Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 44

Second Monday Update: Puppies!

Okay, so Canva is really super handy if you want to put a lot of photos together into a single image. I did try to get a single picture of all the puppies sitting up and facing the camera at the same time, but it was hopeless. All five puppies sleeping, sure. That’s cute too, but it doesn’t exactly let you admire their adorableness.

So, here, the puppies, seven weeks old!

Do you remember the names? No, of course not, why would you, and they are complicated names, so this is:

Top Left: Anara Sestina Starlight Way. Not timid, but a little cautious. You have to earn Star’s trust. Possibly a natural retrieve? Definitely strong attraction to people.

Bottom Left: Anara Another Summers Day. Thoughtful is the exact word. He is just like his mother. When presented with something puzzling, Day sits down and looks at it, and you can see the wheels turning in his head. Morgan was exactly the same at his age. Exceptionally easy-going, which is why he is letting Clair push him around in that other picture.

Center: Anara Symphony Ode To Joy. Possibly not quite as frightful as I’m making her sound. Just utterly confident. Joy is the kind of puppy who hurls herself forward without quite looking to see how far down it might be.

Top Right: Anara Serenade A Little Night Music. I don’t know why I didn’t think of “Muse” from the beginning as a call name. Although he doesn’t have quite the thoughtful attitude of Day, so maybe that’s why. Anyway, a trusting puppy who is sure everyone wants to be his friend.

Bottom Right: Anara Suite Bergamasque Clair De Lune. She’s ten ounces smaller than the others, which is a lot for puppies this size. But she’s confident and outgoing, though not quite as full-speed-ahead as her sister. She should wind up a normal size for the breed, but on the smaller end of the spectrum. That’s a guess based on the six other puppies I’ve had that were her size at this age.

How did they turn out in terms of being not just cute, but correct?

They look great. Star may have the nicest head, but all of them look very nice. Clair has a level bite right now, but it may well correct. Puppy bites come and go. The others are correct right now. Of course Day has that uneven face marking, but if you ignore that, he is really, really nice. I would definitely show him if I kept him.

I don’t know who has the best structure. I think they all have excellent structure. We really judge that at eight weeks, not seven, but I’m pretty sure. They have all been trotting since five or six weeks, no bunny-hopping at all, always a good sign. They all tend to stand in a stacked position, also a very good sign. Sometimes Muse carries his tail high, but he is a boy; they do that when they’re strutting. Honestly, I think they are all show quality. If I were picking the most promising on appearance alone, I think it would be Star. For showy attitude, Joy because of pizzazz or maybe Day because he is probably going to be emotionally bombproof. But any of them would do fine. They are all great examples of the breed.

I believe they are all spoken for at this point, which is kinda breaking my heart, to tell you the truth. Of course one never quite knows until the actual moment, because people do sometimes change their minds, but some will certainly be leaving me in the next few weeks. First puppy vaccinations in just one week! And they will start to leave me after that! Time passes so fast!

By “all” I mean not quite all, as I definitely plan to keep Joy. I love her attitude, and with Haydee to keep her exercised, her pizzazz will be fun rather than tiring. So, definitely lively puppy antics for the foreseeable future! But it’s going to be really tough to see the others go!

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Multiple Updates This Monday

First, the writing update.

But later, after I have time to fiddle with this and that in Canva, a puppy post, with many very cute puppy pictures because wow, are they in the cute stage at this point. They are seven weeks old today.

Writing Update:

Okay, so you remember I said I felt somewhat under the weather LAST weekend? That turned out to be a cold that got quite a lot worse. I was not completely miserable because, I mean, I was taking lots of Excedrin, but I was also going through boxes of kleenix and lots of cough drops and basically what I am saying is: not a great week overall. In that sense.

However, to my surprise, rather than picking up a comfort read, such as something by Sharon Shinn or something by Ilona Andrews or something by LMB, I kind of … turned out to … prefer … comfort writing.

I know! I didn’t see that coming either! But rather than picking up a comfort read, I picked up Untitled Tano II and wrote the next two and a half chapters and boom, that book is now a bit past 100 pages (about 32,000 words or so), and, I mean, I really did not expect to do that. I actually meant to start this book maybe this coming December. But here we are.

I mean, I do want to set it aside and finish SILVER CIRCLE. But still. I am now thinking I may aim to release Untitled Tano II maybe this coming January. That is a guess. But I have never released anything in January, my royalties are always pathetic in January, and it would be nice to try a release at that point and see if I can kick the next year into gear a little faster. This is all highly uncertain and depends on lots of unpredictable things. We’ll see.

Meanwhile! Much more certain: RIHASI.

I sent RIHASI to the first few early readers one week ago, and to my astonishment everyone turned it around in six days or less — including one person who read the WHOLE THING ON MONDAY and sent me comments on Tuesday, which is astonishing. I love you all, and I particularly love you when you say, “It’s great, just how about these very simple little tweaks that you can totally do in a couple of days even while still recovering from a cold.”

So I will be sending the new! improved! version to the second set of early readers tomorrow, probably.

And do you know what that means? That means I will be essentially finished with this book BEFORE MAY. Sure did not see that coming.

All of May will then disappear into tweaking and endless proofreading, but it is now certain that I will be dropping this book at my Patreon June 2, where it will sit for three weeks or so. I’ll set the drop date at Amazon for July 2, and I’ll be putting RIHASI up on Amazon for preorder later today or tomorrow or sometime soon, whenever I have a free moment.

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Coinage in the summer country

So, when writing RIHASI, I had to do something I hadn’t ever done before: define coinage for the summer country.

I’m including a note about this in the back of the book, because a certain type of reader is certain to whip out a calculator and start figuring out how much gold coins weigh and just how much one person likely to be able to carry and so forth.

Other readers are going to ask, “So, how much could you actually buy with that? If you had that much money, would that be a nice thing for you or would you be, like, a millionaire, or what?”

I needed to be able to answer both types of questions and handle both weight and value in a reasonably plausible way in the story. So I looked stuff up about gold coins, not a topic I had previously paid a lot of attention to. Silver and other metals too. Then I got out a calculator and did some sums, and here is the result. This is kind of based on historically plausible coinage, but I wasn’t a massive perfectionist about it.

***

In the real world, I discovered, two standard weights for gold coins are 1/10 oz and 1/4 oz. I decided those weights would do for Lau coinage, so those are the weights of “light” and “heavy” gold coins. That means that fifty light gold coins weighs about 5 oz, or a thousand light gold weighs only 6.25 lbs – not a difficult weight at all.

Whew! I said to myself, because I do have people carry large sums around, and it looks like that’s no problem.

But how about larger sums? Of, possibly, heavy gold? How much would, say, 10,000 heavy gold coins weigh? Rapid arithmetic indicates that this much gold would weigh a tinch more than 156 lbs. That’s a bit more than 70 kg if you think in kg. This is a lot of weight; it’s a lot more than I could pick up, far less carry. But it’s not an incredibly difficult weight if you have a few friends. This is the sort of calculation I did for RIHASI.

I think there were surely historical periods where coinage was not standardized, but to simplify my life, I standardized it for the summer country. This is all kind of roughly based on historical standard values, but the Lau tend to sort things into eights and multiples of eights, so I used that here and got this:

4 copper to 1 bronze, 16 bronze to 1 light silver, so 64 copper to one light silver.

4 light silver to 1 heavy silver, so 254 copper or 64 bronze to one heavy silver.

8 heavy silver coins to 1 light gold, so 2048 copper or 512 bronze to one light gold. This is apparently roughly consistent with real values in real history — lots and lots of copper to one gold. Which does make sense, sure. Again, I wasn’t trying to be exactly in line with any particular historical values, just to get in plausibly in the right ballpark. Then, for gold, we have:

2.5 light gold to 1 heavy gold.

Light silver and light gold are thinner coins that are scored to allow them to be broken in halves and quarters.

I have referred several times to clipped coppers. I think it’s obvious what this means, but I thought about it a bit more while designing coinage. I’m not sure this comes up in RIHASI, but I decided that clipping coins is an illegal practice, but not uncommon. Punishment for clipping copper coins is not especially harsh, so there are a lot of clipped copper coins in circulation and, as long as they don’t appear to have been too badly clipped, they are accepted at the lowest level of commerce, such as buying a mug of thin ale. Clipping bronze is dealt with more harshly if the person is caught doing it, and of course clipping silver and gold is punished much more harshly. Some merchants and tradesmen, and all moneychangers, moneylenders, and banks, will weigh coins and issue newly minted, unclipped coins to replace those they weigh. They will then send clipped coins to a mint to be melted and re-cast at the proper weight, for which they receive a specified fee per weight of metal sent to the mint. I think all that sounds reasonable.

Also, the Lau use bangles and other jewelry as basically unofficial coinage for women. So I worked that out too. I think this is basically plausible, but if anybody out there happens to know how much normal bangles weigh and this seems off, let me know.

1 copper bangle = 2 copper coins

1 bronze bangle = 2 bronze coins

1 silver bangle = 4 light silver coins

1 gold bangle = 4 light gold coins

Now, after working all that out, how much will coins actually buy? The below is based on the plausible historical buying power of the Byzantine nomisma, which I am taking as a very rough guide to the value of a light gold coin.

3 light gold = a donkey

15 light gold = a decent horse

This means one light gold = something in the neighborhood of $400 to $500 today, in US dollars. Remember that horses are common and not that special. A reasonably decent horse of no particular breeding can be purchased for something close to that. Naturally if you want a nice Andalusian, you’ll be paying a lot more for that horse. But this is an estimate for a normal, decent horse.

Cloth, on the other hand, is much more valuable when you have to make it all by hand.

¼ light gold = 2 heavy silver = around 500 copper = one blanket

½ light gold = one cloak

2 light gold = one good coat, the kind with all the buttons and some fancy embroidery; or one silk robe, the kind we see people wearing in Avaras.

How about labor? How much are coins worth in terms of how long it takes to earn them? That’s really important, obviously. Here’s what I’ve got:

1 day’s unskilled labor = 8 bronze or 32 copper or 1/2 a light silver

30 days semiskilled labor = 4 heavy silver or about half a light gold

10 days skilled labor = 1 light gold

1 year of skilled labor = about 36 to 40 light gold

1 year of really skilled or valuable labor = about 80 light gold.

And this is roughly how I estimated value during RIHASI, where coin gets flung around with considerable abandon at times. If any of you know a lot about this topic, how does it seem to you? For everyone else, I trust it seems halfway reasonable. If you’re interested, this was an article that I found helpful for working out the values.

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Can a book be for everyone?

A post at tor.com — I mean “Reactor” — by Molly Templeton: Can a Book Really Be For Everyone?

I like Templeton’s articles because she is usually discussing books rather than movies, she is usually discussing broader themes, and we seem to have similar tastes in books. (I am less sure of that last point after reading the linked post, though.)

To me the answer to this question is plainly NO. I mean … obviously the answer is NO, even defining “everyone” to mean “most people.” How could that possibly work?

A) I love grimdark! Let’s have suffering! Better yet, pointless suffering that leads to no good outcome! The protagonist may try to achieve something worthwhile, but sorry, no way! Pick the worst bad guy in the story — let’s have that guy come out victorious. He can grind the world beneath his bootheel. Blood, filth, and suffering are in your face at every turn. That’s what I want! Gritty realism in fantasy!

B) Let’s have a positive tone, where most people are honestly trying to do their best and mostly succeeding. The protagonist is genuinely kind, and so are many of the other characters. They are trying to achieve something worth achieving, and they succeed. The world is a better place at the end than it was in the beginning. Not only that, but the protagonist becomes a better person because of his commitment to achieving worthwhile aims. He also supports those around him when they try to become better people. Filth and suffering are passed over lightly; the camera doesn’t focus on grit. Sometimes we turn a corner and the world opens up into wonder. That’s what I want — a sense of wonder in fantasy.

These two preferences are totally irreconcilable. What possible book could conceivably appeal to both readers?

I do have a possible suggestion, but I don’t think it would ultimately work.

C) I want adventure! Let’s have fun! Fast pace, quick wit — how about a heist? The protagonist is out for himself, but he’s good-humored about it. The world isn’t particularly gritty, but it’s not particularly safe either. An appealing character dies, but not in an especially brutal way, so there’s this element of tragedy, but not with a slasher aesthetic. The heist succeeds, and at least one character achieves something worthwhile because of that. If that’s not the protagonist, at least the protagonist supports this character. The tone is not high fantasy, but not gritty either — or if the camera pans across grit, it’s in a lighthearted way. Adventurous, fun fantasy that’s the ticket!

The reason I don’t think this would work is that fantasy written this way doesn’t actually appeal to me, even if it’s well written. AND, if the protagonist and/or other characters wind up in a better place than they started out, then I suspect grimdark fans might not find this fun heist story all that appealing either. (That’s a guess.) However, if the writing is good enough and witty enough, maybe this kind of book might hit a sweet spot between (A) and (B).

On the other hand, you know who it wouldn’t appeal to? Every reader who detests fantasy and won’t touch a book with fantasy elements.

So … I’m coming down pretty hard on the NO response. NO, a book cannot appeal to everyone. Or to most people. Or, probably, even to a majority of people. A book can only have wide appeal within the group of readers who like that kind of book.

What does Molly Templeton say?

Listening to Zevin, I thought about what makes a book for everyone. I don’t mean everyone in a bestseller list way—who knows how many of those celebrity-book-club, nonfiction-trend, famous-person memoir books ever get read? I mean the kind of book that can draw packs of teens, writers, parents, readers, and everyone else in a community into a theater on one rainy Thursday afternoon. Is it the presence of universal themes? Approachable prose? Intergenerational narratives? A certain sense of transparency, like you can see what the author is doing even as you appreciate it? 

All right, that’s more reasonable, because here we mean “everyone” as “readers from a wide demographic base.” Who is Zevin? This is Gabrielle Zevin, who has written, apparently, some contemporary YA novels, such as Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. It may be more New Adult than YA; the characters are in their twenties. This is a book with nearly 100,000 ratings and a 4.4 star average. Let’s take a look at the description:

***

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom.

These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love.

***

Well, the story may be great, but “Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts” doesn’t appeal to me at all. Sounds like they’re going to probably practically destroy their own lives, and even if they pull themselves together toward the end, this kind of plot and character arc is anti-appealing.

We’ve been looking at first pages lately; since we’re here, let’s look at the first page of this one. Maybe after reading the first bit, I’ll change my mind and decide yes, the story looks appealing and I do want to read it after all.

***

Before Mazer invented himself as Mazer, he was Samson Mazer, and before he was Samson Mazer, he was Samson Masur — a change of two letters that transformed him from a nice, ostensibly Jewish boy to a Professional Builder of Worms — and for most of his youth, he was Sam, S.A.M, on the hall of fame of his grandfather’s Donkey Kong machine, but mainly Sam.

On a late December afternoon, in the waning twentieth century, Sam exited a subway car and found the artery to the escalator clogged by an inert mass of people, who were gaping at a station advertisement. Sam was late. He had a meeting with his academic advisor that he had been postponing for over a month, but that everyone agreed absolutely needed to happen before winter break. Sam didn’t care for crowds — being in them, or whatever foolishness they tended to enjoy en masse. But this crowd would not be avoided. He would have to force his way through it if he were to be delivered to the aboveground world.

Sam wore an elephantine navy wool peacoat that he had inherited from his roommate, Marx, who had bought it freshman year from the Army Navy Surplus Store in town. Marx had left it moldering in its plastic shopping bag just short of an entire semester before Sam asked if he might borrow it. That winter had been unrelenting, and it was an April nor’easter (April! What madness, these Massachusetts winters!) that finally wore Sam’s pride down enough to ask Marx for the forgotten coat. Sam pretended that he liked the style of it, and Marx said that Sam might as well take it, which is what Sam knew he would say. Like most things purchased from the Army Navy Surplus Store, the coat emanated mold, dust, and the perspiration of dead boys, and Sam tried not to speculate why the garment had been surplussed. But the coat was far warmer than the windbreaker he had brought from California his freshman year. He also believed that thelarge coat worked to conceal his size. The coat, its ridiculous scale, only made him look smaller and more childlike.

That is to say, Sam Masur at age twenty-one did not have a build for pushing and shoving and so, as much as possible, he weaved through the crowd, feeling somewhat like the doomed amphibian from the video game Frogger. He found himself uttering a series of “excuse mes” that he did not mean. A truly magnificent thing about the way the brain was coded, Sam thought, was that it could say “Excuse me,” while meaning “Screw you.” Unless they were unreliable or clearly established as lunatics or scoundrels, characters in novels, movies, and games were meant to be taken at face value — the totality of what they did or what they said. But people — the ordinary, the decent and basically honest — couldn’t get through the day without that one indispensable bit of programming that allowed you to say one thing and mean, feel, or even do, another.

***

What do you think? I think this is definitely not a book that appeals to everyone, because I don’t like it. Why not?

A) I think the writing is top notch, and here we see all sorts of things that have not worked for me in several of the recent “would you turn the page” posts, except here those things do work. The (parenthetical) works much better for me here than it did in Tress because the tone is not arch. We have someone walking somewhere, as in Lost in Time, but here that is engaging rather than boring. The first paragraph is static, but elegant. There’s a flashback, which is also elegant. I note that the paragraphs are longer, which thank you, please, let’s have paragraphs of reasonable length, not divide practically every sentence into its own paragraph.

However,

B) I very much dislike the I’m-so-superior tone. Sam didn’t care for crowds — being in them, or whatever foolishness they tended to enjoy en masse. Oh, I see Sam is so superior. I’m sure he’s much more sensitive and intelligent than ordinary people, who I guess love being in crowds. He’s so sensitive and intelligent and superior that he is contemptuous of decency and honesty. What middle-class virtues those are, how plebian, how ordinary.

I think of this as the Steppenwolf attitude, though Sam is probably much more energetic and gung-ho than the guy in Steppenwolf. Nevertheless, the contempt for ordinary people is the same. I wouldn’t say that I dislike this attitude. No, I despise this attitude.

Sam here is no doubt supposed to be sympathetic and engaging. Well, not to me. I deleted the sample immediately after typing in the above excerpt.

Looking at the ratings, I see 15% are three star or below. I read through some of those reviews, which you shouldn’t if you want to read the story, as there are massive spoilers in some of the reviews. As a side note, please, NEVER DO A LOW-STAR REVIEW THAT SAYS: The book came in the mail with a ripped cover which was very disappointing and that is the whole review. That’s TERRIBLE and I know zero readers of this blog would ever do this, but I’ve got reviews just like that on some of my books as well. Ugh. Honestly, if the review is less than 50 words long and includes the words “ripped cover” and is under four stars, Amazon should just automatically delete it. Or at least remove it from calculations of the average star rating.

Much more relevant to the question about universal (or near universal, or at least broad) appeal, here’s a line from another three-star review: The criticism I keep coming back to seems to stem from the feeling I had that the book revels in the pain of its characters a little too much. I’m not even saying that’s a particularly bad thing, just that it isn’t for me. 

There you go. First, that line would probably kill my desire to read the book even in the absence of anything else, but second, the book is not for readers who dislike seeing characters’ lives destroyed. Those are readers who aren’t going to like the book. Of course, 15% negative reviews (minus the ridiculous reviews about the ripped cover) is a pretty good percentage. Of the nearly 100,000 readers who left reviews, 85% left four- or five-star reviews, so it worked for them. That’s not everyone, but it’s a lot.

Here is where Molly Templeton was actually going with this post:

I suspect, though, that a lot of SFF readers have thought about this, or about a topic in this general vicinity. Who hasn’t found themselves trying to explain—with a mild to severe level of exhaustion and/or frustration—that not all SFF is like the one disagreeable book a friend read and did not like, causing them to back away from the genre forever? Who hasn’t heard a genre skeptic say, “I don’t usually like fantasy, but I liked this book?” Haven’t we all tried to find just the right book, the one that would demonstrate to a doubter exactly why the genres we love are so big, so brilliant, so compelling? And what a task that is. Do they want happy stories or stories that spring from a deep well of trauma? Ensemble casts or chosen ones? Secondary worlds or magic at home? Hot villains or trustworthy paladins? Should we make a survey, try to figure out what the best book to convert someone to SFF is? Is there one true SFF novel for everyone? (I kid. Mostly.)

No, of course there isn’t, see above, so it’s good this is (mostly) not serious.

I know of readers who are fine with contemporary world fantasy, historical fantasy, and alternate history fantasy, but won’t touch secondary world fantasy. I’m sure there are plenty of readers who like paranormal romance with werewolves but would be bored to tears by something like A Winter’s Tale by Helprin. At the moment, I’m off paranormal and UF except for books by Ilona Andrews — I just got tired of those subgenres and that hasn’t worn off yet. Tastes differ. It doesn’t matter how many surveys you do; there isn’t One Great Novel For Everyone; there isn’t a Top Ten Fantasy Novels Your Non-Fantasy Reader Might Love, nothing like that. No, there’s no choice but to say, “What do you actually like to read right now? In that case these novels here might appeal to you.” Without the initial question, there’s just no way.

And, even for books “everyone” loves, some readers won’t love it. But, is 15% “meh” about typical? Or is that proportion high or low? Out of curiosity, I went back and looked at The Fourth Wing. You know what the percentage is for three stars and below? Just 3%. As candidates for “everyone loves it” go, it’s way, way above Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

Given that The Fourth Wing is YA secondary world fantasy with (it looks like) an edge of dystopia, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is maybe YA or “New Adult” contemporary fiction with an edge of literary ruining-your-life, my guess is the overlap of readership is not that great. But of course, I don’t know. It would be interesting to find out, but I don’t know how one could.

One final note:

I am sure (very, very sure) that there are nigh-unto-infinite novels that should be massively more popular than they are. What is ONE book that leaped to your mind that fits this category? I’ve asked that before, I bet, but hey, it’s 2024, I bet some of you have new contenders.

My pick: I’m going for something really out of the ordinary here, something that is practically unknown, and something which is not SFF. We might call it positive literary. It’s kind of YA, but not really? Anyway, it’s Thursday’s Children by Rumer Godden.

Especially recommended if you are into dance, especially ballet; and also like school stories; and also like historicals. This book would be the perfect intersection in that Venn diagram. However, speaking as someone who knows almost nothing about ballet, is just okay with school stories, and prefers historicals set much longer ago than this … it’s still just a lovely story. This is the old cover, the one I’ve got, which I like better than the new cover, though I’m happy to see that it’s been reissued and is in print. And it’s not (apparently) available as an ebook. But I really love this story. I wonder what proportion of readers would appreciate it today, and whether it might turn out to have broad demographic appeal if you dropped it into the hands of a million or so modern readers. I think it could definitely appeal to readers of almost any age, so that’s a start.

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One More Time: Would you turn the page?

Okay, this time, I typed “#1 bestselling space opera book” and got to Amazon’s bestseller list for this category. The very top book in this category was #20 in a series. I have never read anything in this series nor anything by the authors. They definitely aren’t household names and definitely haven’t kickstarted anything at 40 million dollars or anything like that.

However, this page in not from that book. I backed up to the first book in the series, which has a bestseller rank of 2287, which the Publisher Rocket sales calculator tells me is about equivalent to selling eighty copies per day. It’s #3 in science fiction space opera as I type this. Close to 11,000 ratings, average of 4.4 stars.

Here’s the first page (or so):

***

The rain slammed down in hard, unrelenting sheets, rattling on the rental car like bullets and almost drowning out the rhythmic thump of the wipers. In one hand, I held my phone, a custom-built unit that did everything I wanted and nothing I didn’t. Its screen, and the glow from the dashboard, offered the only steady light. Beyond the windows sprawled nothing but rainy gloom, split by sporadic flashbulb bursts of lightning.

My phone wasn’t why I was here, though. At least, not directly. I really was just using it for light. It was the thing in my other hand that had brought me to this place, at this time, sitting in an idling car on a gravel driveway with water sluicing from puddle to puddle.

Another flare of lightning blew apart the night. Its brief crystalline glare etched the shape of a farmhouse and a fence, beyond them a barn, and beyond that the rolling fields that had been my family’s land for — hell, I wasn’t sure how many generations. At least four. Maybe five.

Until recently, it had all been my grandfather’s. God’s green acre, he called it, a rambling farm granted to my family by the railroad at the end of the Civil War. The tracks still ran along the west edge of the property, in fact —

Another flash of lightning. This time, my gaze stayed inside the car, on the documents unfolded in my lap. They looked important, all purposeful text and signatures and seals embossed right into the paper. They even felt important, much heavier than the paper alone. They bore down with the weight of meaning.

Of course, any document starting … being of sound mind, do hereby bequeath … was weighty and important. These papers were a bridge, vaulting from one generation to the next. Or, in this instance, the generation after that. In any case, they were an end, closing another chapter of my father’s lineage, bringing it right up to date. But they were a beginning, too.

… being of sound mind, do hereby bequeath all property and goods and chattels above and below the surface of Blackthorn Farm, address County Road 1100, Pony Hollow, Iowa, United States of America, (Earth), to my grandson, Clive VanAbel Tudor III.

***

What do you think? I think this is pretty catchy. I could totally nitpick, but I think the inclination to do so is largely because the “would you turn the page?” thing makes me super-critical. I would wonder whether we need all that about the phone. I might suggest that some of the transitions are a bit clumsy (especially when moving from the phone to something else). Nevertheless, supposing I had this sample sitting on my kindle app and opened it and started reading. I’d turn the page.

What does this opening have going for it that the previous super boring opening lacked?

A) It’s almost all story, and the part that is backstory is much better integrated and far more interesting. Even though the protagonist is sitting still, there’s more of a sense of movement and more of a feeling of individuality to this opening compared to that one. The storm itself is providing some sense of movement, but you know what else is contributing? The sense of anticipation of the story opening. That anticipation is provided by the will.

B) When we have a line about “above and below the surface,” we don’t need the description to tell us that a starship (or something exciting) is definitely located below ground somewhere on this property. However, the description does in fact tell us that, and that sets up this thing with the will. Take a look at the cover and presentation of this book:

I thought this book was probably self-published, but it looks like it came out from a very tiny press, which in some cases is kind of a subset of self-published, I think. It’s Variant Publishing, with a catalogue of about 120 SF titles from about 10 authors. I would be surprised if this isn’t a co-op of some kind. Looks like they’re doing a good job.

Here’s the description:

When Van Tudor returns to his childhood home, he inherits more than the family farm.

His grandfather used to tell him fantastic stories of spacemen and monsters, princesses and galactic knights. Little did Van realize, the old man’s tales were more than fiction. They were real.

Hidden beneath the old barn, Van’s legacy is waiting: a starship, not of this world.

With his combat AI, an android bird named Perry, Van takes his first steps into the wider galaxy. He soon finds that space is far busier and more dangerous than he could have ever conceived.

Destiny is calling. His grandfather’s legacy awaits.

This is really good description. It is short, the bolded lines are eye catching, it’s catchy, it’s fun, it tells the reader exactly what kind of story to expect. Anybody who would like this kind of story is probably going to pick it up, or at least pick up a sample. I’ve been getting samples of these books so I could type in the excerpts, and I didn’t delete this one, or even remove it from “downloaded.” I left it at the top of the downloaded books and samples on my Kindle app.

Do I think the writing is super great?

C) The writing is not that great. My phone wasn’t why I was here, though. At least, not directly. I really was just using it for light. It was the thing in my other hand that had brought me to this place … why is this here? How about, “I held my phone so the light shone on my grandad’s will, balanced on my knee.” That would be much more direct and clear, avoiding all this “it was the thing” stuff.

However, if a reader is interested in a fun, probably fast-paced story about a guy being jerked suddenly from ordinary life and tossed into a baroque galactic society, then I think this page gets the job done.

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Finished! For real this time. Also, puppies are getting cuter and cuter

Okay, in one way this weekend was not that much fun, as I developed a mild cold. However, it was (and is still) mild enough that it isn’t really distracting or enervating, so that’s good. It also provided a solid excuse to stay home ALL WEEKEND and go NOWHERE AT ALL, which I always appreciate, though it means I’ll have to run errands after work sometime this week. But it was worth it! Because I ripped through the rest of the primary revision for RIHASI and will now be sending it to the first set of early readers.

Naturally this means I added words. That’s why I wanted to cut first, so that looking at the wordcount going up wouldn’t drive me berserk. It’s really really long, however. If I add more during secondary revision, I’ll be trying to trim at the same time, but it’s definitely going to wind up at least 170,000 words.

My feeling is that it’s great and doesn’t need any revision! However, this never proves to be quite true, and sometimes it turns out to be VERY not true, but we shall see.

And, once we DO see, then I will be able to put the book up for preorder. I do not want to be scrambling desperately to get it ready to go, and of course the puppies are distracting, so I want to set the drop date far enough in the future that I can safely meet it without stressing myself out too much. That will actually be a month (or so) after RIHASI drops at my Patreon, so I have to remember to add a minimum of three weeks to the necessary lead time. It will certainly be great to be able to put this cover on view at Amazon.

And the audio version will go into production about the same time it drops, probably. I’m looking forward to that too.

I’m happy with the 7 completed audio chapters I have for MARAG so far. That audiobook probably won’t be available this month, but I expect it will be next month. Oh, and also, if you’ve left a review for MARAG, thank you! It’s up to 83 ratings, I see, which is pretty good for less than a month. Top notch star rating too. That’s going to be really helpful for promotion later this year. Not to mention that it’s personally satisfying!

Whoever suggested I write a story about Sinowa and Marag getting together, I sure appreciate the suggestion. I wouldn’t have thought of writing MARAG if you hadn’t suggested it. Anybody here or anybody at my Patreon should feel free to make suggestions.

Meanwhile, I’d like feedback on this, so if you’re so inclined, please vote —

Do you want a character list at the end of every book for the foreseeable future? Was that a good thing to put at the end of MARAG?

Do you want to have the names of familiar characters included in a character list at the back of every book?

Meanwhile! The puppies have started exploring the outdoor world. This rock here is where I sit to keep an eye on them, which may be why four of them gathered here when they decided they were ready for a break.

Look closely — do you see Magdalene inspecting the new puppies? She has decided they are basically harmless. One of these rubies went up to her in the living room and wanted to pull her tail. I distracted the puppy with a toy, but Magdalen didn’t swat the puppy, only withdrew to the back of the couch. I’m *almost* relaxed about the potential for accidents involving cat claws and puppies.

One more, because the b/ts are hard to photograph, but this one sat up and looked cute at the right time. I’m not sure which this is. I can’t tell the difference without looking at the white spot on the chest. I can tell the rubies apart by picking them both up — Little Ruby is definitely smaller than Big Ruby — or by looking at the hind feet. Big Ruby has rear dew claws, not desirable, but whatever, at least I can tell them apart.

Awww

Puppy names: I haven’t totally decided for all of them, and I’m trying to stick to a 25 character rule so I don’t wind up paying an extra fee. But I’m not that concerned about the extra fee, so I’m thinking of:

Black and Tan #1 — Anara Sestina Starlight Way — I really like this name for a black puppy, even though Swinburne is pretty depressing as poets go. “Starlight Way” isn’t the name of the poem or the first line, or for that matter the last line, so I’m not totally committed to this name, but I do like it a lot.

Black and Tan #2 — Anara Serenade A Little Night Music — a little over the length, but I really like the name. Although it doesn’t suggest an easy call name, unless you pull something out of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Ruby #1 — Anara Suite B Clair De Lune, and yes, I might change my mind and add the full “bergamasque” and pay the extra fee again. Also, I’m not sure about this name because “Clair De Lune” is a peaceful piece of music and this ruby puppy is not quite as much a hellion as the other one, but she shows definite tendencies in that direction.

Ruby #2 — Anara Symphony Ode To Joy — this is the puppy I plan to keep. She has a couple basically cosmetic issues; eg, the extra dew claws on the rear feet and a (very small, unimportant) umbilical hernia. But I don’t plan to breed her, so I don’t care. I really like her hellion nature. And she should be beautiful.

Blenheim — Anara Another Summer’s Day. Here’s the full poem, below. This is Emily Dickinson, one of my favorite poets. You can see the line I picked is the last line. This isn’t nearly as familiar as “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” but on the other hand, it’s Emily Dickenson, so I mean, there’s that. And I like it. She’s a much more uplifting poet than Swinburne, that’s for sure. And I do think “Day” is a cute name.

A Something in a Summer’s Day

A something in a summer’s Day
As slow her flambeaux burn away
Which solemnizes me.

A something in a summer’s noon—
A depth—an Azure—a perfume—
Transcending ecstasy.

And still within a summer’s night
A something so transporting bright
I clap my hands to see—

Then veil my too inspecting face
Lets such a subtle—shimmering grace
Flutter too far for me—

The wizard fingers never rest—
The purple brook within the breast
Still chafes it narrow bed—

Still rears the East her amber Flag—
Guides still the sun along the Crag
His Caravan of Red—

So looking on—the night—the morn
Conclude the wonder gay—
And I meet, coming thro’ the dews
Another summer’s Day!

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Is it time to retire the defective detective?

A post at Kill Zone Blog: Is It Time To Retire The Defective Detective?

My instant response: YES YES YES It was time to retire this painfully cliched protagonist AT LEAST twenty years ago.

Let me tell you about the detective in this gritty, realistic noir-ish detective novel: He is about fifty. He is alone. He is an alcoholic, semi-recovered, or self-destructive in other ways. His wife left him and took the children. Probably she left him because she wanted to be the center of his attention 24/7, never mind that someone was killing girls or whatever. She could not cope with the detective working on actual crimes when he should have been arranging special candlelit dinners for two. This shows how sensitive she is and how insensitive he is. He has almost no relationship with his children, who appreciate how sensitive mom is compared to dad. Now here he is, as I said, alone. He barely gets through is days. He is cynical and hopefully competent, though maybe not.

This is Everydetective. I encountered this exact detective innumerable times, in every single gritty, realistic, noir-ish detective novel I picked up until I completely stopped reading that kind of novel. My impression is that the wife is usually a bigger component of this Everydetective’s current life in movies, so the audience can watch the marriage crash and burn on stage, because wow, that’s so much fun.

This is PJ Parrish. This is actually two coauthors. What do they say?

Now, we all love a flawed protagonist. Their personal journey is a parallel track that runs along side the main murder plot and creates interest and empathy. But man, does everyone have to be addicted, divorced, friendless, childless, and beset with demons from their screwed up childhoods? Do we really need another detective whose only steady relationships are with Cutty Sark and John Coltrane?

Spoiler: WE DO NOT LOVE THIS PARTICULAR FLAWED PROTAGONIST. We are very, very tired of Everydetective.

Whether it’s alcohol, drugs, gambling, or just plain paralyzing depression or grief, a large segment of the mystery writing community frequently writes broken protags. Some of these characters have been very critically successful. I have sort of a different take. I tend to regard emotionally damaged protags as a bit of a crutch.

Response: YOU THINK?

PJ Parrish then offers a quick discussion of cliches vs tropes. Without going into the distinction, I will just say briefly that in my opinion, a cliche is a badly done trope. No tropes get old if they are handled well. Readers who like whatever trope will like endless iterations as long as they are handled well. This is no doubt true for this kind of Everydetective as well; it’s just that I find that character unendurable and the surrounding characters equally unendurable and the plotlines that follow Everydetective through the destruction of his life worst of all.

I doubt I will read anything in the gritty, realistic, noir-ish detective genre ever again. I know absolutely for sure that if I am reading a detective novel of any description, the moment Everydetective picks up a bottle in the hope of drowning his sorrows, mentions his divorced wife or his estranged daughter — it’s always a daughter — or wakes up alone in a grungy setting, I’m not only done with that particular novel, but with that author.

In other words: it’s like grimdark. I’m one hundred percent not interested and I never will be.

Also: unlike grimdark, I don’t think it needed to be that way. Grimdark is intrinsically grimdark. But gritty, realistic, noir-ish detectives do not have to be Everydetective. That, in my opinion, IS INDEED a crutch.

For a less diatribe-ish take, you can click through and read the linked post.

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Why your flashbacks aren’t working

A post at Jane Friedman’s blog: Why your flashbacks aren’t working.

I think getting into and out of flashbacks can be quite challenging. If you’re telling the story in simple past tense, when do you switch to past perfect? And then do you stay in past perfect through the whole flashback? Even if it’s pretty long? And if you shift from past to past perfect to past to story present (which means simple past tense again), how exactly do you make that work?

That was a nuisance in MARAG, by the way. Chapter 1 is Sinowa’s prologue, but then Chapter 2 starts with a flashback that serves as a prologue for Marag, and yes, and early reader pointed to weird verb tenses through there, and yes, I focused on cleaning that up and trying to handle verb tenses so smoothly that no other reader would ever notice the verb tenses at all. Hopefully I succeeded, since, I mean, it’s a little late to mess with the verb tenses any more now.

But I’m not sure that’s why flashbacks might not work in a broader sense. That is, I can think of other modes of failure that are worse. I am thinking about this before reading the linked post because some failure modes really leap to my mind. Maybe yours, too.

A) We started in story-present, got into some exciting situation, and NOW, whoops, we are having a flashback.

And not just for a paragraph or a page. No. We are stuck back here in the flashback for MANY pages, maybe the first half of the book.

I hate this. No matter how long the flashback lasts, I will not forget where we started. I do not like being dragged away from story present, especially at a cliffhanger moment, but actually I don’t like it period. This is just not a structure that works for me.

Except if you do it really well. Zelazny used the most remarkable flashback/flashforward technique in Doorways in the Sand. That’s how to handle this kind of technique — lean into it and do your best to make readers appreciate what you’re doing.

B) I don’t care. Whatever led the character to this point, here he is.

I don’t really want to know how he got here. Multiply this times a thousand if he is a villain. I absolutely, totally do not want to see any of the villain’s backstory. You, as the author, may find the bad guy interesting. You, as the author, may want me to be sorry that someone killed his dog when he was four. Too bad. I don’t care.

If you want to tell me something about anybody’s backstory, that character can tell a relevant anecdote about that in story-present. That works fine. if someone killed his dog when he was four, I will be very mad at them. I’m thinking of an incident in Ilona Andrews’ Burn For Me series. This is a great series because they are great writers and they would never in a million years screw up a flashback, by the way. They really showcase how to slowly reveal backstory in this series, which I do highly recommend.

Those are my biggest problems with flashbacks. Now, what does the linked post say?

You have too many flashbacks. Most interesting advice here: If you’re using lots of flashbacks to tell your story effectively, consider whether you may in fact have a multiple-timeline story. (Learn more about multiple timeline stories.) Link from the original.

The flashbacks are in the wrong place. Focus on flashback-prologues, usually a bad idea. Counterexample offered in the linked post of a flashback-prologue that does work, thus making the point that everything can work if handled well enough.

The flashbacks go on too long. Pacing issues.

They are clunky and obvious. “He remembered, as if it were yesterday, or “The scene played like a movie in her mind,” or “Suddenly she relived the moment when…” Yes to all this, and then the problem isn’t the flashback, it’s the clunky writing, which is probably going to be everywhere, not just in the flashback.

 The flashbacks don’t move the story forward. I do find this an amusing critique, not that this is wrong. Perhaps this would be better phrased: The flashbacks are unnecessary to the story / serve no purpose. The post notes, that the flashback should materially and essentially shed light on the character(s) and their arc in the main story, advance the main story with essential information, and/or raise stakes.  In other words, there’s a reason for it to be there.

The flashbacks aren’t directly relevant to the main story. Sounds like a subset of the prior point to me.

The flashbacks confuse readers.

OKAY. So: admirable use of flashback: Whispering Wood by Sharon Shinn.

This, you may recall, is a book I really loved and also a book where I noted the particularly elegant and effective use as flashbacks.

While we’re on the topic, here’s a prior post about flashbacks, in which I explained why I put two flashback chapters in SUELEN and how much I focused on smooth entry and exit of flashbacks in The Year’s Midnight.

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Would you turn the page of this bestselling SF novel?

Okay, full disclosure: This isn’t the #1 bestselling SF novel right now. It is, however, pretty high up in the charts and #1, #2, and #3 in its three categories. I won’t tell you what those categories are just yet. Let’s start by just purely looking at the first page without knowing anything except that it’s a popular SF novel.

Oh, I’ll also mention that I’ve never heard of the author, so with luck most of you haven’t read this already and can also judge the first page cold.

***

On the anniversary of his wife’s death, Sam Anderson visited her grave.

It was a crisp spring morning in Nevada, with dew on the grass and fog rolling through the cemetery. In one hand, Sam carried a bouquet of flowers. In the other, he gripped his son’s hand. Ryan was eleven and strong-willed and introverted, like his mother. After her death, he had withdrawn, spending even more time alone, playing with LEGOs, reading, and generally avoiding life.

Counselling had yielded little help for Ryan. At home, Sam had searched for a way to get through to his only son, but he had to admit: he wasn’t half the parent his wife had been. Most days, he felt like he was simply reacting to his children, making it up as he went, working on a mystery without any clues.

He hoped the visit to Sarah’s grave this morning would be the start of turning that around.

Same’s daughter, Adeline, gripped Ryan’s other hand. She was nineteen years old, and to all outward appearances seemed to have coped better with her mother’s passing. but Sam wondered if Adeline was just a better actor than Ryan or himself. He worried about that too, about her bottling it all up and carrying the burden of unaddressed grief.

Last night, he had seen a glimpse of her hidden rage. Adeline was still furious with him over the evening’s argument. So angry she wouldn’t even hold his hand or look at him. Hence, Ryan walking between them.

But she had agreed to be there that morning, and Sam was thankful for that.

They walked in silence through the cemetery much like they had floated through life since Sara’s death: hand-in-hand, trying to find their way through it all.

Fog drifted in front of the headstones like a curtain being drawn and opened. Across the cemetery, sprinkler heads rose and began deploying water. The cemetery likely cost a fortune to irrigate out in the Nevada desert, but of all the problems Absolom City had, money wasn’t one.

At the edge of the grass, Sam thought he saw a figure watching them. He turned his head, and yes, there was a man there. He wore a dark uniform, though Sam couldn’t make it out from this distance. Fog floated in front of the man, and when Sam looked again, he was gone.

***

My first reaction: Wow, this is boring.

My second reaction: Wow, this is passive.

Once again, let me show this snippet and boldface all the “telling.”

***

On the anniversary of his wife’s death, Sam Anderson visited her grave.

It was a crisp spring morning in Nevada, with dew on the grass and fog rolling through the cemetery. In one hand, Sam carried a bouquet of flowers. In the other, he gripped his son’s hand. Ryan was eleven and strong-willed and introverted, like his mother. After her death, he had withdrawn, spending even more time alone, playing with LEGOs, reading, and generally avoiding life.

Counselling had yielded little help for Ryan. At home, Sam had searched for a way to get through to his only son, but he had to admit: he wasn’t half the parent his wife had been. Most days, he felt like he was simply reacting to his children, making it up as he went, working on a mystery without any clues.

He hoped the visit to Sarah’s grave this morning would be the start of turning that around.

Same’s daughter, Adeline, gripped Ryan’s other hand. She was nineteen years old, and to all outward appearances seemed to have coped better with her mother’s passing. but Sam wondered if Adeline was just a better actor than Ryan or himself. He worried about that too, about her bottling it all up and carrying the burden of unaddressed grief.

Last night, he had seen a glimpse of her hidden rage. Adeline was still furious with him over the evening’s argument. So angry she wouldn’t even hold his hand or look at him. Hence, Ryan walking between them.

But she had agreed to be there that morning, and Sam was thankful for that.

They walked in silence through the cemetery much like they had floated through life since Sara’s death: hand-in-hand, trying to find their way through it all.

Fog drifted in front of the headstones like a curtain being drawn and opened. Across the cemetery, sprinkler heads rose and began deploying water. The cemetery likely cost a fortune to irrigate out in the Nevada desert, but of all the problems Absolom City had, money wasn’t one.

At the edge of the grass, Sam thought he saw a figure watching them. He turned his head, and yes, there was a man there. He wore a dark uniform, though Sam couldn’t make it out from this distance. Fog floated in front of the man, and when Sam looked again, he was gone.

***

Nothing here is interesting enough for me to care who the mysterious man in the dark uniform might be. I don’t care about Sam or his children either. Why doesn’t this opening work for me?

A) If you’re going to have a static, slow, or passive opening, which is FINE, then please, let it be that way because you are setting the scene, not because you are telling me about the children’s states of mind. None of these people are real to me yet. I don’t care about their states of mind.

B) Please, please, please do not indicate that you think being an introvert is a psychiatric condition in need of treatment, or that reading is a problem that needs to be corrected.

C) Is the author under the impression that mothers don’t feel like they’re making it up as they go alone? Because my impression is that all parents feel that way almost all the time.

D) These short paragraphs would be fine for a blog post or anything else that was going to be read online, but there is nothing remotely interesting about any of these paragraphs, so there is no reason whatsoever to make them all so short. This is ten paragraphs in four hundred words.

E) This is just plain boring. This is the most boring of the various first pages I’ve posted recently, here, here, and here, and it’s not even close. A better writer could write this scene in a much more engaging way. This could involve leaving out everything about the children’s states of mind OR it could involve following the overused but admittedly sometimes relevant advice to show rather than tell OR it could involve getting to the mist-veiled figure in the second sentence OR it could involve just more engaging sentences.

What is this? It’s a novel called Lost in Time, which is currently #1 in the Time Travel category, which, granted, is probably not that huge a category.

This author, AG Riddle, has written about ten novels, it looks like, so this is not their debut.

This book is #1200 or so overall in the Kindle store, which is very solid, let me tell you, especially for an ebook that costs $12. The sales calculator at Publishers Rocket suggests that this sales rank means this book is selling about 100 copies per day. I would certainly be happy if any of my books were selling that well, especially at that price. It has about 20,000 ratings, with an average star rating of 4.4.

I absolutely swear that I am not deliberately picking books with unimpressive openings. I am definitely starting to wonder how long it will take for me to hit a popular book with an opening I love.

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Writing advice on Threads

This is a post by Chuck Wendig: THREADS HAS WEIRD IDEAS ABOUT WRITING AND PUBLISHING, SO HERE ARE SOME OF MY OWN

He starts this way:

The one thing that you have to know is, the algorithm really does rule all — which means that when someone has a WEIRD IDEA or a CONTROVERSIAL TAKE, people responding to it or quoting it for “the dunk” instantly help that thing spread. The system is designed to see fire, and when you say, “Hey, look, fire,” the robot then pours gasoline on it.

(The robot is not here to help.)

As such, you tend to get just truly nonsense ideas about writing and publishing — bizarre opinions and worse, absolutely batfuck advice, often given by people who would seem to have little to no actual credit in the writing and publishing space. It’s like asking driving directions from someone on a different continent.

This is funny, and of course I immediately wonder what opinions and advice he has in mind. He doesn’t give specific examples — that is, he makes up his own:

You’ll be scrolling through Threads and you’ll see someone say, like, “If a sentence has more than one comma, it’s a bad sentence.” Or, “Agents don’t really read queries; the only way to get an agent’s attention is to enter their home at night through a pet door, and leave your manuscript in the refrigerator, topped with origami rose petals made with Post-It notes, scented with your zesty authorial pheromones.” Or, “You can’t have potatoes in science-fiction.” … And then, then, all day long you get Comma Discourse, or Don’t Stalk Agents Rejoinders, or Fiery Debate Over Sci-Fi Potatoes. 

And I have to admit, I did chuckle a couple of times, although I winced too, because I can very easily imagine earnest writing advice making the rounds: If a sentence has more than one comma, it’s a bad sentence. That sounds just like the sort of Earnest Writing Advice (tm) that gets passed around in writers’ groups, then takes on a life of its own, and for the next fifty years people think there’s some rule about not having more than one comma per sentence because somehow they don’t notice that in the real world, real authors pour those little curvy suckers into sentences by the bucketful.

Anyway, Chuck then proffers writing advice of his own. Here is a selection of my favorites:

1. Write the thing you wanna write. … Life is short and art is weird so go on and lean into it.

4. Don’t kill all your darlings. Darlings are nice. We all deserve our darlings.

6. There’s a lot of [writing] advice out there. It’s all bullshit. [That was a comma, but I’m truncating this one at the point I feel a period should occur.]

7. When your process is failing you, change your process.

9. Your writing, your story, isn’t a product, it isn’t quote-unquote “content.” … Writing and storytelling is art.

Twenty-five total, many longer. I mean, I cut all these short too, but some are longish paragraphs.

I’m not on Threads because good Lord above, who has the time? I do Facebook a very tiny amount and Twitter (OR WHATEVER) less than that and Bluesky less still, meaning maybe a few minutes per week, and that’s it. I do not want to be bombarded by political outrage OR by the deaths of much-beloved pets, and sometimes I see three or four “my much-beloved pet just died” posts within a minute after starting to scroll through social media and I understand posting about that (really!) and I always leave a sympathetic comment (of course!), but jeez. But I’m semi-tempted to join Threads [no, not really — ed.] just for the wacky writing advice.

I don’t check Chuck Wendig’s blog very often either, but he certainly can be funny.

Also, don’t kill your darlings. Darlings are nice. We all deserve our darlings.

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