hello, spring

I do not think it’s possible for me to overstate how wonderful an effect warmer weather and sunlight have on my mood. I’ve got lots of things I need to do today, sure, but I’m relaxed. I’m in good humour. I’m sitting around in my summer PJs; how can I not be happy?

I think part of the process of growing up is learning how I operate, and allowing for it. Like, when I wake up I need fifteen minutes or so of low-key websurfing or the like before I try to do much of anything, and I shouldn’t eat for a while after that. When I go to a con, it will take me half a day, give or take, to turn on the switch in my head that says “Social!,” and before that goes on, I’ll be a little bit awkward. When it’s February, I should not expect to get anything substantial done, because winter saps my will to live around then. As long as I understand these things, I get by just fine.

So I’ve got an eyeball-high stack of things to do (several of them hangovers from February; see above about inability to do anything during that month), but that’s okay. Going outside to run errands doesn’t mean wrapping a scarf around my neck and finding gloves and a hat, so errand-running becomes a more pleasant thing to do. And when I’m done with that, I’ll deal with e-mails, or revise a story that needs to go out today, or maybe work on my costume for the upcoming Regency game, or whatever, and it will all be good.

Because I’m in a good mood.

Newsletter!

If you’re reading this post, then odds are you’re already well-informed about my writerly doings, but I should still announce the creation of a newsletter, which you can sign up for here. It will be a once-a-month thing (no more — I promise) with a quick rundown of short story and novel news (like sales and street dates), website updates, and public appearances. So if you want a nice, compact version of the straggling announcements that show up here, that’s the way to go.

MNC Book Report: Elizabeth’s London, Liza Picard

Step one in writing that wretched beast known as a historical fantasy is, of course, research. Ergo, I’m alternating between Elizabethan history books and English fairy lore, on the theory that will produce the correct state of mind necessary for the novel. So far, it’s mostly melting my brain. Whether this is suitable remains to be seen.

But I figure I can at least share the progress of my research with you, the reader, by making brief posts on the books I read as I go along. If you have recommendations of other books I might find useful, or caveats about the ones I’ve read, please share with the class.

First up is Elizabeth’s London, from Liza Picard. For readability, you can’t beat her. Let me quote from the section on period gardening: “Hill suggests olive oil or soot for snails (Oxford snails would come miles for a nice extra-virgin oil) and for that other pest, moles, put a live mole in a pot — first catch your mole — and after a while ‘he will cry and [all the other moles in the neighborhood] will hastily draw near unto him and minding to help him forth will fall into the pot’. But what do you do with a potful of crying moles?” Or there’s the plate caption for a woodcut where, after having carefully identified all the other figures in the image, she concludes by saying “I have no explanation for the man in bondage gear.”

I want to say I spotted something in the book that contradicted what I’d read elsewhere, but a) the other thing I read might have been wrong, and b) I don’t remember what it was anyway. In general, the book is chock-full of concrete facts, including things like different types of cloth and their uses, prices for vast numbers of things, and a very good map with all the halls of the major livery companies marked. In other words, the kind of information most books I read take for granted.

The biggest drawback is not Picard’s fault: this book focuses on the lives of common-to-wealthy Londoners, not nobles, and as such it doesn’t tell me much about life at court. I need another book for that one. Anybody have a recommendation?

Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven . . . .

Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to announce the decision on my next novel. The title of my forthcoming book will be . . .

. . . <drum roll> . . .

Midnight Never Come.

(Confidential to Memento people: yes, that means exactly what you think it means.)

For everyone else, who does not already know what this is, here’s a redacted (read: spoiler-free) version of the pitch I sent to my editor.

THE TUDOR COURT
A jewel in the crown of Renaissance Europe, glittering with power and wealth. For over thirty years Elizabeth has held the throne, taking no husband, but surrounding herself with the great names of the age. Sir Francis Drake plagues the Spanish at sea, while Sir Francis Walsingham quietly removes more subtle threats at home. Sir Walter Ralegh charts new lands abroad, and Doctor John Dee charts the stars of England’s destiny. With a keen mind and an overwhelming force of personality, Elizabeth plays the game of politics as well as any king.

THE ONYX COURT
A dark mirror of the glory above, hidden in the catacombs beneath London. Since Elizabeth took the throne, a new queen has reigned over the fae: Invidiana, a frozen, ageless beauty who rules with a ruthless and Machiavellian hand. Surrounded by dark fae and mortal pets like her mad seer Tiresias, she works in the shadows, weaving a web that touches the world above.

Ancient traditions once kept mortal and fae affairs largely separate. That changed with the rise of these two queens, who play an intricate political game, using the power of one side to manipulate the other. But someone is about to uncover, not just their game, but the secrets that lie behind it.

tooth_and_claw? Yeah, there’s a reason I’ve been pestering you for that portrait of Invidiana. ^_^

I am giddy about this one. Where by “giddy,” I mean about to go on Amazon and buy the rest of the books I need for research (I say “the rest” because I caved and bought some of them already). And I’m contemplating a brief trip to London — not the lengthy visit I want to make someday, but enough to walk around the Square Mile, go to the Tower again, get a feel for the place even if few buildings from Elizabethan times still survive. (Stupid Great Fire. Why did it have to interfere with my research?)

Oh, and the really awesome news? Warner wants to bump this one up to trade paperback, instead of mass-market. I know some people dislike that format, but from the moment I started thinking about this book, it wanted to be bigger — hardcover or trade — it just didn’t feel like mass-market in my head. And it turns out my editor agrees.

I’ll leave it at that for now, but watch this space for more information, as I babble about the awesome things I’m finding in my research, the story of where this novel came from, the music I’m already assembling for it, and so on. That will all have to wait for later, since right now I kind of need to go jump up and down and squeak with joy. *^_^*

A Cultural Fantasy Manifesto

People wo have engaged in certain kinds of discussions with me are probably quite tired of hearing me flag my comments with “that makes the anthropologist in me think X” or “since I’m an anthropologist . . . .” (I’m a little tired of it, myself.) But I’ve come to realize that it’s an important clue to how I think and what I think, not just in an academic or general context, but specifically with regards to my writing. Which has led me to identify what I’m trying to do with my fiction, at least a good percentage of the time. And since “anthropological fantasy” is an unwieldy term, let’s call it “cultural fantasy.”

What this means is that worldbuilding is not just important to me; it’s one of the most central parts of what I do. (With some stories, maybe the most central.) Character, for me, arises from and is shaped by the socio-cultural context of the individual; their beliefs and the actions they take aren’t independent of that context. People aren’t puppets of their cultures, of course, but neither are they free of them.

It also means that I’m promoting cultural relativism. Often people misunderstand this idea; they think it means that everything’s okay, that you can’t criticize a practice if it’s a part of somebody’s culture, so in the end you can’t criticize anything. Not true. Cultural relativism means trying to understand the reasons why people do things, how that practice fits into what they believe about the world — trying to see it from their point of view. It means releasing the assumption that there’s automatically something more natural or right about the way your own culture does things — which, yes, in the long run means you’re going to be more accepting of odd practices, because they don’t look so odd anymore. Something they do in one culture may be no weirder than what you do in your own — or equally weird. You end up seeing how your own cultural practices are constructed and artificial. But understanding the reasons behind human sacrifice or whatever does not require you to say it’s okay: a reason is not the same thing as an excuse.

Corollary to that: I’m not interested in constructing an ideal society, where there’s perfect gender equality, racial harmony, religious tolerance, and a benevolent government, to name a few things I happen to like. Utopias bore me. I’m interested in constructing messy, complicated societies that are full of flaws and then saying, ooh, this is interesting, let’s see what happens if I poke it here. And concurrently with this and the previous point, I’m interested in making up cultures that are different.

Folks, the real world, taken in all its multifarious glory, is weirder and more wonderful than you could possibly imagine. And what that means is that there are (to butcher Kipling) nine and sixty ways of constructing governments, families, religions, genders, meals, music, fashion, houses, and anything else you care to name, and every single one of them is neat. I have an abiding love for Celtic, Norse, and medieval culture, but you’ll rarely find them in my fiction, because I want to introduce readers to things they haven’t seen before. It’s a fine line to walk; too much weirdness, too many new and unfamiliar things, and you start losing readers. But I want to keep extending my writing out into new cultural territory, exploring all the different ways people can live, and what that means for who they are and how they act. Especially in fantasy, where metaphysical propositions can be accepted as literally true, with demonstrable consequences that might seem unrealistic in the real world.

So when I say “cultural fantasy,” this is what I mean: fantasy where the world is as interesting and developed as the characters are (and develops those characters in turn), where you’ll find ideas and practices that aren’t all familiar north-western European constructs. And since some of you Gentle Readers reading this may know my writing only through my novels, I have this to say to you: if you’re in the camp that thinks their setting isn’t that original, I’ve gotten better since then, and if you’re in the camp that things they were fabulously original, I’ve gotten better since then. I have a thousand and one worlds in my head, and I want to spend the rest of my life exploring them, and bringing readers with me.

back from ICFA

It pleases me that I already have twenty-three comments on this weekend’s rant, without me having had a chance to answer any of them yet. For those who have contributed to the discussion so far, I will respond, but probably not until tomorrow. For those who haven’t read it: go see me compare SF elitists to nineteenth-century anthropologists. As I said to ninja_turbo, the post lacks swearing only if you think “warmed-over nineteenth century unilinear cultural evolutionary theory” isn’t me swearing.

ICFA? ICFA was good. It’s moving to Orlando next year, and from the sound of it that’s going to be all-round a positive change, but I confess I will miss the familiarity of that hotel. (And I’ve only been going for five years; what of the people who have known it for twenty?) I would still love to see someone kidnap the Con Cat and bring him to Orlando, even if he does have fleas. Because I will miss having a kitty to pet.

My paper seems to have gone over well, despite being ten pounds of idea shoved in a five-pound sack. I will probably expand it a bitsy and then try to sell it to Strange Horizons, for those who wanted to read it. The expansion will be a Good Thing, though it will necessitate another round of prioritizing information, since I still won’t be able to get remotely everything in there. (What, you mean trying to cover twenty-eight novels, three and a half editions of D&D, and thirty years of textual history in five thousand words isn’t a manageable idea?)

Every paper and discussion I attended was good. This is unique in my conferencing experience so far. Either ICFA’s getting better, or I had good karma this year.

I have a head full of thoughts, not all of them fully baked. Look out in the near future, though, for a manifesto on Anthropological Fantasy, coming to an LJ near you.

I have reached the point where I have a Manifesto.

This is an interesting place to be.

Frazer’s goddamned Golden Bough

(This post brought to you by temporary internet access at ICFA, and a desire to use this rant before my passion for it fades.)

I’m sure that Geoff Ryman is a very nice man, and I like what I’ve read of his fiction. But his luncheon speech the other day included a throwaway line that had me wanting to spit nails: something in the vein of “fantasy fiction, another means of turning away from the future.”

I am so sick of this notion.

The idea, as espoused by way too many people for my taste, is that fantasy is nostalgic for the past, that it turns away from the future. (Generally coupled with an implication that science fiction is therefore better, since it isn’t trying to hide its head in the sand.) Given: yes, some fantasy is nostalgic. (I’d argue that some SF is, too, but this is a rant, not a comparative textual survey.) Not all fantasy is nostalgic. I wouldn’t even say the balance of the genre is nostalgic. Yet this image persists, and I think I have put my finger on why.

Sir James Frazer had an idea — I’m pretty sure it was him, though I’m not at home right now to check my copy of The Golden Bough — that went something like this: when you’re primitive you have magic; when you’re more advanced, you have religion instead; and when you’re truly civilized, you have science. And you know what? One of the common (though not universal) differences between fantasy and science fiction involves exactly those three things. The future, as often seen in SF, means more technology, less religion, less magic. Therefore, since fantasy often involves less technology, more religion, more magic, it must be anti-future. QED.

It’s warmed-over nineteenth century unilinear cultural evolutionary theory. It’s shit we debunked a century ago. And it’s alive and well in the minds of a lot of people out there.

There was a recent discussion on Toby Buckell’s blog about the prevalence of religious plots in Battlestar Galactica and other stories. I don’t mean plots that use religious imagery, or that deal with religious themes; I mean plots that involve active religious belief and/or divine action in the story. How much future-oriented SF out there (as opposed to, say, alternate history) includes religion as a part of the daily lives of the characters? How much of it involves religion for the protagonists, instead of the aliens or Those People Over There? Some, but the prevailing idea seems to be that we’ll have gotten over the religion thing by then. Like it’s something we’re going to leave behind as we get more “civilized” — read, more technological.

Progressive views of time, of history, of human change, and if we’re not going forward (toward more technology, barring apocalypse of course), then we’re going backward, and that’s a Bad Thing. Fantasy =/= Technology. (With exceptions.) Therefore, Fantasy =/= Future. Therefore, Fantasy = Past. Therefore, Fantasy = Bad, Shameful, Pathetic, Whatever.

Whatever.

Obviously fantasy, science fiction, horror, mysteries, romances, and your hard-core mainstream fiction “three generations of women . . .” dynastic sagas are all, in one way or another, about the present, because they reflect our present ideas and feelings and concerns. But they can also be about the past, and about the future, because they’re about ways human beings live or have lived or can live. It’s sloppy reductionism to say science fiction as a whole is intended to predict the future, and it’s even sloppier reduction to say fantasy as a whole is nostalgic about the past.

And the next person who suggests that in my presence may find themselves with a faceful of nails, and me clearing my mouth to deliver this rant in person.

draft . . .?

Crap. I was doing so good — but then patching a hole and putting on a conclusion spiked my wordcount to 4292, when 4100 is about the most I can fit in the time limit without talking too fast.

Well, that’s what revision is for, and more ruthless reduction. Alas, Jarlaxle may end up on the cutting-room floor. (Along with other things, since I didn’t spend two hundred words on him.)

But I think I may leave that for tomorrow. I’ll have more perspective then, which is critically important when cutting stuff. And besides, I’ve worked hard the last two days; I want to read a book for a while before I go to sleep.

Wake up — time to die.

Ruthless cutting of my paper this morning removed three hundred words or so, pulling me back from the rapidly-approaching wall that is the length limit for a conference. (I made it to 85% of the way done by bedtime; now I’m hovering just north of 75%.) Will this be enough space? Probably not. But at least I bought myself a tiny bit of breathing room.

I need to step back and let it compost a bit more, though, so I can figure out the most efficient way to organize this last section. It would be easy to bog down in detailed textual analysis, but I don’t have that luxury. Broad patterns only, thank you, analysis-brain. We have approximately 4000 words to play with, and no more. And no, just speaking more quickly isn’t an acceptable answer; we’ll lose our audience and confuse everybody. We must be succinct. You do know what “succinct” means, right?

Don’t answer that.

halfway . . . there . . .

I don’t want to think about how many hours today I have spent wrestling with an unwieldy and oversized mass of information in order to produce the half of my ICFA paper I have so far. It’s funny to think that I once contemplated finishing it in time for the February 1st grad student award deadline, given that I wrote the first sentence today. (I was going gangbusters on the reading back in January, but when I realized I just wouldn’t have the time to write it, I stalled and got almost nothing done until today.)

So it goes.

The problem is, I really did bite off more than one ought to chew for a conference paper. In addition to about two dozen novels, I’m also looking at a good dozen or more gaming supplements from four different editions of D&D. Plus artwork, which I’m hardly mentioning at all. There are all kinds of nifty-keen subtleties that have happened along the way — well, okay, most of them aren’t actually nifty-keen, but some of them are — but they just won’t make it into the paper; I’ve got another six years of publishing history to get through before I start on the analytical part of the paper, and I’m already halfway to my page limit.

Certain sayings about ten pounds into five-pound containers come to mind.

But I’m brain-melty at this point, so I think it’s time to take a break, and maybe chew on it a bit more before bed tonight. (It would be nice to finish the historical part of the paper, so I can do the analysis tomorrow and Tuesday.) And then, someday well after ICFA, I shall ponder whether I want to go back and expand the paper with some of the finer details for the purposes of submitting it to Strange Horizons.

You know, the original tongue-in-cheek title for this paper was “Drow: The Black Hole of Otherness.” I think it is also “Drow: The Black Hole of My Sunday Before ICFA,” given how much time it’s eaten today.

since it’s already written . . . .

It’s amazing how, even when I have a recommendation already written, I can get eleven days into the month without finding the time to post it.

Up this month: Terry Pratchett’s Monstrous Regiment. It’s one of the later Discworld books, but even if you haven’t read any of that series, take a look at what I’ve got to say about it; this book stands just fine on its own, and is substantive at the same time that it’s funny. (Which is a pretty good achievement for any writer.)

aesthetic kinesthesia

300 is as splendiferously outrageous as I could have hoped. Very very stylized, of course, but that resulted in some awesome images (of which the iconic “shoving the guys over the cliff” one is my favorite) — I’m very interested by the effect comic books are having on cinematography, most obviously in comic-book movies, but sometimes in other movies, too. And on a script level, the Spartans had more of a sense of humour than I expected; normally I think of them as kind of being like Viking-era Norse without the tendency to get drunk and laugh at doom.

Also, the fight choreography was beeyootiful. And I realized, during a discussion last night, that my appreciation of both dance and fighting is partly visual, but primarily kinesthetic. That is, while some of the beauty I respond to is based on the lines and framings creating by the body in relation to its environment, I think more of it comes from the sensation of movement itself, my ability to imagine the flow of dance moves/strikes/whatever. I tense up when I’m watching a fight, not because it makes me nervous or afraid, but because my muscles are making miniscule little twitches of response to the movements I see. There can be an aesthetic quality in the kinesthesia, just as there can be an aesthetic quality in visual presentation — or aural, or tactile, or whatever. And this is why fights are pretty to me: not because of the violence they inflict, but because of the beauty of their flow.

I suspect that people who have studied dance or martial arts are more likely to nod in agreement at this.

Anyway, 300 = awesome. Bloody and violent, and don’t ask what atrocities it commits upon the actual history of the battle, but that really isn’t the point; the point is to celebrate the national psychosis of Sparta, and a breeding program designed to produce the toughest hard-asses in all of Greece. And in that respect, it succeeds admirably.

who feels like a lazy slob?

On the heels of yesterday’s failure of a workout, I read this article about the training the actors and stunt crew of 300 went through for the film.

It’s pretty awesome.

And now I feel like a lazy slob.

Under no circumstances would I want to be in the gym 10-12 hours a day, five days a week for four months . . . but it does make me feel pretty pathetic about my own workouts. I would make a very bad Spartan. I do give a big thumbs-up, though, to a training regimen that, in both physical and social terms, seems pretty well-designed to produce modern-day Spartans. I’ve talked with any number of people about how the cast of Firefly used to hang out in the galley of the set when they weren’t filming, and it shows; they’re comfortable there, and have a camraderie with each other, that you only get by such means. Similar idea here. Blood, sweat, and tears, and at the end of it you’ve got Spartans.

Cool.

snarl.

Exercising today was kind of a bust.

Strength training: this went fine. A woman already had the hand-weight I use for one exercise, so I made myself step up to the next one. Had to lower my reps a bit, but other than that I was fine. So that’s an achievement.

Cardio: things started going wrong. The balls of my feet hurt for some reason, from the moment I stepped onto the elliptical. Not hurt badly, but enough that I quit a third of the way into my usual workout. Grrr.

Stretching: now, I’ve stretched for flexibility before. I know how it works. If I stretch two days after the previous session, it will hurt. I understand this. But there’s hurting, and there’s today, when my muscles told me in no uncertain terms where to shove it. Quit this one partway through, too, and when I got up the soreness took too long to go away.

Is some planet in retrograde that has to do with physical fitness? Because it sure felt like it.

Screw it. I’m going to eat girl scout cookies and forget about health for a day.

and one more . . .

. . . because oh holy jeebus is this one funny to me, and probably to about three others of you. (Three who maybe haven’t seen it already, that is. Certain others of you probably saw this two years ago, when it was originally posted.)

He FIGHTS CRIME.

I cannot for the life of me decide what would be an appropriate icon for my love of Elizabethan stuff. All I know is, I don’t have it, so I will have to make do with Maleficent, because I like her.

also, linkage

Two things that need sharin’ —

Eragon sporked. Book, not movie. In case you’re like me and want to know enough about the book to talk about its shortcomings without actually having to, y’know, read the book. I know that site is not aimed at saying good things about it, but still, it’s a sad state of affairs when the most positive thing I can find to say at the end is, “hey, Saphira’s a nice name.”

Everyone in “Hands of Fate: The Next Generation Legacy” needs to read this. Including the comments. Or at least the one about the badger.

historical oddity

Watching more Horatio Hornblower . . . .

Character: “I’m Jerome Bonaparte.”

Me: “No you’re not! You’re busy ruling Germany!”

Some history-checking later, I find out he hadn’t started ruling Germany yet (or rather, Westphalia), so I wasn’t allowed to yell at him for being in the middle of the ocean instead of where I thought he should be. But that was my knee-jerk reaction, and it amused me, because Jerome Bonaparte is a historical figure I’ve only recently learned anything about.

I like knowing random things.

numbers to chew on

When the Sword & Sorceress antho call went out, I sat down to see how many stories I had around with female protagonists (as that’s one of the requirements). I was startled to find the answer was: not many. Which surprised me; I thought I wrote female characters on a regular basis.

So I sat down and did some counting. These numbers have changed some since the original count (story sales, new stories in circulation), but the pattern’s still there, and still interesting. (At least to me. Your mileage may vary. If so, skip this post.)

Number crunchiness ensues

Huh.

Maybe “Kingspeaker” is the GT story, after all. Since I just tried to revise it, taking those parts out, and they stubbornly migrated to other parts of the story, rewrote themselves, and generally burrowed in deeper. I’m not sure if it quite works yet, but now I believe it might eventually.

I think maybe I need to work out, for my own edification if no one else’s, the mythical backstory for how the kingspeaker thing got started. If I know that, I’ll know why this story needs to be the story it is apparently trying to be.

Um. Right. Enough with the vague babbling, methinks.