silver bullets

Okay, this is just fascinating.

It seems that one of Patricia Briggs’ readers has embarked upon a quest for silver bullets. I came at that series by way of the third chapter, “Lone Ranger, Go Away,” which is a reprint of a 1964 Gun World article detailing previous efforts to produce and test-fire such rounds. That part (which I found via Making Light) is funny enough, but the rest of the series is chock-full of ballistic geekery, of a sort that every werewolf-novel-writing author should read.

And not just them, either. I have no intention of writing about lycanthropes, but I learned from the introduction that three hundred years ago, silver didn’t generally tarnish like it does today. Why? Because the Industrial Revolution hadn’t yet pumped large amounts of sulfur into the atmosphere. If you left a silver object sitting on a shelf for ten years, it would still be shiny when you came back — which made it just about as magical-seeming as gold. And if you’ve come across references to silver cups or knives being used to detect poison, it’s because organic poisons often contain enough sulfur to tarnish the dishware, creating a seemingly supernatural ability to detect their presence.

Of course, if I wrote a story with a silver object that didn’t tarnish over time, readers would think I was doing it wrong. The perils of too much research . . . .

Anyway, if you’ve ever thought about writing a werewolf book, or you like reading them, check the articles out. Turns out the “silver bullet” thing is a lot more difficult than advertised — but out of such obstacles are more interesting stories made.

even more fiction

When it rains, it pours. But this time you get to listen to my fiction instead of reading it!

Yes, folks, it’s my very first story podcast. I’ve got two others on the way — Pseudopod will be doing “Shadows’ Bride,” and Beneath Ceaseless Skies has got “Kingspeaker” — but Podcastle hit the finish line first, with my exceedingly silly flash story “The Princess and the . . .”

I’ve been meaning to post about Escape Artists — the umbrella name for a trio of podcasts, dedicated to science fiction (Escape Pod), horror (Pseudopod), and fantasy (Podcastle). Of the three, I don’t generally listen to Pseudopod (since I’m not a big horror person, my sale to them notwithstanding), and my personal tastes generally mean that about half the Escape Pod stories are up my alley, but I adore Podcastle, and all three of them are very well done indeed. Ever since my trip to London last year, when traveling light meant I packed no leisure reading with me, I’ve become quite fond of being able to carry fiction around on my iPod. Short stories are perfect for sitting around in airports or on planes, since I don’t have to commit ten hours of my life to listening. If you’ve got an mp3 player and need to entertain yourself for half an hour or forty-five minutes, the Escape Artists productions are a good way to go.

This story, though, won’t eat up that much time. When I say it’s flash, I mean it; I don’t remember how many words “The Princess and the . . .” is, but the entire episode, including intro and outro, is about two minutes. You can subscribe to the podcast in the usual way, or download it from a link at the bottom of the story post over on their website. Enjoy!

(Having linked to this, now I’m afraid what kind of answers I’ll get on the comparison post . . . .)

in which I fail to compare

This is going to sound like I’m looking for flattery, but what I’m actually after is assistance.

I have never been able to muster the perspective necessary to say who I write like. It’s one of the things authors are occasionally expected to do; it positions you in the genre, in the textual conversation we’re all having, and coincidentally helps with self-promotion, pitching new projects, and a bunch of other writing-related program activities where you’re not allowed to ramble on for five minutes describing what you write. Sure, we’re all individual snowflakes, but comparisons are still possible, whether they’re straightforward or of the intersection-style “Bridget Jones’ Diary meets H.P. Lovecraft” variety.

But I can’t do it. For individual stories, occasionally — more by comparison to a genre or a specific point of inspiration — but I’ve got no perspective on the general body of my work, not in a useful way. So I turn to you, my internet friends: who do you think I write like? Why? Are you basing your comparison on plots, favorite themes, prose styles? (That last is the true black hole of my inability to reflect; again, I can say an individual story has a nineteenth-century sound to it or whatever, but I can’t begin to describe my prose in general, much less liken it to anybody else’s.)

I can think of two comparisons I’ve gotten in reviews, both of which have induced something of an “I’m not worthy!” reaction. The more comprehensible one, from my perspective, is Ursula K. LeGuin; she’s the daughter of anthropologists, and it shows. (I’ve gotten that comparison twice, for “White Shadow” and more recently “Kingspeaker” — both of which are set in the world that I created to be my anthropological playground.) When I think about my whole cultural fantasy thing, I can see where those reviewers are coming from, even if I’m a long way from having sufficient ego to liken myself to her. Less obvious to me are the Midnight Never Come reviews that compare the book to the work of Neil Gaiman. Aside from the semi-parallel to Neverwhere, I have a harder time seeing where I’m like him.

But, as I said, I have no perspective on this. So please: imagine you’ve got a friend asking for recommendations. What authors might make you say, oh, try Marie Brennan? And when your friend asks why, what would you say to them?

I’d be hard-pressed to answer those questions, myself. I’m hoping you guys can help out with that.

revisions are off

The next day Mr Earbrass is conscious but very little more.

I’ve survived another round with the Beast*.

Time to watch back episodes of House online or something.

*Being The Novel Formally Known As In Ashes Lie But Frequently Referred To As Please God I’ll Be Good Don’t Make Me Deal With Seventeenth-Century English Politics Ever Again.

stabbination!

I’m at the fun part of the learning curve right now.

Every fencing practice I go to, my brain unearths another dusty piece of technique it used to know ten years ago. After a few incidents of walking straight onto somebody’s blade because I failed to clear the line before advancing, my brain remembered beats! Yeah, those work! And then I overuse them heavily, but oh yeah, there are feints and disengages, too. Today’s revelation was particularly funny; given how much I adored binding parries in high school, you would think I’d have remembered them sooner.

Of course, I didn’t remember them until I’d been playing for a good hour and a half, at which point my wrists were no longer up to the task. But we’ll try them next time.

I can watch myself improving, mostly in terms of my ability to keep thinking. If my first attack is blocked, I try another one. Or even plan ahead, my first attack a feint to set my opponent up for the follow-through. If I’m retreating, I don’t just parry; I parry and riposte (or try to). One of these days I’ll get draw-cuts and push-cuts into the mental programming, and then I might even stand a chance in close combat!

Dear Brain: while we’re at the cuts thing, please also recall that we’re no longer in the backyard with a dowel rod; it is not only okay, but desirable, to follow through on a lunge instead of pulling up half an inch short of connecting. kthxbye.

Also, today I let myself pick up a dagger for a little while. I’ve been fighting single-sword because it allows/forces me to pay attention to what I’m doing with that blade, but man, rapier and dagger just feels right. I don’t want a buckler; I don’t want a cloak — though I’ll be happy to play with those someday — a dagger in my off hand feels like the most natural thing in the world. (My real ambition, of course, is case. But the few times I played with that in high school, I invariably got my points tangled, so we’ll stick with a short secondary for now.)

<studies arms> I look like a battered wife. But that will improve as my skill does.

question

Can someone who has a copy of Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book look up for me how many times a church bell tolled for the death of a woman? I know she goes into that system, but I can’t recall (or find on the Internet) the specifics.

Answer needed ASAP, por favor.

So true.

And it makes my academic brain glee over the way fanfiction has given us an entirely new vocabulary with which to describe the world.

weeeeeeeird . . . .

So that’s what the backs of my teeth feel like.

Thirteen years ago, my orthodontist popped my braces off and glued a pair of permanent retainers to my incisors, top and bottom: two little wires, cemented in place, to keep my bite stable. When I went to college, I started bugging him to take them off, with no success; by the time I went to grad school, they had become such a fact of life I never gave them much thought at all.

Today, having had a dentist tell me I really ought to replace them with removable retainers, I had those wires taken out. For the first time in thirteen years, I can feel the backs of my teeth.

My mouth has become alien territory.

crime time!

If you saw me in the back of a police car, what would you think I was there for?

Answer me, then post this in your own journal (or, you know, don’t) to see how many different crimes you get accused of committing.

(From jaylake, who got it from tbclone47.)

thoughts on Fringe

Now that I’m once again using my TV for its original purpose — that is to say, watching broadcasts of shows, rather than treating the TV as simply an output device for the DVD player — I’m watching Fringe, Fox’s new X-Files-style show.

I suspect at least a couple of other people on my friends list are watching it, too, so I decided to toss my (non-spoilery) thoughts on the show up here.

First, and most major: the shadow-conspiracy. Fringe is in danger of falling into the same trap as its predecessor, namely, failing to make me care at all about the metaplot. In the case of The X-Files, it was a problem of concept as well as execution; at the end of the day, I just don’t care very much about UFOs and alien abductions. So when the execution was vague and muddy and confusing and pulled out of Chris Carter’s posterior, well, that didn’t help. In this case, I’m willing to invest more in caring — but they’re going to have to stop doing nothing but monster-of-the-week plots and start building up an actual pattern, with something that makes it hang together. So far, the only connecting element is that practically everything derives from some cracked-out experiment Walter did twenty years ago, thus giving the characters a way to solve the problem.

But I’m enjoying the characters, so I continue to watch. I like the way they have history; Walter and Peter are the most obvious and most enjoyable case, but also Dunham and her FBI boss whose name I can’t remember — not Broyles, the white guy. There’s a sense these people knew each other before the pilot episode started. And in general, I like that it’s a show about smart people being smart, where they have to bring all their mental capabilities to bear in order to figure out the puzzle. If that occasionally involves a dose of WTF, well, that’s kind of built into the premise of the show.

And I like Dunham. I like the fact that she’s a strong character who happens to be a woman, rather than a Strong Woman ™. Aside from that one time she blew up at Broyles, there’s been very little in the way of flashing neon gender signs, and more of her just being who she is, rather than a representative of her sex.

I fully expect a relationship between her and Peter someday, but I like that they’re not rushing into it. Peter himself is interesting, but like the metaplot, he needs more forward movement; he spends too much time being little more than Walter’s interpreter. I like it when he proactively contributes something to the puzzle, when his intelligence matters, too. (Not to mention the clue Walter dropped at one point, about Peter’s medical history. What kinds of experimentation was Dear Dad doing on him, anyway? More on that, kthxbye.)

Also, tonight’s episode made me notice something: if the plot calls for a main character to be strapped to a table or dentist’s chair and subjected to pain, that character has generally been Peter. Which makes sense on a structural level, but is also a refreshing change from media’s default victimization of women.

No overall thesis here; just scattered thoughts and reactions. Anybody else keeping up with this one?

it worked!

I don’t often link to short story reviews. For one thing, they’re a lot less common than novel reviews, and probably play a much smaller role in convincing people to go find the story in question.

But every so often, one pops up that says, yeah, you know that thing you were trying to do with your story? Bullseye.

At least for this reader. (Warning: spoilers for “Kingspeaker.”)

It’s nice to feel, every once in a while, that you’ve hit your target.

the state of the revision

Warning: graphic metaphor ahead.

***

I currently have the vivisected body of Part IV lying in front of me. (Figuratively speaking; I’m working with an electronic file, not one of my cover-the-floor-with-paper stunts.) I’ve sliced it open and gone to work moving things around: transplants for a few organs, repairs to others, a bit of experimental reconnection that I’m hoping will work. Generally, I feel good about the changes. Having it lying there all bloody is making me nervous, though, because this revision is due on the 17th, and I’d feel a lot better if I could stitch this part up and get it on its feet again, so it can walk around a bit and tell me if anything isn’t functioning the way it needs to.

I can’t, though, because it doesn’t have a liver. There was one before, but it never worked all that well — just well enough to pass — and I’m pretty sure it can’t handle the load the new transplants will place on it. And while a liver isn’t so vital of an organ that you’ll keel over on the spot if yours is kind of gimpy, it isn’t an appendix, either; we really want one that works. So I need a new liver, and I need it in the next week. And I can’t go stitching up the body until I have one, because I’d just have to cut it apart again to put the thing in, and besides, there’s stuff that needs the liver to run right. Which means I’m increasingly fretting about how much work it’ll take to stitch the body up again, and how frantically I’ll have to work to get that done once I have the damn liver.

Fretting, in case you were wondering, is not good for productivity.

There are other things I can work on, and I’m going to do those, so I don’t have to do them post-liver transplant. But it’s harder than usual to trust my usual work pattern — namely, that the idea will show up by the time I need it. Generally it does, and I know from experience that I’ll get better results if I relax and let the hindbrain do what it has to. Unfortunately, that doesn’t silence the little voice whispering but what will you do if it doesn’t . . . .

I’d feel a lot better if I just had the goddamned liver already.

Dear Brain: I’ve had a stressful year. Please don’t add to it any more than you have to. (And consider very carefully what goes on the “have to” list.)

Off to work, while I wait for the liver to arrive.

campaign temperament

This journal will not be all politics, all the time for much longer, I promise you. But when one uncovers a motherlode of good reading, one naturally wishes to share.

Since I only just this cycle started paying any real attention to the details of presidential campaigns, this is the first time I’ve heard of Newsweek‘s “How He Did It” series, which is apparently a long-standing practice. They embed reporters with the various campaigns, but put them under a strict embargo, only releasing their articles after the election is over. The result is an abso-frickin’-lutely fascinating and human look at the road to the White House — not only for the victor, but for his opponents along the way.

Now, I’m sure there’s a certain similarity to VH1’s “Behind the Music” shows — you know, the desire to search out the dramatic “but behind the scenes, everything was falling apart!” moments. Having said that, what I’ve read of the series so far highlights something I find very telling, about the temperaments of Clinton, McCain, and Obama.

I had reasons to like Clinton; I think she could have won the election, though probably not with Obama’s margin of victory, and I don’t think she would have sucked as a president. But my confidence in her ability, I must admit, is much weakened by this account of her campaign: she appears to have had no gift for managing her team. She failed to balance conflicting personalities and bring her fractious underlings into line, and the result, at least for a while, is that nothing effective got done. Ads against Obama were made and then shelved, because nobody could agree on what line they should take. It says elsewhere in the series that candidates are not supposed to micro-manage their campaigns, but I do imagine they’re supposed to provide leadership, and Clinton seems to have failed at that. Which does not inspire confidence in her hypothetical presidency: if she can’t forge consensus out of her campaign team, would she fare any better with her administration?

And then there’s McCain. I’m glad they had fun with their wacky pirate bus road trip, and I’m sure he’s a great guy to hang out with when he’s in the mood, but nothing I read about his temperament makes me think he belongs in the White House. He, too, had trouble getting his people to pull together, and has a really passive-aggressive streak to boot, never firing anybody, but making them so miserable they leave on their own — and then calling them up for advice long after they’re gone. He doesn’t like to listen to advice, and while he may be happy as the scrappy underdog gritting his way to the top, that’s a bad mentality for leading a country that has not been a scrappy underdog for at least a hundred years. I could also say a lot about his selection of Palin — and maybe I will, once I get to the part in the series that discusses it — but even before he made that monumental error in judgment, I just don’t think he was the right guy for the job.

Which brings us, of course, to Obama. It’s been said before, but the things I’m reading in the article reinforce it: the guy is smart, thoughtful, and disciplined. His campaign made its share of errors, but the instructive thing is how they reacted to them. They learned. They adapted. And they worked together. Before the Wright thing started blowing up, they decided they needed to look over all the guy’s sermons for potential sources of trouble, but it never happened. And when it came back to bite them? Axelrod blamed himself for not following up on it. Contrast that with the backbiting in Clinton’s and McCain’s campaigns, where everybody was more than happy to blame somebody else. The difference lies in the individuals, but also in the people in charge, who both chose those individuals, and created the dynamic of their interactions. Obama’s advisers didn’t always agree with each other, and he didn’t always agree with them, but they listened to each other, and examined their own judgment. When discussing VP picks, Obama didn’t want Clinton; the two of them did not get along. But when his advisers gave him a list of reasons why she would be the wrong choice, he kept questioning them on it. Were they sure? It wasn’t him second-guessing; it was him making sure their reasons (and his own) were practical, not personal.

That’s a temperament I want in the White House.

Anyway, I’m not done reading the series yet (and two chapters have yet to be posted), but those thoughts were rattling around in my head and preventing much else from getting done, so I figured I’d get them out. I highly recommend the series; it’s a lot of reading, but very, very good.

free fiction

Many of you are no doubt making one of two transitions: either you’re cautiously venturing back onto the Internet, having temporarily exiled yourself to avoid all the political talk, or you’re trying to fill the empty hours now that you no longer need to obsessively check all your favorite political websites. Either way, I have something for you!

The new online magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies has just put up my short story “Kingspeaker.” This is a Nine Lands piece, and the brainchild of something I read about in one of my folklore classes — surprise!

BCS is publishing two pieces every two weeks; my companion this week is the first part of Charles Coleman Finlay and Rae Carson Finlay’s “The Crystal Stair,” which will continue in the next issue. You can also read David Levine’s “Sun Magic, Earth Magic,” Yoon Ha Lee’s “Architectural Constants,” and Chris Willrich’s amusing “The Sword of Loving Kindness,” likewise delivered in two parts. But wait, there’s more! “Architectural Constants” is also being podcasted, and “Kingspeaker” is slated for a later episode. So if you don’t have much time to read, but you do have time to listen, check those out on the website.

hah!

[EDIT: At the advice of my commenters, I’m putting in a notice that this is a post about revision, not politics. I’ve apparently given a few people minor heart attacks already, before they got far enough in to figure out what I was talking about.]

I said it all the way back in July: “When in doubt, throw in an assassination attempt.”

Now, the attempt in question ended up being canceled, but I think putting one in elsewhere may in fact be the solution to one of my problems.

Send in a man with a gun. I don’t think I’ll have an actual gun, but the advice still holds. Funny how this whole “learning your craft” thing involves coming around to the basic lessons over and over and over again.

I’m going to get to work on this book, and stop reading political news. Really I am.

Eventually.

In the meantime, check out this map, by way of The Daily Kos:

Red is counties shifting more Republican than in 2004; blue is more Democratic.

Check out how dark Indiana is. That doesn’t mean the state has suddenly become a Democratic stronghold; it just means the vote swung strongly leftward from where it had been (which resulted in it landing almost perfectly balanced in the middle). Virtually the only part of the nation where Republican sentiment gained in strength was Arkansas, stretching into Oklahoma and up through Appalachia. Even chunks of Alaska went more Democratic this time around, some of them quite sharply.

Even Wyoming, which last night had one of the strongest McCain margins of victory, is mostly blue on that map.

The information I’m waiting on, incidentally, for the substantive post I mentioned before, is electorate stats. I’ve seen exit poll data on electorate share for young voters, African-Americans, etc, but a) exit polls are not great data and b) electorate share isn’t that useful metric, since it’s a zero-sum game, where gains in one area must be matched by losses in another. What I want to know is how much the total number of votes cast by each group changed, and what the turnout rate was for each demographic. That’s where the interesting meat is.