Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 58

Update: Laptop woes, but also: Murderbot, yay!

Continuing technology woes: I’m taking my laptop back to the shop this afternoon, because they didn’t solve the problem. Or, I mean, they did. The solution held for 24 hours. The battery is now back to losing 25% of its charge per hour (at least). Tolerable, but good lord, and the machine is still under warranty, so let’s by all means get it fixed. The little spare I’m borrowing is fine for the meantime, and this time I’ve arranged to borrow it in advance, so the whole thing should be much less annoying overall.

As for progress … for the first time, I’m considering the possibility that I may be breaking Silver Circle in half. I mean, yes, I’ll be cutting it. But jeeze, it keeps stretching out and I’m still not even close to the endgame. In fact, I’m so far from the endgame that I’m still not sure how to get from where I’m standing now across the Chasm of the Uncertain Middle to the peak over there in the distance where the endgame is located. Visualize a chasm filled with mist. There’s a figurative bridge down there somewhere, I trust.

Well, who knows. I don’t need to make that decision immediately. Just as well, as coming up with subtitles will be a challenge if that turns out to be necessary.

Oh, I’m at 112,000 words, by the way. The question is therefore whether I’m looking at another 70,000 words (which would be fine) or another 112,000 words (which would mean I probably break the story in half). In either case, I’m assuming I’ll be cutting at least 30,000 words because that’s almost invariable when the book is this long.

Meanwhile! I read the recent Murderbot novella. I bet a lot of you have as well. What did you think? I liked it, but not as well as the previous novel. This novella begins directly after that novel and concerns the same basic players, right down to the colonists affected by the alien contamination.

The novel, I felt was slow and just okay until Murderbot gets aboard ART, finds ART is not there, and meets the hostiles. Then we have one of the best Murderbot lines of all time. (“First angry, then afraid, then dead. Is that the right order?”) This happens pretty early in the book.

This long novella, I felt was just okay until … I don’t want to spoil anything … until about the halfway mark or maybe a bit farther in.

One thing puzzled me kind of a lot — what happened to the colonists who were most affected by the alien contamination in the previous book? Are they all dead? Because everyone seems to be interacting with the colonists as though that set of colonists isn’t a problem anymore, and I don’t really understand that? Once I was farther into the story, I kind of forgot to wonder about that, but as you see, the question has now recurred. Maybe I missed something. Did anybody pick up something that would explain that?

I did not mind the [redacted] thing. I thought that was fine, and the way Murderbot handled it was fine. That was believable and added a complication to the way Murderbot felt about itself in a believable way.

I would have liked the novella more… I’m not sure … I think I would have liked to see more of Three, whom I liked a lot in the previous book; and more between Ratthi and Tarik, partly because the revelation about Tarik’s background really caught me. I was instantly very engaged by Tarik and wanted to see lots more about him. This is EXACTLY the kind of thing that makes me create a new character of my own: a guy sort of like Tarik, with that kind of background, only much more centered in the story. Plus I like Ratthi and I would always like to see more of him.

I LOVED the solution Murderbot came up with. That was absolutely perfect and I did not see it coming at all, and then I loved how that element played out in the story. And everything after that was fast and fun, so that was my favorite part of the novella — everything from the time Murderbot had that inspired idea to the end.

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Let’s make a cheesecake

Someone asked me for my favorite cheesecake recipe. It’s hard to pick, so here are my TWO favorite cheesecake recipes. One exemplifies the category of baked cheesecakes; the other the category of unbaked cheesecakes. I included variations for each.

Absolutely Classic NY Style Cheesecake

Crust:
1 C vanilla wafer crumbs
3 Tbsp sugar 4 Tbsp butter, melted  

Cheesecake
4 8-oz pkg cream cheese, softened
1 C sugar
3 Tbsp four
4 eggs
1 C sour cream
1 Tbsp vanilla  

Cherry pie filling or whatever you like

The easiest way to make vanilla wafer crumbs is with a food processor. Quite fine crumbs are desirable. Combine crumbs, sugar, and melted butter. Press onto bottom of a 9-inch springform pan. Bake at 325 F for 10 minutes. Set aside and raise the oven temp to 450 F degrees (yes, really).

Combine cream cheese, sugar, and flour, mixing at medium speed until well blended. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Beat in sour cream and vanilla on low speed. Pour over crust. Bake at 450 F for 10 minutes. Lower oven temp to 250 degrees and continue baking for one hour. Remove from oven, run a knife around the edge to loosen the cheesecake from the rim, and cool completely. Chill thoroughly before removing rim of pan and serving. Serve with cherry pie filling, raspberry sauce, or whatever.

FAQs

Is the cheesecake done?

If you followed the directions, probably! But oven temperatures vary, so it’s hard to be sure. A largish area of the center should be wobbly and appear not quite set when you take the cheesecake out of the oven. That is perfectly normal.

How can I prevent cracks?

If the cheesecake cracks, that means it’s a little overdone. It will be perfectly fine, just a little unsightly. Cherry pie filling is good for disguising cracks.

Baked cheesecakes are actually super thick custards. To be sure they don’t overbake, they can be baked in a water bath, like any other custard. You put a big pan of water in the oven to heat, then wrap the springform pan REALLY TIGHTLY with waterproof aluminum foil, and set the springform pan into the water bath for the entire time it bakes. This will probably prevent cracking. It is a certain amount of trouble and I once had the aluminum foil leak, so I mostly don’t bother, especially since I don’t care that much if the cheesecake cracks.

Can I make variations on the theme of classic cheesecakes?

The basic proportions for a baked cheesecake are one 8-oz package cream cheese, ¼ C sugar, and one egg. Those ingredients 3x makes a typical cheesecake. You then add flavorings and variations as desired.

The flour in the above recipe is to compensate for the large amount of sour cream. A smaller amount of sour cream can be added without additional flour, or the sour cream left out and a couple Tbsp of lemon juice added plus some lemon zest could be stirred into the batter. A cup of pumpkin can be added to half the batter and then the pumpkin batter swirled with the plain batter in the pan. Raspberry sauce can be swirled into the cheesecake batter in the pan.

You can combine one pkg cream cheese, ¼ C sugar, one egg, and as many miniature chocolate chips as you like and then use that as a filling for chocolate cupcakes, which are really, really great and you should try that.

Exceedingly Easy No-Bake Chocolate Cheesecake

Crust
1 C chocolate wafer cookie crumbs, OR 1 C vanilla wafer cookie crumbs plus 2 Tbsp sugar and 2 Tbsp cocoa powder.
4 Tbsp melted butter  

Cheesecake
1 envelope unflavored gelatin
¼ C cold water
2 8-oz pkg cream cheese, softened
¾ C sugar
1/3 C cocoa powder
½ tsp vanilla
2 C miniature marshmallows
1 C heavy (whipping) cream, whipped. Don’t add extra sugar as you whip the cream. It’s an ingredient, not a topping.  

Combine the crumbs, or crumbs plus sugar and cocoa, and the melted butter. Press into bottom of 9-inch springform pan. Bake at 350 F for 10 minutes.

Sprinkle gelatin over cold water in a little bowl. Microwave for thirty seconds or so, until warm. Stir. Microwave 30 seconds or so, until very warm. Stir. Set aside.

Combine cream cheese, sugar, cocoa, and vanilla. Mix with electric mixer until well blended. Add gelatin mixture in a thin stream while mixer is running. (No need to be obsessive. I never have any problem with the gelatin failing to get mixed in properly.) Fold in miniature marshmallows. “Fold in” means gently, with a spoon. Fold in whipped cream.

Pour cheesecake filling over crust. Smooth out. Decorate with extra miniature marshmallows or grated chocolate or both. The easiest way to grate chocolate is just to run a vegetable peeler down the edge of a chocolate bar. Chill. Remove rim of pan and serve.

Alternately: skip the crust and spoon into little glass dessert dishes.

For unbaked cheesecakes, the basic proportions are 1 envelope gelatin, ¼ C water, 2 pkg cream cheese, ½ C sugar, 1 C whipping cream, whipped. The extra sugar in the above recipe is because the cocoa powder is bitter. You can therefore use the basic ingredients and swirl in raspberry sauce or some other fruit sauce, caramel sauce, whatever you like. You could use make half the recipe without cocoa powder and add cocoa and extra sugar to the other half, then swirl the two batters together in the springform pan or alternate them in dessert dishes.

Although the marshmallows can obviously be left out, they’re pretty great in this cheesecake and I keep miniature marshmallows around just for this use.

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Is NaNoWriMo a good thing?

My answer: Sure.

I don’t have to explain why I think so because Patricia Wrede captures why NaNoWriMo is a good thing in this post right here.

The value of NaNoWriMo isn’t in the amount of great literature it encourages; it’s in getting people past some of the really basic process problems that prevent so many of them from sitting down and doing it. A lot of these are problems with confidence or with overthinking the process of writing—everything has to be perfect; it’s perfectly reasonable to spend an entire day deciding to add a comma, and the entire following day deciding to remove it; the first draft has to be perfect; the outline has to be perfect; the writer has to chase down and develop every interesting new character and/or subplot the minute it occurs to them; none of the writing will be any good if it isn’t “inspired”; the writer isn’t good enough to even try writing a novel (though how they think they’re going to get good enough without ever writing anything is beyond me).

That is the perfect way to express why NaNoWriMo is a great idea. I completely agree that fear of not doing it right is a big reason a lot of people hesitate to start writing, which of course is one reason I am so mistrustful of the whole idea of writing advice and so against aspiring writers looking for, asking for, or reading a lot of advice about writing. I think the constant deluge of advice makes it harder, not easier, to write; and I really strongly suspect that a lot of people would have a much easier time and also write better if they would quit asking for advice and look at actual books to see how certain techniques are used effectively in practice.

Patricia Wrede then goes on:

Because of all this, I generally advise doubters to go ahead and try, provided that a) they are pretty sure they are not the sort of writer who is going to be devastated and/or convinced they have failed if they only make it to 49,997 words in 30 days instead of 50,000, b) they are not going to worry that they have “done it wrong” if some stranger online says so (even if they made the 50K words), and c) they have never done it before.

I hadn’t thought of that, so absolutely yes, do not do NaNoWriMo if you’re prone to agonizing about failure. Personally, I think you’re doing great if you’ve:

a) started a new project and you’re at 25,000 words. Yay! That’s a real achievement!

b) finished a new project, which only took 25,000 words. Yay! That’s a real achievement!

c) Wrote 28 sonnets, one per day on most days. Yay! That’s a real achievement!

I sure wouldn’t get hung up on whether I actually made it to 50,000 words or more. That is not the measure of whether good things happened in your writing life during November.

As an aside, laptop problems = no words at all for me this morning, argh. It’s supposed to be beautiful this afternoon, much nicer than the rest of the week. I may take dogs out to the park and forget writing for the day.

As a second aside, there’s absolutely no chance I’ll finish Silver Circle before December, AARGH. However, maaaaybe before the semester ends? Surely before January? We’ll see.

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Writing a novel in 13 steps

Thirteen is such an interesting number! Why not lump a few steps together and call it ten? Or break a couple items apart and call it fifteen? Maybe I’m alone in preferring multiples of five; I don’t know. Anyway, this post at Writers Helping Writers caught my eye because of the number thirteen, so maybe that was a sensible choice after all: Write a Novel in 13 Steps

I’m betting I use … maybe … one or two of these steps. Let’s take a look —

Choose your best idea … … … … or, for heaven’s sake, any idea. It can be really hard to pick something to work on!Prewriting Mental PrepWriting. … … … … I think I would just start here.Celebrate the first draft … … … … This is a step? I totally do this!PauseRead straight throughReviseGet feedbackReviseEdit … … … … some of these could certainly be lumped together. Revise and edit are the same thing as far as I’m concerned.Polish and proofreadFinal read

I think the final read is dispensable, because the endless rounds of proofreading encompass that.

Fine, okay, so, Rachel’s streamlined list:

Choose an idea, any idea, for heaven’s sake just pick something! Throw a dart! Flip a coin!Write the novel. Good luck with the middle part!Celebrate the completion of the draft. YAY!Big revision you’ve known for ages you were going to have to do. That entire chapter you knew you were going to cut? Cut it now.Read straight through, doing smaller revision, cutting, and proofing as you go. All the editing you’ve known for ages you would have to do? Do it now.Pause, ideally.Read straight through, doing hopefully minor revision and cutting.Send to early readersRevise according to feedback from early readers.Proofread. Proofread some more. Proofread some more.

Ten steps. The pause is dispensable if you’re looking at a tight deadline.

As far as I’m concerned, step two — write the novel — deserves to be blown up into a ten-point list of its own. Or maybe a twelve-point list.

Write the opening. Looking good!Write the next couple chapters. Looking good!Write the early middle. Cut the early middle and rewrite that part.Repeat step four.Hack your way through the rest of the middle. Start making notes about stuff that will need to be fixed later.Thank heaven you’re through the middle. Write the climax.There, whew! Reward yourself by writing the falling action chapters.Yay, finished draft! Celebrate!Cut all the stuff you know you really ought to cut. Trim throughout.Make all the revisions you started thinking about in step six.Read straight through, polishing as you go.

I know this is a personal list, but I sort of feel the majority of authors agree with me about the middle. Have I mentioned I’m in the middle of Silver Circle? Ugh, I hate the middle part.

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Lots of interesting year-end publishing news

Via a post by James Scott Bell at Kill Zone Blog: The Book Biz is A-Changin’

A) Amazon is beta testing AI-narration for audiobooks.

I would definitely be interested in this. I consider audio strictly a vanity project that is unlikely to pay for itself (I would like to be wrong). Although in some cases, I’m willing to pay real narrators, I would be very interested in a much cheaper option if the quality turned out to be acceptable.

B) The Author Guild survey for 2022 is out. Here it is if you would like to take a look.

C) Did you know that there are lots of scammers with websites that make them appear to be KDP or Amazon, but they aren’t, they’re just scammers? Lots and lots of versions. The real Amazon is suing twenty of them. Good start.

D) Goodreads is taking steps to stop review bombing. Also good. You probably know this, but review bombing is a concerted effort to tank someone’s book by getting lots of people to post one-star reviews all at the same time.

E) Jane Friedman participated in an interview describing how authors published by Big Five publishers are specifically seeing their income decline.

This is all interesting, but the Author Guild survey is particularly interesting. Let me take it apart a little.

–Median book income for full-time fiction authors is $15,000. I think this means gross income. I’m not totally sure of that because Author Guild does not specify, but gross income would be much easier data to collect.

–Median book income for full-time self-published authors was $12,500, in shouting distance of all full-time authors.

–Median book income for all authors was $2000. This includes about two-thirds of the authors, who said they were “part time,” as well as the roughly one-third who said “full time.”

–Romance authors are still doing best. No surprise. No mention of SFF, which is disappointing. Literary authors are doing horribly in comparison to other genres, no surprise there. Even worse that authors of biographies. Wow.

The Written Word Media 2023 survey will be very interesting. I don’t believe it’s out yet.

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Punctuation

This came up recently, so I thought I’d share it with any of you who might never have had a chance to see it before. This is Victor Borge’s famous punctuation skit. Enjoy!

Enjoy!

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Update: Progress, and discovery writing is sometimes hard

Okay, so plenty of progress with Silver Circle this past week, which was very nice. I mean, this is definitely not as fast as a Tuyo-world novel; in fact, it’s slightly less than half that fast. But movement forward has nevertheless been decent. I’ll tip over 100,000 words sometime today or tomorrow, I expect. This is the sort of thing that makes me wish I were writing tightly plotted romances. I’d be finishing the draft for sure. Well, I knew perfectly well this story was going to go long, so whatever, it’s fine.

I had a four-day weekend, so that was nice, but the kittens had their spay/neuter appointments this past Thursday, which was distracting that day. I set up the puppy room to once more be a kitten room. Would you like to know how fast the kittens bounced back to normal? Maximillian bounced back THE SAME AFTERNOON.

Play with me! I’m totally fine!

A spay is a much bigger surgery, but Magdalene seemed almost back to herself the same day as well, and totally back to normal the next day. I wound up opening the kitten room back up Friday morning and letting them have unrestricted access to the house, though not letting them outside because, I mean, I know they had surgery even if they don’t.

24 hours after the spay

You know how big a spay incision is for a kitten? Three stitches! Wow! It seems practically not there at all compared to a C-section incision. (Those go to about eighteen stitches for a Cavalier.) I was going to take her in for a tech to remove the sutures because I assume she will be more wiggly than a cooperative dog, but three? Ha, no, I think I can manage. Huge shaved area is huge, but whatever, as long as Magdalene doesn’t care, I don’t care. While Maximillian could probably climb trees with no ill effects, I don’t expect I’ll let him out in the yard until Magdalene can join him, just to be fair.

Meanwhile, on Friday, I was a lot less distracted by The Horde of pets. Though I did take dogs to the park Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I also got quite a bit of work done.

Let’s have a fake interview!

So, where are you in Silver Circle?

I’ve completed 21 chapters, not all in strict order. Nobody has died (yet), but a very dramatic event occurred yesterday. I wasn’t sure I was going to do that until it happened, but I think The Event is probably going to stay in the draft now that it’s there. Everyone is moving into position for the endgame now. Nobody is actually in place yet. I think I’m probably about 2/3 of the way through the book.

How confident are you about that?

Everything always takes more words and more time than expected, so … not very sure. But I’ve outlined the rest of the book!

No! Really?

Well, no, I mean, not really. I’ve added a list of upcoming chapters with a very, very brief note about whose pov each chapter is in and what should happen. I mean, a couple of phrases or maybe one sentence each. I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen in some of those chapters, besides a three-word hint.

I don’t know if I’ll even stick to this. I wouldn’t be surprised if some chapters go long and get cut in half, or if new chapters appear because I need the action picked up somewhere else for a bit. However, for me, this is sort of close to an outline! There are currently 36 chapters total, counting a denouement [still can’t spell that right without spellcheck, grumble] and an epilogue.

You’ve decided you like epilogues, apparently.

Well, that’s not really new. I often like epilogues; I just didn’t used to feel they were necessary or useful for my books. I guess now I sometimes do. The end of a long series like this does seem like an appropriate place for an epilogue, although what I might actually do is nod forward and then write a separate long epilogue next year.

I suppose you might call that a “Gratuitous Epilogue.”

Or some variation on that, yes, could be! If AKH could do it, I can do it. I’ve been thinking about how to structure that and how far in the future to put it for a while now.

Just how many books are you planning to write next year?

Good lord, don’t even ask. Maybe, I don’t know, four? Five? None of which exist even in draft form yet, but I hope the Tuyo-world ones are fast. (Extremely fast, I hope!) I might not get to a Black Dog epilogue next year, I admit.

This coming week should be more of the same, minus any surgeries for pets, I hope!

I know what happens at the climax of Silver Circle, but figuring out what exactly is going to happen in some of the upcoming chapters probably won’t be necessary this week. Probably by next week. I sure hope I know what should happen by the time I really need to!

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BVC Cookbook

Check this out: A new cookbook by BVC authors

Click through and you will find a list of all the recipes by author. The recipes are presented in a highly individual way! Or, I mean, the recipes themselves are presented in a relatively standardized format for measurements and abbreviations and so on, but the text surrounding the recipes is highly individual. Some of us dropped in recipes with a paragraph or two of description per recipe, but also one recipe is presented as the culmination of a short story, and other recipes are written kind of as poetry.

I read the whole thing in draft — I love cookbooks and read them cover to cover — and this one is chock-full of genuinely inviting recipes. I’ve made a good handful of recipes from this book already and bookmarked a bunch more. If you like cookbooks, highly recommended. I don’t see a paper edition, but I would like one. Maybe one is in the works. In the meantime, here’s the ebook.

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Recent Reading: Whispering Wood by Sharon Shinn

So, you know Whispering Wood is the fifth Elemental Blessings book, right?

The other four are, in order: Troubled Waters, Royal Airs, Jeweled Fire, and Unquiet Land, and before this my favorite was the first, which I fell in love with instantly the first time I read it because it is so warm and cozy. Now I’m not totally sure Troubled Waters is my favorite. Whispering Wood is sure right up there for me.

Whispering Wood isn’t quite as cozy. Or, you know what, maybe it is. I can’t exactly remember whether various plot elements took me by surprise in Troubled Waters; I just remember the sense that of course everything would work out. Naturally it’s obvious that everything will work out in this one too, but I can definitely report that, although in the broadest sense the plot is predictable, lots of details of the plot took me by surprise. This was fun, particularly because everything was beautifully foreshadowed, so it was delightful to watch the pieces click into place. I even noticed certain foreshadowing elements – Ah ha! I would say to myself. I bet that detail turns up again! Then I’d forget about it until yep, there it was. I enjoyed that a lot.

Also, I’ve been meaning to write a post eventually about books that do certain things very well – I mean, like pointing to Faking It by Jennifer Cruisie for a great crowd scene. Well, Whispering Wood offers a particularly elegant use of flashbacks. Now and then, not too often, there’s a short chapter that starts Valentina is eight or Valentina is fourteen, and these flashback chapters (a) lend depth to the character; (b) lend depth to the relationship between Valentina and Sebastien; and (c) lead into a lovely little epilogue. I can’t think of another example of flashbacks being used quite this way, or quite this elegantly. It’s suddenly a technique I’m filing under “would be neat to try someday.” Also, these flashbacks are written in present tense, while the present-day story is written in past tense. This is one element of craft you don’t see that often and it works beautifully here.

Oh! You know what else! I really liked a certain element of the plot. Everybody’s being heroic and doing their best and all these minor characters would be great as protagonists. This element would make a great central plot. I’m thinking of stealing parts of it and recasting those parts in a way that would fit an Invictus sequel. I need to make notes about how to maybe do that.

Meanwhile, back to Whispering Wood!

Valentina is Darien’s much younger sister. Like him, she’s hunti – you may remember that hunti is the wood/bone elemental power. Its characteristics are steadfastness, loyalty, certainty, resolve, traits like that. Let me see, it goes like this:

Hunti – steadfastness, loyalty, certainty, resolve; also orderliness and stability. Those last two aren’t official, but that’s how hunti characters are written.

Sweela – imagination, love, charm, creativity; also impulsivity and wildness. Again, those last two aren’t official, but that’s what sweela characters are like.

Elay – joy, hope, vision, grace; also distraction, removal from human concerns.

Coru – flexibility, change, resilience; also unpredictability and untameabilty.

Torz – serenity, patience, endurance, contentment; also nurturance and calmness.

Those are partial lists of the official qualities plus my perception of how the characters are written. Although these are all fine – it’s a hallmark of this system that all characteristics are positive and all blessings are, you know, blessings – because of the impulsivity of sweela and the airheadedness of Elay and the instability of Coru, I feel like if I stepped into this world, I’d be hunti or torz. So, what I mean is, I was really prepared to love Valentina. And I did. I liked her a lot. She’s somebody I could believe in; the choices she made all the way through were believable; and I liked the way she interacted with Corene and Taro and others, including Darien. Tough relationship there, but I liked the way it worked out. Even though, as I say, the broad strokes of the plot are predictable, I’m chuckling as I type this because so many of the details really did take me by surprise. All of them in a good way. The ending was, again, predictable in the broadest possible sense, but delightful, perfect, and even surprising in the details. I’m already looking forward to re-reading this one; it’s the kind of story I’ll love at least as much as I anticipate certain plot points I know are coming up.

There is also a lot of really nice writing in this book. I especially found the description of Valentina’s experience of grief when her mother dies – this is in a flashback – superb. Really moving. The event is both long expected and absolutely catastrophic. Val had thought she was prepared for grief, but she finds that the expectation of loss and the reality of loss are such different experiences that they bear absolutely no resemblance to one another. The experience is so well drawn, and we also see some important roots of Valentina’s estrangement from her brother here.

I’m trying not to say too much about the plot, or actually anything much about the plot, so I’ll stop there. I’ll just wind up by reiterating that this is maybe my second-favorite book in this series, maybe even my favorite. I loved it and I’m really glad Sharon wrote it and if you like this series at all, you must pick up Whispering Wood immediately. If you’ve already read it, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

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Recent Reading: A House With Good Bones by T Kingfisher

Okay, so I really did read this book – the whole thing – on Halloween. I was like, since I haven’t been doing much in October, let’s just take the day off. Get out the good chocolate and read a Halloween-appropriate novel! Or novella. My very rough estimate is that A House With Good Bones is about 70,000 words, so a long novella. Quite a few of the books I picked up at WFC were long novellas, and you know what is convenient to read when I’m busy? Right. Plus, I trust T Kingfisher to give me a good ending, definitely not a horrific or tragic ending. Which, spoiler, she did.

So, how about this story? Have you read this one? I liked it – I like (almost) everything by Ursula Vernon / T Kingfisher, so no surprise there. Not as much as many of her other books, but even so, I liked it. A House with Good Bones has a lot going for it, including –

The title. That’s a great title. It’s so great that I forgive it for not actually having a lot of buried bones under the house or inside the house or in fact anywhere.

An entomologist for the protagonist. This leads to paragraphs such as the following:

So if I wanted to go look up, say, the type specimen for Votox apicedentatus, the toothed earwig, I would have to trawl through all those photos until I actually saw it and hope that its label was still attached and legible in the photo, and also reckon with the fact that it would probably have been labeled Spongovotox apicedentatus because taxonomy is a harsh mistress.

This, naturally, made me laugh.

A young vulture as an important secondary character. I like vultures. I like social species in general and although I already liked vultures, now I like them more. Also, the scene of this one-winged vulture, Hermes, in flight with his other wing made of flame was the most visually wonderful moment in the entire story, even though Vernon/Kingfisher is good with visuals in general. (I hope you don’t mind this mild spoiler, which after all doesn’t give away anything about the plot.)

The protagonist’s mother. The protagonist, Samantha, was okay; the secondary characters were mostly okay; the antagonist was pretty neat; but the mother, Edith, absolutely stole the show. I loved her all the way through the story.

I also think this is interesting from a craft perspective. Why does Edith stand out for me compared to the actual protagonist and all the other secondary characters? I think some of the reasons are easy to spot. Edith is far (far) more multidimensional than any of the other secondary characters; that’s one reason. Also, she’s genuinely a nice person, genuinely self-sacrificing, genuinely overcoming her own fears to cope with a pretty difficult situation. Also, Samantha seems pretty dim for a long time. Edith knows (broadly) what’s going on, while Samantha sits there telling herself this can’t be happening for a really, really long time. I realize the reader has the advantage of knowing that this is a horror novella (horror-lite, don’t hesitate to pick it up even if you aren’t crazy about horror). The protagonist doesn’t have that advantage. Even so, wow, does she try hard to explain away things that are obviously not explicable. Also, I just didn’t particularly like her. I did like Edith.

The underground children. They may not work for everyone – in fact, I’m sure they don’t work for everyone – but I thought they were super creepy.

Things that didn’t work so well for me:

This is a really short book. It’s a long novella, but that means it’s still pretty short. This meant various plot elements didn’t get a lot of development. In particular –

I’ve never in my life seen a story come so close to including a romance only to cut that off short and not go there after all. I’m fine with stories that don’t include any romance (as you know). As it turns out, I’m less fine with it when a story ticks off multiple romance beats, but then stops short of actually including the romance. The ending left me blinking and thinking huh, that’s odd. This is not a great place to leave a reader. It’s also even stranger because after all Vernon knows perfectly well how romance beats work – she’s written those Paladin romances and whatever else. If she’s going to include the first half of the romance, why not go on and include the back half as well? Beats me. It sure makes the story feel incomplete.

Overall conclusions:

1. For horror, The Twisted Ones is much better.

2. For romance, Paladin’s Strength is much better. This is my favorite of the Paladin series, but each of the Paladin stories is a much better romance because it is, you know, actually a complete romance rather than half a romance.

3. But sure, A House With Good Bones is a fun novella to read on Halloween, with the significant plus that a reasonably fast reader can read the whole thing in one evening.

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