words

Chasing the market into the midlist

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Today I share wisdom:

When I started the Twenty Palaces books, I wanted to change a bunch of things that were standard in urban fantasy: the protagonist who’s an expert in the setting, the supernatural elements that had been ported over from horror and folklore, the stories that focused on the concerns of supernatural figures rather than actual human beings.

When I started Key/Egg, I wanted to challenge myself to write an urban fantasy that was not just a string of violent clashes. I also wanted to move the elderly woman out of the traditional expository role and into the limelight.

When I started The Great Way, I wanted to move away from the lackadaisical travelogue pacing of epic fantasy and write it like a thriller. I also wanted to have a little fun with the idea of the Hero Prince.

I wouldn’t say these were attempts at creating a new subgenre. Continue reading

Dudes Writing Rape Scenes

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I’ve been reading the Game of Thrones novels ever since I picked up the first one from a remainders table at the Jersey shore, and liking them pretty well. There are too many characters and the glossary doesn’t do a very good job helping me remember who’s who from one book to another (especially with years between the end of one book and the start of another) but I’m invested.

I don’t watch the show. Continue reading

Why is Frodo so mopey all the time? Paying attention and critical response

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It’s pretty common for readers to write reviews that get basic facts wrong.

It’s not surprising. If the reader doesn’t like the book, isn’t engaged with the characters or the plot, they start to skim. Skimming means they miss character motivations or plot details. Missing those details means the reader thinks the story is full of flaws, and lowers their interest further.

As an example, I read a review of Peter V. Brett’s The Warded Man that one of the main characters inexplicably became a great fighter even though he spent all his time studying in a library. The only problem with that assessment? The text explicitly states that he spent hours every day learning to fight. It’s right there in the book, but a skimming reader missed it, so it might as well not be.

Anyway, this is why I stop reading books when I find myself skimming. Continue reading

Randomness for 5/17

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1) 16-Year-Old Invents $5 Cell Phone Bike Charger And Shares The Instructions For Free.

2) Seven legendary artists drawing The Hobbit, imagined.

3) Sweden employs the “gay sailor” defense against Russian subs that encroach on their waters.

4) Chinese audiences stymied by Age of Ultron translated subtitles.

5) Animators use Grand Theft Auto: V animations to create a tribute to BREAKING BAD. Video. Pretty amazing.

6) Special gloves that you can’t take off… because the inside is covered with thorns.

7) What would a four-year-old girl like to see Wonder Woman do? This made me laugh with delight.

An interview with Aidan Moher about his new book, Tide of Shadows and Other Stories

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For a change of pace, today I’m interviewing Aidan Moher, the Hugo Award-winning editor of A Dribble of Ink, about his new book, Tide of Shadows and Other Stories. Let’s get right to it:

HC. Let’s make the first question an easy one: What’s the pitch for your new book?

AM. Tide of Shadows and Other Stories is my first short fiction collection. There are five stories in the collection—from a military SF set on board a galaxy-faring starship, to a whimsical romp through the Kingdom of Copperkettle Valley—and accompanying story notes. The stories are all vastly different from one another, and I think there’s something to please every type of genre reader.

HC. I see you’re self-publishing this book, a choice many of us have made for a wide variety of reasons. What made you decide to publish yourself?

AM. I took the long way around to self-publishing. Like a lot of readers and writers, I used to have a fairly negative opinion of self-publishing—I thought of it as a literary dumping ground, a place where the rejected and down-trodden ended up after trying valiantly to get someone to publish their work. I didn’t see that changing. I was wrong. Continue reading

Just plug yourself into this sinister dark lord: the power of cliches

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Lately, this map of Clichéa has been making the rounds of the internet, and getting a lot of laughs. Nervous laughs, sometimes. Continue reading

The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman, #15in2015

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The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (Mrs. Pollifax #1)The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Book 8 of #15in2015.

I’m honestly torn about this one, because there are so many good things but the negatives are colossal.

Setup: Mrs. Polifax is an elderly widow so bored with her life of volunteering and middle class charity work that she’s on the verge of suicide, until she decides to revive her childhood dream of becoming a spy. So she slips out of her home in New Brunswick, NJ and takes a train to CIA headquarters in Langley to volunteer.

Of course, due to a mixup, an administrator actually meets her, is intrigued by her story, and just so happens to have a perfect job for her. A milk run. All she has to go is visit Mexico City as a tourist for a week, then buy a book in a particular shop (using proper code words) and bring it home. Easy, right?

Obviously, everything goes wrong and she ends up in deep shit, and just as obviously, her common sense, practicality, and basic decency helps her to save the day.

I heard about this book, which is the first of a popular series, from commenters on the io9 article about my own elderly protagonist, and I thought it would be only fair to give it a try. When I started this one, I really wanted to like it.

Yeah, some of the writing can be rough. It’s annoying that the protagonist’s thoughts are put in quotations, just like her dialog. But that’s minor stuff. The character work is terrific, and there are several lovely little grace notes in the narrative that I enjoyed very much.

Unfortunately, the book was written and is set in the early sixties, when readers might seriously see the CIA as heroic freedom fighters and the rest of the world as a little slower, a little more primitive or ridiculous. I can look past casual racism in older books (I have to do it in modern books, too) but when the supposed heroes reveal [SPOILER] that the man they saved from prison was a food scientist the Red Chinese government had kidnapped because they hoped his discoveries would help relieve famine in their country.

Character: “Can you imagine what the Chinese government could have done with him?”

Me: “Feed a bunch of starving people?”

But I guess those people don’t count, because fuck ’em. Saving their lives would stabilize a communist government, and that’s not a price these characters are willing to pay.

Here I am fresh off a fantasy trilogy all about the seductive ideas of conquest and empire, and I just can’t go there.

So, good book, but dated in a way I just can’t abide.

Buy a copy.

Randomness for 3/31

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1) Man trolls bookstore w/ fake self-help book covers.

2) A super-tall webcomic about unhappy stories.

3) Double space after a period? Single space? A history.

4) Arnold Schwarzenegger went to reddit to encourage a guy who had a rough day at the gym.

5) Joy Division + Teletubbies = This video

6) A businessman’s affair with his secretary, meticulously documented.

7) Thousand-year-old Anglo-Saxon eye remedy proves effective against MRSA and other drug-resistant bacteria.

The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer #15in2015

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The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People HelpThe Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help by Amanda Palmer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book 7 of #15in2015.

I liked this much better than I expected. I’m not a fan of Palmer’s music, I don’t read her blog or follow her on Twitter, so what I know about her can be summed up by:

Her TEDTalk
What people say about her online
Retweets

Which isn’t much. That said, as soon as she began to describe the experience of leaving college with no idea how to make a living as an artist, I was on her side.

What follows is a memoir mixed with personal meditation on her own need to connect with people on a personal level, to ask them for the things she needs, and to understand the nuances of a gift economy. Then, towards the end of the book, she broaches the subject of how that gift economy appeared to people who were outside it, and how much hate she got.

I found it fascinating, in part because her own worldview is so alien to mine, and in part because of the parallel thread structure the book uses. Recommended.

Buy the book.

Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig #15in2015

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Blackbirds (Miriam Black, #1)Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book 6 of #15in2015

One of the many ways you can categorize urban fantasy is whether it leans toward the fantasy stakes or crime stakes. Is the character on a quest to recover the ancient fang of Curlique before The Bad Guy can use it to take control of the were-lions of Little Rock? Or has someone you care about gotten into debt to/stolen something from/slept with the wife of A Very Bad Person and need to be saved?

Or, is this going to be a story about a threat to the succession of some made-up organization of magical beings, or is it going to be a search for the truth behind the death of a single person?

Both of these are fictional conceits, of course, but one is not grounded in the concerns of real people and one is, and I suspect you can tell by the tone of my comments which I prefer.

BLACKBIRDS falls into the crime-stakes end of things, and I’m glad of it. Premise: The first time Miriam Black touches someone, flesh to flesh, she knows how they’ll die. Then, one day, she touches the hand of a truck driver who helped her out of a tight spot and discovers that he’ll die in one month, while saying her name.

Aside from some vision/dream sequences that might be advice/harassment from Mysterious Entities, that’s it for the fantasy elements. The rest is lifting wallets, roadside harassment, blackmail, a mysterious suitcase, and criminal psychopaths.

Miriam herself is profane and damaged. Not only does she have this awful gift, but she knows that she can’t prevent the deaths she foresees; any attempt to save the doomed person only ensures events will play out as prophesied. Throw in an abusive childhood and you have a cynical fatalist who lives like a vulture. She never kills people, but she’s nearby when they die so she can lift their cash.

And of course the events of the novel destroy all that.

The tone is very gritty, a sort of rural noir that almost reminds me of JUSTIFIED (without the dialog). It’s a powerful story, especially if you’re a fan of low thrillers, which I am. Good stuff.

Buy a copy.