My Agent Told Me To Make A Blog

I finally read American Gods. It's oft talked about, referenced, and used as an example, and it was high time I got my butt through those 465 pages of pure Neil Gaiman bizarro genius. Mostly, when people discuss this book, they sit strongly on one side of the fence or the other: they love it or they hate it. I hate how often and sweepingly that you-love-it-or-you-hate-it statement is made, but in this case, it's so true, I really mean it. In the beginning, I was pretty skeptical--it's weird, it's slow, it's confusing. But with the whole novel under my belt now, I can firmly say I'm in the "love it" camp. It's still definitely freaking weird. But when has anything written by Neil Gaiman not been freaking weird? It's weird in a completely brilliant way. I was also worried about the pacing; critics complain how it's a meander without plot, and I generally hate that kind of book. I was afraid with my tiny, commercial-genre-fiction attention...

I haven't done a signing yet, because I don't have a published book yet. I can imagine how that stage of the process must be exciting yet also terrifying; after months of hiding in your house talking to yourself in a word processor, it's time to go out and convince members of your community to buy and read the thing! As a writer myself, I'm a) instantly drawn to book-seller tables and b) overly compassionate toward local authors. I want to buy their book even if I'm pretty sure I won't like it. Unfortunately, some people make it pretty hard for me to keep wanting to buy their book. I mean, really, the cards are stacked in your favour--all you have to do is be polite and engaging, and I'm gonna buy it because you're a local author. Examples of what I'm talking about are people with tables at local fairs, festivals, and markets. I live in a small state, and we get really excited about local authors. When someone is pushy and condescending, it rea...

The past few months have been adventurous. We bought a house, which involved all the annoying house-buying paperwork and errands that you'd expect. We then moved house, which of course involved all the annoying moving that you'd expect. We have an additional cat, who's the best cat of all so far. I set up an office, with a new desk, chair, and shelving that I assembled all myself. And a beanbag chair that the cats like to monopolize. As far as reading goes, I've started American Gods , finished the Writing Excuses anthology Shadows Beneath , and am working through a collection of Lovecraftian Cthulhu-mythos short stories. Oh! and I quickly reread A Wrinkle in Time in preparation for the movie. Writing-wise, I've made a lot of important progress. I was stuck on a major revision for months. Like, point-of-nervous-breakdown stuck-- so much had to be changed, gutted, and rewritten. There were certain chapters that took weeks of writing, throwing out, and rewr...

I'm like the last person on the planet to read the Dresden Files, and within a few pages it's obvious why. There are very few books that make me actively irritated if I get interrupted. I started this one on an airplane, planning to read it while I was out of town... but I finished it before I managed to get out of town. I may have a particular soft spot for the roguish, lonely, haunted-past, tall skinny male leads. The Doctor. Sherlock. Constantine. I definitely have a type, and Harry Dresden fits it. With his messy history of magical-rulebreaking for self-defense, he's got all sorts of problems following him around, not the least of which is a wizard council that's just itching to find the slightest provocation to have him executed. Add this to the fact that the character is a total powerhouse of bad-ass magic, restrained by his sense of ethics and, well, being a gentleman. I think Harry Desden might have been tailor-made to melt my heart. Plot-wise, I haven't...

Stephen King's On Writing is widely touted as not only an excellent resource, but a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the writer's life and thought process. I think there is some good writing advice, but I mainly enjoyed it as an interesting nonfiction read about his life and how he came to be where he is now. I know a lot of literary folks like to sneer down at Stephen King's proletarian writing style, but hey, us proles love it. I read On Writing super fast, faster than I'd read anything in years. I read a few other things in between, and the next book I found myself ripping through was 'Salem's Lot. I told my coworker, "I haven't gone through a book this quickly since... Well, since the other Stephen King book I read." I find his voice conversational and entertaining, his characters full and lovable, and his settings delightfully close to home. Sneer all you want, but he's still a good storyteller. For those who've only read his ...

Recently I was reading a book that made me pause and think about societal norms of right and wrong. The situation in the story was that character 1 was very upset that character 2 (their bodyguard) had spied on them without their consent. Character 2 had placed a video bug in the interest of better protecting his charge. Character 1 was pissed, and it wasn't explored beyond "he's mad that I spied on him." This made me realize... I didn't have sympathy for character 1, because I felt character 2 was in the right. The author seems to have assumed the reader would be on-board, and so the "just cuz" explanation would suffice. Assuming that isn't necessarily wrong; I don't think an author needs to go out of their way to explain why someone would be upset over theft, slavery, or murder. But more ambiguous ideals, where there's no physical harm or infringement of rights, are more culturally determined. As an example, if character 3 was presented...

I find it's often assumed that, because I so cheerfully critique my favorite things into mangled corpses, I therefore look down on romantic comedies. Friends might engage me in a conversation about how silly and formulaic they are, naturally thinking Mrs. Must-Have-A-Clever-Plot-And-World over here will agree. But I'm actually all, "...I liked that movie". I think this gets into why the romance genre, with a capital R, is so distinct and separate from other genre fiction. You read it (or in my case, watch it) for separate reasons. Regular sci-fi/fantasy--yes, I want to be wowed by how clever and unpredictable and unique everything is. Romance? I just want to be happy and not think about life :( It fills a similar niche to eating cookies. When my husband is off in China for work, and I'm all alone and my brain is exhausted from the day, sometimes all I want out of my fiction is to cheer the main characters on and know they'll get together in the end. (As an...

Not blogging for a month gave me more time to read, so I actually managed to finish a couple books instead of my usual one per century. The last one I finished was the delightfully clever Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone. This is a difficult one to explain. On one hand, it's solid fantasy, with a lot of the usual--magic (Craft), fantasy creatures (gargoyles, vampires, "blacksuits" in service of the city's justice system), and the extraordinary (resurrected gods, ancient skeletal sorcerers, shadow monsters). But it's also an atypical setting--not quite modern, not quite urban fantasy, but definitely not the traditional medieval European. The main characters are lawyers for the firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao. The magic is intimately associated with contracts, clauses, and legalese. Characters might smoke cigarettes or do drugs behind bars. The priests are actually technicians, who manage the steam pipes that provide the city's energy with the fire-god...

I find the concept of good and evil overly simplistic. I'm not going to say I automatically hate it. That would rule out so much great fiction, like Lord of the Rings , Star Wars, and Supernatural.    Oh yeah and that really good season of Constantine that went the way of Firefly. Anyway, a lot of the good vs evil thing comes from religion, and fiction based on religious mythology is naturally going to incorporate it (such as the aforementioned Constantine or Supernatural , also Stargate SG-1 , come to think of it). Some of the really great classics also handle it tactfully, because they're giants and founding fathers of their genre (LOTR and Star Wars ). However, in more contemporary, non-Biblical fiction, I think the idea of good vs evil is starting to get stale. As fiction and literature evolves, we're more and more interested in shades of gray, moral ambiguity, antiheroes, ethical quandaries, and unclear or sympathetic villains. The bad guy who's a ...

I want to share a wonderful book written by one of my peers: The Deathsniffer's Assistant , by Kate McIntyre We're both represented by the same agent, which is how I became aware of her, and I think there's a reason. We must have very similar tastes; I loved every. single. thing. about this book. I'm always on about worldbuilding at setting--it has that in scads. The hero is such my kind of character, too--he's polite, mild-mannered, and sensitive. The setting is alternate-world Victorian, with fantasy elements taking over for any and all technology: bound spirits. That sounds kind of cliche on the surface, but I promise it's not. Each type of spirit has a defined role, a unique personality, and a vastly different appearance. Undines for water and plumbing, salamanders confined into lanterns or for heat, cloudlings for energy and current, and many more. The social structure, too, is inventive and flavored by the magical elements. Every person is categorize...

I've been adventuring further and further into the mysterious realm of steampunk. I've always had a bit of a fascination and admiration for this sci-fi subgenre, though my knowledge of it has accrued slowly over time. The first time I'd ever heard of it was when I was a pre-teen and got a book on how to draw fantasy characters. There was a whole chapter on steampunk, and I was like, what is this ?? I like thinking of steampunk as Victorian sci-fi, or sci-fi set in the past instead of the future. I suppose it's really more alternate-reality. It's defined, obviously, by steam power, and things like gears, zeppelins, vests and tophats, tinctures, wires and tubes and neon glowing chemicals. But at the same time, one of it's most endearing qualities is how the genre is more of a collection, a heterogeneous hodgepodge of ideas and gadgets and dark colors. Part of what makes it is the combination of all those things--the sum of its parts. The grandfathers of ste...

I'm back on this first day of the new year, with a huge stockpile of hopefully interesting blog posts, and we're going to kick off with some reflection! Last year was a big year for writing, for me. I finished my first MS, I queried my first agents, I talked to several real agents on the phone, and then I actually signed a contract with a fantastic agency. I also finally escaped the vestigial clutches of vet school reading burnout, and managed to read a bunch of great books, mostly by contemporary fantasy authors. So what are my hopes and plans for this year? See the Pull of Gravity polished up beyond my best dreams of how good it can be, and find it a home with an enthusiastic publisher. Finish up a second MS, my dark fantasy novel. Keep blogging consistently, and hopefully keep up the quality. Read, read, and read some more! Here's to a fresh new year, and lots of writing!

Writing is a shockingly intimate thing. Whenever I've gotten to know someone through writing, I've never been surprised at who they are. Say I Facebook friend them or start chatting in private messages--I seem to already know them. I'm not surprised by their opinions, their mannerisms, their positions on controversial topics. Conversely, if I already know someone, and I then read some of their writing, it often reveals facets to them that I've never seen before. I really think you show a lot of yourself in your writing. This is particularly fascinating when you consider that characters are often quite different to the authors. The characters may be wildly different from each other, as well, with drastically varying views on a topic or theme. But there's still something in the author's voice that shines through. Maybe it's because each character generally has something of us inside them, even if it's only one tiny piece. Maybe it's the topics we c...

We interrupt our regularly scheduled writing-and-SF-related blog posts to talk briefly about politics. In the days following the 2016 election, there's been a lot of fear and anger. There are plenty of things I could say. Commentary, analysis, fears. Complaints about Trump's complete ineptness at the role and horrible track record of lies, hate, and misogyny. Bitterness about the democratic party forcing us to accept Clinton as their candidate. For now, I don't want to wax too political. And frankly, while I try to stay up to date, I'm not the most experienced or informed when it comes to politics. I have one point I want to make. Before that, the three most important issues to me personally: 1. Donald Trump has enabled others to feel safe voicing and acting upon extreme bigotry. 2. Hillary Clinton is so disliked and mistrusted, she absolutely did not inspire people to vote for her. 3. Now Donald Trump, as president-elect, will become a role model for children...

I wanted to start talking about books that I've read and enjoyed. Not exactly reviews so much as recommendations. I sort of set myself up for starting these posts with an initial list of great sci-fi books I love , but even so, it's daunting to pick only a handful of books to talk about. I love so many books! Nonetheless, here I am, with a relatively recent read (read it last year). I Am Not A Serial Killer is a YA horror/thriller by Dan Wells. Which, you may notice, is totally not my usual genre. I ended up buying this book after listening to a few seasons of the Writing Excuses podcast. He's one of the podcasters, and after hearing his thoughts on writing and descriptions of his book, I couldn't resist. John Cleaver is a fifteen-year-old sociopath who's always been obsessed with serial killers, and when one crops up in his small town, he gets in touch with his dark side to track them down. It's essentially teenage Dexter , which is one of my favorite T...

In the past two blog posts , I talked about characters vs real people--how on one hand, characters generally need to be more predictable and consistent, but on the other hand, it sucks when they're so simplified they turn into caricatures. Today I have some examples for you. These aren't necessarily my all-time favorite characters, just a selection of those that feel, in my opinion, well-rounded and "real." Classic Literature Chief from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - It's a great book, and a lot of that has to do with the two main characters. Our narrator, Chief, is fascinating. He pretends to be dumb and stupid, and is therefore able to observe a ton about the characters around him. He's part Native American and has a full life and backstory before he came to the mental hospital, and one of the best parts is how his paranoid schizophrenia slips in to create an unreliable narrator. He's a multi-faceted, layered character, who shows us--the read...

Last time , I observed how characters are expected to be more predictable and consistent than people are in real life. It turns into a bit of a balancing act, because if there's anything worse than a confusingly erratic character, it's one who's so simple, they can be defined by a single word/phrase/role. This is a very common topic on what makes good writing. Characters being flat or well-rounded is a huge area for critique/praise/discussion in books and book reviews. Generally, you know a character's flat when they're nothing more than their role: "the love interest;" "the wise mentor;" "the plucky thief." I mentioned how complex and surprising people can be in my experiences with vet clients , and brought up that same idea: character first, role second. A good example is me! The whole reason I thought of this post is how surprised someone was one day when I wore a dress. People are often surprised when I wear a dress or skirt, ...

Now, don't get me wrong, I love Star Trek--especially Deep Space 9. I feel no need to pick sides here, even though I know the DS9 and B5 fandoms have had some, uh, friction . But in my mind, what's better than one amazing sci-fi drama set on a space station? Two amazing sci-fi dramas set on space stations! I suppose if you really, really pushed me to answer as accurately as possible, I'd say Star Trek: TNG is the all-time greatest sci-fi series, and I think a lot of that has to do with its cultural influence and the precedents it set. Babylon 5 , sadly, didn't reach nearly that level of widespread awareness and acclaim. Which is why I'm here to tell you about it today. On first viewing, Babylon 5 looks like a hokey, low-budget rip-off of DS9. I remember, several episodes into season 1, I was wondering what the big deal was about the show, and consulted the internet for reviews. It was okay , I thought, but it wasn't exactly as ground-breaking as I'd be...

I'd like to share some of my absolute favorite books with you. I have a lot of non-SFF favorites ( East of Eden and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, for example), but I'll only be talking about SF today. I had the idea to share recent reads with you guys and make recommendations, but I realized my definition of a "recent read" is a bit variable, and I wanted to lay some groundwork first. So I'm going to cover a lot of ground with one post here, by pointing out the big milestones in my sci-fi reading experiences. In the future, I'll talk more about books as I come across them. This is not at all a comprehensive list. Rather, it's a collection of important books that influenced me, which I can talk about intelligently since I've read them. There are plenty more great sci-fi books still on my to-read list. Vet school interfered quite a bit with my reading, so I'm still playing catch-up trying to read the great literary classics as well as SF cla...

Scientific writing and creative writing complement each other in some ways, and totally contradict each other in others. When I'm reading or writing, I completely switch my brain over depending on what I'm doing, and don't even think about it. In vet school, I did a lot of technical writing. Sure, I was working on my first novel when I had the chance, but most of my time was spent working on assignments, case studies, and medical records. As an actual vet, I still read a lot of journal articles and textbooks. And there's some definite differences in scientific writing. Things Not So Good For Creative Writing 1. Passive Voice This one always really sticks out to me. Research is meant to be objective, and so it's generally described as such. It's standard and expected to use passive sentences so you can avoid saying "we" or "I": "The culture was incubated at room temperature" or "A neurological exam was performed." I...