Filed Away

So I caught the pilot episode of Fox’s New Amsterdam last night. Obviously a show about an immortal living secretly amongst the general population would pique my curiosity. In particular I was interested to see what similarities might exist between Amsterdam and Zsallia, but I was also keen to spot the differences between them. All in all I liked the show. For a first episode it was actually very well-produced and the actors seemed pretty comfortable in their characters. The story line was engaging enough, but since I have my own ideas regarding immortal characters I tried exert an extra effort at suspending criticism.

Still, there were some gaping plot holes that were hard to ignore, such as when Amsterdam collapses and ‘dies’ on the subway platform. He’s taken to the hospital as a John Doe, yet he was carrying his gun and a badge and was in an armed stand-off with another man. Think the police might have gotten involved and recognized him? They did it to create a sub-plot, but it could have been done more intelligently. Or in the opening of the show where the indian shaman makes him immortal- boy, those look a lot like plains Indians to me rather than Mohawks, Iroquois or Algonquins. Minor things like that annoy me since I don’t count myself as being smarter than your average bear- I figure if I noticed, they should have.

Despite these issues I really enjoyed the show- next episode airs on Thursday and I’ll be watching.

Amsterdam as a character is a bit of an enigma, as he should be. He chooses to live semi-openly, having at least one and perhaps more than one person he has let in on his secret. Contrast that with Zsallia who until recently had allowed no more than half a dozen people into her secret world over a span of 35 centuries (Amsterdam is only 400-odd years old), and tends to keep from drawing attention to herself. Amsterdam knows how he became immortal, and he knows there can be an end to it. Zsallia has no clue why she is the way she is, and that’s an enormous handicap to her- she’s not even sure she’s human and has gone through periods where she truly did believe she was a goddess.

The search for Amsterdam’s true love appears to be a centerpiece of the show- he finds his true love and he can become mortal again and live out the remainder of his years with her. I find that a little trite, but for a TV series I suppose that’s to be expected. It’s still too early in the series- I’ll give them some time to flesh things out a bit.

Still, they should have consulted me;).

Dean Esmay and I worked for close to three years to create our novel, Methuselah’s Daughter. It was a great experience and I’ll never regret doing it, but it was far from a perfect collaboration. One issue that has always nagged at me is the how and why of Zsallia’s immortality, and when we began working on the book Dean had the same question. I’ve had lots of working theories over the past 30 years to explain this, starting with the pure fantasy/supernatural theory to a very nuts-and-bolts explanation involving intervention by an outside agency. I’ve never liked any of the theories, to be completely honest, and I’ve always tried to come up with a purely natural explanation that would at least semi-plausibly explain her halted aging and her ability to regenerate lost fingers, limbs, etc.

In the end I told Dean my current working theory, one I was very unhappy with… and he fell in love with it. In his interpretation the ‘reality’ of her immortality lent a crucial pathos to the character and it was absolutely imperative we reveal this in order to conclude the novel in a powerful and uplifting way. For me, revealing the nature of her immortality, particularly in the manner I had described to him, stripped Zsallia of all her mystery and rendered her… boring.

We wrote up a pair of chapters dealing with the revelation of how her immortality works, and the aftermath. They were pretty good pieces and I let myself be swayed into agreeing that this would be the ending we would work towards, but I was never happy about it, and as we worked on the book I would constantly come back to the problem, trying to convince Dean that i couldn’t let it work out this way. We fought over this off and on throughout the writing, even coming to a point where we stopped talking to each other for several months. In the end those chapters never made it into the book because I refused to do it and Dean was tired of fighting over it.

As it turns out, that was pretty much the end of Zsallia for me. I can’t write her anymore because I just can’t get back inside her head- we twisted and changed her too much for me to believe in her anymore. I’ve been trying to keep things going on 3500years.com, but it is a painful and ultimately disheartening effort. Compared to the way she used to flow from my head to my keyboard writing her today is like trying to type one-fingered in the dark, with an air raid siren blaring in my ears. I have to accept that the character is dead to me; murdered, really. This may sound bitter, but I’m not angry- the book is the single greatest piece of writing I have ever produced and it never would have happened without Dean. So we only sold a hundred copies- that’s more than most people do in a lifetime.

Given that Zsallia is dead I don’t see any reason not to post the chapters that killed her for me. I own the 3500years.com domain for another two years and the temptation to just leave the blog there is strong, but I know I’ll not be able to stop trying to finish her story as long as it’s there. I’m very seriously thinking of deleting it so I can move on to other things, even if it means i never write fiction again. If that means I was just a hack with only one good story in him, so be it. I just can’t shake the feeling that it’s time for the immortal woman to die.

So, in the extended entry you will find two chapters: Revelation, and In The Desert. Rest in Peace, Zsallia.

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But I might as well be for all the attention this site has been getting.

I’ve been finishing up the proof copy of Methuselah’s Daughter along with a possible rewrite of the epilogue. Between that and the holidays… I slack, therefore I am, I guess.  I’m deciding what to do with this place- it may disappear before the domain is up for renewal. Time will tell.

Two institutes of Higher Education have been floating around the periphery of the news lately. Fortunately there are several bloggers paying closer attention.

The latest issue has been the University of Delaware’s Student Housing re-education program where the Resident Assistants were trained in having one-on-one meetings with students living in the dorms to discuss living situations and essentially train them in diversity. It sounds like just more PC fuzzy-bunnyness until you look into the details, after which you have to wonder just who it was who thought this was a good idea, and did they once consult the University’s legal department before putting it in place?

Welcome to the new Gulag, same as the old Gulag.

Then there is the story of William and Mary College, where College President Gene Nichol began by removing the cross from the Wren chapel on campus in order to make the 274-year-old chapel more welcoming to students of other faiths. Next came the anonymous student denunciation system whereby students were encouraged to report other students engaging in inappropriate speech or activities. Since the spotlight was shone on this program the language at the reporting site has been modified to render it somewhat less Orwellian in appearance, but can any good really come of such a system on a college campus?

I like to believe that the portrayals of rampant PC intolerance in education are at least a little overblown, but sometimes it’s hard…

Links via Instapundit and Powerline

Cross-Posted at Dean’s World

Two interesting articles I encountered today that are      only tangentially related (They both reference Guy Fawkes):

 The first is a post from Armed Liberal at Winds of Change discussing his position on torture, opening with the following:

I’ve wrestled and wrestled with the issue; torture is obviously bad, but what is it about torture that is so expressly bad – why is it worse than the death and suffering that comes in war, or in the daily violence police officers do as a part of their jobs?

In large part, it’s the fact of violence against captives; against the helpless, the unarmed, those incapable of resisting. But that didn’t get to the heart of what cleaves torture as an issue from violence as an issue. And why I – as someone who is decidedly not nonviolent – am so decidedly against and uncomfortable with issues of torture.

I came to an answer, as I usually do, in an unplanned realization while reading a book.

The ensuing article and the comments themselves are well worth your time.

Second, via Instapundit I found Dave Kopel’s 2001 article Virtue in Equivocation where he references Guy Fawkes and the Gun Powder Plot as an introduction to the concept of virtuous lying, where it applies and where it doesn’t. This was in relation to Osama Awadallah, a Jordanian student attending Grossmont College (a college in El Cajon, California, which caters to international students), being indicted by a New York City grand jury for lying to the grand jury about his relationship with September 11 terrorists Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid al-Midhar. He then goes on to explain how the concept of Virtue in Equivocation doesn’t necessarily apply to Islamic radicals. In the process he also sheds light on the question of the rights of jurors and the concept of jury nullification.

All in all, two very interesting takes on the assorted subjects.

Cross-posted to Dean’s World 

I am a football fan. Not one of those fully committed I’ll-dye-myself-red-white-and-blue then cheer on the team in my shorts under the cold November sunshine fans, just a guy who likes to watch the game and likes to watch his team win.  I became a football fan in 1985 when the Patriots staggered their way into the Super Bowl only to be mutilated by the Chicago Bears 59-10.

 I stayed with the Patriots all through the following years of absolute misery- my team just couldn’t seem to pull it together despite having talent and a decent defense. I watched them give up before the first half closed, listened to the endless gloating of Jets, Dolphins, Bills and Colts fans and wondered if there would ever be a time when the Patriots would be a team feared in the NFL.

 Given all that, the Parcells years where the team was rebuilt and remade, followed by the Pete Carroll years where the coaching style seemed to be built around hugs and orange slices, and then, finally, Bill Belichick, it’s a little astounding to realize the Patriots are about to play in what will likely be the best game of the season.

 Two undefeated powerhouses going head-to-head… and the Patriots are 5 point favorites? I have never been more excited about a professional sporting event in my life, including all three Patriots Super Bowl wins.

 I may even paint myself red, white and blue…

Blooking Central is a blog by Cheryl Hagedorn specializing in articles about blogs that have made the transition into books. It is not a book review, rather she explores the mechanisms of how a blog can be transformed into a book- what has worked, what hasn’t and what services are out there for people interested in trying to take that big step with their own blogs.

I mention this because Dean and I were recently written up on Blooking Central after she ran into Methuselah’s Daughter via the 2007 Lulu Blooker Prize. She asked some detailed questions and I responded- Dean chimes in through the comments (or he better have by the time this posts!). Check out what we had to say, and stick around to browse the site- pretty interesting stuff to be found there.

Comments require registration, but all registrations are approved and I get right on that when they arrive. It’s really only to keep comment spam under control so if you want to dummy up an e-mail address, feel free.

More chapters (21, 22, 23 and 24) are up at Methuselah’s Daughter. I’ve been trying to keep a running commentary on the chapters as we go, but somehow it’s just not happening. So sue me.

Lots of what happens in these chapters are the direct result of arguments between Dean and I. Arguments about how Zsallia would react to being pressured to allow herself to be examined. For that matter there is a basic disagreement between us throughout the book regarding the need to reveal the nature (but not the cause) of Zsallia’s immortality, an argument that eventually led to the book ending after Part 4 and leaving the story of Elaine and Jeremiah McAllister untold.

Basically, as the book moves forward and Zsallia and her ghost writer argue about this what you’re really reading is Dean and I arguing about where the book is going. While I believe Part 4 is the best part of the book overall, I think it suffered because we were rapidly diverging on that single issue. At one point we actually stopped working on the book and only spoke minimally for about 6 months until I forced the issue by stitching together the various pieces we had. As a result the portion of the story where Zsallia describes traveling to Arretium seems pretty disjointed… but that’s in a future chapter, and may yet be completely re-written for the 3rd Edition.

I posted an additional three chapters of the novel at 3500years.com over the past two weeks. Chapters 18 & 19 are in a single post, followed by Chapter 20.  We’re starting to get into the meatier part of the story at this point, where people really come to realize Zsallia is capable of truly monstrous acts. One complaint I’ve heard about her again and again is that she’s not very likable, but really, that’s her in a nutshell. She’s fascinating, not lovable.