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Someone mentioned this as one of their favorite stories of mine, and I wanted, for selfish and egotistical reasons, to use it for the subject of a blog post, but I hope that I can in pulling it apart and explaining some decisions, shed a little light on both my process and writing in general.

If you’re not familiar with the story, it appears here on the excellent online publication Beneath Ceaseless Skies, or you can buy an e-copy on Amazon or Smashwords. If you’re too impatient, here are some of the pertinent details: steampunk world, asylum for those injured by the war, nurse with a secret, doctor with an evil crow, wacky hijinks ensure.

The story takes place in a dystopian steampunk setting that I’d wandered around the edges of previously in “Clockwork Fairies” and “Rare Pears and Greengages”. This story got me far enough into that territory that it spurred others: “Her Windowed Eyes, Her Chambered Heart,” “Snakes on a Train,” and “Laurel Finch, Laurel Finch, Where Do You Wander?” I’ve been calling the series Altered America, and you can see some of the images I’ve used for inspiration here.

And the amount of effort involved in writing the protagonist that appeared to me scared me. Transgendered, Native American, poor, and disabled. How could I write that other without offending someone? Better folks than I have battered themselves against that question. But you can’t do something without trying, so I gave it a shot. I strove to do my best by my protagonist: to explain his background, his history, the way he thought, and his relationship with Jesus. Which is another way my character is unlike me: he is struggling with his Christianity, while I’m Unitarian, a faith that has taught me a great deal, and which I embrace, but which draws on, rather than consists wholly of, Christianity.

I went into that attempt with good intentions, a lot of thought, and some tools provided me by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward’s excellent little book, Writing the Other. I hope I did justice by my protagonist, and I hope he comes back for another story or two, because I want to know what happens to him, over the mountains. I hope it involves him finding his captain — or some reasonable facsimile — again.

As all of this started to take shape in my head, I invoked my favorite Nathaniel Hawthorne story, “Rappacinni’s Daughter,” and made my antagonist part of the Rappacinni line. In doing so, I had to think about how much I was allowing Hawthorne to influence the story. Did I want to try to retell his? Definitely not, because trying to place that structure over what was already in my head was way too square peg, round hole in its feel. So instead I took enough to make it a nod to Hawthorne, an Easter egg for readers who knew what grew in Hawthorne’s fictional garden. The important thing with anything like that is that for readers unfamiliar with the text being referenced, it cannot get in the way of the story or prevent their understanding of it. Make it a plus for readers who’ve read the other text, but never a penalty for those who haven’t.

I injected some of my fascination with Victorian mental institutions, which led to a fascinating time researching. And I put in a crow, because that was where the story came from in the first place, with this question:

In fiction, we generally think of animals as good-souled, noble, and self-sacrificing. What if you had one that wasn’t? That was, in fact, a bit of a psychopath? For the past year I’ve kept peanuts in my pockets and gotten the crows around here to know me, so I was aware of how smart they are, and how much personality they can display. Mine all seem like pleasant souls, but what if there was one that wasn’t?

And thus Jonah fluttered and squawked his way into existence to squat malignantly on Dr. Rappacinni’s shoulder.

Stories are so often collisions of things, a month’s worth of influences and odd thoughts perhaps bouncing off an old obsession or two. With these kinds of stories, for me all I can do is plunge in and start writing, and watch the story start to coalesce. There’s a point where it’s solid enough that I begin to figure out what it’s about, and gradually that emerged in an unexpected shape. It was, I realized, a story about faith, which is not my usual sort of story.

I’m also fond of this story because I used it in teaching, showing students the original story map and how I blocked it out, as well as a couple of early drafts so they could see how things progressed as I was writing it. I didn’t worry too much about length, and it ended up coming in on the low side of novelette length, which limited the markets. Luckily, I knew Scott Andrews at Beneath Ceaseless Skies might well be interested.

Scott, whose comments are always on the mark, had me rework the ending. And having realized what it was a story about helped me reshape that ending into something that satisfied both of us. I wanted it to be a little bit ambiguous in the ending. Was God’s hand evident there or not? You can read it either way, and I like that ambiguity, a quality that fills our existence, in that moment.

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.

I’m listening to Lady Gaga’s Alejandro and pondering a foray through World of Warcraft with Brightweed the Tauren warrior, who is only a bubble away from leveling, but first I thought I’d catch up with recent news. I’ve got quite a few publications coming out next month, and there’s some that I’m really looking forward to seeing.

In video gaming, I’ve been (as noted) working on WoW. Wayne and I were talking about and agreed that the more we played, the more we were liking this new Cataclysm expansion. The goblin starting area is a ton of fun, even if a little sketchy and unfilled-out in places, archaeology has been not only fun but a clever way for Blizzard to encourage people to go back and explore changed areas, changes to lower level quests in terms of number of things slain quests are well thought out, and the journey from 80 to 85 has been pleasant. I will say that the financial rewards from the water area seems all out of whack compared with, say, the Twilight Highlands.

But enough of that! Here’s some writing-related news.

• “Close Your Eyes” will appear in the February issue of Apex Magazine. Here’s the origin of the story: we watched “Paranormal Activity,” which was generally stupid, but did have a few genuinely scary moments. I went to bed and was thinking about how I would have rewritten the movie to make it scarier and managed to work myself up enough envisioning terror that I had to get up and go read Winnie the Pooh for a half hour to cleanse my mind. I finished getting it out of my head by writing this, and I’m glad to see it find a good home. I’ve liked many of the stories I’ve read in Apex, and I’m looking forward to appearing there for the first time.
• That’s not February’s only notable publication: “Long Enough and Just So Long” will be appearing in Lightspeed Magazine, while “Karaluvian Fale,” which is an Armageddon story, will be published in Giganotasaurus. The first is near future sf, while the second is heroic fantasy.
• At the same time, February’s Seattle Woman Magazine will run a piece I did on local female science fiction writers, which focused on L. Timmel Duchamp, Louise Marley, Vonda McIntyre, and Cherie Priest. I tried to list as many of the local sf illuminaries as possible, but there was limited space and they trimmed some stuff. But! I’m really pleased with the way it turned out and am looking forward to seeing the accompanying photos, which were taken at Seattle’s SF Museum.
• I’ve continued writing reviews for HelloSeattle.com, and am working on some profiles for them, a new feature which allowed me a chance to swap e-mails with local figures Nancy Pearl and Greg Bear.
• Upcoming book reviews include a review of the excellent anthology Destination:Future for Rise Reviews.
• Tomorrow I’m headed into the city for a screen-writing class with Michael Cassutt at the Richard Hugo House. I’m looking forward to it – the Hugo House classes are usually great.