Catherine Fitzsimmons's Blog: Jinxed, page 16

Music Monday: Video Games Live

In the interest of posting more about the things I enjoy, I am resurrecting my short-lived feature highlighting some of the music I listen to. This week, I want to talk about Video Games Live.

VGL is pretty much what the name suggests – a concert series that performs live arrangements of video game music, with a symphony orchestra as well as electric guitar usually played by the creator of the show, Tommy Tallarico.

I heard about VGL pretty much right from its beginning in 2005. It seems like something that I would have jumped on, but it took me a couple years to get into it. Live shows aren’t usually my thing and I’m generally more interested in recordings I can listen to later, which weren’t available for VGL for the first few years. Mainly, though, on reading about it, I was convinced that they primarily performed music from new games, and it’s been about 20 years since I was anything close to current in my video game habits.

But, in the summer of 2007 or 2008, I was alerted on short notice to a free concert that they were playing in downtown Toronto. I decided it was worth a trip into the city to see what they were all about.

I am so glad that I did. What I discovered that afternoon was not just masterful orchestrations of video game music both new and old, but an amazingly fun and engaging live show. There was a game of Frogger with the symphony providing the music live as it happened, with the player – a member of the audience – using herself as the controller. There was a Guitar Hero competition on-stage with two winners of an earlier competition before the show where they played Guitar Hero Aerosmith, which was not yet released, and the winner absolutely killed it.Tommy Tallarico himself brought so much energy to the show and drew the audience in and had everyone singing along. And I embarrassed my company by screaming my head off when the encore started, a medley of music from Castlevania, which I recognized from the first two notes while Tommy Tallarico was still introducing it.

I have since gone back to VGL at Gen Con and Toronto. I’ve seen lots more great features, special guests, post-show meet and greets, and even a proposal. I’ve never had so much fun at a live concert as at Video Games Live.

And, of course, I’ve bought the music. I purchased the first two CDs at shows, both of which are signed. For the third and fourth albums, Tommy Tallarico used Kickstarter to fund them and I contributed enough for digital copies. I love them all thoroughly, even the songs from video games I’d never played.

Now, he has started a Kickstarter for VGL’s fifth album. As a previous contributor, I was alerted to it right away, and I’m thrilled to see that barely five days in they are already within 85% of their goal, and I sincerely hope that they will reach at least some of their stretch goals and add more tracks to the album.

I’ve already contributed and I implore you to consider doing the same. For $10 you can help bring this project to life and get high-quality digital files of the entire album when it’s released, along with a bonus disc of an assortment of music from various guest artists – and I can tell you from experience that these bonus tracks are almost as good as the new album itself.

To give you a taste of the kind of music to expect, I’ll leave you with my unexpected joys from each album so far, tracks from games I haven’t played but ended up loving these arrangements.

From the first album: Kingdom Hearts suite

Video Games Live: Level 2 – Civilization IV – Baba Yetu (Duet Version)

Video Games Live: Level 3 – Secret of Monkey Island

Video Games Live: Level 4 – Too many favourites to choose, but for a taste of something different, Metal Gear Solid – Snake Eater

A new beginning, a few weeks late

I’ve just made a small change to the design of this blog that may mean bigger things for it: the tagline, which now mentions my art, writing, and interests.

I started this blog with the intention of focusing only or at least primarily on the things I produce. But, inspired a bit by a number of book review blogs I checked out recently, I’ve decided that I will start talking here about the things I enjoy, even if they aren’t directly related to my art. Maybe nobody will care about it, but trying to write posts just for other people has resulted in skeletal updates here for the past… years.

Besides, if you’re here visiting my personal blog, you must be looking for more information about me, right?

In the spirit of book blogs, I’m going to start by sharing my reading progress so far this year. I kind of devoured books in January, surprising even myself with how many I finished – I read more published books in the first six weeks of this year than in all of 2014.

I’ve also started reviewing books again. When I started this blog, I posted reviews of the books I’d read, though when I discovered Goodreads, I moved all my reviews there. In the past couple years, my reviews were feeling too formalized and time-consuming and I pretty much stopped making written reviews and simply left star ratings. But even if just for my own reference, it’s nice to go into greater detail about what I liked and what I didn’t, and I’m taking the reviews a little less seriously this time.

So, here is my reading progress in 2016, with links to my reviews of each:

Star Wars: Tarkin by James Luceno

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was the first Star Wars novel I read to completion. I tried to read a particularly popular Legends novel a few years ago, but didn’t make it very far. It’s taken me a long time to really get into tie-in novels. Now that I am finally able to go into one with an open mind, and with the fresh start of a new canon to get into, I wanted to start with this. I am always interested in hearing the other side of the story, and frankly, I found Tarkin to be a more menacing and effective villain in A New Hope than Vader.

However, I had a number of issues with this book. There was not enough personality to any of the characters to feel anything for them. Tarkin himself did little of his own volition and he failed so often that he came across ineffective at best and inept at worst. The number and length of flashbacks detracted from the story and I felt were a poor way of showing how he came to be the person he is by A New Hope, and overall the present story just didn’t feel like the defining event of Tarkin’s life.

Ultimately, I went into this book with no expectations so I can’t say I was disappointed, but it did fail to enthral.

View all my reviews

A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Even before I was ready to dive into the Star Wars EU, I wanted to read this book. We started watching Rebels, due to it now being canon, and at least up until the current season were pleasantly surprised. I then read the first six issues of the new Kanan comics and thoroughly enjoyed them, so I was very much looking forward to reading this.

And I loved this book. Absolutely loved it. I loved the characters, I loved the setting, loved how down-to-earth it was, loved the villain. I loved how Kanan was an abrasive, self-centred, self-destructive hothead and yet he was depicted in a way that still made me root for him. I also loved seeing another side of Hera that’s rarely shown in the show. It’s a perfect transition between the comics and Rebels and really reinforcing an interest in Kanan’s story. My only disappointment is that there isn’t more yet.

View all my reviews

Star Wars: Before the Awakening by Greg Rucka

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read an article about this book shortly after seeing The Force Awakens, and with my newfound interest in the EU, I was very interested in reading it and snatched it up when I could. The idea of learning more about some of the main characters from TFA very much appealed to me, especially the idea of having some details/references from the movie cleared up.

The writing was okay, but ultimately, I only gave it 3 stars because it didn’t really offer any new insight into the characters. For the most part, these backstories show the characters exactly as they appear in the movie, and aside from a couple minor details it only reinforced what we already saw. The writing style also felt pretty passive so it was difficult to really get into the characters. It wasn’t a bad book by any stretch, but I really wouldn’t have missed much by skipping it.

View all my reviews

Wraith Squadron by Aaron Allston

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As my first successful introduction into Star Wars Legends, I was given this book as less of a heavy, epic story read and more of a fun adventure romp. And it was that. There were things I liked, things I didn’t, but ultimately, it was just fun.

View all my reviews

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It’s been several years since I first read the Harry Potter series, and in light of Alan Rickman’s passing – and of course the abundance of Snape memes that followed – I decided the time had come to read it again.

When I originally added this book after joining Goodreads, I rated it 4 stars because I remembered I quite enjoyed it. I raised the rating after reading it again. This book is absolutely delightful. Right from sentence one, I was drawn in, and it had such a wonderful narrative quality, it felt like the author was in the room telling me the story rather than me reading words on a page. Very, very few books have held the distinction of being absolutely un-put-down-able; even books I have adored on many and deeper levels than Harry Potter have been easy to take a breather at a chapter break, but I simply could not stop reading this.

And even from the first book, when the characters are pretty much all tropes, they are fleshed out and the hints of secrets revealed later in the series are laid down. It was simplistic, yet rich at the same time. When I read this the first time, when the hype was at its peak and I went in skeptical, I was pleasantly surprised, but this time, I completely loved it. Can’t wait to reread the rest.

View all my reviews

Aftermath by Chuck Wendig

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book has been a hot topic in my house since its announcement. My husband, who is a huge Star Wars fan and has been reading the novels pretty much all his life, was upset when Disney de-canonized the entire Legends EU and started over, and doubly so when he started hearing about this book. He was determined to read it, given its significance to the new canon, but after reading about it and downloading a sample on Kindle, let’s just say expectations were low.

What with my newfound interest in the EU, I decided to give it a shot, and went in with an open mind. (Of course, that is probably an easier task for me, given my lack of devotion to Legends, but then, defined canon has never been that important to me.)

I will admit, I almost gave up on this book very fast. I had a lot of issues with the first few chapters. A lot. The almost deal breaker was the sentence fragments. I don’t mind sentence fragments in fiction; I use them in my own writing at times. But the sheer number of sentence fragments in the first few chapters of this book moved beyond jarring to grating. And given that such fragments were rare not much later in the book, it just seemed unnecessary and off-putting at the beginning.

That said, once the story picked up and the writing smoothed out, I did end up enjoying it. The characters were interesting enough, as was the story. I still had plenty of nitpicks, but overall I was pleased enough.

My experience, of course, isn’t that of the typical EU fan, since as of writing this review, I have read all of one Legends novel. But aside from complaints about the writing itself, I don’t have a problem with at least some of the critiques longtime fans have had. For example: gay characters in Star Wars. While I felt the one major character revealing himself as gay seemed a little forced in context, I think inclusion in the Star Wars universe is a good thing; after all, one of the defining traits of the Empire was racism and overall homogeny. Shouldn’t the New Republic be more diverse?

Also, funny story: given my EU reading experience so far, I was surprised to discover, after noting other reviewers dissatisfied with this book filled with “nobody” characters, that most of the Legends novels focused on Luke, Leia, and Han. It’s particularly interesting because to me, the more interesting stories to tell are the ones outside of the main three. There is an entire galaxy of other stories and other characters in this universe, and Luke/Leia/Han already got a full trilogy of movies. I would much rather read more about other characters.

View all my reviews

The best I can do

I draw for fun.

That’s the long and short of it. I may get frustrated with it, I may make pieces with the express interest of selling them, but I come back to art time and again because I enjoy it. And these days, I draw almost exclusively for fun of the craft itself.

Lately, that means a lot of unfinished pictures. Admittedly, time and other priorities are a huge part of it, but mainly, I just don’t get taken with the sketches I do enough to see them through to completion. It’s a lot of work – to the tune of up to 20 hours on a single piece.

To an extent, it has always been this way. I have drawings I have yet to finish, and still really want to, that are ten years old, or older still. Life just gets in the way, and I never get around to coming back to it. At least, I haven’t yet – I still hold out hope that I will some day.

As a result, I rarely end up finishing a picture that is the best I can do. Even when I have a very important piece of art to do or one that I really want to make look good – or both – time or interest run out, and I just focus on getting it to a point that I can call it finished, even if I could make it better. I still might be very pleased with my work, and I certainly don’t go back to work on it later, but I take shortcuts or I accept something a little (artistically) messier for the sake of getting it done.

Currently, I am working on a drawing in which that is not the case. It was a fairly quick idea, not necessarily the picture I wanted to try so hard on. And admittedly, this picture is on a schedule that might run out on me. But I wrote last year about how I am pleased with my art, and this drawing especially so. I am trying some new things that so far are working out very well, and time and interest are both there for now.

The drawing is still early in its creation, despite having put 5-6 hours in already, as the lineart isn’t even done yet. I don’t feel like showing anything off yet, but I am planning a step by step post for after it is finished. It might be a while yet – the deadline is a while off still – and I apologize for that.

But of course, I’m only really doing this drawing for me.

On my journey to the Dark Side*

* Or the Light Side. They’re both fine choices.

I often find that when someone is a fan of scifi/fantasy books, there was someone in their life who led them to it. Maybe it was a parent, a teacher, or a friend. Someone wanted to share the stories that they loved and opened up a new world to a budding fan.

I didn’t have anyone like that. No one in my family was really into speculative literature, my friends didn’t quite hold my same interests in fiction, and I was far too shy to attempt speaking to a school librarian about it.

I wanted to read fantasy books. But back in the days (you kids get off my lawn) before Goodreads, book blogs, or even social media, and in a genre rife with huge, epic stories that are often poorly marked as such, I had no idea where to start. My nearest library was a half-hour hike over lots of steep hills, and the small fantasy selection just didn’t seem to have any titles that caught my eye.

I read a lot of original stories posted online by authors back in those days, but when it came to actual published books, my list was quite short. I did read some great books back then, like one by an author recommended by a friend I chatted with over IM (Someplace to be Flying by Charles de Lint), a random purchase from a bookstore with a cover and premise that intrigued me (Thief of Lives by Barb and J. C. Hendee), and a gift from my future husband the first time we met (Green Rider by Kristen Britain).

I credit a lot of my truly discovering fantasy books with a mailing list I joined nine years ago that provided me with free e-copies of selections from many currently popular authors. I still feel like I’m not necessarily well-read, but I have certainly read enough that I could introduce someone else to the genre.

That seems to be how I have come into a number of my interests – by discovering it for myself, and even resisting when trying to be shown it (maybe that’s why I had troubles in school). I had friends who listened to Jpop but it wasn’t until I heard Japanese arrangements of a soundtrack I loved that I began to accept listening to music in foreign languages (which I have loved for many years now). I had friends who read a lot of comic books, but I never even really read any until last year, when I subscribed to Marvel Unlimited and discovered favourite series on my own – and now we have a pull list at our local comic store.

And now, it’s happened with Star Wars.

I’m not the Star Wars fan in my family. Let me rephrase – I’m not the Star Wars fan in the family. I enjoyed the movies, of course – well, the original trilogy – but I’m not the one with giant tubs full of Star Wars novels, action figures, and art prints. I tried to read a particularly well-loved Star Wars novel once years ago, but I couldn’t get into it. (I couldn’t get into tie-in fiction for a long time, whether fanfiction or officially licensed novels.)

Last year, however, fostered a decidedly increased interest in the Star Wars universe. It started with X-Wing Miniatures – because hey, I’m always up for a good table top game. Then, I started watching Star Wars Rebels, because it’s now canon (whereas those tubs of novels in the basement no longer are).

It escalated from there. Curiosity drew me to Kanan: The Last Padawan, a comic book series about one of the characters from Rebels, which I immediately loved. I saw the trailers for The Force Awakens and grew truly excited about it.

And when it released… well, it wouldn’t have become the top-grossing film of all time if it had been another Phantom Menace.

This week, I have taken the step I never could before – the novels. And not only have I read two Star Wars novels this week, but I didn’t even like one of them very much (but I still got through it).

Now, I’m hooked. I want to read different eras, different characters, I want to know more of the lore and the history and politics that don’t get revealed in the movies, and I’m fascinated by the rich tapestry of comics, shows, movies, and books that are making up the new Expanded Universe. And it’s even kindling a new interest in Star Wars Legends, the old canon.

Maybe I resisted for a surprisingly long time, but now, I have truly discovered the Expanded Universe. It’s always fun discovering new things.

2015 art update

In short, I still haven’t done much of it. However, in my typical way, I have done a bit of dabbling, and at times perhaps I have been doing more drawing than much of the time over the past few years, even if it is just sketches. The beginning of the year, in particular, saw me picking up the sketchbook a little more frequently:

 I have also done some character designs on my tablet:

More recently, after having the materials for upwards of a couple years, I finally tried my hand at some proper wire wrapping:

And finally, earlier this year I upgraded to a proper DSLR camera, with which I am very pleased:

Bibliophiles and other locutions

As a book seller, I have spoken with many people who have told me about the sizes of their book collections. Little surprises me now, and personally, I can easily understand how books can take over a closet, a room, a basement, or even a storage locker. Books are delightful and memorable and avid readers can amass them quickly, particularly those who have been collecting a lot longer than I have.

Of course, I am partial to collections. There’s something immensely satisfying about the sight of perfectly even row of books arranged on a bookshelf. Or a cabinet of DVDs and Blu-Rays. Or a shadow box of figurines. Or–I am probably dating myself here–a rack of CDs. (Although admittedly, ours is in the basement and I almost never take any out, having ripped them all years ago.)

Shortly after moving in to our current home, I took an afternoon and went through our books. I arranged the books on our two kinds of bookshelves by format, genre, and then author, got rid of all the books I no longer wanted, and managed to fit what remained almost perfectly on our bookshelves. I really only keep them all strictly for love of the collection itself; much as I might have adored the books on those shelves, I simply don’t have the time to go back and reread them all, and most have only been read once. I just like having all those books I enjoyed lined up there, and even if I wanted to get rid of more, I would never be able to decide upon which ones to part with. And perhaps there is some paranoia that maybe someday I will want to read a particular one again and will be disappointed that it’s no longer there. These are the same reasons that I don’t like to re-sell the video games I have played and enjoyed, and probably will never play again. But I digress.

For a while after rearranging the shelves, I didn’t really buy any new books. I never have bought many books, as the cost and the sheer number of books that potentially interested me, never mind not knowing where to start with many epic fantasy/scifi series, made it too difficult to decide. I have also read enough mediocre or downright bad books that I have become very selective about my books, and usually want to read at least some of a book or at least an author’s work before investing in something. I also went through a period of reading mainly free ebooks I received through promotions or utilized what turned out to be a pretty impressive library within walking distance of home. On top of all this, at the time that I re-sorted my book collection, I simply didn’t have much time or energy to read, being busy with an infant.

Eventually, I began buying books again. Very slowly, as I am still quite selective about my books, and most of the books I have bought have still not been read yet. I still frequent my library and download a lot of ebooks, and between the two, I have little need to buy books. I still generally shy away from list price, unless it is the latest instalment in a series I am actively following. Generally, those books I have bought are clearance rack finds at my local chain bookstore or books from author friends that have particularly piqued my interest. Even the number of books I have bought over the past few years has gone up and down, as I pass along books I have read and am no longer interested in keeping.

But gradually, my collection has increased. And now, after picking up a couple new books at Gen Con, I am finding myself facing the problem that so many book lovers deal with at one point or another: not enough shelf space.

Changes

I finished a new drawing last night, my first in over six months:

It is a simple picture, in many respects, but this drawing is very important to me. Not because of the content, but because of the way it made me feel.

Because I enjoyed working on it. I enjoyed every step of the process – building up the sketch, designing the outfit, finding reference images for things like the hairstyle and anatomy, even learning to work around the limitations of the app I used, as I drew this from start to finish on my tablet. Intimidation reared its head and made it hard to get started at times, but I never had to force myself to work on it or felt discouraged that something wasn’t working and wanted to give up.

I don’t know why or how this changed, but this is a big deal for me, and it led to an even bigger revelation:

I feel good about my art.

I don’t care that it isn’t as good as the artists I follow. I don’t care that there are a lot of things I can’t or at least don’t know how to draw. I don’t care that after so many years I am still learning how to draw faces. I looked through my online gallery last night, both the drawings that kind of make me want to delete almost my entire gallery and the ones I still like, and it just made me want to draw more. For the first time in��at least ten years, flaws aren’t the only thing I see, and I’m revelling in the act of creating, itself.

Now if only I had more time to draw.

What am I?

I’ve written before about the many hobbies I dabble in, or have done before and would still like to do again (reading, drawing, sculpture, jewelry making, learning guitar, etc.). It was enough to inspire a fleeting wish that I could say, “this month I’m going to do nothing but read.” And yes, I have little doubt that I could focus on a different task for each month of this year.

Many of these hobbies have fallen by the wayside in the past few months, if not already in the past few years. Aside from accessories for my daughter’s Halloween costume, I haven’t touched my jewelry-making supplies in months. Likewise for the last console RPG I was playing, despite that I was almost at the end and spent at least half of 2014 working on it. Obviously, 2-dimensional art is still only a very occasional dabble, despite how important that remains to me. I know things will change when my daughter starts going to school next fall, but I am not raising my expectations too high about the difference that will make with my available time.

As for reading, while I would dearly love to get through the books on my to-read list and then some, not to mention the couple dozen samples and complete books I have downloaded on Kindle, my life is hardly without words. I read blog posts and webcomics on a daily basis, and I have been editing novel submissions. It’s not the same, of course, but it’s enough.

However, there is one hobby that stands out among all of these. One that holds more sway over me than any other, one that I just can’t go too long without doing, one that I miss if I try. One that defines me.

Writing.

Even after all these years, I’m still learning how important writing is to me. I’ve written here before about it, about how I feel unsure of my skill in just about every endeavour I have attempted but not with writing, about how my opinion changed from thinking about myself as an artist first and a writer second, and more.

But I still forget. I go without for a little while, maybe I spend some time focusing on a project in another medium, and I let writing slip to the back burner. At least, until my mind reminds me that I have to create, and if I don’t get back to work on the story I have been writing, I will spend my showers, mealtimes, or other quiet moments having imaginary arguments between fictional characters over the pros and cons of a completely made-up interstellar political system.

… I will neither confirm nor deny that this is the exact thing which inspired this post. The fact remains that I have to write. I can’t not write. Even if my family and my business take up most of my free time, even if I feel too burned out to want to do anything but veg when I do have time to do it, even if I’m struggling with a scene or am enamoured with some other form of expression or life just gets too busy, I have to find time to fit writing in somewhere.

Because I am a writer.

To Boldly Go

As a mother of a now 3-year-old daughter, I tend to watch a lot of movies aimed at young girls. And my daughter fits the trope perfectly – her favourite things are princesses, faeries, and My Little Pony. She more or less came into these interests on her own; I didn’t really let her watch movies or TV shows until this year, and when I let her sit in front of the TV, she has pretty strong opinions about what she wants to see. Yes, we might have been the ones to originally introduce her to these things and allow her to continue watching them, but I try to offer her a well-rounded selection to choose from. And I’ll admit it, I just don’t want to let her watch something I can’t stand.

Oh, sure, there are exceptions – she likes some gender-neutral things like Winnie the Pooh, she has seen and enjoyed Thomas the Tank Engine, she does have a particular interest in Disney’s Planes, and she loves watching me play Mario Kart – but primarily, she likes the girly things. In fact, when it comes to Mario Kart, she insists upon me playing a princess as driver.

I don’t think Disney princesses are bad role models. Nor do I want to try to mold her into liking the things I prefer; I would rather she decide on her own what she likes. (Yes, this means I do not believe that putting Star Wars or Firefly costumes on kids far too young to be watching those is “parenting done right.”) But after watching so many of these movies and shows targeted to young girls, I find myself yearning for some variety. Why can’t we have a simplistic, kid-friendly story with a happy ending that takes place in present day, or the future?

So the bug bit me. I want to write one. I want to write a middle grade or younger story about a space princess. Or something like that. I want the main character to be female, because there’s not enough of that out there and I want it to be someone my daughter can relate to, and I want her to be independent and the hero, but not at the expense of her femininity. I want little girls like my daughter to read/hear this story and think that girls can do anything.

But beyond that, I didn’t know where to start. I got stuck trying to think of the theme or message of the story. I don’t want it to be about the girl learning that she can do anything, because then the conflict would center around the assertion that she can’t, which is not the message I want to send. But then, what should the theme be? I tried looking to my daughter for inspiration, but – fortunately for her and unfortunately for the sake of a story – I just don’t see any problems in her that might help to be resolved through another medium. Maybe I’m just overthinking things, but as someone who tends toward dark endings, complicated conflicts, and villains that are more grey than black, a story like this is quite a leap.

Then, my daughter gave me an idea in another way. I was listening to music and she asked me what song was playing, as she tends to do. It was an arrangement of a track from the Metroid video games. I immediately saw this as an opportunity. I showed her one of my Metroid game cases and told her about Samus Aran, fearless and strong warrior for justice in space – and female.

And I was overthinking things, because that’s all I need for this story: a space heroine. I’ll just go to a new galaxy and let the girl save the day. The rest is just details.

It’s still going to be quite a challenge for me to write, especially if I want a story I can read to my daughter. But just as I believe there’s too much stagnancy in speculative fiction for adults, I think too many kids’ stories are the same, and the best way I can combat that is to write something new.

Do you ever want to destroy the world?

I love superhero movies. I love the excitement, the escapism, the larger-than-life-ness, the sheer drama of them. And I really love superhero movies in which rather than trying to bring a fictional world to life, they make it seem like it really happens in our world. To an extent, of course; I wouldn’t be a fan of superhero stories if I couldn’t suspend a little disbelief.

Another thing I like about superhero movies is that the stakes are always very high. Of course; that’s what makes it a superhero story. In a story like that, one can cause incalculable, irreparable, and frankly pretty improbable damage to civilization or the world itself. That’s what makes it so dramatic, especially if it happens in the very world we live in.

The stakes are always high in fiction. The conflict might not be – will the boy get the girl? – but the risk defines the story – she’s all he ever wanted throughout his high school years, even when she went out with that bullying jock. It’s not dramatic unless it has a big impact. But the scale of that impact varies enormously. Millions of lives could rest on the actions of the protagonists, or just the main character’s feelings.

I’ve never been very comfortable working on a grand scale. I suppose writing fantasy is a bit of a cop-out that way, since I am only affecting imaginary worlds. But even inside my own worlds, I generally prefer to avoid working with those in the most power – kings, lords, etc. The stakes are still high, often world-changing, but the characters who directly resolve the main conflict are generally people who have little or no other influence over the world.

I’m equally (or perhaps doubly) uncomfortable with impacting the real world. That’s why my novel Halcyon, which takes place on Earth, still occurs in an invented city. I don’t feel like I know enough about real places to set stories there, not even places I’ve lived for years. Perhaps if I was writing some kind of novelization of my own life, I might be able to, but the characters in my stories don’t live my life and therefore don’t necessarily or usually live or go to the same places.

This is the part where research should come in, but the fact is no amount of research will make me feel comfortable with writing things that happen on Earth. And trying to write stories that take place on Earth and involve people of power? Hold the phone.

But I read books that take place on Earth and I love how real they feel. They can change so much about the world, even change the course of history, but because it’s the place where we live it feels more believable. I’d like to try it sometime, but it’s going to take some working up to it.

In the meantime, I’ll stick with my magic and dragons and just watch superhero movies.