things I have not been able to suss out

Hey, historians! Can anybody tell me when the north bank of the Thames was properly embanked/walled/whatever, east of the Victoria Embankment? That one formally ends at Blackfriars, and I’m trying to figure out what the riverbank would look like to someone standing a bit further east (between Blackfriars and Queenhithe) in 1884. As in, is it a mess of wharves and wooden pilings and what-have-you, or has someone built a nice tidy stone wall by then?

Why yes, I am obsessive about my details. How could you tell?

Anyway, my books don’t say, and I can’t get the Internet to help me. Possibly my fu is just not on tonight. And yeah, Peter Ackroyd has that whole book on the Thames, but it’s 11 p.m. and even Amazon Prime can’t teleport things to my desk. So I figured I’d ask and see if anybody can answer the question without me having to add to my research shelf.

Okay, I’ve got one.

I found something new to post, that didn’t require much jinking to make it web-ready: “But Who Shall Lead the Dance?”

This originally came out in Talebones, whose fourteen-year run came to an end last fall, much to my sadness. Patrick Swenson published three of my stories in total: this, “The Twa Corbies,” and “The Snow-White Heart,” which was in their final issue. (You can still buy back issues here.)

. . . you know, posting this has reminded me of something I forgot. Namely, that this story tried to turn into a ballad as I was writing it. You can see that in the style — this was the first real stylistic experiment I ever tried writing — the rhythm of the “But who shall lead the dance?” suggested the end of a ballad stanza to me, and everything else followed from there.

Maybe I’ll revisit that, and actually try to write it as lyrics, just for fun. No doubt I’ll fall on my nose; poetry and related forms are not something I’m good at. But hey, it’ll be good exercise. And the silly thing’s halfway there already.

Happy International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day!

Oh! I do have a fifth thing. Today is International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, when writers celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday by collectively thumbing their noses at a certain past vice-president of SFWA and posting fiction for free online.

I was all proud of myself for having picked out a story to post this year, only to discover two minutes ago that it’s one I posted in the past. So I, er, don’t have anything new to share at the moment. But this page lists all the fiction of mine that is readable for free online (either in e-zine archives or on my own site), and if I manage to get something else sorted out today I’ll be back to post that later.

The IPSTP community has many, many more links. Enjoy!

cleaning out Firefox

March for Babies — The link is to the fundraising page for the family of a friend, but I link to it because of a different friend, who has endured one of the most difficult pregnancies I’ve ever heard of, and will soon be giving birth to a pair of preemies. So supporting maternal and infant health is something I’m a bit keen on right now.

On a lighter note: Why the Library of Congress is Archiving Tweets — I find this deeply nifty, because they’re right: the value of an individual tweet is fairly low. But taken in the aggregate, they form a corpus of high historical value, for certain kinds of research. And Twitter and the LoC seem to be taking a reasonably sane approach to what they’re archiving and how, and how access to it will be managed.

On a note of high hilarity: Marella Sands on the language of sex in vampire fiction — specifically, comparing old-school Polidori and Stoker approaches to the Anita Blake series today.

Another Sirens update — Registration costs go up after April 30th, so if you’re on the fence about going, try to decide quickly!

That’s four links, and everybody says five things make a post, so my fifth thing shall be, uh, me apologizing for only having four. (I actually do have a fifth, but it deserves actual discussion, so I’m saving it for later.)

Victorian Book Report: Strange and Secret Peoples, by Carole G. Silver

I first read this book just because I owned it. Then I re-read it three years ago, when I thought the Victorian book would be the next one I wrote in the Onyx Court series, before detouring through In Ashes Lie and A Star Shall Fall. Now I’m re-reading bits and pieces of it for reference, because this, ladies and gents, is the nineteenth-century answer to Katherine Briggs’ Pale Hecate’s Team. Briggs was analyzing fairy folkore and its literary expression in Shakespeare’s day; Silver is doing the same for the Victorians.

She breaks it down thematically: the origins of fairies, changelings and abductions, fairy brides, “racial myths and mythic races,” fairy cruelty, and flitting, the departure of fairies for their own lands (or sometimes Australia). Furthermore, she questions what these things meant to the Victorians, why these kinds of stories became popular; in the case of changelings, for example, she talks about disease (both physical and mental), and about social response to deviant behavior, and about the class-based and racial tensions within Victorian society, that strongly affected the way these stories were told and received, and who was doing the telling and receiving.

In other words, pretty much everything you’d want to write a Victorian fairy novel.

If I have one complaint, it’s that I want this book to be bigger. Only 234 pages, counting the endnotes; I’m sure there’s more to be said here, and I wish Silver had said it.

10K!

Thanks to April’s “500 a day” rule, missing several days has not prevented me from arriving at the 10K milestone on schedule.

For the record, the title hunt is still on. If you’ve sent me e-mail and not gotten a reply yet, I promise to take care of that soon. In the meanwhile, keep on suggesting; I appreciate all the help.

Word count: 10,025
LBR quota: It’s the River Fleet. I think it counts as blood.
Authorial sadism: Leaving Dead Rick standing knee-deep in the aforesaid Fleet, wondering whether he’s going to run into a tosher or Blacktooth Meg first.

Advice from the pro side

Keep notes.

Keep notes from the start. Write down what the characters look like, and where things are. If you invent a town or something along those lines, make a map, even if it’s just chicken scratches on the back of an envelope.

By taking such steps, you will save yourself the effort of having to reconstruct these things by scrounging for details in the three novels, one novelette, and one novella you have already completed. And when the thing you’re trying to map is a faerie palace which (you have abundantly established) doesn’t correspond in a logical fashion to the city above it, you will be very grateful that you have saved yourself this tedious and problematic work.

If you fail to keep notes, you will use up all your scratch paper trying to find a way to make it all fit together, so you can then decide where and how to break it for the purposes of the fourth book. So be smart from the start.

In other words, don’t be like me.

Freeeeeeeedommmmmmmm!

BRACE!!!

Ahem. That is to say, I have achieved Early Release from the boot (the four weeks will be up on Friday), and am now back to the ankle brace I was wearing prior to surgery.

Man, I had really grown to hate this thing in March. Now? It’s my bestest friend. Because it isn’t the boot.

I’m sitting here in my jeans — jeans!!! I haven’t worn these things for almost a month!!! — and I could put on a second shoe if I really wanted to, and I could also drive, or walk to the bank to deposit checks, though I’m not going to do that because it would be really easy to overdo this. I’ve already discovered that we’ll still be going down stairs the two-feet-on-one-step method for a while; trying to walk down them normally produced a twinge that said clearly, you’re not ready for this yet. Okay. Fair enough. Heck, I still feel off-kilter after (nearly) four weeks of having my right foot be higher than my left. Standing flat feels like my left leg is now longer than my right.

Physical therapy starts Thursday. I am very much looking forward to it.

in which I blame the gimpy feet

I’ve reached this weird point of procrastination, where I feel like I’m putting off practically everything until I get out of this damned boot. Folding laundry? I can do it later. Cooking anything? We’ll get back to that in a week or so. Research reading? I have no idea how I manage to blame this one on my foot, but I do. Everything can wait until I’m more mobile again.

So if you haven’t gotten a reply to some e-mail or LJ comment, blame my foot. It’s what I’m doing.

Things I am looking forward to, once I’m out of the boot:

  • Wearing two shoes again.
  • Wearing something other than sweatpants.
  • Carrying things down the stairs without worrying that full hands will compromise my already-compromised balance badly enough for me to fall.
  • Taking a shower without being paralyzed by an utterly irrational fear that I will somehow, against all odds, contrive to slip and fall and rip the ligament apart again.
  • Driving.
  • Physical therapy.

Yes, I really am looking forward to physical therapy. Because it’s something I can do, beyond just waiting. As I said after the surgery, this is the boring stage; I’m eager to get on to the stage that involves active progress, even if it’s tedious and/or painful to do.

thoughts on re-reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

What a peculiar book this is.

I’ve said before that I kind of feel like it’s alternate genre history: if fantasy had been established as a publishing category on the basis of Lud-in-the-Mist instead of The Lord of the Rings, then books like this would be our giant blockbusters. Which is why it’s so peculiar that it was a giant blockbuster; sure, I can see the appeal of Harry Potter for a broader audience, but how on earth did an eight-hundred-page nineteenth-century fantasy novel, complete with footnotes, get so much mainstream love? Heck, how did it get published? You hear all these stories about editors reading a manuscript and saying, “I love it, but I can’t buy it because our sales people have no idea how to market it” — yet somehow they decided they could market this one. And they were right, but I’m still boggled that it happened in the first place.

It’s such a sprawling narrative that I know I lost track of many details the first time I read it; things were clearer a second time around. I was particularly struck by the resemblance to The King of Elfland’s Daughter — “We want magic!” <they get some> “Aaagh no take it back takeitback!” — the powerful sense of Elfland/Faerie being untamed, untameable, and not everybody’s prepared to deal with it but that’s what’s awesome about it. I think it’s no accident that everything I find myself comparing it to was written in either the 19th century or the 1920s. And it’s possible that’s why I find myself still a bit disappointed by the ending; the lead-up seems to be climbing this epic mountain, but it diverts just shy of the summit, as if the author can’t quite bring herself to do something so vulgar. But I really wanted to see the view from that summit, because it isn’t the same mountain all the so-called epic fantasies are climbing, and I think it could have blown the top of my head off. Instead it stopped about one step short, and started climbing back down.

For all that, though — and various other flaws — it still gives me many things to love. The footnoted commentary on different books and articles is a particularly excellent touch, at least if you’re the sort of geek I am, and of course I adore the humour created by an elegantly-phrased understatement. I just wish it would have climbed that one last step.

video games as art

Link from jaylake: Roger Ebert on why video games can never be art.

I’ve got a lot of respect for Ebert, but in this instance I think he fails signally to construct a rigorous argument for his point, even as he’s taking apart Santiago for the same failure.

I could go through his article responding line by line, but that would produce an incredibly long and rambling post, so I’ll try to just hit the central points. First off, he dings Santiago for “lacking a convincing definition of art.” Given that no one has yet managed to come up with a truly convincing definition, that’s a bit unfair. And indeed, he immediately follows that criticism by asking, “But is Plato’s any better?” Okay, so he recognizes the contentious nature of definitions in the first place — but then the rest of the paragraph is spent on his own definition, which at the end, boils down to taste. Art is the amazing stuff. Everything else is . . . something else.

He clearly means “art” as a category of quality, rather than anything structurally defined. Which is an approach I fundamentally disagree with. To pick the simplest way of pointing out the flaw of that argument: Ebert says video games aren’t art (and won’t be) because none of the examples he’s seen impress him. But I guarantee you there are movies that do impress him which would bore me stiff, while there are video games I consider artful. The message I take away from his argument is that my opinion doesn’t matter; only his does, and people who agree with him. And that’s why quality as the delimiter of “what’s art?” is a bad way to go.

More ways in which he’s wrong . . . .

GOT YOU.

Okay, fine, I was totally wrong about the remaining wordcount; you’re 7,410 words and obviously want to be a novelette since I know I rushed the ending. FINE. You can be a novelette.

You can be a novelette later, once I’ve mustered the will to revise you. But for now, “Mad Maudlin,” you are DONE. And that’s all I care about.

I go fall down now.

so. close.

Gaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh I am thisclose to being able to finish “Mad Maudlin” (no, I didn’t get it done last month) and the end of it is driving me batty. (Which is a funny joke, given the subject matter.) I just need to figure out what message Maud gives Peter, and then how to make the next bit happen in a dramatic way, and somewhere work in Peter doing that thing he shouldn’t do (moreso than he’s done already), and then it’ll be the tag scene and I’m done. We’re at 5,698 words, and there can’t be more than a thousand left, and WHY IS THIS STORY NOT DONE ALREADY.

Because I haven’t threaded my way through the last few twists yet, that’s why. Come on, brain, help me out on this one, and then we can sack out and watch Dexter. But until you do, we’re not going anywhere other than this chair, except maybe the bed to roll around and stare at the ceiling and try to figure things out. Work with me, here. We’re almost done.

Updated with revelation: Duh. You promised yourself this was a hack draft. This is you getting the framework down on the page, so you can go back and have experts help you make it better. So all that crap you’re worrying about is stuff you can fiddle with later. You’ll run it by three or four people to get the research stuff right, and then once you have that you can apply writer-brain and make it more exciting, and then you can have your crit group look at it and tell you where it still needs improvement. Obsessing over the finer points now may even prove to be a waste of time, as your clever ideas might get cut on account of being Wrong.

So just write the end, and let it suck, and worry about it later.

calling all occultists

I need references for books on the history of spiritualism, theosophy, the Golden Dawn, etc. Not modern New Age books on their ideas, but scholarly works on what those movements were doing in Great Britain in the nineteenth century, up to (you guessed it) 1884. Overview-type references would be a good place to start, though I’d also be interested in books that really delve into the nitty-gritty, so if I decide to make use of particular people or events I’ll be able to do it properly.

Any other occult movements of the period that I haven’t mentioned here are also welcome. This is a topic that especially needs sorting of wheat from chaff, so if this is a subject you know, please do point me at the reliable books.

a question

What is it with the writers of Dexter and incompetent female police lieutenants who only got their jobs for political reasons?

LaGuerta lied to earn her promotion, flirts with her subordinates, allows her a priori dislike of another female officer to hamper the progress of an investigation, and generally has the sole redeeming professional quality of being a media darling. It wouldn’t bug me so much if her replacement were an improvement, but no — Pasquale’s even worse. Granted, the chief of police is a jerk who makes plenty of his own mistakes, so it isn’t like women are being singled out as bad leaders. But the ep I just watched had the chief saying Pasquale “set back women in this department by twenty years,” while the only alternative the show has yet offered me is LaGuerta.

And the only other female cop shown in detail is Debra Morgan, who is sometimes so stupid and clueless and clumsy in her interactions with people that I want to kick her in the head. (Seriously, Debra — you’ve been a Miami cop for how long, and yet your Spanish is worse than mine?) Yes, she sometimes does things successfully, and so does LaGuerta — but it feels like those things happen despite the characters’ manifest incompetence at basic aspects of their job.

I’d like there to be one woman on the police force, in a leadership position or otherwise, who’s decent at her job the way that Doakes and Angel and Masuka are. The men’s character flaws don’t make me question their fitness for the job. And given that women in male-dominated fields generally have to be more competent to earn respect and promotion, the scenario Dexter presents me with feels all the more implausible.

incentives in schooling (and games)

Time has a fascinating article up about the use of monetary incentives in schooling.

The first thing that struck me was the title: “Should Kids Be Bribed to Do Well in School?” I was glad to see my immediate response echoed during the article. As Fryer points out, we do this all the time as adults; we give bonuses and raises and other forms of monetary reward to employees who do their jobs well. So why is it “bribery” when we offer kids the same kind of incentive we give ourselves? Granted, there are differences between work and school; your son’s math test isn’t used for any purpose other than judging how well he understands math. It doesn’t feed (directly) into a larger economy of labor. And there is definitely merit in learning for the love of learning — as the article duly describes. But the difference is maybe not as absolute as people assume.

What really gets fascinating is the finer-grained material, the evidence for what works and what doesn’t. Rewarding kids for good test grades? Not helpful. Not because they don’t care enough to try and earn the reward; they do. But they don’t know how. Test scores, to the type of kids this study worked with, are not sufficiently under their control. They don’t see how to get from where they are to where they want to be, because the educational system has already failed them on that front. It appears to be more useful to target the things the kid knows are under her control, like attendance, good behavior, and the successful exercise of skills she already possesses. That lays the groundwork for the belief that other things — like test scores — can also be controlled. Education is a game she can win.

I use that phrasing because this morning’s blog-crawl produced a semi-terrifying juxtaposition between that article and a piece on Cracked.com, about 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted. It lays out how MMOs (which operate on a subscription model) use psychological tricks to make you keep playing, even when it isn’t fun. Which is all about incentives and reward.

Maybe if we ran our schools more like MMOs . . . ?

first update of the season

We’re in the season of noveling now, and so I’ve broken out the old progress icon.

I’ve given myself April to tiptoe around in, before I settle down and really start grooving. What does that mean? 500 words a day instead of 1000, and it’s not a huge deal if I miss one, so long as I have 15K by the end of the month. I’m a bit behind that curve right now, actually, but it’s easy enough to make up the difference.

So far I like what I’ve got. The Onyx Court books have gradually been moving down the social food chain — from the royal court, to Parliament, to the gentry, to a pair of thoroughly lower-class protagonists for this book. Dead Rick is in debt to criminals, and Eliza (sorry, d_c_m, she underwent a sudden name change) is currently scraping by as a housemaid. I’m actually kind of enjoying the grit.

Word count: 5146
LBR census: Given that half of this scene was spent talking about Fenian bombings, I think blood wins.
Authorial sadism: I think the Special Irish Branch may be after Eliza.

Sirens deadline

Recap for newcomers and those who have forgotten: this fall I’ll be one of three Guests of Honor at Sirens, along with Holly Black and Terri Windling. It’s a conference/convention on women in fantasy, and reports of last year’s event make it sound incredibly awesome; I’m looking forward to it more than I can say.

Which I bring up because the deadline for programming proposals is May 7th. You can read the latest newsletter here, which includes links to the forum where you can brainstorm ideas, arrange group events with other people, etc. Previous posts on that LJ comm give more info on what kinds of programming they’re looking for. This is very much a participant-driven thing, so if you’re at all interested in Sirens, dive in and share your ideas. The more, the merrier!

new pleasures in reading

I’ve said before that I’ve never been a regular subscriber to any magazines — “regular” in the sense of keeping up my subscription for more than a year. (I might have done for Paradox, but they folded.) That’s changed a bit lately, though. First via podcasting: a good deal of my short fiction consumption now comes in via my ears, as I listen to Podcastle (for fantasy) and Escape Pod (for SF), and I strongly suspect the addition of a narrator’s voice has led me to enjoy stories I might have skipped past on the page. Second, as I’ve mentioned before, Beneath Ceaseless Skies has turned out sit squarely in the middle of What I Like when it comes to fantasy, with the result that I’ve become a regular reader.

As a result, I’m discovering heretofore unknown pleasures, that come when you’re a dedicated follower of a particular magazine. It’s like the reverse of Cheers: rather than everybody knowing my name, I know theirs. Certain authors, whose work sits squarely in the middle of What The Editors Like, keep showing up, and so BCS becomes (among other things) “the place that brings me Aliette de Bodard’s stuff.” Since I very much like her work, I bounce a bit in glee when I see a new piece show up there. Sometimes it goes even further, not just an author but an author’s series: Escape Pod has Jeffrey R. DeRego’s Union Dues superhero stories, and BCS has so far published two of Richard Parks’ Heian-period Japanese fantasies, featuring the duo of Yamada and Kenji, the reprobate priest, with a third one on the way. Carried too far, this sort of thing can make a magazine stale — you get the feeling they only ever publish the same dozen people, over and over, and the assurance of a sale makes those dozen lazy in their work — but so far it’s been a source of familiarity and satisfaction for me.

Since I started this by talking about subscriptions, I should mention that both the podcasts and BCS are supported via donations; if you want to toss a few bucks their way, to help ensure they keep putting these stories out, the relevant places to do so are: Podcastle (right-hand sidebar), Escape Pod (ditto), and BCS. (I noted when catching up on stories this weekend that BCS has also added itself to the Kindle Store, in addition to the pdf, mobi, and epub formats of before, if you’re an e-reader type.)

Let’s close with a question: for those of you who are dedicated subscribers to one or more short story sources (print, web, or audio), are there particular authors or story series that are, for you, part of the appeal of that magazine? Conversely, are there any who show up a lot that you skip over automatically, because you know from past experience that they just aren’t your kind of thing?