I am always amazed by the fact that only the Australians seem to be able to tell realistic mermaid stories. Not ones where they eat people or bastardization of Hans Christian Anderson, but real gritty stories of people who deal with hybrid humans who swim in the deep.
I got this idea for mermaids and mermaid culture independant of H20: just add water because the concept is old. Starbucks does it. Splash did it. And of course Ariel. Bith the lore is filled with fish people who can’t function as a society. They sing men to death and lay on stones.
The other stories gave idea to vast underwater cultures but always the main character either was not integrated into the surface so the struggle was integration or hiding who they were with no one else there. I loved them. I use pieces and ideas from everywhere.
But it was H20 that really helped my idea gel. Seeing the swiming made me think about it and how it would work. Yet H20 being teen was fairly light and shied away for hard issues. If you notice most of my stories tend to ignore those too. They are always interpersonal. The scene from Heartbeat song that addresses the upcoming Taft attack remains unpublished because that story isn’t finished. In fact the darkest so far, is Homecoming Song’s attack on the Graverobber’s complex.
This is why I am so pleased with Tidelands. Its the opposite of Sirens and everything Sirens should have been. I am annoyed that I got keyed up about it only to be disapointed immediately with the dumb beast aspect. Sirens was basically Sharks who became people but still had basically were sharks. They had human bodies so they could ‘be’ people. But they didnt think like people. They thought like sharks. Cue sappy love and familial ties and you get their first season. No mer-society, just a buch of hokey legends around a sea species of Homo that go left behind 200000 years ago. They are working on it and the next season will be better.
Tidelands hits it out of the park. Produced by Hoodlum productions in association with Australian Netflix, it has the same feel as I try to give to my novels. Only theirs is much grittier, filled with broken people who do immoral things to make a living. The main character Callopie comes back from 10 yrs in prison for burning someone alive (and their house) to discover that the dad she loved is dead, her brother is now a drug dealer and her mother hates her so much that she took her part of the will and spent it on a bar.
So what does this have to do with mermaids? Well they supply the raw component, that the brother needs to make the drugs to sell the to Chinese Traid. Those mermaids are hybrid humans who possess superstrenght, the ability to bend water and siren song. They put out the eyes of anyone who they catch watching them and they live on the surface as a commune with no real leader but one middle aged blond woman who has a secret key to this one mansion they live around.
The story is about how the sister discovers who she is, who they are and how she fits into to all this. So why am I so excited? It fits exactly where I am going. The only difference between the tidelanders and Assembly warrior archetype: you cant see the gill slits on the tidelanders and they breath underwater with no trouble. Everything else matches.
My great houses are a little more structured than this but Tidelands is like watching my artistic vision come to life.
Which brings me to where I am on the stories.
- No christmas story this year. I didn’t have anytime and by the time I discovered the Nutcracker it was too late.
- I am writing ‘The widening breach’ with follows ‘Song of Route 91’ immediately. All the events that were laid out in Song of Route 91 are addressed here. You also get a view of exactly how they plan to move the society. Its not pretty. Neither is Gwen’s growth into the Queen. The revelation that Tom worked behind her back to safe Lorelei from death came to a head in that story. Its fallout is here. As is her brokeness.
- I decided that since I put Tom and Gwen into ‘Faking it’, that universe is apart of mine. So you see her fresh from Clement (which is in the heart of downtown Memphis) working on her singer career. If you have no clue what ‘Faking it’ is. Its a MTV show that got the short end of the stick, that deal with teen sexuality. Its really good. Also go read my story ‘We saw the dream’ after you watch the 31 30 minute episodes. Its my take on the finale and considering I folded their story into mine, its how I feel it flowed without breaking their canon.
- Once I finish ‘The Widening breach’ I should enough info to finish ‘Heartbeat song’. Once that is done, I will do Song of Revelation (i never seem to remember, what I will call the book. It will be song of ‘something’)
- With that I will essentially have 5 books of the series that can be read in order to get from late 2006 to sept 2009.
- I will do books dealing with 2012 and the end of dagon and the other mentioned things here.
- Finally, I decided that while Obama was president from 2009 to 2016 Mueller was killed in Vietnam
- I rolled Amazon series ‘the last tycoon’ into the chronology. I will explain that in another post. Its how Emmett starts collecting his empire. Also a detailed explanation of how is in the Widening breach. So in SOA there is no 20th century Fox. Its ‘Brady’ instead. And CBS is ACN. This is why I love Tidelanders. For every Emmett who owns one quarter of all media, there is a woman who sells ‘drugs’ to make money. Its all about how the surface in inferior to the assembly.
- Finally, On tumblr the adult nudity and sex purge continues. I am still unable to post stories there so I will continue to support them until they choose to shut down.
That’s everything. Have a merry Christmas and Happy 2019. The rollercoster will continue for those here in the US. But like it on not, for my novel world History ends april 12, 2019
