Tag: Fiction

Barry Chapter 3 Intro

October 13, 2022 / Calise Sellers

It’s up! “Sons and Daughters,” Chapter 3 of Barry Anderson: An Unexpected Fairy Tale, is live and you can read it here! Or go here to start at 1 – Birthday. (There is also 2 – Lessons but I’m assuming you know how numerical sequentialism works.)

3 – Sons and Daughters

I think quoting my favorite lines would in most cases be either spoilers or punch lines (or my slightly more scandalous phrases like “plug becoming an outlet”). But to share, some of my favorite moments in this chapter involve Nick playing video games on the internet (😱), Dania and the “real” stories of Snow White and Cinderella, along with why fairy godmother spells have time limits whereas color magic doesn’t, and Grape’s experiences with vintage dresses and spoons, the physics of teleportation magic and weebs, alien plush toys and the Mionn a Draíocht, Lassie and hair ties. There’s also lots of sons and daughters and the roles they play.

I’m just going to stop telling you guys how long chapters are, so you don’t get scared away…

Nah, who am I kidding? It’s 41,232 words and I love every stinkin’ one of them. Yes, that’s two-thirds of a respectable novel length, in one chapter. Yes, that means that chapters 1-3 together make 82,666 words and they say 100,000 words is entering “epic novel” length and you sure as inclement weather better have something important to say if you’re going to go off that long.

And Barry is 30 chapters long. Before the sequels. And I’m not going to promise this will be the longest chapter. It most likely won’t be, knowing what’s ahead.

But every line is important to the picture being painted. Believe it or not, with my casual tone and overuse of words like “really” and “stuff,” every phrase and interaction is very intentional. The way someone moves their eyebrows or when they choose to interrupt says volumes about their internal turmoil, whether they realize it or not. And Barry has a lot of internal turmoil.

Despite the barrier that length might be for some readers, Chapter 3 is my favorite to this point and I hope it really shows the audience where we’re going, overall. Two points make a line, but you need three points to make a trajectory, to see whether it’s going to be a straight line or not. Chapter 3 completes the first small plot arc of the story and finishes establishing the themes and where you can expect this very long story to go. It has a lot of establishing to finish, before Chapter 4 is off like a rocket into the plot moving forward.

Each chapter is more like a mini era, that turns the plot and character development in its own unique way. Each has its own attitudes, themes, and events that couldn’t happen in any other chapter because none of the characters are in the same place from chapter to chapter.

To quote Stephen Schwartz, as quoted in 2 – Lessons, which is in turn a paraphrasing of Heraclitus, “You can’t step in the same river twice, the water’s always changing, always flowing.” I only have 30 chapters over the course of a single year to change this boy’s life, and each one of them needs to do something different. If anything, I’m rather stunned that 1/10th of the chapters are live now, and mildly sad to never have those three mini eras to write in again, at least from Barry’s point of view.

All that being said, I really hope to get a move on and not post only one chapter a year. I have other novels to write too, and I can’t wait 27 more years for this one to have its full effect. Although it’s not like I’ve only been writing chapters 1-3 the past few years by a long shot. Chapters 6, 8, 12, 15, 16, and 18 are all already longer than Chapter 1 (which was 12,700 words), and there are no chapters with under 500 words written (the climax chapter having the least written prose atm).

But Chapter 3 is very dear to me. It’s okay if you maybe don’t know what to think at this point, or for a while in this chapter; neither does Barry. He’s feeling torn every which way and if adults disagree so thoroughly on these topics–things like gender and attraction, fate and destiny, responsibility and trust, fairness and defining yourself–then how is a sixteen-year-old (usually) boy supposed to figure it out?

It’s okay to not be able to tell where I, as an author, stand on these things. 😉 Like Barry’s finding out, the universe has a physics to it, but none of it is simple.

Eh, or just take it as a fairy story. Like Puck says in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream…

To quote Barry in the chapter in question, “Mom, maybe stop trying to make sense of the supposed decisions of a trippy dreamland dimension. I’m not sure logic and rationality are at work here.”

If you don’t want to yield to themes that offend, feel free to treat my very long writing like a fever dream with a lot of cleavage. That’s certainly what Barry would prefer to do.

Along with the chapter, here are some other Barry features that have been updated, so you know where to find them:

Chapter Quotes

Chapter 3 is the first to go live with its chapter heading quotes, but now these are a staple of all the chapters, and I’ve gone back and put the ones at the beginning of 1 – Birthday and 2 – Lessons. I have these selected for every chapter through the end of the story and I love how they illustrate and encapsulate each mini-era.

Each chapter has an actual, historically-written quote, written by an author with a national and cultural background that’s relevant to fairy lore, such as Greek, Irish, French, or German, and Barry-relevant specialties, such as philosophers, scientists, or fairy tale writers.

Each chapter also has a plot and theme-relevant song lyric quote from the soundtrack of that chapter, and I have zero pretension when it comes to the songs in this story. This leads to satisfying and amusing combinations of archaic and high-brow historical quotes, beside goofy pop and children’s song lyrics. Some of my favorite combos are Socrates and the Spice Girls, Tennyson and Taylor Swift, Aesóp and Elvis, Carl Jung and the Cars, Shakespeare and the Beatles, da Vinci and CHVRCHES, Ovid and Sofia the First, and the Norse Vǫluspá and Barbie.

But they each triangulate the themes and vibes of the chapter they head, and I hope you enjoy them from here on out.

Song posts

In that same vein, I am planning to have a post for each song in the soundtrack, bringing out its significance to the story and the themes and motifs I use it to illustrate in context. There will also be posts about the overall motifs of the story, which are a big deal for the meta of the story and symbolism I’m kinda super extra about. Very few of these posts are up yet—less than I would like—but I hope to post more of these soon.

But I don’t think everyone was aware of the ones that have been posted, so I thought I’d point them out:

The post for St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion) by John Parr discusses foreshadowing, omens of fate, and holding onto the future we planned, when we’re not genre-savvy to the serendipity in our own lives. Maybe don’t fight the foreshadowing; it’s not always as subtle as we think.

The post for Let’s Hear It For the Boy by Deniece Williams discusses both the vibes of the Barry soundtrack and my beloved use of irony in lyrics, as well as celebrating my protagonist boy and the beloved mess he is.

Those are the songs from Chapter 1, and I only have one of the three songs from Chapter 2 up.

The post about When You Can Fly Again from Fancy Nancy is an exploration into Dania’s motives as she gets overexcited and maybe a little bit silly, not understanding why her little butterfly might not want to go do pretty sparkly things with her, but how much she wants to help him fly.

Considering I finished writing the post for House of Gold by twenty one pilots last October (foolishly waiting to finish the one for Trying On Dresses by Darby, which I still haven’t finished) I’d like to post it soon. That one is about mortality, legacy, and death in fay culture and Barry feeling torn between his two worlds; it has a lot of pretty and potent prose, if I do say so myself, and I’m anxious for it to be read.

And Chapter 3 has three more songs to elaborate on, so I really hope to write up these things soon.

Chapter Icons

Silly little thing, but a while ago I wanted chapter icons for my own benefit, just simple images that symbolize each chapter, which I could use for my own menus. I’ve made seventeen so far, and now the first three are on the menu and the chapters.

Chapter Bookmarks

Despite being a mean author who expects people to read 41k words on a single web page, I do actually want chapters to be accessible and don’t actually expect people to read any chapter in one sitting, lol. So now, at the top of each chapter page, there are actually bookmarks!! Section headings would throw off the groove of the chapters, but I feel like casually naming parts of the chapter with titles that you’ll understand if you’ve read that part, but won’t spoil ahead of time, actually add to the chapters, hopefully. So now Chapters 1-3 have sections at scene or concept breaks, every 500-1500 words. They were really fun to name anyway.

And as I release audiobook versions, I can also break up the tracks at these same breaks and use the same titles. Ultimately I’d love to have a playlist of all the audiobook tracks, with the soundtrack songs intermixed where-ish they go with the prose and events, so you can just pop the playlist on and get the whole Barry Anderson experience in order.

Which, granted, will eventually take months to listen to 😅 but it’s fine. Please love me despite my super extra 🙏.

Media Glossary

Starting with the Extras for Chapter 2, I included a glossary for the non-English words used in the chapter. (This glossary is going to be crazy long for Chapter 11 and the research might kill me lol. Although my Arthurian research for Chapter 12 is a lot more extensive.) Chapter 3 has a decent amount of non-English phrases, so it has that glossary included in the Extras, but 3 – Sons and Daughters also includes a large amount of media and story references (and science-related terms) that Barry often mentions off-handedly. I want these references to be accessible to readers, even if they haven’t seen all of the media referenced. So there’s a glossary for these references on the 3 – Extras page. And, shocking to no one, I used it as an opportunity to commentate, elaborate and joke about the different media, and use them to bring out different things about the story. Hopefully they’re a fun read, even if you already get the references to FPSs, Star Trek, He-Man, Bewitched, or Fibonacci. I’m a girl of varied interests–and therefore sometimes so is Barry 😉 –and my references and jokes reflect this.

Anyway, in spite of so much preamble, I truly hope that you enjoy 3 – Sons and Daughters, and that it helps you explore complex questions about fate, trust, chaos, gender, and adulthood, with some giggles (and maybe some tears) along the way.

3 – Sons and Daughters

Barry Anderson Audiobook – Chapter 1

June 27, 2021 / Calise Sellers

I guess any chance I had to pretend that I wasn’t the author of this novel went out the window when I recorded an audiobook version of the first chapter, in my voice.

Still, despite the very silly premise, and my inability to do male voices (which is a problem less often in Barry’s case 😏), I think I have decent comedic timing, and it’s exciting for me to hear the correct inflections for each of the characters’ lines. It feels like I’m listening to my friends talk, even if it’s essentially a very painstakingly edited version of me playing with dolls in my bedroom.

In fact, it took multiple months longer to get this out than it should have, because Audacity decided to flip out and put all my clips into a blender, and delete everything before a certain date, but I went through every single 3 second clip it still had (there were over 3100, and they were all mixed up, and most of them duplicated) to try and salvage what I could. As it was, the only reason I have the original version of the first 20 minutes (all the actual recording files and bloopers tragically lost), is because I was obsessed enough with listening to myself talk that I’d exported a draft version of the beginning, just so I could listen to it over and over again.

I really wanted to get this up today, because today (June 27th) is Barry’s birthday (is that a spoiler? I never actually mention the date in the story. It’s not hard to deduce however), and toiled with extra rush this week trying to get it up, and was still only able to post it this late in the day, trying to get it the best I could. But oh well, it’s still a good tribute to my favorite little idiot, that I’m managing to post it on his special day.

Hopefully this audio version of “Barry Anderson – Chapter 1: Birthday” will both enable people who find it easier/more convenient to listen than to read to get the beginning of the story, and is also hopefully a fun dramatization of the beginning of a pretty Grape, er, great adventure 😉.

(That link is to the audiobook homepage. You can listen to the file embedded, or download to listen elsewhere. For free, obviously, yay.)

Barry Anderson: An Unexpected Fairy Tale - by Calise Sellers

Calise Fiction: Barry Anderson Intro

November 20, 2020 / Calise Sellers / 4 Comments

Hi. So after about 25 years of writing fiction being one of the things I love most in the whole world, I’m finally taking the leap to share one of my novels with the world, in serial chunks. To share it with you. I’m about as nervouscited as I could be about this.

If you really don’t want any spoilers about the premise of the piece of fiction you’re about to read, then feel free to go read the first chapter and come back. It’s pretty clear, pretty quickly what this story is about, and if you don’t want to know the inciting incident before it happens, you can feel free to skip my musings and introduction for now.

For everyone else, here’s what I’d like you to know before you read Barry Anderson.

I think everyone has a different reason for writing fiction, and Justin’s always said if you’re going to write consistent themes and powerful stories, you need to know what that reason is. I’ve always loved stories, but it took me a long time and a lot of self-reflection to know why writing them mattered so much to me.

Writing has always been the most satisfying art platform for me, having tried and enjoyed acting, dancing, singing, videography, graphic design, sewing and DIY, pottery, painting and drawing, and a bunch of other random stuff. I maintain that art is all about communicating, especially communicating and evoking emotion, and I believe “good art” is art that communicates its intended emotion well.

This photo went out with all my unsuccessful publisher query letters at 16. This pic kinda burns me because at 16 I felt so confused who the crap I wanted to be. The final version was cropped, so you couldn’t see the unofficial guide to the Backstreet Boys behind my head.

Writing wasn’t necessarily my favorite because it came easily to me. I cringe so hard at my undeveloped writing over the years, as I practiced and practiced. But I always felt like writing was wide open to me, in a way that no other medium could really fulfil. I learned how to read pretty early, and from then on I felt like words were a tool where the only ceiling was my own ability to use them. With just a pen or a blinking word processor, I could go anywhere and meet anyone I wanted to, enjoy anything and anyone I wanted to. I didn’t need expensive materials, or anyone to drive me anywhere. I didn’t need my frustratingly little hands to be able to learn techniques to emulate what was going on in my head. I knew how to talk, therefore I knew how to use words to communicate… therefore I could make any world I could fathom.

But that’s just why I liked writing itself, not why my fiction was worth writing. But that I summed up pretty well through character dialogue I wrote when I was a teenager:
“I like creating something out of nothing, a life where there wasn’t one before… And, I want to make a difference in the world. I want to make a lasting influence on someone’s life. I want to share deep messages about inner wars of mind and soul. I want a chance to explore the beauty of the human spirit… That all sounds kind of stupid, doesn’t it?”

That’s still why I love writing fiction, but it still all sounds kind of stupid to me, which is a euphemism for vulnerable and embarrassing. And this story might be my most vulnerable and embarrassing of all, which believe me is saying something for my fiction.

Bebe poof Calise on the left, held by Daddy, along with Big Sister. Always enjoyed being a poof.

I’ve loved fairies since I was itty bitty. My first ever story, at three years old, was about a cat named “Hay” and his struggle for identity… i.e. he got mad because the farmer said “I’m gonna shovel hay” and Hay misinterpreted it as himself. So a fairy had to come, deus ex machina, and explain what straw was, and save the day. It might have been mostly so I could draw a picture of a fairy. Fairies made everything better.

So many of the doll stories I’d play growing up were about fairies, or mermaids, and their magical exotic sparkly worlds with wings and color-coding. Fern Gully was my favorite movie, and Crysta was my imaginary friend, and we’d babysit her little sister I made up, and I’d teach flying lessons to my stuffed Big Bird by jumping off chairs. I’d sing on swings and make up songs about flying… Which I’d sing at the top of my lungs, wanting to be noticed 🤦‍♀️, to the annoyance of my friends who would tell me to stop.

Big Sister and Calise as fairies. I’m probably about 4 here.
Man, I hate that 1993 haircut so bad.

I loved the idea of diverse kinds or categories of fairies. Omigosh, what I would have given for Disney’s 3D Tinker Bell series as a kid! (Or Sofia the First, whom I still relate to, too much.) I had to settle for one of the few kids VHSs at our little video rental store, about a fairy world and the little girl who got sucked into it. Kids would make wishes with little rhymes, and then a fairy categorized to their need would show up to help. I loved how, in fairy stories, everyone seemed to have a job, a place in the world that was uniquely theirs to help in. Little did I know what a prelude to Type Specializations that was.

But as I grew up, I wanted to write more realistically, and “grittily”. (So edgy, I know.) Fairies transitioned to medieval fantasy, and kings and princesses. But I was never very good at gritty, not in a vacuum anyway. And it wasn’t really what made me happy to write.

15, wearing the medieval fantasy dress and cape my mom made for me, to a Christmas dance. (Same dress I wore as Galadriel here.) I loved it so much but felt so embarrassed wearing it. I got asked if I was supposed to be Egyptian…

I loved situational comedy and coming of age drama, coming from a childhood of watching Saved by the Bell, Boy Meets World, Lizzie McGuire and Kim Possible. So as a teenager I started writing coming-of-age-sitcom-fantasy-romance… because that’s a genre, right? (Well in the age of the internet, everything is a genre lol.)

And as weird and random as that was, it seemed I was pretty good at it. My friends were very supportive (something I didn’t always reciprocate, as I could get a little snobby about writing), and lots of them read my goofy, but very important to me, novel about a teenaged prince who was heir to the throne but couldn’t get a date. And I got them to laugh! And said they felt like they knew the characters, which elated me. Because I knew the characters, and they’d come to be some of my closest friends through those awkward teen years.

That was the story I’d always expected to share with the public first, my beloved, revamped version of Prince Ellic of Dallania, which had accidentally ended up mirroring my own love story.

I didn’t expect to go back to fairies instead. Barry Anderson was a spin-off from a modern teenaged version of Pinocchio I started in late high school (around 2005)—a teenaged boy made of wood who has to earn his right to be a man; his version of “a real boy.” I feel like that sounds dumb when I describe it, but it was actually decent. Actually the above quoted “Creating something out of nothing” dialogue was Nock, teenage Pinocchio, speaking. Plus I liked noses. There was a lot of nose humor.

17, first semester away at college, embarrassed selfie. Callous loved that edgy purple and black bracelet, I should try and find another one like it.

But noses weren’t the only thing I had a bit of an obsession with, nor the most embarrassing to me. One of the few things I loved more than fairies since childhood, was men in women’s clothing… or bodies.

I’ve discussed this several times on the internet, and this probably isn’t the time or place to discuss how I figured out over the course of 30 years that I’m not actually gay, despite finding men in women’s clothes or bodies hot. (Well, I’m not attracted to women in women’s bodies, for one, heh.) Sometimes I like to say to my friends “I’m not gay, just kinky.”

But really saying that is just a cover for how deeply guilty I’ve felt over the course of my life for caring about complex gender-oriented exploration and plot lines I worry that will piss off literally everyone.

When you try to explore universe sweeping topics with complexity and without straw men, you’re likely to get both sides mad at you.

This story isn’t politically correct, toward either side of anything. I happen to believe that politically correct humor is dangerous, in a similar way to how straw man humor is dangerous. I find that both extremes of the political aisle attempt to censor the other, in a way that means things fester and grow faker with each passing day. And I consider political correctness to be just another, more passive aggressive, type of censorship.

Censoring people’s words doesn’t change their minds; only being real and open can do that, if people want to change at all.

Reaction to being told there’s a rainbow lens flare on the camera, age 30. Maybe I’m a mix between a fairy and a leprechaun. No short jokes please.

I’m not going to preach anything at you, from either pulpit. I only want to explore complexity via realistic characters making decisions and reacting to things. There are no villains in this story. There are less likable people, and people who are various levels of wrong. Those two categories aren’t necessarily overlapped. Barry Anderson can be such an idiot, and I couldn’t love him more.

So this is just an exploration of people, of gender, and what selfness even means. Since those are really loaded topics, I won’t hold it against you if you choose not to read.

If you’re likely to get offended by a story where a boy magically sprouts breasts sometimes (okay, often), then it’s okay to leave. If you’re likely to get triggered by a story that implies that gender exists, then this story isn’t for you either.

That being said, from tester audiences of close friends, this goofy little story of mine brings up feels in people way more than I anticipated, which I hope is a good thing. It seems to be much more effective as a literary empathizing invoker than I thought it would be. So although I think reading and watching media that take us on emotional journeys is helpful, be warned if you do decide to embark. You are in good company if you react differently than you expected, to my silly little fairy story.

This is definitely not the story I anticipated posting first on the internet, for so many reasons. I mean firstly it’s about fairies and fairy godmothers. It’s really really silly. There’s a whole lore with types of magic, but there’s also way too many descriptions of transformation sequences, ala Cinderella or Sailor Moon. There’s wands and magic, and a lot of purple. It’s hardly the story I’d share if my main intent was to be taken seriously.

Sofia the First, Halloween 2016 (27 yrs old). I’ve gotten better at owning costumes, even if I still feel a little embarrassed. Here have an embarrassing video with me singing.

But also, despite my repeated admissions of gender-flipped fascination, this is the first time I’ve ever shared something quite this scandalous on the wider internet. Despite not having any actual sex in it (as opposed to my Freaky Friday-esque, husband and wife, body-swapped, romantic comedy novel, which I do not intend to share with the internet), this story deals very openly with both gender and sexuality, from the point of view of a teenage boy who desperately does not want the ability to turn into a teenage fairy girl. It has a lot of boob humor, and awkwardness.

I have friends and family of such divergent backgrounds, socially, culturally, religiously, and politically, and I’m honestly much more terrified of anyone I know reading this, than complete internet strangers. Because this story is so not culturally endorsed by most people of my in-person acquaintance, especially family.

I think Barry Anderson is a tasteful story, and talks about topics that usually get either hidden or yelled about—I hate it when important topics about who people are and how they tick, turn into either taboos, or lobby-bait. But it’s weird. It’s a weird little premise, that I think I turn into something pretty darn meaningful.

Sixteen-year-old Barry Anderson’s search for who the crap he is, while his life is going the opposite direction from what he thought he wanted, and everyone is trying to tell him who they think he “should” be, is a journey I think everyone can relate to. And like I said before, he’s really such an idiot about it sometimes, which I think most of us can relate to more than we’d like, such as dishonestly putting forward an image of ourselves, because we don’t think anyone will want who we really are.

Like how I’d prefer to not admit to people who know me that I write scandalous fiction, or like to write about boys with boobs, but sometimes there’s more important things than what makes us feel comfortable. And I think sharing Barry is one of those things.

Fairies, in their world of over-the-top sparkly, glittery, fluttery, prettiness, clashed with the story of a boy who wants nothing but to put his head down and be as normal as possible (serious INFJ(ej) Hercules Syndrome), makes for a piece of fiction that I’ve attempted to make both satirical and serious, both humorous and heartfelt. It’s coming-of-age-sitcom-fantasy-romance at my very best, and for the world of embarrassment it heaps upon me, I couldn’t be prouder of it.

Five-year-old Calise played fairies with her Krystal Princess dolls, and nervously stole glances at her bedroom door, feeling terribly guilty for pretending that one of the fairies was really a boy turned into a girl, and enjoying him squirm with embarrassment.

It was this one by the way; one of my favorites. And no, the irony of it being the rainbow one is not lost on me.

But somehow, even after relating that story in a post talking about my lifelong gender fixations, in 2014, I didn’t realize that was exactly the premise I started writing in 2016 when I finally jotted down the first couple snippets of Barry, until like the beginning of 2020 🤦‍♀️. Apparently this story was 25 years in the making and I didn’t even notice.

Little Calise would be very proud, and very embarrassed. But I think she’d also think grown-up Calise was pretty darn cool for being an adult who writes about both fairies and silly things happening to boys, without being too ashamed to share it. Because fairies (and making boys squirm) still make everything better.

If after all those disclaimers, you still want to read, then please enjoy
Barry Anderson:

Barry Anderson – Chapter One

Tag: Fiction