Sunday Snippet

Since I've been talking about Flow a fair bit lately, here's the opening of another short story in the same setting:

Crouched over his laptop in a dank SleepRite motel somewhere southwest of Cleveland, Mannix Tippet waited for the werewolf to call.

The beast was not expecting Mannix to answer. The room three doors down was temporary residence of the water-witch Tala Blight, who had offered him sanctuary and a cure - as if that could absolve him of the blood he had shed. It had been simplicity to tap the hotel phone system. When the beast called Tala's room to confirm where they would meet tonight, he would not reach her.

Mannix shifted on the bed, starting a minor fugue in the springs, and pulled up his file on Blight. There before him, all the electronic details of her life: her saving habits to her tastes in fiction to how many times she had purchased lavish presents for friends who never reciprocated. Something more precise and useful than magic. Witches relied on it too much; she didn't even own a cellphone.

He knew, without asking questions, that he would kill her. His malice was not for her personally, but it was also immutable. His superiors in the Borderwatch had told him there was informal peace and the supernatural threats both organizations had to face were more important than any difference in methods. The word 'peace' was hollow when a good man like his cousin died on a mission - and the unidentified witch who guided him emerged without a mark on her.

His cousin had drowned.

Mannix had read the official report, which claimed it had been an accident. That meant nothing when a few bytes could erase any truth.

"Take the beast," were his official orders from the Borderwatch. "Use her to find him if you have to, but make sure you can deny it."

Thursday Thoughts

So much work, so little time! I'm currently trying to finish a story for an anthology call at the end of the month, and I realize that at some point, I am probably going to have to put everything else down and cram it if I want to finish and do any editing. As I have previously stated (somewhat tongue in cheek), it would probably be technically cleaner if I didn't have time to edit - but that's the only part of the story that might be better for not being touched. But in part due to a crazy-busy schedule, in part due to four major house issues I've had to wrestle, and in part due to the gaming (I admit it!), my progress for the past few weeks has slowed to a crawl.

Also working on character profiles for my mystery story and ran into a very silly problem. I had initially drawn up the suspects list with the victim's sister as one of the suspects - an issue of greed, as she would become the guardian of the victim's son. Then, when I sat down to write this character, this intense, perfect background wove its way out of me ... and the character was both an orphan and single. Whoops.

I thought about this long and hard, and decided to ditch the sister line. I have enough different motives and characters not to need greed, and the "new" background better fits the victim's style.

7/7 - 7/13

Word Count: 727

GoodReads Review: The Leper of Saint Giles

Leper of Saint Giles by Ellis Peters

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


In this fifth novel of worldly monk and self-appointed detective Cadfael, the tension of the book hinges first upon a bleak arranged marriage and the young man who is in love with the bride. Murder, when it occurs, adds a new dimension to an already intriguing storyline. There is a rhythm, a pattern and poetry to Ellis Peters' novels, and if that makes certain aspects of the story predictable, the tradeoff is the experience of the book.

Peters is as devoted - if not more - to showing the positive, luminous side of humanity, kind deeds both large and small, and her books brim with people who rise above the gravity of the crime. For me, personally, I sometimes find her take on pure young love to be repetitive, and I'd love to see darker romances ... but the characters in these books are always skillfully drawn and entertaining.

The writing style is poetic and leisurely, prone to details and a certain delicacy in description. It's not for those who prefer a swift, action-packed pace, but is ideal for slow immersion.

One of the best features of this series is that both the broader history - the tumult occurring in England between Empress Maud and King Stephen - and the personal history of Cadfael continue to evolve and change, not in earthshattering ways, but in subtle, organic steps. Shrewsbury can be relied upon both for its stability and for its forward momentum. However, a reader can pick up any of the books and generally feel neither lost nor as if something has been spoiled, should they go back and read an earlier volume.

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Fatecraft out! (Again ;-))

I always forget that Darwin's Evolutions seems to do releases right around midnight ... so here's Fatecraft! Meet Pazia and poor, put-upon Vanchen over at:

Fatecraft

Sunday Snippet

Here's a quick piece from a short story I'm working on in the Flow universe. Irena has gotten curious about her new neighbor and gone digging about in the boxes in her garage:


Her fingers scrabbled at a cardboard flap, pulled it free. The scent of mothballs and something else, a little cloying – familiar, but out of context. It was full of snow globes; even the little tap she had given the box caused endless blizzards within. She scooped one out of the box. Instead of the expected scene – a cute snowman or a foreign landmark – there was a little cornhusk doll …

“What are you doing?”

Irena yelped and dropped the globe. It pinged off the concrete. She whirled to face her accuser, feeling the flush burn her cheeks. Moira Alban was a tall woman somewhere in the infinite expanse of middle age with auburn hair and eyes the color of a storm.

“Well, if it isn’t the girl who stole the kiwi,” she continued.

“I did not,” Irena said by reflex, then bent for the snow-globe. “I was just curious …”

She hadn’t seen the globe roll, but somehow, it was at Moira’s feet and the woman cradled it like something infinitely precious. “Do you understand the hazards of curiosity?”

In the chill and the dark of the garage, the words seemed menacing. Irena drew back, her heart pounding with a rabbit’s fear – even though she could easily have dodged past Moira, even though hers was the next driveway over and kids shouted at each other in the yard across the street. The rescue of that scene seemed impossibly far away.

“Killed the cat,” Irena said bluntly, and wished she hadn’t. Her skin prickled, even as her mind shouted at her that it was ridiculous. Neighbors didn’t attack each other for picking through boxes, and the garage door had been open. Surely that was an invitation. And how would Moira hurt her, besides?

Just by looking at her, she somehow knew.

Then Moira laughed, a full, rich sound animating the air. The menace evaporated. “Not the most original answer, but it will do. Since you’ve meddled with my boxes, you can help me carry them inside. Come, child.”

Thursday Thoughts

Over the past few weeks, I've been sucked back into online gaming, which means less writing. It's a vice of mine to which I freely confess - but I also believe it to be valuable as writing practice, as it were, and is especially helpful in the area of clarity. If what you've typed out for your character to do / say doesn't make sense, you find out immediately. Cue conversations that involve characters yelping, "Ack, no - not what I meant!" or OOC (Out Of Character) conferences to straighten things out.

As someone who also GMs - that's GameMaster, for those unfamiliar, and yes, it can be a verb ;-) - it also helps on the plotting side. My experience has been that other players routinely come up with courses of investigation or action that I would never have even thought up if I had been writing a tale out on my own. So I have to rewind, sidestep and work out new responses.

So I'm indulging myself in these dangerous waters for now, with an eye on how much time it takes away from my projects. I'm also reading - Ellis Peters, which means that I tend to describe my life thusly: "Brother Cadfael and I are going to get my car's oil changed." "Brother Cadfael and I have a dentist's appointment."

6/30 - 7/6
Word count: 854 (yes, really ... sigh)

Sunday Snippet

More Scylla and Charybdis from a few chapters later. Aboard the cargo spaceship known as the Bleak, she makes the acquaintance of Tobias Risingsun Mortimer, or Flick:



They ate a second meal together and Flick talked about some of his experiences in Defiance, his inventions, his grandmother – who, by process of deduction, seemed to be the only family he had. Anaea pieced together what a Tweaker was: a salvage expert who could give anything that might otherwise have been thrown away a new form and purpose … and an inventor without government sanction or funding. A unique product of the Pinnacle Empire.

She found that by phrasing her questions in an open-ended manner, she could keep Flick talking while sharing little in return. His cheerful spates of information sputtered out occasionally into jokes or questions – but he seemed more interested in what she thought of the crew or hypermentals or philosophical oddities than personal details.

“I mean, supposing they give every child an aptitude test,” he said. “Whatever they turn out to be good at, that’s what they do in life. It’d be efficient, right?”

“How could you possibly design a test that would cover all variables?” Anaea asked.

He crinkled his nose. “Neural mapping on a particular field of tests could account for that – but you’re avoiding the point. Would it be good for people?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I’m not an expert -”

“You don’t have to be an expert!” he burst out, gesturing wildly with his fork. “You just have to be human. You just have to have a heart in things.”

She wondered what he would think of the way she had left her home. “I suppose just as a thought exercise -”

The ship shuddered. Anaea’s plate slid out of her grasp and clattered on the floor. An animal bellowed.

An unfamiliar voice came through the overhead. “Captain of the Bleak, you have twenty seconds to surrender. Passengers of the Bleak, the warning shot you have experienced represents only a fraction of our firepower, and your only chance is to prevail upon its commander not to test it.”

The voice faded out, and was replaced by the tail end of creative cursing from the Bleak’s captain. “… frighten the passengers into mutiny, of all the low things -”

“You’re on broadcast,” someone else said.

Anaea rose in a flurry, then stopped, the blood humming in her ears. Pragmatism pulled her panic into stillness. Where would she go? She looked to Flick for some reaction, hoping to see him calm, even bored, but he sat shaking his head like a furry dog.

“Oh, no, no,” he said, “I put most of my take into hard barter -” He seemed to realize only then he was speaking out loud and pressed his lips together into a frustrated line.

“Everyone remain calm,” the captain’s voice continued. “They don’t know who they’re dealing with. The Bleak has outgun and outrun every decent pirate in the sector.”

“What about the indecent ones?” Flick said in a sotto voce. The other two passengers in the mess glared.

The deck pitched. The furniture was secure; nothing else was. Anaea tumbled, landing elbow-first in a corner with the remnants of two or three lunches. Voices yowled – animal or human, it was impossible to tell. Her arm throbbed.

Flick grabbed her wrist before she could stand. “Should’ve known a berth like this wouldn’t have the high-grade inertial dampeners,” he said. “Stay down. Crawl along the fixtures. Though really, where are you going? It’s raining food, what more could you ask for?”

She recognized his manic cheer for worry and swallowed.

"Wet and Wild" Giveaway for July!

To celebrate the acceptance of my contemporary fantasy novel, "Flow," for publication by Double Dragon, I've decided to have "Wet and Wild" Giveaway for the whole month of July. Here are the details:


1. Purchase my novelette (that's a long short, for the uninitiated) "Taming The Weald" from Gypsy Shadow Publishing sometime during the month of July. Make sure you purchase it directly from GSP - the editors have graciously offered to send me the email addresses of those who do, but I won't have a record if you purchase it elsewhere! It can be found under their Moonbeams line, or here: Taming The Weald. That's the Wild portion ...


2. Sit back, relax, and you will receive two tracks from my studio-produced Celtic harp CD, "Rolling of the Stone." The tracks in question are: "Fingal's Cave / The North Brig of Edinburgh" - that's bridge to you non-Scots - and "Banks of the Spey / Tommy's Tarbukas." That's the Wet portion: two water-themed tunes and their medleyed companions.


Please feel free to pass this along to anyone who might be interested!

Thursday Thoughts

Finished my time mage story a few days ago, which I wasn't entirely sure I was going to have completed before the end of the month ... maybe a bit of time magic leached out of the story into my fingers.

I just did an edit with Darwin Garrison for the reprint of "Fatecraft" (forthcoming soon) and was very surprised by several things when rereading the story. First of all, just how hyper Pazia is - she has a lot of energy and determination. Second of all, there's this reference to clockwork ruins throughout the world that just begs exploration - and I had totally forgotten about this.

Third of all, two moons. Two, Lindsey. Gosh, I hope I haven't contradicted that in "Natural Selection" or "The City of Lanterns."

I find this issue with short stories: since I don't do worldbuilding or take notes, all these aspects are found only in the stories themselves, which means rereading or skimming to recover key details. It may be part of the reason why I don't do many series stories.

In this instance, what I found throws a wrinkle into the idea of a novel in this setting. I had been thinking of a mystery, closely involving Kalliniar (the light-mage from "The City of Lanterns") - but those ruins, they beckon. The two concepts seem contradictory, so which way I'd jump is now a mystery. No pun intended.

6/23 - 6/29

Word count: 2,621

GoodReads Review: Familiars

Familiars by Denise Little

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This anthology offers stories about the mage's faithful companion, the familiar, and promises to depart from the usual cliches with new and different interpretations. Unfortunately, it fails on this account. Most of the stories do involve cats or dogs - which seems to be to be the obvious anti-cliche of the familiar world - and the familiars generally play an expected role in the story. (There is one tale where the familiar is particularly clever, which I won't identify because it spoils the ending ... but it's the only story where I felt the familiar was an intriguing, different sort of beast.)

I initially was going to give this anthology three stars, because most of the stories are passable and entertaining enough, and a couple shine: the riotous (if somewhat loosely plotted) "First Familiars," by Laura Resnick, which manages to take on the Clinton's pets and still marvelously avoids partisan commentary; and "This Dog Watched," by Von Jocks, where magic, love and the power of words blend together into a poetry of their own. However, many of the stories seemed uneven, bland or incomplete, and the final story is a bewildering eighty-nine page epic where I still couldn't tell you exactly what happened and why.

I also found the description of this anthology somewhat misleading, because a large majority of the stories are contemporary, with only a few set in secondary worlds. With so many options for familiars in different societies, I was a bit disappointed by this. Not that I mind modern stories, but I feel the description of an anthology should be more upfront about the contents.

In the end, most of the stories were a decent read, but predictable or forgettable.

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Big to Little or Vice Versa?

I've reached the point in fantasy / mystery novel work where I'm starting on character profiles, and I wondered ... for those of you who do work in advance, whether writing descriptions, doing mock-interviews, or whatever it is you do to get a handle on your characters - do you usually start with the main character and work your way down to minor members of the cast, or do you start with fringe characters to get a feel for things and work your way up?

Sunday Snippets

Here's a bit from my science fiction novel-in-editing, Scylla and Charybdis, where I ponder a possible future of books:

The library was an austere rose-marble building with a dome ceiling and two abstract figure sculptures for front pillars. Pulses of light passed through their glass limbs, mimicking features. Inside, two doors led into massive chambers on either side, but Anaea’s attention was drawn to the central dome and the encased pillar there.

“Central terminal,” Gwydion explained. “More comprehensive and faster than using the link.” The other rooms were for group holographs, school programs and tours. Past the terminal was a series of isolation doors.

Anaea pressed herself up against the isolation doors with a little cry of astonishment. In that sealed, regulated environment stood shelves upon shelves of real books: massive hardbounds, some with plastic, others velvet or vineskin, paperbacks staggering in untidy lines, and everything in between.

Labels on the shelves divided them by subject and origin. She could see two sections that dated to before landfall on Elysium.

“Oh,” she said, warmed by some ancestral feeling of ownership. Her hand uncurled against the glass.

“I feel the same way,” he said. “It’s silly, I know, old-fashioned – but something about the fact they don’t change, that every word is permanent, speaks to me.”

“I like that they’re not dependent on anything else,” Anaea said. “A world to themselves.” Like home, she thought, and felt a twinge of regret.

To assuage that sickness, she pondered the idea of working here, the meticulous attention to detail and the constant guard against decay. New books must be printed occasionally for collectors or historians, but the originals were priceless. There was charm in the idea, but that might be the novelty.

Gwydion had moved away, speaking in soft tones to his link. He smiled ruefully when she turned to face him. “The officer I report to wants to speak with me,” he said. “I think it would be better if he didn’t meet you just yet. Will you -”

“I don’t need to be chaperoned,” she assured him. “I can find my way back.”

He slipped out. Apart from a few voices in one viewing room, she seemed to be alone. She studied the labels on the bookshelves, noticing the preponderance of fiction. The soft light blurred too much detail to read more than a few of the covers.

The directions next to the door sternly admonished that visitors must be accompanied, clean, free of food, beverage and disease, and that the decontamination protocols took two minutes during which it was crucial the visitor remain still. The implied castigation turned her elsewhere.

Thursday Thoughts

My process with worldbuilding continues to sprawl in all directions - I keep remembering additional key details and backtracking to provide them for the relevant nations. What I last forgot was appearance and apparel. How appalling. Especially as one of the things I used to like to record in the past was what features certain cultures found attractive. It's an interesting / different way to look at appearance, I find, and it makes you (or at least me!) consider possibilities that don't have Earth parallels. This, to me, is always positive.

Not been writing near as much as I would like, but getting back into the groove more. I was mentally stopping up on my Ishene and Kemel story, and sure enough, there was a reason for it: a plot-hole I had to plug ... or at least toss dirt into. I'm not sure I entirely fixed it. Still, when I get "writer's block," it's my subconscious going, "Houston, we have a problem," so I try to stop and gnaw over what's going on rather than shoving forward blind.

6/16 - 6/22
Word count: 3,148

Anatomy of an Idea: Saplings

Warning: contains spoilers. Please read "Saplings" first if you're going to.

"Saplings" is easily one of the most peculiarly populated stories I've written in terms of the characters and elements I used. My initial inspiration for the story was to do a word-hop. This is a writing exercise I created for myself where I gather a list of words, put them in any order, and start writing. For every hundred words, I have to incorporate the next word on the list somehow.

With "Saplings," the word list was every "fun" word I could think of that started with H. I got some volunteers from fantasy-writers.org to offer me suggestions, as well. I ended up with a sizable list, though not enough to take me through the whole story. So be it! If you look at Saplings carefully, you'll notice some of the more unusual H words popping out here and there.

Before starting, I needed some general idea of the plot. The word list suggested that an herbalist would be a good idea. I'm not sure where the idea to write about a character who watched royal / prominent children came from, but as I developed it, I realized I needed a reason for a young, fish-out-of-water herbalist to be entrusted with such responsibility. Ping! Nanny powers. (And even though I didn't use that term in the story, that's how I think of them.)

I quickly decided that I wanted the story to take a twist in that the child who was abducted was not going to be the prince or the High Sorcerer's daughter - but rather the gardener's son. My main character would probably assume that this was a mistake, but it wouldn't be ... and what kind of foe would hold a grudge against a gardener, a man of growing things? From there evolved the idea of using vicious tree spirits as my antagonists.

I didn't know how the story was going to end when it started, but as I hopped along from word to word, I realized that it had to somehow stem from her nanny powers. I only figured it out as I got much closer ... that her ability to protect had to overcome the odds, had to be central to the conclusion.

So that's "Saplings" in a nutshell. No pun intended. Ahem.

Saplings now up at Mindflights!

My story, Saplings - about an herbalist with what I can only describe as "nanny powers" - is now up at Mindflights. Check it out! Here's the direct link:

Saplings

Update: I'm being told that, for some reason, the link isn't working for everyone - so the main Mindflights page is http://www.mindflights.com

GoodReads Review: The Magicians and Mrs. Quent

The Magicians and Mrs. Quent by Galen M. Beckett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book gets four stars from me somewhat reluctantly, but the world and concept, the atmosphere and some of the beautiful passages carry it from three stars in other aspects. Take the socially rigid world of Jane Austen's novel, combine it with magic and given bookish heroine Ivy a mission to uncover the mystery of her father's illness, and you have the essence of The Magicians and Mrs. Quent. Other threads move through this novel - the adventures of dapper gentleman Rafferdy and his poor, struggling friend Eldyn, with the mysterious power to weave shadows - but Ivy's story is the centerpiece.

I confess that I have yet to read any of Austen's novels, though I've seen films of I think every book (including a bleary 2am viewing of Northanger Abby at a sleepover where I'm not sure the viewing millieu made the story more or less comprehensible), but I loved Jane Eyre (the book!) and I saw the influences of both very clearly and wonderfully here. The banter, the social awareness, it crackles and snaps, as alive as any character. Sometimes, I found the first person section was so close to Jane Eyre that it approached pastiche, but the world is deep, consistent and intriguing. It brims with conflict and history.

My main problem with the novel is that these threads didn't come completely together, cross or mesh in a convincing way. Emblematic of this is the way that the novel abruptly leaps into first person for the middle section and then returns to third person for the conclusion, picking up the threads of characters not seen for a hundred and fifty pages. Important events are glossed over or summarized, time compressed artificially to keep the action moving while still accounting (partly) for what happened during Ivy's narration. (I also found the pretext of writing imaginary letters to her father to be a thin justification for first person.) The net sum of this: it makes the initial section of the book feel like an extended prologue.

Indeed, that's indicative of a larger problem in the novel. So much happened in the book (particularly with the romantic storylines) that was summarized or skipped over, when I felt it was crucial to feel every moment of the characters and their response. I don't understand the logic of Beckett's choices of what to skim. By contrast, the final climactic scene felt somewhat ridiculous to me because of the large amount of minutiae the characters had to wade through.

I did like the way the Ivy and Rafferdy storyline played out. It would have been so easy for Beckett to take an uncomfortable and obvious route when they reunited, and I am very glad for it. (I can't be more specific without spoiling!)

I am not entirely reconciled to the use of magic in the novel. It seems to add insult to the injury of the social system and point towards a conclusion that women can only act successfully by influencing and directing men. There are some elements in the book that lead in the other direction, but I wasn't quite satisfied that they undermined this unpalatable message. I understand, of course, that Beckett isn't required to make his world "fair," but the way it was portrayed grated on me.

But in the end, this is a perfect example of a book that carried through to a satisfying conclusion while leaving fertile ground for a sequel, and one I will eagerly read.

Oh, and the title is awful. If one has to read over half the book before one has even an inkling what it means, it had better be a lightbulb moment, not just an affirmation of fact.

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Sunday Snippets

I decided I'm going to try a new weekly pattern: posting a snippet of a work in progress (or perhaps a story for sale) every Sunday.

Alas, I do not have anything specifically appropriate for Father's Day, so y'all will have to settle for a story in honor of the grandfather (paradox). In this story, Ishene (the narrator) is a time mage, and along with her bodyguard Kemel, is tracking a rogue time mage who seems to be trying to change history by preventing the destruction of a historical landmark. The pair have traveled back in time to that fateful day:


We stood on the banks of the Aysil, a river renowned for its voice. Bargemen called harmonies across the water as they poled past. The city of Riesden rose from the banks like an immense ship never to leave its moorings.

Kemel strode off with purpose. “Where are you going?” I called after him.

“To the Clocktower,” he said. “Where else?”

I shook my head. “If she senses us, she’ll change her plans. I want to find out where she’s been.”

“Always the historian,” he mock-grumbled. His face dropped when I didn’t respond to the humor. “Where to, then?”

We entered the city in the docks district. It was too easy, with near-past eras, to forget that it was the past at all: the moored ships had different lines and flags, but the activity on the docks and the technology used to move cargo was everything I had grown up with.

And Riesden in this era was a city straining towards the future, dabbling in clockwork and mechanics that were decades away from being perfected. The explosion of the Clocktower would cause them to check their thinking, look twice at progress for progress’ sake. Erase that, and the city could plunge into a larger disaster … if it even mattered, if the timeline could survive the paradox.

Good News, Bad News ...

Good news: by this point, I am about ninety percent sure I will not be tackling the second novel project that invaded my brain.

Why this is good news is because I really didn't want to be writing two novels simultaneously, or to end up in the situation I am currently, with two books to edit at once. (And I still haven't touched the other one ...) I just looked at the novel and realized that while everything in the story appealed to me, I wasn't doing anything new and I was treading a lot of cliches.

Bad news: I didn't come to this decision until after I finished the world and character work for the project. Hopefully, I'll come back to it and it's not wasted ...

Thursday Thoughts

I've reached the point where I'm doing too much again. I'm trying to: edit Scylla and Charybdis, write worldbuilding notes for my mystery project, and finish a story for the FWO monthly challenge, to be followed by a story for a special Gypsy Shadow Publishing anthology. What I want to be doing, by contrast, is writing the new novel. I need a cloned double, or at least a few extra hands!

With worldbuilding, I'm trying a middle ground. Generally, what I've done in the past is write exhaustively: build the world in intense, sometimes ridiculous detail. With Journal of the Dead, I tried to do very minimal worldbuilding (about a page before I started) and develop the rest as I wrote. I found that I had more trouble pushing that manuscript forward and resolving plot conflicts than I'd had in a long time, so that's how I learned worldbuilding was a necessary pre-novel step for me.

This time, I'm building the area with which the story directly deals in detail, and then drawing back to general statements, specific hints and flavor for other regions. And reminding myself to update my file as I go. Whether I'll remember that last part ...

Worried I'm going to bite off more than I can chew with this novel. Tackling a non-human first person POV is a risk; more so when their kind is extremely perceptive and intelligent - but doesn't understand privacy or deception. (A huge handicap in a mystery - but that's why she has an enchanter's apprentice to serve as her Watson.) I'm good for the challenge, but only time will tell whether I'm up to it.

6/9 - 6/15
Word count: 1,760

Life Sentences

For a couple weeks now, I've been doing a quick daily exercise where I write a "hooky" first sentence - not connected to a specific project. This has turned out to be a lot of fun, and some of the openings seem to have a lot of promise.

I always try to start my stories with an implicit question of some kind and an element of character, setting, plot or some combination of the three. However, when I'm working on a new story, I typically know what these elements are going to be in advance. Some bits and pieces may change or simply be unknown, but I have the larger shape.

Where this has been different is I'm creating those same three elements in strokes of possibility. The world-story-character that results from these lines could be almost anything that meets the promise of the sentence. It's freeing, and it leads me towards ideas I might not have considered.

As an aside, I noticed that the last several were consistently getting longer, so I set myself a challenge to make today's very short. I ended up with:

I hated mourning garb: blue was not my color.

Thursday Thoughts

I've spent most of this last week working on edits for Scylla and Charybdis. I've made a lot of changes, and unfortunately, most of them have been additions - so I may have to devote an editing pass just to cutting words. I think I have a lot more work to do on this one yet, or I may simply get tired of it and call it good after another pass or two. ;-) Ahem.

In reviewing critiques, I've noticed that I sometimes take them in the other direction. That isn't to say I ignore them: quite the opposite. Rather, a comment will point up an impression the reader is developing that I didn't intend, so I rework the narrative to pull back / eliminate that impression or enhance a different one.

Invented example: let's say a reader asks me to increase the hostility between my character and her cousin. I might look it and go, "Augh, no! I only meant to imply that my character was grumpy, not that she's specifically mad at her cousin." So I step back the snarling comments and maybe add something more into the narrative about how it's not really the cousin's fault.

Quite frequently, in fact, I would say that reviewer comments make me revise in ways I am fairly sure the reviewer did not intend. ;-)

Anyone else had this experience?

I've done worldwork, but the only story writing I did this week was on a fairy tale-esque piece about a girl who attracted hats, and I finished that Sunday, so the word count is low.

6/2 - 6/8:
Word count: 823

Novel Developments

I've been sitting on this for about a month, and believe me, the words have been welling up under my fingers and just about killing me - but I wanted to have the contract official and in hand before I ran down the virtual streets shouting to the rooftops. Received the contract in the mail today, so ...

Roll the drums, cue the fanfare, slash the bagpipes ...

My contemporary fantasy novel, Flow, has been accepted for publication by Double Dragon Publishing.

At present, I have no information on publication date or editing - so it is even slightly possible that Flow won't be the final title - but I will keep folks up to date as developments ... develop. Believe me, you will be sick of hearing about it. ;-)

To give a brief teaser, Flow follows the water-witch Chailyn, on dry land for her first mission, and Kit, a contemporary teen with mysterious powers, as they seek the man who killed Kit's mother ... a goal which catches the interest of the darkest of fairies. They must also deal with the Borderwatch, a zealous organization that hunts fairies and has been in a cold war with the water-witches for decades.

In the interim, I will be looking for homes for my short stories in this setting: A Dose of Aconite, Splinter Cell, and a third as yet untitled. The first two are from the POVs of Borderwatch agents.

Review: GUD Issue 6

From a GoodReads reviewer named Sabrina, about GUD Issue 6:

Really an outstanding issue. I don't think there are any weak pieces in this, but I'm writing this review months after having read the issue and the pieces that live on in memory as truly superior are Aliette de Bodard's As the Wheel Turns; Lindsey Duncan's The Naming Braid; Ferrett Steinmetz's In the Garden of Rust and Salt and Lavie Tidhar's The Last Butterfly. I remember Dispatches From the Troubles (Lou Antonelli); What Happens in Vegas (Caroline Yoachim) and Maisy's Many Souls (Matthew Sanborn Smith) less fondly but very vividly. They too are solid and beautifully polished works.

Brief Update

Not just one, not two, but three of my forthcoming publications are discussed here:

http://darwinsevolutions.com/?p=586

Fatecraft is a reprint; Loyal Dice is a prequel. I'm eagerly awaiting the artwork for the latter; I've been in contact with the artist over additional details I was surprised to discover weren't described in the story.

Thursday Thoughts

I'm back!

Wait ... no one knew I was gone, did they? Ahem. Yes, I've been in Baltimore with the folks this past week. Got a fair amount of writing done, rested, recharged my batteries, and spent too much time messing with Quickbooks. (Long story ...) Last time I visited, we did some sightseeing - Annapolis, the Library of Congress, the Spy Museum - but this was a more relaxed visit, more focused on simple family time.

I finished my character notes on the project that attacked my brain and demanded to be written, and am now working on the world notes for the mystery. Since I don't want "bleed" from working on one and then immediately jumping into the other, I am going to keep a close eye on my progress. If I feel I am repeating myself, I will back off. But I actually think I'll be fine, because I spent literally weeks on just characters ... and that, to me, has a different feel than structuring the world.

My only qualm is the names. I'm afraid all the names are going to sound very similar. However, I am entirely not feeling like doing a naming language now, so I will have to come up with a scheme / structure to forcibly differentiate them.

Now that I'm back, trying to get some critiques on at least the earlier chapters of Scylla and Charybdis. Critiques make me (quite literally) ill - I've lost sleep when I think some might come in overnight. So I have to take it slow, but I also know I need to get out of my head occasionally, and an outside eye is a good way to do that.

This extreme reaction isn't from lack of practice, unfortunately: while I've not done full novels, I've had plenty of short stories run through critiquing. I just don't seem to have the capacity to relax about the process.

"Aeolian Harp" now out!

The Spring 2011 issue of speculative poetry magazine "Illumen," containing my "Aeolian Harp" is now available:

http://www.samsdotpublishing.com/illumen/currentissue.htm

Thursday Thoughts

Word count tracker is suspended for this past week and next week. I'm sure everyone is heartbroken, devestated, defenestrated! ... wait.

A running thread over on fantasy-writers.org has made me ponder a first sentences exercise, which I've decided to do ... as of writing this sentence, in fact. Hmm ... appropriate? In any case, I'm going to try and write a zinger of a first sentence a day for at least two weeks and, when I reach the end, scan for the cream of the crop.

This comes up because some people have claimed that you have to hook an editor by the first sentence. Even though this seems excessive to me (who could even physically stop themselves from reading more than one sentence?), I try to put a fair amount of attention into a punchy, usually short opening line that makes the reader ask questions. How much time and attention do you put into first sentences? Do you often change / rewrite them later?

Still trying to figure out my point of entrance on writing anew, but next week, I will definitely be seeking out critique on the early chapters of Scylla and Charybdis.

Be well, all!

A Writers' Guide To Harp: Part Three (Misconceptions)

One more point about the physical construction of the harp most people miss until they get up close: hey, look, colored strings! I’ve heard stories of people asking if these are training strings. N…o. The red strings are Cs, blue strings are Fs. All other strings are white. So, no, you’re not just staring at a sea of unmarked strings.

Since a harper’s mouth isn’t obviously occupied as a flutist’s is, most people imagine that we can carry on a conversation freely. Unfortunately – or is that fortunately? – it doesn’t work that way. I’m not exactly sure why; my theory is that speaking and playing attempt to use the same region of the brain. It is possible to train yourself to talk and play at the same time, but it took me years to learn the small repertoire of, “Yes,” “No,” and, “Thank you.” Now, after over a decade of playing, I can answer simple questions if I am playing a slow tune I know frontwards and backwards. I can say with some confidence that carrying on a full conversation whilst playing? Not going to happen.

But what about bardic storytelling? you might wonder. From what I’ve seen of it, the music and the speaking don’t occur simultaneously, apart from simple patterns that serve as sound effects. Instead, they alternate and augment each other.

And yes … it is “harper.” This applies to anyone who plays the traditional lever instrument. Harp-player is also correct. Harpist refers to the pedal harp – “the big tall thing with the gold pillar” – and is not correct in this context.

Reminders from the previous posts: those playing wire harps need nails; those playing gut-strung harps will need to go without.

Harp strings do not (or almost never) break due to pressure applied during play. They simply break when tightened too far. This can happen by accident when tuning or with sudden temperature shifts. Cold weather causes the wood to contract, potentially breaking a string. (Some wood instruments work differently, I know, so: harps go sharp with the cold, flat with the heat.)

The big joke amongst harpers is, “A harp-player spends half his time tuning, and half his time playing out of tune.” They are sensitive instruments. It doesn’t take much to knock them out of tune, and the range of the harp doesn’t go out of tune consistently. Every harp is a little bit different, but for instance, with mine: my base strings go sharp, the two strings above that stay almost perfectly in tune continuously, the mid-range goes flat, and some portions of the upper range go sharp again.

Assuming a fully levered, 36 string floor harp, there are approximately two million permutations of ways you could set your levers.

The above posts apply to the “mainstream” traditional harp, but there are other harps. Here are a couple I’m familiar with:

Latin American harps are lighter strung, which allows the use of the pinky (normally too weak to play). They’re also strung with blue Cs and red Fs.

The Welsh triple harp has not just one but three rows of strings and no levers. To get accidentals (sharps and flats), the harper dips their fingers through the outer row(s) to the inner row. The double row strings for standard play allows a number of overlapping techniques, including one unique to Welsh harp playing where the melody is played in both hands a split second apart. This creates a mesmerizing echo effect. Welsh players also usually rest the harp on the left shoulder and play melody with left hand, accompaniment with right.

You can actually hear the influence of the triple harp in a lot of Welsh music. These tunes have a running theme of a single accidental, often with a rather rapid switch back to the regular note.

And finally, if you want to hurt your brain, check out the cross-strung harp, the only harp in the world on which it is possible to play “Flight of the Bumblebee.”

A Writers' Guide To Harp: Part Two (Playing)

The basics of how to play ...

Harp rests against the right shoulder, with the right hand on the upper ranges for melody and the left hand on the lower ranges for accompaniment. Thumb and first three fingers are used – no pinky. Elbows are out and raised – not parallel to the floor like a chicken, but elevated to aid in maintaining proper hand position. Thumbs up, fingers down, and palm facing the strings. A properly played note brings the finger straight back to connect with the palm.

Nylon or gut-strung harps are played with the pads of the fingers; wire harps are played with the fingernail. (Difference #2!) Corrolary to this, nails make gut/nylon-strung more difficult – they can even catch on adjacent strings, if they’re long enough. So if your harper is playing a gut-strung harp, they’re not going to have pretty, sculpted nails.

Instrument range: the usual base range for a floor harp is somewhere between 1.5 to 2 octaves below middle C. Some will run down to the A below that. The upper range is typically 3 octaves up from middle C – again with some variation. The usual base range for a lap harp is somewhere between 1 to 1.5 (ie, stopping at G or F) octaves below middle C. The upper range is typically 2.5 to 3 octaves up from middle C. You’re looking at floor harps usually maxing out at 36 strings. Lap harps are rarely less than 22, though I’ve seen a few, and that 22 – 26 string range is the sweet spot for a nice, portable lap harp.

Okay … break from all the numbers. Why this is important is the range for accompaniment on a lap harp is very small, and it can even become cramped on a floor harp, depending on the range of the melody. So single note or simple chord accompaniments are common. Disclaimer: musician paragraph next.

Due to the resonance of the harp, it is easy for accompaniment to sound muddy. Thus, most chord patterns use the 1st and the 5th note, optionally with the octave. The 3rd is usually eliminated in the accompaniment. When it will be included is in inversions, or with another note omitted just to create a different sound – but it would be rare to hear all three notes together because of the sustain.

It is possible to mute notes – a single note can be muted by re-placing the finger, and a range of them can be muted with the flat of the hand. You can get a jazzy, staccato sound this way (which isn’t terribly traditional, though it’s used in modern Celtic music).

Everything stated about resonance goes multifold for wire harp. Wire strings ring – and keep ringing – until muted. That means that accompaniments tend to be more sparse, and there is more emphasis on muting by re-placing the finger. I don’t play wire-strung harp, so I can’t speak further to the style, but that’s the main distinction. (Differences #3 through – take your pick.)

Harpers develop calluses, at the very least on the thumbs and index fingers, but what people don’t realize is that extended play is also rough on the shoulders. Sit there with your elbows out for a few minutes and you’ll see what I mean. Then add the weight of an instrument on one side.

That’s getting into misconceptions, the last stop …

Thursday Thoughts

I am ninety percent sure that I am actually asleep right now and typing this post as part of a lucid dream. Unfortunately, if I pinch myself, I'll lose my train of thought, so ... onwards!

It's been a wild and crazy week, and consequently not as much writing time as I would like. However, I've spent quality time reading one of my manuscripts - which is going to need a frightful amount of editing - and exchanging private critiques with some members of Fantasy-Writers.org for submissions to their anthology. They aren't paying the authors; instead, all proceeds go towards maintenance of the site. A very worthy cause. The topic is the line "Waking to the light of the last day," and, of course, I couldn't resist playing around with some structural malarky ...

Still trying to gauge when it's "safe" to jump back into the novel writing pool. I have a whole bunch of old free writes that want finishing; maybe I'll at least close out 2009 (yes, I really do have them that far back) before I move on to long form. After the current story I'm writing, there's only one more opening from '09.

5/12 - 5/18
Word count: 3,813

A Writers' Guide To Harp: Part One (The Body)

So the post in which I promised to do a fantasy writer's guide to the harp is ... still not back up yet, but I'm going to do it. This will be three posts, the other two to show up over the next few days, breaking down some information I hope writers can take and use in their fiction. First up is the physical characteristics of the instruments, then a basic "how to play" orientation, and finally, misconceptions and other cool harp information.

Minstrels, court musicians and bards – if your fantasy character plays a harp, they probably play the traditional harp (otherwise known as the folk or Celtic style harp), an instrument that’s been around in some form or another since ancient Sumeria. The modern pedal harp (“the big tall thing with the gold pillar” as I describe it in technical terms) is a much later invention – possibly appropriate for later period and Victorian settings, but outside of this discussion.

For a traveling musician, a traditional harp is the only way to go due to size and weight. Pedal harps have to be larger and heavier to incorporate the mechanical aspects of the pedals. Even at that, traditional harps aren’t necessarily small: my harp (an Aberdeen Meadows from William Rees Instruments) is almost five feet tall. The Aberdeen has what is known nowadays as concert spacing (because I have big hands!), so floor harps can and do run smaller, but it’s not typically going to be something your character can just toss over their back. Lap harps, on the other hand, are made for this kind of portability.

I hope I don’t have to explain floor harp versus lap harp, but just in the case – the former rests on the floor and is played from a chair, and the latter either rests in the lap or sets up on a stool.

The three main parts of the harp are the soundboard, which rests against the body while playing; the pillar, which is the vertical support on the outside of the instrument; and the neck, which runs between them and serves as a support for the strings, bridge pins and levers. The strings are made of four materials: wire, gut or nylon, or carbon fiber. I separate these out because wire harps are a different beast from gut or nylon, and carbon fiber is a newer experiment. Let’s assume that in most fantasy settings, you probably wouldn’t have nylon strings, but the sound from gut strings is essentially the same.

For the past few centuries, traditional harps have had levers, mechanisms that allow the pitch of an individual string to be adjusted a half-step, functioning like the black keys on the piano. For instance, it will turn your F into an F sharp. The lever only has two positions: up or down. If you’re not a musician, you can skip the next paragraph. Just understand that levers don’t mean you can play anything. Traditional music is generally fine (and not just Celtic – I’ve played a Korean piece), but classic / orchestral music may be problematic.

Sharps and flats on the harp: if you want a flat, you tune the string down to the flat (for instance, Bb), and then when the lever is engaged, you get the natural (B). This means that traditional harps have a limited number of practical keys. My harp is tuned to Eb Major, which means I have the option of 3 flats (E, A, B) and four sharps (C, D, F, G). Each lever also controls only the actual string it is placed above. That means if you want to change keys from G to D, you have to flip every single C on the instrument. (This differs from the pedal harp, where the pedal engages every note.)

Levers can be flipped during play, but it’s difficult to do. Your accompaniment hand has to come off the instrument and all the way up to the neck to flip the lever.

Without levers, every time you want to change keys, you have to stop and retune the instrument. Just personally, while historically, levers were only developed a short while before pedals, I consider that the portability of a lever instrument and the technical know-how required to construct levers means that there’s no compelling reason for a fantasy society not to have them. But … musicians played for centuries without them.

None of this applies to wire harps. Wire harps do not use levers. (Difference #1 – count ‘em!)

More soon!

Thursday Thoughts

(This is my Thursday post from last week, finally restored by Blogger. I can't figure out how to backdate it, so we'll leave that.)

I wish I had the gift of brevity: that short story I mentioned a few days ago is already over 4k, and looks to come in about twice that. But ... it was never meant to be a tight, plot-heavy yarn. Rather, I was going for a leisurely exploration, an examination of relationships, an inward push-me-pull-you about when it's okay to invade someone else's privacy - not a statement piece, but focused on the main character's struggle over this.

I've decided that I am going to start reading my "Who Wants To Be A Hero?" manuscript - two "chapters" a day. (I put chapters in quotes because they're not, really - each chapter represents an episode in the imaginary reality show.) That means it will take me about a week, which is a slow but reasonable reading speed ... but I will have time to read "real" books (again the quotes!), which is something I've been lacking.

It occurs to me that it might be worth posting a "harp playing for fantasy writers," so I will try to do that over the next week. The instrument I play is probably what you would normally see in most fantasy settings.

5/5 - 5/11
Word Count: 4,564 (not counting character work)

So ... uh ...

... Blogger, when do I get my Thursday post back?

Friendly Reminder

I don't know if it was anyone following my blog, but a quick note: if you want to purchase my CD, please don't do so through Amazon! They take a huge surcharge - plus, I have to ship new CDs to them one at a time. Instead, use the Paypal link off my main website and I will happily mail to you. If you don't mind having the shrinkwrap off, I can sign it, too (though what value that is, I dunno ...).

GoodReads Review: The Sunflower

The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness by Simon Wiesenthal

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Deceptively simple, thought-provoking and sometimes chilling, The Sunflower is both a story and an invitation to explore what seems (on the face) a straightforward question ... but as its situational, moral and emotional layers peel away, becomes anything but. The book is comprised of two parts: first, the account of how the author, a Jewish man in a concentration camp, is called to the side of a dying Nazi soldier who begs forgiveness for his crimes; second, a collection of essays written in response.

I had read this book before, but I was surprised again how brief the encounter itself is. Using language that is straightforward but often poetic, realistic without becoming laden with melodrama, Wiesenthal builds a picture of his life and the mental state of his fellow prisoners and discusses the history of the high school in which he finds himself ... before he is called to the side of the SS man. The pages that form the purpose of this book disappear so swiftly ... and then the reader is drawn on to deal with Wiesenthal's fall-out, the conversations with fellow prisoners, and finally, a secondary confrontation years later with the SS man's mother. As a story - a novella, if you will - this account is satisfying in itself.

The essays that follow are hit and miss. Some are harsh, some merciful; some prosaic, some poetic and beautiful. Some present angles of the situation that a reader may never have considered, and you may come away richer for it. In my mind, however, there is perhaps more than a critical mass of essays here ... and some of them are incomplete, off-point - the author launching from the actual question to discuss a related topic of personal investment - or maddeningly reductionist. I can accept starting from the religious stance that is impossible to forgive someone who has not harmed you personally: I cannot accept ending with that stance without further exploration. Religion is not the only source of morality. I don't recognize a lot of the authors' names, I confess, and I wonder if some of the essays were included less because of merit or balance than because they were written by a "big name" individual.

That said, this book is definitely worth a read, worth thought ... worth attempting the exploration at its heart: what would I have done?

View all my reviews

More Manuscript-age

Had some errands which required me to run up to Kinko's - okay, FedEx Office, but I never think of it that way - so I decided to bite the bullet and print out my manuscript for "Who Wants To Be A Hero?" even though I have no idea when I'm actually going to work on it. I want to do a straight read-through - taking no notes unless something really leaps out at me, just to get an overall impression - and I may do that soon, then let it set for a while ... we'll see.

The true irony is, here I'm setting up my next novel writing projects and, despite seeing the editing overload / uncertainty / angst these two are causing me - I fully recognize that what I'm planning on doing will probably land me in the same situation next year ...

My learning curve is inverse.

On Being Edited ...

Interesting post on another blog:

He said, she objected

My feelings exactly.

Back In The Saddle

I've been editing or doing worldwork for almost a month now, and I had forgotten how good the actual writing side of things really feels. I dashed out a flash fiction story on Friday night, and am now working on a leisurely character piece set in an old novel world ... and the act of spinning it on the page, the slow build of backstory, description, emotion and the loose-leaf plot - sheer joy.

This makes me more determined to start writing on another novel ...

Another Sale!

Another story sale, this one to Kaleidotrope! http://www.kaleidotrope.net/

Due out ... sometime next year. I am waiting to hear whether winter means "Jan / Feb" or "Nov / Dec" ...

The story is entitled "Voices," and is set in the same world as "Journal of the Dead" - almost prehistory, if you will.

This is actually my second publication in Kaleidotrope, and I happened to get curious about whether or not Tangent ever reviewed this ezine. I found this whopper of a review of my previous story:

In this issue’s first story, “Remember,” Lindsey Duncan crafts lyrical prose as nimbly as a skilled glassblower might work a parison. Duncan’s sculpted passages bring to the fore a tale in which an emissary from a drought-stricken village must overcome the rigors of harsh terrains, including and especially desert and mountains, in order to call forth energies capable of transforming his arid homeland into a fertile valley; the main character must summon the “Storm-bringers.” The cost of intruding on such powerful beings is his sanity, but the only way for him to return home is for him to keep a little bit of his head. In the least, the protagonist is conflicted.

At first glance, this piece is a prose poem about overcoming adversity. Read closer, though, this story sets up the relative cost of choices and questions whether or not it is worthwhile to sacrifice one’s self to serve the greater good. Sagaciously, Duncan posits that either response brings secondary problems and that in most cases, no matter the route we follow, we will remain unable to know our choice’s merit.

No. 7, October 2009 print, if you want to check it out.

Thursday Thoughts

It has been a week of triumphs writing-wise: the story sale, something else which I'm not divulging until I have details in hand, and ... I finished my editing pass of Scylla and Charybdis!

I'm still very unsure about the change I made near the end; looking again at how I set up the ending, it may actually be overkill. But it performs a nice, circular loop to the events of the beginning, which reflects the novel's overall shape.

I'm still in love with my characters, too. That probably means they're terrible.

I will probably let the novel rest for a bit, then start looking for reads on at least the opening chapters. I might be brave enough to have someone read the whole book, but I certainly couldn't do it as one big chunk: waiting for that would kill me. Multiple times, potentially (I'm a Highlander).

Because word count reduction was a concern of mine, I started at 161,124 and ended at 153,325. That means I've still got to trim. Most of my cuts were necessary, unneeded verbiage or dialogue exchanges that were weird / clumsy and actually best fixed by simply excising them; I may have to make some tough choices before I get down into reasonable range. Note that I didn't just cut things: I also added, some emotional cues, some references to a new concept, and a new scene. So probably I cut more like ten to twelve thousand words and added a few thousand.

Not sure where I'm going from here. Still plinking around on worldbuilding, but I still have an entire second novel which has been finished for about two months and needs editing ... don't know how to handle that.

4/28 - 5/4
Pages Edited: 30

"Burning The Midnight Oil" to NewMyths.com!

I just got an acceptance for my story "Burning The Midnight Oil" from New Myths! This story started out as an FWO challenge to write about an oddly matched couple. It was initially titled "A Lovely Light" (a reference to the Edna St. Vincent Millay poem), but before I started submitting it, I decided this title better conveyed the sense of flame / work ethic, both of which are central to the story.

... actually, now that I think it over, it was submitted to 2-3 venues as "All Work, No Play," until an editor criticized the title, I looked at it, and went, "Oy. They're right. What was I thinking?" Only then did I light on (heh) the current title.

It should be coming out in their December 2011 issue. There's also a mini-interview, which I haven't sent back yet as I'm waiting for clarification on one of the questions.

GoodReads Review: The Dragon of Despair

The Dragon of Despair by Jane Lindskold

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The fact that this was a very long read has nothing to do with the quality of the book, because as with the first two volumes, this is a solid, engaging fantasy. Lindskold's world is not an unusual one, although New Kelvinese society becomes more intriguing on further inspection and the Royal Beasts continue to provide interesting wrinkles and an evolving multi-book conflict. Rather, the pleasure is in the characters and their adventures.

The book begins with one plot and continues with another (which isn't as disjointed as it sounds, but the first plot is obviously intended to set up for book four). Firekeeper, raised by Royal Beasts but now a member of Hawk Haven noble society - almost - must deal with the conflict between the animal kin who raised her and Hawk Haven settlers moving onto their turf. The ambivalence that Firekeeper feels throughout these interactions is compelling, and as ever, Lindskold's animal societies are well-rounded. I particularly appreciate the fact that she pays attention to the social aspects of wolves, often drawing parallels between their manueverings and those of human society. This kind of subtlety I find is lacking sometimes even in werewolf stories, where the participants are in theory even more human.

The second plot picks up with the mental illness of young Citrine, abandoned by her sorcerous mother Melina but still in her thrall. A handpicked group heads into New Kelvin to bring about a confrontation between the two and hopefully free Citrine from her mother's domination. Again, Citrine's evolution is compelling here. It's dysfunction well portrayed. Lindskold gets deep inside her devotion, and it's a mildly creepy place to be.

Unfortunately, I think the weight of the previous two volumes got in the way of this one: the book is slow off the mark, taking a long time to get past some minor info-dumping (not too bad, but certainly not as well done as in previous volumes) and a lot of characters meeting other characters and talking to each other. It's good dialogue, but there's a lot of it. The middle sections of the story progress steadily, laying groundwork for the future without feeling unfinished.

Then, later on, it gets uneven again. Now, in fairness, I was having some issues making myself read (not a reflection on the book, just an expression of my headspace) at the time, so perhaps how I was reading the book exacerbated it, but it seemed like large chunks of in-story time passed with nothing happening, which - while it was quick to read; Lindskold doesn't waste time in filler - felt disjointed and strange. It was hard to credit the characters would just sit there. I really wanted to know a bit more about what was going on that got glossed. That is a tribute to how fun they are to follow, though!

As we approach the end, some plot points aren't properly foreshadowed. This isn't a huge deal - it's not deus ex machina, just details - but it's one of my pet peeves.

On the other hand (paw!), Firekeeper's dreams build nicely throughout, culminating in an explanation of their true nature that is very satisfying. Early in the book, I had issues with the fact that Firekeeper's evolution as a human - deftly handled in the first two books, neither slow nor fast - seemed to have stagnated. This isn't unrealistic, of course - people hit plateaus - but it was frustrating not to see her progress further in her understanding of the human world around her. However, by the end of the book, I would have to say that I feel this objection was met. Firekeeper may not have come out and realized the moral of the story, but I as a reader felt its impact.

This one gets four stars as a continuation, but I might only give it 3.5 stars as a standalone book. It's still very readable that way (which is quite a feat, given how much happened in those books!), but the flaws become more objectionable. If you've not read them, pick up Through Wolf's Eyes and Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart first.

View all my reviews

Who's Right? Who's Left?

Random fantasy ethics question ...

Imagine a situation where two fathers are planning an arranged marriage, but know that one half of the couple is in love with someone else. Who's worse:

Father #1, who is only now finding out about the existing romance, and is leery of the arrangement - but still agrees.
Father #2, who knew beforehand and has seen the couple together, but is a veteran of arranged marriage himself, fully confident it works, and has no qualms.

No "both" or "equally," please. If you had to say one's decision was more condemnable than the other - which would it be?

There's a basic question here about viewpoint, intent versus action, and ... I am curious what people think. For context in this setting, arranged marriages are a dwindling practice, but still accepted, esp. among the nobility.

As a sidebar, there are other factors to this debate, and I had a tough time narrowing down which ones were relevant without favoring one side or the other ...

Thursday Thoughts

This was a rough week, and it came out in the writing / editing output - or lack thereof. I just completed my worldbuilding, with the exception of putting a few more dates into the timeline as I work with characters. The various backstories are so dependent on sequence, I needed a timeline to make sure that things could happen in the right order without time travel, and to discover some things that I didn't know happened at almost the same time. Ahem. Most of this will never see the light of day, but I'd hate to have said: X happens before Y and after Z, A happens before Z, but after Y ... wait.

I got the rare treat of finishing the timeline and thinking to myself, "Oh, that character is only eighty-nine. Good."

With Scylla and Charybdis, I am working on the last leg and rapidly approaching the sequence of scenes I recently decided needed a larger change - so nervous about that. Could be subconsciously procrastinating so I don't reach them. I wouldn't put it past me!

4/21 - 4/27
Pages Edited: 28

Last Post Addendum ...

And trademark hard copy submission signature: purple ink. No, I don't generally work in purple (twould be unprofessional) but my signature always is.

Honestly, I should have done that for my Sails & Sorcery signing, but I think if I ever sign books in the future (ha!), I'll have to make sure I have a purple pen on me.

Once More Into The Breach ...

Having received my first rejection for Journal of the Dead on a submission to a publisher, I'm now going the query route. In the past, while I've had a list of agents I definitely wanted to submit to, my research beyond that has been a bit scattershot. I decided to go into this time with a Battleplan (tm), and despite the headaches of the past few days (both literal - oww, allergy season! - and figurative - flooding under the garage steps has had me changing towels every few hours), I've come up with a system and information I'm happy with.

First, I set up an Excel spreadsheet with columns for agency name, agent, genres represented, method of contact, submission package desired, other notes, and then a personal ranking. (Actually, the ranking is the first item - on the far left hand side.) Then, I went back through the agencies I submitted to last time and reviewed their sites, adding this information into my sheet. I removed a few agencies from the list, mostly due to inaccurate information - the agent had left, no longer taking fantasy, etc.

Next step, I went trawling the net for other agencies. As a point of interest, I usually avoided agents that didn't have an obvious net presence. This isn't laziness (that's my story and I'm sticking with it - no, really), but more that I feel in this day and age, having that internet platform is important. I'm not terribly good at it myself, but I have a website, a blog and a facebook page. (Actually, I have three facebook pages - personal, author and harper. Oh, the travails of multi-tasking.) Anyone who has less presence than I do makes me leery.

(As a sidebar, I've already found Facebook's character limit on updates annoying, so I will not be joining Twitter. 140 characters? It takes me more than that to say hello!)

Originally, I had added a column for whether or not the agent accepted simsubs, but discovered that only one or two even wanted to be notified, so I moved that info into my notes and deleted the column. One thing I should have included and didn't was whether the agent sent rejections (or whether no reply was considered a rejection) and length of response time. I added a column for that and will add this information in as I make submissions. I also added a color code and a column for JoD to track the kind of responses I get. Why color and not words? I like color. It's also easier to get a quick picture.

Even though I have the summary, I'm still going to consult websites as I submit. Want to make sure I address more specific needs that I can't put in a simple spreadsheet. Still, it will speed me up. The best thing about the sheet thus far is one horizontal line fits perfectly on my widescreen monitor, with room to make notes for 4-5 projects. (I sincerely, sincerely hope I won't need those extra lines, because if I don't have an agent by then I may stab myself, shoot myself and hurl myself off a bridge while drinking poison ... but there it is.)

I decided from the start I wasn't going to do the typical method of submitting to a rash of places at once - but neither was I going to be dumb and simply submit to two or three at a time, because that takes forever. (There was a time I didn't know this. We do not speak of this time.) So the plan was to submit to perhaps five or six to start, and then every time I receive a no response, send out two more. This keeps momentum going and means I'm doing it in small, manageable chunks - critical, with the number of other balls I'm juggling in my life. Obviously, I will reach a point of overwhelming mass, at which point I'll just do a 1:1.

As it so happens, my rank 1 (highest priority) list has seven agencies on it - one of which is currently closed to queries, but I know from prior experience that they close and reopen regularly. Six is a perfect number to start with, and I'm hoping to get the email letters out today. Whether the snail mail letter gets out tomorrow depends on if I have enough postage in-house. Tomorrow and Tuesday are insane days, so it will be Wednesday before I can get to the post office ...

Thursday Thoughts

Clunky bits, meet my red pen!

I've been pleasantly surprised with how far I've gotten on the editing of Scylla and Charybdis. It definitely will need more editing and probably a few outside eyes, at least on the first chapters ... but making a good start. However, Who Wants To Be A Hero? is looming at me, and I can't figure out when is a good time to make headway on that one. I don't want to wait too long, but I don't want them to meld together ...

My word count this week does not include a little over six thousand words of worldbuilding, in the messiest, most disorganized funnel cake sprawl of note-jotting I've committed in a while. The file itself is in decent order, but the way I put it in ... not so much. I keep looping back to add other information, nuances, address questions I forgot ...

Part of it may be the fact that this isn't a full construction. I've built what I need of the world, which means that global elements, magic, etc are deeply outlined, as well as the countries in which the story actually takes place, while other countries are etched just enough that I can toss in spice and refer to them consistently ... and beyond my partial world map, here there be dragons - metaphorically, not literally (although you never know ...). I know the name and general character of two places beyond the map - that's it.

I don't usually do maps; I needed this one because the geographic orientation of the lands is opposite similar locations on Earth, so I wanted a visual to keep me from reverting.

4/14 - 4/20
Pages Edited: 32
Word Count: 1,004

On Writing and Skepticism

I think my years of writing fantasy have contributed to my skeptical view of the world, in particular spiritual concepts.

On the face of it, this might seem like a contradiction in terms, but it starts with how I approach new information. History facts and geographical nuances can spawn new stories (or how about the typo "left at the alter," which I added to my mental file recently) ... but so can mythology, religion, pseudoscience and modern "fringe" beliefs such as past lives. When I read about these things, my first reaction is not, "I believe that: it could be true," it's, "This would make a great story ..."

When I look at such concepts, what I often see first is not potential enlightenment or a way of understanding how the universe works. Instead, I see drama, cost, consequence, plot barrier and tension.

And I've taught myself to structure beliefs, higher powers, etc into a plausible world system. When you approach concepts with the mindset that anything is equally possible, the corrolary is that no single possibility stands out as truth. I am openminded: anything could be possible. But I am also unconvinced: (almost) everything just sounds like a good story to me, not an expression of reality.

Thursday Thoughts

This weekend, I treated myself to a break from editing to work on a new short story and to read through the project I'm thinking of rewriting so I could take notes. Yes ... I consider it a treat, and that's how I thought of it.

The short story is for the Fantasy-Writers.org "act of folly" April monthly challenge - more detail on their site. I'm playing with the idea in that the character is deliberately attempting to do something foolish and keeps getting thwarted. The story is also as-told-to an unidentified third party, so there are occasional present tense / pseudo second person interjections when she stops to explain or apologize to the listener. The identity of the third party is important to the resolution of the story, so I'm hoping it all works.

Being stumped over fantasy calendars again. I hate these: it's a no-win situation. You have the unappetizing choice between a) using our calendar and having it stick out like a sore thumb among all the non-Earth concepts; b) inventing a calendar and forcing the reader to wade through a bunch of gratuitious month-names (at least); or c) using bland, obvious names like firstmonth, secondmonth, etc.

I'm pondering doing a variant on the Earth calendar: instead of January, February, March, it'd be Janum, Februm, Maren ... does anyone think this is viable, or would it just draw you out of the story MORE than using conventional months?

3/7 - 3/13
Pages Edited: 29
Word Count: 5,242

Just The Messenger

I sold "Just The Messenger" to the new Darwin's Evolutions anthology series! Anthology will go into production once it's full, so date entirely unknown ...

It's Raining Men

Male characters occupy a slightly unusual place in my fiction. The majority of my characters are female, and typically, I find that the women in my cast have larger, more distinct roles. This used to be a ridiculous ratio: in fact, I had a collaborator who said to me, "I know why the villainness wants my character: he's the only male left!" I've since achieved more balance, but I have a bias and I'm aware of it. (In fact, when writing Scylla and Charybdis, I realized I had chapters in the supposedly male-dominated region that were shy on men, so I gave one of the characters a sex change. My editing notes thus include the observation, "Make sure Justin is male. No, really.")

I also find that my male characters tend to fade into the background or simply fail as interesting figures more frequently ... but when they work, they form a high percentage of my best creations.

From "The Sintellyn Medallion," main character Tieruko is a figurehead king who realizes his past as an evil overlord's unwilling apprentice isn't entirely over. From "Journal of the Dead," foreign ambassador Razentis Ara-Anaxiar treats the deadly politics of the novel like a game, but still manages to be an engaging and likeable ally (I hope). From "Scylla and Charybdis," the Tweaker named Flick comes on like comic relief, but soon proves himself to be fiercely loyal with an immense heart. And in my novella / novelette "Shadow Play," narrator Irun is an expatriate legal representative who has lost his faith in the world ... almost.

Not sure what accounts for the dichotomy. Maybe it's the freshness of it: when a male character works, really works for me, it's uncommon enough that inspires me. Does that mean some day, I'll lose this aspect? I hope not.

Thursday Thoughts

This week, I've been struggling a lot with the difference between what I need to do to further my goal of producing a (hopefully) publishable novel, versus what I want to do as a writer on a story playground. Now, don't get me wrong on this: I'm not contemplating projects I'm not passionate about or choosing based on marketibility. Instead, I know I should focus on editing, then focus on writing a single project ... but my brain wants to do prep-work / worldbuilding now, and it really wants to sink into both novel ideas, not one.

I am starting to resent this dichotomy. I want to be a professional author, but I write because I love it. Obviously, there's going to be parts of writing that are like eating your green vegetables - rejection letters come to mind - but it shouldn't be this hard or pervasive: something I will be spending months on. I shouldn't spend this much time angsting over this. Do I stick to my plan and fidget because there's so much else I want to do? Do I let myself off leash and accept that the next few projects are going to take a while? (I'm also concerned about if I take too much time editing, I will simply look at the whole thing and think, "The writing in this is crap.)

It's not a race, and I already have projects out there. Any advice?

(I think part of it is I've been editing solid for the whole past week, so my creative brain is playing caged beast ...)

3/31 - 4/6
Pages Edited: 32

Facebook!

After having had several people tell me it's a good tool for marketing, I've (somewhat reluctantly) signed up over at Facebook. You can find me at Lindsey Duncan for personal ... Lindsey Duncan, Celtic Harp ... and Unicorn Isle: Lindsey Duncan. Please feel free to friend, like, stalk me or whatever the heck it's called.

Honestly, right now I am too sick to focus on anything else. ;-)

Multiple Long Projects?

There is a question here, and a plea for your point of view - please read!

Having finally settled on the novel project I want to write - need to write, because it's been brewing and incubating for so long that if I don't tackle it now, it will be never; need to write, because it's the book that embodies the genre-blending (mystery in fantasy) I want to be all about - I had a horrible thing happen to me. I looked at an old manuscript (actually from a collab) and was blown away. We won't speak of the horrible craft in some of the writing, but apart from the fact that some facts needed to be foreshadowed or built up more firmly, earlier (naturally, because hey, I was pulling this stuff out of thin air) ... wow.

And I got so enthused, so delighted, in reading ... in remembering ... in finding side stories I had written and lighting upon alternate interpretations ... I can't remember being this gungho in a while, though granted I'm not sure if I'm just not remembering accurately. But I cannot find any downside, and that's a rarity. Some small concerns about cliche elements, but with this idea, I think I can fix those elements with ease.

I've thought about trying to write both books simultaneously (yes, I know, I know!) but the concerns are primarily: a) confusion of concept and b) I'd end up editing them both almost at once, and I'm already approaching that situation. I'm not sure that the first is an issue: they're both conspiracy / court intrigue concepts, but this is an area which I am so familiar and obsessed with that I think I might be able to better handle the similarity than someone for whom it might be two experiments. And in details, they are very different.

So for the writers out there: how many have you have seriously tried to write two novels at once? How did you figure out when to change between them? How did you keep the two separate? How did you handle the editing processes? Would you do it again?