writing noodling

[coraa]

So when rachelmanija was here, one of the things she said was that I ought to write an urban fantasy about Seattle. (There has been only one that I know of, Megan Lindholm's Wizard of the Pigeons, and that was published back in the 80s. Seattle has changed a lot since then, in a lot of ways.) I think that's a great idea, actually, especially since Seattle is Seattle: green and silver, full of mists and rain, surrounded by water, divided into dozens and dozens of little neighborhoods each with their own culture, navigated by tangled and winding streets, fringed by moss and lichen, and chock full of eccentricities. It's a city that looks westward over the water, but sees, not the distant haze of the sea-horizon, but the long green tongue of a peninsula that is so thick with growth that it merits the name "rainforest." If you look another way, you can see a beautifully arched and snowcapped mountain that just might, someday, blow its top. If you look a third way, you can see the weird alien-landing spire of the Space Needle. At Pike Place Market you can buy fruit and greens and fireweed honey and handmade quilts and grains of paradise and amethyst beads and fish that fly through the air. In the International District you can go to the summer nightmarket and eat food on sticks and shop for nori and long beans and small plastic figures of Edward Elric. At Gas Works Park you can fly a kite on a hill that stands beside a huge rusty steampunk-esque gaswork. On Alki Beach once a year you can stand on the shore of the Sound and see the pirates come in.

(I am rather fond of Seattle, can you tell?)

It's also a city with its share of gloom and black coffee; it's the home of grunge music for a reason. It's not so much a city that rains every day as one that could rain every day, the clouds low and soft for weeks at a time. And these days it's a tech city, Microsoft and Amazon and an ever-changing fuzz of startups. It's a city infamous for the Seattle Chill, which is not its cold damp climate but its tendency for inhabitants to keep themselves to themselves. It's a beautifully imperfect city, and it's a city full of soft-edged boundaries: between day and night, rain and sun, cloud and sky, mist and clear, land and water, sea and shore, Wallingford and Fremont, Belltown and Downtown and First Hill and Capitol Hill. It's a city where the street goes one way and then another and you get lost and suddenly come around a corner and see the broad silver expanse of a lake.

In other words, I think it's a perfect setting for urban fantasy.

I don't want to do vampires-and-werewolves urban fantasy, mostly because it doesn't interest me. And though Bordertown and War for the Oaks are of the kind of urban fantasy that I love, I don't think I want to do hidden faeries, either.

Instead, what I'm thinking of doing is urban fantasy like the Mabinogion. (No, that doesn't mean faerie fantasy.) What I mean by that is: in the Mabinogion, as with a lot of medieval fiction, strange things happen. There are people and beings with odd powers and odder restrictions; there are secret rules and hidden things, and a world that's a half-step away from ours. There are things you can see if you know how to look—or are taught how to look—or are cursed with being unable to look away.

In other words: I don't want to copy the mythological and folkloric figures of medieval tales, I want to copy the feel and create my own figures. No faeries, but numinous creatures and unusual mortals that are all Seattle, not transplants. And strange mist-elusive magic.

I'm not sure how doable that is. But I want to try. Perhaps I'll start with some flash fiction or short fiction and work my way up.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

That sounds awesome, frankly.

[ironed_orchid]

That sounds like the type of urban fantasy I would love to read.

[azurelunatic]

This sounds fascinating.

[dsgood]

Harper Blaine, the heroine of the series, is a private investigator living in Seattle and was killed whilst pursuing a case. She was dead for only two minutes and brought back by medical intervention. During her recovery, she discovers she is able to recognize witches and vampires, see ghosts and is aware of other elements of the supernatural world . She discovers that her brief death has turned her into a Greywalker, a human able to move back and forth at will through the Grey, the realm that exists between our world and the next.

[meaghan_bullock]

I love the way you describe your city, and although it sort of goes without saying that I'd read anything you cared to write, this sounds extra interesting!

(I sort of feel bad that, despite ten years here, I still couldn't describe Chicago all that well; I've stuck to very specific parts of the city and mostly hung out in the suburbs. I should probably do something about that.)

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

OMG <3
THIS is what I want to see in UF and why I am so damn disappointed by so much of it. Actual! fantasy! about cities! WANT.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :D

And yeah, me too. I don't want to read any more UF where you could swap one city for another and change nothing in the story. I want stories about cities that are about the cities! I want people who really know their cities to show me all the ugliest and most beautiful parts, and make them fantastic (literally and figuratively)!

And if nobody* else is going to do it, then I'll do it, by gum.

* - Okay, not nobody. But comparatively few.

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

And I will read it, by gum :)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

YESSSS!

So, an AU Seattle where magic has always been real, a la White Cat?

You should have geases. Nothing makes a world seem more mythic and odd, and nobody uses them nowadays. Plus it would be cool to read about how they feel if you have one.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I think geasa have been a bit co-opted by Jim Butcher lately, though I don't think he does very much interesting with them. I would love to see someone use them as something more than a parlor trick, that is for sure.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure whether everyone knows that magic has always been real (I think not everyone has the capability to 'see,' for one reason or another), but yeah, pretty much. I'm imagining a world in which the clerk at Half Price Books speaks in the printed word and has lichen growing on the backs of her hands (she keeps it at bay with bleach spray so that she doesn't infect the books), but only, say, 10% of the city can see the words unfurling from her mouth like scrolls, or the green and grey that she fights to keep at bay; the rest just sees a bored-looking girl with a skin disease who doesn't talk much. I imagine it as being like when you look at an optical illusion and see the candle, and then someone says, "Look, it's two faces"—suddenly you can see both the candle and both faces. Only some people (but a not-insignificant proportion) can see both the candle and the faces, but they're both 'really' there.

I'm not sure, though. Still puzzling.

And yes, there will definitely be people under geases. (Geasa?) For reasons they may not even understand. (Why did Math son of Mathonwy have to keep his feet in the lap of a virgin? Darned if I know... and I'm not sure he knew either.)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Ohh, this is going to be SO AWESOME.

I wonder if one day Math woke up just knowing that if he sat down without a foot-rest virgin, he'd... die, I guess.

[amberdulen.livejournal.com]

If I was a non-seer I'd go out of my way to find out what I'm missing. I mean, I only live in this one tiny American town, but I read the international news because it's kind of important to know.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

the clerk at Half Price Books speaks in the printed word and has lichen growing on the backs of her hands (she keeps it at bay with bleach spray so that she doesn't infect the books), but only, say, 10% of the city can see the words unfurling from her mouth like scrolls, or the green and grey that she fights to keep at bay; the rest just sees a bored-looking girl with a skin disease who doesn't talk much

AWESOME

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Oh, sorry, it really is geases in English; I'm just hopeless in code-switching and rarely remember to pluralize words according to the language I'm actually writing in at the time.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

This sounds really neat!

or are cursed with being unable to look away.

Especially this.

It sounds a little like magic realism?

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think it's one of those situations where it sounds really cool at first, and you're all excited that you can see that the man standing under the bus shelter has a raccoon mask and is shuffling brightly-colored divination sticks... but it becomes less cool for you when he throws the sticks and tells you that your true love will die by the moon's blade. Is he telling the truth? Lying? Delusional? And you don't have a true love... what does that mean for the guy from OKCupid who you met twice and are kind of getting to really like? Should you avoid him in order to protect him? If you tell him to avoid the moon's blade, will he think you're a complete nutbar?

And why are the green-skinned stonemen grinning at you from beneath the wheels of the bus, when it finally appears?

(I need to read more magic realism. I've read One Hundred Years of Sorrow, but to my detriment that's it so far.)

[daedala.livejournal.com]

I read a bunch in college, and remember being very fond of Garcia Marquez's short stories, and the novels Pedro Paramo by Rulfo and Like Water for Chocolate by Esquivel, and everything by Allende.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Ooh, excellent! I'll have to look them up.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Er, where I mean "Solitude" instead of "Sorrow," because my brain doesn't work.

[clairebaxter.livejournal.com]

I recommend reading some Japanese magic realism as well. I've enjoyed Lizard, Asleep, and Kitchen (three separate books) by Banana Yoshimoto I may have one around that can be borrowed. Also, to a lesser extent, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami (it is so deeply weird it can be tough for me to wrap my brain around).

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I would love to read this. Love it.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

♥

[coneycat.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a wonderful idea, and something that will be terrific fun for you as a writer!

[coraa.livejournal.com]

I think it will be delightful. And lots of excuse to do more exploring of Seattle! (Not that I need an excuse....)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Sounds VERY cool.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

:D I hope so!

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

YESSSSSSSSSS

I want to read this SO BAD. If you want me to have anything to do with it, someone to bounce ideas off of or beta-read or just appreciate or what have you, I would love to. I am disappointed by a lot of urban fantasy, especially the stuff about 'cities', and a lot of Seattle novels seem to be either about the music scene (and get it wrong) or the dot com/bomb (and get it wrong). What you are thinking about sounds really wonderful.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

YESSSSSSSSSS

I want to read this SO BAD. If you want me to have anything to do with it, someone to bounce ideas off of or beta-read or just appreciate or what have you, I would love to. I am disappointed by a lot of urban fantasy, especially the stuff about 'cities', and a lot of Seattle novels seem to be either about the music scene (and get it wrong) or the dot com/bomb (and get it wrong). What you are thinking about sounds really wonderful.

[maggiedacatt.livejournal.com]

Magic realism? (I love.)

Your Changeling game captured these feelings of Seattle so well. When I visited, it all seemed somehow familiar. :)

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Yes, please. I'm excited by the first half of this post, but unsurprisingly, once you say "urban fantasy like the Mabinogion" I'm sold.

[aliseadae]

Ooh yes. Yes yes yes.

[shvetufae.livejournal.com]

Yes, please!

[larryhammer]

This sounds like an excellent project.

---L.

[ceph.livejournal.com]

This is beautiful, and very inspiring. Did I tell you about the Best House in the Universe? I got to tour it a couple of weeks ago. It's a houseboat on Lake Union purchased by an artist in 1968 for $550. He's spent the intervening forty years adding on dozens of tiny odd-shaped rooms and secret passageways and extra roofs and little floating islands moored to the side. The house is entirely surrounded by trees and bamboo planted in floating gardens. It definitely belongs in an urban fantasy (as do many of its neighbors.)

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Oooh! An urban fantasy that is actually about the city and is truly fantastical. Sounds great!

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

Wow.

You are seeing the Seattle I saw and started falling in love with back around 1988, when I first visited: all the mist and fog and potential for magic and things suddenly becoming visible.

Soren was working on an urban fantasy set in Seattle (he's from Seattle), but his was set in the 1980s. I'd love to read one set now.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Cool! That sounds awesome-- good luck!