Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 104

On the total world-domination of workshopped fiction

That’s the subtitle of this post, which I found more interesting than the title itself. Here’s the title: How the MFA swallowed literature

This is a post by Eric Hoel, whom I’ve started looking in on now and then because Scott Alexander pointed out his blog fairly recently.

I am not, as you probably know, particularly interested in literary fiction. Nevertheless, this title and subtitle caught my eye. I’m not a hundred percent sure what “workshopped fiction” is. Let me google that … nothing. Okay, then, I assume this is a term used for fiction that is written by MFA students (or graduates?); fiction that has to make it through a serious critique group … maybe I should say, a critique group of serious writers … in order to move on toward traditional publication. Or something like that. If anyone is familiar with this term, please chime in.

Hoel writes:

One might think the overwhelming popularity of writers getting MFAs in creative writing would lead to an explosion of writer’s writers, for now almost all writers enter “The Program” at some point in their lives, either as students, teachers, or moonlighters. Instead, a new breed has arisen: the “workshop writer,” whose prose is oriented toward the academy. Is it too obvious to say this has fundamentally changed contemporary novels, and, in its totality, this change has not been for the better? …

He is definitely talking only about the genre of literary fiction. That becomes explicit in the post. Hoel is writing, with concern, of the lack of modern literary writers who are truly household names. Well, I don’t care. It is, however, interesting to me that someone who does care is making this observation. I mean, here is a fascinating observation Hoel makes:

Nowadays most literary success is within the context of the academy. And this has consequences. For if avoiding criticism in a writers’ workshop is your priority, then you’ll need to minimize your novel’s attack surface! … Workshop-trained writers are often, not always, but often, intrinsically defensive. This single fact explains almost all defining features of contemporary literature. What you’re looking at on the shelf are not so much books as battlements. …

Now THAT is interesting! I will note here that Hoel is the one who some time ago wrote a post about predictions for what US society might look like in 2050 and specifically predicted — boring! Bland! To minimize the risk of being attacked by The Mob of the Offended. Look around, Hoel said, this is not just happening, it has already happened! I wonder if this perception of what’s going on in literary fiction drove that prediction.

I have no opinion regarding Hoel’s correctness or wrongheadedness. I’m just interested in his perception of a possible phenomenon. I am, however, also glad that as an author of SFF, it never mattered a whit whether I had an MFA or any other degree.

To the extent Hoel is correct, I wonder whether this phenomenon is pushing writers who have no interest in writing defensively away from literary and into other genres. Here I’m thinking of literary/SFF novels, such as Station Eleven — which I really enjoyed, by the way; here’s a review (not mine) — and In the Country of Ice Cream Star — which I admired very much but did not exactly enjoy. That one is my review.

Station Eleven came out in 2014. Ice Cream Star came out in 2015. That is after the period that Hoel considers problematic. He’s talking about literary authors prior to about 2007 and those after, so these would belong to the second group. They are anything but “defensive.” If the authors moved into SFF-adjacent worldbuilding, that certainly worked for them.

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Very Best Dragons in Fantasy Novels

Okay, I’m sure I’ve put together lists of dragons from time to time, but I saw some tweet or something that asked plaintively, “Can someone suggest great dragons”, and of course I immediately thought YES.

I love dragons (doesn’t everyone?) and have included dragons as plot elements or characters in … hmm … well, quite a few of my books. Let me count them quickly — The City in the Lake, The Floating Islands, The Keeper of the Mist (wyverns, but lets not be picky); Winter of Ice and Iron — those are more plot elements than characters, though in the first two, a dragon does speak once or twice. House of Shadows — I’d say that dragon is both a plot elements and a character.

Only five! It feels like more. Oh, there is one more, come to think of it — the beautiful dragons in “Lila,” the story in Beyond the Dreams We Know. I’m not sure whether that’s my favorite story in the collection. To be perfectly honest, I do think that all the stories in this collection are good, which makes it hard to pick one out as my personal favorite. If not “Lila,” it might be “Audition.” It’s truly hard for me to choose!

But back to dragons. Not just great dragons, but great novels. No evil dragons in this list, because I prefer non-evil dragons. They don’t need to be nice, however. Just not evil. Let me see. All right, this time I’m going to try to put these dragons in rough order, with my favorite at the end of the list.

10) Dragon Bones / Dragon Blood by Patricia Briggs. This is a dragon in human form. (Sort of in human form.) Later, we do see him as a dragon. I like this duology quite a bit. I like the friendship between the protagonist and the dragon. There are plenty of good characters and neat situations. If anybody’s read her Paranormal Mercy Thompson series, but hasn’t tried her secondary world fantasy, well, here you go, you might give this duology a try. Vice versa too; you probably know that it was the Mercy Thompson series that made me take a stab at my own werewolf series. Despite quibbles with later books, I still like this series a lot.

9) Dragon Keeper and that whole series by Robin Hobb. For me, Robin Hobb can be hit or miss. Sometimes her characters can be so horrifically stupid and incompetent that I can hardly stand it, or so unpleasant I can hardly stand it, or both. Her pacing is often slow, which in this case doesn’t necessarily appeal to me even though I don’t mind slower books in general. But I liked this series a lot. Nearly all the characters are quite appealing, we don’t get extensive villain points of view, the villains basically all get what they have coming to them, the good guys get their lives in order, and oh, oops, dragons, nearly extinct at the beginning of the story, suddenly become the dominant species of the world. Not sure the humans exactly realize this, but yep. The dragons are not remotely the special magic telepathic friends we see all over in fantasy novels. They are not, in fact, very friendly. They most certainly have their own desires and imperatives and aren’t very interested in what humans think about that. I liked this because I’m not keen on the special magic friend style of fantasy creature.

8) A Natural History of Dragons and that whole series by Marie Brennan

Blessed with amazing cover art and also nice interior art, so this is a great series to get in paper rather than ebook format. The dragons here are very much natural animals. Studying them is like studying tigers, only even more dangerous. I love, love, love the way Marie Brennan handled this series; it’s quite remarkable if you’ve read any accounts written by real-world naturalists in the 1800s or early 1900s because Brennan captures the feel of those expeditions, toned down a bit for modern sensibilities. An interesting through-line results in a startling conclusion that you can’t see coming in the first book. At least, I sure didn’t see it coming that early.

7) Temeraire and at least part of that series by Naomi Novik. Temeraire is a lot more like your special magic friend than some of the dragons above. I like him a lot, but the devotion of dragons to their human riders is not my favorite thing in fiction. On the other hand, the bratty fire-breathing dragon is such a total brat that I despise her, even though she is not nearly so willing to do what her person wants. Also, the worldbuilding does set my teeth on edge a bit because the dragons and how they fit into human society is so ecologically impossible. I loved the first book, liked the series less as it continued, and haven’t read the last three or so. I believe some of you have mentioned that they are better than some of the middle installments?

6) Dragonhaven by Robin McKinley, which amazingly enough is a standalone. Readers either really enjoy this book or else they don’t. I do. I understand the negative comments some reviewers make, but I personally liked the voice, the protagonist, and the story itself. It’s very much slice-of-life fantasy that gets into the daily work of raising a tiny baby dragon.

5) Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly. Technically part of a series, but in this case I must strongly suggest that you may want to read only the first book. Barbara Hambly was apparently going through a tough patch when she wrote the other books in the series and they are grim grim grim. Not sure I put that strongly enough. They are HORRIFIC. Also, as I recall, they don’t really move the characters in ways that fit the first book. Seriously, I’m not kidding, the first book stands alone, while the others ought to be plastered with warning labels on every square inch of the cover.

However, Dragonsbane itself is excellent for a whole lot of reasons; plus I routinely reach for it when I want to demonstrate what I mean by a beginning that places the protagonist in the setting.

Also, not the first time I’ve said this, but the original Michael Whelan cover is so much better than the current cover.

Seriously, I’m not sure why this isn’t clear to publishers, but: if you have a Michael Whelan cover on any book, leave it there. Do not replace it. Whatever cover art you replace it with will inevitably be worse. I mean, look at this image! Who else could capture this ambiguity in the dragon’s feelings about the protagonist? Whelan captured it perfectly! A guy squaring off against a fire-breathing monster is NOTHING compared to the above cover.

4) Dealing with Dragons and that series by Patricia Wrede. These dragons are mostly people disguised as dragons, which as a rule I don’t care for. But the series is so delightful that I can’t help but make an exception. It’s a MG series, but very much worth a look for anyone. The whole series is totally charming.

3) Tea With the Black Dragon by RA MacAvoy. And yes, okay, I realize I’m stretching a point. Is Mayland Long really a dragon? Hard to be absolutely sure. But even if we never see proof that Long is a dragon … yeah, he’s a dragon. Also, this is an elegant and delightful short novel. I ought to have thought of it for my “perfect little fantasy novels” post, because it fits right in that category. It’s, let me see, 138 pp, says Amazon. Basically a novella; I hadn’t realized that.

2) Wings of Fire by Tui Sutherland. My favorite MG series! Almost no humans at all — every important character is a dragon. Beautifully written, fun to read, plotting that surprised me from time to time, basically I highly recommend this series. The first five form one plot arc; the second five form a second plot arc; I suppose the last five also form a plot arc, but I haven’t read those. Here are my comments about #6 through #10.

The Cygnet and the Firebird by Patricia McKillip. Unfortunately, the story does not really come to a satisfactory conclusion. On the other hand, this is probably my all-time favorite dragon. If you haven’t read this, you really must, just for the dragon. The first book — The Sorceress and the Cygnet — is not necessary for the second, but it’s beautiful and you should read it first because why not. Also, the ending is more of an ending, although admittedly it may leave you saying, “Wait, what happened?” I have to acknowledge that endings are not necessarily Patricia McKillip’s strength, but still! Her novels are so beautiful! And the dragon is great.

Did I point to your favorite dragons? If I missed one that you especially love, drop that in the comments!

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Grammatical paradox

This is funny:

Never ask a Spanish speaker how to spell the informal second person singular affirmative imperative of ‘salirle” 

The standard Spanish rules force the spelling of that word to be “salle”, but the pronunciation of the middle consonant to be [l]; meanwhile, though, the standard pronunciation rules would force one to pronounce “salle” with a [ʝ] (this is called “yeísmo”).

Thus, two existing prescriptions for the Spanish language, as laid out by the Royal Spanish Academy, conflict in the case of this word, and the Academy’s official guidance (as of their update on spelling from 2010) is that this word may be spoken, but must not be written, as there is no correct way to spell it. Some Spanish users have been known to spell it “sal-le”, anyway.

Hat tip to Scott Alexander at Astral Codex Ten. I’m getting a kick out of the idea of an official regulatory institution with the authority to declare that particular words must never be written down.

I bet every single commenter here immediately thought of other, much more exciting reasons a regulatory body might forbid words to be written down in a secondary world fantasy or alternate history novel. This idea is ramifying in all directions for me: I’m thing of a regulatory body that cautiously allows the introduction of certain words as their meanings solidify and they become safer to write down — things like that.

Many other possibly interesting links at the Astral Codex Ten post. Let me see, let me see … okay:

The giant fly is not all that disturbing. There are plenty of giant arthropods that are more alarming when unexpectedly encountered, including this giant centipede, which I find beautiful, by the way, but would not want to find unexpectedly in my tent when I woke up in the morning; and these giant cockroaches.

Also, an argument is apparently taking place between various researchers who think getting eight or more hours of sleep per night is/is not important, which is making me roll my eyes. Seriously, let’s consider the possibility that plenty of sleep is important for some people and much less important for other people and therefore your results may differ dramatically depending on unforeseen differences in your sample population. Speaking as someone who can almost always count on getting debilitating headaches if I don’t get enough sleep, I hereby reject out of hand any conclusion that getting plenty of sleep is unimportant across the board.

Also this great anecdote:

There is a curious story how Banach got his Ph.D. He was being forced to write a Ph.D. paper and take the examinations, as he very quickly obtained many important results, but he kept saying that he was not ready and perhaps he would invent something more interesting. At last the university authorities became nervous. Somebody wrote down Banach’s remarks on some problems, and this was accepted as an excellent Ph.D. dissertation. But an exam was also required. One day Banach was accosted in the corridor and asked to go to a Dean’s room, as “some people have come and they want to know some mathematical details, and you will certainly be able to answer their questions”. Banach willingly answered the questions, not realising that he was just being examined by a special commission that had come to Lvov for this purpose.

I’ve never heard of Banach, but that’s a great story.

Click through if you’d like to follow those links or see what else is offered in this roundup.

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Planning to be Exhausted for a few days

i thought they’d all died, so this is great. Four, all boys, out of the original five puppies.

Leda is tired and uncomfortable,and hasn’t recognized the babies yet, the babies aren’t yet nursing, but everything is a thousand times better now that the puppies are out where I can take care of them.

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The Ten Best Things You can Do For Your Manuscript

Here’s another post from The Intern’s blog: The Ten Best Things You Can Do for Your Manuscript. The positive tone of this post appealed to me:

INTERN is feeling extremely wonderful and happy today and wanted to fill the world with yes’s instead of no’s, do’s instead of don’ts. Here, then, are the ten most wonderful and useful things you can do you for your manuscript to give it the best possible chance of growing up big and strong.…

See? There are never enough people feeling wonderful and happy and wanting to fill the world with yes’s; let’s by all means focus on this post for a minute or two, right?

The last suggestion is facetious, and some of the suggestions are perhaps less than totally helpful, but some are good, and funny:

2. Run more tests on it than a three-year old applying for an exclusive Manhattan pre-school.

INTERN has already posted about the Electric Kool-Aid Conflict Test method of making sure your manuscript has enough tension. But you could and should devise other draconian tests for your baby Einstein.

Pick a page at random. Can you identify what’s at stake in a particular scene? Is every sentence your finger lands on brilliant? Can your manuscript recite the alphabet, sing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm,” and know the word for “octagon”? No cheating!

By all means click through and read the whole thing.

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The Rhythm of Writing

Here’s a nice post from Writers Helping Writers: What is Rhythmic Writing?

Rhythm is one of the most underrated aspects of writing, but readers sense the rhythm in our words, whether they realize it or not. Rhythm attracts readers to certain authors. … Rhythm forces the reader to either rush through the pages, flipping one after another, or nestle in the comfy chair to quietly enjoy the story. Words dance. The writer who pays attention to story rhythm creates sentences that waltz, jerk, tango, stutter, tap dance, float, and sing.

This is all true! I’m immediately disposed to approve of this article. Let me see, where does the article go …

–Rhythm defines mood

–Rhythm defines pace

–Rhythm is created by sentence structure, and here’s another mention of punctuation:

If each sentence follows the same structure and rhythm, the writing becomes boring and predictable. Writers who play with rhythm can create tension in many ways, depending on punctuation and word choice.

Yes, see there? Punctuation is totally necessary even for writers who roll their eyes at semicolons and possibly even periods. This is a particularly good companion article to the punctuation post linked here because guess what author is now used to show varying sentence structure? PJ Parrish, who wrote the linked post. Pure coincidence: I didn’t go looking for anything using her writing to illustrate anything. Here’s the excerpt:

In the following example, notice how the intentional repetition of hard -ed verbs create tension in The Killing Song by PJ Parrish

He watched her for the next hour. Watched her playing with the plastic snow globe she had picked up in the souvenir shop. Watched her finish her peach tart, tuck her Fodor’s in her purse and wind the red scarf around her slender white neck.

In the next sentence, the authors slow the pace by varying the sentence structure, adding gerunds, and visceral detail, yet maintain the creepy atmosphere.

In the crowded elevator traveling down from the restaurant in the Eiffel Tower, he stood behind her, closing his eyes as he breathed in the grassy scent of her hair.

Those are indeed good sentences, and comprise a good illustration of the point being made.

Several good illustrations of rhythm created by sentence structure. Worth clicking through.

Now, let’s take a look at a much longer excerpt from a hard-boiled detective type of novel. This is the beginning of The Hard Way, a Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child, which I haven’t read because I’m not a fan of hard-boiled detective novels. But this kind of novel is, I think, the very best for illustrating a particular type of style. Especially in dialogue, so I’ve included a good bit of dialogue here.

JACK REACHER ORDERED espresso, double, no peel, no cube, foam cup, no china, and before it arrived at his table he saw a man’s life change forever. Not that the waiter was slow. Just that the move was slick. So slick, Reacher had no idea what he was watching. It was just an urban scene, repeated everywhere in the world a billion times a day: A guy unlocked a car and got in and drove away. That was all.

But that was enough.

The espresso had been close to perfect, so Reacher went back to the same café exactly twenty–four hours later. Two nights in the same place was unusual for Reacher, but he figured great coffee was worth a change in his routine. The café was on the west side of Sixth Avenue in New York City, in the middle of the block between Bleecker and Houston. It occupied the ground floor of an undistinguished -four–story building. The upper stories looked like anonymous rental apartments. The cafe itself looked like a transplant from a back street in Rome. Inside it had low light and scarred wooden walls and a dented chrome machine as hot and long as a locomotive, and a counter. Outside there was a single line of metal tables on the sidewalk behind a low canvas screen. Reacher took the same end table he had used the night before and chose the same seat. He stretched out and got comfortable and tipped his chair up on two legs. That put his back against the cafe’s outside wall and left him looking east, across the sidewalk and the width of the avenue. He liked to sit outside in the summer, in New York City. Especially at night. He liked the electric darkness and the hot dirty air and the blasts of noise and traffic and the manic barking sirens and the crush of people. It helped a lonely man feel connected and isolated both at the same time.

He was served by the same waiter as the night before and ordered the same drink, double espresso in a foam cup, no sugar, no spoon. He paid for it as soon as it arrived and left his change on the table. That way he could leave exactly when he wanted to without insulting the waiter or bilking the owner or stealing the china. Reacher always arranged the smallest details in his life so he could move on at a split second’s notice. It was an obsessive habit. He owned nothing and carried nothing. Physically he was a big man, but he cast a small shadow and left very little in his wake.

He drank his coffee slowly and felt the night heat come up off the sidewalk. He watched cars and people. Watched taxis flow north and garbage trucks pause at the curbs. Saw knots of strange young people heading for clubs. Watched girls who had once been boys totter south. Saw a blue German sedan park on the block. Watched a compact man in a gray suit get out and walk north. Watched him thread between two sidewalk tables and head inside to where the café staff was clustered in back. Watched him ask them questions.

The guy was medium height, not young, not old, too solid to be called wiry, too slight to be called heavy. His hair was gray at the temples and cut short and neat. He kept himself balanced on the balls of his feet. His mouth didn’t move much as he talked. But his eyes did. They flicked left and right tirelessly. The guy was about forty, Reacher guessed, and furthermore Reacher guessed he had gotten to be about forty by staying relentlessly aware of everything that was happening around him. Reacher had seen the same look in elite infantry veterans who had survived long jungle tours.

Then Reacher’s waiter turned suddenly and pointed straight at him. The compact man in the gray suit stared over. Reacher stared back, over his shoulder, through the window. Eye contact was made. Without breaking it the man in the suit mouthed thank you to the waiter and started back out the way he had entered. He stepped through the door and made a right inside the low canvas screen and threaded his way down to Reacher’s table. Reacher let him stand there mute for a moment while he made up his mind. Then he said “Yes,” to him, like an answer, not a question.

“Yes what?” the guy said back.

“Yes whatever,” Reacher said. “Yes I’m having a pleasant evening, yes you can join me, yes you can ask me whatever it is you want to ask me.”

The guy scraped a chair out and sat down, his back to the river of traffic, blocking Reacher’s view.

“Actually I do have a question,” he said.

“I know,” Reacher said. “About last night.”

“How did you know that?” The guy’s voice was low and quiet and his accent was flat and clipped and British.

“The waiter pointed me out,” Reacher said. “And the only thing that distinguishes me from his other customers is that I was here last night and they weren’t.”

“You’re certain about that?”

“Turn your head away,” Reacher said. “Watch the traffic.”

The guy turned his head away. Watched the traffic.

“Now tell me what I’m wearing,” Reacher said.

“Green shirt,” the British guy said. “Cotton, baggy, cheap, doesn’t look new, sleeves rolled to the elbow, over a green T-shirt, also cheap and not new, a little tight, untucked over -flat–front khaki chinos, no socks, English shoes, pebbled leather, brown, not new, but not very old either, probably expensive. Frayed laces, like you pull on them too hard when you tie them. Maybe indicative of a -self–discipline obsession.”

“OK,” Reacher said.

“OK what?”

“You notice things,” Reacher said. “And I notice things. We’re two of a kind. We’re peas in a pod. I’m the only customer here now who was also here last night. I’m certain of that. And that’s what you asked the staff. Had to be. That’s the only reason the waiter would have pointed me out.”

The guy turned back.

“Did you see a car last night?” he asked.

“I saw plenty of cars last night,” Reacher said. “This is Sixth Avenue.”

“A Mercedes Benz. Parked over there.” The guy twisted again and pointed on a slight diagonal at a length of empty curb by a fire hydrant on the other side of the street.

Reacher said, “Silver, four-door sedan, an S-420, New York vanity plates starting OSC, a lot of city miles on it. Dirty paint, scuffed tires, dinged rims, dents and scrapes on both bumpers.”

The guy turned back again.

“You saw it,” he said.

“It was right there,” Reacher said. “Obviously I saw it.”

“Did you see it leave?”

Reacher nodded. “Just before eleven -forty–five a guy got in and drove it away.”

“You’re not wearing a watch.”

“I always know what time it is.”

“It must have been closer to midnight.”

“Maybe,” Reacher said. “Whatever.”

“Did you get a look at the driver?”

“I told you, I saw him get in and drive away.”

The guy stood up.

“I need you to come with me,” he said. Then he put his hand in his pocket. “I’ll buy your coffee.”

“I already paid for it.”

“So let’s go.”

“Where?”

“To see my boss.”

“Who’s your boss?”

“A man called Lane.”

“You’re not a cop,” Reacher said. “That’s my guess. Based on observation.”

I just think that’s an interesting way to write dialogue. And the descriptive paragraphs handle sentences kind of the same way, stripped down and short, with lots of fragments and lots of repetition and LOTS of short clauses. Even so, the descriptive paragraphs also offer a good handful of much longer sentences. I do think this is effective writing, even if the subgenre doesn’t particularly appeal to me.

Now, let’s contrast that with the opening of Patricia McKillip’s Winter Rose. This is, of course, a far more poetic style, as far removed as one can possibly get from the curt style of a hard-boiled detective novel. It’s also sometimes one of my favorites by McKillip, though that changes based on my mood. This is the novel where everyone keeps telling the same story about a boy and his father and the curse that surrounds them, but the story changes every time it’s told. I tried to do something similar once, but it didn’t work out and I gave up. Maybe eventually I’ll try that again.

Anyway, let’s take a look:

They said later that he rode into the village on a horse the color of buttermilk, but I saw him walk out of the wood.

I was kneeling at the well; I had just lifted water to my lips. The well was one of the wood’s secrets: a deep spring as clear as light, hidden under an overhang of dark stones down which the brier roses fall, white as snow, red as blood, all summer long. The vines hide the water unless you know to look. I found it one hot afternoon when I stopped to smell the roses. Beneath their sweet scent lay something shadowy, mysterious: the smell of earth, water, wet stone. I moved the cascading briers and looked down at my own reflection.

Corbet, he called himself to the villagers. But I saw him before he had any name at all.

My name is Rois, and I look nothing like a rose. The water told me that. Water never lies. I look more like a blackbird, with my flighty black hair and eyes more amber than the blackbird’s sunny yellow. My skin is not fit for fairy tales, since I liked to stand in light, with my eyes closed, my face turned upward toward the sun. That’s how I saw him at first: as a fall of light, and then something shaping out of the light. So it seemed. I did not move; I let the water stream silently down my wrist. There was a blur of gold: his hair. And then I blinked, and saw his face more clearly.

I must have made some noise then. Perhaps I shifted among the wild fern. Perhaps I sighed. He looked toward me, but there was too much light; I must have been a blur of shadow in his eyes.

Then he walked out of the light.

Of course I thought about him, at first the way you think about weather or time, something always at the edge of your mind. He didn’t seem real to me, just something I dreamed on a hot summer day, as I swallowed water scented with roses and stone. I remembered his eyes, odd, heavy-lidded, the color, I thought then, of his hair. When I saw them a day or two later, I was surprised.

I gathered wild lilies and honeysuckle and bleeding heart, which my sister, Laurel, loved. I stayed in the wood for a long time, watching, but he had gone. The sky turned the color of a mourning dove’s breast before I walked out of the trees. I remembered time, then. I was tired and ravenous, and I wished I had ridden to the wood. I wished I had worn shoes. But I had learned where to find wild ginger, and what tree bled a crust of honey out of a split in the wood, and where the blackberries would ripen. My father despaired of me; my sister wondered at me. But my despair was greater if I caged my wonder, like a wild bird. Some days I let it fly free, and followed it. On those days I found the honey, and the secret well, and the mandrake root.

My sister, Laurel, is quite beautiful. She has chestnut hair, and skin like ripened peaches, and great grey eyes that seem to see things that are not quite discernible to others. She doesn’t really see that well; her world is simple and fully human. Her brows lift and pucker worriedly when she encounters ambiguities, or sometimes only me. Everyone in the village loves her; she is gentle and sweet-spoken. She was to marry the next spring.

That twilight, when I came home barefoot, my skirt full of flowers, her lover, Perrin, was there. Perrin looked at me askance, as always, and shook his head.

“Barefoot. And with rose petals in your hair. You look like something conceived under a mushroom.”

I stuck a stem of honeysuckle in his hair, and one of bleeding heart into my father’s. It slid forward to dangle in front of his nose, a chain of little hearts. We laughed. He pointed a stubby finger at me.

“It’s time you stopped dancing among the ferns and put your shoes on, and learned a thing or two from your sister’s practical ways.” He drank his beer, the hearts still trembling over his nose. I nodded gravely.

“I know.”

“You say that,” he grumbled. “But you don’t really listen.” He pushed the flower stem behind his ear, and drank more beer.

“Because you don’t really mean what you say.” I dropped all my flowers in Laurel’s lap, and went behind him to put my arms around his neck. “You love me as I am. Besides, when Laurel marries, who will care for you?”

He snorted, even as he patted my hands. “You can’t even remember to close a door at night. What I think is that you should find someone to care for you, before you tumble in a pond and drown, or fall out of a tree.”

“I haven’t,” I lied with some dignity, “climbed a tree for years.”

Perrin made an outraged noise. “I saw you up a pear tree near the old Lynn ruins only last autumn.”

“I was hungry. That hardly counts.” I loosed my father, and reached for bread, being still hungry. He sighed.

“At least sit down. Never mind about getting the bracken out of your hair, or washing your hands, or anything else remotely civilized. How will you ever find a husband?”

I sat. A face turned toward me out of light, and for just a moment I forgot to breathe. Then I swallowed bread, while Laurel, gathering flowers on her lap, said amiably,

“Perhaps she doesn’t want one. Not everyone does.” But her brows had twitched into that little, anxious pucker. I was silent, making resolutions, then discarding them all as useless.

“I want,” I said shortly, “to do what I want to do.”

We lived comfortably in the rambling, thatched farmhouse that had grown askew with age. Centuries of footsteps had worn shallow valleys into the flagstones; the floors had settled haphazardly into the earth; door frames tilted; ceilings sagged. Other things happen to old houses, that only I seemed to notice. Smells had woven into the wood, so that lavender or baking bread scented the air at unexpected moments. The windows at night sometimes reflected other fires, the shadows of other faces. Spiders wove webs in high, shadowed corners that grew more elaborate through the years, as if each generation inherited and added to an airy palace. I wondered sometimes if they would die out when we did, or leave their intricate houses if we left ours. But I doubted that I would ever know: My father, with his wheat, and apple orchards, and his barns and stables, only grew more prosperous, and my sister’s marriage at least would provide him with heirs for his house and his spiders.

SO MUCH MORE DESCRIPTION is included in the dialogue. All those movement tags and thought tags! How does that change the rhythm, even ignoring the descriptive paragraphs? I mean, these different ways of handling dialogue make an enormous difference to the rhythm of the novels. No one would describe McKillip’s writing as curt even though a few lines are in fact curt. No one would describe Lee Child’s as poetic even though some of his descriptive sentences actually are poetic.

Her writing invites the reader to slow down and linger.

His drags the reader through the dialogue and demands the reader turn the page at once, now!

Both authors utilize rhythm as one element of their writing, and wow, do they create different effects. Kind of neat to read excerpts with very distinctive styles like this and think about mood and tone, pacing and feel.

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Who was Kuomat?

Oh, hey, just noticed, the sequel to The Death’s Lady trilogy comes out exactly a month from today!

A long time ago, Kuomat walked into the woods, abandoning his place in the world of men. For years he’s lived as an outlaw, with little to do with ordinary townsfolk. But when Jenna asked him for help in the name of Death’s Lady and of the king of Talasayan, Kuomat chose to involve himself in the affairs of the great.

That did not go unnoticed.

Now Kuomat has one last chance to step out of the forest and return to the world … if he can bring himself to take it.

Click here to preorder Shines Now, and Heretofore

Haven’t yet tried the trilogy? Well, here’s an Amazon review that might persuade you to give it a try:

Bookwyrm

TOP 100 REVIEWER VINE VOICE

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely brilliant, so glad they came out all at once

Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2021

I’m so glad that all three books in this trilogy came out at the same time so that I could run screaming from one book to the next. (Well, I wasn’t screaming… out loud, anyway.) There’s so much that can be said about the world-building, the characters, the conflicts, the sheer wisdom and reflections built into that world.

Okay, just as an aside, I’m not going to gut myself with that sword so I can meet Lord Death. But everyone else in the book, minus a villain or two, I would love to sit down and chat with. As long as they weren’t asking me to take part in their martial art instructions. Horseback riding I can handle, even roughing it in a non-tech world, but coordination and swords, not so much.

If you like fantasy, great storytelling, tales of new worlds, new beginnings, and a bucketful or two of peril, you’ll love this story. Great for fans of Lois McMaster Bujold, Garth Nix, Brandon Sanderson, and the like.

Altogether, simply a wonderful, engaging, and enthralling adventure. Would give it 10 stars if I could.

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Europa’s in the news

The Chances of Finding Alien Life on Jupiter’s Moon Europa Just Shot Way Up, it says here. Very eye-catching! What’s the article about?

Forget Mars—Jupiter’s moon Europa is one of the most promising worlds in the solar system to look for alien life, in large part because it boasts a huge liquid ocean sitting below a sheet of ice.

We all knew that, of course. Especially those of us who have read A Darkling Sea by James Cambias, which as you know has some of the coolest aliens in all of science fiction. On the planet Ilmatar, under a roof of ice a kilometer thick, a team of deep-sea diving scientists investigates the blind alien race that lives below. … The Ilmatarians are by far the neatest thing about this book, which is readable, but better as a showcase for aliens in a Europa-like environment than for the plot or human characters.

Anyway:

A new study published in Nature Communications on Tuesday reveals that the icy shell itself might be much more porous than previously thought. In fact, the ice might be home to multiple pockets of water that could be habitable to life as well. … Culberg cautioned that we won’t be able to confirm any of this until we’ve had a chance to actually study Europa directly. That will likely occur in the next decade: NASA is planning to launch an orbiting probe called Europa Clipper in October 2024, and it should arrive at the Jovian moon in April 2030.

2030! Well, I should be around to see that, with any reasonable luck. I’ll be hoping for REAL life, eg the sort of ecosystem envisioned by A Darkling Sea. Bacteria or other such critters would be merely mildly interesting rather than seriously neat.

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Punctuation and Poems

The other day, I linked to a post at Kill Zone Blog about punctuation. That post included an Emily Dickenson poem, which is a great choice for looking at dashes, certainly. But it made me think of other poems and poets that march to a different punctuation drum, such as:

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

That’s by, of course, ee cummings. I’m sure you all realized that, even if you have never encountered this particular poem before. I don’t remember ever seeing it before in my life, but I like it a lot, so I’m happy to share it with you all. As small as a world and as large as alone. That’s a wonderful line.

Also, more distracting than any possible use of punctuation or capitalization — lack of spaces! Does anybody else think so? I’m wondering what effect that is supposed to produce, and whether it produces that effect. It makes me pause, startled, every time.

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Any Day Now, I Will Definitely Re-Read …

Honestly, I know perfectly well that I say, remarkably often, “I must re-read that!” or “I really want to re-read that!” This is always true and yet it so seldom happens. Far too seldom! I suppose I might say that I experience a velleity regarding re-reading books: I want to, but seldom so strongly that I actually get a book off the shelf (or virtual shelf). The tension between books I would love to re-read and the huge number of new-to-me books on my various TBR piles and the various works in progress I ought to be working on myself, well, it’s tough to pick one thing over another, that’s all.

What I’m actually reading right now:

FINE, you all MADE me read Phoenix Feather by Sherwood Smith. Enough of you pointed to it and said READ THIS that I finally had no choice but to put it on my phone where I’m most likely to read it. Then it sifted up toward the top and now here I am, reading this book. Which I like a lot, so I’m sure you were all correct to keep bringing it up. I’m enjoying the world and the characters and even the backstory handed to the reader in the long prologue. Sherwood Smith makes that work by turning it into a story within a story.

And yes, Elaine T, I get what you mean about Smith being coy about Mouse’s gender in the prologue, but I can’t tell whether that might have annoyed me because I already knew she was a girl.

Anyway, I’m about 30% into this book and definitely enjoying it. I’m looking forward to strong, supportive sibling relationships and other features you all have mentioned in your comments about this series. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t continual tension about what to read after this — the next book in the series, or the next book in McShane’s Tremontane series, or something else, something familiar?

What I want to be re-reading right now:

The Inda series, also by Sherwood Smith, but it’s so long! But really good! So I’m torn. I bet I don’t get to it this year. Yet another year without re-reading this series! It’s terrible, it really is.

Chalice by Robin McKinley. This is a lot more likely to actually wind up on my coffee table this year. It’s so short, it’s practically a novella. Let me see. 280 pp, says Amazon. That’s right in between a novella and a novel. This is really a novella, though, I think, as the line spacing is quite generous. Anyway, my point is, this is a warm, soft, cuddly sort of story. I think that’s true even though some moments are of course high tension. The story itself isn’t. No one can possibly wonder about whether there’s a happy ending. Of course there is.

Illuminae by Kaufman and Kristoff. It’s laughable to call this one warm and fuzzy! It’s exciting and fast-paced and completely over-the-top in several different ways. It’s so much fun, though! And I’ve only read it once. I really want to read it again! One of these days, one of these days …

Freedom’s Gate by Naomi Kritzer. After bringing that up recently, here I am, with this trilogy on my mind. It’s another one I’ve only ever read once, and I loved it so much. But I don’t know that I’ll take time to read it this year.

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie. I will absolutely for sure read this trilogy again this year, because I’m scheduled to participate in a workshop in July with Ann Leckie. And Sharon Shinn, but I’ve got many of her books practically memorized, whereas I’ve only read the full Ancillary trilogy once.

Summers at Castle Auburn by Sharon Shinn, because this is one that I do not have memorized at all, and various commenters here keep mentioning it in various contexts, and I feel bad that I don’t remember a single thing about it. I expect there’s a castle. And a summer. Anyway, I very definitely want and need to re-read this story.

The Riddlemaster trilogy by McKillip, and, I guess, a lot of her other books. That link goes to the post where I tried to list all her books in order, which was a challenge. Regardless, it’s been a long time since I read The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, for example. Honestly, I’m astonished to think how long it’s been. Ages and ages. In the linked post, I said I wanted to re-read that one, and look, it’s been three years or so since I wrote that post and I still haven’t. It’s just terrible how few hours there are in a day.

Island of Ghosts by Gillian Bradshaw, which in fact may be not be only one of my most re-read of Bradshaw’s books, but actually one of my most re-read books of all time. Not sure why that is, but this particular title apparently hit a sweet spot for me. You know, I believe I can see echoes of this book in Tuyo, now that I think of it. I’m not sure I realized that before.

The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett, largely because I recently received a copy of Ultimate Guide to Dorothy Dunnett’s The Game of Kings, which is an extraordinarily thorough reference to every quote, every reference, every historical figure, and every location in the novel. I’m dying to re-read the novel with this companion reference volume on the coffee table so that I can continually refer to it. In particular, it’ll be so cool to know what all those quotes mean!

But! Despite plenty of competition from all the above, the one novel I actually decided that I MUST re-read, and I don’t mean someday, I mean very soon, is Walk on Earth a Stranger. And, I mean, the whole series, of course. The intention to re-read these became urgent enough that I actually tried to find them on my physical library shelves, only to discover, to my delight, that I didn’t buy them in hardcover as I thought, but in ebook form. That’s way better! I immediately loaded Walk on Earth onto my phone.

Now the only question is whether I’ll go for the rest of the Phoenix Feather series first or stop after book one and pick up Walk on Earth instead. I won’t be able to decide till after I finish the first book of the Phoenix Feather, Fledglings.

Meanwhile:

Yes, I am making progress on Invictus as well. It’s slow, but it’s moving forward. Lately I have just barely been making my 1000-word-per-day minimum, but still, it IS moving forward, and right now that’s fine. I still believe my initial intention to finish a draft by the end of May is totally achievable. I would say there’s about three chapters left, but my guess about that always (always!) turns out to be an underestimation, so let’s say probably from six to eight chapters left. Same thing for wordcount: right now it’s at 124,000 words, and I estimate that it should certainly not go over 140,000 words, which means, sigh, probably at least 160,000. Overwriting is just part of the process.

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