Arclight is... # 17

** Arclight is About People **

There's an aspect of Arclight that didn't strike me as unusual until recently.

If you've read these posts, then you're aware that the Arclight is a secure facility where the characters live. If you've read the first pages on EW.com, then you know that said facility is regimented in a military style - chain of command included. At the top of that hierarchy sits a character named Honoria Whit.

She's an imposing presence. Over six feet tall, stern, unyielding in her determination, and coldly dedicated to maintaining the integrity of her facility, she's absolutely lethal to anyone or anything she deems a threat to those she's responsible for. And, in case it's not obvious, she's also a woman.

Yet, never once is she referred to as "the woman in charge." She's simply "our leader" to those under her purview.

But, you might think, those mean the same thing, don't they?

They should, but they don't. Not really.

In real life, and in most fiction, a female is first and foremost a female. The words "she," "woman," "lady," etc. become qualifiers and modifiers, altering the context. Even in a world of female heath professionals, CEOs, and military generals, the default assumption of any trade beyond teacher, nurse, assistant, etc is that the person will be male. Prefacing an introduction by specifying gender comes off as a warning that you're not getting what you expect, or that the person in question is an oddity for stepping outside societal norms. In some cases, it goes so far as to sound like an apology.

I honestly hadn't realized this, but the people in Arclight don't operate like that. There's no significant gender bias for them - and why would there be? It may sound weird to think of it this way, but the characters simply don't have the time or resources to waste handicapping their society by encouraging restrictive gender-roles. When you need hands on weapons to defend your home, You're not likely to look and see who those hands belong to.

These people are trying to survive, and you don't accomplish that by discounting half the population's qualifications based on their genetic code and whether or not their reproductive organs are internal or external.

Arclight ... #16

** Arclight has a Cold Start **

Not sedate - cold, like jumping into a frozen lake wearing nothing but skin.

I know not everyone likes to be dropped into the middle of the action without any background information, but I chose not to have a prologue primer on the world Arclight's set in. It felt like cheating, considering that such a prologue would mean stepping out of the narrator's POV to accomplish. Marina's kind of adrift at the beginning of the story, and I wanted the readers to feel that, too, and feeling slightly out of step and out of control is part of it.

But, if you hang on for the ride, the chaos will settle into something more familiar as Marina starts finding her own path and her own way. By the time you get to the next action scene, you'll be a lot more grounded.

Arclight is... #15

**Arclight is About Survival**

Not surprising, since most post-apocalyptic stories have survival aspects to them, but I mean more than physical survival against bad odds.

When faced with something truly daunting, the person going through it doesn't always emerge victorious. And if they do, it's often with fundamental changes to who and what they are. These changes can be for the better or worse, depending on where the person's breaking point is, and what happens to them once they've reached it.

There are some tough decisions facing the characters in ARCLIGHT, and there are some tough consequences.
 
Survival in this world depends on staying in the light. The sun still exists, but for most of the world, it doesn't matter because that light is blocked.That's where Marina comes in, because she's the only one ever known to have survived traveling through that blocked area. She's assumed to be the last of not only her family, but also of her settlement, because no one else made it through the darkness with her.

She knows that if she returns to the Dark, she's making a suicide run, but she also knows that if anything remains of her family, the Dark is where she'll find out what happened to them. And she knows that the longer she stays inside the light, the more danger she poses for those who rescued her.

It's no easier for those around her.

The Arclight's leaders know that bringing Marina inside puts all of their loved ones at risk, but they also believe that there's a bigger picture to be seen. If one can survive the darkness, then there's no reason others can't do the same.

There's no free pass in these situations. Survival always comes at a cost - the only question is whether or not it's one you can pay.


What would you do to survive? What would you risk to make sure your friends, family, world, etc. did, too? What part of yourself are you willing to compromise, and is it worth it, if you're not still you after you have?

Arclight... #14

Arclight now feels like a real series because book 2 has an official name!!!

MERIDIAN

I love the name. It was one of my alternative titles that I had in reserve for Arclight, if the publisher had wanted to change that one, and now I get to use both of them - YAY!

The story picks up a short time after the end of book 1, and starts a new adventure for the characters that I won't go into here because it would spoil book 1 to hear it. But, suffice to say, the name is a reference to, not only the line between light and dark, but a few "point of no return" crossings on the horizon.

Arclight...#13

**Arclight Seeks to Put the HERO back into Heroine**

I once read an article about firefighter training where one of the core lessons was “Never give up your ax,” meaning that if a firefighter enters a building, ax in hand, and someone needs a door cut down, the others move out of the way for the one with the ax. They don’t pass the ax to the guy in front – they move, because passing the ax hand-to-hand makes dropping it more likely. But here’s the thing, the guy with the ax is the one taking action; he’s in charge, so everyone wanted that ax, even if they had to take it from another trainee.

It occurred to me that the rules about wielding that ax make a pretty good guidelines for someone writing a YA novel with a female lead.

Too often, a female main character is not the heroine of her own story. She tells the story, but someone else lives the adventure while she’s either captured or unconscious. If she's conscious, then she exists to hand the hero a weapon, or to shout out the positions of the enemy as they close in on him. Granted, the last one makes sense if she's tied up or in a cell where she can see what's happening, but not participate, however, most YA heroines *choose* to be passive.

They get the details second hand, along with the reader, but worse than that, they reinforce the idea that the girl needs rescuing and that she’s inept when it comes to danger. She’s reduced to the role of a fangirl recounting the story of “that time my hero saved me.”

No, thank you.  

If I'm going to follow someone for 400 pages, then that someone better be doing something more than moon over someone else who only enters and exits scenes to save the day and leave. Even in speculative YA, where the heroine is literally a weapon in her own right, you'll find her sitting on the sidelines or freezing up so that others have to charge ahead without her. What good is a weapon that can't be used?

I knew going in that I wouldn't let Marina be that kind of heroine. She's a survivor, and that's not something that happens by accident. (Or if it does, it doesn't happen twice.) Now, I'm not going to say that she's some super-warrior - she's not. She makes dumb mistakes, but at least she tries. 

In the first scene, when everyone's hiding under their tables, Marina is there with the rest of them, but she's ready to move, not waiting to be saved. Like the others, she's not sure if they'll live out the night, but she's made up her mind that if she's going to die, she's going to do as much damage to the enemy as possible. Her family's gone; at least nine people she never knew sacrificed themselves to save her from the Fade - she's not going to lie down and let that mean nothing. Or, to tie it to the story at the top of this post, she's got her ax in her hands, and she's not giving it up until she's done with it.

And it's not just Marina, not just main characters. I *loathe* passive background characters, too. Where is it written that the MC's friends - or enemies - must be reduced to verbal foils? Why can't they do more than cause minor irritations or humorous hijinx?

There's one scene I fought very hard to keep in tact. It's a fight later in the story where a group of kids is face-to-face with one of the Fade-creatures. They're unarmed and isolated, and this creature is more than enough to eviscerate every one of them. 

In this case, we're talking a group of three girls and two guys. Conventional dynamics would have the three girls in a quaking huddle while the two guys did all the heavy lifting. But, by the end of the fight, they've all done their part to try and contain their enemy. Having it any other way makes no sense to me.

ARCLIGHT EXCERPT on EW.com !!

Want to read the opening for Arclight? Head on over and read it here!!! along with an interview by me :)

Arclight is... #12

** Arclight is About Perception **

My last post was about fear, and came with a description of one of the book's locations, called simply "The Dark."

There's a fairly well known lesson about darkness that I'll paraphrase here because I can't remember the exact wording, nor do I know who to attribute it to. Basically, the idea is that darkness only exists because of human perception. That's not nearly as meta as it sounds - it's actually provable.

There's a scale for determining levels of light, which are measured in lumens. There is no scale for measuring darkness because it's a term invented to mean "lack of light." You can't quantify the amount of darkness in a room, or add or subtract units of darkness. No matter how dim the light, it will always add value in a room lacking it. "Dark" is nothing but "zero" on the light scale.

The same thing is true of "hot and cold." Only one of those things is quantifiable (heat), yet, human perception tells us that both exist. We feel the lack of heat and call it cold.

Perception is a powerful thing. It creates absolutes in our understanding where such things don't actually exist. Your perception of a person upon first meeting (or prior to it, if you're going based on others' opinions) will impact how you interact with that person the next time you see them. The way you read or hear something will depend on your prior experiences, creating differences between you and someone with different experiences because you don't perceive the information the same way.

ARCLIGHT is all about perception.

The main character is put into different categories, depending on whether the character in question thinks she's someone to be feared or cheered. Most of her peers avoid her for this reason - they don't know her, but they perceive the threat in having her close by.

Her assumptions of people's character are based on how they first treat her. The friendly girl who takes a chance on saying hello - she becomes a friend. The venomous boy who taunts her at every opportunity - he becomes an enemy. But most people are enigmas to her, since she has no concrete references to compare them to, and it takes her a while to sort through them all.

I wanted a character who didn't just struggle with an outside opposing force, I wanted one who challenged things on a personal level because she begins to understand that if something doesn't sit right with her, it doesn't mean that she's the problem. If she perceives something as wrong, then maybe it is, even though she's being told it's right.

It's Marina's perceptions that create the wedge between what she's told and what she believes. She doesn't want to kill stray animals because they might have come from the Dark, and therefore be dangerous. She doesn't want to stay inside and be content with a future without a past. Those things are accepted by the Arclight and those raised in it, but they don't work for her.

That's part of the growing-up process, and something especially important for teens. They aren't going to agree with everything, and they're going to find their own ways of accomplishing their own goals. At some point, you have to realize that you're not doing things wrong, you're simply doing them differently, and that may be the key to success.