Marie Brennan's Blog, page 232
May 3, 2011
Sirens programming
So a) I'm going to Sirens again, and b) once again, I have no idea what I should do there, programming-wise. This year's theme is Monsters, but I'm not sure what I could do on that topic; on the flip side, while I don't have to stick to that topic, I'm not sure what I could do off it, either.
Any suggestions from the peanut gallery? Workshops, panels or roundtables I could try to recruit other people for, whatever. The deadline for proposals is May 7th, so I need to figure out something soon.
Any suggestions from the peanut gallery? Workshops, panels or roundtables I could try to recruit other people for, whatever. The deadline for proposals is May 7th, so I need to figure out something soon.
May 2, 2011
In which I am Featured
So I just discovered that my biography there is painfully out of date, but I am a Featured Author this month at Anthology Builder.
It's been a while since I mentioned them here, so for those just tuning in: AB is a sort of iTunes-style service for buying short stories. Their database includes a large (and continually growing) number of stories by a wide variety of authors, both current and classic; what you do is go through and pick out the pieces you want until you have somewhere between 50 and 350 pages, your own custom-designed anthology. AB prints it up for you and mails it off, the authors get a cut of the price, everybody wins.
(At present there is no e-book option, but they're looking into implementing something along those lines.)
What does it mean that I'm a Featured Author? It means that for the month of May, if you order an anthology with one of my stories in it, you get a dollar off the price. I've got twenty-one stories in their database -- pretty much all my short fiction from 2008 or earlier, including Deeds of Men -- which adds up to enough for a collection of my work, or you can mix one or more of my pieces with stuff by other authors. They have stories by Tobias Buckell, Aliette de Bodard, Marissa Lingen, Ruth Nestvold, Tony Pi, Cat Rambo, Janni Lee Simner, Martha Wells, and a whole lot of others; those are just a few of the names I recognized in a quick scan of the list. So there's plenty to choose from. I've used the service a couple of times myself, and quite like it, so wander over and take a look for yourself.
It's been a while since I mentioned them here, so for those just tuning in: AB is a sort of iTunes-style service for buying short stories. Their database includes a large (and continually growing) number of stories by a wide variety of authors, both current and classic; what you do is go through and pick out the pieces you want until you have somewhere between 50 and 350 pages, your own custom-designed anthology. AB prints it up for you and mails it off, the authors get a cut of the price, everybody wins.
(At present there is no e-book option, but they're looking into implementing something along those lines.)
What does it mean that I'm a Featured Author? It means that for the month of May, if you order an anthology with one of my stories in it, you get a dollar off the price. I've got twenty-one stories in their database -- pretty much all my short fiction from 2008 or earlier, including Deeds of Men -- which adds up to enough for a collection of my work, or you can mix one or more of my pieces with stuff by other authors. They have stories by Tobias Buckell, Aliette de Bodard, Marissa Lingen, Ruth Nestvold, Tony Pi, Cat Rambo, Janni Lee Simner, Martha Wells, and a whole lot of others; those are just a few of the names I recognized in a quick scan of the list. So there's plenty to choose from. I've used the service a couple of times myself, and quite like it, so wander over and take a look for yourself.
Books Read, April 2011
A longer list than March's, but the post will be shorter, because the DWJ books have all been discussed elsewhere already.
(And while it may be a longer list, I'm not sure it amounts to more pages read. March included a Wheel of Time book, and a bunch of Bujold; April is lots of DWJ and two graphic novels. I won't be surprised if this turns out to be more like my usual level, as opposed to January and February, where I was mainlining books like a woman who hadn't read much fiction in, well, ages.)
Tokyo Babylon, vol. 1, CLAMP. Manga, re-read. Urban fantasy about a sixteen-year-old boy who works as an onmyoji, a kind of sorcerer. Man, it's interesting going through this now that I know the whole story; good lord is the situation between Subaru and Seishiro messed up. I kind of just have to stare in awe.
The Mirador, Sarah Monette. Third in the Doctrine of Labyrinths series. I haven't done myself any favors by letting years elapse between my reading of each volume; clearly I've forgotten many, many things, which doesn't do much to impair my understanding of what's happening here, but does undercut the impact of those events. But I continue to love Mildmay (his narrative voice is infectious, and his broken-ness is effective without wallowing), and the setting has a truly beautiful depth and complexity, with all the kinds of casual references to history and plays and gossip and everything else that we take for granted in real life. Felix . . . is getting better? I still don't like him very much, and am not very invested in him as a character, except in those brief moments where he makes an effort to be better. But those moments are getting more frequent, I think, so that's growth, and growth is a good thing. I should try to read Corambis before I forget everything again.
The Lives of Christopher Chant, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed here. Warning: contains spoilers in the latter part.
Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed here. Warning: contains spoilers in the latter part.
Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed here. Warning: contains spoilers in the latter part.
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Dorothy Sayers. The WWI context of this one was very interesting. I know just enough about that war to see it, but not enough for my brain to auto-fill the kind of associations that her contemporary audience would have had; I do not know anyone who was gassed, nor anyone with shell-shock. (I do know people with PTSD, but their particular inciting traumas are different, and so are the results. Not to mention that our conception of that experience has changed a lot anyway.) Peter's mental defense of George -- something to the effect that the guy criticizing George had no idea what the man had been through -- got me anyway, because my subconscious can do enough auto-filling for that. As for the mystery itself . . . I don't think the solution-gun was placed on the mantel quite clearly enough for me to feel satisfied when it went off, but the journey to that point was interesting anyway. Peter did a very nice job of suspecting lots of things well in advance, but hiding his suspicions for good reasons.
Emerald Eyes, Daniel Keys Moran. Re-read. First book in the Continuing Time series. I'll probably post more about these books later, but for now, I'll say that it's interesting to go back to this book with more professional eyes. I still enjoy it, but man, is its structure weird. Very pointillistic, and the denoument stretches out oddly, in ways that make partial sense if you know the larger context of the series, but even then is a strange choice.
Between the Woods and the Water, Patrick Leigh Fermor. Holy cow, it's some non-fiction! That's right, I'm finally sating my thirst for fiction enough that I can face the prospect of doing some research reading. This is a travel memoir with an unusual history: in 1934, at the age of eighteen, Leigh Fermor set off to hike across Europe, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. Near the end of that trip, he lost his diary. Decades later, that diary was found and returned to him, and he decided to write up his experiences, starting with The Time of Gifts (which I skipped) and continuing with this volume.
This means the story has the odd effect of simultaneously existing in the mindset of the 1930s (when he was traveling) and the 1980s (when he wrote this book). It partly shows the perspective of a nineteen-year-old boy, and partly the perspective of a man in his sixties. There are conversations about the Nazi party, followed by sadder parenthetical asides. There is a lot of casual racism about Gypsies, who are simultaneously mysterious people with beautiful girls and exotic music, and dirty horse-thieves Fermor is afraid will kill him in his sleep. And there is very much a world of Eastern European aristocracy that fell to bits not long after Fermor completed his trip. I read it largely because I'm trying to seed my brain with some cultural fodder, and it didn't quite get into that as much as I would have liked -- he digresses a lot about the broader sweep of history, rather than the immediate local detail -- but it had some good material nonetheless, and it certainly paints an interesting portrait of the region at that time.
The Language Construction Kit, Mark Rosenfelder. More nonfiction! Crazy, man. Anyway, I didn't read this book cover-to-cover; it isn't really meant to be approached that way. This is a collection of Rosenfelder's work on the website Zompist, going into the nuts and bolts of how to create a language. I found the organization of the book mildly lacking (and the layout much more seriously so; this, folks, is why publishers employ typesetters), and in places I really wish he would have slowed down a bit to unpack some concepts and give more illustrative examples of them. But it is still a very useful book that can help avoid the trap of inventing a language that's just English with a bad phonetic paint job. My thanks to![[info]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1380451598i/2033940.gif)
yhlee
, who I think is the one that first mentioned this book in my vicinity, thus alerting me to its existence.
The Homeward Bounders, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed here. Warning: contains spoilers in the latter part.
Girl Genius, Vol. 1: Agatha Heterodyne and the Beetleburg Clank, Phil and Kaja Foglio. I know I can read these comics online for free, but man, I'd rather curl up in a chair, and supporting the creators ain't bad, you know? Anyway, this was fun steampunky reading, with indications of a political backstory that I'm interested to learn more about. I'm not wildly fond of the art, but that's usually par for the course with me and comics.
Onward into May! The month in which I start working more actively on A Natural History of Dragons (rather than just prepping for it), so we'll see what effect that has on my reading.
(And while it may be a longer list, I'm not sure it amounts to more pages read. March included a Wheel of Time book, and a bunch of Bujold; April is lots of DWJ and two graphic novels. I won't be surprised if this turns out to be more like my usual level, as opposed to January and February, where I was mainlining books like a woman who hadn't read much fiction in, well, ages.)
Tokyo Babylon, vol. 1, CLAMP. Manga, re-read. Urban fantasy about a sixteen-year-old boy who works as an onmyoji, a kind of sorcerer. Man, it's interesting going through this now that I know the whole story; good lord is the situation between Subaru and Seishiro messed up. I kind of just have to stare in awe.
The Mirador, Sarah Monette. Third in the Doctrine of Labyrinths series. I haven't done myself any favors by letting years elapse between my reading of each volume; clearly I've forgotten many, many things, which doesn't do much to impair my understanding of what's happening here, but does undercut the impact of those events. But I continue to love Mildmay (his narrative voice is infectious, and his broken-ness is effective without wallowing), and the setting has a truly beautiful depth and complexity, with all the kinds of casual references to history and plays and gossip and everything else that we take for granted in real life. Felix . . . is getting better? I still don't like him very much, and am not very invested in him as a character, except in those brief moments where he makes an effort to be better. But those moments are getting more frequent, I think, so that's growth, and growth is a good thing. I should try to read Corambis before I forget everything again.
The Lives of Christopher Chant, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed here. Warning: contains spoilers in the latter part.
Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed here. Warning: contains spoilers in the latter part.
Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed here. Warning: contains spoilers in the latter part.
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Dorothy Sayers. The WWI context of this one was very interesting. I know just enough about that war to see it, but not enough for my brain to auto-fill the kind of associations that her contemporary audience would have had; I do not know anyone who was gassed, nor anyone with shell-shock. (I do know people with PTSD, but their particular inciting traumas are different, and so are the results. Not to mention that our conception of that experience has changed a lot anyway.) Peter's mental defense of George -- something to the effect that the guy criticizing George had no idea what the man had been through -- got me anyway, because my subconscious can do enough auto-filling for that. As for the mystery itself . . . I don't think the solution-gun was placed on the mantel quite clearly enough for me to feel satisfied when it went off, but the journey to that point was interesting anyway. Peter did a very nice job of suspecting lots of things well in advance, but hiding his suspicions for good reasons.
Emerald Eyes, Daniel Keys Moran. Re-read. First book in the Continuing Time series. I'll probably post more about these books later, but for now, I'll say that it's interesting to go back to this book with more professional eyes. I still enjoy it, but man, is its structure weird. Very pointillistic, and the denoument stretches out oddly, in ways that make partial sense if you know the larger context of the series, but even then is a strange choice.
Between the Woods and the Water, Patrick Leigh Fermor. Holy cow, it's some non-fiction! That's right, I'm finally sating my thirst for fiction enough that I can face the prospect of doing some research reading. This is a travel memoir with an unusual history: in 1934, at the age of eighteen, Leigh Fermor set off to hike across Europe, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. Near the end of that trip, he lost his diary. Decades later, that diary was found and returned to him, and he decided to write up his experiences, starting with The Time of Gifts (which I skipped) and continuing with this volume.
This means the story has the odd effect of simultaneously existing in the mindset of the 1930s (when he was traveling) and the 1980s (when he wrote this book). It partly shows the perspective of a nineteen-year-old boy, and partly the perspective of a man in his sixties. There are conversations about the Nazi party, followed by sadder parenthetical asides. There is a lot of casual racism about Gypsies, who are simultaneously mysterious people with beautiful girls and exotic music, and dirty horse-thieves Fermor is afraid will kill him in his sleep. And there is very much a world of Eastern European aristocracy that fell to bits not long after Fermor completed his trip. I read it largely because I'm trying to seed my brain with some cultural fodder, and it didn't quite get into that as much as I would have liked -- he digresses a lot about the broader sweep of history, rather than the immediate local detail -- but it had some good material nonetheless, and it certainly paints an interesting portrait of the region at that time.
The Language Construction Kit, Mark Rosenfelder. More nonfiction! Crazy, man. Anyway, I didn't read this book cover-to-cover; it isn't really meant to be approached that way. This is a collection of Rosenfelder's work on the website Zompist, going into the nuts and bolts of how to create a language. I found the organization of the book mildly lacking (and the layout much more seriously so; this, folks, is why publishers employ typesetters), and in places I really wish he would have slowed down a bit to unpack some concepts and give more illustrative examples of them. But it is still a very useful book that can help avoid the trap of inventing a language that's just English with a bad phonetic paint job. My thanks to
yhlee
, who I think is the one that first mentioned this book in my vicinity, thus alerting me to its existence.The Homeward Bounders, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed here. Warning: contains spoilers in the latter part.
Girl Genius, Vol. 1: Agatha Heterodyne and the Beetleburg Clank, Phil and Kaja Foglio. I know I can read these comics online for free, but man, I'd rather curl up in a chair, and supporting the creators ain't bad, you know? Anyway, this was fun steampunky reading, with indications of a political backstory that I'm interested to learn more about. I'm not wildly fond of the art, but that's usually par for the course with me and comics.
Onward into May! The month in which I start working more actively on A Natural History of Dragons (rather than just prepping for it), so we'll see what effect that has on my reading.
April 30, 2011
The DWJ Project: The Homeward Bounders
We're almost at the end of the Diana Wynne Jones books I wrote recommendations for; this is the last but one. (The final title is Eight Days of Luke, which is also a favorite, but it's sort of a first-and-a-halfth tier favorite, along with Archer's Goon and The Power of Three and maybe some others, too.)
So that link has the plot summary and so on. Here, outside the spoiler cut, I'll say that the only DWJ novel that has ever seemed to me at all similar to this one (and vice versa) is Fire and Hemlock, though I've heard people talk about a few others in a way that makes me think I may change that evaluation, once I remind myself of what those others are like. Partly it's the role of real-world folklore -- though in this case the components are easy to spot, since many of them are named in the opening paragraph. The Wandering Jew. The Flying Dutchman (whose ship is on the cover of my edition). Him, whom I won't name here because this is the non-spoiler part of the discussion, but those of you who have read the book know who I'm talking about. Then again, there may well be other layers that aren't so obvious to spot.
But really, what makes this one feel akin to Fire and Hemlock is the way it sort of slantwise approaches some really thorny things before turning to look at them directly, without flinching. Neither of these books is precisely happy. They both end on a note of hope, but it's tempered with some real sorrow, the victory coming at a fair bit of cost. I'm really sort of startled this counts as a kids' book, even if the protagonist is twelve. But kids need stories of this kind too, I suppose -- even if it leaves me, at the age of thirty, feeling like somebody has stomped on my heart.
I think that's all I can say that's non-spoilery. Follow me behind the cut for the rest.
So the silly note first: somebody out there has to have written a crossover between this and The Lives of Christopher Chant. The splintering of worlds, both before and after They start their game, could easily be mapped onto the creation of the Related Worlds, especially given that Jamie and the others more than once go through sets that seem quite closely related. Handwave some reason why Chrestomanci hasn't figured out yet that this is going on (or come up with a story in which he deals with it), and you're set.
Less silly notes: my god, that last sentence. It kicks me in the gut every time. The fate Jamie shackles himself to . . . and hell, before that. After he gets flung out of the Real Place, and cracks his head on the statue. Going around the city, and then back to the Macreadys' house. The conversation with Adam and Vanessa's parents. I can hear perfectly in my head the way Jamie's voice starts dithering about, because it's exactly what would happen to mine if I tried to read that out loud. I don't think I would be able to get through it without getting sniffly. Home at last -- but it's too late. Home is gone the moment you get discarded.
Unlike Fire and Hemlock, the metaphorical logic behind this one clicks together perfectly in my head. I get it; I have always gotten it. Heck, I've had a few echoes of the hope thing show up in my stories from time to time, once with an RPG character of mine (Ree, for those who knew her and might be curious) and once, in passing, with Dead Rick (for those who might remember this by the time With Fate Conspire comes out.) Probably some others I'm not thinking of right now.
Other parallelism between books: Helen, of course, calls to mind the Goddess from Lives. Jamie's life, however, is kind of like the sucktastic inversion of Christopher's.
Helen. I love Helen. I love her fierceness, the way she refuses to ever explain most of her eccentricities. I love Joris, because I love competent characters, and he really is -- even if he isn't fully trained yet. I love the Flying Dutchman's resignation, and his one outburst of fist-shaking, before he goes back to pessimistic gloom. I love Ahasuerus' ranting, and the way Prometheus retains his humanity (so to speak) despite aeons of being chained to that rock, having his liver pecked out.
The only character in this that I don't love is Adam, and I think it's largely because I don't buy -- interesting choice of words, there -- his attempt to sell Vanessa to Konstam. Gloating over the thought of how much his sister would be worth, sure. But actually trying to sell her? It's a step too far, for me. I can seen an outside chance that my reaction is a cultural thing, the legacy of being an American and having slavery be the Giant Evil our society still hasn't gotten over; Britain's relationship with that subject is different, though far from perfect. But I don't think that explains it. However nicely Joris talks about Konstam, it's too weird for me that Adam actually tries to follow through on the idea.
(Konstam. Hee. I can't think of him without seeing Adam do the hand high/hand low thing. Not ten feet tall, no sirree.)
My one teeny quibble on a plot front is that I wish Adam's surname hadn't been given so soon. It would have been mildly hard to avoid while the boys were around, seeing as how that kind of group always refer to each other by surname, but it maybe could have been done. I'm not sure if it would have seemed too much out of left field for Jamie to guess that the woman in the photo was Elsie, but I don't think so. And for an alert reader, the name "Macready" is a giant red flag; we've had it established that people who look really similar happen from world to world, but not a repetition of names. I don't remember what I thought of it as a kid, but reading the book now, I wish that clue didn't get tipped so early.
But I do love this one, even if it depresses the hell out of me at the end.
That's it for April. I'm still open to requests; at the moment, Dogsbody is up near the top of my queue, but I'll take others if people have titles they particularly want to hear discussed sooner rather than later. (Alternatively, if you think I would benefit from making a timely comparison between any of the books I've already read and one I haven't gotten to yet, let me know.)
So that link has the plot summary and so on. Here, outside the spoiler cut, I'll say that the only DWJ novel that has ever seemed to me at all similar to this one (and vice versa) is Fire and Hemlock, though I've heard people talk about a few others in a way that makes me think I may change that evaluation, once I remind myself of what those others are like. Partly it's the role of real-world folklore -- though in this case the components are easy to spot, since many of them are named in the opening paragraph. The Wandering Jew. The Flying Dutchman (whose ship is on the cover of my edition). Him, whom I won't name here because this is the non-spoiler part of the discussion, but those of you who have read the book know who I'm talking about. Then again, there may well be other layers that aren't so obvious to spot.
But really, what makes this one feel akin to Fire and Hemlock is the way it sort of slantwise approaches some really thorny things before turning to look at them directly, without flinching. Neither of these books is precisely happy. They both end on a note of hope, but it's tempered with some real sorrow, the victory coming at a fair bit of cost. I'm really sort of startled this counts as a kids' book, even if the protagonist is twelve. But kids need stories of this kind too, I suppose -- even if it leaves me, at the age of thirty, feeling like somebody has stomped on my heart.
I think that's all I can say that's non-spoilery. Follow me behind the cut for the rest.
So the silly note first: somebody out there has to have written a crossover between this and The Lives of Christopher Chant. The splintering of worlds, both before and after They start their game, could easily be mapped onto the creation of the Related Worlds, especially given that Jamie and the others more than once go through sets that seem quite closely related. Handwave some reason why Chrestomanci hasn't figured out yet that this is going on (or come up with a story in which he deals with it), and you're set.
Less silly notes: my god, that last sentence. It kicks me in the gut every time. The fate Jamie shackles himself to . . . and hell, before that. After he gets flung out of the Real Place, and cracks his head on the statue. Going around the city, and then back to the Macreadys' house. The conversation with Adam and Vanessa's parents. I can hear perfectly in my head the way Jamie's voice starts dithering about, because it's exactly what would happen to mine if I tried to read that out loud. I don't think I would be able to get through it without getting sniffly. Home at last -- but it's too late. Home is gone the moment you get discarded.
Unlike Fire and Hemlock, the metaphorical logic behind this one clicks together perfectly in my head. I get it; I have always gotten it. Heck, I've had a few echoes of the hope thing show up in my stories from time to time, once with an RPG character of mine (Ree, for those who knew her and might be curious) and once, in passing, with Dead Rick (for those who might remember this by the time With Fate Conspire comes out.) Probably some others I'm not thinking of right now.
Other parallelism between books: Helen, of course, calls to mind the Goddess from Lives. Jamie's life, however, is kind of like the sucktastic inversion of Christopher's.
Helen. I love Helen. I love her fierceness, the way she refuses to ever explain most of her eccentricities. I love Joris, because I love competent characters, and he really is -- even if he isn't fully trained yet. I love the Flying Dutchman's resignation, and his one outburst of fist-shaking, before he goes back to pessimistic gloom. I love Ahasuerus' ranting, and the way Prometheus retains his humanity (so to speak) despite aeons of being chained to that rock, having his liver pecked out.
The only character in this that I don't love is Adam, and I think it's largely because I don't buy -- interesting choice of words, there -- his attempt to sell Vanessa to Konstam. Gloating over the thought of how much his sister would be worth, sure. But actually trying to sell her? It's a step too far, for me. I can seen an outside chance that my reaction is a cultural thing, the legacy of being an American and having slavery be the Giant Evil our society still hasn't gotten over; Britain's relationship with that subject is different, though far from perfect. But I don't think that explains it. However nicely Joris talks about Konstam, it's too weird for me that Adam actually tries to follow through on the idea.
(Konstam. Hee. I can't think of him without seeing Adam do the hand high/hand low thing. Not ten feet tall, no sirree.)
My one teeny quibble on a plot front is that I wish Adam's surname hadn't been given so soon. It would have been mildly hard to avoid while the boys were around, seeing as how that kind of group always refer to each other by surname, but it maybe could have been done. I'm not sure if it would have seemed too much out of left field for Jamie to guess that the woman in the photo was Elsie, but I don't think so. And for an alert reader, the name "Macready" is a giant red flag; we've had it established that people who look really similar happen from world to world, but not a repetition of names. I don't remember what I thought of it as a kid, but reading the book now, I wish that clue didn't get tipped so early.
But I do love this one, even if it depresses the hell out of me at the end.
That's it for April. I'm still open to requests; at the moment, Dogsbody is up near the top of my queue, but I'll take others if people have titles they particularly want to hear discussed sooner rather than later. (Alternatively, if you think I would benefit from making a timely comparison between any of the books I've already read and one I haven't gotten to yet, let me know.)
April 26, 2011
Guerrière
Lirez-vous français?
If you can read the above sentence and the answer is "yes" (or rather, "oui"), drop me an e-mail at marie[dot]brennnan[at]gmail[dot]com. I have two copies of Guerrère -- i.e. the French-language translation of Warrior -- looking for good homes. (No residents of France, please; I'd prefer to send them to people who can't find the book in their local shop.)
If you can read the above sentence and the answer is "yes" (or rather, "oui"), drop me an e-mail at marie[dot]brennnan[at]gmail[dot]com. I have two copies of Guerrère -- i.e. the French-language translation of Warrior -- looking for good homes. (No residents of France, please; I'd prefer to send them to people who can't find the book in their local shop.)
April 23, 2011
Happy International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day!
Once again, I celebrate the holiday founded by
papersky
, International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, wherein writers are invited to share bits of fiction for free online, and thereby prove that this does not cause the sky to fall.
This year I've decided to post one of my favorite stories: "Nine Sketches, in Charcoal and Blood." It's a favorite because as I was on my way to VeriCon one year these characters wandered into my head and immediately struck up a conversation that hinted at but never said outright all kinds of fascinating things about who they were and how they knew each other and why they had come together again after a long absence. Never have I had such a strong feeling of uncovering a story that was already there, rather than making one up -- and hell, I still wonder what some of the things are that they never got around to telling me.
This year, I'd like to make it interactive, too. Leave a comment telling me about free, online fiction you've really enjoyed lately, whether a specific story or a particular market or whatever. I read Beneath Ceaseless Skies regularly, but I'd love to gather a bunch of other recommendations, and maybe find some new authors or markets to read. So share the love in the comments, and happy Sant Jodi/Shakespeare's birthday/Thumb Your Nose at Howard Hendrix Day.
papersky
, International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, wherein writers are invited to share bits of fiction for free online, and thereby prove that this does not cause the sky to fall.This year I've decided to post one of my favorite stories: "Nine Sketches, in Charcoal and Blood." It's a favorite because as I was on my way to VeriCon one year these characters wandered into my head and immediately struck up a conversation that hinted at but never said outright all kinds of fascinating things about who they were and how they knew each other and why they had come together again after a long absence. Never have I had such a strong feeling of uncovering a story that was already there, rather than making one up -- and hell, I still wonder what some of the things are that they never got around to telling me.
This year, I'd like to make it interactive, too. Leave a comment telling me about free, online fiction you've really enjoyed lately, whether a specific story or a particular market or whatever. I read Beneath Ceaseless Skies regularly, but I'd love to gather a bunch of other recommendations, and maybe find some new authors or markets to read. So share the love in the comments, and happy Sant Jodi/Shakespeare's birthday/Thumb Your Nose at Howard Hendrix Day.
April 22, 2011
The DWJ Project: Howl's Moving Castle
When I started these posts, I had to decide on an icon. I can no longer remember what cover was on the copy of The Lives of Christopher Chant I read back in the day, and sadly, my memory of my original Fire and Hemlock cover turned out to be way cooler than the reality. (In my head, it looked a lot more like the photograph is described. I would pay so much money to see Diana's actual Fire and Hemlock picture.)
But I remember the cover under which I first read Howl's Moving Castle. It's the one you see in this icon, and while Howl himself doesn't look right, that is Calcifer. (One of the many reasons I was disappointed with Miyazaki's film is that Calcifer, while adorable, was utterly wrong.) So, since I wanted an icon that might actually be recognized as Diana Wynne Jones-related, this was the natural choice.
Since I've started to begin this project by re-reading my first tier of favorites -- I don't have a favorite, one that stands out above all others -- I will once again point you at the recommendation I wrote some time ago, which gives you a sense of the plot. This one is much more fairy-tale-ish in its flavor, firmly set by the opening paragraph's proclamations about the misfortune of being born the eldest of three. Its hard edges aren't as prominent, either, as in the previous two books; there are some unpleasant notion lurking in the whole business with the fire demons, and also in what happens with Mrs. Pentstemmon (not to mention Prince Justin and the Wizard Suliman), but there's less that makes you squirm and think, um, these people aren't entirely good, are they? Howl's faults, while real, are also less sharp-edged.
But it's a Diana Wynne Jones book, and that means it also has some interesting truths about people's behavior. I saw somebody's post talking about how Christopher gets smacked upside the head by Flavian's outburst in Lives, and so, in a way, does the reader; there's a similar kind of reversal here with Fanny, as Sophie's mental image of her (and the reader's) changes from the beginning to the end of the book. Sophie's own motivations are for a time unclear to her, and Howl . . . well, let's just say that I'm wondering if my childhood fondness for this book somehow primed me to like Francis Crawford of Lymond. There are some unexpected similarities between the two.
I'm wandering close to spoiler territory, though, so I'll put the rest behind the cut.
So I mentioned in the Fire and Hemlock post that the books I've started this project with share an odd quality among their male characters: a romance that cannot be consummated (in an emotional sense) because the men's hearts/souls/etc are not their own. In this case Howl's heart belongs to Calcifer, rather than the Witch, which would have been a more exact parallel, but he explicitly says "I shall never be able to love anyone properly now." Not until he gets his heart back can he reach out to Sophie. (By then, of course, she's also her eighteen-year-old self, rather than an old woman. But the heart is a major part of it, too.)
Aside from <cough> wondering whether this is where my hindbrain got a certain plot point for my own fiction, I also start to wonder whether DWJ is where I got my interest in names. Howl is also Howell Jenkins; Tacroy is also Mordecai Roberts; even Thomas Lynn has a significant shift between Mr. Lynn and Tom. I'll try to keep tracking these motifs as I continue the re-read, to see how far they extend. (No abused children, though. For all her faults, Fanny is explicitly said to be fair and generally kind.)
On a less analytical note, I've always loved her use of "Song" in this novel -- to the point where I think one of the things that endeared Deep Secret to me was its use of the Babylon rhyme, which echoed this book in a pleasing way. I'm not entirely sure what to make of the use of Wales/our world more generally; it's kind of an odd choice, now that I stop to think of it, and it irretrievably distracted
teleidoplex
when I lent her this book. Part of my brain wants to graft this onto the Chrestomanci setting because of that. (It could probably work. Sophie's world doesn't look like part of Series Twelve, but that's okay; Howell could have found some unexpected method of hopping out of Twelve-B. I do wonder how he managed it, and Ben Sullivan before him.) I like the way it contributes to taking Howl down a peg, though; the continual deflation of his image is fun -- I think of Calcifer calling him "a plain man with mud-colored hair" -- and makes for that much more effect when he has one of his "I am a wizard, you know" moments.
I feel like I should talk about the film, since I mentioned it a moment ago. I knew Miyazaki was likely to change things, and so for the longest time I referred to it as Hauru no Ugoku Shiro (its Japanese title) in an attempt to think of it as its own thing, not to be compared to the book. Unfortunately, the first half of the movie paralleled the book closely enough, with minor changes (e.g. Michael => a much younger Markl), that I couldn't help but think of the story as Howl's Moving Castle. So when it took a screeching ninety-degree turn at Wizard Suliman, haring off into a different plot entirely, I couldn't help but feel betrayed. I know some people really love it, and some of those had even read the book first, but it didn't work for me. I remain desirous of a live-action version -- CGI could do a great Calcifer, I'm sure -- and no, I don't know why this is the book I most want to see filmed, but it's true. Something about its visual nature is particularly strong in my head.
There's at least one more book in the top tier; then we get into a fuzzy zone that I will probably just declare the second tier, and at that point I'll start branching off into one or more of the books I haven't read yet, or ones that are (from my perspective) more obscure. If you have a DWJ you'd really like to hear my opinion on sooner rather than later, mention it in the comments. It's as good an organizing principle as any.
But I remember the cover under which I first read Howl's Moving Castle. It's the one you see in this icon, and while Howl himself doesn't look right, that is Calcifer. (One of the many reasons I was disappointed with Miyazaki's film is that Calcifer, while adorable, was utterly wrong.) So, since I wanted an icon that might actually be recognized as Diana Wynne Jones-related, this was the natural choice.
Since I've started to begin this project by re-reading my first tier of favorites -- I don't have a favorite, one that stands out above all others -- I will once again point you at the recommendation I wrote some time ago, which gives you a sense of the plot. This one is much more fairy-tale-ish in its flavor, firmly set by the opening paragraph's proclamations about the misfortune of being born the eldest of three. Its hard edges aren't as prominent, either, as in the previous two books; there are some unpleasant notion lurking in the whole business with the fire demons, and also in what happens with Mrs. Pentstemmon (not to mention Prince Justin and the Wizard Suliman), but there's less that makes you squirm and think, um, these people aren't entirely good, are they? Howl's faults, while real, are also less sharp-edged.
But it's a Diana Wynne Jones book, and that means it also has some interesting truths about people's behavior. I saw somebody's post talking about how Christopher gets smacked upside the head by Flavian's outburst in Lives, and so, in a way, does the reader; there's a similar kind of reversal here with Fanny, as Sophie's mental image of her (and the reader's) changes from the beginning to the end of the book. Sophie's own motivations are for a time unclear to her, and Howl . . . well, let's just say that I'm wondering if my childhood fondness for this book somehow primed me to like Francis Crawford of Lymond. There are some unexpected similarities between the two.
I'm wandering close to spoiler territory, though, so I'll put the rest behind the cut.
So I mentioned in the Fire and Hemlock post that the books I've started this project with share an odd quality among their male characters: a romance that cannot be consummated (in an emotional sense) because the men's hearts/souls/etc are not their own. In this case Howl's heart belongs to Calcifer, rather than the Witch, which would have been a more exact parallel, but he explicitly says "I shall never be able to love anyone properly now." Not until he gets his heart back can he reach out to Sophie. (By then, of course, she's also her eighteen-year-old self, rather than an old woman. But the heart is a major part of it, too.)
Aside from <cough> wondering whether this is where my hindbrain got a certain plot point for my own fiction, I also start to wonder whether DWJ is where I got my interest in names. Howl is also Howell Jenkins; Tacroy is also Mordecai Roberts; even Thomas Lynn has a significant shift between Mr. Lynn and Tom. I'll try to keep tracking these motifs as I continue the re-read, to see how far they extend. (No abused children, though. For all her faults, Fanny is explicitly said to be fair and generally kind.)
On a less analytical note, I've always loved her use of "Song" in this novel -- to the point where I think one of the things that endeared Deep Secret to me was its use of the Babylon rhyme, which echoed this book in a pleasing way. I'm not entirely sure what to make of the use of Wales/our world more generally; it's kind of an odd choice, now that I stop to think of it, and it irretrievably distracted
teleidoplex
when I lent her this book. Part of my brain wants to graft this onto the Chrestomanci setting because of that. (It could probably work. Sophie's world doesn't look like part of Series Twelve, but that's okay; Howell could have found some unexpected method of hopping out of Twelve-B. I do wonder how he managed it, and Ben Sullivan before him.) I like the way it contributes to taking Howl down a peg, though; the continual deflation of his image is fun -- I think of Calcifer calling him "a plain man with mud-colored hair" -- and makes for that much more effect when he has one of his "I am a wizard, you know" moments.I feel like I should talk about the film, since I mentioned it a moment ago. I knew Miyazaki was likely to change things, and so for the longest time I referred to it as Hauru no Ugoku Shiro (its Japanese title) in an attempt to think of it as its own thing, not to be compared to the book. Unfortunately, the first half of the movie paralleled the book closely enough, with minor changes (e.g. Michael => a much younger Markl), that I couldn't help but think of the story as Howl's Moving Castle. So when it took a screeching ninety-degree turn at Wizard Suliman, haring off into a different plot entirely, I couldn't help but feel betrayed. I know some people really love it, and some of those had even read the book first, but it didn't work for me. I remain desirous of a live-action version -- CGI could do a great Calcifer, I'm sure -- and no, I don't know why this is the book I most want to see filmed, but it's true. Something about its visual nature is particularly strong in my head.
There's at least one more book in the top tier; then we get into a fuzzy zone that I will probably just declare the second tier, and at that point I'll start branching off into one or more of the books I haven't read yet, or ones that are (from my perspective) more obscure. If you have a DWJ you'd really like to hear my opinion on sooner rather than later, mention it in the comments. It's as good an organizing principle as any.
April 21, 2011
Tune in for the thrilling conclusion!
The second half of Dancing the Warrior has gone live.
If you missed the first half, it's here. If you missed the post about what this story is, that's over here. If you want to know the story behind the story -- i.e. where this thing came from -- that's up on my website. And if you're interested in winning a signed copy of both doppelganger novels, but haven't yet chimed in on the comment thread with your Hunter name, never fear; there will be a second drawing two weeks from now.
Enjoy!
If you missed the first half, it's here. If you missed the post about what this story is, that's over here. If you want to know the story behind the story -- i.e. where this thing came from -- that's up on my website. And if you're interested in winning a signed copy of both doppelganger novels, but haven't yet chimed in on the comment thread with your Hunter name, never fear; there will be a second drawing two weeks from now.
Enjoy!
The DWJ Project: Fire and Hemlock
This is the other book that had to be put up at the top of the reading order: The Lives of Christopher Chant because it's the first one I read, and Fire and Hemlock because it is, as I've said before, the book that made me a writer. Since this month is the five-year anniversary of my first novel being published, the time seemed very right to re-visit it.
As with Lives (and a few others to come), I'm going to cheese out a bit on writing up broad commentary and just point you at my recommendation from 2004. This is, as I say there, a "Tam Lin" story (and a "Thomas the Rhymer" one, too); it's because of this book that I picked up Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, which in turn became one of the foundational inspirations of the first novel I ever finished writing. But it isn't a straightforward retelling of either of those stories. It is, instead, its own riff on the idea, with its own twists and solution.
For many years, I would have told you I didn't understand that solution. In some ways, I still don't -- I mean, I kind of do, but slim as this novel is, I never feel like I can quite hold the entire shape of it in my mind at once. Bits keep slipping through my grasp. This used to bother me a lot, and I blamed it on the fact that I first read the book when I was nine; having gotten a certain form of not-understanding into my head, I couldn't let go of it and see what was there. Then I read this two-part post by
rushthatspeaks
, and that referenced an old essay by Diana Wynne Jones that I was able to find online (pages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), and you know what? I no longer feel the slightest bit ashamed of not being able to comprehend this whole book at once. The layers that went into it boggle me: not just "Tam Lin" and "Thomas the Rhymer," but the Odyssey, and Cupid and Psyche, and a T.S. Eliot poem I'd never read that turns out to be quite important, not to mention all the trios I'd never consciously thought about, Nina/Polly/Fiona and Granny/Ivy/Polly and Laurel/Polly/Ivy. Re-reading it this time, I bent my brain in half mapping out similar trios among the men. The novel is worlds more complicated than I ever consciously noticed before.
(In case you didn't guess, you shouldn't read those essays without having read the book first. Spoilers, and a lot of stuff won't make sense.)
I never thought of DWJ before as the sort of author who would do that kind of intricate weaving within a narrative (hah, the irony of deploying my usual textile-based narrative metaphors for this). I've always known she was an incredibly strong storyteller, but now I find myself wondering if I'll spot anything as elaborately layered in her other books, or if Fire and Hemlock is going to stand apart from the others in that regard. I know it's always felt different; only The Homeward Bounders ever seemed comparable to me. But as I go back for this project, I may find it has other cousins among her work.
Okay, behind the cut for more spoilery bits.
What struck me this time, because I read the books back-to-back, was Tom's line at the very end -- "At least I can ask now." It made me notice for the first time the similarity between his situation and Tacroy's; neither of them could really call their souls their own, and so neither could properly give themselves to the women they were in love with. Polly, of course, comes from a broken home, just as Christopher does, but that's a running theme in a lot of DWJ's books. What I'm curious to see now is how pervasive this other motif is with the men. I know it crops up again in Howl's Moving Castle, which is next on my list; I won't be surprised if I find it elsewhere, too.
I also found myself thinking about the Tom/Polly relationship, because I've been thinking more broadly of late about romances where one party (usually the man) is older, and furthermore they first encounter each other when the younger partner is still a child. For all the negative consequences of Polly working that magic to spy on Tom, I think it did her this one favor: it made it possible for their romance to work. I feel much more sanguine about Tom reaching out to her before they go in the gates of Hunsdon House because of those years Polly spent away from him, growing up and becoming her own person (even if it was on the basis of false memories) before coming back to him. I think that break was both beneficial and necessary, in that regard. In fact, this is the only story I can presently think of which is so up-front about the problems with their relationship, rather than trying to sweep it all under the rug of romance. Tom was using Polly, and that isn't okay -- which he himself admits. (That conversation again reminds me of Tacroy.) It makes the ending much less traditionally romantic, but far more moving, as far as I'm concerned.
But mostly I end up thinking, as I always do, about stories. The importance of the Tan Coul/Hero business for Polly, growing up in a broken home, and Tom, trying to escape Laurel's clutches. The way it interweaves with Tom's life, and the way the quartet accepts the fiction. (I love all three of them, especially Tan Hanivar nearly being run over and Polly's "Bless you, Tan Audel!" moment on the train. But Tan Thare, too.) "Sentimental drivel," and Polly's two-stage reaction to it, the latter of which is what I think "murder your darlings" is really all about. I'm a gamer now, and so I think of it in those terms, too; I often explain RPGs to laypeople as "collaborative storytelling," and it's a close cousin to what Polly and Tom are doing here.
There are so many true-feeling moments in this book. The quartet's rehearsal, which always speaks to my music-loving heart. The bleaching feeling of shame and pride that drives Polly out into the streets of Bristol. The way Tom comes into focus for me very gradually throughout the story, as Polly grows up and learns to actually see him, as something other than a tall, vague figure, and a big hand holding her own. Even if I can't hold all the pieces together in my head at once, even if the story is too complicated for me to truly grok it at a level above my subconscious, I love it anyway, and I hope someday I write something half so good.
As with Lives (and a few others to come), I'm going to cheese out a bit on writing up broad commentary and just point you at my recommendation from 2004. This is, as I say there, a "Tam Lin" story (and a "Thomas the Rhymer" one, too); it's because of this book that I picked up Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, which in turn became one of the foundational inspirations of the first novel I ever finished writing. But it isn't a straightforward retelling of either of those stories. It is, instead, its own riff on the idea, with its own twists and solution.
For many years, I would have told you I didn't understand that solution. In some ways, I still don't -- I mean, I kind of do, but slim as this novel is, I never feel like I can quite hold the entire shape of it in my mind at once. Bits keep slipping through my grasp. This used to bother me a lot, and I blamed it on the fact that I first read the book when I was nine; having gotten a certain form of not-understanding into my head, I couldn't let go of it and see what was there. Then I read this two-part post by
rushthatspeaks
, and that referenced an old essay by Diana Wynne Jones that I was able to find online (pages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), and you know what? I no longer feel the slightest bit ashamed of not being able to comprehend this whole book at once. The layers that went into it boggle me: not just "Tam Lin" and "Thomas the Rhymer," but the Odyssey, and Cupid and Psyche, and a T.S. Eliot poem I'd never read that turns out to be quite important, not to mention all the trios I'd never consciously thought about, Nina/Polly/Fiona and Granny/Ivy/Polly and Laurel/Polly/Ivy. Re-reading it this time, I bent my brain in half mapping out similar trios among the men. The novel is worlds more complicated than I ever consciously noticed before.(In case you didn't guess, you shouldn't read those essays without having read the book first. Spoilers, and a lot of stuff won't make sense.)
I never thought of DWJ before as the sort of author who would do that kind of intricate weaving within a narrative (hah, the irony of deploying my usual textile-based narrative metaphors for this). I've always known she was an incredibly strong storyteller, but now I find myself wondering if I'll spot anything as elaborately layered in her other books, or if Fire and Hemlock is going to stand apart from the others in that regard. I know it's always felt different; only The Homeward Bounders ever seemed comparable to me. But as I go back for this project, I may find it has other cousins among her work.
Okay, behind the cut for more spoilery bits.
What struck me this time, because I read the books back-to-back, was Tom's line at the very end -- "At least I can ask now." It made me notice for the first time the similarity between his situation and Tacroy's; neither of them could really call their souls their own, and so neither could properly give themselves to the women they were in love with. Polly, of course, comes from a broken home, just as Christopher does, but that's a running theme in a lot of DWJ's books. What I'm curious to see now is how pervasive this other motif is with the men. I know it crops up again in Howl's Moving Castle, which is next on my list; I won't be surprised if I find it elsewhere, too.
I also found myself thinking about the Tom/Polly relationship, because I've been thinking more broadly of late about romances where one party (usually the man) is older, and furthermore they first encounter each other when the younger partner is still a child. For all the negative consequences of Polly working that magic to spy on Tom, I think it did her this one favor: it made it possible for their romance to work. I feel much more sanguine about Tom reaching out to her before they go in the gates of Hunsdon House because of those years Polly spent away from him, growing up and becoming her own person (even if it was on the basis of false memories) before coming back to him. I think that break was both beneficial and necessary, in that regard. In fact, this is the only story I can presently think of which is so up-front about the problems with their relationship, rather than trying to sweep it all under the rug of romance. Tom was using Polly, and that isn't okay -- which he himself admits. (That conversation again reminds me of Tacroy.) It makes the ending much less traditionally romantic, but far more moving, as far as I'm concerned.
But mostly I end up thinking, as I always do, about stories. The importance of the Tan Coul/Hero business for Polly, growing up in a broken home, and Tom, trying to escape Laurel's clutches. The way it interweaves with Tom's life, and the way the quartet accepts the fiction. (I love all three of them, especially Tan Hanivar nearly being run over and Polly's "Bless you, Tan Audel!" moment on the train. But Tan Thare, too.) "Sentimental drivel," and Polly's two-stage reaction to it, the latter of which is what I think "murder your darlings" is really all about. I'm a gamer now, and so I think of it in those terms, too; I often explain RPGs to laypeople as "collaborative storytelling," and it's a close cousin to what Polly and Tom are doing here.
There are so many true-feeling moments in this book. The quartet's rehearsal, which always speaks to my music-loving heart. The bleaching feeling of shame and pride that drives Polly out into the streets of Bristol. The way Tom comes into focus for me very gradually throughout the story, as Polly grows up and learns to actually see him, as something other than a tall, vague figure, and a big hand holding her own. Even if I can't hold all the pieces together in my head at once, even if the story is too complicated for me to truly grok it at a level above my subconscious, I love it anyway, and I hope someday I write something half so good.
April 19, 2011
a question for the raver-types
I'd like to attach EL wire to the edge of a fan, but I suspect it wouldn't like being doubled up when the fan folds. Am I right about that? Any suggestions for how to get a cool glowing edge by other means?
(What I really want is for the fan to light up automatically when opened, and go dark when folded. But I suspect that would require rather more engineering than I'm capable of, or want to do.)
(What I really want is for the fan to light up automatically when opened, and go dark when folded. But I suspect that would require rather more engineering than I'm capable of, or want to do.)
