Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 295

Finished! Whew, just in time

Okay, so, the space opera I was aiming to have finished at the beginning of July actually went nearly through to the end of July. But its final length is 550 pages, not 400, so, I mean.

Anyway, I think it has less sociological emphasis than I would really have preferred, because the adventure part is so primary. Which is fine. I expect my agent will approve.

The day before I finished the small revision I wanted to do before sending it off to my agent and beta readers, I got the page proofs for THE WHITE ROAD OF THE MOON.

The day after that, I got the first editorial letter for THE DARK TURN OF WINTER.

So . . . no break for me!

I have also almoooost finished the last Black Dog story for the second collection. I’m going to try to do that along with the DARK TURN revision by the end of this month, get that story collection out by September 1st. No guarantees! But we’ll see.

In the meantime, I thought you might like a look at a little snippet from the front of the space opera, NO FOREIGN SKY. So, here:

——————

-1-

Twelve Disks and eight Blades, none of which should have been anywhere near this juncture system. Disks painted red and Blades painted white in the display, the colors for enemies, with nowhere any friends. Not in this empty system between living worlds. Only the near-star Hanaa slide, far enough away now to be invisible to sensors; and, far too close now to sheer off and hide, the wayout Aam slide from which that uut formation had just appeared. Nothing else to hold attention or interest; a juncture one skipped through on the way to somewhere else. Except this time, when one suddenly found unexpected enemies in a place they should not have been. Davon leaned forward, dread of what might have happened to Aam tightening his stomach. And dread of what might now befall Nkaastu.

Worse, Nkaastu’s own presence gave away the existence of another slide in this system. Slides were hard to spot unless you knew just where to look, but if the Trolls looked hard enough, they would certainly find the Hanaa slide eventually. Hanaa was better defended than Aam; every Ka’ Taand world was better defended than Aam. But if any Trolls found Hanaa and then got away, back to whatever forsaken world had brought them forth, they would come again. And again, and again, until they had burned all life from Hanaa as well as Aam, shattered the worldlets and stations orbiting both worlds, and left only broken rock and a poisoned atmosphere. Trolls never relented.

Beyond Hanaa, the Trolls would need to find their way through only two more junctures to reach the heart-stars of turun space. Possibly the Suund would move fast enough, free up enough full-fighters and resources to interdict one or the other of those junctures. Impossible to simply shut down the slides; all the important slides in those systems were stable. That was essential for maintaining the long-term integrity of the Ka’ Taand, but it was almost impossible to close down a stable slide. Fission bombs could dissolve an unstable slide and you could hope when another one appeared, it wouldn’t echo the path of the original. Or if the slide wasn’t quite that unstable, at least a fission bomb could sometimes shut it down for Kaantuu-years. But a really solid, well-established slide in a good position was hard to disrupt.

Interdicting a juncture the hard way, pulling resources from the other side of Ka’ Taand space . . . Davon could hardly see how that could be managed. Wealthy and prosperous as the interlocking clans of the Ka’ Taand might be, every battlecommander knew very well that they were already overstretched. Nevertheless, left with no choice, maybe the Suund would find a way.

Shut those junctures down, close them off, abandon both Hanaa and Aam . . . the Suund would probably have to do exactly that, if it could be done. Let the Trolls past Hanaa and there were only four systems before they’d come all the way to Kaantuu itself. That did not bear thinking of, Davon could hardly bear to think of any of this, yet there rode the Disks and their attendant Blades, as though this was Troll space and not turun at all.

Nine years of gradually intensifying battle had served as a hard lesson in caution, and so scans had gone live the moment Nkaastu emerged in juncture space. So Nkaastu discovered the Trolls at the extreme edge of scan range. Emergency lights set within the high ceiling flickered automatically to life, glowing in intricate cloisonné patterns, black-purple and black-crimson against the turquoise and greens and rich browns of the enamels.

Tsaa Kuotaan u Aanuku, shocked, had stiffened into silent immobility for the first precious instants following the positive identification of the Trolls. All the turun across the wide bridge stiffened in defensive postures, opening their golden eyes wide, lifting their heavy heads, leaning forward, bracing their four powerful legs, gripping the crash railings with their lower hands. Though naturally all of the turun on the bridge were female, the largest of them barely a third the size of a male, they suddenly seemed to loom. Of course, to an uman, all turun sometimes seem to loom.

From his observer’s post behind and to the right of Tsaa Kuotaan, Davon sepu Kaamharaa felt the prickle of danger down his spine and knew that part of the sudden sharp sense of peril was due simply to the instinctive awareness that he was surrounded by creatures who could crush his bones with one blow – even though those creatures were only turun, and would never do such a thing.

But most of that awareness of danger was due to the Trolls. The uut – the enemies from the empty dark, but Davon was convinced that it had been a mistake to call their enemies after a race of mythological demons from the hell of the forsaken gods. It was better to say Trolls: a short, meaningless name from uman cant, a name that carried no connotations of demon-haunted despair.

Especially since this particular bunch of Trolls was enough to inspire a certain despair regardless, with only Nkaastu riding between them and the Hanaa slide. Twelve Disks were too many for one half-fighter like Nkaastu, even without the Blades. Yet what those Trolls might do to Hanaa if Nkaastu let them into the slide – Davon flinched from thinking of it.

Even in these few moments, the Trolls had obviously realized Nkaastu was here. The Disks had already taken on an attack formation, pairs of Blades cutting away below and above the plain of the formation’s ecliptic to wait their chance for independent runs, all of them heading straight for Nkaastu. No sensible predator would attack an angry turun, far less a whole clan of angry turun – but this was not the great savannah of Kaantuu, and Trolls were not ordinary predators, and the turun, who had not evolved to fight predators but to defend themselves and their own by sheer formidability, stood immobile in rage and fear.

Davon, who had been on the bridge only because Tsaa Kuotaan was prudent and farsighted and not much plagued by the possessiveness that afflicted too many Tsaam, stepped quietly past Kuotaan, reached up that last deliberate distance that was always a stretch for even a tall uman, and, without waiting for either command or permission, struck the battlecommand light hard with the heel of his right hand. The light flared to life, black-purple, ringing with the slowly gathering resonance that signaled the emergency transfer of command and summoned the battlecrew.

“Yes,” said Tsaa Kuotaan, her voice a low rumble. She turned her head to look down at Davon. Then she looked at the display again and said in the nturun plural, “Good. We approve.”

————————-

At the time this story opens, a large population of humans have been thoroughly integrated into turun society for a long time — I’m thinking hundreds of years, though I don’t specify.

The background is like this: ages ago, humanity colonized some number of worlds. Disaster struck and almost all colonies were abandoned. A particular colony, on a world later discovered by the turun, suffered one calamity after another and was completely wrecked, with humans eventually reduced to a scattered stone-age population. We find out a little about this in the story, but it was a long time ago and no one spends a lot of time thinking about it.

Then the turun discovered that world, discovered the primitive humans, figured out what had happened, and brought them into their own society, first almost like pets, and later as people.

Very soon after this opening, the new turun/human society is going to run into the mainline human society. Then we move into the main action of the story.

Always a nervous time, sending a book out to be actually read by people who aren’t you. I hope my agent and beta readers like this one, and that you all get a chance to read it in the not-too-distant future!

Recipes your kids might like

So, as you perhaps have noticed, I have about a million dogs rather than children. I would therefore hesitate to say anything like: Recipes your kids will love, because how would I know? But if you happen to have children who like to mess around in the kitchen, then I recently made two completely different things that struck me as extremely kid friendly to both make and eat, at least in some stages.

The first is also parent friendly, because healthy! vegetables! I mean, yes, breaded and deep fried, but that’s the part that ought to appeal to kids if they share the (obviously correct) opinion that one of the four food groups is Crispy Brown Things.

This recipe could be called: Eggplant Everyone Will Eat, because due to the magic of crispy brownness and gooey cheese, I’m pretty sure anybody would in fact like these, even if they generally hate eggplant. Of course its official name is:

Crispy Eggplant Fritters with Smoked Mozzarella

Which also sounds pretty tasty and gives you a much better idea what he recipe is like.

This is a recipe I found on Epicurious.com. Of course I did not follow the recipe exactly, but closer than usual. I didn’t have smoked mozzarella, for one thing. So far I have made this recipe with smoked provolone, Munster, and pepper jack. The Munster was okay, but perhaps too mild. The other two were both just fine. I also strongly suggest some sort of tomato-y dipping sauce, but hey, if everyone in your family hates tomatoes, ymmv. Tomorrow for a change I think I may try a dipping sauce made with pomegranate molasses, which tends to work well with various eggplant dishes. Anyway, the recipe:

2 large normal purple eggplants, about 2 lbs total, or I presume an equivalent amount of smaller eggplants.

Salt

2 eggs, divided

¾ C grated Parmesan, and let me just mention that recently all the pre-grated canned types were found to be adulterated with sawdust, so, you know, really, you ought to consider grating your own if you don’t already. I suggest a microplane grater for the purpose. I find my grater also invaluable for zesting lemons.

1½ C dry bread crumbs, divided. Or more. You know how it is when you’re breading stuff, it always takes more than the recipe says and it is SO ANNOYING to run out of crumbs. I used panko once and regular dried out bread the next time and both worked fine.

¼ C minced parsley. I didn’t have any handy because all the parsley has bolted to seed, so I left it out. I mean, it’s just parsley.

1 Tbsp minced thyme. I do have some growing, but I’d have to walk over the herb garden to get it, so I used dried. It was fine.

¼ tsp pepper

1½ Tbsp flour

4 oz smoked mozzarella or whatever kind of cheese you have handy, cubed, and I didn’t measure it, either. I used pretty big cubes because you really can’t have too much molten cheese in the center of a fritter, right? I bet I used significantly more than 4 oz.

Some kind of dipping sauce. I think this sounds like basically an Italianesque kind of recipe, so I have been using Marcella Hazan’s famous tomato sauce, only with jalapenos added because I have a lot of jalapenos right now.

Okay, you need to start this ahead of time. Slice the eggplants into thick slices. The recipe says ½ inch and I think that is definitely not too thick. Lay out on paper towels in a single layer and sprinkle with plenty of salt for half an hour or so, turning once or twice. Most of the salt will get left behind, so if anything I’ve found the eggplant mixture needs more salt later even though I was pretty generous with salting the eggplant.

Brush baking sheets with olive oil, lay the eggplant slices on the baking sheets, and bake at 350 degrees for about an hour. Cool and chop. You can just keep the eggplant chilled for a couple days at this point if that’s convenient, because I did and it was fine.

Now is the time I suggest your kids might like to get involved. Combine one egg, the Parmesan, ¼ C breadcrumbs, the herbs and seasonings. I bet you could combine all this in a food processor, but I didn’t try it.Stir in the eggplant. This will make a sort of squishy, gooey dough type of thing that you (or your kids) can form into balls without too much trouble

Whisk the other egg together with the flour.

Heat oil for deep frying to 350 degrees, or if you would prefer to shallow fry the fritters, pour ¼ inch oil into a large skillet. I haven’t tried the latter method, which is what the recipe suggests, but deep frying worked really well and was very easy.

Now, form the eggplant mixture into large balls, about the size of golf balls, around the cubes of cheese. The recipe says 1¼ inch. I probably made mine a little bigger than that. Dip the balls into the egg/flour mixture and then roll them into the breadcrumbs. Deep fry or shallow fry, until deeply browned, turning occasionally. I presume you would need to supervise smaller children pretty carefully with the hot oil, but these fritters are particularly easy and quick to deep fry and do not spatter at all. Remove the fritters to a paper-towel-lined plate to drain. Try to wait at least five minutes so that the molten cheese doesn’t burn your mouth, but I warn you, these are going to look really tempting.

Now, I swear, ANYBODY will like these, especially with a dipping sauce. My dad, who really does not care for eggplant, liked them fine. They do not scream EGGPLANT unless you know what they’re made of. And you can sure go through a lot of eggplant in a hurry with this recipe, which is nice if you happen to have a couple productive plants on the back deck, as I do this year.

If by some chance your family is too opposed to the mere idea of eggplant to even consider the above recipe, or the mere thought of deep frying anything gives you hives, this second recipe is for you! I made this because it looked pretty and easy and because I found an old jar of marshmallow fluff in the pantry that I was afraid was going to melt or spoil or something unless I used it up.

Marshmallow Fluff Cookies

1 package Carr’s Wheatmeal Biscuits

1 jar marshmallow fluff

8 oz semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips – I used Ghirardelli bittersweet, but I’m a chocolate snob, so hey, use whatever kind of chocolate you have handy.

2 Tbsp vegetable oil

I bet you can see this recipe coming merely from perusing the above ingredients. But, if you want actual directions, here:

Make sure you have room in your freezer for a baking sheet. Lay out the cookies in a single layer on the baking sheet. Top each with a (scant) tablespoon of marshmallow fluff, until you run out of either cookies or marshmallow fluff (I had cookies left over). Obviously everybody who participates in this little project is going to get sticky, so I imagine smaller children ought to be supervised unless you want marshmallow fluff getting everywhere. Anyway, when all the cookies are topped with marshmallow fluff, put the baking sheet in the freezer for ten minutes or until the chocolate is prepared.

Melt the chocolate with the vegetable oil. You can do this in a pan on the stove, I guess, but the microwave is by far the easiest method. Stir after a minute; by then the chocolate may be about melted. Cool the melted chocolate until it isn’t too hot. A little warm is okay.

Now take the cookies out of the freezer, pick up each one, and swish the top of the cookie through the chocolate, covering the entire top of the cookie and all the marshmallow fluff with chocolate. Let the excess drip off, lay the cookies back on the baking sheet, and pop them back in the freezer for a few minutes to set the chocolate. Naturally this is also messy, but smears of chocolate are not a terrible kind of mess to clean up.

There you go, doesn’t that sound like the kind of thing kids might like to help with? And eat? Mmm, chocolate marshmallow cookies! I stored mine in the freezer, but I would imagine if you made them for a family, they wouldn’t last long enough to need storage.

Twelve grammatical mistakes that make me want to throw live scorpions at you

Here’s a fun post about incorrect word usage: 9 grammatical mistakes you need to stop making before I throw live scorpions at you.*

Yes yes I know, these posts are a dime a dozen, but a) I totally agree with most of these; and b) You couldn’t come up with ten?* and c) scorpions are cool! The tigers of the arthropod world! Though if someone throws one at you, wouldn’t it just bounce off harmlessly? Still, it’s an eye-catching phrase.

I found one of those on the wall of my house a few years ago. Not too poisonous, but startling! I’d had no idea there were any scorpions in MO at all. I am afraid I killed this one before looking it up and finding out it really is not that dangerous even to little dogs like mine. Next time I will just throw it outside. It is a striped tree scorpion, incidentally, and it will sting and the sting will hurt, so this doesn’t mean you should just pick one up casually, but you should think of it like a wasp, not a rattlesnake.

Anyway, so what are these nine* dire diction bad boys?

According to this post, they are:

1. Affect / Effect

OH YES. Since I had no choice but to learn the difference and how to use these, I naturally feel everyone else should do it right, too. (If you’re writing in science, you get to use both of these A LOT because there are no good synonyms, so you are forced to learn the correct usage.)

2. Myself. “My treasurer and myself agree with you completely about general operating funds.”

Another good one! That drives me batty! Surely it’s not just me. Surely many other grammarians out there hear this like fingernails down a chalkboard — myself without a referent. Ugh!

3. Apostrophes. “I forgot my flask, so Janice let me drink from her’s.” Or, “There are leftover donut’s in the conference room, y’all!”

Those examples are from the post. I . . . don’t *think* I have ever seen the former? Or maybe I blocked it. Examples like the latter are EVERYWHERE. Is apostrophe use really that difficult? I don’t think so.

4. Its/It’s.

Cheating to break this one out of #3 and use it as a separate example of grammar badness. But it certainly is super-common. (Don’t tell anyone, but if I’m tired enough, and typing with just my fingers and not my brain, I can actually make this mistake myself. Unbelievable, but true.)

5. I resonate with. I’ve been seeing this one more often lately. Instead of saying, “Your post on dating in the nonprofit sector resonates with me,” a colleague says, “I resonate with your post…”

I had to read the example given to understand what this one meant. I’m not sure I’ve heard anybody say this? I agree that it makes me think you are vibrating.

6. Utilize. Please stop using “utilize,” such as “Let’s utilize binder clips as door prizes at our gala.”

I must admit, this one does not particularly bother me. Sure it’s a little pretentious, but “a little pretentious” is not nearly as bad as “brainless use of random apostrophes.”

7. Based off of.

This sounds a little silly, I grant, but it’s not a usage that particularly outrages my delicate sensibilities.

8. Irregardless.

Yeah, I had a teacher tell me this is not a real word lo these many years ago, and that took care of that. Now I’m allergic to this usage.

9. And the funniest entry:

Service. OK, this, like “utilize,” is not a grammar mistake. It’s more about word choice. But please pay careful attention, because we in the nonprofit sector use this word a lot. And when it is used as a noun, it’s fine. When it’s used as a verb, though, it opens a hole in the fabric of space and time, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse unleash themselves upon the earth. Watch: “We service low-income individuals through our employment programs.” NoooOOOooOOOooo!!! If you don’t know why that is wrong, please ask a friend.

I laughed.

10*. Comprised of.

Yeah, it doesn’t really annoy me, if only because I never hear anybody use the word “comprise” or “comprises.” I mean, except me. I do now and then. Without the of.

11. Momentarily. It traditionally means “for a short period of time,” but it’s started to mean “in a short period of time.”

Interesting! I’m not sure I ever really noticed this shift. Obviously it doesn’t snag my attention when people use it in either sense.

12. Myriad. “We have a myriad of options for venues for next year’s gala.”

Yeah, just “myriad,” no “of” — I know that, but really, do people say “myriad” enough to annoy you with the “myriad of” phrase?

* The post SAID nine. The title of the post really is “9 grammatical mistakes you need to stop making before I throw live scorpions at you.” I counted the items twice when I got to ten, and frankly, it IS funny that a post nitpicking grammar and word choice happens to screw up counting from one to twelve. I hope I didn’t happen to make any grammatical mistakes in this post right hear! I mean “here.” I think errors are especially likely to slither into posts of this kind, which no doubt serves the poster right.

Meanwhile, when I thought there were only nine items, I thought of another which annoys me way more than anything you could do with “momentarily:”

13. “Orientate.” Stop it stop it stop it. There is no such word. It gets on my last nerve when people say this. Stop with the extra syllable!

Those romance writers get all the cool statistics

Here is an extremely impressive presentation prepared for the Romance Writers of America about sales data. Warning: this is pretty long. You can download it as a pdf. Maybe I will, though I wouldn’t mind seeing all this data prepared for SFF as well. Let me see if I can hit some of the highlights …

Romance = about 4% of print sales (from Nielsen), but about 45% of ebook sales (Amazon.com)

About 88% of all romance sales are ebook, and greater than 50% of romance ebooks are indie-produced.

From the comments on this post, here’s the breakdown of what was included in this analysis:

……………………..titles…………..authors

indie self-published……72,410…………..14,622

small/medium publisher….43,856……………9,227

amazon imprint………….2,040……………..752

big five published……..39,191……………5,189

uncategorized………….33,780……………9,540

The $262 million / year in ebook sales of romances from Amazon get divided up among 30,000 authors.

About 8.6% of the authors make over $10,000 per year. The rest of them make less than that. About 1400 authors make enough to theoretically live on — at least $25,000 per year. Of course a handful make a fortune.

There’s information about average sales, but this means mean sales, so in the comments The Data Guy cautions:

Because of the uneven way sales are typically distributed among book titles, it’s really only a small minority of titles in each category that typically account for the majority of sales, which means that the vast majority of titles in the category are earning significantly less than the category average.

It’s like that old joke: E. L. James walks into a bar, and suddenly everyone in there is on average a millionaire.

Tell the World

You know, if you tried to write bad guys as totally, utterly evil as the Nazis into a secondary world fantasy . . . you couldn’t do it. I truly don’t believe you could. I’ve been thinking about how I might try to do that, and honestly, your readers just wouldn’t believe in your villains. The Nazis were simply beyond belief.

We see this every time we get reminded about what they actually were like, what they did. Remember the first time you saw Shindler’s List? I do. Because it is a great story and a great movie as well as a history lesson, it sticks with the viewer. Or it did with me.

And I expect I’ll remember the first time I read Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein.

This is a great story. That’s essential. But it’s definitely also a history lesson; an important one in this era when – it seems to me – young people (and some not so young) have basically forgotten all about WWII and the Nazis. They know the names, but they have forgotten what the Nazis were like. That’s why people can throw around the Nazi accusation and the Hitler comparisons so freely: because they have no idea what they’re saying.

Has any group ever been as purely, comprehensively, calculatedly evil as the Nazis? Not even ISIS, probably. The ISIS thugs practice slavery and rape, torture and murder. They’re definitely evil. But tying down little girls, splitting open their legs, packing the wounds with gangrene, and leaving the wounds untreated for weeks to see what happens? I doubt that would ever occur to them, if only because I doubt they have any conception of rational thought. That sort of thing takes a . . . peculiar veneer, shall we say . . . of rationality.

Maybe North Korea comes close? They’ve got the death camps, but even they (probably) don’t do sadistic medical experiments on young teenage girls. Do they? Dear God, I hope they don’t.

So, the Nazis. The heart of Rose Under Fire is the concentration camp of Ravensbrück, and in particular the Polish “Rabbits.” These were the girls and women used in those experiments. Despite this, this story is not just a compelling read, it is actually uplifting. The bravery of the women at Ravensbrück is as astounding as the evil of the Nazi doctors and the concentration camp guards. Those women never gave up. I mean, of course some did. But as we see in the story, others hid the Rabbits, shared their bread when they were starving, and made continual tiny gestures of defiance. And huge gestures of defiance, sometimes – smuggling the Rabbits out to (slightly) less awful camps and propping dead women up in their places during roll call to get the count to come out even, for example.

Though the story is definitely centered around Ravensbrück and the Polish Rabbits, it is not a documentary. Like Code Name Verity, Rose Under Fire has one primary narrator who tells its story in epistolary form.

Rose is a young woman pilot, an ATA pilot who loves poetry. She’s American; she had a really nice childhood with a close-knit family and a father who owns a flight school, so she’s been flying since she was, like, twelve. Her job is to ferry new and repaired planes to the airfields where they’ll be used by the fighter pilots. She came to England specifically to help with the war effort. And she’s terrified of buzz bombs.

Buzz bombs are an important element in Rose Under Fire, partly because it’s after Rose spots one in the air and successfully tips it – makes it stall – that she gets lost, is spotted by German fighter pilots, and is captured. She winds up in Ravensbrück shortly after that. And because of the epistolary format of the story, when Part II opens, the first thing we find out – thank God – is that she survives. Because she couldn’t write anything much while she was in the concentration camp, so when she picks her notebook back up, it’s after everything is over.

This is a huge plus for the reader, as you might imagine. No matter how grim the rest of the story gets, you know Rose is going to escape. And she does. But along the way, Ravensbrück comes to life for the reader. Rose herself, of course, already has. She is such a beautifully drawn protagonist. Brave, but not unbelievably brave. Self-sacrificing, but not unbelievably noble. Honest, but not unbelievably self-aware – she is as capable of fooling herself as anyone.

They [starving women] were so far from being human that at first it didn’t even occur to me they could be fellow prisoners – I thought they must be hobos who had crawled in off the train tracks. God knows what I thought! Your brain does amazing acrobatics when it doesn’t want to believe something.

Rose feels completely real.

And she escapes. Plenty of people did escape from Nazi concentration camps, generally to be recaptured and shot. But here, Rose escapes, with two of her friends – and we know which ones from the moment Part II starts. That makes it so much easier to read, seriously.

Of course, Rose couldn’t have escaped without the help of other prisoners and a lot of luck. She thinks this over and over: I am so lucky. It’s quite striking, under the circumstances. And yet, she *is* really lucky. Not in a way that threatens to knock the reader out of the story. Still, her acknowledging that she is lucky does make the occasional handy coincidence more believable.

And after the fact . . . talk about post-traumatic stress. I want to re-emphasize that Rose is such a real person. And real people do not come out of something like that with a casual quip and stroll away untouched.

At first I dreamed that you

offered warm arms of comfort and strength,

pulling me close,

your soft lips brushing and kissing my bare head,

all of you loving me,

the nightmare over and the dream come true –

Now I only dream that you

offer me bread.

She does recover, I will add here. But not unchanged, because of course not. The poetry sprinkled throughout – by Rose herself, and a lot by Edna St Vincent Millay – encapsulates something of the experience of Ravensbrück in a way that prose can’t. (I’m such a sucker for fiction that includes poetry, it turns out.)

The secondary characters also seem like living people. Róza and Irina and Elodie and Lisette – somehow for me Lisette’s personal story is the most purely heartbreaking, though I don’t even have children. Anna Engel is one of my favorites; she demonstrates that a rough-talking chain-smoking German woman who’s worked directly for the Nazis can be as heroic as anybody. She is probably the most important continuing character from Code Name Verity and I loved her there, too – the way she changed completely in the reader’s eyes over the course of the story. Here, of course, we already know that she is a decent person.

The way the ending unrolls is believable, too. The way Rose can’t face telling anyone about what happened to her or what Ravensbrück was actually like, even though she swore – with all the rest – to tell the world. She has to work through that block. And she does. She can’t bring herself to testify at the Nuremburg trials where the doctors are held to account for the Polish Rabbits, but the story closes with the reader certain that she will indeed testify at the one where everyone else is held to account for Ravensbrück.

This is an intense but immensely readable story, intricately composed and beautifully told, with characters you’re certain must have been real (some were) shown against a background you really can’t believe could ever have been real (it was). Everyone should read this, and remember that not only does real evil exist, but that it’s possible for ordinary people to fight it.

Recent reading: First Frost by Sarah Addison Allen

Okay, so First Frost was a bit of a surprise, since I hadn’t read the book description.

I’d been re-reading Sarah Addison Allen’s books recently, ran out, and finally picked up First Frost without knowing a thing about it. Turns out it’s a direct sequel to Garden Spells. I had no idea! I really had been thinking that I should have put Allen’s books on The Ultimate Standalone Fantasy List, and here it turns out that she’s written a direct sequel. Not that the first book can’t be read in isolation, but it’s not a standalone I was defining the term for the purposes of the list.

First Frost is a perfectly good book, better imo than Lost Lake. I don’t feel the Waverly family really needed closure; they got that in the first book; but okay, fine. This sequel takes place ten years later, so Bay is a teenager. She’s having a tough time — hint to teenagers everywhere: never tell a boy that you know you belong in his life. It will only complicate your high school years. Bay’s Waverly gift, you may remember, is to know where things (and people) are supposed to be. Getting things (and of course people) to actually *be* where they ought to be is not quite so simple.

Thankfully both Claire and Sidney are still happily married (if they weren’t, that would sure ruin the first book, wouldn’t it?). They have other issues that are getting in the way of happiness. Those are what need to be resolved this time around. I did think both resolutions were essentially obvious from the start, though of course it’s the details of getting there that make the story enjoyable.

Also, there is a con man out to gouge Claire. Spoiler: He doesn’t manage to. He’s an interesting character, though. Allen’s good, at always, at drawing in the secondary characters. Including the apple tree, which is undeniably a character in its own right as well. Her books are always about relationships — family relationships and friendships as much as romances — and practically every named character seems to have their own character arc, even though the books are not long.

So . . . how would you actually rank Allen’s books, if you’ve read them all? I know Garden Spells is a big favorite. However, for me, I think they go in this order:

The Girl Who Chased the Moon

The Peach Keeper

Garden Spells

The Sugar Queen

First Frost

Lost Lake

Added note: As a peculiar little tidbit, check out this link at Goodreads, which says that Sarah Addison Allen’s new Untitled Book will be released in 2050. Ooookay. A little extreme in the lead-time there, but nothing like getting in early with these announcements. Or something.

Should you go back to college if you want to be a writer?

This post by Gabriela Pereira at Jane Friedman’s site caught my eye because I recently saw the above question posed as a possible topic for a panel at a convention.

My immediate response: This doesn’t need a panel. The answer is short and unambiguous: No.

Then I thought, well, maybe some people would find it helpful for some reason? So, as I say, this post caught my eye. Here’s how Pereira starts off:

Most writers want an MFA for one of three reasons: They want to teach writing, they want to get published, or they want to make room in their life for writing. It turns out these reasons for doing an MFA are actually based on myths.

Pereira then goes on to provide a more extensive answer the the question about whether you should go back to college in order to be a writer. The whole post is easy to summarize: No. No, you shouldn’t. You may improve your writing by going for an MFA, and that’s fine. But you can certainly can improve your writing in other ways, and you definitely shouldn’t think of it as a shortcut to a traditional publishing deal.

Pereira does add:

MFA programs are not a bad thing. In fact, they are exceptional at serving a small and very specific group of writers. If you write literary fiction, creative nonfiction, or poetry, and if you thrive in a formal academic environment, then the traditional MFA is a great option. If you can afford the tuition without taking out loans, and if you have the time to make the most of the experience, then you are one of those ideal candidates for graduate school.

Yep, that sounds perfectly sensible. If that description suits you and you happen to want to pursue an MFA, go for it. Otherwise, good heavens, just read widely and then sit down and write a book. No need to go to college for that.

Of course I’m probably a bit biased since MFA programs are not known for cheering on would-be writers who lean toward genre fiction.

Cover reveal!

So, I’m moving along in a quite satisfactory way with bringing out Black Dog. Spanish is all fixed up, “Alright” is now “All right” like God intended, I’ve rejiggered the chapter headings so conversion processes can tell they are there, all that kind of thing.

Fiddling with the margins to get a version Create Space liked was a pain, so I’m glad I’ve got that done, whew. I just today sent it for review by the Create Space people. I trust they will give it a thumbs up. I will then get a review copy, glance at it, nod (I trust), and go ahead. By then I should be ready to throw the ebook versions out into the world as well; ebook stuff takes far less time.

And of course I needed a new cover! Here it is — I hope you all like it. I think it’s quite good:

For simplicity’s sake, just Natividad. I realize that gives short shrift to her brothers. Miguel is so important in SHADOW TWIN, maybe I will let him have the cover for that one.

We can assume the black dog here is Ezekiel, though of course he was really in human form when Natividad first saw him. I actually do not intend ever to show Ezekiel — I want readers to be able to imagine him for themselves. And I rather like keeping Natividad turned away as well. I like her pose here. I asked for a little pink to help draw the reader’s eye, and I think the color of the title serves that purpose, too.

Anyway, here it is. The back is more snowy woods and a blurb, which I tightened up a LOT. I think the description at Amazon is way too wordy. Here’s the blurb I came up with:

In a world where a half-hidden war has finally revealed to ordinary humans the supernatural creatures that surround them, safety is hard to find for a girl like Natividad.

Born Pure, one of the rare girls able to wield protective magic against demonic forces, Natividad and her brothers are on their own and on the run, with terrible memories and terrible enemies behind them. The only possible shelter might be found with their father’s kin, the infamous black dogs of Dimilioc . . . if they can win acceptance. But when their enemies track them to their new home, neither Natividad nor her brothers nor Dimilioc itself may survive . . .

Far less detail about the backstory, hopefully evocative and inviting for readers who enjoy UF/Paranormal.

I expect everything to go live pretty soon, the ebooks probably by the end of the month, the print version hopefully not much later than that.

Then on to the second set of stories! One of which is not finished yet. I am sooooo nearly done with the space opera; I doubt I’ll finish it today, but maybe tomorrow or perhaps Friday. Then a few days to revise it, then I will *finally* finish that Black Dog short story. I would like to bring out that collection at the end of August, plus a print version of all the short stories combined.

So that’s where we are with the Black Dog series right now! I firmly intend to write the rest of Book 3: SHADOW TWIN before January. I won’t say it’s impossible for that plan to be derailed, but I do hope to keep to that schedule. I’d like to bring the book out toward the end of January, which would be midway between the release of THE MOUNTAIN OF KEPT MEMORY in November 2016 and THE WHITE ROAD OF THE MOON in March 2017. I estimate I have about 1/4 to 1/3 of the book written so far. Should be doable!

When in doubt, bury someone alive

Who knows, I may take this advice someday, if only because I’d never heard it before and it made me laugh.

Over at Kill Zone blog, this brief post for how to get unstuck when you have hit a difficult patch in your novel.

“When in doubt, bury someone alive.” Edgar Allan Poe was purported to have said this as one of his five essentials for the betterment of a story. Although it’s never been confirmed, if he didn’t really say it, he should have. So let’s figure out what Mr. Poe might have been suggesting. My interpretation is that there is always a solution to a writing issue. And one of the biggest issues new writers (and old) have is getting stuck without an idea what to do next. Poe suggests doing something drastic.

I agree that Poe should definitely have said this!

Also, the suggestions for getting yourself unstuck are pretty sound. I especially agree with #5: Don’t decide to stop until inspiration strikes. Yeah, I doubt that works very often. Me, I follow #7: write through the stuck feeling. Just force it. You may wind up going backwards later, but forcing yourself forwards will eventually break you out of the part where you’re stuck.

I do disagree with the fairly typical comment: I don’t like to use the term writer’s block because I don’t believe it exists.

Though I don’t suffer from clinical depression, I do believe this is something that can produce a very significant and real blockage; really a whole different animal from just the general feeling of being stuck or the basic lack of motivation that afflicts us all from time to time.

We really should have two terms for writer’s block: one term for the self-indulgent kind that you ought to just work through, and another for the kind that emerges from depression. For all I know, there’s a third type that ought to be broken out, too.

Alas, it’s difficult to get any new term to hit the critical mass of usage where people stop having to define it and can just start using it casually, knowing their meaning is clear.

In the meantime, it’s perhaps better not to declare unilaterally that writer’s block doesn’t exist. That only reveals your belief that everyone else’s experience of life and writing are pretty much like yours.

The Complete Earthsea, illustrated

Via tor.com, I see that Saga is bringing out a one-volume omnibus of LeGuin’s Earthsea books, with illustrations.

In case you don’t remember (I had to look this up), that includes:

A Wizard of Earthsea

The Tombs of Atuan

The Farthest Shore

Tehanu

The Other Wind

Tales from Earthsea

In fact, I only ever read the first two (as far as I remember). I liked A Wizard of Earthsea, but I think I also found parts of it boring or confusing — I was pretty young. I loved The Tombs of Atuan and re-read that one several times, so I remember it a lot better. It’s been a while, though. And for whatever reason — the vagaries of the library system, probably — that’s it.

I don’t know, what do you all think of the rest of the Earthsea books? I really like the idea of an illustrated omnibus!

Here’s a sketch of the wraparound cover art, by Charles Vess, who has evidently worked closely with LeGuin to make sure the illustrations look like what she had in her head.

Click through if you’d like to see bigger images and some sketches for the interior illustrations.