Future Published #1: The Love Song of Numo and Hammerfist

"Future Published" is a series of interviews devoted to fabulous unpublished authors whose work I have been blessed to read, and believe is good enough to deserve professional publication.

Today's interviewee is Reilly McCann, author of The Love Song of Numo and Hammerfist. In this case, I read Reilly's wonderfully off-beat query letter, which appeals to my love of strange and curious things. If I were an agent, I'd be requesting pages!

But enough about me. Thank you, Reilly, for journeying all the way to Elflandia!

Why don't you tell us a bit about your book?

Reilly: It's a speculative novel--a love story about two homunculus-slaves who, in my head, look like a potato with limbs and a werebadger, respectively. ...Crap, that's a really bad logline. I haven't quite worked out the logline yet. But it's sort of like Spartacus made snugglebunnies with Wall-E on a mattress made of Alchemy and Shit I Made Up and produced a big fat baby.

I notice there's a revolution in your book. Was it inspired by any thoughts about real revolutions?

Reilly: The revolution in the book is, at the outset, built on the general notion of a slave rebellion. But it turns into something bigger. The characters all have their own agendas and use the revolution for their own purposes, so it kind of snowballs...

I don't think I was aware of any specific thoughts I had on the business of revolutions. Which is a really boring answer. But it's sort of a backdrop against the question of freedom, which is a significant issue for all of the main characters. Numo, the MC, starts off having no idea what a revolution is and no concept of being "free," really, or why it would be a good thing. The story, for him, is all about the evolution of his own thoughts on the matter, and ends with his own personal rebellion, which involves stabbing people in the face and using a dead whale as a weapon.

Are politics a big part of the book, or is it basically apolitical?

Reilly: Oddly, yes, I made it kind of political, but not on purpose, and it's all fantasy politics. I don't mean to make any statements about real-world government with it, if that's what you mean. But it really surprised me when my stupid little love story ended up also being about overthrowing the (imaginary) government and gender divisions and stuff. I suspect all that will either go very well for me or very very badly.

What inspired you to write this story?

Reilly: I have no idea what inspires me to write anything. I just seem to do it, like farting, but it takes a lot more time and effort.

But as to how this specific story came out...There was some idea about messing with common tropes. Insta-love and lovers-not-meant-to-be and the like. Trying to turn those things into something fresh; facing their typical failings head-on.

And I'm pretty sure the subconscious influence of Winnie-the-Pooh had a lot to do with it. I fucking love Winnie-the-Pooh.

Who was your favorite character to write?

Reilly: Numo, the main character. Hammerfist, his love interest, has given me a hell of a time because her mental state fluctuates so much. Both of them are difficult, actually, because they're unreliable narrators to some extent. The third POV character has been "easiest," because she is human and actually knows what the hell is going on in her world. But Numo's my favorite because he's cray-cray adorbs.

Do you ever kill characters? (You don't have to answer that!)

Ever? Yes. I'm a violent heartless dickface.

Tell us a little about yourself. What are you reading these days?

Reilly: This is a weird time for me because I've just finished three years of internships at literary agencies. So I've been reading a lot of unpublished manuscripts that are all over the map, with very little time for pleasure reading, which is awful of me. But now I have time. And I have a huge fucking reading list. I'm working on Fade to Black right now. Next on the list are Sacre Bleu because I love Christopher Moore, Lone Survivors because I'm a dilettante anthro dweeb, and Divergent, because I haven't read nearly enough YA and someone told me I should read it. I'm very susceptible to suggestion.

What do think of dragons?

Reilly: Most of them are far too nice to humans. I appreciate a dragon who knows how to throw down. Although, I have to say, if I could have my own pet Toothless, I'd piss myself with glee pretty regularly.

What are you working on, now? Do you have a sequel planned, or something new?

Reilly: Right now I'm still working on this book...it is currently pretty rough, and the ending is the literary equivalent of a toddler's smeared-poop painting on the kitchen wall. After I deal with this one, I plan to go back and try to salvage my first two manuscripts, which might be too stupid to work.

I don't have a sequel planned for this book. I'm honestly kind of awed by people who can think up sequels to things. It's an amazing gift that I might not possess. Yet, anyway.

I have an idea for a new story. Something about a professional jellyfish-stabber and a cannibal who eats her legs. A romantic comedy, in other words.

...I'm not quite sure about it yet.

It's my observation that books seem to reflect their writers. What aspect of you is reflected in your book?

Reilly: I'm told that it's weird. Or that it sounds weird, anyway. I suspect people are right, even though it seems to me like it's the least weird manuscript I've ever written. But I guess I'm predisposed to the ridiculous in any case. ;) I might be a ridiculous person.

Would you like to leave us with a quote from your book/query?

The query:
"Numo, if he is to think anything, should only think of his masters’ needs. It is only proper, after all, that a slave and homunculus devote what little his fatty brain can offer to their service, especially for two of the most esteemed alchemists in the city.

But instead, he can't stop thinking about Hammerfist.

Hammerfist, a lady battle-homunculus, has eyes like the purest embers, a mane like a sea of moon-glitter, and a horrible brain disease that is slowly eroding her sanity. The pain of squishing other slaves' heads the arena is a most ponderous weight to bear, and if she snaps, her owner will cut off her legs and dump her in the woods. Numo desperately wants to help, but presents of flowers and tree sap aren’t enough. She needs a way to get out of the arena. She needs a revolution.

Numo only wishes he knew what a revolution was.

But it doesn’t matter. If it will save Hammerfist, he’ll do anything to help. Except, of course, the things he’s too stupid to do. Things like keeping the plans for the revolution a secret from his masters.

THE LOVE SONG OF NUMO AND HAMMERFIST is a [word count] fantasy. Thank you for your time."

A quote from the book:
"The smell of the master struck him first, and the sight was equally odoriferous. Balbus was the sort of man who looked like he slept in a barrel of brine and kept company with rogues, scoundrels, and harlots. Numo did not know what a harlot was, but he often heard the word in association with things like knaves and stinkards, and he imagined that it was some sort of dirty animal that carried diseases and squirted men with milk from its poisonous bosoms."

Thanks for everything!

The Little Ice Age and Revolution

An interesting climactic observation fromNASA: "A cold period that lasted from about A.D. 1550 to about A.D. 1850 in Europe, North America, and Asia. This period was marked by rapid expansion of mountain glaciers, especially in the Alps, Norway, Ireland, and Alaska. There were three maxima, beginning about 1650, about 1770, and 1850, each separated by slight warming intervals."

Charles I of England was executed in January, 1649, after which Oliver Cromwell rose to power.
The Americans signed their Declaration of Independence in 1776.
The French got a late start in 1789, but a couple decades of crop failures and food shortages are undoubtedly to blame.
Revolutions and political upheavals swept Europe in 1848. " It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history... The revolutionary wave began in France in February, and immediately spread to most of Europe and parts of Latin America. Over 50 countries were affected..."

The Russian Revolution, of course, was also prompted by suffering, death, and starvation, thought most likely due to World War I, rather than climate.

Some of these revolutions turned out well. Some turned out terribly. The Americans were quite lucky to have George Washington, and the Russians terribly unlucky to have Lenin and Stalin. But the Americans also had better access to land to feed their families, and no reactionary counter-revolution to deal with. The leaders of the French Revolution took advantage of the instability to reform the state, but (as far as I can tell,) could do little about the country's biggest problem, lack of food. The new government never had a chance. (As for the English, well, I don't know enough about the 1600s to really comment.)

When man is starving, the political order loses legitimacy and the wealthy--the folks with food--become his first targets.

Lost

I went through this phase a while back when I was doodling a lot of bird-people, and a lot of bird masks, and so occasionally bird-people wearing bird masks. I also had a habit of working exclusively in extremely fine point pen, which was probably not such a great idea, as the details just don't scan very well. The result here is a lot of texture, but it's fairly evenly distributed. This needs more tone. The background should be dark (I tried, but it just didn't quite work,) and the foreground should also be dark (not as dark as the background. The bird person should be highlighted, though perhaps only parts of him.

Well, I still like it, anyway.

Goblin X

"There are two kinds of goblins in this world, the field goblin and the hobgoblin. The hobgoblin serves the nobles. He eats the leftovers from their tables and says, 'What a fine city we have. What fine buildings we are building.' The field goblin works for himself. The field goblin is wild and free and that's why the fae hate him."
--Baku Nin, A Midwinter Night's Revolution.

At the End of Misery: More Misery

Reading about the emancipation of Russian serfs today. Interesting that this happened about the same time as the US abolished slavery (the 1860s)--Russian serfs, after all, were not all that different from slave. Unfortunately, it seems that emancipation actually led to lower standards of living and even more poverty for many Russians. It's as if... as long as the serfs were someone's property, those someones had some economic interest in their property not dying. But once the serfs were no one's property, then no one cared if they lived or died.

Sometimes history is sorrowful.

Kings and States

I confess I have generally thought of the European past, excluding the classical era, as filled with 'kings' (occasionally queens) ruling what we might call 'states'. Of course I maintained some vague awareness that Odysseus, King of Ithaca, might be better called a baron, but I didn't give it much thought beyond that.

Anyway, so I'm reading Historian on the Edge's essay, The Crisis of State, about W. Europe in the late classical/early Medieval period, not very far in, and he says two things which strike at my ignorance:

"...to call western polities after 600 'states' is to rob the word state of any analytical value."
Not states. The political entities we are dealing with in this period are not states--and that from a guy who seems to know his stuff.

"There will be a weak and a strong thesis to this paper. The weak thesis is that a crisis of the state occurred around 600; that changes took place which compelled a real shake up in the ways in which central and local power interacted, a critical moment which, whether or not it did, at least could have produced a breakdown of the state. A supplementary to the weak thesis is that these changes killed off the ‘Roman World’ that is still so visible in, say, 525-30.3 One might entitle this ‘weak thesis’ ‘the end of the late antique state in the West’. The ‘strong thesis’ is that the result of these changes was the end of political formations that can usefully be analysed as states in any way. With a slight but important change in the word order, the strong thesis can be entitled ‘the end of the state in the late antique West’.

"As a corollary, it is probably not surprising that government continued in recognisably Roman fashion. For all that we are used to conceiving of them as ‘Germanic’ kingdoms in this period, it is very difficult indeed to find much that can cogently be called Germanic or even barbarian. Certainly there were new elements in western rulership but these developed within a distinctively late imperial framework. It is worth remembering how new kingship was and the extent to which it was being made up by political actors as they went along. It may also be that even as late as the early sixth century it was not regarded as a permanent or even ideal solution to the problems thrown up by the fifth century, even by those occupying royal thrones."

Kingship was new.

Goodness. I'd never thought of it that way before. I mean, were there kings in the pre-classical era? Significant ones? Surely nothing on the scale of Queen Elisabeth I or Louie the XIV. I suppose most areas were governed by tribal chieftains, though some places (Ireland comes immediately to mind, having not been significantly influenced by Rome or the barbarian invasions,) had "high kings". What exactly makes one a king, and not a chief or a sultan or an emperor? Does the terminology matter, other than perhaps denoting something about the size of the territory under governance?

I suppose I should read on.

Never start a land war in Asia--unless you're Genghis Khan

I drew this during a Mongolian history binge. Someday I should figure out what spears actually look like (also, I'm pretty sure they didn't use spears.)

The military achievements of the Mongol army (especially under the famous Genghis,) are really quite impressive.

Viewing the Past (and Present) Through Tinted Lenses

I just cracked open Cipolla's Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy, 1000-1700. I'm only a few pages in, don't mind me, but the discussion of wealth distribution and poverty in pre-industrial/late Medieval European society struck me as a very good example of how much our perceptions matter.

Cipolla cites numerous studies of the wealth/income distribution in various parts of Europe prior to the industrial evolution, as evidence of the unfairness of the system and the poverty of the majority of those in it. The funny thing is, America today is less fair--we have an even more extreme divide between our rich and poor--than the vast majority of Copolla's examples, by an order of magnitude.

Myself, I'm rather worried about modern society.

Post-it-note Dragons

Art Post

They seem happy together.