Patrice Sarath's Blog, page 2

GWIII — a taste of what’s to come

For your reading pleasure: Here’s a little bit of what’s coming up in GWIII.

From GWIII:

Five men ranged in front of their employer. They were scruffy, muddy, but capable; their weapons were clean, their hands dirty, as they were advertised. They were scuffed up. The lord took in the bruises on one, scrapes on another. He shook his head.

“You couldn’t keep hold of one puny boy?” His voice was full of disgust.

The leader of the men ticked off his reasons on one weatherbeaten hand. “You wanted him alive. You wanted him unhurt. You wanted it to happen unseen. You didn’t tell us there was still plenty of traffic on the road in and around Terrick. I made a decision to abandon the plan, try again after dark.”

“So first, you take flight when one man shows up who just happens–”

“You wanted us to be unseen–”

“Who just happens to know which end of the sword to hold–”

“He was better than that–”

“He was one man!” He roared it.

“You wanted it to be unseen!” The gangleader roared back, and they stood nose to elegant nose. “You said you wanted the boy to disappear!”

“Well, he didn’t, did he!” The lord took the paperweight off his desk and threw it at the door. The men ducked reflexively as the carved stone paperweight hit the oak so hard it splintered.

“He didn’t disappear,” he said more quietly. “He got away. And when you tried again, he got away again. Only this time, the whole household got to see it.”

The men all glanced among one another sulkily. He knew they were debating whether to remind him that it wasn’t the whole household, just the strange traveler, who could use a sword for sure, the baby sister, and the householder girl.

I was so close to having Terrick in my fist, he thought. Instead, now he’s Salt and Kennery’s, tied up right and tight. Soldier’s god. What does a man have to do to become High King around here? He composed himself.

“So, you missed,” he said. “Do you still want to be paid?”

The leader looked calculating and eager. “We can make it right. We can go back. There’s a lot going on. The news of the wedding between Kennery and Terrick has the smallholders buzzing with the news. They might be distracted enough…” he trailed off when the lord pinched the bridge of his nose.
For a second he sustained the fantastic notion of another go. Third time’s the charm… but no. The roads were closing. His men would not be able to get in and out before winter set in in earnest. It had been a good plan, too, if a bit more bald-faced than he was used to. He wouldn’t have sent a ransom to Terrick, oh no. But he would make sure the man knew who was responsible for the disappearance of his son. Now, the boy’s usefulness was over. Time for another plan entirely.

The lord’s gaze went out the window. Snow fell outside the small panes, and he could see the faint pinpoints of light from the candles reflected in the glass, floating in the air. Winter was a time for planning, not action. By the time the thaws came, he would set other events into play, and he had long nights and dark days to plan.

“No,” he said. “No, we’re not going after the boy again. But I still have use for you. You have lodgings?”

The leader nodded. The lord waved a hand in dismissal. When he was alone, he stood in front of the fire, thinking. Kenery and Salt were kingmaking, for sure. And it was the only thing that could entice Terrick to lose his gods-forsaken honor and throw in. He hated both of them, but he had crowns in his eyes, and that made a man open to strange bedfellows.

I don’t need anyone to crown me, he thought. I’ll make myself my own king. And he had all winter to set the wheels in motion. He just needed to know one thing.

Who had sent the traveler with the sword to defend Terrick?

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Forthcoming Short Story Collection from NewCon Press

I’m pleased to announce that a collection of my short stories will be published by NewCon Press as part of the new Polestars series edited by Ian Whates.

I’m very excited to be part of this anthology series. I’ll be in good company with authors including Jaine Fenn, Emma Coleman, and Teika Marija Smits. They are the first three authors in the series, with more to come.

To learn more about this series, check out this wonderful book trailer by Martin Sketchley:

Short Stories vs. Novels

I might be better known as a novelist but I started out in short stories. I learned my craft writing to shorter lengths. While at the beginning my short stories were more like first chapters — which is how eventually The Sisters Mederos and Fog Season came into existence — eventually I learned how to structure a story within a framework so that each story had a defined beginning, middle, and end.

A short story is not simply a condensed novel, nor is a novel an elongated short story. While structure varies, a short story has a definite shape and conclusion. This is why, I think, that short stories are a better fit for a film adaptation than most novels, because screenplays have a defined structure and shape too. It’s not that films can’t be epic and long, but shorts share more in common with scripts than novels do.

Elements of short stories

Shorts have certain features. These aren’t rules, per se, as in the hands of any author, these features can be mixed and matched in different combinations.

A defined idea. A short story generally covers one main idea. In science fiction that is often a what if? concept, but it can be anything. One of my favorite short stories of all time is Chris Adrian’s “A Tiny Feast.” What if a modern child is stolen by fairies?A focused series of events. Short stories can be huge in scope but are limited in space, so they keep the things that happen to a minimum. “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin has vast implications, but it’s narrow, focal point ends up — well, where it ends up, a single focused beam of light on a single individual.An ending. Short stories don’t leave unfinished business — unless the unfinished business is the focus. There are no open endings, no room for sequels. The ending may be a twist, it may go back to the beginning, or it may resolve in another unexpected but entirely possible in the world of the story sort of way, but there’s always an ending. Setups and payoffs. Chekhov’s gun states that a gun on the mantel in the first act must be fired in the third. Imagery, dialog, characters, location, movement, motivation — all of these elements must come together at the end, with no last-minute introduction of something new. Everything in the world of the story should be used by the end. Elements of novels

Although it may seem like the most important feature of a novel is its length, that’s not really true. Similarly, a novel isn’t defined by its grand cast of characters or locations, or ideas. There are small, focused novels out there.

Scope. A novel is broad in the way a short story is not. It can take a focused idea — a what if — and put it in a greater context.Characters. A novel has the space to explore different characters and their motivations and actions. A novelist can put their main character in play, and have them interact with all the characters in the book. Exploration. There’s room for exploration in a novel. Even novelists who outline first can expand on their ideas within a novel.Open ended. Even novels that don’t necessarily have sequels can be more open-ended than stories. Having said that, a novel like a short story should feel complete. There’s just more scope in the way a reader closes the book. My Short Stories

My stories are a pretty eclectic bunch. My science fiction short stories include “Spider,” “Murder on the Hohmann,” and “Joe Fledge’s Jump.” My fantasy shorts include “A Prayer for Captain La Hire” and “Theo Ballinchard and the Oranges of Possibility.” And I write horror too — “Caro Comes Home” and “The Star Seed Witches Meet at Midnight.”

Some of them start with a what if or an idea. What if there was a murder on a space vessel traveling between Mars and Earth? What if humans evolve to live in hard vacuum?

Some of them start with a vibe: can a monster love? (“Caro Comes Home”)

Some of them start with an opening line. Theo Ballinchard’s complicated opening paragraph sprang fully formed into the world, and the rest of the story poured out.

Creating a Short Story Collection

Not everything went in. That’s the first thing to know. My very first sale, “The Warlord and the Princess,” didn’t make the cut. I love that story. I learned so much from writing it. I love the whole pulp feel of it. The characters, the plot, the resolution — I lived and dreamed that story. Maybe I’ll re-publish it on the blog — it was one of the first posts that I created. But it had its time.

There were a number of stories like that. “Memories of Gravity,” which was part of the “Spider”/”Murder on the Hohmann” world, also didn’t make it in. I love that story. I wanted to write a science fiction gothic romance and by golly I did. It’s available in the Mammoth Book of Futuristic Romance and it’s well worth the read. I feel like I channeled Victoria Holt the whole way through.

“More to Glory” was one of those stories that made me so happy when I wrote it. It landed in the Low Port anthology, and I am so proud of it. (And hey, it might be a collector’s item!)

Maybe they will make it in the next collection.

Then there was the matter of putting the stories in order. I knew what I wanted to end on, and I knew what I wanted to begin with. I organized and ordered the stories in a way that felt right to me, like putting together a puzzle. The editor may have other ideas, but the point is, one doesn’t simply throw a collection together.

And finally, the title of the collection — I’m not sure. What do you all think? Let me know in the comments.

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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.

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Emilie and the Hollow World

The YA steampunk novel from Martha Wells (Books of the Raksura), published by Strange Chemistry, does something that nowadays is absolutely extraordinary: its main character, a teenage girl, does not have a love interest.

I repeat: This is a YA fantasy without a romance.

Where’s the confetti? This deserves confetti!

And I for one welcome this brave new foray into YA for young adults.

What happened? When did it become the norm for YA to have a love story, or more specifically a love triangle with the girl at the apex? Now, some are actually good — the Hunger Games and the Iron Fey series come to mind (you-know-what will not be mentioned by name in this post) — so it’s not that. It’s just that it has become so formulaic. It was as if a girl couldn’t have an adventure unless she had a boyfriend.

See, I think girls in real life are smarter and more adventurous than that. I know girls who are athletes and scholars and rock climbers  and volunteer in their community and play in bands and make art. So why are girls in fantasy literature unable to go off on an adventure without having a crush on a boy to guide their choices? And that’s the crux — the romance is the chief conflict, rather than the story, and it drives the girl’s action. Why can’t she make decisions based on other factors?

As it happens, romantic relationships are just one kind of relationship. Fantasy of all genres should be willing to explore all sorts of connections that people have. One of the biggest failures of the book that shall not be named is the way friendship between girls is portrayed. It’s false, competitive, and ugly and so completely unlike any real friendships real teens actually have.

Now, this is not to say that fantasy YA should absolutely portray normal girls in normal conflicts having normal lives — for one thing, even mainstream YA shouldn’t do that, and fantasy YA by definition is going to have more excitement and boldness, in which personal relationships are not going to be portrayed in muted color, in which magic and adventure and passion are all going to be present and accounted for.

And maybe there is romance. Maybe the fun and excitement of first love and new love should be part of a new world where magic is part of everyday. But it shouldn’t have to be.

So here’s to more Emilies. They harken back to an earlier time of girls lit, when books for girls were about relationships but they were also about honor, family, duty, goodness — you know, the stuff we don’t mention anymore. Anne Shirley, Jo March, so many fantastic girls who have lived on for a hundred years or more. Maybe there’s a new age of YA fantasy dawning, in which girls could have adventures and find their talents and make steadfast friends and save the world — and they wouldn’t have to have a wedding at the end of it.

That would be pretty magical, wouldn’t it?

Emilie and the Hollow World, by Martha Wells

Published by Strange Chemistry

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Obituary for a man who never lived

Obituary. Mike Cole

Mike Cole was a jack-of-all-trades turned successful businessman, who turned a small moving and hauling company started with one truck into a publicly traded behemoth, Mike Cole Shipping. He loved his friends, his fiends, and good food, and resembled a half-Irish, half-Italian James Gandolfini. He was proudest of his Italian meatballs and cheesies, and would foist them off on perfect strangers at the slightest provocation.

After suffering years of pain from a debilitating car crash, which exacerbated back pain caused by being a one-man shipping and moving business in his early years, Mike Cole shot himself yesterday. He was 57.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At Mike’s ex-wife’s apartment after the funeral, a handful of us sat around and remembered Mike. Nancy, his ex-wife, and I hugged. She was a short, slightly plump woman in her 50s like me, and her short hair was frosted and highlighted and stood out from her head like a slightly madder Annie Lennox. Even though she’d been crying, her eye makeup was still intact. We’d met a few times before, but we didn’t know each other well. Mike had never re-married, and it was just like him to stay good friends with his ex. And I guess it was just like her, too.

“Did I ever tell you how Mike and I met?” I told her, sniffling. We’d been trading Mike stories all night. “We were at Other Nancy’s place, and finding out how much we had in common. ‘Oh, you’re half-Italian too? Here’s my recipe for cheesies.’ I thought mine was the only family that made cheesies. It was like finding a long-lost cousin.”

Other Nancy was Nancy Hightower, the writer and poet and teacher. See, Mike knew everybody.

“Mike loved to make those things. His were so good,” Nancy said. “Every time I tried to make them by myself, they were never as good.”

I resisted the urge to tell her that mine were better. You have to use dried basil. I’m sorry, the fresh is for pesto, but dried basil is for cheesies.

Pieta (Peeta) plopped down next to us.

“What’s going to happen to the company?” she said. “Is it going to close down?”

Pieta was in her 20s, still pretty unworldly. She looked unworldly too. Not as much as the gargoyle, who was her boyfriend, because she was human, but she looked elfish. Or Gelfin, maybe, with a neotonic face — big dark eyes, small nose, sweet mouth — and tousled dark hair. Like all of us, Mike had given her stock in his company when it went public.

“No, it’s public now. The board will find another CEO, and it will go on.”

“But how? Mike was that company.”

That was true. I’d have to keep better track of how the company did, and think about selling if it looked like it wasn’t going to recover from. Mike’s death.

Eventually the party broke up. Some of us went outside to the open biergarten,but it was still drizzling, and the tables were wet. The downspouts were making fools of themselves, opening their big mouths and blurping water all over each other. This made the gargoyle laugh like a little kid, but it just depressed me, and I wanted to go home.

Pieta had to go to work, and so the gargoyle got a ride with me, so we walked across the biergarten, which was huge, and half of it was covered, to the parking garage. It was dark now, twilight turning to night, which was just as well, because the gargoyle, well, he’s a gargoyle.

The gargoyle isn’t like a demon. He’s actually more of a ghastly cherub. In his human form, he looks like a mean little kid, with blond-brown curls. He walks funny with bowlegs, and when he talks it’s like a mean little kid talking. In human form he affects a jean jacket and cowboy boots.

I carry him, because it’s hard for him to keep up, so it looks like I’m carrying a toddler between the tables, and people smile at us. The gargoyle smiles back and people stare in shock.

A lady with a bunch of kids and a stack of pizza boxes accosts us just before I reach the car.

“We’re selling pizza,” the kids say. “You can buy some and won’t have to cook tonight.”

“No thanks,” I say. I shift the gargoyle to the other hip.

“We should get some,” the gargoyle says.

“No. Dude, you ate and drank at Nancy’s.”

“We have a special. Buy five boxes and get the sixth free,” says the lady.

“Who needs six boxes of pizza?!” I say. This is getting ridiculous.

“It’s a great deal,” says the gargoyle.

“No it’s not. It’s too much. No one can eat that much pizza.”

Why am I trying to reason with a gargoyle? We keep going without saying anything to the pizza dealers, and go and find my car.

It’s really dim. I’m waking up now, aware that it’s all been a dream. I can always tell when I’m dreaming. I guess because my eyes are closed, or something, but I never dream about daylight. I’m always walking in my dreams in twilight.

There’s no car. There’s no gargoyle. There’s no pizza.

There’s no Mike Cole.

RIP, Mike Cole. I would have liked to have been friends with you.

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Julie Weissbaum, is that you?

Note: I wrote this story when The Force Awakens came out. I was reminded of  it when The Last Jedi opened. I have a feeling I’ll be reposting this in a few months when the Han Solo movie makes its entrance. Sometimes the past hurts, but who doesn’t want to be 8 years old again and enthralled by a fictional world?

Shamelessly lifted from NASA’s Hubble page.

The minute Bryce saw the girl at Andy’s party, she reminded him of someone, but he couldn’t think of who. She had full red lips, horn-rimmed glasses, big boobs filling out her Galaxy Force T-shirt, a polka dot skirt, tights, and chunky boots. The T-shirt was the one with Bram and Mikala on it, the one that all the girls wore, and by that Bryce knew the girl wasn’t even worth quizzing on her geek bona fides. She was perched on the edge of a long sectional sofa at one end of the living room, and he, Tim, and Andy were all at the other end, near the hall. It was crowded, the buzz of conversation rising over and falling under the game noise from a bunch of people playing their hearts out on Rock Band.

He turned back to Tim and Andy. Tim was going on.

“The first thing I thought was, this wasn’t for me,” Tim was saying. “I get that director is the new it boy in Hollywood, but once he got his hands on it, I knew he was going to sex it up. All those new characters — like, who cares? Diversity, blah — how about a good story? I’m there to see Bram, the Hunter-Killers, and the Gradiant wormhole drivers. As soon as I saw the trailer, I knew how it was going to be — fucking studio would rape my childhood.”

That’s who the girl reminded him of — Julie. They were friends in elementary school. He and Julie were in a gang of kids who ran around at recess playing Galaxy Force, making pew pew noises and fighting the Hunter-Killers with their Inspirare powers.

Tim again:  “I was like, did they even watch the original movies?”

Was it Julie? That would be cool — weird, he corrected himself. Just weird. They stopped being friends in middle school and didn’t talk in high school at all. He’d heard she went on to do cool stuff. He turned around to look, just in time to see the girl laugh at something another girl was saying. For a second Tim’s drone stopped, and he could hear their conversation.

“…liked how they connected the pulsing of the quasar to a message from the Inspirare.”

“A pulsing beacon in a dark time,” the Julie-girl agreed. “They were saying that kind actions reverberate down through the universe and turn into powerful energy. I liked how Jess tapped into that at the end, that the energy from Bram and Mikala’s sacrifice a hundred years ago was what gave his Inspirare force the right amount of power to crush the last Hunter-Killer.”

Sensing competition, Tim raised his voice. “They couldn’t get the door sounds right, and what was the point of redoing the insignia on the Hunter-Killer uniforms? It was like they changed stuff up just to change it. And come on, was there any reason for Jess to be black?”

Bryce rolled his eyes. Tim didn’t see it, but she did, and she gave him a conspiratorial wink. Bryce turned his back with a jerk, sloshing his Coke, but not before he saw her bright expression, her friendly smile, inviting him in to join their conversation. God, he was tempted.

Tim pressed on louder, now that he knew they were all looking at him. “The whole Inspirare explanation was so tortured too. If you’ve seen any of the Extended Mythos universe, you’d know all that, so why pander to newbies? That’s all it was — just a way to give a bunch of people who don’t know anything about the original movies a way to feel like they’re part of something too.”

If the Julie-girl and her friends recognized the challenge, they didn’t take it, moving over to the PS3.

“Bryce,” Tim said, scorn in his voice. Bryce looked at him. Tim raised an eyebrow. “Her?”

Rage boiled over. Bryce set down his sickly sweet Coke. “Fuck you, Tim,” he said. “Door sounds? Door sounds?”

“What? What crawled up your ass?”

#

Bryce drove home, seething. Fuck you, Tim, he thought again. Not for the first time, he realized. Tim was an asshole. Yeah, they liked the same things and they worked in the same industry, and they ran in the same circles but …

I’ve spent too many years letting that be a basis for a friendship.

Had it been her? Julie was cool. Had been cool. They had been friends. They hadn’t just run with the same gang. She came over to his house. They were what, eight? They played with his Galaxy Force action figures. His dad and his brothers teased him about his girlfriend, so after a couple of times he didn’t play with her at the house, but they had remained friends.

Had they?

He remembered telling her that she couldn’t come over any more. It was all kind of confusing, because her expression got mixed up with the face of the girl at the party, but a gut-wrenching punch of shame hit him when he remembered telling his best friend that she couldn’t play with him anymore.

#

His apartment was quiet and empty. He flicked on the hall light, and his tableau of Bram, Mikala, Atoma, and Hunter-Killer action figures greeted him from a small alcove. These were the same action figures he and Julie used to play with. They were chipped and messed up, far from mint, but they were comforting and familiar. They brought an unwilling smile.

“Some things don’t change,” he said out loud. Silence answered him back.

Brushing his teeth, staring at himself in the mirror, he thought about the new sequel. Tim wasn’t wrong, he admitted. They weren’t eight years old and the new movie wasn’t meant for them. It was meant for the new crop of eight-year-olds, for the ones who got the lesson of the Inspirare Force and took it to heart better than he had done. Tim was angry because he got the right message. Their movie was irrelevant; their memories didn’t matter anymore.

He and Julie hadn’t just stopped being friends in middle school. He stopped brushing his teeth. He had been sitting with two or three other outcasts in the middle school cafeteria, a frightened herd of tiny deer surrounded by lions. Julie had walked up with her tray, and she gave Bryce a desperate smile, and he saw the same things in her that he had already learned to despise in himself — pathetic eagerness, weird clothes, stupid hair, stupid food on her tray, stupid stupid stupid Galaxy Force T-shirt and he hated her for everything he was.

So he made a sixth-grade joke about her boobs.

#

Don’t do it, he told himself, even as he checked on Facebook. Don’t stalk her, man. You are fucking pathetic. There were eleven Julie Weissbaums. He went through them, ticking off the obvious no’s. Finally he was left with one. The profile was locked down tight and the picture was of a cat but he had no other choice. Even knowing that his message would get lost in the Facebook system, that there was no way she’d ever see it, he sent a friend request and typed,

Hey, it’s Bryce Olean. Was that you at Andy’s party last night?

He hit send before he lost his nerve, and then spent the rest of the night castigating himself and trying to convince himself that there was no way the message would be seen. She doesn’t want to hear from you, man. You were an asshole back in the day. She’s not even the right girl, and it doesn’t matter how much you want to apologize.

Lying in bed in the dark, only small power lights shining as bright and useless pinpoints that illuminated nothing, Bryce stared up at the ceiling. He remembered when Bram first learned about the Inspirare Force from Atoma, the wise mentor:

“Do you think only great deeds have the power to fight darkness? Not so. Helping hand at the right time can do more to save the world than all the great deeds in the galaxy. Hero without kindness is Hunter-Killer. But hero who sacrifices for what is right and good can change the universe.”

Bryce woke with a jerk. He had been dreaming so vividly he thought he was back in his childhood bedroom, curled up in his small bunkbed with his Galaxy Force bedspread crumpled over him. He breathed hard, trying to remember where he was, eyes tight shut to hold onto the memory. A light pulsed steadily against his closed eyes, and he opened them reluctantly.

Silent, steady, the message light on his phone blinked on and off, on and off.

The End

@Copyright Patrice Sarath 2016

 

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Last-minute book gift ideas for the holiday season

With the holiday shopping season upon us, here’s the only last-minute gift-giving guide you’ll need for the book-lovers in your life. Audio, e-books, and a bonus short story included!

The Unexpected Miss Bennet

For the Jane Austen fan in your life. They’ve read every sequel and watched every movie and they love all things Austen. So get them The Unexpected Miss Bennet, the sequel they probably haven’t read, because it just hasn’t broken out the way some of the other sequels have. Mary Bennet gets her own story, y’all. The fans of The Unexpected Miss Bennet have spoken. I’ve linked here to the audio version, because the narrator is to die for, and the print edition is a lovely gift as well.

The Sisters Mederos and Fog Season

The Sisters Mederos and Fog Season, aka the Tales of Port Saint Frey, are what happens when a Jane Austen fan who also loves fantasy combines her two loves into books of action, adventure, nefarious housemaids, and a dead guy in a dumbwaiter. Your bookish friends will love to curl up with a cup of tea on a long dark winter’s night with these books.

Bonus: If you like these stories, pick up a copy of ParSec Magazine, in which my short story, “Theo Ballinchard and the Oranges of Possibility” relates the origin story of the distaff side of the Mederos family. Hint: They’ve always been a bit shady. But the best families always are, dear.

The Books of the Gordath

Ah, Gordath Wood, Red Gold Bridge, and The Crow God’s Girl. My portal fantasies with horses are still making fans. I’ve had people write that they stayed up way too late reading just one more chapter, which makes a writer’s heart glow. These fantasies are just the thing for the reader who wants to escape into another world. And what reader doesn’t want that?

So there you have it. A quick and easy (and painless!) gift guide to the books that the reader in your life has probably not read but that will make them very happy. Happy holidays from Texas and stay safe and warm!

The post Last-minute book gift ideas for the holiday season first appeared on Patrice Sarath.

Top 5 Tips for NanoWriMo 2022

Can a NanoWriMo skeptic change their mind about the annual hootenanny of word count over writing quality? Maybe, maybe not. I’ll admit that my stance has certainly softened over the years. Evolved, even, as illustrated by the change in attitude in my most recent post about NaNo from a few years ago.

But as you NanoWriMo diehards prepare to take up your keyboards on November 1, I know I can’t change your minds. Whether this is your first or your fifty-first (how long has this thing been going on, anyway?), you are in it to win it (50,000 words on November 30).

So here are my Top 5 Tips for NanoWriMo 2022.

My writing space — a whole lot of novels have been written at this desk. None of which have been written during NaNoWriMo.1. Identify Your Story Elements

Every novel and short story consists of the same elements. Characters, plot, setting. That’s it. It’s like bread – flour, salt, yeast. Sounds easy, but if it were easy, everyone could do it, right? This is still my original argument against NanoWriMo, by the way – it reduces writing to a gimmick. But here we are, so let’s get started.

Character

The main character, or protagonist, is the one driving the story. They are the ones who make the decisions and have the desires that set the plot in motion. Every decision the character makes has a result, and that result has consequences, and those consequences are the plot. A novel also includes other characters, including the antagonist, who also sets the plot in motion, by thwarting the protagonist, or simply by wanting different things.

The desires, motivations, and needs of the character create the plot.

Plot

A plot consists of the story’s events, which combine together into a character’s progress. However, events aren’t random. They are borne of choices the character makes, which come out of a character’s essential being. Each event hangs together with the others that came before it and influences those that come after.

A plot sounds easy. Stuff happens, the character does stuff, and then there are enough events, and the writer gets to the end. But plot is not just one damn thing after another. Plot is the connective tissue that combines character and setting and gives it all meaning.

Setting

The interesting thing about setting is that it is so mutable. No matter your genre – science fiction, contemporary thriller, gothic romance, or big fat fantasy  — when you have strong characters driving a plot, your story can have any setting you want and it will work.

But setting is also a source of opportunity. World-building is a fascinating part of writing. You won’t have a lot of time to do a bunch of worldbuilding if you are cranking out 1,500 words per day. That’s where rewriting comes in, and yes, you will have to rewrite. For now though, sketch in your setting, and think of some telling details to help round things out. Big grand descriptions are less effective than these small details, especially when they reveal how characters interact with their world. Don’t use setting as a crutch to get word count in, is what I’m saying.

2. Develop a Rough Outline

I can guarantee there are people out there who have spent the six months before November 1 building an outline of their story. They’ve created characters, genealogies, world and city maps, identified artifacts, come up with events, character motivations, secret histories, and more.

The rest of us sit down in front of a blank page with a character name and a vibe (If we’re lucky. Sometimes we only have a character – or a vibe). That’s not going to be enough. Even I, a dedicated non-outliner, need more than that.

Start with a rough outline. Take your character and your vibe, and sketch out a tiny bit of a backstory. As you write, keep that nugget in front of you. The more you adhere to the little bit you know about your character, the more they will reveal themselves to you. You’ll build on that character by the actions.

And this next part is crucial – at the end of each writing session, jot some notes down to tell you where you need to go for the next day. A pro tip from the likes of Mark Twain and Anton Chekhov – stop in the middle of a sentence so you know where to pick up the next day.

3. Write Every Day

That’s a no brainer, right? That’s the whole point of this thing. But the trick is not to try to write 1,500 words each day. That’s just counterproductive. They will be really bad words and bad writing and bad storytelling. Also, let’s say you write 1,500 words per day for 30 days, which gets you 50,000 words – and so what? At best, you’ll have 50,000 words of crap to edit and it’s not even a full novel. You’ll probably hate all of those words because they suck and you’ll never want to write again. It’s not just me saying it, as this Time Magazine article from 2012 points out.

So how about this – write every day. 15 words is still more words than you had the day before. Probably you’ll get at least 100. And you won’t hate your writing. I mean, there’s a point at which every writer hates their writing, but that’s a normal thing, not a NaNo thing.

Try not to edit as you go, either. Pretend like once each word is typed, it’s out of your hands. Oh well, tell yourself, can’t do anything about that now. Make little breadcrumb notes in the manuscript reminding you to go back and change things later, but then move forward.

4. Stay Human

Why on Earth the founders of NanoWriMo decided November was the right month for this crazy contest is beyond me. It’s only 30 days. There’s a major holiday and the run up to an even more major holiday at the end. So there are going to be days and weeks that you don’t write. And also, the whole idea of “winning NaNo” assumes that people “lose NaNo,” and that’s just mean. Don’t be mean to yourself. Again, whether you’ve done this before or this is your first time, this is a huge endeavor.

This is where writing 15 words on the days when you just can’t is a win. And I mean that. Don’t let NaNo make you feel bad about yourself and your writing.

5. Write on December 1

Look at you! You made it! It’s November 30 and you have a certain amount of words that you didn’t have before. Congratulations. So now I’m going to advise my final and hardest tip.

Write on December 1. I know, it sounds crazy, you feel like you deserve a rest, but the fact is, writing is a long game. It requires consistent effort. The real work happens when the gimmick is over.

Look, I know that I sound like a party pooper, but the thing is, I love writing, even when it’s hard. It’s a hard craft to learn and to master. My criticisms of NanoWriMo have always been that it makes light of the work that writers put in. It confuses writing with typing and quantity over quality.

Do you want to be a writer or do you want to do NaNo? If you want to do NaNo, fine. Have fun – and I mean that.

But if you want to be a writer, then write on December 1.

To NaNo or Not to NaNo

I don’t plan to do NaNo this year. My writers’ group had an August NaNo (which honestly, people, makes so much more sense – it has 31 freaking days! No holidays!) and I’m finishing up that project. So I’ll be writing in November.

Just like any other month.

Let me know how you did with these tips. And by the way – they work in the other eleven months of the year too.

Happy writing!

Note: If you like this article, please let me know in the comments field or my contact page. And feel free to browse the stories in the Anthology and Novel Excerpts pages. I hope you like what you read!

The post Top 5 Tips for NanoWriMo 2022 first appeared on Patrice Sarath.

How to Write a Jane Austen Novel

Jane Austen will never go out of style. Her most famous six novels, written over 250 years ago, are timeless illustrations of life and love. Most people who read Austen read her books as love stories; nothing wrong with that, although not all of them are romances, as I discuss in my series, The Six: An Analysis of Jane Austen’s Novels.

There’s Something About Jane Austen

Nowadays when I read Austen, and I reread her books regularly, it’s less for the courtship of our main characters and more for the glimpse into their lives. I love the depiction of family and child-raising in Persuasion. I love the depiction of village life in Emma. I love the harsh realities of what it means to be a woman and poor in a highly stratified society in Sense & Sensibility and also in Emma. I love the keen wit that delineates the consequences of a very bad marriage in Pride & Prejudice. And no, I don’t just mean Lydia – I mean Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. I adore the modern YA storytelling in Northanger Abbey. And when it comes to humor, Mansfield Park, considered to be Austen’s stodgiest novel, has unexpected glimmers of comedy along with a very serious topic – the corrupting influence of slavery on slaveholders.

All of this – gestures at above paragraph – is why there are hundreds of Jane Austen sequels, prequels, retellings, spin offs, knockoffs, pastiches, and homages. Shoot – this is a time-honored tradition. Read Louisa May Alcott’s An Old-Fashioned Girl and you’ll see why I think Alcott rewrote Mansfield Park for an American audience.

My novel The Unexpected Miss Bennet (the most excellent audio edition here) was born from the same impulse. What about Mary? What was her life like? And there are so many Mary stories now, because we all love Mary Bennet.

The Unexpected Miss Bennet — my story about Mary and Mr. Aikens.

This is why, also, I really liked the Persuasion adaptation with Dakota Jackson. Yeah, it’s been ridiculously modernized, but they get at the crux of the story, which is not just love and loss and second chances, but also how our families drive us nuts, and you come away with the impression that Jane Austen knew as much about that as she does about love and loss and second chances.

Writing a Jane Austen Novel

Maybe because Jane Austen left behind such a small body of work (The Six, plus a few fragments and novellas), authors have room to explore the world she left behind.

Want to write a Jane Austen novel? Here are some tips.

Be Modern Like Jane Austen

Part of the reason Austen has such lasting influence is because she writes about universal emotions and recognizable characters. When I say Catherine Morland could be transported into a modern YA novel, I mean it. Catherine is a teenage girl, and she acts like one.

 Be modern also means using modern language. Here are some lines from Jane Austen:

Mansfield Park, when Mrs. Norris comes away from a visit with extras she’s cadged from the housekeeper:“What else have you been spunging?” said Maria.

Persuasion, when the young ladies are gossiping in Bath:

“She is pretty, I think; Anne Elliot; very pretty, when one comes to look at her. It is not the fashion to say so, but I confess I admire her more than her sister.”

“Oh! so do I.”

“And so do I. No comparison. But the men are all wild after Miss Elliot. Anne is too delicate for them.”

These are just a few examples of dialog. They could have been written now, especially the no comparison line.

Austen is also so modern when she’s writing about her characters, their concerns and motivations, and the delicious little plot moments that make me cackle with glee.

John Thorpe’s very bad driving in Northanger Abbey. We’ve been there. Stuck in a car with a bad date, whose driving is, shall we say, nowhere near as good as he thinks it is.The conversations that Anne Eliot has with her sister and her sister’s in-laws about who exactly is spoiling the children.

(I could pretty much quote Persuasion for this entire post. Austen knocks this one out of the park. And if you think the baseball metaphor is anachronistic, well, read  the beginning of Northanger Abbey.)

Write Character Like Austen

Jane Austen never wrote a one-dimensional character, even the ones we don’t have many clues to. Mary Crawford, the “bad girl” of Mansfield Park, has an intriguing backstory. “Of Rears and Vices, I saw enough.”  Or so she tells us. Mary immediately tells us this isn’t a pun, but we all know it’s a pun, and it tells us a few things about Mary.

She’s got sexual experience and awareness, which is social death in her time and place – and quite frankly, in ours too. It sure would be nice maybe to have a nice guy like Edmund to marry. Respectability of course, security, which is always necessary for women, and a chance to put her past behind her. A girl who has been subjected to the worst of men might just like a nice guy. Mary is set up to be a villain, because she and Fanny are romantic rivals, but that little pun – that pun is what makes me feel a bit for Mary. Also, she’s smart, and funny, and a little bit mean, and she needs to have her own story. You’re welcome. 

By the way, there are a ton of fabulous characters in Mansfield Park. The entire Bertram family is a dysfunctional trainwreck, and then there’s Fanny’s first family in Portsmouth. I mean the whole thing is ready made for a sequel because Fanny’s little sister Susan takes on the companion role.

I wish more people read Mansfield Park. It’s tough, I grant you, but I think when it comes to Austen’s masterpieces, it’s a very close second to Emma.

Jane Austen’s World – the Little Details Matter

Remember John Thorpe’s terrible driving? Opportunities shine in those little details. When writing a Jane Austen novel, whether it’s a modernization or a sequel, find your own little details. This is good advice when writing your own stories too, actually.

These telling details are what makes stories come alive. They are how characters interact with their world.

Sometimes this requires the dreaded R word – research. And yeah, research can be complicated. But other times, it just means stopping and thinking about how something might translate into the story you’re creating. This is why I advise people to look past the marriage plot and really explore the details that Austen puts in all of her novels.

Speaking of the marriage plot…

Jane Austen and the Marriage Plot

Austen may not have invented the marriage plot (although I might place good money that she did), but she sure perfected it. There really can’t be an Austenesque novel without romance.

So how to write a great Austenesque romance? It all starts with characters.

Lizzy is flawed.Catherine is innocent.Emma is proud.Marianne is dutiful.Fanny is a crier (frankly, she’s exasperating). Anne is wounded.

A flawed heroine requires a hero who loves her in spite of or because of her flaws. And the hero also needs a few chinks in his armor.

Darcy is shy. (Yep. Sure, he’s proud and full of himself, but he doesn’t dance with strange girls. He’s shy.)Henry Tilney is sad and frightened. (He and his sister only have each other. His father and brother are dreadful. And he misses his mother a lot. Maybe that’s why he loves Catherine — she’s so normal.)Mr. Knightley is stern. (Look, it’s an icky dynamic, but it works for them, okay? Don’t judge.)Edward Ferrars wants to be liked.Edmund Betram. Hypocrite.Captain Wentworth. Passionate. Okay, also carries a grudge, but he’s human about it, so he forgives Anne. (I might be biased, but damn, that letter…)

When writing a romance, the characters’ chemistry is the most important quality. Romances also require best friends (Charlotte Lucas anyone?), misunderstandings, villains and rivals, twists and turns, disapproving aunts, obstacles that keep our lovers apart, until it’s time for them to get together.

Write Your Own Adventure – er, Jane Austen Novel

There! All of the elements of a Jane Austen novel, in one place. Whether you are writing a retelling or a sequel, a prequel or a spinoff, remember these things – flawed characters, relatable stories, dialog, and plots, and romance and chemistry. Have fun and happy writing!

The post How to Write a Jane Austen Novel first appeared on Patrice Sarath.

Petrichor and Ozone — Live at Gingerbread House Magazine

Quick post to say that my short story “Petrichor and Ozone” is up at Gingerbread House Magazine. This is my second appearance in their stunning, beautifully designed journal. I recommend you all head over there and drink in the beauty.

Artwork : Yuumei, Reclaim Website : https://www.yuumeiart.com/

The post Petrichor and Ozone — Live at Gingerbread House Magazine first appeared on Patrice Sarath.