Filed under: Faith healing, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: excerpt, Holywell, jim downey, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, St. Winefride's Well, Wales, Well Hopper, writing
The writing continues to go well. Thought I’d share this bit from today:
She looked around the edge of the table, to where his shoulder bag sat on the floor. “Got your hand-held in there?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Get it out, search St. Winefride’s plus 1917.”
Darnell picked up his bag, opened the pocket where his hand-held was, took it out. He turned it on, and while it booted up looked at Megan, who was calmly finishing her dinner, watching him. He tapped an icon on the phone.
“Hi, I’m Andi, your assistant application. How can I help you?”
“Andi, find me information on St. Winefride’s Well in Holywell which is either tagged 1917 or has that date in the entry.”
“Very good. The search results are displayed on your screen. Would you like me to read relevant passages?”
“No, thanks. That will be all.”
“Very good.”
Darnell looked at Megan. “The assistant isn’t very good at finding context in articles, usually just reads the sentence with the specific information requested. Is there a specific reference you had in mind?”
“Yeah. Is there a link to a blog called ‘Well Hopper’ there?”
“Yup.”
“Try that one. Should be towards the end.”
Darnell went to the blog post, scanned down through the entry. “Yeah, here it is: All early descriptions and illustrations of the well indicate that the volume of water flowing from the well was much greater than that seen today, the spring forming a small river that ran from the well. Disaster struck the well at 8am on 5th january 1917 when nearby mining works struck and diverted the underground stream that fed the well causing the well to run dry. Eventually another source was found to feed the well; however the force of this is much less and the well now forms a modest bathing area outside the shrine rather than the rapid stream that used to flow from the building in earlier days.”
He looked up at her. “Huh. So, it’s not really the same well?”
“Does the source of the water matter more than where it emerges?” She sipped her wine, considered, then continued. “You went there, expecting one thing because of your previous experience at the place.”
“Yeah, but I did what you told me, and tried to see the place as the believers see it.”
“But Dar,” she said, “you didn’t try to believe. You just tried to see their perspective. There’s a difference.”
“Now, wait a minute …”
“Don’t get upset. I didn’t figure that this would be something you could do on your first try. You’d been there before, and were necessarily going to have some understandable barriers in place.” She smiled. “It was a good start. Leave it at that, and move on.”
Jim Downey
And yes, that is a real blog post. Remember, St. Cybi’s Well is set in 2012, in a timeline very close to our own. There will be a lot of material in the book drawn straight from our reality.
Filed under: Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: Conwy, excerpt, Great Orme, jim downey, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, Wales, writing
As he came into the open from the narrow spiraling stairs, he saw a man standing on the upper viewing platform, calmly looking out over the city as he leaned on the ramparts. He was tall, even though he had a slight stoop which Darnell sensed came from extreme age. And while he wore a large, wide-brimmed hat, it was clear that he still had a full head of hair, mostly of the sort of silver color which suggested it had once been deep black. His full yet neat beard was completely white. He wore no glasses, and noticed as Darnell emerged from the darkness of the tower.
Darnell nodded to the man. “Hello.”
“Good afternoon,” said the man in reply. His voice was rich, still solid. There was a touch of an accent that seemed familiar to Darnell, though it was neither American nor Welsh. He turned his attention back to the city below them, but spoke again. “You’ve come a long way.”
And with those words, Darnell was better able to define the accent. Mediterranean. Possibly Greek. “So have you.”
“True enough.” He looked at Darnell, smiled just a bit. His eyes were dark, a little sad. He glanced east to the castle proper, then north, where the mass of the Great Orme disappeared in low-hanging clouds. Then back at Darnell, seeming to size him up. “I suspect that both of us have a ways yet to go.”
“If we’re lucky.”
“Perhaps.” He stepped past Darnell, and disappeared down the stairs without another word.
The writing is going well. Things are coming together nicely.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, Connections, Religion, Science, Science Fiction, Space, Writing stuff | Tags: astronomy, Communion of Dreams, exoplanets, Gliese 1214 b, jim downey, Norio Narita, science, Science Fiction, space, Space.com, St. Cybi's Well, writing
Got an email from an old friend and fan of Communion of Dreams which consisted of a link and this comment: Couldn’t resist…when I read this, all I could think was, “they’ve found the gel!!” 🙂
From the article at the link:
A nearby alien planet six times the size of the Earth is covered with a water-rich atmosphere that includes a strange “plasma form” of water, scientists say.
Astronomers have determined that the atmosphere of super-Earth Gliese 1214 b is likely water-rich. However, this exoplanet is no Earth twin. The high temperature and density of the planet give it an atmosphere that differs dramatically from Earth.
“As the temperature and pressure are so high, water is not in a usual form (vapor, liquid, or solid), but in an ionic or plasma form at the bottom the atmosphere — namely the interior — of Gliese 1214 b,” principle investigator Norio Narita of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan told SPACE.com by email.
You should read the whole thing, it’s pretty cool.
And yes, there is a reason why the prequel to Communion of Dreams is based around visits to holy wells in Wales … 😉
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, General Musings, Humor, Music, NPR, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff | Tags: Alwyn, blogging, Darrell Scott, Fat Tire, humor, jim downey, Lake of the Ozarks, music, New Belgium, NPR, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, Tim O'Brien, travel, writing
At about 7:45 in this interview:
NPR: “I wonder: your original CD together Realtime is so beloved by your fans, does that make you just a tad nervous about how this much-anticipated follow-up might be received? Or do you just block that stuff out?”
O’Brien: “Ah, you know, I’m gettin’ over that.”
NPR: “But not yet? You’re still working on it?”
* * * * * * *
It was a hard week. He may have been only a dog, but his absence was entirely too distracting.
* * * * * * *
The other night I played supportive spouse and accompanied my Good Lady Wife to a professional meeting she had at the Lake of the Ozarks.
The Lake (as people in Missouri almost universally refer to it) is an interesting sort of place, from a purely anthropological perspective. Originally built to help generate electricity, it then became a tourist trap in the 1960s, then evolved into something of a Spring Break party spot for college kids throughout the state. It still has something of that reputation, though it has now branched out a bit into being a general purpose convention/resort area. I’ve written about it previously.
Anyway, like these sorts of meeting things go, the first night there was a cocktail party with an open, but limited selection, bar. I walked up to the bar, nodded to the nice very clean cut young man behind it, asked “Got any Fat Tire? ”
“Sorry, just domestic beer. ”
I blinked, a bit stunned.
He explained further “We don’t have any of those Belgium beers.”
* * * * * * *
At about 7:45 in this interview:
NPR: “I wonder: your original CD together Realtime is so beloved by your fans, does that make you just a tad nervous about how this much-anticipated follow up might be received? Or do you just block that stuff out?”
O’Brien: “Ah, you know, I’m gettin’ over that.”
NPR: “But not yet? You’re still working on it?”
O’Brien:“Well, there is a sort of a fermentation that happens in people’s minds, and I guess it happened in my mind too, that you know, what, can we do that again? Can we go back to that? And then, at some point I just said ‘well, you know, if we don’t try we’ll never do anything together again'”.
Scott: “To me the word is ‘fearless’. Putting it out there, and then, with the right ingredients it’ll probably turn into something edible.”
Something edible, indeed. Back to work.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Augmented Reality, Civil Rights, Connections, Constitution, Gardening, General Musings, Government, Habanero, Italy, Predictions, Psychic abilities, Religion, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction, Society, Violence, Writing stuff | Tags: art, augmented reality, Beccaria, Communion of Dreams, Constitution, dreams, gardening, Habaneros, Italy, jim downey, law, legal, literature, Marc Hermann, photography, predictions, Prometheus, Roman, Science Fiction, sculpture, St. Cybi's Well, travel, Voltaire, writing
Remember these?
Well, yesterday afternoon I got around to prepping about half of them to dry:
Overnight I dried the peppers.
* * * * * * *
An interesting take on incorporating an additional dimension into photography:
Photographer and historian Marc Hermann has done a beautiful job pulling historic crime scene photos from the New York Daily News archive to blend them with photographs of the same locations today. For those who live in New York now, it may be easy to forget just how rough the city was in the not-too-distant past.
Grisly violence is an undeniable part of New York’s DNA and the juxtaposition of the old, black and white images with the modern “Times Square” version of what most people expect today is incredibly fascinating – truly making ghosts walk amongst us.
* * * * * * *
Remember this?
What has also been my plan, but which I hadn’t quite been able to sort out how to accomplish, was that in St. Cybi’s Well much of the story will revolve around *how* this character came to have those dream-visions in the first place. This is further complicated by the fact that I don’t necessarily want the character to realize the full import of what he experiences within the context of the story – the reader should be able to draw out conclusions which the character wouldn’t, especially if the reader had already read Communion of Dreams.
OK, got all that? So, here’s what I experienced at Baia Castle: the revelation that the classical sculptures of Greek and Roman mythology could themselves be the conduit for the dream-visions. I got this by walking through the collection – not just walking through it, but by seeing the juxtaposition of different sculptures within the somewhat under-lit and under-stated layout of the museum.
See, like in most of the museums we had visited, the climate control there was non-existent. And whether in order to keep down temps a bit, or just to save money on electricity, the only lighting throughout the space was from windows along one side of the building. And the layout of the building was a series of almost cave-like ‘bunkers’ – rooms which were kinda long & narrow with a relatively low ceiling, and done up in neutral grey tones.
It was perfect. And in a moment my mind made the leap to imagery for St. Cybi’s Well. Because, like many of the different ‘holy wells’ in Wales, it dates back to the middle of the 6th century – not that long after the fall of Rome. And, in fact, the spread of Christianity to the Celtic lands was part of the cultural transference which took place. It’d be easy to tweak the history just a bit to include ‘lost’ sculpture & myth.
I felt in that moment the same way I feel now: like laughing maniacally.
And an appropriate (and somewhat telling) image from that same blog post:
Prometheus. Not Ridly Scott’s version. The original.
* * * * * * *
A passage from an excellent essay on the roots of Enlightenment thought about justice.
Rarely in the history of thought do I have a chance to say the outcome was so simply good, but it worked. Within their lifetimes, Voltaire and Beccaria saw real reform, a sincere and solid transformation of the legal codes of most of Europe, the spread of deterrence-based justicial thought. Within decades, judicial torture virtually vanished from European law. The laws of America, and of the other new constitutions drafted in the latter 18th century, all show the touch of Beccaria’s call. It worked. The change was not absolute, of course. Torture, the primary target, retreated, as did the notions of retributive justice, avenging dignity, and purging sin. But prisons were still squalid, punishments severe, and other things Beccaria had campaigned against remained, capital punishment primary among them. But even here there was what Beccaria would call progress. The guillotine lives in infamy, but it too was a consequence of this call for enlightened justice: a quick, egalitarian execution, death with the least possible suffering, and equal for all, giving no advantage to the noble, who had long been able to hire an expert and humane headsman while the poor man suffered the clumsy hackings of an amateur who might take many blows to sever a writhing neck. Most states judged death still necessary, but agreed that law and punishment should bind all men equally, and that unnecessary pain did not serve the public good. It is strange to call the guillotine a happy ending, but it was in a small way, and even more victorious was the dialog it that birthed it.
* * * * * * *
Overnight I dried the peppers. Here they are this morning:
Why, yes, all of these things are connected. 😉
Jim Downey
Filed under: Augmented Reality, Civil Rights, Connections, George Orwell, Government, Heinlein, Humor, movies, Predictions, Privacy, Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: 1984, augmented reality, George Orwell, Heinlein, humor, jim downey, movies, NSA, predictions, Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction, Steve Jobs, surveillance, technology, writing, Zombies
I wouldn’t have the nerve to include this kind of thing in a novel … no one would believe that such an agency would have such a twisted sense of humor.
The magazine printed several slides alleged to have come from an NSA presentation referencing the film “1984,” based on George Orwell’s book set in a totalitarian surveillance state. The slides – which show stills from the film, former Apple Inc. chairman Steve Jobs holding an iPhone, and iPhone buyers celebrating their purchase – are captioned: “Who knew in 1984…that this would be big brother…and the zombies would be paying customers?”
Jim Downey
*Referencing this, of course.
Filed under: ACLU, Brave New World, Civil Rights, Connections, Constitution, Government, Society, Terrorism, Travel, Writing stuff | Tags: civil liberties, Constitution, government, jim downey, NSA, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, travel, TSA, writing
I’m not sure which is more depressing: that this happened, or that I find it completely unsurprising that it happened. What’s that? This:
…a harrowing story from Aditya Mukerjee about his recent attempt to fly from New York to Los Angeles. After being pulled aside in the security line, he faced hours of interrogation by uncommunicative officials from several different agencies. When he was finally cleared, his airline, Jet Blue, wouldn’t let him on the plane anyway. When he got home, he found evidence that it had been searched.
The entire sickening story, told by the man it happened to, can be found here: Don’t Fly During Ramadan.
To be perfectly honest, I’ve almost given up even mentioning the absurdity of the TSA’s latest actions. Like the revelations about what the NSA has been doing, it seems like there is really little point in it. I just keep filing away the latest news items and go back to adjust what is included in St. Cybi’s Well. Because no matter how egregious the violations of our civil liberties, there’s always someone to come along and say that they’re happy to have the “security” which is being provided.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Connections, Feedback, Health, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, blogging, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, feedback, health, jim downey, Kindle, promotion, reviews, Science Fiction, technology, writing
Some follow-ups to yesterday’s post.
* * *
My wife’s surgeon ordered another CAT scan and assessment, so this morning at entirely too early a time we got up and got her over to the hospital. Once all was said and done, the indications are good and it looks like the oral antibiotics she is taking are finally cleaning up the remaining infection in her abdomen. With a little luck, from here on out she just needs the usual post-surgery recuperation and she’ll be fine.
One curious thing I noted, though. When referring to this latest and the previous CAT scans she’s had done, everyone kept calling them “films”. The nurse in the radiology clinic did it. The radiologist performing the procedure did it. The nurse in the recovery area (where we had to wait following the latest scan, to see whether the surgeon wanted to do another invasive procedure) did it. And then the surgeon did it, specifically saying “I reviewed the films of this latest and the previous CAT scans with Dr. Radiologist, and …”
Which is odd, because I don’t think there’s ever been a practical CAT scan system which uses actual film. Certainly, none of the modern systems use any kind of film — they’re all digital systems and record data on a variety of different digital media.
Yet everyone referred to the results as “films.” I’m not sure whether this was because of their age (all were about my age, +/- a decade), or ours (thinking that middle-aged patients would still think of the technology in those terms).
Strange.
* * *
Speaking of reviewing, yesterday’s post also seems to have elicited three new reviews of Communion of Dreams on Amazon. Each is short, but together they would be a bit much for this blog post. So I’ll just note the links, and encourage you to check out what they have to say.
Remember, you have until Midnight (OK, 11:59:59) CDT on August 31 to get your entry in. Full information in this blog post.
Thanks, everyone — for your reviews, your interest in the novel, and most of all for your kind thoughts/prayers/good vibrations for my wife through her recent illness.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Babylon 5, Book Conservation, Connections, Emergency, Feedback, Health, J. Michael Straczynski, JMS, Kindle, Marketing, NASA, NPR, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Religion, Science, Science Fiction, Space, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, appendicitis, art, Babylon5, blogging, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, feedback, free, G'Kar, health, heliosphere, J. Michael Straczynski, jim downey, JMS, Kindle, leather, NASA, NPR, predictions, promotion, revelations, reviews, science, Science Fiction, space, St. Cybi's Well, Voyager, writing, Z'ha'dum
“All of life can be broken down into moments of transition or moments of revelation.”
-G’Kar, Z’ha’dum
Sometimes you don’t recognize when things change — the moments of transition — except in hindsight. That could be because the change is incremental enough that you don’t notice it for a while, or it might be that you’re so completely involved in the moment that the realization of what just happened doesn’t sink in immediately.
* * *
This morning there was a news item on NPR which caught my attention: that perhaps the Voyager 1 spacecraft has already left our solar system.
Scientists have known for a while that it was approaching the limits of the heliosphere. The expectation was that there would be a fairly clear change in orientation of the magnetic field when the craft crossed the boundary of the Sun’s influence into true interstellar space. But perhaps that boundary was less defined than we thought. From the story:
How did we miss that? As it turns out, it wasn’t entirely our fault. Researchers thought the solar system was surrounded by a clearly marked magnetic field bubble.
“There’s one at the Earth, there’s one at Jupiter, Saturn, many planets have them. And so just by analogy we were expecting there to be something like that for the solar system,” Swisdak says.
Scientists were waiting for Voyager to cross over the magnetic edge of our solar system and into the magnetic field of interstellar space. But in in the September issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, Swisdak and his colleagues say the magnetic fields may blend together. And so in July 2012, when Voyager crossed from the solar system into deep space, “Voyager just kept cruising along,” Swisdak says. All they saw was a change in the field’s direction.
* * *
Last Thursday my wife had a follow-up with her surgeon to see how she was doing in recovering from her emergency appendectomy. She had been released from the hospital the previous Saturday, but there was some concern over the risk of secondary infection within her abdomen.
Well, without getting too much into the details, tests indicated that she might be developing exactly that sort of infection. The surgeon ordered a procedure called a needle aspiration and scheduled it for the following day.
We dutifully reported to the hospital for the procedure. It didn’t go smoothly, and the upshot was that it didn’t help her condition at all. A couple hours later we left the hospital, and she’s been mostly resting since. We’re now waiting to hear from the surgeon about what happens next. And what it means.
* * *
Some six years ago I wrote what could be considered a companion piece to this blog post. In it I quoted a friend, talking about Communion of Dreams:
“Yeah, but it’s like the way that the people involved in your book – the characters – are all struggling to understand this new thing, this new artifact, this unexpected visitor. And I like the way that they don’t just figure it out instantly – the way each one of them tries to fit it into their own expectations about the world, and what it means. They struggle with it, they have to keep learning and investigating and working at it, before they finally come to an understanding.” He looked at me as we got back in the car. “Transitions.”
* * *
Where Communion of Dreams was largely about transitions, in many ways St. Cybi’s Well is about revelations. How we experience them. How we understand them. How we do or don’t recognize them when they happen.
The Kindle edition of Communion of Dreams is free today. And you have less than two weeks to enter into the drawing for a hand-bound, full-leather copy of the book. So far only two people have entered. Don’t miss the moment.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 