First things first the book cover shown on his website reminded me so much of The Power of Lard that I played it on repeat while I was reading. I enjoyed the story - the pacing and ideas were great as well as the horror theme. The story seems to reflect society/clan/nation and worship but I ignored the bigger perspective i favour of world/society building games instead but then quickly throughout the whole damn thing I couldn't shake the feeling of a parallel between god and author. Not being an author, but having met a few, I'm fascinated by an author's inability to precisely direct their characters behaviour and situations. Of course not all authors are created equal but I've met some who say they don't (or can't! ) control their characters because they have their own lives independent of the author. Obviously Kress initially thinks he can control the little darlings but it becomes quite clear how little control he wields. This quickly dominated my mind and got me considering the psychology of writers instead.
That's the wrong way to look at it. As an author I've absolutely depended on this because it shows that I have enough of an unconscious understanding of the character that my conscious manipulations of their environment create unexpected responses. Basically I have to understand the environment enough to be able to predict its outcomes and I have to understand the character enough to have a latent understanding of her responses. You're basically making your conscious and your unconscious minds interact and the outcome is fiction. You can make your characters do whatever you want but it rings hollow - you're basically projecting your life experience with others on this construct in your mind and your subconscious, which has better access to your corpus collosum, sometimes offers up a different result than your cerebral cortex. I'm sure that terminology is a gross oversimplification. However, the trickiest thing in writing is getting out of your own way and when your characters start to surprise you it's like that moment when your camp fire finally starts burning without you blowing on it. Shit. Maybe I oughtta write another book.Not being an author, but having met a few, I'm fascinated by an author's inability to precisely direct their characters behaviour and situations.
That’s an interesting take on it. There’s definitely a creator/control theme there, but how people manifest that seems to vary. I myself couldn’t help but see a god/race theme there particularly with the colors of the mobiles. I also thoroughly enjoyed how the story was paced. I haven’t really read any GRRM before but I’ll have to look into more o his short stories—if he’s done any.