Beth Tabler's Blog, page 206

Interview With Author Ken Liu

interview "Absolutely! The Dandelion Dynasty is a four-volume silkpunk epic fantasy series that took up the bulk of my time and creative energy over a ten-year period. The Veiled Throne, as you note, is the third volume. While writing the series, I learned a lot about myself as a writer, as a father, as a husband, as a grandchild, as a technologist, as a lawyer, and as a person."

Ken Liu is an author of both long and short-form speculative fiction; his short story collections The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories each won Locus awards for best collections. And his silkpunk epic fantasy series, The Dandelion Dynasty, won a Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Award. Aside from being a prolific writer, Liu has worked as a translator, software engineer, and lawyer.  

I had the great honor of chatting with Liu about some of his approaches to story creation, and how technology, law, and software creation overlap, as well as his epic series The Dandelion Dynasty. 

 

[GdM] I read an article where you said, “Tech, law and publishing might seem like three unrelated careers, but…all three jobs required symbolic systems to construct “machines” that achieved specific results. (link)” Could you elaborate on how these three spheres of thought are similar and how they diverge?

[KL] First, it’s a pleasure to talk to you and your readers. Thank you.

As a programmer, a lawyer, and an author, I’m always writing, for machines and also for people. In each case, I’m constructing machines out of symbols that solve specific problems, and they do this by making use of rules in different systems. In a program, these are the rules of computation in a universal Turing Machine. In a contract or brief, these are the legal rules of the particular jurisdiction as well as the rules of interpretation and enforcement followed by authorities in that jurisdiction. In a story or novel, these are the set of grammars and interpretive frameworks, unique to every reading community, that readers deploy to bring the words on the page to life.

Constructing machines is, of course, the bread and butter of engineering. And the aesthetics of craft are similar in every case. Much advice about programming—balance, structure, clarity of expression, self-documenting code, the preference for simplicity, functional design, striving to do more with less, know the language and the toolset—would apply just as well to legal drafting or fiction writing.

However, there is much more predictability and certainty at one end, when you’re writing for machines and abstract mathematical constructs, versus the other end, when you’re writing for people with individual life experiences, expectations, blind spots and insights, biases and hopes, that all inform each reader’s sui generis mind. In a very real sense, the story that the author leaves on the page is incomplete, for the reader must perform her half of the dance to animate the words with her unique view of life and finish the story. Authors must eventually accept that fiction is about giving up control, and stories only work when there is a bond of resonance between the reader and the writer. The more I write, the more I treasure that bond, which is so hard to find and maintain. It’s a miracle that any stories are understood at all.

[GdM] When talking about using symbolic systems for your chosen professions, would it be fair to say that there is also an implied importance in the specificity of word choice? Words themselves have power, especially in fields like computer engineering, law, and English. Does this specificity flow into your stories? Do you search for the perfect words to convey an idea?

[KL] Writers are always on the search for not just the perfect word, but also the perfect phrase, sentence, grammatical structure, rhetorical device … indeed, often to search is not enough, for what they want, need, crave doesn’t even exist, and they must invent it.

Milton did not write in some nondescript, generic tongue called “Early Modern English.” He had to invent his language suited to the task of justifying the ways of God to men: bending the vernacular to fit the syntax of Latin; blending allusions ancient and modern, biblical and scientific; seducing the reader into sin with classical rhetorical tropes before thundering them awake with Puritanical rage. Dickinson did not write in some idealized, bland grapholect called “19th-century American English.” She had to invent her language suited to portraying the vastness of existence in the dance of a single Bee and a single Clover, where each dash, each Capital Letter, each lilting enjambment – so musical and yet so contrary to a song! – is a moment of joy seized from gossamer Death.

Think of the writers you admire: Spencer, Nabokov, Lu Xun, Hughes, Le Guin, Faulkner, Stein, Woolf, Dillard, Sontag, McCarthy, Morrison – none of them bothered to write in the smooth, effortless language of everyday life, of business and instruction, of convention and cliché. Writers with something to say and worth reading don’t settle. They all searched and searched for the perfect language suited to what they had to say and, failing to find it, invented their own tongues. To read them, one must learn their idiolects; it is the only way to see the world they saw.

[GdM] You are both a prolific short story author and a long-form novelist. Each of the two forms requires a different headspace, a different way to construct stories. Between the two forms of storytelling, which do you feel most at home in? Or are they so different that it is hard to compare them?

[KL] As you note, short fiction works completely differently from novels. Short stories are like insects, while novels are more like elephants. They don’t just differ as a matter of size—they have completely different body plans and physiologies, uniquely suited to the scale of the universe they must function in.

I’ve always enjoyed writing short fiction, but I write very few short stories (maybe a few a year). Almost everyone I know writes faster and more than I do, but because I published many of my stories, written over a long period of time, in a relatively short span early on, the illusion that I’m prolific persists.

I also write very few novels—really, only one: the Dandelion Dynasty series (which is like one very long book). But I’m lucky that my one novel is also the piece of fiction I’m proudest of. In it, I think I come closest to the language I need to tell the stories I want to tell.

[GdM] What was your inspiration for the short story, The Paper Menagerie, that won Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards? While I don’t have the same frame of reference as the characters in the story, the problems and interactions feels relatable. The magical parts of the story seems like a perfect extension of the relationship between the mother and son.

[KL] I wrote “The Paper Menagerie” originally for an anthology on wizards (spoiler: it didn’t get in). I wanted to come up with a different take on magic users than conventional ones, and at the time I was reading some personal narratives by women who are often described as “mail-order brides.” The courage and strength and resilience of these women moved me greatly, and so I decided to write a magic realist story inspired by their stories.

The themes of “The Paper Menagerie” are universal. Like the mother, we are all migrants from one life to another, whether it’s literal migration across political borders, or simply growing up and taking on new roles that you didn’t have before, and we must figure out how to be who we are while everyone else is telling us who we should be. Like the son, we all must deal with labels and prejudices others impose on us, and to struggle against self-hatred, to resist the cowardly desire to conform, to realize that our parents also have their own stories, to find how to fit our own story into all the stories out there, to grow in wisdom and strength until we are worthy of the love we’re given.

But “The Paper Menagerie” has also been misread. It’s a story about systemic racism and internalized racism, and how we don’t reflect enough on these issues and don’t stand up to hatred. However, I’ve often seen summaries of the story describe it as being about “an American father and Chinese mother, and their son, who is caught in the middle of their cultural conflict.” This is utter nonsense. Both the mother and the father are American – to deny that the mother is American is to implicitly equate Americanness with whiteness and to marginalize the American experience of immigrants, a core part of the American story. The son isn’t caught “in the middle” of anything. There is no “cultural conflict” here (which is a trope that comes from the racialized “clash of civilizations” narrative of colonial discourse), but pure and simple racism. Each time I see that the story is read to conform to the meta-narrative of systemic racism, I also hope that it’s an opportunity for readers to break free of the meta-narrative and see the story the way it’s meant to be seen.

[GdM] One of the things I appreciate about your short story writing is taking a metaphorical idea and boiling it down into a story that we readers can understand contextually. Is that a subconscious thing, or do you find a concept that moves you and write a story around it?

[KL] I think of my preferred mode of crafting short stories as “literalizing metaphors.” The world in my story is just a few steps to the side of ours, where some concept that we speak of metaphorically is literally true. We speak of love making the world coming alive, so in my story “The Paper Menagerie” love literally animates the paper animals. We speak of technology as magical, so in my story “Good Hunting” magic is literally and gradually replaced by technology. We speak of reading the book of nature, of writing shaping the way we think, of the orality of Internet discourse … so in my story “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” all of these metaphors about reading and writing become literally true.

When a metaphor is made tangible and real, there are ways to play with it and interrogate it that are simply impossible when the idea is merely a metaphor. The literalization can be done through a fantasy or science fictional lens (or any other genre), which is why I don’t care much about genre labels. Ultimately, it’s the specifics of what I can do with the literalized metaphor that interests me, not the broad framework through which that literalization takes place.

[GdM] You are releasing book three of The Dandelion Dynasty called The Veiled Throne . Could you tell us a bit about The Dandelion Dynasty in general for people who have not gotten the pleasure of reading it yet?

[KL] Absolutely! The Dandelion Dynasty is a four-volume silkpunk epic fantasy series that took up the bulk of my time and creative energy over a ten-year period. The Veiled Throne, as you note, is the third volume. While writing the series, I learned a lot about myself as a writer, as a father, as a husband, as a grandchild, as a technologist, as a lawyer, and as a person. I can’t wait to take a new reader from the opening lines of this book all the way to the final period after the last sentence in Speaking Bones.

A preliminary note: I invented the term “silkpunk” specifically to describe the aesthetic in the Dandelion Dynasty series. (Other authors have used my term to describe their own books, and I won’t be talking about their uses. My only concern here is my definition, for my aesthetic.)

In creating the silkpunk aesthetic, I was influenced by the ideas of W. Brian Arthur, who articulates a vision of technology as language. The task of the engineer is much like that of a poet in that the engineer must creatively combine existing components to solve novel problems, thereby devising artifacts that are new expressions in the technical language. In creating the silkpunk aesthetic, I was influenced by the ideas of W. Brian Arthur, who articulates a vision of technology as language. The task of the engineer is much like that of a poet in that the engineer must creatively combine existing components to solve novel problems, thereby devising artifacts that are new expressions in the technical language.

It is not “Asian steampunk.” It is not “Asian fantasy.”

The “punk” part is also not a worn suffix devoid of content. To me, silkpunk is about a key punk project: re-purposing what was for what will be. These books are my rewriting of the narrative of modernity (and in the later books in particular, the modern American national narrative). This is a vision of modernity no longer exclusively centered on what we think of as the “Western” experience. Rather, it melds multiple traditions and myths important to me, from the Iliad to Beowulf, from Paradise Lost to wuxia, and transforms the Chu-Han Contention into the foundational political mythology of a brand-new, modern people.

Why did I do this? Well, a driving impetus behind this series is my desire to challenge and interrogate the conventional narrative of modernity, which is often modeled on a particular telling of the story of my country, the US of A. The Story of America is most often told using allusions to Western models such as Classical Rome (just think of how many aspects of American politics and national culture evoke images of America as a “New Rome”). But when you are constrained to one set of allusions, there’s a limit how much you can push readers to see something new in a familiar tale or, even bolder, to change the narrative.

Something radical had to be done. I decided to depart from the “New Rome” model and instead evoke East Asian models in this fantasy epic recasting of the Story of America — and by extension, the narrative of modernity. Thus, I borrowed much of the plot of The Grace of Kings, the first book from the Chu-Han Contention, as interpreted by the historian Sima Qian, and built up a vocabulary of non-Western political allusions and precedents that could then be drawn on in the re-imagining of the epic of modernity.

Starting with the second book, The Wall of Storms, and then even more so in the third book, The Veiled Throne, all that effort pays off. The story here is about the creation of the constitution for a new people (a constitution, in my view, is not a document, but a set of stories that form the core of a people’s self-perception, self-regard, and deepest values). The plot here no longer has a clear, specific historic analog. (Thus, identifying the people of Dara as “fantasy Chinese” or the Lyucu as “fantasy Mongols” or any people in these books as “fantasy [fill in the blank group]” would be very much misguided.) Rather, the central concern of the Dandelion Dynasty is a series of questions: How can a new nation built from a collection of diverse peoples compose a new constitution, agree on a new source of political legitimacy, rally around a new foundational mythology? How do we carry out a political experiment to build a more just society without creating more injustice? What weight should be given to the wisdom of tradition by revolutionaries? Is it a curse or a blessing that a new generation must contend with the weight of history they are born into and live with the decisions made by their forebears? Is a “perpetual revolution” desirable or even possible?  …

If these seem to draw on my experience as a lawyer, then the next set of themes are based on my life as a technologist. The Dandelion Dynasty is also a series about science and discovery: it’s epic fantasy with a heavy dose of scifi—I mean, one of the characters literally proclaims, “the universe is knowable,” a manifesto of the scientific view of the cosmos. I had some of my best writing moments in the discovery of the silkmotic force and the invention of the machines derived from its power. Many of the discoveries and inventions in the series are drawn from antecedents in China’s classical past; some are based on the work of ancient Greeks; some are modeled on the experiments of Ben Franklin; and still others are simply cut by me out of whole cloth. Being a technologist by trade, I love writing about discovery and innovation—and I’m pretty sure my readers enjoy reading about them too.

Before we go too far down these philosophical routes, however, I should note that it would be just as accurate to say that The Dandelion Dynasty is about young people flirting and partying and being silly and awesome garinafin-vs-airship set pieces and devious battle tactics—derived from history, to be sure, but also from the author’s experience in playing video games and watching football—and legalistic dirty tricks and deconstructionist mis-readings and fantastic engines constructed from silk and bamboo and giant capacitors humming with the power of lightning … I mean, sure, themes are important, but books always need fun.

I wrote the book because I had things I wanted to say and I wanted to have fun. Those are the only two good reasons to write a novel as far as I’m concerned.

[GdM] You have a motif about flowers throughout the novels, specifically the chrysanthemum and the dandelion. What made you choose these two flowers, and how does the love and preservation of certain flowers become a political act?

[KL] Without spoiling the story, let me just say that floral metaphors and motifs are core to all the books in the series. Often, the way I use flowers in the books is contrary to convention. They are not so much symbols of beauty as symbols of strength and resilience, and the flowers I celebrate are not necessarily the “noble” flowers, but the “hundred flowers” that often get dismissed as weeds.

Those who don’t read much contemporary fantasy may have an impression that epic fantasy is devoted to nostalgia for what never was, to an authoritarian view of politics as best geared towards the return of the rightful king. But that is hardly an accurate view of the epic fantasy from the best writers of today, such as Kate Elliott and Rebecca Roanhorse. The Dandelion Dynasty is also an epic about modernity and constitutionalism, about freedom and democratic ideals, and metaphors about flowers play a key role in literalizing these concepts.

[GdM] It is safe to say that there are many examples of Daoism in your work. Could you speak a bit about that and how it influences your writing? The interview I read spoke specifically about The Legends of Luke Skywalker story you wrote and how George Lucas used a lot of Eastern philosophy to create The Force.

[KL] I think it’s more accurate to say that I’m influenced by three separate yet related philosophical traditions: Daoism, Zen Buddhism, and American Transcendentalism. I wouldn’t say anything I write is specifically an instance of Daoism, for Dao is a concept that resists being pinned down and literalized as a metaphor. I do, however, find much appealing in the Daoist’s utter contempt for our general obsession with language, with tracks and traces left by Reality as opposed to Reality itself.

The American Transcendentalism of writers like Emerson, Thoreau, and Dillard, on the other hand, is a much more direct influence on my writing. There are bits of the Dandelion Dynasty that pay homage to these writers (as well as the Daoist and Zen Buddhist masters), but the clearest mark they left on my work is an abiding awe for nature’s simultaneous fecundity and terror, its utter lack of regard for us as well as its recurring generosity.

[GdM] You said, “I’ve always wanted to read a fantasy book in which the heroes are not wizards, but engineers.” I love this idea, and I agree! Engineering can be as fantastical as any wizard character I know of. Is this why you approach things in The Dandelion Dynasty through the lens of engineering?

[KL] Absolutely. Engineering is a species of art, probably the highest form of art in our technological age. Engineers will produce our epic poem, our Globe Theater, our Sistine Chapel, our Yongle Encyclopedia.

So much so that I read you created prototypes to test out the Silkmotic Force. What did you build? How did your prototype work as a theoretical concept come to life?

I built electrostatic motors (also known as Franklin motors, as they were invented by Ben Franklin) so that I could understand their operating characteristics; I made Leyden jars (early capacitors), charged them up and shocked myself (I don’t recommend this – it can be very dangerous) to know how that felt; I made programmable carts modeled on Hero of Alexandria’s designs out of Legos; I 3d-printed models of airships and other vehicles; I flew kites and studied their flight; I prototyped circuits and implemented some of the silkmotic machinery’s operating instructions in software to see if they would actually work; I emulated classical Chinese instructible looms … These were some of the most engaging parts of writing the books.

[GdM] I saw another book in The Dandelion Dynasty series scheduled to be released in late 2022, Speaking Bones. Are you still working on it?

[KL] The Veiled Throne and Speaking Bones were actually written as a single book, and the whole thing was finished a couple of years ago. Because the book was too long to be published as a single volume, my editor and I decided to split it right down the middle into two books. The nature of publishing is such that books often are finished years before publication, and we just have to wait patiently for the books to be released. Fortunately, at this point the wait won’t be too long, as the final volume in the series is coming out in June of next year.

[GdM] Lastly, what else do you have going on? Are you reading anything remarkable you would like to talk about?

[KL] Besides The Veiled Throne, which just came out, my most recent publication is a novella I did for Audible called The Armies of Those I Love, which is a post-post-apocalyptic tale of engineering, love, and hope, narrated by Auli’i Cravalho. Readers who enjoyed Horizon Zero Dawn may find it particularly appealing.

A book I’ve really admired recently is Why Fish Don’t Exist, by Lulu Miller. This is a hard book to describe. It has elements of biography, autobiography, history of science, science, memoir, journalism … and doesn’t sit comfortably within any one category. The best way I’ve found to tell people about the book is to say that it’s an attempt to answer the question: how do we go on?

Thank you so much for the interview. Readers, I hope you enjoy the Dandelion Dynasty and the rest of my fiction!

Interview originally appeared in Grimdark Magazine

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2021 Hugo Art Review – Maurizio Manzieri

stories in photos Learn a Bit about Maurizio Manzieri

“Much of your work features altered humans as the subject—some robotic, some that seem hybridized, some completely fantastical. Is there a theme at work there? What does it mean to you?

I’ve always been fantasizing about an optimistic race in a faraway galaxy where history followed a different path and everything went smoothly. It seems that people in this place survived cold wars or global warming, and slowly began to cultivate the concept of ‘Beauty.’ They became an advanced civilization mastering top-notch cosmetic surgery applied to human beings as well as robots. I’m always been fond of dystopian universes, Blade Runner, the cyberpunk movement, yet starships are not necessarily to be rusted, torn by battles, in bad shape. They could be intelligent, made of glass and titanium, pink or pure white … About mankind, beauty is an abstract concept we are used to understand and appreciate around us. Our genome has already been journeying toward this direction and beauty is just one of the many natural instruments working in an ongoing process of competition and selection…

You do a lot of commission work for book covers and magazines. How do you go about interpreting the work, choosing the elements of the story that you want to illustrate?

Usually I receive the manuscript to be illustrated from the publisher via email, then I upload it on my iPad spending a lot of time highlighting the most interesting passages, putting down ideas, sketching the first concepts on my workstation … or on paper! The world turned digital some years ago, but I like to be in touch with pencils and paper during the preparatory phase. A few strolls in the lush woods surrounding my studio help definitely! In a short time, after one or two days, I feel a click inside, a door opens in the sky and I enter the world of the writer while images and ideas keep flowing in front of my eyes from “nowhere.” I skip unessential elements, focusing on scenes conveying that feeling of sense-of-wonder which captured my soul when I was young. It’s rewarding to see an initial concept unfurling its wings, morphing in a captivating and smart solution.

Are there any subjects you’d like to take on but haven’t had the chance to yet?

Yes, everything! From a fantastic nano-tech creature hidden in a drop of rain to a sparkling metropolis large as a Jovian planet. I like to experiment and try new things. My range of interests covers anything could stimulate my thirst for knowledge, my curiosity for our terrestrial adventure. More than money, our most valuable asset is time … really hope someone may discover the secret of immortality, before I turn eighty!” ….

The interview excerpt was taken from Lightspeed Magazine and can be found here

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For more information please visit Mauricio Manzieri’s website. All images are the property of Mauricio Manzieri. 

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Review – Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi

Review Book Reviews December 10, 2021 10:00 am One Comment Racism, Magic, and the American Dream Beth Tabler  5/5 by tochi onyebuchi

“She can’t stand to have their thoughts bleed into hers, to feel their insides and to hear their prejudice and their hate and their apathy pinball behind her eyes.”― 

Tochi onyebuchi, riot baby About “Riot Baby bursts at the seams of story with so much fire, passion and power that in the end it turns what we call a narrative into something different altogether.”—Marlon James

Rooted in foundational loss and the hope that can live in anger, Riot Baby is both a global dystopian narrative an intimate family story with quietly devastating things to say about love, fury, and the black American experience.

Ella and Kev are brother and sister, both gifted with extraordinary power. Their childhoods are defined and destroyed by structural racism and brutality. Their futures might alter the world. When Kev is incarcerated for the crime of being a young black man in America, Ella—through visits both mundane and supernatural—tries to show him the way to a revolution that could burn it all down.

My Thoughts

Onyebuchi creates a dystopia portrait of modern American in Riot Baby. Kev, one of the two protagonists in Riot Baby, is born to a single mom in 1992 Los Angeles during the height of the Rodney King riots, hence the name Riot Baby. Kev was born into a time that explodes with violence in his childhood violence follows him, and as an adult, Kev is incarcerated at Rikers for eight years. Again his life swirls with anger and violence. The ironic and well-done part of Kev’s character is that even though he was born, lived, and survived through significant violence, Kev himself, does not come off as a violent person. He is a person who reacts to violence and protects himself. 

The other major character and protagonist of the story is Ella, Kev’s older sister as much as Kev is mired in violence and its effects, Ella is mired in her power. She sees much more than the surface of events. She can touch the very soil of the land after some event or act of violence and feel the pain and emotions of those affected. There is a reason why she has this power, isn’t there? While Kev is in prison, Ella visits him both physically and psychically. They do not lose touch and are very close even though Kev is incarcerated. 

One of the most impactful parts of this story is the dichotomy that Onyebuchi writes events with. On one side, both Kev and Ella are very gifted and powerful; they have supernatural abilities. This could have been the main focus of the story, but it isn’t. On the other side, racism and violence run rampant and have shaped their worlds in dystopias. These abilities do not save them from the vagaries of life. While each of the sides of this story is important, their powers and society in general, they are instead written to help develop the other. 

In lesser hands, this story would have been challenging to make it through. It is dark and introspective, full of moments of pain and is unflinching from detailing the misery humans can rain down on others. However, in Onyebuchi’s hands, this story has a vein of hope and ends on a note of possibility for the future. 

I think it will be a book that people will be talking about in the coming year and is worth a reader’s time. 

Riot Baby is speculative fiction at its finest. 

  

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Review of “Blue Is the Warmest Color” by Julie Maroh, Ivanka Hahnenberger (Translator)

“There is only love to save this world. Why would I be ashamed to love?”

Excerpt from Blue is the Warmest Color by Julie Maroh

About

Blue is the Warmest Color is a graphic novel about growing up, falling in love, and coming out. Clementine is a junior in high school who seems average enough: she has friends, family, and the romantic attention of the boys in her school. When her openly gay best friend takes her out on the town, she wanders into a lesbian bar where she encounters Emma: a punkish, confident girl with blue hair. Their attraction is instant and electric, and Clementine find herself in a relationship that will test her friends, parents, and her own ideas about herself and her identity.

Stats




Rating – 4 out of 5 stars
Paperback, 156 pages
Published September 3rd 2013 by Arsenal Pulp Press (first published April 1st 2010)
Original Title Le bleu est une couleur chaude
ISBN1551525143 (ISBN13: 9781551525143)
Edition Language English
Characters Clementine, Emma, Valentine










Awards




Prix du Festival d’Angoulême for Prix du public Fnac-SNCF (2011)
BDGest’Art for Meilleur Premier album (2010)






My Thoughts

“I want to do everything with you. 
Everything is possible in a lifetime. “

Excerpt from Blue is the Warmest Color by Julie Maroh

I think that this is one of those important books that someone should read once in their life.

Just once.

It is too heart-rending to read more than once. This is a story of the hardness and softness of first love. How it can both shred your soul like tissue paper and leave you like a piece of hardened steel.

Le bleu est une couleur chaude Also known as Blue is the Warmest Color is about Clementine. A young girl at the start of the story, a 16-year-old junior and her fascination with Emma. Emma is everything that Clementine is not at the beginning: outgoing, sure of herself, and most importantly… out. They have instant electricity and start a sweet love affair that challenges Clementines preconceptions of herself and helps her become the person she wants to be.

Blue is the Warmest Color talks openly about the challenges of being a homosexual, and finding that love sends chills through your body. What I enjoyed and laud the author over is how she wrote the love story so openly and honestly. Oftentimes when reading about a gay or queer character it can get unauthentic and tropey. This isn’t.

“I can not feel anymore. 
I feel like I’m carrying light in my veins. 
All that happens to me has a name … Emma, ​​her name is Emma. ” 

Excerpt from Blue is the Warmest Color by Julie Maroh

Aside from the gorgeous writing, it is stunningly drawn. The scenes are crafted carefully with a limited color palette of grays and the single color blue. Most often found in Emma’s hair. Emma’s hair is almost a blue flame burning through each scene. You can tell why Clementine is so attracted to her. She lights up every room. There are quite a bit of sex scenes dealt with very honestly in this story. I appreciated it and I thought that it enhanced the love story between the two of them without detracting from the overall story. Some readers might not be comfortable with that level of open sex between two consenting adults. Just know that, unlike the movie, this isn’t pornlike. This is a loving depiction of a romantic couple expressing their passion for each other.

Highly recommended

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About the Author

Julie Maroh (born 1985) is an author and illustrator originally from northern France. She studied comic art at the Institute Saint-Luc in Brussels and lithography and engraving at the Royal Academy of Arts in Brussels, where she still lives.

 

2021 Hugo Art Review – John Picacio

stories in photos

JOHN PICACIO is one of the most acclaimed American artists in science fiction and fantasy over the last decade, creating best-selling art for George R. R. Martin’s A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE series, the STAR TREK and X-MEN franchises. as well as over 150 book covers. Major clients include Penguin Random House, Tor Books, Macmillan, HarperCollins, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, Saga Press, Pyr, Baen Books, Tachyon, and many more. His body of work features major book illustrations for authors such as Leigh Bardugo, Rebecca Roanhorse, Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison, James Dashner, Brenda Cooper, Frederik Pohl, Mark Chadbourn, Sheri S. Tepper, James Tiptree, Jr., Lauren Beukes, Jeffrey Ford, Joe R. Lansdale, and many, many more. 

His accolades include three Hugo Awards, eight Chesley Awards, three Locus Awards, two International Horror Guild Awards, the World Fantasy Award, and the Inkpot Award. He is the founder of the creative publishing imprint, Lone Boy, which has become the launchpad for his Loteria Grande cards, a bold contemporary re-imagineering of the classic Mexican game of chance. In 2018, he became only the third person in the history of the World Science Fiction Convention to serve as Guest of Honor and Hugo Awards Master of Ceremonies at the same Worldcon, and the first Latinx to ever be a Worldcon Guest of Honor. He is the founder of The Mexicanx Initiative. He lives and works in San Antonio, TX.

John Picacio’s Awards

John Picacio has won three Hugo Awards, the World Fantasy Award, eight Chesley Awards, three Locus Awards, two International Horror Guild Awards and the Inkpot Award.

2020 SFWA / Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award

2016 Chesley Award for Best Product Illustration (for ‘El Arbol‘)

2015 Locus Award (Artist)

2014 Inkpot Award

2013 Hugo Award (Best Professional Artist)

2013 Chesley Award for Best Product Illustration (for ‘La Sirena’)

SELECT CLIENTS

Penguin Random House, Del Rey, Tor Books, Tor.com, Macmillan, HarperCollins, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, Saga Press, Pyr, Baen Books, Tachyon

PRESS

Selected Interviews, Articles and Media Appearances

Anime Herald Interview with John Picacio (October 29, 2019)Interview with John Picacio by One Fantastic Week / 1FW 240 (November 13, 2018)Interview with John Picacio by Mia Araujo / Artists of Color (October 19, 2018)Interview with John Picacio by Chris Urie / Clarkesworld Magazine (June 2018)Interview with John Picacio by Evan Narcisse / io9 (October 31, 2017)

Full List of Press and Interviews

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For more information please visit John Picacio’s website. All images are the property of John Picacio. 

© 2021 All Rights Reserved.

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Hugo Art Review – Alyssa Winans

Hugo Art Review – Alyssa Winans

stories in photos About:

Alyssa is an illustrator, animator, and game artist based in the SF bay area. She currently works for the Google Doodle team and enjoys making pastries and unusual ice cream flavors on the weekends.

Contact:

alicique@gmail.com

Select Clients:

Harmonix, FableVision, Tor Books, Tor.com Publishing, Hodder & Stoughton, Cricket Magazine, Google, Warner Animation Group

Honors:

Best Professional Artist Hugo Nominee 2020 & 2021

Spectrum Fantastic Art 22 2015

Society of Illustrators of LA Illustration West 53 2015

3×3 Professional Show No. 11 2014

3×3 Picture Book Show No. 11 Honorable Mention 2014 & 2015

Society of Illustrators West Student Show (Silver Award) 2012

Society of Illustrators Zankel Scholar Finalist 2011

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For more information please visit Alyssa Winans website. All images are the property of Alyssa Winans. 

© 2021 All Rights Reserved.

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How Can You Be A Fantasy Author If You Flunked Creative Writing Class? – An Origin Story by Thomas Howard Riley

I LOVED WORDS FILLED WITH MAGICK

“Your academic accolades do not determine whether you can be a writer or not. “

I want to introduce myself to you, and by doing so, I hope to at the same time show you that there is no right way to be a writer. There is no set path, no particular switches to turn in some specific order that if you deviate from even a little bit, you will not be good at writing. 

I have seen many new writers who fear that they have somehow been marked as inferior since they missed out on expensive college courses or literature degrees or exclusive writing workshops because they did not have enough time or money to attend (particularly in the U.S. where higher education is frequently financially prohibitive). I would like to help negate this fear.

This is not a knock on academic achievement. Far from it. I merely wish to show that there are many paths to becoming a better writer. 

This is not meant to be a template for how to do it. This is proof that you can do it.

This is an origin story.

I used to spend a lot of time in school not doing schoolwork. One tenth of the space in my backpack was actually devoted to real textbooks, the rest of that volume being dedicated to the ten novels or RPGs or gaming rulebooks or copies of Games Workshop White Dwarf Magazines I was simultaneously reading just for fun. 

A large percentage of my school day was spent daydreaming and doodling (mostly fields of dead bodies impaled on stakes, with burning villages in the background—this is normal because I say it is) I also frequently wrote little stories to pass the time. 

I read Dune, Lord of the Rings, and every Star Wars book I could get my hands on. I devoured every book from the Dragonlance Saga, and everything that said Forgotten Realms on it. I obsessed over the X-Men, and Space Marines, and I read the Silmarillion from cover to cover when I was 11 and liked it. (Let the horror of that last bit sink in for a moment, why don’t we?) I could list out for you every book, every RPG module, and show you my handwritten notes and charts and geneologies and hierarchies for each of them. But let’s summarize for brevity’s sake.

I loved worlds filled with magick. (Oh, I spell magick with a K, by the way. We can still be friends.)

I spent grades 1-8 in classes with slightly advanced reading curriculum, what they labeled honors classes, a fact that was in part due to the side benefits of my having synesthesia (oh, by the way, I have synesthesia, but let’s stay on topic here). Let us also not blow this out of proportion. I would not exactly be qualifying for any academic scholarships or anything, merely that the odds of me failing a course were slightly less than the average. 

Now this was mostly fine. Words and numbers were fun to me, the assignments easy enough, and that left all the more time to read my fantasy books instead. 

But as high school approached, the theme of the “advanced” classes changed from simple assignments in grammar, writing, and rhetoric, to focus exclusively on “classic” novels and “classic” authors. The “right” people. The ones that people with fancy PhDs held up as the pinnacle of artistic expression. The ones you had to look up to if you wanted to play the game.

This soon-to-be future on the horizon presented a problem of motivation for me. I had read most of those books already…and hated them. Let me restate that. I started most of them, and discarded many very quickly. Reading and discussing the themes of Charles Dickens was stiff competition for watching paint dry. One can talk about the important allegories in Moby Dick, but have you ever actually read it? Holy shit. It’s…a lot. 

And there were, among the classics, some notable absences.

Where were the swords? There was, as far as I recall, very little magick in Huckleberry Finn. Where were all the orks in A Tale of Two Cities? And the dragon in Of Mice And Men was not very convincing. (I have not read it in a while, so some of the details may be fuzzy). 

I loved Shakespeare though, and I LOVED mythology. That was as close as ‘the classics” came to actual Fantasy. Gods and monsters, magick and spirits, swords and ghosts, petty villains and desperate, imperfect heroes. I was all in for that stuff.

One problem: that curriculum was only a part of the standard course. The regular one. The one I would not be going into when I became a freshman. 

So, genius that I am, always with one eye on the future of my education, I naturally determined the best course of action would be to intentionally flunk out of the advanced course. Which I promptly did, with great celerity and much aplomb. I whimsically failed to turn in projects, show up for speeches, read the assignments, do literally anything that was asked. 

Believe it or not, this worked splendidly. I was demoted to the regular old english class, so that I could spend all day palling around with Othello and Macbeth, Achilles and Zeus, Shiva and Kali, Thor and Loki, Quetzalcoatl and Ishtar and Manannan Mac Lir. That was my wheelhouse. I reveled in my schoolwork because it was finally fun. I even wrote my own little myths and legends to pass the time.

This worked well until senior year. Because the senior standard course material looked suspiciously like the advanced ones. Only here were the very same books I had tearfully vomited over as I tried and failed to enjoy reading years before. 

Luckily for me, there was an escape hatch.

So, like all soon-to-be famous and important authors, I took a Creative Writing course in high school for the sole reason that it would count as a senior english credit so that I would not have to read books by famous and important authors. 

This should have been a dream scenario for someone like me. I wrote little stories on my own already. I was a creative person dammit! I should have been oozing A+ after A+ grades on those assignments, and looking down my nose at the teachers and student aides with casual disdain for daring to try to grade my magnificence.

There was only one teensy little problem. 

I never scored higher than a C on any assignment. If fact, on many of these assignments I scored resounding Fs. Getting an F in Creative Writing was like being slapped in the face. It seemed absurd. How was it possible? How could anyone fuck up being creative?

Then I realized what was wrong. 

Example. Our midterm assignment was to write a 10 page short story, complete with a beginning, middle, and ending, with certain themes represented. I looked at the assignment I had handed in, the one with that big red F on the top, so red I could smell the ink. I looked at it and I realized I had written a 40 page prologue for an epic space opera. A nonexistent space opera. With none of the themes from the assignment represented.

I went back through my other assignments and it was all the same. Everything was a giant intro to an epic fantasy realm of magick, or a prologue for a space fleet war of ten thousand worlds, or character introductions for the seven members of a crew that would eventually, 600 nonexistent pages later, form up like a Lord of the Rings Avengers. 

I was even given an assignment to create a journal (handwritten in an actual journal) of a fake person somewhere in actual history. So I made a journal of a knight on the ill-fated 2nd crusade (the one that belly-flopped into failure, because the 1st and 3rd are too easy of targets). 

After a terrible battle, my intrepid made-up character and a ragtag group escape annihilation, only to be pursued by death-cultists of the Elder Gods, before befriending some locals and trying to escape back home, only to stumble into a Lovecraftian terror sandwich of cosmic horror on land and at sea, complete with sketches and unreliable narration, and a new obsession with summoning the Great Old Ones when he finally returns to his family manor, and his hubris leads to his inevitable destruction. (WTF? Who even am I?)

Of course I failed the journal assignment…..because 2/3 of the grade was adding an “introduction”, a “bibliography of works cited”, a “timeline”, and use of “primary sources”. 

Oops. 

I did not have any works cited because I had unfortunately memorized all the events of the 2nd Crusade years before. (I was obsessed with the ones that failed in particular, yay Schadenfreude) I was a bit of a history buff. (I am also a bit of an understatement-maker). I would not have known what books to cite. It was all just in my head. And there was no wikipedia back then. 

So there went another project. (I still have that journal to this day, and it is still crazy to me that some high school kid wrote the absolute madness inside it, even though I was that kid)

Long story short, once all the grades were tabulated at the end of the semester, I was staring at a pleasant little F. For the semester. 

So, to ensure my actual graduation, I had to retake the course instead of having a free period during my final semester. This time I followed the stupid rules. I managed to pass it by the skin of my teeth.

This should have, one might think, been a moment for self-reflection.

But in the end, the one thing I took away from it was how…arbitrary it all seemed. We were graded on how well we adhered to a pre-selected format. We were judged against other work made-to-order with identical thematic elements. 

We were permitted to exercise creativity only in a single narrow way we were allowed to. We could be creative, as long as we did not stray from the chosen framework. Like being told you will be able to design a car, only to find out that all you were allowed to design was the paint color, the seat cushions, and the wheels. 

Well, I wanted to take apart the whole car and start from scratch. 

I wanted to write outside the lines.

This inability of mine to write short stories will sound very familiar to some—nay, obvious—but it was this very same obsession that resulted in me flunking Creative Writing that also made me realize I should just be ignoring arbitrary criteria and writing what I want instead. 

So instead of teaching me how to write the way they wanted me to, Creative Writing taught me to ignore the expectations of others and just go ahead and write the other 600 pages that went with all those prologues. It taught me that I did not need to mimic “the classics”, or follow the educational tracks of people who had certificates on their walls. That I could choose my own material, that I didn’t need a PhD in writing to write. 

I discovered that I only needed dedication, and a library in order to learn how to be a writer.

So I did. 

So can you. 

That is the moral of the story. This was a weird (and I hope at least marginally entertaining) way to say that there is no specific way to become the writer you were meant to be. Papers and certificates and awards and grades are all helpful things for a future writer. But it is important to know that they are not requirements. You are not excluded from the game because you are missing any of those, Or all of those. 

All that matters is knowledge and practice, and you can get both of those for free.

You don’t have to have an A+ in Creative Writing (though it doesn’t hurt if you do, of course). 

You don’t need a formal declaration from any authority to be allowed to make art. Find sources of knowledge for yourself wherever you can. Talk to other writers about the craft. Find videos and books that talk about storytelling. Study the topics you want to write about. Learn the rules of writing and the formulas of storycrafting, and then laugh as you break them all. 

Above all, READ. Read as much as you can, of as many different styles as you can (even if you only read one genre, branch out into different authors so you can see many examples of prose and storytelling). Find all the things that fascinate you. And dive into them until you understand why they do. See how other authors do it, and you will find things that ring true for you, tips and tricks that you can add to your repertoire. 

These days you can learn all you need to know from watching free tutorials and visiting your local library. 

Above all, never feel discouraged in the presence of someone with the Appropriate Academic Accolades. Because, even if they are a great writer, and even if their fields of study contributed positively to their writing, none of those pieces of paper alone is what made them better. 

Curiosity and dedication did. 

Some people study the classics, pass creative writing, and obtain a masters degree. Some people flunk out, never graduate, and learn the craft by reading and studying and practicing and creating on their own. Or anything in between.

You do not need credentials to be a writer. 

All you need is a writing device and a page to put words on. 

And to trust yourself. 

And to never give up. 

That’s it. 

That’s all it takes. 

Write what you want. 

They don’t get to decide. You do.

Thank you for taking the time with me today.

Check Out Some of Our Other Reviews

Review –  Risen by Benedict Jacka

Review- The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

THOMAS HOWARD RILEY

Thomas Howard Riley is a purveyor of thicc Rated R Epic Fantasy books. He currently resides in a secluded grotto in the wasteland metropolis, where he reads ancient books, plays ancient games, watches ancient movies, jams on ancient guitars, and writes furiously day and night. He sometimes appears on clear nights when the moon is gibbous, and he has often been seen in the presence of cats.

He always wanted to make up his own worlds, tell his own stories, invent his own people, and explore both the light and the darkness of human nature. With a few swords thrown in for good measure. And some magick. Awesome magick. 

He can be found digitally at THOMASHOWARDRILEY.COM 

On Twitter he is @ornithopteryx, where he is sometimes funny, always clever, and never mean.

On Instagram he is ThomasHowardRiley, where you will see books, and cats, and mayhem.

https://amzn.to/3hVPA3J Amazon US link

https://amzn.to/2UYvhtT Amazon UK link

https://amzn.to/3vDCb5w                   Paperback/Hardcover link

https://bit.ly/3zU8qyq    Goodreads link

http://thomashowardriley.com  Author Website

 

Review – Risen by Benedict Jacka

check it out here

BOOK REVIEW

RISEN by BENEDICT JACKA

REVIEW BY BETH TABLER

December 7, 2021 1:00 pm No Comments Facebook Twitter WordPress

Risen is a shattering final book of the Alex Versus series by Benedict Jacka; we say goodbye to the titular character Alex. It is all done. Finito. 

Endings can be difficult; it is hard to wrap up all the emotion and gravitas of a series, especially one as large as the Alex Verus one with a neat bow. Instead of allowing the series to pitter out like a band still on stage when patrons are getting their bags and heading home, Jacka finished the series with a thundering crash of an orchestra in its final song for the night. It was perfectly timed and perfectly executed, and a conscious choice by Jacka that this book and this plot arc is the right time to finish. Jacka did a great job, and I am left with a fondness for the series.

It took us 12 books to get to this point, and unlike other stories in the Alex Verus series, you can’t start at book 12, Risen. You won’t get the gravitas of what is going on and the combined struggles Alex has faced. Jacka does his best to give context to the situation that Verus finds himself in. But even with some backstory, it will read like an excited but superficial action fantasy novel. Instead, Risen feels like a story written as a nod for the fans and everything Verus has gone through and lost.

Alex Verus is an unlikely hero on many fronts. Firstly, up until recently, he was not a hugely powerful mage. Verus has always been cunning and strategic in planning because of necessity. He was scrappy, the runt puppy of the Mage world. Often his fights were akin to someone attacking with a pea shooter instead of a Nuke. You can do a lot of damage with a pea shooter if you get someone right in the eye, which was Alex’s modus operandi. It took him far in the mage world, but Verus was always lacking true power.

That is, until the last few books, where the tides began to turn. But there is always a price to pay for power.

One of the most positive aspects of the story is how Alex has grown and nurtured his relationships with his allies. As I mentioned above this is essential for Alex’s survival, but I think this is more so because of his highly protective nature. It is the epitome of a found family. 

If Alex chooses you and trusts you, he will likely care about you his entire life, and possibly burn the world down to save you. With all the magical and political machinations going on in the background, his relationships take center stage and are the beating heart of the Alex Verus series.

Verus also has a distinctive duality in his nature, which was evident as the series progressed but doubly true for the last book. He can be intensely pragmatic and ruthless, in essence, a dark mage. The very thing he spent most of his adult life running from. He is capable of very dark things, which many dark mages attempted to exploit for their gain. Especially, the longstanding villain of the story Richard Drakh. The morally ambiguous nature of Jacka’s hefty cast of characters seems much more realistic and practical than the perfect “good guy/bad guy” characters that many other urban fantasy series employ.

So, who is Alex Verus and why should you read this series? Alex is a complex character set in difficult situations that never jump the proverbial shark. The series has grey characters that have an authenticity that is appealing and grabs you. And those characters have psychological issues that again, add to the realism of the series. The ever-evolving plot is great, you continually want to know more. And now that it is a finished story, you can binge-read it. There is so much good, which is why I have loved and read this series for years.

It was bittersweet to see it go, but it was time. Jacka did Alex Verus justice and I was thrilled with the ending. I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a great urban fantasy series to binge read. You won’t be able to put it down

Check Out some of our other reviews

REVIEW – SUNDERED SOULS BY TIM HARDIE

Review: When Things Get Dark Edited by Ellen Datlow

Beth Tabler

Elizabeth Tabler runs Beforewegoblog and is constantly immersed in fantasy stories. She was at one time an architect but divides her time now between her family in Las Vegas, Nevada, and as many book worlds as she can get her hands on. She is also a huge fan of Self Published fantasy and was on Team Qwillery as a judge for SPFBO5, and now runs her own team for SPFBO7. You will find her with a coffee in one hand and her iPad in the other. Find her on: Goodreads / Instagram / Pinterest  / Twitter

Review – The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

check it out here

BOOK REVIEW

the bear and the nightengale by katherin arden

REVIEW BY ELENI A.E.

December 5, 2021 10:00 am No Comments Facebook Twitter WordPress “All my life,” she said, “I have been told ‘go’ and ‘come.’ I am told how I will live, and I am told how I must die. I must be a man’s servant and a mare for his pleasure, or I must hide myself behind walls and surrender my flesh to a cold, silent god. I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed me. Please. Please let me help you.” The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

Hello again dear reader or listener, I hope you are doing well! For my part, the days have gotten much colder in my little corner of Italy, and thus I find myself in the mood for all the wintery reads. Truly unexpected, I know.

It will be no surprise then when I tell you that after walking Figaro one evening and freezing my fingers off, I went back home, wrapped myself in my coziest blanket, and sat to read The Bear and the Nightingale, book one in Katherine Arden’s The Winternight trilogy. I read the first thirty pages that evening and was absolutely hooked!! So much so that when I had the chance to sit and read again a couple days later, I actually finished the rest of the book in one sitting! I know I’m a little late to this party considering all the praise this series has gotten but let me share why I loved it so much as well.

The Bear and the Nightingale is a historical fantasy set in medieval Russia and it borrows from Slavic mythology and Russian folklore. More specifically, it is set during the time when Orthodox Christianity was working towards stamping out other pagan religions and beliefs; you know, the usual jazz when it comes to the delightful early Christians. The protagonist, Vasilisa, is a young girl with the gift to see the spirits and creatures that inhabit the world, and as such she is branded a witch by the priests and more religious people around her. 

Personally I am a sucker for a plot where an old religion comes head-to-head with the new, and I’m an even bigger sucker for folklore. So you can imagine my delight when I got to recognize some figures from my childhood stories (I watched a lot of Russian cartoons dubbed apparently and listened to audiobook tapes while playing) or learn about new ones! Moreover, this is a tale about gender roles and finding one’s place in a world that is slowly casting you out. 

So I appreciated that, when writing Vasilisa, Arden took care to be true to what a woman of her time would behave and think like, but also made her protagonist into a strong figure who embraces change and being different and wishing for something else for herself once she realizes she does not fit into that mold and expectation. Arden managed to find that delicate balance brilliantly and created my favorite kind of no nonsense heroine who gets things done and has so much heart.

Arden’s writing in The Bear and the Nightingale was overall was truly spellbinding, her prose beautiful, and her imagery evocative in a way that fully immersed me into the story. You feel invested in almost every single character no matter how small their role on the page, because they all somehow have an almost surprising level of depth right from the get-go. This is mostly because of Arden’s 360-degree narration pov, as third omniscient lends itself super well to painting a full picture from every relevant angle, sometimes even from characters you weren’t expecting, making the story that much richer! 

Reader, I laughed out loud, I rolled my eyes, I awwwed so much my dog looked worried, and by the end, I even teared up. Which just goes to show how invested Arden managed to get me in her mesmerizing characters and wonderful story. It’s hardly a surprise this series as a whole was a finalist for a Hugo Award!

By the time I’d read those first 30 pages I’d already ordered the sequels and now I am (not so) patiently waiting for the sequels to get here so I can continue the story of Vasilisa, a heroine I’ve definitely grown to look up to and feel inspired by for her perseverance and independence, and also to see more of Morozko cause… well, reasons… ahem. In fact, while The Bear and the NIghtingale wraps up its story in a satisfying manner, allowing for it to be read as a standalone, you can’t help but want more of this world and these characters who brave the biting cold in more ways than one.

Until next time,

Eleni A.E.

9.5/10

 

Check Out some of our other reviews

Review – The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

Review – A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers

Review – Legacy of the Brightwash by Krystle Matar

Eleni A.E.

Eleni is a Greek book nerd who grew up in Italy, and got her BA Honours degree in Literature from a Scottish university! She can be found reading all the SFF she can get her hands on, and reviewing it for fun when inspiration strikes and she just needs to share her passion. Alternatively, she will definitely be with a needy Westie in her arms watching series, anime, or movies. You can find her other writing on https://fanfiaddict.com or on her personal blog where there are also posts about other literary genres. Feel free to follow her day to day ramblings on Twitter

@eleni_argyro

or Instagram @the_words_we_read .

Let’s Talk About Mood Reading

It can be a blessing in disguise, but it can also be, put bluntly, a bit of a bitch. Eleni A.E December 4, 2021 No Comments

“The library was a little old shabby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church. She pushed open the door and went in. She liked the combined smell of worn leather bindings, library past and freshly inked stamping pads better than she liked the smell of burning incense at high mass.”

Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Tweet

It can be a blessing in disguise, but it can also be, put bluntly, a bit of a bitch.

Hello again dear reader or listener, welcome back to another little article from yours truly, a.k.a. Eleni felt like rambling about something book-related. So mood reading, what is it exactly? Well, the name is fairly self-explanatory, but I myself didn’t know that my kind of reading habits even had a name to begin with! As with everything then, reading is a strongly subjective experience, and with mood reading, in particular, it becomes even more so. In other words, take this for what it is, an opinion based on personal experience.

The baseline is that when you’re a mood reader, you can only really read the very specific subgenre/trope/plot type, etc., that you’re feeling like getting lost in at a given time. Or that you can only read when the mood strikes you, and not on a planned schedule, so to speak. 

Which also means that you cannot stick to a pre-set TBR to save your life and that often, if you force yourself to get through a book that isn’t your current interest, or while you’re in your non-reading days, you will find yourself struggling to even like something that at a later time you might actually love. Not to mention lead you to the much-dreaded reading slump that haunts every bookworm out there.

This can also make things a little awkward if you are a book reviewer who has received an ARC or free review copy, because you really want to be able to read them in good time, but if you are suddenly hit with the proverbial bat of a completely different mood, then you’re in trouble. It’s pretty hard to explain, especially to people who are not mood readers, and even more so if that person is the author that has sent you the book. Like, please, do not think less of me, or that I am making up excuses to not read your book. 

It is a genuine struggle, and I want to give your kindly offered book the best chance to become my next favorite! Personally, it is the main reason I don’t request many ARCs to begin with, and even then, only when I know I have a long enough time to read them by so that I can still hopefully manage even if some different mood hits.

The thing is, just like with reading slumps stressing us out since we are suddenly feeling all kinds of odd because we are not doing the very thing we love and enjoy, mood reading can make us feel like we’re doing something wrong compared to other people in the book community. 

Why can’t I connect with this when everyone around me seems to be loving it, and (to add insult to injury) technically, I know I would as well? It’s the usual conundrum of trying not to feel like we’re lagging behind because we haven’t read as many books as others, because we’re not reading fast enough, because we’re not reading the newest/latest releases, and the list goes on and on. It comes naturally to compare ourselves to our reading peers after all! But it is also important to remember that by letting ourselves fall into that trap we’re only really harming ourselves and putting pressure on our favorite hobby, turning it into a chore.

On the other hand, as I said at the start, mood reading can also be quite neat of a quirk to have because you can be sure that at least 90% of the time, the book you are reading is one you cannot easily put down. By virtue of being drawn to specific elements in a story and hence having to seek out the very book that meets those requirements with some extra attention and research, you’re almost certainly going to find what works for you and avoid what doesn’t. Mainly the reason most of my reads end up being 8 and above ratings to be honest, and I am not at all complaining!

Ultimately, I can say that I love the book community I’ve found on Twitter. I love that it gave me the opportunity to have contacts with so many cool authors, and with tons of amazing people involved in the book industry and the reviewing world. My TBR has quintupled granted, and I suddenly learned that I am not always able to read every book that I learn of right away because, well, I am not in the mood for it right in that given instant. But I’ve also learned (and occasionally need to remind myself) that it is ok to take my time to enjoy my readings at my own pace and when the mood strikes.

To any authors that I owe a review to, this mini article was partly for you I suppose and please know that I’ll get there cause I’ve given my word and I genuinely am eager to get to your stories. To other mood readers out there, I salute you, and this is your friendly reminder to not be hard on yourself because there is no real reason to! If you’re feeling like a reread of an old favorite, go for it, treat yourself to your comfort read, it is what you deserve. And if someone tells you otherwise, send them my way for a chat.

What about you dear reader/listener? Are you a mood reader? And if yes, how do you navigate it? If you’re not, what does it feel like being able to stick to a plan and schedule? Is it like having an Infinity Stone? Asking for a friend.

Until next time,

Eleni A. E.

Some Great Books To REad If You Are A Mood Reader Link Link Link Link Link Eleni A.E.

Eleni is a Greek book nerd who grew up in Italy, and got her BA Honours degree in Literature from a Scottish university! She can be found reading all the SFF she can get her hands on, and reviewing it for fun when inspiration strikes and she just needs to share her passion. Alternatively, she will definitely be with a needy Westie in her arms watching series, anime, or movies. You can find her other writing on https://fanfiaddict.com or on her personal blog where there are also posts about other literary genres. Feel free to follow her day to day ramblings on Twitter

@eleni_argyro

or Instagram @the_words_we_read .