Harry Potter (again)

One of the interesting memes in the wake of the release of the last "Harry Potter" book has been whether J.K. Rowling is a Good Writer. Many of my friends say no (some with the caveat that she's a great storyteller); they point to the worst section in the series, the first third/half of book five, in which the relentless dismantling of all the joy of the first four books is nearly unendurable, or they talk about the difficulty in reading "ALL CAPS" Harry. To be fair, there are times when Rowling seems downright uncomfortable with her writing, most often (as Cassie Clare pointed out) when writing about romance. The "monster coiling in Harry's belly" seemed like someone trying to describe a boy's awakening to puberty without (a) having gone through it, or (b) being explicit about it at all.

In Salon, Laura Miller (day pass or subscription required) says of Rowling that "the texture and color of her imaginary world is earthy (but not lusty), homely, grounded, irreverent, antic, perfectly suited to the audience of 10-year-olds she first devised it for 10 years ago. Her voice, tone and imagination are rooted in social comedy and observation, not in the metaphysical and transcendent..." This is the best analysis of her writing that I've read. I have little to add to it.

Stephen King, in a long article in this week's Entertainment Weekly, says "she was and is an incredibly gifted novelist." Novelist (a term Laura Miller also uses) simply means that she writes novels, stories about people, rather than Significant Works such as Paradise Lost, or your average Don DeLillo book. King, whatever you may think of his actual writing, knows a thing or two about the craft (his "On Writing" is one of the best books for writers I've read), and I would at this point trust him more to evaluate another writer than to pen a brilliant story.

At the core of it, it feels to me like all of the debate over whether Rowling is a Good Writer or not stems from a touch of professional jealousy, a desire to take down the hugely popular books or demean them because they are so popular. "Yes, well, of course the masses love her, but they don't know what good writing is." She is not Dorothy Parker, she is not Madeleine L'Engle; in the world of children's books, her nearest peer may be Andre Norton, who filled many hours of my childhood with delightful science fiction and fantasy stories that, at their core, were always about the people in them. She introduced me to many strange and wonderful characters (Eet remains one of my favorite sidekicks ever), told gripping and beautiful stories, and took me to faraway worlds. Whatever the quality of her prose, those are the marks of a good writer, and that is as true of the late Ms. Norton as it is of Ms. Rowling.

Harry Potter and the Fundamentalist Deconstruction

[No spoilers]

I haven't actually heard much about the Fundies' response to HP7. Perhaps they're just happy the whole thing is over with. But Lance Mannion has a great take on why they object to Harry Potter in the first place, and what Rowling's message in the books is. Excerpted:

When all is said and done, Rowling makes one very key point about magic.

It's not important.

Harry does not succeed because he is a great wizard. He is, as it happens, not particularly adept at being a wizard.

Magic isn't what saves the day. To say it does is like saying that the hero's gun saves the day in a Western.

Magic is just the technology of the wizarding world and Rowling makes it clear that putting one's faith in magic is a sign of stupidity (the folks at the Ministry) or inhumanity (Voldemort and his followers). To trust in a tool or a technology is to give up thinking for one's self or to give up one's soul and make a tool of one's self.

To make a belief system out of trusting in tools over people is an insanity.

It isn't hard to make the leap from that to the conclusion that Rowling isn't fond of any belief system that encourages people to put their trust not in their own selves but in the authority of the belief system and its ruling elders.

Dumbledore, the greatest wizard ever, performs very little magic over the course of the first six books, and he teaches Harry very few tricks.

His main, and almost his only lesson, for Harry?

Think, Harry! Think!

The whole article is a bit long, as Lance's sometimes are, but worth it, as they almost always are. And if you want more reading, his post is a followup to this post about why the fundamentalists hate Harry Potter. Which I admit I haven't read all of, yet, but the parts I did read look good.

Return from ComicCon / New book on sale

San Diego Comic-Con International is quite the event now, making national headlines and attracting Hollywood and its satellite industries (now including video game producers and toy companies). I love comics, and my favorite part of Comic-Con (apart from all the restaurants in San Diego) is walking around the independent publishers and small press tables to see what the individual creative spirits are up to this year.

This also awakens in me a yearly desire to Do A Comic, mainly because any story without a graphical component is largely ignored here. That desire gets worse when you spend the entire weekend sitting behind a table watching your novel be ignored while people coo over some (admittedly very good) graphic novels. At any rate, I've had a comic idea in mind for, oh, years now, and though I can't draw quickly or all that well, I can draw passably and in the past week I've fleshed out the world and plot of this comic considerably (in past years it had never really gotten beyond the layout for page 1, followed by "and then some stuff happens"). So we'll see how it goes--I will update more in this space as time goes on.

Speaking of projects that don't require me to draw, though, my literary journal New Fables is now on sale online from Sofawolf. This project grew out of a Fabulist Fiction class I took at Stanford, when some friends and I realized that "furry" stories with literary merit could be classified as fabulist, and when our classmates in that class really enjoyed our stories without questioning too much why they all involved talking animal people.

Neither of those stories are in this anthology, but in addition to my own contribution (which is set in a future Earth in between our time and the time of New Tibet, intended to be in the same world though nothing really establishes that), there are stories by Michael Payne, Kevin Frane (my former classmate), and Ryan Campbell. In addition, Phil Geusz and I wrote essays; Ryan, David Cowan, and Elizabeth Barrette contributed poems; and Sara Palmer and Heather Bruton added one-page illustrated stories. Ursula Husted drew a lovely cover for us, and the ever-talented Blotch and Jill C. also helped with interior illustrations.

I'm really proud of it. Please go check it out!

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (NO SPOILERS)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling
9/10, book 7 in the famed series

It's good.

Writing Serial

I've been writing more of my anthropologist journal and giving it in monthly installments to the writing workshop. My writing partner-pal Rikoshi has been doing the same with his novel, and last night we were discussing some aspects of writing serially that are good, and some that are bad.

To the good: the big one is that it forces you to get something done. So far we have both been pretty good about meeting our deadlines, six chapters into our respective books. Considering that's five chapters more than I'd produced in the previous year, that's terrific. Another good thing is that it breaks down the story into smaller parts, and you feel like at the end of each part, you have to make it interesting enough for the reader to pick up the next part. That's a great way to avoid getting lost in meandering long descriptions and loose plot threads. When people aren't engaged in the most recent chapter, they'll let you know. There's also the ability to take feedback from earlier chapters and incorporate it into later ones without having to wait to go back and edit it. That's tremendously helpful and will save time when you go back to edit the whole thing, because you'll already have a pretty good idea of what needs to be fixed.

The bad: pretty much what you would expect. You're showing people first drafts, fairly raw ones. It's hard for the readers to develop a flow because they're just reading one chapter a month (still, Dickens used to do all right with that). You can't go back and fix things in earlier chapters to make what you just wrote in this recent one make more sense.

Overall, though, we both agreed that the good outweighs the bad, and that we're learning a lot from this experience. It's definitely something that works for us, and if you have a workshop group and a novel you're stuck with, it's worth giving it a try.

Writing Resource and Update

While looking for the correct way to say "safe-deposit box" (it's not "safety deposit box"), I found this amazingly useful page. Sadly, it does not yet address one error I keep seeing these days: "eek out" (the correct phrase is "eke out," meaning to barely succeed). But it's a good resource nonetheless.

What am I working on? A screenplay for my screenwriting group (at the "scene list" stage right now, which is kind of like a novel's outline; unlike when I write a novel, I'm more inclined to do this outline before diving into the screenplay, simply because screenplays are so much more minimalist... this is probably another whole post). A YA novel that I really like the idea of. My science fiction book in which an anthropologist finds herself embroiled in a culture war on an alien planet (I am writing new installments monthly for our writing group). And the release of a magazine I edited and contributed to, New Fables, which will be on sale online at the end of July. I'd like to get it into some bookstores. Any thoughts from anyone on how to do that? I think it does have a lit-journal feel, but I also know that little corner of bookstores is crowded and dusty, and I'm not sure how to shove my little book into it.

That's all. Just another lazy summer...

Don't Just Be A Good Writer, Be A Good Person

From the lately departed Miss Snark, via Wyrdsmiths: Ten Traits of Good Authors (as opposed to good Writers). It's something I want to remember, should I ever be fortunate enough to be in the position of having an agent to please.

Review: Ptolemy's Gate

Ptolemy's Gate, by Jonathan Stroud
9/10, a terrific conclusion to a wonderful trilogy

The counter to my argument against trilogies is that a good trilogy can pull off a more satisfying conclusion than a single novel on its own. Over three books, you have time to get to know and get invested in the characters, and if the story is told well, the payoff is that much richer for the more extended journey.

This story is told well. I could leave it at that, and in fact, I won't give too many details of the story itself, because it really is best discovered by the reader. I just want to highlight a few of the points that I liked.

Stroud's characters outshine his world-building as the jewel of this series. Nathaniel, Bartimaeus, and Kitty are the stars, but every one of the minor characters is given the same loving attention, with the result that the world feels real and complete. It's only upon reflection that you wonder about the Victorian-era feel with the modern technology, and wonder if Stroud might have done more to explain that demons took the place of technology, if that is indeed the case. But that is not really a flaw in the story so much as a texture of the world that wasn't necessary to include, only noticeable by its absence, and then only in retrospect. There is a great moment in this book when Nathanial and Bartimaeus are discussing whether one of their enemies lied to them, and Bartimaeus says, no, that's not his style. It's a great moment because the description is true to the character, and because Bartimaeus is the kind of djinn who notices and counts on these little traits of character. He understands others: people, spirits, and everyone in between. That's what makes him a survivor, despite the fact that his powers aren't quite what he would like us to believe they are.

That's also what makes him a great protagonist, because this series is really about people struggling to be different from what the world expects of them. Bartimaeus sees these qualities in the friends and enemies he has, and alone among them seems aware that there is a chance to rise above. We get a more thorough explanation of this rare insight as the story unfolds, not only in the present day, but back in ancient Egypt as well. Bartimaeus's service to Ptolemy is shown in a series of asides, the young noble contrasted with the youngsters Bartimaeus is dealing with in the modern era. What seems like a bit of interesting background becomes an essential component of the story, as Kitty and Nathaniel have to unlock Ptolemy's secret (with Bartimaeus's help, naturally) in order to defeat their enemies and, as is the case in all good books, complete their own individual journeys.

There's little I can say about this book specifically except that it works marvelously as a story, but even better as the capstone to one of the best YA series I've read. The Bartimaeus trilogy ranks up there with favorites like "The Dark Is Rising," Madeleine L'Engle's Murry family series, "A Series of Unfortunate Events," and, of course, Rowling's "Harry Potter" books. If you like YA fantasy, you have no excuse for not reading this trilogy. I am most indebted to those who pointed out this very fact to me and then bought me the trilogy to make sure it was remedied (which, coincidentally, is how I was led to read the "Harry Potter" books, too). Thanks to them--now I'm passing the recommendation on. Buy. Read.

Common Writing Mistakes

I love this post, not only for putting "loose vs. lose" at the top of the list, but also for giving me the Latin behind "i.e." (id est) and "e.g." (exempli gratia) and for the interesting bit of advice about apostrophes: "When in doubt, leave it out." I hadn't thought about it, but I do think an unnecessary apostrophe is more jarring than a missing one. If you really don't know and don't have a reference handy, I guess that's not a bad rule of thumb.

[Edit: In the great Philadelphia Will Do blog, this headline today is timely.]

Review: The Golem's Eye

The Golem's Eye, by Jonathan Stroud
8/10, a thrilling adventure but somewhat of a letdown from the first

I have a bit of a peeve against trilogies that are clearly written as trilogies; something that comes out as "book 1" before the others are even published rubs me the wrong way; it shouldn't, really, because why shouldn't an author plan out a trilogy and know there are going to be three books in advance? Well, because you should be setting out to tell a story, and the story is as long as it should be. I don't feel any annoyance at Ms. Rowling for planning a seven-book series, so why the bother about a trilogy? Maybe because they're so common. Still, the three-act structure is a common enough one, and in this case I've no objection to reading more about Bartimaeus the djinn and his master, now known as John Mandrake.

Since the first book, Mandrake has come up in the world, now apprenticed to the Information Minister and working for Internal Affairs. But there's a problem: an unknown monster has been ravaging London, and as it is a magical creature, it's Internal Affairs' problem. Mandrake is put in charge of the investigation as it is presumed to be connected with the shadowy Resistance that has been launching small raids on magicians for the past few years, which he is already in charge of investigating. And because he needs magical help of the first order, and some snappy comebacks, he summons again the djinn Bartimaeus.

Bartimaeus, having thought that the end of their association at the conclusion of the previous adventure was permanent, is none too pleased, but a judicious threat from Mandrake convinces him to cooperate this time. And so our heroes are off again on another adventure through a curiously time-frozen London, where computers are occasionally mentioned, but the flow of news and information is as sluggish as it was in colonial times.

The problem in this book is that Mandrake has grown up, now a lad of fourteen, and has spent two years under the inflexible tutelage of Ms. Whitwell, who we remember from being in charge of torturing prisoners in book one. He is eager for power, and from his master is learning all sorts of things, not just about powerful magic, but about undermining your enemies and currying political favor; about treating commoners and spirits with the same contempt; about putting yourself and your ambitions first. As a consequence, Mandrake is considerably less likable in this book than he was in the first. Bartimaeus has, of course, contempt for all humans, but even he channels the reader's thoughts in his disappointment that Mandrake has grown up to be a typical magician.

Into the vacuum of sympathetic characters jumps Kitty Jones, a briefly appearing figure from book one, here fully realized as one of the leaders of the Resistance. Her story illuminates the plight of the commoners and the attitude of most of them: they toil for the magicians, but they don't mind, because the magicians protect them from the evil foreigners and thus deserve everything they get. (One sees here, and in the third book, definite echoes of modern political issues.) Kitty herself is a scrappy, loyal fighter, who doesn't accept that magicians deserve all they get. Like John Mandrake, she falls in with a crowd of people who value her abilities and want to help her; like him, she is nobler than the people who surround her; unlike him, she has the strength to carve out her own path.

In fact, the trio of main characters are skilfully drawn with some wonderful parallels. Bartimaeus is literally a slave; Mandrake is just as much a slave to the society he has joined, as is Kitty a slave to the magicians. Through Kitty's rebellion against magicians, and eventually her companions, we gain a little bit of hope that Mandrake may exhibit similar strength of character. Alas, there is not much of that in this book, which appears to serve primarily to set up the third.

Don't get me wrong: this book has all the charm, wit, and action of the first, in addition to which the class strife between the magicians and commoners is well explored and well drawn. I tore through this one as quickly as I did the first book. The problem is that there's too much time spent introducing Kitty, and that, this being the second act of a planned trilogy, the development of the main character must take a downward turn before (one hopes) the final revelation and redemption. Kitty makes for a fascinating character, but she doesn't have the interesting flaws of Nathaniel/John, nor the sarcastic flair of Bartimaeus, and watching John Mandrake's descent into cold, calculating efficiency at the expense of human relationships is, well, just a bit depressing. The characters come together briefly at the end, but the overarching feeling from this book is one of intense loneliness on the part of all three.

Despite the problems, I recommend this book heartily, as a fun adventure on its own, and for the societal issues, but mostly because you have to get through this one to read the third one, and I'm hoping that Mandrake's character arc will finish up in the third.

Happy Endings, and a New Tool

No, not me, though I feel like a tool for leaving my notebook on a southbound CalTrain Friday night. Happily, I got a call Monday morning from CalTrain's Lost and Found telling me that the notebook had been turned in. The cash was missing, of course, but all the credit cards were there (useless now I've canceled them and ordered new ones) as well as my new driver's license (yes!) and, of course, all my precious scribblings (whew). So all's well that ends well, I guess, even if there were a few tense moments when the clerk at the Lost and Found at the San Jose station looked at me with puzzlement and said, "Did they call you?" I thought, wouldn't that be perfect, to get me to drive all the way down to the station only to have the Lost and Found have lost my notebook again. But no, it turned out it was in a locked cabinet somewhere, and she found it and handed it over to me. And because the station is right next to the Poor House Bistro, I treated myself to a Cajun lunch (half a baked ham po'boy and a cup of gumbo) in semi-celebration. After all, if I were writing this as a story, that's how I'd end it: with a lesson learned (symbolized by the cash lost) and a delicious Cajun meal.

So, the tool. I've been thinking for a couple years that it'd be nice to have all my references for a world together in one document without it being a huge Word doc I'd have to scroll through to find anything. Enter WikidPad, which is exactly what it sounds like: a Wiki for your local machine. It's exactly what I needed for my novel. I can have listings of the cities on the planet, the people in the story, even the outlines of what happens in each part. All of them have their own page and are interlinked and indexed for easy access. It's easy to edit, easy to cut and paste into, and the only real problem with it is that it's so easy to use that you could happily spend hours just building out all the details of your world and never manage to write the actual story.

There are a number of local Wiki tools for Windows or Mac. This is the one I heard of first. I've installed and used it and it works great. If you search Google for "local wiki" and either "Windows" or "OSX," you'll find many alternatives, I'm sure.

Oh, and lastly, I promise, pictures of the book signing are up on my Flickr account. Enjoy!

Your Writing Notebook

You know how sometimes some little thing happens to you that prevents a larger accident? Like, "wow, good thing I forgot my jacket or I never would've run back into the house and noticed we'd left it unlocked!" or "if I hadn't missed the turnoff for 101 and decided to take 280, I would've been caught in that traffic jam for hours" or "man, if Jennifer hadn't dumped me, I'd never have hooked up with Angie"?

I am a big advocate of the little Moleskine notebook. I carry mine around everywhere and I even use its pocket to carry my driver's license, cash, credit cards, so I'm sure I have it wherever I go.

One thing I might reconsider in the future is slipping my commuter train ticket inside it. Yesterday I'd sat down and took the notebook out of my jeans so I wouldn't have to dig for it when the conductor came around to check tickets. I like to be prepared, see. Well, I got involved in doing some writing--you can see where this is going--and they never did come around to check tickets. My stop came up just as I was shutting down the machine, so I jammed it into the computer bag, backed out of the seat (that's the part that gets me--I must have been looking down at it and didn't notice it at all), and hopped off the train, happily leaving my poor writing notebook (and cash, and driver's license, and credit cards) sitting on the train seat. And I didn't glance back at the seat to see if anything was missing. I didn't brush my pocket on the way down the stairs and realize that the notebook was missing. I didn't get asked for my ticket on the way out of the train (as I had that morning), forcing me to go find it. That little thing...never happened.

I realized before the train had reached its destination that my notebook (and cash, and driver's license, and credit cards) was missing. Called CalTrain and they said they would call the conductor on the train to see if he could find it, and if he did, or if someone turned it in, it'll be at the Lost and Found in San Jose on Monday. Cancelled all my cards, and it wasn't much cash, so really I'm just annoyed at myself for being scatterbrained, and at losing the writing I'd done in the notebook. And the new driver's license which I JUST got this week.

On the plus side, it doesn't LOOK like a wallet, and whoever finds it can have the cash as a stupid tax if they want. I'm more worried about the little things tucked into the pocket. My name and address and either e-mail or phone are in the book, so hopefully it'll turn up. But there's a lesson for you. Be careful with your ideas and don't lose them.

(Honestly, I'm not sure there's anything irreplaceable in the book. The thing about writing down ideas is it seems to fix them in my mind anyway. But it's annoying. Plus I don't want someone else out there to steal my crappy thoughts.)

Old Favorite in New Edition

The first book I clearly remember reading was Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle In Time." I was staying with a cousin in Washington, D.C., on my own, which was pretty cool as I was only about six at the time, I think. I slid between a chair and coffee table and she said, "I bet you could slip through a wrinkle in time." Puzzled, I asked what that meant. She got the book down and showed me, and I was enthralled. I remember that she'd written notes in the margins, obviously having studied it for a class at some point, and that some phrases were underlined (Mrs. Who's pithy quote, "May the right prevail" being the only one I remember).

I loved "A Wrinkle In Time," was delighted at "A Wind In The Door," but "A Swiftly Tilting Planet" remains my favorite of the series. I may have read "Many Waters," but I don't recall it, and "An Acceptable Time" is a new one to me. All five of them are stories of the Murry family: Meg, Charles Wallace, their friend Calvin O'Keefe, Meg's mother and father, the twins Sandy and Dennys. And the ones I've read are all wonderful.

Square Fish is reissuing the books in lovely new editions. If you are strangers to these books, please do yourself a favor and pick them up. For Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Which; for Proginoskes and Mr. Jenkins; for Gaudior and Zilla; for Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin.

Review: The Amulet of Samarkand

The Amulet of Samarkand, by Jonathan Stroud
9/10, terrific contemporary magical fantasy adventure with great narrative voice

Imagine J.K. Rowling and Susanna Clarke ("Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell") collaborating on a fantasy, and you might come up with Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy. As rich and politically savvy as Clarke's epic novel, with a healthy dose of Rowling's whimsy (mostly provided by the voice of Bartimaeus the djinn), "The Amulet of Samarkand" sucks you in from page one and doesn't let go.

Imagine you are a djinn, a powerful magical creature who lives in a mostly formless state in the Other Realm. It's not a bad existence, except for those dang human magicians, who have figured out a way to yank you from your home into their realm and not only force you into a corporal form (though some, like Bartimaeus, can change their form), but also force you to do stuff for them. This could be stuff as simple as "spy on that guy" or as complicated as, say, "steal this powerful magical talisman from one of the most powerful and ambitious magicians in the realm." Which is a particularly humiliating task when assigned by a twelve-year-old magician's apprentice, with no small dose of ambition himself.

Bartimaeus has been around for a while, and his sarcasm and cynicism are among the primary joys of this book. He explains the magical world in often-hilarious footnotes as he goes along through his adventures (at one point, he describes a building as a "typical Victorian mansion, you know the type" with a footnote in which is contained the more verbose description with the disclaimer, "I was just trying to move the story along."). The other magical creatures he meets in his travels are sometimes known to him, sometimes not, and if they are, chances are he's done something in the past to irritate them, either in ancient Egypt or during the Crusades or in Prague, whose city walls he helped build.

We get hints of a larger political scene here--a previous war with the Czechs, a current war with Italy, and a Resistance that is fighting against the government of the magicians at home in Britain. But the bulk of this story concerns the twelve-year-old Nathaniel coming of age, and his servant (for the time being) Bartimaeus's struggle to complete his tasks and win his freedom, annoying his master as much as possible in the interim. Their interplay is terrific, a more articulate Ushio and Tora, and the magical world is painted with lovely, authentic touches. Even though the story is set in the same pseudo-modern era as J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books (approximately early 80's: cars, TV, but no cell phones or internet), the government of the magicians has a peculiarly Renaissance-fantasy feel that really appeals. Nonetheless, there is a sense of real danger, and people (and spirits) die along the way.

I've already started the second book. If you like magical fantasy, you should already be ordering the first.

Writing Dialogue

I'm sure I've posted on this subject before (Technorati disagrees), but as I've just finished a dialogue class, it's not a bad time to revisit it. Plus, Lance Mannion has a gem of a post today that includes the following:

And this is what separates most of us from great journalists and other real writers---having a trained ear that hears what is really being said instead of what you expect people to say or remember what other people have said in similar situations, having a trained eye that sees everything and not what memory and expectation tell it it should be seeing, and then having the kind of trained memory that remembers and retains what the ear heard and the eye saw and does not overlay these fresh memories with old ones and with old prejudices and with wishful fantasies and opinions about what should have been said and what should have been seen and what should have happened.

And having a notebook handy.

This, or a similar phenomenon, is why I learned to read something twice if I wanted to read it critically; why you should see a movie twice if you want to talk about it structurally; why, as Lance says, you have to train yourself to listen to the words being said, and not what your brain translated them into in order to help you understand them. Memory is tricky, even if you're not Leonard, which is why you and your SO can remember saying completely different things in the same conversation.

One of the exercises we did for our dialogue class was to eavesdrop on people and listen to how they talk. This is a great way to hear exactly what's being said rather than what your brain turns it into, because you're removing the context from their words, so your brain has no expectations to work with. I did find that it's much harder to eavesdrop on people than I would have thought--easier while walking around a busy street on a weekend night than in a restaurant or cafe, if you want a tip. I got some great lines, though the idea is not to use those lines specifically, but to get a feel for how people who aren't you put their sentences together.

Right now, we mostly get that feel from movies and TV, more so (I think) than from our co-workers and friends, unless they're really unusual. Movies and TV represent an idealized form of dialogue, the way we wish we could talk, so that's what we tend to emulate more. Lance goes on about this at some length, and the power of the writer to shape those words and thus the way people think. How many people do you think Tarantino or Kevin Smith have influenced with their snappy dialogue? Or, say, Tolkien (via Peter Jackson)?

The more you sound the way people want to sound, the more they will gravitate to your writing. So always keep your notebook handy, and when people are talking, listen.

Review: City of Bones

City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare
7.5/10, a rockin' YA urban fantasy adventure with sparkling characters

"The Very Secret Diary of Aragorn, son of Arathorn.
Day One:
Ringwraiths killed: 4. V. good.
Met up with Hobbits. Walked forty miles. Skinned a squirrel and ate it.
Still not King."

Those were the first words I read by Cassandra Clare, part of the Very Secret Diaries of the Lord of the Rings characters that launched her into internet legend. She was in the process of writing an extensive Harry Potter fanfic, but took a break to poke fun at Tolkien's cast. If the VSDs exposed the Internet to her sharp wit, the Draco trilogy showed her keen grasp of characters and story. Finally, she put those skills to use in her own story and her own world, and the result is the fun, thrilling "City of Bones."

The book starts with Clary Fray and her friend Simon at a club, where Clary witnesses what she thinks is a murder. The problem is, the body disappears as soon as it's killed, and Simon can't see any of the perpetrators, who disappear with smirking arrogance. Of course, things get rapidly more exciting and more complicated: the "murdered" boy was actually a demon, his killers demon-slayers. Their world collides more violently with Clary's, in an adventure that gets progressively more complicated and layered as it goes along, accumulating glamorous warlocks, sultry vampires, and fierce werewolves, not to mention the demon-slayers themselves, called Shadowhunters.

Clare's prose is fun to read, never stalling or slowing. She has a nice touch with description and imagery, but her real strength is in her characters. Clary, Simon, and the Shadowhunters Jace, Alec, and Isabelle are fully realized, vibrant characters who engage you from the first time they appear. Clary's mother, her friend Luke, the Shadowhunters' teacher Hodge, the warlock Magnus Bane, all spring off the page in supporting roles, and it is the characters that make this story really special.

The only real quibble I have with the book is that the prose is sometimes a little too hip. The characters occasionally sacrifice realism for the bon mot, their wit all as sharp as their blades and drawn more often. However, given that I never watched "Buffy," the closest thing to a touchstone for this genre, that's probably all in keeping with the standards. Also, I am (conservatively) twenty years older than the target audience. Perhaps twenty-five.

That said, though, the slightly forced hipness doesn't detract from the realism of the characters. They are teenagers, saying stupid things sometimes and uncannily wise things at other times. The dynamic between Clary, Simon, and Jace is extremely well played. And the story itself is quite engaging, with strong echoes of Harry Potter (the main villain is presumed to have been dead for some fifteen years, was at school with many of the people Clary meets, and you can feel the shadow of Hogwarts looming over Clare's vague descriptions of the early school). This isn't to say that the world or story feel derivative; I suspect it's more an artifact of my knowing Clare's appreciation of the Harry Potter series and being more apt to notice similarities. The trappings of her world are nicely detailed (the vampire hotel, the werewolf packs, the warlock's party) and make for fun reading.

Overall, I had a great time reading this book. I have no qualms recommending it to anyone who enjoys "Buffy," Harry Potter, or Holly Black, Clare's friend and fellow author.

How It Feels

It occurs to me that in the slightly giddy but overall fairly dry recap of the signing, I didn't really capture how enormously weird it was to be standing in a real bookstore in front of a bunch of people reading lines I'd written. Yes, of course I've had dreams like that, only usually I'm better dressed, the audience is bigger, and the lines are better. Also I can consistently pronounce "either." But based on my reactions last night, I think that my dreams should start smaller. Even this modest audience of twenty people--most of whom knew me--was slightly intimidating. Sitting there, taking me seriously... interested in my book. (And the people, once again, were great.) I thought I'd be prepared for this, since I'd done a preview reading from the text at a convention last fall, but I was nervous, didn't set up the chapter as well as I could've, and tried, in some misguided Iron Man way, to make it all the way through without taking a single drink of water (I failed--my voice literally gave out--but I did get to the last page before I had to grope back behind me for the water bottle).

The side effect this has is one of swinging the pendulum back to me believing in the book. While I was reading, I was wincing inwardly and thinking I should've taken another six months to tighten up the prose, improve the descriptions, rehash the dialogue (at one point I did redact the prose on the fly, taking out one word so it wouldn't sound repetitive). But seeing so many people interested in it, and talking to a few who'd read and enjoyed it, make me see the positive qualities of the book again, and remember one of my core tenets, which is that people won't remember that ugly sentence on page 24. They will remember the message of the book if it's effectively conveyed, and I think that I did that.

That doesn't change the acute awareness of all the minor glitches in the prose that stand out in sharp relief during a reading. All that does is cement my resolve to edit more firmly this next manuscript, so that next time I stand up to read, I can focus on remembering to say either "ay-ther" or "ee-ther" throughout.

Book signing!

...is over! It was last night at Books Inc. in Mountain View, and it was (by their standards) a smashing success. The organizer told me that local authors (read: unknowns) often get little or no turnout, but we filled fifteen seats and had people standing behind them. The bookstore sold out of the 15 books we gave them a month ago and sold nine more of the box we'd brought (they kept a few to stock, so you can still get the book there if you missed the signing). I read a chapter from "Common and Precious" (chapter 5, if you own the book, In Which Meli Meets The Kidnappers And Is Brought To A Filthy Hospital) and answered questions for about fifteen minutes, then signed for half an hour and spent another fifteen minutes talking to a journalism student (friend of a friend) who had read and enjoyed the book. So all in all, it was a great success, thanks mostly to Mark, who did a great job getting the word out to all of our assorted friends. He took pictures too (forthcoming) and helped chat people up during the event.

If you showed up, many thanks! It really means a lot to me to have people take time out of their evening and spend their hard-earned money. I gotta say, it was a lot of fun. Books Inc. had a great setup, a little podium in back and chairs for the audience, and Nadine, the organizer, was very helpful and kept things running smoothly. Mostly it was great chatting with people and being asked serious questions about my book. Yow. I need to get to do another one of those sometime soon.

New story for sale!

I have a new story up on Amazon Shorts, a near-future tale that is sort of about body modification and sort of about fame and a bit about L.A. It's called "Chasing the Spotlight" and I encourage you to go check it out and let me know what you think!

Links will be put up on the sidebar momentarily.

Women in Historical Fiction

Lance Mannion, to whom I've referred before, has been pretty vocal lately on the topic of feminism. With the release of Pirates of the Caribbean 3, he thinks it's a shame that Keira Knightley has, for all intents and purposes, been turned into a boy. His point, shorter: in an attempt to prove that women are the equals of men, writers are losing sight of the feminine aspects of their characters.

This is something that's bothered me about a lot of period pieces lately. It seems necessary to show that women in the olden days were Just As Tough as men, even though in those actual times, they were discouraged from showing it. Lance's point, an excellent one, is that women can be men's equals--and have been, throughout history--without being equal at physical skills (specifically, fighting).

From a writer's standpoint, I think these are important things to remember. In your novel, especially if it's historical/high fantasy, feminine characters (in general) survive by their wits; masculine characters survive by their muscles. Note that feminine characters are not always women; masculine characters are not always men. However, the exceptions should be notable. And you should have some balance.

In Common and Precious, there is a definite (and intentional) contrast between the two main characters, the one masculine, the one feminine (and they happen to be a man and woman, respectively, or at least a male and female tiger). Thinking back on it, I don't think it ever even occurred to Melinda (more appropriately, to me writing her) to fight her way out of her predicament. It just wouldn't be in her character. Does that make her any less strong or powerful? Well, I hope not.

Any other good examples of strong female characters who aren't just "boys with breasts" (Lance's words)?

Blogging about writing

And now, writing (in a blog) about blogging about writing. Lance Mannion, whose blog a friend turned me on to, is quite entertaining. Today he takes issue with a novelist (Richard Ford) who says that "a literary blogger is just "some guy sitting in his basement in Terre Haute."" (forgive the double quotation). Mannion's reply, in part (the whole is very long, but worth it):

...what does Ford think that guy is doing in his basement in Terre Haute?

My guess is he's writing a novel.

And this is something Ford's got to know. Most great novelists started out as some guy or gal sitting in a basement, or an attic or a cheap rented room, in some place as obscure and far away from literary glamor and greatness as Terre Haute---some of those obscure and far away places were in Paris and New York, the distance and obscurity is spiritual and metaphorical but very real to that guy or gal.

A few years from now Richard Ford will be blurbing that guy from Terre Haute's new novel.

There is a growing reaction from many sides of the mainstream media toward these darn bloggers, with the freedom to say what they want without having to have, y'know, earned the right to speak in public. I'm seeing it from the political reporting side particularly, but also here and in a few other places (like the SFWA's recent dustup about authors who post their work online, which spawned a whole movement in backlash). What Ford is saying, essentially, is, "I don't want my work reviewed and dissected by some schmoe."

There are plenty of smart people out there who for one reason or another haven't succeeded at making a vocation out of their avocation, but remain passionate about it nonetheless. In the sports world, Henry Abbott was recently hired to blog professionally by ESPN. Has his content changed now that he's "certified"? Glenn Greenwald blogs for Salon, professionally, and he's one of the smartest political reporters I've ever read. All Ford has done in making this remark is underscore that credentials are not a predictor of being in touch with people, or even of doing a good job.

Review: Harry Potter

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Secret Prisoner's Goblet of Phoenix Half-Blood, by J.K. Rowling
**/10, a fabulous adventure of a boy who discovers not only that he's a wizard, but a famous one with an equally famous nemesis

I finished listening to "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" two days ago and am ready for book seven. So where is it? Oh, right. I'm two months early. Anyway, I thought I would scribble down some thoughts on the Story So Far, as it were.

Overall, Rowling's series stands up well to a fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh reading. The characters remain as distinct and likable (or not) as ever, and Jim Dale's voice only accentuates that (when listening in sequence, one thing you notice is that Madame Hooch, for instance, has a different voice in book one than when she reappears in book three, but these are minor quibbles with Dale's outstanding work). One of the things Rowling does as well as anyone in the YA fantasy genre is build a world as whimsical as it is believable, where spells like the Bat-Bogie Hex exist alongside the sinister ultimate curse, the Avada Kedavra (the resemblance of the last word to 'cadaver' is surely intentional). Even the plots hold up, because Rowling is a master at foreshadowing, and, even better, she gets better as the series goes on, planting misleading foreshadowing and building on expectations set in previous books so that she always stays one step ahead of most readers. The biggest gripe I can muster against the books is to echo a comment Stephen King made about them being slightly overwritten, with an excess of adverbs and explanations for feelings (and an overuse of the 'toadlike' comparisons for Dolores Umbridge in book five). However, as a friend of mine pointed out, the book is aimed at young adults, and so this is not only forgivable, but necessary.

I resisted picking up the books at first, reluctant to join in on what was becoming a national phenomenon, until a friend of mine sent me the first three volumes. Well, I've never been one to turn down free books. I read them and instantly became a convert. If you are one of the people who has been resisting Harry Potter because he is so popular, please stop doing yourself this disservice. Buy them in secret, don't admit to reading them, but do read them. They are not the best books of our times, but they are immensely enjoyable. Each book has its pluses and minuses; some are outstanding while others are merely enjoyable, but the series as a whole offers a rare chance to follow characters through a long, coherent story at a formative time in their lives--compare the wide-eyed eleven-year-old Harry with the determined sixteen-year-old, and you will understand what I mean because you will have grown with him, experiencing what he did and feeling his wonder, frustration, and hope every step of the way.

Also, you should stop reading now, because I'm going to start talking about the plots.

SPOILERS below.

The arc of how Harry learns more and more about his past and his future destiny is really one of the best things about this series. It's the central mystery that keeps us engaged, even through all the other lovely little plots Rowling creates to keep us entertained. I'm sure it's not over yet, that there is still more to be discovered, and that's why I can't wait for book seven.

I'm so glad that book six was as enjoyable as it was. Of all the books, I think "Chamber of Secrets" is the weakest, but "Order of the Phoenix" is the hardest to re-read. It's just so frustrating to feel Harry's over-reactions to everything, to beg him silently to control his temper and watch as Hogwarts goes from a place of delightful magical discovery to a place almost without joy. Only the last third is fun, as Harry becomes distracted with the mystery of the Department of Mysteries and Voldemort's target therein and the book becomes more of an adventure.

"Half-Blood Prince," by contrast, is a great read from cover to cover. We get caught up in adventure almost immediately, there is an appropriately awkward romantic subplot, and it ends by unraveling the mystery it began and setting us up for a climactic adventure in book seven.

There is plenty to discuss about the books, but too much to fit in a single blog entry. I could create an entire blog about it (and people have), but I'd rather just encourage my friends to read it (most of them have, at this point), and wait impatiently for July 21st.

** It is pointless to assign a rating here, I think. If pressed, I would give the series overall a 9/10, but that's unlikely to sway anyone who hasn't yet read the books into reading them.

Review: Tithe

Tithe, by Holly Black
7.5/10, a beautiful and dark story of a girl discovering her identity in the faerie world

I used to be quite devoted to the world of Young Adult fantasy, back when I was a Young Adult--Madeleine L'Engle and Susan Cooper remain favorites--but since I picked them up, the landscape has changed. Faeries, vampires, and werewolves are the big things, driven in part, I'm sure, by the success of "Buffy" and related shows. Holly Black is one of the names I've become aware of very recently in this newly vibrant field, and "Tithe" is the first volume in her YA series.

Sixteen-year-old Kaye travels with her rock-star-wannabe mother up and down the East Coast, landing most recently in her grandmother's house in the Philadelphia area. She's been familiar with faeries from an early age, small companions with cute names like Spike, Lutie-loo and the Thistlewitch, but she hasn't seen them in quite a while. They reappear in her new home with some startling news: one of their number has been killed--by a mysterious knight whose life Kaye has just saved.

This conflict is not as simple as it first seems, and Kaye's role in it only grows more involved as she finds out more about the faerie world. The Unseelie Court, from whence comes the mysterious knight, is an ethereal, sinister place, with horrors and unearthly beauties aglow from Black's lovely descriptions. Faeries, you see, can be as dark as they are beautiful, and the darker ones gather in the Unseelie Court to torment other unfortunate faeries (though it must be said that the denizens of the Seelie Court do not seem as much gentler as simply more adept at concealing their dark side).

Kaye stumbles through this new world very believably, with all the charm and wonder of any of my favorite YA heroes or heroines. Black's characters are vivid and enjoyable, especially the faerie, and some of the encounters between Kaye and her mysterious knight are truly a delight to read. The world of faerie, too, is wonderfully imagined, with many nods to all of the discourse of that world: faeries are famously bound by spoken promises, ancient rules, and customs, and Black makes sure that Kaye snags herself more than once on the jagged edges of that rough world.

The story itself seems slightly rough in parts, specifically the pacing. Events come to climax too quickly, or arise before the reader has a chance to process what was happening. There are almost two books here: one that happens before Kaye discovers the Unseelie Court, and one after. Following the story is not a problem, but I didn't feel as much tension as I thought it deserved, because it kept getting sidetracked. Nonetheless, this is a world I would be happy to revisit, and fortunately, Black has written two more books: "Valiant," and the recently-released "Ironside," which continues Kaye's story.

I had the good pleasure of attending a book signing in which Holly Black and her friend and fellow author Cassandra Clare signed books and gave a very enjoyable presentation. Black's dissection of urban fantasy and the relationship back to old fairy tales was particularly interesting. Clearly, she not only knows what she's doing, but she has a sense of history and literature. She also signs with a great quotation, which I have yet to figure out how to do consistently. Even if you can't get it signed, I still recommend picking up her book. It's a fun, quick read, and if you haven't read YA fantasy since "A Swiftly Tilting Planet," it's unlike anything you've read before.

Elation and Frustration

I just finished "Tithe" by Holly Black (review forthcoming) and was struck by a linking theme between that and the Harry Potter books, which I'm listening to on audio (just started book 6, so I'm ahead of schedule). Both of them deal with magical worlds that exist side by side with our own, below the surface, as it were. Now, I have no desire to write a story about a wizarding world (Rowling pretty much owns that space), nor about faerie (not without becoming a lot more conversant in the extensive discourse going on with those worlds--I am familiar with some of it, like Greg Bear's excellent "Songs of Earth and Power," but I never read, for instance, any of the <color> Fairy books, and I am largely unaware of the current flood of YA urban fantasy out there, though taking steps to remedy that). However, that line of thought did give me an idea, which turned into a story, and in the space of a day, I have another idea for a book to write.

This is cool. This is spectacularly fun. Unfortunately, it doesn't get any of the current projects I'm working on finished any faster, nor does it give me any more time in the day to take care of this idea. The good news is that this story is probably a shorter novel than I'm accustomed to writing, and the idea is one of those burning ones (in Greg Bear's parlance, a vibrant new world) that supplies a lot of its own energy.

Now I just need a month off to write it. So what do you do when you get an idea like that? Put it on the shelf and finish your current projects, or dive right into it and figure the others will take care of themselves eventually?

Book Signing!

It's not much of a book tour--under a mile from my house--but it's my first non-convention book signing! On June 5th, at 7:30, I'll be signing "Common and Precious" at Books Inc. in Mountain View. I'm pretty excited about it! In the meantime, if you don't want to wait for the signing to read the book, Books Inc. is stocking them. I dropped some off yesterday, so they should have them in stock pretty soon.
This is exciting! My book in a real bookstore. If you can make it to Mountain View on Tuesday night, June 5th, I'd love to see you there!

Now, if only someone could do one for "principle"...

I love this.

Worldbuilding revisited

This post on worldbuilding by M. John Harrison begins with a very quotable line: "Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding." I've written on this topic before and drawn a similar conclusion, but I think that especially in the field of science fiction, there is some leeway to be found. There is definitely a segment of readers who want to read detailed descriptions of a world. Often these readers are the kind of people who like to imagine their own stories within someone else's world and want as much detail as possible. At an extreme example, look at Tolkien's "Silmarillion," which is little more than a worldbuilding exercise, or any of the subsequent books which do not so much tell further stories of Middle Earth as flesh out the background and texture of it. Even in the "Lord of the Rings" series, huge passages are devoted to loving descriptions of the world and its history. Stephen Donaldson's "Chronicles of Thomas Covenant," similarly, break to give the reader lengthy passages of description and, on occasion, history.

If you limit the writing you do about your world to the immediate world your characters are experiencing, you will end up with a well-textured background to a good, snappy story. But people love unfinished business and possibilities, and a few extra paragraphs about history, a description of something not entirely relevant, a strange custom or behavior can all spark in the reader a curiosity that lingers after the story is over, that draws them back to your world wanting more of the tantalizing details you've dangled in front of them. Moreover, it can do the same for you, as you sit thinking, "okay...how DID the elves/aliens/Sharath tribe get there in the first place, and why do they venerate that artifact?" A whole other novel can come out of that. And yes, that worldbuilding doesn't have to go into your story, but if it did, then you have a built-in hook to that second story for your readers, who may have been wondering the same thing.

The value of education

Via Copyblogger, this little snippet:

Another quote from Franklin illustrates the importance of constant learning: “If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him.”

I think what he was really saying was: you don't have to pay back your student loans. Man, that Franklin really was ahead of his time. Glad I went to his school.

The first draft

I'm taking another screenwriting course in the evenings, and this is a good one. One of the things the professor said is, "Your goal should be a shitty first draft."

Now, I've always resisted the prevalent wisdom surrounding first drafts--namely, that you should just let the words pour out without editing them and worry about the editing in your second draft. Perhaps because I also edit for Sofawolf, I cannot completely shut off my internal editor, and so my first drafts end up being revised while I'm in the process of writing them. Occasionally, something will be in my head so fully formed that I can churn out a few pages, but by and large my first drafts run slow. It's worth noting that in my Beginning Fiction workshop, the book we used by Koch said that there are other writers who work using that method.

The problem lately has been that I'm not sure where the story is going, and so I foodle endlessly with one paragraph or another, or I take a five minute break to play Scrabble, or I cook dinner. But recently, hearing our professor say that reminded me that that is a valid philosophy, and so I've tried to make a conscious effort to just let go. Even if I'm typing something and I think, 'This is stupid,' where previously I would have stopped, now I'm trying to say, 'Okay, maybe it is, but let's see where it's going.' I know some of it will get cut, but maybe by laying down more foundation for the story, I will have a better one left over when I'm done the editing.

If nothing else, it's helped me get some writing under my belt, which has given me renewed confidence, which has been good all around. So the lesson here is that sometimes it helps to try out a different style, and see what results. You don't have to go all the way, but mix it up a bit.

Review: Stumbling on Happiness

Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert
9/10, an entertaining look at the psychology of decision making

If you want to predict how happy you will be after a meal at a restaurant you've never been to before, would you rather look at the restaurant's menu, or at a review by an anonymous person on the internet? If you're like most people--me included--you would choose the restaurant menu, on the theory that Anonymous Joe might be some weirdo who likes raw squid, mouth-searing hot sauce, and/or SPAM. Gilbert demonstrates, methodically and fairly convincingly, that even though that might be the case, Anonymous Joe's happiness during the actual experience of his meal is a better predictor of your happiness than your own imagination given the restaurant's menu.

"Stumbling on Happiness" is a fascinating, detailed look at the way our unique and important ability to imagine the future is far from perfect. We allow our present state to influence our future imagining (compare the difference between grocery shopping when hungry and grocery shopping just after a meal), selectively edit memories, and attribute our mistakes to other factors, leaving us open to making the same mistakes again.

Gilbert explores this territory with authority and humor, slipping in wry observations and amusing remarks between the engaging discussions of how we trick ourselves. He offers many concrete examples (the restaurant example above is only one) for each progressive step of his journey, so that by the end, you emerge convinced that you can be happier by following his advice. Despite this, he observes with some weary resignation, you will probably not do it. To quote the late, great Douglas Adams: "Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."

This is a quick read, and an entertaining one. It provides a few gems for writers, such as confirming that people's impressions of an experience are disproportionately colored by their impression of the ending (something I have been saying for years--I wrote an article about it for Sofawolf Press, which I may re-post here in the future). It's also a great window into decision-making and all the ways a character might go wrong with it. If you don't read it for yourself, read it for your characters.

Review: Time and Again

Time and Again, by Jack Finney
7.5/10, a slow-starting but ultimately engaging time travel tale

Despite logical and scientific testaments to the impossibility of time travel, we continue to be fascinated by the idea that we can see the future and change the past. Wells's original novel looked forward, not back, the product of a dawning age of science in which people were excited to see where the new technologies being developed would take us. Wells had a famously dystopian take on the new future, which is still tens of thousands of years away in the New York of 1970, where Finney's Simon "Si" Morley begins his story.

Finney, like most modern time travel stories, looks back rather than forward. In 1970, the Industrial Revolution and Atomic Age in our past and the Information Age just a glimmer in the eye of a young future Senator from Tennessee, the country was mostly obsessed with the recent war in Vietnam. Finney, to his credit, doesn't spend much time bemoaning the state of the world, but dives right into the introduction to the government project. The beginning is great cloak-and-dagger stuff, as Rube Prien comes to Si with a proposition: participate in a secret government project about which he can't reveal any details. It's a credit to Prien (and Finney) that he manages to believably convince Si to join the project.

The project is, of course, time travel. In keeping with the disillusionment with industry, time travel here is not accomplished by stepping into a machine, but is literally all in the time traveler's head. Of course, it helps to have surroundings that exactly mimic the time and place he's aiming for, so that he can get into the frame of mind that allows him to travel, but it is the traveler himself who makes the jump simply through hypnotic suggestion, believing he has traveled back to that time.

Si goes back to New York in 1882 with the aim of seeing a letter mailed, a letter which eventually led to the suicide of Andrew Carmody, a relative of his current girlfriend Kate. Witnessing the mailing leads to more questions, and Si soon finds himself enmeshed in an 1882-style web of blackmail, corrupt police, and murder.

Not soon enough, though. Finney pays great and meticulous detail to the features of 1882-era New York; indeed, this book would almost have read better as a historical account of that time and place. I suspect that residents of the Big Apple will be more interested in what's become of Madison Park, or the Ladies' Mile, than I was. There are a couple great moments where he emphasizes that the real essence of the time lies in its people, and several points where I was surprised at some of the things encountered in old New York.

The real beauty of this book, in fact, is its historical accuracy. I never doubted, in reading about the plots of farmland that Si sees on the island of Manhattan, that they were really there in our own past as well. Even so, there's only so long I can be enthralled by a walking tour of old New York. When Si goes back again and becomes enamored of a young lady named Julia Charbonneau, I wondered what would become of Kate, but in fact Si gives almost no thought to her until he returns to the present.

The plot does get rolling eventually, and when it does, the book becomes much more engaging. The 1970 plot is looser than the 1882 plot, but even the wrenches thrown in at the end make sense, if only to drive the book to its inevitable conclusion. Ultimately, despite his misadventures in the past, Si comes to love 1882 much more than 1970, and that feeling is the heart of the book. Finney doesn't gloss over the hardships of the late 19th century, but he does gloss over the benefits of 1970 life, dwelling more (in the short period when he does) on world wars, nuclear weapons, and the horrors of Vietnam.

For the theory of time travel alone, this would be a worthwhile book. The story is also well done, even if you end it from our perspective wanting to yell at Si, "Just stick around another twenty years." Bear with it through the long description and you'll be rewarded, amply.

Keep Reaching for that Ring

David Louis Edelman, an author I was unfamiliar with until today, writes about Five Things That Don't Happen When You Become A Published Author. Good reading (and read his companion piece, Five Things That Do Happen).

Also, bonus link: the writing in this online comic Wondermark is brutally funny.

Multiplicity

I often have several projects going at once. That way, when I'm stalled on one, I can flip over to another and get something done without that feeling of frustration. The danger is that it may also be harder to make real progress on any of them, as I never accumulate that momentum that leads to seven or eight pages at a time just spilling out onto the page. But slow and steady wins the race, they say, and the key is to let one project take over when it wants to. Currently I'm working on a New Tibet story, as well as my next novel and a couple side projects, including a collaboration with a friend (the use of Google Docs is the subject of a whole other post).
I'm also cleaning up a couple stories for submission to small markets. One story went off this week to Omnidawn, the people who published the fabulist collection Paraspheres, which I discovered when it was reviewed next to Sofawolf Press's Volle. I met the editors at a book reading and they are very nice people. We promised to keep in touch and I promised to send them a story. Finally, six months later, I kept that promise.
The other story went off a couple weeks ago to Amazon Shorts, a market that's been very receptive to my stories. So hopefully those will amount to something.

Website recommendation: Wyrdsmiths. Some cool people there, and they talk about writing in much the same way that I'm trying to. Eleanor Arnason, of Ring of Swords, which I loved, is a contributor. I'll add them to the blogroll at some point.

A Good Sign

Early on in Jack Finney's novel "Time and Again":

Our hero has been approached by a stranger who knows some things about him, like his birthday:

"So you know that, do you? Well, goody goody gumshoes."
"It's in your army record, of course. But we know some things that aren't; we know you were divorced two years ago, and why."
"Would you mind telling me? I never did figure out why."
"You wouldn't understand. [...]"

Sometimes you just know a book is going to be good.

A Bi-Annual Tradition Coming To An End

This will be the last time I read the entire Harry Potter series with the wonderful anticipation of another installment coming at the end of it. Ever since "Goblet of Fire" came out in 2000, I've prepared for each new release in the series by reading all the preceding books, to be completely caught up.

It's not just completism, though. The journey of rediscovery is such a joy with these books that I actually look forward to reading them all again, and I'm certain that even after book 7 comes out, I will do so from time to time. The excitement I felt at embarking back on book 1, and rediscovering the world of wizardry along with Harry for the first time, really surprised me this time around. I popped in the first CD of book 1 yesterday and couldn't help but grin.

That's what we're all working towards, isn't it? That's what we're aspiring to: a story that people will think of fondly, will perhaps re-read to recapture the same excitement it gave them last time they read it, a story that will bring a smile to people's faces, or perhaps a tear to their eye, that will do it in such a genuine, heartfelt way that they will spend billions of dollars making you the richest woman in England. Whoops. Sorry, lost sight for a moment. But you get the idea: I want to write a book about which someone will write, ten years down the road, "I still pull it down and read it, and when I open the cover and turn to the first page, I'm already smiling."

If I do that, I will be happy with my work. Thanks, and congratulations, Ms. Rowling. I'm off to rediscover your world.

Review: The Hunt Ball

The Hunt Ball, by Rita Mae Brown
4/10, a confusing soap opera of a mystery interrupted by social pontification

Any time you open a book with a seven-page cast of characters, all of whom are unfamiliar, it's a bad sign, or at least a sign that perhaps you shouldn't be starting with this book. The Hunt Ball is the fourth or perhaps the fifth in a series of "foxhunting mysteries" by Brown, clearly relying on the reader to remember characters from the previous books. The "Cast of Characters" is thrown in more as a warning than a guide. Still, I've managed to start other series midway through and even enjoy them (Bill Pronzini's Nameless Detective, for one), so I forged on ahead.

The problem with this book isn't necessarily with the cast of characters, or perhaps I should say the only problem isn't with the cast of characters. I got the characters as a list of names, only occasionally with personalities assigned to them. Here is how some of the characters are built up:

"Pamela Rene has been a pain in the ass since her sophomore year. [...] She's furious because she wasn't elected class president. You will recall she accused Valentina of voter fraud. A bad apple," Knute said.

Got that, everyone? Pamela = bad apple. A character said it, so it doesn't count as exposition, right? And with a cast of characters this big, you can't afford to show the important character traits, right? So it's okay.

"She has a mother who was once the highest-paid model in New York and still wants the limelight, and a father who has built one of the largest trucking companies in America. there's not much time for Pamela." Amy knew the Rene family well.

That sounds like the perfectly natural conversation of a couple people at a small school who have been teaching this girl for three years, doesn't it? Eesh.

The murder, when it happens, is effective enough, but we don't have a strong central character to follow through the unraveling of it. Sister Jane Arnold, ostensibly the heroine of the book, appears in less than half of it, much of which is taken up with explanations of the details of American foxhunting (they don't kill the fox, just chase it around, and it's okay because the foxes like it, as evidenced by the few otherwise pointless scenes in which the foxes talk to each other) or descriptions of people she once knew. The murder in a mystery should be the catalyst for action: every scene following it should yank the reader forward. What does this clue mean? Why did this person say/do what they did? And each revelation should bring more questions, until the denouement. Ideally, too, there should be some suspense. There's a killer on the loose! Who knows who might be next?! In The Hunt Ball, the murder makes people vaguely worried. There are no clues to follow up on, so life more or less just meanders on as it did before, until the second murder. Which is kept quiet so it won't affect the hunt ball.

The hunt ball, of course, is where everything unravels, but even there, Brown is unable to build any suspense or tension. An incident occurs that sets tensions boiling over into a fight, which would be great if we'd been allowed to follow a character long enough to feel that tension. The next incident, which leads to another killing and the resolution of the case, starts happening out of sight of the point of view characters and is only caught near the end. It has all the tension of one of the far too many foxhunts presented in the book, described apparently for the pleasure of describing them rather than to advance the story. And let's not forget the little commentaries Brown intersperses her story with:

Young women should not wear diamonds, rubies, or sapphires. They are not yet ready to carry such responsibility, for jewelry, in its way, determines a woman's place.

Lastly, she seems very confused about what the difference is between red, gray, and black foxes--unforgivable for someone writing about people who are supposedly experts. It'd be like writing a book about astronomers who think moons turn into stars.

I try to select good books, so the ratings I've given in my reviews to date generally fall above the 7-line. I seriously considered not finishing this book several times. Maybe it's just not for me, but heck, these are my ratings, and given the complete lack of character development, plot movement, narrative flow, or suspense--in a murder mystery!!--I think a 4 is generous. At least I didn't throw it across the room.

Review: The Shadow of the Wind

The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
9/10, a gothic thriller set in post-Civil War Barcelona

I had no idea what to expect from this book, which was a Christmas present. The cover promises a "scary, erotic, touching, tragic and thrilling" tale, which I abbreviated above to "gothic," seeing as how I'm not being paid by the word. Descriptions aside, I was pleasantly surprised to find that "Shadow of the Wind" lived up to all of the above billing.

It begins with a bookseller taking his son to pick a book from the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, and already I'm hooked. The son, Daniel, chooses a book called "The Shadow of the Wind," by an author named Julián Carax, and falls in love with it. Naturally, he tries to find other works by Carax, only to be told that they have been all but eradicated. A visit from a shadowy figure who calls himself by the name Lain Coubert tries to get the book from young Daniel, who recognizes the name as the character of the devil from "Shadow of the Wind," and refuses.

Zafón's "Shadow of the Wind" (as opposed to Carax's) is Daniel's coming of age story. He falls in love several times over the course of the book, and his story meshes with and parallels the story of young Carax, which we discover as well. Along the way, Daniel enlists several allies, including a charming rogue named Fermín with a chequered past of his own.

Mid-century Barcelona's streets, secret places, apartments, and rooftops are painted with loving detail, and highlighting that is the walking tour of modern-day Barcelona included at the end of the book. At one point, when one of Daniel's romantic entanglements tells him she's considering leaving Barcelona to marry a soldier, he promises to show her a part of Barcelona she's never seen, to convince her to stay. Only secondarily does he promise to show her something in himself that is better than her fiancé. Barcelona, the city, is essential to the soul of the characters, and Zafón parcels out her character as thoroughly as any of the people in the book.

The adventure slows down in parts, as it must with so many stories to tell, but Zafón never lets it drag for long. By the time the pace does slow, I was used to his style and invested enough in the characters to want to learn more about them. And the backstory is, at times, as compelling as the main story, with its own secrets to be revealed.

My main problem with the book was the translation. It's lauded elsewhere, but I found it a trifle awkward in parts, especially around the dialogue. It didn't seem to match with the style of the book, or the time period, one or the other. As they first meet Fermín, bringing him in off the street, Daniel says, "Come on, boss, put these clothes on, if you don't mind; your erudition is beyond any doubt." It feels like the words and cadences of a slightly different time, or a non-native English speaker, and it takes me out of the book. Just a bit, but enough to be jarring.

That aside, "Shadow of the Wind" is a terrific ride, filled with wonderful characters and tragic stories, a beautiful city and a bibliocentric plot that is well worth the time to lose yourself in.

Review: Get Shorty

Get Shorty, by Elmore Leonard
9/10, a fast-moving thriller with great characters and language

In one of my writing workshops last year, our teacher handed out a style guideline by Elmore Leonard called something like "Easy on the Hooptedoodle," which could be summed up as "don't overwrite." I'd seen "Get Shorty" and enjoyed it, but had never read anything of his, so I was looking forward to the book, and I wasn't disappointed.

Leonard's prose is clean and crisp, his characters drawn quickly and precisely, his plot fast and engaging. Chances are you know the story from the movie; Leonard said of this screenplay (by Scott Frank): "All the adaptations of my books all sucked. This one got it right for once." It's a testament to Leonard's skill that I was able to read most of the book without calling the image of John Travolta to mind.

The story involves a movie producer, an aging actress, a dishonest dry cleaner, a thug who runs a limo service, a stuntman, a mob boss, and a movie star. At the center of all this madness is Chili Palmer, who got his nickname initially because he was so hot-tempered, but has kept it because he's so cool under pressure. It's the perfect name for him, and he maintains his cool throughout the increasingly crazy events of his trip to L.A. He has a very clear idea of what image he projects, and he keeps himself together no matter what happens. In fact, most of this book is about image vs. substance: the movie star whose image is at odds with the reality; the stuntman who made a living pretending to endanger his life; the actress trying to escape the type-casting of her looks; the movie business that cherishes image over all else. Chili is good at the movie business precisely because he is so aware of the image he projects, what other people see and what he wants them to see.

In the end, of course, substance wins out. Leonard the writer could hardly craft any other ending. But he, like Chili, is very aware of the impact of his words and how we react upon reading them. If you want a primer for action scenes, character building in a few quick strokes, or realistic dialogue--good, clean writing, in other words--you could do worse than pick up this book.

One book... book for sale

My novel "Common and Precious" is now for sale on Sofawolf Press's site. It debuted last month at a local convention where we sold out of the box we brought. Initial reaction to the book has been positive enough to make me happy. Here's hoping people continue to enjoy it! Link will remain over in the right sidebar for now.

Questions of Character

There's a lot of thinking around how to get into a character's head while writing. In a screenwriting class, we got a list of many questions to answer about your character before you get into a story. Some of them seemed relevant, some a little silly (favorite color? I guess it doesn't hurt to have that info all in one place...). Anyway, in light of the recent course I took on tension and conflict, I came up with a couple more questions that I might want to answer about a character before going ahead and writing a story about him or her. "He" used as the generic pronoun to save space.

* Who does the character instinctively turn to in times of stress?
* How does the character react when he does something wrong?
* How does he react when someone points out that he's done something wrong?
* How does he view someone trying to help him? As helpful or as condescending?
* How does he try to solve problems? Step back and assess the situation or jump in and charge?
* How does he react to a friend of his doing something wrong (i.e. kid who catches his friend shoplifting)?
* What does he do to relax?
* How does he view friendships? More casually or more intensely? This also affects how he views actions he sees as counter to his friendships--with a shrug, or with a sense of betrayal.

I'm sure there are a lot more, but those are some good ones to figure out how your character will handle stressful situations. Got any more of your own?

Be aware of your surroundings

I'm taking a two-weekend class on "Tension, Conflict, and the Unknown," and one of the writing exercises we did during Saturday's 10-4 session (which was more like five hours 'til you count getting-started time, 45 minutes for lunch, and a twenty-minute break) was to write a scene between two people who wanted different things, in a specific environment that would intrude on their scene.

It was a very helpful exercise, and it clicked with a piece of advice I got from our last screenwriters workshop, which was that you never write a full page of screenplay with only dialogue. There's always something going on, some direction, some way the actors interact with the set. It gives the scene texture and depth. The same applies in prose writing: you don't just want a pair of talking heads. They should be in a setting that complements their scene.

The scene I chose was a library, where two college students were doing research for a history report. One wanted to talk about something they'd done (presumably a date), while the other didn't want to talk about it at all. The setting of the library worked in favor of the one who didn't want to talk about it, of course, as it's a quiet venue. Imagine how much harder it would be to resist talking to someone at an outdoor fair, where everything is loud and noisy.

Now as I'm going back through the works I'm editing now, I'm hyper-conscious of the setting for each one of my scenes. How does the main character (and others) interact with his/her surroundings? Could the scene be set in a better place? What aspects of the setting intrude on the scene? If they're in a restaurant, use the waiter, the food, the nearby couples--bring them all in as they pertain to the discussion the characters are having.

Yet another thing to remember and think about while writing. This feels more like something you would highlight for a second or third draft--not something you necessarily worry about when getting your first draft down on paper. Still, it's important, and you really improve your scenes by thinking about it. Go on. Try it.

Character: the cake under the frosting

In the course of chatting with some friends about a story they're working on, and giving solicited advice, I crystallized a few thoughts about character that I realize have somehow become second nature to me, so I figured I'd share 'em here. The story outline I was given was basically an outline of the plot: Joe goes to the store. Mary takes advantage of Joe's absence to call her ex and plan a lunch. At the lunch, Joe's co-worker, who has been following Mary, sees the two of them together and decides to follow her ex instead, leading to an amusing mistaken identity scene when the ex goes into the back door of the small bookstore in the strip mall where he works, and Joe's co-worker counts the doors wrong, thinking he's gone into the nail salon. Etc. I was also on a panel at a convention recently in which several people were talking about plots they wanted to write, along the lines of "my character is the best at what he does, so how do I make him believable without having him just solve all the problems and end the story," to which I responded, "well, what's the point of the story?" and got back, "Good question."

My advice hinged around discovering the character underpinnings. The plots were fine and sounded like interesting contrivances, but hearing them without the character story hearing someone order a cake by telling the baker what kind of frosting and decoration they wanted. It'll look right, but I have a feeling they might be surprised at what they find when they bite into it. Before you can get to the level of "what happens," you need to worry about why it happens. Why does Mary want to get back together with her ex? What is Joe's co-worker doing following her, and why does he switch to following the ex? Why is the nail salon next to the bookstore? You get the idea.

The difference between story and plot is, loosely, the difference between the cake and the frosting. The plot is what people remember about a book, but the story, the journey of the characters, is what makes the book memorable. It's the foundation, without with the frosting is just empty sugar. Are there cases where that isn't true, like, say, thrillers? Sure. I devoured all of Clive Cussler's work back in junior high school. He writes great action with great settings. Do I remember any of his books as well as the Frederick Forsyth short story about the guy who hires a killer to get rid of the husband of the woman he's fallen in love with? Nope. Both thriller writers, but Forsyth had a better eye for the characters that made his plot more memorable. Not to say Cussler wasn't an enjoyable read; he was. And I'm sure there are people out there who read his work over and over and love it. I just think that stories with character journeys grip us harder and stay with us longer, and so when asked for advice, that's what I give.

Review: Fudoki

Fudoki, by Kij Johnson
10/10, a pair of intertwined, magical stories set in 12th century Japan

Kij Johnson's "The Fox Woman" was one of those books that I looked at a dozen times before picking up. I'm wary of picking up books just because they feature "fox" in the title, even though those are the ones that catch my eye. I did eventually pick it up and read it, and loved it. It does have foxes in it, magical ones, and it is about one of them falling in love with a human, and the frustrations and anguish we find when our desires lie outside our world, whether romantic or otherwise. Besides the beautiful story, it was set in a lovely world where magic is not common but not unknown, where a fox might turn into a human woman to woo a man, all woven into the delicate world of ancient Japan. It's like a cross between Kazuo Ishiguro and Tim Powers, and if you've been reading my other reviews, you know that's high praise indeed.

Why, then, did it take me so long to pick up "Fudoki"? It's by the same author, set in the same world. I suppose that it was just that it did not come out until after I'd finished "The Fox Woman," and so there was always another book to read. Thank goodness for Tower Records' bankruptcy, which allowed me to grab "Fudoki" off the shelves of a closing Tower Books and read it this past month.

If you haven't read "The Fox Woman," you should start with that. Not only because it's a slightly better book, but because a few elements of that story trickle into "Fudoki." Nevertheless, each story stands on its own, and you don't need to read one before the other. "The Fox Woman" starts with a fox; "Fudoki" starts with a cat. The title is the cat's word for the family history that defines her. Each cat has a fudoki, in which she will one day take her place (the cat's world is a female-dominated world, into which males flit in and out long enough to make kittens and cause trouble, and little more; perhaps they have their own fudoki). The cat's story is being written by Harueme, aging daughter of a long-dead emperor, who tells her own story in the same notebooks.

The cat, eventually named Kagaya-hime, suffers a catastrophe and must leave her home, losing her family and her fudoki. She encounters various people, ghosts, and kami, spirits of the land, one of which gives her advice, direction, and the shape of a human woman. She remains very much a cat in temperament, though, even when she joins a small party which leads her to a larger adventure, all the while lamenting the loss of her fudoki while Harueme tells us her own.

The noblewoman's poignant stories, and her admitted desire to live vicariously through the heroine she is writing about, form an unusual and compelling narrative. Johnson's writing more than does this complicated and lovely world justice. As elegant, structured, and beautiful as the ancient Japan she describes, her words illuminate the palace gardens Harueme sees and the peasants' hovels where Kagaya-hime stays with equal brilliance. All of the characters are remarkably detailed in a few brush strokes; even with the unfamiliar Japanese names, I rarely needed a reminder about which character was which. And I felt I knew many of them as old friends by the time the book was over.

The device of a story-within-a-story does nothing to detract from the immediacy of Kagaya-hime's story. Johnson wisely pulls the reader into the cat's story first, then allows the author to show her own story without disengaging the other. To balance and pace the two is tricky, but Johnson manages it perfectly. The ending of both stories is both touching and exactly right, a rarity that is worth cherishing (though not rare in her books). Fudoki is what its title implies, the tale of a life, and you will not be sorry to read it, only to see it end.

Milestones and future lists

That last post, though I didn't realize it at the time, was my fiftieth, and this one is likely to be the last of 2006. I hope the folks reading this have found it useful or interesting, and stick with it in 2007!

As a result of many generous friends and family over Christmas, I now have a big stack of books to read, so I thought I'd share the list. The first three were actually rescued from Tower Books before they went out of business, the rest are new additions to my stack. I can't wait to get to them!

Fudoki - Kij Johnson
I loved "The Fox Woman," Johnson's first novel, and this one is set in the same semi-mythical Japanese universe. The clerk at Tower told me when I bought it, "This is really good!"

Get Shorty - Elmore Leonard
Loved the movie, kept hearing about his writing, have never experienced it. Can't wait.

Time and Again - Jack Finney
An old writing friend of mine loved the Jack Finney "Time" books, but I never managed to make time to read any, until now.

The Hunt Ball - Rita Mae Brown
Okay, just because it has foxes in it. And it's a mystery. I'm always a sucker for a good mystery. Or even a mediocre mystery.

The Bartimaeus Trilogy - Jonathan Stroud
Relatively new books that people keep telling me about. I'm all excited to read these.

American Movie Critics: An Anthology From the Silents Until Now
This one looks really good. Lots of movie reviews collected from this past century.

The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Another one that's pretty new but looks really cool!

Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man - Dale Peterson
I met Dale Peterson while he was researching one of his books. He's written a few with Jane, and now he's written one about her. Curiously, I found a positive review on this one just a few days before I got it, and had been thinking I should check it out. Bonus!

So that's just a taste of the reviews you should be seeing in 2007. I'll also be immersed in numerous writing projects, so there'll be writing posts as well.

Happy New Year, everyone!