So there’s this book with a cool title. First time I see it curiousity whispers a hopeful h-mmm?? Smart cover, intriguing title. Fantasy, sci-fi, historical fiction, alt fiction, a series or an epic if I’m really lucky – I’m your guy.
Days later…pages later..I get it. My small moment of oneness with all things, transcendence, Samadhi, nirvana attained. When the trumpets fall quiet, the angels chill and fly off to their next choir, the blinding lights are hauled off by the Jovian light crews and I can feel my corporeal old (damnit!) body again, I enjoy the moment as maybe the author hoped I would – a warm sense of intellectual intimacy, an appreciative nod to her light touch, cleverness, humor(?), insight…all these and I STILL have 153 pages yet to savor in the moment’s afterglow. I love this author, I really do!
I re-read that last sentence – the one where all the singing and lights happened. Mayhap a wee grin pulls on my lips. There it is, the novel’s title in all its fine, workman-like simplicity, used like any other useful word. Slipped in amongst all the nouns and verbs, a collection of vowels and consonants that, like a mage’s cant, open the book’s secret places. Yeah, I got it. I am one with this story and lovin’ it.
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I just re-read Dust of Dreams, by Steven Erikson. Having finished The Chained God for the third(?) time, I had a few questions whose answers were to be found in Dust of Dreams. (And yes, I have whatever compulsive thing that drives me to re-read books I really like. Reader’s Fatal Attraction? But hells bells, I’ve read Dune at least twenty times over the years. Where else do we go for guaranteed inspiration?)…
Sorry, back to topic… I was reminded of the pure and simple pleasures an author can give their readers. Got me to thinking about the ah-ha moments I enjoy, how I catch a few words and how they catch me.
As writers we put a fair portion of ourselves into our creation’s name, its title. I imagine we all approach our story’s christening differently – title, then write the body; body, then the title; just start and listen for the title to show her or himself. Moi? I get this kinda unformed tension in my head, but it won’t find relief until I start writing. Then the lil’ sucker usually smacks me upside da head and voila!, stars and the title, all in one.
So, having invested ourselves in the novel’s title – and I feel this can be as true for a chapter title as a novel whole – share our revelation, share the love with our readers. Wee little chapter bites, big book bites, it’s all ambrosia for the imagination.
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Here’s one I like from my current, in progress, 5th novel – A Bridge of Stars.
CHAPTER I
It is pure, blind arrogance to presume that what we have done to others cannot be done to us. Most individuals accept this. a wise kingdom or empire is ruled with this understanding.
Why is it that we Krîll expected otherwise as we breached the void between Krîl-lôc and Rôme?
- An Emperor’s Dialogues
By Kraz-Ishdôc, Emperor of the Krîll Imperium
The Taste of Stillness
(22 pages into the chapter)
Gywn felt Morrigan’s eyes turn a thoughtful look her way. “Now there’s an interesting idea I’d not considered. And ‘twould greatly surprise me, now that you point it out, if indeed Chogs Tsang’s daemon were not awaiting, like a mighty flower, to open up within Dylan’s depths.”
Morrigan nodded, her eyes bright. “That’s how my Dael often spoke of his master, there on top of the world. ‘The most beautifully fragrant flower in a frozen expanse of stone, ice, and little else.’ Said ’twas the only time in all his days when he, ‘smelled power, tasted the scent of eternity.’ Nothing of sight, sound, or touch. Only the, ‘divine exhalation of perfect harmony,’ as he tried to explain it to me.”
“Poor man.” Morrigan’s chuckle rose from deep within her, warm with life’s memories. “We often spoke of his time amongst the Cloud Mountains. ‘Twas there he mastered fear. But try as he would, using every artifice of tongue, he could not find the words through which I could glimpse what the smell of power might be. Then, one moonless span atop Gofannon’s Ridge, as we gloried in the stars’ light falling across sand and stone, he whispered a thing that rolled through me as like a mighty wind. ‘The smell of power,’ he sighed, ‘is a thing like the taste of stillness.’
“We never spoke of it again. ‘Twas no need, bless his sweet eyes.”
