Michael Offutt's Blog, page 163

Whisper of Memory by Brinda Berry

Today I would like to welcome author Brinda Berry. I read her first book called The Waiting Booth and reviewed it HERE. Now, she's back with a sequel and it's very exciting.

From Inside the Flap...
Weapons training and winter formals… a deadly combination

All Mia ever wanted was to fit in at Whispering Woods High. But being a portal-finder who dates a guy from another dimension sort of makes it hard. A month ago her brother disappeared, and agents from the IIA began policing people's movements through dimensions. She'd trusted Dr. Bleeker from the local university when he'd told her the IIA were the bad guys. But even a girl with an extraordinary ability to sense things can make mistakes.

Now two people are dead, and as a portal gatekeeper for the IIA, Mia needs to find Dr. Bleeker before he hurts anyone else. And her boyfriend Regulus, an Agent for the IIA, carries secrets of his own. Between learning about weaponry, finding the perfect dress for the winter formal, and catching bad guys, who has time to fit in?
Brinda is running a contest to celebrate the release of her new book. She is giving away romance trading cards and a Kindle Touch. The giveaway ends on April 30th so please enter below and win win win.
Check out the cool romance cardNow Brinda has a question for you.

High school senior Mia Taylor and her friends seem to draw trouble like a magnet. Did you have anything out of the ordinary happen to you during your senior year? As for me, my senior year was pretty boring. I guess the highlight was that I graduated. Oh and I thought my senior class was lucky...no one died through all three years of high school (and it was a big class). So maybe that's somewhat out of the ordinary. Most high school classes have one or two deaths by the time the average kid reaches graduation. Oh and we had six valedictorians. How dumb is that?
Please be sure to check out Brinda's blog located HERE .Follow Brinda on twitter @Brinda_BerryAnd check her out on Facebook HERE.


Buy Whisper of Memory on Amazon Kindle HERE.
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Can you help me spot the cat?

I got this email from my friend William. Supposedly there's a cat in this picture. I've looked at it but can't find it. My eyesight isn't all that great. You can click on the picture to make it bigger. If you find the cat, please indicate where it is in the comments :).
Have a happy Thursday.

Envisioning 15 ways to change up fantasy fiction

This isn't a list I got from somewhere online. Rather, it is my own list that I compiled after looking at Brent Weeks' new fantasy series and finding things that I'm growing tired of. Note that this list is not indicative of his fantasy. Merely...it is indicative of all fantasy that I've read. Read this as "Mike has already seen, read, and done this many times and is ready for something fresh." As a writer, you might possibly spot some red flags in your own writing from a person who is well-versed in the genre.

1) Stop making your villains gay. I hate reading about some horrible evil nasty terrible incarnation of pure evil who is also homosexual while the hero is comfortably heterosexual. And stop doing unnecessary things to male genitalia just to make your villain repulsive. An example of this is in the movie Immortals. Why on earth did Mickey Rourke's character insist on castrating men that worked for him with a huge hammer? There are other ways to be gross.

2) Stop portraying barmaids as sluts with big boobs.

3) Stop portraying dwarves as alcoholics. Not every dwarf in fiction needs to consume huge tankards of ale or beer.

4) Why are all thieves either named "Rat" or have something in common with the animal of the same name?

5) Why are all knights Caucasian? Have a black man or a black woman or a Hispanic as a hero. And having them be a prince is just boring.

6) Why are all elves graceful? Just stop it. Have a clumsy fat elf. And if you're going to use elves...just use them. Don't try to be clever. George R.R. Martin uses "Children of the Forest" and it's just stupid. They are frickin' elves. You're only fooling people into thinking they aren't elves if they haven't read any other fantasy.

7) Why do all male heroes hook up with a woman who is a virgin? Why can't a hero hook up with a woman who's been around the block a few hundred times? Or...even one that's plus-sized or wears a size 14 toga.

8) Heroes having babies. I'm tired of the pregnancy trope. Why can't a hero and a girl get together and say, "Hey...we don't want kids. They're a nuisance and will get in the way of our adventuring." And then have them use magical contraception that religious groups in the world they live in try to pass laws to make them illegal to obtain.

9) All villainous rapists seem to be men. In fantasy, women can be empowered with magic. Why can't they go around raping men and have people badmouth the evil woman rapist?

10) Women as healers. This is always bullshit. How about a man that is a healer and a woman that is the warrior?

11) Single women. Every woman the hero meets is single and available. How about having the hero be already married and the women he meets already married? They just need to get together to do a job. And if they get romantically attracted to each other, then bring on the adultery baby. Does a hero need to be likeable to get the job done? Nope. He or she could still slay a dragon and then cheat on their loving spouse.

12) Multiple volumes consisting of 1000 pages or more. Just stop. No one needs this kind of space to tell a story. No one.

13) Wizards and magic are frowned upon. Oh stop with the closeted wizards that have to "come out". It's getting old. Give me a society where wizards and magic rule everything, have it ruled by women, and men who want to play with swords are the ones that are shunned. But I don't want another "magic school" story. Lev Grossman, J.K. Rowling, and others have beaten this to death.

14) Weak magic. The hero slays a dragon after 500 pages and finds a ring that can turn him invisible. Invisibility sucks. How about a ring that blows up mountains, destroys cities, and turns people into salt pillars? Give me some real powerful sorcery...stuff that destroys armies and summons legions of demons. Think big or go home.

15) The end of the world is prevented. How about it happens and the hero fails and everyone dies? That would be cool.

*End of rant. If you have the time, please check out Briane Pagel's blogfest with writing prompts and Star Wars questions. You can find it HERE.

Fame brings out a person's true colors

George R.R. Martin is one of the most successful writers alive. And he's now filthy stinking rich because of that success. I think his behavior with regard to his fans is pretty atypical. Here are some words of "encouragement" for you from him:

No, I will not come to your convention, thanks for asking.
No, I will not read your manuscript/ galley proof/ book, but good luck with that.
No, I will not write a story for your anthology, I am a year behind writing stories for my own anthologies.
No, I will not write a preface/ introduction/ foreword for your book.
No, I will not do an interview.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

LOLOLOL
In my opinion, fame brings out a person's true colors.
So, how will you act if the day comes when you have money, an agent, a book deal, and fame? If you're in YA you could be super polite (super fake), never follow anyone on twitter (except other celebrities), never visit anyone's blogs, say things like "goodness me...I'm so busy..." and when someone wants to legitimately talk with you, you'll refer them to "Your Publicist."

Know any authors that fit this bill?

Here is the real mind-bender. Maybe arrogance is the whole point of fame.
Maybe the people that behaved this way were ALWAYS arrogant and couldn't stand being mediocre. It beat them up. They knew they had to HAVE FAME to have an excuse to be arrogant. Without the fame, being arrogant just made them look like jerks. But with it, people get a free pass.

The Lucky 7 Meme

I have been tagged by Lisa Shafer for the Lucky 7 Meme. Please visit her blog if you have the time by clicking HERE.
HERE ARE THE RULES:

1. Go to page 77 of your current Manuscript.
2. Go to line 7.
3. Copy down the next 7 lines - sentences or paragraphs - and post them as they're written. No cheating.
4. Tag 7 authors.
5. Let them know.

"Not at all," she said.

Dustin scrambled down from his perch on the bleacher row just ahead of where Jordan and Jess sat. "Hope you've got a condom," he said. "You're so getting laid tonight."

He just shot him a sideways glance, "We're not even dating."

"It doesn't look that way from where I'm sitting but…okay." Jordan got up and walked with him out of the stadium to wait for the ladies a little closer to the restrooms.

This excerpt is from SLIPSTEAM and at a point where Jordan (the main character) is behaving particularly shallow. He grows up quite a bit during the story.

Seven authors who I'm tagging to complete this meme:
1) Angela Scott at Whimsy & Writing.
2) Charity Bradford at Charity's Writing Journey.
3) Hart Johnson at Confessions of a Watery Tart.
4) Dalya Moon at her author website of the same name.
5) Donna Hole at her website here.
6) Patrick Dilloway at the Grumpy Bulldog Blog.
7) Briane Pagel at Thinking the Lions.

Thoughts on writing science-fiction and fantasy

I read an article on the science-fiction blog io9 about this autistic savant who spent 20 years creating a fictional city called Urville. Here are some pictures that he drew (go and see the rest at this link if you are interested in the full story). In a nutshell, he envisioned everything including its own fictional history and how it was impacted by events in humanity's real timeline.



I started to think of how many stories there must be to a place like this, and I wonder if this person will ever get around to writing fiction about it or about the lives of the people who populate it. I think that world-building can be taken to an extreme. I'm sure for the guy that made this city, it felt real to him. For me, world-building is the funnest part of fiction, and it's where I start with my stories. But there are definitely other approaches.

Brandon Sanderson seems to focus a lot of attention on unique magic systems for fantasy. For myself, I dislike unique magic systems. They seem to slap me in the face as the author is trying as hard as he can to be "clever", and I hate it when an author tries to be "clever."  I think to myself that maybe they'd like it if everyone they met looked at them and said..."Oh you're such a clever writer...look at you being clever" and then just pinched their cheeks.

To use a writing analogy...I liken it to using some other word as opposed to "said".  The word "said" is fine, don't get rid of it, I like it. But sometimes you get authors who have characters who are "retorting" and "cajoling" and "exclaiming" and "replying" and all that jazz.  Just give me plain old "said". I take the same view with "magic". Just give me plain old sorcery with spell books and fireballs that form the backbone of the genre. Don't use a wyvern...just give me a damned dragon. Stop trying to be "different". J.K. Rowling just used wands and spell books. Look at how that worked out.

The fantasy and science-fiction that I have studied that makes an impact on me has taken the clever route on the world-building. Ringworld by Larry Niven is one example. The world in the Rose and the Prophet by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman is another. A third is David Eddings' Belgariad. And a fourth is George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire". All of them have amazing worlds. Sure, Eddings had a unique magic system but I liked his world more than the magic system and it really wasn't all that clever. It was just like psionics in Dungeons and Dragons.

And then there are those that say that development of character and romance is the most important. My only problem with this is that some people go overboard on character development to where the story is their reactions to what other people are saying and doing and it goes on for hundreds of pages with nothing happening.

When you set out to tell a fantasy story, is your first step to envision the character first? Or do you build the world first? or do you come up with a magic-system first? Or do you do something different from these three things that I haven't touched on in this post?

1Q84 Book Two by Haruki Murakami

First, I want to remind people that may not know, that Defying Gravity by author Cherie Reich is FREE all day today if you have an e-reader. Please click here to find out how to get yourself a copy. This is not a book review although there are some things I will be talking about that could be considered spoilers.

I just recently finished book two of 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.
I talked about book one in this post here.

In this particular novel a dowager (wealthy woman) hired Aomame to kill the head of a religious cult. His name was Leader. The dowager pointed out to Aomame that this man is guilty of raping pre-pubescent girls. As an empowered woman, Aomame felt that she could kill this man and avoid the justice system altogether which might be pre-disposed (because of the role of men in society) to treat this man kinder than he deserved. The only thing is, when she went to do the deed, she discovered that the Leader was IN FACT the victim in all of this sexual abuse from a cult that followed him. The man was in tremendous pain, was being raped while he was in a catatonic state as a devotion to the gods they believed in (called the Little People) and he wanted to die.

So she performs the most troubling assassination of her life.

As usual, the book is chock full of memorable quotes that make me think Murakami is a profound philosopher and not just a writer.

Additionally, Murakami includes a short story in his novel called the Town of Cats. This in itself is an accomplishment. I've seen other writers like Patrick Dilloway, who incorporate short stories into the greater length of their novel to illustrate a theme.

My post on Patrick Dilloway's book Where You Belong, is located Here.
The genius Haruki Murakami
I do put it on the same level as Murakami's writing. Only Murakami does not write literary fiction. But Murakami was up for a Nobel Prize and did sell a million of his books in Japan.

 If you would like to read Town of Cats, I will embed the link here to the New Yorker excerpt. To give you some background on it, one of the main characters goes to visit his father in a nursing home. He reads the "Town of Cats". This story is about a man who comes to a city that is deserted. But by night, it is occupied by intelligent speaking cats. Think "dogs playing poker" and you've got the image. But they smell the human amongst them and go searching for him. The man hides from the cats and evades them until daylight when the cats all leave. Later, he finds that he cannot escape because the train no longer stops there to pick any passengers up. So he is stuck in the town of cats.

This story is an allegory of 1Q84 which is a reflection of the real world 1984. However, there are subtle differences. The sky has two moons. The Little People are gods. And Aomame will never meet her true love  as long as she remains in 1Q84. But the way out of 1Q84 back to 1984 is no longer an option. That way is closed.

Murakami says through one of his characters, "Once you pass a certain age, life becomes nothing more than a process of continual loss. Things that are important to your life begin to slip out of your grasp, one after another, like a comb losing teeth. Your physical strength, your hopes, your dreams, your ideals, your convictions, all meaning, or, then again, the people you love: one by one, they fade away."

Maybe that's the purpose of life. To learn to cope and accept loss and to be thankful for the things that we do not lose. Maybe it is (like Aomame) to accept the fact that we cannot always get what we want and that the way home may be barred. Maybe Murakami is saying that it is just as important to find meaning in a world where we are alone among cats. What do you think?

Insecure Writer's Support Group March 2012 Edition

It's time for the March edition of the blogfest that never ends. Alex J. Cavanaugh thought this up, and he's currently touring through the blogosphere promoting the latest book in his sci-fi space opera. It's called CassaFire, and if you like sci-fi...you might want to check it out.

I think the insecurity I have with my writing these days has to do with wondering whether or not my ideas are as fun and interesting as I think they are. I have a lot of fun spending time with my characters. A lot of fun thinking about them, and designing scenarios for them that work within the greater plot/storyline I've built. But what if people read about Jordan and think...how boring. Is anything ever gonna happen? Is he ever going to become interesting. My first book comes out in two months. I guess I'll find out.

Anyway...that's it. Now I'll go and check out yours.

Is there anybody out there?

Another school shooting.A Penn State judge rules Sharia trumps the First Amendment.People starving because they don't have enough money for food.Gay teens committing suicide.Men legislating what a woman does with her body.Gross class inequality.A presidential candidate attacking college education.A talk show host using the words "slut" and "prostitute"to describe a woman in support of free contraception.Injustice.Racism.Intolerance.Ignorance.Bigotry.Contempt.Bullying.Invisibility.Loneliness.Hate.Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one that has a problem with this.I wonder if I'm the only one asking the question, "Is there anybody out there like me?"

The You Can Play Project

It's odd sometimes how fiction can echo real life, or one can follow the other. My book that is coming out in May and the sequel that I have finished and is out to beta readers Donna Hole and Jeff Adams (embedded links to their websites) features a protagonist who is among many things, a gay collegiate hockey player (in the first book he's in high school). In the second book, he plays on the Cornell hockey team as a forward and really...no one cares. They just care about his skill. He's fully out, everyone likes him, and he leads a healthy life as a student athlete. But was I really writing fiction? At the time that I first started drafting it over a year ago...I might have been tempted to say yes.

Now...not so much. The world is changing, despite the rhetoric from the right-wing that would have Santorum stripping homosexuals of their human rights.

I can't say how happy I am (and a little stunned) that the NHL is THE FIRST organization to step forward and make it known that a man's sexual orientation should not matter in sports. It's a person's ability to play that should be measured.

Please go and visit the You Can Play Project and voice your support (or do so here in the comments). Locker rooms and sports venues should be free of homophobia. Athletes should only be judged on skill and work ethic.

Anyway, this is a great public service announcement. Go check out the background on this fantastic movement by reading the article at the Washington Post . Have a great Monday.