Also? It’s been eight hours since they hit me with the uber-dilation drops. Could I please have control of my pupils again?
At least I can read now. For a good five hours there, I couldn’t focus my eyes enough to process print worth a damn.
For those who knew my plans:
No eye surgery next month.
I won’t go into all the details, but short form is, I am not a good candidate for LASIK. Too much correction, not enough cornea. I am a good candidate for a lens implant, but my left eye needs a toric lens, which hasn’t yet been approved by the FDA.
So no eye surgery this year, probably.
Frustrated. Cranky. But it’s the right choice.
I suppose this will make getting the novel done easier.
Quick reminder: the contest running on the official website for Midnight Never Come goes until midnight GMT on June 30th. All six questions have been posted now, and for every one you get right, your name is entered in the drawing for a $500/£250 gift voucher.
Onward to the purpose of the post.
Consider this the official Open Thread for Midnight Never Come. If you have any comments you’d like to make about the book, questions you’d like to ask, feel free to do it here. Want to inquire about some historical detail? Find out why I chose to do something a particular way? Point out to me some anachronistic words or phrases I failed to scrub out before publication? This is the place. I’ll be linking this post on my website, so if you haven’t read the book yet, you can always come back here later.
(People can and do e-mail me, but I figured I’d try doing this publicly, where people can see what, if anything, others have to say.)
I’ve come up with an analogy for what writing this book feels like. (Warning: weird metaphor ahead.)
Say you’ve been going to the gym for some months, maybe a year, and lifting weights faithfully. And the numbers have gone up, sure, but what does that mean? Then one day you find yourself messing around with a friend, and the two of you get into a wrestling match, and you’re gasping and snarling and trying to get a good grip so you can exert some leverage and damn it’s hard — but then halfway through you realize that a year ago, this friend would have had you face-down on the floor crying uncle in about four seconds flat. And maybe all that weightlifting really has done something.
I don’t think what I have so far is brilliant, but I also know what’s what revision is for. I think I’m getting my foundations in more or less the right place, and that means bringing things up to code won’t be too tough. Sure, for the first time in my life I find myself routinely writing three hundred words and then ripping them right back out again, that very night, to start the scene over from scratch — I’ve written fully 15% more than I have of actual book — but that isn’t defeat; that’s victory. That’s noticing my friend about to get me in a pin I won’t be able to escape, and squirming out of it before I can be trapped.
I’m stronger than I used to be.
(Though not physically. My puny self needs to get back to the gym.)
The King saw any restrictions they tried to impose as infringements upon his royal authority.
Writing this scene of political debate, it occurs to me that somebody out there will probably decide I wrote this book as commentary on current U.S. politics. With, I don’t know, faerie warfare as a coded metaphor for terrorism.
Or something.
The character who was John Highlord when I started writing has been replaced with Thomas Soame, because I realized matters would work better if I used an alderman who was also a member of Parliament later on, and both of them are minor enough figures that they don’t rate entries in the DNB. (Ergo, I can make stuff up and not worry too much about somebody knowing I’m wrong.)
So I ask you: why, pray tell, does my subconscious want to insist that Thomas Soame wouldn’t talk the way I had John Highlord do? Why does it object to him being broad-shouldered? Everything I know about both of these men would fit into a paragraph shorter than this one, and it consists of a handful of dates regarding their public service. I don’t know what they looked like. I don’t know what their personalities were. Yet my subconscious resists the swap.
This, chickadees, is why naming is sometimes a giant problem for me. If I don’t find the right name, I often can’t write the character, and it’s like pulling teeth to change a name once it’s settled in. Some bit of my brain decides nobody named Thomas Soame could possibly be a blunt-spoken, broad-shouldered guy, and god only knows how long it will take to convince it otherwise.
This job would be easier if my brain were rational.
I’m not sure whether to be amused or distressed that I game with a group of people who, confronted with a horde of zombies headed for Tiananmen Square, decide that the best of all possible responses is to show up with a tank.
Anyway, we just destroyed the center of Beijing — srsly, I’m talking flaming wreckage of the Tiananmen itself crashing down into the sea of gasoline-charred zombie body parts, bullet casings, shattered concrete, and dead PLA soldiers — and now I have to go write subtle, elegant politics.
My head hurts.
But wheeeeee, is over-the-top gaming fun.
First things first: having found my head rolling around on the floor and screwed it back on to my shoulders, I’m ready to announce the winner of the MNC release contest! By the high-tech randomization method of rolling a die — what? I’m a gamer — the copy of Paradox #12 goes to archangl23. Send me your address at marie dot brennanATgmail dot com, and I’ll send you the magazine!
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Second: there’s a new interview with me, this time over at the urban fantasy community “Fangs, Fur, and Fey.” We mostly talk about Midnight Never Come, but also about urban fantasy more broadly.
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Two more reviews in . . .
Karen at SF Signal gives it three stars, calling it “An excellent story full of political machinations and historical accuracy.” I’ll note in passing that I’m pleased by how my prose seems to be coming across; I’m sure there are people who will find it off-puttingly archaic, but for the most part I appear to have hit the target I aimed at — namely, to suggest the period without being impenetrable.
(Now, can I keep doing that?)
Robert Thompson at Fantasy Book Critic also liked it. Pull-quote: “a seductive blend of historical fiction, court intrigue, fantasy, mystery and romance.”
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Also, two interesting news developments about the Elizabethan period. First, it seems that archaeologists have found a fabulously well-preserved shipwreck from the period. (Is that the fault of my characters? You decide!) And Slate has a piece on a controversial decision to excise a poem called “The Lover’s Complaint” from the Shakespearean canon, and to add a new one —
Dammit, Strafford, get out of my novel. I don’t have the space to deal with you.
ETA: Also, how distracting would it be, if I actually put in the line, “Let them go, let them go, to do their endeavour”? One suspects it actually was the line used to start duels. At least in Scotland.
ETA #2: Actually, let’s just do this the right way. Does anybody know of a book I could read to find out how duels and judicial combat were conducted in seventeenth-century England?
I neglected to link to this before because I was out of town on the day it went live, but I have my usual monthly post up at SF Novelists. This time it’s “The Writer at Play,” wherein I lay out why I think role-playing games have made me a better writer. Feel free to head over there and contribute your own experiences in the comments!
Back home again. Trying to catch up on e-mail. Didn’t I just do this?
2008: the year in which I spend my entire summer playing catch-up. Oh goodie.
Eight states and four time zones later, we’ve reached California. Thoughts on the trip:
Good God, the U.S. is huge.
Going east to west is nice; you effectively get 25-hour days.
So glad I’m not driving back. Especially since I’d have to do it alone.
Just how big is this place?
Thank God for cruise control. I’m pretty certain I didn’t touch the gas or the brake for three hours in western Kansas — and that isn’t hyperbole.
Watching the gas mileage change going up into Colorado is depressing. Watching it change coming down out of Colorado is glee-making.
Especially in a hybrid. Thank God for those, too.
How is all of this a single country?
We managed to find a motel offering free internet access, so I’m hopping online long enough to post a link to the unusual interview I mentioned a while back.
Welcome to Cat and Muse, which bills itself as the only Internet talk radio conducted entirely by fictional characters. If you check out that link, you will find not me, but Lady Lune, being interviewed by the ex-succubus Jezebel and Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy. (Who can speak only in cliches.)
This is probably my favorite interview I’ve done thus far.
Commencing road trip to California. I probably won’t have internet access again until the end of the week (and sporadically until the 17th), so don’t feel bad if I don’t answer your comment or e-mail or whatever. But any images of Midnight Never Come sent in while I’m gone will be counted for the giveaway.
Adios!
Where did that come from?
The first scene I wrote yesterday was The Suck. Antony sitting around and being a spectator to history. It didn’t quite get me to quota, so then I started a new scene, where introducing his wife helped liven things up. Two sentences into today’s continuation, she verbally kicks him in the ass and asks just what he intends to do about the problems around him. So I send Antony off to pick a fight with Pym . . .
And he picks a fight.
Well, not quite. It isn’t his fault the scene almost devolved into a riot. But for the love of baby Jesus, man, you’re thirty-two. Aren’t you a little old for fistfights in the street?
LBR quota: Well, it was supposed to be all rhetoric, but some blood got in there.
Authorial sadism: Having your wife call you on your cowardice, I suppose.
It’s late enough at night/early enough in the morning that I’m going to break my usual rule (it isn’t the next day until the sun has risen or you’ve slept), and declare the beginning of Midnight Never Come Book Day!
(If I’d really been on the irony ball, I’d’ve announced it at midnight.)
So: today you can officially walk into a bookstore and expect to find the book! Borders appears to be stocking it in what I consider to be large quantities, with copies both in the SF/F section (remember to look for a trade paperback) and — at least in this town — on the “New in Fiction” rack. Which is awesome.
As of today, you can also enter the competition! Short form is, there will be a series of mini-puzzles, for which there are hints scattered around the site. (Not all new or changed content is a hint, though; I sent in some belated modifications for the site, which are being instituted as fast as they can manage.) For every question you answer right, you will be entered into the contest. Check back regularly for updates!
Also, don’t forget my own mini-competition: if you send me a picture of my book in the wild, you’ll be eligible to win a copy of my short story “The Deaths of Christopher Marlowe.” You can post those here, or e-mail them to me at marie dot brennan at gmail dot com.
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Review dump:
The verdict is in from Locus, and they liked me. “Brennan ably combines elements of danger, romance, and individual moral choices that could affect the fates of great realms, for a tale that’s rich in plot and character. She interweaves historic and fantastic details with scholarship, inspired acts of imagination, and a keen wit.” That’s another one to hug close and grin idiotically over.
John Ottinger at Grasping for the Wind has a few criticisms, but on the whole he enjoyed it: “Brennan’s ability to maintain historical accuracy while writing an exciting and fast-paced novel filled with elves, fairies, the Wild Hunt, and brownies makes this story worth reading.”
I don’t believe I remembered to quote from the Romantic Times review before. They gave it four stars, and said “This story of courtiers from different but parallel kingdoms is ripe with palace intrigue, Machiavellian double dealing and star-crossed love.”
I’ve also collected a couple of Amazon reviews, one two-star from a disappointed reader who prefers my first two books, one five-star from someone who enjoyed it a lot.
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Not a review: I’m guest-blogging today for miladyinsanity, talking about travel and book research.
Happy Book Day!
7,932 words since June 1st, at a little over 1K every day. It’s a good start, and I’m on track to have 10K before I go driving off to California with kniedzw. Whether I get anything written on the road will be anyone’s guess; I can write while traveling just fine, but I can’t exactly take my research library with me in the car. Even if it’s a total wash, though, I’ll have 23K this month, and that’s fine.
I suppose now’s as good a time as any to outline the structure for this book. There are four days of the Fire, which I intend to scatter throughout the book. (Basically, this one will have four big flash-forwards instead of the ten flashbacks of MNC.) That means the rest of the story leading up to the Fire will also be in four parts. I’m aiming to have each part be roughly 20K, with roughly 5K for each Fire day, and the book is due at the beginning of October. Ergo, 25K each month will give me a completed draft in time (though without time for revision). That’s my baseline, the minimum I need to do. It isn’t precisely one part + one day every month, though, because I really need to save the Fire days until I’ve written everything that leads up to them; they’ll be written last. (However much I dearly want to get to Jack, and see how he works on the page.)
Progress so far: Antony is starting to find his own personality instead of borrowing Philip’s, which is good, because Philip would not make a good protagonist for this novel. Ben Hipley has randomly re-invented himself out of the NPC cast for Memento; I’m not sure why, but hey, sure. I can have a totally different character with the same name, if that’s what he really wants. The Short Parliament is about to start, which is very nearly the same thing as saying the Short Parliament is about to end. (Hence the name.) I, er, ought to read about that before I write those scenes.
The story is developing in my head at a very slow and deliberate pace, but that’s okay. Slow and steady wins the race.
LBR quota: except for that death in the first day of writing, it’s been all rhetoric. Which is fine. I think I can make it exciting enough. And if I can’t, well, I’m going to be Blowing Shit Up (by which I mean London) every 20K words, so there will be regular injections of Spectacle! and Excitement!
Authorial sadism: Sending Humphrey Taylor to the colonies because the protagonists are too soft to kill him themselves.
Mildly curious, I followed this link to an article about culling down one’s book collection. It appears to part of a series wherein the writer chronicles the process of organizing her life. Okay, let’s go.
She is, by her own admission, a “total bibliophile.” Apparently her parents crammed 1,100 books into their apartment!
. . . er, okay, if you don’t have a lot of space (and they had four rooms in New York), then I suppose that’s a lot. The writer? Her book collection — the combined possessions of herself and her husband — “peaked at 600.”
Please.
By the end of the article, they’re down to 200. Our fiction collection consists of more books than her parents had at their incredible height. According to LibaryThing, we own more urban fantasy than this woman now has in her entire collection.
I’m not out to play a game of one-upsmanship; I’m sure there are people reading this who think our 2,260 books are a paltry few. But I just had to roll my eyes at the presentation of 600 as a huge pile of books that must be cut down for the salvation of one’s household. I don’t think the WaPo knows what a real bibliophile is.
Time-honored wisdom among writers says that it’s better not to respond personally to reviews. I agree with that; what I’d like to do is use a review as a jumping-off point to discuss something it made me think about.
I’ve gotten my first negative review. (Counting the Kirkus slam as a rite of passage, rather than a review. <g>) A reader on Amazon who had adored my first two books rated this one two stars, and explained his reasons.
Let me say straight-out: from my perspective, Midnight Never Come is the best book I’ve ever written. It is not flawless; if I thought it was, I’d kick myself, because the only way I could think like that is if I weren’t trying hard enough to improve. But I consider it more intricate and well-thought-out than either of my first two novels.
But that isn’t the point, is it? Quality, if we can even speak of that objectively, is not the major determinant of the reading experience. Midnight Never Come is not the book this reader wanted (and hoped for) from me. I’ve said to several people that you can read it through a variety of genre lenses (urban fantasy, historical, romance, political thriller) — but secondary-world adventure fantasy isn’t one of them. So while I think there are points of similarity, such as the espionage, that will attract some readers who liked the Doppelganger books, it all depends on what you attached to the first time around. There will be other readers who pick this up, wonder what the hell happened to the Marie Brennan they enjoyed before, and walk away — some of them permanently.
This? Drives writers crazy. Because it’s a balancing act for which there isn’t even a recognized “win” condition. Some forces want you to do more of the same; some want you to grow and change and try new things. It isn’t even a straightforward matter of readers on one side, writers on the other, because of course writers may want to keep exploring a world their readers aren’t responding to, or readers may get bored by a writer they perceive as stuck in a rut. What’s victory? Selling lots of books? But what if that comes at the cost of pursuing ideas you’re really passionate about?
Actually, I take back what I said. There is a win condition, and it’s called being Neil Gaiman. The man could probably write anything he wants to, and his fans would love him for it.
This is my third novel. It’s not set in the same world as my first two. This is officially my first encounter with the phenomenon: that every time I change tracks, I will lose readers whose sphere of interests don’t include this new thing. There’s nothing wrong with it (unless I lose so many readers my publisher drops me), and it doesn’t mean the disappointed readers are wrong. They just wanted something else than what I delivered. I may or may not find that the shift brings me within the ambit of a greater number of new readers. Someday, I’ll decide to shift again: rinse and repeat.
I can tell myself it’s natural, but it’s still saddening, realizing the choices I’ve made have disappointed a fan.
I’m posting this publicly to cast as wide a net as possible, but it’s only of direct interest to local people (for a suitably broad definition of “local”).
Next week, kniedzw will be loading up the car and Going West, preparatory to starting his new job. I’ll be driving with him, to split the task, and say hi to Bay Area folks; then I’ll be flying back to write a novel, pack, write a novel, have eye surgery, pack, write a novel, pack, pack, go to a con, pack pack packpackpack and eventually move.
BUT! Before we do that, we’re having a going-away bash. Because I’m dumb and was also out of town, I didn’t get the clubhouse reserved, so this will be at our place. If you ever hung out with kniedzw, or gamed with him, or were fed baked goods by him, and want to bid him farewell, come on by!
WHERE: Castle N (e-mail for directions, if you need them)
WHEN: Sunday, starting at 6 p.m., going until whenever
WHY: Because you’re going to miss him
WHAT TO BRING: A la the Boggan Birthday Bash, I’d greatly appreciate donations of drink, food, baked goods, and assistance dealing with the aftermath, so that we can keep kniedzw from doing any of that himself. I’m damned if he’s going to host his own going-away party, even if it takes thirty of us to stop him.
Feel free to pass this along to anyone not on LJ that might want to come.
