New Year, New Column

Happy New Year!

2013 was a great year for Mythic Writing, with several record-breaking months. We crossed the 6000 views mark, and headed straight past 7000 and hit 8000 before the end of the year. We finished the Book of Josiah, explained Why Mythology Matters, Rewrote Radiance and began our investigation of Leviathanin the Bible in From the Deep. Not to mention that my family increased by 50%

So what does 2014 hold for Mythic Writing?

I still have a lot of rewriting to do for Radiance before I'm ready to release the updated version, so please God this will be the year I finish that.

I also intend to continue From the Deep with Rabbinic texts about sea monsters and Leviathan.

But I also want to start something new.

So I present to you my new column - Torah Mythology of the Week, that I hope to post every Thursday, exploring mythological elements of the Torah reading for that week. Can't promise I'll hit every parasha (may get stuck around Leviticus for some time) but we'll see how it goes.

So tune in on Thursday for your first weekly dose of Torah Mythology.

Writing Ideas - Musings, Dreams and Visions

The Book of Josiah is finished, Radiance is being rewritten (albeit slowly), Lost Words has been completely found, and I've released all the Tales of the Dreamscape. So what should I be writing next?

Here are my assorted musings about things I might want to write as a future project (and obviously these different ideas vary hugely both in length and amount of time needed to research them) - I'd love to hear what you think of these different thoughts - what kind of thing would you enjoy reading?

Let me know!

FATHER HOPE'S STORY
Another tale of the dreamscape, about a priest of the Unreal Gods who loses his faith, and his student Brother Fearful who finds his own strength. The denial of reality seems to preclude change and redemption. They meet personifications of their own emotions as they make a pilgrimage across the Dreamscape.


INVASION
Story of an ‘alien’ invasion of the world, told over the period of 20-30 years from multiple points of view, characters banding together and falling apart.

Team of spies recruited to infiltrate the alien world. Living computer games stolen from another world are actually the young of an advanced alien race who come to our planet to wreak vengeance.

"The first Jack heard of the invasion, was when #aliens began to sharply trend on twitter."

Continued after the break...

Rewriting Radiance - Rashi for Keter/Crown

It's been a while since I posted an update on my Kabbalistic Fantasy novel, Radiance (check out the first draft here), and honestly, it's been a while since I worked on it.

But recently I started working on the final chapter of the book, before the epilogue, that I wrote in the style of Biblical prophecy. While I enjoyed the conceit, and felt like it worked for the novel, I realised that it made the ending quite ambiguous. Rather than offer total clarity however, which seemed to fly in the face of the reason for writing in Biblical style in the first place, I thought I would write a Rashi-style commentary to go along with it, in the best of Jewish traditions.

If you want to read the first draft of this chapter, check it out here. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy the beginning of the 10th section of Radiance - Keter/Crown. Rashi commentary begins with the bold words quoting the text:


The word of the Lord came to Asher son of Eliav when he dwelt in the city of New York, saying:

            Thus proclaims the Lord:
       I have waited for you, My people, years I have waited beyond measure;
      And still you stir up My anger against you.
      Why do you sit in silence when My world cries out for justice?
      When My people suffer under the yoke of oppression, why were your words not heard?



    The city of New York: This is not coming to tell us a new word but rather a word that was created at the dawn of time, only now revealed to flesh and blood. Or alternatively, the verse is only coming to tell us where Asher son of Eliav lived, but the prophecy came when he was in the holy land of Israel.

    I have waited for you: This is what the verse says “The Lord, the Lord, God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger…” (Exodus 34:6).

    My world cries out for justice: This is according to its simple meaning, but according to the legend, in the future to come the earth will open its mouth and say ‘woe to me, that blood has been spilt on my back and it has not been avenged’

From the Deep - Waking Leviathan - Job 3

Job 3:7-8

7] May that night be barren; may no shout of joy be heard in it.

8] Let the cursers of day curse it, who are prepared to rouse up Leviathan.
 

ז הִנֵּה הַלַּיְלָה הַהוּא יְהִי גַלְמוּד אַל-תָּבוֹא רְנָנָה בוֹ
ח יִקְּבֻהוּ אֹרְרֵי-יוֹם הָעֲתִידִים עֹרֵר לִוְיָתָן 

I could write a whole book on mythical themes in the book of Job (and perhaps one day I will) but for the sake of this blog I will restrict myself to 5 posts - one each on Job 3, 7, 26 and 40-41, followed by a big picture look at the book as a whole.

By the third chapter, Job has lost everything he has - his money, his children, his wife, his health - and after seven days of sitting in silence with his three friends, he now opens his mouth to curse the day on which he was born: "Let that day be darkness;" he declares (Job 3:4) "let not God inquire after it from above, neither let the light shine upon it."

It's in this context that Job first mentions the primordial monster the Leviathan, mentioning an unspecified group who in the future are ready to wake the creature from its rest (more on this next week).

But what do we learn from the idea that some seek to wake Leviathan?

Rewriting Radiance - What's in a Name?

A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but I've been finding some names in Radiance less appealing as time goes on. While I wrote about my original intentions here, and while I still like the names of Asher, Virgo, Asher's parents and the Sitra Achra, the names of the rest of the Seven just aren't working for me any more.

So here are my thoughts on other options (I used www.behindthename.com liberally to research this article):


The Seven…
While accurate, calling the group simply 'the Seven' conveys very little information, and isn't terribly exciting. So what else could they be called? The Seven...

Midot - meaning aspects, principles, attributes or measures. More Hebrew might be undesirable, however, and it still isn't that evocative.

Facets/Archetypes - conveying the idea that these are all different aspects of the same divine force. I prefer facets, as it suggests the 70 faces of Torah, evoking a gemstone. Archetypes is a bit drier but more precise.

Manifestations/Avatars/Incarnations - these are all more fantastic, perhaps more appropriate to a fantasy setting, and accurate descriptions of how I imagine they function. Except for the connotations of the word (the movie, the cartoon, Hinduism) I think I prefer Avatars, but given the reality of pop culture, Incarnations might be the better choice.

Sephirot - a better option than Midot perhaps, in that it sounds better, seems a bit more accurate, and conjures more interesting images, it also suffers from being in Hebrew.

More after the jump.

Rewriting Radiance - The floods raise up a roar

Few major changes this week than in the past, but in the 'villain' scene at the end of Tiferet/Splendour (you can read the original here) I wanted to add some clarity to Ashmedai's objectives, and make him a little more understandable, so that his actions in the final scene make a little more sense.

Originally, he merely says the following:

    “Where is my payment?” demanded Ashmedai as Samael stepped away from the captives and walked back down the tunnel towards him. Ashmedai took on the angel’s face as he spoke, twisting the features of fire and stone into the shadows that surrounded him.

But this didn't seem expressive enough of the King of Demons' desire for the sensations of the flesh. The updated version is after the jump:

Rewriting Radiance - The Lower Temple

Welcome to another behind the scenes look at Rewriting Radiance, in which I show you some of the thought processes going into revising my kabbalistic fantasy novel.

I love the scene from the fifth section of Radiance, Tiferet/Adornment, in which Asher and Virgo descend to the Lower Temple, the synagogue of the demons, but I felt that it wasn't quite living up to its potential. While I loved showing how frum (religiously scrupulous) Jewish demons are portrayed, the setting just wasn't rich enough.

Cont. after the jump

Rewriting Radiance - The ancient mountains

Another addition to Radiance, this time in the second part, Yesod/Foundation, in between chapters 8 and 9, after Asher has met the Seven and before his encounter with the dybbuk.

My original intent had been to cut out as much of Asher's training as possible to get to the 'super-powered' part as quickly as I could but I found that it was both too fast and ended up giving the supporting cast too little air-time. Without some opportunity to get to know them, it seems that the readers have little reason to worry about the fate of each member of the Seven. This is my attempt at filling both those gaps.

But have I done enough?

I could easily imagining stretching some of these encounters into longer ones, or having Asher meet angels and take part in an exorcism. Would these be good additions or is this enough as is?

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

    As Asher watched the sun dip in the sky, he found himself astonished that he was not as terrible at Hebrew grammar as he had always supposed. Two months in, he was really getting the hang of it, conjugating verbs like a master (or so he thought), beginning to read full sentences and complex ideas. The pattern of it seemed to make sense to him - there was a kind of music about it that made it stick somewhere deep inside in a nonsense poem of verb formation. I killed, you killed, you (f.) killed, he killed, she killed… Everybody killed.
    But in the growing frenzy of preparations for the oncoming shabbat, he couldn’t help but hope for some more peaceful verbs to work with.
    In the kitchen, Ostar surged around the counters, mixing ingredients together furiously to prepare the meal before the sun set and all preparations had to be complete. Even without his gleaming armour, the manifestation of Netzach, Divine Victory, was an impressive sight a bulking figure that seemed to fill the entire small urban kitchen, smiling and laughing out loud at his own near-unending jokes, even as the sweat started to gather on his brow. Mercury, the embodiment of Hod, Divine Splendour, and, as Asher had learned only a month prior, Ostar’s wife, was slicing carrots while drilling him on his verb forms, her long dark hair tied neatly behind her head..
    “What was that?” she said, never looking up from the silver blade that effortlessly divided the vegetables.

Rewriting Radiance - Tiferet Edition

Complete links to the first draft of Radiance (my kabbalistic fantasy novel) can be found here.

Progress on rewriting Radiance continues, albeit rather slower than I would like as real life complications, such as expecting our first child in the next 8 weeks, get in the way. But I wanted to share some revisions from the fifth section of the novel, entitled Tiferet/Adornment.

In the first chapter, entitled Good to Give Thanks to the Lord, Emma Grunfeld, Asher's mother, journey's through the heavens to encounter the divine. In the early part of the chapter I described roads of fire and ice, concluding:

"Emma’s mind was full of ice and flames. But she had to keep moving.
    A wall rose up before her eyes, a wall of sapphire stones, refracting the light into a million shards of green and blue. "

But I realised that this was a very abrupt transition from the heat and cold to the sapphire stones. I also decided that I wanted more phrases that were redolent of biblical and rabbinic texts. Combining both of these issues, I came up with the following solution:

"Emma’s mind was full of ice and flames. But she had to keep moving.
    And then the heat and cold was no more, like streams that overflow with thawing ice whose water vanishes in the dry season.
    A wall rose up before her eyes, a wall of something like the appearance of sapphire stones, refracting the light into a million shards of green and blue."

Continued after the jump...

Rewriting Radiance - I have taken off my robe

In the process of rewriting Radiance, I realised that I needed some extra chapters in the early part of the book, to fill in more of the back stories of the characters. This is the new chapter 4, that comes after we meet Asher and Virgo but before they meet each other. I love this chapter and hope you do too.

    Asher pulled the coat closer around him, feeling the light fall of rain begin to seep through to his skin despite his best efforts, and the large umbrella being held over him by Uncle Melvin (not really one of his uncles at all, but an old family friend). After seven years in America, he had almost forgotten how much he hated English summers.
    Drum beat rain beat down on the hollow pine as the coffin was lowered gently into the black earth. It was quite unreal.
    Someone nearby burst into tears and had to be gently consoled - it would not do to have to great a display of emotion. His mother seemed to tut in disapproval under her breath, her face an empty mask as cold as the wind roaring over the hilltop cemetery, and whistling between the low forest of tombstones and memorials.
    No, ‘Emma Grunfeld does not cry’, he heard her mother’s austere voice saying in his mind. And neither did he.
    Someone handed him a shovel.

Jewish Eyes On The Arts Salon - Reading Radiance2

Jewish Eyes On The Arts Salon - Reading Radiance

Want to watch me talk about Radiance and read some of a new chapter? Check it out - thanks to Jewish Eyes on the Arts - www.oholiav.com

Rewriting Radiance - Yesod/Foundation

    "They sat below Grand Central, in seats arranged to resemble a train carriage, passing through every major destination at once. This was the gate to everywhere."




Welcome to the 2nd installment of Rewriting Radiance, in which I delve deeper into my editing thoughts and processes. For this installment we're going to take a look at chapter 6, the first part of Yesod/Foundation, in which Virgo and Asher chat in Grand Central.

My most frequent comment, as I explained in part 1 of Rewriting, is to add more detail and depth. My style tends towards being overly terse and I often feel that passages need to be extended. Originals will be in italics major changes in bold.

See what I changed to these opening lines after the jump:

Rewriting Radiance - chapter 1

    "Asher had been sitting in the bath for the better part of two hours when the knock came. The water had long since become tepid, his skin wrinkled as too much liquid passed the boundary of his skin. He watched the tap drip, slowly adding more and more water to the tub.
    The knock came again."

In what I hope will be a series of blog posts, I wanted to show you a look at my rewriting process that I'm currently going through with Radiance, by taking sections from the novel as posted online and showing you my thoughts and then final changes.

We begin with the first chapter, in which our hero is sitting in the bath.

My main comment on this (and indeed on much of my writing)? More! Show more, take a bit longer, flesh it out.

The new version is after the jump (major changes in bold):

The Complete Radiance - All links here!

In this one post you will find all the links to the first draft of my Kabbalistic Fantasy novel, Radiance:

The Complete Ebook
Coming soon!

Malchut/Kingship
1 - I slept but my heart was awake
2 - My beloved is knocking
3 - My head is drenched with dew
4 - I opened for my beloved
5 - They smote me, they wounded me

Radiance - Reflections, Plans and Revisions

Writing Radiance
Almost exactly a year ago, I first put finger to keyboard to begin to write my Kabbalistic Fantasy novel, Radiance. 35 chapters and 50,000 words later, the first draft of Radiance stands complete.

Originally inspired by my Yom Kippur resolution to be more creative, and my discovery of National Novel Writing Month (NoNoWriMo - which I slightly overshot...) it's been quite a journey, and one I've really enjoyed.

Having said that, I've had the basic story of Radiance floating around my head for about five years now, so it's rather strange that it now also exists in fully-formed words, that others have also read. It always feels good once an idea has moved from brain to paper, and yet it feels a little empty too - much of the creative work has been done, leaving the editing, the rewriting, the revising.

Radiance 35 - Epilogue - Ein Sof/Without End

     Dan Black stood in his Manhattan-sized kitchen, and for the third time that evening, waited for the kettle to boil.
    ‘A watched pot never boils’, his mother would have said, but he didn’t like to leave the kitchen when the gas was on, not with Jonny wandering around and playing with everything he could get his fingers on.
    And if he was being honest, some of his guests in the living room were a little… unsettling.
    After that Saturday afternoon, he hadn’t expected Asher to show up again, not really. Five years without much of a word had felt like an eternity, even with the all-present Facebook keeping them in touch.
    But then a text message from nowhere - ‘can we meet up? I’ll buy us some beers -Ash.’
    And so they had met in a bar downtown, and, a little cautiously, renewed their friendship.
    There had been something different about Asher in that meeting, and not just the missing hand that Dan hadn’t dared ask about - something deep and dark, lurking beneath his eyes, a greater seriousness than he had ever seen before.
    “The daughter became the mother,” was all Asher would say about it, and laughed a little hollowly.
    Not that Dan himself had been fully present in the conversation. Since the day of the ‘earthquake’, nothing had been quite right in his mind. He could have sworn that he remembered witnessing a sanity-defying serpent rise up from the Hudson, serrated teeth like swords, black poisonous spines, mile-long coils spreading and wrapping themselves around the city, people screaming and dying as the world crumbled around them.
    But no one said a word about it - no one seemed to remember but him, and then only in the dark of night, when nightmares would find their way into his dreams.
    No, Dan hadn’t been himself for a while.

Radiance 34 - I will be who I will be

This is the final section of Radiance, Keter/Crown, and is composed of just this one chapter. That  means that next week's epilogue, Ein Sof/Without End, will bring this project to a close. In just seven days I'll post links to the entire book, my thoughts about future revisions, and where this blog will go next. Thanks for following along.

From http://hashemartworks.net

13] Moses said to God, ‘Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you,” and they ask me, “What is His name?” Then what shall I tell them?’
14] God said to Moses, ‘I Will Be Who I Will Be. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: “I Will Be has sent me to you.”’
15] God also said to Moses, ‘Say to the Israelites, “The Lord, the God of your fathers – the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob – has sent me to you.” This is my name for ever - my memorial from generation to generation.’
-Exodus 3:13-15

    The word of the Lord came to Asher son of Eliav when he dwelt in the city of New York, saying:

    I have waited for you my people, I have waited years without measure;
    And still you stir up My anger against you.
    Why do you sit in silence when My world cries out for justice?
    When My people suffer under the yoke of oppression, why were your words not heard?

    In the holy city of Jerusalem, my chosen warriors stood up for you,
        Declares the Lord of Hosts.
    The remainder of the seven mighty ones took their stand in the city of David.
    On the mountain of Zion they contended for My honour,
    On the hills of My city they fought for My name.
    Though the pangs of death lapped against them, like waves against the shore,
    The faithful showed neither fear nor terror,
    And planted themselves like the cedar tree, a shelter in the strong wind.

    There the Sword met the sorceress, the sword that cuts struck the ancient witch.
    She saw her lot in the throw of the bones, her coming future in their carvings,
    And yet the mind is swifter than the spirit, the blade faster than the soul.
    The black cloth was cleansed by blood, washed clean through the death of the wicked one.
    And the Sword herself knew peace
    But only for a moment.
   

Radiance 33 - The foundations of the earth

    New York city lay wounded and bleeding, smoke rising from a hundred places, a tearful wailing filling the air.
    “We did it,” shouted Mercury, “we won!”
    “In a way,” said Virgo, closing her strained eyes and sitting heavily on the cracked tarmac.
    “And at what price?” asked Li, looking at the stump of Asher’s arm.
    Strangely, Asher felt no pain at all from where his hand used to be - it was as if he had simply been born without it. It was an unsettling sensation. The world began to swim and blur around him - was this victory?
    “Here,” said Mercury, “sit down, we all need some rest.” She gently brought Asher to the floor and put an arm round his shoulders. “We’ll be okay,” she said, as if trying to convince herself, “we won.”
    Asher looked around. A coldness had seeped into his heart, a heavy emptiness. They had saved the world, hadn’t they? The Leviathan was rebound beneath the earth, once again waiting for the end of days, and yet…

Radiance 32 - He gave the sea its boundary

    “What’s the plan?” Li asked, flexing every muscle in her hand, sending tiny flames into the air.
    The Leviathan roared and lashed its tail - the ground shook violently, sending lampposts and traffic lights crashing to the asphalt. The last three of the Seven barely kept their feet.
    “The Leviathan can’t be killed,” said Virgo, as she tossed the Staff of Moses from hand to hand, “the best we can hope is to contain it.”
    “The Palace has restored much of my energy, but even with a full Seven I don’t know if we would have the strength,” said Li with a frown.
    “There isn’t any choice,” said Asher. The mere presence of the Leviathan was playing havoc with his restored powers, the creature seemed to transcend all boundaries, overrun all borders. “Virgo, it’s up to you to weave the verses together to send this creature back to the pit, Li and I will keep it busy, try to keep it from going too far.”
    Virgo looked at him quizzically for a moment, as if she didn’t quite recognise him, but swiftly nodded. “I have some verses in mind,” she said, “but I will need both of you to help. Perhaps the three of us in concert have enough power from the left side to contain the waters.”
    “We’ll do what we can,” Asher said, Li nodded her assent.
    Slamming her staff deep into the ground, anchoring herself in the crumbling cement, Virgo began to shout the words of scripture, sending them forth from her lips like arrows:
    “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in days of old, in the generations of old. Are you not he who cut Rahab in pieces and wounded the dragon?"
    This seemed to catch the attention of the Leviathan, as a titanic head snaked down towards Virgo, oily teeth gnashing and chomping. Li jumped into the air on a pillar of flames, raising a wall of fire and hurling it at their enemy.
    Asher felt the power deep within himself once more, the feeling of peace and oneness he had known his whole life, the feeling he had no come to call God. He touched this power and gave it a channel, reaching out into the surrounding city to find the edges, as Mercury had taught him so long ago. At the push of his mind, the divide between the molecules in the air strengthened and hardened, turning the air itself thick like mire. The Leviathan sluggishly crashed against the fire and recoiled, shaking its snake-like head.
    “Are you not he who dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; who made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?”
    It wasn’t exactly a victory, but they had slowed the creature’s assault, and forced it to take notice. Asher’s heart began to swell - they could really do this.
    The earth shook all around them, bricks fell from nearby buildings - Asher pushed them aside - but the tremor did not subside. Huge cracks appeared in the earth as the land tore itself to pieces. Two heads of the Leviathan, snaking at the end of mile long scaled necks, twisted away from the water and smashed into Manhattan. Turning to watch, Asher saw a tail, or a tentacle, suddenly join the skyline, bursting out of the earth what must be several miles away. Screams reached his ears once more as the reach of the Leviathan spread across the city.
    “We have a problem,” muttered Li.