BATOMI – Worldbuilding: The Beginning aka “Where do your ideas come from?”

This is the beginning of a series of blogposts about worldbuilding and novel writing using one of my in progress novellas – The Trial of the Kouzinns. Some of the blogposts will be here for free and some will only be available to those on patreon, where I will also be posting the draft chapters of Batomi for my patrons.

Note the first: None of these blogposts are meant to imply that this is the definitive way things are done. AT ALL. I’m not even saying this is the way I work all the time.
Note the second: A specific thing I do as a writer but not everyone does – I don’t plan out the whole world before I start writing. I work out the basics I need and start writing and then build the world and write in tandem.

Where do your ideas come from?

A lot of writers I know dislike this question because it’s completely subjective and hard to articulate in a general sense. So I’m going to be talking specifically about where some of the core ideas for the world of Batomi come from. Like many of my works it was more a number of smaller ideas coming together.

1. A vague memory of a culture which had multiple queens and only one king, where the queens’ only power was deciding if the king should be replaced and who the new king would be. This resulted in the old King being put to death. (I can’t recall if this is history or from a book but it stuck with me for over two decades)
2. Current politics in the U.S. with a white supremacist sympathizer president and those who defend or appreciate the things he does that hurt other citizens feeling unaffected and privileged. I wanted to make it more of a discourse on culture though so it’s about the King obsessed with outside countries who look down on his own and view his country as “uncivilized”.
3. Organized crime and marginalized identity. The ways in which organized crime can become something like organized resistance when the people/organization that is supposed to protect/care about you no longer gives a shit and is actively working against you. I was thinking about gangs and people that have to police themselves and their own community. When does a protection racket become a informal police force?

The combination of these three ideas gave me the basic set-up for the world and the story I was going to tell: A corrupt king who had somehow circumvented the queens to stay in power for decades and was obsessed with turning his people into something they never were. A young girl, Constance, struggling to thrive, survive and care for her family being pulled into a life of crime that is also a life of resistance.

For myself as a writer, once I have the basic plot elements I ask myself a few questions about the world before I get started. For this work the questions were:
What’s the setting look like?
What’s the government look like?
What’s the religion look like?

SETTING

Now that I had a general idea it was time to fill some of the details of the physical setting. In terms of landscape I knew I wanted a nation of islands. Now most folks would go straight to Venice (and don’t get me wrong I love Venice) but I wanted to skew it more towards my own cultural heritage. My mother and her family are from the southern U.S. and are mostly Creole from Louisiana so I wanted to do something rooted in the geography of the southern U.S. So Batomi was going to be a delta, a huge bayou nation made up of 97 islands where freshwater met saltwater on the outer edges. Some islands are large and vital and some are tiny enough that only one or two families live on them.
I decided that Batomi was a historically powerful nation but because they were islands they lacked metal which of course affected their technology level. Therefore much of their technology is plant-based. For example firearms, elsewhere in the world they are at the level of flintlock pistols but these are rare except among the extremely wealthy or extremely well connected in Batomi. They do have homemade firearms in Batomi but they are larger, almost hand cannon things that are usually manned by two people with a barrel of treated and hardened plant trunk that can’t handle an actual bullet but is filled with shrapnel made of hardened tree sap. Swords and daggers are still widely used by most everyone and universally guns aren’t very accurate since they are almost all smooth bore.

For flora and fauna I was going to use the way I view nature in general and bayous in particular, always waiting to kill you. The surrounding environment would be beautiful and dangerous filled with gorgeous deadly snakes, brightly colored insects that could easily swarm, large herons that call in the night, flowers with delightful smells and deadly protections, crocodiles nesting on many islands and hippos…why hippos? Cause I wanted it and I love hippos! Finally I questioned whether I was going to call them by their real names or call a rabbit a smeerp? I decided to just use the real world names for real world plants and animals and save the smeerps for any flora or fauna I decided to create or…import (like hippos perhaps.)

GOVERNMENT

I wanted to use the traditional terms of King and Queen but also fuck with what those titles mean because as we know words and definitions change through time. I decided to use the King and multiple Queens scenario as a beginning point in the history of Batomi. In the past the King was a man married to the Queens who were five women with very little power on their own. In the current age though the five Queens are elected district positions with specific power over parts of the government that are more outward facing (diplomacy, economics, education, wetwork & the military) and also the ones who decide when the king needs to be replaced. The King is selected by the Queens and is the representative of the people, the public face of the government and in charge of more internal matters. Though the current King identifies as male there are no longer any genders associated with these specific titles.

Except that the current King has collaborated with outsiders, killed one queen, married another and the other three have been missing for well near 30 years. Three queens are needed to oust a King and since the three queens are missing and not dead and Queens are elected for life the districts cannot vote for new ones until they have proof of death. As for the one queen he killed? That seat has remained empty, with no one willing to take it up. The King has been listening to outside nations and adopting outside fashions, slowly exiling followers of the Beasts from the central islands first and now working on doing the same to the followers of the Invisibles. He’s been bringing in outside music and styles and slowly edging out his own culture, while not an outright tyrant he is known for his harsh punishments of those who commit crimes – some of which include traditions he has decided to outlaw. Constance, the main character, is of a generation that grew up with this King in power, while she knows things are wrong she believes the lie that everything is improving.

RELIGION

Anybody who knows me, knows that I’m fascinated by religion and belief so religion is something I always work out when I’m worldbuilding. I decided that Batomi had 63 separate powers, divided into three groups – Beasts, Invisibles & Blessed. Each with a very different position and power in society. Why 63? Because there are 97 islands and 9×7=63 (this is something I like to do in my writing, small number connections and other things like meaningful place and people names that will probably never be talked about in story but are part of my internal story telling)
Blessed gave up their physical forms aeons ago to exist as ideals that influence and guide all of Batomi and its people (or are supposed to). They lost their names when they did this and are now only known by their attributes such as Love or Justice. They are universally viewed as good. Even those that might be viewed as evil or ambiguous by those outside the culture such as Decay and Hunger are positive to those of Batomi. This of course ties into the ecosystem they live in and the clear vision they have of the cycle of life/nature. The Blessed at their embody balance.

Invisibles can take physical form but usually don’t and they do have true names but only those dedicated to them remember them. Each of them claimed a month, a season or equinox as their holy time of influence and are remembered by those names. Those dedicated to the Invisibles are easy to spot, they are covered head to toe, only the Invisible they are dedicated to and their religious siblings are allowed to see their bodies uncovered. They are based on mystery cults and have influence on society depending on when their Invisible is in ascendance.

Beasts are in physical form almost all the time. They are called Beasts specifically because many resemble humans with various animal additions. They embody principles that rest in the body, they are viewed as dangerous and capricious because the things they represent not being clearly good or evil (such as Passion or Hatred or Leadership) but are things likely to go to ones head and take control. They live on various islands of Batomi and have their own worshipers who recognize their necessity and power and accept their shifting moods as beyond their understanding. They are also why Batomi has always been inviolate, they protect their people even if they also rumored to prey on the people of Batomi.

Now your questions may be different. Hell with a different book my questions are different but these were the things I needed to start planning out and writing Constance’s story. If you’re interested in reading Constance’s story draft chapters of the first Batomi novella – “The Trial of Kouzinns” will be going up monthly on my patreon starting November 1st.

National Poetry Day 2017 – the boy in the shell

Today is National Poetry day 2017 so I decided to share a rough first draft of narrative poem I’m working on. Hope you like it!

the boy in the shell – 9/28/2017

the witches wanted a child
but held no want of men
or their seed
so they prayed to the sea
and loved each other in the waves
when they returned home
one of the five found a small lump below her belly

the boy was born in a tiny shell
iridescence transferred to skin
he grew up brown
he grew up rainbow

his mothers cared for him
he soaked their love in
and returned it in kind
laughter filled their small house
and outsiders, those on the road
noticed

he cared for his mothers
the boy was polite and helped others where he could
and as his mums curled into age
a town sprung up around them
folk arrived, carried by whispers and tales
they rode with expectations between their thighs

the boy did not learn his mothers magic
instead he took ordinary and made it magic
clothes he mended learned to protect
meals brought tears and joy and hope
and for some death
though those were buried quickly
the boy was good, he could be nothing else

then his mothers began to die
and the boy began to withdraw
the town had become a city
the neighbors of the boy became merchants
his labor and favors sold to make them rich

when the last of his mothers died
a crowd gathered at his home
they begged him
to continue to mend for them
to help the city thrive

“I did not ask you to come.”
they yelled and gnashed their teeth
“I cared for my mothers because they cared for me.
Now they are gone and I will be too.”

they cried out
boy
Boy
BOY

“I have not been a boy for many a year.”
they fell silent
they looked at him

finally he spoke
“I will stay…”
they cheered
but he held his hand up
“…if one of you can recall my name.”

the city took the boy as their patron
parents struggled to forget
children refused to remember\

the boy was born in a tiny shell
as he grew the shell stayed stuck to his body
at 2 it sat on his head like a cap
at 5 cupped his bottom
at 10 it covered his right eye
at 14 it acted as elbow guard
at 17 it sat on his tongue like a candy that would not dissolve
at 20 it was his pinky nail
and there it stayed
until the day he died

Patreon Launch!

Some of you know that I’ve had a Patreon for a while but I haven’t really advertised it. Originally I wanted to do a launch at the beginning of 2017 but circumstances meant I really had to focus on deadlines and moving across the country. So it was there and I have some patrons (thanks!) but I haven’t really been doing anything with it. Since I have now moved and am working on getting my life in order one of my priorities has been revamping my Patreon!

That is going to change starting next month!

The main thing that I’m going to be offering is draft chapters of an ongoing high fantasy novel I’m working on. If you follow me on twitter then you’ve heard me talk about Batomi as my queer brown girl mafia revolutionary YA novel. Though as it’s conceived now it’s more like three multiple chapter novellas that tell the main character’s story. So every month a new draft chapter of the first novella will go up until it’s complete and then the second novella and so on. There will be more posts about the story and the world in this space and some exclusives on Patreon before the chapters start posting on November 1st.

There are also some other exciting things I’m going to be doing. Some will be patron-exclusive only but some will be patron-exclusive for 6 months and then I’ll share them here or elsewhere.

You can check it out here.

I’ll still be fiddling with the tiers and goals a little bit so if you have feedback please let me know

Tiers
$1/month (PATRON)- access to a draft chapter of the ongoing novella every month

$3/month (X-RAY SPECS)- access to a draft chapter of the ongoing novella every month
+ a blog post about the worldbuilding/writing (exclusive for 12 months)

$5/month (RAVENOUS READERS) – access to a draft chapter of the ongoing novella
+ a blog post about the worldbuilding/writing (exclusive for 12 months)
+ a daily draft of a poem/piece of flash fiction! (exclusive for 12 months)

$10/month (NEWSIES!) – everything from the lower tiers
+ a monthly newsletter with updates on my projects, short entertainment
recommendations, calls for submissions y’all might be interested in & other
miscellaneous things.

$25/month (QUESTIONERS) – everything from the lower tiers
+ a monthly Q&A video answering your questions – writing, recommendations,
even personal advice if you want (no guarantee its good)! (exclusive for 6
months)

$50/month (SEEKERS) – everything from the lower tiers
+ two short story critiques a year (first available after six months of
patronage, second after a year of patronage)

$100/month (EPHEMERA PROTECTION SOCIETY) – everything from the lower tiers
+ a yearly bound and illustrated chapbook of up to 6 Patreon pieces (mails
in May/June)

$500/month (COLLECTORS) – everything from the lower tiers
+ an personalized signed author copy of everything I publish that year
including anthologies.
 
$5000/month (BUY A BLACK FRIEND!) – everything from the lower tiers
+ I’ll be your black friend this includes one phone call a month of up to
30 minutes (after your monthly patronage comes through) and one tense
filled family dinner/gathering a year (after a year of patronage).

(Note – That last one is mostly a joke but if someone rich pays it I’ll definitely come through.)

The ones from $50 up are limited by number but if demand is a lot and they fill up I’ll think about adding more slots as a stretch goal. Speaking of stretch goals there are also goals based on $/ per month that have cute little prizes and here they are!

Goals
$500/month – a monthly drunk live tweet of a sf/f movie or TV pilot decided by Patreon poll!

$1000/month – the monthly Q&A video will become available to patrons at all levels (though questions will still come from patrons of levels $25 and higher)

$1500/month – all digital content will be come available for all patrons
+ there will be a draft of a short story posted every month

$2000/month – a monthly Spotify playlist will accompany each short story with a blog post explaining how each song fits in with the story
+ plus an downloadable audio version of one of Patreon pieces every month

$2500/month – a new monthly video series on writing marginalized identities and being a marginalized writer (exclusive for 12 months)

$3000/month – I don’t think we’ll reach here but if we do I’ll think of something awesome to do for y’all!

So there it is! Keep an eye on this space where I plan to tempt you into becoming a patron of my work so that I can keep creating work and y’know eat and stuff.

Fix It Jesus – Mother!

So “Fix It Jesus” is a new series I’m going to be doing sporadically. Where I apply my imagination and problem solving skills to a movie or TV series or game and write out how I would change the plot to make it less offensive, or less or just less bad.

In this first post we’re gonna talk about Mother!

Now I did not see Mother! because I love myself but I did read Bitch Magazine’s wonderful and informative review. Now the main problems I see are the same old suffering woman trope and the idea that exploring that means relying on it even more. She suffers and suffers and dies which…no thank you. The movie also suffers from what I saw as a problem in one of Aronofsky’s previous films – Black Swan. Aronofsky loves metaphor, which is fine, that’s great. I love a metaphor myself but he piles them on like some self-important 90s film student who doesn’t know when to stop or something James Franco would make today.

In Mother! he also mixes metaphors and mythologies very weirdly. Mother Nature gives birth to Jesus? All the power is given to the man and she only seeks to serve him until others intervene? WTF is that?

FIX IT JESUS!

I would erase all that shit about Adam & Eve and Cain & Abel stuff which just serves to overstuff the narrative. We keep “Him” – and give him a fucking name for God’s sake! Let’s say Bob. So Bob is a metaphor for some divine creative force. Then there’s Mother – except it’s super creepy for anyone but someone’s child to call them Mother unless it’s a formal title. So let’s just name her Jackie.

The basic beginning is the same. Bob and Jackie are living alone in an isolated house where he is obsessed with creating a singular poem and she is still obsessed with the house. Except that it’s framed as all she has to do and does not derive true pleasure from it. By excluding any other people in the lead in it becomes more of a creepy horror narrative about the labor women do to support mediocre men who never appreciate it. We see Jackie wanting to break away from this situation and from Bob but she is trapped by their isolation and her lack of any support. The psychological horror of her increasingly small world is shown in detail as it drives her mad. When she reaches her breaking point and decides she has to leave or die she discovers she’s pregnant which serves to isolate and trap her further. She stays trapped by the child she never wanted and by Bob’s overbearing personality and increasing neediness as he reverts to a more and more child-like state.

Jackie begins to carve the house into a nest, destroying many of the things that Bob enjoys about it. When Jackie finally gives birth it’s to a multitude of children of different ethnicities and genders and ability-levels meant to represent the emergence of humanity as a whole. It is these children, not the party guests which begin to destroy the house. They enslave one another and kill one another. The visuals of children performing these acts are shocking and horrifying to the viewer which serve to underscore the horror of humanity and its disgust with itself. Seeing all this Jackie falls into a deep depression which Bob of course ignores as he sees nothing wrong with their children and increases his demands on her. Finally Jackie cannot take it anymore. She starts to hunt down and kill the children in horrible ways but they continue to raise up from the dead and in fact seem to multiply. They haunt her and hurt her in various ways. Finally Jackie realizes there is only option. She gathers Bob and all the children in one room – Bob’s private work study, which she’s never been allowed into. She then sets the house on fire, fighting and keeping them all in there while they all burn.

After the conflagration there is only Jackie, burnt and hurt but alive and surrounded by the charred skeletons of Bob and their children. The ground around her is also burnt to blackness but as the audio focuses on her strained breathing another sound starts to break through the sound of growth. Next to Jackie’s head a flower begins to push itself from the ground she struggles and turns her head and as the black skin flakes off to reveal healthy brown skin (did I mention in my version Gabby is played by Gabourey Sidibe?) and she sees the flower. The camera zooms out as plant life begins to grown around her and slowly fades out on Jackie alone, surrounded by a beautiful garden, her laughter the last sound we hear.

There it is – my take on Mother!

All My Shipwreck Fanfiction – Links

So at a recent at Strut called Black Love that I co-hosted (P.S. – It was fucking amazing!) my participating in Shipwreck – The Literary Erotic Fanfiction Copmpetition and where they could ready my stories. They are all on Shipwreck SF’s tumblr but for easiness I tracked down all the links for y’all.

My very first Shipwreck was in August 2014 & it was The Giver and my prompt was:
The Pills – which for those who don’t know are the pills that are given to everyone to stop the stirrings, i.e. sexual desire a.k.a. horniness. Warnings for sex & bad choices.

Part 1 & Part 2

Then in January 2015 it was Twilight and my prompt was The Baseball Game which meant I had to read practically the whole book. It was a lot, I drank a lot of whiskey & tweeted it.
Warnings for sexytimes & the outdoors &…puppet sex

Brought To You By The Letter…

Finally in October 2015 I was invited to write for one of my favorite King stories: Carrie. My prompt was her mother Margaret White & I went for something more topical & political this time.
Warnings for sex, strap-ons & Kim Davis

Margaret White: Sword of God