Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 294

The Once and Future Teen

Here’s the first panel I’m moderating today: The Once and Future Teen. The panel description is this: Estimates are that 80% of YA readers are adults. How might this affect the growth and direction of the fiction? What is it about YA fiction that brings adults and teens back for more?

Of course I take the position that there is no real dividing line between YA and adult SFF; that plenty of titles are published and marketed as one when they could perfectly well have gone the other way; and that therefore it is just silly to comment about the phenomenon of adults reading YA.

To support this assertion, I have here a modest list of adult SFF novels that I believe read like YA — these all have an important or primary coming-of-age character arc; they focus on characters and the internal, emotional life of the protagonist(s):

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen, and probably everything by Allen

The Last Unicorn by Beagle

The Vorkosigan saga by Bujold (The Warrior’s Apprentice)

The Sharing Knife series by Bujold

Pathfinder and the rest of the trilogy by Orson Scott Card

Cuckoo’s Egg and Fortress in the Eye of Time by Cherryh

Midshipman’s Hope by David Feintuch

The Magician series by Raymond Feist

Silver on the Road by Laura Anne Gilman

A Fistful of Sky by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, and probably everything by Hoffman

The Touchstone Trilogy by Andrea K Höst

The Longest Road trilogy by Guy Gavriel Kay

Bryony and Roses by T Kingfisher, and probably everything by Kingfisher

Lens of the World and practically everything else by RA MacAvoy

Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier, and probably everything else by Marillier

Alphabet of Thorn and practically everything by Patricia McKillip

Deerskin and Sunshine and everything else by Robin McKinley

The Paksenarrion series and the Vatta series by Elizabeth Moon

House of Shadows , the Griffin Mage trilogy, and The Mountain of Kept Memory by Neumeier

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Emergence by David Palmer

The Telsey Amberdon stories by James Schmitz

Across a Jade Sea trilogy by L Shelby

Troubled Waters by Sharon Shinn, and probably everything by Shinn

That early Harrington series by David Weber

The Thousand Names series by Django Wexler (because of Winter)

Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy and Raksura series by Martha Wells

Daughter of the Empire series by Janny Wurts

Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls by Jane Lindskold

And here is a much shorter list of works that are officially YA (or MG even) but have older protagonists (over 20) – I didn’t think this ever happened nowadays, but it does, though infrequently.

Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nymh

Mrs Pollifax spy novels

The Redwall Series by Jacques

The Princess Bride by Golding

Spirits that Walk in Shadow by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

The City in the Lake

The Hobbit by Tolkien

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (not SFF)

Rose Under Fire (ditto)

I Am the Messenger by Markus Zuzak

And a short but in theory practically infinite list of adult SFF that definitely is not YA — does not feature a coming-of-age character arc or a finding-your-place-in-the-world arc; instead we open with an already-competent older protagonist who is dealing with other sorts of problems. Yet I can’t see YA readers disliking these books, which also deal with character and the emotional life of the protagonist.

The Chalion series and the Cordelia stories by Bujold

Everything else by Guy Gavriel Kay

The Heris Serrano series by Elizabeth Moon

Temeraire series by Novik

The Martian by Weir

Wheel of the Infinite and practically everything else by Martha Wells

And here, at last, is a smallish set of adult SFF titles that to me do not seem likely to appeal to readers who basically prefer YA:

Foundation trilogy by Asimov

Leviathan Wakes series by Corey

Ancillary Justice trilogy by Leckie

Ringworld by Larry Niven, and probably his other books as well

Expiration Date and many other titles by Tim Powers

The Mars trilogy and other works by KSR

Dogland by Shetterly – very young protag who does not grow up during the course of the novel

Seveneves by Stephenson

The Just City series by Jo Walton

The Golden Age series by John C Wright

Retro Hugo Awards

So, Thursday was the first full day of WorldCon for me, and it was certainly jam-packed. I have only seen about half the art show and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of the dealers’ room. I’ve attended a few panels and been on one (Trends in YA; the panel was fine; ably moderated by Christine Taylor-Butler), and I’ve certainly missed out on a lot of things I would have liked to attend because there’s no way to do everything. Missed Martha Wells’ reading, alas. I really wanted to go to that.

Anyway, the day wound up with the Retro Hugo Awards, which actually involved a cute, fun frame story about time travel and an alternate 1941 and a lost cell phone stolen by a Hydra agent. I didn’t expect that and it added a lot to the Awards.

Now let me share those results with you:

BEST NOVEL — Slan, A.E. Van Vogt

BEST NOVELLA — “If This Goes On…”, Robert A. Heinlein

BEST NOVELETTE — “The Roads Must Roll”, Robert A. Heinlein

BEST SHORT STORY — “Robbie”, Isaac Asimov

BEST GRAPHIC STORY — Batman #1

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM — Fantasia

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM — Pinocchio

BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM — John W. Campbell

BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST — Virgil Finlay

BEST FANZINE — Futuria Fantasia edited by Ray Bradbury

BEST FAN WRITER — Ray Bradbury

Isn’t it funny to think of Ray Bradbury as a fan writer rather than a pro? Anyway, I was pretty pleased with these results and only really surprised twice — I wanted “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” by Jorge Luis Borges to win, I expected Heinlein’s “Requiem” to win, and as you see, neither did. Incidentally, Borges’ story is available online as a pdf; if you haven’t read it — which I never had until it was nominated for this award — you really should.

And I was surprised by SLAN, too. I’ve never read that one. Maybe I will now, just out of curiosity. The most delightful moment was definitely when van Vogt’s granddaughter unexpectedly appeared to accept the award. Apparently impression the staff didn’t know she was present and she hadn’t prepared a formal acceptance speech, but her unscripted pleasure was unbeatably charming. Here’s a photo, taken with a Real Camera by Mike Schiffer, who was kind enough to share it with me:

Historical figures I’d love to read fiction about

Here’s a post at Rinn Reads: Female Historical Figures I’d Love To Read More Fiction About

Rinn’s picks are all really interesting women:

Ada Lovelace — the only legitimate child of the poet Byron, and was born in 1815. She was a mathematician and writer, and wrote the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine.

Mary Seacole — a Jamaican woman who nursed wounded officers and soldiers during the Crimean War.

Katherine Ferrers — an English heiress, but also, according to popular legend, a female highwayman known by the name ‘The Wicked Lady’.

Gertrude Bell — a female archaeologist who worked during the 19th and 20th centuries. She was also a highly influential spy.

Click through to read a little more about all of those women. Don’t they all sound amazing? I’d never heard of Katherine Ferrers. And are you SURE Gertrude Bell was a real person? Because wow.

This so reminds me of some of the books on my wish list, books that I haven’t even got them onto my TBR pile yet. Starting with:

An engrossing biography of the longest-reigning female pharaoh in Ancient Egypt and the story of her audacious rise to power in a man’s world, says Goodreads. Hatshepsut totally deserves to be the centerpiece of a novel or three. I really want to read this biography, but I would love fiction too.

Not quite the same thing, but I first learned about Hatshepsut by reading CJ Cherryh’s HEROS IN HELL, where she features as a secondary character. So does Cleopatra, although for her I immediately think of CLEOPATRA’S HEIR by Gillian Bradshaw. Cleopatra does not feature in that book herself, but she casts a long and rather terrible shadow over her son Caesarion. It’s a wonderful book, one of my favorites by Bradshaw.

And thinking about CLEOPATRA’S HEIR leads me to Augustus, who reminds me of another biography I haven’t read but want to:

Which takes me away from Rinn’s theme of historical women, but really, Augustus is a fascinating person. Someday I want to read that biography, and I see there is also a novel by John Edward Williams that sounds good.

The closest I’ve come to this idea recently — fiction about real historical figures — is of course ROSE UNDER FIRE. The main character was not a historical figure, but so many of the secondary characters were. I think that counts.

Recent Reading: A lot of romances

So, all during August I have been revising The Dark Turn of Winter. This is my second book for Saga, so my editor for this one is Navah Wolfe. I’m really, really glad she gave this book a thumbs up because a) I am quite fond of it myself; and b) it would be fairly difficult to write something else for Saga in, like, a month or whatever. What a nightmare that would have been, seriously. Unless she wound up approving something else of mine that I have already written, of course. That would have been okay. But thankfully the issue doesn’t come up because she approved Winter.

Also, I expect you have all forgotten this, but Navah is the one who had me revise The Mountain of Kept Memory by removing one of the two main protagonists, replacing him with a different character who had been secondary, and rearranging the plot to accommodate the change. Although I wound up with a tighter plot and I like the results quite a bit – and let me just remind you that Mountain comes out in November and you should all totally read it and then if you’re interested I will describe some of the changes – anyway, I was pretty relieved that Navah’s revision comments for Winter were a lot more, uh, restrained.

Nevertheless, revision. Revision takes not just time but also mental energy (Is this plot point clear enough now? Is this character more compelling? Is the relationship between the two primary protagonists out in the open enough so that readers can tell they are falling for each other? OHMY GOD THIS BOOK IS GETTING REALLY LONG IS THAT OKAY? (It looks like I’m going to tip over into 200,000 words during this revision (the final version of the rough draft was 184,000, which Navah didn’t comment about so I guess length is okay. I hope.))).

So, I have been reading some nonfiction during the revision process, but I really wanted to read fiction, too. There’s only so much time one can spend reading political blogs or Twitter, after all, especially this year, where the two are trying to merge (which I simply detest; of course people want different things from social media, but personally, I can’t tell you how many people I have unfollowed because they keep tweeting about politics).

Yet though I definitely wanted to read fiction, I couldn’t afford to let myself get totally distracted and pulled into other authors’ books. Romances turned out to be exactly what I needed. So this month so far I have read:

A Wedding Journey, The Lady’s Companion, and Softly Falling, all by Carla Kelly. Some of you recommended these. They are all historical novels where the romance is fairly central, yet presented in a fairly restrained way. There is no explicit sex, which as far as I’m concerned is a definite point in Kelly’s favor. Also, the protagonists often have a lot more to deal with than just getting their own lives and relationships in order. One can see that Kelly is primarily a historian who includes romances in her historical novels, rather than primarily a romance writer who is including history in her romance novels.

The Secret Countess by Eva Ibbotson. This is also a historical romance.

Truly by Ruthie Knox. This one is contemporary. Chachic recommended it ages ago for anyone who enjoys foodie details in their romance, which of course I totally do.

I also started and DNFed two mysteries, one cozy and one . . . whatever you call non-cozy mysteries? I didn’t get very far in them, though I wouldn’t want to try to pin down just what about them didn’t work for me because neither one was actually bad. In contrast, all these romances were a pleasure to read.

So let’s see. Taking Carla Kelly first. I don’t take notes on who recommended what to me, not being that organized, so I don’t recall. But I liked these a lot. A Wedding Journey is mainly though not exclusively from the point of view of Jesse, an assistant surgeon in the British army during the Napoleonic wars; and also occasionally from the pov of a young nurse attached to his marching hospital, Nell. Jesse and Nell and a couple soldiers and a few patients find themselves on their own during a retreat through Spain and I expect you can more or less anticipate the plot from there. The best touch: Jesse frequently makes little asides to Hippocrates. That was so charming. I kind of kept thinking of A Beacon at Alexandria, though the two books are nothing alike, of course. Anyway, the good guys were a little too good to be true, especially a couple of the secondary characters; and the villains were perhaps a little too villainous to be believable, but overall it was just right for the purpose; ie, fun to read without being particularly compelling.

So, I enjoyed that one, but overall I liked The Lady’s Companion better. This one involves Susan Hampton, an upper-class young lady whose spendthrift father rips through the money she need for her come-out and throws them both on the dubious charity of her aunt. So she gets a job as companion to old Lady Bushnell. David Wiggins is the bailiff at the estate. So there you go, basically, although the background details about the Bushnell family are quite complicated and fascinating. So this is one of the few – the very few – historical romances (or for that matter contemporary romances, probably) where the female lead winds up marrying way beneath herself socially. A very interesting touch. The bailiff is such an interesting character that as far as I’m concerned he kind of leaves Susan herself in the shade, though I don’t recall getting many (if any) scenes from his point of view. He works better as a secondary character, though, and Susan carries the pov just fine.

And then Softly Falling. It just happens that I read these three books in this order, which happens to be the order I’d line ’em up anyway. Softly Falling was definitely my favorite and guarantees that I’ll be coming back to Carla Kelly’s work in the future.

Nice cover, especially for a romance. No close-up of the naked chest of a guy. That’s a plus for me.

The primary protagonist here is Lily Carteret, whose father is British and mother was from Barbados. She’s an unwanted poor relation in her uncle’s house, so when the uncle marries, he sends her to her father, who has a job on a cattle ranch in Wyoming (this is in 1886). Now, here, for the first time, I thought the female lead was up to the weight of the male lead. I liked Lily a lot. She’s complex in all the best ways – resolute, kind, intelligent, competent. Of course she’s a little too good to be true, but that seems to be typical of Kelly’s work and I enjoy that in a romance anyway, within reason. And of course because Lily is new to Wyoming, her pov is excellent for letting the reader really see the setting.

The male lead is the foreman of the ranch, Jack Sinclair. I liked him at least as much as Lily, and since he’s totally familiar with Wyoming and the ranch and the life of a cowhand, he’s just the right kind of foil for Lily when it comes to bringing the setting to life. Let me add that I am SO GRATEFUL I don’t live on a Wyoming cattle ranch in 1886, particularly during an especially dreadful winter. So: Lily, Jack, a terrible winter, there you go.

Unsurprisingly, just as the good guys in Softly Falling are Very Good, the bad guys are Thoroughly Bad – in this case, that’s the owner of the cattle ranch and his equally awful wife. Naturally they get what they deserve, and good riddance to them. Frankly I thought this particular story would have worked just as well with a little bit of a lighter hand on the Badness, but it was fine, especially since we see relatively little of the bad guys.

Also, it could be coincidence, but in each of these three books, one of the lead protagonists has a father who is a wastrel, a spendthrift, an alcoholic, or all three. That set up might be kind of a thing for Kelly. But the father seemed substantially more complex and believable (and likeable) in Softly Falling than the other two books.

Overall Carla Kelly is a great discovery for me. She’s got plenty more books and I think they will be just right for me while I am revising – probably too distracting if I’m actually working on a first draft. Softly Falling was actually a little too distracting, which is a problem that by definition is a pleasure, of course.

So, then, moving on. I believe several people recommended Eva Ibbotson’s The Secret Countess to me. They were all correct. I greatly enjoyed it – mostly. This one involves Anna Grazinsky, whose noble Russian family lost everything when the tsars fell from power.

Anna winds up with her penniless mother in London, so naturally she takes a job as a housemaid at a country estate. The estate is being readied for the return of the Rupert, the new young Earl of Westerholme, who was injured during the war and is now taking over the impoverished estate because his older brother was killed. Luckily, considering the financial difficulties of the estate, he has a fiancée, a young woman of considerable wealth who greatly desires an aristocratic title. So there’s the plot, obviously.

Now, listen, talk about Too Good To Be True and WAY Too Bad To Be Believable. Perhaps I was sensitized by coming out of Carla Kelly’s novels, but wow.

Actually, Anna’s wonderfulness made me happy. I loved her. She reminded me so much of a scattering of other particularly wonderful characters, like in A Little Princess, remember Sara? I still love that book. In fact, Ibbotson pulls that part off perfectly; I totally believed in Anna. But the bad guys are SO BAD. Wow, that fiancée. She is just despicable. And the doctor who is into eugenics! Of course it took the Nazis and WWII to discredit eugenics, so that hadn’t happened yet. But ugh. I could hardly stand to read the doctor’s pov sections (luckily short). In fact, I mostly skimmed those.

On the other hand, this isn’t a straight romance like Carla Kelly’s work. It’s also something of a comedy of manners, where everyone important finds their plotlines intersecting and weaving together in the most complex way until at the end all the balls fall neatly into the appropriate holes, plink plink plink. It’s a very enjoyable denouement. It totally made me think of Wodehouse, though that is partly because it’s the butler who saves the day at the last moment. Lovely writing, too, though not a bit like Wodehouse. I expect I’ll be adding something else by Ibbotson to my TBR list, too.

Okay, so then I reached for the only other romance I currently have on my TBR pile. Truly had been there for a while, so it was about time to read it. I knew Chachic had recommended it and the male lead was a chef or ex-chef or something. And that it was contemporary. That’s all I knew about it.

Contemporaries are a harder sell for me than historicals, but I liked this one quite a bit. The writing is good; a few times I laughed out loud. There’s a good bit of explicit sex, but I wouldn’t say those scenes take over the book, thankfully. Truly is short on plot compared to any SFF story, or for that matter compared to the above romances. Nothing is going on except the protagonists getting their lives in order, but Knox has created a couple of really believable, likeable protagonists and set them in a network of complicated family relationships.

In this case, the romantic leads are not too good to be true, and there aren’t any villains – not even an antagonist like a terrible winter. The primary protagonist, May, let her life be taken over by her ex-boyfriend because it was the path of least resistance – I can actually completely understand that. But he’s not a bad guy. She’s never felt free to be herself; she feels all this pressure to be sensible and down-to-earth and bland, but that’s her; she’s the one who let herself be stuffed into that box. And she knows it, and knows she’s the one who has to let herself expand if she’s going to. I like how all that is shown. It’s all so true.

However, though I liked May, it was Ben I loved. He would drive me crazy if I were his friend, but as the secondary protagonist he was perfect. All that anger he’s carrying around, and anybody can see he should never, never, never open another high-stress restaurant. He’s got such a weird life right now, urban beekeeper, who would have thought of that as a hobby? (And would anybody really pay $35 for a jar of honey?) He’s got even more to sort out than May, and I really liked how that was shown, too. He also struck me as true and real.

And the secondary characters have their own lives and stuff to work out, too, especially May’s family. Also, as an added note, I so much appreciated that May is a big woman with ordinary good looks rather than a Barbie figure with super-model looks. And how Ben is good looking, but not male-model gorgeous with ripped abs. A lot more romances, imo, could stand to tone down the physical perfection of the lead characters.

So that’s August reading so far: unusually romance heavy. I’m out now, so I’ll have to read other stuff unless I want to buy more books (thus expanding the TBR pile). At the moment I’m re-reading Hunting by Andrea K Höst, but after that maybe I will dip into the historical fantasy bundle I picked up recently.

Until I finish revising The Dark Turn of Winter. After that I am totally going to take a break and read the most intense, compelling SFF novels I can find on my TBR pile.

O Dreaded Prologue

Here is an entertaining post about prologues by Blair MacGregor:

Common talk (and just about every critique group and workshop) says a writer should never use a prologue because prologues are so often written poorly. But… first chapters are often written poorly, too, as are fight scenes, descriptions, character backstory, depictions of horses, near-future science, and final chapters. But we do not advise writers to avoid writing them. We instead advise them to learn how to write them well.

I wish I’d said that. That is just so true.

MacGregor then goes on to analyze prologues a bit — what they’re for and how they work (or fail to work) and so on. The whole post is worth reading. Me, I mostly am not impressed by other people’s prologues and from time to time I read the first paragraph or so and skip the rest (and in that case, I may also skip the rest of the book). But sometimes I love prologues. It depends. Libba Bray’s prologue for BEAUTY QUEENS is wonderful.

I’ve put prologues in a couple of my books. And taken the prologue out again in one of them, come to think of it (MOUNTAIN, but a *lot* about that book changed from the first draft to the final draft, so it may not be fair to hold up as an example either way).

Anyway, nice post from Blair MacGregor — click through and read the whole thing if you have a few minutes.

Recent listening: STEELHEART by Brandon Sanderson

This is a twelve-hour audiobook with a good narrator and generally a fast enough pace and witty enough dialogue to be fun to listen to while driving or weeding (the two activities for which I most need audiobooks). I enjoyed it quite a bit, with some caveats.

The idea: this is a supervillain story! I didn’t know that. I’ve had it on my TBL pile for a while, but had forgotten any description of the book before I started listening to it. Nor do I like to read reviews before I get around to a book; I don’t generally want a lot of spoilers. So I’d forgotten what STEELHEART was about. As I say, it turns out it’s about supervillains – “Epics” – people who got superpowers of various types when Calamity (a mysterious astronomical or alien object) appeared in the sky a decade or two back.

Epics are all evil. Using their powers makes them be evil, so there aren’t any heroes. Their appearance spelled the end of civilization as we know it. Steelheart himself is the most powerful and most evil Epic of them all. He is Emperor of the city that used to be Chicago, thus demonstrating that he is also ignorant as a pig, because seriously, Emperor? Of one city? I guess he thought the title sounded cool and doesn’t care that if you just rule one city, you are hardly an emperor.

The characters:

David is the first-person pov protagonist. We see the whole story through his eyes. He’s basically a kid, eighteen or twenty. The book opens with a prologue where David’s father is killed by Steelheart, and of course David is determined to kill Steelheart in revenge. This is tricky because Steelheart is completely invulnerable. Well, all right, *almost* completely invulnerable. David’s father wounded him, so David knows Steelheart must have a weakness and he is determined to figure out what that weakness is.

David is okay as the protagonist. He’s smart, determined, and a decent guy. I liked him, though to me he was actually less interesting than most of the important secondary characters.

Given that he’s a smart guy and thoroughly obsessed with Epics in general and Steelheart in particularly, it’s kind of ridiculous that David doesn’t immediately lay out Steelheart’s three most likely weaknesses. I mean, he was right there when Steelheart killed his father. He saw the interaction between them. So this is the most important caveat for me: David is incredibly dumb about that.

So is everyone else. David describes that incident to the Reckoners after he joins them, and none of them twig either. Sanderson is trying so hard to reserve the likely weaknesses, but the reader most likely pegs them immediately. I was mentally shouting at all the characters: OF COURSE IT’S A, B, or C, YOU DIMWITS, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU literally from the very beginning. They didn’t even think of A or B until 80 or 90 percent of the way through the book, and then obviously it was going to be C, since that’s the one they hadn’t thought of.

Which makes me very curious: if you have read this, *did* you feel that Steelheart’s potential weaknesses were blazingly obvious right from the moment the reader is told that Epics have weaknesses? I really felt that Sanderson was “writing down” to his readers in preventing his characters from figuring that stuff out for such a long time. But if many readers don’t twig early, maybe I’m wrong.

The strength of the story: The secondary characters.

I loved Prof. I say this even though a particular important revelation about Prof is so extremely obvious that it shouldn’t count as a spoiler. But just in case I’m wrong about that, I won’t give it away here. Anyway, I did love Prof. If this book were to be turned into a movie, he’d present the most important casting decision. I have the most definite idea about what he looks like, his attitude, the way he moves, everything. Here we see how important the narrator of an audiobook is, because I think the narrator got Prof’s voice just right.

I enjoyed Cody, too. He’s so ridiculously straight-faced when he tells David the Prof’s weird technology works because of fairies and demons. He’s ridiculously straight-faced no matter what he comes out with. He might have been my favorite character in the whole book.

I liked Abraham a lot, too. Tia was more of a nonentity. Megan annoyed me, but got more interesting toward the end. Those were the main characters in the story – David, Prof, Cody, Abraham, Tia, and Megan were the Reckoners we met, and the interaction among them was the best part. The setting was just okay for me. The plot was fine; it gets docked ten points for extreme-ultra-mega-obviousness about Steelheart’s weaknesses and a couple other details; but it gets five points back for genuinely surprising me several times with important plot points.

Do I plan to go on with the rest of the series? Sure, probably, but unlike with, say, Kirstein’s Steerswoman series, I feel no immediate need to go on with it this minute. Too bad, since Sanderson’s series is finished and Kirstein’s is not.

Reading Reviews

Here’s a fun post at Kill Zone Blog, about reading reviews — really about types of reviews.

The Bad Review

The Good Review

The “Meh” Review

The Irrelevant Content Review

The All About the Reviewer Review

The Actionable Review

Now, this post — by Laura Benedict — is fun to read, but let me just mention that when she says “bad review” she means “negative review.” And similarly, “Good” means “Positive.” That’s fine, but I wanted to clarify, because actually there is all the difference in the world between a bad review and a negative review. Though from the author’s point of view, both might be maddening and certainly neither is welcome.

A bad review is actually one where the reviewer seems not to have read the actual book, but possibly a weirdly incorrect plot summary. Every now and then you do read a review that makes you scratch your head and say, Now, listen, are we talking about the same book?

In contrast, a negative review is, well, negative.

In some ways I think the most offensive one-star review is the Irrelevant Content type. The book arrived with a torn cover, so one star! I actually have seen that. *Rolls eyes*.

Of course the most *useful* review is not a type at all. It’s a review written by someone who shares your general taste in books.

What do you think of story bundles?

So, I just went ahead and purchased this historical fantasy bundle. I can’t download it just yet because I don’t have a good enough connection here, but I’ll follow the download link sometime soon-ish.

It’s not the first story bundle I’ve picked up, but I think it’s just the second. Normally I’m not too keen. I don’t know the authors, usually, and you know, I have PLENTY of books on my TBR pile already. No real need to add more that haven’t been specifically recommended by someone.

Also, this particular bundle has Death of a Necromancer and Between Worlds by Martha Wells and Lord of the Two Lands and Pillar of Fire by Judith Tarr. These are good to great books, but after all, I already have them. But their inclusion made me feel like the other books in the bundle are more likely to be really good as well. I don’t know if that follows.

Let me see, other titles in the bundle …

Trafalgar and Boone by Geonn Cannon

The Emperor’s Agent by Jo Graham

Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones

The Orffyreus Wheel by David Niall Wilson

Stag and Hound by Geonn Cannon

Steel Blues by Melissa Scott and Jo Graham

The Armor of Light by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett

You can read summaries and snippets from them at the StoryBundle website if you click through, but I will admit, I didn’t take the time to look them over too exhaustively. Who has the time? But if you happen to have read any of these authors before, what did you think?

I guess I’ll think about other story bundles in the future partly in response to how I like all these.

Just to let you know —

Posting may be sparse over the next two weeks.

a) I am busy with a new revision (DARK TURN OF WINTER).

b) I am not working until August 22, which is when the fall semester starts, and internet access is very poor from my house.

c) I am distracted by various things going on in my life.

However, I will be taking my laptop with me to WorldCon, so I will probably post from Kansas City starting on the 17th.

And if I can get anything like a connection, I will try to post now and then. Especially since I’ll continue to keep an eye on The Passive Voice and File 770 and Blackgate and all those kinds of sites.

Let me add: If you happen to be at WorldCon yourselves, then please don’t hesitate to come talk to me, even if I’m with a group of other people. I’ll be hanging out with my brother and various friends and so on, but don’t hesitate! As an introvert, I know it can be tough to feel like it’s okay to approach someone you haven’t actually met in person, especially if that person is in a group, so let me make it clear that this is fine, I would love for you to introduce yourself, and I will be happy to talk to you.

My WorldCon schedule looks like this:

Thursday 12:00 New Trends in Young Adult — I asked my agent for input here, since I think the agent’s-eye view is broader than any author’s view.

Friday 12:00 Adult and YA Fiction: the Once and Future Teen — about transitioning from YA to adult fiction; whether readers do. I want to start this panel with a poll of the attendees and we’ll just find out about changes in actual reading habits of that group and then go from there.

Friday 4:00 Space and Human Speciation. Now THERE’S an interesting topic! I’ve already been emailing back and forth with the other panelists, which includes Elizabeth Moon, btw.

Contrasting views

Via The Passive Voice, I’ve recently encountered two posts that are making me uncomfortable because I agree with them both, but they are pretty contradictory. Here they are. Check them out. What do you think? Are both of these writers correct? Can you come up with a pithy sentence that reconciles both views?

1. Dean Wesley Smith: Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: You Must Be Talented to Be a Professional Writer, in which Smith discusses how utterly untalented a writer he was when he was young and then goes on to say:

Thank heavens for me I came to the realization early on in my life that talent was only a measure of craft at a certain point in time and nothing more.

Yet, frighteningly, parents, teachers, and so many family and friends think that talent is FIXED. If you are talented when you are young in something, you should be for your entire life. Well, sadly, as many have discovered, it doesn’t work that way.

For example, at one point in my life, I was a very talented golfer. Now at the age of 65 I suck at it. But some of the locals I play a round with at times think I am talented because my swing still looks pretty. Ahh, the measures of talent.

Yet parents and teachers early on are determined to saddle kids with the “talented” label or worse yet, push them away from things they don’t do very well at first because they have no “talent” for that.

Just makes me angry every time I hear of it.

If you call a student talented, it’s an excuse for them to not work as hard. “It’s easy for them.” If you say they don’t have talent, you allow them to not try at all, or think something is impossible to do and then quit.

In my opinion, talent is a deadly word to attach or even mention in front of any child.

Now, let’s compare that to this post:

2. Brianna Weist: You’re not meant to do what you love. You’re meant to do what you’re good at.

We’re doing people an incredible disservice by telling them they should seek, and pursue, what they love. People usually can’t differentiate what they really love and what they love the idea of.

But more importantly, you are not meant to do what you love. You are meant to do what you’re skilled at. Imagine an aspiring doctor with a low IQ but a lot of “passion.” They wouldn’t make it through medical school, and you wouldn’t want them to.

If that person didn’t know better, they’d develop an inferiority complex and spend the better part of their life bitter and assuming themselves to be failures. They didn’t get to do what they thought they loved, so they haven’t actualized their lives as they were supposed to.

Premeditating what we think we’d love to do without actually being in the thick of it is the beginning of the problem, and having too much ego to scrap it and start over is the end. When we try to anticipate what we’d love, we’re running on a projection, an assumption. Almost everybody believes they have the talent to succeed at the thing they really love. Needless to say, not everybody is correct.

If everybody did what they thought they loved, the important things wouldn’t get done. To function as a society, there are labors that are necessary. Someone has to do them. Is that person robbed of a life of passion, because they had to choose a life of skill and purpose? No, of course not.

You can choose what you love to do, simply by how you think of it and what you focus on. Everything is work. Everything is work. Everything is work. There are few jobs that are fundamentally “easier” than others, whether by virtue of manual labor or brain-power. There is only finding a job that suits you enough that the work doesn’t feel excruciating. There is only finding what you are skilled at, and then learning to be thankful.

A) Yes, I guess?

B) Yes, for sure?

I do agree that there are many professions where no amount of love and passion can substitute for intrinsic ability. I, for example, could not possibly succeed as a basketball player. Or at any other sport. I have a relatively poor sense of space and position and I’m so unathletic, I can’t even tell you. Plus I’m only five three. I could learn to get better at basketball than I am now (I could hardly get worse), but I could never be actually good at it.

I also frequently work with students who try very very very hard to get into the nursing program (or whatever), but seem unable to learn the necessary prerequisite math or chemistry — or who do get in, but can’t handle the very demanding courseload. I see students fail their classes all the time, often because of their complicated lives, often because of lack of self-discipline, but also sometimes because of what certainly looks like lack of ability.

I once told my vet about an issue I was seeing with a two-day-old puppy. After a pause of about five seconds, she said, “We never see this in puppies, but occasionally in calves …” She had remembered, for twenty years or however long, a random factoid about a rare condition in cows, which are animals she never works with. I was so impressed. (The condition was self-limiting and vanished in another two days or so, btw). My point is, this vet is a good diagnostician because of her amazing memory, and if you’re not above average in this department, then you probably will not be able to be as good a vet as she is, no matter your passion. Is that all just training? I think some of it is intrinsic ability.

Well, well, it was just interesting to encounter these different posts in quick succession.