in the continuing series

Of things I said I'd blog about later: Notes from Mary Robinette Kowal's talk on Readings, given at the World Fantasy Convention 2010.

Usually, it seems, this talk has a much longer time-slot, so she was rushing and hitting the high points, with an invitation to join her in the bar afterwards for a more detailed discussion. Unfortunately I wasn't able to follow the mass that went on to do that, so this is only what was said in the time allotted. Also, only what would fit on the back of my namecard, since somehow I did not have a notebook with me (this is really unusual - I don't know how I wound up walking around without a notebook. Next I will not have a book to read, and then you can take me away raving.)

So, the high points, or what I wrote down of them.
Be loud: this means not yelling but projecting. You don't want to wreck your voice, so use what you learnt in choir or drama class, sit or stand up straight and give your lungs room to fill. Keep your head up and aim for the back row (My mum used to call this 'the deaf old lady in the back row.)
Slow down. You want to run at about 150 words per minute (this is the recommended rate for recording audiobooks). She pointed out she was being a poor example, because she was rattling along talking fast to cram as much of the content in as possible. Practice reading your selection aloud, and clock yourself to make sure you're not speeding up.
Tell the story. Practice, read it aloud beforehand and get familiar with it. As much as possible, tell it without reference to the page, and look at your audience. Make eye contact and watch their reactions.

Choosing which piece to read:
It should be self-contained, without requiring a lot of explanation beforehand or during, and have some sort of closure to tie it off.
It should have a small cast, so that you don't have many character voices or presentations to keep distinct.
It should suit your voice.
It should lend itself to being read aloud, with onomatopoeia and strong rhythm to the sentences. (think Just-so Stories).

The narrator is a character, whether named as one or not, and has to be distinct from the other characters. The narrator is the gateway, and the narrator's attitude determines the audience's interaction with the character. Decide how to play the narrator.
Note the key words in each sentence, give them weight.
If the selection is first person, narrator shouldn't be too different (gender, age) from you, or audience will be distracted & maybe confused.

To distinguish characters, use:
Pitch--learn your pitch by humming high to low
Placement--voice is different when it resonates in back or front of mouth, chest, sinus, movement of soft palate
Pacing--give characters different speeds of speaking (remember to keep own speed down)
Accent--if you are using one, make sure it's accurate, better to use rhythm, pacing & inflections
Attitude--if you speak with a smile, or as if you're angry, the same words sound different

She talked briefly about microphones, but I didn't make notes on that, only mentally resolved to avoid the damn things. If I can teach an Ithra class without a mike, I ought to be able to read aloud without one--I doubt the audience would be any bigger, and probably smaller.

Hmm, that's kind of skimpy compared to how it looked in rough notes. So, my review, then?
Well, it's always worth while watching Mary Robinette Kowal. I would probably attend a panel on, um, ichthyology if she was the speaker, because she's just that lively and engaging. Also she would give all the fish different voices and gestures.

Anyway, with that in recent memory, I paid close attention to Robert Lloyd Parry's performance of M. R. James's ghost stories in November (a run of three-name names - is it significant?) as mentioned here.
He was playing the narrator - Montague Rhodes James, a Cambridge don, and in the second story, the main character was also an academic, and the introductory part of the story was banter at a college dinner, so the characters had similar accents and to some extent similar delivery.
He dealt with this by using posture and body language - it was clear that one character was seated and looking up, and the other standing, looking down & interrupting the first one's meal. The seated character (our MC) he gave a slightly querulous, nasal tone, and when the bluff old soldier appeared, he got a lower in-the-chest voice and a slower speech.
The first story had a historical setting, with characters of different classes, and he kept with James's somewhat caricatured country bumpkin form for the servant, lengthening his vowels and speaking slowly. The squire had a more peremptory pace, and the vicar slower but higher and quieter.
What impressed me was how willing he was to employ movement--even though he mostly stayed seated--and to convey fear (by breathing and pitch mostly) which I think I would be very self-conscious about doing.
And of course I was massively impressed that he was doing it all by memory, with no reference to a text. Tell the story indeed.

I am a hamster

Only less cute. Just the puffy-faced, snuffling, huddled-amidst-crumpled-paper features, the paper being kleenex rather than the crumpled paper balls that iconically signify the trials of literary creation. (tangent: what will be used to signify false starts now that paper is so rarely required for them?)
Yes, I still have the horrid cold. At least today is sunny and clear, unlike the streaming rain of yesterday. Also, last night, after I got up to clean up the cat puke, I dreamt I was on a double-decker bus with Neil Gaiman.
So things balance out, I suppose.

I meant to do a post about things I don't like reading in fantasy: monocultural worlds. But I will use the horrid cold as an excuse to postpone that, and instead refer you to Zoe's excellent post on building multicultural worlds here.
And to the works of the late (and much-missed) Jo Clayton, most especially her three Wild Magic books.
And to the works of Martha Wells, especially City of Bones and Wheel of the Infinite. There's also a moment in The Wizard Hunters where someone from a culture that has no representational art (only pattern making) encounters a trompe l'oeil painting and is fascinated by the idea of painting that looks like real things, which made me-the-reader bounce happily.
And obviously to N. K. Jemisin and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and its sequel The Broken Kingdoms.
And to Alaya Dawn Johnson's books Racing the Dark and The Burning City. Which I want to post a proper review of, when my head contains more braincells than mucus. Short form--Racing the Dark does have some first-novel markers (I don't hate adverbs, but I do notice them) but damn! the world building and the non-generic settings and the heart-wrenching turns of the story and the characters and ... oooh.
And, natch, a pointer to Terri-Lynne DeFino and her first novel Finder, set in a big sprawly fantasy world that (yay!) is not Northern Europe with jumbled place-names.
There are more, but they must wait until the proper thoughtful analytic post. Suggestions welcome....

mostly medieval, otherwise history

Last Saturday was the University's Medieval Seminar, run by Continuing Studies. This year the topic was especially interesting (to me) Medieval Lives.
The talks were as follows:
Program:
9:00 am Welcome and Opening Remarks
9:10 am Introduction, Dr. Marcus Milwright
9:30 am Everyday Life in Scotland during the Viking Age, Dr. Erin McGuire
10:10 am break
10:45 am Abelard and Heloise: Lovers in a Dangerous Time, Dr. Iain Higgins
11:30 am lunch and film presentation
12:45 pm Medieval Map Project presentation
1:00 pm Byzantine Lives Under Siege, Dr. Evanthia Baboula
1:45 pm The Caliph al-Muqtadir (908-32) and the Fall of the Abbasid Empire, Dr.
Hugh Kennedy
2:45 pm break
3:15 pm Christine de Pizan, the first Man of Letters, Dr. Helene Cazes
3:45 pm Closing Remarks

So overall, pretty cool. Erin kept her audience on their toes by starting with questions to them, and asking them to come up with possible explanations for unexpected grave finds and so on. The Christine de Pizan talk ran out of time before it ran out of interest, which is better than the alternative, but frustrating still.

Above, in a pic not taken by me (I'll check and get the credit right later) you can see the site and the setup, during the talks, while things are quiet. Between lectures, we're 'on', and chatting with the attendees while they get their coffee and biscotti. But during the talks, we may attend them or do other things. In the photo I was losing at checkers to a 7 yr old, while his sister walked the labyrinth. (I evened the score later at 9 man's morris.) The lady on the right is warping a tablet-weaving loom, the lady in dark blue is embroidering, and the lady in light blue is playing a harp
Also, yes, I chose this picture to show off the labyrinth and painted floor and backdrops that I painted my own self. Because I think they are pretty cool, actually.

What I should have been doing was getting further ahead with calligraphing the contract indentures for my apprentice-to-be, Deirdre, whom I'll be taking at the end of the month. Writing out two copies of a longish contract, to be cut apart in a sawtooth pattern (the indenting that makes it indentures, in case you wondered) isn't done in one hour or even two. (I'm hoping to get it finished this weekend.)
But I flatter myself that I was still doing something useful, in keeping the kids amused. We also had a non-rules-based foot ball game with the leather-stuffed ball, down past the catering tables and through the empty part of the hallway.


On Wednesday Mark left for the Estrella event in Arizona, with the van, so I am non-vehicular for a couple of weeks, and forced to get my own dinners. I took today as vacation so I could get started on straightening up & tidying the house--after us getting everything medieval out for the display, and then everything needed for a week's medieval camping, the house was in some disarray. (Shall I admit it? I hadn't finished boxing up the Christmas decorations.)
Today was thus spent moving things around and establishing my laptop and immediate-research books on the kitchen table, next to the woodstove; clearing off surfaces; dusting; sweeping; stacking books; and coming down with a streaming headcold that I finally have to admit was not just a response to the dust kicked up by previous activities.
Bugger.

Writing-related, Cost of Silver: I'd reduced the 20-year span of happiness between major threats to 5 years, and am now reducing it by another year or so, by sending Griffin off to war. The Bishops' Wars, in Scotland, so as to include gritty uncomfortable historical detail and increase wordcount.
Originally, after being turned down by apprentice-girl Alice, Griffin was to find comfort and eventual love with Nan Moray (older than him OMG!!!). In revision, he's going to be a sullen overdramatic young idiot and respond to being turned down by going to 'list for a soldier. So a few thousand words of enduring hardships, seeing nasty things happen, engaging in some himself, staying alive, and coming back sadder & wiser and all, then finding comfort and love with Nan. Must figure out which historical figures he'll encounter.

Do I sound a titch cynical? this is because I've been reading Rebels and Traitors, by Lindsey Davis, a novel set in (shoehorned into?) an exhaustively detailed history of Civil War England and the fall of Charles I.
I should say first that it's well written and often engaging, and Davis knows the times and events surpassingly well. Too well, perhaps, and as someone who loves the details herself, I think I can identify when someone has given in to including something because it is just that cool, regardless of whether it assists the story or characterisation.
This would be a pretty good, fast-moving, eventful novel, if you stripped out the irrelevant detail. This would be a fascinating, detailed 'narrative non-fiction' history if you stripped out the invented characters and plot. But as it is, you have both, for 742 pages, and you may be constantly shifting mental gears between fiction and non-fiction--not to mention keeping track of rather a lot of invented characters and rather a lot of historical ones who have walk-ons to be name-checked but don't affect the plot.
On p.14, I encountered this sentence: 'To set the moment in context, that year of 1634 would see the notorious witchcraft trials at Loudon, the first meeting of the Academie francaise, the opening of the Covent Garden piazza in London, and the charter for the Oxford University Press.'
In case you're wondering, none of those have so far appeared in the actual narrative. Then the exposition continues for a page and 2/3ds, bringing us up to date with events in the Americas, continental Europe, and Wales.
I'm not sure I can pull this off, myself.

mixed bag

Bluebeard Contented is up at Cabinet des Fees - yay! This one was workshopped at Worldcon and beta-read by a couple of writer-friends before I finally sent it in. CdF was the first and only market I thought of for the Perrault-with-a-twist version.

To balance that, the first rejections of the year, one from Weird Tales

Thanks so much for submitting your piece to the One-Minute Weird Tales. We have had an overwhelming positive response! Alas, we do not have the room for all the wonderful stories submitted so must pass on this one. Again, we thank you for thinking of Weird Tales.

And one from ASIM

Thank you for submitting to Andromeda Spaceways.

Sadly, we find that we can't use your submission at this stage.

Thank you again, and we hope to hear from you in the future.


See our Hints and Tips page: http://www.andromedaspaceways.com/slush.htm

both form. Which reminds me that I need to start a new Rejection Pledge!

Unearned Specialness

As I've said (perhaps too often) before, I'm a reader before I'm a writer. So I tend to critique stories rather more from the stand of 'would I want to read this' than 'is this the way I would write this'. Not, I must note, from the stand of 'would a lot of people I don't know want to read this', because I can't claim that. For one thing, I find ungraceful or incorrect prose a serious stumbling block, and clearly many readers don't.
*insert obligatory Dan Brown / LKH jab here* But let's not get into the bestseller discussion this time. All I can contribute is that it seems to me the key to bestsellerdom is to appeal to people who don't usually read. The audience of people who read regularly is not large enough (and possibly too divided by genre) to create and sustain bestsellers.

Bear with me, because much of the thinking that follows is still shapeless. I'll try to clean it up as I go.

In a bookshop, I will put a book back if the back-cover copy says something like 'only s/he can save'. Or promises me that the character will discover his/her Destiny. Yes, this may be unfair, and I know as well as anyone that back-cover blurbs are as accurate as tabloid headlines.
But there's still a good chance that I'm being offered a story where the protagonist (or perhaps I should stay 'main character') is Special just because s/he is Special. The MC doesn't look Special, of course, and may be almost aggressively ordinary at first glance. But when danger and crisis hit the plot, and the MC is pushed to the brink, and all looks hopeless ....
*dramatic music*
the MC reaches inside him/herself and discovers an unguessed (but perhaps foreshadowed) power that s/he instinctively knows how to employ and that saves the day or at least the chapter.
If I have bought this book, it goes on the booksale pile right there.

Heck, I can understand the appeal of this trope. It's flat-out wish fulfilment, the dream that I, ordinary as I am, will when faced with crisis rise to the occasion and triumph. It's the 'mom lifts car off kid' myth. But the trope departs from the dream in two ways.
First, the character can keep on lifting cars for the rest of the book, with little or no training.
Second, only this character can lift cars, even if other characters have cars fall on their kids.
If everyone is special, no one is special (another reason why Specialness makes me twitch is that it's inherently non-egalitarian) so the best way to be Special is to prevent anyone else becoming Special. With the author on the MC's side, you get a few possible outcomes.
1) only the Designated Love Interest can also become Special
2) anyone else who becomes Special comes to a bad end or turns evil or both
3) no one else becomes Special, they just worship the MC.

Ah, but don't I have shelves full of books about exceptional characters? What about Simon Templar or Modesty Blaise? What about all those swordplay videos?
Hm. A constant of martial arts movies is the dreaded (okay, I love 'em) training sequence, usually involving pain and drudgery, even humiliation. Skill is paid for--earned. Modesty and Willy Garvin train daily, bruisingly, even after their 'retirement', and the debonair Saint puts time in to earn his marksmanship.
In other words, even those with natural talent have to work at it. The message is there if you want it: you could do this too, if you worked at it. Maybe not as well, but it can be done.

Jules Feiffer, in his 1965 essay "The Great Comic Book Heroes" notes that he 'couldn't stand' the boy sidekick characters attached to Batman, Green Arrow, etc. because he believed he had a chance of growing up to resemble the grownup heroes, but knew he couldn't ever be like Robin, Speedy, or Bucky, characters his own age and already astoundingly skilled. He knew the boy companions were intended for boy readers like him to identify with, but they didn't work as intended.
Likewise, while Unearned Specialness works for many readers, it doesn't work for me. Why? I admitted it was an appealing dream, so why do I resist it?

One reason is that it destroys suspense. (I'm working at not naming any specific books or authors, so I apologise for vagueness.) Once a character has reached inside himself and discovered his inner powers or had the plot whisper its secrets to him, my assumption is that he will deal with all subsequent challenges the same way. After all, who wouldn't? I don't need to read the rest of the book, unless I skip to the end to see what became of secondary characters I liked.
It makes me resent the MC on behalf of the other characters--this happens when I believe the narrative is engaged in special pleading for a particular character--who are being used to contrast with the MC's awesomeness instead of having their own aims in the story.
It prevents--for me--identification with the MC, because I can't suspend that disbelief. I can't believe in grabbing a special power out of thin air will happen for me, and if it did, it wouldn't make things easier. How can I share the rejoicing in a victory when I didn't share the struggle and uncertainty of earning it, because it wasn't earned?

It ties in to the Mary Sue dilemma, well-discussed by Marie Brennan here. How to write an active, effective female character without her being tagged as a Mary Sue?
The big first step, in my opinion, is to not make her naturally talented unless she does the work to back it up. Even people with perfect pitch have to learn to read music, have to learn breath control, have to practice.
Second is to allow her to fail, and to fail through her own lacks, not because of the machinations of an enemy. If she fails early in the story, I am put on alert that she may not succeed later, I become concerned for her success, I begin to root for her.
Third, but by no means least, is to allow good characters to dislike or be indifferent to her, to have their own aims that don't concern her. One character that I quite liked for herself lost my sympathy when I realised that all other characters alliances could be determined by what they thought of her: anyone who disparaged her was later revealed as EEEEEvilll. (An alternative is for anyone who disparages to be forced to admit how wrong they were.)

Naturally I had these points in mind while I was writing Mylla in The Willow Knot, but I'm not sure those cogitations would be of particular interest, what with it being unpublished and all. Also this post is fairly long already. And has no pictures to enliven it.

The daydream of becoming unexpectedly powerful or wealthy or beautiful or famous and coming back to show all those people who were mean before--it's an appealing daydream to the star of it, but other people's daydreams are like other people's dreams: from outside they're boring and incoherent narratives. So the appeal relies on whether the reader can put herself into that starring role. Most of the time, I can't.
Which leads into another half-thought-out topic, using a quote from one of my 3-Day Novels: "Who are you in the story you are told?"
I'll see if I can put that one together more elegantly next month.

three times a bridesmaid

Never a bride? Or is it like a midway game, where if you win three small prizes you can trade up to a larger, and up to a big plushie?
Which is to say that the 3-Day Novel Contest results are out, and this is the email I received this morning:

Hi Barbara,

Congratulations on making our Honourable Mention list once again! As always, the judges very much enjoyed your novel. Like last year, because you made it so far in our judging process we'll be offering you complimentary entry to the upcoming contest... so I hope you are ready for yet another round! We'll be sending out your certificate and entry coupon in the next week or so.

Best,
Melissa for 3DN

I honestly didn't expect to make the shortlist this year, since Archipelago, basically 'Barbara does a Jo Clayton pastiche' was classed in my mind with Trading in Ghosts, something that might work up to a full-scale fantasy novel with a bunch more plot and characters stirred in, but wasn't necessarily a tiny perfect object like Fold (Fold is an egg: to change it would require breaking it). So that was an exciting way to begin the day.

Here's the full notice, swiped from the 3-Day website, and can I just say that I would love, love, love to read the 2d runner up? Also, Gayleen Froese, a shortlister, is the author of Touch, a book given to me by my awesome apprentice (and fellow writer) Alis, and published by NeWest Press in Edmonton . Oh, and another shortlister, Paul Colley has put his novel, co-written with his 12 year old daughter, on Lulu, to be found and ordered here. Worth mentioning that Paul used the Wondermark Genre Fiction Generator to outline their plot (which like most outlines, was abandoned early on in the process, or at least mutated beyond recognition).
And because I guess I should plug it, my previous 3-Day entries have been collected into Threefold: a nine-day novel, on Lulu, which can be purchased here (or downloaded for free).

GRAND PRIZE WINNER

Jennifer K. Chung of Bellevue, Washington, for TERRORYAKI!

Jennifer K. Chung, photo by Gavin Jensen

About the Book
It’s three months until the wedding, and Samantha’s Taiwanese parents won’t warm up to her hopelessly white fiancé. Meanwhile, Sam’s food-obsessed sister, Daisy, is on the hunt for an otherworldly take-out truck whose dishes are to die for. Terroryaki! is a quirky tale of love, family, redemption and the best—if slightly cursed—dish of chicken teriyaki to be found in this realm of existence.

About the Author
Jennifer K. Chung is a Taiwanese-American writer, pianist and software engineer. She grew up in Southern California and studied computer science at MIT in Cambridge, MA. In her spare time, Jennifer plays keyboard in a goth metal band and studies the Japanese martial art of Naginata. She lives near Seattle.

SECOND PRIZE WINNER

Gwendolyn Bird of Kasilof, Alaska
For The Island of Broken Toys, the haunting tale of a community of mysterious children who seek out the truth behind their exile.

THIRD PRIZE WINNER

Tate Young of Toronto, Ontario
For The Ridgeback, a witty thriller about a bloody murder, a very large diamond and a dogwalker on the run.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

• Jon Billman of Stillwater, Oklahoma, for Bicycle Tramps
• Alan James Blair of Stillwater, Oklahoma, for The Mermaid’s Brother
• Jenni Bomford of Prince George, B.C., for Spiritual
• Keith Chittleborough of Glen Waverley, Australia, for Near Dreg Experience
• Paul Colley & Laura Colley of Pickering, Ontario, for Clockwork
• Logan Evans of Pullman, Washington, for The Boundary Nebula
• Gayleen Froese of Edmonton, Alberta, for What the Cat Dragged In
• B. Gordon of Victoria, B.C., for Archipelago
• Diana Holdsworth of Amherst, Massachusetts, for The Golden Tooth
• Jimmm Kelly of Vancouver, B.C., for The Little Man
• Ashok Mathur of Vancouver, B.C., for The First White Black Man
• Iulia Park of Toronto, Ontario, for Canadian Experience
• Rudy Thauberger of Vancouver, B.C., for Evil Beach Dance Party
• Jake Wallis Simons of Winchester, United Kingdom, for 24/3
• Jenny D. Williams of Brooklyn, New York, for The Widow and the Twin

We’d also like to give special mention to this year’s youngest entrants, three-time contest veterans Natasha Carr-Harris, Abby Adams and Sean Vipond, as well as our latest under-10 entrant, Albrightine Ngusurun Orsar.

reconstructing Dad

Yes, I had a specific reason for traipsing off to Vancouver last weekend. To meet my other (half) sister, Lorene. We'd arranged online to meet at the Starbucks in the Chapters store in Metrotown--whenever possible I try to arrange meetings to take place somewhere indoors with food or books to divert whichever person has to wait. And since it seemed likelier that Lorene would have to wait, and since I knew she was another book-lover....
For a wonder, BC Ferries and BC Transit cooperated, and I made it from the 9 am sailing to the Metrotown mall just after 12:30. We'd exchanged descriptions of clothing the night before, and Lorene was already sitting down with her coffee when I reached the mock-iron railings of the Starbucks. We recognised each other easily.



The last time we'd met, I'd been in my early teens and she was a young mother, a couple of years before my (our) father died. I don't remember it very well, and she remembers it as rather a flying visit, because we weren't able to stay until her daughter got home. This was a more extensive meeting: we left Chapters about 3pm.
Some of the talk was 'catching up', though Darlene had filled us both in to some extent. Most, though, was sharing and comparing memories of our father. What term to use? Lorene began with 'our father', though as we became more comfortable, and talk became more fluent, she slid into 'my father'. I stayed with 'Dad', avoiding the pronoun issue.
Comparing notes: did our father have a webbed toe? Yes, two (I have also). Was he an atheist or agnostic (agnostic, but was confirmed Anglican the year after me, so he could serve as a warden for All Saints church).
Swapping stories he'd told: how he got the little scar on his forehead (hit with a lunchbucket in the schoolyard). The time he (very young indeed) and a friend sold tickets for a made-up show. I had more of these--although I'm bad at names and dates, my memory for narrative and dialogue is good, and Dad only had to tell me a story once for me to have it down.
Matching memories: what subjects he taught, what he'd filmed for commercials, family friends who had farms we'd visited as children. Lorene had more of these, having been older and more attentive when Dad was alive. She told me how she'd watched the changes at the film studio he'd done work for, as it went from studio to shop to restaurant, and we digressed to memories of Vancouver neon signs and when Vancouver, New Westminster, and Burnaby were separate places.

Our father was born in October of 1903. He liked to say that he was a year old when the Wright Brothers flew their airplane, and he'd lived to see the moon landing.
He also used to say that his family was the most important thing in the world to him, and that he didn't care what happened to the rest of the world as long as his family was all right. Argumentative child that I was, I would object that without the rest of the world, our family would be in a sad way. Now I wonder whether he included his other daughters when he said that? He continued to see them when he could, and Lorene remembered that when she'd hoped to attend SFU, he and my mum had offered to have her stay with us.
Lorene and I are both the older sisters. One doesn't often get to meet someone who was in the same birth order to the same parent. I think she may have been a 'daddy's girl', as I was. We both learnt to love books and value education, though she wasn't able to go for university until she retired.
Her memories of our dad, all that came up in our first meeting, are positive and fond. I've been braced, a little, to admit Dad's faults, to discover (as in fiction one does) imperfections and failings that might diminish him. That hasn't happened with either Darlene or Lorene. Maybe because my vision of him was realistic already, or maybe because he really was a good father, if not consistently a good husband.

It seems to be rare to not have unresolved issues with one's parents, and the common desire I read of is for 'closure' (a concept I don't quite believe in) and to hash out what went wrong in one's childhood. I didn't feel that either of us were looking for closure, only to fill in the spaces in our father's memory, to hear the stories he would have told us if there had been time, and if we had known to ask.