P D Ball’s Story Newsletter No. 3

Hello! I hope this email finds you well. Better than well!

As per the title, this is the third newsletter. I’m going to find a place to compile them all in case anyone wants to read through them. No. 1, for ex., has a preview of Book 4, which may interest people who’ve signed up recently. You can always fire me an email if you want the preview.

This one is very long! Please read only the parts you like.

Contents:

First Words

Progress Update

Preview #2

Behind the Scenes: gifting giving in cross cultural context

Other Book Promotions

First: Happy soon to be holidays!

I hope the holidays are more than good to you, with lots of family, friends and food. I’m happy to say that the Cayce books will be part of a charity book sale event running from Dec. 26-27^th. There will be a lot of books either free or on sale for 99 cents. When the media for the sale is ready, I’ll be putting out another short newsletter to give you the link. Very short! If you’re interested in having more books at low prices, it’s worth checking out.

Proceeds from the sale will go to the St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.

Progress Update

Book 4 is coming along, but story has demanded a larger size. It will likely be 20% longer than the previous two books. So, you get more story! It’s basically written at this point and I’m onto lots and lots of editing.

Fortunately for me, but unfortunately for Cayce, I’m heading home for the holidays. I haven’t been home since before the pandemic, so very much looking forward to seeing my family and friends, but it means a bit slower of a work schedule. It is foremost on my mind, though, and I work well on planes!

If you want to contact me, your thoughts on the newsletter or writing, I’m at pdballwrites@gmail.com

Preview Number Two!

The last preview before I get the book out – enjoy!

Restless Night

Staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, I couldn’t help but think it was weird that I’d never been hungover. Sure, I was fifteen. But I’d drank methanol and then a gallon or two of mead to counter it. Woke up a few hours into the night perfectly sober. That seemed impossible.

Though, I could shoot massive energy blasts from my hands. Not exactly a possible phenomena. These impossibilities kept me coming back to the game hypothesis. Except it no longer made any sense why that’d be the case. It’d been so long, months and months, since I’d woken up on that battlefield. Well, long for a teenager.

Though, an annoying little voice said, I’m probably just thinking about alcohol tolerance to not think about the wayward Barclay duchy I had to march an army to, the earls who were almost universally angry with me, and the probable civil war erupting from that anger, the archbishop who joined the earls in preventing my becoming queen, the Seclazrin church that basically declared war on my person, the frustrating and likely frustrated suitors, and the crazy behavior of the foxes and ravens since I suddenly developed magical powers.

Magical powers!

I should worry about that more than anything. After all, the holes punched straight through people and tables attested to its worrisomeness. But, Etienne agreed to help me contain it. One problem checked off my list. Probably. Possibly. Assuming other mages didn’t find out and he didn’t change his mind. They’d tell him to hurry up, quick now, get to killing the princess already.

Anyways, it just seemed that for every problem I solved, another deadlier one took its place.

I unwrapped myself from Brin, stuffed a pillow into her arms for her to hug. She seemed good with the exchange. Then I slid off the bed, into my slippers, walked over to the fireplace, tossed a couple more logs on it. Winter was cold in a castle. Really cold. I suspect that’s why most people don’t live in castles.

A tapping on the window.

I waved my hand in that direction. Nope, not opening it. Had my fill of ravens paying homage. It’s cool, thanks bird. That’s a holy window, you’re blessed and all that. Leave your offerings on the sill.

I headed out of my room, down my hallway, passing the locked and bared rooms to prevent, or at least slow, future assassins, and opened the bared door to my apartments, exited to the main visitor hall, off of which rooms where Morry, a few other guards, and the ladies in waiting slept.

In the reception area, a large, looming figure sat by the fireplace. I paused, a touch worried about assassins, but it was the big man. He was already looking my direction, “Princess? What are you doing up at this hour?”

“Uh, couldn’t sleep.”

“Me either.”

“You’re strange. Why can’t you sleep?”

“I’m strange?”

“Yeah. For copying me in the no sleep department.”

He blinked and shook his head a bit, “ah. It’s those damned ravens. Or maybe that I didn’t drink enough ale tonight.” He stared at the cup in his hands.

“You come out here for ale halfway through the night?”

“Not especially.”

I sat down across from him. Poured myself a cup. Seeing as how I apparently couldn’t get hangovers, it didn’t matter if I indulged after the midnight hour. “Might as well join you.”

“Is something bothering you?”

“Yeah, but also no.  No because the suitors and ambassadors are leaving, most of them gone.”

He nodded, “winter digging in. They have to mind their own abodes.”

“Exactly and we’ll finally get some peace.”

“And what is bothering you then?”

“The endless arguments with those damned earls. I have to make one of them a duke and I can’t stand any of them. Bastards. They don’t like me either.”

“Well-”

“Yes, Hafthon is the strongest, most capable of them or maybe the most capable with the largest army. And Crygmore is useless. I think that meeting was the first he’d ever spoken at! And Carlisele probably prays for my untimely demise before sleeping, the man can’t stand me. The feeling is mutual! Anyways, I don’t know, but everyone keeps telling me Hafthon is going to take it once we leave for the Spring Campaign.”

Morry swallowed his ale, set the mug down, “but you don’t want to give it to him.”

“Exactly.  It seems he’s working behind the scenes to, I don’t know, frustrate my power.  My attempts at cementing my position.  He’s the one who prevented me from being crowned queen. Yeah, I don’t want to give him even more power.”

“Ah. The institution of the knighthood you created is giving him something to rally the other nobles behind, especially the earls.”

“Yeah, very frustrating. I’m not about to go back on my word to the men.”

He poured himself another mug. “Well, the men are pleased with being nobles. Knights. They think Hafthon is an ass for trying to take that away.”

“Huh. How do the soldiers know he’s trying to end the knighthood?”

Morry tilted his head slightly, grim features fighting against their natural features to become mirthful, “well, your officers like the institution.”

“Ah! So, you spread the word.”

He nodded. I continued, “what about his soldiers? Do they, I mean, would they like to be knighted?”

“I think that if he’s not treating their status very carefully, he’s not half the man everyone thinks he is.”

“You mean like, now he has to pay them more?”

“Princess, we’ve already had men, soldiers from his army, approach us asking to join ours.”

“Oh.”

“That’s a problem.”

“A problem I like having. But Hafthon is going to accuse me of stealing his troops.”

“And dividing the kingdom.”

“Well, he should just get on board then! That’s his fault. God, Morry, all these whiny nobles!” I took a long drink. It was good ale, thick and flavorful, warmed me up going down.

“You could offer the dukedom for his accepting the knighthood.”

“He doesn’t bargain. I tried with the crown. I could, I guess, I really should try again. Ugh.”

Morry leaned forward, his grim face even more serious. “As you say, there’s always option two. We could take the earldoms.”

“How many soldiers you think would stop supporting Hafthon for a knighthood? I wonder if we could take the earldoms peacefully.”

“Hard to say-”

“There you are Cayce! You wouldn’t believe what was outside the window! A raven! Tapping on it like a gentleman caller.”

We both jerked up straight, the concentration brought about by scheming broken by Brin, joining us in her bedroom attire. “What’s that? A raven. No kidding. How unusual. Did it bow to you?”

“Bow? Why would it bow? It flew away. What are you guys doing out here?”  She put her hand on her hip, head tilted, “drinking? At this hour?”

“Uh, we couldn’t sleep. Brin, how do you know what a gentleman caller is?”

She shook her head with a confused look on her face, sat down and poured herself a cup of ale, meeting my eyes while bringing it to her lips, pausing, “Cayce, I’m fifteen,” then drinking.

There was all kind of wrong in the universe I found myself in. But here I was.

“Uh, we were just talking about the duchy and who to give it to.” Morry shot me a glance that read ‘do you really want to tell Brin that?’ Her parents, after all, were in the running.

“Yeah. It’s vile that you have to give it to Hafthon. But it’s that or keep it. Or marry the Barclay duke and move him up here. Or marry the Laemacian emperor and move him down here. So many options!”

“Thanks Brin.”

“You could,” Morry said, with a rare grin, “give it to Crygmore.”

We all laughed. I held my cup up, “To Crygmore! Never before has there ever been a monk as silent as that man.” We three clinked mugs together and drank.

“If silence is holy, Crygmore is an angel,” said Brin. 

“Probably his wife runs the earldom. He’s merely along for the ride, the public face of her decisions. Silence often seems like wisdom, but sometimes it’s the only option to revealing weakness.”

“Huh,” I said, “I’ve never met his wife.”

“Of course, Cayce. The earls aren’t going to bring their families here. You’d just take hostages.”

“Damn. Yeah, I’m that kind of awful person, I guess.”

Morry picked up the jug to refill his cup. “Perhaps you should demand them. Hostages. That or half their army.”

“I should. I really should. Also,” holding my cup, I pointed with my forefinger, “the archbishop, Ghevont, is in Hafthon’s pocket. It’s making me rethink, uh, ordaining their . . . order, sorry, don’t know the right words here, as the kingdom’s church.”

“Appointing, Cayce. Just use appointing. You’re not a priest, you can’t ordain anything.”

“You know, being a princess sucks. It’s like, where is all the power? I’m the-”

“-ruling monarch, yes.” Brin made the kind of face you make for babies, voice included, “yes, you are! Yes, you are. Who’s a good ruling monarch? You are, you are!”

“Brin!” I nearly doubled over laughing, but somehow got out, “where’d that come from?”

“Sucks?” Morry said. “What is a princess sucking?”

Sitting up straight, “uh, it’s a word that means, uhm, like bad. Or let down. Like, ‘being a princess is hard’ and all that.”

“Why the word ‘sucks’ though?”

“No reason. Lemons! It’s like you’re sucking lemons. They’re very sour. That’s where the word comes from.”

“Ah,” he nodded, “being a princess has a bitter taste to it. All the difficult choices you face.”

“Oh my god, Morry, yes. Can we get off this topic?”

“Cayce, Morry’s right. You use words strangely sometimes. Maybe often. For example, ‘god’ instead of ‘gods.’ Why do you do that?”

“When did this become an intervention?” I grabbed the jug and poured furiously, “can we talk about something else? How’s the new armor doing? Any word on crossbows?” I then drank furiously.

“We don’t have enough of the armor to really test it. Crossbows are taking their time.”

“Morry, are you smiling again?”

“No, Princess, I don’t smile.”

“I think you are.”

“Cayce, you’re getting drunk.”

“I am not! I don’t get drunk. I’m a princess.”

“Yes, you are.” Smiling, she raised her glass, blinked, and said, “and being a princess sucks.”

“Well, that’s it. We are just going to have a party here tonight. I’m getting another jug.”

“I can get it for you, Princess.”

“No, no, the life of a princess . . . is difficult and fraught with challenges. You stay seated!”

Behind the Scenes: Gift Giving

In Book 3, the Laemacian ambassador gives Cayce war rhinos and manages to extract a promise from her to visit the country after she retakes her kingdom. There are a couple reasons why I put this in the story. First, Alexander was forced to turn back from his conquest of India because of war elephants – the Nanda Empire in his way had some 6000 of them, which his troops believed were too many to fight (they refused to continue, forcing Alexander to give up and head home). Because of how well war elephants did in battle, he procured some. Since Cayce’s world is fantasy, she gets war rhinos, which seem altogether more dangerous to me.

And second, Brin mentions to Cayce that gifts bind the receiver in debt to the giver and to be careful about accepting any – but also to use gifts to bind others, suggesting she give something to the new Barclay duke. This interpretation of gift giving as full of social consequences comes from the anthropologist Marcel Maus. He noted that, despite that we in Western civilizations think of gifts as spontaneous and free of obligation, gifts actually carry social bonds.

Cross culturally, gift giving performs a variety of “social work.” Gifts are used to create new relationships, cement friendships and ties between families, build social hierarchies and show off status, prevent aggression and wars through interdependence, and further economic ends.

The classic example of gift giving that furthers exchange between different cultural groups is the kula ring of Papua New Guinea and associated islands. Prior to European contact, and sometime after, the cultural groups living on different islands exchanged goods across islands. The associations were ritualized through the giving of artistic bracelets and necklaces. Before any exchange could be had, one trader offered a necklace and the other returned a bracelet. These weren’t kept forever, but the receiver would pass the gift on to the next person they would trade with. Necklaces traveled in clockwise direction across the islands and armbands, counterclockwise. Once the ritualized gifts were exchanged, the actual trade would begin in earnest.

An example of preventing aggression is found in the Yanomami. These peoples live in the Amazon jungle and are surrounded by tribes on all sides of their territory. Prior to European contact, all their needs were met by the jungle – their knowledge of jungle flora and fauna is highly developed; they use roughly 750 plants as medicine, for example. Anyways, when you’re living in the jungle and don’t have factories or mining, everything you can make, be they bows, arrows, spears and houses, all your neighbors can likewise make. This situation creates problems for developing exchange based relationships – but the Yanomami overcame this through specialization. One group would make arrows best suited for hunting monkeys, while another would make some best suited for fishing or deer, for example. This specialization allowed them to engage in trade, which created relationships and reduced the potential for warfare. Also, and this is baffling but also very human, to develop relationships, they’d even create fictional reasons for trading. A group would visit another group and bring bows with them. The group being visited would look at their bows and spears, identical to their own group’s weapons, and praise them, then buy them through an exchange of goods.

The Potlach of the Haida culture is a gift exchange that is difficult for those in capitalist societies to understand.  It was a gift giving ritual (almost a party) that created status for the hosts. Haida lived in the Oregon to British Columbia areas, which were rich in plant life, game and fish. From this vast environmental wealth, they built a population to rival state societies, despite remaining foragers.

In non-capitalist societies, the accumulation of wealth is seen as selfishness and actively discouraged. Demand economies, for example, prevent the individual accumulation of wealth, because anyone of the in-group can demand any good from any other member of the in-group. In this manner, no one rises above anyone else.  Such cultural groups value humbleness and equality.  Hunters, for example, in these groups do their best to downplay their hunting skill, claiming their success is entirely due to luck.

The Potlach event took place at weddings and yearly celebrations where gifts were exchanged at large gatherings. The hosts of the party would proceed to destroy as much of their own property as possible, even, on occasion, their own houses. This destruction of their property showed onlookers that the family was so powerful and capable, they didn’t need these goods. Goods could be replaced easily. And so, the destruction of one’s own property and the giving of everything they owned to others, elevated their status in their communities.

The Moka, a cultural practice found in Papua New Guinea, is similar in that one’s status is based on how much one can give to someone else. Tribal cultures here do not have formalized chiefs. Rather, they have “big men,” men who are charismatic and can motivate others to do their bidding. To build one’s status as a big man, you basically encourage people in your community to save up and give another individual, usually a power holder, a large party and several gifts, usually pigs, but in present day, also money and cars.

The man who can rally other men to give much to another gains status thusly. Rivals in these communities try to stimmy each other’s ability to persuade people to help them.

In modern societies, we have several fictions surrounding gifts. We pretend that they are entirely free of obligation, that we’re giving from our own hearts. Yet consider birthday presents. You give to people who are close to you and expect and eventual return gift, or good tidings, in return.

Wedding invitations are another such example. People invited to the wedding are often treated to a party, with food and beverages, but expected to provide something for the newlyweds. And arguments can emerge from mismatches on either side of the equation.

Giving and receiving therefore creates obligations. Giving pressures the receiver into a debt they can only repay by giving in kind, at a later date. And these obligations strengthen people’s relationships, widen their social circles.

A very short video on the Kula ring exchange:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzc4kUB9ya8

An hour-long lecture on the Kula ring, which is interesting if you’re really into anthropology (unfortunately, the prof is kind of dull):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGrkEjv80E0

For the Yanomami, there are a LOT of videos, but I cannot find any about their exchange system. However, if you’re interested in them, here’s a YouTube search. Unfortunately, they’re in real trouble right now as illegal loggers and miners are damaging the Amazon and spreading disease. Hopefully, Brazil’s new president will address these problems (the previous one fully supported exploiting the rain forest at the expense of the indigenous peoples living there):

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=yanomami

A short video on the Potlatch. It has some interesting archival footage of actual Potlatch ceremonies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdYFVwKNUyU

Here is a video discussing contemporary Potlach – they’ve been reinvented through a modern lens. It has changed from focusing on building status through the destruction of goods to a redistribution of wealth in support of others in their communities. Also, it’s now done for weddings, funerals and other important events:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9pBP_7TuvM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvzqCbdyFIM

And here is the gem of anthropology videos, Ongka’s Big Moka. It’s an hour long video that documents a big man’s attempt to throw a moka, his cajoling, begging and persuading of others to raise pigs for him, why he wants to do it, and the difficulties he faces because of rivals and inter-tribal conflict:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_gBYVfqtWM

Other Author Book Promotions

Ok, so these are promotions I agreed to do in trade for the same. They’re key for authors to reach larger audiences. These are works from authors in similar genres who’ve agreed to list my work in their email newsletters and promotions.

I have vetted these works to the extent that I tried to eliminate erotica and anything that triggered my ‘yuck’ response. But that’s as far as I went. I haven’t read any of these as I’m trying to get Princess Cayce’s story out as quickly as possible. Regardless, maybe one of these books will appeal to you. Some of them look interesting to me and I might add them to my reading list.

Space Kindle!

These are mainly scifi books, with a few fantasy thrown in:

https://storyoriginapp.com/to/w3C7tJD

More Space Kindle!

A bunch more scifi books, with a focus on military action, and a couple fantasy books for good measure:

https://storyoriginapp.com/to/w3C7tJD

Looks like we’re stuck in scifi mode, but scifi is fun, too:

https://storyoriginapp.com/to/50Wp3ke