Monthly Roundup: September 2015

So I spent the majority of the summer imitating a toddler going, "I DON'T WAAANNNAA". It was hot, the house was falling apart, everything sucked, and dammit I just didn't waaaannnaaa.

Now that it's cooled off and my garden has died back, I feel like an adult once more. I also started a new job in August that switched me back to day shift, consequently knocking me on my ass as far as my sleep schedule, so there's been a lot of residual crankiness in that department too. Suffice to say, I'm feeling a bit kinder towards the authors I'm reading at this time.

Here's some quick thoughts on books I read these last few months:

Writing Fiction - Janet Burroway
Nonfiction
I had this book recommended to me as part of the Writers in Paradise conference as a great reference text on crafting fiction. On the one hand, I do see how this kind of thing is helpful and contains a lot of good information. On the other? It's a slog, and while the info seems really good and helpful when you read it, for me it's not so easy to retain that information and apply it to my own works. It's one thing to think in the abstract and say, "A character needs contradictions to be three dimensional!" and another to apply that to creating your own characters. My own process often feels so nebulous and meandering, and things just kind of seem to happen or they don't. These are things that are, maybe, better applied during an editing phase than a first draft. I still firmly believe that the most important thing about a first draft is to just word vomit it all out and clean it up later, and that's worked ok for me so far. Now that I'm on, say, a third draft of a big project and it's morphed into a completely different beast from what it started as, these are things I want to keep in the back of my mind but not allow to take over. Good reference, I'll probably keep it around, but I'm conflicted on exactly how much it'll help.

Assholes: A Theory - Aaron James
Nonfiction
Another nonfiction book. I thought this would be a semi-humorous look at why assholes are assholes and strategies to manage their assholeness, but it falls far short of it's promised premise. This seems like an idea that started off really interesting, but would have benefited from handing the first draft to an actual writer. James is circular and monotonous, even when tongue-in-cheek, so that the whole thing just reads like a college freshman's philosophy text. It lacks general accessibility and  readability, which I think would have benefited from someone who could make it more palatable to an average reader.

Voices in the Night - Steven Millhauser
Magical realism
 A collection of short stories that was recommended to me by a writerly friend. It started off very interesting, but quickly fell into a rote pattern--Story is set in Small Town, where Something Weird is happening, but it's totally Normal, even as it is Weird. Relies heavily on American nostalgia and a sense of oddity, which I do like, but not as a pattern. The first half of the book just all felt vaguely similar, and then we got to a retelling of Rapunzel where we dive into the main characters' heads in a rotating turn, which just didn't grab me, and the same goes for a hyperbolic Paul Bunyan short that went on much, much too long. Short stories are difficult, I imagine, to not fall into these traps. Still, I enjoy the sense of magical realism and oddity in each setting, something I want to pull into my own work.

Glamour in Glass - Mary Robinette Kowal
Alternate history, fantasy
 The second in Kowal's Glamourist Histories series, Glamour in Glass follows the now-married couple Jane and Mr. Vincent in Brussels. They develop some neat new glamour techniques, and then get caught up in the Napoleonic wars. At one point, Jane has to use all her wits and techniques at her disposal to rescue her husband. Again I like the worldbuilding and the magic system, which Kowal establishes very well. The relationship between the two isn't particularly compelling, with lots of misunderstandings and such that makes it seem like they don't really understand each other much at all, and doesn't make them seem like a particularly close couple. Just didn't work for me as well as it could have, but as a whole it works well enough that I'll continue to follow the series.

One Good Earl Deserves a Lover - Sarah MacLean
Romance
I've never given romance novels much stock, honestly, especially historical ones. I love historical novels, but historical romances seem to love to throw accuracy to the side in favor of bodice-ripping, and it irritates me to no end. I thought I'd give the genre another chance when MacLean was recommended to me, and this is the second in her Rule of Scoundrels series. They're not bad, if you set your expectations for accuracy low, though I have to say her tendency to make dramatically short sentences/paragraphs is rather grating. It's a style affectation, but I don't care for it. It sticks out like a sore thumb when reading, and I feel like writing styles should be subtler than that. If it trips up a reader, it's too much, girl. But overall, some fun and funny characters, even if the constant harping on their stock personality traits (We get it, Penny is a scientist. She doesn't understand love. She needs to study it and conduct experiments and gets herself into hilarious(!) situations because of it. Enough.) gets overwhelming. At least it's a fast read.

The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Fantasy
It's hard for me to really make up my mind about this book. On the one hand, it plays in such stock fantasy tropes: beautiful elves! A half-breed prince suddenly thrust into a ruling position! Evil stepmothers! Pseudo-medieval speech patterns! Even the names are a bit over-syllabic. And the main character, despite being raised far from civilization and barely educated, manages to do nearly everything right without any realistic missteps. Yet for all that, it still wormed its way into my heart. It's a decent read, if not spectacular. I'm just rather burnt out on elves and royalty.

Texts from Jane Eyre - Mallory Ortberg
Humor
Simply brilliant. Enough said. Re-imagining classic stories through the medium of text (and a dark sense of humor), with references only book nerds will truly understand. Poe can't leave the house because a bird is looking at him, Emily Dickinson is concerned about the man who is definitely snakes, and Hamlet needs his mom to bring him a tuna fish sandwich WITHOUT THE LITTLE CRUNCHY THINGS. Read it and rejoice. Or weep. Whatever.

Raising the Stones - Sheri S. Tepper
Science fiction
This book has long been on my top list for science fiction. There's just something about it that really stuck to me, and, as a pretty avowed atheist, I find it's story of religion-gone-wrong and it's Hobbs Land Gods to be really compelling. A God that works, huh? A God that actually helps people get along, be happier, weeds out the bad seeds, helps them produce more (important on a farming planet!), and helps them communicate. And protects them from threats. This book is the second in a series, of which I have never read the first, but I'm told they aren't really related in story so much as taking place in the same universe, so it's an easy book to drop into the series with. This re-read proves no exception: Tepper is a thumbs-up.

The Magic Wars - Jo Clayton
Fantasy
I've previously talked about the book that got me into fantasy as a child, and how little it held up through the years. This is, finally, the third book in the series, that I found by accident at Half Price Books. I slogged through the others, but I gave up halfway through this book- once the magus falls through the dimensions and lands in Alice's Wonderland tea party, my disbelief is a little far stretched. The writing's not great anyway, and the formatting is annoying. Over it.

So that brings me up to the present time. I'll be trying to get back into the habit of posting about each book as I finish it to continue my dive into understanding what works and what doesn't.

What's coming up for October? Biggest of all: NerdCon Stories, of course. Helpfully based here in Minneapolis, many of my all-time favorite authors are coming to the Minneapolis Convention Center to tell some stories and talk about stories and sell some stories and sign some stories. People like the whole Nightvale podcast crew, John Green, John Scalzi, Maggie Stiefvater, Mara Wilson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Matt de la Pena, Nalo Hopkinson, Paolo Bacigalupi, Patrick Rothfuss and more. I'm going to get so many books signed, you have no idea.

Monthly Roundup: June 2015

June was a pretty uneventful month, although I (finally) made my reading goal! Hooray! I got one rejection letter, though it was for a piece that I fully expected to be sent back, and the note with it was kind. They say that if an editor takes the time to compliment your writing personally, at least there was something of merit in it, even if it doesn't fit with their needs at the time. I've got a few ideas for how to restructure that piece anyway.

Otherwise I didn't really do much for writing this month, much to my shame. We're trying to fix up our house and that's really demanded a lot of attention lately, so we'll see how the rest of the summer plays out. We took out a couple overgrown lilacs and other trees, installed some new fixtures, built a new deck and a couple other small things to improve our poor, rotted house, at least until we disturbed a colony of biting ants and had to retreat. The garden is also getting into the stage where it's slightly lower maintenance (at least until things start being ready to harvest!) so July may go a little easier.

One highlight of my month is I did get a linkback from Nnedi Okorafor on her twitter. Call me a fangirl, but I enjoyed it!

What's happening in July? Writers conferences I'm not going to, for one. Writers Digest conference is July 31st, and the Midwest Writers Workshop starts the 23rd. I'm probably not going to get to another conference until I try for Writers in Paradise again next January - what with my job being up in the air and so many things demanding money at home, it's just hard to balance the stuff I want to do with the stuff I have to do: the ever-present struggle of adulthood. Plus there's this constant feeling that these big conferences and things are just not for me, the amateur with only a couple tiny magazines under her belt. These feel like they're for people who are more advanced than I in their writing careers. Of course, I also felt the same way about Writers in Paradise, and that turned out pretty spectacular, so I may be worrying over nothing. Still, it's hard to justify the fees for some of these events given that I'm not making anything back at the current time. I'd like to advance a little more in my skills and resume before investing heavily in workshops and conferences.

Non-writerly events for July include the Dragon Festival celebrating pan-Asian heritage and spirit, and what I originally read as a scottish festival but apparently is just music with a deceiving name. Hmph. Well, just wait till August when Ren Faire and the State Fair start up. Minnesota summertime traditions, that.

Going to be enjoying this all summer, yeeeaaahhh

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.

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!

Monthly Roundup: March 2015

It's been a light reading month for me this March. I have a kind of loose goal each year to read 75 (new) books, which averages out to about 7 per month. But March, poor March... only ended up with 5. Between working full-time at the hospital and school it's been getting harder to squeeze in all the delicious reading time that I want. I did drop a class this week so my workload should be a little lighter here on out.

I expect one of the reasons for my slowdown, however, is the fact that I'm trying to chew through a Dickens novel. Like a hunk of jerky without any water. I find a lot of authors say that if a book doesn't grab them right away they stop reading, because they can't waste time on bad books when there's so many to read, but I just have a hard time setting a book down even if it's the most vile pile of garbage I can think of (and I have finished some incredibly vile books). Even if I don't like it, I feel like I should give a book a whole try. If I had given up, I would never have known how much I liked the end of Ender's Game, for example.

Anyway, what's to look forward to next month?

• Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference and Bookfair

The AWP Conference & Bookfair is an essential annual destination for writers, teachers, students, editors, and publishers. Each year more than 12,000 attendees join our community for four days of insightful dialogue, networking, and unrivaled access to the organizations and opinion-makers that matter most in contemporary literature. The 2015 conference will feature over 2,000 presenters and 550 readings, panels, and craft lectures. The bookfair hosts over 700 presses, journals, and literary organizations from around the world. AWP’s is now the largest literary conference in North America. Join us in Minneapolis to celebrate the best of what contemporary literature has to offer.

AWP is in Minneapolis April 8-11, and I'm pretty excited. There's SO many readings and lectures that sound really interesting, and there'll be the opportunity to pick up a ton of journals that may be relevant to my interests. Too bad I have to work two of the first days, but at least I can go for a couple hours during the day before having to come home again to sleep. Patients first, people.

On a more personal note, April includes surgery for the spouse (boo!) and a baby shower for a friend (yay!), as well as season premieres for Outlander, Game of Thrones and Orphan Black. The garden beds will get installed in April and the whole state will start greening up. April incoming!