Dan Wells's Blog, page 13

Review: Neck of the Woods

As I mentioned in my post-apocalyptic playlist, my favorite band of the moment is Silversun Pickups. I learned about them the same time most people did, back when Lazy Eye was all over the radio; I picked up that Album, Carnavas, and their prior (non-studio) album Pikul and I loved every song on them. When their next album released, called Swoon, I loved it even more, which I suppose is fitting because everyone loved it more–the lead single off the album, Panic Switch, instantly became their biggest hit, and a #1 chart-topper; I admit I can never decide if Panic Switch or Royal We is a my favorite. The point is I like their music.

Last week Silverun Pickups released their newest album, Neck of the Woods, and in the past week I’ve listened to it extensively, writing several scenes of ISOLATION and FRAGMENTS with it (and, eventually, their other albums) as background music. It’s a great album, but my feelings on it are a bit conflicted. The best and simplest description I can offer is that Neck of the Woods is their Kid A–a more insular, experimental album coming on the heels of a hugely popular mainstream album. Just like Radiohead’s Kid A, which followed their enormously successful OK Computer, SP’s Neck of the Woods shows a band in search of its own identity, rejecting a bit of their broad appeal in exchange for finding something more unique and personal. I think it mostly works, with the caveat that the process seems to have smoothed their curve of quality significantly; the overall strength of the album is the best they’ve ever done, but no single song stands out as, for example, “the new Panic Switch.” Neck of the Woods is a brilliant album without a single.

The Radiohead comparison extends to some of their sound, as well, with tracks like Here We Are having a distinctly Radio-headish vibe to them. When Silversun Pickups first started they were often compared to Smashing Pumpkins, and their early songs bore this influence proudly. As they grow and stretch themselves they’re finding influence in other places, and in Neck of the Woods I can hear a lot of Temper Trap, especially in tracks like Mean Spirit. I don’t think they’re actively trying to emulate Temper Trap, just that they and Temper Trap are chasing some of the same sounds and techniques. Mean Spirit is, perhaps not coincidentally, the most radio-friendly song on the album, but it’s not the best. The best work on the album comes from their more experimental tracks, where they seem to be eschewing influence altogether and really trying to find their own sound.

My favorite song on the album was, initially, the last one, Out of Breath, but I suspect this is mostly an effect of how new the sound of the album is in general–it took me until the last song to really get what they were doing at first, and in light of that Out of Breath was able to hit me when I was finally ready to hear it. This might be because the second-to-last song, Gun-Shy Sunshine, is their most traditional, and the closest in style to their older stuff, and the juxtaposition made me appreciate the new stuff that much more. As I’ve gone back and listened again and again I find myself most strongly drawn to some of the stuff in the middle, particularly Busy Bees and Bloody Mary, the latter being hands down my new favorite, and one of my favorite SP songs overall. It starts with a classic Silversun Pickups structure, the kind of slow burn dissonance that made me love them in the first place, and then takes it in a new and exciting direction. It’s the track where their new experiments blend most seamlessly with their signature style, and shows a promising future for the band as a whole.

And that’s really the question, isn’t it? “Where do they go from here?” Radiohead followed Kid A with Amnesiac, an even more insular, more experimental album that sent all but the die-hard fans running back to the familiarity of Ok Computer and The Bends. The later Radiohead stuff is great, but very few people, if any, will point to those later songs as their favorites. Will Silversun Pickups move further toward the Amnesiac end of the pool, or will they take the new sound they’ve discovered on Neck of the Woods and combine it with the chart-topping energy and appeal they showed in Swoon? I have no idea, and I hope the answer is “whatever makes them the happiest.” I’m a huge fan, and I’ll keep buying their albums regardless.

Until then, I go back to my own work, blissfully set to a playlist of all four albums–plus the mini-album of extra Swoon songs–all shuffled together. May their search for a uniquely personal sound help me find a little more of my own.

Review: The Sharp End of the Stick

The most terrifying thing I ever do is tell people I like that I’ll read and review their latest work on my blog. What if I hate it? I don’t want to lie to you, so it would be better to just not review it at all, but I already promised I’d review it and I don’t want to lie to them, either, so arg. It’s usually easiest to never read anything at all–or, alternately, to just not promise reviews.

And then, like a chump, I told Howard I’d read his latest Schlock Mercenary book.

The good news is, the latest Schlock Mercenary book turns out to be my favorite story from the Schlock webcomic. BULLET DODGED. You see, given the nature of how Howard publishes, this story was online several years ago, and I read it then, and while I’d always enjoyed his work before this is the story that made me a fan. I love it. I won’t go into spoilery detail, but the plot begins as “in medias res” as it is possible to begin: a small group of our heroes is lost in a jungle, nearly naked and armed with makeshift spears, desperately defending themselves from a pack of hungry carnivores. And then the main character gets eaten and dies.

On, like, the third page.

What follows is a fascinating story combining science fiction, politics, medical mysteries, body horror, and the best romantic arc Howard’s ever done, all perfectly executed and tinged with a relentless sense of humor. The story bounces back and forth through time and memory, not just because it’s an effective storytelling technique but because it actually matters to the story, and could not be told in any other way. Punchlines turn out to be important science-fictional plot points; fascinating new technologies lead naturally to hilarious one-liners, and round and round in a circle of comics goodness. You might not have any idea where the story’s going, or how it could possibly resolve, but Howard knows exactly what he’s doing at every step of the way. And he does it very well.

Being his newest book, The Sharp End of the Stick is available right now for pre-order, and you should definitely pick it up. You’ll be glad you did.

Isolation: A Lost Tale of the Partials Sequence

This is fantastic news, so I’ll just get right to it. The sequel to PARTIALS, called FRAGMENTS, is coming along nicely and will be released next Spring. You’re going to love it. But just in case you didn’t want to wait an entire year for another Partials book, we have a treat for you: coming this fall is ISOLATION, a Partials novella that will be released as an ebook. Even if you don’t have an ereader, you can read ISOLATION on any computing device (so unless you’re an archeologist, reading this in transcription after the Break, you can read ISOLATION). (And maybe even then….)

Want to see the cover?

ISOLATION is a flashback to the time before the Break, and careful readers of PARTIALS can probably guess at least part of what it’s about. I’ll be revealing details slowly over the next few months, but for now here’s some teasers:

1) It’s about a minor character from PARTIALS, providing a lot of backstory for him/her (I’m not telling which).

2) You’ll get some hints about the state of the world leading up to the Break.

3) You’ll learn more about the Partials themselves than ever before.

If you’ve heard me talk recently about two secret projects I’ve been working on, this is one of them. The other just launched yesterday: a podcast I started with my brother, Robinson Wells, called Do I Dare To Eat A Peach? Two brothers who both write science fiction, talking for an hour or so about their favorite books, movies, TV shows, music, comics, food, and everything else we love. The title comes from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, my favorite poem, in a repeated theme where Prufrock remains frozen in indecision. In a sense, our podcast is to help you eat peaches–to help you find something you may never have tried before, but that ends up being your favorite thing. The first episode is about comic book movies, but who knows what the future will bring? It’s completely free, of course, so check it out.

Packing for Germany

Time for an update on my move to Germany. First off, the schedule is more or less solidified: on July 3, my new book comes out (a new supernatural thriller called THE HOLLOW CITY, about a man with schizophrenia who realizes that some of the monsters he sees are real). I’ll be touring for three weeks, including a week in the middle for another Dark Days tour for PARTIALS, and then I’ll return home on (approximately) the July 23 and fly to Germany on July 25 or 26. We’ll be living in Stuttgart, or technically just north of Stuttgart in a town called Weilimdorf. I will be flying there with my wife and five kids, all of whom will go absolutely insane trapped on a plane for 14 hours, so if you’re planning to fly from the US to Germany I recommend you don’t do it on July 25 or 26.

Literally everything that we’re taking needs to fit in a carefully calculated set of luggage: 7 backpacks and 7 suitcases. Most of this space will be taken by clothes, but we’re throwing a few extras in there where we can fit them. Of special concern to me is my Boardgame collection–most of it is staying home, because it could more than fill seven suitcases all by itself, but I want to take at least a few things. I have some criteria to meet, and I’m open to suggestions:

1) It has to be something I can play with my kids. I’m leaving my game groups behind, obviously, and while it’s entirely possible that I’ll find a new one in Stuttgart (Germany has a much stronger boardgaming culture than the US), I figure anything they want to play they’ll already have. My family is who I’ll be playing most of these games with, so I need to take something they like.

2) It has to be small, or at least have a very high game-to-volume ratio. Something like Fireball Island would be awesome, because my kids love it, but it’s enormous (and kind of crushable) so it wouldn’t work. Something like Battles of Westeros, on the other hand, is pretty hefty but packs a ton of replayability into the space, so it might be worth it.

3) I don’t want to step on any cultural landmines. I’m not talking here about the difference between Eurogames and American games, but of more large scale cultural issues. Maybe this isn’t a concern at all, and I’m overthinking this, but please enlighten me: are World War II games, for example, totally tasteless in Germany? My son loves Memoir 44, which is another good “lots of game in one box” option, but it has Nazis in it. I can see how that might be a big cultural taboo, but I can also see how it might be no big deal, like playing a Civil War game in America. Please let me know in the comments.

So, in light of those requirements, and my current Boardgame collection, what do I take? My two top-rated games are Battlestar Galactica, which wouldn’t work with my kids at all, and Last Night on Earth, which would. LNoE also has that great replayability factor, making it a good match for requirement #2, so I think it makes the cut.

Of my ’9-rated’ games, two are expansions, one is a minis game I don’t currently own minis for, and one is a big wargame I don’t think I could find the room for. 7 Wonders, on the other hand, could be a great choice: my kids like, it, my wife loves it, and it’s not enormous. That might make the cut as well. We’ll put it on the shortlist.

My 8-rated games are more problematic. My son is campaigning heavily for HeroClix, which I would LOVE to take, but it’s completely out of the question. Big Boggle‘s a great option, and not necessarily “big” so we might be okay. Agricola‘s a good choice, as is Vegas Showdown, though I’d want to repack it to reduce the size (it doesn’t come anywhere near filling the box it’s in). Battles of Westeros is one of my favorites, but fails the “my kids like it” test; I’d be better off with BattleLore, but now our list is getting pretty big, and I don’t know if I can feasibly fit this much in my luggage. It’s time to take a look at games I know my kids like, and work from there.

Let’s see, here. Going through the collection and pulling out the best candidates, I get Castle Ravenloft and it’s two twin sisters, Fill or Bust, Set, Small World, Ticket to Ride, UNO, Zombie Dice, and Zooloretto. Castle Ravenloft I should strike off the list right now, because it’s huge, but if I found a way to consolidate all three games into one box it might be worth it. Fill or Bust and Set are tiny card games, and a no-brainer; I should throw in a few other card games as well, like Guillotine and maybe Zombie Fluxx. Zombie Dice is a similarly easy inclusion, as is UNO (which is also a card game, but a biggish one). Ticket to Ride is on the iPad, so I don’t think I need a physical version; besides, it could be fun to pick up a Marklin edition in German while I’m over there. Small World could be good, as it would be the only wargame-ish thing I’d have, but I’m not convinced it’s worth the at this point extremely limited room. Zooloretto is one of my daughters’ favorites, and another one I could consolidate into a smaller box, so that might have to go as well.

My list at this point is too big:

Last Night on Earth

7 Wonders

Big Boggle

Agricola

Vegas Showdown (repackaged)

BattleLore (size issue)

D&D Adventure Games (repackaged, and still probably a size issue)

Small World (size issue)

Zooloretto (repackaged)

Fill or Bust

Set

UNO

Guillotine

Zombie Dice

Those last five are about as big, put together, as the smallest other item on the list. I’m going to strike the D&D games and Big Boggle, the former for size and the latter for language inconsistency–if we play any word games, they should be something that helps the kids learn German. Small World might still be too big, so I’ll put that in a maybe pile. The others are totally doable.

Of course, we haven’t even discussed my Warmachine models. Painting models is not only a great solo hobby that I’d love to keep up with, it’s a very popular one in Germany that I could easily maintain at local shops. It’s huge, though. I don’t know. Maybe I could ship it to myself?

Stuff and Things

I’ve been deep in PARTIALS-land the last few weeks, first writing the sequel and then touring with the first one, and my website maintainence has faltered. I apologize. I have now gone through and approved all the pending comments, and I stand forth now to write for you a blog post. We have a lot to talk about, so strap in:

1) The Partials sequel, which for a while was called FRAGMENTS, and then FAILSAFE, and is now back to FRAGMENTS, is progressing nicely; it’s not as done as I’d like it to be, but it’s good. My editor is working on the first part while I work on finishing the second part, so don’t worry, you WILL have it by next year, presumably end of February. And yes, I will be back in the US to tour with it, at least for a few weeks.

2) If you absolutely CANNOT wait until February/March for more PARTIALS, I have good news: during the last week I took a break from FRAGMENTS and wrote a piece of short fiction in the PARTIALS universe, and you’ll be getting it sometime this fall. I don’t want to give too much away, but I will cryptically say this: it’s kind of a flashback-y thing about one of my very favorite minor characters in the book, and gives some interesting hints on the topic of “how did we get from here to there?” You will get more info on this soon, possibly this summer.

3) Speaking of touring, and of not being in the US, offers have already started to roll in from some places in Europe, and I’ll be doing a lot of touring while there. I’ll post more details soon, but if I’ve got a book debuting in your market anytime in the next 14 months, I hope to be there in person. We’ll see.

4)BIG NEWS: my Twitter buddies noticed a few weeks back that I changed my username from @johncleaver to @thedanwells. This was the first step of a very broad re-branding of my online presence, which is marketing-speak for “I have a new website and Facebook page.” The reason I was @johncleaver instead of @danwells, and the reason you’re currently reading fearfulsymmetry.net instead of danwells.com, is that there’s a very web-savvy actor who shares my name, and he already owns that name pretty much everywhere. I made do, but I didn’t do it very intelligently; all of my various web platforms used different names, and some of the most visible ones, like Twitter, were married too closely to my first book series. That was fine when I only had one book series, but now that I have BLACKER DARKNESS and PARTIALS and (in about two months) THE HOLLOW CITY, I needed to tweak a bunch of stuff to make it about me, and by extension ALL of my books, instead of just one of them.

So: I now have a new website, TheDanWells.com. I chose TheDanWells because a) it wasn’t taken anywhere yet, so I could use the same name for everything, and b) I’m totally self-confident enough (my Mom uses the term ‘arrogant’) to call myself ‘The’ Dan Wells. All you other Dan Wellses are pretty awesome, too, but there you go. I got the idea from Kevin J. Anderson, who goes by @theKJA on Twitter, so thanks for the cool idea, Kevin. I also have a Facebook fan page by that name, which I’ll be trying to send people to, and which will include a lot more of my business-related stuff to help spare my poor family who couldn’t possibly care less about my signing in Houston or wherever.

What this means for you: possibly nothing. This website will continue to exist, and I will continue to blog on it, and the two websites will link back and forth freely. Some of the stuff here will migrate more permanently there (such as the book pages and bio) and some of the stuff there will migrate more permanently here (such as, maybe, the event calendar), but for all practical purposes you can think of it as a single website where half the pages have a different domain name. People looking me up for the first time will end up there, and old-timers who want to read the blog and such will end up here. If you’re already my friend on Facebook, you may or may not want to subscribe to the fan page as well; we’ll see how that pans out as I use it more. We’ll also be updating a lot of other online portals, such as Goodreads, to use TheDanWells as well, but that won’t really affect any current users. For now, go check out the new website! It’s awesome.

5) I have MANY books and things to blog about, notably Mary Robinette Kowal’s awesome new GLAMOUR IN GLASS, but this is too long and unfocused already, so you’ll probably get that tomorrow. For now, I’ll end with a hearty “What You Should Be Watching on Netflix” recommendation: PAUL SIMON: GRACELAND, a very detailed documentary about the creation of one of my favorite music albums ever. Simon wrote the album in collaboration with a bunch of singers/musicians/dancers from South Africa, and there are some cool interviews with most of them and of course with Simon and his producers as well. My favorite sequence shows Simon sitting at a mixing board listening to the title track (which he calls “the best thing I ever wrote”) and responding to it, calling out little bits here and there, explaining why he did it one way or how they arrived a final bit of background music, and it’s awesome. If you’re interested in music and/or the creative/collaborative process, I think you’d get a kick out of it even if you’ve never heard the album before. (And if you’ve never heard the album before, seriously: it’s one of the all-time greats. When I posted a playlist a few months ago, of music that defines who I am, one of the tracks was from Graceland. Check it out.)

A new PARTIALS tour, and other notes

Sorry about the wait; I’ve left you guys hanging for two weeks without a new blog post, mostly because I’ve been buried up to my armpits in the manuscript for PARTIALS 2. It’s turning out to be one of the hardest books I’ve ever written (the other hardest was MR. MONSTER–I think book twos are just hard for some reason). Never fear, though; I feel like I’m wrestling a crocodile with this book, but when it’s done it will be that much better. Since everyone’s asking, book 2 will be on shelves and ready to be devoured next spring, in late February/early March of 2013. And yes, I’ll be flying in from Germany to do a US tour. Huzzah!

Speaking of tours, I’m starting a new round of book signings TODAY, beginning at 6:30pm in West Jordan, UT, at the Barnes and Noble in Jordan Landing. I’ll be signing, reading, answering questions, and then going out to eat afterward, and anyone who wants to come hang out is welcome to join me for all of it. If you want to ask me about Partials, about John Cleaver, about how to get published, or about anything at all, this is a perfect opportunity.

On Wednesday I’ll be doing pretty much the same thing, except I’ll be doing it in Dayton, OH, and I’ll be accompanied by super awesome authors Kimberly Derting and Jill Hathaway as part of a HarperTeen DARK DAYS tour. If you like my books, you’ll love theirrs, so come on by at 7pm at Books & Co.

Thursday, Kimberly and Jill and I will be in Chicago, or technically in Naperville, at Anderson’s Bookshop at 7pm.

Friday, all three of us will be in Boston (actually nearby in Burlington) at the Burlington B&N at 7pm.

If you live in or around these cities, please come say hello! I’m excited, because I’ve never signed in any of these places before, so I need shouting and support and recommendations of good restaurants. Somebody in Atlanta last month had me sign five glossy pictures OF MYSELF–can any of you beat that? (Note: I’ll actually sign glossy pictures of anybody. I’m not picky.)

After this week, I’ve got two local conventions in Utah and then a giant 3-week megatour in July for the launch of my upcoming novel THE HOLLOW CITY. More details on that when we get closer.

Gracias!

I Want You To Want Me

This weekend I heard one of my favorite songs on the radio, "I Want You To Want Me" by Cheap Trick, and it occured to me that I'd heard several covers of the song, perhaps more than any other song I know–I don't by any means claim that it's the most covered song ever, just that's it's been covered a lot. Which version, I wondered aloud on Twitter, is the best? I've since listened to approximately 25 versions of the song, which I don't necessarily recommend to anyone unless you really, really love it, and I can say with some finality that the answer is not in any way surprising. Let's take a look.

The first version of the song, which most people have never heard, is the studio version. This version was okay, but kind of boring; the band itself said the song "lacked any kind of balls," which is a pretty fair assessment. The one you've all heard is actually from a live concert a few years later, at the Budokan stadium in Japan, and the reason you've heard that one instead of the original is because that song, in that performance, is the reason Cheap Trick is famous. They were never very big in the US or UK or really anywhere but Japan, where for some reason they were huge, so they very wisely capitalized on that fame with a live concert, blew the roof off the place, and the rest is history.

Cheap Trick became one of those bands that every other band in existence cites as an inspiration, especially (and oddly, since their styles don't match at all) a lot of grunge and alternative bands like Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins. The Pumpkins have an okay cover they do in some of their live shows, but it's not my favorite. Of the straight rock/metal covers I have to give the prize to Warrant, which best captures the energy and guitar-y-ness that makes me love the song so much. Punchline does a pretty good version, too.

Thanks to the movie 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU, which heavily featured the band Letters to Cleo singing the song, it's become popular with a lot of "chick rock" bands, and I love me some chick rock bands. Cleo's version is awesome, definitely in the top 5, but I was surprised by how much I liked the version from KSM, a manufactured girl-pop band from Disney. I also really like Aly Michalka's version–another pre-fab Disney creation–but she kept pronouncing "me" as "may" and it drove me crazy. Lindsay Lohan did a live performance of the song somewhere, but coming from her it felt like a cry for attention. Maybe that's my own prejudices speaking, I don't know. I couldn't get into it.

It's a pretty popular country song as well, with versions from Dwight Yoakam and Chris Isaak. I'm not a country guy by any means, but I have to say I preferred Isaak's bouncy, rockabilly take on it. Yoakam gets extra points for SLING BLADE, though, for whatever that's worth.

After listening to 25 versions of the same song, it should come as no surprise that the ones that most impressed me were the versions that adapted the crap out of it, changing the style and the genre and really shaking it up. Damhnait Doyle sings a very soft, sweet version unlike anything else out there, and I highly recommend it. Rob and Fab (the two dudes who pretended to be Milli Vanilli, in their post-Milli Vanilli incarnation) did a wacky pop/reggae/rap version that could have been amazing, but ended up feeling (ironically) very artificial. The wildest and craziest cover I found was a Nortena version from a Mexican movie called RUDO Y CURSI, in which Gael Garcia Bernal does an 'obviously intended to be terrible' video of it. Nortena is basically bad-A cowboy polka music, which sounds ridiculous until you remember that every drug dealer in the world thinks it's the coolest thing ever. You don't want to mess with Nortena.

The best version I found anywhere, and the only one that could rival the Budokan version for sheer awesomeness, was another cross-genre adaptation by the Holmes Brothers, a gospel group, which took the hard-rocking "I Want You To Want Me" and turned it into a soft, slow, heartbreaking song about lost love. It's gorgeous. I wasn't familiar with the Holmes Brothers before, but you can bet I've listened to a lot of their stuff in the last few days.

So. Overall, the best version available is none other than the version that made the song famous in the first place: Cheap Trick live at Budokan. It's hard to argue with the classics, though I think you'll agree that I gave it a pretty good effort. For a top five, I'd rank them thusly:

1. Cheap Trick, Live at Budokan

2. The Holmes Brothers

3. Damhnait Doyle

4. Letters to Cleo

5. Warrant

(With a special prize for Gael Garcia Bernal's "Quiero Que Me Quieras," because it is insane.)

If you're looking for a list of most of the versions I watched, and some more detailed info on the song itself, the wiki article is, as always, a great place to start. That's also where you'll learn that my Sunday morning tweet was a very timely one, since apparently April 1 is Cheap Trick Day in Illinois. That seems like an appropriate choice, all things considered. Also, I'm just glad somebody shares my obsession.

What you should be watching on Netflix

Netflix's instant streaming selections are pretty much the only reason I have a TV these days; if it wasn't for Community and it's fellow Thursday night comedies, I'd never watch TV at all. Netflix has an awesome array of both blockbusters and weird little things you might never have heard of before, and I'm going to recommend two of them today.

The first is RIVERS AND TIDES, a documentary about artist Andy Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy uses nature as his medium, creating pieces out of rocks or twigs or leaves by arranging them, slowly and meticulously, into breathtaking works of art that sometimes last for only a few seconds before time and weather and nature reclaims them. At one point in the film he builds a cairn of stones on the beach, well below the high tide line, because he wants to watch it get swallowed by the ocean; it takes him all day and (if I remember correctly) five tries, but he finally makes it, and the tide rises, and the cairn disappears, and there's something incredibly moving about watching it happen. You might start the movie wondering why this weird guy spends so much time on something that can't possibly last, but by the end you'll get it. As the movie's subtitle suggests, his other artistic medium is time, and watching the interaction of man and nature and time made this one of the most fascinating documentaries I've seen in a while.

The second movie I want to recommend is MONSTERS, which I talked about two years ago but not enough of you listened, which I know because it wasn't even nominated for the Hugo last year despite being the best SF movie of 2010. INCEPTION was a worthy winner, I agree, but MONSTERS was my main nomination and, I admit, my write-in vote for the final. I loved it. MONSTERS is about a journalist hired to retrieve a rich man's wayward daughter from Mexico, several years after a meteor landed in the Mexican wilderness and deposited the seeds of alien life: giant tentacled creatures that do not exactly get along with humans. Much of northern Mexico is now a quarantine zone, which our heroes eventually find themselves trekking through in a desperate attempt to get home, but this is not an action movie, and the aliens are not so much evil as incomprehensible; they are different, and we don't really know how to deal with them, and that's not a situation humans tend to respond to very well. There are some obvious immigration metaphors here, but it's not a political movie either. It's a near-future cultural study, a suspense-filled character drama, and my hands-down favorite 'alien invasion' movie. Check it out.

I Am Moving to Germany

Yep. I'm moving to Germany, sometime this summer, for one year. The most likely schedule is that I'll leave in late July, after finishing the US tour for THE HOLLOW CITY, stay for a year, and then return to the US sometime in August of 2013. My wife and kids, of course, are coming with me, and we're all incredibly excited.

Why are we doing this? Why not? My wife and I are both very adventurous, and we've wanted to move somewhere for a while, but we didn't know where. We're not tied to a physical location, because I'm fully self-employed, so we started looking all over the world; we considered England for a while, but slowly shifted to Germany for a lot of reasons. First, of course, we love the country: we've been there a few times and adore it. Second, as many of you know, that's my biggest market. My books sell better in Germany than any other country, probably any other two countries, and living there will allow me to do a lot of the stuff my US fans take for granted, like readings and signings and con appearances. I've also long been tempted to write a book set in Germany, or a made-up place very similar to it, and living there would be the perfect research opportunity. The third reason we chose Germany is simply that we love to travel, and we want to give our children a cool cultural experience outside of the US. Travel is the single best way, in my opinion, to widen your view and gain a new perspective on life and the world and the people in it, and we want our kids to have that. Living in a new culture, eating different food, speaking a new language, and making new friends are going to be things they look back on and love for the rest of their lives.

The process of moving to Germany is tricky, and we've been working on it for a while. We hired a relocation agency to help with the arrangements for a residency permit, and so far that's gone much better than we expected. All the preliminary stuff has gone through now, and all that remains is an in-person interview where I'll have to fly over and prove that I'll be earning plenty of money through my writing; since I won't be getting a job there, they want the very reasonable assurance that I won't be a drain on their economy. This shouldn't be an issue: we're not rich, but we earn enough to support ourselves handily. After the interview they'll stamp the permit and we'll be in.

My interview will likely happen in late April, which means I have about a month to figure out which part of Germany we want to live in. We honestly don't know. My publisher's in Munich, so we've looked at that, and I really like how central Frankfurt is–it would be easy to spread out from there to take small trips all over Europe, which is definitely a part of our plan. We've also looked at Hamburg, since my wife has a lot of ancestors from there, and it would be a good place to explore her family history. I've even looked at Essen, just because I'm a boardgame geek. Honestly, I don't know: I am open to suggestions. If you live in Germany, or have lived there in the past, PLEASE take some time in the comments to sell me on your particular part of it.

In fact, let's open this up to even more comments. Tell me where in Germany you think I should live, and why. Tell me about the book fairs, bookstores, and SF/Fantasy conventions you think I should go to. Tell me about your local reading group, or gaming group, or whatever. Help me decide exactly which part of Germany will be best for me and my family.

And for everybody not in Germany: don't worry. I'll be back in November for a conference, and again in March for the PARTIALS 2 book tour, and probably at least one other trip. I want to connect better with my readers in Europe, but I definitely don't want to forget about everyone else.

Media Dan Has Consumed: Books I read on tour

I haven't posted here in a while, mostly because I've been touring like a madman for PARTIALS. Thanks to everyone who,s come to see me, and for everyone else, don't forget that there's still plenty of touring to come. I have a signing in Ogden, UT this Friday, the SLC Nerd part this Saturday, the World Horror Conference next week, and another Dark Days tour in April. All the info's in my calendar on the left.

All this time traveling has given me the chance to read a ton, and today I want to recommend two of the books I loved the most. VODNIK by Bryce Moore is one of the best YA fantasies I've read in ages, and THE MIRAGE by Matt Ruff might be one the best books I've read in any category, ever.

VODNIK

I honestly didn't know what to expect from VODNIK; it's a YA urban fantasy based on Slovakian folk tales, yes, but what does that even mean? I don't know anything about Slovakian folk tales. Well, let me tell you what it means:

1) VODNIK has a unique and quirky group of monsters, and a "magic system" you haven't seen anywhere else. In a market horribly oversaturated with the same old vampires and werewolves and fairies and whatnot, VODNIK shows us elemental spirits, a sea monster, an agent of Death, and of course the vodnik himself–a cheerful, friendly little killer who drowns people and stores their souls in teacups, not because he's evil but because that's how he is. He's goofy, neurotic, helpful, deceptive, and deadly, and the most interesting urban fantasy villain I've read in ages.

2) VODNIK is about a clash of cultures. I've never lived in Slovakia, but I have lived outside of the US, and VODNIK captures perfectly the stages of culture shock, fascination, acceptance, and love that comes from discovering a new country. There's a scene partway through where the main character sees a group of Americans after already becoming accustomed to Slovakia, and his unsettled reaction feels very real. This book made me want to visit the country.

3) VODNIK takes this culture clash, and the classic YA search for identity, and ramps them up with a full-on exploration of racism. The main character has some Roma (gypsy) heritage, which never mattered in the US, but becomes a very big deal in Slovakia, and this out-of-nowhere plunge into racism really opens his (and the readers') eyes. More importantly, the author handles the topic expertly, explaining how the characters' lives change because of it, and how they learn from it. I was honestly very surprised by this facet of the novel, expecting little more than the simple surface story about the magic creatures, but the Roma plot gave it a depth and power that really brought it all together.

4) VODNIK is actually funny. I've read so much YA that thinks it's funny but isn't, and even worse, YA that tries to use pop culture references and fails horribly. Nothing's worse than an author trying way to hard to seem clever and cool. The author of VODNIK pulls it off almost effortlessly.

I loved VODNIK, honestly much more than I expected to. It's well-written, unique, and clever. It's a breath of fresh air in a very popular genre, andI can't wait to see what Moore gives us next.

THE MIRAGE

Holy crap. Here's the quick pitch: this book is about the War on Terror, but in a mirror universe where the United Arab States is the world superpower, and America is group of feuding, sectarian mini-nations. On 11/9 a group of Christian terrorist crash airplanes into the World Trade Center in Baghdad, and that brief description completely sold me on the book. It's an ambitious, treacherous, wildly subversive idea that Ruff pulls off with incredible aplomb, showing what is essentially a police procedural about Baghdadi Homeland Security agents tracking down terrorists, and frankly that by itself would have been enough for a great book, but THE MIRAGE takes it to the next level. See, in the course of their investigation the HS agents find a newspaper from our world, describing the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, and suddenly this fascinating thought experiment becomes a full blown interdimensional fantasy.

I can't imagine what a gamble it must have felt like to write this book, walking a vicious tightrope between clever and offensive, real and imaginary, political charged and completely bipartisan. Reading it certainly gives you that tightrope thrill, alternately holding your breath and laughing in delight at each new crazy reversal of the "truth." Osama Bin Laden is a senator of questionable character; Al Qaeda is a branch of the secret police; Saddam Hussein is a Capone-style mobster; the Gulf War is fought in the Mexican Gulf, as the United Arab States led a Coalition to protect the oil-rich nation of Texan from the invading American army and its power-mad dictator LBJ. Even the agents of the CIA, when we finally meet them, are shockingly appropriate for a nation of Christian extremists. As a fan of audacious ideas, I found something to applaud on nearly every page.

As with VODNIK, though, what really keeps THE MIRAGE grounded are the very real, very human characters at the center, dealing with personal issues both larger and smaller than the world-spanning mayhem they fight against in their jobs. The story and the setting are wonderful, but it's the characters that make you care.

If you love good books, you'll love these two. Go out and get them NOW.