L. Jagi Lamplighter's Blog, page 26
December 5, 2014
Story Snippet — Operation Renfield by Steve Johnson
A special treat! A snippet of Operation Renfield by Steven Johnson. (First novel any child in my family ever finished was: Up In Smoke by Steven Johnson.)
A different book, also by Steven Johnson. ;-)
King in the Morning
The morning report listed sixty-six effectives in K Company. Of the names I recognized, half were dead or missing. That wasn’t a big slice of the sixty-six.
“I hear they got the new six-inch mortars up at Essen now,” Willie told me. He tilted his head down to keep his cigarette going in the rain, but his massive nose was doing that all by itself.
“Good,” I said. “Maybe they’ll grind up some decent potions for once. That stuff they sent up last week didn’t do anything but make my teeth green.”
“Ah, that’s the fungus, Joe,” Willie suggested. “Only greens we’re likely to get our teeth into for a while.”
I scratched at the gap between my front teeth. There wasn’t anything to say to that; it was the truth, pure and simple. Not “God’s honest truth”, though. Nobody would use God’s name to talk about Waldorfsbruck.
We were on the reverse slope of a hill, which was good and bad. Good, because the Austros couldn’t tell exactly where we were without sending over a broomstick, and with our drake-jockeys watching over us, they weren’t likely to survive the attempt.
Bad, because the rain went past like a babbling brook, curling over every little rock and tent peg. Sure, the grass and bushes would hold the dirt down, but that was before the U.S. Army came stomping around in our shoe-pacs. We weren’t knee-deep in gluey mud, which was something. But we were ankle-deep in cold water, which isn’t any picnic either.
Plus, whenever the Enemy settled in for a while, everything else went gray and died. It takes a lot of cursing to keep a vampire officer up and at ‘em night after night. Takes even more to keep their mortal soldiers in line, when every decent instinct is trying to leap right out of their skulls and drag the rest of them along for the ride.
The Austro-Hungarian morale problem was less like our Army’s and more like our prisons’, or our psycho wards. There’s one, count ‘im, ONE Angel of Mental Stability in the whole of the Heirarchy, and don’t think for a minute he’s not half buggy himself from the flood of prayers he gets from our Invocational Warfare boys. Fighting the undead, we wind up with blasted near more head cases than neck wounds.
Of course they’re not all vampires. For one thing, who would they eat?
So all those evil spirits churning around gets into the soil, and the trees, and whatever lived around here, and it wears ‘em out. Can a germ feel despair? I don’t see it, myself, but I did know that an open cut up at the front lines never got infected. Guys got sloppy about cleaning their mess kits, and never a bellyache. Docs didn’t have to wash their gear in alcohol, even, although they did anyway.
Waldorfsbruck was dead. Deader than Caesar. Deader than chivalry, in fact, because there are still a few Knights of St. John around, holding back the Dark with their bulletproof crosses. Everything natural except us was dead, and we were trying mighty hard to make the UN-natural dead, too.
The unnaturals on the Enemy’s side, of course. Our golems and dwarves are just good Old Folk.
“So,” I said after I tracked down the last piece of breakfast, “how many guys do we really have?”
“Forty-some,” Willie allowed after a pause for thought. “Simms and them’re at Mine Warfare School until, uh, the 28th. What’s today?”
“It’s right there at the top of the report,” I groused, to keep from having to admit I didn’t know the date, either.
“Can’t the Old Man get ‘em back early?” Willie said. “I thought we had dwarves for all that underground stuff.”
I chewed my lip, where a baby moustache was boldly defying regulations.
“Yeah, but dwarves,” I said. He knew what I meant. There aren’t many of the Old Folk left, although they’re more common in Europe than back home in America. We’d been around them some since coming Over Here, and they weren’t bad guys, just different. You literally never knew where they’d pop up. We have maps, because the ground is flat and we can’t fly. They got map rooms, layered with different colors like a Dagwood sandwich. Always looking up, always crouching with their hands in the dirt. Always tasting everything. Not twitchy, like some guys get on the Line. The exact opposite, in fact. So quiet and calm that when they finally did speak, you couldn’t believe that down-in-the-well rumble was actually coming from them.
Also, I could never understand their accent.
“We gotta get better at this tunneling bit,” I opined. “There ain’t but so many dwarves to go ‘round. And the other side’s got most of ‘em.”
“Zat why their dwarves’re so much better’n our dwarves?”
“Mebbe,” I allowed. “And they’re trained better. Cuz they’re really trained, like a dog. Ours are free to do whatever they want.”
“S’what we’re fighting for,” Willie drawled out. “Ain’t it?”
“Not getting bit in the middle of the night’s the main thing,” I countered. “But, yeah, freedom. I guess. Hope someone gets some, somewhere. Cuz there ain’t an eye-a-newt of a lot of it in th’Army.”
I hear back home some guys think the way we cuss Over Here makes us sound sissified. Back there you hear “damn” and “Hell” even in the nice places. They can go tell the Marines, the way I see it. Why give the Enemy any more ammunition?
I scratched a little – at least the lice died up here on the Line – and stood on an ammo crate to see through the rain. There weren’t any trees left; the boys burned them for warmth before the place went gray. So it wasn’t hard to make out our tents, three twelve-man rigs and a Baker for the captain. We were down in a shallow swale that was pretty good concealment before the bushes died. As it was now, it was still cover from the chest down.
To our right was the pavilion of the Excellent Master of the Oaken Hunt. The carbon-arc spotlight filaments were smoking hot; Elves like it bright. The stovepipe chimney was roaring, too, because Dwarves like it hot. And there were piles of slime in the corners, with a Troll wriggling fat and happy in each one, half in and half out of the tent.
I hear they call it coalition warfare.
On the left were three trucks with tarps over the sides for a lean-to. Those British guys with the berets. Bred to command. They can make you do whatever they want. Tell you to eat a live grenade and you'll think it's the best idea ever. Doesn't work so hot when your enemy speaks one of eleven languages, though. The Austros deliberately kept their nationalities separate; you never knew if you were up against a Serbian regiment, or Galician Poles, or Ruthenians, whatever they were. Can't understand your Voice, can't obey it. There wasn't generally a lot of work for the Commandos.
An infantry regiment has nine rifle companies, A through I. Headquarters is J-for-Juliet, the artillery is L, M and N, and Oscar Co. is transportation. Sometimes there’s a tank company attached, but they’re all numbers instead of letters. What with most of the fighting being at night, every regiment’s had a reconnaissance company authorized for a while now. That’s us, K-for-King.
That is, we’re a reconnaissance company in theory. Most times, we’re the regimental reserve, the Colonel’s bodyguard, military police and rock-straighteners. But once in a while, when the gremlins stop hexing our Jeeps, we go out and poke around to find out where the Enemy is, and what he’s up to.
The Austros, we know about. They have to have a vampire to keep their men in hand, so they move around in company-size clumps. Officer likes the night, but the men can only see in the day. So they don’t move around all that much. Our overlays show every enemy unit in the valley. Every day.
But the real Enemy supplying the Austros with their magical oomph? They’re a little beyond my pay grade. nobody knows how many Dark Forces there really are, or what they can do. We don't even really know what they want. When every demon with any influence is both smarter than us and a psychotic liar, how can we trust anything we hear?
Well, yeah. We can trust one Source. But He doesn't issue morning reports.
http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/370244.html?mode=reply#add_comment
December 3, 2014
The Superversive Blog — Guest Blog: Makers and Breakers
Today we have a superb guest post by author Dave Freer.
Before I post it, however, I have some terrific news. There is now a Superversive website! It is Superversive SF, and will be posting both superversive and science posts. The site is run by Mr. Jason Rennie of SCI PHI. He is looking for posts and book reviews. So, if you wish to write a post or a book review, or you see an article you think fans of Superversive SF would be interested in, let him know! (Or let me know, and I'll let him know. ;-)
This column is also going to appear there. I am going to experiment with having the comment link lead over there.
Again, that's: SuperversiveSF.com
And now, without further ado:
Makers and Breakers
by Dave Freer
You an find this book on Amazon here.
Now of course you want to take anything I say with a whole shovel of salt, because, according to the self-selected arbiters of modern standards, I’m barking insane.
As sanity is a relative concept (take some of my relatives. Please), salt is great preservative, and if I’d rather not be judged sane by their standards, this is all good.
Of course they don’t like you listening to me or reading my folly, but that is, as they say, is hard cheese…
Which brings me around to what I was going to write about.
“‘Hard cheese?’ maybe he is mad after all,” I hear you mutter.
Well, maybe. But what you have to grasp about hard cheese is that, as opposed to milk, or even soft cheese, hard cheese was made as a way to keep food for the long, dark winter months. To store against a possible bleak year and poor harvest.
Making hard cheeses is the opposite of instant gratification. It’s not easy or quick (soft cheeses are, even if you don’t nip off to the shops and buy some cream cheese).
Cheese these days comes from the supermarket… unless of course you’re a nutter like me.
I make cheese. I make bacon. I make salami. I make hams. I make jerky… I preserve, dry, or freeze everything that doesn’t run fast enough to get away.
Part of this is choice and part of this choice-inflicted. I live on a remote island, a once a week ten hour ferry trip off the coast of Australia. Actually, yes, I can buy anything you can in urban America. I can even buy today’s newspapers, as long as I only go and collect them tomorrow. It is just very expensive to do so, and if there is bad weather (and this is the ‘roaring forties’ of sail-ship legend) there is a chance that tomorrow may be somewhat delayed (it’s not quite like mañana. It eventually does come). It does force you to change the way you live, and how you see the world. To plan, to build up stocks and to think ahead. And of course, to delay gratification. It also changes the way you look at that now much maligned and derided hero of yesteryear, the pioneer, the colonist, and those who built on that legacy, so someone urban lout who never got up at half-past predawn to milk, could whinge about government cheese. The farmer, the guy getting a sloppy-with-somewhat-processed-grass tail whipped across his face, the fellow squatting planting seeds he kept from last year, the fisherman on a wild and rolling sea… these are my people, my heroes and my role models. These are the builders, the makers. These are the foundation stone people on which my Australia and the US and Canada (yes there are others, but at least I know a little about those) were built, and still actually stand.
Not surprisingly they tend to see the world very differently from those who are sheltered from these things in the raw, and completely differently from the takers and breakers.
They tend to be pragmatic, to think ahead, to think for themselves, which seems to mean conservative these days (bizarre, isn’t it, how words change meanings. Once that was what one meant by liberal. It still does in some English speaking places.). They value things that they can see have worked (for their parents, grandparents, and more), and do still work. They’ve learned the hard way of the value of hard labor, of honesty, of good neighbors and of a real ‘community’ (not the stolen use of the word that politicians like to burble about).
These are people who know each other, who turn up to fight fires or clean gutters for the old people, because they know, like and respect them. Church is still important, and so is earned respect, appearances, less so. You know people for what they are and do, not for what they look like, and what labels they stick on themselves.
It’s not always an easy way to live, which is one reason why cities draw. The other is that cities offer a great deal… of employment, entertainment, choices and also fast food.
No, I don’t want everyone to live like we do.
If everyone did it, it would be harder going for a hunter-gatherer-farmer like me.
I might have to rely on my writing to put food on the table for my family, And there’d be No-one to make computers, so you’d best all stick to making computers or mining or writing programs, from my point of view, anyway. That’s also making.
But it is much easier to become distant from it. To not see the gulf between making and taking, between building and looting what others build. Although I work the land and sea much as my ancestors did, and with the same attitude – if a piece of machinery made it possible to do it better and faster — I’ll try it, I am two other things (well, yes, actually many. A man is a complex thing) firstly, by background, a scientist who likes logic and numbers, and secondly, a lifelong reader.
And it was books, and identifying a trend in them that I found, well, was making them less pleasurable, that got me writing.
Observation said that there were less books with heroes I could identify with.
Logic said something about them had to be bothering me. It took me some time to work out what it was, because it was counter-intuitive to me.
The center of the books had shifted over the years. Steadily, to the point where it was now bothering my logic and suspension of disbelief, as well as my enjoyment. Fiction is not a how-to manual or even necessarily plausible, as long as it is enjoyable. When it starts to fail the latter part… well, we start to question the first parts.
I realized that the makers, without stopping being the cornerstone of real society, had somehow gone from being mostly the heroes, to inevitably the villains. Somehow we’d gone from FARMER IN THE SKY to only books where humans (particularly white male, Western, heterosexual middle aged ‘country’ people/or those making things) were always villains.
The heroes, weren’t building, they were breaking. And if anything at all, they were striving for or defending the ‘utopia’ we’d narrowly escaped and discovered the horrors of, barely decades ago. Or, possibly worse, humans could be some kind of hedonistic parasite… but making, colonizing, exploring and taming were now evil as were the people (always the same villains) who even thought of such things. They weren’t just evil, they were core-rotten. There was no good in them at all.
Now, of course, I approach this from my own philosophical and religious perspective: While I accept the reality of evil, and that some people can be so corrupted by it that there is little good left in them, I start from the position that humans are made in God’s image. However you take that, it means they start pretty good.
Rotten genes, and bad rearing, and a lousy moral environment can create some very nasty products from that – but not inevitably.
People (or perhaps something more than people) have surprised me over and over. There is still an amazing capacity to do good within just ordinary people, and the capacity of individuals to be that, despite the worst, is something we should celebrate.
Acts of kindness, altruism, generosity, idealism, are not rare. I’ve broken down in areas of South Africa where that is apparently a death warrant… and yet met nothing but kindness and help.
Does that mean I’m some stupid rose-tinted spectacle American Liberal, thinking we can all sing Kumbaya and get on? Not hardly. I’m a pragmatic country-man. I realize that breakers and takers are there too. I just think there are actually more makers than one realizes… but we’re not very noisy and not very busy crawling into the control-spots.
And one of those control spots is fiction.
Fiction is, of course, terribly effective propaganda – but like all propaganda, fails once the target audience is aware it is being manipulated and thus takes the opposite point of view.
What’s more, once they realize it is propaganda, they’re quite likely to dislike the vessel – the story – as well as the ‘message’.
Now I freely admit I started submitting writing (with no delusions that I was a particularly good writer) but with a “I’ve got to be able to do a bit better than this, even if I’m no Heinlein,” look at what was coming out of publishing.
I didn’t realize that those on the levers of publishing didn’t want Heinlein, with ‘makers’. They wanted to break everything that it stood for. If you sneaked it through, you had to clothe it in heavy disguise. I foolishly thought that publishing was long-sighted and logical, and not willing to act against their finest, their foundations, out of short-sighted partisan self-interest.
I thought that there was just a shortage of the kind of heroes I admired, aspired to be like and enjoyed reading about because authors weren’t providing it. Yes, not very bright for a man prides himself on logic.
But it was just so stupid, I didn’t think anyone would do that.
I did figure it out, though. I did then try some stealth, but I am not good enough at it.
And then I was lucky and tried Baen who were still publishing the old kind of Science Fiction.
The trouble, as I see it anyway, is that fiction as propaganda can only work well, long term, when there is a lot of non-propaganda for it to swim amongst, and pass as. So by trying to make the whole field your tool, you must do it so badly that either you prevent the reader from being able to suspend his disbelief (and kill your market, outside the converted), or you convince them to believe falsehoods which may be in your personal short-term interest, but are going to cause devastating long term and collateral damage.
For example: Your teen daughter who reads sf/fantasy is making her first long distance drive home from college. Her car breaks down one night in the middle of nowhere. Two guys stop and decide to grab her and rape her (look at the stats to see who they’re likely to be).
Guns are bad, according to the books she’s read, so she can’t shoot them dead.
Does she, like the feminist heroes of her books – beat them to ground, or maybe just shame them into checking their privilege on twitter? Or, having slightly more brain than cheddar (it’s all about cheese) run to the house across the field – which, given the location is certain to be occupied by the arch-villain of her books, the middle-aged white farmer, who has a wife and three kids, is a church-going Christian, who votes Republican and thinks an Agricultural fair with a rodeo is the best thing ever… and probably keeps a shotgun behind the door and can throw an 80 pound hay bale into the loft sixteen feet up.
The crime stats (the facts, not the fiction) show that he’s her best possible help: not only will he help her, and fix her car, and his wife will feed her and look after her, but he’s almost the single most likely person to physically deal with or to shoot the two varmints, if they decide to try come and get her.
Yes there is a remote chance that he’s some backwoods Hannibal Lector. But the probability is so microscopically slim as to be wearing a dress size minus 24 000 000, which is still too big for it.
But what is she going to believe, if the propaganda has worked? Which is why I started writing books that might be fantasy or sf… but took reality and logic back to where they belonged. That took makers, builders, colonists back to the heart of the story as what they really are a lot of the time: human, fallible and foolish sometimes, but with the characteristics that make the real people.
Pushing that envelope just a bit further I’ve just written a ‘cozy’ Who-dunnit, JOY COMETH WITH THE MOURNING. Set in a small country village in my home, Australia, with the ‘detective’ the person I could think of fitting in with most difficulty there – a timid, urban lady-priest. The point was to write a good murder mystery… with anti-propaganda. With current sneered at villains – ordinary people making lives for themselves and food for others, people as real, and human as I could make them.
With the warmth that they really have. I’m not trying to pretend there are no villains, and no evil.
It’s just not where they claim it is.
We OWN the high ground. We made it. It’s time to stop conceding it. I’m sure some of you can do this far better than I can.
And we can, now.
Let’s do it.
Dave Freer's blog on writing, politics, and philosophy.
https://coalfiredcuttlefish.wordpress.com/
http://flindersfreer.blogspot.com.au/ blog on the self-sufficiency on the Island
More books by David Freer (click on the cover picture to learn more):
November 26, 2014
Superversive Blog: The Goal of the Superversive
Any new venture needs a mission statement. So, what are the goals of the Superversive Literary Movement?
Well…let me tell you a brief story.
As a child, I distained Cliffsnotes. I insisted on actually reading the book. I would like to instill the same virtue in my children. But recently, I made my first exception.
My daughter had to read Steinbeck’s The Pearl for class. We read it together. She read part. I read part. The writing was just gorgeous. The life of the people involved drawn so lovingly. The dreams the young man had for his baby son were so poignant, so touching.
Worried about what kind of book this might be, I read the end first. It looked okay. So, we read the book together.
Turns out, I had missed something—the part where the baby got shot.
Not a happy story.
Next, she brought home Of Mice and Men. We started it together. What a gorgeous and beautifully writing—the descriptions of nature, the interaction between the two characters. A man named George, who could be off doing well on his own, is taking care of a big and simple man named Lennie, who accidentally kills the mice he loves because of his awkward big strength. In George, despite his gruff manner and his bad language, we see a glimpse of what is best in the human spirit, a glimpse of light in a benighted world.
The scene of the two camping out and discussing their hopes of someday owning their own little farm, where Lennie could tend rabbits, was so touching and hopeful, so filled with pathos and sorrow, and so beautifully written. Steinbeck is clearly one of the great masters of word use.
But I remembered The Pearl. I glanced ahead, but this time, I looked more carefully.
On the next to last page, while discussing how their hoped-for little farm with rabbits is almost within their grasp, George presses a pistol against the back of Lennie’s head and shoots.
Now, in the story, he does it with a terribly heavy heart. He does it for “a good reason”—Lennie accidentally killed someone, but…
That doesn’t make it better.
I sat there holding the remains of my heart, which Steinbeck had just ripped out and stamped on. The devotion of this good man George had led to nothing. All their golden hopes turned to dross, sand.
And it wasn’t just the end. The book was full of examples of “the ends justify the means” type of thinking – such as a man killing four of nine puppies, so that the other five will have a chance.
Very realistic? Check. Very down to earth? Check. Very “the way of the world”? Check.
Why give a book like this to children to read? What are we trying to teach them? That life is difficult and meaningless? That sometimes its okay to kill something we love for a “good reason”? That life is pointless? That dreams and hopes are a sham? That no matter how you try, you cannot improve upon your circumstance, so it’s better not to even hope? (That was what The Pearl was about.)
What possible good is such a message doing our children?
Maybe if a child grew up in posh circumstances and had never seen hardship—maybe then, there would be a good reason for letting them know that “out there” it can get hard.
But this was my daughter—whose youth resembles that of Hansel and Gretel, and not the fun parts about candy houses and witches. There are many things she needs in life—but pathos-filled reminders of how harsh life can be is not one of them.
The book was also full of cursing. I’m not sure I would have noticed, but my daughter kept complaining.
I closed the book and refused to read any more of it. I told her we’d find the answers online. She ended up getting help with it from her brother (who had been forced to read the book at school the previous year) and from a friend.
I’ve seen some of the other books on the school curriculum. Many of them are like this. In the name of “realism,” these works preach hopelessness and darkness.
They are lies!
So, you might ask, why does it matter if our children are being fed lies? They’re just stories, right?
What do stories matter?
Stores teach us about how the world is. They teach us despair, or they teach us hope. In particular, they teach us about the nature of hope and when it is appropriate to have it.
So why is hope—that fragile, little flutter at the bottom of Pandora’s jar—so important?
Because hope needs to be hoped before miracles can be requested.
In life, some things will go badly. True. Some things will go well. But what about everything in between? What about those moments when hope, trust, dare I say, faith, is required to make the difference between a dark ending and a happy one?
If we have been taught that hope and dreams are a pointless fantasy, a waste of time, we might never take the step of faith necessary to turn a dark ending into a joyful one.
Think I am being unrealistic, and my head’s in the clouds? Let me give a few examples.
Example One:
I heard a story on the radio the other day. A woman named Trisha is dying of cancer. She has an eight year old son named Wesley and no one else. No close friends. No relatives. No hope for her son.
Trisha met another Trisha…the angel who ministered to her in the hospital in the form of her nurse. When the news came that her illness was terminal, Trisha worked up the courage to do something astonishing. She asked her nurse: “When I die, will you take my son?”
The nurse went home and spoke to her husband and her four children. They said yes. They not only agreed to take Wesley, they took both Wesley and Trisha into their home, caring for them both as Trisha’s illness grows worse.
What if Trisha, laying in her bed in pain, had not had the faith, the hope, to ask her nurse this question? What would have become of her little boy?
If Trish believed the “realism” preached by Steinbeck and other “realists”, she would never have had the courage to ask her nurse for help.
Example Two:
Don Ritchie is an Australian who lives across from a famous suicide spot, a cliff known as The Gap. At least once a week, someone comes to commit suicide there.
Don and his wife keep an eye out the window. If they see someone at the edge, Don strolls out there. He smiles and talks to them. He offers them a cup of tea.
Sometimes, they come in for tea. Sometimes, they just go home. On a few occasions, he’s had to hold someone, while his wife called the police. Sometimes, the person jumps anyway.
Don and his wife figure they’ve saved around a hundred and sixty lives.
What if Don had believed that hopes and dreams are dross, and he never walked out there? What if he had spent the years standing in his living room, shaking his head and cursing the fact that he bought a house in such an unlucky place?
There are people living lives, perhaps children born who would not have been, merely because Don did not give up on those caught by despair.
Example Three:
Andrea Pauline was a student at the University of Colorado. She traveled to Uganda to study microfinancing for a semester. While she was there, she discovered that some of the local orphan children were being abused.
Andrea refused to leave the country until the government did something. She received death threats. She would not back down.
The government of Uganda took the forty-some children away from their caretakers—and gave them to Andrea. She and her sister now run an orphanage in Uganda called Musana (Sunshine). They have over a hundred children. (Matthew West was inspired by her story to write the song Do Something — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_RjndG0IX8 )
What if Andrea had believed the things preached by Of Mice and Men and The Pearl?
What if she had come home to America and cried into her pillow over the sad plight of those children back in Africa? What if she pent her time putting plaintive posts on Facebook about how the sad state of the world and how blue it made her feel?
Over a hundred children, living a better life, because one teenage girl refused to give up hope.
This is what the Superversive Literary Movement is for—to whisper to the future Trisha’s, Don’s, and Andrea’s that miracles are possible.
That hope is not a cheat.
The goal of the Superversive is to bring hope, where there is no hope; to bring courage, where without courage, hope would never be manifested.
The goal of the Superversive is to be light to a benighted world.
The goal of the Superversive is:
To tell the truth.
November 25, 2014
Live Chat now!
Okay Folks,
We are now love at Bitten by Books, come by any time this afternoon or tonight! (And get a chance to win a $75 Amazon gift certificate!)
Come by for a minute and just say hi, or join in and chat all night.
To join in the fun, click here:
Today’s the Day — Bitten by Books Interview
Just to make it clear: This event runs from 3pm EST to like midnight or something, so come any time. You can even comment over the next few days, I believe (and be put in for the drawing for the gift certificate.)
So,
Where: Bitten by Books (I'll post the link at 3 when it goes live.)
When: 3pm EST to whenever
What: Chat with me online
Why: Talk about books and get a chance to win a $75 Amazon gift certificate.
You can still get an extre 25 chances at the gift certificate drawing if you RSVP HERE.
November 23, 2014
Author L. Jagi Lamplighter Interview and $75.00 Amazon Gift Card Contest 11/25
Bitten by Books will be chat interviewing me Tuesday, November 25th from 3pm EST to like 11pm or something.
To RSVP, go here.
Their add reads:
Join us on 11/25 with author Linsey Hall for a release party, reader chat and contest. The event post goes up at 12:00 pm PACIFIC and the official chat runs into the evening. For those visiting from outside of the US, here is the time conversion link, we are in the Seattle time zone: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/
She will be talking about her newest book release The Raven, the Elf, and Rachel book two in the Books of Unexpected Enlightenment series.
About The Raven, the Elf, and Rachel:
“Before coming to Roanoke Academy, Rachel Griffin had been an obedient girl—but it’s hard to obey the rules when the world is in danger, and no one will listen.
Now, she’s eavesdropping on Wisecraft Agents and breaking a lot of rules. Because if the adults will not believe her, then it is up to Rachel and her friends—crazy, orphan-boy Sigfried the Dragonslayer and Nastasia, the Princess of Magical Australia—to stop the insidious Mortimer Egg from destroying the world.
But first she must survive truth spells, fights with her brother, detention, Alchemy experiments, talking to elves, and conjuring class. As if that were not bad enough, someone has turned the boy she likes into a sheep.
Oh, and the Raven with blood-red eyes continues to watch her. It is said to be an omen of the Doom of Worlds. Will her attempts to save her world bring the Raven’s wrath down upon her?”
Read a 5 star review of The Raven, the Elf, and Rachel by clicking here.
Buy a print copy of The Raven, the Elf, and Rachel from Amazon by clicking here.
Buy a Kindle copy of The Raven, the Elf, and Rachel from Amazon by clicking here.
Books in the Books of Unexpected Enlightenment series in the order they should be read:
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November 19, 2014
The Superversive Blog — Guest Blog: A Light In the Darkness
This utterly beautiful essay (It made me cry…twice) was written by 16 year old author, April Freeman. For more beautiful things written by April, visit her blog: Lost In La La Land.
When I was quite young, my mom read my brothers and I The Tale of Despereaux. It is one of those stories that you remember loving, and though you may not remember exactly why or how the plot went, it still sticks with you. I think Despereaux could be considered a surperversive book, that is the opposite of subversive as explained by The Superversive Literary Movement. But it’s not just the book I want to talk about today.
There is a scene in which the little mouse hero has been banished to the dungeon by the Mouse Council, one of the members being his father. They banished Despereaux because he loved the Princess, broke the law by showing himself to her, a human, and would not denounce her. So he is cast down the steps of the dungeon and walks on, to what would be his death. He finds comfort from the crushing darkness and despair around him by reciting to himself the story he had read hundreds of times in the castle library. He tells himself the story of the brave knight, because he wants to be brave for his beloved Princess Pea.
What Despereaux does not know is that the jailer, Gregory, heard him. He picked up the mouse, and in that act saved him from the dungeon rats that would have eagerly eaten him. Gregory had never saved any of the mice before, and when Despereaux asks why Gregory would save him, the old jailer replies, “Because you, mouse, can tell Gregory a story. Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell Gregory a story. Make some light.”
Reading this book again, many years later and further on in my journey as a writer, this passage rings very true for me. For what else is a good book, than light in the darkness? A beacon of hope, a way of adventure and discovery, a way to be lifted out of ourselves and see the world from someone else’s eyes. A world in all its joys and evil, and where light can prevails over darkness. This is what a good book can do.
We should write stories that not only lift our readers out of their mundane routines of life, sweeping them away into a new world filled with new people, experiences, and struggles. But give them something good, something they can think about and remember. Give them light to see the world in different, better, ways.
It is one thing to enjoy a decent book and then be done with it, much as you would enjoy cotton candy and then move on to the next thing. But if you had a good, wholesome meal, it would not only taste just as good as the cotton candy, or even better, it would give you more to chew on and leave you satisfied for longer. Maybe you’d even remember it years later as that “One dinner Grandma cooked.” And this is how we should write, and how to write in a superversive way.
But it’s not only about the good and the light. To have a story you must have conflict, so there must be struggle and darkness. The light must have darkness to fight against. For that is the reality of the world. There is always much darkness, and people are often weighed down by it. So we as writers must bring light and hope, to help lift their burdens and make it through another day. Especially to those who feel overwhelmed by the darkness.
How many times, when you are outside at night, do you pause to look at the stars and became lost in their vastness and beauty? I do almost every night. I crane my neck and stare. And the longer I stare, the more immense and limitless it becomes. It gives me a sense of childlike wonder and meekness. It lifts me out of myself and makes me realized just how small and fleeting my little existences is, compered to everything else. And I smile in joy and awe, because I know I am not alone and I am part of something bigger than myself.
This is the kind of feeling we’d like to give our readers.
However, this frightens some people, because they only focus on the darkness surrounding the light. They only see the void and the hopelessness. They never truly look, because they can only see the darkness and not the beauty of this messy universe. And when you no longer look for the light, you start to cave in on yourself and sink. Just as when St. Peter focused only on the waves around him, he began to sink.
In The Tale of Despereaux, there is another character, a rat named Roscuro. Being a rat, he has grown accustomed to the darkness and learned to enjoy torturing prisoners. But he also has a fascination with light, which is unheard of for a rat. He struggles with his conflict until finally he ventures upstairs and is dazzled by the beauty of the light. Though after an unfortunate incident involving soup, a queen’s death, and a look filled with hatred from the Princess Pea, Rosocuro’s heart is broken. Sadly, some hearts that break aren’t put back together properly and heal crooked and lopsided. And so was the fate of Rosocuro, when he swears to seek revenge on the Princess.
The story comes to a climax in the deepest, darkest part of the dungeon, where no hope can survive and no light touches. The rat has succeeded in dragging the fair Princess there, with the help of a servant maid, Miggey Sow. At the final confrontation where our small hero has found his way out of the dungeon, then back in again to save the Princess, Despereaux points his sword-like needle at Rosocuro and threatens the rat with it. But while Despereaux is contemplating whether killing the rat would really make the darkness go away, Rosocuro smells something on Despereaux. The other rats standing and watching suggest tears or mouse blood, but then Rosouro realizes it’s soup.
The smell of soup brings back the memory of the light, the laughter, the joy, and everything wonderful about that day, before he fell into the Queen’s soup bowl and gave her a heart attack. He begins to cry and admits the reason he really brought the Princess to the dungeon was so that he might have some light.
One thing you must remember, is that the King had outlawed soup after the Queen’s death. Despereaux only had the smell of it on him because the cook, who hates mice, had shared it with him. This remarkable interaction came about because the cook was illegality making soup, for the Princess had just gone missing, and in terrible times like those, soup helps. Cook was so releaved that the little footsteps she heard where that of a little mouse, instead of the King’s guards coming to take her away, that she not only let the mouse live, but shared the soup with him. She said, “Oh, these are dark days. And I’m kidding myself. There ain’t no point in making soup unless others eat it. Soup needs another mouth to taste it, another heart to be warmed by it.”
The soup reminded Rosocuro of the light he so loved, and how he can never again have it, because he was a rat. Disgusted with himself, he agrees with almost everyone else saying that he should die. All is resolved by a very brave act of the Princess. Here I will again quote the book, for what happens next is best put in the words of the author.
“Gor!” shouted Mig, waving her knife, “I’ll kill him.”
“No, wait,” said the princess. “Rosocuro,” she said to the rat.
“What?” he said. Tears were falling out of his eyes and creeping down his whiskers and dripping onto the dungeon floor.
And then the princess took a deep breath and put a hand on her heart. I think, reader, that she was feeling the same thing that Despereaux had felt when he was faced with his father begging him for forgiveness. That is, Pea was aware suddenly of how fragile her heart was, how much darkness was inside it, fighting always, with the light. She did not like the rat. She would never like the rat, but she knew what she must do to save her own heart. And so, here are the words that the princess spoke to her enemy.
She said, “Roscuro, would you like some soup?”
And so Roscuro leads them out of the Dungeon, and they all eat soup. The story is about bravery, light, forgiveness, and soup. Miggery Sow is reunited with her father who had sold her when she was young but repented of it everyday after, the Princess Pea and Despereaux become great friends, and soup was once again allowed in the kingdom. At the very end, there is a last passage where the author is talking to us, much as a story teller might talk to the children scattered at her feet, listening to the tale. It says:
Do you remember when Despereaux was in the jailers’s hand, whispering a story in the old man’s ear? I would like it very much if you thought of me as a mouse telling you a story, with my the whole of my heart, whispering it in your ear in order to save myself from the darkness, and to save you from the darkness, too. “Stories are light,” Gregory the jailer told Despereaux. Reader, I hope you have found some light here.
Most of us aren’t looking for an earth-shattering, life-rocking outcomes when we pick up a book, but sometimes that is exactly what we get. Sometimes on a smaller scale, and sometimes without even realizing it at first. Most readers just want to be entertained, which of course we should do. But even as we do this, we want to entertain them with something wholesome, something good, something filled with light, because even entertainment can be a sort of light.
Remember to offer the light, but don’t force it upon them. Writing in a pious, preachy, or lecturing way is very annoying and gets in the way of the story. People want a story, not a sermon.
I am not the best authority on how exactly to write a superversive story, for I am only just starting, but I know what one looks like when I see it. It must be heroic, it must be uplifting, it must be light. It should be filled with the things everyone forgets to notice, like the way leaves change in the fall, the innocent play of a child, the moments of goodhearted laughter among friends, watching how an ant crawls across the ground, or how lovely the stars are at night.
So what can we do for those who are burdened and consistently being pushed on by the darkness, or for those who have forgotten to look for the light? We lift them up, we show them hope, we help them see that even though there is much darkness, there is also much light. And we do this by telling them stories. Stories of struggle and light, stories that are wholesome and surperversive and filled with wonder. With great skill and care, we writers bring these stories to anyone who will listen. But let us not only bring them stories, let us bring them light in their darkness!
Also, dear readers, if any of you woud like to write a review of a book you feel has Superversive qualities, to appear here as a guest blog, let me know. (You don't have to be as brilliant a writer as April. Even an ordinary book review will do.)
November 18, 2014
A Thank You to the Evil League of Evil
I realize me signal boosting the Evil League of Evil is a bit like a dingy trying to draw attention to the ginormous aircraft carrier that is pulling it, but…I cannot think of another way to express my thanks.
In case anyone missed the cause, on October 22nd, the Evil League of Evil blogged about my newest book. The book reached some of the Amazon Bestseller's Lists. So did the first book. — AND they are still there! So, a thank you is due.
Normally, when I post a Signal Boost, it is not a recommendation. It is just me doing a favor for another author.
These, however, are recommendations. I've read all of these books…or am reading them. I recommend them all.
HARD MAGIC by Larry Correia
This is just a delightfully fun book. I really enjoyed it. It reminded me of the early stories in the Wild Card series, only better. I loved Wild Cards, but the quality was spotty because the authors changed. This has the same mood but maintains the quality across the story. It reminds me of the parts of Grapes of Wrath that I liked crossed with superheroes. (The story is so much fun, that I joined a Hard Magic game with some friends. I'm playing a Weatherman (girl?) named Belle Weather.)
I've recommended this series to several people and most of them have really enjoyed it and are now big Correia fans.
WITCHFINDER by Sarah A. Hoyt
If you are ever in the mood for a fantasy novel crossed with a Regency romance, this is the book for you! A delightfully fun story done in the style of a Regency but with lots of magical action and a character from modern earth to boot. Ladies, how can you resist a duke named Seraphim! Particularly, when he's noble, misunderstood, bearing up under the heavy weight of duty, rescuing persecuted wizards, and falling-in-love! And there's a trip to fairyland! If I had any complaints about this book, it would be that I would have liked it to be longer. (Full disclosure, includes a sub-plot of elf-boy on elf-boy romance)
One Bright Star To Guide Them by John C. Wright
This is possibly my favorite thing of everything John has written. Certainly, one of my favorites. Many people compare it to Narnia, but really it was meant to be a sequel to a whole genre of children's books where magical things came into the life of children and then left again. (Narnia, The Dark Is Rising Series, Carbonel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, and many others.) In particular, the characters in this story are not meant to be grown up versions of Lewis's characters.
In this story, a man is leaving work when he comes upon the talking cat who had been his animal companion during the magical adventure of his childhood. Now, decades later, the cat wants him to do one last thing. But Tom has a life, a job! As the story goes on, we are granted a glimpse of the otherworld and the adventure that young Tommy and his friends underwent, and it is among the most magical and wondrous of stories! (I have seen people ask for that story to be written. Beautiful as it is, I think something would be lost if it were seen up close. It is partially that we are seeing it through the nostalgia of time that makes it so beautiful.)
A really lovely and uplifting story.
A THRONE OF BONES by Vox Day
I have not yet finished this one. It is quite long, and I have a minimum of reading time. But I am at least half way through and am quite enjoying it. Who would not enjoy seeing Romans fight goblins!
In a world where ancient Rome is surrounded by goblins, dwarves, and elves, churchmen quarrel while gladiators battle goblins and dwarves steal from dragon's hoards. There are charming barbarians who have come to the civilized world to seek help against the wolf-men, and huge battle scenes between armies of humans and non-humas. And a really good portrayal of an elf girl watching some sorcerers try to bind up a dragon. The writing style is cool and intellectual with a great deal of care taken to the depicting of the world at large, reminding me a bit of John's writing. So far, very intriging!
November 17, 2014
Caption This Winner
This time, we had a tie:
Although the lights were nearly extinguished, he kept knocking.
and
"Do not neglect to give out Halloween candy,
for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels."
