Deborah J. Ross's Blog, page 72

Kittens Watching Videos

Some days, we all just need a few kitten endorphins to get through the day. Our two hang out in my office. Freya, on the left, is 6 weeks younger than Sonja, on the right. They're the same weight, although Sonja is rangier. Sonja had a particularly rough start in life, so she may be slower in her growth. Poor sweetie was so thin when we got her, you could feel all her ribs and her spine. Now she's on her way to being a butterball. Both of them love watching the fishies in these videos.

Short Book Reviews: Mathematics Vs. Telepathy

Zero Sum Game, by S. L. Huang (Tor)
To say this novel grabbed me by the throat and refused to let go is putting it mildly. It’s as much a thriller as a science fictional tale. I absolutely adored that the heroine’s superpower is her mathematical ability, and how that ability allows her to use normal human physical attributes in an extraordinary way. 
The plot hits the ground running when Cas Russell takes a job that seems innocuous enough on the surface: rescuing a young woman who’s gotten in trouble with a drug-running gang. The client is the older sister, referred to Cas by the notoriously violent, psychopathic Rio, who uses his devout Catholic faith to guide his conscience. Oddly enough, he considers Cas a friend, although neither of them trusts the other. 
From there, things go pear-shaped in a hurry, since Rio never made the referral and Cas keeps stumbling upon references to a mysterious name, “Pithia.” Before long she’s battling a telepath capable of not only reading minds but changing them in ways that make it impossible for the victim to break free.
Verdict: a hell of a ride, juicy mathematics-geek neepery, twists and turns and ambiguities, with nary a stumble. A bit on the gory side for those sensitive to it.

Today's Moment of Art

Tiger Resting, c. 1830, Pierre Andrieu

Citadels of Darkover cover reveal!

Here's the cover for the forthcoming anthology (edited by me!), Citadels of Darkover. The design is by Dave Smeds. The Table of Contents is here. Author interviews and pre-ordering information will go up soon.

Lace and Blade 4 Author Interview: Adam Stemple

From lands distant or nearby, familiar or utterly strange, historical or imaginary, from ancient times to the Belle Époque comes a treasury of luscious, elegant, romantic fantasy. Come with us on a journey through time and across boundaries, inspired by the longings of the heart and the courage residing in even the meekest person.

The release date is Valentine's Day 2019, but you can pre-order it now:
Kindle: https://amzn.to/2PBzyj6
ePub: https://www.books2read.com/u/bwYJwP
Adam Stemple sent me a wonderful and complex Japanese fantasy, "The Ghost of Lady Rei," for "Lace and Blade 3" but because of a change in publisher (and name) I wasn't able to include it. When I began work on this present volume, #5, I wrote to him inquiring whether the story was still available. It was, and I'm thrilled to be able to present it to our readers.



Deborah J. Ross: Tell us a little about yourself.  How did you come to be a writer?Adam Stemple: Writing is the family business. My mother and my siblings are all writers, and most of my friends, as well. 
DJR: What inspired your story in Lace and Blade 5?AS: The characters in The Ghost of Lady Rei were existing characters from two stories I had written for the now defunct speculative and historical fiction magazine, Paradox. I had always wanted them to take a trip to Edo, and was just waiting for a reason for them to go. 
DJR: What authors have most influenced your writing? AS: I have co-written eight novels with my mother, Jane Yolen, so I have certainly been influenced a great deal by her. I also like to steal...er...borrow techniques from crime writers like Elmore Leonard and Lawrence Block. I try to learn something from everything I read. 
DJR: What’s the most memorable fan mail you’ve ever received?AS: My first solo novel, Singer of Souls, featured a main character who was a heroin junkie. I received a call from a young man who had read my novel while on a jobs program for recovering addicts and he said that my novel helped him beat his heroin addiction.
DJR: How does your writing process work?AS: Haphazardly.
DJR: What have you written recently? What lies ahead?AS: My latest project was Fly with Me, A Celebration of Birds through Pictures, Poems, and Stories for National Geographic that came out in October. It's a big, beautiful book written by myself, my mother, and both of my siblings. The Last Tsar's Dragons, a novella I wrote with my mother, Jane Yolen, comes out from Tachyon 6/19/19. And I have just sold a poem to Reckoning 3, a combo digital/print collection of creative writing on environmental justice.
DJR: What advice would you give an aspiring writer?AS: Join a writers group. Have a thick skin. Write, even when you don't want to. Have at least five pieces on submission at all times. Don't take rejections personally. Write some more. Get a copy of Elements of Style. Read it. Read it again. One more time. Yeah, now you've got it. Write a lot more. Don't be afraid to give up on a story, but never give up on yourself.
Adam Stemple (adamstemple.com) is a Minneapolis writer, musician, web designer, and poker player. He has written eight novels and one poker book. Ken'ichi and Master Shichiro appeared in two stories previous to this one in the now sadly defunct Paradox Magazine.https://images.macmillan.com/folio-as...

Very Short Book Reviews: John Scalzi's Whatever Blog Collection

Virtue Signaling and Other Heresies: Selected Writings from Whatever 2013-2018, by John Scalzi (Subterranean)
John Scalzi is as noted for his opinionated blog as for his excellent science fiction. Fans will find much to delight in this collection of Scalzi’s thoughtful, often provocative commentary on life, politics, writing, fandom, and more. The entries suffer from the predictable limitations of their original format. That is, there’s a repetition of tone and theme that make reading them in large chunks less than exciting. This is not to say that Scalzi’s collection lacks content or lively prose. Both abound, but as in life, one person’s viewpoint and way of expressing it are consistent. There’s a clear effort to vary more serious topics with humorous ones. For Scalzi fans, this book should be a feast of eloquent, beautifully articulated blog posts, even if they must necessarily be taken in small bites.

Today's Moment of Art

Landscape at Chailly (1865), Frédéric Bazille (1841-1870)

Lace and Blade 5 Author Interview: Steven Harper

From lands distant or nearby, familiar or utterly strange, historical or imaginary, from ancient times to the Belle Époque comes a treasury of luscious, elegant, romantic fantasy. Come with us on a journey through time and across boundaries, inspired by the longings of the heart and the courage residing in even the meekest person.

The release date is Valentine's Day 2019, but you can pre-order it now:
Kindle: https://amzn.to/2PBzyj6
ePub: https://www.books2read.com/u/bwYJwP

In the marvelous serendipity of anthologies, Lace and Blade features not one but two love stories with djinni (or jinni, or djinn, depending on which dictionary one consults). One is "Fire Season" by Anne Leonard. The second, quite different, is Steven Harper's "The Bottle."



Deborah J. Ross: Tell us a little about yourself.  How did you come to be a writer?Steven Harper: I've been writing since I learned my letters. There were few fantasy authors in those days, and when you can read a book in a couple hours, you run out right quick.  And I realized no one seemed to be writing the kind of stories I really wanted to read.  So I started writing my own.

DJR: What inspired your story in Lace and Blade 5?
SH: An old folk tale from the Middle East.  A man accepts a bargain with a djinn, who will grant him one wish every day, but if he ever fails to make a wish, or if he repeats a wish, the djinn will kill him.  At first, this seems like a good deal.  But after a few months, the man sees the curse.  I started to write my own take on the story, and eventually realized I was writing about slavery vs. free will.

DJR: How does your writing process work?
SH: I write almost daily, usually between getting home from my teaching job and making supper.  My first drafts tend to go slowly because I edit quite a lot as a go.  This means my first draft takes a long time to do, but it also means the rewrites go very fast.
DJR: What have you written recently? What lies ahead?
SH: I recently sold a YA novel to Dreamspinner Press.  The title hasn't been settled yet, but it's about a teenaged boy who joins a summer theater program to keep his parole officer happy and falls in love with the male lead in the show.

DJR: What advice would you give an aspiring writer?
SH: Write it, finish it, send it out, repeat.

DJR: Any thoughts on the Lace and Blade series or this being its final volume?
SH: I just discovered the series, and now it's ending!  I need my special writers bottle of whisky.

 Steven Harper is the pen name for Steven Piziks, a name no one can reliably spell or pronounce.  He sold his first short story way back in 1990, and his keyboard has been clattering ever since.  So far, he's written fifty-some stories and twenty-some novels, including The Silent Empire series and The Clockwork Empire steampunk series.  He's also written movie novelizations and books based on Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and The Blacklist. Steven also teaches English in southeast Michigan, where he lives with his husband and son.  When not writing, he plays the folk harp, tries to stick to weight-lifting, and spends more time on-line than is probably good for him.  
Visit his web page at http://www.stevenpiziks.com

Short Book Reviews: Captive of the Norse Goblins

White Stag, by Kara Barbieri (St. Martin’s)

I was done with Western European pseudo-Celtic fantasy a long time ago, so I welcomed this Norse-based setting. Instead of dangerous/intoxicating elves/fae/fairies, we have goblins. These are not the hunched-over, hook-nosed second-class orcs from Middle Earth or fairy tales; these guys are seriously bad news. Their outer forms can be just as supernally beautiful as those of Lothlorien elves but the goblins are as blood-thirsty and contentious as it comes, quickly transforming into their SuperPredator forms. In short, they’re extremely not-nice characters, they live in the Permafrost where time and physics operate differently, and every once in a while, they slaughter their king, take off after the white stag that is the king’s spiritual guide, kill it on the border with the human world, and the whole murderous shebang cycles through again.
Enter human heroine Janneke, raised in a village near the Permafrost border, trained from childhood as a hunter and tracker (and preferring the masculine form of her name rather than the feminine Janneka). Enslaved by the goblins who burned her village, she’s been subjected to a century of brutality. When, finally, she’s discarded as an insulting gift to her master’s nephew, she’s near death and not about to trust any goblin. At all. Ever.
All of this is prelude to a love story.
So how do you recover from a century of near-fatal abuse? Volumes and volumes have been written about recovery from sexual assault, but that is not the focus of this story. It’s about opening your heart after a very long time of surviving the most unspeakable and constant physical abuse in an environment where there is no safety. Anywhere.
The core of that journey is the shift from incredible-toughness-survival-at-all-costs to recognizing the humanity in another person (even if that person isn’t, strictly speaking, human). At first, Soren – Janneke’s new goblin-master – seems to her no different from her former abuser or any of the other vicious denizens of the Permafrost. Gradually, however, she begins to see him as an individual, with his smirks and his oddnesses. From there comes the recognition that he is capable of a range of emotions, not just rage. And that he consistently and quietly takes actions to make her life more bearable.
Love, as opposed to infatuation, grows by small steps. We all of us learn trust as we take tiny risks that pay off in mutual respect. Intimacy follows the hundreds of daily kindnesses that teach us we are not only cherished, we are safe with our partner. Even though White Stag is a fantasy, the lover is a goblin, and magic warps every aspect of Janneke’s life, the same principles hold true. Barbieri  hasn’t taken the easy way out with instant falling into one another’s arms and all is rainbows and sunsets. The length of the book gives time and scope for the slow unfolding of hearts, complete with missteps and spats and unbeatable action.
Verdict: superior world-building, difficult emotional issues presented with clarity and unflinching courage, skillfully managed tension, and an emotionally resonant ending. Highly recommended. Trigger warning for violence, rape, cruelty.

Today's Moment of Art

Italian Landscape with Travelers, 1645/50, Jan Both