Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 7

Fairy Tales

The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn” (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially “escapist,” nor “fugitive.” In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief. It is the mark of a good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the “turn” comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality.

The above is from Tolkien’s essay, as I’m sure you all know. It’s hard to beat, which is why everyone quotes this bit.

Here is a post at Patricia Wrede’s blog: Modern vs. Period Fairy Tale Retelling

I saw this post and at once thought, as one does, of Tolkien’s essay. I think there are three types of fairy tales today: period retellings, modern retellings, and original fairy tales that aren’t retellings. I like all kinds … and then Patricia Wrede goes in an entirely different direction with her post. I didn’t see this coming at all:

But for every successful retelling, updating, revision, or reimagining, there’s another that misses the mark completely. Using a fairy tale as the basis for a novel is not a guarantee of success. It’s not even a guarantee that the novel will be as good as the fairy tale. Whether it works depends on what the writer does with it, and there are more pitfalls to navigate than one might think.

Fascinating! There are some fairy tale retellings and original fairy tales I like, and some I don’t like, but I’ve never thought of categorizing any of them as “missed the mark.” What would that even mean? Missed the point of the fairy tale? Failed to capture the fairy tale tone? I could see either of those being failure modes. What does Wrede have in mind? She means, at least in part, departing from the original so far that the story morphs into something unrecognizable:

On the other hand, reimagining may mean ignoring plot as well as period. A modern story in which Cinderella is the youngest sister of a poor family, who transforms into a fiery revolutionary when her siblings are mistreated, and who ends up hunted by the FBI after blowing up a major gala is barely recognizable as the story that inspired it.

I wouldn’t call that “barely recognizable.” I would call it “not based on the fairy tale,” and I would say that a story can easily be inspired by something, but depart from that thing so massively that it is not remotely based on the thing. I think that happens all the time. We may have different ideas of what it means to be inspired by something.

A few books, such as Peg Kerr’s The Wild Swans, manage to have it both ways by using two story threads—one a historical retelling, one a modern-day (or nearly) one. Some modern retellings work by making the magical/monarchical elements part of a “hidden world” that operates either in secret alongside the real one, or on a completely different, magical-supernatural plane that’s only accessible under specific conditions.

I though Kerr pulled that story off rather well. I can’t think of any modern retellings that do it by inserting a hidden world into the modern world. Wrede doesn’t name an example. Can anybody think of this, and did it work for them?

I have a whole category on my Kindle: Beauty and the Beast retellings. I haven’t read most of them, of course. Maybe someday. I also particularly like The Twelve Dancing Princesses; I don’t know why. I like The Six Swans, but that may be because of the Sevenwaters books. The first is stellar, and then I loved the second book, but didn’t love the third, and didn’t go on with the series. Probably I should (among so many other books I should go on with.

Side note: Look at this:

The chieftains of Sevenwaters have long been custodians of a vast and mysterious forest?and a new heir has been born. But the family?s joy turns to despair when the baby is taken, and something unnatural is left in his place. To reclaim her newborn brother, Clodagh must enter the shadowy Otherworld and confront the powerful prince who rules there?

What the heck are those ? doing there? I’ll tell you why: inexcusable publisher carelessness. This is Ace, and they should be ashamed of themselves. I suppose correcting the description of a 17-year-old book is too much trouble.

My all-time favorite is Beauty by Robin McKinley — an easy choice, even though I think the ending is weak. There are lots of editions with lots of different covers. This is the one from my library:

I don’t much like the current cover, with two red roses on a midnight-dark blank background. I get that’s visible as a thumbnail. Regardless, it’s all wrong for the tone of the story.

If you’ve got a favorite fairy tale and a favorite retelling of that fairy tale, what is it?

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Stories about Making Amends

At Reactor, from James Davis Nicholl, Five SFF Stories About Making Amends

At least one weird choice for this post: Carrie. What we have here is a story where someone tries to make amends and it all goes wrong and ends in tragedy and horror. Why in the world did Nicholl pick this as one of FIVE stories that center “making amends”? This theme neither centers the story nor actually leads to anything good. This makes me thoroughly suspicious about the other four books in this post, although one sounds interesting:

Numamushi: A Fairy Tale by Mina Ikemoto Ghosh 

Nicholl describes the book thus: Years ago, the great river snake loved a human woman. The romance ended in madness and murder. Therefore, when the snake saw a burned human child float by, he did not eat the infant. The snake rescued the baby, named him Numamushi, and raised the boy as best he could. Back when he was a priest, Mizukiyo cajoled young men into joining a pointless war. A surprise inheritance—a mansion abandoned for years after gruesome murders—allowed Mizukiyo to hide from the world. Nevertheless, he is happy to befriend the odd boy, Numamushi. Through no intent of his own, Mizukiyo is the old snake’s doom. How can the former priest make amends for making Numamushi an orphan?

I know snakes are not known for their parenting skills, but the great snake is an unusual snake, perhaps even a local god of sorts. In any case, the book’s title does say it’s “A Fairy Tale,” which allows for some liberties with herpetology.

***

I will just mention that this is a novella, with a high price, and one does wonder about the decisions the publisher made here. The reviews are stellar, but even so.

What are some books that, unlike Carrie, actually DO center the theme of making amends, of trying to make up for having done something awful or making some serious mistake? This is different from centering forgiveness, because an attempt to make amends should not be joined to an effort to demand forgiveness. Making amends is something the perpetrator of a wrong does; forgiveness is something the victim of a wrong offers, or otherwise.

I can think of a couple. Oh, and look here, there’s an entire list on Goodreads. I fear most of those are probably a certain kind of romance, and in that case, that isn’t really what I’m talking about, because in 100% of them, the guy makes a mistake and then grovels trying to make up for it and true love emerges from the wreckage, and this plot isn’t very appealing to me personally.

Nikoles centers the idea of seeking to make amends.

The book that leaped to mind for me even though I’ve never read it is The Book of the New Sun. I know that Severian is banished because he helped someone kill herself instead of torturing her to death, and that he feels he needs to atone for this, and this idea has stuck with me because it’s so appalling when you set it out like that. I know the story is supposed to be a masterpiece. No doubt it is.

Crime and Punishment is another, surely. Again, I haven’t read it, I just know in the broadest possible terms what it’s about. I do regret never taking a class on Russian lit while I was in school, because I would have liked to read this book, and I doubt I ever will. I know I could. But it’s just not likely to happen.

Maybe, in a way, Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen. Not sure about this one. Here are my comments about this book.

Any others come to mind? Preferably not like Carrie. Novels where making amends is important and also successful.

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Update: Ah, yes, This Again

Okay, so a fairly major dilemma, with which I am presented about four times per year, is:

What should I work on now?

And usually there are multiple plausible answers. Sometimes I make a call that turns out to be insanely wrong, generally because of terribly mistaken premises. This year, that sequence of events went like this:

I think I’ll write Hedesa because that will be fast; then I’ll finally pull out the long-ignored fantasy novel I have handy, which will probably be a serious pain in the neck to revise so putting it off makes sense; then we’ll see.

And then Hedesa went really slowly, and, when I finally looked at Eight Doors, it turned out to be in fine shape, and now I wish I had dealt with them in reverse order and thus had books ready to release throughout the year, rather than cramming them all into the last five months of the year. But here we are. Lack of omniscience, it’s a pain in the neck at times.

Right at the moment, I am working on two (or three, depending on what counts as “working on it”) different projects:

A) I sent Eight Doors to most early readers last week. I don’t expect to do a lot beyond minor tweaking and proofing at this point; it’s basically good to go; I’ll put it up for preorder as soon as I have a cover. Otoh, tweaking and proofing will continue right up to the last week before release, so it’s not like I’ve put it entirely away. I’ve scheduled a chapter to go live tomorrow at my Patreon, and that will continue until the full and final draft drops. That will most likely happen in the middle of August, though naturally that sort of thing is subject to change depending on things such as WHERE IS THE COVER??? and the other complications that can occur.

In the future, I won’t enable the “sell the post” function at my Patreon until I’m pretty sure all the typos (or essentially all) have been cleared out, meaning one week after the epub drops. Since I didn’t have the basic common sense to do that for past books, anybody who has bought a post at my Patreon and then I dropped an updated version? You are welcome to contact me and I will send you the updated epub separately. I’ll say that at my Patreon too, later, when Eight Doors drops there.

B) I’ve re-read No Foreign Sky, highlighting in blue allllll the ten million details that are or might be relevant to the sequel. Some I will just remember without trouble (“The turun and therefore the humans who are part of their society tend to sort concepts into sets of four rather than into dichotomies”), but lots I would not remember without a bulleted list of details (“tables are about two feet high”), so I am creating that list.

For an absolutely astounding and very welcome change, I already know the title of the sequel. That will be Unforgiving Sky. I like the sound of it, it’s clearly part of the same series, and I will find a way to justify that title. I mean, I have ideas about how to justify it, but I will make sure to actually do so. Someone will probably say or think that phrase, probably near the end, in a context where it makes sense.

Although this will be a direct sequel, I’m shaking up the pov protagonists because I just feel like it. Gerstner will most likely remain as a pov character, not entirely sure, but Samuel Lockwood will definitely take over the pov from Taya – he turned out to be one of my favorite characters, and he’s both distinctive and, as we move forward, in a much more interesting and challenging position. A turun will also pick up a pov role. That’s three, and that’s possibly enough, I don’t think we need an uman point of view. Samuel can serve as an eye into uman attitudes and customs. An acerbic, untrusting, borderline hostile eye.

I have not quite started actually working on this sequel, however, because –

C) I don’t want to make the Hedesa vs Eight Doors mistake twice in one year, so I’m actually prioritizing Sekaran. It is surely (surely!) more sensible to finish Sekaran FIRST and then worry about Unforgiving Sky. Sekaran right now includes, let me see … twelve chapters that are finished or nearly so, plus five that are unwritten or nearly so. Plus any other chapters I might suddenly decide to add, because who knows. But five chapters … more than two weeks left in July … I ought to be able to finish this draft by the end of the month and that is my goal. We’ll see what early readers think – it’s such a strange “novel,” stepping through time like this – it’s not really a novel at all; I’m not sure what to call it. I hope everyone will enjoy it, though, and if I can hand it off to early readers around the first of August, then it will be on track for release in early October or (if it needs a lot of work, which I don’t expect), maybe November, but certainly this year with no trouble.

I’m writing it in LibreOffice, by the way, because Word locked up as it periodically does – Microsoft demands that you connect to the internet and sign in every three months or so, and will abruptly lock Word if you don’t. This is of course infuriating, and last time it happened, I opened Sekaran in LibreOffice so I wouldn’t have to bother taking my laptop to the office to let it connect to WiFi for thirty seconds so Microsoft would be happy. For the first time, I decided to just keep working on this one book in LibreOffice, learn where everything is – styles are harder to get to, but they are there and modifiable; certain display options are different in annoying ways; the paragraphing menu is there if you keep poking around long enough to find it; it’s probably adequately functional, is what I’m saying. After I use it for this book, and provided the file loads to KDP without incident, I may just continue using LibreOffice rather than Word.

***

Side note i: Meanwhile, I don’t like LibreOffice as well. The way it displays text is not as smooth; and the Find command doesn’t highlight words, which is super useful in Word; and you can’t do accent marks with keyboard shortcuts, or if you can, I haven’t figured out how. It would have been INSANELY annoying to work with Eight Doors in LibreOffice if there’s no good way to do Aûn and Vaàncu and Cuón Róc with keyboard shortcuts. Autocorrect options might be possible, which would solve the problem. I should check that out and see if I can make it work. But the thing is, in Word, I can type with accent marks almost as fast as without, and if I had to stop and do some sort of insert-symbol thing each and every time, I would go insane.

For names in Eight Doors, I started off with a specific Vietnamese name that caught my eye. This is exactly like doing the Russian feel for the Ubez language in Invictus because the Russian word “Ubezhishche” caught my eye and I took that word and did a whole bunch of names based on that and a handful of other Russian words. In the same way, the Vietnamese name Bích caught my eye. I liked the way it looked – I still like the way it looks – but this is an absolutely impossible name for American readers, obviously. The fact is, the pronunciation is not what it looks like, but what it looks like is utterly crucial to American and English-speaking readers in general, and it is therefore not a possible name.

***

Side note ii: I am especially sure of this because I’ve seen how many people are deeply upset when I use the word “bitch” to refer to a female dog in a Quora answer, which I have done rather often because it irritates me that the correct term for a female dog is considered unusable even if all you’re saying is “Twenty-five percent of all intact bitches will get pyometra, which will quadruple the cost of the spay even if she survives the experience, and if you’re extra unlucky you will pay for this enormously expensive spay and THEN she will STILL DIE, so you should spay your bitch before she is, say, seven years old.”

Which is true, by the way. To extend this side note, I have personally had three bitches with pyo: one at two years, one at three years, one at five years of age. I’ve known of two puppies who had pyo after their first season. So even though the condition becomes more likely with age, every single person with an intact bitch needs to look up pyometra and memorize the signs, and fundamentally every single time a bitch “looks sick” three to five weeks after she has been in season, that should be treated as an emergency until you are sure it is not. Though I would not suggest rushing to spay all puppy bitches because pediatric spaying screws up orthopedic development and, bonus! also predisposes the puppy to various aggressive cancers later in life, so that’s not great and I therefore suggest spaying around eighteen months of age, or two and half years for big breeds. But spaying at a better time for orthopedic soundness and cancer means letting the bitch go through a couple of seasons and that means you need to watch out for pyo, even though this is relatively rare in young bitches.

At this point, I diagnose pyo by intuition, meaning the last time a girl of mine had pyo — at two years of age — I stepped through the front door, looked at Naamah, and said, “Hmm, you have pyo, don’t you?” I called my vet and said, “I realize you are in theory closing in ten minutes, but even though there’s no sign of a discharge, I’m pretty sure Naamah has pyo and I wonder if you would let me bring her in immediately, confirm that, and then spay her right now, this evening.” I was right, they did the spay fifteen minutes after she first “looked sick” to me, and she recovered much, much faster than any bitch who is allowed to get sicker before the emergency spay either saves her life or fails to save her life.

But returning Side Note i, the thing about names:

***

Beats me why some words and names appeal to me so much, but I really liked the look of Bích on the page, so I picked a different letter to put in front, which means it’s probably not pure coincidence that the letter is a V, as that is directly next to the B on the keyboard and I was a little peeved at feeling obligated to change the name. Then I looked at other Vietnamese names and segued from there to Thai names and then picked up a book of Thai poetry with phonetic English spelling with accent marks in addition to the English translation and the original akson thai, which looks like this: อักษรไทย.

So that is a neat little book, by the way, and here is my favorite poem in the book, though I grant I haven’t read them all:

***

When walking the eightfold path
of right understanding,
right intention,
right speaking,
right acting,
right living,
right effort,
right mindfulness,
and right concentration,  

There is one thing you must bring with you,  

one thing that will guide you
back to the path when lost in the woods,  

one thing that will shelter you
when the rains come,  

one thing that will deliver you
to the other side
when your faith wavers.  

The thing you must bring is patience.  

***

ANYWAY, obviously I let myself wander way off the topic there, so back to Sekaran.

Because Sekaran is so close to finished, I want to finish it first, even if I’m also thinking about Unforgiving Sky at the same time. If I begin serious work on Unforgiving Sky in August … five months from there to the end of the year … SURELY I can have it about ready to go by the beginning of 2026, EVEN IF it is slow, which it probably will be. Say 2000 words per day, give or take; that is a painfully slow pace, which may be realistic for this book, not sure. Five months; 100,000 words, there you go. Not that it’s likely to wind up that short, but still.

If I get TOO stuck with it for any reason, I’ll probably back up and see about writing the long-ago prequel that deals with the discovery of the abandoned human colony, the remnant human population, and early days in that first contact situation. That should somewhat echo Little Fuzzy, though only to a very limited degree, of course. One echo will be how tremendously cute turun think humans are, though with a lot more emphasis on delicacy rather than fluffiness.

MEANWHILE

I hope you are all enjoying summer, unless you’re in Australia, and in that case, I hope you’re enjoying winter. Let’s have a blast of orange flowers that suit the hot weather we’re having here:

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This isn’t an expanding business practice, I hope

This isn’t an industry trend, I hope, it’s just extreme but individual rudeness: Silence: The New Rejection That’s Expanding in Insidious Ways

The reason this is ridiculous rather than insidious:

But what concerns me is that the “Silence means no” practice is expanding in insidious ways.

In the past few months, two of my author clients were met with silence after submitting projects to agents—despite both agents having expressed strong interest and inviting the submission. There was not even an acknowledgment to the writer that the submission had been received. Polite follow-up queries by the authors several weeks later asking for confirmation of receipt were also met with silence.

That’s ridiculous.

Tolerable reasons for this kind of silence:

A) Agent is dead.

B) Agent is in the hospital.

C) Agent’s close relative is in the hospital.

D) There’s been a zombie apocalypse and civilization has disappeared.

That’s it. That’s all the reasons I can think of that would excuse this behavior.

From the linked post: You know who always responds to writers fast and enthusiastically? Scammers. To be clear, not everyone who replies promptly is illegitimate. But after enough silence from the legitimate publishing world, disheartened writers become more vulnerable to the siren call of a growing number of predatory players targeting them. … “But they were so helpful,” a recently scammed client told me. This ‘publisher’ responded right away, answered all of his questions, and made him feel like his book really mattered.

I’m going to assume that the author of this post hit two … okay, three … so-called industry professionals capable of exhibiting the same level of professional courtesy exhibited by a slime mold, and that this is not becoming standard.

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Poetry Thursday: Li Bai

According to Human Accomplishment, a whole lot of people point to Li Bai as one of the greatest poets who ever lived. This includes Chinese experts on Chinese literature and Western experts on Chinese literature. They don’t mean “one of the greatest Chinese poets.” They mean “one of the greatest poets, period.”

So naturally you are going to lose a lot by reading poetry in translation, but let’s take a stab at this. I’m pulling everything here from an extremely neat website that features a ton of Chinese poetry. Here is the page on Li Bai.

He was China’s Don Quixote, Sir Lancelot, and Falstaff, known as the “Banished Immortal” because of his plotting against the Emperor, condemnation to death, and pardon. Shakespeare would have said of him, he played many roles in his lifetime, knight errant, poet, drunkard, braggart, and Doaist priest.

Lots more if you click through. Here is a page about translation.

If it is so difficult, one asks, why translate at all?

The cheeky response is because it is there. It is a challenge, and one sees in the answer one of the difficulties of translation. The English know quite well what is meant by “cheek” and the Chinese not at all. One must interpolate, extrapolate, transmogrify, hunt for a word choice that conveys the meaning if not the exact same image.

Here is one poem, multiple translations:

***

Jingye Si, 靜夜思, quiet night thoughts. Ming yueguang, 明月光, the bright moonlight shines at thr foot of hid bed. A frosty message from home? By now, Li Bai’s four line poem, Quiet Night Thoughts, has become my old friend. A popular poem in China, one I have read and translated time and time again. One more time won’t hurt.

Quiet Night Thought
Bright moonlight shines at the foot of my bed,
I wonder, is it frost on the ground.
I gaze up at the bright moon,
I look down, thinking of home.

Version Two, more concise.

Moonlight beams beside my bed,
Silver frost or dreams instead?
Gazing up, the moon glows,
Head bowed, I long to be home.

A third try, I wonder, how it is different.

There is moonlight at the foot of my bed,
I wonder is it the frost on the ground?
Lifting my head, to gaze at the moon,
Hanging my head, one thinks of home.

Lastly (then again, it never ends), in the pursuit of perfection, one forgets Laozi, ignores the Buddha, to be in the moment, and forget the words. How does one describe missing one’s home.

Beside my bed the moon sheds its light,
For a moment, I think, it must be frost.
I look up at the moon so bright,
Then look down, because I miss my home.

Mon Dieu, in French, no help.

À côté de mon lit la lune brille fort.
Je pense, je me dis, que ce doit être du gel.
Je lève les yeux vers la lune si brillante,
Puis je baisse les yeux, car ma maison me manque.

Chinese, as intended.

靜夜思
Jìngyè sī

床前明月光, 疑是地上霜.
舉頭望明月, 低頭思故鄉.

Chuáng qián míngyuèguāng, yí shì dìshàng shuāng.
Jǔ tóu wàng míng yuè, dītóu sī gùxiāng.

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What is Excellence?

Okay, so I’ve been reading Human Accomplishments by Charles Murray.

In this book, as part of, basically, an extremely extended introduction, Murray presents a defense of the concept of excellence and of the basic human ability to identify excellence. This is interesting and persuasive, and I’m going to summarize it here to help myself understand it, and you can see what you think.

The assertion: Excellence is a thing.

Excellence is a thing, humans evolved in such a way as to find certain qualities attractive and worthy, and Michelangelo’s David is objectively a work of timeless excellence, while the dinosaur your five-year-old made out of clay in kindergarten isn’t. This is my example, not Murray’s.

I think this is obviously true. Moving on to the sub-assertions.

Sub-assertion one: It’s difficult to be so good at something that you create a work of enduring genius.

“Enduring” means a lot of people still admire your work after 100 years. (My summary, remember.) This isn’t as obviously true, because how much of a role does luck play in whether a work endures? And the answer is: not as much as you’d think; the sheer difficulty of creating works of enduring genius is more important.

Whole chapter defending this sub-assertion; eg, alllll about the Lotka curve as it emerges in many fields of human endeavor. Have I mentioned that my first dog’s name was Lotka? Yes, after this Lotka, though not with this particular curve in mind. Yes, I got my first dog when I was in grad school; why do you ask?

My Lotka, 1994-2208. He had four obedience titles, which doesn’t reflect his sheer brilliance. Brain the size of a walnut, yet he was practically telepathic.

Moving on!

Sub-assertion two: Your emotional fondness for a thing has nothing to do with excellence.

Or at least, not a lot. You can be very fond of the singing fish your uncle gave you. Your emotional attachment to the singing fish is not a judgment of its intrinsic excellence as a work of art; it’s sentiment, which is not the same thing.

I think this is clearly and obviously true and needs no defense.

Sub-assertion three: Some people have a much better ability to judge excellence in a specific field of endeavor than others because their experience with and knowledge of that field is much more extensive than average.

Sub-assertion four: The nature of a person’s appreciation of a thing depends on the level of their expertise with that thing.

I think these assertions are clearly and obviously true as well, and I will step way outside any field Murray discusses to lift an example from practical experience: Seeing the anatomical soundness of a dog or a horse – an animal that is standing right in front of you in full view – is a learned skill. Most pet owners do not see structure outside the most absolutely glaringly obvious facts, such as “that Dachshund is short.”

Check this out:

This drawing is from An Eye from a Dog by Robert Cole, by far my favorite resource for learning about canine structure, by the way. Cole is a judge, knowledgeable about both type and structure, and also capable of doing these great, clean line drawings, often based on real animals, that illustrate everything exactly as he wants to show it. I flipped to the Dane images because Great Danes have no coat to speak of and giant bones, so you can see everything about them very clearly.

Compare all four dogs. Is it obvious which ones are the best-constructed, soundest dogs, or do you only notice the ears? If you have more of a natural eye, you might think something vague, such as “Dog F is sort of spindly, isn’t she?” This would not exactly be wrong, but it would be … all right, it would be mostly wrong, though she is sort of spindly.

Anyone knowledgeable about functional structure can see at once that C and E are both good. I like C’s neck better, but E’s front better. But they are both fine.

D and F are both terrible, and of the two, it’s hard to choose which is worse. D has an ewe neck and overly long and sloped front pasterns — a serious fault in a big dog, inviting breakdown in the front. She has an abrupt angle where the withers should lead into the back, showing that her shoulder layback is not correct. She’s overangulated in the rear, she’s too long in the loin, her croup is steep. My vote for Most Likely To Suffer Back Issues is D.

F also has a sharp angle between neck and withers, caused by a direly upright shoulder — she lacks every kind of angulation in the front, her whole torso has been shoved upward on the stilts of her front legs, popping her chest up above her elbows. Her front pasterns, far too upright, are worse than the overly sloped pasterns seen in D. F is cruising toward orthopedic breakdown in the front. Her rear lacks angulation too, but not nearly as severely as her front. My vote for Most Likely To Suffer Orthopedic Breakdown is F. That front is dreadful.

No one who knows nothing about structure will be able to see any of this unless every feature of the dog is painstakingly pointed out. The judgment that B and E are structurally much more sound than the D or F s a judgment of objective quality. Nothing about it is subjective. The subjective part is stating that the sound dogs are more attractive. This is also true, because once you learn to see soundness, then correct anatomy is in fact more attractive than incorrect, unsound anatomy. The size, color, and fluffiness of the dog – almost the only physical features most pet owners see – recede in importance to the point that the expert barely notices those features.

“I don’t like natural ears much,” says the non-expert, looking at a ring filled with Great Danes. “Ears?” says the expert. “Oh, I guess I don’t either, now that you mention it, but her front is good, her shoulder’s nice, her topline is smooth — she’s far, far better put-together than those behind her.”

So, when someone says, “Experts can see things about paintings that nonexperts can’t see, or can see only when these features are painstakingly pointed out to them,” I have no trouble believing that’s true. Or a piece of music, or some other work of art. Or a sport. I know when I like a painting or a piece of music. I’m so perfectly ignorant about team sports that I can’t even express a preference. All events in football are essentially equally opaque to me. I know nothing about any of it and have zero ability to judge the relative greatness of football players.

Naturally, I have strong opinions about quality in writing.

William Wordsworth

And to the left, three yards beyond,
You see a little muddy pond
Of water – never dry
I measured it from side to side:
‘Twas four feet long, and three feet wide.

Compard to a quite different fragment, also by —

William Wordsworth

Was it for this
That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved
To blend his murmurs with my nurse’s song,
And from his alder shades and rocky falls.
And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice
To intertwine my dreams?

The poem on the top is silly and pointless; and the poem below is excellent and that’s the way it is. Practically everyone is going to agree, and this is an important component of Murray’s argument that excellence is a thing:

Sub-assertion Five: Excellence is measurable because experts in a field routinely and predictably converge in their opinions.

What Murray is arguing here is that, by and large, the reason people who know a lot about a subject prefer A to B is because A is better than B – intrinsically better, objectively better. This remains true for experts regardless of nationality, by the way; eg, Western experts and Chinese experts converged in opinion about Chinese art. Art and music are easily perceived by anybody with vision and hearing, but to avoid bias when assessing opinions about literature, Murray excluded reference sources written in the language of the author; eg, the importance of English authors was assessed by looking only at the opinions of experts writing in languages other than English. That’s clever, and should pretty well do the job. There’s lots more about the statistical methods used in this book.

But here’s a sub-assertion that Murray doesn’t explicitly pull out as an assertion, though it is:

Sub-assertion Six: Excellent works invite extensive study, especially study by experts, in a way that works of lesser quality do not.

Another way of determining whether a work of art is excellent is by assessing this trait: whether the artwork invites and rewards prolonged study, especially prolonged study by people who know a great deal about the field. Here’s what Murray says about this:

The prolonged study of Bach’s music does not become boring. Bach’s music keeps presenting new facets to examine. … The person who knows a lot about art can look at Titian’s Venus of Urbino for a long time, and the looking alone – not the social context of Titian’s era, not the meaning of the female nude in the construction of gender, not what sort of person Titian was, but just the looking – absorbs the full attention of the expert.

The people who know the most about an artistic field are drawn to certain works. The qualities that draw their attention are those that offer the biggest payoff in the aesthetics of the art, and this payoff is based on qualities distinct from subjective sentiment.

and also

On topics about which we know a lot, we [all of us] have concrete reasons for concluding that amateur observations are either wrong or boringly obvious.

Bold is mine. That last is like me saying, “Oh, yeah, true, the dog has natural ears, but so what, look at her shoulder layback.” Pointing out that the dog has natural ears is not wrong, but it’s trivial.

Or again, like someone saying, “That dog looks strong!” and me saying, “No, he doesn’t look strong, he looks like an orthopedic disaster waiting to happen – he has loaded shoulders, he’s out at the elbow, his chest is tremendously too flat and wide, in what universe can this dog be said to look strong?” In this case, the non-expert is flatly wrong in his perception because he does not know anything about functional anatomy.

But back to excellence, this time excellence in literature.

This all makes me think of the time fairly recently on Quora where I stated flatly that Tolkien was a far, far better writer than Terry Brooks. And there’s a certain amount of “It’s all opinions anyway” and “Tolkien is a bad writer in my opinion” and so forth in the comments, and I am now thinking: The prolonged study of The Lord of the Rings does not get boring. The person who knows a lot about literature can contemplate The Lord of the Rings for a long time, and the work alone – not the social context of Tolkien’s era, not the meaning of fantasy settings and fairy tales in human history, not the roles of female characters in the story, not what sort of person Tolkien was, but just the work itself – absorbs the full attention of the expert.

I think: If I were going to be stuck on a desert island with one work of literature for the rest of my life, just one, this is a top contender for the one work I would pick. And I would be absolutely gobsmacked if anybody ever said the same about anything by Terry Brooks, and I think the difference is exactly what Murray is talking about here.

And I will just note that if you search for “nonfiction books about Tolkien,” there are dozens – I mean, I counted dozens and then got bored and stopped counting; there could be hundreds for all I know. If you look for nonfiction books about Terry Brooks or the Shannara series, there aren’t any. The next time I decide to start that argument, I’ll mention that, and this idea that TLotR does not get boring, as evidence that all opinions about quality may not be equal and that sentiment or enjoyment aren’t the same thing as excellence.

And of course it is worth mentioning here that expertise in a field is what allows someone to say, “I loathe this book and everything about it, here are the things I hate about it, but it is nevertheless an excellent book.” Or a piece of music, say, or I suppose any kind of artwork. I’m largely bored by portraits; I prefer landscapes. I don’t mistake that for anything but irrelevant personal preference. Separating preference from judgment is something someone distracted by sentiment can’t do, especially if this person does not have any depth of knowledge about the field. This is what leads to people saying, “The Sword of Shannara is just as good as The Lord of the Rings.” They don’t notice the craft or even the plot, and they mistake their liking of the book for a judgment of quality.

So, to sum up this summary:

What is excellence in literature? Is there such a thing as excellence, or is it all “I know what I like” and nothing is objective and The Sword of Shannara is just as good as The Lord of the Rings because it’s all about sentiment and there’s nothing real?

No one, unless bludgeoned into it by some instructor, actually thinks there’s no such thing as excellence. Anyone can see that yes, of course there is, and everyone can see this most readily in a field where they are experts.

While some nonexperts may prefer The Sword of Shannara, zero experts think that it is comparable in quality – though for reasons of sentiment, it’s possible some expert somewhere likes it better. (In theory, anyway.) And this is because TLotR is genuinely excellent and the Shannara books aren’t.

So, to reprise:

Excellence is a thing.

Sentiment is not a measure of excellence.

There is such a thing as breadth and depth of knowledge in a field. People who have this are experts in the field.

Experts in a field are generally much better able to judge excellence in that field than non-experts, and the things they assess are not the same as the things non-experts notice.

Excellence is at least somewhat measurable, because the opinions of experts broadly converge. This leads to lots of references to excellent things and nonfiction books about excellent things.

And, one more note from Murray’s book: evidently the single most frequently expressed opinion, by experts, about the very best works, is: How is it possible that a human person created this? Evidently people say this about Beethoven, about Michelangelo — and about the best Chinese poets — and about the very best in any field. How is this possible? It’s beyond comprehension anyone mortal could write like this / compose like this / paint like this / create this beautiful work.

The whole thing makes me want to listen to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony and gaze at Michelangelo’s David. And go look at the Sistine Chapel. I’ve been there, but now I want to go look at it again. The tour of the Vatican was the highlight of the one trip I’ve taken to Italy.

Painted gallery ceiling at the Vatican

Another painted ceiling

This one was in Venice, which come to think of it was another highlight.

People really do produce the most astounding art. We ought to start building amazing buildings again, and painting the ceilings.

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Characterization

From Kill Zone Blog: Characterization, using a biography of Teddy Roosevelt as an example.

As the crowd snakes its way into the room where Roosevelt is greeting them, Morris describes the president’s physical impact on the visitors. He quotes English statesman John Morley as saying, “Do you know the two most wonderful things I have seen in your country? Niagara Falls and the President of the United States.”

This is a good post, which points to, but does not really discuss, characterization by —

–directly describing the physical appearance of the character, and I’m surprised to see several comments saying that the author has some trouble remembering to even do this at all, because I do, but I didn’t think that was common.

–indicating character via dialogue.

–letting the character’s actions indicate who they are.

–having the reactions of other characters indicate what the character is like.

Teddy Roosevelt evidently inspired plenty of very strong reactions in practically everyone who met him! He sounds very larger-than-life, just from this post. No doubt he was.

Because of this fairly recent post about dialogue, I am particularly thinking of using dialogue to indicate character. For example, how about this, which I bet you’ll all recognize, though it isn’t SFF:

“It was my father’s last request to me,” replied her husband, “that I should assist his widow and daughters.”

“He did not know what he was talking of, I dare say; ten to one but he was light-headed at the time. Had he been in his right senses, he could not have thought of such a thing as begging you to give away half your fortune from your own child.”

“He did not stipulate for any particular sum, my dear Fanny; he only requested me, in general terms, to assist them, and make their situation more comfortable than it was in his power to do. Perhaps it would have been as well if he had left it wholly to myself. He could hardly suppose I should neglect them. But as he required the promise, I could not do less than give it: at least I thought so at the time. The promise, therefore, was given, and must be performed. Something must be done for them whenever they leave Norland and settle in a new home.”

“Well, then, let something be done for them; but that something need not be three thousand pounds.”

“Oh! beyond anything great! What brother on earth would do half so much for his sisters, even if really his sisters! And as it is—only half blood!—But you have such a generous spirit!”

“I would not wish to do any thing mean,” he replied. “One had rather, on such occasions, do too much than too little. No one, at least, can think I have not done enough for them: even themselves, they can hardly expect more.”

“There is no knowing what they may expect,” said the lady, “but we are not to think of their expectations: the question is, what you can afford to do.”

Sense and Sensibility was the first Jane Austen book I read, and I read it because I watched the linked movie, which was a revelation to me. I had never even glanced at Jane Austen’s books prior to seeing this movie. [English teachers who could not bring themselves to assign anything but grimly awful tragedies, I’m looking at you, here.] Obviously, I loved the movie, so I immediately read the book and then all Austen’s other books.

And I know the brother and his wife are not important characters as characters; they are just getting the plot underway. But wow, you do not need anything except the dialogue between them to get a VERY CLEAR idea of who they are as people, what they are like. She is grasping and selfish and petty. He is a wimp, unintelligent, easy to manipulate — at least to manipulate into behaving selfishly.

This is a scene that translates beautifully to the screen because everything important is contained in the dialogue. The author does not need to (a) describe them beyond the barest bones of description; (b) bring us into their heads; (c) have any other characters react to them; (c) have them actually do anything. These characters are just talking about doing something, or not doing something, but what they say is, all by itself, PLENTY to establish who they are.

This is a stellar example of characterization done purely through dialogue, and also it could be subtitled: How to Make the Viewer Despise Your Minor Characters in 30 Seconds of Dialogue, Boom! Honestly, grand evil is not as purely unpleasant as this sort of petty selfishness, at least not to me.

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Update: Making progress, making decisions, and much excitement about birds

OKAY, so a lot. When did HEDESA go live at Patreon? One week ago, basically — July 1st. Already that seems like a long time ago! How remarkable one’s sense of time is!

Anyway: I will shortly correct a relatively tiny number of typos — yes, of course there were a few, just imagine me rolling my eyes here — and the new! pristine! epub file will go live tomorrow, Tuesday, the 8th. Then I’ll load the correct versions at KDP, do the final formatting for the paperback and hardcover, nudge the cover artist if necessary because those editions are also scheduled to release, so I need those covers, and move on.

And by moving on, I mean: finish secondary revision of World of Tiers and send that to proofreaders et al. I wound up doing just a bit more with it than I expected, and by “a bit more” I mean adding two scenes and rearranging the early chapters, and do you know why? BECAUSE OF THE TITLE SHENANIGANS. This is barely an exaggeration.

The title — I’m unlikely to change my mind yet again, though I won’t say it’s beyond the realm of possibility, but it’s unlikely — will be:

Nine Doors from Dawn to Midnight

And, should I wind up ever writing another book set in this world, the SERIES name can be The Thirteenfold World, which would work great for that purpose.

This may be clear, but quite likely not, since I only handed you the list of tiers one time, but there are nine MORTAL tiers, which run from the dawn tier to the midnight tier, so that’s where “nine” comes from. There are also four IMMORTAL tiers, hence thirteen tiers total.

Putting “Doors” in the book title allows alliteration, which is nice, and avoids “doorways” as in “Every Soul a Doorway.” Thirteen doors might evoke “Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All.” This novel is not remotely similar to either, so I don’t want echoes.

AND, for a completely unrelated reason, it turned out to work to add an early scene where we glimpse the tier of dawn. We already wind up at midnight tier (I don’t believe this constitutes a spoiler, as you have no clue how that’s going to work, obviously). Thus, adding that early scene lets me deal with a separate problem and also provide a from-dawn-to-midnight throughline, even though the story takes place over more than one day. Not a lot more, I will say. This is a very fast-paced story.

MEANWHILE

At this point, it seems weird not to set up chapters of something to go live at my Patreon, and I HAVE this book right here, so next week, you can expect to see chapters of this new book begin to drop there. Not this week, because I am still tweaking this and that, including right up at the top of the story. But next week, sure.

I don’t see any reason the full novel shouldn’t be ready to go live at my Patreon in a month or so; I’m thinking very seriously of aiming for September 2 as the release date on Amazon, which means no later than mid-August at my Patreon.

WHAT ELSE?

I’m also re-reading NO FOREIGN SKY, and of course you realize this means that I intend to (finally!) start writing the sequel. However, I think I’m going to work on this AND other things, because at this point SEKARAN is pretty close to finished — maybe four or six more chapters? Close enough that it seems VERY SENSIBLE to finish the thing before truly focusing on something else. If I have a draft finished by the end of July — seems perfectly doable, even if I’m also doing other things — then I see no reason I can’t set SEKARAN to release as Tuyo: Book 11 on October 2. If that’s overly optimistic (I admit I sometimes get a trifle overoptimistic), then November 2.

So I don’t thnk I’ll be seeing new releases come out on Amazon August 2, September 2, October 2, November 2, AND December 2, but I DO think I’ll be hitting four out of those five dates — you remember THIS HOUR is already set for December. So, releases in four of the five latest months of the year. That’s what I expect.

And then with luck something — such as the NFS sequel — ready to go in early 2026, plus Tuyo: Book 12: The Thing That Happened in the West, and then sometime later in 2026, probably Hedesa II and we can all finally move forward with Tano’s story and meet the Saa’arii for real.

That’s the plan. It only extends roughly a year into the future, so who knows, I might stick to it.

Not sure what I’ll be putting in my newsletter.

Chapters of SEKARAN, which is what I intended when I thought it would be half the length? Maybe. Separate short stories? Maybe. Scenes from earlier books written from different points of view? Maybe? I’m kind of doing that a tiny, tiny bit in SEKARAN, which is why I thought of it. Chapters from a book I want to write, but haven’t got time to write? Maybe, because doing that for THIS HOUR caused me to write that story, which I hadn’t intended to, so maybe I could try to do that again? The newsletter ought to go out mid-month, so I guess I’ll be deciding. Oh, I may delay that a trifle because I will be running a sale as HEDESA drops at Amazon, and news about the sale ought to go in the newsletter. That gives me an extra week or two to think about this. If anybody has a preference, this would be a good time to mention it!

MEANWHILE

Morgan, Joy, and Haydee find it very frustrating that birds can fly.

After chasing those cheating birds for an hour:

Morgan, Joy, and Haydee cuddle up together for a nap. That’s Ish on top.

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Happy 4th of July

An extra poem this week …

Carl Sandburg

*

Many ways to spell good night.

Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July

        spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes.

They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit.

Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue

        and then go out.

Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack

        mushrooming a white pillar.

Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi crying

        in a baritone that crosses lowland cottonfields

        to a razorback hill.

It is easy to spell good night.

                                     Many ways to spell good night.

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Epigraphs

From Writer Unboxed: Epigraphs: A Fun Writing Tool

Beats me what they mean by “tool.” I do think epigraphs are fun, and I also think honestly, they are more appropriate for contemporary fiction or fiction set in a contemporary-ish world. I feel strange about using lines from real books as epigraphs for secondary-world fiction, and … I think that’s just me, probably, and I should get over it and start using epigraphs now and then, because they really are fun.

Piranesi begins with an epigram from The Magician’s Nephew: “I am the great scholar, the magician, the adept, who is doing the experiment. Of course I need subjects to do it on.”

Clarke also uses a quote from one of the characters in the story, and this is how I would be inclined to do it if I were using an “epigraph” in secondary-world fantasy or far-future SF. The quote is:

People call me a philosopher or a scientist or an anthropologist. I am none of those things. I am an anamnesiologist. I study what has been forgotten. I divine what has disappeared utterly. I work with absences, with silences, with curious gaps between things. I am really more of a magician than I am anything else.” — Laurence Arne-Sayles

The linked post focuses on chapter epigraphs, which I enjoy very much, especially fictional ones.

I utilize chapter epigraphs throughout my trilogy. This is hardly an original or rare storytelling element, particularly for my genre of epic fantasy. Some of the biggest names of the genre utilize them, including Robin Hobb, Brandon Sanderson, R. Scott Bakker, and Steven Erikson, to name a few.

Do they? Good for them.

All right, Amazon, show me a book by R Scott Bakker (whose books I’ve never read, by the way.) The Prince of Darkness, Book I — is this grimdark? Never mind, show me a sample and let’s take a look at the epigraph for chapter one …

If it is only after that we understand what has come before, then we understand nothing. Thus we shall define the soul as follows: that which precedes everything. — Ajencis, The Third Analytic of Men.

Evocative!

Here, from the linked post, are the suggested uses or advantages of using epigraphs:

Provide omniscient narration —Being a separate voice in our stories, we can use epigraphs much as Greek tragedies utilized the Chorus—to set the scene, introduce new characters, or to provide essential exposition for the upcoming scene. Infuse atmosphere —Being a separate voice, epigraphs can incorporate a completely different style, in some cases adding a taste of something bolder than the voice of the main body of the story. Enhance world-building or insert lore— It’s amazing how much backstory or peripheral information can be added in a brief epigraph when it need not be designed to “flow” into he narrative. Act as story guideposts —Big sprawling stories can be complicated. Consistent chapter epigraphs can keep readers on course, like a throughline in a forest. Provide foreshadowing, corollary information, or clues to thematic undertones –The epigraph can bring needed or useful insight to the reader without breaking the fictive trance offered by following the tight POV of a character. Offer a contrary position, or enlighten through hindsight —The narrative voice from the epigraph can offer a counterpoint to what the characters believe to be true. Inject a completely different form than prose— Many authors choose to use alternative forms of the written word for their epigraphs, such as poetry, song lyrics, proverbs or adages.

Click through to read the full entries; the above are abbreviated.

I will probably never do actual chapter epigraphs, which, like actual chapter titles —

TAKE TOO LONG

And I am thinking here of Robert Asprin, who said that by the end of his Myth Adventures series, coming up with those damn chapter titles took as long as writing the book. Which I have absolutely no trouble believing. ONE epigraph at the front of the entire book, yes. Chapter epigraphs, no. I suspect authors who try this more than once probably also have a knack for titles, log-lines, one-sentence pitches, and all the other short forms that give the rest of us absolute fits. More power to them, but I’m not one of them.

I do like them, though!

The author of the linked post adds: One of the things I’m proudest of in regard to my epigraphs is the overarching story within them. In a meta way, the main body of the tale and the story within the epigraphs are entwined, hopefully adding meaning and emotional impact by The End.

This sounds very snazzy! I’m still not going to do it, but I’m a bit jealous of this author’s ability to do it. This is Vaughn Roycroft, who has written … looks like a fantasy trilogy with a historical feel.

Meanwhile, here’s Reactor’s post: Always Read the Epigraph

I’m going to talk to you now about two particular fantasy novels—Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and Kate Griffin’s A Madness of Angels—that I think illustrate the value of epigraphs. Why these two? Because they demonstrate two opposite but equally effective ways in which an epigraph or two can really spice up a story. Just as a warning: because I’m going to discuss how these epigraphs connect to the stories that follow them, there may well be some spoilers to come, even though I start by just looking at the first page of each book.

Book Riot: Best Epigraphs of 2020

I like this one:

Afterlife by Julia Alvarez

“We die with the dying: 
See, they depart, and we go with them. 
We are born with the dead: 
See, they return, and bring us with them.”
—T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” The Four Quartets

Oh, here’s one from Kill Zone Blog: The How and Why of Epigraphs

GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn

Love is the world’s infinite mutability; lies, hatred, murder even, are all knit up in it; it is the inevitable blossoming of its opposites, a magnificent rose smelling faintly of blood. — Tony Kushner, THE ILLUSION

Very useful epigraph! It whispers: Would Not Like, Do Not Read.

Honestly, I do really love epigraphs. I truly should think of using them now and then.

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