Allison Hurd's Blog, page 14

Death Cannot Stop True Love

By now, most of you have likely noticed that each of my works has at least one Princess Bride reference in it. It is my all time favorite movie. I’ve probably watched it more than fifty times. I can quote it more or less verbatim. It was part of my wedding, for crying out loud.

I love Princess Buttercup and Westley. I’m not sure love is enough. They are woven into the story of my life.

So, when I saw Buttercup (yes, I know it’s Robin Wright, and that she’s tremendously talented, but she is always and forever my Buttercup) in Wonder Woman, I was thrilled. As so many memes have noted:

And lawdy it feels good. Because I love Antiope and Buttercup, I have created a head canon. It goes like this.

After the Fire Swamp debacle Buttercup vowed that never again would she be helpless. She took it upon herself to learn everything she could, with rapt attention and kindness as exemplified by Westley. She pursued her studies until she was so fierce and so beautiful that Zeus couldn’t ignore her.

Whenever you feel like dying, feel free to visit.

But Zeus was likely no match for Westley alone. Now the unbreakable bond of the love shared by Buttercup and Westley had two defenders. It was both iron and silk, and the god knew better than to mettle. So, he made a race of people with her spirit, and granted her long life. Buttercup stayed with her true love for every moment of his time on Earth as his equal. After the trials that had brought them together, she knew each moment was a gift. She summoned forth all the strength she could and kept him well when time, machines, and decay would have made lesser men falter. But he was not as favored by the gods as she, and then when he had passed on, she joined her sisters in Themiscyra, never doubting, never fearing, and never loving again.

There she stayed, to fight and bolster her people under a new name. Antiope she was now, for Buttercup had died the day she buried Westley. She had been princess once, and wanted it no more, focusing instead on sharing the skills that she had learned, and protecting other women from ever feeling as helpless as she’d felt the day of her abduction so many years ago. She took no lover, and therefore the only child for her was that of her “sister,” Hippolyta, whom she cherished as her own. And when death claimed her at last, she returned to the side of her true love. After all, death cannot stop true love. It only delays it awhile.

But Instead I Didn’t

Here’s the takeaway:

Wonder Woman was great and the words I have to eat were only a little bitter.

The new Museum of the American Revolution was very cool, especially the tent finials that my sister restored.

I am going to sleep for probably a thousand years.

The longer version:

I saw Wonder Woman last weekend. As I said before, I was ready to raze DC to the ground over any shit it tried to pull with Diana, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was maybe not the world’s best movie, but i still cried tears of joy twice, so it wasn’t the world’s worst movie by a long shot. Bonus points, it passes all of the dialogue tests we currently have for whether a movie has women in it, or plot devices with boobs. Definitely worth a see.

I thought I’d have more time this weekend, but, well. Instead I didn’t. In part because we went to the Museum of the American Revolution in Philly to see the amazing work my sister and her fellow conservators have done with hundreds of artifacts. You should especially oo and ah over George Washington’s tent and the iced gingerbread cookies you can buy in the gift shop, because my sister worked on the tent (the finials were entirely her creation, as the originals were all too damaged to subject to further abuse) and made the mold used for the cookies from an antique cookie press!

There were lots of other really cool things but my sister didn’t make them, so I’m not going to brag. Do I have to do everything? Just get up and go find out for yourself. Jeez!

And finally I am dead tired, my feet feel like they are made of blisters, and there are so many blooming things that I think I’m’a do some exhaustive research on this Rip van Winkle character. For, err, a book.

-FIN-

Pride Goeth Before the Weekend

I think if I were honest, this all started when some careless teen started using my email address.

A couple of months ago, I started getting notifications that my application had been “received” by some university in the middle of…I want to say Oklahoma?

After the heart palpitations subsided and I vehemently yelled “YOU CAN’T TAKE ME, SATAN” to my startled but un-surprised coworkers, I realized that it was very unlikely that I had either subconsciously decided to pursue a second undergraduate degree in the middle of the nation or that someone had cruelly gone through all the effort of impersonating me to that end. I took a deep breath and called the university to let them know that they’d never take me alive. 

They laughed. I laughed. They said they’d fix it. I said “or else.” We laughed again, but mine was delayed a little too long and they hurried off the phone.

Awhile later, well after I’d thought myself safe, I received another email that said I needed to upload “essays” and finally that congratulations me, I had been accepted.

Except it wasn’t me, of course. It was a whole other human whose email address unfortunately looked like mine, or maybe this was her safety school and she didn’t really wanna deal with all that, so she foisted it on some poor body whose years in education are so old that it now buys her drinks to cope with the fact she was in school for that long.

And then I received word that she and some friends had had their application approved for an apartment.

At that point I made sure that this was actually a mistake and not someone politely telling me they’d stolen my identity.

My core being, and my bank account still intact, I tried to think what to do? This person clearly wasn’t being a trustworthy protector of her life, and was dragging my good email-name through the mud with her.

I considered sending her a housewarming slash congratulations on starting college gift, but apparently sending teenagers unwanted gifts is skeevy in our culture.

This is what she’s missing. Sorry, you’ll never get this now, careless teen.

Good to know.

And that’s when pride was my downfall.

I got careless with my own security, because clearly I was doing way better than this person a decade younger and from a place with no easy access to an ocean, which I think makes you more trusting. As all coastal-born people know, beaches be tricky.

I let my guard down. I swung my adorable clutch containing my wallet and favorite lipsticks too hard, and it soared too high. I threw it at my brilliantly engineered work bag, with its thermal cup holders and two-tiered storage with abandon, and it found the bag’s one Death-Star-esque weakness:

a gap between the convenient side entrance to my Mary Poppins bag that could just fit a clutch containing a wallet and someone’s favorite lipsticks.

In my hubris, I lost more of myself than the poor teen could have done with her poor handwriting on various applications.

In the cold light of self-reflection, I am forced to consider that perhaps I should not be trusted with the cards I use regularly. Perhaps sweet little clutches shouldn’t be given to the likes of me. Worst of all, I’ve let down my library card, right when it needed me most.

I am a monster. A driver’s license-scattering, library card-squandering, no good clutch-loser who feels that, between library closings and due dates, will never get to read anything by Nnedi Okorafor.

The book that I’ve been trying to enjoy for over a week, but for the dire circumstances that separate us.

This is what I get.

And this is also the reason I’m only a third of the way through Blood and Bone. Thank you for understanding my need for time to grieve.

Tread Hel-Way; Heaven Is Cloven

No offense to him, but Snorri Sturleson’s parents must have known they were pigeonholing him into a life of the arts and assholery when they named him. I think that’s just a given.

But before I tell you more about Snorri and his tales, check out the new digs! We have a new website now and are in the process of sprucing it up. Make sure you sign up on our mailing list! As I get comfier here, I’ll be adding additional short stories and offers to the site for subscribers. Don’t miss anything. It could be fatal. (But probably not. Almost certainly, definitely not fatal.)

And now, back to Snorri.

He’s the author of The Prose Edda, among other things, which tells the stories of the Norse gods for the first time ever on paper. Snorri was a bit of a jerk (read: a monumental jerk) but this story is great. Today I am going to share with you an abridged and modernized version of the Doubting of Thor, which is a name I just gave this portion of the Gylfaginning, which you should absolutely read.

Italics are the original text, the rest is me.

Öku-Thor drove forth with his he-goats and chariot, and with him that Ás called Loki; they came at evening to a husbandman’s, and there received a night’s lodging. About evening, Thor took his he-goats and slaughtered them both and added them to a cauldron. When the cooking was done, then Thor and his companion sat down to supper. Thor invited to eat with him the husbandman and his wife, and their children. Then Thor laid the goat-hides farther away from the fire, and said that the husbandman and his servants should cast the bones on the goat-hides. Thjálfi, the husbandman’s son, was holding a thigh-bone of the goat, and split it with his knife and broke it for the marrow.

Thor tarried there overnight; and in the interval before day he rose up and clothed himself, took the hammer Mjöllnir, swung it up, and hallowed the goat-hides; straightway the he-goats rose up, and then one of them was lame in a hind leg. Thor discovered this, and he knew that the thighbone w as broken.

“What the actual, fuck, guy?” Thor demanded, gesturing with his  hammer at the goat. “Do you know how hard it is to find self-assembling goats?”

“I’m sorry! Usually when someone gives out magical food, they tend to warn people first!”

“Oh, sure, this is my fault. Fucking classy,” Thor fumed, Mjöllnir crackling unpleasantly.

There is no need to make a long story of it;

(But what the Hel, eh? Long story incoming. YOLO!)

all may know how frightened the husbandman must have been when he saw how Thor let his brows sink down before his eyes; but when he looked at the eyes, then it seemed to him that he must fall down before their glances alone. Thor clenched his hands on the hammer-shaft so that the knuckles whitened; and the husbandman and all his household did what was to be expected: they cried out lustily, offered in recompense all that they had. But when he saw their terror, then the fury departed from him, and he became appeased, and took of them in atonement their children, Thjálfi and Röskva, who then became his bond-servants; and they follow him ever since.

“Nah, just joshing with you guys. The universe just, like, gave me these goats. Just like it just gave me your kids! The universe is bountiful, I tell you what.”

“W-what?”

“Here you go, you can keep one self-assembling goat and one goat that you’ll never be able to lose because you fucking ate its leg, you monsters. And now I get your kids!”

“Can we maybe discuss this a little?”

“Yeah, sure. Hang on, I’ll call my negotiator. His name is hammer that calls lightning and levels mountains. Heads up, he’s a close-talker.”

“Err…thanks for the goats! Have fun, kids.”

Thereupon he left his goats behind, and began his journey eastward toward Jötunheim and clear to the sea. Then, when they had walked a little while, there stood before them a great forest, but there was nothing good for food. As soon as it had become dark, they sought themselves shelter for the night, and found before them a certain hall. But about midnight there came a great earthquake: the earth rocked under them exceedingly, and the house trembled.  Then they heard a great humming sound, and a crashing.

But when it drew near dawn, then Thor went out and saw a man lying a little way from him in the wood; and that man was not small;

Child, he was freakin’ ENORMOUS.

he slept and snored mightily. Then Thor thought he could perceive what kind of noise it was which they had heard during the night.

“Do they even make CPAP’s this big? I think we just call the oxygen tank he’d need the sky.”

He girded himself with his belt of strength, and his divine power waxed; and on the instant the man awoke and rose up swiftly; and then, it is said, the first time Thor’s heart failed him.

“Loki, fuck, man, this is a giant’s giant, man.”

He asked him his name, and the man called himself Skrýmir,–‘but I have no need,’ he said, ‘to ask thee for thy name; I know that thou art Ása-Thor. But what? Hast thou dragged away my glove?’ Then Skrýmir stretched out his hand and took up the glove; and at once Thor saw that it was that which he had taken for a hall during the night.

Skrýmir asked whether Thor would have his company, and Thor assented to this.

“You tell him he can’t stay with us, then,” Thor grumbled as his comrades groaned.

Then Skrýmir said to Thor that he would lay him down to sleep,–‘and do ye take the provision-bag and make ready for your supper.’

Thereupon Skrýmir slept and snored hard, and Thor took the provision-bag and set about to unloose it; but he got no knot loosened and no thong-end stirred. When he saw that this work might not avail, then he became angered,

“Thor, just chill, man,” one of the kidnapped kids implored.

“Bet you wish you had a self-assembling goat now,” Loki said.

“You don’t talk to me!” Thor whisper-shouted.

gripped the hammer Mjöllnir in both hands, and strode with great strides to that place where Skrýmir lay, and smote him in the head. Skrýmir awoke, and asked

“Did a leaf fall on me? I hate camping. Oh, hey Thor! How was dinner?”

 Thor replied,

“Oh, uh…yeah man. It was great. Just wanted to uh…make sure you were cool before we turned in for the night.”

“Yeah, thanks! As long as these leaves stay away. I hate nature.”

“Ha! Totally.”

Then they went under another oak. It must be told thee, that there was then no fearless sleeping.

“I am hangry and awake. I am going to murder something.”

“Not it!” cried a brother.

“Not i– dammit,” the other brother cursed.

At midnight Thor heard how Skrýmir snored and slept fast, so that it thundered in the woods; then he stood up and went to him, shook his hammer eagerly and hard, and smote down upon the middle of his crown: he saw that the face of the hammer sank deep into his head. And at that moment Skrýmir awoke and said: ‘What is it now? Did some acorn fall on my head? Or what is the news with thee, Thor?’ But Thor went back speedily, and replied that he was then but new-wakened; said that it was then midnight, and there was yet time to sleep.

“Fuck me running, I just put a crater in his head and he wants to know what’s new. What’s new?? Your new crater face, Crater Face,” Thor whispered to the oak as the giant fell back asleep.

The next morning, the colossal killer of sleepovers decided to go his own way, much like Fleetwood Mac.

‘I have heard how ye have whispered among yourselves that I am no little man in stature; but ye shall see taller men, if ye come into Útgardr. Now I will give you wholesome advice: do not conduct yourselves boastfully, for the henchmen of Útgarda-Loki will not well endure big words from such swaddling-babes.’

“Like, seriously, Thor. Button it up, man.”

‘But if not so, then turn back, and I think it were better for you to do that; but if ye will go forward, then turn to the east.’ Skrýmir took the provision-bag and cast it on his back, and turned from them across the forest; and it is not recorded that the Æsir bade him god-speed.

“Don’t let the door hit ya!” Thor cried out after him, but not loud enough the  giant could actually hear.

“This. This right here, Thor. This is what he said not to do,” Thjálfi said.

“Your mother.”

Thor turned forward on his way, and his fellows, and went onward till mid-day. Then they saw a castle standing in a certain plain, and set their necks down on their backs before they could see up over it. Thereupon they came before the king Útgarda-Loki and saluted him; but he looked at them in his own good time, and smiled scornfully over his teeth, and said: ‘It is late to ask tidings of a long journey; or is it otherwise than I think: that this toddler is Öku-Thor? Yet thou mayest  be greater than thou appearest to me. What manner of accomplishments are those, which thou and thy fellows think to be ready for? No one shall be here with us who knows not some kind of craft or cunning surpassing most men.’

 

Útgarda-Loki asked Thor what feats there were which he might desire to show before them: such great tales as men have made of his mighty works. Then Thor answered that he would most willingly undertake to contend with any in drinking.

“Like seriously. Of all the things I can do, this one is most impressive.”

Was it necessary to get naked first, though?

Útgarda-Loki said that might well be; he went into the hall and called his serving-boy, and bade him bring the sconce-horn which the henchmen were wont to drink off. Straightway the serving-lad came forward with the horn and put it into Thor’s hand. Then said Útgarda-Loki: ‘It is held that this horn is well drained if it is drunk off in one drink, but some drink it off in two; but no one is so poor a man at drinking that it fails to drain off in three.’ Thor looked upon the horn, and it did not seem big to him; and yet it was somewhat long. Still he was very thirsty; he took and drank, and swallowed enormously, and thought that he should not need to bend oftener to the horn. But when his breath failed, and he raised his  head from the horn and looked to see how it had gone with the drinking, it seemed to him that there was very little space by which the drink was lower now in the horn than before. Then said Útgarda-Loki: ‘It is well drunk, and not too much; I should not have believed, if it had been told me, that Ása-Thor could not drink a greater draught. But I know that thou wilt wish to drink it off in another draught.’ Thor answered nothing.

“I’ll show you a great drink,” he thought.

He set the horn to his mouth, thinking now that he should drink a greater drink, and struggled with the draught until his breath gave out; and yet he saw that the tip of the horn would not come up so much as he liked. When he took the horn from his mouth and looked into it, it seemed to him then as if it had decreased less than the former time; but now there was a clearly apparent lowering in the horn. Then said Útgarda-Loki: ‘How now, Thor? Thou wilt not shrink from one more drink than may be well for thee? If thou now drink the third draught from the horn, it seems to me as if this must be esteemed the greatest; but thou canst not be called so great a man here among us as the Æsir call thee, if thou give not a better account of thyself in the other games than it seems to me may come of this.’ Then Thor became angry, set- the horn to his mouth, and drank with all his might, and struggled with the drink as much as he could; and when he looked into the horn, at least some space had been made. Then he gave up the horn and would drink no more.

“This game is stupid. I’m not gonna play a stupid game.”

“Then said Útgarda-Loki: Now it is evident that thy prowess is not so great as we thought it to be; but wilt thou try thy hand at more games? It may readily be seen that thou gettest no advantage hereof.’

Oo! Thor! Ya burnt!

Thor answered: “I will make trial of yet other games; but it would have  seemed wonderful to me, when I was at home with the Æsir, if such drinks had been called so little. But what game will ye now offer me?’ Then said Útgarda-Loki: ‘Young lads here are wont to do this (which is thought of small consequence): lift my cat up from the earth; but I should not have been able to speak of such a thing to Ása-Thor if I had not seen that thou hast far less in thee than I had thought.’

“DAMN. You need some ointment for that burn?” Loki asked.

“I don’t know why we’re friends,” Thor said. “But at least I know I can drink better than you can.”

What are you doing? You can’t milk cats!

Thereupon there leaped forth on the hall-floor a gray cat, and a very big one; and Thor went to it and took it with his hand down under the middle of the belly and lifted up. But the cat bent into an arch just as Thor stretched up his hands; and when Thor reached up as high as he could at the very utmost, then the cat lifted up one foot, and Thor got this game no further advanced. Then said Útgarda-Loki: ‘This game went even as I had foreseen; the cat is very great, whereas Thor is low and little beside the huge men who are here with us.’

“Oh, you motherf–”

“Thor! Remember Snore-y Stilts-on back there!” the brothers interrupted.

“Then said Thor: ‘Little as ye call me, let any one come up now and wrestle with me; now I am angry.’ Then Útgarda-Loki answered, looking about him on the benches, and spake: ‘I see no such man here within, who would not hold it a disgrace to wrestle with thee;’ and yet he said: ‘Let us see first; let the old woman my nurse be called hither, Elli, and let Thor wrestle with her if he will.’

Straightway there came into the hall an old woman, stricken in years. Then Útgarda-Loki said that she should grapple with Ása-Thor. There is no need to make a long matter of it: that struggle went in such wise that the harder Thor strove in gripping, the faster she stood; then the old woman essayed a hold, and then Thor became totty on his feet.  Yet it was not long before Thor fell to his knee and Útgarda-Loki went up and bade them cease the wrestling.

“Quit embarrassing yourself,” Utgarda-Loki suggested.

“How ’bout go fuck yourself?” Thor opined.

“How ’bout we just get drunk?” Loki added, bored and worried that once Utgarda-Loki was done making Thor-sized pancakes, Loki-shaped ones would be next.

But at morning, as soon as it dawned, Thor and his companions arose, clothed themselves, and were ready to go away. Then came there Útgarda-Loki and caused a table to be set for them; there was no lack of good cheer, meat and drink. So soon as they had eaten, he went out from the castle with them; and at parting Útgarda-Loki spoke to Thor and asked how he thought his journey had ended, or whether he had met any man mightier than himself. Thor answered that he could not say that he had not got much shame in their dealings together. ‘But yet I know that ye will call me a man of little might, and I am ill-content with that.’

“That really sucks.”

Then said Útgardi-Loki: ‘Now I will tell thee the truth, now that thou art come out of the castle; and if I live and am able to prevail, then thou shalt never again come into it.

“Get lost, is what I’m sayin’.”

And this I know, by my troth! that thou shouldst never have come into it, If I had known before that thou haddest so much strength in thee, and that thou shouldst so nearly have had us in great peril. But I made ready against thee eye-illusions; and I came upon you the first time in the wood, and when thou wouldst have unloosed the provision-bag, I had bound it with iron, and thou didst not find where to undo it. But next thou didst smite me three blows with the hammer; and the first was least, and was yet so great that it would have sufficed  to slay me, if it had come upon me. Where thou sawest near my hall a saddle-backed mountain, cut at the top into threesquare dales, and one the deepest, those were the marks of thy hammer.

“HA! I knew it! Mountain-leveler, right here!”

‘I brought the saddle-back before the blow, but thou didst not see that. So it was also with the games, in which ye did contend against my henchmen: when thou didst drink from the horn, and it seemed to thee to go slowly, then, by my faith, that was a wonder which I should not have believed possible: the other end of the horn was out in the sea, but thou didst not perceive it. But now, when thou comest to the sea, thou shalt be able to mark what a diminishing thou hast drunk in the sea: this is henceforth called “ebb-tides.” ‘

And again he said: ‘It seemed to me not less noteworthy when thou didst lift up the cat; and to tell thee truly, then all were afraid who saw how thou didst lift one foot clear of the earth. That cat was not as it appeared to thee: it was the Midgard Serpent, which lies about all the land, and scarcely does its length suffice to encompass the earth with head and tail. So high didst thou stretch up thine arms that it was then but a little way more to heaven. It was also a great marvel concerning the wrestling-match, when thou didst withstand so long, and didst not fall more than on one knee, wrestling with Elli; since none such has ever been and none shall be, if he become so old as to abide “Old Age,” that she shall not cause him to fall.

“So…I wrestled with Death.”

“If you want to ruin the poetry of it, yes.”

“Tell me again how I won.”

“…”

‘And now  it is truth to tell that we must part; and it will be better on both sides that ye never come again to seek me. Another time I will defend my castle with similar wiles or with others, so that ye shall get no power over me.’

When Thor had heard these sayings, he clutched his hammer and brandished it aloft; but when he was about to launch it forward, then he saw Útgarda-Loki nowhere. Then he turned back to the castle, purposing to crush it to pieces; and he saw there a wide and fair plain, but no castle. So he turned back and went his way, till he was come back again to Thrúdvangar. But it is a true tale that then he resolved to seek if he might bring about a meeting between himself and the Midgard Serpent, which after ward came to pass. Now I think no one knows how to tell thee more truly concerning this journey of Thor’s.”

Pretty great, am I right? Thor’s a badass. And a bit reckless. But in his defense, he was probably very drunk.

 

Urban Fantasy is the Jeans of the Book World, and Also You Shouldn’t Yell At People.

 

You can’t go around yelling CONSISTENCY at people, I’ve been informed, but I’m going to keep doing it anyway because I am nothing if not consistent.

CONSTANT VIGILANCE is also good, and if that’s what you want to yell at people when they least expect it, by all means. Live your best life. But I am easily distracted, so I am woefully unprepared to have that lifestyle. CONSISTENCY! though…that’s something I can do. Again and again.

And again.

“Why do you keep yelling at the cats when you know they’ll do it anyway?”

“CONSISTENCY!”

“Why do you turn on your computer before getting coffee?”

“CONSISTENCY!”

“Why do you read science fiction and urban fantasy?”

“CONSISTENCY!”

“What don’t you like about nuts in baked goods?”

“CONSISTENCY!”

This is all true, and while I would be delighted to discuss with you my thoughts on cat parenting, the proper way to make carrot cake, and productivity, today’s post is mostly about consistency in ostensibly realistic fiction.

C’mon, what are you, an animal? Small bites.

I am specifically referring to urban fantasy, of course, because I have no legs to stand on in science fiction (which would be a great “what if” for a science fiction story–you’re welcome, NK Jemisin or Seanan McGuire!) but I am going to point with all of my energy at sci-fi and angrily whine “but they’re doing it!” until you either agree or buy me ice cream. I’ll take either. Baked good predilections aside, I’m not picky.*

The thing about books in which our present is also their present (or past, if it’s far future sci-fi. Or future, I guess, if it’s a book about time travel) is that we don’t need to make the world over whole cloth. We can totally just take someone else’s cloth, as long as they’re not using it. We are like theatre groups who do a modern day Shakespeare retelling so that everyone can wear their own “street” clothes and we don’t need to find a seamstress who’s interested in sewing twenty yards of velvet.

Urban fantasy is the jeans of books.

We just have to ask a “what if” question and then follow that as honestly as we can.

What if there was a wizard who set up shop in Chicago?

What if someone could see how a person would die when they touched them?

What if in a skeptical age some people knew that all the myths were real?

Note how none of those what ifs say “and all of humanity has totally lost their entire minds and the art of conversation is mostly just recapping facts about our days.”

See how they’re not there in the what if? That means we get to assume that humanity still has whatever part of its mind we ascribe to it today, and conversations still often have points and awkward non sequiturs.

“Surely,” you ask. “Surely that’s not as important as the fact that there are space battles (spattles?) and vampires (no portmanteau needed, unless they’re space vampires, in which case I submit they’d be spampires**) running about?”

I vant to suck your ozone!

So glad you asked, and great use of portmanteaus.

I heartily disagree. There are great works of fiction about the world entirely as it is now, devoid of battles or vamps, be they space or Earthican. The “what if” is the plot–the rest is the story. And the plot is usually something you can say in a sentence or ten (unless you’re GRRM and need a cork board, push pins and 10 skeins of yarn to create some sort of intricate plot web) but the story hopefully takes a bit more time than that. If not, you should try micro-fiction, I have a feeling you’d be great at it.

This is what makes or breaks a book for me. People should be people. Dialogue should sound like something you’d overhear on the train, or if you were a fly on a wall with sufficient sentience to understand speech. Sex shouldn’t be possible if you’ve been so badly hurt that day you lost consciousness twice. You know. The average day-to-day stuff.

The second real things stop happening around the “what if” we’re taking a dive into fantasy, and the cheap knock-off cloth we used to imitate the design of the Great Creator will no longer suffice. We need to make whole cloth anywhere we deviate from reality, or serge the shit out of it with details and explanations.

I think my costuming metaphor, much like my attempts at ruching on a sewing machine, is getting away from me.

What I mean to say is that when natural progressions falter in realistic settings, the whole story falters. The light falls down in the middle of The Truman Show. The set piece collapses on stage. We see the boom mic in a wide shot, and suddenly we’re not watching the show anymore, we’re examining the facade of it. It all falls apart if we don’t believe the world is gonna support the story. This is how fairies get killed.

NNNOOOOOOOOOO! TINK! I BELIEVE IN YOU! *CLAPPING*

When I’m stuck writing about what would happen next, I think about what I would really do in this situation. What would [friend] do? And I see how I can work something close to that into my writing. I can tell when authors do that, or when they just think “what would be cool?” Cool is great. Being unable to continue fighting because a regular guy with no powers is so sexy that the breath is knocked from your chest is not cool. That’s not a thing. If it is, it’s probably the type of thing often treated by a psychiatrist and/or a great vibrator. I recommend trying both, and then maybe including your findings in your next book.

This attempt at realism is something done regularly in science fiction, because those stories are almost always really about the limits of humanity when put in extreme environments. My favorite urban fantasy is when we treat our characters similarly. If monsters and magic are real, the world just got a lot less hospitable, and it’s already pretty skewed towards our destruction as is. As always, people screw things up, and that’s the best part of the story.

CONSISTENCY!

*This is a total and also a complete lie. I am extremely picky about most-to-all things.

**Spampires might also be umpires made of canned meat, or empires built on unwanted emails.

 

 

I’m really busy right now trying to poison my mom on an i...

I’m really busy right now trying to poison my mom on an island of fire, so you’ll have to forgive me for the short post.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms, mom-figures and people with moms! What’s that? Oh! I see your confusion. Yes, I’m drinking grown up orange juice with my mom on Fire Island this weekend! But that’s not nearly as metal sounding.

WHO MIXED OJ WITH VEUVE CLICQUOT? YOU PLEBE!

I hope you are also able to spend time with your mom(s), even if it’s just in spirit. Better if it’s over spirits.

I’d wish you all a fairy tale day, but moms and fairy tales don’t seem to mix, for some bizarre reason, so may you have a very realistic but extremely pleasant day and if you forgot a gift? Well, I won’t tell her, but Feeding Frenzy is at a new low price on Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

Thanks, moms! Especially mine, though, who gave me a love of puns and a burning need to finish projects as fast as humanly possible. These are the cornerstones of my work, and I am happy to have stolen them from you, unlike your clothes, which I tried to steal, but you’re too tall.

I’m Not Your Plot Device

Let’s set the scene.

You are a pretty good human. You’ve got the majority of essential human components, and they work within the bell curve of human normalcy. Your brain weasels are present but fairly well mannered, and your past, while clingy, usually just likes to go for walks or skips through the park. Most days, it does not actively try to unmake you.

Cool, you think. You’re mid-marathon. You’re on track, doin’ okay, plodding or sprinting or hopping or however it is your specific human race is run towards your mile markers.

“Yes! I haven’t embarrassed myself once today!”

And then outta nowhere, someone is like “Hey, remember that time that all human misery was yours? Didn’t it make you strong?”

Plot-devicing, man. It happens to all of us.

So you stand there, staring at the insolent son of a bitch who broke your stride and gave the past a bag of bricks to carry as it clings to you.

“No,” you say. “No, it didn’t make me stronger. You’ve got the idiom all wrong. ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ isn’t referring the actual thing that tried to kill you. I don’t go around punching people in the face and then patting them on the back for how strong they now are. ”

Your new titanium jaw implants are gonna be so strong.

No, the truth is that expression should be more like “whatever doesn’t kill us necessitates the creation of coping mechanisms that allow us to wall ourselves off from similar hurts, unless the initial hurt came a lot closer to killing us than not, in which case you’ll likely never fully recover and even if you do, it may still take a long damn time to heal to the point we can work on our defenses.”

But that’s much harder to fit in an activewear advertisement.

And this is so goshdingdang important in stories. Strength is so monumentally essential in our heroes, because it’s something we can all share. We may not be able to cast fireballs or pilot a spaceship, but every single one of us has been tested, and most of us have failed at least once.

Because strength NOT some impenetrable fortress of sheer willpower. Human strength is riddled with portcullises and bricks that need repointing and only about 3000 calories of willpower to burn on a good day. Heroes are no exception, though they may burn more calories, and may have better-kept fortresses.

So if you’re gonna come here, trip me up mid-race and chuck a bunch of bricks at my head, you best believe I’m gonna start bobbing and weaving and chucking bricks right back or else I am going to look like Joe Pesci from Home Alone.

“Im made of iron!” “And I ain’t no stinkin’ chicken.”

And if a kids movie about endearingly inept robbers can get human strength right, I expect everyone else can wrangle it as well.

If you can’t manage that? Don’t test me. Don’t test my heroes. Go find a brick first, and examine it. Imagine what it would feel like to drag it or to dodge it. Then try again.

 

Media Representation: The War for More

My neck is tired. I  have been doing some full body eye-rolling lately. There is a war going on about where and when women and minorities can do cool stuff in public. And y’all? If this is something we need to fight about, I don’t need your peace. I am content with war, if my options are that or capitulation to an entity with no claim on me.

Diversity is winning. New voices are acquiring megaphones. Change is coming.

But one of the most contested battles lately is over how we convince the parts of society unsure how to divine the crystal ball of culture that all we want and what we need is as follows:

We want to see the world we live in reflected in our media
We don’t just want the veneer. We want everyone crafting the stories to be part of this process.

You are not going to get an audience for a cult classic when you castrate the parts valued by the cult. Ghost In the Shell could have been the best sci-fi movie ever released. But with a white person in the place all fans knew should have been held by someone of Japanese heritage, fans were going to be mad, and non-fans were likely going to be put off by a story associated with such an angry cult.

So close.

You are not going to get a pat on the back for having a token character on a show who either has all ethnic identifiers removed from their character, or who double down on a stereotype.

Yet so far.

The only way to avoid these issues is to have voices comfortable in their identities help mold the world around those stories. Notice the difference between the Sansa plot in “Game of Thrones” and the treatment of Jessica Jones in her titular show. Both involve feminine horror and are played as honestly as the actresses can. But one is casebook example of a version of the survivor’s story, written by women, and Sansa is just the styling, with none of the substance, written entirely by men.

So. How do we correct this? The best way is to show all of these articles we keep writing to movie execs until they’re so convinced that everything they’re doing is wrong that they listen to the money-givers. And then step two, we wait for various movie execs to die or retire and replace them with underrepresented people in the industry.

The second way is with us. We, the media consumers, keep speaking up with our words and our dollars. There is some in-fighting on this one. One school of thought holds that we should give movie execs positive reinforcement anytime they include someone in a project who is representative of a group we’d like to promote, and should therefore attend every single mainstream movie with someone who isn’t a straight white cis man at the helm even if the movie is just two hours of snoring.

This is a great strategy for some media. Disney’s Brave was one of the first kids movies to come out where both parents were alive, the daughter was alive, and the happy ending didn’t have a marriage. It was sort of a train wreck of a plot, but they were really going out on a limb, and you could tell they were out of their depth but still doggedly swimming for the distant shore. So yeah. They got my dollars.

Ghostbusters, the reboot, was another film that was obviously trying and nervous. There are dozens of articles on why it flopped, but I am glad I went. We found it enjoyable, and it was a work that held additional meaning. It was diving into territory that was at once so banal as to be overlooked and so new as to be revolutionary.

There is another option in place of positive reinforcement. It is an option I find that I tend to apply tactically, and that usually is targeted against a particular person or company.

Sometimes companies think we’re idiots. They think we don’t see what they’re doing, that our opinions are uninformed, and that the thing that makes or breaks a concept for us is no big deal. Sometimes we tell them to their faces what it is we find exceptionable and they refuse to believe us. And then they treat women and minorities like executive boards at failing companies around the world:

The last resort. The idea so crazy it just might work. They offer the CEO position to a woman whose resume makes the other officers’ resumes piss themselves in fear, put her in the spotlight, refuse to take her cues, and as the show tanks, they shake their heads. Just as they suspected. Women can’t do anything better than men. Minorities are simply not up to the job.

And I say, with all due respect and in full understanding of why someone would agree to be trapped in that position fuck that.

When someone is trying something new with the intention of doing good, we want to encourage them. We are like Gordon Ramsay with his child chefs, cultivating knowledge and praising experimentation, even when it’s not quite right. When someone who should know better takes the form of a new idea and paints it over the substance of an old idea, it is no longer new. It is a slap in the face of everyone who saw how well the new ideas performed, who nursed hope in their hearts that the future would be better, and we are within our rights to act like Gordon Ramsay does with so-called professionals.

Yes. This feels right. It is proper.

Parading a captive as the ingenue of the old system is a deathwish, and I think we should respect some companies’ right to choose their own demise.

We are told that the Wonder Womans* and “Girls” of the world are the battlegrounds we must meet on.

Must. Mandated. Required.

But…why? Why can’t we spend our resources on media trying new and provocative things only? Why must we keep the rest on life support? DC Cinematic has been on my shitlist for ages. They haven’t produced anything good since the Nolans fought everyone for creative control of The Dark Knight Rises. DC saw what worked well, and instead they forced us to have Batman vs. Superman.

Yeah, no. No, you can go to Hell, DC. We still have Marvel, and dozens of producers hungry for licenses to content you hold. Or, even better, beloved content outside of DC’s scope, stories epic and rich, penned by hands that look like the hands of my boldly-hued world.

Is there such a thing as a reverse siege? Where the army gathers in the field, and you just don’t show up, and instead go grab their castle? I want to do that.

Capture the flag is how it works IRL, IIRC.

So there are the options. And I have to say, I think there’s room for both tactics, even in the same battle. Guys, you should go see every woman-fronted movie you can afford. As we all know, your dollar is worth 1.3 times as much as ours. White people go see “black” movies. Support stories even if you don’t see yourself, because that’s exactly what we make other people do in deference to our stories.

But those of us being fed scraps while being told we should be grateful? We are under no obligation to show up for every challenger who would fight for our strongholds. We only need to meet the worthy foes. The rest are noise, and our outriders should be able to set them right soon enough.

 

*I realize this isn’t out yet and may be excellent. If I hear that even some of my fears are unfounded, I will humbly request forgiveness, and also give them my dollars. But it’s just…DC. AND DIANA!! They best not come for her, I swear to Amazonians everywhere.

 

How to Date Your Audience

Online dating is a strange place. It’s like in-person dating, except that we self-select info to share outside of our looks and infectious laughter, which used to be enough in the olden-times, and while you don’t have any immediate risk of physical interaction, cyber stalking is strangely encouraged. I am fascinated by this.

Not for actually dating, but for what it says about human connection, and the novelty of the conversations it spawns. I don’t go much for schadenfreude, but gosh I can’t help but pop some corn when I get a text that starts “So, I just started talking to this person on OK Cupid…”

It probably has something to do with my entire inability to comprehend how this process is supposed to work that fascinates me. It’s like watching terrible magic in the hands of wizards with inscrutable motives.

It’s also really helpful for finding out how to appeal to audiences.

I don’t consider myself any kind of expert in dating or marketing, but I see the same patterns over and over. I would be insane not to recognize them.

Here it is, the wealth of my gleaned knowledge:

People don’t like to feel used.

Really that’s all it boils down to. People don’t want to feel like you’re only interested in them for their looks or money, or as an audience to whom they can brag.

Whether you’d like to end up in their bed or their bookshelves, this remains true.  “How bout dat ass” is about as subtle as coming into a reading group and saying “Hey! I’m a new author but I also read books!” I suppose it works sometimes, because people continue to do this, but these interactions seem to sour people more often than they arouse them.

I mean, one of these is more likely to work.

Honestly, it’s quite simple how to get around this issue. It’s called conversation. I’m beginning to think that conversation would be a good topic to teach in high school, along with how our bodies/brains actually work, and how to apply and interview for jobs.

People want you to seem like you give a shit about them, that you’re able to share your interests honestly, and that you won’t skin them and make a mask of their face.  That’s all we want.

So, if you’re in reader spaces, no one wants to hear about your book. They want to talk about what everyone’s reading. You can tell, because it’s called a group for readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s useless to authors. I have learned so much talking to other reading enthusiasts about how various demographics view series, tense, point of view, and what makes or breaks a review for them. The organic sales I have are almost always from word of mouth, or because people think kindly of me and would like to support me, provided I didn’t write garbage. And the coolest part is that this is all a bonus, because I also get to spend time with people who like books as much as (or more than) I do! What’s not to love?

 

While I think self publication is an amazing platform, being an author these days means that you’re able to type words and press a button. People are much more encouraged to try our own work when our writing ability and personalities are enjoyable on topics that interest them personally. I’m not sure how it works elsewhere, but I know in the States we believe quite strongly that “if you have to say what you are, you aren’t.” If you have to tell people you’re an author, your must not be a very good author. If you have to tell people you’re a bodybuilder, you must not be a very good one. Whether or not that’s fair, that’s the sentiment.

So wise, Subhas.

Which of course feeds into the frustration. If you can’t tell people about your book, how do they learn about your book?

Again, it’s like dating. You can put on a nice outfit, wear some good smelling things, smile and pay for dinner or a movie or adventure, and you might not find your next partner. We can spend hundreds of hours writing and thousands of dollars perfecting our book, and it might not get picked up anywhere any time fast. It isn’t owed to us, and while it’s slow, painful and often disappointing, how we approach the process is really important to our eventual success. Kindness, authenticity, and perseverance will eventually prevail. And in the meantime, we learn, grow, and stay optimistic.

May we all find our people!

Princesses Aren’t The Problem

If you want to come here and fight me about whether or not children can be princesses, you’re gonna need an army. ‘Cause this warrior queen ain’t got time to joust every last White Knight trying to save us from…what? Ruling an entire kingdom?

I will cross the poison water and sic my dragons on you.

I love that everyone is so conscious about little girls getting the opportunity to be scientists or business women or well-respected artists. There is a huge gap in genders and jobs and it fills me with righteous glee to see people working to address that.

But stop already with the either/or. There are warrior kings and philosopher kings and warrior poets. Why not queens, too?

You think ruling is hard? Try doing it backwards. In heels.

Our real problem with princesses is what we associate with them: selfishness and reliance on men to save the day. And while it’s true that some of the stories do seem to have that element to it, I see so many deeper threads. It may not surprise you to hear that I read and study a lot of our fairytales, folk tales and legends. They have, in more ways than one, shaped my life. They introduced me to so much magic, but more importantly, to so much reality. Let’s not scoff at the Disney-fied endings and ignore all of the struggle contained in our folktales. Our stories are so much bigger than the wedding, so practice what you’re preaching and dig deeper.

Don’t hate the selfless dreamer who toils for love of her family, expecting nothing in return just because she indulges a little at the end. Let’s talk about what we do for love, and what the limits are.

Don’t talk to me about Sleeping Beauty and true love’s kiss. That’s all Disney. Let’s talk about how many women are trapped until they are impregnated, and then their freedom is only allowed so far as their new motherhood title extends.

I agree whole-heartedly that a woman should never just have one role ascribed to her, and that to only see herself as princess is limiting. But where is that in our fairytales? Which of these women, who cook and serve and fight and dream and deflect the persistent, unwanted attentions of suitors are just princesses? Why do you want to deny them their full title?

Rapunzel: Explorer, single mother, princess

Snow White: Philanthropist, wild heart, princess

Deerskin: Gourmet chef, survival expert, princess

Hell, in the Twelve Dancing Princesses, marriage is the punishment.

It is okay not wanting our daughters to expect Prince Charming to make it all better. But tell me, which of those women had lives that magically got better when they married? Tell me which story has a ball that makes them forget who and what they are? And which fought to make their best life within the confines of the rules that bind them?

Then tell me that princess is not defined by its own struggle.  Princesses are only ever given the short stick, and with that, they divert every river that tries to drown them, and fend off every attack aimed to kill them. This is something, I think, that is a shared feminine skill. Very few, if any, of us grow up without realizing we’ve been sent on a quest not with a sword, but that same fractured twig. And still, we persist. That is what being a woman is, after all.

So, yeah. You’re damn right that little girls are princesses. Princesses grow up to be queens.