Doc says Rawr!

I’ve been writing fiction since I was ten years old–for fun, serious writing, not because I had to for school or any other reason.  Most of it has been crap.  Some of it’s been okay.  I haven’t reached a point where I have a manuscript ready to send off to agents or publishers…but that will come sooner rather than later, I’d suspect.

Today, in the midst of cleaning the house and weeding out in the garden, I came across a few of my writing magazines that I hadn’t finished reading–this happens often enough, that I’ll get one of them and not finish reading them to my satisfaction and then they get shuffled someplace in an effort to get my mother to stop complaining about how everyone’s stuff is everywhere cluttering up her house (not going to offer commentary on that one).  So, at some point today I sat down on the couch and thumbed through an article from the May/June 2010 issue of Writer’s Digest that had YA agents and editors talking about the category — how to break into it, what they’re looking for, that kind of thing.

It got me to thinking a bit.  I’ve always written younger protagonists (there are a few notable exceptions, including several of the major supporting cast members in Epsilon and The Last Colony–heck, Adam Windsor is a PoV character in The Last Colony and he’s in his fifties–as well as characters in Fate and Second Chances and its untitled sequel…though I’m not entirely sure elves and dragons count as “older protagonists”), characters ranging from their late teens through their twenties.  In some ways, my characters have aged with me and in others, they certainly have not.

Paranormal and speculative fiction have become huge in young adult fiction, and that subsegement of the genre have yielded works that have transcended the age category (see: Harry Potter and as much as I hate to mention it, Twilight–Vampires do not sparkle thank you very much!).  To carry this even further and away from the article I read, manga, Japanese graphic novels, tend to have speculative, paranormal, and fantastic elements to them as a matter of course.  Manga is extremely popular in the United States–and growing in popularity all the time.

Which brings me to what really got me thinking–the untitled sequel to my D&D-inspired Fate and Second Chances already has two very strong teenage protagonists in it–Alysta Riverden and Kaelen Verrel–and could quite possibly be transformed into a YA novel.  It’s something I’ll have to think about, because the story as it stands right now (in its very early stages–there’s only about 23500 words of ramble to it) is planned to be about as much about Alysta’s father, Talasin, as it is about Lysta and Kael.

But it’s entirely possible, and could be fun.  I’ll just have to do some homework on it, and some thinking.  But maybe.  Just maybe…

…after all, high adventure does well, too.

Back to medieval Latin today, and back to Adam of Murimuth’s Continuatio Chronicarum.

His temporibus rex Franciae multos conflictus habuit cum Flandrensibus, sed semper sine victoria remeavit.

His (hic, haec, hoc) – pronoun, dative or ablative form, plural; this, these

temporibus (tempus, temporis) – noun, dative or ablative; time, condition, right time, season, occassion, necessity

rex – noun, nominative; king, ruler

Franciae – noun, gen. possessive; France

rex Franciae – of France

multos – adj, accusative; many, much

conflictus – noun, accusative; clash, collision, impact, fight, contest, impluse, impression, necessity

habuit (habeo, habere, habui, habitus) – verb; have, hold, consider, think, reason, manage, keep, spend/pass (time)

cum – with, together with

Flandrensibus – noun; Flemish, from Flanders

sed – but, but also, yet, however, but in fact/truth, not to mention, yes but

semper – adv; always

sine – without

victoria – noun, ablative; victory

sed semper sine victoria – but always without victory

remeavit (remeo, remeare, remeavi, remeatus) – verb; go or come back, return

This season the King of France had many conflicts with the Flemish but always returned without victory.

Habuit and remeavit are the perfect active forms of the verbs, which are difficult to turn into English and have phrases make sense.

Today’s entry is a line from a poem by Catullus, the Roman poet.  The poem laments the “Death of a Pet Sparrow.”

Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque
et quantum est hominum venustiorum.

Lugete (lugeo, lugere, luxi, luctum) – verb; mourn, grieve

O – Oh!

Veneres Cupidinesque – Venuses and Cupids

et – and, even, however

quantum - adverb; how much, the most, the greater

est (sum, esse, fui, futurus) – verb; be, is

hominum -  noun; fellow, fellow creature, man, person, mortal

venustiorum – more charming

I grieve, oh Vensuses and Cupids
even of all the people it is one more charming than ordinary men!

Now, this translation is probably wrong because translations of Catullus hate me.  That is all.

I found today’s phrase in Lesley Coote’s Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England.  It is a fragment of “Sicut rubeum draconem,” a prophecy inspired by and reworked from the Prophecia Merlini.

In ultimis diebus albi drachonis semen ejus trifarium spergetur.[1]

In – prep.; in, on, into, at, among

ultimis – adj.; far, farther, farthest, latest, last, highest, greatest

diebus – noun; day, daylight

In ultimis diebus – In the last days

albi – white

drachonis – noun; dragon

albi drachonis – of the white dragon

semen – noun; seed

ejus – pronoun; his

trifarium – adj.; three-fold

spergetur -> dispergetur (dispergo, dispergere, dispersi, dispersus) – verb; to scatter

In the last days of the white dragon, his seed will be scattered about threefold.

Now…this translation was dicey because of “spergetur,” which doesn’t appear in any of my dictionaries and such.  Dispergetur, however, is a known word meaning “to scatter.”  I actually had to go back into my dictionary in English looking for a word that meant something that would fit into the phrase (in this case, I was looking for “to seed” or “to scatter (seeds).”  And that’s what I found.

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1. “Sicut rubeum draconem” in Lesley Coote, Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England, (Woodbridge, Suffolk: York Medieval Press, 2000), 61.

Today, we have a selection from something very near and dear to my heart, the Historia of Geoffrey of Monmouth.  The History of the Kings of Britain contains the Prophecia Merlini, which is where this selection is drawn from.

Sextus hybernie menia subuertet

Menia is actually moenia.  I really don’t think that they’re talking about overthrowing a small fish of Ireland.

 Sextus – proper noun in this case, translated simply as Sextus

hybernie – proper noun; Ireland

moenia – noun; walls, ramparts, defenses (all of a town or other area)

subuertet – verb; overturn, cause to topple, overthrow, destroy, subvert

Sextus will overthrow the defenses of Ireland

And now, back to our regularly scheduled thesis.

So for the past week or so I’ve been feeling the need to put pen to paper (literally) and do some freewriting.  I don’t do it often and so when the mood strikes, it’s strange.  So between thesis and cleaning, I’ve been freewriting.  I’m up to fourteen handwritten pages (almost fourteen pages, there’s only a few lines left on page 14 to write).  Freewriting is a strange thing…you never know what’s going to happen.

So I started with a first person point of view and rambled.  My narrator told me pretty quickly that her name was Julia (Julia Rhiannon, no less) and that she’d been living in this creepy little midwestern town for a few months because she’d been taking care of a sick (now deceased) relative that she’d been visiting there since she was eight.  Most of the town, especially the good Reverend at the local evangelical chapel, give her the heebie-jeebies.

Then there was this boy–maybe about her age, maybe a little younger, a mysterious, broken thing that on the surface looked crazy, “special,” or drugged.  He kept popping up, kept looking for her.  She found out his name was Darien fairly early on.  He came to her in moments of almost-lucidity and asked for her help.

Now…I knew by this point (heck, I knew by a few lines into the first page) that this story is in the same universe as my first Nanowrimo project ever, When All’s Said and Done, which has been on my mind in between thinking about Edward I and III because it’s about time I finally gutted the thing, revised it, polished it, and started sending it to publishers.  It’s a strangely disturbing piece, probably because there’s elements of it that are just maybe a little too real to not be creepy.  The freewriting ramble I’ve been working on was very clearly very intimately connected to the story of the Insitute, given Darien’s whisperings about the end and the Institute and how he’s very clearly reluctant to tell Julia the whole truth for fear she’ll either think he’s crazy or get herself into trouble with the sprawling installation just outside of the village of Andover Commonwealth.

I’m writing page 13 and 14 today, where Darien is giving up some of the secrets he knows about the place…and it hits me.  Bam.  Right between the eyes.

Darien isn’t Darien at all.

Darien is Ridley.

Now that revelation isn’t going to mean anything to anyone except for me and maybe one or two other people who may happen to stumble across this.  And if Miss Jen reads it, she’s going to blink and ask me who Ridley is and I’ll tell her.  And her eyes will get big and wide and she’ll be all “Ooh.”

And then she’ll ask if she can read the ramble.  And I’ll let her, because she’s Reece, and maybe someday Reece’ll actually meet up with this broken soul who feels like he’s betrayed people he cared about, people who cared about him in return.

All depends on what the redrafting process brings.  Either way, this ramble…fantastic background and yet another layer added into what was originally a lot less complex than it’s going to become.

More medieval Latin today, this one from the Cartularium Prioratus de Gyseburne, the salutation to a letter, to be exact.

Willelmus etc. dilecto filio, Abbati de Whiteby, salutem, gratiam et benedictionem.

Willelmus – William

etc. – et cetera; and so forth

dilecto – adj.; beloved, dear

filio - noun; son

Abbati de Whiteby – Abbot of Whiteby

salutem – greetings

gratiam – noun; thanks

et - and

benedictionem – noun; blessings

William and so forth, beloved son, Abbot of Whiteby, greetings, thanks and blessing.