Monthly Roundup: May 2015

Rough month again reading-wise. Maybe I should just start adjusting my expectations? What with being an adult and all, with a job, classes, a house and now family (albeit small family, but still) to care for. Maybe I'll just mentally lower my goal to 60 books per year, averaging 5 books a month, which may be more doable. So in light of that... met my May goal! Hooray!

Forgot to mention in the April roundup that I had a small flash piece published at Flash Fiction Magazine. Unfortunately the copy-paste in the email submission stripped my formatting, and it ended up that way on the site too. Oops! I guess this whole submission process is something I'm learning more about as I go along. I wasn't even that hopeful about the piece to begin with, but the kind folks at FlashFic enjoyed it enough it seems, so thank you guys! I really appreciate the opportunity. The curious can find my piece The Dead Are So Pushy at the link.

I have another piece out for submission at the moment that I'm waiting to hear back on, but naturally, a day after I submitted it I end up with some ideas on how to fix what I now see as lingering problems. Figures. It's too late to call it back, so I'm waiting to see what happens: if it comes back, I certainly won't be heartbroken, as it'll give me an opportunity to fix the parts I'm thinking about.

Coming up in June: Nada. Zero. Zilch. June is going to be my month for buckling down and working on some shit. The piece I took to Writers in Paradise is still shelved and needs rampant edits and I've been putting it off, intimidated by the fat stack of edits from my cohort. I'm trying a post-it plotting method on my bedroom wall that I want to keep plugging away at, and I have another short story that needs some finessing. Additionally, I'm working through Burroway's Writing Fiction, and trying to do at least some of the writing exercises therein. Some of which have already helped me move a few pieces that I've been stuck on.

Unfortunately all that ambition has to be balanced with my other love: yardwork. Well, not the yardwork itself, only weirdos love mowing the lawn or raking. But I've got a yard and a vegetable garden for the first time and that takes time, yo. So while I don't have classes for the summer, yard and house maintenance calls a not-so-sweet siren song.

It'll all work out.

Here's some handsome motherfuckers who got married this month.

Wildfire - Jo Clayton

So this is a really interesting post for me to write. Wildfire, published in 1992, is possibly the first real fantasy book I remember reading. It hooked me into the genre completely. Previous to that I had read mostly children's lit, including things like Indian in the Cupboard and Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher, that often had fantasy leanings, but this book was something completely different. I found it in my stepsister's castoffs, so it must have been when I was around 10 or so, so let's say around 1995. The pretty, ornate cover caught my eye, and I've fallen down the rabbit hole ever since.

As you can see, this copy has been well-loved. The binding was retaped somewhere around ten years ago.

I had never experienced anything like this book before. The heroine was beautiful, fascinating, with amazing powers, but flawed in that she didn't know how to use them and often made her situation worse by them. She was at the mercy of a vast pantheon of gods and powers, as she tried to navigate her way through a lush world that was completely alien to me. I didn't always understand what was going on, with the world's own language sprinkled in throughout the text, but it felt immersive to me, that I was getting a sense and flavor of the world without having it spelled out, so that you could perceive the meanings of these nonsense words through their context.

I kept this book ever since, re-reading here and there. I found the first book in the series, and now I discovered the third a few months ago. But in the last year I've been reading works with a more critical eye, looking at their structure, rather than just their story, so I picked this one up again.

Honestly, it's shit.

No, really. I experienced this with the Redwall series and also the Dragonriders of Pern series, too. All things that made huge impacts on me as a kid, and as an adult, suddenly lack the luster and sparkle that I remember. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, apparently. The 80's and 90's fantasy boom produced some really hilariously bad novels (especially covers) doing pretty much everything that is a publishing no-no today.

First, the plot is barely coherent. There's really very little tying events together in a logical way, but it's difficult for me to give a very specific example. The magus Navarre brings news of Varney's kidnapping by the Mezhmerrai to Varney's father, who promptly drugs, tortures, and sells Navarre to a wizard. But Navarre's sojourn as a drugged and broken slave is really just a few chapters long, before his friend Kitya shows up and kills the wizard, oh but a mini-god shows up, and Navarre gets his with his curse, and they all get scattered. We move through these elements SO fast that it feels like we're just barely touching on them without really exploring what's happening. It starts to feel more like an outline than the kind of story I really want to see.

Plus, the ending is a literal deus ex machina. The area's god Meggzatevoc comes down and sorts everyone out neatly, punishing the wrong doers and ejecting our main characters from his land.

I think this is one of the issues I have with writing God characters. There's really no established rules for what the gods and powers in this book at capable of. Why didn't Meggzatevoc just do this earlier, if they were making so much trouble for him? There's a subplot in the book of the city electing an Augstadievon (what that is, we never know) with a group of plotters trying to kill off candidates. The Diviners of the city can't figure out who it is because they're cloaking their meetings in smoke. Can't Megg just put a stop to that? God characters just make this whole thing too easy to solve, especially when they're only used for narrative convenience.

The language is a mixed blessing. I still do appreciate the immersive quality that Clayton imparts to her worldbuilding, however, it really could do with some explaining. So much ends up as literal nonsense because we have no idea what these made-up words mean. If you're going over the head of your reader, it's just not going to work.

Lastly, what the fuck is this formatting.

At several points throughout the novel Clayton splits chapters with numbers. We stick with one character for a scene, then abruptly shift to another, then another, or back. She uses this weird poetry-like formatting at parts where, it seems, powers are battling, there's confusion, the wrystrike curse is hitting them.. and honestly, this is not good. This is bad. Don't do this. Format normal. Your publisher will thank you for it. Use your skill at writing to convey confusion, if that's what you're going for: not cheap tricks.

So there I go, destroying another aspect of my childhood. It was fun while it lasted, but now I'm going to take what I've learned from this book, and move forward. I still have book #3 to read just for completion's sake.. I'm sure you'll hear all about that when it happens.

Overall: 2 stars

Amazon: Wildfire

More reviews: Wildfire on Librarything (Average 3.19 stars)

Wildfire on Goodreads (Average 3.63 stars)

Still pretty because somewhere deep down I'm still ten years old.

Suitcase City - Sterling Watson

I had the wonderful opportunity to work with Sterling Watson at the Writers in Paradise conference at Eckerd College in St Petersburg, Florida this last January. He's a wonderful writer and a great teacher, and brought both myself and, I think, the others in my workshop, to a better understanding of the inner bones of writing and short stories in particular. (What do you mean it's more than writing 'what happened'? What!) The piece that I workshopped drew influences from Malaysian folklore, and had some heavy fantasy elements, and I think that Mr. Watson perhaps wasn't as into the genre direction that I tend towards. He's very old-school literary fiction, but he was remarkably patient with my work and that of my group (and one particularly contentious participant) though I think we may have been something of a trial.

So I listened to him read a excerpt from this particular novel, his newest, Suitcase City. Afterwards there were signings, and I did purchase this book and have him sign it for me. If he put so much of his time and effort into working on my piece, it seems only fair that I should buy and read something he's poured his heart and soul into, yes?

Honestly I'm sure he had no idea what to say, but this was very kind.

Five months later I finally get to finishing it (DON'T JUDGE ME) and really, I'm glad that I did. Suitcase City takes place in 1980's Tampa, Florida, and follows Jimmy Teach, an ex-football player with a checkered past who finds himself caught up in a whirlwind of legal action when he punches a young black teenager in a bar restroom holding a razor--only nobody can find the razor and the kid claims it was a comb. Racial tensions and Teach's own past braid together to create a rich almost-mystery (but mysteries are genre, and we don't do genre here).

Watson really does a remarkable job of leading us back and forth through the main characters' lives in a way that reveals just enough information when we need it, but not so much as to spoil the action. As new elements are introduced that complicate Teach's situation, we go back to understand what brought them to that point. I think this really emphasizes the importance of understanding your narrative in its entirety and being judicious about what you reveal at what point. It's part of what keeps the mystery, dragging out the "But why?" just long enough that you maximize tension without losing the reader.

The only thing I didn't particularly care for was the characterization of Bloodworth Naylor. I get that he's supposed to be a fairly unbalanced person, but I just didn't follow him at all. He's got to be the world's worst criminal, even in an era where police aren't doing DNA tests or finding hairs and checking for fibers. Every development in his plans happens by chance: The journalist happens to come question him, he kills her, he puts her in the trunk of her own car, he gets the idea to leave it in Teach's neighborhood, he happens to find Teach's daughter, the detectives happen to show up at the house at the same time Teach does. It's believable that his plans would fall apart around him, sure, but--and I'm struggling to describe this, exactly--I wish it felt more planned.

There's also an interesting point to discuss in this book regarding race. Written by a white man, it deals heavily with racial tensions that were prevalent in Tampa for the time. But we find some interesting lines drawn regarding the types of characters that are cast. The good guy is white, his good daughter is white. The drug-addicted football player teen with the razor is black, Teach's nemesis Blood is black, the mean lawyer is black, the ex-girlfriend-turned-hooker is black. I find this interesting because yes, there are parts where I felt mildly uncomfortable with this casting: the majority of the 'bad' characters are black. However, with that being said, I tried to think about it in a more open way. This is the particular story that Watson wanted to tell, and it's not unreasonable to assume that, had something like this happened in real life in this place in this time, that's what these various characters would be. Logically it fits the period and place and context. I think it would be dangerous, artistically, to say that you can't write a story in which the protagonist is white and the antagonist is black, but I also think it's important to understand the baggage that many readers may bring to that kind of story. It's just something to think about when including race in writing, which I think is actually really important to do. 

With any luck, I'll be back at Writers in Paradise next year and can tell Mr. Watson how much I enjoyed his book. Only this time I'm shooting for the novel section rather than short story, so, you know, good luck on that and all.

"I told you I represent the Tribune, Mr. Naylor. I'm surprised you haven't heard of me. Do you read teh paper?" Blood thinking: Can you read, Mr. Naylor? It made his hands shake with anger. She said, "Haven't you seen my columns on the murdered women?" 

Blood walked over to the crate of parts, reached into it, and took out a table leg. It was about the size and heft of a baseball bat. 

"Look," the woman said, getting impatient, "it's hot back here, and I had a long night last night. If you aren't willing to talk to me, I can just print what I have now. I think you'll be happier with what comes out if you give me your side of it, starting with Tyrone Battles. Then maybe we can talk about your relationship with Thal--" 

The table leg hit her in the mouth. Blood had accelerated the blow because he did not want to hear her say Thalia's name. 

Overall: 4.5 stars

Amazon: Suitcase City

More reviews: Suitcase City on Librarything (Average 3.71 stars)

Suitcase City on Goodreads (Average 3.52 stars)

The Lighthouse Road - Peter Geye

So like, I kind of love historical fiction. Maybe not quite as much as I love a good, weird, speculative fiction, but still a whole damn lot. I'll read the story of Henry Tudor and Anne Boleyn in a million different iterations from a million different authors (and I have), no problem. But I really enjoy exploring the different parts of the world in different eras, too. It's not really so different from science fiction or fantasy, when you think about it: there are some similarities between the world of the story and our own, but there are a lot of differences too, and well-written historical fiction allows the reader to escape into that world just as much as a good fantasy novel does.

The Lighthouse Road (not to be confused with 16 Lighthouse Road, a fluffy Macomber book that Google seems to think I mean) is set in Minnesota in the late 19th and early 20th century, on the shores of Lake Superior. Peter Geye sets up a dual storyline of Thea, a young Norwegian woman immigrating to America and going to work at a logging camp in the tiny town of Gunflint; and her son Odd, raised by the village after her death, and his affair with Rebekah, a much older woman who helped deliver him. Their stories parallel in a lot of ways, centering on dangerous relationships and trying to find one's own way and one's happiness in a harsh world.

I actually read this book for a class, but of the books that were assigned, this really was my favorite. The other books we read were poetry, and Geye's writing, by contrast, is very simple and straightforward. I found it really interesting how he could use some very physical, relatively simple sentences, and use them to create poetry in images. There's a lot of images from this book that really stick with me: Odd going out onto the lake to pick up whiskey from smugglers; Odd finding the postcards of Rebekah for the first time; Rebekah falling into her deep moods when their baby is born in their tenement in Duluth. I guess I like the contrast of using straight prose to create poetic images without getting flowery.

I guess there's just not a ton for me to say on this one: it's well-written and I enjoyed it, but there's not enough in it to really make me wax poetic about its virtues. Nothing to really nitpick either. Definitely a decent read, I just don't know if I'd go out of my way to find it.

No quotes today, because I already gave the book to my mom. Oops!

Overall: 4 stars

Amazon: The Lighthouse Road

More reviews: The Lighthouse Road on Librarything (Average 4.09 stars)

The Lighthouse Road on Goodreads (Average 3.60 stars)



The Dead Lands - Benjamin Percy

To start this post I'd like to point you, first, to a clip of 'devil-voiced' (no, that never gets old) Benjamin Percy singing "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Writers" over at Poets and Writers magazine. If you ever have an opportunity to go to one of his readings, do it. It's worth it to hear his voice alone, and you know, the books are pretty decent too.

Benjamin Percy kind of exemplifies to me the 'small world' flavor the literary world has sometimes. On the jacket of this book he has blurbs from Edan Lepucki, who was on a panel with him at AWP 15 that I saw, and also Jess Walter, who I saw at Writers in Paradise in Florida in January '15. The deeper I get into this world, the more I'm starting to recognize these names. Everyone is connected...!

The Dead Lands was Percy's April release, and part of my new effort to try to read at least one new release each month. Previously I'd read his werewolf novel Red Moon, which I liked as a kind of newer take on the whole werewolf mythology. It also earned a glowing review from my mom, so there's that. The Dead Lands departs from this concept but stays firmly rooted in the speculative (though, like many writers, it's hard to genre-define Percy). Best described as a post-apocalyptical reimagining of the Lewis and Clark journey, we follow Lewis Meriwether and Mina Clark on their journey as they leave the walled city of the ruins of St Louis and strike out into the midwestern desert, following their guide Gawea to the promised land of water and plenty. Naturally, not everything is as it appears. And also human-size albino bats.

I love that there is someone out there that is both literary-fiction-acceptable, and in their own fashion, genre, considering how much anti-genre bias there is in the literary world. It kind of gives me hope for bridging that gap. And yes, the book really is well-written: although I find a lot of the sentence structures to be short, almost overly dramatic, it's really part of Percy's voice and style and works for him in his own way.

My nitpick, though? Science. The flu is named H3L1 - or Hell, but while kitschy, this has no bearing on what flu varieties would actually be named. Varities of flu are named according to the type of H (hemagglutinin) and N (neuramidase) antigens they possess, hence, H1N1, or H3N1, etc. These are very specific proteins that produce specific effects: hemagglutinin causes red cells to aggregate, and neuramidase cleaves bonds in neuraminic acid. The minute differing signatures of these proteins are what differentiate H1 from H3, etc. etc. But there is no L antigen. It's a little bit of a stretch to say that the flu could have developed another kind of antigen- it's possible, sure, but not necessarily probable. I get the narrative convenience but I do love me some accuracy in biology.

I don't know, I'll admit, the accuracy behind what Percy describes as the changes to the various parts of the US, but they ring true to me. I love the description of North Dakota, where the pressures from the abandoned oil rigs have built up to the point of explosions, and caught fire into blazing infernos that have nobody to put them out. So they foul up the sky and cause a kind of nuclear winter. St. Louis and the rest of the midwest is a desert wasteland where water is precious, the pacific northwest is lush and green, and Washington DC is a swamp. I can easily imagine the images that he's creating here, and it seems really plausible for these changes to have taken place. So kudos there, for sure: the setting is really enjoyable.

The book is written in present tense which really emphasizes to me the difficulty in making present tense work. Percy has obviously had lots of practice, because the difficulties are few, but there are parts where we're slipping into describing past action where it gets a little awkward jumping from tense to tense. Example, including my notes:

Even the horses seem angry. (present) One dropped dead from exhaustion. (past) The others droop their heads and hood their eyes. (present) Yesterday, when Lewis spurred his horse, it swung back its head and bit his calf. (past)

I think in a way that past tense is almost easier to write in, because you don't have to try and keep this straight as you go. Which is not to say don't write in the present tense, because by all means, do: just be aware of the unique challenges that present tense forces you to confront. I'm certainly more comfortable in past, but if a story calls for it, I would try my damndest to make present work.

Overall I'd say another good book from Percy. Because of the theme there's the occasional kitsch that not really my cup of tea (Aran Burr (Aaron Burr), Gawea (Sacagawea), President Jefferson, etc.) but it's eminently overlookable for the whole. And also human size albino bats.

He will go there are night, when only a few guards haunt the halls and he can whisper in and out without any trouble. He will fold the letter into Danica's panties, they decide. Not her pillow. There it might be discovered by a servant or her husband. And not a gown hanging in the closet. There it might wait undiscovered for a month or more. "No," Ella says, "only her panties will do. A good everyday pair. Faded, worn, maybe even holey."

"Woman like that would never wear a pair of holey panties."

"Every woman has a pair of holey panties. They're her favorite panties."

(she did not, for the record, have any holey panties)

Overall: 4 stars

Amazon: The Dead Lands

More reviews: The Dead Lands on Librarything (Average 3.25 stars)

The Dead Lands on Goodreads (Average 3.51 stars)

Mirror Dance - Lois McMaster Bujold

So here we are again with Bujold and Miles Vorkosigan. I, like many people, have my comfort series, and until I finish devouring the whole thing, I'm going to keep picking at it piecemeal. I do love picking up new books by new authors but there's always an element of chance involved. Will I connect with their prose style in any way? Are they able to tell a good, cohesive story? Are their characters at all interesting? With Bujold I know the answer to all three of those questions is an emphatic yes, so I pretty much have to keep sampling her wares. It's guaranteed to be a crowd pleaser.

Again, it's hard to place this exactly in the Vorkosigan timeline, but this begins after Miles's first encounter with both Mark and Taura, who both feature prominently. Mark who is still hesitant to call himself by that name (because, after all, Miles chose it for him), impersonates Admiral Naismith to gain control of a Dendarii unit and use it for his own personal rescue mission on Jackson's Whole. They raid House Bharaputra, known clone creator and distributor, to free a group of young clone siblings before they can be killed. Naturally, it all falls apart, and even as Miles rushes in to try to save both his brother and his troops, he's hit with a needlegun and killed.

This book explores the resurrection process that's been hinted at in previous works, from Miles' perspective. Mark explores who he is without Galen and within the identity of Mark Vorkosigan, as he travels to Barrayar, gets to know his parents, and learns about Barrayaran society. Miles exploers re-finding himself as well after cryo-amnesia. They parallel each other in this story, and both come out drastically changed. I won't spoil that far, but the psychology behind this story is really fascinating. You really find yourself rooting for what previously seemed an unredeemable character.

All in all, still classic Bujold gold. This is the kind of book I pick up when I'm bored with my other picks and want some delicious word candy to lose myself in.

"I don't understand."
"Just exactly so." She was a child, despite her grownup body, he was increasingly certain of it. "When you are older... you will find your own boundaries. And you can invite people across them as you choose. Right now you scarcely know where you leave off and the world begins. Desire should flow from within, not be imposed from without."

"And what were you planning to do tonight, Mark?"
"Dance with Kareen."
"I don't see the problem with that. You're allowed to dance. Whatever you are. This is not the play, Mark, and old Prospero has many daughters. One may even have a low taste for fishy fellows."
"How low?"
"Oh..." The Countess held out her hand at a level about equal to Mark's standing height. "At least that low. Go dance with the girl, Mark. She thinks you're interesting. Mother Nature gives a sense of romance to young people, in place of prudence, to advance the species. It's a trick--that makes us grow."

 Overall: 5 stars

Amazon: Mirror Dance

 

More reviews: Mirror Dance on Librarything (Average 4.28 stars)

Mirror Dance on Goodreads (Average 4.31 stars)

 

 

Monthly Roundup: April 2015

So last month I talked about my yearly reading goal, which averages out to about 6-7 books per month. Yeah, I totally missed that mark again. Only four reviews completed in April, though technically I have two in the wings I'm still working on that were finished in April. With the end of the semester rapidly approaching I'm expecting that to get at least marginally better, but then the books are going to be in competition with the garden, so it's hard to say. It's hard being an adult, man. I remember devouring books as a kid, probably because I literally had nothing better to do. C'est la vie.

AWP in Minneapolis was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the sheer amount of panels available with wonderful information was a blast! I also got to see one of my favorite authors, Benjamin Percy, again. I originally saw him at a reading he did at my school, where he read from his book Red Moon. We had read Red Moon for class that semester so it was very well timed. Then I walk into a panel at AWP and think, hey, that guy's really familiar... then he starts talking and, oh yep, that's devil-voiced Benjamin Percy. So I picked up his new book The Dead Lands in April and have a review of that coming up as well.

The downside of AWP was the sheer amount of people. I'm not all that comfortable with crowds, so have several thousand people jammed into one area got extremely overwhelming for me. Add to that a huge string of bad luck that whole week and I ended up leaving a little early for a couple days, and skipping Saturday entirely in favor of retail therapy. Luckily since I live in the area, and only paid a student's fee, it wasn't too big of a deal. I still recorded some great lectures. I hear next year is in LA, so yeah, skipping that whole cluster right there.

So what's coming up in May? May is jam-packed. Biggest news? Getting married. Yeah, no big. We're walking the Minnesota AIDS Walk and taking some vows at the finish line. Should be a good time.

Some garden sales and farmer's market outings are on the horizon, but sadly because of work I couldn't fit in the other conference I had my eye on, the Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference in Bemidji. It's on my list for next year.

Additionally, I'm set up now to take playwriting as an independent study in the fall, and may start working with the theater department again. The department head is already hoping to have a student-written play to enter in a national competition, so, you know, no pressure or anything.

I've got a couple finished-ish pieces from this semester to work on and one out for submission as we speak (although now, of course, there's changes I'd like to make to it so if it comes back I won't be heartbroken). Here's to a summer of reading and writing!