I Saw Lightning Fall

Gourlay on the Land of the Non-Reader

2012-01-30T14:12:00.000-05:00

Jonathan Gourlay of The Bygone Bureau talks about the time he allowed video games and Star Trek spinoffs to seduce him away from his favorite pasttime of reading. Excerpts:

Back when I was a reader, it often troubled me when friends claimed that they had no time to read. Was it possible that their lives were so full of wonders that they could not spend five minutes here or there to read? How was it that my life, in comparison, seemed to offer so many chunks of reading time throughout the day? A train ride, a late-night break, and an office wait. Through marriage, babies, graduate schools, and new jobs, I always found time to read for pleasure. ...

Then I opened Skyrim and saw the following message: "48 hours played. Last played today."

I must have some free time. Perhaps the "I don’t have time to read" line is just a cover. A way that people excuse themselves from the uncomfortable truth that they do, in fact, have time but that they would rather do something other than read with that time (such as pretending to be a wood-elf). We exalt reading as "good" like exercise and vegetables and so we are always making excuses as to why we avoid it.

After I saw that message I knew that I had taken up residence in the swamp of the non-reader. Here is what life is like in that swamp ...

Read the whole thing. I often run into people who ask, "Why in the world do you bother with reading?" They aren’t trying to be cruel or condescending. They simply don’t see the utility in it. Yet Gourlay does. With penetrating insight (and a fair amount of healthy self-loathing), he skewers the deficiencies that have sprung up due to his non-reading life. Tenuous concentration. Difficulty in engaging new ideas. An inability to make mental associations. An aversion to complexity. For myself, I’d like to add another point: Reading is worthwhile because it is beautiful, and while beauty might not reside on quite the same plane as truth or usefulness, it’s still worth seeking for its own sake.

(Picture: CC 2011 by brianjmatis; Hat Tip: Brandywine Books)

"Engines of Progress"

2012-01-27T20:29:00.003-05:00

How they once mocked my "mad, Victorian affectations." But when war blasted the mainlands, how they flocked to my island in the Irish sea.

I never exactly renounced this age. True, I love steampower, my family title, my top hat. But I also foresaw how really useful artificial intelligence could be.

A new civilization will soon rise, borne by my intelligent engines, carrying my loads, my followers, my vision. None will dare mock me then.

Behold this tank engine, my first creation! See the strength in its pistons, its armored blue chassis! Even its name will shame the doubters -- Thomas.

Engines of Progress by I Saw Lightning Fall

Postscript: If the above widget is giving you trouble, visit ISLF's Soundcloud page or consider subscribing to the podcast to listen to audio recordings of this and other stories.

Milligan and Murphy Goes Deep, Gets Funny

2012-01-26T15:40:00.001-05:00

Note: I received a review-copy of the following title from its author.

I had a liberal-arts undergraduate education, one of those programs in which students take tons of classes outside their field of study. In addition to studying all sorts of literature, I filled my schedule with courses on rhetorical theory, world history, meteorology and drama. That last class was there I encountered Samuel Beckett's Endgame. While I wouldn't call the Irish author's bleak offshoot of existentialism my favorite philosophy, I learned to like his play about two lost souls struggling in a postapocalyptic wasteland. Now through his new novel Milligan and Murphy, long-time Beckett pasticheur Jim Murdoch has taught me there's something else to enjoy in the man's work -- humor.

The two brothers Milligan and Murphy aren't exactly what one might call distinguished examples of manhood. Though in the middle of their years, they still live in their mother's house in gloomy town of Lissoy. Despite dwelling all their lives in a hamlet drenched with ennui and rain, the two seem comfortable drinking, fornicating, lounging about, collecting welfare and generally avoiding any sort of responsibility. Then their mother shoos them to old O'Connor's farm for some day work, and the two trudge down the road toward it. And then past it. And then on to the next town and the next and the next. Milligan and Murphy have no clear goal in their heads, nor can they answer one simple question: What made them decide to abandon their home?

Milligan and Murphy goes in deep for theme, and like Beckett himself, it seems to espouse a sort of nihilism. At one stop on their aimless trek, Murphy notes, "Over the last few days, three people have all spoken to my brother and me, in brief and at length, about the meaninglessness of existence: a tramp, a priest of all people, an artist and now you: this can't be a coincidence." Of course, it is a coincidence, just like everything else in life. Not that the realization crushes the hapless protangonists. Rather, they see existential absurdity as an excuse to search out their own meaning. Murphy later opines, "There's nothing to be found if we go nowhere or if we go back there to spend the evenings, when one hasn't even the price of a pint to one's name, thumbing through Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopaedia trying to locate photographs of half-naked Africans." Call it adverturous nihilism, if you like.

If the novel only had theme going for it, then it would likely garner hearty approbation or distaste, depending on each individual's viewpoint. Discussions on the significance (or lack thereof) of ultimate things tends to polarize readers. Fortunately, Murdoch's droll style keeps the proceedings pretty darn funny. For example, the narrator explains in the introductory paragraph how Milligan and Murphy aren't full blood brothers, but rather "they were half-brothers; each had been dragged screaming from the innards of the same mother though a different father had been guilty for them winding up there." Murdoch somehow also manages to make funny the killing of a crow for food, an -- ahem -- act of "solitary vice," and the preferred payment a less-than-comely wench exacts for her services. The brotherly pair may not be the most likeable sort and some may find their worldview dicey, but no one can deny Murdoch's writing chops. Milligan and Murphy is some kind of funny.

(Picture: CC 2011 by Ledbetter, Architect)

Music To Write By: Killswitch Engage's "Rose of Sharyn"

2012-01-24T10:35:00.002-05:00

Why Listen? To see how form affects function; an example of making private symbolism accessible; how to keep sentiment from becoming sentimentality.

When one thinks of music with compositional subltety and a literary bent, heavy metal doesn’t exactly leap to mind. Sturm und drang and dire denouncements, yes, but not much more. So "Rose of Sharyn," from the progressive metalcore band Killswitch Engage, comes as something of a surprise. In most contexts, this eulogy to lead singer Howard Jones’ mother would seem overly sentimental. ("What would I give to behold / The smile, the face of love? / You never left me. The rising sun / Will always speak your name.") But atonal howls and thundering riffs add gravitas, while its surprisingly melodic bridge lends a fragile beauty. What’s more, Jones refuses to surrender to the achorless abstractions that dominate his genre, instead coopting a biblical metaphor in the song’s title to help communicate private symbolism. There’s some finesse in all this fury.

"The Season's Latest"

2012-01-20T11:50:00.004-05:00

Your wife loves purses. Coach's notched rectangle. Gucci's mirrored "G"s. Louis Vuitton's entwined "LV." But her latest bag, a grotesquely large patent-leather sack on the kitchen table, bears the unfamiliar brand "Alhazred of Damascus."

You hear her cell warble from the purse's depths. She yells from the garage for you to grab it. You reach down its maw. And down.

And down.

Around you rises a catacomb of cloth corridors. You wander them for -- hours? days? weeks? Time and space mean little amongst their alien geometry. Eventually, you find the phone.

Now if only you could find your way out.

The Season's Latest by I Saw Lightning Fall

Postscript: If the above widget is giving you trouble, visit ISLF's Soundcloud page or consider subscribing to the podcast to listen to audio recordings of this and other stories.

The Quiet Earth Is Uneven, Ends Fascinatingly

2012-01-18T10:43:00.001-05:00

As middle age approaches, I've found myself battling an intractable foe -- the ever-expanding belly. For some reason, I can't seem to shrug off the calories like I used to, so mornings find me sweating away the calories. I've taken to sussing out odd or obscure movies to watch while I workout, anything to keep exercise from getting boring. And while trolling top-ten lists for viewing ideas, I stumbled across The Quiet Earth, a 1985 post-apocalyptic SF film shot entirely in New Zealand.

On July 5th at 6:12 a.m., the world ended. Researcher Zac Hobson woke mere moments later. Upon leaving his room, he finds no armed uprisings or nuclear fallout, no devastating plague or marauding mutants, only a city empty of all people and utterly silent. A search throughout the deserted metropolis turns up only a single clue at the scientific center where Hobson once worked, a blinking prompt on a screen that read, "Project Flashlight complete." Seems the global power grid he and his colleagues had worked on wasn't as harmless as they initially thought. Hobson begins taking steps to contact any survivors of what he calls The Event, broadcasting a looped message from a radio station and painting billboards with his contact information. But as the days stretch on, he begins to wonder: Could he be the last man alive?

Alas, anyone who picks up a DVD of The Quiet Earth will have that question quickly answered. Perhaps this is one production where the actors and actresses' names -- note the plural -- shouldn't be printed in plain sight. But some surprises still lay in store. The film revels in unexpected developments, some stunning, others bewildering. The initial scenes of Hobson wandering around abandoned shopping malls and highways strewn with empty cars possess an eerie beauty. But whenever director Geoff Murphy tries to amp up the intensity, the proceedings turn absurd. One would expect a man in Hobson's situation to undergo some mental strain. But to don women's lingerine, bust into a Catholic church with a shotgun, scream, "If you don't come out I'll shoot the kid!" and blast the crucified Christ above the altar? Yeah, not so much. Most pundits also dislike the ending, which is so unexpected it seems at first like the dictionary definition of a non sequitor. However, careful viewers may take note of the subtle clues that Murphy sprinkled throughout the narrative, clues that make the conclusion feel more appropos, and that may be worth the price of admission.

(Picture: CC 2009 by Marshall Astor - Food Fetishist)

"The Night Train"

2012-01-13T09:51:00.003-05:00

I don't live in a great section of town. Rust-eaten Caddys bottom out in potholes. Street-corner peddlers proffer pharmaceuticals. Advertisements never tout refurbished rentals. My building, largely vacant, is all crumbling plaster, peeling paint, spotted carpet. Then there's the train, roaring by twice an hour mere yards away, sounding like some massive, antediluvian thing.

The oldtimers say you get used to it. But I'm searching the classifieds. Yesterday, I woke at 3 a.m. to the train-whistle's wail, a howl splitting the night. And I swear I heard, from deep in the tenement's bowels, an answering cry rise to meet it.

The Night Train by I Saw Lightning Fall

Postscript: If the above widget is giving you trouble, visit ISLF's Soundcloud page to listen to audio recordings of this and other stories.

Phraselet No. 48

2012-01-12T12:46:00.002-05:00

Many common objects may be made the vehicles of retribution, and where retribution is not called for, of malice. Be careful how you handle the packet you pick up in the carriage-drive, paricularly if it contains nail-parings and hair. Do not, in any case, bring it into the house. It may not be alone ... (Dots are believed by many writers of our day to be a good substitute for effective writing. They are certainly an easy one. Let us have a few more ......)

- M.R. James, "Stories I Have Tried to Write," The Haunted Dolls' House and Other Ghost Stories

Middle Shelf Selection: The Collected Stories of M.R. James

2012-01-12T12:37:00.004-05:00

Allow me to offer a modest proposal: If you want to understand horror, you need to read the stories of M.R. James.

I doubt that many of the contemporaries of Montague Rhodes James ever imagined that the bookish bachelor would go down in history as an author of British ghost stories. A scholar and administrator at King's College, Cambridge, in the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, he made his name by chronicling church history and translating the Apocrypha. Hardly hair-raising stuff. But history doesn't always preserve what we expect it to, and most of James' scholarship has faded over time. What remains in popular memory are his spectacularly spooky stories, of which he penned usually one per year and then recited it for students and friends on Christmas Eve.

St. Bertrand de Comminges is a decayed town on the spurs of the Pyrenees, not very far from Toulouse, and still nearer to Bagnères-de-Luchon. It was the site of a bishopric until the Revolution, and has a cathedral which is visited by a certain number of tourists. In the spring of 1883 an Englishman arrived at this old-world place -- I can hardly dignify it with the name of city, for there are not a thousand inhabitants. He was a Cambridge man, who had come specially from Toulouse to see St. Bertrand's Church, and had left two friends, who were less keen archaeologists than himself, in their hotel at Toulouse, under promise to join him on the following morning.

One only has to read a few of James' tales to see how closely they hew to a particular pattern. They typically feature a scholarly male protagonist with an interest in dusty artifacts of some sort, perhaps literary curio ("Canon Alberic's Scrap-book") or obscure objets d'art ("The Mezzotint") or a historical cypher concealing the hiding place of ancient wealth ("The Treasure of Abbot Thomas"). Often these protagonists prove benign in their aims, but some possess sinister motivations. Two academic fellows seeking unearthly power seek an encounter with "The Fenstanton Witch." In "Lost Hearts," a country lord's munificence masks murderous aims. And despite the affable manner of a teacher in "A School Story," he harbors a dark secret deep in his past. But whether through curiosity, cupidity or cruelty, these characters always cross paths with some monstrous supernatural being.

"Monstrous" being the key word.

And as noiselessly as possible he stole to the door and opened it. The shattering of the illusion! He almost laughed aloud. Propped, or you might say sitting, on the edge of the bed was -- nothing in the round world but a scarecrow! A scarecrow out of the garden, of course, dumped into the deserted room. ... Yes; but here amusement ceased. Have scarecrows bare bony feet? Do their heads loll on to their shoulders? Have they iron collars and links of chain about their necks? Can they get up and move, if ever so stiffly, across a floor, with wagging head and arms close at their sides? and shiver?

James earned the admiration of none less than H.P. Lovecraft with his diabolical creations. Commenting on them, Lovecraft wrote, "Where the older [gothic] stock ghosts were pale and stately, and apprehended chiefly though the sense of sight, the average James ghost is lean, dwarfish, and hairy -- a sluggish, hellish night-abomination midway betwixt beast and man -- and usually touched before it is seen." A few stories include the quotidian idea of the dead breaking from their graves to wreck havoc on the living ("Wailing Well," "There Was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard"), but many of James' monsters feel entirely original even now. A cursed carving among "The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral" comes to life at the touch of a doomed Archdeacon. "Casting the Ruins" has the nasty shock of a character putting "his hand into the well-known nook under the pillow" and discovering "a mouth with teeth, and with hair about it, and ... not the mouth of a human being." Even when James made his antagonists incorporeal, he always threw in a wrinkle. In "'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad,'" he twists the conventional idea of a bedsheet-wearing ghost, having a spirit get tangled amongst bedclothes so that it wears "a horrible, an intensely horrible, face of crumpled linen." My favorite James story, "The Malice of Inanimate Objects," finds a vengeful spirit making creative use of everyday things to torment an antagonist.

"I suppose I shall have to translate this," said the antiquary to himself, as he finished copying the above lines from that rather rare and exceedingly diffuse book, the "Sertum Steinfeldense Norbertinum." "Well, it may as well be done first as last," and accordingly the following rendering was very quickly produced.

For all his influence in the horror field, no one can say that James produced a perfect oeuvre. Some stories run on interminably ("Mr. Humphreys and His Inheritance") or lack a fully realized plot ("A Vignette"). A few are simply difficult to read. James' voluminous learning colored his narratives, and their erudition may strain 21st century genre fans. Unless you have passing knowledge of Anglican ecclesiology, medieval Latin, British archetectural fads, the common law tradition, Shakespeare, numerology and obscure biblical texts, you really should pick up an annotated copy of the stories. Penguin Classics has published two worthy volumes, Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories and The Haunted Dolls' House and Other Ghost Stories, and Audible has also produced many of the tales in audiobook format. Challenges aside, though, James' work deserves our attention not only because of its lasting influence, but also it still sends gooseflesh racing up one's spine.

"Each Heart Has Its Reasons, No Matter How Still"

2012-01-06T16:58:00.002-05:00

Hair in the bathroom sink. Muddy footprints on the tile. A mirror smudged and smeared. Tatiana swiped stinging eyes. Papa would've grumbled about feckless foreigners, their family tree's weakened branch, how the old country held many suitable mates.

But she'd fallen for Lucas like a body into a grave. Never mind his preoccupations with astronomy, romping monthly in the woods, eating solid food. Tatiana loved him, despite the dictates of her people's prejudice.

The bathroom's tiny window framed a harvest moon, fat and full. She grimaced at it, taking a rag to the mirror -- which reflected only an empty bathroom.

Each Heart Has Its Reasons, No Matter How Still by I Saw Lightning Fall

Postscript: If the above widget is giving you trouble, visit ISLF's Soundcloud.com page to listen to audio recordings of this and other stories.

Micro-Fiction Index

2012-01-06T16:55:00.007-05:00

"Engines of Progress" (Soon a new civilization will arise, and none will dare mock me.)
"The Season's Latest" (You're wife loves designer purses.)
"The Night Train" (I don't live in a great section of town.)
"Each Heart Has Its Reasons, No Matter How Still" (Tatiana knew exactly what papa would say.)
"It Rolls Along, The Unbroken Song" (Kirby agreed with Norman on so much -- but not the split.)
"Moriah" ("Would that another provide.")
"First Picture" ("It might be my first memory. Any other has evaporated.")
"Simeon" (Simeon was waiting for something different from all the others.)
"Frost" ("I started with excuses after the leaves turned ...")
"Ebenezer" ("I have not seen the three Spirits again.")
"Magi" ("Now that I am old, I wonder how we made the journey.")

The Machinist Is More Than Bale's Thinness

2012-01-03T20:59:00.001-05:00

Sometimes all the extra-textual chatter around a story can keep you from giving it a fair reading -- or from even knowing much about it in the first place. Take, for instance, the 2004 psychological thriller The Machinist. I'd heard of it. I'd heard that it starred Christian Bale, he of The Dark Knight and American Psycho fame. And I'd heard he lost a lot of weight for the role, gotten thin to the point of becoming downright skeletal. But for the life of me, I couldn't find anyone who actually knew what the movie was about. My solution? Forget Wikipedia and track down the DVD.

Trevor Reznik isn't a healthy man. He doesn't snort coke or have some wasting disease as his coworkers suspect. No, Trevor's problem is that he hasn't slept for a full year. Whenever unconsciousness looms, some circumstance conspires to jerk him awake. A copy of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot slipping from his hands as he sits on the couch. A waitress pouring coffee at the local airport's all-night eatery. His truck's cigarette lighter snapping on as he leans against the headrest. Sleeplessness has whittled the flesh from his bones, leaving him looking more like a survivor of Dachau than a skilled manufacturing worker. Yet while insomnia troubles Trevor, it isn't his biggest problem. A guy named Ivan has appeared at work, a bull of man with an easy grin and a mocking tone. While on the floor one day, he distracts Trevor during a routine recalibration, and the resulting accident nearly costs a coworker his life. Bad stuff. But what's worse is that no one else seems to think Ivan exists ...

Perceptive viewers will quickly notice that director Brad Anderson freighted nearly every scene of The Machinist with import. Most every lingering shot or bit of dialogue has a reason for its inclusion. There's a reason why Trevor can never seem to find hand soap and therefore scrubs up with bleach and lye. There's a reason why Ivan is thick-necked and thick-limbed, girded about the waist with a layer of fat. There's a reason why Trevor has odd associations with fishing trips, aviator shades and a certain highway route number. There's a reason why Dostoyevsky features prominently, although the final scenes made me think Crime and Punishment might've proven a wiser choice than The Idiot. You get the idea: No one could describe the movie anything other than intricate. But that very braininess becomes a liability. It takes a long time to weave that much texture into a film's fabric, and The Machinist moves as slow and cold as something living on the bottom of the sea. And the ending, well, the big twist satisfies without actually surprising. Perhaps it's understandable, then, that Bale's performance eclipsed the movie itself.

(Picture: CC 2011 by Maitham Photography)

Curious George and the Artist's Responsibility

2011-12-31T07:07:00.000-05:00

Regular ISLF readers know that I like to muse about an artist's responsibility from time to time, the ethics of releasing narratives out into the world. Well, life just dropped a prime example of it right into my lap. A few weekends ago, I got up early with my two-year-old so that my wife (dear, hardworking woman) could sleep in. I had just ladled a scoop of pancake batter into a hot skillet when my high-chaired tot exclaimed, "Curious George, he ... he let the bunny out? He let the bunny out of the cage?"

"That's right," I said as bubbles appeared around the edge of the pancake. We'd recently read Margaret and H.A. Ray's Curious George Flies a Kite, wherein the titular monkey clambers into a neighbor's backyard and swipes a baby rabbit from its hutch.

The rejoinder came quickly: "I ... I let the bunny out."

Wait a minute, that didn't sound right. "What did you say?"

My little one grinned broadly. "I let the bunny out of the cage!"

At first I thought that must be a mistake, a kind of youthful misunderstanding to which children are particularly prone. Nope. When she got up, my wife confirmed that earlier in the week she'd taken our little one to a you-pick-it farm and had a close encounter there with a jailbroken bunny. Who knew that a child of 28-months could work a latch that fast? Fortunately, she'd come to the rescue before the rabbit had gotten properly free of its prison.

You know the moral here, right? Of course you do, and I can already hear the objections to it. Yes, children are far more susceptible to all sorts of media than adults. Sure, stories don't directly cause individuals to behave in certain ways. And, no, narratives don't need to be squeaky clean or devoid of gritty verisimilitude to pass moral muster. I get all that.

Consider, though, what my old lit prof Leland Ryken has written about storytelling in general: "A ... presupposition that I make of stories is that the characters (especially the protagonist) undertake in experiment in living. This experiment is tested during the course of the story. Its final success or failure is a comment on the adequacy or inadequacy of the morality or world view on which the experiment was based." Now perhaps we can find exceptions to this presupposition. After all, the sea of literature is broad and deep, and I doubt anyone has plumbed its every nook and cranny. But it strikes me as a generally sound assumption, one that we need to take into consideration when we write. The actions of our characters tell readers what we think is normative about life, and some of them will take that to heart.

As for Curious George, the naughty little monkey who always seems to escape any lasting consequences for his actions, I think we might read a little less about his adventures.

(Picture: CC 2007 by youngdoo)

Pressfield on What Advertising Can Teach Writers

2011-12-29T10:57:00.000-05:00

On his Web site, Steven Pressfield (author of The Profession) describes what he learned by working in advertising. Excerpt:

My first real job was in advertising. I worked as a copywriter for an agency called Benton & Bowles in New York City. An artist or entrepreneur's first job inevitably bends the twig. It shapes who you'll become. If your freshman outing is in journalism, your brain gets tattooed (in a good way) with who-what-where-when-why, fact-check-everything, never-bury-the-lead. If you start out as a photographer's assistant, you learn other stuff. If you plunge into business on your own, the education is about self-discipline, self-motivation, self-validation.

Advertising teaches its own lessons. For starters, everyone hates advertising. Advertising lies. Advertising misleads. It's evil, phony, it's trying to sell us crap we don't need. I can't argue with any of that, except to observe that for a rookie wordsmith, such obstacles can be a supreme positive. Why? Because you have to sweat blood to overcome them -- and in that grueling process, you learn your craft.

Here it is. Here's the #1 lesson you learn working in advertising (and this has stuck with me, to my advantage, my whole working life):

Nobody wants to read your [expletive].

Read the whole thing. Oh, this is a hard lesson to learn. Pressfield goes on to pound the proverbial nail on the head when he notes that every advertising client "is in love with his own product. The mistake he makes is believing that, because he loves it, everyone else will too." Can any of us, from the compositional dilettante to the grizzled professional novelist, argue that writers don't also fall prey to this impulse? Of course we do, hence our difficulties with honest feedback and negative reviews. Sure, the realization that nobody cares "about your one-act play, your Facebook page or your new sesame chicken joint at Canal and Tchopotoulis" can turn us sour and pessimistic. Or we can understand that "it isn't that people are mean or cruel. They're just busy." And this comprehension can transform us into empathetic writers who learn how to truly connect with an audience.

(Picture: CC 2010 by bbweb; Hat Tip: Tony Chavira)

Advent Ghosts 2011: The Stories

2011-12-24T00:03:00.013-05:00

There is a cold in the air tonight, a chill that goes deeper than aching fingers and frostbitten cheeks. It pierces to the marrow, to our innermost parts. And morning, well, morning lies a long way off. We know the sun will soar into the sky again, warming us with its light. But until then, let us strike sparks against the darkness and feed the fire until it rages. Come, gather together, and as we wait for the new day, let us give you that oldest of gifts.

Let us tell you a story ...

• "Awaited" by Dale Nelson (see below)
• "Jack Frost" by Tony Chavira on Minefield Wonderland
• "The Accident" by Thomas Joyce (see below)
• "An Angel Above" by Paul Liadas on The Struggling Writer
• "Näck" by Aidan Fritz on Aidan Writes
• "It Rolls Along, The Unbroken Song" and "Moriah" by Loren Eaton on I Saw Lightning Fall
• "When Will Santa Come?" by Craig Scott on CS Fantasy Reviews
• "While You Sleep" by Simon Kewin on Spellmaking
• "My Watch Says It's Christmas" by Lester D. Crawford on Lester D. Crawford Blog
• "A Long Mile Confession" by Jackie Jordan on Let's Hear It!
• "Faces" by Giora Polushko on Giorap.com
• "After" by S.D. Smith on SDSmith.net
• "Who’s That?" by Michael Morse on Rescuing Providence
• "Believe" by Michelle Davidson Argyle on The Innocent Flower
• "The Rift of the Magi" by Josh Vogt on Through A Glass, Darkly
• "How The Helper Earned His Price" by B. Nagel on B. Nagel
• "Philadelphia (In Old City on Christmas Eve)" by Jason Evans on The Clarity of Night
• "Incarnation" by Chestertonian Rambler on The Winding Road to Roundabout
• "The Escape" by Elizabeth Gaucher on Esse Diem
• "Dopamine" by Ollwen Jones (see below)
• "The Road North by Scott GF Bailey on Six Words For A Hat
• "Untitled" by Donna Hole on Donna Hole
• "Goddess Bless Us, Every One" by Nathaniel Lee on Mirrorshards
• "Untitled" by SzélsőFa on Gondolatok az erdőben

* * *

"Awaited"
by Dale Nelson

No choice ...

No choice.

So he looked over the well's lip.

That face looking up at him.

("Awaited" copyright 2011 by Dale Nelson; used by permission)

* * *

"The Accident"
by Thomas Joyce

Surrounded by the Christmas presents that our son should have been feverishly opening the following morning, I tried to tell my wife about the accident. I explained how he had begged to sit up front with me and how he'd fidgeted. When she refused to turn from the window I cried that I might have a broken rib given the pain in my chest, and that I'd only had four beers. She turned and looked straight through me to where our son, wrapped in a blanket and comforted by a paramedic, now stood, and the cold darkness finally claimed me.

("The Accident" copyright 2011 by Thomas Joyce; used by permission)

* * *

"Dopamine"
by Ollwen Jones

Marianna sat at the kitchenette, a second pill in her wrinkled, palsied hand. Dopamine, or a reasonable replacement. Too little of it slurred her speech and kept her feet from obeying.

This time of year she missed Bill most of all. A second pill.

After a while, there he was, smiling silently across the table at her, just as last year.

Soon she eyed her pill bottle. How many to join him? He stared sternly at her for a moment, then turning, smiled dotingly at all the photos of grand-children on fridge.

No. Of course not. Not on Christmas Eve.

"It Rolls Along, The Unbroken Song"

2011-12-24T00:02:00.001-05:00

A penny taken is a penny earned. Kirby agreed with Norman on that. And that the bellringers didn't deposit donations promptly. And on the wheres and whens -- four a.m., the world dead and sleeping.

He didn't agree with the split.

In and out, no problem. Then Kirby put the screwdriver in Norman's throat. No one marked every missing cent or cooling corpse. But turning the key in the getaway's ignition, he thought he heard a chiming roll across the face of the waking world. Imagination, surely.

Then the getaway groaned. Stalled.

Red and blue light pulsed against the rear window.

It Rolls Along, The Unbroken Song by I Saw Lightning Fall

Postscript: If the above widget is giving you trouble, visit ISLF's Soundcloud.com page to listen to audio recordings of this and other stories.

"Moriah"

2011-12-24T00:01:00.004-05:00

Mother laughed when the seer proclaimed that she -- she of ten-score summers! -- would conceive me. But I've heard no laughter during this three-day journey, only that YAH Himself will provide.

YAH, that Fear in the darkness murmuring promises -- yes, I know what He will provide. For as we scrabble on this slope, I see father hefting the fire, the rope, the bright-edged blade.

Would that another provide. Would that some king commute this sentence, some prophet foresee a new future, some priest lift the wood from my neck and bear it up this lonely mount step by step by step.

Moriah by I Saw Lightning Fall

Postscript: If the above widget is giving you trouble, visit ISLF's Soundcloud.com page to listen to audio recordings of this and other stories.

"King Flounder"

2011-12-20T20:43:00.001-05:00

Quando sederis ut comedas cum principe, diligenter adtende quae posita sunt ante faciem tuam …

Hmmm? What is it, Johnny? Tyler Hooper's been waiting outside almost an hour? Who's Tyler Ho --

Oh. Yeah. The Good Samaritan. Fine, show him in.

Tyler! Glad you could stop by. Sorry if Johnny kept you waiting, but I'm a busy man. You know Johnny from the neighborhood? No? Remind me to tell you a story.

For some reason, I didn't have much exposure to Grimm's fairy tales as a child. Sure, I knew the Disneyfied versions of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, but the gritty stuff had somehow escaped me. Then soon after I moved back to Florida in 2004, I picked up Black Swan, White Raven, an Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling-edited anthology featuring reworked versions of old folk stories.

I got hooked in no time at all.

Michael Cadnum's "The Flounder's Kiss" grabbed me in particular. That piece reimagined "The Fisherman and His Wife," a tale wherein a henpecked husband begs a magical fish for greater and greater blessings at the behest of his overbearing wife. In typical Grimm fashion, the woman's cupidity and the man's cowardice conspire to strip them of all the good they've gathered. Cadnum, though, gave his version a sheen of realistic detail, turned the wife physically abusive, and wrapped up everything up with a quietly horrific denouncement.

Not long after reading his take, I checked out an unabridged version of Grimm's Fairy Tales from the library, but "The Fisherman and His Wife" stuck with me even after finishing that volume. So when John Kenyon of Things I'd Rather Be Doing suggested penning a fairy tale-themed crime story, my mind started recontextualizing the tale. I quickly decided to feature a marginally likeable Mafioso as my protagonist and realized that I wanted to riff off of that famous scene in The Godfather where Michael Corleone brazenly offs Sollozzo and McCluskey in an Italian restaurant. But how to work in a flounder? Well, my father and I had done a little bit of fly fishing on the salt flats in the Keys. So what if the flounder population in south Florida is notoriously sparse? A bit of creative license would have to do.

"King Flounder" appears in the Untreed Reads e-book anthology Grimm Tales, which features stories by Patti Abbott, Eric Beetner, Nigel Bird, Kaye George and longtime ISLF friend B. Nagel. You can buy the collection at the Untreed Reads Web site.

But we like free here at ISLF! The first person to email me at ISawLightningFall [at] gmail [dot] com and say where in the United States the flounder is typically found will get his very own copy of Grimm Tales.

Music To Write By: Tom Waits' "Black Wings"

2011-12-17T21:09:00.001-05:00

Why listen? For non-lyrical songwriting; a strikingly gritty presentation; almost five-minutes worth of dark inspiration.

Even the most superficial survey of the Billboard Top 40 reveals that today's music prides itself on accessibility. Transparent lyrics and catchy melodies sung by pretty people rule the day. Given that standard, Tom Waits' "Black Wings" would never get a hearing on a Clear Channel station. Muted upright bass and hushed banjo riffs bracket Waits' sepulchral growling as he unfolds a mythic narrative about a wanderer who might not be entirely human. Biblical allusions pepper the tale, but this stranger has more in common with Christopher Walken's creepy Gabriel in The Prophecy than Christ. "Some say he once killed a man with a guitar string. / He's been seen at the table with kings. / Well, he once saved a baby from drowning. / There are those that say beneath his coat there are wings." Popular listening? Certainly not. But it fires the imagination better than anything sung by those picture-perfect crooners.

(Hat Tip: Tor.com)

Fowler on Persperistence

2011-12-14T10:03:00.002-05:00

Milo James Fowler, one of the brave souls behind the Write 1 Sub 1 campaign, explicates a nifty neologism over at In Medias Res. Excerpt:

When a story survives 14 rejections over 2 years to finally find a good home, I can't help but feel awash with relief.

According to fellow writer Steve Ramey, perspiration + persistence = persperistence, and that's the formula necessary to succeed as writers. We can't give up on our stories, and we can't lose faith in ourselves, no matter how long it takes for our work to be published.

Read the whole thing. We often talk about the necessity of perseverance -- excuse me, persperistence -- here at ISLF, but I don't know if we've ever asked a concomitant question: Why bother? After all, unflagging effort doesn't guarantee success. Plenty of worthy writers struggle for the acknowledgment they deserve. Well, the simple answer is that it's the only part of the process that we can directly control. Literary and genre darling Michael Chabon admits as much in a recent article from Writer's Digest: "I like to say there are three things that are required for success as a writer: talent, luck, discipline. … [Discipline] is the one that you have to focus on controlling, and you just have to hope and trust in the other two."

(Picture: CC 2010 by Ame Otoko; Hat Tip: Brandywine Books)

Shared Storytelling: Advent Ghosts 2011

2011-12-08T11:04:00.003-05:00

The cold has started to come down, and as winter waxes, we'll turn to our traditions, to the tinsel and lights, the turkey and pie, the wrapping and unwrapping of presents. We, too, have traditions here at ISLF, only they involve letting the chill get into our bones and creep up our spines. Every year, this blog hosts a round of flash-fiction storytelling entitled Advent Ghosts, a kind of virtual huddle around the Christmas Eve hearth, and we'd like you to join us. The details? Here they are:

1.) If you want to contribute, email ISawLightningFall [at] gmail [dot] com.
2.) Write a spooky piece of flash fiction exactly 100-words long -- no more, no less. Note that you don't have to write a ghost story, per se. Any genre is fine, but your final result should aim to raise gooseflesh on the back of the reader's neck.
3.) Post your story to your blog on December 24th and email the link to me. Hosting can be arranged for those who don't have their own blogs.

Looking for some inspiration? Read the results of our shared storytelling from 2009 and 2010. Check out the work of Nathaniel Lee, who excels at the form. Crack open a collection of M.R. James' stories or glance at Neil Gaiman's superb "Nicholas Was …" Listen to Jon Boden's poignant version of the British folk song "Mistletoe Bough" while sipping a glass of Potus Ypocras. (Hat tips and raised glasses to Chestertonian Rambler for those suggestions.) Christmas creepiness lies all around us, in sources both secular and sacred. When the earth stands hard as iron and water like a stone, who knows what creatures might forsake their ancestral haunts to roam the newly whitened world?

Well, perhaps you know. I do hope you'll share the story with us ...

(Picture: CC 2007 by Martin Gommel)

Music To Write By: Sarah McLachlan's "Wintersong"

2011-12-02T16:17:00.001-05:00

Why listen? For an Advent lament; musical arrangement befitting the season; an illustration of how to balance of sadness and sweetness.

Even though we in sunny south Florida only get a tiny taste of winter, I still remember those Kentucky Decembers on the farm, when water could freeze in the horses' buckets and the wind would cut like a knife and you could wake up one morning to a world suddenly gone white. Few songs capture the loveliness and melancholy of the season quite as well as Sarah McLachlan's "Wintersong." This Advent lament for a lost love skirts close to sentimentality in places, but ultimately avoids it through poignant reflection on personal pain. The arrangement is spare as a leaf-stripped bough, McLachlan's voice warm as a seat by the blazing hearth. A good way to usher in the most beautifully bleak time of the year.

Lessons Learned From Sub-par Stories

2011-12-01T11:42:00.002-05:00

Brace yourself: A post about Twilight is coming.

More specifically, a post about the latest film in Stephanie Meyer's monstrously successful series is coming. See, over Thanksgiving weekend I did a gallant thing and took my wife to see Breaking Dawn – Part 1. Now, readers of this blog can probably guess that I'm not a huge fan of Twilight. I called the first novel "pleasant," and it was in a pulpy sort of way. But future installments added plot woes and highlighted absurdities -- coughsparklescough -- that the initial volume glossed over. Out of all those offending sequels, Breaking Dawn was the worst. So why did I go see it? Well, I love my wife. But that wasn't the only reason. I watched it in order to learn.

Surely you must be thinking, "Ah, I get it, you watched it to learn how not to write a story." Well, not really. I mean, it's good to avoid obvious potholes, such as making a muscled werewolf fall irrevocably in love with a near-matricidal infant moments after she emerges from the womb. But few stories do everything wrong, and I gleaned two things from the celluloid version of Breaking Dawn. Bella's wedding-night jitters showed how a dose of humor can lighten overly serious action. But the best part of the film was the infamous birthing scene, a scene so visceral that critics wondered how it could appear onscreen and the movie's PG-13 rating stay intact. How did director Bill Condon pull it off? Through fast cuts, oblique camera angles and grisly sound effects. The imagination can fill in a lot of holes.

I'm not saying you should intentionally expose yourself to bad stories in order to pick up writing tips. Yet should you find yourself stuck with an awful story, keep your compositional eyes peeling. You never know what lessons you might find.

(Picture: CC 2010 by toastforbrekkie)

Intacto Ends Unfortunately

2011-11-28T09:24:00.002-05:00

Anyone remember the TV show Strange Luck that sprung up out of nowhere in the mid-nineties, bloomed for a season and then shriveled away? The basic premise involved a photographer who serendipitously happened to always end up in the right place at the right time to prevent tragedies and solve crimes. Though the series tried to capitalize on the popularity of another equally odd show, The X-Files, it ultimately failed because (in the words one of my friends) 'you get tired of having a miracle pop up every episode." Therein lies the problem with making luck a narrative driver: It's capricious by definition. A similar issue plagues the Spanish-language film Intacto, a spec-fic thriller about grifters with the ability to barter fortune.

Only one person survived when the airliner fell from the sky, a professional thief named Tomas. Lucky guy. But when authorities pulled his semi-conscious body from the wreckage, they found the take from his latest job strapped to his chest. Not so lucky. He ended up with an armed guard posted outside his hospital room and the promise of a lengthy jail term just as soon as he could move under his own power. Then along came Federico, an insurance agent bearing a payout from Tomas' travel policy -- and a secret offer. Federico believed Tomas possessed the ability to absorb others' luck, and if he has faith enough to follow, he'll prove it to him. Soon Tomas finds himself thrust into a bizarre world of underground gambling, where increasingly dangerous games of chance build fortunes and break lives. Pursued by a police officer who miraculously survived a devastating car wreck, he'll move up the circuit, on his way to a confrontation with a concentration camp survivor whose luck has never failed him.

Let me say it up front: Intacto is a failure. A fascinating failure, true, but a failure none the less. The film goes almost immediately wrong in how it introduces its speculative premise. First, we see a luck-absorbing character end a spectacular roulette run simply by entering the room where the game is being played. Okay, so some folks are like fortune's black holes, sucking in everyone else's kismet, right? Not exactly. That character loses his "gift" moments later when a luckier individual grasps him in a bear hug. Well, the draining of luck must require physical contact then. Sort of, but you can also barter someone's luck by taking a picture of him. You get the idea. The premise falls to pieces from a score of qualifications. As for the ending, it's as fickle as anything Strange Luck put on the screen. Watching the final few minutes, I found myself thinking, "There's no compelling reason this movie can't end in any way the screenwriter wants it to." Bloody gunfire, peaceful reconciliation, invasion from beyond the stars -- all of them would've left viewers with the same sense of satisfaction (or lack thereof). An unfortunate finish to an intriguing film.

(Picture: CC 2009 by Nina Matthews Photography; Hat Tip: io9)

An Intense, Crowd-Pleasing Game

2011-11-27T19:50:00.001-05:00

Sometimes it becomes nigh impossible to give a book an unbiased read. Take Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. Though I had scant exposure to Card's prose before picking up the novel, I knew that he was considered a master in the field, that Ender had won a Hugo and a Nebula, and that the director of the Oscar-winning South African film Tsotsi was directing a big-screen adaptation. With such praise littering my RSS feeds, I found it difficult to approach Ender's Game with the requisite blank slate that a good critic ought to have. Opening to the first chapter, I found myself hoping for narrative greatness -- and fearing my lofty expectations would let me down.

Earth's inhabitants call the menacing alien race the buggers. The insectoid marauders have another name, sure, but two hard-fought wars made the crass moniker stick. Humanity has nursed a grudge ever since utter disaster was averted in the second conflict through the daring of Admiral Mazer Rackham. But the buggers are still out there, and a military genius like Rackham only comes along once a generation, if at all. Humanity can't hope to stumble on a savior the third time their fleets come calling. So the rulers of Earth's tenuous alliance government hatch a plan to find the sharpest young mind possible and imbue it with tactical brilliance. No danger or depredation could prove excessive if it resulted in another Rackham. After all, the human race is on the line. Eventually, the authorities find their subject, one Ender Wiggin, a youth who's all of six years old.

I'm tempted to say that Ender's Game didn't live up to my expectations, but that sounds too negative. Card's debut novel doesn't disappoint; it's too well-written for that. Where lesser writers would have turned the book's child geniuses into flat ciphers, Card makes them well-rounded, engaging people in their own right. The plot keeps the pages turning, even if the twist ending doesn't exactly surprise. And the themes Card addresses have plenty of profundity. In fact, those very themes made me think twice about the novel. For a title that's supposed to be a crowd pleaser, it sure does focus on cruelty. Ender suffers through agony after agony, from a sociopathic, animal-torturing sibling who threatens to murder him to thrashings from intellectually inferior peers to a military bureaucracy that intentionally lets such things happen in order to hone their star pupil's strategic mindset. Card places readers in the uncomfortable position of simultaneously acknowledging the horror in such crimes and seeing how they eventually make Ender into Rackham's equal. Other ethical dilemmas unfold, too, such as the rightness of seeking to utterly annihilate an implacable foe or whether it's justifiable for politicos to manipulate the populace in order to achieve peace. Weighty stuff, and it makes for an intense Game indeed.

(Picture: CC 2004 by tomswift46)

Bruce on Writing Lessons from Holmes

2011-11-23T14:53:00.000-05:00

Robert Bruce of Copyblogger discusses what Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous creation can teach us about writing. Excerpt:

Sherlock Holmes was the greatest Consulting Detective in the world.

Though merely a fiction, written over a century ago by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, his methods of logical deduction are without equal.

Holmes' mastery of his craft brought him to the fog-cloaked London doorsteps of the most powerful people of his time.

Correction: those clients came to him.

They ran, desperate, to his Baker Street rooms, begging for his help, willing to pay any amount he requested in return for his services.

What can Sherlock Holmes teach us about mastery?

Everything.

I'll let you find the wealth of anecdote, advice, and adventure in Conan Doyle's stories yourself, but here's a short beginning list on Holmesian mastery to get you started …

Read the whole thing. Honestly, I'm not much of a fan of the Holmes stories unless they feature inhuman monsters from beyond the stars. But Bruce offers some good counsel, particularly on the need for novice writers to cultivate a laser-like focus on the craft. Sure, he may go a little overboard in claiming that well-rounded folks won't master the art of writing. (The experience of meeting a person who can only do one thing well is generally enough to convince about the very practical limitations of specialization.) Still, he has a point in saying that excellence requires opportunity costs: "If you want to master writing, you are probably giving up running the 800 meters in the Olympic Games. If you want to master the cello, you are probably giving up the ability to talk about what's good on television these days."

(Picture: CC 2004 by Mr Wabu; Hat Tip: Brandywine Books)

New Anthology from Nathaniel Lee

2011-11-19T09:58:00.001-05:00

Every release from an ISLF friend deserves a shout out, and if you've already paged through Patti Abbott's Monkey Justice and Tony Chavira's Brand & Reese, I have something else for you: Nathaniel Lee's Splinters of Silver and Glass. For those unfamiliar with Nathaniel, he uploads 100-word stories (dubbed flitterfics) to his blog Mirrorshards every day, and he has also placed longer pieces in publications such as Pseudopod, Abyss & Apex and Daily Science Fiction. I've been a big fan of Nathaniel's work ever since we met in an online writing group, and I was honored when he asked me to pen the introduction for Splinters of Silver and Glass. The anthology collects some of his most memorable flitterfics as well as two longer stories not available anywhere else. Here's a little of what I wrote:

The collection before you contains the very best of [Nathaniel's] output, poignant and profound, grim and menacing, absurd and flat-out funny. In these splinters of narrative, you can spy the furthest corners of the universe and the innermost parts of the human heart. Of course, they may catch you by surprise on first read. They reflect truly, but no one ever claimed that they display things straight on.

Pick up a copy from Amazon.com. Trust me, you'll be glad you did.

(Picture: CC 2006 by tanakawho)

Phraselet No. 103

2011-11-18T08:36:00.001-05:00

"All right. Tell me what to do again."

I told her. "Now, about my fee."

"Yes, of course."

"Two thousand, exclusive of expenses."

"I remember."

I looked at her. She looked at me. Nobody moved. After twenty or thirty years I said, "Well?"

"I'll get it to you."

I took the checkbook out of the stack of bank paper and pushed it across the table to her. "What's wrong with now?"

A tick started on her right eye. "Do you ... take Visa?"

It was very still in the house. I could hear a single-engine light plane climbing out of Van Nuys Airport to the north. Somewhere down the street a dog with a deep, barrel-chested voice barked. There was a light breeze, but the jasmine was soured by the smog. I slid the checkbook back and looked at it. Most of the couples I know have the husband's name printed out, with the wife's name printed beneath it, two individuals. Theirs read: Mr. and Mrs. Morton K. Lang. There was a balance of $3426.15. All of the stubs were written in the same masculine hand. I said quietly, "Go get a pen and I'll show you how."

- Robert Crais, The Monkey's Raincoat

Brick Is An Intriguing, Incongruous Mash-Up

2011-11-16T14:33:00.001-05:00

"Synergy" is a funny word. Business types love to use it when describing potential mergers, but while the term lends panache, it doesn't always impart understanding. Basically, if a combination of two-or-more entities yields more value together than separate, you can call that combination synergistic. Think chocolate and peanut butter, David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen, a lazy Sunday afternoon and a good paperback. All are synergistic. My wife's inexplicable habit of replacing the "j" in "pb&j" sandwiches with pickles and mayonnaise? Not so much. Of course, even odd-sounding unions can work if their fundamentals fit together well. Consider Rian Johnson's Brick, a thriller that melds hardboiled with high school.

Brendan can tell you that lunch is hard. No one really trusts him after he brought his high school's administration down on Jerr for dealing, not the stoners or the jocks or the social climbers. Brendan doesn't really mind. He's happy eating alone and chatting every once in a while with the Brain, a Rubix-cube-solving outcast with more mental power than half the school combined. Or at least he's happy until he gets a phone call from Emily, an ex-girlfriend who dumped him for a shot at the society scene and fell hard into junkie life when she failed to land on the upper rungs. Em is frantic, spouting about the brick and the Pin and all sorts of other stuff Brendan doesn't understand. Then she turns up dead in a storm sewer. Now Brendan is on the hunt for the killer, and it's a search that'll leave his hands more than a little dirty.

The thing to ask of any unconventional mash-up is how well it works, and Brick mostly excels. Johnson draws parallels between student slang and underworld jive, criminal subcultures and youthful cliques, administrative hierarchies and the long arm of the law, the iconic femme fatale and the unreachable adolescent beauty. The film unspools seamlessly for much of its running time -- much, but not all. As Brick progresses, it grows darker, more brutal, and the educational setting seems increasingly incongruous. Not to say Johnson hasn't told a cracking good crime story, full of poignancy and subtlety. That's quite true. But in the end when the guns come out and the blood starts flowing, high school seems the wrong place in which to situate the story.

(Picture: CC 2011 by Jack_Tempest)

Orson Scott Card on Not Being Literary

2011-11-14T14:36:00.000-05:00

Well, this provides an interesting counterpoint. In my previous post, I wrote how the typical genre scribe "rarely earns kudos for presentation" and that "few praise SF, Fantasy and their friends for stylistic excellence." I saw that as a blot upon the field as a whole. Then I read the Orson Scott Card's introduction to his award-winning novel Ender's Game and happened upon this passage:

The attacks on the novel -- and on me -- were astonishing. Some of it I expected -- I have a master's degree in literature, and in writing Ender's Game I deliberately avoided all the little literary games and gimmicks that make "fine" writing so impenetrable to the general audience. All the layers of meaning are there to be decoded, if you like to play the game of literary criticism -- but if you don't care to play that game, that's fine with me. I designed Ender's Game to be a clear and accessible as any story of mine could possibly be. My goal was that the reader wouldn't have to be trained in literature or even in science fiction to receive the tale in its purest, simplest form. And, since a great many writers and critics have based their entire careers on the premise that anything that the general public can understand without mediation is worthless drivel, it is not surprising that they found my little novel to be despicable. If everybody came to agree that stories should be told this clearly, the professors of literature would be out of a job, and the writers of obscure, encoded fiction would be, not honored, but pitied for the impenetrability.

I find myself agreeing with much of Card's analysis, even though I still believe that the majority of speculative fiction comes off as compositionally tone deaf. See, the difference seems one of degrees. Beauty catches one's breath, stops you in your tracks, makes you stare. But an obsession with personal vanity or an overdeveloped fashion sense yields results that are striking for all the wrong reasons. Perhaps that's what Card is criticizing here, a piling on of technique that turns loveliness into narcissism, charm into impenetrability. Like him, I wish that works exhibiting such obsession would become objects of pity rather than approbation. Still, is it too much to ask that genre authors value beautiful prose? I grew to love Bradbury, Tolkien and Gibson not only for their characters, settings and ideas, but also for the elegant ways in which they communicated those very things.

(Picture: CC 2008 by digitalthom)

Johnson on Compositional Aesthetics

2011-11-11T18:48:00.001-05:00

In Microstyle, a primer on how to pen terse messages effectively, author Christopher Johnson explains why it's important for authors to have an artistic touch:

While meaning is the essence of a message, sound, whether real or imagined, is how a message presents itself. And like it or not, people are superficial: beautiful words often seem truer than ugly ones. Your message will be judged as an aesthetic object. That doesn't just mean you should have a well-tuned instrument; it also means you should play a good tune. If you strive for poetry in your messages, here are some questions to ask about its sound: Does it have rhythm? Do the sounds make a pleasing pattern? Do they fit the meaning?

Johnson's insistence that peoples' "superficial" natures necessitate beautiful prose seems a little off to me. After all, none of us choose foods solely for their nutritional value or mates strictly for their competencies. Enjoyment is an integral part of life, and a finely tuned phrase can certainly delight. Johnson ends up on more solid footing when arguing that our works "will be judged" on their beauty. Genre writers ought to particularly take note, because our chosen field rarely earns kudos for presentation. Inventiveness? Of course. Intellectualism? Why, yes. Escapism? Most certainly. But few praise SF, Fantasy and their friends for stylistic excellence. That's something we ought to change.

(Picture: CC 2010 by montuno)

Meloy on Writing for Children and Adults

2011-11-07T10:08:00.000-05:00

In the October 29-30, 2011, edition of The Wall Street Journal, Maile Meloy (The Apothecary) talks about the lessons she learned when writing for young readers rather than adults. Excerpt:

Sometimes you find yourself part of a trend accidentally: Some old, beloved jacket in your closet becomes fashionable, or your private, favorite novel is discovered by the world. Having written four books of fiction for adults, I wrote a novel for kids, and looked up from the first draft to find that other writers were doing the same thing -- and adults were reading the books.

My plunge into the world of children's publishing surprised my friends as much as it surprised me. One asked, "How did you make the change? Did you have some kind of magical elixir?" I did, if you consider that magical elixirs are slow and difficult and sometimes frustrating to make, and involve wrong turns and unexpected discoveries. But here's the basic recipe ...

Read the whole thing (and if the Journal's Web site wants you to subscribe, remember that Google is your friend). Some of Meloy's observations will seem old hat to longtime readers of YA fiction. For example, most everyone knows that authors ought not to write down to children and teens, and writers shouldn't obsess over their targeted subgenre before they even begin the book. But Meloy's emphasis on the importance of plot really struck me. After recounting to a chum that "that I had stopped reading three much-admired novels in a row because I was on page 60 in each and nothing had happened," she expresses consternation when the friend replies, "That's why I don't read books!" Meloy argues that authors can't afford stylistic self-indulgence when writing for children or adults. "There are too many forms of entertainment to compete with. ... [Y]oung readers are exquisitely demanding of narrative drive, and I'm with them. I think that's why writing for kids felt like coming home, and also why so many adults have started reading books written for kids. That's where the plots are." That's where we should be, too.

(Picture: CC 2009 by Jer Kunz)

Find Noir, Tragedy Inside The Square

2011-11-01T15:53:00.002-04:00

Several years ago, I read an article about tragedy. Although the author and exact place of its publishing escape me, I remember its main thrust: The literary form that secured a place in the history books for Sophocles and Shakespeare is so dour and downbeat that it may never find a foothold in America's optimistic storytelling tradition. That claim certainly has merit, at least on a popular level. One only needs a passing knowledge of big blockbuster movies to see that most American films prefer everything to be sunny and upbeat. But if tragedy can't find a place to lay its head in the land of the free, it may find a home Down Under if Australian director Nash Edgerton's black-as-tar noir The Square is any indication.

Ray Yale doesn't always choose the straight path. A contractor charged with overseeing the construction of a resort, he isn't immune to taking the odd kickback and cooking the books to hide it. But he has his reasons, mostly relating to an ongoing affair with the comely Carla, the wife of a petty thug. See, Carla wants Ray to run away with her, but that takes money, and Ray doesn't have any. Then one day Carla makes a discovery -- a bag of cash secreted away in the attic. They could just take it, pack up the car and leave. No, Ray says, then people would know, and the only way to make a scheme like that work would be to, oh, I dunno, burn down the house so it looks like the cash just went poof. Not that Ray really wants to do that. He's just thinking out loud. Only Carla starts saying he doesn't care, isn't serious about their relationship. So Ray makes a phone call to a certain firebug. And that's when everything begins to go wrong ...

Detectives Beyond Borders' Peter Rozovsky argues that noir protagonists always go willingly to their doom, and while I might quibble a bit with his definition, I find it essentially sound. You won't find happy endings in noir, and the inevitability of catastrophe hangs over The Square like Damocles' famous sword. Cell phones fail at crucial moments, misunderstandings turn bloody, and innocent (and not-so-innocent) people begin to die in truly horrible ways. But the protagonists' moral culpability differentiates the film from other noir pieces wherein an existentially bleak world breaks its inhabitants without rhyme or reason. 'If you listen closely ..., you might hear the devil chuckling in the background as the characters continually dig themselves into more hopeless predicaments," writes Dan Lybarger of eFilmCritic.com. The tragic final moments hit like a bullet to the brain, reminding us that our sins really will find us out.

(Picture: CC 2011 by i k o)

Music To Write By: Andrew Peterson's "Rocket"

2011-10-29T08:30:00.001-04:00

Why Listen? For a sense of childlike wonder; a Bradbury-esque take on space travel; cheerful innocence and optimism.

Even those only fleeting familiar with science fiction know the genre took a dark turn a few years ago and has kept the course since. Post-apocalyptic rules bookstore shelves, and while I like a grim read, sometimes I find a lighter tone equally enjoyable. Singer-songwriter Andrew Peterson shows just such an easy touch with "Rocket," a peppy pop-folk ballad about watching a Space Shuttle liftoff with his children. Listeners will have a hard time thinking Peterson hasn't steeped himself in Ray Bradbury's short stories once they hear the lyrics: "Oh, the sight of the mighty machine! / The iron shine of a golden dream / On the edge of the ocean, a potential explosion, / Stands so tall and so serene." A perfect accompaniment to tales such as "Rocket Summer."

Storm Front Is Breezy, Enjoyable

2011-10-28T09:38:00.000-04:00

When it comes to picking a book, sometimes you want the whole shebang, the all-inclusive literary luxury package. Think of the readerly equivalent of sipping Chateau Lafite in a penthouse suite overlooking the French Riviera. Think Joyce or Faulkner, Yeats or Steinbeck. Then again, sometimes that highfalutin experience is exactly what you don't want. Sometimes you're looking for a burnt brat, a cold Bud and a seat at the annual autumn bonfire. And when the desire for simple pleasures seizes you, I could think of worse titles to pick than Jim Butcher's Storm Front, the first entry in The Dresden Files.

Harry is a wizard -- and don't think he can forget it. Despite living in a sort of exile from other wizards due to a fatal altercation with a corrupt mentor, he still confronts his magical nature daily. First, the arcane arts put bread on the table for him. Got lost items? Need a paranormal investigation? Have questions about wizardry? Chicagoland's only consulting magician is your man. (Sorry, no children's parties or love potions.) Also, his very name keeps mystical matters front and center. No child bearing the moniker Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden will likely grow up to become an accountant. Finally, his ability to peek into the soul of anyone who happens to lock eyes with him means that blending in with the local populace might prove difficult. But such powers have benefits. Bizarre murders have police stumped, killings wherein the victims' hearts literally exploded out of their chests. It's the sort of transgression only a black mage could commit, and a kind of murder only Harry can likely solve. He'd better do it quick, though, before suspicion begins to settle on the only known consulting magician in Chicago.

If Dean Koontz wrote a paranormal mystery without a preternaturally intelligent golden retriever in it, the result might read something like Storm Front. Some folks will see that as a criticism, but I don't intend it as such. Sure, Butcher's prose won't win any awards, and his characters sprout conflicting motivations like my lawn does weeds. But, hey, this is the kind of book that features pizza-scarfing faeries, bestial vampires masquerading as beautiful seductresses, and a Lothario-minded air spirit trapped in a human skull. Oh, that air spirit? His is Bob -- Bob the Skull. Heck, the climatic confrontation involves Harry staring down an evil magician, gun-wielding criminals, a gigantic toad demon and scorpions the size of poodles. You get the idea, right? Storm Front may not reach the upper echelons of the craft, but it's breezy and enjoyable.

(Picture: CC 2011 by Stuck in Customs)

Cohen on the Importance of Perseverance

2011-10-25T16:12:00.001-04:00

Over at his blog Monstrous Musings, Douglas Cohen talks about the difficulties he's experienced in trying to get his own work published. Excerpt:

So almost six years ago, after trying to break in for some years, I finally made my first fiction sale, this to Interzone Magazine. It was a great first sale, one that I'm very proud of. As you might expect, when I received word of the acceptance, I was elated. And there was a significant part of me that kept thinking, "Finally!" I felt as though a great weight had been lifted off my shoulders, that the monkey was off my back, etc. And while I didn't expect fame and fortune to suddenly follow this sale, I did think that subsequent sales would start coming a little more frequently.

Alas, this was not the case. And as the years slipped by without new sales, a new weight settled on my shoulders to land another sale. There was also a new phenomenon, a special little voice in the back of my thoughts. It only spoke one word, and it did so in a whispery mocking voice: "Fluke."

Let me tell you something. I hated that [expletive] voice. I despised that voice. But as far I could tell, there were just two ways to get rid of it: quit writing and admit the voice was right, or make another sale.

Read the whole thing. Cohen's story has a happy ending: After much effort, he managed to land two more sales to respectable markets. What strikes me most about the tale, though, is that Doug isn't your everyday freelance scribbler. No, he serves as editor for Realms of Fantasy, an A-list periodical in its own right. He reads the magazine's slush every month, skims off the cream and fires off rejection letters for the rest. From his time on both sides of the desk, he intimately knows the odds neophyte writers face , and he still urges us to do the very same thing he does -- persevere. How's that for your daily shot of encouragement?

(Picture: CC 2005 by e-magic)

Phraselet No. 127

2011-10-23T20:04:00.000-04:00

If the human race has ever invented an institution more effective in the propagation of intellectual and ethical cripples than the nobility, I have yet to stumble across it. Take the progeny of a half millennium of inbred idiots, first cousins, and hemophiliacs. Raise them via a series of bloated wet nurses, drink-addled confessors, and failed academics, because Śakra knows Mommy and Daddy are too busy diddling themselves at court to take a hand in the upbringing of a child. Ensure any youthful training they receive extends to nothing more practical than swordsmanship and the study of languages no longer spoken, grant them a fortune upon the attainment of their majority, place them outside the bounds of any legal system more developed than the code duello, add the general human instinct toward sloth, avarice, and bigotry, stir thoroughly and, voilà -- you have the aristocracy.

- Daniel Polansky, Low Town

Take a Tour of Low Town

2011-10-21T20:33:00.002-04:00

Longtime readers may recall that I like to cook sweet stuff. What they may not have realized is that I'm something of a hipster when it comes to the culinary arts. Forget traditional desserts. I'd rather bake a pear pie with a cheddar-rosemary crust or whip up a batch of malt-infused ice cream. The only problem with such highfalutin goodies lies in finding a recipe for them. Usually, I have to wing it, combining bits and bobs from various concoctions, using trial and error to cobble together a tasty comestible. It's satisfying when an effort actually works, just as it is when an author manages to combine disparate genre elements into a new sort of story. For example, consider how Daniel Polansky blends hardboiled and fantasy in his debut novel Low Town.

Once upon a time you could've called Warden somebody, back when he wore the gray as a member of the freeze, Rigus' elite investigative force. He came the position honestly enough, distinguishing himself in the long war between the kingdom and the Dren, mainly by killing men and surviving to speak of it. Of course, that was a long time ago, and since then Warden has fallen hard and fast. Foul-mouthed and hard-living, he spends his days selling and sampling all sorts of controlled substances. On the surface, he looks like any other petty criminal skulking the streets of Low Town, that pimple on Rigus' pretty face. But Warden still possesses some ambition. Through conniving and plain brute force, he has consolidated much of the area's less-than-legal commerce, claiming it as his own. If you want to find a pimp or pusher, you talk to Warden. Soon, though, he'll need every one of those sketchy contacts. Seems small children have started disappearing, and that's an outrage Warren simply won't stomach, not in his town ...

Unlike many fantasy scribes, Polansky really and truly understands the grittiness of hardboiled. Unlike many crime writers, he comprehends the appeal of magical and mysterious fantasy tropes. The best part of Low Town lies in watching him weave the two styles together chapter after chapter, braiding them into a story simultaneously hard-edged and exotic. He even throws in a bit of Lovecraftian horror in a couple places, although to explain it more would ruin some of the plot. Not that everything's peachy in Polansky's ghetto. Warden's incessant -- and I do mean incessant -- fondness for drugs and obscenities will rub straight-edge types the wrong way, and the ending comes a bit out of left field. But if you enjoy watching an author pull off a tricky bit of compositional alchemy, you should take a tour of Low Town.

(Picture: CC 2010 by Gianmaria Veronese; Hat Tip: Tor.com)

"Old Man Smith"

2011-10-18T16:25:00.003-04:00

Note: The following piece was written as part of the Reginald Marsh flash fiction challenge hosted by Patti Abbott. Patti has published numerous short stories in various literary journals and crime zines, and she has recently released Monkey Justice, a collection of short stories. She blogs about writing, books, movies, politics, life and music at pattinase.

The score sounded simple when Rufus explained it. Every other week, an armored car came in the pre-dawn darkness to ferry away cash from The Schooner's Keel, money old man Smith had fished from folk with beer and bottom-shelf whiskey. They could get into Smith's office while he was tallying the take, crack the safe and disappear before the driver arrived. Old man Smith wouldn't want to spill the combo, of course. That was why Rufus carried the dusters. And if somebody stumbled upon their persuasion mid-scene, well, that was why Johnny carried the gun.

"But things won't go that far," Rufus had assured him. "See, Smith, he'll do the math, realize how little he has to lose by cooperating and distribute the dough. Simple. After all, he's just one man."

Johnny hoped it would unfold that way. He didn't want to hurt anyone, not even old man Smith, with his creped skin and Brylcreemed hair and ever-present cloud of cologne. But he wanted his kid sister to have at least one new dress. He wanted ma to only take in their own laundry. He wanted pa to not have to work day jobs.

"Lookee," Rufus had said, "Smith, he isn't doing anyone but his banker any good by holding the dough, we're just helping him distribute it, it's a service to society, really."

Rufus' monologues tended to plow ahead like a half-ton Ford with a stuck accelerator. Johnny hoped his mind moved as fast as his mouth, because if it did he couldn't see how things would go south. Not when they were dealing with just one man.

On the night of the job, they swam through the 3 a.m. darkness, avoiding wells of brightness plunging down from streetlights. The tracks for the elevated rail sealed off the streets from the night sky. Johnny was thankful for the emptiness of the block as they approached the bar, that there didn't seem to be even one man within earshot.

When the evening's final train roared by overhead, they kicked in The Schooner's front door.

Johnny squeezed his eyes as splinters flew into his face, and when he opened them he found himself looking at a very shocked and very young individual who most certainly wasn't old man Smith.

"What the --" the boy began.

In a blink, Rufus laid the dusters twice across his cheek.

"Awfully loud there, junior," he hissed, "wouldn't want to wake the neighborhood, now follow us into the back real quiet now."

The boy clutched his face, blood welling between his fingers. He looked at the hand Johnny had slipped within his coat. "Okay," he said very softly.

"Nothing tricky, nothing at all, got it?"

They swept aside a curtain behind the bar, revealing a dim passage that smelled of stale cigarette smoke, a hall streaked at its end with a light-lined, half-cracked portal.

"I think we should check, Adam," came a female voice, prim and slightly nasal.

Rufus' eyebrows rose. Johnny felt sweat prickle across his neck.

An indistinct reply floated down the corridor.

"I thought I heard voices." The female voice sounded as though it was accustomed to arguing fine points at length. "Perhaps Archie can handle it, but it would hardly take a moment for us to --"

The complaint of unoiled hinges squealed in Johnny's ear, and he whirled to see a door opening on a recessed staircase, an undershirt-clad man with a face like the flat of a sliced ham emerging.

"Hey," the man said. "I know this ain't the Waldorf Astoria, but I expect a little ..." He trailed off, his gaze going first to the boy's bloody visage and then to the nickel-plated .38 that Johnny didn't remember drawing.

Light flooded the hallway. A squat, matronly figure appeared, framed in the glow. She gasped.

"Hell-ooo, everyone," Rufus cried, "please follow me into the back, we have some business to transact, it'll only take a moment." He herded Archie and Mr. Undershirt in with the squat woman and old man Smith himself, Johnny following. Rufus' eyes shone fever-bright. "Seems we were having a little party, shame my associate and I weren't invited."

Old man Smith said nothing. Even at this hour, his hair still held its Brylcreemed sheen, but his skin looked yellowed and tired, worn by ceaseless labor.

Finally, he nodded. "If this is your idea of a party, you're easily entertained. Archibald was cataloguing inventory. Walden --" He motioned at Mr. Undershirt. "-- rents my flat. Miss Dodson and I were reconciling the books before our transfer. Which is why I assume you're here."

"Yessir, and I think you'll need to some more reconciliations, no question, why don't you open up that safe."

Old man Smith smiled wearily. "You aren't the first to try this. Some, like you, come in off the street. Some wear uniforms. Some have official writs. But even if I open the safe, what makes you think that they --" He motioned to the others in the room. "-- will let you leave?"

Rufus cocked his head. "This ain't about them, why would they care, this is about one man, you and you alone."

Old man Smith sighed. "I don't think so."

And then Johnny saw it as the hardness settled into the others' features. Saw that tired old Smith could never have had all of his increase. Saw that the overflow of it coursed to the others in the room, and not to them alone, but also to everyone caught in its current. Saw how he could have positioned himself to partake in some of the stream, still could, if he wanted.

But he also saw that he and Rufus could simply try to take it, the others be damned.

The gun felt very heavy in his hand.

A hiss of brakes came from outside The Schooner's Keel.

"Game time, Johnny," Rufus said.

They hung there, frozen in the moment of decision.

Scalzi Warns of The Write Agenda

2011-10-13T16:51:00.000-04:00

John Scalzi, president the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and author of Old Man's War, warns writers of a dubious group masquerading as a legitimate writing resource. Excerpt:

Many of you are aware of Writer Beware, the fantastic resource spearheaded by Victoria Strauss and Ann Crispin (and supported by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, among other groups), which researches, documents and informs writers about the various scammers out there who pose as legitimate editors, publishers and agents. Writer Beware shines a light on the scumbaggery that these people do, thereby making it harder for them to separate writers from their money. So it's not entirely surprising that some of them would try to turn the tables on Victoria, Ann and Writer Beware, and attempt -- poorly -- to make it look like they are somehow bad guys.

One such group is "The Write Agenda," which gives the impression that it's an organization of writers that impartially looks at writing information online. What it actually appears to be doing is targeting Writer Beware, its principals, and other industry pros who have gone out of their way to point out scammers and the scams they pull. If "The Write Agenda" can give the impression that it is a legitimate group, it can then cast doubt on the work that Writer Beware does for writers.

Read the whole thing. Normally I would consign an article such as this to the @ISLF Twitter feed, but 140 characters don't quite seem enough to properly communicate the importance of the matter. The writing game is tough enough when everyone plays fairly. How much more so when one party operates in bad faith? While I'm not familiar with Writer Beware, I know John Scalzi (his curmudgeonly nature aside) wants nothing more than to keep con men away from honest authors. Cross The Write Agenda off of your resource list.

(Picture: CC 2011 by Sección Madrid; Hat Tip: The Literary Lab)

Epstein on Corporate Villains

2011-10-12T08:19:00.000-04:00

In the October 10, 2011, edition of The Wall Street Journal, Edward Jay Epstein (The Hollywood Economist) discusses why corporations have become Hollywood's go-to villains. Excerpts:

Why don't the movies have plausible, real-world villains anymore? One reason is that stereotype-sensitive advocacy groups, representing everyone from hyphenated ethnic minorities and physically handicapped people to Army and CIA veterans, now maintain a liaison in Hollywood to protect their image. The studios themselves often have an "outreach program" in which executives are assigned to review scripts and characters with representatives from these groups, evaluate their complaints, and attempt to avoid potential brouhahas.

Finding evil villains is not as easy as it was in the days when a director could choose among Nazis, communists, the KGB and Mafiosi, though they have served in a pinch. The 2002 apocalyptic thriller, "Sum of All Fears," was based on the Tom Clancy novel in which Muslim extremists explode a nuclear bomb in Baltimore. But Paramount decided to change the villains to Nazi businessmen residing in South Africa to avoid offending Arab-American and Islamic groups. "The list of non-offensive villains narrows quickly once you get past the tired clichés of Nazis," a top talent agency executive pointed out to me in an email. "You'd be surprised at how short the list is." And even Nazis have now aged out of contemporary-movie contention.

Read the whole thing (and if the Journal's Web site wants you to subscribe, remember that Google is your friend). What I find ironic about Epstein's analysis is that, by making corporate types into baddies, Hollywood appears to be vivisecting its own golden goose. After all, what sort of entity better embodies the faceless corporation better than a pulp-churning, artistically tone deaf Tinseltown studio? Not that the studios necessarily mean to cut their own throats. Epstein notes how Hollywood's aversion to offending certain demographics arises out of a desire to safeguard revenue and that "CEOs and financiers have no connection with the studios' outreach programs." Yet as my undergrad literature professor Leland Ryken noted in one of his books, characters in stories "undertake an experiment in living ... [and] its final success or failure is a comment on the adequacy or inadequacy of the morality or world view on which the experiment was based." By portraying its own model of business as a failed existence, Hollywood undermines the very ground on which it stands.

(Picture: CC 2005 by Shavar Ross)

Music To Write By: Darrell Scott's "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive"

2011-10-09T09:29:00.003-04:00

Why listen? For soulfulness and passion; a taste of rural noir; an example of how to turn biography into art.

When the country-fried hardboiled crime drama Justified needed a song to close out each of its cordite-scorched season finales, it chose the Darrell Scott-penned ditty "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive." Unfortunately, the show's creators ignored the original version, settling instead on a poppy cover by Nashville star Brad Paisley. That's a shame, because Scott infuses the noirish narrative with a soulfulness befitting the gloomy hollers of old Appalachia. It doesn't hurt that he drew on his own family history in chronicling the attempts of two star-crossed lovers to escape a corner of Kentucky that claims the life of almost everyone who ventures into it. Spare and striking, "Harlan" shows how to turn biography into art.

Bernardin on Searching for the Golden Age of SF Television

2011-10-05T10:26:00.001-04:00

Marc Bernardin, screenwriter for Syfy's Alphas, wonders why genre TV shows haven't exhibited the high quality of other laudable small-screen offerings. Excerpts:

We are, most people would agree, in the midst of a Golden Age of Television. Since the late-1990s, the programming that's been pumped into our homes has been as good as it's ever been -- and, in many respects, better than the movies that have long sat atop the Pop Cultural Quality Pile. But why aren't we also in a Golden Age of Genre TV? ...

I'm talking great in the way that The Wire was great -- the universally lauded Best Show Ever To Exist On Television -- or The Sopranos or The Shield. Or the way that Breaking Bad or Mad Men or The Good Wife or Louie are killing it week-in, week-out.

Why are there no genre shows performing at the same level? Why are we not able to turn on the TV any day of the week and find something shiny to watch? Here are some theories ...

Read the whole thing. Bernardin offers three thoughts on the subject, namely that SF is too cerebral to slip past corporate suits without getting dumbed down, too pricey to produce properly in most cases, and too adored by fans who'd rather nitpick than promote it. Each of his suppositions has merit, yet I'd argue that Bernardin misses a more obvious reason: Genre TV tends to fail because it forgets the fundamentals of storytelling. Lost and The X-Files didn't fall apart because of a lack of funding or interfering executives. They collapsed under a weight of unfinished storylines and unsatisfying spectacle. Every sort of story succeeds because it contains engaging action in an interesting setting populated by relatable characters who reveal universal human experiences. If SF television can hew to those basics, I see no reason why the golden age shouldn't start now.

(Picture: CC 2008 by catchesthelight)

Catch This Falling Glass

2011-10-03T11:04:00.000-04:00

Tropes are simultaneously the biggest strength and weakness of genre fiction. Fans pick their favorite sorts of stories based on commonalities they know they'll find in them, yet rote adherence to convention quickly becomes boring. No matter their preferred flavor of composition, genre scribes usually need to offer up a certain spice to keep readers interested, some sort of deviation from the tried-and-true recipe. Crime writer Adrian McKinty has regularly folded stream-of-consciousness into his hardboiled thrillers, adding a literary tang to bad-men-with-guns tales. However, his latest novel, Falling Glass, features new ingredients -- a sardonic sense of humor and an examination of exotic corners of Irish culture.

Killian doesn't like to work with guns. The forty-ish ex-militant and bodyguard has always felt more comfortable diffusing dangerous situations with his mouth rather than slugs. In truth, Killian would like to give up The Life entirely and go legit, quite messing around with criminality and settle down. He's giving it a try, having bought some investment property and enrolled at university. But when the Irish real estate market tanks and Killian finds himself without any equity, he finds the offer of one last job enticing. The client? Charmingly corrupt airline magnate Richard Coulter. The task? Find his drug-addled ex-wife Rachel, who up and vanished with their two daughters. The wrinkle? Rachel has unearthed a secret that could topple not only Coulter's empire, but the entire Irish peace process that has reigned in years of IRA violence.

Readers will notice that Falling Glass is less literary than McKinty's previous works, such as Fifty Grand and Dead I Well May Be. The style feels leaner, less reliant on poetic flourishes and more focused on action. That isn't to say it's any less skillful. The novel's first chapter had me in stitches as it described Killian's fruitless attempts to lecture clueless Bostonians about Irish history during Saint Patrick's Day. McKinty's delving into the Pavee (a group of ethnic Irish gypsies) proves similarly engaging. Sure, a couple missteps jar the proceedings. The prose is so punchy at times that point-of-view shifts may catch you off guard, and one watery chase scene finishes dubiously. But they hardly spoil the main action. McKinty knows how to serve up tough-guy tension, and the book ends with a deliciously ambiguous ending that's right up there with the final moments of Dennis Lehane's Mystic River. Catch this Glass if you can.

(Picture: CC 2007 by laszlo-photo; Hat Tip: Detective Beyond Borders)

Phraselet No. 101

2011-09-30T08:17:00.002-04:00

Horsepower is not a quaint leftover of linguistics or a vague metaphoric anachronism. James Watt, father of the steam engine and progenitor of the industrial revolution, lacked a measurement for the movement of weight over distance in time -- what we call energy. ... Mr. Watt did research using draft animals and found that, under optimal conditions, a dray horse could lift 33,000 pounds one foot off the ground in one minute. Mr. Watt -- the eponymous watt not yet existing -- called this unit of energy "1 horse-power."

In 1970 a Pontiac GTO (may the brand name rest in peace) had horsepower to the number of 370. In the time of one minute, for the space of one foot, it could move 12,210,000 pounds. And it could move those pounds down every foot of every mile of all the roads to the ends of the earth for every minute of every hour until the driver nodded off at the wheel. Forty years ago the pimply kid down the block, using $3,500 in saved-up soda-jerking money, procured might and main beyond the wildest dreams of Genghis Khan, whose hordes went forth to pillage mounted upon less oomph than is in a modern leaf blower.

- P.J. O'Rourke, "The End of the Affair," The Wall Street Journal (May 30 - 31, 2009)

Allen on How Not to Open a Story

2011-09-29T10:05:00.000-04:00

Anne R. Allen (Food of Love) discusses the importance of a strong story opening and thirteen introductions you ought to avoid. Excerpts:

When we're first diving into a novel, we're not thinking about our readers; we're telling the story to ourselves. All kinds of information will come up, but be aware you'll want to cut most of it or move it to another part of the book when you edit.

And when it comes to that editing -- the first chapter presents your biggest challenge. I've often spent more time on a first chapter than the entire remainder of the book.

On that first page, we have only a few lines to grab the reader and keep her from putting the book back on the shelf. We have to present an exciting hook and fascinating characters that will suck readers in immediately -- but not overwhelm them with too much information.

We also want to promise something unique -- not the same/old same/old they've got on the shelf at home.

But when we start writing fiction or memoir, some of the ideas that come most readily have unfortunately come readily to a whole lot of writers before us, so they've become clichés. ...

Here are a few openings to avoid ...

Read the whole thing. Allen nails to the wall a bunch of classic bad openings, including those that ape Lord Bulwer-Lytton's meteorological descriptions or borrow from the first lines of Moby Dick. But her last suggestion is the one that really hits home for me: "Writing gurus keep telling us to start with action, action, action, but this isn't actually such good advice. We need to be emotionally engaged with a character before we care how many dragoons of doom he slays." Ironically, the grab-the-reader-by-the-collar-and-give-him-a-good-shake opening has rubbed me the wrong way for a long time, not just because it avoids character development, but because so many people employ it. No amount of frenetic action can overcome a boredom born of ubiquity.

(Picture: CC 2009 by Leo Reynolds)

An Effectively Disturbing, Dour Woman

2011-09-27T10:49:00.002-04:00

Even though time has taught me that Hollywood likes to sell more sizzle than steak, I'm not immune to a well-crafted trailer for an upcoming feature. I'll admit to feeling a stir of interest upon seeing the preview for CBS Films' The Woman in Black, a horror movie that also happens to be the first starring role for Daniel Radcliffe after his turn in Harry Potter. Imagine my pleasure upon learning that the upcoming film had originally been a short novel written by one Susan Hill. What's a bibliophile to do except log off YouTube and hunt down a copy?

Arthur Kipps has a loving wife, a large family and a secret that's haunted his midnight hours for years. He'd planned to keep the painful past buried, but an innocent exchange of ghost stories among his children on Christmas Eve brought old agonies to the surface. Now Arthur plans to banish it by putting pen to paper. The terror began at the start of his nascent solicitor's career. His boss, Mr. Bentley, sent him from the London office to settle an estate in the tiny town of Crythin Gifford. Situated near salt marshes, Crythin Gifford was simultaneously a desolate and beautiful place, a world of gray and silver and silence broken only by the lonely cries of sea birds. It became evident to Arthur that the client whose affairs must wrap up, a solitary widow named Alice Drablow, wasn't much loved by the town's inhabitants. Her dilapidated manor house squatted out on the marshes, sundered daily from the mainland by rising tides, abandoned and unvisited. Or maybe not. Because as Arthur sorted through the crumbling edifice, he began to sense a brooding evil hovering about the place, a malignant wrath that fixed upon any living being who dared broach the mansion's doors.

If The Woman in Black proves anything, it's that marketers rarely mind twisting the truth into pretzel-like contortions to sell their products. The back-cover copy of the edition I read promises a book akin to "a ghost story written by Jane Austen." True, Hill imitates a pre-Victorian style fairly well, but there the similarities end. With its fear-transfixed protagonist and sense of looming doom, the novel has much more in common with M.R. James. (Indeed, Hill names a chapter after one of his most famous tales.) Yet because so much of today's supernatural horror springs from the stump of James' stories, few readers will find surprises in the plot. Hill manages a few spine-tingling moments, but it often feels as though she has simply penned an homage to the classic ghost story -- at least until the end. Suffice it to say that the final few pages hit like a sledgehammer and reveal that Hill hasn't written a ghost story at all. No, the titular spirit has more in common with ancient, blood-thirsty revenants than sad spooks, and I can't imagine that the novel's grim conclusion will make it to the big screen. Effective? Certainly. But the ending is so dour you might yourself that this Woman has thrown you into a black funk.

(Picture: CC 2006 by Big Fat Rat)

Music To Write By: 16 Horsepower's "The Partisan"

2011-09-23T10:46:00.001-04:00

Why Listen? For sheer poignancy; apocalyptic eeriness; grist for that war-ravaged setting rattling around in your mind.

Many contemporary cover songs pale when compared to their source material. But 16 Horsepower's version of "The Partisan" -- the 1943 French resistance anthem penned during World War 2 and popularized by singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen -- transmutes the tune into something altogether different. Lead singer David Eugene Edwards does apocalyptic intensity like no one else, and in his hands the song seems to slide from a lament about Nazi oppression to a dirge over the evil of a fractured world. Slip on the headphones and see if your brain doesn't begin to bubble over with martial images when Edwards intones, "Oh, the wind, the wind is blowing, / Through the graves the wind is blowing, / Freedom soon will come. / Then we'll come from the shadows."

Jacobsen on the Importance of Excellent Writing

2011-09-22T13:04:00.000-04:00

Roy Jacobsen of Writing, Clear and Simple (a nominee for Grammar.net's Best Grammar Blog of 2011 award) argues that elegant style is essential to one's writing. Excerpt:

We love the truism "You can't judge a book by its cover." We all want the world to appreciate our "inner value" without taking external appearances into consideration.

But human nature does not work that way. As Stacy London and Clinton Kelly (of the show What Not To Wear) adamantly insist, appearances matter. In the case of your wardrobe, it matters for two reasons: people make judgments about you based on your appearance, and your appearance has a huge impact on how you judge yourself.

And what is true about your wardrobe is also true about your writing: readers will make judgments about you and your ideas based on the quality of your writing.

Read the whole thing. Regular visitors to ISLF know that I'm a fan of the early cyberpunk movement, but I've never let slip what made me come to love it. It wasn't the genre's dsytopic conception of the near future or its appropriation of noir tropes, although I appreciated both elements. No, what hooked me was the strength of the prose in William Gibson's Neuromancer, particularly a passage wherein the protagonist glances out a window to see a femme fatale's "eyes reflected in a cage of red neon." Now, I was young when I first read the novel and didn't understand geopolitics, existential angst, computer programming or much of anything related to Japan. In other words, all the defining elements of cyberpunk. But I understood that image, intuitively felt its beauty in my bones, and it carried me through the entirety of the book.

(Picture: CC 2007 by Andrew Huff)

What Do We Need for Inspiration?

2011-09-20T10:07:00.001-04:00

I typically dislike metanarratives on writing. Stories about creating stories usually smack of self-indulgence or an author's unwillingness to research. However, when Patrick Rothfuss snuck just such a passage into The Wise Man's Fear, I found myself nodding in agreement with its primary point. In that section, the protagonist Kvothe has been tasked by a noble with writing a song to help him woo a comely lady:

[Alveron] shrugged. "I'll arrange something to bring the two of you together early on. Is there anything you require for the practice of your art?"

"A goodly amount of paper should suffice, your grace. Ink and pens."

"Nothing more than that? I've heard tell of poets who need certain extravagancies to aid them in their composition." He made an inarticulate gesture. "A specific type of drink or scenery? I've heard of a poet, quite famous in Renere, who has a trunk of rotting apples he keeps close at hand. Whenever his inspiration fails him, he opens it and breathes the fumes they emit."

I laughed. "I am a musician, your grace. Leave the poets to their superstitious bone rattling. All I need is my instrument, two good hands, and a knowledge of my subject."

The idea seemed to trouble Alveron. "Nothing to aid your inspiration?"

"I would have your leave to freely wander the estates and and Severen-Low according to my will, your grace."

"Of course."

I gave an easy shrug. "In that case, I have everything I need for inspiration."

Years ago, a roommate learned that I liked to write and advised me to take a toke every now and again "to help with your art." I laughed off the suggestion, and today I'm half convinced his pharmacological council was more a dig at my straight-laced nature than a serious suggestion. Still, plenty have taken that idea to heart, from alcoholic Beat Poets to laudanum-consuming Romantics convinced that their substances of choice would transport them to a compositional Xanadu. Others have attempt a more mystical approach, seeking out idyllic vistas and pastoral glades in hope that the muse will torch their minds with creative fire.

Kvothe would call hogwash on both approaches, and so do I. Creativity both comes from and addresses universal human experiences, the stuff that suffuses our everyday lives. Who needs the bizarre machinations? Keep your bottles and beaches. Give me a fresh pad, a new pen, a little quiet -- and let me write.

(Picture: CC 2007 by Matthieu Aubry.)

Music To Write By: Mat Kearney's "Ships in the Night"

2011-09-15T09:10:00.004-04:00

Why Listen? For metaphor and simile; domestic drama; a reminder that "interstitial" needn't mean muddled and inaccessible.

On his first two albums, Mat Kearney seemed to suffer a sort of identity crisis. Was he a Top-40 pop star, chilly Brit rocker, hip-hop crooner or Springsteen-esque singer-songwriter? With his latest effort Young Love, he's answered the question with a resounding "all of the above" -- often within a single song. "Ships in the Night," a surprisingly literate track, details a struggling relationship over urban beats, soaring falsettos and catchy hooks. Not only does Kearney reach for something like a metaphysical conceit throughout, he shows that smooth transitions can join divergent styles into an artistic unity. Interstitial works don't have to be jarring.

Music To Write By Index

2011-09-15T09:09:00.007-04:00

Writers are magpies, always snatching glittering bits of inspiration from the dullness of everyday life. Sometimes we find them in conversations or a sunrise or a particularly striking passage in a book. Sometimes it only takes three chords, a snippet of melody and a well-put verse to spark the imagination. Here you'll find an index of songs to write by, a listing of tunes from all sorts of genres that fired my creativity. I hope they do the same for you.

Mat Kearney, "Ships In the Night"
16 Horsepower, "The Partisan"
Darrell Scott, "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive"
Sarah McLachlan, "Wintersong"
Tom Waits, "Black Wings"
Killswitch Engage, "Rose of Sharyn"

(Picture: CC 2005 by angelocesare)

A Fear-fully Good Follow-Up

2011-09-14T15:38:00.001-04:00

What images do the words "epic fantasy" bring to your mind? For me, they call up ferocious battles and distant lands and great, world-changing actions. By those measures, Patrick Rothfuss' The Wise Man's Fear would certainly fall into the epic-fantasy camp. Yet those approaching the second volume in The Kingkiller Chronicle with hopes of Tolkien-esque fields of slaughter or the geographic sweep of the Viriconium novels will probably end up a bit surprised. Rothfuss maintains the approach he began with The Name of the Wind, twisting fantasy tropes to fit an intimate rather than expansive narrative, a story centered on a single, extraordinary life.

The Chronicler is ready to pick up his pen again. A day and a night have passed, and the story he has heard so far from the legendary Kvothe hasn't disappointed. A tragic childhood. A serendipitous enrollment at a famous arcane academy. A clever dispatching of a marauding dragon. A search for the terrifying Chandrian, at whose appearance iron rusts and wood rots and flames gutter blue. The red-haired man masquerading as a backwater innkeeper has recounted many of the details for which the Chronicler has longed. Yet there are more to come. As the second day dawns, he will learn how Kvothe saved the life of a powerful noble, turned the tide of a savage skirmish, and escaped the clutches of the seductive Felurian, the fae woman whose charms break men's bodies and crush their minds. But doubts will arise in the Chronicler's mind, too. Why do some of the tales that Kvothe recounts not seem to square with evidence? Why can't the man who allegedly called lightning down on scores of his enemies deal with a couple of squabbling soldiers? And why does Kvothe's fae assistant, Bast, seem so set on having the Chronicler produce an uplifting account of his master?

If you've read The Name of the Wind, you have a pretty good idea of what lies in store with The Wise Man's Fear. If not, then go get it -- now. Any author deserves attention who can produce an 800-page-plus tome that's elegantly written, original in setting, exciting in action, profound in theme and imminently readable throughout. That's no small feat. His follow-up keeps the quality similarly high, albeit with a few missteps. Readers know from the first book that Kvothe is destined to become a great lover, a kind of brainy warrior Cassanova. But when Rothfuss introduces Kvothe's first liaison with the supernatural Felurian , it comes across as more silly than seductive, purple in style and studded with similes galore. "Though I am doused in you, I burn," he intones. "The motion of your turning head is like a song. Is like a spark. Is like a breath that billows me and fans to flame a fire that cannot help but spread and roar your name." You get the idea. Also, the novel tends to lose its main plot thread among a snarl of secondary actions, and when references to the Chandrian pop up, they do so with surprising abruptness. Still, these are pretty minor faults. Anyone who liked The Name of the Wind would be foolish to not pick up The Wise Man's Fear.

(Picture: CC 2009 by duane.schoon)

Phraselet No. 126

2011-09-11T15:21:00.000-04:00

The innkeeper drew the beer and handed it over silently. Graham drank half of it off in a long swallow. His eyes were red around the edges. "Bad business last night," he said without making eye contact, then took another drink.

Kote nodded. Bad business last night. Chances are, that would be all Graham had to say about the death of a man he had known his whole life. These folk knew all about death. They killed their own livestock. They died from fevers, falls, or broken bones gone sour. Death was like an unpleasant neighbor. You didn't talk about him for fear he might hear you and decide to pay you a visit.

Except for stories, of course. Tales of poisoned kings and duels and old wars were fine. They dressed death in foreign clothes and sent him far from your door. A chimney fire or the croup-cough were terrifying. But Gibea's trial or the siege of Enfast, those were different. They were like prayers, like charms muttered late at night when you were walking alone in the dark. Stories were like ha'penny amulets you bought from a peddler, just in case.

- Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

Maybe It Will Lead To More Writing

2011-09-09T08:25:00.000-04:00

Some of you may have noticed that there's a pattern to the way I post on this blog. Most posts fall into one of four categories -- articles related to writing, my musings on various parts of the craft, book reviews, and miscellanies (quotes, links to contests, stories, etc.). I really try to alternate between these four on a frequent basis, hoping to not bore anyone with the same sort of material. Recently, though, I glanced at the front page of ISLF and noticed that over half of the posts were book reviews.

Yeeps. That troubled me, because I didn't at all intend for that imbalance to arise. After all, it risks boring readers. Plus, it takes such a comparatively long time to write up a book review that it didn't make any sense as to why I was drowning in them. Well, classes in marketing and managerial accounting are squatting in a lot of my mental real estate, so I hadn't mulled over the craft quite as much as I'd like lately. Indeed, I've found it a challenge to jot down more than a couple hundred words a day. So instead I read.

Some talk of writing their way out of a slump, but that rarely works for me. Execrable first drafts prompt more frustration than inspiration. But reading, well, that almost always helps. Bad books remind me that success isn't an impossibility, while good ones call to mind the heights I'd like to reach one day. Right now I'm knee deep in Patrick Rothfuss' The Wise Man's Fear, a ridiculously thick fantasy that's as fun to read and excellently written as anything I've picked up in a long time. Though it eats up portions of my schedule I could dedicate to new stories, I'm going to let it keep nibbling away. Who knows? Maybe it will lead to more writing in the end.

(Picture: CC 2007 by Celeste)

Epstein on Academia and the Love of Lit

2011-09-06T14:05:00.000-04:00

In the August 27, 2011, edition of The Wall Street Journal, Joseph Epstein reviews both The Cambridge History of the American Novel and the problems with literary education as a whole. Excerpt:

The Editors of "The Cambridge History of the American Novel" decided to consider their subject -- as history is considered increasingly in universities these days -- from the bottom up. In 71 chapters, the book's contributors consider the traditional novel in its many sub-forms, among them: science fiction, eco-fiction, crime and mystery novels, Jewish novels, Asian-American novels, African-American novels, war novels, postmodern novels, feminist novels, suburban novels, children's novels, non-fiction novels, graphic novels and novels of disability ("We cannot truly know a culture until we ask its disabled citizens to describe, analyze, and interpret it," write the authors of a chapter titled "Disability and the American Novel"). Other chapters are about subjects played out in novels -- for instance, ethnic and immigrant themes -- and still others about publishers, book clubs, discussion groups and a good deal else. "The Cambridge History of the Novel," in short, provides full-court-press coverage.

"In short," though, is perhaps the least apt phase for a tome that runs to 1,244 pages and requires a forklift to hoist onto one's lap. All that the book's editors left out is why it is important or even pleasurable to read novels and how it is that some novels turn out to be vastly better than others.

Read the whole thing. Epstein launches into an entertaining diatribe about how the follies of the academy rob undergraduates of the love for lit. One doesn't have to agree with him at every point to see how the intellectual provincialism of universities, their inevitable Balkanization of books into racial and sexual subtexts, and tone-deaf academic styles can push students away from bibliophilia to (ahem) more practical majors. And while Epstein has a point in saying that professors have lost the ability to judge just what makes a work good, I think he missteps in brushing aside the entire field of genre fiction. True, most genre books fall short of literary greatness, but a few (1984, A Brave New World, Dracula, Frankenstein) have landed in the canon. Yet even when it fails to rise above the level of pulp, genre provides young readers with something important -- a love of tales and characters and language itself.

(Picture: CC 2008 by Nico&CO; Hat Tip: B. Nagel)

Friday's Forgotten Books: Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Lieber

2011-09-02T09:27:00.001-04:00

Note: Friday's Forgotten Books is a regular feature at pattinase, the blog of crime writer Patti Abbott. Log on each week to discover old, obscure and unfairly overlooked titles.

I'll admit it: Sometimes I'm a bad book reviewer. In Picked Up Pieces, literary icon John Updike urged critics to not let their personal ideologies or prior opinions color their comments on a title. I try to do this, I really do. But occasionally I catch myself importing prejudices before I've even finished a novel. Consider what happened when I picked up Fritz Lieber's supernatural thriller Our Lady of Darkness. Lieber has a reputation as a godfather of speculative fiction of all stripes, from down-and-dirty fantasy to creepy horror. Buoyed by such accolades, I made the critical mistake of approaching Lady with a distinctly partial anticipation.

Franz Westen has only just begun to emerge from the alcoholic fog into which he plunged after a brain tumor felled his wife. An author of weird fiction, he dwells in an old San Francisco hotel, a once grand structure now supplanted by ever larger towers that scrape the sky. He's made friends with a few folks who live in the building and even started a relationship with a young philharmonic harpsichordist. But one day he happens upon an odd book he barely remembers buying, something he must've (literally) stumbled upon while befuddled by booze. Titled Megapolisomancy: A New Science of Cities, it predicts catastrophic upheavals for any overgrown metropolis, a sort of apocalypse facilitated by strange entities called paramentals. Of course, Franz knows it's all nonsense, half-baked hullaballoo cooked up by some turn-of-the-century conman. Still, he keeps the book and the strange journal bundled with it for novelty's sake. Then while climbing a hill outside the city one day, he tries to find his hotel with a pair of high-powered binoculars. What he sees there shakes him to the core -- a strange, shadowy form skulking in his room.

From its multiple references to H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James, you can tell that Lady wants to be a successor to their spooky stories, and it comes close to doing so at times. The climax truly chills, and a nightmare Franz has about his deceased wife made my neck want to detach itself from my body:

"Her fingers were so very slim and silken dry, so very strong and many, all starting to grip tightly -- they were not fingers but wiry black vines rooted inside her skull, growing in profusion out of her cavernous orbits, gushing luxuriantly out of the triangular hold between the nasal and the vomer bones, twining in tendrils from under her upper teeth so white, pushing insidiously and insistently, like grass from sidewalk cracks, out of her pale brown cranium, bursting apart the squamous, sagittal, and coronal sutures."

Sublimely eerie stuff. Unfortunately, it takes a long time to get there. The reference I included to Updike in the beginning is apropos, because for the first half of the novel Lieber seems to channel him rather than the masters of classic horror. Lady's protagonist and secondary characters dawdle about for about half of the novel's length, talking about liberated sexuality and the wonders of drug use and any number of other subjects fashionable among the artistic set in the seventies. (Lieber penned the book in 1977.) Dull and dated. Perhaps my anticipation of discovering a standout work in the genre has colored my opinion, but this is one Lady best left in the gloom.

(Picture: CC 2006 by Thomas Hawk)

Hood on Failing Big

2011-08-29T11:12:00.000-04:00

Deadline.com posts a piece by Sean Hood, screenwriter for the much-reviled Conan the Barbarian remake, on what it's like to pen a failing film. Excerpts:

A movie's opening day is analogous to a political election night. Although I've never worked in politics, I remember having similar feelings of disappointment and disillusionment when my candidate lost a presidential bid, so I imagine that working as a speechwriter or a fundraiser for the losing campaign would feel about the same as working on an unsuccessful film. ...

By about 9 PM its [sic] clear when your "candidate" has lost by a startlingly wide margin, more than you or even the most pessimistic political observers could have predicted. With a movie its [sic] much the same: trade[s] call the weekend winners and losers based on projections. That's when the reality of the loss sinks in, and you don't sleep the rest of the night. ...

But one thought this morning has lightened my mood:

My father is a retired trumpet player. I remember, when I was a boy, watching him spend months preparing for an audition with a famous philharmonic. Trumpet positions in major orchestras only become available once every few years. Hundreds of world class players will fly in to try out for these positions from all over the world. I remember my dad coming home from this competition, one that he desperately wanted to win, one that he desperately needed to win because work was so hard to come by. Out of hundreds of candidates and days of auditions and callbacks, my father came in… second.

It was devastating for him. He looked completely numb. To come that close and lose tore out his heart. But the next morning, at 6:00 AM, the same way he had done every morning since the age of 12, he did his mouthpiece drills. He did his warm ups. He practiced his usual routines, the same ones he tells his students they need to play every single day. He didn't take the morning off. He just went on. He was and is a trumpet player and that's what trumpet players do, come success or failure.

Read the whole thing. If you've tried to make a go of it in the fiction market, you more or less know how Hood feels. There's nothing quite like writing and revising your heart over a story only the receive rejection after rejection saying, "Great piece, but it just isn't quite what we're looking for." Such failures sting, and when you stumble over and over again the temptation to throw in the proverbial towel grows quite strong. Hood wisely finds inspiration in his father's perseverance, but there's another motivation worth considering. Few get involved in this field because of its limitless pecuniary opportunities. No, we write for the sheer joy of it. We write because it fills us with delight. And no number of rejections slips or poor reviews or abysmal box-office grosses should remove the simple pleasure of putting pen to paper.

(Picture: CC 2010 by Yan R.; Hat Tip: Rock, Paper, Shotgun)

Bowes on the Noir Roots of Cyberpunk

2011-08-26T15:00:00.001-04:00

Danny Bowes talks about the noir origins of cyberpunk over at Tor.com. Excerpts:

The link between film noir (and its literary antecedent) and cyberpunk is not a revelation. The influence has been noted by countless critics, as well as cyberpunk authors themselves, most frequently that which Raymond Chandler had on William Gibson. Chandler, who came to writing late, not publishing his first short story until he was in his mid-40s, wrote boldly and flamboyantly. His protagonists were men embittered by the injustices of the American system, but resigned to working either within or parallel to it. ...

Where Chandler lost his job in the Depression, Gibson came of age in the 1960s, as one of many young people in that generation who felt little to no connection to "normal" people, drifting from place to place, identifying with the counterculture and, all too often, with the drug culture (experience which Gibson chronicles vividly in his novels). ...

In the end, what noir and cyberpunk share is a simultaneous, paradoxical status as distinctly past-tense forms that nonetheless keep popping up everywhere in subsequent art. ... Fittingly, as each was widely criticized -- and exalted -- as valuing style over substance, the lasting impact of noir and cyberpunk (connecting the two as one entity, since there is no cyberpunk without noir) is greatest in the visual arts and cinema. For in the shadows lies danger and mystery. Sex and power. The simultaneous thrill and fear of confronting death. Noir, and all its descendants, including cyberpunk, is the shadow.

Read the whole thing. While recently listening to Audible Frontiers' excellent production of Gibson's Burning Chrome, I was struck yet again by how much his stories "Johnny Mnemonic," "New Rose Hotel" and "Dogfight" feel like crime fiction. Bowes is right about cyberpunk's parentage; those high-tech thrillers have noir in at least one branch of their family tree. But I think he misses a big thematic commonality between the genres. True, both share a preoccupation with social injustice (whether real or perceived), the criminal underground and the illicit allure of all types of vice. But they also often touch upon the impulse towards self-destruction, that which the ancient Greeks called hamartia, the bent part of human nature that causes us to indulge in the things we ought to hate. Without getting too spoilery, Neuromancer has a plot shaped like a horseshoe, wherein the protagonist rises from abject lows to great heights only to descend once again in the end. Both noir and cyberpunk know that the darkest places aren't secreted in some distant computer network or crouching in a dingy alleyway. They lie within.

(Picture: CC 2008 by ronocdh)

High-Concept Exam Garners High Marks, But Not a Perfect Score

2011-08-23T14:23:00.000-04:00

The term "high concept" carries low-brow connotations, and it's no wonder given the titles of stories that carry the label. Snakes on a Plane and Hobo with a Shotgun don't exactly sound burdened with an excess of philosophical ruminations. But sometimes a high concept can hone a storyteller's craft to razor sharpness. Consider writer/director Stuart Hazeldine's Exam, a single-premise thriller set entirely in one room.

Only eight candidates have made it to the final examination, a test to determine who will receive positions with the company -- and not just any sort of position. Rumor has it that this particular job will offer great pay, luxurious benefits and even (some whisper) medical innovations to extend one's life. An enviable job, one that almost anyone would do anything to secure. But none of the candidates expected an examination quite like this. They've been instructed about the rules of the test by a mysterious individual who calls himself the Invigilator. If they deface the single sheet of paper at each of their desks, they will be eliminated. If they attempt to speak with the armed guard at the exit, they will be eliminated. If they leave the room for any reason, they will be eliminated. There is but one question, and they have eighty minutes to answer it. Only they quickly discover they share a common dilemma: Each of their papers is blank.

Exam feels like a blending of 12 Angry Men and The Usual Suspects, a pressure-cooker story where personalities unravel under relentless tension and everyone isn't who he seems to be. Like most narratives with twist endings, it requires a bit more suspension of disbelief in the final moments than many viewers will likely be willing to give. But it's fascinating to watch how Hazeldine unspools possibility after possibility from the simple premise. Could the paper contain a hidden message? If it did, would different sorts of light reveal it? How about liquids? Or could the paper be a red herring? Could the real question be whether or not all of the candidates are, in fact, really candidates? Could one -- or more -- be a plant, and how far will the rest go to find out? Exam may not garner perfect marks, but it certainly scores high for inventiveness.

(Picture: CC 2011 by pamlau; Hat Tip: io9)

Alexander and Connolly on Scheduling Time to Write

2011-08-19T14:57:00.000-04:00

Cassie Alexander (author of The Nightshifted Trilogy) blogs about the most important element to completing a book in a short period of time:

Protect your time. Protect your time. Protect your time.

In fact, protect it so much, that if you already know what I'm going to say here, stop reading, and get back to writing. ...

The most valuable thing you have as a writer just starting off is time. Time, and taking yourself seriously. I was going to break the serious thing out into another post, but it really fits here, because you won't make the time for yourself until you do take your writing seriously.

I know how easy it is to let real life waylay your writing time. But if your writing never wins out, you'll never get anywhere. Ever.

There was a point when I was finishing up Moonshifted, where I shut out the whole world and did nothing but go to work and write. I made one date night a week with my husband ... everything else went into the book. A little bit ago, mid-July, post turning the book in, I said to my husband, "I worry our group of friends isn't hanging out as often as they used to." And he looked at me like I was insane and said, "No, you've just been living in a cave."

Tina Connolly (Ironskin, "Turning the Apples") adds a helpful rejoinder to Alexander's piece:

What I always say is, don't worry about falling down on your goals -- just get back up the next day and try again. (When I first started, I thought I had to do double wordcount the next day, etc, which very quickly ran aground.) Also, crazy goals over a very short period of time can be fun, but for a long haul if you're just trying to get better habits, set something very easy. I mean ridiculously easy, like 50 words or 10 minutes. Or 5 words. 5 brushstrokes. 5 scales. 5 minutes without facebook.

Point is, always start small. Gives you something to exceed, and once you've got that, you can always aim higher.

Both views have merit, but I'm finding Connolly's counsel particularly helpful at this point in life. Having just put to bed the most quantitatively intense course so-far in my masters program, I'm not only completely disconnected from my usual writing schedule, but also having difficulty thinking creatively. It feels like stretching a long-disused muscle, full of aches and exertion. Perhaps the goal for the creatively constrained ought to be less great continent-crossing blocks of time and more short compositional strolls.

(Picture: CC 2007 by jimmedia)

Take a Walk Down Bad's Gray Streets

2011-08-17T15:30:00.000-04:00

Back-cover blurbs should serve to sell a novel, but those adorning Harry Dolan's Bad Things Happen almost made me put it down. When Nelson DeMille, Karin Slaughter and James Patterson heap kudos on a book, I start thinking, "Yeah, I bet this will end up being a hyper-commercialized title, the kind of mindless mystery that gives the term 'beach read' a bad name." But while Bad Things Happen certainly has mainstream appeal, Dolan possesses more erudition, good humor and plain old writing chops than the average bestselling writer.

David Loogan isn't David Loogan's real name. He chose it when he came to Ann Arbor, part of a new start to his life. While lounging in a coffee shop one day, he comes across a short-fiction magazine named Gray Streets, a magazine filled with stories of tough men and dangerous dames -- a magazine featuring stories where plans go wrong, bad things happen and people die. On a whim, Loogan jots down a short and drops it at the magazine's editorial office. That leads to a meeting with the magazine's editor, Tom Kristoll, and an eventual friendship. Tom begins asking Loogan to dinner parties. He asks him to help with editing some stories. He asks him to drop by the office now and again to share a midnight sip of scotch. Then one day he asks Loogan to buy a shovel and meet him in the woods. Seems Tom Kristoll has a body that needs burying.

Normally it smacks of a lack of research when an author populates his book with writerly types. But Dolan quickly proves that the choice wasn't due to laziness. He thoroughly integrates all of the authors associated with Gray Streets into his plot, and what a plot it is. Not only does Dolan continually toy with readers' expectations through nail-biting twists, he also includes uncommon references to Shakespeare and ancient myth. In fact, the ending veers close to surreal fantasy. Add in stylistic nods to noir and hardboiled, and you've got quite a novel on your hands. True, Dolan sometimes relies too much on dialogue to spell out conundrums. But otherwise there's precious little Bad about this debut effort.

(Picture: CC 2007 by Bo47)

Friday's Forgotten Books: The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis

2011-08-12T10:32:00.003-04:00

Note: Friday's Forgotten Books is a regular feature at pattinase, the blog of crime writer Patti Abbott. Log on each week to discover old, obscure and unfairly overlooked titles.

How does one find books that have fallen out of the mainstream consciousness? It's a good question to ask, because titles tend to sink like stones without a marketing machine behind them or a place in the canon. Every once in a while, though, someone will pipe up with unexpected praise for a forgotten book, and when that happens I sit up and take notice. So as fantasy author Daniel Abraham heaped kudos on Walter Tevis' chess-centric 1983 novel The Queen's Gambit during a recent installment of PodCastle, I added it my to-read list.

No one has ever taken Beth Harmon very seriously. Orphaned at age eight and confined to the Methuen Home, she moves through her days in a narcotic haze, force-fed the tranquilizers the orphanage's matron uses to make her charges easy to manage. But one day something cuts through her drugged fog: She sees the orphanage's dumpy janitor mulling over a strange game in the basement, a game played with black and white pieces on a checkered board, a game called chess. Beth pesters him until he agrees to teach her how to play, and after a few matches she discovers the strange ability within herself to unfold strategies entirely within her mind. She has a gift, one that could take her all the way to Russia, the nation which holds chess almost in holy awe. But before that can happen, Beth will need to conquer all the naysayers without and her hidden demons within.

You've got to hand it to Tevis. Though I find playing chess only slightly more pleasurable than a colonoscopy, he somehow manages to move it into the realm of thriller, transforming movements on the board into action every bit as enjoyable as the wildest car chase. It's an achievement. So why then has The Queen's Gambit fallen into obscurity? Much of it probably has to do with his protagonist. Not just unlikeable, Beth seems almost an embodiment of Samuel Johnson's "The Vanity of Human Wishes." Every time she gets near to a grand achievement, she methodically sabotages it with drugs or drink or unenjoyable sex with near strangers. It's perplexing, maddening amd infuriating, and by the end of the book you want to shake her. It doesn't help that Tevis oddly reserves more criticism for religious types who oppose communism than for the oppressive Russian Bear itself. An engaging Gambit that doesn't quite pay off.

(Picture: CC 2006 by We Are CS)

Anders on Seven Ways to Start a Story

2011-08-11T12:02:00.001-04:00

Charlie Jane Anders, editor of io9, discusses the seven types of speculative fiction story openings and provides concrete examples of each. Excerpt:

A short story is like a chess game: The opening is a huge part of whether you win or lose. The first sentence of a short story doesn't just "hook" readers, it also sets the tone and launches the plot.

Sure, the opening sentences are important in novels, too. A strong beginning, in a novel, can help provide momentum that will carry the reader all the way to the last page, sometimes in one sitting. But short stories are different: the first sentence, or the first paragraph, often hangs over the whole rest of the story. Many short stories are really about one idea, or one situation, and that's what the opening sentences establish.

Or fail to establish, sometimes.

There are many great ways to start a short story. But not every type of opening is right for every story. Here are seven types of short story opening, and how to decide which one is right for you.

Read the whole thing. Quibblers will likely note that some of Anders' classifications overlap a bit, and a few of the examples could easily illustrate multiple categories. But we aren't academics here, are we? We're writers! Let persnickety precision swim the River Styx with a boulder on its back. Seriously, though, Anders' grid serves much the same purpose as Orson Scott Card's M.I.C.E. quotient: It provides us with a starting place, particularly when we're stuck.

(Picture: CC 2008 by Rennett Stowe)

A Peek Behind the Giveaway Curtain

2011-08-09T10:25:00.000-04:00

Mysteries are a mixed bag, it seems. People like to unravel them in their fiction, but apparently not when it comes to receiving free titles. At least that's what I'm concluding from the response (or lack of it) to last week's free fiction for young writers offer! Come to think of it, requesting unnamed titles from some unknown person on the Internet might seem a little daunting. So with the thought of lessening the uncertainty, here are descriptions of the three books up for grabs:

Children's Tile: A riff off of the classics The Velveteen Rabbit and Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, this book is both simple and multi-layered, beautiful and heartbreaking, easily comprehensible by kids and with enough depth to captivate adults. Its author examines the idea of love in almost all of its terrible glory, and when I read it I'm reminded of "Little Gidding" wherein T.S. Eliot writes, "Who then devised the torment? Love. / Love is the unfamiliar Name / Behind the hands that wove / The intolerable shirt of flame / Which human power cannot remove. / We only live, only suspire / Consumed by either fire or fire." A masterpiece.

Young Adult Title: An old friend and I read this book at the same time when we were young, and today our conversation still touches on it. Despite being written in 1967, this science fiction novel has aged remarkably well. Touching on issues of loss of identity and societal safety versus freedom, it also serves a great primer for post-apocalyptic literature. Besides all that, it's also fabulous fun to read how three teenage boys pick their way across a devastated Europe while being pursued by powerful forces they don't completely comprehend. An exhilarating read.

College Title: Most creative writing manuals binge on motivational advice while starving themselves of substantive technical pointers. Not so this manual, penned by a speculative fiction author who has worked in the field for over 40 years. Don't let its slim shape fool you: If you follow all of its writing exercises, you will end up occupied for quite a while and a much better writer to boot. Filled with examples from authors as wide-ranging as J.R.R. Tolkien and Virginia Woolf, this title is truly a diamond in the rough.

If these short descriptions have piqued your interest, remember the giveaway rules. Since the giveaway is intended to encourage young writers, you can't claim the titles for yourself unless you fall into one of these three age brackets. However, you can refer young readers to receive them. I'll award the books and a first-come-first-served basis. Send nominee names and info to ISawLightningFall [at] gmail [dot] com.

(Picture: CC 2006 by gianΩmerz)

Argyle on Profanity

2011-08-05T11:44:00.001-04:00

Michelle Davidson Argyle (Cinders) blogs at The Innocent Flower about how the advance copies of her new novel Monarch contain two strong profanities -- and why the final edition of the book won't. Excerpts:

I'm not going to write out the "f" word in my blog post, but I sure did write it out in my novel, Monarch. Twice. Oh my gosh, twice. At the time I wrote the book, I thought that word was necessary to cram into the mouth of my characters. The word was used in dialogue in two very appropriate places, I thought. In fact, even to this day, I don't mind the word where I put it, but I did end up taking it out in both places. Here's the story why, if you're interested.

First of all, let me lay it straight that I don't say the "f" word if I can ever help it. It's not something I like the taste of in my mouth, and although I don't believe for one second that words are inherently evil, I do think that they can have a strong impact. ...

[W]hen I wrote Monarch, I took my characters seriously and let them talk how they would really talk. Sure, they're somewhat of an extension of me, but they aren't all me, and they certainly have their own lives and personalities and free wills in my novel. So I wanted to keep it real, and that's how the ARCs ... were printed -- with that word in place.

Then I got an email from a sweet friend of mine who had started reading her copy of Monarch. I won't say what she said or anything, but her email got me thinking more about the language in my novel and what I really wanted to do. Honestly, I hadn't give the matter very much thought, even during edits. I should have.

Read the whole thing. Argyle's not the only author to reconsider the language in her stories. In a 1959 reading of "A Good Man is Hard to Find" at Vanderbilt, Flannery O'Connor redacts a then-common racial epithet and excises an entire section where a character callously details the poverty of an African American boy with vivid slang. I find the exclusion interesting. Most writers justify the inclusion of objectionable language on grounds of verisimilitude, on the idea that the story wouldn't seem true-to-life without it. Yet if anyone could've made such an appeal it would've been O'Connor, and still she saw fit to remove the offending language.

Of course, the verisimilitude argument has merit. People do use profanity in real life, and excising it entirely from every tale would be damaging. But Argyle and O'Connor have a point, too: Language can normalize and even encourage certain modes of thought, and authors ought to choose every word carefully.

(Picture: CC 2010 by stockicide)

The Literary Lab's "Variations on a Theme" Contest

2011-08-03T11:25:00.002-04:00

Hot off the heels of The Clarity of Night's short fiction contest comes another worthy one from the good folks at The Literary Lab. Entitled "Variations on a Theme,"` it involves fairy tales, Anton Chekov and ... well, let's allow them to tell you about it:

As opposed to last year's celebration of free creativity with "Notes From Underground", this year we wanted to offer writers a more concrete jumping off point. Entries for "Variations on a Theme" should be inspired by one of two stories:

"The Tinderbox", a classic fairy tale

or

"The Huntsman" by Anton Chekhov

As there are different versions of both of these stories, you're free to use any version you choose as inspiration. If you click on the links above, you'll be taken to public domain versions you're welcome to use. (Or feel free to search for other versions of the story if you wish.) And, we're interpreting the phrase "inspired by" rather loosely, so writers definitely shouldn't feel too restricted by it.

Stories can be written in any genre and can be up to 3,000 words long. We do, however, prefer short stories as opposed to poems or visual artwork. The contest is open until December 31, 2011 at midnight PST. Paste your stories in the body of an e-mail to LiteraryLab@gmail.com.

Read the rest of the details here. In addition to the fact that Scott, Michelle and Davin's previous two anthologies have been quality through and through, this time around they're offering some serious cash money for the top two stories. Cash money, people! Get thee to thy Moleskin!

(Picture: Copyright 2011 by The Literary Lab; used by permission)

'Tis Better to Give

2011-08-01T08:54:00.000-04:00

When I said in my last post that my placing in The Clarity of Night's "Elemental" contest was an embarrassment of riches, I meant it literally. Turns out Jason Evans doubled the prize money for Readers' Choice because two entries tied, my piece and Aerin Rose's (In Search of Giants). That made me a little uncomfortable. After all, did I really need two prizes? I didn't think so, which led me to email Jason with an offer to donate it for the benefit of future CoN winners. He had a different idea: Why not use some of the winnings to encourage young writers?

What a fabulous thought.

Now, dear readers, this is where you come in. I'm offering three books that inspired me to write free-of-charge -- one for children, one for YA readers and one for the college-aged -- and you're going to help me find worthy recipients. A few rules, though. First, I'll award the titles on a first-come, first-served basis. Second, no one gets to know the names of the titles except yours truly. Third, you can't claim the titles for yourself unless you fall into one of these three age brackets. Fourth, send your nominees to ISawLightningFall [at] gmail [dot] com.

Godspeed and happy reading!

(Picture: CC 2006 by gianΩmerz)

!

2011-07-28T09:11:00.000-04:00

Wow. This is ... very nice -- and unexpected! My story "Golem" has taken second place and tied for the Readers' Choice Award at for the Clarity of Night's "Elemental" Short Fiction Contest. My, what an embarrassment of riches!

Those of you who have participated in Jason Evans' various contests know he's been doing them for a long time. But you may not know that "Elemental" is his fourteenth such contest, and reaching a number that high requires a serious commitment to the online writing community. Catherine Vibert of Catvibe Creative has created a special blog to thank Jason for all his effort year after year. If you've participated or enjoyed reading the entries, why not stop by and tell him so?

(Picture: CC 2007 by Kapungo)

The Proposition Is the Father to the Tale

2011-07-27T11:19:00.000-04:00

Over at his blog, Nathan Bransford (Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow) presents a common argument for why narrative writers create stories. Excerpts:

Our entire worldview and memories are created out of our stories. Two people can witness the same event, process and interpret it completely differently and reach completely different conclusions about what just happened. And that's before the fluid and corrosive effects of memory take hold. The reality of the actual event, even if it was recorded on film, blurs into the past. In its place: Stories, our way of interpreting what we have seen, which is all we have to make sense of what passes before our eyes. ...

Life is too complicated to hold in your head and relationships are too immense and multi-faceted to easily comprehend. So we write and tell stories to make sense of our relationships and existence. A novel can capture more than we can readily contemplate, and an author can, brick by brick, build a world that can illuminate and give meaning to some part of the full tapestry of our lives and relationships. They help us understand things that are too difficult to think about all at once.

Read the whole thing. Bransford certainly has a point or two. Stories definitely impact our thought processes, and writers as diverse as C.S. Lewis and Joan Didion have tried to write their way to comprehension of perplexing personal circumstances. But we must remember a salient point: The story isn’t the bedrock of communication. That honor goes to the humble proposition, and it informs the story at every point, sometimes explicit and blunt, sometimes implicit and lurking in the shadows. The actions of your characters, the details of your settings and the machinations of your plot are all freighted with propositions. So is basic communication, as evidenced by the manifold truth claims packed into Bransford's story-extolling essay. But without propositions, no narrative can exist. Conviction comes first. It's truly the father to the tale.

(Picture: CC 2007 by absolut xman)

Friday's Forgotten Books: House of Stairs by William Sleator

2011-07-22T10:00:00.001-04:00

Note: Friday's Forgotten Books is a regular feature at pattinase, the blog of crime writer Patti Abbott. Log on each week to discover old, obscure and unfairly overlooked titles.

Today's publishing industry (and the entertainment business as a whole) places a heavy emphasis on bigger hitters, those folks who can produce titles that draw down huge chunks of revenue. While that's great for Stephen King and Dean Koontz, such an attitude means that many mid-list authors have their books dumped into the marketplace with precious little support behind them. Such seems the case with William Sleator, an author who has gamely worked the speculative fiction field since 1970 and received only marginal attention. Indeed, I'd never heard of him until Tor.com ran a retrospective of his 1974 novel House of Stairs.

The five sixteen-year-old orphans share precious little in common. There's Peter (lonely, emotionally troubled, sexually confused); Lola (brash, impertinent, independent); Blossom (obese, sly, manipulative); Abigail (lovely, retiring, longing for relationship); and Oliver (handsome, jovial, controlling). Mere circumstance wouldn't have conspired to bring them together, but someone else has. One day, each finds him- or herself blindfolded, shoved in an elevator and dumped into a massive, white-walled edifice filled with nothing but stairs, a single toilet and the machine. Relieving oneself in the open is bad, and so is trying to make sense of the crisscrossing steps that never seem to lead anywhere. But the machine proves worse than either. When its light begins flashing and the strange voices start whispering, it gives them food -- sometimes. See, the rules keep changing. At first, it dispenses the meat-flavored pellets when they stuck their tongues out at it. Then it feeds them if they danced in time with the lights and sounds. Now, though, it seems to want them to do something new: It wants them to hurt each other.

One has to give House of Stairs credit for a winning premise. Part Lord of the Flies, part Cube, part horrifying human Skinner box, the book prods readers with ever-present paranoia and the supposition that deep down humanity isn't as good as it pretends to be. Sleator also creates a winning secondary world with left-handed exposition, revealing a smog-choked, centralized-government-oppressed America through snippets of conversation. Unfortunately, most of the characters barely become anything deeper than broad sketches, and Sleator's style tends toward the tell-don't-show school of composition. A disappointment, but not a fatal one. Though not a classic, House delves into dark covers of the human soul most would rather neglect.

(Picture: CC 2006 by cowsgomoo :); Hat Tip: Tor.com)

Self-Promotion

2011-07-21T12:42:00.000-04:00

In a recent conversation with a family member, I referred to a particular author's popularity as "a triumph of marketing over content." Harsh, I know. Yet I felt somewhat justified in the remark because, well, calling the individual's titles pabulum gives pabulum as bad name. But as the days rolled by I realized that the above remark revealed something about myself that I hadn't really considered: I abhor self-promotion, no matter how forthrightly handled or honestly presented.

Seems I'm not the only one. Nathan Bransford (Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow) has blogged about his dislike of it:

If self-promotion were an insect, I would squash it with the world's biggest fly swatter. If self-promotion were a field I would burn it and salt the earth so it could never live again.

It doesn't feel right to stand in front of a crowd and shout, "Me!" and no matter how much you try and cloak the self-promotion in elaborate disguises, it can still feel kind of icky. And if you don't enjoy the spotlight, self-promotion in all its forms can be downright terrifying.

Ah, if only I could've stopped reading there. But Bransford continues:

And yet I know what I would tell someone else who has a new book out: You have to do it. No matter how much you might dislike it, no matter how much negative feedback you get about it, no matter how much it makes you cringe, you gotta do it. You have to give your book a boost, you have to make your network aware of it, you have to do everything you can to help it sell. The era of being just an author, if it ever existed, is over.

See, my dilemma is that I not only detest the self-promotion of others, I also hate doing it for my own stuff. Sending stories out into the editorial void and hoping some inherent excellence will draw an audience like iron to a loadstone is more my speed. And if I'm honest with myself, it's probably a prescription for obscurity. True, anonymity needn't necessarily carry a stigma, but who says networking has to? Aidan Fritz wisely points out that the term can encompass lasting relationships as well as ephemeral professional contacts. Friendships can fuel all sorts of success.

(Picture: CC 2007 by oooh.oooh)

This Irish Blood Flows Even Through the Complex Parts

2011-07-19T10:56:00.000-04:00

What is it about the Irish and crime fiction? For some reason, the gray, rain-swept isle seems to produce crime scribes a plenty, writers who pen plots that hit the gut hard as a shot of Jameson and create protagonists as world-weary as a priest after hearing a week's worth of confessions. Talents such as Tana French and Adrian McKinty have shaped this poignant, ferocious literary landscape. Now Declan Hughes makes his mark with The Wrong Kind of Blood, the first entry in his ongoing series about expatriate Irish private investigator Ed Loy.

Ireland slips back around you like an old glove. At least it feels that way to Ed Loy. Sure, he's only been back home for a few days, returning from the sunny anonymity of Los Angeles to bury his mother, but he still feels the familiarity of every contour. The almost-entwining pair of apple trees in his mum's garden. The suave brutality of the local drug dealer. The easy sensuality of old friend Linda Dawson. Linda certainly hasn't changed. Never one for propriety, she begs Loy to find her missing husband mere hours after his mother is in the ground. He decides to try to help her, but he soon learns that, for all the Irish familiarity, something's different. Cranes scrape the big cities' skylines, evidence of a building boom that's reshaping ancient streets. Yet no amount of new construction can cover over crimes. Blood will always cry out from the ground.

One could best describe Hughes' debut book as a hardboiled mystery, emphasis on "mystery." Every time Loy cuts close to the novel's central conundrum, it splits off and forms an entirely new dilemma of its own. The story gets so twisty that you almost feel like you need a flow chart for the final chapter, a complicated denouement that tries to tie up each and every loose end. But the liberally sprinkled action sequences and tongue-in-cheek commentary on modern Ireland keeps Blood flowing on through the overly complex parts. An enjoyable if not revolutionary read.

(Picture: CC 2006 by Monosnaps)

"Golem"

2011-07-15T13:17:00.002-04:00

My entry into The Clarity of Night's "Elemental" Contest is up. Entitled "Golem," it deals with ancient knowledge, marital scheming, mystical forbidden words and ... Well, you’ll have to read the entire thing to find out!

The Clarity of Night's "Elemental" Short Fiction Contest

2011-07-13T09:28:00.003-04:00

You remember those fantastic short-fiction contests hosted by The Clarity of Night blog, right? Every year or so, TCoN's proprietor Jason Evans hosts a bevy of stories that are inspired by a particular picture and run no longer than 250 words. This time the going title is "Elemental," and the picture, well, you can see that for yourself up above.

However ...

Past contests have garnered such an overwhelming response that Evans is putting a cap on it, limiting stories to the first 95 entries. Final deadline is July 20th, but we all know it'll fill up a lot faster than that. Sharpen your pencils and go here for all the details.

(Picture: Copyright 2010 by Jason Evans; used by permission)

Dean on Concrete Language and Truth Claims

2011-07-11T12:20:00.002-04:00

Jeremy Dean, who helms PsyBlog, discusses the connection between concrete language and persuasion. Excerpt:

There are all sorts of ways language can communicate truth. Here are some solid facts for you:
• People usually judge that more details mean someone is telling us the truth,
• We find stories that are more vivid to be more true,
• We even think more raw facts make unlikely events more likely.
But all these involve adding extra details or colour. What if we don't have any more details? What if we want to bump up the believability without adding to the fact-count?

Just going more concrete can be enough according to a recent study by Hansen and Wanke (2010). Compare these two sentences:
1. Hamburg is the European record holder concerning the number of bridges.
2. In Hamburg, one can count the highest number of bridges in Europe.
lthough these two sentences seem to have exactly the same meaning, people rate the second as more true than the first. It's not because there's more detail in the second -- there isn't. It's because it doesn't beat around the bush, it conjures a simple, unambiguous and compelling image: you counting bridges.

Abstract words are handy for talking conceptually but they leave a lot of wiggle-room. Concrete words refer to something in the real world and they refer to it precisely. Vanilla ice-cream is specific while dessert could refer to anything sweet eaten after a main meal.

Read the whole thing. Last Saturday, a marine biologist was talking to me about the lack of biological diversity in North American crops, and I brought up the idea of genetically tailored blights in Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, a reference that netted a slightly puzzled look. Similarly, a theologian appeared perplexed when I asked him if he'd ever heard of noir, a natural question to me since we were discussing mankind's depravity. Scientifically and philosophically minded people love to elevate abstract thought, acting as though raw data and pure proposition reside on some high frame. Yet none of us have ever encountered an uninterpreted fact or evaluated an argument not couched in some form of human communication. As Dean remind us here, our job as writers lies in bridging the gap between argument and experience using the best words at our disposal.

(Picture: CC 2010 by Thomas Hawk; Hat Tip: Tony Chavira)

Phraselet No. 96

2011-07-08T09:23:00.001-04:00

Just when I'd conquered the decorator wars with my husband I had to start dealing with my kids. By comparison, coming to an agreement with my husband was a cinch. Wise man that he is, he quickly saw the upside of leaving the home decorating to me. It was either that or domestic homicide. Our truce is modeled after the relationship between the U.S. Congress and the president. (Trust me, girlfriends, this works.) He gets executive privilege. (Be sure to call it that.) That means he gets veto power and final budget approval, but he brings no proposal to the floor or to the house (or to the walls or the ceiling, for that matter). That's my domain. I'm the Congress.

But who knew my kids would come on like a pack of noisy lobbyists?

- Marni Jameson, The House Always Wins

Momentum

2011-07-06T10:00:00.000-04:00

For those of us who live in the United States, an election cycle lies right around the bend, and soon we'll doubtlessly find ourselves mired in technical political jargon. Talking heads love to banter about centrism, open primaries, matching funds and which candidates have momentum. I find that last term somewhat fascinating, because as a metaphor it stands up pretty well. Some would-be leaders simply seem to fire on all cylinders during a campaign, speeding from success to success, not allowing any bumps in the road to slow them down. Meanwhile, others struggle to even reach the speed limit, strike a pot hole and promptly blow out a tire. They don't get anywhere.

Am I the only who thinks this could equally apply to writing?

Most of us have experienced those times when a story unspools with the ease of a Ferrari accelerating on a straight stretch of highway. Every new piece of description, character detail or plot point flows into the next with increasing rapidity until -- what do you know? -- we've finished. And if you've written for any length of time, I bet you've gone through the opposite, those periods when you can't get out of compositional first gear, when your pen moves at a Pinto's pace and nothing you do seems to make it move faster.

I know all about being mired. I'm there right now, stuck in a submission that's due in a little over a week and unsure whether or not I'll make the deadline. Here's what I want to know, dear readers: How do you regain momentum after losing it?

(Picture: CC 2009 by Viernest)

This Is a Quest Fantasy Lovers Will Want to Take

2011-07-05T12:37:00.002-04:00

Genre fiction is all about tropes, conventions, common ways of doing things that stretch from story to story. Read a little in the field, and you quickly realize that trying to nullify the ancient prophesy by killing all the village's children just won't work and that your imagination hasn't produced that groaning from the attic. Constant repetition has worn some such standards down to the nub, so it's no wonder that authors like to overturn them as much as honor them. Enter Jim C. Hines' Goblin Quest, a fantasy novel that reworks the old story of a group of adventurers plumbing the depths of dangerous caverns for loot -- and tells it from a monster's perspective.

One couldn't quite call Jig's life inside the mountain "good" even prior to meeting the adventurers. Scrawny and myopic, the tiny goblin often ended up the butt of cruel jokes and crueler beatings, his only friend an equally small fire spider named Smudge. Indeed, that's how the whole debacle unfolded, with the brutish Porak forcing Jig to follow in front of his patrol as bait. And it worked, sort of. Before he knew it, Jig ended up the captive of a pompous prince, his mentally unstable wizard brother, a cartography-obsessed dwarf and a sullen elfin thief. (Fortunately, though, Porak became fodder for the carrion worms, which lifted Jig's mood a bit.) The motley crew wants Ellnorein's Rod of Creation, an artifact reputedly hidden in the mountain's lowermost parts, and they seem convinced that the goblin can lead them to it. Never mind that Jig has never ventured past the hobgoblins' lair or the pool of the poisonous lizard-fish. If he wants to survive, he'll have to bring the band through the treacherous abode of the Necromancer to the guardian of the Rod, a scaly terror named Straum.

Hines could've settled for a simple inversion, making the so-called heroes bad and the mountain-bound monsters misunderstood. At first, that appears to be his tack. The adventurers are a squabbling bunch, their mission crosscut with conflicting motivations and outright hypocrisy. Meanwhile, Jig only wants to make his way home, enjoy a good meal, and have a long sleep. Hardly monstrous expectations. Yet Hines gradually rounds out his characters, revealing hidden parts of their personalities that transform them into something greater than caricatures. The prince owes his selfish pride to more than mere moral laxity, and Jig eventually comprehends that some the derision aimed at his species comes as much from their foolish habits as pointless prejudice. A last-minute upturning of the plot is a true treat. Some of the prose may feel unpolished, and Hines crowbars in a rough resolution or two. But in the end, this is a Quest fantasy aficionados will want to take.

(Picture: CC 2008 By  JoesSistah; Hat Tip: Writing Excuses)

Jacobs on Artistic Freedom and the Day Job

2011-07-01T09:50:00.002-04:00

John Hornor Jacobs (Southern Gods) talks about why he never wants to quit his day job to become a full-time author. Excerpts:

I own a 2800 square foot home. I live in Arkansas and that means it’s hot and we run the air-conditioning 6 months out of the year. I have two children who go to private Montessori school. I have two cars, a Honda and a Toyota -- luckily, I’ve paid them both off, but still there’s gas and insurance and I don’t know if you’ve seen gas prices lately but WOW. My wife works very hard at being a mom and keeping our house, but she doesn’t have a day job (thanks, honey, for all you do). ...

And yeah, I’ve got appetites. We’re a nuclear family with all that implies. ...

For me to become a full time writer is like saying, “Hey! I plan on being a lottery winner when I grow up!” It’s a nice pipe-dream but it isn’t for me.

You might ask why. Let me tell you.

I like being able to write books on my schedule, the way I want to write them. I LOVE the artistic freedom of having a day job. It’s liberating. You don’t have to churn out 5000 words a day to make your contractual obligations, you don’t have to put out two novels a year. A day job frees you from compromising your artistic vision in order to put out a product.

Read the whole thing. When the term "artistic freedom" turns up in descriptions of the writing life, my mind immediately jumps to hipster types scribbling stream-of-consciousness narratives in the second person that will appeal to approximately 43 people. But Jacobs takes an entirely different tack on the topic. Unless you happen to become a Big Name, writing for a living quickly becomes a treadmill existence, popping out pulp piece after pulp piece in a rapid succession. Want freedom from that grind? Punching the clock provides it.

(Picture: CC 2011 by Steve Snodgrass; Hat Tip: @StaciaDecker)

Finch Perches at the Ambergris Cycle's Peak

2011-06-28T09:56:00.000-04:00

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a theory, just a simple observation: When it comes to trilogies, second installments tend to be the best. Why? Perhaps it has something to do with finding a compositional safe place. Initial entries need to lay a sound foundation, and conclusions have to pound in all the stray nails and make sure the trim gets painted. But the middle falls into the sweet spot, with all the initial exposition out of the way and plenty of room to play before needing to wrap everything up. Of course, one can think of exceptions. The Matrix trilogy slid down a straight slope from visionary to dull to pedantic. Then there's Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris cycle, which does the exact opposite, rising from a fascinating yet almost impenetrably dense debut (City of Saints and Madmen) to a somewhat less experimental familial drama (Shriek: An Afterword) to its final piece -- the grab-you-by-the-throat hardboiled thriller Finch.

Six years since the Rising. Six years since the fragile coalition of warrior merchant houses Hoegbottom & Sons and Frankwrithe & Lewden fell to the gray caps, the fungal creatures long dwelling beneath Ambergris. Now the city is almost unrecognizable, whole houses swallowed by semi-sentient mold, giant drug-dispensing growths keeping an oppressed populace chemically placated, and fungus-augmented half-humans always pressing the threat of the internment camps on the unruly. The man who calls himself Finch holds no love for the gray caps, even though he works for them. Drafted might be a better word. He's a detective, and he has just received the toughest case of his short career. A dead man and an equally dead gray cap found in 239 Manzikert Avenue, apartment 525. Looking as though they fell from a great height. Even though that's impossible. Finch's investigation will take him into further impossibilities, into other times and dimensions, into contact with ferocious gray caps and militant rebels and endlessly scheming spies, none of whom care a whit for his wellbeing.

Finch's predecessors were interstitial works, falling intentionally on the self-consciously artsy side of the literary spectrum. But the last entry in the Ambergris cycle is pure genre, a blend of Raymond Chandler and 1984 with Ian Fleming and the original Stargate film added in. VanderMeer channels the rich setting and characters he developed previously into pure plot, and what a plot it is. Finch lands very quickly in over his head and stays there throughout almost the entire novel. (It's telling that VanderMeer brackets chapters with dialogue between his protagonist and an unnamed interrogator unafraid to use very rough physical persuasion.) Like Finch, readers catch glimpses of competing conspiracies, ancient civilizations and bizarre dimensions that unfold like an accordion before collapsing back into Ambergris' now-familiar tableau. It makes for electrifying reading. Sure, there are a few downsides. VanderMeer's attempt at hardboiled prose often feels a bit too choppy, and those who haven't read the entire cycle may miss the emotional import of a few scenes. But ultimately Finch perches at the trilogy's peak.

(Picture: CC 2006 by Hopefoote, Ambassador of the Wow)

McKinley on Horror and Escapism

2011-06-24T14:32:00.000-04:00

On Days in the Life, Robin McKinley (Sunshine) reacts to a Twitter follower dubbing her novel Deerskin horror. Excerpts (and spoilers) follow:

[T]he reason I find the suggestion that DEERSKIN might count as horror distressing is because what is horrible about it is real. ... [T] the horror of DEERSKIN is the rape. The rest of it is straightforward fantasy. There are no zombies or vampires, and the toro is just a great big animal. And rape is real. I hate the idea -- and let me reiterate I'm not saying DEERSKIN's readers do this, only that this is my reaction to the suggestion that DEERSKIN might be classified as horror -- that anyone reading it could, as it were, get out of it by putting it in their minds with the zombies and the vampires. Rape is real.

The line between fairy tales and horror for me -- and for a number of you who have posted or commented or tweeted to this effect -- is that fairy tales tend to be about working through your traumas, your horrors, your fears, your great big insurmountable obstacles. Horror tends to plonk them down and say yup, there they are. Trauma, horror, fear and insurmountable obstacles. Have fun. People die in fairy tales and the happy endings may be a little crinkly around the edges but generally some kind of something worth having is won through to.

Read the whole thing. Where to begin? Well, McKinley's antipathy to the horror label is understandable. Have you ever seen a "horror" aisle amongst the "crime" and "fantasy" and "literature" rows at your local Barnes and Noble? Of course not. Horror's mainstream legacy (think the Friday the 13th and Saw franchises) has so tainted the genre that few see it as anything but splattery escapism. Indeed, horror authors prefer to market their titles as supernatural thrillers or dark fantasies or paranormal romances just so they can have a chance at selling.

But McKinley surely goes too far in claiming that horror tropes don't thoroughly deal with or automatically distance readers from a story's theme. Yes, horror -- like noir and classical tragedy -- almost always has a downbeat tone. No getting around that. Yet the conventions matter less than what an author wants to do with them, and often he wants to deal with the stuff of universal human experience in a deep way. Mull over a few examples, keeping in mind that content warnings may apply: Horror can recall desperate childhood loneliness (Nathaniel Lee's "Terrible Lizard King"); consider the oversized impact of a parent's death (Tim Burke's "I.C.U."); ponder the problem of evil (Dan Wells' I Am Not a Serial Killer); acknowledge the existence of universal human depravity (Ray Bradbury's "Touched With Fire"); and perceive how such depravity necessitates spiritual renewal (Abel Ferrara's The Addiction). Sure, plenty of horror pieces don't rise to this level. But any story can provide objectionable escapism if written with the wrong touch -- fantasy and fairy tales included.

(Picture: CC 2006 by (jennY); Hat Tip: Chestertonian Rambler)

"The Breaking"

2011-06-20T15:21:00.002-04:00

Three people waited for us at the village's periphery, two boys my age and a man. Around them lay supplies. An iron pot. A large water skin. A sack of ground maize. Three metal-tipped spears.

"A fine choice, Manyara," Moses said when he saw me. "He has a strong back."

He was tall and bald with yellow, rheumy eyes. His arms ended just below the elbow's bend, the skin a mass of crusted scar, worn nubs of bone protruding. He leaned in close to me, and a sharp, sour smell came off him. Then I saw what he clutched to his chest, a glass bottle cloudy with a patina of scratches and half-full of liquid. Mampoer.

"You must help," Moses said. "Everyone's life depends on it."

The creases around mistress Manyara's mouth deepened.

In the late nineties, I spent about three weeks in Africa doing humanitarian work, and by the end of that time I'd fallen in love with the continent. Zimbabwe especially claimed the largest measure of my affection, being both geographically beautiful and filled with some of the most gracious people I'd ever met. When it came time to go, I wondered when I could return and see again the faces of those I now called friends.

A few years later, prime minster Robert Mugabe put feet to his long-held Marxism and forcibly redistributed the nation's land. Hyperinflation soared to the point where the government issued a Z$100 trillion note in an attempt to maintain their currency's purchasing power, but ultimately abandoned it in 2009. A flood of refugees fled Zimbabwe for South Africa. Basic infrastructure suffered so much that cholera, normally easily preventable and treatable, killed four-thousand people.

It seemed like a good place to set a post-apocalyptic dark fantasy.

In "The Breaking," a cripple named Moses struggles to beat back ever-encroaching growths named krim as they slowly advance upon his rag-tag village. For help with the work he has only an orphan, a ditchdigger's son and the indolent child of a wealthy trader. Blasted and apparently barren, the krim look like dead, weather-beaten bushes. Yet they continue to spread, inexorable and merciless, and no one in the village heeds Moses' warning of a flame that will soon sweep through them, devouring as it goes. ...

You can read "The Breaking" for free in Port Iris issue #5.

A few notes before you dive in. Though krim is a neologism of my own invention, other terms and geographical references in the story are real, including mampoer, veld, Francistown, Bulawayo, Harare, Kabwe, sadza, mopane and maviriviri.

Many thanks to Ehren von Lehe, Bill Gozansky, S.D Smith, Chestertonian Rambler and Nathaniel Lee for their feedback on the piece. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Port Iris editor Casey Seda for steering me toward some much needed changes in the narrative. The story is better for it.

Color Is Bright, Fun, Flat

2011-06-18T11:41:00.002-04:00

A wise man once said that the ending of a thing is better than the beginning, a cross-disciplinary sort of truism that cuts across matters of business, academics, the arts and life itself. Yet even though conclusions hold the higher place, the start of something still elicits a certain fascination -- especially when it comes to a multi-volume genre series. At least it did for me when I sat down with The Color of Magic, Terry Pratchett's first entry in the inimitable Discworld books. Sure, I knew later installments had a reputation as something special, but how much of that uniqueness translated to the series' earliest iteration?

Even the least judgmental individual on Discworld (the dinnerplate-shaped planet carried through the vastness of space on the backs of four cosmic elephants who are, in their turn, borne by a turtle of star-swallowing size named the Great A'Tuin) would have to confess that Rincewind is a complete failure as a wizard. Booted out of Unseen University after sneaking a peek at a forbidden book, he exhibits not only perpetual cowardice, but also an inability to remember any spells. That is, of course, because the page he glanced at in the forbidden book happened to contain one of the eight basic spells comprising the fabric of reality itself, and it burrowed into his mind the moment he saw it. The mass of all that arcane knowledge simply crowds all other magic out of Rincewind's skull. So he contents himself by whiling away his days with drink in the Broken Drum, one of Ankh-Morpork's seedier pubs. At least he did until Twofeather the tourist came strolling into the establishment, scattering gold coins as though they'd gone out of style and looking for a guide. Seems Twofeather comes from the Counterweight Continent, a land so wealthy that many regard it as mythical. And Rincewind, well, he'd be a fool to ignore all that gold, wouldn't he? So one might think, except that pair will end up on a perilous tour indeed, one that takes them to the eldritch temple of a soul-munching demigod, the lands of bickering dragonriders who soar on semi-imaginary lizards, and the Rim of Discworld where the seas froth over the flat planet's edge into the endless void.

Although I had only a rough exposure to Discworld prior to reading Color, I knew enough to recognize it contained most of the series' trademarks. Baroque fantasy settings, nudge-and-a-wink satire of real-world subjects, ludicrous absurdism and over-the-top silliness -- all make appearances. Only they feel really rough. Though the action is fun, Pratchett resorted to (often literal) deus ex machina resolutions an awful lot, and Color ends with the second-worst cliffhanger I've ever read. Additionally, when the most noble and sympathetic character turns out to be a magical piece of luggage with an indomitable desire to follow its owner and a taste for the appendages of any who would harm him, you know the author has a likeability problem on his hands. Color is bright and fun, but ultimately a bit flat.

(Picture: CC 2009 by TopTechWriter.US; Hat Tip: Nathaniel Lee)

"A Dream to Fill the Earth"

2011-06-15T06:59:00.000-04:00

Note: The following piece was written as part of the flash fiction challenge "Wake Up, Writing Monster" hosted by B. Nagel. Audio of the story was recorded as part of Peter Dudley's concomitant "Voice Thing" challenge. To listen to the recording, click the widget at the end of the story or visit ISLF's Soundcloud.com page.

John's nightly janitorial route always took him last to the corner office of Randall Templeton III on the twenty-four floor of the Beverly Heights City Center. As he dumped Farnsworth Templeton LLP's final full trash can into his fifty-gallon Rubbermaid, an opalescent globe little bigger than a quail's egg tumbled out.

"Huh," he said into the 4 a.m. silence.

The globe glowed softly in the fluorescents' ambient light. He plucked it up, brushed it clean. Then as he wheeled the collected refuse to the service elevator, he slipped it into his pocket without even thinking.

As it did most every day, the downtown bus line carried John nearly to the doorstep of his tiny duplex unit. His wife, Anne, clad in khakis and a Continental Café polo, opened the door before he knocked, proffering a cup of joe. Ignoring the corn flakes before her, Helene kicked Goodwill-sneaker-clad feet while proclaiming how the entire first-grade class would be going to the zoo in a few weeks, and would daddy chaperone, please, please, pleeeeeeeze?

John said he would. He praised the integrity of Anne's brew. He told them he loved them, but be needed to sleep before his eyes turned into raisins. Anne shooed him toward the bedroom, where he emptied the contents of his pockets onto the dresser. Sliding under the covers, he heard their laughter fade into the bustle of the waking day.

Then he heard something crack.

He sat up.

"Hello," a voice said.

A small, furry head poked from gleaming shards on the dresser.

"What are you?" John asked.

Ink-drop eyes blinked. "Why, I'm your Dream."

John blinked back. He'd never planned for ammonia and mops to become the tools of his trade. Once Selectric typewriters and Parisian cafes had filled his thoughts of the future. But when Anne became pregnant on their honeymoon, literary ambition surrendered to paying the power bill.

"Really?" John asked.

The Dream smiled a broad smile filled with tiny teeth. "Why not put it to a test?"

So John found himself at the kitchen table with pad and pen, the Dream on his shoulder, cleaning its claws. It was a small thing, no bigger than John's thumb.

John shook his head, his mind a perfect blank. "Yeah, I've got nothing. I really should sleep."

"Try for my sake."

So John tried, and soon enough he lost himself in scratching out and stringing together sentences, ignoring the increasing complaints from his aching eyes and straining bladder. Before he knew it he had a rough chapter about an expartriate novelist named Charleston struggling to compose in a Marseilles garret.

"Ugh," he exclaimed when he finally looked up, "it's one. Work starts in five hours.' He glanced at the Dream. "Hey. You look bigger."

The Dream smacked its lips. "I love a little time."

The next week passed in an increasingly muzzy disorientation. John fell into a rhythm of stumbling home at dawn, scribbling down scenes until he couldn't stay upright, snatching some sleep and dragging back to work. The entire time the Dream rode his shoulder, whispering literary admonitions, which John would jot down on a pad. Though it was now about the size of a parrot, no one seemed to notice it.

But he soon learned someone had noticed the change in his habits.

The trill of the phone jerked John from a dream about Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd. begging to represent him.

"Hello?" John said.

"Johnny," said Marcus Miliband, manager of Glow Shine LLC franchise no. 59. "I've had complaints."

He unspooled the list with vigor. The lobby level bathroom stank like spoiled eggs. The break room microwave was developing a baked-on strata of exploded lunches. And no one could find a single packet of Glow ‘n' Go brand coffee anywhere in the building.

"Who'd even drink it?" John asked.

"Don't like that your job involves coffee service? Tough. Do it or find another -- capisce?"

The Dream stretched on the carpet, long as a golden retriever. "I adore inattention to detail."

There are only so many ways to slice a schedule. After the call, John sectioned his compositional time into smaller periods, taking advantage of ten-minute breaks and bus rides. But something had to give. He didn't think Anne and Helene noticed his mental absences during mealtimes and weekends. He wasn't writing that much.

"Daddy." A small hand tugged on his shirtsleeve. "Miss Johnson needs you to sign this."

John squinted at the indemnification form his daughter had slid in front of him. "Right. The zoo. Well, I'll look at it and --"

"But it's today."

John sighed and set down his pen. Today? How had he lost track so easily? "Sweetie, I'm sorry, but daddy's worn out."

Anne stopped spreading peanut butter on Roman Meal and fixed her husband with a steely glare. "John. You promised."

"I know, but work's killing me --"

"And you're wrapped up in your hobby."

"Hey, I deserve a little time to myself."

"You take more than a little."

"Please," Helene begged, "please stop fighting.

"We're just having a discussion," Anne said, taking the girl's hand. "We'll discuss this later," she added, shooting a loaded look at John. "Someone has to ensure our daughter makes it to school."

The front door clicked shut.

The early morning sunlight streaming through the windows disappeared as if obliterated by eclipse.

"Ah, alienation," the Dream rumbled.

"I can't do this," John said. "I'm exhausted."

The Dream shrugged massive shoulders. "That's what nicotine and caffeine are for."

"It could cost me my job."

The Dream flexed its talons. "Succeed and you won't need one."

"And my family."

The Dream smiled, a broad smile filled with finger-long teeth. "Child may fail thee, spouse assail thee, still remain within my fold. What else can you do? No matter the balance in his bank account, Templeton didn't enrich his life by forcing me to sleep."

John's hands began to tremble.

The Dream seemed to swell in size. "Fear is the sweetest thing."

John stared at the black-eyed creature, the thing that would fill his hours and days, his home and earth itself if it could until nothing else remained.

The pen clattered onto the tabletop.

"You don't want to do that," the Dream warned.

"No," John said, "you don't want me to."

He snatched up the permission slip and ran for the bus stop.

Today, John still empties Randall Templeton III's trash. His wife still buses tables. His daughter still wears secondhand shoes. Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd. still hasn't called. Something about six-inches tall still rides around on his shoulder, fed on thirty minutes a day and unnoticed by everyone else. Sometimes John still listens to it while he cleans. Sometimes he doesn't.

This disappoints the Dream. It wants so much more. Yet it knows John lacks only a chapter or two in a certain manuscript. Agents might follow and, perhaps, a signed contract.

And that, well, that comforts it.

A Dream to Fill the Earth by I Saw Lightning Fall

Britt Offers Two Takes on SF Violence

2011-06-13T13:34:00.002-04:00

Ryan Britt engages in the old debate-team tradition of arguing both sides of an issue over at Tor.com. Initially, he states that science fiction movies need to purge themselves of narrative violence. Excerpts:

When I talk to people about my interest in science fiction I run into trouble when we start talking about movies. Do I like Star Wars? Sure, but outside any sort of argument of whether it is or is not actual science fiction, the thing about Star Wars that bugs me is the same thing that has been bothering a lot of SF fans for several decades now. Though entertaining, Star Wars created a slew of monsters: science fiction movies that are mostly shoot-em-up blockbusters full of mindless action violence. Why is the genre of unlimited imagination often so predictable at the cinema? ...

[T]he incredibly popular Matrix trilogy has at its core a very inventive concept concerning a real world versus a digital one. Which one is more preferable? Do we really have free will? But these cool ideas ultimately take the form of ridiculously trite speeches exposed by characters whose only real personality traits are their ability to shoot/chop at people. The problem of the action/violence in the Matrix movies is compounded by the fact that the stakes of said violence are dubious. When characters are granted physical powers previously reserved for video game characters, not only does the action/violence cease to be interesting, it betrays what its real purpose is: violence for violence's sake. Is this brand of violence any different than the goal of pornography? Should you stand for it in your science fiction?

Then Britt takes an opposing view, arguing that the genre needs violence for verisimilitude's sake. Excerpts:

Violence does indeed have a place in science fiction; so much so, that I would argue that much of science fiction actually needs violence. And the reason is that in order to be effective fiction, science fiction has to comment on the real world. ...

In a recent interview on The New Yorker's blog, author Mary Gaitskill commented on the way violence is incorporated into our lives and the creative process saying; "… most people sublimate the violence, are even able to use it in a creative way. There's an interesting and very terrible line between that sublimation and more overt expression, a line that gets dramatically crossed in wartime situations …" The act of sublimation seems to be the key here. If science fiction, or any fiction, tackles violence it would seem the route would need would to be an acknowledgement without a celebration.

For my part, I think Britt hits the proverbial ball out of the park on at least one point, namely that if violence exists in a story it needs to not titillate. For all the usual talk of artistic freedom, I think most storytellers realize theirs is a profoundly moral undertaking, one that shapes peoples' minds at a bedrock level. If violence steps onstage during storytelling, it ought to do so in a way that doesn't encourage base instincts.

(Picture: CC 2009 by erin m)

Blood Is a Bit Mixed

2011-06-12T20:57:00.001-04:00

In the late nineties, I spent close to a month in three countries near Africa's tip, and my memories of each nation couldn't be more different. In Swaziland, I recall sipping sweet tea and eating oranges in a dirt courtyard behind a Reformed church. The scents of boiled sadza and stewing meat fill my thoughts of Zimbabwe. But when it comes to South Africa, I mostly remember the bars on the windows in Johannesburg and how every car seemed outfitted with a complicated key system to discourage vehicular theft. It's a rough city, and I only learned how close I came to disaster one night when recounting to an Afrikaner how a group of us got lost on the highway. He explained that a close friend of his had done the same and ended up dragged from his car, doused in gasoline and set ablaze. That sense of ever-present peril thoroughly informs Cape Town-based author Roger Smith's debut novel, Mixed Blood.

John Hill isn't John Hill's real name. Back in America, people once called him John Burn, and then he'd owned a successful business, the honor due a wartime veteran and a picture-perfect family. But as Hill, he's lost everything except his wife and child, and he's barely holding on to them. He thought immigrating to South Africa would keep a stateside criminal secret hidden, and at first it did -- until the two men turned up. A pair of drug-addled Cape Town gangsters broke into his new home, a random transgression, a thrill crime with no plan or purpose. Their mistake. Quick work with a carving knife removed the thugs from the equation, but now the calculus of John's expat life has gotten exponentially more complicated. Unable to go to the police because of his past, he tries to hide the bodies, which soon attracts the attention of a very corrupt cop and a fearsome killer who is himself quick with a blade.

Mixed Blood succeeds most in its portrayal of a stratified city whose social classes differentiate themselves not only by race and wealth, but also by how easily they can avoid violence. That doesn't prove particularly easy for even the most advantaged. In Smith's Cape Town, safety depends less on law than luck. It's an incendiary place where the violence can erupt from as small a matter as taking a wrong turn and where none of its inhabitants have clean hands. Indeed, a back-cover blurb perfectly sums up the novel's nuanced presentation of human depravity: "The bad guy is really bad -- but so are the good guys." Unfortunately, the book doesn't handle religious belief with the same light touch. In fact, Mixed Blood seems to propose an inverse relationship between virtue and piety, with the most believing characters descending to the blackest depths while skeptics avoid the worst degradations. A disappointment, as are a few lurches in the plot. Still, Smith satisfies with a noirish ending and an abrupt denouncement that hits like an enraged heavyweight. Blood may be a bit mixed, but it's a solid hardboiled thriller all the same.

(Picture: 2010 by cliff1066™)

Sans Support?

2011-06-09T09:28:00.001-04:00

When Jeff VanderMeer told how he wrote a novel in a mere eight weeks, he explained that family support proved vital. "I can't tell you how easy Ann made this experience, since I rarely left the house and she did a lot of things I usually do for the household," he said on his blog. "I can't thank her enough for that, and I owe her big-time." Indeed, most professional authors name the backing of friends and loved ones as the bulwark that bolstered their success.

So what happens when an author doesn't have it?

Those close to me are, God bless them, awesome folks, kind and loving and gracious to a fault. Yet they rarely get my interest in genre fiction. In fact, it positively perplexes them. Futuristic speculation, fantastic dreaming, grim grotesquery -- at best they tolerate such things, at worst openly wonder why anyone would waste his time with them.

I don't think I'm alone in facing such skepticism. Fantasy, SF and horror hardly receive high praise from the culture at large. Even literary fiction seems to have slipped in perceived influence, moving from being the firer of men's hearts to residing in an academic backwater. Could it be that Plato was wrong, that we really don't need to exile the poets from the perfect republic because no one notices them much anyway?

Surely not. Narrative remains a powerful shaper of the mind, even if no one recognizes it as such. In his "Defence of Poetry," Shelley famously argued that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." Perhaps we simply need to convince others of the truth of it.

(Picture: CC 2005 by Clearly Ambiguous)

Anders on Kids and Dark Classics

2011-06-06T14:30:00.000-04:00

Charlie Jane Anders, editor of io9, considers when it's appropriate to allow children to watch classic dark movies. Excerpt:

How do you tell if your kid is ready for the hand-chopping Empire Strikes Back?

Not to mention a bunch of other genre classics that are for almost all ages, like Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Or some recent superhero films. There are a bunch of movies, TV shows and graphic novels that are maybe just a little too scary, violent or sexy for little kids. And there's no exact rule of thumb for how old a kid needs to be before they're ready to watch some dark, scary material.

So we asked some experts, and here's what they told us.

Read the whole thing. The experts' advice falls all over the proverbial map, from being practical ("When in doubt, it's better to wait" and "watch it with your kid") to suspect ("One general rule: eight is the turning point") to entirely unhelpful ("Tons of shows and movies aimed at kids are dark and violent anyway"). It surprises me, though, that none of the experts advocated sitting children down for some careful analysis of what they've watched. During my college days, one English professor loved to fling around Wordsworth's flammable phrase "we murder to dissect" as a rebuke to those more given to explicating literature than experiencing it. And perhaps analysis sometimes does destroy the pathos of a work. But it can also provide both understanding and emotional insulation for sensitive little minds.

(Picture: CC 2008 by sean dreilinger)

Heller on How To Guard Against Online Distractions

2011-06-03T16:40:00.003-04:00

Joseph Finder, author of Buried Secrets, talks about tools he uses to stay productive in an age of endless diversion. No bonus points for guessing that more than one is analog:

(Hat Tip: Brandywine Books)

Blount on How To Be a Matador With Words

2011-06-01T13:07:00.000-04:00

In the May 14, 2011, edition of The Wall Street Journal, Roy Blount Jr., (Alphabetter Juice: or, The Joy of Text) talks about -- and exhibits! -- the delight one can find in playing with words

When we write, we work with what? Words.

Wow -- nine straight words beginning with W. "Just virtuosity," as the card shark played by Charles Coburn says in "The Lady Eve" after showing off an especially nifty false shuffle. "You don't really need it."

What I was doing was playing around. Anyone who undertakes the literary grind had better like playing around with words. Letters, even: W, for example, though L and K are catchier. L leads you in and K connects. Why do you think young people say "like" so much?

Somebody informed me recently that the key to every art, from writing to gardening to sculpture, is creativity. I beg to differ. Sculpture, I told this person (although sculpture is something I know nothing about), is for people who like playing around with granite or automobile bumpers or quantities of chewed gum or whatever. Gardening is for people who like playing around with bulbs and dirt. Writing is for people who like playing around with words -- like "bulbs" and, let's say, "loam."

Read the whole thing. Right now I'm in the midst of multiple first drafts, facing two stories still in the wow-I've-seen-more-organization-in-a-post-party-frathouse state while knowing I have a third I really need to start if I want to make a particular deadline. To put it mildly, I dislike first drafts. Manuscripts that have rounded the fifth or sixth revision? Now those are a lot easier to get excited about, when stories feel more finished than not and crippling self-doubt doesn't threaten with every other sentence. But perhaps Blount offers an alternative to the grin-and-bear-it approach to early drafts -- play. Even bad writing isn't a chore when we're having fun (although Blount wisely urges us not to get to infatuated with our own diction: "I like a writer who gets off on words, but not one who gets off on getting off on words. That writer is out to impress more than to express").

(Picture: CC 2008 by purolipan)

Friday's Forgotten Books: Black Cherry by Doug TenNapel

2011-05-27T08:33:00.000-04:00

Note: Friday's Forgotten Books is a regular feature at pattinase, the blog of crime writer Patti Abbott. Log on each week to discover old, obscure and unfairly overlooked titles.

Graphic novelist Doug TenNapel's Black Cherry is less forgotten than never particularly well-known in the first place. TenNapel has built his career around absurdity, and his most famous works feature robot-hijacking cats (Gear) and space-suit-wearing annelids (Earthworm Jim). Silliness, exaggeration and an artfully sloppy art style are the tools of his trade. But Black Cherry represented a shift away from speculative subject matter to a combination of hardboiled and horror.

Small-time crook Eddie Paretti is in over his head. Stealing from the mafia isn't smart to start out with, but when The Family also happens to be your employer, well, that's a sticky situation for the shrewdest operator. And Eddie ain't that shrewd. Still, he's bright enough to know that his boss, Don Mauro, might wise up to his larceny one day. So when a rival crime boss offers him big bucks to swipe a body from Mauro's mansion, Eddie jumps at the opportunity. Who knows? Maybe he'll have enough left over to help find the girl that got away, a beautiful stripper named Black Cherry. Eddie snags the body, only to discover it isn't dead -- or human, either. Soon he finds himself pursued by a whole host of demons, a kindly Catholic priest and a comely new convert to the church who looks an awfully lot like a certainly lady he once saw spin around a pole.

The best part of Black Cherry is TenNapel's style, hands down. Intentionally loose, his black-and-white illustrations make masterful use of light and shadow, recalling classic film noir. (Click here to read the first ten pages, but heed the content warning.) The screwball plot is more of a take-it-or-leave-it affair. Longtime fans probably wouldn't bat an eye at possessed hitmen, a jive-talking katana-wielding angel, and a sight gag that takes a very literal interpretation of the doctrine of transubstantiation. Casual readers, though, may end up baffled by all the incongruity. However, the biggest sticking point is Black Cherry's edginess. Over-the-top slapstick works fine when married to an upbeat tone, but joining it with grim tropes is an uneasy union indeed. A decapitated demon dominatrix whose severed head spurts blood like seltzer? An elephantine flesh-eating squirrel that references the Sermon on the Mount after having a chair leg broken off in its eye? Gag and gag after gag about forcible sodomy? Yeah, you get the idea: The approach alternates between the ridiculous and offensive. TenNapel's work is worth getting to know, but start instead with his free-to-read Web comic Ratfist. This Cherry's sour.

(Picture: CC 2007 by p.v)

Anders on Abandoning Cyberpunk for Fantasy

2011-05-25T13:38:00.000-04:00

io9 editor Charlie Jane Anders wonders why cyberpunk writers are jumping the ship for dark fantasy. Excerpts:

Cyberpunk has fallen from its peak in the 1980s and early 1990s, but the great cyberpunk authors are still writing. And many of them have turned to fantasy. ...

Consider:

Rudy Rucker, author of the Ware tetralogy and Postsingular, among many others, has described his new novel Jim and the Flims as being akin to fantasy. Also, Black Glass author John Shirley published the mystical Bleak History in 2009.

Metrophage author Richard Kadrey has gained a huge following for his Sandman Slim novels -- the third one, Aloha from Hell, is coming October 18. Richard K. Morgan, author of the cyberpunk Takeshi Kovacs novels, has written a bloody fantasy, The Steel Remains, with the sequel, The Cold Commands (or The Dark Commands), coming October 11. Meanwhile, some of Synners author Pat Cadigan's recent stories have seemed much more fantasy-oriented.

What's going on here?

Read the whole thing. Some of Anders' suggestions seem a bit off to me. For example, can we really state that cyberpunk's tropes can no longer speak to the current human condition or that fantasy fits better with a noir mindset? Failing to speak to universal experience is more of an authorial than genre problem, and early works from the godfather of cyberpunk drew so heavily on hardboiled that crime fiction aficionados still read them. But on at least two points, she hits the nail on the head. First, money follows fantasy more than science fiction. Richard Kadrey quips, "I never made a dime in the SF world. Fantasy keeps the lights on and smoke coming out of the chimney." And no wonder, given that the highly technical nature of much SF discourages casual readers. Second, Anders thinks that much of cyberpunk's vision of the future has come true. It's hard to argue otherwise when iPhones do much of the work of any fictional brainjack. Indeed, the closest contemporary entry in the genre that I've read is Paolo Bacigalupi's delightful The Windup Girl, only instead of investigating human-computer interactions he ponders the mysteries of genetics (albeit a bit simplistically). Perhaps cyberpunk's spirit will stay with us, only with a shift in subject matter.

(Picture: CC 2006 by Stuck in Customs)

A Fascinating, Frustrating Girl

2011-05-23T10:00:00.001-04:00

Sometimes a novel comes along that lives up to all the hype, one that astounds the reader with its freshness of vision and execution. Paolo Bacigalupi's Nebula- and Hugo-winning The Windup Girl is just such a novel. Set in a world where oil production has bottomed out and global warming has swept away coastal metropolises with rising sea levels, once-grand nations have contracted into provincial powers. Most have replaced fossil fuels with kinetic power, storing joules in specialized kink springs wound by specially engineered elephantine precursors called megadonts. But few countries can easily replace another equally scarce resource -- food. Agricultural monopolies bolster the marketing of their sterile crops by releasing blights tailored to kill natural growths and any who eat them. However, mutations to these designer diseases have put even the so-called calorie companies on the defensive, and their operatives scour the globe for any genetic material that can help put their herbicidal Pandora back in its box. Thailand has resisted the conglomerates at every step, which is why AgriGen's Anderson Lake is in the drowned city of Bangkok, posing as a factory operator. His right-hand man, Hock Seng, has a more mundane goal, namely to build a new life for himself after Malaysian jihadists murdered his family. Meanwhile, Environment Ministry enforcer Jaidee Rojjanasukchai seeks to keep Thai soil free of calorie company crops, as well as the genetically engineered servants known as wind ups. This terrifies one such wind up named Emiko who was abandoned by her master and now survives by selling her body in a brothel. Unbeknownst to this divergent group, circumstances are conspiring to bring them together in a violent confrontation that will rock Bangkok to its very foundations.

If William Gibson and Timothy Hallinan decided to collaborate, The Windup Girl might be the result -- and that's intended as high praise. Bacigalupi keeps his characters well-rounded and ethically conflicted, his plotting always unexpected and never forced, his setting ... Well, as you can probably tell from that overlong intro, the setting is a thing of pure beauty, jaw-droppingly complex and well-realized. I could pile on superlatives, but suffice it to say that while reading one almost feels the jungle heat, smells the salt spray of a rising ocean kept at bay only by ingenuity and good fortune, sees the saffron-robed Buddhist monks and the white-shirted Environment Ministry police threading through rickshaw-choked streets. Windup is the sort of book that can twist you into knots with sheer admiration and envy.

And yet ...

Typical, I avoid critiquing a novel's thematic content. After all, that's really more of a reader's job than a reviewer's. But a pair of controversial topics so thoroughly inform Windup's action that they deserve mention. The first is Bacigalupi's advocacy of economic isolationism, the populist notion that nations only survive when cut off front international trade. One bureaucrat tells Anderson that specializing to make use of its comparative advantages nearly brought Thailand to the brink of ruin, a notion that would raise eyebrows on most economists. Ditto for the concepts of economic assassins and coup-instigating corporations with their own standing armies. However, the novel's second big idea, that of genetic determinism, proves more problematic. Not only does Emiko suffer all sorts of degradations (some of which recall the awful ending of Requiem for a Dream), but Bacigalupi also implies that she submits to them somewhat willingly and that because of the content of her genome. A rogue scientist implies she owes her sexual subservience to having her helix spliced with that of Labrador retriever. Such a biological obliteration of free will surely goes too far and certainly ignores recent research into how quantum entanglement fits with the mind-brain dichotomy. The Windup Girl is an amazing read, one that every fan of speculative fiction should pick up, but it ultimate proves just as frustrating as it is fascinating.

(Picture: CC 2002 by besar bears)

Whitehead on Online Distractions

2011-05-18T11:21:00.001-04:00

Colson Whitehead talks Internet distraction and writerly willpower over at the Publishers Weekly blog. Excerpts:

The doubters ask, how do you get any work done if you're RTing and LOLing all day, which is also fair, introducing the topic of Internet distraction in general. We've all read interviews where the author moans, "I'd never have finished my opus if I hadn't rented out serial killer Joel Rifkin's old hostage pit." Not only did this cinderblock retreat lack Wi-Fi, we learn it was also soundproof and windowless, a Lecterian Yaddo.

I say, yes, you can rent out a hostage pit. You can also close your browser. It's called willpower. If you can't muster the will to lay off Gawker, how are you going to write a book? ...

There are those who moan, oh, Shakespeare wouldn't have written all those wonderful plays for us to "modern update" if he'd had Angry Birds ... Is it so terrible, here in the 21st century? A sonnet is perfect Tumblr-length, and given the persistent debates over the authorship of his work, the bard would have benefited from modern, cutting-edge identity theft protection. The old masters didn't even have freaking penicillin. I think Nietzsche would have endured non-BCC'd e-mail dispatches in exchange for pills to de-spongify his syphilitic brain, and we can all agree Virginia Woolf could've used a scrip for serotonin reuptake inhibitors. I digress. The Internet is not to blame for your unfinished novel: you are.

Read the whole thing. I want to expound upon Whitehead's comments at length. I want to analyze them and synthesize them, post my own reconstituted musings here and check my comments every, say, seven-and-a-half minutes to see if any of you fine folks have responded. I also want to surf on over to IO9.com to check out the latest SF-related distractions, sneak on to Tor.com to see if they've updated their detailed reread of The Name of the Wind and sign in to my email for the thirteenth time today. But I'm not going to. Instead, I'm going to plant my rear in the seat and enter some edits. It may not satisfy my desire to grab a fistful of online ephemera, but it'll certainly prove more productive in the end.

(Picture: CC 2006 by kainet; Hat Tip: Nathan Bransford)

Makinson on Electronic Publishing

2011-05-17T10:58:00.000-04:00

Penguin Group CEO John Makinson sat down with The Wall Street Journal to talk traditional versus electronic publishing in an interview released May 9, 2011. Excerpts:

WSJ: Will there come a time when physical books are no longer published?

Mr. Makinson: No, I really don't think so. There is a growing distinction between the book reader and the book owner. The book reader just wants the experience of reading the book, and that person is a natural digital consumer: Instead of a disposable mass market book, they buy a digital book. ... I looked the other day into the sales of public-domain classics in 2009, when all those books were available for free. What I found was that our sales had risen by 30% that year. The reason is that we were starting to sell hardcover editions -- more expensive editions -- that people were prepared to pay for. There will always be a market for physical books, just as I think there will always be bookstores. ...

Mr. Makinson: This is a new market that can't exist economically in print. You can't manufacture, ship and store a book at those prices. But we as publishers probably need to participate.

We'll look at new content that maybe we can popularize in different ways. We'll also look at our backlist. Maybe there are customers for westerns at $1.99.

Read the entire thing. If the Journal's Web site wants to curtail your access to the article, remember that Google is your friend. Makinson's partial acceptance of e-books mirrors my own slight migration away from print. Thanks to a relative's new Kindle that I've had the privilege of perusing, as well as a kind electronic publisher who has seen fit to put some of my stuff in print, I think I understand the new medium a little better. However, I really do think e-books best serve those who don't need to intensively study a text. Due to a poorly stocked campus bookstore, I had to settle for an electronic textbook for a grad class last semester. Every with a search feature, attempting to find old highlight sections of text proved far more difficult than simply thumbing through a ream of physical pages. Short stories on a screen? Perfect. Complicated technical info? Hello, Mr. Migraine.

(Picture: CC 2008 by Horia Varlan)

"Wake Up, Writing Monster"

2011-05-14T19:24:00.000-04:00

Just in time for the sultry days of summer, B. Nagel is hosting a round of shared storytelling at his blog. Excerpts:

Hello friends. This is a writing exercise. And I want to take this opportunity to invite you all to take part in it.

In my head, I'm calling this exercise "Wake up, writing monster!" You can call it whatever you want. But first things first, right off the bat, this is not a contest with fantastic getaways to southern Spain or giftcards to internet bookstores. The only prize is participation; the only reward, community; a shadow beside ours as we walk the writing road. ...

But what is the story supposed to be about? Well, I want everyone who participates in this exercise to write to his or her own purpose. I have been travelling through a dry patch and need to to revive, tease, wake up the writing monster. So my story will be about that. Now, my story may star two old ladies having coffee and flirting outrageously with a barrista OR a young boy passing through manhood trials OR I may write about myself writing about library patrons. All of these options are on the table and more beside. I am writing to exercise and inviting you to work out with me. In a free-for-all, internet word gymnasium kind of way. Just keep it PG-13, please. My mom does read the blog.

Read the whole thing for all the pertinent details, including word count and posting date. Monsters? Writing? I am so in, and you should be, too. To sweeten the pot, B. has tag-teamed with Peter Dudley of Corner Kick to encourage participants to add audio or video to their entries. By gum, it’s going to be a veritable multimedia extravaganza!

(Picture: CC 2008 by Stephanie Massaro)

The Bolt or the Bug?

2011-05-11T14:58:00.000-04:00

Surely you've heard that renowned Mark Twain aphorism: "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." It's become a mantra for many writers, a call to focused creativity and compositional excellence, a pledge to rise above mundane prose.

I wonder just how many stories such a commitment has killed.

Don't get me wrong, I love excellent writing. I delight in phrases freighted with literary import, sentences stuffed with alliteration and allusions, all carefully constructed to yield maximum emotional impact. It's all good stuff. Such beauty can print you like a brand.

The problem lies in that such a standard is exceedingly difficult to meet, especially right out of the gate. For those who (like myself) desire to find it, discovering the right word can feel like a stumbling block or an millstone tied around your neck, a barrier to writing rather than an incentive. I can't tell you how many times I've stared at a half-finished page, willing the perfect turn of phrase to come and walking away in a huff when it didn't.

The solution? Well, I've stopped aiming for the right word -- at least at first. Let my early drafts (and perhaps even some of the latter ones) be embarrassingly sloppy. At least I have them. Some say that good is enemy of the best, but I say sometimes the best is enemy to anything at all.

(Picture: CC 2006 by art farmer)

Wech on Less Script, More Story

2011-05-09T15:07:00.000-04:00

Katie Wech, screenwriter for Prison Break, Stephen King's Dead Zone and Prom, talks how less script often equals more story in the April 30, 2011 edition of The Wall Street Journal. Excerpts:

In screenwriting, you have to cover a lot of ground with very few words (a mentor of mine once described it as "the thong bikini of writing.") Instead of spending a half page describing a character, I have to do it in a sentence. And it better be a good sentence, specific and vivid enough to help everyone from a casting director to a costume designer bring that person to life. ...

When the script runs long, decisions about what goes and what stays hinge largely on the story's spine. The spine is its essence, the thing you can't change without fundamentally altering the whole piece. I've thrown away exquisite pieces of dialogue, set pieces that made me giggle, characters I've lived with for months, because at the end of the day, they weren't necessary to the story.

Read the whole thing. Though Wech claims screenwriting in particular is known for its economy of language, I'd argue that all good writing involves putting the perfect word in its particular place. Even the efforts of authors who churn out epic sentences and paragraphs feel more impressive than expansive when they're paying attention to craft. The challenge for me (and a few others, I bet) lies in wanting that not-a-word-wasted draft right out of the gate, in trying to shortcut the tedium of composition and revision. Unchecked, that yearning for immediately beautiful writing becomes instead a recipe for no writing at all.

(Picture: CC 2007 by mchlmbrk)

Man and Wife Is Tense, Entertaining, Flawed

2011-05-06T16:29:00.001-04:00

Once I read a wonderful little synopsis of the dramatic differences between Shakespeare and Chekhov. Although I can't lay my hands on the exact source, it essentially said that when the Bard's characters reach the end of the proverbial rope, they intone something like, "To be or not to be," while in the same situation Chekhov's creations murmur, "My, I think it's time for tea." That strikes me as a perfect continuum on which to situate a narrative's action: Where does a particular story fall between big and bombastic on one end (Shakespeare) and soft and subdued on the other (Chekhov)? Well, if we're talking about Andrew Klavan's thriller Man and Wife, it's Shakespearean through and through, stuffed full of enough dramatic tension for any number of alienated royals.

Cal Bradley had a good life. A thriving psychiatric practice in tiny Highbury, Connecticut. Three adorable children. A wife with whom he shares a passionate love even after 15 years of marriage. Things seemingly couldn't have been better -- until that fateful night when Peter Blue snapped. Seemingly out of nowhere, the nineteen-year-old beat his girlfriend, stole a pistol and set fire to Trinity Episcopal Church. If he'd died there, things might have been simpler, but Orrin Hunnicut, the Highbury chief of police, hauled the kid from the flaming wreckage in an almost holy wrath. Hunnicut wanted to send Peter up the river, but after Peter tried to hang himself in the holding cell, a number of Highbury's elites convinced a judge to put the boy under Cal's care for psychiatric evaluation. But as Cal begins to untangle his charge's psyche, his own family begins to fall under scrutiny. And then while hiking through the woods one day, his spies his wife deep in conversation with another man ...

Man and Wife isn't a book you'll read for subtlety. It has nothing secreted away in some literary corner. With the exception of Cal, every character is broad as a battleship and given to launching into over-the-top antics with precious little provocation. The novel's themes are self-evident from the get-go, and the ending is foreshadowed multiple times with more forthrightness than art. And yet I still found it entertaining, primarily because Klavan knows how to plot. From the first chapter on, we understand that Cal and most everyone around him will do some Very Bad Things. However, the exact path of his downfall remains in doubt up until the very end, an end which recalls A Simple Plan and A History of Violence. An entertaining, flawed entry in Klavan's canon.

(Picture: CC 2009 by Nahh)