Patrice Sarath's Blog, page 12

Wizard World Comic Con Austin

If it’s not one convention it’s another — I’ll be at Wizard World Comic Con in Austin on Sunday, paneling on the following:

Sunday, Nov. 19, 201712:30 PM – 1:15 PM location: Room 4

Start Your Creativity Engines

Having trouble revving up your creativity engine? Writer’s block and general creator’s block often succeeds in stalling every type of artist at one time or another, but thankfully, there are creative solutions that can bulldoze those standstill challenges! With the right tools and inspiration, the wonderful world of art, writing, and creativity becomes your oasis. Join Genese Davis (The Holder’s Dominion), Patrice Sarath (Gordath Wood Series), Eric Kieron Davis (Star Citizen) Christopher Brown (Tropic of Kansas) and Rebecca Schwarz (Curious Worlds) as they divulge their experience when creating worlds and storytelling. Discover the routine, environment, and even networking and collaborative solutions that can bolster creativity and help you complete your artistic endeavors during this fantastic discussion!

Introducing…The Sisters Mederos

I am so happy and excited to announce the debut of my latest novel, The Sisters Mederos, coming out from Angry Robot Books in April of 2018. Regular readers of my blog will recognize the name if not the title. I’ve been writing about the Mederos Sisters for a long time, as Bandit Girls and then Reversal of Fortune.

But really the very first introduction of Tesara Mederos was in a short story I wrote back in the early 1990s, when I was still getting the hang of this writing thing. The story was then called A Heart for Magic. The editors at Weird Tales turned it down with the wise comment that the story started on page 24 (ie, the last page). I had written a long introduction, but it wasn’t a story. Marion Zimmer Bradley Magazine turned it down with, “You write well, but this is paced rather poorly.” (Seriously, these rejections go back 20 years. I still remember them.)

I later sold a version of that story, and it was so long ago I can’t even remember the market or the new title, and it’s probably best that it’s lost in the mists of time.

The reason I kept working at this was because I always knew there was something there. This story was the first story in which I felt I got it. I got how to put together dialog, plot, character, and bring it all together. And I loved these characters, even the version of the story which I wrote as a screenplay, and in which there was some very un-Bechdel test writing going on.

And now, Angry Robot is bringing the Mederos sisters to the page (and e-reader). I am very happy to present The Sisters Mederos to the world.

 

World Fantasy Wrapup

World Fantasy is one of my favorite conventions. The convention is known more as a professional event rather than a fan convention like WorldCon. Still, there are plenty of fans who attend who are dedicated readers of literary fantasy and science fiction.

I love World Fantasy because you never know who you see on the elevator or the dealer’s room or the art show or at the bar, where much barconning was going on. As usual I didn’t get to see half of what was happening, but I did my best.

As the theme of the convention was Secret Histories, my panel, Myths of the Old West, tried to get at the root of the mythology and outright inaccurate history of the West. Panelists including Walter Jon Williams, Tex Thompson, and J.M. McDermott delved into the backstory of the myth, the reasons for why so much of the literature about the Old West obliterates the truth of native peoples, immigrants, women, and the land itself. With only 50 minutes, we left a lot on the table, but tried our best.

And that brings me to the controversy. The programmers had done their damndest to program panels with diverse panelists, and to create programming that does justice to all the people in fantasy and history, not just straight, white, and mostly male. But there is a certain reality and that is that there are not as many authors of color or queer authors, or non-binary authors who come to WFC. (Note: there are plenty of authors; but they just weren’t at the convention.) So, led by Joe McDermott, we tried our hardest to find authors who are Native American or Latino or other than white, straight, etc. to be on the Old West panel who could speak on the topic. And we couldn’t. The programming committee tried, and they couldn’t. So we did our best, and I know we fell short, but it was not for lack of trying.

In a more disturbing example, the cultural appropriation panel was a study in how not to go about it. I’ve linked to Rebecca Kuang’s experience. I caught the last 20 minutes of the panel, and I was shocked and confused by what I heard. Kuang has every right to be angry. We can do better, as authors, and editors, and as part of this community.

Despite this, and because the programming committee worked hard and thoughtfully to create a convention that honored the theme of secret histories, many panels lived up to their mandate. I hope that people can look upon this con as a step in the right direction, and take lessons about what works if we work at it, and how to prevent missteps for the next one.

A significant bright spot in the convention was the great Martha Wells’s toastmaster speech. I had to leave before the banquet and the speech, but Tor printed the whole thing. It was magnificent, and you all should read it if you have not already. Heck, I’ve read it twice now.

Book burning draws too much attention. In science fiction and fantasy, in comics, in media fandom, everybody was always here, but we have been disappeared over and over again. We stumble on ourselves in old books and magazines and fanzines, fading print, grainy black and white photos, 16 millimeter film, archives of abandoned GeoCities web sites. We remember again that we were here, they were here, I saw them, I knew them.

 

Complicated

Because the male gaze is crippling and demeaning. (That man in the sportscar. I was twelve.)

Because the male gaze is a powerful drug, a pure hit. (That black dress, I walked like a goddess in that black dress and those black boots).

Because the male gaze is defining.

Because the male gaze is self-defining.

Because T]he definition of ‘crazy’ in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to fuck her anymore.

Because dressing sexy for oneself is #girlpower.

Because dressing sexy for oneself is a #contradiction. (“If it’s just for myself, shouldn’t I be comfortable?”)

Because taking a meeting with the most powerful man in Hollywood is a crucial step in a career.

Because we’ve heard the stories.

Because we discount the stories.

Because he’s big and powerful and he will use his power against her.

Because if she’s nice he will use his power for her. (Spoiler alert: he doesn’t.)

Because there are ways to use his power against him.

Because we want to get out of there without getting hurt or degraded or assaulted.

Because we’ve been told to smile and be nice. (Don’t be bossy!)

Because our cultural conditioning is used against us.

Because we don’t listen to the girls who warn us.

Because the girls who would warn us are silenced.

Because we think well, it’s the way it’s always been.

Because we jeer when a conservative scolds, “Men only want one thing!”

Because we jeer when men say #notallmen.

Because #whatIwaswearing is an indictment of her attacker but #whatshewaswearing is an indictment of her.

Because sometimes it is because of what we’re wearing.

Because more often than not, that’s an excuse.

Because we have to even think about it.

Because we are complicit.

Because we aren’t complicit.

Because we are victims.

Because we aren’t victims.

Because the first thing we think is what did I do?

Because it stays in the back of our minds, and ambushes us at unexpected moments. #metoo

Because sometimes we want to take back control.

Because it’s complicated.

 

 

World Fantasy Convention

World Fantasy will be in San Antonio this year. This is one of my favorite conventions. It’s considered a working convention for writers and therefore it isn’t quite as packed as WorldCon, which is for fans. There will probably be less cosplay, although I’ve definitely noticed a resurgence of dressing up at conventions. For a long time literary cons didn’t encourage costumes. Now people are putting time and talent into creating beautiful costumes and I’m happy to see their creativity on display.

I will be moderating one panel:

The Old West: Not Entirely Wild but Always a Fantasy

Panelists: Tex Thompson, Joe M. McDermott, Patrice Sarath (M), Walter Jon Williams

The invention of what we think of as The Old West, complete with gunslingers and derring do and cattle and tinkling ragtime pianos in saloons, was always a myth. The violent history of the settlement of the continent by European settlers needed a mythic framework to justify the actions of the settlers and the empire-builders, as well as sell it to the next group of dissidents looking to Go West and start over. Our panelists will discuss various narrative attempts to grapple with the complex history of the West from both sides, conqueror and conquered. How do we approach the myth of the west? What do we take from it for future narratives? How do we find the truth hidden inside the myths?

I don’t think there has been mythmaking like the mythmaking that created the Old West. I think it was the confluence of photography, dime novels, the telegraph, and moving pictures that mythologized the era even as it was being lived. By the time the early moving pictures were being made, the West had mostly faded, but think about it — Wyatt Earp was still alive at the turn of the last century. Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid were either alive in Utah or dead in Bolivia (Schroedinger’s outlaws), and Quanah Parker, famed Comanche warrior chief, was living on a reservation in Oklahoma with his family (a lot of wives). There were cars. How could there be the Old West when there were cars?

Dime novels helped popularize gunslingers and invented the standoff on main street. Can’t remember which gunslinger protested at the portrayal of a gun fight, but he pointed out he’d be an idiot to just stand there — they were ducking behind trees, for heaven’s sake.

When the guy being mythologized is around to enter into the discussion, you know that some heavy story telling is going on.

I’m not convinced there is any other era like it in world history.

I’m looking forward to the discussion with my fellow panelists.

Hope to see you there.

 

What the Dickens, Stephen King!

I just saw IT. And a few days ago Jack Conner reminded me that it was Stephen King’s birthday. Whereupon I commented that King is the Charles Dickens of our time. Some writers are meant for the age in which they write — King, Austen, Norah Roberts — and they achieve success and adulation while they’re around to appreciate it. (The rest of us ink-stained wretches, alas — well, that’s another post for another time).

Why Dickens? On a superficial level, King is and Dickens was highly prolific with a rabid readership. There were fans of Dickens waiting at the docks for the ships to bring in the next installation of his novels.

Dickens specialized in the horrors of childhood, and so does King. King shines when he writes about kids. Dickens wrote the death of children with particular intensity and vigor. When I read Bleak House I sobbed so hard over the death of Jo the Sweeper Boy that tears splashed on my Kindle.

King remains fundamentally misunderstood about the stories he’s telling, especially by filmmakers. Horror is always about something else. I just watched The Babadook with some friends and it was so specifically a movie about postpartum depression and psychosis that it dredged up all of my emotional anxieties stemming from my own PPD. Likewise, King’s horror is always psychological first and foremost. The blood and violence is for show only. The scariest monsters are always in our heads and in our souls, and that’s why with a few exceptions, movies made from King novels fail. That’s because directors and screenwriters mistake the horror for the point of the movie, and then try to illustrate the horror with special effects. (IT fails in its own special way, which has to do with the movie being made as a cynical mashup of Stranger Things and Stand by Me, and while some of IT was effective and I jumped as much as anyone, the movie as always fell short).

The exceptions are Misery, The Shining, Stand by Me (written as The Body), and The Shawshank Redemption (Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption). Only one is horror. King famously did not like Kubrick’s The Shining, and for sure, the move is a Kubrick movie, not a King adaptation.

Misery is a thriller, not horror, and it was effectively filmed as such. Misery is a damn fine book and Misery is a damn fine movie. I can reread the first and rewatch the second and take pleasure in each.

Stand by Me is a coming of age tale. It has all of King’s beats — boys on the verge of adulthood, check; nasty teenagers, check; a writer as the protagonist, check; and a truth that the world is a scary place, and innocence is a burden and a gift.

By any measure The Shawshank Redemption is such a departure for King that it might be the only reason the movie succeeded. How do you make a successful movie from a King short story? Well, make it from the only King short story that acts like it was written by someone else.

Going back to the other three, they comprise a trilogy of what could be termed The Life and Death of the Writer. Stand by Me is about the becoming writer. Misery is about the writer at the top of his game. And The Shining is the writer’s descent into madness.

When King wrote IT, it was supposed to be his farewell from the horror genre. He put everything into the book, and he was going to move on to write — what? Respectable literature? (Some of his best short stories appeared in The New Yorker, which probably pissed off Harold Bloom to no end, especially because they are very fine short stories). Anyway, the pledge didn’t take, and he continues to mine the same territory.

Which is fine by me. I haven’t read everything King has written because there are only so many hours in the day, but I’ve read enough, including some of his lesser known books, and they have given me hours of pleasant discomfort and anxiety and outright fear. People may scoff at The Tommyknockers, but it scared the hell out of me and I still think about it. The Girl Who Loves Tom Gordon is another favorite of mine, although if he had left out the monster, it  would have improved the book in my opinion.

In this day and age, we don’t have to wait for the ship to come in to bring us news of the death of Little Nell, as fans of Dickens had to endure. King has tapped into that desire for emotional catharsis, and he understands how to provide readers with what they want and need. At the end of a King novel, after he has taken the reader and the characters on a perilous journey in which they do not escape unscathed, in almost every instance order is restored at the end. The children are saved. The children grow up. They are sadder, wiser, and stronger for having been broken. Over time they forget, grow apart, remember it all as a dream, and evil worms its way back in. And so it begins all over again.

Dickens would have approved.

The Diaries of a Homesick Viking

This is what happens when Martin Owton and I have too much time on our hands. Can you guess which entries are his and which are mine? By the way, Martin is working on a new epic fantasy that I can’t wait to read. But for now, you can check out Exile, his first book in his tales of swordsman Aron of Darien.

The Diaries of a Homesick Viking

Dear Odin,

We’ve been blown westward for the past seven days, and have had nothing but rolling high seas and lots of fog. I keep thinking I can hear skraelings off the port bow. Grey and damp here, might as well be in Ireland.

Odin grant relief from this stomach ache. I never wish to see a pickled herring again. A man needs meat!

I dreamed of Helga again last night. She looked as lovely as the goddess Frigja. But when she spoke, all I heard was a skraeling’s shriek. I woke to a splash of seawater and the other men all laughing at me. Will we ever see land again?

The Gods mock us. Three times we have sighted land but with only sheer cliffs and no place come ashore. We have opened the last barrel of herrings.

Every time I set my oar to water to take a stroke, Thorvaldr Gislason throws a herring at the back of my head. Will this voyage never end?

My hands bleed and my lips crack with the salt water. I have not shit in days. Everything tastes of pickled herring.

Go a-viking, they said. Plunder new lands, they said. Odin’s Eye, but what I wouldn’t give for meat, mead, and someone to kill. Gods damn you, Thorvaldr! Quit it with the herring!

The Norns curse Harald for bringing us to this desolate shore. We should have gone to Cymru where the sheep and women are plump and herrings are fed to cats.

Well. We’ve reached the end of the whale’s road. The mists flow down from the land over the shore. I see neither villages to plunder, nor fat game to hunt. Bitter flows the blood in my veins.

Great. Skraelings.

 

 

 

New project — working title Dark Queen

Joan of Arc, in Notre Dame Cathedral. This part of the Dark Queen is inspired by her trials.

Here’s a bit of a teaser for the new project. I read it at ArmadilloCon  (ooh, check it out — they have next year’s site up!) last month, and was pleased by the response from the audience. People were asking questions afterwards, always a good sign.

As many of you know, I’ve been reading and researching Joan of Arc for many years. My short story, “A Prayer for Captain La Hire,” is based on Joan and the general Etienne de Vignolles, nicknamed La Hire, and her two faithful knights, Jean de Metz and Bertrand de Poulengy.

This snippet from my WiP is based on Joan’s trials and her testimony at her second trial.

“What is your name?”

“Ephenia Lydia Almericia Suerta Dellarocca.”

“Who are your parents?”

“My parents were good people of noble birth.”

“What were their names?”

“Pass over that.”

“Where are your parents?”

“My mother died when I was an infant.”

“Evil child! You killed her with your birth. Such is the devil in you. Have you repented of your first murder?”

“It would be false witness to lie to God. I did not kill my mother; I will not repent of her death.”

“Did you love your mother?”

“I must have done; all children love their mothers.”

“Then why do you not mourn her death?”

“I mourn it every day.” With a shock, I realized suddenly that was true.

“Does your father yet live?”

“He does.”

“Who is he?”

“My father in Heaven is God.”

“Who is your father on Earth?”

“Pass over that.”

And so it went, on and on for hours. I was brought out of my cell and examined by a tribunal of learned men, the silent scribes in the balconies scribbling furiously over their desks, the scratching of their pens like the scrabbling of the rats in my prison walls. The courtroom smelled of candles, iron, and blood and tears. I sat below the men in a pool of light from a ring of lanterns overhead. My interlocutors were in shadow, only their stentorious voices revealing them.

They asked me in as many ways as they could if I claimed myself as the daughter of King Feodoro. I knew better than to answer it, because once I did, they could behead me at once for making a claim on the throne. Despite my thirst and hunger and fear, I knew my only hope was to think one step ahead of my enemies, resist at every step, and turn their questions around on them.

“Where were you raised?”

“In a small village in the heart of this country.”

“Who raised you?”

“My guardians.”

“What were their occupations?”

“Farmer-priest and farm-wife.”

“What are their given names?”

“The names their parents gave them; the names they took to honor the saints; and the names that denote their family.”

“Insolent girl! Give us their names!”

“Let me go home to them and they can tell you themselves.”

I could hear discussion from the bench. They knew that if they tortured me they could get the names — or at the least, I would give them some names. I had no intention of giving up Rothaire and Serene. I prayed for them nightly, and hoped they were well and that my homey village went about its business as it always did, with little thought for its wayward daughter.

“What is your purpose in traveling?”

“To achieve my destination.”

“What is your destination?”

“Castilia.”

“Why do you wish to go to Castilia, a young girl like you?” This was a different interrogator. His voice was soft, insinuating. Sneering.”Do you wish to sell yourself to different men?”

I refused to dignify that accusation with a reply. There was another conference on the bench, a hissed reprimand, and then my usual questioner continued.

“Why do you go to Castilia?”

“I have never seen it before; therefore I wished to go there and see the capital of my country.”

“And you have no other aim than to see the capital?”

I remained silent.

“What is your purpose in going to Castilia?”

“Pass over that.”

“Is it an evil purpose?”

I thought a long time before answering. When I did, my words were reflective.”In this imperfect world, even those of us with the best of intentions can do evil. I do not intend evil, but I am human, and cannot claim perfection, as neither can you gentlemen.”

There was a gasp from the clerks in the balconies. The judges were struck dumb. Then –“You are very clever. You must have suckled at the she-devil’s tit to have learned to answer with such cunning. Was that your mother or your guardian?”

“I rose to my feet with a roar of fury, my chains rattling.”DON’T SPEAK OF HER SO!”

A guard yanked me forward onto my kneeling bench, my knees hitting the stone with a painful crack. A light was brought to my face, blinding me, as I sniffled away my tears, and turned my head to protect my eyes. I couldn’t see who was holding the lantern. There was only a deeper shadow behind the lamp, so close that I felt the heat and oil hissed and ran down sides of the lamp onto my lap. I jerked away in pain.

“Oh, you will feel far more pain than this little prick,” came the voice in the darkness.”Your fate is to taste the eternal damnation of hellfire in your last moments on earth.” The lamp was pulled away.”Take her back to her cell.”

The days passed in a blur of interrogation, cell, interrogation, cell. I had lost track of time, and no longer called out for Adessio and Giona. I didn’t know if they were dead or alive, if they had already been executed. I struggled to say my prayers, but all I could think of was Serene and Rothaire and how disappointed they would be in me. I no longer hoped that Marsroi would rescue me.

One day when they dragged me before the tribunal, I was made to kneel on the stone penitent’s bench, but I promptly fell over in a faint, so weak was I with hunger and thirst. I had gone beyond even hunger pangs.

When I woke, I was disoriented, thinking at first that I was home in my village, and Serene was ministering to me. I muttered her name, sobbing in relief. I was home, though my bed was hard and I smelled piss and sweat and blood.

“What did she say? What name was that?” It was a sharp male voice.

“I didn’t catch it. Make her say it again. What was that name, witch! Tell us the name!”

I was shaken roughly by the shoulders and mewled a cry of fear, and woke up to my eternal nightmare. Someone threw a bucket of water at me, and I was hoisted to my knees and propped back up onto the kneeling stone. This time my guards held me by my chains to keep me upright, and the interrogation began anew.

“Did you turn Mistress Laurina into an ass?”

“If I did, I am very sorry for it.” But she was entirely behaving like one, I wanted to add.

“Are you a witch?”

“If I am, I am very sorry for it.” A giggle rose to my lips, and I tried to suppress it. I knew how it sounded. I knew that I must have sounded entirely like I was possessed by an evil spirit. But I was broken and could not help myself.

“Are you a pretender to the throne of REALM?”

“Only my father can determine that.”

And then back to the other voice, triumphant in its accents, as if the speaker knew he had me:

“Are you in God’s grace?”

And I remembered, with sudden clarity, the catechism that Serene had taught me, the prayer she had made me memorize from the time I was a little child, lisping at her knee:

“If I am, may God keep me there; If I am not, may He put me there.”

The courtroom erupted in shouting and arguing, and I knelt there in the middle as chaos swirled around me, focused only on one thought. She had known. Serene had known I would be asked that. She had prepared me for this moment for years, just in case I ever found myself in this position. For this was the ultimate trap — if I had said yes, it was blasphemy, for it would have meant I would presume to know God’s will. And if I had said no…I lifted my eyes. Thank you, I whispered, and I felt my words travel up through the ceiling and out into the air, all the way to VILLAGE and to Serene’s ear.

I was dragged back to my cell again and thrown to the stone floor, the shouting and epithets ringing in my ears, but I couldn’t help but exult, even as I curled up around myself, a broken, dirty, small creature.

Whatever happened next, I knew I was loved.

When a writer is without words

This time, writer’s block has manifested as a solid rock in the pit of my stomach. I look around at what is happening in my country and I think, is this it? Are we at the end of the United States of America? Are white supremacists that willing to destroy their nation because they don’t want other people to have what they have? Gun-toting, torch-bearing, honest-to-God Nazis. Bringing hate, gunning for a race war, jackbooted hooligans who want to fight.

They aren’t just Nazis. They are Hutus, macheting their neighbors. They are the janjaweed, the death on horseback, running down innocents. They are ISIS, their brothers in hate and ideology and tactics. Our terrorists are domestic.

We have a vulgar toddler in the White House, occupying the Oval Office, who was put there by Republican voters who looked at him and who he brought with him, and thought, “I can live with that.” I guess they figured that since they weren’t brown or Jewish, what the hell. Not their problem. (“But those e-mails…”)

And don’t get me started about Bannon leaving, as if there’s some essential schism in the White House. Bannon’s call to the American Progress was carefully crafted to signal his rebranding. Anyone stupid enough to think this piece of shit has changed his colors is kidding himself.

So. Is this the end? The Republican party has brought this about by appealing to the fringe elements of hate. The fundamentalist Christians, who again share many of the same ideologies as fundamentalist Islam, are trying to create a Christian theocracy in the United States. Republicans, all of them, who didn’t care anything about the very non-Christian lifestyle of the puerile monster in the White House. They chose this man. They chose a drooling, demented, man-baby to represent them and to bring down the government, all the better to install their  government.  (“But those e-mails…”)

There is a sick, addictive attraction to destruction. Witness rock stars in hotel rooms. This past election has been nothing more than an exercise in masculine destruction for destruction’s own sake. A bunch of thugs with guns are bringing it all down and watching it burn. The United States of America is being taken down from the inside, and the cracks are starting to widen and deepen.

Dystopias aren’t just for books, y’all. We’re seeing what it’s like to live in one.

The fairy tale is over. The horror story is about to begin.

ArmadilloCon wrap up

Being pragmatic is a wonderful thing. For instance, having a day job — not a bad concept. I need financial security in order to create. That’s just the way it is. The trade-off is time and energy, and that most definitely has taken a toll on my creative output, if nothing else. I know there’s a good chance I sacrificed creativity for financial security.

Enter ArmadilloCon. Because just this past weekend I was rejuvenated and re-energized by the outpouring of creativity surrounding me. I came in Friday night a bit tired and exhausted from the workweek, a bit demoralized about my writing and art, and stayed almost until they kicked us all out on Sunday afternoon.

And I had an epiphany. This is my tribe. These are my people. Work is where I cosplay. Conventions and writing groups are where I find my mojo.

The convention this year was amazing. The interview with Tamora Pierce was so much fun and interesting, and my reading was a hit. The panels were a rousing success, and the ones that weren’t — well, we gossiped plenty about those. So that’s a success too!

I left with a renewed vigor and a story idea that is going to be my next novella. By the way, on the short story vs. novel panel, we talked about how do you know when an idea is a short story and when it’s a novel, and this one is a novella.

I’m excited about starting it.

But first, the new project. I read from a section of the new project at my reading, and the audience was receptive, and I continue to be excited and happy about it. It’s working and humming on all cylinders, and there’s nothing like it.

So this week has been work re-entry, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But kids, I’ve got my mojo back, and I have ArmadilloCon to thank. *

See you all next year.

* Seriously, thanks to all the volunteers who make the convention go. It’s a thankless job, and you all do great work. ArmadilloCon is 40 years old next year. You bet it’s going to be a doozy.