Ella Drake - A Space Western World

Please welcome my guest, Ella Drake!

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A Space Western world


When I started to write Silver Bound, a space western releasing Nov 22nd from Carina Press, the elements of world-building excited me. What’s not to love about creating a world for a book with the tagline: “A dangerous journey across the galaxy”? During the course of the story, we visit five shuttle craft, two planets, two space stations, and two large spacecraft. Yet, the hero is Guy, a sheriff from a small town on a technologically limited planet. To create that space western feel, I created a world for Guy to make him the quintessential cowboy in a white hat. Only, he doesn’t wear a hat and he can fly a shuttle craft. And, his hat wouldn’t really be white-white. He has his flaws.

But as I worked through the science elements--including a slave collar which used implanted nanobots to control the slave, how a memory wipe might work and how it might look visually on a medical screen, stuff like that--the home world had a more historical feel juxtaposed against the futuristic. A seemingly small addition to his character, a lasso, became an intriguing element. Guy knows how to use his lasso, which is a crucial part of who he is and what he might do in the story. He’s a rancher. To add flavor, to show his skill at his job, it makes sense that he might take down a cow or a calf with his lasso. Maybe take down a criminal. But since I have never used a lasso, didn’t know what it was like to throw one, I did some research.

It turns out, roping cattle is a controversial practice. Thought it’s rare, it can cause neck and other injuries in the roped animal. A scene that I’d originally intended to be Guy roping a calf to inoculate it, turned into a scene of chase with his robot dog. He couldn’t hurt the robot by catching it with his lasso, but he still has the expert skills of using the lasso. But was this enough? If concerns over safety of roping cattle, or even a human, is contested, couldn’t a futuristic story find a solution? In this case, I decided to give Guy a lasso made of special material that wouldn’t constrict too tightly.

Within this same scene, striking a balance between the anachronistic and futuristic led me to considering the scene: how to set up the ranch. What kind of robot dog would a rancher/sheriff want or need? And, how does my research balance with the need to create a scene, get the reader into the hero’s head and world, and set the stage as a future set story? Just because my research led me down a path about lassos and rodeos, does the reader need that information?

This is what I came up with, the introduction of our hero:

The rope left his fingers and flew with precision to its target. With a practiced yank, Guy tightened the lasso around his robo-shepherd’s legs. Max tumbled to the dry ground with a woof.

Guy strode forward to stroke Max’s soft, synthetically furred head and removed the lasso. “Good boy. You put up a good chase this time, but I took you down.”

The mottled-brown Max appeared to grin, tongue slurping along the cuts on his hands—the dog’s saliva carried first-aid anesthetic. Its tail thumped on the ground and sent dust flying in a cloud. Guy chuckled and signaled to Max with a wave and a low-key whistle. The knee-height robo-dog took off, leaving a rolling wave of air-thrown dirt in its wake as it circled Trident Ranch’s smallest corral.

And there we are. A balance of today and tomorrow. After hours of researching lassos, holding rope, feeling its texture, tying knots, and generally spending more time with the concept of roping than figuring out what powered the spacecraft in the story, I’m reduced to the few lines above. I think it was worth it.

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Thanks, Ella, for sharing some of your process!

Steampunk Research Books

I've begun basic research on the history of the American West for a western steampunk novel. My book isn't going to be a historical, but I want it to be informed by history and in dialogue with history.

I chose Frontiers: A Short History of the American West as my basic overview book.

The Encyclopedia of North American Indians: Native American History, Culture, and Life From Paleo-Indians to the Present was recommended by Debbie Reese at her blog, American Indians in Children's Literature.

Peoples of Color in the American West is a textbook and has a lot of material that's more modern than I need, but I think it will be a good guide to further resources.

I chose The Comanche Empire partly just because I wanted to read it!

Check out its awesome reviews. "In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, at the high tide of imperial struggles in North America, an indigenous empire rose to dominate the fiercely contested lands of the American Southwest, the southern Great Plains, and northern Mexico. This powerful empire, built by the Comanche Indians, eclipsed its various European rivals in military prowess, political prestige, economic power, commercial reach, and cultural influence. Yet, until now, the Comanche empire has gone unrecognized in historical accounts." So far, this book is just as incredibly cool as it sounds.

If you've got any more book suggestions for me, please comment!

Steampunk Worldbuilding Questions

I'm in the early stages of creating a world in which a steampunk Western can take place. Here are some of the questions I'm asking myself. Some of them I answered promptly; some of them I'm still pondering.

1. Alternate history or alternate world fantasy? How close will my world be to the "real" world? Is geography the same as in the real world?

2. Overall mood: is it utopic, dystopic, or somewhere in between? How is the world organized politically?

3. Technology, magic, technology that might as well be magic, or some other variant?

4. How are women and people of color positioned? What plot opportunities does that create?

5. What are the boundaries of technology? What can be done? What can't be done, and why? What plot opportunities does that create?

Pondering the Mail-Order Bride

I had another thought about Western romances.

Does the reason the "mail-order bride" plot is so popular in Western romances have anything to do with the idea that marriage is linked to civilization? In that case, marriage could be civilization, and imposing it upon two people can be likened to imposing a farm onto a wilderness, or law upon a den of outlaws.

True, the mail-order bride isn't usually forced legally to marry, but she often takes that action under force of circumstances. Circumstances, interestingly, that usually arise in the East, supposedly a place of "civilization."

Is there a subtle commentary going on here, that the "civilized" world isn't, and that the new, improved civilization is the looser, freer world of the frontier? A commentary also, perhaps, on the European historical, particularly the rigid Regency or Victorian, versus the "new" world of America?

I am probably reading way too much into this.

Related post:
The Intricacies of Marriages of Convenience.

Basics of the Western

So, Westerns. What are the basic elements of a Western? There are the two plots: 1) a stranger comes to town and 2) someone leaves town, heading for a new place. A subsidiary plot involves surviving in the wilderness, whether that's physical (making a go of a farm or ranch) or emotional (surviving in a corrupt town) - both come under the category of Civilization versus Wilderness. And, usually, there's some kind of moral conflict going on, whether it's personal (fighting an enemy) or social (fighting outlaws).

There are also, often, a lot of issues relating to representation of Native Americans in many Western romances. I've been looking for some critical sources about this issue, so if you know of some, please let me know!

In romance novels, the major conflict must always be the relationship. So in a Western romance, the basic conflicts are usually represented on a personal level. I think that's why there are so very many Western romances involving an Eastern woman (stranger) traveling to a Western town, where she is often a civilizing influence on a wilderness man, who might be rough-mannered, or an outlaw, or even a civilizing influence on the wilderness himself.

Various elements of the Western genre work really well with the structure of a romance novel. Westerns provide a setting and a framework for stories; romances provide a plot structure. The two mesh easily together, like romances with mystery/thrillers.

One thing I think might be specific to Western romances is that the setting can also be a character. Think of Western movies, and all those gorgeous shots of sunset-lit rock and flowing plains. Very often, the stranger character in a romance, usually the woman, falls in love with the landscape she's met as much as with the man. Often, the man himself is revealed to have a deep love of the landscape in which he lives.

I also find it interesting that Western romances take a genre that's heavily gendered as male (think of the Western movies you've seen) and bend the civilization aspect of the genre towards making a personal home rather than a law-abiding town; making a home is usually gendered female in our society. When the woman's goals come up against the man's in a romance, even if he's a rough and tough hero, usually she comes out the victor in the end, "taming" him, even if on the surface she remains the "little woman." Conventional as some western romances can be, they can also be subversive.

My Favorite Westerns - Books, Movies, Television

Wendy the Super Librarian and Kristie of Ramblings on Romance are posting about Westerns this week, so I thought I'd list a few of my favorites.

Song:

Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond Of Each Other, covered here by Willie Nelson. It doesn't get much better than that.

Novel:

The Jump-Off Creek, Molly Gloss. Unrelentingly realistic and beautifully written, to boot.

Honorable Mention to Ledoyt by Carol Emshwiller.

Television:

Deadwood, no contest.

Al Swearengen: Sometimes I wish we could just hit 'em over the head, rob 'em, and throw their bodies in the creek.
Cy Tolliver: But that would be wrong.

Romance:

Fall from Grace, Megan Chance.

Erotic Romance:

Roping the Wind by Kate Pearce is notable because it's about a modern cowboy, a rodeo star whose career has been ended by injury.



Caine's Reckoning by Sarah McCarty is more traditional. (It's from the line that publishes my books, Harlequin Spice.)

Movie:

The Magnificent Seven (yes, I know it's really The Seven Samurai).

Chris: There's a job for six men, watching over a village, south of the border.
O'Reilly: How big's the opposition?
Chris: Thirty guns.
O'Reilly: I admire your notion of fair odds, mister.

It's tied with High Noon.

Helen: What kind of woman are you? How can you leave him like this? Does the sound of guns frighten you that much?
Amy: I've heard guns. My father and my brother were killed by guns. They were on the right side but that didn't help them any when the shooting started. My brother was nineteen. I watched him die. That's when I became a Quaker. I don't care who's right or who's wrong. There's got to be some better way for people to live.

Dead Man gets a mention for being a very weird Johnny Depp movie.

TV Cowboy and Horse:

Roy Rogers and Trigger.

Related Posts:
Reading for the Writer.