Random Jordan's Blog, page 10

Book Review – Moon Called

Disclaimer: As with all my reviews there is the possibility of spoilers, though I work my hardest to avoid them when I can.

You Can’t Get Me Out of My Skin

I’ve had a crazy stint of Urban Fantasy lately, and after reviewing a smaller time series with an Elemental main character, I really wanted to get around to the Mercy Thompson series too. Unfortunately I’ve only gotten through the first book, but it is a start at least. So I figured it would be useful to throw up my thoughts on the Mercy series first book before I get around to the others. (which at some point I will eventually).

I went into this series knowing little more than ‘it is about a coyote shapeshifter mechanic’. Seriously, and originally I wanted to get the third book I think it was, because I liked the cover on it better than the first one. But someone convinced me I should start with the first one, since I have a nasty habit of starting in the middle of a series and never going back.

So let’s begin with Mercy. She is what is known as a skinwalker, though everyone seems to know what a skinwalker is, except her (including me). She works on the cars of vampires, after taking over her garage from a fairy, and lives near a werewolf alpha. So as could be expected, somehow she ends up getting roped into quite some ridiculous situations, including some people trying to kill her and needing her garage cleaned up by a witch. But it isn’t all bad, before long Mercy is brought back to her old roots with the werewolf pack she grew up with and gets caught up in trying to help a lot of people even though she really didn’t need to.

And this is just about as general as I could get with it. Eventually she does fight some big baddie and puts an end to a plot for werewolf pack domination (not quite world domination, but close). Overall, Mercy was a well done character and interesting, I was a little disappointed in one major area with werewolves being largely just as sexist and misogynistic of a society as humans are, and that Mercy even still gives into this area (despite protesting against it with her words). But it’s at least still something that is acknowledged by the character, but I feel showing her giving into that submissive quality she is ‘supposed’ to possess wasn’t exactly an awesome thing.

Still, it’s only one major thing in the first book of a series, which I can honestly understand a lot about the first book not always being what you want it to be, which is generally why when I start a series I will actually start further along than the first book (I had planned to read the second book first). But it was still a decent one to read and it had a good flowing plot and plenty of fun characters. In fact there was some degrees of diversity with a few gay characters (though once again suffer from a very… heteronormative werewolf society).

Overall, this is a book I’d definitely recommend to anyone interested in Urban Fantasy, it manages to be just different enough with a character not focused on a job around snooping on people like many other Urban Fantasies do, and even defies the gender norms in multiple ways like being a mechanic. Together with a well done plot, that uses the damsel in distress trope unfortunately at one point (at least a wife didn’t die). It’s a good solid beginning for a series that I’d love to see more of, and I really hope to see the heteronormative, misogynistic werewolf society broken down for once instead of Mercy just becoming the ‘mate’ of one of the men.

As for my imps, three of them stuck around for this one, totally getting sucked up into the action and the third one especially liked the vampire scenes. My fourth imp stuck around for some of it and flitted away for others, but mostly enjoyed it and so I wouldn’t let him get away with trying to be half again. My fifth imp didn’t put up with any of it really, as she felt there could have been more diversity and it’s definitely not a book for everyone.

Four out of Five Imps

Painful Poetry

I’m not one to often spout poetry, but I’ve done it a few times and usually it’s all in the moment stuff. This one in particular was less poetry and more of just me trying to express the words with the right flow and timing and stress of the rhythm, which I guess is technically poetry? I debated publishing this one, but after seeing it again I realized there wasn’t anything specific in it that I would feel necessary to censor or anything. In fact I’d release the whole piece if it wasn’t for certain parts of it being incredibly personal to more than just me, because I feel there’s a lot of good words to be said in it, but publishing stuff on the internet is permanent for the most part and some times you pick.

So here are parts of two pieces that I liked, though when I had written them, I didn’t quite read them. Then again, I wasn’t doing much reading of anything at the time.

———————————————————-

You took the one thing from me I thought I couldn’t lose.
My memories of us.
Now I question every little thing.
The one relationship I thought had meaning
was really just an empty shell.

What does that say about me?

I can’t do this.
I can’t.
I see you and me in everything
I can’t watch a show, I can’t write.
I try to drown myself away with anything
But I’m left in tears.

I didn’t want to say this to you.
I didn’t want to burden you with this.
Because it’s cruel.

I don’t know what to do.
I’ve cried every morning for the past week.
And it just gets harder the more you tell me.
I thought I would get to keep the memories
But that is not true either.

I’m sorry.
I can’t.

I wish I could just hate you for it.
I wish.
But its only pain and tears.
Eventually they’ll die away.

I watched something yesterday
It mentioned grief
It said:
The worst state of being
is remembering the future,
particularly the one you’ll never have.

I try to forget it.
But it won’t leave me.

I just don’t know.
What happened to the cabin?
What happened to that future?

—————————————————–


And sure, we don’t always know when we love.
That’s because love is not a thing we do
Or that happens to us.
It’s a state of being.

You don’t KNOW when you love.
You FEEL when you love.

Too many people
Use their heads
And not their heart
When it comes to that.

You say you can’t love me like I needed,
But what does that even mean?
How was your love not what I needed?
How can it be so devastating to me when it wasn’t what I needed?

Don’t tear yourself down.
And don’t think less of yourself.

You are a wonderful person,
You don’t deserve to be hated.
You don’t deserve someone who isn’t making you happy.

You deserve happiness.
You deserve a good life.
You deserve the world.

And some day you’ll get it.

Book Review – Sappho’s Fables

Disclaimer: As with all my reviews there is the possibility of spoilers, though I work my hardest to avoid them when I can.

I Wish Sappho Wrote Fables

I really do wish Sappho wrote fables… or anything that actually survived entirely in tact. But I have to say I still always love when I can find more queer fairy tales. So it probably isn’t any surprise that this was the first set of stories by Elora Bishop (Sarah Diemer) that I ever actually read, and the same reason I read more of her stuff.

Sappho’s Fables is actually three novella length stories put together, and all of them take classic and well-known fairy tales and give them a non-modern, still fantasy-based spin. Particularly, the stories are: Snow White, Rapunzel, and Hansel and Gretel. You can actually get them each separately, and they are part of a series Elora and her wife Jennifer Diemer are doing to reinvent classic fairy tales for Lesbians (I really, really can’t wait to read the Red Riding Hood one, considering I have a lesbian red riding hood of my own).

So because they are three different stories (and not a mass group of them like an anthology), I’ll assess them separately, and I might even be able to convince my imps to do the same. No promises.

The first story is Seven and is a Snow White story written by Jennifer Diemer. This story was probably the most stellar of the collection and has some of the most unusual and interesting takes on the step mother and seven ‘dwarves’. The story itself actually follows the ‘step mother’, after she was forced to marry a man in another country. She arrives to discover her husband practices alchemy and has some strange rituals like wanting to share an apple with her every night before bed. She also discovers that she now has a step daughter, who happens to practice magic.

The story unfolds into a plot of immortality (a unique take on the Eternal Beauty and Fairest of them all mentality of the original tale), and you discover the man the ‘step mother’ married actually had six other wives before her, and all of them are no in a hut in a special type of forest that sometimes the snowy step daughter visits. You also discover there is a pact between the man and Neve (step daughter) that gets broken because Neve finally had the courage to step into dangerous matters to help Catalina (step mother).

Overall, the unique takes on this continually redone tale and an interesting and appropriate ending for both the romance and overall story, makes this one quite fun and I didn’t even mention the romance that occurred between Neve and Catalina (who are actually right around the same age, as appropriate to the original Snow White). It’s worth the read for anyone interested in fairy tales and it was fascinating and fun to read, I only wish there were more from Jennifer besides the Project Unicorn stuff.

The second story is a tale of Rapunzel, titled Braided, which makes me think of Tangled even though they are completely different stories. I’m still not quite sure if I liked this one or the one from “Kissing the Witch” better, but I think that’s because the good elements they both have are completely different too.

This Rapunzel story follows a girl bound to a tree (Zelda) and the girl who brings her food and keeps Zelda’s long hair clean (Gray), even though she doesn’t actually need to do this. The premise behind it is that Gray is actually supposed to be the one tied to the tree, so she feels guilty and continually thinks of Zelda and how she could free her. In a way she’s kind of consumed with it and Zelda, whom she’s been in love with since she knew her practically. So she actually started even dreaming of freeing Zelda, which is where the connection to the turnip comes in and the tower.

You were probably thinking where the tower comes in, considering Rapunzel is classified as a ‘Maiden in the Tower’ Fairy tale. Well, through some special dream magic from a special world they enter a dream realm and one girl frees the other from a tower before they continue on their adventure to repair the tree and make it so neither of them are bound to anything or anyone but each other.

Overall, I like that Sarah (err Elora) took some different approaches to the rapunzel story, with some dream elements that were exciting and it wasn’t just ‘Lesbian Rapunzel’ which is an important distinction, because if all you do is take an original story already done and change something like the sexuality and sex of some of the characters you still end up getting the same story. It made the story more of its own and less of just a retelling. I absolutely loved the dream portion of this story and it was decently paced with a selection of characters that were fun to learn about and explore what they were going through.

Finally we have the Hansel and Gretel story, known as Crumbs, and I think this one was actually the weakest of the collection, mostly because the unique world created for this story was a bit harder for me to personally get into. That doesn’t stop it from being a decent story with some interesting points though, especially since it still follows the classification decently despite no witches being involved.

The premise behind this one is that there is a terrible zombie-like plague ravaging the world and two parents decide to give up on the world and leave their kids behind in their house, while they take a ride with a bunch of people who are infected with this virus. Meanwhile, the kids decide to leave their safe cottage and take bikes in the woods while being chased by monsters. They manage to make it to the hut that looks like it is made of candy and sweets and are found by another brother and sister.

This is where the story really begins, particularly the dark romance area. Also I have to give a bonus to the story as I was actually expecting the brother and sister in the hut to have been the people who started the virus, or some kind of witches that were eating the people or something, but it went in a completely different direction.

Overall, the romance between the two girls was a bit generic and the brother characters were more just filler characters that served the purpose of plot for trying to break up the two girls and show the sympathy and compassion of the girls, but otherwise there wasn’t much to either (which I’m not gonna blame since this usually happens to women characters more often). It wasn’t a terrible story, but there were a lot of areas that I felt could have been so much more for such an interesting twist to the original. Plus I really like witches, so I was slightly disappointed at not seeing one.

Putting all these tales together, this was still a solid selection of stories and quite fun to read and imagine in particular. If I had to rank them then Seven would be first with Crumbs being at the weakest level. As for my imps? Three of them were all over all these stories, getting lost in them and everything. The fourth loved the first two stories but kept nagging me on the last one. And my fifth imp was stubborn and only stuck around for the first story because her attention span was just gone after that.

So all my imps agree, everyone should at least read Seven, while Braided should be left to those who love fairy tales and dream stories, and finally Crumbs which fits more for the people who like zombie or dark stories with romance elements thrown in.

Crumbs – Three out of Five Imps

Braided – Four out of Five Imps

Seven – Five out of Five Imps

Book Review – TWIXT

Disclaimer: As with all my reviews there is the possibility of spoilers, though I work my hardest to avoid them when I can.

No Touching My Hair

I went into TWIXT not knowing a thing about it, other than I assumed it would have a Lesbian protagonist (based on the author). This level of knowledge about the book is actually almost how the protagonists go into the world of Twixt, except they didn’t even have assumptions, because they started with no memories.

TWIXT (I don’t know if all caps is necessary, so it’s happening) is the story of a group of people mysteriously appearing in a city, while being hunted by demonic looking creatures and with no memories of their lives previously. At least until they take a drug that is literally sticking the quills of the feathers from the demonic birds into their bodies.

Much like the characters are, you are thrust into this world instantly with the main character waking up and being attacked by a creature. Well the creature actually attacks the person who woke her up, Charlie, who grabs her and drags her back to the safe house away from the birds.

Over the course of the adventure you discover more and more about each of the main characters, Charlie and Lottie, as well as the world that is TWIXT. I’d rather not give away much of it since I feel this book relies on a lot of thriller type elements to keep pace and talking about those here would ruin that for people who haven’t read it. I will say that some areas were predictable, like who Charlie was; while others were cool realizations like what the demonic creatures were.

I really enjoyed the slow-paced and increasing romance between the two main characters, which you could tell was going to occur from young in the book. But it grows slowly and not from the obvious ‘I hate you’ and ‘Now I love you’ kind of thing too many romances stories do. Also I loved the concept of their name picking and each of them using half of the same name (Charlotte), it was truly a brilliant and uniquely romantic idea.

Most of all though, I have to express how well this story can serve for a trans individual in the romantic department. Around the time when Lottie discovers who she is, she is at first reluctant to tell Charlie (the person interested in her and who she likes), but is eventually glad you does, because Charlie accepts her as she is and even has some thoughts on explaining that Lottie had always been the person she is now, even in the past with some careful observations.

That kind of moment is incredibly effective for someone like my self who has literally dealt with romantic ties right around the times of transitioning and still going through with telling the people you are interested in. I’m not sure the author is even aware of how well this shows the romance side for a trans individual (especially one that isn’t fully transitioned or will always be between genders). It can be a scary experience to reveal yourself to the world, especially when many are met with a lot of fear in return. And this book managed to show both sides of that fear rather well.

That moment is one I can always connect to, and I’m sure there are many non-trans reasons others could connect to that, because having someone accept you for who you are is something everyone would and should want.

With that said, the ending didn’t have quite as much power, in fact it felt rushed and ended with a brisk note. But the more I stewed on the ending, the more I could at least recognize the poetics of that chosen end. I still felt like it left things literally and figuratively hanging in the air, which does frustrate me when a book isn’t marked for a series and is likely to be stand alone. I want to feel like the experience is complete and something felt a little missing.

Overall, the story was unique and interesting, and that’s coming from someone who is normally bored by the average romance story. The thrills can really get you going, and all wrapped into a bit of mystery and romance with a dash of darkness. I definitely suggest this one for anyone interested in romance, and you’ll even enjoy the mystery of a well-crafted (you have no idea how ironic that is) fictional world.

All but one of my imps were all over this story, and the last one was flip-flopping because of the ending, which is why I’m just going to count her, since I don’t let my imps go halfway in anything.

Five out of Five Little Imps

Book Review – The Dark Wife

Disclaimer: As with all my reviews there is the possibility of spoilers, though I work my hardest to avoid them when I can.

Maybe the Underworld Ain’t so Gloomy

The second of my Sarah Diemer collection is probably one of my favorites, no actually it is my favorite. Not only does it take a classic legend that I love: the Greek tale of Persephone, but it also manages to flip some gender on its end and turn a normally very sexist story into a romantic one.

The Dark Wife is an adaptation following the experiences of Persephone’s actual encounters with Hades, and some of the things leading up to those encounters. In the original myth, everything was forced on Persephone, from going in the underworld, to marrying Hades, and even needing to spend six months with her mother and six months with Hades (The Greek Explanation for Seasons).

So it shouldn’t be any surprise that I really enjoyed seeing those forced events like that (especially on women) become worthwhile and healthy relationships and events. And that is what The Dark Wife managed, with a slight twist. You see, the God of Gods (Zeus) was an all around Jerk (and represents a patriarchal society), so he convinced all the mortals that Hades was a lord or man, when Hades was actually Zeus’ sister. And all because she preferred the company of women. Sound like something that happens in current society?

Now this concept actually falls in really well with other myths about the underworld. The Norse had a woman take care of the underworld because it was a lot like a giant hotel where all the dead went who weren’t worthy, and she was the caretaker. So of course such a motherly position would go to a woman, right?

And that’s actually what Hades is, a very motherly character, with a soft heart for helping anyone and a strong hand for punishing when it is deserved, or forgiving when it is needed. In fact, there is a significant part involving Charon, where she grants his wish of freedom, even though he had just tried to induce an unfounded revolution in the dead souls of the underworld. This shows the compassion Hades possessed in comparison to Zeus who takes what he wants whenever he feels like it (including Persephone’s first lover). This makes all the characters really powerful, even Zeus, who you can’t help but hate.

I think my favorite areas of this book were the simple references to the Greek myth; like the pomegranate, or Persephone’s CHOICE to go into the underworld after being invited by Hades. All over, these kinds of allusions to the original tale have a lot of ‘pop culture’ power that a reader can enjoy if they knew the original tale. It’s the same reason Urban Fantasy does so well with references to things people know and like, and why we still love fairy tale retellings (one of the reasons).

I do want to mention one area I noticed across more than just Sarah Diemer’s books (thought there are plenty of references in hers). There seems to be some kind of correlation to hair cutting and Lesbians. I can’t properly describe it, but there seem to be a lot of Lesbian books I’ve read (including my own) that involve cutting of hair (particularly on women). I feel like it’s a similar occurrence to how certain era literature discusses flies more than it probably should. But not only does Persephone cut her hair as a payment to cross the river Styx but hair cutting occurs in the Rapunzel story of Sappho’s Fables (understandably) and even in Twixt, Sarah’s newest book, it happens all over the place, just not as drastic as chopping off entire gobs of hair in one go (at least on scene).

Overall though, The Dark Wife was definitely the strongest of Sarah’s stories and there were a lot of symbolisms you could get out of it (like the patriarchy being over thrown by two women in love). I really enjoyed this story and I think it is well worth it for everyone to read, especially if you like greek myths or lesbian romance, but even then if you like romance in general this one is perfect.

My imps enjoyed the realism of the characters, the power in the story, and the diverse, capable and compassionate female power. My last one especially liked the little touch at the end which was such a great ending to run with, by catching the book up to what could be considered urban fantasy with a jump to the future. It really closed things out effectively.

Five out of Five Little Imps

Gendering Young Adult Fiction and Fairy Tales

We have a sad epidemic on our hands people. It has spread to everyone and everything, and worst of all… we don’t even realize it most of the time. No, I’m not talking about a disease, though if we gave it a name like a disease it would probably get more recognition and attention. I’m talking about our need to gender everything. Not just calling you and me a boy or girl, but deciding make-up is for girls, sports are for boys, and that there isn’t a single YA book for boys.

Where the flying fey did this notion come from? Was I busy playing with my incredibly boy-gendered Lego blocks while everyone held a meeting to decide that fiction about young kids was only for a particular gender? I mean this even goes back to fairy tales (particularly because of Disney princess stories). For some reason it was decided there aren’t any fairy tales for boys. Then suddenly there aren’t any YA (Young Adult) books for boys. Then, my favorite part of all, was a huge leap to boys being less inclined toward learned degrees because girls dominated the young adult fiction market.

What the fey is going on here? Are we such a gender inducing society that we can’t survive without giving our stories a gender too?

In a way. But it has to do more with the terrible beast known as marketing. You see, when a novel is created (or any story that can make money) it has to be marketed to a particular audience, and unless you are a self publisher, chances are the author doesn’t decide the target audience beyond how other people interpret what they’ve put in their book. Instead things like if you have a male or female protagonist, or if your story is a romance or action adventure, end up deciding what your target audience is for that book. This is especially the case when it comes to the gender to target.

The thing is, in saying that young adult isn’t for boys, we are saying that boys cannot get any value, fun or interest from female protagonists, any kind of romance or real relationships, growing up stories, and a whole slew of other concerns like having flippin’ emotions and considering and learning how to deal with them. Oh, but clearly we still live in the 1800′s where men are supposed to have the adventures and women are just meant to be a prize and be quiet. Cause little boys can’t identify one bit with a female character… no way that would never happen…

Wait… this sounds a bit familiar…

Damn you Disney princesses. Okay, okay, I’ll give Disney credit that at least those stories follow and focus on the women and their experiences, but then they also go and make the boys one-dimensional and perfect beings saving these girls which does NO ONE any good. Now because of this, when you factor in a focus on a princess like character that even only maybe half the girls will identify with and a two-dimensional main male character (up until recently) you end up with something boys don’t even look at because everyone else makes it seem like it isn’t something they will enjoy. Half the time they don’t even get a chance to choose, it’s decided for them. Don’t believe me? How often have you heard a parent state that there isn’t YA for their boy? Or there isn’t a Disney movie for their boy? We see princess and automatically think ‘Oh, that’s only for girls’.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I sure connect with a well done character regardless of their bloody gender. I mean, I understand Hermione’s obsession to rules and slowly learning to break them and live a little, but then I also connect with the witty and foolishness of Schmendrick the Magician. Think about it, have you always identified with all the female characters you’ve read? What about the male ones? Or better yet, what about the ones where their gender isn’t as clearly defined like Wall-e. Oh sure, everyone says he is a he, but both Wall-e and Eve are not forced into gender categories yet we still connected to them in a truly effective manner because they were PEOPLE even though they were robots.

So there issue here isn’t that we are marketing to genders, it’s that we think people can’t connect with people, regardless of gender. What? You can connect with Ariel’s want for a different world, but you are a ‘boy’?! BLASPHEMY!

How about if you ever felt trapped in a situation, whether physically or emotionally, or can’t decide what to do for fear of hurting someone you care about? Well then you might connect with the Disney Rapunzel! Better yet, you want action and adventure and less fruffy romantic stuff?! Look no further than Katniss Everdeen (from hunger games) or Lyra (from the Golden Compass)!. How are these characters not the same as a male equivalent? Seriously, you could make Katniss into Kater or something and they would be the EXACT same character. Their gender has no impact on their story, on their adventure, on their core character.

This idea that we can’t connect with people just because their gender doesn’t match our own is faerie fudge! I’ve been doing it my whole life. The issue isn’t that there are no boy specific Young Adult works, the issue is that we decided boys can’t get anything out of the Young Adult stories like girls can. And where did all this start… well… it’s laid into the very core of our society. Because boys are supposed to do things that are practical, and so they should be learning stuff first hand or at least reading things like a mechanic book. Where girls are okay to live in a fantasy world and learn to be social while filling their head with fantasies and not the ‘practical stuff’ like math.

It’s a social thing, ingrained in us. Boys learn young that they shouldn’t read fantasy stuff, I mean how often are male geeks that play things like DnD counted as not being a man or not capable of being a functioning person for society? So the problem isn’t that there is no YA for boys, it’s that we THINK YA is only for girls! I mean What?!

I feel like there is a really effective comic strip for this notion:

Courtesy of Danielle, author of Girls with Slingshots

If seeing capable (I feel strong is over-used) and real female characters, and learning about how to properly communicate with a girl is something that is only for girls… then we have a serious issue on our hands that could very well be propagating a lot of sexism (should be genderism) that is occurring in our poor world.

So next time you pick up a book, think hard, think long, and think past the gender, before you decide whether that book is worth it to your child. Because this is where we can make a difference. Teach em young that their gender isn’t what matters, or what dictates the things they can do. Trust me, the world will be a better place if you give your child no limits in who they can be and what they can do.

And when it comes down to it, don’t we all just want to change the world? Well it starts with a little love and a lot of understanding.

Book Review – The Witch Sea

Disclaimer: As with all my reviews there is the possibility of spoilers, though I work my hardest to avoid them when I can.

You Can’t Take the Ocean Out of the Sea Creatures

So, I read a bunch of Sarah Diemer/Elora Bishop books and short stories over the past few weeks, which includes a couple I think from her wife as well. And while ‘The Witch Sea’ was the weakest of the group, it was still a solid story that was at least semi-interesting. The best part this one had going for it was the originality behind it. Amusingly enough, I originally grabbed this one because I thought it would have some kind of mermaid element to it. I was definitely wrong, but it had something cooler: a seal element. 

The Witch Sea, tells the tale of a young woman who has taken on the job passed down from mother to daughter for the past couple generations. This job entails the protection and management of a magical net that fences off this inland area from the ocean. It probably doesn’t make much sense at this point, but to give the story credit, it did a better job of explaining it. Essentially this all-powerful god of the sea decided to walk on to land and destroy all the humans. Only problem was that he needed the sea creatures to do this. 

So after the first day of him being on land and calling a bunch of sea creatures to him, who were changed in to human-like people, the main character’s grandmother created this magical net to stop any further sea creatures from reaching this god. Jump forward two generations and you have this incredibly bored girl with enough magic to keep all the sea back and a god continually trying to convince her to just let the net down. 

That’s the basis of it, now thinking over that, you are probably wondering how there is a lesbian element to this story? Well, not that I ever told you this had a lesbian element, but I did mention a seal element. You see, a seal got passed the net when Meriel (the main character) had been a little slack while her powers waned from the new moon. This seal became a woman, who was then sent by the god to Meriel every day since in an effort to get her to let the net down.

Now when I say this one was the weakest of the ones I read, I meant more in the style of writing chosen. The story is actually really effective and interesting, though I could guess the ending pretty easily but I was guessing the ending in a way that made me go: ‘Why is she having all this internal conflict about taking the net down?’ This was due to the foreshadowing you could call it, as it showed how the god was feeling this whole time and Meriel could also see it because she had a special stone to spy on others. So if she could see his pain then why was she so hesitant to let them go back to the sea? 

That was really my only major issue with the approach to writing the story. The story itself and ending was perfectly set, I could understand everything going on, even if I did skip a few sentences here and there (don’t feel bad, I skip sentences in every book, even my own). And it even had a really effective message that sometimes even if all you know is tradition, you just have to break it to be yourself. For even if Meriel had kept the net up for the rest of her life, she would have to sleep with a man to bear a child so she could then pass down the same burden to her own child. 

Overall, the story was what pushed this one up. The characters were not so much flat but stagnant and obvious, like they were archetypes rather than full characters themselves, as they did a lot of predictable stuff. But the enjoyment was still there, and when it comes down to it for me, as long as you have a story that I can connect with, I’m good. For a short piece, and how little time it took to read this, it was definitely worth the read. Though I’d leave it to mostly those who are interested in Lesbian fiction and romance and possibly those who love sea creatures. 

As for my imps, three of them felt like this story was worth their time, the fourth one is kinda pouting in the corner cause he didn’t want it to be so short, and the fifth one scoffed at all the transparent areas of the tale. But still, the third one stuck around because of the originality.

Three out of Five Little Imps

 

Fairy Tale Retellings and Fan Fiction

So everyone (especially writers) has been jumping on the Amazon Kindle Worlds program and what it means for things like Fan Fiction and rights to the people who write the stories. If you don’t know anything about it, you can find more here and here with Malinda Lo and John Scalzi’s thoughts. The program is pretty much a way for companies to obtain writers for novels from a particular ‘universe’. Probably the most famous one that has done this is the incredible collection of various Star Wars books, however the other big one is Nancy Drew back in the day who was written by many writers. So this concept has been going on for a while, and it’s not technically monetizing fan fiction, though it does give the potential for that to occur depending on the fan fiction and world.

However, my care isn’t really for this system. I think it’s an interesting idea and certainly fun, but many rights are taken away from the author of the stories. That said, I would personally love seeing a character I made for a franchise (like Doctor Who) be made as a cast member on Doctor Who, that would be AWESOME. That doesn’t excuse the fact that the whole reason I would write for the Amazon Worlds being I’d want money and I wouldn’t get money from that character being on the show.

With that said, my real reason for talking about all this is because the idea of monetizing Fan Fiction got me thinking about how many fairy tale retellings there are out there, and that when it comes down to it a fairy tale retelling is Fan Fiction. You are a fan of a particular fairy tale, or maybe a whole collection and you decide to rewrite the fairy tale as a Lesbian story, or with various characters from other fairy tales interacting with each other (I’m looking at you Once Upon a Time).

No matter how you put it though, unless you are creating an ENTIRELY original story with all unique characters of your own. A fairy tale retelling is fan fiction. And I have an amazing reference for this with said above author Malinda Lo. Ash is a novel she wrote that essentially is a Lesbian telling of Cinderella. Now think about this, wouldn’t you have to be some kind of fan to be writing an entirely new take on the same character and story design? In fact Ash falls right in the lines of many fan fictions that take two characters not normally together and puts them together by changing their sexuality or their partnerships or even their character to make them fit a specific story.

On the other hand, we then have in the same universe Huntress, by Malinda Lo, which is not technically based on any specific fairy tale. It has elements that could be considered such, like there is a faerie Queen, but nothing like Titania or from the poems ‘The Faerie Queene’ many years back, and doesn’t act in the same way or have any storyline connected the same way. This is a fairy tale that she made herself, so it wouldn’t be fan fiction.

The same can be said for Once Upon a Time, and many other great shows and books like Once Upon a Time Machine and Fables. They all take fairy tale characters and storylines and rewrite them or change them around to fit particularly together in certain ways.

Does that mean every fairy tale retelling is bad? Well, not every fan fiction is terrible or completely against the characters. As I’ve said many star wars novels are fan fiction (literally authors that loved the star wars fanchise so much they wrote stories about them). But even things like Roleplaying boards online that create RPGs based on universes like Harry Potter can provide wonderful entertainment and fit so well to characters and the world without damaging it or rewriting everything about it. Fan Fiction is amazing stuff, so it’s nothing to do with it being bad. Hell, if I ever have fan fiction one day for my books 1. I’d be freakin’ amazed. but 2. I would have so much fun seeing what other people could do with my characters and my world, which is probably why I’m all for doing my books for free and giving people the option to mess around with stuff, heck I’ve considered starting my roleplay forum in my universe if it wasn’t for the fact that I still ‘technically’ get money from my books which means I could be sued if I ever ran with an idea of someone’s that I liked in my universe, even if I acknowledge them about the idea (probably especially because I do).

That said, there are Fan fictions that don’t end up quite well as they should (NEVER mention the Red Riding Hood movie to me), or fan fictions of things that shouldn’t really be in the first place (damn you twilight).

But that doesn’t mean you can’t get truly great things out of it. I mean when you think about it, how many Star Wars authors can you really think of? I can remember my favorite Star Wars novel story line and name, but never the author. So this direction Amazon is going with their Kindle Worlds actually is fitting. That doesn’t mean I will write something for it though, especially since the current worlds aren’t anything I’m particularly familiar with or care that much about (though Pretty Little Liars does have Lesbian/bi characters at least). But maybe it will happen with future worlds, even just to try it out (if I ever have the time).

And so, there we are. Anyone have some thoughts on Fairy Tale Retellings and the idea of it being Fan Fiction? (Though it is a different kind of fan fiction since most fairy tales are out of copyright).

Episode Three: Excess

 The Magic in Writing Episode Three

Excess

This particular subject was one I wanted to get to for a while. And I eventually did, just not on this blog. Instead I ended up exploding a friend’s blog with an incredibly long written reply to one of her posts. Check out Julie Israel‘s blog right here, and see the original comment I made.

When you think of excess I have no idea what comes to your mind. But when I think of excess my first thought is crap. Literally. Because that is what excess is. It’s what doesn’t need to be there, and is often times left over from something in the past. This is especially true for writing. The problem is many people cannot always realize what is excess in their writing.

So then, how do you recognize what can be excess in your writing? Well if you have ever read any of the more famous books on writing, like Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ or ‘The Elements of Style’ by William Strunk, then you might already know what is excess. As William Strunk put it: ‘There should not be a single unwanted word in a sentence, a single unneeded sentence in a paragraph, or a single unnecessary paragraph in a work, much like there are no extra lines in a masterpiece drawing.’ I am paraphrasing here, because of course I’m too lazy to go look up the actual phrase he said, but that was close enough.

Stephen King goes on further to mention about how the elimination of adverbs can solve the majority of writer’s problems. And he has quite the point, especially when you consider there was actually a story about a writer who received a magic salt shaker that would erase the adverbs from his writing and actually made him a better writer. But I don’t believe Stephen King went quite far enough. So let’s look at the most common unwanted and unnecessary things that can be cut from writing.

Adverbs: These are the spawn of some kind of literary devil. Adverbs for those that aren’t aware describe verbs, adjectives, and pretty much anything an adjective wouldn’t describe. You can most easily (

Adjectives: These are the bane of description, and quite necessary for description, because that is exactly what they do. The key is to make sure you are only using adjectives when necessary. Having a sentence with two or more adjectives being used to describe one thing, is always too much. There can be a big difference in the flow of a line when you say ‘purple, hard, and small people’ compared to ‘small people’.

Exposition: This is a form of telling a story rather than showing it, that many people tend to use to relay past information or explain a situation out. Once again it often gets overused, especially at the beginning of a series or novel when a lot of background information needs to be revealed. This process is called the ‘expo dump’, and that means you should look into focusing on how you can relay the background information in other means where you are showing the story that can be found from it for your reader. This can often be done by peppering your story with further revealed information rather than just dumping it all on the reader at once.

Description: Most people don’t realize that description often bogs down their writing and makes it more difficult to get through, whether this is in combination of adjectives and adverbs or simply just too many words taken out of moving the story forward. Sure, description is important, but the key is to use your description sparingly; a little description can go a long way when it comes to your reader’s mind. And if there is anything you can learn it is to know when to bring up more or less information for your reader’s imagination.

Now for description we can break this down further. There is also a matter of ‘material description’ and then ‘character description’. Material description deals with all the nuances for description of your environment so that you can paint a picture of your scene. It is a crucial element for getting your readers absorbed into the setting. Character description is just as important for creating realistic characters… to a degree.

Much like how expo suffers from a dump of information, so does character description often times. We all know it too and have probably done it ourselves. When a character is first encountered the narrator will then take a paragraph or FEW to explain how that character looks, then after that character description dump the most you see is the character’s name or a simple feature like their hair color or how beautiful their eyes are (especially in romance novels).

Why is this a problem? You’d think, oh we need all the details up front to visualize the character correctly. But here are the issues:

1. You break up the flow of the entire story by stopping to talk about how some new person looks. This is especially the case when a first person narrative voice is shattered because suddenly that voice decides to intimately describe every detail down to the crust between a person’s toes.

2. No matter how detailed you managed to describe your characters, unless you draw your readers a picture of them, they will ALL have different views of how that character looks, and this is because of the concept every writer should know. When you write, you are collaborating with your readers to make a story. They visualize, you lead them along.

There are more reasons but I’m lazy and won’t bring them up as I have more to say. Because your reader is visualizing these characters though, all it takes to truly fit a proper direction for a character is a unique name for them (avoid names that start with the same letter), and their eyes and hair. Seriously… that’s it for character description. It’s bare, but based on your character’s action and the way people interact with them, your reader has already decided how that person looks except those details.

There is one exception to this. If you give a character a defining physical characteristic, then you absolutely have to mention that as well. Snape had a big nose, maybe someone else has a scar across their forehead? I mean, think about it, on average what makes a character actually rememberable? They have some defining physical feature, or they shine with a specific personality. And you sure as hell aren’t describing personalities are you? (I really hope not)

So trust me when I say. In all things in life, but especially writing: Less is more. And excess will always be shit.

Exciting New Fairy Tale Stuff

Well! Exciting new stuff on the way!

Not only do I have my ‘Magic in Writing’ series coming back tomorrow but I am finally cleaning out my draft list of half-written posts, finishing up some new book reviews… and best of all…

Introducing my new serial for this blog that I have technically yet to give a name to. Though I’ll come up with something last-minute when the post goes live probably. Though I do have some stupid ideas for it that I won’t end up running with trying to pun things like ‘Once upon a time’ and ‘Happily Ever After’. We will see.

But if you haven’t guessed, yes the new serial will be dealing with fairy tales exclusively. In particular I will be taking ‘Once Upon a Time‘ cards, specifically the ending cards which are known as the ‘happily ever after’ cards, and using the endings as a basis to build the rest of a story that must end with that ending. I’ll be taking really crappy pictures of the cards and starting the story with those, so you will know the happily ever after at the beginning (even though many of the endings are not happy). The stories will be all mine, except the last line that will come from those cards, and there is also a possibility that if you commented on my blog a while back with ‘Once upon a time…’ and included a beginning to a fairy tale, I just might end up using it for the beginning of a story.

The fairy tales will be a nice stretch for me, and in total there will end up being 66 and I will be touching on a variety of topics and subjects that fairy tales didn’t originally deal with, and many still don’t yet. Regardless, I can’t wait to bring out a bunch of original and diverse fairy tales and who knows, if the project completes and is a lot of fun, I just might publish the stories together in one giant volume of diverse fairy tales.

The project will be massive, though not quite as big as my 366 project has been. Regardless that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t start it, so I can’t wait to actually get this first fairy tale up and even more to come. It may take me forever but I’m okay with that, just as long as I write.

Finally, in my last note I will be bringing a few more imps to my site, which will be my social media imps, as buttons Currently I am working on them, but they are turning out nicely and they can’t wait to be holding up all those social media signs permanently on my blog. (yes I am an Imp slaver, because who pays imps?).

Because of more imps hitting the blog, I also want to get some names up for my book reviewing imps, if you have any ideas, let me know. Otherwise they will get their names soon. Before they were always just, ‘red imp’ or ‘yellow imp’. They probably would hate me less if they had actual names… and actual pay…