Changes

It's about time the blog reflected a major change in my writer's identity -- to use my real name instead of a pseudonym. I guess when one is this close to being published, one begins to reconsider things like that.

Using a pseudonym is a good idea if one wants to cloak ones identity, not embarrass ones relatives or, if the title starts to compete with the likes of Harry Potter, go places without being recognised. I suppose in such a case, it would only be a matter of time before people discovered who the author really was anyway.

I'll also probably need to restructure the page to be more of an author's page. Perhaps I'll eventually need a new website. I've already changed the blurb. The facitious sounding one you see up there now may be only temporary, until I think better of it, or find a better one. The older one was descriptive of my intent for doing a blog, but it's probably better to let blog surfers judge by the content.

One positive reason for using my own name is just to give the Charters name a bit more notoriety. I don't know of any Charters (with that spelling) who have distinguished themselves. Some, using alternate spellings of the name, such as Chartres, and Charteris, have written books and such, but it's about time the name Charters got a little airing out. I think it's a Huguenot name, originally spelled Chartres, the same as the cathedral town in France, where they came from. There are possible connections with the Bourbon dynasty as well, but I don't think any of us have any claim to the French throne, or anything of that sort. Anyway, that's a bit far back, and you certainly wouldn't know it looking at the motley crew we are today. So far, though, I haven't been able to trace my direct genealogy farther than my great-grandfather, Samuel Charters, of Artnigros, who was a lock-keeper on the river Bann.

My Childhood Friend

A few weeks ago, my family and I had lunch with Beth, a childhood friend of mine. I had been in email contact with her off and on for a few years, but I hadn't seen her since we were teen-agers. Even then, it was for a brief few days. We had known eachother as play/school mates for a period of nine years, since I was five and she was three, until I was thirteen and she was eleven. Twice, during that time, her parents were my house parents, so they became like uncle and auntie to me. I was in email contact with her mother, who was supportive of some of my writing endeavours, until she passed away in 2004.

Anyway, she has opened a blog page for the purpose of telling of her trip, which she made with her two grown sons. The link takes you to the very last page, because you have to work your way forwards from there to get the story in chronological order. There's a photo of her son, Micah with my son, Abie, as well as one of my family in Lumpini Park, a favourite spot of ours when we were young.

How to be Humble without being a Wimp

Here's a good definition of humility from the Chavad people...

It's the sense of, "Yes I know who I am, what I can do and what I can't. But I stand in the presence of something much larger than my little self, so much larger that there isn't any room left for any vestige of my own ego. Something before which a thousand universes are less than dust and from which all things extend. Something which is infinite, transcendent and yet pervades all things."

Sheep Comics

I was pointed to this on Len Hjarmalson's blog. I reminds me of some of my own takes on sheep and chickens. The sheep in these cartoons says some of the same things a lot of us are trying to say... anyway, happy reading

Consuming Jesus

Scot McKnight is reading through Paul Metzger's book, Consuming Jesus, and doing a discussion of it on his blog. It's about how consumerism has invaded the western church. Metzger sees that as the root of inherant racism and classism (why whites only go to white churches, blacks go to black chruches, people only fellowship with people their own social class etc.). Basically, it's because the chuch has swallowed the consumerist lie, that everyone is entitled to what they want. Keep the customer satisfied, at all costs, even if it means trashing the costs of discipleship. He sees the born again experience as being the answer -- the vital ingredients being regeneration, repentance and reconciliation.

From this blog: a loud "Amen!"

Eetoo - the rough draft

I've completed the rough draft. At the moment, my two most faithful readers are reading it, my dad and my aunt.

It' s cross genre science fiction (space opera) / historical fiction. Has anyone ever heard of that?

I suppose one could cite various stories about time travel, perhaps a few episodes of Dr. Who, or Star Treck, or one T.V. program I saw once in which the characters specialised in going to various points of history and made sure things happened the way they should; i.e. that Sparticus started his revolution, etc. as though these things wouldn't have happened without help. Of course, everyone they met throughout history spoke English with an American Midwest accent.

Eetoo isn't about time travel, though. The whole story takes place in the first century, where humans have been living since the (fictitious) Nephteshi empire (predating the rise of Egypt) removed itself to a new planet using a technology that enabled space travel and exploration.

In the story, Eetoo and a friend find their way to Earth at time that's pivital for both Earth's and galactic human history. He doesn't altar the course of Earth's history (as many a sci fi author has done), but what he finds affects the course of humanity living in space.

First century Jewish and Christian history is something has been a pet subject for study of for 16 years now, since I started writing my first (as yet unpublished) novel, The Emissary. I think I sufficiently understand all the factors affecting the times, the Messianic expectation, the various groups like the Pharisees (Beit Hillel, Beit Shammai, etc), the state of the High Priestly system, the Essenes, the intense hardships cause Roman imperialism and local corruption etc. to make it a real to life story. It owes a lot to what's called "Jesus Study".

Also, I've poured in my understanding of culture and linguistics, some from study and some from experience. Eetoo's culture is partly based on Karen (an tribal group stradling the Thai Myanmar border). There are other cultures there as well. I think I've portrayed all the cultures so there won't be such a clash between those living in space and the Greco/Jewish culture of Palistine and Egypt.

I might be tempted later to post a future draft on my website for a limited time.

Eetoo

I had told myself I don't have time to be starting on a new novel. I have ideas for several more, and when ideas come, I simply open up a file containing my plot outlines and ideas, and add them in. I even had opening chapters for three of them. One of them had been getting so full that I started writing a second chapter, then a third, and now, of course, I'm hopelessly in the middle of a Space Opera type SF narrative.

The setting is actually in the past, about first century, but it takes place in space. The premis is that an ancient civiliation predating the Egyptian rise to being a world power, discovered technologies that enabled space travel, and even relocating their nation, topsoil and vegitation to a new planet.

The narrative shifts constantly between two viewpoints: Eetoo, always written in present tense first person, and that of Heptosh (later in the novel, by a different charracter), who gives a third person viewpoint with the understanding of the technologies and other factors involved (which Eetoo can't do as he's the member of a primative tribe.

Anyway, I'll past in the opening two scenes below:

Eetoo’s story: This is the third time I've seen a light moving about in the sky.
The first time, I told Uncle Oo Paw about it. He said it was only a shooting
star. I thought it was too slow for that, but I figured maybe he was right and
my mind was playing tricks on me. The second time was a week ago. I knew it was
definitely too slow to be a shooting star. I didn't tell anyone though. They
wouldn't believe me.
Now I know it isn't a shooting star. Shooting stars don't stop and go back the way they came. But they'd probably say I was lying. They already say that knowing how to read the ancient writing makes my head too cloudy.
They just don't take me very seriously -- even though I've had my manhood ceremony. I'm supposed to be a man. I'm what they call 'thirteen years old'. A 'year' is the amount of time it takes for the earth to go around the sun, plus three tenths of that. Our ancestors once lived in a place where the earth went around the sun in exactly one year. It got cold during part of the year, and hot during another, so it was easy to tell when a year went by. Also, they had a big round light in the sky that would change into something real thin, and round only on one side, and then back again. It did that twelve times in a year. That must have been weird to look at! Even though we don't live there any more, we still count time like that. It's the way of the Fathers, they say.
That really bright star there is part of something called the 'Zodiac'. Where our ancestors lived, they could see the whole thing. That star was the faintest. Here, it's one of the clearest, but it's the only star from the Zodiac that we can see. I know all that from reading the Writings. I just don't get it. If our ancestors came from the stars, how did we get here? Venerable Too Da says, 'In ships.'
Couldn't that light I've been seeing be a ship?
Venerable Too Da is different from the others. He take me seriously,
probably because he can read, and knows it isn't bad for you. He taught me to
read. He wanted to make me the next Keeper of the Writings. Noo Paw and Noo Maw wouldn't have it though. They wanted their son, Noo, to be, even though I'm a
better student than him. I can read all the tablets now, and I can understand
them too. Noo doesn't even know the whole Nepteshi alphabet yet. He fools around
too much. He only knows some of the pictographs, and even then, he says them in
Fa-ti-shi that we speak every day. That upsets Venerable Too Da no end.
Ha ha! I remember when Ni and I spelled out some Fa-ti-shi words using the
Nephteshi phonetic letters. We thought t was the funniest thing, but Venerable
Too Da got real upset. 'It's a sacred language,' he said. He would have given us
a beating, but he said we were young and didn't know what we were doing. He let
us off with a warning.
Then I asked Uncle Oo Paw why we don't make up some new letters to use for Fa-ti-shi. He just got real uptight, and said that reading and writing things in our own language would make people think more than what's good for them. Then he started scolding me for being too cloudy headed from too much reading of Nephteshi. He's glad they picked Noo to be the next Keeper of the Writings and not me.
Venerable Too Da's afraid he won't live long enough to teach Noo properly. He says maybe I could teach him more if only Noo weren't such a proud little brat. He couldn't understand why the village elders picked Noo and not me.
I think it's because Noo Paw and Noo Maw have such a big flock of sheep and a big house, and I'm only an orphan.
Ni could have been it as well, but he got sucked down the whirlpool. We never even found his body again.
Ni and I did everything together; we fished together, did
traditional wrestling together with Mo Paw, studied the ancient text with
Venerable Too Da.
Venerable Too Da has always been good to me though. He took
care of my Paw and Maw's flock of sheep after they died, and then gave them to
me at my man-hood ceremony. That way, I can at least maintain our family name as a sheep owning family. I could be a village elder one day!
The sheep look like they're doing okay. I think they're all asleep now. I should get some sleep too. It'll be a long trip back to the village tomorrow.
There's that light again...

Heptosh scanned the surface once more, this time at an altitude from which he could make out individual features. It was night on this side of the planet so his activity shouldn't raise any undue alarm from the inhabitants. They'd mistake him for a shooting star.
At least those on this side of the mountain divide. They were mostly primitive tribesmen. Here and there, he could pick out shepherds minding their sheep, or a caravan camped out for the night. These were harmless, but it wouldn't be good to interrupt their peaceful existence by suddenly appearing to them out of the sky.
It was those on the other side he was worried about. They were a more advanced
civilisation. At least they used to be.
If they were as they used to be, they'd present no problem either. The Klodi were a friendly nation, and there had been many happy interactions between them and the Toki human population. Then, there was some sort of struggle. The Klodi had sent out a warning not to enter their solar system until they had got their problem sorted out. They didn't say exactly what the trouble was, so the sector council issued a restriction, and waited. Then they went silent. That was many years ago.
Now, the restriction had expired. There was still silence.
Heptosh was here on a scouting mission.
So far, he had determined, the Famtishi half of the planet was safe. Civilisation was carrying on as it always had. Heptosh had spend the last several weeks making observations of life on the ground -- nothing to worry about here.
The worrisome bit was, what was on the other side of the divide?
Heptosh would fly at a low level across Famtishi territory towards the mountain range and sort of creep over in stealth mode below the range of their scanners.
He viewed the countryside below through his night viewing screen. He'd make his approach over an uninhabited bit of landscape.
What would he find on the other side?
He hoped very much it wouldn't be the Bionics.
They hadn't been detected in this sector of the galaxy as yet, but there were those little signs that made them wonder.