S.K. Dunstall's Blog, page 11

I skip the boring bits

How is your social distancing going?

If we ignore the big issues, like not being able to go anywhere, and the general craziness of what’s happening, so far the hardest thing about the enforced isolation for me is remembering when to put the bins out.

Bin night is Thursday night, which I’d normally remember because it’s the day before Friday (last workday of the week, hooray) but because we’re at home all day, every day, I’m losing track of the days. Not only that, our little two-person bin, which we normally don’t fill, gets full.  We’ve already forgotten one week, which meant that the following week the bin was almost overflowing.  Thank you, garbage collectors, for still working.

I’ve not set a reminder on my phone.

I read somewhere that people should write down how it is for them in this time of pandemic and send it to the archives.  Not sure which archives, but it would be an amazing thing for a scholar of the future. One thing that is so hard to glean from historical records is how normal people lived through times of crises because often the records are newspapers and reports and government records, rather than everyday life.

Anyway, on to other things.

I convinced Sherylyn to read T. Kingfisher’s Paladin’s Grace* the other day.  “It’s great,” I said. “Lots of repartee between the characters, emotional support, and other things. And you’ll love Bishop Beartongue.”

Partway through the book Sherylyn said, “You like this book. All they do is think about each other.” (It is a romance.)

“I’d forgotten those parts,” I said.  “I don’t read those bits.”

“But it’s half the book!”

“Ah, I skip those bits.”

Sherylyn did agree, that in between the parts where the two protagonists kept thinking about how much they like each other, the book is a lot of fun, and the characters are great. (Especially Bishop Beartongue.)  But it is only half the book.

I confess, I skip a lot of the romance in books.  Sex scenes, especially. You write a sex scene then I’m not your audience.  I’m there for the story and they get in the way, so I skim them at best.  That doesn’t mean to say I won’t read your book. I will.  I’ll just likely skip those particular scenes.  And I won’t even remember they’re in the book when I’ve finished reading it.

Having said that, I do like a good romance.  The romances I love are the unstated ones. Like Wei Wuxian and Lang Wangji in The Untamed. The tv show, not the original novel, where you knew how they felt about each other, but tv show never explicitly spelt it out for censorship reasons.  Where you know how people feel about each other in everything they say and do, even when it’s not romantic.

Those, to me, are the best romances.

Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay healthy.

* I do like this book, by the way, and recommend it if you like fantasy romance. It’s fun.

In media res

We survived another week in isolation. How did you go?

Sherylyn and I both worked from home this week. At least
Sherylyn ‘finishes’ work when she logs off. I finish when I’m done. I admit I am
envious. I know I said last week I was going to take it easier this week. Unfortunately,
this week was worse. I haven’t had a chance to look at our latest
work-progress. Worse, I only went outside about two days. So far this week I’m
already excelling in comparison. One day, one super-easy stretching from
YouTube and one walk around the block.

I expect may writers will try their hand at pandemic books over
the next couple of years. I’m not sure I could read them, it’s a little too
close to the truth. Maybe I could read one about smugglers doing a run to get medical
supplies to hospitals. Fighting against corrupt officials, gangs, even the army
trying to come in and take it off them.

Maybe not. Roger Zelazny did this in Damnation Alley
fifty years ago.

That’s how l like my dystopia. As science fiction.

Although, to be honest, it has been pointed out that through all ages, there has generally always been people somewhere in the world living in what we would consider dystopia.

On Friday night I went looking for books to read, and I hit
a streak of them—three of them in a row—which all started the same. Books I had
on the Kindle that we hadn’t looked at before, all by different authors.

Each one of them started with the protagonist supposedly in
the middle of the action. One was in the middle of robbing a house, one waiting
for an attack, the third in the middle of robbing a warehouse.

As an aside, thieves as protagonists are so common now the
book has to work a lot harder to keep my interest in those first few pages. (Cate
Glass’s An Illusion of Thieves, did work hard, and I loved it.)

The protagonists in all three books spent a lot of time
thinking, describing themselves and their surroundings, and giving backstory. Believe
me, if I’m in the middle of a stakeout, I’m not thinking about my long,
chestnut tresses. Expect, perhaps, to think maybe I should cut it short because
it keeps getting in the way. And to be honest, how many of you think about what
colour your hair is (unless you’re worried about the grey and realise you need
to go to the hairdresser)? Especially in the middle of a job.

Writing advice tells you to start the story in media res—in
the middle of the story. And these authors started their story in the middle of
something, kind of, but nothing happened. Not for pages. By that time I’d given
up.

I decided to try out a variation of a combined slush pile/page 99 test on Sherylyn.

“Would you read on?” I asked and read out the first page of
the novel.

No for the first, no for the second, no for the third. “Boring,
all of them.”

After that I looked around to see what else we had.

I started with books we already have on Kindle.

Patricia Briggs’ Moon Called, the first Mercy
Thompson book.

“Would you read on?” I asked.

The answer was a definite yes, although Sherylyn said the
story sounded familiar. (It was. The only Mercy Thompson story she hasn’t read
yet is the new one, but she’d read this a while ago.) We read on.

Next we tried a book I knew she hadn’t read.

T. Kingfisher’s Paladin’s Grace.

“Yes, I’d read on.”

Jackson Ford’s The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind.

“Yes. I’d read on.”

After that I looked around Amazon to see what I might choose and found an early Patricia Briggs. Dragon Bone. At first glance this story sounded a lot like those we’d rejected earlier. It started with some description, a bit of history, and a protagonist whose hair colour we know by the end of paragraph two.

“Read on,” Sherylyn says, and I did. I read all the way to
the end of the extract, and then I bought the book. I stayed up that night reading
it, and into the following day. When I’d finished, I bought the second.

It passed the read-on test.

Take care, everyone. Look after yourself.

I should be cleaning my bookshelf

How are you coping in these surreal times?  I hope you’re doing okay. Hang in there.

I’m into the first full week of self-isolation and work-from-home,
although I have, technically, worked from home for the last three weeks, sans
two days.

It started with a cold. Just the normal. Sneezing, sore
throat, runny nose. Like many colds it came on full on the weekend—a long
weekend, mind, so the three days of feeling rotten were the holiday period. I
took two more days off, to be sure I was over any bugs.  By then, COVID-19 sanctions had hit.  I couldn’t go back to work without a doctor
clearing me of any issues

That took the rest of the two weeks, just to be sure I was cleared.  I must say, I have never been the only person in the doctor’s waiting room before. It’s usually packed.

I didn’t get a COVID-19 test. Both the doctor and I were fairly
sure I didn’t have it—if you’re interested, she tested my temperature, listened
for any liquid in my lungs, and went through my symptoms—but she was at pains
to emphasise that even though she was clearing me for work, she couldn’t guarantee
I didn’t have COVID-19, as I hadn’t taken the Coronavirus test, only that I did
not have the symptoms that indicated it.

Anyway, I was cleared for work, went back for two days, just
in time for the work-from-home edict.

I am grateful I still have a job for the moment—many people
don’t.

I am grateful I can work from home.  I work for a company that has a good
work-life balance and allows us to work from home one day a week.  Not that I had been able to do so for the
last six months, due to the project I am on, but we can, when we’re not so busy,
so it wasn’t even a stretch (or an expense) to set up.

I am grateful I have a boss who looks after her staff and
makes a real effort to ensure we’re not isolated while we are working from
home.

I am not sick.  I am healthy(ish),
although horribly unfit.

I thought I’d get more writing done.  I have two extra writing hours a day because
I don’t have to commute. That hasn’t happened. Instead, I’ve worked longer
hours. I can’t believe I’m doing this.  I
start at nine and finish at nine, and when I’m finished I gobble a quick meal
and go to bed.

This week I’m sticking to rigid office hours.

And I need to clean up the bookshelf behind my desk in
preparation for work tomorrow.

That shelf is the one we put our junk onto, things we don’t anywhere else to put.  Especially electronic stuff, like cables and old keyboards. As you can imagine, it’s messy, and we’re doing lots of video conferences. Right now I take the laptop out to the kitchen to make the calls. I don’t want anyone to see to see mess behind me.  One day I’m going to forget and take the call at my desk.  I want it cleaned up before that.

Take care, everyone.

Finally back on line

We’re finally back on line after some technical issues where the site kept bringing up an error and I couldn’t even log on from the back end to investigate the error. We ended up backing up everything, and reinstalling, then reinstating the whole site.

Which worked, kind of, except that we lost all the book data, we’re using the default styles, the contact form isn’t working yet, we don’t have a front page. We’ll fix these over the next couple of days.

It could have been worse. Bear with us in the interim please.

Gateway books

There has been a lot of talk in the Twitterverse lately
about gateway books. These are the books, or book, that you read that makes you
a fan of a genre.

Harry Potter is a gateway book. Many fantasy fans grew up
reading Harry Potter and progressed to reading other fantasy. If we include
film and television, Star Wars and Star Trek can be considered gateway stories
as well.

Many people—particularly older people—will recommend the
classics. “You’ve got to read Lord of the Rings.” (I read it in
secondary school, and enjoyed it, but I have never read it since.) Or, “Robert
Heinlen is the grand master of science fiction. You must read him. Stranger
in a Strange Land.” (Never give someone a sixty-year-old book as a gateway
book. Few last the tyranny of time.)

Not only that, different people have different gateway
books. You can’t—and shouldn’t—recommend the same books to everyone.

Being a science fiction writer, people often ask me for
recommendations. They also, sometimes, ask whether they would enjoy our books. My
answers are the same for both the recommendations, and the should-I’s. I have a
little mini-quiz I ask.

What do you read?What television shows do you watch?What movies do you like?Not everyone reads books, but if they do, I ask
about some of their favourite books.

After that, I’ll recommend some books if I can come up with
any I think they’ll like.

I try to make them:

Published within the last twenty years, the last
ten, if I canStrongly character-based.

For most people, but not all, I also try for lighter stories
rather than serious ones.  Few people are
ready for heavy tomes as entrees into a genre. That often comes later, when
they start to enjoy the genre.

Likewise, the classics come later, too. Sometimes they even
come after someone has watched a television series. That’s what I did with
Pride and Prejudice. Couldn’t get into it until I watched the BBC version (I’m
sure I don’t need to say which one, it’s the classic). After which I finally
read the book right through.

How did you go with last week’s quiz?

Last week I gave you twelve images from book covers to see if you could guess the cover.

How did you go?

Here are the covers, in order of image.

How many did you get?

Quiz: Science fiction and fantasy covers

Sherylyn is on the engagement committee at her workplace,
and recently they had a competition they call ‘I Spy’. You take a photo of part
of an object in the workplace (usually close-up) and the teams have to guess the
object is. I’ve adapted their competition to create a quiz on book covers.

We’ll show you part of a book cover. You tell us, in the
comments, which books these are from.

To make it easier we have restricted it to:

Novels that were published, or will be published, between
2018 and 2020. Some of these novels are coming, not yet available. Dates are
from amazon.com, so North American publish date.

Science fiction and fantasy only.

The covers are available on Amazon.com. That is, US covers, rather
than UK (or Australian or any other country).

Covers may be paperback, hardcover or Kindle.

There are twelve book covers below. Answers next week.

(Sherylyn says the work prizes were a box of chocolates. We can’t
send out chocolates, so we’ll eat the chocolates for you. Sounds fair? No?)

Interesting conversations only partially heard

The restaurant was crowded.

The woman at the large table across the room had one of those
loud voices that older people often have when they’re going deaf. She raised
her voice. Everyone in the restaurant could hear her, even above the crowd.

“Science fiction. You can buy it from Amazon.”

Naturally, I turned my head to see who was speaking. Wouldn’t
you?

Her (adult) daughter was mortified. She deliberately avoided
my eye and looked away from me, trying to shush her mother.

I wanted to go over and tell her not to worry. Let her
mother talk. Sometimes the other people in the room hear what they have to say.

The daughter’s husband came in then, with birthday cake, so
the conversation turned, but I really wanted to go over and tell the younger
woman not to worry. Sometimes, when someone hears a loud voice, they just want
to know what the loud-voiced person will say next.

The under-rated subconscious

We have a routine in our house, where most mornings we grab
the paper and do the quiz while we drink coffee and wake up.

This morning I was doing the quiz and the question came up, “Name
the author who wrote five books featuring Tom Ripley.”

Total mental blank. I knew Ripley was a con artist and a
murder, but I didn’t know who created him.

Then, two questions later, when we’re trying to work out who came bottom of the ladder in the A-league two years ago (neither of us had any idea), up pops a name. “Patricia Highsmith.”

The subconscious is an underrated tool. Give your mind a
puzzle to solve, then sleep on it. You’ll often wake up next morning with the
problem solved. That’s provided you can manage not to worry about it so that
you keep yourself awake all night.

For a writer, it’s a boon.

We’ll often talk out writing problem of an evening, not come
up with a solution at all, but next day—after we’ve done the quiz—one of us will
say, “Suppose this happens”, or “Suppose we move that part to earlier in the
book, where our character has more of a reason to want to …”.

It doesn’t feel like work. It feels like serendipity. But your
subconscious has been working away in the background, coming around to that
conclusion.

Why are our characters always eating?

Come to our house, you won’t get a feast like this. Sadly.

Is it just me, or are purple book covers a thing right now?

I think it’s only because I haven’t noticed them before, but
ever since Stars Beyond came out, all I see are books with predominantly
purple covers. I can remember when talking cover colours for Linesman,
we said we’d like it to have some blue in it, for every science fiction novel
at the time seemed to have red or orange covers.

Looking at the covers coming up, I’m predicting brown will
be the new purple.

It’s all about food

We’re currently editing a scene in our new novel where the
protagonist’s uncle serves hard-to-eat food to embarrass one of his guests.

Food is a constant in our novels (along with drinking). From
Ean’s dinners with rulers and the military, to Rossi’s less-social dinner with
Janni Naidan, all the way down to Sale’s sandwiches in the linesman’s survival
pack. From Jacque’s spicy flatbread to garfungi soup. So much so that you’d
sometimes think that food—and drink—is all we think about.

You might also think that based on our novels we lovingly
prepare gastronomic masterpieces every night for dinner. Not so. Once, before
some close friends retired and moved to the country, they used to come around
for dinner every month and we’d scour the magazines to find something new and
experimental (but that looked good) to cook. But that was then, and we haven’t
brought out the good dinner service since they moved away.

Those dinners were legendary, by the way. We experimented,
and while most meals were successful, some went down in history as monumental
flops. We all still joke about the infamous Mars Bar dessert, which was so hard
we couldn’t even cut it with a knife. I don’t recall if any of us ate it. I
think we would have broken our teeth.

But experiments notwithstanding, most of our dinners are of
the “what’s for dinner” variety five minutes before we have to prepare it. It often
turns out to be salad and a meat, or meat and potatoes and peas (important
standby in anyone’s pantry). Or pasta. Tuna and noodles (tuna in oil and
whatever pasta is in the cupboard) is a favourite. Tuna is another cupboard
staple.

As for going out to dine, how to get home afterwards is always
more important than how good the food is. The restaurant needs to be close.

So although we write a lot about food, but we don’t always
think about it.