Harry Connolly's Blog, page 33

This is amazing: the sounds of Jupiter.

Be sure to listen to the end, where you can hear the planet whispering “Trump, trump, trump.”

No, seriously, this is cool.

Randomness for 9/13

1) Why Salad Is Overrated.

2) Actually, salad is good.

3) Ice-T will has some startling information for you in these (fake) SVU screencaps.

4) Most Heinous Stories of Role-Playing Games Gone Wrong.

5) Picture Yourself as a Stereotypical Man. “Stereotype threat” and academic achievement, or how to erase any statistical difference between whites and blacks / men and women.

6) I love this book design.

7) Classic book covers turned into gifs.

The Lord of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, book 15 in #15in2015

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Book 15 in #15in2015

In an era when so much fantasy–especially the really popular sellers–read like novelizations of movies that have never been made, this book (I read it in a single volume edition) was wonderful.

This isn’t my first time through. I read Lord of the Rings in high school and then again in the nineties when a pre-production interview with Peter Jackson got me all excited for the stories again. This time, though, for my third read, I promised myself that I wouldn’t skim.

Because, frankly, LOTR is pretty skimmable. Especially at the start, where Tolkien was obviously feeling his way through the story, trying to get a handle on what was happening.

But by the end of the story, the cumulative weight of what had gone before has a powerful effect. I’m not even sure when the change happened, but somewhere in The Two Towers I was hooked.

I’m not going to talk about these books too much, since so many others have done it before and better. However, I was really touched by the scenes in The Scouring of The Shire, in which Frodo, who’s been touched so deeply by evil, pleads with the others not to do violence of any kind.

Anyway, flawed, but its flaws are part of what makes it so wonderful.

Buy this book.

The Only Reason You Do [X] Is So People Will See You Doing [X]

So, there’s this annoying conversation that comes up in social media every few weeks that goes basically like this:

Person 1: “Writers who write in coffee shops are just hoping that someone will ask them what they’re writing.”

Person 2: “Yeah!”

Which is weird, right? You see people on their laptops at a cafe, and what you think is I can see them. That means they want to be seen.

Or maybe, and more insidiously: I can see them there. That means what they’re doing is a performance aimed at me.

In all seriousness, people talking shit about writers at Starbucks is a petty thing. It bugs me a little if I’m having a hard day because I’m one of those writers, but folks assuming that I’m there because I’m hoping to be interrupted?… well, I wonder if they’re really thinking clearly.

Also:

I like Starbucks (& coffee shops in general) for the sense I can work, in company, while ignoring people. It often makes me more productive.

— Kate Elliott (@KateElliottSFF) September 5, 2015

If you like big epic fantasy with lots of great female characters, check out Kate’s work.

Personally, I’ve been writing in coffee shops (mainly Starbucks, but not always) for 13 years. Thirteen also happens to be my son’s age. COINCIDENCE? Guess again.

When he was born, my wife’s family descended upon us. We had nine people in a two bedroom apartment–including a newborne, a teenager, and my wife’s elderly parents–that was already crowded with stuff. Writing at home became impossible, so I slipped out to the local Starbucks before everyone woke up and I did my work.

What I quickly discovered is that a) no, no one ever asks what you’re doing–In the 13 years I’ve been writing in cafes I’ve been asked about it three times[1]–and b) I got a lot more done than usual.

Home is where my distractions are. I’m a very distractible person, and the lure of the TBR pile, internet, TV, fridge, chores, whatever is powerful. Even more powerful are the voices of my wife and son; when they speak, my attention turns to them. I can’t help it. At the cafe, as long as I have my internet disabled (nowadays I use a program called Focus for that) my distractions are few[2].

As for hoping people will ask what I’m writing, let’s run that through a common sense check: Fantasy is about 6% of the market. Do I want to be interrupted in the middle of a thought by people who are 94% likely to be totally uninterested in what I do? And of the remaining 6%, how many are interested in my exact sort of fantasy? And those numbers look even worse when you acknowledge that they’re based on the assumption that everyone reads novels, which they don’t.

The answer is obvious. Starbucks is not a convention, where you get to meet admiring readers. It’s a place where you can ignore people and do some work.

Which is why a lot of people in different fields see cafes as a refuge where they can accomplish work. I have managed to sneak peeks at other people’s computers at those long Starbucks tables; what I mostly see is people writing code, not fiction. What’s more, if you click on Kate Elliot’s tweet up there, you’ll see more people talking about their reasons for slipping off to Starbucks to get stuff done.

But like I said: petty. In the specifics, anyway. In a more general sense, the twin notions that I can’t imagine a reason other than X, so X must be the reason and That person can be seen in this place doing X, so being seen must be the reason they’re doing it here are a genuine issue.

I’d like to think that most intelligent people recognize the problems with those sentences. I’d like to hope that most people understand, just to take an example, that just because (to take a not-so-random example) someone is wearing something sexy doesn’t mean they’re wearing it to please you.

And for those who have learned that specific lesson, they need to apply the principle more broadly.

[1] Two were asked dismissively, as in that other person had their laptop open to do REAL work. The third was when an old guy rapped me on top of my head with a folded up newspaper because he wanted to chat but I was wearing headphones. We didn’t chat.

[2] Not non-existent, but few. Very rarely someone with issues in their brain chemistry will distract me. Much more common are adorable tots. I don’t mind them at all. I like kids, and I’m happy to take a brief break to smile and wave at them, or to smile at their mortified parents when the kids act up.

oh god am i really going to write about the hugos again

Okay. I am. A little bit, but only to float an idea.

Eric Flint (possibly aiming for a fan writing Hugo himself) wrote a long post called The Divergence between Popularity and Awards in Fantasy and Science Fiction, in which he argues that the award-winners of Ye Dayes of Olde (before the mid 80’s, I guess) were also the best sellers in the genre, but for the last 25+ years, that hasn’t been true.

He comes at this argument through an odd, winding route, attempting to magically divine the top sellers by seeing how many feet of books are modeled[1] on the shelves, using pre-Amazon measurements he took at B&N and Borders. (Kids, Borders was once a big chain bookstore.)

Which… fine. Let’s just pretend that this is a good measure of sales. Assuming that the big sellers of today are no longer necessarily getting the awards, why not?

Let’s put aside the idea that there’s some sort of left-wing cabal handing them out to their friends, because that idea is dumb. Let’s also put aside the idea that the standards for the awards are especially literary. To quote Abigail Nussbaum:

The truth is—and this is something that we’ve all lost sight of this year—no matter how much the puppies like to pretend otherwise, the Hugo is not a progressive, literary, elitist award. It’s a sentimental, middle-of-the-road, populist one.[2]

I basically agree with her, although I don’t feel the urge to “walk away in disgust” and am in no way disappointed. The Hugos are what they are, and I think that’s fine for the people voting for them.

But here’s my suggestion, tentatively offered: what if the Hugo voters/nominators aren’t the one’s who’ve changed these last few decades? I mean, sure, some folks age out, new folks come in, so they aren’t the same individuals. But what if they’re the same sort of novelty-seeking reader, preferring clever, flattering books to pretty much everything else?

Because that would mean that the bulk of the readership now are the sorts of readers who don’t care about fandom or voting for Awards. Who have maybe sampled a few award-winners and found them not to their taste. They’re the people who came into the genre through Sword of Shannara, because it was the first fantasy to hit the NYTimes list, through STAR WARS and dozens of other action/adventure-with-ray-guns movies that sold millions of tickets, through D&D novels like Dragonlance, or through shoot-em-up video games.

Maybe the award hasn’t changed very much, but the readership now suddenly includes huge masses of people who are looking for Hollywood-style entertainment, with exaggerated movie characterization and a huge third act full of Big Confrontation.

Obviously, some Hugo voters enjoy that sort of thing, too. If they didn’t, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY wouldn’t have won this year. They may not think R.A. Salvatore’s work deserves an award, but they’ll read it and enjoy it. But the few thousand people involved in the Hugos are not enough to fill out the readership of someone like Jim Butcher or Robin Hobb. That’s a whole other group.

Flint’s post seems to suggest that the awards seem to have moved away from the influential big sellers, and he’s not sure why[3]. I would say that science fiction and fantasy have become large markets with a readership that’s less insular. It has more “casuals” to steal a gaming term. Those are the people who are blowing up the sales of the books at the “basic entertainment” end of the spectrum.

That’s a good thing.

It might seem funny at this point for me to say, once again, that I’m not all that interested in the Hugo Awards. I’m really not, although I’m very interested in selling large numbers of books [4]. The divergence between what sells in large numbers and what wins popular awards is an interesting data point.

[1] Modeling: When bookstores make a special effort to always have an author’s books on the shelf. A copy of The Two Towers sells, and a new one is ordered instantly. That’s a good place for an author to be.

[2] I found her writeup in this io9 summary of Hugo articles.

[3] Do the people who give out the Edgars worry that the books winning awards aren’t on the bestseller lists?

[4] Check out my books. I’ve got sample chapters for you and everything.

REALITI Available on VOD

My friend Jonathan just released a movie to VOD: Here’s the trailer:

I watched it last night, after some shenanigans on Vimeo’s part that made it difficult to log in. It’s meditative, mysterious, and a little mind-blowing. The blurb is:

“REALITi plays like the bastard love child of Rod Serling and George Orwell as filtered through the classic New Wave.” – Todd Brown, Fantastic Fest

Which is not a bad description at all. I had a little problem with it because I sometimes have a hard time recognizing faces, so when the same actress appears in several roles, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. It was mostly the response of the lead that made me work out that he was, in fact, seeing the same woman in different places.

Also, it’s not exactly what you’d call an action-packed thrill ride. It’s a low-budget indie with a lot of silence and thoughtful moments. If that sounds like your thing, check it out.

I helped another writer make a sale (in a very small way)

Ideas are cheap.

Everyone knows that. They’re optional, since you can have a great story without an unoriginal idea behind it. They’re common as dirt–so common, in fact, that most writers have more than they could ever find time to write–and they’re only one very small component of a finished piece of fiction. Without solid execution, even the greatest ideas are useless.

But a cool story idea is valuable in one way: it can make people excited about a story.

That’s why I give my story ideas away right here on the blog. Sometimes I have an idea that’ll tickle my brain, but I don’t have the time (or, frankly, the inclination) to write it. Sometimes it’s just a title or an interesting mashup. Maybe it’s in a medium I don’t write in. Maybe it’s a genre that’s wrong for me. Maybe there’s something else about that, while it sounds interesting, makes me want to put it aside.

The best way I’ve found to put them out of my mind is to add them to my Story Seeds posts, then give them away to the world.

Last night, for the first time ever, I received an email from a writer who’d taken one of those seeds, written a story, and sold it. Obviously, my role in that sale was incredibly small–it was the writer who did the bulk of the work. Still, it feels good.

It only gets harder once you’re published (mostly)

Some days ago, Chuck Wendig wrote a blog post about how writing books gets harder after you get published, not easier as some people seem to think. Yesterday, Clarke Award winner Tricia Sullivan wrote about breaking in and then fighting to stay in.

I used to say all the time that it’s easier to break in than to stay in, and Wendig and Sullivan have different paths. Wendig has been growing his readership and having success. Sullivan’s experience is closer to mine: struggling to find a substantial readership and to get her work out there, although she’s been doing it longer and has that award on her mantel.

I have ten books out, and on Tuesday I passed 30K words on book 11. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get a NY publishing contract for this one, so the backlist bump will hit my self-published work.

And Chuck’s right: I still have all the same insecurities and doubts about the work I’m doing. Worse, actually, is that I sometimes feel that I’ve lost a certain attitude I had when I wrote Child of Fire. I was pretty frustrated when I wrote that book, and I attacked it with an attitude of Fuck it. I’m going to do what I want.

I’m still doing what I want, but the fuck it doesn’t have the same bite. Why? Because that publishing contract was a tremendous relief. I didn’t celebrate it by jumping around and cheering; I flopped into a chair and sighed. I haven’t wasted my life after all.

It’s easy to forget that feeling as the years go by. Even if I never make the midlist and die in obscurity, at least one professional in the field thought my work was worthwhile. Before I was published, I really wanted that. Afterwards, I learned that it’s not enough. It’s something–something good–but it’s just the start.

Randomness for 8/26

1) Wheel of Misfortune. Love this comic. Love. It.

2) Every JRPG ever: Video. Reader, I laughed at them.

3) Exotic polyhedra dice, made of marble, gator jawbones, carbon fiber, and more.

4) Hole Quest: Ryan North live-tweeted the thrilling 40 minutes he was stuck in an empty pool with his dog.

5) 15 Delicious Regional Sandwiches. A chow mein sandwich? I don’t think so.

6) Texts from HP Lovecraft. This made me laugh.

7) Ten tabletop games that you can play as couples. Video.

Masterminds without Muscle: The Man from UNCLE and Soft Antagonists

I saw The Man From U.N.C.L.E. last week, and I’m still thinking about it, mainly because it was such an amazing misfire. There are so many good things in it, but the flaws wreck it. This is true of a lot of modern movies, I find: there will always be enjoyable bits, but the real question is whether they add up to a good movie or not.

TMfU had quite a few problems, especially a director who didn’t understand how a con artist-flashback works, who undercut any power the movie could have gotten from the final conflict with the main antagonist. However, the problem I want to talk about here is the lack of a Top Muscle-type character (what TV Tropes calls, unfortunately, a dragon).

If you have a mastermind-type villain who’s in charge of a large organization, the Top Muscle is their number one fighter. They’re the meanest badass on hand, usually tougher than the protagonist(s) themselves. Often, they are only beaten by the protag and his friends teaming up, or by trickery.

Top Muscle appears in Bond movies all the time; Oddjob and Jaws are probably the most famous of them. Wez from The Road Warrior fits, as does Ramrowan from The Man From Nowhere and two different characters named Mad Dog from Hardboiled and The Raid: Redemption. That TV Tropes page above features a picture of Darth Vader. Sometimes the Top Muscle ends up turning against the Mastermind boss. Sometimes they’re just looking for a worthy opponent to test themselves against. In every case, they represent a huge physical challenge to the protagonist(s).

TMfU could have had a Top Muscle character. The villain’s husband had almost nothing to do except smirk at the sole female protagonist and drive a car. He might have been recast as an expert marksman and Olympic boxing champion, or an SS Commando military trainer, or anything. But nope. He was just an ineffectual romantic rival.

But Harry, you’re wondering, why does it matter? Two reasons: When properly implemented, a Top Muscle character brings competence to the antagonists and focus to the story.

Competence: A mastermind-type villain usually has three things going for them: resources, cool clothes, a scheme of some sort. All of these things are provided by the plot (as in: the villain is rich enough to hire mooks and arm them well, and they’ve gotten their hands on a macguffin and have a plan for WORLD DOMINATION). However, much of that is established by plot fiat, and it doesn’t necessarily establish the villain as a particularly scary guy.

However, having an underling who is a kick ass fighter lends an air of competence to all the antagonists. Instead of being a psychopath with a bunch of hirelings that the protagonist outwits/outguns/outfights with ease, they become a psychopath with a world-class killer as a subordinate. When the Top Muscle fights the protagonist to a stand still (or even beats the hell out of them) that extraordinary competence is transferred to the boss above.

Focus: Most spy/adventure movies have a lot of physical trials. There are fights, maybe some macguffins to steal, maybe someone to rescue. Are the protagonists facing off against a bunch of faceless stormtroopers, who only present a real danger in their numbers, or are they facing a single threat that could undo everything?

Extended scenes where the protagonists mows down mooks, then has to face the Top Muscle, can be incredibly effective. TMfU, with its aimless fight against a young Italian count and his two buddies, not to mention that endless boat sequence, needed that focus.