World Fantasy Convention 2016: Meat and Bones

So everyone has been waiting with breathless anticipation, on pins and needles, after the cliffhanger of my last post ...

All right, not exactly.

Conclusion:  this was a high quality, worthwhile World Fantasy Convention, and I had a great time.  There were some minor planning problems that always seem to be common at conventions - one mic or no mic at all, lack of name signs - but nothing that got in the way of the conference.  (There was that particularly memorable incident in the final Thursday night panel where the *lights kept going off,* though.  Turned out that a venue staff member didn't realize that when he turned them off in the other room, they went out in both.  So a panelist would get up, turn on the lights ... they'd still on for a moment ... go back off ...)

I mentioned in my previous post that I was a little unenthused about the selection of panel topics, but like many WFCs previously, the panels I was just lukewarm about turned out to be great fun.  For instance, the Tall Tale panel Thursday evening was a blast - the panelists were hilarious, informed and made those of us who never really cared or thought about the tall tale as a storytelling form (hi!) interested in the topic.  A few panels wandered off what I interpreted as the topic, but I can't say if that was me or them getting it wrong.  There was only one panel that both diverged and became unpleasantly argumentative.

Thursday featured back-to-back panels about costumes / clothing and masks, which not only hit upon the period significance and use of both, but discussed the psychological impact.  "Flights of Fancy" was the central theme of the convention - though as with every WFC I've attended, it received lip service more than any true focus - and I attended two panels on aspects of flight.  They ended up being somewhat repetitive due to wandering topic, but I still gained useful insight from both.  Besides the philosophical and primal aspects of flight, the panelists discussed its use in warfare ... and, of course, the physiology necessary to allow a creature to fly, which gave me a story idea I'm dying to write.

L.E. Modesitt was everywhere, in the best sense.  He's an excellent panelist and not afraid to disagree - politely - with his fellow panelists.  He self-describes as borderline aspergers, and as someone who often feels the same way ... it's encouraging to hear him speak.

Of course, I adored the panel on retellings, always a favorite topic of mine and populated by eloquent, witty speakers.  Another highlight was the panel on Strange Drugs, which was partly notable due to the fact it was the last panel on Saturday, and, well ... everyone was tired and punchy ... I've never heard so many snarky comebacks from an audience before.  All in good fun, and suitable because it really is a heavy topic if taken in an entirely serious vein.

My final panel was a perfect ending for the convention:  "Is God Dead?  Atheist Fantasy."  Arguably, this one veered off-topic, too - one panelist contended that the term religion can be applied more broadly to community systems of belief, even without a deity component, and the dialogue ended up centering around the use, justification and purpose - narratively speaking - of gods, religion, etc.

Sidebar:  one of the pitfalls of writing by hand (besides my terrible handwriting and the occasional leftie smear) is my notebook is full of terrible little doodles.  One in particular is a vague little sketch of water with critters labeled, "narwhals!"  The panel topic had nothing to do with this.  I also ended up writing multiple poems.  This in no way should indicate that I wasn't absorbed in the topic and paying attention:  I seem to have trouble with *just* listening to people speak, so the jots filled in the empty spaces in my brain.

Going in without expectations or grandiose plans improved my experience, and I'm glad it happened that way.  Overall, a satisfying convention.

World Fantasy Convention 2016: Prelude

I've attended World Fantasy Conventions in the past and found them entertaining, thought-provoking, and energizing.  (My 2008/Calgary bag - with a dragon's head wearing the signature Sherlock Holmes hat - is my go-to carrying bag.)  I stopped attending for two unrelated reasons.  First, I started to learn that one of the most important aspects of the convention was the social, hobnobbing, networking ... and though I sent myself to parties, what I ended up doing was lurking awkwardly and trying not to look like I was eavesdropping rudely while attempting to eavesdrop invitingly.  Second, finances and life changes:  I had saved up for the WFC in the UK and some sightseeing to follow, but that money ended up going to culinary school.

(For the curious, I wanted to visit Wales, as well as Shrewsbury, the English town where Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael novels were set.)

I perked up when I saw the WFC was returning to Columbus, which is an hour and a half drive from where I live up the windiest stretch of road in the Midwest.  (Chicago has nothing on I-71 between Cincinnati and Columbus.)  What decided me to plunk my money down on membership and commit was my sale of Scylla and Charybdis.  I wanted to attend in context of my new milestone.

(I had initially intended to apply for the BroadUniverse Rapidfire Reading, but my culinary life almost literally exploded - actually, there were a couple interesting equipment malfunctions, but that's another story - during this period of time, and I had no time to think straight, much less prep a reading.  In the end, probably for the best:  I would have been immensely stressed about it, and probably not had as much focus to enjoy the conference.)

(Yes, I do have a parentheses problem.  Curiously, I don't write with them in stories, only non-fiction and roleplaying scenes.)

Between that time and attending the conference, a sour note:  controversy over the original programming draft, which was narrow in focus and nigh oblivious to recent history/writers, among other issues.  I was only peripherally aware of the discussions and revisions.  What I did notice when I received the program was the number of panels devoted to a single individual or to horror topics.  Nothing wrong with the latter, but not an area of interest.  I was a little worried when I found myself planning to skip certain time blocks - something that had happened only once or twice at prior WFCs.

As it turned out, those empty blocks of time turned out to be a boon.  I was able to enjoy the art gallery and dealers' room - including a good conversation at the Nightshade Books table about their anthologies - and also simply take some time to stop and breathe.  I'm sure at a conference of writers I was hardly unique in being an introvert, but the energy of people can be overwhelming.

That chaotic tumble of my life before the WFC meant that I couldn't do much in the way of preparing or planning, and that also worked in my favor.  I was much more relaxed and ready to go with the flow than I usually am.  Did I hear, encounter, absorb or set up something I might not have?  Only time will tell.

One thing I hadn't intended:  I think I made myself stand out visually, which hopefully didn't work against me.  Why?  I was that girl with the purple hair.  I was not the only person with dyed hair - oh, writers, I love you! - but I was definitely in a small minority, and wearing that what I'd loosely describe as bohemian-hippy-harp-performer clothes.  (I was also in sandals the whole time, but that was more an expression of the fact that after wearing my work shoes so much, I have no interest in normal shoes until it gets toes-freeze-off cold.)

And what about the conference itself?  Next post ...

My Radio Silence

I haven't posted on my blog in a while for two reasons.  The first is the typically dull too busy, brain-fried, etc.  The second is that I spent the second half of last week at the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, OH, which has set my brain to bubbling.  I'd like to share my overall impressions of the convention, especially highlights; I'm also intending to post separately about some of my personal conclusions.  Watch this space.

Wednesday Wanderings

I know people who give certain important possessions proper names:  harps, cars, computers, maybe if you had a truly amazing toothbrush.  It's always seemed like an odd habit to me, though at the same time, I've felt a little wistful about the fact I don't indulge in it.  It seems like the kind of thing a whimsical, creative person ought to do.

I think there are two reasons I don't feel the urge to name my harp, etc.  The first is something I discussed in a previous blog post:  people name/label things (... and other people ...) to allow themselves to think about, remember, manipulate concepts, and so forth.  For those of us who are very kinesthetic, such labels are replaced by a "feel" for the object or person.

The second is ... for me, I think it comes close to anthropomorphizing the object.  My sense of reality is a little wacky as it is, and I already talk to inanimate objects.  My subconscious doesn't need any encouragement!  This probably sounds like a frivolous reason, and it is ... but I do feel odd "acknowledging" an inanimate object by name.

The one notable exception in my life is more descriptor than name.  My laptop clings stubbornly to life, after several part exchanges (upgraded memory, new battery, new power cord, new hard drive, random failures (I've never determined what that musical shrieking noise was, but it stopped years ago), and other odd quirks.  It keeps dying, at which point I freak out, and then claws back to life.

I refer to it as "the Frankenlaptop."

Wednesday Wanderings

Most versions of my bio mention both the fact that I'm a professional harper, and (to tie it to my writing) that I feel music and language are inextricably linked.  I still have a clear memory of the first time this truly struck me.  I was at the Somerset Folk Harp Festival in a class taught by Beth Kolle.  She pointed out a particular motif in the Scandinavian music we were learning. She told us the pattern of notes was common because it echoed an end-of-sentence inflection in the language.  Comparable motifs also appear in music written by English speakers, across different origins.

When arranging music for the harp, even purely instrumental, conventions of speech and singing apply.  The hands come off the harp to punctuate - analogy intended - phrases.  When the music has lyrics, these pauses often come at a comma, conjunction or the end of a sentence.  Music breathes, regardless of whether a voice is involved.

Outside of the pattern of sentences, words themselves have sound and melody.  J.R.R. Tolkien said that the phrase "cellar door" was one of the most beautiful in the English language, quite divorced from its meaning.  When choosing the right word to use in a sentence, often the choice between synonyms is a question of flow, reflecting intent in rhythm.  Short, sharp staccato words convey a different impression than long, fluid syllables.

To an extent, lyrics are the ultimate meeting of music and language, and they work best when it is a wholehearted marriage.  One of my favorite lyric lines is from the old classic Big Yellow Taxi - "Paved paradise and put up a parking lot."  The alliterative plosives punch, brought out further by the quick patter of the notes.

Lyrics flow most naturally when they match the pattern of language, as discussed above.  In some cases, deliberately setting up lyrics to contradict the pattern of language can create an interesting effect, sharpening the listener's focus.

(Or it's just confusing - it took me the longest time to parse the last verse of Carrie Underwood's Last Name because of the musical distance between "This ring that just appeared" and "out of nowhere" - I kept threading it together wrong in my head.)

Where lyrics fall down, at least for me, is when the music is slave to the lyrics, melody and rhythm warped to fit in the appropriate words.  A lesser offense (to me!), but still unsatisfying, is where the musical pattern results in odd, awkward or vapid word choices.

But when the two meet, ah, there's romance in the air.  The music reinforces the words; the words fill the music with second life.  I don't - I can't - compose, but I appreciate experiencing the result.

Wednesday Wanderings

So I just turned the manuscript for Scylla and Charybdis back over to my editor (I still get a giddy little thrill saying that, call me a dork) for her review.  I've been swimming in tweaks, changes, additions, deletions and hoping that I've managed to hit all the notes for a little over a month, and now it's time to stop and breathe.

What will I do until the next round?  On my next book to submit / query, Unnatural Causes, I am partway through transcribing my paper edit, but honestly, I've been editing so much that I need to step away for a bit.  So ... time to give the new novel, Surgeburnt, some love.  It's a huge change from Scylla and Charybdis:  a chaotic, magic-infused Earth as told through the first-person eyes of a snarky and pessimistic narrator.  And the trick with Surgeburnt is that I'm actually telling two stories at once:  the "now-time" sequence of events, and a dramatized backstory of how it got to that point.  It's a fine balance, filling in enough detail to make sense of the now-story, while still leaving questions to play out in the then-story:  how did this happen?  Why?  What's missing?

So my current plan is to focus on Surgeburnt through the end of the month (gee, maybe I'll come up with a better title in that time, too).  After that, I'd like to break up my attention and do some shorter pieces - poetry and flash.  The ideal would be one a day, but with my work schedule, that may not be feasible.  Anyone have an idea for prompts or a scheme I might follow?  It would be fun to have an ongoing flow of inspiration.

Then ... back to Unnatural Causes.  I'm planning on another pass before I look for beta readers; guessing that won't be until early 2017.  And, of course, when I hear on Scylla and Charybdis, that goes to the top of the pile.

That's the plan, anyhow.  And we all know what happens to plans ...

Goodreads Review: Soulless by Gail Carriger

Soulless by Gail Carriger
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In a Victorian England which hosts a not-so-secret society of vampires and werewolves, Alexia has the opposite problem: as the supernatural is an excess of soul, she is the opposite, preternatural, able to cancel out their abilities at a touch. This ability, and her nosy nature, sets her on collision course with a chilling plot.

I had mixed feelings about this book. There were places where it absolutely delighted me and nearly made me laugh out loud (which is a very high bar, for me); there were other places where I rolled my eyes; and a few that just didn't connect with me one way or the other. Of course, parody and humor are delicate things, and the balance of elements just didn't sit right with me - it was hard for me to tell in places whether something was intended to be hyperbole-for-humor or whether it was intended to be serious. Other readers' mileage may certainly vary!

Trying to discern this tone made my entrance into the book a bit tricky. I had trouble identifying with Alexia because she came off too casual about a dramatic turn of events. Once I got used to the tone, I began to enjoy it (though it does make use of some mid-scene POV shift, which has never been my favorite thing). The humor throughout is an absolute highlight, whether from the events themselves or the way Alexia thinks about them. Her family is a perfectly delightful caricature and yet entirely appropriate.

I never quite felt like Alexia led or motivated the events of the plot, however, so much as her general poking-about attracted the attention of antagonists already in motion. She acts and she gets results, but those results seem to be unintended (at least by her) and connected to larger events already in motion. She disturbs the "villains" of the story almost by accident.

The romance subplot is one of the primary places where the tone tripped me up. There is a sequence where my suspension of disbelief went wandering off into fields of heather because of the behavior of the male lead in very dire circumstances. Even if influenced by a werewolf nature - really?!

That said, I was very ready to write that romance off as a traditional love-hate cliche, all too well-worn, but the details of it are actually delightful and do a great job of incorporating supernatural culture, too.

Overall, I enjoyed this book enough that I would read the second, but would eschew a third if fell pray to some of the same pitfalls.

View all my reviews

Wednesday Wanderings

Except for the orphaned farmboy of fantasy cliche, every character has family.  (Even the orphaned farmboy has family, they're just deceased / missing / secretly evil.  Sometimes all of the above, improbably.)  The rootless character is a popular one in fantasy - even those who have living family and relatives may not speak or see them in the story's timeline.  Even in these cases, though, the family - real or adopted - leaves a mark on the character, influencing their background and personality.

 Other tales either involve the family on the fringes of the plot or sometimes, right in the center of it.  To be honest, this is usually the kind of book I prefer.  I'm fascinated by the interplay of family ties, loyalty to blood relatives versus loyalty to found family, the lengths people will go to protect a family member ... and the clashes of personality.  After all, as the saying goes, you can't pick your family, so what do you do when a family member is someone you wouldn't choose to have tea with?

Or worse, a criminal, murderer, antagonist?  This in particular is something I've always been intrigued with, from the very start:  my first two novel attempts featured characters who were closely related to the main villain.  I'm still playing with the idea.  To me, it's less interesting as a shock reveal than as something learned earlier in the plot, a dilemma to wrestle with.

As an only child, I have always been an outside observer to the interplay of siblings.  My cousins all live(d) a considerable distance away, so I wasn't regularly exposed to that relationship, either.  Perhaps that's the reason I so enjoy writing about siblings ... and no one's told me that I've gotten them terribly wrong (yet), so I must have absorbed something from watching everyone else's.

Of course, having been homeschooled gave me a slightly different perspective on siblings, too.  I think there's a tendency when you're young to make friends with your closest age peer and then write off their brothers and sisters as annoying pests.  I remember very distinctly suddenly learning that my friend's siblings were actually a lot of fun, and that stayed with me.

What about characters who are already married or who have children?  Seems the married characters typically only show up when it's unhappy or troubled, or in sequels where the romance was played out in a previous volume.  And unless the child is a catalyst to the plot - abducted, parent is trying to make a better life for them and that's the primary storyline, etc - you don't often see them, either.  At least, not in the books I've read, though of course, I can think of exceptions.

... and there should be more of them.  Obviously, the absence of such characters is partly due to the fact that it's hard to "work around" them in a plot:  the related character is tied down, constricted, unlikely to be able to make too many moves without considering their spouse / child.  But isn't that part of the fun for the writer?  The puzzle of making that conflict an integral part of the story?

It obviously works better for some kinds of books - tales that are more intimate, character focused, or political, rather than sweeping quest sagas or war novels.  But in the end, we all have family.
 

Wednesday Wanderings

It's the little things.

I've had a lot of entertaining conversations at work lately about products we use.  We recently switched to new disposable gloves.  The new ones are disturbingly like medical gloves, actually:  it's exactly that color.  But they are so much easier to get on (especially if your fingers are even the slightest bit wet) and sturdier.  My old boss loves 'em, new boss immediately complimented them ...

... and then a captain from another location came in and recoiled.  "These are terrible!  Where are the old gloves?"

This isn't the only bone of contention.  I can't stand the thin towels used at other locations; they hardly soak up any moisture, but they also don't leave any fabric threads.  My new boss doesn't understand I love the wider roll of plastic wrap; it takes up too much space on the counter, but it makes it so much easier to securely wrap certain things.  (Me and plastic wrap have always had a contentious relationship.  I'm sure people who don't know me watch me struggling and wonder, wait, how long has this chick been in food service? but it's just a quirk of mine.)

Tiny acts of compromise every day, hardly noticed, hardly commented upon.  Minute quirks and preferences that add up to a person.  We can't agree on the little things, so why do we expect to agree on the big things?

In editing Scylla and Charybdis, I've been thinking a lot about the little things.  The novel centers on a drastic change, from one isolated space station to an entire, boisterous universe, and the big things are important, consuming ... but it's the little things that we focus on, that bring the changes into sharp focus.  So now I'm trying to mine those and reset them in a science fiction context, see the most mundane aspects of the unfamiliar.

Sometimes, it's no more grand than plastic gloves.

Wednesday Wanderings

So I've started the editing process for Scylla and Charybdis - which has involved, if you've been watching my Facebook feed, making lists upon lists to keep on hand for reference - and I made a realization.

I like to write about the apocalypse.

Or not the apocalypse itself, actually:  what I like to write about is the era when the initial upheaval has passed, humanity has found ways to adapt and thrive, and nothing will ever be the same again - but people still look back and romanticize the past.

That's the backstory of Scylla and Charybdis.  It's also, in a very different way, the backstory of Surgeburnt.  In both cases, the destructive event is (comparatively) recent history:  110 years in Scylla and Charybdis and 90 in Surgeburnt.  In the former case, I very specifically wanted the last people who would clearly remember what had happened to be dead and gone.

But this is also Undertaking Chances, my zombie novella, though the apocalypse is much closer - a matter of months - and the recovery incomplete.

I think that's the question that intrigues me:  how do you get back to normal?  What does normal look like when the rules have changed?  I think I'm less interested in the survival and adaptation of individuals in the moment than the long-term systems that develop.  (Which is maybe why I'm still stubbornly watching The Walking Dead - they've reached that phase where they recognize the need to put down roots and build.  Far more interesting than the wandering-about.)

What happens to the old infrastructure?  How does it get repurposed?  What words and concepts - in language, in custom, in technology and the names of items - remain that once made perfect sense, but now are divorced from context?  (I'm thinking of things like the phrase "roll up the windows" in a car, when we haven't had hand-cranks in years, or the fact that the Save icon in most computer programs looks like a tiny floppy disk.)

When everything changes, do we respond by trying to recapture the old, or by creating something new?  Do we change our minds down the line?  How reliable is nostalgia?

I grew up with such timing that I can clearly remember both the days before constant connectivity and the explosion of it, how excited we were.  I remember the first time I saw a billboard with a web address on it and how much my family laughed.  I remember the first camera phones and how everyone's reaction was, "What use is that?  It won't catch on."

I remember saying, "Eh, by the time I need to text, there will be keyboards and I won't need to learn how to do it with the number pad." ... and I was right.

So because of this, I think, one of the elements I'm always interested in is taking that all-encompassing infrastructure and shattering it.  How does society deal with broken links in that chain?  Is constant connectivity too addictive to give up?

... all right, the fact that I'm a grumpy hermit might have something to do with my take on this aspect, too.

So:  bring on the apocalypse!  I have work to do.

Wednesday Wanderings

I've spent a lot of my life involved in roleplaying games, whether it be via email or on a MUSH (Multi-User Shared Hallucination - basically a text-only world), freeform and story-based, or - gasp! - with statistics, mechanics and virtual dice.  I've even run a few games in the real world, where my players quickly figured out I had no poker face, would make predictions about where things were going, and then watch me very closely to see if they were right.  Grrr.

One of the concepts that is central to these games, particularly the MUSH sort, is the distinction between IC - In Character - and OOC - Out Of Character.  What this really translates to, in general, is imaginary-world / real-world.  For instance, if you were in the middle of writing a scene with someone and needed to run out, you might say:  "OOC:  be right back, grabbing lunch."  It's a simple system to carry on a mundane conversation and also to coordinate the character (IC!) action.

IC and OOC are also used less commonly to refer to specific character actions and whether they fit the character.  For instance, you might say, "It would be IC for my character to be very upset."  For whatever reason, you rarely see OOC used in this fashion.  If there is a mismatch, players are more likely to say, "That behavior isn't IC."

So what does this have to do with writing?  I find this sometimes intrudes into how I regard the various aspects of a tale.  The IC is everything that exists in the world of the story, even aspects that don't appear on the page.  The OOC is everything in the writing that doesn't necessarily have a reality the characters would recognize:  structural choices such as chapters and scene breaks, thematic elements, etc.  Narrative style straddles the line:  in most first person, it is an IC aspect - it's how the character talks or writes, after all - and in many third person stories, the choice of words and tone is influenced by the personality, knowledge and outlook of the character.

Old habits are hard to break, too:  I am prone to thinking of mismatched character behavior as, sure enough, "not IC."  It's a quick, easy shorthand that works in my brain and helps guide me away from choices that might serve the plot, but not the people.

Fun with Song Titles

I've mentioned before that I do themed music CDs for my elderly car, so I can listen to my collection of this, that and the other.  One of the themes I like to do is word association, where the titles (and sometimes, internal versions) suggest a chain from one to the next.  Here's my most recent sequence:

Gasoline - Britney Spears
Shut Up And Drive - Rihanna
I Don't Care (Lonesome Road) - Alana Davis
Lonely Girl - Oceanlab
Not Alone - Sara Bareilles
Party In My Head - September
Get the Party Started - P!nk
Begin Again - Purity Ring
Never Ending Circles - Chvrches
Circle - Sarah MacLachlan
Plain Gold Ring - Kimbra
The Golden Ball - Clannad
Gold Digger - Glee Cast version
Beautiful, Dirty, Rich - Lady Gaga
Dirrty - Christina Aguilera
Earth - Imogen Heap
Diamonds and Rust - Blackmore's Night
Stone Hearts and Hand Grenades - Leona Lewis
Melt My Heart To Stone - Adele
Blaze - Colbie Caillat
Fire Under My Feet - Leona Lewis
Hands Up - September
Criminal - Britney Spears
Good Intent - Kimbra
I Told You I Was Mean - Elle King
Hurt So Good - Carly Rae Jepsen
Just Like A Pill - P!nk
Medicine - Gloria Estefan
Wait For The Healing - Amy Grant
Wait A Minute - Pussycat Dolls
Split Second - Lisa Loeb
Half Life - Imogen Heap
Sum of Our Parts - Mary Lambert
Come Together - Echosmith
Posse - Kimbra
Paper Gangsta - Lady Gaga
Hotel Paper - Michelle Branch
Hotel Nacional - Gloria Estefan
Live It Up - Colbie Caillat
(This last one is really the only one where the connection is tenuous, I think:  both are songs about throwing caution to the winds and doing what feels good ...)

Wednesday Wanderings

A short while ago, I mentioned I had begun writing on my new novel project (tentatively entitled Surgeburnt), and a crucial part of that process was choosing a font.

I was speaking somewhat tongue in cheek, but not entirely.  Whenever I start a new piece, I do spend a few minutes fiddling around with fonts until I hit one that seems right.  Some fonts just seem more sterile, more elegant, more humorous.  Now, I'm staying mostly with the mainstream fonts - Times New Roman, Arial, Trebuchet MS, Book Antiqua - though for a while, when I was going through a phase of letter stories, I favored Monotype Corsiva, which looks like handwriting while still being easy to read.

I don't have any kind of codified system - this type of story should be written with this font, contemporary should always be this, etc.  It's not an organized process, but rather a feeling, and here comes the real reason for it ... for me, the visual change on the screen serves as a subliminal key for the mindset of that story.  I'm a kinesthetic person, so it's all about feel.  A page in one font looks subtly different than the same page in another.  Rather than being a conscious flag, it becomes a subconscious reminder of where I am, fictionally.

(Of course, it should be noted that translating to standard manuscript format is part of my pre-submissions process, but I cannot write in it.  I loathe Courier.  It just looks thin.  I can't concentrate on text written in Courier.  I can't written in double spaced lines, either:  there's too much space in the middle of thoughts!)

As far as Surgeburnt is concerned, I had to choose this font.  Come on, it's called Centaur.  Centaur.  It would be a crime not to.

GoodReads Review: Alternate Outlaws ed. Mike Resnick

Alternate Outlaws by Mike Resnick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a solid collection of alternate history stories, all based on one of (sometimes both of!) two premises: a famous historical figure was in fact an outlaw; an infamous criminal was in fact the hero of the story. It's a fun idea, but many of the stories, while entertaining and satisfying as fictional yarns, don't fully live up to the promise of the premise. Others feel like slice of life, dependent entirely on the identity of the fictional outlaw to give the story interest.

I particularly enjoyed the stories based on the wackiest outlaws: Sir Francis of Assisi, Helen Keller, Santa Claus. Some of the stories were chilling: Michelle Sagara's "What She Won't Remember" (Agatha Christie), Janni Lee Simner's "Learning Magic" (Harry Houdini) and the closing story, Barbara Delaplace's "Painted Bridges (Adolph Hitler). Also of a note was a particularly lush tale featuring Queen Elizabeth, Tappan King's "The Crimson Rose." And finally, "Good Girl, Bad Dog" by Martha Soukup shows Lassie in a light you've never seen before.

This is a minor point, but in many cases, I wish the stories hadn't come with author introductions that revealed the name of the historical persona beforehand. It would have been more fun to piece together while reading.

View all my reviews

Wednesday Wanderings

This time last week, I declared my intention to goof off in regards to what I chose to write, which mysteriously, was one of my most popular blog posts ever.  Apparently, that means y'all need to take things more seriously.

In the spirit of that, here are a few of the novel projects I've repeatedly put off or shuffled to the bottom of the list due to marketing and sales concerns:

A Flow Sequel:  I do have a title for this project, but I'm not mentioning it here since it's an implicit spoiler for the events of Flow (which in itself causes much debate I shouldn't even be having in the pre-writing phases, but having a title before I start is a key part of my process).  The story would be set a few years later, with Kit at the messy end of her first serious relationship.  He's part of the hidden world in that setting, so there's the additional complication that he feels responsible for her protection.  (Too much, as far as Kit is concerned, which part of the reason for their evolving breakup.)  Chailyn would be back, of course, and Hadrian ... and one of the exciting parts of this project for me is actually getting into his point of view.  Since he has hypersensitive perceptions, day-to-day living can be an overload, and I'm excited by the challenge of trying to convey that without leaving the reader completely lost.
But ... the sales for Flow don't really justify a sequel.  I can certainly make it a standalone volume, but why this book over all the others?  (In addition, years later, I'd love to get back into Flow and change things, but that's another story ...)

The Great Starshine Rewrite:  years and years (... and years ...) ago, I was involved in a fandom group.  I had a blast, mainly because I was too young to know better, but I created a sprawling cast of characters and an ongoing conspiracy that I always thought would be fun to revive.  The act of translating everything to an original world promises to create some intriguing results, and these are imaginary people I know like the back of my hand.
But ... as mentioned, the cast is sprawling.  There are a massive number of characters and subplots.  Not too many for me, because I'm nuts and I know the map and territory.  For readers ...?  That, I don't know.

A World of My Own:  my long roleplaying history also includes some original contemporary settings, where I was either part of the game founders or was invited to join staff later on ... which means that I ended up designing various elements for the setting.  I've considered combining these elements (or at least, a lot of them, some tweaked) into a single, cohesive setting so I can write short fiction in it.  It would also give me a chance to revive well-loved characters or ones I didn't give enough life to.
But ... there's a sliding scale between urban fantasy and superhero.  I have to find a consistent tone and potentially decide how comfortable I am writing superhero fiction - which seems to be a growing genre on the black and white page, but it certainly isn't an area I have a lot of knowledge about.  Of course, I can fix that ...
But part two ... it's not like I lack for short stories or ideas as it is!

Helen of Troy:  I'm a huge fan of Greek mythology.  I grew up with them:  one of my earliest story attempts was a retelling of the Pandora myth with Barbie as the main character.  The Pandora story is one that never set right with me, and I've tackled it in short fiction.  The Helen of Troy saga occupies a similar point of disquiet:  all this strife and death over a love affair?  
Scholars have numerous theories about the larger implications of Paris and Helen running away together, from the economic - the real reason for the war was trade; to the political - Helen was queen in her own right, so without her, her erstwhile husband no claim to the kingdom; to the fantastical - some sources connect Helen to a vegetation goddess and the health of her land to her presence.  Yet most fictional portrayals of this storyline attempt to make it historical, sensible in our real world.  To me, that's the least interesting path to take.  The Greek gods are infamous for their meddling, and they do it constantly in this saga.  To tell that story, full-fleshed, without taking agency away from the mortals ... that's where my interest lies.
I should note that I want to create an inspired-by tale rather than a retelling - different names, identities, other elements changed to suit ... well ... me.  That allows me more freedom, including the ability to be less literal and interpret threads in non-traditional ways.
But ... it's this last point that's the tricky one.  If I'm not openly identifying the storyline as Helen of Troy, does it just come off as mimicry rather than homage?

There may be more, but these are the four that I keep tossing off the island.  Maybe some day!  ... maybe soon.

Wednesday Wanderings

When I first started writing, I really didn't know what I was doing, and I blissfully enjoyed the process of stumbling about in fictional realms.  I didn't worry about the business side of writing, about the things beyond writing quality that might influence whether a story could be sold:  length, trends, unpopular tropes ...

And then I did worry about these things.  Not so much the trends part of it - I was never all that enthused about trying to find the latest wave to ride.  But length, particularly when it came to short fiction, and other elements that publishers / editors hunted for?  These things bedeviled me.  I pushed aside projects I thought about writing because I didn't think they would be able to sell.  When my short fiction crossed certain word thresholds - and it often did; I am, after all, a novelist at heart - I would get depressed and even angry with myself.  What was the point?

Recently, I've turned a corner.  I've decided I'm done worrying.  Partly this is because I have enough of a backlog that I'm not under pressure to produce new work with an eye towards sales (editing is another story, mind).  But mainly, I want to keep hold of that crazy joy at the heart of writing; I don't want to lose the simple enjoyment of it.  This is what motivated me to write my zombie novella, even though the genre is done to death and works of this length are a horror to sell:  I just thought it would be a blast to write.  And it was.  It was the most sheer fun I'd had writing anything in a long time.

But even as I prepare to goof off, there's something else I need to give myself permission to do:  pick projects that seem like a stretch for my skill level, that are difficult to pull off, that present challenges I have to think my way through.  Scylla and Charybdis was just such a project, for me - novel-length science fiction being out of my comfort zone - and I gave the foundation work more love and attention than usual.  Look where it ended up.

So I am resolved:  let the games begin.

Wednesday Wanderings

(For those who might not have seen it yet, my author interview for Kristell Ink: http://kristell-ink.com/new-kits-on-the-block-lindsey-duncan/ )

It always bewilders me when I come across authors who rename their characters deep into a project, sometimes more than once ... and even those who don't use names but placeholders.  Then there's that famous tale about Gone With The Wind and how Margaret Mitchell originally named her heroine Pansy.

I have trouble wrapping my head around it because for me, character and name are intertwined.  The act of naming a character crystallizes their identity.  There's something magical in the act, which is actually quite appropriate to the significance of names in ritual:  when you know someone's name, you have power over them.  When I would ponder new character ideas in my roleplaying games, I used to joke that as soon as I came up with a name, I was doomed.  That character would exist, regardless of whether I had the room to add another.

Of course, I've needed to change character names for one reason or another:  sometimes I'll find that two names are similar enough to cause confusion, and in one case, I accidentally broke a naming convention I had set out for myself.  When that happens, I try to preserve the feel of the name.  Usually that means changing it as little as possible, but sometimes, it's simply playing around with syllables, visuals and flow until I find something that feels right.  I might not even be able to explain why the old name and the new are analogous.

I think this may be a small part of why I enjoy secondary world fantasy so much:  I'm not limited to names that have been used on Earth.  I can pluck them out of the ether and find someone who maybe, just maybe, couldn't even be labeled with our names.  Or maybe that's just a fantasy like any other.

Wednesday Wanderings

I don't tend to write in the same world - or even the same cosmology - very often.  I've spoken occasionally that I admire writers who work like that and enjoy it:  on the purely mercenary end, I have an inkling it probably is a surer route to building a fanbase.  Unfortunately, I just have way too much fun with the nuts and bolts of worldbuilding and a short attention span.  (Well ... as short as a novelist's attention span can be.)

However, recently, in contemplating some of my projects that haven't been in what I like to call my wheelhouse - "secondary world fantasy" - I've detected an amusing possibility.  Follow along with me:

Flow is contemporary fantasy - specifically, set in the late Aughts (2000 - 2009) before mobile technology exploded - with a backdrop secret history of fairy incursion and underwater sorcery.

Scylla and Charybdis is soft science fiction, set in a future where humanity departed Earth and colonized a handful of planets.  Travel and communication with the homeworld was always cumbersome because there nearest wormhole to Earth was several light-years away, and in the chaos of Y-Poisoning, the colonies lost contact with Earth.

My new novel project is ... uh ... post-apocalyptic science fantasy?  Let's go with that.  The premise is that magic exploded into the world through virtual reality, both mutating the human environment and opening portals to other worlds.  (It has been left open whether or not any magic existed within this world before.)

So since the existence of magic was hidden in Flow, it's quite possible that book could be history for the other two stories.  And there's even an argument for "magic" in Scylla and Charybdis:  Gwydion (among others) has hypermental abilities, which are presumed to have a scientific basis (look at studies of extrasensory perception, etc) ... but who is to say?  (Me, obviously.)

Looking further, again, the people in Scylla and Charybdis have lost contact with Earth.  What if, in the interim, things have turned very strange indeed?

I didn't set out to connect these storylines, nor am I completely sure that all the small detail facts - dates, background information, etc - line up.  But it's certainly an entertaining thought, and with Scylla and Charybdis pending edit and the new novel as yet unwritten, I could easily plant hints and Easter Eggs.

Oh, I probably won't; there's nothing really to be gained, and the downside is that it limits my options in all three venues - Flow is in finalized form, and I have pondered writing a sequel.  But then again, you never know ...

Novel forthcoming!

Grimbold Books / Kristell Ink has taken on my soft science fiction novel, Scylla and Charybdis!  I'm in some exciting-looking company:

http://kristell-ink.com/grimbold-welcomes-our-new-authors/

The irony is, of course, that I always say my wheelhouse is secondary world fantasy, yet my two successful / accepted novels are contemporary fantasy and scifi, respectively.  However, both featured very intensive worldbuilding - my notes for SaC include the class of the star, rotational and orbital periods, climate data, etc ... only a fraction of this shows up in black and white, but it helped me to make sure I was building a plausible SF setting.

Wednesday Wanderings

(I just changed my fractal image - over to the left.)

The political atmosphere these days is ugly - not just in the United States, but in Britain as well.  The British decision, at least, is almost over:  tomorrow, the UK votes on what has been nicknamed Brexit, the decision whether to leave the European Union or remain.  Regardless of which way Britain decides, however, I suspect there will be fallout, name-calling, repercussions ... everyone taking facts and twisting them to suit their particular variant of "I told you so."

The United States is in a battle that will continue for months more, of course, with two major candidates who are both polarizing figures with huge personalities.  This latter muddies the waters even further:  the personal and the political spill over into each other.  And this battle now occurs around the metaphorical wreckage of a national tragedy.

Everyone wants a solution, but in the shouting and anxieties, the very human desire for that solution to be *simple*, proponents of one side have forgotten that "everyone wants a solution" applies to the other side, too.  No one is saying, "Eh, this is just the way it is."  There's no cosmic battle for good and evil going on in the political realm, wherein the belief you espouse makes you a villain or a hero.

This is not a new phenomenon, but it seems to be even worse this election cycle.  Republicans and Democrats alike paint each other as the enemy (idiotic, heartless, ruthless, oblivious, sanctimonious, lazy) without making that basic assumption which allows for dialogue and thought:  my opponent has their own line of logic.  There's another way of looking at this issue besides my own.

Again, it's human nature.  I talked in the previous blog post about the deep discomfort most people have with states outside of the binary ... what about people who agree with Republicans on some issues, Democrats with others?  In the current climate, you'd better swallow your outlier position or risk accusations and imprecations.

(The partial answer to this, of course, is that there are third parties, but their electability is slim at best, and it's still very possible to disagree with certain positions.  Parties align themselves according to certain fundamental principles - that human desire to organize and label, again - but individual humans are more than capable of holding specific positions that contradict generic guidelines.  We're flexible like that.)

I've stayed out of discussions personally, but I'm unable to escape the lure of reading them.  It's the worst of pulp (non)fiction.  It turns my stomach, makes me want to grab people by the shoulders and shake them.  True, there are some people who are genuinely twisted or self-interested to the point of being dangerous ... but I'd like to think that percentage is very small, and that more progress will be achieved by assuming that your opponent is operating in good faith.

If there's been any upside to this election cycle for me, it's that it has forced me to personally examine my positions and figure out where I stand - and what impact each position has.  I may choose not to think about it, but I've brought passion and rational thought together, and I hope others do the same.

Wednesday Wanderings

(This post inspired by, but not intended to be a direct response to, recent events.)
 
We all need to be one, people say.  We need unity.  We need to stop defining ourselves by labels.

But the labels are important.  Without the human desire to label the pieces of the world around us, we wouldn't have language.  We would be unable to distinguish between tigers and trees.  The language, the labels, are also how we organize and classify the overwhelming deluge of information around us.  It makes the world manageable ... mostly.

Labels are how we, as an evolving species and throughout our history, identify and manage what we should consider a threat, what might be an ally, and what is neutral.  We categorize and classify as a survival strategy, and did so long before formal taxonomic systems.  It's why things that don't belong in one distinct category (or belong to several) cause tension on a primal level.  Much of mythology, superstition and folklore deals with these liminal forces.  By defining and naming them, they become an evil that can be fought, placated and understood.

People also use labels on the personal level to recall and manipulate information.  For those with a visual memory, they might picture the person or object in question instead, but others often need the words.  Without a tag, an identifier, a position on the association tree, that person, thing or concept cannot be accessed by the brain - cannot be considered, contemplated, understood.

So to say "stop using labels" flies in the face of human evolution and neurology.  Luckily, however, we also have the capacity to realize that the label is not the thing - that just as "Suzie" represents a person of immense complexity, to say that someone is Jewish, Swedish, bisexual is only one piece of their truth.  Naming is the first step to understanding; it is not the last.

The word liminal means "on the threshold" and we can stand on that threshold - despite our deepest fears, fortified by our power - and be all things at once.  We can use the words, the labels, to speak about what we must ... and know the rest in a place beyond words.

GoodReads Review: One of Our Thursdays Is Missing by Jasper Fforde

One of Our Thursdays Is Missing by Jasper Fforde
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love the humor, imagination, and authorial madness of the Thursday Next series, and this volume did not disappoint. The sidestep that is the premise - this story is told from the viewpoint of the fictional Thursday, the version of her that exists in the BookWorld after novels were written based on her life - is handled very well. I got a clear sense of this not-Thursday's personality, and her butler / sidekick, Sprockett, is also a delight.

I have only minor quibbles. I felt that the eventual resolution wasn't laid out clearly enough to be wholly satisfying when it came - it felt like a mystery where the writer had deliberately withheld a bit of information so the reader couldn't solve the problem. The other elements of the conclusion, however, were fulfilling enough to balance this out, and an entirely appropriate end for written-Thursday's character arc.

The other problem I had has been an ongoing one: I'm never quite convinced by Landen, Thursday's husband. He seems one-dimensional to me, existing only to be a supportive ideal. It's actually a little more appropriate here, considering that written-Thursday lost "her" Landen, so he is an unattainable dream ... but the character still bothers me, and it's hard to invest in her desires when he feels flat.

Jasper Fforde has a rare ability to make complete nonsense feel cohesive and internally consistent. You know, logically, that there's no way the BookWorld makes sense, but any attempts to pick it apart end in throwing up your hands and going along for the ride. Relax and enjoy it.

View all my reviews

Liner Notes For "The Promise of Song" now available!

It's up! Check out my flash fiction story written as CD notes:

https://87bedford.com/…/liner-notes-for-the-promise-of-song/
‪



 Mythology buffs: see how many references you can spot ...

GoodReads Review: By The Sword by Richard Cohen

By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions by Richard Cohen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A highly entertaining and very readable chronicle of the history of fencing, from the earliest era to dueling to modern Olympic competition, this book strikes an excellent balance between providing an overall historic and cultural perspective, and relating the stories of individuals - often with humor and/or drama. For my tastes, the later chapters on fencers in the 20th century were less interesting and took up more of the book than I would have wanted ... but that may show my bias more than anything else.

Particularly recommended for any fiction writer hoping to chronicle duels or professional sports - the book is a great source for insights on sportsmanship, legal challenges, honor, cheating, and other related topics that transcend fencing.

View all my reviews

(I don't usually post my nonfiction reviews on this blog, but this one is especially relevant to Things Fantasy, at least my Things Fantasy, and might be of interest to fellow writers.)

Wednesday Wanderings

For me, in a work of fiction, the story has a life of its own.  It exists as an independent entity, more of a found object than a composed one; an excavation rather than a creation.  Now, that doesn't mean I'm against editing and revision - changes to help a story realize its potential are, to extend the archaeological metaphor, removing the dust and debris.  (Literary criticism is the scientific paper discussing the find.  Fanfiction is ... all right, I'm taking the metaphor too far now.)

When I refer to story here, I want to clarify that I don't just mean the plot:  I mean the sum total of character, world, plot, and to a lesser extent, tone and mood.  Since I primarily write secondary world fantasy, the analogy is easy for me:  the story is the history of another world. I debated a bit whether to include those last two, but decided that there's a sense of mood and tone in "real life," too, so it's appropriate to consider that part of the story.

There are other elements that may exist in a work of fiction that are intertwined with story, but (in my mind) separate from it:  theme and message; education; raising awareness and increasing diversity; filling a niche; style and language; narrative structure.  Some people would argue that it is impossible to separate message from story, and in the end, I agree.  Even if the author doesn't consciously intend to say something, he or she does:  even if it's, "sometimes, life is random."

Beautiful prose; intriguing facts that give the story life; how could I be against any of this?  I'm not.  I can hardly rail against experimental narratives when I've written not one, but two stories in first person plural ("we"), another entirely as a dialogue between two minds trapped in a single body with no outside cues, and am currently submitting a tale with two different endings - which completely change the context of the tale before.

But for me, there's an important caveat:  these other elements must grow out of and/or serve the story, not the other way around.  The story is always first.  It's about authorial intent:  I need this element to tell this tale properly.  When a story because slave to other elements, because a writer wants to send a specific message or deliberately write something "wacky," the story begins to gasp for air.  It loses verisimilitude.  The long-buried pottery begins to crack.

Obviously, though, defining when this happens is very subjective.  Unless the author has been interviewed about the writing process for that tale - and possibly not even then - it's nearly impossible to know in what order the elements were conceived, where the inspiration started.  A story I find ridiculously contrived might seem perfectly natural to someone else, and vice versa.  And, of course, we all have blinders:  favorite elements or pet peeves that blind us to "flaws" or highlight them with a spotlight.

So it goes with every work of fiction:  taste is subjective.  One thing comes out of this that is immutable, though:  for me, personally, whenever I sit down to write, I concentrate on the story and chisel out everything else from there. 

Real archaeology makes me sneeze.

Wednesday Wanderings

I think I've talked about this before, but it's been some time, and with the current feast of speculative television and movies, I thought it would be fitting to look back at the movies that started it all ... specifically, my favorite three.

Obviously, the Lord of the Rings movies set the bar and opened the gates for fantasy film.  There is a direct line from the success of that trilogy to Game of Thrones, which made secondary world fantasy not just viable on the small screen, but a smashing success.  Suddenly, it's mainstream.  I was seriously tempted to buy a "A Girl has No Name" t-shirt, and cheerfully confident that people would get the reference.

But Lord of the Rings is a step in the middle of the road - a big step, but not the first.  And for me, I was an adult when the first Lord of the Rings movie came out:  other films had already been inscribed on my heart.

Specifically, these three.

The Princess Bride:  let me start with the most famous of these, the cult classic of swashbuckling, romance, faux-left-handed swordfighting, and rodents of unusual size.  It has all the elements you think of when you think of traditional fantasy, witty, eminently quotable dialogue, and an enormous heart.  The Princess Bride is an adaptation of the novel by the same name, the script written by the author.  It is (unsurprisingly) remarkably faithful to the book, though it removes one level of humor that only works in the printed form and transitions the internal monologues and flashbacks to external monologues ... which works remarkably well and makes the characters feel more connected to each other.

That level of humor, by the way, is embedded in the conceit that Goldman "translated" The Princess Bride, which is not actually an adventure story at all, but an intricate political satire based on fashion, manners, and even packing for a trip.  This also more firmly plants the tale on "our" earth, but either way, it's a version that never existed and never will.  (For my money, I actually like the film better:  that the backstories such as Inigo's are internalized makes the story feel more isolated.  It's more intellectual, but not as warm.)

Willow:  an evil sorceress hunts the child of prophecy destined to destroy her ... and the babe ends up in the care of an unassuming farmer, who must take her to safety.  It really is an iconic tale, an archetypal example of fantasy, though the "chosen one" is an infant - really a McGuffin more than a character, though the little girl is absolutely charming - and the farmer has a loving wife and children.

I've never confirmed whether this is true or urban legend, but my favorite story about this movie is that George Lucas wanted to make Willow instead of Star Wars, but the technology required for the morphing effect was not yet available.  It's why there are so many similarities in the storyline and character roles.  But the morphing is in full flower here, and it still holds up remarkably well.  (Not so much with some of the other special effects, like the multi-headed monster, sadly.)

It's an exciting, rollicking movie, with generously applied humor and highly quotable lines ("Went away?  'I dwell in darkness without you' and it went away?") ... and Val Kilmer in a skirt.  No, not a kilt, a skirt.  And, of course, I should point out that the wizard staff battle in Lord of the Rings is completely, totally shamelessly ripped off from the showdown between Bavmorda and Fin Raziel.

Ladyhawke:  a tale of cursed lovers, a powerful bishop, and the thief who tumbles into their path, this movie is an absolutely perfect example of a Welsh myth, down to small details ... so perfect, in fact, that early promotional materials touted it as an authentic legend, and the actual author had to sue to get the packaging altered.  (I wrote an essay in one of my courses about this movie, breaking down all the elements.)  It's a gorgeous, atmospheric tale, unfolded with a slowness that sometimes approaches the ponderous, but the pay-off is the sense of wonder.  This is really a "low magic" story, but it is infused with mythical imagery.  A lot of people complain about the rock music soundtrack, but for me, I find it strangely fitting.

Ladyhawke got around the potential need for morphing technology with a really great effect:  instead of trying to show the transformation, the shot focuses in close-up on the eyes of the person transforming, that moment of shock, realization and then the flash from human to animal.

Ladyhawke has Matthew Broderick at his very best.  Most people think of Ferris Bueller's Day Off when they think of Broderick, but I think of this movie.  He and the inimitable Leo McKern provide the movie with a much-needed counterbalance of levity.  (Oh, and Michelle Pfeiffer and Rutger Hauer.  Impressive cast much?)

So those are my three favorite fantasy movies:  they all share archetypal elements, character-based humor, and a wonderful cast.  If you haven't seen any of them, hunt them down.  And even if you have ... they reward rewatching.

Wednesday Wanderings

Today, I want to talk about casting calls - or at least, the author version of them.  By that, I mean choosing an actor or model who looks like the character.  This can come in a number of forms:  a popular question for authors is, "Who would play your hero/ine in a movie?"  It can be entertaining to imagine who might be able to portray your favorite character.  (It's often more fun than seeing who actually does - who among us hasn't been disappointed by a Hollywood casting choice?)

Another form is when the author chooses actors/models in advance to firm up their mental picture of the characters.  The competence / realism of the picture reference truly doesn't matter; I've even "cast" a silver screen starlet in her heydey who at this point, I think, has passed on.  A lot of writers swear by this method.  It helps them visualize, and it's a fun tidbit to share with readers, too.

I don't do this too often; I tend to work more on my gut feeling of a character.  But occasionally, I've done it in part when the mood strikes or when I have other reasons.  

In the case of Scylla and Charybdis, I originally had a sense of Anaea as Emmy Rossum, Phantom of the Opera era - this was before Shameless hit the screens.  I drifted away from that as I wrote.  In the case of Flow, my three core characters were all former roleplaying creations, and having a PB - Played By - is very common in these games.  (Some lazy players don't even bother to read others' character descriptions, they just look at the chosen actor / actress.  Really!)  Hadrian was Christian Bale from the era of Equilibrium, long before his now-iconic Batman stint.  For those who haven't seen the movie, it's best described as The Matrix meets Fahrenheit 451.  Bale was very gaunt, severe, and pale in that role.

But for my still-unnamed new project, I decided to "cast" all my characters.  The reason for this ties back into something I discussed in an earlier post about character naming:  I'm aiming for a society with a high degree of ethnic blending.  But I know myself, and my default mental image tends to be pale European.  So in selecting specific actors and references, I'm hoping to give myself an image to anchor myself with and maintain the look I'm striving for.

And because Facebook is the home of impulse, people there convinced me that it was perfectly all right to tweak a character expressly so he could be "played" by Giancarlo Esposito. 

Wednesday Wanderings

On Monday, my Facebook "On This Day" feature reminded me that it had been a year since I finished Unnatural Causes.

Really?  A year?  I could hardly believe it.  I'm in the middle of my editing marks for the second draft now, with so much to do.

I haven't been idle during that year.  When I finished the book, I was still editing Who Wants To be A Hero? with a query letter and synopsis to follow.  I took a break for my "strictly for fun" zombie-novella project, Undertaking Chances, which I had estimated would maybe be in the 15-20 thousand word range.  Twice that length later, the story had taken me on a wild ride.  Short stories, life developments, and the building blocks of my next novel ... and here we are.

As far as the professional and sales side of the writing business, not much has changed in that year.  As for the personal side and my personal life?  (Who wants to hear about the latter, really?)  I've gotten less serious in the right way.  I've had a disheartening lack of success ... and I'm starting to learn to divorce myself from that pressing need to sell-sell-sell and just have fun with it.

Stand back, things are about to get messy.

Wednesday Wanderings

I seem to go through phases with my novel protagonists.  The main characters will have a common underlying type for a series of projects; then that type will change completely.  By type, I don't mean that a specific cookie-cutter or exact set of characteristics - just an overarching "feel."

I don't make this decision consciously, either to begin the streak or to end it ... and because I'm frequently in different stages in multiple projects at once, I don't always have a clear sense of the transition.

I recently finished one of these streaks - if you can call a few years ago recently.  Has it been that long since I finished Who Wants To Be A Hero?  Because that was the end of the previous streak:  characters who were quiet, self-contained, independent ... but not necessarily sure of their course in life.  It's Rhiane in Journal of the Dead, who endured the weight of ghosts to search for her son; Anaea in Scylla and Charybdis, a fish out of water in her tiny home colony who discovered the true size of the universe; and Ioweyn in Who Wants To Be A Hero? who willingly allowed herself to be a prize in a game to earn herself a divine role.  These women are very different, but they share the same heartbeat.

The next streak started with Unnatural Causes, which I'm doing editing notes for now, and this set of protagonists promises to be a lot ... livelier.  The dominant thread seems to be a snarky-sarcastic attitude, little patience for authority, and a strong will:  not only a descriptor of Vil, who refused to be treated as a creature (she was a mage's familiar) as she tried to solve her mistress' murder; but a good descriptor of Maren, the protagonist of the still-unnamed project I'm working on now.  I have a backup concept in the works with a wild-child sorceress who finds herself in possession of a rich mystic legacy in the form of enchanted dolls ... you can see the common thread, I'm sure.

Why do I do this?  I'm not sure.  Perhaps it's me as a person - less than as a writer - working through something in my life.  Maybe I'm channeling some aspect of myself that is important at the time - this would fit with the previous streak, as I was feeling aimless before I decided to enroll in culinary school.  Maybe it's wish fulfillment, something I lack - certainly, I can't just shake people off the way my current protagonists can.  Is this a writer's version of therapy?

Am I going to break the streak now that I'm aware of it?  Probably not.  The characters are still different enough to keep me out of a rut (or the accusation that I'm writing the same person all the time, should I be lucky enough to get each book in print).  And as a backburner thinker, I've learned that most of the time, it's best to let my subconscious mind have at it. 

Wednesday Wanderings

The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Isn't that what a writer does every time we submit a story or send a query to an agent?

Except it's never exactly the same:  it's a different story, a different editor, a different agent ... a work written weeks, months or even years after the last, and in that sense, written by a slightly different writer, too.  Maybe we're working through a particular theme or writerly habit; maybe our lives have taken a recent turn; or maybe we're simply in a different mood.

Sometimes, I worry that my skill is not improving, that I'm only getting worse - losing the spontaneity and picking up artificial affectations in exchange.  It's tempting to measure this by ratios, acceptances, manuscript requests, but nothing happens in a vacuum:  the agent might be looking for something in particular, the market just accepted another story about time-traveling opera cows, or someone on the other end was simply in a bad mood.

Lack of success doesn't mean lack (or loss) of skill.  But how do you know what does?  Or does it even matter?  Maybe you at your worst is just what some editor wants.

Wednesday Wanderings

What's in a name?  If you're a writer pondering a character, a great deal.  While some writers may be able to freely change the names of their characters, even the protagonist, throughout drafts, for me, characters become intertwined with their names in a very kinesthetic sense.

And the rose does not smell as sweet by any other name.  "Petunia" conjures very different images - arguably even if one has never seen a petunia.  Give someone the name Ethel, and one has a certain first impression; Brittany creates another one.  It's about more than sound, of course:  culture, time period, and even personal choice affect the names we know a person by.

On the other hand, it's possible for a name to be too on the nose.  I tend to resist names that have precise, appropriate meaning, unless prophecy or divine intervention is involved.  A fire invoker named Ember ... what, her parents really knew that was what she going to grow up to be?  Call me crazy when I'm happily accepting the existence of dragons and bickering gods, but this kind of thing threatens my suspension of disbelief.

I'm reminded here of a story I once read about J.R.R. Tolkien (a master linguist, of course), who thought that words "cellar door" were some of the most lyrical in the English language, even though their meaning is dreadfully mundane.

I admit to a weakness for characters who dislike their given name, so use a nickname or other handle.  I did in Scylla and Charybdis - in fact, I just had to go back into the manuscript to remember that Flick's given name is Tobias, so take that as you will.  It's also coming up in the project I'm working on - the narrator is generally called by her last name, Maren, and the intent is to trickle out her nickname, and then her full first name.  It should be quite obvious to readers why she's not fond of it, and hopefully, it's a bit ironic.

All right, enough vaguebooking on a story I haven't even written yet ... the project also contains a character whose real name is Aristophanes - blame the artificial intelligence who decided to name the children in its care after ancient Greeks.  He goes by Archer, and for him, it's also a personal homage / in-joke to Robin Hood.

In both Scylla and Charybdis and my current project, I've had to ponder the direction names will take in the future.  I think it's quite likely that, as ethnic groups blend, so will naming ... to the point where a future society may have numerous examples of names that don't seem to "fit" - but in context, they're normal.

We already see this as exceptions to the rules.  A young couple might give their daughter a Native American name because it "sounds cool."  Someone might name their baby in honor of another individual ... who may be from another group and certainly comes from another time period.  (To pull from above, imagine a teenager named Ethel.  Quite possible, if her namesake is her grandmother.)  As people marry across boundaries, the blending of surnames produces some odd results - for instance, what if an Italian woman and a Japanese man marry and give their daughter a name from her family?  That's ignoring what happens when you start to hyphenate surnames ...

The challenge for me as a writer has been to represent this drift in naming without it seeming bizarre, gratuitous and "special" to readers.  I have to strike a balance between plausibility to modern ears (without going into great depth explaining / justifying background every time I introduce a character) and capturing that element of change.

And even if I haven't succeeded, I promise I will never name a sage "Elvis" (... that is what it means.  I swear.  Look it up) again.  Maybe.  Well, I haven't planned to.