Top Chef - A Character Study

So some of y'all may know that I'm a pretty big fan of Bravo's Top Chef series, and in watching their most recent season - the All-Stars, with favorites and almost-winners from previous seasons - I've started to consider it as a character study with one particular central question: do people change?

In fiction, there are different schools of thought about this. Some authors will tell you that character transformation is necessary for a piece. Others (probably a minority) will tell you that people don't really change, and there are stories written specifically to illustrate this point. I'm sure there's also a middle ground of folks who believe that "real" people don't change, but it's necessary for compelling fiction.

So let's look at the evidence as pertains to Top Chef:

(Warning: spoilers ahoy, if you follow the show and happen to be behind.)

There are several chefs who were infamous, whether for fits of temper, backstabbing, snide remarks or just general personality dysfunction. Some of these chefs appear, at first examination, to have matured this season. Marcel seems more relaxed, less melodramatic, and more open to team play. Dale - whose most memorable moment in his season comes from slamming a piece of equipment hard enough to dent it - has become more quiet and less contentious.

But looking at this last episode, Marcel wonders if Mike won because the judges still had traces of his dish on their palette, and Dale cusses out his colleagues extensively in the interview box. So I'm led to wonder if there's been less a change of personality and more of a growing awareness on how to harness emotion and practice diplomacy - crucial elements for a chef in the kitchen.

Spike, easily one of the biggest game-players in his season, takes an undeserved loss with relatively good grace. Mike seems to have tempered his arrogance into confidence, but we'll see.

Then there are chefs who were fan favorites ... who have faded this season. Jen seems to have lost her touch in the kitchen and traded it for a higher level of aggression. Jamie, who was one of my favorites in her season, seems to have just fallen apart. Fabio, charming to the point of making his faux-arrogance entertaining rather than irritating (usually), seems to have gotten a lot more sour and grumbly - though some of that is the same old hyperbole. If these were characters, you'd be asking what happened in their lives to trigger this change.

Antonia seems to have gained confidence and poise in the kitchen - whether that extends to leadership (which is what got her kicked out in her season) remains to be seen. Carla is still the serene zen-artist she was, though she seems to have gotten a bit less ... ahem ... kooky. She learned a lot from her Top Chef finale, I think, about staying grounded and true to herself. Richard is as experimental and level-headed as ever, but for the first time, I'm actually hearing him snark a little at the other competitors. I don't think it's mean-spirited - if anything, it's deserved - but it's new. Is it a change in him, or is the environment?

The hypothesis I come down to, looking at these real people (as presented through a slanted TV lens, of course), is that perhaps people don't change, precisely. Instead, the same essential personality evolves through time, experience and circumstances. People don't lose their basic outlook and impulses, but they learn to temper them or perhaps get enough proof of different points of view to stop and consider.

It's food for thought.

Thursday Thoughts

It's been a good week: I got a lot of critiquing and editing (short stories) done on top of the writing. I still am drawing blanks on the FWO challenge topic. I feel obliged to enter, since the concept of a sequel story was my idea ... but I can't seem to find anything suited. I've written stories that are linked and involve the same characters, but very few that qualify as a sequel. Many of my stories have endings that scan as, "... and then ..." but in such a way that it's meant for the reader's consideration, not the writer's fingers.

Finished the Ishene and Kemel story ... finally. It just deals with way too much material (and gets started too slowly, but at least that part is fixable). Will I get tired of using time travel and paradox in fantasy? Only time will tell ...

And these stories aren't suitable for sequels since, while I could tell plenty of other stories about these two, none of them stem directly from a specific current story.

The novel ... ah, the novel. I've lost my neurosis about being continuously funny, which means I may have to go punch some things up - but at this point in the story, the interactions of the characters create a lot of the humor, meaning I don't have to work at it as hard. It's like a sitcom: something happens, and there's this beat where the audience knows how character Y is going to respond ... wait for it ... the anticipation enhances the laughter.

Word count for 12/30/10 - 1/5/11: 10,336

Neurosis in Reading

Considering fantasy can be replete with armies and battles, and short stories add a lot of random deaths, I added this to my file to give my cumulative death toll some "meaningful" criteria:

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

Also, it's probably evil of me that I want to file ALVH on GoodReads on my Non-Fiction shelf and see who notices.

GoodReads Review: Witch Way To The Mall

Witch Way to the Mall by Esther M. Friesner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Let me put my cards on the table first: I adore Esther Friesner as a writer – and having seen her at a few conventions, she is just as boisterous and witty in person. So even though I’m not a huge fan of urban (or suburban) fantasy, I came into this anthology with high expectations.

I admit, I did find the introduction over-the-top to the point of being too-obvious funny, which usually doesn’t hit my laughter bone. It is clever, though, and sets a nice opening tone.

(FYI – if you don’t want to read a story-by-story, flip down to the line of asterisks for a summary.)

“Birdwitching” by Harry Turtledove starts off the anthology with a witchery arms race – centered around the birdwatching count / competition between two neighboring counties. This is a folksy, funny tale with seamless integration of birding jargon. It builds well throughout and comes to a satisfying conclusion. The problem that muddied some of the reading for me was the fact that Turtledove wasn’t wholly clear about how witches fit into the real world and how the birding count related to witch activity until very late in the story. That marred some of the tension.

Steven Piziks’ “Witch Warrior” takes the legend of Baba Yaga and brings it to a world of and suburban Celtic warriors when the famed witch attempts to claim a father’s adopted children. Another tight, witty tale, crackling with energy and well-incorporated personal knowledge. Here I found only one small quibble, that the protagonist’s inward debate was illustrated in a way that was a bit too on-the-nose, but it was definitely enjoyable.

“Nimue and the Mall Nymphs” by Lee Martindale has an amusing setup: a witch lost in the back corridors of a suburban mall runs into a group of bubbleheaded pretenders. The events are humorous, but it came off a bit flat and dry for me – a funny concept that didn’t wholly translate into a funny story. I also had trouble suspending my disbelief about the labyrinthine construction of the mall and honestly, expected it to have supernatural origins.

Kevin Andrew Murphy provides us with “Tacos for Tezxatlipoca,” the story of a young man who buys himself a stuffed manticore and finds himself a magician. This story has a more subdued sense of humor than the first two, but in this one, it works, providing smiles along with the grins that the absurd situation conjures up. Unfortunately, I thought the story flatlined at the end. I was expecting more drama and consequence from the conclusion, though there are hints …

I thought Hildy Silverman’s “The Darren” was one of the best stories so far. It takes place at a dance for a school where witches are segregated from the normal population. Mariah has to chaperone a wayward friend and gets more than she bargained for. Typical teenaged shennanigans take on a mystical cast with an intriguing glimpse into how publicly known witches would interface with the rest of society. (I thought it was fairly realistic, too, or maybe I’m just cynical.) There was an element late in the story that I thought didn’t walk the silly-scary line quite properly, diffusing some of the tension, but that was a minor flaw.

Sarah A. Hoyt’s “The Incident of The Inferno Grill” is another entertaining story that peters out somewhat at the end – though more forgiveable as this is a very relaxed story to start with. The fun is watching the bewildered narrator cope with his new boss, a psychic investigator, and the possessed grill they have been called in to deal with. File this under cats, properties of, and be prepared for a few real belly-laughs in this otherwise low-key humor story.

Dave Freer’s “Soot” features a charming feline narrator whose sarcasm and superiority are the highlights of this story. The plot follows a witch, her familiar and a local troll as they attempt to stop the opening of a door to the world of the fey. The background and goal of the story are somewhat muddled. However, it is enjoyable sharing Soot’s point of view for a while.

Storm Christopher’s “The House of Lost Dreams” starts with vivid descriptions and a lush, metaphor-laden tone that perfectly suits the story that follows. A restless salesman stops at this mysterious store and finds unusual merchandise within its array of boxes. I loved this story: it’s sweet, sorrowful and absorbing, with the perfect conclusion. If I have to pick any nits, the narrator’s angry outbursts early in the story seemed excessive – but a minor point in a lovely tale.

“Queen of Suburbia” by Selina Rosen is one of the highlights of this anthology. This the story of a witch with a plot to take over the world with good luck generated from an email chain-letter … and the writer who runs afoul of her. The build and tone of this story are pitch-perfect, and I loved the ending. Rosen should have foreshadowed her protagonist’s knowledge of sorcery earlier, but that’s the only thing I could point out that could possibly be improved. Great story.

Esther Friesner has a knack for writing great humor stories intimately involving mundane professions, and “Twice A Year” is no exception – about a dental hygienist and her yearly struggle against an entity of the sea. If there is a flaw here, it’s the over-the-top, expository dialogue. People don’t explain things they know to each other in quite the fashion herein, and the rest of the story is close enough to real-world logic that it didn’t quite jive for me. However, the story is intriguing and whacky both and builds slowly to an entertaining – and walrus-y – conclusion.

David Vierling’s “Neighborhood Witch” delivers a delightful tale of a husband and wife pair who arrive in their new neighborhood … and stumble not just one but three bizarre local communities. In attempting to find peace and quiet in their new surroundings, they provide the reader with an excellent tale, good to the stomach-turning conclusion. Very well-done.

K.D. Wentworth’s “Hex Education” is an entertaining story that begins with a soccer mom – literally – and her suddenly uncooperative Honda. Suspecting magical meddling from her well-meaning husband at first, she soons discovers there is more afoot. This is a nice, solid story that pffts out a bit with a too-mild climax, but the turns it takes are fun to read.

Jan and S.M. Stirling’s “The Importance of Communication” is a lighthearted story about a retired witch whose old friend and evil-battling buddy shows up on her doorstep to discuss her daughter’s potential gifts. This is another one of those stories that doesn’t really seem to climax, maybe through a lack of tension. It’s frothy and enjoyable, though, and has a few perfect snicker-worthy lines.

From David D. Levine comes “Midnight At The Center Court,” a story set in the seventies about a young boy discontent with the gender division of magic, his best friend, and a haunted mall. The references to popular television shows of the era were lost on me, but might be more familiar to older readers. I thought this was a sweet, simple story of friendship, though one of the central issues posed – the reasons why certain kinds of magic are reserved for women – was never answered.

“The Price of Beauty” by Robin Wayne Bailey is about an appearance-fixated woman whose trips to a charmingly-named witchery salon are the only thing – as far as she believes – that can keep her on top. Can a shallow siren learn the true meaning of beauty? While the story leads the reader on to find out, the spoiled-brat behavior of the lead character makes it hard to sympathize with her. (Also, way too many exclamation points.)

I would classify Brenda W. Clough’s “Making Love” as slipstream, a story where you’re not entirely sure whether it’s fantasy or simply the perception of the character, but it’s a quiet, touching tale nonetheless. Milly’s magic is in her knitting, small works of art that bring love wherever they go – but she’s at a loss how to convince her husband of their curative powers. Nicely done.

Ellie Tupper’s “Yo Moms A Dragon” takes on the idea of a dragon banished from another dimension and trapped in human form and pits her against a trio of too-perfect self-help divas. It’s an energetic story with one of the best food fights I’ve seen in fantasy (now there’s something you don’t type every day) and great twists and turns. I felt there were a few too-convenient loose ends that weren’t properly addressed, but this is still a fun ride.

“Witch’s Brew” from Berry Kercheval is the cute tale of a reluctant witch who finds that doing homework while serving as a barrista can lead to unexpected complications, as she and a school crush chase after an imp. While not dramatic, it’s fluffy and enjoyable.

Daniel M. Hoyt’s “The FairWitch Project” follows a group of mortalos – children of witches who choose to live non-magical lifestyles (?) – as they plan to play the biggest prank yet on the magical community. That question-mark indicates my main problem with the story: I was never a hundred percent sure what the exact definition of a mortalo was. The conclusion is certainly worth the read, though. Overall, this story is a nice examination of the perils of using magic to the exclusion of the real world.

Julia S. Mandala’s “Valley Witch” is a (sometimes painfully) exaggerated story of a cross-world sorceress and her son hiding out in high school. I loved the description of the Evil Academy which the main character (the son) attended, and the references to it were gems. It’s a good clash of humor and tropes, though I found Tiffany’s character to be overdone.

Jody Lynn Nye closes the anthology with “There’s No ‘I’ In Coven,” the story of a competitive Pentackle mom and one memorable game where both her children have an opportunity to shine. Sports stories are always hit and miss with me; after a certain point, I tend to lose interest in the play-by-play. This was a very well-done example, though I found the amount of parental interference from adults who were portrayed as seasoned spectators stretched my credulity. (This could, however, just be because I don’t have any personal experience with sports parents!) Sometimes, it’s all right to have a narrator who’s just a spectator … and the engaging tale of the two siblings would have held up without their mother taking part.

*********

Overall, this was a strong anthology, with no stories that I would classify as really “bad,” several solid stories, and a few gems – one of the best being the only non-humor piece in the anthology (“The House of Lost Dreams”). Some of the jokes flatlined for me, but the majority worked – which, the sense of humor of individuals and authors both being so varied, is quite an achievement. As far as the construction of the anthology, I thought the pace from story to story was well-constructed, though the opening – two boisterous, in-your-face stories followed by one of the weakest in the anthology – could have been improved.

The virtue of this anthology is that every story takes the mundane, the ordinary, the tiny rituals and patterns of modern life, and brings them to life – sometimes with magic, sometimes athwart it, but always putting it in a new light. And if urban fantasy draws on the vast, sometimes ineffable power of the big cities, then this is the heart of what suburban fantasy should be. On that count, forging a new definition (however tongue-in-cheek) and living up to it, this anthology succeeds.





View all my reviews

Anatomy of an Idea: Twice Given

This is a true story.

Well ... sort of.

I own - and am a great fan of - the Uppity Women series by Vicki Leon. At one time, I had notes on well over a dozen of these feisty historical heroines that I wanted to turn into stories.

In ancient Mesopotamia, there is a historical case where a priestess and her sister were wed to a man in tandem ... and the wedding contract not only regulates all the chores and childbirth to the sister, it stipulates that when the priestess is happy, the sister has to be happy, too. This last clause is what really caught my interest, because of course, in a fantasy setting, you can make this literal requirement a mystical certainty ...

I tried to give the setting of Twice Given a sense of that era without hammering readers over the head with it. I did derive the names of the two female characters by juggling the names from the historical case in question - Taram, the priestess, and Iltani, the sister - but the other major player in this story (besides the husband) is entirely an original creation.

Anatomy of an Idea: Bird Out of Water

"Bird Out of Water" has pretty simple origins: it stems from a Fantasy-Writers.org challenge to write about the offspring of two fantasy creatures. I decided to write about two monsters from different environments and a child who was poorly adapted to both. Of course she would wish to be human, but what comes of that wish?

One of the key elements for me in writing Vri was to keep her rather visceral and beast-like - not childish, but without much grasp on niceties and fine details. I also wanted Calis to come out as an ambivalent figure ... much to the dismay of some of my reviewers, who wanted me to "nice" him up.

And, of course, the opening quote was pretty much an inevitability.

Twice Given

Twice Given is now up at Abyss and Apex - pleasant surprise, because I had thought first quarter would be March / April. Check it out!

http://www.abyssapexzine.com

Book Goal Revision

I did some common sense math and remembered how fast I read versus how much else I do, and ... decided to revise my book goal to 75 books for the year. I don't want to get into the feeling that I have to keep up with the pace. (And me being neurotic, I will ...)

Carry on!

Bird Out of Water - Now Out!

Bird Out of Water can now be read over at Crossed Genres:

http://crossedgenres.com/archives/026-opposites/bird-out-of-water-by-lindsey-duncan/

This Is *Not* A Resolution ...

... but seeing someone else blog about their reading goals for 2010 and the nifty stats they tracked, I decided to do the same.

I am going to pick the goal of 100 books for the year. I will also try to put up reviews (hi, GoodReads!) on at least the fiction. And I'm going to be tracking the following things:

Novels read in my genre (fantasy):
*Secondary world:
*Urban:
Novels read in mystery genre:
Anthologies:
Non-Fiction:
Sequels and prequels:
Books over thirty years old:
Books I would recommend:
Books I was tempted to put down*:
First person:
Third person single-POV:
Third person multi-POV:
New vocabulary words:
Number of books containing said:
Books with maps:
Appendix consultation necessary:
Cumulative death toll:

* = for several years, I've had a personal rule that I don't put any book down. This started after I read fifty pages of Terry Brook's Running With The Demon, was about to give up ... and then on page fifty-one, it got good. Really good. (For a long time, Nest Freemark was my benchmark for an adolescent character done *right* in an adult novel. It's been so long since I read this book that I can no longer say this for sure.) Even a bad book, I can learn something from it, if only how *not* to write.

I am starting with "Witch Way To The Mall," an anthology edited by the (fantastic) Esther Friesner, all stories featuring (sub)urban witchery. Wish me luck!

Thursday Thoughts

Hard to believe the year is almost over ... it's been different than any year before, but I still feel as if I'm holding my breath, waiting.

The Ishene and Kemel story has pretty much turned unusable, at this stage. Simply takes too long to get anywhere - the pacing is all off. I'm not even sure it's possible to edit it into decent shape. But maybe I can cut a chunk out, use it in a novel (it could happen!), or simply use it as a frame of reference for other stories.

Aaaand ... I finished my editing marks on my paper copy of Scylla and Charybdis. At this point, thinking it will sit until I finish the novel I'm currently writing. I have both sizable cuts and small cuts marked throughout, including a whole miniature scene I thought was darned unnecessary and took up breathing room. I also have little notations throughout that just say "emotion." Ah, the cryptic-ness of notes to yourself.

I have to get about 30k words out of this manuscript to get it into a range where the length isn't a handicap. Will I be able to do it without sacrificing story, or will I end up carrying this massive turtle shell on my back? Only time will tell ...

Word count for 12/23 - 12/29: 8,977

Thursday Thoughts

It is the week of Christmas cheer and Christmas cookies (not necessarily in that order), time with family, a puppy substituting quite convincingly for a two year old, and too many movies, some of them bad.

Through all this, I am fairly proud of myself I got the usual amount of writing done, though I had one day down in the word count dumps due to generally enjoying myself in other arenas.

This week, I resumed a story I had paused back in October (!), after the original opening was written in November of '09 ... and in the context of a secondary world fantasy with academic magic, I get to write about the concepts of time travel and cloning, with a side-order of the more traditionally fantastic predestination. How I love Ishene and Kemel, and the things their lives let me tackle without ever preaching or writing a thought-story. The first tale was a straight-up adventure (though it does deal a bit with racial prejudice), but since then, I've really enjoyed the playground of fantastic time travel.

Also still working on my reality TV novel, and becoming concerned about the judging panel sections. The fact that the competitors get to defend their performance and then the judges talk about it separately means that I effectively show what happens, talk about it, then talk about it again. It's a good opportunity for humor, but over several episodes, I worry it becomes too repetitive. It's starting to sound like Beowulf. (Since this current episode is about poetry and odes, I got to make a few meta-cracks regarding my opinions of Beowulf that probably most people won't get. Not unlike this one!)

Word count for 12/16 - 12/22: 7,635

The Rise, Progress and ...

I just finished reading The Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution by Mercy Otis Warren, a comprehensive (one might say exhaustive) account of said historical event from the perspective of a woman who lived during the period and corresponded with several of the Revolution's leading figures, including George Washington and both John and Abigail Adams.

Despite the extensive discussion of events, battles and negotiations, what I found I primarily learned from this book was not the history it contained, but other aspects, such as:

How history books were written in this time period. The author's bias is plain, not just in word-choice, but in the slant and description of events. She also stops to comment on the personal and moral character of the players. This is not an aberration: this was common practice in history books written around the turn of the eighteenth century.

The use of language and grammatical conventions. It came as no surprise to me that the sentences were long and convoluted, and definitely written to a higher level of reading comprehension. What did surprise me were what I'd think of as grammatical error, most especially the overuse of commas - even in places where the addition of the punctuation actually (to me) obscured the meaning of the sentence. This brings up a disturbing consideration: are we fated to keep losing commas?

The vocabulary caught my eye, too: I've never seen "sanguine" so frequently used, and of course, we no longer use "warmly" to mean heated and intense (as in debate).

The illumination of the depravities, mercies, acts of vengeance, retaliation and honor that occurred on both sides gave me a new perspective on some of the personal impact of the war and the way humans rose or sank down to its level. (The way Warren treats the defection of Benedict Arnold, though painfully partisan to the sensitivities of those used to modern history books, was particularly interesting in this light.)

But some of the historical aspects did jump out for me. I hadn't been aware that the Empress of Russia and her policies had influence on the European scene. Most of the histories of the American Revolution I've read neglect the naval battles that occurred during the same period over French and English holdings in the West Indies.

In any case, a heavy read, but worthwhile for me on several counts.

Thursday Thoughts

When we get snow in Ohio, we don't just get snow. We get blowing powder, slush, ice over snow over ice, and sometimes all three at once. I'm fortunate enough to have seen snow rollers, an extremely rare phenomenon where the weather essentially makes its own snowballs by blowing the snow across icy ground. (How rare? Not quite sure, but the conditions are very precise and wikipedia's article has links to individual incidents.) This was several years ago, but I always keep my eye out for them.

About writing ...

I just finished my short story for the FWO challenge last night. As usual, it is too long, though I'm happy with how it turned out. The romantic subplot feels a little underdeveloped, so I will have to figure out how to enhance it without adding to the word count. I usually don't include romance in my stories unless the story is about the romance, but this was an experiment in a particular kind of dynamic.

I've noticed that increasingly, music does enter my stories - usually not from the perspective of a musician, but as some kind of wonderful, ineffable force. Farewell to Flesh from Emerald Tales, about a person pondering whether to give up her physical life to become an embodiment of inspiration, is probably the most obvious example, but Three Great Loyalties - which *is* a story that features musicians, since it was based on a prompt to write about your (the writer) worst job ever - becomes about the transformative power of music.

For me, writing about harpers feels self-indulgent. It's equivalent to the "writer story" that so many editors hate to see. It's also a bit like work. I love playing the harp, yes, but I'm writing, I don't want to be thinking about harp. But, of course, it's hard to deny the influence that music has on my life, and my approach to arranging music is very organic and almost mysterious ... it comes out of me, and I'm not always sure from where. So that perspective definitely comes through when I incorporate music (or more broadly, art of any type) in my stories.

Count for 12/9 - 15: 7,771

Thursday Thoughts

Saw something today that has nothing to do with writing, but made me smile, so I thought I would share:

I do a little part-time work at an office center nearby. About a week ago, a bunch of construction paper ornaments went up on the side wall of the main office, each one featuring a toy or other gift for a specific age-range. The board next to it announced that anyone who wanted to donate for homeless children could select an ornament, purchase the appropriate gift, and drop it off by mid-next-week.

Today I walked in, and the wall was empty except for one ornament. Beautiful.

As far my writing, the word count experiment is off to a good start. Seeing the tangible quantity is encouraging, and it's at such a pace that I'm pleased with the quality as well. I think it might be more effective if I weren't pausing around 1k words to do some editing every day, but I need to polish that off, too.

Really having fun with the short story I mentioned in the last post. I've thrown in two Celtic-geek in-jokes: the name of the seaside city is Abeul (... as in port ...), and I made a reference to a kind of river song - and since strathspey refers to the river Spey in Scotland, the canny could infer that's what I'm talking about.

I think I am going to track my word counts, but I'll put it at the bottom of the post so y'all can feel free to skip it.

Count for 12/2 - 12/8: 7,719.

Urban Fantasy

My primary love in writing fantasy is secondary world fantasy. I love exploring the limitless what-ifs in a setting. I love worldbuilding, both the act of creating a new world and incorporating it into a work in a way that seems natural and seamless. (Even if that sometimes gets me smacking my head into a wall, it's good smacking.)

However, I do write urban fantasy occasionally - that is, fantasy set in our modern world - and I've found there are two reasons I will reach for it:

1. Playing with real world mythologies and the occult. There are so many intriguing possibilities if you take myths and legends as true ... or mostly true. You can play with this in a secondary world, too, but it's less direct, and there's something viscerally satisfying about taking a piece of our old beliefs and making it real.

2. Humor. There are so many jokes and wisecracks you can make in a contemporary setting with our wealth of shared culture. It's also easier to highlight humorous incongruity in a more familiar setting.

There is one more possibility that I haven't consciously based a story around yet, but it makes sense to me as an appeal of urban fantasy. This came from hearing Sarah Hoyt at the WFC ...

There are places in our personal experience that, for whatever reason, we find magical. (In her case, it was diners.) This may be a childhood encounter; it may not. But transforming the metaphorical, imagined magic into real, concrete magic ... I think it's a very powerful idea. And it's certainly something that's (almost) unique to urban fantasy.

Oddly enough, I can't come up with a personal example right now. Maybe I was just born a soulless cynic. ;-)

Thursday Thoughts

FWO has a highly entertaining challenge topic up: http://www.fantasy-writers.org

I have a full-blown idea, but held up by a) finding a title and b) the fact that I'm still deciding whether I want one POV character or two. Two is difficult to pull off in a short story, but especially for the romantic subplot, I feel as if I want the push-me-pull-you of having both their perspectives.

The special type of song I've selected is Puirt a beul. Puirt a beul aka "mouth music" is essentially turning a dance tune into a singing piece, often with nonsense vocables. If I am recalling correctly, this is another of these forms that came about because of the suppression of Scots / Irish culture - their instruments were taken away, so they sang their dances to remember them. I know one puirt in Scots Gaelic - it's not easy!

I'll get off my Celtic musician nerd stool now. I'm using a secondary world, so it won't be called Puirt a beul, but the concept will be a centerpiece.

Bird Out of Water sold

I just sold my short story "Bird Out of Water" to Crossed Genres and their Opposites theme for January 2011! This story was originally written for an FWO challenge to write about the offspring of two different fantasy creatures. I love the concept of CG, so excited.

What a nice way to start the month, wakin' up to a contract.

Nano - Triumph

Not quite to the end of the day, but I hit the 50k mark at 8pm this evening, so it seems the right time to put up my heels and ...

Wait. The book isn't done yet. In fact, I'm only in Episode Six (of Ten). Well, then ...

I like the pressure that Nano applies, but in thinking about it, I've seen some better value in the longer-term, macro goal - 50k in a month - than in a daily, micro goal - 1.67k (or pick your poison) per day. Firstly, a daily goal is unforgiving: if you fail, you're done. You can get up and try again the next day, but if you're neurotic like I am (Hi!), that will bother you. Secondly, a daily goal is kind of like a hamster in a wheel: it resets every day. You can write five thousand words and it doesn't really "matter" in terms of meeting your goal. You still have the full word count the next day.

Now, not that is a bad thing: it produces writing. But for me, having my goals and the way I meet them be satisfying, rather than frustrating, is an important factor.

So starting this Thursday, I'm going to start a 7k / week prescription for myself, with a further long-term goal of finishing "Who Wants To Be A Hero?" by Valentine's Day (2011, smart alecks), and for the love of all that's holy hopefully finding a snappier title. Since I still have to finish my editing marks for SaC, for the next couple weeks, as soon as I finish 1k per day, I'm going to move on to editing.

In conclusion: wish me luck!

Happy ...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Have a safe and savory holiday, y'all.

This year, I am thankful that ...

(Drumroll, please)

... I can actually cook!

On a more serious note, this has been the first year I've been away from my immediate family, and it's been strange and often lonely. Having them back, not just for a couple days, but for two weeks, has made me appreciate how close we are. I know not everyone has that relationship with their kin, and I'm thankful for that.

On a less serious note, I've received rejection letters on a surprising majority of holidays and my birthday, so I am expecting one today. ;-)

Thursday Thoughts

Nano progress update: I just started episode four (of ten) and missed my word count slightly for yesterday, but still on track. My parents are visiting and my mother and I went to see Morning Glory yesterday. (Rather predictable, but very cute and clever, and really a lot of fun. Recommended.) I've reached one of the challenges that I have been looking forward to: the dungeon crawl, where I get to abuse my knowledge of RPGs to skewer that genre. This will also give me a chance to -

(Spoiler!)

- do something I set up a bit ago. The host of the "show" has sworn up and down that death is permanent. She's about to show that she's been lying through her teeth. Someone is going to die in this round.

They're going to get better.

Thursday Thoughts

Friday of last week, I had a business opportunity crop up with a lot of complicated aspects, so I've been spending a lot of my time working / thinking about that - and when I'm not, I've been very drained and it's been difficult to write. However, I did manage to build myself something of a cushion over that evening and weekend, so as of today, I am 900 words shy of the (Nanowrimo) count I need by midnight tomorrow. Worst case scenario, I squeeze out 450 words per day between now and then. More than doable. Hopefully I catch up some over Saturday, but then my family is coming in for the holidays ...

I'm almost done with the content of episode two. It will be followed by an "off-camera" scene where the judges and other personnel sit down for dinner - or pseudo dinner, considering my classical style gods are probably the ambrosia types. I'm concerned right now that the scenes are too repetitive, but this is something to address in editing. I'm too close to it to determine what to cut.

Also, I am somewhere between proud and guilty that I imagined to make what amounted to a plastic surgery joke and keep it in setting. Also a non-anachronistic reference to "fifteen minutes of fame." This is what I wanted to do: reframe modern concepts so they made sense in setting, then make fun of them. The Nicanan colony of Destia is basically early America (... if Britain were Greece ...) and I've been able to make some fun cracks about the revolution brewing there. And tea.

Quote

Saw this great quote today on a whiteboard:

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." -- Albert Einstein

On the One Hand ...

I managed to give myself a pretty nasty steam burn making dinner last night.

I sat there regarding my hand, and I thought:

Well, bad news for harp, it's on the right hand.

Good news for writing, it's on the right hand ...

Thursday Thoughts

So I am about 5.5k into my NaNo novel and starting to hit my stride. I've discovered that it's impossible to load the thing down with jokes and still keep the plot moving in a way that a reader will care about, so I've pulled back on the frequency a bit. I've tried to keep odd, bizarre and other amusing phrasing and comments as a continuous factor, while the outright jokes come more widely spaced. It's working out, I think. I can already tell, though I've only hit a few of them thus far, that there are going be some mythology "in-jokes" - I've lampooned some divine tendencies and myths where you have to be familiar with the inspiring material to get the humor.

Names - ah, names. Honestly, I can't work with a character in any extended fashion without naming them, so I am going to take a risk and name each competitor as they first appear. (This will actually be less crazy than it appears, as a few of them were already named in the Casting Call "chapter.") However, I am also going to give them a descriptive label - the diminutive thief, the holy assassin - that will appear every time they come back onto stage for the first few episodes.

This should help people get a handle on them, and it fits perfectly within both genres: reality televisions always have visual labels when they show the characters talking (Greg Sommers -- Pastry Chef, Creme De La Creme), and to go back further, the Greek epics (which is my primary inspiration for the definition of hero, though there's also a shameless sprinkling of thought-line from RPGs such as D&D - I mean, I've got a dungeon-crawl, for pity's sakes) use that kind of phrasing as a poetic beat.

WFC Day Four: Last Panels and Departure

I had trouble sleeping (amazing with how tired I was), so I ended up earlier than I intended ... and it turned out that even if I had gotten up with my alarm, I would have still been up to the Con area with time to spare, checked out, suitcases in storage and all. Whoops. Better than the reverse, I suppose.

I attended about half of this first panel, then stepped out for a presentation on reading out loud ...

What Do We Mean By Urban Fantasy Anyway? (Holly Black, Sarah Hoyt, Michele Lang, Cinda Williams Chima, Linda Robertson): What was discussed while I was there was the differing / overlapping expectations of the readers coming from paranormal romance versus the traditional fantasy reader, the sometimes narrowing of the definition to only first person narratives with tough women and romantic plots, and the difference between urban fantasy and horror. Also interesting, and of particular interest to me right now (though I couldn't tell you why) was the discussion of a closed / secret fantasy world versus an open one. (Maybe I'm about ready to try the latter myself.)

Heading over to ...

Reading Presentation: Mary Robinette Kowal on How to Give an Effective Reading: I used Kowal's excellent website to orient me for my own reading last night (and I highly recommend it), so I was familiar with some of this, but there was new information to be mined, and other points that were simply more effective in a face to face presentation. She discussed the most basic faults of reading - lack of projection, over-accelerated spped, and droning / monotone - and how to combat them by using the body's natural tendencies. She also discussed how to pick a proper selection (hint: maximum of 3-4 characters ... and the narrator counts as a character) and the five tools for differentiating characters - pitch, placement, pacing, attitude and accent ... which can be achieved without a real accent through the use of speech rhythm.

Another nice one I had read but forgot: if you have two chars talking, speak the lines of one to the left side of the room, the other to the right, and narrative returns to middle focus.

Check out the website, in any event.

True story about accents: I used to do Renaissance reenactment, and years later, someone told me the best way to knock yourself out of the accent after a long day is to say, "The beer is in the pickup truck." Try to do that in an Elizabethan accent. I dare you.

What is Left to the Imagination (Lawrence Connolly, Madeleine Robins, Delia Sherman, Martha Wells, Gregory Wilson): An intriguing final panel about what to leave out from the fantasy - what not to explain. The panelists pointed out that we're in a unique field as far as being able to get away with that sense of wonder ... but most of the time, the author has to know, even if it's not articulated. Still, whether it's a slow unveiling throughout the story or a mystery that remains, choosing how far to go is a tricky matter, and you can't please everyone. Someone referred to it as, "the balance of breadcrumbs to bafflement." Ambiguity can be richly rewarding ... or it can be confusing.

And so reluctantly, I left the world of the World Fantasy Convention and headed home ... to a puppy so excited she lost her balance and her hindquarters slid forward on her, belly up. I come back with a bubbling of ideas and thoughts, some entertaining encounters, an obscene amount of books and an even longer list of books to find ... a deep breath before going back under the waters of uncertainty.

WFC Day Three: Evening

I took dinner away from the ConSuite last night to give myself some breathing / relaxing room (ie, without people) before my reading. Then I went down for ...

What Can Be Done With Old Mythologies (Lynn Cantwell, Sarah Hoyt, Dave Sakmyster, Seressia Glass): This panel covered similar topics to the earlier one about mining the humor of mythology, but went off in different directions due to the slant and the panels. After hearing these folks speak, I'm eager to read Glass' book (received in convention packet) and tracking down Sarah Hoyt's books about the were-panther and were-dragon who run a diner. Besides discussion of treating the mythologies with respect, the group also touched upon using mythological figures as archetypes in secondary world fantasy and the inevitability of some form of belief even in science fiction.

Next, after a grueling half hour break, the BroadUniverse reading commenced with nine ladies, nine very different works, and a good time had by all. I think mine went over well - not great, but it was understandable and not torturous (I hope). I did end up, for the record, reading a brief clip from "The Naming Braid" (GUD) and a longer section of Taming the Weald (Gypsy Shadow Publishing). I also met a fellow writer from not too far away! Might lead to further conversations.

I put a copy of Sails and Sorcery (Fantasist Enterprises) in the raffle. That contains Currents and Clockwork, an older story of mine set in the Butterfly's Poison world. It's a world I keep coming back to: I have at least one additional novel idea, and the novelette of doom, Shadow-Play, is also in the same setting. Vlisa and Calais beg future stories, but I haven't figured out what to do with them.

Then, having been encouraged earlier, I wandered into the Edge 10th anniversary party. I suppose I don't really think about it, especially because for most of my life, I've been in situations where I've been forced to act as if I'm not, but I am deeply, intensely shy. I have become good at one-on-one interactions and formal situations (for instance, MCing for a performance), but party environments are way out of my realm. The publishers, Brian and Anita Hades, were very nice / friendly - they actually stepped in and nudged me to talk to specific people. Which ... I did!

I came out of the whole thing feeling as if I had made some kind of victory, because I came out of my shell more than I usually do. It's a process.

WFC Day Three: Part 2

I may write Part 3 tonight, but it won't be posted until I get home tomorrow. Internet is pay-per-24-hour period, and I can't justify spending another ten bucks on it for the two seconds I'll probably be awake. ;-)

The Lighter Side of Death (Jason Sanford, Esther Friesner, Laurel Ann Hill): Discussion of death as a character in funny fantasy. Of course, you have to get the obvious example out of the way - Terry Pratchett's Death. There was also discussion of Dead Like Me (yay!) and, wonder of wonders, Craig Shaw Gardner's "Disagreement with Death." I made a bit of an idiot out of myself when Hill asked if anyone had read it because I can *never* find *anyone* who has read those books and they, probably more than anything else (Douglas Adams included) shaped my idea of humor in spec-fic.

Anyhow, things discussed were the inversion of expectation, the fact that people in tough life-or-death situations often use humor to survive, and the fact that real world deaths are - horrible as we feel to laugh at them - sometimes just plain funny. I got two distinct idea sparks from this panel ... they're not complete stories, but they'll go in my files and I might be ready to take a break and write one in December.

Authors and Ideas (L.E. Modesitt, Tim Powers, S.M. Stirling, Jason Sanford, Guy Gavriel Kay, Ellen Kushner (panel-crasher)): I approached this panel with trepidation. I honestly expected to disagree with what they would say. Instead, I got a wonderful affirmation of the priority of story and the fact that the beliefs authors most commonly express in their works are the ones they don't even realize they hold. The authors touched upon the challenge of creating characters who hold beliefs the author doesn't share and the potential for fantasy to erode confirmation bias because it addresses situations in a different order.

Personal example: The world of Butterfly's Poison was consciously designed as a Renaissance setting, and one of the things I did include was slavery. I deliberately didn't want all my characters to express progressive attitudes about it because it jarred with the setting - basically substituting modernity for authenticity. (One character does free his slave and she's basically his willing bodyguard / confidante, but the other chars definitely think it's a little weird.)

Later, I tried to convert the setting into an RPG. I used a group of slaves who crash-landed on an island as my premise. I got one player who wanted to play someone whose main goal was to rid the world of slavery, which I emphatically did not want. It was never designed to be something to be defeated in the world. Yet I'd never say that I support slavery in any way, shape or form. I just feel there are inequities in the world that you can't solve, and they can be mentioned in a story without diminishing the final victory.

... which I guess illustrates a deeply held belief of its own, as I think about it.

Okay, this has been more about me than the panels - sorry! Wish me luck with the reading.

WFC Day Three: Part 1

I have a nasty little cough going. It's allergy related, so not a health concern, but sort of embarrassing. Pay no attention to the coughing brunette in the corner.

The Story Cycle vs The Novel (Suzy Charnas, L.E. Modesitt, Dennis McKiernan, Mette ivie Harrison): Discussion of the difference between a cycle of closely linked short stories and a novel ... and standalone novels in a series versus a broader arc, because of course all writers are editors and they like to make tweaks to the text at hand. Also the difference between a collection and a story cycle. The central difference, of course, is that standalone stories require an ending / climax, whereas each chapter doesn't ... and, of course, collections really don't sell.

(I thought about trying to frame a question around my time traveling stories, which are written all out of sequence - both in the "real" timeline and the eras my characters are traveling to. I decided not to break anyone's brain.)

I also posed a private question to L.E. Modesitt about titling, because I'm curious about how folks do it - and specifically, when they do it. (I find that all the titles I've come up with after completing the work are unsatisfactory and were certainly a struggle - I'll share some stories after the WFC.) He pointed out that shorter titles are better for a simple matter of marketing - the longer the title, the smaller it is on a cover.

That leaves some concern about "Who Wants To Be A Hero?" ... though they're all very SHORT words. (It's not much longer than "Butterfly's Poison," as a string.) And makes "Flow" the best title ever? ;-)

Moving along ...

The Continued Viability of Epic Fantasy (Blake Charlton, John Fultz, David Coe, David Drake, Freda Warrington): Conclusion here was that epic fantasy is very much alive, but it is evolving towards a shorter, more standalone form as a simple question of economics ... and with the success of the LoTR movies and the conclusion of the Wheel of Time, it is a much more viable form of fantasy than it was five years ago. It's no longer agent / editor anathema. Those big, thick fantasies apparently have another name in the industry: chihuahua-killers. So if you take the book, hold it out at arm's length, and drop it ... you get the idea.

All this is great news for me, but I am still am content with the "mannerpunk" label I've put on Journal of the Dead. Though I did ask the panel about mannerpunk and they were, honestly, boggled. I am sort of encouraged by this.

Lunch break! Free Panera. Two two-thirds of a broken chair.

Guest of Honor Presentation: Lee Martindale Interviews Esther Friesner: Awesome, as you'd expect. Esther Friesner is a ham. She's lively, funny and an engaging speaker. She talked about the experience of winning a Nebula (then another, the next year) and how she came up with the Chicks In Chainmail series - browsing the art show at a convention (so many of these stories started, "I was at an SF Convention ..." to the point where Esther led the crowd in a chorus near the end) and thinking about SF concepts, she rattled through trashy babes behind bars movies and then ... boom. She's also the queen of the SFWA Muskateers, who put on charity fencing demonstrations. The money goes into the SFWA medical fund, for SFWA members who have medical emergencies and can't pay for them. Nifty stuff.

Btw: I learned yesterday that "Death and the Librarian" was titled due to a gift from Terry Pratchett. He gave her tiny figurines of two of the figures from his books ... yeah, you can see where this is going: Death, and the Librarian. The story, mind, has nothing to do with it. (And I really wish I had brought my DatL collection with me to be signed. Whine.)

Slaughtering the Evil Hordes (Robert Redick, Eric Flint, Dennis McKiernan, Patricia McKillip, Tom Doherty): This was a very thoughtful but quick-moving panel about how to handle the evil horde in a day and age when it's no longer fashionable to automatically assume the "other" is monolithic and villainous. There was discussion, particularly from McKillip - who, though quiet, is very deliberate and contemplative about her process - about the idea of the evil from within, of having to conquer that ... either before, after or completely unrelated to the horde. It was pointed out that many of the hordes are the aggressors, coming to take what you have rather than work for it themselves, so in that sense they can be painted as evil ... and that maybe, ultimately, the fantasy horde hasn't gone out of style because psychologically, soldiers have to picture their enemies as faceless to function. Still, there are many ways beyond / outside of the horde to write solid fantasy, even war-based fantasy.

I need to ruuuun ... next panel in ten minutes. I am going to skip the ConSuite and actually pay for my dinner so I can escape back up here and hopefully get a 40 min - 1 hr nap before the last session of the day and then my reading (oh gawd oh gawd I am going to DIE). See you on the flip side!

WFC: Writer or Fan?

I've had a couple people ask me if I'm a writer or a fan, and my answer has been an awkward, "Well, both, I guess." I don't know why, in this context, I've been less certain about introducing myself as a writer.

I guess one reason is because lately, my progress has really discouraged me, and I've started to wonder if I "have it." Another reason is that in this context, I sort of feel as if people are expecting "real" writers - people with pro publications or books in print. It's a comparison issue. When I'm moving around in company that includes Esther Friesner, Eric Flint, Dennis McKiernan, etc, etc, can I really call myself a writer?

Also, I am idly pondering if it is too late to start putting "Lindsey W. Duncan" on my stuff. Would help the confusion with the British actress and I'm always introducing myself as, "Lindsey With-an-e Duncan" anyhow. I am only partly joking.

WFC Day Two: Part 2

More panels:

Everybody Has Their Faults, Mine Is Being Wicked (Molly Tanzer, Mark Teppo, David Boop): This was meant to be a discussion of the comic villain, but ranged more broadly into the appeal of villains and the kinds of thought and motivation that work. If anything, the panel pointed out that humorous villainy could be more creepy - the juxtaposition, the uncertainty about whether or not we should laugh along and what that says about us. In some ways, the villain can be more appealing than the hero because the villain is usually proactive, whereas the traditional hero's journey implies / requires a reluctance. Arguably, psychopathic villains have lost their mystique due to the proliferation of CSI, Criminal Minds, etc.

Esther Friesner Reading: I missed the title and a very small part of this story - I misjudged the time and didn't go in right away because I didn't want to interrupt the previous reader. That didn't affect my enjoyment of the story at all, the tale of a six year old werewolf with decided Opinions about her situation. Friesner used an amazing reading voice perfectly suited to this excerpt, light and child-like without being babyish. Story was hilarious, too. Apparently in an anthology called Full Moon City ...

Transforming Fantasy into a Screenplay (Ryan McFadden, David Coe, Barbara Gallen-Smith): This panel talked about the challenges of adaptation in general: the fact that screenplays don't get into the characters' internal thoughts, the fact that the structure of a successful movie is very different from a successful novel and the disparity between the average screenplay length - about ninety generously spaced pages - versus the average novel. Also touched upon were issues specific to fantasy, such as the challenges of creating a believable world instantly. They ended encouraging screenwriters to mine short fantasy as an untapped source of ideas.

Sidebar: I either lost my Scylla and Charybdis outline or left it at home. I won't know until Sunday, when I get home. Sheesh.

WFC Day Two: Part 1

I kept sneaking into the ConSuite to eat today ... well, sneaking is the wrong word, that's what it's there for. Also, I am about as sneaky as an elephant.

Panels for the first half of today:

Fantasy Gun Control (Walter Jon Williams, Charles Gannon, Elizabeth Bunce, Lee Martindale, Ian Drury): This panel discussed why guns are missing from our quasi-medieval fantasy stories when hand cannons date back to the 1400s. Some theories suggested were the deep influence of the original fantasists, including Tolkien, who very explicitly wanted to move away from that evidence of modernity; the lack of "elegance" in a gun versus a sword, the intimacy of hand-to-hand combat, and the idea of personal courage / heroism that can be lost or diluted when weaponry is added. All these things can be overcome, but there is a very strong public perception / bias against it. Yet other genres - eg westerns - do romanticize guns ...

(My two most recent secondary fantasies do have pistols. Butterfly's Poison is set in a world where these things are brand new, and my mad-scientist inventor is maybe the first person to have come up with a multi-shot pistol. Pity he can't hit the broad side of a barn. And Journal of the Dead is loosely Victorian, so the presence of firearms is in the background.)

The Explosion of Funny Fantasy Series (Lucienne Diver, Laura Resnick, Steven Silver): Another one of those panels where the panelists debunked the topic in question, though not as vigorously as before - they just said it was less a question of explosion and more a question that a field once locked tight is now open for exploitation. Among the difficulties of comedy is the fact that it isn't universal and that pacing is very difficult to maintain - even if it's perfect in the book, you can't control how and when the reader will encounter certain sections. Putting the book down for a crisis? Reading hastily in the car? (... not while driving.) Even the slightest placement of a word or sentence can alter the comedic impact.

Making Mythology Fresh (And a Little Silly) (Elizabeth Bear, Kathy Sullivan, Laura Bickle, Esther Friesner): Another great panel, and one from which I came away with a particular number of books to look up. (Darn, that sentence still ended with a preposition.) Among the suggestions for keeping it fresh were to seek out more obscure mythologies, confront ancient myths with modern realities - akin to science fiction's extrapolation - and going back to the roots of myths that have been so well-mined that the derivations have become the familiar. (Not lookng at vampires here at all, no ...)

Also: never discount zombie Paracelsus. (Actual quote from the panel.)

At this point in the chronology, I take a break for lunch and browsing the dealer's room. At this point in real life, I hop away from my computer with every intention of creeping into the ConSuite again.

WFC Day One: Evening Panels

Two panels tonight and I am wiped out. I have a business stop to make tomorrow in the dealer's room (which I may or may not discuss, depending on the outcome thereof), and once that's over with, I can ... well, not breathe easier, because my five minutes of spotlight for reading aren't til Saturday evening. Mock me if you will, I've done half hour stage sets and introduced numbers for a group - but then I have a five foot tall instrument to hide behind. And I'm good at making people laugh, particularly at me ... not so much with other forms of public speaking.

Fantasy as a Rejection of the Present (Theodora Goss, Walter Jon Williams, Nancy Jane Moore): Every now and again, there's a panel where the panelists seem focused upon debunking the panel topic, and it cracks me up. This was one of them. It was a very thoughtful discussion that went beyond fantasy as a form of nostalgia and into its possible use as social agenda, its expression of the anxieties of the age, etc. For instance, it was suggested that part of steampunk's popularity might be that it goes back to the last period where the average person really understood technology.

(I'm writing down a lot of book titles. My Amazon list is going to sprawl out again after this, I can just see it.)

The Logic of Absurdity (Gerald Warfield, David Levine): Unfortunately, Eric Flint, who I was looking forward to seeing on this panel, was a no-show. He couldn't make it in time. Hope he's not stuck in an airport now. The other two joshed him good-naturedly in absentia. Handpuppet Flint: "Hi, I'm Eric Flint, and I'm not here."

Anyhow, this panel was not about what I expected, and at first, I was disappointed - it was more about using absurd, larger than life elements within stories. However, it turned out to be very relevant in ways I hadn't expected. They talked a lot about the rules of absurdity, the need for it to fit into the framework; how it was essentially an element in context, and in a wholly "absurd" world, the normal becomes out of place. This seemed to affirm some of my gripes / quibbles with "weird" fiction, and I felt better for hearing it. (Of course, it's all subjective, too.) Other points: the absurd still needs to map onto the reader's experience. If you've got plot, character and setting, one of those elements can be absurd, maybe two ... but try to make all three absurd, and it crumbles.

So not at all on that note, what do people think of, "Who Wants To Be A Hero?" as a title?

WFC Day One: Arrival and Afternoon Panels

Dropped the dog off this morning - I've never seen her prance and squeak like that before - and hit the road for a very windy drive to Columbus. Got off an exit too early and wound through the less ... prosperous parts of the city, then ran into a detour my GPS didn't know how to handle and had to just keep driving until it got back on track. Was surprised the hotel didn't have its own free parking lot. Ended up walking in from the garage with my laptop bag and my luggage, then adding the truly mammoth WFC freebie bag before stumbling up to my room. I carry a harp around all the time. I'm tough. But that was work.

(Maybe it will make up for all the candy corn. Yes, I had a craving for candy corn, so I bought some.)

Sorted through the conference bag - a great collection of books, including Ian Esselmont's Night of Knives, which I've been meaning to read. (I didn't care for Erikson's first Malazan novel, but heard that this book in the same setting was worth checking out.) Far more hardcovers than I remember there being in the past. One too many urban fantasies, so I went back to the trade table and exchanged it.

Also put out some freebie flyers and postcard-ish things for Gypsy Shadow Publishing on the freebie table. Hope I picked a good spot!

First three panels of the day:

The Art of the Mashup (Jeff Connor, Jay Franco, Jim Frenkel): Three great, funny guys with a lot of intriguing things to say about the growing popularity of mashups - loosely defined as taking something classic and twisting it by the introduction of something that doesn't seem to fit. The originating book of this recent fad-wave, of course, is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I have to point to a couple of personal favorites: "Franz Kafka, Superhero!" (a short story in the Mike Resnick-edited "This Is My Funniest") and Jana Oliver's Sojourn, which while not strictly a mash-up takes some elements (time-travel, Victorian shapeshifters) that you wouldn't necessarily find together and fuses them. The fellows discussed this as a fan/nerd-driven phenomena, with connections to fan-fiction and comic book crossovers.

(Topical to me, since my planned NaNo novel is basically a mash-up of heroic myth and reality television.)

The West Doesn't Exist (Marie Brennan, Dennis McKiernan, Freda Warrington, Liz Gorinksy): I thought this panel was misnamed - sorry, guys. I expected it to be about cultures that aren't often used in fantasy. Instead - a wonderful turn of events - it was about the proscribed / forbidden / impassable zones on fantasy maps, about whether the world even had to be round, about considering climate and human ingenuity in crossing obstacles, about places that weren't mapped because they were very constantly changed. There were reminders that peasant geography is often proscribed into a tiny sphere: this village and our neighbors is as far as most people might think. Ultimately, leaving the blanks leaves room for wonder.

(For the record, my NaNo novel has the "weird / mysterious" culture in the west, not the east - though I am guilty of the barbarians in the north.)

Vampires Thick as Fleas (Melissa de la Cruz, Linda Robertson, Peter Halasz, Alex Bledsoe, Sandra Wickham): I didn't have much hope for this panel, and really got a pleasant surprise. There was a lot of discussion about vampires as symbols, and where their power is really accessed versus just being the "bad boy" in romantic fiction. What about scientific vampires? Why has the religious aspect almost vanished from most modern vampire fiction? Vampires speaking to fears of disease and sexuality. A modern obsession with the redemption story - but maybe some people can't be redeemed.

(Unfortunately, side-effect of this was it made me want to go back to an old project of mine, a post-mana-apocalypse real-world setting which had some traditional, non-mainstream vampires. I have resisted because a) it's a very, very dark story and b) it would require a lot of setup I don't have time to do for Nano, esp as it was always intended to have two plotlines: one the current story of the MC after she's defected from a rebel cause, and the other her flashbacks to the progress of that rebellion.)

And upcoming tonight, possibly the most topical panel for me of all: The Logic of Absurdity. The topic is the line between absurd fantasy and satire which essentially describes the real world ... and that line, and staying on the "right" side of it, is going to be my foremost challenge.

Three hours and I am so, so happy I committed to doing this.

Brace Yourselves ...

There will be no Thursday Thoughts this week. Instead, look for updates on the WFC panels and other bizarre happenings through the end of the month. In 2008, I found this was a great way to process my thoughts - and hopefully interesting to someone else as well. So I'm giving it another shot.

Anthologies!

As my post of last week might imply, I love anthologies ... and one of the things I would love to do (some day!) is put one together. This is something of a pipe-dream, but I figured I would have fun thinking up some potential concepts. Here's a couple:

The Impossible Crime: Fantasy / mysteries are "in" right now, and more importantly, they're something I adore. This theme would be stories where the crime is committed by supernatural means - somehow impossible in the mundane world. For fair play to apply, of course, the stories would have to be very upfront about the "rules" of the settings. Tricky to balance without giving the game away? Probably ... but isn't that the fun?

Things To Do In Fantasyland When You're Dead: Since I can't use this for the title of a (serious) novel, how about a humorous anthology of characters after they've died ... whether we're dealing with a trek through the underworld, a character who discovers - the hard way - that they come back to life the next day, or a reincarnating demi-god. Actually, I would like to see this as a not-specifically-comic anthology, which I guess would mean ditching the title again. Drat!

One Line: I've seen the concept of "The story must start with this line" before, but what about a group of stories where the line can be incorporated anywhere, as long as it's somehow important? I wonder whether this would work better if the line was revealed in the intro ... or if it were left for the reader to discover. (EDITED to add: Put it at the end, so people who want to "spoil" themselves can?)

Thursday Thoughts

Haven't done much this past week - been buried in allergy fog and done a lot of harp-playing, including a networking gig on Tuesday. Hopefully it turns into something ...

Mainly been hashing out this fantasy / mystery short story that continues to bedevil me. I can only remember once before where I've still been changing so much - chopping, adding - after so many edits. That one had a happy ending, so I can hope that I can beat this one into shape yet. I would also love to get another two hundred words out of it - the "8k" market is limited, but it's less limited than the "over 8k" market - but it seems to be holding steady and stubborn about where it is.

I need to get cracking on my character profiles for my novel. One thing I've noticed in reality shows that I'm trying to emulate is that often, part of why you watch is to a) cheer on your favorites and b) see the people you can't stand get bumped off (... the show). There's a visceral intensity to it that I know is partly created by the fact that these are "real" people - grant that the faces the players present to the camera aren't often wholly authentic - but I want to capture as much of it as possible. So I've been consciously thinking about which of the characters fall into which category - which will the reader cheer for, which will they campaign against ... and hopefully, if I do my job right, some of them won't garner the same reaction from every reader.

I am a bit concerned about using a "camera lens" POV for the main scenes in the story, but I am intending to break that up with close-focus on individual characters - and off-stage scenes from a few, select POVs. I am hoping to emulate that sense of not knowing what is going through the character's head - until you step aside with them in the isolation booth. So much of this is balance between getting the meta-story feel of the base material without making it seem arbitrary or unnatural. I'm hoping if done right, it will give its own unqiue element of depth.

"First Contact" at Golden Visions

Golden Visions has just purchased my "First Contact" for April 2011. The only thing I'll say about the story right now is that it takes the concept "first contact" literally and deals with synesthesia ...

Anthologies?

So when I'm in the mood for short stories for pleasure reading, I usually reach for an anthology. I love to see the way different authors tackle the same theme / idea. Anthologies also tend to be more consistently story / character-driven (as opposed to experimental / theme-based), which is what I prefer. From a skilled editor, I also love the macro elements of the way an anthology flows from one mood to another. (I've seen it done badly, alas.)

So I'm starting to put together a Christmas list, and I thought I ought to see if y'all have any recommendations of anthologies you've tried and enjoyed - because a bad one is no fun. Some specifics:

1. As stated above, I'm going to be more interested in theme collections, so "best of" isn't really my cup of tea. See also note about experimental stories (or not).

2. Fantasy or scifi is fine, but not so much urban-specific collections. I have no problem with urban fantasy, but I think there are so many possible worlds out there, an anthology ought to explore a lot of them.

3. I'm especially interested in fantasy / mystery crosses. I already own Murder By Magic and Powers of Detection and have The Dragon Done It on my wishlist. I know Dana Stabenow did another crossover antho, but I wasn't impressed with her as an editor. Yeah, okay, this is a long shot, but if you've encountered others ...

GoodReads Review: The Muse of the Revolution

The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Foundingof a Nation by Nancy Rubin Stuart

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


An in-depth portrait of an obscure figure from the American Revolution, this book skillfully portrays Mercy Otis Warren both in her capacity as a political writer and as an exceptional woman of her time. Much care is taken to portray the life she lived around her famous works and illuminate her as a person. The book is liberally (but strategically) sprinkled with quotes from her letters, poems and plays, and also includes some quotes from reply correspondence.

This book is both informative and entertaining. The author does not interpret or apologize for Warren's failings - in fact, at times, I wish there had been a little bit more partisanship in favor of the subject. I learned some connected facts about the Revolution I hadn't known before, as well. The chronology is crystal-clear, though there is one point where there's a typo in the dating, accidentally leaping the account forward a year.

Highly recommended.

View all my reviews

It's (Almost) Official: WFC Reading

The preliminary WFC schedule has been posted, and the BroadUniverse Rapidfire Reading is slated for Saturday at 9:30pm.

Currently planning to read a snippet of The Naming Braid and a somewhat longer excerpt from Taming The Weald ... my five minutes of numbed terror. ;-) Wish me luck!

Thursday Thoughts

Still making my editing marks on Scylla and Charybdis. I would like to be through the book before November and NaNoWriMo, because I consequently won't touch it until December, but that's not looking good right now.

Started my fourth Ishene and Kemel story. One of the things that's delighted me about this is there are passing references to previous events - an embarrassing incident with the Hakathri and the time Ishene "tripled" over herself (went back in time twice to a location where she was already present). And I don't think you can tell which one is "real" - the latter is from "Double or Nothing" - and which one is invented - the Hakathri thing was a fabrication created in the original free write. This is what I love about writing these stories out of chronology: I'm creating foreshadowing, backstory and potential present (for another story) all in the act of writing one tale.

And, of course, it remains singularly appropriate for a pair of time travelers.

Also (yes, I'm busy) trying to finish my character notes for the reality TV project. I'm "feeling" it more that I'm getting into it, except the themesong part of it - while just for my amusement / potential playlist - is a disaster. I also tried to do a character portrait and decided ... nope. My art skills are still not there.

Anatomy of an Idea: Taming The Weald

This is a spoiler-free post, so y'all can read it without fear. Or do fear, because I'm an intrinsically scary person - as you will.

Obviously, since Taming The Weald started as an image prompt contest entry, my first inspiration was the picture provided by Gypsy Shadow Publishing. I knew the obvious assumption would be a fantasy story, so I decided to go in the opposite direction and do something science fiction - or rather, science fantasy.

That gave me the initial idea of having a single wild area on a space station. To further emphasize the contrast, the natives considered it a dark, dangerous place - but why wouldn't it be a potential source of food? I decided they had been eating synthetics for so long that the human stomach had started to adapt away from being able to process organic food. I ended up playing this down for the needs of the plot, but this was the first element in the theme of artificial versus natural that plays through the whole story.

I wanted an evocative name for this wild area. I didn't want to call it just The Forest or some such. I did a little browsing on thesaurus.com (no, really) and came up with Weald. Instantly, I also had my title - which I prefer to have before I start, because my track record of being able to title afterwards is pretty abysmal. It's a Saxon word, so I briefly toyed with using Arthurian legend names for the characters, but none of the names I researched seemed to fit.

Back to the picture ... who is this? A daughter of the wild? I knew right away that I didn't want to write from her POV - for me, that would kill the mystique of the setup I had created. So who is the narrator, then? Keryn and her desire for a child came into my mind ... and I had all the basic building blocks in place.

I Am Puzzled!

This tickled me to death and then right back to life:

http://www.jigzone.com/puzzles/9713FDE43D7?z=0

Yes, Gypsy Shadow Publishing puts their cover images up as digital puzzles. That's rather awesome.

Taming The Weald - released!

It's now out! Taming The Weald, my science fantasy story with Gypsy Shadow Publishing, is now available for your purchasing and reading pleasure:

http://www.gypsyshadow.com/Lindsey%20Duncan.html#Taming

(I love that the abbreviation is Taming. I have Monty Python flashbacks. "Monday morning, I want to be in there: taming!")

Thursday Thoughts

I just started working on the character profiles for my reality TV project, with the goal of starting for Nanowrimo in November. I'm dealing with an interesting problem: because the individuals from each country are the primary if not only thing the reader will see, they need to be representative of their origin ... but I don't want to "normalize" them to the point where they're the stereotypical Thanocian, Sarrlander, etc. Their behavior has to say "I come from country X" and "I'm individual Y" and potentially do it in a single scene. And I don't want to spend a lot of words setting this up, because the elimination style of the novel means that some of those people won't last too long.

A further issue I'm worried about - and I'd welcome feedback - is the opening. Traditionally, on these shows, the first episode does a lot of brief-clip introductions of characters, but I'm concerned it will get heavy and info-dumpy. I also toyed with doing a "casting" where the weirdest, most unsuitable folks breeze past - hoping to play up the humor - and someone we're rooting for doesn't even make it to the competition. I've only seen this once in actual reality TV, so though I have "Casting" jotted down in my structure, I'm undecided if I'm going to do it or not.

Next step for me is a short story, probably the last before Nano starts. It's another Ishene / Kemel story - this one involving time travel to the future and broaching the issues of whether or not the past is still immutable ... if the past you're looking back at is your present.

The more stories I write about these two, the less it becomes an adventure featuring them, and the more it becomes an adventure about them. Ishene's nature was important in my first story, but it was essentially a quest (sort of). The second story revolves around the death of Kemel's sister and how he deals with the fact that they can't change it, and it's also largely about their budding friendship - but it's still more about the mystery. The third story had other facets, but a pivotal point in the story was one of Ishene's shortcomings and the temptation to change it. This fourth story (whoot! Four) promises to be a lot about emotion, desires and her late fiance ...

(Book) Mercy Otis Warren by Jeffrey H. Richards

This isn't a formal Goodreads review because the book isn't in their database, but I wanted to comment briefly on it. I did read this book somewhat out of order - it would have made more sense to read her biography first - but I had already started it when I realized the nature of the book, so I decided to push on.

This book is an exhaustive analysis of Mercy Otis Warren's writings, how it fits in the framework of the times, and what she was trying to achieve with each type of writing. It covers her exhaustive letters to family, major political figures and female friends, her poetry, her plays and (almost paranthetically) the history book she wrote. Richards' book is dense, with long, complex sentences that sometimes need a moment to sit back and process. And I found it fascinating ... for the history, yes, but also for the thoughtful discussion of literature in context with the time period and purpose.

To some degree, the book is apologetic, framing Warren's weaknesses in context with her unique religious and political perspective and her purposes for writing. However, Richards balances deftly and avoids making his text a statement that we should ignore the flaws in favor of what the author was trying to say. He is honest about where her works make for compelling reading and character creation (esp. the plays, of course) and where they come up short.

I cannot put my finger on a specific writing-related thing I learned from this book, but I found it very absorbing and educational on a front the author really didn't intend. Of course, there are great pieces of history here, as well - the discussions of Warren's letters to the Adamses (Abigail *and* John) and the British author Catherine Macaulay in particular - though it's ultimately a specialty book for a reader interested in literature of the period.