GoodReads Review: The White Hart

The White Hart by Nancy Springer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's hard to judge a novel like this, decades after its time, when the archetypes upon which it draws have become cliché and the style has become something most modern readers don't appreciate. To me, I love the lyricism, the flow, the stylized language - it is one part novel, one part poem / ballad / ode. It feels mythical, even though the land in which events occur is invented. This book draws deeply upon Celtic, specifically Welsh, mythic sensibilities. (I read this first as a child - in hindsight, it's easy to see why I adored it, coming out of The Prydain Chronicles, which are themselves a loose retelling of Welsh mythology. It's certainly part of my lifelong affinity for all things Welsh.)

This novel relies heavily upon destiny, fate, and the motion of powers beyond ourselves - powers against which even gods have trouble standing. For the most part, the power of the language carries these elements and makes the reader (or at least me-as-reader) feel the mystery and inevitability. However, there are other places where, with more modern fantasy sensibilities, I'm just not sold on the inescapable nature of events. As a child, I was wholly swept away; as an adult, there are places where I can only say, "Bevan is a jerk."

I also have to say that the prophecy, written as all such things are, about the future line ending with a character named Hal ... that made me giggle. Because when I hear the name Hal, I picture a balding plumber. (This would actually be a great story, but I'm sure the like has been written.)

That said, this is a lovely work, as long as you treat it as half story and half poetry; there is a kind of fairytale logic to it. It shows its age, but it is based on some of the elements that give fantasy its power, and those are timeless.

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Thursday Thoughts

Those of you who know me will be aware that, as an author, I am strongly against the idea of stories having a constructed message - that is, the story was written to illustrate a specific viewpoint or philosophy or to explore a certain issue under the guise of fiction.  Of course, all stories inevitably make some kind of statement about the world they reflect, but to me, that should be secondary - incidental, if you will - to the story itself.  To me, a good story has a life and existence of its own, which needs to be respected.

All of this is to preface why it might be surprising when I say that my problem trying to figure out the exact ending of Wine and Chocolate was solved by looking at the story question.  To me, the story question isn't one of underlying theme or meaning:  it's the core of where plot and character meet, the reason the reader keeps turning pages (we hope - both in that they turn pages, and that they're doing it for the same reason the author intended!), and the question that must be answered for the story to satisfy.  The resolution of the story question is arguably what separates a standalone story from a chapter in a novel.

(... although some editors who have read my short stories may disagree with me on this point ...)

Most often, for me, the answer to the story question is a, "Yes, but ..."  The main character is successful, but in achieving their desire, new complications arise, leaving the sensation - which is crucial in fiction, to me - that life goes on.

In any case, back to Wine and Chocolate:  the story starts with a specific problem and a mystery; the latter is resolved in what I hope is a pretty dramatic reveal late in the story, and then ... and then I halted.  When I had started the story, I had a very clear image of the arc to this point:  it was my goal in writing.  But I had no idea how to move from there to a conclusion.  I played with two or three possible resolutions, all of which felt unnecessarily drawn out and labored.  I couldn't quite put my finger on what wasn't working.

Then I realized that I was trying to "solve" the new issues raised by the reveal; to go back to my own terminology, I was trying to resolve everything after the "but," which was outside the scope of this story.  I need to pull back on my ending, reveal less, but lay groundwork for the reader to assume the eventual resolution.

So that's the direction I'm going.  It may be quite a while before Wine and Chocolate sees my submissions queue - I have about forty finished stories right now that haven't even seen the light of day; even considering some never will, that's a lot "ahead" of it - but I hope it will satisfy.

Yes, but ...

GoodReads Review: Spells and Swashbucklers

Spells and Swashbucklers by Valerie Griswold-Ford
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If I had stopped reading this anthology about halfway through, I would have described it as a solid but unexceptional collection of stories - only one or two duds, but nothing that particularly grabbed my attention, either, with the exception of A.D.R. Forte's "The Goddess Clause," which had a very satisfying fleshed-out fairytale feel. Right about "William Did" (Erik Amundsen), though - the terrible pun-ness / rhyming-ness of the title and content notwithstanding - the quality of the stories takes an upturn. The remaining stories in the anthology are in general much richer, with some inventive worlds and unusual circumstances.

In general, I think this anthology suffers from the fact that many of these stories feel like - and in a handful of cases, actually are - sequels, but they don't quite satisfy as they are. The strongest stories are those that contain a complete arc, including the chilling "The Vengeance Garden" (Laurel Anne Hill).

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Sunday Snippet: Wine and Chocolate

It's been a while since I've posted an excerpt since - until recently - I've been working on novel-length projects, which are too far along to pick an excerpt that isn't a spoiler, requires a lot of explanation, or both.

But for today, I'd like to share the opening of a new story I'm working on, inspired by:  my research on wine and religion; the medical properties that, historically, people used to believe that chocolate (as a drink) had; and an aspect of the opening scenario of the television show The Last Ship.  I've also just finished my Latin Cuisine course, so I have that area of the world on the brain.

That melange of inspirations has become Wine & Chocolate:
 

I leaned against the Necessity’s rail, my fingers tracing the grain of my ancestors, and squinted into the fog.  While the dark bulk of the city assured me that Port Diovana had not been swallowed by the earth, no firefly lights sparkled in the gloom to greet us.

“Odd thing, isn’t it, Captain?”  Arojin Feneli, my first mate, spoke in a low voice.  His softness made me more uneasy than the content of his words.  “Never seen a city so still.”

“Neither have I.”  I shook off the unease.  It had been a long journey back to civilization after a pack of privateers had chased us deep into the Evershifting Islands.  After that unwelcome adventure, I was probably just borrowing trouble.  “Tell Nip to stay sharp.”

Arojin nodded and moved off to flag the tiny girl – my cabin girl and lookout.  Nip, who had always looked a bit like a scruffy monkey with tawny hair that spiked down the center of her brow, now looked better kept than most of us:  she had grown up in rags and cast-offs and knew how to carry herself in them.  Arojin took pride in his sculpted black beard, the height of Tavellan fashion, but hadn’t been able to trim it since the ship’s last mirror broke in a storm.

I joined the navigator at the helm as the ship glided into the fog.  “Lane lanterns are out,” I observed.  “Think you can do this by feel, Vassar?”

Thursday Thoughts

In honor of my final week as a pastry student - after this week, I will be calling myself a pastry chef, though I will still be a culinary student working on my associates - I present a feast (or is that a library?) of culinary to fiction parallels:

If the final product is too staged and composed, it is unappealing.  In plated presentations, a bit of randomness catches the eye; in display cakes, gum-paste flowers and leaves look more real when occasionally torn (my chef recommends putting in a puncture mark 'bug bite' now and then); and in fiction, the best tales have a bit of real life's messiness.

The dish you are eating is made of both what you can see - fruits, nuts, lamb - and what you (usually) can't - herbs, spices, and in the case of baked goods, baking powder, yeast, and other invisible ingredients that are crucial to structure.  There's also a lot going on in fiction that goes beyond the casual read and between the lines.

If you play a trick on someone - bread that looks like a carrot; blue food - there are people who will appreciate it, and people who will have to suppress the urge to smash the plate over your head, and the response only partially depends on how clever you are.  I don't think I have to elaborate how this applies to trick endings in fiction.  ;-)

You can make a gorgeous, soaring sugar-piece or beautiful gum-paste blooms to accent a pastry piece, but none of that matters if the cake is two inches tall because you don't know how to properly emulsify a batter.  (Sponge cakes rise in large part because you are incorporating air into the batter.)  In fiction, spinge-tingling prose and intriguing plotlines fall apart without basic grammar and punctuation.

You have to know the rules before you break them.  See above:  blue is typically not used (via dye or other methods) because there are no true blue foods.  Blueberries are actually more purple.  But certain cultures traditionally have blue plates, and it can be quite effective when used correctly.  I don't even know that I can pick out a single writing rule to apply this to:  there are times when it's very effective to tell, not show, or to use passive voice to convey a feeling of helplessness, or ...

And there's one parallel where I feel it's most appropriate to start with the writing aphorism, because it is one of the most infuriating and misunderstood bits of advice in the author's world:  write what you know.  More properly, this should be "know what you write."

I am one quarter Welsh, one quarter Italian, and a random dollop of Scottish, Scots-Irish, German, Swedish and ... oh, never mind, I've lost track.  The fact is, I am ridiculously European, and until relatively late in life, I had no experience with Indian cuisine.  That hasn't stopped me from cooking Indian food, but I've spent a lot of time becoming familiar with the spice profiles and understanding the philosophy behind certain flavor combinations.  I can confidently say now that I could "invent" an Indian style dish, but if I had tried when I first started cooking?  It would have rung hollow.

So ... know what you write, know what you cook:  know your inspirations.

Thursday Thoughts

Fiction, like the real world, is supposed to be messy.  It is, however, a continuum:  if fiction were as chaotic, random and often pointless as reality, readers would revolt.  On the other hand, a story where all the pieces fit neatly into place and everything has a purpose feels too contrived, too convenient.  It breaks our suspension of disbelief.

I have a pet peeve with prequel stories, mainly illustrated by film examples.  For me, I find myself pulled out of the story when the prequel tries to explain / incorporate everything.  Isn't it awfully convenient that the complexities of the now-time story can be contained within this one episode?  To me, rather than illuminating mysteries and revealing new facets, it makes the fictional world feel smaller.

(My personal examples:  White Collar and the prequel episode that finally shows Neal's relationship with Kate; the Spartacus prequel series.)

A related issue is the amount of content in a story that isn't strictly necessary.  Once again, I feel moved to offer a culinary metaphor.  I hope y'all will forgive me.

We're told to cut fat off our stories - but fat is what provides flavor.  Lean pieces of meat are frequently wrapped in or threaded with fat while cooking to ensure taste.  When hunting for a quality piece of meat, we look for marbling.  And what does marbling represent?  That, my friends, is intramuscular fat.  In the fictional world, I suppose that would be "unnecessary" detail that fits so smoothly in with the story the writer is telling that it never stands out.

This may be why I've never had much luck with shorter stories.  I do luck upon them occasionally:  She's Unable To Lunch Today, which I just finished, runs about 2800 words ... but even that tale has some detail that doesn't pertain directly to the story and characters at hand.  I just find it difficult to narrow my focus to only the essential elements.  There's so much just around the corner, and it only takes a heartbeat to take a peek ...

By contrast, this has served me well in Unnatural Causes.  It makes for a great method of generating red herrings.

I feel the urge to extend the culinary metaphor once again, but I hate fish.

Thursday Thoughts

Because I've been in no less than three baking and pastry courses, two of which allow a fair amount of artistic freedom, a lot of my observations on creativity lately have related to the culinary field.  It's not so unrelated to my writing as I originally assumed, though, and I've found a lot of parallels and similarities.

Dessert plating, which takes into account color, shape, texture and taste, and includes at minimum a main component, a sauce and a garnish.  (I suppose you could stretch the metaphor and say that ... no, you couldn't, because I'm reluctant to say that "plot" is automatically the main component, or relegate "setting" to the garnish.  But I digress.)  As I've progressed through my coursework, I've learned some things about my plating style:

I don't like overly complex, cluttered plating with multiple elements that serve only a decorative purpose.  (Read:  purple prose.  ;-)  See also:  stories that go out of their way to be clever and experimental.  No, I am not bashing either of these things in themselves, but I have read stories where it seems like the author's only purpose is to be "weird," and everything else has gotten lost.  The experiment should serve the story, not the other way around.)

I don't like plate design to be overly regimented or organized.  A little chaos / messiness / randomness is very appealing to me.  (Stories, especially in the shorter category, can be *too* neat and tidy.  Life is messy, and fantastic worlds reflect this.)

I like abstract designs and odd shapes.  (I wouldn't call myself an experimental writer, but I definitely trend to tackling odd topics and dealing with them faithfully.)

I have trouble conceptualizing the design of a plate in my head.  To really discern what I want to do, I need to have all the potential elements laid out, where I can physically play with them a bit before plating.  (This is also how I write:  I create in-depth character and world profiles so I have all the pieces developed in technicolor, but I do very little plotting in advance.)

You can never have enough sorbet or ice cream.  (In fiction, I ...

Nope, I got nothing.)

Goodreads Review: The Viognier Vendetta

The Viognier Vendetta by Ellen Crosby
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

When vineyard owner Lucie Montgomery receives a phone call out of nowhere from her tempestuous friend Rebecca - who she hasn't seen in twelve years - she finds herself drawn into a web of lies, betrayal and coded messages buried within poetry.

I picked up this book by accident: I was actually looking for non-fiction books on Viognier. However, I love a good mystery with an amateur sleuth, so I decided to take a chance on it. It has all the right elements - lies, intrigue, an evocative setting, excellent pacing - and I really wanted to like it, but it fell short for me in too many places.

The first thing that stood out to me is how much the descriptive and historical passages read like a tourist guidebook. The infodumping took me right out of Lucie's point of view and made me feel as if I was learning about the places secondhand, rather than actually being there.

Second, there's the romantic subplot. It may be an unfortunate side effect with coming in at the fifth or so book in a long-running series of this subgenre, but I briefly found myself wondering if the main character had slept with every male we would be introduced to. The actual interactions with Quinn are disappointing and frustrating: there seems very little reason for her to be attached to him except that he's good in bed, and as a reader, I never really felt the heat between them. So much of their apparent problems could be cleared up by honest conversation and never were. It was throw-the-book infuriating.

I really did enjoy the way Crosby set the scene, introduced us to characters, speculated on their motives, and gave us loose ends to puzzle upon. The novel was also nicely paced: for all its flaws, it kept me turning pages. (I had the same reaction to The DaVinci Code, so I suppose it is in good company!) However, the final revelation as to the killer disappointed me. It was a very straightforward mystery with few twists and turns as to whodunnit. The answer wasn't a surprise, and not in a positive way.

Finally, considering that this is Lucie's fifth endeavor into the realm of murder and mayhem, I expected her to be more proactive. She was fairly passive throughout, allowing other characters and their actions to push her into motion.

Overall, it was a decent read, but I was disappointed.

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Goodreads Review: The Buried Pyramid by Jane Lindskold

The Buried Pyramid by Jane Lindskold
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a thorough, absorbing historical adventure, deeply rooted in the culture and society of the era. The reader gets inside the minds of headstrong Jenny Benet, a young woman raised on the American frontier and with a dim view of English society and all its restrictions; and Neville Hawthorne, a thoroughly British military man who has become obsessed with the mystery of a legendary pharaoh. It is this mystery that brings Neville and his companions to Egypt and a perilous quest ...

Lindskold excels at creating characters that you identify with and enjoy; their foibles make them real. Even the "villains" in this story are people with depth. I loved Stephen, the peculiar young scholar who is brought along to translate. There's even a cat with a personality all her own. (Particularly fitting in a novel of Egyptology ...)

The build-up in this novel is lengthy, with much planning, preparation, warnings, cautions and preludes ... but it all pays off in the end, and when the fantastic element finally arrives, the reader is fully primed for it. That said, I still think this book spends a bit too much time digressing into the research / background, adds maybe a hurdle or two too many, and could probably have been 50 - 100 pages shorter without losing this tension.

All in all, though, I really enjoyed this book and would love to experience further adventures from this cast.

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Thursday Thoughts

For whatever reason, I've always had trouble naming (or titling) things.  I can syllable-mash with the best fantasy writer, and I've spent hours working on naming languages that produce very cohesive and credible results, but if you ask me to come up with a descriptive name for an organization or - perish the thought - a business, my brain seizes up.  Part of it is the inner editor, given room to have laser focus and dismiss everything as not good enough, but the rest is inexplicable.

Of course, I'm terrible at word jumbles:  I look at a mess of letters and my brain doesn't unscramble them, it goes, "Oh, that would be a great character/place name."  But I digress.

When I stumble upon something that works, it often seems to be an accident.  I'm fairly happy with the titles I used in Flow:  water-witches, Borderwatch, the Unwashed, but I don't recall spending a lot of time or mental energy on those - they just developed naturally.  I can't say the same for the Pinnacle Empire and the Galactic Collective in Scylla and Charybdis - they took a while to work up, and they're workable, but not the most brilliant gems in the box.

This all comes up for a reason far more mundane and probably more important, in the scheme of things:  I'm trying to come up with a name for my pastry / culinary face.  I don't want to be "Lindsey Duncan Pastries" or the like - as a matter of personal preference, I've never liked that kind of business name.  I have a great one for the future, Entwined Harmonies ... but that's for use with wine-related ventures.  I want something serious but clever, ideally with a musical reference ...

But I can't even start.  Forget brainstorming, all I have is a handful of lame, unsuitable notions.  I just have to relax and let the idea simmer on the backburner ... but I wish I knew why it was so hard.

Thursday Thoughts

It's been a while since I've posted, and I've decided to return to Thursdays to a) preserve the alliteration and b) post on a day that is hopefully less insane.  Cue the hysterical laughter now ...

I had a very vivid dream a little over a week ago, and I've been playing with it and developing it as a possible future novel - though I have so many ideas in my folder that it may never see the reality of keystrokes.  However, the foundation of this concept is perhaps the oldest fantasy trope in the book:  the Chosen One, whom the Dark Lord (trope #2) wants to destroy because of their power / prophecized role / etc.

Of course, I've taken that and twisted it about, working with it to go in a different direction.  My Chosen One has fully accepted the mantle of her role.  In this case, the "chosen" aspect is the possession of a rare form of magic ... and, of course, the villain is the only other person who can wield it.  He's trained, she's not.  Ideally, he'd rather convert her than kill her, which means there are people on her own side that feel it would be better to remove that possibility - forcibly.

So the basic plotline is that our main character decides to stage her capture with the goal of learning from the villain and then escaping.  Obviously, this is shaping up to be a character-driven sort of story, so besides the cliche of the motive-less Dark Lord being just terrible, he needs to be fleshed out.  Part of what I've developed in my head is how he became a conqueror, and that inciting incident plays into his philosophy and the goals he's set that seem tyrannical and wrong to our heroes.  Somewhat ironically, part of what he's doing is removing the traditional fantasy system of noble inheritance ...

All this explanation is a roundabout approach to my concerns.  If I were to pitch this book to agents, how many would get past the cliche setup to the more original elements?  How many would it be a "do not pass go" no matter how well written the book is?

I've had the same worries pondering a rewrite of some old concepts.  Yeah, this is a great story, I've thought, but it opens up with an assassin ...

Clearly, these kinds of books get sold, but ... how do they do it?

Tuesday Thoughts

I both admire and am bewildered by the authors who can spend the majority of their careers writing stories in the same world.  They may span continents and periods of history, or they may concentrate on one extended family, but the underlying laws of nature and magic are the same.  This creates a great deal of depth and the ability to explore the same world through the eyes of different cultures or time periods - and the latter isn't done nearly often enough.

I just can't hold myself to writing in a single setting.  I'm too often thinking of ideas and story-sparkers that need an alteration to the underlying assumptions of the world to work.  If I tried to impose this on the same setting, well ... I'd have a cast of very cross and confused characters.

This is part of the reason why I want to get back to my Ishene and Kemel stories at some point, though they definitely lend themselves more to the episodic than to the concentrated arc of a novel.  Ishene is a time mage, allowing her to travel to different historical periods and places within her own world.  Her magic also slows down her aging drastically, so there's the potential for there to be cultural / technological shift during her lifetime.  One of the free-writes I have yet to finish is written from the POV of her apprentice, when Ishene herself is quite old, and it mentions factories and industrial technology.

Of course, another possibility would be to develop this setting from the impromptu scraps I've created in the four or five short stories I've written thus far, but I'll be honest:  I'm not sure there's enough meat in their setting to hold my attention for long enough to do that much detailed groundwork and development.  Still, fantasy time travel is a fun conceit that allows me to dip into the ebbs and flows of imaginary history.

Tuesday Thoughts

There are times, when I try to explain what I do for living - and this comes up a lot, you might imagine - that I feel rather judged.  This is probably more a reflection on my insecurities than upon the person(s) I'm talking to:  I know that realistically, no one is expending that much thought about my life.  But I can hear the mental monologue in the back of my head:  impractically artsy; scatterbrained; can't she make up her mind?

So I answer, silently, with something like this.

I have always been a writer.  From a young age, I knew I wanted to have novels in print.  From not quite such a young age, but relatively early on, I also knew I wasn't going to be a full-time writer:  not only is this very rare and difficult to pull off, but as someone who creates by incubation, I needed something else to do to get away from it and let my ideas mature.  I went through a few possibilities before at sixteen, I discovered the harp.

My adoration for the instrument was near-instantaneous.  It only took a few months of playing before I knew I wanted to do it professionally.  I had hopes at the beginning that I would be able to make a living from it ... but whether it's the opportunities in the area, my weakness as a self-promoter, or a combination of factors, that never materialized.  I took on part-time office work to stabilize my financial situation.

As this developed, I also began to experiment with cooking.  Unlike an ordinary, sane person, I started with Indian cuisine and complex recipes.  I was fearless.  I also set off the smoke alarm more than once.  But as time passed, I discovered how much I loved these culinary excursions.  I began to joke about culinary school - some day, down the road, eventually.

Then, finally, I hit a turning point.  My part-time work was stressing and overwhelming me; I felt stuck in a rut.  I met with a career counselor and floated the culinary school idea past her just to feel it out.  She helped me map out that option, but also focused me on several ways to improve my current situation.  Yet the more I came up with ways to increase my satisfaction with where I was, the more I felt the pull towards the culinary.

I finally decided to pull the trigger.  I'm at a point in my life where I have the freedom and circumstances to take on new adventures.  Let's do this thing.

Tuesday Thoughts

"The streets are crawling with Romans!"

Humor is a funny thing.  (Pun intended.)  Sometimes, jokes that are perfectly constructed just glance off us ... but other times, a particular line, scene or situation strikes us as hilarious and continues to amuse through innumerable repetitions.  Sometimes, that bit of "perfect" humor isn't all that funny, objectively speaking - but it always makes us grin.

Here are a few of mine.

Since I couldn't find the above bit - from History of the World Part 1 - I include another classic snippet of Mel Brooks visual punnery:

Comb the Desert!

Also on the classical movie front, saying "Surely you jest" or anything of that ilk in my family is only at your peril:  the inevitable response is, "I am, and don't call me Shirley."  Back to History of the World Part I, my family also says, "It's good to be the king" at random times ...

This cartoon, from the Far Side, comes to mind almost every time a nasty storm starts to blow in:

Then, of course, there's my favorite response to any discussion of the grammatical importance of commas:

I go to look at this picture when I'm in a bad mood, that's how hard it makes me laugh.

I risk losing part of my audience here, so skip over this one if you're not a watcher of AMC's The Walking Dead.  This definitely falls into the category of "I'm not even sure why this is so funny to me."  It's from the Bad Lip Reading take on the show, which is so-so until you hit this.  Should anyone venture to listen without context, let me preface by saying that in the show, this is an extremely tense face-to-face negotiation:

The Governor's Song

More generally, something that never fails to make me smile, from the wonderful folks over at Improv Anywhere.  Imagine going to your local mall and encountering this:

Food Court Musical

Finally, my favorite one-liner joke:

Q:  What do you get when a midget psychic escapes from prison?

A:  A small medium at large.

If any of these tickled your funny bone, enjoy!  If none of these strike you, well ... humor is a funny thing.

Tuesday Thoughts

I'd like to take a break from writerly musings to share some of the most frequent conversations I have as a player of the traditional lever harp.  These come up again and again at gigs, and I've developed rehearsed responses to them:

Them:  So you're a harpist, right?

Me:  Actually, I'm a harper.  Harpist refers to the pedal harp - the big golden thing with the pillar.  Harp-player works, too.

(This distinction is important to me.  I'd prefer not to be called a harpist.)

Them:  Is this is a Celtic harp?  (Sometimes they pronounce the C like an S.)

Me:  Yes; to be more accurate, it's a traditional lever harp because it has these levers (Vanna White gesture here) instead of the pedals on an orchestral harp.

Them:  Are you Irish?

Me:  Nope.  I'm Scottish and Welsh, though.

Them:  Is this a small harp?

Me (what I'd like to say):  You try carrying it.

Me (what I actually say):  This is a traditional harp.  It's the predecessor of the big harp you see in orchestras.

Them:  How long have you been playing?

Oh, how much easier it became when I could just say "over a decade" and stop counting every time.

I work through a fair number of misconceptions.  It seems to confuse people that I don't also play with an orchestra; similarly, they seem a bit taken aback when I tell them I studied privately (instead at a university, presumably).  Then there's this conversation:

Them:  Can I help you carry something?

Me:  Could you carry my chair?

They look at me, probably a bit like I'm crazy.  They look at the massive instrument. 

Me:  I'm balanced, but I have to carry the chair in a way that makes it hard to walk.  It would really help.

I have gotten "such a little thing with such a big instrument!" more than once, which always makes me laugh:  I'm about 5'7" with strong shoulders.  Besides the Scots, I've got German and Italian in me.  I'm not heavy - thank you, 20+ hours of running around a kitchen this past quarter - but I am not a delicate flower.

I think possibly my favorite question, though, came from a guitarist.  First of all, some background:  my harp has 36 strings, one for every note.  Each individual string has to be tuned.  When a string breaks, the replacement has to "settle" before it will hold.  This usually involves, as a ballpark, 50 - 60 retunings.  So the following ensued:

Him:  How often do you change the strings?  Every few weeks?

Me (horrified look):  Only when I have to.

Harps are notoriously finicky for responding to every shift in temperature and pressure.  In fact, that leads to one of my favorite harp jokes, which I got from the Welsh triple harpist (he is a harpist - the Welsh harp is much closer to the classic instrument) Robin Huw Bowen:

Q:  How long does it take to tune a harp?

A:  No one knows.

Tuesday Thoughts

One of the most important facets of my writing process is that I'm an incubator.  I don't usually tackle ideas right away:  instead, I put them on the backburner of my brain to simmer, develop, resolve problems and fuse with other thoughts.  This process occurs under the surface - occasionally, something will occur in the front of my brain and I'll drop it in the pot, as it were, but most of the time, it's neither active nor conscious.

I think this is part of the reason why I tend to do extensive world and character building before I start writing:  it gives my mind time to turn over possibilities and permutations and actively brings them to the fore.  It also explains why I often have trouble simply diving into a story as soon as the idea strikes me - I can't develop it on the fly, nor can I rush the process.  Oddly (or not?), this also applies to me and arranging music on the harp.

So I've learned to listen to my writer brain and determine when reluctance is laziness or procrastination, and when it's my subconscious telling me the idea hasn't had enough time to brew.  I've learned to be kind to myself when I fall down on my writing goals - within reason - because my brain never stops.  It's all there, waiting for me.

Anatomy of an Idea: Polestar

Polestar is now available in the current issue of Plasma Frequency - check it out!  Here's an account of how it came about, as spoiler-free as I can make it.

This story was written as a several-years-later sequel to First Contact, which was published in the now-defunct Golden Visions.  It is in First Contact that many of the elements in Polestar were developed, so a flashback to that story is in order.  

First Contact was written for a Fantasy-Writers.org monthly challenge on the subject of first contact.  When I take on these challenges, I always like to add an additional interpretation or twist on the topic.  In this case, I decided to take "first contact" in two ways:  both in the traditional sense of the meeting of two peoples, and in the sense of physical touch.  I decided to make my main character a girl who was being kept "pure" by being forbidden to touch anything for herself.  I also had a quote from Much Ado About Nothing rattling about my head:  but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born.

It was this line that inspired the idea of the Lthieryn, the living stars, and the character of Eridanus.  Eridanus is the being with whom Adiarwen makes her first contact, in both senses ... and in Polestar (remember the story we were talking about originally?  Here we are again), he becomes the narrator.  He has been her fast friend and traveling companion over the intervening years, but yearns for more.  At the time of writing this story, I was full of myself enough to want to use another Shakespeare quote, and I chose Sonnet 116 ("Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds").  The later line, "It is the star to every wandering bark," inspired the title, Polestar.

And when someone becomes the center of your life, your guiding light, the consequences can be terrible ...

Tuesday Thoughts

Still working on editing marks for Who Wants To Be A Hero? so I have humor on the brain.  Lately, I've been chewing on another aspect of how humor manifests in stories:  who finds it funny?

First, there are the elements that both the reader and the characters find humorous.  This is the kind of humor you find almost everywhere:  even (especially) in the most tense of situations, people throw off quips and one-liners.  It's probably the most appropriate to stories that aren't intended to be comedic, a moment of tension release.  Personally, for me the tricky part is balancing the reactions of the other characters - to have them ignore such humor seems peculiar, but on the other hand, I don't want their reactions to be too broad.  That ends up somewhere between self-congratulatory and a sitcom laugh track.

Second, there are elements that the reader finds funny, but the characters do not - whether because it references an anachronism / bit of modern culture, it involves in-story knowledge that the reader has but the character does not, or simply that it's something you can only laugh at with distance.  I do a lot of this in Hero - though I'm always cautious with the pop culture references, because I know they may be incomprehensible a few years down the road.  Still, there's a mild dig at creationism that I think has some life yet to it ...

Third, there are elements that the characters find funny, but the reader does not.  This is probably not really humor so much as worldbuilding:  it points to ingrained stereotypes and shorthand in the characters' culture(s).  And it can be built up into the other kinds of humor:  if character X makes cracks about culture Y's love for beer, you can already anticipate what's about to happen when a native from that land shows up ...

It's this last that I haven't played with much - about the closest I've come is that there's a certain understanding that songs from Evinnen are very much like classic Celtic tunes:  depressing and full of woe.  That leads to the following exchange, which also touches upon the second kind of humor in drawing a parallel to another genre of music in our contemporary world:

“Matheus, Matheus!”  The inventor Valchem’s face lit with a child’s enthusiasm.  “What happens if you take a traditional Evinneni song and play it backwards?”

“You get your life back, you get your health back, you get your true love back?” the hero hazarded.

In any case, it's definitely something I want to work with more.  Obviously, characters laughing at something the reader doesn't "get" can become tiresome fast, but it's a nice level for worldbuilding.  Anyone have any nice examples of this?

GoodReads Review: Unsympathetic Magic

Unsympathetic Magic by Laura Resnick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Struggling actress Esther Diamond is back as the calamities of her everyday life collide headlong with the rising of the dead. This book does an excellent job of introducing new threads and interweaving old ones, all with a riotous humor that had me laughing out loud - and I'm a tough sell for audible laughter. Esther's escapades pile atop each other and play out in a convincing and engaging fashion, and it all feels like the inevitable - if hilarious - result of what came before.

Only two things kept me from giving this book full stars. First, Resnick's research is showing: the story grinds to a halt to discuss the finer points of vodou (and similar spellings, etc), the associated religion, the spirits ... it's interesting information, but it stops the plot dead with its bulk. Second, three books in, the barriers between Esther and Lopez are beginning to feel well-worn, the same clichés I hate in romantic comedies. There's still much to enjoy in their relationship, but my patience with the contrivances is wearing thin.

Overall, though, this book comes highly recommended. It was quite simply a blast to read.

View all my reviews

Tuesday Thoughts

This will be roughly two parts life rant, one part writing rant.  So you have been warned.

I've watched a number of reality shows where the contestants are vying for the opportunity to start their own businesses, and one thing that has always annoyed me about popular media seems to come to the fore in these shows:  if you have passion, you have to wear it on your sleeve.  If you are devoted, you have to be visibly emotional.  If you are controlled and collected, then the judges seem to think you are apathetic.

In some way, this makes sense:  not being in someone else's head, we can only judge by what they demonstrate, and that goes doubly for the home viewer, who is only seeing selectively edited clips.  But to me, the assumption that people who are less emotive, or uncomfortable with loud displays, somehow have less fire than the rest of us ... it grates on my nerves.  There is a type of person for whom these outbursts are unnatural.  Trying to force it would be farce.

As you might have guessed, I am this type of person.  Under stress and pressure, things may bubble up, but otherwise, I keep quiet and internalize my emotions.  And that's all right with me.  I don't enjoy when the moment gets the best of me.  I prefer to stay composed.  The people around me don't need to be burdened with my emotional minutiae.  Does that mean I don't feel as much as someone who is more vocal?  Definitely not.  The inside of my head can be a powder keg.

I promised there would be writing talk in this post, so here it is:  I sometimes (though not exclusively) write characters whose reactions come from that same, reserved place, and I find that reviewers will pick upon certain character reactions as being too mild or detached.  Sometimes, this is because I haven't properly illuminated the thoughts bottled up behind the outward calm, which I then set about correcting, but other times, it's simply the reaction itself that provokes this critique.

So I strengthen the mental underpinnings, but I'm not budging on the outward quality of reserve.  Because even if this sort of person is unusual, they do exist.  Hi!  I'm pleased to meet you.