The Eternal Knot!

Publication is a bit of an odd beast when it isn’t going through normal book distribution channels, but as near as I can tell, today is the release date for The Eternal Knot, my Legend of the Five Rings novella! If you’re interested in the setting of Rokugan but don’t want to dive into the middle of the ongoing storyline, this makes a much better entry point; it clearly takes place in a much larger setting than is necessary for the story at hand, but it doesn’t require pre-existing knowledge of canon to make sense or be enjoyable. (And if you want more samples, flavored to the various clans, there are three other novellas out now: The Sword and the Spirits, Whispers of Shadow and Steel, and Across the Burning Sands.)

If you want to get this from a brick-and-mortar store (which is a very useful thing to do in general), you’re more likely to find it at your Friendly Local Gaming Store, though I think it’s possible that places like Barnes and Noble might be able to order it.

I had a lot of fun writing this one. The novellas are giving us L5R writers a chance to explore characters at greater depth, and to take the story into corners of the Empire that are too far off the beaten path to make it into the main story. And since mystical tattooed monks are basically how I got involved with L5R in the first place, it’s a pleasure to play around with their world in this story!

Penny wise, megaton destructive

Our household of three people has at present ballooned to six people and four cats, courtesy of Pacific Gas and Electric.

I don’t know how this is being reported elsewhere in the country (or elsewhere in the world), so I want to be clear about what’s going on. There are multiple causes for California’s wildfire problem, ranging from climate change to flawed forest management policy in past decades to the expansion of settlement into at-risk terrain. But part of it, especially here in northern California, is the direct fault of our electrical companies.

PG&E has, for years, prioritized making massive payouts to their shareholders over investing in basic maintenance and safety. The equipment that started last year’s devastating Camp Fire — the most destructive in the state’s history, the fire that destroyed the town of Paradise — was built in the early 1900s. It was over a hundred years old. PG&E knew damn well their equipment was out of date and in need of refurbishment or outright replacement. But doing that cuts into the quarterly profits, so it got put off, and put off, and put off — until there was nothing left to replace, because it had all been destroyed by the fire.

This is true all over the areas they serve. It’s why this year PG&E is aggressively cutting power to areas considered to be at risk when we have conditions of dry weather and strong winds — a common occurrence these days, thanks to climate change. Initially all of our house guests (call them what they are; refugees) were here because power was cut to their homes. But then two of them made a run up to Vallejo to rescue their four cats, because while there hadn’t yet been a mandatory evacuation order issued for their area, there was a “precautionary” evacuation underway. This was why. Fires bracketed Vallejo on three sides. We don’t know yet whether any of them were started by PG&E’s power lines, but the Kincade Fire burning up in Sonoma almost certainly was. Because PG&E may be cutting power to areas . . . but they aren’t necessarily shutting down their main transmission lines. And if your immediate thought is “they should do that!,” be aware that part of the problem in Vallejo yesterday was that PG&E shut off the power to the water-pumping stations. Which makes fighting a fire rather more difficult.

I don’t want anybody to walk away from this thinking PG&E is the sole cause of the fires. If we didn’t have such dry conditions and such high winds, coupled with sporadic wet winters that encourage the growth of new brush which then turns into tinder a few months later, the fires wouldn’t burn as hot and as far; that’s thanks to climate change, and humanity is collectively responsible for that one. And it’s true that for a long time forestry officials thought it was best to prevent all forest fires, whereas now we know it’s actually better for the environment to let (smaller) blazes sweep through periodically to clear things out. We could change our urban planning to put fewer homes and people at risk.

But PG&E unquestionably shoulders some of the blame. And so does the overall corporate culture that encourages short-term thinking, boosting quarterly profits at all costs, deferring expenses again and again so you can look “fiscally responsible” (while someone else pays a heartbreaking bill down the road).

That’s finally, maybe, a little bit, beginning to change. Corporations are starting to admit that maybe shareholder dividends should not be their first, last, and only priority. The new Long-Term Stock Exchange was founded to encourage companies to think on time scales longer than three months. We might — we can hope — eventually see a world where we once again know how to plan for the future, investing in infrastructure and building a world future generations will want to live in.

The road there, however, is currently leading through a burned-out hellscape.

Next collection: The Nine Lands!

For some time now, as I assemble sufficient quantities around relatively focused themes, I’ve been collecting my short fiction into ebooks: Maps to Nowhere for secondary world fantasy and Ars Historica for historical fiction, and then the much smaller Never After and Monstrous Beauty for two different twisted approaches to fairy tales, the latter taking a darker tone than the former.

Now I can add The Nine Lands to that list! This is also secondary world fantasy, but unlike Maps to Nowhere, all of the stories take place within the same world: the eponymous Nine Lands, the first properly fleshed-out setting I ever created. Many of the pieces in this collection are “firsts” of one kind or another for me: first good short story I ever wrote (that form did not come naturally to me), first story to earn me money, first story I ever sold. Because of that, I decided to commission my friend Avery Liell-Kok to take my ugly scribble map and turn it into the beautiful thing you see here:

THE NINE LANDS by Marie Brennan

The book will come out on November 19th, but you can pre-order it now at Barnes and Noble, Google Play, iTunes, Kobo, or Amazon US or UK — or wait until the 19th and buy it directly from the publisher, Book View Cafe.

New Worlds: Demons

The New Worlds Patreon rounds out the month of October with a discussion of demons! As usual, comment over there.

And remember, if you’d like weekly photos and other benefits such as ebooks, the chance to vote on topic polls, and more, you can always become a patron! It’s through their loyal support that I’m able to continue this series, bit by bit creating what is probably on its way toward becoming the world’s most comprehensive discussion of SF/F worldbuilding.

Where to find me at World Fantasy!

Next weekend I’ll be down in L.A. for the World Fantasy Convention. If you’re going to be there as well, here’s where you can find me:

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Combat!
Friday, 1 Nov, 17:00 – 17:55, Marquis 4-6

Experts in fighting hand-to-hand and sword fighting debunk myths and set the record straight as they talk about what authors get right, what authors get wrong, and why it matters.

Participants: Christopher Husberg (M), Troy Carrol Bucher, Scott Drakeford, Elizabeth Crowens, Marie Brennan

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Magic Systems 101
Saturday, 2 Nov, 10:00 – 10:55, Marquis 1-3

What makes a magic system work? What do you need to do to make it believable for the readers? And what makes it so unique and compelling that readers can’t put down the book?

Participants: Barbara Hambly (M), Margo Lanagan, Susan Forest, Marie Brennan, TA Moore, Marshall Ryan Maresca

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The World of Fairy Tales
Saturday, 2 Nov, 13:00 – 13:55, Marquis 1-3

Tales of events which occur outside of reality exist in most every culture throughout the world. What are the recurring themes that cross cultures? Are these expressions of societal norms or propagations of religious myths? Or are they just stories to scare kids into “behaving properly”?

Participants: Marie Brennan (M), Sheila Finch, Jack Zipes, Kathleen Jennings, Ann Chamberlin, Emma Törzs, David Drake
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Reading
Saturday, 2 Nov, 15:30 – 15:55, Pac Coast 3

The pieces come together for DRIFTWOOD!

From the Department of News I’ve Been Sitting on for Ages . . .

Ever since I published the first Driftwood short story, I’ve had people asking me whether I would ever write a novel set there. To which I’ve always said no, because a novel is the antithesis of what Driftwood is about. In a setting about fragments, a large, coherent story seems entirely out of place.

A fix-up, on the other hand — that’s a different matter. 😀

cover for DRIFTWOOD by Marie Brennan

I’ve teamed up with the lovely folks at Tachyon Publications to create Driftwood, Larger Edition: all the existing short fiction, now embedded in and given context by a frame story, with a brand-new novelette to shed light on a heretofore unexplored part of the setting. In other words, a book that sort of epitomizes the nature of Driftwood itself. (With a freaking beautiful cover. Look at that typesetting!)

So fans of the series, rejoice! You’ll be able to get your hands on this July 17th of next year.

The weight of tiny details

A sentence I revised tonight got me reflecting on one of the tiny, subtle things about writing that’s really difficult to teach — mostly because it requires spending a disproportionate amount of time talking about something microscopic, and unpacking it with twenty or a hundred times the number of words involved. I almost never delve into this when I teach creative writing, just because it burns out my energy so fast.

Consider this line:

“I wouldn’t have invited you if all I wanted was a distraction.”

This is a completely ordinary sentence. Not super-memorable, but it’s doing what it needs to, and that’s fine. What I revised it to was this:

“If all I wanted was a distraction, I wouldn’t have invited you.”

Essentially the same sentence; I just swapped the order of the clauses.

Why? Because the important thing in that sentence is the implication that the invitation was issued for more than one reason. Putting the hypothetical after that dilutes the effect. So I rearranged the sentence to make the punch arrive at the end of the sentence.

Now, in reality a person might well choose the first phrasing. We often talk that way. But the job of dialogue is to create an effect, and while sometimes the desired effect is “the casual structures that mimic real speech,” in this case, that wasn’t the goal. There isn’t a clear-cut rule, though, that says “always put the most important thing at the end of the sentence” — sometimes you want it at the front instead. The actual rule is “pay attention to the rhythm of what you write, not just in aural terms, but in terms of where you’re placing the key elements, and make sure the arrangement directs the reader’s attention toward them, without less-critical elements getting in the way.”

Which is a lot more complicated and subjective. In fact, some of you may question the superiority of my second example over my first. Because it’s not just about the one sentence; it’s about the flow of the overall text. (Unfortunately, I can’t quote the surrounding material to you because SPOILERS AHOY.) And even when the whole is available, there can be disagreements over what works best. But when I read a story that’s competent but never quite comes to life, the problem is often (at least in part) at this level: the material is all there, but the sequencing undercuts its effect. Teaching that to someone, however, requires breaking out the red pen and rewriting sentence after sentence, with explanations for why. It’s a huge investment of time and effort, and in the end, the writer needs to develop their own instinct for how these rhythms work.

Rook and Rose Book 2, Chapter 7

I am really, really glad we are getting some distance into Book Two before Book One goes in the can.

We went into this series with a (for me) remarkably detailed idea of where the story was going in the long term. But even with that . . . stuff keeps cropping up. Bits and pieces where we say, hmmm, we have to figure that out — and then what we figure out really ought to be reflected in the previous volume. Or we change our minds on a thing because it will serve our later purposes better to do it this way instead of that way, and isn’t it a good thing we still have the option of revising?

That happened in two places this chapter, one a matter of organizational structure for a group in the story, the other a matter of metaphysics. Sadly, we won’t be able to write the entire second book before we have to ship the first one off into the maw of production, but the further we get, the better. We can still make changes even into the copy-edit phase, though it gets more annoying at that point.

As for the chapter itself . . . we’ve been so busy juggling various balls of plot and such (not to mention the interruptions of day jobs and travel) that our rough draft has been feeling rougher than normal. But we had a marathon day of writing yesterday, and I think that had really good results for us packing in something more like our usual density of description, characterization, banter, and interweaving of plots. Everything this chapter was focused on V in one way or another, which gives it a nice feeling of coherence — that’s something we try to aim for, though obviously not every chapter can have that kind of through-line. (Not without feeling totally artificial in its structure, anyway.)

Poor characters, though. Starting next chapter, we’ll be heading into the moments where all the problems between them bare their fangs and bite down. It’s still going to be interleaved with fun things — capers, trickery, dancing, naptime, small fuzzy animals — but shit’s gonna get worse for a while before it gets better.

Word count: ~50,000
Authorial sadism: The whole chapter? It’s basically “let’s dump problems on this character’s head, whee!” But the “I didn’t know” moment in particular is gonna come back to bite him later.
Authorial amusement: “Will you stop that?” (Brought to you by us noticing we’d done a certain thing, like, three times — so R— might as well notice it, too.) Also, the line about justice being revenge in formal dress.
BLR quotient: I guess when the chapter is a survey of various conflicts, I gotta call it for blood.

Twenty years and still going strong

Twenty years ago today, I finished my first novel.

I often say — because it’s true — that of the basic foundational skills one needs to be a writer, the last one I acquired was the ability to finish what I started. I was writing competent (if not brilliant) prose, characters, and plots before that point, but none of them meant much because unless you’re a celebrity or otherwise have some kind of “in” with the publishing industry, nobody’s likely to buy an unfinished project from an untested writer. Nor should they: I was living proof that being able to get a good start doesn’t mean you can stick the landing.

Why did that change? I more or less tripped and fell into it. I’d written assorted scenes for the novel that joined up into something like a coherent whole, but a guy in our crit group (the one who is now my husband) pointed out that there were problems with the pacing and so forth. He was right, but for a deeper reason: I looked at what I had and realized it wasn’t the beginning of the book. You see, in those days I tended to leap around writing whatever bits sounded exciting, and unsurprisingly, those were mostly from the middle.

So I made a list of stuff that needed to be set up first — worldbuilding to explain, character stuff to establish — and worked out a path through it all that would let me work that stuff into the story. I spent the first half of the summer writing my way down that list, until I finally was ready to stitch it onto the part I already had . . . and realized I had half a novel.

At which point there seemed no reason not to keep going.

Much of what I wrote for the beginning was ultimately cut. I’ve said before that Lies and Prophecy owes a debt to Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin; the connection is much less visible these days, as I wound up revising out a lot of the material that followed the characters through their lives at college in favor of getting to the central plot more rapidly. But it was still an extremely useful thing to do, because it turns out that for me, the “leap around writing the fun bits” approach is a really bad idea. It leads to me writing stuff that isn’t grounded in what came before, and when the time comes to splice things together, the splicing material is very utilitarian, designed to get the story from Point G to Point J as fast as possible. These days I will occasionally skip ahead to write a scene out of order, and of course the structure of Turning Darkness Into Light meant that one threw much of my usual process directly out the window . . . but I still mostly write in order. I have to, if I want good results.

Like the result of finishing what I’d started. Twenty years ago today, for the first time, I had a complete novel: a long story that went from beginning to end with no holes in it. I didn’t publish it until thirteen years and multiple revisions later, but it’s still a watershed in my career. I have a career because of that moment.

(And for those who have been wondering . . . yes, there will be a third book in that series. Various factors have prevented me from writing it yet, but I haven’t forgotten, and by god, I will finish it eventually.)

New Worlds: Chimeras

For October the New Worlds Patreon will be exploring the topic of monsters! Last year we hit witches, faeries, and various kinds of undead; now we explore the beasts of mythology, starting with chimeras. Comment over there!

I know I post these essays for free publicly, but if you’ve been enjoying the series, consider becoming a patron! You can get access to photos, polls, bonus essays, and more, and keep this project going strong.

It only took ten years . . .

Man, it’s ten years almost to the day.

In October of 2009 my husband and I took a trip to India. While I was there, I read William Buck’s heavily abridged rendition of the Mahabharata, one of the great Indian epics, and a side character in it really caught my imagination. Enough so that I thought, I’d like to write a short story about this.

Well, it took me ten years and reading four different English-language versions of the Mahabharata (plus spot-checking details in a fifth), but I finally got that short story to happen! And now, in October of 2019, that story is live at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, in both print and podcast forms.

Also out now: a reprint of my short story “The Snow-White Heart” in Flash Fiction Online‘s October issue. It’s been a remarkably busy short story scene here at Swan Tower lately . . . I like it. 🙂

Soup greens?

While my husband and I were in Ireland before Worldcon, I picked up The Irish Pocket Potato Recipe Book, which purports to contain “over 110 delicious dishes.” This is a bit of an exaggeration, as many of them are minor alterations on previous recipes, but that’s fine; it’s charmingly idiosyncratic in places rather than Extruded Corporate Product (even if that idiosyncracy means that sometimes it fails to tell you what temperature or how long or why, if it spends time introducing you to different types of potatoes, it then doesn’t specify which types work well in which recipes).

Last night I made a soup recipe out of it that I liked, but which felt as if it would benefit from an addition. It’s billed as a “Provencal potato soup,” with a vegetable stock as the base, then basil, saffron, onions, peeled tomatoes, and of course potatoes. It came out very tomato-y in a way that I want to balance with something else — maybe a green vegetable of some kind. Spinach is the obvious suggestion, but that would make this nearly identical to a tortellini florentine soup I already make, and I’d like it to be more different. My brain went immediately to bok choy for some reason; I’m not sure if that’s a good guess or not. Cabbage? Something else? Doesn’t have to be a leafy green, but we can’t do any form of squash, as my husband is allergic. And if subbing in X would go better with a swap for the basil and/or saffron and/or garlic, that’s fine; I don’t mind altering the herbs and spices.

Every day is Voter Registration Day

Yesterday evening, I thought, “oh, crap. I was going to make a post about National Voter Registration Day, but I missed it.”

And then I thought, “screw that.”

So yes: Tuesday the 24th was National Voter Registration Day. You know what else is a good day to register? Literally any day you like. Here, have a link — just click on that to get rolling.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. The best response to the attempts to undermine our nation is to democracy so hard at those people they can’t pull their shit anymore. To vote in better officials at every level, from the presidency down to the local dogcatcher. All our protests, the letter-writing, the sit-ins — those are all responses to the things done by our elected representatives, demonstrations of support for their good actions or efforts to push them in the right direction. You know what makes that easier? Having people with actual human ethics sitting in those seats to begin with.

So register. And better still: ask the people around you if they’re registered. If they’re not, here’s the link again. Step One, register. Step Two, vote. Step Three, profit. No question marks in the chain there; we know exactly what to do. We just need to get out there and do it.

Rook and Rose Book 2, Chapter 6

Welcome to Plot Tetris!

I’ve talked before about how it isn’t enough for a scene to just do an interesting character thing, or a plot beat, or whatever. It has to do multiple things at once. In the case of this series, where we have so many interlacing layers of story, we’re constantly having to keep an eye on the pace at which those get measured out, and make sure nothing gets dropped for too long or given insufficient time to develop. (There’s a whiteboard. It’s color-coded. As is our outline spreadsheet.)

Which led to some serious “bang our heads against the wall” time with this chapter. We needed a scene from the viewpoint of a character who’s been neglected, because otherwise her corner of the story risks falling out of the novel entirely — okay. But what should that scene do? It needs to involve these other characters; fine. We could even figure out some character beats for it. But see above re: that’s not enough; we had to figure out a plot thing for it to be doing, too. And we went about nine rounds before we managed to settle on something that works, in terms of furthering something that needs to be furthered right now, while also fitting that specific group of people.

This whole part of the book is going to be like that. At this point we’ve got something approaching a nearly-complete outline for the next four chapters, but it involved a metric crap-ton of rearranging, pushing back stuff we expected to happen earlier, checking where we stood on pov scenes for various characters, and figuring out which beats we need to show vs. being able to mention them happening offstage. All of which is before we get into details like “giant end-of-part caper, how???” But those are chapters away, and we can worry about them when we get there.

Or, y’know, after. One of the scenes in this chapter needs rewriting, because we changed our minds about the metaphysical thing going on in it — for the better, I think, since it made my brain light up in a way the previous version hadn’t — and it’s not the only scene we’re going to backtrack to eventually. More or less inevitable, when you’re juggling this many balls; sometimes you don’t quite have a feel for what needs to happen until you’ve got more of what comes later pinned down. Or you just don’t know how much attention you can devote to it, wordcount-wise. As great as it is to nail a scene on the first try, that doesn’t always happen. But that’s what revision is for.

Word count: ~42,000
Authorial sadism: Ethnic Impostor Syndrome ahoy, and also seeing what it would have looked like had someone been there for you.
Authorial amusement: Wow, we entertained ourselves with food this chapter, both good and bad. Raw mussels, coffee, a coded reference to buffalo wings, and one of our characters is totally going to invent mac and cheese.
BLR quotient: Lots of rhetoric, which is part of why it’s such a snarl to sort through. But I’d be lying if I said the impending love in the final scene isn’t, like, half the reason we showed up for this book.