Paranormal Week - World Building with Ancient Egypt as the Foundation

I've always been fascinated by anything to do with Ancient Egypt, and the further back in time, the better. Cleopatra is interesting and all, but she's way too "modern" for me to write about!

The Egyptian civilization has almost 3000 years of recorded history to work with, beginning over 5000 years ago. They believed in a pantheon of gods and goddesses with authority over every aspect of life, many of whom have multiple origin stories and attributes. The Egyptians were lusty and loving, devoted to family and home life, while also building a rich, powerful nation, all things centered around the bounty of the Nile. Despite their endless fascination with preparing for and ensuring a satisfactory afterlife, they were quite practical, yet poetic, in their daily pursuits, leaving us fragments of poems and songs and science, math and medicine, tales of battles and magic and pharaohs.

As a writer, I couldn't ask for a more wonderful setting.

But being a lover of paranormal romance, I had no desire to write straight historical novels, not even about the most intriguing players in Egyptian history 4000 years or so ago. Much as I enjoy doing the research that supports my paranormal tales and anchors them in a world that once existed, I want to tell stories that involve the gods and goddesses walking among the warriors, dancers, pharaohs and priestesses. I want them taking an active role in events, with the resulting complications.

I like the period of 1550 BCE, when the Egyptians had been under the rule of the Hyksos and were just beginning to throw off the enemy invaders and reassert themselves, which would eventually lead to the most prosperous times Ancient Egypt would ever see, when the powers of the pharaohs such as the Rameses dynasty would be unparalleled. When things are in a state of flux, interesting events are much more likely to occur.

Nat-re-Akhte, the Pharaoh who anchors my connected series of novels, doesn't appear on any list of actual

rulers of Egypt. He's a composite of several, with a lot of my own thoughts about who a hero should be. He himself is sworn to serve Horus the Falcon, but so far I've also had Sobek the Crocodile God, Renenutet the Snake Goddess, Isis, her sister Nephthys, Lady Ma'at of the Scales, Thoth, Anubis, Hathor, Tawaret the Hippo Goddess - many deities taking part in the events as they unfold. Nat-re-Akhte's son will play a part in the god Amun-Re becoming the supreme god of Thebes in a later novel. (I can only write so fast and there are so many stories to tell in my alternate Ancient Egypt!)

So in Priestess of the Nile, we have Sobek falling in love with a human and then having to deal with the wrath of Isis, since such love is forbidden. Oh and the Hyksos show up - remember them? I'm currently writing the sequel to that novel, due out in January.

In Warrior of the Nile, coming in September, the goddess Nephthys forces Pharaoh to send two people on a mission which requires their deaths in order to save Egypt from black magic. But they fall in love on the journey down the Nile and search for a way to carry out their task and yet still  survive to be together in this life.

In Dancer of the Nile, due in October, a resourceful woman taken prisoner by the Hyksos and a warrior on a secret mission for Pharaoh  combine forces to try to save Egypt from a sneak attack. Renenutet and Horus come to their aid as they battle not only the enemy but also black magic.

So many stories yet to be told - if you enjoy tales of ancient Egypt, with mystical happenings and magical possibilities on the way to romance, I invite you to step into my paranormal world!

You can find more details about my worldbuilding and the books on my webpage 

Or you can visit my Amazon Author Page ..(the books are or will be available in most formats, not just kindle)

I'm also on twitter and Facebook!

Here Be News

Short news post this week. I can't decide if that's because nothing happened or because I was too busy to take note of it. Here goes...

Links of Interest

A Timeline of the 2013 SFWA Controversies

Interview with Award-Winning Author Lois McMaster Bujold

John Scalzi will only participate at Cons with clear harassment policies

KATE ELLIOTT TALKS WOMEN IN EPIC FANTASY

Here Be Magic Group Announcements

Please join us for...

My Summer Vacation

It's not all campfires and ghost stories, unfortunately. I came home (and brought my children) for the summer, and got to spend some time with one of the women who has been a major influence in my life. Sadly, we lost her two days ago. I am the last person who should be writing a blog right now because I'm pretty...maudlin. But despite what is going on in my life right now, I still have responsibilities. My grandmother would be the first to remind me of that.


And we all have "things that happen" right? Which got me to thinking after I read Jeffe's Female POV post (Sorry for taking your name in vain Jeffe!) Those small things? Those little things that aren't the big story? They are so important. They are what make us and what define us. One of the things I learned from my grandmother was the little things matter, the details matter, and no matter what, life goes on. You have to embrace it.

I'm reminding myself of that the last couple of days, and I'm reminding my daughters, and if my fiction reflects my female centric attitudes, well, maybe we need to spread it around more lol! Because those things don't make a big sweeping epic fantasy less. It enriches them.

So I will keep doing what I do for my grandmother, Maggie, who empowered me to do it in the first place. 

Fighting the Dog Days of Summer

The monsters are out of school.  They're already bored.  It's too hot to play outside all day.  The Evil Day Job is crazy busy.  The air conditioner is crying.  Mom doesn't want to cook.  Our sleep schedules are all messed up because again, school's out.  Yet work must go on, which means less sleep, longer hours, and shorter tempers.

How do I keep writing in all that insanity?

It's a struggle, let me tell you.  I always have a hard time in the summer.  It's too hard to get up early before work and write (what I call "Dark and Early").  I like to write at night, too, but the kids are still up, which makes it hard to concentrate.  Work has been too busy to write much over lunch and longer hours make it harder to sneak in time before cooking dinner.

The chores never end.  The kids have summer activities like band camp that mess things up even more. 

In June, I didn't even break 10K.

*hangs head in shame*

However, I decided I was going to correct that problem this month, and so far, I've already written 10K in July.  I hope I can continue the pace through the rest of the summer -- I need to!  I'm behind.

If you're struggling too, here are a few techniques that have worked for me.

• I set up a simple spreadsheet for my daily word counts.  Until I hit my daily goal, that column stays red.  As soon as I break the goal, it goes green.  That simple color change is actually pretty motivating, as long as I actually *open* the file each day and take a look at it.
• I usually have playlists built for each project, but lately, nothing was satisfying me.  So I switched to simple nature and rhythmic sounds via Naturespace.  The change in music has really helped fire up my creativity again.  Maybe I was just getting tired of the same old songs.
• I set tiny goals to start.  250 words.  That's it.  Once I got that green column a few times, I increased my goal.  I'm up to 1K a day now and easily beating it.
• I set a timer for 15 mins and closed all browser windows.  I ONLY wrote for 15 mins at a time and it was amazing how much I got done when I refused to waste time on the internet.  At first, I could only get a hundred words.  Then I got 150.  Eventually, the words were coming and I didn't have to use the timer any longer.
• I took a break from the project that was dogging me.  In fact, I started a brand new project as a collaboration, something totally new for me.  It sparked my creativity and got me moving again, so I'm getting words on other projects too.  I'm hoping that when I return to the first project, I'll be energized again.

The most important thing is to START MOVING.  One step, just one, will get you started in the right direction.  Inertia is hard to overcome.  It takes a lot of effort to start moving at first, but eventually, momentum builds.  Then it's easier to face that blank page every day.

Do you have any techniques that have helped you fight the summer blahs?

Writing the Female POV in Fantasy

Lately I’m back into writing fantasy and it feels good to be back in that “brain.”

Because it IS a very different writing brain. I’m not exactly sure why. But I’ve been working hard lately on my erotic romances (Five Golden Rings for the Carina Press Erotic Holiday Anthology and Master of the Opera for Kensington). Now I’ve turned my attention to Book 2 of my adult fantasy Twelve Kingdoms trilogy. Book 1 releases in trade paperback from Kensington next June. I’d tell you the titles, but they’re still in flux.

Suffice to say these are my “princess” books – about the three daughters of the High King, each more beautiful than the last. At the start of Book 2, there are sad events. It begins in a bad place, with strong emotions and physical illness.

Just so not where I’d open an erotic romance.

And, though there’s love possibly in this princess’s future, right now her life is about other things. She has a long road ahead of her and it’s fascinating to walk it with her. Especially because she’s pregnant and I’ve never been.

(For those of you who know I have grandchildren, I acquired 5- and 7-year-old stepchildren when I was 24. They always seemed like plenty!)

It occurs to me that this is something particularly female, to write about civil wars and the concerns of ruling a troubled kingdom, while the heroine is struggling with morning sickness. Sometimes I see criticisms of the work of women writers along the lines that we focus on “small scale” events, rather than sweeping ones. (Maybe “criticism” is the wrong word – I’ve seen that offered as a reason for why books by women don’t tend to win the Big Awards, because they’re not about Big Topics.)

So, in that paradigm, the war and so forth are Big Topics and morning sickness is a small scale event. But, for me as a writer, they’re intertwined. It’s also to deal with the issue within the constraints of what is essentially a (fictional) medieval-style society. Amusingly, when I asked on Twitter about morning sickness – what foods set women off and which helped – I got an avalanche of useful feedback. I also had to keep reminding people that foods like Saltines and tech like Zofroth pumps wouldn’t be available to my character.

It was a great discussion. I Storified it here.

Still, it’s making me think – are there many fantasies with pregnant heroines? And I mean, ones with close POV on the trials of it, not the beatific Madonna glowing nearby.

I’d be interested to hear suggestions!

The Joy of Tropes

I nearly forgot about this post. There was some jockeying of days and I had taken the reminder off my calendar and didn't remember until the last minute. I was mentioning this to a friend and she jokingly suggested I claim amnesia as the reason why I didn't post anything. Which actually tied into what I had already planned to blog about, which is tropes.

It's not a subject I spend a lot of time thinking about until very recently. All Romance eBooks is running a series of trope-related posts all month long. Not coincidentally, yesterday's topic was amnesia and yes, one of my books was mentioned in their post. It still surprises me that I have an amnesia book, by the way, since I don't generally care for that particular trope. In fact, as I looked over the list of various romance tropes they're planning to explore this month, I realized I have books that fit into quite a few of them. It's something of a problem.

Like most authors (I think most. Certainly a lot of us feel this way) I hate the thought of writing what feels like the same book over and over again with only slight variations. I'd get bored and I've convinced myself that if I write bored, I'll end up boring my readers. And who needs that? I get a lot of different ideas and I try a lot of different things and have a pretty eclectic mix of stories to show for it...and probably some readers who are just as confused about exactly what kinds of books I write as I am. Will the real PG Forte please stand up?

But change is good, right? Different is good. That's what I tell myself, A Chorus Line to the contrary.  But, as a reader, what I really want is the same. I want the same kinds of stories told over and over again. Different voices, different styles, different settings, but still the same basic theme or storyline.   As a reader, I'm kind of boring. As a reader, I study blurbs and book descriptions looking for new books that are just like the old books I already have and love. In other words: I look for tropes. I've been doing that since long before I even heard the word or new what it meant, without even realizing I was doing it.

I guess that's part of the reason that tropes are so popular with readers. They provide consistency, familiarity. They're very comforting. You can dive into a new story by an unfamiliar author and still know exactly what to expect (and still manage to be surprised by the way in which events unfold, by a three-dimensional character or an unanticipated plot twist).

As a writer, I've also come to appreciate tropes for their utility. They're a shortcut, a quick and easy way to break down complicated stories and help readers decide which book is right for them. This one is a secret baby story. This is a reunited lover story. This is a tortured hero story. This one? Well, that's got all three of those tropes crammed into one tiny novella. I did mention it's a problem, right?  Hi. My name is PG and I'm a trope abuser.

What are some of your favorite tropes?

Double, double, toil and trouble…

...Fire burn and brimstone bubble. Witches and witchcraft date back through the ages to when people worshiped the Mother Earth or nature goddess. It was a time before traditional religion when the unexplained was called magical and people with unique talents were special.  The Old Religion which existed since the Stone Age was far from evil. These people were connected with the seasons, the plants, the animals and the planet and sought a balanced life. These special people were seers, knowers, healers, and averters of evil.

Over the centuries the nature goddess was replaced by more traditional religions and practices. The word witch only took on a negative meaning with the coming of Christianity, which taught that all the heathen gods were devils. And by association, anyone who clung to the old ways and the Old Religion was a devil worshiper.

The real roots of witchcraft and magic appear to come from the Celts, a diverse group of Iron Age tribal societies which flourished between about 700 BC and 100 AD in northern Europe.  The Celts were a brilliant and dynamic people, gifted artists, musicians, storytellers, and metalworkers, as well as expert farmers and fierce warriors much feared by the Romans.

They were also a deeply spiritual people and believed in the many gods associated with Mother Earth, the Divine Creator.  By about 350 BC, a priestly class known as the Druids had developed. They became the priests of the Celtic religion as well as teachers, judges, astrologers, healers, midwives and bards.

The religious beliefs and practices of the Celts, their love for the land, and their reverence of trees (the oak in particular) grew into what later became known as Paganism. Blended over several centuries with the beliefs and rituals of other societies, practices such as concocting potions and ointments, casting spells and performing works of magic, all of which (along with many of the nature-based beliefs held by the Celts and other groups) developed and became known as witchcraft in the Medieval Period.

There are many types of witches. The witchcraft of the Picts, the early inhabitant of what is ow the Scottish Highlands, goes far back and differs from all the other types of witchcraft in Europe. This is Old Scotland and its history and legends are filled with stories of magickal workings, spells and charms. There are charms performed to increase farm production, to ensure a favorable wind for fishermen. Some seamen walked around a large monolith stone seven times to encourage a good trip/catch. Other people created charms such as the woodbine wreath. They would cut down woodbine (a form of honeysuckle) in March during the waxing moon (anytime between the new and full moons) and twist the boughs into large wreaths. They kept the wreath for a year and a day. Young children suffering from a fever would be passed through the wreaths three times to be cured.

Old superstitions have a strong hold on people. There are hints of the 'old ways' even today. Some in Scotland carry a lucky penny or 'peighinn pisich' that they turn over three times at the first glimpse of a full moon.

There are many cases of Witchcraft throughout Scottish history, demonstrating the zeal of the Protestants and Catholics alike, in their paranoia over possible "servants of the devil." The vast majority of Scottish Witches practiced as Solitaries (alone without a coven), only occasionally coming together for special celebrations.

Witchcraft was first made legally punishable, in Scotland, by an Act passed by the Scottish Parliament, in 1563 during the reign of Mary. Witch hunts swept through Northern Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries and were fed by a mixture of superstition, religious fever, political motivation and general suspicion. No one was safe, not the peasant not the nobleman. Storms, diseases, and misfortunes had to be blamed on something or someone—witches were an easy target. 

Types of witches

Kitchen Witch: Practices by home and hearth, mainly dealing with practical sides of the religion, magick, the elements, and the earth.

Ceremonial Witchcraft: Mainly use ceremonial magick in their practices such as Kabbalistic magick or Egyptian magick.

Satanic Witch: This doesn't exist. Why? Contrary to the witch hunts of Europe and America, witches don't believe in Satan.

Celtic Wicca: Believe in the elements, the Ancient Ones, and nature. They are usually healers. They work with plants, stones, flowers, trees, the elemental people, the gnomes, and the fairies.

Eclectic Witch: These witches don’t follow a particular religion or tradition. They study and learn from many different systems and use what works best for them.

British Traditional Witch: A mix of Celtic and Gardenarian beliefs. They train through a degree process and the covens are usually co-ed.

Alexandrian Tradition: They are said to be modified Gardenarian.

Gardenarian Tradition: Follow a structure rooted in ceremony and practice. They aren't as vocal as others and have a fairly foundational set of customs.

Dianic Tradition: A compilation of many different traditions rolled into one. Their prime focus is the Goddess. It is the more feminist side of 'The Craft'.

Pictish Witchcraft: It's originally from Scotland and is a solitary form of The Craft. It is more magickal in nature than it is in religion.

Hereditary Witch: Someone who has been taught the 'Old Religion' through the generations of their family.

Caledonii Tradition: Also known as the Hecatine Tradition, it has its roots in Scotland.

Pow-Wow: Comes from South Central Pennsylvania and is a system based on a 400 year old Elite German magick. They concentrate on simple faith healing.

Solitary Witch: Any witch who practices alone, without a coven.

Strega Witches: Originally from Italy this group is known to be the smallest group in the US. It is said their craft is wise and beautiful.