One of the first interview requests I received in response to “Codex” was from the University of Winnipeg feminist radio show “Femisphere”. My spot will be airing live at 8:15-8:55 AM CST on Thursday, September 20th, 2018, and I’m looking forward to discussing the feminist themes which are such a big part of my novel.

SPOILER ALERT from this point forward.

In the “Codex” universe, an alien presence known as the Interstellar Codex arrived on Earth 67 million years ago. The Codex released a genetic engineering retrovirus into a large population of small (approximately raven-sized) raptor theropod dinosaurs who lived in the mountains of an area which would later become part of Western Alberta. Some of those dinosaurs sickened and died; others were unaffected by the virus; but in some of them the virus “took”, and reworked them at the genetic level to provide them with more efficiently structured brains, longer and more agile hands, and the ability to learn (and communicate using) the written word.

This last gift gave the new population their name — the Culture of the Word — and they relocated to a large nearby valley, leaving behind the surviving unaffected dinosaurs, who proudly called themselves the Tribes of the Inspiration and relied on spoken stories, poetry, and songs as a repository for their shared knowledge.

Possibly the biggest difference between the two populations, however, was imposed by the Interstellar Codex through a written decree: in the Culture of the Word, male must always be dominant over female. This was a mind-bending change from the ways of the Tribes, who had been matriarchal since the earliest dim memories marching back into the ages before they gained the powers of speech.

In “The Codex of Desire”, Tir’at~Esk, a proud Courier/Scribe of the Culture, is captured by the Tribes and plunged head-first into a society where he is expected to behave as a subordinate — and worse, he has caught the amorous attention of the Most Potent Chieftess Ev’ora, who is determined to coerce him into her harem. (She must convince him to submit willingly, since no male can be mated against his will and expect to produce viable issue,) Ev’ora has a lot riding on convincing Tir’at to mate with her: she hasn’t kindled in many months, and no Chieftess who is barren is permitted to continue as leader of her Tribe, much less of all the Tribes. Tir’at is therefore her “Illustrious Guest”, and she grants him a beautifully appointed “nest” for his comfort as well as the most delicious of foods and the most delectable of perfumes… but he is her prisoner, no matter how luxurious his prison.

When I started writing “Codex” (during National Novel Writing Month in 2015), using only the barest of notes, my plan was clear: Tir’at was the hero of this story, a brave and noble Warrior who proudly resisted the debased desires of the Most Potent Chieftess, and whose love for the Poetess he sees performing at a banquet is both clear-headed and pure. There was a sentence about a character named Girn’ash, the slave girl who served the purely plot-determined device of (somehow) uniting the two lovers and who would die for Tir’at in the end, but nothing more was said about her or planned for her. Above all, the story was Tir’at’s story, and he was always strutting around at the centre of events.

Here’s the relevant paragraph from my initial outline:

So far, the following background elements are shaping up to be important for me… in brief, the plot involves small intelligent feathered theropod dinosaurs and a tale of war, imprisonment, love-at-first-sight, secrets, lies, hatred, betrayal and murder in a social setting similar to the samurai vs ninja conflicts of 15th century Japan. Tir’at is the MMC, a brave young warrior of the Culture of the Word who’s been captured by the primitive Tribes of the Inspiration; La’leet is a beautiful young poet of the Tribes, whom Tir’at sees singing/dancing and falls instantly in love with; and Girn’ash is an ugly low-ranked female servant who has fallen secretly in love with Tir’at, who will end up conniving to bring him together with La’leet — and who will wind up dying for him, all in vain.

In short, Girn’ash was a throw-away character who existed only to assist and to glorify Tir’at’s story arc. Well… in writing things seldom work out quite as we’d planned. More about that in tomorrow’s post.