertise. Also, Mr. Hines didn't use the watered down, modern version of fairytales to base his characters on; he used the grittier, older versions. And then he threw in twists.

I expected to not like Cinderella. I don't like her fairytale and in the first few pages of this book she seemed true enough to that tale for me to dismiss her as a twit. But she became my favorite character. Don't get me wrong, nothing the princesses do seems out of character; it's just that Mr. Hines goes deeper into their character and tales to pull out possibilities that previous authors didn't think of. But they aren't super heroes. They are competent, skilled, powerful in their own ways, scarred, and flawed. I was invested in these characters, admired them, feared for them, and loved them.

My only complaint, and it is extremely petty, is that in a couple of descriptive passages there were mistakes that I thought an editor should have caught. In addition to the book being well written, it's extremely well edited. In this day and age when books by well-known genre authors are full of careless editing, I was impressed by the quality of it in this paperback edition. Which could explain why the few errors jumped off the page at me. If that's the worst thing I can say about the book…

I almost forgot to mention the jokes. Throughout, there are subtle innuendos and not so subtle jokes. Some of them are quite adult, but you have to be paying attention.

I love a well-crafted book that is also entertaining. I will definitely be buying the rest of the princess tales as they are published.

Werewolf novel update

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:56:00 +0000

My muse is a sneaky thing, wielding inspiration like an angry young man hiding just around the dark corner with a broken board scavenged from a construction site trash pile. I found the beginning of my post apocalyptic werewolf novel when I wasn’t looking for it. Care to follow my journey?

The other day I asked on my LiveJournal for recommendations of books with excellent endings to study for a class I will be teaching in June. I took the list to Half Price Books the other afternoon. A wonderful book geek led me to the "Reading List" shelf which seems to be stocked with the books everyone should read before they die, and we found most of the ones I was looking for. Each book that we pulled off the shelf suggested another one that begged to be read.

One of the books, Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank was nowhere to be found. My new friend walked behind his desk and pulled it off the shelf. I vaguely remember hearing the title years ago, but knew very little about the story. I read the back cover and immediately thought of another book.

"Do you have On the Beach?" I asked. I remembered seeing bits of the movie one day a while back. He we handed me an old Ballantine paperback, "Good choice."

This weekend I took The Stepsister Scheme for pleasure reading, The New Square Foot Gardening for planning, and several of the new books for studying. I looked through each book trying to decide which one to read first. I picked up On the Beach and looked at the page behind the cover. I expected to see either a bit from the book or some blurbs. There were two blurbs; however, the surprise was a three-paragraph prologue:

In the Northern Hemisphere, the end had come suddenly, disastrously, touched off by a skirmish that became a nuclear war.

In the Southern Hemisphere, the end would come slowly, as radiation drifted in the wind. There would be time to prepare, time to seek solace in religion, or alcohol, or frenzied sex, or in the thing that one had always wanted to do. To drive a fast, expensive car. To buy some splendid object with one’s life savings. To consume the best bottles of wine from the cellar of one's club.

In the end, when the sickness could not be stopped, the government would issue cyanide pills to those who waited, hoping they would not have to use them, knowing they would.

I read it to L and he immediately said, "Now that’s a good beginning."

And I thought, 'I wish I could write something like that. It perfectly explains what happened before the story begins.' And then I stepped around the corner and right into the full swing of that damn muse. Thankfully, instead of getting a smashed face, I got an idea.

I've struggled to explain the war and origins of all the living myths within my story. I'd rejected the idea of a prologue because it would be a book killer. Who wants to read pages of back story, right? But three paragraphs... three pointed, powerful paragraphs followed by an already excellent hook... now that’s a good beginning.

Welcome back

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:31:00 +0000

The last several months have been very bad for me as far as writing goes. There are lots of reasons contributing to it, but the solution is to treat my ADHD. I have high hopes for this medication. I'm already focusing better and ideas keep popping into my head.

My writers' group is embarking on what we are calling 6MoNo (six month novel). Most members will take their NaNoWriMo novel and attempt to turn it into a decent draft by the end of June. I'm going to try to finish the draft of my werewolf novel and possibly revise it. When we are all done, we will trade manuscripts and critique. I think it's a worthwhile venture.

As far as the memoir goes... there are apparently several similar works being shopped around and mine doesn't have as much sex or violence as them. So, I'm going to work on turning it into a novel (meaning fiction rather than memoir) and post it to my website. I'm not sure when I'll begin on this.

I'm also beginning research for a novel I'm calling "Amadeus" at this point. It should be interesting.

Well, here's hoping that the coming year will be more productive than the past one.

KBR Electrical issues

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:35:00 +0000

Please note that I am not an electrician. Therefore, my interpretation of the details my husband has told me could be wrong. For part of my contract, I worked the Service Call Desk where the military came to report maintenance problems. I knew most of what was going on, on the base as far as maintenance issues. Also, we were on Al Asad AB, Iraq, not in Baghdad, not in the Green Zone. We were out in the middle of the Al Anbar Province.

When I met my husband in Iraq, he was a KBR electrician, a licensed journeyman. Going from working union jobs in the States to working in Iraq was trying experience for him. In the States, anything he wanted; tools, supplies, equipment was available for the asking or just by running down the street to the local Home Depot or Lowes. Not in Iraq.

He quickly discovered was that the few tools he was issued were made from substandard materials. The screwdrivers would chip and sometimes bend with normal use. Tools such as pliers and Klines would come apart at the screw joint, and the rubber-wrapped handles would peel off. A lot of his coworkers had their personal tools shipped to them, despite the possibility of the mail shipment never arriving or their tools being stolen once they got them.

All the wiring and cables in Iraq were metric. He'd never worked with metric or substandard materials. He's told me stories of going through spools and spools of cable or wire trying to figure out what he needed, throwing his hands up in the air, and yelling in frustration about not being able to get some normal supplies.

In the States, the electrical code calls for using the green wire as the ground. Standardization saves lives. You open a panel, see the green wire and know exactly what it's doing. In Iraq, some of the electricians were unlicensed and had never studied the code or were from third world countries where safety didn't matter. Anyone who complained about "code" issues was told that Iraq wasn't the States and OSHA and the electrical code didn't apply.

I've heard people say, "Why didn't you just label the wires with colored electrical tape?" or similar things. Because they didn't have colored electrical tape. Sometimes they didn't have black electrical tape. Sometimes they didn't even have duct tape.

When we talk about there being a supply problem in Iraq, we aren't kidding. We don't mean that it took a couple of days to get things; we mean that it took months and sometimes years to get things. A lot of the time when the supplies came in they were from Turkey or Syria and didn't come close to American standards. Picture the cheapest supplies you can get at Home Depot; what we got was even lower quality.

We knew an electrician that needed to install a breaker panel for a group of tents. He didn't have a panel so he made one from an ammo box. You did the best you could with whatever you could find or steal. And yes, we stole. We stole from the military, other contractors, and each other. When your job is on the line if a project isn't completed, you do what you'd never do in the States.

One of the issues the electricians had was how to ground steel-shell buildings in a desert environment. You can drive six-foot steel rods into the earth, but if there is no moisture in the earth, the building won't be grounded. To top it off, the buildings were from Turkey and Syria. The wiring inside didn't meet American code to begin with. But the guys did the best that they could.

Most everything was powered by generator. None of the generators were designed for a desert environment. The generator techs were some of the most overworked people we had. Every time it rained (yes, the winter in Iraq brings tons of rain), or a sandstorm blew through, they spread thin across the base trying to bring the generators back up. The electricians had to help because half the time the problem was that the cables, which were buried between the generators and whatever they were powering, had gotten wet and literally exploded out of the ground. The cables weren't armored or coated properly, so they weren't waterproof. It took a lot of rain to seep through the moon dust of the Iraqi desert, but it eventually did.

Several months before we left Iraq, KBR began getting ready to take over the hard buildings (the buildings built by Saddam). All the departments had to do assessments on each building and turn in estimates for what it would cost to fix everything in the buildings. The electricians invariably recommended replacing every light fixture, outlet, switch, panel, and all the wiring itself. The stuff was twenty-years-old and was crap when it was initially installed. No one wanted to touch it.

Up until that time, whenever there was a problem in a hard building, it would be turned over to the SeaBees or a local unit's maintenance personnel. At Al Asad, they wanted KBR to fix the stuff because even with our supply and employee problems, we had the best available. We weren't allowed to work on the hard buildings because they weren't included in our contract.

Want to know a secret? Sometimes we did it anyway. A Soldier or Marine would come to me at the Service Desk and the story they would tell was terrifying or disgusting. Yeah, we civilians were there for the paycheck, but we lived with these men and women, and we cared about them. When the SeaBees or maintenance just couldn't handle it, I'd write up a ticket for an "assessment". We were allowed to go into a building, assess a problem, and tell the maintenance teams what they needed and what they had to do to fix a problem. I knew which electricians, plumbers, and HVAC techs to give those assessments to. Usually, about the time the assessment was finished, the problem was miraculously repaired. No one talked about how that happened.

Yeah, KBR employed some lazy, lothesome SOBs. But they also employed some caring, resourceful, talented people. We did what we could with what we could get our hands on.

KBR water issues

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:54:00 +0000

I've been reading a lot lately about these issues, and since I have experience with both, thought I'd go ahead and talk about them. We'll talk about the water first. I worked at Al Asad AB from July 2004 to December 2006. As soon as we arrived, we were told not to use the water in the ab units to brush our teeth or drink because it was non-potable. The water in our showers stank, so I wasn't tempted.

In September of 2004, I was sitting with a boyfriend near the water tank that fed the KBR women's ab unit. One of our friends drove up in a water truck and climbed the ladder. We knew something odd was going on because the tanks had been filled just an hour or so before, and the driver didn't take the fill hose up with him. So, we accosted him when he climbed down with a bag in his hand.

He told us they'd found ecoli in the water and they were superchlorinating every tank on base that night. The problem was that the tanks were all full and the chlorine was just floating on top.

By the next day, they had all the tanks superchlorinated and continued to keep them that way at least until I left. You could smell the chlorine when you took a shower, washed your face in the sink, or even sat on a toilet. It dried out our skin. I don't know when the problem was found, but I do know when they started fixing it.

Camp Hope

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 23:09:00 +0000

I want to direct you to a great article I read today. A man lost his son, PFC Christopher Neal White, in Iraq. Christopher loved the outdoors. In order to create a living memorial to Christopher, the family purchased 180 acres near Farmington, MO, near my own hometown. They are turning it into a place for disabled veterans to hunt, camp, hike and just enjoy the outdoors. They are building a handicap accessible lodge, the plans for which were donated by a vet. Go check it out: http://soldiersmind.com/2008/06/29/a-living-healing-monument/

Blogging about views

noreply@blogger.com (Wishwords) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:04:00 +0000

As someone writing a memoir about Iraq, I suppose I'm expected to have opinions on the war, KBR, independent contractors, and such. I do. I'm just never sure how to express them in a blog. When I read articles about these subjects, I usually compare them to my personal experiences and notice that my views are sometimes significantly different than those of the person writing the article. That leads me to believe that posting those views as snippets in a blog isn't the best way to make myself understood. Readers need all the context that comes with living the experience because experience colors point of view. Hopefully, the memoir will provide that.

One thing I can say, I like the articles about people coming home, battlefield compassion, and deserved recognition best.