Wednesday Wanderings

I don't tend to write in the same world - or even the same cosmology - very often.  I've spoken occasionally that I admire writers who work like that and enjoy it:  on the purely mercenary end, I have an inkling it probably is a surer route to building a fanbase.  Unfortunately, I just have way too much fun with the nuts and bolts of worldbuilding and a short attention span.  (Well ... as short as a novelist's attention span can be.)

However, recently, in contemplating some of my projects that haven't been in what I like to call my wheelhouse - "secondary world fantasy" - I've detected an amusing possibility.  Follow along with me:

Flow is contemporary fantasy - specifically, set in the late Aughts (2000 - 2009) before mobile technology exploded - with a backdrop secret history of fairy incursion and underwater sorcery.

Scylla and Charybdis is soft science fiction, set in a future where humanity departed Earth and colonized a handful of planets.  Travel and communication with the homeworld was always cumbersome because there nearest wormhole to Earth was several light-years away, and in the chaos of Y-Poisoning, the colonies lost contact with Earth.

My new novel project is ... uh ... post-apocalyptic science fantasy?  Let's go with that.  The premise is that magic exploded into the world through virtual reality, both mutating the human environment and opening portals to other worlds.  (It has been left open whether or not any magic existed within this world before.)

So since the existence of magic was hidden in Flow, it's quite possible that book could be history for the other two stories.  And there's even an argument for "magic" in Scylla and Charybdis:  Gwydion (among others) has hypermental abilities, which are presumed to have a scientific basis (look at studies of extrasensory perception, etc) ... but who is to say?  (Me, obviously.)

Looking further, again, the people in Scylla and Charybdis have lost contact with Earth.  What if, in the interim, things have turned very strange indeed?

I didn't set out to connect these storylines, nor am I completely sure that all the small detail facts - dates, background information, etc - line up.  But it's certainly an entertaining thought, and with Scylla and Charybdis pending edit and the new novel as yet unwritten, I could easily plant hints and Easter Eggs.

Oh, I probably won't; there's nothing really to be gained, and the downside is that it limits my options in all three venues - Flow is in finalized form, and I have pondered writing a sequel.  But then again, you never know ...

Novel forthcoming!

Grimbold Books / Kristell Ink has taken on my soft science fiction novel, Scylla and Charybdis!  I'm in some exciting-looking company:

http://kristell-ink.com/grimbold-welcomes-our-new-authors/

The irony is, of course, that I always say my wheelhouse is secondary world fantasy, yet my two successful / accepted novels are contemporary fantasy and scifi, respectively.  However, both featured very intensive worldbuilding - my notes for SaC include the class of the star, rotational and orbital periods, climate data, etc ... only a fraction of this shows up in black and white, but it helped me to make sure I was building a plausible SF setting.

Wednesday Wanderings

(I just changed my fractal image - over to the left.)

The political atmosphere these days is ugly - not just in the United States, but in Britain as well.  The British decision, at least, is almost over:  tomorrow, the UK votes on what has been nicknamed Brexit, the decision whether to leave the European Union or remain.  Regardless of which way Britain decides, however, I suspect there will be fallout, name-calling, repercussions ... everyone taking facts and twisting them to suit their particular variant of "I told you so."

The United States is in a battle that will continue for months more, of course, with two major candidates who are both polarizing figures with huge personalities.  This latter muddies the waters even further:  the personal and the political spill over into each other.  And this battle now occurs around the metaphorical wreckage of a national tragedy.

Everyone wants a solution, but in the shouting and anxieties, the very human desire for that solution to be *simple*, proponents of one side have forgotten that "everyone wants a solution" applies to the other side, too.  No one is saying, "Eh, this is just the way it is."  There's no cosmic battle for good and evil going on in the political realm, wherein the belief you espouse makes you a villain or a hero.

This is not a new phenomenon, but it seems to be even worse this election cycle.  Republicans and Democrats alike paint each other as the enemy (idiotic, heartless, ruthless, oblivious, sanctimonious, lazy) without making that basic assumption which allows for dialogue and thought:  my opponent has their own line of logic.  There's another way of looking at this issue besides my own.

Again, it's human nature.  I talked in the previous blog post about the deep discomfort most people have with states outside of the binary ... what about people who agree with Republicans on some issues, Democrats with others?  In the current climate, you'd better swallow your outlier position or risk accusations and imprecations.

(The partial answer to this, of course, is that there are third parties, but their electability is slim at best, and it's still very possible to disagree with certain positions.  Parties align themselves according to certain fundamental principles - that human desire to organize and label, again - but individual humans are more than capable of holding specific positions that contradict generic guidelines.  We're flexible like that.)

I've stayed out of discussions personally, but I'm unable to escape the lure of reading them.  It's the worst of pulp (non)fiction.  It turns my stomach, makes me want to grab people by the shoulders and shake them.  True, there are some people who are genuinely twisted or self-interested to the point of being dangerous ... but I'd like to think that percentage is very small, and that more progress will be achieved by assuming that your opponent is operating in good faith.

If there's been any upside to this election cycle for me, it's that it has forced me to personally examine my positions and figure out where I stand - and what impact each position has.  I may choose not to think about it, but I've brought passion and rational thought together, and I hope others do the same.

Wednesday Wanderings

(This post inspired by, but not intended to be a direct response to, recent events.)
 
We all need to be one, people say.  We need unity.  We need to stop defining ourselves by labels.

But the labels are important.  Without the human desire to label the pieces of the world around us, we wouldn't have language.  We would be unable to distinguish between tigers and trees.  The language, the labels, are also how we organize and classify the overwhelming deluge of information around us.  It makes the world manageable ... mostly.

Labels are how we, as an evolving species and throughout our history, identify and manage what we should consider a threat, what might be an ally, and what is neutral.  We categorize and classify as a survival strategy, and did so long before formal taxonomic systems.  It's why things that don't belong in one distinct category (or belong to several) cause tension on a primal level.  Much of mythology, superstition and folklore deals with these liminal forces.  By defining and naming them, they become an evil that can be fought, placated and understood.

People also use labels on the personal level to recall and manipulate information.  For those with a visual memory, they might picture the person or object in question instead, but others often need the words.  Without a tag, an identifier, a position on the association tree, that person, thing or concept cannot be accessed by the brain - cannot be considered, contemplated, understood.

So to say "stop using labels" flies in the face of human evolution and neurology.  Luckily, however, we also have the capacity to realize that the label is not the thing - that just as "Suzie" represents a person of immense complexity, to say that someone is Jewish, Swedish, bisexual is only one piece of their truth.  Naming is the first step to understanding; it is not the last.

The word liminal means "on the threshold" and we can stand on that threshold - despite our deepest fears, fortified by our power - and be all things at once.  We can use the words, the labels, to speak about what we must ... and know the rest in a place beyond words.

GoodReads Review: One of Our Thursdays Is Missing by Jasper Fforde

One of Our Thursdays Is Missing by Jasper Fforde
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love the humor, imagination, and authorial madness of the Thursday Next series, and this volume did not disappoint. The sidestep that is the premise - this story is told from the viewpoint of the fictional Thursday, the version of her that exists in the BookWorld after novels were written based on her life - is handled very well. I got a clear sense of this not-Thursday's personality, and her butler / sidekick, Sprockett, is also a delight.

I have only minor quibbles. I felt that the eventual resolution wasn't laid out clearly enough to be wholly satisfying when it came - it felt like a mystery where the writer had deliberately withheld a bit of information so the reader couldn't solve the problem. The other elements of the conclusion, however, were fulfilling enough to balance this out, and an entirely appropriate end for written-Thursday's character arc.

The other problem I had has been an ongoing one: I'm never quite convinced by Landen, Thursday's husband. He seems one-dimensional to me, existing only to be a supportive ideal. It's actually a little more appropriate here, considering that written-Thursday lost "her" Landen, so he is an unattainable dream ... but the character still bothers me, and it's hard to invest in her desires when he feels flat.

Jasper Fforde has a rare ability to make complete nonsense feel cohesive and internally consistent. You know, logically, that there's no way the BookWorld makes sense, but any attempts to pick it apart end in throwing up your hands and going along for the ride. Relax and enjoy it.

View all my reviews

Liner Notes For "The Promise of Song" now available!

It's up! Check out my flash fiction story written as CD notes:

https://87bedford.com/…/liner-notes-for-the-promise-of-song/
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 Mythology buffs: see how many references you can spot ...

GoodReads Review: By The Sword by Richard Cohen

By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions by Richard Cohen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A highly entertaining and very readable chronicle of the history of fencing, from the earliest era to dueling to modern Olympic competition, this book strikes an excellent balance between providing an overall historic and cultural perspective, and relating the stories of individuals - often with humor and/or drama. For my tastes, the later chapters on fencers in the 20th century were less interesting and took up more of the book than I would have wanted ... but that may show my bias more than anything else.

Particularly recommended for any fiction writer hoping to chronicle duels or professional sports - the book is a great source for insights on sportsmanship, legal challenges, honor, cheating, and other related topics that transcend fencing.

View all my reviews

(I don't usually post my nonfiction reviews on this blog, but this one is especially relevant to Things Fantasy, at least my Things Fantasy, and might be of interest to fellow writers.)

Wednesday Wanderings

For me, in a work of fiction, the story has a life of its own.  It exists as an independent entity, more of a found object than a composed one; an excavation rather than a creation.  Now, that doesn't mean I'm against editing and revision - changes to help a story realize its potential are, to extend the archaeological metaphor, removing the dust and debris.  (Literary criticism is the scientific paper discussing the find.  Fanfiction is ... all right, I'm taking the metaphor too far now.)

When I refer to story here, I want to clarify that I don't just mean the plot:  I mean the sum total of character, world, plot, and to a lesser extent, tone and mood.  Since I primarily write secondary world fantasy, the analogy is easy for me:  the story is the history of another world. I debated a bit whether to include those last two, but decided that there's a sense of mood and tone in "real life," too, so it's appropriate to consider that part of the story.

There are other elements that may exist in a work of fiction that are intertwined with story, but (in my mind) separate from it:  theme and message; education; raising awareness and increasing diversity; filling a niche; style and language; narrative structure.  Some people would argue that it is impossible to separate message from story, and in the end, I agree.  Even if the author doesn't consciously intend to say something, he or she does:  even if it's, "sometimes, life is random."

Beautiful prose; intriguing facts that give the story life; how could I be against any of this?  I'm not.  I can hardly rail against experimental narratives when I've written not one, but two stories in first person plural ("we"), another entirely as a dialogue between two minds trapped in a single body with no outside cues, and am currently submitting a tale with two different endings - which completely change the context of the tale before.

But for me, there's an important caveat:  these other elements must grow out of and/or serve the story, not the other way around.  The story is always first.  It's about authorial intent:  I need this element to tell this tale properly.  When a story because slave to other elements, because a writer wants to send a specific message or deliberately write something "wacky," the story begins to gasp for air.  It loses verisimilitude.  The long-buried pottery begins to crack.

Obviously, though, defining when this happens is very subjective.  Unless the author has been interviewed about the writing process for that tale - and possibly not even then - it's nearly impossible to know in what order the elements were conceived, where the inspiration started.  A story I find ridiculously contrived might seem perfectly natural to someone else, and vice versa.  And, of course, we all have blinders:  favorite elements or pet peeves that blind us to "flaws" or highlight them with a spotlight.

So it goes with every work of fiction:  taste is subjective.  One thing comes out of this that is immutable, though:  for me, personally, whenever I sit down to write, I concentrate on the story and chisel out everything else from there. 

Real archaeology makes me sneeze.

Wednesday Wanderings

I think I've talked about this before, but it's been some time, and with the current feast of speculative television and movies, I thought it would be fitting to look back at the movies that started it all ... specifically, my favorite three.

Obviously, the Lord of the Rings movies set the bar and opened the gates for fantasy film.  There is a direct line from the success of that trilogy to Game of Thrones, which made secondary world fantasy not just viable on the small screen, but a smashing success.  Suddenly, it's mainstream.  I was seriously tempted to buy a "A Girl has No Name" t-shirt, and cheerfully confident that people would get the reference.

But Lord of the Rings is a step in the middle of the road - a big step, but not the first.  And for me, I was an adult when the first Lord of the Rings movie came out:  other films had already been inscribed on my heart.

Specifically, these three.

The Princess Bride:  let me start with the most famous of these, the cult classic of swashbuckling, romance, faux-left-handed swordfighting, and rodents of unusual size.  It has all the elements you think of when you think of traditional fantasy, witty, eminently quotable dialogue, and an enormous heart.  The Princess Bride is an adaptation of the novel by the same name, the script written by the author.  It is (unsurprisingly) remarkably faithful to the book, though it removes one level of humor that only works in the printed form and transitions the internal monologues and flashbacks to external monologues ... which works remarkably well and makes the characters feel more connected to each other.

That level of humor, by the way, is embedded in the conceit that Goldman "translated" The Princess Bride, which is not actually an adventure story at all, but an intricate political satire based on fashion, manners, and even packing for a trip.  This also more firmly plants the tale on "our" earth, but either way, it's a version that never existed and never will.  (For my money, I actually like the film better:  that the backstories such as Inigo's are internalized makes the story feel more isolated.  It's more intellectual, but not as warm.)

Willow:  an evil sorceress hunts the child of prophecy destined to destroy her ... and the babe ends up in the care of an unassuming farmer, who must take her to safety.  It really is an iconic tale, an archetypal example of fantasy, though the "chosen one" is an infant - really a McGuffin more than a character, though the little girl is absolutely charming - and the farmer has a loving wife and children.

I've never confirmed whether this is true or urban legend, but my favorite story about this movie is that George Lucas wanted to make Willow instead of Star Wars, but the technology required for the morphing effect was not yet available.  It's why there are so many similarities in the storyline and character roles.  But the morphing is in full flower here, and it still holds up remarkably well.  (Not so much with some of the other special effects, like the multi-headed monster, sadly.)

It's an exciting, rollicking movie, with generously applied humor and highly quotable lines ("Went away?  'I dwell in darkness without you' and it went away?") ... and Val Kilmer in a skirt.  No, not a kilt, a skirt.  And, of course, I should point out that the wizard staff battle in Lord of the Rings is completely, totally shamelessly ripped off from the showdown between Bavmorda and Fin Raziel.

Ladyhawke:  a tale of cursed lovers, a powerful bishop, and the thief who tumbles into their path, this movie is an absolutely perfect example of a Welsh myth, down to small details ... so perfect, in fact, that early promotional materials touted it as an authentic legend, and the actual author had to sue to get the packaging altered.  (I wrote an essay in one of my courses about this movie, breaking down all the elements.)  It's a gorgeous, atmospheric tale, unfolded with a slowness that sometimes approaches the ponderous, but the pay-off is the sense of wonder.  This is really a "low magic" story, but it is infused with mythical imagery.  A lot of people complain about the rock music soundtrack, but for me, I find it strangely fitting.

Ladyhawke got around the potential need for morphing technology with a really great effect:  instead of trying to show the transformation, the shot focuses in close-up on the eyes of the person transforming, that moment of shock, realization and then the flash from human to animal.

Ladyhawke has Matthew Broderick at his very best.  Most people think of Ferris Bueller's Day Off when they think of Broderick, but I think of this movie.  He and the inimitable Leo McKern provide the movie with a much-needed counterbalance of levity.  (Oh, and Michelle Pfeiffer and Rutger Hauer.  Impressive cast much?)

So those are my three favorite fantasy movies:  they all share archetypal elements, character-based humor, and a wonderful cast.  If you haven't seen any of them, hunt them down.  And even if you have ... they reward rewatching.

Wednesday Wanderings

Today, I want to talk about casting calls - or at least, the author version of them.  By that, I mean choosing an actor or model who looks like the character.  This can come in a number of forms:  a popular question for authors is, "Who would play your hero/ine in a movie?"  It can be entertaining to imagine who might be able to portray your favorite character.  (It's often more fun than seeing who actually does - who among us hasn't been disappointed by a Hollywood casting choice?)

Another form is when the author chooses actors/models in advance to firm up their mental picture of the characters.  The competence / realism of the picture reference truly doesn't matter; I've even "cast" a silver screen starlet in her heydey who at this point, I think, has passed on.  A lot of writers swear by this method.  It helps them visualize, and it's a fun tidbit to share with readers, too.

I don't do this too often; I tend to work more on my gut feeling of a character.  But occasionally, I've done it in part when the mood strikes or when I have other reasons.  

In the case of Scylla and Charybdis, I originally had a sense of Anaea as Emmy Rossum, Phantom of the Opera era - this was before Shameless hit the screens.  I drifted away from that as I wrote.  In the case of Flow, my three core characters were all former roleplaying creations, and having a PB - Played By - is very common in these games.  (Some lazy players don't even bother to read others' character descriptions, they just look at the chosen actor / actress.  Really!)  Hadrian was Christian Bale from the era of Equilibrium, long before his now-iconic Batman stint.  For those who haven't seen the movie, it's best described as The Matrix meets Fahrenheit 451.  Bale was very gaunt, severe, and pale in that role.

But for my still-unnamed new project, I decided to "cast" all my characters.  The reason for this ties back into something I discussed in an earlier post about character naming:  I'm aiming for a society with a high degree of ethnic blending.  But I know myself, and my default mental image tends to be pale European.  So in selecting specific actors and references, I'm hoping to give myself an image to anchor myself with and maintain the look I'm striving for.

And because Facebook is the home of impulse, people there convinced me that it was perfectly all right to tweak a character expressly so he could be "played" by Giancarlo Esposito. 

Wednesday Wanderings

On Monday, my Facebook "On This Day" feature reminded me that it had been a year since I finished Unnatural Causes.

Really?  A year?  I could hardly believe it.  I'm in the middle of my editing marks for the second draft now, with so much to do.

I haven't been idle during that year.  When I finished the book, I was still editing Who Wants To be A Hero? with a query letter and synopsis to follow.  I took a break for my "strictly for fun" zombie-novella project, Undertaking Chances, which I had estimated would maybe be in the 15-20 thousand word range.  Twice that length later, the story had taken me on a wild ride.  Short stories, life developments, and the building blocks of my next novel ... and here we are.

As far as the professional and sales side of the writing business, not much has changed in that year.  As for the personal side and my personal life?  (Who wants to hear about the latter, really?)  I've gotten less serious in the right way.  I've had a disheartening lack of success ... and I'm starting to learn to divorce myself from that pressing need to sell-sell-sell and just have fun with it.

Stand back, things are about to get messy.

Wednesday Wanderings

I seem to go through phases with my novel protagonists.  The main characters will have a common underlying type for a series of projects; then that type will change completely.  By type, I don't mean that a specific cookie-cutter or exact set of characteristics - just an overarching "feel."

I don't make this decision consciously, either to begin the streak or to end it ... and because I'm frequently in different stages in multiple projects at once, I don't always have a clear sense of the transition.

I recently finished one of these streaks - if you can call a few years ago recently.  Has it been that long since I finished Who Wants To Be A Hero?  Because that was the end of the previous streak:  characters who were quiet, self-contained, independent ... but not necessarily sure of their course in life.  It's Rhiane in Journal of the Dead, who endured the weight of ghosts to search for her son; Anaea in Scylla and Charybdis, a fish out of water in her tiny home colony who discovered the true size of the universe; and Ioweyn in Who Wants To Be A Hero? who willingly allowed herself to be a prize in a game to earn herself a divine role.  These women are very different, but they share the same heartbeat.

The next streak started with Unnatural Causes, which I'm doing editing notes for now, and this set of protagonists promises to be a lot ... livelier.  The dominant thread seems to be a snarky-sarcastic attitude, little patience for authority, and a strong will:  not only a descriptor of Vil, who refused to be treated as a creature (she was a mage's familiar) as she tried to solve her mistress' murder; but a good descriptor of Maren, the protagonist of the still-unnamed project I'm working on now.  I have a backup concept in the works with a wild-child sorceress who finds herself in possession of a rich mystic legacy in the form of enchanted dolls ... you can see the common thread, I'm sure.

Why do I do this?  I'm not sure.  Perhaps it's me as a person - less than as a writer - working through something in my life.  Maybe I'm channeling some aspect of myself that is important at the time - this would fit with the previous streak, as I was feeling aimless before I decided to enroll in culinary school.  Maybe it's wish fulfillment, something I lack - certainly, I can't just shake people off the way my current protagonists can.  Is this a writer's version of therapy?

Am I going to break the streak now that I'm aware of it?  Probably not.  The characters are still different enough to keep me out of a rut (or the accusation that I'm writing the same person all the time, should I be lucky enough to get each book in print).  And as a backburner thinker, I've learned that most of the time, it's best to let my subconscious mind have at it. 

Wednesday Wanderings

The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Isn't that what a writer does every time we submit a story or send a query to an agent?

Except it's never exactly the same:  it's a different story, a different editor, a different agent ... a work written weeks, months or even years after the last, and in that sense, written by a slightly different writer, too.  Maybe we're working through a particular theme or writerly habit; maybe our lives have taken a recent turn; or maybe we're simply in a different mood.

Sometimes, I worry that my skill is not improving, that I'm only getting worse - losing the spontaneity and picking up artificial affectations in exchange.  It's tempting to measure this by ratios, acceptances, manuscript requests, but nothing happens in a vacuum:  the agent might be looking for something in particular, the market just accepted another story about time-traveling opera cows, or someone on the other end was simply in a bad mood.

Lack of success doesn't mean lack (or loss) of skill.  But how do you know what does?  Or does it even matter?  Maybe you at your worst is just what some editor wants.

Wednesday Wanderings

What's in a name?  If you're a writer pondering a character, a great deal.  While some writers may be able to freely change the names of their characters, even the protagonist, throughout drafts, for me, characters become intertwined with their names in a very kinesthetic sense.

And the rose does not smell as sweet by any other name.  "Petunia" conjures very different images - arguably even if one has never seen a petunia.  Give someone the name Ethel, and one has a certain first impression; Brittany creates another one.  It's about more than sound, of course:  culture, time period, and even personal choice affect the names we know a person by.

On the other hand, it's possible for a name to be too on the nose.  I tend to resist names that have precise, appropriate meaning, unless prophecy or divine intervention is involved.  A fire invoker named Ember ... what, her parents really knew that was what she going to grow up to be?  Call me crazy when I'm happily accepting the existence of dragons and bickering gods, but this kind of thing threatens my suspension of disbelief.

I'm reminded here of a story I once read about J.R.R. Tolkien (a master linguist, of course), who thought that words "cellar door" were some of the most lyrical in the English language, even though their meaning is dreadfully mundane.

I admit to a weakness for characters who dislike their given name, so use a nickname or other handle.  I did in Scylla and Charybdis - in fact, I just had to go back into the manuscript to remember that Flick's given name is Tobias, so take that as you will.  It's also coming up in the project I'm working on - the narrator is generally called by her last name, Maren, and the intent is to trickle out her nickname, and then her full first name.  It should be quite obvious to readers why she's not fond of it, and hopefully, it's a bit ironic.

All right, enough vaguebooking on a story I haven't even written yet ... the project also contains a character whose real name is Aristophanes - blame the artificial intelligence who decided to name the children in its care after ancient Greeks.  He goes by Archer, and for him, it's also a personal homage / in-joke to Robin Hood.

In both Scylla and Charybdis and my current project, I've had to ponder the direction names will take in the future.  I think it's quite likely that, as ethnic groups blend, so will naming ... to the point where a future society may have numerous examples of names that don't seem to "fit" - but in context, they're normal.

We already see this as exceptions to the rules.  A young couple might give their daughter a Native American name because it "sounds cool."  Someone might name their baby in honor of another individual ... who may be from another group and certainly comes from another time period.  (To pull from above, imagine a teenager named Ethel.  Quite possible, if her namesake is her grandmother.)  As people marry across boundaries, the blending of surnames produces some odd results - for instance, what if an Italian woman and a Japanese man marry and give their daughter a name from her family?  That's ignoring what happens when you start to hyphenate surnames ...

The challenge for me as a writer has been to represent this drift in naming without it seeming bizarre, gratuitous and "special" to readers.  I have to strike a balance between plausibility to modern ears (without going into great depth explaining / justifying background every time I introduce a character) and capturing that element of change.

And even if I haven't succeeded, I promise I will never name a sage "Elvis" (... that is what it means.  I swear.  Look it up) again.  Maybe.  Well, I haven't planned to.

GoodReads Review: Living With Ghosts by Kari Sperring

Living with Ghosts by Kari Sperring
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I did not have a neutral experience with this book.

(This review may be more spoiler-ish than usual, though I've tried to be as circuitous as possible. You have been warned.)

Old powers threaten the city of Merafi, and a handful of its denizens - from a noble lord to a guard captain to a foreign spy - struggle to deal with the forces that have been awakened. There were parts of this book I loved; there were parts I hated, and I can't entirely pick out what is wholly personal taste and what is an objective issue ... though, of course, reviews are always to some degree subjective.

The world here is beautifully realized with a deep, rich history and a nice iceberg effect: you have the sense of more that isn't shared with the reader. Unfortunately, while the worldbuilding is generally good, for me there wasn't enough of it given in the right places. I had trouble getting through the first quarter of the book because, though I felt the looming doom, I didn't feel like I understood enough of the magic / situation to get a) an idea what the stakes were or b) a sense of what the main characters might be able to do about it. That made their efforts feel a bit pointless. Later in the story, I thought the wide-view descriptions of power sweeping over the city were striking ... but I also found them somewhat opaque, and once more, I didn't feel as if it was well explained how the characters could respond and why. There's a lack of specificity, and with some magic systems / plots, that works, but for me and in this book, it didn't.

Another great effect of the book is how the characters are woven together. They are interconnected as one would expect with the movers and shakers of a large, pre-modern city, which allows some great crossing of plotlines and shared (or missed) information, without straining credulity - everyone doesn't know everyone, and two characters might be only connected thirdhand. (Let's play six degrees of Yviane!) Sperring also does a great job of using this setup to increase tension, without confusing the reader about what each character knows, or boring the reader by repeating the same information. It's always a little different, a little near.

And I loved some of the characters: outwardly flighty but inwardly brilliant Miraude; insouciant ghost Valdarrien; and the cool, mysterious Iareth. But notice these are all more peripheral characters I'm mentioning: it was the central cast that disappointed me. It took me a while to engage with Gracielis; I just didn't care that much for the character. I found the exaggerated femininity to be unsuited to his role / supposed gift for seduction. I would think, if you're a male prostitute and the majority (if not all) your clients are female, you'd be better suited to the appearance of picture-perfect masculinity. At least show him swapping back and forth between modes (as it were).

Then there's the problematic fight between Thiercelin and his wife, which is exasperating from the first act. It would be quickly defused by honest communication, but they keep coming up with increasingly strained reasons not to do so. It's the most exasperating part of a romcom strung out over a couple hundred pages ... and the only reason I can really see for it to exist is to excuse Thiercelin so he can have thoughts of infidelity. For me, that fails: I don't see their relationship as estranged enough to justify it. Further, I don't see why Thiercelin needs to gravitate towards Gracielis this way: all the emotional energy between the two men can certainly stand without physicality.

That aside, the climax of this book holds some really interesting episodes and surprises. I can't be more specific without giving the game away. In summary: there are some stark images and wonderful occurrences in this book, but I also wanted to tear my hair out at points.

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Wednesday Wanderings

Lately, it seems I've seen a number of contemporary fantasy authors catching heat for misrepresenting a specific ethnic or minority group.  J.K. Rowling is perhaps the most prominent example:  people were very unhappy about her use of the Navajo skinwalker stories.  Since my old notes for my next novel project included skinwalkers, this one particularly caught my attention.  (For myself, I've decided to work the concept from a different angle.  The way magic works and entered my setting - via public consciousness and imagination - makes this more appropriate, ultimately.)

One thing stands out to me in these missteps and their criticisms, however, and I'm always a little surprised by it, because it's one of the things that, as a secondary fantasy writer, you learn early on:  no culture is monolithic.  People show cultural tendencies along a spectrum; mutations, one-offs, misfits are an intrinsic part of every group.  To assert that a trait is always true of a group seems to be an inevitable railroad to inaccuracy and oversimplification.

Of course, now the perverse in me wants to point out that there are probably exceptions to that, too.  In a secondary world, you can "cheat" by making a trait constant through supernatural means.

Fellow fantasy writer Nyki Blatchley said something in one of his blog posts a while back that really stuck with me.  I'm going to paraphrase it mercilessly here.  Imagine you have two neighboring kingdoms, and each kingdom has a string of border villages.  It's very likely that a person in one of these border villages will have more in common with their neighbor across the border than they do with a person in their capital city.

We humans may draw lines and apply labels, but life itself has little regard for borders.  It's analog, not digital:  a continuous sliding scale rather than an orderly sequence of distinct numbers.

It applies to science, too:

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. – Arthur C Clarke

But that's getting a bit far afield from the original premise.  I think we writers instinctively see this diversity and search for that exception to the rule:  how many stories are written about the character who doesn't fit in?  Yet when talking about cultures beyond our own, we reach for the imprint of the familiar.  It's worth keeping in mind:  no group is as homogeneous as it might look from the outside.

Wednesday Wanderings

Picking up the train of thought from last week, I learned a lot from writing short stories.  With fewer words comes the need for sharper focus:  I had to develop the skill of building a story around a single moment, a single decision, and making that complete.  It's probably this process that built my liking for the "yes, but ..." ending - the conclusion that fulfills the story goal, but sets up ongoing complications.

Short stories also helped with my sense of plot.  Working on the micro level (comparatively), I had to figure out the direction of the tale before I began, or I risked wandering ... and wandering into novelette or novella territory.  I know there are other writers who can start a short story without an ending or outline, but I was never one of those writers, and in a few cases, I found out the hard way.  Those rambly tales are best forgotten.

I also learned quite a bit about incorporating worldbuilding into fiction ... and some about faking it.  Many of my short stories have allusions to cultural, physical, historical elements of the world - brief glimpses that show the workings beneath the surface.  Except, in almost every case, it's an illusion:  the glimpse is the only truth, and the reader knows as much as I do.  Well ... almost.

But it's not all faking it.  Again, space is at a premium in a short story, with less room - and reader patience - for extended descriptions.  Sentences setting the scene often do double, even triple duty, contributing to the plot or understanding of character.  An example I often like to give is instead of just stating that a character is tall, something like, "She was obnoxiously tall, looming a head and more over the locals," also gives some information about aforesaid locals ... and a hint of snarkiness in the narrator, perhaps.

All of these skills, this learned economy, translated back into my novels - or at least, I hope it has.  Even if that's not the case, I enjoyed the ability to dip my toe into far more worlds than I might have, had each demanded a novel of its own.

Another Game of Words and Music

I've mentioned before that I have an older car and am limited to listening to CDs, but music is a critical part of keeping the errant parts of my brain focused/distracted/plotting appropriately (take your pick) while driving ... so I make themed CDs.  One of the sets I've enjoyed doing is via word association, where the titles or persistent lyrics lead me from one song to the next.

Here's my current list, with explanations where the thread isn't in the title:

I To You - Leona Lewis
This Time - Celine Dion (both songs about abusive relationships)
Time Machine - Ingrid Michaelson 
Ghost in the Machinery - Sarah Brightman
Ghosttown - Madonna
Nobody Home - Amy Grant
Clear The Area - Imogen Heap
Shelter - Eisley
Umbrella - Rihanna
Today the Sun's On Us - Sophie Ellis-Bextor
Brighter Than The Sun - Colbie Caillat
Blinding - Florence + The Machine
Just Want To See - Cowboy Junkies
When He Sees Me - Sara Bareilles (the line "he could be criminal ... some kind of psychopath who escaped from an institution somewhere where they don't have girls ..." plus this is actually in tango rhythm)
Cell Block Tango - Chicago soundtrack
Security - Joss Stone
Hot Cop - Village People
Heat Rising - September
Swoon - Imogen Heap
Falling in Love (Uh-Oh) - Miami Sound Machine
Ex's & Oh's - Elle King
Blow Me (One Last Kiss) - P!nk
Sisters in the Wind - Laura Powers
Little Sister - Jewel
13 Little Dolls - Sophie Ellis-Bextor
Not Big - Lily Allen
Thin Line Between Love and Hate - Annie Lennox
Push Pull - Purity Ring
Disappear - Sahlene (this song is all about a push-pull kind of relationship)
She Used To Be Mine - Sara Bareilles
Say You'll Be Mine - Amy Grant
Don't Say A Word - Ellie Goulding 
The Last Words You Said - Sarah Brightman
Isobel - Dido (both songs about someone who probably died, but it's never stated outright - and the line "the last day leaving" leads into the next on my list)
The End of a Perfect Day - Kirsty MacColl
Loose Ends - Imogen Heap
What Have We Started? - Sophie Ellis-Bextor
Begin Again - Purity Ring

So that's the current list.  As another point of possible amusement, I have a "Marriage" themed CD as well ... and I just about fell over when I realized that I'd followed "Sunrise, Sunset" from Fiddler on The Roof with Beyonce's "Single Ladies" ...

Wednesday Wanderings

I still distinctly remember the exact moment I decided to stop reading short stories as a kid.

I was reading a shared-world anthology, and one of the stories described a fortress as, "a rectangular square."  I was incensed by the redundancy.  (I was a weird kid.  I'm sure I've established this by now.)  It must have been the straw that broke the camel's back for me.  I don't recall if I finished that specific story or just stopped right there, but that was the last short story I read for a very long time.

When I came back to short fiction, it was for mercenary reasons.  No, I wasn't trying to kill people:  I had just started submitting novel manuscripts, and had been told that short story sales made editors more likely to consider your work.  So, of course, to write short fiction, I had to read it ...

The short fiction world had changed a lot since my first foray, especially in SF/F.  When I was young and reading short stories, one had a pick of magazines on the newsstand in every bookstore.  (All the bookstores.  I weep.)  I have several old Realms of Fantasy issues, and I had a subscription to MZB's Fantasy Magazine for a while.

When I returned to short fiction, the pool of magazines had dried up, and of those that remained, most couldn't be picked up by simply walking into a bookstore.  (This was before bookstores started crashing left and right.)  Electronic magazines had started to pop up, but weren't nearly as numerous as they are today.  Postal submissions were still very common, too.

What I found instead were anthologies.  I loved - and still love - anthologies on any theme.  I am less fond of "best of" collections, simply because part of the pleasure, for me, is to see different authors interpret the main thought in a variety of tones, worlds, and possibilities.

I had started reading short stories for business reasons, but I discovered a deep love for them - both the reading and the writing.  I also learned a lot that I never expected to that translated back into my books ...

Wednesday Wanderings

For those of you not involved in the realm of the writer, two quick definitions, typically used to describe the type of writer one is: 

1.  Plotter - someone who uses outlines, plot diagrams, and other tools to extensively map their story before writing.
2.  Pantser - someone who just dives in and wings it.  As in "by the seat of your"

I've always considered myself more of a pantser than a plotter, though I have elements of both.  My process is to do extensive worldbuilding and character creation, figuring out details, societal elements, past history ... though that doesn't mean that all of these will remain fixed when I start writing.  With all this framework built, however, I already know the sources of conflict and likely reactions, so when I get down to the business of writing, I can wind it up and watch it go.

When I started plotting for Unnatural Causes, my first novel length work that was also a mystery, I was inspired by a panel of mystery writers I had seen.  All of them claimed that they didn't have a firm idea whodunnit until late in the writing.  This sounded like an awesome idea to me.  I would build characters with solid motives, come up with a passel of clues ...

... and find that it utterly didn't work for me.  About a quarter of the way through, I got completely stuck.  I couldn't continue the characters' investigation and trickle out further clues without knowing where they were leading.  So I stopped, thought it through, and made some choices.

Now I'm doing my first readthrough of the manuscript, and I realize how much "pantsing" hurt the opening portions of the book ... and even later on.  I'm going to have to do more extensive editing than I typically like to do, tearing some stuff out, including a red herring that doesn't even make sense any more ...

So I think I have to concede:  I'm more of a plotter than a pantser, if only because I would much rather have the story going in the right direction to start with.