Patrice Sarath's Blog, page 14

Songwriting

This year at FenCon I took the lyric writing workshop held by Bill and Brenda Sutton. I have been wanting to explore songwriting for a while, but as I have no musical background or experience, that had to wait. FenCon offered the perfect opportunity to get into writing lyrics, which are similar to writing poetry but with cool things like refrains and bridges. None of which I actually used in my finished song, as you will see.

The class brainstormed an idea — Vikings — and concepts and then with a bit of background information we were sent forth to create. The idea was to return the same time the next day with a refrain, or a bridge, or a lyric or two.

Y’all, there are some talented people out there. Maybe the songs were imperfect, but they had lines of true beauty or comedy, depending. So here’s mine (and as always, all words copyright Patrice Sarath):

Gray is the whale road, Cold is the sea,

Brave is my lady, Handfast to me.

Eager the longships, Icy the sails,

Stiff is the scabbard, Heavy the mail.

None can withstand us. They flee when we come,

Our swords bite and render, To the ominous drums.

Dark is the shaman, Who curses my line,

Cold is the shudder, That runs up my spine.

Blazing the starlight, Black are the waves,

Uneasy the Viking, Who sails to his grave.

Grey is the whale road, Grey is the sea.

Cold is my lady, ‘Twas handfast to me.

FenCon Schedule

Hey, that’s this weekend, boys and girls! I will be taking the MegaBus up to the DFW area this weekend. Looks like it will be loads of fun. Some amazing guests — Esther Friesner, Jim Hines, and Rachel Swirsky —  bring the SFF firepower.

My schedule is as follows, and I plan to read from The Tales of Port Saint Frey.

 

Holding Out for an Anti-Hero

Friday 5:00 PM Irving Lecture Hall   


Reading

Saturday 6:30 PM Pecan   


Beyond the Shoebox: Record Keeping for Artists and Writers

Sunday 10:00 AM Trinity VI   

Rain down on me with words

Weather’s gift in August is gratefully accepted,

When a breeze scatters leaves and the sun is veiled.

Thunderclouds tower and darkly sail.

Rain, we say, rain! This time of year! So unexpected!

The other night silent lightning illuminated the sky,

A pulsing white aurora — we saw this movie, we joke,

Nervously, waiting for the rain to soak.

While stars shone in the rest of the sky.

Today the clouds pull together in herds.

Foaming white, in squalls their waters break.

The cracked earth its thirst to slake.

I wish they would rain down on me with words.

ArmadilloCon wrap up

One of the best ArmadilloCons ever. Everyone said it. Everyone remarked on the programming, the energy, the panels, the guests, and the fans. The workshop was a blast, and the stories I got to read and the students in my group, were all eager and smart and funny. We all learned some good stuff — it was like a creative writing seminar. And I was so grateful to be part of it.

A shout out to my coteacher Urania Fung — she is so smart and insightful about writing. Everyone should take her class at Tarrant County Community College.

I conducted a writing exercise that went very well. Every time I present this exercise, I never know what to expect. It’s simple — I provide two writing excerpts. One is from mainstream literature, the other a spec-fic selection. The prompt is to rewrite each section, the mainstream, as genre, and the genre as mainstream. The goal is to get at the telling detail, the emotion, the character development, while building a world in service to those aspects. The point is that worldbuilding supports your character and plot; it’s not the point of it. And if you can take a mainstream excerpt and skiff-ify it while keeping the emotional truth, then that’s what you bring in to a speculative story. We’re telling stories, not travelogues (although that can be pretty cool too).

So, every time I teach this, it goes differently. Sometimes students get it, sometimes they don’t, but always there’s some gem that comes out of it. A few students and some of the other workshop teachers told me they enjoyed the exercise.

We tried something different with the Reversa-Panel, which was having audience members talk about what books they enjoyed and why, what they looked for in a good book, and what made they reread if they were rereaders. I’m a big rereader. I love rereading. There are books and authors who are comfort reads for me, there are books that I reread because the writing is like a master class and I want to see how it’s done, and there are books I reread, like mysteries, because even though I know how they end, I loved the journey so much I want to take it again.

It was a blast to be on the law enforcement panel with Myke Cole (tough dude!) and Joe McKinney (Toastmaster!), Jaime Lee Moyer (soft-spoken historical fiction author!) and Rob Rogers (good dad award!), and the late night science panel was surprisingly crowded.

But hey, science girls — please come to science panels. We had me, Amy Sisson, and in the audience JJ Litke. I know that science doesn’t interest everyone, and believe me, my chemistry and physics grades in high school were pretty typical of a fantasy loving English major type, but — and maybe this is too prescriptive — we need more interest in science, and we need more atypical perspectives in science. Maybe now more than ever.

There. Enough preaching. I read from the new novella which is out on submission, and because it’s a prequel to my story Murder on the Hohmann, I even sold a few volumes of the Futuristica anthology.

Great con. Great people. Great parties. Lots of wonderful discussion. Let’s do it all again next year!

My ArmadilloCon schedule

Here’s my schedule for ArmadilloCon, July 29 through July 31.

Friday

Writers Workshop. In addition to the critiquing sessions, I am conducting a writing exercise that I call The Telling Detail; Creating a fantasy world using the right details, the importance of tone, and emotional atmosphere to bring SFF worlds to life.

Saturday

Reverse-a-Panel

Noon-1:00 PM

Cole, Dimond, Fischer, Rogers, Sarath*, White

Readers tell writers what they like and want to read!

Portrayal of Law Enforcement in SFF

1:00 PM-2:00 PM

Cole*, Maresca, McKinney, Moyer, Rogers, Sarath

Do people get it right? What does getting it right look like?

Reading

5:30 PM-6:00 PM

Where Has All the Science Gone?

9:00 PM-10:00 PM Landon*, Ledbetter, Moore, Sarath, Scarber, Sisson

The final, glorious journey of Poussey Washington

During the searing last two episodes of Season Four of Orange is the New Black, the prison explodes in violence. By the end, an inmate is dead, and the one person we want to be the hero, to save everyone including himself, fails with such spectacular impact that it’s almost as beautiful as it is destructive.

Poussey, her gamine, whimsical, beautiful, lovely romantic self, lies dead, after gasping, “I can’t breathe.”

And fucking Warden Caputo lets everyone down. Again. And again. And again.

If Game of Thrones fans say of the violence depicted on that show that’s how things were, back in “those days,” OITNB takes an unflinching look at how real violence in “these days” impacts real people. How the myth of the good guy is so powerful that good guys believe it. How words have power to incite race hatred, even if they are accidental words.

But what OITNB has the courage to acknowledge that GoT does not, is that violence is not spectacle, even when we watch it from the comfort from our living rooms, and that should break our hearts.

Caputo fails because he believes he’s one of the good guys, even though he keeps Sophia Burset in solitary, lying to her and her wife and her allies, even though he takes the photo that gets her out, even though he once again tries to serve two masters, his self image and MCC, even though he leaves Poussey’s body lying in the cafeteria, even though he only at the last minute calls her father to tell her she is dead. Caputo never once lives up to his own laser-like focus on his own goodness, even when he holds the press conference absolving the guard who killed Poussey, thinking he is taking a bold stand against his corporate overlords. Caputo’s words incite the riot that ends the season, with sweet inmate Daya holding a gun on a rotten, evil guard.

Sam Healy, of all characters, has the only singular moment of self-realization, when he calls his Russian wife and says, “I am not very good at my job.”

It is hilarious because it’s true. He’s got a power-tripping white savior complex, and in that moment, when he realizes just how bad he is at his job, like the worst prison social worker ever in the history of the field, all anyone can do is laugh til tears come, and not the cathartic ones.

So, Poussey. The show is known for its structural flashbacks that tell us how the inmates and the guards got to prison. So the last we see of Poussey, we think we are seeing that flashback. She’s traveling in Brooklyn and she’s trying to meet up with her friends.

Only gradually does the truth come clear. This is Poussey’s final voyage. She never finds her friends, and her entire journey is one of missed connections. She literally goes underground on the subway. She has lost her way, her phone is stolen, she meets strange and wondrous creatures, and has shared moments of companionship and bonding. At the very end, she is transported on the handlebars of a bicycle pedaled by a fake monk, to the ends of the earth, or at least the waters of the Hudson River.

There, Poussey turns to face the camera and smiles. I’ve taken you as far as I can, she seems to say. Here I go on alone. You can go no farther.

 

 

 

 

“Reflection” out now in Gingerbread House Literary Magazine

My short story, Reflection, is out now in Gingerbread House Literary Magazine. This is a lovely magazine, focusing on fairytale-inspired stories, with stunning art and a lovely sensibility. Please visit and check out some gorgeous art and wonderfully evocative stories.

Reflection was written in one fell swoop at Cherrywood Coffee House in Austin, Texas. I was sitting opposite my writing buddy, Rebecca Schwarz, and the story poured out of me. It has changed somewhat since that first explosion of words, but it remains essentially the same. It was originally titled The Cinderella Gaze, but I think Reflection suits it better.

Is narcissism a drug? And if it is, are we infecting our young people? This makes me sound like such a grumpy curmudgeon, but I can’t help but wonder — we spend so much time, energy, and focus on external appearance, especially of our young women, we are sapping their energy for anything else.

Futuristica is here!

Like science fiction? This is a cool new anthology that I am honored to be a part of. My story, “Murder on the Hohmann” was a blast to write, and I am so delighted it’s part of the lineup.

Here’s the skinny from publishers Metasagas:

 

 

More News

In other news, I have been merrily writing and plotting and writing and plotting. Book 2 of the Tales of Port Saint Frey is with Agent Goloboy of Red Sofa, and I have found my way in to Book 3. As a dyed-in-the-wool pantser, it’s the only way I can do it. Outlining wastes time at the beginning; pantsing often causes wrong turns and dead ends, but I’d rather have the delays in the middle than at the beginning. I feel like outlining just makes me spin my wheels when I’d rather just dive in.

I just now finished — like a half hour ago — a new novella that I’m very happy with. It’s science fiction, it’s related to Murder on the Hohmann, and I’m all aglow with the feeling of creation and inspiration.

Upcoming Conventions

My next convention is at ArmadilloCon and I will be one of the teachers for the writers workshop. This is one of the top one-day writers workshops for science fiction, fantasy, horror, and speculative writers. If you write and are coming to the convention, you should seriously check it out.

ArmadilloCon Writers Workshop

ArmadilloCon Writers Workshop, run by Marshall Ryan Maresca. The deadline is coming up: June 15, so hurry and get your story or chapter in.

By the way, Marshall is an alumnus of the workshop, and his books, beginning with The Thorn of Dentonhill, are fast-paced, intricate fantasy, that are fun and action-packed. Check them out if you haven’t already.

Other alumni include myself and Campbell Award nominee Stina Leicht. The workshop was ably run for many years by Wendy Wheeler and Jennifer Evans of long-time Austin writers group The Slug Tribe, and they turned it over to me, and then I handed it over to Stina, who in turn passed the baton to Marshall. I sold the first story I ever workshopped through the Armadillocon Writers Workshop to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. This workshop works, people.

 

The ritual cleaning of the office in between manuscripts

That floor is a thing of beauty.

I believe that humans are creatures of ritual — renewal and rebirth, migration and return. We are dependent on the ebb and flow of tides and the circle of the seasons. Even now, when we are largely creatures removed from the need to hunt and forage, when we are no longer dependent upon growing seasons, we crave that sense of marking time. It’s no longer the first and last frosts, or the equinox or the solstice, or the tide and the phases of the moon. When we don’t have that instinct that it’s time to move on to the next hunting ground or to follow the sun south, we make our own rhythms and our own cycles.

Y’all, I just cleaned out my office. The manuscript is complete — well, that was done a while ago, but now, the second draft edits are done. I didn’t take a before picture because I couldn’t even stand to go into the room. It was a landfill. Paper everywhere, books everywhere,  music all over the place — it was horrendous. I couldn’t find anything, and there was stuff falling out of shelves and cabinets. But behold! A clear floor. The ritual cleaning of the office is complete. The old project is put to bed, and I have cleared space emotionally, physically, and mentally.

So you all know what this means, righ?

Time to start a new novel.

 

Catching up: Eating Authors, SXSW, other news

Lawrence Schoen, novelist, anthologist, short story writer, and Klingon speaker, has a feature in which he has authors describe their most memorable meal.

LMS: Welcome, Patrice. Please tell me about your most memorable meal.

PS: There have been a handful of meals in my life that have been the best food I’ve ever eaten, and all of them could have been the “right” answer to your question. Sure, the meal at Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago was fabulous, every bite a revelation in gastronomy. I have never eaten such elegantly prepared, gorgeously presented, originally conceived food in my life. Read more.

After a lovely chat in New York with Agent Goloboy, I am excited about my new series going out on submission. I am in good hands. And this is going to be an exciting year. And I just know good things are in store.

My article, Writing and the Day Job, came out in the SFWA Bulletin in February. My short story, Murder on the Hohmann, comes out in Futuristica Vol. I in June. I hope to have more story news later this year.

And just to keep up my cool, slick persona, which you all know and envy, here is a photo from SXSW: rocker Gfire. She set up a singer-songwriter lineup of women who rock and it included performers from Austin, Ireland, and France. Gfire is my voice instructor and my inspiration. And she is one of the hardest-working musicians I know and braver than anything. After all, she is trying to teach me how to sing.