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Who doesn’t like a good ghost story? Gail Martin’s The Summoner begins on Haunts (Halloween), with spirits walking and a royal coup. Martris Drayke is tasked with avenging his family, overthrowing his half-brother, and fleeing for his life. En route he has to learn to control his necromatic spirit magic.

What worked for me: The opening hook worked for me. Martin set up a compelling reason to get on board right off the bat. Her world is three dimensional and distinct. Magic is handled in a practical way and Martin makes it look easy in how she blends action and ghosts to the character’s reality. The characters don’t stop and emote while running for their lives. The romantic affections build: they don’t just drop out of the sky. These are two fantasy conventions that always drive me nuts.

What didn’t work: I felt like the vampires were shoe-horned in at the last minute. The two typos I noticed concerned them but hey, she didn’t use elves. There is also an eleventh hour plot device that wrapped things up a bit too tidily for me.

I always feel like writing, just not always what I should be.

What’s playing right now? Ani diFranco, Cloud Blood from To the Teeth

It’s on o’clock on Easter. It’s snowing hard outside and the cat is glued to the window to watch. I have a ton of German homework to do and Eastlight isn’t going to edit itself, but I’m distracted this early afternoon by thoughts about heroes, specifically my heroes.

I’m trying to expand the page I have on myspace.com and they ask for heroes. I quickly noticed that most of mine were women. Most of my favorite authors are women. Most of my favorite musicians are also women. The pattern is inescapable. Women are a tremendous influence on my life. That brings me back to Easter, which brings me back to Spring, which brings me back to my grandmother.

Her birthday was April 2nd. She died in the month of May some years ago. I’ll never forget that spring. Grandmother died the Sunday before finals started. My grandfather, on the other side, died the week before mid-terms. I started the semester with a flu so severe they put me on an IV for dehydration. Needless to say, it was not a stellar term for my academic record.

My grandmother got me. Not completely. I was a very weird kid after all. But she tried. She encouraged my creativity, saving me cereal boxes and panty hose eggs to build spaceships with. (The eggs made the absolute best escape pods). She bought me Star Wars action figures and let me play in her private bathroom, where the bright yellow carpet made for a great alien landscape. Okay, she spoiled me a lot. She let me build a toy city in her spare room. Comprised of lego bricks, plywood, discarded bits of furniture and bits of junk, it was my finest childhood creation. She let me be a world builder. When I set up my Ewok village in a pot of dirt with real plants for trees, she crocheted me strings of green for vines. I could always raid her spice rack for magical ingredients.

My grandmother was once a violist and when her tutor/fiancé left her for California and a symphony job, she took it hard. My grandfather wooed her and she was honest with him that she needed time to heal. Their marriage lasted over fifty years, until her death. She always loved music.

My grandmother was a wonderful cook and while I have copies of all of her recipes, I have no skill for baking her cinnamon rolls or cakes. I practice sometimes, in her memory, but it never tastes the same and it never will. There is no way to bake in the here and now and mix in the ineffable qualities that only a childhood memory can contain.

My grandmother and I did not agree about religion or politics but we did not argue. I think I chose the exact right age to move out of state, before my adulthood could ruin our ideal of what our relationship had been when I was a child. Her faith was not something she proselytized about to me. I felt it was sincere in the way she did not feel the need to announce it.

My grandmother was a poet. She typed these little religious poems out years ago, in courier typewriter font and put them away. But we kept discovering them, so she did not hide them too hard. She was embarrassed by them, as she was by her proper first name, Ruby.

I miss her all the time. I miss her strength. And she was very strong. I never saw her shy from a burden, hard thing, or task in her life. I miss her letters, most of all. They came too rarely and I did not call nearly as often as I should have.

I do not have a bad thing to say about my grandmother, though my siblings and parents can find a few. My grandmother encouraged me, took pride in me, loved me, and she was one of my heroes.

Or, April showers and all that. Today the city is rainy with a bit of sleet. There’s a thing I’m helping with at work so I’m going in. Too bad, this would be a great “mental health”, call in sick day to work on Eastlight. I would thrive in Seattle, like a low light plant or happy mushroom. There is nothing better to me than a day on the couch, hand editing or free writing with a big mug of coffee. Instead I’m out the door and on the bus now. The caffeine is starting to kick in and the ipod is serving up some Spoon mixed up with the National, so I’m picking up and thinking about my listening habits.

The Republic begins with a dinner party. Socrates is pleasantly forced to attend and when he attempts to reason with Polemarchus, the son of the host, Polemarchus replies that you cannot “convince us if we refuse to listen.”

I’m in heavy editing mode right now, trying to trim “my words like kudzu” as Miss Snark suggests. It makes me feel like I’m operating with my blinders on. On the bus, head in the world of Aegea and face glued to laptop, I don’t even notice the woman who sits next to me. She’s well dressed and comments sideways that I’m obsessive for working on the bus. I give her a quick sideways librarian finger to the lips and get back to work. This is my time, precious, and I won’t be distracted. I’m not listening.

Lately, I’m on a delayed signal. Marnie Christenson, the goddess of indie rock goodness, gives me great album after great album and they sit. I listen to them and put them aside. Then a few months or weeks later, it will click in my head. I go back to it and fall in love. Not driving, I’m almost wholly disconnected from the radio. I’ll often discover a song in a television show or movie and think it’s new. Having been raised without access to secular music in junior high and most of high school, I thought Duran Duran was sparkling new in 1989.

I’m not trying to live some intellectual, aesthetic life. I keep my eye on pop culture and watch what TV I find clever. But lately, I find myself having cut down a lot on my reading and this I think, is a mistake. I can’t just write in a vacuum, spinning out what I think is gold. I need to measure it, get the pulse of what’s popular and what is selling. I need to thicken my skin and open myself to more criticism and input. More importantly, I need to remember that writing is all well and good, but without an audience you’re just talking to yourself.

I turn to the lady beside me and ask her where she’s from. Detroit it turns out. I let her know I’ve heard it compared to “bombed-out Beirut” but never been. “Yep,” she replies. “Beirut on the Lake.”

See? There is someone with a life experience I’ve never had. The rest of ride was informative and colorful, as only public transportation can be. Writing and editing are important David, but they aren’t much good without life!

By now you may have heard of The Compact, the group in San Francisco who try not to buy anything new for a year. They have exceptions for food and things like toilet paper, but when it comes to cars or clothes, they buy only used. And I think it’s pretty neat.
I decided to try and implement a few of these steps and run an experiment. So I’m not buying clothes this year. I’ll make exceptions for a job interview (which includes meeting with agents or publishers), or a funeral (my wedding suit is in prime condition). Till then, I’ll be that guy in the slightly worn slacks.
Somebody asked me what it felt like so far (as if I’d quit smoking or something hard) and I had to say that it feel a lot like when I stopped driving. This prompts a:
“YOU DON’T DRIVE?!”
Yep. Gave it up. Hated it. Was bad at it. It impaired my drinking.
It’s a pretty stupid story about how I totaled my car on an ice patch only to realize I’d let my insurance lapse by a couple of days.
“Mr. Slayton, to get your license back…”
“No, seriously Your Honor, just keep the damn thing.”
The first week I went through withdraw. I couldn’t just run to the mall and buy something. Then I noticed, I wasn’t buying as much stuff. I had more time to read on the bus. I wasn’t late as often because the bus schedule taught me discipline. I wasn’t as angry from negotiating traffic. Then, once the car loan balance was paid off, I started realizing the financial changes: no car payment, no insurance, no tickets, no gas, and no maintenance.
I’m finally getting my license back for my next Europe vacation, but it would take a lot to make me own another car.

I’m supposed to be editing Eastlight right now. Having found that I’ve been mis-using coordinating conjunctions, I’m searching on each one and checking its usage. It is tedious work to say the least. But the dreams that started off the year, with the Moth Box, having stopped and are begging to be written about.

I’ll start with Sunday night. I dreamt that Lesley, Forrest and Jordan (my god-daughter) had moved their life to the same sort of rural existence as my own upbringing. Forrest had decided to stop being a highway engineer and was actually now a highway patrolman. My own father had been a park ranger. Their hats were the same, wide brimmed, round with these yellow tassels that draped after running around the top in a circle. Something in my past is wanting discussion. At issue was Jordan, who I was babysitting and who needed to be fed. This became a mad dash from place to place in the woods as I carried her and kept tripping. Each time I fell I caught her safely but there was a snake blocking my path. They were often twisted and blue, small or large but they were ubiquitous. Each time I recovered my footing and had to try and mix her formula, with the precision of temperature you must use with a baby. This kind of stress dream usually never has a resolution for me. And neither did this one. It was dashing from pitfall to snake until I awoke.

That was Sunday night. Yesterday was Monday and this was different. Brian’s started on the daunting task of cleaning the closets, preparing us for another move and looking at what we own that should be donated or gotten rid of. There is an amazing used bookstore here called Books Unlimited. It is a family owned business and the people who run it are incredible. If you are in Denver, check them out. I’ve always thought of the place as a trove, where hidden treasure can be found if you’re just willing to do a little digging. In my dream they’d moved to Fort Collins, a good distance north of here. We made the trek and the place was busy. The thing of interest was the layout. The store had chosen a space that shared a plus sign layout with three other shops. The square that joined them was a massive gas fireplace where bright flames roared through a large framed sized window. It filled the store with warmth and red light. The space itself was twisted, with small nooks and tables where readers sat with coffee and texts. I ran into my ex, tapped him on the shoulder and we said hello but nothing else. We dug into the cabinets and shelves of the books. I found a Christmas coffee mug my mother would love. But the longer I looked at it I realized that it portrayed the hideous mask of a green ice monster squished together with a snowman. Then I opened another cabinet and within were toys, pristine, from my childhood. I suggested to the shopkeeper that he sell them on Ebay and make a fortune but instead he gave them to me at a steal of a price.

January 2nd 2007. I hung up the phone with my brother and headed out to get on the bus for work. The call that had made me late hadn’t regarded a death, an overdose, or any event of such weight.
“Our father is getting a divorce.” Is how Bonner started. The divorce itself may not happen. It may happen. Whichever route our father’s third marriage takes isn’t really what Bonner wants to discuss. He wants to talk about the blame and where it belongs.

The truth of it should be an easy matter. It’s our father’s marriage. The blame should lie with him and his wife. But that’s not going to stop him from displacing it and if he can, onto Bonner or worse, Bonner’s kids. For a lot of people this type of blame shifting wouldn’t work. They’d tell dad to fuck off or something. But it will work on Bonner, to enough of a degree that he’ll lose sleep over it. He tells me he already has. He spent last night not contemplating the new year, or celebrating with his wife and beautiful family but tossing and turning over what our father the drunk has said.

Me, I was sleeping. Fourteen hours straight. I needed to rest after my own New Year’s eve celebrating and drinking. I was content to go to bed New Year’s Day at four o’clock and let time stop for a while. 2007 would wait. I wanted to rest.
Then I dreamt of Jeff, whose last name I couldn’t remember. I dreamt of high school and frogs and my father’s second wife and a bunch of other people and things but when I woke fully rested on the morning of the second it was already clear that the past was wanting to be dealt with.

I’m thirty-three, just graduated with a BA in History. I have a job that has nothing to do with History that I like pretty well. I have a good life. A good boyfriend and a lot of houseplants. I’m finishing my second novel, and hopefully this one will publish.

Life is pretty good. Until the phone rings and my family, and the past, comes pouring in. The term dysfunctional won’t really work here. They function, barely sometimes, but they function and I pretty much work the same way. I get through each day, go to work, cook and sleep, keeping my craziness as internal as I can. The gym helps. The daily ritual of coffee and writing on the bus helps.
I critique my city. I watch the people on the train. I do my job. And I wait for the next phone call: “Your father is dead” or “your sister has overdosed.” Instead I get “your father is getting a divorce” and this starts off my year. He tried to call me yesterday morning, to wish me a happy new year his message said, but I wasn’t going to fall for that.

The frogs I dreamt of were massive and they would eat their young. Jeff, whose last name I can’t remember, explains to me that these bullfrogs do this to any young they think can’t survive. The parent frog somehow has access to their offspring’s entire blueprint, a map of what they are going to be. So the frog wisely consumes any offspring that is going to evolutionarily disappoint. Jeff was cute, now that I think about it. Dirty blonde like me, he was a bit acne-ridden and slightly nerdy. Like me. We were never close, never friends, and I only remember one conversation with him in high school. Dreams are weird that I think of Jeff now. Whoever and wherever he is now, I hope he’s happy. I hope he got out. That’s the best wish I can have for anyone in Oklahoma, or at least in the version of it I lived in.

My brother tells me the root of the issue: our father attributes his first divorce, from our mother, to us. He says that we gave him our permission and therefore it is our fault. He blames his second on Kaleb, my brilliant nephew. The fifth of gin my stepmother consumed daily and my father’s own excessive drinking have nothing to do with it. It was an eight year old who deftly unraveled the tapestry of passion, angry sex and abuse that my father and his wife wove together.
I calmly stress the need for boundaries. I repeat this several times. I don’t talk about instances. Instances are just symptoms and they are without count. That Bonner and Kaleb aren’t responsible for what is not theirs. And I feel a twinge of guilt. Because I left. Because I got out. And I rarely look back unless I’m forced too: someone dies or someone overdoses.

I’ve had a little time this month to get back to reading in between querying agents and trying to put together the next thirty pages of Eastlight. In organizing my library I realized that once again, I’d given away my last copy of A Wizard of Earthsea. If you haven’t read it, I have to highly recommend Le Guin’s essentialist form of writing fantasy. She manages in two hundred pages what so many epic writers can’t: she brings her world alive to you. Ged’s story is still almost crystal clear to me since the first time I read this book nearly ten years ago.
I just started my Hero’s Journey course last night. It’s one more piece in the seemingly endless puzzle of my college education. We have to choose a book for our research paper and despite its small size, I’m going to use A Wizard of Earthsea. If the paper is of any note, I’ll post it but I love it when I get a chance for my personal love of a book to converge with my studies.
Le Guin made me dream in a very real way about writing fantasy. Since then I’ve always wanted to instill and inspire people the way she did me all that time ago.
How about you? What’s your favorite fantasy book of all time? What timeless book did the best job of transporting you out of the real world for a while?