Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 71

Update: whoosh, the amazing disappearing weekend

So, multiple people got back to me with comments about the Tuyo World Companion last week. Therefore, the entire weekend vanished into an extended revision session.

I didn’t do anything else besides work on this. I mean, I took the dogs for walks. Nice weather, a lot of the weekend. But nothing else related to writing. On the other hand, I did kind of a lot with this.

I made all the corrections of typos and other small things readers noted.

Then I reordered all the sections, then checked the consistency of the headings. These changed as I reordered the sections, so a lot of the headings moved from Heading Three to Heading Two and a few moved the other way around.

Then I added a couple more letters from one person to another and added headings to note when the letters were written. I mean when they were written in relation to the novels. Most of the letters were written by Lau. I might add another one written by an Ugaro, if I can think of another good topic for a letter.

Then I took out a section and put it back and took it out again and, sigh, put it back in again, but heavily revised.

I added a section on domestic animals and wrote stuff to go in that section. Ditto for a section on recreation. Ditto for probably a couple more headings that I don’t remember off the top of my head.

Moved sections around again and once more changed headings so they would still be consistent. Put in a Table of Contents, moved sections around yet again, took out the T o C and put it back. Repeat, repeat. Scanned through a lot of the book from the top, noted a couple egregious typos absolutely everyone had missed so far, and fixed them. (There were several egregious typos various readers caught, obviously.)

Took out some spoilers for TARASHANA. There are still some spoilers, but not as many or as big. Except in a letter that Selili, Aras’ daughter, writes to a friend. Big spoilers in that letter, so I went back right to the top of the World Companion and added a specific heading: Spoilers, where I tell readers what not to read if they don’t want to be spoiled for this and that. I also added a note at the top of the Lakasha and Ro section to say that this section doesn’t contain spoilers, but if readers want to learn about those two peoples in the context of the story, they should skip that section until they read TASMAKAT.

I revised the ending of the novella, gazed at that ending for a long time, then revised it some more. Not sure I’m finished with that. I might even put it back to the original ending.

So, what with one thing and another, the entire weekend disappeared into this project, BUT, I think the World Companion is now in very good shape. It is just a hair shy of 100,000 words, which is a little startling. I didn’t expect it to go quite that long. I like it, though! I hope everyone else does too!

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Character thought and credibility

From Writers Helping Writers, this: The Link Between Character Thought and Credibility

This post caught my eye because it seems like it might dovetail with the reasons I didn’t finish the first book of the Vardeshi duology. I could see perfectly well that the Vardeshi aliens are not superior to humans, but (in the 75% of the book that I read) the human protagonist never entertained any doubts regarding Vardeshi superiority. The protagonist therefore lost credibility and (sorry, but this is inevitable) so did the author. Then when a plot twist occurred that I didn’t like, I was not prepared to be tolerant and wait to see what happened. Therefore, the DNF decision.

I’m not sure this is the kind of thing this post about character thought and credibility has in mind, but it’s what I thought of immediately. Let’s take a look at the post …

Readers come into a story eager to greet a new world, willing to temporarily suspend their belief in the way the world works to explore your vision of the alternatives. They place their trust in you to make it feel plausible. … Stories that fail to ring true break that trust. These brittle, hollow stories break reader immersion again and again before finally driving readers away.

Yes! Yes yes yes! That is what happened. I was willing to accept the Vardeshi and Avery’s viewpoint, but I kept not finding the aliens plausible and very particularly not finding Avery’s reactions to the aliens plausible. And that kept breaking immersion and yes, that is why I was unprepared to tolerate a plot twist I didn’t find believable.

[R]eaders are keen to be led into all sorts of farfetched nooks and crannies. They’ll overlook a certain amount of hand-waving and even step willingly over minor plot holes as long as the characters are all in. … If characters forge a fathomable path into the story through their thoughts and reactions and emotions, readers will dive in alongside them.  

Now the post goes off in a different direction. The emphasis here is that failing to communicate the protagonist’s emotions is a problem, that a wooden protagonist is a problem. When the protagonist fails to react, that’s bad. This is true, but this is also just bad writing, not the same problem.

Oh, now we’re also back to the problem I experienced: When the protagonist fails to react appropriately. That’s it. That’s the issue.

If the protagonist is wooden or flat, I probably wouldn’t be reading the story in the first place. I mean, I might, because sometimes I can enjoy a novel with flat characters if the story itself is engaging enough. But when I’m reading any novel, then if the protagonist fails to react in a way I think is obviously the way any normal person or that specific character should react, that kicks me out of the story hard and I’m likely to stop.

This reminds me of my problem with, um, right: Control Point by Myke Cole. The story wasn’t the problem. I just could not believe in the reactions and actions of the protagonist (or the other characters). This is probably the most negative review I’ve ever posted and I did feel somewhat weird about posting a review this negative. I was so outraged by the protagonist’s failure to react appropriately in a novel that was otherwise well written, I think that’s why. If a novel is just bad, I don’t read it and don’t feel inclined to post a review. Apparently this exact kind of problem bothers me much more than just bad writing.

Yep, I think the linked post nailed it. I would say maybe “reactions” rather than “thought.” But yes, the protagonist has just got to react believably and appropriately or else the protagonist and then the author lose credibility. And if that keeps happening, that’s a failure that leads, to me, to a DNF for the book and permanent reluctance to try anything else by that author.

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The Nisean Horse

The breed of kings! The breed of horses for which the Chinese fought the War of the Heavenly Horses. From Wikipedia:

Emperor Wu of Han had received reports from diplomat Zhang Qian that Dayuan owned fast and powerful Ferghana horses known as the “heavenly horses”, which would help greatly with improving the quality of their cavalry mounts when fighting the Xiongnuhorse nomads, so he sent envoys to survey the region and establish trade routes to import these horses. However, the Dayuan king not only refused the deal, but also confiscated the payment gold, and had the Han ambassadors ambushed and killed on their way home. Humiliated and enraged, the Han court sent an army led by General Li Guangli to subdue Dayuan, but their first incursion was poorly organized and undersupplied. A second, larger and much better provisioned expedition was sent two years later and successfully laid siege to the Dayuan capital at Alexandria Eschate, and forced Dayuan to surrender unconditionally. The Han expeditionary forces installed a pro-Han regime in Dayuan and took back enough horses to improve Han’s horse breeding.[3]

Here’s a horse enthusiast, hat tip Astral Codex Ten, writing about the possible descendant breeds from the Nisean stock:

With respect to the Andalusian being derived for that, that is something that is highly highly debated. And there are three camps of people in this, the purest Andalusian people who beleive absolutely not. They think that the skies opened up and the Andalusian just dropped there. As if it had no breeding and adaptation. You can read sources from the Arab world which will tell you about the Barbs and horses from the Andalus region of North Africa that they took there to breed with Domestic stock. Now within those camps, you can also find the same references to where their horse breeds originated and you will find them breeding to Persian Nisean horses and domestic egyptian horses to get the modern Arab. …

And so on. Very interesting, and this person believes that the Nisean horse breed is not extinct at all, but remains in very much the original form in Iran. Similar to Andalusians, which are indeed a beautiful and striking breed.

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Phrases you’re using wrong

A blog post at Writer Unboxed: Phrases You’re Probably Using Wrong

How many of you immediately said, “I bet I’m not.” Everyone? Yes, I thought so! That’s why I feel a bit annoyed at blog post titles that use the word “You” in connection with “doing it wrong.” It’s intrinsically condescending toward the readers of that post, which is particularly out of place when the readers of that blog probably enjoy language and words, which I would sort of imagine is true of the readers of Writers Unboxed and am very sure is true of readers here.

Let’s just check out those phrases …

 “Home in on.” I know you want to say “hone in on.” –—> I do not. I know perfectly well it’s “home in on” and why that’s the correct phrase. I think your incorrect phrase looks and sounds strange. I doubt whether many people actually say “hone in on.”

You walk hand in hand with your beloved—your hand in their hand, of course. Not “hand and hand.” —-> I know that. Everyone knows that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that mistake.

Are there ANY phrases here which people actually use wrong? Let me scan down the list … nope. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of these mistakes in print. “Probably” using wrong my foot.

One exception: the first phrase, the one used to introduce the post, is “begging the question.” But that one has taken on the previously incorrect meaning, so now it has two meanings, both accepted (by me, I mean, because this is not a hill I would personally die on). The first meaning is “assert something iffy as an unproven premise for your argument.” The second, newer, meaning is “invite a particular question.”

I will suggest a phrase that I think a lot of people do get wrong:

I could care less. If you could care less, then … you could care less, so I guess you care kind of a lot? The actual phrase that makes sense is I couldn’t care less. That’s the one that means it’s not possible to care less because I already don’t care at all. I think I DO hear and see people say “I could care less” when they plainly mean “I couldn’t care less.” That’s the one phrase that leaps to my mind when someone says something about phrases that are used incorrectly.

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I did not finish your book, a specific example

Okay, so you know I’m not reading much right now. Not since, I guess, 2020 or even 2019. But I DO try to read SOME new to me books, and this one is the most recent:

Now, Ascending is the first book of a duology; the second book is called Bright Shards. The first book has a 4.5 rating, the second 4.7. Someone here suggested this duology, and I think I see at least part of why. The story that opens in Ascending is quite catchy and engaging. This is true even though it opens with dialogue. I was drawn in at once and quite cheerfully read through the part where Avery learns the Vardeshi language, the Vardeshi turn up, and Avery is of course — since she knows the language — chosen as the one person who will return with them to their homeworld as part of, basically, a cultural exchange.

This all takes quite a while and I really liked it!

Now, spoilers coming up because otherwise I can’t talk about why I DNFed this book.

Parts I did not love: Avery accepts without question the idea that the Vardeshi are very superior to humans. Which they are in a lot of ways. They look a whole lot like humans, but they are stronger, faster, more beautiful. Fine, that is actually annoying, but whatever. They made first contact and then changed their minds because humans weren’t socially advanced enough, which always annoys me, but okay. Then they left, and now they came back and here’s Avery on their ship and …

… they are not remotely more socially advanced than humans. They are exactly as mean and petty as any humans you might care to select at random from any normal human culture. But also more condescending because they assume they are so superior. Which Avery appears to continue to agree with, for some reason, even though they plainly are not at all superior. They’re very hierarchical and have a lot of social behaviors meant to reinforce social hierarchy via continual displays of superiority and dominance from those higher up, versus displays of submission from those lower down. Which Avery accepts, basically without a blink.

Oh, by the way, they’re all telepaths, surprise! Except some, a minority, are not, and the rest are highly condescending to and really rather cruel to the Blanks, the non-telepaths …

… How is it that Avery continues to believe these people are superior? If you are wondering how she manages to accommodate that belief in the face of mounting evidence that the Vardeshi are frequently mean, petty, selfish, and so on, well, so was I.

The captain of the Vardeshi ship seems to have it in for Avery. At first I thought she was wrong about that, but evidence mounts that no, he really dislikes her and is unfair to her. Does she stand up to him? Basically, no. I mean, I think that the author thinks she does. I don’t think so at all. Does the captain abrogate the spirit of the cultural exchange? Absolutely, yes.

All of this was tolerable. I kept going. Then a plot twist! Sabotage of the ship, which Avery OBVIOUSLY COULD NOT POSSIBLY BE RESPONSIBLE FOR because she does not know remotely enough about Vardeshi technology to perform this kind of sabotage. But the captain is blaming her anyway because …

… I don’t know why. I don’t know if he’s insane. (There are hints he might be.) I don’t know if he has a subtle plan to find out the real saboteur by pretending to blame Avery. (That would be true if I were writing this story.) I don’t know if the author just thinks this is actually believable. (It is not believable.)

I don’t know, and I guess I’m not going to find out, because I quit. This is at the 75% mark, which may be as close as I have EVER come to finishing a book and then quitting.

So what we have here is:

a) worldbuilding elements (the superior human-like aliens that are condescending toward humans) that I don’t really like, and

b) character traits (Avery’s willingness to believe in Vardeshi superiority when they are obviously not superior) that I don’t really like, and

c) a plot twist that I hate and also don’t believe.

The first two caused a faint distancing and a distraction. I kept wondering whether Avery would ever comment inwardly that the Vardeshi were actually just normal people and wonder to herself why they should possibly feel so superior. Telepathy appears and I thought surely she would think, Oh, when they realized humans aren’t telepaths, that’s when they got their knickers in a twist and pulled back, that just seemed so weird to them. None of that happened, and I started to grit my teeth a bit.

Given that, when a major plot twist occurred that I didn’t like and didn’t believe, that was it.

I don’t expect to pick this up again, but the right kinds of spoilers provided by any of you who have read this duology could change my mind. Does Avery EVER realize that the Vardeshi are not actually nicer than humans? Is the captain’s behavior actually a tactical ploy? In this situation, I don’t mind spoilers a bit. The more the better. Please let me know your thoughts if you think I’m off-base with this DNF decision.

Meanwhile, I’m considering what else I might try.

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Monday Update: Finished! More or less

All right, so I think everything left to do with the TUYO World Companion is detail work. And maps. Still working on getting maps done. For all I know I may write some more sections, or for that matter take out sections. Or rearrange the sections presently there. Or who knows what.

Notes about regions, seasons, cultures, architecture, astrology … what else? Well, I rewrote the story Ryo tells Lalani, about the origin of the inKarano tribe, as Marag told it to Lalani later. That’s in here. Letters from various people to various other people. I might write a few more of those, not sure. A fairly complete list, alphabetical, of characters, with notes. Less extensive lists of places, with notes. An “interview.” And, of course, the novella, “Returning Hokino’s Knife,” that I’m better satisfied with now that I’ve incorporated suggestions from the earliest first readers. That basically involved pulling some of the subtext I had in mind into the text where the reader can see it. Some very important stuff was not clear enough. I think it is now. The total length of the World Companion is about, I don’t know, something over 80,000 words. The novella is a little less than half of that.

So, whew! That’s well on its way. I haven’t put it up for preorder yet. I won’t until I know that the maps are under control. I added a jpg picture to the file and sent that to the Kindle app on my phone so I can see how it looks. This is not an actual picture that will appear in the book, it’s just a test photograph of the hand-drawn map, just to see how a jpg file looks and whether it loads properly. I haven’t even looked at that yet. I’ll be using that file to proofread as well. I started to make a paper edition for proofreading purposes, gave up because the template was too annoying with ten thousand little sections, and took a look at using Draft to Digital to make a print version instead. That may be simpler. I’ll poke at that some more this week.

So, fundamentally under control! I’m pretty sure! Not under control enough to put up for preorder, but I hopefully soon!

That means I can go back to revising the back half of INVICTUS, yay!

Will I have INVICTUS completely revised by June 15th? Not sure, but not impossible! How about by July 1? Yes, I should think so. I would be quite surprised if this revision takes longer than that. Finishing with INVICTUS and getting it in shape for first readers would allow me to start work on SILVER CIRCLE just about when I intended to, maybe a few weeks behind, but fundamentally “a few weeks behind” equals “about on time” when it comes to my writing schedule.

July and August should be good writing months for me. Short workdays, too hot to do all that much outside, only one puppy underfoot …

Haydée crashes hard after going out for a run with the big dogs.

Haydée is doing so well that I’m almost starting to worry. I mean, if she never, ever pees in the house, how can I tell her not to pee in the house? Well, I suppose she will make a mistake eventually. Meanwhile, she is certainly a very (very) easy puppy. I’ve said for ages that some puppies are easy to housetrain and some more difficult, without regard for time of year or anything. But I suspect having the deck door open for the first bit of housetraining may help. Or else all these recent puppies just turned out to be very easy. I do need to take her more places over the rest of June. Very important to socialize a puppy before twelve weeks and here we are, the clock ticking away toward that date.

Anyway, SILVER CIRCLE! I’m barely thinking about it at this point. The World Companion kept me in that world, so I know more about the upcoming novels that will be set there. I’ve ordered two more covers, by the way, so that is a commitment. One is for a long novella/short novel that will be called MARAG. I bet you can guess that this is the one where Sinowa and Marag get together. The other is for probably a normal-length novel called RIHASI, after the female lead.

BUT SILVER CIRCLE WILL COME FIRST. Next thing after finishing the INVICTUS revision. I am determined.

Once I let myself think about the Black Dog series, I hope that SILVER CIRCLE will unroll cooperatively before me. I suspect parts of it may not be all that cooperative. But I do know a lot about it. I’ve even got pieces of it sitting around.

I’ll need to re-read at least the novellas in the 4th collection, maybe also COPPER MOUNTAIN. That should put me in the right place to actually work on the final novel in this series. I expect it to be something of a pain in the neck, and I expect it to go kind of long. Nevertheless, if I start it July 1, I’m betting I can have a draft complete or at least nearing completion by October 1. We shall see!

Therefore, this week, detail work for the World Companion, actual focus on INVICTUS, but SILVER CIRCLE is now a definite gleam in my eye.

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Haydée

Haydée! That’s her name! (Accent mark desirable, but optional.) Obviously it went like this: Rhapsody … Dee … DeeDee … Chickadee … Haydée.

I mean, possibly that isn’t totally obvious, but it sort of seemed obvious after the fact!

I think this is a pretty name for a sweet, gentle puppy, which she is. I liked that name the first time I read The Count of Monte Cristo and I still like it.

Haydée moved down to the bedroom with the rest of us the day her final sibling went off to a new home. That was adorable little Boy 1. Haydée clearly missed him and all her siblings, but after 24 hours, she started playing with Morgan, with Naamah, and even with Leda. She and Leda play very gently, both of them lying down.

Leda is an exceptionally gentle Cavalier, and Haydée has learned this and plays more vigorously with Morgan (who wants to be chased) and Naamah (who wants to wrestle.) She also plays with me, very nippy, but gentle enough that I’m not paying much attention to the standard bite inhibition training. She will learn that without a lot of feedback from me, I’m pretty sure. She is also learning to follow me and another dog (off leash) and she is learning to tolerate the leash, but that’s separate. Oh, and I meant to say, she slept through the night from the first. Sure enough, she wants to be on the bed for a few minutes. When I’m ready to go to sleep, I put her in the crate with Naamah and not a peep is heard until the alarm goes off the next morning. She’s eating fine, too. She’s a bit of a social eater, but if I put her food on the couch with me, she is happy to eat it while I read or whatever.

No housetraining mistakes so far. They’re sure to happen, especially now that it’s so hot and the door to the deck is closed. But she’s doing really great and let me add that I very much appreciate not having to do two extra loads of laundry per day plus go up and down the stairs a thousand extra times per day. She can’t go down on her own, but she’s mastered up.

So that’s my Haydée!

Possibly one major reason I thought of that name was that I had just read this answer on Quora, which mentioned that the Count would have been worth, in today’s dollars, about 3.6 BILLION dollars. Wow. I commented about this to Craig and we segued from there to a discussion about how bad all the movie adaptations are. Which they are. Even the one with Richard Chamberlain.

And why are they bad? They are bad because half the movie takes place in the Chateau d’If. That is so … it’s so … it’s … it’s unthinkably stupid, that’s what it is.

Here is the right way to do the movie of The Count of Monte Cristo:

Edmond Dantes arrives at the Chateau d’If. Scene of Edmond escorted through the stone corridors and into a prison cell. He turns to face the door, which grates around and smashes shut. He looks bewildered and horrified. Begin the opening credits here. Now a visual montage of Edmond and his teacher, the Abbe Faria, with occasional snatches of conversation, as the credits roll. Edmond stitches himself up in the canvas shroud and is thrown into the sea. He is rescued by the boat. The credits are still rolling. He finds the treasure. The credits are STILL ROLLING. All of this happens DURING THE CREDITS.

There is a fade to black.

Then the Count steps into the scene and the movie begins. This is where the movie actually begins! Not during the betrayal scene! Not during the Chateau d’If! This is a movie, not a long miniseries! You have to get past ALL that in order to start the ACTUAL MOVIE, which is the part where the Count takes revenge, but also learns (with some difficulty) to forgive and not to impose the sins of the fathers on the children. That’s the good part! It’s also the important part. Scenes of the betrayal can be inserted as brief (brief!) flashbacks when absolutely necessary to explain what is going on in story-present.

If you want to watch a prison break movie, fine, how about that thing by Stephen King, what was it, oh, The Shawshank Redemption. Which I liked very much, by the way. But that is the right movie for a prison break. The Count of Monte Cristo should be MUCH, MUCH more than a prison break movie. The prison break is not the point of the movie! Edmond becoming grim Providence and then letting go of that role again, that’s the point.

I have read the book many times — the abridged version, which I think is better than the unabridged version — and I have my favorite parts. I love the rescue scenes, the part where the ship that had been wrecked is re-created and arrives in the nick of time. I love Monsieur Noirtier and his granddaughter, Valentine, and Maximilien. I love all of that. I also love Haydée’s courtroom scene where she denounces the man who betrayed her father. That’s a powerful speech and a powerful scene.

When the Count arrives in a cloud of mystery with a Greek slave girl, that’s him stepping in as Providence. Then everything happens — he rescues those who were Edmond’s friends and sets himself to exact vengeance on Edmond’s betrayers, and then the two become inextricably entwined in the persons of Maximilien and Valentine, and there’s the scene with Mercedes where she begs him not to kill her son, and over and over the Count finds it impossible to be as coldly vengeful as he’d intended. Nobody has to demand or beg that he forgive the last person. By that time, he’s arrived at a place where he can do that without a further push.

This is a great revenge story, but it’s the forgiveness that makes it powerful. Haydée is part of that. Her character arc is crucial because it’s a story of the quest for vengeance coming to an end. The Count sets Haydée free, discovers she won’t go (or doesn’t want to go) and then finally declares his love for her. He frees her literally, which means he’s also freeing himself of the memory of Mercedes and also the memory of betrayal and the focus on vengeance. We can then presume that everyone lives happily ever after, with, I guess, 3.6 billion dollars to help smooth the rough corners of life.

There’s a lot in this story, a lot I just love. I’m glad this name occurred to me. Even if nobody’s going to get the accent mark right.

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Who in the world created this cover?

Here’s a fun post at tor.com, and thanks to commenter Robert for pointing me to it: Do You Know Who Illustrated This Classic Wrinkle in Time Cover?

This post is by Molly Templeton, and here is the cover she means:

If you are of a certain age, you remember it well: The creepy, haunting, downright iconic—and totally weird—cover of the 1976 Dell edition of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. But while many of us remember being scared by (and/or fascinated with) this image, there’s an unexpected mystery behind it: No one seems to know who the artist is.

I remember this cover! Oddly, I remember only the narrow-winged armless centaur. I don’t recall the creepy face at all. Perhaps that’s not odd, since I was always going to notice mythological creatures far more than creepy mask-like faces. Regardless, apparently the artist is still a mystery.

Regardless, Templeton is right. This cover is totally weird.

Robert then started me, no doubt on purpose, down the rabbit-hole question of What Is The Weirdest Cover Ever. Here’s his submission in this wild and wacky category:

Words fail me. I presume this is one of the apparently common instances when the publisher slapped a completely random cover on a book without the least regard for the tone, style, subgenre, or actually even the genre of the book in question. Apparently publishers sometimes literally used to have a file of unused covers and just pick one out at random for whatever book was up for publication next.

If you’re curious, here’s a post that shows various other covers for The Princess Bride. I think my copy is the one with the girl on the horse. That one is certainly far, far preferable to the above peculiar mess.

If you poke around looking for the worst fantasy book covers of all time, you will see plenty of contenders that give this terrible Princess Bride cover a run for its money. Here is my very favorite:

I am particularly enjoying the above because of the unexpected theme of “terrible fantasy covers featuring centaurs with strange arms.” I wouldn’t have thought there could be more than one cover in this exceedingly specific subgenre of bad covers, but here we are.

The above covers are so bad that they even make the many and terrible covers for the Vorkosigan series look pretty good. Or at least somewhat less terrible.

Anyway, here is a good cover featuring centaurs:

There you go, centaurs with normal arms.

This is of course one of the books in Nick O’Donohoe’s Crossroads trilogy, The Magic and the Healing, Under the Healing Sign, and The Healing of Crossroads. They are not linked into one series page … and, I am not finding ebook versions. Who published these? Ah, Ace. Well, Ace, what the heck is wrong with you? How about you bring out ebook editions? I guess Ace let these go out of print and O’Donohoe hasn’t got the rights back, or isn’t interested in bringing out ebook editions. That’s too bad, because the first book is excellent and the other two pretty good. (I’m downgrading them because of personal irritation with one specific detail that might not bother anyone else.)

Anyway, the protagonist is a vet student — in later books, a veterinarian, no longer a student — with an interesting and unique practice. Also serious problems, as Crossroads is at hazard for various reasons. My own vet gave this series two thumbs up for the medical details. AND, I know I have mentioned this before, but I’m going to mention it again: the protagonist here was the first time I specifically noticed an author making a character smart and perceptive without every saying, or having anyone else say, “Oh, look, she’s so smart and perceptive.”

I don’t mean O’Donohoe bludgeoned the reader over the head with BJ’s brilliance and perception and that’s why I noticed this part of her character. I don’t want to imply that. He did a great job and I just happened to sit up straight and say, “Look how perceptive she is! And the author never even says so! It’s just part of who she is! Wow, that is so neat!” It was something I was ready to notice as a reader, I guess, so it really struck me.

Writing smart characters without having to tell the reader that the character is smart is something every novelist needs to learn how to do. I mean, if any of your characters are ever going to be smart and perceptive.

Okay! Any other centaurs you particularly like in fantasy? Normal arms or otherwise, but I bet the above are the two weirdest centaurs pictured in all of fantasy.

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I did not finish your book

A post at SteveLaube.com (he’s an agent): I Did Not Finish Reading Your Book

There are a lot of reasons for this to happen. Here are a few examples.

Fiction:
–I didn’t care about your characters.
–The plot fizzled.
–The story became ridiculous and unrealistic.
–It was too easy to put down. Or, in other words, it was forgettable.

I won’t say this happens to me that often, because I would say that if I don’t make it past the first ten pages, I wouldn’t really say I truly started reading the book at all. I tried the book. But I didn’t actually begin reading the book. I didn’t commit.

Reasons I stopped before I got ten pages in:

A) I didn’t care about your characters. That part is the same.

B) I was actively repulsed by your characters. I’m thinking of the “Would you turn the page post” here, the one that offered this first page:

And, of course, there was to be a lunch party to mark the new year. A small affair, just family, but Thomas would require all the trimmings. Unthinkable that they would do otherwise: the Turners were big on tradition, and with Nora and Richard visiting from Sydney, neither frippery nor fanfare was to be skipped.

Isabel had decided to set up in a different part of the garden this year. Usually, they sat beneath the walnut tree on the eastern lawn, but today she’d been drawn to the stretch of grass in the shade of Mr. Wentworth’s cedar. She’d walked across it when she was cutting flowers for the table earlier and been struck by the pretty westward view toward the mountains. Yes, she’d said to herself. This will do very well. The arrival of the thought, her own decisiveness, had been intoxicating.

She told herself it was all part of her New Year’s resolution—to approach 1959 with a fresh pair of eyes and expectations—but there was a small internal voice that wondered whether she wasn’t rather tormenting her husband just a little with the sudden breach of protocol. Ever since they’d discovered the sepia photograph of Mr. Wentworth and his similarly bearded Victorian friends arranged in elegant wooden recliners on the eastern lawn, Thomas had been immovable in his conviction that it represented the superior entertaining spot.

Ugh. I have anti-interest in spending time with Isabel and her family.

C) I was actively repulsed by something about your world. This time I’m thinking of She Who Became the Sun.

Zhongli village lay flattened under the sun like a defeated dog that has given up on finding shade. All around there was nothing but the bare yellow earth, cracked into the pattern of a turtle’s shell, and the sere bone smell of hot dust. It was the fourth year of the drought. Knowing the cause of their suffering, the peasants cursed their barbarian emperor in his distant capital in the north. As with any two like things connected by a thread of qi, whereby the actions of one influence the other even at a distance, so an emperor’s worthiness determines the fate of the land he rules. The worthy ruler’s dominion is graced with good harvests; the unworthy’s is cursed by flood, drought, and disease. The present ruler of the empire of the Great Yuan was not only emperor, but Great Khan too: he was tenth of the line of the Mongol conqueror Khubilai Khan, who had defeated the last native dynasty seventy years before. He had held the divine light of the Mandate of Heaven for eleven years, and already there were ten-year-olds who had never known anything but disaster.

Ugh. I have anti-interest in spending time in this world, which is apparently characterized by grinding poverty and disaster.

D) The protagonist or important secondary characters got themselves into a pickle that is too high-tension for me to tolerate right now.

I’m still (still!) not really into high-tension, high-stakes novels. Unless I really trust the author. Maybe not then. This is still (STILL!) limiting the kinds of books I really feel like reading.

E) I am particularly repulsed by any story that puts the protagonist or important secondary characters in acutely embarrassing situations, perhaps for humorous effect. I have, seriously, no tolerance at all for that. I’m not likely to get through that scene. This is most likely to happen with romances.

F) My interest just … petered out for no clear reason. I quit opening the book to go on with it. Nothing was causing me to recoil. I just lost interest.

This is the same as one of the above reasons too, the “too easy to put down” reason. I always feel bad about this, especially if I got more than halfway through the book. I just did not really care. Sometimes the protagonist makes a choice I don’t understand or a stupid decision. That can make me pause and then I may be kind of reluctant to go on and then I get less interested. But sometimes I just lose interest for no obvious reason. I think that happens more often than it used to.

However, even though I’m all about not wasting time reading books I don’t like, I will often finish books that are only moderately engaging. That’s because being able to put a book down is a feature, not a bug, if I have stuff of my own I’m working on, which I do almost all the time these days.

And finally,

G) The book is too difficult. The setting is too astonishing. The prose is too good.

I know, right? This is all completely unfair to the book. But this is the opposite of “moderately engaging.” These are books the reader has to really pay attention to. And I don’t have time or attention to spare because I have deadlines, self-imposed or otherwise, and do not want to stop and read something to which I have to truly pay attention.

If the book is engaging enough, I’ll get over that hump. But I may read just, I don’t know, two pages and say, “LATER! LATER WHEN I HAVE TIME!” And that is why my TBR pile is so extreme and why it is taking me three years or whatever to get around to reading plenty of really good books.

There are increasing numbers of books on my Kindle that fit this latter category.

That is, alas (?), probably going to continue because I have just no shortage of books of my own I want to work on.

You know what has become a hundred times more inviting over the last week? Anything on my TBR pile? No: the idea of writing a direct sequel to NO FOREIGN SKY. I am so, so easy to influence. All it takes is a handful of positive comments and great reviews and boom! I instantly feel much more happy about the book and much more inclined to go on with the series. I was so bored with proofreading NO FOREIGN SKY, but now that feeling has vanished like the mist and I’m starting to think, Okay, how could I maintain a fast pace like that in a sequel? Maybe I should try throwing a very brief outline together...

I hit a new-to-me low in numbers of books read last year, probably. I can see that is likely to happen again this year. The number of books I barely try or DNF is probably even going to increase. Well, that’s too bad, but here we are. Someone needs to invent Magic Clones or something so I can both work on my own books and simultaneously read other people’s books.

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Update: And suddenly there is just one puppy

Bo, which is to say Anara Quintessential Bodhisattva, with his New Person at his New Home. May he have a wonderful life!

Wow, it is always something of a shock to let all the puppies go, especially when they go so fast, one after another. I sent Morgan’s tri boy off first, then her Blen boy — that’s him above, as you may realize — then a short pause. Then Leda’s Girl 2 left me this past Saturday, Boy 2 Sunday, and Boy 1 this morning. Ouch, seriously.

I’m glad I’m keeping one. Even if I decide to place her later, I definitely prefer to have a puppy underfoot for awhile. Here she is, my personal puppy, nibbling my toes. Luckily I am not ticklish.

Her name, by the way, is Anara Rhapsody in Lavender. Her mother’s name is Anara Lavender Rose, you see, and Rhapsody is a nice R word. I named her sister Anara Rhapsody in Blue, which turned out to please her new person, as he is a Gershwin fan.

But it’s rather difficult to turn Rhapsody into a call name. Rap? No. Soda? No. Happy? No. Lavey? No no no.

Right now I’m calling her DeeDee. If you squint, you can see the “dee” in “Rhapsody.” Dee is too short for a puppy name, but DeeDee is okay. I might change it later, but for now, DeeDee. Which also sounds quite a bit like PuppyPuppy, which is what I start off calling nearly all of them, so she’s already learned to come to me when she hears her name.

She is a very sweet puppy, but — I think I said this in a previous post — not the most confident. So this week, many short drives to nice friendly places that are not too overwhelming. With treats. Treats are always good.

Meanwhile! Gosh, look, this is a rough draft after all!

I sort of remembered this as finished.

I skimmed through the first book quickly and was pleased. Then I started this book, the second half of the story. It was fine, fine, fine, then boom! I hit chapter ten and suddenly realized that yep, this is indeed a rough draft. I had known that, in sort of vague terms, but it has been a year since I wrote this draft and now, ouch, this looks pretty rough. The first part of the revision will be very easy: I just need to pick up elements that appear in the second book and foreshadow them properly in the first book. The second part of the revision will be MUCH MORE DIFFICULT, as I smooth out chapters ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fourteen. And fifteen. Hey, at least the last part of the book is in much better shape! But yes, I can now guarantee this project will not be finished by June 1. I’m definitely aiming for June 15th. That is probably fairly realistic.

One thing I’ve noted to myself — I leave BOLDED notes scattered through the text — is that I have two sections where I sum up what has been happening. I think I will replace both of those with the action rather than a summary. That will make this book longer. That is fine. Once I decided to cut the story in half, suddenly there was room to expand either or both books. That’s feeling like something of a luxury after tightening tightening tightening TASMAKAT. Which will still be substantially longer than this complete duology, but I am resigned to TASMAKAT being a total monster.

Anyway, this revision is what I worked on last week and what I will be working on this week, with little side quests around the edges. For example, I’m putting together my next newsletter. I think I will be running some unusual sales of books I don’t normally put on sale; I’ll put information about that in there. And I think I’ll include the current table of contents for the Tuyo World Companion. That way if anybody wants to suggest something else that might go in that book, they can. I’m still working on that, of course. That’s why it will be the “current” ToC. That’s another of the side quests.

I am including recipes, by the way. A couple Ugaro, a couple Lau, a couple Lakasha. I had to order barley flour from Amazon in order to test the Ugaro recipes properly, as the Ugaro have limited wheat flour and use more barley flour. Can you believe I couldn’t find barley flour either at the local health food store OR at Global Foods? Well, Amazon had it.

I love Global Foods, which is in a suburb of St. Louis. I haven’t been there for a long time, probably not since before Covid. I bought lots of cool stuff, many treats I do not usually have handy. But I thought you might enjoy a picture of the single weirdest item I spotted at Global Foods. Here you go:

I think I have a pretty decent imagination, but I could not have come up with that. On the off chance that any of you have tried this, what did you think? In the more probable case that you haven’t, would you have bought this just to see what it was like? I don’t like alcohol, so I didn’t. I wasn’t sure this would contain alcohol, but “fermented” suggested it might. Apparently it doesn’t. The link goes to an article. Here is part of the abstract. The conclusion may not be entirely unbiased.

Shalgam is a traditional Turkish beverage produced by lactic acid fermentation. … In shalgam production, bulgur flour … salt, water, purple carrot, turnip, and sometimes red beet is used… Shalgam is a probiotic food and a good source of nutrients. It helps regulate the pH of the digestive system. It contains β-carotene, group B vitamins, calcium, potassium, and iron. People also use it as a medicine because of its antiseptic agents. Shalgam consumption should be increased and become worldwide.

It would be easier to get people to try it if you called it “shalgam” rather than “fermented hot black carrot juice,” probably. I do try to get something I have never heard of every time I’m at Global Foods. This time I got mulberry molasses. I was quite disappointed. Pomegranate molasses is concentrated pomegranate juice and it’s great. This mulberry molasses just tastes like molasses. I like gingerbread fine, but I can get ordinary molasses to make that. When I found out that the mulberry molasses doesn’t taste like mulberries at all, I looked on Amazon for mulberry preserves. Wow. That exists, but it is VERY PRICEY. However, it is not as pricey as it could be! There are hilariously wrong prices at Amazon. The link goes to a jar that is 16 oz for $28. You know what it says? It says the jar costs $28 OR $28 PER GRAM. That’s what it says! ($28.23 / gram)! There are 454 grams in 16 ounces, so at $28.23 per gram, that would be $12,816 for a 1 lb jar! Ha ha ha, whoops, that is funny! If mulberries were actually worth that much, I would climb my mulberry tree and pick the mulberries! Anyway, I guess I will live without mulberry preserves for the moment, even the jars that are advertised at a more sensible $21 for 2 1-lb jars.

Anyway! That was last week, and this week should be calm, relatively speaking, and pleasant, and since it will be blazingly, unendurably hot, no doubt I will stay inside and not take dogs to the park and that means I will get a lot done. Welcome to summer, and happy Memorial Day!

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