First of all, I’m featured over at “The Page 69 Test” (here and here), talking about page 69 of With Fate Conspire, and whether it’s a good sample of what the book is like or not.
And second, the Intergalactic Awards Anthology is out, containing my Driftwood story “A Heretic by Degrees” — as well as stories by a couple of friends of mine, aliettedb‘s “Horus Ascending” and Von Carr’s absolutely fabulous “Sister Jasmine Brings the Pain.”
And now, back to cleaning my living room.
You have a little over two weeks left in which to get a letter from the Onyx Court, hand-written by yours truly, in the persona of a character of your choice. Get ’em while they’re hot, folks! (By which I mean, before I lose all ability to hold a pen, from concentrating so hard on not writing m when I mean n, and some weird many-humped scribble when I mean m.)
If I have time, I’ll post a report — with pictures, even — of my adventures with the Spencerian System of Practical Penmanship. Yes, I gave it a shot. The results were . . . interesting.
We’re nearing the end of this project, and I’ve saved most of my second-tier favorites for next-to-last. These are the books I like quite a lot, but for whatever unknown reason didn’t imprint on like I did my first-tier favorites.
The title of Archer’s Goon refers to the Goon-like individual who shows up in the kitchen of the Sykes family, claiming that the father is overdue with his “two thousand.” This turns out not to refer to money, but to words: Quentin, a writer, has for years now been writing and mailing off two thousand words of whatever crap comes into his head, four times a year. The most recent batch has gone astray. But it gets more complicated than that, because Archer is one of seven not-quite-human siblings who appear to rule the Sykes’ hometown from behind the scenes, each one “farming” various aspects of society. Pretty soon they’re all sticking their oars in, which makes life very difficult for the Sykes family, and it’s up to Quentin’s son Howard to sort it out.
One of the great appeals of this book is its quirky family dynamic. Howard’s younger sister Awful is fabulous, and so are the occasions when her parents or brother use her as a weapon against outsiders. Quentin is sometimes deserving of a smack, but there’s a point during the war with Archer and his siblings when you really understand the impulse to grin, dig your heels in, and see what they’ll do next. Catriona, though less than tolerant of the crap produced by her husband’s intransigence, has good reasons for objecting. And Howard himself protags very satisfyingly, following up on questions and looking for a way out. Together they’re actually quite strong, which contrasts nicely with Archer’s family: individually any one of them can outdo an ordinary person without trying, but their refusal to cooperate with each other undermines them.
Also, I love the Goon.
Spoilers!
I’m engaged in research mode right now for the second book of Isabella’s memoirs. But this isn’t the focused, targeted research of the Onyx Court series, where I know my time and place and am looking for details; I’m trying to decide what time(s) and place(s) I’m going to be drawing from to begin with. Since the general sphere of this second book is going to be “sub-Saharan Africa,” that means doing a fair bit of 101-level familiarization, before I decide where to dig down further.
One of the books I just read had me rolling my eyes at certain obvious flaws, and I figured that when I write up my “books read” post in a few weeks, I’d dismiss it with a flippant sentence that would make teleidoplex and albionidaho laugh, and move on with my life. But then it occurred to me that the flaws I see as obvious actually may not be. I spent ten years in anthropology and related disciplines; I’m familiar with the ways in which anthropological writing can go wrong. Not everybody else is. And it might be useful for me to talk to more than just the anthropologists in my audience.
So here, with an illustrative example, is how to look critically at the genre. This isn’t in-depth technical stuff, where you need to know the region or the theory to spot where it’s going wrong; this is just critical thinking, of a mildly specialized sort. But the flaws are a type that can slip under the radar, if you’re not accustomed to them.
So I wrote the first Onyx Court letter tonight, and after abandoning one slightly messy-looking attempt two sentences in, succeeded at producing fair copy.
Then I folded it up, got out the sealing wax stick — which has a wick, like a miniature candle designed to drip copious wax — and nearly lit the damn letter on fire.
Need to experiment and figure out if it’s wick length or what that caused burning bits to drip off it along with the wax. Or, y’know, give up on the sealing wax thing. But I have this stuff, and never use it! This seems like the perfect excuse! I just didn’t consider this as one of the possible hazards when I set out to write these letters.
Hey, alecaustin! You thought your book post was embarrassingly late? 😉
Before we get more than a quarter of the way through February, I should talk about what I read last month.
This, like Wild Robert, is a shorter piece published on its own; I’d guess it’s a novella, in terms of length. Hayley, having disgraced herself to the grandparents who raised her, is sent to live with her numerous cousins, who play an unnamed and very odd game involving a realm known as the mythosphere.
. . . and I really can’t say much more than that without giving spoilers, because the story itself is so short.
I like The Game; I just wish — as I often do with DWJ’s pieces in this range — that it were longer. It doesn’t partake of the flaws that tend to weaken her actual short stories, but it also doesn’t have room to fully leverage the virtues of her novels. The concept of the mythosphere is nifty, but I want a whole novel exploring it; the brief glimpses we get here only make me wish for more.
And now, the spoilers!
(more…)
Oh, god. I blame kniedzw. And also the research question that sent me to my bookshelf last night, searching for a book that was not in either of the sections I expected it to be in, so I scanned along the shelf looking for it, and found this instead.
I had completely forgotten that Once Upon an Eon Ago, kniedzw purchased the Spencerian System of Practical Penmanship.
Which is a reproduction of an honest-to-god 1864 system of penmanship instruction. This thing is . . . wow. The theory book starts with “Signals,” which are the cues the teacher should use, “by bell, tap, or by counting, at the teacher’s discretion.” They are as follows:
At this point the teacher should pay particular attention to giving instruction in penholding. When ready to write, give the order to TAKE INK.
No, seriously. I have this vivid image of a dank, grim little classroom, the teacher standing stiffly at the front, rows of bows and girls at the desks in uncomfortable suits and dresses, moving like proper little Victorian automata while the teacher rings his bell. Which probably isn’t far off the mark.
The real question, of course, is whether I am going to subject myself to the Spencerian System for the letters from the Onyx Court. I know better than to put this to a popular vote; you all, being not the ones who would suffer through it, will cackle and tell me to doooooo iiiiiiit. And I am so very much not sure it would be worth it. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop myself . . . .
Edited to add: oh my god, it’s even worse than I thought. The instructions for each exercise!
Turn in n, x, and v, at top and base the same, i.e. as short as possible with continuous motion. The x combines Principles 3, 1, 2, 1. The v combines 3, 1, 2, 2. After the combination is written, finish x by beginning at the base line, crossing upward through middle of First Principle, with a straight line, on the same slant with curves, and ending at upper line. Finish v same as w. Count 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, dot 1, cross, cross.
No really, I think the teacher is supposed to be counting out each movement for the students. I am increasingly afraid of this book.
I’ve worked with Ekaterina Sedia (squirrel_monkey) twice before, on “Comparison of Efficacy Rates for Seven Antipathetics As Employed Against Lycanthropes” (in Running with the Pack) and “Coyotaje” (in Bewere the Night). Now that I have the go-ahead, I’m delighted to say that I have sold her a third story, this one without any shapeshifters in it whatsoever: “False Colours,” a novelette in her upcoming anthology of YA Victorian romance, Wilful Impropriety: 13 Tales of Society and Scandal.
You can read more about the anthology here. The table of contents looks pretty awesome:
As for “False Colours”? Well, a select few among you may recall a certain character named Lt. Ravenswood . . . yeah, this is that story. The rest of you will have to wait and read it for yourself — I wouldn’t want to spoil anything!
I’ll post a release date when I have one.
I don’t read all that much fanfic. My fannish impulses don’t express themselves that way; I write individual stories because I come up with specific concepts, not because I have an ongoing engagement with the canon, or am linked into the social community of that fandom. Taken from the other direction, I generally only read things if a friend has recommended them, and a lot of what I read ends up not meaning a whole lot to me, because I lack the context or the interest to receive it properly.
But there are exceptions. There are fanfic stories I not only read, not only love, but remember for years afterward.
And, as I realized a while ago, they all have a common trait.
For a fanfic to really stick with me, it needs to be doing something extra, beyond just being fannish. (There’s nothing wrong with being fannish, mind you — it just isn’t what I read for.) Something intellectual, something critical, which can’t be done by writing original fiction, because that would lose the closeness entanglement of its commentary, and can’t be done by writing straight-up criticism, either, because that would lose . . . something harder to put my finger on. Stories that strike that balance make me absolutely giddy as a reader.
I’d like to share with you a few examples of what I mean, with explanatory notes. (But, uh, be warned — I guess the stories I like share two common traits. The thing I mentioned above, and the fact that they’re EPICALLY LONG. The two rather naturally go hand-in-hand.)
The cover copy of your novel made it sound like the plot was kind of stapled together out of cliches. But a) cover copy can undersell the originality of a story, and b) the cliches you are using are ones I kind of like, so I was willing to go with it — especially since your setting, being not the Usual Thing, was interesting to me in its own right.
Unfortunately, you have not managed to transcend these cliches. I skipped ahead to see if you would, once the story actually got moving; instead I discovered that it takes a regrettably long time for the story to get moving. Furthermore, you seem to lack the courage of your convictions where the setting is concerned: the names are a random mix, some appropriate to the culture, others not, with no apparent pattern or reason for this blend, and the first fifty pages are littered with small details that contradict the rest of the picture. (Example: the presence of a food that is not only non-traditional to that culture, but traditionally considered disgusting.) While I do not demand 100% fidelity to a real-world culture in a secondary-world fantasy, I cannot find any compelling aesthetic rationale to explain why you diverged from it; the result therefore feels watered down, rather than interestingly varied.
It’s a pity. I was quite hoping to enjoy your novel. Alas, it is simply not doing enough to hold my interest, but instead far too much to push me away.
Trotting out the old Elizabeth icon for the occasion:
I had the wrong setting on my camera, so it’s unfortunately blurry, but you get the idea. I am so. doomed. I haven’t tried to write in cursive, except for that thing I laughably call my signature, for years.
Admittedly, my writing got better when I realized that a tiny notebook is a very bad choice for hand support and such. Practicing on better surfaces, and relaxing into it a bit, the result looks less awkward. Of course, if I relax into it, I’m prone to turning my n’s into m’s and my m’s into some alien thing with far too many little humps . . . which is only the most common of my errors. There are others, too. The letters I send may have more than a few things crossed out and corrected. (Which is part of the whole handwritten letter thing, right? Not everybody bothered to send perfect copy. I guess it all depends on which character I’m writing as. Dead Rick probably doesn’t worry much about errors. Delphia, however . . . .)
There has been enough interest expressed in the Month of Letters/Letters from the Onyx Court thing that I have decided to go ahead and do it. Full details are here.
Send me letters! (Or rather, send them to my characters!) I’ve rented out a P.O. Box for the duration; I hope to make extensive use of it.
I’m tempted to follow in the shoes of Mary Robinette Kowal and participate in the Month of Letters . . . or rather, have my characters participate.
But I don’t want to advertise my home address to all the world, so I’d need to get a P.O. box. And that means I need to take the temperature of the Internet first, to see if there’s any interest. Would you like to receive a letter from the Onyx Court? If so, drop a comment here, on Twitter (@swan_tower), or via e-mail (marie[dot]brennan[at]gmail[dot]com) to let me know.
I figure all characters from that series (including the short fiction) are fair game, though be warned that some are better correspondents than others. 🙂 If I do this, I’ll probably ask that you put a date on your own letter, so that I’ll know when the character should be responding; after all, Lune would write a very different response in 1588 than she would in 1757. (Mortal characters contacted before their births or after their deaths are not likely to respond at all.)
I even, like Mary, have quill pens with which to respond — though it may become a tossup between authenticity of writing implement and legibility of the handwriting . . . .
When Andrew Hope’s grandfather dies, he leaves Andrew in charge of his magical field-of-care — with very little instruction as to what to do with it. And when a boy named Aidan Cain shows up on Andrew’s doorstep, looking for safety from the inhuman things chasing him, the two of them have to work together to sort out just what is happening in the village of Melstone.
This is one of Jones’ newest books, surpassed only by Earwig and the Witch, which is one of the only things of hers I haven’t read at all. It’s a splendid example of two of the things Jones did beautifully well, which are vivid characterization coupled with a dry wit. The opening pages, which describe Andrew trying to cope with the housekeeper and gardener for Melstone House, are just hilarious: slightly larger-than-life (quite literally, in the case of the vegetables Mr. Stock keeps dumping in the kitchen as punishment), but still grounded in something very real. And both of the protagonists, Andrew and Aidan, are the kind of sensible people I have always loved in her books. (It makes me wonder, in fact, how much of my preference for sensible characters stems from reading her work. Not all of it — Cimorene from Dealing with Dragons deserves some credit, too — but I suspect quite a bit.) First reading this book when I was thirty instead of thirteen means those characters will never occupy the deep place in my heart some of her others have, but I have very little to quibble with, where they’re concerned.
My quibbles have to do with the world, which hints at all kinds of fascinating things, but never goes into enough detail to satisfy me. For an explanation of that, follow me behind the cut.
My parents need to have fortieth anniversaries more often. ^_^
I’m in Hawaii. ^_^
I couldn’t mention it before, because it would have spoiled the surprise for my mother, but my father arranged to ship me, kniedzw, my brother, and my brother’s wife out to Hawaii for a long weekend to celebrate my parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary with them. As I type this, I can pause to look out over my balcony to the lagoon down below, where yesterday I swam and basked in the sun; just past it is the sea, where in a few hours I’ll be going whale-watching.
(Yeah, I might be gloating just a bit.)
Quite apart from the beautiful surroundings, it’s great to be able to hang out with my family like this. The last pure vacation the four of us took together was also in Hawaii, nineteen years ago; the last vacation-with-another-purpose was a year or two later, when my brother was looking at colleges, and we took it as an excuse to go sightseeing in California. We see each other on the holidays, but it’s lovely to have this kind of time, where nobody has to cook or run errands or do any of the other things that can make the holidays stressful.
And, y’know, the surroundings don’t hurt. 🙂 Especially in light of the fact that the Bay Area is currently receiving a lot of desperately-needed, but not terribly fun to walk around in, rain.
So huzzah for my parents and forty years of happy marriage. May they continue happy for many more years to come.
Last month, for the first time since we launched the group blog in August of 2007, I missed my post at SF Novelists.
But I’m back this month! With the first of what turned out to be a two-part thing (since otherwise my post would have been unreadably long), on how competence is hot. (With bonus links to several people trying to pose like the men and women on book covers.)
Comment over there, no login needed, etc, but if you’re a first-timer please wait for me to fish your comment out of the moderation queue.
