Gah! I just realized that Planting Life in a Dying City will be out this weekend!
Time snuck up on me.
Still feels weird. Planting Life has been an obsession of mine for about 5 years now, and it's done, and now I'm about to share it with the world, and even more than most of my stories I REALLY hope people like it because I put so much of myself into it.
Given that it's almost release day for Planting Life, I'm gonna give myself permission to geek out a bit.
The world that became Planting Life started as an exercise in world building. I had an idea for a magic system (which you see basically none of in Planting Life, but it will show up more in the sequel) of light-based magic. And I wanted to build a world for it.
Of course, that meant I had to build *cultures* for my world and that's when things went completely off the rails.
Planting Life is actually set in the THIRD culture I built for this world. The other two cultures are set fairly close to each other and I had tentative plans for a book that included both of them, but it never quiet gelled.
HOWEVER, in building those cultures it occurred to me that this was my chance to REALLY play around with society and gender roles and shit. So those first two cultures have radically different approaches to gender and family.
When I started working on the Planting Life culture, I was honestly a little tired of thinking about gender. So I decided to do away with it entirely.
Which led to wondering how families would work in a society without gender, which led to thoughts about how inheritance and shit would work in such a world... and eventually I ended up with the delightful weirdness that is the culture of Planting Life.
Along with the culture came the language. You wouldn't think it to read the story, but I actually built a full and complete conlang for Planting Life.
Literally the only way it shows up in the story is the characters' names. I found I just didn't see a need for the conlang in story beyond that. But I'm still glad I put the work in because I learned a lot about the cultural ideas and world views in building the it.
One of the big ideas that came out of it, which became central to the story and an inspiration for the title is that idea that change=good, lack of change/stagnation=bad.
Lefeng looked down. “I never had much current. I flowed with my family because it was the life I was born into, and I was good at it. I miss the mountains. There is beauty to them. But I think sometimes I never really cared about anything until I met Chestef. And then… It was less than I cared about em and more that caring for em gave me a reason to not run back to the mountains and let them take me.”
That was not the guarding-one, long-stride, watchful-one Kolchais knew. Not the strong-one who killed a great cat to defend eir family and carried it across the mountains in memory.
“And now?” Kolchais asked.
“I am lost.” The words were so soft they were nearly lost too, even on such a quiet night. “No current of my own and none to follow. I think if I were alone, I would stop where I am. But I can’t do that because you and the others depend on me.”
Hesitantly, Kolchais reached out and put a hand on Lefeng’s shoulder. “I think you mistake yourself. You can create great current when you choose, but what moves you is the people you care for. As long as they are well, you are content and let yourself be carried in the current of others. But when they are in need, you are the riptide, sweeping all from your path.”
Lefeng was silent for a time. “How do you see in me what I don’t see in myself?”
Kolchais laughed. “Well, my spouse-to-be, you are the one who says I am wise about people. Maybe you are right.”
One thing that I don't think came up in any of the hashtag games but I always wanted to talk about is Kyawtchais and eir family.
Kyatchais and eir family are almost all #autistic. It's a large family (around 30 people across 4 generations) and they are known as the Silent Spinners for how many of them don't/prefer not to/can't talk verbally. Several generations ago the family invented their own sign language, which has started to spread out into the wider society.
I put a fair bit of thought into what kind of family culture might develop in such a family over the generations. Kyatchais is mostly (not entirely) modeled off of my own experiences of autism, but I tried to show other ways autism can impact people in the glimpses we get of Kyawtchais' family.
I had an essay bout how families work in Planting Life that I'd love to share here, but it got lost in remodeling my website. One of these days I'll dig it out of my archives and get it up again...
In the mean time, if any of this caught your interest, feel free to ask me questions, or you, know, go buy the book on preorder!
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FPP3C99B
Other retailers: https://books2read.com/u/3JOR5E
