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Apr72009

The Question of Veterans – David’s Review of The Steel Remains

There is a question that societies and empires must deal with when wars end: what to do with the displaced veterans. Often they return home as heroes, but that can fade. Just as often, they are left on society’s borders, dejected, with lethal combat skills. How do heroes protect a society that despises them? Do they even know why? How do they live peacefully when killing is all they’re good at? Richard K. Morgan’s the Steel Remains asks these questions brutally, with a challenging approach to adult material. Let me start by saying that is one is most definitely not young adult. It’s full on adult. Rated R adult. In some places it might be NC-17, but that’s a whole other debate that I’m not here for.

Let me also say that I’m not here to discuss “writing the other.” More influential bloggers and accomplished writers have discussed this in depth, to strong effect. There’s a lot of discussion swirling around this book’s main protagonist and since we find out he’s homosexual in the first few pages, I won’t consider telling you this a spoiler. He’s certainly a type we don’t see much in fantasy where homosexual men are portrayed as effeminate bards or predatory pederasts. A lot of the content surrounding the main protagonists is a challenging read, which seems to be Morgan’s main point: the book has been lauded for challenging fantasy conventions, but I found its plot to be comfortably familiar. There’s even a bit of deus ex machina at work as gods move their chess pieces about. It uses a lot of the regular trappings of fantasy: dual knife wielding dark “elves,” mysterious, miraculous blades with great names, religious zealots, other worlds or states of being reached through magic, and accomplished heroes. These elements get woven into a more embittered world, where good and evil don’t exist. Everything, and everyone, has a shade of gray to them. Slavery, drug use, hedonistic sexuality, and language I would not use on a regular basis are all on full display. The world is still reeling from a war, and in this the protagonists stumble. The world itself is a good one, well worth a side trip, but I’m not sure I’m ready to spend a full series there.

The ultimate question is of course, is the Steel Remains a good book? The story had me gripped at points, but the clear, open-ended threads left dangling signaled a trilogy or series. After Robert Jordan, I’m a little nervous about loose threads. A lot of build up was done without a payoff. Some important events were told and not shown. There are a few good twists, so the plot carried me, but I had a hard time accepting the characters’ motivations. I like what Morgan is trying to do, which is stretch the genre, but I think that aside from a few adult trappings, the book fails to do anything new.

Mar262009

David’s Review of Dark Haven by Gail Martin

iPod: Yaov. Good stuff!
Backpack: Finally continuing to read R. A. Salvatore’s Cleric Quintet.

I like where she’s going with this. Gail Martin’s third book in the Chronicles of the Necromancer series is out, and she’s chosen to answer a question: what happens in a fantasy world after the big bad is destroyed? A black and white world of moral absolutes can get a lot greyer. Martin has upped the politics and intrigue, setting up factions, each wanting the new king of Margolan dead for their own reasons. A lot of the factions are being opportunistic, taking advantage of the fallout. The protagonists won their war, only to now face a situation where they can’t easily name the enemy attacking them. She’s dealt them a pyrrhic victory. They won their last war but are they too weak to survive the next round?

There’s a bit more romance to this volume, but it’s no detriment. Martin connects her characters on something other than mere appearance, a problem I have with a lot of fantasy. She escapes this cliché. I wouldn’t mind seeing the romance having a bit more conflict, a bit more challenge, but with everything else she’s throwing at them, a little happiness isn’t a bad thing.

I really liked Dark Haven’s battle scenes. I felt like that Martin capitalized on the potential of her characters a bit more, especially Tris Drayke, the Summoner king. The spirits came into play in ways I didn’t expect. This was my only real complaint about the second volume was that she didn’t play as far and wide with the toys she’d crafted as I’d felt she could. She’s making up for it now. One warning, she left it on a cliffhanger, and I’m anxious to continue the story.

Mar172009

Aspiration and Inspiration

I was asked this week to name a book that had profoundedly affected me and inspired me to write. There are a lot, all demonstrating the power of language, but I choose to focus on Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye.

I am not entirely certain that I will fully “get” this book until I’m a middle aged woman, otherwise, never.
When I was eighteen, living in Dallas and trying to find my footing as someone on the verge of adulthood and responsibility, a friend recommended that I read Cat’s Eye. I had to seek it out used, misfiled under Science Fiction, and I think I paid 80 cents for it.

It’s a story about a lot of things, but at the same time it’s not easy to sum up. It starts with a myth, of how when we kill something, that thing becomes a part of us. In the plot, it’s a girl’s spirit which is crushed and she forms a symbiotic relationship with her primary tormentor. Art and memory are two very important themes. What we lose in life as we age, and what we get back in lucky moments of rediscovering ourselves powers the plot, which leaps around in time as different incidents and facts surface in the mind of the main character. The book shuffles the main character’s memory like a deck of cards and you have to stay with it to put all of the pieces together. It’s certainly too uneventful and internal to ever be a movie.

The book profoundly affected me at the time, like a sip of wine at a very young age: it didn’t quite taste right but I knew that if I gave it time there was a world of experience and subtle variations that would open up to me as I matured.

I skipped class, sat in my car, and read the book in a day. I had to reread it again, several times, annually, before I think I fully managed to crack open Atwood’s thoughts. I recommended it to everyone I knew, and they all just shook their head at me. They’d heard of the Handmaid’s Tale, or read that book in high school, but Cat’s Eye was unknown to them.

I’m not big on first editions, believing that books should be distributed and read, not collected; but I have a copy of this one. Every time I go into a used bookstore, if they have a copy on hand I buy it and give it away, sometimes at random.

Atwood’s career has blossomed since then. She won the Booker prize and has written some incredible books (Lady Oracle is fantastic), but Cat’s Eye remains my favorite of hers, probably my favorite book of all time. I had a professor once say that you have to love people to be a writer, but I disagreed. I don’t think Margaret Atwood loves people. In fact, I think she’s a bit misanthrophic. She’s challenging to read and her characters can be hard to root for. I don’t think I could ever be as good a writer as Atwood, but reading Cat’s Eye certainly made me want to try.

Mar92009

Beauty and the Nine Volt Battery

Mood: Up. My move is complete and I found the coffee pot. All my hard drives survived.
On the iPod: Gabriel Yared’s rejected Troy soundtrack.
In the Backpack: Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life.

The construction of beauty, particularly as it pertains to woman, is an old topic. The myth of Pygmalion revolves around just that: a sculptor who creates the perfect woman from stone. Hitchcock covered the topic with surreal, analytical depth in Vertigo. The Stepford Wives was Ira Levine’s sci-fi/horror analysis of the myth: man’s quest to control woman by building her better, if more limited. I think Levine’s take was powerful, just avoid the recent terrible remake of the movie. And you can’t really go wrong with Vertigo, though the animation sequence dates the movie terribly. The latest person to consider this topic, of constructed woman, is Joss Whedon, in his Fox series Dollhouse.

I know Dollhouse is taking a lot of flack in the press, but I’ve decided to look at it without the filter of Firefly (which let’s face it, was pretty damn good television). Dollhouse is looking beyond just the construction of a man’s physical ideal. In Dollhouse, people can ask for the perfect anything and have it custom created for the right price.

It’s a premise with a lot of potential, as well as a horrifying possibility. We look at a future of designer genes, designer babies and the ability to alter our traits rather quickly. Plastic surgery alone offers a field ripe with story potential. Sci-fi certainly is filled with examples of the custom person, built to order. The genre is also filled with examples of the idea gone horribly wrong (Whedon used the concept in Serenity and it came up occasionally in Buffy).

But is Dollhouse any good? I’d say yes. A nice twist this week took me by surprise. A little more intrigue and a little less of the fun personality/costume changes would go a long ways to increasing the concept, but I think I can see where Whedon is aiming and I trust him enough to let him run with it.

Suspense television these last few years, particularly of the Sci-fi variety, has had some incredible examples to work with. Lost and Battlestar Galactica have both kept us on the edge of our seats. Dollhouse is hardly that level of intensity, but frankly, I need a bit more lightness. I can only handle so much of Battlestar’s weight before I want to turn to something smart but dopey looking. I’m giving Dollhouse a B, but I’m keeping with it for a while. After all, the first few episodes of Buffy were hardly instant classics.

Mar52009

The Passing of a Friend

We deal with mentors a lot in fantasy. Thanks to the mythic cycle, we also deal a lot with their passing. Many a good story gets a solid kick when the mentor dies and the student must avenge his master. Moving past the mentor is an important rite of passage for a hero, but in real life, our mentors are people who teach us and believe in us. Then they are gone, and we’re often left a bit more alone and thrust into the unknown without their experience to guide us.

One of my own mentors died recently. Though I only just found out, I have to admit that it’s affecting me more than I thought it would.

Dr. Paul Farkas of Metropolitan State College was my advisor in my English Literature degree. As I stretched my two degrees out over many years, he was also someone I had a lot of contact with. In my first semester as Metro in 2000, I took his course on James Joyce. In my last semester of 2007, I took his Literary Criticism course. His course on Myth, Symbol, and Allusion helped shape my thoughts on the myths and archetypes I wanted to work with in my writing. Further, he did a lot of work with me on myth and popular culture. We analyzed modern myths like Buffy or Xena, often finding humor in how mythic archetypes get replayed in . We shared a love of Margaret Atwood, and I never visited his office without remarking how we owned many of the same books and same editions. One of the things I’ll always remember about Dr. Farkas was his support of me in my writing and aspirations for graduate school. He wore these rather outdated sweater vests and khakis that marked him in my mind as the consummate English professor. He loved Joyce and Auden. Finally, he introduced me to Rilke, a gift for which I will always be grateful. I don’t know where his spirit has gone, but I wish him good journeys. I don’t know where he will be, but I hope he is surrounded by books he loves. Literature was his life, he said once. Analyzing it was a constant process and work of love for him. It was a gift he helped nurture in me.

Feb212009

What We Carry On Our Tongues

I read this article today with a bit of sadness mixed with deep interest. As a native English speaker, who has only taken other languages for fun, I find the topic of endangered languages very interesting. After all, English is rapidly becoming the singular language in many places. Linguistic studies indicate that speakers of other languages soon lose their original tongue after immigration (usually by the third generation).

So what’s the problem? What does losing an obscure language cost all of us? The article spells it out: culture. Poetry, literature (usually oral), traditions, and beliefs, these are all lost to us once a language dies out. Of course, in some cases, we’re able to translate documents or eventually unlock what’s left behind, as in the case of Linear B, but the intrinsic native meaning of so much is lost forever.

Anthropology 101 was a long time ago, so long in fact that we had 101s, but I was fascinated by the potential of other, primitive cultures. One fact I carried away was the study of oral literature and memory “hooks,” those oft repeated phrases in the Iliad or Odyssey, which help the poets catch a moment of mental breath in order to remember more of the epic poem. What epics are lost when a culture vanishes?

In fantasy, there are always ruins. Our characters inhabit a world that they don’t often well understand. Whether they are the remnants of our own technological age, an alien civilization, or simply other cultures, ruins are wonderful doorways into the imagination. We often project our own cultural expectations onto them, which is definitely made easier when we cannot read what literature might be available. It took Archeology and Anthropology (both fairly young sciences) a while to understand that a clinical removal of perspective is necessary, but even then, Anthropologists realized that a studied people react differently than an unstudied one. It all comes back to “show not tell.” We can read a story, we can translate it, but it will never be the same as what the initial culture experienced, and that’s the tragedy of a lost language.

Feb172009

I Really Wasn’t Trying to Complain About the Family Friendly

Just watched the second season episode of Torchwood called Adam. (Yeah, I’m quite behind on Television). That was most definitely not a Doctor Who episode. The writers seem to be doing a good job of building up the sense that Torchwood = loss. Characters have to give up a lot of themselves to live in the world they do. They resolve conflict, save the world while looking good doing it, but they pay a dark and heavy price.

At the center of the conflict is our Point of View character, Gwen Cooper. Her relationship with her boyfriend (first season) / fiancé (second season) is the crux of her character. Rhys is Gwen’s anchor to the world outside Torchwood’s bizarre investigations.

I don’t have to tell you that I’m buying it, as obviously I’m into the second season. Still, the sheer darkness of the story world had me wince a few times last night. One thing I’m enjoying about these BBC shows is the short seasons. There isn’t a lot of room for fluff or irrelevant story, though I do find it a bit light on the character development angle. While it’s comparable to other monster of the week shows, I think Torchwood so far has shown a bit more willingness to risk characters’ lives and vary from formula. This definitely isn’t Doctor Who, and it isn’t Buffy, though both of those series are clearly strong influences.

The BBC is about to air Season Three. By the time we get it over here I should be all caught up and quite ready for more.

Feb172009

Lean and Mean

In the backpack: Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell
On the IPod: Lisa Gerrard, Ichi Soundtrack

I finished my whole draft of Eastlight in the fall. It had evolved so far from its original shape that looking back over the original scraps, I found it almost unrecognizable. And to be honest, I’m a bit embarrassed by them. So now I’ve finished another novel, but I had to ask myself the hard question: is it any good?

I’d like to think so, but at 85,000 words, I kept feeling like the book was a bit bloated. There was more description than I needed, particularly in the first, crucial, section. I gave the book to Alan (from over at RandomTope) and his input reflected what I already knew: we needed to do some pruning.

World-building is a key element in fantasy, but it has to be balanced against action. Alan was right on the money when he told me I’d put so much thought into all the factions and politics that the action was taking a backseat.

By the time I finished editing the first half of the book, I’d cut out 5,000 words. A full edit brought the cut to 8,000, though I decided to add a few scenes and the whole thing ended at 79,000. Why all the details on the word count? First, it’s what agents and editors work with, not page counts.

If you analyze a few paperbacks at random, you’ll notice that the word per page count varies wildly. Eastlight is meant to be a first novel, sure, I hope to make it a series, but for now it needs to be as brief and tightly written as possible. All those extra political factions were adding color, but so much that the main conflict wasn’t clear.

The second reason I focused on word count is that Stephen King’s advice in his excellent On Writing, is that an edit should reduce the word count by about 10 percent.

A final note on the importance of the first section: it’s the first thing a reader sees. I imagine at the bookstore, picking Eastlight off the shelf. They read the first line. Does it grab them? They read the first few pages, does it make them want to read more? That’s my goal, to grab them early and hold onto them till the end.

I think I can safely delete those old drafts of Eastlight. A little comparison shows me how much I’ve grown as a writer. The second half of the book needed a lot less cutting than the first. I’ve still got a ways to go, and I never want to stop improving; but I feel like I’m getting it, advancing in a craft and truly seeing a marked improvement in what I write.

Feb172009

Studying the Craft and Other Updates

I haven’t been much for the blogging lately, instead having thrown myself so deeply into editing with whatever free time I get; but Eastlight is out for a fresh pair of eyes, so it’s time to catch up a bit on the virtual side.

Unfortunately my reading has slowed a bit as well, but I’m happy to say that I’m taking the time to get a few books in on writing. I’ve returned to a habit of keeping one on me at all times. Ten minutes here, fifteen there, it adds up. And I’m grateful to have wonderful friends, who for Christmas stocked me up on great books from my Amazon wishlist. I’ll be reading through them and reviewing them here over the course of the year. I’ve already read two, so look for those soon.

I’m also getting close to graduating. My final quarter of courses in my “practical” CIS degree is about to end and from there I’ve only got the project. For that I’ll be giving my actual website a badly needed makeover and expansion, just in time to start the submission process for Eastlight. It’s nice to be able to tie things together.

Finally, I’ve discovered another great resource on writing better query letters. Query Shark has reinforced the great advice provided by Kristin Nelson, Miss Snark, Evil Editor, and well, just about everybody else.

Feb172009

Some Heroes are Timeless. Some just won’t die.

What’s on the ipod right now? Darren Hayes How to Build a Time Machine.
In the backpack: Ursula K Le Guin Steering the Craft.

As a child in Oklahoma, I had an open love of Science Fiction Television. Every night at 6 pm Star Trek reruns would play on Channel 34. I didn’t yet understand that it had been off the air for years. It was all new to me. Even when the cycle of reruns would repeat, it was okay. I reveled in the characters and the adventures. The bright colors of alien worlds, green women, and bizarre outfits (what was it with Gene Rodenberry and pink faux fur anyway?) added a nightly dose of color to my drab rural world.

My father was working nights at the time, and he’d come home after 10, wake me up, and put me in front of the TV to watch Doctor Who with him at 10:30. In that sleepy state, I’d travel time and space with the Doctor. This was the Tom Baker period and I couldn’t tell you how far off our syndication on PBS Channel 13 was from the original British airdate. I wanted a TARDIS. I wanted a robot dog. I wanted to be Adric (he made math cool in my adolescent eyes).

At some point Doctor Who decayed for me. PBS stopped airing it or I stopped watching. I knew it was still out there, getting lower budgets and a bit weirder. (I remember tuning in once to see ice monsters made of cellophane wrap and plastic party ware). So the Doctor and his adventures slipped into my past, a nice hazy memory of watching TV with my dad.

It took me a while to check out the BBC’s recent revival. I knew Russell T. Davies could write witty dialogue. I knew he’d update it for a twenty-first century world. I knew I also liked Steven Moffat’s writing, but in my brain it remained kid’s stuff, something I’d left behind.

I gave it another shot recently, brought in by the tricky bit of marketing they used to bring back Sarah Jane Smith and K-9, the robot dog I so remembered. Sarah Jane was a vaguer memory, but she’d been part of the mythos when I was little, so off I went on another trip with the Doctor.

The Sarah Jane episode really brought home the sense of lost first loves and closure. She had to move on, let go. In doing so, she got a new life, new purpose, and got her dog back.

Yeah, it’s still kind of kid’s stuff: family friendly and a bit adolescent, but it’s grown up enough to play with themes of loss and growth. I’m all caught up, through Season Four, and while David Tennant’s departure saddens me, I’m going to stick with it for a bit. Maybe someday I’ll have a son and we’ll be dragging out the DVDs. Maybe I’ll even name him Adric.

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