Arinn Dembo's Blog: Mill on the Inspiration River, page 2
March 11, 2012
The Inheritance and Other Stories
I stumbled across this book in the catalog of the Vancouver Public Library recently, and decided to pick it up for a quick read. I have been a fan of Meghan Lindholm for around 20 years at this sitting, as I first started reading her many years ago, when I picked up the paperback of "The Wizard of the Pigeons". Since then I have made a point to read most of the work she has published, including the epic fantasy trilogies that she writes under her other pseudonym, Robin Hobb.
Reading through this collection I found that two of the tale were already familiar, in particular "The Silver Lady and the Forty-ish Man" and "The Fifty Squashed cat", both of which are classics. I was pleasantly surprised by "A Touch of Lavender", the opening story, if only because it combined some of her usual themes with an extremely interesting and well-developed science fiction premise, complete with weird alien race. Very cool stuff.
The book is split between the two writing personas, but reading the stories of Lindholm and Hobb together definitely reveals how much the two "different" authors have in common. There are seven stories written as Lindholm here, and three as Hobb--but the continuity between the two groups is strong.
Lindholm typically sets her stories in a contemporary world skewed only a few degrees from our own: its shopping malls and slums are very familiar, and despite the science fiction and fantasy content these are essentially slipstream stories about rather ordinary people whose largest problems are generally pretty mundane--poverty, divorce, the inability to connect with family. Robb is writing in an exotic high fantasy setting; the three stories in this collection seem to focus around the Rain Wilds/Bingtown area of her fantasy world--which is not surprising, since her most recent novels are also set in that region.
All but two stories in this collection share a common pool of themes and problems, however, and seeing them all collected here definitely shows the unifying traits of both pseudonyms. "The Inheritance" as a whole is very much about poverty and privation, the struggle to make ends meet and secure the basic necessities of life. The issues that rise up out of this fertile soil are incredibly important, and they are common to the protagonists of both the mundane and the high fantasy worlds of the author.
What we see here is the battle for dignity and autonomy against a world which simply does not care that we exist. The characters are often people who have problems claiming their power, whether they are women in societies where women have few resources and rights, children from bad neighborhoods, or artists who are losing sight of the value of her art--and by extension, losing sight of their own value.
The struggles of these characters are almost painfully sympathetic and highly engaging; they are generally the sort of people that we root for, despite our occasional temptation to smack them in the back of the head.
I give this book four stars out of five, not because the book as a whole or any story in it is flawed, but because this author has given us even finer moments in the course of her career. I'd recommend any one of her books quite happily; they are always quite vividly imagined, and she is one of the best writers in her genre. I recommend this one in particular because the central argument of the collection is a sound one: the inheritance that women need most is not any material thing, but a sense of their own worth.
The Inheritance & Other Stories
Reading through this collection I found that two of the tale were already familiar, in particular "The Silver Lady and the Forty-ish Man" and "The Fifty Squashed cat", both of which are classics. I was pleasantly surprised by "A Touch of Lavender", the opening story, if only because it combined some of her usual themes with an extremely interesting and well-developed science fiction premise, complete with weird alien race. Very cool stuff.
The book is split between the two writing personas, but reading the stories of Lindholm and Hobb together definitely reveals how much the two "different" authors have in common. There are seven stories written as Lindholm here, and three as Hobb--but the continuity between the two groups is strong.
Lindholm typically sets her stories in a contemporary world skewed only a few degrees from our own: its shopping malls and slums are very familiar, and despite the science fiction and fantasy content these are essentially slipstream stories about rather ordinary people whose largest problems are generally pretty mundane--poverty, divorce, the inability to connect with family. Robb is writing in an exotic high fantasy setting; the three stories in this collection seem to focus around the Rain Wilds/Bingtown area of her fantasy world--which is not surprising, since her most recent novels are also set in that region.
All but two stories in this collection share a common pool of themes and problems, however, and seeing them all collected here definitely shows the unifying traits of both pseudonyms. "The Inheritance" as a whole is very much about poverty and privation, the struggle to make ends meet and secure the basic necessities of life. The issues that rise up out of this fertile soil are incredibly important, and they are common to the protagonists of both the mundane and the high fantasy worlds of the author.
What we see here is the battle for dignity and autonomy against a world which simply does not care that we exist. The characters are often people who have problems claiming their power, whether they are women in societies where women have few resources and rights, children from bad neighborhoods, or artists who are losing sight of the value of her art--and by extension, losing sight of their own value.
The struggles of these characters are almost painfully sympathetic and highly engaging; they are generally the sort of people that we root for, despite our occasional temptation to smack them in the back of the head.
I give this book four stars out of five, not because the book as a whole or any story in it is flawed, but because this author has given us even finer moments in the course of her career. I'd recommend any one of her books quite happily; they are always quite vividly imagined, and she is one of the best writers in her genre. I recommend this one in particular because the central argument of the collection is a sound one: the inheritance that women need most is not any material thing, but a sense of their own worth.
The Inheritance & Other Stories
February 25, 2012
The Deacon's Tale Give-away is over!
The first ever Goodreads Giveaway from Kthonia Press is now over! I am actually pleasantly surprised with the results. We offered 10 free copies of the book in trade paperback, to readers in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. 599 people applied for the give-away, and the winners are fairly evenly distributed throughout Canada and the USA.
All ten of the winners will be receiving a signed copy of the book from Kthonia Press. Congratulations and many thanks to all the winners--I hope you enjoy the novel. :)
For those who have requested a review copy in electronic format, please send your queries to the publisher at kthonia@gmail.com. The book is available in .pdf, .epub and .mobi formats.
Thank you all for your support!
February 19, 2012
The House on the Borderland
The House on the Borderland by William Hope HodgsonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
“From the Manuscript, discovered in 1877 by Messrs Tonnison and Berreggnog, in the Ruins that lie to the South of the Village of Kraighten, in the West of Ireland. Set out here, with Notes…”
It is closing in on a hundred years since this classic work of eerie fiction was first published, and even a century removed I’m still not quite sure what to think of it. The House on the Borderland is one of those titles which comes up naturally in the course of one’s education in horror; the book is mentioned often, always with a tantalizingly vague description, by several sources. The reader has the nagging sense that she ought to track it down and read it some day, just to see what everyone is talking about, especially as Hodgson’s name always arises as a notable author who never quite seems to get his due.
“The book almost certainly influenced Olaf Stapledon’s The Star Maker,” one critic will say. And then H.P. Lovecraft chimes in: “Perhaps the greatest of all Mr. Hodgson’s works…”
It was with some pleasure, then, that I discovered this old and oft-rebound book in the data base of the Vancouver Public Library System’s electronic catalog. It took only a few keystrokes to have it spirited to my local branch from its obscure corner of the city’s widely dispersed stacks.
“And the M.S. itself—You must picture me, when first it was given into my care, turning it over, curiously, and making a swift, jerky examination. A small book it is; but thick, and all, save the last few pages, filled with a quaint but legible hand-writing, and writ very close. I have the queer, faint, pit-water smell of it in my nostrils now as I write, and my fingers have subconscious memories of the soft, ‘cloggy’ feel of the long-damp pages.”
Having now read the book from cover to cover, I find myself somewhat bewildered; whatever I expected from this book, I most certainly didn’t get it. The House on the Borderland, despite its great antiquity, is one of the weirdest books that I have ever read.
Structurally, this is a nested narrative; the center rests within two consecutive framing devices. This “Chinese box” motif is one that I often see in older gothic fiction, and it gives me some pleasure to see it done well. Antique stories are not unlike antique furniture, in some ways; the craftsmen of former ages had their own way of building a functional object, and it is pleasant sometimes to run my hands over the fine old things they made, and marvel at the cunning way things were fitted together.
Hodgson (the author), poses as the editor of this work in his introduction, claiming that he has produced the published work that you hold in your hands by transcribing what was written by others. This is the outer frame of the story.
The inner frame is a tale of two outdoorsy young men on a fishing trip in Ireland, vacationing in an untouched region where the people still speak nothing but Gaelic and the villages and rivers cannot be found on any map. While exploring these two men come upon the ruin of an old house, strangely perched on the lip of a huge crater; among the tumbled stones they come across an old journal, and the contents of this journal make up the main body of the book.
And here is where the bewilderment sets in. The main narrative of House on the Borderland is extremely bizarre. The writer of this journal is a nameless old curmudgeon, who bought the strange old house in the woods when it was still intact. The place had a bad reputation with the locals, but it was quite cheap, and offered him all he could want in the way of isolation and quiet. So he lived in the massive, rambling manse with no family and no servants except for his elderly sister and a faithful old dog.
All of this is sketched in within a few pages; Hodgson takes no time to establish an ordinary routine or explore the characters in ordinary circumstances. He simply shakes the reader’s hand and then pounces, leaping out of the ordinary into the fabulous without hesitation. Literally, by the ninth paragraph, we are yanked feet-first into a realm beyond the boundaries of ordinary consciousness and space-time, clinging to the shirt-tails of the hapless narrator as he finds himself dragged bodily into an eerie dreamscape which reminded me inevitably of Carlos Castaneda.
With him we float disembodied over a vast silent plain, then drift into a range of dark mountains, and are brought at last to a huge natural amphitheater where the brooding peaks form circular walls. There the towering death gods of countless religious traditions stand frozen, looming over this place like undead statues for all eternity. And in the center of it all, an eerily huge copy of his own house in Ireland stands, built of green jade but otherwise similar in every respect to the building he calls home.
Does it get stranger from here? Most definitely it does, but I have no interest in spoiling it for those who haven’t read the book already. Suffice it to say that the narrator does return to the ordinary waking world within a chapter or two, and tries to get on with his alarmingly believable “real” life. But the way this strange and largely unwilling visit to another realm begins to creep into his mortal affairs is genuinely horrifying.
This isn’t a book that merely creeps up on you, tickling the back of your neck with a cold feather. There are times when the old man is engaged in a genuinely desperate struggle for his life and his sanity, against enemies that tear and claw and leave corruption in the wounds they make. You forget entirely, as you read, that he had to have survived these battles in order to write about them; Hodgson has you by the throat during those passages, and his grip is strong.
But there are also long, minutely described chapters which recount the old man’s visions and experiences in realms far, far beyond the waking world. Strange silver seas, from which rise the spirits of our beloved dead. Dreadful eternities blinking by in seconds, until our sun is a cold cinder and the gases of our planet’s atmosphere have frozen and fallen to earth as snow, leaving the sky airless and black for the rest of time.
All in all, The House on the Borderland has the feel of “addict fiction”, the kind of works which can sometimes be written by authors who experiment heavily with mind-altering drugs. Samuel Taylor Coleridge sometimes has this kind of eerie power, and Byron touched upon it once with his poem “Darkness”. William S. Bourroughs can show this kind of imaginative abandon at times, as well, and I have seen it often in art created by men and women who took frequent “trips” on LSD, peyote, or psychoactive mushrooms.
Please understand that I do not presume to guess at Hodgson’s personal habits in this regard. I haven’t read his biography, if one has been written, and there are obviously some writers, like Lovecraft, who achieve these states of mind without any chemical assistance whatsoever. I merely point out that regular doses of a powerful alkaloid can send an artist in this direction; Hodgson’s book is “trippy” in the extreme—and it’s a very bad trip at that.
I can certainly see a heavy influence on the weirdest of the weird fiction written by men like Stapledon and Lovecraft. I can even see a dim connection between some passages of this book and the eerie extended sequence at the end of Stanley Kubrick's classic film 2001; there is the same sense of scope, of willingness to grapple head-on with the infinite.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who fancies himself a scholar of weird fiction, especially those who think that Lovecraft’s “Dreamlands” stories are his best work. It’s also worthwhile for those who can appreciate finely made antiques, or very deep, very bad acid trips. An object lesson for those who want to know what the word “original” really means, when applied to a work of fiction: after nearly a century, I assure you, The House on the Borderland still stands alone.
View all my reviews
January 7, 2012
Candle in the Window
Candle in the Attic Window by Silvia Moreno-GarciaMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I've just finished reading this book recently. I kept it beside my bed throughout the holidays like a box of chocolates, picking it up to read it one story at a time, so that I could savor each piece.
I can see why this book might have difficulty finding its intended audience. It has a serious problem: it's billed as a tribute volume of sorts, an anthology of Gothic horror, but the vast majority of the work being done here is just MUCH TOO ORIGINAL.
There are only one or two stories here which actually seem to brush coatsleeves with the writers of the 19th century. Orrin Grey posits that a schlock horror director of the 1960's might take it into his head to try and make a cheeseball B-movie out of "The King in Yellow", for example. Joshua Reynolds explores the inner life of a minor and quickly dispatched character from the most famous novel of the Gothic genre in "Elizabeth on the Island". But these are only two stories out of twenty-seven; of the remainder, a sizable majority of the writers seem to have kicked off the cozy blankets of pastiche some time in the night, and we are left lying in the cold cold night of the unexpected.
Far too often these stories are breaking entirely new ground, rather than walking in the old rut. The book is divided into sections, with stories grouped by very broad subject matter. It is amazing what a diversity of stories you can place under the heading of "Dwellings and Places"--alongside the old family manse and the traditional cursed monastery you can also find a movie set, a private school, a massive industrial complex. Stories about "Lovers and Desire" need only to end badly to be Gothic, and a bad end can come to people in any number of ways. Stories about "Objects and Mementos" can be about any object, from the traditional letter or book to a deck of magical cards or an Egyptian mummy. And if the subjects is "Ghosts and Death", the sky is the limit; in the great history of Dying in the World there is an endless supply of story material.
The overall quality of the individual pieces in this book is very high, and I was particularly impressed with a few of the stories and poems. There is some wonderful work being done here. "Desideratum" by Gina Flores struck me on the first reading, and reminded me pleasantly of García Lorca or Marquez. Mary Cook's poem "The Forgotten Ones" was a wicked little dagger of ice, and would not have been out of place in a Norton anthology of English literature. Of the stories that slipped back into a historical setting, I found Martha Hubbard's "I Tarocchi dei d'Este" the best; I particularly liked the way it evoked the hand-painted Tarot decks of the Renaissance, many of which were quite beautiful. And Berit Ellingsen's "The Ascent" made me extremely hapy, I must admit. It was one of the best pieces of horror fiction that I read in 2011; despite its deceptively simple structure, this story is a real literary achievement in terms of sensual detail and a truly unusual setting. I would like to see more from the author in the future.
Overall, I think this volume is exceptionally good and I certainly will be writing about it in more detail later/elsewhere. For now, I would simply say that if you enjoy literary horror, and you can appreciate the paradox of an anthology which is simultaneously a tribute to the great tropes of Gothic fiction without containing many direct pastiches of Gothic horror writers--you might find this book is a real treat.
View all my reviews
December 26, 2011
Happy Boxing Day!
The real meat of this blog begins with a post-Christmas celebration of all the wonderful reading presents that I bought and received on the holidays:
From editor Silvia Moreno-Garcia at Innsmouth Press, I bought holiday review copies of "Future Lovecraft" and "Candle in the Window", an anthology of neo-Gothic horror tales. I had already read "Historical Lovecraft", the first full-length anthology from Innsmouth Press, so I knew both collections would be a treat, and I have been reading the stories like bon-bons throughout the holiday season as a gift to myself.
From McKay's Used Books in Knoxville, TN, I picked up hardback copies of "Dead and Gone" by Charlaine Harris and "Strange Candy" by Laurell K. Hamilton. I have been investigating the paranormal romance genre throughout 2011, and these two authors have both proven to be very entertaining; between the two of them I'd say I'd read 30-40 novels in a single year. They're quite light and fast-moving fare; I've already finished "Dead and Gone", for example. It's quite a short novel, and my faith in Sookie Stackhouse as a solidly entertaining and sympathetic character remains well placed.
While visiting Knoxville I also discovered a strange little gem of a collectible's shop called Raven Records. Although the store sells mainly vinyl records and movie memorabilia, there was one amazing spinning rack of collectible books which really blew my mind. Beautiful old vintage paperbacks in excellent condition! Unfortunately it was the season of giving, not shopping for myself, so I restrained myself and purchased just one awesome vintage book for a close friend (can't tell you what it was because he hasn't unwrapped it yet!). The next time I am in Knoxville, though, I am going to be getting some goodies for myself.
As expected, I also got some great books as gifts on Christmas day. This year it was a smaller stack of paper books than usual, but this was because The Big Gift of the Season was the ultimate gift for the modern reader--a new iPad, which will allow me to access literally hundreds of thousands of free and low-cost books! Needless to say I immediately installed the iBooks app and started searching the web for cool free stuff from Project Gutenberg and other public domain archives. I happily whiled away a couple of hours reading George Bird Grinnell's "Blackfoot Indian Stories", which is a genuine gem for a person who loves both weird fiction and anthropology. Deeeeeelicious!
I also received paper books, of course. I'm a fan of comics as a medium, and the latest latest graphic novel-sized digest by author Bill Willingham was under the tree for me: "Fables: Super Team". Alongside it were a re-print of two old pulp fiction stories from Shadow Magazine, packaged as "The Shadow Volume 17"--more on this re-print later, when I have had a chance to savor it. And finally rounding off my comic gifts for the season, I received a new graphic novel digest of "Solomon Kane" comics from Dark Horse. This was volume 3, "Red Shadows".
I've been working on a project for the past two months which combines zombie-apocalypse horror with classic homespun American mysticism, so I also received "The Old Gods Waken". This is one of the old Silver John novels written by Manly Wade Wellman, and has an awesome illustration of a Wicker Man on the cover. I'm looking forward to immersing myself in the adventures of an Appalachian bard.
To keep that novel company was another old Wellman novel, "The Beyonders", which is apparently not based on the same character, but looks interesting nonetheless. I judge the book, of course, entirely by its cover. A handsome white couple clings to one another for comfort in the background, confronted by the enigmatic black pillar of an alien robot with one green-glass eye. The landscape of arid mountains and lurid red sands in the background gives way to the cool grey-violet stones upon which the robot stands. Could there be a more classic confrontation between feeble, defenseless Emotion and stern, remorseless, unassailable Logic? Could there be more eloquent packaging for a well-aged and ripened slice of vintage sci-fi cheese? :D I can only hope it doesn't disappoint.
I also read Young Adult novels from time to time. I find that people who work well in this genre can be quite inspiring. The reason that I enjoy YA fiction might not make sense to anyone but another writer, however. It's not that I aspire to write young adult fiction myself; it's more that I like to be reminded that a skilled author can produce an engaging and meaningful story while working within civilized constraints.
You can make a powerful and effective point in your fiction without resorting to explicit sex or pornographic violence. And it is good to keep in mind that there is a vast difference between being innocent and pure of heart and being stupid or excessively naive. Also, quite honestly I find that younger readers are less tolerant of the self-indulgent nihilism which passes for artistic maturity in the mainstream. Children and teenager will not accept a limp-wristed non-ending, or any of the feeble excuses for a wrap-up which pass muster with far too many editors of literary fiction. You try to pass off that crap on a kid, they'll quite firmly announce that it's stupid, the Emperor is naked as a jaybird, and it's time for you to march right back to your study and write a real ending for the story.
One of the first books I read during the holiday season was "Howl's Moving Castle" by Diana Wynne Jones. It's quite a lively little book, and has been turned into a lovely (but not as coherent as the novel) animated classic by Hayao Miyazaki. In a similair vein, the last of the books under the tree for me was a young adult novel written by Rick Riordan. In 2010 I picked up a copy of Riordan's "The Lightning Thief", a YA novel with a Greek mythology theme, and found it enjoyable. "The Red Pyramid" seems to approach similar ideas from an ancient Egyptian angle, and I look forward to reading it during my brief winter break from the office.
Candle in the Attic Window
Future Lovecraft
Dead and Gone
Strange Candy
George Bird Grinnell and the Blackfeet: Blackfoot Lodge Tales and Blackfoot Indian Stories
Fables, Vol. 16: Super Team
The Fate Joss / The Golden Pagoda
Solomon Kane Volume 3: Red Shadows: Red Shadows
The Old Gods Waken
The Beyonders
Howl's Moving Castle
The Red Pyramid
From editor Silvia Moreno-Garcia at Innsmouth Press, I bought holiday review copies of "Future Lovecraft" and "Candle in the Window", an anthology of neo-Gothic horror tales. I had already read "Historical Lovecraft", the first full-length anthology from Innsmouth Press, so I knew both collections would be a treat, and I have been reading the stories like bon-bons throughout the holiday season as a gift to myself.
From McKay's Used Books in Knoxville, TN, I picked up hardback copies of "Dead and Gone" by Charlaine Harris and "Strange Candy" by Laurell K. Hamilton. I have been investigating the paranormal romance genre throughout 2011, and these two authors have both proven to be very entertaining; between the two of them I'd say I'd read 30-40 novels in a single year. They're quite light and fast-moving fare; I've already finished "Dead and Gone", for example. It's quite a short novel, and my faith in Sookie Stackhouse as a solidly entertaining and sympathetic character remains well placed.
While visiting Knoxville I also discovered a strange little gem of a collectible's shop called Raven Records. Although the store sells mainly vinyl records and movie memorabilia, there was one amazing spinning rack of collectible books which really blew my mind. Beautiful old vintage paperbacks in excellent condition! Unfortunately it was the season of giving, not shopping for myself, so I restrained myself and purchased just one awesome vintage book for a close friend (can't tell you what it was because he hasn't unwrapped it yet!). The next time I am in Knoxville, though, I am going to be getting some goodies for myself.
As expected, I also got some great books as gifts on Christmas day. This year it was a smaller stack of paper books than usual, but this was because The Big Gift of the Season was the ultimate gift for the modern reader--a new iPad, which will allow me to access literally hundreds of thousands of free and low-cost books! Needless to say I immediately installed the iBooks app and started searching the web for cool free stuff from Project Gutenberg and other public domain archives. I happily whiled away a couple of hours reading George Bird Grinnell's "Blackfoot Indian Stories", which is a genuine gem for a person who loves both weird fiction and anthropology. Deeeeeelicious!
I also received paper books, of course. I'm a fan of comics as a medium, and the latest latest graphic novel-sized digest by author Bill Willingham was under the tree for me: "Fables: Super Team". Alongside it were a re-print of two old pulp fiction stories from Shadow Magazine, packaged as "The Shadow Volume 17"--more on this re-print later, when I have had a chance to savor it. And finally rounding off my comic gifts for the season, I received a new graphic novel digest of "Solomon Kane" comics from Dark Horse. This was volume 3, "Red Shadows".
I've been working on a project for the past two months which combines zombie-apocalypse horror with classic homespun American mysticism, so I also received "The Old Gods Waken". This is one of the old Silver John novels written by Manly Wade Wellman, and has an awesome illustration of a Wicker Man on the cover. I'm looking forward to immersing myself in the adventures of an Appalachian bard.
To keep that novel company was another old Wellman novel, "The Beyonders", which is apparently not based on the same character, but looks interesting nonetheless. I judge the book, of course, entirely by its cover. A handsome white couple clings to one another for comfort in the background, confronted by the enigmatic black pillar of an alien robot with one green-glass eye. The landscape of arid mountains and lurid red sands in the background gives way to the cool grey-violet stones upon which the robot stands. Could there be a more classic confrontation between feeble, defenseless Emotion and stern, remorseless, unassailable Logic? Could there be more eloquent packaging for a well-aged and ripened slice of vintage sci-fi cheese? :D I can only hope it doesn't disappoint.
I also read Young Adult novels from time to time. I find that people who work well in this genre can be quite inspiring. The reason that I enjoy YA fiction might not make sense to anyone but another writer, however. It's not that I aspire to write young adult fiction myself; it's more that I like to be reminded that a skilled author can produce an engaging and meaningful story while working within civilized constraints.
You can make a powerful and effective point in your fiction without resorting to explicit sex or pornographic violence. And it is good to keep in mind that there is a vast difference between being innocent and pure of heart and being stupid or excessively naive. Also, quite honestly I find that younger readers are less tolerant of the self-indulgent nihilism which passes for artistic maturity in the mainstream. Children and teenager will not accept a limp-wristed non-ending, or any of the feeble excuses for a wrap-up which pass muster with far too many editors of literary fiction. You try to pass off that crap on a kid, they'll quite firmly announce that it's stupid, the Emperor is naked as a jaybird, and it's time for you to march right back to your study and write a real ending for the story.
One of the first books I read during the holiday season was "Howl's Moving Castle" by Diana Wynne Jones. It's quite a lively little book, and has been turned into a lovely (but not as coherent as the novel) animated classic by Hayao Miyazaki. In a similair vein, the last of the books under the tree for me was a young adult novel written by Rick Riordan. In 2010 I picked up a copy of Riordan's "The Lightning Thief", a YA novel with a Greek mythology theme, and found it enjoyable. "The Red Pyramid" seems to approach similar ideas from an ancient Egyptian angle, and I look forward to reading it during my brief winter break from the office.
Candle in the Attic Window
Future Lovecraft
Dead and Gone
Strange Candy
George Bird Grinnell and the Blackfeet: Blackfoot Lodge Tales and Blackfoot Indian Stories
Fables, Vol. 16: Super Team
The Fate Joss / The Golden Pagoda
Solomon Kane Volume 3: Red Shadows: Red Shadows
The Old Gods Waken
The Beyonders
Howl's Moving Castle
The Red Pyramid
Mill on the Inspiration River
Greetings all! I realize that it is traditional for professional writers to maintain a blog on a site like Goodreads to serve as some sort of self-promotional organ. But I was a reader long before I was ever a writer, and I would prefer to use this opportunity to celebrate my reading, and my love of language.
For those curious about the title of this blog: the Mill on the Inspiration River is a metaphor for an author's love of words and language. The Mill is the stack of books that can be found on the bedside table or beside a favorite chair in a professional writer's home. It's the contents of those packed bookshelves overflowing with paperbacks and hardbacks, which so often conquer the wall space of every room. And it's also the sturdy and highly functional apparatus that produces the fine language of your trade, whether you produce, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, or plays.
Every human being who makes writing a profession, rather than a hobby or a chore, must maintain a constant relationship with the Word. In fact, I would say that a writer's relationship to the Word is very much like a miller's relationship to the Wind or the Water. You can grind grain into flour without a wind mill or a water wheel, it's true--but unless you are able to harness that bountiful force of nature, your work will be hard, miserable and long. Grinding one stone against another with your bare hands is a slow and onerous task, and it grinds away your own joints like the wheat you're trying to turn to flour.
The results of the labor, needless to say, will also leave much to be desired. Any archaeologist can spot the worn teeth of a person who spent a lifetime eating the gritty, sandy bread baked from grain that was badly milled.
A Mill for grinding out Words takes years to build. Every brick and board and stone was an hour spent in the library as a child, or a night under a blanket with a flashlight reading when you were supposed to be asleep. Your Mill is built out of stolen moments with a paperback novel in the park on your lunch break from work. Quiet evenings that you spent with a man who died decades or centuries ago rather than the one you married. Tears that you shed for people who never existed. Rage that sparked from the seething coals of an injustice committed before you were born. Ghosts that you inherit from pages written before the printing press, and printed before the digital age. Demons that were freshly minted last summer by a person whose flesh and blood hands you can shake at your next convention.
And of course, the work of building and maintaining that Mill never ends. In order to write, one must read. The Word must keep flowing through you, just as the wind and the water must keep up their endless motion past the sweeping blades to keep the miller in business.
I will try not to forget to post something when one of my books or stories is published or receives a positive (or at least amusing!) review. But for the most part I will use this space to write about what I'm reading, and why.
More blog entries in this series will follow, as I read and reflect on the novels, poems, short stories, histories and essays that flow past. I hope that my readers will enjoy seeing how the Word flows in this particular valley...and that these words will be a small part of great flowing river that powers new work.
For those curious about the title of this blog: the Mill on the Inspiration River is a metaphor for an author's love of words and language. The Mill is the stack of books that can be found on the bedside table or beside a favorite chair in a professional writer's home. It's the contents of those packed bookshelves overflowing with paperbacks and hardbacks, which so often conquer the wall space of every room. And it's also the sturdy and highly functional apparatus that produces the fine language of your trade, whether you produce, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, or plays.
Every human being who makes writing a profession, rather than a hobby or a chore, must maintain a constant relationship with the Word. In fact, I would say that a writer's relationship to the Word is very much like a miller's relationship to the Wind or the Water. You can grind grain into flour without a wind mill or a water wheel, it's true--but unless you are able to harness that bountiful force of nature, your work will be hard, miserable and long. Grinding one stone against another with your bare hands is a slow and onerous task, and it grinds away your own joints like the wheat you're trying to turn to flour.
The results of the labor, needless to say, will also leave much to be desired. Any archaeologist can spot the worn teeth of a person who spent a lifetime eating the gritty, sandy bread baked from grain that was badly milled.
A Mill for grinding out Words takes years to build. Every brick and board and stone was an hour spent in the library as a child, or a night under a blanket with a flashlight reading when you were supposed to be asleep. Your Mill is built out of stolen moments with a paperback novel in the park on your lunch break from work. Quiet evenings that you spent with a man who died decades or centuries ago rather than the one you married. Tears that you shed for people who never existed. Rage that sparked from the seething coals of an injustice committed before you were born. Ghosts that you inherit from pages written before the printing press, and printed before the digital age. Demons that were freshly minted last summer by a person whose flesh and blood hands you can shake at your next convention.
And of course, the work of building and maintaining that Mill never ends. In order to write, one must read. The Word must keep flowing through you, just as the wind and the water must keep up their endless motion past the sweeping blades to keep the miller in business.
I will try not to forget to post something when one of my books or stories is published or receives a positive (or at least amusing!) review. But for the most part I will use this space to write about what I'm reading, and why.
More blog entries in this series will follow, as I read and reflect on the novels, poems, short stories, histories and essays that flow past. I hope that my readers will enjoy seeing how the Word flows in this particular valley...and that these words will be a small part of great flowing river that powers new work.
Mill on the Inspiration River
Arinn Dembo's blog on reading and writing.
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