The Story of Okal Rel

Yeah, this is my blog about my fiction life. But the truth is my obsession with Amel and Horth’s world has always driven skills development for my day job. So I’m going with being “one me” on the blogging front.

I’m attending the Open Education Conference for 2015 in Vancouver, this week and feel the urge to indulge in free speech. So here’s my rules from my salad days at UNBC, about course content, whether you make it yourself, adapt it or buy it.

Lynda’s Course Content Rules
other things being equal ’cause there are always special cases …

1. Go with free or less expensive over greater polish
   (note: polish and quality are not the same.)
2. Use the “necessary and sufficient”principle for required content. (i.e. Nothing not essential to outcomes and everything that is essential.)
3. Be up-front about what’s fact, what’s cultural consensus in the field, and what’s debatable or in flux.
4. For enrichment: connect students to living (in high-change fields) or authoritative (in slow-change fields) sources. Make “optional” aspect explicit and warn them it is “off the deep end” stuff.
5. For review/remedial challenges (i.e. bugbears): provide two alternative, level-appropriate sources that present your lesson in a different way.

An excerpt from Gathering Storm is May 2015 free fiction feature on SF Canada site.

Yeah, it makes sense to start at the beginning. But the emphasis on Part 1: The Courtesan Prince, has never done justice to the scope of the Okal Rel Saga and wider universe. So it’s time to offer glimpses beyond the first few books, into the building climax through parts 6 to 10.

With thanks to the SF Canada site for featuring an excerpt from Part 8: Gathering Storm, in May 2015.

Chiseries Vancouver SF/F Reading featuring Lynda Williams, Paula Johanson and Alma Alexander.

Preliminary info is up here: http://chiseries.com/event/chiseries-vancouver-october-7-2014

Lynda Williams one of three readers at Chiseries Vancouver, Oct 7, at Cottage Bistro.

The reading is Tuesday, Oct. 7 at 7:30. The Cottage Bistro is at Main St. around 28th Ave. on the east side of the street. It’s a small restaurant serving food and alcohol. Authors will read for 15 minutes each with a break to mix and mingle and a Q&A session afterwards.

Robert Runte blogs at http://runte.blogspot.ca/

As for the literary thing … been conflicted forever. And bored with myself. Sure, I think I convey some profound stuff about the human condition (and how people OUGHT to build AI) but it’s true. I write space opera. I’m proud to have readers with PhDs but trying not to be touchy about the young ones into the romances or sword fights, either. So am I! Literature is in the eye of the beholder, in the end. My whole saga’s meant a lot to me, on the front of processing big questions about life from “what is male vs. female” to “how responsible are we for our actions if we’re unbalanced mentally” and “can culture constrain us from mass destruction?”. I re-read it and find it deep as well as entertaining. I was self-consciously aware of the themes and subplots and symphonies of parallels and all the rest one could discover. But if others don’t see these things, either they’ve failed or I have. 

Lynda Williams (on SF Canada list Aug 2014)

 

Yeah, pretty much why I read Lynda Williams. As I was saying earlier this thread, when I encounter students who are consciously trying to write CanLit or capital L literature, they end up losing their own voice and whatever potential they had to add their voice to the choir. Write what you love, and then we’ll have something. Yeah, Lynda Williams writes space opera, but it is f-ing marvellous space opera, and some of the best world building around. I’m a sociologist by training, and I love the meticulous sociological thinking that went into Lynda’s world building. And the psychology of the characters is completely believable…even or especially the unbalanced characters. And the interaction between sociological and psychological…the acknowledgement that cultures can be simultaneously functional and dysfunctional…the whole series is a brilliant thought experiment. As is a lot of the best SF. 

Dr. Robert Runte (on SF Canada List Aug 2014)

http://runte.blogspot.ca/

The Okal Rel story is founded in a ten novel series and plays out through a continuing tradition.

Got lots of action on my response to a query from a fellow writer, on the SF Canada mailing list, about balancing the quest for fame-in-fiction with more-than-fulltime employment in the day job and a stubborn resistance of wise advice about branding. ‘Cause I just wanna do what I wanted to do. So sharing my response here. Not sure I have permission for sharing other people’s input or I would. Just FYI all.

I cheat. I have a day job to pay the bills. So I can get away with things I couldn’t if I made a living writing. I have done that, but as a reporter long ago. Not really a working librarian, either. Manager in ed tech support and parttime teacher of tech. Bottom line for me – if it bores me to read it, why the %$$ would I write it? Make more money doing other things. So rebelling against the dogma of the pro world. It may be hard to get noticed as a maverick. But hell, it’s hard to get noticed, period. Running into the “little boxes on the hillside” business again as a publisher, trying to conform to distributor’s needs for pitching to bookstores. No one ever escapes. But think of that, more, as learning the right rituals to get over hurtles.

 

As for the literary thing … been conflicted forever. And bored with myself. Sure, I think I convey some profound stuff about the human condition (and how people OUGHT to build AI) but it’s true. I write space opera. I’m proud to have readers with PhDs but trying not to be touchy about the young ones into the romances or sword fights, either. So am I! Literature is in the eye of the beholder, in the end. My whole saga’s meant a lot to me, on the front of processing big questions about life from “what is male vs. female” to “how responsible are we for our actions if we’re unbalanced mentally” and “can culture constrain us from mass destruction?”. I re-read it and find it deep as well as entertaining. I was self-consciously aware of the themes and subplots and symphonies of parallels and all the rest one could discover. But if others don’t see these things, either they’ve failed or I have. It’s all so subjective in the end. I give up. I just want to be read. 🙂