Unicorn Ramblings

Thursday Thoughts

2012-01-12T17:57:00.006-05:00

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

2012-01-02T13:13:00.012-05:00

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

2011-12-29T17:12:00.001-05:00

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

2011-12-18T20:31:00.001-05:00

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

2011-12-15T23:13:00.009-05:00

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

2011-12-08T23:27:00.006-05:00

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 ...

2011-12-05T14:56:00.003-05:00

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 ...

A Sale and a Release

2011-12-01T16:38:00.002-05:00

I just sold "Three Great Loyalties" to Niteblade! Nice affirmation from the editor: she said the vote to include it from the slush readers was unanimous (apparently this is rare).

And ... my story "The Changeling Letter" is now out in the current issue of Sorcerous Signals! (http://www.sorceroussignals.com) Check it out, enjoy, and please vote for your issue favorite.

Xmas Wishes for GSP Holiday Antho

2011-11-26T13:30:00.003-05:00

My story "Xmas Wishes" will be appearing in the Gypsy Shadow Publishing holiday anthology - a for-charity production. This story is set in the same contemporary world as Flow. More details as they emerge (on the anthology, not the story) ...

Thursday Thoughts

2011-11-17T19:06:00.010-05:00

Part of the reason the show "Glee" has always appealed to me - even when I feel it's suffered from slumps - is the intrinsic concept of found songs that perfectly encapsulate a moment, a scene, a character. It's a different feel from a true musical, where the songs are written to suit the characters; here, the process is more organic, finding two things that just happen to fit together. It's the joy in discovering a personal facet to something (more or less) universal.

I do this a lot with the music I listen to, and much of it gets permanently associated with a character, a scene or a situation - so much that even years later, if I play a certain song, I get flashbacks. Gloria Estefan's "Dangerous Game" will always conjure memories of Miayde and Treddian from Butterfly's Poison, the character assassin and her scheming opposite; Leann Rimes' "The Safest Place" may have gotten a place in the Scylla and Charybdis soundtrack, but it still rings of its original place describing the (unrequited) romance between Mikane and Tieruko. (Hmm ... what is it with me and M and T couples?)

Unnatural Causes has a songlist, but the associations aren't permanent in my head yet. Probably the snarkiest choice I made, however, was for the queen, a minor character who largely serves to stand as an authority figure in the background.

Her themesong? "What Do The Simple Folk Do?" from Camelot.

GoodReads Review: Paradise 21

2011-11-15T10:47:00.001-05:00

Paradise 21 by Aubrie Dionne

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Paradise 21 is a fast-paced, energetic ride through a space opera universe populated by generation ships, space pirates and exotic, hostile planets. The cast is sizable but never unmanageable, with some intriguing personalities and character quirks. The action scenes are particularly enjoyable: the author has a way of writing that makes you want to read faster, a gripping anxiety for the characters.

I do consider this space opera, not science fiction – though the events and places in Paradise 21 didn’t strike me as scientifically sound, the novel created a mood where that didn’t matter. The Star Wars comparison made by other reviewers is apt: you know the creatures and gadgets might be nonsense, but you’re having too much fun to care. There were a handful of places where my suspension of disbelief still got twinged, though.

Another thing to praise was the portrayal of space pirate Tiff. The way she teeters back and forth between self-absorption and a developing selflessness was very satisfying. I was less sure about Barliss. I enjoyed his maniacal calculation, the way he knew to play the social game but had no actual empathy – but I found he came off too cruel / evil to be wholly believable.

The romance did, at times, feel a bit forced – and there were a few moments where I wondered about the appropriateness of Aries’ line of thought. (When survival is on the line, this is not the moment to notice your companion’s handsomeness.) Similarly, I thought some of the dialogue was unnatural – characters explaining too much, too clearly, asking questions that seemed implausible to pose to a stranger just met.

That said, there’s moments of beauty in the book, and ultimately, an optimism that was heartening to encounter. It’s definitely a fun read.

View all my reviews

Thursday Thoughts

2011-11-10T14:56:00.004-05:00

Official thoughts on Nanowrimo at this juncture: let's call the whole thing off.

I may try to do a Nano-esque stint at some other time, because I'm dying to give this novel focused, undivided attention ... and that's precisely what I can't do right now without putting too much on hold. Scylla and Charybdis needs its final polish; I have online gaming obligations; I still have an unfinished short story; for that matter I have an entire unedited second novel (Who Wants To Be A Hero?) that desperately needs my eye - I finished it March or so of this year!; and there's a ton of house reconfiguring left to do.

I am fairly sure there was an excess of punctuation in that last sentence.

Thursday Thoughts

2011-11-03T19:44:00.006-04:00

I've had an extremely slow start to Nanowrimo. I'm having new tile floors put in, and combined with lingering fall allergies, I was so ill yesterday I couldn't function ... and I have company, so social time has devoured writing time. That said, I'm not calling it off yet: I can produce a prodigious amount in a sitting / weekend.

That said, if I do bow out, I don't look at it as losing or failing. Rather, I will be making a conscious choice to divide my time more evenly among other activities. I devote enough time and discipline to writing that I don't feel as if I'm giving it short shrift.

The title settled in as Unnatural Causes for now. It was Supernatural Causes, but I decided the word had a modern-paranormal / ghost-story vibe I didn't care for. Since I'm very definitely trying to avoid the overdone (to me) concept of the contemporary world detective investigating paranormal events, it seemed important to make the distinction.

So I'm going to veer and use the old pre-modern concept of natural versus unnatural within the framework of the story. Since sorcery in this setting is performed by thought-machines, and the category of the unnatural, in medieval thought, encompassed anything being made to act outside its nature - that is, an arrow shot would be unnatural because the natural quality of wood is to obey gravity - this seems doubly appropriate.

Thursday Thoughts

2011-10-27T17:14:00.007-04:00

I know I haven't posted in a while - here's my attempt at getting back to schedule. With Nanowrimo nearly upon us, it should be interesting. Hopefully, I'll have lots to talk about. Equally hopefully, I won't be tempted to stud it with profanity.

I want to address something quickly - and that's the idea of realistic dialogue. It's common wisdom among writers that "As you know, Bob," dialogue is frowned upon: a long passage where one character sums up something they both know. However, there are subtler forms of this. People leave out bits in their speech constantly, not just past events, but complete explanations, specific references, emotional states ... and things they may think inside the confines of their head, but would never say (exact perhaps under extreme duress).

Obviously, story dialogue is a sculptured form of real dialogue. If dialogue were rendered completely consistently, it would need tons of footnotes and a shot of caffeine. However, I find that you can get a more realistic and intriguing in-character conversation by strategically allowing characters to assume, elide, short-circuit ... and sometimes, say nothing at the worst possible moment.

When a character can say one thing in dialogue and the reader knows - without needing a narrative aside - that they mean something else, I think a writer has opened new possibilities for tension. Conflict can hinge as much off what isn't said as what is.

Thursday Thoughts

2011-10-06T17:53:00.007-04:00

With Nanowrimo creeping up on us, I should be scrambling to finish as much as possible to clear the decks - but life has me scrambling too much to spend as much time with writing as I would like. Case in point: the story I've started has hardly begun - though I like what's developing so far, as I discover more about the character and her circumstances - and as far as the editing pass on Scylla and Charybdis, I'm still ...

No, actually, I'm off the space station. Barely!

Does anyone else have a horrible time with titles? I'm afraid to brace Nano without a working title ... wait, who am I kidding? There's no such thing as a working title for me. It's just "the horrible preliminary title that will stick because I can't think of anything better." The few times I've had to retitle a story for one reason or another turned into an uphill battle. Here's the worst:

Firstborn / The Dreamweaver's Dispute: Had to change the title because the magazine had printed a story with the same title in the previous issue ... by Orson Scott Card, no less. I did a brainstorm where I wrote down every word I could think of that might relate to the story - character type, name, nouns, verbs, etc. I spent hours kicking around ideas with another person ... and this is still the best I ended up with.

Thursday Thoughts

2011-09-22T18:50:00.006-04:00

So I've had some delay in working on my editing for Scylla and Charybdis ... because I've had workmen in and out ... and I'm on the "read out loud" editing pass. I do not want to entertain / horrify them and embarrass / embarrass / mortally embarrass myself.

What I've just finished doing, too, is reading through all my worldbuilding and character notes for the still-unnamed fantasy / mystery novel. I've tweaked some points, either due to inadvertent contradiction or better ideas left dangling that I forgot about. I am trying to imprint enough of this in my brain that I don't miss any of the cool things I've created. Well. Most of them. If the whole book were this cool, you'd have to chip the ice off it.

Yes, I'm being facetious.

About to start a short story based on a writing exercise. Here's the original snippet, yet to be revised - for instance, I'm changing the name, since I appropriated Lina for something else, and some of the descriptiveness needs work:

Turgid artic waters rushed about the isle, swept by low currents towards the icelands and eventually, the base of the world. From here, Lina could see the dim shadow of the immense column that anchored them in the field of stars, but that was not her destination.

She clutched her cloak tighter to her, a speck of brown in the small boat, a figure no smaller than a child, though girlish amber curls had been given the hatchet job before she applied. One of the first healers to do so; accepted when three months of waiting turned up only two other volunteers, none quite so qualified.

The ferryman conducted her without glance or sound, but his apprentice kept peeking under his elbow at her. "Why are you doing this, miss?" he asked finally.

The voice did not match the woman, resonant, midnight-deep. "Someone has to."

Sunday Snippet

2011-09-18T20:13:00.006-04:00

A section from early in Scylla and Charybdis, where Anaea goes to an elder on the space station about her encounter with a refugee - the first time she's ever met a male. The following is part of the dialogue:

“Is that part of why men aren’t allowed out of isolation? The language barrier?” The question hadn’t seemed so foolish in her head. To take her eyes elsewhere, Anaea focused on the pointillism painting behind Thalestris’ head. She had done a three-month rotation as an artist apprentice, but she hadn’t felt creative enough to stay, though she enjoyed the act of making something with her hands.

Thalestris chuckled. “A trifle, perhaps. A larger part of the reason is how durable Y-Poisoning is: it can stay dormant on surfaces for a long time. Bring it in with a salvage, expose a male who happens to be wandering the station, and you have a madman on the loose.”

Anaea bit her lip and said nothing.

“You’re thinking that seems tenuous. Remember this disease shattered everything we know.” Thalestris closed her eyes, added mildly, “There is, of course, the social element: reintroducing men would be disruptive. Technological advances recently have made it possible to consider the idea, but it will be a long debate.”

Anaea tried to imagine living side by side with someone like Gwydion, wondered why it was so hard to picture. Was he so different from her, apart from the physical element? And she had seen women – not many, but a few – who were larger and more muscular than he was.

“You’re saying that men are disruptive?” she asked.

“No more or less than we would be, in the reverse situation,” Thalestris said. “Men and women are strangely designed. They do not fit together with ease.”

Yet people had lived as such for far longer than they had not. Anaea recoiled from her doubt, swallowing. Thinking these questions made her uncomfortable.

Thursday Thoughts

2011-09-15T18:27:00.009-04:00

I've done very little writing work since finishing Scylla and Charybdis, but I think one of the most important things for a writer is to learn your own cycles and habits and understand the difference between valid recharging time ... and goofing off or procrastination. The pitfalls of not having enough "discipline" are obvious: lack of product, minimal editing, etc. The pitfalls of having too much discipline are maybe a little subtler, but just as harmful. It can take the joy and inspiration out of writing.

Besides ... when you wake up, immediately starting make house maintenance phonecalls, get in the car, drive to a gig, come back, and alternate two different work requirements, ultimately finishing at 12:45am ... this ... is not a time for great writing product. It is, in fact, a time when incoherence is not only acceptable, it is expected.

Which I suppose should actually mean it is the perfect opportunity to product some surrealism ...

Sunday Snippet

2011-09-11T23:45:00.001-04:00

In honor of the SaC pass just finished, here's the first two hundred and fifty words (about a standard book page) of the novel as it stands:

Waiting behind the airlock door, Anaea Carlisle tried to wrap her mind around the nature of the refugees she might see on the other side – if any were still alive. She clutched her medic’s kit in twitching hands and flicked a glance to Valasca Braun, the angular woman who led the team. Why did the chief doctor insist on leading so many salvage missions?

The door oozed open. Anemic grey light filtered in from the ship’s docking station. Valasca gestured them forward. “Stay cautious,” she said through her mask. “If anyone is alive, they won’t be expecting rescue. Stun first, apologize later.” The techs at Themiscyra Station had retrieved the crew roster, but hyperspace had damaged the ship too much for an attempt at jury-rigging communications.

Even through the mask’s filter, the corridor smelled like overstewed tomatoes. The hum of electronics sputtered and snorted, disconcerting Anaea: she was used to hearing such sounds as white noise. Every time they cracked, she tensed, expecting someone to leap out. Of the six-woman team, she was the least imposing – one of the tallest, but slender and pale. In the light, her dark auburn hair washed out.

Valasca led the way to a door that had been melted open. The ship’s hub – central point for navigation – lay beyond, choked with broken girders. Anaea gasped as she saw the two bodies. Her eyes widened at the shapes, larger and more square than what she thought of as human norm. One had a fringe of hair on the chin. Males.

Editing Pass Finished!

2011-09-11T23:39:00.005-04:00

I just finished what I'll choose to think of as the third pass over Scylla and Charybdis. First pass and a half was making notes in the hard copy and then transferring them; second (and a half) pass was what I've just finished, going through the computer file again, and that extra half pass comes from having the earlier chapters critiqued and extensive revisions.

Next step is to do a pass where I look for continuity issues and whenever I encounter something, scan the whole manuscript for references / lack thereof ... combined with a read-out-loud test, since my brain seems to work such that these two complement each other.

I had the word count down as I approached the final chapters, but adding and expanding the emotional reactions there increased it again. I keep telling myself not to get freakish about added words, but I don't think I'm listening ... ;-) Still, there's no doubt I added a significant amount of necessary fleshing out.

For the curious, word count:

Draft: 161,124
First pass: 153,325
Second (or third, or whatever) pass: 151,784

The Changeling Letter to Sorcerous Signals

2011-09-11T21:13:00.004-04:00

I just sold "The Changeling Letter" to Sorcerous Signals (http://www.sorceroussignals.com)! Look for it in November ... please consider voting as your favorite story, too. Don't worry, I will definitely remind you then.

Thursday Thoughts

2011-09-08T09:36:00.011-04:00

I'm almost done with my building notes for my mystery novel, which needs a title before I start writing, or it will never have one. Ironically, I already have the first line more or less figured out in my head.

My main concern with the narrative is that I'm writing from the first person perspective of the familiar, who is from a very alien mindset. This is avoiding the traditional trope, where you have a narrator who watches the genius detective. I decided on this because it's a fantasy novel first, a mystery novel second. The point is, however, I need to avoid making her narration a "humans in funnysuits" situation - where the differences of mindset and culture are only skin-deep. Among the attributes of her people is the fact that though they're very perceptive and clever - brilliant, even - they don't understand falsehood. Which is where her sidekick / the enchanter's apprentice comes in ...

Another stretch for me that might not be for other people is I've placed the apprentice in a romantic relationship best described as dysfunctional. She loves him, he wants her up until about the point he can actually have her, and it's circled back and forth like this against any better judgment for a few years before the novel starts. Cross your fingers for me that I don't chicken out or make it too black and white. Not to say that it's an acceptable situation, but there's a difference between an opposing character and a villain.

GoodReads Review: Doppelgangster

2011-09-07T22:49:00.002-04:00

Doppelgangster by Laura Resnick

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Esther Diamond is a struggling actress in New York City ... and sometimes the only job you have to help you through is that of a singing waitress at the friendly neighborhood mob hangout. This leads her headlong into murder, mayhem and the tabloids as a doppelganger curse dogs (... and speaking of dogs ...) the gangsters. If this isn't complicated enough, she has to avoid the suspicion of her hunky cop would-be boyfriend long enough ... to actually *become* his girlfriend.

Fast paced, witty, clever and consistently good at racketing up the insanity - all without ever sacrificing believability or heart - this book is a joy to read. Resnick has a unique grasp on the comic aspects of mobsters - no one writes them quite like she does, and watching scholastic sorcerer Max try to grasp the language is just one of the many hilarious sequences in the book. And the dog - excuse me, familiar - is a charming character in her own right.

This book pokes fun at some tropes of urban fantasy and inverts others, and does it with affection. As far as other cliches, one of my personal pet peeves is when a main character has to hide something from her significant other, sometimes with "comic" mishaps preventing her from doing so, until he finds out anyway, and thus much angst and aggravation ensues. Resnick handles the inevitable problems with Lopez in what I found to be a satisfying way, sidestepping my usual irritation with the entire trope.

If I have one quibble, it's that the mystery is a bit weak: I figured it out by process of "what has the writer included?" elimination rather than clues-in-story deduction (and by one suspect being a trifle too obvious). But the story is so much about the characters puzzling it out that it really doesn't matter.

This is one of the few books that has made me guffaw aloud - repeatedly - and yet it is rife with moments of excitement, danger, drama and a little heat. Highly recommended.

View all my reviews

Teaser Tuesdays

2011-09-06T14:13:00.003-04:00

Saw this on Cherie Reich's blog and couldn't resist jumping in:

 Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following: 

Grab your current read

Open to a random page

Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others.)

Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers.

So here's mine, from page 73 of Doppelgangster, by Laura Resnick:

I smelled something foul floating up from the laboratory, a putrid, acrid odor mixed with smoke, incense, and ... wet dog fur?

"Max?" I called.

GoodReads Review: The Best of MZB Fantasy

2011-09-03T15:55:00.003-04:00

The Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley Fantasy Magazine Volume 1 by Marion Zimmer Bradley

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I came into this anthology with high hopes, because while the years have taken the luster off them, I love my issues of MZB Fantasy Magazine and think they contain some of the most enjoyable, while still wholesome stories I have ever encountered. Unfortunately, this anthology - filled with what the editor considers the best stories of a range of issues (I am not sure how many issues of MZBF this encompasses; she does not specify); not, notably, necessarily those that the readers voted as the best - failed to live up to my hopes.

Of the stories in this anthology, I would have to say that the humor stories are the most disappointing ... strange, since one of my favorite qualities of the magazine was its ability to provide light but still believable stories. But in this anthology, the humor stories are generally of that quality where the behavior of the characters is stretched to ridiculous for the sake of a joke, ruining any suspension of disbelief I might have had. I didn't care what happened, and the humor wasn't gut-splitting enough to overcome that.

The editor's commentary, overall, detracts from the book. Bad enough that the first story is basically a "punchline" story (in that the only purpose of the tale is to reveal the final line, whether humorous or not), but MZB chooses to telegraph that ending ... making the actual read a bit of a moot point. The personal comments in the intros make it feel as if the magazine was a friends-only club ... not the impression I got from reading MZB's editorials throughout the issues I have.

It's a fantasy magazine, yet at least twice, I counted in the comments, "This is the closest to science fiction we've ever published ..." (you can't say that twice unless they're tied, can you?) and at least two other stories that verged on that territory. This in an anthology of nineteen stories, making about twenty percent of the total ... more if you consider two of the stories are essentially flash fiction.

Those two pieces of flash fiction are very vivid and enjoyable, however. Also of note is Jo Clayton's "Change", which gets deep into the mind of a non-human entity. " The Dancer of Chimaera" from Diana L. Paxson shows the unexpected consequences when a shy, girlish dancer on a space station finds true love. Interestingly, both of these are stories MZB lumped into the SF category (I'd argue that "Change" isn't).

Some of the better stories beyond those draw strongly on a mythic tradition. For Mary C. Aldridge's "The Adinkra Cloth," it is African myth; for Lawrence Watt-Evans' "The Palace of al-Tir al-Abtan," it is Arabian legend. I also liked Pat Cirone's "To Father A Sohn," though I am never a fan of invented pronouns and there's got to be a better way to do it.

Overall, most of the stories are readable, but have distinct flaws, and few are really exceptional. I wouldn't go out of my way to track down this anthology.

View all my reviews

Now Available: The Herd Mentality

2011-09-02T14:55:00.005-04:00

The second issue of ParABnormal Digest, with my "The Herd Mentality" is now available for purchase here:

http://sdpbookstore.com/parabnormaldigest.htm

Four words: psychic-vampire unicorn story.

This one doesn't warrant a full Anatomy of an Idea post, as I can't recall a lot about how it came to be ... except to say that I very consciously looked at early portrayals of unicorns and the coloring of their horns and imitated that.

Thursday Thoughts

2011-09-01T14:54:00.010-04:00

Sometimes, to get through one part of the writing process, you have to treat yourself with the promise of something else - or at least, that's my theory right now as I proclaim: verily, I will get through this editing pass of Scylla and Charybdis before I start writing another short story. It's looking more and more like my next novel project will be held over for November so I can commiserate with the Nanowrimo people. With luck, SaC will be prepared for the query process by then. It may not be in queries, as I'm still working through Journal of the Dead ...

With Flow up for the editor's eye soon (Double Dragon's, that is), I've toyed with the idea of another novel in that setting. Two ways I can go: a sequel (which opens up the potential for Hadrian's point of view) in the "new adventures happening to these characters" sense rather than the "continuation of the same story" sense ... or an unrelated mystery story I've been kicking around with an Asrai and her self-appointed mortal companion. In the grand tradition of Flow (okay, not very grand), this second idea is likely to involve another character cribbed from a MU*, a bird-like street kid named Gray (short for Igraine).

So I would just like to state for the record that the mounds of time I've spent roleplaying lately are not wasted, thank you very much. Roleplaying gave me my first book sale. Can't argue with that.

Thursday Thoughts

2011-08-25T08:36:00.007-04:00

I've mentioned this elsewhere, but the good news is I've finished my winter holiday anthology story. The bad news is, with a word count ceiling of 5k for the anthology, it came in somewhere over 8k. I'm working on a first editing pass now, which has it down almost to 8k, but it looks like this one is going to have to find another home.

Imagine the poor little homeless story, crouching on a park bench somewhere, feeding the pigeons ...

I'm still working on my character notes for the mystery novel, and though I'm enjoying the process, I'm starting to burn out on one thing - the names. I've chosen a naming convention which produces a very distinct look for very little effort (though those of you who have been following me for a while know that I love naming languages and can spend hours putting them together - heck, I even looked up a supplementary list of the hundred most common words to use) (this is an exceedingly long paranthetical and for that, I apologize) (where was I?) ...

In any case - though the naming convention definitely has a lot going for it, one of the things working against it is that it becomes difficult to come up with authentic sounding names after you've put together, oh, thirty or forty. Most will not appear in the text ... but at this point, without a clearer idea of how the plot will play out, I can't be sure which will be needed. So I'm sure that I've omitted some I'll need to go back and add, conversely.

I once saw a panel of mystery writers at one of my local(ish) bookstores who commented that they don't know whodunnit when they start writing - and because I think it would be fun, I decided to take that route. I'm going to firmly squelch a tendency I've had in the past, which is to set up the mystery so multiple people dunnit. One murderer. Two at most. It does not need to be a social event.

8/18 - 8/24
Word count: 1,959

GoodReads Review: Madman's Dance

2011-08-24T12:03:00.002-04:00

Madman's Dance by Jana Oliver

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This, the final (?) book in Jana Oliver's Time Rovers series, brings the events of the previous two books to an explosive conclusion - shapeshifters, time travelers, meddlers from a future beyond, anarchists, and all combinations thereof. As with the previous two books, the majority of the action takes place in Victorian London, with some events in "now-time" from the prospective of the time travelers ... well, the point of view characters who time travel ... there's a dizzying amount of crossover, but it all comes together with crystal coherence in the end.

For the first third of the book, however, I was disappointed by the flow. In Madman's Dance, Oliver does a good job summarizing while still moving the plot forward, but for most of this portion of the book, I felt the characters were almost exclusively reactive, responding to the situation without much agency of their own. I also felt just a bit disconnected from events - I think in good part because Jacynda, who is so vibrant in the first two, spends much of this one profoundly altered and just ... not herself. As a new reader, I would not have been drawn to her. As someone coming from the previous two books, I missed the old Jacynda terribly.

A potential word of caution: while, again, Oliver does a great job filling you in on previous plot points without bogging down in it (which is a skillful feat, given how much happens in those two books that is vital to this one), I think the book loses something for not being read with immediacy. If you're going to pick up this series, I'd recommend going straight through.

But it all turns with Jacynda, and when she gets her feet back underneath her, so does the book ... and the way she leaps back into action is a delight. Her audacity and the controlled (barely) chaos she creates are a pleasure to read. The plot device that damaged her at the end of Virtual Evil comes into play and has intriguing implications in the later portions of the book. The reader learns a lot more about the transitives (shapeshifters), their organization, the Lead Assassin who emerged from the shadows in Virtual Evil ... and their future.

The ending of this book is a pitch-perfect illustration of character and exactly the kind of denouement you would want for a time traveler. It made me want to stand up and cheer. I was never quite sure I bought the romantic storyline here, but I think that's personal rather than anything amiss with the way it was portrayed. Definitely recommended as an ultimately satisfying close to the series.

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Sunday Snippet

2011-08-21T16:50:00.004-04:00

With where I am in both works I'm presently ... working on ... I had difficulty finding a section that didn't give away earlier action. This is from my winter holiday story:

The presents glinted under the tree, but Irena hardly thought about gifts this year - not even the look on her grandfather's face when he saw the antique watch. Instead, she was fixed on the party, the thought of spending time with Justin, and the hovering promise of mistletoe.

Christmas Eve arrived with no phone call from her mother, perhaps because she stood staring at the phone, willing it to ring. Irena expected to feel more resentment, but her heart seemed to be encased in ice. It was difficult to feel anything, even joy over the snow that had delighted her - still fresh and crisp on the ground, as if it had fallen that very morning.

"I am sure her duties are very important," her grandfather said.

"A midnight call, I expect." Her grandmother's pinched face encouraged her to believe this. "So as to reach us when it's properly Christmas."

Phone call or not, Irena didn't intend to be home at midnight. She endured a day of carols, cookies and traditional Christmas movies - a Christmas Story, Elf and, for reasons never properly explained, The Long Kiss Goodnight - with her attention elsewhere. She felt more distant from her family than she ever had before and wondered if it was more than the party on her mind.

"I don't feel well," she said after dinner, feeling the tingle of the lie dance on her tongue. "I think I ate too much. Do you mind if I lie down?"

"Go on, dear."

Irena trudged upstairs, resisting the urge to sprint instead. She plumped her pillow and blankets in what she hoped was a convincing fashion. Truth was, she had never broken out of her house before. What if she couldn't manage the climb down? Television made it seem so easy. Obligatory for any teenaged girl, in fact. At the very least, she knew she couldn't risk wearing tights and a dress. Well, she had planned on slacks anyhow. It was dorky, but her thighs were too big.

She tossed her cellphone on the dresser and eased the window open, wincing when it creaked. The cold slapped her in the face. She held her breath, sliding out shoulders-first. Her fingers clutched awkwardly at a frost-covered branch. It stung. She should have worn gloves, but they were downstairs in the closet. She wobbled out into the crook of the tree and pushed the window as far shut as it would go from the outside.

Then she was alone in the darkness.

(Belated) Thursday Thoughts

2011-08-19T10:16:00.010-04:00

Oh, for the ability to time travel!

Yesterday was a long day, and I just lost track of it. Headed bedwards, I had the thought, "Ack, my post!"

So what's up this Thursday? Time travel. No, not really - I forget that I do, in fact, write about time travelers and have several of their stories pending submission. (The most recent story has a major plot hole which I still haven't plugged, so its submission date is indefinite.) Fantasy sometimes makes it difficult to joke around - something that seems to be meant in humor in a piece of fiction could be literal. So just to clarify ... the only time travel involved here is my effectively backdating this post.

This editing pass of Scylla and Charybdis is winding down - my cursor blinks at the beginning of Chapter Thirty-Two. There are a few throughlines I'm concerned about, but my intention is to do a separate pass where I exclusively focus on whole-book continuity issues and bounce around to fix those. This will be combined with my reading aloud pass, since bizarrely, I seem to notice large-scale continuity questions while reading out loud. My brain is a strange beast.

I'm beginning to weary of my character building for the mystery novel - which needs a title, stat! Or at least before I start writing, because if I start writing without one, it will never be titled - but I'm reluctant to pause and wing it. I'm over halfway through, but it's a lot of material. One choice I made I'm regretting a little is I've given each character songs to describe them and Tarot significators. These have been harder to choose than I had thought.

The victim's song (or one of two) is Celine Dion's "Immortality." I didn't actually choose it to be ironic, but now I'm looking back and facepalming.

Sunday Snippet

2011-08-14T10:45:00.004-04:00

This is a piece from another Flow-verse Borderwatch story. (Not fully edited, so forgive a little roughness.) Brianna has just learned that her sister is pregnant ... while she and a group of agents are hunting an Alastyn (a waterhorse fairy) living as a mortal. They confront "Adam" on a beach, and the following ensues:

Carter slammed into Adam from behind and drove a fist into his lung. The skinny kid was a powerhouse and that blow would have incapacitated a human – but Alastyns have the lungs of a horse, and it only slowed him. I drew Adam’s attention with a feint of the knife. His head jerked around, teeth snapping, but he was too far from the water to transform. He kicked out at Carter, who mewled as the blow caught him below the kneecap.

We kept Adam from the water, circling. My thoughts whirled, already imagining sleepless nights spent nursing my niece/nephew – a hazy hermaphrodite – and miles driven as Greta forgot appointments or lingered to exchange coy words with a clerk.

“Brianna!” Marcus bellowed. Adam was upon me, far too fast. I drove the blade forward in a belly-thrust. It glanced off his ribcage, but the shallow cold-iron knick drew a shrill scream.

I locked my thoughts on the present. Unprofessional, sloppy … now to correct my mistake.

Marcus stayed back, blocking the retreat as Carter and I closed in. A technical specialist, Marcus knew enough fighting to stay out of trouble, but we were the enforcers.

Adam bared his teeth. “Who are you people?”

“Does it matter?” I asked.

Carter and I exchanged looks and moved in tandem. He kicked Adam’s legs out from under him as I lunged. The Alastyn hit the ground; I landed on his chest. I pushed the blade against the side of his throat.

“Ahhh …” The aspirated hiss of pain hung suspended, as if Adam were afraid to close his lips.

“Nice work,” Marcus said. “Finish it.”

Adam made a sound of disbelief. “If you know what I am, you know what kind of allies I have.”

“You want to give us names?” I said. “We’ll be happy to take care of them, too. Otherwise – shut up.”

He sank against the sand, but the smirk flitted back. “You should have her name it Dalia.”

I stiffened and – before I could catch myself up in questions – drove the blade home.

“What was that about?” Carter asked.

“Nothing,” I said, rolling off the body. I left the knife in place. We would bury him like that, with the remains of his victims.

Thursday Thoughts

2011-08-11T08:46:00.001-04:00

I took about a two week break from my weekly feature(s) (assuming my recent Sunday addition counts) (oh, how I love parantheses (no, I'm not done yet)), unannounced and unplanned, but now I'm back.

The good news is I wrote more this week and am starting to retrench. The bad news is ... these words were in a short story for an anthology that has a 5k ceiling, and I am already about three hundred words over and not near done yet, though the end is in sight. I'll see how much I can cut, but I'm not willing to warp the story to shorten it. It's a winter-holiday theme charity anthology, so I'd love to get the story into the word count and done ... we'll see.

The entertaining thing that's been happening as I work on character profiles for the mystery novel is I've discovered personalities, motives, and new suspects whom I didn't anticipate. I've also uncovered new aspects of my world. I may never use some of what I've written down, but it has gotten the gears turning. At this point, I'm almost wondering if I should just backburner this when done, finish my novel(s) editing, and begin for Nanowrimo. I no longer participate on the forums, but the sense that so many people are in the same boat is still encouraging.

8/4 - 8/10

Word count: 1,536

Thursday Thoughts

2011-07-28T09:06:00.000-04:00

Editing on Scylla and Charybdis has me a mite discouraged. I'm adding so much emotional content that I never realized was lacking - which not only is pumping an already unacceptable word count, it's making me worry about my original writing process.

I'm at about the midpoint of the novel, which features one of Anaea's lowest points. She's sacrificed herself for a friend - I won't get into any more detail than that - and when an opportunity to escape comes up, she can't (ethically) take it.

I do realize that, in part, my take on character emotion is influenced by Ann Hood's Creating Character Emotions, which (among other points) emphasizes two things: showing the emotional reaction / feeling rather than telling it (showing the way the fear makes the character feel rather than labeling it fear) and avoiding the obvious cliches on how emotion makes people react. So I also do worry, as I add bits, that the reactions are too subtle / oblique ... but for me, I would rather err on the side of obscurity rather than hammering a reader.

As a sidebar - only a few more days to buy Taming The Weald from Gypsy Shadow Publishing and get two free harp tracks!

7/21 - 7/27

Word count: 783

Sunday Snippet

2011-07-24T14:33:00.005-04:00

Since Fatecraft is now available at Darwin's Evolutions, and Loyal Dice is due out soon, I thought I would put up an excerpt from the next story in this series. It hasn't had its final edit before submission yet (much less an editor's eye), so please forgive a little roughness, but here Pazia and Vanchen have come into the hospitality of a forest race known as the Kivesh. (Iphiri, for the record, is a goddess of chance.)

Pazia awoke before her companion and crept into the shrine chamber. Her arm was still sore, but she could move it without wincing. Hafsha knelt, turning lengths of bone over in her hands. The daserii hung back, recognizing the ritual casting of morning lots.

Hafsha’s nostrils flared; she looked up. “Pazia. Please sit with me?”

“I don’t want to interrupt …”

“You are known to Iphiri. You are welcome here.”

Pazia knelt opposite the Kivesh, hands on her knees. “Thank you.” She ventured a question, “The people who brought us here yesterday seemed nervous. Is there something out there?”

“The forest is angry with us,” the priestess replied. “It has been this way for some months. Best to tread lightly.”

“Are you seeking guidance for that?”

“It -” Hafsha faltered. “Among other things.“ She changed the subject. “Do you know the language of the bones?”

“Somewhat – but not well,” she admitted. “I know a bit about every game of chance, but I’m more familiar with seer dice.”

Hafsha seemed to relax at this admission. “Close your eyes, then, so they might fall as they will.”

Pazia did so, waiting. The tink against stone echoed in her head. She squinted open one eye to see Hafsha pass her hand over the bones.

“You may look,” the priestess allowed.

Pazia complied. “What do they mean?”

“They mean …” Her lips rippled, not exactly pursing. “That good fortune has come to us as a gift from the gods, without expectation of return.”

Pazia had seen, in the second before the bones were covered, two crossed bones that indicated a trial or test. Hafsha was not being totally honest about the results. Had she and Vanchen walked from one danger into another?

Thursday Thoughts

2011-07-21T09:41:00.000-04:00

More editing done on Scylla and Charybdis - well, that's been the case pretty much every week, but this week I banged through a scene I keep dithering about removing. It's a word-game tournament, which Anaea enters on a whim, and which has unexpected consequences in the following chapter ... but a whole chapter of this, even though I keep trimming the events, still seems excessive.

As for mystery project, I've just encountered the reason why I had pondered waiting until later in my character-building to do my main characters: my entries get longer by bits and bobs as I go on. The entry for the prince - who is a semi-major character - is about as long as the entry for the apprentice, who is the main character's sidekick (more or less ...). I don't know whether it's momentum or shifting moods as I work.

I put this question up on my writerly Facebook, and I'll repeat it here. For those of you who read mysteries, a quick poll. Which do you prefer:

1. Books where the murder happens in the first pages (if not on the first page) and the murder is the immediate focus.

2. Books where the murder happens later on (but still early), giving the reader time to identify with the victim, while some connected plot thread provides the tension.

Or ... it doesn't matter as long as it's good. ;-)

I've already decided which way I'm taking my project - just curious.

7/14 - 7/20
Word count: 873 (oy ... ouch)

Sunday Snippet

2011-07-17T15:03:00.003-04:00

Since I've been talking about Flow a fair bit lately, here's the opening of another short story in the same setting:

Crouched over his laptop in a dank SleepRite motel somewhere southwest of Cleveland, Mannix Tippet waited for the werewolf to call.

The beast was not expecting Mannix to answer. The room three doors down was temporary residence of the water-witch Tala Blight, who had offered him sanctuary and a cure - as if that could absolve him of the blood he had shed. It had been simplicity to tap the hotel phone system. When the beast called Tala's room to confirm where they would meet tonight, he would not reach her.

Mannix shifted on the bed, starting a minor fugue in the springs, and pulled up his file on Blight. There before him, all the electronic details of her life: her saving habits to her tastes in fiction to how many times she had purchased lavish presents for friends who never reciprocated. Something more precise and useful than magic. Witches relied on it too much; she didn't even own a cellphone.

He knew, without asking questions, that he would kill her. His malice was not for her personally, but it was also immutable. His superiors in the Borderwatch had told him there was informal peace and the supernatural threats both organizations had to face were more important than any difference in methods. The word 'peace' was hollow when a good man like his cousin died on a mission - and the unidentified witch who guided him emerged without a mark on her.

His cousin had drowned.

Mannix had read the official report, which claimed it had been an accident. That meant nothing when a few bytes could erase any truth.

"Take the beast," were his official orders from the Borderwatch. "Use her to find him if you have to, but make sure you can deny it."

Thursday Thoughts

2011-07-14T09:30:00.012-04:00

So much work, so little time! I'm currently trying to finish a story for an anthology call at the end of the month, and I realize that at some point, I am probably going to have to put everything else down and cram it if I want to finish and do any editing. As I have previously stated (somewhat tongue in cheek), it would probably be technically cleaner if I didn't have time to edit - but that's the only part of the story that might be better for not being touched. But in part due to a crazy-busy schedule, in part due to four major house issues I've had to wrestle, and in part due to the gaming (I admit it!), my progress for the past few weeks has slowed to a crawl.

Also working on character profiles for my mystery story and ran into a very silly problem. I had initially drawn up the suspects list with the victim's sister as one of the suspects - an issue of greed, as she would become the guardian of the victim's son. Then, when I sat down to write this character, this intense, perfect background wove its way out of me ... and the character was both an orphan and single. Whoops.

I thought about this long and hard, and decided to ditch the sister line. I have enough different motives and characters not to need greed, and the "new" background better fits the victim's style.

7/7 - 7/13

Word Count: 727

GoodReads Review: The Leper of Saint Giles

2011-07-12T23:43:00.001-04:00

Leper of Saint Giles by Ellis Peters

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In this fifth novel of worldly monk and self-appointed detective Cadfael, the tension of the book hinges first upon a bleak arranged marriage and the young man who is in love with the bride. Murder, when it occurs, adds a new dimension to an already intriguing storyline. There is a rhythm, a pattern and poetry to Ellis Peters' novels, and if that makes certain aspects of the story predictable, the tradeoff is the experience of the book.

Peters is as devoted - if not more - to showing the positive, luminous side of humanity, kind deeds both large and small, and her books brim with people who rise above the gravity of the crime. For me, personally, I sometimes find her take on pure young love to be repetitive, and I'd love to see darker romances ... but the characters in these books are always skillfully drawn and entertaining.

The writing style is poetic and leisurely, prone to details and a certain delicacy in description. It's not for those who prefer a swift, action-packed pace, but is ideal for slow immersion.

One of the best features of this series is that both the broader history - the tumult occurring in England between Empress Maud and King Stephen - and the personal history of Cadfael continue to evolve and change, not in earthshattering ways, but in subtle, organic steps. Shrewsbury can be relied upon both for its stability and for its forward momentum. However, a reader can pick up any of the books and generally feel neither lost nor as if something has been spoiled, should they go back and read an earlier volume.

View all my reviews

Fatecraft out! (Again ;-))

2011-07-11T00:38:00.002-04:00

I always forget that Darwin's Evolutions seems to do releases right around midnight ... so here's Fatecraft! Meet Pazia and poor, put-upon Vanchen over at:

Fatecraft

Sunday Snippet

2011-07-11T00:33:00.003-04:00

Here's a quick piece from a short story I'm working on in the Flow universe. Irena has gotten curious about her new neighbor and gone digging about in the boxes in her garage:

Her fingers scrabbled at a cardboard flap, pulled it free. The scent of mothballs and something else, a little cloying – familiar, but out of context. It was full of snow globes; even the little tap she had given the box caused endless blizzards within. She scooped one out of the box. Instead of the expected scene – a cute snowman or a foreign landmark – there was a little cornhusk doll …

“What are you doing?”

Irena yelped and dropped the globe. It pinged off the concrete. She whirled to face her accuser, feeling the flush burn her cheeks. Moira Alban was a tall woman somewhere in the infinite expanse of middle age with auburn hair and eyes the color of a storm.

“Well, if it isn’t the girl who stole the kiwi,” she continued.

“I did not,” Irena said by reflex, then bent for the snow-globe. “I was just curious …”

She hadn’t seen the globe roll, but somehow, it was at Moira’s feet and the woman cradled it like something infinitely precious. “Do you understand the hazards of curiosity?”

In the chill and the dark of the garage, the words seemed menacing. Irena drew back, her heart pounding with a rabbit’s fear – even though she could easily have dodged past Moira, even though hers was the next driveway over and kids shouted at each other in the yard across the street. The rescue of that scene seemed impossibly far away.

“Killed the cat,” Irena said bluntly, and wished she hadn’t. Her skin prickled, even as her mind shouted at her that it was ridiculous. Neighbors didn’t attack each other for picking through boxes, and the garage door had been open. Surely that was an invitation. And how would Moira hurt her, besides?

Just by looking at her, she somehow knew.

Then Moira laughed, a full, rich sound animating the air. The menace evaporated. “Not the most original answer, but it will do. Since you’ve meddled with my boxes, you can help me carry them inside. Come, child.”

Thursday Thoughts

2011-07-07T08:29:00.010-04:00

Over the past few weeks, I've been sucked back into online gaming, which means less writing. It's a vice of mine to which I freely confess - but I also believe it to be valuable as writing practice, as it were, and is especially helpful in the area of clarity. If what you've typed out for your character to do / say doesn't make sense, you find out immediately. Cue conversations that involve characters yelping, "Ack, no - not what I meant!" or OOC (Out Of Character) conferences to straighten things out.

As someone who also GMs - that's GameMaster, for those unfamiliar, and yes, it can be a verb ;-) - it also helps on the plotting side. My experience has been that other players routinely come up with courses of investigation or action that I would never have even thought up if I had been writing a tale out on my own. So I have to rewind, sidestep and work out new responses.

So I'm indulging myself in these dangerous waters for now, with an eye on how much time it takes away from my projects. I'm also reading - Ellis Peters, which means that I tend to describe my life thusly: "Brother Cadfael and I are going to get my car's oil changed." "Brother Cadfael and I have a dentist's appointment."

6/30 - 7/6
Word count: 854 (yes, really ... sigh)

Sunday Snippet

2011-07-03T10:23:00.004-04:00

More Scylla and Charybdis from a few chapters later. Aboard the cargo spaceship known as the Bleak, she makes the acquaintance of Tobias Risingsun Mortimer, or Flick:

They ate a second meal together and Flick talked about some of his experiences in Defiance, his inventions, his grandmother – who, by process of deduction, seemed to be the only family he had. Anaea pieced together what a Tweaker was: a salvage expert who could give anything that might otherwise have been thrown away a new form and purpose … and an inventor without government sanction or funding. A unique product of the Pinnacle Empire.

She found that by phrasing her questions in an open-ended manner, she could keep Flick talking while sharing little in return. His cheerful spates of information sputtered out occasionally into jokes or questions – but he seemed more interested in what she thought of the crew or hypermentals or philosophical oddities than personal details.

“I mean, supposing they give every child an aptitude test,” he said. “Whatever they turn out to be good at, that’s what they do in life. It’d be efficient, right?”

“How could you possibly design a test that would cover all variables?” Anaea asked.

He crinkled his nose. “Neural mapping on a particular field of tests could account for that – but you’re avoiding the point. Would it be good for people?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I’m not an expert -”

“You don’t have to be an expert!” he burst out, gesturing wildly with his fork. “You just have to be human. You just have to have a heart in things.”

She wondered what he would think of the way she had left her home. “I suppose just as a thought exercise -”

The ship shuddered. Anaea’s plate slid out of her grasp and clattered on the floor. An animal bellowed.

An unfamiliar voice came through the overhead. “Captain of the Bleak, you have twenty seconds to surrender. Passengers of the Bleak, the warning shot you have experienced represents only a fraction of our firepower, and your only chance is to prevail upon its commander not to test it.”

The voice faded out, and was replaced by the tail end of creative cursing from the Bleak’s captain. “… frighten the passengers into mutiny, of all the low things -”

“You’re on broadcast,” someone else said.

Anaea rose in a flurry, then stopped, the blood humming in her ears. Pragmatism pulled her panic into stillness. Where would she go? She looked to Flick for some reaction, hoping to see him calm, even bored, but he sat shaking his head like a furry dog.

“Oh, no, no,” he said, “I put most of my take into hard barter -” He seemed to realize only then he was speaking out loud and pressed his lips together into a frustrated line.

“Everyone remain calm,” the captain’s voice continued. “They don’t know who they’re dealing with. The Bleak has outgun and outrun every decent pirate in the sector.”

“What about the indecent ones?” Flick said in a sotto voce. The other two passengers in the mess glared.

The deck pitched. The furniture was secure; nothing else was. Anaea tumbled, landing elbow-first in a corner with the remnants of two or three lunches. Voices yowled – animal or human, it was impossible to tell. Her arm throbbed.

Flick grabbed her wrist before she could stand. “Should’ve known a berth like this wouldn’t have the high-grade inertial dampeners,” he said. “Stay down. Crawl along the fixtures. Though really, where are you going? It’s raining food, what more could you ask for?”

She recognized his manic cheer for worry and swallowed.

"Wet and Wild" Giveaway for July!

2011-07-01T08:56:00.013-04:00

To celebrate the acceptance of my contemporary fantasy novel, "Flow," for publication by Double Dragon, I've decided to have "Wet and Wild" Giveaway for the whole month of July. Here are the details:

1. Purchase my novelette (that's a long short, for the uninitiated) "Taming The Weald" from Gypsy Shadow Publishing sometime during the month of July. Make sure you purchase it directly from GSP - the editors have graciously offered to send me the email addresses of those who do, but I won't have a record if you purchase it elsewhere! It can be found under their Moonbeams line, or here: Taming The Weald. That's the Wild portion ...

2. Sit back, relax, and you will receive two tracks from my studio-produced Celtic harp CD, "Rolling of the Stone." The tracks in question are: "Fingal's Cave / The North Brig of Edinburgh" - that's bridge to you non-Scots - and "Banks of the Spey / Tommy's Tarbukas." That's the Wet portion: two water-themed tunes and their medleyed companions.

Please feel free to pass this along to anyone who might be interested!

Thursday Thoughts

2011-06-30T10:11:00.006-04:00

Finished my time mage story a few days ago, which I wasn't entirely sure I was going to have completed before the end of the month ... maybe a bit of time magic leached out of the story into my fingers.

I just did an edit with Darwin Garrison for the reprint of "Fatecraft" (forthcoming soon) and was very surprised by several things when rereading the story. First of all, just how hyper Pazia is - she has a lot of energy and determination. Second of all, there's this reference to clockwork ruins throughout the world that just begs exploration - and I had totally forgotten about this.

Third of all, two moons. Two, Lindsey. Gosh, I hope I haven't contradicted that in "Natural Selection" or "The City of Lanterns."

I find this issue with short stories: since I don't do worldbuilding or take notes, all these aspects are found only in the stories themselves, which means rereading or skimming to recover key details. It may be part of the reason why I don't do many series stories.

In this instance, what I found throws a wrinkle into the idea of a novel in this setting. I had been thinking of a mystery, closely involving Kalliniar (the light-mage from "The City of Lanterns") - but those ruins, they beckon. The two concepts seem contradictory, so which way I'd jump is now a mystery. No pun intended.

6/23 - 6/29

Word count: 2,621

GoodReads Review: Familiars

2011-06-29T23:38:00.000-04:00

Familiars by Denise Little

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This anthology offers stories about the mage's faithful companion, the familiar, and promises to depart from the usual cliches with new and different interpretations. Unfortunately, it fails on this account. Most of the stories do involve cats or dogs - which seems to be to be the obvious anti-cliche of the familiar world - and the familiars generally play an expected role in the story. (There is one tale where the familiar is particularly clever, which I won't identify because it spoils the ending ... but it's the only story where I felt the familiar was an intriguing, different sort of beast.)

I initially was going to give this anthology three stars, because most of the stories are passable and entertaining enough, and a couple shine: the riotous (if somewhat loosely plotted) "First Familiars," by Laura Resnick, which manages to take on the Clinton's pets and still marvelously avoids partisan commentary; and "This Dog Watched," by Von Jocks, where magic, love and the power of words blend together into a poetry of their own. However, many of the stories seemed uneven, bland or incomplete, and the final story is a bewildering eighty-nine page epic where I still couldn't tell you exactly what happened and why.

I also found the description of this anthology somewhat misleading, because a large majority of the stories are contemporary, with only a few set in secondary worlds. With so many options for familiars in different societies, I was a bit disappointed by this. Not that I mind modern stories, but I feel the description of an anthology should be more upfront about the contents.

In the end, most of the stories were a decent read, but predictable or forgettable.

View all my reviews

Big to Little or Vice Versa?

2011-06-29T21:24:00.003-04:00

I've reached the point in fantasy / mystery novel work where I'm starting on character profiles, and I wondered ... for those of you who do work in advance, whether writing descriptions, doing mock-interviews, or whatever it is you do to get a handle on your characters - do you usually start with the main character and work your way down to minor members of the cast, or do you start with fringe characters to get a feel for things and work your way up?

Sunday Snippets

2011-06-26T11:09:00.002-04:00

Here's a bit from my science fiction novel-in-editing, Scylla and Charybdis, where I ponder a possible future of books:

The library was an austere rose-marble building with a dome ceiling and two abstract figure sculptures for front pillars. Pulses of light passed through their glass limbs, mimicking features. Inside, two doors led into massive chambers on either side, but Anaea’s attention was drawn to the central dome and the encased pillar there.

“Central terminal,” Gwydion explained. “More comprehensive and faster than using the link.” The other rooms were for group holographs, school programs and tours. Past the terminal was a series of isolation doors.

Anaea pressed herself up against the isolation doors with a little cry of astonishment. In that sealed, regulated environment stood shelves upon shelves of real books: massive hardbounds, some with plastic, others velvet or vineskin, paperbacks staggering in untidy lines, and everything in between.

Labels on the shelves divided them by subject and origin. She could see two sections that dated to before landfall on Elysium.

“Oh,” she said, warmed by some ancestral feeling of ownership. Her hand uncurled against the glass.

“I feel the same way,” he said. “It’s silly, I know, old-fashioned – but something about the fact they don’t change, that every word is permanent, speaks to me.”

“I like that they’re not dependent on anything else,” Anaea said. “A world to themselves.” Like home, she thought, and felt a twinge of regret.

To assuage that sickness, she pondered the idea of working here, the meticulous attention to detail and the constant guard against decay. New books must be printed occasionally for collectors or historians, but the originals were priceless. There was charm in the idea, but that might be the novelty.

Gwydion had moved away, speaking in soft tones to his link. He smiled ruefully when she turned to face him. “The officer I report to wants to speak with me,” he said. “I think it would be better if he didn’t meet you just yet. Will you -”

“I don’t need to be chaperoned,” she assured him. “I can find my way back.”

He slipped out. Apart from a few voices in one viewing room, she seemed to be alone. She studied the labels on the bookshelves, noticing the preponderance of fiction. The soft light blurred too much detail to read more than a few of the covers.

The directions next to the door sternly admonished that visitors must be accompanied, clean, free of food, beverage and disease, and that the decontamination protocols took two minutes during which it was crucial the visitor remain still. The implied castigation turned her elsewhere.

Thursday Thoughts

2011-06-23T09:34:00.006-04:00

My process with worldbuilding continues to sprawl in all directions - I keep remembering additional key details and backtracking to provide them for the relevant nations. What I last forgot was appearance and apparel. How appalling. Especially as one of the things I used to like to record in the past was what features certain cultures found attractive. It's an interesting / different way to look at appearance, I find, and it makes you (or at least me!) consider possibilities that don't have Earth parallels. This, to me, is always positive.

Not been writing near as much as I would like, but getting back into the groove more. I was mentally stopping up on my Ishene and Kemel story, and sure enough, there was a reason for it: a plot-hole I had to plug ... or at least toss dirt into. I'm not sure I entirely fixed it. Still, when I get "writer's block," it's my subconscious going, "Houston, we have a problem," so I try to stop and gnaw over what's going on rather than shoving forward blind.

6/16 - 6/22
Word count: 3,148

Anatomy of an Idea: Saplings

2011-06-20T13:12:00.019-04:00

Warning: contains spoilers. Please read "Saplings" first if you're going to.

"Saplings" is easily one of the most peculiarly populated stories I've written in terms of the characters and elements I used. My initial inspiration for the story was to do a word-hop. This is a writing exercise I created for myself where I gather a list of words, put them in any order, and start writing. For every hundred words, I have to incorporate the next word on the list somehow.

With "Saplings," the word list was every "fun" word I could think of that started with H. I got some volunteers from fantasy-writers.org to offer me suggestions, as well. I ended up with a sizable list, though not enough to take me through the whole story. So be it! If you look at Saplings carefully, you'll notice some of the more unusual H words popping out here and there.

Before starting, I needed some general idea of the plot. The word list suggested that an herbalist would be a good idea. I'm not sure where the idea to write about a character who watched royal / prominent children came from, but as I developed it, I realized I needed a reason for a young, fish-out-of-water herbalist to be entrusted with such responsibility. Ping! Nanny powers. (And even though I didn't use that term in the story, that's how I think of them.)

I quickly decided that I wanted the story to take a twist in that the child who was abducted was not going to be the prince or the High Sorcerer's daughter - but rather the gardener's son. My main character would probably assume that this was a mistake, but it wouldn't be ... and what kind of foe would hold a grudge against a gardener, a man of growing things? From there evolved the idea of using vicious tree spirits as my antagonists.

I didn't know how the story was going to end when it started, but as I hopped along from word to word, I realized that it had to somehow stem from her nanny powers. I only figured it out as I got much closer ... that her ability to protect had to overcome the odds, had to be central to the conclusion.

So that's "Saplings" in a nutshell. No pun intended. Ahem.

Saplings now up at Mindflights!

2011-06-20T13:04:00.003-04:00

My story, Saplings - about an herbalist with what I can only describe as "nanny powers" - is now up at Mindflights. Check it out! Here's the direct link:

Saplings

Update: I'm being told that, for some reason, the link isn't working for everyone - so the main Mindflights page is http://www.mindflights.com

GoodReads Review: The Magicians and Mrs. Quent

2011-06-19T22:22:00.001-04:00

The Magicians and Mrs. Quent by Galen M. Beckett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book gets four stars from me somewhat reluctantly, but the world and concept, the atmosphere and some of the beautiful passages carry it from three stars in other aspects. Take the socially rigid world of Jane Austen's novel, combine it with magic and given bookish heroine Ivy a mission to uncover the mystery of her father's illness, and you have the essence of The Magicians and Mrs. Quent. Other threads move through this novel - the adventures of dapper gentleman Rafferdy and his poor, struggling friend Eldyn, with the mysterious power to weave shadows - but Ivy's story is the centerpiece.

I confess that I have yet to read any of Austen's novels, though I've seen films of I think every book (including a bleary 2am viewing of Northanger Abby at a sleepover where I'm not sure the viewing millieu made the story more or less comprehensible), but I loved Jane Eyre (the book!) and I saw the influences of both very clearly and wonderfully here. The banter, the social awareness, it crackles and snaps, as alive as any character. Sometimes, I found the first person section was so close to Jane Eyre that it approached pastiche, but the world is deep, consistent and intriguing. It brims with conflict and history.

My main problem with the novel is that these threads didn't come completely together, cross or mesh in a convincing way. Emblematic of this is the way that the novel abruptly leaps into first person for the middle section and then returns to third person for the conclusion, picking up the threads of characters not seen for a hundred and fifty pages. Important events are glossed over or summarized, time compressed artificially to keep the action moving while still accounting (partly) for what happened during Ivy's narration. (I also found the pretext of writing imaginary letters to her father to be a thin justification for first person.) The net sum of this: it makes the initial section of the book feel like an extended prologue.

Indeed, that's indicative of a larger problem in the novel. So much happened in the book (particularly with the romantic storylines) that was summarized or skipped over, when I felt it was crucial to feel every moment of the characters and their response. I don't understand the logic of Beckett's choices of what to skim. By contrast, the final climactic scene felt somewhat ridiculous to me because of the large amount of minutiae the characters had to wade through.

I did like the way the Ivy and Rafferdy storyline played out. It would have been so easy for Beckett to take an uncomfortable and obvious route when they reunited, and I am very glad for it. (I can't be more specific without spoiling!)

I am not entirely reconciled to the use of magic in the novel. It seems to add insult to the injury of the social system and point towards a conclusion that women can only act successfully by influencing and directing men. There are some elements in the book that lead in the other direction, but I wasn't quite satisfied that they undermined this unpalatable message. I understand, of course, that Beckett isn't required to make his world "fair," but the way it was portrayed grated on me.

But in the end, this is a perfect example of a book that carried through to a satisfying conclusion while leaving fertile ground for a sequel, and one I will eagerly read.

Oh, and the title is awful. If one has to read over half the book before one has even an inkling what it means, it had better be a lightbulb moment, not just an affirmation of fact.

View all my reviews

Sunday Snippets

2011-06-19T13:40:00.009-04:00

I decided I'm going to try a new weekly pattern: posting a snippet of a work in progress (or perhaps a story for sale) every Sunday.

Alas, I do not have anything specifically appropriate for Father's Day, so y'all will have to settle for a story in honor of the grandfather (paradox). In this story, Ishene (the narrator) is a time mage, and along with her bodyguard Kemel, is tracking a rogue time mage who seems to be trying to change history by preventing the destruction of a historical landmark. The pair have traveled back in time to that fateful day:

We stood on the banks of the Aysil, a river renowned for its voice. Bargemen called harmonies across the water as they poled past. The city of Riesden rose from the banks like an immense ship never to leave its moorings.

Kemel strode off with purpose. “Where are you going?” I called after him.

“To the Clocktower,” he said. “Where else?”

I shook my head. “If she senses us, she’ll change her plans. I want to find out where she’s been.”

“Always the historian,” he mock-grumbled. His face dropped when I didn’t respond to the humor. “Where to, then?”

We entered the city in the docks district. It was too easy, with near-past eras, to forget that it was the past at all: the moored ships had different lines and flags, but the activity on the docks and the technology used to move cargo was everything I had grown up with.

And Riesden in this era was a city straining towards the future, dabbling in clockwork and mechanics that were decades away from being perfected. The explosion of the Clocktower would cause them to check their thinking, look twice at progress for progress’ sake. Erase that, and the city could plunge into a larger disaster … if it even mattered, if the timeline could survive the paradox.

Good News, Bad News ...

2011-06-17T17:02:00.004-04:00

Good news: by this point, I am about ninety percent sure I will not be tackling the second novel project that invaded my brain.

Why this is good news is because I really didn't want to be writing two novels simultaneously, or to end up in the situation I am currently, with two books to edit at once. (And I still haven't touched the other one ...) I just looked at the novel and realized that while everything in the story appealed to me, I wasn't doing anything new and I was treading a lot of cliches.

Bad news: I didn't come to this decision until after I finished the world and character work for the project. Hopefully, I'll come back to it and it's not wasted ...

Thursday Thoughts

2011-06-16T09:43:00.007-04:00

I've reached the point where I'm doing too much again. I'm trying to: edit Scylla and Charybdis, write worldbuilding notes for my mystery project, and finish a story for the FWO monthly challenge, to be followed by a story for a special Gypsy Shadow Publishing anthology. What I want to be doing, by contrast, is writing the new novel. I need a cloned double, or at least a few extra hands!

With worldbuilding, I'm trying a middle ground. Generally, what I've done in the past is write exhaustively: build the world in intense, sometimes ridiculous detail. With Journal of the Dead, I tried to do very minimal worldbuilding (about a page before I started) and develop the rest as I wrote. I found that I had more trouble pushing that manuscript forward and resolving plot conflicts than I'd had in a long time, so that's how I learned worldbuilding was a necessary pre-novel step for me.

This time, I'm building the area with which the story directly deals in detail, and then drawing back to general statements, specific hints and flavor for other regions. And reminding myself to update my file as I go. Whether I'll remember that last part ...

Worried I'm going to bite off more than I can chew with this novel. Tackling a non-human first person POV is a risk; more so when their kind is extremely perceptive and intelligent - but doesn't understand privacy or deception. (A huge handicap in a mystery - but that's why she has an enchanter's apprentice to serve as her Watson.) I'm good for the challenge, but only time will tell whether I'm up to it.

6/9 - 6/15
Word count: 1,760

Life Sentences

2011-06-12T18:13:00.003-04:00

For a couple weeks now, I've been doing a quick daily exercise where I write a "hooky" first sentence - not connected to a specific project. This has turned out to be a lot of fun, and some of the openings seem to have a lot of promise.

I always try to start my stories with an implicit question of some kind and an element of character, setting, plot or some combination of the three. However, when I'm working on a new story, I typically know what these elements are going to be in advance. Some bits and pieces may change or simply be unknown, but I have the larger shape.

Where this has been different is I'm creating those same three elements in strokes of possibility. The world-story-character that results from these lines could be almost anything that meets the promise of the sentence. It's freeing, and it leads me towards ideas I might not have considered.

As an aside, I noticed that the last several were consistently getting longer, so I set myself a challenge to make today's very short. I ended up with:

I hated mourning garb: blue was not my color.

Thursday Thoughts

2011-06-09T09:37:00.012-04:00

I've spent most of this last week working on edits for Scylla and Charybdis. I've made a lot of changes, and unfortunately, most of them have been additions - so I may have to devote an editing pass just to cutting words. I think I have a lot more work to do on this one yet, or I may simply get tired of it and call it good after another pass or two. ;-) Ahem.

In reviewing critiques, I've noticed that I sometimes take them in the other direction. That isn't to say I ignore them: quite the opposite. Rather, a comment will point up an impression the reader is developing that I didn't intend, so I rework the narrative to pull back / eliminate that impression or enhance a different one.

Invented example: let's say a reader asks me to increase the hostility between my character and her cousin. I might look it and go, "Augh, no! I only meant to imply that my character was grumpy, not that she's specifically mad at her cousin." So I step back the snarling comments and maybe add something more into the narrative about how it's not really the cousin's fault.

Quite frequently, in fact, I would say that reviewer comments make me revise in ways I am fairly sure the reviewer did not intend. ;-)

Anyone else had this experience?

I've done worldwork, but the only story writing I did this week was on a fairy tale-esque piece about a girl who attracted hats, and I finished that Sunday, so the word count is low.

6/2 - 6/8:
Word count: 823

Novel Developments

2011-06-04T15:28:00.023-04:00

I've been sitting on this for about a month, and believe me, the words have been welling up under my fingers and just about killing me - but I wanted to have the contract official and in hand before I ran down the virtual streets shouting to the rooftops. Received the contract in the mail today, so ...

Roll the drums, cue the fanfare, slash the bagpipes ...

My contemporary fantasy novel, Flow, has been accepted for publication by Double Dragon Publishing.

At present, I have no information on publication date or editing - so it is even slightly possible that Flow won't be the final title - but I will keep folks up to date as developments ... develop. Believe me, you will be sick of hearing about it. ;-)

To give a brief teaser, Flow follows the water-witch Chailyn, on dry land for her first mission, and Kit, a contemporary teen with mysterious powers, as they seek the man who killed Kit's mother ... a goal which catches the interest of the darkest of fairies. They must also deal with the Borderwatch, a zealous organization that hunts fairies and has been in a cold war with the water-witches for decades.

In the interim, I will be looking for homes for my short stories in this setting: A Dose of Aconite, Splinter Cell, and a third as yet untitled. The first two are from the POVs of Borderwatch agents.

Review: GUD Issue 6

2011-06-04T14:41:00.002-04:00

From a GoodReads reviewer named Sabrina, about GUD Issue 6:

Really an outstanding issue. I don't think there are any weak pieces in this, but I'm writing this review months after having read the issue and the pieces that live on in memory as truly superior are Aliette de Bodard's As the Wheel Turns; Lindsey Duncan's The Naming Braid; Ferrett Steinmetz's In the Garden of Rust and Salt and Lavie Tidhar's The Last Butterfly. I remember Dispatches From the Troubles (Lou Antonelli); What Happens in Vegas (Caroline Yoachim) and Maisy's Many Souls (Matthew Sanborn Smith) less fondly but very vividly. They too are solid and beautifully polished works.

Brief Update

2011-06-03T19:15:00.003-04:00

Not just one, not two, but three of my forthcoming publications are discussed here:

http://darwinsevolutions.com/?p=586

Fatecraft is a reprint; Loyal Dice is a prequel. I'm eagerly awaiting the artwork for the latter; I've been in contact with the artist over additional details I was surprised to discover weren't described in the story.

Thursday Thoughts

2011-06-02T10:53:00.018-04:00

I'm back!

Wait ... no one knew I was gone, did they? Ahem. Yes, I've been in Baltimore with the folks this past week. Got a fair amount of writing done, rested, recharged my batteries, and spent too much time messing with Quickbooks. (Long story ...) Last time I visited, we did some sightseeing - Annapolis, the Library of Congress, the Spy Museum - but this was a more relaxed visit, more focused on simple family time.

I finished my character notes on the project that attacked my brain and demanded to be written, and am now working on the world notes for the mystery. Since I don't want "bleed" from working on one and then immediately jumping into the other, I am going to keep a close eye on my progress. If I feel I am repeating myself, I will back off. But I actually think I'll be fine, because I spent literally weeks on just characters ... and that, to me, has a different feel than structuring the world.

My only qualm is the names. I'm afraid all the names are going to sound very similar. However, I am entirely not feeling like doing a naming language now, so I will have to come up with a scheme / structure to forcibly differentiate them.

Now that I'm back, trying to get some critiques on at least the earlier chapters of Scylla and Charybdis. Critiques make me (quite literally) ill - I've lost sleep when I think some might come in overnight. So I have to take it slow, but I also know I need to get out of my head occasionally, and an outside eye is a good way to do that.

This extreme reaction isn't from lack of practice, unfortunately: while I've not done full novels, I've had plenty of short stories run through critiquing. I just don't seem to have the capacity to relax about the process.

"Aeolian Harp" now out!

2011-06-01T19:59:00.002-04:00

The Spring 2011 issue of speculative poetry magazine "Illumen," containing my "Aeolian Harp" is now available:

http://www.samsdotpublishing.com/illumen/currentissue.htm

Thursday Thoughts

2011-05-26T07:46:00.008-04:00

Word count tracker is suspended for this past week and next week. I'm sure everyone is heartbroken, devestated, defenestrated! ... wait.

A running thread over on fantasy-writers.org has made me ponder a first sentences exercise, which I've decided to do ... as of writing this sentence, in fact. Hmm ... appropriate? In any case, I'm going to try and write a zinger of a first sentence a day for at least two weeks and, when I reach the end, scan for the cream of the crop.

This comes up because some people have claimed that you have to hook an editor by the first sentence. Even though this seems excessive to me (who could even physically stop themselves from reading more than one sentence?), I try to put a fair amount of attention into a punchy, usually short opening line that makes the reader ask questions. How much time and attention do you put into first sentences? Do you often change / rewrite them later?

Still trying to figure out my point of entrance on writing anew, but next week, I will definitely be seeking out critique on the early chapters of Scylla and Charybdis.

Be well, all!

A Writers' Guide To Harp: Part Three (Misconceptions)

2011-05-22T00:31:00.002-04:00

One more point about the physical construction of the harp most people miss until they get up close: hey, look, colored strings! I’ve heard stories of people asking if these are training strings. N…o. The red strings are Cs, blue strings are Fs. All other strings are white. So, no, you’re not just staring at a sea of unmarked strings.

Since a harper’s mouth isn’t obviously occupied as a flutist’s is, most people imagine that we can carry on a conversation freely. Unfortunately – or is that fortunately? – it doesn’t work that way. I’m not exactly sure why; my theory is that speaking and playing attempt to use the same region of the brain. It is possible to train yourself to talk and play at the same time, but it took me years to learn the small repertoire of, “Yes,” “No,” and, “Thank you.” Now, after over a decade of playing, I can answer simple questions if I am playing a slow tune I know frontwards and backwards. I can say with some confidence that carrying on a full conversation whilst playing? Not going to happen.

But what about bardic storytelling? you might wonder. From what I’ve seen of it, the music and the speaking don’t occur simultaneously, apart from simple patterns that serve as sound effects. Instead, they alternate and augment each other.

And yes … it is “harper.” This applies to anyone who plays the traditional lever instrument. Harp-player is also correct. Harpist refers to the pedal harp – “the big tall thing with the gold pillar” – and is not correct in this context.

Reminders from the previous posts: those playing wire harps need nails; those playing gut-strung harps will need to go without.

Harp strings do not (or almost never) break due to pressure applied during play. They simply break when tightened too far. This can happen by accident when tuning or with sudden temperature shifts. Cold weather causes the wood to contract, potentially breaking a string. (Some wood instruments work differently, I know, so: harps go sharp with the cold, flat with the heat.)

The big joke amongst harpers is, “A harp-player spends half his time tuning, and half his time playing out of tune.” They are sensitive instruments. It doesn’t take much to knock them out of tune, and the range of the harp doesn’t go out of tune consistently. Every harp is a little bit different, but for instance, with mine: my base strings go sharp, the two strings above that stay almost perfectly in tune continuously, the mid-range goes flat, and some portions of the upper range go sharp again.

Assuming a fully levered, 36 string floor harp, there are approximately two million permutations of ways you could set your levers.

The above posts apply to the “mainstream” traditional harp, but there are other harps. Here are a couple I’m familiar with:

Latin American harps are lighter strung, which allows the use of the pinky (normally too weak to play). They’re also strung with blue Cs and red Fs.

The Welsh triple harp has not just one but three rows of strings and no levers. To get accidentals (sharps and flats), the harper dips their fingers through the outer row(s) to the inner row. The double row strings for standard play allows a number of overlapping techniques, including one unique to Welsh harp playing where the melody is played in both hands a split second apart. This creates a mesmerizing echo effect. Welsh players also usually rest the harp on the left shoulder and play melody with left hand, accompaniment with right.

You can actually hear the influence of the triple harp in a lot of Welsh music. These tunes have a running theme of a single accidental, often with a rather rapid switch back to the regular note.

And finally, if you want to hurt your brain, check out the cross-strung harp, the only harp in the world on which it is possible to play “Flight of the Bumblebee.”

A Writers' Guide To Harp: Part Two (Playing)

2011-05-20T00:13:00.004-04:00

The basics of how to play ...

Harp rests against the right shoulder, with the right hand on the upper ranges for melody and the left hand on the lower ranges for accompaniment. Thumb and first three fingers are used – no pinky. Elbows are out and raised – not parallel to the floor like a chicken, but elevated to aid in maintaining proper hand position. Thumbs up, fingers down, and palm facing the strings. A properly played note brings the finger straight back to connect with the palm.

Nylon or gut-strung harps are played with the pads of the fingers; wire harps are played with the fingernail. (Difference #2!) Corrolary to this, nails make gut/nylon-strung more difficult – they can even catch on adjacent strings, if they’re long enough. So if your harper is playing a gut-strung harp, they’re not going to have pretty, sculpted nails.

Instrument range: the usual base range for a floor harp is somewhere between 1.5 to 2 octaves below middle C. Some will run down to the A below that. The upper range is typically 3 octaves up from middle C – again with some variation. The usual base range for a lap harp is somewhere between 1 to 1.5 (ie, stopping at G or F) octaves below middle C. The upper range is typically 2.5 to 3 octaves up from middle C. You’re looking at floor harps usually maxing out at 36 strings. Lap harps are rarely less than 22, though I’ve seen a few, and that 22 – 26 string range is the sweet spot for a nice, portable lap harp.

Okay … break from all the numbers. Why this is important is the range for accompaniment on a lap harp is very small, and it can even become cramped on a floor harp, depending on the range of the melody. So single note or simple chord accompaniments are common. Disclaimer: musician paragraph next.

Due to the resonance of the harp, it is easy for accompaniment to sound muddy. Thus, most chord patterns use the 1st and the 5th note, optionally with the octave. The 3rd is usually eliminated in the accompaniment. When it will be included is in inversions, or with another note omitted just to create a different sound – but it would be rare to hear all three notes together because of the sustain.

It is possible to mute notes – a single note can be muted by re-placing the finger, and a range of them can be muted with the flat of the hand. You can get a jazzy, staccato sound this way (which isn’t terribly traditional, though it’s used in modern Celtic music).

Everything stated about resonance goes multifold for wire harp. Wire strings ring – and keep ringing – until muted. That means that accompaniments tend to be more sparse, and there is more emphasis on muting by re-placing the finger. I don’t play wire-strung harp, so I can’t speak further to the style, but that’s the main distinction. (Differences #3 through – take your pick.)

Harpers develop calluses, at the very least on the thumbs and index fingers, but what people don’t realize is that extended play is also rough on the shoulders. Sit there with your elbows out for a few minutes and you’ll see what I mean. Then add the weight of an instrument on one side.

That’s getting into misconceptions, the last stop …

Thursday Thoughts

2011-05-19T19:56:00.006-04:00

I am ninety percent sure that I am actually asleep right now and typing this post as part of a lucid dream. Unfortunately, if I pinch myself, I'll lose my train of thought, so ... onwards!

It's been a wild and crazy week, and consequently not as much writing time as I would like. However, I've spent quality time reading one of my manuscripts - which is going to need a frightful amount of editing - and exchanging private critiques with some members of Fantasy-Writers.org for submissions to their anthology. They aren't paying the authors; instead, all proceeds go towards maintenance of the site. A very worthy cause. The topic is the line "Waking to the light of the last day," and, of course, I couldn't resist playing around with some structural malarky ...

Still trying to gauge when it's "safe" to jump back into the novel writing pool. I have a whole bunch of old free writes that want finishing; maybe I'll at least close out 2009 (yes, I really do have them that far back) before I move on to long form. After the current story I'm writing, there's only one more opening from '09.

5/12 - 5/18
Word count: 3,813

A Writers' Guide To Harp: Part One (The Body)

2011-05-17T19:25:00.002-04:00

So the post in which I promised to do a fantasy writer's guide to the harp is ... still not back up yet, but I'm going to do it. This will be three posts, the other two to show up over the next few days, breaking down some information I hope writers can take and use in their fiction. First up is the physical characteristics of the instruments, then a basic "how to play" orientation, and finally, misconceptions and other cool harp information.

Minstrels, court musicians and bards – if your fantasy character plays a harp, they probably play the traditional harp (otherwise known as the folk or Celtic style harp), an instrument that’s been around in some form or another since ancient Sumeria. The modern pedal harp (“the big tall thing with the gold pillar” as I describe it in technical terms) is a much later invention – possibly appropriate for later period and Victorian settings, but outside of this discussion.

For a traveling musician, a traditional harp is the only way to go due to size and weight. Pedal harps have to be larger and heavier to incorporate the mechanical aspects of the pedals. Even at that, traditional harps aren’t necessarily small: my harp (an Aberdeen Meadows from William Rees Instruments) is almost five feet tall. The Aberdeen has what is known nowadays as concert spacing (because I have big hands!), so floor harps can and do run smaller, but it’s not typically going to be something your character can just toss over their back. Lap harps, on the other hand, are made for this kind of portability.

I hope I don’t have to explain floor harp versus lap harp, but just in the case – the former rests on the floor and is played from a chair, and the latter either rests in the lap or sets up on a stool.

The three main parts of the harp are the soundboard, which rests against the body while playing; the pillar, which is the vertical support on the outside of the instrument; and the neck, which runs between them and serves as a support for the strings, bridge pins and levers. The strings are made of four materials: wire, gut or nylon, or carbon fiber. I separate these out because wire harps are a different beast from gut or nylon, and carbon fiber is a newer experiment. Let’s assume that in most fantasy settings, you probably wouldn’t have nylon strings, but the sound from gut strings is essentially the same.

For the past few centuries, traditional harps have had levers, mechanisms that allow the pitch of an individual string to be adjusted a half-step, functioning like the black keys on the piano. For instance, it will turn your F into an F sharp. The lever only has two positions: up or down. If you’re not a musician, you can skip the next paragraph. Just understand that levers don’t mean you can play anything. Traditional music is generally fine (and not just Celtic – I’ve played a Korean piece), but classic / orchestral music may be problematic.

Sharps and flats on the harp: if you want a flat, you tune the string down to the flat (for instance, Bb), and then when the lever is engaged, you get the natural (B). This means that traditional harps have a limited number of practical keys. My harp is tuned to Eb Major, which means I have the option of 3 flats (E, A, B) and four sharps (C, D, F, G). Each lever also controls only the actual string it is placed above. That means if you want to change keys from G to D, you have to flip every single C on the instrument. (This differs from the pedal harp, where the pedal engages every note.)

Levers can be flipped during play, but it’s difficult to do. Your accompaniment hand has to come off the instrument and all the way up to the neck to flip the lever.

Without levers, every time you want to change keys, you have to stop and retune the instrument. Just personally, while historically, levers were only developed a short while before pedals, I consider that the portability of a lever instrument and the technical know-how required to construct levers means that there’s no compelling reason for a fantasy society not to have them. But … musicians played for centuries without them.

None of this applies to wire harps. Wire harps do not use levers. (Difference #1 – count ‘em!)

More soon!

Thursday Thoughts

2011-05-17T14:15:00.002-04:00

(This is my Thursday post from last week, finally restored by Blogger. I can't figure out how to backdate it, so we'll leave that.)

I wish I had the gift of brevity: that short story I mentioned a few days ago is already over 4k, and looks to come in about twice that. But ... it was never meant to be a tight, plot-heavy yarn. Rather, I was going for a leisurely exploration, an examination of relationships, an inward push-me-pull-you about when it's okay to invade someone else's privacy - not a statement piece, but focused on the main character's struggle over this.

I've decided that I am going to start reading my "Who Wants To Be A Hero?" manuscript - two "chapters" a day. (I put chapters in quotes because they're not, really - each chapter represents an episode in the imaginary reality show.) That means it will take me about a week, which is a slow but reasonable reading speed ... but I will have time to read "real" books (again the quotes!), which is something I've been lacking.

It occurs to me that it might be worth posting a "harp playing for fantasy writers," so I will try to do that over the next week. The instrument I play is probably what you would normally see in most fantasy settings.

5/5 - 5/11
Word Count: 4,564 (not counting character work)

So ... uh ...

2011-05-13T21:42:00.000-04:00

... Blogger, when do I get my Thursday post back?

Friendly Reminder

2011-05-11T17:04:00.003-04:00

I don't know if it was anyone following my blog, but a quick note: if you want to purchase my CD, please don't do so through Amazon! They take a huge surcharge - plus, I have to ship new CDs to them one at a time. Instead, use the Paypal link off my main website and I will happily mail to you. If you don't mind having the shrinkwrap off, I can sign it, too (though what value that is, I dunno ...).

GoodReads Review: The Sunflower

2011-05-11T16:48:00.002-04:00

The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness by Simon Wiesenthal

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Deceptively simple, thought-provoking and sometimes chilling, The Sunflower is both a story and an invitation to explore what seems (on the face) a straightforward question ... but as its situational, moral and emotional layers peel away, becomes anything but. The book is comprised of two parts: first, the account of how the author, a Jewish man in a concentration camp, is called to the side of a dying Nazi soldier who begs forgiveness for his crimes; second, a collection of essays written in response.

I had read this book before, but I was surprised again how brief the encounter itself is. Using language that is straightforward but often poetic, realistic without becoming laden with melodrama, Wiesenthal builds a picture of his life and the mental state of his fellow prisoners and discusses the history of the high school in which he finds himself ... before he is called to the side of the SS man. The pages that form the purpose of this book disappear so swiftly ... and then the reader is drawn on to deal with Wiesenthal's fall-out, the conversations with fellow prisoners, and finally, a secondary confrontation years later with the SS man's mother. As a story - a novella, if you will - this account is satisfying in itself.

The essays that follow are hit and miss. Some are harsh, some merciful; some prosaic, some poetic and beautiful. Some present angles of the situation that a reader may never have considered, and you may come away richer for it. In my mind, however, there is perhaps more than a critical mass of essays here ... and some of them are incomplete, off-point - the author launching from the actual question to discuss a related topic of personal investment - or maddeningly reductionist. I can accept starting from the religious stance that is impossible to forgive someone who has not harmed you personally: I cannot accept ending with that stance without further exploration. Religion is not the only source of morality. I don't recognize a lot of the authors' names, I confess, and I wonder if some of the essays were included less because of merit or balance than because they were written by a "big name" individual.

That said, this book is definitely worth a read, worth thought ... worth attempting the exploration at its heart: what would I have done?

View all my reviews

More Manuscript-age

2011-05-10T13:34:00.004-04:00

Had some errands which required me to run up to Kinko's - okay, FedEx Office, but I never think of it that way - so I decided to bite the bullet and print out my manuscript for "Who Wants To Be A Hero?" even though I have no idea when I'm actually going to work on it. I want to do a straight read-through - taking no notes unless something really leaps out at me, just to get an overall impression - and I may do that soon, then let it set for a while ... we'll see.

The true irony is, here I'm setting up my next novel writing projects and, despite seeing the editing overload / uncertainty / angst these two are causing me - I fully recognize that what I'm planning on doing will probably land me in the same situation next year ...

My learning curve is inverse.

On Being Edited ...

2011-05-09T18:33:00.002-04:00

Interesting post on another blog:

He said, she objected

My feelings exactly.

Back In The Saddle

2011-05-09T14:24:00.005-04:00

I've been editing or doing worldwork for almost a month now, and I had forgotten how good the actual writing side of things really feels. I dashed out a flash fiction story on Friday night, and am now working on a leisurely character piece set in an old novel world ... and the act of spinning it on the page, the slow build of backstory, description, emotion and the loose-leaf plot - sheer joy.

This makes me more determined to start writing on another novel ...

Another Sale!

2011-05-05T22:25:00.003-04:00

Another story sale, this one to Kaleidotrope! http://www.kaleidotrope.net/

Due out ... sometime next year. I am waiting to hear whether winter means "Jan / Feb" or "Nov / Dec" ...

The story is entitled "Voices," and is set in the same world as "Journal of the Dead" - almost prehistory, if you will.

This is actually my second publication in Kaleidotrope, and I happened to get curious about whether or not Tangent ever reviewed this ezine. I found this whopper of a review of my previous story:

In this issue’s first story, “Remember,” Lindsey Duncan crafts lyrical prose as nimbly as a skilled glassblower might work a parison. Duncan’s sculpted passages bring to the fore a tale in which an emissary from a drought-stricken village must overcome the rigors of harsh terrains, including and especially desert and mountains, in order to call forth energies capable of transforming his arid homeland into a fertile valley; the main character must summon the “Storm-bringers.” The cost of intruding on such powerful beings is his sanity, but the only way for him to return home is for him to keep a little bit of his head. In the least, the protagonist is conflicted.

At first glance, this piece is a prose poem about overcoming adversity. Read closer, though, this story sets up the relative cost of choices and questions whether or not it is worthwhile to sacrifice one’s self to serve the greater good. Sagaciously, Duncan posits that either response brings secondary problems and that in most cases, no matter the route we follow, we will remain unable to know our choice’s merit.

No. 7, October 2009 print, if you want to check it out.

Thursday Thoughts

2011-05-05T09:11:00.018-04:00

It has been a week of triumphs writing-wise: the story sale, something else which I'm not divulging until I have details in hand, and ... I finished my editing pass of Scylla and Charybdis!

I'm still very unsure about the change I made near the end; looking again at how I set up the ending, it may actually be overkill. But it performs a nice, circular loop to the events of the beginning, which reflects the novel's overall shape.

I'm still in love with my characters, too. That probably means they're terrible.

I will probably let the novel rest for a bit, then start looking for reads on at least the opening chapters. I might be brave enough to have someone read the whole book, but I certainly couldn't do it as one big chunk: waiting for that would kill me. Multiple times, potentially (I'm a Highlander).

Because word count reduction was a concern of mine, I started at 161,124 and ended at 153,325. That means I've still got to trim. Most of my cuts were necessary, unneeded verbiage or dialogue exchanges that were weird / clumsy and actually best fixed by simply excising them; I may have to make some tough choices before I get down into reasonable range. Note that I didn't just cut things: I also added, some emotional cues, some references to a new concept, and a new scene. So probably I cut more like ten to twelve thousand words and added a few thousand.

Not sure where I'm going from here. Still plinking around on worldbuilding, but I still have an entire second novel which has been finished for about two months and needs editing ... don't know how to handle that.

4/28 - 5/4
Pages Edited: 30

"Burning The Midnight Oil" to NewMyths.com!

2011-05-03T16:13:00.006-04:00

I just got an acceptance for my story "Burning The Midnight Oil" from New Myths! This story started out as an FWO challenge to write about an oddly matched couple. It was initially titled "A Lovely Light" (a reference to the Edna St. Vincent Millay poem), but before I started submitting it, I decided this title better conveyed the sense of flame / work ethic, both of which are central to the story.

... actually, now that I think it over, it was submitted to 2-3 venues as "All Work, No Play," until an editor criticized the title, I looked at it, and went, "Oy. They're right. What was I thinking?" Only then did I light on (heh) the current title.

It should be coming out in their December 2011 issue. There's also a mini-interview, which I haven't sent back yet as I'm waiting for clarification on one of the questions.

GoodReads Review: The Dragon of Despair

2011-05-01T19:27:00.001-04:00

The Dragon of Despair by Jane Lindskold

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The fact that this was a very long read has nothing to do with the quality of the book, because as with the first two volumes, this is a solid, engaging fantasy. Lindskold's world is not an unusual one, although New Kelvinese society becomes more intriguing on further inspection and the Royal Beasts continue to provide interesting wrinkles and an evolving multi-book conflict. Rather, the pleasure is in the characters and their adventures.

The book begins with one plot and continues with another (which isn't as disjointed as it sounds, but the first plot is obviously intended to set up for book four). Firekeeper, raised by Royal Beasts but now a member of Hawk Haven noble society - almost - must deal with the conflict between the animal kin who raised her and Hawk Haven settlers moving onto their turf. The ambivalence that Firekeeper feels throughout these interactions is compelling, and as ever, Lindskold's animal societies are well-rounded. I particularly appreciate the fact that she pays attention to the social aspects of wolves, often drawing parallels between their manueverings and those of human society. This kind of subtlety I find is lacking sometimes even in werewolf stories, where the participants are in theory even more human.

The second plot picks up with the mental illness of young Citrine, abandoned by her sorcerous mother Melina but still in her thrall. A handpicked group heads into New Kelvin to bring about a confrontation between the two and hopefully free Citrine from her mother's domination. Again, Citrine's evolution is compelling here. It's dysfunction well portrayed. Lindskold gets deep inside her devotion, and it's a mildly creepy place to be.

Unfortunately, I think the weight of the previous two volumes got in the way of this one: the book is slow off the mark, taking a long time to get past some minor info-dumping (not too bad, but certainly not as well done as in previous volumes) and a lot of characters meeting other characters and talking to each other. It's good dialogue, but there's a lot of it. The middle sections of the story progress steadily, laying groundwork for the future without feeling unfinished.

Then, later on, it gets uneven again. Now, in fairness, I was having some issues making myself read (not a reflection on the book, just an expression of my headspace) at the time, so perhaps how I was reading the book exacerbated it, but it seemed like large chunks of in-story time passed with nothing happening, which - while it was quick to read; Lindskold doesn't waste time in filler - felt disjointed and strange. It was hard to credit the characters would just sit there. I really wanted to know a bit more about what was going on that got glossed. That is a tribute to how fun they are to follow, though!

As we approach the end, some plot points aren't properly foreshadowed. This isn't a huge deal - it's not deus ex machina, just details - but it's one of my pet peeves.

On the other hand (paw!), Firekeeper's dreams build nicely throughout, culminating in an explanation of their true nature that is very satisfying. Early in the book, I had issues with the fact that Firekeeper's evolution as a human - deftly handled in the first two books, neither slow nor fast - seemed to have stagnated. This isn't unrealistic, of course - people hit plateaus - but it was frustrating not to see her progress further in her understanding of the human world around her. However, by the end of the book, I would have to say that I feel this objection was met. Firekeeper may not have come out and realized the moral of the story, but I as a reader felt its impact.

This one gets four stars as a continuation, but I might only give it 3.5 stars as a standalone book. It's still very readable that way (which is quite a feat, given how much happened in those books!), but the flaws become more objectionable. If you've not read them, pick up Through Wolf's Eyes and Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart first.

View all my reviews

Who's Right? Who's Left?

2011-04-30T13:12:00.012-04:00

Random fantasy ethics question ...

Imagine a situation where two fathers are planning an arranged marriage, but know that one half of the couple is in love with someone else. Who's worse:

Father #1, who is only now finding out about the existing romance, and is leery of the arrangement - but still agrees.
Father #2, who knew beforehand and has seen the couple together, but is a veteran of arranged marriage himself, fully confident it works, and has no qualms.

No "both" or "equally," please. If you had to say one's decision was more condemnable than the other - which would it be?

There's a basic question here about viewpoint, intent versus action, and ... I am curious what people think. For context in this setting, arranged marriages are a dwindling practice, but still accepted, esp. among the nobility.

As a sidebar, there are other factors to this debate, and I had a tough time narrowing down which ones were relevant without favoring one side or the other ...

Thursday Thoughts

2011-04-28T09:21:00.008-04:00

This was a rough week, and it came out in the writing / editing output - or lack thereof. I just completed my worldbuilding, with the exception of putting a few more dates into the timeline as I work with characters. The various backstories are so dependent on sequence, I needed a timeline to make sure that things could happen in the right order without time travel, and to discover some things that I didn't know happened at almost the same time. Ahem. Most of this will never see the light of day, but I'd hate to have said: X happens before Y and after Z, A happens before Z, but after Y ... wait.

I got the rare treat of finishing the timeline and thinking to myself, "Oh, that character is only eighty-nine. Good."

With Scylla and Charybdis, I am working on the last leg and rapidly approaching the sequence of scenes I recently decided needed a larger change - so nervous about that. Could be subconsciously procrastinating so I don't reach them. I wouldn't put it past me!

4/21 - 4/27
Pages Edited: 28

Last Post Addendum ...

2011-04-24T11:23:00.004-04:00

And trademark hard copy submission signature: purple ink. No, I don't generally work in purple (twould be unprofessional) but my signature always is.

Honestly, I should have done that for my Sails & Sorcery signing, but I think if I ever sign books in the future (ha!), I'll have to make sure I have a purple pen on me.

Once More Into The Breach ...

2011-04-24T10:16:00.055-04:00

Having received my first rejection for Journal of the Dead on a submission to a publisher, I'm now going the query route. In the past, while I've had a list of agents I definitely wanted to submit to, my research beyond that has been a bit scattershot. I decided to go into this time with a Battleplan (tm), and despite the headaches of the past few days (both literal - oww, allergy season! - and figurative - flooding under the garage steps has had me changing towels every few hours), I've come up with a system and information I'm happy with.

First, I set up an Excel spreadsheet with columns for agency name, agent, genres represented, method of contact, submission package desired, other notes, and then a personal ranking. (Actually, the ranking is the first item - on the far left hand side.) Then, I went back through the agencies I submitted to last time and reviewed their sites, adding this information into my sheet. I removed a few agencies from the list, mostly due to inaccurate information - the agent had left, no longer taking fantasy, etc.

Next step, I went trawling the net for other agencies. As a point of interest, I usually avoided agents that didn't have an obvious net presence. This isn't laziness (that's my story and I'm sticking with it - no, really), but more that I feel in this day and age, having that internet platform is important. I'm not terribly good at it myself, but I have a website, a blog and a facebook page. (Actually, I have three facebook pages - personal, author and harper. Oh, the travails of multi-tasking.) Anyone who has less presence than I do makes me leery.

(As a sidebar, I've already found Facebook's character limit on updates annoying, so I will not be joining Twitter. 140 characters? It takes me more than that to say hello!)

Originally, I had added a column for whether or not the agent accepted simsubs, but discovered that only one or two even wanted to be notified, so I moved that info into my notes and deleted the column. One thing I should have included and didn't was whether the agent sent rejections (or whether no reply was considered a rejection) and length of response time. I added a column for that and will add this information in as I make submissions. I also added a color code and a column for JoD to track the kind of responses I get. Why color and not words? I like color. It's also easier to get a quick picture.

Even though I have the summary, I'm still going to consult websites as I submit. Want to make sure I address more specific needs that I can't put in a simple spreadsheet. Still, it will speed me up. The best thing about the sheet thus far is one horizontal line fits perfectly on my widescreen monitor, with room to make notes for 4-5 projects. (I sincerely, sincerely hope I won't need those extra lines, because if I don't have an agent by then I may stab myself, shoot myself and hurl myself off a bridge while drinking poison ... but there it is.)

I decided from the start I wasn't going to do the typical method of submitting to a rash of places at once - but neither was I going to be dumb and simply submit to two or three at a time, because that takes forever. (There was a time I didn't know this. We do not speak of this time.) So the plan was to submit to perhaps five or six to start, and then every time I receive a no response, send out two more. This keeps momentum going and means I'm doing it in small, manageable chunks - critical, with the number of other balls I'm juggling in my life. Obviously, I will reach a point of overwhelming mass, at which point I'll just do a 1:1.

As it so happens, my rank 1 (highest priority) list has seven agencies on it - one of which is currently closed to queries, but I know from prior experience that they close and reopen regularly. Six is a perfect number to start with, and I'm hoping to get the email letters out today. Whether the snail mail letter gets out tomorrow depends on if I have enough postage in-house. Tomorrow and Tuesday are insane days, so it will be Wednesday before I can get to the post office ...

Thursday Thoughts

2011-04-21T09:23:00.003-04:00

Clunky bits, meet my red pen!

I've been pleasantly surprised with how far I've gotten on the editing of Scylla and Charybdis. It definitely will need more editing and probably a few outside eyes, at least on the first chapters ... but making a good start. However, Who Wants To Be A Hero? is looming at me, and I can't figure out when is a good time to make headway on that one. I don't want to wait too long, but I don't want them to meld together ...

My word count this week does not include a little over six thousand words of worldbuilding, in the messiest, most disorganized funnel cake sprawl of note-jotting I've committed in a while. The file itself is in decent order, but the way I put it in ... not so much. I keep looping back to add other information, nuances, address questions I forgot ...

Part of it may be the fact that this isn't a full construction. I've built what I need of the world, which means that global elements, magic, etc are deeply outlined, as well as the countries in which the story actually takes place, while other countries are etched just enough that I can toss in spice and refer to them consistently ... and beyond my partial world map, here there be dragons - metaphorically, not literally (although you never know ...). I know the name and general character of two places beyond the map - that's it.

I don't usually do maps; I needed this one because the geographic orientation of the lands is opposite similar locations on Earth, so I wanted a visual to keep me from reverting.

4/14 - 4/20
Pages Edited: 32
Word Count: 1,004

On Writing and Skepticism

2011-04-17T10:48:00.017-04:00

I think my years of writing fantasy have contributed to my skeptical view of the world, in particular spiritual concepts.

On the face of it, this might seem like a contradiction in terms, but it starts with how I approach new information. History facts and geographical nuances can spawn new stories (or how about the typo "left at the alter," which I added to my mental file recently) ... but so can mythology, religion, pseudoscience and modern "fringe" beliefs such as past lives. When I read about these things, my first reaction is not, "I believe that: it could be true," it's, "This would make a great story ..."

When I look at such concepts, what I often see first is not potential enlightenment or a way of understanding how the universe works. Instead, I see drama, cost, consequence, plot barrier and tension.

And I've taught myself to structure beliefs, higher powers, etc into a plausible world system. When you approach concepts with the mindset that anything is equally possible, the corrolary is that no single possibility stands out as truth. I am openminded: anything could be possible. But I am also unconvinced: (almost) everything just sounds like a good story to me, not an expression of reality.

Thursday Thoughts

2011-04-14T09:55:00.009-04:00

This weekend, I treated myself to a break from editing to work on a new short story and to read through the project I'm thinking of rewriting so I could take notes. Yes ... I consider it a treat, and that's how I thought of it.

The short story is for the Fantasy-Writers.org "act of folly" April monthly challenge - more detail on their site. I'm playing with the idea in that the character is deliberately attempting to do something foolish and keeps getting thwarted. The story is also as-told-to an unidentified third party, so there are occasional present tense / pseudo second person interjections when she stops to explain or apologize to the listener. The identity of the third party is important to the resolution of the story, so I'm hoping it all works.

Being stumped over fantasy calendars again. I hate these: it's a no-win situation. You have the unappetizing choice between a) using our calendar and having it stick out like a sore thumb among all the non-Earth concepts; b) inventing a calendar and forcing the reader to wade through a bunch of gratuitious month-names (at least); or c) using bland, obvious names like firstmonth, secondmonth, etc.

I'm pondering doing a variant on the Earth calendar: instead of January, February, March, it'd be Janum, Februm, Maren ... does anyone think this is viable, or would it just draw you out of the story MORE than using conventional months?

3/7 - 3/13
Pages Edited: 29
Word Count: 5,242

Just The Messenger

2011-04-11T09:27:00.004-04:00

I sold "Just The Messenger" to the new Darwin's Evolutions anthology series! Anthology will go into production once it's full, so date entirely unknown ...

It's Raining Men

2011-04-08T16:30:00.010-04:00

Male characters occupy a slightly unusual place in my fiction. The majority of my characters are female, and typically, I find that the women in my cast have larger, more distinct roles. This used to be a ridiculous ratio: in fact, I had a collaborator who said to me, "I know why the villainness wants my character: he's the only male left!" I've since achieved more balance, but I have a bias and I'm aware of it. (In fact, when writing Scylla and Charybdis, I realized I had chapters in the supposedly male-dominated region that were shy on men, so I gave one of the characters a sex change. My editing notes thus include the observation, "Make sure Justin is male. No, really.")

I also find that my male characters tend to fade into the background or simply fail as interesting figures more frequently ... but when they work, they form a high percentage of my best creations.

From "The Sintellyn Medallion," main character Tieruko is a figurehead king who realizes his past as an evil overlord's unwilling apprentice isn't entirely over. From "Journal of the Dead," foreign ambassador Razentis Ara-Anaxiar treats the deadly politics of the novel like a game, but still manages to be an engaging and likeable ally (I hope). From "Scylla and Charybdis," the Tweaker named Flick comes on like comic relief, but soon proves himself to be fiercely loyal with an immense heart. And in my novella / novelette "Shadow Play," narrator Irun is an expatriate legal representative who has lost his faith in the world ... almost.

Not sure what accounts for the dichotomy. Maybe it's the freshness of it: when a male character works, really works for me, it's uncommon enough that inspires me. Does that mean some day, I'll lose this aspect? I hope not.

Thursday Thoughts

2011-04-07T08:17:00.013-04:00

This week, I've been struggling a lot with the difference between what I need to do to further my goal of producing a (hopefully) publishable novel, versus what I want to do as a writer on a story playground. Now, don't get me wrong on this: I'm not contemplating projects I'm not passionate about or choosing based on marketibility. Instead, I know I should focus on editing, then focus on writing a single project ... but my brain wants to do prep-work / worldbuilding now, and it really wants to sink into both novel ideas, not one.

I am starting to resent this dichotomy. I want to be a professional author, but I write because I love it. Obviously, there's going to be parts of writing that are like eating your green vegetables - rejection letters come to mind - but it shouldn't be this hard or pervasive: something I will be spending months on. I shouldn't spend this much time angsting over this. Do I stick to my plan and fidget because there's so much else I want to do? Do I let myself off leash and accept that the next few projects are going to take a while? (I'm also concerned about if I take too much time editing, I will simply look at the whole thing and think, "The writing in this is crap.)

It's not a race, and I already have projects out there. Any advice?

(I think part of it is I've been editing solid for the whole past week, so my creative brain is playing caged beast ...)

3/31 - 4/6
Pages Edited: 32

Facebook!

2011-04-05T18:33:00.001-04:00

After having had several people tell me it's a good tool for marketing, I've (somewhat reluctantly) signed up over at Facebook. You can find me at Lindsey Duncan for personal ... Lindsey Duncan, Celtic Harp ... and Unicorn Isle: Lindsey Duncan. Please feel free to friend, like, stalk me or whatever the heck it's called.

Honestly, right now I am too sick to focus on anything else. ;-)

Multiple Long Projects?

2011-04-03T20:30:00.024-04:00

There is a question here, and a plea for your point of view - please read!

Having finally settled on the novel project I want to write - need to write, because it's been brewing and incubating for so long that if I don't tackle it now, it will be never; need to write, because it's the book that embodies the genre-blending (mystery in fantasy) I want to be all about - I had a horrible thing happen to me. I looked at an old manuscript (actually from a collab) and was blown away. We won't speak of the horrible craft in some of the writing, but apart from the fact that some facts needed to be foreshadowed or built up more firmly, earlier (naturally, because hey, I was pulling this stuff out of thin air) ... wow.

And I got so enthused, so delighted, in reading ... in remembering ... in finding side stories I had written and lighting upon alternate interpretations ... I can't remember being this gungho in a while, though granted I'm not sure if I'm just not remembering accurately. But I cannot find any downside, and that's a rarity. Some small concerns about cliche elements, but with this idea, I think I can fix those elements with ease.

I've thought about trying to write both books simultaneously (yes, I know, I know!) but the concerns are primarily: a) confusion of concept and b) I'd end up editing them both almost at once, and I'm already approaching that situation. I'm not sure that the first is an issue: they're both conspiracy / court intrigue concepts, but this is an area which I am so familiar and obsessed with that I think I might be able to better handle the similarity than someone for whom it might be two experiments. And in details, they are very different.

So for the writers out there: how many have you have seriously tried to write two novels at once? How did you figure out when to change between them? How did you keep the two separate? How did you handle the editing processes? Would you do it again?

Anatomy of an Idea: First Contact

2011-03-31T19:31:00.017-04:00

This story was inspired by the concept of synesthesia - which is experiencing a sensation associated with one sense (ie, sight or hearing) through a different sense. For instance, one might hear color or taste music. It's a genuine clinical condition, but also has broader application.

Back to fantasy-writers.org and their monthly story challenge. This was a prompt I had suggested: first contact. Why should science fiction have all the fun of first encounters? (It doesn't, but that may be a popular perception.) Of course, as the person who came up with the prompt, I wanted to take it one step further, and decided to take the phrase "first contact" literally - the first time a character experiences touch.

This led me into deciding why a character would find themselves in that situation, and I decided this stringent purity had been forced upon the character from infancy. Description and metaphor are generally based in things familiar to us - we don't make comparisons between two foreign objects. Instead, we familiarize the new by comparing it to the known.

So in "First Contact," physical sensations, from passing breezes to fabric against skin, are phrased (back to the first paragraph again! Have faith in me, it's all interconnected) in terms of sight, sound and occasionally smell, the way the narrator would think of them. It was challenging to come up with descriptions in this vein that were evocative, realistic, but seamless enough that they didn't throttle the reader over the head with their cleverness.

I realize that quoting Shakespeare is extra high-falutin', but one line stuck in my head when I started to conceive this story and would not let go, and I finally succumbed to placing it at the beginning:

But then there was a star danced, and under that was I born ...

One ... Two ...

2011-03-31T17:33:00.005-04:00

A one-two punch today: First, ParABNormal Digest purchased "The Herd Mentality," the infamous psychic vampire unicorn story. I cannot even write the phrase "psychic vampire unicorn" without grinning like an idiot. It will be in their second issue, September 2011.

Second, Golden Visions' April print issue, with my story "First Contact," is now available here at the bottom of the page. Note that the print and online versions are different - I'm in the former.

Thursday Thoughts

2011-03-31T09:32:00.015-04:00

I finished "Scenting Rain" today - thanks to everyone who contributed a sentence for its sprawling expanse! It finished at a whopping 17,000 (and some change) words. I am more copacetic than I would have expected about being saddled with a bear-to-sell novella. Of course, it will probably shrink 2k or so in the editing, but still no chance of getting it under the 10k mark. I'd have to go through and delete random words.

One of the interesting elements to the story, for me, is an ordinary one: Gerune's not too bright. She means well and she tries hard, but she tends to miss nuances and alternate explanations. She is so fixed on things happening a certain way that she doesn't see different paths. Hopefully, I've made this human and realistic rather than irritating, but I don't think you necessarily see stories where the character is slow on the uptake that often.

As is typical for me, the story is definitely open-ended in its conclusion. The main story problem(s) is / are solved, but there's clearly a lot else to do ...

Finished an insane five chapters editing this week. My observations are that I'm going to need a draft where every time I see a continuity issue, I bookmark my place and skim through the rest of the manuscript to make sure I've adhered to it. I think this is best done as a separate pass through the manuscript. I'm fixing or tweaking too much else in this one.

I'm just starting to edit "Stolen Moments." I read it through yesterday to get an overall sense of it, and while it has some rough edges and needs some tightening, there's a lot of intriguing stuff going on. I have a good feeling about this one, but the cynic in me remembers that last year, I didn't even get a story held by Sword & Sorceress (unlike the first 2-3 years), so I'm not holding my breath.

3/24 - 3/30
Pages edited: 27
Word count: 3,008

Prequel Pitfalls

2011-03-26T17:03:00.038-04:00

I've seen a number of prequels in the past little while, most from television - but I think most of the same factors apply to books, as well. (Except maybe for the fact that their recent popularity may be enhanced by the ease with which an actor can be made to look younger, with little touchups of easy CGI if necessary - which, of course, a book doesn't have to worry about. See "Surrogates," which - whatever you think of the storyline, and of course it's not a prequel - has some of the most amazing-yet-subtle CGI in movie-making.)

On the face of it, a prequel is a great concept. Any good story, in my opinion, has a sense that it is neither the beginning nor the end of the characters' lives: the things happened to them before the curtain lifted and things will continue to happen after it falls. There's a fine line between a story that lives in this way and a story that doesn't feel like it starts at the right spot ... but to me, I would rather trend towards too much backstory than too little.

Then, of course, there's the unintentional prequel - when you're forced to read book two and then come back to book one. This happens a lot with mysteries: those long-running series, good luck finding all the books, in order, in print. I've pretty much resigned myself to picking up whatever number I can find, and I hate - hate hate hate - reading things out of order. And because the mystery is so important, the mystery novel has an obligation not to spoil previous volumes, while still providing the reader with enough context to operate. Anne Perry's "Callander Square" does a marvelous job of discussing the events in "The Cater Street Hangman" without revealing a key aspect of the murderer in the previous book.

In fact, just to confuse the prequel issue further, I like to read things in chronological order, so I'll tend to start with the prequel ... but we digress.

I think prequels suffer from some potential pitfalls above and beyond regular volumes, and there are two that jump out at me:

1. That's All There Is? The events of the prequel seem too small / cramped to live up to all the foreshadowing and complexity of the hints in the main storyline. This is always going to be a big risk, because the reader (/ viewer's) imagination will probably create scenarios more interesting than what the writer can provide. Often, what we don't see is more powerful than what we do. But more generally, this can apply to situations that don't havethe right proportion of time or immensity. It's like finding out the mysterious vendetta that's been keeping our hero and villain at each other's throats for years is a parking space.

The "White Collar" prequel episode fell into this category for me. I felt that the now-time association between the characters suggested a far longer and deeper connection than could be summarized / presented in a one-hour episode. Even now, I sort of ignore the whole backstory episode and pretend there's more to it.

2. Too Tidy. The prequel takes in / explains every single little event in the present storyline. Sometimes the events even torque unnaturally to make sure that something is covered. Additionally or instead of, there is almost no content in the prequel that doesn't pertain to or lead into the main storyline. Life doesn't work like this. It's too neat, too contrived - even in storytelling. I stop believing in it ... and it loses one of the prime virtues of backstory, to flesh out the world with the unseen but present.

Not a prequel / main story situation per se, but this was part of my problem with "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter:" the whole alternate history was so entirely fixed / predicated on vampires that I had trouble buying into it. Sure, that's your subject matter, but the entire span of a person's life is more varied than that.

These aren't insurmountable problems, but they're definitely a significant concern and an impact upon (my) enjoyment of a prequel. What do you think, folks? Is there another pitfall I've missed?

Thursday Thoughts

2011-03-24T09:20:00.009-04:00

So much has happened within the course of the novel pages I've edited this past week, and yet I have little to say. I'm conscious of the fact that I'm not cutting as much as I wanted to and often adding chunks of explanation and emotional insertions - but I am still fixed on the point that whatever the length, it needs to be as strong as it can be. Four more chapters this week. Not going to promise (even to myself) that I'll keep that pace ...

I'm still finishing "Scenting Rain" in between times, but have a lot else I've been tackling, such as reviews and editing a story that I intend to submit to Triangulation: Last Contact. (Everyone who read "Last Requests," by the way - thank you so much. It's a much stronger story now, and all my niggling doubts have been addressed.) I'm down to one last sentence to use in "Scenting Rain," and I just realized I'll need to switch POVs one more time to get it to happen. Curses! But we are looking at a sprawling novella - currently a little over 14k, likely to go over 15k, and probably shrinking back to 13-14k in editing.

That makes my total count of novellas / novelettes (technically it's a novelette, but that term sounds so dainty) written for publication: two. The other is "Shadow Play," and while I'm sure much of the style / feel is similar, the outlook on the world espoused by the characters could not be more different.

3/17 - 3/23
Pages Edited: 19
Word Count: 1,258

Sword & Sorceress 2011

2011-03-19T20:16:00.058-04:00

It's that time of year again: I prepare to charge up the submission shores of Sword & Sorceress. This year, submissions are limited to two (assuming the first is rejected within the submissions window) ... and I am breaking my brain trying to figure out which stories best fit the style of the anthology. The combination of trying to categorize and identify my own style versus assessing what I've found in stories by others maddens me. I've never been very good at it. I certainly don't have a gut-level feel for it.

I have read three Sword & Sorceress anthologies: XVII, XXI (the first one edited by someone other than Bradley) and XXIV, edited by the reigning red pen, Elisabeth Waters. So I've encountered a fairly wide range of the stories selected. The most significant feature is that the stories have a strong bias towards female narrators - though not exclusively. A majority, but not a distinct majority, feature warriors and battles. Others involve quests, puzzles, and quieter adventures. Though personal battles rather than global stakes - usually considered a defining feature between sword and sorcery and high fantasy - predominate, some of the stories involve princesses, kingdoms, the fate of the world, etc ... which sort of stretches the point of calling it "Sword & Sorceress," to me. Conclusion: it's not just for swashbucklers and fight scenes (and better for it).

At present, my definite contender is:

Stolen Moments: Mantisia, an unusual child who ages a year in a day, stows away with an adult friend when he goes to pay a mysterious debt. I do have concerns that this story might be a bit experimental (gah, that word!) for Sword & Sorceress: it's in first person POV with each scene narrated "immediately" - so that it starts with a (albiet precocious) seven year old narrator and vocabulary and progresses throughout. However, my favorite stories in XXIV were the ones that tread different paths in regards to setting, and I think (hope!) this would have a similar kind of interest. Seven thousand words. Ouch.

The other three are wrangling around with each other:

Kept Woman: An assassin assigned must pose as one of thirty-some royal brides, but how will she react when she develops feelings for the first among their number? Story also comes in around 7k; I know longer tales are handicapped, and I'm reluctant to submit two in that range. This is one of my older stories, too, though believe me it'll get a thorough polish ...
Note Taking: Among a people where music is language, Ecca is handicapped by her lack of pitch ... but this unassuming servant girl may be the only one who can break the language barrier with a foreign people. I think the feel of this one is on the right track, but - and this is a big but - there is no magic in this setting. At all. I don't think I've seen a secondary world sans magic in any of the anthologies. For me, this is a short story - 5k.
Dancing Day: A group of young teleporters who lose their abilities upon maturity must keep the traditions of their conquered city alive ... but how can one dance the Silver Tree with no instruments to play? (Look, Lindsey is obsessing about music!) I can't put my finger on what makes me uncertain about this one. Well, length, at least - yet another story in the 7k range. Unfortunately, that seems to be my sweet spot for length.

As an aside, I did have this whole problem figured out - but the original story I had intended to set aside for story #2 sold. (Well, good news bad news ...) So back to the drawing board!

Anyone who has experience with Sword & Sorceress and is better at eyeballing, I would love some advice. Currently my plan is to bang my head against a wall until I hurt myself and do some divination with the blood.

Thursday Thoughts

2011-03-17T21:19:00.010-04:00

Today is the busiest day of the Celtic musician's year. I only had one job, but it was a marathon: two hours at lunch, then another two and a half hours at dinner, with my trio. I also turned down at least three other jobs that intersected. Might have been more, I lost count. Which is all to say that I apologize in advance if this post is in gibberish. Or Gaelic (same difference).

First week, off to a good start: four chapters edited, and more thoroughly than I had initially intended. What I usually do is take a printed manuscript, read it through once to get the macro sense of the story, then read it through again taking hand notes and creating an outline. The outline contains macro-level corrections I need to make; the hand notes are typically line edits. These steps are already done. Then I address the hand notes in the manuscript. That's the step I'm on. As I finish each chapter, I'm going back over it again to see if I've edited in anything strange, if I skimmed lines I should have read more closely because I didn't mark them on the printed pages, etc.

I had something wise and enlightening I was going to say in this post, which I have forgotten. Oh, well.

3/10 - 3/16:
Pages edited (computer manuscript, which is about 750 words / full page): 21
Word count: 2,069

The Eyes Have It

2011-03-15T12:01:00.047-04:00

One of the best things about writing fantasy is the ability to create cultures and peoples, and one aspect of that - though far from the most important - is physical appearance. Now, I know racial type is a hot-button topic in fantasy, with some people increasingly concerned about how the genre is white-and-European-centric, and arguably even some characters who are physically different are just western folks "painted" - but I'm going to skirt that issue in this post, just as I skirt it in my writing. Not because I'm afraid or unaware of controversy, but because ...

... why limit yourself to Earth types? Some components of physical appearance are tightly tied to evolution and adaptation to a particular clime, such as skin color and physical type - that is, longer, thinner body types disperse heat better and are more suited to hot climates. Others, however, have no correlation in necessity. Genetics may have a hand in it, dominant traits coming to the fore ... but who says that the same traits have to be dominant or recessive in your world? If magic gets to be a gene (and in some worlds, it really is), why not play further with the rules of inheritance? Why not make a culture / race that has no direct parallel in the real world?

I've done this in several different ways. Mixing up types in a way not usually seen in our world is one. The Alayins, the dominant people in "Journal of the Dead," are dark complected with light hair and eyes. The few dark-eyed characters are treated with some fascination by the cast. Another way is specificity - for instance, a race that only produces blondes. Or capitalizing as a physical or cultural feature something that isn't usually considered part of a distinct type. On Trianor, the Sikan standard of beauty revolves around the feet. A final way is simply to pick something that doesn't exist in the real world - genuinely yellow eyes, dominant polydactylism ... actually, I think I'm going to mark that for future use - and make it racial.

When I do imitate an Earth type, it's either out of laziness (I admit it!), or because I want to evoke a specific parallel. For instance, in the world of the Seventeen Seas, Ilkanae is supposed to be reminiscent of ancient Greece, and the reader should get that feeling quite strongly. And in "Who Wants To Be A Hero?" the parallels were necessary both for the feel of the story and to support some of the real-world cultural / mythological jokes. Destia is basically pre-Revolutionary America if it were a Greek colony instead of an English one ... well, okay, that's not exactly a parallel ...

This all comes up because I've been editing "Scylla and Charybdis" and noticed Gwydion has brown eyes. There was a time, when I was a young writer, when I hated brown-eyed characters. Part of it was because I didn't see any variety in it: you could have brown eyes, hazel eyes or ... brown eyes. Later, obviously, I realized there are a lot more variations. Another part of it, I think, was self-identification. I have grey eyes, which tend to greener or bluer depending on what I'm wearing. Yes, I am this close to being the fantasy cliche of the girl with the mood-ring eyes.

Sidebar about "Scylla and Charybdis:" I very consciously mixed real-world ethnic types (since it's science fiction) with both appearances and names, as a demonstration of how those types had fused over the centuries. To do it to every character would have made it look like a circus, but there's a reason I have a redheaded Upala Manuel. The city of Nissyen has a mostly-assimilated Native American population - but this is never said directly in the text. It's left implied with the names and faces.

Back to the brown-eye controversy, I actually started consciously forcing myself to create characters with dark eyes, and I was all proud of myself when I had a narrator as such. Yes, I was young and silly, but it's a place I came from and a door I used to have shut for no other reason than instinct. Now I like exploring unusual combinations, not as a way of making the characters superficially special or diverse, but as one more way of expressing the possibilities of a secondary world fantasy ... and reminding readers that they're not in Kansas any more.

GoodReads Review: Water Witch

2011-03-10T17:44:00.001-05:00

Water Witch by Connie Willis

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

On the planet of Mahali, where the ancient talent for water-witching has been replaced by a computerized system, two characters collide: Deza, daughter of a con artist whose plan has gone horribly awry; and Radi, on a royally appointed mission to deal with the threat of the Tycoon. The story incorporates romance, adventure and intrigue on a river-ride to what seems like a no-win conclusion.

The feel of this story is intriguing: it's either a science fiction story with fantasy trappings, or a fantasy story with science fiction trappings, depending on how you look at it. Because of this, despite the fact the book is almost thirty years old, the science in it wears very well. The only part that made me burst out laughing was a bit about the lack of communications between the Tycoon's compound and the City due to the lack of landlines. Oh really?

However, for me, the emotional dimensions weren't always written fully and convincingly. In particular, I didn't buy into the love story. In a story that was otherwise fairly deep into the character's heads, much of the chemistry was introduced through actions without support of thought or emotion. Now, I hate the romance novel cliche of bashing the reader over the head with the "mysterious feelings," but this book goes too far in the other direction.

In addition, I never got the impression that Radi loved Sheria (the princess he starts the story engaged to) - it read like a marriage of convenience, and I was surprised when he was upset later on. (Contributing to my confusion was the fact that Radi seemed to think nothing of sleeping with another woman. This is somewhat fitting to the time period of the setting the SF millieu mimics, but it was never explained or even mentioned, so I was left with a slightly sour puzzlement.)

I'm not quite sure whether the principle development in the latter half of the story was meant to be a surprise; it was certainly obvious to me from before the character was even introduced, which leads me to believe the reader was meant to know, but who knows.

The character of the father and how he is incorporated into the story as a deceased spirit is great, and his commentary throughout is a delight. This story also has one of the best one-thing-after-another sequences, as character after character barges into Deza's bedroom to speak with her. It's so tight and perfect that I put the book down at the end of the last entrance and howled. The character of Edvar (the Tycoon's son) is also a refreshing surprise.

Overall, this was a solid story with some shining moments, but I felt that it lacked some depth and intensity, and I would have enjoyed the romance better if the setup had been more distinct.

View all my reviews

Thursday Thoughts

2011-03-10T10:29:00.018-05:00

My mother is visiting this week - got in Saturday morning - so my word count is not what it might be. I am squeezing in brief writing spurts in between socializing and my regular daily routine. We've been cooking a lot - see my other blog if you're really curious. (Three words for you: homemade ice cream.) We're watching TV and playing chattery commentators. My dog is over the moon with the attention.

However, it was a good week in that I finished my draft of "Who Wants To Be A Hero?" (Hmm ... is the question mark part of the title? I've been writing it without ...) Sometimes I think my most marked improvement over the past few years is that I need more editing: Scylla and Charybdis looks to need tons (and tons of cutting, for sure), and this book is similarly going to need a lot of hammering to get it into shape. Sadly, I will be going back and looking for more opportunities for humor. Sometimes, I just had to let the comedy slide and drive on to the point. The fact that I was trying to contain the humor within a believable, sympathetic framework sometimes hampered me. However, once you get to know the characters, the cross-character banter is (I think!) fantastic.

Editing starts this week. I have tentatively figured I will do three chapters a week for this particular draft. This is the draft where I am translating my handwritten notes from the printed manuscript into the book. If it turns out to be to fast to get decent work in, I will revise / rethink. However, that gives me fifteen weeks for the manuscript, or 3 - 4 months. Hmm. Maybe too slow, considering we're talking about one pass-through. Again, we'll see.

Word count for 3/3 - 3/9: 7,755