Spontaneous ∂erivation

I slashed 858 words and added 969. The plot is on slightly less shaky ground now, although now there’s more things to take care of.

I’ve had to create a wiki to keep track of various things. Not something I’ve had to do before. Where will this all lead to? I have no idea, but then, I started with no ideas.

Some new text:

“Generally I believe that favor is on my side, since changing all the letterheads and records and of course our registration in the Aerial Commonwealth is rather an expense; you’d be surprised. Most people are.”

The next place to go is not yet truly decided for me. I thought it was one way, then I thought another way, and now I’ve changed my mind again. I suspect only in the rewrites will I be able to tell the difference. Le sigh.

Including some early ones I completely missed.

This post may be updated through the day if new stuff appears. Sometimes it’s a complete surprise!

Notable stars: Tobias S. Buckell, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett.

Also: P.C. Cast’s vampyre finishing school.

Updates: 2:19AM PST

John Scalzi has an interesting post with a lot of comments over here. This post is inspired by that, plus me waking up to the spectacle of the DOW this afternoon.

Buy “Free Fallin’” by Tom Petty on Amazon MP3 Downloads

Fantasy world-building doesn’t get much better than this.

Jeff VanderMeer remarked that it was a shame that Acacia, as well as other wonderful and daring books, was missing from the list of finalists for the World Fantasy Best Novel Award. I am as well; to me, there is no excuse, for Acacia is among the best of heavy-duty world-building fantasies, the last of which we’ve seen is George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, and the first of which we ever saw was Tolkien’s venerated Lord of the Rings.

Acacia can stand proud along with them, these giants of the large-scale fantasy field, because it encompasses their very best attributes: a complex world with histories and cultures and even geographies that are believable and varied, and an intriguing story with a large cast that never loses our interest in either plot or characterization—a living, breathing world and tale that wraps you up and does not let you go.

As an interesting side note: the best of large-scale fantasy, the ones that feel the most authentic, have a historical heart beating inside them. Their authors are deeply engrained in the study of history in one way or another—with Tolkien and his extra interest in languages and their effect on historical cultures; George R. R. Martin with his well-known fascination with the history and times of the War of the Roses; and David Anthony Durham with his host of historical novels, set from the American West to the Roman Republic.

In terms of reading punch, Acacia moves relatively quickly compared to Song of Ice and Fire and Lord of the Rings, and yet it’s no less complex or immersive than either. This should come as a relief to those of us who are used to a lot of dead time, or to extra detail that, while pleasing, means we spend less than five years spread out over 5000 pages. Instead, Acacia snakes along across its enormous story without missing a single beat, and the first book is indeed the soul equivalent, if not actual number-of-pages equivalent, of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and, yes, I say it, over half of Song of Ice and Fire, which will only just get to its “pass over five years” point, it is rumored anyways, by the end of A Dance of Dragons.

(Indeed, Acacia itself is divided internally into three “books”, but it’s by no means 3000 pages—it’s about the size of A Game of Thrones; now doesn’t that go back.)

One thing I also love about Acacia is that not everybody is white, frankly speaking. The peoples of Acacia are all colors and cultures; it really is a world unto itself, rather than a single continent or something. I still love SOIF and LOTR to little bits, of course, but this aspect of Acacia is special.

So, dear reader, go and read what the judges of the World Fantasy Award are missing—go and read Acacia.

Related links:

• Acacia, Kindle Edition
• Acacia, Paperback Edition
• Acacia, Hardcover Edition
• David Anthony Durham’s official website and blog
• All about Acacia trees

A Gene Wolfe for the rest of us.

Among circles unfamiliar with his writing, Gene Wolfe is a much maligned man. His books are well-known for being difficult to read—extremely good and very deep, but difficult all the same. However, recently he’s been on an approachable roll, with tales that not only resonate with the usual Wolfe complexities beneath the text, but are also just damn good reads.¹

Pirate Freedom is such a book, and actually a very good one to read² for Talk Like a Pirate Day, which I did do. This is not just a good pirate yarn, full of all the things that good pirate yarns have—scurvy other pirates and personal and ship battles with them, young man abducted to become bloody good pirate later with the help of a mentor, adventures with Spanish galleons, attacks on Tortuga by the British navy, Carribean and Spanish intrigue with governors, lusty maidens who become pirates, pirate boy gets pirate girl….

It’s also a good pirate yarn that gets you all nine yards of that and then some, and yet is an extremely well told and constructed story. In fact, the structure of this story is one of the best for any pirate story—a first-person account. There is none better, because the life of a pirate is most interesting when it’s auto-biographical in nature—a conversation with normal man who happens to have the most interesting of pasts.

Of course, this wouldn’t be Gene Wolfe if he didn’t add an extra twist. Somehow our narrator was born in the late 20th century—but grew up as a pirate hundreds of years ago. This lead-in is subtle, Wolfe-subtle in fact, and the resolution likewise. It’s an old tale that circles another old tale, and the result is fireworks. Pirate fireworks, make no doubt about it.

I think the completeness of Pirate Freedom satisfied my desire for pirates immensely—I was not fed up with pirates by the end of it, but I felt no need to read about further pirating. In that sense, Gene Wolfe’s got a monopoly on the pirate story.

And who would have thought that would happen?

Related links:

• Pirate Freedom, Kindle Edition
• Pirate Freedom, hardcover
• Talk Like a Pirate Day
• Innocents Abroad: New Fantasy Stories, a Gene Wolfe story collection, Kindle Edition
• Innocents Abroad, Paperback edition
• An Interview with Gene Wolfe (Infinity Plus)
• WolfeWiki—assisting your Wolfe reading needs

1. Which is not to say that other Wolfe books are not also damn good reads, but you tend to need a firm foothold on mythology, symbolism, and thematic resonance. Prior Wolfe experience helps. He’s kind of like Neil Gaiman dialed up to 11.

   By the way, his short stories are completely approachable, and he has several collections.

   [↩]

2. Or re-read—that’s another nice thing about Wolfe that also shows up in Gaiman and Terry Pratchett; and even his approachable books yield yet more on re-reads. [↩]

Now at 3,721 words.

This should be recognizable to some:

In the hallway stood a tall boy dressed primly in an old-fashioned waistcoat and jacket, dark hair slicked back, his trousers creased sharply as if by the trouser presses of doom.

For some reason this amuses me:

“I would be happy to give ear to it, my dear lady, for it seems tonight is for secrets amongst conspirators for better causes in the world.”

Notable notes:

Out of 3,721 words, over 900 come from the dialogue of one character in four.

ETA: A graph!
ETA: A graph that shows I can count and stuff!
ETa: And count in the right direction!

I can’t help it anymore. Everything about the news is depressing me so much that I end up reading Pundit Kitchen all the time now. Here are some of my favorites.

Note: I’m not trying to belittle anything. I’m trying to find some temporary humor in awful situations. Some of this might be considered somewhat dark humor.

Second note: obviously picture-spammy, click through for pics.

Click here to read more »

I’m breaking it up by publisher so that you can experience the scary of HarperCollins.

Non-SF/F Publishers/Imprints

They like to hide their SF/F amongst thrillers, romances, historicals, mysteries, you get the idea. They’re more genre imprints than mainstream imprints, although this is not always the case.

Very often the ratio of SF/F to other genres is low, but then again, the ratio of non-mainstream genre to mainstream is fairly high.

Anchor Books

More of a historical imprint of Random House. However, Acacia ended up here—which is not surprising, since the author, David Anthony Durham, also writes historical novels, like Pride of Carthage (also in the Kindle store).

Ballantine

An imprint of Random House. Amongst the more normal SF/F titles like Elric: To Rescue Tanelorn, you’ll also find romance/horror like Night Fall.

Bantam

Yet another imprint of Random House. SF/F was more rare here before they folded the imprint Spectra under Bantam—at least in the Kindle store.

I find myself strangely contemplating reading The Magicians and Mrs. Quent: “Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë and H.P. Lovecraft collide….”

Harcourt

Four words: Ursula K. Le Guin. Well. Not really words, but you know what I mean. And only one Le Guin book under their name. Only 25-some books in the Kindle store overall, though.

HarperCollins

Much more varied, because they’re a full-fledged publisher and don’t seem to believe in grouping books under individual imprints in the Kindle store.

They are totally badass about releasing books on Kindle, even for a full-fledged publisher: currently over 30 books are going to descend upon the Kindle store, and usually they’ll be adding more over the next few days.

With Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Neal Stephenson, and others, their ratio of SF/F versus other books is fairly decent for a publisher that’s folded every single one of its imprints under HarperCollins in the Kindle store…

Penguin

Usually their SF/F stuff ends up in the imprints, but once in a while there’s either a catalog error or something else going on, and an SF/F book ends directly under Penguin as a publisher.

This brings an effect that’s like: “Wow, first it’s the ‘For Complete Idiots’ series, The Winter of Our Discontent, and The Art of Being; and then it’s SETI, Misspelled, and When All Seems Lost: A Novel of the Legion of the Damned.

Random House

Ditto. Alternate similar mainstream books with The Second Siege: Book Two of Tapestry, The Dragon in the Sock Drawer: Dragon Keepers #1, and Elissa’s Odyssey: Phoenix Rising #2 (I detect a pattern here).

However, I have to give them mad (random) props for Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go.

Simon & Schuster

Stephen King and YA Fantasy live here. Also, Go Go Girls of the Apocalypse.

St. Martin’s Press

Another a full-fledged publisher. Nevertheless, it bears interesting fruit once every 50 books. Usually it’s Charles de Lint.

Yes, I can be incredibly patient in some things… less so in others.

SF/F Imprints

Science fiction and fantasy imprints are almost always easier to deal with than the parent publisher, because then you don’t have to sift through the hundred books or so that are unleashed to find the SF/F ones.

Ace & Roc

Combined because they’re both imprints of Penguin. Combined, at least 6 new books are coming out, including an early Christmas book involving werewolves.

Neil Gaiman would like it. I think I’ve had my share of werewolves though. There’s plenty of other courses though, like The Dresden Files, Breath and Bone, and Elizabeth Bear’s Promethean Age series.

However, I have to give lots of love to Ace and Roc for Armed and Magical, which is like eating cake. I have been needing some cake.

Baen

Is full of hate for the Kindle store. However, their Kindle-compatible eBook store lives on WebScriptions.

DAW

Slowly but surely; a couple books every once in a while.

I have no idea what’s up with Goblin War by Jim C. Hines ending up with a publication date of January 6th, 2009 but… that’s what Amazon says is true.

Plenty of other DAW books are available, however, and every single one is SF/F.

Del Rey

SF/F imprint of Random House. They’re busy bringing their backlist into the Kindle store, although the rate is slow since they’re very focused in Manga these days—which don’t transfer easily to the Kindle and thus aren’t.

Orbit

They live and breathe SF/F, with a few books every release period. Jeff Somers lives here so as far as I’m concerned they’re good, even with few books.

Spectra

Originally quite a few titles ended up here, but recently they’ve been, a la HarperCollins, folded up into the parent publisher, Bantam.

Notable inhabitants include George R. R. Martin; I’ll be curious to see if A Dance of Dragons will go under Bantam or Spectra in the Kindle store.

Tor & Forge

Tor is specifically SF/F, while Forge does literary SF/F combined with alternate history, romance, thrillers, and other genre, which makes the latter harder to parse—although it seems like every five books hits SF/F. Both are imprints of Macmillan.

Tor has tons of marvelous authors, like John Scalzi and Gene Wolfe and Tobias S. Buckell, and Cherie Priest and… uh… I think I’m mostly naming authors because I met them through Tor’s free eBook program. Of course, I always loved Gene Wolfe.

I didn’t realize had completely forgotten Tor had done The Book of Joby. Awesome-o-rama.

Publishers and Imprints I Keep Hoping Show Up

Eos

Where are you?

Nightshade

Ditto.

Prometheus/Pyr

Ditto.

Subterranean Press

Probably they’ll never show up here; they focus on high quality print editions. Nevertheless.

Started a new thing; 1759 words last night. It’s currently called, not very creatively, Project #46.

Nope, I have no idea where this one will go. This one wasn’t even planned. Right now it’s just raw wordage. I’m assuming 50k for fun, rather than having a definite place to go.

Starting line:

Jillna wondered if she should claim to be the daughter of an ambassador, or perhaps the niece of a company executive.

Second to last paragraph, which is not what you think it is:

Chasra laughed. “This is too rich. You are such a farce. Just a word of advice—you better like eating humble pie, ’cause you’re gonna get ripped to pieces here.” Even Fern laughed, but a polite and small laugh into her hand.

Will it go anywhere? Who knows? This could be described as “Mike and Psmith meets I, Robot,” and though that’s rather inaccurate it gets the basic idea across. Going somewhere is optional right now.

Some minor writing quarter-mile marks:

• This is actually the first time I’m writing with a female protagonist, and currently a mostly female main cast (with a more balanced set of minor and walk-on characters).
• This is the first scene I’ve ever written where more than two characters take an active role in a conversation. It’s about to become four. The best part is that they all sound different.
• More of the characterization is carried through dialogue and, in the case of the POV, thoughts. Almost every time I come across something I recognize as a “tell” rather than “show”, I shift it to conversation or drop it entirely.
• The point of view character actually has a personality and history from page one. It helps that I’m planning on multiple POV characters.
• My narrator I’ve made as invisible as possible and not such a pill. Interesting narrators are probably not my style unless they’re first person. This might be a problem with this project.
• I’ve killed the urge to write about Death and Destruction and Emo and settled on embedding personality quirks, faults, and fears into my characters rather as a nebulous infective atmosphere, because I’m not good at nebulous infective atmosphere. Unless you want to read the equivalent of Evanescence on downers.
• I’m writing humor. This may turn out badly. But at least the narrator isn’t trying to exude humor; the humor is currently involved in conversation and/or character thoughts. And right now the situation has gone slightly bizarre and needs no tells to indicate its bizarreness, because it all comes from the characters and their quirks/fears/faults and, in one case, bizarreness.

I have Nick Mamatas to thank for the dialogue, POV, narrator, and most of the rest, by the way. I have every expectation that I would still have been far less clueless without his critique on another piece of mine. Which points out to me the importance of workshops like Clarion and Viable Paradise, where critiques from pro writers are available.

I try not to care when starting a writing project. I don’t know why when I end up caring anyways. Right now, this is a small break from bigger rewrites I have in mind. I have learned my lesson: where I am at the state of my knowledge, serials that are not largely pre-written, for a high percent value of “largely,” are bad ideas.

We’re getting close to the end of September, when there will be a great unleashing of titles from publishers on September 30th – October 7th, so I’m getting a few titles out of the way now.