Tuesday Thoughts

As a writer, I think of the lyrics in music as a specific kind of form poetry.  Beyond the requirements of rhyme, lyrics have to follow melodic flow, with emphasis and syllables laid out appropriately to the rhythm and beat.  That's the challenge and reward of lyrics:  to bring out the message in a very specific structure.  I have little patience for musicians whose lyrics either don't rhyme (I'm old-school:  songs are supposed to rhyme!) or whose later verses make a hash of the melody / rhythm to smash a certain amount of syllables into a line.

Ideally, lyrics tell a story.  Within these limits, it's a story implied or even written the listener, but there is a sense, not just of the "now" moment of the song, but things coming before and/or after.  To be successful, lyrics usually have to be universal; to be interesting, they have to strike an unusual chord (all musical pun intended).  For me, certain song lines jump out and stick with me.  I've been on a bit of a self-improvement kick of late, so my current picks tend to show that:

No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from -- "Life Uncommon" by Jewel

As if my luck and hope had found each other -- "I Believe" by Sophie-Ellis Bextor

I'm dealing with the changes, this complicated strangeness of seeing life this way -- "This Is Me" by Faith Hill

The things I write are only light extemporanea.  I won't put politics on paper, it's a mania!  So I refuse to use the pen in Pennsylvania.  -- "But Mr. Adams" from the 1776 soundtrack   (This whole soundtrack is filled with brilliance.  It's particularly awesome that some direct quotes from the historical figures are actually *woven into the songs.*  "Is Anybody There?" includes the line, "Through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory" which was actually written by John Adams in a letter to his wife.)

(But I digress.)

I've been down and for too long forgotten; on occasion, I'll stay there for days.  And I'll act like a clown, and I'll tear myself down, just for someone to fill me with praise -- "I'd Rather Be Alone" by Helen Reddy

Of course, musicals have a bit of an advantage in that the story context has already been provided, so their lyrics can fill in the specifics.  That said, my favorite lyrics probably do come from musicals:  1776, Wicked, Camelot, Into The Woods.

Of course, the music is not only equally important, the mood and instrumentation should augment the lyrics, increasing their power.  Some examples:

He Never Mentioned Love by Kirsty MacColl -- I have loved this song for a long time, and I can still put it on loop with great pleasure.  The beauty of it is the first listen (or a casual listen) tells one story, and a deeper listen to the lyrics brings the realization that the story is actually the opposite of the singer's claims.  The bouncy, chipper instrumentation and melody are something of a contrast, which works beautifully here.  Kirsty tends to do a fair amount of this - another one to check out is "Children of the Revolution," which sounds so happy until you pay attention to the words ...

What Is This Feeling? from Wicked -- I adore these lyrics.  The whole song is a near-parody of upbeat, triumphant love songs, and the lush, overwrought Disney-esque ensemble arrangement is the icing on the cake.  (Please excuse some of the typos in this version - I grabbed the first one I could find with the words.)

Chasing The Sun by Sara Bareilles - all right, so I know Bareilles is very mainstream, so I'm not exactly saying anything unique, but for my money, this song is the standout of The Blessed Unrest.  It blows the continuously clipped "Brave" out of the water.  Just the line "Skyscrapers' little tombstone brothers" sticks in my mind and won't leave.  Here there is some of the "cramming in syllables," but it's done in such a consistent way that it creates a rhythm of its own.  I also love that unusual pitch she hits on the word "sun" - it brings your awareness back to the gorgeous melody with that moment of surprise.

So that's my (way more than) two cents on the writing of lyrics.

Tuesday Thoughts

In working on my editing marks for Who Wants To Be A Hero? I've been reminded that humor has distinct pacing.  For me, I'm seeing three separate speeds, dependent on the type of humor ... and of course, timing is everything.  A mismatch drains the funny out of even the most clever setup.

1.  Quick hit.  A snappy remark, terrible pun, etc.  Setup for this needs to be subtle; it loses punch if one can see it coming.  On the other side, if the characters respond too much or drag out the logical conclusions of the joke, it becomes diluted - unless the follow-up is also comic in nature, of course.  This is probably the one I have the most trouble with, and a lot of my editing marks involve paring away the ungainly train behind the joke.

2.  Continuous buildup.  One quip or moment of humor builds on another, builds on the next, builds on the next ... in this kind of sequence, the length adds to the humor.  This kind of back-and-forth can still be ruined by going on too long, and if it's too short, it may never get off the ground.  The "level" of the jokes needs to move upwards - save the best for last.  I like to do this with pun sequences or a barrage of phrases in the same vein; the first one or two, you may not even notice.

3.  Anticipation.  This is usually character-based humor, but not always.  Here, it's all about the setup and laying out the joke in such a way that the reader knows what is coming and looks forward to it - and their expectations are met perfectly or even exceeded.

I certainly don't claim to be a master humorist, but I enjoy writing humor, and I've published a few stories in a comedic vein.  This is actually the second humorous novel I've written:  the first, Miss Understanding, involved a group of female adventurers from a fantasy world being dropped into our reality and having to participate in a beauty pageant to win their means home - maybe I'll rewrite it some day.  I've learned a lot from Who Wants To Be A Hero? and hopefully, the pay-out of that joke will be publication.

Tuesday Thoughts

I meant to write this post on Mother's Day, but since I was working, I only had enough free time to call my mother, watch Game of Thrones, and then pass out.  Still, I definitely feel the need to discuss what my mother gave me as a writer.

Despite having devoured The Lord of the Rings books so voraciously that my father (reputedly) said he'd have to grow hair on his hands and feet to get any attention, my mother is not generally a fantasy reader.  She tried to help me out with critiquing some of my early fiction, but about the time she wondered, "Why are all their names so strange?" I realized she might not be my best choice of first reader.

But she always challenged me to think of things in a different way.  My earliest stories involved a flock of rainbow sheep (... I don't even know where that came from), and when my second story had the same plotline as the first, she encouraged me to think of something new.  She always modeled for me the ideal of marching to the tune of your own drummer, including homeschooling me at a time when this was a radical notion and most people had no idea what homeschooling even was.  I can't even begin to estimate the impact this had on my ability, freedom and inclination to explore new ideas.

My mother never tried to fit a dodecahedral peg into a round hole.  She let me practice cursive by writing a guide to a medieval castle, the surrounding town, and its people.  And I learned parts of speech in a way I think provided me with a solid foundation:  she put together cards with sequins, each shape / color representing a different part of speech, and had me invent sentences that matched the pattern.  It was fun, it was concrete, and it got my imagination turning.

Then there was the word graveyard.  "Here Lies (X) - Died of Overuse," the paper headstones read, with X being a bland, simple word, "Replaced by ..."  It was my job to list as many synonyms, alternatives and replacements as I could think of.

As I grew older, she was (and still is) my cheerleader, even if my subject matter seemed foreign and bizarre to her.  She's had confidence in me even when I don't (which, if I'm being honest, is more often than not).  Then, of course, there was the moment when she read "Precious Cargo" from Space Sirens and raved about the story.  But that was really just a bonus, a final footnote to the foundation and secure footing she gave me.

Tuesday Thoughts

I have a peculiar quirk as a reader:  except in the case of nail-biting, gasp-worthy cliff-hangers, when I finish a book in a series, I don't immediately reach for the next.  Instead, I reach for another author, often something as different as possible.  It may be (in fact, usually is) months before I meander back for book #2 or #3.  This is nothing against the books:  I do this even with authors I adore.  After deep immersion and acquaintance with a world and group of characters, I feel the need for new fictional surroundings.

This tendency filters into my writing as well.  While most of my novels leave threads untied and possibilities open for future volumes, I typically don't feel the need to start working on those.  I don't have many story sets, where multiple short stories involve the same world or characters - probably my longest arc is the Ishene and Kemel stories, and those were written out of sequence.  The new path to a major publisher which has sometimes been touted - write short stories in the setting, get them published in pro magazines / anthologies, then write a novel - pretty much seems like a nightmare to me.   I feel for every author who's said they're tired of writing "another X novel."

I need variety - I need to periodically switch it up and do something different.  It's why I'm typically working on two or three projects at once, but of different sorts or in different stages.  Right now, that's writing Unnatural Causes - a high fantasy mystery / intrigue novel with a sometimes snarky non-human first person narrator - and editing Who Wants To Be A Hero? - a humorous fantasy novel involving multiple narrator viewpoints and a mix of third person and first.  I'm also pondering tackling my zombie novella.  I have what I hope is an unusual take on the idea, and it's so athwart what I usually do that I thought it would be a fun escape.

And isn't that what reading and writing are about - escape from the normal?

Tuesday Thoughts

My ambition to make this Anthology April, alas, didn't appear, but I did want to acknowledge the alliteration with a list of some recommended anthologies:

This Is My Funniest (Mike Resnick):  I'm a sucker for humor, but what distinguishes this anthology is that the stories are chosen by what the author deems is their funniest - and it includes offerings from writers that aren't traditionally thought of as humorists.  I think this anthology starts off weak, so stick with it:  the stories get steadily better as the pages progress.

I, Alien (Mike Resnick):  Alien encounter stories from the first-person perspective of the alien.  There are a few truly moving tales in this one, and the closing piece is just delightfully clever.

Murder By Magic (Rosemary Edghill):  The requirements for this anthology were that the story had to have a murder and a fantastic element, and the writers are chosen from both the fantasy camp and the mystery camp.  The results are wonderful, and surprisingly, some of the worldbuilding comes from the mystery writers.  If you are planning on reading Laura Resnick's novel Doppelgangster, skip her short story herein:  it's the basis from which the novel was fleshed out.

Sword & Sorceress XVII (Marion Zimmer Bradley):  It may take some searching to find this particular older volume, but it's probably the strongest in the series.  Full review here.

The Book of Kings (Richard Gilliam, Martin H. Greenberg):  A thought-provoking, imaginative anthology of kings based in both history and fantasy.  Full review here. 

Fantastic Companions (Julie E. Czerneda):  This anthology frames itself as being about the animal companions of humans, and this isn't really accurate - but ignoring the drift from theme, this is full of entertaining, varied and surprising stories.  From cats and dragons to more imaginative creatures, well worth the read.  Full review here.

Tuesday Thoughts

... and they all lived unhappily ever after.

There was a time in my writing career when, by both choice and compulsion, I wasn't capable of writing anything but a happy ending.  I killed off a character in a novel, only to suddenly find myself stumbling across a way to resurrect him.  I took a short story class and was asked to write a story with an unhappy ending.  When the instructor read it, he commented that the characters weren't very sympathetic.

Well, of course, I thought.  Who would want to read about sympathetic characters failing?

Over the years, I've slowly relaxed my position on unhappy endings, though I'm more prone to bittersweet, and the "yes, but ..." is still my favorite ending.  I suppose in most cases, my bittersweet *is* a "yes, but ...":  the character gets what they want, but at a high price, or they find that it wasn't what they wanted, after all.  I can't give examples without spoilers, of course.

For me, there's an emotional toll quota in a story.  I don't want to read a depressing story with a depressing ending - I just feel wrung out and unsatisfied.  To "earn" an unhappy ending, the story has to have enough hope and levity that the reader doesn't enter the last paragraphs already exhausted.  Conversely, you can batter the character with unrelenting darkness ... if there's light at the end of the tunnel.

I think the first time I wrote what I'd call a bittersweet element in an ending was in The Sintellyn Medallion.  There were multiple romantic attractions in the story; some of them were mutually exclusive as far as happy endings might go.  One of them was a mutual attraction that broke off because one character had to choose between career and romance - that's another theme and strongly held belief of mine.  In any case, it doesn't end well for everyone, and there's several wistful notes in the concluding chapter.

Since then, I've dabbled further ... but I still find that my instinct is for a happy ending.  I can't remember which story it was any more, but I'd planned a hope-is-lost sort of ending ... and as I approached writing it, I realized that it wanted to keep going, and that another half page completely changed the tone of the ending.  So I suppose I'm still resurrecting the dead, moving heaven and earth to give my characters success ...

... but at what cost?

GoodReads Review: Sword & Sorceress XIII

Sword and Sorceress XIII by Marion Zimmer Bradley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A solid anthology of stories featuring female protagonists who conquer the odds, this volume didn't strike me as being as strong as some of the others ... it had some weaker stories, and fewer "wow" moments. That said, there were some strong tales, in particular Leslie Ann Miller's "Sun Dancer" - and both Marella Sand's "Tortoise Weeps" and Diana L. Paxson's "Twilight" came to life with their well-researched, deftly incorporated historical settings.

I think what struck me about this anthology is that, in contrast to later volumes - even XVII, only four years later - it had a particular emphasis on the idea of women facing barriers because inferior men wouldn't listen to them, or men traditionally inherit, etc ... and the male side of it comes off as something of a straw-man. Nowadays, if fiction portrays this scenario as so black and white, we're prone to respond with skepticism or, "Now tell me something new." Gender inequality is still very real, but (in most cases) it's somewhat subtler, and readers want more variation and nuance when the idea is explored.

This anthology is certainly worth reading, but not as strong as some other volumes.

View all my reviews

Thursday Thoughts

First lines!  I'm fairly sure I've blogged about this before, but it's been long enough that I figure the topic is due another inspection.

I spend a lot of energy on my first lines, even for novels - the leaping-off point is very important to me.  As a general rule of thumb, the hook for a short story needs to be snappier and more immediate than for a novel, simply because you have less room to run.

For me, even the most slow-burn opening sentence of a novel has to fulfill one criteria:  it has to make the reader ask at least one question.  It may be an immediate punch of a question or simply something that catches the attention.  There can be more than one implicit question; one is simply the entry requirement.  One fun way to do this is with something that seems contradictory on the surface - it provokes a, "What do you mean XYZ?  That makes no sense!" reaction from a reader.  These tend to need to be explained quickly, though.

If this bears some similarity to my discussion of book titles, it's no accident:  there is definitely some overlap in tactics and purpose.

I've mentioned before that my favorite first line from a published novel is in Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair, which is:  

My father had a father that could stop a clock.

What's beautiful about this line, of course, is the answer to this inverts expectations:  you expect "stop a clock" to be a figurative expression, of ugliness or maybe a stern expression ... and it turns out to be literal.

Another question I like to pose is to use a term or description that makes a reader wonder, "What is that?"  I'm sure there are punchier, more interesting lines, but my personal favorite from my works is:

The Houseless were drunk on the veranda.

What is a Houseless?  The word would imply some kind of dispossession, which perhaps explains why they are on the narrator's veranda ... there's actually two or three questions here, elaborated upon in the sentences that follow.

There's one more aspect to a first sentence that is important:  it should be the first building block to establishing tone.  A comic story shouldn't start with a weighty paragraph (unless the sudden inversion is part of the humor).  A serious, sober story shouldn't start with slapstick.  (Usually.  There are exceptions to everything.)  Who Wants To Be A Hero? starts thusly:


Ioweyn stood in the Waiting Chamber of the Gods and tried not to fidget.   

Which I'll grant is not immediately funny, but it has some quirk of humor to it.

A few other random beginnings:

Being shipwrecked, the thought rose to the surface of Miayde’s mind, had a dismaying impact on her dignity.  (Butterfly's Poison)

Time is more important to me than it is to anyone else.   (Stolen Moments)

Every soldier in the Pitharian army waited on the command of their captain – but every soldier also kept half an eye out for the sorceress, watching her wend across the battlefield even if they could not see her.  (The Heat of Battle)

Rosh always wore the shoes when she killed.  (In These Shoes)

The dragon’s harsh breath beat down on my face, with the decaying sweetness of fear and anxiety.  (Nesting Instinct)

Anyone got any favorite lines - their own or another writer's - they want to share?

Thursday Thoughts

Breaking news!  Since I have two 4.5 hour lab classes on Thursday next quarter, this may become Tuesday Thoughts for the interim.

Now that everyone has recovered from the shock ...

And the sarcasm ...

I've finally taken some action towards editing Who Wants To Be A Hero? - a novel which I like to describe as, "What if a pantheon of Greco-Roman deities invented reality television competitions?"  For me, it was a fun project, combining my shameful enjoyment of shows like Top Chef, Project Runway and America's Next Top Model (... yes ... really ... I've admitted it ...) with my lifelong love of mythology.  The challenges for becoming a hero are inspired both by the traditional Greek hero arc and by more modern ideas like roleplaying games - for instance, there's a challenge that can only be described as a dungeon-crawl.

The fun part for me was that the results of the episodes were quasi-random.  I gave each character a score in various aptitudes (1-10) and decided which aptitude(s) each challenge used.  If a challenge had multiple aptitudes that might apply, the contestant could "choose" to focus on one or the other.  They could also potentially use an unsuitable aptitude at a penalty.  Then I rolled a die (a ten-sided die, to be specific) and added the two numbers together to determine how well the character was going to do.  The three highest would be up to win; the three lowest would be up for elimination.

... none of this actually showed up in the manuscript, mind.  Instead, it informed the way I wrote the episode and the characters' attempts.  I let my feeling of how the scene had played out influence which of the top three won ... and tried to stick with the numbers as to who had the lowest score and would go home.  This was intended to imitate that moment in a reality show where someone you really expected to go all the way slips up and has a bad moment.  I didn't want my preconceptions to create the straightest, most obvious route.  I also hope that if I genuinely didn't know who was going to win until very near the end, that the reader won't, either ...

So editing this book is going to have some advantages - the plot structure is built in - and some disadvantages - there's going to be some untidiness where I set up elements with characters who then were eliminated.  On the whole, I don't think I'll totally cut out the latter.  A bit of red herring can be good for a story ...

GoodReads Review: The Dragon Done It

The Dragon Done It by Mike Resnick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Fantasy-mystery crossovers have enjoyed increasing popularity, and I had high hopes for this anthology of short stories, advertised as humorous in nature. This is a solid but not remarkable anthology; there aren't any real duds, but none of the stories stand out in my mind as especially memorable, though Esther Friesner, as ever, delivers a highlight with twists upon twists ("Gunsel and Gretel").

There is definitely a bias towards noir here, especially in the first half of the book, which is specific enough that the stories start to feel a bit repetitive. I wonder why the noir offerings weren't spread out more evenly, because we also get some entertaining Sherlock Holmes takes - I'm particularly fond of "The Adventure of the Pearly Gates" by Mike Resnick, which is set in heaven - and some well-realized historical tales. Another unusual offering is "Fox Tails" by Richard Park, which features an eastern setting.

Overall, this collection was decent, but not exceptional. Some of the stories, I wouldn't classify as mysteries. Some of the humor was of the broad, silly type I have trouble with - it takes me out of any tension. Other examples were quite clever, though, but this isn't a humorous anthology as a whole. Worth reading, but don't run out to get it.

View all my reviews

Thursday Thoughts

The fact that I've been writing, with ambitions of books in print, since I was very small, combined with the fact I've been a professional harp performer for close to fifteen years, has had an odd effect on my relationship with the creative process.  Often (though not always), I feel at a loss when I try to create something that won't become a product for sale.  This has influenced my forays into photography and fractal generation ... not so much the drawing I've done, possibly because I can comfortably say there's no way anyone would buy my rudimentary portraiture.  I finish working on something and think ... now what? ... and gradually, that "now what?" has crept into my brain before I even start.

That's not to say I don't "play" with my creative outlets.  I learn tunes that no one is going to recognize for me and me alone; I challenge myself with unusual arrangements when something more simple would be perfectly appropriate for a background gig.  I've spent a lot of time with roleplaying games, a tremendous investment of time and energy that will never be sent to a publisher.  And even when it's work, it's fun:  it just happens to be fun I signed myself up for.  I couldn't stop any more than I could stop breathing.

But in those other creative arenas, I feel at a loss.  What if I become a good photographer?  How would I know?  What constitutes a good piece of abstract art?  When do I stop playing with a fractal?  What do I do with all these pictures, short of filling up a tiny fraction of my hard drive?

I suppose for me, creative process has become bound up with creative product.  The act of creation itself isn't enough:  I need to see it through to completion, which isn't necessarily publication or sale, but at least a state of polish and perfection.  When I play or goof off, I'm practicing my craft.  When it comes to the creative arts I've only dabbled in, I don't know how to tell when I've reached that level of completion.  Is it finding that one perfect photo out of a thousand?  Cropping and editing?  But some photographers will tell you that they never alter the picture as it was taken ...

I have neither answers nor conclusions here, really.

Thursday Thoughts

Occasionally, the topic arises of how to write a male or female character authentically when the author is of the opposite gender - and the inevitable (and ultimately, accurate - if simplified) retort is, "Don't write a gender:  write a person."  And this is all well and good; it helps break those grating stereotypes we're all tired of seeing.  However, there's one aspect in which you can't ignore gender, unless you're writing about a very exotic society with a culture structure at odds with ours:  how other people react to them.

This comes to mind because I'm re-editing "Traveling By Starlight:  A Journey of Two Ways" ... a story of mine with two alternate (and mutually exclusive) endings.  In one conclusion (this is only a minor spoiler!) the first-person narrator is female; in the other ending, the details of the story are seen in another light, and the narrator is male.  

When I put this story up for critique initially, I asked readers what gender they thought the narrator was (before the divided endings) and why.  Most of them pegged Verel as female not due to anything the character said or did, but due to how the love interest (male, which probably also contributed, though no one said as much) interacted with the character.  Verel gets a minor injury, and in the original draft, the love interest was worried about it.  I ended up rewriting his reaction and dialing back a few other comments throughout.

So again, unless your society has been radically restructured or gender simply doesn't exist, it's going to be hard to avoid tackling the topic of how other characters treat someone of male or female gender.  This sometimes leads to obnoxious extremes, where secondary characters pound the reader over the head with, "Oh, wow, a girl isn't supposed to do that!  How shocking / awesome / unusual!"  Done right, though, society's mirror is a key facet of depicting male-or-female ... even when the individual defies all conventions.

Operation: Anthology

I've decided that I want to do an Anthology April series on my blog, talking about my personal favorite source for short story reading - the anthology.  And I want to hear from you ... all of you!

I'm looking for book reviews and recommendations:  what are your favorite anthologies?  Why?  What are the highlights?  Please note, I'm not talking about plugging anthologies you have stories in ... but!  There's room for that, too.  I just want to distinguish between book suggestions and advertisements (though I want both).

On the other hand, also please write about your personal experience with anthologies - did a topic inspire a story that you might not have otherwise written?  If you ended up with a specialty story and it didn't sell, what was its fate?  If you've edited or otherwise helped put together an anthology, what was the experience like?  How did you balance theme adherence and overall (subjective, of course!) story quality?

I'm looking for full posts here, say at least 150 words, however long as the mood takes you after that.  Links gleefully encouraged.

On the other hand, if you have specific ideas for concepts that you would love to see as an anthology, send them to me, too.  I'd love to compile a long list (credited, of course) for folks to enjoy.  For instance, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, I've always wanted to see an anthology of humorous secondary world stories involving the afterlife entitled, Things To Do In Fantasyland When You're Dead.

Got an idea?  Email me at LindseyDuncan@earthlink.net and I'll (almost certainly) give you the thumbs-up, a sanity deadline, and maybe a request or two.  :-)  Hope folks are willing to give this a shot! 

GoodReads Review: Sword and Sorceress XVII

Sword and Sorceress XVII by Marion Zimmer Bradley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The tradition of the Sword & Sorceress anthologies is evident here, a mix of stories that deal with the deeply personal conflicts of female characters in fantasy. Many of the tales have a strong emotional component, and a few hit me hard. The quality is generally high: there is only one real miss, though there are a few of what I would call "beginner" stories - they hit you over the head with their plot points, resolution, description, etc. The two flash fiction pieces are easily among the best, though I really wanted a full-length tale from the humorous one (“Weapons at War” by Charles Laing). Length does a few of these tales a disservice: they would have been much stronger if allowed to breathe. On the converse side, “Memories Traced In Snow” by Dave Smeds would probably be better served by being about a third shorter.

Far and and away my favorite story here is “Luz” by Patricia Duffy Novak, a tale I simply could not put down until its conclusion … and it takes the ending a step further into something thought-provoking and a little unsettling. I also really liked “Nor Iron Bars a Cage” by Deborah Wheeler for the ‘magic’ used within and the development of its narrator. The opening and closing stories are both well-chosen; they’re shorter, deceptively simple, and with emotional impact.

On the flip side, I simply didn’t get “Caelqua’s Spring” by Vera Nazarian. It just felt like flowery, opaque language for the sake of it. “Demon Calling” by ElizaBeth Gilligan has the opposite problem – there’s not enough specificity to the story to be that compelling.

One thing I loved about the collection, too, was how many of the stories were inspired by history and mythology. And it was obvious that the authors loved their source material, more than just a casual encounter: it came through vividly. I’d definitely recommend this volume.

View all my reviews

Thursday Thoughts

I was finishing up an assignment for my Purchasing course a few days ago and I had a surprising realization:  my method for coming up with dishes to cook may just be very similar to the way I come up with stories.  

My Purchasing course is an accelerated five and a half week course, and the final assignment of each week builds on the concept of an imaginary business.  I decided to have fun with it and get a bit pie-in-the-sky, so I developed a catering concept meant for Virginia wine country that features dishes that highlight or pair with local vintages.

Step back a week or two to my Baking and Pastry lab class, where I had a bizarre amount of difficulty mastering crepes, so I asked the chef for some other ideas of fillings I could make.  One of the things she said was, "curry" and I thought ... wow, that's a really neat pairing.  So when I started to compose my imaginary menu for Purchasing, I put down Chicken Korma Crepes.  All right, but two problems:  1) they need to be served with something; and 2) there's no wine element.

Indian dishes like this are usually served with pilaf.  What's a rice dish that incorporates wine?  Risotto, of course.  So the first "draft" of the dish was Chicken Korma Crepes with Viognier Risotto.  Assignment #2 was to actually write out and calculate the cost of the recipe, so I went hunting in my files for a korma.  I stumbled across Green Chicken Biryani and noticed that the pilaf it served with had a lot of flavor profile very similar to classic cuisine, so I tweaked the menu item.

So what I ended up with was a blended dish for two or three very disparate sources that fused together into a (hopefully) harmonious whole.  And ... wait a second, that's one of my favorite strategies for concocting fiction.  I enjoy taking two elements that seem to be part of completely different worlds and fusing them together so they make sense.

Maybe the kitchen and the keyboard aren't as far apart as I'd thought ...

Thursday Thoughts

Today, I'd like to talk about the Olympics and a story that spoke to me - so if you haven't seen the Ladies' Free Skate for some reason (my cable decided to die Thursday evening, and it was only last night that the program finally showed up in my On Demand listing), close out this window post-haste.  Here be skating spoilers.

Most of the attention and commentary was on defending Olympic gold medalist Yuna Kim, who was clearly a lovely person with a humanitarian bent and a mature skating style; and on the young athletic Russian phenom, Adelina Sotnikova, who came out of nowhere when the spotlight focused on her younger teammate ... both of whom were trying to make history.  Yuna Kim would have been only the second woman to ever win back-to-back gold medals, while Adelina Sotnikova would be Russia's first gold in women's figure-skating.

But there was one more historical landmark at stake that evening:  27 year old Carolina Kostner of Italy, an Olympic veteran with a painful history of faltering at the key moment - she was ninth in 2006, sixteenth in 2010 - stood a chance to give Italy its first medal in solo figure-skating.  But Kostner's opportunity was also deeply personal.  After the Olympics in 2010, she was defeated and weary; she decided to quit skating.

Her mother and coach, once a figure-skater herself, urged her not to.  She said:  skate for the love of skating.

Sounds so simple, so obvious.  It's almost a cliche.  It's the first advice any artist - and make no mistake, figure-skating is as much an art as a sport - receives when contemplating a life in pursuit of passion.

Yet for Carolina Kostner, it was magic.  She was reborn; she was the World Champion in 2012.  And at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, she performed a flawless short program followed by a triumphant free skate.  As she got off the ice, her mother said to her, "Now do you believe in yourself?"

Adelina Sotnikova might have stunned the crowd with her athleticism; Yuna Kim might have moved them with artistry ... but Carolina Kostner, the bronze medalist and Italy's first solo figure skating medal, showed them love of skating.

I suppose this story speaks to me because, as a writer, I often feel like Kostner.  Publication has been a long trudge with a few bright lights, but my main goal keeps eluding me while writers who have been at it a much shorter time keep racking up their successes, and I start to wonder ... what's wrong with me?

That's not to say I should ignore the fact that there are areas in which I need improvement.  I always try to keep an eye on my faults and work to correct them.  But when I go from submitting and selling back to writing, there's only one thing that matters:  do it for the love of writing.

Thank you, Carolina Kostner.

GoodReads Review: Wild Magic by Jo Clayton

Wild Magic by Jo Clayton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The story of spunky, defiant Faan who is forced into a war between god and goddess, Wild Magic is, at its heart, a tale of ordinary people caught up in cosmic circumstances. It's a story with an intensely realized and complex world which is never fully explained to the reader - most of its concepts are learned by osmosis (or perhaps not at all). It's the kind of book that probably wouldn't be published today: full of dense, poetic language, an overabundance of made-up words, and following its heroine from infancy through growing pains to the adolescence in which the real story starts. Yet this life-long course is perfect for the story: it allows us to understand Faan in both her mundane and magical aspects.

It's a pity that this book is under-explained - some major concepts, like the Change, seem to appear suddenly and are left to inference, and there are aspects of the setting that I still don't understand. Faan's time learning sorcery was generally glossed over, which felt like a major omission, though it wasn't necessarily crucial to the story and seems like it will come into play more in the second book. As far as a satisfactory ending, Wild Magic has a great "Yes, but ..." conclusion ... and that's all I'll say on that.

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Thursday Thoughts

I belong to a small writing forum which has been doing bi-weekly free-writes on and off for a while.  Someone hosts and provides a topic / inspiration, and everyone writes for an hour.  I almost never finish, but I've gone back, finished and sold many of these stories.  This week, I plopped down to write up a list of what I had and had some surprises.  The general statistics:

Total free-writes:  58
Finished:  34 (of these, 1 was trunked for being, well, terrible)
Sold / Published:  5 (+1 that was sold and hasn't come out yet)
Currently in Submission:  2

Several patterns appeared.  There was no real science fiction here; a few stories had far future settings, but were closer to science fantasy.  Most of the stories were in secondary worlds, usually with significant worldbuilding basis, but a handful were contemporary.  Most of the protagonists were female.  There were far more stories that involved cooks, bakers or confectioners than I would have expected - keeping in mind these free writes were done long before I decided to attend culinary school.  Four of these stories were in worlds I had used before ... not including the two Ishene and Kemel stories, since the first story started as a free-write, and the story start from the perspective of Ishene's apprentice, decades later.

Some of the free writes were experimental.  One of the finished stories I had forgotten about is completely in dialogue, the arguments of two minds who end up in the same body.  Another is present tense, first person plural.  Then there's one that I have to blame on the prompt:  the entire story is one sentence.  Well, two, but the last sentence is used as sort of a cap to the run-on insanity.  A lot of the finished stories are way too long, and almost all of the unfinished ones need tightening.

So what did I learn here? ... I need to start doing free-writes again, of course.

Thursday Thoughts

As I've mentioned before, I use the backburner of my brain a lot.  I tend to work best when I give stories time to simmer on their own, with just the occasional stir ... and I'll stop there, because otherwise the culinary metaphor is going to become laboured.

But it works even better when I don't just idle in between, instead working on a different project.  I found out the hard way some years ago that two novels wasn't a good idea simply because I ended up in a never-ending editing sequences, but short fiction and poetry is definitely an excellent change of pace.

So a bit late, and I've already missed one month, but I'm resolving to write a short story a month for the rest of the year.  Length is no object - if I have an idea for a piece of microfiction, that's perfectly valid.

So February's story is Stone Unturned, about a historian who specializes in "Soundings" - summoning visions of the past through prayer and song.  It's intended for the Fantasy-Writers.org monthly challenge, which is to write a story including these five elements:  a child, a journey, a betrayal, a bird and a deserted building.  I always tend to take FWO challenges and add an additional, personal level of difficulty - my intention with this one was to have all the elements in both the past and the present, but I believe I'm just short of this ...

As far as this blog is concerned, this project will also give me more opportunity to share the occasional tidbit, as Unnatural Causes has already reached the point where most segments would either require extensive explanation, be "spoilers" for the plot, or both.

GoodReads Review: Shades of Grey

Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron by Jasper Fforde

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Eddie Russet lives in a world where most people can only see one natural color - and how much of that color they can see determines their place in the world.  He has life figured out ... until he's banished to the Outer Fringes for attempting to improve the process of queueing, where a rebellious Grey named Jane challenges everything he thinks he knows.

It's a fantastic premise for a world, and many authors would have stopped there, but the setting of Shades of Grey is both deeply whimsical and twisted.  It is built on a mysterious past of "the Previous," who the reader assumes (but is never sure) was our own society, then bent thoroughly out of shape by premises that seem absurd, but hinge together with a logic one can almost - but never quite - make out.  It's a balancing act of dizzying skill.

Before the last quarter of Shades of Grey, I'd have to say that I felt Fforde spent too much time just exploring his world, without much clear conflict or advancement of the plot.  Then when I got to the chilling pay-off in the last pages, well ... I still think the story could have done with a little less exploration, but that deep immersion in the setting is crucial for the impact of the climax, and having been hit upside the head with it, I am confident that many of the apparently extraneous details will have relevance in the sequels.

Because this is definitely a book one ... but it's a book one that ends in a satisfying place, with the character resolved and evolved.  The main questions are really deeply personal ones:  will Eddie find his place in the world?  Will he be able to kindle romance with Jane? ... and both these questions get my absolute favorite answer:  "Yes, but ..."

The only other quibble I have with Shades of Grey is that I never felt particularly deep in Eddie's head.  For a first person narrative, it's surprisingly shallow in POV.  But small points aside, I don't say it lightly when I describe this novel as brilliant.  Give it a try.



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