The Coalition

Day 26 (35 in base 7) of re-writing my novel

I finished Part Two today! I will celebrate tomorrow (somehow). It is ~21,000 words.

The very end of Part Two explores what it is like to exist as a body without magic. Check out the following excerpt. Keep in mind, there are a TON of spoilers right here.

I blinked again, and Dolgof was on the ground.

I staggered back, clawing for Hota's arm, pulling them back as well as I stared at the Hero of Life's limp body, laying up against the lemon tree. Behind her stood the Hero of Earth. She gripped a syringe with white knuckles.

"What did you do," I shouted, "you killed her!"

Fangs bared, she kicked the Hero of Life. "Go on, tell him your dirty lie," she growled.

"Come," Dolgof whispered. "She won't hurt you."

Against my better judgment, I knelt down beside her. Her breathing slowed. Her hand laid over her stomach. Her cheeks drooped with fatigue. She was barely alive now, and she wouldn't be for much longer.

"I hid so much from you," she continued. "I hid myself from you for eighteen years. Only now-" she coughed "-only now do I tell you that, In Iziser."

She struggled for a breath. I lifted her head up. "What, what," I cried. My body shook, tears forming behind my eyes. "What is it?"

"You're my son."

No.

"I'm  your mother, Izi."

I gasped and staggered back, hands covering my mouth until I fell hard on the ground. Hota picked me up. Still wielding her syringe, I begged the Hero of Earth, "what did you do to her?""I took her magic," she snarled. "I took the Hero of Language's, too. I'm going to combine them all, myself, and save Meiste. That's the easiest-no, only-way."

A body without magic is, too, aimless and stumbling through existence. An existence without the magic that fundamentally makes people people in Meiste is a painful one. Dolgof, once the Hero of Life, will remain a vegetable until the end of the novel, once they're able to reunite her and her magic.

Hey! I'm David Peterson, and a few years ago, I wrote a book called Create Your Own Secret Language. It's a book that introduces middle grade readers to codes, ciphers, and elementary language creation. The age range is like 10-14, but skews a little bit older, as the work gets pretty complicated pretty quick. I think 12-13 is the best age range.

Anyway, I decided to look at the Amazon page for it a bit ago, and it's rated fairly well (4.5 at the moment), but there are some 1 star reviews, and I'm always curious about those. Usually they're way off, or thought the book was going to be something different (e.g. "This book doesn't teach you a thing about computer coding!"), but every so often there's some truth in there. (Oh, one not 1 star but lower rated review said they gave it to their 2nd grader, but they found it too complicated. I appreciate a review like that, because I am not at all surprised—I think it is too complicated for a 2nd grader—and I think a review like that is much more effective than a simple 10+ age range on the book.) The first 1 star rating I came to, though, was this:

Now calling a completely mild description of a teenage girl who has a crush on another girl controversial is something I take exception to, but I don't want to pile on this person. Instead I wanted to share how this section came to be in the book.

The book is essentially divided into four parts. The first three parts deal with different ciphers or codes that become more complicated, while the last part describes elementary language creation. The first three sections are each built around a message that the reader can decode, but with language creation, the possibilities are too numerous and too complicated, so there isn't an example to decode, or anything. It would've been too difficult.

For what the messages to decode are about, though, I could do, potentially, anything, so at first I thought to tie them into a world of anthropomorphic animals (an ongoing series of battles between cats and mice), with messages that are being intercepted and decoded. My editor rejected that. Then I redid it so that each section had an individual story that had to do with some famous work of literature. My editor rejected that as well. He explained that it needed to be something that was relevant to kids of the target age range. I was kind of at a loss, for a bit, but then I thought of a story of kids sending secret messages about their uncle who eats too many onions. I shared that, my editor loved it, and I was like, all right. I can do this.

The tough part for me in coming up with mini-stories to plan these coded messages around was coming up with a reason for them to be secret. That's the whole point of a code/cipher: A message you want to be sure no one else but the intended recipient can read in case the message is intercepted. With the first one, two kids are poking gentle fun at a family member, so they want to be sure no one else can read what they're writing. For the last one, a boy is confessing to a diary, because he feels bad that he allowed his cat to escape, but no one knows he did it (he does find the cat again). For the other, I was trying to think of plausible message-sending scenarios for a preteen/teen, and I thought of how we used to write notes in, honestly, 4th and 5th grade, but I aged it up a bit, and decided to have a story about a girl writing a note to her friend because she has a crush on another girl, and wants her friend's opinion/help.

Here's where the point of sharing this comes in. As I had originally written it, the girl's note to her friend was not just telling her friend about her crush, it was also a coming out note, and she was concerned what her parents would react poorly.

Anyway, I sent that off with the rest of my draft, and I got a bunch of comments back on the whole draft (as expected), but my editor also commented on that story, in particular. Specifically, he noted that not every LGBTQ+ story has to be a coming out story, the part about potential friction between her and her parents because of it was a little heavy for the book, and, in general, not every coming out story has to be traumatic.

That was all he said, but I immediately recognized the, in hindsight, obvious truth of all three points, and I was completely embarrassed. I changed it immediately, so that the story beats are that it's a crush, she's not sure if it'll be reciprocated, and she's also very busy with school and band and feels like this will be adding even more busy-ness to her daily life as a student/teen. Then I apologized for making such a blunder. My editor was very good about it—after all, that's what drafts and editors are for—and that was a relief, but I'm still embarrassed that I didn't think of it first.

But, of course, this is not my lived experience, not being a member of the LGBTQ+ community. This is the very reason why you have sensitivity readers—to provide a vantage point you're blind to. In this case, I was very fortunate to have an editor who was thinking ahead, and I'm very grateful that he was there to catch it. That editor, by the way, is Justin Krasner.

One reason I wanted to share this, though, is that while it always is a bit of a difficult thing to speak up, because there might be a negative reaction, sometimes there is no pushback at all. Indeed, sometimes the one being called out is grateful, because we all have blindspots due to our own lived experiences. You can't live every life. For that reason, your own experience will end up being valuable to someone at some point in time for no other reason than that you lived it and they didn't. And, by the by, this is also true for the present, because the lives we've lived cause us to see what's going on right before our eyes in different lights.

Anyway, this is a story that wouldn't have come out otherwise, so I wanted to be sure to let everyone know that Justin Krasner ensured that my book was a better book. An editor's job is often silent and thankless, so on Thanksgiving, I wanted to say thank you, Justin. <3

“It can take years. With the first draft, I just write everything. With the second draft, it becomes so depressing for me, because I realize that I was fooled into thinking I’d written the story. I hadn’t — I had just typed for a long time. So then I have to carve out a story from the 25 or so pages. It’s in there somewhere — but I have to find it.”

— David Sedaris

Yeah lol I was just hoping there was like a quote in that excerpt that might be helpful. Wither is a rockin' name though. Like, crazy good.

Hey, guys, I cometh with a question.

Do you guys know any poetic words, phrases, terms, etc, referring to death? Stuff that's more neutral, or melancholic, something that acknowledges death as a necessity of life and deems it almost beautiful.

It can be from any language, so long as it carries the meaning.

For complete transparency: this is for the name of a faerie character who personifies death.

They describe themself as: "the leaf that is evicted from the tree. {T}he ageing bones of a feeble grandmother. {T}he rot that gathers on a dead animal, the bugs that feed on its carcass, and the entire process of death.

"In short, I am Dying."

But uh—that'd be a temporary name for her. I'm trying to figure out his "real name" so to speak. They're someone who takes joy in their reaper-like role and finds mortality (and mortals' attempts to escape it) entertaining. They find their own domain fascinating, but clearly a cause for others' suffering.

Just not hers.

Anyone have a word/name that carries those kinda connotations? Again: it can be from any language!

(i'd appreciate a reblog for visibility)

Don't leave students in red states behind

This week, a teacher at Lewis and Clark Middle School in Meridian, Idaho was reprimanded by the West Ada school district for having a sign up in her classroom reading "Everyone is welcome here" she refused to take it down and went to the media with her story. The district responded saying everyone has to be a team player and the poster was discriminatory and distracting.

So students walked out.

This afternoon, a student-led walkout protest happened at the West Ada district office. Children are the future. Just because Idaho is a red state does not mean that rights violations and whitewashing are normal or par-for-the-corse.

this is not normal.

read the story here

Day 31 (1:01 in extended base 30 base 7) of rewriting my conlang.

Poll at the end!

Groups of thirty days are easier to count than pure groups of seven days, so I will now be implementing an extended base 30 where the first digit will go up to 42 (30 in base 10) and the next digit will count in base 12. A complicated way of approximating the number of years:months:weeks-days I've been writing.

Today I remembered that I'm writing my novel and can do what I want, so I added a pretty direct form of foreshadowing by mentioning that Mostijv was going to find a huge lava monster (named Tev) who would help her rebel against the oppressive, Odapir government and form the White Army.

Today, I fleshed out more of the Western Zenestian languages, but I'm not done with sound changes and grammar yet, so be on the lookout for that.

Also,

The only good thing from all of this is that now I have an in-depth understanding of the dynamics that create this kind of situation, which is kind-of a must for Evil Government TM. Easily the worst way to get an in-depth understanding of that but...

I have a foolproof strategy for worldbuilding these days (as an American):

Step 1: Wait for Trump/MAGA to do something stupid and perform insane levels of Orwellian double-think to justify it.

Step 2: Write it down and change the names around.

A Proper Introduction

It only now occurs to me that I haven't properly introduced myself (or this blog!) Welcome. I'm happy to have y'all. I'm Lex (they/them) (18+), your local siren, programmer, writer, worldbuilder, conlanger, composer, and gardener. I speak with a bit of a Southern accent.

This is my main (and only, for now) blog, where I mostly post about my writing endeavors and worldbuilding "woes" (I make myself suffer for fun.) In the future, I may make blogs devoted to specific conlangs or concultures, but I will probably make a website for that, first. If that happens, I will post it here. I follow other blogs I like ad nauseam.

Additionally, I'm always taking translation suggestions for any of my conlangs in any of my WIPs. At the moment, I only have two WIPs, which I'll list below, but I'm really only working on one right now.

My WIPs are:

It Will Hurt: And There Will be no Fire - (On hold) A story about a vegan big-V Vampire, her sister, her cofee bar, and a lot of people who want her power for themselves.

Meiste - (Current) A story about several Heroes running around and trying to restore "magical balance" while also navigating political and economic strife.

Moreover, current conlangs I'm accepting translation ideas for:

Ipol (and Sinezo 'speer)

Odapir

Atepsi

Kwalinu and Kwaleynnũ

Ytos and Itaush

Katla-Khi

Bumpe Nende

Knál Bnú and Kanál Banáu

I'm normally down for connecting with writing buddies, so if you're interested, feel free to DM me! I am also willing to proofread/edit others' works, in addition to helping however I can. I can make websites, make languages, and make music lol.

I promise I wrote today, so there will also be an update following this. Take care, y'all.

Some tips for using a few words to describe voices:

1. Tone Words: Use tone words to convey the emotional quality of a voice. For example, you can describe a voice as "melodic," "soothing," "sharp," "gentle," or "commanding" to give readers a sense of the tone.

2. Pitch and Range: Mention the pitch and range of the voice. Is it "deep," "high-pitched," "raspy," or "full-bodied"? This can provide insight into the character's age, gender, or emotional state.

3. Accent and Diction: Describe the character's accent or diction briefly to give a sense of their background or cultural influences. For instance, "British-accented," "Southern drawl," or "formal."

4. Volume: Mention the volume of the voice, whether it's "whispering," "booming," "murmuring," or "hushed."

5. Quality: Use terms like "velvet," "silken," "gravelly," "honeyed," or "crisp" to convey the texture or quality of the voice.

6. Rate of Speech: Describe how fast or slow the character speaks, using words like "rapid," "slurred," "measured," or "rambling."

7. Mood or Emotion: Indicate the mood or emotion carried by the voice. For example, a "quivering" voice may convey fear or anxiety, while a "warm" voice may express comfort and reassurance.

8. Resonance: Describe the resonance of the voice, such as "echoing," "nasal," "booming," or "tinny."

9. Timbre: Mention the timbre of the voice, using words like "rich," "thin," "clear," or "smoky."

10. Cadence: Highlight the rhythm or cadence of speech with descriptors like "staccato," "lilting," "rhythmic," or "halting."

11. Intonation: Convey the character's intonation by saying their voice is "sarcastic," "apologetic," "confident," or "questioning."

12. Vocal Characteristics: If applicable, mention unique vocal characteristics, like a "lisp," "stutter," "drawl," or "accented 'r'."