Thursday Thoughts

Haven't had any time to work on Scylla and Charybdis since last week - I've kind of had a bunch of more immediate projects slam into me, including a more-in-depth-than-expected edit for Balance of Power, and an initial once-over for the next two stories in my queue to start the process of readying them for submission. Add to that the fact that I foolishly started an F-W challenge story and I'm still working on Shadow Play (which still promises to be novelette - novella range) and ... oof.

There's also a third story I may give an initial pass to because the editor of Darwin's Evolutions has expressed interest in seeing another story with Pazia and Vanchen, and it just so happens that I have one finished (but not edited). I'd like to get that to him soon after Loyal Dice comes out.

And I'm dying to write a Fib. (A poem based on the Fibonacci sequence.)

I like to multi-task, but this is nigh unmanageable. After I get through this particular thicket I'm going to try not to get tangled up in it again soon.

On the "whoot!" front, I am on the home stretch with the first edit of Journal of the Dead. Just reached the beginning of the climactic scene. Hoping to reach the end by this time next week. We'll see!

Remember

My flash fiction story "Remember" is now available in Kaleidotrope - in the leading slot of the magazine, in fact! You can order yourself a copy over at:

http://www.kaleidotrope.net/

This is a second person narrative about a long journey across the desert ... or is it?

Setting Integrity

I just received a request for a rewrite on the ending to one of my stories that touches upon a setting point. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem: if I agreed with the request, I wouldn't mind doing the bodywork throughout the story to alter the ending. However, in this case, I was working in a pre-established setting where I've written other works - including the last novel I abandoned; I was about 57k into it and hadn't even hit what I envisioned as the main action of the novel - and the setting point holds up as important for future ideas.

Now, I was able to make an edit that I think moves in the right direction. Do I think the setting point harms this individual story? No. It adds a tinge of realism to the conclusion. Sometimes the world is bigger than we are. But I thought it was interesting that this stricture came up for me, especially as I usually do hop to other worlds. We'll see.

Thursday Thoughts

By now, I've gotten far enough into Scylla and Charybdis - and I know enough about the rest of the cycle - that I can make a tentative estimate as to its final length. I'm saying between 140 - 150k. (For the layman, the upper limit @ 600 page book.) Grant that I'm only halfway there now, so it could change ... but this gives me a good idea how much cutting I'm going to have to do. I think, to be saleable, it needs to be more in the 125 - 130k range.

The good news is, I'm sure that when I go back through it, I'll see unnecessary descriptions, overly wordy sentences, and potentially whole scenes that don't need to be there. (I'm toying with the notion that the entire chapter I just wrote falls into that category.) As I did for Journal, I'll be doing a first-read outline so I can see what's where and why it is. This isn't just a point-by-point outline: it's a list of the purposes the scene serves. For instance, the same scene could move the main plot forward - and also advance the romantic subplot and fill in setting details. Some segments might only serve one purpose but still be necessary.

The OTHER good news is, I should be finished with my first edit of Journal well before I'm ready to start editing SaC ... so I will be able to get a gauge, by how much shorter the second draft is (first draft clocks at 114k), how hard the above editing is going to be.

I'm on the home stretch with the first Journal edit. Kind of excited about it. It still really seems to hang together well.

Due to my sale of The Winter Queen, I'm prepping another story for submission. I had planned to send it out yesterday ... but as I started editing it, I noticed I was making a lot of changes, not to the fundamental structure of the story, but filling in little holes, expanding dialogue that was too quick, cutting bits that were unnecessary. As I know my editing is weak and feeling like I know what I should change is rare, I'm going to keep plugging at it for a while. Currently in the middle of a second pass; if I do a third and I'm only making minor changes, I'll send it. Otherwise I'll wait a few days. It may be - gasp - as late as next week before I get it out. Augh! My queue is halted.

I'm a little concerned about Balance of Power just from a niche / market standpoint. It's an adventure-style story. That's not to say it's complete fluff: there's a lot of elements in it about choice, freedom, compulsion and a little sprinkle of duality. However, they don't create an arc so much as musings throughout. So you definitely have to argue that the romp is the point of the story ... we'll see, I suppose.

The Winter Queen

One of my fastest acceptances ever: after a little over twelve hours (submitted just after midnight last night, even!), Golden Visions accepted my story The Winter Queen for their second 2010 issue. This was my first word-tumble story, and huzzah! It now has a worthy home.

A Versatile Visage

Poem now available in Vol 2 of Emerald Tales: Masks or Appearances Can Be Deceiving. I got the final slot closing out the issue. Check it out:

http://www.scribblersandinkspillers.com/emeraldtales.html

This poem marks an unusual milestone for me: it's the only piece I've written for a specific theme that sold to a venue on a completely different theme. (It was initially composed for Cinema Spec.)

Thursday Thoughts

My, I was talkative in September, wasn't I?

Had a better week and (no coincidence) a more productive one.

I know my main concern in editing Scylla and Charybdis will be amping the tension through the sections where the primary thing my narrator is doing is exploring. There are currently long descriptive / narrative passages - all with purpose, but I don't think they make the reader worry about what happens next, though I hope they're interesting enough to draw along with curiosity. I'm currently working on a scene where she's ambushed in the street - hurrah, action! - and realized I have to explain why her young escort would leave her in a neighborhood like this. So that will have to go in the next scene.

I am inching closer to the climactic scenes in Journal. I've done a fair amount of cutting in recent pages - not large sections, but unnecessary sentences. Some of them weren't even lined out when I made my markings, but in reading back I decided they were fluff. I'm very curious to get to the end and do a word count comparison. I may come out slightly shorter than the first draft despite several additions throughout, which to my mind is a good thing.

I'm about two and a half thousand words into my new short story. I've decided to relax and let it be whatever length it wants to be, which is probably going to be novella. There's a lot of world exploration here, but I really wanted to immerse the reader in the setting and the characters. I'm particularly proud of how I managed to imply the glove-wearing custom of the Seventeen Seas - it's pretty universal among all "civilized" cultures, just like you'd wear a shirt in public - without saying much direct about it. Getting the "loud piety" into the dialogue is tricky because my brain doesn't work that way.

Here's a quick flash of description from the story that I'm proud of. It hopefully tells a bit about the city, the character and his homeland:

The press of people on the cobbled streets was light, but the buildings - sandstone and pale green limestone, an earthy dappling of color - made him feel claustrophobic, even though few were over two stories high. He missed the clear line of sight afforded by Calathinyan roofways. The streets were well-maintained, the walls splashed with vibrant murals of gods, country scenes and optical illusions, but he always felt as if he were pacing a rabbit's warren until the avenues broadened into a courtyard or agora.

Old Wounds

So eons ago, I read an issue of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy magazine - dated Summer 1995, so it could be as much as fourteen years if I read it right away - with a story entitled "Even More Than Magic" by Bob Dennis. It's about two teenagers, children of a sorceress, who are captured by her rival, and is told from the point of view of the one who wasn't raised in magic - instead sent out for herbcraft and practical learning. There's a bit in the final third or so where the narrator believes she's figured out that her mother simply loves her less, that she kept her out of her own magical craft to protect her sister.

This broke my heart. The anguish in that idea - not just applied to families, but in other areas you can be weighed and found wanting - burrowed into me and stayed there ... so much that now, over a decade later, I instantly - boom - recognized the story when I saw it. Heck, I teared up before I started reading. The fact that this theory of the narrator's is disproved at the end of the story never really helped. That moment remains. I remembered it for all the intervening years.

This inspired me, longer ago than I care to consider, to write a little story entitled "The Other Sister." It's definitely its own entity ... in fact, it takes off the idea of a sister who really is inferior, despite all her attempts and good intentions. (It showed up in Eye of Unicorn, Tongue of Dragon, the little e-zine I ran for a while when I was too young to know better.) I think that's one of the few pieces I've ever written that was genuinely carthartic. I usually just don't go there.

I'm pondering rewriting this one. My style has improved so drastically (stop sniggering: I can hear you!) that it would basically be restructured from ground-up, the same essential plot with everything else fleshed, filled, extended and - of course - rewritten. Maybe ... who knows? I wouldn't be surprised if it touches off the same reaction for me as a writer. The feeling is still with me.

Anatomy of an Idea: Instructions For An Initiate

This story was a product of The 3AM Epiphany (the only writing exercise book I recommend, by the way) when I was doing a daily "boot camp" - an exercise a day. This was one of the very first exercise, to write a story purely in the form of commands ... implied second person. I decided to go the route of orders given to a young person being initiated as a priest - and it took a (for me) very dark turn.

I'm not sure when I decided to create a very ambiguous, pitiless goddess, but it definitely shaped the tone. For more - read it.

Instructions For An Initiate

This flash fiction piece is now available at Golden Visions magazine (http://www.goldenvisionsmagazine.biz/). Make sure you flip down to the bottom of the page on which "Instructions" is listed: the flash fiction are all on the same page, and mine is the last (and the best ;-)).

Feel free to vote for my piece if it takes your fancy.

Reviews

I just received one of those reviews - well, late last night - that reminds me why I bother posting on critique sites. The reviewer got what I was trying to do, but had a few significant critiques that left me in a quandary. After stewing and sleeping over it, I came up with a revision that I think solved, not only what he and other reviewers thought was "off" with the ending, but what left *me* somewhat discontent and gnawy ... sort of by accident on the second part, but it all works much more smoothly.

Anyhow, it's a stronger story now, and I'm very happy for it.

Name Proliferation

Those of you who are writers - at least, fantasy writers - may have run into this problem ...

I'm about four hundred words into the new story mentioned in the previous post - and in that space, I've used six proper names. It developed very naturally:

1) My main character, who of course I wanted to name right out - it's third person narration, so that's the first name we see.
2) His "boss," the character he's talking to. I didn't want to keep saying "his superior" and the character is going to reappear, so let's get the name in.
3) The nationality of said boss. I'd already decided that since my MC is an exile from another nation that I wanted to do a lot of comparisons. This is the first. It would have required serious gymnastics to write the sentence in question with a generic non-name, rather than simply saying, "Ilkanese."
4) The name of the victim in the case that will be taking up the entire rest of the story. This seems like a relevant piece of info to me. By using her name, I also get to easily and simply indicate that she is THE High Priestess, not simply a high priestess.
5) His native land. Again, I'm going to be referring to it a lot, so it would be cumbersome to keep saying "his home country" every time. This is the only reference I can see that would be easy to change and move later on.
6) The name of the city. If you're writing an urban story, you can get away with naming the city and not the country; not so much the reverse.

I'm hoping this is a manageable amount of information, but I keep dithering between placing the information when it's first relevant, versus trying to undergo some gymnastics to intersperse it more gradually. On the other hand, this is a page and a half in a manuscript, so maybe that's relaxed enough. You then get a break until the next scene. Ahem.

I find this happens a lot, though. In my "word tumble," I had to name my MC, a king, five children, and a royal guard, all within a short span of time. Just personally, I would rather give something a concrete handle if it's going to mentioned more than once or twice. The act of naming something makes it feel "real" to me. So it's just a matter of making sure it's spaced out properly.

Thursday Thoughts

No, you really don't want to know what I'm thinking.

It's been a rough week, particularly the last twenty-four hours. Real life hammered me with a to-do list so massive that even when I reached the end, my nervous system was flashing me staccato signals of, "Move! Move!" This means ... not a lot of writing, and an inordinate amount of discouragement over what I have done.

Hoping to start the story mentioned last week sometime today. I've already resolved that I'm not going to skimp on the worldbuilding ... if it's not strictly relevant, so be it. This is a character-and-setting piece more than a plot piece, and I want to immerse the reader in the mindset of someone who lives there.

Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine

So as mentioned in my bookcase post, I found my old MZB Fantasy Magazines. I loved this magazine - it's the first one I remember really enjoying. Hoping for a good read, and also curious if the issues would live up to my nostalgia, I started to read. I've finished three now (#40, #36 and #25, and yes, in that order) and I feel as if I have the shape of it again.

To some extent, the magazine didn't live up to my memory. I had the sense that the stories were familiar - but I'm honestly not sure whether this is a "flaw," or whether they're still imprinted on the recesses of my brain from years ago, and thus even if I don't remember the specific story, the feel of it is recognizable. But I found that I sometimes wanted more of the unexpected and exotic from the worlds and the plots.

That said - what a breath of fresh air! The stories are high-quality and many of them are humorous ... and they all present a reliably good read. There's no risk of being dangled off a literary precipe; each item in these magazines puts story first. They also tend to be pretty wholesome, which is nice in a genre that occasionally resorts to R-rated material for kicks. (I remember reading a story in - Fantasy Magazine, I think? - that would have been excellent except for taking a few passages too far ... and consequently, THAT'S what I remember about the story.) And there's real emotional resonance: I confess to tearing up a few times.

So I'm glad I found these, and I miss the magazine. Who knows where it would be today?

But what do I *DO* with it?

So for me, the creative arts have always had a practical side. I'm a professional harp performer: every piece I arrange and practice is eventually intended to be played in a background job or a stage set. I also consider myself a professional writer and with the exception of brain-stretching exercises, every story / novel I work on is intended to be sent out to publishers. I am goal-focused and product-conscious ... though I still have tremendous fun with the process. (Three words for you: Under The Sea (from The Little Mermaid). Such a blast to play. I just need to get off my duff and finish a cohesive arrangement ...)

So occasionally, when I need to downtime my brain (look, I'm verbing nouns!), I turn to the visual arts. I dabble - and it's definitely dabble - in photography, fractals, drawing and painting. To be able to do something where the result isn't expected to be up to a professional standard and I don't have to produce something for a specific goal allows me to unwind.

But then that little nagging voice creeps into my head, the one that's been trained from years of work ... what do I do with it? I feel as if there needs to be some purpose for the finished project. It's just sitting there, and it drives me batty. These files, these loose pages! They're just taking up space.

Part of it, I suppose, is that I do have a show-off streak: I want people to see what I've done and - yes, I blush - admire it. That's probably a good part of why I have a Deviantart page. For the rest of it ...

My brain churns - I can't help it - over what use my artwork might serve. One idea that amuses me is the notation of doing art-cards as stories / poems of mine are released and posting them up as little advertisements. Not sure yet.

But the point is ... I felt compelled to find something to do with my creative product, even my downtime product. I feel as if there's something vaguely diseased about this outlook of mine. I don't feel that it's ever stifled my creativity in my primary work, but I occasionally don't turn to the art because there's this tiny little voice whispering, "Okay, but what do I *do* with it?"

That said, if anyone wants my fractals or photos I'll be happy to be paid, but that's besides the point ... ahem. Running away now.

Link added

Link added to the very artistic website of Lydia Kurnia. Check it out!

Thursday Thoughts

Recently, I received a rejection on a story that commented it opened slowly. I'm aware of this, but I disagree that it's a problem. With an intriguing setup and a strong narration - which I've been told by editors it has - I feel that a reader should be curious about rather than bored by a short (emphasis on short) pre-plot section. The section in question is less than two manuscript pages out of twenty-three, and the information is crucial to the action pretty quickly. It was longer; I had already moved some of it forward into the action.

Anyhow, upshot: I've considered it, I've reviewed it with a cold eye, and it's staying. I believe I can find a publisher who sees the balance sheet. I've also seen published stories that positively dither before westward ho ...

The past few days have been crazy-busy. I've had hardly any time to work on the Journal of the Dead edit ... and when I do, I can't tell if my sense that X scene or Y scene is redundant is good instinct or just the fact that I'm tired, darnit. For now, I'm not making any drastic cuts, but I do think overall, I've removed more than I've added. Which with the way I write (you all know it) is a good thing.

I did choose my next short story from my pile of exercises ... and furthermore, decided to move my setting into the Butterfly's Poison world (otherwise known as the world of the Seventeen Seas). I already have a story published in that setting ("Currents and Clockwork" in Sails & Sorcery), which (if I'm recalling right) is about ten-fifteen years after BP. This time I'm going about three years before and making my lawyer an expatriate Calathinyan. Unfortunately, this means skimming back through my BP world notes to make sure that I'm consistent, because if the novel gets picked up or anyone compares the stories OR I decide to write another ...

This actually seems to be an inadvertent theme in that world. I'm always writing about people who are exiled or fled their homelands ... some of them miss it, others - like the MC in Currents and Clockwork - are trying very hard not to be dragged back. I wonder what this signifies.

Putting in my notes to write a story actually set in the Shardath sometime. Can I make an Oligarch (as they exist in-setting) sympathetic without turning the individual PC? Hrm. This one is set in Ilkanae, an island of city-states I created to be my (ancient, sorta) Greece -- in the theocratic city state. And the dominant religion of the Seventeen Seas is monotheistic ... so should be an interesting blend of elements. Already got some great ideas, if I can keep it from being too longwinded ...

When I'm Not Writing

Three random photos I put up today:

http://aiara.deviantart.com/art/Roses-By-Night-137171255
http://aiara.deviantart.com/art/Roses-At-Night-2-137171674
http://aiara.deviantart.com/art/More-Roses-137171929

My drawing skills are just on the edge of acceptable. I've pondered doing character portraits for a project (I have a specific one in mind where my fear of an inaccurate drawing getting "stuck" as the character would be minimized) but ... not quite sure I'm there yet.

Firekeeper series - Jane Lindskold

I just finished reading book 2 of Jane Lindskold's Firekeeper series - Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart. I enjoyed this even more than the first book. It built on the previous conflicts, introduced new characters and threads, and still felt like an authentic continuation. Firekeeper and Elise have particularly intriguing evolutions during the course of the novel, but a lot of the characters grow and change, even those who aren't the focus.

This is a great example of a novel that takes a fairly common fantasy setting and some familiar tropes - and does some awesome things with them. The setting is richly detailed, the characters are three-dimensional and well-illustrated (even the "villains"), and there are several surprises in the execution. I got really caught up in the risks to the characters in the latter part of the book.

Handled particularly well is Firekeeper's continued efforts to combine her wolf outlook with her human nature. I also thought the expansion into New Kelvin was skillful. It was very different from the two countries that took up the first book, but it didn't feel slapped on or non-sequitor. I even liked the way Elise's romantic subplot was handled: it's a refreshing change from the usual romance tropes - unrequited love, love-hate, comic misunderstanding, star-crossed lovers - that develops towards a mature outlook.

Certainly, there are aspects of the book that annoyed me. It's less prevalent in #2 than it was in #1, but augh! The heraldry! Trying to crush your brain into who is related to who, and how, and how that affects their social standing ... some of it is color and you can breeze over it, but some of it is pretty crucial to the story. It seems that understanding this kind of develops by osmosis - even if you're not following it, keep reading and it will gel. There is an appendix; I don't think I resorted to it.

I also sort of felt that the history between the Royal Beasts and the humans had kind of "been done" a few too many times, but it's certainly an archetype well supported by real history.

That said, I highly recommend this book. I think a reader will enjoy it more as a continuous thread from Through Wolf's Eyes, but it seemed to me it was well-designed to carry a new reader without making the previous readers feel bogged down. There's more skill right there.

And without having to read the back, I have a good inkling as to some of the directions the next book(s) is/are going ...

What's in a Name?

Enough to drive me bonkers.

Eons ago, I was involved in Pern fandom - basically, roleplaying / writing in that setting. Recently, I've experienced the desire to remove my characters from that context and re-cast them.

The problem? These characters are around - in some cases, over - a decade old. I have a very strong association with names fitting the character and the character fitting the name. So by now, most of these people are locked into their current name and it's very hard to make significant changes. Swapping a few letters will hurt my head enough.

Why do I need to change the names? For those unfamiliar, Pernese naming frequently deals with blending the names of the parents. Sometimes it's really obvious; sometimes it's just a letter jumble. To give some examples I won't have to worry about: Vecaria and Roran's son is Veoran; Nyzael and Larkani have a daughter, Nykani; and Cyderieh and Shalderin have a son named Sahaile.

In the latter two examples, I've fixed it by simply planning to change the names of the parents. They're not going to be appearing "on camera" anyway, or even if they do, I didn't really do much with them so they're not "locked in" like others. I've noticed that changing the parent names seems to be sufficient in most cases that I can leave the names of siblings and not have it look odd. My worst example is probably Daicara, Darave and Davenor ... and modern people give their children alliterative names, so hey.

But then there are those that don't budge and aren't easy to fudge. The worst examples:

Ravela, her sons Darave and Davenor, and the former's daughter Ranessa: All four of these characters saw play. The most attention went to Darave and his daughter; I think - emphasis on think - if I change Ravela, then the others come neatly apart and it's not too bad. Savela? Sarvela? The V kind of gives it the punch. Would it make sense to make Darave into Dirave, or does that change not help? Darave and Davenor are excusable because the backstory is that Ravela left her husband, but claims the latter is still his son.
Millysti, her son Kailyst, and his cousin Telystian: Complicated by the fact that Telystian's little sister is named after her aunt, so even though one Millysti was never on-screen, the other was. Kailyst is ... he's utterly non-negotiable. And I love Telystian's name. I don't even have ideas what I could possibly do with this one.
Brothers Andileran and Ryleran and cousin Toscileran: Enough said, I think. The -leran suffix, I could probably come up with some reason for using it, and I thought of making a vocational tag ... since they're all guards. Not sure if that's cheating, or if it still looks transparently like name-blending. Also compounded by the fact that I don't want to use this solution for the prior group, so it would be two separate fixes.
Toscileran's son Cellani: Cellani was active longer than his father, actually. And I love the name! It's cute. If the -leran is an occupational suffix, does that uncouple this name enough? Or is it detached already and I'm just too used to seeing it as a direct nomenclature descendant?

I just continue to contort myself over how much change is enough, at what point does it start looking unblended versus at what point does it stop being the same "feel" for the name? How far does it need to go?

This post is just here because I'm venting right now, not specifically hunting for solutions, but it may go onto writer forum(s) in the future.

The Final Encounter

Just sold this story to Aoife's Kiss! It will be coming out in June of 2010.

This story was written from an old Fantasy-writers.org prompt. I was bored, so I went back cruising through challenge topics that were used in the past. This one was actually about "life after the adventure" -- but instead of having a retirement story (as it were), I created an archetypal confrontation with the evil overlord(ess) ... then had both characters walk away from it. Where they go from there is the story.

Aoife's Kiss has been good to me, people. Tyree Campbell is prompt, courteous and of course, having accepted multiple pieces of my work, has excellent taste. Give them a shout-out.

I may be back today: I have something to grouse about, but I also have to bake some cookies for the harpers' gathering later today. I really need to practice this music more; resolving to do so between now and the final pre-performance gathering. It's American music and such a departure from "just Celtic" and I don't know why I'm so unenthused. I also need to work on my solo, which is the theme from Jurassic Park, or part of it. (The "pretty bit" - you hear it particularly near the end when the pterasaurs are flying past the plane.)

Cleaning Out

While cleaning out my shelves and my desk drawer, I discovered some funny things, some bizarre things, and some cool things. Among them:

Ultima IV for the Apple II GS. All materials, including cloth map and vellum-bound spell guide. In the original box.

A copy of Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet" with ownership signatures from my aunt, my grandmother, and her mother.

A case for holding 3.5" diskettes. Yeah, that's useful.

A folder with sheets of cherry-picked fairy-tales photocopied out of various sources, including multiple Lang fairy books.

Two copies of the Poetic Edda. I think one is not mine.

The moisture sponge that is supposed to go into my harp during winter months. Oops.

A small collection of Spanish and English coins. (Hey, this coin has a hole in it!)

I apparently followed Renaissance magazine avidly for a while. I have something like twelve issues.

Also found my Marion Zimmer Bradley Fantasy magazines. Squee. I am so reading these.

I have that many Pratchett books? Since when? Grant that it's been a tradition that when I fly, I buy a Pratchett for the trip, but ... really?

For a form of fiction that's supposedly tough to sell, I have a massive anthology collection.

A Versatile Visage

This poem - one of my infamous pantoums - was just accepted by Emerald Tales! Quite excited to see this one published ... and in print, even. Even better, publication date is October, so it shan't be long. (Actually, October is supposed to be a landmark month for me with things actually hitting the stands ...)

Thursday Thoughts

I decided to change my writing focus game plan. Currently, I'm making sure I edit/rewrite a page a day of Journal, then trying to finish a chapter of Scylla and Charybdis. After that, I'll need to do an editing pass on two separate stories. Then ... I've got to take a day or two and do a focus on Journal, as otherwise it will take forever to finish up.

Speaking of Scylla and Charybdis, I made the mistake of inserting a sideplot where the ship Anaea is traveling on - to reach Annwyn, where the plot resumes - is attacked by pirates, its weapons damaged, and the new character I mentioned last week is shanghaied into repairing them ... with Anaea helping out. Wow, I am in territory such that I am faking it so much I expect a phantasmal lady to lean over and say, "I'll have what she's having."

There are places where I'm trying to be vague because I can't possibly check my science on something this general, and I'm hoping this doesn't hurt the story. I may seek out a science-savvy reviewer to error-check these pages - just as I'm half-considering doing so for my use of Judaism. (I've actually got a potential reviewer already for that.) This whole sequence really exemplifies why trying to tackle science-fiction is a challenge for me.

I've finished the Scene of Doom in Journal. At one point, I was worried about the coincidence inherent in having an old friend of one of Rhiane's spirits show up ... but it works. It doesn't come off as, "Huh, that's handy," it comes off as another complication and throws a moral wrench in the works. There's no good answer here, ethically speaking, no easy choice.

Finished my F-W challenge story and promptly forgot to include the phrase that becomes the title. Of course. I'll get it in editing; I didn't feel like drilling into it right away. I'm not sure I have five different styles; for certain I have three, and I did try to use some deliberate stylistic choices for the less distinct sections, but I chickened out on making the last section really florid (which was my plan) because ultimately I wanted it readable. Again, something I can try and manhandle in editing.

The Big Three Films

Of course, I admire The Lord of the Rings film trilogy for proving that fantasy films could be a viable commercial enterprise - and I'm still slavering over that Temeraire film we were promised: where IS it! - but for me, there are three films that embody fantasy in movie format. They're all older movies; I'd personally call all three of them classics. They are:

The Princess Bride: Let's start with the obvious one, shall we? I challenge you to find someone who doesn't love this movie, with its light-hearted but dramatic core, the wonderful humor, the quirky characters ... it's a lovely portrayal of a lot of traditional fantasy elements, princes, epic beauties, revenge quests, sword-fighting, pirates ... it's eminently quotable ("Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.") and has really saturated our culture (quote from Civilation IV advice menu: "Never start a landwar in Asia."). Even if us modern gals are irritated by Buttercup's ineffectual flailings in the fireswamp - what a great adventure.

WIllow: This is the movie George Lucas wanted to make. That's my story and I'm sticking with it. There really is an unconfirmed story, though, that Lucas had written the script to Willow first ... but current technology couldn't handle the shapeshifting effects for Fin Raziel (really amazing cutting-edge effects for when it was made, folks), and so he wrote Star Wars instead. Hence the similar elements ... but this is really an archetypal adventure story, of an unassuming man swept up in events larger than himself. As to the rest, Madmartigan is an amazing character. The brownies are probably the least annoying of Lucas' sidekick concoctions. And the quotes ... okay, they're not as mainstream. But come on ... "'I dwell in darkness without you,' and it went away?"

Ladyhawke: This is probably the most obscure of the three films. The box and promo text claims that this is based off a genuine Welsh legend. It isn't, but it's easy to see why such a statement would have endured even after the real author sued. Its flaw is that it's too perfect: the illustration of traditional Celtic myth is too complete, too precise, the story too well-rounded to be an organic rather than a composed thing. (I actually did an essay on this film, so uh - pardon the ranting there.) Again, it's a beautiful blend of timeless fantasy archetype with emotion and - yes - humor. This remains my enduring image of Matthew Broderick. Yes, to me, who cares about Ferris Bueller? Broderick will always be Phillipe the Mouse. "I expect to see you at the Pearly Gates, my son, don't you dare disappoint me!" "I'll be there, Father ... even if I have to pick the lock."

For Your Amusement

I just started removing the books from my shelves so I could add a new one - which happens to entail moving three of the existing bookcases even if I didn't desperately need to reorganize, so ... down they all come.

I haven't figured out my non-fic classifications yet, but I currently have separate piles for:

Fantasy, Light Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Science Fiction, Mysteries, Light Mysteries, Historical Mysteries, Anthologies and (general) Fiction.

Will probably add a YA category as I still have a fair number of my "kid" reads.

This is going to take forever, yo. Especially as I'm also seriously considering breaking into the one bookcase I DON'T have to move. I mean, I'm already tearing things apart, might as well go all the way ...

Two Steps Back

Lately, I've been feeling as if my writing capability has taken a dive. The last few stories I've posted up for critique have been pretty well clawed - even when I was feeling good about them. I continue to be concerned about the fact that I confuse people when I ... almost never catch the source of confusion in my own edits. Sometimes, I think it's an issue of people don't read all that carefully. Other times, I have no idea how to train myself to edit for this.

And I've gotten a lot of rejections lately, even from markets that accepted my stories in the past. The one story that has been getting really high marks (though still rejections) ... I can't seem to sell. There's only a few higher-tier markets left, and I'm reluctant to ship it down because I know it's a bloody good piece of work.

I wonder if it's my process. Writing two pieces - a novel and a short - and editing another novel keeps me continually switching up. I'm wondering if I need to work in larger chunks, for instance do a little bit of the editing each day, then a chapter of the novel and the entirety (or at least, a larger piece) of a short.

Or maybe I'm trying to stretch too far. I've been challenging myself a lot lately, not even deliberately ... but a difficult idea latches on and I'm eager to dive in. Maybe I need to pull back and simplify.

Or maybe I'm just losing it. I don't know.

Lady in Gil

Sometimes, you read a book, and it far exceeds your expectations. Rebecca Bradley's "Lady In Gil" is one such book.

On the face of it, I expected a light, simple comedy. It's not an uncommon story: an unlikely hero is recruited when no better candidate is available, and bumbles his way in the general direction of success. But the tone of this particular novel - and its narrator - is immediately endearing, a very personal and engaging sense of humor. More than that, the book is somewhat miscast by its cover blurb: it's humorous, true, but it's also dark, grim, with gritty and uncompromising descriptions of what the conquered people are suffering. This a tough balance, and excellently struck.

The romance story in this novel is beautiful. It's by turns predictable and unexpected, familiar and heart-wrenching. You can see the mistakes the narrator is mistaking and want to hit him over the head, without quite getting disgusted - which again, for me, is quite a balancing act, because I'm jaded with the familiar romantic subplots.

Overall, the plotline shines. There are some aspects you see coming - you know they have to be there - and then there are bends that go in a completely different direction. There are few black and whites in the story: every character falters, every noble character has a flaw; every situation is imperfect, every solution a little painful.

Anyhow - yes. Loved it. This is going on my Recommended Reads as soon as I figure out a shorter desc.

Thursday Thoughts

My mindset with fiction lately seems to be to take a lot more risks and experiment with things - not so much out of my comfort zone as stretching my technical and story-telling ability.

Case in point: for the September fantasy-writers challenge - which is tough enough, the topic being "someone who is guilty and innocent of the same act" - I've added three personal challenges for myself.

I wanted to do a "Vantage Point"-esque story where the same scene is replayed from multiple perspectives, adding details and advancing the story sideways rather than linearly. I wanted to use names that were titles / epithets, because this something that I don't really do and is sort of out of my comfort zone. And ... I decided I wanted each of the five scenes planned to be in a different style. (I'm a bit concerned, actually, because I started with fluid and poetic, and I don't want to lose readers! Scene two is going to drop into more of a light-touch comic style.)

After I got done planning all this, I was worried that my guilt/innocence wasn't pronounced enough, so I decided to add hints of that aspect to every character/scene.

Shortly after last week's entry, I finished "Reclamation" by Sarah Zettel. I bring this up because the novel contains a lot of the elements I was concerned about "getting away with" in science fiction. There's a strong spiritual component and lengthy flavor descriptions. It works; it works beautifully. I still have the concern with Scylla and Charybdis that I'm not maintaining tension as well, but I'm not so gnawy about the fact that there's a lot of world exploration and a sprinkling of near-mysticism.

With my Journal rewrite, I've just reached the beginning of what I think is the longest scene in the book. It's where Rhiane encounters the criminal seeking sanctuary in the Dry Temple and finds out he's the old friend of one of her spirits. There's a lot going on in this scene: the recognition, reconciliation, explanation, some unpleasant new facts and a bargain - to which her bodyguard strenuously objects. It's really too long to be an in-story written scene ... but as it is, I keep dithering over the likelihood of her being able to write the romance entries without her mental inhabitants noticing. There's just some things that have to be gimmes in the journal form.

Thursday Thoughts

I've been having a fairly horrible week health-wise - this is the fourth day in a row I've felt pretty wretched. So pardon the lower quality of this post.

The word-tumble story concerns me because I have something eight or nine named characters. They're introduced slowly so you can grasp who each is in turn, and I've been careful not to name anything else so you don't have your attention split over other foreign syllable combinations, and it's necessary ... but it's still worrisome to me.

Scylla and Charybdis - I don't know I bother to write character profiles for novels. I am now introducing the third or fourth character who wasn't even mentioned in my original material. But I didn't have this entire plot arc in my head when I started, so it's natural I wouldn't have a character to fulfill it. The individual is a Tweaker (basically a professional jury-rigger of technology) nicknamed Flick.

Journal of the Dead - nothing to report, your honor. Carry on.

Signs ...

... I'm an incurable dork: I traveled today with volume cranked, singing along, practically headbanging, to ... Sondheim's "Into The Woods."

Anyone who happened to read my lips in a neighboring car was going to think I was insane.

Emerald Tales

Just got finished reading the special SF/F/H edition of Emerald Tales #1: Follow the Butterflies. Need to spend a moment here talking about the physical aspects of the magazine, because they impressed me. If you're not going to go in the direction of an ultra-sleek store magazine feel, this is the way to do it. The magazine has an antique string binding and a spackled cover with very adorable stylized butterflies on it. Each page has a faint greyed-out impression of the butterfly, which I first found a little distracting, but it quickly faded into the woodwork (ahem ... pun intended?) and it was nice flavor.

What impressed me most was how many different ways there were to "follow the butterflies." Some of the stories took it literally; one took it as a bellwether of the apocalypse; one as a metaphorical pursuit of beauty ... impressive work with the theme.

I think my favorites were "The End of the World: A User's Guide," "The Return of the Supes," and "How To Mount and Frame Fairies" which is ... morbidly hysterical. I was a little disappointed not to find any secondary world fantasy, but perhaps in future editions ...

I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed most of the poetry, considering that I am usually not very fond of free verse. They definitely have cadence, rhythm and mystery. (I am little concerned about my own poetry sub for the next issue, though. It's structured form, which is my passion in poetry. Hope just the form-i-ness doesn't turn the editor off.)

If I had a critique, I think that White Butterfly might not have been the best opening. It's a short, crisp, clean story - and I enjoyed it - but it's more slipstream than hardcore fantasy, and I sort of feel as if a special issue of SF/F/H needs to start with a, "WE ARE HERE!" to the genre elements. ;-)

This is worth picking up. I only wish it were longer!

Briar Rose, Jane Yolen

I've been wanting to read this book for some time, but because of what I've heard about it, I put it off several times: I needed to read something happy, I needed something light and mindless because I was traveling, I didn't feel up to a "deep" book ... etc.

When I finally got around to it, I was surprised by several things. I'd built up a picture of this book in my head and for the most part, it didn't match said picture.

First and foremost - it's not a fantasy novel. I had assumed since it was printed by Tor (fantasy line) that it would have some cohesive fantastic element. I suppose this is because it comes from Jane Yolen who is well-known in her genre. I kept waiting for something to sneak magic into the story, and it never happened.

Secondly - I always assumed that the story was from the point of view of the character who turns out to be the grandmother, that it was told from inside the camp. Instead, it's the story of her granddaughter unraveling her history.

(Neither of these is a problem or detracts from the book! It just surprised me.)

Now that confusion cleared up, I really enjoyed Becca as a character and the path her search for grandmother took, even the romance side-story that slips in between the lines - very well done for not a lot of words committed to it.

However -- when, with about two-thirds of the book finished, another character finishes the tale with an eye-witness account ... it becomes sort of an anti-climax, despite the intense and memorable images. (It doesn't help that the character is *so* much a survivor-not-hero that after reading about plucky Becky, he irritates by comparision.)

It comes off feeling unfinished somehow. Maybe this is partly because the entire framing fairytale isn't related in the italic chapters interspersed amongst the rest. Maybe because, even as a person who doesn't mind some loose ends, I felt that one question too many went unanswered after such an extended search.

I enjoy Yolen's craft as ever, but this book left me feeling a bit disconnected.

(Next stop: the SF/F/H edition of Emerald Tales #1.)

Thursday Thoughts

I'm now working on what I call a word-tumble story: I come up with a list of random words, jumble them, and start writing, with the mission to fit the next word in each block of 100 words. In this case, all the words begin with H. I've got thirty-some, so at some point I'll have to figure out if I can finish in 3000-some words, or if I need more.

In Scylla and Charybdis -- last Friday, I finally reached the place where the original short story left off. The three sections that comprised it were extended; a fourth section was added before the final question of, "So which way do you turn?" It's only now that I've reached it that I have any specific ideas how I'm going to tackle next part, but I have a good feel for the larger arc, so hopefully it will come out in the wash. Right now, I think I'm looking at a 120 - 140k novel, so the focus in editing is probably going to be paring that down.

Journal of the Dead -- in the middle of Parik's story. I am very fond of this section: it doesn't directly connect to the plot, but it gives the reader the answer to a question they've (hopefully) been asking from early on. It's also a reminder that the targeted suicide that awakens a mage's powers doesn't always work.

Wizards

WIZARDS Anthology - Edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois

I've heard this praised as one of the best anthologies of 2007 - so I figured no one would mind if little ol' me took a crack at evaluating it. Also, I was genuinely hoping for an excellent read.

Neil Gaiman's "The Witch's Headstone" was a wonderful opening to this anthology. It's an intriguing story, steeped in folklore and a sense of timelessness, about Bod (or Nobody) Owens, a boy who meets the ghost of a witch and promises to buy her a headstone. The development of the fantastic angle in the opening is particularly well-handled: it sneaks up on you and yet seems perfectly normal in context with this strange little boy. My only quibble is that I wanted to see more plot and conflict; it seemed that the premise was underused in such a short space.

I had mixed feelings about Garth Nix's "Holly and Iron." The historical setting, intertwined with magic, was immersive and authentic, and follows the struggles of the outcast heir to Ingland to reclaim the kingdom and take revenge. However, I found the main character, Robin, difficult to sympathize with. She seemed selfish and somewhat petulant, making the same mistakes in a tale that was somewhat longer than it needed to be. On a technical level, the opening could be clearer about the distinction between the two types of magic, and the Robin's goal in the later part of the story is made unnecessarily coy. You can read between the lines, but the very vagueness of it made me think something more complex was occurring. Kudos for the weaving of legend and magic, however.

I enjoyed "Color Vision" by Mary Rosenblum, which has a particularly fun opening sequence: an ability is displayed which looks supernatural, but turns out to have a rational explanation. However, it still deftly sets the scene for the real magic and the villain. Melanie has synesthesia and is also a Firstborn, a user of magic. When the new principal's silver words disrupt her world, she must find a way to defeat him. I dislike the gratuituous use of present tense and I think there were some holes in the logic in this story - why don't the Firstborn band together? Why wasn't the solution in the end of the story tried earlier? (and some things that would give away plot points) - but overall, I found it a satisfying read.

I was absolutely delighted with Kage Baker's "The Ruby Incomparable," a fairy-tale style story about the daughter of the tyrannical Master of the Mountain and the Saint of the World - a headstrong girl who surprises everyone. It was beautiful, it was engaging, Svnae sharply defined and fascinating to follow. Even with many years and many adventurers summarized, it holds the attention. (I can even forgive Baker for giving the main character an unpronouncable name.)

"A Fowl Tale" by Eoin Colfer made me laugh. This short, snappy comic tale is about an enchanted dove who must tell a story for his supper. The references to popular storylines - and seven master plots - particularly tickled my fancy. A charming story, well worth the brief read.

At this point, I have to say: if this is representative of the quality of the whole anthology, I will be a very happy reader.

Jane Yolen's "Slipping Sideways Through Eternity" certainly does not break this trend. This is the story of a young Jewish girl who sees Elijah during a Passover and finds herself aiding him. Sometimes humorous, sometimes heart-wrenching, always absorbing, this story follows our narrator through history. I loved how her talent for art, casually woven into the story at first, proved to play a central role - though by contrast, I thought it wasn't expanded well enough for the final conclusion. Still, a thoroughly satisfying read.

I enjoyed the conclusion of Tad Williams' "The Stranger's Hands," but I thought the story took too long to get there, and didn't give quite enough reason for the reader to be interested in waiting. A mysterious stranger appears in a small village and begins granting people their hearts' desires - but why? The question of the stranger and his origins is intriguing, but it is difficult to attach to any of the characters, and the story lacks some tension. I think the last seven pages or so could have been made the bulk of the tale - and like that, it would have been almost flawless.

The style and story of "Naming Day" by Patricia McKillip are light and enjoyable. This is the story of Averil, the best student at her sorcerous school, who can't decide what secret name to take. I sympathized with Averil while seeing her selfishness - a nice bit of work - but I still thought that her mother's response was unfair, and I was disappointed we never do find out what name she chose. (I think the author meant the method of naming to be important enough, but I still wanted the what.) The story also suffered from an unclear setting; it took me a while to be sure that it was in our world rather than a more technological fantasy setting. I did, however, very much like Averil's interactions with Fitch: it could have easily become a cliché, but was perfectly pitched. Cute story, but not one of my favorites.

Elizabeth Hand's "Winter's Wife" is a subtle, under-the-surface story that would have been perfect at a third of its length. As it is, this story about a man who brings back a mysterious wife who is not all she seems - told from the point of view of a teenaged neighbor - is too long, too stuffed with unnecessary details, and takes too long building to what should have been (for the length) an explosive pay-off. Every individual part of the story is well-written, but there is far too much meat on the bone.

At this point, I am really hankering for some solid worldbuilding. Most of these stories are set in our world; others are set in a blurry standard fantasy world. Baker's story included some intriguing setting details, and I did love the mythic-fantastic setting interpolated on Nix's tale, but I'm waiting for a world with unusual magic and an equally unusual sorcerer.

Winner of the longest title, Andy Duncan provides "A Diorama of the Infernal Regions, or The Devil's Ninth Question," which follows the adventures of young Pearl as she steps through a showman's attraction - the diorama of the title - into a house of ghosts and secrets. This is a lively, quirky story with an entertaining tone and some amusing details. However, the elements are puzzling and some of the nonsensical parts - the important ones, as opposed to the just-fun ones you let dart past you - never resolve, leaving the story with an unsatisfying gnaw at the back of the brain.

Peter S. Beagle finally gives me the worldbuilding I crave with "Barrens Dance," a narrated legend of what occurs when the sorcerer Carcharos - master of dance - falls in love with the wife of a shukri trainer. This is a story in the best tradition of fairytales; if it moves somewhat ponderously in the beginning, it is forgiveable. I wish that the shukris had been described properly earlier in the story, but that is the only other complaint I have: the ending contains both a satisfying conclusion and a justification for the frame narration - to say more would be to ruin it.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed "Stone Man" by Nancy Kress, considering it deals with one of the elements of fantasy-into-the-mundane-world that I find the most exasperating: how long it takes a character to suspend disbelief. In this case, Jared, a down-and-out skateboarder, survives a nasty accident through the use of stone magic and must come to terms with his abilities. What makes this tale appealing is the snarky adolescent tone, grown up too fast - and perhaps Jared's generalized suspicion of adults in general makes his ridicule of magic in specific more palatable. This isn't a new story, but it's a good one.

I have a confession to make about Jeffrey Ford's "The Manticore Spell" - I didn't get it. The point of the story completely eluded me, except that is a very poetic, lyrical exploration of - obsession? Mythology? In the tale, the wizard Watkin and his young apprentice seek to perform an autopsy on the last manticore. There is mystery, there is tension, but I'm not even sure there is a real plot … just a string of bizarre images and contradictions resolving into a sense of continuation.

Tanith Lee's "Zinder" is a snapshot of an unfortunate young man named Quacker, who at night has a mystical, all-powerful double-life. And it is just a snapshot: there really isn't a plot here, just the sweeping depiction of a single night. Zinder's attitude towards the world is touching and enjoyable, but the rest of the story seems wanting. Random details can add a perfect touch - but here, the details are just random, and they feel it, inserted to give the eye something interesting to read. (Also - present tense again. Argh. No. Just - no.)

My primary reaction to "Billy and the Wizard" by Terry Bisson was, "What? Huh?" This is the story of young Billy, accused of being a sissy because he still plays with dolls - but his dolls speak to him and have wizardly acquaintances. This story was written in a bald, simplistic style; I kept waiting for it to grow on me, but it never did. This is a disjointed tale with a lot of repetition, little explanation, and only a few brief points of disconnected conflict.

Terry Dowling's "The Magikkers" was a joy to read. Sam has come to train at Dessida, a school for magic, but soon learns that he is a magikker: someone with just enough ability for a single large spell. Is he willing to give that up, and for what? This is a great concept for a story; how Sam reacts to the question posed and the ramifications of his decision are well-illustrated, and the conclusion is simply lovely. I think there were a few small mis-steps - some hidden items that should have been visible earlier; a bit of a cheat in how magic can be transferred between people - but they leave little mark on a satisfying story.

Gene Wolfe's "The Magic Animal" is a unique take on Arthurian legend, with much jumbling of chronology. It begins when Viviane, a contemporary girl who can speak to animals, falls off her horse in the forest and meets a fairy. I thought the reinterpretation of the legend was clever, but I disliked the fact that the protagonist simply followed the directions of the fairy - and sometimes knew what to do without any decent explanation - without having much motivation of her own. Much of the story seemed to have loose ends, episodes whose significance was never revealed. The introduction of the name Merlin into the story made me smile, though.

I approached Orson Scott Card's "Stonefather" with some trepidation, as it fills a little over seventy pages in the anthology. I need not have worried. The story of Runnel, who flees his homeland to the city of the wetwizards, is even-paced and engaging. Its narrator is tough but vulnerable, cocky but endearing, and even though I could see what powers he would discover within himself, I enjoyed the journey. His often prickly interactions with the servant Lark are both real and entertaining. The legend incorporated into the tale is a bit hard to read at first, and I found that the final conclusion still strained my belief, but it was still thoroughly worth the read - and the worldbuilding, since I've mentioned it before, was fabulous. I look forward to a novel in this world.

Overall, I enjoyed most of the stories in this anthology and thought they presented some unique views of the use of magical power. I thought the anthology was paced and spaced well, with a strong opening and finish. Definitely recommended.

Thursday Thoughts

Non-heroic short story: finished. Final word count (pre-edit): 6,660 words. That's not ominous or anything.

I'm becoming concerned with Scylla and Charybdis that my mindset is too archaic for science fiction. I'm an old-fashioned girl: I don't like the constantly-plugged-in aspect of iPhones, cellphones that can cook omelettes for you, etc - I don't even understand the appeal. I think that has been reflected in my treatment of connectivity in my societies. You can be effectively linked twenty-four-seven with a device the size of a dot. However ... a lot of people opt out of being publicly accessible.

I honestly think is realistic: after some decades (maybe a century?) of continuous connectivity, it's going to get wearing, and my personal take is that the trend will swing back towards deconnectivity as a way of re-establishing private space. But maybe this is hopelessly old-fashioned. I just don't know.

I should've written this novel two decades ago when this wasn't even an issue, I think.

I'm midway through my Journal rewrite and I just want to say again that I love Razentis. He's such a thoroughly odd man. Fear a savvy politician who has nothing to do except amuse himself.

Thursday Thoughts

Working on a new story for the fantasy-writers.org monthly challenge. This time, the challenge is to write a story where the main character is not a hero. This was inspired by a discussion on the forums, and I decided to interpret it as a story about a character who catalyzes everything (or almost everything) in the story, but doesn't actually have any heroic motivations or take any heroic actions.

Surprisingly, I've actually managed to come up with a good plot for this, and a character I hope people will identify with. Much of the focus of the tale is around a romantic relationship. I'm finding that sometimes, the MC's self-image (which is important to his non-heroic...ness) cuts a little too close to home ...

Scylla and Charybdis - I'm feeling as if the action is in a lull. There's not a lot of tension, and I worry that someone might just put the book down ... but the breather is a necessary component of the action to follow. I also just did a shameless info-dump on how the two societies developed, but since I'm thirteen chapters / forty thousand words / @ 160 pages in, surely one can forgive an author a little relation of information that cannot be found out any other way.

Journal of the Dead - this is taking a long time, darnit. Am very pleased with the introduction of Oliun, one of the central antagonists; he comes off (I hope) very chilling and yet very real. Mostly, though, feeling antsy: I just want this novel edited and out there already.

Novels

This quote was on my page-a-day calendar, and it amused me:

"I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars." -- Fred Allen

Why, indeed? ;-)

The Herd Mentality

Last night (or rather, early this morning) I finished what I hope will be the final edit on "The Herd Mentality" in preparation to start submitting it. This is a contemporary fantasy story involving psychic vampire unicorns, dragons, and virgins. I set it in the midwest, so I got a chance to poke fun at my hometown.

This one has been a long haul. When I first went to review it, I had it in my head that I wasn't going to submit it - I thought it had come out too weird. When I actually sat down to read it, I found that the mood was more surreal and off-beat -- a pitch I don't hit often, and I was rather pleased with it. However, there was another problem: a couple motivation holes in the latter part of the story.

I struggled with these. I probably changed my mind how to handle it three times, each edit spaced out over months. Finally - finally! - I think I've got it worked out in a way that matches the mood and makes sense, while still leaving things vaguely unsettled ... which was part of the original ending. (I also managed to get it under five thousand words, which was a nice bonus.)

Now, of course, watch editors hate it. ;-)

Thursday Thoughts

Lately, I've had the odd experience of being called "literary." My recent story on fantasy-writers has received comments about allusions, thinking on a higher plane of thought, the whole thing being unconventional ...

... and I think, "What?"

There was no grand plan or structure behind the story. I just poured a few concepts into a mythology pool and splashed around like a hyperactive three year old. I worked to make sure it was cohesive, of course, but I never set out to have a specific message ... though it did amuse me to work in some irony that might be hard to catch if you're not very conversant with the Greek mythos.

To all this, I don't understand "literary." To me, literary is more about an intent than a result: you set out to write something that is educational, illuminating or, at least, more than "just entertainment." And for me, it's always been exclusively about the story. I have fun (a lot of it); I just hope the reader does, too.

Part of it may be the Greek mythology aspect. My issue is that I practically teethed on Greek myths - D'aulaire's Book of Greek Myths is one of the first books I can remember reading obsessively - and I don't think of them as classical literature, much less intimidating. To me, they're comfortable, snuggly stories - just like a fairy tale that's been Disney-ized. So it's really hard for me to understand some people's approach to them.

I try not to be insulted by "literary," honestly, because I know people don't mean it as an insult ... but the whole idea is counter to my writing philosophy. So it really does feel like a slap.

Mistress of the Art of Death

As some of you know, I read a fair number of mysteries on top of my speculative fare. I just finished this book, by Ariana Franklin, and overall, I very much enjoyed it.

It's set in mid-twelfth century England, a few decades after the Cadfael era and sends Adelia - a female doctor from the medical school at Salerno - as one of a pair of investigators to discern who killed four children in Cambridge ... and absolve the Jewish population, which would otherwise be profitable to the king.

The historical detail and the way it is conveyed is fantastic. It all seems to flow; I never had the sense that I was being lectured. It all feels very sharp and authentic. This extends into Adelia's perception of herself in the male world (it's pleasant to see a confident period female character who doesn't come off strident or too modern), the way disease is handled, and everyone's attempt to understand the idea of a serial killer.

I did have some significant issues with the book. What probably annoys me most as a writer is the headhopping. Franklin can't seem to stay in one character's thoughts for the duration of the scene, and it's confusing to track where she's switched without the scene breaks. It also makes it hard to tell who the main character is supposed to be when the book opens, which is not where I want to be.

More on the issue of the actual plot, a few things: I guessed the killer less than halfway through the book, so I can't think that it was very well-disguised as I stink at guesswork. ;-) I also found the romance sort of "forced" - it springs up out of nowhere. The way it's played out is entertaining, but I was sort of exasperated by the whole, "Oh, instantly when he's absolved of suspicion she's going to realize she's fallen for him," tact.

I was amused by how much it feels like "medieval CSI" without actually breaking that sense of being in-period. Really, the crime is solved by committee, and there are a handful of supporting characters who help Adelia out immensely. I appreciated this aspect - so many mysteries are lone detective, or detective + batty sidekick.

Anyhow, overall it gets my stamp of approval.

Thursday Thoughts

It's Thursday again? Where does the time go?

This past week was much more relaxing for me. Last night, I even had enough spare time to feel restless. My writing bug still seems to bite me late at night, so when I get to the hours I ought to be pondering bed, I keep squeezing myself up longer to get a little more written.

I've been writing flash fiction off quotes, both as part of F-W challenges and with some help from folks on my personal journal. The former have been 100 words + quotes; the latter, I limited myself to 200 words including the quote. Some of the shorter ones, I felt, lacked just a little bit of clarity due to skipped transitions, emotional states missed, etc - so I rounded them out. Thinking of posting them for critique when I've got a baker's dozen.

People are talking about NaNoWriMo again. I really have no idea if I'm going to do it. It will depend heavily on the progress I make with my current novels ... and whether I can complete my worldbuilding before I start. I've discovered that, while I usually write novel plots by the seat of my pants, I can't do the same thing with characters and world. I need to have a clear idea of those before I begin. (Not so much the characters - they seem to do a good job of inserting themselves when the situation calls for it.)

Pretty sure I'm going to increase my transcription rate for Journal of the Dead from two manuscript pages at a time to three. I still can't tell if rewriting from hand helps at all and it's driving me batty. I think the conclusion is going to be it worked well for this project, but in the future, I can discipline myself to edit more strenuously without re-typing everything.

Process

I just posted this on F-W, and I think it describes a part of my writing process pretty well:

Personally, I don't think my characters so much have a mind of their own as I do a lot of my thinking (and this includes plot elements) on a subconscious level. There's threads moving under what I'm doing that my brain doesn't think the lowly pilot in the cognitive area actually needs to KNOW about. So when I realize this isn't fitting or I feel that a character "wants" to do something ... it isn't the character running amok so much as it's that second author surfacing and letting me know that I'm contradicting myself.

Thursday Thoughts

Since returning from Grandfather Mountain, I've written with new vigor, despite possibly / probably having picked up a case of strep throat down there. To some extent, my own darn fault for not packing more warmly, but you expect the temperature to stay somewhat up there in summer in the south - even in the mountains.

I received a challenge on f-w.org to write a story about a light that doesn't give off light and someone who can see in complete darkness. For this I decided to take a loose interpretation of "see" and borrow an old concept of a character who (despite being perfectly able to see) never used his sense of sight, rather relying on scent - sound - touch. And interdimensional lampposts serving as beacons to travelers. It really is just a bit too much for flash fiction, and I'm fairly sure I'll write a normal-length sequel once I finish my monthly challenge (different story).

Yep, F-W does provoke a lot of writing out of me.

With regards to Journal of the Dead, I've reached the second half of Ihseye's backstory. I really wonder if the spirit comes off as dislikeable and unreasonable - and realize that's all right. There are plenty of flaws to go around in this novel.

The current scene I'm in is the scene where the headman where Rhiane is now staying delineates the heart numbers of her spirits. I don't think numerology permeates the storyline in the way I would have liked it to, but this is a fantastic scene, exploring the diaphanous nature of numerology. Note to self: add some further numerical commentary later. (Ironic that I didn't get this into the editing notes.) Rhiane doesn't really believe in it, but it works nicely for flavor.

Scylla and Charybdis, the stage is still set in New Athens. I am trying my best to make this section roughly equivalent in length to the section in Eastwood. There's a sense of mirroring in that there are more or less three incidents here (as there), but it plays out with a different flow and build, so it should be reminiscent but not (hopefully) an obvious example of, "Oh, the author is trying to compare / contrast."

By the By ...

There were no Thursday thoughts last week because I was en route to Grandfather Mountain, North Carolina and had no internet access. Also, I did absolutely no writing (though some brainstorming!) until last night when I got home.

Gasp. Horror. But there's a good reason: I was judging the harp competition at the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games, and I was hoppin' the whole time.

Now it's back to the grind.

The Last Unicorn

What a lovely, wonderful, moving book.

Here there is also whimsy and child-like simplicity, and here it works, evolving from fairy tale into truth. There are passages that are simply beautiful - and make sense on a metaphorical, magical level even if they don't make sense on a literal level. It's an intriguing look at love, immortality and humanity. It manages to explore fairy-tale tropes, often with direct references, without feeling meta-fictional (at least, not for long) or losing its sense of reality.

Want my own copy.

(... library book, for those just tuned in. Did NOT steal it. ;-))

Speechless

The title of this post is the title of the story I just finished. Because I want to delve into the fantasy-writers.org monthly challenge (and hopefully another challenge) soon, I resolved to finish it, and did so yesterday ... well after 3am.

I knew the flashbacks would make it longer, but I wasn't aware how long that would be. The completed length of the story currently is about 8,600 words. It turned out that I used several points from my idea exercise, though I dropped a few. For instance, I had given my MC a necklace from an old lover she claimed was her daughter's father; in the story, I never used the necklace and the issue of the other half of her daughter's parentage is only brushed past.

I'm not totally sure of the strength of the story. I used vessels that trapped spirits could be placed into to be reborn - but how satisfying is it to be given a limited, artificial body? A reader has to believe this is worth doing, or the motive of the narrative begins to fall apart in multiple places.

One part I am very pleased with is that you don't discover until a third of the way through the story why, exactly, Nariv needs to reclaim her sword so desperately. The mystery falls into place through the flashbacks. I hope it creates dual lines of tension instead of diffusing it.

I continue to have a horrible time writing the last few paragraphs of a story. I'm never quite sure precisely where to break and how to finish on a sentence that creates a strong conclusion. I don't remember always having this problem; it seems to have developed. Maybe I'm more picky? Hope so, as the alternative is I'm getting worse ...

The Once and Future King

Yes, it took me this long to finish the next book in my classics review. I have been madly busy ... and it is a very thick book.

I remembered enjoying The Once and Future King more the first time I read it, many years ago. I'm not sure whether this is the blurring of time, or whether there is something in the book that spoke to me then that seems different now. There is a youthful (I hesitate to say childish) humor, a simplicity to the book that makes me feel removed from it now; the anachronisms were distracting, was as perhaps before, I simply accepted them. It's a thoughtful exploration, a satisfying take on ancient legend, but it just didn't hit me in the same spots.

(Now I really want to read the portions of the Mabinogion that reference Arthurian legend, having touched upon it in two retellings. Do this soon?)

I have The Last Unicorn left yet, and I hope to finish it before I depart to judge the harp competition. Considering this is NOT a 600+ page book, this might actually be doable.

Thursday Thoughts

It's July! When did that happen?

Scylla and Charybdis is exhibiting the behavior that makes novels so much fun to write - and why I'd never write events out of chronological order. I don't outline when I write a novel, but I do have a general sense of the flow, shape and some of the pieces which ought to come into play. Thus, I am always surprised and delighted when things just seem to flow naturally into the narrative that I didn't picture, fall outside those lines - but fit perfectly. Right now, I've got my main character asking for a lawyer in much the same uncertain fashion as someone squinting at the Sphinx going, "Ah, are you going to tell me a riddle before you eat me?"

I am pretty solidly convinced that I am writing science fiction like a fantasy writer, and it's not a bad thing. My sense of metaphor and description just lends itself to a very fantastic atmosphere. I am trying hard, however, to keep the science in line, as well as the science progress. For instance, I think it's not unreasonable that after centuries of having the successors of cell-phones and electronic money that some people might start having tendencies to retract from these conveniences. We haven't seen a lot of tech backlash in history yet, I think, because higher technology hasn't had sufficient time to endure to that point of exasperation.

Not much to say on Journal except that I think I need a way to speed up the rewrite. I'm not getting very far anyhow fast.

I need to finish my short story ASAP so I can a) edit the last two I completed + my intended next submission and b) start work on the fantasy-writers.org July challenge AND C) possibly be ready to write a shorter story for another on-site challenge. Not necessarily in that order.

It would be amazing if I could think of titles for either of the first two.

The Naming Braid to GUD

I just sold The Naming Braid to GUD, or the Greatest Uncommon Denominator Magazine (http://www.gudmagazine.com). This marks my first mainstream sale, GUD not being a speculative-fiction specific market. I am highly chuffed.

The Naming Braid, for information, is a braided (... right ...) retelling of three of the Lais of Marie de France. It springs from some of my observations about the course of the stories and how the women in them were viewed.

Thursday Thoughts

What an exhausting week this has been! I've been putting out so many fires at work (and just so busy in general) that I haven't had as much time to write as I would like.

I did manage to start the story mentioned in previous posts, even reached the first flashback. I'm having unusual trouble with names in this story - they're just not gelling. They feel too similar. By contrast, I don't really think I have a set culture feel to them ... just sort of gooing around in the fantasy territory.

Small progress in the novel projects. Within a chapter or so, Scylla and Charybdis will have made landfall on Elysium ... and I get to introduce the other cultural dimension. Of course, I've had opportunity (particularly in those recent section) to make it clear that the generalizations are averages and that different regions, planets, etc all have their own viewpoints and takes ... so it helps to avoid an inadvertent sense of being homogenous.

I'm reaching the point in Journal of the Dead where I stopped and went, "This is a stupid problem to have." To whit: I could not figure out why it would take my character most of the day to read two fairly slim books, but I needed the library to close before she got very far in book three - and she'd entered in the early morning. After doing some reality checks with people, I realized that not everyone reads that quickly and ... it's not as silly as it sounds. It still makes me snerk as a rather ridiculous thing to get hung up on.

Collection Idea

So for a while, I've been tempted to make one of my "novel" projects to write a collection of short stories. (I might even try to sell them as a collection first, though I know the places that pay money upfront for them are slim ... and most of them are looking for novella-length totals, which is way under what I'd end up with.) A large part of why I haven't put this high on my list (and anything but "top of the list" doesn't get written with novels, sadly) is because I am about two years back on story submissions and I have a log of 40+ short stories that haven't seen the light of day yet. So the last thing I need right now are more of them. (Yet I keep writing them. I'm an idiot.)

The idea is ... I have a world concept that involves three types of magic, with four disciplines within that. I also have a timeline (that needs a lot more detail - I just have "kingdom A, kingdom B" right now) that goes from pre-historic up to the equivalent of modern times, with some incorporation of rise-and-fall, growth of religion, major historical figures, etc. So I wanted to write a story following a sorcerer of each flavor of magic, set in a different era (undecided whether it would be chronological or back and forth).

A possible pay-off of this is a potential collection title is "Earth, Wind and Flesh" which is to my mind pretty cool.

But like I said - I need to come out of this with twelve more short stories like I need a hole in my head. Indeed.

New Story - Plotted

So I undertook answering the questions from the last post and came up with some interesting information ... stuff I didn't expect to use, but started to come into play as I worked on a plot outline. (Which I need for short stories, not so much for novels.) What I've ended up with is a very dark S&S story set in a manor ... I'm wavering back and forth about whether flashbacks are appropriate, especially as they're likely to make it long, but a) it seems more interesting than just narrating the information; b) everything in the past comes into play in the present and c) my short stories are always long. Why buck the trend now?

Anyhow, the questions got me thinking about story points in a whole different way, and I enjoyed that. I tried not to come up with too much of the plot until after I'd finished with the questions, to mixed results ... the two (three, if you count setting separately) wove naturally together.

New Story

So I'm working on mining my old boot camp exercises for stories again. I already have a mountain of free-writes backed up, but I'll get back to those.

Two camps ago, I did two descriptions a day (a character and a place) using the word of the day from dictionary.com. I decided to take one of each from different words and then apply to the character a series of questions a fellow writer says she uses to design her characters. I thought they were a really neat way to study a person outside-in.

I chose my character desc easily; there's one I really love. From that, I decided I wanted sort of an S&S/action story, and to avoid what might be obvious, an indoor/urban setting. I ended up with the following two:

She was wiry, sparse, a collection of attenuated muscles strung taut over thin bone. One part warrior, one part scarecrow, daubed in the colors of decay: leaf-mold brown hair, turned-earth skin, pallid grey eyes. Most of the time, she kept her head down and her voice soft – but the grave-chill she could summon when roused would daunt even the fiercest of challengers.

The foyer of the estate swept outwards into the main hall, a hardwood-paneled expanse three floors high. Balconies rimmed the chamber, their bars cages around the many doors. Light stabbed down from a single circular window in the ceiling. The marble staircase pooled, the final steps oozing into the floor - which gleamed, pearl-flesh, like a zealous merchant baring his teeth.

At this point, I decided the setting needed three questions to go along with the character. So my questions are:

What are they wearing?
How do they feel about what they are wearing?
What do they have in their pockets (or about their person, ready say, in case of a werewolf attack?)

Who lives here?
How do they feel about it?
What doesn’t fit?

From this, I should be able to get a good spark for a plot ... whoo.

Thursday Thoughts

My prime concern about Journal of the Dead right now is the story-within-stories. These are interludes explaining how the individual spirits who travel with Rhiane ended up being sentenced to death. They're long for internal tales, but wouldn't be considered lengthy if taken as separate short works. There are five spirits and six stories: Ihseye's is broken into two somewhat shorter chunks.

One concern is they start fairly early into the journal. I waffle back and forth as to whether this is a problem since the reader will have just come out of third person (the chapter section), or whether it works better because it builds on that expectation.

Overall, I've decided that I'm justified having these interludes because:

1. They provide character flavor and color; rather than info-dumping the spirits' backgrounds, you really get to meet them AND (again) half of them turn out to have plot relevance. I hope the first time the reader runs into a reference to something they saw in the sidestories, they'll keep their eyes peeled for more.
2. There's precedent. I point to American Gods, which has long interludes, earlier in the book than my first digression -- not to mention that none of these interjections, while they are flavorful, have any direct bearing on the plot.

On a more cynical note, the interludes are far enough into the manuscript that by the time an editor sees them, they'll be looking at the whole tamale, and I don't think even if they ARE a problem, it's weak / significant enough to bring down the whole work.

In regards to Scylla and Charybdis, I am currently having some mental disconnect because I'm reading the fourth book of the Mabinogion Tetralogy - the one involving the mythological Gwydion - while writing about my Gwydion, and they couldn't be more different. The name was originally chosen as an homage; when I was writing the SaC short story, I wanted a mythological manly-man to contrast to my Amazons. I went for Welsh because ... I like Welsh. My intellectual decision-making for stories only goes so far!

I suppose I could have named him Pwyll.

I'm a trifle concerned about this warlord's assistant who is ... well, pursuing Anaea. His sudden attention feels a bit thin. On the other hand, it's a point I'm trying to illustrate about the society, that those at his level are accustomed to having what they want, and that leads to a fair number of frivolous impulses chased down with unnecessary intensity.

I finished the form story about dancing, btw. It is a universal not-hit - but it did get written.

Mythology

Frustrated at my lack of progress with writing (specifically selling) lately, I made the following comment:

"I feel like Penelope with that stupid tapestry."

The sad thing is, my listener understood what I meant.

Thursday Thoughts

Not much more to report on the two novel projects: they're lumbering along. I've been pretty consumed with a harp workshop that I'll be giving this time next month, getting the music and handouts prepared and trying to excise a rhythmic inaccuracy that I slowly learned in one of the tunes. Speaking of harp ...

Also working on a short story that was based on a "worst day on the job" prompt. I always feel as if I'm too clinical when writing about harpers. I never ramble on, but the flavor and detail, to me, don't seem as if they're interesting - from the inside of my head, I'm more likely to feel I'm showing off. Reader reaction to the last story where I did this was that the bits and pieces worked and flowed well ... I think it's just that I'm inherently self-conscious of something that's, "Been there, done that," to me.

Servant of Winter

Hey, it's up!

I feel rather sheepish for missing it, but my poem is up at Silver Blade:

http://www.silverblade.net/issue3/poetry3.html

This was the first villanelle I wrote, and it wasn't done in poetic form initially. It was part of my 3am Epiphany "boot camp" and the assignment was to write a brief prose piece that used the elements of a villanelle. In fact, this was the first time I'd ever even heard of the form.

I recast it as a poem and started submitting it. I spent some time wrangling with another editor who decided not to accept it, and I did change some of the things he requested back - but the final version was much stronger, I think, and much thanks to his suggestions.

The Mabinogion Tetralogy

Two of my books arrived early this week and I promptly picked them up. I was briefly intimidated by the size of the Mabinogion Tetralogy, a mid-sized hardcover book of over seven hundred pages - but it being four books, this seemed not unreasonable, and I decided that I would feel free to stop if I didn't connect with the first book.

I was intrigued by the archaic style and the formalized, sweeping grandeur of the dialogue - and yet not entirely sure, to what percentage, the tone could be put to the subject matter, the period in which it was written, or the author's individual tastes. Certainly the feel of the original work is much present, though with other legends woven into it such that an entire universe stands behind the book.

One tendency I noticed seems to be a product of the times - I also spotted it in Jirel of Joiry and to some extent in the Harold Shea stories. Fantastic elements (particularly those of the otherworld, in this case) are presented vividly, almost surreally, with little attempt to explain their presence. Not that they seem off-kilter or out of place, but a modern fantasist would have to give some nod to how the monster subsists when there aren't mortals wandering through to eat, etc. There's an attitude of it, "This works. Just have faith in it," and ... to flout all the advice given to worldbuilders nowadays, it does.

An element that disappointed me, though again I can't tell to which of the three aforesaid influences to attribute it, is how "distant" the POV is. I didn't feel very engaged with Pwyll as a character; the (first) novel keeps you a good distance outside of his head.

I don't entirely know what to make of the heavy elements of goddess worship. That they may be suited to the historical period is outside my expertise to argue; they certainly don't feel inauthentic in that regard. I am less sure whether they are valid in view of the Mabinogion, or if they are not, if the stories can / should be interpreted as such. It doesn't seem an unreasonable projection into the storyline, but I'm not sold on it.

All that notwithstanding, however, I think I am going to press on and read the books that follow. I'm intrigued to see what Evangeline Walton does with the rest of the Mabinogion.

Thursday Thoughts

Today is also the goal-setting day for a group I'm part of, and I came to an interesting realization: the only time I've missed or fallen shy of a goal was when I made a conscious decision to switch my focus for something more important. (Or my computer crashed with the latest edit of the story I was trying to post on it. Le sigh.) This week it was a requested revision from a top-tier market. I'm still not totally sure that I managed to work enough in-depth changes to satisfy the request, but I reached the point where I didn't want to do more because it might cause problems in another direction. So - you make a judgement call.

I ran into a small plot issue with Journal of the Dead which I resolved by re-casting some of a scene and putting in another time break. My next chunk involves two fairly involved dialogue insertions / revisions.

I notice that I have some tense jumps in Journal, which I've decided to leave. Because it is a journal, there are patches where the narrator would naturally discuss thoughts / confusions in a more immediate fashion. I've kept these to specific, distinct chunks and not allowed there to be hops when there's story going on. That should minimize the confusion and make the tense shifts feel natural rather than in error.

I ran into an odd issue with Scylla and Charybdis: so far, Anaea and Gwydion have solved all their problems by spinning falsehoods. Now, honestly, this is pretty much the only resource they have available to them, but it still becomes a little repetitive. I've taken conscious effort to re-cast the other two encounters in this part of the story so they are more direct and face-value. (This also fits the theme of the society they're moving through.)

I remain oddly amused that this particular segment of the novel had me googling "Jewish entrance scrolls" because I couldn't remember the word mezuzah for the life of me, and I stupidly didn't write the term down. I hope Anaea's religious cynicism isn't off-putting, but I have to keep in mind as I'm working how foreign all this is to her. She's sort of an untrained anthropologist.

Form and Function

So right now, I wonder if I'm biting off more than I can chew.

Looking at the monthly challenge for fantasy-writers.org, I waffled back and forth about whether to attempt it. Then I thought a flash fiction piece, a nice, succinct description of two quasi-elemental forces dancing - that would be fun to do. To give it more structure, and to imitate the way formal dance constantly comes back to where it started, I thought of using a looped sentence structure.

But then I decided that the dance ought to be between inspiration and tradition ... and with that, you can't just stick to the fixed form. Now I have ideas of starting fixed, then tossing in a few unfixed paragraphs - then having the last sentence in the story contain the initial word, but continue onwards for another part-phrase.

If I do this right, both the story content and form will play out the tension between structure and freeform. If I do it wrong, it'll be a big bloody mess.

We'll see, I suppose!