Hey! Do you feel days are shorter as you get older?
A common sentiment among those more advanced in age is the continual acceleration of the passage of time.
I’ve heard it explained as each divisible unit becoming a smaller and smaller fraction of our overall lived experience.
Mathematically, summer break was a much more significant portion of our lives when we were children.
Rhean Review
I bring all this up because it’s relevant to the first public review of Rhean. Kimberly is one of the few people to have read through both my stories. She enjoys multiple genres and has been a long-time supporter of my—let’s call it eccentricities.
I mention all that to say she understands who I am as an author and how my words weave into peculiar patterns. That also means I was very much looking forward to seeing what she would say about Rhean.
Now, I’m no stranger to harsh critiques and mismatched tastes. I have endured more than my fair share of pointed complaints disguised as “constructive criticism.”
But as someone who thrives in self-expression, I’m also an overly sensitive soul.
I knew something was off when Kimberly was strangely silent after the release of Rhean. My thoughts soon drifted into darker realms. I began to accept her silence as an unstated gesture of politeness.
I easily believed she disliked my story and would rather not stain the image of a new book.
Luckily, that understandable outcome only existed in my head. Kimberly sent me a message after a few days, and I can only assume she must have felt a similar stiffness in the air between the wires.
She wanted to first share her thoughts with me privately, letting me know how she indeed struggled for a short while to feel invested in Rhean.
More than her hesitation, she wanted to let me know how she found the right mood and developed a new perspective that made her truly enjoy every aspect of the story.
While I definitely intended for Rhean to follow a more traditional structure, I would never betray the integrity of a character. I can see how that builds into an uncompromising paradox.
I suppose that comes out in what can be felt as a slower start.
But as Kimberly will attest, it would be difficult to capture the emotions of Rhean Eyadu without first forcing us to think beyond mortal limits.
Thematic Pacing
To be clear, the revelation that helped Kimberly really become invested into Rhean was gaining perspective on who my heroine was.
As a demigoddess, Rhean Eyadu is not human.
That may look like an obvious, simple statement, but it’s important to keep in mind. Her detachment from humanity should make her inherently difficult to connect with as a character.
While she does indeed share many of our emotions, there is a specific aspect of her long life that is impossible for us to really ever empathize with:
Immortality.
The longest stretches of our short lives from birth to death are nothing more than another wilting flower to Rhean—no matter the color.
We are insignificantly impactful to her.
Even if our self-determined greatest achievements were lost to history, she knows a new tribe would eventually rise.
The ego in our hearts and minds will refuse such a dismissal. I think shifting the context can, however, help build up the specific understanding I was hoping to shape.
If an ant were to attempt to convince us to join their army as they raided their neighbors, we humans would laugh.
Perhaps some would play along out of boredom.
Perhaps some would see them as a pest and get rid of both colonies.
More than likely though, we would just ignore the voice we couldn’t even really understand.
So if we are mere ants to a divine being, why would Rhean ever do anything for a human?
There would need to be an exceedingly good reason for her to act at all.
I’ll be honest with you, I struggled with this bit of motivation. I did not want the character to just up and start adventuring because the pace of the book demanded so.
No.
I wanted Rhean to be stubborn and foreign in ways unlike most of us have ever really known.
That can be off-putting, but I cannot imagine how a demigoddess would be anything less.
Forest Trees
In our real world Earth, it can be hard to find a comparable gap in empathy between long lived life. While some tortoises may be old, they are not beyond what humans feel like we can understand.
Minerals and rocks have existed since Earth began to cool, but we don’t usually associate any lived emotions with inanimate objects.
In my wondering, I then came to think of trees. The great redwoods lived for thousands of years. Some other species stretch the meaning of life to five thousand or more.
We may still be far off from the great number Rhean has lived, but it does provide an existing perspective.
How something has continued to grow as human civilization both rose and fell around it. Those old trees never feel the need to intervene in our conquest or questions.
So, I believe another way to gain the insight Kimberly needed is to ask yourself what we would need to say to the oldest trees on Earth—what could we possibly say that would convince them to join our cause?
A Call To Arms
I mentioned a few weeks ago that I wanted to try something new—a writing contest that dives deep into the heart of what makes us human.
I came up with the name Sidereal Times and I think I’ll stick with that. I’m not sure of the exact shape it will take, but I have seen that I can make “sub-newsletters” here on Substack and will probably use that as the publication method.
I have no prize to offer, but I can flood a good hundred people’s inboxes. For those who have struggled to hear even an echo as they scream into the void, that may be enough motivation to submit your writing.
The theme is simple: Battles.
Interpret that as you wish.
Explore the skirmishes within, the wars waged against time, the clashes of willpower, or the grand conflicts of your wildest imagination. All of our battles. Be they epic confrontations, quiet struggles, or cosmic duels, I want to read about them.
I can justify this petty pretext for self-promotion by saying this contest is about finding solace in the knowledge that we all fight our own battles. I want to create a space where these stories can shine, where your words can touch others and resonate.
A rallying cry with no specific goal in mind.
Keep it to about a page and use any format you want. Send it to me however you see fit and we’ll go from there.
I’ll probably be making a separate section of Nightly Noise to cover more of the details in the days and weeks to come.
Until then, keep fighting the good fight.
JMB