Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 123

Hello there, Creature of the Night

A fun idea for a quiz:

WHICH FAMOUS FICTIONAL MONSTER ARE YOU?

I got Phantom of the Opera, but to be fair, I was answering nearly at random. There were no questions about singing ability. While I’m willing to sing in public, certainly not as a soloist! Not sure this is the best choice of famous monster for me.

Other possibilities, let me see … Oh! If I got to just pick one of these possibilities, I’d pick The Headless Horseman.

You know, roughly a zillion years ago, I was on a school trip where we watched The Headless Horseman and then walked back to our cabin … through the woods … at night … and just about jumped out of our skins when a rabbit dashed out of the underbrush. A surprisingly spooky movie under the right circumstances!

Also, this way I’d get a cool horse.

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I can’t Believe No One’s Dunit

An amusingly titled article at Book Riot: I CAN’T BELIEVE NO ONE’S DUNIT: A COZY MYSTERY SETTING WISHLIST

I’m having a hard time thinking of a quirky setting or occupation that hasn’t been used in a cozy mystery. Dog trainers and dog walkers abound. Bloggers, writers, coffee shop owners, pickle shop owners, every kind of craft store. Math teachers. Hair stylists. As for settings, there are cozies set in Alaska (this one’s historical), Tahiti, Australia, and basically zillions of small towns everywhere, you name it.

I would be very cautious before I declared there was a setting or occupation that had never been used by the author of some cozy mystery somewhere. But sure, let’s take a look at this Book Riot post:

Mortuaries! Nope, the author of the post points to some mysteries set in funeral parlors.

Community theaters. Nope, she seems to be mistaken, here’s one.

IT Centers. “But CJ,” I can already hear you saying, “that doesn’t sound cozy at all. That sounds boring.” I laughed, because that was indeed my reaction.

Maybe, but picture this: you’re a disgruntled IT support person trying to nudge someone on the phone to at least give turning their computer off and on again a try. Suddenly, you hear on the other line, “I really don’t think that will fix — AH! AH, HE’S GOT ME! HE HAS A KNIFE! IT’S SO POINTY!”

Well, fine, but I must say, it would be funnier if the mystery involved a disgruntled IT support person tracking down and executing people who kept calling in because they didn’t think to turn their computer off and on again.

Art museums. Nope, here’s a cozy with murder in an art gallery (close enough!) with bonus pets.

Best part of the post:

I’ve been thinking about this tweet at least daily for the past six months:

I think the world is ready for a TV series where a spry hobbit-lady solves crimes in the Shire whilst eating pastries nicked from Bilbo’s kitchen. call it Law & Mordor.

Plenty of cozy mysteries have magical elements. I’m begging for someone to go all in and create something akin to Miss Marple written by Terry Pratchett. Someone convince the Tolkien Estate to approve the Shire one, at least, because I’m tired of emailing them.

I have to admit, that sounds like a lot of fun! I’d almost certainly read that!

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Most Famous Poems

From Book Riot: MOST FAMOUS POEMS: 20 OF THE BEST

Seems like that should be two different categories. Do you want the 20 most famous poems or the 20 best poems?

Poems that are famous:

The one about the plums in the icebox, which everyone can recite from memory. (You can, right?)

The one about the red wheelbarrow, which ditto. (Right?)

The Road Not Taken. Also, maybe Fire and Ice. Or perhaps Nothing Gold Can Stay. I think Frost’s short poems are likely to be remembered by everyone, especially the ones that rhyme, whereas The Death of the Hired Man, say, is less likely to spring to mind.

I’m Nobody, Who Are You? Come to think of it, everyone can probably recite that one from memory too. What’s another truly famous poem by Dickinson? Because I Could Not Stop for Death, maybe. Quite a few others. A Certain Slant of Light.

The Walrus and the Carpenter. I could recite a lot of this at one time, but that was ages ago. I can just recall the most familiar lines now. Jabberwocky, although I recently discovered that a (well-read) coworker apparently had never heard of it.

Shall I Compare Thee To a Summer Day?

Let me see, what else? Oh, of course: The Raven. Lenore too, but I doubt that’s as famous as The Raven.

A good handful of other poems are probably leaping to mind for everyone.

This is hardly the same as the 20 best poems. Regardless of my various literature teachers’ opinions, I’m unimpressed by either the plums or the wheelbarrow. It’s an uphill battle making those poems look particularly impressive to the average student, I expect. Anyway, I never had an English teacher who made me believe that.

I’m not widely enough read to have opinions about which 20 poems in all the world are the best. But I would probably pick:

A Forsaken Garden by Swinburne

The Garden of Prosopine by Swinburne. What can I say? I really like Swinburne.

Ozymandias by Shelly

To Make a Prairie by Dickinson. I know this isn’t one of the famous ones. I really like it, though.

The Second Coming by Yeats

Crossing the Bar by Tennyson

Up Hill by Rossetti

Song by Adrienne Rich

What is that, eight? Yes, I know there’s a preponderance of death themes in the above choices. That has just always seemed like a great theme for a poem to me.

I’ll stop there, take a look at the Book Riot post, and see if they define best in any way other than “iconic” or “well-known” or whatever.

As a consequence of the fact that the most famous poems tend to be the older ones, they also often have distinct rhyme schemes threaded throughout the verses. While I personally do think rhyming poems are generally ‘better’, and that partially also accounts for their fame, …

I’ll pause there. I also generally prefer rhymed poems (with strong rhythm, too), I think the important thing in this context is that poems with strong rhyme are easier (a LOT easier) to remember. They stick in the mind well. If everyone in the world believed that rhymed and unrhymed poems were equally good, people would still remember rhymed poems better and they’d have a better chance to become famous.

Despite this, as you can see, I picked one unrhymed poem for my list. I’ve loved “Song” by Rich ever since I saw it in a literature class. I can’t remember whether it was assigned or just in the book, but it’s stuck with me for decades.

All right, looking to see what the Book Riot post actually picks …

Oh, The Highwayman! Yes, I love that one, but I hate highwayman’s mad ride to death at the end. What good did that do anyone? The way the highwayman throws away Bess’ sacrifice makes me furious. I wouldn’t mind writing a retelling in prose form and giving it a different ending, perhaps not happy, but not one that wastes her courage.

Here’s Loreena McKinnett’s version of The Highwayman. I love this, even though I still dislike the plot of the story.

Here’s her version of The Lady of Shalott, which I also love — more than The Highwayman, because although this is a tragic ending, it’s not the same kind of pointless tragedy.

Okay, Crossing the Bar makes an appearance on this post. That’s nice to see, though not surprising; it’s so famous.

The Road Not Taken, of course.

Oh, here’s If by Kipling. I should have thought of that one.

Because I Could Not Stop for Death. It’s a great poem, no doubt. I like it, but I got somewhat tired of it while it was being assigned in one class after another.

This is a pretty good list, really. Many famous poems, plus a couple I’m not familiar with. I do like most of the selections. I must confess, I’ve never especially liked sonnets. These are familiar, and yep, I still wouldn’t pick them.

If you were going to put a poem on a “best ever” list, what would it be?

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Introducing your Protagonist

A post at Kill Zone Blog: How to properly introduce your protagonist

Good post.

Recommendations: clue the reader in about the protagonist’s name as soon as you can. Also gender. Also race, if that is a factor. A hint about physical appearance, but not too much. A hint about backstory, but not too much. I think that’s a summary of the recommendations at the post, which is worth reading through.

The post also points out, of course, that all the above is easy in third person, which is largely true; and considerably more difficult in first, which is definitely true.

I want to address a particular difficulty that applies to the Tuyo series and no doubt to some fraction of other secondary world fantasies:

Adding physical description when everyone in the entire story shares a specific physical trait, so there’s no reason for anyone to ever think about it.

In Tuyo, the Ugaro look like Inuit, only somewhat more so. That means they all have black, straight hair. The Lau look like Maasai, only somewhat more so. That means they all have tightly curled or kinky black hair. I’ve said that here. But it’s hard for me to say that in the actual books.

There is very seldom any reason for Ryo to think something like: “She has beautiful straight black hair.” All Ugaro have hair like that. It makes sense for Ryo to notice length of hair, the style in which it is worn — things like that. It doesn’t make sense for him to think about color or straightness when he’s looking at another Ugaro. There’s exactly one moment in Tarashana where he does think that, when he’s with Darra, very close to the end. That’s it. That only happens because he’s so physically aware of Darra, much more so or in a different way than he is of other Ugaro.

Besides that moment, I think the first, or nearly the first, time I ever have Ryo think directly that all Ugaro have black, straight hair is when he contrasts that with Inhejeriel. This is also one reason I gave Elaro, the poet from the east, a reddish tinge to his hair — this contrasts with the Ugaro of Ryo’s region, so that I can say that all the Ugaro in this region have pitch-black hair.

I realize any reader must have gained a general impression that the Ugaro are culturally uniform. This is not actually true. The reader simply has not had any way to see cultural variation among the Ugaro. *I* know about cultural variation that exists in this world, but Ryo does not, or has not had any reason to think about it — both, probably. Elaro opens a gateway to at least mention that kind of variation. That’s one useful role he plays for me as the author, though this isn’t going to be important in story terms (as far as I know).

Ditto for the novels told from the pov of a Lau. Neither Nikoles nor Esau ever thinks about hair color or type. All Lau have the same kind of hair — at least all we ever see. Style is noticeable. Color and type, not so much. That shuts the door on some kinds of easy physical description that I really can’t use, or at least not very easily. That’s why some Lau shave their beards in patterns or shave patterns into their hair. That gives me something else to describe.

Eventually, if we return to the starlit lands, that’ll be one useful function of the tattoo-like patterns many of the Tarashana wear. I’ll have to figure out what those actually mean, but, especially if we’re seeing the Tarashana through the eyes of an Ugaro protagonist — very likely — those patterns will be useful for for both the protagonist and the reader to tell different Tarashana people apart.

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Here comes November

We’re barely into October, but I’m seeing a flurry of posts about NaNoWriMo already.

Well, that’s sensible. If you want to write 50,000 words in November, it’s probably about time to consider what form those words might take. Here’s a relevant post from Jane Friedman’s blog: Why You Should Write a Novella for NaNoWriMo 2021

That is, of course, more realistic. A novel is more than 50,000 words. For me, generally 50,000 is not quite half a novel; or if we’re talking Tuyo-series novels, possibly barely over a quarter of a novel. But no matter what you’re writing, 50,000 is better conceptualized as a novella rather than a novel.

And that’s a better way to think of NaNoWriMo for two reasons, it seems to me:

a) You shouldn’t feel that the goal is to write a full novel, but

b) You may find it helpful to consider the goal is to finish something.

Doesn’t it feel different to think about finishing a long novella than it does to think about writing part of a novel? That’s probably not a universal perception, but I can’t be alone in thinking that 50,000 words feels different when you’re aiming to produce a finished product than when it’s a fraction of a project.

Also, you might have time to both write and (roughly) polish a novella. Let me see, okay, 50,000 words would be 1667 words per day, which is to say, about five pages. A little more, probably. That is a doable number of words — I mean, not if you have two-year-old triplets, probably.

Novellas are also simpler to hold in your head, as a rule. One main plotline will do. Fewer characters to carry that plot. It’s interesting, because the linked post also declares that novellas tend to take place in one basic setting, cutting down on the amount of setting you need to write, but I don’t think that’s my perception. I’m thinking of the Murderbot novellas and the Penric novellas by LMB, and those aren’t at all fixed in one place.

Here’s the ending of the linked post:

Planning is key … I also recommend identifying a touchstone, a novella that’s exactly the sort of book you want to write—but different. A touchstone can keep you inspired even as it offers you the answers to so many questions about how to begin and end, how to develop scenes, and so forth. Your best teachers are always your favorite writers.

That does seem helpful. Going back to one specific work to see how the author handled things — compressing time; stepping across a long journey in two paragraphs; building backstory in a limited number of words; whatever — I think that is probably a sound idea.

I’ve never participated in NaNoWriMo. As a rule, in the fall I’m taking a break from the various intensive writing projects of summer, plus gearing up for whatever project I have in mind for December. I don’t expect to participate this year either — though I won’t be taking a break. With any luck, I should be finishing this current Black Dog story Really Soon Now. Then I’ll need to write at least one more story in order to set up what I want to do in Silver Circle next year. I hope that by the end of November, not only is that finished, but all the stories will be revised and I’ll be asking for people to proofread the collection. So that is a project to finish, but not exactly a 50,000-words-in-a-month project.

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Best advice I’ve seen on Quora today

From Eric Lowe:

If an untrained person needed to be in a 1 on 1 sword fight, what would you tell them to do?

Like, they’re about to fight right now? I’d tell them to stab the other guy like a homicide sewing machine. That is their one job. All stabs, all the time.

I do like simple, clear advice that may someday come in useful for some unfortunate character who finds himself or herself in a difficult position.

Eric Lowe often provides useful, well-written, fun answers on Quora. I’ve got his book, which I’m reading now, in between reading other things.

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Archon Panels 2020

All the panels went well, basically. Small audiences for some of them, but of course Archon was (very) small this year compared to normal years.

It turns out that if I’m on a lot of panels myself, I have less time to go to other panels. Somehow I hadn’t thought of this obvious downside to saying sure, put me on lots of panels. I did enjoy every single panel that I was on, but I missed sitting in on a good handful I might have enjoyed, plus I barely bumped into people I’d have liked a chance to chat with.

Typical exchange all weekend: “Hi, nice to see you, I’ve got a panel starting in ten minutes!” “Me too, bye!”

Still, I had a good time. I had a nice chat with the guest of honor, Alma Katsu, a really interesting person who worked in Intelligence before retiring to write novels. That sounds exactly like the fictional backstory for the protagonist of a thriller, but there she was. She tends to write novels, such as The Hunger, that fall into a genre I guess is best called Historical Horror. That one is the Donner Party, except haunted by supernatural evil. She’s got another that’s the Titanic rewritten as psychological horror. Things like that. So … not sure I’ll ever pick up one of those. She has also written a spy novel — you’d think she might have started with that, given her background, but no — anyway, who knows, I might try that one.

Oh, by the way, Alma Katsu and her husband own a couple of Silken Windhounds! A totally delightful breed. The breed club is fairly serious about getting their breed established and recognized and they have some people who know what they’re doing. This is the single newly created breed I most want to succeed. Anyway, we obviously showed each other pictures of our dogs and exclaimed over their beauty and she told me about her previous dogs and, as I said, we had a very nice conversation. (We didn’t talk ONLY about dogs, but no, we didn’t talk at all about books or writing.)

Now, panels:

Most disappointing: Since all of you helped me out with ideas for the Space Cops panel, I’m sorry to have to tell you that one was canceled. However, I’m currently reading Great North Road by Peter Hamilton. I like it a lot and it is the perfect book to read for a panel of this kind, so if the topic comes up again, I’ll be prepared. Before you all dash off and buy it, I’ll add: I’m only 9% of the way in, so “like it a lot” is not a conclusion, just a for-now statement. About 8% of the way in, he suddenly switched pov characters, so I’m a little wary of whether I’ll wind up okay with that or not.

I’ve never read anything else by Hamilton, I think. Good writing, but I have no idea whether he tends to write tragedies, for example.

Most popular: The “How to commit the perfect murder” panel, by a lot.

This was a fun panel, and I guess everyone thought it would be, because quite a few people came. Lively discussion ensued.

Obviously — at least, it seems obvious to me — panels on SF murder mysteries and fantasy murder mysteries would both be good, BUT, probably not quite the draw of just straight up “How would you commit murder? What’s the best way to commit murder?” That was just very (alarmingly?) engaging as a topic.

Great suggestion from the audience: a SFF-themed short murder mystery dinner theater sort of thing. Not with the actual dinner, although quite possibly scheduling it during lunchtime would work. Do it sort of like a live-action role playing game and sort of like mystery dinner theater. Wouldn’t that be fun? Pretty much everyone at the panel agreed it would be fun.

As far as the rest of the convention went, I did make a chance to chat with one or two people I know, and overall the convention was a good experience despite the masks and the crowded schedules.

I also stayed up there Friday night, which gave me a chance to get up at the normal time for me (four in the morning; I know, all right?), and work on the current Black Dog story until it was time for my first Saturday panel. That was nice. Of course I didn’t get the story finished — I mean, I intended to try, and I hoped I might finish it, but no. I seem unable to write the last, say, five pages or so. I keep reworking earlier bits. Well, this week surely I will finish the draft of this story.

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Check this out

As you all know, I loved Victoria Goddard’s The Hands of the Emperor. I didn’t really get into the stories from Antorin’s point of view. Turns out that las month, Goddard released a set of linked stories that splits the difference.

This is from Antorin’s pov, but involves Cliopher’s early days with the Emperor.

Several points worth mentioning:

a) This is one of the few works in second person — sort of in second person — that works for me. This is an interesting choice, obviously, and a risky choice. Goddard is using this technique of nearly-second-person to show Antorin’s — Fitzroy’s — anyway, the pov character’s — alienation from the role of Emperor and god-on-earth and so on.

b) EVEN HERE, Goddard does not actually show us the joke that Cliopher traded back and forth with the emperor that was so important to that initial encounter. I think this is cheating! I’m really curious what that joke was! Surely it would be possible to call up a friend with a knack for one-liners and jokes and so on and toss ideas back and forth and come up with something good.

Oh, well, I guess we will never know. Regardless, it’s an enjoyable set of stories. I still would like a sequel from Cliopher’s pov, but this was a pleasure to read in the meantime.

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Going wide

Okay!

Now that the Death’s Lady trilogy is

(a) out of KU, alas!

but

(b) available in BVC

I’m going as wide as I can with these books.

That means I just put them into Draft to Digital and hit “publish.” After Draft to Digital grinds through its process, these books ought to become available at Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and a zillion other sites.

Draft to Digital takes a cut for doing all the conversions to the different platforms. They SO deserve whatever they skim off the top. Can you even imagine doing two dozen conversions to make an ebook work on every possible platform? No. Or at least, I can’t.

In addition, I’m bringing out the Death’s Lady trilogy in an omnibus edition, which should be available shortly:

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An Interview

Here’s an interview I did for Book View Cafe.

Among other things, Kat asked something no one ever asks — for details about what I was actually supposed to be working on in grad school when I started writing fiction.

There’s a link to the paper that came out of my master’s thesis. It is not, I warn you, an example of scintillating prose. It is, however, a decent example of non-scintillating academic prose.

If anyone actually clicks through all the way and wonders, the other author was my graduate advisor. All the writing is mine. All the guidance through the statistics was his. How well I remember the moment when he asked, “So, have you checked the residuals? How does that look?”

I also remember my answer clearly. I said, “Not yet, Jeff, but I’ll get on that soon.” Translation — Um, what are residuals again? I had to go look that up and then figure out how to calculate residual variation and then interpret the results.

I don’t miss those days at all, I must say. I still write (casual, rough, just good enough for bureaucratic purposes) analyses of tutoring outcomes for my job. That’s fine, but yeah, it was very plain at the time that I was never, ever going to like doing research. Fiction, as tough as it can be at times, is much better. Much.

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