Marie Brennan's Blog, page 121

World Fantasy’s Safety Surcharge

Today the registration fee for the 2016 World Fantasy Convention went up by seventy-five dollars, from $150 to $225.

I registered during the previous WFC, as has been my habit for years. Unfortunately, now I realize that I need to rethink this policy. Because despite being prodded on these matters, WFC 2016 still has not posted either a harassment or an accessibility policy. The con-runner, going by her comments posted there, seems to think that “be nice to one another” and “the hotel is ADA compliant” are sufficient measures in that regard — and maybe there will be policies posted by the time the con begins, but apparently it’s totally unreasonable to ask for those things before the price of attendance gets jacked up.

This is not okay. It amounts to a safety surcharge, because if you want to attend WFC, you have two choices:

1) Buy your registration early, in the blind faith that the con will do its duty and put together an acceptable set of policies before you arrive.

2) Wait for the policies, and pay more money in exchange: seventy-five dollars more now, another fifty if they aren’t posted by mid-April, literally twice the membership price if you pick your membership up in the fall (y’know, around the time the harassment policy got posted last year). To say nothing of the difficulty in getting a hotel room if the block has sold out, which it often does — a situation that might put you in a different hotel entirely, and yeah, like that won’t cause you problems if your mobility is limited.

Oh, and let’s not forget: this is a con with a membership cap. Waiting to register might mean you can’t attend at all, because they’re sold out. So really it’s heads they win, tails you lose, because if these things matter to you, then you wind up paying more money to the con, or not showing up at all.

I’ve said that I will not attend a con without either a harassment policy or an accessibility policy. As it turns out, that pledge needs to have a rider attached to it: these things must be posted sufficiently far in advance of the con. I already have my WFC membership, but if they have not addressed this problem in a substantive way by the end of the month, I will ask to have my membership refunded. That gives them four weeks: more than enough time to look at the many fine policies posted by other cons and select their menu options. If they can’t do it in that amount of time, I really don’t have faith that they care enough to do it properly at all.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

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Next installment of Dice Tales at BVC

Continuing my blog series on games and storytelling at BVC: “The Character Sheet”, wherein I talk about how the mechanics encode certain assumptions or setting expectations about personal identity. Comment over there!

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

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Who knew you could buy sanity on Amazon?

So as many of you know, my husband had ankle surgery recently. He’s on crutches, putting no weight on the affected foot . . . for 8-10 weeks.

That’s a long time.

And while I can’t rightly compare my own difficulties to his, it’s going to be a long time for both of us. All of a sudden, I’m carrying most of the household on my own shoulders, because he can’t. Many tasks that I’m used to sharing with him (laundry, taking out the trash, etc) are now mine alone. Things that didn’t use to be tasks suddenly are: I have to be available when he goes to bed, because while it’s possible for him to drag his crutches and the pillow we’re using for his leg up the stairs as he slides up them — they’re too narrow for him to crutch up — it’s a pain in the neck, and much easier if I carry those for him. Some tasks that I would normally let slide for a little while now have to be kept 100% up-to-date; the ant infestation plaguing this entire city isn’t related to his surgery, but that doesn’t change the fact that I have to wash the dishes right away or risk finding a conga line of ants making their way across our kitchen to whatever I left out, and I have to keep the living room constantly tidy or he won’t be able to cross it safely on crutches.

But. My friends, I had a stroke of genius, and it already promises to do wonders for my sanity.

We’ve been making extensive use of stools and folding chairs in various places so he can kneel on them(1) while he showers or washes his hands or whatever. I found myself wondering whether it would help to put one of those in the kitchen, too — and then I thought, no. What we want in the kitchen is one of these.

It arrived this afternoon. Today, for the first time since his surgery, my husband scrubbed some dishes. He loaded the dishwasher and emptied it, too; he put dinner into the oven and took it out again. He can’t do everything; kneeling for too long is uncomfortable, and he has to be careful that it doesn’t roll out from under him and drop him into an unexpected split. But he can function. He can probably manage to bake some brownies if he wants to — and if you know my husband, you know how much that means to him.

And me? I was giddy with delight. The sheer fact of knowing that I don’t have to do everything kitchen-related is a relief all out of proportion to its actual size. Sure, I’m still facing another two months of having to carry his plate to him and then carry it back when he’s done, because you can’t really do that on crutches and the stool doesn’t transition well to carpet. But he can make his own sandwich for lunch without having to balance on one foot while he does it, even if I’m the one who carries it to the couch. He can wash dishes, which is a task that normally falls about 70-80% in his bailiwick instead of mine. He can prepare simple dinners. All of these are things I expected to have to do myself for weeks to come and now . . . now I know that he can help.

I’m well aware that the situation I have with him is business as usual for a lot of people. If you’re a single mother with a toddler, you’ve got to carry every bit as much weight, without the compensation of a charge who continually thanks you and can at least accomplish tasks that don’t require standing. And they don’t sell products on Amazon that will magically turn your toddler into more of a functioning adult. But if you ever find yourself dealing with a similar situation, remember the merits of a simple, flat-topped, caster-mounted stool. It can work wonders.

(1) Some of you will now be thinking of those kneeling scooters you’ve been seeing around lately. We rented one, but they don’t corner well at all, and our place is too small for him to easily navigate indoors on that thing. It’s useful only for when he leaves the house; the rest of the time, it’s crutches, which are far more maneuverable.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

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Return of the Bride of the Revenge of the Month of Letters

As I have done in past years, I will be participating in Mary Robinette Kowal’s Month of Letters! Ish — the actual point of it was to send something via the mail every day in February, but, inspired by her example, I’ve used it as a time in which people can write to and receive letters from Lady Trent. The process will be exactly the same as in past years.

Time to go practice my cursive . . . .

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

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Pre-order CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 5 now!

There’s a page set up now for pre-ordering Clockwork Phoenix 5, which will be available for sale on April 5th. For those who may not recall, this is the anthology that contains my story “The Mirror-City.”

I got my contributor’s copy of CP5 in the mail the other day, and I have to say, I think it’s the prettiest Clockwork Phoenix yet. I love the new cover. :-D

Also, one day left in which to get Lies and Prophecy at a discounted price!

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

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“Dice Tales” at Book View Cafe

I’ve started blogging at Book View Cafe again, this time on one of my favorite topics: role-playing games! Specifically, RPGs as a method of storytelling, and how that interrelates with and differs from the more conventional kind of storytelling I do as an author. There are three posts up so far, one introductory piece to launch the series, one on the dramatis personae of an RPG, and one on mechanics. New installments will be posted each Sunday morning. Comments are off here; share your thoughts over there instead!

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

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Limited time sale for LIES AND PROPHECY!

From now until next Tuesday(1), Lies and Prophecy is on sale! Normally the illustrated edition is $4.99 and the text-only edition is $3.99, but each is a dollar off for the time being, making that $3.99 for the illustrated and $2.99 for the plain. Choose your retailer here!

I’m also pleased to link to a pair of pieces about Chains and Memory. The first is a piece I wrote for Special Needs in Strange Worlds, on characters with PTSD. I could have talked for a lot longer there — one of the things I didn’t even try to touch on is the fact that Kim has also developed PTSD by the second book of the series — but the focus of that post is how I managed to give Julian PTSD without noticing, and what I did with the story and the worldbuilding once I figured it out. The second post is over at Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog, discussing the cultural differences between Kim and Julian, and how the two of them work to bridge that gap. Her blog series is called “My Favorite Bit,” and given my anthropology background, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that my own favorite bit is the mismatch between the two characters’ assumptions, the things they do because of those assumptions, and most especially, the light-bulb moment where they realize what’s been going on. (For those who have already read the novel, I’m referring specifically to the scene after Julian gets his nose bloodied at practice.)

Finally, I’ve gotten out of the habit of linking to reviews here, but I have to say I love this quote from Marissa Linge’s review: “There are action scenes. There is not fencing, but there is fighting, torture, revenge, and true love. Of more than one sort. There is not actually a mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, though. I suppose one can’t have everything. At least not in a book of this length.” I am now sorely tempted to put an MLT into the third book, just because. :-P

***

(1) Actually, from a couple of days ago until next Tuesday — but I forgot to post this in a timely fashion. Mea culpa.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

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I would make a good seeing-eye dog

(Except for the part where my vision is terrible. And I’m not a dog.)

Some years ago, a friend of ours with a degenerative eye condition told us about the methods used to sort German Shepherd puppies for possible training. I don’t know whether this is how all facilities do it, but at that particular place, they would put a puppy in a room with various blanket and toys and so forth, and then leave them alone there for a while. Some dogs basically curl up in a corner and cry, and those will have a lovely future as someone’s pet. Some tear everything apart and pee all over it, and those are candidates to become police dogs. The potential seeing-eye dogs are the ones who investigate everything in the room, then sit down in a place where they can watch the door and wait.

My husband had ankle surgery today — I swear this is not a non sequitur — and it occurred to me that I am very much a much Dog Type Number Three. In the pre-op room, I wandered about reading every label on every box and drawer, peering at monitors, and generally investigating everything I could get at without touching stuff. When it came time for them to administer the nerve block, one of the nurses said that would be a good time for me to head out to the waiting room; I asked whether it would be a problem for me to stay and watch. The anesthesiologist said that would fine, so I sat in a chair and peered around him at the ultrasound screen while he stuck a needle in my husband’s leg. He even narrated what he was doing at one point, for my benefit!

. . . yeah, I’m a writer. If I can watch a thing, I probably will. Because who knows what I’ll need to know someday?

(In other news, my husband is home and doing fine, though that will probably change a bit when the nerve block wears off and he starts actually needing the happy pills they have prescribed for him.)

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

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Star Wars: Enthusiasm Awakens

(Minor spoilers ahead, but no major ones.)

I went yesterday to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens on a 3D IMAX screen, because really, there are some things that are just kind of cool to go virtually flying through. But lest you think I’m way behind the curve, this was not the first time I’d seen it, nor even the second; it was the third.

Partly this is because of a quasi-joke I made a while ago about “girlcotting Star Wars.” If staying away from something or refusing to buy it for political reasons is a boycott, then, I reasoned, actively going out to support or purchase it for political reasons should be called a girlcott. (Yes, I know the etymology doesn’t remotely work that way.) A Star Wars movie with a white woman, a black man, and a Latino man in leading roles? Yes please. A Star Wars movie whose crawl text blazes with the words GENERAL LEIA ORGANA(1), one where there are women taking up blasters to defend their village and female X-wing pilots running around the Resistance base and Gwendolen Christie as a Stormtrooper captain? Yes, yes, yes. I would have gone to see it even if it were terrible; I might have gone to see it twice. Fortunately, Abrams gave me something much better than terrible — he gave me Star Wars.

Because I’ll be honest: in hindsight, the prequel trilogy just doesn’t even feel like Star Wars to me. Sure, it has Jedi and Sith and lightsabers and spaceships and so on. But the opening crawl text of The Phantom Menace is all about a Trade Federation and frickin’ taxation. Where’s the EVIL EMPIRE? Where’s the noble REBELLION? Not here yet, I know, I know . . . but that’s part of the problem. Star Wars is supposed to be sweeping and epic. When its crawl text sounds petty and mundane, you’re off to a bad start. But right from the opening lines of this movie, and then the beautiful shot of the Star Destroyer eclipsing the planet . . . it felt right. And it continued to feel right the whole way through, so that I walked out of the theatre energized and excited, and the spoiler-free review I gave to people in the following days consisted of clasping my hands in front of my chest, going starry-eyed, and bouncing on the tips of my toes.

With more distance and further reflection, writer-brain is fascinated by the relationship between this movie and the source material. I disagree with those who say, eh, boring, it’s just a retelling of A New Hope. Does it use many of the same elements? Yep: desert planet, rescuing a prisoner from the bad guys, a bar filled with colorful aliens, a big scary weapon that has to be destroyed(2). But those elements get used like Lego blocks: you can build lots of things out of them. One of the things I love about it is the way that, although you can find points of correspondence between this and A New Hope, none of those points become a line that runs all the way through. Poe feels like Han Solo (hotshot pilot), but he’s also Leia (dedicated member of the Resistance, captured by the bad guys and then rescued), and as Todd Alcott points out, he’s also kind of a high-speed Obi-Wan to Finn (from a political rather than mystical angle). Rey may look like Luke — orphan on a desert planet — but she doesn’t dream of getting off the planet and doing something cool; she wants to stay on her planet (and get back to it once she leaves) because she’s waiting for something important there. Maz Kanata’s bar is not where our heroes come together; it’s where they split apart, and Maz herself is one of two Obi-Wans to Rey (the other being, from a backward angle, Kylo Ren). And there’s just zero precedent for Finn: a humanized Stormtrooper, a “bad guy” who face-turns right out of the gate and offers the other heroes an insider’s perspective on how the faceless masses operate.

To discount all of the deeper changes just because the surface looks familiar is, in my opinion, a mistake. Sure, maybe you could have had this plot with Rey growing up on a jungle planet and other such superficial changes. But that would have jettisoned the psychological effect I can’t help but think Abrams intended: “look, guys, we’re getting back to basics. Forget about the prequel trilogy. Remember what you loved about Star Wars. I’m going to give you that experience, and take it in a new direction.”

I’ll admit that I was apprehensive about Abrams directing. I’m fine with his Star Trek movies; they’re not brilliant, but as somebody who has zero emotional investment in the franchise, I found his films very enjoyable. My concern here wasn’t so much that he would screw Star Wars up as, it would now feel the same as Star Trek. As it turns out, that fear was unfounded: I think Abrams successfully poured himself into the mold of this franchise. Because it really is true that my immediate reaction upon walking out of my first viewing was a satisfied sigh of “now THAT was Star Wars.” Better than that — it was Star Wars plus, where there’s more than one woman, and not everybody is white, and the characters speak dialogue you can imagine coming out of the mouth of an actual human being.

I can’t wait for the next one. <clasps hands, starries eyes, bounces on toes>

***

(1) While waiting in line at a coffee shop over Christmas, I picked up and idly flipped through a Star Wars: The Force Awakens book written for very young children. The first page I flipped to began with the line, “General Leia is a princess.” Which might possibly be the most awesome sentence in the history of children’s literature.

(2) I will grant that I could have done with a bit more variety on the whole super-weapon thing, because it really is an Even Bigger Death Star. But I would have been satisfied with a single change: if you’re going to call it Starkiller Base, in homage to Luke’s first-draft name, then have it kill stars! Not by draining them, but by BLOWING THEM UP. Send the Hosnian sun supernova. That would have been awesome.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

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a career I do not want

Tor.com had a recent piece about George R.R. Martin’s announcement that the sixth book in his series will not be published before the next season of Game of Thrones airs. That means the show’s storyline will officially outpace the novels'; we find out what happens next from HBO, not Martin.

Reading that piece, it occurred to me that I do not want Martin’s career.

His piles of money? Sure. But not, I think, at the cost of everything that has come with it. I could be perfectly happy with a much smaller quantity of money, and the thought of living under the kind of stress he faces is massively unappealing. I think it’s clear, from everything he’s said and the way the series has progressed, that he’s the victim of his own success: so many people are invested in A Song of Ice and Fire, and the resulting pressure is grinding the life out of it for him.

For anybody who makes their living creatively, that’s kind of a horrifying thought. And I honestly feel bad for him with this HBO situation. I mean, he’s made plenty of statements about how HBO is telling their own version of the story, and it doesn’t affect his own, etc etc, and yes, fans will still care about the “real” end of the tale — but it has to feel like somebody else got there before him. Maybe that will make it easier for him to move forward; who knows? It could take some of the pressure off him. But he’s no longer leading the pack, and I have to imagine that stings. I know I wouldn’t want to be in that position myself.

I thought about something else, too. When the TV series started airing, book fans were incredibly disciplined about not spoiling things for people who came to the story via the show. This was, in part, a selfish act: I had a friend who hadn’t read the books, and I couldn’t wait to be there when she reacted to certain major events. Spoiling would have ruined the fun. But it was also courteous — and although I’m not optimistic, I’d like to hope that people watching the show will extend the same courtesy to anyone who is sticking with the books alone. Certainly I will; any posts I make about events on the show will be hidden behind a cut-tag. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I didn’t like A Dance with Dragons much at all and I feel the series has been rolling downhill with increasing speed . . . but I still hope that Martin pulls up out of that dive (to mix my metaphors), and anybody who prefers to go the text route should have that chance.

And I wish Martin the best in finishing off The Winds of Winter, and however many more there may be.

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