review

I’m really excited to have Shea guest posting today. I’m pretty sure I haven’t had the pleasure before. He’s here to promote his novel, Untitled, a futuristic murder mystery of sorts. You can read my review following his post.

Fiction Writing Lexicography

When sitting down to write a work of fiction, an author has a whole host of choices to make about the sort of language xe will use. I guess this is a bit of a truism, since everyone who’s ever written anything has had to choose xis words from among whatever vocabulary xe has at xis disposal, but fiction takes things a step further. Xe has to make decisions for a host of characters, all of whom are presumable not xer, while at the same time remaining faithful to xis personal convictions about what sort of language xe will or will not use. In short, a fiction author must take the existing language(s) in which xis book is written, then do a bunch of subtracting – and possibly a bit of adding – to come up with a unique lexicon for the project at hand.

As readers, we have all been conditioned to accept this practice without giving it much thought. When it comes to subtraction, we hardly notice when a skilled author leaves huge swaths of language out of a book; even words as common as “very,” “like,” “that,” and “kerfuffle.” Likewise, we tend to accept quite a bit in the way of new introductions to the lexicon. When William Gibson made up the word “cyberspace” for a story he wrote in the 80s, readers barely even batted an eye.[1] Swear words, in particular, have a longstanding history of being removed from the lexicon and replaced with such delightful nonsense terms as “frak,” “nerfherder,” and “gorram.” You can’t prove I’m a sci fi fan. Shut up. In recent years racial, ethnic, and other sorts of slur have also been tossed aside in favor of new, meaningless epithets, which have in turn become offensive in their own right. For the most part, nobody bats an eye at these things. Unless Dr. Seuss does them. He went a little overboard on the whole word inventing thing, and it turns out people noticed.

Once in a while, however, we are still surprised by an author’s lexicographical choices for xis story. This was the case for early readers of Untitled, who had to make an adjustment to an addition I made. It’s the same adjustment you’ve had to make in reading this piece: my use of a set of gender-neutral pronouns.[2] The book passed through the hands of about half a dozen beta readers, editors, and other critiques, not to mention four particularly dimwitted poodles, and each one had more or less the same remark: “It took me a little bit to get used to the xe[3] thing.” Only one questioned why I included it in my lexicon.[4] After all, I’d written other stuff set in the future, with a much more positive tone, and hadn’t felt the need to break in the X key on my typewriter. Why was it a part of this story? I think the answer to that question can only explained by drawing back the shower curtain of my world building process. B

When I set out to build the world of Untitled, I had this idea: What if there was a future where many proposed solutions for society’s ills had been implemented, yet those ills remained? With that as my guiding principle, I built my landscape. I provided universal housing, yet at least two of the characters are homeless.[5] I torpedoed the prison industrial complex and did away with recidivism, but hardened criminals remained in abundance. I even eliminated wars over ideology and, well, you’ll have to read it to see how that works out. So when it came to the issue of sexism, I made my world one of gender blindness, where characters even think in gender neutral terms. We don’t even escape the first chapter before the rampant sexism faced by the Main Character is exposed in all its glory. All the xes and xises in the world do nothing to prevent Felicity from bumping her head repeatedly on an exceedingly intact glass ceiling. The ideology of many people (myself among them) becomes the gilded veneer laid over a world which proves rotten to its core. Of course, being the sort of writer I am, the contrast between said veneer and core becomes the basis for most of the book’s humor, because in my mind every story is meant to be a comedy.

[1] It was Gibson’s debut novel a couple of years which eventually led to the term’s widespread use. His reputation as the “noir prophet” of cyberpunk may come in part from his predicting a word would be used, then being the one to fulfill the prediction. Some would suggest this constitutes cheating.

[2] Actually, you didn’t have to make the adjustment, but since you’ve chosen to read this far, I’m assuming you did so. Which works out really well, because now you can read my book without any adjustment period whatsoever. Congratulations!

[3] I use xe, xer, xis, xisself in Untitled. The more widely accepted conjugation is xe, xem, xyr, but I know a number of genderqueer individuals who would prefer those pronouns be used to indicate people of nonbinary genders, rather than as neuter.

[4] Well, two, but the second was one of the poodles, and her question was actually “Why did you use gender neutral pronouns instead of Snausages?” so I’m going to say it doesn’t count.

[5] Also, at least two of the characters are called Rupert. None of the homeless people are called Rupert, though. Funny how that works.

If you’re in the mood for a different take on the classic detective novel, this is the one for you. I enjoyed Shea’s writing style for its twist on the usual mystery tropes blended with a highly literary word-crafting. There are some takeaways regarding social structure, which I won’t spoil for you here. What I got from it is that we may try to dismantle power structures, but the nature of humanity is such that sometimes all we do is shuffle things around because we haven’t really reorganized our thinking—only our rules and language. As a person who falls outside several binary identities, I can appreciate this view.

There’s some world-building in the story which might require more development in order to get the most out of the social commentary, but it’s sufficient for a short novel. The end of the story leaves open the possibility for more, though it could also be read as closure in and of itself.

Fair warning, this is probably not a novel for everyone. It’s not a for-entertainment-purposes-only kind of story, and even though there is some lgbtq content, it’s definitely not a romance. However, if you like mystery, literary fiction, science fiction, and a bit of dark humor, this is definitely one you’ll want to pick up.

Buy the Book

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