Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 350

Myers-Briggs and the Lord of the Rings

So, Cheryl reminds me about the Myers-Briggs test: which Harry Potter character are you? I said to myself, how about other fandoms? Because how about The Lord of the Rings, right?

And here it is! Which Lord of the Rings character are you?

I was rather hoping I’d get Aragorn, but I guess I’ll settle for Elrond. He’s kind of sanctimonious imo, but he’ll do.

A truly great post from tor.com: The King That Might Have Returned

Here’s a must-read post at tor.com, that talks about the other actors that Jackson considered for the part of Aragorn.

Indispensable from this post: the commentary of the writer, Emily Asher-Perrin:

Nicolas Cage is never anyone but Nicolas Cage. We all know this. He has an irrefutable Cage-ness. He’s great at extremes because that is clearly where he lives. His vocal delivery does not conform to other languages or accents—they must bend around him. He would have never blended in with the ensemble cast that Jackson ended up assembling. Suddenly, the king’s return would seem like the entire point of the LOTR trilogy. Frodo? Who’s that? What’s this Ring thing about?

All I can see is Cage.

It would have been the most distracting casting choice of the 21st century, and the 21st century had only just begun.

You really must click through to read the rest, admire the pictures, and consider the alternate-history LotR movies that might have existed.

Have you seen these?

I don’t watch nearly as many YouTube clips as I’d probably like to, because my connection is not great even in the depths of winter and videos tend to pause and stutter. And I am somewhat reluctant to watch YouTube clips at work. Nevertheless, here are a couple that I have had pointed out to me.

This one I saw as a link on Twitter, but I didn’t make a note about who pointed it out: Women’s ideal body shapes through history. I especially like the vapid expression of the woman who represents the sixties. All the hair styles and things add nice detail.

And something completely different that a friend pointed out: a Harry Potter mix that gives Severus Snape the central role. I always liked Snape. He was complex and interesting and brave and, in his own way, definitely heroic. Also, the music on this clip is great. The first part is “Heart of Courage” by Two Steps from Hell, their Invincible cd. I wouldn’t have known that: my friend told me. I wound up getting the cd, which I am trying not to overplay and get bored with. I really like it.

On the perils of rounding out your secondary characters TOO well

So, I’m about halfway through STELES OF THE SKY.

The best part of this series: The details in the worldbuilding! Elizabeth Bear did an incredible job with this. Like, Temur’s people are based on Tibetan steppe nomads, and the horses are clearly Akhal-Tekes, with not only the metallic sheen to the coat, but the sparse mane and flat musculature; and the dogs are just as obviously Tibetan mastiffs, with the correct matted coat for working mastiffs. I know I’ve mentioned this part of the worldbuilding before. But also:

a) I’ve seen lots of mages control fire in fantasy novels, but I’ve never seen any author correctly refer to combustion as a dehydration reaction that produces water. Wow. I mean, Bear didn’t actually lay out the chemical equations, but she came close.

b) I’ve seen lots of fantasy novels where people go hunting and bring back game, but I’ve never seen anybody go hunting and bring back water chevrotains (mouse deer), correctly described and placed in the right ecosystem. She did everything but refer to the species as Hyemoschus aquaticus.

c) When the cream-colored foal is born, Temur explains correctly that it’s impossible to get that color of foal out of a bay mare. This is true because that color is almost certainly produced by the chinchilla dilute and you would need it to be homozygous, but the bay mother can’t have that allele or she wouldn’t be bay (she would be buckskin). Temur explains exactly what crosses could produce “ghost” — by which he means what we could call cream. Correct color genetics in a fantasy novel! It’s amazing.

What ought to be the best part of this series, though: the characters. And here we stumble into a problem that I never realized existed, or even could exist. The secondary characters are TOO well developed. Let me lay out what’s happening to me as a reader while I work my way through this series:

1. Yangchen, now Dowanger Empress Yangchen, accidentally let a really horrible plague of demons invade her country because of her machinations to remove her mother-in-law, a crime for which she framed her junior husband even though it meant he would be burned alive. All this is terrible. She did terrible things, and the results are even worse than I’ve indicated. Now she is horrified by what has happened and she is also coming to believe that she was probably wrong to murder her mother-in-law in the first place, even if that hadn’t led to the rest of this. She is trying harder and harder to be a good empress. She is actually intrinsically kind — amazing, given her early history in this series, but it’s true. I’m really pulling for her to somehow overcome the dire obstacles she and her people face, grow into herself, become a great Empress, and hopefully rear her son to be a way, way better Emperor than his father. YANGCHEN SHOULD BE THE MAIN CHARACTER. I would totally read a book that focused just on her. It is jarring to switch out of her pov.

2. Ummuhan, a female slave-poet in the Caliphate of Uthman, has a tough row to hoe. As a woman, she has to pull strings from the background, and exactly what she’s trying to achieve is not perfectly clear. Her actions, too, have led to horrible things — she’s riding a tiger, and she’s not in control of it, and it’s hard to say how things are going to work out for her or for the Caliphate now that she’s helped a pretty evil guy usurp power. Oh, btw, Ummuhan is also a secret priestess. Women, horribly restricted in the Caliphate, do not get to be priestesses, which is why this is secret. Exactly what the secret order of priestesses entails is not clear, because we just do not get enough time with Ummahan to find this out. UMMAHAN SHOULD BE THE MAIN CHARACTER. I would totally read a book that focused just on her. It is jarring to switch out of her pov.

3. Tsering is a wizard who never gained power. She knows everything about the theory of magic, but she has no magic of her own. She fights against envy in order to be as useful as possible to her order of wizards and to her people. She has a tragic backstory, about which we know practically nothing; and a very promising character arc. TSERING SHOULD BE THE MAIN CHARACTER. I would totally read a book that focused just on her. It is jarring to switch out of her pov.

4. Hsiung is a mendicant monk who years ago snuck a look at one or some forbidden texts. The texts, from the ruined city of Erem, blister your mouth when you read them out loud. Just reading them makes you go blind. The magic in them contaminates you permanently in various ways. So Hsiung has been dealing with all that. In order to protect his order of monks and also in order to avoid punishment for reading the forbidden books, he left the monastery. In order to protect everyone from the magic that contaminates him, he took a vow of silence. Now, in the middle of the third book, he has finally returned to the monastery to lay out the story of what’s been happening to his masters and seek their help, no matter what it costs him personally. Hsiung’s story has hit several of my favorite tropes and wham! He is now one of my favorite characters in the story; his story is one of the most compelling, if not *the* most compelling. HSIUNG SHOULD BE THE MAIN CHARACTER. I would *totally* read a book that focused just on him. I really resented switching out of his pov.

Every single character could fall into this category of should-be-the-main-character. I’m not personally too keen on Hrahima, the tiger woman, because for me she is a bit much-of-a-muchness. Hrahima, the super-tiger! But the glimpses of her backstory that we get are interesting and I’m sure she appeals to many readers. Also, I flinch from Edene’s pov, not because she isn’t sympathetic, but because she’s being used by the bad guy, she doesn’t know it, and I feel terrible for her. I hope she turns in al-Sepher’s hand at the end and saves the day. But to me, it looks like her story is inevitably going to end in tragedy.

Anyway, rounding out all the “secondary” characters to this extent is definitely contributing to the difficulty in focusing on what started out as the “main” storyline, that of Temur and Samarkar. My response as a reader is to become more emotionally distant from all the storylines in order to avoid being jarred as much.

My response as a writer, btw, is to consider picking up one or more of the secondary characters, revamping all the details while keeping intact some part of the central heart of the character and his or her basic dilemma, and writing a book where that character gets to be central. If you someday read a book of mine in which the main character’s story involves stealing forbidden knowledge and eventually returning to his home to make amends and seek help in saving the world, well, you’ll know where that came from.

Frustration! And, uh, what’s the opposite of frustration?

Wow, this cover concept for THE KEEPER OF THE MIST is totally fabulous! Too bad I can’t share it with you all.

MY GOD AT LAST I HAVE WORKED OUT THE CLIMATIC SCENE. Too bad I can’t tell you all about it without utterly spoiling a book that isn’t even out yet.

So, I’ve finished this neat book! Too bad I’m not allowed to even mention it.

————-

These are all actual, real moments from my life over the last couple of years. The most recent is this *fabulous* cover for KEEPER, my editor just sent it to me, but the thing is, the marketing people have to approve it before it turns into the real deal, and then for all I know Knopf/Crown will have their own notions about how to do the cover reveal. Have I mentioned that it’s a great cover? It’s a great cover. Beautiful, evocative, poetic, symbolic, and clearly the artist read the book (or at least enough of it). I’m crossing my fingers the marketing department loves it as much as I do.

But! What’s the opposite of frustration? Antonyms listed in this handy dictionary I have here on my phone include, let’s see: success, happiness, pleasure, advance, aid, assistance, blessing, boon, boost, help, promotion, support, triumph, cooperation, encouragement, facilitation, satisfaction.

Hmm. I’m not so sure any of those fit all that well, but sure, let’s go with support, triumph, cooperation, and satisfaction.

Because here’s some good news: Saga has agreed that I can self-publish BLACK DOG sequels to my heart’s content, whenever I like and as many as I like. Poof! (Not that this was magic; my splendid agent made this happen.) Anyway, we are now once more moving forward toward the release of PURE MAGIC.

Here’s the plan, such as it is: I will very carefully copy edit the short stories, get someone else to line edit them, think of a title (MY GOD I am so tempted to take a leaf from Martha Wells “Short Stories of the Raksura” and just call the set “Black Dog Short Stories”), approve the cover, do the ebook conversion, and release them. My goal is to release the short story collection in April, ebook only.

Then the same for PURE MAGIC, aiming for May, print and ebook both. For the month in between the release of the short stories and the release of PURE MAGIC, I will be aiming to do a lot of guest posts and things.

Next winter (I KNOW, right? But I have to plan ahead to get things to work out.) I will see if I can write a third Black Dog novel. My ultimate goal is to write and self-publish PURE MAGIC and three more books in this world. I have a basic notion of where the overall arc is going and about how long it should take. I will be working on other stuff for traditional publishers during the next few years, too, but I think I can do both.

So that’s what’s been going on over the past couple of days here! A very promising beginning for February. Now: Must go work on revising that partial for THE WHITE ROAD OF THE MOON.

Shifting viewpoint

So, I’m reading THE SHATTERED PILLARS.

I like it very much. I do. But I don’t love it. And this is why: Shifting point-of-view.

This is not a book where the pov changes with each chapter. It’s a book where the pov changes many times per chapter. Sometimes a pov section is less than a page long. We are seldom with any specific pov for longer than a few pages.

In the first book, which I *loved*, we had two main pov characters: Temur, a prince of the steppes, and Sarmarkar, a wizard of Tsarepheth. We also had two or three minor pov characters, including the bad guy, al-Sepehr, who is indeed pretty Bad; and Edene, Temur’s woman, who was kidnapped by al-Sepehr.

In the second book, we spend A LOT less time with Temur and Sarmarkar because we also get more extensive point-of-view sections not only from al-Sepehr and Edene, but also from al-Sepehr’s servant(s), the twins, who at this point cohabit in Saadet’s body; Empress Yangchen, who has accidentally allowed her own country to be invaded by horrible demon things and is being eaten up by guilt because of that, and no wonder; Hong-la, a wizard who is trying to save people from the horrible demon things; Tsering, who ditto; and Hrahima, who is a woman from a species of tiger people.

This is too many for me. I could care about any of those characters, because they are all interesting, but since I never get to spend more than a few pages with any of them, it’s hard to get emotionally engaged with them. Saadet is an interesting person and she’s in an interesting position; she could easily carry her own story; but she only gets a handful of pages here and there, and in context, her interesting story simply pulls attention away from Temur and Sarmarkar. It’s too few pages for *her* story, but too many pages of her story to let the main pov characters carry me along with *their* journey. The same goes for every single one of the minor characters.

So. I’m still interested in how all this works out, and I’m fine with going on, but. A lot less emotional engagement.

I think I am intrinsically less into epic fantasy, with these cluttered pov casts, and far more into adventure fantasy that focuses more on one or two protagonists and does not insist on presenting the reader with the points of view of every character in the whole entire world.

Or, OR, that’s not quite it, or at least that’s not entirely it.

If there is going to be a cluttered pov cast, then I would prefer to spend PLENTY OF TIME with each character before switching to another. That is the basic difference between Sherwood Smith’s INDA series, for example, and this one. I can think of other examples easily, so this is definitely a thing for me. Miller and Lee’s Carpe Diem, two thumbs up; but their Fledgling, two thumbs down; and primarily for the same exact reason.

Any of you already read the whole Range of Ghosts, Shattered Pillars, Steles of the Sky series? Did you have the same issue as the pov became more diffuse, or was that fine with you? I wonder if this is a difference between readers who are more focused on character vs more focused on plot.

So, I’ve written a synopsis . . .

Of course, one does write synopses. But in my case, I write ‘em when my agent or editor asks for them — and I write them *after* I’ve written the book. And yet now I have actually written a synopsis for THE WHITE ROAD OF THE MOON, which is the book due to RH in September — and what I have for it is

a) The first 100 pages

b) The climactic scenes, more or less

c) Two or three scenes I really want to hit in between.

Therefore the point of writing the synopsis — which is like a present-tense paragraph-style outline of major events, in this case about four pages long — is to get some general notion of how to get from (a) through (c) to (b) so that it will be easier to work on this manuscript.

How true to the final story will this synopsis wind up? I have no idea. I certainly am not wedded to it. Anything could happen! Except I will by God get to those climactic scenes somehow, because I’m not giving them up.

I also have a map! We will not visit every piece of it, not by a long shot, but at least I know what is where and that Our Protagonist is at the moment heading north. Very useful to know whether the sun ought to come up in the mornings on her right or left, you understand. Also, I shouldn’t have to pause and agonize over the names of roads and rivers and towns. At least not very often. Gotta work out the map.

I have the backstory, too. I’ve had that for a while. Don’t worry, no infodumpy prologue that lays out the backstory, because I hate that, but important events have consequences that echo forward into the present; the whole plot depends on what happened two or four hundred years ago (not sure how long it’s been since the big, dramatic events of the backstory. Almost living memory? Long enough ago that it’s remembered as myth? I’ll have to decide eventually, but not yet.)

I’ve worked out the metaphysics of the world, more or less. Ghosts and Gods. Witches, who can see and speak to and bind ghosts. Blue priests and white priests.

I have a dog in this story. Is that the first time I’ve put a dog in a book? I think it is. Not a sweet beautiful lapdog, though: a big guy, more like an Irish Wolfhound. For my next trick: making sure the dog is a dog and not a Special Magical Robot Companion. No telepathic animals! No perfectly obedient robot slave animals that always do what you want and have no personality of their own! No no no! I hate that.

I need to come up with something for several of the secondary characters. They have to have more of a role than Sidekick To Protagonist, or out they go! That’s part of why I wrote a synopsis. I have some glimmerings of ideas now about what to do with them to make them important and interesting. They’ll develop more later — we haven’t even met a couple of them yet.

You know what this makes me think of? The early part of The Griffin Mage II (SANDS), where I commented to somebody (my agent?) that if I couldn’t find a role for Tehre to play other than Love Interest, I would write her out of the story. Honestly, I had no idea what she was going to be like till she walked on stage and opened her mouth and said some cool thing about materials science. (Later I went back and established that aspect of her earlier in the book, but that came later.)

So that’s what I’ve been working on lately.

Also! I’m finally re-reading RANGE OF GHOSTS by Elizabeth Bear. So good! Such beautiful writing! Such great world design! Next up: the other two books in the trilogy, which I’ve had since each came out and finally get to read.

Emotional Milestones of Writing a Book

From Chuck Wendig, this:

At his actual post, if you’d like to click through, you will find that he expands on each of these points in his usual style.

But here’s what’s interesting to me:

1. My milestones are completely different, and

2. I don’t even come within stone’s throw of the same milestones for each book.

I suppose the first point is to be expected, because everyone’s writing experience is different. Chuck takes the beginning slow-and-steady, really? That’s the smoothest, easiest part, and often one of the fastest. And so forth.

A few years ago I would have said: Sure, milestones: smooth beginning, tough slog through the early middle, easier through the late middle, downhill slide to the end, ice cream and cookies to finish.

Now, with another half-dozen books under my belt, I have to say, well, sometimes. Other times, unfortunately, it’s a tough slog through the early middle, the late middle, and all the way to the end, and only the awareness that the book is under contract WITH A DUE DATE keeps me going. Well, that, and glimmers of satisfaction scattered here and there through the manuscript.

In contrast, every now and then the whole thing is like a downhill slide and you couldn’t pay me enough to make me stop, whether there’s a deadline or not. (This doesn’t happen as often as I’d like. Twice? Oh, two and a half times, really.)

The whole thing is also complicated because in retrospect every book seems like it was easy to write. They start feeling like they were really no trouble as soon as they’re done, no matter how tough they were to get through. I can hardly believe now how doubtful I was that The Griffin Mage II (SANDS) was working, at the time I was working on it. But if I think about it, I can remember how uneasy I was about big sections of it. (I always loved Lady Tehre, though.) I remember how relieved that my agent gave it a thumb’s up, because I wasn’t sure she would. Now it’s (usually) my favorite of the trilogy.

Anyway, I wonder whether in ten years Chuck will still be saying: And in this magical journey where I headbutt my monitor again and again until the bloodstreaks form words and become novels, I notice that I hit the same emotional milestones during every book, in roughly the same order, at roughly the same points-of-completion. Or whether by then he will have hit a couple of books that just did not fit the pattern.

Welcome to February!

The most noticeable thing about February this year is that MOUNTAIN is due to go to Saga in March, so time to finish it up and tie a ribbon around it! I just sent it off to Caitlin this morning, since the re-write is so extensive that I would like her opinion before I send it off to my editor.

So, reading closely through a manuscript takes a couple of days. I think it’s pretty good, so it wasn’t too great a chore to read through it. On the other hand, it did take up the whole weekend, minus time to take the dogs out for a run each day because it was supposed to get cold. (It did: 18 degrees this morning.) But I did do quite a bit of cooking. I made four new-to-me dishes and every one of them was good enough to make again and plan to serve to company. That doesn’t always happen when you’re trying new things! It was a nice assortment of dishes, and since they were all good, I thought I’d share them with you.

Salt Cod and Ackee, from The Complete Mexican, South American, and Caribbean Cookbook, by Jane Milton, Jenni Fleetwood, and Marina Filippelli, which after this weekend is a cookbook I will be picking up more frequently.

1 lb salt cod

2 Tbsp butter

2 Tbsp vegetable oil

1 onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, crushed

8 oz tomatoes, chopped

1/2 hot chili, chopped

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1/2 tsp ground allspice

2 Tbsp chopped spring onion

1 lb 6 oz can ackees, drained

Fried dumplings to serve (these are essentially fried biscuits and I didn’t make them)

Soak the salt cod in a large bowl of cold water for 24 hours or longer, changing the water at least 5 times. It didn’t say to keep the fish in the fridge, but I did. Drain and rinse and place the fish in a large pan of cold water. Bring to a boil. Immediately drain and set the fish aside to cool. Then remove the skin and bones and flake the fish. Here I must add that the removing-the-skin-and-bones part was tedious and a pain in the neck. It took about 40 minutes, and even then I missed some of the small bones. So I wouldn’t want to do this all the time. It’s interesting to imagine living in a time and place where salt cod was a staple food, though. As an added note that ought to make anybody want to try this fish, in the 1800s, a shopkeeper in Bilbao saved his city during a siege by ordering 20,000 salt cod — he meant to order about 20, but the person filling the order mis-read his order, and thus the city was saved. How about that?

Anyway, now you can proceed with this very easy recipe.

Heat the butter and oil. Saute the onion and garlic 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes and chili and cook five minutes. Add the fish, pepper, thyme, allspice, and spring onion. Stir to mix. Add the ackees, stirring very, very gently. Nothing can keep them from breaking up, but try to minimize this for a prettier presentation. Don’t add salt without tasting, because both the cod and the ackees are somewhat salty.

This was more than acceptable, despite having to watch out for little bones.

Peanut Chicken, from the same cookbook

2 lbs boneless skinless chicken breast, cubed

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 Tbsp curry powder

1 Tbsp lemon juice

2 Tbsp butter

1 onion, chopped

2 Tbsp chopped tomatoes

1 hot chili, chopped

2 Tbsp smooth peanut butter (I used a very, very generous couple of Tbsp)

2 C warm water (I think this was too much)

Salt

Toss the chicken with the garlic, thyme, black pepper, curry powder, lemon juice, and some salt. Cover and marinate 2 hours.

Melt the butter and sauté the onion 5 minutes. Add the chicken. Cook 10 minutes or so. Stir in the tomatoes and chili.

Blend the peanut butter with 1/2 C water to make a smooth paste. Stir this into the chicken mixture. Stir in the rest of the water, though I would suggest just another half cup or cup. Simmer 20 minutes or until chicken is done. I wanted the sauce reduced more, so I simmered it longer, thus overcooking the chicken. I’m sure you all would be bright enough to simply remove the chicken after it was done and then simmer the sauce as long as you wanted.

Now, I’m not sure where I got these other two recipes, but if I guessed, I would say probably from “Taste of Home,” which my mother gets and I read.

Glazed Shrimp and Pork Meatballs

3/4 lb shrimp, chopped

1/2 C soft bread crumbs

4 strips bacon, cooked and crumbled

1 egg

1 Tbsp mustard

1 1/2 tsp liquid smoke

1 1/2 tsp smoked paprika, which actually I forgot to add, whoops

1 tsp salt

1 clove garlic

3/4 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp hot pepper sauce

1/2 tsp onion powder

1 lb ground pork

1/2 C brown sugar

1/4 C cider vinegar

1 Tbsp mustard

Pulse the bacon in your food processor to reduce bits to very small crumbs. Add bread and pulse. Add shrimp and pulse to chop. Put this mixture in a bowl and add the rest of the ingredients through the pork. For into 1 inch meatballs and bake on a rack at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

Combine the glaze ingredients in a skillet, add the meatballs, and cook 10 minutes, turning occasionally, until glazed. These were very good and not TOO much trouble, even granting that forming meatballs is always somewhat annoying.

Garlic Cauliflower Pumpkin Pureee

I meant to make this last Thanksgiving, but didn’t. So I tried it now. It would be well worth making at Thanksgiving or whenever, because it’s quite good.

1 head cauliflower, in florets

3-4 cloves garlic, whole

8 oz cream cheese, softened (the recipe said six, but who wants 2 Tbsp left over?)

1 can pumpkin (the recipe didn’t specify can size; I used just one 8 oz can because I’m not crazy about pumpkin)

1 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cayenne

1/4 tsp pepper

Cover the cauliflower and cloves of garlic with water, bring to a boil, and simmer ten minutes. Drain, place in food processor and puree. Add the remaining ingredients. Place in casserole dish and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or so. I covered the dish for about 20 minutes and then uncovered it. This was quite tasty, really, and a far more inviting way to serve vegetables than in a pile next to a Piece of Meat, a cooking style I have never understood.

So there you go! If you try any of these, I think you’ll like them.

The World is in a Fantasy Novel

I don’t really have time to write a real post OR look around the internet . . . MUST FINISH “MOUNTAIN” . . . but I’ve collected quite a few nice pictures over the past few months. Here’s a sample, illustrating once again that the world really is definitely in a fantasy world:

This is supposed to be a real hotel in Chile. Hah. It is definitely the home of . . . what? It looks like a half-elf / half-hobbit should live here. Or, wait! Tom Bombadil? I never was much of a Bombadil fan, but this looks like the sort of place he’d live.

And would live here? Besides a serious, serious misanthrope? This is the home of someone who ought to have otters for pets instead of dogs — I’ve always liked otters, I mean, who doesn’t like otters? — and maybe a fish eagle.

A wizard’s tower, obviously. But is this a dark wizard with wraiths and wyverns at his command, or the kind of wizard who putters around with books, every now and then interrupting his studies to chat with a dragon?

How about this one? A shapeshifter, perhaps. Who shifts into a bear to explore the forests of Norway. Or a family of shapeshifters — it looks like a pretty big building. I could see a Goldilocks retelling set here, only, of course, a more complex story. The bears are the guardians of this forest, and Goldilocks is under a curse cast by the evil witch who is their enemy. Together, she and the youngest bear must find a way to break the curse and free the forest from the looming threat of the witch . . .