Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 112

In “Macbeth”, why does Prospero decide to show mercy to his enemies?

This is a verbatim question from Quora: In “Macbeth”, why does Prospero decide to show mercy to his enemies?

Here is the funniest answer.

You should definitely all click through and read this! Especially if you’re a real Shakespeare fan. I got a lot of the references, but definitely not everything.

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Hope is a Powerful Thing

A post from Jane Friedman’s blog: Yes, Writers Need to Hear the Hard Truths. But Warnings Can Go Too Far

Many years ago, when I was invited to guest speak about my writing journey, I spoke about my trials and tribulations. When I opened the floor for Q&A at the end, a teenage girl in the front row raised her hand first. She asked me, “Why should I even bother?”

Whereas I thought I had been inspirational by sharing all the hardship I had been through, it had frozen a teen writer in her boots. …

Sometimes I worry for the writer who attends a conference for the first time and hears discouraging conversations over and over. Yes, those discussions are important to have. But hope is a powerful thing. I don’t want the world to miss out on fantastic art because a writer left a program wondering why they are even trying. 

This strikes me as a good and useful post. There’s plenty of negativity in the world, especially right now.

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SFF books with Great Opening Lines

A post at tor.com: Five Books With Great Opening Lines

Of which my favorite by quite a bit is Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve:

It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried out bed of the old North Sea.

I’ve never read this book. I’ve only read one of the five books featured on this post. Oddly, it’s not the one with the dog. I might even have that one buried somewhere on my Kindle? Not even sure, that’s how out of control the TBR pile has gotten.

If you’ve read Mortal Engines and the rest of that series — or, for that matter, The Knife of Never Letting Go, which is the one with the dog — what did you think?

But back to first lines. Obviously this is an endlessly fertile topic for posts. For some reason, that sentence from Mortal Engines made me think of 2312 by KSR. Oh, I know why: because of the way the city on Mercury travels continually to stay ahead of the intolerable heat of day. How does that book actually start? Like this:

The sun is always about to rise. Mercury rotates so slowly that you can walk fast enough over its rocky surface to stay ahead of the dawn; and so many people do.

Two sentences, but they work very well. So does the whole first paragraph. Here it is:

The sun is always about to rise. Mercury rotates so slowly that you can walk fast enough over its rocky surface to stay ahead of the dawn; and so many people do. Many have made this a way of life. They walk roughly westward, staying always ahead of the stupendous day. Some of them hurry from location to location, pausing to look in cracks they earlier inoculated with bioleaching metallophytes, quickly scraping away any accumulated residues of gold or tungsten or uranium. But most of them are out there to catch glimpses of the sun.

What do I like about this paragraph? Well, let me see.

I like the use of the semicolon before “and” in the second sentence. This is a technique I learned from CJ Cherryh. It is not, of course, exactly standard. But I like the extra pause that is created this way; not the same as a period or a semicolon; definitely not the same as a comma plus “and.” I don’t use this type of punctuation often, but sometimes I do. KSR is certainly confident of his stylistic choices, using that in the first paragraph. You can bet his copy editor said NO and he said STET.

I love the alternation of very short and very long sentences.

I’m not crazy about his use of the second person in the second sentence, but I didn’t notice that until now, so obviously it didn’t actually bother me.

I love the use of the word “stupendous.” That’s a word you can’t easily get away with using. I’m not sure I’ve ever actually used that word myself, ever, in any book. It’s absolutely perfect here. Now that KSR has drawn this word to my attention, I may well find myself using it sometime soon.

I can take or leave the technical details about the metallophytes. That’s fine; it tells us something about this setting, about the broader worldbuilding; it fits the paragraph. But it lacks the poetry of the rest of the sentences, except inasmuch it sets up the last sentence.

I like how the first sentence is The sun is always about to rise and the last sentence is But most of them are out there to catch glimpses of the sun — effectively bookends the paragraph.

Well, this post moved away from just “first sentences” to a broader “novel openings” in a hurry, didn’t it?

I haven’t read all that many books by KSR — just the Mars trilogy and 2312 — but his writing in this one in particular is often beautiful; I remember thinking so at the time.

If you’ve recently been struck by an opening sentence or paragraph, drop it in the comments!

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It’s always sudden, I guess

Anara Adornment RN RA CRN CRA CRE CGC

6-10-2007 — 1-29-2022

Well, so far, 2022 has been pretty hard.

I didn’t exactly expect to lose my Dora this soon. She had been aging gradually and rather gracefully, slowing down a bit and a bit more, but in no special hurry to become Old. Then suddenly I turned around and she was Old. She was also rapidly — far too rapidly — getting Older.

Dora at Fourteen

Dora was one of two puppies from the first litter I ever bred. That was a problem litter, delivered by emergency C-section at three in the morning. Two puppies survived: Anara Affection, Effie, whom I placed as a pet, and Anara Adornment — Dora. Living up to her name, Dora was absolutely adorable as a puppy.

Dora at Eight Weeks

I showed Dora in Conformation, but I didn’t much want to travel out of state to find majors, so though she earned a good many single points, she never finished her championship. She did look beautiful in her prime! She was a joy to show — she loved showing. She loved everything, tackling everything she encountered in life full steam ahead. I used to say that Dora’s two natural gaits were the bounce and the twirl.

[image error]Best Ruby Bitch at a CKCSC Specialty

I was a lot more active in performance at the time, and wow, was she a pleasure to show! Dora earned her Novice title with scores of 99, 100, and 89, which was, I think, my first perfect score in Rally. That low score reflects a ten-point error on my part, not on her part — she couldn’t have scored that low on her own! Dora went on to pick up quite a few more Rally titles, including her Rally Excellent in the CKCSC club. She was just super-fast and usually if there was a tie on scores, she won on time. 

Dora had quite a bit of prey drive, particularly toward things that fly. She used to leap into the flower beds and catch a butterfly every single time I walked her down the driveway. Once she spent almost an hour chasing dragonflies; I finally made her stop for fear she might overheat. She liked birds better than insects, though, and doves best of all. I don’t know how a spaniel is genetically coded to prefer a game bird species over, say, a sparrow, but she did. I’m sure it disappointed her that I never took up hunting doves and quail as a hobby. She would certainly chase bunnies too, and caught one every now and then, unlike the doves. Elegant and soft she might look, but Dora definitely would have liked to be a hunting dog!

If I see a bird, I’ll be off this chair instantly!

In her youth, Dora gave me one litter, again with two surviving puppies, a Blenheim son (Anara Fiddlesticks) and a ruby daughter (Anara Frivolity), both of whom I eventually placed as pets. They’re both doing fine, and hopefully will be for years to come. Unfortunately Dora had pyometra when she was just five, so that was it for breeding her. She recovered well and went on to rule the house as Pippa’s co-queen for a good many years, courted by the boys and respected by the girls. When I handed out any sort of chew toy, Pippa would get one and keep it. Somehow Dora would accumulate all the rest, and then there she’d be, on a dog bed with all the chew toys gathered up around her, calmly possessive. No one but Pippa could possibly take a toy away from her, and Pippa never tried.

Dora remained beautiful and enthusiastic and, most of all, loving, for many years. She converted a whole lot of people who thought they preferred the flashier Blenheims; everyone who visited wound up deciding maybe rubies were the best after all. Dora had this wonderful trick of gazing adoringly at someone, anyone, while they petted her — then sitting up on her hind legs and waving her front feet when they stopped. Obviously no one could resist her! Practically every guest wound up petting her for ages because they just couldn’t stop.

She could turn on the charm for me too, of course, particularly when she wanted a treat. Dora used to dash up every time the oven timer went off because she knew perfectly well she was going to get a tidbit. She always did, too. Who could resist that melting expression?

When she was ten or so, Dora had mammary cancer. I felt the lump right away and had it removed and assessed. It was a high grade. The lab gave her about a 30% chance of survival. I actually had a feeling she would be fine. I don’t put a lot of credence in feelings, but on the other hand, Cavaliers tend to have lower mortality from cancer than dogs in general. Anyway, I was right. After that, every year, on the first of February — the date the tumor was removed — I gave Dora a special treat to celebrate.

Cavaliers mostly die of heart disease. Dora was first diagnosed with a murmur when she was seven. But it never really progressed. An echo in spring 2021 showed only moderate heart enlargement and she certainly didn’t have any symptoms of heart failure.

I thought then, when I saw the results of that echo, that neither cancer nor heart diseases was going to take Dora from me. That it would be … just old age.

A few months ago, Dora suddenly developed mild neurological symptoms, including signs that she was losing feeling in her rear feet. She started having trouble with moving. Though most days she could trot and manage stairs and so on, sometimes she couldn’t. She wasn’t in apparent pain. But she slowed way, way down.

I thought I would have to make a decision soon. Soon-ish. Probably before spring.

I didn’t have to make that decision. This morning, at one in the morning, she had a stroke or heart attack. I woke up because she fell off the bed. She might have had a seizure; I don’t know. She was unresponsive and obviously having trouble breathing.

She passed away before I could get the car ready. I don’t think she regained consciousness.

It turns out it isn’t any easier at all to have a pet pass away in your arms at home.

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Free Today!

Big sale on the Kindle ebooks in the Tuyo series today until February 2nd.

Tuyo will be free for these five days; Nikoles and Tarashana will be substantially reduced in price; Keruanani will be held at the low price at which I released it.

On Feb 2nd, the free promotion and countdown deals will end. At that point, I’ll go in and reduce prices manually, though at that point nothing will be free.

I’m going to try holding prices down until Feb 15th or so, as I understand this can result in a larger and longer-lasting boost to KU pages read than raising prices after the initial five days. After that, I’ll put prices back up and see how that looks after a month or two.

So … if you’re thinking of recommending this series to friends (and please do!), then today until Feb 2 is the ideal time to make that recommendation.

On a different but related note:

I do get asked sometimes whether I plan to take the Tuyo series wide. I’m sorry, but I have no immediate plans to do that.

From the beginning, this series has been by far my best performing series in KU pages read. On a month in which direct sales and KU reads are as low as they get, the main titles of this series show six and a half times more pages read than the next best non-Tuyo titles. Even Nikoles shows three times more pages read than the next best. On months when I run a sale on Tuyo, and for about two months afterward, sometimes longer, the main series titles do a lot better than that. Even after a promotion of the Black Dog series, those books still don’t approach the Tuyo titles in KU pages read.

At the moment, it seems very plain that my royalties would be instantly crushed if I took this series out of KU.

I will be experimenting with “wide” strategies this year with the Death’s Lady trilogy. If and when it seems to me that it may be realistically possible for “wide” sales to come anywhere close to replacing KU pages read, that’s when I may take the Tuyo series wide.

.

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And so it lives

A giant pine, magnificent and old
Stood staunch against the sky and all around
Shed beauty, grace and power.
Within its fold birds safely reared their young.
The velvet ground beneath was gentle,
and the cooling shade gave cheer to passers by.
Its towering arms a landmark stood, erect and unafraid,
As if to say, “Fear naught from life’s alarms”.
It fell one day.
Where it had dauntless stood was loneliness and void.
But men who passed paid tribute – and said,
“To know this life was good,
It left its mark on me. Its work stands fast”.
And so it lives. Such life no bonds can hold –
This giant pine, magnificent and old.

—Georgia Harkness

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“Book Complete” at Weird Moments

I hear that at least one person got a “book complete” message in the middle of a chapter of Keraunani.

Has anyone else experienced this? Please let me know. If it happens to more than one person, I’ll contact KDP and ask them what gives. If it’s just one person, I’m going to go with “random individual glitch” rather than “broad issue with this book.”

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We are the Product of the Books we Read as Children and Young Adults

From this post by Seanan McGuire at tor.com: Finding Poetry in Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin

We are the product of the books we read as children and young adults. They shape the vocabulary we use to shape the world we live in: they spark interests and ideas and ideals that we may never be consciously aware of harboring. Sometimes we’re lucky. Sometimes we can point to the exact moment where everything changed.

I completely agree. I mean, not necessarily about being able to point to an exact moment or a particular book, though that might be so as well. I’m thinking here about the overall thesis that the books we read at about age fourteen set our taste and ideals … I don’t want to say in stone … let’s say, these are the books that are most likely to have a profound and lasting effect on what we view as the ideal for stories, for themes, and for characterization.

Obviously McGuire identifies Tam Lin as a seminal work for her own image of what is best in stories. (I didn’t check, but yes, she was fourteen when she read this book.)

I was older when I read Dean’s Tam Lin and for me it was okay, but not that important. Fire and Hemlock is probably my favorite Tam Lin retelling, and honestly that is far from my favorite of DWJ’s books.

The author I point at as most seminal for me is Patricia McKillip — everything of hers, but I specifically remember reading The Riddlemaster of Hed for the first time. I remember sitting in a hallway in school reading that between classes, and I don’t really have a lot of clear memories from that long ago.

Also Robin McKinley. Also Patricia Wrede, and sure, Diana Wynne Jones, and CJ Cherryh, and RA MacAvoy. But particularly Patricia McKillip.

McGuire’s post is also about poetry; about discovering poetry in fiction.

Although I did not sit down and write a sonnet every day, as Seanan McGuire apparently did after reading Tam Lin (and now I kind of regret that I didn’t think to try something like that!), I would say that you can’t read McKillip without discovering poetry in fiction, because McKillip’s prose IS poetry. That had a huge impact on my writing, I think. Much more so in some novels than others; particularly in The City in the Lake. But I hope it’s always there to some extent. That’s why I’m pleased and flattered whenever anybody compares my writing to McKillip’s, which I’m glad to say does happen now and then.

Also, after reading this post, I do sort of feel like going and getting my copy of Dean’s Tam Lin off the shelf. I’m almost sure I still have it in my library.

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We are the Produce of the Books we Read as Children and Young Adults

From this post by Seanan McGuire at tor.com: Finding Poetry in Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin

We are the product of the books we read as children and young adults. They shape the vocabulary we use to shape the world we live in: they spark interests and ideas and ideals that we may never be consciously aware of harboring. Sometimes we’re lucky. Sometimes we can point to the exact moment where everything changed.

I completely agree. I mean, not necessarily about being able to point to an exact moment or a particular book, though that might be so as well. I’m thinking here about the overall thesis that the books we read at about age fourteen set our taste and ideals … I don’t want to say in stone … let’s say, these are the books that are most likely to have a profound and lasting effect on what we view as the ideal for stories, for themes, and for characterization.

Obviously McGuire identifies Tam Lin as a seminal work for her own image of what is best in stories. (I didn’t check, but yes, she was fourteen when she read this book.)

I was older when I read Dean’s Tam Lin and for me it was okay, but not that important. Fire and Hemlock is probably my favorite Tam Lin retelling, and honestly that is far from my favorite of DWJ’s books.

The author I point at as most seminal for me is Patricia McKillip — everything of hers, but I specifically remember reading The Riddlemaster of Hed for the first time. I remember sitting in a hallway in school reading that between classes, and I don’t really have a lot of clear memories from that long ago.

Also Robin McKinley. Also Patricia Wrede, and sure, Diana Wynne Jones, and CJ Cherryh, and RA MacAvoy. But particularly Patricia McKillip.

McGuire’s post is also about poetry; about discovering poetry in fiction.

Although I did not sit down and write a sonnet every day, as Seanan McGuire apparently did after reading Tam Lin (and now I kind of regret that I didn’t think to try something like that!), I would say that you can’t read McKillip without discovering poetry in fiction, because McKillip’s prose IS poetry. That had a huge impact on my writing, I think. Much more so in some novels than others; particularly in The City in the Lake. But I hope it’s always there to some extent. That’s why I’m pleased and flattered whenever anybody compares my writing to McKillip’s, which I’m glad to say does happen now and then.

Also, after reading this post, I do sort of feel like going and getting my copy of Dean’s Tam Lin off the shelf. I’m almost sure I still have it in my library.

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Recent Reading: the Mask of Mirrors by MA Carrick

… And by “recent,” I mean I actually started The Mask of Mirrors in late December and finished it this morning.

A whole month to read one book! A book I actually liked a lot! That’s undoubtedly a first for me.

Three things slowed me (way, way) down with this story: I was busy working on my own stuff; my personal life became complicated for a week or two; and every single time I hit a high-tension scene, I put this book down for days or sometimes weeks while I read something soothing.

I mean, you know what else I read during January? Parts of The Touchstone trilogy (for the umpteenth time), and The Book of Firsts (for the third time.) Also the entire Jumper series, in reverse order because the last book is the least tense. The first couple are not as low-tension, but I’ve read them before, so that was all right. Also that long Bujold fanfic where everything goes right for everyone. Plus some more of my really long book about Ceratopsian dinosaurs. It’s hard to be more soothing than technical papers about dinosaurs.

I’ve picked up some of your suggested titles for low-stress novels too, by the way, and thank you for those suggestions!

Meanwhile, all the time, I kept coming back to The Mask of Mirrors.

Basic conclusion:

This is a great book! I enjoyed it very much and I also admire it a whole lot.

Worldbuilding: I regret very much not dividing time in the Tuyo series into Sun hours and Earth hours, because that would sure have fit the world, but I didn’t think of it. Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms thought of it. They thought of a whooooole lot of amazing worldbuilding details and put them together into a world that feels coherent and real, but not very familiar. Two different types of magic, long complicated backstory, fraught political situation, and a thousand snazzy details.

This is the first story I’ve ever read where there are Tarot cards, except all the cards are different from real-world cards, with different names, different symbols, different meanings, and drawing on a very different source of magic. And that’s just the one type of magic! The other type is completely unrelated!

Seriously, the worldbuilding is wonderful, and wonderfully complex, and I loved it. But this is one aspect of the story that slowed me down, because obviously a world like this is harder to get into than, say, the setting of a contemporary romance. If I hadn’t been distracted by other things, this wouldn’t have slowed me down at all, and regardless, I enjoyed the worldbuilding very much.

How about the characters? You may remember the list; something like this: The enigmatic crime lord, the mysterious vigilante, the feckless heir, the guard captain with deep integrity. And of course the protagonist, who is a con artist.

I loved them all, including the Feckless Heir, which is for me by far the least attractive type of character on that list. I loved Ren, the protagonist; and her sister Tess, and her brother Sedge (minor spoiler: he’s not dead despite the prologue). (There are MUCH more important spoilers I am not revealing, believe me.) I also liked the members of the noble house on whom Ren is pulling her con. (She likes them too, which complicates the con, until other complicating factors overwhelm that one.) There are lots of sympathetic characters and although there are villains, there are not, thank heaven, any villain points of view.

And wow, do the major villains go down hard at the end. So that was satisfying.

From about the middle of the story on to the end, many fast-paced, high-tension things happen, so that all the important point of view characters basically wind up working … not together, but toward the same end — saving the city and their people.

The ending of the first book does leave the enigmatic crime lord (Vargo) at odds with the mysterious vigilante (The Rook), and with Ren, and also, in a way, with the guard captain (Serrado). This is unfortunate. I’m pretty sure (not one hundred percent sure) that they are in fact all on the same side and will all end up pulling together . I mean, here’s the teaser for the second book:

A clever con artist, a legendary vigilante, and a dashing crime lord must fight to free their city from the clutches of a dark and ancient magic

And that sure implies they’re not only on the same side, but ought to figure that out eventually.

The plotting: Wow, did the authors surprise me with a couple of plot twists. Not all those plot twists were welcome. I put the book down for some time after one of them. But keep in mind, my tolerance for tension is low low low right now. I don’t think this would have happened ordinarily.

The pacing: Starts rather slow, picks up gradually, turns breakneck.

The names of people and places: Complicated and difficult to remember, especially reading the story so slowly and with many breaks, so let me just mention that there is a glossary and dramatis personae in the back.

Second book: I picked it up immediately, and I will start it soon, maybe even today. I’m curious to see whether I read it in a couple of days, a couple of weeks, or whether it might possibly take me all of February to get through it.

I know some of you have read this book and possibly the sequel! Comments, please, though preferably spoiler-free. Thumbs up or thumbs down on the second book? I hope you all give it a thumbs up, since I did already buy it.

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