This weekend was primarily spent focused on a seasonal 24-hour short story contest I’ve participated in for several years—this one being summer-themed, of course. The story prompt led me to write about a steep mountain trail, perhaps because I am now somewhat in the mountains (at more than 4k feet of altitude), and definitely surrounded by them in my New Mexico abode of two months now.
My short story ultimately involved hikers, which these days I am not, but also summer camp, which I attended only once as a young child, in the Shenandoah Valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains. There, I had a crush on a very tall camp counselor, leading to a connection with a certain alien character in my Other Worldly novels who can fly, as revealed in book five, Alien Sensation, published in 2022.
Alien Sensation’s opening scene takes place in Salem, including references to the sordid sexism occurring via the infamous witch trials of the late 17th century. So it’s not exactly uncanny that protagonist Rowan Layne revisits the subject in book four, Being Alien, while staying at the Witchery, a hotel in a historic 16th-century building near the gates of Edinburgh Castle on the Royal Mile in Scotland. Named for hundreds of women burned at the stake as witches on Castlehill during the 16th and 17th centuries.
In fact, as already drafted in the beginning of book eight, Alien Origins, my otherworldly protagonist Rowan Layne is currently in Scotland once again, where the subject of actual witch hunts will most definitely come to life, and to light in terms her ancestry. Just as she’s always pondered, snarked about—and suspected.
I haven’t been working on Alien Origins this week, because I’m still tweaking the book that launched the OW series, Alienable Rights, in hopes of eventually submitting it for traditional publication per last week’s post about One More Chapter http://onemorechapter.com. And while the United Kingdom publisher remains “temporarily closed” to submissions, I did some digging to find submission guidelines from back in 2023—so I sure hope this temporary closure isn’t actually years-long—only to be daunted by the requirement of a dreaded synopsis summarizing the entire novel in no more than 1,000 words, as well as a “pitch” that describes it in one to three sentences. Yikes.
Yet perhaps it will finally be worth it to brave what should be a simple writing endeavor. Though it never is. Having spent two years unsuccessfully attempting to obtain a literary agent with the aim of traditional publishing back in 2018-2019, I started avoiding agencies that required a synopsis, as well as those replacing query letters with maddening, inflexible, impersonal fill-the-blank submission forms. For one thing, I’d spent a great deal of time learning how to draft, and trying to perfect, my query letter for Alienable Rights.
But why is it so difficult for an author to condense her story into a “just the facts” synopsis? It’s not as if I didn’t have to once write unimaginatively as a lawyer—not that I enjoyed it much. Though, for the record, my earliest memory of struggling with summaries of any kind was fifth grade, only a few years after attending that summer camp.
Back then, we kids were tasked with writing a summary of something that hadn’t actually been drafted yet. As in, starting with the summary. An endeavor I have never been able to fathom, or do. And now I struggle with summarization even after the story is completed? Again, why? Perhaps it boils down to revealing spoilers, to spilling all the good stuff with little fanfare. Ugh. But a challenge is a challenge, and so I will seek to meet it with a bloody synopsis of Alienable Rights.
In the meantime, I have continued my recent pursuit of reading works of new-to-me authors, delving into the realm of fantasy that categorizes my novels (among multiple other genres and subgenres). Unlike science fiction, which I don’t read and therefore still hold sway that my otherworldly novels are not and have never fit into the futuristic, dystopian world of sci-fi despite involving aliens and outer space travel.
Lo and behold, I stumbled upon a novel series that began as the All Souls trilogy by Deborah Harkness and was apparently made into a televised AMC series (though I haven’t yet seen it). So much was I intrigued by the book series description that I took a decided risk and bought a packaged deal of the first five offerings.
I am now only halfway through book one, A Discovery of Witches, as it is nearly twice the length of a typical novel (at least for me) at more than 500 pages. It’s also initially set in Oxford, England, where protagonist Diana Bishop is a professor, not to mention a witch. Yes, that kind of Salem Witch Trial witch.
This novel series was billed as adult fantasy (as in grownup, not erotica), though I would deem it intellectual fantasy, or perhaps scholarly, which is how the author describes herself and her main character. Indeed, Harkness, an American professor at USC, is so scholarly that I’ve already looked up multiple words, and marveled at the discussion of ancient texts of of alchemy and fascinating tidbits of European history. I also constantly google translations of British terminology. For instance, who knew a don meant professor as opposed to a mafia patriarch? And how on Earth is Harkness an American? I looked at the “About the author” info twice to verify she wasn’t in fact English.
In any event, I’ve also noted uncanny similarities with my Other Worldly novels, mostly involving discussions of genetics, and genetic hybrids, though of course my works are not at all scholarly. Also, supernatural powers. And oh my gosh the descriptions of wine! But there’s also the whole witch thing, given the direction Alien Origins is headed. Hence, it’s reminded me of why I tend not to read books about aliens, lest I be inadvertently deemed a copycat by something I write, wholly unaware that others might also have done so.
A Discovery of Witches was published in 2011, which means Harkness wrote it long before I drafted Alienable Rights, including a layman’s discussion of genetics, from 2017 to 2019. Yet I can’t help but think about, as I continue to read this marvelous tome, where I was and what I was doing when she wrote it. One thing’s for sure, I had not yet fathomed creating a series involving “creatures,” as Diana Bishop’s world describes witches, daemons, and vampires. And who knew I’d progress from writing about extraterrestrial aliens to other otherworldly creatures such as fairies, mermaids, selkies, dragons, shapeshifters, giants, Bigfoot, and unicorns?
It will be fun to see where the All Souls trilogy and beyond takes me, and what I learn from it. I’ve certainly been able to appreciate the nuances of prejudice between witches, daemons, and vampires, as well as the blatant denial projected by humans who reject and vilify what they don’t understand.
Which brings me back to that too-tall camp counselor in reference to my alien character, Roger Rogers, introduced in book two, Feeling Alienated. Funny thing, there’s this summer blockbuster movie currently causing a stir among bigots (haven’t seen it yet myself, but plan to). They’re all up in arms because Superman is an alien, as in an immigrant not from the US, and he’s also, horrors of horrors, far too enlightened for their willfully ignorant, anti-woke, easily threatened sensibilities. Newsflash for these knuckleheaded nutjobs: Superman has always been an alien from another planet since he was created in comic books in the 1930s, as well as a champion of the kinds of folks you like to bully and demonize for no reason other than they are different from you.
I could have predicted the MAGA moron reaction to this latest Superman movie. Because I already did. The entire premise of my Other Worldly novels involves Americans reacting badly to discovering aliens among us—and resisting their own DNA, as in genetics. The exact same deplorable way they have treated immigrants from other nations, indigenous Americans, women, and pretty much any race or religion other than their own. That’s why the diabolical Puritans of Massachusetts burned females at the stake as witches, centuries ago. And why there’s another vicious war on women now. Not to mention immigrants being dehumanized by disgusting hypocrites. Apparently I will never run out of diabolical current events to cover in my fictional world. So I’ll keep writing, and also keep reading the All Souls series by Deborah Harkness, because she’s also inspiring me to tackle that synopsis.