Jump to content

Shadeside


Castle Herald

Recommended Posts

[Special Note: The new website is now live. As a result the links throughout this thread are invalid except for the latest posting to the thread. All of Multimapper stories can now be found at MultiMapper]

NEW STORY!

Chapter 1 presented at http://www.castleroland.net/library/author/multimapper

Edited by Zach Caldwell
Link website notification
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Multimapper's stories have been featured on several sites, and I've read many of them in the past. Never really thought about the meaning behind his pen name until reading this story. A muse, sitting on my shoulder and twisting my ear much as my grandmother once did, whispered, "Think! It's obvious."

 

So I thought, and realized that Multimapper (MM) maps multiple tropes into a story in a way that is comfortably familiar but refreshingly new. (If this is wrong, please don't tell me...I don't want to be disabused.) So far, in "Shadeside," I think I've found five tropes, maybe six.

 

And one leitmotif: cooking. I do not need to be told by an author at every meal every dish that is prepared; that becomes not only boring but utterly distracting. OTOH, MM uses not a litany of dishes, but the preparation, the interaction between the characters, as a part of developing them both as individuals and as a couple. Example: the migration of "hash browns" from "10% hash, 90% brown" to "70% hash, 30% brown." (I may have the numbers wrong, but that's not the point.) E.g., the difference between "kneaded and cut" biscuits and drop biscuits. E.g., the preparation of cornbread. (I have the identical cast iron corn bread pan, and was inspired by the story to buy cornmeal, today.) E.g., the benefits of a cast iron pot. (I used to have one of those, too. Katrina got it, and it's somewhere at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Never used it over a fire, though.)

 

This is an old story told in a new way, with depth and complexity. It can be read on more than one level, and I'm looking forward to seeing just how many levels there are.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Each story takes on it's own style. In Shadeside and One Door Closes there's quite a bit of cooking going on. But in other stories it may simply be mentioned that they sit down to a meal and I don't even tell what they're eating.

 

I suppose that the difference is the familiarty of the characters and their experience of being introduced to new foods or new styles of clooking.

 

As far as my name... to be honest, not a lot of thought went into that. While I was in college, I was taking computer classes at the same time as I was becoming interested in creative writing.

 

I wanted to establish an Internet account that was independent from my college ID to keep the two separated. When it was time to decide upon a name, I happened to be learning about 'multimapping' in my computer class and decided that I liked the sound of it.

 

The name that I used in my academic pursuits has long since fallen away, but all these years later, MultiMapper continues on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...