Thursday Thoughts

This will be my last Thursday Thoughts post before the World Fantasy Convention in Toronto.  Next week, I'll be blogging about the happenings of the convention, the panels I'm attending, the wonderful authors ... the whole atmosphere.

I'm not expecting any marketing miracles whilst I'm in Toronto, but I know that inevitably, the question, "What is your book about?" comes up.  I want to be able to answer it without stammering and saying nothing ... or rambling on for two minutes at someone who really wants an answer about as in-depth as when they ask, "How are you?"  No one really wants the detailed description of your headache and how you almost missed your alarm that morning; give us the CliffNotes.

So I came up with both short loglines and longer (but still brief) descriptions if someone turned out to be crazy enough to express further interest.  Mind that I don't expect to rattle these off verbatim, but I wrote these to give my brain a framework for what I might say.  Now, there are three variants of this question - my published book, the project I'm currently shopping, and the projects that are currently in progress.  So that leads to three answers:

(Published)

Flow is a contemporary fantasy.  Teenaged Kit recruits water-witch Chailyn to hunt for her mother’s killer.  The pair run afoul of both fairy wrath and the attention of a human organization that hunts the supernatural.

(Shopping)

Journal of the Dead is a mannerpunk-style fantasy set in a world where killing someone causes their mind to leap into yours.  Aided by her spirits, an unwilling executioner must fight royal politics to reclaim her son.

(Working On - Editing, Actually)

 

Scylla and Charybdis is a soft science fiction novel about a young woman from an isolated space station who escapes to the polar opposite societies left behind in the wake of an alien disease, and Who Wants To Be A Hero? is humorous fantasy asking the question:  what would happen if a Greco-Roman pantheon invented reality competition television?

... from this, I can only infer that my brain is hyper.  Wish me luck!

GoodReads Review: Thirteen Orphans

Thirteen Orphans by Jane Lindskold
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When college sophomore Brenda Morris' father drags her along to meet eccentric chocolatier Albert Yu, they instead encounter a sinister plot to steal the memories of the Thirteen Orphans - the descendants of twelve advisors and their emperor, exiled long ago from a land of myth. Luckily, some of the senior Orphans have survived, in particular the aging Tiger, Pearl.

The greatest strength in this story is the setting and the way the characters interact with it. The Chinese zodiac determines the nature of each Orphan, while mahjong forms the basis of the magic, in an impressively outlined system. I didn't fully understand the rules despite the (lengthy - more on that later) explanations, but I felt grounded in their reality. The backstory of the Thirteen Orphans continues to unfold, treating the reader to glimpses of an intriguing otherworld. The Lands of Smoke and Sacrifice fascinated me.

I also enjoyed other, smaller aspects of the setting. Lindskold does a nice job of dealing with the idea that there are other magical systems in the world (of course there would be!) without needing to delve into them. Pearl's backstory as a child star contemporary of Shirley Temple was also one of my favorite bits, though there were a couple points where I thought it was laid on a bit too thick.

And some of the characters are great - particularly Nissa, the Rabbit, her daughter Noelani, and the developing personality of Foster. I also really liked Pearl. Even Brenda's down-to-earth character provided a pleasant enough pair of eyes to view this new world. And we need the outsider, because there's a lot of complexity here.

Which leads me to the downfall of Thirteen Orphans: too much information and too much talking without progression or conflict. See my last review here (A Coalition of Lions) - there's nothing to say that a story with a lot of dialogue and very little physical action can't be tense and riveting, but far too much of Thirteen Orphans was expository and day-to-day, the process of making amulets, discussion of the Land's history, and a lot of logistical discussions that probably could have been summarized. Of course, Brenda, Riprap and Nissa come into the story knowing no magic at all, but I think the lessons could have been highly truncated.

And then - far too late in the book - when action finally does strike, it cools off for a negotiation session. Now, this is actually closer to the kind of dialogue I mentioned above, but it's still symptomatic of the overall problem. Finally, to my exasperation, during a key sequence near the end where the characters are split into two groups, there is an absurdly in-depth analysis of the contents of an apartment.

That notwithstanding, the book ends with a great twist I did not see coming, and given some of the things I liked about this volume, I would definitely pick up Nine Gates. I am hoping that since the "initiation" happened in this book, that future volumes will be less talky.

View all my reviews

The Next Big Thing

I've been tagged for this blog chain by W.E. Larson - thanks!  Of course, as soon as I pondered it, I realized that I had a bit of a quandary:  not just one, but two projects currently in progress ... sadly, both in the editing process.  I tried to choose and then decided not to choose.

1. What is the title of your Work in Progress?

The first is Scylla and Charybdis; the other is Who Wants To Be A Hero?

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

Scylla and Charybdis started out as a short story so long ago I can't recall the original genesis of the idea.  I received a lot of encouraging rejections for the story, but the sticking point was that it really felt like the opening sequences of a novel.  The basic germ of thought was, "What would happen in the wake of a disease that targeted only men?" and I developed two societies from there ... but I knew I wanted something of a milieu novel, and the best way to do it would be with an outsider, which is how Anaea and her space station home were created.

Who Wants To Be A Hero? started with a simple concept - translating the "reality competition television" idea into a secondary world fantasy.  It immediately occurred to me to conflate it with a Greco-Roman style hero.  There are lots of strong, common tropes to play with there, and the Greek gods are so terribly human that they seem to me a great template for the kind of deities who would watch such a "program."  But I knew I would need a continuing character or spectator; otherwise the winner would be too obvious.  That's how Ioweyn came into being.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

Scylla and Charybdis is soft science fiction; Who Wants To Be A Hero is humorous fantasy.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

For Scylla and Charybdis, I only have one definite casting call:  I've always seen Anaea, the main character, as Emmy Rossum.  She's got that pale, gamine, wide-eyed look that I see in my head.  I could see Flick played by someone like Jamie Bell - or another actor with a roguish look and some visual awkwardness / out-of-jointedness.

For Who Wants To Be A Hero? I think Ioweyn would either be incredibly easy or incredibly difficult to cast, since she's a shapeshifter, and she doesn't even appear as a woman the whole time.  Moreover, there are subtle changes in her personality when she's "in character."  It might be really cool to see this done with multiple actors, with some kind of consistent identifying mark for the viewer.  (Obviously, this isn't necessary in printed text.)  Other than that, I don't have any clear thoughts.

5. What is a one-sentence synopsis of the book?

Anaea has lived her entire life on an isolated space station, but to save the life of Gwydion, a mysterious refugee, she flees and struggles to find a new home in the polar opposite societies left behind in the wake of an alien disease.

What would happen if a Greco-Roman pantheon invented reality competition television, with a country and a divine bride as the prize?

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I am hoping to find an agent for my currently-circulating novel, Journal of the Dead, so if that is the case, I expect that I will be sending one or both of these his/her way.  Failing that, I will try to get an agent for these projects and then turn to those publishing houses that except unagented submissions.

Self publishing?  I know I don't have the marketing savvy.


7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?



I no longer remember, in either case.  Next question!
 
8. What other books would you compare this story to in your genre?

No comparisons really spring to mind for Scylla and Charybdis; I don't think I've encountered a milieu-focused science fiction novel in a while.  As for Who Wants To Be A Hero? I can't draw comparisons, but I'm sort of hoping that the way it acknowledges, even highlights convention without breaking the story might be familiar to fans of Thursday Next.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The voices in my head!  Okay ... bad answer.

As mentioned above, Scylla and Charybdis started out as a short story and I had multiple reviewers and at least two editors - including one I highly respected - mention that it really felt like the opening section of novel.  I finally heeded those comments.  Mind that by the time I had expanded what I had, what had been a 6,000 word short story became the first 40,000-50,000 words of the manuscript.

I could probably blame Who Wants To Be A Hero? on Top Chef.  Or Project Runway.  Or ... man, should I admit I watch all of those things?  Sigh.  But I definitely distinguish between skill-based, competition television versus things like The Real Housewives, and when I tried to watch The Apprentice, I pretty much realized I had hit my outer limit of both trash factor and focus on conflict.  That really isn't what interests me:  I much more prefer to see moments of human cooperation and generosity of spirit.

10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?


I think Scylla and Charybdis would appeal to fantasy fans, because the science is very soft and unobtrusive, and it has some fantasy sensibilities - as the name might imply.  I think it's a bit of an unusual take for SF these days.

Who Wants To Be A Hero? has a lot of in-jokes for people who are familiar with mythology - mostly Greek, but there's some Welsh, as well - and related literature (I rag on Beowulf a bit).  If I've written it correctly, it should also have that "armchair judge" feel - inviting the reader to root for their favorites, disagree with the judges, and be exasperated when that snake no one can stand keeps squeaking by.

Include the link of who tagged you and this explanation for the people you have tagged.

As previously mentioned, I was tagged by W.E. Larson, who talks about COG, his middle grade steampunk novel.

I'd like to tag:

Maria of Bear Mountain Books 

And ... you!  If you're reading my blog and you haven't been tapped for this chain yet, please consider yourself invited.

Thursday Thoughts

Time to talk about technology.

No, I couldn't resist the alliteration.

One of the challenges of writing contemporary fantasy is that technology is always changing, especially with regards to the internet and connectivity.  These days, it seems the majority of the people can operate their phones as if they were miniature computers, playing games, pulling up maps or websites ... the list goes on.  (I am not one of those people.  My phone makes calls, period.  I have been known to (rarely) take pictures with it, but that's why I have a digital camera.)  This capacity only seems to keep expanding, so unless the characters are luddites, trapped in a blackout (hi, Revolution!), their magic interferes with the workings of technology (come to think of it, that may be why I've never noticed any discrepancies with the Dresden Files) or the absence of technology is in some way a plot point ... most writers will have to deal with it.

It's a problem made worse by the fact that it may take a year or more to write and then polish a novel (though arguably, you can make the necessary updates during this time), and unless you're lucky and have an agent, possibly a couple of years to find a home and another few to go from acceptance to publication.  What if something comes up in the interim that actually invalidates a plot point?

I have no solution for this except to weather the storm - or to visibly set your story in a particular year.  With Flow, the novel had initially been written with the intent that it was set in 2007.  After it was accepted, I debated for a bit and decided to leave it.  So modern readers may find the mobile disconnect a trifle odd:  Kit's cellphone is just a phone; Hadrian does his research from a laptop; and there is, wonder of wonders, a single reference to a pay-phone.  (Grant that it's in an old diner along the road which might even still have such a device today.  Maybe.)

Sure, science fiction has to put up with this, as well, but it's more likely to be on the order of after the book has been published - five, ten years down the line.  I actually dealt with this in Scylla and Charybdis - again with connectivity - and created a mental scenario, never explicitly discussed in the book, where society actually moved away from our current constant connectivity culture and then gradually back.  In one city the characters visit, being disconnected is considered a sign of personal freedom.

One of my favorite stories about the evolution of science and science fiction comes from reading Connie Willis and Cynthia Felice's Water Witch.  It's more of a science fantasy than straight science fiction, at least in tone and influences, and despite having been published in 1982, it has aged very well - perhaps because the story is more focused on the characters, the politics, and the ritual.

However, near the end of the book, there's a reference to a city that is disconnected from the rest of the world because it's not physically possible to run wires for communications across the distance.  I put the book down and giggled. ... then I picked it back up and finished it, but it's astonishing what we assume is impossible.

Whirlwinds and Rollercoasters

With success in hand, I feel comfortable divulging the project I've been cramming the past several days:  a submission to Harper Voyager's open call for their digital imprint.

I had initially intended to give this a pass, for a couple of reasons.  First of all, I didn't have anything finished and edited within the desired word count, and second of all, being a die-hard lover of paper books, I was reluctant to put a project into a digital-only line.

Then the bug and inspiration bit at the same time:  I had Butterfly's Poison, which was the novel I finished before I wrote Flow.  It had seemed to make a strong showing:  Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy in Canada had requested the full manuscript. After so much time, I was dubious about the quality, but I figured I would attempt an editing pass and see what shape it was in.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the core of the novel was solid and far better than I had expected.  Most of what I needed to alter was straightforward:  clumsy wording, clarified setting points, enhanced emotional response.  As I approached the end, I learned of more complications:  HV's idea of a "short synopsis" was a ridiculously brief 1500 characters - estimated 250 words.  Let's face it, it takes me 250 words to say hello.  What I ended up doing was taking my original query teaser and expanding it to include the ending ...

But not before I got an unpleasant jolt.  I had decided to keep working until late this evening, spending as much time as possible cleaning up the novel ... and then about two o'clock this afternoon, I found out submissions had been closed a day early.  I stopped dead in my tracks.  It knocked the wind out of my sails.  I had put in an incredible amount of hyper-focused work to no purpose.

A few hours later, when I was sulking, feeling sorry for myself (no, really) and trying to get through an hour writing exercise, a fellow writer on the same forum commented that the closure had been a technical error, and submissions had been reopened.  I stopped the free write where it was (33 minutes in) and dove back in.

So as of about an hour later:  success.  The submission is on its way, and I feel weightless.

I decided a few things from all this:

1)  The "cramming" edit turned out to be really useful.  The earlier parts of the manuscript were still fresh in my mind even when I got closer to the end.  This is something I think I should incorporate into my process.
2)  Butterfly's Poison is a surprisingly solid manuscript.  Assuming it is rejected by HV (I am aware of how long the shot is!), I will keep it in my files as something to show my agent when I have one.
3)  Never give up.  Never surrender.

Thursday Thoughts

With the World Fantasy Convention coming up at the end of the month, I'm going to continue to write about Flow in particular, and perhaps contemporary / urban fantasy in general - with the exception of The Next Big Thing, which I have been tagged for, and I will post about!  I promise.  But I am swamped with a project I'll post about if I meet my exceedingly crunchy deadline.

Lately, I've been thinking about a potential sequel to Flow.  This following post continues some spoilers as to the plot resolution (though I'm trying to phrase things to minimize such), so if you haven't read the novel and care about such things, pop over to:

Flow - Lindsey Duncan

All right, shameless plug over.  On with the show!

I'm still working out the exact details of a plot(s) for this - I want to do something a bit more complex and spread out than Flow, so it may indeed be plots, plural - but there are a few things I know are must-dos:

Scenes from Hadrian's perspective.  Flow was conceived as alternating scenes between Kit and Chailyn.  Much is made of Hadrian's hyper-accelerated perceptions, but because of the dual POV, the reader never gets into those eyes.  Back when I wrote Flow, I wouldn't have been confident of being able to tackle that level of detail without bogging down the narrative unduly.  Now it seems like a fun challenge.

The dissolving romance.  One core concept for the sequel started before I even finished Flow:  in this later volume, Kit would have a boyfriend of supernatural character who uses his powers to suppress her abilities and allow her to be normal, but as the story opens, this is beginning to chafe.  I've expanded this into wanting to show a romance as it ends, the staying-together-by-habit, the irritation, the dissolution.

The uncomplicated romance.  I actually wrote an exercise (from Ann Hood's Creating Character Emotions, which I highly recommend) which set up the direction for the other romantic element in the book, but I want this to be a happy, middle-of-relationship story.  No irrational jealousy, no wandering eyes, no strained secrets, no "you put your work first" accusations.  There's too much media out there treading the same tired ground of tension for the sake of it.

Evolution.  The sequel will pick up a couple of years after Flow - there are a few points I have to nail down to determine how long.  I want to give a clear sense of how the characters have changed in the intervening time.

And just one more teaser on a likely plot point:

What do you do with the body of someone whose soul has been drained?

Sunday Snippets

Can't promise I will keep up with this feature, because it's difficult to post snippets unless I'm at the beginning of a piece, but here's a writing exercise I did recently from a challenge provided by my dear friend Lauren:

                It was her last masquerade as queen, for what vestige of meaning the title retained in a conquered land.  She had commanded the Fire Hall to be decorated as time and tradition demanded, scarlet banners and a host of torches in sconces both jeweled and plain.  She dressed the part, a flowing black gown with a high waist and a wide neckline, dotted with obsidian – hair the color of ash set free.

                And she ached for it to be anything more than ceremony.

                She surveyed the Fire Hall from the concealment of a curtain, frowning.  Too many of the court had already adopted the style of the conquerors, pale, uncertain colors in winding, binding ties and stays.  It was a scramble for favor, pure and simple – since the queen herself was old and intractable, the empire would need a figurehead, and why not one of them?

                She suppressed the feeling her people were about to dance on her grave.

Thursday Thoughts

I am pondering moving this feature to Tuesday Thoughts - my Thursdays are frequently insane.  On the other hand, maybe insanity is a good perspective to write from.

Today, I want to touch briefly upon on why I refer to Flow as contemporary fantasy rather than urban fantasy - even though it's set in 2007, so by now, it is very technically historical fantasy.  (Really, the only noticeable evocation of this is the rarity of mobile technology - or if you add up the travel times / dates / day of the week.)  Realizing that the distinction is often a marketing one, I still prefer the term because it gives a better snapshot of the focus.

First of all, the preconceptions that the term urban fantasy generates have in some cases become highly specific.  Besides the contemporary, real-world setting, the familiar type for these books is:  a first-person storyline, set in a big city (more on that later) with a dark tone and a strong romantic subplot.  Whether or how much of this is in any formal definition of urban fantasy is a different point - these are the books most people think of when you say "urban fantasy."  Flow fits none of these secondary attributes.  I might argue the story is a little dark, but I also will cheerfully admit that I don't know what I'm talking about where dark is concerned.

Second of all, the literal definition of urban fantasy is "fantasy set in a city."  It doesn't intrinsically imply a modern or even a real-world setting.  I think you'd find very few people using the term urban fantasy to refer to a secondary world city tale, but the connotation is there.  And well ... while Flow has some stops in cities - Cincinnati and Boston - it's primarily a traveling tale, a tale of small towns, suburbs and wilderness.

Contemporary fantasy, on the other hand, carries less of the baggage - and on the accuracy front, it says what it is:  fiction set in the present day.  Simple, clean, uncomplicated.

None of this is ironclad, of course, but it's the thought process behind my labels.

Anatomy of an Idea: Dancing Day

Dancing Day started out as a challenge over at fantasy-writers.org - and moreover, it was a holiday challenge.  To be specific, the challenge was to take five elements associated with Christmas and use them ... however the writer might see fit.

The elements were:

- An annual festival
- A normally earthbound form of transport that flies
- An unorthodox way of entering a house
- A tree that isn't fulfilling its usual function
- A special type of song
 
(I do realize, in hindsight, that I cheated:  my "earthbound" form of transport is more properly a waterbound form of transport.)

I knew as soon as I saw the challenge that I wanted to incorporate mouth music, a traditional Scottish music style that was invented when musical instruments were banned.  This historical backdrop heavily influenced the story I ended up telling.  There's also a bit of a bratty call-out to this in the story:  the term for this mouth music is "puirt a beul," while the setting is the (port) city of Abeul.  (The original title was Mouth Music, in fact.)

The unusual method of entering a house followed next - teleportation and the Hoppers.  I quickly decided I wanted them to youngsters who lost their powers as they aged, and I knew this element would be important to the story somehow.

From there, I built the rest of the story.  Some of the elements and details developed while I was writing, especially the other Hoppers, who almost created themselves as I wrote.  And I certainly wasn't entirely sure what was in store for Taris and how it would affect the ending until I approached that final scene - but it all came together.

Dancing Day in A&A!

Abyss and Apex has just released its 4th Quarter Issue, including my Dancing Day!  Check it out ...

Plasma Frequency and Mythocraft Now Out!

Plasma Frequency has just released its second issue, containing Mythocraft - best described as a (loosely) steampunk take on Greek mythology.  Check it out here:

Plasma Frequency Issue 2

Me and Cooking

So here's a confession:  I enjoy cooking.

I get a similar sort of satisfaction from it as I do working on a story or harp arrangement.  (I have a cooking blog over at Evil Overlady Cooks.)  On the face of it, though, this doesn't make much sense.  Sure, it's creation in the broadest sense - I'm making something out of raw materials - but it's not all that different from putting together an Ikea desk, and I'm sure most people wouldn't consider that a creative outlet.  At present, my substitutions, omissions and additions to recipes are fairly minimal.  I'm still a fairly by-the-book cook.

So I'm not sure what it is, precisely, that satisfies that creative urge.  Maybe it's the combination of recipes - I tend to throw together some fairly oddball menus.  Maybe it's the fact that (let's be honest) my ambition outstrips my skill, so I often find myself improvising to get back on track.

Or maybe it's less to do with the creative instinct as the emotions at the core of it.  I have a very Italian mother:  food is love.  And it's that sense of acceptance and contentment that I get every time I cook ... even when something ends up all over the floor.

Anyone else feel creative in the kitchen?

Thursday Thoughts

I'm baaaack!

Since we're on the countdown to the World Fantasy Convention (with its dual themes of urban and gothic fantasy) and since Flow has now been out for six months, I'd like to talk a little bit about what makes a setting work for me in contemporary fantasy.  (I do consider Flow contemporary fantasy rather than urban fantasy.  I'm aware this is largely a matter of nomenclature, but I have specific reasons for it - more in another post, probably.)

For me, the best reason to use our modern-day world in a story is the wealth of background available in the history - and the present! - of the occult, mythology and religion.  Strong contemporary fantasy takes these elements and builds the backdrop from them ... or if it starts from another concept, incorporates them in the development.  To me, to simply slap some magic invented wholecloth onto a private detective or ballet dancer or accountant misses the point.

As in any other fantasy, the magical element needs to be an integral part of the setting; it needs to feel organic to the history and beliefs of the people practicing it.  If the magic is divorced from the rest of the world, it becomes unconvincing.  Now, I've focused on real world "magic" here because it seems the most obvious and easiest source, and to me it's also the richest, but it's not the only option:  it's also possible to build modern-day supernatural on scientific concepts.  (It's why I was so fascinated by Rachel Caine's Ill Wind and her very climatically sound weather wardens, though I was less interested in the other concepts she introduced.  Those felt less organic, to me.)

Another nice benefit is that a reference to history makes the magic feel suddenly authentic.  I handle the arcane elements of an online roleplaying game where the Great Depression was the creation of a group of dark mages intent on feeding off the despair and emotional pain of the victims.  History often seems so random - providing an occult explanation can be very satisfying.

On the other hand, contemporary fantasy doesn't need to select a mythological beast, divination method, historical legend and use it one hundred percent by the book.  A twist, interpretation change or new direction can give a writer new options ... and offer a pleasant surprise for those readers versed in the base mythos.  Of course, these changes can't throw the baby out with the bathwater - there had better be an explanation for why the bulk of folklore says something different.

So that's my take on the best way to incorporate the supernatural in a modern setting.

GoodReads Review: A Coalition of Lions

A Coalition of Lions by Elizabeth Wein
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The quasi-historical story of the daughter of King Arthur, A Coalition of Lions sends its heroine, Goewin, to Africa and Aksum to face a perilous political situation and a hostile would-be bridegroom. My initial impression of this novel was negative for a reason that was only partly the fault of the writing: nowhere on the book does it clearly indicate that this is the second novel of a series, so when the first several pages were consumed by a rapidfire, rather dry summary of what had gone before, I was irritated and felt the author had started the book in the wrong place. Finding out that this was a sequel, I let go of my indignation - but I still feel that the recap was hamhandedly handled for new readers.

As a personal aside, I was further disconcerted by the initial names. In Welsh mythology (which meets / intersects with Arthurian) Goewin is the foot-holder (and later, the wife) of high king Math, and Lleu is the son of the king's subsequent foot-holder ... anyhow, this tangent to explain why, among the mythologically-saturated opening, I was dearly confused to find Goewin and Lleu as sibling children of Artos.

Once past this rocky start, however, I found myself absorbed in the characters and conflict. The narrative is lyrical yet in many ways, minimalist - the descriptions are evocative yet sparse, prompting the reader to fill in the blanks without noticing that the gaps exist. And despite the fact that almost the entire novel is a series of conversations, often political and sometimes stiltedly formal by the necessity of the venue ... it was never dull, always absorbing. Telemakos flashes through here as an absolutely superb portrait of brilliant childhood.

This is a rich and distinct narrative, a striking read ... but not without its flaws. The love story implied within leaves me unconvinced. While I am the first person to bang my head against the wall over romances too-obviously wrought, this one goes in the other direction: it was so subtle and poorly supported that I didn't believe it. Similarly, Goewin's later change of opinion towards Constantine didn't seem supported by actions in the narrative - and since that very much affected the outcome of the book, I found it weakened the plot.

Overall, this was an absorbing read despite its flaws. I don't feel completely satisfied by the novel and its resolutions, but it was an enjoyable visit to another time and place.

View all my reviews

Now over at Every Day Poets ...

My poem "The Rivers of Nowhere" is now up and available for your reading and voting:

http://www.everydaypoets.com/the-rivers-of-nowhere-by-lindsey-duncan/

Enjoy!

GoodReads Review: The Last Alchemist

The Last Alchemist: Count Cagliostro, Master of Magic in the Age of Reason by Iain McCalman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading this book, the exploration of the fascinating, enigmatic Count Cagliostro - of many other names and just as many roles, from charlatan to spiritual guide. Rather than present a balanced, chronological biography, the book provides a wealth of setting, detail and strategically placed "snapshots" surrounding seven key episodes of Cagliostro's life. The years before and after these episodes are summarized in brief, interwoven when needed for context. Each chapter is about more than Cagliostro, although he is the star: one learns a great deal about his friends, victims, antagonists, kings, queens and luminaries, the social history of the times ...

There is very little dry about this book: it is presented with flourishes that sometimes resemble those of a gifted fiction writer. It is a joy to read, comprehensive without being dense, presenting its subject matter without apology - thoughtfully, but without trying to interpret too much for the reader.

Highly recommended, and not just as a biography of its subject. It does a great job of touching upon the period world and some of its central figures (Casanova, Catherine the Great), as well.

View all my reviews

Sale!

MindFlights just picked up "The King's Passing" - actually a rewrite of the first story I ever wrote, set in the same world as "Burning The Midnight Oil" (which NewMyths printed).  Publication date when I have it!

Now Available ...

My "Didn't I Mention ...?" is out in the Summer issue of White Cat Publications - and it's their own flash piece!  Check it out ...

http://www.whitecatpublications.com

The inspiration behind this story was an hour writing prompt to tell a story out of sequence.  I decided to approach it backwards ... sort of ...

Another Sale - Every Day Poets ...

... picks up "The Rivers of Nowhere," which I loosely classified as a fantasy poem, but may be more in the slipstream (did *I* just use that word?  Woah) vein.  It was originally intended to use only the letters in the title; it drifted from that design, but there's still some careful choice of words to produce a certain sound.

Mythocraft sold to Plasma Frequency

Plasma Frequency Magazine (http://www.plasmafrequencymagazine.com/) just picked up Mythocraft - my (loosely) steampunk take on Greek mythology.  Stay tuned here for details, as ever.