Five Rivers Books on Smashwords

After hearing news yesterday that Indigo's Shortcovers had reached an agreement with Smashwords to receive feeds of the latter's digital books, I went back and re-examined the whole digital rights management issue. It would seem the code-breakers win once again, in that despite all the encryption you can put on digital content, if someone really wants to pirate your work they can. And faced with the fact that you're never going to stop this sort of illicit behaviour, and that the people who break codes, and laws, aren't likely to purchase your work anyway, why not cry 'Uncle', and ride the crest of this brave new publishing world?

So it is that as of yesterday Five Rivers put up our first offerings on Smashwords, Lorina Stephens' debut novel from 2007, Shadow Song. Within the first hour appearing on the Smashwords site, nine preview downloads occurred, with two purchases. That's enough to raise eyebrows.

Despite poor information for publishers on Smashwords' site, they do offer digital books in ten (10!) different formats, including those compatible with the Kindle, Sony Reader, Palm devices and more. Smashwords' content is now feeding not only to Shortcovers, but Barnes & Noble and Sony.

Today Five Rivers will be uploading Lorina Stephens' And the Angels Sang, and From Mountains of Ice to Smashwords. Standard price for all Five Rivers' digital books remains at $9.99. As other of our authors agree to have their content uploaded to Smashwords, titles will become available.

Do Your Research

If you're going to be a writer of any kind, you have to research. No escaping it. Fail to and a reader somewhere in the world will catch that one inconsistency and call you on it, and for them, because of that oversight, the story will most likely lose credibility. You may even lose them as a follower, not something to dismiss with a pshaw in this new age of immediate entertainment gratification.

Recently I had one writer tell me that she knew all this historical information because of her long experience as an amateur re-enactor. While involving yourself in these often pleasant and invigorating hobbies you can learn a great deal, but unfortunately much of it can also be hearsay. I can remember well the raging debates among 18th and early 19th century re-enactors regarding the ubiquitous uniform many women seem to wear, as in bodice, petticoat and mob cap. Despite a cascade of primary source documentation that clearly refutes this olde-timey costume, many female re-enactors refuse to capitulate to the proven attire solid research would dictate.

Equally, as a writer, I am incensed when we fall into the classic error of the bodice-ripping scene in a historical novel set anywhere from the 16th century forward. Clearly the writer has no knowledge of historical garments, otherwise that brawn Fabio hero wouldn't be able to shred our heroine's bodice from her heaving bosom.

What we'd actually experience is a laborious, potentially sensual, removal of layer after layer, starting with a tightly fitted laced or pinned bodice which may or may not have laced or pinned sleeves. If she's middle to lower class that bodice may be what's known as a short gown (think jacket). Perhaps there's a stomacher pinned in place, then a corset or stays which may be laced front or back or both, and depending on station in life and era may be boned with up to 180 whalebone splints (veritable armour) or if she's lower class may be stiffened with cording or reed or may be constructed of just of heavy, plain leather. And it's important to note that the corset or stays were considered underwear, and so to have a woman swanning about in public in her stays would mark her as insane or practicing an age-old trade.

There would be an over petticoat (what we know as a skirt), usually tied at the sides, likely an under petticoat, perhaps hoops (also known as farthingales), perhaps another petticoat. Finally we're down to the chemise, which often was worn as a bed-gown, and then depending on the era, there may be drawers, and depending again on the era, those drawers may be bifurcated.

Even during the Regency period (also known as the Empire or Federalist period, with somewhat malleable dates depending on region), there were layers to part.

Our hero would have to work for his lady's gifts.

And this is but one example. From foodstuffs to geography, hygiene to transportation, you have to know your subject.

I remember clearly a reader questioning the use of a brake on a medieval wagon. Indeed there were brakes, something that consisted of a block that could apply pressure against the wheel through a lever operated from the driver's seat. I also remember being brought to task in another novel when I sent the manuscript to a colleague for comment pre-publication. At issue was the transportation of a moose carcase. I had my hero dragging the kill through the forest, never even giving thought that this beast could weigh up to three quarters of a ton. Oops. A quick rewrite of the scene corrected my lack of research and the credibility issue vanished.

Being a writer means you should divide your reading time between non-fiction for research purposes, and other reading for your own pleasure, although for me, the research is often an adventure and a joy.

Why do all this research? Aside from keeping your readers reading, a solidly researched novel can, if well-written, add to the richness of your story, create an entire surround in which your reader can immerse and become enthralled, thereby keeping him turning the pages, and resulting in a follower who will watch for your next novel and recommend the one he's just finished to his friend. And so it goes.

In Remembrance

A departure today in remembrance of those who have served, and those who have died serving, the countries they love. Whether that service was by choice or unwilling conscription makes little difference after the fact. What remains is that these men and women were and are subjected to what we ask of no one in normal society, that they face irrationality and fear, prejudice and privation, struggle and death, and then return to us whole, hale, capable of inserting themselves completely and seamlessly into the fabric of civilization.

There was a time I chose, somewhat vehemently and ignorantly, to denigrate those who served and survived previous wars. War is the ultimate evil, and therefore senseless and unworthy of commemoration. At least so I thought. Until I met my husband, Gary, and through him his father, George Stephens.

George was a colourful figure, a story-teller of legendary proportions, a man weaned on the army, hard, irascible, but with a tender side he could at times display to the woman he loved more than his own life, and to his children despite a confrontational nature that had him debating just for the devilry of it. George did like to stir the pot.

He, according to family legend, was the only British citizen to have served in five armies: the British, the French, the American, the Canadian and some other I cannot recall. His service in the forces of all but the British army remains shadowy and lost to knowledge, but while he fought in WWII he served during the Battle of Malaya, and later under General Montgomery's eighth army tanks corps in the Battle of El Alamein in 1942. George was also there in the last tanks on mainland China during the Chinese Communist Revolution when the British tank corps were given orders to dig in their tanks and thereby make them pillboxes. I remember clearly George talking about facing the hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers and knowing that thin British line was all that remained of his country's influence in China.

George Stephens returned home to Gloucester, England after that to marry the girl next door, Mavis Long. He tried very hard to be a good father and husband, but it would seem the wandering and unsettled life of an army man never quite left him. With the hope of a providing a better life than battle-scarred England could provide, George brought his wife and two children across the ocean to Canada in September of 1969, hoping to pursue the honourable trade of farm manager.

He was to learn a bitter lesson that farming in Canada, especially for a hired hand, was and is one of abject poverty, an ignominious career and reward for a man who had given his all in three major global crises.

It was in 1978 George died of a fatal and massive heart attack after collapsing with a bleeding ulcer. His ashes for a long time lived with Gary and me, sitting on a bookshelf which we thought fitting for the man who could quote Yeats as soon as regale you with a story about a drunken episode in the Chinese rice paddies. At the request of his widow his ashes are now buried in a veteran's grave in Richmond Hill, Ontario.

Here at the Old Stone House we remember George Stephens on this Remembrance Day, along with his other brothers who also served in the British Army, and the brothers of Mavis Long's family (Gary's mother), Duncan who was shot down in an air raid over Germany, Jim and John, his uncle Walter Phelps who was taken prisoner by the Japanese and tortured so that he returned a fractured man, another uncle, Tom Phillips who fought alongside the Gurkha Regiments in Burma and elsewhere. The photos below were contraband, images Goerge Stephens smuggled out and had sent to his 'girl' back in Gloucester, England.

Musical Influences on Writing

I'm not sure how many other authors are greatly influenced, or not, by music. For myself, music plays a very important role in helping me to visualize the environment I'm creating, as well as set the tone of a particular scene. This enormous influence is one of the reasons I mentioned in the afterword of From Mountains of Ice my preferred music list when I was writing the novel.

Unfortunately, one reader felt that because I listened to the soundtrack from Gladiator I cloned the movie.

My response was, that the sound track for Gladiator inspired me had more to do with the mood Lisa Gerrard sets with her remarkable voice, than with memory of the film itself. It should be noted it is Lisa Gerrard's voice, once again, in the Dead Can Dance music that I found utterly compelling and of inspiration. The Pan's Labyrinth soundtrack was also very much an influence, not because of the film, but because of the haunting and startling quality of much of the music, as was Russian Easter by the St. Petersburgh Chamber Choir. That I listened to the latter didn't mean there was a religious or Orthodox Christian influence; it meant the music itself, the mood it evoked, moved me.

For example, there is a scene about a third of the way into the novel, in which Sylvio (the protagonist) enters the Temple of Nerezza (his country's patron goddess and goddess of death). In this scene he watches his reflection flicker in the red marble of the columns and walls, feels the heat of hundreds of candles lit on Nerezza's altar. When I wrote that scene I listened over and over again to Chant of the Paladin from The Serpent's Egg CD, by Dead Can Dance.

Before that, when Sylvio makes his way up the avenue of temples, there is a carnival scene that plays out in street vendors, whores, bawdy puppet shows, oracles and supplicants. If you really want to get the feeling of this scene you need to listen to my inspiration, Ullyses by Dead Can Dance, The Serpent's Egg.

And just a little later on, when Sylvio enters the ossuary where the dead Principessa Viviana lies, you should listen to Song of Sophia from the same album, and later still during Carmelo's peregrination to the Temple of Nerezza for the festival and his rededication to the goddess, Indus, from Dead Can Dance's Spiritchaser would put you in the same atmosphere I envisioned when writing the scene.

In the scene where Sylvio wakes up from his ordeal in the mountains, and finds what has been done to his body and realizes the full import of his situation, the soundtrack from Pan's Labyrinth, A Book of Blood, very much carries the despair and futility of the moment and was my touchstone for the scene. Then, when Sylvio returns to Simare, a complete cucullatus, and gathers the dead in his wake to bring Carmelo to justice, the sweeping sadness and mystery of The Fairy and the Labyrinth from Pan's Labyrinth brought me to tears throughout those passages, evoking the overwhelming weight of that section.

Just a few insights for you into the writing of From Mountains of Ice. I hope you will find this of inspiration.

Signing this Past Saturday

The book signing Saturday at Indigo Books in Burlington, as part of the fall promotion tour of From Mountains of Ice, went well. Although sales weren't brisk, certainly they were acceptable and interest from both customers and staff was keen. Had a delightful conversation with a fully engaged and connected young man by name of Holden (wonderful old name) and look forward to a continued discussion with him over the next months on things literary and philosophical.

Special thanks to all the staff there at Indigo on Brant Street in Burlington. So great to work with such vibrant folks.

And for those of you who weren't there, here's an image of me, apparently off in thought or about to greet someone.

From Mountains of Ice, Review by Sara Messina

From Sara Messina, reviewer at Mind Fog Reviews.

Unlike many fantasy stories, Lorina Stephens’ From Mountains of Ice tells more than just a single narrative centering around a hero or group of adventurers in a magical world. Stephens tells the stories of Simare, an Italian country struggling to keep its simple rustic way of life free from the encroachment of larger countries and a crown’s tyranny. The understanding of cultural nuances serves as a foundation for the struggle of main characters.

Sylvio di Danuto comes from an old noble family and spent many years as advisor to his king and mentor to his prince. He also possesses the unique Simirian abilities of a ‘bone speaker’, a person who can commune with deceased ancestors through their remains. Sylvio and his family, friends and comrades must contend with the negligence and abuse of their country and kingdom by the young Principe Carmelo. Political powers and the spirits of the ancestors arise in anger as the young ruler seizes power by pushing away, and yet never truly letting go of, Sylvio and others who would impede his hedonistic drive and approach to leadership. Sylvio realizes that he must act if his country and everything he loves should survive.

Stephens’ tale takes her reader through an exploration of the bonds between love and hate, darkness and hope, and the power of resilience that leaves an impression as lasting as Simare’s “mountains of ice”.

Nate Hendley: Upcoming Books

As many of you know Five Rivers is re-publishing five of Nate Hendley's books next year, revised and updated, as well as releasing early in 2011 a new book on China as an emerging superpower.

We've been busy working on covers for some of Nate's books, and thought we'd give a sneak preview at these dynamic releases. For more information, go to Five Rivers' at http://www.5rivers.org/contents/en-ca/d92.html