Why I Write About Brown Elves

A few weeks ago, an author I respect (who is a shade of brown, not pure bleached white like my almost-aryan ass) said something like this: "I don't like brown elves." That was explained by a belief that tradition is important, and her European ancestry was just as important as her native american culture -- but mixing the two waters them both down. Elves are a European myth. Therefore they are white, and should remain so. Extrapolating, we should not change or use other culture's mythologies in ways they have not been used before, approved by dead people.

Obviously, I disagree. The author in question is of two ancestries. She had to have grown up in a household that celebrated both. And were they watered down? Have both cultures been lost, their importance and history ruined by impure mixing and changing? Since she professes to value them both, I doubt it.

The title of this piece references a wonderful essay by Terry Brooks: Why I Write About Elves. If you've never read it, you should before you go any further. (although the amazon shlick sheen on the essay is new. And unlikeable)

TL;DR. Terry Brooks writes fantasy because fantasy, like Science Fiction (albeit SF is more direct) speaks about the real world, and real issues. But spirituality and culture are real. Racism is real. And yet these are stories that SF rarely engages in, because they are less tech-focused. And nobody cares what colour you are when you can just change it at any time.

But fantasy has all of that. Fantasy, with its medieval trappings, is full of our modern cultural values, our beliefs and superstitions, and our racism. Arab authors complain of overuse of "those people in the east who wear turbans and live in the desert and abuse their women" in the fantasy genre. The entire Forgotten Realms universe is a shining example: to the East, lies "the Orient."

Keeping elves white only adds to this problem. Segregating fantasy to protect real-world cultural identity isn't the solution to cultural misappropriation. If you've never heard the term "cultural appropriation" it basically means this: The West, esp white americans, are stealing from cultures (most offensively Native American and Asian groups) by wearing headdresses or calling themselves redskins, or forcing anyone who uses a katana to speak with a fake japanese accent (transformers). The argument against this is that anyone who isn't from that culture shouldn't be using these clothing items or saying things a certain way or whatever.

The argument for is mostly "we're all post-racist and so we should all be able to share! this is America, melting pot of the world where we all come together equally!"

I'd really like the argument for to be true, but it's not. The world is not post-racist. America is not post-racist. One look at how Arabs in the West are treated and you see that cultural emnity and the racism borne of that are alive and well. Our cultures are clashing, and we have no idea how to reconcile them.

Except we do. Every child with parents from two different cultures should know that. Every child from parents of ONE culture should know that. Culture is ephemeral, and is different from home to home. You may share one thing or another, and the distances may grow wider the farther you go from your home, but this is the digital age now. We are all connected, we are all flying around in airplanes to every part of the world, and everyone lives everywhere. Even our animals are "invading" where they weren't before.

Because we brought them.

All this makes it all the more important to write about brown elves.

I treat my cultural appropriations in fantasy novels like I treat tattoo ideas. With rules.

1. Does this fit who I am (what this novel is about)
2. Can I explain why I have this tattoo (is the reason for this use compelling)
3. Does this do harm (does this use reinforce negative stereotypes, either actively or passively)
4. Would I do this exact same thing with a cultural relic of a culture I am closer to? Eg: Would you dress up in a headdress but not a pope-hat? If so: you suck, go die. Or realize you're wrong. Either one.
5. IS IT AWESOME: Y/N (this is really the most important one)

The world I created in Leylined is one of many cultural leftovers. They are clustered in strange ways, and have mixed and moved throughout. Just like me. I have lived many places, and will live in many more. I have learned many languages, and eaten foods from many countries. I am white, I am male, and I am more than that.

We must recognize when we are stealing from a culture, and when we are celebrating hand in hand. When I make fun of christianity, I must be ready to do the same to Islam, or even Buddhism (tho it's pretty hard to poke fun at buddhism. OHM) When I celebrate the rich culture of native american mythology, I must be ready to admit that christianity had some cool myths too.

Educate yourself on the context of your use. Don't just put angry turban wearing brown people in your deserts wielding scimitars. Learn why those clothes are worn instead of others. Learn why those people look the way they do -- there are many brown people across the earth, and they all look different, just like us poor ass paleskins. We're all human, and in fifty years I hope our kids are all as hot as this foretelling says they will be.

Will it be wrong to write about brown elves then? And white genies? Will anyone care?

Know what you're doing. Realize why you're doing it. And if it's for awesome, if it does awesome, if you know why it's awesome, then keep on truckin'. If it's because of stereotypes, if it reinforces cultural emnity (and not for plot reasons), if it leads to lesser understanding for the reader if not more, then drop it. Change it. You choose every word with care. Now choose your settings.

I don't put every character in a headdress. In fact, I haven't so far. But when I do, it's gonna be great, and they're gonna wear it right.

Friday Review: Engines of a Broken World

Hello again! I'm sad to report that this Friday Review may be a little more angry than some of the others -- well, not 2312's, but godzilla only knows how boring that tome was. Oh, wait, I know. It was boring as hell. Anyways, enough about that travesty, let's have a review that upset me for different reasons! Who knows, maybe these reasons will inspire you to read the book.

DISCLAIMER (necessary for reasons you will see): I am an atheist. I am perfectly willing to accept that there may be a god in the traditional Abrahamic sense. I do not want, or like, the idea of that god's existence. However, everyone should be able to believe as they like, and I'm not going to bash you for your beliefs.

Moving on.

ENGINES OF THE BROKEN WORLD

By Jason Vanhee

Merciful Truth and her brother, Gospel, have just lost their mother. And it's snowing too hard outside for them to bury her. So, under the reproachful eyes of the mechano-cat Minister, they put her under the table, with a sheet over her head. The Minister, full of Christian proverbs, is not happy, and says they need to bury her outside. But, save for two other women in their little remnants of a village, there is no one to help them, and they'll die of frostbite if they do. The next day, they try to bury her, but the ground is too hard and they can only put her in the basement, which the Minister also doesn't like. The Minister is God's representative in this world, a source of good and right, who nobody pays much attention to anymore.

This is when things get, in the words of a goodreads reviewer "Weird." What they mean is, it gets Sci-Fi. Spoilers ahead -- if you don't want to read them, skip to where it says >>>>, but let me be straight with you that like the 6th HP book, this whole story could've been about, well, let's just say it would've worked better as a short. Merciful's dead mother starts talking. Singing, at first, with foretelling lyrics instead of the usual for "Hush little baby" and then talking, through (if you're used to SF) the spirit and voice of her mother, but from a parallel universe, where she was a doctor and a scientist, things that are long gone from Merciful's world. Their worlds are dying, the spirit tells her.

Merciful doesn't talk to her long, and upstairs Gospel reveals that their world is shrinking; a fog is closing in that makes everything into nothing. They have only hours to live. The parallel ghost haunting their mother's body tells them that they must destroy "a machine" to save both their worlds. This is about 30% into the book, and it is already immediately obvious, probably even to you, what the machine is. It takes until about 80% for them to finally "realize" that it's the Minister. Though apparently the Minister is keeping them from realizing it, but in really non-subtle ways.

At about that same 80% mark, their last neighbor dies, and is possessed by a murder from the same parallel universe as the first ghost. Both ghosts tell the kids that the Minister must die, or be tortured, because God is shutting down both their worlds. He's pissed at how shitty humans are, and is winding back the clock. He sent down his Ministers to save humanity, so that they could live with him in heaven, and all the meanwhile shuts down the worlds. Just the two, apparently.

In the end, it comes down to a choice -- Does Merciful believe the semi-evil ghosts and kill the Minister, or does she believe the Minister's stories about God and his love and his anger towards the world?

She does both. She kills the Minister, which changes nothing. The fog approaches. She is the last living human being anywhere, potentially forever until God restarts everything with less free will. So what she does is pray. The last word, "potentially ever said, ever" is "Amen." So be it. Giving in, giving up, letting go. And that's it. It's over. The decision as to what happens, what god does, whether her prayer changes anything, is left to us. But we're so depressed after reading this damn thing that there's only one option I can possibly see. And that is death.


>>>>I know I just gave you a recap of the entire book. In fact, I just told you the whole book. There's not much else besides what I just said. Now, let me tell you why it upset me, and also amused me. This is the most nihilistic proselytization I have ever read. In this book, God is definitely real. God is upset with humanity, which He created, and God is shutting the whole thing down, without sending any sort of notices or anything. In one world, he sends the Ministers, to save everyone, and in the other, which seems a lot like ours, everyone just rots away and dies. And yet, very little in the book paints God as bad. Some of the characters do, but they're dismissed. The final scene is a suggestion that when everything else is shredded away, when we've lost everything, including God, all we have left is prayer. Not even hope.

In terms of prose, this book is fine. The excerpt, which I suggest reading on Amazon, makes you want to read the book so hard. It's good, it's compelling, the world is suggestive and depressing and strange. But no one goes anywhere. The secrets revealed are not found, but told, by the only characters left to tell them. This book is a race against Deus ex Machina, and no one can do anything about it. The world that seemed so large and mysterious in the first chapters is drawn inwards, closer and closer, until there's nothing left but Merciful. The ending is unpredictable only because we are so rarely used to seeing books where the characters have absolutely zero power to change anything. And that's for a reason. Because that is depressing as hell. We already live in a world where we as individuals have little power to sway the world at large. Why would I want to read fiction of that? Especially fiction that proscribes that that is in fact, good. Whatever lesson about being better people, respecting others and helping is lost in a nihilistic grey fog.

I guess maybe I should like this book. It doesn't paint Christianity in a particularly good light. It doesn't really put the idea of God in a good light, though from my interpretation it suggests that we have to trust him. Frankly, everything and everyone looks like shit in these books, except the two kids, whom God is also intent on killing. Merciful's final prayer, desperate in its hope that she, as the last living human being, might be able to save anyone, anything, to change God's mind in any way, is a statement that if God is real, and God wants us all dead, there's jack-ass crap we can do about it, except beg and plead at his feet to make it merciful, like the abusive father with a gun in one hand, pointed at our head, the whiskey bottle in the other, our last words pleading, no, no, please don't do this. But he can't hear you, he doesn't care, he's too lost in himself. And we all know what's about to happen. All we can do is say "Amen." So be it.

ONE WORD REVIEW:                                                                                         B/W/D
OPPRESSIVE                                                                                                        Don't.

SHORT STORY SHUFFLE TIMMEEEEE!

Alas, alack! Has it really been two weeks? Two weeks since we shuffled up the hat and handed out all those ridiculous prompts? For those not in the know, two weeks ago everyone submitted a character, a setting and an object, and I shuffled them all up and handed them back out. We all wrote 1-5k stories on those premises, and the results are due today! (though some sent them to me early. Damn do gooders)

I've seen a few, but the rest I've yet to read, but already I can tell this was a great exercise. It's awesome to see all your different writing styles and how you all dealt with being handed random prompts. I enjoyed trying to sound like a 13 y/o, and trying out a new style of writing a story (for me). Please find below links to all the stories on folk's blogs, or in the comments if they didn't have a blog. I hope you enjoy this little adventure and join in when we run this next time :D

Without further ado:

Mine! (muahaha most important): Texts from Last Dimension
Marie! The Attic
SE! That Time with the Drone and the Fence
Cel! Flugelhorn of the Void
Melanie! The Cave of Wonders
Tia! The Knife

More to come as they get sent to me :D

From Lisa (@lkajue) a story since the comments are being buttheads and her blog is dead.

It was midnight. Rain crashed against the windows of the house on the hill. It looked new, but it had been standing on that hill for at least a hundred years. At the bottom of the hill were three teenagers - fourteen year old Amy, fourteen year old Lizzy and fifteen year old Robin. They should have been at Lizzy's house, curled up and watching movies, but instead they had sneaked out of her window and travelled to the hill.
Amy smiled to herself. It had been her idea to visit the haunted house on the hill and she definitely wasn't going to regret it.
They climbed up the hill. It was steep, and Amy started to wonder if they were ever going to get to the top.
Finally, they got to the top, and they opened the doors to adventure.
Inside, the house was cold, empty and sent an unpleasent chill racing all over Amy's body. She bit her lip and swallowed.
"Are we going to go in or not?" Robin said. "Or are you too scared to now?" The teasing tone of her voice made Amy want to slap her right around her face, even though she was one of her best friends, and had been for a very long time.
"Yeah, we are." Amy said. Her heart was drumming against her rib cage, but she was determined to go in and prove that she wasn't a scaredy cat.
"Well, come on, then!"
Amy led the way into the house. When all three of them were inside, the door slammed shut behind them, making them jump. Amy's heart continued to thump against her ribs and looked down the long corridor that sent more unpleasent shivers down her spine. There was a door just in front of them, so she went to open it. It was jammed shut. She turned back around and realised that Lizzy and Robin were at the bottom of the stairs.
"We're going to go upstairs." Lizzy said. "Do you want to come with us?"
"No. I'm going to stay down here and explore."
"Okay."
Lizzy and Robin went upstairs and Annie walked to the end of the corridor. She started to wish that she had gone upstairs with Lizzy and Robin because not only was the place absolutely freezing cold, but it was also really, really creepy. All she could hear was her heartbeat and her feet as they seemed to crash against the floor with every step she took. She couldn't breathe properly. Finally she got to the end of the corridor and managed to pull open the heavy door that was in front of her.
It was an empty room. The only things in there was a bright red sofa, which looked so old and so decript that Amy was incredibly surprised that someone hadn't come to take it away, and a figurine of the frilled dinosaur from Jurassic Park. She went over and picked it up, thinking that it might belong to someone when there was a terrible scream.
Annie ran upstairs. In a small, dirty room was Robin, who was pale and shaking tied to a chair and Lizzy, who was being held by a strange looking man and had a knife pressed to her throat.
Amy stormed into the middle of the room and shrieked, "Who are you? What are you doing? What do you want?"
"Never mind that!" the man spat. "What are you doing here?! Have you told anyone about me?!"
"No - no, I don't even know who you are! Why would I tell anyone about you?!"
"Good! Now come over here!"
Amy stared at him, wondering what on earth he wanted, and then she slowly made her way over to him. She shivered like she had never shivered before and wished that she hadn't suggested this stupid adventure.
She thought the man might just be wanting to talk to her, maybe he would tell her who he was and then let the three of them go, but it turned out that that was definitely not what he wanted. He launched himself at her, but he didn't get very far. His form began to change and in a moment, he was a ghost.
"Oh my God, he's a ghost!" Amy exclaimed.
"Why the hell is there a ghost here!" Robin exclaimed, trying to get out of her bonds - and failing.
"Never mind that!" the ghost yelled. He launched at them again, but Amy managed to get out of his way. She fell onto the floor and felt a shooting pain in her leg. She clenched the figurine in her hand and them she threw it at the ghost. It flew through him and he laughed.
"Did you really think that was going to work?" he laughed.
He moved forwards and Amy tried to move back, but she seemed to be stuck to the same spot on the floor.
Just then, the sun rose and poured into the window. A moment later, the ghost disappeared.
"What - what just happened?" Lizzie asked.
"I don't know." Amy said. "We - we need to get out of here."
Lizzie and Amy managed to untie Robin and they went back to the house. All the way there, all Amy could think about was that the ghost hadn't killed her or her friends.
The next day, Amy did some research on the ghost that had almost killed her and her friends. She found out that the ghost was a man called Roy Bell, who had first raped his victims and then killed them by hitting them over the head with a very large mallet. Then he would go and hide them in the woods near his house, marking their graves with a cross made out of teeth that he had pulled from his victims, though he never used teeth from the person that he was burying because he knew that that would make it easier for the police to identify who was hidden away.
He had died before he could be arrested after he had been poisoned by a relative of one of his victims. It turned out that the house that he had been haunting was the house where he stayed after he had killed someone. When she read that, it occurred to Amy that if they had walked past the house, they might have stumbled on a grave.

Friday Review: Ancillary Justice

Hey folks! I finished another book that didn't make my soul weep, so here's a friday review! For your reading pleasure, I give you a hopefully well-reasoned review of a book that's been seeing a lot of reviews recently:

ANCILLARY JUSTICE

by Anne Leckie

Now, I'm not usually that much of a fan of first person novels. Personal preference. They all sound about the same to me unless the character has a really distinct voice. I picked this book up and (having just read a 1st person novel) couldn't bear it again, especially since the introduction starts you off with pretty much no information whatsoever. However, I came back to it, and I'm glad I did. The MC is both a starship, Justice of Toren and not a ship, as the book takes place across two different time periods which eventually converge. The book's title is made obvious when you learn that starships contain "Ancillaries" -- corpse soldiers slaved to a ship's AI and given superhuman implants. The two timelines contain the ship as is, full of ancillaries, and the future where all that is left is one, and no ship to be found.

This is a book about identity, and the entirety of the book is centred around that premise. What it means to be an individual, what it means to have identity, the little bits and pieces that make us unique, discrete units, distinguishable from other humans or even animals. The Radchaai, the semi-Roman empire whom the Justice of Toren (human name "Breq") serves, is ruled by the Lord of the Radch, a multiple individual with thousands of instances across the empire. The Radch have only one gender (she) and Radchaai often have difficulty determining the proper gender pronouns for non-Radch humans. I found this interesting and fairly novel, mostly in the fact that since this was a 1st person novel, I had no real way to imagine which gender people she was talking to were. There are hints, with non-Radch humans telling the MC she got it wrong, but at times this was a bit anachronistic, since the MC had been a human in non-Radch space for a long time, I would have figured that she'd learn, but I liked the idea from both a moral and literary standpoint. It was interesting to see my brain do flips when certain characters were revealed to be "male." 

There's a lot of fine worldbuilding in Ancillary Justice, all much deeper than what we've gleaned from the end of the book. The characters are vivid, full of life, and the author's depiction of life within an aggressive expansionist empire nearing the end of its expansion is extremely interesting. I always appreciate when the "bad guys" are given a closer look. This book was kind of like reading from an immortal Stormtrooper's perspective. 

If you're wondering why I haven't mentioned any plot, that's because there wasn't really much of one up until about halfway through the novel, when we discover why the future, singular version of the MC (Breq) is on a desolate icy planet. The pace picks up significantly, although at one point an entire novel's worth of action linking the two timelines is given about four sentences, but I understand that books can't all be a million pages long. 

Given Breq/Justice of Toren's pretty much impossible goals, the ending of the book was about what I expected. Half-success, setup for a sequel. I had actually been hoping that this book was a standalone novel, but I'm okay with it being part of a series, although I actually mostly enjoyed the ships multi perspective 1st person, possible because it can look through all its ancillaries' eyes, and that's something that will be lost in following books. 

If you're looking for a super action packed thrillride this book is not that. If you are looking for an interesting dialogue on individuality, morality and free will that happens to include pretty awesome spaceships and a very interesting universe, then this book is for you. Ancillary Justice knows what it's trying to say, how it's saying it, and it doesn't deal with all the extra fluff. Everything in this book is for a point, an idea, and one that I think is fully expressed at its end. And that, combined with an interesting look at character development from the inside and out, makes this book worth a read.

ONE WORD REVIEW:                                                                             B/W/D?

NEW                                                                                                          BUY

THE HAT BEEN SHUFFLED YO

I have shuffled the hat, the shuffling has been done!

The results are as follows. It's possible but unlikely that you got one of your own prompts. No one should have two of their own; if that happened and I didn't notice somehow we'll do a swap. Now, all of these should feature prominently in your story, hopefully as plot related objects, main settings and main characters, but if you really get stuck then you should just get creative. The point is to have some fun and use some random shit. We've given you some tidbits to start, and I know you all will come up with some absolutely hilarious stories.

You have TWO WEEKS to write a 1k-5k short story using your prompts. I suggest  you post them on your own blogs, and I will link them all in a post on here. If you don't have one, we'll post it up here. I look forward to seeing what you all create! (and I feel bad for some of you with your prompts XD cough cough cait reynolds)

MADISON DUSOME:

CHARACTER: A grizzled, no nonsense explorer
SETTING: A cruise ship in quarantine because everyone is infected (with flu?)
OBJECT: A sleeping bag

MELANIE FRANCISCO:

CHARACTER: A book-hating librarian
SETTING: A cave of wonders with no apparent exit
OBJECT: The wrong suitcase

LISA: 

CHARACTER: A chirpy teenager
SETTING: A haunted but renovated townhouse
OBJECT: A dilophosaurus (that frilled dinosaur from Jurassic Park)

THE PROVOCATIVE ONE:

CHARACTER: A pirate's parrot (make sure this is the MC, somehow!)
SETTING: The craziest possible place you can fit a roller derby
OBJECT: A ball of yarn

S. E. Lehenbauer:

CHARACTER: Man who has no memory of his life before age 10 who also fears soup
SETTING: Closed church from the 1600's
OBJECT: An EMP generator

CAIT REYNOLDS: 

CHARACTER: A dead gorilla (make this the MC if you can!)
SETTING: The bottom of the ocean
OBJECT: A ball

TWYNED EARTH: 

CHARACTER: A five-year old who thinks they are a ninja
SETTING: A spaceship
OBJECT: A flugelhorn!

DANIELLE COURCELLES: 

CHARACTER: A janitor who was something else
SETTING: An engineering office
OBJECT: Three golden bananas

MELINDREA:

CHARACTER: Lesbian roller derby girl
SETTING: An attic
OBJECT: A low-quality statue/figurine

TIAKALL

CHARACTER: A male rock star who used to be a nurse
SETTING: A beach
OBJECT: A knife

AND LAST I TAKE THE DREGS

CHARACTER: A 13 year-old girl
SETTING: A french chateau
OBJECT: A pen case

A little game.

Hello everyone!

I'd like to play a little game. A writing game, for fun and greater expertise. One that we can all enjoy and have some fun with. One that will hopefully teach us all something good about making engaging plots and working with other characters and settings that we normally might not touch.

Here's the setup:

In the comments, you will sign up by saying you're signing up in whatever way seems appropriate. "Hell yeah! I'm in! Go fuck yourself!" All of these are good. You will then provide three things:

1. A Character: This can be vague like, "A fireman" or specific "Lucy Jones, a weary stock trader just a few weeks from retirement.
2. A Setting: Time and/or place, an alien planet, an asteroid, 18th century Paris, a paleolithic cave in north Africa, 40 Million AD, etc.
3. An Object: Could be an apple, could be a priceless vase, could be a starship. Whatever you desire, and the author chooses its importance to the story.

After I've collected a few of these (hopefully there's more than one of you!) I will randomize them, juggle my digital sack, and redistribute the characters and settings and objects back to you. We will then write stories! All genres accepted, whatever you want. I suggest something inbetween 1-5k, depending on how crazy people get. We'll take two weeks (starting this Sunday) to write our stories, no real worries about the editing, and then come back on Feb 15th to share and go crazy-go-nuts! :D

I hope you guys are excited about this, because I think it will be a fun, fun time. To start things off, here are my 3:

1. A janitor who used to be something else.
2. The bottom of the ocean. (ours or some other)
3. Three golden bananas.

Lets play! 

Why Beta-Read?

Hello everyone! I'm here with a note about why you should be a beta reader. If you've already read the blog, you probably already are, but if you aren't, here's a few great reasons why reading someone else's unpolished manuscript is an awesome opportunity.

1) Free book! You're reading all the time, and you have to pay for the things, which is great for the author but if you make as little money as I do and read as fast as I do, it starts cutting into the things I need like food and heat. These books may not be as polished and have fancy covers like the money variety, but you can't beat the price, and 

2) You get to discover something new! In the course of beta-reading I've touched on novels I probably would have passed when it came to money. I've read a Sex-in-the-City with gorgons and greek gods, a new england family drama centered around an ancient curse, and the tale of an elven priestess who discovers she actually cares about love and kingdom after all. Discovering new things opens your mind and helps

3) Improve your writing! See other people's styles in their raw form, encounter new literary tactics, clever twists and tricks and everything else under the sun! You can see what didn't work for the author, what didn't work you, and offer them tips to improve. Teaching is the best way to learn, they say, and you get both when you beta-read. While being much more entertained than in a classroom (at least for me).

4) Help someone else. By Beta-reading, you greatly improve the chances that your MS will be beta-read, and the more beta-readers you have, the better your book will be (there's probably an upper limit but let's ignore that) Reaching out to strangers and helping them realize the same dream you have, of getting published and making a bestselling novel, improves everyone's lives, especially yours.

So get out there and read, why don't you! Stop by the beta-buddy page and become one today :D Reach out on Twitter, I'm always happy to give a shoutout. http://nanopals.blogspot.com/p/beta-buddies.html

Procrastipost!

Yeah hey look I'm not supposed to be here, okay. My MS is right there on the other side of the screen, and she's lookin' at me right ugly. The editing, the editing! The words control my life. But you know, sometimes you gotta be free, you gotta find a little YOU time. Which I'm going to spend on you. With a handy-dandy list of the editing I should be doing right now!

What am I doing right now? AHM EXORCISING MAH DEMONZ.
No, I'm not getting my vodka blessed then playing quarters with my old college roommate (a monster), nor am I going on a spirit journey. That's later. Instead, I am engaging in the incredible act of hunting down the demons in my MS, the dark spirits that cloud my text and obscure the beauty and power of the prose beneath! What the hell am I talking about?

THESE WORDS:

• SAW
• FELT
• HEARD
• KNEW
• AND
• SEEM/SEEMED
• THAT

I see you, spawn of Ghidora! Begone from my texts, begone from this earthly realm and never return! Well, not all of you. Sometimes I need you. But like, only on holidays. If we could just have a few little demon meetups once or twice a novel, that would be swell. 

In not-crazy person words: This selection of lexical items is a good tracker for words that can and should be ridden from your novel! All of these add clunk to sentences and break up pace. Stop seeing things! Stop hearing things, stop feeling things, just, you know, things. Imagine you are watching a movie and instead of the camera you had the cameraman, and you were just looking at his viewfinder the whole time, shaking and wobbling as he tries to keep up with the action until you realize you're on a goddamn set and Tom Cruise is just on a friggen treadmill. You've got some guy who is seeing everything for you. He maybe sends a telegram and lets you know what's going on in the action scene every few weeks -- who cares, you've stopped reading them.

Okay, so the crazy came back. All this has been said before by smarter people (read: here) but I'm giving you what I'm personally looking for right now. Ctrl-F->DELETE. Every sentence looks better, my Godzilla. Even if you don't have too many of these instances, and you already know this stuff, go through, because they are sneaky little buggers, and they get in all over the place.

Okay, I'm running back to my MS to murder these beasts. Too many run-on sentences given life by the necromantic powers of AND! Go back to your prison, you moster!

Day 4: Mind over Body (we all wish we could do it)

Mind over body. That's what I'm telling myself today, after having terrible bowel issues that I have been successfully avoiding for some months due to controlled diet. Somewhere in the past couple of days, I failed that diet, and I have been punished by the bacterial culture living in my gut. They decreed that those bacteria that process lactose were evil and sacreligious and exiled them from my stomach some years ago, after previously locking them in a fart-gulag.
The body is a horrible place, and everything about being made of meat is awful. That is why I like to write about things that aren't human! Robots and other superiour beings that don't have to look at the delicious melting cheeses that they once loved so very dearly and now can only gaze wistfully upon lest they eat even one tempting morsel and send themselves into a shit spiral that will last for days.
It's important to find the passion for your work, wherever it may come from. Most days, it's love of crazy wonderful things, or a desire for childhood fantasies to be real, or just wanting to be heard. Today, it's the rage and anguish I feel as a Frenchman towards lactose intolerance.
C'est la vie, c'est vrai, mais j'suis un ecrivant de science-fiction. Cette vie n'est pas la seule vie disponsible.
Nous faisons nos mondes propres.

Let's write some novels.

Day 3: It's like it never even ended

By this third day of #nanowrimo you've all either begun to remember what the last nano was like and are freaking out that you'll lose steam two weeks from now and nothing will ever be finished and oh god why or you're freaking out that you're behind on your count and oh god it'll never be finished why me...

Yeah, we've all been there before. But this is only day 3! The official count for today is only about 4000 words! YOU CAN GET THAT DONE TODAY IN TWO HOURS I BELIEVE IN YOU. Okay, probably not. In a perfect world, that's how I'd get it done. 1000 words every 30 minutes. The golden pace. But no, I'm never there. And you never are either! But that's okay. Because every moment we spend freaking out about our wordcount is time we should be using to fill our books with words.

Here is your mantra for the month, in fact, forever:

NO WORRIES ONLY WORDS. No worries only words. No worries only words! NO WORRIES ONLY WORDS!!! CHILDREN OF THE CORN AHHH

We've got 27 more days of nanowrimo, but you've got an eternity to worry about whether anything you do is good. For these next 27 days, just forget about that crap. Everything you do is good. And it'll be better when you edit it in December.

I'm trying to keep my face around the Forums for those in need, but if you see a thread that could use some Caps Lock Crusader action or see someone crying out for a #betabuddy, let me know!

Keep writing everyone, and I'll see you online :D Join me for a #wordsprint sometime!

Day 2: The envengening of fwords

Are you making up words? Chances are if you're writing fantasy or science fiction, you're making up far more than one. But almost any book can involve new language. Teen slang is an ever-changing miasma of made-up words. If your book has teenagers, you should probably have some kind of slang. Otherwise, they aren't really talking like teenagers.

But how make false words are too many? If I write out "The Glorxian sacrophods invexed the Halati metalikuds" you have some idea that <proper noun> <things> verbed some other <proper noun> <things>. But even if you have a degree in linguistics and figure out that the author was trying to suggest with the cross-linguistic "metalikud" that the Halati have a group that is above consolodation that doesn't really help you understand anything at all. But that's not because the words are made up, it's because you have no context for them. This is the first time you've seen these words, and they don't come with any context whatsoever, so you have no idea what they mean. If you provide the proper context, and make the language rich enough, (cough cough Elvish) everyone will want to learn that shizz. You know they made a whole language for the Avatar people? Cool, but no one actually cared about the language, because the world of that movie wasn't really compelling enough to make me want to pretend to be one.

Ooh, but what if someone's trying to take my unobtanium? Godzilla. If all your made up words are like unobtanium, then please, take all the made up words out. But for the rest of you, who have imaginations and intelligence, don't throw your made up words away. Sometimes they are beautiful, sometimes they enter the real language. I don't believe for a second that Shakespeare made up all the words English profs say "he" did -- I think that about 99% of them were common street language, which was never written down. And if you include a slang word that you and your friends use but nobody else, and it catches on? Think about grok, or frak. I at least hear those words pretty much daily. Frak is fun to say, and we all know what it means because it shows up exactly where fuck is supposed to be. But frak sounds funnier and doesn't come with any connotations other than BSG.

The key to getting your fwords into people's brains is to not make your book a language textbook, with long descriptions and definitions, but to leave those words like little crumbs of cake, a tantalising tidbit that you nab quickly and easily. Set a new word up with proper context, put in the proper grammatical slot and bam your readers will slurp up that word. Hell, if you make the language beautiful or compelling enough, people will learn the whole damn thing! Klingon appeals to those of us who love to yell consonants, Elvish to those who like to whistle and sing. My advice to making up words if you don't have any sort of academic linguistic knowledge is to just go with what sounds natural, and give us enough context to understand what it means. Don't give me a quiz on whether a lanitar has a long shaft or short shaft or whether the mechanism to create the spinning blade motion uses chains or gears or both. Just let me know that the mechanism whirrs as it slices through a thousand orks. (or orcs, whichever you want!!! Start a controversy over the spelling of your made up thing!!)

If you put in fwords sparsely towards the start, keep their usage consistent and supported, by the end of your book we'll be able to read "The Glorxian sacrophods invexed the Halati metalikuds" and go "OH SHIT!" instead of "Uh, what?" And that's what you're really going for.

2 days in, 28 more to go! Get those words, get those novels written!

Need Words? No Credit? NO PROBLEM!

Hello, and I am here to sell you the deal of a lifetime. That's right, fame and fortune can be yours, all yours. No strings attached, nothing scammy, nothing under the table. Except the dog, but that's where he's supposed to be. Can't have dogs sitting at the table, can we? Then there's no difference between them and us. Anyways -- I've got a deal for your. I know you've got a dream. You wanna write a novel.

OH I've heard that one before. Who doesn't say that? Everyone wants to write a novel. of course they do! But how many do? How many set up and say that and then finish? Not enough, i'll tell you that! Same as the gym, a few weeks after New Years and they're all empty. But what if I told you that I could guarantee you'd finish those fifty-thousand words?

Well, I can't. But you can. That's why I'm here. I'm here to make a deal with you, for that promise to fame and glory. I promise to badger you, to cheer you, to rabble-rouse and even jeer you, whatever it takes to help you make it down that line. I promise to sprint with you every day I am able, and to be unfailingly positive and faithful. Because it's hard to do that for yourself. But I know you can write these words. I know you have the power within yourselves to reveal the stories that live inside your minds. I believe you have the will and the fortitude to write just over a thousand words a day. For some of us, that's an hour's work, even less. For others, it's a whole day. We don't all have time to write slow. We don't all have time to write the best lines that there are. But that's not what #nanowrimo is about, and it's not what first drafts are about. They're about uncovering the bones, about laying the foundation. It's about transferring that story from your brain to a stable and permanent medium, before you refine it into art.

None of the words you write have to be perfect. None of the words you write have to be good. But you want them to be, and I believe you can do it. You just have to believe tha you know when something is wrong, and when you need to continue on. If your brain gives you another scene to write, write it. Maybe it will fit, maybe it wont, but you will learn something, and you will have those bloody words.

It's November first, and we've just begun. The road ahead is long, but also tragically short. Don't make every minute count. Don't make every word count. Just make words. I'll be here whenever you need aid, whenever you need to know that someone believes in you. And when we're all done, when that novel's written and ready to be edited into beautiful, magical art, then you'll find that the road to all that fame and glory just got a lot shorter.

Let's write a novel.

Friday Review Returns!

Too many books started and unfinished recently, as I apparently have become a gigantic snob. Or, I always was, but I just wasn't buying as many books. Sufficed to say, it's been a little bit since I've finished reading anything that wasn't a beta novel. But I did finish something just this morning, so I present to you the #FridayReview of Peter V. Brett's debut (now past) novel:

THE WARDED MAN

The Warded Man falls into an interesting genre I rarely see well done; fantasy post-apocalypse, with a scientific world like ours preceding the world of magic. The book started out strong, but I found myself growing less enthralled as it bore on. The Warded Man is an origin story. Multiple origin stories, technically, but it's really only one. Arlen, our titular hero, is a young boy who lives in a world where demons rise out of the ground each night in near endless numbers, hungry for living flesh, only to be repulsed by magic wards rediscovered from ages past. There are two other characters, Leesha and Rojer, but they are obviously secondary to Arlen, being given some twenty percent of the book altogether. 

This is a world where demons are mostly considered invincible. The demons come in delightful elemental varieties: fire, wood, wind, rock, sand, but all share a sort of classic semi-reptilian devil theme. For good or ill, the flame demons often reminded of the Night on Bald Mountain scene from Fantasia, albeit these are far more dangerous. Rural populations hide inside warded homes, while a few Free Cities stand encased in great warded walls, but even within those, people still hide inside at night. Only one Free City, Krasia, home to Arab-themed warriors, fights at all, and I believe the number in the book lists their male population (the only important one, apparently, since the men do all the fighting) as only eight thousand. This is a world where humanity has very much lost the war against demonkind, and very much forgotten who they were. Since the world of my current WIP is somewhat similar in its genre, including magic tattoos, I was obviously interested to see how well this lost knowledge and rediscovery was handled. Apocalypses are popular settings, even LOTR can be considered to be post-apocalyptic, but the apocalypse is so long gone that the world is quite stable, with only ruins to remind them of the dangers of the past (until, of course, that apocalypse comes again.) The Warded Man's world is something like this, the time being some 300 years after the demons returned, ending millenia of peaceful scientific progress. At least in this book, it's not clear how far that science got. The only mention of any sort of electrical work is a description of an ancient building with "wires for hanging pictures" which may just mean that, but my imagination went there. There's no guns or anything else like that; the only weapons seem to be spears, and rarely tipped with metal. The only wards known are defensive, and weapon and armor warding appear to be mostly forgotten.

I wouldn't spend so much time on this, but it's Arlen's whole story. He is the only brave one, besides, to a lesser extent, Rojer, and to an even lesser extent, Leesha. He is born with a natural talent for Warding, and a natural bravery. His life is simple in the small farming town where he lives as an inexplicable only child -- considering how much making babies is spoken of in the rest of the book, it's astonishing he doesn't have siblings. Arlen fantasizes about fighting back against the demons, but takes the advice from his elders, especially his father, that fighting is something left to a last resort. Inevitably, situations resolve that result in demons attacking his family, and Arlens mother is mauled, in part because Arlen's father refused to leave the warded house to help them. She dies from her wounds after we are treated to a scene of hillbilly incest (not explicit) and Arlen runs away, surviving a few nights by scratching ward circles in the dirt -- dangerous because wind or a footprint or a falling twig or rain could easily obscure the wards and allow the demons inside. Arlen ends up maiming a demon and making an enemy, and proving that they can be hurt, and that individuals do stay, and die. He ends up finding a Messenger, who are exactly what you think they are, glorified magic mailmen/tax collectors. They carry portable circles and have warded shields and are basically the only people who travel between the Free Cities, besides a few heavily guarded caravans trading essential goods. Arlen pretty much consistently proves himself the bravest, smartest and most talented Warder anyone's seen, and quickly makes a name for himself. The book's chapters often take place years apart, and this, along with a few other issues, are what began to wear on my experience.

All three characters begin the book as children. Arlen 10, Leesha 13, and Rojer 4. But because they start at different times, the story ends with Arlen being the oldest, and Rojer some eleven years younger than Leesha, rather than nine. Impressively, each manages to have their own consistent story before they're all inevitably connected together, with various levels of chronological skipping. Rojer goes from four to fourteen almost immediately, and it goes pretty normally from then, until he jumps to sixteen, while Leesha has a few chapters at thirteen, a couple at twenty, and then a final handful at twenty seven. Arlen jumps too many times for me to recall, before SPOILER he discovers an ancient warded spear, and an ancient city with lots of mystical power runes, and makes the incredibly obvious realization that if you can literally paint wards on anything, you can paint, and thus tattoo, wards on yourself. He does this after some betrayal at the hands of the ultrareligious warlike Krasians (can Arabs -- I'm sorry "desert people" in the Warded Man, AND A thousand Names -- be anything BUT religious zealot barbarians who abuse their women and hate foreigners in fantasy novels? This is fantasy, you know.)

Individually, I liked each of the characters, though Arlen started to wear on my nerves the more "tortured hero" he got. And he gets a lot. By the end of the book he's dripping tortured hero so hard I can read the Pantone color #. Rojer begins, continues, and obviously ends up as the Jongleur sidekick -- read bard. Leesha becomes a strong confident woman, trained as a master Herb Gatherer -- read, chemist/doctor, but then... Godzilla.

Let me go off for a second here. This book is a book with a lot of sex. Talking about sex, talking about babies, about how people in small towns constantly cheat, about how everyone is always sleeping with everybody else, about how you pretty much can't trust any man to not force his way into your pants. Leesha is almost raped numerous times, until SPOIILER she actually is. Off-screen. Her and Rojer are attacked by bandits and her virgin flower is stolen. It happens so suddenly, so randomly, that I actually stopped reading, earmarked my page, and put the book down on the table. The scene seems to hold no purpose other than to accentuate the point that men are rapists, and to give the characters a reason to need to be rescued by Arlen, discover he's the now-mystical Warded Man and murders demons with his bare hands, 

Let me put this out loud. The way the characters meet, and the "love chapter" I mean, love story develops is:

• Leesha gets raped.
• Leesha is rescued by Arlen.
• Arlen, assisted by Rojer, essentially murder the bandits who raped her by leaving them to demons.
• Leesha discovers this and is upset since she as an Herb Gatherer has sworn off killing anyone for anything.
• Arlen is guilttripped by her logic and basically tries to kill himself by going nutso Rambo in the rain, which is dangerous because mud obscures wards and thus makes him vulnerable.
• Rojer rescues Arlen, who comes back and acts a big sullen baby.
• Leesha decides that this is the man she is destined to love and has sex with him.

Time between "lost virginity to rape" and "have sex with man I just met": one day.

Authors. Please, please, please. If you are going to include a rape scene in your book, please talk to a rape victim. Yes, people are different. People respond in all sorts of different ways. But one of the things rape victims almost universally do not do is immediately go have sex with near strangers. We all know Arlen is a hero who would never hurt anyone. We all know that Leesha is a woman who can make her own decisions, even if that decision is to revert to her childhood ignorant dream of just having babies and being a mom, literally throwing aside all of the character growth she's had through the whole book. The point is, they are still strangers basically at this point, and if that's her response, it's because she's gone crazy, and if Arlen is a really good person who does good things, he would realize that she just got raped and she is probably emotionally unstable, and maybe not making the best decisions.

Maybe I'm overly sensitive to this based on personal history, but I don't think that changing this story to have a longer build time from got raped to fucking a crazy tattooed magic dude would necessarily be a bad thing. Additionally, if you're going to have a rape scene, give the goddamn woman some agency. Having her entire struggle occur off-screen so that all we see is the resulting disempowerment makes that character seem weak, even though we know she's not. Leesha fights off rapists multiple other times in the book, yet she is denied a voice when it comes to the struggle that she loses. Poetically just, perhaps, but wrong for the character. Leesha becomes about as flat of a character as a pancake after she meets Arlen, lusting for his babies and promising she'll find out what the horrible truth is behind why fighting demons and absorbing their magic with his magic tattoos is turning him into an ubermensch. What a horrible flaw. It's really something I would worry about when I'm trying to rid the world of every last demon. 

Okay, I guess that's all the spoilers. The book ends with Arlen teaching people they can fight back, and a menacing chapter that leads directly to the sequel, with the Krasians on the march. Wheee. It's a classic hero's journey, through a fairly interesting world, but I felt like either too much of the iceberg was being hidden from me, or that the world is built on flimsy structures. For instance, if all you have to do to basically be invincible and able to kill demons with your hands is paint wards on your body, don't you think that's something like... no one would have forgotten? Or someone would have tried again? Because you can use pretty much any paint substance? 

It makes me worry that I'm projecting too much self-awareness into books, but this seems like... incredibly simple. Then again, I am some sort of super-educated magic man, and the people in this book are pretty much all medieval hicks.

Okay, all this said though, I do find myself thinking about the characters and the world when I'm not reading the book. The world gets into your head, and the characters are very likeable, and the prose is good. Brett writes with confidence, and he has a clear view of his world. While perhaps the destinations of each character's journey were never in question, I enjoyed the paths they walked -- truncated though they were. This book has all the essential parts of a story, without the fluff. But that in itself is something of a negative. Some fluff is good. Living with our characters can be enjoyable. You're not always wasting your reader's time if you're allowing your characters to live a little. This book could have been quite a bit longer and I would have been happy. Depending on the price of the Desert Spear, I might pick it up, and see if the sequel is worth a read. But if it's more man-happy tortured hero worldsaving... I might be too tired for it. It's too cool.

ONE WORD REVIEW:                                                                                         B/W/D

ASPIRING                                                                                                             LIBRARY.

#FridayReview #12 "Abbadon's Gate"

I love science fiction, and space operas are generally my favourite kind. I'm not entirely sure how operatic the so-called James S. A. Corey Expanse novels are, but they certainly are space. I enjoyed the first book in the series, and the second, and so I was really excited to read the third. So without further ado, I present the review for:

ABBADON'S GATE

This is the third book in the series, starting with Leviathan Wakes and continuing with Caliban's War. The first one was an action packed/mystery filled broventure through space that I thouroughly enjoyed, but found almost completely lacking of female points of view. Somewhere between Leviathan Wakes and Caliban's War, someone talked to the two guys that make up Corey and they apparently learned what women are and how they exist. The results are impressive, though if you were looking for the fixes, they're really noticeable. I don't know if they planned the novels to become progressively more "feminist" (read: egalitarian) and sort of flip flop some tried-and-true patriarchal sci-fi tropes, but they end up doing that, and it works pretty well in Caliban's War.

Let's drop some background: In The Expanse series, the solar system is pretty well populated, almost like the setting of the dreadful 2312, but a little grittier and significantly more real. There are three major factions: The UN, Mars, and the Outer Planets Alliance. You can guess who they represent. There is one main character who the story ostensibly rotates around, the man James Holden who has been the centre of a lot of political turmoil all because of the crazy billions-year old alien protomolecule superdevice discovered living inside of Phoebe. I don't want to reveal too much, but the results of the other two book are that Earth and Mars are no longer allied, the OPA is independent, and there is a giant Ring floating just outside Neptune's orbit. This book is about the Ring.

I'll be frank. Corey knows that it's obvious that the Ring is a hyperspace gate or whatever, and doesn't play with us at all: the prologue tells you that's whats up. These guys do great prologues. Leviathan Wakes was a good book, and the best part of it was the prologue. The characters are brought together quickly -- the new are introduced, and Holden is honestly the least interesting, which is a good and a bad thing. There's Bull, the grizzled Earther vet who's joined up with the OPA, Anna, a priest originally from Russia, then Europa, who just happens to be gay. (which is pretty normal by the Earth family standards of the Expanse. They tackle the overpopulation issue in an interesting way that I like!) Last, there's Clarissa, who wants to destroy everything that Holden is, for what happened in Caliban's War.

Mixing all these guys up is real fun. It doesn't take long for everyone to get through the Ring, in very dramatic fashion, and then things

slow

the fuck

down.

If you've ever read Rama II or Rama III. You'll know there's something as too slow. The action in the book literally slows down -- you'll know what I'm talking about when you read it. The humans discover there's an alien superstructure, but most of them can't get to it. Mostly because most of them are killed pretty quickly after arriving. Shit hits the fan really hard, really fast, and the pace somehow stays alive, but at the same time, I felt like nothing was being accomplished. Characters died, action happened, but once again the aliens are kept on the outer edge, a whisper or a vision, a brief interaction. Technically, the alien structure is attacking them the whole time, I guess, but it definitely doesn't feel that way.

The whole battle against the aliens is actually a battle between humanity, to try to get everyone to agree. Much like Crossroads of Eternity was about the characters choosing where to go, Abbadon's Gate is about deciding what to do once you get there, and find out it's crazy and friggen weird.

If you've ever read Mistborn, and gotten past the first book, you'll know what I'm about to talk about. Transitioning an action-based, adventure style mystery solving whip of a book into a introspective political drama is difficult. Rewarding if done well, but difficult. This book is an introspective political drama in space, with gunfights. There is plenty of action, and the writing is as always, great, but I felt like Cory had written himself(ves?) into a corner with this book, because while I get that the whole point is that its humanity that's the real enemy, the world they've put their characters in is one where they have no option but to turn on themselves, because the alien artifact is essentially unnaproachable, unreachable, and completely unresponsive except through some little side-interaction through Holden, who doesn't really do much of anything with the alien structure, except learn what he needs to do to turn it off, which is to make everyone agree. The actual puzzle-solving is done by the alien-ressurrected ghost of the second POV character from Leviathan Wakes, one sad, lonely, drunkenly stereotypical hard-but-tired Detective Miller.

I don't know why they chose to keep the interaction with the aliens to the minimum that they did -- the story is good, and I enjoyed the book, but the ending felt weak without some real climax with the alien power. Maybe that's waiting for another book, but this book needed one.

The book leaves off promising that there will be more of Holden&friends to come. Honestly, they've got quite the setting for an expanded universe -- I can't deny that I've thought of writing my own little fictions in their world -- it's a good one! While this book has its flaws, it also has incredible strength in the power of its character's messages. There's a real philosophical heart to this book, and it's one we should all get along with. If you're looking for a solid sci-fi book that respects women, this is your ticket. Though I suggest reading all the other ones first :D

ONE WORD REVIEW: ENGAGING                                                   B/W/D: BUY

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#FridayReview #11: The Throne of the Crescent Moon

As always, my turbulent existence has lead to another break, but I'm here again with another edition of the #FridayReview! This time its a book I picked up after hearing the author talk at Immortal ConFusion. Saladin Ahmed is a pretty cool guy, with a really cool name that I am totally jealous of. Just like the names of all his characters in his Hugo-nominated novel

THE THRONE OF THE CRESCENT MOON

This book is a delightful Sword and Sworcery in full Arab theme, my personal favourite theme. It has always perplexed me why Middle Ages Europe, largely the most stylistically dreadful period/place in human culture, has been the basis for so many fantasy novels. The obvious reason for this is influence of the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, with their decidedly British flair for tiny hovels in hills surrounded by decaying ancient ruins. No doubt, ancient ruins are awesome, especially if they are as majestic as those in LOTR. However, in a day and age where we can see and study the influences of almost every culture in existence, I feel it behooves us to write outside our cultural sphere. Which is why I was so happy to read the fantastic Middle Eastern/North African styled world of the Crescent Moon -- an obvious reference if there ever has been one. And awesome one.

During one of the panels of the Con, Religion in Storytelling, I think, Mr. Ahmed and others talked about how in traditional Arab tales, and Arabic speech, praises to god are common, and not only common, but many are flavorful and long. In this book, as well as that one, God has many titles: "God is the Mercy that Kills Cruelty," and spells are prayers shouted in his name: "Beneficent God is the Last Breath in our Lungs!" It's pretty wicked. As a total heretic, I found all of the religion in this book really easy to get along with. It was also good to get a story where the Arab traditions and culture is viewed from the inside rather than a European-style adventurer showing up in an Arab themed locale.

But enough of the politicks and whatnot! You want to know how the book actually was. The answer is pretty radical. The magic has appropriate flair and majesty, and seems appropriately difficult to come by and use. There are restrictions and expenses for most powers, such as, well, all the main characters, and one of the sides. Adoulla Makhslood's magically pure-white kaftan will only remain so if he remains unmarried. Raseed bas Raseed's superhuman strength and speed and skill with his forked blade are only as great as his piety -- which is pretty great. Zamia Banu Laith Badawi is blessed with the ability to turn into a magical lion, but she pays for this gift by losing everyone she loves. And Dawoud, a side character who gives us a few POV chapters loses time off his life for every use of his life-saving magics. Really powerful magic seems to require really dark things -- which is what the entire plot revolves around.

Adoulla is a ghul hunter, which is like being an undead hunter, except ghuls come in a far greater variety than zombies and vampires. While he is reaching the end of his career, he's the only one around, and so he just keeps on working, with his heavenly charged assistant, Raseed bas Raseed. Another day on the ghul-hunting racket brings him into a far larger plot to stop an evil sorcerer from corrupting the throne of the Crescent Moon with dark magics from the Traitorous Angel (the Devil) and eating all the souls of everyone around, or turning their intestines into cobras (real from-book examples).

The story takes place almost entirely in the confines of the majestic city of Dhamsawaat, which is rich enough to host a book twice this one's length. (I will admit, it was a little short for me - at 260 something pages, it doesn't last long enough for me) Dhamsawaat may as well be a main character all its own, and indeed the whole story is almost just an excuse to go sight-seeing. If the city wasn't so interesting, it would be a problem, as it is, it's still a small flaw. The pacing is pretty good, and it doesn't really slow down, though by my usual taste in longer books, to me it barely got started up. Much of the book is devoted to the Falcon Prince, a princely thief who sort of steals the show whenever he shows up -- another small flaw -- and his rebellion against the obviously corrupt Kalif. Really, the only time we get to see any action on the side of the antagonist, the sorcerer Orshado, before the climax is through POV shots from a guard he's torturing, and occasional attacks by his minions, including the ghost-manjackal Mouw Awwa, whose dialogues are always great. That's the book's biggest flaw, by far. I really wanted more active adventure/invetigation against the evil superboss Orshado, and less passively collecting and deciphering clues. But that may be a personal preference for action. I will say that preference aside, I would have liked more interaction with Orshado, even though his final appearance is pretty epic.

Overall, the Throne of the Crescent Moon is a pretty grand adventure, with some flaws. It definitely deserves the Hugo and Nebula nominations it received, though I might not have voted for it to win. Although given the competition, I definitely might have.

ONE WORD REVIEW: MAJESTIC                                      B/W/D: BUY

Rewards and NPCs

Hi gang! A proper post today, a rarity in these dark and troubling times. Why are they dark and troubling? Well, to be honest, it seems our awards systems are broken, and while a full post on the state of SF when it comes to shortlists like Clarke and Hugo will have to wait for another time, reading Strange Horizons' review of the Clarke shortlist brought out a very disappointing fact to me.

Many writers still don't seem to realize how important side characters are. The NPCs of the story: the shopkeeper, the army general, the kid from down the street. The love interest! The mentor! The "Non-Protagonist Characters."

I'm especially going to talk about the love interest today, because it's still sadly clear that many male authors don't know how or why women fall in love with men. I certainly don't understand how anyone could love me but that doesn't stop me from understanding the concept. The Clarke list, of which I have only read Dark Eden seems to be full of them. The relationship in Dark Eden is at least somewhat plausible, but it doesn't really fit here because the love interest is also a protagonist, though a clearly secondary one. But many of the other relationships in the Clarke books, and in many other SF (especially the sort of "adventure" SF or post-apoc) novels seem to be based on the idea that the protagonist has "won" the love of that character.

Video games are not books, and you do not write a video game like a book. But at the same time, you do. A video game, for our sakes in this conversation specifically an RPG (though that is a loose, loose label now)  is written for an audience of one, and is written so that the player feels engaged and that their actions have a driving affect in the world of the game. You want to reward them when they do good things so that they will want to do more good things or cool things. The player should feel so invested in the story and in completing all the things you have offered as rewards that they will go through tremendous hurdles to accomplish their goals. After all, that's the game. (The gameplay has to be fun, too, but a bad story can ruin even a fun game.)

When you're writing a book, you are writing to an audience of one, but there's no interactivity. The protagonist of the story is no longer directly controlled by the audience; their actions are set regardless of whether the reader turns the pages or not. But whether or not you have gameplay and interactivity, you still have rewards. The reader is supposed to feel invested in the character and begin to empathize with them as you follow them along their journey. In this way, they aren't playing, but they are expending effort, and you need to reward them.

Here's where we come back to NPCs. They're almost always the reward. Sure, the hero finds the sword or their parent's lost amulet or that old letter or whatever, but the most satisfying rewards are those that involve human relationships. What better than true love and happiness as a reward?

Many books like to provide a love interest as either a goal ("Your princess is in another castle"), a sidekick or (I believe more rarely) as antagonists. Any way you have them, their eventual true love, the culmination of their relationship, is often as or more important than the resolution of the plot.

(I think Neil Gaiman likes to end romances in his books because it's like killing the protagonist, but without the killing the protagonist part. You get the same emotional punch, but you can write a sequel. *cough cough* Graveyard Book *cough cough*)

It's all well and good to have love be a reward for the protagonist for his/her trials and tribulations, but that love interest needs to be actually interested and interesting. What I see far too often is an attractive but tough woman "who wants it her way" who ends up submitting herself to the male protagonist because he's just so heroically great. It's a clear indication of a boy trying to write a woman, but still not actually self-aware of what misogyny really is, and how much of it is in their own perspectives. Worse are the women who are just there to be a sex reward, who don't save themselves or make their own decisions or actually really exist. They are cardboard cutouts of women with (if the author is at least descriptive) plush breasts and fleshlights installed.

Other NPCs are often cartoon cutouts that follow the PC around that the writer thinks the story needs: the comic relief, the hard-ass boss, even the antagonist is often just a cartoon. It's so critical to remember that every character is their own person. If you are writing a book and trying to make it real, fill it with real people. Real people can smell fake people a mile away. That's why it's actually difficult to pass a Turing test. People are filled with emotional complexities and contradictions, and those can all work to your advantage, but only if you know the people you are writing. When you focus solely on your PC and surround them with foil-thin foils that turn into presents once the PC gets far enough into the story, you lose out.

A good relationship can make or ruin a story. Take the movie Lockout, which I like to call "Escape from Space." It is an old story, so much so that they made this movie previously, with Escape from New York, and Escape from LA and Save the President's daughter, Studly "America" McMan. You  knew pretty much every single plot point that was going to occur in this movie right from the beginning. The science was risible, and the action only decent. But what saved this movie was character acting and the relationship between the manly hero and the president's daughter. The characters all had their own motivations and were allowed to act on them, even the deranged psychopath. The romance between the hero and the Pres' daughter doesn't climax onscreen, but it is implied afterwords in an actual, healthy manner. If this movie had had good science and an original plot, it would have been incredible. As it was, it was enjoyable.

It takes more than a plot and a protagonist to make a story. It takes a world. It takes people.

#FridayReview #8: 2312

Well guys, it's arrived. The review of the Hugo-nominated 2312, by Kim Stanley Robinson. I have to say, I was really excited to write this one, but now, to be honest, I haven't even finished the book. And at this point, it doesn't matter what the ending is. I'm honestly not even going to give it the big text this time.

Okay fine, I will.

2312

by Kim Stanley Robinson

2312 takes place around the year 2312, and starts strongly hinting that some shit goes down in that year, but has not yet in the character's lives. He never specifies what date it is in the book, mostly for good reason, since a day and date mean little between Earth, Mars and Saturn. The setting of the book is quite excellent: a climate ravaged and poverty stricken Earth held down by ancient traditions and primitive beliefs and greed still remains the dominant power in a fully-populated solar system. Mars is terraformed and independent, Venus is being terraformed by a mostly Chinese population, Saturn and Jupiter and their moons are independent as planetary leagues, and all the major iron-nickel asteroids have been hollowed out as giant terrariums to hold the lost biospheres of destroyed Earth.

Oh and there's some jazz about quantum computers called qubes that all spacers have but few have implanted; they're "totally not sentient" i.e. totally are, and are super intelligent and powerful but supposedly harmless and slaved to humans.

There are two major plots and two major POV (there's a third semi-major POV that reminds me of the comic relief POV I had to throw away in the first draft of Leylined because he didn't fit and was just there to add fluff) and to tell you the truth, I don't even care about them anymore. KSR certainly doesn't seem to. His characters certainly don't. I don't ever see them caring. They just do things and go places and see stuff for KSR to describe, which, don't get me wrong, is cool. He is a descriptive master, and the solar system he has created is really beautiful and interesting, and real. The future he describes is one that seems totally plausible!

For a little background, KSR wrote a trilogy of novels about terraforming mars called Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars, and they ruled. They were great political dramas about planetary independence, the old world, and climate change, while having sweet hard sci fi about terraforming a planet.

And he used a lot of big words. He uses a lot of big words in 2312, too. A lot of them my Kindle dictionary doesn't even know. Fortunately, I know many of them, but there are still quite a few that I don't. 

This is a political book, too. Very political, and very derogatory of our planet's current administrations and cultures, and how we treat the planet and are just setting future generations of Earthlings up for a big ass shitshow. And you know what? I agree with it, all of it. This book jives with my personal political beliefs almost to a tee (except about qubes). It illustrates a universe I think is totally awesome and interesting. I should love this book. This should be my favourite book of last year, hands down. But you know what?

I haven't even finished it. It's too boring. It is too boring. I can't read it quickly enough! It's like molasses in my brain. There were about 20 straight pages of WALKING THROUGH A TUNNEL while that POV pondered the iterative versus the pseudoiterative life. And then they just get out through a happy coincidence, and nothing else bad happens to them.

Honestly, I got fed up at 70% and just put it down because the moment that should have been dramatic as fuck was like "okay whatever now this junk happens." Somehow, the dramatic situations he creates are transformed into piles of grey sludge by the narrative and his POVs.

Remember the two main plots I talked about? One is fixing Earth, and the other is "dealing with the qube problem." There was a single chapter devoted to the qube plot in this 70%, and I have the feeling it's going to blow up soon, but I can't bring myself to go any further. It's boring. It's stale. This book isn't telling a story, it's making a point. A point I agree with, but one that's made so staidly and obtusely that I can't even bring myself to support it.

Even if the last 30% of this book is a dramatic pulse pounding adventure, it's not worth it. It's bad writing. There are full chapters that are just X went here, X did this X saw that X did this X saw that X saw this thing which I will now describe in detail with full history for 2000 words. X goes somewhere else. Many people offering advice to writers say to cut down on the dialogue; people don't talk that much. This book cuts down on it to a point where these people may as well be mute. One of the POVs fell in love with the other POV and I couldn't even tell, his emotional state is so bland. The other POV is crazy, but when she really has a psychological break, you're never in her head. When you are, she's just a whiny girl, even though she's supposed to be something like 130 years old, and a super famous professional.

This book makes some good points about how we treat our world, and illustrates the potential for human expansion and the power we have to change our world and others. It is an "important" book. It is a "good hard sci-fi" book. That's why it got nominated for a Hugo. But I wouldn't tell a first-time scifi reader to read this book. Honestly, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who hasn't read KSR before, or isn't a heavy Stephen Baxter fanatic. And even then, that recommendation would come with caveats. Number one of which is: it's boring as hell, and farily badly written from a directorial standpoint. His actual mastery of the English language is not under question. But dramatic vision for this book is sorely lacking. The exciting things that do happen are like battles in LOTR -- briefly mentioned and often little more than a paragraph long.

I'm going to for real finish this book sometime, and I'll let you know if the ending changed anything for me, but right now, I'm going to read something else.

ONE WORD REVIEW: YAWN                                                                                      B/W/D: WAIT

#FridayReview #6: The Emotion Thesaurus

I'm going to do something different with this #FridayReview and that's to review something that isn't entertainment! This is a blog about writing, after all. So if you feel like your book is filled with nodding, grunting, scowling neanderthals, then you'll understand why I went out and bought:

THE EMOTION THESAURUS

 By Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman

The Emotion Thesaurus is what it says it is. It's a thesaurus filled with emotions. But it's more than your generic thesaurus -- it gives you a breakdown of all the traits associated with certain emotions, be they physical tics or internal cues such has hammering heartbeats. They're all in a modern human context, since that's the most widely applicable cross-genre, but there's a few in here that provide a good basis for imagining alien or animal responses. 

Each emotion links to the aggravated or subdued versions of itself, such as something like Anger-Rage-Annoyance. Not every emotion you can think of is in here -- for example I couldn't find exasperated, but there's enough that you'll find one close to it, and get some inspiration from the cues within. 

The power of emotion can't be understated, and the introduction does a good example of some some show vs. tell texts. There's some good advice to be found in this book, and I actually wished there was more of it before I actually got to the thesaurus part. After reading through the thing (it's about as long as some short novels!) I definitely know there's a lot I need to go back and work on in my WIP. 

There are times, of course, where it is appropriate to say "X felt thusly" or "X was [emotion]." Sometimes that's all there is to it! Sometimes it can be more powerful to just say "I'm pissed" than to describe a whole set of pissed-offedness symptoms. But that's only if you've previously established what happens when that character is pissed. You know how they feel, you know what happens. If you've never written anything else about that character being pissed off, then you shouldn't be using it.

The Emotion Thesaurus is a great tool to help you define your character's unique traits. Everyone reacts differently to different emotions, and so should your characters, unless it matters to the plot. There's nothing worse than reading a story where almost every character is just a copy of the other one. Making unique characters is one of the best things about RPGs, and therefore about writing. I'm not going to call this book "essential" but it is something I keep nearby (just like the rest of my library). After all, not everyone nods to say yes.

ONE WORD REVIEW: USEFUL                                                        B/W/D: BUY IF YOU WANNA

Friday Review #5: The Way of Kings

Oh yes... yes I knew we would come to this day. I mentioned it during last week's review of Mistborn, and it gave me a hunger. Yes, a deep hunger. So, without further ado, here is the Friday Review of Brandon Sanderson's

THE WAY OF KINGS

This book was actually my first experience with Brandon Sanderson, and he's quickly becoming a favourite for me. I may have spoiled myself, however, because this book is one of the best I've read in a while.

Here's the blurb from the back cover, which I really liked:

I long for the days before the Last Desolation.

The age before the Heralds abandoned us and the Knights Radiant turned against us. A time when there was still magic in the world and honor in the hearts of men.

The world became ours, and we lost it. Nothing, it appears, is more challenging to the souls of men than victory itself.

Or was that victory an illusion all along? Did our enemies realize that the harder they fought, the stronger we resisted? Perhaps they saw that the heat and tThe bohe hammer only make for a better grade of sword. But ignore the steel long enough, and it will eventually rust away.

There are four whom we watch. The first is the surgeon, forced to put aside healing to become a soldier in the most brutal war of our time. The second is the assassin, a murderer who weeps as he kills. The third is the liar, a young woman who wears a scholar's mantle over the heart of a thief. The last is the highprince, a warlord whose eyes have opened to the past as his thirst for battle wanes.

The world can change. Surgebinding and Shardwielding can return; the magics of ancient days can become ours again. These four people are key.

One of them may redeem us.

And one of them will destroy us.

The world of Way of Kings (hereafter WoK) is similar to Mistborn in one way -- it's a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Only instead of darkness and ash all the time, it's occasional superstorms that strip the land of its dirt and flay anyone caught outside alive with hail and raging winds. Seasons change based on these storms, so things don't stay the same for long. But rather than just a thousand years of this, the society of WoK has dealt with this reality for tens of thousands. The world is populated with crustaceans and hardy armored pod-plants, the only things that can survive out in the storms. As many have said, Sanderson is a master of worldbuilding, and this world feels very real.

This book has a lot of characters, but only three main POV characters, while about a dozen (including our weeping assassin) show up in interludes between plot arcs. This allows you (the reader) to meet a lot of people, learn a bit about other places in the world and open up some side plots but at the same time letting you know you don't really need to worry about these things right now. It's like a recess from the epic storyline. And it is epic, since the book is 1200 pages in print.

The magic is predictably Sandersonian, with straight rules and a complex system (this is actually relates to my only real complaint with the novel, which was a long and detailed description of just how all three of the prologue character's abilities worked. I appreciate that he wants to tell us and make it simple to understand right off the bat, but I know some people are put off by long explanations of magic systems, and throwing one in at the prologue, even if it is a long prologue, is in poor taste. I got through it because Sanderson is a great writer and makes everything easy to read and because the story was already awesome, but its still something that I recommend against.

But seriously guys, this world. It's so magical and wonderful and real. It was refreshing to get a very original feeling world with a creative and involved religion. As I've said before, this is Mistborn for grownups. You travel so far and so wide, and it's all so detailed. I hadn't felt a world so real since reading Name of the Wind, which I know has detractors but seriously it rules. But where NotW has sappy romance and woeful regret (which are good in their own way) WoK just has more action, action, action. There are slow parts, but the book is structured in such a way that you are almost always being rewarded with action scenes whenever the pace settles down for what would otherwise be too long elsewhere.

If you're writing a book, I can't recommend WoK enough. The dramatic structure is obvious; it's like a play. But that doesn't stop your enjoyment of it, and the world and plot are deep enough that you can't just figure it out even knowing how some things will inevitably go. I was surprised by a few things, but really there was just so much to learn about the world that the book could be afforded a few slow moments or obvious twists. There was one twist at the end that was both not surprising and also really surprising at the same time. (I'll leave it to you to read) When I was reading this book I was really trying to be a good reader, and Sanderson made it easy in a good way.

Plus, magic power armour and giant bugs. What more could you ask for?

ONE WORD REVIEW: EPIC                                                       B/W/D: BUY SERIOUSLY ITS 2.99 ON KINDLE FOR SOME REASON