First lines! I'm fairly sure I've blogged about this before, but it's been long enough that I figure the topic is due another inspection.
I spend a lot of energy on my first lines, even for novels - the leaping-off point is very important to me. As a general rule of thumb, the hook for a short story needs to be snappier and more immediate than for a novel, simply because you have less room to run.
For me, even the most slow-burn opening sentence of a novel has to fulfill one criteria: it has to make the reader ask at least one question. It may be an immediate punch of a question or simply something that catches the attention. There can be more than one implicit question; one is simply the entry requirement. One fun way to do this is with something that seems contradictory on the surface - it provokes a, "What do you mean XYZ? That makes no sense!" reaction from a reader. These tend to need to be explained quickly, though.
If this bears some similarity to my discussion of book titles, it's no accident: there is definitely some overlap in tactics and purpose.
I've mentioned before that my favorite first line from a published novel is in Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair, which is:
My father had a father that could stop a clock.
What's beautiful about this line, of course, is the answer to this inverts expectations: you expect "stop a clock" to be a figurative expression, of ugliness or maybe a stern expression ... and it turns out to be literal.
Another question I like to pose is to use a term or description that makes a reader wonder, "What is that?" I'm sure there are punchier, more interesting lines, but my personal favorite from my works is:
The Houseless were drunk on the veranda.
What is a Houseless? The word would imply some kind of dispossession, which perhaps explains why they are on the narrator's veranda ... there's actually two or three questions here, elaborated upon in the sentences that follow.
There's one more aspect to a first sentence that is important: it should be the first building block to establishing tone. A comic story shouldn't start with a weighty paragraph (unless the sudden inversion is part of the humor). A serious, sober story shouldn't start with slapstick. (Usually. There are exceptions to everything.) Who Wants To Be A Hero? starts thusly:
Ioweyn stood in the Waiting Chamber of the Gods
and tried not to fidget.
Which I'll grant is not immediately funny, but it has some quirk of humor to it.
A few other random beginnings:
Being shipwrecked, the thought rose to the surface of Miayde’s mind, had a dismaying impact on her dignity. (Butterfly's Poison)
Time is more important to me than it is to anyone else. (Stolen Moments)
Every soldier in the Pitharian army waited on the command of their captain – but every soldier also kept half an eye out for the sorceress, watching her wend across the battlefield even if they could not see her. (The Heat of Battle)
Rosh always wore the shoes when she killed. (In These Shoes)
The dragon’s harsh breath beat down on my face, with the decaying sweetness of fear and anxiety. (Nesting Instinct)
Anyone got any favorite lines - their own or another writer's - they want to share?
About Me
- Lindsey Duncan
- I'm a professional harp performer, chef / pastry chef, and speculative fiction writer from Cincinnati, Ohio. My contemporary fantasy novel Flow is available from Double Dragon Publishing, and my science fiction novel Scylla and Charybdis is now out from Grimbold Books. I've also sold a number of short stories and a few pieces of speculative poetry. I write predominantly fantasy, usually epic and/or humorous, with some soft science fiction. I play the traditional lever harp with a specialty in Celtic music - but I also perform modern and Renaissance tunes. And yes, you read that right - I have a diploma in Baking and Pastry and an Associates in Culinary Arts and am currently working in the catering field at Kate's Catering and Personal Chef Services (Dayton, KY). I am a CPC (Certified Pastry Culinarian) and CSW (Certified Specialist of Wine).
Thursday, April 03, 2014
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Thursday Thoughts
Breaking news! Since I have two 4.5 hour lab classes on Thursday next quarter, this may become Tuesday Thoughts for the interim.
Now that everyone has recovered from the shock ...
And the sarcasm ...
I've finally taken some action towards editing Who Wants To Be A Hero? - a novel which I like to describe as, "What if a pantheon of Greco-Roman deities invented reality television competitions?" For me, it was a fun project, combining my shameful enjoyment of shows like Top Chef, Project Runway and America's Next Top Model (... yes ... really ... I've admitted it ...) with my lifelong love of mythology. The challenges for becoming a hero are inspired both by the traditional Greek hero arc and by more modern ideas like roleplaying games - for instance, there's a challenge that can only be described as a dungeon-crawl.
The fun part for me was that the results of the episodes were quasi-random. I gave each character a score in various aptitudes (1-10) and decided which aptitude(s) each challenge used. If a challenge had multiple aptitudes that might apply, the contestant could "choose" to focus on one or the other. They could also potentially use an unsuitable aptitude at a penalty. Then I rolled a die (a ten-sided die, to be specific) and added the two numbers together to determine how well the character was going to do. The three highest would be up to win; the three lowest would be up for elimination.
... none of this actually showed up in the manuscript, mind. Instead, it informed the way I wrote the episode and the characters' attempts. I let my feeling of how the scene had played out influence which of the top three won ... and tried to stick with the numbers as to who had the lowest score and would go home. This was intended to imitate that moment in a reality show where someone you really expected to go all the way slips up and has a bad moment. I didn't want my preconceptions to create the straightest, most obvious route. I also hope that if I genuinely didn't know who was going to win until very near the end, that the reader won't, either ...
So editing this book is going to have some advantages - the plot structure is built in - and some disadvantages - there's going to be some untidiness where I set up elements with characters who then were eliminated. On the whole, I don't think I'll totally cut out the latter. A bit of red herring can be good for a story ...
Now that everyone has recovered from the shock ...
And the sarcasm ...
I've finally taken some action towards editing Who Wants To Be A Hero? - a novel which I like to describe as, "What if a pantheon of Greco-Roman deities invented reality television competitions?" For me, it was a fun project, combining my shameful enjoyment of shows like Top Chef, Project Runway and America's Next Top Model (... yes ... really ... I've admitted it ...) with my lifelong love of mythology. The challenges for becoming a hero are inspired both by the traditional Greek hero arc and by more modern ideas like roleplaying games - for instance, there's a challenge that can only be described as a dungeon-crawl.
The fun part for me was that the results of the episodes were quasi-random. I gave each character a score in various aptitudes (1-10) and decided which aptitude(s) each challenge used. If a challenge had multiple aptitudes that might apply, the contestant could "choose" to focus on one or the other. They could also potentially use an unsuitable aptitude at a penalty. Then I rolled a die (a ten-sided die, to be specific) and added the two numbers together to determine how well the character was going to do. The three highest would be up to win; the three lowest would be up for elimination.
... none of this actually showed up in the manuscript, mind. Instead, it informed the way I wrote the episode and the characters' attempts. I let my feeling of how the scene had played out influence which of the top three won ... and tried to stick with the numbers as to who had the lowest score and would go home. This was intended to imitate that moment in a reality show where someone you really expected to go all the way slips up and has a bad moment. I didn't want my preconceptions to create the straightest, most obvious route. I also hope that if I genuinely didn't know who was going to win until very near the end, that the reader won't, either ...
So editing this book is going to have some advantages - the plot structure is built in - and some disadvantages - there's going to be some untidiness where I set up elements with characters who then were eliminated. On the whole, I don't think I'll totally cut out the latter. A bit of red herring can be good for a story ...
Thursday, March 20, 2014
GoodReads Review: The Dragon Done It
The Dragon Done It by Mike ResnickMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Fantasy-mystery crossovers have enjoyed increasing popularity, and I had high hopes for this anthology of short stories, advertised as humorous in nature. This is a solid but not remarkable anthology; there aren't any real duds, but none of the stories stand out in my mind as especially memorable, though Esther Friesner, as ever, delivers a highlight with twists upon twists ("Gunsel and Gretel").
There is definitely a bias towards noir here, especially in the first half of the book, which is specific enough that the stories start to feel a bit repetitive. I wonder why the noir offerings weren't spread out more evenly, because we also get some entertaining Sherlock Holmes takes - I'm particularly fond of "The Adventure of the Pearly Gates" by Mike Resnick, which is set in heaven - and some well-realized historical tales. Another unusual offering is "Fox Tails" by Richard Park, which features an eastern setting.
Overall, this collection was decent, but not exceptional. Some of the stories, I wouldn't classify as mysteries. Some of the humor was of the broad, silly type I have trouble with - it takes me out of any tension. Other examples were quite clever, though, but this isn't a humorous anthology as a whole. Worth reading, but don't run out to get it.
View all my reviews
Thursday Thoughts
The fact that I've been writing, with ambitions of books in print, since I was very small, combined with the fact I've been a professional harp performer for close to fifteen years, has had an odd effect on my relationship with the creative process. Often (though not always), I feel at a loss when I try to create something that won't become a product for sale. This has influenced my forays into photography and fractal generation ... not so much the drawing I've done, possibly because I can comfortably say there's no way anyone would buy my rudimentary portraiture. I finish working on something and think ... now what? ... and gradually, that "now what?" has crept into my brain before I even start.
That's not to say I don't "play" with my creative outlets. I learn tunes that no one is going to recognize for me and me alone; I challenge myself with unusual arrangements when something more simple would be perfectly appropriate for a background gig. I've spent a lot of time with roleplaying games, a tremendous investment of time and energy that will never be sent to a publisher. And even when it's work, it's fun: it just happens to be fun I signed myself up for. I couldn't stop any more than I could stop breathing.
But in those other creative arenas, I feel at a loss. What if I become a good photographer? How would I know? What constitutes a good piece of abstract art? When do I stop playing with a fractal? What do I do with all these pictures, short of filling up a tiny fraction of my hard drive?
I suppose for me, creative process has become bound up with creative product. The act of creation itself isn't enough: I need to see it through to completion, which isn't necessarily publication or sale, but at least a state of polish and perfection. When I play or goof off, I'm practicing my craft. When it comes to the creative arts I've only dabbled in, I don't know how to tell when I've reached that level of completion. Is it finding that one perfect photo out of a thousand? Cropping and editing? But some photographers will tell you that they never alter the picture as it was taken ...
I have neither answers nor conclusions here, really.
That's not to say I don't "play" with my creative outlets. I learn tunes that no one is going to recognize for me and me alone; I challenge myself with unusual arrangements when something more simple would be perfectly appropriate for a background gig. I've spent a lot of time with roleplaying games, a tremendous investment of time and energy that will never be sent to a publisher. And even when it's work, it's fun: it just happens to be fun I signed myself up for. I couldn't stop any more than I could stop breathing.
But in those other creative arenas, I feel at a loss. What if I become a good photographer? How would I know? What constitutes a good piece of abstract art? When do I stop playing with a fractal? What do I do with all these pictures, short of filling up a tiny fraction of my hard drive?
I suppose for me, creative process has become bound up with creative product. The act of creation itself isn't enough: I need to see it through to completion, which isn't necessarily publication or sale, but at least a state of polish and perfection. When I play or goof off, I'm practicing my craft. When it comes to the creative arts I've only dabbled in, I don't know how to tell when I've reached that level of completion. Is it finding that one perfect photo out of a thousand? Cropping and editing? But some photographers will tell you that they never alter the picture as it was taken ...
I have neither answers nor conclusions here, really.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Thursday Thoughts
Occasionally, the topic arises of how to write a male or female character authentically when the author is of the opposite gender - and the inevitable (and ultimately, accurate - if simplified) retort is, "Don't write a gender: write a person." And this is all well and good; it helps break those grating stereotypes we're all tired of seeing. However, there's one aspect in which you can't ignore gender, unless you're writing about a very exotic society with a culture structure at odds with ours: how other people react to them.
This comes to mind because I'm re-editing "Traveling By Starlight: A Journey of Two Ways" ... a story of mine with two alternate (and mutually exclusive) endings. In one conclusion (this is only a minor spoiler!) the first-person narrator is female; in the other ending, the details of the story are seen in another light, and the narrator is male.
When I put this story up for critique initially, I asked readers what gender they thought the narrator was (before the divided endings) and why. Most of them pegged Verel as female not due to anything the character said or did, but due to how the love interest (male, which probably also contributed, though no one said as much) interacted with the character. Verel gets a minor injury, and in the original draft, the love interest was worried about it. I ended up rewriting his reaction and dialing back a few other comments throughout.
So again, unless your society has been radically restructured or gender simply doesn't exist, it's going to be hard to avoid tackling the topic of how other characters treat someone of male or female gender. This sometimes leads to obnoxious extremes, where secondary characters pound the reader over the head with, "Oh, wow, a girl isn't supposed to do that! How shocking / awesome / unusual!" Done right, though, society's mirror is a key facet of depicting male-or-female ... even when the individual defies all conventions.
This comes to mind because I'm re-editing "Traveling By Starlight: A Journey of Two Ways" ... a story of mine with two alternate (and mutually exclusive) endings. In one conclusion (this is only a minor spoiler!) the first-person narrator is female; in the other ending, the details of the story are seen in another light, and the narrator is male.
When I put this story up for critique initially, I asked readers what gender they thought the narrator was (before the divided endings) and why. Most of them pegged Verel as female not due to anything the character said or did, but due to how the love interest (male, which probably also contributed, though no one said as much) interacted with the character. Verel gets a minor injury, and in the original draft, the love interest was worried about it. I ended up rewriting his reaction and dialing back a few other comments throughout.
So again, unless your society has been radically restructured or gender simply doesn't exist, it's going to be hard to avoid tackling the topic of how other characters treat someone of male or female gender. This sometimes leads to obnoxious extremes, where secondary characters pound the reader over the head with, "Oh, wow, a girl isn't supposed to do that! How shocking / awesome / unusual!" Done right, though, society's mirror is a key facet of depicting male-or-female ... even when the individual defies all conventions.
Sunday, March 09, 2014
Operation: Anthology
I've decided that I want to do an Anthology April series on my blog, talking about my personal favorite source for short story reading - the anthology. And I want to hear from you ... all of you!
I'm looking for book reviews and recommendations: what are your favorite anthologies? Why? What are the highlights? Please note, I'm not talking about plugging anthologies you have stories in ... but! There's room for that, too. I just want to distinguish between book suggestions and advertisements (though I want both).
On the other hand, also please write about your personal experience with anthologies - did a topic inspire a story that you might not have otherwise written? If you ended up with a specialty story and it didn't sell, what was its fate? If you've edited or otherwise helped put together an anthology, what was the experience like? How did you balance theme adherence and overall (subjective, of course!) story quality?
I'm looking for full posts here, say at least 150 words, however long as the mood takes you after that. Links gleefully encouraged.
On the other hand, if you have specific ideas for concepts that you would love to see as an anthology, send them to me, too. I'd love to compile a long list (credited, of course) for folks to enjoy. For instance, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, I've always wanted to see an anthology of humorous secondary world stories involving the afterlife entitled, Things To Do In Fantasyland When You're Dead.
Got an idea? Email me at LindseyDuncan@earthlink.net and I'll (almost certainly) give you the thumbs-up, a sanity deadline, and maybe a request or two. :-) Hope folks are willing to give this a shot!
I'm looking for book reviews and recommendations: what are your favorite anthologies? Why? What are the highlights? Please note, I'm not talking about plugging anthologies you have stories in ... but! There's room for that, too. I just want to distinguish between book suggestions and advertisements (though I want both).
On the other hand, also please write about your personal experience with anthologies - did a topic inspire a story that you might not have otherwise written? If you ended up with a specialty story and it didn't sell, what was its fate? If you've edited or otherwise helped put together an anthology, what was the experience like? How did you balance theme adherence and overall (subjective, of course!) story quality?
I'm looking for full posts here, say at least 150 words, however long as the mood takes you after that. Links gleefully encouraged.
On the other hand, if you have specific ideas for concepts that you would love to see as an anthology, send them to me, too. I'd love to compile a long list (credited, of course) for folks to enjoy. For instance, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, I've always wanted to see an anthology of humorous secondary world stories involving the afterlife entitled, Things To Do In Fantasyland When You're Dead.
Got an idea? Email me at LindseyDuncan@earthlink.net and I'll (almost certainly) give you the thumbs-up, a sanity deadline, and maybe a request or two. :-) Hope folks are willing to give this a shot!
Friday, March 07, 2014
GoodReads Review: Sword and Sorceress XVII
Sword and Sorceress XVII by Marion Zimmer BradleyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
The tradition of the Sword & Sorceress anthologies is evident here, a mix of stories that deal with the deeply personal conflicts of female characters in fantasy. Many of the tales have a strong emotional component, and a few hit me hard. The quality is generally high: there is only one real miss, though there are a few of what I would call "beginner" stories - they hit you over the head with their plot points, resolution, description, etc. The two flash fiction pieces are easily among the best, though I really wanted a full-length tale from the humorous one (“Weapons at War” by Charles Laing). Length does a few of these tales a disservice: they would have been much stronger if allowed to breathe. On the converse side, “Memories Traced In Snow” by Dave Smeds would probably be better served by being about a third shorter.
Far and and away my favorite story here is “Luz” by Patricia Duffy Novak, a tale I simply could not put down until its conclusion … and it takes the ending a step further into something thought-provoking and a little unsettling. I also really liked “Nor Iron Bars a Cage” by Deborah Wheeler for the ‘magic’ used within and the development of its narrator. The opening and closing stories are both well-chosen; they’re shorter, deceptively simple, and with emotional impact.
On the flip side, I simply didn’t get “Caelqua’s Spring” by Vera Nazarian. It just felt like flowery, opaque language for the sake of it. “Demon Calling” by ElizaBeth Gilligan has the opposite problem – there’s not enough specificity to the story to be that compelling.
One thing I loved about the collection, too, was how many of the stories were inspired by history and mythology. And it was obvious that the authors loved their source material, more than just a casual encounter: it came through vividly. I’d definitely recommend this volume.
View all my reviews
Thursday, March 06, 2014
Thursday Thoughts
I was finishing up an assignment for my Purchasing course a few days ago and I had a surprising realization: my method for coming up with dishes to cook may just be very similar to the way I come up with stories.
My Purchasing course is an accelerated five and a half week course, and the final assignment of each week builds on the concept of an imaginary business. I decided to have fun with it and get a bit pie-in-the-sky, so I developed a catering concept meant for Virginia wine country that features dishes that highlight or pair with local vintages.
Step back a week or two to my Baking and Pastry lab class, where I had a bizarre amount of difficulty mastering crepes, so I asked the chef for some other ideas of fillings I could make. One of the things she said was, "curry" and I thought ... wow, that's a really neat pairing. So when I started to compose my imaginary menu for Purchasing, I put down Chicken Korma Crepes. All right, but two problems: 1) they need to be served with something; and 2) there's no wine element.
Indian dishes like this are usually served with pilaf. What's a rice dish that incorporates wine? Risotto, of course. So the first "draft" of the dish was Chicken Korma Crepes with Viognier Risotto. Assignment #2 was to actually write out and calculate the cost of the recipe, so I went hunting in my files for a korma. I stumbled across Green Chicken Biryani and noticed that the pilaf it served with had a lot of flavor profile very similar to classic cuisine, so I tweaked the menu item.
So what I ended up with was a blended dish for two or three very disparate sources that fused together into a (hopefully) harmonious whole. And ... wait a second, that's one of my favorite strategies for concocting fiction. I enjoy taking two elements that seem to be part of completely different worlds and fusing them together so they make sense.
Maybe the kitchen and the keyboard aren't as far apart as I'd thought ...
My Purchasing course is an accelerated five and a half week course, and the final assignment of each week builds on the concept of an imaginary business. I decided to have fun with it and get a bit pie-in-the-sky, so I developed a catering concept meant for Virginia wine country that features dishes that highlight or pair with local vintages.
Step back a week or two to my Baking and Pastry lab class, where I had a bizarre amount of difficulty mastering crepes, so I asked the chef for some other ideas of fillings I could make. One of the things she said was, "curry" and I thought ... wow, that's a really neat pairing. So when I started to compose my imaginary menu for Purchasing, I put down Chicken Korma Crepes. All right, but two problems: 1) they need to be served with something; and 2) there's no wine element.
Indian dishes like this are usually served with pilaf. What's a rice dish that incorporates wine? Risotto, of course. So the first "draft" of the dish was Chicken Korma Crepes with Viognier Risotto. Assignment #2 was to actually write out and calculate the cost of the recipe, so I went hunting in my files for a korma. I stumbled across Green Chicken Biryani and noticed that the pilaf it served with had a lot of flavor profile very similar to classic cuisine, so I tweaked the menu item.
So what I ended up with was a blended dish for two or three very disparate sources that fused together into a (hopefully) harmonious whole. And ... wait a second, that's one of my favorite strategies for concocting fiction. I enjoy taking two elements that seem to be part of completely different worlds and fusing them together so they make sense.
Maybe the kitchen and the keyboard aren't as far apart as I'd thought ...
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Thursday Thoughts
Today, I'd like to talk about the Olympics and a story that spoke to me - so if you haven't seen the Ladies' Free Skate for some reason (my cable decided to die Thursday evening, and it was only last night that the program finally showed up in my On Demand listing), close out this window post-haste. Here be skating spoilers.
Most of the attention and commentary was on defending Olympic gold medalist Yuna Kim, who was clearly a lovely person with a humanitarian bent and a mature skating style; and on the young athletic Russian phenom, Adelina Sotnikova, who came out of nowhere when the spotlight focused on her younger teammate ... both of whom were trying to make history. Yuna Kim would have been only the second woman to ever win back-to-back gold medals, while Adelina Sotnikova would be Russia's first gold in women's figure-skating.
But there was one more historical landmark at stake that evening: 27 year old Carolina Kostner of Italy, an Olympic veteran with a painful history of faltering at the key moment - she was ninth in 2006, sixteenth in 2010 - stood a chance to give Italy its first medal in solo figure-skating. But Kostner's opportunity was also deeply personal. After the Olympics in 2010, she was defeated and weary; she decided to quit skating.
Her mother and coach, once a figure-skater herself, urged her not to. She said: skate for the love of skating.
Sounds so simple, so obvious. It's almost a cliche. It's the first advice any artist - and make no mistake, figure-skating is as much an art as a sport - receives when contemplating a life in pursuit of passion.
Yet for Carolina Kostner, it was magic. She was reborn; she was the World Champion in 2012. And at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, she performed a flawless short program followed by a triumphant free skate. As she got off the ice, her mother said to her, "Now do you believe in yourself?"
Adelina Sotnikova might have stunned the crowd with her athleticism; Yuna Kim might have moved them with artistry ... but Carolina Kostner, the bronze medalist and Italy's first solo figure skating medal, showed them love of skating.
I suppose this story speaks to me because, as a writer, I often feel like Kostner. Publication has been a long trudge with a few bright lights, but my main goal keeps eluding me while writers who have been at it a much shorter time keep racking up their successes, and I start to wonder ... what's wrong with me?
That's not to say I should ignore the fact that there are areas in which I need improvement. I always try to keep an eye on my faults and work to correct them. But when I go from submitting and selling back to writing, there's only one thing that matters: do it for the love of writing.
Thank you, Carolina Kostner.
Most of the attention and commentary was on defending Olympic gold medalist Yuna Kim, who was clearly a lovely person with a humanitarian bent and a mature skating style; and on the young athletic Russian phenom, Adelina Sotnikova, who came out of nowhere when the spotlight focused on her younger teammate ... both of whom were trying to make history. Yuna Kim would have been only the second woman to ever win back-to-back gold medals, while Adelina Sotnikova would be Russia's first gold in women's figure-skating.
But there was one more historical landmark at stake that evening: 27 year old Carolina Kostner of Italy, an Olympic veteran with a painful history of faltering at the key moment - she was ninth in 2006, sixteenth in 2010 - stood a chance to give Italy its first medal in solo figure-skating. But Kostner's opportunity was also deeply personal. After the Olympics in 2010, she was defeated and weary; she decided to quit skating.
Her mother and coach, once a figure-skater herself, urged her not to. She said: skate for the love of skating.
Sounds so simple, so obvious. It's almost a cliche. It's the first advice any artist - and make no mistake, figure-skating is as much an art as a sport - receives when contemplating a life in pursuit of passion.
Yet for Carolina Kostner, it was magic. She was reborn; she was the World Champion in 2012. And at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, she performed a flawless short program followed by a triumphant free skate. As she got off the ice, her mother said to her, "Now do you believe in yourself?"
Adelina Sotnikova might have stunned the crowd with her athleticism; Yuna Kim might have moved them with artistry ... but Carolina Kostner, the bronze medalist and Italy's first solo figure skating medal, showed them love of skating.
I suppose this story speaks to me because, as a writer, I often feel like Kostner. Publication has been a long trudge with a few bright lights, but my main goal keeps eluding me while writers who have been at it a much shorter time keep racking up their successes, and I start to wonder ... what's wrong with me?
That's not to say I should ignore the fact that there are areas in which I need improvement. I always try to keep an eye on my faults and work to correct them. But when I go from submitting and selling back to writing, there's only one thing that matters: do it for the love of writing.
Thank you, Carolina Kostner.
Monday, February 24, 2014
GoodReads Review: Wild Magic by Jo Clayton
Wild Magic by Jo ClaytonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
The story of spunky, defiant Faan who is forced into a war between god and goddess, Wild Magic is, at its heart, a tale of ordinary people caught up in cosmic circumstances. It's a story with an intensely realized and complex world which is never fully explained to the reader - most of its concepts are learned by osmosis (or perhaps not at all). It's the kind of book that probably wouldn't be published today: full of dense, poetic language, an overabundance of made-up words, and following its heroine from infancy through growing pains to the adolescence in which the real story starts. Yet this life-long course is perfect for the story: it allows us to understand Faan in both her mundane and magical aspects.
It's a pity that this book is under-explained - some major concepts, like the Change, seem to appear suddenly and are left to inference, and there are aspects of the setting that I still don't understand. Faan's time learning sorcery was generally glossed over, which felt like a major omission, though it wasn't necessarily crucial to the story and seems like it will come into play more in the second book. As far as a satisfactory ending, Wild Magic has a great "Yes, but ..." conclusion ... and that's all I'll say on that.
View all my reviews
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Thursday Thoughts
I belong to a small writing forum which has been doing bi-weekly free-writes on and off for a while. Someone hosts and provides a topic / inspiration, and everyone writes for an hour. I almost never finish, but I've gone back, finished and sold many of these stories. This week, I plopped down to write up a list of what I had and had some surprises. The general statistics:
Total free-writes: 58
Finished: 34 (of these, 1 was trunked for being, well, terrible)
Sold / Published: 5 (+1 that was sold and hasn't come out yet)
Currently in Submission: 2
Several patterns appeared. There was no real science fiction here; a few stories had far future settings, but were closer to science fantasy. Most of the stories were in secondary worlds, usually with significant worldbuilding basis, but a handful were contemporary. Most of the protagonists were female. There were far more stories that involved cooks, bakers or confectioners than I would have expected - keeping in mind these free writes were done long before I decided to attend culinary school. Four of these stories were in worlds I had used before ... not including the two Ishene and Kemel stories, since the first story started as a free-write, and the story start from the perspective of Ishene's apprentice, decades later.
Some of the free writes were experimental. One of the finished stories I had forgotten about is completely in dialogue, the arguments of two minds who end up in the same body. Another is present tense, first person plural. Then there's one that I have to blame on the prompt: the entire story is one sentence. Well, two, but the last sentence is used as sort of a cap to the run-on insanity. A lot of the finished stories are way too long, and almost all of the unfinished ones need tightening.
So what did I learn here? ... I need to start doing free-writes again, of course.
Total free-writes: 58
Finished: 34 (of these, 1 was trunked for being, well, terrible)
Sold / Published: 5 (+1 that was sold and hasn't come out yet)
Currently in Submission: 2
Several patterns appeared. There was no real science fiction here; a few stories had far future settings, but were closer to science fantasy. Most of the stories were in secondary worlds, usually with significant worldbuilding basis, but a handful were contemporary. Most of the protagonists were female. There were far more stories that involved cooks, bakers or confectioners than I would have expected - keeping in mind these free writes were done long before I decided to attend culinary school. Four of these stories were in worlds I had used before ... not including the two Ishene and Kemel stories, since the first story started as a free-write, and the story start from the perspective of Ishene's apprentice, decades later.
Some of the free writes were experimental. One of the finished stories I had forgotten about is completely in dialogue, the arguments of two minds who end up in the same body. Another is present tense, first person plural. Then there's one that I have to blame on the prompt: the entire story is one sentence. Well, two, but the last sentence is used as sort of a cap to the run-on insanity. A lot of the finished stories are way too long, and almost all of the unfinished ones need tightening.
So what did I learn here? ... I need to start doing free-writes again, of course.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Thursday Thoughts
As I've mentioned before, I use the backburner of my brain a lot. I tend to work best when I give stories time to simmer on their own, with just the occasional stir ... and I'll stop there, because otherwise the culinary metaphor is going to become laboured.
But it works even better when I don't just idle in between, instead working on a different project. I found out the hard way some years ago that two novels wasn't a good idea simply because I ended up in a never-ending editing sequences, but short fiction and poetry is definitely an excellent change of pace.
So a bit late, and I've already missed one month, but I'm resolving to write a short story a month for the rest of the year. Length is no object - if I have an idea for a piece of microfiction, that's perfectly valid.
So February's story is Stone Unturned, about a historian who specializes in "Soundings" - summoning visions of the past through prayer and song. It's intended for the Fantasy-Writers.org monthly challenge, which is to write a story including these five elements: a child, a journey, a betrayal, a bird and a deserted building. I always tend to take FWO challenges and add an additional, personal level of difficulty - my intention with this one was to have all the elements in both the past and the present, but I believe I'm just short of this ...
As far as this blog is concerned, this project will also give me more opportunity to share the occasional tidbit, as Unnatural Causes has already reached the point where most segments would either require extensive explanation, be "spoilers" for the plot, or both.
But it works even better when I don't just idle in between, instead working on a different project. I found out the hard way some years ago that two novels wasn't a good idea simply because I ended up in a never-ending editing sequences, but short fiction and poetry is definitely an excellent change of pace.
So a bit late, and I've already missed one month, but I'm resolving to write a short story a month for the rest of the year. Length is no object - if I have an idea for a piece of microfiction, that's perfectly valid.
So February's story is Stone Unturned, about a historian who specializes in "Soundings" - summoning visions of the past through prayer and song. It's intended for the Fantasy-Writers.org monthly challenge, which is to write a story including these five elements: a child, a journey, a betrayal, a bird and a deserted building. I always tend to take FWO challenges and add an additional, personal level of difficulty - my intention with this one was to have all the elements in both the past and the present, but I believe I'm just short of this ...
As far as this blog is concerned, this project will also give me more opportunity to share the occasional tidbit, as Unnatural Causes has already reached the point where most segments would either require extensive explanation, be "spoilers" for the plot, or both.
Monday, February 03, 2014
GoodReads Review: Shades of Grey
Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron by Jasper FfordeMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Eddie Russet lives in a world where most people can only see one natural color - and how much of that color they can see determines their place in the world. He has life figured out ... until he's banished to the Outer Fringes for attempting to improve the process of queueing, where a rebellious Grey named Jane challenges everything he thinks he knows.
It's a fantastic premise for a world, and many authors would have stopped there, but the setting of Shades of Grey is both deeply whimsical and twisted. It is built on a mysterious past of "the Previous," who the reader assumes (but is never sure) was our own society, then bent thoroughly out of shape by premises that seem absurd, but hinge together with a logic one can almost - but never quite - make out. It's a balancing act of dizzying skill.
Before the last quarter of Shades of Grey, I'd have to say that I felt Fforde spent too much time just exploring his world, without much clear conflict or advancement of the plot. Then when I got to the chilling pay-off in the last pages, well ... I still think the story could have done with a little less exploration, but that deep immersion in the setting is crucial for the impact of the climax, and having been hit upside the head with it, I am confident that many of the apparently extraneous details will have relevance in the sequels.
Because this is definitely a book one ... but it's a book one that ends in a satisfying place, with the character resolved and evolved. The main questions are really deeply personal ones: will Eddie find his place in the world? Will he be able to kindle romance with Jane? ... and both these questions get my absolute favorite answer: "Yes, but ..."
The only other quibble I have with Shades of Grey is that I never felt particularly deep in Eddie's head. For a first person narrative, it's surprisingly shallow in POV. But small points aside, I don't say it lightly when I describe this novel as brilliant. Give it a try.
View all my reviews
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Thursday Thoughts
As a writer, while I experiment with different personalities in short fiction, including characters that you would probably want to punch if you met them (the narrator of "A Dose of Aconite," which is currently in submissions and set in the same world as Flow, is a delusional and rather unpleasant Border Watchman), my novels - at least those that spend the majority of their time in one or two perspectives - tend to gravitate to certain character personalities. Some of this, of course, is just the usual desire to give the reader someone they want to identify with, but for me, I also want to write characters that I want to spend an extended period of time with.
So undertaking Vil in Unnatural Causes - a character who is non-human, from a world whose basic concepts are very different from ours; a character who interprets humanity through a lens that isn't always flattering - was something of a risk for me. I wanted to be sure I could get deep within the character's skin, without lapsing too much ... but I wanted to enjoy the process of writing her, too.
So far, though, I've been having a blast. It's true that Vil sometimes comes off blunt to the point of rudeness - but there's no malice in her, just an ingrained inability to understand certain nuances in human culture. And Iluenn, who shies away from conflict and is much smarter than she gives herself credit for, makes a perfect foil and companion. They're a formidable team - and both outcasts in their own way.
It makes me want to seek out different types of narrators in my long works. Who else might be worth spending an extended period of time with, if I just give them a chance?
So undertaking Vil in Unnatural Causes - a character who is non-human, from a world whose basic concepts are very different from ours; a character who interprets humanity through a lens that isn't always flattering - was something of a risk for me. I wanted to be sure I could get deep within the character's skin, without lapsing too much ... but I wanted to enjoy the process of writing her, too.
So far, though, I've been having a blast. It's true that Vil sometimes comes off blunt to the point of rudeness - but there's no malice in her, just an ingrained inability to understand certain nuances in human culture. And Iluenn, who shies away from conflict and is much smarter than she gives herself credit for, makes a perfect foil and companion. They're a formidable team - and both outcasts in their own way.
It makes me want to seek out different types of narrators in my long works. Who else might be worth spending an extended period of time with, if I just give them a chance?
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Thursday Thoughts
Today, let me talk about titles.
As far as I'm concerned, I don't have a knack for titles. Every now and again, I light upon a good one, but most of mine are utilitarian ... and the few times I've had to re-title a story due to editor's requests, the process has been a struggle. Sometimes the results are worthwhile (Firstborn = The Dreamweaver's Dispute; The Clockwork Oracle = The Oracle Unlocked), but other times, about all you can say about it is that it's a title (Sailing The Seventeen Seas = Currents and Clockwork). Post-writing titles tend to be dicey for me, so I try to come up with something before I start.
The kind of titles I enjoy the most - and the style I try to emulate - are those that use some appropriate word or phrase ... which turns out to have multiple interpretations in the story. Often, this takes a turn to the punny - Terry Pratchett's Making Money; or one of my all-time favorite titles, Laura Resnick's Disappearing Nightly - but it can be absolutely serious, too. Much of the Dresden Files falls into this - Summer Knight, Death Masks ...
Of my own stories, I'm proud of the titles First Contact - in which "contact" is of new species, but also of physical touch - Diminishing Returns - about a shapeshifter who loses a bit of her substance each time she transforms - and City Limits - wherein the city is a self-contained prison, and the story focuses on the characters' attempts to escape. Even Scylla and Charybdis arguably falls into this category: it's a fancy way of saying "between a rock and a hard place," but there are also mythological influences in the novel.
Another type of title that jumps out to me is the one that stops and makes you go, "Huh?" It's a simple phrase that doesn't go the way you expect, an unusual combination of words, or something that immediately raises a pressing question. Here you get humor, too - John Moore's The Unhandsome Prince. When it comes to what intrigues, what creates a burning question, that's more a matter of personal taste, but here are a few of mine: Mistress of the Art of Death (Ariana Franklin), Channeling Cleopatra (Elizabeth Ann Scarborough), and Thirteen Orphans (Jane Lindskold).
These are the type of titles I don't think I do as frequently or as well, but one I'm proud of is Ten Cities Down ... and, of course, Journal of the Dead possibly falls into this bracket as well.
And just to do both at the same time, Bird Out of Water (From Trespass), which ... nope. Going to make you go read it.
What are your favorite title conventions? Any titles that fall into these categories (or any!) that leap out as particularly strong?
As far as I'm concerned, I don't have a knack for titles. Every now and again, I light upon a good one, but most of mine are utilitarian ... and the few times I've had to re-title a story due to editor's requests, the process has been a struggle. Sometimes the results are worthwhile (Firstborn = The Dreamweaver's Dispute; The Clockwork Oracle = The Oracle Unlocked), but other times, about all you can say about it is that it's a title (Sailing The Seventeen Seas = Currents and Clockwork). Post-writing titles tend to be dicey for me, so I try to come up with something before I start.
The kind of titles I enjoy the most - and the style I try to emulate - are those that use some appropriate word or phrase ... which turns out to have multiple interpretations in the story. Often, this takes a turn to the punny - Terry Pratchett's Making Money; or one of my all-time favorite titles, Laura Resnick's Disappearing Nightly - but it can be absolutely serious, too. Much of the Dresden Files falls into this - Summer Knight, Death Masks ...
Of my own stories, I'm proud of the titles First Contact - in which "contact" is of new species, but also of physical touch - Diminishing Returns - about a shapeshifter who loses a bit of her substance each time she transforms - and City Limits - wherein the city is a self-contained prison, and the story focuses on the characters' attempts to escape. Even Scylla and Charybdis arguably falls into this category: it's a fancy way of saying "between a rock and a hard place," but there are also mythological influences in the novel.
Another type of title that jumps out to me is the one that stops and makes you go, "Huh?" It's a simple phrase that doesn't go the way you expect, an unusual combination of words, or something that immediately raises a pressing question. Here you get humor, too - John Moore's The Unhandsome Prince. When it comes to what intrigues, what creates a burning question, that's more a matter of personal taste, but here are a few of mine: Mistress of the Art of Death (Ariana Franklin), Channeling Cleopatra (Elizabeth Ann Scarborough), and Thirteen Orphans (Jane Lindskold).
These are the type of titles I don't think I do as frequently or as well, but one I'm proud of is Ten Cities Down ... and, of course, Journal of the Dead possibly falls into this bracket as well.
And just to do both at the same time, Bird Out of Water (From Trespass), which ... nope. Going to make you go read it.
What are your favorite title conventions? Any titles that fall into these categories (or any!) that leap out as particularly strong?
Thursday, January 09, 2014
Thursday Thoughts
Let me tell you about the first time I ever had an identity crisis.
(This is a writer story, I promise. Stick with me!)
When I was much younger, I spent a lot of time writing stories - often long, complex multi-"book" series - in my head, sagas which spanned plotlines and generations. One of these (the beginning dreamed up while listening to Amy Grant's "I'm Gonna Fly") involved a main character named Wylen, a timid homebody who is dragged out of her routine life by daring sorceress Circe ... not to be confused with the mythological Circe, I was just obsessed with the name. Wylen was intended to be the protagonist, but as I wove the story in my head, I became more and more intrigued with Circe as a character.
This culminated in a moment in the car where I had a complete meltdown because I was afraid I resembled Wylen.
My poor mother dealt with me losing it because I didn't want to be like a fictional character I had created with remarkable poise. I suppose this is sort of a backwards way of identifying with your characters ...
(This is a writer story, I promise. Stick with me!)
When I was much younger, I spent a lot of time writing stories - often long, complex multi-"book" series - in my head, sagas which spanned plotlines and generations. One of these (the beginning dreamed up while listening to Amy Grant's "I'm Gonna Fly") involved a main character named Wylen, a timid homebody who is dragged out of her routine life by daring sorceress Circe ... not to be confused with the mythological Circe, I was just obsessed with the name. Wylen was intended to be the protagonist, but as I wove the story in my head, I became more and more intrigued with Circe as a character.
This culminated in a moment in the car where I had a complete meltdown because I was afraid I resembled Wylen.
My poor mother dealt with me losing it because I didn't want to be like a fictional character I had created with remarkable poise. I suppose this is sort of a backwards way of identifying with your characters ...
Sunday, January 05, 2014
Goodreads Review: Fantastic Companions
Fantastic Companions by Julie E. CzernedaMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Fantastic Companions is a solid, varied anthology of imaginative, emotional, sometimes gently humorous short stories - all featuring non-human characters, most of whom stand side-by-side with a human counterpart. This is an exceptionally strong anthology; none of the stories were really duds, though a few were simply average, and a few others had flaws with virtues could make up for them ... and most of the tales were strong and satisfying, with unusual concepts or worldbuilding. Several moved me, which is quite hard to do. I enjoyed the range and variety of companions and how they came into play. Even the introduction is well-written: a nice teaser of the contents.
An observation more than anything: most of the stories are about and/or by women, and oddly, the weaker stories were often those with male protagonists. It almost makes me feel as if they were chosen to address an imbalance, rather than being the strongest in the submission pool. My least favorite was Jay Lake's "Eggs For Dinner," but I'll allow that it may be my personal taste - his writing isn't something I generally enjoy. (I also thought that "House of Cats," Catherine Dybiec Holm's opener, was weak in comparison to the rest of the anthology, though it's not a bad story by any means.) I could so easily pick out multiple stories as stand-outs, but I've got to go with my gut on this one: "Darkbeast" by Mindy L. Klasty, for an intriguing setting (children have darkbeasts who absorb their pettiness and faults, then have to slay them to be recognized as adults), a great use of a simple, personal plot, and a perfect ending.
View all my reviews
Thursday, January 02, 2014
Thursday Thoughts
So for my second post of the year (it's all downhill from here, folks; bail out while you can), I'm taking a look back at 2013. It crept in, swept me away, carried me along, and then took me on a detour through an obstacle course for the last month or so - but overall, it's been a satisfying ride.
The early part of the year started with a growing awareness of being somehow discontent, and it finally coalesced with my decision to investigate culinary school ... followed rather swiftly with my enrollment, though I didn't begin courses until the fall. To those observing me, it might seem that I made the decision suddenly or even out of the blue, but it was the product of an extended confluence of thoughts and circumstances. I've always been a private, internal person, and my decision-making often occurs below the surface.
I spent the summer getting everything in place and wondering nervously how I was going to juggle it all. When classes started, it was the first time in my life I had been in a classroom full-time. (As some of you may or may not remember, I was homeschooled from kindergarten on, then did my coursework with Indiana University via distance education. Scheduled, location-specific learning time is pretty much foreign to my existence.) And ... it was exciting, it was nerve-racking, it was fun, it was frustrating ... and I should have predicted it, but somehow my efficiency expanded to incorporate everything I needed to do, and when classes ended, I was a bit at a loss for what to do with all this free time.
December, though - December. I don't want to get into kvetching or too many personal details, but if I went down the list of everything that happened to or around me in December, most sane readers would think I was making things up for kicks. I've needed some time to recover from it all, but ultimately, I hope it's set me up for a better direction in 2014 ... I just have to do my best and trust it will work out. And I feel that being open to possibilities, just allowing things to come your way, is an important part of the process.
Though sometimes they need a little nudge.
On the writing front - or at least, the selling of writing front - progress has been slow. I was particularly pleased with The Hurricane Cavalry's publication in Penumbra; it's one of those intensely structured pieces Dan mentions in his post yesterday. And while I still don't have an agent, Journal of the Dead got two requests for the full manuscript. It's been a process of long-term inches for me, which is maddening ... but I have to believe I'll break through eventually.
My next big project is to get Who Wants To Be A Hero? (finally) edited, but I need to run the first few segments by beta readers for a couple of specific issues, and right now, I'm not up to fielding critiques ... but soon.
So many things started in 2013. I'm hoping for fruition in the year to come.
The early part of the year started with a growing awareness of being somehow discontent, and it finally coalesced with my decision to investigate culinary school ... followed rather swiftly with my enrollment, though I didn't begin courses until the fall. To those observing me, it might seem that I made the decision suddenly or even out of the blue, but it was the product of an extended confluence of thoughts and circumstances. I've always been a private, internal person, and my decision-making often occurs below the surface.
I spent the summer getting everything in place and wondering nervously how I was going to juggle it all. When classes started, it was the first time in my life I had been in a classroom full-time. (As some of you may or may not remember, I was homeschooled from kindergarten on, then did my coursework with Indiana University via distance education. Scheduled, location-specific learning time is pretty much foreign to my existence.) And ... it was exciting, it was nerve-racking, it was fun, it was frustrating ... and I should have predicted it, but somehow my efficiency expanded to incorporate everything I needed to do, and when classes ended, I was a bit at a loss for what to do with all this free time.
December, though - December. I don't want to get into kvetching or too many personal details, but if I went down the list of everything that happened to or around me in December, most sane readers would think I was making things up for kicks. I've needed some time to recover from it all, but ultimately, I hope it's set me up for a better direction in 2014 ... I just have to do my best and trust it will work out. And I feel that being open to possibilities, just allowing things to come your way, is an important part of the process.
Though sometimes they need a little nudge.
On the writing front - or at least, the selling of writing front - progress has been slow. I was particularly pleased with The Hurricane Cavalry's publication in Penumbra; it's one of those intensely structured pieces Dan mentions in his post yesterday. And while I still don't have an agent, Journal of the Dead got two requests for the full manuscript. It's been a process of long-term inches for me, which is maddening ... but I have to believe I'll break through eventually.
My next big project is to get Who Wants To Be A Hero? (finally) edited, but I need to run the first few segments by beta readers for a couple of specific issues, and right now, I'm not up to fielding critiques ... but soon.
So many things started in 2013. I'm hoping for fruition in the year to come.
Wednesday, January 01, 2014
Guest Post: Daniel Ausema
Kicking off the New Year with a visitor - which means that this is probably the best post you'll see for a while, so enjoy it. ;-) With no further ado, I turn it over to Daniel Ausema, author of the serialized Spire City, Season One with Musa Publishing ...
My thanks to Lindsey for
allowing me to post this here, and please do take the time to head over to Twigs & Brambles
to read her post there, which should be going up soon as well. (Or even check
out the post she had there about two years ago, for a little
time traveling.)
Lindsey and I share a love
of odd story structures and stories that rise from strict forms. She has
a great flash fiction piece told in the liner notes of an imaginary CD, and
we've both discussed and enjoyed the series of posts from Bruce Holland Rogers on Flash Fiction
Online about writing short shorts in all manner of styles and formats.
It's easy to fall into a
romantic view of writing that holds any imposed structure as automatically
suspect, necessarily limiting the writing in some way. The truth is quite the
opposite. Not that an artificial structure is required, but as Italo Calvino
and the Oulippo group show in their works (as well as any poet who has made use
of any poetic structure), great stories can arise directly from the
self-imposed rules a writer creates. This idea fascinates me, and while I
don't always write with any sort of predetermined requirements, sometimes I do,
and in Spire City there were some specific rules I decided on before I began
for how the episodes would go.
The broadest way to look at
this is that it is episodic, which places it somewhere in between how
I'd usually approach chapters of a novel and how I'd do loosely related short
stories. Each episode is neither one nor the other, but aims for a balance
between standing alone and advancing the broader story arc.
For planning that structure,
I looked at how TV shows handle their episodes and longer arcs. There is a wide
variety of season lengths out there at the moment, but I settled on thirteen as
a relatively common number of episodes. That number imposes a certain feel
to the season-long arcs of the series. Frequently, new shows also are given the
first six episodes to establish themselves, and therefore have a definite
climax at the end of those first six episodes. So season one follows that, with
a major confrontation in episode 6 that forms a complete mini-arc while
pointing toward the longer arcs of the season and series as a whole.
The structure of each
episode has a large effect on how the story goes. Again I drew inspiration
from TV shows. An hour-long show will often have three commercial breaks,
dividing the episode into four sections. The Spire City episodes likewise
divide up in that way, so that each episode is made up of four 1,000- to
1,500-word sections.
What effect does this have
on the story? Each episode is different, so I tried to avoid falling into any
repetitive pattern. Even so, it does create a sense of increasing tension as each
section complicates the preceding one or expands its implications. It also
avoids falling too easily into the three-act structure that writing advice
often follows, which is good for making sure it's not taking a mindless way
through an event.
The strict word limit
also affected the writing. I wouldn't plan out the scenes until I was ready
to begin an episode. Then I would take out my note cards and jot down a quick
idea for each scene to give the episode direction. Sometimes as I wrote,
though, I'd find that the idea I had for a given scene was only enough to
sustain half the target word count. Other times, though less frequently, it was
cruising toward easily exceeding the target. So I had to work in new wrinkles,
or smooth out unnecessary complications to get the scenes to fall right. The
stakes went up, the problems increased, the characters were forced to face
greater challenges.
Those scenes, difficult to
work through at the time, often proved the strongest when I went back to
rewrite. The realization that my initial idea needed tweaking (or a complete overhaul)
forced me to rethink how I was creating the scene. But without that word count
miss, it would have been very easy to just wrap things up and move on to
another scene, never realizing (or not until it came time for rewriting) just
how much more of an impact a given scene could have within itself and on the
story arc as a whole.
At its heart, Spire City is
the story of a group of people faced with a terrible infection and fighting
back against the scientist who created it. Around that central story is all the
structure built from these episodes, which is to say all the crises and
adventures of their infected lives. That structure, arbitrary as it was,
helped to create the overall feel and focus of the entire story of Spire
City.
Episodes 1 and 2 of Spire
City, Season One: Infected are available now, and episode 3 is schedule to
come out on January 10, 2014. Thanks for reading, and thanks again to Lindsey
for hosting me.
Spire City is home to mighty machines of steam power and
clockwork, and giant beetles pull picturesque carriages over cobbled streets,
but there is a darker secret behind these wonders. A deadly infection, created
by a mad scientist, is spreading through the city, targeting the poor and
powerless, turning them slowly into animals. A group of those infected by the
serum join together to survive, to trick the wealthy out of their money, and to
fight back.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Thursday Thoughts
Happy Holidays to all, whatever days of celebration you observe and however you do it, religious or secular. Expect a post of retrospection and introspection soon, but today is not that day.
Today, perhaps appropriately, I'd like to talk a little bit about endings, albeit in the fictional sense.
The past few weeks have been difficult emotionally and physically - a nasty cold which evolved into a sinus infection - so I can perhaps be forgiven for missing my usual warning signs of impending plot hole: writer's block. Instead, I ground to a halt with Unnatural Causes and tried to keep plugging away ... but the problem was, I couldn't walk the characters through what amounts to a fantastic autopsy (and believe me, I am having fun with the atmospherics of this scene) without knowing whodunnit.
Seems obvious, perhaps, but years ago, I saw a collection of mystery writers speak at Books and Company in Dayton, and more than one admitted that when they started writing, they didn't know which suspect had committed the murder. This really stuck with me, and I decided when I broached the idea of a fantasy mystery novel that I was going to go into it with suspects, but no chosen killer.
I finally found this just wasn't working for me, and I needed to decide whodunnit to work through this autopsy (I'm not going to get tired of describing it like that). What I looked at first was how I wanted to play with various assumptions that had already been made about the crime and the logic behind it. That gave me some specific parameters to play with and one idea I knew I wanted to incorporate.
Then I started looking at the ultimate motive - was it political? Personal? Was she just in the wrong place at the wrong time? In deciding which way I wanted to go with this, I had a distinct sense of how I wanted the characters (and hopefully, the reader) to react, and this dictated my ultimate choice.
This somewhat less organic than I usually work, but I'm satisfied with the conclusion I came to, and knowing where I'm going helps me shape the tone of the steps along the way. I've never liked the concept of stories having a message, but I do like to play around with certain themes and tropes. I suppose it's the difference between a short answer on a test - which would be the "message" - and a stream of consciousness poem. It's not about the destination, it's about the journey.
Today, perhaps appropriately, I'd like to talk a little bit about endings, albeit in the fictional sense.
The past few weeks have been difficult emotionally and physically - a nasty cold which evolved into a sinus infection - so I can perhaps be forgiven for missing my usual warning signs of impending plot hole: writer's block. Instead, I ground to a halt with Unnatural Causes and tried to keep plugging away ... but the problem was, I couldn't walk the characters through what amounts to a fantastic autopsy (and believe me, I am having fun with the atmospherics of this scene) without knowing whodunnit.
Seems obvious, perhaps, but years ago, I saw a collection of mystery writers speak at Books and Company in Dayton, and more than one admitted that when they started writing, they didn't know which suspect had committed the murder. This really stuck with me, and I decided when I broached the idea of a fantasy mystery novel that I was going to go into it with suspects, but no chosen killer.
I finally found this just wasn't working for me, and I needed to decide whodunnit to work through this autopsy (I'm not going to get tired of describing it like that). What I looked at first was how I wanted to play with various assumptions that had already been made about the crime and the logic behind it. That gave me some specific parameters to play with and one idea I knew I wanted to incorporate.
Then I started looking at the ultimate motive - was it political? Personal? Was she just in the wrong place at the wrong time? In deciding which way I wanted to go with this, I had a distinct sense of how I wanted the characters (and hopefully, the reader) to react, and this dictated my ultimate choice.
This somewhat less organic than I usually work, but I'm satisfied with the conclusion I came to, and knowing where I'm going helps me shape the tone of the steps along the way. I've never liked the concept of stories having a message, but I do like to play around with certain themes and tropes. I suppose it's the difference between a short answer on a test - which would be the "message" - and a stream of consciousness poem. It's not about the destination, it's about the journey.
Friday, December 20, 2013
GoodReads Review: The Founding Foodies
The Founding Foodies: How Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin Revolutionized American Cuisine by Dave DeWittMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
An entertaining look at the early history of food in America and the Founding Fathers who were greatly influential in its development, this book was full of delightful information. The period recipes, presented verbatim, are fun to read - and definitely give you an appreciation for modern cookbooks, because I would hate to try to follow one. Be aware that book is perhaps mistitled; the first segment of it (a significant portion of the book) is not so much about founding foodies as it is about the early economy, necessity and evolution of food, from the explosion of the pepper trade in Salem to the duties of the baker-general of George Washington's army.
This is not a general history book - it is an in-depth analysis of American eating, and includes a lot of elements we often take for granted nowadays, such as the requirements imposed by geography and the creation of a national identity. The chapters that focus specifically on Washington and Jefferson are really well-balanced, providing a general sense of their lives and historical high-points, while keeping the focus on the real star on the story: the cuisine.
For me, where this book falls down is the translation of recipes at the end of the book. The author has attempted to modernize the recipes, but the result seems half-hearted at best, both in the product and the methodology used to arrive at these interpretations. To be honest, I would have been perfectly content - might have even enjoyed it better - to have another few chapters, looking at some of the other early culinarians, rather than the recipes. This kind of a project really requires an entire book to itself - perhaps even for each individual region (for instance, New England fare versus Jefferson's Virginia), never mind the whole Revolutionary landscape; it's not really suited to be squashed into 46 pages.
Still, as a reading book rather than a recipe book, highly recommended. If you love the story behind the food, this is for you.
View all my reviews
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Thursday Thoughts
It's been a long, draining week.
As some of you who follow me on social media may have noticed, my grandmother passed away this Monday. To her other numerous grandchildren and grandnieces, she was Juju, but she's always been Grandma Junie to me.
I've always tried to keep this blog "angst-free" with a low personal threshold - I talk about my habits and quirks, but I don't think (as a general rule) people want to read the latest saga of my life. When it comes to my Grandma Junie, though, I wouldn't feel right without a few words.
The family asked me to write the obituary; it was one of the hardest things I've ever had to write. I didn't want to gush or use the same trite words seen in every obit. How to encapsulate what a wonderful, nurturing woman meant to her family with brevity and clarity? I thought about what I remembered most - both from my own experiences and stories I had heard. She really gave all of us what we needed, and that's what I wrote. I'm not an overly demonstrative person; I went for simplicity and truth.
My Papa Tony (her late husband) preceded her in death by several years; you couldn't have imagined a more loving couple. They both adored the people around them. Papa Tony started a local tradition at the drive-thru of buying coffee for the person behind you. Grandma Junie continued to visit the Dunkin Donuts up the street for years simply to keep in touch with the young women who worked there.
And they were wonderful to us grandkids. For a long time, I was the only grandchild who lived out of town, but they went out of their way to make me feel special and included. While looking through my grandmother's things, my mother found some very heartfelt thank-you notes I'd written them when they came to visit us in Ohio, along with some very puzzling nonsequitors that definitely refer to events I can no longer remember ...
One of the things I remember about Grandma Junie, both from my personal experience and tales from other relatives, is that she was always willing to stir our imaginations and join in our games. One of the activities we shared when I was younger was painting rocks. Can't remember how many hours we spent. But I probably owe a bit of my creativity to her.
As I grew older, I learned about a few other traits that we share, including a slight tendency to be obsessive-compulsive about the little things. She's the source of my Welsh heritage.
When she moved out of her house into an assisted living facility, she gave away a lot of her things. I was asked if I wanted anything, and I had an immediate answer: the crane plate. After my mother was born in Bermuda, the family moved to Japan. There, my grandmother acquired a golden plate covered with a latticework of cranes flying in all directions. The Thousand Crane Plate is hand-painted, and no one crane flies in the same direction; it's considered good luck. Some people might call it gaudy, but I had always been fascinated by it; and more importantly, it made me think of her house and of her. The plate sits in a place of honor on top of my music cabinet.
Alzheimer's is a terrifying illness. To think of losing those pieces of yourself fills me with dread. I hate losing my grandmother and I will miss her, but I'm also happy she's whole again. And maybe looking after and loving people still in her next phase of existence.
As some of you who follow me on social media may have noticed, my grandmother passed away this Monday. To her other numerous grandchildren and grandnieces, she was Juju, but she's always been Grandma Junie to me.
I've always tried to keep this blog "angst-free" with a low personal threshold - I talk about my habits and quirks, but I don't think (as a general rule) people want to read the latest saga of my life. When it comes to my Grandma Junie, though, I wouldn't feel right without a few words.
The family asked me to write the obituary; it was one of the hardest things I've ever had to write. I didn't want to gush or use the same trite words seen in every obit. How to encapsulate what a wonderful, nurturing woman meant to her family with brevity and clarity? I thought about what I remembered most - both from my own experiences and stories I had heard. She really gave all of us what we needed, and that's what I wrote. I'm not an overly demonstrative person; I went for simplicity and truth.
My Papa Tony (her late husband) preceded her in death by several years; you couldn't have imagined a more loving couple. They both adored the people around them. Papa Tony started a local tradition at the drive-thru of buying coffee for the person behind you. Grandma Junie continued to visit the Dunkin Donuts up the street for years simply to keep in touch with the young women who worked there.
And they were wonderful to us grandkids. For a long time, I was the only grandchild who lived out of town, but they went out of their way to make me feel special and included. While looking through my grandmother's things, my mother found some very heartfelt thank-you notes I'd written them when they came to visit us in Ohio, along with some very puzzling nonsequitors that definitely refer to events I can no longer remember ...
One of the things I remember about Grandma Junie, both from my personal experience and tales from other relatives, is that she was always willing to stir our imaginations and join in our games. One of the activities we shared when I was younger was painting rocks. Can't remember how many hours we spent. But I probably owe a bit of my creativity to her.
As I grew older, I learned about a few other traits that we share, including a slight tendency to be obsessive-compulsive about the little things. She's the source of my Welsh heritage.
When she moved out of her house into an assisted living facility, she gave away a lot of her things. I was asked if I wanted anything, and I had an immediate answer: the crane plate. After my mother was born in Bermuda, the family moved to Japan. There, my grandmother acquired a golden plate covered with a latticework of cranes flying in all directions. The Thousand Crane Plate is hand-painted, and no one crane flies in the same direction; it's considered good luck. Some people might call it gaudy, but I had always been fascinated by it; and more importantly, it made me think of her house and of her. The plate sits in a place of honor on top of my music cabinet.
Alzheimer's is a terrifying illness. To think of losing those pieces of yourself fills me with dread. I hate losing my grandmother and I will miss her, but I'm also happy she's whole again. And maybe looking after and loving people still in her next phase of existence.
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Thursday Thoughts
Today is the last day of my first quarter of classes. I've taken all my exams associated with my coursework; I have one more test, for ServSafe certification, on Saturday ... at 8am. Who schedules an exam at that date and time, I ask you?
In any case, the academic courses were, generally, no sweat - and my concepts course was fascinating, a goldmine of intriguing information about food and associated topics. I've always enjoyed exploring the interconnection of information - how the habitat of birds and the necessity of disguise influences the color of their eggs, for instance.
For me, the challenge was the lab course. First of all, I have a slow physical learning curve; I'm always a bit behind everyone else. Second of all, I was homeschooled my entire life and then took the majority of my previous college courses online. I am not accustomed to retaining information solely from lecture format. So suffice to say ... it was a learning experience. I've definitely learned to take notes in greater detail.
Overall, the experience was intense, but I enjoyed it. I love learning; I love keeping busy. Now it's time to start applying what I've learned ...
In any case, the academic courses were, generally, no sweat - and my concepts course was fascinating, a goldmine of intriguing information about food and associated topics. I've always enjoyed exploring the interconnection of information - how the habitat of birds and the necessity of disguise influences the color of their eggs, for instance.
For me, the challenge was the lab course. First of all, I have a slow physical learning curve; I'm always a bit behind everyone else. Second of all, I was homeschooled my entire life and then took the majority of my previous college courses online. I am not accustomed to retaining information solely from lecture format. So suffice to say ... it was a learning experience. I've definitely learned to take notes in greater detail.
Overall, the experience was intense, but I enjoyed it. I love learning; I love keeping busy. Now it's time to start applying what I've learned ...
Thursday, December 05, 2013
Thursday Thoughts
Nostalgia, part two!
A couple more projects I've pondered rewriting. Like the others, they all have their problems and their plusses. The allure of new novels is still potent, so it may be a while, but I'm sure these ideas will materialize in some form or another, even if they're cannibalized for another project.
Conspiracy: This was actually a series of short stories, storyline never finished, that was "published" in my Eye of Unicorn, Tongue of Dragon ezine, which was a private "subscription" (note all the quotation marks!) circulated among a small number of people. It never quite worked the way I wanted it to - I intended people to "pay" for it (more quotes!) by submitting at least one piece in a certain period of time - but it was a good idea ... and this is off-topic, in any event. Conspiracy followed a dissolute playboy prince and the leader of the song mages who both had problems that could be solved by each other's resources ... so even though they could barely stand each other, they decided to pretend a romance and get married. As the story unfolds, we learn a lot more about Calina's dark past ... and two secondary characters on each "side" of the tale develop who I simply adored.
But there's one huge problem with the story: what's wrong with an arranged marriage? Why pretend? I came up with a tentative worldbuild element that might explain this, but I'm still working against the expectations formed by earth's entire history. This is probably the primary reason why I haven't tackled this already.
Blood From Stone: This story was a journal written in "real-time" - if there was a three-day lapse between entries, I waited three days to write the next one, and I tried to finish the events of a single day *in* that day, though I think as the storyline heated up and got more complicated, I eventually found this was an impossible quantity of typing. The basic premise was that everyone was bound to a stone embedded in their body that allows them to be monitored and harmed / disciplined by a class of sorcerers known as Lithomers. The main character is essentially a gypsy, from a class of people who are still bound to stones, but do not have to keep them on their person ... and she is adopted by a scheming noble to enter the Lithomers. There's a love ... polygon of some kind (her and three men) and a lot of conspiracy, complication, mythic backdrop ...
Probably the main issue with this story is the slow start and the amount of complication. To rewrite it, I'd probably have to do a plot / scene outline and identify elements that could be cut ... and I'm sure there are a few. ... a few. The current draft is about 160,000, which is untenable for a newbie author these days ...
Some of you are probably wondering about my Nano novel, Unnatural Causes. (Or possibly none of you, but allow me my illusions.) I'll chatter about that next week, but suffice it to say, I did not "win," but was thoroughly satisfied with what I did get written.
A couple more projects I've pondered rewriting. Like the others, they all have their problems and their plusses. The allure of new novels is still potent, so it may be a while, but I'm sure these ideas will materialize in some form or another, even if they're cannibalized for another project.
Conspiracy: This was actually a series of short stories, storyline never finished, that was "published" in my Eye of Unicorn, Tongue of Dragon ezine, which was a private "subscription" (note all the quotation marks!) circulated among a small number of people. It never quite worked the way I wanted it to - I intended people to "pay" for it (more quotes!) by submitting at least one piece in a certain period of time - but it was a good idea ... and this is off-topic, in any event. Conspiracy followed a dissolute playboy prince and the leader of the song mages who both had problems that could be solved by each other's resources ... so even though they could barely stand each other, they decided to pretend a romance and get married. As the story unfolds, we learn a lot more about Calina's dark past ... and two secondary characters on each "side" of the tale develop who I simply adored.
But there's one huge problem with the story: what's wrong with an arranged marriage? Why pretend? I came up with a tentative worldbuild element that might explain this, but I'm still working against the expectations formed by earth's entire history. This is probably the primary reason why I haven't tackled this already.
Blood From Stone: This story was a journal written in "real-time" - if there was a three-day lapse between entries, I waited three days to write the next one, and I tried to finish the events of a single day *in* that day, though I think as the storyline heated up and got more complicated, I eventually found this was an impossible quantity of typing. The basic premise was that everyone was bound to a stone embedded in their body that allows them to be monitored and harmed / disciplined by a class of sorcerers known as Lithomers. The main character is essentially a gypsy, from a class of people who are still bound to stones, but do not have to keep them on their person ... and she is adopted by a scheming noble to enter the Lithomers. There's a love ... polygon of some kind (her and three men) and a lot of conspiracy, complication, mythic backdrop ...
Probably the main issue with this story is the slow start and the amount of complication. To rewrite it, I'd probably have to do a plot / scene outline and identify elements that could be cut ... and I'm sure there are a few. ... a few. The current draft is about 160,000, which is untenable for a newbie author these days ...
Some of you are probably wondering about my Nano novel, Unnatural Causes. (Or possibly none of you, but allow me my illusions.) I'll chatter about that next week, but suffice it to say, I did not "win," but was thoroughly satisfied with what I did get written.
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