Ken Lizzi's Blog, page 71

The New Year’s Post

Last week a Christmas web log post, this week a New Year’s post. I’m sensing a holiday theme running through these scribblings of mine. None of this sort of consistency for me. I hereby declare a halt to holidays for the immediate future so I can write about other subjects.

So let it be written, so let it be done.

Yesterday MBW, the HA, and I stripped the tree of ornamentation, leaving a drying pine husk in the living room. Today I took it outside and dismembered it with a saw, then stuffed the limbs and sections of the trunk in the yard debris bin. I felt like a criminal in an unproduced episode of CSI: Arbor Day.

We didn’t make it to midnight. That just isn’t in the cards when one has a three-year old who wakes early. Unless one is a masochist, which I am not. Nonetheless, we celebrated the passing of the old year and incipient arrival of the new with a bottle of prosecco.

So, farewell 2016. Hello 2017. Traditionally this demands the making of resolutions. I’m not going to do it. I’m pretty comfortable right now, happy with work and life. But, as too much comfort can lead to stagnation, I suppose I should at least develop some aspirations. Thus for 2017:

At least one more novel published
Complete another (at least a first draft)
Outline yet one more
Get a concrete slab poured so I can set up the grill
Brew beer
Travel someplace new

 

There. To what more can man possible aspire?

Happy New Year, readers.

The Christmas Post

Merry Christmas, Grinches and Grinchettes. We’ve orbited the great ball of fire once more and the fat man in red pajamas has again trespassed upon our property to dispense gift-wrapped gratuities. I hope your stocking offered something other than coal.

No travel horrors, extended family disputes, or entertainment anxiety here. We kept it low-key at Meduseld, limiting the festivities to the nuclear family of your humble web logger, My Beautiful Wife, and the Heir Apparent. For our first Christmas in the new house we wanted a certain intimacy. Of course we cooked enough for a murder of relatives (is it a ‘murder of relatives’ or a ‘suffocation of relatives?’ I’m never sure.) But leftovers will taste just as yuletidelicious.

The highlight for me is always the opening of the cards. Because that’s how the bookstore gift certificates are delivered. There’s something about the anticipation of strolling into Barnes & Noble, gift cards in hand, with no preconceived idea of what books to purchase. Utter freedom (or it would be if B&N carried the selection of, say, Powell’s. But hey, don’t look a gift card in the mouth, right?)

So, I hope the Spirit of Christmas achieved for you whatever the Spirit of Christmas is intended to accomplish in your philosophy. As for me, I think I’ll get some wine mulling and work on realizing my own Christmas spirit. Ho ho ho.

Bits and Pieces, Odds and Ends, This and That

Perihelion Science-Fiction magazine published a bit of flash fiction I was commissioned to write for an article on The End of the World. (Read that last phrase in a pretentious film trailer voice, with a dramatic pause between the second and third word.) It’s a brief read, a literary hors d’oeuvres. Here it is, if you want a snack.

I know I’ve already mentioned that I have a short story in Mama Tried. It is a straight up crime piece, no rocket ships or wizards. I’m rather proud of it, though I suppose I’d prefer the title had been spelled correctly. It’s Copperhead Road, not Cooperhead Road. Well, no use crying over spilled beer. A single, anguished tear ought to do. The reason I bring it up is that I received my author copy. So I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the stories. And seeing if their titles are spelled properly.

I’m over two-thirds of the way through Bernard Cornwell’s latest, The Flame Bearer. I’ll probably finish it today. Even strapped for time to read, I still power through Cornwell’s stuff like a chainsaw through pudding. He writes utterly compelling drama. It is familiar territory. I have the Cornwell beats down by heart, and I know how it is going to end. But it doesn’t matter, I’m still swept along by this relentless tide of action.

So, enough of this web log post. I’ve got a book to finish.

Andrew Offutt, Gary Gygax’s Guiding Genius?

I think, as far as reading sensibilities went, Gary Gygax shared the most with Andrew J. Offutt out of all the Appendix N authors. They were contemporaries and from the available evidence enjoyed similar tastes in fiction. Andrew Offutt was a prolific writer and editor. (And an interesting fellow, as one can discover from reading his son Christopher’s memoir. But such biographical details are beyond the scope of this web log.)

Andrew Offutt wrote, among other things, Howardesque pastiches, including a series of books featuring REH’s character Cormac mac Art. Many readers might be most familiar with Offutt from Shadowspawn, the cocksure thief he created for the Thieves’ World shared world series. But Appendix N lists only (and quite specifically) Swords Against Darkness III.

Why only volume III? (Note that volume III doesn’t even have an Andrew Offutt story in it, circumstantial evidence of a strong sympatico between Offutt and Gygax, a ‘brother from another mother’ quality, though I don’t know if the two ever met.) I had only a copy of volume I until recently. There isn’t, in my opinion, an increase in the quality of the stories. In fact, for my money, volume I contains a higher proportion of superior stories, with Poul Anderson’s The Tale of Hauk, David Drake’s Dragon’s Teeth, and Ramsey Campbell’s The Sustenance of Hoak (no relation to Hauk) as standouts in a strong lineup. Volume III offers some excellent contributions, with a strong run starting with Drake’s The Mantichore and carrying on through most of the rest of the collection, with Manly Wade Wellman’s The Guest of Dzinganji a personal favorite. (I wonder if volume III represents an epochal mark of sorts, the point at which Swords and Sorcery* was supplanted by the incoming wave of Tolkien clones.)

My theory as to why Gygax selected only volume III is based on chronology. The copyright date in volume III is 1978. Appendix N of the Dungeon Master’s Guide is dated 1979. My speculation is that volume III is included because that’s what Gygax was reading as he penned the DMG. Maybe the book was sitting on his desk as he wrote. Perhaps he even referred to Poul Anderson’s essay On Thud and Blunder at the end of the book as he wrote his advice on building a campaign world. While I was reading volume III I couldn’t help but wonder if some aspect of the story at my fingers directly and immediately influenced the new edition of the D&D rules.

So, want to get a sense of the spirit imbuing the game of D&D? Don’t have the time to read Leiber, Moorcock, and Anderson? Well, Andrew Offutt’s anthology Swords Against Darkness III is the shortcut you’re looking for.

*I prefer ‘Swords and Sorcery’ to ‘heroic fantasy’ — or hf — which is the term Offutt pushes in his editorial remarks. Sheer semantics, I suppose, but I don’t consider the prototypical Swords and Sorcery protagonist to be particularly heroic. That isn’t a slight, just an observation.

First Draft Contemplation and Commiseration

The way I figure it, I’m three-quarters through the first draft of Boss. If I can press on at the current rate, I should finish around March.

How do I feel about that? Glad to be on the downhill slope. I can’t actually see the finish line yet, but I know it’s approaching. On the other hand, I’m beset with the usual anxieties, self-doubt, and hyper-critical responses to a first draft. Is there enough conflict? Does it lack description? Is there sufficient characterization? Is it rife with cliché-ridden, lazy writing? Or is there instead too much experimental, self-indulgent phrasing? I alternate between thinking it is absolute shit and that it is actually pretty good for a first draft.

The nature of a first draft is to be a mess. It is an embarrassing hodgepodge of spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, plot-holes, inconsistent characters, misidentification of characters, contradictory positioning, etc. But that’s all right. The important thing is to get all the ingredients assembled. The second draft (and the third, and maybe the fourth, fifth, even sixth) will put it all to right.

If it is at all salvageable.

Sigh. The self-doubt will pass. Right now I can agonize over a remembered failure to properly set something up. But when Second Draft Ken sits down to read through the manuscript, preparatory to commencing the second draft, he’ll probably find out that First Draft Ken had already considered the problem and dealt with it. Maybe in a cursory fashion, but with enough specificity to allow Second Draft Ken to sort it.

At least I hope so. Maybe I’ll have a beer.

The Thanksgiving Post, 2016 Edition

The year has been eventful and engaging for me. Selling the condo and buying a new house proved a lengthy, multi-step process. (That isn’t a complaint. This isn’t a complaining web log post, it is a thankful one.) The result was worth the effort. The new house faces a park where the Heir Apparent can assault the play structures with the rest of the army of neighborhood children. This view is two minutes away

And this view about forty minutes away

My novels continue to sell. The volume has decreased, as only to be expected. But the dribs and drabs still add up to royalties. Thank you, readers. I continue to write. I make gradual progress on home improvements. Professionally I am stable and able to support myself, My Beautiful Wife, and the HA. MBW continues to expand her business. We are all in good health. Ever since the move, the cat has quit vomiting.

This all smacks of platitude and the commonplace. So what? I feel no embarrassment at being thankful for the opportunity to take care of my family. If I can continue doing so, while producing the occasional bit of scribbling you deem worth reading, then I will remain thankful.

A bit of unsolicited advice that you’re free to ignore: Look after yourself, look after your family. Assuming you can do that, be thankful.

Orycon 2016

And that wraps up another Orycon. Technically, as I write these words, the con is still ongoing in the sleepy manner of a con winding down on a Sunday. But it is over for me. I finished my last panel and drove home to help host the joint birthday party for My Beautiful Wife and the Heir Apparent. (Happy birthday, girls!) Before the guests arrive I’m going to write down some impressions of the convention.

The layout of the downtown Portland Marriott is not ideal for a science fiction convention. The hotel is not spacious and what space it possesses is oriented vertically. Nor is it equipped with an overabundance of elevators. Now, I don’t mind climbing stairs and generally will do so even if an elevator is convenient to hand and the car immediately available. But science fiction conventions do comprise in large part individuals for whom stairs represent a challenge.

The downtown location does, however, allow access to an excellent selection of restaurants. Sorry, bank account, I got hungry.

Placing the author autograph tables below a staircase in a little frequented subfloor is not conducive to selling books. Just saying.

Thanks to all those who attended the panels I sat on. And to those who showed up for my reading; I hope you enjoyed it half as much as I did.

I picked up an Andrew Offutt paperback, which should provide a more than generous hint as to the next author up on my Appendix N set of web log posts. Another of the Cormac Mac Art books, so I’m expecting as much pulp fun as the last one I read.

And now, time to put the finishing touches on the decorations.

Dreams and the Perilous Realm

At what point during parenthood do you begin getting a full night’s sleep again. I’m nearly at the three-year mark and I’m still not there. I’m tired. I mention this because I was considering today’s post with my head on my wife’s shoulder. She asked if was sleeping, or thinking, or dreaming. I asked if I could do all three. Because, as I just alluded to, I’m tired. But that exchange brought to mind a paper I’d written during college, back in the antediluvian days of the late 1980s-early 1990s for a class on “The Lord of the Rings.” Yes, I received university credit for re-reading the trilogy. I’m not ashamed. The point is, I wrote about dreams, and the perilous realm, and seeing beyond the veil within the context of LOTR. So, I figure it is appropriate for a post on this here web log of mine.

What do you think? Does my undergrad prose hold up? Or is it sophomoric rambling from a junior (or senior, I can’t remember) who ought to have known better by that point?

Commodore 64 and dot matrix printer for the win!

Library Progress Report

I have yet to decide what to call this room. Library? Den? Study? Office? What best suits it? I don’t know. At this point it remains a work in progress. Though I have made progress. Check it out.

My wife and I refinished this desk. (She finds the process of sanding, staining, and varnishing a relaxing experience. Who am I to deny it her?) $25 from a thrift store. The desk still requires a chair. What I’ve placed there is a make-do until I can afford the chair I have in mind. The mostly empty book case is temporary. $25 on Craigslist. (Actually, $22. The seller could not make change for a $20 and accepted the lesser amount.) I hope to replace it with a better piece at some point.

Some gaps in the decorating remain. I’ve some knives I’d like to display. And I’ll need to buy some sort of sleeper-sofa. I hope room remains for a side table or chess table. My fancy pants chess set rests in a box in the garage. It must be freed!

So, it’s coming along. Time and money will see it complete.

Appendix N and the Witchy World of Andre Norton

Well, as a cover it certainly is a…cover.

I come at last to Andre Norton, long a gap in my Appendix N reading. While she has always floated within my awareness as a reader, I remained unfamiliar with her works. I did pick up Quag Keep a few years back. My distaste for gaming fiction remains, but I think I can give Quag Keep a pass as it is evident that Andre Norton had only the most cursory knowledge of D&D and made little effort to stick within any established rules. The book is moderately entertaining if you’re not expecting much. That’s about all I can say for it. And I have read her story The Toads of Grimmerdale a couple of times and consider it an atmospheric delight. Recommended.

But Andre Norton is primarily known for her Witch World novels and those had eluded me. Oh, I knew of them. I recall picking some up many times from the library shelves, considering them, and replacing them. When I was in sixth grade, after school I would walk a couple of miles to the library to wait for my mother to pick me up at around six in the evening. Every day. For the entire school year. If a bibliophilic boy has a notion of bliss, this must meet it. I consumed that library. But not Witch World. For some reason the covers and descriptions always dissuaded me.

However, as I couldn’t get through this Appendix N project without exploring Witch World, I picked up a few of the books. Over a month ago. It has, frankly, been a slog. I don’t wish to be overly critical. Andre Norton was a successful, much admired, author. Perhaps it is age — my age, not the books. I think I might have enjoyed these when I was ten or so. I think today they might be marketed as Juveniles or Young Adult novels. There isn’t much there and what is there is relatively tame. She steered clear of detailed descriptions of violence. Romantic interests she dealt with in rather poetic terms and sex is merely hinted at.

As I read these I couldn’t help but wonder what another author might have done with the same basic plots and secondary world. Robert Adams, for example. I know, I know. You don’t have to rehash to objections, I understand them. But he was good with the visceral stuff and solid on weapons and armor, the latter subjects that Andre Norton dealt with imaginatively but not realistically.

It often struck me that Andre Norton was disinterested in the portion of the story she was telling at any one time. She’d elide and move on to something she was more interested in. She’d dispense with a concept, activity, dialogue, etc., within the space of a paragraph or even a sentence. Something that might easily of occupied an entire chapter gets summed up in a few words. You have to be careful reading her. Read too fast, skim, or even just blink, and you’ve missed an essential point. You have to backtrack to figure out why the characters are now here, or doing that. I think an English Literature major would charge her with favoring diegesis at the expense of mimesis. She’s more interested in forwarding the plot than in describing a situation. Sometimes the novels read more like an outline than an actual book. There’s clearly an interesting world being built, but she never made if feel real.

But I can see why Gary Gygax included her. It’s all there. Secondary world fantasy (technically, I think, Witch World is a portal fantasy) mixed with science fiction elements. The ubiquitous psychic powers of ‘60s and 70’s novels. (I find it tedious. And often smacking of deus ex machina. Abilities remembered, discovered, or forgotten as plot necessitates. Never rigorously explained and providing for pages of vague descriptions of what is obviously intended to be fraught and dramatic, but is instead unclear, rather boring, and taking place within someone’s head.) Magical swords. Loads of monsters and non-human races. Magical healing. Quests. Plenty of ideas to mine for role-playing adventures. So, kudos for that. But as novels? I can’t recommend them.

But do read The Toads of Grimmerdale. That’s a good one.