OOC: Next Novel (with poll)

[sythyry]

So, I'm poking at the next novel. Some particular goals:

1. A small story: about a manageable number of characters, keeping the world-shattering events down to a modest number. (Marriage of Insects and Sythyry's Vacation are small stories.)
2. Something that has some chance of being saleable. Specific desiderata:
   1. Recognizably fantasy instead of the fantasy/sf blend I seem to indulge in usually. At least, as much fantasy as World Tree is.
   2. Not so much emphasis on potentially-disturbing stuff.
   3. Minimal sex. (Yeah, I know that sex sells, but not the way I write it)
   4. Minimal war. (Yeah, I know that war sells too, but war isn't a small story.)
3. Totally in my style, and playing to my strengths.
4. Specific influences currently in mind: Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of Man; Roger Zelazny's Amber (first series); Alan Dean Foster's The Tar-Aiym Krang. The first two are among my favorites. Krang is not; I read it once in the mid-70's, and found it adequate.

The backstory of the setting concerns two species from different worlds. The first is the couatl, winged feathered serpents, who learned how to slither delicately between worlds (which few species can do). They were clever and friendly and gentle, and were explorers and traders, and learned much in their travels and became very civilized. In time they came to the world of the lammasu, mighty winged lions. The lammasu were not gentle. They learned the power of throwing open the gates between worlds, and they went forth and conquered a thousand worlds. Including the coatls, of course.

I'm kind of thinking of the coatls as very loosely like classical Greece, and the lammasu as very loosely like classical Rome at its peak -- and like the Instrumentality of Man from Cordwainer Smith. The domain of the lammasu is run with ruthless benevolence. The lammasu try to make it a decent place to live, for nearly everyone. This is a strategic point: it cuts way down on rebellions and other troubles. And the lammasu intend their empire to last forever. (As of the start of the story, it has been around for centuries and is quite robust.)

So here's the fussing of the day: vocabulary.

I am thinking that the vocabulary of inter-world travel will come from the coatls, since they did it first, and the vocabulary of empire will come from the lammasu. I have a modest number of technical terms in mind. I could just use "gate" or "portal" as the way you leave one world and come to the next, but that's so overworked I dunno. Anyways, I am considering trying to abuse the Nahuatl language for couatl words and the Sumerian language for lammasu ones.

I'm making some attempt to pay attention to actual Nahuatl and Sumerian. I'm ultimately more concerned with literary use than linguistic purity.

"š" is pronounced "sh". There are a few other odd letters that scholars use for Sumerian (ģ for an ng sound); I might use some of them too.

So here's my core vocabulary.

Word	Language	Short	Definition
calac	couatl	gate	Portal between tlalli. A calac leads from one tlalli to the next.
coatl	coatl	winged serpent	One of the older, more powerful, and more civilized species
Ensi	lammasu	governor	Nešgeš-appointed governor of a tlalli
gi-nun	lammasu	slave	Subject of Nešgeš, but without the priveleges of a mašda. (About 5%)
lugal	lammasu	lord	One of the most important people of the Nešgeš. (80% of lugals are lammasu)
mašda	lammasu	commoner	Citizen of the Nešgeš. (About 95% of the subjects of the Nešgeš are mašda)
Nešgeš	lammasu	empire; instrumentality	The empire of the lammasu, controlling dozens of ohtli and thousands of tlalli
ohtli	couatl	road	A string of tlalli connected by calacs
tlalli	couatl	land; worldlet	The region readily reachable by a calac. Usually a populated country some 50-100 miles in diameter. Generally much smaller than a whole world.

And here're some specific questions. I'm doing this as a LJ-quiz because it's all scales.

[Poll #1487398]

Comments

[rowyn]

Yeah, same thought re: humans. Human-like -- humans with pointy ears, or humans with wings -- is probably saleable. Humans as minority, or even just one human protagonist, is fine. No humans at all seems to be a dealbreaker. I can't think of a single book put out by a large publisher that has no human characters. :/ Surely there's *some*? Oh, wait, there's a few ones about animals, like Watership Down and Tailchaser's Song. And some furry stories for kids and YA, like Beatrix Potter and (I think) Redwall (I thought those were YA but I haven't read them). So it happens. Stuff for grown-ups with only alien characters (as opposed to animals) isn't coming to my mind, but there's surely some I haven't read or am overlooking.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

The Chanur series went several books before adding a human character, if I remember right. You had cat people and skeksis for the most part (there were a couple other races that I had no clear image of).

She brought in humans *eventually* though (it turned out the whole thing was happening on the other side of human space from the Company Wars).

[rowyn]

I only read one or two Chanur books, but the very first one Cherryh published, Pride of Chanur, had a token human character, Tully. He caused various problems for the captain and crew (not deliberately, mind) and was a significant part of the plot. Because of the structure of the novel, Tully ends up looking more alien than any of the cat-people. It's pretty cool.

I don't know if later books (published, if not chronologically) stopped having humans, though.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

All of Cherryh's characters seemed pretty alien to me...

[rowyn]

Is that good or bad?

I haven't read that many of her stories, actually, and have had mixed reactions to them. I liked Paladin. Pride of Chanur was okay, but not good enough for me to read the others. I hated the stories she did for Thieves' World. (I don't even remember what they were about now, except that she was one of the authors I associates with the Dysfunctional Drama-filled Power-gaming stage of the Thieves' World campaign.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I liked the Pride of Chanur series but it got a bit depressingly redundant. The Company Wars were better (Downbelow Station was the first one, I think?), and the very very best was Cyteen.

I don't think I ever read Paladin, unless it was part of the Foreigner series (which started out okay but got more and more annoying until I stopped reading it).

[rowyn]

Ahh. I'm pretty sure Lut has a copy of Cyteen kicking around somewhere. Maybe I'll give it a look.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Bad.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Huh, okay. I thought the troublemaking outsider for the first few books was a male, and then Tully came later when they introduced the human invasion fleet. I mean, peacekeeping fleet.

If he was there from the start he was probably there for the whole series.