Lorina Stephens's Blog, page 24

Writing, really I am

Seems to be I can only manage one post a month. My apologies, dear reader.

Writing of The Rose Guardian continues slowly but positively. I’m so close to finishing the first draft, perhaps by close of year. I’m very happy with how the characters have developed, particularly Vi, my protagonist. It has been a challenge writing three separate stories, meshing them so the stories flow as a cohesive whole.

Fine tuning of that will happen in the new year when I set to a revision. And then send it out for editing, which will mean another revision.

But at least it’s coming along, this very protracted endeavour known as The Rose Guardian.

I’ve also received Susan MacGregor’s very helpful edit of Caliban, a speculative fiction novel I’ve been tooling away at for the past 25 years or so. The revision has started. No idea at all when I’ll have that done.

However, I have been thinking of issuing an updated version of From Mountains of Ice. There are a few alterations I’d like to make to the story, and of course a new cover is definitely required. The possibility looms of reissuing the audiobook of From Mountains of Ice. Diána Majlinger, who originally narrated the audiobook, is looking into being able to produce the necessary files. If Diána is successful, I will be able to offer the audiobook through this website, as well as on Five Rivers Publishing’s site. Will also be investigating distribution channels for audio in the coming weeks.

While I’m banging on about audiobooks, I’ve also begun discussion with a possible producer in the Toronto area, coming up with a creative business arrangement. I’ll be talking more about that later when there are further positive developments.

Here at the old stone house things continue much as they always have. There was a wedding in September: our remarkable son married a remarkable woman. It was a day I won’t soon forget. Such joy.

Renovations of this grand old pile of stone are ongoing. At the moment it’s a make-over of the main bathroom to address some old plumbing issues, as well as the renovation of the loft where I work, and where the new library will be situated.

And my days have been made easier thanks to the insight of a new specialist I’ve seen. For the first time in years I’m getting a full night’s sleep. Pain is finally manageable. I’m emerging again, feeling almost like my old self, albeit it with two canes, but at least smiling more.

Until we meet again, dear reader.

Review: The Piano Maker, by Kurt Palka

The Piano Maker by Kurt Palka

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Kurt Palka draws a tight, intriguing tale of mercy and forgiveness in this unforgettable story, The Piano Maker.

Set during WWII and subsequent decades, the reader follows the unfolding saga of Helene, a piano maker from France, who through a series of betrayals finds herself marooned in Canada, only to set out upon an epic and tragic journey that changes her life forever.

Palka writes with great authority, sliding technical and environmental detail seamlessly into the weave of the story. The characters are rich, never cardboard, always fully realized. The plot moves along at a brisk pace. And amid all this he deals with some controversial and sensitive subjects with the utmost delicacy, presenting a balanced and nuanced argument and tale.

It is not often I highly recommend a novel. This one I do.

View all my reviews

Review: The Assassin’s Song, by M.G. Vassanji

The Assassin’s Song by M.G. Vassanji

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Assassin’s Song, by M.G. Vassanji comes with an impressive list of literary accolades, having been shortlisted for the Giller and the GG. Yet, for my part, there is a definite lack of simpatico or connection with Vassanji’s tale.

The novel is set in India from Partition to the devastating religious violence of the early 21st century, following the timeless theme of father/son tension and sibling disharmony. There is a rich vein of material here to mine, and mine it Vassanji does. Yet there is a distinct distance to how Vassanji relates his story, a lack of emotional involvement that cools the narrative and shutters the reader.

For the first third of the novel Vassanji spends considerable time setting the stage for the emotional impact of the denouement, offering up endless, almost jejune details regarding the protagonist’s, Karson Dargawalla, life as the next embodiment of the sufi mystic and demi-god who resides in the temple Karson’s father keeps, Pirbaag. From there we shift to the middle third in which Karson escapes to Harvard, and a renunciation of his birthright.

Throughout this interminable backstory, Vassanji does little to draw in the reader, either by way of contextual clues as to language or cultural nuances, or by way of emotional investment. Karson’s father remains an aloof, unapproachable academic, his mother a frustrated, secretive if dutiful stereotype, and his brother an unknown, albeit cute, almost throw-away character. There are other characters who walk on and off-stage, uttering lines and sagacities, conveniently thrown in to move Karsan through the story-arc.

It is not until the final third of the novel, Vassanji employs any emotional investment to draw in the reader. By then, for this reader, it’s too little too late. That Karsan’s brother is most likely a terrorist responsible for the devastation of Pirbaag, and the death of his own father, is almost a shrug. That Karsan submits, in the end, to destiny and the continuation of chicanery and religious charlatanism, seems contrived and cardboard.

It is a competent novel. But it is a disappointing read. In the end, all I can offer is this: Vassanji is no Rohinton Mistry.

View all my reviews

Great reviews coming in for Strangers Among Us

Reviews are now coming in for Strangers Among Us, the fabulous anthology edited by Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law, and the anthology in which my short story, The Intersection, appears.

The stories in Strangers Among Us are varied in tone and approach as their authors. The power of the collection derives from this variety; while each story can be read in isolation, the assemblage of outsiders feels, on a whole, exultant. There is, indeed, strength in numbers, when each individual is accorded space and respect.

–Quill & Quire

Strangers Among Us . . . is important, shining a much-needed spotlight on issues that get far too little attention. A wonderful anthology, one of the major SF&F books of the year. Bravo!

— Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of Quantum Night

Best of all, however, at least for me, was a comment from a NetGalley reviewer who gave the anthology 5 stars:

My favorite story out of the anthology was “The Intersection” by Lorina Stephens. I found this story to be the sweetest out of the whole book. Not the most lighthearted, but definitely not the darkest by far. Some of the stories in the book are rather dark in nature. “The Intersection” was the story that I was able to relate to the most out of all the stories in the book. I rather lost hope of actually relating to any of the stories after awhile, and just settled for enjoying them, so it was a pleasant surprise to find that this one I really connected with on that level.

So, there you have it. I’m tickled silly.

The editors have lined up four book launches in Calgary, Ottawa, Toronto and Winnipeg. If you’re looking for an interesting event, you might want to consider one of them.

Calgary

August 14, 2016 (Sunday) 4 PM at When Words Collide

Venue: Kananakis 1 Room, Delta Calgary South Hotel, 135 Southland Drive SE, Calgary

Host/Interviewer: Julie E. Czerneda

Featuring: Susan Forest, Bev Geddes, Erika Holt, Lucas K. Law, Sherry Peters, Robert Runté, Amanda Sun, Hayden Trenholm, Edward Willett and Special Guest: Vanessa Cardui

Ottawa

Date (TBD) at Can-con (September 9 -11, 2016)

Venue: Novotel Ottawa, 33 Nicholas Street

Featuring: Suzanne Church, Julie E. Czerneda, Susan Forest, Lucas K. Law, Ursula Pflug, Hayden Trenholm, Edward Willett

Toronto

September 15, 2016 (Thursday) 7 PM at The Friends of the Merril Collection

Venue: Lillian H. Smith Library Branch, 239 College Street

Featuring: Suzanne Church, A.M. Dellamonica, Gemma Files, Susan Forest, Lucas K. Law, Derwin Mak, Mahtab Narsimhan, Ursula Pflug

Winnipeg

September 21, 2016 (Wednesday) 7 PM at McNally Robinson

Venue: McNally Robinson, Grant Park Mall, 1120 Grant Ave.

Host/Interviewer: Samantha Beiko

Featuring: Bev Geddes, Sherry Peters

Strangers Among Us is available in print and ebook from online booksellers worldwide, and is now available for pre-order. Get yours now. If you do, let me know and I’ll be pleased to send you a digital, personalized dedication for you which you can then print and affix to your print copy.

Possible new novella this year

A novella on which I’ve been working for some 25 years may finally see the light in 2016. Or possibly early 2017.

It is a speculative fiction piece, Caliban, which, among other things, examines reality. All sounds very erudite, doesn’t it? But it’s not. I hope you will find it a good read, and perhaps, after you’ve had time to think about it, discover there are depths. But your experience may vary.

The official blurb? Thus:

Tine desires beauty and freedom from his home. When called to find a missing ambassador to a colony of artists, he risks everything for the pursuit of that desire, only to find illusion can be reality, and reality illusion. Sanity is subjective. And it is possible life, even beauty, can be found in unexpected places and forms.

Caliban is presently in editorial review. There is likely going to be a revision. If all goes well I can manage that rather quickly, given I have a bit of a window in the publishing house, and can, theoretically, devote my time to my own writing. We’ll see.

And of course I continue to poke away at The Rose Guardian, otherwise known as That Damned Novel. 

So, perhaps something new of mine published in the near future. Wish me luck, dear readers.

And to my fellow Canucks, Happy Canada Day!

That blasted novel

There was a time I used to be able to sit myself in front of the computer and just let the fingers fly. Stories were easy. Writing was easy. Now I find it hard to steal time from a day to let that creativity bubble up and flow. It’s taken me nigh unto five years to get where I am with my current work in progress, The Rose Guardian. My dear cousin keeps nudging me. My dear friend keeps nudging me. I eke out a few pages at a time. I find myself thinking and rethinking, probably over-thinking this damned novel. I get stuck at the most unlikely of places, scenes I already know and which should just flow from brain through fingers to screen.

But I find I pause. I think: but what if. What if she doesn’t really think that way? What if that occurrence is too contrived? What if it should be afternoon instead of morning? And then my brain stutters. My fingers stutter. And the whole mess stutters to a halt. I think to myself, oh for god’s sake, Lorina, just shut up and write the blasted thing. Just shut up.

By then the damage is done and I lose all faith in what I’ve written, in what I’m planning to write, and so I stagger, hit Ctrl S, click the X in the upper right of the screen and go read Facebook, or deal with a layout question for Five Rivers Publishing, or make up that invoice for Five Rivers Glass which is the business we run that keeps us afloat. And another day goes by. And the novel still isn’t finished.

And I’m so close. So blessedly, damnably close to being finished. It’s maddening. I find myself maddening. I don’t ever remember having to work this hard for a story.

Still, I do hold out faint hope I may be finished by close of summer, or at least by close of year. Then I can stew and fuss and fret about the cohesiveness of the story, hang on to it in an attempt to revise and polish. If I’m truthful that process is likely going to take yet another six months to a year, given all the demands on my time, publishing other people’s dreams. But I have to believe this wretched novel will be finished soon, soon being a relative term. Then I can fire it off into space in the general direction of Lethbridge and dear Robert who will lovingly eviscerate the thing and send it back to me bleeding and weeping and begging for an insightful hand to give it life and voice and manna. Robert, of course, will have been exacting and brilliant in his insights. I, of course, will fuss and fume for a while and then approach the keyboard carefully. Because the keyboard snarls, you know. The keyboard hisses when you don’t demonstrate respect and willingness and determination. It knows. It bloody well knows.

How long will that revision take? Dear god, I have no idea. I used to have a feel for these things. No more. Not about my own work.

Anyway, enough whinging. This comes to you mostly by way of FYI, a belated update. Do trust, dear reader, I am working on the novel, albeit sporadically. But I am working.

Next book Prime Ministers of Canada Series releases December 1, 2016

We’re pleased to announce the next book in our Prime Minister of Canada Series, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, 15th Prime Minister of Canada.

Before he was elected to office, he hitch-hiked across North Africa, swam the Bosporus Strait on a whim, and ran with the bulls in Pamplona – twice. Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Canada’s 15th Prime Minister, could be called the most colourful of them all.

Trudeau was confident that his informed opinions were good for all Canadians. Not everyone agreed. Suspending civil liberties with the War Measures Act wasn’t even his most controversial decision, at least, not to those who are still stuttering mad about his National Energy Program or White Paper on Indian Affairs. From his youth as a backwoods canoeist and political activist, to his retirement from politics and the law, Pierre Trudeau lived a life that was, as he put it, “one long curve, full of turning points.”

That long curve is traced in this new biography, with turning points from Pierre Trudeau’s home life, his political machinations, and the lifelong love he had for wilderness places. Details come together here in a narrative that shows how he became a citizen of the world.

Deftly written by Paula Johanson, the book is an excellent addition to the series.

For over twenty-five years, Paula Johanson has worked as a writer, teacher and editor. Among her twenty-nine books on science, health and literature the most recent are Love Poetry: How Do I Love Thee? (Enslow Publishers), What Is Energy? from the series Let’s Find Out! (Rosen Publishing), and the science fiction anthology Opus 6 (Reality Skimming Press).

An accredited teacher, she has written and edited curriculum educational materials. Recently she completed an MA in Canadian Literature at the University of Victoria.

A lifelong hockey fan, she listened on radio to the first Canada/Russia hockey series, and is proud to have played a pick-up game on a frozen pond.

Pierre Ellliot Trudeau releases December 1, 2016. Five Rivers is taking pre-orders for both the print and digital editions, which will be available through online booksellers and digital partners worldwide.

An editor considers exposition

It is too often the case in many of the manuscripts I see, the author is in such a rush to tell his story the entire narrative devolves to exposition. In other words, the author is telling rather than showing.

Why avoid exposition? The answer to that is quite simple. When you’re telling your reader instead of showing, you remove the reader from the story. You’re intruding. That suspension of disbelief shatters because all action has ceased in order to give stage directions, or the all-too-common: they went here, did this, went there, did that, time passed.

Who wants to read that?

For example, in a manuscript I edited, the author had written this particular scene:

Yoi turned to him and stretched the small fabric at him proudly, her chin up, her mouth turned downwards, her nose scrunched slightly.

Yoshi laughed. “You look like a Hannya.”

A Hannya is a Noh mask depicting female jealousy, and Yui was jealous. Yoshi got to join the war, defend their country, see the world.

I pointed out the last paragraph in particular was expository and needed to be revised, which the author did thus:

Yoi turned to him, proudly flashing the small hoop of stretched fabric, her chin up, her mouth turned downwards, her nose scrunched slightly.

Yoshi laughed. “You look like a Hannya.”

In a way he thinks she is indeed a Hannya, for she is jealous he leaves tomorrow for adventure, for honour, to defend their country and see the world. She would go if she were allowed. He knows she would. Her jealousy is palpable, as obvious as if she wore the Noh mask.

Now the information about the Noh mask is part of the action, rather than the action coming to an abrupt halt because the author stepped outside the story to deliver an explanation.

In a different story written by a different author, there was this scene:

Kathy got off the train and the three of them went and sat on the cement platform near the grey wall. Robert tried to draw Kathy into a conversation. She had been dead for a long time. He didn’t know how to talk to a dead person.

Pretty dry and cursory stuff. No depth of character. No sense of action. Just exposition.

That scene was rewritten with this result:

He sees Kathy. She looks as grey as Malek’s suit, the pallor she wore lying there in that hospital bed with her bone marrow neuked and the stem-cell transplant failing to reboot her system. Twenty-eight and no way to die. His face is wet with tears and he hears himself gasping for air.

“Kathy,” he whispers. He’s about to say, How are you? and realizes how ridiculous that is. What do you say to your dead daughter?

“Dad,” she says and although there are no tears on her face he hears the catch in her throat. She looks scared, he thinks, and wants to pull her to his side, drape his arm around her shoulders and squeeze. Maybe he’d been wrong? Maybe you didn’t screw with the forces of nature?

“C’mon,” he says, and gestures toward the archway where there are fewer people and the light is dimmer. “We can talk over there.”

Malek precedes them, places himself like a barrier in front of the corridor. Robert tries to ignore him, walking to the wall, glancing over his shoulder to make sure Kathy follows. She does, but it’s clear she’s uncomfortable. When at last they’re cross-legged on the ground – where else would you find a man in a navy business suit sitting on the floor? – he asks her if she needs anything.

She looks at him, perplexed. “What would I need?”

“I don’t know.”

Her attention slides away again, flicking from person to person, the walls, the floor, the rails where the trains run every twenty minutes.

“I’ve missed you,” he says. “Every day.”

“I know,” she says. And is silent once more.

Now you have a better understanding of the characters, of the tension, of what’s going on in the story. And this is what makes a story not only vibrant and a narcotic to the reader, but potentially makes it into a sale.

Sara Firmani joins Five Rivers’ editorial team

Sara Firmani

We are very pleased to welcome Sara Firmani to our editorial team in the capacity of copy-editor.

Sara Firmani is a professional librarian based in Cambridge, Ontario. She works as a selection specialist at Library Services Centre, doing adult fiction collection development for public libraries across Canada.

Sara holds an Honours BA in English and Music from the University of Guelph, and has a Masters of Library & Information Sciences from the University of Western Ontario. She has also studied copy, stylistic, and substantive editing through The Chang School of Continuing Education at Ryerson University.

In her spare time, Sara is a reader, music nut, crazy cat & rat lady, knitter, roller derby aficionado, and runner. Not necessarily in that order.

Review: A Telling of Stars, and, Silences of Home, by Caitlin Sweet

It is always a pleasure to delve into the detailed, gorgeous story-telling of Caitlin Sweet; A Telling of Stars and Silences of Home are no exception to that experience.

In these two linked novels Sweet reveals an epic story spanning centuries, with actions that echo through generations with devastating effect.

In the first, A Telling of Stars, we are introduced to the young woman, Jaele, who has suffered a terrorist attack on her fishing village, with the terrorists a long-accursed race from across the sea. In her quest for vengeance, she crosses her country to the sea, following in the footsteps of a legendary queen, the author of the curse which brought terrorists raiding Jaele’s village.

The story, however, is so much more than a blood-debt. Sweet examines the rejection of contentment, acceptance, and peace in the face of irrationality and shattering grief. The writing is lyrical without being purple, the environmental detail precise and revealing without hampering the narrative. This is, frankly, storytelling at its best.

Silences of Home is the prequel to A Telling of Stars, and the framework of the story deals with the origin of the curse brought down upon the Raiders. It is a complex and compelling story, examining power, deceit and the ambiguities of love. There are shattering moments. And there are moments of redemption.

If you like fantasy which pushes the boundaries, which makes no excuse for intelligence and imagination, I urge you to consider these two novels by Sweet. You won’t be disappointed.