Sunyi Dean's Blog, page 4
March 23, 2020
King Far
A combination of Mother’s Day, Chinese New Year, and tough times in 2020 has had me thinking about my maternal grandmother.
Her exact birthday wasn’t recorded, but she was born about a hundred years ago in a remote village in northern China before later emigrating to Hong Kong. She survived the Cultural Revolution, two world wars, including the Japanese invasion and occupation of Hong Kong, and raised three children on her own.
On top of that, my grandmother was functionally illiterate for all of her life, because girls like her were not given an education in those days. The only thing she learnt to read or write was her own name, King Far, which means golden flowers, and so this short piece is named for her.
###
KING FAR
by S Dean
I will not live in silent rooms
where all my mothers died;
forgotten women lost in time
feet bound by cultural pride.
I will not drag the tired plow
its sharpness long devoured;
I know the secret of my name—
ancient, golden flowers.
The tides of revolution
wash me down to southern seas
by shores the English bought in blood
to sell their poppy seeds.
I’ll build my home on iron streets
and nest in concrete towers;
far from where my mothers died
I cut my roots, and flower.
A skipper with a paper heart
brought gold to stake his claim;
my daughter, do not trust the men
who take away your name.
Buddha, great unchanging friend
for you the incense burns;
teach my children all the words
that no one let me learn.
War sails into our island port
six thousand shot to silence;
The Japanese are here to break
the spirit of our defiance.
The killing bombs consumed their skin
yet liberated me;
the price of peace is always death
and death’s reward, is peace.
But all things under Heaven pass,
all sorrows gift us hope;
my years unspool to grey and I
give thanks, for growing old.
And when I’m gone, remember me
by that which gave me power;
the secret of my written name—
ancient, golden flowers.
January 28, 2020
Writer Alliance: Publishing Round-up!
I try not to do promo-type stuff very often, either for friends or myself, but I want to talk very briefly about my amazing online writer group.
Good critique groups make all the difference in a long writing journey. I remember all too well the confusion and mild horror of sifting through one bad beta-read after the next, swapping my poor-quality book for someone else’s poor-quality book. Neither of us doing much for each other.
Eventually, I was lucky enough to swap with Essa Hansen, whose brilliant but (at the time) unfinished space opera wowed me, and whose critiques propelled me to a whole new level of writing. Together, along with another online friend of mine, we set up a private Facebook group–Writer Alliance– for swapping work.
The group took a life of its own. We gradually added ‘good people’ to our numbers as we found them in the wild (name order is surname-alphabetical): Alia, Ravey, Darby, Jennifer, Shelly, Kali, CJ, Cassie, Joanne, Sera, Anita, Jannette, Greg.
And we have kept working hard. Building, critiquing, swapping, sharing news and tips, building each other up. Writer Alliance has become very special to me, and I’m pleased to share some of their successes.
**NB: Writers are listed below in alphabetical order of surname.
Shelly Campbell
Website / Twitter / Instagram
Book Release Date: UNDER THE LESSON MOON, coming Feb 2021
[image error]Shelly is an artist, author, and mother. Her sculptures, painting, sketches, and digital drawings blend technical realism with fantasy imaginings, and now her debut novel, UNDER THE LESSON MOON, has been acquired by Mythos Ink. Her novel is an erudite and elusive fantasy about Akrist, a firstborn boy slated for sacrifice by his tribe to appease their goddess and her dragons.
Cassie Greutman
Website / Twitter /
Book Release Date: Feb 19th, 2020
[image error]Cassie Greutman is a small town Ohio girl who has always loved stories in any form. You can usually find her typing away at her computer or playing out in the barn with her ponies. These days, she also publishes fast-paced, complex YA urban fantasies with super relatable and deeply human characters. Her newest book will arrive in less than a month on Feb 19th, and we are all excited to see what it contains.
Essa Hansen
Website / Twitter/
Book Release Date: NOPHEK GLOSS, coming Oct 2020
[image error]In addition to being a lead sound designer for Skywalker Studios in California, Essa is also a falconer, swordswoman, horse rider, martial artist, and now a debut science fiction author. Her first book, NOPHEK GLOSS, has been acquired by Orbit Books and will be released later this year. The story is a character-driven space opera about a young man who is forced to grow up far too fast, and his ship with a soul that can create its own bubble universes.
Darby Harn
Website / Twitter /
Book Release Date: EVER THE HERO, 01/28/2020 (Today!!)
[image error]Writing from the depths of Iowa, Darby is a world traveller and Queen fanatic who spins iconic characters and storylines, melding current social issues with immersive scif-fi narratives. The first of his sprawling series, EVER THE HERO, traces the path of Kit, a young mixed-race technician living in a dystopian world where superheros are privatised and protection is only for those who can afford it.
Alia Hess
Website/ Twitter/ Instagram
Book Release Date: Multiple!
[image error]Alia is a multi-talented nonbinary writer and artist, producing short stories, novellas, full novel series, oil paintings, and sketches. Their books are full of art, and the stories follow characters for their “cozy” post-apocalyptic world–two terms you don’t normally find in close quarters to each other. Currently, Alia is slated to release SIX titles this year, in addition to an already-impressive backlog!
January 26, 2020
THE PURSUIT OF WILLIAM ABBEY by Claire North
The Pursuit of William Abbey by Claire North
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Conflicting read
“And I knew at last what I had wanted to know since I had met her: that there was no such thing as simple as the storyteller’s love in her, that love was a tangled measure of a thousand different things, and that sometimes there was a word called love that she knew and understood, and then sometimes it was gone, and she could not master it, and being unmastered, she longed to let it go, and then thinking of it, it came again.”
Another beautifully written but structurally chaotic novel from Claire North. I had moments that I loved but ultimately feel frustrated by how events played out. Of the books I have read so far, 15 Lives of Harry August was the best structured; the others (including William Abbey) have circled repetitively through the plot and had unfocused antagonists who never quite materialised any teeth.
It is well worth a read if you are a fan of contemporary spec fic with a literary edge, esp on the British scene, but maybe has more appeal to North fans than new readers.
November 27, 2019
THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR by Amal El-Mohtar
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Beautifully written: go read this.
Eloquent, subtle, atmospheric; fast paced but still carrying depth. So much wordplay; if you delight in reading such things, as I do, then you will find the writing itself to be so much joy. TIHYLTTW is what happens when fantasy is used not as a limiter but as a springboard for wild creativity and complexity. (I consider this to be a high tech fantasy; others may feel differently.)
My only complaint as such is I think some of the novel descends into abstract description and I personally would have preferred to dwell on exactly what the limitations of the characters were, if any. That part I found hard to picture. Maybe if this were a novel and not a novella that would be possible; wordcount is a constraint here.
But it is a minor complaint and not nearly enough to stop me loving the book.
October 11, 2019
DARK PLACES by Gillian Flynn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Ehhhhh.
In a nutshell: strong characterisation and good craft/writing, with a very atmospheric setting. But the novel was structurally messy, the main character has motivation and/or passivity issues, and the final reveal is incredibly convoluted.
Without wanting to give any spoilers, I feel like the author was perhaps bending and warping events to create a specific emotional state for one character (who isn’t the MC). Plot events were therefore rather unbelievable to me, in the final order of what went down. Finally, the emotional state she was going for felt melodramatic and unnecessary to me. It’s the equivalent of ripping seams out of your clothes to make them fit: the hassle and damage to the overall fabric isn’t worth the final result. Yeah the shirt fits but you look like a mess. The ending to this book looks like a mess.
Some spoilery stuff:
I feel like the novel could perhaps have themed more strongly around Libby and her relationship to her mother. It’s there, hints of it, but instead it starts out focusing on her relationship with Ben (older brother who goes down for the triple murder.) And then that peters out, or something? There was more that could have been made of the mother/daughter thing, but it didn’t really happen.
Thematically stuff was all over the place, much like the MC. Redherrings were used so frequently and routinely that I just didn’t trust any hint.
None of the characters were likeable or very relatable.
The plot happened to Libby; she was mostly passive and did as little as possible except for a few stand out scenes.
There’s something off with the pacing, the build-up to the big reveals; I struggle to identify what exactly, although I’ll think on it some more.
September 9, 2019
On the peculiar joy of feeding trolls
Earlier today I stumbled on a tweet from malicious troll account, which stated this lie:
I wrote the following Twitter response for the purposes of clarity:
Nobody from Bookends has charged me for anything, least of all @NaomisLitPix, and I did NOT consent to be used as an “example” in this tweet. This guy has always been a running #amquerying joke so I try not to engage, but for me, this libel warrants a categorical refutation.
###
A few people have asked me what on earth is going on with this guy. I kind of have a lot going on in my personal life right now and don’t really feel like dealing with this, but the whole ridiculousness is also beginning to be exasperating, so maybe it will save me time and blood pressure to lay out a few facts on my blog. Just the once.
In short, there is a writer by the name of Gary Kadet–author of a single BDSM book and proud owner of a restraining order for stalking women–who has an unpleasant habit of harassing other writers on Twitter. He particularly targets women and self pubbers, and has a special reserve of dislike for Bookends agency (that’s the agency I’m signed with, to be clear.)
###
Below, here is a short, truncated history of my encounters with him.
More than a year ago, I responded to a thread asking about beta readers (people who read your manuscript and give feedback). Kadet took it upon himself to inform me that only crap writers use beta readers (??) and that someone like me would never be agented because I was clearly terrible if I needed feedback.
His comments were bizarre to the point of insanity, as well as patently untrue, so I blocked him and moved on. He was, of course, completely wrong. Feedback makes writers better. I did find an agent, despite my apparent weakness in using beta readers.
A couple years passed, during which time Kadet had continued to wind up writers, agents, and editors alike, got himself banned multiple times, and subsequently remade his account to continue trolling. I mostly ignored him.
Eventually, we had another brief run-in on the #amquerying hashtag. Kadet was going through his usual spiel of slagging off fantasy writers (those who have encountered him will know what I mean) and exhorted me for not reading the “right” books, which seemed mostly to be Dunsany and Lovecraft, as far as I could tell. Anyone who knows me at all will know that I’ve read both–Lovecraft exhaustively, in fact–and most of the other “classical” writers of fantasy and horror who he puts on a pedestal.
That’s no criticism of people who haven’t, btw, or at least not from me. Readers should read what they enjoy. But fair to say, I do like quite a bit of the older stuff, including Dunsany and Lovecraft and the epics.
Anyway, that made Kadet angry. He took issue with me for having read the books that he was shouting at me for not having read (???). This, you see, is part of Kadet’s mental gymnastics: he needs to feel justified in his over-the-top hate. He hates women (five minutes of interacting with him will make that astonishingly clear) and needs them to be stupid, as he defines the word, so that he can take pleasure in putting them down.
Basically, he was angry that I’d read books he liked because he felt it robbed him of the opportunity to tell me that I’m poorly read, stupid, and uneducated.
He changed tact, and progressed to insisting I hadn’t read Lovecraft “well” enough or something, so it didn’t really count (lol) before switching to insisting I was just lying. When that didn’t work he went more personal, telling me that I’m pretentious and fake, and suggested at one point that I only got picked up by my agent because I’m autistic and she has a “thing” for autistic people.
His tactic has a name: moving the goal posts, and is an informal but common logical fallacy in discussions or arguments. Basically, it means that someone asks for evidence, and when it’s provided, they change the threshold or criteria to exclude the answer you’ve given. It’s very tiresome, honestly.
Younger me might have stuck around out of morbid curiosity, but I no longer engage in discussion with people who rely on logical fallacies for the brunt of their discussions. This is because someone who is de facto illogical cannot understand logical arguments, and so cannot be argued with. At least, not by me. They can only be quarantined.
In other words, don’t feed the troll.
###
The next I heard of Kadet, he was wittering away about Naomi supposedly fleecing me for services. He also, in my limited experience of him, takes great pleasure in slagging off individual agents who he thinks don’t do well enough. And he wonders why industry professionals don’t want to work with him. Can you blame them?
At some point, Kadet must have gone through my profile and picked out things to tell porkies about. As for why he might single me out at this particular juncture, I suppose I tick a lot of Gary’s pet-peeve boxes because;
I’m female
I write fantasy
I’m autistic
I’ve read books that he likes
I’m agented
The last one (being agented) is particularly sour, I suppose. Kadet carries a deep conviction that women are holding him back, because many editors and agents are women, and he sees them as responsible for his lack of career progression in writing. He is therefore perpetually resentful of women writers, believing that women editors and women agents are conspiring to lock him out of publishing on the grounds that he is a man. (Yes, really.)
And… that’s it. I’m afraid if you were hoping for a “better” explanation I really have none to give! Really, seriously, that’s all this is; Kadet making a great big song and dance over not much. If he has any special skill, it’s his capacity to spin absurd drama from almost nothing at all.
Congratulations, troll. You got me to feed you one last time.
My advice to most writers is to not engage, and block when you see him. And if you see him posting odd things about people you know which don’t make sense, definitely take it with a grain of salt.
PS – Bookends don’t charge for their services. That should probably go without saying, but still.
On peculiar joy of feeding trolls
Earlier today I stumbled on a tweet from malicious troll account, which stated this lie:
I wrote the following Twitter response for the purposes of clarity:
Nobody from Bookends has charged me for anything, least of all @NaomisLitPix, and I did NOT consent to be used as an “example” in this tweet. This guy has always been a running #amquerying joke so I try not to engage, but for me, this libel warrants a categorical refutation.
###
A few people have asked me what on earth is going on with this guy. I kind of have a lot going on in my personal life right now and don’t really feel like dealing with this, but the whole ridiculousness is also beginning to be exasperating, so maybe it will save me time and blood pressure to lay out a few facts on my blog. Just the once.
In short, there is a writer by the name of Gary Kadet–author of a single BDSM book and proud owner of a restraining order for stalking women–who has an unpleasant habit of harassing other writers on Twitter. He particularly targets women and self pubbers, and has a special reserve of dislike for Bookends agency (that’s the agency I’m signed with, to be clear.)
###
Below, here is a short, truncated history of my encounters with him.
More than a year ago, I responded to a thread asking about beta readers (people who read your manuscript and give feedback). Kadet took it upon himself to inform me that only crap writers use beta readers (??) and that someone like me would never be agented because I was clearly terrible if I needed feedback.
His comments were bizarre to the point of insanity, as well as patently untrue, so I blocked him and moved on. He was, of course, completely wrong. Feedback makes writers better. I did find an agent, despite my apparent weakness in using beta readers.
A couple years passed, during which time Kadet had continued to wind up writers, agents, and editors alike, got himself banned multiple times, and subsequently remade his account to continue trolling. I mostly ignored him.
Eventually, we had another brief run-in on the #amquerying hashtag. Kadet was going through his usual spiel of slagging off fantasy writers (those who have encountered him will know what I mean) and exhorted me for not reading the “right” books, which seemed mostly to be Dunsany and Lovecraft, as far as I could tell. Anyone who knows me at all will know that I’ve read both–Lovecraft exhaustively, in fact–and most of the other “classical” writers of fantasy and horror who he puts on a pedestal.
That’s no criticism of people who haven’t, btw, or at least not from me. Readers should read what they enjoy. But fair to say, I do like quite a bit of the older stuff, including Dunsany and Lovecraft and the epics.
Anyway, that made Kadet angry. He took issue with me for having read the books that he was shouting at me for not having read (???). This, you see, is part of Kadet’s mental gymnastics: he needs to feel justified in his over-the-top hate. He hates women (five minutes of interacting with him will make that astonishingly clear) and needs them to be stupid, as he defines the word, so that he can take pleasure in putting them down.
Basically, he was angry that I’d read books he liked because he felt it robbed him of the opportunity to tell me that I’m poorly read, stupid, and uneducated.
He changed tact, and progressed to insisting I hadn’t read Lovecraft “well” enough or something, so it didn’t really count (lol) before switching to insisting I was just lying. When that didn’t work he went more personal, telling me that I’m pretentious and fake, and suggested at one point that I only got picked up by my agent because I’m autistic and she has a “thing” for autistic people.
His tactic has a name: moving the goal posts, and is an informal but common logical fallacy in discussions or arguments. Basically, it means that someone asks for evidence, and when it’s provided, they change the threshold or criteria to exclude the answer you’ve given. It’s very tiresome, honestly.
Younger me might have stuck around out of morbid curiosity, but I no longer engage in discussion with people who rely on logical fallacies for the brunt of their discussions. This is because someone who is de facto illogical cannot understand logical arguments, and so cannot be argued with. At least, not by me. They can only be quarantined.
In other words, don’t feed the troll.
###
The next I heard of Kadet, he was wittering away about Naomi supposedly fleecing me for services. He also, in my limited experience of him, takes great pleasure in slagging off individual agents who he thinks don’t do well enough. And he wonders why industry professionals don’t want to work with him. Can you blame them?
At some point, Kadet must have gone through my profile and picked out things to tell porkies about. As for why he might single me out at this particular juncture, I suppose I tick a lot of Gary’s pet-peeve boxes because;
I’m female
I write fantasy
I’m autistic
I’ve read books that he likes
I’m agented
The last one (being agented) is particularly sour, I suppose. Kadet carries a deep conviction that women are holding him back, because many editors and agents are women, and he sees them as responsible for his lack of career progression in writing. He is therefore perpetually resentful of women writers, believing that women editors and women agents are conspiring to lock him out of publishing on the grounds that he is a man. (Yes, really.)
And… that’s it. I’m afraid if you were hoping for a “better” explanation I really have none to give! Really, seriously, that’s all this is; Kadet making a great big song and dance over not much. If he has any special skill, it’s his capacity to spin absurd drama from almost nothing at all.
Congratulations, troll. You got me to feed you one last time.
My advice to most writers is to not engage, and block when you see him. And if you see him posting odd things about people you know which don’t make sense, definitely take it with a grain of salt.
PS – Bookends don’t charge for their services. That should probably go without saying, but still.
August 26, 2019
THE MONSTER BARU CORMORANT by Seth Dickinson
The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I adored The Traitor Baru Cormorant (Masquerade #1) and loved the *start* of book #2 in this series, but despite some excellent writing and characterisation at the start, the novel disintegrated for me at around the 30% mark.
Structural problems were my biggest issue. Instead of one clear focus on Baru, MONSTER cut between different characters. That in itself isn’t problematic, except that some of the other POVs seemed random in their choice and presentation at times (in one memorable chapter, the narrative switches mid-paragraph from first person following Xate Yawa, back to third distant centered again on Baru.) I’m not really sure why those decisions were made.
The narrative is disjointed (continuation of structural issues) and I struggled to see a clear thread pulling it tightly together, unlike the first book which was sewn up tightly. It gets better when Baru finally leaves the Masquerade people to go do what she does best, but the overall execution still feels sloppy to me.
Smaller point, I was mildly disappointed by the Masquerade crowd. They felt small and powerless, and their rule over the empire very fractured. I found it hard to believe that these people were successfully governing anything when they can barely organise a dinner party. But maybe other readers will react differently.
As ever, my thoughts are my own and opinions are subjective.
August 19, 2019
TELEPATHIST by John Brunner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
#shortreview for Instagram:
I finished reading the Telepathist this morning. It was a sad and rather brutal novel, about a man whose physical deformities enable him to develop powerful mental capabilities (telepathy, in this case). There’s some dystopian-esque spy stuff going on in the background but the story is heavily character centric, with an unflinching examination of the ways in which society simultaneously exploits and abandons disabled individuals. Some of the language would likely be considered a trifle insensitive in modern standards but even disregarding the time period, Brunner has some wonderful and nuanced character portraits of people beaten down by poverty and circumstance, and the inherent danger of hope. Poor Gerald!
August 12, 2019
Coming off submission: some thoughts
So much of an aspiring author’s time (at least, for those aspiring towards trade publication) is taken up with querying. I can understand this, having been in the querying trenches last year (and the year before that). Doors open with agents, you might say, meaning it’s natural to focus on such a big goal.
Querying is therefore often treated liked the final gauntlet that writers must run, and one which–if successful–will result in publication. Sometimes that is true, but often it isn’t. The majority of books which go on submission will not sell; that’s an unfortunate fact of publishing.
Mine was one such this year. ANCHOR went on submission (or “on sub” for short) to publishing houses via my agent in Sept 2018. Responses came in over the next nine months, some with praise and some with criticism and one very near miss. But the end result was ultimately the same: all rejections, approximately fifteen in total. After some discussion, we pulled the book from submission and I’m now writing another. (In an ideal world I’d have already completed another while on sub, but due to moving and other personal circumstances, I hadn’t done so.)
Nor am I alone, unfortunately. One of my CPs has sent two books on sub, and is preparing to put out a third one should the second not sell. Several other writers I know have parted ways with their respective agents this year, due to their book(s) not selling. (In that sense I’m lucky; I’m still with my current agent, and we are still getting on.) Writers chop and change agents with surprising frequency.
The curious thing is how hush-hush most of these developments are, outside of private little Facebook groups. A quick look on Writer Twitter and you’ll find #amediting, #amwriting, and #amquerying hashtags everywhere–but almost never do you see agented writers discussing their sub experiences. There isn’t even an #onsubmission hashtag in common use.
This is one of the things which makes submission a difficult stage: much like Fight Club, the first rule of being on-sub is you don’t get to talk about being on-sub. For contractual and business reasons, this simply isn’t good practice while a book is out doing rounds. And so submissions is a process shrouded in uncertainty and mystery, the specifics of which come as a shock to many new writers.
You do tend to hear about the sales and successes after the ink has dried on contracts, but less about the books that don’t sell–perhaps because most people are understandably uncomfortable talking about the failures. All the more reason for me to talk about it here, I think!
###
So, you’re an author who is preparing to go on submission. What should you expect?
Straight up answer: everything and nothing. There are few rules for submission, except that everyone’s experience varies enormously. Good is subjective. Success is variable. Nothing is guaranteed. That much, I can guarantee.
Still, here are a few sweeping generalisations on which you can signpost yourself:
Submission is regarded by most writers as far, far worse than querying. If that sounds depressing… well, it is
