Worlds of Jasmine

Building a Better Villain, One Psychopathology at a Time

2011-12-19T15:45:00.000-08:00

According to the medical journal Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, the ‘big six’ group of personality disorders found in the psychopathology archetype of "evil dictators" include sadistic, paranoid, antisocial, narcissistic, schizoid and schizotypal. Psychologists have actually tested such real-life dictators as Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, and the newly-deceased Kim Jong Il, using first-hand accounts of their actions, to see how they rate.

And if you were wondering, it seems that Kim Jong Il was more like Saddam than he was like Adolf.

You want a truly evil villain for your fantasy story? Check out what makes these guys tick and build yourself a truly psycho villain. Here's a list of fourteen personality disorders shared by all three dictators (this is the order for Saddam, from most evident to least):

1. Sadistic -- deriving pleasure or sexual gratification from inflicting pain on another. (Also Jong Il's #1)
2. Paranoid -- suffering from a mental disorder characterized by systematized delusions and the projection of personal conflicts, which are ascribed to the supposed hostility of others. (Adolf's #1)
3. Antisocial -- of or pertaining to a pattern of behavior in which social norms and the rights of others are persistently violated.
4. Narcissistic -- tending to derive erotic gratification from admiration of one's own physical or mental attributes. (#3 for the other two--just can't pull off that divine right of kings without it!)
5. Schizoid -- of or pertaining to a personality disorder marked by dissociation, passivity, withdrawal, inability to form warm social relationships, and indifference to praise or criticism.
6. Schizotypal -- pertaining to actual or potential borderline schizophrenia, a condition characterized by cold aloof feelings, eccentric behavior,hallucinations, illusions, and delusions.
7. Obsessive-compulsive -- of or pertaining to a neurosis characterized by persistent intrusion of unwanted thoughts (obsessions) or the performance of actions, as repeated hand-washing, that one is unable to stop (compulsions).
8. Dependent -- having a pervasive and excessive need to be taken care of that leads to a submissive and clinging behavior as well as fears of separation.
9. Depressive -- characterized by mental depression.
10. Self-defeating -- serving to frustrate, thwart, etc., one's own intention or interests.
11. Borderline -- a personality disorder characterized by instability in many areas, as mood, identity, self-image, and behavior, and often manifested by impulsive actions, suicide attempts,inappropriate anger, or depression.
12. Passive-aggressive -- a personality that harbours aggressive emotions while behaving in a calm or detached manner.
13. Histrionic -- deliberately affected or self-consciously emotional; overly dramatic, in behavior or speech.
14. Avoidant -- demonstrating a tendency to avoid intimacy or interaction with others.

Happy villaining! If you like, check out the other two dictators' ratings here, and read more on the nuts and bolts of the study.

A Wicked Giveaway

2011-12-11T13:24:00.001-08:00

In honor of my Facebook author page reaching yet another 100-like mark, I'm hosting a giveaway of my first novel, The Wicked Heroine.

To sign up for a free signed copy, comment on this post with your email address -- you can write your e-mail like this: [awesomereader (at) gmail (dot) com] to avoid spam bots. The givaway ends December 20th, 2011, when I'll randomly select a winner and email you for your mailing address. If you're quick and in the mix, you can get your copy before Christmas! Just one more treat from Santa under your tree!

My Christmas Wish: Duotrope for Review Sites

2011-12-01T07:36:00.001-08:00

As I was falling asleep last night (my usual good ideatime), I realized what sort of service could rock the worlds of book reviewers and independent/small press authors alike: a Duotrope for review sites.

If you've ever used Duotrope, you know the awesomeness of its color-coordinated search function, the glory of its detailed information and statistics. What if such a site existed to help books get reviews? Think of the myriad ways you could streamline your search for review sites.

Let's see, I'll look for:

genre: romance
subgenre: paranormal
length: novel
theme: YA
price: free
wait time: 4 months or less
type: pre-publication (hoping to bump that first week of sales, right?)
and definitely simultaneous submission! I can't see any reviewer objecting to that, anyway.

Then I click "Search", and ideally dozens of reviewers for paranormal YA romance pop onto my screen. I begin perusing, reading the details of each reviewer's guidelines for submission, and choose which to submit to. Some request a first chapter to see whether they like my style. Others want a query first. Others don't care and will accept my entire novel file as an attachment. Following everyone's guidelines precisely, I send off half a dozen simultaneous requests for review. Three reviewers bounce back a generic "no thank you", and three accept, putting my book into their review queue. Half an hour of work, and I've netted three reviews! I am over the moon!

Registered users would have a monthly per-book request limit to prevent spamming; abuse of the feature would get you banned. Review markets would have their responses catalogued by authors when (or if) the reviews were posted, and review times would be compared with posted wait times for authors' perusal (satisfaction with the review is so subjective that it's not necessary to record--the reviewer isn't talking to the author, anyway, but to readers). The stats lists for fastest responses, least likely to post a review, number of markets for any given genre, most likely to accept a book, etc., would be very useful, and would encourage reviewers to do their best in order to draw more traffic and better books to their sites.

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? If you've ever had to search, and search, and search, for active review sites, you know the pain of realizing that the one site that sounds perfectly matched to your novel's style has been inactive for three months. That's one of the reasons I chose the Duotrope model: Duotrope actively checks with its 3600+ listed markets at least once per month to make sure they are still active. They add new sites and retire old ones regularly, keeping the listing as current as possible for the thousands of people who use the resource they provide. A function like this would do the same for the always-fluctuating review-site markets as well, giving assurance to review-seekers that the listed markets will actually respond to their requests.

If you were an author, how much would this service be worth to you, saving you all that time searching? Currently, Duotrope is free, running on donations for maintaining its publishing-market listings. If they or someone else expanded into the review market, I would hope that authors would donate gratefully. I know I would.

Dear Santa, if I wish really hard and be a very good girl, can I get this for Christmas? I'll leave you all the cookies you want.

My NaNoWriMo Do's and Don'ts

2011-10-20T12:43:00.000-07:00

DO make a Snowflake outline ahead of time.

DO stick to its scene list like it's the gospel truth so you don't wander off and write another 100k that isn't relevant...again.

DO add notes to yourself in [brackets] as you're writing so you can keep track of changes you want to make later.

DON'T worry what that will do to your word count. Your goal is a finished novel manuscript, not a mere 50k.

DO turn off the Internet. Except to post word count updates.

DO take Saturdays off, or your tendinitis will overwhelm you. Unless you didn't type much on Friday and an idea strikes you Saturday night while you're watching Doctor Who reruns.

DO use liniment during the day and wear your wrist brace at night even if it doesn't feel like it needs it. It does.

DON'T try to set a new personal record for most words written in one day. You couldn't type for 4 days after that.

DO write entire scenes at once whenever possible. Homogeneity is a good thing in scene tone.

DO eat regularly, and with relatively healthy food, so your hypoglycemia doesn't flare up mid-scene.

DO get up between scenes and stretch, exercise a bit, or do a quick chore. The house always looks cleanest during the first week of NaNo!

DO upload your word count every hour or so like the obsessive nutjob you are.

DO check your writing buddies' word counts every morning to see if anyone has passed you.

DO try to stay in the top 5 among your writing buddies' word counts.

DO boot everyone from your writing buddies list who hasn't actually written anything the first week. They're not helping your momentum.

DO remember you have a family, and spend time with them when you're not writing.

Happy National Day on Writing!

2011-10-20T10:04:00.000-07:00

There's an animal joy that rises in my soul at the thought of creating new universes. I make new places. I make new people. I carve the mountain ranges; I arrange the women's hair. I release the people into the worlds, and I guide them on their journeys. I get to create encounters and adventures I'll never see on Earth.

At the same time, I am the filter for these places, these events. They are the distilled awesomesauce of planet Earth, through my eyes. Through my soul. My creations are the pure, unadulterated moonshine of my brain, the ambrosia that is freedom of expression...the crack cocaine that is my imagination.

Have some.

#whyiwrite

My Hero

2011-10-11T10:23:00.000-07:00

Anger can come in more than one form. Unfocused anger is the unhealthy sort, where anyone and everyone can be a target, and usually nothing is resolved. But focused anger, the sort that has a pattern and a path and a targeted goal, can work wonders. Studies have shown that arguments given in anger (read: rants) are more coherent and organized than those assembled in a neutral state of mind before any editing is done. You know the type: you get fed up with a series of related issues, and you spell them out, one by one, with accompanying examples. Look, angernization!

My own current anger is in retaliation against my own passivity and laziness, as well as events beyond my control. I had a hard summer: I pulled a tendon in my leg, which resulted in no exercise and little movement for four weeks, followed immediately by two weeks' vacation, consisting mostly of car rides and unhealthy food. I gained weight. As a former 116-pound black belt, my pudge well and truly disgusted me. But not as much as my fatalism. Two weeks ago, I organized workout music and planned an easy exercise program that my leg, still recovering, can handle. And I ranted at myself, out loud, in wickedly organized fashion. It felt good.

I'm happy to report that my body still likes to be in shape. After two weeks, I've dropped a nice seven pounds and an inch here and there, and I feel stronger and healthier. Fitting back into clothes I had to put away is a serious joy.

My goal is to drop twenty pounds. I don't know, or care, how long it will take. I WANT this. I DEMAND this.

And this is where I whip out the "art" portion of this post, because I can't help wondering whether one of the characters in my current fantasy trilogy project is inspiring this change in me. Here's how I wrote him in book one of the Seals of the Duelists, titled Elements of Allegiance:

Bayan is a young man, just 15, when his magic powers appear. He doesn't want them; he wants to marry his girlfriend. His worst-case scenario is being sent to live on a mountain ridge nearby, causing his girlfriend to leave him, but things go from bad to worse immediately, and he learns he has to travel over a thousand miles away, leaving family, culture, language and climate behind, and go deep into the heart of the empire that has taken control of his homeland, in order to be trained by the imperial duelists to do a lifelong job he despises.

Yeah, he's pissed. He's so pissed that it affects his magic while he bides his time, looking for a way to escape and return home. At a critical point in the story, he has to deal with his anger, because in its unfocused state, its disruption of his magic could be deadly. After all, he doesn't want to die, he wants to go home. So he finds a way to focus his anger. It never goes away (spoiler?), but only one of them can be in control, and Bayan DEMANDS that it be him. Because it must be so, and so it is.

Did my character inspire me? Is he saving me? (My hero!) I've experienced a lot of anger during my life, and I thought that's where Bayan's issues came from when I created him. But maybe I've held the keys to my own freedom all along, too. It just took some fiction writing and the summer from hell to help me see it.

Tribalism in Fantasy Fiction

2011-09-25T12:53:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning thinking about tribalism and how it can be used to enhance fiction, and specifically fantasy. Yeah, my subconscious brain is far more cool than the one I have to use when I'm awake.

Let's start with a description of what tribalism is: for my purpose, I'm using the meaning that gives its adherents a strong sense of cultural unity. And to make this a practical version of tribalism, they'll need to have that sense while surrounded by various groups who are "other".

Keep in mind that "tribal" does by no means mean "primitive". Many modern nations on Earth still exhibit strong tribal traits. The enduring core of tribalism is an Us vs. Them mentality, and it comes in three basic forms.

Yay Us, Boo You

Your basic tribalistic sentiment is bipartisan. Two entities, whose members support their own beliefs and customs and decry those of their opponent. Examples: Americans with strong political beliefs, soccer fans on the day of a match with a bitter rival.

This form can serve in fiction when you've only got two main groups to deal with. They can be equal in power, territory and resources, or you can imbalance their relationship, giving one group most of the advantages. The relationship can range from merely unequal to true oppression, to active attempts at extermination. Examples: Israel vs. Palestine, Hutu vs. Tutsi, United States vs. Native Americans, Nazi Germany vs. ethnic Jews

Naturally, an imbalanced rivalry would create more conflict, a sense of dominance vs. the underdog, and engage the minds of your readers more directly. Example: in Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games, the twelve Districts must annually send their children into mortal combat as punishment for a previous rebellion against the Capitol.

Yay All of Us, Boo You

A more populated, multi-tribe scenario involves several groups who generally consider themselves to be equals, especially compared to one single group whom they collectively dislike, steal from, abuse, or exploit. Wars and alliances may shift local borders over time, and a certain cultural group might lose their homeland entirely, being forced to live in land controlled by other tribes, subject to their rules. Or various tribes may invade from afar, seeking to subjugate and enslave a technologically inferior race for profit. Yet the subjugated tribe would try to preserve their cultural identity, as it is all they really have left. Proud squatters or wanderers, forced to consider tasks and jobs the other tribes don't want to perform in order to survive, or forced to live in certain disadvantaged areas in order to control them. Examples: Kurds, African slaves

Alternately, the disfavored tribe could wander far from their homeland, making themselves unwanted among other tribes due to sucking up resources, clogging the streets with beggars, taking up local jobs, and/or clashing with local religious or cultural practices. Example: Gypsies, medieval Jews

Disadvantaged peoples make regular appearances in fiction. As individuals, they're often romanticized, portrayed as heroic survivors, misunderstood loners, sometimes in possession of arcane or lost knowledge. On the flip side, larger groups of these peoples can also be portrayed as deserving of their lowered status, untrustworthy, or bearing tribal shame for a historical act. Examples: Lan Mandragoran, Dai'shan of the Malkier, and the wandering Tuatha'an in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series

Yay Us, Boo All of You

The opposite form of the multi-tribe scenario involves one tribe who considers themselves better than all those around them. This could stem from a technological advantage, better resources in their land area (mining, water, precious gems, better croplands, etc.), a history of winning battles, being culturally emulated by their neighbors, possession of a world landmark, a current trend of tribal fervor due to a charismatic leader, or a religious superiority (my god is better than your god). Example: Ancient Romans, French, Chinese, Jews, Americans, British Empire, Nazi Germany, Spanish vs. Mexican and S. American tribes, Dutch vs. African tribes

This high opinion of themselves will persist for a longer period if they truly do possess some form of advantage, or if others reinforce the belief that it is true. However, the term "confirmation bias" surely applies here to some degree.

In fantasy, this multi-tribe scenario is often part of an epic Good vs. Evil plot. One tribe rises above the others and begins to oppress or slaughter them, seeking what all tribes with power want: more power. Pretty much universally, it is proven in the end by the success of the protagonist(s) that the oppressing tribe was not, in fact, superior. At least not in the way they thought they were. In current fiction, it's considered rude to attack your neighbors just because you can, and if your inter-tribal social skills are lacking, you simply can't be a superior race. Sorry. Example: Sauron and his armies of orcs and Uruk-hai in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy

Additional Concepts

In the real world, people sometimes get upset at even distant tribalism conflicts on the news, often identifying with one side or the other. Other times, they simply can't relate to what the tribes involved are fighting over, because the tribal and cultural backgrounds of the news-watcher and the fighting tribes are so different. Actions that offer insult vary widely between cultures: hitting someone with a shoe, touching their head, even accepting a gift the first time it is offered. Yet to other cultures, these things are nearly meaningless. The traits you give to your tribal culture will shape the ways in which conflict with their neighbors arises.

In order to create a believable conflict between your fictional tribes, it's essential to provide historical context. Studying current world conflicts is an excellent place to get inspiration. Was there a land grab? An oppressive ruler who belonged to a minority group? A wave of religious intolerance and slaughter? A patriarchal-society prince spurned by a matriarchal-society princess? An advance in medical care, leading to a population boom? The rise of a prophet?

Consider how long you want the tension to have existed. Ancient rivalries are far more difficult, and sometimes impossible, to truly set aside. They can become part of one's tribal identity, and even in times of peace, distrust and aggression can surface without warning.

Derogatory phrases perpetuate such negative characterizations. Consider our Earth phrase "I got gypped". This perpetuates the idea that Gypsies are untrustworthy thieves. Another is "Indian giver". Jokes at the expense of another culture also perpetuate superior feelings by giving permission to laugh at the supposed inferiority of the other tribe. If your tribes really want to teach their children hate and distrust, they'll incorporate such insulting phrases and jokes into their everyday language.

Alternately, direct insults, a.k.a. racial slurs, are a much stronger form of dislike, often used to directly insult a disliked person to their face, or to indicate dismissal and superiority through using the term to a like-minded tribesman. Consider the powerful context of the infamous N-word in American culture, or the myriad derogatory terms that the American culture has used to describe its various enemies during wartime, and which persisted for decades even after the wars were ended.

With time, some of these derogatory terms can become accepted by the tribes they're applied to, either by disinterested parties or by the insulted tribes themselves. Several Native American tribes are now known by names coined by their enemies.The term "Christian" used to be an insult a couple thousand years ago. Whether the name is forced upon its targets or whether they embrace it for their own reasons is up to you.

Whatever your tribal tale, don't forget to consider your audience, and their own tribal background. If the tribal conflict you choose to write about isn't something your readers have cultural experience with, use other ways to help them relate, through character reactions and plot consequences. When you can get your readers to relate strongly to your fictional conflict, you've captured the essence of tribalism.

Sometimes, You Really Do Need to Take a Journey to Find Yourself

2011-08-08T19:28:00.001-07:00

August 7th, 2011 is a day that will live in my memory forever. I finally got to meet my long distance friend, Lindsay, in Boston--the woman who is so like myself that I call her "Other Me". And while that wasn't all that made the day so stunning, it was the best part.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

First, Boston served up the wrong weather, dishing out some rain the likes of which I haven't seen in years, even on the West Coast. Lindsay called the continual liquid pounding a phenomenon, and I'll take her word for it. It was torrential, and with the strong gusts of wind that howled down the streets of South Boston like a horde of avenging harpies, it was very nearly horizontal. Our departure from The Other Side Cafe to go sightseeing left us completely drenched on one side within a block. My capris went from pink on the back half to dark red on the front half right at the seams. Yeah, great, because I needed to look like a harlequin juggler today. Not.

Once inside the car, we decided to head indoors and wait for the rain to let up. Our chosen destination: the BPL, Boston Public Library. We even scored a parking space half a block away! Thrilled, we leapt over 4" deep puddles at the curbs to huddle under the library's overhang...and learn that it was closed on Sundays.

Curses!

Sanctuary

Now what? Well, luckily (okay, I confess it wasn't luck at all, but more like obsession) I had loaded a nearby geocache into my GPS unit. It was across the street at Trinity Church. So, despite the absolute downpour, we returned to the car for the GPS unit, then sloshed back across the street to the church. Seeing as we were so wet by this point anyway, we decided to just jump around in the puddles instead of clinging to the sopping shreds of our dignity. It was far more fun that way, and we both had sandals on anyway.

After wading through numerous puddles, lakes and inland seas, we finally arrived at the church's portico and wrung our clothes out. Yes, that's how wet we were; a little shampoo and I could have lathered and rinsed right there on the sidewalk. Apparently enjoying the view from directly above me, Lindsay's umbrella kept dropping huge glops of water down the front of my shirt. Not cool, little bendy umbrella. Not cool.

We found the info for the puzzle cache after exploring the sanctuary of the church for a few minutes (it was back outside on the thankfully covered portico), and located the micro container. I had to take it inside to sign the log with a pen because I'd left mine in the car and wasn't nearly about to swim after it. After replacing the container, we all decided that we might enjoy a car tour more than a walking tour, at least until the rain let up.

"Here Lies Peregrine Took"

Into the car we went; we zoomed around Beacon Hill for awhile and saw the Massachusetts State House and a bunch of multi-million dollar townhouses that you couldn't pay me to live in. We crossed the river and puttered around MIT and Harvard campuses, admiring the buildings and nice streets and large old houses.

Then I recalled a virtual geocache I wanted to take a look at, in Mt. Auburn cemetery. We drove there in yet more pouring rain, to discover that a hidden treasure awaited us.

The cemetery was split into dozens of small areas tucked within curling, looping roads. Thousands of individually identified trees lined the roads. Headstones rose above the grass in dozens of amazing forms, from Egyptian obelisks and draped urns to full body statues, vine-draped crosses and column-and-lintel shrines. Family plots were everywhere. Not to mention the wealth of unique mausoleums that dotted the rolling hills. Most of them were set back into low hillsides, where the facade was visible in front, but on top, the hill rose to obscure all but the little roof. They were like hobbit mausoleums.

But the best surprise of all lay at the top of the highest hill, where the virtual cache awaited. We finally found the road to the top, and were excited to see a stone tower rising high above the trees. Someone in our party mused about who might be buried at such a location. I said it must be Rapunzel.

When we parked and climbed the steps to its base, we realized we could actually go inside! We climbed the tower and stood on the balcony halfway up. The rain was still blowing everywhere, but by happy chance, the wind was slamming itself against the exact far side of the tower just then. On our side, we were completely free from raindrops, though the wind whirled around the tower's rounded walls and made Lindsay do the Marilyn pose in her flirty black skirt. Best picture of the day!

Turn Left, Bitch!

The top of the tower had better views, but a higher moisture content as well, so back to the car we went, and decided to tour around the cemetery some more because the stonework was so amazing. At one point, we found a roundabout with a single mausoleum in the center, and a pair of massive, ancient trees flanking it. On one side grew a huge weeping willow, and on the other, a fern-leaf beech. But due to the raindrops on the window and the distance from the second tree's label, I thought it read, "Turn Left, Bitch". Funny the first time, it turned into an inside joke when we wandered back to the same roundabout about twenty minutes later and had already turned to the right to explore, leaving the tree's directive as our only option.

No One Thinks That's Funny

Eventually the rain stopped, and we returned to Cambridge for some eats. Chipotle Mexican Grill filled our tummies--and we had to eat outside both to enjoy the warm air and sunshine and to escape the polar habitat of the air-conditioned restaurant. We'd once again managed a fabulous parking spot (read: in sight of our destination), too. We explored the Harvard campus (Yeah, I went to Harvard. Haha.) and got our pix taken with not-John Harvard and his polished statue-shoes. Lindsay drooled over the amount of grass the campus possessed, and we wondered whether the small pedestrian gates to the sides of the large wrought-iron gates on the northern side of campus were considered a walk of shame for non-honor roll students.

We returned to the main pedestrian area for some frozen heaven at Pinkberry. I had some mango yogurt with blueberries and kiwi, while my husband managed some form of chocolate combo and Lindsay put a solar sail in cookie form into her quadruple-toppinged frozen ambrosia. I totally would have had chocolate, mind you, but I was still pretty full from Chipotle; the fruit was a selection calculated to be 100% consumed, and I was indeed successful. Best frozen yogurt I've ever had!

We meandered through downtown Boston some more, then dropped Lindsay off for her evening activity, which, I imagine, included arm-wrestling the ghost of Paul Revere while having a spelling bee with all the BU undergraduates and constructing a rudimentary lathe from available materials.

Whatever else we do, nothing will compare to this day for sheer anticipation and fulfillment for a very long time. Thanks so much, Lindsay, for being yourself, and for being in Boston so I could meet you. You're the best. And so am I. :D

Anticipation

2011-07-21T17:25:00.000-07:00

Some people love it, some people hate it.

I almost always love anticipation. That feeling of something coming, approaching in a way that will change your world, even if only in some small way. I've even come to appreciate, to make myself aware of, that last moment before something arrives, because not every anticipated change is a good one. I say to myself, "This is the part when I don't know who the killer is," or "This is the part when I don't know what's in the case." (Of course, I still don't know what's in the case...thanks, Ronin)

In writing, there is often a need for anticipation to build throughout a story. In my experience, audiences have different tolerances for the length of an anticipatory period. Because there is such a thing as dragging something out too long.

Romance readers, it seems, have nearly-infinite patience as they wait for a pair of lovers to finally admit their feelings and act upon them. As Shakespeare said, "'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished". The romantics in all of us have no problem with the phrase "hope springs eternal" either. As long as neither of you are dead yet (paranormal romance aside, of course), there is always another chance for love to work out.

Other story elements can't stand much anticipation before the reader gets frustrated or bored. Plot actions that we expect to move quickly shouldn't have too much lead-up before they actually do happen, no matter how long it takes in story-time for them to occur. Assassins strike quickly. No one wants to read about the two days a bit-part sniper sat shivering in the tree before taking a kill shot.

Main characters are the ones we're supposed to care about; things that affect their future, their lives, we want to anticipate (except when we enjoy sudden twists) to some degree. The smaller the character role, the less patience readers have for long, drawn-out plot results. Unless, of course, it's about love. Everyone knows characters have to fall in love by the end of the novel. And if they don't: sequel!

The Unexpected Present, Part Two

2011-07-12T14:57:00.000-07:00

You see how he works, distracting with the simple gift (see previous post). Now witness the sneaky majesty that is my husband's brain.

Two days ago, he asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I told him, a new GPS unit. He asked, reluctantly, if there were anything else I wanted.

"Nope. Just a new GPS unit. One with a USB cable (unlike my present unit, whose cable was lost years ago, forcing me to type in every single geocache I've ever found, by hand), preferably some kind of Garmin."

He hemmed. He hawed. I knew I wasn't going to get my GPS unit for my birthday. I might not get it before our vacation back east next month either, and that would be a real pain, since we're planning to cache in thirteen different states. I told him I could use a nice sturdy nail file instead.

Yesterday evening, I caught him standing by the front door in the dark. "Whatcha doin'?" I asked.

"There's something going on outside," he replied. "I'm going to to check it out."

Envisioning a fight between my husband and the crazed level 3 sex offender who just got let loose into our community, I said, "Don't forget your bat!" while casually strolling toward the spot where I keep my sword.

He came back in, unscathed, and asked me a couple questions about making waymarks on my old Magellan GPS unit. I showed him how (he mostly goes caching as a social event, rather than for the joy of logging finds), and then I thought nothing more of the incident until lunchtime today

He delayed coming home in order to swing by and pick up a cake, which he and the kids stuck sparkly candles into. After I blew them out and sliced cake for everyone, my husband handed me a birthday card, which read, "Forever is so limiting. Let's be in love way past that." Ha! It was awesome. And inside, instead of the usual sentiments, he'd left a clue.

A clue.

In my birthday card.

Being the geocaching puzzle fiend that I am (all my geocaching hides are either puzzles or Earthcaches), that moment suddenly got far more interesting.

It directed me to check with Mr. Flix and my Uncle George for further details. I had already spotted, in the mail he brought in, the happy red envelope of my next Netflix delivery, containing the movie I wanted to watch on my birthday: Red. But I also saw that my new driver's license had arrived, so I tore that one open first. Turns out, that was pure luck: Uncle George was a hint for Washington (State Driver's License). And inside the envelope, my husband had slipped a strip of paper containing the following clues:

The digits of your age reversed, plus one
Number of seconds you've been alive (first three digits only, round up) plus one
Second and third digits of the number of hours you've been alive

Now, I'm no Charlie Eppes, but I do enjoy math puzzles, so I whipped out the calculator and went at it. It took a few minutes, and I scribbled numbers all over the envelope that the birthday card had come in. When I had all the answers, I sat there, trying to figure out what they meant.

I'd forgotten about Mr. Flix.

I peeked inside the happy red envelope and slid out another strip of paper. This one read:

Difference in our age in years as of the coming winter solstice (I'm a science fan)
Days we've been married
Fundamental number of calculus times 111

More math on the envelope! Now, I did say I'm no Charlie Eppes, but my husband was a Math major for awhile. He has math jokes, some of which I actually get. So although I've never taken a calculus class, hanging out with him has made me learn the awesomeness that is the number four.

Once I had all six answers in front of me, I realized what they had to mean, due to the inclusion of the numbers 118 and 46.

My husband had hidden me a geocache for my birthday.

Oh, even better than what you're thinking of, trust me. He hadn't made an official geocache on geocaching.com, no. He'd hidden something special just for me to find, somewhere outside the house. (Good thing it wasn't far, with the ankle I've got) I snapped up my Magellan and began turning it on so I could enter (by hand, yes) the coordinates. My husband said, "Now, a smarter man would have known how to delete waypoints..."

Ha! The closest generic waypoint in the unit had the coordinates he'd used for the puzzle. Bonus! So off I went, hobbling around in the grass. We'll skip the part where all the satellites in the sky were conspiring against him last night. I eventually found the cache container, a UPS package, unopened.

That brought the kids over. "Mom, what's in it? Can I help you open it?" Such helpful children I have. We had a long, involved opening ceremony, including the passing around of giant bubble wrap which gave off an unsatifsying piff when popped.When we finally got that out of the way, I got my first glimpse of the actual present that my husband had gone through all this trouble to hide for me.

It was a Garmin box.

I'm now the proud owner of a nice touch-screen Garmin Dakota 10. I'm still the proud wife of the best husband in the universe. And I am never, ever throwing that envelope away.

The Unexpected Present

2011-07-12T10:02:00.000-07:00

No, it's not what you're thinking. Unless it is, in which case...you think of the weirdest stuff.

My husband's alarm went off this morning, just like, well, you know. And, similarly, he smacked the snooze button. However, that's when everything changed for the wacky.

You see, he didn't actually hit the snooze button. He turned his alarm off. And the next time an alarm went off in the room, it was from somewhere else.

My alarm clock broke a couple of years ago. I don't really need one; I work at home and my kids make sure I never get to sleep in anyway. But my husband wanted to get me a cute little clock for my birthday, so he did, and he set the alarm on it as an avenue to presenting me with it, at 8:06 AM.

Such a cute little plan amused me, as did the cute little clock. A simple rectangle with a wraparound pink frame resembling a pinafore, there wasn't anything extraneous about the thing. The buttons were easy to use, the face was easily readable...

...and something was thudding around inside.

It took three minutes of shaking it and pestering my husband before he admitted he hadn't put the whatever-it-was inside the clock. So I decided to open it up and see what it was.

If any of you have ever bought a lightweight plastic clock before, you might already know what was banging around in there. If not, let me explain that this adventure might have started off being about the destination, but once I was there, it ended up being about the journey.

Out came the jeweler's screwdriver, for the infinitesimal screws that held on the pink aluminum plate around the clock face. I swear, the world should outlaw such tiny metal bits. Not only are they hard to hold, let alone find, but banning them would probably cut down on child labor, since tiny fingers are pretty much a requirement in handling the stupid things.

The aluminum plate slid off from around the clock with reluctance, as if it only found purpose when attached to the shiny silver clock. Well, let me tell ya, little pink metal piece, I instantly thought of a couple wicked geocache tricks I could do with you, so don't get comfortable.

Then, things got a bit hairy. We couldn't figure out how to open the two halves of the clock body! You'd think, after years of infant and toddler toys, that we'd have an eye for tiny catches and hidden screws and the like, but it took a couple minutes of prying and finger pinching to realize that a pair of recessed screws, again microscopic, were foiling us. And all the while, the clonk-clonk of the mystery item inside taunted us.

One recessed screw gave up easily and came out with its hands up. The other one burrowed in for a siege. Peering into the hole with my face in one of those odd squints we make when we have to get the angle just right, I worried that I'd either stripped the head, or that a screw with a stripped head had been inserted to begin with (after all, one of the first set of infinitesimals was missing entirely).

But, after the husband gave up and went for a shower, inspiration sneaked up behind me and thwacked me on the head. There was another size of jeweler's screwdriver in the box! It was larger, and might overcome the slippage issue I was having.

I hobbled out to the kitchen (did I mention I twisted my ankle pretty badly on Saturday? No? Well I totally did. Fetching screwdrivers from the kitchen was literally a pain) and got the larger screwdriver, and voila! It opened the clock!

The moment of truth was here! What was inside my new alarm clock? Was it a wandering battery? A container of microfilm? A mini-bomb? The key to a safety-deposit box? A couple of dimes glued together? A smuggled sapphire the size of my thumbnail?

No, no, of course not. It was a slice of an iron rod (or possibly steel--there's a way to tell the difference, but I'm fresh out of grinding stones--gotta love novel research*!), once upon a time glued into the clock case so it wouldn't feel as light as the plastic it was made from. The weight broke loose at some point and was rattling around inside.

Sure, it's just a smidge of slag metal. But boy did I have a blast finding that out! One more mystery bites the dust.

*Elements of Allegiance, First Seal in The Seals of the Duelists series, Winter 2012

Short Story Collections

2011-07-10T19:54:00.000-07:00

I finished both the rough draft and the 2nd draft of First to Find during the month of May, so when June rolled around, I wanted a change of pace.

A big change of pace.

I went back through all the short stories I'd ever written (some published, some never submitted, some with a nice list of rejection slips), and decided to let others read them without asking the magazines for permission first. I had right around fifty stories just lying around, with no one to read them. And as one who write simply for the love of stories, that seemed wrong somehow.

So I collated the stories into eight different collections, hovering around 15k-20k words each. And I'm publishing them exclusively in ebook format, for $0.99 each. When all eight are released, I'll do a massive collection of all of them, with the eight sections intact. At least, I think they'll be intact. Some of my stories were pretty slipstream, and could have fit in two or even three different collections (which, I admit, were pretty arbitrary in designation, but the reader has to be able to find what she wants to read, right?). So I guess we'll see on the sections bit. My short stories, all taken together, contain as many words as either one of my published novels, so there's plenty of good reading to go around, no matter how it ends up being categorized.

I got three and a half of the collections published before it was time to switch projects again. "Against a Sea of Troubles" (action fantasy), "Let the World Slip" (romance, usually fantasy), and "The Whirligig of Time" (sci fi, somehow all dark stories) made it to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords. "This Breathing World" (environmental fantasy/history) only managed to get posted to Smashwords before I had to stop, but it's one of my very favorites, both for cover and content, so I'm eagerly awaiting the completion of my current editing project (Elements of Allegiance) so I can pop that collection out to Amazon and B&N as well. They might get it out faster than Smashwords for once, since Smashwords is suffering a dearth of free ISBNs at the moment, and Apple, Sony and Borders won't take anything without an ISBN attached. (Edit: the ISBNs have kicked in, but Smashwords doesn't send things out to its affiliates until A: the work is approved and B: it's the day of the week for shipping out, so there's still time for me to beat, say, Sony or Apple)

What I have left is my dark and scary/horror humor collection, with the working title "The Jaws of Darkness", then two straight-up fantasy collections (I do write a lot of fantasy), and a separate collection that features children of fantasy (not children's stories, but stories about children). I might get to some of these this summer, but once we're back from the East Coast vacation we have planned in August, all bets are off, baby: it's NaNoPlaMo time!

Magma

2011-06-07T09:14:00.000-07:00

I cracked last night, and my soul oozed forth.

A world unto myself, only the vegetation upon my crust is visible to others. And like any warm-blooded world, I have a crust. Thick in places, thin in others, ever moving and shifting and cracking and oozing.

I cracked a doozy of a fault line. And I don't know why.

Can planets get scared?

Of course they can. That's my problem, isn't it?

I'm an angry person. I freely admit it, because to deny such an obvious fact puts me in a position where I can't even begin to cope with my feelings. But why am I so angry? Why does my anger rise forth, hot and deadly and seemingly infinite, a massive swell of unending rage, pouring over the landscape of my skin for all to see like a malevolent flow of smoking magma?

Why am I my own hell?

Because beneath that magma, that defensive pyrolithic flow, the small, fragile core of me is terrified. Scared to death. I know life and love and happiness, you see, and I am frantic to avoid losing them again.

"Again". That is the key. A burned child is chary of the stove.

A horrific fear grips me daily. Because lightning does, in fact, strike twice. And what is it that I fear, what is it that drives me to rage so dramatically over seemingly insignificant things?

The dichotomy of character in a predator drives its victims to desperate anger. How can no one see what really happens? Why does no one know that, in secret, this person is actually perpetrating acts of hatred and abuse? How can such a secret even exist? Does no one care about me? Does no one really love me? Where are all the Good People? Shouldn't someone have saved me from this?

Yes. Yes, they should have. And I'm sorry.

But in some cases, as in mine, the rage does not stem from hidden secrets. In some cases, the terror happens right under everyone's nose, out in public, where others can see. This is a special torture. Everyone sees, yet no one believes. You are trapped in a glass cage, where everyone can see you bleed, but no one can see the knife. Everyone can see you're trapped, but they never notice that they constructed the cage at the direction of your torturer.

Now tell me, in such a situation, who is the crazy one?

It's not who you think. It's not me. And despite the instinct to rage against naysayers, it's not you either. It's him. It's always him.

Putting people in glass cages for the rush of it all. Watching others enlist themselves unknowingly.

When the victim is finally freed, broken, stumbling, weeping and bleeding from a hundred invisible wounds, everyone turns away. No one lends a hand. No one realizes what they've done, how they've contributed, unaware. Everyone blames the victim, because they cannot see anyone else on the suspect list. They cannot accept that said list is a mirror handed to them by the real perpetrator, so all is cast aside and the Label Box is fetched.

Bitch. Slut. Crazy. Liar. False friend. Manipulative. Arrogant. Whatever sounds worst.

All the bad things that drive friends apart, make them turn their backs on each other, these reside in the magic pouch on his belt. A bit of dark powder in the eyes, and they see what he wants them to see. What's in that powder, anyway? Words. Skillful words, honed by practice.

They get better with age, you see. Like wine or cheese, but far more foully fermented.

Sometimes, I dream I am back in that glass cage. It steals my breath with fear, and then the cage melts with the fervent heat of magma. Yet, I am no less trapped, for what does magma form when it cools?

Such rage is dangerous. It can destroy. I don't want to. I don't mean to. But the living are flawed, and this is my flaw. A diamond, I'll never be. I am hot, seething basalt, pooling, waiting, far beneath the cool, sheltering trees and the serene winding rivers. I feel helpless within my own gravity field. Because in the end, magma only destroys itself, recycling melted rock over and over again.

This is not a cry for help. I gave up on that idea last millennium, when no one heard me.

This is just a geothermal survey.

Status: active. Hopelessly, endlessly active.

Review for The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

2011-04-02T12:38:00.000-07:00

I got this book through the reddit.com book exchange, and I was so happy to see it in the box I got!

Katniss, a teenage girl who illegally hunts outside the District 12 fence in order to barter meat for the things her family needs, is selected for the Hunger Games, where she's pitted in a battle to the death against 23 other kids on national TV as a continuing punishment for the rebellion of her district and theirs. It's reality TV meets Fahrenheit 451 in a post-apocalyptic setting.

The freakiest part was how the show people take the time to pretty up and pamper the kids for a few days, showing them off in expensive clothing and interviewing them as if they're not going to die bloodily at each other's hands over the next couple of weeks. Katniss gets a jewel-encrusted gown to wear, and is plucked and waxed to within a inch of her life, and eats as much of the gloriously fine food in the capital as she can. Then she's muddy, bleeding, sore, thirsty, and running for her life. The dichotomy is nearly too much to grasp, but apparently it's been the way of things for 74 years.

I loved the political undercurrents. Things got very dangerous at the end, and not for the reason you'd think. The only trouble I had with it was how quickly Katniss seemed to grasp the danger, as exhausted as she was, and with her background as a poacher with no political experience at all.

Katniss was a dynamo, but a human one. She kept going, kept trying, never gave up. As the games progressed, she was forced into a few decisions that might have made other kids quail. But she didn't. In fact, she often didn't even think twice. Perhaps it was her experience with the life and death of hunting outside the fence.

There was a lack of fear, a lack of rebellion, among all the players in the arena. Everyone seemed okay with their presence in the Games. I suppose that could be chalked up to the week of prep each player got, but surely there was one teenager who totally freaked out at the prospect of killing or being killed, right? Nope. No hyperventilation or denial, no fleeing and hiding in a cave hoping to simply outlast everyone else. Everyone played, and played hard. For a system based mostly on lottery, with only a handful of volunteers, that seemed unrealistic.

The characters were great in this book. Katniss, Peeta, Rue, Gale, these were the best-fleshed characters. They had secrets and gimmicks and weaknesses and strengths. Haymitch was the most confusing character for me: he was supposed to teach Peeta and Katniss strategy, but he never did, so Katniss had to step up and suddenly figure the Gamemakers' tactics out on the fly, and she did so with such cool logic that it didn't seem she was 16 anymore. Mary Sue strikes again.

There were many flashbacks in the story, where Katniss goes back and explains some detail of her life at home or out with Gale, or with Peeta. I found them smooth and non-disruptive, and they seemed like a logical following of Katniss' thoughts during down time in the arena.

The present tense of the story's POV was an interesting choice, but I think it served the story well. In a tale where every moment may be your last, you must live entirely in the present. There were a couple of places where the verbs in a flashback clashed with the verbs in the current storyline and I had to read again to make sure I knew what was happening when, but for the most part the transitions from present tense present to past tense flashback were smooth.

The novel handled the deaths of the players lightly. There was no gore, and most of the deaths happened off-screen, being discovered by the MCs only during the nightly sky broadcasts. SPOILER Peeta gets two kills, but both are off-screen and one is even unintended. Katniss gets four kills, but only two are described, and one of them is vengeance for an attack on an ally, while the other is a mercy killing. The two that were off-screen weren't meant to kill, either, but to distract so that Katniss could escape being treed. The teens who are most intent on killing everyone else--the Careers who trained for this all their lives--are portrayed as the bad guys, even though the only way out of the arena is to kill. END SPOILER In spite of this, I was brought back many times to the concept that the Capital is a horribly cruel government, making young teens with their whole lives ahead of them go in and kill each other so that the Districts never forget who's in charge.

With each death reminding me of this, and with the tension at the end, it's no surprise where the second book will be taking our young heroes, but I want to see how they handle it. I'm definitely up for reading more.

Review for Heat Wave, by Richard Castle

2011-04-02T11:37:00.000-07:00

Richard Castle is back, with the first installment of his new Nikki Heat crime thriller series! After he killed off Derrick Storm, his audience was left confused, angry, fearful. Was Richard Castle through? Was he throwing in the pen?

No. Not by a long shot. Castle has come back with a new brand of detective: the tough, independent, yet secretly empathetic Nikki Heat. When a real estate tycoon is found dead after a long drop and a sudden stop, Heat, along with Riley and Ochoa (collectively known as Roach) and her ubiquitous story-seeking journalist companion, Jameson Rook, begin to delve into his past. The bodies pile up as the wisecracking team uncover more leads.

Jameson can't manage to follow most of the basic orders Heat gives him. Heat manipulates him into getting something through his connections that she can't get through official channels. Riley and Ochoa lay the gallows humor on thick. It's everything we want and nothing we don't. Welcome back to the bestseller list, Castle.

Haha, okay, I can't keep a straight face anymore. Enjoyable as this novel was, I couldn't suspend my meta-disbelief very well. The book is short, less than 200 pages. It comprises a series of events that could fit into one episode of the TV show. If you don't get the show, you probably won't like the book, since description is thin and action is paramount, and the thinly-disguised TV show characters are what you're meant to be picturing; you're already supposed to know who all the main protagonists are.

The book pokes fun at Castle's crush-like focus on Detective Kate Beckett. She is perfect in every way, except for not knowing how to be playful at sex, which the Jameson character helps her with. Her two assigned detectives in the show, Esposito and Ryan, are so low on his priority list that he comes up with one name for the both of them, and it's "Roach". The names for all the characters in the book are frightfully close to the names the characters on the show have. Laurie Parry even has both initials the same. Everyone is the same gender and personality.

In short, it seems that "Richard Castle" is great at writing twisty plots, but he's complete crap at writing original characters and has to rely heavily on his own "real life" acquaintances.

I highly enjoyed the meta-material in the book: the acknowledgments, the back cover, etc. The bit at the back where Castle thanks everyone had me laughing out loud. He thanks his mother and his daughter, by their TV character names, and then later he thanks the actresses themselves (by first name only), in a list of all the actors and actresses on the show. Including "Nathan"! Ha!

I could swear that when the book was on display or in Beckett's hands in the TV show, it was about 400 pages thick. No way was it the slender volume I just read. If ABC is going to charge $20 for a novelized account of every Castle episode, I think I'll just stick with the boxed DVD set instead. This is an excellent fun read for fans of the show, though, and if you're one, you should read this, even if you have to grab it from the library.

3 of 5 stars.

Review of Limitless, the film based on The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn

2011-03-28T17:24:00.000-07:00

So, I actually got to go see a film. On a real date. With my husband and no one else. We went to see Limitless. The movie was enjoyable, and it created discussion that lasted the whole drive home, which I always enjoy.

The movie's premise is thus: Eddie Mora, a writer struggling with writer's block, is offered a new drug that is supposed to unlock his brain's full potential. It does so, and he gets a large enough supply of the drug to last long enough to completely alter his life and thrust him into a world of money, women, and highly motivated opponents, leaving him to sort his way through while trying not to die from various causes.

The first hint of danger comes right as Eddie's decided to be his ex-brother-in-law Vernon's bitch, doing whatever it takes for Eddie to keep getting the NZT drug from him. He returns from picking up lunch and the dry cleaning to find his ex-bro murdered. Stunned and afraid, Eddie dials 911. But while the cops are en route, Eddie takes a more serious look around and realizes that the killer trashed the apartment looking for something...and maybe he didn't find it, which resulted in the ex-bro's death. Well, glory be, Eddie's contribution to the ransacking is rewarded, with a fat bag of NZT (which look like hard contact lenses, btw).

Eddie goes home, pulls facts out of his arse like rainbows to impress (and lay) the landlady, then opens up a can of Fly Lady on his tiny apartment. And then he decides to sit down and pound out 90 pages of his novel for his editor.

Being a writer, I strove to calculate how much writing that would actually be, and whether he could do it before the next morning, when the following scene began. It wasn't clear whether Eddie stayed up all night or not. Ninety pages @250 words per page, in double-spaced Courier font = 22,500 words. If he was an expert typist and had zero hesitation time, he could have pounded that out in under four hours. But that assumes he had a plot laid out and scenes in mind ahead of time, and it wasn't clear whether he did or not. I got the impression he slammed out his 90 pages in just a few hours, and that's at least physically possible, if not mentally. However, he proceeded to finish the rest of his novel manuscript in the next few days, and I had to wonder where the scene was of him with ice on his wrists. Or maybe that's just me and my tendinitis.

Moving on: Eddie has big plans, though unrevealed. To finance them, he begins to dabble in the stock market. Most of the rest of the movie follows the results of this choice. He does well, he gets a loan from a Russian loan shark to get more money faster, he attracts the attention of Mr. van Loon (De Niro), he works on a merger between van Loon and another mogul named Atwood.

The NZT was having negative effects on Eddie. He got accused of a murder and had to hire a lawyer. He tried to track down what he believed were other clients of Vernon's NZT-pimping business, and found that they were dead or gravely ill. He was being followed by a hatchet-faced, silent greasy type.

It was at the end, when things were supposed to be tying together, that I noticed they weren't. The movie was focused too much on Eddie and what his new braininess was doing for him to bother looking back at plot strands.

It was never revealed who killed Vernon. There were only a couple of killer characters in the movie, and only one probably did it, and his motive was probably X, but why it got to that point, the point where murder seemed the only option, simply reveals another plot hole.

Several characters, on-screen and off, had some experience taking NZT. Yet, Eddie's the only one smart enough to figure out a way around the drug's nasty side effects? Others on the drug can't avoid letting things deteriorate to murder? Sorry, but the throw-away line "it helps if you're already smart" just can't explain that hole away for me. ALL those people were on NZT, and NONE of them realized or attempted to combat that fatal loophole? What, were the pills handed out at the midnight showing of the latest Twilight movie?

A minor but annoying plot divot kicked in with the "no service" issue on Eddie's cell phone. (That's not the divot; it could have been explained in the scene, but wasn't.) He flees into a sort of safe room...and there's a land line phone in there, but he doesn't use it! Cary Elwes and the cell phone much? Gah.

Okay, Twi-hards, I'm sorry I bashed your movie. To make it up to you, let me say that Limitless has the drinking of blood in it. There, happy? Well, I wasn't. The drinking (okay, slurping) has a specific purpose, but in order to achieve said purpose, the amount of blood that needed to be slurped should have been at least a couple of pints. But nooo, the blood pool is nearly untouched when the next bit of action takes over. Come on, people! Especially in a "geniuses everywhere" movie! Shame.

This is definitely a guys' movie. Eddie has a gorgeous girlfriend who dumps him as nicely as humanly possible at the beginning of the movie, even though he's a total unwashed loser. Then he bangs the landlady. Then he bangs a bunch of hot rich chicks at a foreign beach house. Then he gets his girlfriend back and bangs her. Then he has a massive blackout due to NZT and vaguely remembers banging a couple of girls in the same night. This covers about, oh, two weeks? And he never suffers any consequences for his playboy lifestyle. This must be the "oh, shut up, you know you'd do it too, dude" part of the movie. My husband's opinion on the proclivities of the women of New York City makes me wonder whether he's secretly been watching Sex and the City.

The cinematography in this movie was awesome. Whenever Eddie (or whoever) was "on", the light changed from a dry, dark tone to warm and comfy. A play on "suddenly the light came on", and all sorts of references to enlightenment come to mind. Visual effects were sparse, but used to great effect in representing the mental processes that Eddie was going through. I especially loved the letters raining from the ceiling as he wrote those first ninety pages of his novel (the title of which was a nod to Glynn's original).

I had an epiphany after the movie had ended. At the beginning of the film, Eddie's struggling to explain the yet-to-be-written novel's plot to a guy in a bar. He eventually says something like this: "it's masquerading as a sci-fi, but underneath it's all about how we're all struggling". Well, perhaps the movie is smart, after all, being that self-aware. :)

The ending was something I didn't see coming, actually. I was sure I knew who was going to live and who was going to die, but I was wrong. The ending was happier than I was expecting, considering the earlier tone of the movie. So much so that, contrary to my usual preference, I might actually have enjoyed a darker ending. It would probably feel more realistic.

I'd recommend seeing it as a fun strategy/action flick, but don't try to follow the logic. It's followable, of course, but I kept getting frustrated that here, and not there, was where the genius led. Just let it ride. And if someone offers you something that looks like a hard contact lens, maybe ask if they have the blue pill instead.

Flash Fiction: The Coffee Quest

2011-03-25T18:00:00.000-07:00

She could smell it--even over the jungle’s heady bouquet of decay and life. Its rich aroma called to her olfactory sense and drew her eagerly to find it. She changed direction, stumbling over rocks hidden beneath the mass of ferns she was struggling through. Her hands sunk an inch deep into the thick soil, crushing young green fiddleheads back into the earth. Her dress, once the epitome of fashion, and now sweat-soaked and reeking, ground into the soil beneath her knees.

Gaining her feet again, she paused to look around. Walls of yellow-green vines rose up the sheer cliff nearby, its top swathed with giant, branching trees. The smell came from that way; she fervently hoped she wouldn’t need to attempt to climb the mass of vines to the top. Her blue satin Manolo pumps lost miles ago, she stepped wearily, determinedly, on aching, bleeding bare feet, toward the vines.

Reaching the cliff’s base, she struggled through thick verdant brush that reached her waist as she searched about for the spot where the smell was strongest. The foot of the cliff was not straight, though, and a faint breeze wafted the scent she sought in and out of the weaving niches in the rock.

And there, miraculously, was her salvation: behind the living green curtain of vines and their small yellow heart-shaped leaves, she found a small cave entrance. The scent was nearly overpowering.

She dropped uncaringly to her skinned and bruised knees, peering into the meter-high, irregular opening. The light-colored stone striated away into blackness, but along the left wall, several meters in, she could ever so faintly see something moving, falling, glinting in the murky dimness. And now there was the sound of it, as well--she could hardly believe her luck, after all this time! She had found it!

Crawling in, minding her head, she made her way breathlessly to her prize. The scent nearly overpowered her in these close confines. It was within reach; hardly believing it was real, she stretched out a trembling hand that clutched a cracked porcelain cup. Her hand got splashed in her excitement.

She flinched.

A scream of sheer and utter devastation rocked the jungle birds from their arboreal homes for miles around.

The Fountain of the Everlasting Quad Ristretto Split Shot Dark Chocolate Mocha Mint Light Foam Coffee was not hot--it was iced!

Amazon Has Discounted My Shanallar Series

2011-03-14T18:01:00.000-07:00

I just noticed that Amazon has lowered the price on the print version of The Wicked Heroine, and of Oathen, by four dollars each. The books contain 250k words all told, and used to sell for the full price of $13.99 apiece. Now they're each marked down to $10.07. I have no idea why they've selected this book for such a markdown, nor how long it will last. But if you want a print copy of it, this is your opportune moment.

Reviews more than welcome.

Review for Maggody and the Moonbeams, by Joan Hess

2011-03-04T20:11:00.000-08:00

I've read a few of Hess' Claire Malloy books, and this series appears very different, in several negative ways. Or maybe I just got the lamest book of the Maggody series.

Arly gets roped into chaperoning some horny teenagers up at a youth camp for a week, where they mess around, scream, fight, and build a few bleachers. Some cute guy wanders in now and again, and several of the locals at the nearest town and among the Moonbeams have secrets that Arly must learn. And for some reason, a handful of people back in Maggody, 75 miles away, get subplots completely unrelated to the murder. Go figure.

Book themes: everyone either is horny or believes everyone else to be horny; people who have never lived outside Maggody/Dunkicker are uneducated, inbred backwater hicks with thick accents and mental faculties that run slower than molasses in February; all religious people have something to hide/are hypocrites, and the protagonist, being an atheist, is the only sane person around.

I get that this is supposed to be a comedy, but I couldn't ever find the groove where anything that happened in the book amused me. I expect it's just a cultural gap I couldn't bridge, not being familiar with the Southern school of thought. Between hillbillies and the Bible Belt, I'd imagine that a lot of the humor in the book was self-deprecating. But it all felt foreign to me.

I couldn't find much reason to like Arly. All of the youth group kids and chaperones seemed to be little more than caricatures, reduced to a single overblown feature. I had no idea why the book followed characters who had nothing to do with the murder plot or any of its subplots. Their scenes appeared in third person, and occasionally head-hopped. It appeared to be series creep, which I've only encountered in fantasy thus far: the author doesn't know when to stop writing about minor characters' lives (see WoT, aSoIaF), making subsequent books longer and longer and straying further from the central plot.

The plot itself was generally sufficient, but between the preponderance of teenage histrionics, religious freak-outs and other minor distractions of similar caliber, it was hard to make room for the actual case. In fact, the actual guilty party and their motive made for quite an awesome plot. Unfortunately, the reveal was pretty well buried. The dramatic conclusion was related by one character through flashback dialogue.

Lowbrow comedy and murder do not mix for me. Give me Dorothy Cannell's Ellie Haskell any time, but I'm just not the target audience for Arly and her town of Maggody.

1 of 5 stars.

Review for Damsels in Distress, by Joan Hess

2011-03-03T13:48:00.000-08:00

A Renaissance Fair is coming to town, and Claire and Caron get roped into helping by a purple-tights-clad Fool. But as they meet the local "nobility" and experience the fun and silly delights of the Fair itself, they realize there are numerous undercurrents. When someone is killed at the Fair, Claire tries her best to keep out of it for a while, but then, once again, delves into the mystery.

I had a harder time accepting Claire's brash actions in this book. She did more illegal things and seemed to care less about them, which, considering the issue her fiancé, Lieutenant Rosen, has with that, seemed especially out of character. Their wedding being only two months away and all. It felt like, to accomplish this plot, the author put Rosen out of town because he wouldn't have let Claire do what she did, and the only reason Claire had to do what she did was because the author purposely wants to portray Claire as Chaotic Neutral in this book. Mission accomplished.

The Ren Fair characters were all larger than life, as well as improbably horny. Sure, any good Ren Fair is full of suggestive jokes, but to imply that everyone involved is taking that literally, well, it felt unnecessary. SPOILER And it ended up being a red herring anyway. END SPOILER

The character set felt a little imbalanced. There were the locals, there were the Ren Fair folks, and there were the victims/murderer, who crossed lines left and right, but those who were involved in the crimes felt unnaturally close-knit and isolated. It felt like a letdown to have them feature so largely in the final details. SPOILER And unlike Sue Henry, Joan Hess does not seem capable of writing a sociopath. END SPOILER

Having attended the Renaissance Faire at Black Rock religiously during my college years, I was excited to get into this book. Probably too excited. The Fair portrayed in the book played a very small role, and most of the characters from it spent their pages in other locations. The plot focuses on their interpersonal relationships quite heavily, which made for a whole new set of mysteries, but I was sad not to spend more time goggling at the awesomeness of the Fair.

The writing was smooth, with only a sprinkling of errors, but, yes, I noticed them, as always. It baffles me that people paid to make sure books are flawless do a worse job of it than I do as a casual reader.

3 of 5 stars.

Review for Beneath the Ashes, by Sue Henry

2011-03-03T13:44:00.000-08:00

Ooh, Sue Henry knows how to write a sociopath. Sadly, once I'd had that realization after a couple of the character's scenes, it sort of gave a lot of things away. Even the "twist".

I was surprised that Alex Jensen was out of the picture, not having read the last book. I did read book 4, and his name was plastered on the cover. It surprised me that the series continued without him or his name.

I loved Jessie in this book. Her and her dogs. I know next to nothing about mushing, so it was a real treat to read the easy descriptions and information about it. The regular characters were a little harder to keep separate in my head.

The new characters, they stood out vividly. The husband, the wife, the arson investigator, and his replacement all jumped to the fore.

The plot felt very tight and interwoven. "Beneath the ashes" ended up applying to more things than I usually see tied into a title. Some involved real fire, and others were emotional or psychological. It was a real treat to see all the ways Henry worked that theme into the story.

The writing nearly killed me. A glorious cornucopia of typos, punctuation errors and homonym abuse (my pleasure at seeing "illusive" quickly faded when I realized they meant "elusive") filled this book. I didn't think it was possible for anyone to confuse "retched" with "wretched", though, since they're not even homonyms. But the editors of this book have managed to surprise me with their interesting skill set. It's almost turned into a game, reading this series and looking for which wacky mistakes will crop up next. But the stories are entertaining, so I'll keep reading.

4 of 5 stars.

Review for Death Takes Passage, by Sue Henry

2011-03-03T13:42:00.000-08:00

Alex and Jessie take passage on a small cruise ship that’s re-enacting the voyage of the SS Portland, whose arrival in Seattle WA with two tons of Yukon gold sparked the Klondike gold rush. Alex’s role is purely ceremonial, until crimes begin to occur, leading him to step back into his job and take on thieves and murderers alike.

I’ve been to Alaska only once, but I loved it. I picked this book up because I wanted to experience its vistas once more, and the premise of the novel—a cruise through the Inside Passage—seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. I was not disappointed. The scenery description was awesome; I felt like I was there.

I was interested to read in the massive acknowledgments section at the back of the book that this voyage was actually scheduled to happen. The author got wind of it a couple of years before it was to occur and was inspired to write a fictional account of the re-enactment. That sounds both awesome and loyal to Alaska, and for that I applaud her. But I’m not sure the book was the better for her trying to serve two masters. She included several real-life individuals, and the cruise ship itself, getting permission for each, and having to adapt her plot to individual/company wishes. Between that and the information dumps (see below), the book came across as part-future-fictional-documentary. If that long acknowledgments section had been at the front, it would have helped me understand why the story sometimes took tortured side trips.

Alex and Jessie were really good characters. They were comfortable with each other and their own roles as well. Well, Alex was; there were no dogs for Jessie to mush here, so she just got to play sleuth/babysitter.

The other characters ranged from really quite awesome to “why is this person even in this book?” Some of the red herrings the book presented in the form of suspicious characters were never even explained, leaving me dissatisfied.

Young Lou, apathetic teenager extraordinaire, was apparently so adorable that Jessie wanted to adopt her on sight. Crotchety old Dallas, while eventually growing on me, struck Jessie as a muse of wisdom and affection immediately. The insertion of these characters into Jessie’s and Alex’s lives so that they could later help out with the action was so clumsy that it dragged me out of the story with a mocking snort. In both cases, Jessie states “I like you, a lot,” practically upon being introduced. The book also had a habit of taking a jaunt into the future for a couple of paragraphs and explaining how things went afterward, for sometimes weeks in the future, before jerking me back into the present time. Just because I know that, in the future, Jessie and Lou really get to like each other and hang out, does not mean that I’ll sit back and accept that as a reason for them to bond immediately. Jessie is awesome, but she is not psychic.

In fact, I got to the point of frowning every time “a lot” came up, because of Jessie’s immediate adoration for these two characters. It showed up…a lot.

The character Judy Raymond just seemed to wander through the plot, serving no purpose. Another downside of having this book contain real people is that I find myself questioning all the book’s flaws and wondering whether they’re present because of the two-masters thing again. Sigh. Judy shows up at the beginning and pops in now and again during the whole book, never seeming to have a goal of her own, never seeming to find a resolution. I’m not sure she deserved the end she got, but at least something was finally certain about her.

The bad guys had their own scenes in this novel. I didn’t mind it for most of the book, until the last scene they had all to themselves. In that scene, they blatantly give away the plan they’ve been carefully keeping from us all throughout the book. The next scene they’re in is when they’re beginning to execute that plan. Why couldn’t we just keep that mystery (or at least the illusion of it—it wasn’t that difficult to ascertain) going just a little further? Honestly! If you’re going to keep it a secret for so long, do so all the way to the action-packed reveal. On the other hand, the bad guys didn’t do much more than give us the opportunity to see their bumbling, argumentative selves and some more nice scenery. The book could have done without their scenes entirely.

I loved this plot. The captive audience is one of my favorite types of mystery. The scenery and building suspense were highly enjoyable. The bad guys had a good plan. The good guys had a better one. And there was much sneaking about and kicking ass. It was great. Most enjoyably, the ending resulted in actual arrests. Be still my heart.

There was one plot hole that bothered me, especially when it ended up being critical to the final action. One of the mysterious characters Alex and Jessie had already met had a friend she hung out with. The heroes wondered if he was up to anything. But they never so much as spoke to him, even after voicing an intent to do so. Eventually, Alex requests a background check on the guy while Alex is off the ship in Ketchikan, despite the man’s continued presence aboard ship and lack of attempting to hide in any way. But before it comes in, the bad guys start to do their thing and the good guys figure everything out the hard way. SPOILER I wasn’t even sure why the author kept it a secret, since it was all a red herring anyway. END SPOILER

I was inordinately pleased to find that the book wasn’t written in first person. I got to follow Alex around most of the time, but sometimes I also got to follow Jessie. They both made for equally entertaining main characters.

In most cases, the novel flowed effortlessly, especially in the scenery description. I could feel a deep love of the land and the sea in those words. But every now and again, the book would pause, and an info dump would back up, beeping, and bury me in facts which were described in present tense. It was as if the author copied and pasted from an encyclopedia. Most of these sections were, thankfully, given over to the cruise coordinator as she spoke over the public address section, so there was a reason for the info dump. But some of them were separate from that character. I ended up skipping most of them anyway, because they just droned on for paragraphs. I’m usually one who reads every word in a book. But these paragraphs had nothing to do with the plot, so I made an exception.

The author apparently loves italics, though not for internal dialogue, which remain unmarked in this novel. All the cruise coordinator’s info dumps were delivered in italics. All the lines in the re-enactment mystery plays were also given in italics. I couldn’t see a connection, nor really a reason, but there it was. Odd.

Still, I really enjoyed the main characters and their world. I think I might be safe with a nice toffee—er, another Sue Henry book sometime soon.

4 of 5 stars.

Review for Dead Guy's Stuff, by Sharon Fiffer

2011-03-03T13:28:00.000-08:00

Jane Wheel gave up her day job, and now spends her time picking. When she stumbles across a basement room full of tavern paraphernalia from thirty years back, she takes it all…including a man’s finger, floating in a jar of formaldehyde. Believing somehow that the finger has a mysterious secret, Jane pushes into the past, discovering a web of secrets and lies that comes far too close to home.

I really enjoyed this book, but for the longest time I couldn’t put my finger on why. Sure, the main character spends her time engaged in activities I’ve recently come to enjoy watching on shows like American Pickers and Auction Kings. But that wasn’t it. Then, finally, it dawned on me: absolutely none of the characters in this book are typical 8-to-5 people. They’re those who serve them, or those who prey on them, or those who simply live alongside them. But none of these characters are the “average” American. There aren’t even any retired old ladies (in the sleuth department, anyway). It was such a fresh approach to the genre that it made reading all the more enjoyable.

That said, I did find Jane a little inconsistent. Sometimes, she’d figure out a clue in an snap, worthy of Adrian Monk. Other times, she’d be baffled for pages and pages on what seemed a simple deduction.

Her husband Charley and son Nick made for an interesting family dynamic, though they didn’t spend a lot of time standing out in this book. The fact that Charley and Jane start the book as separated but living in the same house was intriguing, and Charley sounded like an awesome guy. I wished there were more of him in this book.

Jane’s mother, Nellie, featured in this novel, but I found myself torn between not getting her at all and laughing at her unrealistic actions. SPOILER At one point she is kidnapped, and bustles around making breakfast for her captors, because that’s what she’s used to doing. But she slips some crushed Valium into the eggs and then duct tapes everyone up, all as if it’s no big deal. END SPOILER Hilarious! But it felt that Nellie had barged in on the plot with a short story of her own, so that what happened to her wouldn’t be “too scary”.

The plot started off slowly, with nothing but Jane’s concerns about the severed finger driving it forward. The middle section provided a good balance of entertainment and suspense, though unrelated to the finger yet. By the time the finger had been proven to be relevant, I admit the plot had leaped to a new level that I wasn’t entirely enjoying. That’s because its focus had left Kankakee, where everything else had been happening. It felt as if the author was shooing in bad guys from afar because she couldn’t find a way to make them be local. Which is neither here nor there, to have local bad guys. It was the way that they were the only bit of the plot that felt out of place, that felt off.

And once again, SPOILER the killer’s success is not punished. What is it with these books? I don’t remember this annoying trend in cozies when I started reading them a couple decades back. Little old ladies getting away with murder because “he deserved it”, over and over again! END SPOILER What. The. Heck. I didn’t know there was such a large demographic of retired, vigilante women in this country.

I enjoyed all aspects of the fund raiser house. To have it tie into the plot as well was just bonus.

The writing was enjoyable to read and flowed smoothly. There were, unfortunately, far too many errors for my enjoyment, however, and of a disturbing variety. If I were proofing a book that would represent the publishing company I worked for, and it had a single error, I’d be absolutely mortified. Come on, people. This is your job, and you're making the author look bad.

Lastly, I was puzzled by the choice to write in a fully omniscient POV. The scenes wandered from one character’s view and thoughts to another’s with the flick of a paragraph. Some included three different people, one after the other and back again. Others just led from character A to character B. I had no trouble following, but I did have trouble settling down and identifying with any of the characters because the interruptions of each other’s thoughts postponed a true feeling of knowing any one of them on their own separate terms. It was a little like reading about three amoebae rather than eight separate characters. It was a minor annoyance, but one that never went away.

4 of 5 stars.

Review for The Goodbye Body, by Joan Hess

2011-03-03T13:19:00.000-08:00

Claire Malloy, bookstore owner, smells a rat. And sees it too, sneaking about in her own house. After throwing the book at her landlord, who grudgingly agrees to make extensive cleanup and repairs to her duplex, Claire and her daughter find themselves out of a home for two weeks. In steps Dolly, loyal customer, to offer her place to them as she jaunts off to visit her sister in Austin. And that's when the bodies start showing up--with most of them being the same body.

Not being a fan of mobster, well, anything, this book didn't excite me as much as the previous Claire book. The mob characters all began to blend together, since I don't possess the experience with such characters to detect minor differences in their makeup. Everyone came across as overly inquisitive, to hide the characters who were trying to pump Claire or one of the girls for information. I could see one random stranger asking curious questions, but four? Thankfully, most everyone had perfectly good explanations eventually.

Dolly was the linchpin character to this whole story, but she was painfully boring when in a scene. Sure, she was supposed to be secretive in order to draw out the plot. But every time it was "fake laugh, lame excuse, admit a lie, leave abruptly". On top of that, this plot ended with a double reveal after the climactic action ended: one for most of the suspect characters, and one after that for Dolly. It just felt like she never fit well with her own story.

I really enjoyed Cal, Caron and Inez in this book. The girls were amusing, believable, and entertaining with their chosen hobby. The rich girls who entered the story at the beginning seemed to be treating the plot as a strip mall, and only showed up in it reluctantly, afraid to really interact with anything they saw.

The plot seemed unnecessarily complicated for a mystery novel of this caliber. Perhaps that's due to my lack of Soprano-esque experience, though. It continued to feel like a stretch to involve distant doings in Farberville; nothing felt exceptionally immediate or clear much of the time.

The writing left me wanting, honestly. There was, unfortunately, a nice crop of typos. Baffling. I also noticed a tendency to flip-flop on Claire's level of intelligence between scenes.

3 of 5 stars.

Review for A Conventional Corpse, by Joan Hess

2011-03-03T13:14:00.000-08:00

Claire Malloy, owner of the Book Depot bookstore, finds herself suddenly in charge of a weekend murder mystery convention when the organizer is hospitalized. Five mystery authors, strong personalities intact, swoop into town, clashing with each other, their B&B owner, and a surprise guest who crashes the convention: their agent. A local girl crashes her car on the way home from the first night of the convention, but it's more than just a simple accident. And then the theories get really creepy, as the authors begin to speculate on death and murder as only they can.

While I generally enjoyed this book for the mystery convention concept, I wonder whether Ms. Hess wrote it on a dare, or possibly as a cry for help, or even as a satire on the ins and outs of her own genre. I'm probably kidding about the cry for help, but this one line from page 227 makes me wonder: "Authors are powerless in the overall scheme of the publishing industry." She's right, you know. It's one of the reasons successfully published authors are going indie in this new era.

The characters in this book were well done: the authors, naturally, overpowered everyone else except Claire, who, while she confessed to feeling lost and/or ignorant occasionally, held her own in the "sit down and STFU" line delivery category. The insulting in this book was delicious. And I enjoyed the little inside issues the authors had to deal with, such as being ignored by their editor, or having books trapped in a backlist, inaccessible to readers. Motives for murder abounded.

The only character who felt flat was Peter Rosen. There tried to be a whole subplot between him and Claire, but with the vivid author characters dominating the book, it came across as reduced to a series of similar "I'm not talking to you" conversations and forced insertions of baby/babymaking references.

The plot itself, as I said, was fun. But it felt pretty unrealistic, even more than the usual serial cozy plot. A handful of bestselling mystery authors popping into a tiny town? Hmm. The subplot with Peter wasn't terribly gripping, but the one involving Arnie was surprisingly endearing, and had a tie-in with the Peter-Claire subplot.

The end was disappointing, however, and in a way I've found disturbingly often in the cozies I've been reading recently. SPOILER The killer is urbane, collected, makes no attempt to flee or fight, is in fact an adorable old woman. In addition, other characters come up and thank her for this or that, or try to persuade her not to confess, while she's actively confessing. She seemed to indicate she'd lie about what happened, and she may or may not have been poisoning herself with the tea she was drinking the whole time. END SPOILER And that's where they left it. That's too cozy for me, really. Consequences, people!

One thing that came across as a little jarring was the tendency for the authors' thought processes to leave so much assumed between the lines, in contrast to the rest of the plot. Whenever they'd talk amongst themselves, you'd have to fill in a few blanks around their dialogue in order to keep up. Which was cool and made sense; their job is to think on that level. But the rest of the book was more simply written, and as a result, the "regular" characters seemed a bit slow.

And do not let me forget to mention the gaping plot hole that pretty much destroyed the credibility of the first killer's motive! SPOILER In sum, the first killer taught the first victim in college years ago, and apparently saw one short story of hers in particular. Fast forward several years, to where the first killer, now an editor, has apparently used some details gleaned from that short story to pump up a new mystery author's debut novel. When she meets up with her old student unexpectedly, she realizes she needs to kill her before she gets her hands on that debut novel, on sale the next day, because it'll somehow expose the killer/editor as an idea thief. I'm sorry, but that's just nonsense. The novel clearly stated that the first victim learned all sorts of interesting stuff like forensics and police procedures AFTER the killer had moved away from town. Also, she's had ten years to work on that short story and expand it to a novel. Surely the mystery genre suffers from the occasional trope just like every other genre. I completely fail to see what fully formed plot idea could have been stolen from a short story ten years previously, and which would still be immediately recognizable to the original writer and drive her to sue, let alone win. END SPOILER I actually re-read parts of the book, trying to figure out if I'd missed something, or if I'd misunderstood the motive/timeline. Nope.

The writing was so tight that it seemed to tear in a few places, leaving a gap just a bit wider than I enjoy crossing to continue the story. I also counted several typos of the sort that are also words (a for at, Rose for Rosen, etc), and a couple of completely omitted words, which for me really detract from the enjoyment of a book.

Overall, a fun read with the mystery convention in town, but the authors' vivid and weighty presence seemed to unbalance the plot and the writing both.

3 of 5 stars.

Review for Dead Man's Bones, by Susan Wittig Albert

2011-03-03T12:33:00.000-08:00

China Bayles is at home in Pecan Springs, working with Ruby in their herbal shops. A new playhouse has been erected, and is putting on its first performance, starring Ruby in a play written by the rich donor of the playhouse itself. Meanwhile, China's stepson, Brian, discovers a set of bones in a remote cave near town.

Alas, while the premise of the plot promised awesomeness, the delivery fell flat. Much of the story was given over to daily life details, such as Ruby's mysterious new boyfriend, who seems to have some sort of history with both the police chief and with China's husband McQuaid, but naturally one won't say and the other can't remember. There's also the introduction of Cass as a potential replacement for Janet, the aging help in the shops. A lot of business talk goes on: China and Ruby are expanding their horizons, offering catering now, to make up for slow business in the shops. Cass steps up and says she'd like to work with them. They talk about it. They think about it. They talk some more. Sure, it's somewhat relevant to the protagonist's life, but in that much detail? It just watered down the mystery.

As far as that mystery went, what I saw seemed too transparent to be the actual truth, so I kept looking for other explanations. Alas, there were none: the killer was who I thought, and the bones belonged to who I thought. It seems, from reading just two of Ms. Albert's books, that the villains don't come anywhere near the level of complexity as the protagonist, making the books less interesting to read and the resolution almost boring. Ruby's new lover's past was never explained, so it feels he's a setup for the next book, yet he appeared in this book throughout, diluting this case as well.

2 of 5 stars.

Review for Bloodroot, by Susan Wittig Albert

2011-03-03T12:31:00.000-08:00

China Bayles goes home, to her ancestral manor house in the swamps of the South, looking for answers to the mysteries of her own family tree.

This was my first China Bayles mystery, and I enjoyed it. The herbalism, the pervasive, odorous mugginess of the swamps, the heavy feel of generations of conflict and mystery--it was all good, baby.

The plot, a straightforward investigation into whether a newly-missing man possessed a claim to the land under China's ancestral home, quickly spun off into curling detours and tangents that delved into previous generations and their secrets, as well as hereditary illnesses they may have passed on to the current generation. There were several characters who had vested interests in various outcomes. The only real letdown was the killer.

For the most part, the characters were awesome in this book, both the living and the ancestors. From Aunt Tullie, with her Huntington's chorea, to the mysterious Marie Louise, to the Chocktaw gardener, Judith. Other characters were flat or forgettable, never really connecting with me throughout the book. The killer never really felt fully fleshed out, as if the point of the book wasn't who killed the victim, but China's history, and the killer was just an excuse to bring that into the light. A pair of sisters, Dawn and Alice Ann, had the same effect on me; they seemed to float through the book without ever really seeming real.

There were several smaller themes throughout the book, which tied in nicely with herbal notations at the start of the chapters: herbal abortifacients, lily of the valley's various meanings and uses, plantation behavior on the part of the master, and of course all the implications and uses of the bloodroot plant itself. In most regards, these sort of gave away the secret, as it were. The same thing happened with the killer, whose name was given as a nickname for a certain plant, far earlier than they were listed as a suspect. As the only character with a plant name, that made them stick in my mind, and ruined the surprise; it was just a matter of figuring out why they did it.

This type of foreshadowing starts at the beginning of the book, where it's revealed who died, as well as a couple other facts, before the story technically even starts. Talk about ruining the surprise! In a mystery book, that seems like the sort of thing you specifically want to avoid doing.

4 of 5 stars.

Review for Bridesmaids Revisited, by Dorothy Cannell

2011-03-03T12:28:00.000-08:00

Ellie Haskell receives a message from friends of her deceased grandmother, saying the ghost has something to tell her. When she does go and see them, she learns far more than she expected to about her own family's past.

I feel like I cheated, reading this book second out of all the Ellie Haskell books. I'm guessing that the early death of Ellie's mother was mentioned more than once in the previous nine books, and only now is Dorothy Haskell getting around to explaining what happened. Ten books is a long time to wait, yet I sort of jumped the line here. Still, it was a great read.

The plot drew me in right from the start. Three old women say that Ellie's grandmother has a message for her, yet she's been dead for decades. As soon as Ellie arrives at their monstrous old home, the murder and mayhem begin. It's got all the fun hallmarks of the old castle mysteries: poison, family secrets, secret passageways, yet those tropes have been rewoven into a modern tale that is entirely enjoyable to read. The only part that was a little off was the Daddy Warbucksian ending, but from what I can tell of this series, each book does its faithful part in actually changing the characters' lives.

Oh, the characters were lovely. Aside from a tendency to confuse two of the "bridesmaids", I had no trouble visualizing each character. That made it all too easy to figure out who the killer was early on, unfortunately. But in this book, that wasn't so bad, as much of the plot revolved around mysterious family history, rather than it being entirely about murder.

The writing fell neatly between heavy and light, containing moments of humor as well as serious and tense episodes. The subplot involving Mrs. Malloy was nearly entirely separate in this book, but the tie-ins were perfect and necessary, and her plot as it fit into the larger one was excellently done.

4 of 5 stars.

Review for The Spring Cleaning Murders, by Dorothy Cannell

2011-03-03T12:25:00.000-08:00

Ellie Haskell tackles spring cleaning at Merlin's Court, her home, as well as solving the murders of several charwomen in her village.

I really enjoyed this book. The characters were vivid and entertaining, and the list of suspects was lively and full of secrets. The absence of slapstick and the nice interweaving of plotlines made for an excellent read.

The plot, at first, seemed straightforward, but there was plenty of obfuscation, and by the end, I was pleasantly confused. Mrs. Malloy's subplot was a great addition to the book.

I really enjoyed the characters. Ellie tells it like it is to the killer at the end, which struck me as something not seen often--we're somehow supposed to infer the character flaws for ourselves most of the time. However, there's something deeply and viscerally satisfying in seeing a spade called a spade.

The twins were especially darling as a counterpoint to the adult situations going on over their heads, as I have a son that age right now.

I had expected a lighter level of writing when the book claimed it was a comedy. It turned out better than I expected, and I really enjoyed the book.

5 of 5 stars!

Review for The Body on the Beach, by Simon Brett

2011-03-03T12:23:00.000-08:00

A fun case of mixed up corpses, but I was disappointed in the "villain".

The novel starts off with the exceptionally proper Carole discovering a body washed up on the beach where she walks her dog. By the time she gets back home, washes the salt off the dog, cleans the kitchen, and reports the body, however, it's not there anymore for the police to find. And the next morning it's back...or is it?

The plot started off smashingly. Probably two different bodies, a bohemian neighbor with secrets of her own, and a lovely collection of interesting characters with their own issues and motives. Perhaps it was just that I've been into mysteries lately, but I saw through a few of the plot lines right away. I didn't see through the main one, though, and I confess that's because I was expecting something...bigger, in some way. The original motive, while prepared for well, seemed to have been executed horribly, for what struck me as a bizarre reason (does that mean I'm not killer material? I'm crushed). So many of the plot-enforced delays ended up being entirely avoidable that it seemed a wonder the bad guy even got started.

The subplot involving the teenagers really seemed like it was just there to toss so many red herrings across my path. It worked, but when all was said and done, I didn't really have a feeling of satisfaction from solving that mystery. In part, it was tragic, but in another regard, it seemed overblown.

I liked most of the characters, and those I didn't were generally fleshed out enough to make me decide not to like them on their personality, rather than because they weren't fleshed out enough. The group of teenage boys felt a bit awkward as it pertained to the rest of the characters, but I think that was the point.

Carole and Jude both have POV scenes in this book (it is written in 3rd person, thank God), and I really enjoyed how the author managed to work in Jude's investigations without giving away her secretive past very much. Jude basically operated entirely in the present moment, and thanks to her neighbor Carole's English reticence, no major questions ever got asked, and so were not answered, leaving Jude smugly ensconced in her mystery.

I think she's a former spy, myself. :P

As previously mentioned, this mystery was written in 3rd person, which I always prefer to 1st person. So many of the cozy mysteries I read are 1st person POV, and while that usually works for the genre, it gets on my nerves. I really enjoyed this break, with its two disparate protagonists.

3 of 5 stars.

My Love/Hate Relationship With Romance

2011-02-07T14:25:00.000-08:00

I'm not a Romance fan. But I enjoy Romantic subplots. Do I contradict myself? I don't think so.

Romance novels are required to have the Happily Ever After ending. You pick up a new Romance genre book, and without peeking, you may correctly assume that both the heroine and the hero survive until the end and become a permanent couple (or threesome, alien-creche-parents, legal partners, or whatever term applies to them). The genre is formulaic in this way; if you do not provide the reader with a HEA ending, it simply will not be classified (by readers!) as a Romance. And they'll complain and never read your books again.

So, without that HEA, what genre is it? That depends. My first guess would be Chick Lit, but it could also fall into Literary Romance or Women's Fiction. Stray too far (i.e. less than half your plot concerns the relationship), and your book could be Romantic Suspense, Romantic Fantasy, Romantic Comedy, Romantic Adventure, etc. You want to cash in on the vast Romance market, you need to put in that HEA.

For me as a reader, it is the formulaic nature of the Romance genre that turns me off. It's the most restrictive genre I can think of. Romantic characters enter the plot at the beginning, various delaying/distracting stuff happens to them in the middle, and at the end, they always, ALWAYS, end up together. It's far more strict than even Mystery, in which you always know the crime(s) will be solved at the end. With mysteries, you don't automatically know who will be guilty of the crime, and every book is a new puzzle to solve. There's no such appeal in a Romance. You know who the romantic players are.

I suppose it's a combination of my own past romantic life, my love of the unknown, and my cynicism that makes me disinclined to read Romance. Many people who read this genre do so purely for the happy ending, the fantasy of the HEA. And I get that: I want happy endings in the books I read as well. But the shiny pink glowing happiness at the end of every Romance book ever just says to me, "If only you were as awesome as we were, then you might get some of this for yourself. But you're not. Poor you." And I must emphatically reject that notion, because I am neither more pitiful than nor less awesome than fictional characters. I'm not inclined to follow the lives of the rich and famous in the real world, so why would I want to read about fictional people with glorious, perfect hair and D-cups* getting exactly what they want? How does that make me feel better about myself in any way whatsoever? It seems like some bizarre literary addiction, in which I'd need to pick up another Romance right away lest I realize how sucky my life is in comparison to the fictional couple's.

All that said, let no one confuse my distaste for formulaic love with a hatred of the romantic in other genres. Romance in a plot is like an ingredient from a recipe. If it's all you have, all you get is flour, or lemon rind, or BBQ sauce. But add the other ingredients back in--suspense, mystery, historical drama, adventure, sci-fi--and you get a more balanced--and to me, palatable--recipe. Romantic subplots enliven a whole book. I've got three or four of them in my own adventure fantasy series, Legend of the Shanallar. Romance will play a distinct part in my upcoming Mystery series, Margarita Williams Geocaching Mysteries, too.

Romance should be a natural extension of the rest of characters' lives, as they interact and suffer hardships during the advancement of the plot, not something forced into corsets which artificially shape the body of the story. Or whatever they think will make them look hottest. Come on, Romance genre, whatever happened to loving yourself for who you are?

I know, Romance books sell like hotcakes, but I'm a waffle girl. Give me dimension, texture...and then give me that whipped cream. ;)

* Yes, I know what you're going to say. But you should know what my reply will be. :D

Love, Mutants, and the Ephemerality of Life

2011-02-04T18:41:00.000-08:00

For me, it's spiders with wings.

Everyone seems to have some horrible combination of creatures, events, diseases, etc., that, if it were to happen, would surely push them over the edge of sanity. This is probably the stuff of SyFy Original Movie scripts, but on some deep, primal level, these fears show us that we know our mortality. Know it and probably hate it. Or at least hate its approach in mutated form.

How about mosquitoes and dysentery? Or the common cold and pancreatic cancer? Now we're moving into 12 Monkeys territory.

It's been noted time and again that the things we fear the most aren't always those most likely to happen. Terrorist attacks are far less likely to kill you than your average heart attack. Too bad we can't work up a morbid fear of hamburgers and soda pop.

Aside from our own mortality, we often fear change. We like things to be comfortable, or at least familiar, for the most part. Drastic changes can bring fears both legitimate and unfounded: the pure fear of the unknown has plagued our species since long before Hamlet realized he couldn't actually commit suicide, despite his otherwise depressed-emo lifestyle.

Yet, it is precisely the fact that life changes, that life ends, which gives it such meaning to us mere mortals. If we all lived forever and had nothing bad ever happen to us, could we appreciate, truly, the windfalls that come our way? Could we enjoy a day of sun as much if it hadn't just poured rain the week before? Could we love as fully in the moment if we had never lost a dear one? That bittersweet mix of emotion as we look into the eyes of our children, a combination of pure love, fear of inevitable hurts, and sheer joy at their existence--that is what it means to be alive.

I've experienced that, and been the richer for it. So bring on the flying mutant spiders.

Review for The Headmaster's Wife, by Jane Haddam

2010-12-18T18:33:00.000-08:00

The Headmaster's Wife is the only Gregor Demarkian novel I've read by Ms. Haddam, and I think it'll probably be the last.

Mark, a young teen who thinks he's possibly becoming mentally ill, calls Gregor from his private boarding academy outside Boston to tell him he might have seen a body on campus. And oh, by the way, his roommate hung himself. Gregor, having issues with wanting to investigate any more murders, goes up to Boston thinking he'll just help out the unstable young teen, since the suicide seems pretty solid. But then he gets sucked into campus politics, and campus-town relations, and then someone else dies. Already in place among the town's police, Gregor finds himself solving yet another murder case.

The characters were all very well formed in this book. Dare I say, over-formed? The first chapter introduced a dozen people, bing bang boom, most from their own POV. The result was a bit muddling and overwhelming. Long backgrounds, personality details, philosophical perceptions, previous employers...the list of details went on and on. And not just at the start. Large swaths of this book slowed down to cover furniture, history, historical philosophers, and other details irrelevant to the plot. One spot had a character muse for two pages on an anecdote about a character who wasn't involved in the current story at all. It did make the characters feel more realistic, but in a way I've usually heard advised against: if it's not related to the plot, it doesn't need to be there. I nearly put the book down more than once, so turned off by the blubber.

I don't live on the East Coast, so a lot of the references were lost on me. I don't collect old furniture. I don't use politics as a way of life. I don't live defensively, automatically covering my tracks in case I might get attacked for doing something someone powerful doesn't like. I don't have negative opinions toward poorer people moving into rich people's circles due to hard work. I just couldn't relate to many of the characters in this book, and found myself not caring who the killer was.

I found the title of this book highly misleading, as the only thing spectacular about the headmaster's wife is that she's a sociopath who doesn't get identified as such (I hope the author intended for people to pick up on that: she presents a dozen excellent examples of sociopathy in her character, then has her think fondly of a psychopath and use similar tactics to him, if far less violent). Otherwise, the book isn't really about her, not in the way you think it will be.

On the psychopath: he's a character introduced at the beginning of the book. Yet not until halfway through does anyone seemingly notice or mention his crazy, violent obsessions. Then, suddenly, everyone does. It's like he's two different characters. It made no sense, and artificially postponed the revelation of his psychopathy until a teacher came across a paper by the student, which he hadn't graded yet, in order to reveal a plot detail. What, he hadn't ever assigned any writing to this student, all year? The story takes place in February! I call shenanigans and forced plot density.

The plot itself didn't strike me as very tight. The premise that got Gregor to campus was a little shaky, though presented well through the POV of the self-doubting Mark. However, once Mark's mind cleared enough to think more rationally, no more sense was ever made of the "body in the snow". The repetition of its mysterious circumstances showed up multiple times in the book, and yet never had more detail added to it, until it was fully solved all at once. That happened a lot, the repetition of details. Even the temperature of that first night, nine degrees below zero, must have been said ten times. Was it ever important as nine versus eight or ten? No.

The multiple POVs did help to hide who the killer was. Everyone had a secret, and some were hiding things you didn't expect them to be hiding. There were only a couple of clues as to the identity of the real killer, and they were completely swamped in the myriad other details, most of which were completely irrelevant.

I found myself irritated by the end, in which one murder seems to remain unsolved. The way it was handled left Gregor seemingly apathetic again, and the cops incapable of a five-minute Q&A with the kitchen staff in order to clear it up. There is certainly implication as to who committed that murder, but I didn't see any reason for it not to be looked into. The author just let them get away with it.

The writing in this book is either exceptionally long-winded, repetitive and boring, or it's operating in a meta-level where its very prose addresses and mirrors the rarified atmosphere in which many of its elitist characters seemed to live and breathe. I honestly can't tell, not having read any other books by this author. Either way, I'm disinclined to search further.

2 of 5 stars.

Review for Roots of Murder, by Janis Harrison

2010-12-18T18:26:00.000-08:00

A cozy small-town murder mystery centered around flowers. Not really gardening, as the cover states.

Bretta Solomon has recently lost her husband. She runs one of the small town's flower shops with a friend named Lois. When her flower supplier, an Amish man named Isaac, whose brother bought Bretta's family farm in the next town, dies under mysterious circumstances, Bretta is both saddened and alarmed. Isaac's brother, Evan, begs her to find out what happened, and Bretta is pulled into a mystery where half the people involved are Amish, with customs she doesn't understand, and the other half have their own host of secrets.

I loved the characterization in this book. Everyone from Bretta, who can't open the door to her old bedroom she shared with her late husband and face the memories inside, to Leray, the redneck who wants in on the flower industry, to Margaret, the quiet woman who scavenges for pumpkins and subscribes to an Amish magazine to keep in touch with that part of her community, really stood out as unique and individual. I also enjoyed some of the minor characters: Sam, Cecil, Cleome and Lois. Everyone was vivid.

The plot felt a little simple, in regards to what Bretta did to learn who did what, etc. The actual killer and their motive was well done, but it was ridiculously easy to see coming due to some poor foreshadowing. Bubbles' intro into the story felt highly random, and yet since it was there, it couldn't be random, so overall the Bubbles story line felt forced. I highly enjoyed the side-plot that dealt with what Isaac had in his grow house, and the glimpse of Amish life was well-presented with both pros and cons that realistically affected the characters.

The writing was very good. I enjoyed the clear description that took time to involve me fully without making the plot drag. Small details were effortlessly included throughout, making every setting vivid. The details of running a flower shop and of the Amish characters' lives were made both informative and interesting.

4 of 5 stars!

Review for An Ice Cold Grave, by Charlaine Harris

2010-12-18T18:23:00.000-08:00

Jam packed with spoilers!

Harper can sense the dead; it gives her an odd job, where she travels the eastern half of the US, helping people locate their dead and/or telling them how those dead passed away.

In this third book, Harper and Tolliver head to Doraville in January to find a missing boy. Instead, they find eight, who were gruesomely tortured and killed by a pair of sociopaths. And they sleep together.

Yeah, wait, what?

I feel like the author tried to push too many envelopes at once here, going for graphic child murders and near-incest all in one short book. Were we not supposed to notice the squickiness of Tolliver's and Harper's sex scenes (yes, plural) because we were distracted by the horrific assaults on eight young teen boys?

Again, the character of Harper is the only POV we get. I think that really hampered the plot of this book, because it made Harper have to do all the work herself. The last half of the book is, again, H&T trying to leave town, but being restrained by the authorities. Into that situation, add Harper's odd desire to wander among the book's settings, revisiting places she's already been or characters she's already seen. Some of these scenes actually had use. But were the others a smoke screen? I can think of two entire scenes where nothing was learned or accomplished aside from noticing that the plot was starting to drag.

I did appreciate the plot not being overly formulaic in regards to who the killers were. I was treated to an overload of uncertainty on Harper's part, combined with a lot of details that might or might not mean a thing. Together, that completely muddied the waters. But again, the last few dozen pages of the book felt rather aimless.

Harper's character again can't get past her past, to make a bad pun. She constantly bemoans her past home life with Tolliver and their other sibs, and how she needs to use the gift that the lightning gave her before it goes away again. She comes across as unable to focus on her present situation (despite what happens with Tolliver) and defensive about her job, whereas in book one, she seemed quite all right to let it be what it was.

The sexual encounters with Tolliver were abrupt and creepy. There was very little lead-up at all. After all the work that the author put into making their relationship half-business, half-sibling, this switch to romantic love feels as abrupt as having someone flick on a lightswitch when you're trying to light some mood candles. Utter failure. Previous sexual encounters in the series occurred off-screen, but here, we're treated to some very enthusiastic foreplay on a few different occasions. It feels like the author has been building to this scene for three books, yet failed entirely to remember the emotional side of her characters. They apparently think about each other safely in their heads, in a "but he's been my brother for decades!" sort of way. Then they have their first tryst. Then they decide, oh, now we'll just tell everyone we're a couple. Never mind that they'd built their reputation as a brother-and-sister team! I can't imagine they'll get many clients whose family trees branch after this. After all the poking fun at hillbillies Harper did in book one, it seems disingenuous to take these familial characters to this place in their relationship.

On that first tryst: I see that as a major plot failure. Not for what they did, but for what they weren't doing. Before that, they'd headed out to a location where they met a young boy who told Harper to come back and find him soon. He didn't have time to say any more. Harper and Tolliver are chased away, but instead of seeking a way to locate the boy to see what he wanted, they go back to their cabin and screw like rabbits. While they're doing this, the poor boy is committing suicide. It's never explicitly mentioned, but that's the timeline, and it's just one more creepy part about this book. Afterward, it's clear that the boy needed to die for the plot to progress, but "let's have a not-really-siblings love fest" is about the worst plot device I can think of to distract the reader while that happens.

The writing was filled with repetition, in concepts revisited and in overexplained ideas and actions. The voice of Harper is distinct, but while it is constant throughout the book, it's depressing and remote, and caught up in its own replaying reel. It's like listening to Rousseau's distress signal on the LOST island for sixteen years, and about as interesting.

I don't even want to know what happens in the next book; this one was just too creepy and disturbing. 2 of 5 stars.

Review for Grave Sight, by Charlaine Harris

2010-12-18T18:17:00.000-08:00

I grabbed this at the library, having never read any Sookie Stackhouse or anything else by Charlaine Harris. The pretty pink cover art made me think it would be a cozy mystery, but...no, it's not really cozy. Despite the fact that I don't like first-person POV books, and I'm tired of female characters with "boyish" names, I did enjoy this book enough to keep reading.

The plot, following Harper and her stepbrother Tolliver as they become embroiled in the secrets of a fundamentalist town in the Ozarks, was presented with few hiccups. Harper's ability to sense the dead from a distance brought her to this town to search for a missing girl, whom she finds pretty quickly. And that's when the trouble starts. Various long-time residents to the town have their own secrets, which Harper can't guess at, leaving her bouncing from one angry face to another.

The secret of who murdered whom and why was, unfortunately, not well concealed for me. There was a nice dearth of hard fact, making it impossible to say for certain what had happened until all was revealed. But mysteries are by nature formulaic, and with only X number of characters and plot arcs to choose from, I had motive pegged halfway through. I couldn't stop reading, though, due to a need to learn all the details surrounding the incidents.

Sex was toned all the way down to happening offstage, though it was present in more than one story arc. There was minimal swearing, though the F-bomb presents itself here and there. Yet, always in character and for good reason.

The characters were generally presented very well. Most every one had a full, rounded feel to them, from the hussy waitress to the chilly socialite. The two that felt the most forced were Hollis and Mary Nell: plot direction showing through, methinks.

Some of the characters reacted with a black and white, good vs. evil response when they learned what Harper's ability was. Others were presented as unaware, and their normal personalities were allowed to show. The only character besides Tolliver who seemed to accept her ability was Hollis, who inexplicably fell for Harper despite her description of herself as quite ordinary, and of Tolliver as the irresistible one. Shades of Bella? Their storyline never seemed to fit well with the rest of the novel.

I did have some trouble with the writing style. As I said, I'm not a fan of first person POV. Though the book's tone seemed consistent given Harper's background, I personally couldn't relate to her much at all, and the book came across as dim and emotionless, spattered with panic attacks that didn't feel properly grounded (ahaha, lightning joke) in the character's past (fear of lighting, I get, but fear--nay, full blown panic--of being without Tolliver was never explained to my satisfaction). Contrasting with that, every other paragraph seemed to suffer from telling instead of showing. There was a lot of concept repetition and a few repeated dialogue scenes in regard to her being struck by lightning. Honestly, I got it the first time. The fifth didn't give me anything new.

I was pleased to find merely a single error of omission in 263 pages: an end quotation mark left off some dialogue near the end of the book.

This book was enough to hold my interest as a free library loan, but there is no way I'd have paid the $23.95 price listed inside the front flap. Not for these particular 65K words.

3 of 5 stars.

Free Short Fiction

2010-11-20T01:31:00.000-08:00

e-Markets

The Bee Stone - Historical Fantasy @ Residential Aliens
The Healer of Kyras - Fantasy @ The Absent Willow Review
Angst Undying - Horror Spoof @ The Oddville Press (issue 5)
Rediscovering Home - Fantasy @ Black Lantern Publishing
Earthbound Exile - Fantasy @ Static Movement
Flowers for the Sentinel - Fantasy @ The Lorelei Signal

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Don't Blink - Magic Realism, Murder Mystery
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Kiss of the Infinite - Fantasy
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I'm Your Huckleberry - Western humor fairytale

YA Compatible

2010-11-16T19:08:00.000-08:00

YA compatible (adj): describes a story that, while written for an adult audience, does not contain the standard ingredients (sex, gore, profanity, etc) which would preclude it from being considered generally acceptable to Young Adult-aged readers.

I coined this term a short while ago, and find it seems pretty self-explanatory. (I'm claiming to have coined it because, having Googled it both alone and with several other writing terms, I got zero hits. Maybe I'll get one after posting this?) I'm using it to describe The Wicked Heroine, and it will also fit Oathen, its sequel. In fact, this generally describes my entire writing style, as I personally don't enjoy reading sex scenes, excessive bloody spatterings, and scatologically-enhanced f-bombs, and don't use them in anything I compose myself.

So if you enjoy a cleaner, freer reading experience, in contrast to the more gritty, darker fantasy stories out there, try my works.

I'm also pleased to present my Kindleboards-hosted novel profile page, where you can check out The Wicked Heroine, including reading a free sample, as well as view my other Amazon works. Many thanks to Harvey for his excellent generosity in creating these.

Rough Drafts: Cold-cocking Editors and Baking Novels

2010-10-25T10:27:00.000-07:00

I recently read a lament on a writing site by a young person who bemoaned her inability to write anything good, despite her great ideas. She said she was always stopping, erasing and rewriting, and that it killed her motivation. Nothing good ever got written--indeed, nothing got written at all--because what she was crafting was always worse than the other books she'd read.

If you have either of these issues--a bossy inner editor or comparison issues--then listen very closely, for I've got two things to say to you.

1. Engage in NaNoWriMo. Sign up, get in there, and write the heck out of your inner editor. Make him beg and plead for revision, and leave him supremely ignored. Make him pound his fists on the ground, and crank up your writing music. Make him leave you, slamming the door on his way out, crying helplessly that you never listen to him anymore.

He'll be back. And when he is, you can put him to work--after your rough draft is complete. With an enormous project like that to occupy him, all will be forgiven, and he'll be the one bringing you apology presents.

The original purpose of NaNoWriMo was and is to overcome the existential horror the average person feels when confronted with the task of creating an entire book all by themselves, as if they were someone important, like [enter fave author's name here]. In a nutshell, NaNo is "shut up and write". That's how the rest of those famous authors got where they are: they wrote. A lot. And you can't write hundreds of thousands of words every year if you're constantly listening to the depressing whine of an inner editor who won't let you complete a sentence without a revision or two.

Give NaNo a try. Yes, your resulting rough draft will be crap. And that leads me to my second point.

2. Rough drafts are always crap. Yours, mine, Stephen King's. I get the feeling that this is a "secret" which only some of us have learned, while others are caught up on the performance issue. Editing and polishing are basic, integral skills in our industry. Knowing what to change, and by how much, is a skill learned over time. As is the realization that what you're crafting simply isn't ready for public consumption until it's run its own gauntlet. Until you grasp the concept of the process, you really can't engage in it.

Rough drafts are the mushy dough you make after whipping all your basic ingredients together: salt, flour, oil = plot, characters, settings. Herbs and spices are your tension and crisis moments. But the recipe is by no means done. You have to knead it (rewriting and editing). It's also important to let it rest and rise sometimes, giving you a fresh perspective when you return to knead it again. At the end it must bake in the heat of an oven (here's your outside perspective, whether beta readers, an editor, a critique group. Probably not your mom. Definitely not your cat.) Only then, all pretty and smelling great, is it a finished product.

No one would take a bite of their doughy mess on the counter top and whine that it doesn't have the warm yeasty flavor of Emma-next-door's loaves. No one would sit in a pool of molten steel and complain that the car just doesn't have the acceleration to match Bob's. At least not for long.

So stoppit. These are not good writing habits. If you're going to produce a decent writing product, you need to focus--on writing it, and on improving it. The more time you spend worrying and comparing, the longer it'll take. And your audience can't read your works if you haven't finished them yet. Chop chop! We're waiting!

At Least I'm Not Bored

2010-10-10T13:24:00.000-07:00

NaNoWriMo is coming. NaNoWriMo is coming! Gallop through the night and warn the community! Get them on their keyboards and pounding out fifty thousand words apiece!

Or trying to, at least.

If you've never heard of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), maybe this is your year to try it out. Turn off your inner editor and pound out 50K words on any topic of your own choice, between November 1-30. The site has a word count validator (that doesn't save your content, so no worries!), and if you reach 50K words before November ends, and you get bragging rights for the year, Win badges for your blog or other sites, and a generous offer from CreateSpace, good for several months, for a free copy of the book you wrote! How fun is that?

I just started NaNo last year. Being paranoid about losing momentum and failing to finish, I drove myself like a mad thing and finished my 50K words in 7 days. I'm planning to have a slightly slower pace this year, after having tendonitis flare up in my right arm last time. I never did completely finish that mss, though that was due to receiving a publishing offer for The Wicked Heroine the week of Thanksgiving. Talk about completely distracting. :P

This year, I'm trying to complete book one in a trilogy (just like last year), but I'm also in the middle of editing Oathen, sequel to The Wicked Heroine. I've got beta readers and an actual editing schedule, which is helping me keep on track with it. However, I know something's gotta give. And I know it'll be the editing. Nothing sings a siren song as seductively as a new writing project! Luckily, I also know my own tendencies, and I'm giving myself through about February to get Oathen published.

My NaNo project is a fantasy novel called "Elements of Allegiance". This here's my mockup cover, to keep me inspired while I write. :D

Its trilogy is Seals of the Duelists, and so I'm calling EA the First Seal. You know, because everyone's gotta be all cool with what they call their series books. Tapestries, Codexes, Songs, what-have-you. So I have Seals. I think it'll look very slimming. :P

Interview with the Author: Fourteen Questions From My Character, Meena

2010-09-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

Meena sprawls on the overstuffed green chair in my living room and eyes me with irises that very nearly match her choice of seats.

“You ready?” she asks, in a voice that indicates she won’t wait if I’m not. This interview about my fantasy novel series, The Legend of the Shanallar, will proceed at her pace, not mine.

I smirk. She hasn’t changed a bit. “Bring it on.”

“First up, then: why did you pick the name Meena, for all the stars’ sake? Out of all the other, more interesting names I’ve had, I get stuck with 'Meena' everywhere but the flashbacks!”

“Are you sure you want this as one of your fourteen questions?”

“No backtalk; answer the question,” she growls, crossing her arms.

Ah, yes. I recall her difficulty with myopic authority figures from when she challenged the Temple Masters early in The Wicked Heroine. At least she acknowledges that I am an authority.

“I chose the name ‘Meena’ because it’s one of a set of names similar to mine that I like: Jasmine (my pen name, chosen after I wrote you, and for another reason, so set aside the Mary Sue-themed pitchfork), Yasmina, Azmeena, and Meena. Yours is just the shortest one, and the most prosaic, and I gave those to you on purpose to help you blend in. If I’d given you a fancier name, people would have remembered that about you when you passed through. So, as I wildly invent backstory here on the spot, it was actually you who gave yourself the name ‘Meena’.”

A slight tilt of her head is the only indication I have that she’s considering my words. Her long brown braid shifts on her shoulder and she sighs, perhaps in defeat, perhaps in frustration at my hopeless insanity.

“Two,” she continues. “For all your love of the fantasy genre, and the adventure sub-genre, you sure don’t give us many fantasy creatures in our novel. What’s up with that?”

I tsk. “Fantasy creatures are a dime a dozen, unless I go out of my way to invent new ones. I’ve done that before, and it’s fun, but they don’t figure largely in this plot. I’ve written about elves and dwarves and dragons, and everyone has expectations about them; they’ll be this way or that way. I like new concepts and creatures as much as I like the tried and true, and for an adventure story, I didn’t want to populate the world with trite little bad guys and helpful little good guys that show up for five pages and then disappear. This isn’t a Who’s Who of Fantasy Creatures.”

“Well that’s good. That sea monster was enough of a hassle.” Meena cracks a real grin at me. “Let’s see, question three: did you intend for the Vinten nation to be perceived as atheist? Because you know fantasy-loving atheists are gonna jump all over that one.”

I laughed. “I didn’t intend the Vintens to be atheistic, no. But I do see your point. A fantasy nation that worships no gods at all? Yeah. That’s not a large leap. But everyone who ever wrote a fantasy story seems to populate it with weak copies of the Greek or Roman or Egyptian or Scandinavian pantheon. Borrrring. I don’t particularly like learning a whole new pantheon of gods every time I want to read a single book. I’m sure there are stories out there I’ve read that have no mention of religion, or which feature only one god, or something. But for the purposes of this novel, I needed a heroine--not you, I mean Sanych--who was raised in a culture that emphasized knowledge and wisdom. I took away the distraction of gods just for a change of pace. As I said, I like the different.”

“Well, Sanych sure is different.” Meena grins fondly. “And on that topic, why did you think it would make a good story to write about an adventure that takes place largely at sea? Didn’t you think it would be interesting to explore by land? There could have been a dozen nations that you’d get to create exciting cultures for, but instead you sailed right past them.”

“Again, it’s the novelty of it. There’s a sea adventure in the middle of an enormous quest that spans three continents. It’s the scope of the thing. You all crossed two oceans and a sea to reach your destination. It was Far, Far Away. That was the point. But I did put in adventures on land in the middle of the sea: Salience? The Aldib island in Oathen? I see you recall them well. I knew too much sea would be boring, but some sea brings in that fresh breeze of excitement!”

“’Fresh breeze of excitement’? You are a writer, aren’t you?” Meena wrinkles her nose at me. “Do you have any idea how bad it smells aboard a ship after five weeks of storms, when your cabin-mate pukes after nearly every meal?”

“Is that the next question?”

“No, no, never mind. I really wish you’d given Sanych some other flaw than seasickness, though. Or a different cabin-mate.” She makes a moue of distaste. “Let’s see, where was I? Question five: How did you pick the physical appearances of Geret and Salvor?” Her eyes gleam at me knowingly.

“There was this one nerdy guy on Stargate: Atlantis. Just a minor character. He had black hair pulled back into a braid. It was so sleek and shiny! But he was kind of an arrogant jerk. I snagged his hair for Salvor, and I gave him hazel eyes because I just love to say ‘hazel gaze’. No, just kidding. I wanted his eyes to be a bit on the exotic side, yet not too much so. I made him a bit shorter than Geret: my brother’s height.

“For Geret, I went with the tried and true brown over brown, because that’s standard in Vint: dark colors. And for a relative of the Magister, it’s important that he maintain some sort of genetic continuity. To make up for his possibly boring appearance, I made him pretty tall. In fact, he’s the height of my husband, while Sanych is my height.”

“Rawr,” she growls at me, waggling her eyebrows.

“Stop that; I didn’t intend that as an indicator of future romance and you know it.”

“Mmhmm, sure.” She smirks again. “Then why did you make Sanych your height?”

“She’s only fifteen during the story. I wanted to emphasize that she wasn’t all grown up. Making her so much shorter than the others, even you, helped emphasize her childlike innocence, and contrasted well with her incredible mental capacity. I gave her the pale hair and big blue eyes not only to make her slightly more doll-like, but also as a contrast to Geret and Salvor. It was a very subtle hint as to her origins, or more accurately, where she wasn't from. Of course, in the denouement, she’s not any taller, but that’s beside the point. It’s the mental image I was trying to create in the minds of my readers.”

“All right, you might have a point,” Meena concedes. “Here’s another for you then: do you think it detracts from the storyline to have a grumpy heroine like myself in the story?”

“Ah, nice one,” I murmur. “It might, in spots, but I really tried to keep your bitterness to one or two words at a time. Small doses, you know. I did make up for it by giving you excellent fighting skills and a good memory for names and faces from your past. Overall, though, you’re the heart of this novel. It revolves around your past, and your present, and all the secrets you slowly reveal to your companions. This quest everyone’s on, it’s not really Geret’s. It’s yours. And you know there at the end, you gave a perfectly good explanation for your constant grumpiness. No one wants to go through what you did. You’re not only the ultimate heroine, you’re the ultimate scapegoat. The victim and the conqueror all in one. Your attitude is essential to the plot, and the novel wouldn’t be the same without that; not at all.”

Meena preens a bit. “I’m pretty used to being important; it’s true. All right, question eight: What in the deeps happened with Rhona? You totally lost it with her, didn’t you?”

I lower my head in embarrassment. “I so lost it with her in the rough draft. She took control of me and off we went! But it was good for the plot, I think. You know how tangled the interpersonal relationships got there at the end.”

“Not to mention limbs, sheets, fistfuls of hair--”

“Stop that. I don’t write erotica, and it’s not fair for you to start.”

Meena chortles; I clear my throat.

“Back to Rhona: initially she was just a brief character. When I decided she needed a larger role to play, I was excited about the continuity that would provide. And then, after the Aldib island chapter, I tossed off those last lines about the champagne case in her cabin, and then I felt I had to go on with that storyline. It mushroomed so fast it caught me by surprise.”

“Maybe a little unresolved issue, there?” Meena eyes me, her expression clever.

I glare at her. “No. A writer’s unresolved issues get edited out for being stupid and conflicting with the plot. Rhona’s plotline with Geret was my subconscious trying to tell me I needed more tension as the story drew toward the final act. And I think it worked out well in the end, after a whole lot of editing. That champagne case stays on deck, now. Although Rhona kinda got the short end of the stick.”

Meena taps her chin with a finger. “Question nine, then: you say you think Rhona’s end is less satisfying than the others', yet you gave it to her with the events that preceded the final conflict. Isn’t it you that’s less satisfied with the outcome?”

“Oh, that’s a sneaky question!” I say. “I think you’re right, though. I'm all about the happy ending when I read books. But when I realized I wanted to take her through to the end, I knew immediately that she couldn’t have everything she wanted; something had to give. And from that moment on, she became a bittersweet character to me. She’s so passionate; she fights, she loves, she’s loyal to her clan and crew--and yet she’s fatally flawed, as I wrote her. Her own imbalance does her in. No matter what perfect ending I wrote for her, she’d screw it up because of that flaw.”

“That’s harsh.”

“But it makes for good reading," I say, nodding wisely.

Meena nods. “You got me there. Let me switch topics for the tenth question. What’s with the detail in the fighting? Can’t you just say my arrow hit the guy, or that Geret and Salvor dueled excitingly for ten minutes?”

I laugh. “Not at all! Fights are fun! You know I took jujitsu for seven years. Our sensei required us to write up a notebook with exacting details on every art we learned: every throw, pin, punch, block and arm bar. Though I’m not an expert with a bow or a sword, I had to ‘dumb down’ my description level to make it less technical and more interesting. The fight sections are definitely geared to those who enjoy visualizing their fights when they read them. I know I’m one of those people. When you shoot your arrows, you have to feel what you’re doing. When the young bucks duel, where are their feet? What can they do next from where they’re at now? The fights have to flow naturally, while still sounding dramatic and interesting.”

“So you’re a realist when it comes to detail, even here in an adventurous fantasy novel?” Meena chuckles. “You’re nearly as full of contradictions as I am!”

“Well, it helped me build you convincingly,” I say, laughing.

“Convincingly, in what way? What do you try to make ‘realistic’, and what do you just pull out of your arse?”

“Is that the next question?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. Then the answer is, it varies. The things I usually like to get right are technology, geological features, ships, poisons--you know, things that can be proven to be as they are here in our world. Google is SO my friend when it comes to researching something I know nothing about. What I like to make up is the big picture. The maps, the countries, the cultures. Sometimes it seems so sad that so much is the same in fantasy worlds. A yellow sun, beef for dinner, shingles on roofs...yet I do that too; if it’s too fantastic, no one will identify with it. There’s a boundary there, between exotic and the wrong side of an inside-out galaxy slushee.”

“Well that’s a pleasant image,” Meena says.

“You think so?” I ask eagerly.

“No. That was sarcasm. Next question. What is, this, number twelve? Yes. All right, what is your favorite point in the story, and your least favorite?”

“Ooh. Let me think.” I pause, letting my mind flash over the entire plot. “I think my least favorite is the voyage between Yaren Fel and Ha’Hril. I basically entertained myself by making crap up while enough time passed to get to the next plot point. I didn’t feel I should leave it blank, but you know, I don’t think I’d miss much if I removed that entire chapter or two.

“As for my favorite...I honestly can’t pick. I love all the flashbacks. They are the second layer of chocolates in the box that contains your plot contributions. But there are a few scenes I really enjoy envisioning as well. No, I can’t list many of them; it gives away the plot. I’ll have to say the alley fight. That one point in the story begins a sea change in the way things go, and from that point on, there’s no turning back. I love points of no return.”

“Okay, here’s a geeky question: how do you think your sentence structure aids or hampers the telling of your story? Because I know you’re all into the compound-complex stuff.”

I laugh. “I admit it, I do love the long sentences. But I also know the power of the very short ones. I’d say I tend to over-connect my sentences, with commas, semicolons, and subordinate clauses galore. I know how to use all that stuff, so I do. It’s not always easy to read, though. That’s the problem. I get so into my description and flowing from one thought to the next, that the ease of reading is lost. And once I’ve lost my audience, what’s the point? I do try to edit the most monstrous sentences into smaller sections when I see them. I mean, if I get lost reading it, I know it’s too long. But really, anything over, what, three independent clauses, and I’ve probably gotten a little too strung out on my own awesomeness, there. Ahaha.”

“Ahaha,” Meena echoes, rolling her eyes. “I’m not saying I’m not awesome, as a product of your mind, but you’ve certainly got a good handle on subtle bragging, if I ever saw it.”

“You think so?” I ask, blinking my eyes innocently.

“I ought to swat you. If you were anyone but my creator, I would.”

I grin. “I know. Come on, what’s the last question?”

“What was the best part about this whole create-your-own-tales experience?”

“There you go again, with the hard ones,” I say. “Honestly, I have to say the anticipation. I’d think up these amazing scenes that I hadn’t gotten to yet, and with two in particular--Sanych at the farmhouse, and your attack by the waterfall--I was nowhere near to writing those scenes. I imagined them for weeks ahead of time, honing the details, literally vibrating in excitement; they felt so awesome in my head! The letdown came when I actually wrote them out; my fingers had ten little contradicting minds of their own, and those sections didn’t come out nearly as awesome as they appeared in my mind’s eye. Of course, that’s the magic of editing: I can change reality with a flick of my fingers. Both those scenes have been edited many times now. And while possibly not quite awesome, they at least make more sense than a green-wattled frabjous lizard burping in Old Kroilen.”

“A what?” Meena raises an eyebrow at me.

“Exactly.”

Meena lets her face fall into her hands. “Stars and darkness. How did someone as fabulous as myself ever emerge from that bizarre mucousy cavern you call a cranium?”

Far from insulted, I lift my chin in pride. “That’s my girl.”

On Focus

2010-08-30T08:40:00.000-07:00

My mind likes to veg out and get deep when I'm in the shower. Some of my best plot inspirations have happened in that oblong white stall with the built-in benches. But I also have other thoughts, about life, the universe, and everything.

Recently, I had a lens analogy pop into my head regarding my views on the world around me. "Focus" was a theme I used when training for my black belt, to help me work on certain aspects of my martial arts. It also encapsulated the whole martial arts experience in a way, so it's become a theme of my life.

While warm water sprayed around me, I realized that my focus has since split in two. One lens is telescopic (yes, I know you need more than one lens to actually achieve a telescopic effect - work with me), seeing far into the future, seeing the broad, wide scope of everything. My cosmic view. The other lens is microscopic, looking very closely at individual situations, and especially at myself and my expression through writing, examining and identifying flaws and faults so that I can make us both better.

Sounds mostly cool, right? The ability to look ahead at long-term consequences, as well as the ability to stop and focus entirely on one facet of myself. But I feel like there's a middle vision, a bifocal, normal vision of the world, that I've lost. I feel impractical, unreliable. I want to wear sleeveless tunics and gauzy pantaloons in January. I want to eat salad that's mostly kidney beans. And I don't mind if my daughter's socks are mismatched on purpose as a representation of her personal style. Don't expect me to pander to you with platitudes. I'm fully capable of a variety of more useful responses, and more inclined to use them.

So much of my earlier life has been unremarkable. I've forgotten years at a stretch. People's names escape me because I wasn't paying attention. Well, screw that! I'm going to take my lenses and turn them to the sun, and set my world on fire, then dance across the coals on bare feet.

BYOMarshmallows.

Bloody. Awful. -- Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule

2010-08-11T10:09:00.000-07:00

I have caught a few episodes of the "Legend of the Seeker" TV show, and I heard it was generally based off this book. I figured I should read it to get an idea what makes for popularized fantasy.

I can now say with full confidence that if this is what it takes to get a book turned into a TV show, I'm going to aim for the quirky recluse writer in the big house at the end of the lane, who wears foreign clothes that smell of odd spices and gives full-size candy bars out at Halloween.

Oh wait. I was going to do that anyway.

I have several issues with the way Goodkind constructs his book. I can only assume that the rest of this series will be in a similar vein, and I'm put off enough that I'm not going anywhere near them. Ever. I'm going to dig a hole beneath my star rating so I can go negative on this one. So many factors in the book made for a frustrating, irritating read. This is not so much a review as a rant, I'm afraid.

I didn't even read everything in this book. At one point, my husband (who had already warned me that this wasn't a "happy ending" sort of book - that's a personal definition, btw; the book does have a technically happy ending) asked me how it was going. I told him I was about ready to throw the book across the room because I'd read, in the last few pages, about the ritual killing of male Confessor infants by their father, at their mother's order, and the gang rape of young girls who had been lucky enough to survive their village being razed by their own lord's army in disguise, just to cement the pretend-enemy's evilness. I've no general complaint against violence in fantasy. Swords and spears FTW. But when you feel it's necessary to stoop to describing violence against children--not necessarily in detail, but in continual reference--I've got a problem with your writing. When you must describe the flying gobs of blood every time there is a battle, the crunching bones and collapsing faces, every time, then you've strayed into violence porn, and you're no better than a 70's mob movie at keeping me focused on the plot you're ostensibly constructing. Some writing style elements just shout too darn loud, and drown the plot out. Excessive gore for its own sake is definitely one of them for me.

Honestly, whatever happened to hinting? I DO have an imagination, you know. It's why I enjoy fantasy worlds in the first place!

After explaining my irritation at the author's choice of details, my husband took the book away and said, "Don't read past when they cross the bridge after the castle then." He marked the place for me, and I skipped a good hundred pages of what he summed up for me as the hero being tortured by sadistic women who are the embodiment of the black widow spider. I didn't feel the loss of reading about a man tortured into Stockholm syndrome in loving detail, just so the next part of the plot could happen. It's the "loving detail" part that irritates me. I've read some twisted works by a misogynist sociopath before--before I realized what he was--and this was little different. Probably due to a good editor. Such things one cannot simply scrub from one's brain afterward. Some things cannot be un-seen.

I have to say, though, that I'm sort of expecting this to be the worst book Goodkind ever wrote. It is his first book, and one usually gets better with time. In this book, I can see other issues with the plot's construction that irritated me on a less personal level than as a mom of living children.

Situational irony got Out Of Control in this book. Sure, you can have the magic box go one way while the heroes are still looking somewhere else for it. Fine. But don't write about it for eighty pages until they realize what happened! After about page 3 of "it's still at the castle, let's get to the castle", and knowing that it wasn't in fact at the castle, I was ready for them to figure it out. But nooooo. In this case, better timing of scene switching, and hurrying up one side or delaying the other so that it balanced better, would have made me much happier.

The other ironic situation was in regards to the traitor who handed the magic box to Lord Rahl. Richard, our hero, is so focused on it being either X or Y that he can't consider anyone else. Meanwhile, the actual traitor had been acting odd from the beginning of the book. It was a no brainer, and caused all sorts of unnecessary conflicts, encounters and confusion until they figured it all out. It added an extra 50 pages to the book to discuss all this uncertainty and its resulting clashes, making the plot limp along with a hop-a-skip to get to the end.

This world is not a happy one. The magic that exists here is based on pain. Sure, there are technically two magics here, and magic has two sides, as they say. That's a cool concept. But the way it's used in the book, I'm fully on the Westlanders' side: I'd move away behind a boundary to get away from those freaky-ass magic users and their bizarre "gifts". There's a fair bit of underworld crossover, and they're always evil/bad/deadly. No friendly ghosts here. No mention of anywhere else for the dead to go, so it seems everyone goes to hell here.

Magic spells, unless you're Zedd, seem to involve manipulating prepubescent boys into adoring you, then killing them with molten lead, or screaming naked in the forest with blood pouring from your wounds, for a couple examples. For Richard, his sword causes him agony every time he kills someone with it, and he can only seem to use it when his anger is merged with its anger, giving him a sort of subjective perspective of righteous rage. For Kahlan, she makes people fall completely in love with her, then commands them to do stuff she wants. Most of the time, this is dying immediately. The original concept of Confessing is so twisted from its stated intent (seeking the truth), that it seems obvious that the wizards who created the Confessors were either psychopaths, or horribly inept. It was nearly inconceivable that her Confessing didn't bring her a small army of fanatics, that she had to kill them all, except Brophy, who wasn't even allowed to remain human anymore. How is that any sort of functioning magic, that the confessed are apparently so obsessive that even the ones you don't order to die on the spot are so irritating that they need to be turned into wolves?

Seriously, Goodkind must eat spicy quesadillas before bed each night to come up with this stuff.

These characters he's created are not merely flawed. They're twisted, shattered, and broken. They're way beyond flaws that others can relate to; they've entered the realm of the grotesque. They don't stand out because their whole world is similar. It's not a happy ending sort of book because it doesn't seem to grasp the concept of happiness. Love (Kahlan's magic) is twisted to bring death. Righteous anger is twisted to become Richard's Seeker magic, and he can forgive people for their actions with it too, but only by killing or hurting them. Rahl is a complete basket case, with the constant licking of fingertips and smoothing of eyebrows, and he's clearly psychopathic...in loving detail. He employs lots of evil people (Demmin, the Mord-Sith) who also get to do evil stuff in loving detail.

It's not the evil I mind. You can't have conflict without evil. You can't have a gripping story without conflict. It's the loving detail that irritates me. I'm generally in favor of free speech and against the banning of books, but when the intent gets out of hand, I'm not cool with that. There are in fact some things that should not be reveled in. Concepts are important for grasping. You can't deal with evil unless you know what it is. But this book reads like a low-key bacchanal of evil fun, where the heroes cry quite a lot, after proclaiming they never cry, bleed more than most books put together, and everyone seems to get tortured or lost or terrified at regular intervals. It's just a bit much, all around, like the volume got cranked to 12.

I've read worse, so this gets a -3 of 5.

Review for The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown

2010-08-01T14:35:00.000-07:00

Yeah yeah, I had to read it. I had to see if it was up to the hype about how horribly it stank, and if it was on par with the crazy schemes and intricately knotted plotwork of Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code.

I have to say, after reading, that it wasn't quite, and it wasn't quite.

Overall, the book just wasn't quite.

There were three plot twists/hidden details that kept this plot going through 133 chapters: who Mal'akh is, why Sato is so adamant in chasing Langdon around, and where the Lost Word is hidden. Because you know there will be a real place with a real thing in it; methinks the symbologist doth protest waaaaay too much about it being metaphorical. Come on, that's totally not a spoiler if you've read anything else by Brown.

I'd figured out the first and third far sooner than I'd have liked to, so most of this book was me waiting to be proven right...and reading a lot of details about Masonic art around Washington, D.C. Sigh. The second twist was so much less than earth-shattering, it was the opposite of irritating: that's right, it was boring.

I'm also not a fan of reading detailed descriptions of rituals that I don't understand. Rituals are meaningful only to the initiated, so it's a sequence of meaningless events to me. If you're not going to explain what the parts mean, why explain the details? Argle. But alas, I forget that Brown enjoys working details into any crack he can get them to fit.

I do, as a puzzle maker, enjoy Brown's interconnectivity within his plots. The way the magic square plays its parts in the beginning and in the end, and the concept of the symbolon becoming a reality in the pyramid's numerous puzzles, were fun to read. It makes me wonder how long he had to search before he found a series of facts that gave him enough layers that he could use it in his plot. An example in no particular order: Benjamin Franklin - Franklin Square, the address - a Franklin square - an order-eight Franklin square - The Order. Etc etc. Pyramids and symbols everywhere! The constant mention of ancient symbols throughout the architecture of Washington made the city take on a truly exotic feel, as if there were two cities there, rather than one. Sort of like the way London has Diagon Alley, but you just don't notice it unless you're the right sort.

The city Brown presents is the coolest part of the book. The philosophy which he gives to the Masons to protect and espouse, which is that there is a wealth of secret knowledge hidden in plain sight among numerous ancient writings that survive to this day, isn't surprising or astounding in any way. That these books have survived exactly because history's brightest minds have sought to decipher this knowledge over the centuries is kinda cool, despite the tang of self-fulfilling prophecy.

I guess the book is sort of a letdown on that end because it doesn't show me anything I didn't generally believe possible in the first place. I'm not into the concept that the earlier civilizations on this planet were dumber somehow, or not interested in the world they lived in. It makes me chuckle when everyone acts all astonished that archaeologists find a simple computer from the Roman Era, or a currently untranslatable document (Voynich, anyone?)full of details no one can fully grasp, or astronomically accurate stone buildings built thousands of years ago. I mean, come on. These people didn't have American Idol and iPods to distract them. They were busy thinking crap up! So yeah, I'm down with our ancestors having figured out a lot of deep thoughts. I enjoy trying the same from time to time. I don't see how this is a big deal. Are there more sheeple in the world than I thought? Maybe in this day and age.

Most egotistical sections: the parts where Brown works scenes into the plot that refer to the controversy and success of The Da Vinci Code. Yes, that's right: scenes. Plural. Hilarious from a "dude, you can't be serious" point of view. Puts me in mind of Clive Cussler's insertion of himself (or at least a character with his name) into each of his Dirk Pitt books. Although I must say the Clives were written in with more fluidity and less plot disruption...possibly because no one ever accused Cussler of revisionist history. Even though that's what he inadvertently, anachronistically did with Raise the Titanic! I still can't get the screwdriver-in-the-eyeball scene from that novel out of my head. Thanks, Mr. Cussler.

Biggest jolt out of the story: the weighing-the-soul experiment. Duncan MacDougall's experiment in 1907 (weigh a man right before death, and right after death; do math) seemed to reveal that the human soul had a miniscule but measurable weight, but his experiments could never be confirmed by other tests and was considered anything from deliberate attention-mongering to hopelessly inaccurate science to downright ridiculous. Brown decided to use this experiment, ramped up by a hyper accurate scale, for a plot device at the point in the story where someone is shown to die. That's the only reason it's there. And then when things are revealed in the plot to not be what they seem (which was cool, actually, btw, as it was tied back to the plot in more than one way, in typical Brown fashion), that whole flashback to Katherine's experiment is proven unneeded. So...*raises a single eyebrow*...why, exactly, did that need to be there? To mislead the reader, of course. But it felt horribly heavy-handed. No other experiments were flashbacked to.

In the end, the physical side of Lost Word is revealed to be nothing mysterious at all. It's something everyone's seen, possibly handled and owned. More secrets in plain sight, which leave me with the feeling that the whole thing was a wild goose chase for something that wasn't ever physically lost. The downerside of this is that what the philosophical side of the Lost Word is, doesn't feel complete according to the Masonic traditions presented in the books. If you're gonna hide the Lost Word, at least hide all of the Lost Word. But no, they got all prejudicial. Was there really only a tiny amount of space to hide it, considering? I doubt it.

At least the bad guy died. There, now that's a spoiler...or is it? Mwa ha ha.

Overall, I have to give this book a meh. It had good detail, great characterization, and nice puzzlework, as I expected. But the reveals and plot twists were expected, anticipated even, and the end result was a book that was overblown on delivery. The final scene was incomplete, in fact, without the movie version's climactic music. Two and a half of five stars from me today. That includes a bonus half star for zero noticed typos. :D Mr. Brown has a great editor.

Review for Wheel of the Infinite, by Martha Wells

2010-08-01T13:42:00.000-07:00

Alas, I'm skipping books in Ms. Wells' chronological publishing order. Not my fault; blame the library system.

I started off Wheel with another enjoyable splash into another hugely entertaining setting. Monsoon season strikes Southeast Asia, it seems, with roads turned to muddy rivers, and jungles so dark you can't see a thing. I could practically smell it, having never forgotten my sojourn in Thailand a few years back.

Add to that a spirit of slightly antagonistic magic, a nature that fills with dark spirits when its rhythms are upset, and a cast of out-of-Empire guests who make the cosmopolitan flavor of Duvalpore complete. Oh, and a possessed puppet. *nods*

And we're off! Our heroine, Maskelle, has been cursed and banished, but now is being summoned back to her temples and companions: something's trying to destroy the world, and only she can stop it. This turns out to be more true than I expected, due to the deft plot detailing at work. There was a vague sense of details arbitrarily selected, of a spirit randomly out of its mind, until all at once, everything coalesced into excellent cohesion. I very much enjoyed the main thrust of the book's plot. It led me a merry chase through this or that side road, and in the end it delivered beautifully.

Alas, there were a few distractions along the way. The random attachment of Maskelle and Rian, seeming to hook up only so there can be emotional reasons for trying to save the other from danger, could have been explained better at the start to avoid the feel of an obvious plot detail. Again as in City of Bones, the otherworldly plane that arrives is described without attaching meaning, and comes across as arbitrary. If the details aren't important, why are they mentioned? It gives me the sense that there are meanings behind the appearance of the otherworld, but they're not to be shared with the characters. The characters of the current world are supposed to be left in the dark. But that wasn't mentioned either, so the one who was really in the dark was me.

Rian, for all his apparent hotness, didn't do as much as I expected him to. Rather, what he did was get into fights. I got the impression that Maskelle was keeping him around for his flesh rather than his brains, of which he exhibited less than usual. Unfortunately, there seemed to be little mystery in who the bad guys were; it was more a matter of proving it that delayed the plot. There was a sense of detective-novel around this story, combined with history-book from the continual detailed mention of the locations/directions of the canals and the locations of various rooms in the Marai temple. It felt like the author was looking over at a schematic, and was compelled to mention location because she could see it. Yet for all the mentioning, I was still lost half the time; there seemed little reason for me to need to memorize the order of the Marai chambers, courts and galleries. The second half of the book really felt weighted down by facts compared to the light and action of the first half. As if when the characters arrived in the city, they began to be surrounded by stone and darkness, and had to feel their way, confused, through the plot. And lastly, I kept picturing the heroine Maskelle as a Thai woman, despite her name not feeling right on my tongue compared with the other Empire names, because the author never described her skin tone, just her many braids (and why can't Thai have many braids? Huh?). What she does do is describe all the pale people as pale, but those pale people are all from outside the Empire. Yet on the cover art, Maskelle is portrayed as very dark-skinned. So are all of the Kushorit dark skinned like Maskelle, or are they Thai-toned (Angkor-toned?), to match the culture used in the book? It's a nice thought to imagine a world where no one notices anyone else's skin tone, but that's not the world I, the reader, live in. I enjoy the exotic flavors of mixed cultures. Just tell me what I'm looking at, so I can see the characters as the author sees them. All I'm asking.

The use of the sand art as a literal forming of the world was a fabulous detail. Pulled, I'm guessing from the sand mandalas of Tibet. Those just awe me completely, and imagining one turned to the task of drawing the world really held my interest. I enjoyed how it tied into the Adversary's fate; again, very well done plotwise.

Again, Ms. Wells blew me away with her cultural description and her setting. Top notch, 100%. Can not get enough of her settings. How does she do that? I have to read more of her books to figure that out. The character details were a bit flat, and the otherworld plane (is there one in every book?) was a letdown, but I'm still giving this three stars of five, because the beginning of the book was so incredibly strong that I couldn't put it down, even when things got dry.

Review for City of Bones, by Martha Wells

2010-08-01T12:52:00.000-07:00

Yea verily, I have stumbled upon awesomeness, and I am heartily pleased. Martha Wells writes the sort of settings that I aspire to: those rich with detail and culture, so well-captured that you feel the dusty heat of the road rising up from the pages.

City of Bones is set in the towering city of Charisat, in the desert, at the fringe of what remains of humanity. Water is so scarce, it is used conceptually to represent wealth. The immensely wealthy have so much water, they have a pool just to drown people in. They have plants and trees all over their grounds. The poor have trickling fountains where rent is paid by buying water for the day or week. Aside from any rent one might have to pay otherwise. The poor have dusty roads and ramshackle ruins to live and do business in. I was surprised there wasn't more corruption among the water talliers. Maybe they're all required to be nice old men who know when not to hang around and eavesdrop.

The main male character of the book is Khat, a non-human krisman from the Waste. He's got a few useful features that make him stand out to observant humans, as well as keep him alive in the monster-infested lava tubes of the Waste. An all-around useful fellow, Khat takes his lumps and uses his brains, and solves a few ancient mysteries as the book progresses. As a relic-dealer, he's got a more learned perspective on history and culture, and as an outsider, he brings unique views to his job and to the plot.

The main female character is a Warder named Elen. Supposedly weak in actual magic, she's labeled a whiz at political maneuvers and ninja moves. Sadly, neither of these made much of an appearance, and the rest of the time, she was awfully wilting-violet for a kick-ass heroine. Some of this was explained as a purposeful sabotage against her, and that was pretty cool, but I prefer my heroines to be full of awesome personality in some respect or another, and it took Elen the whole book to really discover who she was. This was great character development. But as a reader, I kept urging her to step out a little more than she did; couldn't shake the odd impression that she was pale with enormous, frightened eyes all throughout the book. Which is odd considering that the richest folk in the city (of which she was one) are supposed to be the darkest-skinned, due to their descendance from the Survivors, who had a lot more sun exposure (and a high interest in veils) in their past than the poor people who have to live in the shaded alleys and cul-de-sacs on the lower tiers of the city. More a mental projection on my part, I guess.

So, City of Bones. Where do the bones come in? Ohh, that was entertaining, and occasionally creepy. Burning bone fragments was supposed to reveal the future...but only if you burned the right sort of bone fragments. And creepiest of all, there is more than one interpretation of "right". I loved this part, although it felt a little too tenuous to get the book named after it.

On the flip side of the creepiness coin is the madness that using the Ancient magic can bring to the Warders. Everyone talked about this, and how people used to be executed after going mad, but that whole build-up throughout the story sort of petered out into a disappointment. No one even came close to going mad, and those who were already "mad" seemed to merely possess an alternate politico-magical point of view, as well as a few arcane details unbeknownst to our heroes. A letdown indeed after reading how Lois McMaster Bujold handled madness in her delightful The Curse of Chalion.

It was mentally entertaining to see this post-apocalyptic society, part of a network of trading cities based on water locations, and so fully enmeshed in ancient magic, reach out and embrace "ancient engines" and use steam power and air power for its wagons. It was like watching cyberpunk mesh with a scorched-earth Arabia. Clockwork fans FTW! (For the longest time, I kept trying to picture a circulating fan there, but eventually I realized it must be pendular in motion. Then I felt cool.)

Charisat and its culture were very solidly rooted in their history, and felt real and tangible in good ways. When the book approached the climax, however, the vagueness of the ancient engines exploded into the enemies' territory, and everything got a little psychedelic. They didn't all live in a jar of Tang, but it had that sort of unattached-to-any-reality flavor, and I prefer raspberry. I noted this same flavor in a later book, so I fear it is either a favorite of this author or a flaw in explanation, to present the otherworldly bad-guy plane as vaguely bizarre and leave it at that. If you're going to take me to another plane of existence, let's at least get the nickel tour, is all I'm asking. There was a lot of substance, with little explanation, and unverified information tends to leak right back out of my ears pretty quickly, when it's all made-up to start with.

I guess what I'm saying is that I just want to live in Charisat, where everything's made up and the points don't matter. Oh wait, that's Whose Line is it Anyway. Charisat is the awesome place with tiers, veils, Warders, water prices, and illicit coinage called "days". Sign me up!

Ms. Wells has the most awesome settings I've read in awhile, and they touch deep cultural levels, many-layered with meaning. For this awesomeness which I love to immerse my brain in and marinade overnight, I give this book four and a half of five stars.

Review for The Magic Thief: Found by Sarah Prineas

2010-08-01T11:44:00.000-07:00

Boy howdy. I loved this book. Very much the sort of fantasy I enjoy reading. By mistake, I picked up book three, while believing it was book one (not having a memory of book one's cover, I overlooked the significance of the word FOUND on the cover in my book-selecting frenzy - silly me). Once home, I realized by looking at the first pages that I had skipped searching for The Magic Thief and The Magic Thief: Lost, and jumped to the end of the trilogy.

However, happily, Ms. Prineas was kind enough to let Conn have the occasional flashback, and I soon fit right in to his world, gleaning relevant facts from books one and two. I had the oddest impression that the first bit of the story, where Conn lurks in the dark, waiting to pick Nevery's pocket, was perhaps a throwback to the beginning of book one. Whether or not this is the case, I did pick up a lovely sense of cycle and repetition that in no way overwhelmed the narrative, and instead gave it excellent touches of continuity and closure (see beginning and end of book for a good example).

The concepts in this book were amazingly entertaining. What is magic? Where does it come from? How do cities begin? What is Arhionvar, and what is its motive? Why has Wellmet always been so divided? (this wasn't ever stated outright, and might have been touched on in earlier books, but there were plenty of delicate hints in this book to make me believe that there was more than just a cultural divide where the river flowed)

While Conn is the youngest character in the book, he's crucial to the plot, not least of which is in his interconnectivity between various disparate groups of adults. Without him, they'd never speak to each other or learn different perspectives. He is the medium through which the book's plot unfolds, and he personifies communication, despite the fact that he's notorious for not speaking at all.

Conn's character was in full flower in this third book, and I found him amazingly consistent and true to himself. This is a strong point of the author, I see, as her other major characters are easily recognized by their behaviour and attitude as much as by their appearance or location. Strong characters always make me love a book, along with brain-fizzingly awesome magical concepts and strong settings. Kerrn, Nevery and Benet were favorites. The little dragon, Pip, was the least developed, most likely because it couldn't communicate, and thus felt pretty random as an addition to the plot. It struck me as little more than a device to make Conn's magic sporadic throughout the remainder of the book.

The pages that were notes from one character to another were an entertaining addition, and I enjoyed seeing the characters' personalities come through in their own writing. Way to get around the single-perspective limitation that first person POV brings. Personally, I heartily dislike first-person for precisely this reason: it's so limiting, like a baldly artificial attempt to draw out the story simply by withholding information from the only character whose perspective the reader is exposed to. However, the connection with younger readers is fostered by this more direct link to a character's inner thoughts, so there is a positive trade-off. But it's my firm opinion that first-person POV isn't something an author outside of YA/MG/romance genres needs to use. (You see what I did there.)

Happily giving The Magic Thief: Found five of five stars, for including a great set of literary tools, and not overdoing any of them. Excellent balance, superb storytelling.

Review for Enchanted Glass, by Diana Wynne Jones

2010-08-01T11:23:00.000-07:00

I admit it, the cover art pulled me in on this one. While there's something familiar in the slightly-mischievous Harry Potteresque look the protagonist, Aidan Cain, is wearing, it was actually the visible colors pouring through the stained-glass window in the angled ceiling and wrapping around Aidan and the dog that made me grab this book. I can only assume it goes back to my love of all things half-scientific, half-magical: it reminds me of the Northern Lights, which I still have yet to see with my bare eyes.

With the appeal of the cover fresh in my mind, I cracked this book open to see what lay inside. I realized immediately that the inside flap text was slightly misleading: it portrays the central character as Aidan, but the first chapter of the book, and many others, are from the older Andrew's perspective. They are both main characters, and the plot requires both their large contributions to balance out the story.

I liked Andrew from the start. His history and its application to his current position as inheritor of Melstone House were enjoyable to contemplate. Clearly, he was the wizard of the story, in more than one sense, despite Aidan's magical abilities; Andrew, as the adult, was aware from the start of the importance of certain plot details, and grasped the significance of others as the plot progressed. Aidan, an entertaining and powerful character, is generally a boyish boy who plays soccer, meets the giant that eats the unwanted vegetables laid out on the shed roof every night, and rescues the were-dog Rolf from the clutches of Mr. Brown and his mysterious forces.

The book is populated with other highly entertaining characters, as well. Tarquin, the one-legged retired jockey, and his daughter Stashe (short for Eustacia, not Mustache, btw) were my favorites, but Mr. Stock and Mrs. Stock (no relation), the two staff members in Andrew's aging mansion, made a hilarious pair of curmudgeonly caretakers, and their oft-clashing Master Plans for Andrew and the mansion helped drive the plot in excellent ways.

The buildup to the reveal of what "counterparts" were, and why they were a problem, was nicely done. I was quite eager to see what they'd be and how they fit into the world of Andrew and Aidan, and I was not disappointed. The explanation and its subsequent manifestations (as well as explaining prior characters) left me grinning, and the interaction between counterparts became crucial to the plot.

The main thrust of the plot wasn't quite what I expected at the end, and I'm left with the curious feeling that this book will have a sequel. Either that, or the denouement didn't do its job. Most of the book follows the premise that Aidan is half-faerie, a son of Oberon himself. Oberon wants to kill him so he can't take over the faerie throne. Aidan's in possession of a wallet that magically makes money in the exact amount he needs, but Oberon and his minions can trace its magic. This leads to a final confrontation at the Fête, which is resolved, it seems, happily. And then, at the end, Oberon does a one-eighty and proclaims that he's not Aidan's father after all, and claims the boy's an...uncle...of Andrew's instead!

Let's throw some mud on old Jocelyn Brandon and label Aidan's mum a trollop all in one go, shall we, and then we'll leave Andrew on the doorstep with this knowledge at the very end of the book, unsure how to proceed. The end!

Heh. That feels far too much like reality just intruded into this lovely, exciting fantasy world. I can't figure why this was the preferred ending. It might manage to explain Aidan's gifts in that they come now from Jocelyn's bloodline rather than Oberon's. But it honestly feels like someone came in and jotted across the last page of Ms. Jones' manuscript, then submitted it to her publisher without her knowledge. It makes a mockery of the whole book, a case of supremely mistaken identity, and an unnecessary tale in the whole. Such an abrupt ending cannot possibly leave me satisfied. Perhaps that's my fault for not being a child of the British Empire, and not being in the proper target audience. I might be overthinking this, and there could be a cultural issue I'm missing. But personally, I recommend stopping reading on page 290 with the following:

"Oh yes," Aidan said happily. "Everything's all right now."

...and call it a good story.

I'll happily give this 4 of 5 stars, but a logical ending of some sort would have pushed another star on there. Alas.

Review for Crispin: The Cross of Lead, by Avi

2010-07-23T21:35:00.000-07:00

Yes, Avi, one word. Like Cher, but with books. And possibly fewer drag impersonators.

Not quite sure where my age-target-group compass is pointing (suffering from Jack Sparrow's undecided compass, perhaps?), I checked out a few YA books from the library a couple days ago. The first one that I read was Avi's Crispin: The Cross of Lead. The third book was on the new fiction shelf, but the library did not deign to carry the 2nd book of the series on its shelves (though it had about twenty of Avi's other books) at that time, so I just got book one. I can't abide reading the first and third books of a trilogy and not know what happens in the second. Drives me batty. I'm still wondering what happened in this one trilogy I read back in college, whose name I've completely forgotten now...

Ahem. The Cross of Lead follows the adventures of a young orphan named Asta's Boy, who soon learns that his real name is Crispin. He lives in a tiny English village in the 1300's, and has never been beyond its borders. Until his mother passes away, and suddenly the authority in the village, the lord's steward John Aycliffe, accuses him of a crime he didn't commit and puts a penalty on his head so severe that any may kill him on sight. What's a boy to do? He must flee everything he's ever known in order to try and save himself, carrying with him only a cross of lead that his mother used to wear.

Out in the wide world, Crispin stumbles across a plague-dead village from years past, and in it he finds a boisterous red-bearded man in a jester's cap. The man is loud and rough and pushy, and it's clear from Crispin's first hours of reaction to the man that he fears him to be mad, violent, or both. This part sort of took me aback, as from Crispin's POV, the man was horribly rude and possibly dangerous. He binds Crispin into his service, then berates him for being bound by his word.

But this was a clever trick by Avi, who had to let the world open up to Crispin by small degrees. Crispin, who had never seen the dress of the rich or official personages. Crispin, who had never seen a mummer's show. Crispin, who had never traveled, could not sew, could not make snares, could not read or write. Soon enough, I realized that Crispin only knew 150 people in all the world, and none of them dared to reach for such large and dangerous ideas as his new master, Bear the juggler did. Once we see that Bear is a visionary on the cusp of greatness, our fear for Crispin becoming either bait or breakfast are set aside.

Bear teaches him skills both practical (sewing, juggling, playing the recorder for coins) and social (where to look when you speak to people). As they travel cross-country, hoping to avoid Crispin's pursuers, they come to a city in time for a midsummer fair, only to find that their pursuers have come here as well. Much is learned and revealed through secret conversations and through chance encounters inside the city walls, and at the end, Crispin must step into his own and claim his place to save both his own life and Bear's.

You can't have a story like this without a bad guy, but they were pretty shadowy throughout the whole book. Much more was spent on Crispin and his unfolding new personality and skills under Bear's tutelage. It was made clear at the end that the bad guy was the bad guy because he broke his vow (for no good reason other than he was angry enough to), and the good guy was the good guy who (accidentally) dispatched him. Apparently, fighting is the answer in medieval England. I saw a couple more socially acceptable solutions to this one, including dealing directly with a couple of the other "bad" characters in a nonviolent way, but the author chose the fight and flight. It's possible that book two will deal with repercussions of not resolving the inheritance issue completely (at least in the bad guys' eyes). But the heroes did escape from a very claustrophobic scenario and made their getaway, so all's well that ends well.

No fantasy in this one, just straight historical fiction. A good, serious read with fun historical facts and details that really fleshed out the reading experience. I'll be happy to give this one a 4 of 5 stars.

Review for A Song for Arbonne, by Guy Gavriel Kay

2010-07-23T11:16:00.000-07:00

Third Kay book here. Seeing trends in his work over time. A Song for Arbonne was written in 1992, after Tigana and before The Last Light of the Sun. It's my favorite of the three I've read. It lacks the sing-songy run-on comma-spliced sentences of both other books (though they were much heavier and purposeful in tLLotS). It also manages decent characterization, and for the first time, I was well and truly attached to characters in one of Kay's books. Is this because I like French troubadours and the Court of Love from history? No, I don't think so. I think it's because, in this book, Kay comes much closer to the style of fantasy novel I enjoy reading: one without an overt agenda (Tigana) and with normalized characters and writing style.

I really enjoyed reading about Blaise (blaze, blasé...clearly the first) and his confusion regarding the Arbonnais way of life. I liked the fact that, though he was from Gorhaut, which was quite repressive to its women, he rejected his father's way of life (and this included, it seems). On top of that, he'd spent several years traveling as a mercenary before the novel begins, so he'd had many different cultural experiences to ameliorate his motherless, father-infested Gorhaut upbringing.

Yet he'd not been to Arbonne before, and so was much confused at the goddess-inspired woman's position in its culture. A woman ran the Court of Love, completely separate from the ruling Duke's position (although at one point, a Duke was married to the woman in charge of the Court). Not being raised with the goddess Rian in his life, Blaise managed to be mild in his opinion of her, rather than raging to the point of desiring religio-genocide, as his father is. An extreme motive for the plots of the novel, it nevertheless does its job, and manages to create a strong, unapologetic villain.

As tLLotS did afterward, this novel engages the older generation of characters as well as the younger, in a complex weave of mystery and secrets. A couple of the plot points seem baldly to be such--and both involve Lord Urté of Miraval, who came across as a not-quite-fully-developed character, despite his importance to more than one plot thread. But once more, Kay's mastery of culture, blending the historical with the fantastical, shines down on Arbonne with a blend of blue and white moonlight. The poetry, the songs, the attitudes, all contributed to a fully believable Arbonne (sans one thing, below).

And the magic was more understandable than in other books: the priestesses of Rian could do more on their sacred islands than off them, and some things were completely forbidden. I get that magic is, by definition, something mysterious. Otherwise, we'd call it science. But I really prefer knowing at least some of the avenues magic use requires, and Kay seems perennially inclined to the opposite. Alas.

Aside from my Lord de Miraval, the only other bit of the book that distracted me was the feelings of the joglar Lisseut for Blaise. She loves him, she loves him not. She loves him, she loves him not. And never tells him, nor acts on it in any meaningful way, ever. I was expecting a more formal approach to her emotional state, making her the female version of a troubadour in love with his courtly lady, writing songs to her beauty with the approval of his lord. But that never happened, it seems, according to her vidan at the end of the book. I was disappointed, and worse, I was reminded of Dianora from Tigana. The book started off with such a case of courtly love, ultimately involving Blaise in his mercenary capacity. It seemed only fitting that the book end with a similar case. But no, I was denied. Unless it was just too well-hidden: the vidan states that Lisseut was friends with Blaise and his first and second wives, and also bore a child whose father is obvious (this sentence kills off a poor character who comes into her own only at the end of the book; how irritating).

In Arbonne, love and marriage are two separate things entirely. Ariane, queen of the Court of Love, has a homosexual husband, so she sleeps with whomever she likes, and he does the same. Part of the plot's generational secrets stem from a character who did something similar, being married for politics. So it's possible that with Lisseut being from Arbonne, she'd be allowed Arbonnais ways in the court at Gorhaut after the book ends. But...how likely is that? Honestly? I couldn't decide, and Kay didn't make it clear she even got to live at that court as Blaise's troubadour. Which she should have.

I'm beginning to see that the way Kay treats sex is more as a weapon than as a gift between his characters. Couldn't guess as to why, but it's not my thing. As with Tigana, some of the sex in this book is used to dominate or repress or humiliate, and it's not a subtle thing, either in act or in the writing of it. It's meant to shock, to offend. All this sex belongs to Gorhautian men, those evil dogs who aren't interested in anything equal about women whatsoever. The sex in Arbonne is all consensual, though. Because they get women in each and every nuanced way. Or do they?

Okay, I lied. One further thing disappointed me about this book. In a land where the goddess is worshipped above the god, unlike anywhere else in the six countries, why do they still follow the same patriarchal political maneuverings in marriage?? (This popped right out at me because I got called on a similar issue by an equality zealot on a short story I wrote once) Why are the women of Arbonne married away from their families for political reasons regardless of love, if womanhood is such a valued, nay worshipped, trait? The more I thought about that, the less sense it seemed to make. The culture that Arbonne had was different in many respects due to its goddess worship - love and music being primary - but in the political sphere, it was identical. Why should a goddess keep out of politics? Should she stay in the cosmic kitchen instead? Or, apparently, the conservatory? The Duchess' daughter was the High Priestess, for sheep's sake. Yet Kay seemed either unaware of this gap, or incapable of altering this situation to fit his goddess-culture.

His...goddess-culture? Maybe that's the rub right there.

Most of the characters in this book were a joy to read, and the plot, while mostly straightforward, also contained plenty of intrigue and drama to hold my interest. But I must confess that this book only shone as brightly as it did after reading the previous two Kay books. There's not going to be enough interest for a second read.

I'mma go with 4 stars of 5 for this one.

I'm also highly entertained by the consistent flaws or stylistic variations I've seen in Kay's writing, which I've heard denounced as evil and a publishing-deal-killer countless times from countless mouths. Yet here Kay is, published, with numerous books to his name. What's the lesson here? Write what you love. Don't change what you write just because you don't think it will be published as it is. Kay's been published numerous times, and his distinct voice is read by thousands upon thousands of readers. I may not particularly be a fan, but reading and writing are notoriously subjective in taste. For which I am, as Kay no doubt is, eternally grateful.

Review for Tigana, by Guy Gavriel Kay

2010-07-23T10:11:00.000-07:00

It's me again. I'm testing my hand at reviews, if you didn't notice. It helps me keep a written log of my thoughts on certain elements of published novels, so that I can track what I see, what I like, what I want to avoid in my own writing. I've been reading fantasy books for twenty years or more, and like everyone, there are things I like to read and things I don't. However, now that I'm also writing my own novels, I see the need for certain elements, for what they do to a plot. So come along with me, if you like, and see what I find interesting in these books I'm reading.

Okay. Tigana. Let me start with the end. No, not that end. The Afterword, after the end. In it, Kay states that he had several threads in his mind combine to create the seed for this story (I read the 10th anniversary edition of this book, btw--never did figure out the cover art). The thing was, a couple of those threads weren't completely woven through the tapestry of the novel--they lay on top, exposed, obvious, and it kept distracting me, pulling me out of the story, every time he drew attention to them. Arrrgh! I hate that: pet peeve. It's hard for fiction authors to work up a properly-screening agenda-hider sometimes, and it seems to me that Kay has fallen victim to that pitfall here. He has, again, a glorious culture. I nearly want to move there myself...okay, vacation. But there were so many speed bumps in the narrative that I kept losing my place in the fantasy world.

A glorious culture, indeed. Based on Italian Renaissance history, it depicts the pitfalls of a culture that is so divided within itself that one section will not rise to the aid of another against an outside foe, simply because they do not like them. And thus they are conquered. The book follows twenty years later, as a few rebel elements try to throw off the yokes of two warring (er, yelling-across-the-room-at-each-other) sorcerers and reclaim their homeland.

In one instance, however, reclaiming their homeland is more historical than literal. Tigana has been erased from the memories of everyone who did not live there, and they cannot hear nor understand the term. The name has been changed, and those who still live there are mistreated terribly by their ruler, Brandin. After all, the Prince of Tigana killed his son. No matter that it was during an invasion war. Brandin's rage and punishment will not be halted. The problem is that the magic he cast in order to wipe the memory of Tigana from the land means that he has to live in the area for 60 more years.

Okay, you had me 'til that point. I was with you. And then he has to hang around for 60 more years? Sure, he lives waaaaay longer than regular people. But Kay portrayed Brandin as sympathetic from the POV of Dianora, one of his concubines. I realize people are complex, and Brandin's POV was made clear on the issue of his son. I just couldn't buy it. I chalk it up to a lack of background on his relationship with his son. The kid dies before the Prologue, for sheep's sake. There's no mention of what he, a younger son, meant to Brandin, other than the usual king-to-younger-prince relationship. I believe the entire Palm was meant for the younger son to rule, so that his sons could control two empires for him. So yeah, a bit of bitterness there. But he never went home to his queen to make more kids. There was mention of her not liking him for leaving to conquer elsewhere, and at one point she and her lesbian poet lover plot to kill him (we'll get to the sex in this book in a minute), so that probably wasn't going to happen. But then, neither did he take a new wife, kill the old one, or in any other way move toward having more kids in his new land. Until near the end. Twenty years later.

I saw what this was early on, and it irritated me. It's a case of Bad Bad Guy. The other sorcerer, Alberico, had it too. They're the most powerful magic users in the land. They've split the peninsula, half to each of them, and reached a stalemate. Then, they did nothing for twenty years? No spy networks, no assassinations on each other, no police states? Nothing. Their stagnation, especially Alberico's, allows the rebels to make far-reaching networks and coordinate right under their noses. Manipulate them into doing what the rebels want them to. The sorcerers are like oxen, it seems. Huge and dangerous if you're underfoot, but also slow and easily prodded. This slowness, smugness, arrogance, was the device Kay used to make the book long enough so the rebels had time to scamper about and get ready. The sorcerers mostly sat there and stewed about their own problems, either in the Palm or back home in their own empires. It was quite boring.

Dianora started out as an interesting character: she came to kill Brandin in revenge for Tigana, but found herself helplessly in love with him. She had a plan of some sort to get to where he was, and miraculously got taken there before she could decide what she was doing. How conveeeenient. She never acts on her original rage and hatred, though she spends a lot of time waffling--not about killing him, but about killing herself. I must say, however, that the first time suicide is an option, it has huge political repercussions, and would, in my opinion, have been the best way for that character to go out. It wouldn't have been good for the plot, however, so she had to live. Unfortunately, it seems she's taken with a maudlin attitude from that point on, and sees herself as fated to die, useless. It's this sort of character that irritates me to no end: one who can't make up their mind whether to act, and by waffling, advances the plot to its end by characters who know when to act. Arrrrgh! She started off so excellent, and then degenerated into fluff, much like Brandin and Alberico. It's the loss of what might have been that makes it to hard to accept her fate.

Okay, the sex. In the Afterword, Kay states that the novelist Milan Kundera helped him fuel his own ideas for a relationship between "conquered peoples and an unstable sexuality". It's an interesting theme, and one that perhaps psychiatrists have theories on. But the way Kay handled it felt clumsy, new, awkward. No, not the sex; he's written enough of that so that it went smoothly here. But the meaning behind it. He had to attach meaning to every sex scene, every mention of sex, throughout the book, it seemed, in order to further his theme. That part was awkward.

The book starts off with a teenage boy, Devin, who looks younger than he is. He seems to be constantly propositioned or panted after by homosexual men who live under Alberico's rule. He turns them all down. Then a girl who doesn't like him throws himself at him, giving up her virginity in order to protect secrets he finds out anyway--she lives in embarrassment and their relationship is very strained once the truth comes out. Once their team is assembled and they begin phase two of saving their land, all the homosexuals vanish (the brave Tomasso is murdered). It seems that when Devin and friends go to war, the policy becomes Don't Ask, Don't Tell. If you're going to paint a culture as a place where homosexuality is acceptable in public, don't hide it when war shows up. The war's not about sex.

In one of Dianora's flashbacks, it's revealed that she and her brother lived in Tigana's occupied capital, and that he was harassed daily, beaten even, by the occupying soldiers of Brandin. Yes, the Brandin she sleeps with later (Kay never describes their sex, though with her mentality, it should have fit his quality of "broken"). This desperate, hopeless situation leads Dianora and her brother to check into the Incest Motel for a few months before he flees the country.

The worst bit was when the team visited Alienar's castle. Alien? No, quite human. She's a dominatrix, or possibly a switch, and she nabs Devin for a night of twisted fun. Okay, fine, she's all alone in the mountains. But no. Devin has to go open his mouth as he's leaving, and bring up the philosophical implications of her behavior. Is now really the time, Devin? He hurt her feelings and left me wondering what the heck sort of book I'd gotten into. Though by then, I should have known.

On magic: there are wizards in the Palm, and they have power, though it seems to be different than that of the sorcerers. It's never explained, though. I like my magic quantifiable, unless specifically described as unquantifiable. This book had everything so vague that I had no idea what was possible and what wasn't. Some may enjoy that position, but I don't. Magic rarely showed up, too, so I had little time to try and piece its rules together. Lopping off fingers and proximity were key, though. At least for the wizards.

On romance: separated from sex because in all instances of sex in this book, none of it was prompted by love. I begin to believe that Kay doesn't do romance, but his characters do, and that doesn't work for me. The "proper" sort of relationships emerge only at the end of the book, once there is freedom to be had. There's no foreshadowing for them, however. Rather the opposite. One character has a dream, in the middle of the book, of her and a man in a field of flowers beneath the moon. That scene happens, but not with her; she pairs up with someone who suddenly loves her to death and never wants to leave her--except for another night at Alienar's castle. (Um...) Another pairing pops up out of the blue, implying that a working relationship and a willingness to kill yourself after committing murder are all it takes to spark that loving feeling.

Okay, I think I'm done harping. Don't get me wrong; overall, I did enjoy this book, but again, it was because of the immensely detailed setting and culture, and not so much because of the plot or characters. It made it difficult to get through, but since I'm reading with an eye to style and form, it made the story more interesting.

Fave characters: Alessan's mom (scary!), Catriana, Scelto, Rovigo, Alais. Hmm, this includes only one main character. Ish.

Notes to self: don't leave obvious plot threads hanging out, and communicate with characters re: love. Also, make awesome setting.

Three of five stars.

There. That should cover it.

Review for Guy Gavriel Kay's novel, The Last Light of the Sun

2010-07-23T08:56:00.000-07:00

Since I could not get my hands on the Fionavar Tapestry at the local library, I settled for a few of Kay's stand-alone works. I read this one first, since it seemed to promise Vikings. I read it as a writer, an author, a fantasy-maker, seeking to discover techniques and styles, that I might broaden my own scope. I was mostly not disappointed.

The story follows the fate of three cultures: the Anglcyn, the Cyngael and the Erlings, who have a long and complex history among themselves. It follows two generations as well: older and younger. I really enjoyed this aspect of the story, since it provided not only an instant history, but extra (hidden) meaning for the actions of the younger characters as well. Battles and escapades of 25 years earlier had direct bearing on the choices and importance thereof that the next generation made.

Also, there were faeries. And other old folk. Well written, in present tense, to reflect the lack of a grasp of time. Although I noted later in other books that Kay employs this present tense from time to time for average humans as well, so that sort of took away from this, but only after I had finished the book.

The setting and culture are, I believe, where Kay shines brightest. In all his works. He creates a deep, nuanced cluster of history, pulled from reality and altered with deft touches (no wonder he was chosen to edit J.R.R. Tolkien's works).

Where I found The Last Light of the Sun lacking was in characterization. In what I believe was an attempt to show a stoic group of characters, eaking out their lives at the northern edge of livability, Kay refrained from letting the reader into the minds of any of them. Their thoughts are not included in the book, unless narrated so. The gap between "Bern thought X" and "'I can't get to X without it!' Bern thought" means a great deal to me. If I am not allowed inside the characters' skulls, I care much less about their fate. Yes, that's just a quirk I have, but it lessened my care for the climax of this book quite a bit. When characters are overshadowed by their culture, they take on less significance. Just a collection of dust motes on the breeze. Don't pay them any mind. In another second, there will be more, no more or less interesting.

The romance, or lack of it, didn't shine as much in this book as in others. However, when coupled (ahaha) with the lack of internal dialogue, it made the pairing of Alun and the faerie seem pretty random. Like, "Let's pair them up now so she can be useful later in the plot". Sorta stood out. On the other hand, that lack of internal thoughts made the casual attitude toward familial relationships all the more stark. That part was good, as it fit with the culture and plot. But it seems there were unintended consequences among romance and characterization as a result.

Lastly, a note on voice. Man, Kay pulled out all the stops on this one. Nearly every other sentence throughout the whole book was laden with a chanting style of run-on sentence, broken only by commas, it led the reader onward, it showed them the next move, there was a rhythm to it like the Sagas of old. You see what I did there, no doubt. Yeah, the book is all like that. Now, oddly enough, Kay seems to favor the comma style of run-on sentence in other books as well (at least I'm assuming that it's on purpose). But here in tLLotS, it stands out as an obvious tribute to ancient Sagas. I felt I should chant the book aloud, perhaps while holding a mistletoe sprig under the two moons. In the end, while a clever use of voice, it did detract from my enjoyment of the book, simply because it was everywhere, and because I don't make a habit of reading chant-laden Sagas. I do admire it and give style points, though.

Overall, I'll give this three stars of five for my enjoyment of the novel.

Leaving the Stables

2010-06-08T16:00:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since my last post, but in the immortal words of Nicholas Cage, "Well gosh, kind of a lot's happened since then."

In mid-April, my book came out in print worldwide through my POD publisher. In late May, we dissolved our contract and went our separate ways. In June, I began publishing my own book, in ebook and paper formats. The ebook versions are available for purchase on Smashwords and in the Kindle store (page in progress). Currently, the print book (through CreateSpace) is in process: the proof copy is being mailed for my approval.

For any of my readers who might want to pursue this angle themselves, and in case I forget what I did when it comes time to prepare my next book, I'll give a bit of a list here.

1. I got Edward C. Patterson's free ebook on how to publish to Kindle and on CreateSpace. Followed the ebook formatting hints to the letter, since it specifically discussed how Kindles read ebooks. E.g. double-spacing for Kindle is unnecessary and annoying, as the Kindle doubles all spaces. Good stuff like that really helped, since I do not yet own a Kindle.

2. Downloaded a 6x9 word template from Lulu.com and copy/pasted my manuscript into it, once it was cleansed of formatting issues. These are so handy! Thank you, tinhorn. The pagination is completed for you, and if you alter one chapter heading in size or font, they all change. It's lovely. One note: CS has a handy calculator for inside margin width: if your book has over 400 pages when it's sized and ready to go, you'll need to increase that margin to over 0.875 inches. My Word didn't have .025 increments, so it's set at 0.9.

3. Converted the .doc file to .pdf. First, I tried Lulu's free converter, and it went off without a hitch, until CreateSpace got back to me saying I could order a print copy as is, but the file was only 151 dpi instead of the recommended 300. Now this might not be a big deal for text, but I have detailed maps with small text on them embedded in the file, so I chose the safe route and had the file converted by someone familiar with Adobe.

4. Cover art! Oh, my brain hurt on this one. I created a lovely cover in GIMP (and kept fiddling with it), but the open source program doesn't have the ability to save in .pdf format. I'd copied the pixel requirements from my previous cover, also printed through CreateSpace, but most of the free PDF converters I downloaded from the internet distorted the file or put white on the sides when I selected 11x17. One managed to do a great job, though: Convert Image to PDF left only the tiniest of white lines on the right side and bottom. So I uploaded their version as the cover art.

Next time, I'll download CreateSpace's template and size accordingly for it. This was a headache and a half. But I'm always uncomfy during a learning experience. It's half the reason I do stuff; to get out of my comfort zone and spite my comfiness.

Ed's book recommends the Lulu cover wizard, which suits his style of cover perfectly. But it doesn't allow for a full-cover upload, like CreateSpace does. You can do front cover and back cover yourself, and upload those, so you don't even need to worry about how wide your spine is (which is critical to sizing), so it's way easier to use.

But CreateSpace will tell you how wide your spine will be. In fact, Lulu will, too. And CS's template has guides so you know where to put your spine art/text. So in the end, it's just a matter of preference. The book series I'm doing now will have full-cover wrap-around art, so I'm restricted to CreateSpace's uploader for these two books. But I have a fascinating series of 8 fantasy books in my head that lend themselves extremely well to single-color spines (but I'm not telling why), so I think I'll let Lulu do the PDF conversion for those books for me in the future.

Other details of note: CreateSpace has a Pro Plan that authors can sign up for, for a one-time fee of $39.00, and $5 per title per year. It saves me $4 per book I order for myself, which means that if I order 10 books this year for whatever I want, I'll already have earned my money's worth. So yes, I signed up for CS's Pro Plan, and I recommend you do too.

Related to the Pro Plan is CS's EDC: extended distribution channels. I chose not to use any of them, because the percentage of the price they each take leaves me with a negative royalty per book. I'm fine for now with my print book only being available on Amazon. The ebook version is probably going to do a lot of the moving and shaking, anyway. But I could be wrong; I'm very interested in seeing the results of early sales.

Biggest benefit of publishing the print book myself is that I got to lower the price by $5. Five whole dollars! Since it's a Young Adult crossover book, I think that lower price will heavily appeal to the younger end of the spectrum.

So, this horse has left the stables and is romping around in the fields. I expect I'll get a little muddier out here, but you know what? I'm free. I'll take it.

In Which A Scottish Mastermind Exposes Her Fiendish Plan for Worldwide Ebook Domination

2010-04-15T11:54:00.000-07:00

Thriller writer J.A. Konrath has been on a roll in recent months with his exceptional success in the ebook-selling business. I only stumbled across his blog last week, but in reading his comments, I realized instinctively what he later said in this post. What he's learned, and what my penny-pinching Scottish-influenced upbringing taught me years ago, is that there are lots of people who will take a low price on an unknown product simply because it's low. Take the ebook phenomenon, for example.

They don't care so much that they don't know who the author is at first; if you're only charging them a dollar or two for a full novel, and you've got a strong blurb and nice cover art, some of them will try it. If you've written a story that they can really get into, they'll buy another book of yours, even if it's more expensive.

The way to a reader's heart is through his or her wallet. But only if you use a small hole.

To this end, the fantasy trilogy I'm working on, with the working title of The Truthfinder Series, will very likely start making its appearance online for exclusive ebook purchase starting late this year. And it'll be cheap. Anyone who looks at the difference between costs associated with print books vs. ebooks will see that pixels are basically free, as far as the production side goes. The people who are freaked out by this are those who are already paying lots of money to make or buy paper books. You've heard about how traditional publishing companies want to set the price of the ebooks they're distributing? They're keeping the prices competitive with their print copies, because they're afraid they'll lose customers from the print side, and that they'll flock to the e-side. Which would probably happen to some degree, even though there will always be those who adore the feel of a paper book, the smell of ink, and the physical sensation of turning pages. Or, as in my case, those who get headaches from too much screen time. Alas, it's true: I'm doomed to be a treekiller.

Those of us who write the books, well, we have all sorts of opinions about the two media. Mine is simply to get my stories out to those who enjoy reading in my genres. I have no illusions about getting rich doing this. I don't want to charge people a lot of money and have that put them off buying. None of us are happy that way. But if I lower my price way down into the bucket and offer my product in various worldwide e-markets, such as Kindle, the Sony Digital Reader, Kobo, Apple and Barnes and Noble, there will eventually be people who take a chance on it, even if they have no idea who I am.

And there's nothing you can do to stop me. My plan has already been put into motion, with works available at Smashwords (in process of uploading to Sony, Apple, BandN, and Kobo) and Kindle, and more on the way.

Mwa ha ha haaaa.

Kindling an Interest in a Broader Audience

2010-04-04T13:08:00.000-07:00

I'm trying an additional outlet for my writing, as of today. I've uploaded my first e-book exclusive to Amazon's Kindle store. Now, it probably won't stay just at Kindle. Other e-book markets are on the horizon. But I already had an Amazon account, and, well, baby steps, right?

I still prefer to read hard copy books because it's easier on my eyes (annoying screen contrast can cause headaches), but Amazon's Kindle for PC does have a couple great points in its favor: downloading it is free, and there is a lot of interesting content on Kindle that I'd not find in a traditional bookstore.

Honestly, I didn't even know about Kindle for PC until I bought this new laptop, and it just automatically asked me if I wanted to download it. Talk about customer service. I thought about it for a couple days, then went ahead with the download and poked around the program a little. I had zero ebooks to put in it, but I've remedied that already.

As far as whether I'll ever buy an actual Kindle reader, I can't say. I mean, I don't even own a cell phone. Carrying around electronic devices is still foreign territory. Unless it's a GPSr, helping me home in on a geocache in the woods or a massive strip mall parking lot.

But for those of you who are like me, and not really into expensive, easily losable/breakable electronics (some lives are more chaotic than others!), you can still get all these amazing books and stories on your home computer. I'm all ecstatic that Amazon's doing this; it's a great way to encourage good will and reach a larger audience for their products.

Like mine. Or yours.

So: first story up is a novelette, just shy of 15K words, titled The Map Dance. A historical fantasy full of magic realism and poetry, it's a puzzle just waiting to be solved.

It's selling for $0.99 because it's quite a bit longer than my short stories, which I'd either put up for free or bundle for this same price. I've another novelette to add here in a bit, and then we'll see what else I want to put up.

This is fun!

Self-publishing: A Record Already Broken

2010-03-10T14:30:00.000-08:00

I've got good news and bad news.

First, the good news: you can pre-order copies of my book directly from the publisher, here: buy the book They accept PayPal and ship to anywhere in the US. If you don't have PayPal or live outside the US, the book will be uploaded to Amazon and other sites once it's received its final approval in a couple weeks or so.

Now for the bad news: I've said this a couple dozen times today alone, and it's already boring my right hemisphere to death. Oy. The little gray cells want to reach across the corpus callosum and rewrite the pitch every time, to prevent themselves from suiciding. How do I survive doing this for...ever? Gulp!

Yes, that's the kind of broken record I meant. The kind that you turn into when you do your own advertising, because you self-pubbed your book. It's been so long since I actually wrote this book that I'm getting an odd logic going in my head right now: I tell lots of people they can buy my book, and if they do, I make a couple of dollars every time. This feels too easy, and weeeeeird. Why the detachment from the creative phase? I'm not sure, but I think my brain hemispheres are taking turns dominating my life.

I was an English Lit major in college. That's where all the writing comes from--the inspiration, imagination, the ten-hour jam sessions at the computer. My minor was Business. I guess my left hemisphere thinks it needs to step up and participate in this now-paying hobby I have. And who am I to say no to my left hemisphere?

Besides, while it's doing that, my right hemisphere can be off making crap up again.

Take a look at the link above; it gives a synopsis of the book as well as a free downloadable sample chapter. If it's to your taste, be among the first to buy this not-quite-yet-available book.

2010-02-11T16:03:00.000-08:00

I have a small round scar on my left wrist from where they pulled out the IV and sent me home with sepsis. The spot filled with pus for a couple days and scarred over. So did the other two holes in my skin. I might have died, but I didn't.

And a good thing, too, or I wouldn't have written anything that's been published. Okay, that's not true. I wrote "The Healer of Kyras" back in college. But it wouldn't have gotten published, so you'd still miss out on its quirky sequel homage to Ursula LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas".

I haven't posted any updates in awhile, and for that, I apologize. Self-pubbing a book, when working with an editor and a publisher through email alone, is time-consuming, I've learned.

On a high note, The Wicked Heroine is nearly ready for the printers. The inner layout has got a bug when saved from Word format into .pdf, but once we smooth that out, it should be all good to go. The cover art is complete, and we're just fiddling with alternate subtitle placement. Nearly, nearly there. It feels like I'm about to sneeze, but can't quite work up the expulsion yet. That incredibly tense moment of action, adrenaline, power, movement, frozen in time and extended, in this case, to two weeks and counting.

It looks good, the cover. The whole book. It's good. I am currently not sorry I wrote it, nor that I'm having it published through IFWG Publishing. I hope neither of those sentiments ever changes. It's probably not going to change the world overnight, but then things that do exactly that are usually apocalyptic in nature, so I'm all right with a slow buildup.

One of my first acts, once I get the book in hand, will be to mail a copy to the reader for Nathan Fillion's charity, Kids Need to Read. I got contact with the Development Director, Debbie Brown, to see if my book, which I classify as a YA/adult crossover, would be a good match for her needs. I sent her a link to the book's synopsis and when she got back in touch with me, she wasn't turned off, bored, or in any other way saying no. She invited me to mail in a copy when I have one in hand.

Go synopsis! That was the first thought I had. I'd written it in such a way that it didn't shoot the novel in the foot. Whew. I mean, for someone to chat you up out of the blue and say, "Hi, I wrote this book all by myself and I'm not being published by anyone you have ever heard of. Wanna hand it out to unsuspecting kids?" and then have a good enough opinion of its summary to say "Okay, let me take a look," that's awesome.

Mind you, I'm aware Ms. Brown isn't a literary agent (that I know of), but anyone who reads books or deals with them on a regular basis must be aware that there are certain standards that are usually present if a work is to be considered "not crap". Basic SPaG (spelling, punctuation and grammar) must be present. Ideas must be presented in a clear manner. And the content must be engaging.

I hope my book delivers on the promise my synopsis just gave to Ms. Brown. I would be over the moon to have my book handed out to school libraries so that kids could read for the sheer joy of it. In fact, even if my book isn't chosen for the charity, I'm so excited about this idea that I'll go look up other charities of this nature. And hopefully there are many - because kids DO need to read.

They can start with my book. It will be available shortly.

A free preview chapter will be coming soon; I'll post a link when it is available.

When the book is available for purchase, links will pop up like crocuses. Except on the East Coast, where it is still too cold and snowy. There will also be an e-book version for the blind, which has an exclusive map description feature. I love this idea so much, I added a few secret details to the description. Kudos to IFWG Publishing for this brilliant idea.

Free Shorts - Anasazi: Last Lament

2010-01-17T13:50:00.000-08:00

This is a historical fiction piece I wrote some time ago. I like to think that the Anasazi were stronger than we are today. That any culture who faces their own destruction finds within themselves something that we have not yet had to contemplate needing, let alone had to delve for.

Enjoy.

Anasazi: Last Lament

Hopiai paused at the very rim of the cliff and looked down into the valley below. The merciless afternoon sun beat down on his tanned shoulders, and his thick black hair was so hot it nearly burned his scalp, despite the strong, hot wind that tugged at his short braids. He'd run off without remembering his sun cover again; his mother would be furious.

Hopiai hoped she would be furious. Some days, she hadn't had enough to eat and drink to muster the energy to yell at him. He admitted to himself that maybe he'd left the hat on purpose, hoping to make her angry enough to give a good chastising.

So many of the People had left the valley; he did not understand why their family remained. When he was a toddler, he remembered hundreds of people living in the cool shelter of the great rocky overhang, the black mineral staining on its lip seeming to rain goodness down on them, in their fertile river valley.

Now, there was no more river. Grandfather Talking Rain said that when he was a young man, the river would flood in the spring rains, and the whole valley floor would be underwater. Hopiai was skeptical; during the six summers of his life, the river had never once flooded out of its narrow channel, carved through the rich soil of the valley. And this summer, right now, the riverbed was dry. He could see it, hundreds of feet below, through the dying tree limbs. Large rocks poked out of dry earth, which the wind whipped into swirls before scattering it back in just as futile a spot as it had found it to begin with.

The other tribes, known only as the Raiders during all of Hopiai's lifetime, had not come for a few months now either; Hopiai's father said that the Raiders were not raiding here for food because they knew there was none to be had. Now that the river was dried up, and no rain fell, the only thing to be gained by raiding the few People that remained in the settlement was the occasional dry root or unlucky field mouse. The crops had failed early this year, and last year's seed grains had already been consumed in desperation.

Their settlement here in the river valley was one of the last holdouts among the People; all of the other settlements on the trade routes had vanished before Hopiai was born. He had asked Grandfather Talking Rain where they had gone. Surely they had found somewhere else to live, he reasoned. But Grandfather Talking Rain had only looked out toward the vanished settlements, far across the dusty summer terrain, and said, "They have gone away, Hopiai. They have gone away."

And that was when it came to Hopiai: the People were dying. Mother Earth was turning away from their pleas.

Suddenly Hopiai realized he was not alone; his grandfather had joined him on the cliff rim. Hopiai smiled up at his grandfather, but the old man merely looked down at him with preoccupied, melancholy eyes.

"Grandfather Talking Rain, will you sing to the river again today?" Hopiai asked, troubled by the look on his grandfather's face.

"Not today, Hopiai. But I will sing."

"What will you sing?" Hopiai always enjoyed his grandfather's songs and chants; he was Speaker for the People, and Hopiai's life's dream was to be Speaker like his grandfather. At seeing his grandfather's melancholy, he wondered fearfully if there would be any People left to be Speaker for, when he grew up.

"You will need to wait until sundown to hear my song, Hopiai."

"Sundown?" A small note of alarm entered Hopiai's voice. Sundown: the time of ending, of stopping, of death. When the sun died in the western sky, songs of lament for the death of loved ones were raised to the skies. When the sun died in the western sky, songs of thankfulness for the end of a journey were raised to the skies. All things died at sundown, and were reborn the next morning with the new rising sun. But some were not reborn in the same way. Hopiai knew that the old and the sick were reborn in a new way, done with their bodies forever.

"Grandfather Talking Rain, is it my mother you will sing for?" Hopiai's chin trembled. He had not thought his mother would ever leave him.

"No, Hopiai, your mother awaits you below. I believe she is furious with you for forgetting your sun cover again." Hopiai couldn't help the chuckle that escaped his lips. "I will tell her I chastised you heavily. Do not make a liar of me."

"Yes, Grandfather Talking Rain." Hopiai caught the twinkle in his eyes and assumed a penitent pose.

They sat together and awaited the sun's descent over the edge of the horizon. The wind cooled a bit, but still blew warm and fiercely against the two small figures at the edge of the sun-soaked orange cliff.

Finally, Grandfather Talking Rain stood. He faced the sunset, its orange-red glow seeming to set him alight with otherworldly fire. The Speaker for the People began to sing, one last lament for the death of his People. One last lament for the end of their journey here in the valley.

"To be reborn into new life

The People end their journey here

The Mother's hand has strayed from us

The lives we have are only dust

The People end their journey here

A new life comes with rising dawn

The lives we have are only dust

All things must end to start again

A new life comes with rising dawn

The Mother's hand has strayed from us

All things must end to start again

To be reborn into new life. "

Grandfather Talking Rain looked down at Hopiai. "Your mother has your things packed, Hopiai," he said. "It is time to climb down to our family and go."

"Go? Go where, Grandfather Talking Rain?" Hopiai asked, standing beside his grandfather, eyes wide.

"Away, Hopiai. We are going away."

Tomorrow, they too would be reborn.

Free Shorts: I'm Your Huckleberry

2010-01-13T10:55:00.000-08:00

Here's one of my non-standard fantasy stories, written from a prompt to craft a Western fairytale. Western as in the Old West. This odd, endearing creation was the result. I hope you enjoy it.

I'm Your Huckleberry

Once upon a time, in a territory far to the West, there lived a beautiful young woman who loved to bake pies. Her name was Rosie Dawn Dawson. Rosie would bake pies with marionberries, chokecherries, crabapples, strawberries, peaches, apples, apricots, rhubarb, raspberries, blackberries, pecans and cherries. But her favorite pie was huckleberry. No one else in Why-Are-We-Living-Here-On-This-Dry-Plain liked huckleberries.

Yes, the name of the town was Why-Are-We-Living-Here-On-This-Dry-Plain. There wasn’t enough water for anything. The townfolk were always digging new wells. Rosie had to be very careful with the water she used for irrigating her plants and trees; she only had enough for one pie each. Her seven pie trees were stunted because they didn’t have enough water to grow to their full size. She liked to think of them as her Seven Dwarfs.

Now the town of Why-Are-We-Living-Here-On-This-Dry-Plain had several casinos. The townfolk lost there regularly, and all that money ended up in the pockets of Chabley Montpelier. He was the richest man in town. Nearly every business in Why-Are-We-Living-Here-On-This-Dry-Plain was under his heel in some way. Everyone was afraid of him.

Except Rosie. See, in Why-Are-We-Living-Here-On-This-Dry-Plain there was a shortage of unmarried women. In Western towns, most of the women were snapped up as soon as they arrived. But Rosie insisted on waiting to fall in love. She had lived in town since her father had moved here to start his bakery business. Lyle Dawson had once had high hopes of Rosie marrying into a dairy family, thus creating the basis for a bread-and-butter empire, but he, as well as all the single men in Why-Are-We-Living-Here-On-This-Dry-Plain, soon realized how adamant Rosie was about waiting until she found that special spark.

Including Mr. Montpelier. He had noticed Rosie the day she arrived, and had waited until she was of age to begin his courtship of her, never dreaming that he would fail completely. He hounded her for an entire year, offering bribes and gifts that would have made most other girls swoon. But Rosie always refused. She liked baking pies, and she wanted to fall in love.

And then, it happened.

A stranger rode into town one day, his rusty flat-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes. His horse was the same rusty color as his hat, and the white bridle and saddle, with their gold trim, matched the hat’s band. The man wore black pants with rusty chaps and boots, and a black shirt with a rusty vest over it.

He pulled up in front of Rosie’s Pie Shop, dismounted and whipped the end of the reins around her hitching rail, before doffing his hat and striding inside. His boots made loud thuds on the wooden floor of Rosie’s shop, and she looked up from her crust-crimping to see who had come in.

“Mornin’, ma’am,” the stranger said, hat in hand.

“Good morning, stranger. What can I do for you?” Rosie smiled self-consciously, dusting flour off her gingham skirt and smoothing her light brown curls back from her face.

“Well, ma’am, I’ve just arrived in Why-Are-We-Living-Here-On-This-Dry-Plain, and I’ve got me a powerful hunger for some huckleberry pie. I was wonderin’ if you might be in possession of such a concoction here at your fine pie shop.” The man leaned an elbow on Rosie’s high counter and smiled, his dark brown eyes atwinkle.

Rosie gasped. “Huckleberry pie?” she squeaked. “You want huckleberry pie?”

“Well, ma’am, I’d take just about any pie you have right now, as my belly button’s wearin’ a hole in my backbone, but I figgered it cain’t hurt to ask for what I really want, in case you’ve got some. Huckleberry pie’s my favorite.”

“Oh, wait here, please!” she said, fluttering her hands at the stranger. She fled to the back room, where she had most of her own personal huckleberry pie left. She grabbed a clean plate and fork and slid a fat slice onto the plate, then returned to the front room and presented it to the stranger.

His dark eyes lit up in amazement. “Miss Rosie, you’re a wonder. Pardon my forwardness, but I think I just might love you!”

Rosie blushed. “What’s your name, stranger?”

“Everyone calls me Rusty.”

“Really? Why is that?”

“Oh, because of my horse.” Rusty gestured out the window.

She noted that the horse was also rust-colored. “Your horse is Rusty, too?”

“No, that would be confusing. My horse’s name is Russ Steed.”

They both laughed, and Rosie decided that she too would have some huckleberry pie. They sat at a small wooden table on her front porch, eating pie and talking. He told her that his revolver was named Secret Weapon, and his long rifle was named Easy Temper, because it had a long fuse. She told him about her father’s bread-baking business, and her Seven Dwarf trees. He laughed, and Rosie knew she’d found the man she wanted to marry.

As they parted ways there on Rosie’s pie shop porch, however, a sinister pair of eyes glared from the dark alley across the way. Mr. Montpelier decided it was time to act, and this time he wasn’t taking no for an answer.

That night, while Rusty lay in his boarder room, dreaming of Rosie and her huckleberry pie, Mr. Montpelier’s hired hands broke into Rosie’s sleeping room in the back of the pie shop and snatched her from her bed. They tied her hands and gagged her, and put her on a horse. As they rode off into the blackness of the night, Rosie kicked off one of her slippers, hoping it would help someone rescue her. Someone like Rusty.

The next morning, Rusty rode up to Rosie’s pie shop and found a small, milling crowd. An older man with flour all over his apron seemed especially distraught.

Without dismounting, Rusty asked the baker, “What happened here?”

“Someone’s taken my Rosie!” Lyle exclaimed. “They left her bed full of money-bags! I don’t want cash. I just want my Rosie back,” he lamented.

“It must be Montpelier,” someone murmured from the crowd, and everyone nodded fearfully and turned to look up the canyon to the west, where Montpelier’s mansion was perched at the edge of the canyon’s boxed end.

A longing for Rosie built up in Rusty’s chest, and he heard himself proclaim, “I’ll go get her back.”

“But how? And, who are you, anyway?” Lyle asked, squinting at the stranger.

“I’m Rusty, sir, and I do believe I’m in love with your daughter. Now, if you all will excuse me, I’ve a damsel to save.” Rusty touched his brim and nodded to the crowd, and urged Russ into a trot.

It wasn’t long until he found a slipper in the scrub brush. He knew immediately that it was Rosie’s by its giant embroidered huckleberry. He clenched it to his chest, glaring up at the box canyon.

“Montpelier, you and I are going to have a reckoning,” he vowed.

Rusty and Russ raced to the canyon’s mouth, crossing a dry wash that angled south of town, directing any flash flooding away from the buildings. Russ leaped its expanse easily, and then the walls of the canyon closed in around them.

Up the box canyon they rode, dodging the reaching arms of a twisted saguaro cactus, jack knifing among sinister growths of prickly pear, and leaping across enormous barrel cacti.

Finally, Rusty spotted the narrow trail that led up the left side of the canyon to Montpelier’s home. He guided Russ Steed onto the slender rock path.

The sun had reached its zenith before Rusty arrived at the mansion. He ground-tied Russ behind a large boulder, out of sight, and sneaked up on the elaborate building.

What a waste of money, Rusty thought, eyeing the intricate gingerbread that trimmed the roof line and window lintels. And what a waste of good gingerbread.

Rusty made it all the way around the bottom level of the mansion without seeing anyone in any of the windows. All the doors were locked. Around back, he squinted against the sun that slipped in under the brim of his hat. Maybe he could leap to the roof from a rocky outcrop.

Sure enough, after Rusty had clambered up the rock face that was mere feet from the back of the house, the leap to the roof was easy as pie.

Then Rusty’s nose caught a new smell. It wasn’t pie; it was water! Looking around in bewilderment, Rusty tried to find the source. He realized it was coming from the other side of the rock wall here at the end of the canyon. Not seeing Rosie through any of the windows on this side of the mansion, Rusty took a minute to climb to the top of the rock wall.

He was nearly blinded by the reflection of the sun. An enormous lake spread for hundreds of acres, and off in the distance he could see a tall waterfall pouring its pure fresh water endlessly into the lake. Rusty gasped in awe at the sight of so much water in one place.

Suddenly, a scream from inside the house caught his attention. It was Rosie!

Rusty climbed down the rock wall and leaped to the roof. He followed the screaming to one window and leaped through the plate glass. He rolled to his feet, drawing his revolver, Secret Weapon.

Rosie sat tied to a chair next to a mannequin with a wedding dress, and Montpelier was next to her, thrusting a veil at her. They both stared at him.

“Rusty!” Rosie exclaimed.

“Rusty?” asked Montpelier.

“Boss?” one of Montpelier’s hired hands asked, his voice muffled through the hallway door.

“Rosie.” Rusty smiled. “Montpelier.” He glared.

“Rusty--”

“Rusty!”

“Montpelier!”

“Boss?”

“All right, that’s enough. I’m Rusty, you’re Montpelier, she’s Rosie, and she’s coming with me.” Rusty waved his revolver toward Montpelier, who backed up and let Rusty step close to Rosie and untie her.

“Oh, Rusty!” Rosie exclaimed, throwing her arms around Rusty. “It was awful! He wanted me to wear chiffon!”

“Don’t worry, Rosie. I’ll never make you wear chiffon,” Rusty comforted her.

“Get in here now, you buffoons!” Montpelier shouted.

Rusty looked over and tried to shoot at Montpelier, but the villain threw a chair at him and ran for the door, just as it opened and seven henchmen ran into the room.

They all raised their guns to shoot Rusty, but he was quicker than they were, and fired six shots off so rapidly that not one of his victims got a chance to shoot him first. The seventh man grinned and drew back the hammer on his revolver.

Rusty fired again, a seventh shot, and the last man fell to the floor as well.

“Oh, so that’s your secret about Secret Weapon,” Rosie said, unfazed, a true woman of the West.

“No, that’s just practicality. The secret‘s that I‘ve got a wad of chaw stuffed in the handle. It makes a mean short-distance projectile,” Rusty answered with a grin, sweeping her into his arms and leaping out the window.

Once around to the side of the roof, he whistled for Russ, and his faithful Steed trotted into sight. Rusty leaped into the saddle, Rosie still in his arms. Far from complaining, Russ Steed whinnied welcomingly, for he was a true Western horse.

Just then Montpelier dashed out the front doors of his mansion, rifle in hand. He looked about wildly until he spotted the horse and its two riders.

“Rusty, look out!” Rosie called, pointing to Montpelier as the villain raised his weapon.

Rusty didn’t bother looking at Montpelier. He reached for Easy Temper, pulling it from its long leather home on his saddle, and fired.

“But--” Rosie began. Rusty hadn’t shot anywhere near Montpelier.

Montpelier also was confused. He looked in the direction Rusty had fired, just in time to see a stick of dynamite explode against the rock wall that held back his secret lake. The rock wall cracked and trembled.

Rusty fired another stick at the wall, then tucked the rifle away. Rosie hung on for dear life as Rusty hollered, “Yee ha, Russ Steed, away!”

Russ Steed reared a bit, and then leaped onto the narrow rock ledge at full gallop, just as the rock wall behind them collapsed with an enormous grinding moan.

Montpelier stood stock-still and watched the first wave of water arch over his home, crushing it to splinters and smashing into him, before everything washed over the lip of rock he’d built his home on, falling down to the bottom of the canyon.

Rusty willed Russ to gallop faster. The horse hit the bottom of the canyon while the rushing flood was still a few hundred feet behind, but it was gaining quickly, and Rosie, looking behind them, gasped as she saw the muddy, cactus-filled deluge bearing down on them.

“Oh, no! How close are we to the town?”

“We’re nearly there! Hold on!” Rusty shouted, pulling his rifle out again. He loaded and fired repeatedly at the canyon walls, and the dynamite explosions brought rubble down behind them. The deluge slowed as it worked its way over and around the jagged boulders.

Rusty eventually ran out of ammunition, and soon the rushing flood was nearly at Russ’ hooves again. “Rusty!” cried Rosie.

“Here we go!” Rusty said. Russ took a last leap across the dry wash that marked the end of the canyon. Rosie looked down and saw the water slam into the wash, sending spray everywhere. A fair bit splashed out and soaked them before they rode clear of it. Rusty slowed Russ to a cooling walk as they approached town.

“Russ, that was amazing,” Rusty said. “I’m going to buy you the best alfalfa I can find for the rest of your life, pal.”

Townfolk ran up to see the lucky survivors and pepper them with questions. Lyle called eagerly to Rosie, who slipped down from Russ and hugged him tightly.

“What’s this water all about, Rosie?” her father asked, staring at it in awe.

“Oh, that? Rusty’s gone and made us a river, Pa. No more water shortages.”

“I guess we’ll need to change the name of our town,” Lyle said. He looked up at Rusty. “Son, I’m sorry, but I don’t believe I ever caught your last name.”

Rusty tipped his hat brim. “Dover, sir. Rusty Dover.”

Lyle’s eyes bugged. “Of Dover Dairy, down in Too Gol-dang Hot?”

Rusty grinned. “That’s us, sir.”

Rosie’s eyes widened. Her father’s dream of her marrying into a dairy family and creating a bread-and-butter empire was about to come true after all!

“Father, I love this man! He loves my pies, and he saved me from Montpelier! He’s the man I want to marry.” Rosie turned shining eyes to her hero, astride his faithful Steed.

Rusty looked down at Rosie and grinned. “Well then, Rosie Dawn, I’m your huckleberry.”

The town of Why-Are-We-Living-Here-On-This-Dry-Plain changed its name to Flowing-With-Bread-And-Butter. The river was duly named the Huckleberry River, and Rusty and Rosie lived happily ever after.

The Map, Part Two: An Apology to Artists

2010-01-05T16:10:00.000-08:00

I've finished populating the map for my world. Finally. I had to read through the second novel to pick up any stray place names. I always hate it when you read book one of a series that has a large map, and some places are blank, but in later books, the author has put something there. It makes me feel like the world is randomly rewriting itself.

Granted, that's exactly what the author is doing. "Oh, let's have the hero gallivant off to Northern Shake-and-bake for this latest adventure. I'll have to make up the whole culture that lives there, but I can do that."

As a reader, I dislike when there wasn't at least a modicum of effort put forth to name everything on the map ahead of time. Certainly, I don't expect a full three page description of the land, its inhabitants, their culture and ways of making a living, and how dangerous it is to those on the western edge by the Swamps of Haze and Fog. But a place name on the map would really be nice. A casual reference like "I'm not an uncultured Carthan, Lord Faahr. I know how to use a knife and fork. Now pass that glazed pumpkin, or you'll see how I use them to impale your arm," would be fine.

Mmm, glazed pumpkin. Now I'm hungry.

Maybe a small, stylized pumpkin next to the dot that reads Cartha would be nice, too. They could probably use some, so they can practice with their knives and forks.

I do like map illustrations. The map for The Wicked Heroine will have a few sea monsters on it, since ocean hogs the spotlight in its design.

One of the things I found myself staring at in the map for Jim Butcher's final (?) Codex Alera book, First Lord's Fury, was the pair of lines that traced every shoreline. It gave a fine, finished touch to the whole map. I doubt I'll get something as nice on my map, but since I do have a brazillian miles of coastline, it would definitely help!

You know, fitting landscape-oriented maps into books isn't a pretty job. The pages support portrait maps only. Either you have to crank your head every time you refer to a single-page map, or you get the map spread over two pages (which is much easier to read). But then you have to deal with either a large gap between halves of the map along the spine, or you're practically tearing out the pages to see what necessary detail has gotten wedged in that dark little crevice of folded space.

Is there any two-page map that's balanced between these extremes? I might read a new book just for that.

On framing: surely a map is always better with a frame, right? Not necessarily. For fantasy, you want a frame that displays the map with a medieval quality, or no frame at all. If you get a frame around your map that shows up like a photo-corner tabs from the nineteen-thirties, you'll probably raise a few eyebrows.

If they even notice them. I admit, I rarely looked at the how of a map before trying to draw my own. I suppose it comes down to whether anything stood out as negative. If nothing catches the reader's eye in a bad way, then you're probably fine.

I suppose those people blessed with the gift of drawing, sketching, painting, etc (which I am most decidedly not) would notice these maps more than I have. So it is to you gifted ones that I must offer this advance apology for the surely-amateur work my map will appear as, despite the best efforts of my publishers.

If you find yourself overly sensitive to crap maps, then please skip over that page when you begin reading my book. If the compulsion to look becomes overwhelming once you've started reading the first few chapters, then I trust you'll be able to handle your own disappointment. But keep in mind that I wrote The Legend of the Shanallar duology without a map a'tall. So I expect you can read it without one as well.

Unless you're terrible with directions, like my sweet grandmother, who always gets confused outside her small home town as to which way is north. Then you might just have to Suck It Up, and use the thing anyway.

Who Writes this Stuff, Anyway? Oh...Right...That Would Be Me.

2010-01-02T13:19:00.000-08:00

Well, Christmas and the New Year are both over with, and it's a very ordinary January 2. My editor, Gerry, and I have both been very busy over the holiday. He, editing the vast majority of my novel while on a rural farm in Australia, and me, getting a pic taken for the back of the book, writing a synopsis and an author bio.

I think Gerry may have had the easier task, of the two of us. Okay, perhaps not. But having to kneel Japanese-style on a pillow tucked in back of my knees until my lower legs went entirely numb wasn't something I'd anticipated during the photo session, but we needed the extra height. (Read: I'm short. The better to be underestimated in a fight, my dear.)

We kept adding and swapping props, and adjusting the position of the katana so that it wasn't hogging the attention. Glittery blade much? You'd think this was an anime the way it tried to jump in there and gleam. I was suddenly very glad that its guard was generally octagonal in shape; we finally found an angle where it didn't blind the camera with the flash reflection, but you can still see that it's there, way down in front, if you're looking.

I suppose you'll all go look for the sword now. Go ahead; I'll wait. Bio Page It's also permanently located in the Links of Interest on the right side of the screen.

Also, writing a synopsis of the book (as well as one of my relevant life) is just as hard as composing a short story. It took over an hour for each of those to get the way they are. As with short fiction, you have to add only the relevant details, and leave out most anything that isn't pertinent, interesting as it may be.

In the case of the synopsis, this is much longer than the book-back blurb, of course. It's over 400 words, which wouldn't fit on the back of a book at all. However, I considered that those who went to the IFWG Publishing site should get a little more information about the story than those that just see the book.

I also had to keep it mysterious, which is something that apparently comes naturally to me. I have a hard time coming out and saying what's happening in a story, just giving away all the details, even at the points where exposition is practically required. You'll see what I mean when you read The Wicked Heroine, though there's a massive scene of this kind in the first few chapters of its sequel, Oathen, as well.

I guess I like putting my readers in the same boat with at least a couple of my characters. Not only is there more fun in learning the full story slowly, over time, but there's a chance for more identification with those characters who are just as in the dark as you are. *smirk*

As I said, Gerry has given me the first-round complete edit job. I'm wading through it now. It's so exciting to have a professional opinion on my writing, catching things I am blind to. I look at the text now, down at the nuts-and-bolts level of comma placement and word choice, and it just sparkles. The before-and-after pictures, showing how much smoother it reads now, are so exciting. I swear, this'll make a real book yet!

It doesn't hurt that Gerry really enjoyed reading the book, either. When I can capture and impress a fellow fantasy writer, on both a content and writing-skill level, that makes me feel awesome. If you enjoy fantasy, adventure, and epic good vs. evil, with a solid grasp of worldbuilding and the natural and geologic features that support it, all written to a YA/adult crossover audience, I think you'll enjoy my book as well.

When it's ready for purchase, I'll set up a link to it here on my blog.

Serious Writer is Serious, Part 2: SPaG Ninjas on Dialogue

2009-12-20T11:23:00.000-08:00

Any ninja worth his itching powder knows how to use every weapon in his arsenal, and how to turn any innocuous item into a weapon.

The same goes for constructing fiction. SPaG (spelling, punctuation and grammar) is a handy set of three pouches on the tool belt of every modern fiction ninja. Know your SPaG, love your SPaG. Your stories will be choppy and amateurish without at least a basic knowledge of these three tools, and might be so bad that no editor will want to wade through the fetid swamp of your mistakes.

Often what I see in inexperienced writing (not young writing per se: one can be inexperienced at writing at every age) is a lack of grasping the rules behind SPaG. This can lead to inconsistent mistakes, where sometimes the writing is done properly and sometimes the same set of mistakes crop up.

It makes me want to smack everyone. English literacy should not be an option, people! There are rules. Just like for soccer, chess, driving a car, any complex game or task. Either they weren't taught correctly, or they weren't learned correctly. Or both. But there should be smackage for not getting it right. We text, speak and type in this language. How pathetic that we can't get it right, especially if it's the only one we know!

And no, lolcats, 1337speak and txspk are not true languages. They're sub-quality translations for people with a short attention span and/or a desire to avoid carpal tunnel.

Back to SPaG: If you learn the rules that govern writing proper sentences, then you can free your mind from guessing how to put things (excluding artistic expression, of course!) and let it roam over to the imagination factory instead. Or, alternately, you can use some brain cells to care about how your story appears to others who also knows the rules of SPaG.

The most common mistakes that I see involve dialogue. Where the heck do you put that comma: inside or outside? It goes inside, if it's part of what the person is saying.

"I put my comma here," Jasmine said.

The exception is if you're talking about something that you put in quotes, which isn't really dialogue. I could refer to "lolcats", with the comma outside, just like that. Since "lolcats" doesn't have a comma after the word every time you see it, it shouldn't have a comma when you refer to it in quotes.

Another dialogue punctuation issue is whether to have ending punctuation at all. You always do. Unless it's a lolcats issue as above. If they ask a question, you need that [?] inside the quote marks. If your character is exclaiming, the [!] goes inside the quote marks.

If your character finishes a sentence at the same time you do, the [.] goes inside the quote marks, thus:

"I just figured out where to put the punctuation."

If the character finishes a sentence that would normally get a [.] at the end, but you're not done writing your own sentence, it looks like this:

"I just figured out where to put the punctuation," Jasmine said.

If it's a question or an exclamation, then those symbols still go inside the quote mark at the end of the dialogue.

Which reminds me of something else I see too much: capitalization of the pronoun in that dialogue tag. Like this:

"What do you mean, I shouldn't capitalize the 'she' in this dialogue tag?" She asked.

The "She asked" there isn't its own sentence, so it doesn't get capitalized at the start. It's part of the dialogue sentence.

"Oh, so since it's just the same sentence, I don't need to capitalize my pronoun," she realized.

Yes, there we go. There is hope for you yet, my very young paduwan learner.

Be well, all, and Merry Christmas.

Serious Writer is Serious, Part 1: Snatch the Pebble, Grasshopper

2009-12-11T09:36:00.000-08:00

I'm just getting started in this whole "serious writer" vein. I'd call it about a year and a half now, in which I have thought of myself as aspiring to be serious about this hobby I have.

So I'll try to keep my topics somewhat relevant to beginning. Sometimes. I do have that sort of mind that makes associations far afield, and sometimes I forget what topic I started with.

Now, where were we? Oh wait, we're not there yet.

I've been thinking about the editing process lately, since my book The Wicked Heroine is in to my editor. "My" editor. Wow. Even saying that makes me think I should feel far more legitimate than I do. But I have to say I've learned a lot about the nuts and bolts of good creative writing over the last year and a half, and I have to say I do feel just a little bit legitimate now, compared to the fluffy writing style I used to have.

Oh, it was horrible. I had compound-complex sentences everywhere, even in places where you'd normally see short, straight ones, like in battle scenes. But no, my stories were full of phrases, semicolons, and subordinate clauses. They bristled with commas. Grammatically correct, every one, but darn hard to read.

My favorite word was "and". And then Aerynn swung... And so it was. And that's what happened. "And then" really bugs me now. Surely you only need one of those, unless you're really waxing poetic, or working in a dramatic moment. "And then the ceiling fell in, revealing seventeen ninjas tumbling down amongst the dusty bricks and burnt-umber roof tiles." That, as its own paragraph, sounds moderately acceptable, aside from the cheesiness of seventeen ninjas (an old what-if holdout from jujitsu class).

It took some time for the concept of differing sentence length to become a tool I felt capable of remembering long enough to use. It was easy to edit my long sentences into short ones; I'd already written them, after all. But writing them short in the first place, that took another level of awareness in my head, which I'd not previously owned. I think I've got the tool now, or at least the awareness. I'm sitting here analyzing my sentence length in this blog, checking if I've shot myself in the foot. It's way better than it used to be, and a good representation of how I write now.

Getting those short, direct sentences in is important, because I write fight scenes. I like fight scenes. The experience of reading about the fight is enhanced, you see, by making the sentence structure match the action. Blurring, direct blows. Sudden reversals. An unlucky fall turned into a desperate roll to safety. You see what I mean, there.

I'm still making the transition in my mind from reader to writer (and there's a whole other topic right there), so I admit, I haven't fully analyzed the way others write their fight scenes. I have certainly enjoyed them, though. I do feel a bit slow on the uptake with the "art imitates fictional life" concept, but now that I get that, all sorts of possibilities open up.

Other nuts and bolts I'm enjoying using, aside from sentence structure, include metaphor, simile, alliteration and assonance. That's [AZ-uh-nence], not ass of Nance.

Hrmm.

There once was a sweet ass o' Nance,
It sat quite secure in her pants,
'Til she slipped on the ice,
Split a seam once or twice,
Fell and broke all that sweet assonance.

Yes, I'm afraid you're right; I am prone to the Imp of the Limerick. It's a blessing...and a curse, as Detective Adrian Monk used to say.

Until next time, all.

Of Maps, and Magic Lost and Found

2009-12-09T16:47:00.000-08:00

One learns a lot when one does something for the first time. How often I forget that! I feel like I'm always struggling to find a balance between learning something new, and avoiding the fear of messing something up.

Well, I messed up the map for my world several times, so I called them drafts and moved on to the next sheet of paper. Good thing I'm not a god of worldbuilding. The numerous times I shifted whole continents around would have killed everyone off with volcanoes and tidal waves, and their food crops would have died off and made everyone starve come winter. If they had winter anymore. The poor Kazhbor people went from a UK environment to that of Scandinavia. Sorry guys. Uh, no wonder you're so good at building those Sea Gods. You're all desperate to get to the tropics for a nice warm vacation. Yeah, that's it.

Honestly, what I actually learned during crafting this map is that I should have done a better job on the rough map I used when I wrote the story. I had no sense of distance on the map, only in the story. And putting a map together based on a story written with only a vague sense of distance, well...let's just say that a newfound benefit of writing fantasy is that revisionist history is always an option.

Does anyone else notice that going through a brazillian (brazillian: a number somewhere between a bazillion and South America) edits on the same story really kills the magic that books held when you were a kid? Seeing the messy side of a story is far different than simply picking up a polished, published product and enjoying the fruits of months of labor by numerous individuals.

And yet, to me it reveals another magic: that of creation. That writers can craft and polish common, familiar words into complex forms that convey the full spectrum of ideas and emotions, and reveal to readers a crisp, clarified universe that doesn't really exist--surely, if anything is magic, that is.

Ah, look, I got all rambly. That happens now and again. When I'm old and gray, I expect to be even more prone to such maunderings. If I am not, I shall consider myself cheated.

Well, the master copy of the map I finished last night has been sent to the publisher. Way more fun than I thought it would be. I used to stare at puddles as a child, and imagine they were borders to continents. I'd often doodle maps for fun and try to figure out where the mountains and rivers went. That endeavor--the rivers and mountains--was generally a failure until I learned more about geography. Maps of imaginary lands and stick men are about all I can draw. Oh, and stylized suns shining on stylized flowers that grow on stylized hills next to a stylized tree. Seriously. My drawing skills topped out in second grade.

It really helped this week that I had a few books with maps to examine (funny how I never really looked at their construction before I needed to draw my own). Most of our books are packed, alas, but a few with maps were close to hand. Some I looked at, aside from an example my editor furnished me with, were in Marie Brennan's Warrior, Jim Butcher's First Lord's Fury, and the lovely old map in C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew. Mostly, I was looking at how they drew their mountains and hills. I have terrible mountain-drawing skills. Making upside-down Vs is much harder than you think! Or, no, that's probably just me. In the end, I fell back on my stylization skills and didn't even try to make them anything approaching realistic. Realism and fantasy, they are oil and water in the beaker of my mind.

All right, my throat's getting pretty sore again: back for some more salt-water gargling I go. And no, I wasn't actually talking out loud while I typed. Hee.

Daaaaay One

2009-12-07T21:13:00.000-08:00

It's entirely possible that you'll notice I use movie quotes with reckless abandon. It's not a bug; it's a feature. Bonus points for the movie that my post title is from. Hint: it's animated.

I've chosen dimmer colors for this blog for those of you who, like me, can get headaches from too much whiteness blaring at you. Also, it saves energy to have dark screens. W00t for saving the environment, one pixel at a time.

All right, let's be serious for a tic. The purpose of this blog is to help promote awareness of my writing. If you like what you read here, please share. Let me know, let others know. Robert Jordan I'm not, but I do know a dangling participle when I see one, and you'll never find a run-on sentence in my works.

That's right, I'm very nearly a Grammar Nazi. I'd imagine the difference between me and them is that I won't hold your feet to the fire if I find a mistake. I'll try and explain the rules for how to fix it, so that you can fish out all similar mistakes yourself.

I guess that makes me a Grammar Geek.

My writing is often adventure fantasy, with a healthy dose of combat, so if that appeals, you've come to the right place. I've played the odd D&D campaign, and run a few myself, back in the day. I'm a proud member of Clan Hackenslash, in that battles and duels are always interesting to me. I hold the rank of shodan (a first-degree black belt) in Dan Zan Ryu Jujitsu, so my fight scenes aren't too shabby--I usually find myself toning down the details of the action.

Other writings of mine, usually short stories, can wander further afield. I write historical fiction from time to time, as well as science fiction, humor and dark fantasy, sometimes in combination. Horror and romance hold similar lack of appeal for me, both as reader and writer. I don't like others forcing me toward the emotions they want me to feel; I like to come up with them on my own.

My first novel, The Wicked Heroine, is due out in the spring of 2010. I hope to have cover art + link around the New Year for you all. Its sequel, Oathen, comprises the second half of the Legend of the Shanallar duology, and will likely make its appearance sometime after that, unless the space-time contiuum goes haywire again.

Again? you ask.

Yes. You wouldn't remember it happening the first time, would you? Heh. I love time quandaries.

I'm currently drawing the map for the duology. Black ballpoint pen on printer paper. It's easier than I thought! And yet, I somehow still suck at it. I think I can get something that might pass muster in another half dozen tries. Thank God that printer paper is thin enough to trace through.

Take care, all, and thank you for visiting.