Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 69

The opening of your novel is a promise

A post by Donald Maass at Writer Unboxed: Promise Words

A fairly common topic when thinking about writing! But it’s true, the opening of your novel always constitutes a promise to your readers. What does Donald Maass — I’m sure many of you know he’s a famous agent and also an author himself — what does he have to say about this?

Have you ever read a few lines of a novel and put it straight back onto the bookstore shelf? It’s not your thing. But wait…how do you know? You could be wrong. Nevertheless, there are certain words on that opening page that send signals that light you up, turn you off or, if nothing else, cause you to judge a tale’s nature and relative appeal. Certain words tell you what to expect. Those words are what I call a novel’s promise words.

Maass does exactly what I would do: looks at actual novels rather than offering advice out of context.

Here’s a list of promise words from one opening: Grief…solitary…islands…graves…alone…avoid…waving from a distance…hurrying away…ghosts exist…the ghost of myself…

What kind of story do you expect, Maass asks.

What kind of novel do you think that is going to be? A rom-com? Hardly. A ghost story? A sad story? A memory piece? What kind of protagonist will we meet? The life of the party? Um, no. The words suggest it will be a main character who is grieving, solitary, alone. … Do you agree? The impression that you’ve already formed sets your expectations for the novel. You know what kind of experience you’re in for. It’s either an experience that you want for your weekend reading or one that you’re going to return to the bookstore shelf. All on the basis of a few words.

Three more examples at the linked post. Each time, Maass gives the “promise words” and then, later, provides the full opening. This is a good, clever way to illustrate his point! Great idea, good post, definitely click through if you’re interested in this topic. Here’s the full opening of the one above:

The first list of promise words is from Greg Iles’s Mississippi Blood (2017), the third of his Natchez Burning trilogy, concerning the (now) mayor of Natchez, Penn Cage, who has a family in peril, a father on trial, and a dark history with a violent splinter group of the KKK called the Double Eagles.  Here’s the full opening:

Grief is the most solitary emotion; it makes islands of us all.

I’ve spent a lot of time visiting graves over the past few weeks.  Sometimes with Annie, but mostly alone.  The people who see me there give me a wide berth.  I’m not sure why.  For thirty miles around, almost everyone knows me, Penn Cage, the mayor of Natchez, Mississippi.  When they avoid me—waving from a distance, if at all, then hurrying on their way—I sometimes wonder if I have taken on the mantle of death.  Jewel Washington, the county coroner and a true friend, pulled me aside in City Hall last week and told me I look like living proof that ghosts exist.  Maybe they do.  Since Caitlin died, I have felt nothing more than the ghost of myself.

Perhaps that’s why I spend so much time visiting graves.

I agree that the words Maass pulled out constitute an accurate hint about the opening and about what kind of story this is likely to be.

Peril. Tragedy. Enchantment. Delight. Most of the openings I’ve cited could have been written plainly. Just the plot, ma’am. But they’re not written that way. The words are carefully, or at least intuitively, chosen to create a specific effect: promise. I’m going to tell you a story. It’s about death. Or life. You will feel fear. Or hope. Or both. 

Promise words aren’t a hook, a story question, narrative voice, not exactly, nor any other thing that might be present on a first page. Promise words are an invocation. They fix our minds and hearts for a story, the specific story that will follow. They create in us expectation. We’re living the story already. It’s writing itself in our imaginations. The story, even now, is becoming ours.

Good post!

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Jennifer Crusie: more on traditional vs self-publishing

A post I happened to notice at Jennifer Crusie’s blog: Happiness is a Soup Truck

[W]e were submitting to editors and getting caught up in the insanity of traditional publishing, and although our agent tried to protect us as much as possible, it’s a jungle out there, even worse than it used to be when it drove me into writer’s block for a decade. Then we got an offer and I really tensed up, but the good news is that it was a lousy offer. And Bob said, “Let’s just self-publish,” and I said, “Oh, god, yes, yes, yes.”

And I don’t want to say that traditional publishing is hopeless because I doubt that’s true. But I do want to note that Jennifer Crusie is another traditionally published author, a NYT bestselling author no less, whose first book came out in 1993. Ten years ago, she ground to a halt due to clinical depression and now she has moved sideways. For Crusie, it’s about control, and I will just note that I did say that for me, control over what I write is the most important thing. Here’s Crusie, emphasizing a different kind of control — control over how the book is published:

Which is when I realized how bad publishing is for me and why: I have no control. … I can’t tell you what a relief it is not to be dealing with contracts and outside revisions and sell-throughs and all the other things we’d have no control over. … we’re both so relieved to be doing this ourselves because we can get the books out fast and only a month apart and price them so that people don’t have to sell a kid to afford them …

“We” is Crusie and a collaborator. She is also talking about luck, the same thing I emphasized. Sell-through means the proportion of readers who buy book two and then book three. Bad sell-through will kill your series. This is exactly what I meant when I said that if a major chain of booksellers goes bankrupt between book one and book two, you’re screwed. I meant that sell-through will be lousy for your second book and there is nothing you can do about it and the publisher will hold that bad sell-through against you.

The book Crusie and her cowriter are bringing out is the first of a series; it’s called Lavender’s Blue.

Liz Danger has returned home after fifteen years to deliver a giant teddy bear for her mother’s birthday (color: Guilt Red) when a cop with a great ass picks her up for speeding, fixes the missing lug nuts on her back wheel, pulls her out of a ditch, doesn’t give her a ticket, and helps her avoid her family. This is a man with real potential. The rest of the day goes downhill, starting with her finding out that the only man she’s ever loved is getting married to Lavender Blue, the most beautiful woman in southern Ohio. Really, the best thing in her day is that cop with the lug nuts.

Vince Cooper still isn’t sure about being a cop in Burney, Ohio, a place he just moved to six months ago, since Burney is full of some fairly odd people spaced between long stretches of boredom. Still, considering the dangerous, difficult life he had before Burney as an Army Ranger and New York City cop, boredom is good. Then he picks up Liz Danger for speeding and life gets a lot more interesting. And when he picks her up again in the local bar the next night, he starts to realize that “interesting” doesn’t begin to describe what’s going to happen to him if he pulls Liz into his arms and his life

I preordered it, because (a) happy to give Jennifer Crusie a boost, and (b) sure, book sounds like fun, so why not?

That thing about pricing the book in an attractive way is nicely illustrated here. Lavender’s Blue is $4.99. Want to know how much the ebooks are for her traditionally published titles? $11.99 or thereabouts, because big publishers are convinced that price doesn’t matter and readers will buy books no matter what the price is.

I actually read a post where someone, a marketing guy from a Big Five publisher, was quoted as saying that in so many words. Sorry, don’t remember the details, only the statement that price is not relevant to book sales. This was years ago, but looking at the prices of traditionally published books, I don’t think they’ve changed their minds, even though competition from self-published authors is way, way up and only going to get more intense.

All else aside, I’m glad Crusie is back in business! I’ve only read one of her books previously, but I did like it and I’m looking forward to trying Lavender’s Blue.

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Heroes in SFF

A post by Molly Templeton at tor.com: Holding Out for More Heroes

I always like Molly Templeton’s posts, and of course I’m always happy to see a post saying that you know what, heroes are great, but I am just a little taken aback by the tone of this post. Here is how the post begins:

If there’s one kind of question guaranteed to make me roll my eyes, it’s one about guilty pleasures. You don’t need to feel guilty about the art you enjoy. There are things in life about which a person should feel guilty … but liking a particular kind of art or story or character or movie or song is not, generally, among those things.

And yet there’s a thing I love that I’ve been feeling squirmy about. I don’t feel guilty, exactly, but I feel self-conscious and dorky and then feel guilty about feeling those ways, which maybe transforms into a feeling that’s a cousin to a guilty pleasure? It’s in the same general vicinity, at least. … I found myself forced to admit that I love paladins. And I really feel like I’m not supposed to say that in public. … I could not feel more uncool for confessing to this. It feels like announcing that I’m a boring person who only likes simple, happy stories, when that is the furthest thing from the truth.

I … do not feel like this at all. I mean, at all. I had to pause for a moment to contemplate this.

It’s not that Molly Templeton thinks that the notion that a story centered around good guys are always simple, happy, boring stories. She adds:

But I don’t think a do-gooder has to be simple, or plain, or a stick-in-the-mud …

And, honestly, I think the apologetic tone is creeping out again here. Let me rephrase that:

A do-gooder does not have to be, and usually is not, simple, plain, one-dimensional, flat, unbelievable, or boring.

There is no need to say cautiously, “I think” or “in my opinion” or “it seems to me” in front of that assertion. It is just obviously true, and one could list off a thousand examples without the slightest difficulty. The example Templeton uses here is Maia from The Goblin Emperor, always an excellent (very excellent) choice. One could add Thara Celehar from the second and third books set in that world. Celehar is also not simple, plain, one-dimensional, unbelievable, or boring. He is overly self-effacing and passive, which is none of the above, but is a big reason I have not read the third book.

Celehar is also totally different from Maia, which there you go, look, two genuinely nice characters who are totally different from each other. Not that this is surprising, because that’s how it works when you are doing a solid job of characterization, which is absolutely for sure no more difficult with characters who are nice than characters who hover on the edge of being bad guys.

Templeton asks for suggestions for fantasy, specifically fantasy, where the protagonist is a genuinely nice person trying to do good things. I am happy (VERY HAPPY) to see that TUYO is mentioned multiple times in the comments, and thank you all very much! I recommend dropping over to that post if you would like to see what other books are mentioned in the comments, but I will mention the ones that sprang to mind for me. Some of these also appear in the comment thread of the linked post; other’s don’t; all of these leaped to my mind waving their virtual hands in the air going Look! Look at me! Nice do-gooder character who is not boring so one-dimensional!

1) Cazaril in The Curse of Chalion, which is mentioned in the comment thread

2) Penric, obviously, and that is also mentioned in the comment thread

3) Cassandra in The Touchstone Trilogy, which isn’t really exactly fantasy, but, I mean, sort of?

4) Medair, in the Medair duology, because THAT really is fantasy, but also

5) All sorts of important characters in And All the Stars, which I grant is not remotely fantasy, but once I started thinking of AKH, what was I supposed to do? Trying hard not to say too much about the specific character I have in mind here, but I will add that this book contains possibly the single most amazing plot twist I have ever encountered.

6) Kit, in From All False Doctrine, which I am indeed re-reading now.

7) Cliopher in The Hands of the Emperor, another one mentioned in the comment thread at the linked post.

8) Paksennarian, obviously, also in the comment thread

9) El, from the Scholomance trilogy, and seriously, you cannot think of both El and Cazaril and then declare that all good-guy characters are the same, because ha ha ha, wow, no. El refutes that notion NO MATTER WHO she is compared to. Any other do-gooder character in the ENTIRE WORLD of books is going to be wildly different from Galadriel Higgins.

10) Frankly, Daniel in the Death’s Lady trilogy is the single nicest person I have ever written.

Okay, I will add that I have picked up a few books from the comment thread at the linked post and maybe soon, this month even, I will close my laptop for two weeks and read a whole bunch of books, including these.

Meanwhile! Favorite book that hasn’t yet been mentioned where the protagonist is a good person trying to achieve good things. Doesn’t have to be nice, does have to be a do-gooder, any other book spring to mind? Oh, I just thought of another, which I will mention in the comments if no one else gets to it first.

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Wow, that was even more tedious than proofreading

Okay, so I have now loaded all three versions of TASMAKAT to KDP, with a week to go to the last possible upload date, so that’s good. Here, if you are interested, is the process:

Step one: create the files. I’m much more efficient at this than I used to be, but it’s still tedious. Now that I know how to do it smoothly and without encountering weird problems, at least it’s not especially annoying.

Step two: load the final kindle file. Load the cover. Get the preview. Flip through ALL the pages to confirm that there are no horrible-looking formatting things that shouldn’t happen, but sometimes do. No blank pages at the end of a chapter, which again shouldn’t happen, but sometimes does if I missed an extra page break while creating the file (which is astonishingly easy to do).

Step three: notice that there is no clickable “other works by” section at the end because I forgot to copy that over from a different book. Also notice that there is no clickable link to leave a review because I’m an idiot and forgot to put that in. At least this time I noticed before letting the book drop. Add those to the file and load the new! improved! final version to KDP, but this time don’t click through all the pages because that would be insanely obsessive.

I mean, I am in fact pretty obsessive, but there are limits, and this book is almost exactly as long as three (3) normal books, so I am not going to spend that many minutes clicking through the entire preview again. No. I just check to make sure the new Works By section is there and looks okay.

Step four: open the paperback file and make sure that the widows and orphans thing is turned on, because it’s annoying to have to fix that along with everything else. It took me an insanely long time to figure out where that is in Word. (It’s in the extra Paragraph menu, in the “line and page breaks” tab.) Did I remember to right and left justify? No? Let’s do that now before loading the file. This file is going to need to be adjusted multiple times, so any adjustments that can be made now are a good thing. Hey, is the ISBN in the actual book? Time to add it!

Step five: load the paperback file. Load the cover. Get the preview. Does the title page appear on the right-hand side? Does the ToC begin on the right-hand side? Does chapter 1 begin on the right hand side? If not, that means adding extra blank pages here and there to make sure they do. I find it impossible to tell about this until the file is actually loaded and the preview is up.

Once the preview is up, flip through ALL the pages to once more look for the odd formatting issue, much more important in the paper editions, AND also remember to record the page numbers for all the chapters, which will not be the same as in your file, so you have to check them and then put them in the table of contents, which is blank until this moment. Remember to check the page numbers through the whole book in case the book starts counting from one again somewhere in the middle. (This is a problem I now know to look for and how to fix, but it took me aback the first time it happened.)

Step six: load the version with the correct blank pages, the corrected ToC, and, as much as possible, formatted correctly. Flip through the preview AGAIN to check that all the formatting issues are gone. Something will still be wrong, there’s just no doubt about this. Something is always still wrong. Fix whatever it is and load the new version and look at it again. Hopefully the third iteration is the last.

Step seven: start over with the hardcover file, same exact business as the paperback file.

Step eight: Grimly note, not for the first time, that the sensible thing to do would be to have broken TASMAKAT into three normal-length novels, gotten two more covers, and set them up to release a month apart, one after the other.

I commented in an earlier post that releasing a giant book was a mistake. Why, you may be wondering, was this a mistake?

I’ve learned various things about KDP by loading a book this long. I did not expect problems because I know there are other books this long, eg, The Hands of the Emperor and lots of omnibus editions and so on. But it turns out there are in fact problems, so just on the off chance any of you find it helpful to know about this, here is why I should have done this as three separate books and why you, if you ever write a super-long novel, should check to see if these limitations still exist and think about whether you should break it up:

A) Yes, you would need more covers; yes, the cover artist may be booked up for three to six months, thus screwing with your release schedule; plus yes, that would obviously cost more; but –>

B) The top price you can put on an ebook in KU is $9.99, even if the book is super long. Therefore, if you’re putting a super-long book into KU, breaking it into thirds and pricing each at $4.99 would be more sensible, even if the very long book is part of a larger series. Pricing each of three books at $6.99 would literally double the royalties for the book. I did not know about the price restriction when I asked for one cover, and when I realized, I was too impatient to re-assess, order two more covers, and push back the release dates for the other two books.

Impatiently putting the full thing up as one book was especially a mistake as the higher price of $9.99 is definitely holding down preorders. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that this higher price has had a large impact on number of preorders, even though the book is in practical terms substantially less expensive than if I’d broken it into three books, each of 100,000+ words, and listed each one for $4.99 to $6.99 — especially since I would probably have gone for something on the higher end of that range.

The benefit to you all is of course that you are getting a price break plus the entire story all at once, no waiting. This is nice, sure, but still.

In the fullness of time, all this will become unimportant. When there are eight more books in the Tuyo world, I won’t care that I should have done TASMAKAT differently. Still, if I were doing it over, I’d do it as three books and release them at month-long intervals or something. This is especially true because –>

C) The top number of pages you can put in a 6×9 paperback is 828 for black-and-white pages, which is A LOT and should not be very limiting. BUT, the top number of pages in a 6×9 hardcover is 550, which is much less, and wow, I did not see that coming. That is why the font size in the hardcover version of TASMAKAT is going to have to drop to a painfully small size, and I’m sorry, but there’s no help for it. This also meant I had to go through the book looking for any chapter that ended with a small number of lines on a page, then go through that chapter and take out words here and there to pull those lines up a page and save one page of length. I did this to four chapters and shrank the font of the ToC to get it on one page and wound up just barely making TASMAKAT fit — it’s 549 pp in hardcover. Also –>

D) If you ever do an omnibus, then it’s difficult to handle really long books. You cannot cram that many pages into a physical edition.

E) While we’re talking about super-long books and omnibuses, did you know that Amazon caps the number of KU pages for which you can get paid for a single book? If you enroll a book in KU, you will earn approximately $0.0044 per page read UP TO 3000 PAGES. If your single book goes over that, then you do not earn anything for any additional pages over 3000. This is Kindle Normalized Pages. It’s hard to imagine going over 3000 KENP. Even TASMAKAT is not going to do that. I’m just saying that if you do go over that, there is this length limit for KU. I can easily see omnibus editions going over that limit.

The basic take-away here as far as I’m concerned is that 120,000 to 160,000 words is fine as one book, but from now on, anything that goes to 180,000 words or more is going to get broken into two or more books. Anything that approaches 300,000 words is going to get broken into thirds. If you want to know the exact length, TASMAKAT is 315,600 words.

However, and this is obviously the good part: TASMAKAT has now been loaded properly in all three formats and all that’s left now is waiting for the clock to tick down.

I’m feeling good about the way the first half of the year has gone!

I’m looking forward to doing final revisions to the World Companion, looking forward to sending INVICTUS to early readers, and REALLY looking forward to starting SILVER CIRCLE!

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Finished! For now

Okay, whew, last day of June — where did June even go? — and I finished the basic revision of INVICTUS last night and read through the back part of the first book this morning.

I’m glad to say that to me the first book now seems smooth, decidedly smoother than it did before this final revision [I mean final for now]. I’ve got the second book in my head now, so it was easier to read through part of the first book and SEE that it’s smoother.

Next step: read the entire second book from the top, with plans to send the whole thing to early readers early next week. Everything is on track, yay!

Also on track: I’ve finished proofing TASMAKAT.

I mean, I ordered one more proofing copy, but I think it’s good to go. I don’t think I’ll find anything to fix at this point. I may find things I want to tweak, but honestly I may resist the urge to tweak because it’s fine. I will, of course, expect readers to point out maybe half a dozen typos in the first week after the book releases, but you never know, maybe this time every single typo has been cleared out.

I will say, I will never again publish a book this long. From now on, I will always, and I mean always, break anything close to 180,000 words into two books and anything close to 300,000 words into three books. I hadn’t realized that there are actually significant practical problems if you leave a book really long. I will describe those problems briefly in an upcoming post just in case anybody is now contemplating, or in the future may contemplate, self-publishing a really long book. I didn’t think there were major downsides to doing that, but I was wrong. Not that the problems have been insoluble, I don’t want to imply that, it’s fine! Mostly fine! But nevertheless, I won’t do this again.

On the other hand, I will VERY MUCH ENJOY reader reactions to this book, and if I’d done it as three books, I’d be dropping one per month over three months, and waiting for reader to get to the third book would be painful, so that is an actual benefit to bringing it out as a single book.

Also! I have reordered the sections in the World Companion ONE MORE TIME and I’m finished with that as well!

I think I am finally happy with the order of the sections. I also, sigh, suddenly wrote new sections to go in the “material culture” heading, including a section on weaponry. I’m not declaring that the book itself is finished because there’s no end to this, honestly. But getting the sections in a final order is a big step. I’ve also finished proofreading the (slightly older) version of this book, so this weekend I will go through and fix all the typos and tweaks, then send it to myself again and make another print copy.

I have given up on bringing the World Companion out in July. There’s no way the maps will be ready. I just can’t see that happening. I will now be aiming for August 15th, and that is a shame, as I did hope the Companion would act as a gentle teaser for TASMAKAT. However, fine, August will do.

Next!

I will be sending out a newsletter in the next few days, which will include the full first chapter of TASMAKAT.

Also!

Hanneke suggested this and I immediately realized this was a great idea, so:

You know how people in the Tuyo world keep telling stories, and sometimes they do so on the page, but sometimes the stories are just referred to, not actually told? You may remember, for example, that in TARASHANA, Ryo tells the story of how the Little Knife got there, and Elaro tells a story of a boy who snatched a handful of whiskers from a tiger’s jaw and got away. We’ve heard references to lots of stories. This keeps happening. In TASMAKAT, Ryo tells a story about a man who tries to find a fragment of the Moon’s light to use as a lantern, and one of Aras’ daughters tells a Lau children’s story about a clever rabbit, and there are just a lot of stories, most of which we don’t get to actually hear.

Well, these have so far been easy and fast to write, and they’re short, with no (all right, almost no) risk that any of them will unexpectedly blow up into a hundred-page novella. So I’m going to start writing those and dropping them into newsletters. That’s where they will be: in the newsletter and nowhere else. It’s good to finally think of something I feel confident I can write on a frequent basis and share in a newsletter!

So that’s coming up, though not in July. Probably the first of those extra stories will appear in August.

It’s been a good week! I hope you’ve all had a good week as well.

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The Dangers of Feedback

A post at Writer Unboxed: The Dangers of Feedback

That’s certainly an eye-catching title. I actually think I know what the greatest danger of feedback has to be. Do we all immediately think of the same thing? Raise your hand if you instantly thought something along the lines of:

Trying to revise your novel to fit someone else’s vision, expectations, or preferences, when these are all wrong for the novel and incompatible with your own vision and tastes.

That’s surely the great danger of asking for feedback — that you may get feedback that is completely wrong for the novel or for you, and that you’ll destroy your novel by trying to take that advice. Nothing else can possibly come close. Can it?

Well, maybe this:

The feedback you receive will be so negative that it will destroy your motivation to write.

And of course this is awkward because we all know there are truly awful, unreadable self-published books on Amazon. What if someone set something like that before you and asked for your feedback? What are you supposed to with that?

I’ll tell you what I think might be somewhat kind and somewhat useful in that situation: you can say, accurately, that the book is not at all to your personal taste and you don’t feel you can offer useful feedback for it.

I will add that although I’ve said repeatedly that I would be happy to beta read for regular commenters here, I am assuming that (a) most of you probably have quite good command of the language at the sentence level, and even more important, that (b) none of you will ever send me some sort of horrible nihilistic story where the protagonist slowly destroys his life and ruins the lives of everyone around him and then commits suicide. If you do, I will skim through it and then I will tell you that your book is unfortunately not at all to my personal taste and I am completely unable to offer any useful feedback whatsoever. This will be totally true. I would be stunned if anything like that happened. Many of us probably have broad tastes in reading, but not that broad.

Anyway, the dangers of feedback. Those are the dangers that leap to mind when I hear that phrase: that it will be crushingly negative or that it will be completely wrong. Does the linked post agree? Here’s how that post begins:

How’s this for a guilty pleasure? One of my go-to pastimes for the last ten years has been going on Amazon, searching up my all-time favorite books, movies, and albums, and obsessively reading every single one-star review. I have no idea what this says about me, but it’s probably not 100% healthy.

Just ballparking the numbers here, one-star reviews of brilliant things tend to breakdown like this: 25% of them are complete nonsense, 25% miss the point entirely, and 25% have nothing whatsoever to do with artistry. The Great Gatsby has too much drinking in it. Did the White Album really need all those songs? My Pulp Fiction Blu-ray arrived a day late! You know, that kinda thing. Inevitably, though, that last 25% of one-star reviews will include well-reasoned, artfully written, totally not ridiculous arguments for why many of the things I love so much are actually huge pieces of crap. The lesson here is simple, and I’ll adjust it for the fact that this is a site about writing: No book is for everyone.

I’ve never once gone to Amazon to enjoy reading one-star reviews for anybody’s book, far less mine. This is true even though I actually do enjoy a reading a highly negative review of a book, as long as the review seems fair and is pointing to things that matter to me. Still, that never occurred to me. I do like fake Amazon reviews. I mean the funny kind, like the ones for the black-and-blue-or-gold-and-white dress, like this:

It was a dark and stormy night. What began as the perfect evening out in my new gold and white dress ended in a crushing downward spiral of death, deceit, and a strange case of hoodwinking as I awoke, alone and terrified, in an ensemble of blue and black. **Not recommended for small children or imaginary friends of any size**

Still, I guess I can sort of see the appeal of reading one-star reviews for books I know I hate, except I wouldn’t have the patience to wade through one-star reviews that say “The cover was torn when it arrived, one star, very disappointed” or “Totally boring, one star” or whatever.

Anyway, reviews aren’t what I thought of at all when I saw the word “feedback.” I thought of beta reader feedback, editorial feedback, feedback from your personal friends whose taste in books is completely unlike yours, things like that. Is the linked post solely about “feedback” from reviews?

No, whew. It’s actually about the kind of early feedback on drafts that I thought of.

If you’re an established writer—or if you’ve just been at it for a long time—you may already have a team of trusted early readers in place. For many of us, though, finding people to read our initial drafts can be a challenge. Often the impulse—believe me, I’ve been there—is to thrust your typo-ridden Microsoft Word doc into the inbox of the first literate, willing, seemingly able-brained person you find. My advice: take a pause, maybe run spellcheck, and ask yourself three simple questions:

Is this person an idiot?Is this person the right reader for my book?Does this person even like the type of book that I’ve written?

I think you can dispense with (1). If the person is literate and willing, then you can assume they’re not an idiot. But (2) and (3) are certainly crucial. This is also why I would hesitate to hire a freelance developmental editor. They might be a good editor for, say, grimdark, but totally wrong for anything I would personally write. I’m not sure how to tell whether a freelance editor is actually a fan of the right kind of books AND ALSO good at nailing problems with plotting and pacing, and unless I was sure I was picking an editor who would really be helpful, I would not be willing to pay thousands of dollars for editing. Thus, the importance of beta readers.

The advice in this post is straightforward: don’t ask for feedback from someone who is certain to hate your book. That’s fine as far as it goes. I would add:

If you make a mistake and give your book to the wrong person and they give you totally wrong advice for it, don’t take that advice.It’s fine to disregard one person’s advice and find a different first reader.There’s too much emphasis on not asking someone who likes your books too much because you need a critique rather than a cheering section.

You see that last bit everywhere, including in the linked post. I think it is largely wrong. I think what is most helpful is someone who is both offering a critique AND a cheering section, and I think that is not actually unusual. It’s nice (seriously, very nice!) to have little smiley faces dotted in the margin along with YAY! and OH NO! comments. This kind of happy feedback does not in any way stop an early reader from also saying, “I’m skimming through this chapter, I can’t get interested in this, I want to get back to the other plotline,” or “Wow, repetitious or what, you just said this three paragraphs ago” or “Gosh, you’re sure using the world “actually” a lot; maybe you should stop doing that?” This is what the author needs to know, but the little smiley faces are very definitely a bonus!

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Flashing banner ads

From Astral Codex Ten: Every Flashing Element On Your Site Alienates And Enrages Users

File that under Truer Words Were Never Spoken.

Yes. Yes, those elements alienate and enrage uses and everyone should quit using them. In fact! My new platform for when I run for political office will include making those dratted flashing elements illegal, as well as getting rid of telemarketer phone calls once and for all.

Scott says:

A few days ago I needed to look up an obscure point of Jewish law, as you do, and found this Jewish law website. The background toggles every few seconds between a picture of a rabbi and a picture of . . . a different rabbi? There’s no conceivable benefit to this and it makes it almost impossible to concentrate on the text.

Right! That’s the thing about flashing this and that on websites! Blinking images make it impossible to concentrate on the text and there is NO CONCEIVABLE BENEFIT, so cut it out!

Having read the post, though, I will add that I don’t find this type of thing as annoying as Scott does. I literally had not noticed that gmail blinks a “saving draft” message at the top corner of your email when you are typing an email. I HAD noticed that this WordPress site blinks to a “saving draft” message every few seconds at the top of the page, but this doesn’t annoy me.

I am now grateful that I’m not in the 17% of users who find that unendurable. I guess it’s good to start the day grateful for something. However, I would be MUCH MORE GRATEFUL if website designers would not have extremely obtrusive, rapidly strobing images anywhere the actual text I am trying to read. Speaking as someone who isn’t bothered by the “saving draft” message, I am confident that EVERYONE hates that.

While at Astral Codex Ten, I also looked at this post: Your Incentives Are Not The Same As Media Companies’

Unfortunately I hate many of you.

Only the ones with Twitter accounts. If you don’t have one of those, you’re fine. But if you do have one, there’s a good chance you said something which horribly offended me. You said everyone who believed X was an idiot and a Nazi, and I believed X. You read the title but not the body of an article about some group I care about, and viciously insulted them based on your misunderstanding of their position. You spent five seconds thinking of a clever dunk on someone who happened to be a friend of mine trying really hard to make the world better, and ruined their day.

Maybe the people who do these things think it’s all water under the bridge. It’s not. I block people on a hair trigger, which means that I’ll never see anything else you write, ever again. If you make one ill-considered “haha, aren’t people who think [your strawman of my position] so stupid”, then you can be as eloquent and scholarly as you want in everything else you write, and I will never get a chance to consider it or change my mind or feature your ideas on ACX.

I don’t just block you on Twitter. Until I forget who you are – which might take years – I get mildly upset every time I see your name. If someone links to an article you write, I’ll close it as soon as I recognize the byline. If you’re at some kind of real-life event I’m also attending, I’ll avoid you. I’ve had negative associations with whole political movements just because one of their members insulted a person I respect, in some especially unfair way. I’ve sometimes found myself being irrationally uncharitable to everyone named Albert or Allen or Alvin just because a totally different guy named Alfred was a jerk on Twitter.

This isn’t out of some kind of principle. It’s how my emotions naturally work. I think it’s a natural human urge, and a lot of other people work the same way.

Wow, Scott. I pretty much quit using Twitter because of this (well, in part because of this), but at least I don’t generalize from one jackass named Albert to everybody named Albert. At least, I don’t think I do that. I don’t have that quick a hair-trigger for blocking people either, although come to think of it, if I did, maybe I would enjoy Twitter more and spend more time over there.

But that’s not exactly what the post is about. The post is actually suggesting that when people imitate the style of confrontational journalists, they alienate practically everyone. That … may be true. It’s probably worth considering.

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Would you turn the page?

Here’s another of Rhamey’s posts where he presents the first page of a current bestseller and asks whether you would turn the page. I do like these posts, particularly since I absolutely never look at bestseller lists and therefore never have a clue what book or author the page might be from. I’ve seldom read anything by that author and therefore don’t generally have preconceived ideas about their writing.

Here’s the current entry:

A cottage on the rocky shoreline, with knotty pine floorboards and windows that are nearly always open. The smell of evergreens and brine wafting in on the breeze, and white linen drapes lifting in a lazy dance. The burble of a coffee maker, and that first deep pull of cold ocean air as we step out onto the flagstone patio, steaming mugs in hand.

My friends: willowy, honey-haired Sabrina and wisp of a waif Cleo, with her tiny silver septum piercing and dip-dyed box braids. My two favorite people on the planet since our freshman year at Mattingly College.

It still boggles my mind that we didn’t know one another before that, that a stodgy housing committee in Vermont matched the three of us up. The most important friendships in my life all came down to a decision made by strangers, chance. We used to joke that our living arrangement must be some government-funded experiment. On paper, we made no sense.

Sabrina was a born-and-raised Manhattan heiress whose wardrobe was pure Audrey Hepburn and whose bookshelves were stuffed with Stephen King. Cleo was the painter daughter of a semi-famous music producer and an outright famous essayist. She’d grown up in New Orleans and showed up at Mattingly in paint-splattered overalls and vintage Doc Martens.

And me, a girl from southern Indiana, the daughter of a teacher and a dentist’s receptionist…

I often admire a novel that begins with fragments. I don’t see that a lot, but when I do, I’m generally impressed with the prose. Nicola Griffith drew me instantly into The Blue Place when she opened in much this way, a book I loved in a trilogy I loved. Here’s Here’s my review of The Blue Place. Here’s my blog post about technique in The Blue Place. I see this book is still not available in ebook form. That’s a real shame. I will add that I love the other two books in this trilogy, Stay and Always even more than the first. Not only are they not available in ebook, the series isn’t linked together in a series page, and I always wonder what the heck is wrong with the publisher. I sort of had the impression that Griffith got the rights to these back, but if so, she hasn’t done anything with them yet. Maybe I’m wrong.

Anyway, let’s look at how Griffith opens The Blue Place:

An April night in Atlanta between thunderstorms: dark and warm and wet, sidewalks shiny with rain and slick with torn leaves and fallen azaliea blossoms. Nearly midnight. I had been walking for over an hour, covering four or five miles. I wasn’t tired. I wasn’t sleepy.

You would think that my bad dreams would be of the first man I had killed, thirteen years ago. Or if not him, then maybe the teenager who had burned to death in front of me because I was too slow to get the man with the match. But no, when I turn out the lights at ten o’clock and can’t keep still, can’t even bear to sit down in my Lake Claire house, it’s because I see again the first body I hadn’t killed.

This is really a great opening, better than the one above from Rhamey’s post, in my opinion. Of course I’m biased because I already know I love The Blue Place.

I’ve said this before, but when you open with sentence fragments that show the setting, that’s a way of pausing the action while painting the scene. It’s very effective, and not only in openings. I’ve said this before too, because this is the example that brought this technique to my attention, but Dickens uses the same technique to excellent effect in Great Expectations when Pip meets the convict. Hey, look, you can get the Audiobook of Great Expectations for $2.50 right now. I don’t know if that’s at all typical for classics, but there it is.

Meanwhile, back to the actual book from Rhamey’s post, whatever it is.

Here we have two sentence fragments to set the scene and then “we.” Then another pause as the narrator introduces her friends. Then the narrator’s voice actually comes into focus with “boggles the mind.” That phrase is a cliché, which is interesting on the first page of a bestseller. Hard to believe the author didn’t do that on purpose. I don’t know if that it’s a problem. That whole paragraph and the next sets the protagonist’s voice. I’m … not that interested so far. I don’t hate this, but I’m not very interested either.

I’m completely uninterested in anything marketed as literary or women’s fiction, which offhand is what this opening suggests, one or the other. Women’s fiction is a subset of literary, I guess. I haven’t thought about it because I don’t care. Either way, that’s what this opening makes me expect. Or maybe romance? If it’s literary, I would wonder if maybe the protagonist will burn down her life through obsession or something. If it’s romance, of course the plot arc will be much happier!

Just from the first page, sure, I would turn the page . Then I would read the description. This is a situation where the description and maybe reviews would make a lot of difference.

Let me see. Okay, most people are voting NOT to turn the page. Lots of votes for this one for some reason, many more than usual. Rhamey doesn’t much care for this opening. He points to lack of tension, to any hint of where the story might be going. He says there’s no tension in the entire first chapter. Well, I bet he’d like The Blue Place far better, but to me that sound promising! No tension! I’m fine with that!

The book is Happy Place by Emily Henry.

Vivid!

Here’s the description from Amazon:

A couple who broke up months ago pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.
 
Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college—they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now—for reasons they’re still not discussing—they don’t.
 
They broke up five months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.
 
Which is how they find themselves sharing a bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blissful week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.
 
Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week…in front of those who know you best?

Ah hah! A rom-com. I assume it’s a rom-com? They’re going to get back together, right? Probably they’re going to get back together. I’m looking at the reviews now. I’m specifically looking at the three-star reviews. Here’s one that makes up my mind for me, a three-star review by someone named Jennifer Collins, if you would like to look at the rest of the review.

I love Emily Henry. She’s a go to author for me. Lovers was literal perfection. I also love second chance. So it kills me that I didn’t overly enjoy this book. I have a huge pet peeve about relationships that end because one character knows what is best for the other WITHOUT HAVING A CONVERSATION! And that was the basis for this book. It examined the idea of happiness and what makes people happy. I got that. But the fact that Wynn decide what was best for Harriet and almost destroyed what was a strong love was infuriating. All of this would have been solved with a conversation.

Fine, that’s a huge pet peeve for me too, so I guess I won’t pick up a sample. I have a couple contemporary romances on my TBR pile you all recommended, and when I want a romance, I’ll pick one of those.

BUT, I would have turned the page. The lack of tension or story definitely does not bother me. I wonder what Rhamey and his commenters would say about From All False Doctrine? There’s a quiet opening with no visible tension, but it’s brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Also highly engaging, at least for me. I wonder if they would have said, “But there’s no story in the first chapter, there’s no tension.” Hard to say. These first page tests put readers in the mood to be highly critical.

Here’s my post about From All False Doctrine, which as you may recall was one of my very favorite novels that year.

Here, by way of parallelism with Happy Place and The Blue Place, is the first page of From All False Doctrine:

“It isn’t a question of actually believing the teaching,” said Elsa, drilling two neat holes in the sand with the heels of her shoes. “It’s whether or not they believe in the authenticity of the manuscript, that’s all.”

“Gosh, you had better hope that’s all,” said Harriet cheerfully. “It would be so tedious for you, wouldn’t it, to have your research interrupted every so often by cultists wanting to worship the thing you were studying? In my department, now, we don’t have such problems.”

“Good heavens, Harriet — you study money! All sorts of people worship that.”

“Oh, true. Have a grape while I consider a suitable riposte.” Harriet proffered the tin of green grapes that had been nestled on the blanket beside her.

They were seated in the shade of a large blue sun-umbrella — Harriet’s property, like the blanket and the grapes and the vacuum flask of iced tea and the basket that it had all been packed in. They had been there since noon; they had moved the umbrella several times to adjust their pool of shade, and the tea was nearly finished. The day had become blazingly hot, the sky arcing blue-white out over the lake, the water flashing in the sun.

Oh, yes, I still like this a lot, even though it opens not just quietly, but with dialogue — always risky. I remember now that the author is actually foreshadowing a lot of the plot in this chapter, even in the first sentences. So subtle and impressive! You know, I’m having trouble being in the mood to read ANYTHING. Maybe, in between revising Invictus and proofing the Tuyo World Companion, I will re-read this.

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Update: tedious revision is tedious, but pastries are good

Okay, so, earlier this week, I hit some stuff in Book Two of Invictus that badly needed to be set up properly in Book One. So I went back to Book One and found an appropriate place and dropped the setup in there.

And went back the next day and re-read that part and groaned, because MY GOD WHAT A COMPLETE INFODUMP. Six paragraphs! Six! Of straight infodumping, tucked into the middle of an important conversation. Ugh!

So I spent an entire morning integrating that information actually into the conversation, the way I should have done in the first place. But while I did that, I also realized I should really change the whole political situation under discussion. This is now a better setup, but naturally after that, I had to go back and forth through BOTH books, making sure this aspect of the political situation is the same all the way through. Or I hope I changed that bit everywhere; this is the kind of thing that introduces continuity errors.

This isn’t the super important political situation between the Ubezhishche and the Elysians, but it is a factor that determines the shape of that political situation AND a factor that is crucial in the endgame of the plot, so it does need to be correct all the way through.

So I finished that part and started moving forward again and what did I find at the top of chapter 16? You guessed it: [Take out summary, put in conversation]. SO I DID, but OMG can I just get through the plot climax? Because the relationship arc is fine! That’s been fine for a long time! If I can just smooth out the plot arc, I’ll be done except for very minimal tweaking. Aargh, revision is so annoying.

Well, I’m through that part now, so maybe I am indeed ready to move faster and more smoothly through the remaining four chapters. The last two are short relationship chapters that I’m sure (pretty sure) are in good shape. Almost there!

This bit about having to sort out the political situation to get the endgame to work gets at something interesting that I think Mary Catelli mentioned in the comments some time ago: setup vs foreshadowing. Are those two different things? Maybe? Or maybe they’re two different aspects of the same thing.

For setup, you need to drop brief (brief!) comments about the broader world into the early and middle part of the story. I don’t think it’s enough to have one offhand mention of something in the early part of the story if that thing is going to be crucial later. I think you need to remind the reader about the thing, whatever it is. An element of worldbuilding, a type of magic, the broader political landscape, an aspect of technology. Whatever it is, it can’t come out of nowhere in the endgame, and that means you need to mention it early, where hopefully it is interesting enough to stick in the reader’s mind but does not looks QUITE so fraught as a gun on the mantelpiece. Then, in a long novel, you need to mention it again later, at least once or maybe twice, so that the reader is reminded about this thing. Again, preferably the reader will think this is an interesting aspect of the world, but will not think OH HO, I SEE THE ENDGAME COMING. Or, if the reader does think, Oh ho, I bet that’s important, at the very least they should not see exactly how or why it’s important, especially not if it’s the single most important thing that’s coming up at the end.

Since INVICTUS is a duology, I think the setup is even more important. I’m trying to remember that I need to remind the reader in the second book about stuff that got mentioned in the first book, but carefully. I need to do it briefly and subtly enough that the reader doesn’t think, OH HO. Ideally, reminders should be barely noticed, but just enough to recall to mind something that was mentioned in the first book, but might not have stuck in the memory. This is all part of setup.

Foreshadowing … what exactly is foreshadowing besides setup?

I think one way to frame a possible difference is that foreshadowing is about action and decisions, while setup is about worldbuilding. They’re interdependent, though, because elements of worldbuilding are often crucial for the action and decisions that takes place in the climax. Foreshadowing is setting up the action so that when the protagonist or antagonist or anybody important does something important at the end, makes some kind of important decision, that clicks into place with a little of course feeling, even though the reader didn’t see that exact action or decision coming.

Not sure there’s really an important distinction between foreshadowing and setup, but to the extent there is, that might be part of it.

ANYWAY, lots of that kind of thing with INVICTUS.

Meanwhile!

I have also been doing other things, including continuing proofreading both the the World Companion and TASMAKAT. That’s a lot less annoying because in this particular case, I’m not super bored with either story. That’s a highly variable reaction. I don’t get bored with Tuyo-world novels nearly as easily as with other novels, so I’m a little bored with this, but not a lot bored. Last night I finished making the final tiny little tweaks to TASMAKAT based on MY final read-through. Tonight I will skim through Linda S.’s comments and fix anything she caught that I missed — just opening the file and glancing at it, I see she caught something right at the beginning that I think I didn’t get myself.

Ages ago, I destroyed the paperback file in order to be absolutely sure I didn’t accidentally upload it. (That happened once. Never again.) I have made lots of mostly very minor changes and corrections in the master file, which I have on three different flashdrives and two harddrives because I’m paranoid. Later, recently, I created a hardcover file in order to make sure the pages could be made to fit (barely, with small print). I’ve been fixing all typos in both the master file and the hardcover file, which is of course tedious. After correcting everything Linda found, I’ll re-create the paperback file, which will be a whole different order of magnitude of tedium, but I’m much more efficient about that than I used to be, so it probably won’t take more than an hour or so. I should do all that this afternoon and possibly tomorrow.

I will have days and days to spare before the final version must be uploaded! Which is July 11th. You have to have the final files uploaded four days in advance of the preorder release date. I cannot believe how fast this is coming up. For a book with a looooong lead time, wow, I will once again be loading final files just a couple weeks before the release date. Of course I was doing a lot of other things during the past months.

I don’t know whether the World Companion will be released just before or somewhat after TASMAKAT. It depends on the maps at this point. Either they’ll be ready in time to release the Companion before July 15th or they won’t. We’ll see. The book, by the way, is now up to 115,000 words. This always seems to happen, so I’m not exactly surprised. Though I’m still (STILL!) moving sections around, I’m getting pretty well set to decide they’re in a decent order. I made a paper copy for my mother to proofread and so that I can look at the order of the sections again in a different format.

I’m proofreading the actual story, “Returning Hokino’s Knife.” Early comments have been quite positive and I’m feeling good about this novella. I’m finding a lot to tweak, but very small tweaks. It’s going to come out at just about 38,000 words, or about 120 pages or something like that. It’s a good length, but by no means takes over the World Companion, so I think that’s about right.

Meanwhile, I am pursuing an unusual task that needs to be finished prior to release of the World Companion: I’m testing the handful of recipes that are included. These are mostly recipes I have made before, often many times. However, I don’t really follow recipes as such, so I feel I had better make them again, this time following the recipes carefully, just to make sure everything is at least edible and ideally tasty. Hanneke, who proofread (various versions of) the World Companion mentions a problem where cinnamon can be bitter if boiled in liquid or cooked too long in liquid or something, which I have never noticed at all, and I just made one of the recipes this past weekend and did not notice that happening at all. I’m usually sensitive to bitter flavors — Red Delicious apples are distinctly bitter to me, for example. I think the recipe is fine, but I took a sample to my mother, who is a supertaster for some compounds. She didn’t detect bitterness either. I think it’s fine.

BUT, and this is the actual point, wow, do I have a great pastry recipe in the World Companion.

I made these pastries a couple weeks ago and they were so good that I immediately made them again this past week, and you know what, I think I may just make something based on this recipe every week for the rest of my life. Since this recipe is just outstanding, I’m going to share it with you all here, minus a little bit of commentary that relates the recipe to the books and plus a little bit of other commentary.

Almond-Apricot Pastries

Now, as we enter this recipe, I want to say that (a) this may look complicated or difficult, but (b) it is NOT COMPLICATED OR DIFFICULT AT ALL. Yes, there are multiple steps spread out over multiple days. But all the steps are easy, and when you get to the part where you put the pastries together and bake them, that is so quick and easy that I have literally made these pastries for breakfast every day for four days running and then I take two pastries to my mother and stroll back to my house and eat mine, with about five minutes of work per morning not counting rising or baking time. They would definitely be special enough for an Occasion, but they’re easy enough to make four times a week on weekday mornings, is what I am trying to indicate here.

I got this recipe from a book by Julia Child called Baking with Julia. Many of the recipes in this book ARE complicated or difficult, and unfortunately, in my opinion (Sorry, Julia!) they are often written in a way that makes them hard to follow. That is, directions that ought to be in a bulleted list are instead buried in paragraphs. Also, half the recipe is way back there in “making dough for Danish pastries” and the rest of the recipe is over here in “making Danish pastry,” and really? Who designed this book, anyway?

So, let me start off by giving you a flowchart that will set you up to spend no more than fifteen minutes per day.

Day 1: Make the pastry dough – 5 minutes or so. Chill overnight.

Day 2: Roll out (laminate) the pastry dough – 15 minutes or less. (I set a timer to check and I think, even if you’re not used to rolling out dough, it should still take you less than 15 minutes to do this.) Chill overnight.

Day 3: Make the apricot filling – 5 minutes. Make the almond filling – 5 minutes. Make the pastry cream – 5 minutes.

Day 4 through Day 7: Make four pastries each morning – 5 minutes, plus 25 minutes rising time, plus 10 minutes baking time.

Or of course you could make all 16 pastries at once, but the (only) downside to this recipe is that these pastries are dramatically better fresh. They are best warm, excellent at room temperature, but after 12 hours I would probably feed them to the dogs and make fresh ones. Granted, I am a food snob in some ways and also I have a lot of dogs, but still, these pastries are a lot better fresh than they are left over.

Anyway, presuming that the above does not look too offputting, here is how you make these pastries:

Make the pastry dough

¼ C warm water2½ tsp active dry yeast1/2 C milk, room temp1 egg, room temp1/4 C sugar1 tsp salt2 1/2 C flour2 sticks cold unsalted butter, cut in 1/4 inch slices

Put the water in a bowl, sprinkle with the yeast, and let set for a minute. Add milk, egg, sugar, and salt and whisk to combine. You know how you can bring an egg to room temp in a hurry? Microwave the milk until it is very warm but not actually boiling, crack the egg into the milk, and wait five minutes. You can do this while letting the yeast set with the water. Then pour the milk and egg into the bowl with the yeast, add the sugar and salt, and whisk.

Put the flour in a food processor and drop in the butter pieces. Pulse ten or fifteen times. You don’t want the butter to disappear. You want fairly biggish pebbles of butter. But it doesn’t really matter, honestly. Small bits, bigger bits, it’s going to work fine either way, and I’m not sure this is adequately stressed in recipes of this kind. Julia Child is very stern about the size of the butter pieces, but I swear, it does not matter how big they are. This pastry will be absolutely fantastic whether the butter bits are rather smallish or quite largish at this stage.

Pour the flour mixture into the bowl with the yeast mixture and fold in rather gently. You don’t want to be so vigorous the butter actually gets all the way mixed in. You want the butter in bits because this leads to a flaky pastry. Just stir gently until the flour mixture is fairly uniformly moistened. Don’t fret – however you do it, it will work fine.

Cover and chill the dough overnight or for a couple of days, until you are ready to continue.

Laminate the pastry dough

This pastry dough is pretty easy to work with; not particularly likely to stick, just basically a cooperative, simple dough. I do dust the work surface with flour again before each lamination.

So, turn out the chilled dough onto a lightly floured surface, pat into a rough square, roll out to a square about 16 inches to a side. Or so. There’s no need to be obsessive about this either. Julia Child says a French rolling pin is best. Well, whatever. I used my marble rolling pin, but you could use a wine bottle if you wanted. I’ve rolled out pastry dough with a wine bottle before. It honestly does not matter what you use. Dust both sides with flour periodically if necessary to keep it from sticking, but this is not a difficult dough.

Fold your squarish dough in thirds like you’re folding up a business letter to put it in an envelope. This will produce a narrow rectangle.

Roll this rectangle into a long, thin rectangle, like 24-inch by 10-inch or so. Fold in thirds again, this time forming a square.

Roll out to a 20-inch square (or so). Fold in thirds to form another narrow rectangle.

Roll out into another long, thin rectangle. Fold in thirds once more to form a square. You’re done! Wrap the flat square of dough in plastic wrap and chill again. You can hold the dough at this stage for days. What I suggest is, you’ve got this flat square of dough. Cut it in quarters right now and wrap each piece separately. You can use one piece at a time every day to make four pastries each day.

Rolling out a quarter of the dough at a time also takes less space and is easier, so you may choose to roll it out a quarter at a time even if you are going to make all sixteen pastries at once.

But before you can finish the pastries, you need to make the fillings, so after you put the laminated dough in the fridge to chill, make the fillings. Although! You could ALSO skip the filling and make sixteen croissants with this dough and that also would be great! If you’re not into sweets, then you might want to try that.

Apricot filling

I tend to be generous with the filling and run out, particularly because my mother likes a lot of apricot filling in her pastries, so this makes a lot. If you have some left over, I expect you can find something to do with it, even if that’s just swirling it into vanilla ice cream, which would be very good, by the way. Anyway, if you don’t want filling left over, make half this recipe.

2 C dried apricots – generous cups, so pack them in there.2 C granulated sugar2 C water4 Tbsp lemon juice, preferably fresh squeezed, but bottled is fine1 tsp almond extract

Pour the water and sugar over the apricots in a microwavable bowl. Microwave ten minutes, stirring now and then. Pour this mixture into a food processor and puree. Add the lemon juice and almond extract. Cool and then chill to store. Stores at least a week in the refrigerator, probably longer.

 Almond filling

1 C blanched almonds, raw or toasted1/2 C powdered sugar2 Tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature1/2 tsp almond extract1 egg whites, beaten

Are the almonds already toasted? No? Toast them. The way you toast nuts is to preheat the oven to 350 F, spread the almonds or any other nuts on a baking sheet, bake three minutes, shake and stir the almonds or other nuts around on the baking sheet, bake another minute, stir, maybe one more minute and stir again. Time will depend on how big the pieces are, so slivered blanched almonds don’t take as long as walnut halves. When the nuts are a little golden and smell fragrant, they’re done. Pour them out on a plate to cool because if you leave them on the baking sheet, they may burn. Or in this recipe, just pour them into the food processor and let them cool there.

Toasting the almonds is by far the longest step involved in making the almond filling.

Place almonds, sugar, and butter in food processor and puree. Add the almond extract and beaten egg white and process again. There you go. Doesn’t matter whether you process this mixture all the way smooth or not. Any texture is fine. Stores at least a week in the refrigerator, probably longer.

Pastry cream

1 C cream1 1/2 Tbsp cornstarch1/4 C sugar1 egg yolk1 tsp vanilla

When I think of making pastry cream on the stovetop, I could cry. This method is so much simpler and quicker. I can’t believe I never saw this recipe before in Baking with Julia. It’s worth buying the book just to get this recipe, or it would be except I’m providing it here. By the way, did you know that no recipe is copyrightable? The ingredients list is never copyrightable unless something about the list is weird. Only the words that are used to present the recipe, the directions and how you chat with the reader and all that sort of thing, are copyrighted. I think it’s nice to credit the author from whom you got the recipe, but there is no copyright issue involved and I just thought I would share that tidbit with you in case you ever want to present a recipe in public. You can, but you need to use different words in the description, and I expect that is why all food bloggers have such personal, chatty styles.

Anyway:

Combine the egg yolk and vanilla. Whisk together in a small bowl.

Combine the cream, cornstarch and sugar. Whisk together.

Microwave 1 minute. Whisk. Microwave 1 minute. Whisk. Microwave 1 more minute. Whisk.

Add a spoonful of the hot cream mixture to the egg yolk mixture and whisk. Add the egg yolk mixture back to the larger part of the cream mixture and whisk. Microwave 30 seconds. There you go, you are done. Cool and then chill to store.

Finish the pastries

This is the fun part! Not that the earlier parts are disagreeable, but this is when you get to actually eat pastries.

Option A: Roll out the dough to a 20-inch square. Trim the edges so you have a straight-edged square. Collect the trimmings and pat into a disk because you can chill it again, roll it out again, and make another set of pastries. They won’t be as flaky, but you know what, they’ll still be good. Cut your neatened square into nine to sixteen squares depending on how much you just trimmed off the edges.

Option B: Roll out one-quarter of the dough to about a 10-inch square, don’t bother trimming, cut in quarters with a pizza roller or knife, and make four pastries.

Beat an egg white and have that handy in a little bowl.

Top each square with a tablespoon of apricot filling. Add a tablespoon of almond filling OR the pastry cream on top of the apricot filling.

Paint two opposite corners of the square with the beaten egg white—you can just use your fingertip—and fold those corners over the middle with the points overlapping. Press fairly firmly to seal and get a little filling to show at each end.

If you are making just four pastries, the rough edges will not show if you fold up the pastries the right way. Paint the nice triangular corner with egg white, fold in the opposite corner, fold over the triangular corner, and pinch firmly to seal. The rougher edges are now hidden by the straighter edges, which is yet another bonus to doing four at a time.

Either way, place the finished pastries on parchment-lined baking sheets, cover with kitchen towels, and let rest at warm room temperature for 25 minutes. If it’s cold, then turn on your oven for two minutes, turn it off, and let the pastries rise in your now-warm oven. The pastry isn’t supposed to double, but it should look a little puffy. If you can’t tell whether it’s puffy, that’s fine, they always turn out great.

After 25 minutes, take the pastries out of the oven and preheat the oven to 400 F. The pastries will finish rising while the oven preheats. Bake the pastries for 8-10 minutes, until lightly golden. When I make these, I spin my baking sheets around after 8 minutes because my oven is hotter at the front than at the back, then bake the pastries another 3 minutes for a total of 11 minutes. Every oven has its quirks, so adjust as necessary.

Cool the pastries on racks and serve warm. Or cool to room temperature, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and serve later that day. Very much best the day they’re made, preferably served within a few hours.

These are REALLY REALLY good. I hope I have emphasized that enough. They are easy and they are excellent and you should all try making them, except Craig, who can count on having me make them next time he visits and therefore may prefer that option.

Okay, I’m now going back to the revision of INVICTUS and the very final proofing of TASMAKAT.

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Ranking CJC’s Oeuvre: SF

Okay, now for the hard one. CJ Cherryh has written a whoooole lot of SF. As with her fantasy, it ranges from practically perfect to books I frankly find disappointing and even forgettable. A wide range of quality regardless, always noting that these rankings are all my personal opinion, but it’s a pretty strong opinion! But I expect disagreement!

Also, she has three different novels or series that are sort of SF, but read like Fantasy (as Mike S. pointed out in the comments of the other post). There are so many SF novels that I unilaterally decided to shove all three into the fantasy post, so they’re not here, they’re there in the earlier post.

I used to think that I preferred Cherryh’s fantasy to her SF. I remember thinking that when I heard or read something about how her SF is better than her fantasy. Well, as I’ve created these posts, I’ve changed my mind and now agree with basically everyone else: I do think that almost all of Cherryh’s best work is SF, not fantasy.

Once more I’m going to go from the best to the worst. It’s going to take a LOT longer to get to novels I really did not care for. The ones at the top all the way through the middle are amazingly good.

1. Cuckoo’s Egg. In the previous post, I said that I thought few readers would agree with me that Paladin belonged at the top, and whoops, I was wrong, a lot of you did agree! We’ll see what happens this time. I think few readers have ever encountered this story compared to Cherryh’s better-known works and therefore I don’t think most people would put it the top. Also, on the surface, I think Cuckoo’s Egg looks less ambitious than Downbelow Station or Cyteen, though actually I’m not sure that’s true. I think Cherryh was trying to do something different and interesting in this story, and I think she succeeded perfectly.

This very short novel does so much in its scant wordcount. Really, it’s astounding. Also, the story is perfect. That’s also astounding as well. Oh, I see it was a Hugo nominee. I didn’t know that. Good taste among people making nominations that year. That was a ways back; Cuckoo’s Egg came out in 1985. I’m glad to see it’s collected in this ebook linked here.

This story includes a lot of tropes I absolutely love, re-cast into an alien society that is a lot like a human society, but not quite. The last line has a great deal of quiet impact. I just love this story — you can probably tell — and I personally think it makes a great introduction to Cherryh’s work: It’s short, it’s compelling, it shows her facility with alien species and her proclivity for throwing one human into an alien society — she does that a lot — and it is SO MUCH MORE APPROACHABLE than Downbelow Station, it’s hard to express. Honestly the two stories are so different they might as well be in different genres. I get that Downbelow Station is the one people think of, but it sure isn’t the one I’d put at the top. In fact, you can see from this list how far down I personally put Downbelow Station. I’ll explain why when I get there.

2. Foreigner: (2nd trilogy) Precursor, Defender, Explorer. This is the arc that includes the largely defunct station and the kyo. The Foreigner series is my favorite long-running SF series by a mile and this is my favorite arc in the whole series. Could you actually start here? … I’m not sure I would recommend that, but probably. Cherryh is pretty good at working in reminders for the important events; every now and in this long series she includes a long recap in the form of a letter or something.

Regardless, is it worth reading the initial trilogy to get to this one? ABSOLUTELY.

3. “The Scapegoat.” This novella always brings me to tears. I find it very effective. It’s also one of Cherryh’s attempts to show how difficult it can be to grasp the viewpoint of an alien, or for an alien to grasp the human viewpoint. First published in an anthology of three novellas by the name Alien Stars; now available in ebook form, thankfully, in a collection just called “The Collected Short Fiction of CJ Cherryh.” This collection includes the stories from Sunfall, the stories from Visible Light, and various other stories, including “The Scapegoat.”

I didn’t realize this collection existed until now. Reviews are saying it’s a mixed bag. Well, yes, that’ll happen in a largeish collection of short stories and novellas. IMO it’s worth picking up just for “The Scapegoat,” and if you like other stories as well, that’s a bonus.

4. Foreigner: (5th trilogy) Intruder, Protector, Peacemaker. Lots of Cajeiri. The shadow guild is decisively defeated. Fun times, fun times! I like this part of the overall series a lot. I mean, really, a lot.

5. Chanur’s Legacy. This is the one where Hilfy is the main focus, and it is a great story. I was surprised how much I liked it the first time I read it. I hadn’t been especially fond of Hilfy. But this novel is fast, fun, with high stakes that keep rising, AND Cherryh actually made me like the stsho, a species I largely disregarded in the original Chanur quadrilogy. Plus, I love what Cherryh did with the kif in this book. Plus the young male hani who carries part of the point of view. Honestly, this is a great story!

6. The Chanur trilogy: Chanur’s Venture, The Kif Strike Back, Chanur’s Homecoming: This is a single story that follows the first book, Pride of Chanur.. It’s great. Seriously. It’s fairly fast and definitely high tension, but I trusted Cherryh to bring the story to a fantastic conclusion. She delivered. There’s a line near the ending … let me see if I can remember it well enough to quote it … it’s another ship’s captain defending Pyanfar and her people.

This captain snarls to all those who are collectively making themselves an obstacle, “Look at ’em, you say! They’ve got mud on ’em, must be them as brought the flood! And you never seeing they’ve been holding up the gods-be timbers!”

Great scene, wonderful scene! And very high tension because there’s significant risk that the hani species may be wiped out if people don’t get their tails in gear and take effective action right that minute. This moment is the impetus that leads to a handful of male hani going to space — because if all the males are on one planet and that planet gets destroyed, whoa, that’s it.

Lots to love in this excellent, intense, series, which is actually introduced in –>

7. Pride of Chanur. This is the original book, a standalone. As you see, I think the series gets better and better, but it’s great right from the start. The aliens are just about the very best aliens in all of SF as far as I’m concerned. That is, they’re not the most inhuman. Well, the methane breathers are up there. But the kif and the mahendo’sat — and of course the hani — are understandable without being human. The hani are based on lions, as you probably know. Not sure the kif or mahendo’sat are based on any recognizable animal. I didn’t recognize them. Plus of course there is one human, but we never see through his eyes. Anyway, a great book. This series offers a splendid introduction to Cherryh’s science fiction.

8. Foreigner: (4th trilogy) Conspirator, Deceiver, Betrayer. This is the arc where Bren is the tremendously skilled and quite powerful diplomat who sorts things out on the west coast. I love this arc, not least because Bren has ENTIRELY come into his own. This is captured best in the cover here:

Look at that! Bren Cameron, Badass Diplomat, here to solve problems or else. This is really a wonderful arc in the series, which should tell you something about how much I love all the stories and novels above this.

9. Cyteen / Regenesis. For crying out loud, what is wrong with publishers? The first book is not available in ebook form and not linked to the second book on a series page. I bet if CJC tried to get rights back, she probably could, and I wish she would do that and bring out an ebook edition. Who brought out the sequel? DAW. Well, why don’t they make an effort to get the rights to the first book as well? No doubt there’s a story there.

Anyway, about the books. Look. I realize the creation of the azi says uncomfortable things about that society. And the manipulation of a little kid in order to try to re-create her clone mother, very iffy thing to do. But I love, love, love Cyteen.

I mean, not all of Cyteen. When I re-read it, which I have done many times, I skim or entirely skip through the front part, picking up when Baby Ari is born, and read the novel from there. At that point, we begin a wonderful story with a great child protagonist (among others; quite a variety of points of view in this epic SF story). We follow Young Ari as she grows up and takes power in Resuene, following her clone mother. We also follow Justin (most important secondary character) as he grows into himself after a really tough beginning.

I love Young Ari, I love her azi, I love Justin and Grant, I’m even moderately fond of a few of the other characters, such as Yanni. And you know what makes me happy? That Regenesis exists. Did Cyteen need a sequel? Not really. Did we actually need to know who killed Old Ari? Not really. Finding that out is by far the least important thing that happens in the sequel. Did we need to get the political situation sorted out? I guess. But none of that is important to me. What *I* like is that in Regenesis, Young Ari, Justin, Grant, and various other people all get their lives sorted out and get set up for a proper happily-ever-after. THANK YOU, YES, THIS PLEASE. After a long, tense story where a lot of people have to struggle really hard to overcome serious problems, let us by ALL MEANS have an extended epilogue where they do overcome all those problems and get set to move forward into much better lives!

You know what my favorite scene in Regenesis is? The part where Young Ari shows Justin and Grant around the small new apartment complex. I’m a sucker for the coming home to a home you’ve never seen before scene.

10. Foreigner: (6th trilogy) Tracker, Visitor, Convergence. This is the trilogy where Bren gets things under control on the station and then visits Mospheira as the powerful representative of the the aji. It’s great fun. He’s still very much at the top of his game, and this time he gets to demonstrate that to his own people.

11. Foreigner: (3rd trilogy) Destroyer, Pretender, Deliverer. This is the arc after Bren and everyone return from meeting the kyo and discovers that Tabini-aji got deposed and they have to deal with the shadow guild and get Tabini back in power. It’s fine, but it’s by no means my favorite part of the series.

12. Voyager in Night. This is not one I think many people would put at the top. It’s not at the top for me either. But I really liked it. But I have to say, I’m not sure I should. Parts of it are grim, and the resolution is pretty ambiguous.

13. Merchanter’s Luck. I really like this as well. Putting people in such grim circumstances doesn’t always work for me, but the overall arc did in this one. I wasn’t sure why, so I poked around, looking for reviews of this one, and found a fantastic review on Goodreads, which I’m going to quote here because I can’t possibly say anything better than this about Merchanter’s Luck:

The rest of the novel is about the lingering echoes of Sandor’s family catastrophe, about how something resembling post-traumatic stress disorder can screw with a man’s head the rest of his life, and about how hard it is to look past all of these things to find love and trust. It’s a book about desperate love. In a few of Cherryh’s trademark clipped, condensed paragraphs in the first pages, she paints a picture of a young man on the edge of life, scarred by a horrific tragedy in his youth, eking out a living in the shadow of the big players of Downbelow Station. That novel made a big splash in the early 80s, and I read it, but this story is the one that stuck in my mind for thirty years. I come back to it over and over because of the tone Cherryh puts into it, because of the way she expertly balances the yearning in Sandor against his fear of betrayal, his pride, his survivor’s guilt, the secrets and ghosts (metaphorical) that are all he has left. Sandor is a victim who doesn’t realize he’s a victim, so he behaves like a hero and then is surprised when people say nice things about him.

Okay, so … if you haven’t read this book, that’s what it’s about. Moving on:

14. The Faded Sun trilogy

I love this trilogy. I loved this story when I first read it as a kid and I love it now. It’s one of Cherryh’s trademarked stories where she throws a single human into an alien society. She does that a lot, as I’m sure you’ve realized. Here we do get the human’s point of view some of the time. And the society is not quite as different. But you know, in some ways it is pretty different. The people don’t look as different as the hani of the Chanur series or the shonunin of Cuckoo’s Egg, but their society is at least as different — more different, really.

I may not need to say this, but the Faded Sun trilogy is VERY VERY SLOW. The first book is setup. The second book is … more setup. You have to enjoy the character stories and the slow (slooooow) build or I can’t see why you’d bother. The third book then crashes to a close, much faster paced and much more intense. Wait, intense in a different way. The whole thing is intense.

And now we have a break!

We are now leaving the books I just love and entering the category of books I like less. Do you see how long that took? How many books are above this line? Wow. I’m just saying. I hadn’t realized myself how many books are crowded into the top of CJC’s oeuvre for me.

***

15. Foreigner: (1st trilogy) Foreigner, Invader, Inheritor. I like this. I really do, but it’s veeeery slow to get moving and also, if you start at the beginning and read the whole series in one go, there are some inconsistencies that become apparent between this initial trilogy and the rest of the series. Also, Jase is so unhappy for so long, which makes parts of this trilogy a slog. Also, there’s no Cajeiri yet. What with one thing and another, this is not my favorite part of the series. It’s almost my least favorite part of the series. When I last re-read the Foreigner series, I actually started somewhere in the second trilogy, I don’t remember where, but I stepped past this entire trilogy.

If you were really starting for the first time, sure, read this. Treat the entire first book as a prologue. I mean, I know there’s a prologue. Just treat the ENTIRE first book as ANOTHER prologue and you will probably be more patient as you work your way into the world. Which is very much worth doing. Seriously.

16. Hunter of Worlds. There is so much about power relationships here. Power relationships with huge disparities of power. The iduve have complete power over the people they rule, the kallia, who are very definitely slaves. There are also the amaut, who are also subordinate but much less humanoid, and way, way over yonder, the edge of human space. Humans are unknown, basically, and guess what we have here? That’s right, a single human who has been acquired by a specific iduve. This iduve has also acquired, very much against his will, a particular kallia, whom she intends to use to understand the human via an involuntary mindlink … wow, this sounds awful.

It is awful, pretty much. And yet … this story is also about building friendship and trust. And accommodating huge power disparities without losing yourself. And the importance of powerless people in achieving good outcomes. The outcomes, I will add, are in fact good, or at least much better than they might be.

This is a story I see as an early attempt to do something like Chanur and something like Foreigner. It’s not the same as either. It’s pretty successful on its own terms. The things Cherryh does with language here are really interesting; language is an intrinsic part of the worldbuilding. I actually like this book quite a bit. But not nearly as much as Chanur or Foreigner.

Let’s have another break!

***

Okay, here are the books I don’t actually like that much.

17. Serpent’s Reach. One human among aliens, sort of. I don’t like the protagonist very much at all. The aliens are fine, I guess. I’m somewhat bored with hive-mind aliens. Actually, I’m a lot bored with hive-mind aliens. There are lots of them and they’re all the same and I don’t believe in any of them and … and … what can I say? Even though I do think Cherryh’s hive aliens are much better handled than is generally the case, and even though I liked this book, I honestly did not like it that much.

If I ever create hive aliens, they will tilt everything about this trope hard sideways. I would enjoy doing that.

18. 40,000 in Gehenna. I know some of you are going to put this much, much higher. (Hi, Pete!) The problem for me is that this story is … diffuse. It is the story of a colony, not of a person, or even people. We follow one person and then another and we keep going through the generations and this is interesting, but it is not actually very engaging. I mean, for me. Particularly since a lot of people we follow are basically unhappy.

I like the part with the mature colony the best, the part where two competing models of human/Caliban society are pitted against each other and the nicer society wins.

18. Port Eternity. The Camelot theme was a little much for me. But I loved Mordred. Oh, and this may be the wackiest idea CJC ever came up with, so there’s that. It’s pretty darn wacky for any SF novel. But I did love Mordred.

19. Rimrunners. I liked this story, which is about … I don’t know. Loyalty, including loyalty after people have failed you pretty badly. Some grim stuff in the backstory that is echoing forward in the present-day story. I like how this works out, but I found some of it tough going.

20. Foreigner: (7th trilogy) Emergence, Resurgence, Divergence. This is the trilogy where CJC forgets how she handled Nomari, an important secondary character, at the end of Emergence and completely misses her step as she opens Resurgence. AARGH. She recovers somewhat in Divergence, but not really. Plus nothing could really smooth out the huge, glaring discontinuity between Emergence and Resurgence, which was an outrageous mistake that should never have made it into the final draft.

Not that I have strong feelings or anything.

21. Finity’s End. I’ve only read it once and don’t remember it well. But I think I liked it?

One more Break!

***

These are books I honestly do not like or don’t remember at all.

22. Brothers of Earth. This book is interesting. It’s one of Cherryh’s early “throw one human into a terrible situation in an alien society and see how that works out.” It is therefore similar to so many others. Hunter of Worlds, Cuckoo’s Egg, Foreigner, Chanur, they all have this basic setup, though they’re very different in other ways. However, in this one (a) really horrible stuff happens, like practically everyone getting killed except the lead characters. And (b) I just don’t like it very much, even aside from point (a). Honestly, I’d rather re-read this than Downbelow Station, though.

23. Heavy Time / Hellburner. I’ve read them twice, but I don’t particularly like this duology. Too grim, far too claustrophobic. Things do work out, but the PTSD part is hard to take. What time is it? — aargh. But I’d rather re-read these than Downbelow Station.

24. Downbelow Station. Yes, it won the Hugo. I don’t like it. It’s too big and impersonal. Too many points of view, too many I don’t care about. Way too much about the political situation, none of which I care about. I’ve read it twice, but I ought to just give away my copy because I am never going to re-read it.

25. Forge of Heaven. The discontinuity between this book and the prequel, Hammerfall, in the previous post, was so immense that I could not get into this book. I was not interested, I could not get interested, I remember nothing about it except my complete lack of interest and something about social influencers. That’s it.

26. Tripoint. Like Finity’s End, I’ve only read it once and don’t remember it well. But I think I didn’t really like it?

27. Alliance Rising. I haven’t ever read it, and given my disinterest in Downbelow Station and the fairly crappy reviews, I doubt I ever will.

28. Hestia. I know I’ve read this at least twice, but I don’t remember it AT ALL. Complete blank. I’m putting it at the bottom because I guess it was super forgettable for me.

WHEW.

That is A LOT. Half the books and series above are in the “REALLY LOVE IT” category, then another chunk in the “Still like it quite a bit” category. I honestly feel I should probably go re-read Tripoint and especially Hestia.

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