Deborah J. Ross's Blog, page 61

New on Curious Fictions: Totem Night (Free Short Story)

This week's treat for you is a free short story in Curious Fictions. While you're there, I hope you'll subscribe or check out my other posted work.

When the young wizard journeys into the mountains to find her totem spirit, she little dreams of the twisted fate that would exchange her own soul with that of the winged unicorn.Totem NightThe night was darker than she expected. Darker and colder. Frostmist haloed the stars. As she pulled her sheepswool ruach’ tight around her shoulders, Xiera wished, not for the first time, that she’d paid as much attention to her weaving as to her wizardry.She had traveled, alone and unarmed, from Choa’tlexa at the edge of the Harvest Plains and into the barren mountains of Hua’tha’s Curse. At the fifth setting of Choa’tl’s Eye, she came across the circle of fallen stones. When she touched one, a spark crackled, stinging her hand. Her fingertips came away, covered in acrid dust. She sat cross-legged in the center of the circle and composed herself.It will come, she reminded herself. My totem will come to me. Everything so far had been exactly as her teachers foretold, the journey to Hua’tha’s Curse, the moonless night, this place of power.Moments crept by, bleeding into one another. The earth shivered, so light a ripple that she might not have noticed if she hadn’t been sitting so still. It was the third tremor that hour, each one raising it own false hope.A speck of silver winked along the western ridge. Heartbeats followed one another. The mote of light elongated into a circle, quickly followed by the second moonlet. “The Kiss of the Twins,” a man’s voice spoke from the night, velvet-smooth. Darkness masked his face, as coppery as her own. She’d never known a life without him, from her earliest memories of following, playing and fighting with him and his brothers, sleeping on the mounded carpets of the children’s tent, curled together like puppies.Only later, as her wizardry stirred and her body changed, so did Xiera’s feelings for him, and his for her. She wept when the elders sent her to Choa’tlexa with its towers, stepped pyramidal temples and markets, as priests, traders, artisans and wizards bustled along the narrow stone streets. She wept again when Tl’al followed her three years later. His beauty burned as sharp as the sun, as did the answering fire within her. That was the last time she had wept, for wizardry kills tears.

Short Book Reviews: The God of Broken Things

God of Broken Things, by Cameron Johnston (Angry Robot)

One of the challenges of writing a sequel is the balance between giving the new reader all the necessary background, developing the characters well enough, and yet not boring readers who are already familiar with the cast and setting. I picked up God of Broken Things unaware that it was a sequel to Traitor God. For most of the book, however, I could not decide if God of Broken Things was indeed a sequel (to a book I knew immediately I wanted to run out and read) or a stand-alone with a rich and brilliantly handled back story.
The world of this story, and in particular the city-state of Setharis, are still reeling after the events in the previous book, which include all sort of monstrous, god-like things running amok and smashing things in horrific fashion.Our reluctant hero, Edrin Walker, a “tyrant” magus who can read thoughts and impose his will on others, among other mental talents, remains at odds with the magical authorities and himself. Behind all this havoc are the barbaric Skallgrim (skull-grim?), many of whom are infested with alien Scarrabus mind-parasites. Now the Skallgrim and their mind-worms (or insects) are back again, bent on battering the world into ruins, and if humanity survives at all, it will be as an inferior, enslaved race. Much as the Setharis magus powers-that-be distrust Edrin’s mental powers, he’s their best hope, so they send him to hold the invading army at bay or at least slow it down until their allies can arrive. Edrin gathers together a personal coterie of arsonists and poisoners, plus a mind-slave or two, a sword that’s really a bloodthirsty demon, an old almost-lover, and a vicious pony, along with a handful of other magi of various sorts. And things go wrong. And more wrong. And then seriously wrong, with one reversal or twist leading to the next, even more awful crisis. And then this-can’t-possibly-get-worse-but-it-does wrong.
One peculiarity in this work is the discrepancy in language and tension level between external battle scenes and the internal struggles of Edrin Walker. The latter are taut and emotionally vivid, but the battle scenes often have a strange, flat quality. For one thing, these scenes are many and go on for a long time. More significantly, the sentences are long and complex, shifting the reading experience toward the cerebral. Here’s an example of how wordiness and an overlong sentence dilutes dramatic tension:

Axes and spears bounced off her armour and the magic-reinforced skin beneath, earning their wielders an early grave as elbows, fists and feet staved in chests and shattered bones even if they managed to avoid her hammer.

This is a long, complex tale with a cast of thousands and a ton of battle scenes. Also torture, also other sorts of combat. But overall it’s very well done and immensely entertaining. God of Broken Things definitely marks Cameron Johnston as an author to watch for.
As an aside, the publisher, Angry Robot, is putting out some very interesting books these days. I’d keep an eye on them, too.
The usual disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book, but no one bribed me to praise it. Although chocolates and fine imported tea are always welcome.

Today's Moment of Art

Landscape with Lake - 1894 | Albert Milton Drinkwate

Guest Interview: Heather Albano, Author of the Keeping Time Trilogy

Welcome Heather Albano, author of the wonderful steampunk time-travel novel, Timepiece, and its sequels. I reviewed it here. She's graciously agreed to give us a peek behind the scenes.

What inspired your novel?

(I love telling this story.) It started when afriend of mine told me about a dream she’d had, in which a package arrived in the mail for her then-infant son. Inside the package addressed to him was a package addressed to me (how odd, she thought) and inside that was a velvet bag containing a pocket watch. Opening the pocket watch, my friend discovered the period casing contained a futuristic-looking screen cycling through images of different historical times and places. “I think I had your dream, Heather.”

I tried to write a story about her son and me and the pocket watch, including a reason for the nested packages, but I couldn’t get it to gel. A pocket watch seemed to belong to an older era anyway…so maybe this wanted to be a Victorian time travel story. Maybe steampunk—huge mechanical monsters stomping down a gaslit street? Yeah. Stomping after what? What would mechanical Victorian monsters hunt? Something natural run amuck, of course. The Victorians would totally build monstrous scientific artificial things to constrain monstrous natural things.

Okay, so where did the run-amuck natural things come from? And when? It would have to be long enough before the Victorian era for the organic monsters to become a problem, for a solution to be generated, and for the solution to become its own problem. Seventy to eighty years, say? The “Victorian era” spanned a long time, of course, but I meant the Sherlock Holmes / Jack the Ripper / Dracula / H.G. Wells part of it—so call it 1880 to 1895. What was going on in England seventy to eighty years before, say, 1885?

Five seconds later, I was scrambling for Wikipedia to look up the dates of the Battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo. Five seconds after that, I knew exactly what the story was about.



What was your favorite part of writing the Keeping Time trilogy?

My favorite type of reading experience is the one in which I suddenly realize the story I thought I was reading is not the story I am actually reading—the moment when the addition of a perspective or a backstory changes the context entirely. So it’s not entirely true that I wrote the first two books just so I could rewrite the scenes from a different character’s perspective in the third…but it was my favorite part of writing the third. Other people were in the middle of their lives when Elizabeth’s exuberant bildungsroman intersected with them, after all, and their stories have a different shape than hers…


What’s the most memorable fan mail you’ve ever received?

No question, it was the piece of original music composed by Vikki Ford, entitled “Constructs In Fog.” She sent it to me out of the clear blue sky when the first electronic edition of Timepiece was published, and when I set up the Kickstarter to fund the paper versions, Vikki kindly allowed me to use the composition in the project video.



What advice would you give an aspiring writer?

The same advice I give to aspiring game designers: Just make games.

Just write. Write now. Don’t wait to get your degree. Don’t wait for more experience. Don’t try to align with market trends. Don’t wait for permission. You don’t need anyone’s permission.

Write the stories you want to write. The first several will suck; this is okay. Write them anyway. The next several will suck less.

I think it’s very common for those of us who want to create art professionally to hamstring ourselves by listening to all the contradictory advice given by all the experts and all the classes until we are paralyzed by it. By all means take classes. Join crit groups. Read online forums. But don’t wait until you’ve absorbed all the wisdom to start creating your own stuff. You’ll never absorb all of it anyway. Write your stuff while in the process of absorbing. That’s how you generate your own wisdom.

And to the extent possible, draw on your real-world experiences. I don’t mean “write what you know,” exactly, because I’ve always disliked that phrasing, but use what you know. At one point while Timepiece was underway I visited a Civil War re-enactment at which real cannon were used, and found to my surprise that the explosions resonated in my sternum. Which is why, in the first line of Timepiece, John Freemantle feels every burst from the cannon as a jolt through his breastbone.



What have you written recently? What lies ahead?

Well, I’ve got the first chapter of a fourth book in the Keeping Time universe (this one focused on different characters, and exploring the fascinating historical and literary personas of the Marquess of Montrose ). I also have ideas for a novel about a city that changes its shape in response to the desires of the ruling family (inspired by a visit to Andalucía, where the layered architecture reflects the values and aesthetics of the culture currently in power, as the holder of that position swapped between the European Spanish and the Moors) and a near future SF novel about augmented reality (inspired by work I’m currently doing in the augmented reality field).

At the moment, though, most of my creative energy is going toward making games. If you enjoyed my traditional fiction, you may also enjoy my interactive fiction. If you liked the steampunk part of Timepiece (and especially if you enjoyed that but didn’t care for the time travel J ), you might want to check out A Study In Steampunk, a Sherlock-Holmes-inspired steampunk interactive novel published by Choice of Games.



Heather Albano divides her time between writing traditional fiction and creating interactive fiction, and finds the line between the two growing fuzzier all the time.

On the game design side, she has co-authored six titles released by Choice of Games, including the award-winning Choice of Broadsides and Choice of Zombies. She worked on the critically-acclaimed interactive radio dramas
On the traditional fiction side, she is the author of the novel Timepiece (a steampunk time travel adventure about a girl, a pocket watch, Frankenstein’s monster, the Battle of Waterloo, and giant clockwork robots taking over London), and its sequel Timekeeper and Timebound. Her short fiction has appeared in Electric Velocipede, Aoife’s Kiss, the More Scary Kisses anthology from Ticonderoga Publications, and others.

She is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the Writers Guild of America, the Indie Game Developers Association, Women in Games International, Women in Games Boston, Broad Universe, and the Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop.


https://i2.wp.com/stillpointdigital.c...

Short Book Reviews: Ekaterin Vorkosigan Solves a Radioactive Mystery

What a pleasure it is to return to the adventures of Miles Vorkosigan, or rather those featuring his resourceful and compassionate wife, Ekaterin. In The Flowers of Vashnoi, Miles has inherited a tract of land, the Vashnoi exclusion zone, that was once a rich agricultural area, a veritable garden. Now, generations after the Cetagandan war, it’s still radioactively contaminated and uninhabitable. Ekaterin has gone there to check on the clean-up progress. One of the methods used is a bug that consumes and concentrates contaminated matter so that it can be collected and removed from the site. But, as Ekaterin discovers during her tour of the facilities, a significant number of “radbugs” have gone missing. And there’s a mysterious, pale figure flitting through the forest like a wood elf.

This mini-adventure is paced just right, contained within the mystery plot structure yet evoking the larger universe of the Vorkosigan novels. It’s lovely to spend more time with Ekaterin, who tries to take a lesson in leadership from Miles now and again but falls back on her own innate capacity for insight and her scientific curiosity.
Bottom line: just delightful.
The usual disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book, but no one bribed me to praise it. Although chocolates and fine imported tea are always welcome.

Today's Moment of Art

The Coast of Labrador, 1866 | William Bradford

Recipe: Vegan Sesame Noodles

This is so good, my omnivorous family loves it! It's also a very flexible recipe, so I will substitute whatever veggies I have on hand (like green beans or zucchini). Plus it doesn't result in a ton of pans to wash. Plus did I mention how yummy it is?


Sesame Noodles (serves 4)
4 oz uncooked spaghetti (I use brown rice, but any kind is fine)4 c. bean sprouts2 c. thinly sliced snow peas2 T toasted sesame oil¼ c. peanut butter2 T soy sauce1 T vinegar1 T brown sugar1 green onion, minced1 T finely minced ginger (or ½ tsp dry)1 clove finely minced garlic1 c. grated carrot
Cook the spaghetti according to the instructions. Just before done, throw in the bean sprouts and snow peas. Cook for 30 seconds, then drain everything well. Return the pasta, sprouts, and snow peas to the pot and toss with sesame oil. In a large bowl, whisk the peanut butter, soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, scallion, ginger, garlic with 2 T (or more!) water. It should be thick enough to coat the noodles, but liquid enough to be easy to toss.Toss the spaghetti, sprouts, snow peas, and carrots with the peanut butter mixture.

Short Book Reviews: Welcome to the Night Vigil

Sons of Darkness (A Night Vigil Novel), by Gail Z. Martin (SOL)
I met Gail Z. Martin through her #HoldOnToTheLight campaign and was curious to see what kind of fiction she writes (there’s a lot of it, which is a good thing because she’s very good!) I didn’t know that Sons of Darkness is tied into several of her other series, but no prior experience was necessary to enjoy this story.
Martin is highly experienced in her genre and handles pacing, tension, character development, and a host of new twists on old horror themes with deceptive ease that makes for a smooth, fast-paced reading experience.
The book revolves around two men who are both mirrors of one another and distinct individuals. Travis Dominick, ex-priest, psychic medium, and former member of a secret Vatican order of demon hunters, encounters Brent Lawson, vet, ex-cop, ex-FBI agent, former member of a supernatural-black-ops, and surviving twin whose ghost brother hangs around, trying to make contact. Travis’s first thought about Brent as he rescues him from a psi-vampire is: There’s a newbie out there who thinks he’s Van Helsing.
Soon, however, the two overcome their animosity to work together as supernatural invasions mount and a pattern emerges:  every fifty years, a hell gate opens and increasingly terrible disasters feed the spirit dwelling there, climaxing in a horrific blood bath.
One of the challenges of writing a stand-alone book within a series, or linked to other series, is the balance between giving the new reader all the necessary background, developing the characters well enough, and yet not boring readers who are already familiar with the cast and setting. Martin does a fine job here, and although not every secondary character came fully alive for me, I always knew enough about them each time they were mentioned so as to not be confused. As I mentioned earlier, the handling of exposition, action, and pacing was top-notch, except for a couple of minor bobbles late in the book when a small but essential piece of action happened (unnecessarily, I thought) off-stage, but these flaws were minor compared to the overall pleasure of the story.
Now that I’m hooked on Travis, Brent, and the crew, I’ll be looking to follow their previous and future adventures with anticipation.
The usual disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book, but no one bribed me to say anything in particular about it, one way or the other.

Today's Moment of Art

A Sunny Winter’s Day | Walter Moras

A Prayer Against Detaining Children​

A Prayer Against Detaining Children​by Alden Solovy
God of the captive,
God of the imprisoned and detained,
The voice of heartbreak echoes across the land,
Children rejected at our sunset gates,
The Mother of Exiles weeps for the innocent,
Their journey to Liberty bringing detention, deprivation and death.
Has compassion fled our borders?
Has the lamp at our door been extinguished?
Has Justice abandoned her post?Source of comfort and hope,
You call upon us to stand in the name of the children,
To witness against mistreatment and neglect,
To fight a government that separates parents from minors
At the border of our nation,
Flaunting power,
Ignoring decency and law,
Allowing the innocent to die.Bless those who dedicate their lives to human rescue.
Grant them the fortitude to battle in the name
Of the unknown, the unseen,
Those who cannot be forgotten.
May the work of their hands never falter,
Nor despair deter them from their holy calling.Bless those in human bondage with hope and courage.
Grant them the strength and the fortitude
To face the indignities and privation forced upon them.
Hasten their release.
Grant them lives of health and prosperity,
Joy and peace.Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the Universe, who releases the captive.
Baruch ata Adonai Eloheynu melech ha-olam, matir asurim.
From the blog ReformJudaism.org