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Posts Tagged ‘writing’

thinky thoughts on magic

superversive has a lengthy and thought-provoking post up, asking why we hanker for magic. It’s many things in passing, including a deconstruction of ceremonial magic and a literary analysis of several founding fathers of fantasy, but for me, the two most interesting bits are further in.

First is the summary of Steven D. Greydanus’ “seven hedges” which “serve to divide the magic of fantasy from the magic of curses and occult powers.” I find these fascinating, honestly, because they seem to arise out of a set of concerns that, well, don’t concern me. Greydanus (and superversive) are writing in the context of Catholic theology, and more broadly Christian theology; it’s the same context Tolkien was writing in, and he, too, had to address those concerns. What does it mean to write about magic when you believe magic is either real and bad (because then you are circumventing God) or fake and bad (because then you are wasting your time on a delusion)?

And I find that I’m not concerned with that question. Maybe I should be, and it’s a failure on my part to ponder the deeper implications of fantasy. I read the summary of the seven hedges, and found myself irritated by them. Why should I limit magic to non-human, already-trained wizardly supporting characters in another world where magic is entirely known, and lard the tale with cautionary road signs? I don’t think superversive thinks I should, but it might be that Greydanus does. (I didn’t have the enthusiasm to read his piece myself.) But those restrictions are predicated on a certain assumption of the connection between magic-in-fiction and magic-in-life, and while I haven’t thought through all my feelings on that matter, off the cuff, I’m fairly sure my feelings are not his.

Anyway, that’s one thing I’m chewing on. The other is the excellent Old English proverb superversive quotes: Man deþ swa he byþ þonne he mot swa he wile. “A man does what he is when he can do what he wants.” Magic as a means of dipping human will in myth . . . that’s a mode of thought I can get behind. Looking at my own writing, I can see how some of the magic-facilitated turning points in my stories are expressive of the characters’ inner selves, more directly than mundane action could show. (In fact, I’m tempted to write an essay explicating some examples of that, but it would be spoilery as hell — especially since one is drawn from Midnight Never Come.)

So. Thinky thoughts on magic. Go forth and think!

random query

I don’t suppose any of the Brits reading this journal are in Oxfordshire? Or are at least familiar with that area?

I’m trying to sort out something for research purposes.

Edited to add: Okay, it looks like what I really need is a bus schedule to get myself from Swindon to either Woolstone or Compton Beauchamp and back. (And, y’know, advice on whether I should be worried about hiking a few miles alone in the Oxfordshire countryside.)

light bulb

Sometimes the answer to your plot problem is staring you right in the face.

If one of Charles’ problems in 1640 was that he had three kingdoms to juggle, then clearly the way to set up problems on the fae side is to drag Ireland and Scotland into the mess, too.

International faerie politics for the win!

AAL Book Report: King James and the History of Homosexuality, Michael B. Young

Dear Typesetter Of This Book,

I know the truth. You snickered to yourself when you saw what had happened in the last paragraph of Chapter Seven, where the line spacing required the word “arsenal” to be hyphenated onto the next line.

Kisses,
— The Part Of My Mind That’s Twelve Years Old

***

Dear Michael B. Young,

Thank you for letting your snark off the leash every so often. Like when, after telling me over and over again how much Thomas Scott wanted war and was so happy when he got it, because now England was a “nursery for soldiers,” and then tossing off in two lines that he was soon thereafter murdered by a soldier and life does have its little ironies, don’t it? Or when, addressing the question of whether the people around James understood what was going on with him and his male favorites, you go through a paragraph about how the Archbishop of Canterbury deliberately prettied up Villiers and chucked him into James’ path, and what in the world did he think he was doing?

— The Part Of My Mind That Appreciates Entertaining Nonfiction

***

I picked this book up on the recommendation of cheshyre, to get a sense of the atmosphere of James’ court (spilling over into Charles’), and how the critics of that lifestyle bemoaned it as homosexual. It’s a pretty good read, quite short — 155 pages, not counting notes — and quick to process. Though it probably could have been shorter if the conclusion hadn’t taken twenty pages to beat you over the head with the excellent points it raised in the preceding chapters.

I have yet to actually read Bray’s book Homosexuality in Renaissance England, but this appears to be a good counter-argument to Bray’s thesis that male homosexuality at the time was only conceived of in terms of sodomy (and therefore witchcraft, the devil, popery, and the general dissolution of the world). Young acknowledges that Bray’s probably right in certain cases, that some people wandered around with “sodomy” in one compartment of their brains and “what the King does” in another compartment and determinedly didn’t connect the two, but he also quotes a number of contemporary writers who appear to have been floundering around for a word they didn’t have yet — namely, homosexuality as we now conceive of it.

Hmmm. I might have more sympathy for James’ situation if he hadn’t been such a raging misogynist at the same time. Oh well.

Good book. Now on to the next one. Mush!

International Pixel-Stained Technopeasantry Unite!

In Internet terms, this is ancient history, but I liked this the first time around, so I’m doing it again. (As are some other people.)

Short recap, for those born after the Hendrixonian period of the Cretaceous: the former vice-president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America railed about people posting fiction online for free. The response, as provoked by papersky (Jo Walton) — after we were done making fun of him — was a whole hell of a lot of people posting fiction online for free.

Last year I posted “Calling into Silence,” my Asimov Award story from 2003. This year it’s a piece that might have the best ratio of length-to-pride of anything I’ve written — which is to say, there are things I’ve written that I’m prouder of, but they’re also substantially longer. “Silence, Before the Horn” is just a flash piece, but I like it all out of proportion to its length.

Both stories are available through Anthology Builder, where you can put together an anthology of your own design and have it printed and shipped to your door.

contest results, a bit delayed

I’m not sure if I should never do a contest like this one again because it was so hard to decide on winners, or to do a contest like this every time because I laughed so hard while making my decisions.

For the record, I have three ARCs left, and you lot have convinced me to give away all three. Without further ado, the winners:

(more…)

Remember when you interviewed me?

Last summer or fall I collected interview questions from readers to put in the back of Midnight Never Come. I’ve received permission to post that on my website — with special bonus update to the final question — so that’s your MNC-related goodie for today.

I will also post answers to some of the questions I didn’t use there, but that will come later — probably in June.

tradition

I remember when I moved into my freshman dorm at Harvard, and there was a list on my pillow of everyone who had lived in my room since 1804. (Nobody famous, but Ralph Waldo Emerson had lived down the hall.)

I’m reminded of this as I look at the list of the Lord Mayors of London. It’s kind of boggling to imagine being elected to an office that stretches back in an unbroken line to 1189. (Well, the elections go back to 1215. The two guys before that were appointed.) I won’t count them myself, but Wikipedia says almost 700 individuals have served.

Stop and think about that for a moment. Monarchical dynasties come and go; they overthrow each other, die out, pass to collateral lines. Sometimes they even get abolished and re-instituted. And those who occupy thrones are put there by birth, not by merit. I’m less impressed by that than I am by this, a tradition of annual elections stretching back nearly 800 years.

This is the kind of thing that makes me realize how American I am. We’ve had forty-three presidents over 219 years. Whoop-de-doo. 219 years is an eyeblink, by the standards of European history.

Brits think 100 miles is a long distance, and Americans think 100 years is a long time.

Back I go to making a list of the aldermen of London in 1640 — another institution that’s been around for eight centuries or so.

Edited to add: I also get brief flashes of what it’s like to be a historian, reading meaning between the lines of incredibly boring information. List of aldermen? Boring as hell. But then you notice things like the sudden turnover in 1649, the year they cut the king’s head off. Normally there were maybe one or two vacancies in a year; maybe four or five, maybe none. The list for 1649? Stretches nearly four pages. John Smith of the Drapers’ Company was selected for Walbrook on June 12th, sworn in the 19th; on June 20th they selected William Nutt of the Grocers’ Company. He got sworn in on July 10th, four days before the selection and swearing-in of Hugh Smithson from the Haberdashers. Smithson in turn lasted five days, to be succeeded by William Bond, also of the Haberdashers, who made it all the way to 1650 before vanishing. And that’s not the worst of it; Cornhill Ward alone went through nine aldermen in 1649.

I know seven aldermen were forcibly booted for Royalist sympathies, but I don’t know why the rest of them had the political lifespan of mayflies. What aspect of the unrest had them coming and going in a matter of days?

The list doesn’t say. But it raises the question, and I think that’s how historical inquiry gets started.

Edit #2: Also, my apologies to Richard Martin of the Goldsmiths, who is apparently the real-life individual I booted off the historical stage when I made Deven’s father the alderman for Farringdon Within. (There was a limit to my historical accuracy, but you have to dig pretty far to find it.)

Since Martin got to be Lord Mayor in 1589, I’ll just pretend he was busy with that instead.

today’s writing lesson

If you’re grappling with a problem in your story, and then you think up a solution, and then decide (as you should) that no, that solution is too easy, so you toss in a complication, but you still don’t quite know how to make it work . . .

. . . then the answer is in fact to toss in another complication.

Throw plot twists at it until it works1, sez I.

1 — Method not advised for all stories. But it works for some.

It’s the 16th, and that means I’m posting over at SF Novelists, this time about my decision to leave grad school.

***

Also, I did find another review of Midnight Never Come recently. That’s right, folks, I’ve been Klausnered.

I knew it was coming sooner or later. What fascinates me is that her review reads kind of as if she cribbed it from the Publishers Weekly review. (Only less grammatical.) The resemblance isn’t overwhelming, but the structure of the two is very similar.

What’s that you say? You want me to link to it? I’m not going to, for the simple reason that, while it’s hardly the most spoiler-ridden review Harriet Klausner has produced, it does say a few things I’d rather it didn’t. Take my word for it: she doesn’t say anything in particular that you haven’t heard elsewhere, with better grammar.

Want one of the last few?

Your challenge is this: give me a creative reason why I should mail you one of my last few ARCs of Midnight Never Come.

And I do mean creative. None of this “’cause I really want to read it” stuff; tell me how, if you have an ARC, you will leverage it for Total World Domination. Or how your kitten is being driven mad by alien implants in her brain and only this book can save her. Bonus points for plausible logic, even if it’s entirely nonsensical in its premises.

(I’m looking forward to these answers.)

One or more of those who amuse me the most will get an ARC mailed to them next week. You have until Friday to post your answers here, or e-mail them to marie dot brennan at gmail dot com.

::squeak::

Don’t ask me why I got the UK version first — but ten copies of Midnight Never Come just showed up on my doorstep.

<happy squeak>

I am ever-so-faintly sad that my copy-editor’s diligent work in Americanizing my spellings was ported over without change; I’d love to see the UK editions of these books carry British spellings. (My natural state, for the record, is neither fish nor fowl — colour but favorite; theatre but center. And grey. Always grey.)

On the other hand, they managed to slip through an incredibly last-minute change I asked for, that they would have every right to deny. So I’m grateful for that.

Fifty-six days and counting . . . .

I really am this bad

You know what happens when I post two research book reports in one day?

I get into the sort of mood where I’m genuinely excited to discover that all the minutes of the House of Commons from the seventeenth century are available online. And that the IU Library has a book that lists seven hundred years’ worth of the aldermen of the City of London.

The sad thing is, I do have a life. And this is it.

AAL Book Report: London Wall Through Eighteen Centuries

I know, I’m posteriffic today. But I’m finally making visible progress on research, so you get book reports.

This particular item, published in 1937, is apparently the most recent — nay, the only — useful resource out there for information about the Roman and medieval city wall. Which seems bizarre, but hey. It’s jointly written by Walter G. Bell, F. Cottrill, and Charles Spon, who took it in turns to write about the wall in various periods, from its first construction by the Romans to its demoltion through the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.

The archaeologist in me alternately cringes and giggles at the gimpiness of 1930s research methods and the unapologetically patriotic tone of the writing, but it does provide me with a great deal of handy information, both for this and later books.

So for the 0.00001% of you who might need to know about the London Wall in excruciating detail, this is your book. (Unless the folks at the Museum of London are wrong, and there’s a better one out there I could have been reading.)

novel meme

A variety of people are doing this as a quasi-meme thing, apropos of a discussion about writers selling or not selling their first novels, and which ones are the first ones to sell. So here’s my own litany of the books I’ve written.

0. Attempted Vervain Novel — this happened around 1996 or so, give or take a year. It’s the first time I recall deciding I was going to finish a novel. I failed, for a variety of reasons, one of which was that I didn’t realize the pace I had set for myself was way too high, and thus my non-outlining self wrote itself into a corner. The setting and characters, however, may still yet see the light of day . . . eventually.

1. The Novel Formerly Known as Shadow of the Sidhe — currently languishing under the less-than-inspiring replacement title Emerald and Gold. Concept formed circa 1997; first draft completed October 1999. Substantially rewritten in fall 2001, maybe winter 2002. Near-future urban fantasy, set at college. I wrote it while at college, but the setting actually came to me in high school, for which I blame Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin. Unsold, but I have every intention of seeing it in print someday, along with the two sequels I want to write.

2. Doppelganger — soon to be retitled Warrior. Concept formed circa 1997 (around the same time as #1); first draft completed August 2000. My first novel sold, in 2004, as a part of a two-book deal with the then-untitled Warrior and Witch. Published April 2006. I conciously conceived of it as my attempt at a more complex plot, hence the two-protagonist structure (which has ended up a pattern with me). Written as stand-alone, but since both this and #1 end with a major change in the world, it wasn’t hard to spin out consequences for a sequel.

3. The Kestori Hawks — concept formed circa 1998 or 1999, I think; first draft completed Feb. 2001. The base idea was supposed to be Robin Hood, but that kind of fell apart due to the main character’s complete reluctance to act in a heroic or even proactive fashion. It was supposed to be my attempt at more complex characterization, but unfortunately this led to Leonard drowning in his own trauma. I should have realized, when Eleanor and Luke started hijacking the plot for its own good, that the book needed a good re-thinking. Currently trunked, and likely to stay that way.

4. Sunlight and Storm — concept formed summer 2000; first draft completed August 2001. Fantasy western. My initial attempt was a flaming disaster, so I rewrote it practically from scratch in fall 2001 or winter 2002. (Basically I can’t remember which I rewrote first, Novel #1 or this one.) Second draft is better, but I’d need to give it a third go before I try to sell it, this time with extra helpings of western research. I’d like to do that someday, but it won’t be any time soon.

5. The Vengeance of Trees — idea staged a mental coup d’etat March 2002; first draft completed May 2002. I was supposed to be writing Novel #6, not a quasi-Italian renaissance theatre fantasy. Apparently my subconscious had other plans. Unsold, but I really want to see this one in print eventually.

6. The Waking of Angantyr — concept formed fall 2001; first draft completed July 2003. The bastard child of my senior thesis on Viking weapons, this is a big ol’ revenge epic with berserkers and ghosts and blood magic and all that good stuff. As with #5, unsold, but I hope that will change.

7. Warrior and Witch — sold in 2004 with its prequel Doppelganger; first draft completed August 2005. Published October 2006. This was my first experience in selling a novel before it was written.

8. Midnight Never Come — contract signed in spring of 2006, but we didn’t settle on this being my next book until March 2007, at which point I cranked out a first draft by August. Elizabethan faerie spy fantasy, due out in June. The concept dates back to June 2006, when I ran my RPG Memento.

9. Super-Sekrit Projekt CHS — YA urban fantasy, currently being shopped around. First draft completed Feb. 2008.

Future stuff:

10. And Ashes Lie — second book for the 2006 contract, and a seventeenth-century sequel to MNC. English Civil War and Great Fire of London.

11. SSPCHS #2
12. SSPCHS #3 — ideally #9 will be sold as a trilogy, and then I can write the next two books.

13. Onyx Court #3
14. Onyx Court #4
15. Onyx Court #5 — I have potential ideas for three more Onyx Court books, though they are at present unsold. I’ll keep you updated on that.

For a while there during college I was averaging more than a book a year; if you count in the two rewrites, I think it goes up to about 1.7 a year. Which is encouraging, given my plans for my future. If I can manage that while joint-concentrating at Harvard, I can manage this, right?

AAL Book Report: A Monarch Transformed: Britain 1603-1714, Mark Kishlansky

This is the book I needed to read before Stone’s. If you’re looking for a clear, readable, narrative overview of seventeenth-century history, I’d definitely recommend this one. It starts with a pair of chapters on the social and political world throughout the period, then begins moving chronologically, separating the century into reasonably distinct segments for James I and VI, the Duke of Buckingham, Charles I, the start of the Civil War, the conclusion of the Civil War, the Commonwealth/Protectorate, and the Restoration. (It goes on from there, but I stopped in 1667; I might well come back and read the later chapters after this novel is done.) A few of Kishlansky’s break-points seem oddly chosen — why 1644 as a dividing line in the Civil War? — but divisions like that are always going to be a little arbitrary.

The political perspective seems, if anything, excessively moderate. I’m not sure if the contrast with Stone comes from the different times at which the authors were writing, their political inclinations, their theory backgrounds, or what, but Kishlansky appears reluctant to paint anybody in a noticeably negative light. Charles I doesn’t seem unreasonable, Cromwell seems like a patriot — hell, even Strafford comes across as not all that awful, when Stone made it sound like he was practically eating Irish babies with tartar sauce. Granted, Stone’s purpose was to trace the causes of the conflict, so he’s more likely to highlight the negatives, but still — Kishlansky might be a bit too forgiving.

But that’s okay. I came to this book hoping to understand what happened, and now I do. The result is that I finally have a tentative outline for which time periods And Ashes Lie will be covering. I call that a win.

more excerpt!

That’s right, folks; it’s time for another bit of Midnight Never Come. You can start at the beginning, or pick up with with the new material. There are two scenes posted, one introducing Deven, the other for Lune.

There will be one more addition to the excerpt before the book’s publication, and several other goodies of a different kind. Read and enjoy!

Baby Writer Moment

I’ve had three pro author friends more established than me come into the comments thread on the last post to pat me on the head and reassure me that Kirkus Hates Everything. This does indeed help, as does the quoting from their reviews of Gene Wolfe’s work.

It was an odd little Baby Writer Moment, as I got educated in something new to me (namely, the general snarky disdain of Kirkus, which I had not been aware of before).

Our brains are weird things. Psychologists have apparently established that it takes on average fifteen or so pieces of praise to outweigh one negative response. (As I headed for bed, I started tallying up how many positive reactions I’ve gotten, to see where my personal balance sheet stands. <g> We’re up to roughly eleven, as I count it.) Certainly writer-brain seems to lend itself to mood swings that would get any normal person put on medication: the PW review had my subconscious convinced that my book would storm the world, sweeping all before it, for NONE CAN DENY ITS MAJESTY!!!! Then I read the Kirkus review and dropped straight into the Doldrums of I Suck, do not pass Go, do not collect your royalty check because there won’t be one.

(An exaggeration. The actual emotional reactions have been magnified slightly for the sake of imagery. But only slightly.)

If we were rational beings, this math would make more sense. But we aren’t, and it doesn’t.

Want some irony?

Poking around online, I discover that Barnes & Noble’s website actually lists the Kirkus review for MNC, which I didn’t realize had come out already.

I’m ending my day with one hell of a contrast:

A hardworking, sanitized Elizabethan backdrop frames a tortuously passive yarn populated by lifeless characters: Mediocre stuff at best.

It really just makes me boggle. Two people read a novel; one falls over praising it, while the other finds it a remedy for insomnia. Did they read the same book?

It’s hard to understand how radically subjective our reactions to things can be. You’d like to believe there’s some such thing as objective quality, that everybody can agree on the technical merits or flaws of something whether it’s to their taste or not . . . but the truth of the matter is that our reactions are often more informed by subtle factors of preference and mood and what we had for breakfast that morning than they are by any supposedly objective criteria.

And then you’re just tempted to throw your hands up in the air and say, screw it. There’s no such thing as quality, just taste, and you might as well throw darts at a board blindfolded; reactions will be just that scattershot, no matter what you do.

Then you have to sigh, shrug, and go back to working on your stories, in the belief that there is such a thing as quality, and you’ll achieve it (or at least get closer) if you just work hard enough. All the while knowing that some reviewers will fall over praising the result, and others will find it a remedy for insomnia, no matter what you do.

(Those, btw, are the closing lines of the review; I’m not quoting the full thing because the rest is just a summary of the plot, though without any terrible spoilers.)

Possibly the Best Monday Morning EVAR

If I have to be jolted awake by my alarm on a Monday morning when I don’t really want to be up yet . . .

. . . then this is the sort of thing I want waiting for me when I sit down at the computer:

Stunningly conceived and exquisitely achieved, this rich historical fantasy portrays the Elizabethan court 30 years into the reign of the Virgin Queen, often called Gloriana. Far below ground, her dark counterpart, heartless Invidiana, rules England’s fae. Brennan (Warrior and Witch) pairs handsome young courtier Michael Deven, an aspiring agent under spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham, with bewitching fae Lune, who attempts to avoid Invidiana’s wrath by infiltrating Walsingham’s network in mortal guise. History and fantasy blend seamlessly as Deven and Lune tread their precarious tightropes between loyalty and betrayal. Brennan’s myriad fantastical creations ring as true as her ear for Elizabethan and faerie dialogue. With intriguing flashbacks to historical events and a cast of deftly drawn characters both real and imagined, Brennan fleshes out the primal conflict of love and honor pitted against raging ambition and lust for power in a glittering age when mortals could well be such fools as to sell their souls forever.

That, folks, is (I believe) my first-ever Publisher’s Weekly review.

It’s starred. And the at the top of the SF/F/H section, too. (Page down if you’re looking for it in context; there’s no way to link directly to that graf.)

(It also happens to be the thing I had to redact from my earlier post; I didn’t realize I wasn’t supposed to mention it until the review itself came out. But I only knew the review would be good; I didn’t know what it said until this morning.)

So, yeah. A very nice thing to wake up to. Paired, as it happens, with an e-mail from a super-sekrit individual planning a different kind of interview for Midnight Never Come, who also loved the book. Did somebody declare today Ego-Stroking Monday and not tell me?