transitions, blech

There are certain kinds of transition scenes I detest writing. One of them is the “holy shit, the supernatural is real!” scene common to so much urban fantasy; it was a source of great pleasure to me that I could more or less skip that scene in Midnight Never Come, on the grounds that the reaction of a sixteenth-century gentleman would not so much be “there are faeries under London?” as “there are faeries under London?” (You’ll note that nearly every pov character for the remainder of the Onyx Court series already knew about the fae by the time they showed up in the story. This was not deliberate, in the sense of being a thing I consciously decided to do . . . but I wouldn’t call it an accident, either. The sole exception that leaps to mind is Jack Ellin, and I had more than enough going on in the story to divert him, and me, while that transition happened.) It’s boring to me because the audience already knows the supernatural is real (or at the very least has no reason to be surprised by this fact), and we’ve seen that conversation so many times, making it fresh is really difficult. Your main hope is to undermine it in some fashion, like the time on Buffy when they told Oz vampires and demons were real. “I know it’s a lot to take in –” “Actually, that explains a lot.”

I’m dealing with a similar kind of thing in the fifth Memoir right now. The scene isn’t about the supernatural being real; it’s a different kind of transition, one I don’t really have a name for. And of course I can’t get into specifics, but it’s one of those deals where something very complicated is going on, only the complication is of a type that doesn’t actually make for great narrative. After the initial drama of the moment is over, there’s a lot of explaining that needs to happen, and a lot of very tedious suspicion that can’t be laid to rest with the right words or a single decisive action. Inside the story, the whole thing is going to drag on for days — probably for weeks. Making the reader sit through all of that would be dire, starting with the fact that I would have to write all of that.

It’s at moments like these when I love the retrospective, consciously-framed first person viewpoint of this series. Because I can 100% get away with Isabella saying “what followed was very tedious and dragged on for weeks, because there was nothing I could do that would resolve it with a single decisive action. But X, Y, and Z got settled — not without a great deal of wrangling and suspicion, but settled all the same, and now let’s move on to the next interesting bit.” Any viewpoint can skip over things, but this one gives me greater latitude to summarize what I’m skipping, without making it seem like the elided material is simple to deal with in real life. Isabella can acknowledge all the complications without getting bogged down in them.

I had no idea, when I started writing this series, all the advantages that would come with framing the entire thing as a series of memoirs. It just seemed like a period- and subject-appropriate way to approach the whole thing. But my god . . . it’s probably the best craft decision I’ve made all series long.

Stats for the stat god

Neither Shihan nor his wife were at the dojo tonight, which meant I felt comfortable asking the sensei who teaches on Wednesdays whether he was okay with me keeping my Fitbit on during class. He said that was fine, so for the first time, I have stats for what goes on with my body during practice.

I was surprised at how few “steps” it recorded, to be honest. Sure, we spend the first twenty minutes or so on various warmups and stretches, most of which won’t register on the Fitbit. But it only recorded 1500 for the whole hour, which is equivalent to about fifteen minutes of normal walking at my usual pace. I thought the various punches and blocks would add up to more. The real interest, though, is in the heartrate tracking: I can see where we finished the warmup and started doing basics, and I can see what happened when I ran seven kata back-to-back in preparation for my upcoming test, which is a thing I’ve been doing at every practice for about a month. Turns out that I do indeed spend most of the class in the zones generally classed as “cardio” or “peak,” and topped out the scale at 185 at one point during that block of kata. (It would be amusing to see which kata work me the hardest, but since I was only allowing myself five breaths’ pause between them, there’s no hope of differentiating one from the next via the stats.) 185 is what the American Heart Association considers the usual “maximum” for my age, so I feel safe in saying that I’m working pretty damn hard when I do that kind of set. πŸ˜›

I wish Fitbit had a way for me to save that data and label it “karate,” so that I can add it to my stats for the day any time I go to the dojo. But I also wish they made them waterproof enough to wear while swimming, and that they could make the actual unit thinner; I can’t get everything I want.

Dice Tales at BVC – No Takebacks

My newest Dice Tales post is up at Book View Cafe: No Takebacks, in which I talk about the way that RPGs don’t really allow for revision, and what that does to the story. Comment over there!

I’ll also mention that since the BVC WordPress configuration doesn’t display the series name, I’ve switched to using a tag to sort all the Dice Tales posts. So if you’re looking for one easy way to pull them all up, now you have it!

Burnination for fun and profit

So on Twitter the other day, in a fit of frustration, I posted this:

Which of course promptly led to a bunch of people saying that no, I totally should do that. After the third or fourth of those, I issued this challenge:

And, well. I think I’m actually serious about this. If you have a crown you don’t want back (or don’t mind getting back charred and possibly warped), get in touch with me. The following requirements apply:

1) It needs to be metal, as nothing else will last long enough in the fire to be of use. (Doesn’t have to be gold, though.)

2) Should look at least vaguely royal/medieval — no bridal tiaras here.

3) Has to be full-size.

If you have something that fits that bill, send a picture of it to marie {dot} brennan {at} gmail {dot} com. As promised, if I get what I need, I will take blog/tweet the whole process, with color commentary. But I need it soon, so be prepared to act quickly if you offer up your crown!

And thanks in advance to anybody who might be able to help.

FORGOT TO ADD: If you do provide me with a crown, I’ll send you your choice of the audiobook of A Natural History of Dragons on CD, a UK trade paperback of Midnight Never Come, or an ARC of In the Labyrinth of Drakes.

Books read, uh, recently

Over the last few months I seriously fell off the horse when it came to keeping track of my reading. So this covers December and January, but only the things I can recall reading — which isn’t very much.

The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu. I know this one ate quite a lot of December, because BRICK.

I . . . really, really wanted to like it. Epic fantasy, drawing on Chinese epic tradition! Sign me up. I was totally there for the worldbuilding and the character archetypes and the nature of the plot. And, courtesy of comments I’d seen elsewhere on the internet, I was prepared for (though not pleased by) the fact that the first half of the book has virtually no women playing significant roles, because I knew that there would be more showing up in the remaining pages. As indeed there are! But anybody without that advance warning would be justified in thinking that the only women in the story would be helpful wives, distant goddesses, or deeply problematic seductresses, so I can’t really say the second half justifies the first.

But the real problem for me was the style. It read a lot like an old epic — too much so. I fundamentally did not care about any of the characters, because the text never let me get close enough to any of them to form an emotional attachment. The style is incredibly distant, telling instead of showing, often spending more time narrating to you what is happening than letting you experience it. Let me give an example — it’ll be a spoiler, but (for reasons I’ll explain in a moment) not much of one. If you’d prefer to avoid it, though, just skip the next paragraph.

So there’s a plot thread involving one of the few early female characters, who has been blackmailed by an enemy general into working for him. We don’t see her arrive in the lands of the rebels — that part I’m okay with, since it isn’t as important as what she does when she gets there. Once established among the rebels, she manipulates two men into falling in love with her: an uncle and a nephew, who have been inseparable for the nephew’s entire life. (These are major characters in the book; the nephew is essentially co-protagonist with another guy.) Once both of them are besotted with her, she plays off their jealousy, using it to create a rift between them, until they become wholly estranged and the uncle sends the nephew away at a critical moment when he needed to be present. Then she murders the uncle and commits suicide.

From beginning to end, this entire thing takes about sixteen pages.

Fully a quarter of which is spent on that last sentence, actually; the rest gets crammed into twelve pages, where it shares space with other things going on in the plot. We the readers are told that both of these guys have fallen in love with her. We’re told that they’re jealous. We get little snippets of actual interaction, a few paragraphs here and there, which present us with emotion (love! jealousy! anger!) the narrative hasn’t actually earned. I don’t consider this to be a spoiler because I don’t feel like there’s an experience to spoil; it feels more like me giving away the ending to a historical account of the Duke of Buckingham’s assassination. I majored in folklore; I’ve read a great many epics from different parts of the world, and can deal with that kind of arm’s-length approach. It is not, however, what I’m looking for in a novel. The sweeping scope of The Grace of Kings is impressive, but it only fits into one book because so many of the elements of modern fiction have been squeezed out. The result is that I found myself pronouncing the Eight Fatal Words: “I don’t care what happens to these people.” I finished the book, but have no motivation to pick up the sequel. Which is a pity, because I was so excited for the first one.

Daughter of Mystery, Heather Rose Jones. I don’t remember where I heard of this one; it’s an ebook that’s been sitting on my tablet for ages. Normally when I call something “Ruritanian fantasy,” what I mean is that it’s set in a secondary world, but has no magic (e.g. Lloyd Alexander’s Westmark books). In this case, however, I mean that it’s set in the fictional European country of Alpennia, but has magic. I suspect that Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint and The Privilege of the Sword are among its literary ancestors, as one of the two protagonists, Barbara, is a woman trained as an armin (bodyguard) and duelist for an eccentric Baron. The other heroine, Margerit, unexpectedly inherits the Baron’s estate upon his demise — including Barbara, who was his property. The plot is moderately complex, involving the question of why he named his goddaughter his heir and why he failed to free Barbara as he promised (and why he owned her and trained her in the first place), running alongside a strand wherein Margerit begins to study the “mysteries” (sacred magic) and investigate why they no longer work the way they should. Overall it came together in a reasonably satisfying way, and Jones has a pleasingly solid grasp of the social politics of a nineteenth-century-type world: Margerit can’t just go “la, who cares” and blow off her obligations without consequence, however much she may want to. Plus, lesbian romance, which I know would be a selling point for many of my blog readers. πŸ™‚

Phoenix, Stephen Brust. Still working my way slowly through these. I liked Vlad’s interactions with the Empress: they struck a nice balance between the formal ceremony that accompanies such a role, and showing the Empress as a human being (well, for the contested values of “human” that apply in this setting). I’m also pleased, though not surprised, to see Brust follow through on what he began in an earlier book, with Vlad questioning his role in the Jhereg and his chosen livelihood of murdering people for money. I have no idea whether that was planned from the start, or whether Brust got a couple of books in, looked at his assassin hero, and reconsidered how good of an idea that really was, but either way it’s nice to watch the change percolate through the narrative. Where it goes in the long run . . . well, that will be interesting to see. “Phoenix stone” felt like a bit of handwavium to me, but I’d love to see more exploration of what pre-Empire sorcery was like, and how the Interregnum changed the way sorcery worked.

World Fantasy’s Safety Surcharge

Today the registration fee for the 2016 World Fantasy Convention went up by seventy-five dollars, from $150 to $225.

I registered during the previous WFC, as has been my habit for years. Unfortunately, now I realize that I need to rethink this policy. Because despite being prodded on these matters, WFC 2016 still has not posted either a harassment or an accessibility policy. The con-runner, going by her comments posted there, seems to think that “be nice to one another” and “the hotel is ADA compliant” are sufficient measures in that regard — and maybe there will be policies posted by the time the con begins, but apparently it’s totally unreasonable to ask for those things before the price of attendance gets jacked up.

This is not okay. It amounts to a safety surcharge, because if you want to attend WFC, you have two choices:

1) Buy your registration early, in the blind faith that the con will do its duty and put together an acceptable set of policies before you arrive.

2) Wait for the policies, and pay more money in exchange: seventy-five dollars more now, another fifty if they aren’t posted by mid-April, literally twice the membership price if you pick your membership up in the fall (y’know, around the time the harassment policy got posted last year). To say nothing of the difficulty in getting a hotel room if the block has sold out, which it often does — a situation that might put you in a different hotel entirely, and yeah, like that won’t cause you problems if your mobility is limited.

Oh, and let’s not forget: this is a con with a membership cap. Waiting to register might mean you can’t attend at all, because they’re sold out. So really it’s heads they win, tails you lose, because if these things matter to you, then you wind up paying more money to the con, or not showing up at all.

I’ve said that I will not attend a con without either a harassment policy or an accessibility policy. As it turns out, that pledge needs to have a rider attached to it: these things must be posted sufficiently far in advance of the con. I already have my WFC membership, but if they have not addressed this problem in a substantive way by the end of the month, I will ask to have my membership refunded. That gives them four weeks: more than enough time to look at the many fine policies posted by other cons and select their menu options. If they can’t do it in that amount of time, I really don’t have faith that they care enough to do it properly at all.

Who knew you could buy sanity on Amazon?

So as many of you know, my husband had ankle surgery recently. He’s on crutches, putting no weight on the affected foot . . . for 8-10 weeks.

That’s a long time.

And while I can’t rightly compare my own difficulties to his, it’s going to be a long time for both of us. All of a sudden, I’m carrying most of the household on my own shoulders, because he can’t. Many tasks that I’m used to sharing with him (laundry, taking out the trash, etc) are now mine alone. Things that didn’t use to be tasks suddenly are: I have to be available when he goes to bed, because while it’s possible for him to drag his crutches and the pillow we’re using for his leg up the stairs as he slides up them — they’re too narrow for him to crutch up — it’s a pain in the neck, and much easier if I carry those for him. Some tasks that I would normally let slide for a little while now have to be kept 100% up-to-date; the ant infestation plaguing this entire city isn’t related to his surgery, but that doesn’t change the fact that I have to wash the dishes right away or risk finding a conga line of ants making their way across our kitchen to whatever I left out, and I have to keep the living room constantly tidy or he won’t be able to cross it safely on crutches.

But. My friends, I had a stroke of genius, and it already promises to do wonders for my sanity.

We’ve been making extensive use of stools and folding chairs in various places so he can kneel on them(1) while he showers or washes his hands or whatever. I found myself wondering whether it would help to put one of those in the kitchen, too — and then I thought, no. What we want in the kitchen is one of these.

It arrived this afternoon. Today, for the first time since his surgery, my husband scrubbed some dishes. He loaded the dishwasher and emptied it, too; he put dinner into the oven and took it out again. He can’t do everything; kneeling for too long is uncomfortable, and he has to be careful that it doesn’t roll out from under him and drop him into an unexpected split. But he can function. He can probably manage to bake some brownies if he wants to — and if you know my husband, you know how much that means to him.

And me? I was giddy with delight. The sheer fact of knowing that I don’t have to do everything kitchen-related is a relief all out of proportion to its actual size. Sure, I’m still facing another two months of having to carry his plate to him and then carry it back when he’s done, because you can’t really do that on crutches and the stool doesn’t transition well to carpet. But he can make his own sandwich for lunch without having to balance on one foot while he does it, even if I’m the one who carries it to the couch. He can wash dishes, which is a task that normally falls about 70-80% in his bailiwick instead of mine. He can prepare simple dinners. All of these are things I expected to have to do myself for weeks to come and now . . . now I know that he can help.

I’m well aware that the situation I have with him is business as usual for a lot of people. If you’re a single mother with a toddler, you’ve got to carry every bit as much weight, without the compensation of a charge who continually thanks you and can at least accomplish tasks that don’t require standing. And they don’t sell products on Amazon that will magically turn your toddler into more of a functioning adult. But if you ever find yourself dealing with a similar situation, remember the merits of a simple, flat-topped, caster-mounted stool. It can work wonders.

(1) Some of you will now be thinking of those kneeling scooters you’ve been seeing around lately. We rented one, but they don’t corner well at all, and our place is too small for him to easily navigate indoors on that thing. It’s useful only for when he leaves the house; the rest of the time, it’s crutches, which are far more maneuverable.

Pre-order CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 5 now!

There’s a page set up now for pre-ordering Clockwork Phoenix 5, which will be available for sale on April 5th. For those who may not recall, this is the anthology that contains my story “The Mirror-City.”

I got my contributor’s copy of CP5 in the mail the other day, and I have to say, I think it’s the prettiest Clockwork Phoenix yet. I love the new cover. πŸ˜€

Also, one day left in which to get Lies and Prophecy at a discounted price!

“Dice Tales” at Book View Cafe

I’ve started blogging at Book View Cafe again, this time on one of my favorite topics: role-playing games! Specifically, RPGs as a method of storytelling, and how that interrelates with and differs from the more conventional kind of storytelling I do as an author. There are three posts up so far, one introductory piece to launch the series, one on the dramatis personae of an RPG, and one on mechanics. New installments will be posted each Sunday morning. Comments are off here; share your thoughts over there instead!

Limited time sale for LIES AND PROPHECY!

From now until next Tuesday(1), Lies and Prophecy is on sale! Normally the illustrated edition is $4.99 and the text-only edition is $3.99, but each is a dollar off for the time being, making that $3.99 for the illustrated and $2.99 for the plain. Choose your retailer here!

I’m also pleased to link to a pair of pieces about Chains and Memory. The first is a piece I wrote for Special Needs in Strange Worlds, on characters with PTSD. I could have talked for a lot longer there — one of the things I didn’t even try to touch on is the fact that Kim has also developed PTSD by the second book of the series — but the focus of that post is how I managed to give Julian PTSD without noticing, and what I did with the story and the worldbuilding once I figured it out. The second post is over at Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog, discussing the cultural differences between Kim and Julian, and how the two of them work to bridge that gap. Her blog series is called “My Favorite Bit,” and given my anthropology background, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that my own favorite bit is the mismatch between the two characters’ assumptions, the things they do because of those assumptions, and most especially, the light-bulb moment where they realize what’s been going on. (For those who have already read the novel, I’m referring specifically to the scene after Julian gets his nose bloodied at practice.)

Finally, I’ve gotten out of the habit of linking to reviews here, but I have to say I love this quote from Marissa Lingen’s review: “There are action scenes. There is not fencing, but there is fighting, torture, revenge, and true love. Of more than one sort. There is not actually a mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, though. I suppose one can’t have everything. At least not in a book of this length.” I am now sorely tempted to put an MLT into the third book, just because. πŸ˜›

***

(1) Actually, from a couple of days ago until next Tuesday — but I forgot to post this in a timely fashion. Mea culpa.

I would make a good seeing-eye dog

(Except for the part where my vision is terrible. And I’m not a dog.)

Some years ago, a friend of ours with a degenerative eye condition told us about the methods used to sort German Shepherd puppies for possible training. I don’t know whether this is how all facilities do it, but at that particular place, they would put a puppy in a room with various blanket and toys and so forth, and then leave them alone there for a while. Some dogs basically curl up in a corner and cry, and those will have a lovely future as someone’s pet. Some tear everything apart and pee all over it, and those are candidates to become police dogs. The potential seeing-eye dogs are the ones who investigate everything in the room, then sit down in a place where they can watch the door and wait.

My husband had ankle surgery today — I swear this is not a non sequitur — and it occurred to me that I am very much a much Dog Type Number Three. In the pre-op room, I wandered about reading every label on every box and drawer, peering at monitors, and generally investigating everything I could get at without touching stuff. When it came time for them to administer the nerve block, one of the nurses said that would be a good time for me to head out to the waiting room; I asked whether it would be a problem for me to stay and watch. The anesthesiologist said that would fine, so I sat in a chair and peered around him at the ultrasound screen while he stuck a needle in my husband’s leg. He even narrated what he was doing at one point, for my benefit!

. . . yeah, I’m a writer. If I can watch a thing, I probably will. Because who knows what I’ll need to know someday?

(In other news, my husband is home and doing fine, though that will probably change a bit when the nerve block wears off and he starts actually needing the happy pills they have prescribed for him.)

Star Wars: Enthusiasm Awakens

(Minor spoilers ahead, but no major ones.)

I went yesterday to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens on a 3D IMAX screen, because really, there are some things that are just kind of cool to go virtually flying through. But lest you think I’m way behind the curve, this was not the first time I’d seen it, nor even the second; it was the third.

Partly this is because of a quasi-joke I made a while ago about “girlcotting Star Wars.” If staying away from something or refusing to buy it for political reasons is a boycott, then, I reasoned, actively going out to support or purchase it for political reasons should be called a girlcott. (Yes, I know the etymology doesn’t remotely work that way.) A Star Wars movie with a white woman, a black man, and a Latino man in leading roles? Yes please. A Star Wars movie whose crawl text blazes with the words GENERAL LEIA ORGANA(1), one where there are women taking up blasters to defend their village and female X-wing pilots running around the Resistance base and Gwendolen Christie as a Stormtrooper captain? Yes, yes, yes. I would have gone to see it even if it were terrible; I might have gone to see it twice. Fortunately, Abrams gave me something much better than terrible — he gave me Star Wars.

Because I’ll be honest: in hindsight, the prequel trilogy just doesn’t even feel like Star Wars to me. Sure, it has Jedi and Sith and lightsabers and spaceships and so on. But the opening crawl text of The Phantom Menace is all about a Trade Federation and frickin’ taxation. Where’s the EVIL EMPIRE? Where’s the noble REBELLION? Not here yet, I know, I know . . . but that’s part of the problem. Star Wars is supposed to be sweeping and epic. When its crawl text sounds petty and mundane, you’re off to a bad start. But right from the opening lines of this movie, and then the beautiful shot of the Star Destroyer eclipsing the planet . . . it felt right. And it continued to feel right the whole way through, so that I walked out of the theatre energized and excited, and the spoiler-free review I gave to people in the following days consisted of clasping my hands in front of my chest, going starry-eyed, and bouncing on the tips of my toes.

With more distance and further reflection, writer-brain is fascinated by the relationship between this movie and the source material. I disagree with those who say, eh, boring, it’s just a retelling of A New Hope. Does it use many of the same elements? Yep: desert planet, rescuing a prisoner from the bad guys, a bar filled with colorful aliens, a big scary weapon that has to be destroyed(2). But those elements get used like Lego blocks: you can build lots of things out of them. One of the things I love about it is the way that, although you can find points of correspondence between this and A New Hope, none of those points become a line that runs all the way through. Poe feels like Han Solo (hotshot pilot), but he’s also Leia (dedicated member of the Resistance, captured by the bad guys and then rescued), and as Todd Alcott points out, he’s also kind of a high-speed Obi-Wan to Finn (from a political rather than mystical angle). Rey may look like Luke — orphan on a desert planet — but she doesn’t dream of getting off the planet and doing something cool; she wants to stay on her planet (and get back to it once she leaves) because she’s waiting for something important there. Maz Kanata’s bar is not where our heroes come together; it’s where they split apart, and Maz herself is one of two Obi-Wans to Rey (the other being, from a backward angle, Kylo Ren). And there’s just zero precedent for Finn: a humanized Stormtrooper, a “bad guy” who face-turns right out of the gate and offers the other heroes an insider’s perspective on how the faceless masses operate.

To discount all of the deeper changes just because the surface looks familiar is, in my opinion, a mistake. Sure, maybe you could have had this plot with Rey growing up on a jungle planet and other such superficial changes. But that would have jettisoned the psychological effect I can’t help but think Abrams intended: “look, guys, we’re getting back to basics. Forget about the prequel trilogy. Remember what you loved about Star Wars. I’m going to give you that experience, and take it in a new direction.”

I’ll admit that I was apprehensive about Abrams directing. I’m fine with his Star Trek movies; they’re not brilliant, but as somebody who has zero emotional investment in the franchise, I found his films very enjoyable. My concern here wasn’t so much that he would screw Star Wars up as, it would now feel the same as Star Trek. As it turns out, that fear was unfounded: I think Abrams successfully poured himself into the mold of this franchise. Because it really is true that my immediate reaction upon walking out of my first viewing was a satisfied sigh of “now THAT was Star Wars.” Better than that — it was Star Wars plus, where there’s more than one woman, and not everybody is white, and the characters speak dialogue you can imagine coming out of the mouth of an actual human being.

I can’t wait for the next one. <clasps hands, starries eyes, bounces on toes>

***

(1) While waiting in line at a coffee shop over Christmas, I picked up and idly flipped through a Star Wars: The Force Awakens book written for very young children. The first page I flipped to began with the line, “General Leia is a princess.” Which might possibly be the most awesome sentence in the history of children’s literature.

(2) I will grant that I could have done with a bit more variety on the whole super-weapon thing, because it really is an Even Bigger Death Star. But I would have been satisfied with a single change: if you’re going to call it Starkiller Base, in homage to Luke’s first-draft name, then have it kill stars! Not by draining them, but by BLOWING THEM UP. Send the Hosnian sun supernova. That would have been awesome.

a career I do not want

Tor.com had a recent piece about George R.R. Martin’s announcement that the sixth book in his series will not be published before the next season of Game of Thrones airs. That means the show’s storyline will officially outpace the novels’; we find out what happens next from HBO, not Martin.

Reading that piece, it occurred to me that I do not want Martin’s career.

His piles of money? Sure. But not, I think, at the cost of everything that has come with it. I could be perfectly happy with a much smaller quantity of money, and the thought of living under the kind of stress he faces is massively unappealing. I think it’s clear, from everything he’s said and the way the series has progressed, that he’s the victim of his own success: so many people are invested in A Song of Ice and Fire, and the resulting pressure is grinding the life out of it for him.

For anybody who makes their living creatively, that’s kind of a horrifying thought. And I honestly feel bad for him with this HBO situation. I mean, he’s made plenty of statements about how HBO is telling their own version of the story, and it doesn’t affect his own, etc etc, and yes, fans will still care about the “real” end of the tale — but it has to feel like somebody else got there before him. Maybe that will make it easier for him to move forward; who knows? It could take some of the pressure off him. But he’s no longer leading the pack, and I have to imagine that stings. I know I wouldn’t want to be in that position myself.

I thought about something else, too. When the TV series started airing, book fans were incredibly disciplined about not spoiling things for people who came to the story via the show. This was, in part, a selfish act: I had a friend who hadn’t read the books, and I couldn’t wait to be there when she reacted to certain major events. Spoiling would have ruined the fun. But it was also courteous — and although I’m not optimistic, I’d like to hope that people watching the show will extend the same courtesy to anyone who is sticking with the books alone. Certainly I will; any posts I make about events on the show will be hidden behind a cut-tag. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I didn’t like A Dance with Dragons much at all and I feel the series has been rolling downhill with increasing speed . . . but I still hope that Martin pulls up out of that dive (to mix my metaphors), and anybody who prefers to go the text route should have that chance.

And I wish Martin the best in finishing off The Winds of Winter, and however many more there may be.

Convention Accessibility Policies

A while back John Scalzi made a public pledge not to attend conventions without a harassment policy, and many authors signed on.

I’ve decided to add a new pledge(1) for myself: I won’t attend a convention that doesn’t have an accessibility policy.

The proximate cause of this decision is the abysmal experience Mari Ness had at yet another World Fantasy Convention. She’s the one who has spoken up the most about this, but far from the only one it affects: as she says there, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, the Guest of Honor, was using crutches. Many of our most respected writers are elderly and use assistive devices; Gene Wolfe was using a cane. Injury can strike anyone; Scalzi was in Australia when he tore a calf muscle, requiring a combination of crutches, cane, and wheelchair to get about and get home. (How many ankle surgeries have I had, again?) And those are just the authors, then ones a convention might invite and then either lose or massively inconvenience because of bad accessibility. It doesn’t even touch on the fans who might want to attend, but stay home because they just can’t face the hurdles imposed by trying to get around or enjoy themselves while present. But if you make it more accessible for them? You may be surprised how many show up.

I think it’s easy for this one to slide under the radar because many of us are lucky enough not to be affected. In the wake of Mari’s recent experiences, though, I found myself thinking: saying “well, I don’t need accessibility assistance; therefore I don’t care about the policy” is kind of like saying “well, I’ve never been harassed at a con; therefore I don’t care about the policy.” Both of those statements are crap. Do I care about my fellow writers and fans being able to attend and enjoy themselves? Yes. In that case, I need to make sure they’re welcome.

So: if a con does not have an accessibility policy, I will not attend.

Of course, it isn’t enough for me to just say that. What do I mean by “an accessibility policy”? What kinds of measures does a con need to take for me to say I’m willing to attend? Fortunately, other people have put a lot of thought and effort into these matters. Tanya Washburn was kind enough to help me out with this, pointing me at several resources: Geek Feminism Wiki has a page linking to several sub-topics, Conrunner.net has a page, and the WisCon policy is generally agreed to be the best example out there. Just reading through those things can teach you a lot.

The first purpose served by an accessibility policy is to inform people. Maybe the policy says “we regret to say that we cannot arrange wheelchair access to X part of the venue.” That may be disappointing to a wheelchair-bound attendee — but it’s a lot less disappointing than showing up to the con and only then finding out that they can’t go everywhere they want to. If you say you will not be providing gluten-free food in the con suite, then gluten-sensitive attendees know to bring their own victuals. Etc. And providing this information is, quite frankly, not very difficult. It costs no money (you’re already paying for your con website); it requires only a small amount of time and effort. But writing it up is a really good exercise, because it will prod you to think about these issues and consider whether you can’t make some adjustments — which is the second purpose of such a thing; it makes those of us who don’t deal with a given issue more aware of it, which in turn can help us do better.

And that brings us to the third purpose of the policy, which is to actually, y’know, make things accessible. I think that my pledge should include some minimum standards of access, without which I will strongly question whether I should attend. I don’t expect everything: for example, the policy for my friendly local FOGcon acknowledges that they cannot afford to pay for interpreters (e.g. ASL sign), and they haven’t been able to find any volunteers. That, for me, is not a make-or-break issue. Ditto their comment on fluorescent lighting, which is ubiquitous in the kinds of hotels and convention centers that cons take place in; expecting a con to somehow deal with that problem is not realistic.

But some things require very little effort and money, and I think it’s fair to expect them at any con that gives half a damn about access. At the moment, for me, these include:

1) A con staff member who is the designated accessibility contact. This person is in charge of making whatever arrangements the con will be implementing, answering questions from guests or attendees in advance of the con, and handling problems if they arise during the con. If the hotel has locked the door at the top of the wheelchair ramp to the restaurant, this is the person who gets that unlocked. Etc.

2) If panels or other program items take place on a stage, this stage must have a ramp. This was a major issue at WFC this past year — and the most galling thing is, if the con had spoken to the hotel about it ahead of time, ramps could have been arranged with very little difficulty or cost. If for some reason your venue charges through the nose for such things even with advance notice, reconsider whether your panels really need to be on a stage.

3) In larger rooms, provide microphones for panelists. There are some panelists who project well enough to be heard by everyone in the room. The number of such people is rather smaller than the number of panelists who think they can project well enough. Providing mikes reduces the interruptions where somebody has to say “could you repeat that, please?” and the disappointing panels where the audience only heard half of what was said. And again, venues will usually supply and set up these things, as long as you say you’ll need them.

4) Make sure aisles are wide enough for people using mobility devices, and mark out space for them in the seating area. This can be difficult in tiny panel rooms, but in larger ones it shouldn’t be a problem. Blue paper tape is cheap and easy to use for marking pathways and “parking” zones. You can also use it to stripe chairs at the front for the use of those with visual or hearing difficulties.

5) Signage on food in the con suite, green room, and/or banquet. Even if you can’t provide vegan or gluten-free options or whatever, you can at least tell people what’s in front of them, so they don’t have to go out of their way to find out.

Those, I think, are the bare minimum elements I want to see at cons. Other things are great! Other things should be encouraged at every turn! (If there are other things you think should also be on the make-or-break list, let me know!) But if the accessibility policy for a given con doesn’t mention these five things, I’m going to ask. And if the answer is “no, we’re not doing that” . . . I will probably say that in that case, I decline to attend.

And finally, the fourth purpose of a policy like this is to provide accountability. If you say there are wheelchair ramps to the stage, and I get there and no such thing is in evidence? Then we have a problem. And when I bring the problem to the attention of the staff, I’m not making an unreasonable last-second demand. I’m just holding them to the promises they made.

So that’s my pledge. You can sign onto it yourself if you like, or make one of your own. But just as we’ve been pushing to get cons to deal with the harassment issue, we need to push on this one, too.

***

(1) I’ll note that I started drafting this post before Mary Robinette Kowal posted her own accessibility pledge; various personal issues (including, ironically, a month spent in a cast) derailed me from finishing it in a timely manner. I considered just signing her pledge and scrapping this post, but I decided I wanted to talk about this in more detail, so the post stands. But I’m well aware that I am not the first person on this particular bandwagon.

Chains and Memory is on sale now!

Chains and Memory cover

At long last!

Chains and Memory is on sale today, at a variety of reputable outlets. This is the fruit of my very first Kickstarter, which was a resounding success; backers have had copies of this book for a little while, but now I can share it with you all. Go forth! Buy! Enjoy!

Seriously, I’m really excited about this. Remember, I ran the Kickstarter because I’d been wanting to write this book for a solid decade and more; to see it out in the world is incredibly satisfying.

And for those who are wondering . . . no, this is not the end of the story. There will be one more volume. When that happens will depend on the schedule of my contracted work in the immediate future, but stay tuned.

Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuletide

Sometimes you just hit the jackpot.

I got two fics for Yuletide this year, and both of them are brilliant in different ways. The first is “a stuttered ancient alphabet in skin,” which is an Elfquest story exploring the early days after the fall of the High Ones, when the creation of the Wolfriders causes some of the pure-blooded elves to depart and seek their own way. It’s absolutely gorgeous in its exploration of the different philosophies, and the horror some of the the High Ones feel at living in a world where mortality and death are not just distant possibilities, but near-guarantees. The second fic is “The Winter Wind,” and it is nothing less than an epic retelling of Captain America: The Winter Soldier in the setting of the Sengoku Avengers fan-art set by Genesischant, which reimagines the characters as mystical samurai in early seventeenth century Japan. Watching the writer fit the various characters and beats into that setting is just fantastic.

As for my own fics, I managed to uphold tradition and write four, three of them full-length: “The Book of the Duchess, or, In the Dungeons of Her Grace” (A Knight’s Tale; Chaucer tries to tell a story, but keeps being interrupted), “A Prayer to Mother Night” (Legend; Lily’s actions in the aftermath of Darkness’ downfall), “Hush” (Ghostbusters; the origins of the library ghost), and then a little ficlet entitled A Scientific Proposal” (The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage; Babbage has a notion for how to improve their crime-fighting efforts).

It was a good way to close out 2016. And, unlike the fifth of the Memoirs, it’s stuff I can talk about and show to you now — but trust me when I say the latter is going well. πŸ™‚

Onward into 2016!