The Long Tail of Liberty...

A rather long and thoughtful post…skip if you're in the mood for sexy hijinks! (Go, hijinks!)

I’m no legal historian. In fact, I’m no kind of historian, unless it’s an armchair one.  Or, rather, computer-chair.  My research amuses myself, and informs my stories, that’s all.

That said, I have musings.  And sometimes, current events impinge directly on my historical sensibilities.

I write stories set in the middle ages. For a good portion of that period, liberty was dependent on how much money you could afford to pay the king or local nobleman for his 'goodwill,' or how well you fought in a ring (or again, how much money to had to hire a champion to do it for you), or how well you floated in water, or, most commonly, if the Sherriff of Nottingham was your local law-keeper (bad news for you), or some other local strong-arm was in the mood to plunder. People had very few recognized rights, and they could be compelled to do any number of things, depending on the will of the more powerful.

It was not until King Henry II that the concept of 'common law'--laws that applied to all, and could restrict the king & his agents' actions--came to be an accepted government policy. Next came Magna Carta (based on a charter of liberties from King Henry I), further restricted the government. And so on.

These were hard-fought, and hard-won victories. They were fundamental expansions of the notion of personal liberty and a curb on State's rights, & were therefore core redistributions of power.

Might did not necessarily make right anymore, at least legally.

Liberty requires strong checks on the powers of a State. 

This includes surveillance powers.  It also includes the power to compel private individuals (& companies) to engage in particular actions.

And that is the reason I hope Apple does (& think they should) win their 'appeal' against the FBI's current attempt to force Apple to give them backdoor access so the FBI can bruteforce open the phone of one of the San Bernardino shooters.

In short, this: There will always be crime. There will not always be liberty.

In fact, in the course of human history, liberty has been a rare and precious commodity for a citizenry against powerful, militarized State.

Be careful what powers you give your government, in a state of fear or anger, to encroach on the civil liberties of its citizens, even to "combat crime."  Because next time, it's going to be your civil liberties.

Is she more a Scolastica or a Wymarka?

I've talked about names before, and how important they are for a writer, sometimes shaping the entire story, and definitely shaping the character's arc.  Who is this hero and what overriding traits does he have?  What's going to be this heroine's biggest test and her largest vulnerability?

Not sure why, but the right names helps find all that out.

Oh, the crazy human psyche.

I love choosing medieval names.  Well, I mean, there are also a lot of repeats in the name department.   I mean, a lot.  Of repeats.  Like in this paragraph.  Whether Norman or English or French, you find the same names repeated in the historical documents.  Alice, Agnes, Joan, Beatrice.  John, Richard, Geoffrey, Peter.   Over and over and over again.  And all those folks, without surnames.  :shakes head:

But there are also a lot of great names.  Evocative names.  Illustrative names.  Juicy, oh-there-has-to-be-a-story-there names.

Men's names, like Adelard, Basewin, Tancred, Serle and Saer (hero coming).  Percival, Ives, and Everard.  And oh my, the Irish names.  Aedh, Faolán, Lúcás, Siadhal.  It's sounds like a poem to me.

And the women's names.  Scolastica, Petronilla, Dyonisia, Wymarka, and Diamanda.  And the Irish: Áine, Sorcha, and Dubh Essa (which looks frightening, but sounds /Dove-essa/).

In my own books, I've loved some names so much I would hug them if they weren't, you know, a name.  i.e. breath, i.e. difficult to hug. 


Finian O'Melaghlin (IRISH WARRIOR), yes, it is a mouthful, but he's proud of his name, and Senna de Valery, the woman who freed him from prison, and whose mother loved color so much she named her daughter one, then left her. 



Eva (DEFIANT), who had no last name, and her hero Jamie Lost, whose name was given to him by the men who loved him and the ones who used him.


Sophia Darnley's (DECEPTION) first name was something entirely different in early drafts of the story, but Kier kept calling her "Sophie," so I had to change her name.  Those heroes...nothing but trouble.


I love when a name fits!   And not just in my romances. 

Bilbo Baggins is about the most perfect, fitting character name ever.   As is Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple.   And Hannibal Lecter. 

What character names 

have YOU loved? 

Name-Catching

Finding a character's 'true' name can be the simpliest thing in writing, or one of the most difficult. In either case, though, for me, doing so is like water: essential.

It's different if I'm reading.  In that case, names matter, but I can also skim over them if they don't work for me.   I'm an inveterate chunk-reader anyway, so I can  hum through any name that feels like a misfit, or that reminds me of the kid in 3rd grade who used to make truck sounds as he went through the cafeteria line every day, spraying the kids on either side of him with the effluvia of his sputtering. (Note: not sexy.)

But as a writer, I'm a lot less flexible on the name thing.   Names matter.   A lot.

It's kind of crazy, but for me, names let me truly 'see' the character.  They're a bit like clothes: they reveal truths about a person, from the fit to the style.  But they not only reveal; they create. 

Names 'find' characters, and then force them to be true to that name.

I've had to use 'placeholder' names for months on end because no name felt right.   Unfortunately, no name = I struggle to find the story, flailing through hundreds of pointless pages trying to find the story and the arc for this wrongly-named soul.  

Names can be pesky things, and catching the right one can be like trying to catch a butterfly in a hurricane.  So sad, for the story, for the characters, for any deadlines I had planned.  


But the moment I 'find' the name, I also find the story.   It's as if the story shakes itself out, like a dog, and the entire character arc appears.
I'm guessing I struggle with names when I haven't 'found' the story yet.  This creates a vicious, if masochistically pleasing, circle.  All I need to do is find the story, and I'll find the name, and vice versa, which is at once hopeful (the story's out there somewhere, right??) and hopeless (I'll never find it.)

A peek into the neurotic freefall of one writer's mind.

How much do character names matter to you?

Do you have any books that you've loved, but couldn't stand the hero/heroine names? 

Tourney!

Okay, who loves a tourney?  I mean, besides me.

Pennants fluttering off the host's castle ramparts, villagers and nobles mingling in the busy grounds all around, merchants hawking their wares, performers juggling and wrestling.  While up in the lists, knights in shining armour preen and perform for ladies in the stands, who bestow their favors--a sleeve, a scrap of silk, and a smile--on their favorites. 




Originally, though, tournaments didn't much resemble our romantic notion of them.  The 'joust'--two men squaring off and taking a run at each other with lances--yeah, that was a latter addition, and even when the joust came to be part of the tourney, it was a prelude to the main event, the mêlée, a pitched battle with, well, pretty much no rules. 

Occasionally the type of weaponry was predetermined for the mêlée, but other than that, it was basically no-holds-barred fighting.  Lords came with their retinues, often comprised largely of men hired for the sole purpose of helping Lord Such-and-So kick Lord Whos-And-Whats knightly arse.  They came to fight, and to win. 

Oh, and to make a lot of money.  

The big money didn't come from official prizes, though, although those could be quite rich.  But the real prize was...ransom.

First came the cavalry rush with lowered lances, which quickly devolved into hand-to-hand combat, on foot, between the two opposing sides.  Death happened, although combatants were not (usually) killed intentionally.   Why kill a guy, when you can bankrupt him, and enrich yourself in the process?  Capture was a much better business plan. 

The loser had to 'yield,' then he and the victor agreed to the terms of the surrender.  Usually horse & armour were taken, and a price agreed-upon to buy them back.  Remember these horses were worth more money than a villager could make in a dozen lifetimes.  The same for armour.  Terms of the agreement were set down in a contract (yes, they signed a contract, right there on the battlefield, in a section called the 'refuge'.  Recognize it?? Cool, huh?) It was all very official and well-run. 

Except when it wasn't.

Tourneys were a dicey proposition for kings and counts. On one hand, tourneys were good training for war, could be useful for raising money, and for channeling the aggressive tendencies of all those young, male, armed citizens, who were so necessary in times of war, and so...unpredictable at all other times.

But they also wrecked destruction on the countryside and any unlucky villagers caught in the crossfire as the battle raged across the land, including farmland (!!)  Often, two villages were designated as the outer boundaries of the battleground, essentially assuring that armed knights in the heat of battle were going to come roaring through the town and across their tended fields.  Note: No village is on record as ever having requested such a dubious privilege. 

The larger concern for a medieval king was this: tourneys were a breeding ground for petty feuds, vengeance, and, at the top of any medieval lord's mind, rebellion.  

Perfect for romance fiction!  I can feel my brain cells firing up, ready to play with the ceremony and drama of a medieval tournament.  I see a dark-haired, hard-hearted hero, and the conceited, intelligent, alluring daughter of his worst enemy....  

Have you read any books with great tourney scenes??  Spill!

The Magic of Showers Or; The Shower and The Artist

It's a pretty well-established fact, that a lot of people get their best ideas in the shower. 

It's true for me.  Maybe not the best, but certainly an awful lot of good ones.

Dopamine is part of the reason, no doubt.  Anytime you can get a good dopamine shower, you'll be happier all around, and nice hot H2O showers tend to trigger the release of dopamine.

Additionally, they say (you know, 'them') negative ions have an effect on us.  They show up wherever there's water and attach to things like dust particles and negative ruminations about why multi-billionaire dollar international hedge funds can get away with a multitude of nefarious, self-serving crimes, while you can't go five miles over the speed limit to get your cat to the vet before she has her kittens in your lap and get away with it.  (You ruminate on this stuff too, right??) 

The ions drag attach to all this and drag it down, down to the ground, leaving the air fresher and your mind more capable of handling barking dogs and multi-billionaire dollar hedge fund managers and all the other impurities life slings your way.

And of course, for many moms, showers are The One And Only place we can get five minutes alone.

Sort of alone.  It's good enough.  This is powerful stuff, people.  Wet Alone Time matters.

But the real reason showers work is probably far more mundane, and far more important.  We're stationary.  We're reflective.  We're quiet.  We're not inundating our brains and senses with stuff.  Shiny, Bright, Sparkling, Noisy, OMG Look At This Funny Cat! stuff. 

There are no new ideas bombarding us in the shower, which is why you can get so many new ideas in the shower.

Reflective time matters.  Wandering minds matter.  A lot.  But we're so often plugged in and turned on, getting 'input' by bad music and good music and bad news and good news and other people's ideas about how to feel and think and be with it all.  There's always some heartbreaking new tragedy and some inspiring new triumph and it's just exhausting if you slow down and actually notice it all. 

Which we generally don't.  More often we run through it all, like a kid with a bubble wand.


But in the shower, there's nothing.  Nada.  Zilch.  Just you and your mind.  Your quiet mind and your wet body.  And the ions, of course.

So for me, shower time is pretty sacred.  No technology, no kids, just me and the ions.  And all those ideas.....

Do you get ideas in the shower?  Or is somewhere/something/someone else your idea incubator?