Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 66

Quelling Quirks

Here’s a post from Writer Unboxed: Quelling Those Writerly Quirks

We all have them. Our peculiar, individual tics. And no, they’re not the same as a “voice.” They’re scamps that sneak into our writing, and weaken it. I have a document on my desktop called Check For, with a long list of words and phrases to track when I do a “search-and-destroy” edit...

This made me laugh. I mean: both a wry laugh of recognition and shared annoyance and with actual humor.

One of the early readers for INVICTUS said, basically, “And quit using ‘very’!” Of course she was right, and of course you all know what’s happened, yes? The problem is that because Ryo uses “very” all the time, I’ve let myself use the word much (much) more freely than I used to, and now it’s a quirk, or at least a habit, that needs to be quelled. Did I take ALL instances of “very” out of INVICTUS? No, but I took out the vast majority. Most that remain are in phrases such as “That’s the very one, yes,” or “The very same,” or whatever. Phrases where the word is intrinsic to the larger phrase.

I haven’t updated my “check for” list, but I need to. It’s a growing list, as perhaps you might imagine. Or perhaps not, but I assure you, it is.

My characters have chins, shoulders, and eyebrows that lift. Lips, jaws, and throats that tighten; eyes that narrow, widen, meet, and lock.  And, of course, bobble heads that are constantly nodding, shaking, tilting, dipping, and getting tossed. Gently. Softly. Carelessly.

Another wry laugh, because yes. I generally catch this during some part of the proofing process, but if a character inclines her head twice on one page, well, ugh. That’s the flip side of movement tags; if someone nods, then someone else nods, then the first person nods, well, that’s a lot of nodding.

“Ever since I read Stephen King’s directive to eliminate adverbs, I cringe every time I wander into the -ly universe. So I try to avoid saying: ‘She went home quickly.’ Instead: ‘She rushed home.’  But if you combine that with the admonition to avoid pronouns referring to the third person POV narrator, wonky sentences result. ‘The wind pushed her home.’  Then I look at all those choices, and decide to ignore the rule. ‘She ran home.’”

What rule? There’s a rule to avoid pronouns referring to a third-person pov protagonist? Really?

Honestly, this is yet another instance of “There’s a rule? Throw it out!” That goes quadruple for proscriptive rules: Don’t use said, don’t use adverbs, don’t use adjectives, whatever. And now don’t use pronouns, seriously? Just say no to proscriptive rules. Oh! THERE’S a rule to follow:

Don’t take proscriptive advice seriously.

Probably almost every aspiring author would be better off putting that on a banner above their computer.

Here’s the take home message from the linked post:

Check the frequency and placement. It’s not simply the number of times a phrase appears in a manuscript, but how close together. Will the reader remember (or care) that she read the phrase she narrowed her eyes fifty pages ago? Probably not. It might be okay. My rule of thumb: no more than once in a single chapter or scene.Get rid of it.  As an experiment, try deleting some of those narrowed eyes and wistful smiles. Is anything really lost? The paragraph might even be stronger without it. Or try expressing the same idea in a simpler, more direct way. Trying to be “creative” doesn’t always enrich the writing. If the language pulls the reader out of the scene, it may distract from her experience, rather than enhancing it.Go global, instead of specific. If eyes are always blinking and widening and darting, try substituting a gesture or movement that uses the whole body. Or, at least, a different body part, one you haven’t used a lot.  Of course, a character only gets so many flinches and freezes and backward staggers; “going global” is another tactic that can turn into a tic if overused.Vary interiority and exteriority. If your character is always telling herself what she is feeling (excess interiority), try shifting that experience into a gesture or visceral sensation. Or the reverse.  Too many blinks and shrugs?  Give her a thought instead.Forget about Stephen King. Sometimes a “rule” really needs to be broken. Adverbs are not always the enemy.

Good for the author! Indeed, adverbs are not always, or even often, the enemy. Most writers are not so incompetent with adverbs as the proscriptive advice “kill all adverbs” assumes, and it does not matter one jot that Stephen King hates adverbs.

Schoolhouse Rock: Anything that can be described can be described some more!

However, yes, I do need to update my “check for” file, because I removed literally 180 instances of “very” from the first half of INVICTUS.

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Update: Finished! Also, Finished! Also, Scrambling to Complete Stuff

OKAY, A LOT GOING ON. There’s lots of news, so it’s hard to know where to start. But I have to start somewhere, so:

The TUYO World Companion, ebook version, ought to be available today. I hit publish Sunday evening. Many relieved sighs that everything was finished by today, because I really wanted to to get it out by today, and here it is, barely. I hope. KDP says it can take up to 72 hours to publish a book, but usually it’s more like a couple of hours, so barring something going wrong, I hope it’s available by the time you read this post, which I also wrote Sunday evening, so I haven’t actually SEEN the World Companion go live yet, but I hope there are no glitches. It’s up! Here’s a link: Tuyo World Companion.

I loaded the World Companion to KDP and scanned through the entire preview with every new tweak, AND I have looked at it on my Kindle AND my phone, and adjusted the formatting until after many finicky adjustments it looks good on both — and Craig looked at it on HIS Kindle — and as far as I know it looks good. If anybody hits any formatting weirdness on whatever device, let me know and I will beg an expert for help, but I think it is good to go. Also! Quite a few people participated in producing this book, so if I inadvertently left someone out of the acknowledgments during the flurry of last minute tweaking, a thousand apologies, and please remind me and I will add your name, because I greatly appreciate you all.

I’m having some trouble getting the maps to load properly in the paperback version and I don’t want to rush — I swear, I had it, but something went funky — anyway, I think I ought to be able to hit publish for that version this week. Almost totally for sure! Oh, by the way, the final wordcount was just barely under 130,000 words, so THAT is why I’m a little late moving seriously to work on SILVER CIRCLE. The novella is just under a third of the total length, and I hope you enjoy it!

NEXT!

The TUYO series is on sale starting today. This is the day to recommend to friends that they buy this series. I lowered the prices by hand, so the sale prices OUGHT to apply in Canada as well as the UK and the US, hopefully also in Australia and basically everywhere. Even if you already have the series, if you live somewhere other than the US or the UK, I would appreciate it if you would check and confirm that the whole series is showing price reductions wherever you live. That would be helpful in planning future promotions.

I checked Sunday evening and all the prices were down in the US, so it looks fine! I will put the prices back up this coming Saturday.

NEXT!

The audiobooks of SUELEN and TANO are both finished and both available! Yay!

So that’s definitely good. TANO was a particular challenge because there were so many voices, including all those young men. I think the narrator did a great job. They all sound distinctive. Sinowa sounds great, Marag sounds great, Ryo sounds all right, Aras sounds acceptable, and I’m just really pleased with it. There weren’t nearly as many voices in SUELEN; that narrator wasn’t as good at doing lots of different voices, but it also wasn’t as important.

NEXT:

I’ve moved on to final proofing for INVICTUS: CAPTIVE. Once again feeling stressed about this! I guess I’ve felt stressed at this point before every single release this year. Probably every single release ever. In this case, I’ve got to have the final version loaded by September 11, which is exactly three weeks from today. I’ve gotten a proofing copy in paper and I’ve also sent it to myself in ebook form so I can read it on my phone while walking the dogs. I’ve said this before, but I’m still amazed at how much more I catch when I read the book in a different format.

I’m still doing minor revision for INVICTUS: CRISIS. It’s on the To Do list for the coming week, you bet, but I don’t think it will take that long. I sure hope it doesn’t take more than a day or two longer, after which this one will also move into final proofing, for a change well before it’s due out. By the way, getting to this point means that based on feedback from early readers, I’ve added two — or was it three? — more chapters, plus additional scenes in a different chapter. That’s in addition to extensive tweaking throughout.

Wow, I’ll be SO glad to check off the INVICTUS duology and move on.

What else? Oh, right —

ALSO:

I’ve re-read COPPER MOUNTAIN and the 4th story collection. I enjoyed that. I do enjoy going back and re-reading series books, which probably is not a surprise since otherwise I probably wouldn’t write series in the first place. In this case, I made actual notes in pencil in the books about stuff that needs to be handled in SILVER CIRCLE. That’s not something I’ve ever done before, but this time, yes. The real point of re-reading isn’t so much to remember details — that’s important, but it’s not the point. The actual point is to put myself back in this world and this story so that scenes start to occur to me. Attractive scenes, that I’m eager to write. I need those scenes to start unrolling in my mind because if that doesn’t happen, it’s a thousand times harder to get words down.

And whew, that happened, so that’s great! I’m still being pulled away from SILVER CIRCLE by all the detail work for everything else, but the beginning of the story has come together in my head. At least, I think it has. Lots of rapid-fire scenes to begin with, lots of urgency right off the bat. It’s going to be a fast-paced story, probably. I hope I will actually write the first scenes this week, and regardless, I should certainly be able to make significant progress fairly fast in September, which is now the goal, since August is practically over.

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Recent Reading: Journey Across the Hidden Islands by Sarah Beth Durst

Okay, so this was a quick-to-read MG fantasy story with a plot just complicated enough to add interest to the superb setting. This is a young MG story; the protagonists are just twelve, so the book is probably aimed at readers who are about ten years old. For readers of that age who like fantasy, Journey Across the Hidden Islands would probably be perfect, especially if the kid loves animals and loves the idea of talking winged lions. For older readers, it’s still got plenty of charm, especially for readers who still love the idea of talking winged lions (Hi!).

In either case, it gets a boost from the lovely cover, which accurately captures the feel of the story.

This story has some exciting moments, but basically this is a joyful story with an overall message that might be summed up as, Don’t be scared of life – keep going forward! Another message is perhaps something like, Life gets complicated, but people are trying to do their best. This was way, way nicer than a story where everybody turns out to be a villain. Come to think of it, I don’t think there are actually any villains in the entire story – just obstacles, monsters, and competing ideas about how various problems ought to be solved.

I already gave the setting two thumbs way up. Let me show just a tiny bit from the beginning:

Yellow light bathed the mountains, soaked the trees, and tinted the streams and waterfalls. In the sunlight, the water looked like liquid gold as it cascaded over the rocks and crashed into the mist that hid the valley below. Fire moths flew in and out of the mist, streaking it with glowing red-orange dust, and a pair of flying monkeys chased one another before disappearing into the soft whiteness.

Islands wreathed with mist, a palace suspended over the sea, fire moths, winged monkeys, winged cats, mer-minnows, waterhorses, it’s all just lovely. Though a tiny bit imperiled by earthquakes and monsters, and surrounded by a shimmering barrier of dragon magic that keeps out the larger world. I expect you won’t be surprised to know that the earthquakes are getting worse, that monsters are appearing where they really shouldn’t, that the barrier is failing, and that all this is tied together somehow.

What is my favorite part? The winged lions. And why do I love the winged lions so much? Because, VERY unusually, they are not servants, pets, or sidekicks. They’re equals, sometimes superiors. When Ji-Lin is afraid her teachers won’t like a recent stunt, she’s not thinking about human teachers – the masters of the school where she’s learning to be an Imperial guard are winged lions.

Ji-Lin is training to be her twin sister’s guard. Her sister, Seika, is the Imperial Heir. I liked them. They both feel a little confined by their preordained roles and their training, but, you know, they’re really okay with it, each well-suited to her role. The lion, Alejan, is also young. He wants to be a hero! They all want to be heroes, but especially Alejan, who knows lots of heroic tales. He loves the whole idea of being an Imperial Guard. The way each of these young characters is actually fine with their place in life is one element that makes this a low-angst, comfort read. All the young characters want to do well, to do things right, to be heroic, to protect each other and save people and save their world. They’re all supportive of each other. This includes the two princesses, the young lion, and a kid from the outside world who gets coopted into the quest (and turned out to be one of my favorite characters).

The sisters are close to each other. Their father is distant, almost absent, difficult to please. He sends them off on their quest to renew the ages-long bargain with the dragon of the Hidden Islands early, before they’re fully trained, but to be fair, though he knows there are problems, he probably has no idea how much danger he’s sending them into. So off the girls go on their quest to renew the bargain with the dragon, and of course many unexpected obstacles turn up in their way and nothing about the quest turns out to be routine. I’m now tempted to say too much, so I won’t. I’ll just say that Durst put together a nicely elegant story here, a story filled with wonderful fairy-tale scenery, plus winged lions. I liked it a lot. Now that I’ve read it, maybe I’ll give it to a school for their library, because it’s just the sort of story I would have loved when I was a kid.

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Now I have to write the book

AARGH, the cover artist is WAY OUT IN FRONT. This book so far exists just as a few pages of notes and a deep desire to get to it.

I’ve only just started working on SILVER CIRCLE! And LOOK at this lovely cover!

It says Book Nine because I’m probably going to do the Sinowa / Marag prequel first. I bet I’ll get that cover in a few weeks or a month and I will just have to file it, along with this cover, because it’s going to be AGES before I’ve got a draft and can put the book up for preorder.

In the meantime, here, you can all now look forward to a book with this cover.

I asked for a cat on this cover quite a while ago, before my own kittens turned up, but now that decision amuses me a little. You know, I’ve watched innumerable puppies grow up, and they’re baby carnivores and you can tell they have carnivore instincts. Of course they do. But spaniel behavior is so modified that what draws attention is the natural retrieve and the attraction to people and so on. Baby cats? Are pure little carnivores. It’s so deeply entertaining to watch these teensy little predators tackle each other with their teensy little fangs and claws. They’re quite gentle, actually. I haven’t even bothered to trim their claws yet.

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Room for the reader

From Jane Friedman’s blog: Gray Space: Making Room for the Reader

Elision is not a word that is often used in story crafting, but it should be. To elide is to omit, or to leave out. And we need to know as much about “leaving things out” of our stories as we do about the things we love to add. … When writers use elision, this is much like the way that visual artists use white space: by creating space within images, the viewer’s brain fills in what’s been left out to complete the picture. I coined the term “gray space” for what writers do when we elide, as we link gray matter, writer brain to reader brain, to fill in unsaid ideas.

I have heard some comment like this, except regarding tv shows. I’m sure I saw someone say something like, “It’s not what’s in the Star Trek episodes — it’s what the viewers are putting into those episodes, and into the world.” I thought at once this was true, and also I thought this was why the best Star Trek novels are so much better than almost all of the tv episodes: because the author is putting a lot of depth into the show that wasn’t, perhaps, actually there in the show itself.

Digression: Do you have any great favorites among the clutter of media tie-in novels? I personally grew up with original Star Trek and like that best; I’ve read very few tie-in novels for any of the other various Star Trek franchises

Diane Duane’s Rihannsu series, beginning with My Enemy, My Ally

John M Ford’s The Final Reflection

Janet Kagan’s Uhura’s Song

Barbara Hambly’s Ishmael

Diane Carey’s Dreadnought and Battlestations

Back to the topic! Leaving room for the reader, right!

[T]he emotional connection that’s made between the writer and reader is strengthened by what the reader brings to the story—their experiences, dreams, hopes, and longings. When we let the reader fill in our intentionally left blanks, we invite them inside our imaginary worlds. … Let’s look at the craft techniques you can use to make gray space.

Then we have dialogue, internal monologue, action, sensory detail, and rhetorical devices.

Quick, three guesses about the example used for “gray space” in dialogue? Correct, “Hills Like White Elephants” by Hemingway. If you’ve never read it, here’s a pdf version. This short story is used all the time as an example of indirect dialogue, implication, and burying everything important in the subtext. It’s hard to find a better example, as neither character ever spells out what they’re talking about or how they’re actually feeling. This is kind of the ultimate in “show don’t tell.” While I think you can go too far with “show don’t tell” — if you find yourself contorting into pretzels to avoid telling, you’re probably going too far — this is still a neat example of a story where everything is buried.

It’s true that burying subtext in dialogue lends depth. There’s some risk that you’ll bury too much or bury it too deeply and your readers will miss it, which is one reason beta readers are crucial. Despite the risk, getting that kind of subtext into the story is also crucial because everything buried in the story gives it not just depth of meaning, but also emotional depth, which is the point this post is making.

Not quite the same, but related, one element that some readers trip over is the part in The City in the Lake where Lilienne can hear everything everyone says, and everyone knows this, so no one is saying what they mean. This was tricky to write, but kind of fun. Some author — DWJ? — noted that young readers pay better attention when reading and therefore catch this sort of thing, while adults are more likely to miss it. Could be. Certainly it ought to be jarring when a character says one thing while doing something incompatible.

Anyway, back to leaving space for the reader.

Setting conveys emotion but the more we let the reader decide what that emotion is, the better. A dark forest can be a refuge or a threat, or both. A storm can be a cloak or a danger, or both. Leave out the explanations and let the reader derive meaning by injecting their own experiences of forests and storms into the moment.

Now, here I disagree. Maybe that can work sometimes, but in general how your protagonist responds to the dark forest — considering it a refuge or a threat — is an important part of (a) characterization, and (b) placing the character in the world. This is crucial imo, and so it would be quite wrong and counterproductive to hide the character’s response. Now, you can show the character’s response rather than saying, “Susan felt that the dark forest might be a refuge.” But I don’t think you generally want to fail to provide the response. If the example provided in the post works — “All the trees in the lower field were gone, uprooted and blasted to splintered logs” — that’s because the reader already know how the protagonist feels about that: not excited and thrilled by the power that wrought this destruction, but taking the destruction as a loss. If the reader didn’t know that, this plain description wouldn’t carry much impact.

Rhetorical devices — what does the author of the post have in mind? Only one device is mentioned: endowing an object with thematic meaning and then using that object. That’s fine. I mean, that certainly does work. Aras’ scepter is an object like that; breaking it matters. Should that scepter be broken, there’s no need to point to that and tell the reader that was significant. Just set the broken scepter in the reader’s view and that carries plenty of heft without the author needing to point to it.

Well, overall a good post, I think. That is, I think it’s very true that the reader pours meaning into the story, often the meaning that the author intended, but sometimes some other meaning; and that good stories leave space for that to happen.

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Update: Lots of Progress, Whew

Okay, so this past week was productive in a couple of different ways.

First, very pleased to wind up this round of revision for INVICTUS and the next round should be much less trouble. It had better be much less trouble! I’m feeling fairly good about INVICTUS: CAPTIVE and don’t expect to make substantive changes to it at this point. Tweaks, maybe; possibly even extensive tweaks, but I shouldn’t be ripping into it for major remodeling. I sent off INVICTUS: CRISIS to another early reader late last week with a sigh of relief. I mean, there will be more to do with it, but every step forward is something I appreciate.

Second, I celebrated by reading  Journey Across the Hidden Islands by Sarah Beth Durst

I picked it because it’s MG and I expected it to be charming and fast to read. It was both, so it worked out fine. I’ll post comments about it later this week, and by the way I am longing to live in a world with winged lions, winged cats, winged monkeys, mer-minnows, cloudfish, on and on. Preferably not giant wolf-headed flying serpents, though.

This makes me want to read this one even more:

Because wow, what a cover! Burst has had some great covers, that’s for sure. This one’s not MG, I think. I think it’s YA or maybe adult. Oh, probably YA because it’s listed in “coming of age” categories.

Third, I’m waiting for the more detailed map for the Tuyo World Companion, but it’s looking good for release this month. Note that I’m not sufficiently certain to put it up for preorder. At this point, as soon as it’s ready, I’ll just release it and let you know. Meanwhile I’m using the less-detailed map as a placeholder and a test map. I sent myself the ebook file and my first impression was that the images were not enlarging on my phone, but they actually are, so that’s good. I may increase the spacing between paragraphs — the novella has normal indenting and no spacing between paragraphs, but most of the rest is formatted with no indenting, but spacing between paragraphs. If the spacing looks too funky, I may change that.

I tried putting all the letters into various “handwritten” fonts, none of which are showing up in the kindle previewer, so I may give up on that. A brief google search confirms that KDP strips out all odd fonts and converts everything to basic fonts for kindle. Fine, never mind, it was just a thought. The various fonts do look cool in the paperback, so maybe I’ll leave them in that version.

Overall, a bit of ongoing fiddling, but largely finished and nearly ready.

So with the TWC and INVICTUS more or less under control and moving into the less intense background, that means that —

Forth, at long last, I’m moving SILVER CIRCLE to the foreground. I mean: I’m still doing final proofing for the Tuyo World Companion, and I will be doing further (hopefully relatively minor) revision to INVICTUS and then proofing right up till it comes out — till both books come out — but I’m finally preparing to focus on the Black Dog world.

First step: re-read at least Copper Mountain and the 4th novella collection and take quick notes about all the elements I’ll need to juggle. Aargh, so many elements! There are a great many balls in the air at this point. I need to keep those balls in the air and then drop them neatly into place throughout the final novel. Let me see. There are the grimoires that have no doubt continued to appear in various libraries; and the sensitives who can spot supernatural stuff; and Tommy, who ought to get something useful to do; and those wendigos in the far north and the black dogs up there; and the Russian black dogs in Florida — including a potential love interest for Ethan — and you remember the demon that stole control of a black dog kid’s body and took off — not to mention what’s her name, the spooky witch in California who’s got magic spyware pointed at Keziah. Plus whatever’s going on with the cellphone app, a different kind of demonic spyware, probably. And none of the characters who have been important throughout the series can be dropped here at the end.

Even though I basically know where I’m going and where I want to wind up, this is going to be a bit challenging, I bet.

I have part of a novella I wrote from Grayson’s pov. It didn’t work properly and I’m going to start by seeing if I can switch it into a different pov and use it as an early-ish scene in the novel. That gives me one starting point and will permit me to move one important character into place for the endgame. One character is starting out in the right place for the endgame. Everyone else will have to move into place over the rest of the story. I have a vague notion about the actual first chapter and a vague notion about something else that should happen kind of early and in fact, kind of a lot of vague notions. Well, by the end of August, I bet I’ll have something started, and by the end of September, a much better idea of what I’m working with.

So that’s the big shift in my attention this month. Feels practically seismic!

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Another sale, another ad

I’ve been holding off on releasing another newsletter until I can point people to the TUYO World Companion, though I’ll certainly have to send out an announcement about the upcoming sales. That may be right before the Tuyo series sale. Ideally the TWC will go live at the same time that the promotion is running.

Meanwhile, I’ve been setting up a different promotion.

I’ve been dragging my feet a bit about doing another Black Dog promotion for various reasons — among other things, I’ll do more serious promotion when Silver Circle releases — but I haven’t run a promotion for this series since March and I have to say, I can sure tell. I’ve set one up for early September, and again, I’ll be trying a BookBub ad at the same time.

You see how I’m drawing on the same basic design as for the Tuyo series: the first book prominent and the others at the bottom, the announcement itself white on red. Here’s a nifty tool that’s useful for putting ads together: a 3D cover image generator. You can use your ebook cover to generate either Kindle covers or 3D paper covers. It’s fast, easy, and free, which is pretty nice of whomever made it. I made a donation because I didn’t have any 3D cover images for this series, so I really appreciate this tool.

Anyway, what I expect is some sales and then a decent bounce in KU. But I’m not really going to take promotion seriously until I have Silver Circle ready to go. Then we’ll see what I can do. That’s mostly for next year. Along with so much else, because I have various plans for how to handle this series. It underperforms right now. If it did even half as well as the Tuyo series … that may be a lot to ask. A third as well, say. I think that’s my goal for next year: get it to perform a third as well as the Tuyo series.

The authors I’m targeting for this series are totally different (almost totally) from the authors I targeted for the Tuyo series. It’s tricky because for this series, I want UF authors who aren’t really emphasizing romance all that much, ideally UF aimed at somewhat younger readers. Not Ilona Andrews; her books are all romances. Not Patricia Briggs; she has too many followers.

So far I’m targeting Anne Bishop, Leigh Bardugo, Sarah Maass, Elizabeth Hunter, VE Schwab, Maggie Stiefvater — some of these are a bit of a stretch. I’m also targeting a fair number of authors I’ve never read anything by and sometimes authors I’ve never heard of. Eva Chase, Joel Shepherd, KM Shea, KF Breen, quite a few others. These are authors whose books turn up on the product pages for the Mercy Thompson series and for Stiefvater’s Shiver, among others. I can see that this is a series where running the author tests as David Gaughran recommends would probably be useful. Not right now, I don’t want to take time for this, but later this year or next year.

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Disconnecting

Here’s a post from PJ Parrish at Kill Zone Blog that I bet will resonate with a lot of us: Disconnecting from the world so you can create you own.

The world is too much with me. … I need to re-find quietude and solitude. I need my hurly-burly brain to calm down before something creative can start growing there again.

There’s a lot of talk these days about how many of us are trying to find a way to wean ourselves off our phones and social media. Here in my small northern Michigan town, the school board bucked high schoolers and some parents and banned phones from the classrooms. (Guess who didn’t object? Teachers, grade-school kids and middle-schoolers). We know we have to turn off the TV, ignore the cable Babel, stay away from Facebook, Instagram and whatever Musk is calling his enterprise these days.

Well, this is easy for me to identify with: I disconnected years ago and have only just barely reconnected. I actually did spend time messing around with Twitter and Facebook after I got a neat phone that could connect to everything. These days, my phone sometimes says, “Do you want to free up space? Here are some apps you haven’t used for a while!” And there’s Twitter and Facebook, among others. I do answer Quora questions, and what is the difference? I can avoid almost everything having to do with current events on Quora, but not on Twitter.

“The World Is Too Much With Us.” Wordsworth’s words are worth heeding. He wrote the poem during the First Industrial Revolution, when technological innovation was transforming 18th century life. He was saddened by the mad rush from one new thing to the next, and said we had lost our ability to find tranquility in nature.

It’s not just technology as far as I’m concerned. It’s not technology at all, actually. It’s outrage. Twitter exists to fan the flames. Or it used to; these days I don’t know because I’m not looking. I prefer to reserve my emotional energy for writing, and therefore I look away, play with the kittens, take the dogs for a walk, and turn the computer back on.

This sort of post always makes me think of this:

To make a prairie, it takes a clover and one bee
One clover and a bee
And reverie.
The reverie alone will do
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Fantasy for readers who don’t read fantasy

From Book Riot: FANTASY BOOKS FOR PEOPLE WHO DON’T LIKE FANTASY BOOKS

Okay, interesting. I know what I’d recommend, at least I know some things I’d recommend, so I’m curious about this post. Oh, look at this:

Fantasy has always intimidated me. New worlds. Complex societies. Classes of magic I don’t understand. Unfamiliar, extravagant names making up a cast of characters I can’t possibly keep track of.…

So this post is written by someone who doesn’t like fantasy, not by someone trying to encourage other readers to try fantasy. That’s interesting. Also a little hard to imagine. I don’t remember ever feeling that way, and in fact I’m slightly puzzled by this feeling. Aren’t fairy tales a type of fantasy? I’d think children could segue from fairy tales to fantasy quite easily.

Granted, some fantasy is a lot less approachable than others. But right away, I’m thinking:

Fantasy retellings of fairy talesFantasy that is a fairy tale, but not a retellingFantasy that is historical, with only a little magicContemporary fantasy so you don’t have to fuss about names.

Personally, I’m delighted by extravagant names. But contemporary fantasy and a lot of historical fantasy completely step around unfamiliar names if that’s a problem.

Let’s see where the post goes:

But then I read a book last year that I later realized was classified as dark fantasy, and I sort of liked it. And another one that was apparently historical fantasy. Also fun. And some works of magical realism. I really liked those, too. Had I just been wrong about an entire genre for 42 years?

Well, yes. That happens when you think “Fantasy is set in a secondary world with a complex magic system laid out in detail and the huge cast of characters who all have weird names.” When you have that kind of restricted idea about a huge genre, naturally you’re mostly wrong. The same thing happens when you think “Romance is slight and silly, with extremely rich handsome guys falling in love with cute, quirky shopkeepers.” You’re noting one subgenre and just not noticing that your conception is the tiny tip of genre iceberg. In this case, the author of the post — as she notes herself — was intimidated by epic fantasy and didn’t notice that there was a lot of fantasy that isn’t in that subgenre. I’m moving past the conflation of epic fantasy and high fantasy without comment. We’ve done that before, several times. This time I’m more interested in seeing what subgenres this particular non-fantasy reader wound up liking. Ah, contemporary fantasy, which she is calling low fantasy, which again I will just move past.

Therefore, her suggestions are contemporary fantasy. I haven’t read them, except Like Water for Chocolate, which I didn’t like. And she’s got Nettle and Bone on her list, because she likes horror and therefore horror-adjacent contemporary fantasy, and yes, I’d certainly suggest T Kingfisher to anyone who likes horror. Especially Cozy Horror, and thanks to whoever suggested the term, because that’s very descriptive and useful.

Lots of other suggestions at the linked post. But here’s what I’d suggest, particularly if someone did not like horror:

A) Fairy tales — you can’t go wrong with Beauty by Robin McKinley.

I think the cover is wrong for the book. Fine for other retellings of Beauty and the Beast, but not great for this one. Anyway, while on the subject, I would then segue to Sunshine by McKinley.

What is with these covers? I would just like to register a protest here. Who’s the publisher? Open Road Media. Well, Open Road, kindly find some other cover artist with a better feel for McKinley’s stories. I’m scared to think what this cover artist might do with Chalice. I see it’s still a bright, sunny cover right now. Good job, Ace!

B) Fairy tales that aren’t retellings. I’d start with The Changeling Sea by McKillip

And then point them at anything else by McKillip … well, not anything, but lots and lots of things .. and also to The City in the Lake.

After that, if the person liked historicals, there’s so much there! But how about:

C) Historicals with almost no magic, such as Walk on Earth a Stranger by Rae Carson

The whole trilogy is good, and there’s only one magical element in the whole thing, as far as I can remember. You could then shift to sometehing with a little more magic, but a very historical feel, such as something by Guy Gavriel Kay. Everyone’s got their favorite, but how about A Song for Arbonne.

There are really a whole lot and this isn’t my favorite, actually. I would probably pick Under Heaven. If someone liked tragedy (for some reason), then there are certainly good options there too.

Does the person think they hate epic fantasy? Because there’s another category of fantasy I hadn’t previously thought of, which could serve to lead a reader into epic fantasy if they thought they didn’t like epic fantasy:

D) Portal fantasy, such as the Fionavar trilogy.

Look, you have protagonists who are from a familiar society and have familiar names; you can travel with them into the epic fantasy and won’t that make the journey easier and more fun? I think it would. Okay, last category:

E) Contemporary fantasy. Again, there’s so much (so, so, so much), but let’s avoid vampires. How about Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen?

Such gentle, easy stories. Nice writing, a bit of romance, people getting their lives together, seriously, these are my go-to for magical realism, and no thanks to Like Water for Chocolate.

But there is SO MUCH contemporary fantasy that it’s hard not to suggest more than one. How about Bone Gap by Laura Ruby?

I should re-read that. It’s a great story, and not only that, it pulls us back full circle to fairy tales, because it’s a story that draws on the tale of Persephone.

Okay! What’s a book you might suggest to someone who thought they didn’t like fantasy, but really meant they didn’t like the thought of epic fantasy?

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Check out this Kickstarter

Here’s a kickstarter for a Rook and Rose pattern deck.

This deck of cards is based on cards like tarot cards, but in this case based on cards in the world of Rook and Rose, by Marie Brennan and  Alyc Helms. The link goes to my comments about the first book, which I liked and admired.

I haven’t gone on with the second book solely because this is a high-tension story and I just couldn’t bring myself to go on with it. I think I need to wait for reviews to appear for the third book, which is coming out … ah, in a week! So, right around the corner.

What I basically want is a broad spoiler, something like this:

“It was a pleasure watching everything click into place. These three important characters all realized they were on the same side and worked together to defeat the bad guy, and then they all lived happily ever after.”

That last phrase is optional, but the first book set up two characters to be seriously at odds — three characters — and I like them all and I don’t want to see any of them get destroyed. I want them to all work together, save the city, and wind up better off than they started. Romance acceptable but not necessary, but I want everybody to be friends.

AND! Important tip! If a bad person says, “I’ll give you this thing you need or want, but you need to betray that person over there,” then the appropriate means to handle that situation is to make a chance to say to the person, “Hey, the bad guy offered me this thing to betray you, so I’m going to betray you in this way at this time and you need to be prepared. I figure if you and I work together, this ought to work out for both of us.”

All the stress aside, the reason I’m worried about the characters is because I like them a lot, so, I mean, that’s good. And the worldbuilding in this series is just spectacular. One of the spectacular elements is the two completely different systems of magic, and one of those systems involves cards like tarot cards, and thus we have this kickstarter.

The pattern deck is organized into three suits called threads. The cards of the spinning thread deal with the “inner self,” i.e. the mind and spiritual matters; the cards of the woven thread deal with the “outer self,” i.e. relationships and social institutions; the cards of the cut thread deal with the “physical self,” i.e. the body and the material world. In addition, there are seven clan cards, representing the archetypal personalities of the founding ancestors of the Vraszenian clans.

Each of the three threads consists of twenty cards, twelve regular and four pairs of Faces and Masks. The Faces and Masks represent Vraszenian deities, each of which has a benevolent side (the Face) and a malevolent one (the Mask), and which represent particularly important concepts like truth and lies, peace and war, or life and death. This duality is built into the pattern deck as a whole, such that no card is inherently negative or positive. Fear in the right circumstance is a useful warning; peace can come at the cost of willful disregard for a problem. Which interpretation applies depends on the layout used and where the card appears.

It’s all very cool. I’ve backed it. It just went live, and last I saw, it was about 40% funded.

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