Blog

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 He wore these rather outdated sweater vests and khakis that marked him in my mind as the consummate English professor.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.

Oct122008

Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds

In the backpack right now: Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market
On the ipod: The Frames, Keepsake

We live in a strange and ever interesting world. Wednesday night, my friend invited me to the symphony, whom were performing the music of the Final Fantasy video games. I was curious to hear it, as the series has been a part of my life since high school, since the first game was released on the original NES. I stopped playing at some point, when I realized that the games were taking ever more hours to beat, and that was time I could be spending reading or writing. Still, I kept up on the series.

Wednesday’s concert included giant video screens showing footage from the games. What surprised me was how much I remembered of the footage they showed, and how good some of the music was once it was taken out of its 16, 32, and even 64 bit context.

Each game, and its cut scene movies or music evoked a very specific memory: escaping away into combat and exploration of continents when high school had me depressed. They showed the trailer for FF 8, whose main character, in the form of a giant face, followed me through Dublin the first time I went to Ireland. Strangely, I never played FF 7, the one most people seem to best remember, but I saw the movie Advent Children this summer when I went to see Colorado’s Black Canyon, an amazing piece of landscape I’ve always wanted to explore.

I was surprised how excited the crowd was to hear the guest conductor name each track. I’ve always known video games had music, it just never occurred to me that it could have such fans.

The symphony did an amazing job, bringing a full chorus to handle the vocals on the more operatic pieces, and I’ll confess that hearing the opera sequence from FF 5 made me break out in a huge grin. I’m sure that a few of the classically minded musicians resented playing material from such a source, but it speaks to the uniqueness of our age when a genre as young as video games can be translated through a media as old as classical music.

Apr192008

History and the Family Epic: David’s Review of Dragon Prince

Album I’m listening to today: Lisa Gerrard’s Immortal Memory
In the backpack: Sunrunner’s Fire by Melanie Rawn and The Splendour that was Egypt by Margaret A. Murray

I got to Melanie Rawn along a strange path. My first exposure to her books was through the cover art: particularly the cover to Sunrunner’s Fire. That Michael Whelan painting is still nicely etched in my memory. I wish I had read Dragon Prince, the first book in this trilogy, in high school (and I hereby date myself by letting you know that’s when it was published). Though I’d already started working with some of the characters and ideas that would become my first still unpublished book, Neophyte, I wasn’t reading much fantasy in 1989.

I wish I had. This book definitely seems to be from a different age of writing: it has a lot description and detail, particularly in the realm of colors. I was struck by her detailing of the clothing and colors, which is nearly overdone at points. I think she veers into romance territory often, but a lot of the darkness I find (okay, and write) in fantasy, isn’t to be found here. The most brutal acts in this book didn’t resonate for me. I didn’t shudder with concern for the characters, and well, maybe I’m being a little too harsh.

If you have read Isabelle Allende’s House of Spirits, you know epic family history can be a powerful device in fiction (though to be fair, House of Spirits is magical realism, and down the street a ways from traditional fantasy). My friend Brian, who recommended Dragon Prince, hinted that the first book is a large amount of buildup, that a lot of its events won’t bear fruit until the second novel. After nearly 600 pages, I’m not sure the payoff is going to be worth it.

Front loading is a big issue for me in books lately. I need to get my review of Blood King up, but it turned my attention to this problem that I hope I can avoid. Dragon Prince follows an older style of epic, whereby all the players are set in position and slowly introduced before any action comes to bear. Summoner did a good job of getting right into the thick of it, while its sequel, Blood King really takes a while to execute its plot.

Dragon Prince makes one other crucial mistake: it tells a lot of important deaths and details, rather than showing them. To cover such a wide range of time and so many characters, this was probably necessary, but it definitely robs the book of a lot of impact. I’m glad I read it, and it was compelling enough that I’m working my way through the other two books in the trilogy, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’ve already been drawn to it.

Apr92008

Sultry Fairytale: David’s Review of Thief with no Shadow by Emily Gee

Album Playing tonight: Twilight as Sung by the Twilight Singers.

I bought this book a while ago. It’s the third book by Hyperion that I’ve read, and so far I’m impressed. While Summoner was a good little ghost story, Thief with no Shadow is fairly less epic in its aim, though I think it is better written. Gee’s sentences are simple in style but with good color and depth. She spins a fairly simple plot that drew me in to its depths.

It reminded me of Caroline Stevermer’s When the King Comes Home, which was another simple book that had a lot of thought put into it. Thief is definitely more adult. I wouldn’t pass it along to my teenage daughter, though I was pleased with the distinct voice of the main character. The sexuality is still pretty minimal but not easy to digest. One of the things I think Gee did best was essentialist world-crafting: I got the right amount of detail to envision her locales but not so much that I got lost in boring details of customs or travelogue.

If you’ve noticed that I haven’t given you a plot summary, I should tell you that it’s on purpose. Pick this one up and discover by chance, like I did. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. Like its main character, it will sneak up on you.

Apr12008

No Future in Sight

Today’s Ipod song? Nothing. The chaos wave affecting my technology finally hit the pod.

S.M. Stirling’s Dies the Fire is exactly the type of fantasy that I try to avoid. I have it on good authority that it’s well written and fascinating. What would happen if all of our much vaunted technology was suddenly zapped and ceased to function? In Stirling’s view, it would be interesting chaos: some social conventions would completely die out, others would thrive. The idea that we’re so close to a complete and utter collapse of society sends all too familiar shivers up my spine not because I necessarily believe it, but because I’ve heard it all too often, and it echoes against something drilled into me for many years.

My mother and stepfather are apocalyptic Christians, which means they strongly believe strongly that at any moment the world will unravel, the Rapture will happen, the United Nations will come over the hills seeking our guns and put us all into concentration camps. Hearing this nearly every day in high school didn’t do much for my sense of futurism. It fed in me a distinct fatalism. What was the point of college? Striving for a better career? Any effort you put forth to improve yourself was soon to be wiped out by a cataclysmic change. The best you could do is remain pure in thought or deed, remain as static as possible, in case today was the day when all hell would break loose.

I rejected this teaching in time. I had something in me far too Humanist, far too curious, to do nothing with my life. Having a job flipping burgers could have contributed to it, but I wanted more.

When I first began reading the Enlightenment thinkers, I understood where they were coming from. They were trying to reason on logic while also updating their methodology. I won’t say they hit their mark, but I found in Voltaire and Franklin sympathetic minds. I strive for the rational, though sometimes the superstitious still lurks at the edge of my mind. When I see people being injected with RFID tags for security purposes my mind immediately leaps to the Mark of the Beast. The more I see our privacy violated the more I worry that the world could teeter in that destructive direction. Maybe it will. Maybe my mother was right all those years ago when she told me the tales of the tortures we’d all face at the hands of a world government.

I believe this world is worth living in, that for every terror the nightly news shows us, there is a sublime beauty in nature or in the arts. By endlessly contemplating the horrors awaiting those left behind, my mother fails to edify those she could help: instead of remaining static, she could be feeding the poor, educating the illiterate, improving the world a little bit at a time.

There is only so much time in a life. At thirty-four I know I’m at the halfway mark. It doesn’t make me dread the mystery of the end; it makes me want to do more, faster. If we’re all doomed by some asteroid the government isn’t telling us about or by the work of the devil, I’d still rather get what good done that I can, rather than waste time contemplating the inevitable end.

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