A Review: CAPTAIN VORPATRIL'S ALLIANCE

If you know anything about me, you know that my favorite author is Lois McMaster Bujold. And guess what? She has a new book out! There are four categories of Bujold books: Vorkosigan saga, Challion tetralogy, the Sharing Knife, and the Spirit Ring.

The Spirit Ring is the first fantasy book she ever wrote. It shows. It's good, but nothing of the quality you should expect from her. The Sharing Knife is a four-part series that has concluded, though the world has room for more. The Challion tetralogy was not conceived of as a five-part series and there are only three books so far, but there better damn well be five books. This is some of the best fantasy you will ever read ever anywhere period don't argue. And then there is her most famous series, the Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan -> Miles Naismith Vorkosigan series with a bajillion novels, novellas, and short stories (including some stories like FALLING FREE that take place in the setting without any of the main characters).

This most recent offering is CAPTAIN VORPATRIL'S1 ALLIANCE, the often seen cousin of Miles, Ivan You Idiot. As the series has continued, Ivan has gone from a feckless womanizer to someone who is immensely capable and goes out of his way to hide it so no one notices and assigns him more responsibility. This book explores that motivation and it's AWESOME if you're a fan. If this is your first book in the Vorkosigan universe, put the book down and go read CORDELIA'S HONOR2. The book will feel incredibly mediocre unless you've read other books in the series.

Specifically, the climax will disappoint you if you don't know Miles and you don't know Ivan and you don't know the difference between them. I might not have spotted this as quickly if I hadn't seen Bujold in person at a book signing (where she signed my book and I promptly had an anxiety attack and ran away--yeah, behold my coolness). She mentioned that when she was writing, she caught herself writing a Miles book and not an Ivan book. Miles succeeds through perpetual forward motion. Ivan lets things come to him, and you see this in the book a LOT. Faced with a problem, the solution is to wait and hope it goes away. This is most obvious in the climax and if you don't know that this book is entirely Ivan, you might not like it.

But this novel is Ivan. This novel shows Bujold's mastery of character and voice. If you changed the names to something else and read this book, you'd easily know this is an Ivan book.

This book takes place chronologically before CRYOBURN. I know that doesn't mean they were written that way, but I wish they were. This is the better of the two books and CRYOBURN could have used some more work (except for the epilogues--Gregor's makes me cry). I started reading this book on Monday and finished it on Friday. I actually stopped writing on my train ride and just started reading the book.

So here's the short review: You read even some of the Miles books? Read this. You've never read any Miles book? Read CORDELIA'S HONOR. You'll get to this one eventually and you'll be rewarded for taking the extra time.

1 The Vor are a warrior caste on Barrayar, so take the last name and add Vor at the front. This makes names like Kosigan (KOS-i-gan) Vorkosigan (vor-KOS-i-gan). Despite the obvious rule of pronunciation that I applied to EVERY Vor name in the series, I have been pronouncing Vorpatril VOR-pa-tril instead of vor-PAT-ril as Bujold herself pronounces it. Turns out, I've been mispronouncing a LOT of names. E-ka-TER-in is actually e-KAT-er-in. Cetagandan like Set is actually actually like Seat. Even Barrayar which has TWO Rs is Bear-a-yar, which I think is totally unfair and I refuse to pronounce it that way.

2 CORDELIA'S HONOR is an omnibus3 that combines both SHARDS OF HONOR and BARRAYAR. I read SHARD'S OF HONOR every year. I didn't think I'd ever be one of those people, but it turns out I am.

3 Wonder to yourself, how are you going to read all these stories that have spanned nearly thirty years? Don't worry! The publisher, Baen, has collected almost all of them into omnibi. YOUNG MILES, MILES ERRANT, etc etc. The only ones you won't find are MEMORY4, CRYOBURN, and CAPTAIN VORPATRIL'S ALLIANCE. You'll actually find one story included a few times, which has to do about acceptable page counts and subject matter and not any nefarious decision on the part of Baen. Still, crap move not to include MEMORY anywhere.

Because 4 MEMORY is my second favorite Vorkosigan saga book after SHARDS OF HONOR. If you think you can do without this one, THINK AGAIN! Once you've gotten to the MILES IN LOVE omnibus, track down MEMORY and make sure to read it so we can huddle together and giggle about the scene where he wears his medals because that's AWESOME!!! *GOO!*

So...yeah, that's my review. I guess. Lots of fanboyishness in there, but I hope I was honest.

A Review: THE CITY'S SON

Once upon a time I was a podcaster. In addition to the weekly audio recordings, it also afforded me a place to act like a more professional blogger. I could review books (and in fact, reviewed a Tad Williams book that I had been keen to receive). I no longer podcast (or I should say, I no longer host any podcasts; I would certainly be a guest on a show). That leaves me this location to do book reviews, and I'm more hesitant to do so. Here it makes it feel personal rather than professional, and I don't want people to think I'm attacking their work. (I'm also critical on everything, including my own work, but if people don't know me, they might not understand that.) I still have a review saved in my drafts of a book I LOVE (and have read multiple times) that I've never published because there's one part of the book I have a serious problem with and don't want the author to think I dislike his work.

Despite all that, an author asked me on Twitter to tell him what I think of his book when I was finished, and I can't do that in 140 words, so here it is, my first book review in this journal. Not to leave him out there by himself, I'm also going to review another book later this week. Two in one week! Two! It must be Christmas.

And so we begin. I recently read THE CITY'S SON by Tom Pollock. This is an urban fantasy, and I don't normally read urban fantasy. This is also a young adult novel, and I'm tired of young adult novels. It seems like that's all there is on the market, for the most part. So now that you know that, here are my opinions of the book:

Read it. It's a good book.

Boom. Review done.

Wait, I'm supposed to do more? Okay. Here's the general description: Set in modern-day London, there is a world-within-a-world, but not with fairies, vampires, or werewolves. This is a wholly new concoction of not-humans, which makes this the best urban fantasy I've read in years. YEARS! This is the kind of setting that gets turned into a role playing game and you get to play it for years and years until you forget that it was based on a book.

People live in the walls. People live in light bulbs and depending on what kind of light bulbs they are (phosphorus versus sodium) they may hate the other kind of light bulb person. Trainwraiths that remember their passengers, wolves made of scaffolding, and so on and so forth. It is AMAZING. The setting of this book is so awesome that I could give up the plot and just wander around marveling at the world beneath London.

Which also leads me to my first complaint. Much like Buffy, it is hand-waved away that normal people self-delude themselves if they're exposed to this world. They cannot accept it, thus they do not accept it. They forget or rationalize or in some other way dismiss what they've seen. Except for every human character we meet that actually interacts with them. One of the two main characters of the book is introduced to this world and NEVER EVEN BLINKS AN EYE. She rolls right into it like she's hanging out in Camden Market or something.

I had trouble accepting how readily the human characters interact with the other world, but you get over it just like the book does. It speeds along so you don't have time to think about that (which means you either keep reading and accept it or you stop reading, which I almost did, but I'm glad I didn't).

Speed along because there isn't just an imaginative setting, there's an imaginative history to that setting. You get to learn about the Pavement Priests (SO COOL!), the mother of the streets, the Chemical Synod (so cool, but the long Ses make me think they're speaking in parseltongue). The setting is cool, but so much cooler because of the people that make it up.

Which gets us to the people. Ups and downs here. There are the two main characters, boy and girl. Then there's the female main character's best friend. There was a little confusion for me at the beginning because the best friend's nickname is Pencil and THAT name gets truncated down to Pen. The thing is, I thought they both had nicknames, one was Pen and one was Pencil, so things got really confusing really quick. Once I realized that Pen was Pencil and only one had a nickname, it made more sense. I was also disappointed because I thought Pen and Pencil was a great way to describe their friendship in as few words as possible.

The relationship between Beth and Pen is the high point of this book. As personal interactions go, Pollock nails these two the best. It feels the most natural. It reads the most engrossing, and it feels the most realistic. Second is the relationship between Beth and her dad, which really hits its high point in the middle of the book when neither character are together. It really helps their individual arcs along, and I was a bit jealous at how subtly those arcs had their foundation lain in the early chapters with these two characters. That was some mighty fine character development.

The relationship between the two main characters, well, that was the inspiration for this post. Now that I've finished the book, my opinion remains the same. (The backstory of the male main character is pretty wicked as well, lest you think I am ignoring him.)

Speaking of previous posts inspired by the book, there is also this post. I almost quit reading the book because of the errors. And I'm not talking about "Oh no, that's not an error, it's a Britishism rather than an Americanism". I mean, there are errors. Words missing. Words included that shouldn't be (words included that shouldn't that be). ESPECIALLY at the beginning. It dies down after the beginning but never fully goes away. It's rampant at the beginning of the book and was driving me nuts. This suggests a number of possible options: the beginning of the book received the most revision closest to publication (such as editorial notes), thus was not edited as much as other parts of the book that remained the same. The publisher skimped on editing. Or the author is atrocious at self-editing and that was the best the publisher could do. I'm leaning toward the first option myself, as I want to give both the publisher and the author the benefit of the doubt. (Having worked in book production before moving on to media, I know how, why, and how often publishers skimp on editing to save time and money.)

But lastly, and why I'm over the moon about the book, and why it means so little to you whether you'll like the book, his voice is SO similar to my own. I wouldn't have written this book. I've never been inspired to write urban fantasy. But if you had told me that you were from the future and I had written an urban fantasy and you let me read this book, you might convince me. Word usage, sentence style, cadence. It all sounds like me. And that's not to suggest that my voice makes it superior. It is to suggest that there is HOPE! I have improved significantly over the last year. I've moved on to the next level, I think in my brain. I'm ready to do this! But I'm not doing this. I'm still doing that other thing, and that can make it hard to keep one's chin up. But seeing Tom's book out there, that really makes it feel like there are agents out there that resonate to the way I write (just not necessarily what I've written to date). (That Tom's agent is on my short list of agents I want to work with only sweetens that pot, it is not the cause for this adulation.)

A pessimist (like myself) might think that an agent finding that voice wouldn't want another author that sounds similar, but that sliver of optimism I have in there says, but Tom writes urban fantasy and I never ever write urban fantasy (and with less finality, I rarely ever think of young adult stories either). So let's do this! Regardless of my dominant pessimism or my slight optimism, the simple fact that someone with a voice similar to mine has found an agent and a publisher says that YES there are fish out in that sea, so I need to keep swimming or I'll suffocate and the other fish who aren't those fish will eat me and crap me out to be food for phytoplankton. No one wants that.

So, back to the short review, THE CITY'S SON is worth the cost and worth the read. You should give it a try. I quit books in the first chapter ALL THE TIME, and I made it through this one. That should speak for itself. And follow Tom on Twitter. He's good people.

Candy: A List

We had a poor turn-out this year for Halloween, which means we have left-over candy, which means I've been eating left-over candy. Here are the best name-brand candies out there. You may have your own, different list, but it's wrong. ;)

1. Reece's Pieces/Peanut M&Ms (tied)

2. Twix

3. Watchamacallit

4. Snickers (the almond variety is why my childhood favorite, Mars, is no longer on this list)

5. Krackle (settle for Nestle Crunch only if you don't love life)

Shoo! Get away, you!

Generally, I feel in a rush to be published and begin my professional career in earnest. Part of that is because I've been writing for so long and am a touch ashamed that I only recently started taking it so seriously. I lost a whole decade in there where I might have made something of myself. A small part of it is that there are these kids getting published now. 22, 18, 16, sixteen really? I wasn't good enough to publish at twenty-six much less sixteen. Then again, whole lost decade. I guess we can call it two lost decades!

But perhaps the biggest reason I'm in such a rush, the reason that isn't so obvious as "I'm old" is that other people keep having the same ideas I do! There's nothing more I hate than when someone reads something of mine and says "This is just like ____!"

FUCK! I don't want to be just like _____. I want to be me. Now, sometimes it just reminds them of the tone or the style and that's fine. But sometimes it's a matter of whole story concepts! You know that episode of Supernatural where it turns out a prophet has been writing books that detail the adventures of Sam and Dean? You want to know who came up with that story before the show even aired? That's right! And now if I ever publish it, someone will say "Hey, that's just like that episode of Supernatural!" No, sir, that episode of Supernatural is just like my book even though my book will have come out years later.

Sigh.

The longer this takes the more frequently that happens. I'll have to beat other people's stories away with a stick. A stick I say! *thwap thwap*

Okay, now I'm going to go watch Hugo, which is very similar to a story idea of mine, but it's okay because it's based on a book that came out before I had the idea, so really I'm encroaching on that guy's world.

(Yeah, I know there are only so many stories, but some of them hit closer to each other than I like. Dammit.)

The Cinema!

It's hard not to say Lord of the Rings is my favorite movie1. The most epic of fantasies done better than any genre movie ever before. But for all its awesomeness, I always come back to Out of Sight. Steven Soderberg's 1998 movie with George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, and Ving Raimes. The writing, the acting, the directing is all top notch. It has the perfect slow burn for a couple that spark right away.

That kind of thing is on my mind lately. How people get together in books almost seems obligatory any more. If two people of opposite genders show up on the same side of whatever they're battling, they seem required to get together. In the book I'm reading now, the writer really knocks it out of the park when he's writing about the female main character and her best friend. So much so I thought there was going to be a reveal that the two were lesbians and in love. But when she's around the male main character, even though the chemistry isn't nearly as good, the story pushes them together.

I'm watching Out of Sight and seeing what would in any other sense look like a meaningless conversation but it's full of romantic tension and some foreshadowing. I notice that I've been skirting away from relationships. They're usually already in progress and without complication because the "will they or won't they" seems pretty transparent. It's almost always a will they. Or, if they're together, they won't for much longer because people just can't seem to keep their shit together after the weight of the world (author) slaps them together like legos.



1 I know there were three of them2, but I consider them one movie. If you're going to be stubborn about it, I think Fellowship most improves (and surpasses) the book, but I still say that all three (extended) movies form a single bad ass movie.

2 Unless you were thinking I was talking about the animated movie. It's animation style is revolutionary, but it just can't compare to the live-action movie.

Run for Your Lives!

An exciting thing happened to me in September. An agent read a full manuscript of mine and offered me a recommendation. I know it's not as cool as offering me representation, but a recommendation is pretty awesome in itself. "Send it to X and Y."

Well hell yes I will! Especially since both X and Y are on my short list of agents I would like to work with. What an awesome opportunity!

The thing is, both X and Y are at the same agency. Now some agencies specifically say "do not query multiple agents" but this isn't one of them. HOWEVER, I was still nervous of querying them both simultaneously. Some asshats out there will use in their query "so and so said I should email you" when so and so absolutely did not do that. They assume agents are enemies and don't talk to each other. Publishing is small folks and agents absolutely talk to each other. If you lie, you will get caught.

So I didn't want to appear to be one of those people by querying two agents at the same agency that I was contacting them on a recommendation even though it's absolutely true. I weighed the merits of both and chose which to send to first. And now I'm waiting. It's hard to wait for a response to queries. Harder still when you have a recommendation that you're hoping will help your already awesome manuscript (of course) rise to the top of the slush pile. Harder to the umpeenth degree when some agencies (a la Nelson Literary Agency) frequently send responses in two weeks or less. I've had agents respond to queries six months after I originally sent them. One time, I finished a manuscript and then received a rejection for the manuscript I had written BEFORE that one. There is not a set schedule for this kind of stuff.

So here I am waiting and it dawns on me. Shit, NaNoWriMo is here! With NaNoWriMo comes the SUPER-SLUSH! That period at the end of November through the middle of January where hopeful participants think their 50,000-word quantity-over-quality block of text is the next Harry Potter. I've made the mistake of querying during the super-slush. If you are serious about your career, just skip this time period. It's a billion times harder to get noticed. There are holidays and there is a ton of shit coming in.

So I am going to query second agent now so I don't get lumped in with the pending onslaught of 50k novels. If you're working on your query right now, I recommend you get that thing polished and out the door.

You Have a Proof, Read the Damn Thing!

Here's a little tradecraft for you. Copyediting and Proofreading are not the same thing. Copyediting often includes proofreading, but it's not its primary goal. It's the icing on the cake that makes your story better. Proofreading does not include copyediting (though occasionally a proofreader will attempt to do so and it usually means a lot of work cleaning up all their bad ideas--but I may be jaded with experiences past ;).

More tradecraft, copyediting costs more than proofreading. In instances where the schedule/budget are tight, you're more likely to see proofreading skipped rather than copyediting even though it's cheaper. Why? Because copyediting is more valuable. It doesn't just fix typos and bad grammar, it fixes holes in your plot, eliminates redundancy and cliche. It makes the story better. And surprisingly, readers are willing to accept a lot of typos if the story is good.

What does that mean? PROOFREAD YOUR SHIT! I hate reading authors talking about how bad their manuscript was when they turned it in. So and So cleaned that mess up and made it readable. Well then put So and So's name on the front cover since you weren't professional enough to make the effort yourself.

Tradecraft: No matter how hard you try, no matter how hard your editor tries, no matter how hard your copyediting and proofreader try, things will get missed. The more crap you leave in your manuscript for others to find, the more crap that will get missed. You get rid of as much as you possibly can before you turn it over. That way what's missed is minor and doesn't make you look like a writing slob.

I'm reading a book right now with an interesting premise and characters, but the frequency of errors is DRIVING ME NUTS! Complete words (articles or short prepositions) are absent in every other chapter. A) it knocks me out of the story. B) how shitty was your manuscript that you turned over that this many mistakes are present? and/or C) how shitty is your publisher that they didn't hire a quality freelancer that could find ENTIRE WORDS MISSING from a sentence.

*pant, pant, pant, pant* Okay, so the lesson, kiddies, is that a book is your face to the world. You can look like a slob and a slacker, or you can suit up and shine. Don't rely on other people to make your shit shiny. Put in the hard work. They'll think better of you for making their job easier and your readers will think better of you because it looks like you know how to write.

Filling Up the Tank

When I first started writing in a professional manner, I would have to take breaks every few months. I would take two weeks off and just read, letting my brain cool off and my creative juices to replenish. The more I wrote, the less frequently I had to do this and for shorter amounts of time until I haven't had to do it at all this past year. I had a pretty solid routine, take the train into Boston and write the entire way. Take the subway to work and read the entire way. I wrote and read every day and that seemed to balance creative intake and creative output.

But I'm unhealthy and I need to lose a lot of weight (a lot, so let's just leave it at that). I started participating in Boston's bike share program, riding a bike to work rather than riding the subway. While this did not have an immediate impact on my creativity, it seems to have had an effect over time. I've been feeling really burnt out the couple weeks. Now that the weather is cooling, I've started to take the subway again and started reading a new book (THE CITY'S SON by Tom Pollock) and I feel a spark I haven't felt for awhile. I've taken the past few days off and will resume writing tomorrow. I'm hoping a little break is what was necessary. I know there's been a lot of stress. Three full requests is no small thing and work has been incredibly difficult this year. Or rather, my editors have been incredibly difficult this year. My job is the same as it's always been, but content has been delivering later and later and I've had to turn it around faster and faster. I actually developed insomnia for a couple weeks. Let me tell you, that sucked.

I actually have (another) really exciting opportunity regarding one of the fulls I already delivered. Over-the-moon exciting, so of course I can't tell you about it. Cross your fingers for me, if you would be so kind.

So what does that leave? Well, I'm still fat. I need to lose weight and "working out" is something I detest. I always have. I always will. I do much better competing than I do simply standing on an elliptical and trudging for 45 minutes. I need a goal, a challenge, something I want to accomplish. I played kickball, but that was only once a week and our post-game dinners usually packed on more calories than we burned during the game. Serendipitously, they're starting a men's roller derby league in New Hampshire. I haven't skated in 25 years, but I think this might be just the kind of thing I would like to participate in. The biggest hurdle? My feet. I have insanely wide feet (8 EE if you're familiar with skate boots). No one has something that wide that I can borrow, which means I'll have to buy custom skates. It's a big deal if I choose to participate and I or it craps out. A skate made of quality components will hit me just under $600. How horrible would it be to spend that and then not be able to participate?

I can't keep doing what I'm doing. It may be cute to say "Oh bother" in a Whinnie the Pooh voice, but looking like him is not that cute.

Two Thumbs Up to Level Up

One of the perks of living/working in a major metropolitan area is that new technologies become viable in the marketplace sooner. For me, that means paying with my phone rather than cash/credit card.

You might have heard of Square. It won best new technology a year or two ago. Rather than the standard credit card reader that plugs into a phone line, Square card reader attaches to a smart phone. The company charges a lower processing fee than credit card companies and doesn't have any of the extra service or equipment fees. AND if they enable the GPS component, customers that have the Square Cardcase app can simply give their name and the smart phones communicate with each other. Nifty!

The problem is, not a lot of people in Boston are adopting Square. Starbucks just invested in the company and is converting all their locations to Square. I find Starbucks coffee disgusting so that doesn't do me a lot of good.

BUT, Square is not the only such company. Another is Level Up. Level up gives the vendor a smart phone to take pictures of QR codes that display on the customer's smart phone. The QR code is linked to a token and that token is linked to your credit card (thus, if your phone is ever stolen, you can just deactivate the token to protect your credit card). Unlike Square where the motivation is lower processing fees, Level Up creates more of a club mentality. Each vendor offers a discount for first-time users and then additional discounts when repeat customers pass certain benchmarks (so I get $3 off on my first-time purchase and then $5 after I've spent $50 at that restaurant, or what have you). Level Up doesn't charge processing fees on every purchase, but instead charges a fee based on the discount earned. That means that the merchant is getting free charges up until benchmarks are met. It can be great for vendors who might not get a large amount of repeat business (or get repeat business semi-frequently to hit that sweet spot in between) but the cost against the discount is higher than the individual charge fees, so it's not a revolutionary "how can they afford that" kind of deal.

I use Level Up a lot because merchants all around me use it. There are a dozen different places in immediate walking distance of my office and more along the subway path I take to work. I love love love paying with my phone rather than a credit card (except at MJ O'Connor's which is the only place I've ever had experience a "problem"; I think they just don't know how to use the phone).

The reason I'm talking about this today is because Level Up just introduced a new feature that I'm over the moon about. You can donate a percentage of your savings to charity. So instead of me getting $5 off at Four Burgers after I spent $50, I get a percentage of that $5 and the charity gets the rest. In this case, I buy the hamburger I was going to buy anyway, I save $2.50, and Jumpstart gets $2.50 as well. Not earth shattering, but it's more than they were getting before.

If I hadn't been a fan (which I was), I would be now. This is an awesome opportunity for people to give. If you have Level Up merchants in your area, give it a try.

So Much Time and for What?

I'm not one for "How To" books. I can never stick with them. It feels like reading a reference book. The closest I come is to reading Don Maass on Twitter who gives good advice on improving your characters.

So I'm linking to this post by Peter V. Brett not because of the book he's referencing but because of his life experience as a writer. When I first read it, I just shouted, "Yes! This! Exactly this!" While I don't mind trotting out my degrees (one in creative writing and another in playwriting), anyone that knows me knows I think very little of the education I received while pursuing those degrees.

I wrote my first short story in first grade and decided in seventh grade that I wanted to be a novelist, just like one of my favorite teachers, Brother Stephen Chappell. I got to high school and they told me I couldn't take creative writing until my junior or senior year because they found that the underclassmen lacked the maturity to take the writing seriously (despite the fact that I was asking to take the class as an incoming freshman, which I think demonstrates I want to take the damn thing seriously). I got but the one class in high school where the teacher frequently used my work as an example for the rest of the class on how it should be done. Clearly there wasn't anything for me to learn there.

And then I got to college. I had an amazing poetry writers workshop by a Lebanese instructor who proved to be the best writing professor I would have in my entire tenure in higher education. I had a Chinese teacher who announced the first day that writing could not be taught! You simply had to write and you would know how to do it or you would not. I had her repeatedly, which may tell you why I think so little of my creative writing degree. It was just class after class of writing for other students who most likely had the same experiences as me, being the best in their high school classes, but not the same interests. "Writing something other than fantasy" is not good feedback. Nor is "Write something real, not fantasy." Hope you enjoyed seeing Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies, motherfucker. They were books first.

Playwriting was better, but marginally so. The classes were smaller, I think, which is what made the difference, but they were still the same format of workshop. I often fantasize about teaching college because writing, to a degree, can most certainly be taught. If you disagree, then why do you read so many blogs where people giving writing advice? That's teaching. More over, a business of writing class would be awesome.

With all these young authors today talking about this teacher or that who had such a huge impact on them and prompted them to achieve their first novel days out of their mothers' wombs, all I can think was, am I only the only one that had a shitty writing education? My best classes were poetry, Chaucer, history of the theatre, and a senior theatre capstone. And it took me 4 1/2 years to get my degrees and I count my valuable writing experiences on four fingers. How disappointing.

But, at least, now I know I'm not alone.

Magic Through Tragedy

My wife and I watched the movie From Time to Time last night. The blurb sounded interesting enough, a boy returning to his ancestral English manor finds he slips back and forth between his current time and the past, deciphering the secrets of the ghosts that still live there. I didn't realize until it started that it was set during World War II. The opening scene sees the young main character sitting on a bench at a train station, waiting to be picked up. This struck me as powerfully similar to THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE as well as other English WWII-set stories like Bedknobs and Broomsticks and what have you.

Magic feels right when set in this period. It was a time of loss and upheaval, trial and depredation. It was a time when imagination was the only thing that could alleviate the tragedy. And that got me thinking.

What if magic is real but it's not limited by the normal tropes like technology or the loss of youthful innocence. What if magic is dependent on tragedy? Wherever you find pain and suffering, magic may manifest itself and the worse the suffering the more powerful the magic. An abusive father terrorizing his family? The mouse in the wall can talk. A deranged warlord causing a world war? The wardrobe leads to another plane of reality.

So we see these old tales of Euro-centric magic and think it folklore of years gone by. But what if the modernization and general improvement of life there means magic disappears? What if you'll find your new magical stories in Sudan or Afghanistan or Myanmar?

Redux: Where I Write

As time goes on, I find there's a topic from my old (decommissioned) live journal that I wish people might have read. So I post it here as a "redux", meaning I haven't changed anything, so some of it may be out of date. Still, the heart of the post is worthwhile, so I post it for you to read. In case you're wondering, I settled on THE TRIAD SOCIETY as the final title.

How strange. I seem to have fallen into a pattern of posting every other week on a Thursday. That is unintentional. June is my busiest month out of the year and this year was particularly bad. The amount of dreck that came out of editorial was massive. The worst offenders submitted and then promptly left on vacation. Jerks.

But that's not what this post is about! I just had to get that off my chest. (The last month really has been miserable in that respect. So much more work than was necessary to complete these projects. Sometimes it took me longer to decipher what was needed than to actually create the ebook!)

Have you heard of

The Rejectionist

? She's a popular insider/industry blog, written by an anonymous agent assistant. Her agent reps fantasy, too. She seems like a pretty cool assistant to work for. I hope she works for an agent I query and not one I've stricken from my query list. I think we'd have a fun dynamic working together (though her tastes lean toward classic metal and maybe some NWBHM while I lean toward Nu Metal and Metalcore). (Interesting aside, I plugged Metalcore into Last FM the other day. I was pleased it recognized the genre, but displeased when it spat death metal at me instead. I know the difference, Last FM! Don't try and fool me!)

Now, we don't always see eye to eye. She reminds me of

Anna Genoise

a lot in her absolutist take on prejudice and discrimination. While we all agree that discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, or sexual preference is wrong, I tend to lean toward a "multiple factors" approach rather than pointing a finger and calling for the torches and pitchforks. Still, I enjoy her blog. She has sass and I'm a sucker for sass.

Well, last Friday she made a proposal. Don't tell, show us where you write. It's a common question, "Where do you write?" That and When... At home, on the porch, whatever. Writers tend to adopt favorite spots, locations where they are most productive. Some people go to Borders every day and that's how they do their thing (I've tried this and neither Borders nor Barnes and Noble are conducive to maximum output). Instead of just saying where we write, which has become almost rote memorization by now, we should show it.

Now for me, I write in public places, so I limited my pictures so I wouldn't creep people out by taking pictures of them. If you've followed this journal or read

my website

, you know I love breakfast food. I like it from a diner. And I like it at a counter. Specifically, I like Jackie's Diner. (I also enjoy Dylan's in Chelmsford as a second option.)

I went to Jackie's with my wife when we first moved to Nashua. I tried the coffee and it blew my mind. They serve Green Mountain coffee. If you live outside of the Northeast corridor, this is the coffee the serve at McDonald's except without the shit ton of sugar that McD's adds. Specifically, they serve breakfast blend which is the awesomest coffee ever. Enjoying the coffee, I went back. And back. And back. I am now a regular and eat at the counter with other regulars. They know I write and mostly leave me to my devices (especially when I stare off into space). We can differ on politics, which is a big deal in New Hampshire, and other things, but that's all cool because we're all regulars. The waitresses know what I do and they support me in my effort even though the owner Carol doesn't like laptops. Mine doesn't take up a lot of space, thankfully.

She's okay with it. I'll give her a signed copy when I finally get published. Coffee, pancakes, eggs, more coffee. Who couldn't write like this? My brain is powered by breakfast! Rrraaaaaaahhhh!!!!!!

Problem is, because I'm such a regular, they like to talk to me. That's all right. That's more of an early morning or weekend writing spot. I get the bulk of my writing done on the MBTA commuter rail between Lowell and Boston North Station. Getting a job in Boston has proven to be one of the greatest events of my life. Not only because I work for a much better publisher than I used to (which I do), but because now I have a commute. This was hard to get used to and some days it still runs me down. Getting home at 6:15 in the evening being "early" sucks. Getting home at 10:00 at night sucks more. But despite all that, the commute has proven the absolute best thing that has ever happened to my writing. It is time that can't be taken away (except by standing room only and shrieking children). I tried to set boundaries with my wife when we first moved in together (before we were married, because you know you were asking). It would last for a few weeks and then dissolve. This can't be taken away. This is dedicated writing time. Two hours of writing a day, one hour each way. I wrote BLACK MAGIC AND BARBECUE SAUCE and WANTED: CHOSEN ONE, NOW HIRING in a year's time because I rode this train. People think I rushed or I didn't revise. Nope. Two hours a day, five days a week and then writing at Jackie's on the weekend. That netted me two novels. Bam!

My regular seat was taken when I took this picture. I was in one of those sideways facing seats that fold up when no one is in them, so I couldn't frame the best picture I wanted. But writing on the train is writing on the train regardless of where you sit. This is also why I use an Eee PC (early gen netbook if you don't know what that is). Like any good fantasist, I have a bit of a belly, so using a full-size laptop is kind of hard. And who needs it? I can type on this thing and that's all I need. Type type type.

After taking this picture, I worked on my WIP for the rest of the ride in. I will do the same on the way home. Later this year, I will have another completed manuscript to send to agents and eventually I'll crack this glass ceiling and publish my damn books!

And who knows, when I finally do, maybe the Rejectionist will be the assistant who pulls my work out of the slush pile. (That's Joseph L. Selby, Le R. The next work you'll receive from me will be either THE TRIAD SOCIETY or THE HOOK AND HAMMER SOCIETY depending on which title I finally settle on. Get ready with a request for a full! ;)