Quote Of The Week - Rudyard Kipling, The Land

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, and during his lifetime he travelled more than most. He knew and loved many countries, so it is telling that when he wrote about England he displayed such tenderness. His love of the country shines through his words, and for today's quote of the week I have chosen one of my favourite Kipling poems.

The Land

When Julius Fabricius, Sub-Prefect of the Weald,
In the days of Diocletian owned our Lower River-field,
He called to him Hobdenius—a Briton of the Clay,
Saying: "What about that River-piece for layin' in to hay?"

And the aged Hobden answered: "I remember as a lad
My father told your father that she wanted dreenin' bad.
An' the more that you neeglect her the less you'll get her clean.
Have it jest as you've a mind to, but, if I was you, I'd dreen."

So they drained it long and crossways in the lavish Roman style-
Still we find among the river-drift their flakes of ancient tile,
And in drouthy middle August, when the bones of meadows show,
We can trace the lines they followed sixteen hundred years ago.

Then Julius Fabricius died as even Prefects do,
And after certain centuries, Imperial Rome died too.
Then did robbers enter Britain from across the Northern main
And our Lower River-field was won by Ogier the Dane.

Well could Ogier work his war-boat—well could Ogier wield his brand—
Much he knew of foaming waters—not so much of farming land.
So he called to him a Hobden of the old unaltered blood,
Saying: "What about that River-piece; she doesn't look no good ?"

And that aged Hobden answered "'Tain't for me to interfere.
But I've known that bit o' meadow now for five and fifty year.
Have it jest as you've a mind to, but I've proved it time on time,
If you want to change her nature you have got to give her lime!"

Ogier sent his wains to Lewes, twenty hours' solemn walk,
And drew back great abundance of the cool, grey, healing chalk.
And old Hobden spread it broadcast, never heeding what was in't-
Which is why in cleaning ditches, now and then we find a flint.

Ogier died. His sons grew English—Anglo-Saxon was their name—
Till out of blossomed Normandy another pirate came;
For Duke William conquered England and divided with his men,
And our Lower River-field he gave to William of Warenne.

But the Brook (you know her habit) rose one rainy autumn night
And tore down sodden flitches of the bank to left and right.
So, said William to his Bailiff as they rode their dripping rounds:
"Hob, what about that River-bit—the Brook's got up no bounds?"

And that aged Hobden answered: "'Tain't my business to advise,
But ye might ha' known 'twould happen from the way the valley lies.
Where ye can't hold back the water you must try and save the sile.
Hev it jest as you've a mind to, but, if I was you, I'd spile!"

They spiled along the water-course with trunks of willow-trees,
And planks of elms behind 'em and immortal oaken knees.
And when the spates of Autumn whirl the gravel-beds away
You can see their faithful fragments, iron-hard in iron clay.

      .       .       .       .       .

Georgii Quinti Anno Sexto, I, who own the River-field,
Am fortified with title-deeds, attested, signed and sealed,
Guaranteeing me, my assigns, my executors and heirs
All sorts of powers and profits which—are neither mine nor theirs,

I have rights of chase and warren, as my dignity requires.
I can fish—but Hobden tickles. I can shoot—but Hobden wires.
I repair, but he reopens, certain gaps which, men allege,
Have been used by every Hobden since a Hobden swapped a hedge.

Shall I dog his morning progress o'er the track-betraying dew?
Demand his dinner-basket into which my pheasant flew?
Confiscate his evening faggot under which my conies ran,
And summons him to judgment? I would sooner summons Pan.

His dead are in the churchyard—thirty generations laid.
Their names were old in history when Domesday Book was made;
And the passion and the piety and prowess of his line
Have seeded, rooted, fruited in some land the Law calls mine.

Not for any beast that burrows, not for any bird that flies,
Would I lose his large sound counsel, miss his keen amending eyes.
He is bailiff, woodman, wheelwright, field-surveyor, engineer,
And if flagrantly a poacher—'tain't for me to interfere.

"Hob, what about that River-bit?" I turn to him again,
With Fabricius and Ogier and William of Warenne.
"Hev it jest as you've a mind to, but"—and here he takes command.
For whoever pays the taxes old Mus' Hobden owns the land.

Rudyard Kipling

Photo by Margo Benson

An Accident Of Birth - Cover Reveal

The moment has arrived... I now have cover art for An Accident Of Birth, which is planned for release in July/August 2013.

The year is 2754 and Francesca is 21 years old. As a rare fertile person in a largely infertile society she is a valuable resource for breeding and by law she is kept in an Atelier which is effectively a luxury hotel prison where she is required to breed.

Since she was brought here she has been waiting for her sweetheart Dominic to rescue her. She is coming to believe that he will never do so, but still hangs on to the possibility that he will. She ponders about the last few years and regrets that she didn’t run away and become a bolter when she had the chance. Exile would surely be better than this.

Baron Drake is a Fertile who has bolted and built a criminal empire exploiting people who either want to bolt, or who have done so, some with his rather expensive assistance.

Dominic, having exhausted his ideas for springing Francesca from her captivity, engages Baron Drake to do so on his behalf. It is a black market transaction with a large deposit and a huge balance to pay.

Baron Drake decides that Francesca is a worthy trophy and he will have her for himself. He turns on the charm and gains Francesca’s affections.

What follows is a competition between the sensitive and caring Dominic and the ruthless Baron Drake to get her free from the Atelier and to gain her love.

Cover design by www.jdsmith-design.com

When Evolution Fails Us

What if, in a future generation, human fertility has dwindled to the point that fertility is a rare gift?

Every species has a natural drive to survive and reproduce. It is one of our most basic instincts, and let's face it, without that instinct, humankind wouldn't exist today. We fight for survival, and we love to reproduce.

Indeed, in many sectors of human society, couples who choose to remain childless are thought to be failing in their responsibility. This attitude, however dubious, is driven by primal instinct, not reason.

In recent years, studies have revealed some sobering facts. It seems that every generation is, on average, less fertile than its predecessor. We may be growing taller and bigger, but we're not as good at making babies.

The news reports which highlight these studies focus on the generation to generation decline in fertility, but do little to speculate on where it will lead. The reports generally measure fertility in terms of how many children are produced per couple. If the average is less than two then the population is declining.

We have to look a bit harder to find reports which talk about the biological ability of a couple to reproduce, rather than the choices they make. It seems that every generation is less biologically capable of reproduction than the last. According to Skakkebæk et al, “... data on semen quality collected systematically from reports published world wide indicate clearly that sperm density has declined appreciably during 1938-90, although we cannot conclude whether or not this decline is continuing.” [1].

That's pretty scary. If we were to take this to its logical conclusion, the end result could be catastrophic.

So, why is this happening? According to the Infertility Centre of St Louis, “The human male is known to have the worst sperm count of any mammalian species, with the exception of the gorilla, possibly because the fragile location of these sperm production genes lies on the Y chromosome. The process of recombination "repairs" chromosomes. Since genes on the Y do not recombine, the chromosome degenerates. Thus, the Y chromosome — which makes the male a male — deteriorates with each succeeding generation. It is not a very safe place for sperm production genes.” [2]

There's plenty of evidence, also, that lifestyle choices of parents, such as obesity and smoking, can have a serious adverse effect the offspring's fertility.

In today's society, most people are fertile, and the infertile are the unlucky ones, but will that change? Fifty generations from now, will we be frantically trying to find ways to secure the future of the human race?

What will society look like if fertility becomes a rarity? Will fertile people still be considered lucky when the rest of society depends on them to propagate the species? In such a scenario, would a fertile person be allowed to choose not to have children? How would genetic diversity be maintained to avoid the birth defects which result from inbreeding? How would the population be maintained?

In today's society most of us consider ourselves to be free, but are we really? We are subject to a profusion of laws which take up an impressively large room full of bookcases, most of which we don't know about and wouldn't understand if we did. More than this, we are subject to social pressures and taboos which greatly influence every aspect of our lives. Still, most of us are born 'free', and spend most of our lives believing that we live so.

Certainly there exists a slave trade, and a trade in unwilling prostitutes, but it is not exactly rare to be human or female. We're not going to be born with any biological features which might make us such a rarity that people would treat us as a resource; a commodity. Something to trade in.

But what if that weren't true? If fertility were rare, would those lucky few be the victims or the benefactors of their accident of birth?

Would they be treated as childbearing royalty or breeding slaves? Would they be able to chose a partner because they love them, or would they be forced into breeding with carefully selected, genetically compatible partners? Would their lives be dominated by social pressures or statutory rules? Would surrogacy be a choice, a lucrative contract between a fertile people and their clients, or would it be state controlled?

Would there be a whole black market; a criminal underworld, trading in the fertility of the few? Would supporting industries spring up? How about services for fertile people who wish to escape the bonds of their condition?

These questions are not easy to answer. How society might respond to such changes is no more than speculation. Nonetheless, if and when it comes, we will have to respond, one way or another.

However we set about tackling the problems posed by increasing infertility, conflict is bound to arise. Different people will have differing beliefs about how to deal with the problem. Whatever solution is chosen, there will be those who don't accept it.

Would that lead to social unrest? Quite possibly. Large scale differences of public opinion on emotive subjects often do.

Will it change the face of politics? The world of politics is there to serve the greater social interest (or so it should be), and what greater interest than the survival of the species?

We don't really know how long it will take for dwindling fertility to become a threat to the future of humankind, or indeed, whether it ever will, but one thing is clear. The trend towards diminished fertility raises some difficult social questions.

For now, we have to rely on works of speculative fiction, such as An Accident Of Birth, for answers to these questions.

~

[1] Carlsen, E., A Giwercman, N Keiding, N Skakkebæk. 1992. Evidence for Decreasing Quality of Semen During Past 50 Years. British Medical Journal 305:609-613.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1883354/pdf/bmj00091-0019.pdf

[2] http://www.infertile.com/infertility-treatments/millennium.htm

An Accident Of Birth

I'm moving on from my working title.

Exit: Bolter Baron
Enter: An Accident Of Birth

I've written the book, and edited it several times. I have worked with critique partners, and finally I have a fully edited manuscript, for which the working title was Bolter Baron. I've now, after much deliberation and nail-biting, given it a title which I believe will be more appropriate:

An Accident Of Birth

I feel that the way the new title positions the story is much more appropriate for the mood and content than the working title.

I hope you agree, and if you honour me by reading the story once it's published, I believe you will.

So, what's next? I shall send out copies to beta readers. I can't wait to get their feedback.

After that...

The world is, as they say, my small, shell-like thing. Let's hope there's a pearl in it.

Publisher Interview and Giveaway

Interview with Mark Heiman of Loomis House Press

Mark Heiman and Laura Saxton Heiman of Loomis House Press have now completed publication of the first new (non-facsimile) edition of Francis James Child's collection The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, completely re-set and edited to include all of Child's post-publication corrections and additions, including 77 additional ballad texts.

In today's post, I interview Mark Heiman, who has generously agreed to offer a hardbound copy of the latest volume to the winner of a draw. More on that after the interview:

Mark, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Some readers may not be aware of Loomis House Press. Could you tell us a little about your publishing objectives.

We founded Loomis House Press in 2001 in recognition of the many core ballad and folklore texts that were no longer available in print — Child being foremost of those. The world has changed somewhat since then, with the availability of digitized holdings from libraries around the world, but we’d like to hope that there are still people who value having some of these titles in hand and on the shelf.

For a long time the Child Ballads were only available as second hand books, often at high prices, but more recently the facsimiles of the first edition have become available again. Why did you choose to produce a second edition of the Child Ballads?

Well, you’d somewhat answered your question. Child was out of print, and used copies were going for exhorbitant prices, unless you were lucky enough to find an old Dover volume on a back shelf in a used book store. Those bookstores had only begun to sell online in small numbers in 2001, so gathering a complete set of Child took a lot of dedication and/or money.

Without a new edition of Child, the likelihood of a new generation of ballad singers and scholars discovering this work seemed remote, and that’s just a shame. For better or worse, Child is the foundation on which all subsequent ballad scholarship and collecting has been built. His 19th century academic prose can seem daunting at first, but persistence is repaid by the breadth and depth and even the wit of his work.

Producing this new edition must have been a massive task. What particular challenges did you face?

The original edition of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads was published in ten volumes over 15 years, from 1883 to 1898, and over that time Child continued to discover new ballad variants, to find better manuscripts of some of his sources, and to develop his understanding of the materials he was working with. As a result, each of those ten volumes contains a lengthy section entitled Additions and Corrections, where Child notes things that should be added to or corrected in each of the preceding volumes. The final volume contains new material for the entire set, including some corrections of prior corrections!

What we set out to do was to carefully carry out the instructions represented by this supplemental material, inserting new texts where indicated, correcting or expanding ballad notes, etc. In order to do that, we had to first create a new digital text of the books, working from an original first-edition set. If we’d started ten years later, now that several public domain texts have been generated, we could have saved many hours of tedious proofreading!

One of the largest challenges, and one we didn’t really recognize at the outset, has to do with page numbers. The original final volume contains a number of indices and an extensive glossary, all of which obviously refer to the original pagination. Many of those references are to text in the Additions and Corrections — text that we have subsequently scattered through five volumes. Identifying the correct new pagination for all of those references was a huge project; it ultimately involved creating software to track the location of repositioned references and dynamically generate new index references. That’s why Volume 5 took as long as it did…

Now that all five volumes are complete and available, what new projects do you have in the pipeline?

We’ve got a long list. As you probably know, we paused between volumes 4 and 5 to bring out a facsimile of Bronson’s Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads; that had been on the list from the beginning, but we were able to acquire the rights at that point in time, so it was well worth taking a little time just then to bring those books out.

At the moment, we’re preparing a fascimile edition of Sharp’s two volume English Folksongs from the Southern Appalachians, another absolutely foundational source for ballad texts and tunes that has long been unavailable.

Also on the near horizon are some online projects — we now have this digital, corrected, highly structured representation of Child’s collection that should be able to serve as the foundation for an amazing online “Child Explorer.”

On a personal note, have you always been in the publishing industry, and what is your interest in the Child Ballads?

I had worked as a writer and editor, and had been doing freelance book design for a number of years before we founded Loomis House, so it wasn’t a big leap. My interest in Child goes back to when I first stumbled across Child (and Bronson) as a teenager, and I’ve been singing ballads ever since, and more recently, giving performance/lectures about Child and the ballad tradition.

Thank you, Mark.

Mark has generously offered a hardbound copy of the latest volume, including shipping, to the winner of a draw. To enter this draw, all you have to do is post on your blog to tell your readers about this interview and give-away. Leave a comment on this post to let me know where I can see your post and you'll be entered in the draw. I will pick a winner, on 20th September - two weeks from the date of this post, at random from the entries and notify the winner, who can then contact Loomis House Press to arrange delivery.

Please do support Mark and Laura's work by posting a link to this post on your blog, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or anywhere else. Thank you.

Inspiration for a Title

I have a wip and a new work both in need of a title, and I've been thinking about what it takes to make a good book title.

The biggest question of all is 'what does the title need to convey'? The answer isn't simple. These are the main points I've been considering:

Do you want the title to convey an aspect of the story?

Can you tease the reader with a title which conveys the action of the story without spoiling it? What is it about the story that makes it unique?

A good approach to this is to start with your logline. If you haven't come up with one yet then it's a good idea to do so before attempting to title the book. Coming up with a good logline is an art of its own, so it helped me a lot to research the art before coming up with one. Once you have a logline you have a core statement from which you can key a title.

Is there a message or theme which could be conveyed in the title?

Does your book have an underlying message, moral story or fable? Is there a snappy way this underlying message can be conveyed in the title?

How well will the title convey the genre of the story?

If the title conveys the story genre, all's well and good. It doesn't hurt to do so and in some situations it can be an advantage (such as when your book is listed out of context and without a cover image). What has to be avoided is a title which indicates the wrong genre, or is confusing about the genre. For example a title that sounds historical for a story set in the future.

Will the title reach out to the right kind of reader?

Every title has an effect on a reader, but that effect can be hard to predict, since everyone reacts differently to the next person. This is one of the reasons to get feedback from others on your title choices before making a commitment.

What do you want the reader to think of when they see the title?

Even if everyone reacts differently there is still scope to create an impression with the title. Having answered the question What do you want the reader to think of? the next step is to find ways of conveying that in words. Again, experimentation and feedback are key.

How will the title look on the spine and the front cover?

Once in the shelf the spine is the only visible part of the book. How will the title look when viewed that way?

The title will probably come before cover art, but it is important to consider how it will look on the front of the book. A seventeen word title won't look great on any front cover or spine. Remember, the front cover will often be viewed as a small icon on websites and in catalogues, so whoever designs the cover needs a title they can make readable even at that small size.

Where else will the title be seen?

The title will often be seen without a cover image. This can happen on websites, in lists or catalogues, and the title may even appear without the author's name. These situations need to be considered when answering questions about what the title conveys to the reader.

How does your title compare?

There's a market for your book, and there are other authors writing for that market. Take a look at successful books in your genre that are comparable with your work. Their titles work, or at least don't harm sales, so it's worth considering why to see if there is an approach you can use.



Having considered all these points I try to come up with a small selection of options for the title and begin with my favourite, seeking feedback.

I've been through this process for my wip and here is the logline and title I came up with:

Wishing to free his sweetheart from a government enforced breeding programme, a young man finds himself competing for her with a ruthless underworld boss. - Bolter

This was after a lot of agonising and many options considered. The back cover blurb can be seen at the 'Bolter Baron' tab on this blog.

So, my questions for you...

How do you set about creating a title for your book?

What do you think of Bolter as a title? Do you have a suggestion for me?

Finally, I'd like to say thanks to my followers for sticking with me while I've been a bit sporadic with my posts. You're a great bunch.

Child Ballads. A second edition after 130 years.

In July this year the final volume will be released of the Loomis House Press second edition of Francis James Child's collection 'The English and Scottish Popular Ballads'

The English and Scottish Popular Ballads was first published in ten volumes by Francis James Child between the years 1882 and 1898. The first edition, published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company was later re-printed by them in five volumes, each containing two of the original volumes.

Francis J Child was an acedemic at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, and prolific in his work. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads was his greatest and most enduring work; the one by which his name is remembered today.

Since then it has only been available in facsimile editions, the most popular of which is the Dover edition. For a long time the Dover edition was unavailable, leading to sky-high second hand prices for tatty paper back copies.

Revered by lovers of poetry, songs, ballads, antiquity and folklore worldwide 'The English and Scottish Popular Ballads' is one of the most sought after poetry collections.

Dover have since re-printed their facsimile edition, but until recently the first edition has been the only edition available.

Mark Heiman and Laura Saxton Heiman of Loomis House Press have changed all that.

Years' of work have gone into the production of a new edition, newly typeset and containing Francis Child's own corrections in five volumes as well as tunes from Child's own sources.

Volumes 1 - 4 have already been published and volume 5 will be available in July, completing the set.

I would like to congratulate Mark and Laura of Loomis House Press for their diligent work and celebrate the completion of this important new publication.