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Fairy Tales, Continued

I meant to get to this earlier, but got distracted. Plus it was a bit time consuming to add all the links. But here at last: a compilation of all, or at least most, of the fairy tales and similar books and collections mentioned in the comments of this post. I hope you’ll enjoy skimming through this list and perhaps find something here you haven’t previously tried, but might love. I picked up a couple new-to-me books, and I expect I’ll probably pick up a few more …

The Wild Swans by Peg Kerr — I only sort of liked this book, which I remember as being filled with sadness and a good deal of failure and betrayal. I only read it once. But I think I was also impressed by how the stories wove together. Here’s a brief review of this and several other Swan fairy tale retellings.

Beauty and Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley — it’s always interesting to me to see how firmly readers prefer one or the other. I’m a Beauty fan myself. In a broad poll, I wonder how the proportions would come out?

Spindle’s End — In my opinion, the ending was not the best. I do think endings are difficult for various fairy tale retellings, and I thought the ending was weak for both Beauty retellings above as well. The shift in perspective here is interesting; this is one of those rather uncommon novels where the pov shifts dramatically over the course of the novel. This didn’t bother me in this case. McKinley handled this aspect of the story really well.

Sarah Z points to —

Stardust by Neil Gaiman — I’ve never read it. I’m not actually a huge Gaiman fan, aside from questions about the author’s behavior.

Cinder by Melissa Meyer — I know this is a popular retelling. I fear I wasn’t impressed.

The Princess Curse by Merrie Haskell — I read this a long time ago, it was completely charming, I should read it again. It’s a Twelve Dancing Princesses retelling, by the way.

I’m adding: Castle Behind Thorns, also by Haskell, which is one of those great stories where only one character is on stage for a large part of the story. For some reason, I usually like that. This is also a slice-of-life fix-up-the-castle story, which also appeals to me. I guess I will add that I read this story in draft; Merrie and I shared an agent at the time. She didn’t write a lot of books, unfortunately, but she did write an original fairy tale: The Handbook for Dragon Slayers, and a couple collections of shorter works.

Tithe by Holly Black. I’ve never read it. I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything by Holly Black. About this book, Amazon says: Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she travels from city to city with her mother’s rock band until an ominous attack forces the sixteen-year-old back to her childhood home. There, amid the industrial, blue-collar New Jersey backdrop, Kaye soon finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms—a struggle that could very well mean her death.

Six Gun Snow White by Cathrynne Valente — Valente is one of those authors where I admire her work, but almost never like it.

The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine. I love the Twelve Dancing Princesses. This one is juuuust barely a retelling. It’s more flavored by the fairy tale than a retelling. It’s historical, it’s set in the 1920s. Valentine is a great writer, enormously talented; her books tend to be dense and even claustrophobic; I liked this book, but it’s not a light, fluffy beach read. Looking at her author page, she has mostly been writing Catwoman comics or graphic novels or something, which I would never have guessed.

The Brides of Rollrock Island (selkies) by Margo Lanagan

Poisoned Apples by Christine Heppermann (poetry)

Cautionary Fables & Fairytales by Iron Circus Comics. Sarah says: This is a graphic novel series, a collection of retellings of stories from a different part of the world. Some are too scary for my kids, but some are really fun, and it’s introduced them to stories they’d never have heard of otherwise (The Disobedient Daughter Who Married a Skull, Tatterhood, The Tanuki and the Teapot, the Lizard Prince…

Alison, Kim or both suggest —

Goose Girl by Shannon Hale — I fear I hated it. If I were writing a post on terribly ineffectual protagonists, this book would be right there on that list. I read the fairy tale later to see how true to the fairy tale Hale was when she wrote this book. Very much true to the fairy tale, and I hereby hate the fairy tale as well.

Thorn by Intisar Khanani — It’s been on my radar for a long time. Maybe someday …

A Sorceress Comes to Call by T Kingfisher. Bonkers good, says Kim. That’s fine, but the Defensive Baking one turned me off so severely because of extreme protagonist stupidity that I didn’t finish it. Can anybody confirm that isn’t a problem here?

Craig points out —

Tam Linn by Pamela Dean. This is an elegant contemporary retelling.

Fire and Hemlock by DWJ. An even more elegant retelling, not remotely my favorite of DWJ’s books, but impressive.

The Lady and the Wish by JM Stengl (a King Thrushbeard retelling, says Kathryn M) King Who? I said, and here is a Wikipedia page about this fairy tale. Amazon has this about Stengl’s version: Something strange is going on at Lady Beneventi’s villa. Ghostly people appear, doors vanish, statues come to life . . . and the old lady herself despises Gillian. With the help of a handsome but hostile construction worker, can Gillian solve the mystery of the wishes and return to her proper place in high society? Can she finally snare a prince to marry? Or might love play a part in changing her plans?

EC points to —

The Spirit Ring by LMB. We’ve probably all read it. It’s fine, but just not as good as her later fantasy, imo.

Silver Woven In My Hair by Shirley Rousseau Murphy — A delightful retelling, says EC. But when the king’s summer gala draws near and Thursey is, as usual, left at home, she takes charge of her own fate. With help from a traveling monk and a friendly goatherd, she secretly prepares to attend the ball. Does she have help, as well, from the ugly white mare whom she loves? And will she gain more than a rare evening of happiness, perhaps even the joy of new-found love?

East by Edith Pattou is a great retelling of East of the Sun, West of the Moon, which, says EC, stays very true to the original.

Boys of Blur by N.D Wilson — a Beowulf retelling, says EC, and I said, “Really?”

When Charlie moves to the small town of Taper, Florida, he discovers a different world. Pinned between the everglades and the swampy banks of Lake Okeechobee, the small town produces sugar cane . . . and the fastest runners in the country. Kids chase muck rabbits in the fields while the cane is being burned and harvested. Dodging flames and blades and breathing smoke, they run down the rabbits for three dollars a skin. And when they can do that, running a football is easy.  

But there are things in the swamp, roaming the cane at night, that cannot be explained, and they seem connected to sprawling mounds older than the swamps. Together with his step-second cousin “Cotton” Mack, the fastest boy on the muck, Charlie hunts secrets in the glades and on the muck flats where the cane grows secrets as old as the soft earth, secrets that haunted, tripped, and trapped the original native tribes, ensnared conquistadors, and buried runaway slaves. Secrets only the muck knows. 

I can see it because EC said it, but I wouldn’t have guessed Beowulf from this description.

Moving on —

A Redtail’s Dream, a webcomic by Minna Sundberg. The link goes to the free online version. Here is an ebook version for sale. I don’t find the hardcover EC mentions, but maybe if you poke around you can find it.

The Treachery of Beautiful Things by Ruth Frances Long. That’s quite a title. Here’s part of the description: Determined to find and free Tom, Jenny must navigate a strange and frightening world of wonders. Her only guides are the hobgoblin known as Puck, and Jack of the Forest, the Guardian of the Edge, a strange green-eyed man who is duty bound to protect her. And she desperately needs protection. Hunted by Queen Titania and her servants, with time running out, Jenny and Jack find themselves caught up in an older magic, one bound in rituals of love and death. As it awakens to the presence of a new May Queen, the Realm demands a sacrifice.

The Land of the Blue Flower by Frances Hodgson Burnett. This is a short, charming original fairy tale.

George MacDonald’s entire oeuvre — link goes to a very inexpensive collection at Amazon.

The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany — also inexpensive; I have it on my Kindle, but of course haven’t read it.

OtterB

Nettle and Bone by T Kingfisher

Her Hamster Princess series, graphic novels for early readers, has fun with classic fairy tales without making fun of them.

Green Man series by Juliet McKenna. OtterB says: It doesn’t replicate fairy tale plots but has supernatural characters from old English folklore, dryads and wyrms and swan maidens and hobs and very dangerous Fair Folk.

Mary Catelli suggests

Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis, which, you know what, I honestly ought to read more of CS Lewis’s works.

And of course Mary Catelli has written various fairy tale-adjacent books, such as Even After and a collection of stories in Enchantments and Dragons.

Mona suggests

Seven Daughters Seven Sons by Cohen and Lovejoy. I don’t see an ebook edition, so the link is for paper, sorry.

Tuyo-Fan suggests

Tales of the Wendy by Erin Sky and Steven Brown.

London. 1789. More than anything in the world, Wendy Darling wants to be the captain of a ship, but women aren’t allowed in the Royal Navy. When she learns the Home Office is accepting a handful of women into its ranks, she jumps at the chance, joining the fight against the most formidable threat England has ever faced. Magic.

These are nice covers, especially the second book:

Elaine’s Teen says: I’d like to contend that it’s not enough fora retelling, retouching, or other have the trappings of a fairytale if it isn’t about what the tale in question is Actually About. For example, a selkie story isn’t made by a person who has a sealskin and spends time as a seal, but by the themes of being trapped, of power and abuse of it, and the choices made with it, all wrapped up in the sealskin- or the swanfeather cloak. Or a thing can run on the logic that fairy tales are made of, without being one, and then everyone who meets it goes, ” should know that tale” because it feels like it came out of the right space.

I basically agree, or I think I do. I think if the retelling departs too far from what the original was doing in terms of the theme or the heart of the story, it’s hard to call it a retelling. I’m not dogmatic about this, but I think I would tend to reach for terms such as “flavored with” or “slightly reminiscent of” or something. As for the second clause, absolutely, and those are the original fairy tales, such as a handful of those above, plus Chalice by McKinley or City in the Lake by me. Or The Shape-Changer’s Wife by Sharon Shinn. Maybe Sister Light Sister Dark by Jane Yolen — it’s been a while since I read that!

I’m pausing to think: I should do a post just on original fairy tales. There are surely quite a few. I think it’s hard to capture the fairy-tale feeling … hard for me … apparently it was easy for Patricia McKillip, because she did it a bunch of times.

Anyway, the Teen then points out that Ladyhawk is like that. The book is apparently out of print and stupidly expensive on Amazon. Rather than look for an ebook someplace, here’s the movie. I have the book and I’ve watched the movie; my vague memory is that the movie is pretty good and sticks halfway well to the book. Can anybody else confirm that?

Heather suggests

Rumpelstiltskin, plus various other books, by KM Shea. There are a bunch.

And then draws attention to: A yearly retelling-fairy-tales writing competition that ran for four years. It did Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Cinderella, and published the five best short stories that came in for each. Each book has ONE (fairly) straight retelling, but the others… the OTHERS… well, take “Sleeping Beauty” and slot it into far-future sci-fi, where an alien prince who’s been lying in stasis for thousands of years is accidentally-awoken by a human grave-robber! Or take Beauty and the Beast and slot it into a gothic tale of a gargoyle who’s the last of his kind to stand against the encroaching evil, and unless he finds a bride the world will be destroyed… and he’s dying…!

The collections are:

Five Enchanted Roses

Five Magic Spindles

Five Poisoned Apples

Five Glass Slippers

Elaine T mentions one I have never heard of — though to be fair, there are a fair number on this list I’ve never heard of — anyway —

Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim.

Shiori’anma, the only princess of Kiata, has a secret. Forbidden magic runs through her veins. Normally she conceals it well, but on the morning of her betrothal ceremony, Shiori loses control. At first, her mistake seems like a stroke of luck, forestalling the wedding she never wanted. But it also catches the attention of Raikama, her stepmother. A sorceress in her own right, Raikama banishes the young princess, turning her brothers into cranes. She warns Shiori that she must speak of it to no one: for with every word that escapes her lips, one of her brothers will die.

Also, stories by Eleanor Farjeon, and here’s an inexpensive collection. I’ve got one of these on my TBR pile, I see.

Maria suggests

Briarly by Aster Glenn Gray. It’s got one of those BLACK COVERS WITH A RED ROSE that to me say, “This is probably erotic horror.” I don’t know, that’s often misleading because these types of covers are used a lot. But that’s what this implies to me.

During a chance summer shower, an English country parson takes refuge in a country house. The house seems deserted, yet the table is laid with a sumptuous banquet such as the parson has not seen since before war rationing. Unnerved by the uncanny house, he flees, but stops to pluck a single perfect rose from the garden for his daughter – only for the master of the house to appear, breathing fire with rage. Literally. At first, the parson can’t stand this dragon-man. But slowly, he begins to feel the injustice of the curse that holds the dragon captive. What can break this vengeful curse?

Entreat Me by Grace Draven. Determined to rescue her sibling from ruin, Louvaen Duenda pursues her to a decrepit castle and discovers a household imprisoned in time. Dark magic, threatening sorcerers, and a malevolent climbing rose with a thirst for blood won’t deter her, but a proud man disfigured by an undying hatred might. Louvaen must decide if loving him will ultimately save him or destroy him.

The Fire Rose by Mercedes Lackey. It takes place in her Elemental Masters universe.

Hammer and Air by Amy Lane — a cross between Snow-White and Rose-Red and Hansel and Gretel.

Brute by Kim Fielding. Maria says: a lovely romance with a really kind and compassionate main character. From the description: Brute leads a lonely life in a world where magic is commonplace. He is seven and a half feet of ugly, and of disreputable descent. No one, including Brute, expects him to be more than a laborer. But heroes come in all shapes and sizes, and when he is maimed while rescuing a prince, Brute’s life changes abruptly. He is summoned to serve at the palace in Tellomer as a guard for a single prisoner. It sounds easy but turns out to be the challenge of his life.

That sounds like my cup of tea, so sure, picking it up.

How to Find a Nameless Fae by AJ Lancaster — a Rumpelstiltskin retelling with some Howl’s Moving Castle inspiration. It’s about a 40 year-old princess tracking down the fae who won her in a first born bargain but never showed up to claim her.

WHEW. I think that’s MOST of the fairy tales, fairy-tale-adjacent, original fairy tales, and other related books that were mentioned in the comments of the earlier post.

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Poetry Thursday: Samuel Loveman

I went looking for obscure poets this time, not poets born in August but just any poet whose works are really obscure and also in the public domain. I found Samuel Loveman because a fan of his collected his public domain works and has posts here and there saying, essentially, “Here’s a poet who is unfairly forgotten! Please pay attention to this poet!” So I naturally thought, PERFECT, and clicked through. Here is the first of the poems collected at the linked site below the name of the poem. Here’s the Wikipedia page about Samuel Loveman. He was close to Hart Crane, apparently — I mean, it says, “Loveman wrote numerous memoirs of Hart Crane, and nursed Crane’s mother Grace until her death.” Here’s the Thursday post where I featured Hart Crane.

In Pierrot’s Garden

Samuel Loveman hub

I.

There’s a lark that’s drunken with the daedal moon,
And I sing to the shy-fledged singer;
Lonesomest thing in the world but one,
He bids me wait and linger.

Hush, little brother, your heart is fire,
Hush, little one and forget;
He will not tarry, but wings him higher,
And my eyes are wet, are wet.

II.

This is the way the moon comes up
From under the glimmering fallow fields;
First but the rim of a silver cup,
Where the farthest twilight primrose yields
Her earthly beauty up;

And now where the deep light winks abrim,
You can see it flutter and fail for breath,
And a single star falls rapt and dim –
I call it Death.

III.

These are my moths, a brooding slumber
Falls from their painted placid wings,
The shifting dusk is white with their number,
They stir to the song one sings.

Into the heart of a poppy they hover,
Out of the purple starlit night;
Ah, they are gone now, poppy and lover –
I am their short delight.

IV.

Do you hear it? – my bubbling nightingale,
With a thousand notes to a single trill;
The moon and the stars are passion-pale,
Listen they must at will.

Such a world of ache, such an ancient wrong,
I have tried to fathom it all forsooth;
But the deep night covers the singer and song,
And youth, it cries – youth – youth!

V.

I wonder what the night can hold
Beyond the sea-blue sloping boughs,
The heart of all the west is gold,
I wonder why it glows.

My thoughts lie heavy on my eyes,
I have so many dreams to dream,
So many little fantasies,
To solve and scheme.

They creep upon me unawares,
They flutter in and out my brain,
Each one finds housing in my prayers,
I hold them free from stain.

***

Here’s another —

Dream Song

Samuel Loveman hub

Byron’s soul was mire,
Goethe’s heart was ice;
But mine is a fire
From Paradise.

Joy without a grief,
Songs without words,
As beautiful and brief
As are singing birds.

I, who loved the light
Where silence dwells,
Heard in the night
The sound of bells.

For hours and hours
On the still deep,
Came the odour of flowers,
Came the colour of sleep.

What should one who tries
To dream the world away –
But to close his eyes
For a better day?

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Have you heard of Little Stack?

Here’s a new-to-me website: Little Stack

Welcome to our organized collection of fiction. Build a personal library, get notified of new releases from your favorite authors, and manage your
to be read list—all in one place, it says.

I found out about this via an email that said I’d been added to Little Stack and here were the links, and this is certainly very nice! Also, quite complete, as even Eight Doors is already listed. Honestly, this is a well-designed website. I like the presentation. I like the way the series are shown, with companion books marked as such. I like the “other authors you might like” sidebar.

I believe the point is that you can follow authors and make sure you don’t miss their new books. This isn’t a huge concern for me because you all tend to say, “Hey, LMB’s newest Penric novella just dropped!” and this prevents me from completely missing these things.

Who are authors you might miss if you didn’t follow them somehow? But you would always be interested in whatever new books of theirs appeared? Nicola Griffith springs to mind for me. If an author doesn’t release books that often, a new one can be easy to miss. She’s not there. Ilona Andrews is another, and she is. I mean, they are. Whatever.

Here’s the Little Stack button if you’d like to try it out:

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Five Novel Openings: Creativity

One of these is extremely appealing to me. I bet you’ll be able to point to it right off. One of the others is generated. I did my very best to prompt ChatGPT to give me something that looked reasonably plausible. Below each entry is a moment to pause for thought. I’d insert a poll below each entry, but that doesn’t appear to be functional right at the moment, so just a pause for consideration.

***

1)

There were four of us.

Grandfather was an old fox, of perhaps eight or nine years. Gray ran along his narrow jaw and in a broad streak from his black nose to between his black-tipped ears; it frosted his pelt so that he seemed almost outlined in gray light. His joints stiffened on cold wet days, and he liked to doze in the spring sunlight when he could. He was missing a toe on one of his front paws. When I was little and first realized he didn’t have the same toes I had, I asked him why and he told me a tanuki-badger bit it off, but I think he was teasing. He was like that.

Mother was simple, even for a fox. My brother and I watched her sometimes catch and lose a mouse a half-dozen times before she remembered to bite it while she still had her paws on it. We were amazed sometimes that she survived long enough to bear us.

Fortunately, the place where we lived was thick with mice and chipmunks and other small prey. The grasses around our home were too long and dense for hawks, and the few humans who lived nearby chased off anything larger. Our only competition was a family of cats led by a black-and-white spotted female. They lived in a deserted outbuilding near the people, but they hunted in our range, and ignored us rigidly. The cats chased and lost mice, too. I think this was intentional for them, but who can understand cats? Even as a woman, I have never understood them.

***

Is this generated, or real human-written text? AND, how sure are you, on a scale of one to ten, with ten being positive it’s human-written.

I do, of course, know the answer. But I’m trying hard to pretend that I don’t so I can ask myself, if I didn’t know, what would I think? And what I THINK is — This is human-written, 10 on the surety.

I think what makes me feel this way is the creativity AND the style — both. This therefore abruptly becomes, in some measure, a post about creativity. As we all know (Do we know this?), ChatGPT is not great at doing anything other than lining up cliche after cliche. I don’t think that’s changed in ChatGPT-5 because how could it? If you say, “Let word follow word according to a frequency analysis,” then how can you get anything but regression toward cliches, even in principle?

Either way, I just think the above entry is fantastic. Tons of great details that ChatGPT is just not likely to come up with, strung together in a coherent style that ChatGPT is not likely to use. AND ON TOP OF THAT, a meaningful line. I mean the last line. “Even as a woman, I have never understood them.” This is the author inviting the reader into a joke or a common experience — ah, cats, so mysterious! — and also this is obviously foreshadowing. I don’t think this level of skill with setup and foreshadowing is something ChatGPT can manage. (Am I right about that? What do you think? Are you aware of any counterexample?) Because ChatGPT can’t plan ahead and can’t assess coherence — it can’t plan or assess anything at all, ever — I don’t believe it or any other text generator can even in principle insert a line like this into the opening of a novel and then have that line pay off later. I have not read a lot of putatively good fiction generated by ChatGPT-5, though.

Regardless, overall, it seems inconceivable to me that the above entry could have been generated. I’d bet a hundred dollars without hesitation and a thousand dollars without much hesitation. I think I would be REALLY sure even if I did not actually know.

***

2)

Curran watched the man whose life he required settle onto one of the faux leather couches scattered around the station’s reception module. The monitors showed him Amory Dane, spruce, tall, and fair. Dane made the perfect picture of someone prepared to wait patiently for an appointment. He was a radically different creature from the furtive Freers in the corner dickering over the delivery price for the wafer case that sat on the floor between them, or the gaggle of haggard mechanics who had put in one shift to many at the bar.

Curran wondered idly what they would do if he spoke up and announced what he was. Would they laugh, thinking it was a crazy engineer’s joke? Would they scramble for the wall and try to get at the computer system? Or would they just start running for the hatches?

He ran through each of the scenarios and decided that any would be amusing, but that the risk of being recorded on a hard medium was not worth it.

From his position of safety, Curran calmly overrode the inspection commands for the modules automatic systems. Then he ordered the hatches to cycle shut One of the mechanics, more sober than the others, jerked his head up as he heard the hatch seal.

Before anyone could make another move, Curran sent a single command to each of the three explosive charges his talent had laid against the module’s hull.

***

Is this generated, or real human-written text? AND, how sure are you, on a scale of one to ten, with ten being positive it’s human-written.

I’m trying to look at this as though I’d never seen it before. I don’t like it much, but I *think* I would come down on Human-written, about a 6 on the confidence.

To me, this seems kind of generic. This is partly because of the style, which seems bland and kind of cliched. What makes me think “cliched”? I think it’s the … adverbs! Wondered idly, calmly overrode. Even though I’m constantly declaring that adverbs are peachy and people should quit hating on adverbs!, I still sort of feel that way, and I wonder if that’s partly because I noticed extreme overuse of adverbs in fiction generated by ChatGPT-4, unless you prompted ChatGPT-4 toward a more literary style.

This also just sort of … feels … uninteresting to me. It’s action-up-front, situation-up-front, but … in a kind of uninteresting way?

I think if I came to this entry cold, I would not bet money one way or the other.

I should add, I’m pretty sure anybody could tell after the first CHAPTER. These very short excerpts exaggerate the uncertainty because there’s not time for ChatGPT to lose the thread of the story, which I expect it’s certain to do soon enough if you keep going.

***

3)

I always thought the VentureStar looked like a tombstone. When it was standing on end it was twice as tall as it was wide. It wasn’t very thick. It was round at the top. For a night launch it was illuminated by dozens of spotlights like an opening night in Hollywood It could have been the grave marker for a celebrity from some race of giant aliens. The stubby wings and tail seemed tacked on.

The VentureStar didn’t spend much time flying, which was just as well, because it flew about as well as your average skateboard. Sitting on the ground, it looked more like a building than an aircraft or a spaceship.

That’s okay. In about thirty seconds it would leave every airplane ever built in a wake of boiling smoke and fire.

“Manny, a Greyhound bus leaves Cocoa Beach every day for Tallahassee. Why don’t we go watch that some night? We could get a lot closer.”

That was my girlfriend, Kelly, trying to get my goat. Her point being that VStars left Canaveral once a day, too. Point taken.

***

Is this generated, or real human-written text? AND, how sure are you, on a scale of one to ten, with ten being positive it’s human-written.

I would say, This is human-written, 8 on the surety. The description seems unlikely to be generated. A spaceship that looks like a grave marker for a giant alien? Looked like it would fly about as well as a giant skateboard? It seems unlikely that ChatGPT would come up with that. But maybe it might? Not sure. That’s why 8 instead of more surety than that.

***

4)

The rain slicked the stones beneath my chair, whispering against the eaves like it meant to wear the house away. I kept my gaze on the garden gate, because looking at him would have been an invitation, and I’d sworn off invitations years ago.

“You’ve heard,” Mondrian said, stepping closer. His boots left no sound in the wet. “A new god has risen. He’s carving his name into the bones of the earth. We mean to stop him.”

I took a slow sip from my cup. “Then I wish you luck.”

“You’ve killed a god before.”

“That’s exactly why I won’t do it again.” I set the cup down, watching the rain thread silver lines between us. “The first one took three days to die. I’ve no desire to spend another lifetime listening to a second god scream.”

He didn’t blink. “The difference is, General, if you don’t, you won’t hear him scream at all. You’ll hear the whole world.”

***

Is this generated, or real human-written text? AND, how sure are you, on a scale of one to ten, with ten being positive it’s human-written.

This is the generated opening, 9 on the surety. Why do I feel that way? Because at this point I’ve read enough generated text that this seems to scream GENERATED in a loud voice. That’s what I think. The first sentence does it. I’m being very heavily influenced this post about where AI goes wrong when it tries to generate literary fiction. It anthropomorphizes inanimate things, such as rain. Everything snarls, hisses, and whispers.

Also, by lack of continuity. The first one took three days to die. He doesn’t want to spend another lifetime listening to a different one die. Three days is not what I would call “a lifetime.” This could work with adequate setup, but without setup, it’s nonsensical. Ditto for “If you don’t.” If you don’t what? Kill the new god? Or spend a lifetime listening to the god scream? Which? Because this is written, it ought to be the second, but that makes no sense.

And this would be so easy to fix! Say three years instead of three days! Put if you don’t help us kill this god, rather than if you don’t.

Also, I’m starting to think that “taking a sip of coffee” might be a tell for “generated fiction in a literary style.”

Agree / disagree? Do any of the previous entries seem more likely to be fake than this one? Why?

***

5)

Doctor Walden looked glumly at the forms she had to fill ink. At the top it said RISK ASSESSMENT.

She’d designed the forms herself, in a burst of optimism. They would have fewer accidents if people just stopped to think. It was an unfortunate truth that in the Venn diagram of “qualified to teach magic” and “still alive,” the overlap consisted almost entirely of people who had always been much too sensible to accidentally get eaten by a demon. Walden’s colleagues – in particular, those who were her responsibility, the loosely grouped Faculty of Magic here at Chetwood School – possessed, as a body, an admirable and well-judged lack of imagination. In the three years since she took the post as Director of Magic, she had had someone in her office once a term to weep on her shoulder and say, But why would anyone ever –

Some of these people had been teaching for years, and yet they still managed to be surprised by how bloody stupid the average teenager could be, given a group of friends to impress and a fifteen-second video about major invocation that they found on the internet somewhere.

***

Is this generated, or real human-written text? AND, how sure are you, on a scale of one to ten, with ten being positive it’s human-written.

Human-written, 10 on the surety. I might not be QUITE as sure about this one as about the first one, but I’m sure. Why? Because of the smooth, clever writing. That Venn diagram! That line about the fifteen-second video! I wonder if it’s possible for ChatGPT-5 to write with this kind of humor. I vote no, but I haven’t tried to get it to write with humor, either.

Also, the adverbs seem better to me here. More creative! More humorous! That’s what I mean by better. Looked glumly is funny and builds character in a way that, to me, the adverbs in #2 did not seem to do. Throwing “accidentally” in there is also funny.

Below, the non-big reveal because I feel like everyone’s going to vote for #4 as the fake.

***

1) The Fox Woman by Kij Johnson. This one has been on my physical TBR shelves for a long time, and this opening is so delightful that I have put it on the coffee table so it will be in front of me and hopefully I will read it.

2) Fool’s War by Sarah Zettel. This is a NYT notable book. Well, the beginning doesn’t impress me at all. I’m willing to believe that it gets better.

3) Red Thunder by John Varley. I’ve liked a lot of books and stories by Varley; near-future SF is a hard sell for me; I’m willing to bet that I will probably like this book if I ever get around to reading it.

4) ChatGPT-5

5) The Incandescent by Emily Tesh. Here’s what it says at Amazon:

Naomi Novik’s Scholomance series meets Plain Bad Heroines in this sapphic dark academia fantasy by instant national and international bestselling author Emily Tesh, winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.

That’s promising — I mean the Scholomance comparison. A commenter here recommended this to me, so I do look forward to reading it … someday … possibly even very soon, since I did decide to take off the rest of August to read books!

Fundamentally, I think smooth, fun creativity and actual humor are not possible for text generators, even though these things are practically effortless for a gifted writer. I might try asking ChatGPT-5 to write something in the style of Terry Pratchett and see what it does. I don’t think it can possibly do that, but rather than saying “No way!” and stopping, I should probably actually try it.

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Update: BASICALLY finished!

Okay, so I didn’t even think to say anything about Sekaran last week, but in fact what I was doing last week was smoothing it out plus musing upon the possibility of rewriting the epilogue from a different pov.

Which I’m doing. I might not leave it that way, who knows, but for now it’s (a) an epilogue for Sekaran, and also (b) a teaser for Tathimi. Which should not be taken to imply Tathimi’s first book is actually underway; it’s still in the gleam-in-my–eye stage. But it’s a sufficiently bright gleam that it seems reasonable to handle this epilogue in a way that will serve both purposes. I guess it kind of would serve both purposes regardless, but anyway, I’m putting it in Tathimi’s pov for now and then we’ll see whether it stays that way. It’s third person, though, while I expect to eventually write Tathimi in first person.

So Sekaran is essentially finished! It’s novel length — a bit over 100,000 words — and who knows what might happen? I’m open to adding a chapter or two if anybody suggests a chapter that isn’t there yet. FEEL FREE TO MAKE SUGGESTIONS!

Meanwhile, I’m sending this draft to early readers and I will be super, super, super interested in reactions to this odd thing that isn’t a novel. It does have through-lines of various kinds. Anyway, we’ll see!

Oh, and btw, for the first time ever, I added chapter titles. They’re lines from the chapters. Sekaran’s most interesting cousin. Allure is hard, isn’t it? Splinters of ebony and gold. He tried to tell me. The reader will be able to guess from the table of contents what each chapter is about, though I’m sure some will be obscure. Some are the opposite of obscure. Sekaran Kansa Shavet, Regat Sul.

***

Also, there is now a permanent list providing within-world chronology at the top of the Tuyo series page. I’ll have to remember to update that, as I will undoubtedly (I mean, I’m certain) keep writing books that are not in chronological order. If you click through, you may notice that the cover for Sekaran isn’t there yet. I went ahead and put a blank cover on the Books page as a placeholder because that cover should be ready in about … I’m guessing … three weeks or so. A lion, of course; what else. Regal, I said, so we’ll see how what the cover artist thinks of that.

When the cover is ready, I’ll put up the preorder at Amazon. I’m going to schedule the preorder for NOVEMBER 2 rather than OCTOBER 2, because if anybody DOES suggest, “Hey, I would love to see a chapter in which [this neat thing happens]” and I think Wow, that would indeed be neat, I want to have time to add that chapter.

If I don’t wind up adding a lot, then fine, it can be a relaxed, calm tweaking-and-proofing job, which will make a nice change.

***

What else is going on?

Oh, Haydee has ONE MORE eye appointment this coming Wednesday. Last week the vet said, “So much better! 95% perfect! Continue the eyedrops and we’ll look again in ten days or so.” So that was good news, basically, but there is one more — hopefully just one — follow-up appointment.

Ish is totally back to normal as far as the prostate issue and showing no signs of overt symptoms of anything nasty lurking in his gut. He is thrilled with his new IBS diet, but to be fair, he is basically thrilled with all diets of every description. I’m avoiding giving him fatty treats, like peanut-butter-stuffed cow hooves. He’s okay with that because he gets different treats.

Left to right: Haydee, Joy, Morgan, Naamah

As Sekaran winds down and it’s barely past the middle of the month, I’m going to take about two weeks to … I realize this is shocking … read books that someone else wrote. It’s been a while. I’m currently reading Body and Soul by Frank Conroy. It is splendid. I’ll post about it one of these days, and in the meantime, thanks to whoever recommended it! I don’t remember who it was, but it was certainly someone here! Thank you!

I have lots of other books at the top of my TBR pile that someone here recommended! I have no clue how many I’ll get to in the next few weeks, but this one by Conroy is going slowly because it’s too good to rush through.

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Tokien’s annotated map

Here’s an interesting article.

A recently discovered map of Middle-earth annotated by JRR Tolkien reveals The Lord of the Rings author’s observation that Hobbiton is on the same latitude as Oxford, and implies that the Italian city of Ravenna could be the inspiration behind the fictional city of Minas Tirith.

The map was found loose in a copy of the acclaimed illustrator Pauline Baynes’ copy of The Lord of the Rings. Baynes had removed the map from another edition of the novel as she began work on her own colour Map of Middle-earth for Tolkien, which would go on to be published by Allen & Unwin in 1970. Tolkien himself had then copiously annotated it in green ink and pencil, with Baynes adding her own notes to the document while she worked.

Kinda neat! click through and read the whole thing.

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Poetry Thursday: Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr

I remember the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay, but I had forgotten Holmes was the author. I didn’t remember much about Holmes at all, in fact. According to All Poetry:

Holmes’s literary career unfolded during the American Renaissance, a period of extraordinary literary creativity in the United States that lasted roughly from the 1830s to the end of the Civil War. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson were among his contemporaries. Transcendentalism, a philosophical and literary movement that emphasized the inherent goodness of humanity and the unity of creation, was a powerful intellectual force in New England during these years. Holmes, however, viewed Transcendentalism with a skeptical eye and satirized some of its excesses.

That puts him into context for me. All right, let me look for some poems I haven’t seen before … lots of these are on the long side … Here, how about this shorter one:

The Two Streams

Behold the rocky wall  
   That down its sloping sides  
  Pours the swift rain-drops, blending, as they fall,  
   In rushing river-tides!
   Yon stream, whose sources run  
   Turned by a pebble’s edge,  
  Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun  
   Through the cleft mountain-ledge.
   The slender rill had strayed,  
  But for the slanting stone,  
 To evening’s ocean, with the tangled braid  
  Of foam-flecked Oregon.

  So from the heights of Will  
  Life’s parting stream descends,  
 And, as a moment turns its slender rill,  
  Each widening torrent bends, —  

  From the same cradle’s side,  
  From the same mother’s knee, —  
 One to long darkness and the frozen tide,  
  One to the Peaceful Sea!

***

Here, this one is funny:

An Unpublished Poem, by my late Latin Tutor.

In candent ire the solar splendor flames;
The foles, languescent, pend from arid rames;
His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes,
And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes.

How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes,
Dorm on the herb with none to supervise,
Carp the suave berries from thc crescent vine,
And bibe the flow from longicaudate kine!

To me, alas! no verdurous visions come,
Save yon exiguous pool’s conferva-scum,–
No concave vast repeats the tender hue
That laves my milk-jug with celestial blue!

Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades!
Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids!
Oh, might I vole to some umbrageous clump,–
Depart,–be off,-excede,–evade,–crump!

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Nature is Ridiculous

Mind-Blowing Discovery: Peacocks Have Lasers In Their Tails

Famous for their dazzling iridescence, peacock feathers are known to contain nanostructures that scatter light in ways that make their plumage shimmer in hues of blue and green.

Applying a special dye to multiple areas on a peacock’s tail, researchers from Florida Polytechnic University and Youngstown State University in the US went on the hunt for structures that may emit a very different signature glow.

In a mind-blowing first for the animal kingdom, they discovered the eyespots on the fowl’s fabulous feathers have unique properties that align light waves by bouncing them back and forth, effectively turning them into yellow-green lasers.

I wonder if this is just the tiniest bit less weird given that both iridescence and blues in feathers are created by structures in the feather, not by pigments. Once you start messing with the structure of feathers in order to do stuff with light, lasers become more plausible?

It’s a bit fun, when looking at a flock of parakeets, to think of colors and structures: Green is wild type, yellow is the pigment, blue is the structure. Remove the pigment but not the structure and you get a blue parakeet. The reverse gives you a yellow parakeet. And you have to both inhibit the pigment and destroy structural blue in order to get a white parakeet.

Naturally it gets way, way more complicated than that in practice.

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Cliff-migration exercises

An older post from Terrible Minds: A writing career is a series of cliff-migration exercises

Cliff-migration exercises! That’s a great way of saying whoops, didn’t see that coming.

People who want a writing career, here’s a thing you should know:

You’re always driving very fast toward a very high cliff. Not toward the wall at the bottom, but rather, rocketing toward the edge at the top. The precipice.

What I mean is this:

You get published with your first book, right? And it’s great. It’s roses falling from the sky, it’s a bubbly Champagne feeling in your nose, it’s a lightness to your step — an airy, giddy, level of triumph. And then you realize you’re not traipsing joyfully around a meadow, but rather, chained to the wheel of a fire-belching, fat-tired, steel-cage Apocalypse Car, and you’re barreling at top fucking speed toward what looks like the edge of the world.

I do think the bubbly Champagne stage lasts for a good while. Not sure it quite wears off. I certainly remember it vividly, and it’s been along time since The City in the Lake came out. But I do get what Chuck Wendig means here, about the cliff.

A career is one cliff after the next.

And in knowing that you are — after every book, every contract, every deal — driving ineluctably toward the next cliff, you have to figure out how you’re not going to die. Meaning, you’ve gotta spend the time rocketing toward the cliff performing some kind of… cliff mitigation technique. Choose whatever metaphor you like: installing rocket boosters in the car, hastily constructing a ramp that you will deploy via mobile trebuchet, training a flock of Canadian geese that you will anchor to your car in order to fly your ass over the edge and to the next butte or plateau ahead — whatever image you prefer, go for it. The point is that, your career is constantly in danger of crashing off a cliff. Your money will stop. The energy will slow and fade. You will be lost in the jungle next to the flaming wreckage of your vehicle.

Vivid, energetic metaphors from Chuck, as always. Hopefully the wreckage will not be flaming.

Regardless, cliffs! I think they are common. Especially because I bet — these days especially — nearly everyone who starts out with traditional publishing will eventually transition to self-publishing, and that experience will probably be somewhat cliff-like for almost everyone. I rather hope not to encounter too many more cliffs, in fact. I keep seeing that promotion services no longer work and Written Word Media is now almost a scam. So far, this does not seem true for me, so that is a cliff that I have not (yet) encountered. It’s true promo services aren’t as effective for me as they used to be. But the first time you promote with a big service, so that your book is new to their entire mailing list, obviously that service will be most effective. Plainly the effectiveness will decline later. What else would you expect?

I still haven’t actually taken any time to truly learn how to use ad platforms such as Amazon ads. Not in a hurry to do it. It would be a lot of trouble, and annoying. If I hit a real cliff with promo services, I guess I’ll see then about learning to fly.

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Update: Winding Down, Whew, plus Cover Reveal

All right, so this past week was slow in some ways but highly satisfactory in many important ways.

A) Last week, Haydee’s eye looked like it was healing. Right now, her eye looks a whole lot better to me. She’ll see the vet again this afternoon, and I hope that’ll be it. She is far, far less upset by eyedrops than, say, I would be, and when I pick up the bottle and look at her, immediately heads for the table and puts her feet up on the chair, waiting for me to pick her up and put her on the table and do the eyedrops, because of course she gets a yummy liver brownie afterward. She’s very keen on the liver brownies.

B) Ish’s prostate issue seems to be resolving, which is nice because it’s only been two weeks since he was neutered, so that’s fairly brisk as these things go. He’s on a diet for irritable bowel syndrome. I’ll be keeping track of his weight, but he seems fine to me at this point. He sleeps more than he used to, but he is 11.75 years old and he sure did look lively the last time he spotted a bunny in the yard. (Note to rabbits: stay out of the yard, you idiots, can’t you tell there are a million dogs in the yard?)

C) I’ve loaded Eight Doors at my Patreon, where it will go live tomorrow, Tuesday, Aug 12th. If necessary, I’ll correct any typos not later than the next Tuesday, Aug 19th. I’ll need to delete this book at Patreon no later than two weeks from that date, September 2, because it will go live at Amazon, including KU, on September 4th.

And it occurs to me that the cover was only just finished and therefore none of you have seen it, unless you happened to notice the preorder, which went live late last week. So first, it’s up for preorder at Amazon now, and second, here’s the cover:

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