I have another chapter of A Lady of Morandau ready, but it doesn't feel like a good time to post it. It's not a violent chapter, but a brief but important passage has Anastasia receiving a modern assault rifle as a gift from her parents. In another chapter or two, I'm planning that she'll use it. This is not the time for any of that.

I don't buy the argument that I sometimes hear, that making things up in fiction has nothing to do with what you'd approve in reality. I happen to despise the entire horror genre, to the point that I would have a hard time shaking the hand of somebody like Anthony Hopkins, who has lent his cool to the idea of a despicable monster. Reality has enough horror in it. To make horror into entertainment seems to me like complicity. Weak complicity, I'll grant. But why get even a 1% solution of blood on your hands?

That is not the same, however, as saying that only Raggedy Ann stories of buttercups and lollipops are acceptable fiction. Bad things do happen in reality, and stories that have any real impact will usually have bad things happen in them. My concern is about how this is done. In reality, bad things often happen with no apparent compensation and no apparent meaning. But that's the horror of which we have enough. Also in reality, bad things do sometimes have some kind of redeeming meaning. I believe it can actually help, in finding that kind of meaning in real suffering, to work through examples in fiction. From the old artistic 'dulcis et utile' canon, that poetry should be 'sweet and useful', I'm willing to let the sweetness go, but I want to see some kind of utility for that price.

My story has a considerable amount of gunfire in it. In large part it is a fantasy about what might happen if, in a barbaric world, the fundamentally sane and decent people — or at least one of them — had superior firepower. What if, what if only, the next time some monster tries to do something horrible, he could run into someone like Anastasia? The story will also try, however feebly, to think about the implications of dangerous technology. How much would superior firepower really help? If it's not enough by itself, is it any use at all? If it is of partial use, what extra help does it need?

It is supposed to be one of the main things that have become clear by this point in the story, that the Morandau are all about enforcing gun control. They keep all the guns for themselves. It's not supposed to be clear that that's right, but the justification they offer is that the barbarian masses around them cannot possibly be trusted with that power. That's not supposed to seem like a crazy idea.

As far as I'm concerned, there are some stories for which no time is right. I don't feel that mine is one of those. But I do feel it isn't right just now. Most of the time, I think responsible fantasies about responsibility for gun violence are acceptable. Right now, I don't think any such fantasy is.

I'll post another chapter eventually, probably next year.