Thursday Thoughts

Working hard on my Flow galley. After an initial readthrough, I decided to go over it a second time for other tweaks. There were two substantive things that needed alteration - a better explanation of what a "Crescent" is (a rank, or rather lank thereof, amongst the water witches) and a deletion of a minor element that I ... uh ... wrote into the story and then completely forgot to bring back. Also a few tweaks to the use of computers / cellphones to make it less obvious how long ago the manuscript was written ... but decided to leave it on the subliminal assumption that events happen in 2007.

(You have to read the manuscript fairly closely to figure this out - look at the starting date, look at the number of days the book covers, and then note that the confrontation scene happens on a Sunday. But it's there.)

When I return the galley to the editor, I will be wrangling such information as schedules, cover creation, and the policy of review / gift copies ... and doubtless other things that I haven't considered.

Books Read in 2011 - and Random Statistics

Here's the list of the books I read in 2011 and some general, random and (hopefully) funny statistics I recorded throughout the year, including the overall death toll and vocabulary words picked up.

Before I get on to the meat, a confession: I'm rather embarrassed by the small number of books I read in 2011. This doesn't include the copyediting I did for Darwin's Evolutions or critiques written over at FWO, of course, but it still does make me wince ... and resolve for a more bookish 2012.

Totals: 19 books read

Raw stats first. Note that where the math seems off, this is generally attributed to anthologies that were "all of the above," so weren't tabulated either way.

Novels read in my genre (fantasy): 12
Secondary world: 4
Urban: 5
Novels read in mystery genre: 3
Anthologies: 4
Non-Fiction: 1
Sequels and prequels: 7
First person: 3
Third person single-POV: 0
Third person multi-POV: 12

Which seems to suggest third person single-POV is a dying breed. Some value judgments next:

Books I would recommend: 12
Books I was tempted to put down: 3

Finally, my "snarky" section.

For death toll, I'm only counting on-screen / described deaths or plot-related deaths that are given a specific number. For instance, in Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, Grahame-Smith quotes a statistic about 204 murders, then shows a news report about one of those deaths. The 204 murders not being directly related to the plot, just color, they don't add to the tally, but the news report does, for a total of one. A fantasy battle in which "hundreds" died would not get counted because it's not a specific number. I am not going to count non-fiction deaths, though ALVH gets a pass because I am too lazy to separate out the fictional characters from the historical ones.

Books over thirty years old: 0 (though one was right on the cusp)
New vocabulary words: 36
Number of books containing said: 12
Books with maps: 3
Appendix consultation necessary: 0
Cumulative death toll: 1029

For the vocabulary list, some of these words are not strictly "new" - but if I encountered a word and couldn't remember what it went, it entered the list. Some of these words I'd seen in other forms but never as an (adjective, noun, whatever). Here it is, for anyone's amusement:

Assart, bollard, cognoscente, cotte, demimonde, exigent, four-in-hand, inanition, infundibulum, leat, lemniscate, loy, lumenal, merlon, moiety, mooted, neurasthenia, ormolu, palatines, paynim, piacular, pother, purblind, scurfy, spindrift, spume, supererogation, suttee, thrapple, thyrsus, tocsin, toft, travertine, turbid, vagus, volte-face.

As a point of interest, blogger's spellchecker doesn't seem to recognize about half of those. And here are the actual books:

Witch Way To The Mall – ed. Esther Friesner
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter – Seth Grahame-Smith
Thunderer – Felix Gilman
The Fourth Bear – Jasper Fforde
The Cater Street Hangman – Anne Perry
The Heart of Myrial – Maggie Furey
Blood Rites – Jim Butcher
Sisters In Fantasy – ed. Susan Schwartz / Martin H. Greenberg
Water Witch – Connie Willis and Cynthia Felice
The Dragon of Despair – Jane Lindskold
The Sunflower – Simon Wiesenthal
The Magicians and Mrs. Quent – Galen Beckett
Familiars – edited by Denise Little
The Leper of Saint Giles – Ellis Peters
Madman’s Dance – Jana G. Oliver
The Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine – ed Marion Zimmer Bradley
Doppelgangster – Laura Resnick
Paradise 21 – Aubrie Dionne
The Virgin in the Ice – Ellis Peters

Thursday Thoughts

Galley for Flow - received!

Of course, I am hacking my lungs out and too tired to look at it except cross-eyed ...

GoodReads Review: The Virgin In The Ice

The Virgin in the Ice by Ellis Peters

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Deeply rooted in the turmoil of the war between Empress Maud and King Stephen in the 1100s, The Virgin In The Ice poses Brother Cadfael with a number of puzzles: a frozen angel, a wounded monk, and missing young nobles whose guardian is on the wrong side of the fighting. These mysteries collide with the threatening presence of a band of marauders.

As ever, this episode in Cadfael's chronicles is steeped in history and poetry, written with a thoughtful, pensive air - eminently appropriate for events seen through the monk's penetrating eyes. (That this extends to the other point of view characters merely maintains the cohesion of the novel.) That the mystery is perhaps less important to this novel than to others in the series makes it no less compelling a story. There is also a secondary "mystery" that offers an important and satisfying revelation into Cadfael's history.

However, there are certain patterns to these novels that can be viewed as detractions, and it is nowhere more evident than during the battle scene of this book. The writing style can best be described as elegant detachment - neither of which makes for a compelling fight or fights. This takes away somewhat from the climax of the scene.

That said, this book delivers a solid and satisfying reading experience overall ... and ends with a warming note of hope, for all the darkness.



View all my reviews

Thursday Thoughts

More thoughts on the love story ...

Looking at my tendencies in writing, I've often created stories where there's a tension between the character's role in life - not just their occupation, but the thing which defines and drives them - and a romantic interest. I don't, personally, believe that trading what you love for who you love is a fair or healthy exchange, and I think that's reflected a lot in my fiction.

This was, in fact, a huge issue with Who Wants To Be A Hero? ... where this potential conflict arises and, not only couldn't I see my way clear to writing my female lead choosing the love interest over (removed for spoilers), I couldn't see him allowing her to do so. It took much of the novel (knowing it was coming and planning ahead) to work out how I was going to handle it. It turned out to be a solution that was eminently appropriate to the format.

It's something that would be central to the rewrite-project-of-doom I had pondered, as arguably, most of the plot arc is catalyzed by a romance story - the villain's.

By the way, Unnatural Causes is still tabled - I want to come back to it when I have room to devote my full attention.

Thursday Thoughts

My brainpower has been consumed of late by lack of sleep: I have a new puppy, who while delightful and entertaining, also has yet to acquire the knack of sleeping through the night and tends to be quite vocal about her desire to get up. So the writing and editing has been slow going. Confessedly, some of my energy has been going to a roleplaying game ... but that's all right, I figure. Instant feedback, flexibility, collaboration ...

I miss collaborative writing, as well. It was always an enjoyable process, if bumpy - because I'm an incubator, coming with ideas over a long brew-time, brainstorming tended to be lopsided. I used to spur partners on by asking question after question after ... they must have started to think I couldn't speak in anything else. Surely that's not right?

Another reason to procrastinate, though, is that Scylla and Charybdis is approaching the point where I've got no choice but to tackle the dreaded synopsis ...

For Your Reading Pleasure ...

My "Burning The Midnight Oil" is now available in the current edition of NewMyths! Check it out ...

This story started as an FWO monthly challenge to write about an odd couple of some kind. I saw the topic its one couple and raised it a second ...