Hell and Wheels

In working on the backstory of my newest novel, I’ve strayed into the euphoric nightmare shared by most fantasy writers–world-building. It is here in the vast blackness that is potential where fantasy writers first lift their fingers over their keyboards and with the first few strokes either triumph or fail.

I believe it can go largely undisputed that J.R.R. Tolkien set the bar for fantasy world creation. His Middle Earth is so real you could plunge through the page, step onto the ground and start walking in any direction. In your travels across his landscape you would never wander into a blank area or cross a foggy, half-imagined portion of the scenery. In Tolkien’s mystical land there are no gaps, no missed opportunities. Middle Earth is whole, a world as full as our own. Prete-a-habiter. The only downside to Tolkien’s masterful accomplishment–it took him over twenty years to build.

So comes the task I’ve been struggling with for a few weeks. I have to build nine fully fleshed worlds and not be mostly dead before I’m done. There are some great resources on the Internet, of course. My current favorite is a fill-in-the-blank sort of question sheet offered by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. This sheet has been a great help to me in the past few days as I struggled to figure out what I had missed in terms of culture, geography, history and mythology. It has given me a direction, and–better still–kept me fixed on my course. There are many other resources out there, including numerous helpful sites for RPGs, and my newest inspiration, the monstrous Otherland novel series by Tad Williams. Seeing that modern, non-obsessed writers have indeed created believeable, multi-world novels is a huge comfort.

I was watching something on TV the other night (Robot Chicken or maybe Family Guy) and the characters were lampooning the fact that George Lucas is a terrible planet creator–making one only of sand, another only forest, another only ice… This easy route is the enticing lure I’m trying to evade, the pitfall I’m determined to dodge. You won’t find whole languages in my book, or even histories detailing every single year since the beginning of my worlds’ inceptions, but they will be whole, fleshed out and believable–with many different climate zones. And I won’t be sixty when I’m done.

Maybe fifty-five.

Last night I was thinking of where I am now versus where I was ten years ago. The difference is staggering, even to me. In honor of my nearly six years on The Shore (and nearly six years away from D.C.), I’ve come up with a list of what I miss about the Nation’s Capital, and what I love about where I am now.

What I miss about D.C. (and its surrounding locale):

1) Accessibility. Shopping, food, great medical care–all right there.
2) Diversity. An international cornucopia of heritages, faiths and culture.
3) Free Museums, especially the Freer/Sackler galleries with their vast collection of religious icons.
4) The Uptown. An historic movie theatre with a twenty-foot curved screen, a huge balcony and velvet curtains that roll back before the show.
5) Alternative music doesn’t mean Green Day–real shows, awesome bands, great venues and spectacular attendees (this applies more to Baltimore than conservative D.C.).
6) Proper county fairs. You’d think a rural county like Wicomico would corner the market on this agrarian tradition. Not so. You have to hike fifty miles north to the Delaware State Fair if you want to see a goat (and I love me some goats).
7) Commander Salamander (although I hear it has gone mainstream. Sigh).
8) Thai food. Korean food. Vietnamese food.
9) Armand’s pizza in Silver Spring. Heaven on a crust.
10) MOBY DICK HOUSE OF KABOB. Yeah, losing access to a tiny little carryout place is the biggest regret I carry with me. It’s was a splurge back in the day, which is why I particularly crave it for my birthday, our anniversary, any special event. Kabob E-Chehjeh over rice, Mast-o Kheyar (cucumber yogurt sauce), herb salad, flat bread and the house Doojh (fizzy yogurt drink) to wash it all down. A planet of “Yums,” couldn’t cover my adoration for this place.

What I love about the Eastern Shore:

1) Maryland Blue Crabs. And not the crap they charge you an arm and a leg for in Baltimore, but locally harvested, giant, succulent crabs.
2) Assateague Island National Seashore, with its massive white beaches, nature trails and wild ponies.
3) The towering pine trees ensure there’s always a little green edging the horizon, even in the depths of winter.
4) For better (usually) or worse (one stellar example), I actually know my neighbors.
5) The ocean is twenty minutes away.
6) On nights with a celestial or lunar event, all I have to do is drive ten minutes in any direction to find myself standing in a cornfield under a velvet black sky.
7) I can drive my 1977, belt-squealing, engine-growling, eight-foot-bedded beast of a pickup and the stares I get are ones of approval, not horror.
8) Farmland is not a mythological entity.
9) Thrasher’s French Fries and Anthony’s Carryout roast beef sandwiches.
10) I can afford my house.

So, six years later, I’ve reached a happy compromise. When the yearning for city life grabs me, I jump in my car, indulge in some of my most longed-for entertainments, then I climb back in the car, and let the sparkling silvery waters of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries guide me, bridge-by-bridge, back home.

This is just a tiny bit of fluff that popped into my head after hearing (and I so wish I hadn’t had to hear it) 1979 by Smashing Pumpkins.

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The splintered laminate dug into her palms as she leaned over the sink, studying the void that stared back at her.

What was she doing here? And where was it all supposed to take her?

“I’m off to class, now,” her roommate said from the other side of the dark, twin bureaus that divided the room. “You going today?”

She turned towards her roomate’s voice. The heavy fire door slammed against the metal jamb before she could form an answer. She looked back at her reflection. She studied the absurd roundness of her cheeks in the mirror. Apple cheeks on crank. Campbell Soup Kid Cheeks. She’d never be skinny. Too much Mountain People in her for that. What was it her great-grandmother had called her mother?

Fleshy.

A compliment.

Sturdy.

Like a mule.

The reflection’s eyebrow lifted. So, that took care of the supermodel option. Probably the actress, too. So–what? She knew full well what her parents wanted. Nurse. Teacher. Government worker. The first two with easier schedules for a tired pregnant woman, ones quickly enough discarded when the proper man, proper house, proper number of spawn came along. Disposable jobs. The mirrored mouth twitched in something bordering amusement. The latter option would provide great retirement benefits.

A sturdy job.

A good job.

A fleshy job.

She snorted, pushed away from the vanity, and snapped off the light.

**********

Twin bulbs flicker into illumination. She leans against another vanity. Although it is in another place entirely, the mood is unsettlingly similar. She leans forward, pulled into the bluish glow like a bug to a zapper. She studies the face before her. She had been right. She never got skinny. As for her cheeks, well, the advancing of time had neither sagged nor diminished them. Still like a hamster with a face full of seed. Forever a Campbell’s Kid. As she gazes at the minute lines time has danced across the features she once thought unchangeable, she thinks back to that day. They had wanted an answer. She hadn’t had one to give.

Who was she going to be?

What was she supposed to have said to that?

Whatever’s on page forty-one of the Course Catalog?

You pick for me, because I haven’t a fucking clue?

A bloom of teeth and gums splits the face in the mirror.

The answer to her roomate’s question had been–had always been– “No.”

What was going to be a regular post has now become a memorial for yet another fallen freak.

Rest in Peace, Lux Interior.