David R Slayton

Jun182009

An Interview with Gail Martin, author of the Chronicles of the Necromancer series

For this post, I’m doing something exciting: an interview with Gail Martin. Gail is promoting her series, Chronicles of the Necromancer, and she kindly agreed to let me interview her for the blog. Read on below for more about Gail’s series and find the sneak peek she’s offering for the fourth volumne: Dark Lady’s Chosen.

In the Summoner, you introduced us to a hero, Martris Drake, who as a necromancer, would normally be evil. While Tris uses his spirit magic for good, you have hinted at a dark side to Tris’s powers. Will we see more of this explored in further volumes?

I really wanted to question the assumption that a necromancer is necessarily evil. I don’t think that being dead makes someone a bad person, and just because a spirit is brought back from the dead, why should it change the moral compass the person had throughout life? I realized this when my grandmother died when I was just a girl. At first, the whole ghost thing spooked me, and then I realized that if my grandmother were to come back (to my knowledge, she hasn’t), it would still be my grandmother and she wouldn’t hurt me.

So the ghosts and the power itself are morally neutral. But spirit magic is very powerful and rare, and it carries a real temptation to use it for selfish ends or to say that the ends justify the means. Tris sees what this seduction costs the Obsidian King and the mage Lemuel, whose body was possessed by the Obsidian King’s spirit. As he ventures further into the moral quandaries of being a king and the battlefield issues where right and wrong become murky, it will be harder and harder for Tris to avoid making compromises. So yes, you’ll see more of this struggle, especially in Dark Lady’s Chosen.

You’re blending a lot of genres together: fantasy with light horror and most recently quite a bit of romance. What brought you to writing fantasy? What inspired you to write in this genre?

I really just started by writing the stories I wanted to read. I’ve loved fantasy and the paranormal since I was a kid, as well as vampires, ghosts, magic and haunted houses. So it’s inevitable, I guess, for all those elements to end up in my novels. As for the romance—the books are first and foremost action/adventure, but I’ve always enjoyed deeper characterizations and a hint of romance, so there it is. It’s not the most important element or the focus of the book, but when you’re dealing with a cast of characters that are young men and women in their 20s and early 30s it seems like it would be remiss to leave it out. I want to make the characters very real as well as their setting and adventures. My favorite books are the ones where I feel like I’ve really gotten to know the characters as people.

I have to ask about your inspiration for your character naming conventions. Can I ask where you get your names from? They have a great old Europe or Romany sound but also a consistent texture.

Good question! I will admit to having a stack of baby name books by my computer, and I use the online sources as well. Since the setting is quasi-northwestern European, many of the names are variants of Anglo-Saxon, Welsh, Celtic and Gaelic names, with some Bulgarian, Slovenian, Romanian influences as well. It depends on the character I’m naming.

I’m really excited for the fourth book in the series, Dark Lady’s Chosen. You’ve certainly left us with a couple of cliffhangers and done a great job in splitting focus onto various characters. How long do you expect the series to go, and will we see more of the other characters in main storylines?

Thank you! I’m hoping the series will go on in various forms for a long time. By ‘various forms’ I mean duologies and maybe trilogies that are contemporary to the first 4 books and that also go backwards or forwards in the chronology, as well as some completely unrelated storylines. I think I’ve identified at least 20 story arcs so far I’d like to work on in the Winter Kingdoms, so we’ll see!

Yes, as the books unfold I do plan to show readers more of the Winter Kingdoms and more of characters who may have just had a minor role in other books. There will be new characters as well. It’s a big world—there are lots of interesting people and plenty of stories to tell!

I think your use of a rather singular religion in the series is very interesting. You’ve got different factions fighting over it anyway, which I think reflects human nature. The Goddess has already made a few cameos. Can you tell us a little bit more about how religion affects your story world? Will we see more of Her and the Sisterhood in the following volumes?

Fantasy often either ignores religion, gives it a superficial nod and then moves on, or makes it the uber-bad guy. I wanted to have it be a part of my world and my characters’ lives in realistic ways, because it does shape the history and the culture of the world, even for agnostics and atheists. As you read the books, I think you’ll see that the Aspect of the Lady a particular individual or kingdom is drawn to colors the world view and even self image of that person/kingdom, and the choice of Aspect often tells you more about the individual/kingdom than it does about the nature of the Goddess herself!

In the real world, whether or not someone is observant or not, religion or the lack thereof is an element of culture, just like geography, social structure, economics, plague, invasion, famine, historical rivalries, politics and personality. I love playing with the texture of the 8 different major practices, and as you’ll see in Dark Haven and Dark Lady’s Chosen, there are older, partially forgotten gods and goddesses who aren’t really gone as well as a wide variety of observances for holidays and life events such as weddings, funerals, births and coming-of-age. And of course, the vayash moru and vyrkin have their own observances and perspectives shaped from their unique situations and for the vayash moru, their long lives. So yes, you’ll see more of both the Goddess and the Sisterhood as the books move forward.

Finally, any tips for the unpublished fantasy authors out there? What do you think aspiring authors can do to succeed?

To succeed, you have to keep trying. Write what you enjoy reading. Don’t write to impress other people or because someone tells you a certain type of book sells well. Write what you enjoy. Then find a couple of trusted friends who like to read the same types of books you do and try your stuff out on them. Pick people who are kind but honest: you don’t want people who enjoy shredding other people’s work for their own amusement. Then write. The more you write, the better you get. It’s ok to start with fan fiction. Many famous writers did. Eventually you’ll find a story of your own and then you’ll find the fire inside to tell it. Learn everything you can about the business of writing by reading books about publishing and going to conventions or conferences where you can talk to real writers. Some of the best books on the subject are published by Writers’ Digest Books. I think I’ve read all of them. They are very helpful.

For more about Gail’s dynamic series, visit her site: www.chroniclesofthenecromancer.com. She’s got some great content, including podcasts and a calendar of upcoming appearances. You can also read the first chapter of Dark Lady’s Chosen here.

Jun112009

Off the Beaten Path: David’s Review of Eat, Pray, Love

Finishing my “practical” Master’s in Computer Information Systems sort of knocked me offline for the month of May. I was staring at a computer for most of it, but I’m afraid my writing and blogging got mightily ignored. Whenever this happens, whether from a dry creative period or life just keeping me away, I find I’ve lost focus. It’s not very different from working out: you ignore your muscles and they atrophy. Going back to the gym means finding your place and building them back up again. Completing the degree meant that my brain was very, very tired. It was quite strange, but I realized that I had little ability for meaningful output directly after. Instead I switched to input and started tackling the stack of books piled up beside my desk.

I just finished Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir piece Eat, Pray, Love, stepping far outside my genre. It was a great read and I got a lot out of tagging along for her global adventure of rediscovering her self. I don’t think I was one hundred pages in before I’d made a mental list of six people, not all of them women, to recommend it to. Gilbert’s journey to explore pleasure and devotion gets kicked off with a brutal divorce, something too many of the people on my list can relate to. I have to admit a lot of the appeal to me was getting into her head, feeling how she experienced her journey. By the end I felt like I’d connected with her as a voice, made another friend “through the pages” as an old saying goes. The book is intensely personal.

In many ways, Gilbert’s journey is mythic and that connects it well to fantasy. After all, our characters in fantasy are usually on a journey. Their experiences and encounters change them, evolve them, and shake them up. The whole concept of the mythic journey is just that: a call to leave an ordinary life. Gilbert is lucky enough to have experienced this in reality, but she touches on why I read fantasy and why I fell enough in love with it to write it: by escaping for a bit, we get the chance to change our perspective. Maybe we learn something, maybe not, but just the experience affects us. Gilbert set out with a mission and a plan, the benefits of which unknowing characters rarely have. Escape can be avoidance, but it does not have to be. Escape, when you’re trapped, is exactly what you need. By traveling with characters on their journeys, we ride along, and hopefully empathize with their plight. When they experience something, maybe we experience too. I’d highly recommend Eat, Pray, Love for anyone in your life who needs a change.

Jun62009

Everything Old is New Again

The summer movie season came faster than I expected. It will be dating myself to say that when I was in high school, Terminator 2 was the big action flick. This summer feels like a nostalgia wave: Star Trek, Transformers, and a new Terminator are all hitting the screen.

I find it interesting that we cling to serials and timeless characters, though I’ll have to do a lot more in depth analysis to grasp what I think makes a character last like that. In fantasy, the trilogy seems to be the norm, but the series is another standard. I think some series go on a bit too long, sometimes when the author has simply run out of things for the characters to do. (I’m thinking here of R.A. Salvatore’s action-packed Drizzt series, which I loved for the first eight books or so). Or an author leaves too many threads dangling, and I finish the books feeling like some important plot points were left unresolved.

But we seem drawn to everlasting characters, ones we eventually call classic. I can easily tick off a list of attempts to bring older characters forward: the upcoming Sherlock Holmes film immediately springs to mind. Some of these characters are actually immortal, drawn back from death after their creators have tried to let them go time and time again.

So how do we get from blank stock character to one we want to spend a number of books with? It’s a question I’ll be putting a lot of thought into as I think about Eastlight’s future. I’d certainly like to see it go to series and last at least as long as a trilogy. I’ve started with the idea that characters need to evolve over time, but not too quickly, so they have somewhere to go. While my two main characters certainly grow in the course of the first novel, I’ve left them a lot of room to mature and sprawl out in time. Certainly a character should be unique, original enough the reader wants to spend many books with them, but not too unique. I think of the typical romantic heroine, who shouldn’t be so offbeat or alien that your reader cannot identify with her getting the hero. Genres such as fantasy and science fiction give us the chance to work with characters radically different in culture, history, and even biology. All of these things can help to give a character flavor and a distinct background, but even strongly defining traits shouldn’t override our ability to relate to a character.

May92009

Writes of Spring II: The Query Process

Mood: Still up, but trying to refocus now on my next project.
Music: Byzantine chants, perfect for writing fantasy on a Saturday morning.
Backpack: Just finished Fool Moon by Jim Butcher, turning back to some Rilke.

In my last post, I alluded to the idea that shopping for an agent is like dating. I’m not the first person to make this analogy, but I can take it a step farther: it’s a lot like Internet dating. You craft a query letter, you hope to intrigue a stranger, not look too desperate for representation, and most of all, create a life long relationship that will benefit you both. When I first crafted my query letter, it was pretty bare bones. As I visit more and more sites, I realize different agents want different levels of detail. So the letter has spawned many, many versions. Just like an online profile, I keep testing what to share, what to hold back, and where to hint that I might have a bit more up my sleeve than a cliché opening line.

Things have changed a lot since I shopped my last book. More agents are working through email. This is great for the cost savings, the faster turnaround time, and of course the paper we’re all saving. It also means I can craft a letter on the bus and then fire it off once I get to my day job. It also gives me the chance to reference materials on my web site without bogging down the query letter. Who wants to type a URL from a snail letter into a browser?

The query letter shifts a bit to reflect different agents’ needs. The bare bones is the same, but the more research I do into an agent’s client list, the more likely I am to see if I’m going to align with what they’re looking for. The key to improving the letter is the key to improving any writing: editing and time. The pitfalls are also the same: know how and when to let it go and stop fussing with it. I’ve dropped my kid off for his first day of school. Let’s see if I’ve given him the skills to survive rejection, grow through adversity, and the wits to avoid having his lunch money stolen by scammers. The query also means taking a bit more time for research: the agent has to represent young adult fantasy and hopefully have a track record with the genre. It’s an extra plus when I see they rep an author I love, but like dating, it can also make me more nervous about the introduction.

Then there are the criteria. Some agents go off the letter alone, no pages wanted. This means they’ve got to be intrigued by the blurb alone. Fair enough, think of them as browsers in a bookstore, looking at the back of books. If that’s enough to get them to read five pages, I’ve written the right blurb. Some agents linger a bit longer. They want the first few pages. Always the first few, so make them count. This is the second impression, the first actual date. Try not to blow it. Dress appropriately – is your copy error-proof? Write down the directions – did you include the right contact information, the right format, the right number of pages. Be a gentleman – Be careful to make sure you’ve got the agent’s name and other letter details right. So far, so good. You’ve made it through dinner.

This brings me to the delicate art of the synopsis. A little reading online tells me I’m not alone in finding synopsis writing a challenge. I think one reason is that it’s reversing everything we’ve learned about showing and telling. You have to tell in a synopsis. How else are you going to get the details of your story out in a few pages? That doesn’t mean it can be boring. Even the synopsis has to be punched up to intrigue. My first synopsis draft was too short. It made no sense because I was trying to get the entire story crammed into two pages. My second draft was five pages and way too long. The current, and hopefully final, form is three pages. With each draft I’ve gotten great input from my support network and the language has become more active. It’s not the whole story by any means. I had to leave out a lot of great secondary characters and interesting side-trips, but the meat of the conflict is there. This is the version of the story you’d tell your date over dinner. Don’t bore them with detail but don’t leave out anything critical that’s going to cause her to lose interest. Try to imagine at what point I’d lose my friend or she would start yawning. Really, this is the same process the book should have: at what point was someone able to put it down? When did they get bored? Those are the parts to edit or take out.

Like dating, querying agents means a lot of rejection and a lot of practice. Some people may get lucky and connect with the right agent on the first go, but I’m willing to bet that for most of is, it’s a longer process.

The last bit of leg I can get out of this analogy is that the rejection can get you down. You can feel down about your work and worn out from your efforts here. Taking a short break, working on your next project or even putting writing away for a few days altogether can recharge your batteries. The one piece of advice that won’t hold up is to stop looking. You have to query many, many agents in a wide pool. You have to put yourself out there and stay in the game. Hold me to that as the rejections come in.

Apr292009

The Writes of Spring

Mood: Bouncy. Spring is here, though we’re still seeing a bit of snow. The lilacs are just starting to bud, and a young man’s fancy turns to querying agents.

Music: Franz Ferdinand, Tonight

Backpack: Forest for the Trees: an Editor’s Advice to Writers by Betsy Lerner

Your eyes do not deceive you, I’ve been reformatting the blog to apply some of the stuff I’ve learned about message design and merge its theme to the changes over at davidrslayton.com.

It has been a really productive season. I’ve put a lot of myself into Eastlight, getting it to a place where I want to share it and start getting input. I’ve polished the book to the point where I’m ready to query. I’ve been pumping a lot of energy into those materials: the hook, the letter, and the synopsis. I’ve come a long ways on updating my website. We had the photo shoot Sunday and the pictures came out better than I’d hoped:

There, doesn’t that look more writerly?

I also took a break last week to catch the Franz Ferdinand concert and catch up with friends. There is nothing as renewing for me as watching my friend Marnie dance, red hair washing back and forth as I feel the music coming up through my feet.

Sometimes you have to take a break, mix up your routine, get out of your book cavern, and see what the rest of the world (who isn’t obsessing about scene transitions and dialogue choices) are up to. I have to plug my friends here and praise them. They are my critique group, my first readers, and above all my support system. They listen to my ideas, and I trust them to give me honest input without the sugar coating. Most important of all, they keep me grounded so I don’t descend into my little cave of books and loose leaf paper. To Marnie, Jo, Alfred, Justine, Alan, and everyone else who has been there lately, thank you! Hopefully we’ll soon have cause to celebrate seeing Eastlight in print.

Apr172009

Lessons Learned so Far

Status: Eastlight is complete! First query letters are off. The first rejection is in. Now we play the waiting game.

I was really flattered yesterday when someone asked me what he should do to start writing a book. I felt a bit like an imposter, as I haven’t published my novel, but I do think I have figured a few things out. Here are the things I am applying to my own work.

Write. This one is standard advice. You’ll read it anywhere. To write well, you need to write as often as you can. I’d take it a step farther and say that you need to write with a structured approach. Be free form to get it down, but try to keep it in my mind that the work has to make sense to other people. In fantasy we have a tendency to spin out worlds that to us are intricately detailed, with lots of juicy side-trips, but that same book needs to translate into something a reader can engage. My friend Alan says that I “have a hard time seeing the trees for the forest, and my forest is deep and lush.” He’s referring to my tendency to build an entire world, when the reader only needs the part they’re exploring. So I’ve been cutting a lot of these details out and saving them for later journeys.

Grammar. This is one I’ve seen pushed aside in a lot of the creative writing courses I’ve taken. The idea is that writing is intimidating, and grammar more so, therefore it’s important to just write and not worry about grammar, which is something you can bolt in later. I think of grammar and the language itself as the operating system. You might create an incredible video game, but if it won’t run on any computer’s operating system, then you’ve made something that will never sell. So again, write freely, but study grammar and language. Writing truly is a craft and becoming good at it means constant practice and applied study. If you’re writing fantasy, think of it as your own wizardly studies. Mastery takes expertise and training. The beauty of it is that you can always learn more, go farther, and reach a new level in the craft. The next level will always be there. Reach for it, and never stop growing in skill.

Read. Annie Dillard says that the payoff in writing is being a better reader. Actively read, not just in your genre, but in others. See what’s happening in Literary Fiction, Horror, Suspense, etc. Even Romance may have a few things to teach you. This is one piece of advice I see over and over, but the part that I don’t see as often is that you need to read actively. By this I mean that you need to analyze books as you read them. Think about point of view, exposition, plot elements, characterization. Try to grasp what’s working and not working in the books you read or even the movies you watch. I’ll warn you though, this might kind of ruin reading for you. I know I’ve learned to shut off my writer self when discussing a movie with friends. Dissecting a creature does after all kill it.

Share. I wrote my first book in a vacuum. I thought of it as a great opus, a piece of art, and didn’t get any input until it was finally finished. And then, it didn’t sell. The book was bloated, with too much description, too much exposition, not enough dialogue. The book came out just like it was being written: solitarily, with little review. When you’ve got a draft together, carefully select people you trust to share it with. They need to be readers or writers, but it’s hard to find just the right critique circle. I chose readers who have a lot of experience with books but not so much with writing. I felt the writers I worked with were too close to their work or ideas to objectively critique mine. Even then, my readers had very different tastes. I found their feedback to often be helpful not for fixing problems, but for telling me what wasn’t working. Regardless of the feedback, be gracious. Somebody took the time to read a less than perfect version of your book. I really could not have written this book without them.

Open-mindedness. Holding your work too close to you is a sure way to strangle it. Some of the best sentences I framed for Eastlight were the ones I had to cut. They were pretty, but they didn’t fit into the flow. I find that I suffer from too many ideas, too many random directions. I had to cut a lot of these side-trips and segues in order to make the book work as a whole tapestry. Be open to the feedback you receive, and be prepared to make changes. Define which items you’re not willing to budge on, but be sure they’re worth the fight. I may revise this lesson once Eastlight is published, as I suspect that publishers and agents will have some suggestions of their own. The important thing is that I am open to them. I’m not married to the work, and as long as the changes don’t compromise the heart of the story I wanted to tell, I am willing to make them. Get a thick skin. It’s a tough market, and thousands of books are written every year that will never be published.

Editing. You’ve got to be brutally objective when you edit. Stephen King suggests putting a manuscript away for six months before editing. I’m too impatient for that, but I do recommend getting some distance. In my case, I sent the book out for critique and got to work on my next project. I started writing something completely different, so that when Eastlight came back covered in blood red ink, I was ready to see it with fresh eyes. It really helped. I integrated the feedback that I felt enhanced the book, starting with the line by line typo corrections, then turned my attention to items of larger or vaguer note: “This character doesn’t have a big enough part;” “There are too many religious factions to keep track of,” etc. Some of this feedback was a matter of the reader’s taste. Some of them agreed on weak points, and after having taken six weeks off from it, so did I. I cut a lot of factions, speeding things up considerably, and making it easier for the reader to jump into the story. In some places I combined factions, removing partitions, and in one, I changed an important faction that showed up at the end to match one from the beginning, giving the story some nice parallelism. A friend asked why I worried so much about editing, that wouldn’t the agents or publishers take care of that, which brings us to my next lesson learned.

Professionalism. Be in it to win it. Be objective and on. Write the best book you can and try to avoid obsessing about publishing. When you’re ready, and the book is as good as you can make it, start studying the publishing and querying process. Do not just start sending your book out. Read up on agents, what they represent, what they’re looking for. Follow the instructions on their website or in Writer’s Market, or on Publisher’s Marketplace. Never assume you’re the exception to the rule. Be prepared to see your work objectively and take critique. Get real on the chances and on the process. Don’t assume the book you’ve labored on as an act of love is the next big seller. Be kind to the agents that request partials and gracious to those who don’t.

I’m sure as the process progresses that I’ll have a fresh list or a few refinements, but the list above is a good start.

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.

Blog