Clarion West Write-a-thon Progress: How Deep Is Red

I had a wonderful time talking to Shaun Duke and Jen Zink of the Skiffy and Fanty Show last week. The podcast is up here. If you enjoy it and use iTunes, show them a little love with a rating on there.

A reason the interview wa so enjoyable was that they asked really interesting, incisive questions about the stories in Near + Far, in that way a writer desires and dreads at the same time, where they’re seeing some of your psyche’s underpinnings shaping the stories that you create. I’ve been mulling over some of those questions since then, and was thinking about one on the bus home the other day.

They pointed to many of the stories being about the need for connection, with characters like the protagonist of “Angry Rose’s Lament” being addicted to a drug that makes him feel connected, the hero of “Therapy Buddha” projecting all his needs onto a toy, or Sean Marksman’s ultimate fate in “Seeking Nothing.” Going through other stories in my head, I see the theme of connection coming up in various forms throughout. I think that’s a basic human need, one born of monkey roots, an instinct to be with the other monkeys.

Connection’s been something I’ve sought throughout my life. I was a brainy and isolated child, and still am to some extent. NowadaysI work in a profession that requires stretches of isolation in order to produce. So I value my time spent with other people, and particularly writers and likeminded people. I know that I’m happiest when I’ve got a group of interesting and lovely friends doing wonderful things and setting the world afire, just as I know that without some of them I would be a much different person.

Still, it’s not something I’m alone in exploring, as a writer. Human connections — gone awry, gone swimmingly, mistaken or acute, agape or philia or eros — are what fiction is made of.

At a panel at this year’s Worldcon, a fellow panelist got quite huffy when I mentioned the idea that fiction teaches us about being human. He found the idea outmoded and far too 19th century. Perhaps the divergence lay in our conceptions of what the word “teach” means — and perhaps “demonstrates” or “discusses” would be a better verb there, but I don’t know. We’re all just flailing about trying to fit into our own particular monkey packs and we’re watching the other monkeys to see what they’re doing and what we’re supposed to be doing. Don’t we read fiction to find some of that information? Perhaps we don’t say to ourselves, “I will be like character X in Book Y,” but we do think about heroes. We try to be better human beings sometimes because we have their examples. Or perhaps to avoid whatever fictional fate they fell prey to.

So, yeah. Connections. In fiction, the connections between characters, the way they choose to interpret word or gesture or telepathic scream. In the absence of human (or perhaps, intelligent, rather than human) connection, they make imaginary ones, creating fiction within fiction. That’s one of the things I’m looking at in the book I’m currently working on, focusing on the connections between the main character and the beings around her. It’s let me plunge into her head in a way I haven’t before, and I’m enjoying the heck out of it, connecting with her.

An Instructive Listing of the Notable Markets of Tabat, being Pamphlet #4 of the first series of “A Visitor’s Guide to Tabat,” Spinner Press, author unknown.

The Rain Market: To the north and east of Tabat lie the great marshes, half salt water, half fresh water. While the struggle to drain them and transform them into cropland presses on each year. The vast marshlands, a mix of salt and fresh water, seem unthreatened. The grasses that grow here are colored, like most of the marsh’s vegetation, by the purplish and green clays and minerals that underlie the marsh. Their pliant grasses colored lavender to dark purple and shades of olive, grow in abundance and are harvested for the purpose of making the tight-woven rain-gear that fills the Tabatian square known as the Rain Market.

Open come rain or sunshine, the Market sells, beyond its hats and shell-shaped overcoats of woven grass, baskets and other containers in whatever size or shape you might need. Bring the object there and they will weave a basket to hold it, from spiky pine-fruit to a glove shaped case from a wooden prosthetic hand of the sort the 12th Duke wore. Clatter chimes, lengths of hollow reed string on cording and meant to be hung from windowsills or bank tills to scare away sea-ghosts are sold here exclusively in this market in the shadow of the Slumpers.

Also near the Slumpers are the shops that sell its wares: tiles and china and porcelain goods. At the very edge of Rose Way is the complex of shops devoted to brownie wares: miniature dishes many use to coax brownies into their houses as well as other wares designed for smaller Beasts and animals.

Spice and Fish Square, only a block away from the main dock, supplies goods just unloaded from fishing and merchant ships,. The freshest sea fare can be found here and many vendors are prepared to cook your dinner on the spot. The air smells of brine and rot and smoke, and the nearby alleys are scattered with fragments of scales like silver spangles underfoot.

The Stable Markets are housed in what were once the city stables, since relocated to the northern edge of Tabat. Sitting on the fourth terrace, the building is filled with swarms of tiny shops selling this, that, and the other thing. Some stalls have existed here for generations while others are new traders, come with merchandise they want to dispose of quickly, if sometimes not cheaply.

The Midnight Market, located on the lowest terrace within sound of the sea, operates only from dusk to dawn, in the spaces that will be occupied by traders, merchants, and sailors during the day’s daylight hours. Anything and everything can be purchased here, and many of the vendors, as in the Stable Markets, are Beasts acting as representatives for Human masters.

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Love the world of Tabat and want to spend longer in it? Check out Hearts of Tabat, the latest Tabat novel! Or get sneak peeks, behind the scenes looks, snippets of work in progres, and more via Cat’s Patreon.

• Hearts of Tabat on Amazon
• Hearts of Tabat on Baen Books
• Hearts of Tabat on B&N
• Hearts of Tabat on Kobo
• Hearts of Tabat on Powell’s
• Hearts of Tabat on Smashwords

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