|
|||||
|
Monday, June 16, 2008
The Dreaded QuestionI've heard it said that the question writers most dread hearing is, "Where do you get your ideas?" Well, not this writer. I could wax rhapsodic for hours about where I find my inspiration, about how I love to take fairly well-known legends like the romance of Eros and Psyche in Greek lore, or more obscure tidbits like the gwrach-y-rhibyn of Wales and twist them on their heads to find something new. That question is an easy one for me. No, the question that I hate to hear, that I absolutely dread, is "What's your book about?" Arrgh! Bad enough that we writers are expected to condense tens of thousands of words of story into a few pages for our synopses, or a few lines for our blurbs. Now laymen expect us to be able to spout out a pithy one-liner that will adequately convey to them the story that's in our heads? I don't know about any of you -- but I can't do it! This morning, I told a coworker that I started writing on a new book this weekend, and this was the first question out of his mouth. Now, for all that I've just started, I feel I have a fairly solid grasp of what this story is and what it's going to be about. But in order to convey to him what's in my head, I'd have had to sit down with him for an hour. Not exactly an appropriate answer for an early-morning run to the cafeteria. If we'd had the time, I'd have told him that it's about the choices we make without even knowing it, and how the repurcussions of those decisions can shape the rest of our lives. It's about learning to love -- others, yes, but mostly learning to love ourselves, flaws and all. I'd have told him that it's heavily based on the lore of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Book of Enoch, and other apocrypha, and that it's influenced by the steampunk genre and the Hero's Journey structure. If I'd had the time to tell him, and the time to prepare, I could have shared a glimpse of this story that's growing in my head. Instead, I stammered out, "It's about fallen angels. Kind of," and kicked myself for the rest of the morning. Because it is very much about fallen angels -- kind of -- but that's not the half of it. What about the other writers out there? Do you dread this question as much as I do? Or is there another question that makes you cringe at the thought of having to answer it? Friday, June 6, 2008 When Good Books Go Off CourseI've been thinking a lot about authorial promise lately. It's a term I first heard used in regards to the explicitness of sex scenes in romance novels, and why readers sometimes get angry when an author fades the scene to black. The idea is that the tone and frankness an author chooses to use creates an expectation within the reader of what the sex scene will be like, when it finally comes around. It's when the frankness of the two don't match up that problems happen, readers get annoyed, and books hit walls. And I think this holds true for more than just sex scenes. I'm currently reading Deerskin, by Robin McKinley, and I was absolutely engrossed at the beginning. I loved the way she was able to make the narration sound lke a fairy tale. In the opening chapters, we learn about the main character, the princess Lissar, her beloved sighthound, Ash, and her somewhat-unusual life in the palace. I loved seeing how Lissar came into her own as she grew to adolescence, how she shrugged off what ws expected of her and followed her passion. I was very thoroughly engrossed, and very much enjoying the woman I was reading about, and looking forward to reading more. And then Lissar suffered a terrible trauma, ran off to the mountains, and forgot pretty much everything. She doesn't remember who she is, where she came from, or why she left. She doesn't even remember what farmland is until she happens to see some. A goddess heals her wounds, and in doing so drastically changes her appearance so she will not be recognized. She also gives her magical abilities. If this were the opening of the book, I think it might be another matter, but as it stands, this is just about at the halfway point. All those promises the book made to me when I started are thrown out the window, and I feel like I'm reading about another woman entirely. I'm a little miffed about it. It is not what I was led to expect. The part tht breaks my heart is tht it's an incredibly well-written book. But it's not the book I thought I was reding, and I'm having a little trouble moving past that and enjoying it for what it is. I'm not sure what's to be done about it. I'm not sure what can be done. Should authors stop throwing plot twists and surprises into their books? How boring that would be! Should readers suck it up and deal with it? I'm not sure that's the right answer, either. There's something to be said for the fact that I'm sitting here thinking, "This is not the book I signed on for," and feeling slightly betrayed, and I don't think that's a thought any of us want to be going through our readers heads about our books. This isn't the book that's had this effect on me, either. I've read other books that have caused a similar reaction, that turned away from the course I thought we had set, and left me impatient, irritated, or frustrated. I don't know that there's an easy solution for this, from either a reader's or a writer's perspective. But I'll be keeping it in mind, especially as I look at my own work. And I'm going to keep going with Deerskin. Because it is a very well-written book, even if it's not the one I thought I was reading. Thursday, May 29, 2008 This is what I get for being unfaithfulFor a long time, I've been a monogamous writer. I started a project, worked on it faithfully until it was done, and I didn't start anything new until it was. I might start to develop and prewrite one project while finishing another, but I was very firm -- I didn't start Chapter One until I'd written The End. Lately, though, that's been changing, and it's come to a crisis point the past few weeks. I've got too many projects to finish, and now that I'm working full-time, not enough time to devote to all of them. I'm torn! There's the finished novella that needs to be revised and resubmitted to my editor. I love this story, and I really want to do right by it and find it a good home. But it needs a lot of restructuring that's going to require my complete attention. Then there's the sequel to All that Glitters. This one needs some more scenes, a slight restructuring of the ending, and a final polish before I submit it. And there are a couple ideas for more sequels bouncing around in my head that depend on it, so I need to get that one sold before I can do anything with the others. And then there's the new kid on the block, the idea brimming with NRE that keeps popping up and distracting me any time I let my mind wander. It is shiny and new and terribly, terribly exciting, and I'm very anxious to work on it. So far, I've been able to restrain myself and keep to plotting and prewriting, but my resolve is weakening. It keeps calling to me with its siren-song promise of exciting characters, awesome worldbuilding, and a city I can't wait to lose myself in. So, I'm stuck. I've got too many projects to work on (and a dozen more clamoring to be taken off the back burner) and not enough time to devote to all of them. So far I've been managing, doing as much as I can as often as I can, and trying to focus my energy onto finishing the sequel to All that Glitters, but I'm not really happy with the division of labor. Has anyone else found themselves in this sort of pickle? Got any tips on how to manage your time when there's not enough of it to go around? Wednesday, April 23, 2008 "All that Glitters" and "Psyche" available now! Psyche, by Aislinn KerryAfter months of text messaging, Psyche has fallen in love with a man she's never even met, so when she finally gets the chance to see him face-to-face, she leaps at it. However, their meeting doesn't turn out quite the way she expected. E hides in the dark and refuses to let her turn on the lights. Psyche's startled at first, but willing to overlook a few idiosyncrasies while they get to know each other in person. Their relationship flourishes--until the night Psyche's curiosity gets the better of her. Light reveals that E is Eros, the Greek god of love and desire, and he is furious that she broke her word. She begs for forgiveness, but he won't give it. In breaking her word, she broke his trust. She must seek help from a goddess and brave the dangers of the underworld in order to prove herself and win back the man she loves.  All that Glitters, by Aislinn KerryKynan Pritchard has come to Paris to start a new life, one free from the gruesome nightmares--and the accusations of insanity--that have plagued him from childhood. He's used to a hard-luck existence, but when a stranger comes to his aid, he thinks maybe that luck is changing. Aneirin is strong and brave, everything that Kynan wants to be. And Kynan falls for him. Hard. But Kynan's nightmares are about to become reality, and not even Aneirin can protect him from the monster who's stalked him across the continent. The gwrach-y-rhibyn threatens everything--Kynan's life, his sanity, even his love for Aneirin. To defeat her, Kynan will have to risk becoming the very creature he hates. Thursday, April 10, 2008 Thursday Thirteen!
Wednesday, April 9, 2008 Carpe Nocturne, by Tawny Taylor Thursday, April 3, 2008 Thursday Thirteen
The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted! View More Thursday Thirteen Participants Monday, February 4, 2008 Coming Soon -- All That GlittersI am just thrilled to announce that All that Glitters, which was one of the final winners in Samhain's First Lines contest, will be released on April 22nd.  All that Glitters Running from a nightmare…falling into the arms of a monster… Kynan Pritchard has come to Paris to start a new life, one free from the gruesome nightmares—and the accusations of insanity—that have plagued him from childhood. He’s used to a hard-luck existence, but when a stranger comes to his aid, he thinks maybe that luck is changing. Aneirin is strong and brave, everything that Kynan wants to be. And Kynan falls for him. Hard. But Kynan’s nightmares are about to become reality, and not even Aneirin can protect him from the monster who’s stalked him across the continent. The gwrach-y-rhibyn threatens everything—Kynan’s life, his sanity, even his love for Aneirin. To defeat her, Kynan will have to risk becoming the very creature he hates. Thursday, January 10, 2008 It's Booking Through Thursday! `How did you come across your favorite author(s)? Recommended by a friend? Stumbled across at a bookstore? A book given to you as a gift? Was it love at first sight? Or did the love affair evolve over a long acquaintance? My favorite authors of the moment, subject to change as fast as my reading list does, are Jacqueline Carey, Laurie R. King, and Ellen Kushner. Nonny Morgan introduced me to Jacqueline Carey when she sent me her copy of Kushiel's Dart. It was definitely a matter of love at first sight. I inhaled Dart and immediately ran out and bought the sequels. Carey was the first author since I started writing who I was able to read without being distracted by my internal editor. The beauty of her story left me awestruck. Laurie R. King I discovered by happy accident. I had heard tell of a Sherlock Holmes novel that gave him a young female apprentice, and told it as her story. One of my first memories of reading is lying in bed at night, alternating reading chapters of The Hound of the Baskervilles with my dad, so I've always had a love for Holmes. Twisting the stories so that they had a female protagonist enthralled me. I ran over to my high school library, snatched The Beekeeper's Apprentice out of another student's hands, and was hooked on the first line. (The protagonist is a girl after my own heart -- she reads while she walks!) This was a slower love affair. I really enjoyed The Beekeeper's Apprentice, and waited impatiently for the next book in the series. Each one that I read made me fall more and more in love with her. Ellen Kushner is the most recent addition to my favorites list. My good friend Terra read Swordspoint a few months ago, loved it, and was so certain that I would love it that she informed me she was getting it for me for Christmas. She was absolutely right -- I adored it, as well as the "sequel", The Privilege of the Sword. I am now Friday, July 6, 2007 Writing, New Amsterdam, and the Five Stages of GriefI finished New Amsterdam three days ago, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. I try to put it out of my mind, to focus on my current book, to think about something -- anything -- else, but no matter how hard I try, I keep coming back to it. Poking it, prodding it, talking about it, turning it over and over and trying to get some sense of closure, of understanding. This morning, it occurred to me: I'm grieving. I don't get this way over books very often. I get emotional, certainly. I laugh, I love, I hate, I rage. But I don't cry, almost never. The last time I remember crying over a book was when I read Where the Red Fern Grows in elementary school, and my mom came home and found me lying on the carpet, bawling. I might have cried over Bridge to Terabithia, too, but I'm not certain. I don't cry over books, but I very nearly cried over New Amsterdam. In any case, this revelation got me thinking about the five stages of grief, and by golly, I've gone through every one of them but the last. Denial -- Oh my, yes. Lots of denial. I have been trying really hard to just pretend that the last ten pages don't exist. Anger -- See my previous post. *grin* Bargaining -- I've been doing lots of this, too. From "Maybe if I talk to her, maybe if I just tell her how upset I am, she'll understand. Maybe once she knows what she's done, she'll just say she's sorry for it, that she wishes she could go back and change it, and then it will all be okay" to "Well fine. I am just going to create my own not-Jack character and stick him in my own book, and I will love him and treat him right and it won't matter that Ms. Bear was such a meanie." Depression -- Yep, that too, and it's a large part of the reason that I've been trying to keep my mind off of it. Because inevitably, I come back to it and I think about it and I just get so sad. It makes me just want to curl up in bed and mope for days. Acceptance -- This one...this one I haven't gotten to yet. I do hope I will. I hope I can get this damn book out of my brain and move on. The thing I keep coming back to, the thing that keeps making me want to scream and cry and wail, is that it's just so senseless. It seems almost random. I keep thinking, "It's not like there was nothing they could have done to save him. It's not like it had to happen." A comment on the Q&A post that Bear put up today helped me get a little bit of insight, a little bit of understanding. It helped me take one small step toward acceptance. She said, "You made me care, and then you made it hurt, and that's the endless Sebastien theme." And, you know, it is. And I can kind of get that. Putting us in Sebastien's shoes, giving us a small taste of his eleven-hundred-plus years of loving and losing over and over and over and over again. But... That's the thing. I keep thinking maybe I can understand, maybe that, I can accept. And I keep thinking it, and then thinking, "But..." But it didn't make sense. But it's so pointless. But it could have been done so many other ways, so many better ways. But there wasn't a set-up for his death, it just happened, out of the blue. But we weren't given a chance to prepare. And then I sigh and think that Bear's response to all of these protests would probably be, "Yeah, well. That's life." And yeah, it is. People die for pointless, senseless reasons all the time. People go through life blithely taking for granted that everyone they love will still be there the next day. And then something happens, they turn around, they wake up, and suddenly one of those loved ones is gone, just like that. Out of the blue, no set-up, no chance to prepare for it. That's life. But... But New Amsterdam isn't life. It doesn't even pretend to be -- it's alternate history. It's not life. It's a story. And that's what I keep sticking on. I don't remember who said it, but it makes me think of the quote, "The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." And that, I think, is where Bear failed with New Amsterdam. Taken as a whole, it doesn't make sense. It doesn't work. (You should, of course, read this with a great big "IMO" tacked on to the end of everything I'm saying here. From the comments on Bear's blog, I gather it worked just fine for a number of people. But it didn't work for me, and I know I'm not the only one.) It puts me in mind of another quote. I don't know who this one came from either, and it should probably be considered more paraphrasis than direct quotation, but the gist of it is, "If someone gets shot by a gun in Act 3, then the audience had better see the gun lying in the drawer of the desk in Act 1." And that's why New Amsterdam's ending didn't work for me. We saw no gun. I knew from the beginning that something bad was going to happen, because Terra wailed when she finished the book, and I figured that could only mean that either something happened to Jack, or something happened to split Jack and Sebastien up. And even with those strong suspicions, even watching for it and waiting for it, a page before it actually happened, I still wasn't sure. I still thought maybe, maybe I was wrong. Maybe I'd misinterpreted what Terra had been wailing about. When a reader knows what's coming and is searching desperately for any hint of its existence and it still takes her by surprise, you're being too damn subtle. From what I've read in Bear's posts and comments, it seems like she's trying for an Important Life Lesson sort of theme, in this ending1. It seems like she's trying for something literary. And that, too, makes me think about that second quote. Because I didn't think I was getting Literature when I picked this book up. I had no clue. For 95% of the book, it reads like any other commercial fantasy novel2. You can't pull out a gun in Act 3 that wasn't there in Act 1 and expect the audience to accept it, and you can't tack a Tragic Ending onto a fantasy novel and expect to turn it into Literature. That said, she did nearly bring me to tears, and three days later, I still can't stop talking about her book. And that, at least, is impressive. But it still doesn't mean the ending works. 1Actually, she pretty much says that flat-out: Rocks fall. People die. Life goes on. 2I don't mean to suggest that it's average. It is, as I said earlier, quite good. What I mean is that that seems to be the genre niche it fits itself into. Thursday, July 5, 2007 "Heart of Stone" is now available! Crazy things happen on Halloween. Still, the last thing Kestrel expects is to inadvertently bring a large gargoyle statue to life. And the last thing she figures a statue-come-to-life will want is a one-night stand. But Damaris is strong, sexy, and remarkably persuasive, and what he really desires is to spend his one night of freedom pleasing Kestrel. Who is she to say no to a man who's only got one night to live? Kestrel anticipates little more from Damaris than a night of no-strings-attached sex. She doesn't expect him to be the most passionate lover she's ever had, nor does she expect to fall for him, but he is, and she does. However, Damaris is cursed, and Halloween is the only night they can be together. Can Kestrel find a way to be with him forever? Or will she be doomed to love a man she can only be with one night a year? Read an excerpt * Purchase from Freya's Bower Monday, June 4, 2007 New Amsterdam, by Elizabeth BearI finished this book yesterday, and I’m having a strong enough emotional reaction to it that I think I’m going to write a review. Or something like it. In any case, I’ll put spoilers behind a cut, to be safe. I’ve been musing over what to say about this for about a day and a half, and at some point the title came to me, “The Good, the Bad, and the Angry”. And as tongue-in-cheek as it may be, it’s appropriate. First, the good. Because, make no mistake, New Amsterdam is very, very good. I read about it a few weeks ago, and was intrigued by the premise. It sounded really interesting, but I had a rather ambivalent experience with Blood & Iron, so I hesitated and — as is my wont — ultimately talked myself out of it. Then I discovered that “Lucifugous”, the first story in the book, is available online at Subterranean Press. I read it, fell in love, and immediately ordered New Amsterdam. (And waited on pins-and-needles until it arrived.) And the rest was just as good as the first. I love the worldbuilding, the alternate history and what she did with the vampires. And I love — love — Sebastien and Jack. Words cannot express my love, and I can’t count the number of times I squeed to Terra over some bit of cuteness or another. My God, I love them. Even Abby Irene (though I’ll admit I often found myself yearning for more Sebastien and Jack during her stories) was great fun to read. So, yes. Overall? Very, very good. Now, for the bad, and the angry… (Here there be spoilers. You’ve been warned.) The thing is, I loved the book… until the last ten pages. And then Jack died, and it crashed and burned. See, I understand the need to murder your darlings, when the plot requires it. When there’s a point. But if there’s a point to Jack’s death, I just don’t see it. He didn’t die to save someone else’s life, he didn’t die to uphold an ideal, he didn’t sacrifice himself because it was the only way to kill the beast and save Paris (although after all their talk about how stepping into the power field would kill you, I half expected that he would die because something would go wrong with their trap and the only way to kill the beast would be to go into the field with it, and Jack would end up taking the initiative and doing it). If he’d been turned by Sebastien, even, it would have worked, and it would have been a nice throwback to the conversation in “Limerent” between Sebastien and Abby Irene, over whether Sebastien would turn Jack if he needed to, and whether Jack would thank him for it. If Jack had died for one of those reasons, I’d have been really sad. As it is, I’m sad, but I’m also really really angry. What was the point? It’s just so senseless. And without a point, a reason for it, it just seems like melodrama, like a contrivance. The only point I can see is to make the last story have a more dramatic climax than the rest. Murdering your darling because the story requires it is one thing, and slaughtering them needlessly is entirely another. And it’s a really piss-poor reason to kill a character, IMO. |
|||||
