Greetings from the Picklesverse!
It’s April 13th, which means the Ides are upon us once again, and it’s time for my monthly message. Here’s what I’ve got for you today:
🌹 What to name the series
🧜♀️ Signs and portents
🌏 A trip to Kyoto
Let’s get stuck in!
🌹 Naming the series
I’m sure you can think of loads of series names for books. Some of them reference the setting (e.g. The Expanse, Discworld, Silo), some of them use the name of the first book in the series (e.g. Rivers of London), or of the main character (e.g. Easy Rawlins mysteries). Before Time Hack comes out, I’ll need to decide on my series name.As an AI, Ben was keen to help with this. He offered to generate some options, but he only managed to come up with two ideas…
Here’s Ben’s top recommendation: Time Hack (Ben and Charlotte’s Amazing Adventures, Book 2)
While I appreciate Ben’s enthusiasm, I suspect this is his well-meaning attempt to guarantee plot-immunity for himself and for Charlotte in perpetuity. As the author, I can’t allow myself to be manipulated in this way by my own characters.
Being manipulated by my readers is much more palatable. As a result, I wanted to ask for your opinion. I’ve drafted six potential series names and put them into a one-question survey. To have your say, click the button and tick the one(s) you like best. I’ll close the survey on May 1st and I’ll share the results in next month’s email.
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P.S. You’re welcome to add your own suggestions in the “other” field. But please note that Ben’s other suggestion was Series McSeriesFace, and I’m fairly sure that’s already taken.
P.P.S. FYI, I’ve put the options in alphabetical order to make sure any preferences I might have are obscured (in the name of science!).
P.P.P.S. Bonus puzzle! Do you know why I chose the rose emoji for this section of the email? If you can name the two literary references I had in mind, drop me an email. If you’re right, Ben will award you a Level 1 digital badge in “Literary Botanical References,” which can be shared on your LinkedIn profile (to impress the Abhishek Gautams of the world.) Don’t say Ben never gives you anything nice. 🌹
🧜♀️ Signs and portents
Sadly for all the Babylon 5 fans out there, this section isn’t about season one, episode thirteen, which is entitled Signs and Portents. (I got your attention, though, didn’t I?)
In fact, I’d like to talk about the sign that marks the entrance to the pre-Melt town of Mablethorpe. I was recently in Lincolnshire visiting my lovely parents, and we took a day trip to the noble town to which Mabel Thorpe from Artificial Selection owes her name. I had no idea its sign would be quite so opulent. I’ll describe it for you… It’s an old-fashioned metal sign which reads “Mablethorpe” across the top in capital letters. Under that, there’s a circle containing a topless mermaid. She’s waving at us while riding a dolphin. Yes… I did say “a mermaid riding a dolphin” and before you ask, the answer is “side-saddle”. (No, I don’t know how she doesn’t slip off.)
It gets even better because the circle containing the dolphin-riding mermaid is framed on either side by a determined-looking seahorse entwined with a large fish whose tongue is sticking out. Looking on from below the scene is our old friend the seagull, perched on a fence overlooking the sea. (All that’s missing to make it a truly life-like rendering is a beakful of chips.)
I had to know who was responsible for this whimsical composition, and I learned that the sign was created by a designer called Maria Vincent in 1996. The article I found doesn’t specify whether the mermaid is called Mabel (but it does explain why her nipples are missing).
Needless to say, I’d recommend a trip to Mablethorpe if you have the opportunity. The beach is lovely, and the sign alone should be evidence enough that it’s worth a visit.
🌏 A trip to Kyoto
While I made it to Lincolnshire, I sadly haven’t been all the way to Japan. However, I did recently have the pleasure of seeing the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Kyoto at Soho Place Theatre in London. I heard about the play because the actor who plays Angela Merkel is the wonderful Kristin Atherton, who narrated the audiobook of Artificial Selection. I wanted to support her, and it was a happy coincidence that the play’s subject matter was close to my heart. I expected it to be good, but I wasn’t prepared to be so completely blown away by every aspect of the production!
The play is about the ten-year process of negotiations leading up to the signing of the Kyoto Protocol by all members of the United Nations in 1997. That might sound unbearably dry, but the play had me on the edge of my seat from beginning to end. The main character is Don Pearlman, a lawyer hired by shadowy oil industry types to disrupt the negotiations. The writers did an excellent job of putting across the perspectives of the various parties involved. It would be easy to tell the story in binary terms, but they painted a more complex and interesting picture than that. The audience heard the concerns of the many island nations fearful of losing their homes to rising sea levels, but we also heard from Saudi Arabia, whose economy at that time depended almost entirely on oil. Even Don was portrayed as multi-faceted and human, despite being a major antagonistic force throughout the play. It was beautifully done.
The power of language was another interesting theme. There was a scene dedicated to the negotiation over precisely which modal verb should be used in a particular sentence of the agreement: “Sea level rise will / would / could threaten survival.” In another scene, twenty-eight different adjectives were proposed before the member states found one they could all agree on: “the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate.” That might all sound deeply bureaucratic, but weakening the language was a key objective for Don, illustrating the power that words can wield. The level of disagreement also helped underline how big a deal it was when the world agreed to acknowledge that human action really is changing our climate.
Aside from being great entertainment, Kyoto was a fantastic example of a story seeking to bridge divides. Online discussions about global warming have become quite polarised (like online discussions of most subjects these days?). But the only way we’ll find solutions to the world’s biggest challenges is by working together. And that involves listening to each other, and being able to tolerate, and even empathise with differing viewpoints, perhaps especially when we fundamentally disagree with them.
As I mentioned in my Instagram post about this, there was one line which I felt summed up the whole play:
“There is always something we share.”
If that’s true, then maybe there’s hope that we can set aside our differences to safeguard our future. (My cynical side wants to insert the words “an unfathomably tiny shred of” before “hope” in that last sentence, but I’m relegating that thought to this parenthetical aside to avoid letting those words wield too much power.)
On that rather philosophical note, that’s all from me this month.
I hope all’s well in your own personal universes.
Walk in the sun,
Marianne
