Scenting Rain

So I've started working on my story with the sentences so graciously provided to me - thank you, thank you, thank you! I have a rough outline with which sentence goes where and I've already taken the plunge headed towards the first. For your amusement, the opening paragraphs of "Scenting Rain," completely unedited and with most of the worldbuilding being made up as I go along:

Gerune stood on the highest temple balcony, drenched in sweat, not rain. Though weary and defeated, she whispered prayers through cracked lips. Her eyes remained locked on the horizon, though too bleary to see anything more than a thin line of blood. She knew each of the three thousand, seven hundred and ninety one sacred winds that made up the consciousness of the goddess, by name and purpose and history, and spoke to them as a family servant might, one who had lived in their household since birth.

There was no answer. The blank sky flickered with mocking stars. A high priest of Terisu had nine days to pray for salvation before she had to admit failure. It was the ninth evening, and a new spring trickled in the shadow of the volcano, but that was not enough. The very fact that this small source of water sprouted in the shadow of the red god's monument condemned her.

The fiery scent of torches mixed with the desert night, burnt caramel. Gerune leaned forward, hands the color of teakwood curling about the rail. The city of Qeva twined below, its roads following the ancient lines of wind upon the oasis. Mud brick glowed golden and copper with the falling sun. Canopies fluttered everywhere, sun-guards washed only by the rain … except now they were dusty, grey, invisible where they once would have shone like pearls.

The Deadline ...

... is officially past, and I have not completed "Who Wants To Be A Hero?" though I am content with my progress. Thrills! Chills! Jokes about heroic cliches! Some really bad puns. And the philosophy of, "Anything for a good show," explodes in a big way.

Counting two lines given to me off-blog, I have enough sentences to work with. A very interesting mix of styles and implied plot points. (And Dan gives me the opportunity to indulge my obsession with describing scents.) I'm excited!

Sentenced to Death

I need your help, gentle readers (and not so gentle readers), with some random elements for a short story. I am seeking five sentences, as simple or complex, sensible or peculiar, as fancy takes you. Your criteria:

1. No specific references to the modern era or modern technologies, such as fridges, cars, etc. I may end up composing an urban story, but I'd prefer not to be locked into it.
2. No proper names. If the sentence needs to refer to someone by name, use "(Name)" for that. Yeah, yeah, but I would change it anyhow. Sorry!
3. No ****ing profanity. ;-)
4. One sentence. Not two sentences. Not a paragraph. You can stretch this a little with a line of dialogue, but don't go hog-wild.
5. A willingness to let me use the sentence verbatim in a story which may eventually be submitted for publication.

My rules for usage:

1. Pronouns may be changed freely, depending on if I decide to write in first or third person. Otherwise, sentences may not be altered whatsoever (except in case of typo).
2. Sentences may be used in any order.
3. If for some crazy reason I end up with more than five, I'll choose five randomly. The others are optional to include. (Or might become another exercise ...)

Anyone who wants to see the end result, drop your email in your reply. And thanks in advance for giving my lazy brain a jolt!

Thursday Thoughts

My subconscious is my greatest ally, solving problems in my writing that I often didn't even know I had, but I'm still often surprised by the way it surfaces. However, I've learned to live with the somewhat capricious impulses it conjures and even to harness them. For instance, I know that writer's block isn't a sign of rustiness or procrastination for me: it's my undermind telling that there's a plot problem, hole or weak spot that I need to resolve before I continue. So I've now learned that when I get that sense of reluctance and malaise to step back from the work and ask, "What's wrong?"

In this case, my subconscious granted me a real gift. This last episode of "Who Wants To Be A Hero?" has changed a lot since my original concept, when it was supposed to be a simple show-down between the last three contestants. The latest quirk not only enhances the drama (I hope!), it solves a problem that's been bothering me from the beginning: my main viewpoint character is (perhaps necessarily) rather passive. Now I get to put her in play with a vengeance, and it all makes sense with the development of the episode.

Not going to make the Valentine's Day deadline, but it looks like end of the month is a reasonable goal. I guess it'll be my personal birthday present to finish the darn manuscript. Wow, something about that just sounds wrong.

Word count for 2/3 - 2/9: 10,480

GoodReads Review: The Heart of Myrial

The Heart of Myrial by Maggie Furey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A sprawling fantasy epic in an intriguing variant on the "science fiction settlers colonized a new world" setting, The Heart of Myrial follows the lives, large and small, affected by the disintegration of the Curtain Walls which artificially separate environments and hostile races from each other. Devestating climate has driven the country of Callisiora to the brink as Veldan, her firedrake partner Kazairl, and the dragon Seer Aethon attempt to pass through.

The main problem with this book is it was immediately obvious that it was going to be the first in a series. I have no problem with sprawling epics, but it took almost seventy pages to return to the perspective and storyline that began the book. There are no spear-carriers in this book: everyone has a name, history and storyline. A little flavor and color is wonderful, but when everything is important, nothing is. And all these storylines intertwine, crisscrossing over each other in a way that would be compelling in smaller doses, but becomes hard to swallow in this quantity.

Then there's the infodumping in the early portions of the book, sometimes compounded by its insertion in, "As you know, Bob," dialogue. It's an intriguing world that Furey has created, promising many secrets, and the development does improve as it continues, but the start is rocky.

Yet after all this, there's a definite pleasure in watching the storylines unfold, the revelation of the villain, the building of many small relationships - and the twists that emerge from the original plot and even the backstory. The characters are enjoyable and sympathetic, even - perhaps especially - those minor characters who emerge when a face is needed in the crowd. Also, Furey has an interesting perspective on how people deal with grief and tragedy, something which (I think) will only have more power in future volumes.

I will definitely seek out the second book, but be warned that - while it's implied that the original plot problem may be resolved - by the time the book reaches that point, so many other situations have exploded that the end can properly be called a cliffhanger. It promises to be a fun ride ahead.

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"She's Not There" by the Zombies

So after watching tonight's episode of Glee, which contained one of my favorite "oldies" songs, "She's Not There" by The Zombies, I got curious what the song was "supposed" to be about and did a trawl on songmeanings.net.

I discovered something fairly shocking: the line(s) is: "Well, no one told me about her" etc etc.

I had always heard it as "Will no one tell me about her" etc etc.

In furtherance to this (though less jarring), the line that follows, "It's too late to say you're sorry," which is actually, "How would I know? Why should I care?" came out to my ear as, "I would I know, why should I care?" (Which does make sense: "I'd say sorry if I could, though why should I?" essentially.)

This pretty much led me straight into interpreting it as being a song reflecting back on the life of a dead lover. (Possibly the fact that it was by "the Zombies" helped, though that would have been subliminal.)

The "actual" lyrics throw an entirely different spin on the song. My little musical world is rocked. It's a good example of how a very subtle change flips the meaning about, though.

I still will persist in thinking of it as "Will no one tell me about her," though.

Thursday Thoughts

I'm surprised how productive a week this was, considering I had an obscene amount of work (professional work and domestic / admin work) on Thursday and Friday - to give you an idea, I stopped working on Friday (actually Saturday) at 1:15am - a lengthy rehearsal on Saturday; Monday and Tuesday, I was almost-couldn't-stand sick; and through it all, I've been cramming music for a Valentine's Day gig.

Sadly, the bulk of the work was not on the novel, but I finished my untitled Seven Swans retelling and knocked out my piece for the 2k story challenge - what's called an "Outside The Box" challenge. Basically, OTB starts with a round-robin challenge session, where each person offers a prompt for something that's unusual or difficult to do in fantasy, the next person takes it and offers a prompt of their own ... it initially started as a targeted challenge, where members would challenge each other to fix their weaknesses, but it evolved into a more general / informal form.

Since I started this round, I gave the first prompt - "Write a story about an aunt / niece or uncle / nephew pair in which the setting is in some way a character" - and took the last one when the alloted time for issuing challenges was up - "Write a comedy of errors in which the only actual problem is miscommunication." To ensure that everyone has time to read each other's entries, there's a 2k word limit, which for me is possibly harder than any prompt unless I am starting out to write flash ... but I managed it.

One person has already posted theirs; five more (including mine) to go. Looking forward to seeing what other folks have.

Word count for 1/27 - 2/2: 10,870

GoodReads Review: The Cater Street Hangman

The Cater Street Hangman by Anne Perry

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Though this is the first Charlotte and Inspector Pitt novel, it's the actual the second I read, because I couldn't get ahold of this one initially. It took a bit of secondhand bookstore trawling to find, but turned out to be well worth the hunt. If you are interested in reading and enjoying this book, I highly recommend you don't read later in the series first: I had some of the twists and turns spoiled for me because I had read "Callander Square" not too long ago. Especially because this is the first book, the lives of the characters are highly defined by its events.

At first, the specter of murder - the death of a maid - that hovers over Cater Street is more of a nuisance to its wealthy inhabitants ... doubly so the policeman who comes to investigate. Sharp-tongued Charlotte, the middle daughter, in particular clashes with the inspector ... but when a maid in their own household falls victim, the entire family is drawn into rampant suspicion and the dissolution of family trusts and truths.

Because the reader and the central family are on the inside of the crime, the emotional and psychological elements are far more engaging in this book than in "Callander Square." The way a little suspicion can shatter trust forever is powerfully examined here. If the book starts a bit shaky - I had to reread more than a few sections to tell the family members apart, until I got used to them - it develops in full and intriguing fashion.

Another worthy component of this book is the segments where the Cater Street characters (primarily Charlotte) learn about the bizarre and foreign world of the criminal and the poor. Because it is equally stranger to the reader, we get to share in their shock and confusion. Even though it's almost unabashed infodump, it's eminently readable.

The mystery itself is almost secondary to all this. As mysteries go, it's not even particularly mysterious, though Perry attempts to heighten the drama by indicating by positing that the murderer might not even know he is committing the crimes. I found this a rather transparent ploy to make point-of-view characters into suspects, and not too convincing. Also a mis-step is George Ashwood's behavior. I never did get a satisfactory explanation of the difference between his reputation and his decision in regards to Emily.

I thought the central love story in the book was a little forced ... a few steps missing, though perhaps forgiveable with the restrictions on love in the Victorian era. Rather than having long, drawn-out romances, people ... got married. But in its own way, this book is a long, drawn-out romance, a frenetic connection with human nature bound up in the ritual of appearances. For that, it is a worthwhile read indeed.

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Anatomy of an Idea: A Thousand Strips of Parchment

Real brief this time: the originating idea for this villanelle was a concept that really resonates with me, the oracle / prophet and how they deal with the gift of foresight. How do you cope when there's no way to change the future? How do cope when there is? If you have this talent, how much should you sacrifice to share it? Or are other people better off ignorant?

A few years ago, I joined the Muse Online Writer's Workshop and signed up for the poetry class. Part of the course was to post a poem daily for critique. This was the second one I wrote specifically for the course - the first was The Rivers of Nowhere, which is still seeking a home. I very deliberately chose a hard rhyme scheme, knowing that the difficulty was multiplied when dealing with a villanelle. (Villanelles were one of the first kind of poetic form I'd ever worked with, and I had several under my belt at this point ... so I knew exactly what I was getting into.)

Some of the comments were helpful and assisted me in revising and tweaking the poem for its current home.

Now out!

"A Thousand Strips of Parchment" is now up at Strong Verse! Direct link:
http://www.strongverse.org/cgi-bin/poiesis.pl?search=-403&header=number&method=perfect&template=poem

I had a wretched night last night (woke up at 6am with ripping, almost-called-hospital stomach pains), so ... really nice to wake up to.

Thursday Thoughts

My cyberpunk retelling of "The Seven Swans" is on its way towards the climax, so I'm hoping to finish it this week. It has turned out to be a rather long story, but in contemplating it, I've realized that I really had to tell two (and a half) stories: the main plot, then the love story to establish her relationship with the "king" ... and finally, interactions with her brothers to show how she feels about them. Not a full story, but a narrative thread. I felt I needed to flesh both these out for the emotional component of the story.

Not so sure about finishing my novel by the Valentine's Day deadline. I've just finished the competition portion of the second-to-last episode, and I could probably do it, but that would mean writing nothing else for the next two and a half weeks ... and I've got a short story to finish, the FWO February challenge to contemplate, a couple of free writes I want to make because they're good for my writer-brain, and a 2k story challenge I've committed myself to.

I still have no idea what's going to happen in the last episode, but I finally had a brainstorm that helped me worked out the problem I had with the romantic subplot. Totally not a direction I had anticipated going initially ...

When I finally do edit this novel, I'm going to have to break down the episodes both organically and mechanically, and see how the actual size versus the flow and pacing work together.

Word count for 1/20 - 1/26: 11,669

GoodReads Review: The Fourth Bear

The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I'm a big fan of Jasper Fforde, but I prefer his other series. Still, to tide me over until the next Next book, I decided to give this one a try. What I found was a delightful romp through conspiracy theories definitively not involving the book's prosaic aliens, twists, turns and well-incorporated metahumor resulting in a satisfying read.

Jack Spratt (of "eats no fat" fame, occasional giant killer, necessarily insane) is head of the Nursery Crimes Division of the police force and, cast into disgrace due to fall out from a recent case, is placed at leave and at odd ends until a female reporter disappears ... and it looks increasingly that she may be the PDR (Person of Dubious Reality) Goldilocks.

Fforde does an excellent job of maintaining a tone that supports even the most self-aware commentary by the characters without jarring the reader out of the story. The humor is fast-paced and works on several different levels. This book features little clips at the beginning of each chapter with various bizarre world records. Fforde has always used flavor quotes to open his chapters, but here, it works even better: the continuing theme ties them all together nicely, and each one has relevance to the chapter that follows. It's great literary glue.

My only problem with the Nursery Crimes series is that, with occasional exceptions, I feel distant from the characters. The narration level seems shallow - we don't get deep into the characters' heads, so one feels removed from them. This makes it harder to invest emotionally, and occasionally to follow the action.

That said, I think Fforde's head works like mine (or as I certainly aspire it to work!). Ursine substance abuse, binary-speaking aliens, giant cucumbers, Dorian Gray's used cars and a serial-killing baked good all appear to have absolutely nothing to do with each other, and yet they're woven together perfectly. Fillers and details often prove to have unexpected significance later in the story. (I do think a joke about the Gingerbreadman being a "Ginja" assassin missed - just too corny and Fforde kept repeating it in a short span of space so much I wanted to apply a fried fish to his head.)

Quick, clever and highly recommended.

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Sentence Lengths

Common wisdom in writing is that when you want to convey rapid action sequences, switch to short sentences. Sometimes I'll adhere to this, but other times, I actually find the opposite is more effective: using long, almost run-on (but still grammatically correct) sentences to convey the action.

To me, it's a matter of breath control. Every time you have a short sentence, you get to stop at each period. Dot. Dot. Dot. Now, each pause is placed in a staccato, rapidfire fashion ... but it is a pause. Whereas with a longer sentence, you almost "run out of breath" as clause piles on clause.

Obviously, it's tricky to build these sentences so they're easy to read and don't force a reader to double back to the beginning, but it can be done. Also, of course, like any technique, this can be overused.

To me, the best way to explain "short sentences for conflict" versus "long sentences for conflict" is the difference between a whole bunch of things happening in rapid succession and a whole bunch of things that seem to be happening all at once. Short sentences will give you an event-event-event gauntlet. Long sentences will give you an EVENTS! melee.

Thursday Thoughts

I remain concerned about the burgeoning length of the episodes in my novel. On the one hand, I wanted them to resemble one hour episodes. On the other hand, I have this theory (unconfirmed!) that longer segments about fewer characters will be more appealing to readers than the shorter vignettes about a larger number. Some point around two thirds of the way through, I swapped from snippets to relating the whole adventure, which naturally bumped the word count up. I may operate and remove some of the connective tissue later.

Somehow, that sounds painful.

I finished a story this week that is rather unlike me. It's somewhat plotless (though there is a throughline about the main character's husband, it's not the central focus), instead exploring the various ways people cope with or deny the realization the world is going to end. Best classified as soft science fiction. This is either one of the best things I've ever written or one of the worst. No middle ground, and gosh if I know.

Still working on catching up on my old free-writes. The next one is my cyberpunk take on The Seven Swans ...

Word count for 1/13 - 1/19: 8,963

New Blog

In my madness and ambition, I have started a second blog, Evil Overlady in the Kitchen, intended to amuse and divert with my adventures in the culinary arts. Also reviewing and commenting on recipes. The primary thrust of the blog is comedy, so hopefully it will be interesting to some of a non-culinary bent ... or if nothing else make them feel better about their own kitchen skills after reading my left-handed lampooning.

GoodReads review: Thunderer

Thunderer by Felix Gilman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Thunderer is a complex novel about an enigmatic, labyrinthine city with unknown boundaries; the bizarre, indifferent gods that flood its streets; and a cast of characters navigating this maze, foremost among them Arjun, a priest seeking his lost god of music, the Voice. And the list really should be in that order: it's first and foremost a book of setting, and everything else cascades from there. It's been a long time since I've read a book where the world was so perfectly integrated into and necessary to the plot. That aspect of the book is phenomenal, and leaves the reader with intriguing questions: how aware are the gods of their worshippers? Are they free-willed beings, or do they follow mechanical rules? Can the city be measured? What else lies within its walls?

Unfortunately, there were some ambiguities in the setting that detracted from it. I was never quite clear on the tech level. Sometimes, it seemed Victorian; other references seemed downright modern. Mostly, this was a matter of word choice.

Outside of the setting is where this story falters. The primary "romance" in the book is emblematic of much of the decisions the characters make: an accommodation of convenience, not love, not even lust. Only Jack seems to put his claws into a goal and go for it wholeheartedly; the other characters stumble through, letting themselves be detoured because they can't see a clearer way to their goals. This keeps the emotional timbre of the book low throughout, with one major spike near the end ... after which it drops off to attempt a second, lesser climax.

On the positive side, I enjoyed the way the characters didn't quite intersect or interact, but rather passed each other - or rumors of each other - on the vast streets of their tiny corner of the city. When they finally do collide, they do so with powerful literary momentum, and the result is the most satisfying section of the book.

Ultimately, this book was interesting and impressive, but left me cold. I don't know that I care enough about this absorbing setting to read the sequel.

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Pictorial Note

<----- Going to put rotating fractals up here, changed ... whenever I feel like it. All artwork copyright me.

Movies

I just came to a somewhat surprising realization ... I'm a bit of a movie buff.

I suppose it shouldn't be surprising, considering I used to watch a good dozen movies a month, and I still enjoy kicking back with a new film, whatever the genre ... but I never think of myself as having seen that many movies. I guess the thrill of a movie is I can turn off my analytical, editing / critiquing brain and enjoy the film ... mostly. I still do notice the occasional plot hole or weak moment.

This came up due to a discussion on Fantasy-Writers.org, where we were discussing the escape plan or heist, and arguably the best examples come from movies because of the ability to conceal and reveal. Besides Leverage and the new Ocean's movies, which had already been mentioned, I brought up Lucky Number Slevin and Who Is Cletis Tout? (That's not a punctuation mistake. The question mark is in the title.) These are both pretty good examples of that genre, but dang ... who here has heard of or seen these? (Though Slevin has an insane cast: Morgan Freeman, Bruce Willis, Ben Kingsley ... on top of Josh Hartnett and Lucy Liu, just to add insult to injury.)

(I'm also a parantheses fanatic, but we'll get to that another time.)

I really hate the "big secret" kind of romantic comedy, where the tension comes from hiding something and then the fact that the other person refuses to stop and hear them out (seriously!), creating another false twenty minutes of tension so the movie doesn't end early. I've seen a few good recent examples of romantic comedies that don't follow this pattern: the slightly off-beat Love Happens, Leap Year, and When In Rome. The last is probably the most adorable thing I've seen in a while. It's hilariously implausible and sweet as anything. Carve out some time for that one.

Up In The Air gets points from me for being surprisingly layered and nuanced, and not going where you expect it to. This is definitely not a fluffy, formulaic film, but it's not an arthouse piece, either. Just don't watch it when you're already feeling depressed.

Got any recent recommendations for me? I'm still trying to catch up - I haven't rented a movie in a while, so I'm now picking up things as they premiere on television. I do have the premium movie channels, so I get them on that time-table.

A Thousand Strips ...

My poem "A Thousand Strips of Parchment" just sold to Strong Verse! This is a villanelle where I tackle a subject I'm confessedly obsessed with, how oracles deal with the implications of knowing the future and not being able to change it. More of my evil poetry seepeth out into the unsuspecting world ...

Thursday Thoughts

Finished writing a short story this week for the FWO sequel story challenge. Light dawned, the angelic choruses sung, and I am going to need to swear up and down to the members that I don't always write about music-related topics, because this one is back to my rhythmists, mages who shape spells through percussive (non-musical) patterns.

The story which I am sequelling (and verbing) was originally written for the "write a main character who isn't a hero" challenge. Rather than take that as writing from the perspective of a villain or an anti-hero, I decided to write a very ordinary, non-heroic character whose actions still drove the story despite himself.

With this sequel, without the pressure to keep him from doing brave deeds, Dossian gets bold. What he doesn't get is particularly competent. I had a blast writing him fumbling around. He's not the kind of person you'd want watching your back in a fight. You'd be worried he'd hit you instead.

The novel continues apace. I'm into Episode Nine - the second to last episode - and looking on track. I have no idea what's going to happen as we come into the closing round, especially with my romantic subplot, for which there appears no satisfactory conclusion ... but that's part of the fun of it.

Word count for 1/6 - 1/12: 11,829

GoodReads Review: Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Blending biographical fact (almost) seamlessly with the fantastic, this book creates an impressive secret history for president Lincoln, infusing it from his earliest days with the spectral presence of vampires. It is also accompanied by illustrations, which are cleverly photoshopped and/or reinterpreted to highlight the influence of vampires in Lincoln's life.

This book is written in the style of many immersive biographies, and in general, carries it off quite well. There were some hitches, though: I found the frame narration explaining how the author had gotten his hands on Lincoln's vampire-hunting journals unnecessary and thought it confused reader expectations. If Lincoln did have such a journal, why not just publish it, rather than an interpretation?

The journal segments aren't always spliced well, either: occasionally, one sentence will be plopped into the middle of a narrative passage, jerking one back and forth. The majority of the excerpts are better handled, though.

The final stylistic issue is with the dream sequences. These are again a huge confusion, because they aren't prefaced as dreams, so disorientation ensues. I guess they were meant to foreshadow Lincoln's famous last dream, but it just didn't work for me.

As far as the incorporation of vampires, I was wholeheartedly impressed. Grahame-Smith incorporates vampire lore into Roanoke and the life of Edgar Allan Poe, as well as invoking the connection with Erzsebet Bathory. I was worried that the connection between vampires and the Civil War / slavery would be spuriously, but it’s simply and convincingly connected. On the flip side, I did get a bit exasperated when everything in the book came back to vampires (or the author made a point of clarifying / reminding us when it didn’t).

High marks, too, for the handling of vampires: they’re clearly monstrous, and the mystique and charm of them is handled without it ever predominating.

Overall, this is a solid, well-executed read, an entertaining story that makes good use of its form. It’s a fun play on history.

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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.