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I’d say “you can’t make this stuff up,” but apparently you can

So there’s this game called Crusader Kings II, which is a strategy game in which you play a medieval European dynasty — yes, you read that right, a dynasty. At any given time your “character” is the king of that dynasty, but when he kicks the bucket you switch over to playing his heir and so on. (Or her. But getting female inheritance going is near impossible if you aren’t Basque, and playing as Basque is near impossible all on its own. So.)

It’s quite well-designed; the people behind it seem to have a decent grasp of how medieval politics actually worked. You can’t go to war unless you have a casus belli, so no invading your neighbor without at least a fig leaf of justification. You spend half your time marrying off your unattached relatives, so that you’ll have allies when you do fight a war and three generations down the road your heir might inherit the crowns of four kingdoms. Etc. And after a while they started releasing expansions for non-Christian or non-kingdom options: The Old Gods for European paganism, Sword of Islam for the Middle East, The Republic so you can play as Venice or some place like that, Sons of Abraham for Judaism, Rajas of India for the subcontinent, etc. I haven’t played those personally, nor do I know all of the cultures in question well enough to judge quality, but I get the impression they continue to do a decent job of modeling historical dynamics in a realistic fashion — within, of course, the abstracted framework of a political/military strategy game.

. . . a mostly realistic fashion, that is. Because one of the DLCs is Sunset Invasion, in which the Aztecs invade Europe during the 13th century. Y’know. Like they did.

I thought, okay. The people making this game are obviously geeks, and geeks come up with these wild, over-the-top ideas. They’ve gotten it out of their system now.

Friends, I was wrong.

I was so very, very wrong.

You guys. I wrote a CKII fic for Yuletide this past year. I made it as crazy as I could, based on my experiences with the game and some advice from my husband, but I’m well aware that it fell short of the full craziness CKII can produce. But even had I hit my mark . . . it would have been nothing compared to that tale above. All hail Sebdann, spawn of Satan and Queen of Milesia!

The whole way through, I’m narrating this in my head

For the last couple of months, I’ve been trying out the meditation thing — largely through an app called Headspace. I’m not terribly far into it yet, so I can’t give a full review, but the short form is that it’s a secular program developed by a former Buddhist monk that guides you through the basics of meditation. It starts off with a free series called “Take 10,” which is ten days of ten-minute sessions; then if you subscribe, it moves on to “Take 15” (fifteen days of fifteen-minute sessions), followed by “Take 20” (you can guess how that one goes). After that it expands into other stuff — the “Discovery Series” and so on — but I can’t tell you about those because I haven’t started them yet. The program does require you to take everything in order, but I can understand why; fifteen minutes is a non-trivial step up from ten minutes, and likewise twenty from fifteen, so working your way up to it isn’t a bad idea.

Because I’m only a little more than a month into the program, I can’t say much yet as to what it’s done for my mental health. But one thing I can say: it has exposed just how deep-seated my instinct to narrate is.

The largest portion of each session is spent focusing on your breath and letting go of other thoughts — or trying to. My mind, of course, immediately identifies this as prime Thinking About Story time. So I gently take it by the hand and lead it back to my breathing . . . until it wanders off again . . . so back to the breathing we go . . . and after a while it gets the idea, sort of. Whereupon it begins narrating my experience of focusing on my breathing. It isn’t really possible to make a story out of “this time my shoulders rose more than last time, and my exhalation was slower,” but god damn if my brain doesn’t try. And it thinks about what I’m experiencing — difficulties with not thinking included — and starts crafting the blog post in which I will tell you all about it. You have no idea how many times I’ve written this post in my head. (I have a faint hope that actually writing it will head this tendency off at the pass, but it is a faint hope indeed.)

It’s actually kind of hilarious, watching my brain scrabble for a way to narrativize what’s going on. I knew I was the sort of person who will run imaginary conversations in my head, or mentally compose blog posts, or whatever, but I underestimated just how much my thought processes are bound up in telling the story of what I’m thinking about. Turning that off is haaaaaaaaaaaaard. By which I mean, I basically haven’t succeeded yet.

This is not unrelated to my difficulty with the mindfulness thing in general: focusing on my physical experience of something, rather than thinking about other stuff while I do it. I live very much in my head, with all my imaginary friends (i.e. my characters), and if what I’m doing doesn’t demand my attention, I tend to daydream. I can focus when it’s something like karate; that’s detailed and intensive enough that I can sink my thoughts into muscle and bone and breath. But without a focal point like that, not so much.

So I keep practicing. One of these days I’ll get a handle on it . . . right?

Exercise on the road

Apropos of my previous post: any recommendations as to ways for me to get exercise on a trip that will involve a new city almost every single day? I know that if step one is “leave your room and go to the hotel gym,” I won’t manage it. But stuff I can do in my room, without equipment — that might happen. I’ll need to do PT for my ankle regardless, so I’m going to have to set aside time for activity; it should be possible to tack other things on, if people have suggestions.

Tour begins tomorrow!

Quick reminder to folks living in Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Salem, Houston, Salt Lake City, San Diego, or San Franscisco, near enough to such places for this to be relevant: I’m going on tour! With the ever-awesome Mary Robinette Kowal! You can find us in the following places at the following times:

Thursday, May 1, 6:00 p.m.
DePaul University
Chicago, IL

Friday, May 2, 7:00 p.m.
University Bookstore
Seattle, WA

Saturday, May 3, 2:00 p.m.
Powell’s Books at Cedar Hill Crossing
Portland, OR

Sunday, May 4, 3:00 p.m.
Book Bin
Salem, OR

Tuesday, May 6, 6:30 p.m.
Murder by the Book
Houston, TX

Thursday, May 8, 6:00 p.m.
Weller Book Works
Salt Lake City, UT

Saturday, May 10, 2:00 p.m.
Mysterious Galaxy (Part of the Mysterious Galaxy 21st Birthday Bash!)
San Diego, CA

Sunday, May 11, 3:00 p.m.
Borderlands Books
San Francisco, CA

I hope to see some of you there!

several recent books

I am not going to pretend I have any kind of objectivity here. None of these writers are strangers to me; they range from “the woman I’m about to go on tour with” to “the guy whose short stories I was critiquing when he was an undergrad just getting serious about writing.” 🙂 But their books are excellent and I recommend them to you. All three are recently released!

Attack the Geek, by Michael R. Underwood — a side installment in the Geekomancy series (Geekomancy, Celebromancy, the upcoming Hexomancy). This series is basically “what if you could get superpowers through your knowledge of pop culture?” And don’t tell me you never wished you could do that. 😀

(Bonus installment: there’s an excerpt from Shield and Crocus up on Tor.com; that’s Mike’s new series, which will be starting up in June.)

Valour and Vanity, by Mary Robinette Kowal — fourth in the Glamourist Histories (Shades of Milk and Honey, Glamour in Glass, Without a Summer). I haven’t read this one yet because it just came out today, but you damn bet I’m going to, and not just because we’re touring together. This series is Austen-ish with magic, and they’ve only gotten richer as they go along. Plus: GONDOLA CHASES. How can you not want to read a book that has a gondola chase in it?

Steles of the Sky, by Elizabeth Bear — last in the Eternal Sky trilogy (Range of Ghosts, Shattered Pillars), though there will be new stories in that world after this, or so I hear. Central Asian-inspired epic fantasy, with some truly awesome worldbuilding elements and also a giant tiger-woman. (My love for Hrahima, let me show you it.) I was belated in reading the second book, so I haven’t picked this one up yet, but as above: you damn bet I’m going to. In fact, it may be coming with me on the trip.

she’s a changeling; they get reborn all the time

I have no idea when and how I will do it, but I suspect that one of these years, Ree is going to find her way into some piece of fiction I write.

She was my Changeling character in a long-running LARP, and over the course of five years of playing her, I worked up a fascinatingly complex framework for the metaphysics of her personality. She was a changeling: a faerie in a human body, which meant that psychology and metaphysics and narrative were essentially three sides of the same coin (and hey, it’s the Dreaming; why can’t a coin have three sides?). I don’t know why she came to mind tonight, but she did, and I found myself re-reading the transcript of a scene I once ran via e-mail. Jadael hosting people at his manor for some kind of party — I don’t remember why — and Ree in the middle of her cyclical Court change, which meant she was Unseelie and overwhelmed by fatalism and taking it out on everybody around her. So Jadael, being the perfect host, took her to a building out back and let her beat the ever-living shit out of him in a fight . . . because that was clearly what she needed. Which was both true, and not. It probably wasn’t good for her. But it made her feel better, because she had more anger than she knew what to do with, and whaling on Jadael with her fists let her inflict the fatalism on him, too, and make him bleed into the bargain. And there’s the whole layer that got added in by the Mesoamerican faerie stuff I had invented — stuff which got reworked into “A Mask of Flesh” and several other stories from that setting I haven’t finished and sold yet — Ree formally thanking Jadael at the end for giving her blood, which meant more than he realized, because of the concept of a debt of blood and what it signified to her. She was a diamond that had been shattered, and ultimately I got her out of the pit of her Court change and her fatalism by way of a metaphor, Ree understanding that you don’t fix a diamond by gluing it back together, you recognize that what you have — what you are — is coal, and you make a new diamond through unspeakable pressure over a long period of time.

I don’t think you can tell that story with a human being. Whatever I do with it would have to be higher-fantasy than that, because you need somebody whose soul is a story, somebody who exists through and for the telling of stories, who can re-tell her own story to fix what got destroyed so long ago. Somebody whose psychological problems are metaphysical and metaphorical at their root, tied up in diamonds and blood and fire and ice. Parts of it will go away, I’m sure: the two jaguars and her totemic tie to them, which is straight out of the Mesoamerican stuff and will wind up in the Xochitlicacan stories if it winds up anywhere. The specific framework of the Changeling cosmos, with Seelie and Unseelie and Ree as an eshu. Many of the characters she interacted with. But something about the core is still there in my mind, simmering away, and like blood, it will out.

Someday. Somehow. I’ll let you know when it does.

Extra time to Design Your Own Dragon!

It occurred to us (i.e. myself and my Tor publicist) that it would be nice to give people in the cities I’ll be visiting on my book tour a chance to participate in the Design Your Own Dragon contest. Ergo, the new deadline is:

11:59 EASTERN TIME ON MAY 15TH

All current entries are still included, of course. But if you were worried about the impending deadline, now you have another two weeks or so to polish your creations. Full details for the contest are here, if you need a refresher.

Now, back to prepping for the tour!

Design Your Own Dragon: final week!

Just a reminder that the Design Your Own Dragon contest will be ending in a little more than a week, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on April 30th. This is your chance not only to win an ARC of Voyage of the Basilisk (once we have some on hand), but to have your very own creation included in the Memoirs of Lady Trent. I may choose up to three winners, depending partly on how many entries I get — so in a sense, the more of you that enter, the better your chances are!

(Okay, really I’m just selfish. I’ve enjoyed the heck out of reading the entries thus far, and am eager to see what else people come up with.)

E-mail your submissions to dragons.of.trent {at} gmail.com. You’ve got about one week left!

post roundup

Things I’ve been saying in different places ’round the interwebz . . . .

“Seeing the Invisible” — this month’s post at SFNovelists is a review of Invisible, the ebook collection Jim Hines put together of guest posts and additional essays on the topic of representation. Proceeds from sales go to charity.

“The Gospel of Combat” — an excerpt from Writing Fight Scenes, which will be familiar to long-time readers of this blog. You can comment there for a chance to get a free copy of the ebook, though!

Interview at My Bookish Ways — in which I talk about a variety of things.

“The Dreaded Label ‘Mary Sue'” — guest post at Far Beyond Reality, talking about female characters who don’t apologize for their awesomeness.

Seven Souls in Skull Castle

Tonight I saw a movie which is probably the most refrackulous thing I’ve watched in ages.

Its Japanese title is Dokuro-jo no shichinin, and it’s actually a recording of a stage production, deliberately intended (so the blurb for it said) to be a blend of cinema with live performance. That much is comprehensible.

But the plot, you guys. The plot.

It just —

These characters —

I — I have no way to describe it that wouldn’t be full of spoilers. Which you probably don’t care about because the number of you who will ever see it is minuscule. But I can’t tell you why Tayu’s crew of prostitutes are so awesome. Or who exactly that one dude turned out to be (though I can say that I turned to my sister about ten minutes prior to that reveal and said “if he turns out to be X, I am going to laugh my ass off.” Of course he was X.) I just —

Okay, look, here’s an example. The story takes place in 1590, eight years after the death of Oda Nobunaga. There’s this guy who’s set up shop in Skull Castle in the Kantou region, calling himself Tenmao, the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven. (This story: it is SUBTLE, yo.) It turns out that he, along with several of the other characters, used to be one of Nobunaga’s retainers, and hasn’t really gotten over his lord’s death. I believe the technical term for his state of mind would be, hmmm, how do they put it, oh yeah — bugfuck crazy. So one of his former comrades-in-arms goes to Skull Castle, and something like the following conversation ensues:

TENMAO: See this mask on my helmet? It was made from the skull of our dead lord!
FORMER COMRADE IN ARMS: That’s a little crazy, dude.
TENMAO: That’s funny, coming from you. I happen to know those beads you wear are made from our dead lord’s bones!
FCIA: . . . okay, that’s true. <caresses bone necklace>
TENMAO: And this drink in my cup is made from our dead lord’s blood!

Whereupon he drains the cup, kisses his former comrad-in-arms, and spits the blood into his mouth, which turns out to be drugged, so FCIA also goes what you might call bugfuck crazy.

It is kabuki on crack and cranked up to eleventy-one. It also dodges the Smurfette trap (three of the seven heroes facing down Tenmao are women), swings wildly between broad comedy and rather grim drama, features some kind of amazing stage fighting, and has a character who basically figures out how to turn the fact that he can’t make up his mind which side he’s on into his superpower.

I am so buying this the instant it’s available on DVD. And then I am going to inflict it on everybody around me.

So, Okinawa

I made reference to this in my previous post; I’d forgotten that I hadn’t actually said anything about it before now.

I’m going to Okinawa in July. Every few years, on an irregular schedule, Shihan and various other people put together an intensive karate and kobudo seminar, bringing in people from a variety of countries (Germany, Spain, Denmark, the U.S.) for about a week in Naha and on Kori Island. It will be my first time going; the last one was five years ago, and I was much too low-ranking to attend. Sometimes there’s a tournament, but apparently Shihan got tired of waiting for other parties to get their act together, so this time it’s a seminar only.

I made the decision to go before I knew I was having ankle problems; I paid the fee before I got told I was going to need surgery. But honesty compels me to admit that before I went to the doctor, I told Kyle that I didn’t care what the prognosis was, I was going to Okinawa anyway. Because it’s bad enough to have to do this again: I will be damned if I let it take away my chance to experience that kind of intensive training. I’m going to be sweating to death for 4-6 hours a day in an un-air-conditioned budokan, and that isn’t exactly a thing to look forward to — but I am.

And then I’ll come home and have surgery and not go to karate for a month or more. But before then, I’ll work my butt off.

I believe the abbreviation I’m looking for is FML

Same song, second verse. A little bit louder, a little bit more JESUS H CHRIST THIS ISN’T FUNNY ANY MORE.

Which is to say, I will be having ankle surgery.

Again.

Same ligament as before . . .

. . . just on the other foot.

Listen up, kids: sprain your ankles too often as a youth, and this will be your reward before you’re anywhere near your dotage. An orthopedist wiggling your foot around and saying “Wow!,” followed immediately by “Sorry, that’s not what you want to hear your doctor say, is it?” An unstable ankle joint that’s causing microabrasions and is already building up a bone spur, so let’s get this surgery done soon, shall we, before we’ve got ourselves a lovely case of arthritis? Oh and it’s so helpful that you still have the boot from the last round. We can just stick you right back in it. Not your first rodeo, here’s your forms, you know how this goes, and hey you’ve even got some blog posts to remind you of the unpleasant things in your future. Isn’t this great.

The surgery isn’t scheduled yet, but it will be some time between the very end of July and mid-September. Putting it off that long probably isn’t the most intelligent thing I’ve ever done, but god dammit I am going to Okinawa. The last time this karate seminar happened was five years ago; I don’t know when it will happen again. And I am not letting my stupid fucking ankles keep me from it.

world’s worst ad

I play solitaire a lot on my tablet, and there’s a banner add that has been popping up on it lately which is, I think, the worst ad I’ve ever seen.

It flashes between a white bar with black text and a black bar with white text. And I do mean flashes — very nearly at the level of “isn’t there something about this kind of stimulus causing epileptic seizures?” It is phenomenally distracting. Good ad, right? Nope — because it is so. bloody. annoying. that I might light my hair on fire before voluntarily tapping it. (Nor is it in a location where I’m likely to tap it by accident.) And if you’re thinking that even annoyance-publicity is still publicity, and they’re at least getting their product into my head . . .

. . . the text of the banner is “(1) Free Game.”

That’s it. No brand name. No hint of what type of game it is. No image I might recognize if I see it again later in a less annoying context. Just a seizure-inducing, content-less banner which is so obnoxious, it’s giving me a strong inclination to stop playing solitaire entirely, so I’ll never have to see it again. Which is about as profound of an advertising failure as I can imagine.

What were they thinking?

sound effect

There’s a particular . . . sound effect? I don’t even know if that’s the right word to apply. It’s a quality sometimes heard in the background beat of techno songs. I have a hard time describing it in words (and can’t think of any examples to link to, since I hate the songs that do this and therefore always turn them off) — it’s kind of this muffled effect at the end of the beat that then slides into the sharp beginning of the next one — but the easiest way for me to summarize it is, it makes me feel like I’m being punched in the eardrums. Repeatedly. Ad nauseam.

I don’t suppose anybody a) knows what I’m talking about and b) can tell me whether it has a specific name?

Tour update; also Mary is a genius; also interview

The full schedule for my joint tour with Mary Robinette Kowal has been posted at Tor.com:

Thursday, May 1, 6:00 p.m.
DePaul University
Chicago, IL

Friday, May 2, 7:00 p.m.
University Bookstore
Seattle, WA

Saturday, May 3, 2:00 p.m.
Powell’s Books at Cedar Hill Crossing
Portland, OR

Sunday, May 4, 3:00 p.m.
Book Bin
Salem, OR

Tuesday, May 6, 6:30 p.m.
Murder by the Book
Houston, TX

Thursday, May 8, 6:00 p.m.
Weller Book Works
Salt Lake City, UT

Saturday, May 10, 2:00 p.m.
Mysterious Galaxy (Part of the Mysterious Galaxy 21st Birthday Bash!)
San Diego, CA

Sunday, May 11, 3:00 p.m.
Borderlands Books
San Francisco, CA

And I would like to state for the record that Mary is a genius. She made a suggestion for something I could do during the events which — well, you’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you? (Yes, this is my transparent bid to build suspense and get you all to come.) I promise I’ll talk about it after the tour, for those of you who don’t live anywhere near our stops or can’t make it to the events, but for now you’ll just have to wonder. (Hint: it involves my husband marveling, once again, at what kinds of things can be written off as business expenses for a writer.)

Also, there’s a new interview with me up at Just a World Away, in which I talk a little bit about Voyage of the Basilisk (among other things).

Reminder: Design Your Own Dragon!

The entries for the Design Your Own Dragon contest have started to come in, so here’s a quick recap for those who may have missed the first announcement:

* * *

From the newly released The Tropic of Serpents and the first book in the series, A Natural History of Dragons, readers know Isabella, Lady Trent, to be the world’s preeminent dragon naturalist. She is the remarkable woman who brought the study of dragons out of the misty shadows of myth and misunderstanding into the clear light of modern science.

The world of Lady Trent is home to a myriad of different dragon species, from the fire-breathing desert drakes of Akhia to the tiny draconic cousins known as sparklings. Now you have a chance to expand the borders of dragon naturalism, by adding your own species to the mix!

All you have to do is invent a breed of dragon or draconic cousin that might fit into Lady Trent’s world. Write up a description of no more than two hundred words covering its appearance and habitat, any noteworthy behaviors, and so on. An example of a write up, Marie Brennan’s wyvern, is below. Then submit your invention to dragons.of.trent@gmail.com, with the header “DRAGON: {name}”. Marie Brennan will select one to three entries and reference them in a future installment of the Memoirs of Lady Trent. Winners will also receive a signed Advance Reader Copy of Voyage of the Basilisk, the third book in the series, when those become available (late 2014).

This contest is open to entrants worldwide. No more than three submissions per entrant; any subsequent e-mails will be deleted unread. The contest will close to entries at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on April 30th, and winners will be announced on May 12th.

WYVERN — A reptilian creature native to northern and eastern Anthiope, possessing hind limbs and wings, but lacking forelimbs, which disqualifies it for consideration as a “true dragon” under the criteria of Sir Richard Edgeworth. Wyverns are typically 3-4 meters in length from nose to tail, with a comparable wingspan, and light of build through the chest. Their coloration is mottled brown and green, for protective colouration in the treeless hills that are their usual habitat. They typically hunt by waiting in an elevated position and then launching into the air when prey is sighted. Their venom is paralytic, and kills the prey through asphyxiation. Wyverns are solitary except when they mate, but the male will follow the female until she lays her eggs, after which they incubate in the care of the male, who feeds them and teaches them to hunt after hatching. Juveniles rarely stay with their father for more than three months, by which point they are capable of independent sustenance.

Design Your Own Dragon!

From the newly released The Tropic of Serpents and the first book in the series, A Natural History of Dragons, readers know Isabella, Lady Trent, to be the world’s preeminent dragon naturalist. She is the remarkable woman who brought the study of dragons out of the misty shadows of myth and misunderstanding into the clear light of modern science.

The world of Lady Trent is home to a myriad of different dragon species, from the fire-breathing desert drakes of Akhia to the tiny draconic cousins known as sparklings. Now you have a chance to expand the borders of dragon naturalism, by adding your own species to the mix!

All you have to do is invent a breed of dragon or draconic cousin that might fit into Lady Trent’s world. Write up a description of no more than two hundred words covering its appearance and habitat, any noteworthy behaviors, and so on. An example of a write up, Marie Brennan’s wyvern, is below. Then submit your invention to dragons.of.trent@gmail.com, with the header “DRAGON: {name}”. Marie Brennan will select one to three entries and reference them in a future installment of the Memoirs of Lady Trent. Winners will also receive a signed Advance Reader Copy of Voyage of the Basilisk, the third book in the series, when those become available (late 2014).

This contest is open to entrants worldwide. No more than three submissions per entrant; any subsequent e-mails will be deleted unread. The contest will close to entries at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on April 30th 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on May 15th (note the extension!), and winners will be announced on May 26th.

Sample entry:

WYVERN — A reptilian creature native to northern and eastern Anthiope, possessing hind limbs and wings, but lacking forelimbs, which disqualifies it for consideration as a “true dragon” under the criteria of Sir Richard Edgeworth. Wyverns are typically 3-4 meters in length from nose to tail, with a comparable wingspan, and light of build through the chest. Their coloration is mottled brown and green, for protective colouration in the treeless hills that are their usual habitat. They typically hunt by waiting in an elevated position and then launching into the air when prey is sighted. Their venom is paralytic, and kills the prey through asphyxiation. Wyverns are solitary except when they mate, but the male will follow the female until she lays her eggs, after which they incubate in the care of the male, who feeds them and teaches them to hunt after hatching. Juveniles rarely stay with their father for more than three months, by which point they are capable of independent sustenance.