Category Archives: A Writing Life

721. Learning from the Masters

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Much of what has appeared in this blog over the years has been how-to for writers and would-be writers. Those posts have been gathered, reconsidered, sometimes condensed, sometimes expanded, and placed between the virtual covers of two books.

The first book, Learning from the Masters, is a compilation of some of the things I have learned from a lifetime of reading. It is partly a thank you to those who came before me, and it could form a long, annotated to-read list. You could do worse than to look up these old guys (and gals) as your next reads. There is a note below that will tell you more. Learning from the Masters is scheduled for release on March 17, 2027, a little less than a year from now.

The second book, So You Want to Write Science Fiction, is more personal, primarily consisting of things I have learned myself through fifty-plus years on the edge of the publishing industry. It is due for release on July 7, 2027. There will be a heads-up like this one on July 8th of this year to remind you.

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What follows here is a note I wrote a few months ago, for inclusion at the beginning of Learning from the Masters. If you were born after 1990, this note is for you.

This book is called Learning from the Masters. You don’t get to be a Master overnight. Even if your first book is a masterpiece, it will probably be decades before they call you a Master.

Most (not all) of the Masters in this book are dead. That doesn’t make them obsolete. Even if you are reading this on your smart phone, you should remember that these visionaries were the primary builders of the world that made that smart phone possible. Even though they lived in your past, their minds lived in the future. Most of what they envisioned is yet to come — unless one of the violent ends to modern culture that they also envisioned happens first.

When they wrote is less important than what they wrote.

There are Masters at work today, and many of them have already been anointed with that title. Some will still be called Masters by your children; some will be forgotten. A few of them are in this book, but the bulk of those I have included are the Masters who helped form my writing life.

My early life was lived with one foot in the past and one foot in the future. I was born in 1947 — a little closer to 1900 than to 2000, and much closer to 1900 than to the publication date of Learning from the Masters..

When I was thirteen, standing in the dairy barn, shoveling cow manure out the door, my soul wasn’t grounded in the muck at my feet. It was riding a multi-colored variform horse across the plains of Arzor in memory of the Andre Norton novel I had been reading the night before. Or it was on the way to the outer planets with the family Stone in a novel written by Heinlein

The Masters in this book, no matter what era they were writing in, faced the same challenges that writers face today. Plot, characterization, backstory, readership, changing tastes, censorship, publication and how to attain it — the questions never change, although the answers often do.

If you are a writer, or want to be — and why would you read this book (or this blog) if you didn’t — these men (and a few women) faced the same challenges you are facing now. Shouldn’t you be . . .

Learning from the Masters

Due for release on March 17, 2027.

720. Where Good Men Have Gone Before

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I never thought it would happen, but NASA proved me wrong. Good for them.

I was a space enthusiast from age 10, when space was impossible. I never lost my fervor. Coming home from our honeymoon a decade later, my wife and I went to her old college dorm to find a television and watched the Apollo 11 landing, surrounded by a crowd of enthusiasts.

Three and half years later, the glory was over. Manned exploration was over. We flew space shuttles, but only in low Earth orbit. We built a space station — two actually, and the Russians built many. Still, manned exploration was over. We were not-so-boldly going where Mercury and Gemini had gone before, but nobody was going where Apollo had so recently gone.

Then came NASP, Venturestar, and Project Constellation, phantom programs that promised new explorations, but died stillborn. By the time Constellation morphed into Artemis, I had given up — not on space exploration, but on the politicians who make it happen. Or don’t make it happen.

<< — >>

The rest is part of a post I wrote 45 years after the liftoff of the last Saturn. These were Gene Cernan’s words on leaving the moon at the end of Apollo 17.

“We leave as we came, and, God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.” 

<< — >>

On December 7, 1972, at 12:33 AM Eastern Time, the last manned moon flight took off from Cape Canaveral.

Apollo was a stunt from the get-go. Kennedy’s speech set a goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth within the decade. If we had failed, it would be laughed at today as just another empty promise made by a politician.

One man laid down the challenge and thousands of men and women carried out the promise.

But it was still a stunt. When Kennedy made his speech on May 25, 1961, Russia had put a man into orbit. We had not, although we had managed a sub-orbital flight. NASA had only been in existence for three years. By any real or imagined yardstick, the Russians were far ahead in space.

By herculean efforts, NASA forged ahead through Mercury and Gemini. The fire aboard “Apollo One” set American efforts back significantly, and when launches began again, it looked like the Russians were going to land on the moon first.

Something had to be done. That something was the Apollo 8 journey to and around the moon, without a lander, for the Christmas season of 1968. We could claim to have been to the moon first (by an ad-man’s stretch of the truth), even if the Soviets became the first to land.

The Russian program faltered. Apollo 11 landed a man safely on the moon, and returned him safely to the Earth.

Now what?

For the Soviets, the answer was to turn away from the moon. Their N-1 mega-rocket had failed, and their manned modules and lander were stored away. The Soviets began a series of long flights and space stations, studying space from low Earth orbit.

For NASA there were nine more Saturn V rockets waiting to launch Apollo 12 through 20. It didn’t turn out that way. Even before Apollo 13 failed, Apollo 20 had been cancelled so its Saturn V could be used to launch Skylab. Even before Apollo 14 landed, Apollo 18 and 19 were cancelled. Why? Because it was a stunt from the get-go. Apollo 11 had met the deadline. To coin-counting bureaucrats, that was enough.

For those of us who see space exploration as the future of humanity, Apollo 11 was only the  beginning. Lunar exploration, a moon base, Mars, Venus — there should have been no end.

Bureaucrats did not agree. The program was cut short.

<< — >>

Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt landed on the moon December 11, 1972, in the Taurus-Littrow region of the moon. This site allowed sampling a wide range of types of rock, as it consisted of an ancient lava flow, with surface broken by subsequent meteor strikes, and included secondary strikes. This means that ejecta from the nearby Tycho crater had come to earth (come to Moon?) causing secondary, smaller craters at the Taurus-Littrow site. This allowed Schmitt to sample Tycho material even though an Apollo landing at Tycho never happened.

A few minutes before eleven PM, Greenwich Time, December 14, 1972, the last manned mission to the moon lifted off, to later rendezvous with the CSM and return to Earth. Gene Cernan was the last to enter the lunar lander before take off.

We’ll give him the final words, spoken years later:

“Too many years have passed for me to still be the last man to have left his footprints on the Moon. I believe with all my heart that somewhere out there is a young boy or girl with indomitable will and courage who will lift that dubious distinction from my shoulders and take us back where we belong. Let us give that dream a chance.”

And now, we’re going back. It’s about time. Thank you to all who did not lose faith.

719. Winning a War

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I have over a dozen novels waiting to be published, and once in a while I fire one up and read it again on my computer. It isn’t entirely self-indulgence, although if you don’t enjoy reading your own writing its time to take up a different art form.  In my case it is half enjoyment and half polishing. Every read-through finds dozens to hundreds of tiny changes that make the novel read more smoothly.

I have recently been re-reading my novel The Cost of Empire, an alternate reality story in which the Brits won the German War, their equivalent of our WWI. In their world that war came a half a century early and was won mostly by the actions of a secret group of spies, saboteurs, and assassins.

Now this Britain all but rules the world. Our hero has found out about the league of spies, has gotten himself on their hit list, and has gone underground.

Today — March 23, 2026 — I reached ms. page 203 where he is musing about how he got to where he is. He says of his country:

Winning a war is one thing: surviving the peace that follows is another, particularly when all the world hates you.

God, does that sound familiar. And timely.

— << >> —

Here are two propositions for you to consider:

The United States is a beacon to the world, showing what democracy can mean for its people.

The United States is a hungry beast, treating the little countries of the world as its prey.

Neither proposition is true all the time, but each of them is true sometimes.

We could start looking at how the nation was formed, although that gets awfully complicated for a short post.

Yes, the land was already occupied by “savages”. That wasn’t a word restricted to North America. In early days it basically meant non-Christian, and was applied to the whole non-European world. Before we sympathize with the natives too quickly however, we need to remember that most of the pioneers who took over Indian land were escaping from tyranny.

No, I am not talking about the tyranny of King George III. North America was well populated by Europeans before George III’s grandfather was  born. I am referring to the tyranny of European landlords — the rich of their day who controlled the land and reduced the people who worked that land to serfdom, whether or not that term technically applied.

Could the European populating of America have been stopped? No. Do I wish for a different outcome? No. Nevertheless, it is the ground base of our culture, the source of our pride, and the birth of our legends. We tell ourselves that we won because we were a superior people, endowed with the rights of free men.

Good enough. I make no arguments with American pride, as long as it is tempered with a clear vision of what else we have done over the years.

For instance, we might consider the Mexican War of 1846-8, in which the United States force-purchased New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah, along with parts of Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma, all at the point of American guns.

We might also remember the with Spanish-American war of 1898. It began with America supporting Cuba’s revolt against its Spanish masters. The Senate disavowed any intention of taking control of Cuba, but when the treaties were signed after the war, America had nevertheless gained control of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

But not Cuba. 128 years later, Trump wants to remedy that.

Old news? How about the war your grandfathers fought in Viet Nam, a fourth rate country that should have fallen in no time, but defeated the giant — us. Or the ten years spent in Afghanistan, before we pulled out.

Who could have guessed such things could happen?

The answer is, any guy. We all know the story. The school bully beats up every kid in the class, and finally picks on the littlest, least, and last — and gets his head handed to him. For the bully, it was just fun; for the little guy, it was life or death.

Multiply that by a million and you have the US taking on third or fourth rate nations, and losing. When you declare victory and vacate, no one is fooled.

I say it again:

Winning a war is one thing: surviving the peace that follows is another, particularly when all the world hates you.

That is, if you can even win the war.

718. History Repeats Itself

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NEWS FLASH

I write these posts far in advance, then polish them repeatedly, which makes it hard to keep up with fast moving news. Two posts were scheduled for today and next week so that they would come one year before the release of a book. That will have to change. I have two things I need to say, so the scheduled posts will both get bumped forward, along with a general reshuffling of the next dozen.

This all started two days ago when I ran into a situation that called for a response to the ongoing war against Iran. It led me to write the post that you will see next week.

Then, three hours later on the same day, the news reported that Trump said he was negotiating with Iran, and Iran said they weren’t negotiating with him.

Really?

History seems to be repeating itself, so now I have to write this post.

I’ve seen this movie before, but not many people have, so let me explain. I grew up in north-eastern Oklahoma, which was the land assigned to the Cherokees. I learned all the cliches then, and later acquainted myself with their actual history.

The Cherokees came from the eastern United States, largely Tennessee and Georgia. During the first half of the 1800’s they lived in cabins not very different from their white neighbors, raised crops in similar ways, held slaves, and intermarried with whites. John Ross, their principal chief, was seven-eighths Scottish.

Nevertheless, their white neighbors wanted their land, and President Jackson wanted them, and most of the other tribes, out of the United States. He offered the Cherokees land across the Mississippi in exchange for their homeland, in an area owned by the United States but not part of any state. It came to be called Indian Territory, and later Oklahoma.

The Cherokees didn’t want to go.

Cherokees were divided in many ways, as human groups usually are. Some were unable to speak English and lived as closely as possible to the old ways. Some were more integrated into the white world.

That exact same sentence could be used to describe their white neighbors, if you slip in the word “proper” just before the word “English”.

There were factions among the Cherokees, with differing responses to the idea of removal. Jackson found a faction he could buy off, signed a treaty with them, then sent the Army to move the entire Cherokee nation whether they agreed with the treaty or not.

That is a lot of history to cram into 220 words, but it is essentially factual, if short on detail.

So what does that have to do with Trump repeating history? He says he  is “negotiating” peace with someone, but won’t say who. We have to guess, while also considering that it might be an outright lie.

It isn’t the Iranian government (unless they are flat out lying), but possibly some disgruntled diplomat, someone who wants out of the war, or someone who can be bought off. Like Jackson with the Cherokees.

So here are the choices we face:

One, Trump is actually negotiating with someone in authority and a treaty will come out of the process. I give that a 1% or less chance of being true.

Two, Trump is actually negotiating with someone who has no authority, and any treaty coming out of the process will be bogus. That is history repeating itself.

Three, there are no real negotiations, just another smoke screen.

The chances of a positive outcome don’t look good.

717. Don’t Start at the Beginning, Part Two.

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Last week I said you should buy a copy of Flint, by Lous L’Amour, and have it in hand as I take you through the first five pages. I have left out more than I have provided, so you need the original. Don’t read this and think you have read L’Amour. Now let’s begin —

Flint, Chapter 1, Paragraph 1-3  =>  It is given to few people in this world to disappear twice but, as he had succeeded once, the man known as James T. Kettleman was about to make his second attempt.

If he did not succeed this time he would never know it, for he would be dead.

When a man has but a few months to live, he can, if he so wills, choose the manner of his going, and Kettleman had made such a choice. He was now on his way to a place of which he alone knew, and there he would die. He would die as he had lived — alone.

If that doesn’t grab you by the lapels, I don’t know what it would take.

Be sure to read the paragraphs I don’t provide. The ones I am giving you are just landmarks.

Paragraph 6 => There were five people in the car. The lights were dim, the passengers lay sprawled in uncomfortable sleep. The train rushed westward through the cold, clear night, carrying the man steadily toward his final destination.

First who he is, now where he is. Next we will get a glimpse of his love interest and his antagonist, both of who will appear later in the novel. Read on . . .

Paragraph 10-14 => The country outside was invisible. The windows had steamed over, and the train moved as if through an endless tunnel.     (I am trying to maintain the letter and spirit of the copyright laws, which allow short excerpts, so you will have to have a copy of Flint to read the longer sections.)

Now we know where he is going, and that the place is intimately familiar to him. If you are a fan of the genre, you also know that it is a place you want to spend the next few hours. In a different genre, it would be different place.

Paragraph 15-23 =>      Next in your copy, but too long to reproduce in this post, is the essential flashback that establishes Flint’s deep background. This gunfight is a classic of the genre, but it is told briefly since it exists to establish character and motivation. There will be other gunfights to bring the book to its necessary conclusion. This is a Western, after all.

In another genre, say a romance, this might be be an early or failed romance to set up THE ONE in the closing pages.

Paragraph 24 => In the instant of silence that followed the shooting they heard the click of a drawn-back gun hammer, and every head turned. “He was my friend,” the youngster said, and he started shooting.

This is a triple set-up. First it establishes Flint’s relationship to the man who is killed. This will be fleshed out later in the novel. It also shows Flint’s gun skills, and finally it sets-up an essential mistake of identity, when “Kettleman” is later thought to be the legendary hired killer Flint.

Paragraph 27-28 => The train whistled, the lonely sound trailing off across the wind-swept plains. Kettleman got out his pipe and lighted it. His two bags and haversack were at the back of the car. When he opened that door there would be a moment when the cold air might awaken the others, but he would be gone.

Up to a point he had planned every move, but once arrived at Flint’s old hideout there would be nothing to do but wait. Some time ago his doctor had told him he would not live a year, and most of that year had passed.

The next five paragraphs are skipped just to speed the process. Of course you will read them in that novel in your other hand.

Paragraph 33-34 => There had been more than fifteen hundred dollars in Flint’s pockets when he died on that rain soaked Kansas hillside, following the shooting at The Crossing. The boy who was to become James T. Kettleman had sixty dollars of his own, which he used to buy an outfit of store clothes in Kansas City.

He travelled to New York City and sold his four horses for an additional four hundred dollars. With this stake he started in business. It was more money than either Jay Gould or Russel Sage had started with.

Again, some paragraphs are skipped.

Paragraph 41 => In the fifteen years following that night at The Crossing he had built his small stake into many millions, making many enemies and no friends in the process. He married a wife who tried to have him killed, and had no children.

That last sentence is a masterpiece of brevity. It tells a little, but leaves volumes unsaid. It leaves us dying to know more about this woman. When she shows up more than half-way through the book, we will find that she has been worth waiting for.

Paragraph 43 => Thirty years earlier, when he was two years old, he had been picked from the brush near a burned wagon train, where he had been overlooked by raiding Comanches. There were no other survivors. Nothing remained to tell who he was, and those who found him had no interest in learning. During the next four years he was handed around from family to family and finally abandoned on a cold night in a one-street Western town.

Having established Flint as a youth and as a grown man, L’Amour finally tells us about the very early life which set him on his path.

Paragraph 47-49 => The dry grass bent before the wind, and seed pods rattled in the brush along the right of way.

James T. Kettleman was ended, and the man who had borne that name, making it feared and respected, stood now where he had stood so many years before, without a name. He was now a man without a past as he had been a boy without one.

“Good-by,” he said, but there was nobody to say the word to, and nothing to remember.

<< == >>

So now we are five pages into the novel. I dare you — or any reader — to stop now.

There is a lot to be learned in these few pages about grabbing your readers, whether you like Westerns or not. And if you didn’t get a copy of Flint to read, causing you to miss 90% of what the rest of us learned, aren’t you sorry now?

Of course you can still go get a copy. This post will still be here. Just type Syd Logsdon 716. Don’t Start at the Beginning, Part 2 into your browser.

716. Don’t Start at the Beginning, Part One.

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Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

The Bible starts that way but you shouldn’t. When I say that, I am assuming that your are or want to be a writer.

The days of beginning at the beginning of a story passed a couple of centuries ago. Now we begin in medias res, which is Latin for in the middle of things. Then we fill in with flashbacks, as needed.

It’s quite an art, and it is often done badly.

In a recent Christmas movie, two young women were standing on stage at the Grand Ole Opry. One said, “I can’t believe I still get nervous before a live show.” The other replied, “You’re Suzie Smith, country western star, and I’m your manager. You’ve got this!”

Awkward, awkward, awkward.

You need to get your story going at full speed, then introduce the necessary background early so your reader or viewer doesn’t close the book or change the channel before being properly hooked. It’s a skill that takes time to master.

AI devours ten thousand reports in order to learn how to produce one report. Writers read a thousand novels before they are ready to write one, starting it in medias res. I am about to offer you a novel that should be on your list.

The novel is Flint, by Lous L’Amour. It doesn’t matter if you are a fan of westerns or not, this is business. You can learn from any genre, and this novel is a masterpiece at grabbing the reader by the lapels in the first sentence and never letting him escape.

In the first five pages, L’Amour introduces his character, paints a compelling picture of his surroundings, tells you that his character is dying (he isn’t, but he thinks he is), shows the girl who will later be his love interest, as well as the man who will be his future enemy, tells Flint’s origin story (it’s a good one), tells the story of his life so far, and introduces the woman (who happens to be his wife) who will bring him no end of misery.

But here is a twist. Before I tell more, I’m going to give you a homework assignment.

You can buy Flint in many new bookstores, in many used bookstores, or you can go to Amazon and find it new, used, as kindle, or as an audiobook. Get a copy and have it handy on March 11th. Then I will walk through the first five pages with you.

I can’t compress five novel pages into one of these posts, and it would probably be illegal anyway. Also, I’m not ChatGPT. If I am going to use another author’s novel, I will expect him (or his estate) to get at least a few pennies.

Of course, you may be reading this post years from now. The same rules apply. Get a copy of Flint and then go to the March 11, 2026 post.

Join me next week, same time, same place,
with a copy of Flint in your hand.

715. Pettus Bridge, a fable

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Once upon a time, there was a lovely young woman. Unfortunately, she was black, enslaved, and living in Alabama. The year was 1815.

Her owner was just back from fighting beside Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. He was a hero.

His wife didn’t think so. She had been running the plantation all the time he was gone. She hadn’t enjoyed that, but she enjoyed having him home again even less. In bed, he was quick and crude, and after three weeks his wife moved into a different bedroom.

A week later, he found the lovely young black woman in the fields. He ordered her to take off her clothes and lie down on her back in the shade of a tree. Ten minutes later he was on his way again.

Nine months later, the woman gave birth to a beautiful daughter. Nineteen years later, the hero’s son caught the daughter in the fields and did the same thing to her that his father had done to her mother. Nine months later, another lovely black girl-child was born, but now things had changed.

The plantation was failing. The hero’s son had become too fat to chase women, even slave women, and too drunk most of the time to miss the chase. The plantation was sold, the slaves were broken up and scattered. The girl-child stayed with her mother a few years, then was sold to a plantation south of Birmingham. When she turned seventeen, she was sold to a brothel.

When she was twenty-four, she gave birth to twins — but not identicals. One she named Flo; it had been her mother’s name. The other she named Cécile, since the father had been a Frenchman. She thought so, anyway.

The blood of Cécile’s white father, and grandfather, and great grandfather were strong in her makeup. He nose was small, her skin was pale, She would be a great addition to the brothel when she grew up. Flo had inherited the other side of the genetic lottery.

Both would remain slaves. Both were black, Cécile’s white looks notwithstanding, since the doctrine of that day was the one drop of blood was all it took to make you black.

Little Cécile was a favorite of all the men who came to the brothel. When her head was only up to their elbows, she had already learned how to lean against them, smile up at them, and laugh like she didn’t have a care. She earned coins that way and she kept them hidden. She listened to what they talked about as they waited their turn upstairs, and she remembered. She stored everything away in her finely tuned mind and she planned. She learned about Birmingham, but more importantly she learned about Memphis from a traveler who came often. Soon she knew all the street names, where blacks lived, and where they didn’t.

When she was fifteen, she ran away. Two months later, she was in Memphis. Her name was Celia, now. Celia White, because she had a sense of humor. Her name was White, and she was white, because she was intelligent enough to know that that was the only way to survive. Her husband never knew. Her children never knew.

Celia had eight children. Every time a child was born, she was in mortal fear that the child would have dark skin and kinky hair, but it never happened. When one of Celia’s grandsons had a black appearing child, he beat his wife for her infidelity, since the child clearly could not be his. Celia said nothing.

When Celia was 53, her husband moved to Selma, Alabama. Within a year most of the children and grandchildren had followed. Now Celia was only seventeen miles from the town that held the brothel where she had been born. She said nothing.

Celia’s mother was emancipated in 1865, but Celia never contacted her.

Celia had emancipated herself already. While the others traded slavery for Jim Crow, Celia had made herself white. Her emancipation was real, and she had no intention of jeopardizing it.

Celia live to be 71. They buried her in Selma, in a cemetery that black folks couldn’t use — but she did.

She had eight children, forty-seven grandchildren, and one hundred six great-grandchildren. Most of them remained in and around Selma, and many went into law enforcement.

In 1965, Celia would have been 116 if she had lived that long. She never saw her mother again after she ran away from the brothel. She never saw her twin, Flo, either. For most of Celia’s life, Flo was alive and in the area, having children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, just like Celia, but they never met again.

On March 7, 1965 near the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, Celia’s great-grandchildren, thinking they were white, brutally attacked Flo’s great-grandchildren who knew that they were black and always would be.

Behold, America, clubbing itself to death over the myth of race.

714. The Soul of the Menhir

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Religion fascinates me. I had it, I lost it, and I have told that story too many times to repeat it here, but the fascination remains.

I invented a master religion in Jandrax, where Louis Dumezil wrote a compilation of all the things which religions have in common and called it the Monomythos. It was meant to end religious wars. It went through many revisions, after which religious wars were fought over which version was the correct one.

In A Fond Farewell to Dying Ram David Singh found his research impeded by those who believed in the Christian concept of a soul and by those who believed in the Hindu concept of atman.

That is the way I exercise my fascination. Whatever my personal opinion, I write about characters working out their destinies, guided by their own beliefs.

Of course, I nudge.

In the menhir series, menhirs are gates between worlds. (See post 710, January 28, 2026) How they are powered in the rest of the multiverse is not explained, but in the world of the menhir they are repositories of souls, and are fed by the ai (power) of the souls which are bound (enreithed) to them.

I’ll let my favorite priest, Dymal, explain further:

— <<  >> —

From Morning of the Gods . . .

Dymal paused outside the hedge and shook his head.

“Most improper,” he said and, looking at the direction the late afternoon shadows fell. He walked around to the eastern side of the thorngall hedge and pushed through. As Tidac and Cinnabar followed him, he said, “One always approaches a menhir from the direction of the rising sun.”

“We didn’t know.”

“Of course not. No harm was done. It’s just that you came in the window when you should have entered by the front door.”

Dymal stopped to survey the besh. It was rounded and lichen covered, a boulder perhaps a little under man height. He raised his hands and spoke a word, listened to the echo of his voice, then said, “Not a menhir, but certainly a stone of enreithment.”

Tidac was puzzled. His education should have included the details of menhir worship, but it had been cut short by Marquart’s death. Cinnabar knew even less, and said so.

Dymal accepted their ignorance with good grace and fell into a didactic mode of speech. “When one dies,” he said, “where does the soul go?”

“It is enreithed,” Tidac said.

“It hoovers above the body for a time,” Cinnabar said. “Then it sometimes goes into some object, or it just fades away.”

Dymal smiled as if his pupils had said something profound. A dozen years of teaching priest candidates had given him the skill of setting young ones at ease, and making the ignorant feel smarter than they were. “You are both half right and half wrong.” he said.

“No one knows where souls come from; the last great mystery is who you were before you were born. But once installed in a physical body, our soul, our essence, clings with such tenacity that not age, nor weakness, nor sorrow, nor torture can drive it out. Only death can free a soul, and in that terrible last moment it becomes abahara — bodiless. The word means disconnected, and there is no greater torment than that state.

“Thousands upon thousands of years ago, wise men discovered a way to attach those bodiless souls to inanimate stone, and give them rest. Over the millennia, as soul after soul comes to find rest in a single stone, those souls form a commingled whole — a gestalt soul, if you will. Thus a mere stone becomes a besh, as this one is.”

“But not a menhir?” Tidac asked.

“All menhirs are beshes, but not all beshes are menhirs. This one will never be more than it is. It is too far from where men now live. But in other places, as more and more souls are enreithed, the power of each soul — each soul’s ai — contributes to the ai of the besh. If this goes on long enough, the besh becomes a menhir gate, through which the powerful can pass from world to world.”

— <<  >> —

Thank you, Dymal. I’ll take over now.

Menhirs are gates between the worlds, but only in the world of the menhir are men so attached to them. They are every man’s or woman’s desired ending. Death is not particularly feared, if it is followed by enreithment and a commingling with all the souls who have gone before. However, it is much feared by travelers and soldiers, whose deaths may come too far from a menhir. They truly die. Their souls arise out of their bodies and hover in fear and agony. Over a few days they dissipate. It is the ultimate in loneliness, and those who endure it are called abahara.

But not ghosts. Once these abaharas are gone, they are gone. They do not return.

There is passage between living worlds by way of the menhirs, for those who have the personal power to compel them. There is passage into the menhirs, once and forever at death. The eternal loneliness is averted, but individual identity is lost.

There is no land of the dead for the abaharas to return from. The unenreithed are simply dead, irrevocably and eternally.

It’s a tough world. I wrote it, I enjoy visiting and watching my word-people working out their destinies, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

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BACK IN POST 695 BIRTH OF A SERIES I gave my best estimate of publication dates for the Menhir series. That has been revised to:

The Morning of the Gods

May 27, 2026

Firedrake

July 15, 2026

The Lost Get

September 2, 2027

Whitethorn

October 21, 2026

The Scourge of Heaven

December 9, 2026

713. You and Me

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About sixty-eight years ago I was sitting in a fourth or fifth grade classroom, learning that I should always say, “You and I,” and that I was never supposed to say “Me and you”. I didn’t know that right there in small town Oklahoma I was being given a double-whammy of British imperialism and English politeness.

I did know that every child was going to continue saying “me and you” outside the classroom, and I suspected that the teacher probably would too. Adults were always full of advice they didn’t follow themselves.

I also knew that the adults in my little town didn’t talk like the people on television, and certainly didn’t speak the same English that I was finding in all those books from the county library.

I’m not talking about accent. Books are silent. Whatever was written in them, echoed in my head in the same Okie accent that I spoke. Even the local newsman on KTUL Tulsa, who used different words in different places than the people in my town, did so in the same Okie accent.

The teacher said, “Never say me and you. Always say you and I.” The implication was, memorize it and don’t ask any questions.

It wasn’t even grammatical. Let’s assume that we keep the other person first and ourselves second — it is “you and I” if we are using it as subject, and “you and me” if we are using it as an object. They didn’t teach us that.

Putting the person spoken to before the speaker didn’t really have anything to do with grammar. It existed because America grew out of British culture, before the rest of the world arrived. Britain was a stratified society in which you kept your head down unless you were top dog.

Don’t step in front of your betters. Don’t complain if they cut in line. Don’t speak until spoken to. And put your betters first in the sentence.

Any stratified society is dangerous, because your place in the system is never permanent or safe. If you work hard enough, you can rise — but if you slack off, you will fall.

That’s for the upper strata. If you are too far down, you had better plan to stay there, or your “betters” will make you wish you had. We are referring to Brits in Britain, high caste Hindus interacting with low caste Hindus in India, or anybody White in the era of my childhood, anywhere near the South, talking to anybody Black.

Until recently, and maybe still, that also included women trying to interact with men.

The English politeness — you and me, but never me and you — is not a matter of Mary Poppins sweetness and light. It is a word to the wise. Never assert your own value in a stratified society. Never put yourself first. Those above you will slap you down if you do.

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In that class, I was actually being taught that grammar (in the larger sense of rules of language, both acknowledged and hidden) is what language is all about. It would be years later that I realized that an equally compelling case could be made for the idea that usage is what language is all about. Finally I came to realize that it is, and probably always will be, a struggle between those two positions.

To be short and snarky, usage is what people say, and grammar is what intellectuals tell people that they should have said.

So who cares? You do, probably, if you are or want to be a writer.

Language is always changing, and one advantage of being seventy-eight and being a writer is that I have lived long enough to see it happen. A disadvantage (from the same viewpoint) is that language always seems to move toward the more simple, at the expense of the measured, the stately, and the beautiful.

I hate it. I throw metaphorical bricks at my TV screen every evening because of the way the characters are talking.

Nevertheless, the changes are real. They reflect the language people actually speak. They make up the language you readers will expect to read.

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When I was about fourteen, I knew I wanted to go to college, and I knew that the people there were not going to speak small town Okie. I got an authoritative book of grammar, Strunk and White, and made it part of my thinking. (It didn’t help my accent, but that’s another post.)

Even then, I didn’t buy into S&W as if it were the word of God, and over the years I have found that much of their advice was not helpful. No problem. I have never read a book without muttering, “Yeah, maybe?”, from time to time under my breath.

I know now that sentence fragments are as legitimate as sentences, and are frequently a great deal more expressive. Strunk or White would slap my knuckles for that, but who cares.

Are you a writer, or a would-be writer? I can’t imagine you coming this far into this post if you aren’t. There is a great variety of English out there. Pick and choose. Make it your own. Decide who your audience is, and how far you want to go toward sounding like them.

Especially,  be prepared for more changes in the future. Like it or not, change is coming.

712. God, Trump, and the Devil

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I originally wrote this post before Christmas. That’s not unusual; I always write posts early and revise them several times before they appear. In this case, you might expect that all the horrors visited on the world by Trump in Venezuela, Greenland, and Minneapolis would make my position harsher. It doesn’t, but only because this post is about the situation at the time of the last presidential election.

If those same voters still support Trump, that is a different matter.

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The people who follow Trump are not necessarily evil. They also aren’t fools. If you disagree with them philosophically, it is all too easy to paint them blacker than they deserve.

I don’t feel that negatively about them. I understand why conservatives hate abortion. I understand why the more extreme conservatives consider it murder. It isn’t a crazy position. I would argue with them, but that doesn’t mean their positions are crazy — not even extreme.

It’s a Christian thing and I used to be a Christian. I understand it.

I hear complaints about transgender people reading to children in libraries. I understand that too, even though I don’t agree.

If God made men and women, separate and different, in the manner He saw fit, then there is no middle ground — no blurring of the genders. I disagree with that philosophy (or more properly, religious interpretation) but that doesn’t make it crazy. It doesn’t even make it extreme.

I understand why Christian conservatives would support someone who claims to oppose abortion. I can understand why Christian conservatives would support someone who tells them that there are only two sexes, so homosexuality is wrong. I don’t agree, but I understand their viewpoint.

Here is what I don’t understand.

How can Christian conservatives support Trump when he only plays lip service to what they cherish. They have deep beliefs about morality and religion. He has deep beliefs in money and power. Trump has no empathy, no sexual morality, no sense of justice, and no respect for the law.

Christian conservatives, you should consider this question — do you like him? He doesn’t like you, or anyone else but himself.

I have even heard it said that Christians should support Trump because he is doing God’s work.

Really?

Does God need the Devil to do his work for him. Don’t you think He could save the world without employing a lying, cheating, heartless, arrogant, self-serving buffoon like Trump?

That’s the Christian position I don’t understand.

Here’s what I would think, if I were still a Christian. My mind would stray from contemporary issues to the Revelation of St. John. I would think about the Beast. I would think about the Antichrist — that charismatic world leader from the final days whom everyone worships and everyone follows, but whose coming signals Armageddon.

Trump as the Antichrist? I don’t believe it — now.

But if Trump had been around when I was a Christian, it would have been the first explanation that came to mind. It makes a lot more sense than the idea of Trump doing God’s work.