Just noticed that as of last night’s revision, With Fate Conspire is officially the longest Onyx Court novel. (144K and counting.)
I’m hoping the damn thing doesn’t hit 150K before I’m done, but given the big honking change I’m thinking of putting in, I wouldn’t bet the farm on that.
When we say “identity theft,” we usually mean something having to do with credit cards and the like. But at least when that happens, you can notify the various powers that be, and they’ll do something about it.
Not so with Facebook. China Miéville has notified them several times of at least one person (possibly more) impersonating him on Facebook, and so far has gotten jack in the way of reply. Are his life savings being wiped out by this? No, of course not. But if you think this couldn’t hurt him, think again. As a writer, he’s a public figure, albeit a minor one; his ability to work depends partly upon his reputation. If the impersonator wanted to, they could tarnish that reputation, by sending messages or joining groups or otherwise doing things that would reflect badly on him. Even if they don’t, they are in a fashion acting in his name, without his permission. Which is not something anybody should be allowed to do.
But Facebook doesn’t care. As Deanna reports, their old system was that you had to be a Facebook user in the first place to complain about somebody impersonating you on the service; at least they’ve made the small step of changing that. But in general, their policy is still abysmal. No system of verification; no grievance process worth the name. Your ex could create a profile, pretend to be you, “like” a bunch of groups that make you look like a terrible person, and then when you apply for a job your prospective employer finds that profile and decides they don’t want to hire somebody who’s a fan of “Immigrants Go Home.” And there won’t be a damn thing you can do about it.
How obvious does Facebook have to make it that they don’t give a shit about anybody — their users included — before people will stop using the service?
I canceled my account a while ago, when they went one round too many of “we’re going to share info you thought was private! And you have to jump through hoops to stop us!” I tried not to proselytize too much back then, because I don’t want to piss off people who are content to keep their Facebook accounts, but Jesus H. The flash games just aren’t worth it, especially when the company is mining data about you and selling it to advertisers. As for getting in touch with old friends . . . there are other ways to be findable online. Seeing random updates about how somebody I haven’t seen since graduation didn’t get enough sleep last night is, again, not worth it to me. There are other ways to get in touch if you want to have a real conversation, and the more I see of Facebook’s evil, the harder time I have understanding why anybody else should play along.
Does silver nitrate have a distinctive smell?
How about sulfates? Do they tend to smell of sulfur, or not?
(This is what I get for deciding to put faerie science in my books. I have to figure out how the real science goes, then figure out how the fantasy version goes, then figure out how to describe the fantasy version, based on but maybe not identical to how I’d describe the real version. If I ever do this to myself again, somebody please kick me.)
How would you describe the smell of acid? Does it have a smell? (Any kind of acid will do; I’m looking for commonalities here.)
I’m done (for the time being, at least) with the series of posts on writing female characters, so instead this month’s SF Novelists post is about my first experience as a Guest of Honor.
Comment over there, no registration required, though if you’re a first-time commenter I’ll have to fish your comment out of the moderation queue. So don’t worry if it takes a little while to appear.
My friends-list is full of posts about bullying, or more precisely the experience of being bullied, because I am friends with a lot of geeks and nerds and other such target types. They’re heart-wrenching to read, but not because they call up echoes of my own past. You see, I was never bullied. And to all the adults who tell the victims “It’s your fault, you must have done something to provoke them,” I have this to say:
The sole reason I didn’t get bullied is that I was lucky.
It’s the only explanation I can find. I was freakishly skinny — seriously, I look at pictures of myself and wonder how I didn’t snap in half — I wore thick glasses all the way through elementary school, I was an unabashed smart kid and book nerd. I was in the band. I had a weird name. There was an abudance of reasons to pick on me . . . but to the best of my recollection, nobody really did.
See, I went to school in the kind of affluent area where parents generally drove their kids to school (as mine did), so I never experienced the rolling hyena cage that is the school bus. During my early years, the only time I rode one of those was when a group of us were bussed to the once-a-week gifted program, held in another school — a program that was large enough, and included enough like-minded kids, that I had plenty of friends. We had honors and AP classes as I got to junior high and high school, so that I never even saw a whole subset of the student body, the subset that might have thought being smart was something to mock you for. The band in my high school was roughly 150 students out of 1500 — ten percent, and a large enough block that we could (and did) just socialize with each other, filling up entire lunch tables, going to practice after school, storing our things in the extra lockers we got by the band hall. Hell, our head drum major was voted homecoming king one year, because the drill team thought he was the cutest thing ever, and that plus the band was enough to lift him above the various football players who were his competitors. Our solidarity protected us.
Not a single piece of that was my own doing. I didn’t conform, didn’t scare the bullies off, didn’t do any of the things adults might advise to prevent the crimes of others. I was lucky.
But even luck may not save you. One of my classmates — a guy I’d known since elementary school, who’d gone through the same system I had, who was in the band — committed suicide during high school. I don’t know if he was bullied, but I know the football team talked some appallingly ugly shit about him afterward. He left behind a community, though; the entire band was devastated, and a posse very nearly went after the football players who were saying those things. That’s a lot more than most bullied kids have. But he didn’t have it because he did anything, other than being himself; he had it because the circumstances made it possible.
The kids who get picked on do not have power over their situations. Telling them it’s their responsibility to make change happen isn’t just unfair, it’s adding to the problem. It’s like grabbing the kid’s hand and smacking him with it while saying, “stop hitting yourself.” We need to not blame the victims. We need authority to step in, the same way we ask authority to step in when adults get stalked or assaulted or harassed. And for the love of god, we need to remember that our instincts are animal ones, and that altruism and compassion and so on don’t happen because a fairy waves a wand, they’re things that need to be fostered — that children need to be taught how not to act like beasts. We need to improve our math scores and everything else, too, at least here in the U.S., but I think I’d happily trade that for a school system that raises kids to be human beings, rather than hyenas.
I don’t know how to do that. But I know it needs to happen, because not everybody is lucky, and even luck can’t save everyone.
I’m starting to buckle down to work again, but interested parties might like to know that Jim Hines is giving away a copy of A Star Shall Fall (and also one of Tanya Huff’s The Enchantment Emporium). Details at the link; you have until the 20th to enter.
I’ve picked up quite a few new blog readers since the last post in this series, so to recap: I’m going back through the Wheel of Time, partly as a reader (so I can read the ending and know what the heck is going on), but partly as a writer, to look at it with a professional eye and see what works and what doesn’t. This has particularly meant looking at the structure, to see what really happened to the narrative pacing as the books went along, but there are some content-level bits of analysis going on as well. I stopped reading after Crossroads of Twilight, so please, no spoilers for Knife of Dreams or The Gathering Storm. If you’d like to see and/or comment on previous posts, just follow the Wheel of Time tag.
So, The Fires of Heaven. In which we begin our journey into the swamp.
By that I mean, this is the book where I see the pacing consequences of Jordan’s decisions in TDR and TSR coming home to roost. Once TFoH gets going, I enjoy it just fine . . . but it takes a while to get going. We’re skirting the fringes of the swamp, bogging down occasionally, and if memory serves that problem will get worse before it gets better.
Let’s step in a bit closer than usual, to show what I mean by this.
By popular request, my keynote from Sirens. The actual speech I delivered was a little different — for one thing, this version doesn’t have the comments about Helen Mirren as Prospera in Julie Taymor’s upcoming film of The Tempest — but the gist of it followed this pretty closely. I’m debating whether to post it to my website as-is, or update it based on the comments and feedback I got at the con; thoughts?
I have a lot to say about Sirens. Con reports aren’t something I usually do in detail, but this was my first experience with the con, my first con of that particular sort, and my first time being a Guest of Honor; unsurprisingly, this produces Thoughts. I’ll put them behind the cut, but for those who don’t want to read the whole shebang, here’s the short form:
It was amazing.
If your idea of a good con is one where you can spend pretty much your whole weekend in really good conversations about books, or hang out without feeling there’s a divide between the Authors and the Attendees, or get actual face time with the Guests of Honor, you should take a look at Sirens. I’m going to try to go back next year if I can, which should tell you something right there.
Also, Vail is pretty stunning in early October.
For more detail, follow me behind the cuts.
OH HOLY GOD THE OTHER THING WORKED, TOO.
(The other thing, in this case, being my costume. Pictures will follow. Only the crown bit was the subject of the Boggan Deathmatch a while ago; the rest, I paid someone to make, because sewing it myself while also finishing With Fate Conspire would have required paying a lot more money in psychiatrist bills.)
Early breakfast tomorrow, then shuttle back to Denver, flight back to home. This has been fabulous, and there will be a detailed report.
OH HOLY GOD IT WORKED.
(The stunt I alluded to before? I read a selection from With Fate Conspire . . . complete with RP and cockney accents. One attendee with a British mother said that if she hadn’t heard me speak in my natural voice, she wouldn’t have known I was American. This is pretty much the best seal of approval I could hope for.)
(I still don’t know that I’ll try that stunt in public again, though.)
Popping in briefly from Sirens (so far: it’s fabulous) to say that it’s the second anniversary of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which they’re celebrating with a double issue. (And some really lovely artwork, too.)
Anybody who’s read this journal for a while knows my love for BCS. They publish my kind of fantasy, the kind that has richly developed or evocative secondary worlds, ranging in style and content from the American frontier to Mesoamerica to Enlightenment France to India to Japan. And they do podcasts, too. From my personal experience, I can say the editor, Scott Andrews, is great to work with, and I’d go on with the praise but I haven’t eaten yet and I should probably fix that before I fall over.
So instead let me just nudge you in the direction of the site, encouraging you to read, and to support BCS if you enjoy what you find. Bringing you this kind of fiction ain’t cheap, and while they’re a non-profit, they do need money to function. So if you like what they’re doing, and want to see it go on for another two years or more, think about helping out.
Back to Sirens I go . . . .
I turned in a novel, and then my sister left for Japan, and then I had a house-guest, and now I’m heading off for Sirens. So the lack of posting is likely to continue for a few days yet; I may post updates during the con, but in all likelihood you’ll get the story after the fact. (Among other things, I have a keynote address to finish writing, a reading to practice that requires a certain stunt, and a workshop to plan out. So that will have me busy in my off moments.)
I am nervous and very excited. This is my first time as a Guest of Honor; I can only hope I do justice to the role.
After much hiatus-ing along the way, I’ve finally seen the entirety of Avatar: The Last Airbender. (TV series, natch — not the Shyamalan film. Though I laughed and laughed at how the episode “The Ember Island Players” seemed to presage the movie’s awfulness.)
I very much enjoyed the show: the characters, and most especially the world it takes place in, which has all kinds of nifty little details squirreled away in the corners. Apparently Nickelodeon is planning a new twelve-episode series to air next year — set seventy-five years later, focusing on Korra, a Water Tribe girl who’s the new Avatar — and I am very much looking forward to that.
It was interesting, though, watching a show which fundamentally was written for a kid audience. I read a decent amount of YA, but this was aimed at a demographic aged 6-11 (according to Wikipedia), and they play in a whole different ballpark. I could feel the difference: the show still grapped with interesting and sometimes difficult ideas, but the way it did so was . . . simpler.
Which feels like a criticism, maybe even a dismissal, and that’s the part I find interesting. I can’t find any words to describe what I’m thinking of that don’t sound like pejoratives. It’s simpler. The answers come more easily. They aren’t explored in as much depth.
But that isn’t a bad thing. How many adults got hooked on that series? I’m nowhere near the only one. Just because we weren’t the intended audience didn’t mean we couldn’t enjoy it. If it didn’t reach quite the same depths of grief and heights of joy as, say, Dorothy Dunnett, that’s okay; I was shouting at the TV screen anyway, which is a good sign that I cared. The story may have been simpler, but it wasn’t lesser.
So I’m left wondering, what makes that trick happen? What’s the secret technique that makes a nice, simple story for children (Avatar, Harry Potter) into something hordes of adults enjoy? Was it the characterization? Again, that didn’t have the depth I might expect from an adult show — but it was compelling; I giggled and cheered and wailed at the characters not to do the stupid thing I knew they were about to do. Was it the world? Maybe we were all just starving for a full-blown setting that wasn’t the usual familiar medieval Eurofantasy. I’d be curious to hear from people who loved the show: what was it that drew you to it?
(Be spoiler-free, if you can.)
Draft of With Fate Conspire is off to the editor. I have formally decided I don’t have to look at it again until after Sirens is over, which means I’m on vacation (from this book, at least) until October 11th.
I go fall down now.
Through random bloody chance and the favor of the gods of procrastination, the Victorian book, my assembled ladies and gentlemen, HAS A TITLE.
Can I get a drumroll?
<rolllllllllllllll>
With Fate Conspire.
Unless you are my husband or moonandserpent, you do not know — and do not want to know — how much Victorian literature I read through in search of something I could use. This one was lovely but had the verb at the front (and therefore looked out of place with the rest of the series); this one had the verb at the end but the quote it came from only fit the book if I tilted my head at a particular angle and squinted; this one was gorgeous but didn’t fit no matter how hard I squinted; this one was out of period; this one fit the pattern but wasn’t a great title. (Children, learn from me: nevereverever constrain yourself to this kind of highly patterned titling scheme.) I kept on plowing through poet after poet after architecture writer after novelist, trying to find something.
And then I sat down yesterday to read Tim Powers for procrastination, and I found my title.
The funniest part is, the epigraph he used came from a source I’d already gone through, and gotten nothing from. I mentioned some random bloody chance, right? The edition Powers quotes is earlier than the one I’d read, and has a different phrasing. “With Him conspire” is not a line I would have used. But Powers used an earlier edition, and I stared at the epigraph thinking, could I . . .?
I could. I can. My editor has given it the thumbs-up. On this, my last day of revising before I send the draft off to him for comment, my quest has ended. The Novel Formerly Known As The Victorian Book is now With Fate Conspire.
. . . wait, the Heaviside Layer is a real thing?
I thought it was just something made up for the musical Cats.
(This epiphany has been brought to you by Tim Powers’ novel Declare, and the details on wireless telegraphy therein.)
If you’re interested in steampunk, Nader Elhefnawy has a well-thought-out article on it up on the SFWA site.
I particularly like the way he acknowledges the role of nostalgia without automatically dismissing nostalgia as something that must always be inherently bad. Yes, the steampunk vision of the past conveniently overlooks the less-attractive parts of the period, but the flip side of that coin is that it valorizes the attractive, selecting out qualities we may be losing/have lost in this day and age and trying to resurrect them. Plus, Elhefnawy puts the current era in context with the past in a way I found very eye-opening, characterizing this as the post-apocalypse of the Victorians, with WWI as the apocalypse.
Interesting stuff. I recommend reading it.
