Marie Brennan's Blog, page 45

New Worlds: Off to Market

A new month, a new theme! The lovely backers of the New Worlds Patreon have voted for an economic motif this month, so we’re beginning with a look at periodic (and then permanent) markets. Comment over there!

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Rook & Rose: Hot Drinkable Edition!

Subscribers to the M.A. Carrick newsletter got a head start on this, but now Alyc and I are very pleased to tell you all: we have partnered with Dryad Tea to create five Rook and Rose-themed tea blends! They are as follows:

Rook & Rose — A lush, wine-red blend that can be as sharp or as sweet as you like. Hibiscus, rose hips, and berries decorate a rooibos base. Lacewater & Pearl (Ren) — This tea moves between worlds with a con artist’s ease, wedding the rich warmth of cacao to the wakeful edge of black tea. Twilight Vigil (Grey) — The smoke of a Vraszenian campfire flavors this mix of lapsang souchong, black tea, sunflower, and calendula. Ruthless Indulgence (Vargo) — Spices from the Dawn and Dusk Roads mingle with caramel black tea for a decadent blend with a hint of bite. Imblueberry (Tess) — A warm hug of green tea imbued with sweet blueberry, like a scone in liquid form. And yes, we do mean “hug” and not “mug;” that isn’t a typo.

You can buy all of those teas from the links, through Dryad’s website. Note that this isn’t a situation where Alyc and I get a commission or anything; we paid to have the blends developed, and our reward comes in the form of getting to drink them ourselves, heh. (We can attest to them all being delicious! There was extensive testing.) So all profits — and thanks — go to the company that helped make this happen!

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Ars Historica — now in print!

I ran into some technical snags with this, but I have finally gotten Ars Historica into a print edition! You can get it through Bookshop.org (my current recommendation for supporting independent bookstores), Barnes and Noble, The Book Depository, or Amazon in the US or the UK. It joins Maps to Nowhere in the tiny but growing library of novella-sized short fiction collections on my bookshelf — my physical bookshelf, I mean — and the others will follow in due course!

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New Worlds: Next in Line

The question of who inherits your money/land/title when you’re gone can get . . . complicated. This week, the New Worlds Patreon wades into the tangled thicket of inheritance and succession! Comment over there.

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New Worlds: Autocrats, Dictators, and Tyrants

They say the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship — but of course there are all kinds of problems with that . . . This week, the New Worlds Patreon takes a look at absolute monarchs, dictators, and other individuals who hold supreme power. Comment over there!

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Writer’s Block(s) Redux

Years ago I wrote an essay for my site called “Writer’s Block(s),” wherein I said I don’t find the term “writer’s block” to be helpful.

I stand by that, even though I’ve now gone through a period where, if I were inclined to use that term, that’s what I would have called it.

In 2020 I was hugely productive. Some writers found it very difficult to write last year, but I was in the camp that took refuge from the world by escaping into ones of my own creation. I wrote two novels (The Liar’s Knot with Alyc, and Night Parade on my own), plus ten short stories, three flash, one fanfic, one short story for L5R, various short adventures for Sea of Legends, and my ongoing Patreon essays.

Given that, it wasn’t surprising that after I rounded the corner into 2021, things slacked off. I’d been working really hard, after all, and you can’t do that nonstop forever. I’d already decided to slow my roll on short fiction because I was writing it faster than I could sell it, so taking a break from that wasn’t a problem. Besides, I had The Mask of Mirrors out in January and Night Parade two weeks later, so there was a stretch of literal months where I was doing promotional events every week, usually two or three of them. That eats brain and energy and I know it, so giving myself time off from producing something new was good self-care.

But.

Round about late February, I realized my ability to brain creatively was not regenerating. I’d taken two months off and I still had no more energy for writing than I had before; if anything, I had less. I’d written my final L5R story and a couple of pieces of flash, but for the former I had the benefit of all the existing story momentum and the latter were . . . not impressive. More importantly, I had a story due to an anthology, and I was having the worst time getting it done.

Well, there could be multiple reasons for that. And I knew perfectly well that I had a plot problem in the story which I hadn’t yet solved — so naturally I couldn’t move forward on it. I made myself sit down and I figured out a way around that problem, which let me write a little more . . . but then I ran into a new problem, which slammed me into a second wall.

And then I reached a point where even trying to make myself think about the problem induced a flinch reaction in my brain: god, no, please don’t make me.

This was . . . not good.

If you saw the day in mid-March where I asked on Twitter for cute cat pics and the like, that was the day I realized I wasn’t simply tired, and I wasn’t simply stuck on a bit of plot and everything would be fine once I sorted that out. Something had gone wrong in my head, that merely sitting back and waiting wasn’t going to fix.

But the gist of that original essay is that calling the issue “writer’s block” accomplishes nothing. It’s a description of symptoms, not a diagnosis of cause, much less a cure. I had to figure out why my head had gone wrong, on a global level that went well beyond being in a plot corner with a single story.

I mean, pandemic. That was a pretty obvious culprit. But “pandemic” wasn’t really an answer, either, because there was a pandemic before and I still wrote, and also what exactly about the pandemic was the bit stabbed into my brain? There’s been discussions about the lack of novelty involved in being locked down, which can be particularly deadly to creative work; that seemed like a good angle to investigate. My first-line response was to spend a whole day doing things like working on a jigsaw puzzle, playing piano, and otherwise engaging in activities I hadn’t done in ages, which definitely helped to lift my immediate mood, even if it didn’t fix everything.

What about environmental factors? I figured winter had something to do with it — I’ve known for decades that I don’t respond well to a lack of sunlight — but merely rounding the corner into daylight saving time hadn’t brought the improvement I hoped for, so I got more aggressive about seeking out light. We recently got a swing for our back patio, and the weather was nice enough for me to sit out there, so I started making a point of doing that every day (light + a new place to sit, i.e. novelty). In fact, the trainer I see has a list of elements that play into good health — things like nutrition, sleep, and so forth — and sunlight is on that list, so my “homework” from him for a while was not to lift weights or anything like that, but to get at least twenty minutes on the patio each day.

I also started taking a vitamin D supplement, on the theory that a deficiency in that nutrient has caused sluggishness in multiple people of my acquaintance, and overdosing on the stuff basically requires you to down a whole bottle in one go, so why not supplement for a while and see if that helped.

And that story I was stuck on? Well, I had a deadline, so I did have to push through, rather than just shelving it until I felt better. But I talked to Alyc, who not only helped me work out the problem I’d been stuck on, but made a suggestion for another detail that wound up fixing a problem I hadn’t even gotten to yet. Which unclogged the brain ducts enough for me to get the story done, with a small extension from the editor that gave me time enough away to revise the draft as it needed. So yes, “fix the story” was part of the solution, along with other things. (Full disclosure: I held off on making this post until I heard back from the editor with revisions, because a part of me was afraid that I’d turned in something visibly sub-par. But he’s delighted with it, so I feel much more comfortable publicly discussing the problems I had along the way.)

So here we are, roughly two months after I started trying to figure out what was off in my head and how to fix it. How are things going? Well, in April I finally rewrote a story I’d drafted in 2019 and had meant to redo ever since then (the idea was solid, but the execution was meh at best). And I also popped out a piece of flash I’m quite pleased with. And I started revising another story whose polishing I’ve been putting off. More pertinently, one evening recently I decided I’d done plenty of work during the day and sat down to read . . . only to wind up scribbling notes and even writing material for a side project I’ve got going on. In other words, I was excited enough about that project to spontaneously generate ideas for it when I wasn’t trying to extract them.

That’s what my brain looks like when it’s working right.

Now, I will be the first in line to say that I’m lucky: this problem wound up being relatively quick to resolve. I do not appear to have developed major depressive disorder or anything else that would require medical intervention to fix. My home remedies sufficed, at least for now, and they sufficed in a fairly short time — call it a few weeks before I started feeling like I was on my way out of the pit, and a bit over a month before I felt like I was back on my feet. Not everybody has that easy a time of it.

But I stand by what I said before. If I were to rewrite “Writer’s Block(s)” today (which I may do), it would be to change the presentation of the points there, not the points themselves. I had to dig past the surface of “I’m having trouble writing” and even the surface of “well, pandemic” to get to the potential causes and the changes that might help mitigate them. My first attempted solution (taking time off) didn’t work; okay, what should I try next? If it isn’t just low-grade burnout, if it isn’t all the promotional stuff taking my time and energy, then what is it? What path might get me back to where I want to be?

We have to ask ourselves these questions. Simply waiting and hoping the problem will go away on its own will only fix a minor subset of the possible causes; some of the others may get worse, as the failure to produce exacerbates the stress. Sometimes you need to crack the whip over your own head, and sometimes that will only drive you deeper into the hole. Sometimes you won’t know what works and what doesn’t until you try.

But you can try, and eventually — hopefully — find your way back out again.

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New Worlds: Royal Dignity

Even though kings and queens are human beings like everybody else, they can’t always afford to seem like it. The New Worlds Patreon is taking a look at royal dignity and its role in maintaining a government — comment over there!

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The Advent of Scent, Week 20

These are all from another friend, meaning that I am branching out into new territory! Not a single BPAL scent in the lot.

* Citrine (NEST)
Described as “lemon blossom, lotus flower, and freesia with the essence of morning dew and hints of precious woods.” The lemon freesia of its early stages was kind of nice, but it gets generically floral over time, so meh.

* psy_cou (Nomenclature)
Described as “coumarin (which is apparently used a lot in pipe tobacco), cardamom, juniper berries, coffee, incense, saffron, oud, and palo santo.” It’s sharp in the bottle, possibly from the juniper, but dulls a lot in application, and then I think I must have largely been getting the saffron and maybe the cardamom? Because I mostly smelled like Indian cooking. Overall I found this one hard to parse, and it’s not for me.

* Flowerhead (Byredo)
Described as “angelica seeds, lingonberry, Sicilian lemon, dewy tuberose, rose petals, wild jasmine sambac, fresh amber, and suede.” This goes into the category of “floral, but I don’t mind.” I never picked up much of the non-floral notes after the lemon faded early on, but I’m holding onto it to test against the other inoffensively floral scents I’ve kept.

* Special Moments (Catherine Malandrino)
Described as “citrus peel, plum, peach, honeydew, rose water, pink cyclamen, jasmine, white musk, amber crystals, and vanilla bean.” The honeydew helped hold down the floral here; it’s fairly clean-smelling, and I’ll try it again.

* Fantasia (Anna Sui)
Described as “pomelo, pink pepper, raspberry, praline, floral notes, cypress, and Himalayan cedar.” This one went SUPER mild, super fast; the pomelo vanished as if it had never been, and I was left with lingering traces of those floral notes. Doesn’t really have enough personality to be interesting.

* Like This (Etat Libre d’Orange)
Described as “Indonesian ginger, pumpkin, tangerine, immortal flower, Moroccan neroli, rose, spicy notes, vetiver, woody notes, musk, and heliotrope.” I forgot to take notes on this one, but I remember it being another sort of complex and confusing one, and while it wasn’t bad, it was also not really to my taste.

* Angel (Mugler)
Described as “Calabrian bergamot, red fruits, praline, ethylmaltol?, patchouli, and vanilla absolute.” Despite living in the Bay Area, I don’t really have a good grip on what patchouli smells like — or rather I didn’t, until I tried this perfume. My sister loathes the stuff and made faces every time she sniffed my wrist. I didn’t find it objectionable, but all I really got was patchouli and vanilla, and I find that unengaging.

* Gin Fizz (Lubin Paris)
Described as “bergamot, lemon, mandarin, juniper berry; iris, galbanum, orange blossom, rose, jasmine; lily, benzoin, iris, vetiver, oak moss, and white musk.” Another inoffensive but uninteresting perfume: it also fades quite fast, and is just sort of vaguely clean floral.

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New Worlds: There Can Be Only One

One ruler, that is. This week, the New Worlds Patreon starts taking a look at those monarchies you see so often in science fiction and fantasy. Comment over there!

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Books read, March 2021

The Cloud Roads, Martha Wells. First of the Raksura books, and I was a little bit ambivalent about it. I love the worldbuilding and all the stuff built around the Raksura being a different species, but it’s challenging to write a book about a loner main character who spends much of the novel with one foot out the door, wanting to get away from the people around him. But the setting was interesting enough to keep me engaged, and the first volume ends on a note that probably means Moon won’t be acting quite so much like a cat that doesn’t want to be held.

Pre-Industrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World, Patricia Crone. Recommended on A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, this is an overview of the commonalities found in pre-industrial states, just by dint of their technological constraints. It definitely has its shortcomings (it’s moderately good at looking at parts of Eurasia that aren’t Europe, but less good with Africa, much less the New World), and most of what it discusses is stuff I’ve picked up by osmosis through reading about the societies themselves, but it works well as an overview you could hand to someone who hasn’t spent decades osmosing that stuff. (Also, the shade Crone throws on Europe at the end is a truly astonishing thing to behold. Her thesis is that Europe industrialized because it so comprehensively failed at finding stable solutions to the problems of a pre-industrial society, and her summation of that failure gets vivid.)

Piranesi, Susanna Clarke. What a peculiar book! Five pages in, I wasn’t sure I was going to finish, partly because of the random Capitals the narrator scatters throughout his Text. Fifty pages in, I wanted to hoover the entire thing up, and I couldn’t even tell you why. I acquired it because I have an idea for a “weird house” story, and it turns out what I’ve got in mind is absolutely nothing like this, but I’m not sorry I read it. (Also, kudos to whoever designed the case for the hardcover: if you take off the slip jacket, the front and back covers and the spine have a marching series of columns of varying heights that spell out PIRANESI. It’s really pretty.)

Aru Shah and the Song of Death, Roshani Chokshi. Second in the Pandavas series from Rick Riordan Presents, this introduces a third Pandava sibling (along with, of course, new threats to deal with). I don’t find this series as congenial as some of the others from that imprint; the narrative voice just doesn’t work as well for me. Not that I think there’s anything wrong with it — but as I’m not the ideal reader, and I’ve established there are other series I like better, I may not continue on.

Never Have I Ever, Isabel Yap. A collection of short stories that range in tone all the way from a really sweet romance that’s the most San Franciscan thing I’ve read in a while (it’s about a queer guy who works in tech and also has a part-time job at an occult store on Valencia) to some outright horror. A few of the stories end on a bit more of an unresolved, literary-style note than is my preference, but I liked the collection overall. The author is Filipina, and several of the stories involve that setting and/or elements from that folklore; the latter sent me down some excellent new rabbit holes on Wikipedia. (If anybody has recs for English-language books on Filipino folklore, please share them! It’s not an area I know much about at all.)

Sins of Regret
Winter’s Embrace
Wheel of Judgment
Mask of the Oni Four short adventures written for Legend of the Five Rings. I’ve read very few adventure modules overall, and the ones I’ve looked at in the past were all for Pathfinder, so it’s interesting to see how a totally different game approaches the medium.

Daily Life in the Inca Empire, Michael A. Malpass. I have a vague idea for a short story set in Incan history, so this is the first of several books I’ve acquired on the culture, and also the oldest, being from 1996. (Which really doesn’t feel like it’s twenty-five years ago. O_O ) It’s from the same series as the Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia that I read back at the start of 2020, and while it isn’t quite as much of a slog as that one was, it’s still pretty dry going. I hope some of the others will be more flavorful? But I got useful information out of it regardless.

From Kuan Yin to Chairman Mao: The Essential Guide to Chinese Deities, Xueting Christine Ni. This got recommended during one of my Flights of Foundry panels. It goes through sixty some-odd deities in a little over two hundred pages, so none of them get more than a few pages apiece — but in that time, Ni manages to pack in details on the historical and/or mythological origins of each deity, how they’re worshipped now and/or in the past, where major temples can be found, what kinds of offerings you can make to them, which novels/TV shows/movies/video games they show up in, and sometimes even how to cosplay as them. And yes, Mao is genuinely included in the list of deities; he isn’t in the title just for rhetorical value.

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