MUSE MONDAY
What better way to do Muse Monday than to talk about Muses with Carmen?
“Where do you get your story ideas?” It’s a question writers are
often asked. So, where does inspiration for a story come from? The ancient
Greeks believed in the existence of muses, inspirational goddesses
of literature, science, and the
arts who, presumably, could help those who needed inspiration. However, I’m pretty sure the Greeks didn’t have a muse for
science fiction.
Some writers may use a specific process to inspire a story, but
for me, most of my stories began their existence as a picture that popped into
my head. The first novel I published
The
Sixth Discipline began with a man walking warily through a forest. The next
thing I knew, he was being kidnapped by a bunch of strangers. I didn’t set out
to write a far-future science fiction story about a man from a primitive
culture being snatched by people with more advanced technology, but when that
scene played out in my head, that was what was happening.
On the other hand, the story in my time travel/alternate history
novel King of Trees started with a
question generated by a real (but not in any way personal) event. I was reading
about the abdication of Edward VIII of Great Britain (now the UK) and what a
fuss it had caused in 1936. Edward wanted to marry a twice-divorced American
woman and since the monarch was the head of the Church of England, that was (at
the time) not considered acceptable. [Note: This is incredibly ironic when you realize
that the Church of England split off from the Roman Catholic Church so that
Henry VIII could divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, in order to marry
Anne Boleyn.]
This made me think about what is, in effect, a contract between
a monarch and those he rules— or, in more modern times, those from whom he
accepts money and reverence, just for being their monarch. What does he owe
them in return for what he gets from them? That led me to write a story in
which a young man who is a king, but with no actual power, has to choose
whether to marry the woman he loves or the woman who can help his country. He’s
not named Henry or Edward but Bardolph, and while his country is called Albion,
it’s an alternate version of the country we call England. Inspiration doesn’t
mean you need to stick to realty.
But the most dramatic instance of story inspiration for me, was when
a story came to me because of a major event that happened in my life. My
parents had been married for 28 years and had four mostly grown children when
my dad announced he was leaving my mom. What came out, eventually, was that he
had had learned that a married woman he had admired decades before was now a
widow, and so he left my mom and eventually married the other woman. My mom
was, naturally, devastated.
This made me contemplate the way marriage works in our society, both
now and in the past. A few hundred years ago, divorce wasn’t acceptable. And
yet marriages were often arranged, most often but not exclusively at the higher
levels of society. In some cultures, arranged marriages happen even today. A
2020 article in the Washington Post described how many Indian families still rely on old-style
matchmakers who connect people looking for spouses.
And of course, in the Western world, many people use online
dating apps to screen prospective partners for compatibility, not only of
temperament but also income, race, and looks, so I can't claim screening
potential mates is a purely an Eastern thing.
But after seeing my mom’s devastation, I tried to imagine a
world where that circumstance could never happen to anyone. How could a human
being make a lifetime commitment to someone and be absolutely sure it wouldn’t be broken? I realized, of course, such
certainty wasn’t really possible for humans, so I invented a world where it
was. I ended up creating Wakanreo, the planet that is the basis for the trilogy
that begins with the novel Alien Bonds. The aliens known as Wakanreans are unique in my far-future
universe because they mate for life from a purely biological reaction. And once
mated, the attraction never fades.
Finding a life partner is a serious matter. Some people stay
single from choice, some from despair after a bad relationship, and some
because they're waiting for the right person to walk into their lives. But in
the society I created on Wakanreo, every adult is either paired off or
waiting to be paired off, based on a biological reaction beyond his or her
control.
Once I had determined the mechanism for this bonding, I thought
about how it would affect the cultures of this world. This system has
advantages and disadvantages for individuals, but one side effect is, there
are no castes, no
aristocrats, no stratification of society, because pairing off
cannot be controlled or arranged like marriage can be. Also because of that,
sex has nothing to do with morality.
But the heart of that novel is that attraction and love are two
different things. The couple in the story cannot resist the pull of the
biological reaction, but that does not mean that they love each other. The bond
from the biological mating is practically instantaneous, but the bond from
love, like love itself, takes time to grow and must be nourished. And in that
way, Wakanreans are like humans, in
that while the lifelong commitment is unbreakable, love isn’t guaranteed to be part
of it.
I don’t know if anyone could tell from reading my books whether
they originated from an intellectual question or from pure spontaneous
generation, but for me, the process was very different. I am a “pantser.” I
write “from the seat of my pants,” without an outline. In fact, I credit a lot
of my output to insomnia; I wrote most of my books in my head first, while
lying in bed trying to go to sleep. The stories that started from a specific
question were more constrained than those that simply flowed from my
subconscious, because they had to conform to my inspiration. As to which are
the better books, I will leave that to the reader to decide.
But if I were to create a muse for science fiction writers, I
think I would name her Mary, after Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley who wrote Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, the very first science fiction novel. It seems only fair.
And if you would like to visit Wakanreo, you can find Alien Bonds for sale online in paperback
or on the Kindle.
Buy: US Kindle store (also
currently available through Kindle Unlimited)
Buy: Paperback
Blurb:
A
human woman and an alien man are unexpectedly bonded and must learn to navigate
the sea of their
differences. Industrial chemist Dina Bellaire travels all the
way to the planet Wakanreo to advance her career. Her carefully planned life
goes up in flames the second she meets Kuaron Du, a Wakanrean who makes his
living singing ancient songs in a dead language. Both of them know they can’t
go back to the way they were before they met. They just have to convince the
rest of the universe that what happened to them is real.
From Kirkus Reviews--
"Buxton offers an SF story about interplanetary love triumphing, despite
the odds.. . . readers will feel truly immersed in their religion, values, and
technology of Wakanreo and appreciate the relevance of Buxton's depiction of a
couple fighting for their relationship in a climate of intolerance in this
thought-provoking work. A dense but often engrossing tale, grounded in a
relatable love affair."
Excerpt:
Neither of them
had taken a step since he took hold of her arm. Dina swallowed once, conscious
of discreet glances and overt stares from those around them.
“I’m all right,”
she said finally, wondering if she was speaking the truth. The dizziness had
passed, but she still felt lightheaded. “Thank you, but you can let go now.”
He loosened his
grip but didn’t release her for a few seconds. When he did, he brushed her bare
arm with the back of his hand. Dina was amazed when it sent shivers of
anticipation up her spine.
“This is
unexpected.” His wonderfully resonant voice had a rich, warm timbre to it that
made Dina’s shivers change from anticipation to yearning.
“Yes,” she said,
unsure of what he meant, but afraid to give offense.
“Where do you
live?”
“I have an
apartment in the off-world sector,” she said, wondering why she was answering
him. She fought the urge to close her eyes and just listen to that wonderful
voice.
“My house is in
the cliffs outside the city. Let’s go there instead.”
“All right.”
It took Dina a
moment to realize that she had agreed to go home with him.
Bio:
Carmen Webster Buxton spent
her youth reading every book published by Ursula LeGuin, Robert Heinlein and
Georgette Heyer. This combination of far-future worlds, alien cultures, and old-fashioned
courting customs influenced her writing, especially in her ThreeCon series.
Carmen was born in Honolulu and experienced a
childhood on the move, as her father was in the US Navy. Having raised two
wonderful children, she now lives in Maryland with her husband Charlie, and a
beagle named Cosmo. She writes science fiction, often with a romance or two,
and the occasional fantasy. She is a member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America
(SFWA).
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