Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 275

Reasons a book winds up on the DNF pile

So, I tried a new-to-me author last night. I read the first chapter and then deleted the sample. Here is the book:

Here is what Sharon Shinn’s blurb says about it:

“A vivid, violent, and marvelously detailed historical fantasy set in the perilous world that is medieval England in the middle of a war. Elisha Barber wades through blood and battle in his pursuit of arcane knowledge—forbidden love—and dangerous magic.”

Here’s what DB Jackson says about it:

“Blending magic and history, strong characters and gripping action, E.C. Ambrose brings a startlingly unique voice to our genre. Part epic fantasy, part medical thriller, part historical novel, Elisha Barber is at once dark, powerful, redemptive, and ultimately deeply satisfying.”

Here’s why I couldn’t bear to go on with it, even though all this sounds so promising (warning, the next paragraph will consist of spoilers for the first chapter of the book):

In the first chapter, Elisha’s estranged brother come to him for help because his, the brother’s, wife is suffering through a terrible delivery. Elisha finds the baby is breech and also the baby is already dead. In order to save his brother’s wife, despite the horror of this kind of surgery, Elisha cuts the dead baby into pieces and delivers the body that way. Despite his efforts, the wife dies. His brother commits suicide. End of chapter.

Now, tell me, assuming the book is well written and the (extremely gritty) setting well-drawn, would you keep going? Of course you can’t answer that without actually reading the first chapter for yourself. If you want to do that, here is the link to the book on Amazon.

However, this is the sort of beginning that I find practically unbearable, no matter how admirable a man Elisha is.

Is there anything that could have made this work for me?

Actually, there is:

Drop all that into the backstory. Don’t tell it as a prologue, just leave it a dark mystery in a tragic past. Jump ahead a couple of decades, or at least a couple of years, or at the very least a couple of months. Start the story wherever seems advisable. Move ahead with the action. Gradually reveal the tragic backstory as you tell the rest of the story.

That, in case you are curious, is how to keep a horrible, horrible incident without causing readers like me to recoil violently and then either delete your book or give it away. The distance gained by putting the tragedy in the past makes it far more tolerable to read about, particularly if the protagonist has managed to come somewhat to terms with the horrible incident.

Not that everyone should always handle a tragic backstory that way. Of course not. “There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right!”

I’m just mentioning this as a way to make it work for readers who otherwise might not get past the tragedy and into the real story.

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Down to two ultimately cute puppies

Here is Leda last Wednesday:

This was taken just before she left to go to her beautiful new home with a wonderful 8-year-old boy who is, I hear, ecstatic to have her. Actually I know he is because I have the video of the big Puppy Reveal. So so so charming!

Leda handled the four-hour car ride with no trouble and slept through the night on her new boy’s bed and is, I am sure, due to have a wonderful life. Sad to see her go, but not too sad because her new home will be wonderful.

How much does Honey miss her? Not at all, as far as I can tell. She is not a very fond mother at this point — she growls (gently) when the puppies try to nurse and jumps on the couch to get away from them. Chloe and Jos, the two youngest, are the ones that most enjoy the puppies. Ish and Kenya are very tolerant of the babies; they’re tolerant of everything really. Dora and Pippa, the two oldest, really see no need for puppies to intrude into their personal space.

I will definitely be keeping the other two puppies for the foreseeable future. They are thoroughly adorable and also very nice in show terms. I may lay bets on which one finishes a championship first. Kimmie? She has the most wonderful face and head. Conner? He has such a great body and his head is pretty darn cute, too. I’m looking forward to showing them! They will be old enough in July.

Here they are sleeping on the couch with everyone else for about the first time.

I have to keep an eye on them because at this point I really do not want them trying to jump off by themselves! They are getting big, especially Conner, but they are certainly not THAT big.

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Cover reveal!

Oh, this went fast! I only saw the brand! new! cover! for my fall title a couple days ago, and here we have the cover reveal already!

Not to mention a final title. You will see we lost everything about dragons, wolves, falcons, and so on. But I think you will agree the cover and title are VERY clear about the kind of book that you are looking at: epic fantasy, with some romance.

The reveal is over at Barnes and Noble, so please click over there and take a look!

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Which classic novel describes your life?

An internet quiz, as if you couldn’t tell from the title of the post.

Here is the quiz.

I got . . . drumroll, please . . . The Lord of the Rings. So that’s pretty accurate! Possibly this one is more accurate than the average internet quiz. I wondered if anybody who chooses Harry Potter on that one question would TLotR, so I went through the quiz again choosing a different answer every time except for Harry Potter. That time I got To Kill a Mockingbird, which, confession time, I either never read or have absolutely no memory of ever reading. So it’s hard to say how that answer matches up to my choices in the quiz.

If you’ve got a moment, click through and try it and see what classic novel supposedly describes your life.

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Upcoming free story

Just wanted to let you know that the upcoming March newsletter will contain a link to a never-before-published free short story. So when the newsletter pops up in your email, you might want to glance through it and find that link.

FAQ:

1. Is it really a novella and you’re just calling it a short story?

No. This is one of the shortest pieces I’ve ever written. It’s not flash fiction, though. I think it’s about 4000 words.

2. Is it set in the Black Dog world?

No. This is one of the very few short pieces I’ve ever written that isn’t. It’s not set in the world of any of my books, but in a unique world of its own.

3. Is it sad?

Yes, a little bit. Just thought I’d mention that up front. Not tragic or anything, but yes, a little bit sad.

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Drunk Texts, Squad Goals, and Brewer’s Droop: an Oxford Dictionaries update

Via the Passive Voice blog, I see the Oxford English Dictionary has been updated to include a whole bunch of modern words. Um, some may not quiiite fit my idea of “words.” Except as slang terms that still sound kinda silly, and to me seem rather likely to fade out of usage in a few years.

When should you count a new word as worthy of inclusion in a dictionary, anyway? When it’s been around five years? Ten? Twenty? I guess I’m leaning toward at least ten. Momentary slang-of-the-moment doesn’t seem to me like it should count. Examples from this new update, let me see . . .

Fitspo. Not only have I never heard this, as far as I know, but it sounds really stupid. It’s supposed to be short for fitspiration. Which I also have never heard and don’t like any better. The dictionary entry says: A person or thing that serves as motivation for someone to sustain or improve health and fitness, as in ‘the perfect fitspiration for anyone wanting to tone up’

Yeah, not impressed by that one. I don’t care whether it’s in common use today . . . in circles other than the ones I move in . . . I truly can’t see it lasting any time.

Same for haterade. I’m sure you don’t need any help deciphering that one even if you’ve never heard it. Again, sounds like momentary slang with a mayfly lifespan.

Other words seem like they’ll have more staying power and ought to be included, such as “unseen” in the sense of “Warning: once scene, this image can never be unseen.”

Plenty of the so-called new words are just other-language words that have become more familiar to English speakers, often culinary, like tonkatsu sauce and ras-el-hanout. Both are terms anybody who’s really into cooking is going to know, depending on what kind of cooking, of course. The former is Japanese and the latter North African, as you very likely know.

Anyway, interesting to scan through the list.

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Out in One Week!

Mysterious strangers, ghosts, dogs, a fire horse . . . not a fire elemental (I thought I should add, in case any of you immediately thought of griffins). But a pretty cool not-quite-horse, if I do say so myself.

Brave journeys, daring rescues, nefarious sorcerers, friends, enemies, and with a little luck, a chance to save the world.

Remember, subscribe to my newsletter for a chance to win a free signed copy! Just click on “newsletter” above.

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Good News Tuesday

Is a cure for sickle cell on the horizon?

That wouldn’t surprise me, actually. Sickle cell is caused by a simple, single-gene mutation that is well understood. Seems like it ought to be a good candidate for this kind of thing.

Two years ago, a French teen with sickle cell disease underwent a gene therapy treatment intended to help his red blood cells from “sickling.” In a paper published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers revealed that today, half of his red blood cells have normal-shaped hemoglobin. He has not needed a blood transfusion, which many sickle cell patients receive to reduce complications from the disease, since three months after his treatment. He is also off all medicines.

The first tentative pilot treatments are not all working as well, apparently, but this looks very encouraging.

Okay, next:

If you’d asked me if any extant primate species remained undiscovered, I’d have said it seemed pretty unlikely. But here we are:

New Dwarf Primate Found, Is Giant Among Its Kin

It’s a bush baby — a galago — in Angola.

Here’s something weird from astronomy, no slouch in the weird-stuff category over the past couple years:

Strange New Nebula Is Missing Its Light Source

The two other ELANS previously discovered are nicknamed the Slug Nebula (for UC Santa Cruz’s idiosyncratic mascot) and the Jackpot Nebula (because it contains a whopping four quasars, extremely bright objects created by particles accelerating away from black holes). But the new ELAN is a head-scratcher. The Slug and the Jackpot have bright quasars illuminating their dust and gases, but the light source inside the newfound ELAN is a mystery.

An Elan is “enormous Lyman-alpha nebula,” it seems.

Also in the realm of peculiar, this one has it all: both suggestions of aliens and suggestions of a conspiracy to cover up the evidence of aliens. Ah, yes, we really do live in a science fiction universe.

Bizarre ‘megaship’ captured by International Space Station camera before Nasa ‘dims the feed’

“I have monitored hundreds, likely thousands, of hours of ISS live feed footage and I’ve seen UFOs, I’ve seen ice crystals, I’ve seen space debris and I’ve seen light reflections….What we’re seeing here looks like none of those. And it would appear that shortly after these objects come into view, Nasa – either purposely – or the UFOs do it on their own, but the objects quickly dim out. So we may have had Nasa dimming the feed, messing with the contrast or the exposure to make these objects disappear from view.”

Uh huh. We all know the truth is out there.

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Upcoming SF movies in 2017

There are actually 31 SFF movies coming up this year? That seems like a lot, but if you hardly ever see movies, maybe it’s easy to not notice there are 30+ SFF movies per year.

Anyway, here is the list, posted by David Brin.

Oddly, he does not list Logan, a movie I would kind of like to see even though I know it will be sad. Maybe Brin counts movies based on comics as different from SFF. I pretty much think of them as a subcategory of SFF.

Anyway, Logan is showing now, of course. I need to decide pretty soon whether to go see it. Do any of you know whether it is ultimately hopeful or ultimately tragic? I might see it either way, but I would like to be prepared.

I always have had a soft spot for Wolverine. And I’ve always thought of him as more human — ie, Logan. He always seemed like a more well-rounded character than some of the others.

So, yeah, if you’ve seen Logan, let me know what you thought.

Now, the other 31 movies coming up this year … let’s see … ah, Brin does not actually go all the way to 31. He lists and comments on 22.

My favorite of Brin’s comments: Death Race 2050: Geez, a cliché take on the cliché ripoffs of a cliché.

Something I might actually like to see: The Ghost in the Shell. I like Scarlett Johansson.

Still, I doubt I’ll get to the point of watching enough movies this year to be able to make a Top Ten list.

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Friday’s dose of puppy cuteness

What can I say? The babies are still at Maximum Cuteness. They will be for a couple weeks yet. Might as well enjoy Extreme Cuteness while it lasts, right? So, puppies:

Isn’t Kimmie adorable? I chirped like a bird until she lifted her head and held still for one second. She is only barely over four pounds, but such a little hellion!

This will probably be Leda’s last week with me. She has a new family lined up and will almost certainly be moving south to Little Rock very soon, where she will get a big jump on spring. I am sure her new people will admire her amazing ability to climb up a whole flight of stairs by herself. Hopefully the other two will learn to do that soon, thus saving me a whole lot of stair-climbing.

Conner would not look up! But he was still adorable anyway.

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