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Making The Story Live

quill, ink and parchment scrollSo what about story motifs, or themes? Yes, I know I’ve already stated the style of this series may be called Steampunk/Fantasy, even perhaps science fiction. But that really says very little, doesn’t it? I think so. Behind all the characters and the contrivances of the genre, there must be more to the story. If there isn’t, then the story will have no direction, no meaning. It would sit there like some CGI film that’s really all special effects, and no real story. I’ve seen enough of those kinds of films to want more than that! So when I began my story—that would be the first book in the series, “After Earth: Journey To The Black City”, I decided to deal with a variety of subjects present in our universe, and express them in my ‘alternate earth fantasy.’ There are several of these themes, and I’ll be writing about them individually.

An aspect of our world I find most disturbing is the idea that women are somehow inferior to men—that they’re mentally, and emotionally not the equal of men. Much of this thinking, I feel, comes from what I might call ‘ancestral memory.’ In many cultures over the long span of human existence, this concept has developed simply because men are physically stronger. For the most part, though there have been exceptions, men were generally the warriors, and therefore the warlords…and therefore the kings. A pretty slick deal for the men. Once this concept was established, it was very easy for those men to write ‘sacred books’ claiming them to be ‘the direct word’ of some God or other that made the male of the species superior.

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