Welcome to the Maze

WHEN WE WERE EXECUTIONERS is out and everywhere

2012-02-01T19:24:00.000-05:00

Go forth little book. Know that I am cleaning up the sequel in another tab, and the trilogy will be completed soon.

Soon.

First, pick up a copy for yourself.

When We Were Executioners Arriving in Stores and Homes Today

2012-01-24T17:02:00.000-05:00

It would take too long to fiddle with the picture stuff between now and getting to work, so I won't be taking any pictures. However, I have received my copies of WHEN WE WERE EXECUTIONERS from Amazon.com today. Any sightings in the wild? Upload it to Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, etc. and Tag Me in it!

Things I've learned reading slush all day...

2012-01-21T22:23:00.000-05:00

I have been reading slush for approximately twelve hours straight, for Bull Spec. It is an interesting and highly-recommended experience for everyone, and it has not made me bitter, yet.

Here are some things that I have learned after my first full day of slush reading.

1) People who've taken writing workshops at Clarion, Oddessey, Taos, and Universities are generally a bright spot in the pile, even if I reject their story, because they don't generally make easy mistakes.
2) I am far more forgiving of a story that tries very hard to be amazing, and fails, than I am of a story that tries very hard to be mediocre and nails it.
4) The cream really does rise to the top.
5) The worst thing a story can be is successfully mediocre. This is worse than being unsuccessfully mediocre.
6) People who sweat their cover letter need not worry. I generally don't even look at it until after I've read enough of the story to be curious or not. The way e-mail submissions work, it seems like this will be generally true. The most I'd do, at best, is quickly skim the letter while getting straight to the story.
7) Ergo, the shorter the cover letter, the better.
8) Lists are fun.
9) Good night.

Coming next month from Apex Books...

2012-01-18T15:45:00.002-05:00

[Free Fiction] Iphigenia at Aulis

2012-01-16T12:38:00.000-05:00

You know her story, don’t you? The great king Agamemnon offended Artemis, by murdering her sacred deer. He spoke arrogantly of this goddess.
1
Later on, a prophet had to be called to the council of kings. No storms had come to wash the battleships to war. Zeus’ commanded siege of Troy depended upon the famous storms of Aulis that never seemed to come. The gods had to be consulted.
The blind prophet, Calcas, announced that the great king had to sacrifice his daughter. This was subsequently, immediately, done by that terrible tyrant.
But, there are as many versions of a myth as there are grandmothers in Greece.

http://womenandmonsters.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/iphigeniaataulis/

Blogging Elsewhere, Elsewhen...

2012-01-12T16:27:00.000-05:00

I've been blogging for the Night Bazaar for two weeks, now, along with some other folks.

I haven't really had a chance to go over there and read the posts, mind you, because I'm gearing up for Illogicon this weekend, writing, and writing, and also Angie and I took a break today to build our first terrarium.

We're packing our bags tonight for Illogicon, and it should be a great time. I expect to be on a few panels, give a reading, but mostly I expect to enjoy myself among cool people and things.

Oh, and be advised that WHEN WE WERE EXECUTIONERS is quite nearly upon us. Quite nearly time. See if you can find it out there, and you might.

[Free Fiction] Arachne

2012-01-09T08:45:00.000-05:00

Penelope wove her husband back to life in nineteen years. Arachne wove greater than this, until the gods in their jealousy left her with nothing but the application of her art.

If it bends, it can be woven. Hair braids, rivers braid, and fingers fold together in prayer. Cars crash into each other; the metals bend around the engines. With a strong enough machine, cars could be woven into each other – crumple zone to crumple zone, gas lines snaking like Hermes’ staff between two twisted engine blocks. I’m too disciplined to stop what I’m doing to doodle the weaving of cars on the naked particleboard walls of this café. In a few weeks, I don’t know if I will still have that discipline. I may lose my mind if I keep this up.

I sit in a corner of an abandoned café, and weave endlessly, endlessly, with all the threads and yarns and found things from the empty café. The weave of my own life bent me here. My back is hunched over. My fingers are long and nimble. I never abandon my weave

http://womenandmonsters.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/arachne/

Of Note: The trade paperback edition of the collection is currently available. The eBook successfully funded the trade paperback.

[Free Fiction] Eurydice

2012-01-02T12:55:00.000-05:00

“What shall I do without Eurydice?

Where shall I go without my love?

Eurydice! Eurydice!

O heavens! Answer!”

– Orfeo ed Euridice, Glück

On the farthest shore of the stillest lake, the boatman was only a child. I thought he would be older – skeletal, perhaps -in some kind of robe. He was just a little boy in dirty, mismatched basketball shoes, and a worn-out soccer uniform. He was covered in jewelry. His fingers were coiled in rings that sparkled even in the muted moonlight of this place. His neck was covered in necklaces. His wrists and ankles were lined with bracelets. His face was hollowed out, like the kids I had seen with me in the cancer wards.

His paddle boat was not what I expected, either. It was a plastic two-seater. Both people had to pump their legs on bicycle pedals to drive the little boat forward.

Of course, paddle boats are always rentals.

-Hey there, lady. You going across?

[Read the rest? http://womenandmonsters.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/eurydice/ ]

In a Shameless Attempt to Encourage Reviews, a One-Day Push for Reviews to Happen on Any Book, in Many Places

2011-12-27T13:13:00.000-05:00

This particular place in the interweb is probably the least useful place to announce this, because I know most of the people who swing through here regular-like have also reviewed books - mine, other people's - etc. Still, it's a very helpful thing to do to review books, particularly on-line in the eBook future. Your reviews on commerce sites matter more than they have ever mattered before.You can make a difference in the life and livelihood of your preferred creators.

I'm going to do this, too, in approximately three minutes. I'm going to post a review on these three sites for two books I liked that I realize I hadn't reviewed. I will be reviewing "The Honey Month" by Amal El-Mohtar, and "The Book of Cthulhu" edited by Ross Lockheart.

Ergo, here's the thing, I'm going to be very Catholic about this. I want you to go review a book today.

Any book.

I want the review on Amazon, and Barnes and Noble, and one other place like GoodReads or Kobo or LibraryThing or your own blog.

Post your review @Amazon+Barnes & Noble+one more place

e-mail me a link to the reviews you post today.

I'm going to be very Catholic about this. I don't care what book you review, or who wrote it. It could be Eragon. It could be Of Blood and Honey. It could be a manual for the proper comment procedure for computer code, or something equally tedious. Pick a book you read recently, that you liked. Post your reviews on the major commerce sites. Do this, and point me to the links to your reviews, and I will send you one eBook of any of my eBooks. And, if you happen to review my books, I thank you.

Remember, in our digital future, you matter more than you have ever before.

In other news, I'm moving, so though I'm so close to done with this steampunk cinderella novel I can taste it, I don't have time to finish it, because I am packing and moving boxes and doing stuff involved with moving. I hate moving.

[Free Fiction] Tiresius

2011-12-26T11:20:00.000-05:00

Tiresius

Everyone remembers how he was blind, but nobody remembers the why of it. He blinded himself, when he was made a woman for seven years by pitiless gods.

When he was young and he wasn’t yet a prophet, the gods turned Tiresius into a woman. She found, after being a man among men, that she could not live among her people as a woman. She learned the truth about the men and women of her time and place in a flash of violence: men were drunk and laughing together all the time; women endured. Tiresius could not walk the streets alone without the risk of rape. She could not stand in a doorway and say hello to the men that used to be her friends. They looked at her differently now. They had a smile that should not have been there. They had a lingering touch that promised of unwanted advances, and soon.

Want to read the rest? head over to http://womenandmonsters.wordpress.com to read the rest. Or, one could go to the nearest eBook retailer for a copy of the whole collection, now before it goes live.

Shamelessly, I Direct You Towards My eBooks Because I Know People Be Getting Them Some Nooks and Kindles.

2011-12-24T17:28:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas, Kwanzaaa, Chanukkah, Festivus, etc.!

Santa Claus, and his various and diverse cast of sidekicks and NPCs, are coming to town. They are, undoubtedly, carrying a lot of eReaders and Tablet devices along to drop at households all over the world.

So, just in case you happen to be one of those households, or if you happen to acquire a gift card for your favorite retailer and decide to look for something me-related regardless of format, I'd just like to point out that there are things available, and you could purchase them, read them, etc.

At Barnes & Noble, there are many things. Here's a link with all the things: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s?keyword=j.+m.+mcdermott&store=allproducts&page=%2Findex.asp&prod=univ&pos=&box=

There is even something I haven't announced, yet, because I haven't had two seconds to spare and put together the website for it... Nor do I particularly like the cover that's on it, at the moment...

There's an Amazon page with all sorts of stuff, too. http://www.amazon.com/J.-M.-McDermott/e/B001JS0L2E/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1324765098&sr=8-1

Also, if you just want the things I did for fun and experimental purposes as eBooks, there's a Smashwords page with links to many formats: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JMcDermott

So, that's the shameless post where I am the selfish dude who demands your retail dollars.

It's an American Christmas Tradition.

[Free Fiction] Siren

2011-12-19T14:30:00.000-05:00

“Yet lost were I not won;
For beauty hath created been
T’ undo, or be undone.”

– from Ulysses and the Siren by Samuel Daniel

Don’t let that lying creep, my first manager that we fired, suggest it was him. Odysseus was my first.

My Odysseus walked up the beach with his friends and a surfboard under his arm, an olive-skinned man with hair curled and dark. Muscular, and famous, I knew him on sight. I was posing with a book I didn’t read for the camera men along the edge of the sand. I was alone, against the rules my parents had set for me. There I was. I believed I could sing, but it was a voice that came from deep inside of me, passed through microphones and soundboards and sound men. I had never heard my voice alone in an empty room. I never sang unless I had to, for joy. It was my job, and I was told to rest my voice outside the studio.

Read this one, for free, at http://womenandmonsters.wordpress.com/ or pick up the whole collection or go grab a copy of the PopFicReview where this particular story first appeared

Today is my Birthday. Send me a Dollar. So I can Buy Beer.

2011-12-17T11:58:00.000-05:00

Today is my birthday. Do you know what I got for my birthday?

So, that's pretty cool. I haven't been translated into a foreign language before, and it is probably not supposed to be as exciting as I find the whole prospect, once I've done it a few times, but I am new enough at this whole thing that it is still very, very exciting.

Translation by Kamil Lesiew
Irina Pozniak design with art by someone calling themselves anotherwanderer

Also, since today is my birthday, you should send me a dollar. That way I can buy beer. The best way to send me a dollar is by picking up an inexpensive eBook at your preferred eBook retailer. You know you have an eBook-capable device, and even if you don't care for them, the art world is moving that way, so the sooner we all get used to reading our art off screens, the better. Also, that way I get to buy beer.

Today is my birthday. Send me a dollar. So I can buy beer.

Invocation and Happenings

2011-12-12T10:37:00.002-05:00

I have a moment lingering between drafts, and I'm about to push through to the end of what I hope should be the final on something. It's something. Maybe it will be something good. It's a boost to the body and mind to know that early reviews of WHEN WE WERE EXECUTIONERS are turning up, and it looks to be a well-received book. I particularly want to point out the SFSignal article, because it is not everyday my work is described in the same breath as Ann McCaffery. I was sad to hear she had passed on. As a young reader, I became hooked on Lloyd Alexander novels in the third or fourth grade, tearing through them and re-reading them all, because my path in life was changed forever when I encountered "The First Two Lives of Lukas Kasha" in about the 3rd grade. After Lloyd Alexander, in junior high school and high school, I was swallowed up by the dragons of Pern and Ann McCaffery. Many of the sci-fi/fantasy fans around me were devouring Heinlein and Philip K. Dick, which is cool, I liked them, too. But, I didn't like them as much as I did Ann McCaffery who seemed concerned less about dystopias as she was about people living their lives in impossible circumstances, colonizing worlds, and working together towards making humanity a better, grander, more beautiful species in conjunction with the forces of their worlds. I preferred Ann McCaffery. After I finished reading all I could find by Ann McCaffery, I moved on to Stephen King, and from there, I grew up beyond the need to obsess so much in just one imagination, when I could obsess about dozens of imaginations, all at once. I wish she was still around to know that, that she was a part of this career I seem to have, and an important part, and that her worked fundamentally mattered, because it inspired people.

Anyway, I'm procrastinating when I need to get back to work work work work work.

The Erudite Ogre writes about my work in the same breath as Ann McCaffery: http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2011/11/artifice-and-apparitions-a-reverie-concerning-fantastikas-inspiration/

The more improbable this is, the more intensely we must imagine, the more creatively we must invoke, the more audaciously we must believe the lie. All fiction is a lie at the start, and what makes it true is what we can produce from it. This occurred to me while reading J. M. McDermott's forthcoming book When We Were Executioners, with its fantastical secondary-world that is made alive by the finely-grained details and the palpably convincing characters. It is, on one level, a simple world, of kings and criminals, of sadness and malice. The worldbuilding is neither complex nor epic, and it is certainly not a place to which one might wish to escape. But the world comes viscerally alive in the reading, and its bleakness and desperation are strongly mirrored in the shabby edges and sticky innards of the world's workings. Despite the darkness and desperation that suffuse the novel, it comes alive because what enters the reader's mind are not baroque details of social structure or the coolness of a complex magic system, but people trying to survive, to do their duty, in the hustle and muck of everyday life.

Publisher's Weekly Reviews WHEN WE WERE EXECUTIONERS:

The second Dogsland novel picks up where Never Knew Another left off, with a wolfskin-wearing priest and priestess of Erin reconstructing the last days of Jona, Lord Joni, a half-demon corporal of the King’s Men, from residual dreams that imbue his found skull. Hoping to track down and terminate two similarly demon-tainted Dogslanders of Jona’s acquaintance—Rachel Nolander, his lover, and Salvatore Fidelio, his detested enemy—the priestly pair follow Jona’s memories through adventures that include his clashes with drug smugglers and his assassination of suitors to the daughter of a powerful lord, whereby Jona hopes to manipulate the succession. McDermott make Jona a compelling antihero, by turns ruthless and compassionate. The author’s real achievement, though, is his vivid evocation of Dogsland, a quasi-medieval realm whose squalor, depravity, and brutality give credible context for the best and worst behaviors, as well as the novel’s subtly fantastic goings-on. Agent: Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. (Feb.)

http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-59780-338-0

Now, in other news entirely, it is Monday, and another story from Women and Monsters is going live to the dedicated website: http://womenandmonsters.wordpress.com/ This one is about Cerynitis:

The 12 Labors of Hercules include numerous instances of impossible animals. For instance, the Cerynean Hind was sacred to Artemis, and could outrun arrows and the spring of traps. Hercules had to present it, still alive, to his taskmaster.

Animals like me do not speak, but if we could, we would tell you about my brother, the legendary boar and how he plagued the king of the mountains. My brother the boar ravaged ground, tearing up crops and eating it, and spears bounced from his back and men died at his tusks and walls tumbled before his fury. A man was sent after him in the skin of a lion. The two, brother and man, wrestled until winter came, and snow fell and all the mountains of the world were red with both of their blood and struggling.

To him, the man in the skin of a lion, he was in a battle with a terrible monster, determined to drag it back to a menagerie of wild beasts and mysterious things from the deep places of the world.

To read the rest of this story, head on over to the Nook, Kindle, Kobo, Smashwords, etc. and pick up a copy of the full collection for just 6.99!

Or, go to the website, and wait for every Monday, as the stories slowly seep out into the internet.

I am writing a book, at the moment, that could be described as steampunk, though I don't feel the term has much meaning beyond mere art direction and costume design. But, there it is. And I am writing it. And I am going back to it, now. Be at peace, intertubes.

Oh, one more thing. INVOCATION is the name of a craft beer local to me, here in Decatur, GA, from WILD HEAVEN brewery. It is delicious, roasty
and toasty, Belgian-style ale and a perfect beverage for a dreary December evening. If you have a chance, check out their stuff. It's very nice after a long day of pulling words out of my head.

Update to Add: Hey, THE FATHOMLESS ABYSS got it's first review at Amazon.com!

I'm the type of reader who typically goes for the safe bet... ie top sellers printed by major publishing houses, with reems of reviews to peruse before making a purchase. As a reader of Athan's blog however, I knew the guy had the know how to take on something like this and not disappoint.

Tales From The Fathomless Abyss does not disappoint.

This is a professional, polished collection of very original and very different short stories. I've read other fantasy and sci-fi short story collections, and TFTFA is every bit as good as any of them. There's a very seasoned editor at the helm here, and it shows.

With any collection, there are bound to be some stories that one likes better than others. Of the six here, three I thought were quite good, and three were decent-but-not-great. The setting (the Fathomless Abyss) is interesting for various shorts, although I wonder how it'll do in a full-length novel (there are several novels based on this setting on the way, so I hear). I guess time will tell.

Overall, 4 stars. It's an entertaining read, and well worth the $5 it costs.

[Free Fiction] Io

2011-12-05T16:50:00.002-05:00

“For I am full of fear when I behold

Io, the maid no human love may fold,

And her virginity disconsolate”

– Aeschylus, from Prometheus Unbound

1

I speak bee. No one believes it, except maybe my friend Europa, but I learned the language. My mother taught it to me, when I was very young. What you do is you place honey on your finger, your nose, and then a splash of floral perfume upon the back of your jeans. Then, you go into a field to speak to the bees, who find you because of the smell, and then they watch you to see what you have to say. You shiver, and move forward, then shiver again. Shivering looks like shaking your butt, like shimmying, but it’s not. It’s shivering. It’s a complex language. It took years of practice. I’ve gotten so I can get their attention even if I don’t have any honey or floral perfume.

read the rest?

The Abyss Collective

2011-12-05T12:35:00.000-05:00

If you see a big hole in the ground, lined with cities, don't go in. Once you do, you might find yourself the unfortunate protagonist in a story by one of us author types.

My contribution? It's Mine.

radio silence, going dark, down down down

2011-12-02T14:33:00.001-05:00

be at peace, intertubes.

trying to finish this bloody thing...

[Free Fiction] Charybdis and Scylla

2011-11-28T10:02:00.002-05:00

Monsters are made, not born. Transformation, like lost virginity, is a crossing that can’t be undone.

1

Neighbors all our lives and no one else looks after us since our husbands died so we take care of each other until we’re killed by this stranger. Who else will? There’s this thing that happens to women who live long enough. It’s like people only look at us to sell something. Used to be, when I was a pretty young thing, sunlight beaming at me from everywhere and everyone all the time enough to make me ashamed of myself, and then I got a certain age and it was like I was a whirlpool threatening to swallow everyone whole if they so much as looked at me in the face. I thought I looked like still water – a nice old lady – and I cultivated that look.

I have to tell you about me, that I’m not a nice lady. Neither is Scylla. Don’t you forget that about us. We know better than to let people push us around, and we don’t go gentle into that good night.

Read the rest? ->http://womenandmonsters.wordpress.com/

FREE FICTION: "Menae"

2011-11-25T09:12:00.000-05:00

The Fifty Menai were goddesses of the lunar months, daughters of moon goddess, Selene, and the mortal, Endymion, asleep for her love for all time. Some deities are echoes of older ones, supplanted by the Olympians and fading into the background of myths, quiet and mostly forgotten.

She stood in the doorway covered in flour from the moon, like a light layer of snow. First, though, she had been out in the backyard with my sister and me on a tire swing.

Her parents were divorced, too. She had told us that about herself when we met. My sister and I didn’t talk about more than that, because our parents were divorced and it was the greatest source of fear and loathing in our lives to that point and we didn’t want to talk about our own parents any more than she wanted to talk about hers.

Read the rest at http://womenandmonsters.wordpress.com/

FREE FICTION: "Gaia"

2011-11-14T07:16:00.000-05:00

‘My children, gotten of a sinful father, if you will obey me, we should punish the vile outrage of your father; for he first thought of doing shameful things.’

-from Hesiod’s Theogony

I did nothing to deserve the way he treated me. All that nonsense my children talk about endlessly – a wedding, a war between titans and children of titans and all for our sake, him and me, heaven and earth – don’t believe a word. All that really happened between us was just the argument that broke out because we hadn’t quite invented marriage so we couldn’t quite divorce when he invented infidelity.

Here’s the true story. I was asleep in a field. Goodness, I was the field. He came by like a cloud over me. His shadow passed over me like nightfall. He looked down at my beauty, at how beautiful I was as a field, naked and asleep with nothing to cover me. He wept because I was so beautiful. Then he did more than weep tears. That’s what woke me up.

Link: http://womenandmonsters.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/gaia/

Where I will be on the 17th

2011-11-09T14:36:00.000-05:00

See you there, if you can make it!

Daphne

2011-11-07T09:10:00.000-05:00

So flew the god and the virgin – he on the wings of love, and she on those of fear. The pursuer is the more rapid, however, and gains upon her, and his panting breath blows upon her hair. Her strength begins to fail, and, ready to sink, she calls upon her father, the river god: “Help me, Peneus! Open the earth to enclose me, or change my form, which has brought me into this danger!”

-from Bullfinch’s Mythology

The first time your car was stolen, you were sleeping in the backseat in a pile of all your belongings. The thief didn’t know. He didn’t bother to check the back seat. He popped the lock and hotwired the car. The thief drove your car to the 24-hour grocery. When he left, to go to the store, he left the engine on. You were quick to take back the front seat and steal your own car back. Driving away, you saw him in line, buying a quart of milk. It was 3 AM, and none of the buses were running. You imagined him, with a baby that needed milk at 3 AM, and you couldn’t bring yourself to call the police on him.

At least he had somewhere to go. You had walked out on someone, after two years. You wanted to stay in the city, even if it meant sleeping in your car a few nights. If you went anywhere else, he’d find you – at your mother’s house, or a friend’s. He’d never find you in your car, deep in the heart of the city. You had nowhere to go, at the time, and you couldn’t hate the man who stole your car while you were sleeping in it because he had somewhere to go, for milk, with milk.

Keep reading...?

Two Days No Writing

2011-11-06T10:31:00.000-05:00

Friday and Saturday were lost days, so busy running around, with no time to sit still and work, think, do. Friday was all looking over places stripped and gutted by copper thieves to the dismay of the people showing the houses followed by cleaning and the betterment of living spaces with loved ones. Searching for houses in Atlanta is also searching for houses that haven't been destroyed by copper thieves, and won't be before we move in. Gotta love the drug war + the econopocalypse = unsustainable community-destroying activity. Hooray for the city.

Saturday, Angie and I went up north, into the mountains, to volunteer helping to build a water-catchment berms at the Cedar Hill Enrichment Center where they are developing permaculture farm techniques and educating folks in them. we learned about berms and sways. Hey, they have a labyrinth!

I've noticed when I'm working on a book (in part because my fiance has noticed it) that I get really, really spacy. I work for hours and come out dazed and confused, lost in a fog, like sleepwalking. I'm building a universe in my head, and have to take time to reintegrate with regular society. Even reading books, I can fall into this. All these years of reading and writing, I've probably knocked a few cogs and gears around up there. As such, I have found a day or two a week where I am out volunteering, working, or puttering around in the kitchen help me keep my balance and sanity while I work on a book.

Time will tell if the book that results is better for it.

Books, and the speaking of them. Scott Wolven's excellent book, CONTROLLED BURN, just went into paperback. If you have not picked it up, do so. I think this may be our book club selection for next month even though I have read it, already, because it would be a good book to read again and study a little closer. Lots of moving parts hiding under the surface.

Check this out: WEIRD FICTION REVIEW

2011-11-02T10:58:00.000-04:00

Ann and Jeff VanderMeer and close friends and collaborators have started a website to honor the massive, huge, expansive anthology they just put out with Corvus, celebrating 100 years of Weird Fiction.

It also looks like it's going to become a major hub in surreal and speculative fictions for all things strange and odd and grotesque.

Check out www.weirdfictionreview.com for an interview with Neil Gaiman, some fabulous and horrific art, and an excellent short story, translated from the Belgian, "Kavar the Rat" that I quite enjoyed late at night, to unsettle my dreams with a dose of the strange. There's even a comic strip. I imagine there will probably be surreal videos, and performance arts, stilt-walkers and clowns and seamstresses that work only in the medium of octopus tentacles, perhaps some clocks and a series of ominous chimes that go off in the night, unexpectedly, when the city is trying to sleep, and no one really knows what's making all that noise.

Until such time as these many things appear on the site, there is a comic, art, an interview with Neil Gaiman, and an excellent short story.

BOOK CLUB: Half the Day is Night by Maureen McHugh

2011-11-01T07:37:00.001-04:00

So, grab your books and let's all get to reading 'em.

HALF THE DAY IS NIGHT by Maureen McHugh, her second novel after she won copious awardage for CHINA MOUNTAIN ZHANG is supposed to be another close, intimate portrayal of the people who live a few days or weeks ahead of the moment we live in, and I'm expecting great things.

As we go, feel free to leave comments and I'll pull up any interesting ones into this post.

Spiral sez:
[quote]
I'm very much enjoying the story, particularly the not-overly-obtrusive-but-still-amazingly-well-done world-building. Mchugh's created a future that I doubt she could've known in 1994 would so eerily resemble the sort of thing we're actually headed toward or are already in (though perhaps corporations and banks were as mixed up then as now - I was but a wee lad in '94, naive, and not so world-weary...okay, I'm still naive, but...). The depth of the main characters - David and Mayla - is great. She really gets in their heads, from Mayla's nervousness over-analyzing on her "date" with Saad to David's desire to leave Caribe and his denial to come to grips with his violent past.

I've read enough SF that I don't think this is the kind of novel that'll be replete with explosions and high-octane action; maybe some, but to me, it feels more like a slow burn, kind of like the film Michael Clayton or an Elmore Leonard novel set a few years in the future.[/quote]

I'm getting close to the end, and I like the Elmore Leonard reference as things do pick up. I love the world-building, and the unobtrusiveness of it. The setting doesn't have the "OMG LOOK AT THAT COOL THING!" quality of a Rucker or Doctorow or Gibson or Stirling novel. Instead, it is a reflection/refraction of the character's lives and dramas. It is a way of enhancing the drama, not a distraction from it. Very well done.

I've also heard that she is in Publisher's Weekly Top Ten for her latest collection, and this is absolutely unsurprising to anyone who has encountered McHugh's work, anywhere, anywhen.

I'm loving the heck out of this book.

Nemean Lion is Live, and Book Club

2011-10-31T10:01:00.000-04:00

Nemean Lion went live this morning on the website: womenandmonsters.wordpress.com

Also, Book Club #2 starts tomorrow with HALF THE DAY IS NIGHT by Maureen McHugh.

Pick up a copy while you still have time and join me in the comments of tomorrow's post as we all read the book together.

As people post interesting comments, I'll include them up in the main post, credited to you.

Join us! It'll be fun!

Throw It In the Fire

2011-10-28T09:36:00.000-04:00

When you discover your work is poo, when you are working on it, you want to just take the work and throw it in a fire. You don't lose anything when it is poo. You lose time, but you gain time by abandoning the poo for something that is not poo. You also take the lessons learned from the poo and try not to make poo next time. Burn the poo in the fire, and start something new.

Except that in the digital age, with our redundant backup systems and constant flash-drives and dropboxes and tricks and wizardry, nothing is ever burned.

Someday, I will find this poo again, and I will have to smell it. I can't just throw it away. I can't do anything with it but wait until I am bored some night and desire to scour the back recesses of my backup systems for things that merit a second attempt.

Which is a waste of time thing that I do when I am too lazy to do anything else.

I want a place inside my recycle bin. I want it to be called "The Fire" and when I open my recycle bin, I can put the thing in the "fire" and it burns that out, also burns it out of any backups, and burns files that are attached or related to it in some meaningful way. Good-bye worthless story notes! Good-bye dozen or so stilted disaster openings! Good-bye! You are now all in the fire.

There is too much permanence in our world. It is an allusion of permanence. With the flood of media and datapoints, and the way passwords and technology actually functions, that sense that we are building powerful webs of interconnected "work" is a myth. Computers go obsolete and become paperweights. Children care only that the machines are wiped before they are recycled when we die. They do their best to pull out the pictures, but these photograph albums are so cheap, and there's so many pictures, these days, that it will be a genuine hassle to sort them all, even as they are moved. Ergo, many will be lost. Many more will be, for all practical purposes, lost.

When we had fires, we were more particular about these things. We threw things in them, or we did not. If we kept them, we knew they were precious, because people didn't have so very many things to hold onto.

I have too many things. I want to start a fire in the street outside my apartment. I want to toss in all the things that have accumulated: old shoes, old clothes, old bric-a-brac and papers that may have had a meaning once and all these things that someone must deal with, probably me, and certainly nothing that will be of interest to anyone if something were to happen to me, and all these things would be left behind.

Burn it. Burn it all.

And this miserable, horrible draft?

I will now throw it into a fire, and try again, as if this one never existed, for it is poo.

FREE FICTION: "Ariadne After Theseus"

2011-10-24T08:59:00.000-04:00

[Free Fitcion from womenandmonsters.wordpress.com]

Is there, then, no Beyond?

Is this our goal?

Is this our goal?

-from Ariadne on Naxos, an opera by Richard Strauss

Everyone always wants to know about when we were young and a little famous, and it’s really the most boring part of my life.

My father is dead. The dashing young man is famous somewhere else. I don’t know where. I don’t keep up with him. He left me because we were young, and confused, and because we knew – both of us knew – that what I wanted wasn’t him and what he wanted wasn’t me, and leaving me on an island was better than trapping me in a new palace labyrinth in some rich house in Athens. He was doing me a favor. Really, we both had just wanted away from where we were, and running away together had been the natural way to do it at the time. I moved on long ago. I wouldn’t even call him my great love. I wouldn’t even call him my pretty great love. Honestly, we never even made love. I’ve never been with a man.

You are probably about to be my great love. Look at you, you. You’re adorable. I mean it. You’re as delicious as hot chocolate in winter. You’re a goddess, to me.

Anyway, that’s all there is to know about that boy. Let’s talk about something else from my many travels.

Do you see this weird, squishy thing? It’s a box and it’s alive, and I think it’s lonely.

[Visit http://womenandmonsters.wordpress.com/ for the rest, and tell your friends!]

Shamelessly Shambling Towards Word of Mouth

2011-10-20T12:03:00.000-04:00

I'm going to be pretty shameless for a little while on Facebook and Twitter, so feel free to zone me out a while if you feel like you don't want to hear me going on about things one could buy.

There's a reason for this, and maybe it will all become clear here at the blog someday in the next few months, though it isn't really a professional goal so much as it is a personal thing that we're trying to accomplish with the aid of slightly better revenue. In the mean time, please consider posting reviews of things, even if your review is "I really liked this" with a link to a project at IndieBound or Amazon or Whatever. Like this:

<-I really liked this!In particular, I hope that folks can point out the books that are out with what we're all calling "traditional" publishers, these days, though it is as meaningless a term as calling them all purple-trout-baboon publishers.

So, the shameless self-promotion will be ramped up a bit around these parts. If there's anything you feel comfortable doing to help, I'd appreciate it.

That is all.

Free Range Evil: a pet peeve of mine, when reading...

2011-10-18T10:22:00.000-04:00

One thing that bugged me about my recent attempt at reading FREEDOM by Jonathan Franzen, which I did not finish because I did not care for it at this time, was the free range racist in West Virginia.

There's this scene where one of the the main characters, an older white male, is in a steakhouse in rural West Virginia with a beautiful Bangladeshi woman, his assistant and probably about to be his mistress if I had read any farther along, who is very dark-skinned. When the old man goes to the bathroom, he is approached by what I refer to as a "free range bad guy" who is a racist and makes a lewd and racist remark, suggesting the possibility of a violent reaction.

I've seen this in lots of stories from writing workshops, too. This character appears, with perfect timing, who does the most horrible thing imaginable before stumbling back behind the curtains at the side of the stage, without a name, without a face, without any role in the fiction except to be this chaotic evil bastard who does a bad thing.

It's always a male, too. It's always a male figure that shows up to mug, rape, spit, punch, hit-and-run, and voice the wickedness of the world. Generally, this character is what would be referred to as a "lower class" character, the sort who would not be out of place in a round up of the "Usual Suspects" for any particular region of the country, whether an urban male with a dark hoody in the city, or a poor white trash racist in the country. If we're really lucky, we get an evil authority figure, like a cop or an employee of a business that surprise us with their free range evil.

When I meet this character, I am often struck by how the writer does not seem to have any emotional investment in that character, and no desire to really make them something that stands out as a character. They're stock. They're no better than the herd of redshirts who died on alien planets, or the countless African-Americans arrested on television screens early in the show or used to fill out the bustling station scene.

Evil is free range, roaming about, waiting for the perfect moment to strike, apparently. Every shadow, and every trip to the restroom in the club, or every step out behind the restaurant is an opportunity for evil to smell our aura and decide if we are ripe for the devil's touch.

In fiction, it drives me nuts to see it happen. When it's done well, like in Don DeLillo's fictions the roving bad characters are given a chance to be more than a stock hoodie or hick, to introduce himself and have a small character arc of his own between what he perceives himself to be and what he truly is. When it is done poorly, like in FREEDOM, it is a stereotype wrapped in a moment that is fleeting and unfulfilled.

Bad things happen, but there is something very trite and twee about such perfectly-timed evil, such convenient-to-the-plot random acts of evil, such stereotypical-stock character evil.

Imagine, in FREEDOM, if the character who made that racist quip about liking dark-skinned women stepped out of the restroom, and sat down to dinner with his wife and kids, who were all dark-skinned. It's still a racist quip, that his wife would probably not appreciate, but it becomes a reversal of tone where the guy who at first seemed kind of scary turns and and smiles, giving the main character a big thumbs-up about his date.

There are racists in the world, just as there are muggers and bad guys. They are the devil, a swirling chaos vortex of evil looking for a chance to bite away at society. Promoting "good things" like community action and charities, is an attempt to push back the devil, and make the things that drive people into the devil's care lesser and lesser a little bit every day.

But, how do we write about them?

I will say this about Jonathan Franzen's moment in FREEDOM: I did not feel like he ever really had a chance to sit down and talk with people from West Virginia. When I was seventeen, I traveled through there with a Drum and Bugle Corps (I played the Contrabass Bugle for the Blue Knights Drum and Bugle Corps) and we spent a few days there, doing laundry and practicing. In the laundromat, the people were some of the friendliest, most helpful folks I'd ever encountered in a laundromat. I, in my youthful inexperience with laundry, confused front-loading washers with a dryer, because obviously it was a dryer for it had a door like a dryer. I went outside to play my horn in the parking lot, thinking nothing of this. Once it was revealed to me the true nature of laundry machinery, I had to rush to get my clothes out of the second washer and sorted into dryers before the bus decided it was time to move on to the next town with all 100 or so people involved with the touring musical group. The women there did not have to help me, because they were laundromat employees in a poor neighborhood, surrounded by an ethnically-diverse bunch of kids from Colorado/Utah/Texas/Etc but they did help. And, without their friendly and affable help, I'd have been wearing a lot of wet clothes for a while, on that tour, maybe catching some horrible illness as a result that would leave me smelling musty and gross for the rest of my life. I was being teased by my teenage peers for my laundry fail. I was going to be teased about it for a while, no matter what, but if I had damp, stinking laundry, I would be teased much longer, indeed.

It is this that I think about when I think about free range evil.

There is also free range good.

It is perfectly timed. It is out there, waiting in the wings, for a chance to step out into the spotlight. I don't remember the names of those two very nice, helpful women, who went above and beyond the call of duty to teach the silly kid how to get his clothes dry and hacked a couple extra dryers to do it without costing me all those coins I lost in the front-loading washer. These sorts of things make almost no appearance in fiction, that I can recall. It would be just as cloying and strange, in fiction, as free range evil, but t is out there, waiting for a chance to be helpful, and save the day.

In fiction, we have to deal with these things, floating out there, and waiting for a chance to step out of the chaos and change the course of lives. My advice is to avoid stereotypes, always make sure the free-range evil character is given an arc of their own where expectation about who they are or what they are twists and turns a little bit. Also, remember that there is probably more free range good in this world than bad. Maybe there should be more of it in fiction.

FREE FICTION: "Korey"

2011-10-17T09:17:00.001-04:00

My name was just Korey, then. I was my mother’s only child. I had no father I knew. I grew up in a small town, in the country.

A carnival came to the big field, back behind the house I shared with my mother. I didn't know the carnival was coming to town that day. Just passing time and I saw it. I climbed over the back fence, and stood in the field behind the house where the grass grew wild and our small town ended in fields and fields and fields of long grass right up to the mountains. It was evening twilight. The stars were already peeking out from beyond the veil of the blue sky. Bugs jumped from stalk to stalk. I held my hands out to run them along the wispy tips of the grass. The bugs were going to the carnival, too, I reckon, after the bright lights and the sweet cotton candy. I heard the music over the hill. I wasn't expecting music like that – old music, like the kind they’d play for tap dancers. I wanted to go.

My mother said to me "Got the brain of a frog sometimes, girl" when I asked her. Then, when I asked her again, "No, and I mean it. You've got work in the morning."

Read the whole story for free, and the rest of the collection as it appears every Monday?-> http://womenandmonsters.wordpress.com/

Read the rest of the collection right away?-> Donate 5 dollars or more, or visit your preferred retailer of eBooks (smashwords, Amazon, Nook) for the full.

Linkage...

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/89167

Amazon Kindle
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Women-and-Monsters/J-M-McDermott/e/2940013377325

BOOK CLUB

2011-10-13T12:28:00.000-04:00

So, did you read EMBERS by Sandor Marai?

What did you think?

Anyone?

*hears the sounds of crickets*

Well, regardless, we can try again next month. This time, I've chosen a book early because ordering used took so long last time.

The book I've chosen is Maureen McHugh's second novel, HALF THE DAY IS NIGHT, which I have not read before, and I suspect other huge McHugh fans have also not read. I do this because there is a collection coming out in November from Small Beer Press that I suspect I will also be purchasing, and I really want to fill out my collection of Maureen McHugh books with first editions while they are still inexpensive.

If you read Embers, come on down to the comments section and let's talk about it, eh? I thought y'all wanted a book club!

For Immediate Release

2011-10-12T09:53:00.001-04:00

Press Release type thing with one part bolded as it may be of particular interest to YOU, my fair blog readers:

Joe McDermott
sankgreall@gmail.com

In Greek mythology, the heroes cheat on their wives, go into murderous rages, seduce and abandon, drink too much, and destroy all the wondrous things in their world in the name of glory, desire, or maybe heroism. The women and monsters of these myths rarely get to speak for themselves. WOMEN AND MONSTERS by J. M. McDermott seeks to allow the muse to speak for herself, following in the tradition of Margaret Atwood’s PENELOPIAD and Carol Ann Duffy’s THE WORLD’S WIFE.

The surreal, post-modern short story collection by critically-acclaimed writer, J. M. McDermott, repurposes the characters from myths into explorations of the universal themes of life. Eurydice describes why she remained so quiet to drive her husband mad with doubt. Deianira explains her side of the death of Heracles. Ariadne moves on from the labyrinth, and from Theseus, beyond Naxos and into the city. Also, there are monsters like Charybdis and Scylla, the Nemean Lion, and the terrifying Gorgon.

This unconventional book is published unconventionally, and will have an unconventional launch to match. The collection begins as an eBook, only. The short story collection will also be released one story at a time, every Monday on a dedicated website: womenandmonsters.wordpress.com. The site is open to donations, but encourages readers to go to different retailers to purchase the full eBook. After a successful eBook launch, a print edition will be forthcoming.

J. M. McDermott has always walked an interstitial line between fantasy and literature. His first novel, LAST DRAGON (Discoveries 2008), was described by Jeff VanderMeer as “William S. Burroughs writes Epic Fantasy” and by Paul Witcover in SciFi Weekly as “…like Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH.” His work has appeared on the Best SF/F list at Amazon.com’s Omnivoracious blog, received nominations for the Crawford Prize for first fantasy, and on the ballot for the Rhysling Award in Speculative Poetry. His Dogsland Trilogy has received wide critical acclaim including praise from John Clute in Strange Horizons, Paul Goat Allen for Barnes & Noble, the Book Smugglers, and more.

Long Weekend Updates

2011-10-10T09:22:00.000-04:00

In Virginia, driving down I95 to Georgia. I was in Maryland for a funeral.

Updates: Disintegration Visions is in copyedits, and it always comes back.

Secret Projects continue in secret. Secretly wditing cool x
Cool things.

On November 17, 2011, I will be at Georgia Tech for a Science Fiction Symposium with many others, including Chesya Burke and Eugie Foster and Kathryn Ann Goonan. Should be a fabulous time.

Cool things happening.

Stop to acknowledge the loss then life again. Read any good books lately? I am reading in a car. Coming home.

BOOK CLUB IS LATE: Mail is late.

2011-10-03T12:21:00.001-04:00

I ordered the book two weeks ago from a used book vendor on-line, but it has not arrived yet. I'm very disappointed about this.

Anyone had a chance to start reading, yet?

I will update this post with your thoughts and observations even as I try to hunt down another copy of the book in question.

Addendum 2: What anti-Publishing Bias?

2011-09-29T00:11:00.000-04:00

Let it be said that if an anti-publishing bias comes through in anything I've said, it is not because I have a bias against publishing. My bias is against the parts of publishing that do not act in a manner that is respectful of content creators and content consumers. This is not all of publishing. This might not be most of publishing. I know there are parts that are doing things that I don't like, and I am concerned by what I see.

Every contract negotiation is an adversarial one, even among best friends, and both parties are trying to do what they can to get the best possible deal. That doesn't mean a publisher is "bad" or "evil" or anything like that. It means they are a business.

Writers who do not educate themselves in the business of publishing will be unprepared when the business of publishing changes again. (Believe me, we've only seen the beginning of the changes to come in the digital revolution, and there are going to be some battles ahead.)

I know, for a fact, that I am also totally unconcerned with the question of whether the books in the narrowing marketplace are good or bad, at the moment, because they will be or they won't be depending on each individual book. I don't presume to judge whether a book at the formerly upper-midlist is "good" or not without reading it. What concerns me is that it will be harder to find places for books that used to be below that higher sales mark, many of which I loved to bits.

There will be blood in the months and years to come. Maybe even mine. Still, I don't believe for a minute that a post on the internet will impact my career much. If that were so, I know a few writers who wouldn't have careers. What I can gain from this post is the opportunity to invite people who know other things than I know to show up and speak out. I do this because I know the business climate is dramatically shifting, and if I don't stick my neck out to learn what I can, I won't be ready for those changes.

Make no mistake about this: Publishers and agents who are ethical are your best friend in the changing market. And publishers aren't going anywhere. And, I don't care how evil you think publishers might be, which they aren't, but they are a thousand times less terrifying than what Amazon could become, and publishers are our best hope to push against a functional monopoly of content formats and distribution. This is not really a question of what will happen to publishers. I hope to have killed that buzzing noise about the death of publishing or the death of New York publishing. It's not happening.

The questions are other things. What will happen to the interesting books that used to be the bottom of the midlist and now are not even on the list at all, and aren't even close to it? What will happen once writers who can financially afford to form their own publishing houses do it, on a large scale? Why does publicity seem to not work at all on eBooks, and what kind of publicity has proven to work?

(I disagree with Jeff VanderMeer about eBook publicity, by the way, but I take my info from Kristine Kathryn Rusch and her info lines up with stories I've heard of authors that discover their backlist titles sell really well for no apparent reason other than genre positioning.)

People are sensitive about stuff like this, because the change is happening very quickly and no one knows exactly what will shake out in the years to come.

Personally, I prefer to try and build the future I would like to see than to wait and see what happens without my influence, even if it leads to the end of my career. (Careers end all the time. Why not mine? I am not special or different from a thousand other quiet voices from centuries past.)

There are still many questions. I hope people stop by over at SFSignal to answer them, raise questions, raise hell, and in all ways discuss civilly what is happening, or has already happened, or what is not going to happen.

Thank you if you already have.

An Addendum to Something About to Go Live at SFSignal...

2011-09-27T13:00:00.005-04:00

Right, so my big digital publishing post is about to go live at SFSignal, spaced out over two days. I don't consider myself an expert on the subject, but I do think that throwing my ideas out there will encourage people who are experts to chime in with their perspective.

One of the things I didn't touch upon, though, is something I saw at least six times in my Twitter feed yesterday that drives me absolutely up the wall.

Some people are calling this the eBook "Gold Rush" which is accurate inasmuch as the original gold rush led to very, very little actual gold for prospectors, who mostly died dirty and violent and drunk and shoved into each other in tents that were riddled with lice.

What we are seeing is a gold rush, in that the supply depots and grifters and tool providers will make a killing in this gold rush. Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, Barnes&Noble, etc., are going to make a million-billion dollars. We authors? No.

For us, it's more of a hopeful crawl than a gold rush. Income is slow, as always, and builds slowly, and word builds slowly, and there actually isn't very much money in it, but we're all very hopeful that we can STRIKE A BIG VEIN ANY DAY NOW!

Unless of course we are not hopeful for that big strike, and we prefer to continue doing what we do best: producing quality content that is worth a few dollars, and enough of it that people will provide us with enough money to keep us alive and off the government dole.

Harumph.

Right, so even though I'm still hammering out the details on the cover art with an awesome artist whose name you would recognize, I'm going to go ahead and post a link to the project that has come out, in case people stumble over here looking for it, and no one knows what the heck is going on about it:

check your favorite e-Retailer of eBooks for this one, folks, and/or hold your breath for a cover that isn't just one of two sketch placeholders.

I'm not officially "launching" this thing out right now, but it is out, and I guess it will launch "officially" in mid-October. (eBooks, and micropress books, benefit from a long, deliberate launch, I think...)

Full Version:

Discount Version With Just Two of the Stories as a Sampler/Teaser:

Also up at Barnes&Noble for Nook. And Smashwords (presumably their affiliates, too, eventually...)

As in all things eBook/MicroPress anything you can do to spread the word is helpful and appreciated. Also, as you're reading, if you come across any weird hiccups in formatting and spelling and whatnot, let me know. The manuscript was vetted by more than one editor on a story-by-story but that definitely doesn't mean a few ghosts haven't slipped through the package-ware. I've been clearing the chaff out, especially trying to get the formatting right on each device, but it's one of the reasons you want to do a soft launch of eBooks, so you have time to actually see them on a couple devices...

Anyway. Yeah. Not a gold rush for us, really, or only one in that the gold rush did not lead to very much gold for the prospectors back in the day.

I won't have time to update my website today, maybe not this week, but...

2011-09-27T12:26:00.000-04:00

But... Moonlight Tuber #3 is live and in the world, including a story of mine.
http://moonlighttuber.wordpress.com

Paul Jessup's Coffin Mouth is live, as well, with a story by me:
http://coffinmouth.wordpress.com/

Also, as it will be outed in a few minutes by SFSignal.com, I feel like I should mention this here, first, though I've been hinting at it for a couple weeks.

The cover isn't final (I'm hiring someone for that, and it's still in process), nor is absolutely all the layout and stuff final (I'm still tweaking it for each device), but the stories are there and any changes that happen, at this point, should be pretty minimal (except the cover):

Also up on Smashwords, Nook, if you care to look for it.

There's a discount sampler of the stuff, with just two of the stories, that are free on Smashwords, and 99cents on Kindle. Want to taste the stuff before deciding to buy the stuff? Got you covered: link.

If you like it, please tell people about it. Indie/Micro titles are always fighting to make themselves heard in this noisy world. Every little bit helps.

Have you read pieces of this in The Raleigh Review? In Coffin Mouth (linked above)? In The Journal of Unlikely Entomology? Have you said to yourself that you'd like to read a lot more of that sort of thing?

Well, there it is. It is a thing. It is in the world. Enjoy.

The world is changing. The book world is going through massive, huge, crazy, scary, amazing, wonderful changes. I go into some detail about that over at SFSignal, in two posts. The first of the two goes live in about half an hour. The second part goes live tomorrow.

There's also going to be an addendum to the two posts at SFSignal over here, in about half an hour, where I talk about this "eBook Gold Rush" that doesn't, actually exist...

Peace and Love,

J. M. McDermott

Hiring cover art for this thing that's in the world

2011-09-26T10:26:00.000-04:00

It's showing up here and there as I send it out to reviewers.

The cover art isn't here, yet.

But, if you go out and look, you could find it.

The way eBooks work, I feel no need to do "One... Big... Launch..." which seems to work contrary to what eBooks actually do on the market, from what I can tell. It's a different animal. It's better to just do it one step at a time, and make sure every step is out in the open where one could, if one were so inclined, find it and help it along.

It's out there, but I won't tell you about it here until the cover art is in and done.

The Awesome Book Club for Awesome Cool People Starts October 1st.

2011-09-22T12:22:00.000-04:00

Simple rules.

1) I pick a book. It will be a book that I think looks interesting that I want to read. It will not be a thing that I have already read before, which defeats the purpose of this thing.

2) I will post on the 1st of the month about this book that we will be reading this month.

3) In the comments of that post, read along together. Post your thoughts, impressions, etc. Label spoilers so people can skip them if they wanna. Generally, I like the kind of books where knowing a spoiler doesn't change your reading experience much, so no worries about going crazy trying to avoid them.

4)I will pick interesting things that people say and edit them into the main post, so everyone can keep up with what is happening in the comments.

5) I will stop doing this for that post at the end of the month, when we begin the next book.

6) The next book will be announced at least two weeks before the next month begins, so we can all have time to locate a copy. I bet we're going to end up with some obscure things here and there, because what's the point of a book club dedicated to easy-to-find, easy-to-read stuff?

The book I have chosen for our book club, after consultation with some of y'all is this one:

EMBERS by Sandor Mari, translated by Carol Brown Janeway

From Publishers Weekly
Two very old men Konrad and Henrik, "the General" once the closest of friends, meet in 1940 in the fading splendor of the General's Hungarian castle, after being separated for 41 years, to ponder the events that divided them. This 1942 novel by a forgotten Hungarian novelist, rediscovered and lucidly and beautifully translated, is a brilliant and engrossing tapestry of friendship and betrayal, set against a backdrop of prewar splendor. In the flickering glow and shadow of candlelight, the General recalls the past with neither violence nor mawkish sentiment, but with restrained passion. The two met as boys, Henrik the confident scion of a wealthy, aristocratic family, and Konrad the sensitive son of an impoverished baron. Of their closeness, the General says, "the eros of friendship has no need of the body." When they are young men, Konrad introduces Henrik to Krisztina, the remarkable daughter of a crippled musician. Henrik and Krisztina marry, and the two keep up a close friendship with Konrad, until one morning, on a hunt, Henrik senses that Konrad is about to fire at him. Nothing happens, but Konrad leaves at once, vanishing. For the first time, the General goes to his friend's rooms, and then his wife unexpectedly comes in. He never speaks to her again. Capturing the glamour of the fin de siŠcle era, as well as its bitter aftermath, M rai eloquently explores the tight and twisted bonds of friendship. (Oct. 2)Forecast: M rai's history he was born in 1900, rose to fame in Hungary in the 1930s, fled the country after WWII and committed suicide in San Diego in 1989, virtually forgotten is at least as compelling as the story he tells here.

link: Indiebound (<-strongly recommended)Amazon:

This thing is in the world...

2011-09-21T03:33:00.003-04:00

There is a thing. It is in the world.

You could find it, too, if you looked. It's getting easier and easier to find. People have found it already.

What are you going to do about it, though?

Are you going to help spread the message about it? Are you going to wait and see what happens, and wait and see what you want to do, if you want to do anything?

Tell people about it, if you can.

Spread the word. Share the word. Iterate on it.

Look for something and you'll find it.

2011-09-16T05:57:00.000-04:00

How good is your google fu?

Can you find it?

It's out there.

You'll know it when you find it.

Good luck.

J M McDermott

Chinese Five Spice Bread, a recipe for a bread machine

2011-09-14T09:14:00.000-04:00

I have a bread machine. (Thanks, Mom!) I am using this bread machine. I am using this bread machine to make Chinese Five Spice Bread, which I think is delicious, very much so.

3.25 cups of unbleached plain white flour
1 egg
some milk (I'll explain)
some water (I'll explain)
2 tablespoons of butter
1.25 teaspoons of salt
1.25 teaspoons of sugar
2.25 teaspoons of dry rapid rise yeast
1 abundant fistful of Golden Raisins (I'd guess my meaty palms to be about 1/4 a cup?)
More Savory? 2 teaspoon of Chinese Five Spice Blend for a more savory bread
OR 1 teaspoon Five Spice+1/2 teaspoon of Cinnamon+1/2 teaspoon of Nutmeg for a sweeter one.

Step 1: So, get out ye olde machine of bread. Check it for spiders because I know you don't use it enough.

Step 2: Also get out a measuring cup that goes up to 1 cup.

Step 3: Here's where I explain the milk and water. Put the whole egg in the measuring cup. Now, with what's left of that measuring cup, fill it halfway to the top with whole milk, and then fill it the rest of the way to one cup with plain water.

For dry climates, I'd say maybe a little more water. For wet climates, I'd say maybe a little less. You know where you live, right?

Put all the ingredients into the bread machine.

Tell the bread machine to make a medium-sized, white bread.

When the bread is done, pull it out and cool it on a wire rack.

I recommend fig preserves, on top.

I love bread machinery. I love making bread the regular way, but doing it in the machine is just fantastic because I can space out all day long, completely forgetting about the machine while I am working, and the next thing I know there's this wonderful smell coming from the kitchen, and all I had to do was throw some things in a bucket and push a button.

Would anyone here be interested in a book club?

2011-09-12T15:09:00.000-04:00

Just curious. I've been thinking about ways to make this site more meaningful than just a big megaphone for my own things.

I've often done book reviews, and promoted things, and tried to use my powers for good. However, there comes a point where I feel like I'm just typing into the dark.

Would anyone be interested in a monthly book club?

I figure I could choose a book (with input from everyone in the comments) and then we all read it. We all post comments about it on a post dedicated to comments about it. I pick and choose what I like best from the comments and pull it up into the main post for the sake of bringing to light interesting things.

I've been thinking about this for all of twenty minutes, but it doesn't seem crazy, yet. A monthly book club, where I pick your book (with your input) and we all read it for fun and commentary. Hopefully it'll be something none of us have read before. I promise I won't just assign everyone Hal Duncan, Jeff VanderMeer and Ekaterina Sedia over and over again like some kind of geeked out fanboy.

In fact, I'm pretty sure I won't be wanting to do these authors at all, for a while, unless something new comes around.

What do you folks, think?

sandpiper

2011-09-08T22:24:00.000-04:00

From the bottom of the boards

The ragged children pile their castles

Sandy crenallations, driftwood guitar chords

And all the happy courtesans

They gather vessels full of sand

The paper moon kite spins the winds

And every body grins and grins

Sandpiper, chase the shells

All is well

A black-skinned girl in chains sings sweet

The way the water filled her floor

boys cursing in Greek beside her cheat

At blackjack while two alabaster twins

hold each other’s hands, don’t swim

The biggest boy holds up a knotty scepter

demanding dancing of toddling jesters

Sandpipers, chase the shells

All is well

By dawn the ocean swallows every moat

The water shatters castle walls

And every sandy township falls. The notes

Of music fade while children fly away,

Terrified to lose themselves to darkness

trapped there, dashing over shorelines

Lonely cries for mothers in the brine

when i was in college i'd do this, too, and go out all night, all night, all night

2011-09-06T12:26:00.000-04:00

ever go out all night? ever just step out of your own skin, your own life, and seek out a bar, a diner, a bus station or a place like that, where you can just be late into the darkness, and watch the world turn from daylight to starlight and back again?

i did that a few times in college. i slipped out after dark to escape the dormitory, went to the house of pies on kirby, or hung out in a computer lab in the honors college lobby. i even had this spot at the bottom of a stairwell where i could go and read and rest and decompress away from all those people all the time, all those people.

get away from your beds, and your safe places and take to the night. see if you experience something.

i read this book that i liked quite a lot by haruki murakami that dramatized that experience.

a young student reading a book goes to a Denny's, where an acquaintance who had a crush on her sister shows up between practice sessions with a trombone and a cheerful attitude. he sits down to chat with her, a lonely young man with a conspiratorial nature that unpeals in conversation all the layers of defenses that she carries with her to stay safe in the night.

the novel, at the surface, appears to be a series of vignettes that occur in the night, but watch out for all those rambling conversations and stories and cinematic asides into the periphery of two characters - a violent insomiac salaryman and a somnambulist sleeping beauty - and there's layers of meaning wrapped into the words.

imagine each character stepping out of the novel of their own lives, each one capable of carrying a novel on their own. instead, they fall into each other in tokyo, after dark, and reveal the core of their story to each other in conversation, what it all means that they're all trying to communicate, that there is a darkness in the world, rising up from the depths of the unknown and subconscious nightmares, and being together, falling into each other and trying to become one person and to cross the gap between the subconscious depths of two narrators, two novels, two stories...

"after dark" in a city is like saying "in the woods" in a fairytale. the park where children play changes in the nighttime into something hideous and terrifying. the bus lines turn from cheerful commuters to empty, restless men with dead eyes. after dark is when puck and the fairies come out, and wicked men walk the streets, call into a cellphone that lingers in a cheese aisle of a 24 hour food shop, where passing strangers pick it up and hear the terrifying threats. there's a mystery in the world, rising up from the depths of the subconscious, where dreams happen and nightmares happen, too.

the answer to the darkness is to hold each other close. share the dreams and nightmares. talk to each other. just say what you're thinking, and trust the people who are also running into the darkness like you to understand that something important inside of you is trying to escape or you wouldn't be out here so late, deep in the city, where the great mysteries of time linger in every shadow, and people are hurting each other, running from each other, playing jazz music, and trying find something - some truth or something - that they can carry back into the day.

MAZE is coming in March, 2012

2011-09-04T10:54:00.000-04:00

I know everyone's been asking me (and calling me on the phone, and e-mailing me, and asking me at conventions, etc.)

So, I just want to make sure we all get this down: March 2012, there will be a book called MAZE. The book trailer for this book is below.

It will be from Apex Books, distributed through Diamond. It was delayed because of the relaunch of Apex Books through its new distributor.

Want to hurry things along? Pick up an Alien Shot and the proceeds go to ensure the publisher doesn't need to put off the book:

lish carver?

2011-09-03T15:31:00.000-04:00

Should I read the unedited Carveror stick to the regular?

The Rise of Writers Versus Readers, a theory presented with no evidence whatsoever...

2011-08-31T08:40:00.000-04:00

So, I have this theory as to why there are as many aspiring writers as there are readers, and why it seems like there has been an explosion of writers in recent years. It has nothing to do with word processors. It has nothing to do with the rise of outlets for writing in the age of the internet.

I think it's simpler than that. People are unfulfilled working in this country. People grind their lives away pursuing the goals of shareholders and stockholders and upper management and do not have work that interests them, if they have work at all. For the approximately 25-30% of the country unemployed or underemployed, this purposelessness is exacerbated by the general economic woes involved. Ergo, writing books is a home-based business that solves certain problems that home-based businesses often have.

1) Cost of entry is low. A word processor and a web connection and access to mail is all that is required to start.
2) It can actually lead to huge success, if one is dedicated and talented enough, unlike plumbing or envelope stuffing. This is not actually a scam.
3) The work is enjoyable. It is not a grind, most of the time, to sit in one's cave and make stuff up.

With a down economic climate, and one in which real wages have not kept up with demand, we are going to see people get their hustle on, and try to work harder to make something more meaningful. That most work in this country is about as interesting as scraping your face against a cheese shredder only makes the interest in writing more so. Everyone who enjoys reading a book and wants to find a way to increase the annual income in a direction towards meaningful, soulful work will get the virus to scribble into the night.

It's the economy. For the last twenty years, the Reagenomicon has decimated the middle class, and everyone needs to find something to get that hustle on, and get that income up, and find work that doesn't involve layers of management and goals that make no sense most of the time and a culture of greed and efficiency that extricates surgically the soulfulness and joy of good, hard work.

I have no evidence for this. I have done no research. It's only a theory.

Because writing books is hard, and reading them is fun. If more people had fulfilling work, that met their goals and desires financially, there would be more people just reading books and less people writing them.

(I'd still be writing them. This is my megaphone to shout at the world. I would be screaming from my mountaintop even if no one cared to listen. I'm like that. I suspect most of the writers I like best would also keep at it, because none of us are in this for the money nor do we actually make very much money.)

Returned home from Armadillocon

2011-08-30T12:02:00.000-04:00

At the end of every convention, I feel like the only adequate report that can be offered is this: I survived. I love conventions. I get to meet very cool people from all over the country and the world and we discuss important questions like "Could Red Sonja kick Conan's ass?" and "What are you doing in the ePublishing sphere and is it working?" You know, the highs and lows of pure geekery.

I could namecheck lots of people, but I would like to give a shout out to my workshop participants who all seemed very upbeat and positive at the end of the workshop, despite all of the efforts of the instructors to turn them into the cynical shells of men that Matt Bey and I have become after years of working in the field of SF/F. Thanks for signing up and I hope you encourage other aspiring writers you know to sign up in the future! Also, thanks to Stina Leicht for running the show, and organizing everything down to the point of a much better vegetarian sandwich than I would have otherwise gotten for lunch! Go Stina!

(You know who Stina Leicht is, right? She wrote this:)

I attended some awesome things, including panels with people, all very cool. I also attended some readings by Martha Wells, Matt Bey, Patrice Sarath, Michelle Muenzler, and Rob Rogers. In particular, I'd like to point out Rob Rogers because I discovered that has written what sounds like an excellent and timely sequel to Devil's Cape, and he has just released that fine first novel full of superheros and circus freaks out into the world as an eBook you could go pick up right now!

Let's see, who did I meet...

I'm missing people. I know I'm forgetting people. If I forgot you, I'm sorry, but this is devolving into such a pimp-thread, I may have to get a gold cane and a cape just to get to the end...

One topic of constant conversation among the con-goers was how low attendance was at cons all over the country, how people just weren't showing up. There were people I expected to meet that weren't there, at all. I know times are hard, but it's hard to see it happening right there in front of me among one of the best conventions in all of the south.

FenCon is coming. I won't be there, but I wish I could. If you're in Texas, go. It's a great Con. Lots of cool people, awesome panels, and good times will be had.

The journey was long. Texas is in a serious drought. When I drove in, it was raining so hard in Louisiana that I had to pull over and rest along the side of the road. I crossed the border into Texas and there was an instant shift from green to brown. There's this big Catfish shack on the border between Texas and Louisiana, and the rear of it is green, out by the dumpsters, but the front of it is brown where people are parking their pickup trucks. Drive down into Austin and see how desolate it's become there. Everyone's zeroscaping their yards. Everyone's talking about the politics of water and the death of the aquifer that's been open for business too long, too long, and too widely. There's a reason people weren't building up so much before, you know. It wasn't because they didn't want to push into the hill country. It's because there isn't enough water for everybody. Once upon a time, a farmer would stand up in the courtroom and say that, and people would respect him. These days, they just laugh him down. 100 years is a long time until everything runs out. Lots of money to be made between then and now. Who cares that it is an eyeblink of a protozoa clinging to a grain of the sand of time? They don't. They don't care what world will be left for the people after them whom they will never meet. By then, they'll be long gone. Pull the water up from the ground. Keep building above the aquifers. Retail malls and outlet malls and housing complexes as far as the eye can see, because 100 years from now, when these empty concrete shells collapse upon their imperfect construction, designed for less than 100 years life, there won't be a person left on this ground that has a choice about it, and by then all the money accumulated will help drive the family ever east, ever east, ever east, back where there is an ocean and some mountains that will stay up above the rising waters of the great, big melt.

I think this is the 3rd time I've been "done" with this thing...

2011-08-24T18:17:00.000-04:00

The problem with integrated collections about Greek Mythology is that there is quite a lot of mythology to play with, and no shortage of ideas bouncing around my head.

I think I'm done. This is the third time I thought I was done.

Time will tell.

I'm at my father's house, passing through on my way to austin. the dogs are anxious. they want to go around the block. they want to play and eat and play some more.

I think they might be right.

so, in the mean time, it's going to be all steampunk all the time, then.

I don't actually believe in Steampunk as a literary movement. I believe in it as a fashion movement that was such a powerful and timely aesthetic idea that it tumbled out into other forms of art. It's like how there are really strange poems and plays from Marcel DeChamp's hobby-horsery, but it was always, really, about the paintings and sculptures and breakdown of form and imagery and definitions of the visual, tactile arts.

Still, I'm writing me some. It's going all right. Time will tell.

The Future of Everything

2011-08-23T14:54:00.000-04:00

I am in Texas, at my mother's house, surrounded by brown, drought-ravaged yards and plants, sitting in an air conditioned house with a glass of water beside me and the constant distraction of dogs.

I have decided to reveal the future of everything.

The future of business, every business, is the death of every business, because they will all collapse under the weight of changing business models and bad investments and better competitors.

The future of reading is the end of reading, because literacy was invented and is more precarious than we could possibly imagine in a world where reading is not as valuable a skill as programming, and it is only a matter of time until programming is the preferred language in text form.

The future of programming are programs that design other programs, because people couldn't be bothered to learn all the intricacies of whatever language of programming iterates while machinery produce tool after tool after tool.

The future of machinery is to get smaller. There are only so many power plants that can run on this earth without killing us all, and we are already over our limit.

Get smaller. Think local. Think illiterately.

We will walk away from all these futile devices, and return to agriculture.

We will tumble away from agriculture as crops fail and new insects learn to eat old plants. We will have to forage.

We will all be foraging, with no businesses to hire us, and no books to teach us, and no programs to bother reaching out a robot hand to ours and no power plants to send the bill collectors after us.

We will all be foraging.

There will be tribes.

They will want to leave messages for each other that will look like heiroglyphics on stone walls.

This is what will happen to us, and to everything with us.

Also, the sun is a finite resource, and even if it is a slow burn, it is the only burn we have.

Something I just wrote about in tweets...

2011-08-21T16:15:00.000-04:00

Read backwards as I just cut-and-pasted it.

In the current climate, it is still better to pursue major magazines first, but unless a semi-pro carries some cachet, it's better to DiY.
29 seconds ago Favorite Reply Delete

The experience has changed my perspective on short fiction, in general, and I expect I will be doing more original short stories via eBook.
1 minute ago

The bits are always distributed, exactly where people can find them, and I just have to keep producing more data bits...
2 minutes ago

Though I still think it is not fully "here" as a writing business. In two years? Three? Five? The accounting and distribution is too good.
2 minutes ago

The other neat thing is patience: I'm not racing against the death spiral to move units of product. I've got no PR, no hurry, and just write
3 minutes ago

And, that this amount is small is a temporary thing, I think, as more and more readers turn to eBooks on their various devices and many small amounts add up over time.
4 minutes ago

It's simply breathtaking to open up a browser window, and know what I'm owed and exactly when it will arrive to the day. Even if it's small.
5 minutes ago

My eBook experiments indicate to me that this will be the future of books, if only because of the way accounting and payments work. #ontime

I'm in this anthology...

2011-08-21T13:03:00.000-04:00

My short story, "Dedalus and the Labyrinth" is the very first story in this collection, from Apex Publications, among what appears to be an excellent bunch of stories.

This particular work of fantasy was the first glimmer in the brain of what was going to become a science fiction/interstitial novel called MAZE that's coming out when it comes out from Apex.

2011-08-18T22:55:00.000-04:00

My agent is a very smart and talented man, and I agree with him almost all the time, and sometimes I have doubts. Nagging doubts. I am mortal, you see, and no matter what when you are a writer you are plagued with doubts. Is this the right project to pursue? Is this good enough? What if the market shifts and this sort of thing becomes cliche? Am I going to get paid on time this time, or do I get to wait for months again before the unnamed group that owes me money pays me the money I need to live...

Lots of doubts and confusion in the career of a writer, you see. And, we have most of the day to sit around and think about things, and it takes a strong force of will to quiet ones' doubts.

I have doubts. I agree with my agent, in theory, but I have doubts.

My literary agent has advised me to put this particular project on hold for a while, and even then thinks only the smallest of the small publishers would be after it. I agree with him, in part, because I can only think of a handful of places to submit this particular integrated collection of stories, none of them offering the sort of advances I could muster with the literary steampunk cinderella story I'm pulling out of my head with sharp tines at the moment.

Then, I second-guess my agent because I also think that maybe this is a powerful thing that the world would love, if it knew it existed, and maybe some of it is the best writing I've done to date. My imagination will not let this go. My gut will not let this go. I think maybe my agent knows epic fantasy really well, and literary fiction really well, and the in-between stuff maybe he doesn't know so well because there isn't the sort of money involved that one would get with the stuff that has a clear category, but defining a category is the way to build a career and my gut says this is the right thing to pursue and publish. I think that the writers that have seen pieces of this project, the good writers like Liz Hand and Scott Wolven and Jim Kelly, have completely flipped out for it.

Pieces of this thing have been selling to magazines. One was in The Raleigh Review. Another was in the Journal of Unlikely Entomology. Another will be in Paul Jessup's Coffin Mouth. When it comes to Greek Mythology, the women and the monsters never get to tell their own stories. Always they are the tossed-away baggage and victims and ruins left in the wake of the gods, goddesses and mighty heroes, who all mostly acted like selfish asshats and were praised for it. We all think of Orpheus, and never wonder what Eurydice wanted when she did not answer to her name, or what the Nemean Lion thought about becoming such an icon of a monstrous man, or what happened to Ariadne after she was abandoned on an island and had to just live her own life after the labyrinth and after Theseus. (Gosh, Theseus was such an ass...) Circe was a mighty sorceress with her own goddamn island but all anyone remembers is that a man committed adultery there, abandoning her wondrous immortality for a woman that he wouldn't see for nineteen years. Nausicaa became a woman without Odysseus around, and maybe she had her own odyssey. The muse never gets to tell her own version of things. Sing, muse, for yourself.

Anyway, it's a book. It's very strange. It's shifty, too, with some things in the past and some things in the now, and many things in between places, with magic and whimsy and surrealism as casual as breathing. I'm trying hard to clean up the last three of the fictions that I think that I want: Io and Cerynitis and Aphrodite/Athena. Maybe there's more stories to tell, because there are so many women and monsters of mythology that didn't get to speak their own stories.

I want this book to be in the world somewhere. My instinct is telling me once it is picked up it will be loved by the sort of people you want to love your books, the sort who read lots of them and share them with others and really care about them. My agent says no one will want it but the smallest of the small presses, and we should sit on it a while because maybe I'm going to keep writing more of them and maybe the market isn't ripe for this sort of thing. Maybe it won't be for a long while. I don't know if I agree with him or not, the more I think about it, because if the writing is good - if it is really, really good - maybe. Just maybe.

What do you think, world? Anyone out there have any ideas or insight?

Do you, my fans, become excited at the thought of a Literary Steampunk Cinderella story, or would you prefer more surrealism and fabulism?

When I wake up tomorrow, I will work on what you tell me to work on, either/or. It is unfair not to say too much about the steampunk project when I go on about the other one, but the very words "Literary Steampunk Cinderella" are about enough when you consider the sort of books I have already written, and sort of what that might look like in my capable hands.

What should I work on today?

I'll be volunteering on this farm until late afternoon. When I get home, we'll make dinner with what they give us on the farm, and then I will work. My time working will be dictated by you.

(Also, if you happen to be a publisher and your interest is piqued by this collection idea, no harm in dropping me a line, is there? I mean, it's not anyone's fault you read this on my blog. No harm telling me why it would never work, either.)

do you speak bee? (and, a giveaway...)

2011-08-15T12:43:00.000-04:00

I'm writing new stories, frantically, some under deadline, some not. I'm writing and writing.

[quote]

I speak bee. No one believes it, but I learned the language. My mother taught it to me, when I was very young. What you do is you place honey on your finger, your nose, and then a splash of floral perfume upon the back of your jeans. Then, you go into a field to speak to the bees, who find you because of the smell, and then they watch you to see what you have to say. You shiver, and move forward, then shiver again. Shivering looks like shaking your butt, like shimmying, but it’s not. It’s shivering. It’s a complex language. It took years of practice.
My mother was an expert. She could guide the flocks of bees over the highway, into safe harbors all over the city. Someone had to keep them safe from the killing men, that came in fancy trucks to spray the streets. Someone had to protect the bees from the changing places, where the old buildings that should have been a refuge were doomed to be rebuilt.
In this world, no one cares about the bees. Father doesn’t care about them. He doesn’t believe in my mother. He says the powerlines have changed everything. Everything will be connected together that’s human, and anything that can’t ride along the lines might as well be forgotten.
My mother agrees with him when he says that, but she still taught me to speak bee....

[/quote]

There's a giveaway next door, at the Night Bazaar, where I was asked to speak a little about world-building, and I did, late at night, when I was awake far too late, because I was afraid of something terrible.

[quote]

Often, I am bored by world-building in the books I read. I’m not really into “cool” worlds. I read for characters and to find the questions of my life that I did not know I was supposed to be asking. I mean, really, what matter whether a river is purple or a mountain is made of glass if the people of that world are not changed by it in some fashion, and not just in that they need special shoes to walk on the purple water and climb the glass mountains? I mean imagine that the glass of the mountain is a metaphor for a bright, shining, religious lie, and it is so massive that all the stained glass windows in the world have been thrown up together into one, huge monument to the lies. I mean that the character who climbs this mountain discovers a truth upon it that makes the monument a lie, because the thing that inspired it all was wrong to begin with. Things are different for a reason, and it has to do with art. Otherwise, we’re just messing with reality for the sake of making reality cooler than it is, and it feels lazy to me because reality is actually very cool, already.

[/quote]

Go there, and leave a comment there, and be entered in a giveaway to receive both LAST DRAGON and NEVER KNEW ANOTHER.

Comment here, and I will offer you nothing but a nod, which is invisible to you as far away as you are from me in this world

I noticed a story in the New York Times about something Angie and I did yesterday, by the way. We have so many foraged figs from a friend's backyard. She's out of town, and told us to sneak into her backyard and take figs. She has so many, and they're just sitting there, ripe and delicious and about to rot. So, we pulled in yesterday morning, slipped into a strange backyard, and went nuts to gather about six pounds of figs right from the tree at a house that's abandoned for most of the summer. I call them our "ninja figs" because I felt like a ninja sneaking into a yard to get them. (We were invited to do it, and not trespassing, but her neighbors didn't know that!)

The people in this article are friends of friends, on the local farmer's market scene where my fiance works every day. They're right to do what they're doing, too. At the EAV markets, every dollar of food stamp is worth two dollars in produce. The people who need it most get what they need at a better price.

Don't let the food rot on the tree or the vine, I say. Atlanta has so many empty houses, empty yards, empty lots. If we don't do something about this place, we'll end up like Detroit, all hollowed out and polluted with drugs and crime in all these empty houses. I hope it works out for us.

I'm going back to work, now. Input/output... Io.... Mourn with the bees..

[Re-post] I Want to Throw Indiana Jones Off a Cliff and Watch Him Die, Apparently

2011-08-12T10:52:00.000-04:00

[With the malware-splosion of the Apex Blog, I'm digging around in my backup files to repost all the things I did there, here. This first appeared at the Apex Book Blog, about a year ago.]

You know that game with the wise-cracking hero, and how he is all clever and athletic and a he has a sassy, flirtatious relationship with the female lead, and he is smart and tough and funny and... Yeah, it's an archetype you've seen a lot of if you have been playing games. Whether you are a Prince of Persia, Nathan Drake, Spider Man, Serious Sam, Master Chief, Gabriel Knight, Dante, Ezio Auditore, etc., etc., etc., you know you are both a brilliant, competent dude, and always ready with a quip about how brilliant and competent you are. These characters could all probably be voice-acted by a young Harrison Ford to great success.

I'm sick of him. When I was playing Prince of Persia - the newest one, written by Andy Walsh - I was so sick of this guy that I kept imagining how great it would be to jump off a cliff and watch him actually land with a splat of blood and death. I don't blame the writer. I blame the company that chooses to ask the writer to make their character sound like Indiana Jones.

As I was thinking about how much I hate this archetype - because I'm sick of his self-confident smirk in the face of danger - I got to thinking why this has persisted. It seems the only alternative is the brutal, angst-ridden guilty characters of GTA:IV and God of War. Think about it: either one is a total smirking man-muppet, or one is a total, raging pain monkey. There is little nuance, for the most part. in between these two macho extremes.

Because, for the most part, you're playing characters that are supposed to be facing great peril, and deadly consequences, these two types have persisted. Most likely, your character is a mass murderer who leaps heights and distances that would make normal men break limbs against odds epically awful.

That wink at the crowd, or that comedically gruesome emotional angst, is the way designers have to try to deal with the reality that their characters are inhuman, and operating with inhuman expectations. They don't have human emotions. When they kill someone, it's nothing. When they jump from a burning building, a hundred yards, to grab a rope and swing over an exploding bridge, the characters' emotional "stance" sets a tone that alienates them from the moment they're in. A wise-cracking character always has their verbal defenses up, smirking to reveal the unreality and lack of actual consequences in the moment. An angst-riddled character is so inward-looking they never see what they're doing beyond their emotional blinders, a pocket of pain like gravity weighing down an unfelt, shallow-to-everyone world.

Main characters in games - especially male ones - have an emotional distance from the moment they experience. They are always above the people around them, slightly better, slightly faster, or blessed with slightly better aim. They are special and the world treats them as such.

If I were to draw a graph of immersion, then, I'd have the player who is holding the controller, separated over, then the character that is above the world, then the game world, like so: PLAYER ->MAIN CHARACTER -> WORLD. As a cipher, the main character tends not to be part of the world in which they inhabit. As sick as I am of the wisecracking main character, it is the way that many games choose to keep their main character a little separated from the world around them, to allow them to be the cipher of the player in the living room with the controller.

I was thinking about this, as well, because I just saw the excellent film, Scott Pilgrim Versus the World, and it played like a game. Scott was the emotionally distant main character, a cipher for the audience, a little aside and above the world in which he inhabited. If one really thinks about it, were he truly engaged with the world he lived in, fully, he would never be able to separate from the persona in which he inhabited to grow as a person. Around him, all those quirky, funny, character-types are locked in their idiom, but none of them are capable of changing who they are without the action of the emotionally distant Scott, who seems to define everything around him.

At once, walking away from the film, I felt like I had lost something because I did not have, truly, that same clique of quirky, exciting, interesting people around me. But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it is because I am emotionally engaged with the people around me as people. I am not distant from my friends and close relations. There is no player using me as a cipher for this world. I am totally immersed.

Indiana Jones archetypes are really a part of a larger problem, that the player cannot truly immerse in the virtual worlds. They need someone to stand aside of that world, and above it, carrying the loa of the player like a voodoo god.

That same perspective of emotional distance is all over books, too. But, as our characters do not have to be mass murderers to be interesting, in books, we are able to have a more mature immersion with the world of the book. We can approach characters as equals, for the most part. We do not need a wise-cracking, good-looking, super hero to carry us safely through the perils of the book. This may be what people are thinking about when they don't consider video games an art form on par with great works of literature, that can carry the reader a while in someone else's true skin.

But, I really thought Scott Pilgrim's movie was fantastic. I thought it spoke to the truth of the human condition, despite the unrealities built into the design and application. The veil of the unreal placed over Scott and Ramona's relationship enhanced the story, I thought, into the realm of art that spoke to the human condition.

The reason I thought this probably had something to do with how Scott Pilgrim did not sound like Indiana Jones. Unlike Nathan Drake, one could imagine Scott failing, hurting, or giving up, because Scott isn't just an archetype. He may be our cipher in that shiny world, but he is also ridiculously, painfully human. He's just as confused, stupid, weak, and petty as we are; and when he rises out of himself into true heroism and self-esteem it feels like it means something about how relationships and our desire to connect meaningfully with the people - to immerse ourselves in our world truly and completely - mean giving up that emotional distance. In the end, that's what he does. He leaves his shiny, brilliant, cool world behind to be with the woman he loves, in a real, grown-up relationship.

And now I'm going to Amazon to buy the graphic novels...

Word to the Wise: Armadillocon is coming

2011-08-10T00:07:00.000-04:00

All you Texas-area, particularly Austin-area peoples best be getting prepped for the awesome ArmadilloCon Convention going down in a couple weeks. I'm taking my suits to the drycleaners tomorrow morning to get ready, clearing the car out for the drive, and wondering what I should read Friday night, when I'll be exhausted from a full day of teaching with Matt Bey of Space Squid in the writer's workshop.

Even right now, I'm reading the stories over, thinking hard about them, and getting my act together to figure out what must needs be said about the stories for the workshop.

When I'm not doing that, I'm getting ready for a guest coming in from out of town, passing through on a crazy roadtrip.

When I'm not doing that, I'm poking around for some kind of new employment. I'm getting sick of hanging around the house. I'm too social to want to spend this much time by myself. I'm not shaving enough. I find myself unshaven, wearing clothes that don't match, and it's horrible. I find myself wasting time because it is there to be wasted instead of maintaining a rigid schedule. I work better when I have to schedule. I feel more urgency with my writing time.

Hm.

Also, and related to yesterday, with the update to the Kindle, one should be able to discover my latest experiment in ePublishing of projects that have no future in any other form, in this case a thing full of my bizarre poetry.

I hope not to mention this again, because I was reading some Ann Sexton earlier today, and I suspect I will not be going down in Norton Anthologies. I think it's good for a laugh, though, if only because I write poetry about robots, zombies, and whatever bizarre things bounce into my head when I'm stuck somewhere with nothing to do but think and scribble things.

But, enough about that. The next time I'll talk at all about poetry will be at a round robin reading in ArmadilloCon, where I will regale you with some of my not-remotely-immortal work!

ArmadilloCon, people, focus on that. It's coming soon, and it should be a wild time. Howard Waldrop, Paulo Bacigalupi, Stina Leicht, Patrice Sarath, Lou Anders, Scott Lynch, Martha Wells... I'm telling you, it's going to be great. I'm driving in from Georgia.

www.armadillocon.org

Don't Blame Me; Blame Yourself.

2011-08-09T02:25:00.003-04:00

I was encouraged to do this by someone who shall remain nameless, and I think it might be a terrible idea, even if I had great fun doing it.

It is done, however, going to be appearing for Nook and Kindle in a matter of hours, and is already up at Smashwords:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/80053

Much of this has already appeared on my blog, so hardcore readers need not bother purchasing this unless you have money burning through your pocket.

It's your fault. You know who you are.

If you're reading my blog, you've probably already seen all of this, so this is basically like saying: "Look, you could be paying for this crap!"

I feel like I just spit in the Mississippi. No one would notice, and it's all so blackened and muddy in there, among the poetry collections that are put up by the poets themselves, that what little I contribute is sullied the moment it touches the water.

I feel dirty.

I'm going to bed. Good night.

I like to make things.

2011-08-07T11:47:00.000-04:00

I have learned about myself that I enjoy making things. It brings me pleasure to know that I created something, and it is a good thing.

When I am not making books and stories, I also like to make things. For instance, we made a basic clover honey mead a few months back, our first effort at making our own home brew, that was ready for bottling this weekend. I used to do this a lot with my parents, and was very pleased to give the super-fun activity a go, recently. It's still too young to drink, and tastes young, but it is definitely on the right path to tasty mead-y meadness. By Christmas, our bottles of mead should be fabulous and delicious.

Time will tell.

This is what I do, when I am not reading or writing: I'm making things, baking things, and occasionally, accidentally breaking things!

A Small Strike Team Can Succeed Where an Entire Army Will Fail (repost)

2011-08-05T16:55:00.002-04:00

Again, with the malware-splosion of the Apex Book Blog, I'll be reposting things I did over there over here, for posterity's sake! Here's one I did about how small strike teams in video games...

A Small Strike Team Can Succeed Where An Entire Army Would Fail

I was playing Mass Effect last night to get myself prepared to finally - finally - tear into Mass Effect 2, and I was reminded of a pet peeve of mine in most RPGs. As a hero in an RPG game, I generally attract the help of other heroic people. They have big weapons, powerful special abilities, and would be very handy if the proverbial shit hit the fan against our mutual enemies. I think it's great to have party members with me, to provide cover, and extra ass-kicking powers when I'm defeating the forces of evil. I love my party members. Literally. I fall in love with one of them, and usually get some awkwardly done sex scene wherein still-partially-clothed avatars with wooden facial expressions commence foreplay until a black screen cuts me out of the good stuff. Anyway, the point is I really like having them around. All of them.

So, when a game designer hands me a party member, I am always fascinated by the next screen, wherein I choose who gets to come with me. In Mass Effect, I never get to take more than two people with me. Everyone else stays in the comfort and safety of the ship, somewhere far off-screen, where they are of no use to me.

This annoys me. RPGs do this all the time. I never quite understood the notion that a small strike team could succeed in - for instance - charging directly into a massive army of Darkspawn at the heart of the capitol city to kill a dragon, in Dragon Age: Origins. You know what? Fighting a dragon in the end boss battle through wave after wave of enemy darkspawn is, to me, quintessentially the moment I want to have every one of my allies with me to help me kick dragon tail. Why would a small strike team do a better job charging through the war-torn streets past wave after wave of Darkspawn until the climactic battle at the highest peak in the city? Because the design team decided that you don't get to have an army. It would - I presume - throw the balance off, create difficulties with processing power, and otherwise confuse the micro-managing sort of player that wants to give each member of the team a specific command each moment in combat.

Mass Effect, Dragon Age: Origins, Neverwinter Nights 2, Baldur's Gate, Fallout, Fallout 2, and uncounted others all are guilty of this same strange trait. Player choice is limited to forcing players to take their favorite party members along. Player choice is not extended to taking as many or as few party members along as one wants.

This could be a new way of looking at difficulty settings. Using a small strike team is "hard", a medium one is "normal", and every single ally who can hold a gun and walk is "easy". This could also be a new way of looking at death. Another strange thing in these RPGs is what happens when someone dies. Someone can get knocked out in combat by losing all their health points, but they aren't actually dead. There's another way of handling that mechanic. At the end of combat they hop right back up again. Giving us a lot of NPCs and encouraging us to try to keep them alive is something that happens in first-person shooters. An emotional connection to our squad mates in an RPG-style dialogue system could really make the natural death of party members in a wartime scenario meaningful. Imagine having to decide between reloading to keep party members alive against an insurmountable boss battle that you finally, after hours of trying, won, or deciding that you don't want to face that enemy for the twelfth time regardless of who bought the farm.

Another approach - which I like the best - is one of the reasons why a dusty, old RPG from way back in 1990 is still one of the best RPGs ever made. "Planescape: Torment" didn't just throw a bunch of party members at you and let you pick and choose between them for your small strike team against crazy odds. No, instead, you begin the game with Morte. For the first few hours of gameplay, that floating skull is the only friend in the world. After a while, you earn people like Annah, Nordom, Dak'kon, Ignus, Fall-From-Grace, or Vhaillor. Honestly, you could play the whole game through twice and never even meet Vhaillor or Nordom, and Ignus might turn on you just before the last battle. The beauty of the game was that the individual characters were so well-written and so well-acted, you didn't feel like you wanted to choose other party members. You accumulated them slowly, making you feel like you earned them instead of just being handed these party members. And, I played through that brilliant game more times than I can count, and I never recall being asked to choose which party member to let go so I could keep the one I have. And, nobody ever said the words "...a small strike team" just before a giant pitched battle with wave after wave of bloodthirsty creature.

I began this post talking about Mass Effect. It's a great game, sure. I expect Mass Effect 2 will also be great. Dragon Age: Origins is great, too. But, are they great in the sense that Planescape: Torment was great? Limitations of game balancing and game technology are the things that mark the artistry of Planescape: Torment. There was an elegance to the game, perhaps the first RPG I know of where the ultimate goal of becoming a powerful, unkillable, behemoth of death and influence in the world around you existed solely so you could finally die. I still have those CDs floating around here. I still pull it up when the mood strikes and read through all the dialogue, meet all the characters. There will never be another game like Planescape: Torment. For a game to be a work of lasting art, I hope part of the definition is that no one will ever throw the concept of a "...a small strike team" around just to explain away the seems of the design. Because that's fucking lame. And, Obisidian figured out how to solve that design problem ages ago.

The Collector's Narrative (repost)

2011-08-05T09:29:00.004-04:00

(With the malware-caused implosion of Apex Publications' Website, many of my blog posts were lost in the crash. I'm going to pull them up here for the sake of archivalism.

I've played approximately two days worth of EVE On-line. I had played it a little of it in the past, but it has been a while, and I wanted to get it back under my fingers before writing about it here.

Have you ever killed someone over a dull, gray rock? Ever smash your car into someone's car just to get at the bags of groceries in their trunk? That's Eve, in a nutshell.

More importantly, Eve is collection turned into a narrative experience.

EVE and MMORPGs in general suffer from a similar story quirk. The story is not where you think the story is. The quest texts one receives are unread, if they are even attempted. Players are here to be in the game, not reading flavor text. In fact, I think the real flavor text of EVE is the combination of intelligent, helpful people who exchange quips with the stoned-out potheads on the chat channel. Space is dreamy, gauzy, and mining is probably best done under the influence of something fun. (My drug of choice was chocolate milk.)

As these quest boxes, like every MMORPG I've ever seen, are silly at best, or absurdly poorly written at worst, I have to wonder what the narrative experience of this type of game must be.("Apparently they do not realize how dangerous capsuleers are, so head out there and teach them a lesson. A very painful one"! *yawn*) It certainly isn't the "plot", either, where all these nations have scripted feelings about each other. There doesn't seem to be a traditional narrative resent in the game, at all, as it is experienced, despite the efforts of the game designers to make it so. Without a narrative experience,I don't think people would play the game as long as they do. Story arcs hold your imagination hostage, and make you feel like you are part of something greater. Pushing the button to get a pellet is not enough to keep people coming back month after month. There has to be some narrative that even a casual player can experience.

I offer two possibilities, that I think are both present.

One, as has often been said and written, this game allows a community of like-minded people to blow up another community of people who aren't quite so like-minded. That's awesome. It's paintball teams for people that don't actually want to get their clothes dirty or feel the sting of a point blank machine paint gunner. Much has been written and said about this, of course. The players can form fleets and conquer territory. Awesome. They can betray their Band of Brothers, causing a breakdown in the universal economy. Awesome.

Two, the player goes on a quest for the biggest, baddest spaceships of the universe. Collecting, then, becomes the narrative experience for players that don't necessarily fall deep into the human dynamics. Even players who do fall into the human dynamics - I suspect - do so out of their desire to show off their cool shit. I suspect this is the most important part of the narrative of MMORPGs.

Even after two days, I feel this chocolate milk-withdrawal-like urge to get a bigger, more powerful space ship, for no apparent reason. I have no difficulty completing the quests, or joining other players for shared goals against our nemesii with my current fleet of practical, effective frigates. Yet, I want a bigger space ship, with more slots, and more lasers and rockets. I want it to look pretty. I want people who see my space ship to go Ooh and Aah...

Can keeping up with the Jones' become a narrative? Do collectors of things live out a kind of story, where they see something they desire, and go through troll flame and hellfire to achieve it?

Two days ago, I'd be suspicious that this was not a narrative experience, but an expression of vanity. At work, I am surrounded by folks who religiously play another well-known MMORPG you might have heard of,World of Warcraft. They load their character pages on their web browsers and compare gear, achievements, badges. They talk about what they had to do to get these little blips of colored electronic blorps in their character's electronic box to finally drop. It seems silly from the outside, like they are jus tbeing vain and showing off.

From the inside, even after only two days, I know what they are also showing is a shared experience. One knows that the fellow with the wicked awesome battleship had to go through a series of occasionally thrilling but often tedious "work" in this space economy. They had to endure the sort of anti-social mining team that rams a cheap frigate into an expensive freighter, just so a buddy can harvest the minerals from the wreckage. They had to endure the slow search for anomalies that led to wreckage that led to blueprints that led to bad-ass battleships. When you speak with other players of your preferred MMORPG, you have the subtext of that experience, expressed by your ability to back up your claim with wicked awesome new gear. You can talk, together, through this framework about the silliness of those potheads on local chat, and about what you were doing all those hours in the basement, huddled against the glowing box that lifted you up out of the suburbs, and into the stars.

When I, in my little frigate, fly past that bad-ass Amarrian Carrier in a Caldari pilot's skilled control, to his/her player-run corporation's space station, that's what I'm seeing all around me. Someone went through the experience to get that cool shit. Even if that experience involves grinding through asteroid after asteroid and enduring silly pirate attack after silly pirate attack - seriously, I just blew up your other three buddies without breaking a sweat, and you're still attacking me? - and the tedious probing and probing and probing of deep space, the result of that effort comes in the form with a collection of things that are really, really cool: mother f***ing space ships. Big, large, beautiful, graceful, elegant, powerful mother f***ing space ships.

When book collectors meet, they tell stories about how they came about their greatest prizes. When WoW-addicts meet, they compare gear and badges and talk about how close they came to wiping in "Nax". Just like these two, seemingly unrelated activities, in EVE Online, there is no actual narrative, per se, if only because what is presented by scripted quest-givers is so absurdly thin. There is a story, though, behind every Caldari Phoenix, and every beat-up frigate limping back to a station for repairs. It may be a story obtuse to people who are not engaged in the universe, but it is there.

As a writer of fictions, I'm always looking for new ways to tell stories. Eve is the narrative of collecting things, and showing it off to your friends, and helping your friends collect things while they help you collect things. I picture another story set in space, Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War series, where the main character, the reader's ally and wish-fulfillment cipher, accumulates a collection of more and cooler people and larger and cooler ships and more people and larger ships in a tale that seems determined to continue until the author can take no more. It's kind of the same thing, isn't it? That urge to get bigger and stronger and more epic in the genre fictions? In reading these series books, I am often hesitant to follow authors down the long, long path. To me, I am always terrified that the very things that make the series successful, also mean that the ending will be shit. I read four Vatta's War books, liked them fine, but hesitated to read the fifth. The very reason the early ones were good was shifting into a collector's game. The Vatta will collect a fleet. They will collect pirate heads. They will collect power. Any setbacks will be temporary hitches on the warp drive to glory.

That brings me to this final thought on EVE, as I shut down my frigates, and sell off the cargo and turn the lights off on this, the third day...

Ah, EVE, a paradise of night sky, where my capsuleer's journeys may never cease. I wonder what will happen when the starlights dim, and the ISK dwindle, and the capsuleers fade into the long dark night of other games. Will the stars burn out, one by one, like a universe disintegrating into old age? Will abandoned corporate space stations become the ruins of the salvager kings, who laugh and dance and set off fireworks while the universe dies all around them with that promise of immortality that all pilots got upon their creation a joke of the past?

For me, I am not drawn to these MMORPGs any more than I am drawn to long series books. I see them spinning forward like mad ships,refusing to come back to shore, promising the drunken revelers that life will go on like this forever. There will always be The Forge. There will always be Orgrimmar. Do not fret. Have fun! The rudder will never falter. The ship will never sink.

But ships always, always sink. Pour your life into these drifting pleasure cruises at your own peril, sailor. There may come a day when your saved games will no longer load, and adventures fade into obscure self-mockery, and all the coup that's been counted will disintegrate into a memory of paper or electrons, as if nothing was ever there but a strange space anomaly that's imploded into itself.

Work is a Horror, or The Humor/Horror Of Social Interactions: “The Office” and Cannibalistic Wendingo Dinner Parties

2011-08-04T18:06:00.001-04:00

For a few very long months, I was a perma-temp for a music licensing company. The horror of doing data entry of usage reports for a commercial music licensing company was this: to behave for hours at a time in a manner contrary to my desired manner of living. I burned out after only a few weeks, fell into a depression, and began using web-based e-mail to send early drafts of a novel back and forth from different web-based e-mail clients, invisible to the corporate overlords at the time, at their level of technology, while spending only an hour or two actually performing the miserable tasks to which I was assigned. I was a cog, which is not who I am. I prefer to solve problems, create new expressions and ideas, and in other respects act in a manner that involves being innovative, not being rote or mechanical. I have never been able to successfully watch more than an episode or two of the popular TV Show, “The Office”, at a time because it is too close to the horror of what I felt at that one point in my career, in an office, where the social constraints of the “Big Other” in that situation dictated a constant string of behaviors that were directly contrary to who I actually was as a person, and as a worker. In this horror, I tell stories of my time there – funny stories! Without this medication of laughter shared, I don’t feel like I can re-appropriate control of that portion of my life I mostly consider lost time and suffering. But, this is not to be a discussion of therapy, rather a discussion of horror and comedy as they relate to some basic teachings of Lacan…
Despite being the embodiment of the “Big Other” as the boss and therefore the central crux of all social interactions in the building, Michael (Steve Carrell), the boss of the US-version of “The Office” for the first seven seasons, was completely immune to the notion of behaving in a manner consistent with his role in the social group. He was supposed to be driven by profit to motivate his employees to succeed as workers. Instead, he was entirely driven by the personal need for everyone to love one another. In this, the true horror of “The Office” is not that the structures of authority demanding behavior contrary to individual group members’ personal identity beneath their veneer of proscribed behaviors. The horror was that their code of symbols and behaviors socially proscribed by years of behavioral training in the workplace was constantly undermined by someone incapable of actually perceiving the appropriate coded behaviors. His acts to “lead” were all just symbolic grasps for interpersonal relationships that he, himself, desired as part of his personal identity as a “cool, approachable, popular” or otherwise happening “guy.” The fact that he behaved in this manner also kept him from experiencing those human connections. He was not operating consistent to the social situation in which he was operating. He cared more about being liked than he did about being an effective business leader. No matter how bumbling his attempts at validating his desire for love, the situation would be more comfortable for everyone around him if his bumbling attempts at validating an ideology were rooted in his accepted social role as a corporate leader instead of a social sponge. We have plenty of cultural symbols and codes developed to deal with churlish bosses that do not care if they are liked, and these are often said to be respected even if they are not liked. We have few social rules and codes to deal with churlish bosses that only care about being liked. That MBA programs seem to care about such social lubrication, inventing whole pseudo-languages to disguise the unpleasant messages they have to deliver, and inspire their workers to operate counter to their best interests through harder work, only serves as a foil by which the audience appreciates the character of Michael, who has been duped by the very books and seminars he has supposedly spent too much time devouring. Michael embraces the mask at the surface this pseudo-language, of people getting along and becoming a team, at the expense of what this language is actually designed to disguise.

In this, then, the horror – and the laughter – comes from the misreading of the relationship between the self, the others in the office, and the Big Other of expected social norms. Play this same relationship without the laughs, then, and achieve a sense of the “Other” that horror writers aspire to achieve. I am thinking, here, about “Wendingo” by Michaela Morissette. In this short story, first published in Weird Tales Magazine, a character falls in with a group of strange gourmands who seem to be preparing their own bodies for the perfect feast at the apex of their bodies’ flavor potential and social station. In this, the social codes and symbols of preparing food for others is taken to an extreme. Ultimately, the host of the dinner party is offering up himself to his guests as a memorable feast. The social codes and symbols of the “Big Other” of expected actions are altered. However, the people who participate in these feasts still obey all the rules and expectations of a “normal” dinner party. They are gracious guests, eager to participate. Like any dinner party, there are the catty gossips that eventually peel away the veneer of love to reveal their sharp teeth. Still, in this case, the horror comes from the excessive misinterpretation of a “Big Other” idea of self-sacrifice for the enjoyment of guests at the expense of what that is actually intended.

Both of these narratives serve as a form of critique of a social structure that is often endured and rarely enjoyed. Dinner parties are social commitments oft-spoofed for their “fakery” by an impersonator of British artist Banksy in the film “Banksy’s Coming to Dinner” featuring a very fake-feeling dinner party that is also, at the same time, believable as a real dinner party because of the fake-feeling nature of everyone’s interactions full of facades and innuendo that are all seemingly power plays, built upon a fake actor portraying one of the art world’s sharpest social critics. If it felt like a “real” dinner party, it would not be believable! Why a dinner party? Senators and politicians and workers who would align their interests closer to their employer meet over dinner all the time to bond and build power relationships that can be exploited for personal gain. In this, upwardly-mobile society is no different, except when they are Wendingoes. In that case, the greatest height one can achieve becomes an almost sexual destruction, where the parts of the host are prepared for the feast, and passed around to the guests. A fake Banksy, like fake crab meat, is handed around for consumption, and praised as if it were the real thing for the social codes demand it. What’s worse than the fact that this whole event is a sham with a fake Banksy is that it is a terrifically dull film. The only interesting piece in the whole thing is the question of whether Banksy is real or not. As soon as the viewer concludes that this is a sham, it becomes moot to wait until the end where no climax worthy of the name awaits them. Please, don’t feel compelled to investigate this film. It’s fake. It’s painful. I shouldn’t even bring it up.

I try to imagine, then, Michael from the Office attending one of these voracious gatherings in Morisette’s story, expecting Joan Collin’s sumptuous country estate and social heights. Michael, ever the bumbling rube, has no idea what he’s eating, which is probably Joan Collins herself, but he is compelled by his comically-impossible pathological need to fit in to any social setting, to try and make the best of the feast of his host’s own flesh, over-praising it and declaring loudly how much he enjoys it even as he is vomiting into the nearest vase and out every open window. By the end of the night, he would be willing to sacrifice his own body to the Wendingos, to satiate his own hunger for love. The Wendingoes, of course, would graciously accept out of their social code, but in private would demarcate who is and who is not really a Wendingo by gossiping about the failure of Michael to understand that he is not really ripe.
In this, I am not far off when I think of the rest of the cast of the Office as flesh-devouring Wendingos. One of the great mysteries of The Office is that the characters seem trapped there, with no other economic options, working until they die, at the peak of their professional development, leaving behind only a memorial brunch. The corporation devours their years, even as they, in turn, devour the money from the company. To what purpose? Are they professionally fulfilled? No. Are they performing some important service to mankind? No. Are they even recycling? Maybe some of their paper is recycled, but I assume such paper comes at a premium and is often not purchased. Do they even like each other? Mostly not. Despite a couple love interests that develop, many of these characters would prefer not to hang out with each other if they met in a social setting. Even the love relationships that develop feel more like prison sex than actual, plausible love. The characters live in their fishbowl, and must find love where it is found, not where it is desired.

Michael’s moment of escape finds the total acceptance of love with a fiancé which “saves” the character of Michael from this continued purgatory where his behavior is primarily marked by his constant quest for love from all around him. In the Morisette story, the narrator is saved by a realization that the love is false, and the ones who would devour her do not love her.
Consumption, of course, is a major theme of the story of the Morisette’s Wendingoes and a major term for corporations selling their goods. In this, I wonder if the creepiness of the Wendingoes is also similar to the creepiness of management’s attempts at altering the language of death into something friendly and palatable. By wrapping inherently painful, harmful, terrifying things in a language designed to be innocuous and bloodless… Well, is that so different from the Wendingoes at their dreadful, sacrificial dinner parties? I think not. The thing that is supposed to be painful and horrible is wrapped in a veneer of social codes that speak of love and joy and peace…

In comedy, in our office water coolers, we are allowed the relief of laughter to medicate the things that make us miserable. Laughter is a social action, mostly, where we share things that make us laugh with others to spread the laughter. Horror is often not treated in such a manner. Generally, gruesome horror is contained alone, in a personal manner. This, too, is encoded in the language of modern employment. “NSFW” means things that acknowledge the reality of the body, in all its scatological, sexual, grotesque glory. Comedic things, however, are passed among office mates as a form of social bonding. In this, laughter medicates what is actually the horrifying boredom, dislocation, and disassociation of the human entering into a situation where their sense of self, their relationship to the other notions of self around them, and their sense of the “Big Other” of the shared situation have fallen into disalignment with each other. This is, perhaps, the source of both comedy and horror. If not all of it, than at least much of it. Perhaps only some of it. Still, it seems to be the essence of it, to me.

Working in my own version of The Office, I woke one day to discover I was nothing but a dung beetle: a chittering, mechanical creature of pure instinct who rolls feces into a ball for food. Is it horrible to say that about working? Perhaps. At another job, in another office, I woke one day to discover that I was nothing but a gargoyle, funneling the rain through my own mouth, ingesting all the poisons, and unable to lick the water clean.

Work is a horror. Why would anyone wish to do anything that didn’t make the world a better place?

At least, for most of us, it is a horror that we can laugh about. The starving orphans of the world, and the enslaved ones, are not even given that peace.

“Lacan started his “return to Freud” with the linguistic reading of the entire psychoanalytic edifice, encapsulated by what is perhaps his single best known formula: “the unconscious is structured as a language.” The predominant perception of the unconscious is that it is the domain of irrational drives, something opposed to the rational conscious self. For Lacan, this notion of the unconscious belongs to the Romantic Lebensphilosophie (philosophy of life) and has nothing to do with Freud. The Freudian unconscious caused such a scandal not because of the claim that the rational self is subordinated to the much vaster domain of blind irrational instincts, but because it demonstrated how the unconscious itself obeys its own grammar and logic – the unconscious talks and thinks. The unconscious is not the reservoir of wild drives that has to be conquered by the ego, but the site where a traumatic truth speaks. Therein resides Lacan’s version of Freud’s motto wo es war, soll ich werden (where it was, I shall become): not “the ego should conquer the id”, the site of the unconscious drives, but “I should dare to approach the site of my truth”. What awaits me “there” is not a deep Truth I have to identify with, but an unbearable truth I have to learn to live with.”

Source: http://www.lacan.com/essays/?p=82

Reprint of a thing I did for SFSignal a while back.

2011-08-04T02:57:00.000-04:00

My recent MFA has come up in conversation a couple times, and I thought I'd post this thing I did a few months ago for the fine folks over at SFSignal for the sake of being thorough.

Honestly, with the recent crash of Apex Books' Blog, I'll probably start reprinting all that I wrote for them here, too, just to put a record of it somewhere, now that it's all mostly lost to malware.

This whole thing first appeared at SFSignal

1. Be a Fungus or a Vulture, or Else You Starve
I've been suspicious of the academic system most of my adult life. You see, some of the dumbest people I ever met in life had Ph. D's, and some of the smartest people I ever met in life never seemed to need much in the way of education. I don't think I'm alone in this, either. Stupid comes in all shapes and sizes, as does brilliant. I've met janitors who could debate complex philosophical concepts, who lived quiet lives assertively saving and investing for retirement with their library card in hand. I've met security guards who could enter easily into rigorous debate with art historians about the nuances of different brush strokes and biographic details gleaned from obscure letters. I've met professors of humanities that could barely string together three sentences coherently, in three languages, and wealthy business-leaders who made their fortune not on skill but on narcissism and talking loudly. Naturally, I've also met dumb janitors, brilliant professors, and everything in between. Especially in our current economy these last ten years, education beyond high school is almost completely decoupled from our actual employment in all but a few select fields. Most of our advanced degrees exist for the sole economic sake of producing professors to teach advanced degrees in that field. It seems amazing to me, sometimes, that anyone would pursue an advanced degree in anything useful, let alone something relatively useless in the current economy, like a master's degree in the fine art of writing fiction. Better to just find work that suits your social and mental preferences to keep the lights on with a little money left over, invest your savings, raise a family, and try not to make too much noise until retirement. Lots of folks figured the whole system out, and it's working great for them.

But, about the decoupling of school from work: Walk into your average Starbucks and notice the intellectual diversity behind the counter. It isn't just college kids slinging drinks behind the counter, these days. There's folks behind that line, making your coffee, that have resumes that would impress you, with advanced degrees in complex things. This is true everywhere. In my last office job, the gentleman who emptied the trash and cleaned the bathroom was in school for a degree in biology, with limited career prospects in his field outside of going into debt for medical school, which he did not desire to pursue, so he figured he'd keep the job he had emptying the trash. His boss on the cleaning crew seemed to be doing quite well with his fancy sports car, designer clothes, and upbeat attitude, and he had only a high school education.

I was looking at an article about the best jobs for graduates, this year, and it seems like the industries that are booming are symptomatic of the global decline of Western society: accounting is hiring lots of folks, to tighten the clamps on business; medical fields at all levels will be caring for a degenerating population of retirees and business is booming; high finance firms and corporate salesmen are grinding through their latest fish in the shark tanks to scheme upon the bubbles of bacterial growth in an economy that is as degenerating as the average age of the population.

Basically, the great and glorious American empire is in decline. Any education - especially an artistic one, like an MFA - is a poor investment if it doesn't help the graduate profit from the breakdown of our society. More than any other, careers in the arts go where the patrons go. The novel, being historically a middle-class art form, will suffer without a middle class to support the writers, and fictionists will stumble when there just aren't enough people around with money enough to buy books instead of buying branded food-esque AgraSoyCanola. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that an MFA in fiction and/or poetry may be the single worst investment you can make in your economic future. The money you spend pursuing it is far better off, economically, being thrown into interest-bearing accounts, ready to be ripped out at a moment's notice as soon as everyone is convinced that the economy might not suck (because that just means the next bubble is upon us!) Debt for an MFA is worse than a credit card, because you actually can keep what you buy with your credit card debt and you can sell it on e-bay later when it becomes nostalgic and collectible. A paper with your name and the letters "M...F...A" upon it might only be useful as a something to burn in your cave when you are homeless.

There is no economic value in an MFA in Fiction, popular or otherwise.

2. Like I Said in the Title...
I am in my last semester of graduate school, for an MFA in Popular Fiction, from the Stonecoast Program of the University of Southern Maine, and I don't regret it for a moment. Not only that, I have come to this relatively late in my writing career, after dropping out of one lesser graduate school program chosen for location and cost instead of quality, and then even after making a name for myself as an author. I was, on my first day of this program, well-published, and pulling upon life experiences of all sorts of zany things people go to graduate school to be able to do, like have a "real job" or work in video games, or travel the world. I chose to go to the Stonecoast Program of the University of Southern Maine, where I am currently in my final semester. If all goes according to plan, I'll be graduating in July with an MFA in Popular Fiction.

Be proud of me. Be proud of my economic waste. The greatest tragedy of our culture is that we have allowed the financiers to take over our young imaginations. Our brightest minds from our greatest universities flock to high paying jobs, where they try to make as much money as they can before they die. The best and brightest children our nation has to offer have all been seduced into believing that ownership of large houses is more important than the environmental footprint that our McMansions smear all over our fragile ecology. The systems of wealth culture have brainwashed our youth into believing that upward mobility is something everyone should aspire to, and that being a leader is something glorious and respectable and sexy, and everyone else is a slacker or failure, and that it is a shameful thing to be a janitor or a waiter or a truck driver or a stay-at-home mom.

We, all of us, need to stop that shit right now. The best and the brightest of our world should neither be measured by how much money they earn, nor by whether they own big houses, fancy clothes, or all the consumerist bullshit things like that. The only measure of a person that matters is how they affect other people, and how we all can find a way as individuals, communities, and continents, to contribute in a meaningful, positive fashion to the very tiny world we all share. The best and the brightest should, in fact, in a fair world, see high-paying jobs as corrupting influences on the pursuit of true value in the world. (Are any of you listening to me, best and brightest graduates? Anyone? Bah... go drive your Porsches to your mansions all you greedy children...)

Art, in any form or fashion, is one of the most important things anyone, anywhere can pursue. Art is a gift given to the world, even if it is sold for money. No amount of money walls off the ideas from spreading and infiltrating other people's ideas. A good idea repeated enough times, whispered into enough minds in enough ways has the power to make the world a better place, in a dramatic way. Good ideas repeated enough times tore down the walls of segregation, the Berlin Wall, the miserable treatment of GLBT human beings in America, and the power of fear to control society.

Want to be rich? Want to be a doctor? Medicine is a losing battle against human mortality. Death always wins, eventually.

Want to get one of those hot yuppie jobs right out of college? Accounting is a losing battle against human greed. The more rules we invent to measure a company, to try and hold back the greed at the heart of the corporate system no matter how altruistic the people and the CEO, the harder it gets to hold back the tide of the wicked pigmen, wallowing in the blood of the workers whose communities, pensions, and ecologies are turned into pigsties. Sales is the training ground of pigs. Insurance industries are constructed in such a manner that they actually don't qualify as insurance, as the dictionary defines them, because risk is minimized, but never shared.

Engineering? Technology? Computers? When I was in high school, one of our bus drivers was an experienced engineer who kept getting promoted until two new grads could do his work for less pay, and he gave up on the rat race to drive a bus. His story was not uncommon among the tech-heads that were either promoted into management or released into the wild at the convenience of the shareholders.

What is left for you, graduate? Do you do what your parents tell you and aspire to that golden beach house, those golden retirement years, golden plastic surgeries to stay forever young? No? Then, sneak off into the bookshops and punk rock clubs of the disaffected youth and slack until the drugs break you? Not for you? Then hide out in some job, hoping that all the things you don't understand just don't hurt you - pray that things you can't control don't hurt you. They still will. Maybe you'd rather hide in academia forever, training a new generation of soldiers in the global economic war to make the rich more rich?

All of these paths are false. None of these goals have value or meaning as economic goals. There's a very simple solution.

Pursue what interests you.

3. An Important Message For All Graduating Seniors
If you are in school right now, and looking at future career prospects, future degree-majors, ignore the bollocks. Pursue what interests you. Even the dire examples above, if they are of interest to you, suddenly are no longer dire. When medicine is interesting, or the architecture of corporate management structures, or the fascinating way accounting can make life better in such small ways, then that is what you should pursue. A smart parent may try to convince you that something lucrative intersects with something that interests you, and maybe their advice will be good for your pocketbook if it is honest and true. Remember, you only get one life. At the end of your life, when you are on your deathbed, you will not measure your life in dollar bills, excepting only where those bills can be used to help the people you have left behind. This has been my method and my madness since I graduated from high school.

I pursued degrees in Creative Writing. I started as an undergraduate at the University of Houston. I dabbled in straight literature at an inexpensive, convenient graduate school before the educators who should have inspired me drove me away in disgust. I came back to graduate school later on, at a new school with better teachers, wiser and calmer and looking to learn from people that were actually good. To me, even after all the turmoil in my education and my life, art is still a meaningful career choice, even if it is not economically viable most of the time. I saw this first hand in the years since my undergraduate degree. I spent ten years among creative graduates, this army of art school and writing and literature and philosophy graduates all over the cities of the world, all of us gently using what we learned in strange and unexpected ways to make the world a better place, drawing over signs and talking sense where otherwise corporate media talking points would rule uncontested. I recall an art school graduate and myself convincing a hardcore Fox News Republican about the truth of global warming with simple methods familiar to anyone who ever attended a workshop. I brought my education into the bars and coffee houses where I communicated effectively among people who didn't study the arts to explain how certain films suck and they are not to be celebrated because a marketing department is pissing on your eyes and insisting that you love every minute of it. I have been in corporate meetings and understood what was being said between the lines because I was reading people as characters instead of allowing them to lie to me with the face value of their words. An education is something that carries with you a long time. An education in the Arts means you're part of this army of people who don't suck, and can tell good idea from bad, inoculate people against marketing campaigns, and call out the false drama, false image, false fools wherever we see such things in ways that can be polite and elegant or damning and indomitable as situations merit.

It's like how before kids take piano lessons, they don't understand really good music. It's like how it's hard to appreciate Beethoven until you've numbed your fingers trying to walk behind him on the keyboard and you get a sense of how complex it all is, and how beautiful in its complexity. Then, you get a sense of that in all the music around you. Then, you realize that Milli Vanilli really shouldn't be lip synching, and certainly not to anything that sucks that much. (I mean, at least Lady GaGa rips off Madonna's good stuff, not the B-Sides...)

I digress.

4. You Don't Stop Learning Because a Critic Liked One Book, One Time, People
Even for writers who are "making it", like me, the degree is worth pursuing. Like many of the good writers I know, I find myself always looking for ways to improve my work, looking for insights into fiction craft everywhere I go, and I seek out people who share that passion to learn what they learned. Whilst looking around one day, I noticed that the teachers in this particular program were all top notch writers. (Not the esoteric numeric rankings in some magazine or website! The people who would actually be in the classroom with you are all that matter to you as a writer!) I was familiar with their work, and thought it would be useful to me as a writer to expose my stuff to the eyes of people who had come from different artistic backgrounds than me, who had different aesthetics and different influences. (link: http://usm.maine.edu/stonecoastmfa/)

I've noticed that every time I write a novel, I have to learn how to write again, because I have to learn how to write that, particular novel. I've noticed that every time I take time to expand my artistic horizons, I find a direct benefit in my work within the week, if not sooner.

Learning is a good thing. In a field dedicated to constant ideation, learning is just about the best thing.

Who were these people? Well, James Patrick Kelly is up for another Nebula. Elizabeth Hand teaches there, too. So does David Anthony Durham, David Mura, Nancy Holder, and Scott Wolven. Writers I've heard of, and read, and from whom I'd like to gain new perspectives on my own work. Even when I don't agree with them or their approach, I like to learn about it. I like to see how they think a little when they see my stuff, and maybe learn new things about myself.

Maybe I did learn new things about myself.

5. Go Forth, Be Mighty, All Ye MFA Graduates
With my MFA complete this coming July, a couple career options will open up to me that were previously closed. I could teach college, for instance. It would be nice to do that, I think, compared to what I'm doing now. But, I'm not holding my breath. Many graduates are thinking the same thing I am about teaching writing. It may be a more desirable way to earn a living than scrubbing floors or working a cash register, but it is no more or less honorable. There is no shame in honest work, and one does not need to have a respectable job to be respectable.

Every time I sit down at the computer, often in my own free time, away from the sort of boring work most of us must do to keep the pantry stocked and the lights on, I try to make the fiction I produce better, stronger, closer to the idealized vision inside of my head of what emotional impact it should have on readers. If I make a living as a writer, so be it. If I teach college, so be it. If I scrub floors somewhere, bus tables, or wash dishes so I can sneak off to the library to continue my pursuit of the arts, so be it. None of this is important in consideration of the worth of the degree, itself. In the end, I do not pursue an MFA to be anything other than what I already am: a writer of fiction. I need no validation. I need no certification. No one needs those things, really, even if these things are listed as things gotten from the degree. I came to the program wanting to improve myself on the path I was already on, and I think I have gotten that. I learned about whole fields of art I didn't know about. I met with luminaries of the fields of writing. I read new poetry. I read books I would not otherwise have read, and learned from them. I borrowed the eyes of strangers, and the eyes of new friends. I gave as good as I got, I think.

As this experience winds down, I like to think of all these supposedly economically useless degrees, especially degrees in the creation of artistic things like poems or pottery, like getting a degree in being super heroes. By day, people with useless degrees are, most of us, working hard to keep our pantries stocked with food and our lights on. If we are lucky, our daylight work is engaging and interesting. If we are not, it is a minor inconvenience as long as there is food and light. Then, we leave our day jobs and our lives open up. We read, and analyze, and create. We engage in debate on the internet and in the magazines of our fields--for instance, at SFSignal. We continue pursuing our interests, beyond graduation, and maybe we make things or ideas that whisper out into the world, rippling chaos theory's caribou sneezes to rend the walls of Jericho. We go out to buy groceries afterwards, and nobody knows us. We go to work, and maybe we tell one person there over lunch what happened in our esoteric pursuits. We work hard, raise families and/or pets, and most people don't even know what we really are in the wee hours and the corners of our lives, when we pursue what interests us.

But, at night, in the corners of our lives, when no one is looking, we are superheroes.

6. One Final Whisper Before I Go
Personally, I think if we stop thinking about degrees as career-training, at all levels of business and culture, and start thinking about them as life-training, we'll make huge headway as a civilized society. Imagine a world where philosophers and engineers are recruited by Wall Street, and Mathematicians are political interns, and literature majors are welcomed with open arms into accounting work because of their studies in multi-cultural poetry. MBA schools no longer exist, because management of a person is too personal a thing to be turned into a system, and management of matter can be taught better in Quantum Mechanics. None of my hypotheticals are so far-fetched that they can't exist in some fashion already in the world as is.

I guess what I'm trying to say is wouldn't it be wonderful to live in a world where everyone was an outlier, an oddball, a curious individual with esoteric interests that diversify every community?

Wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone could pursue the things that interested them, including through economically-useless degrees? Wouldn't it be great if economies valued things that have cultural value but no direct economic value? Wouldn't it be wonderful if the world actually valued studying things that are interesting in the same way we value the work of accountants and middle-managers and corporate sales and marketing departments and plastic surgeons and cosmetic dentists and CEOs?

We could live in that world, you know. It starts with you, right now. Here's how: Whisper this idea out into the world.

We'll all do it together.

Ready?

(this first appeared at SFSignal. Link:http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2011/02/guest-post-jm-mcdermott-a-candidate-for-a-masters-of-fine-arts-in-popular-fiction-would-like-to-whisper-with-you/#comments)

With the death of our fridge...

2011-08-03T10:18:00.001-04:00

Lots of things were lost in our fridge. I made biscuits with what was left of the half & half. Some things have no second use. Many veggies lost.

It's depressing to watch so much food wasted.

In these dark economic times, when life is uncertain, and the arrival of the next contract payment is up in the air, always, for writer-types like me, I wonder if I will ever, truly "make it" as a writer. It's so disconcerting to work incredibly hard and see no reward for that work for months at a time. It's perfectly normal for a company to get around to paying you after three or six months have already passed. Even short fiction runs slow with their payments. Even SEO articles and craptastic business-to-business gigs run slow.

It's like working in a vat of molasses, burning all this energy at the keyboard, while the payment sort of floats towards you in the hazy distance.

Freelancing actually kind of sucks, quite a lot, in this manner.

In the mean time, I've got books for sale -- even an inexpensive eBook or two. Remember, without your support, all of your favorite creators will sink into the molasses, and never have a chance to write again.

The other day, I was flipping through some old "Year's Best Fantasy and Horror" anthologies. For every Ursula LeGuin and Jeffrey Ford there were three people I'd never heard of with a couple books out and some great stories that haven't really done anything, since. I certainly didn't recognize them. Their books were out of print, when I looked them up.

There but for the grace of God...

Maze is late... So...

2011-08-01T19:49:00.002-04:00

I'm sure many folks have noticed this book, MAZE, is not out, yet. With Apex Publication's very, very exciting new distribution, all of their schedules and releases have yet to be newly hammered out, and we don't know when MAZE is coming, but we know it will be part of this super-awesome re-launch of Apex Books all over the country with Diamond Distribution. So...

So, because it is late, and people have been expecting a book from me, Jason and I will be putting out a short story collection this fall. There will be a short story collection. It will be very interesting, with stories published and not, and it will involve things, societies, people, familes and reality falling all apart around us.

Some of the stories may be familiar (like "The End of Her World" or "Death's Shed") and some may not be familiar (like "Lights, Bugs" and "The Jamcoi"), but take heart weary fan, for there will be a book, even if it is not MAZE, and it will be available to you with things old and things new, and it will be put together when it is ready and it will be out in the world probably in the fall, because you were promised a book called MAZE, and schedules were made and announcements were made, and then plans changed. But, you were promised a book. You will have one, then. It will be a good book, promise. And it will not be too expensive, I hope, and it will look dandy on a shelf next to my other books.

So, MAZE is late. But, there will still be another book.

I think, therefore I was

2011-07-29T14:12:00.001-04:00

No surprise to folks who read my novels, I think a lot about the relationship between the Lacanian "other" and the "Other" that hovers over it like an indifferent godhead. I've been poking my nose into some Slavoj Zizek, who is almost certainly much smarter than I am, as he describes a Carteisan subject ("I think therefore I am") as some kind of cemetery mind song, demarcating what is lost with language, not what is present. To Zizek, it's more like "I think therefore I was", and the constant state of discovery and memory and signification is a series of absent material realities creating alternate realities in the mind. Okay, this is a bastardized application of Zizek with a little reader response criticism and a little Baudrillard, and I'm sure someone with more knowledge of Zizek's work can come along and give a better representation of it. There's lots more to it, but I like thinking about it like that because I think about the way people use stories to define themselves in their relation between their idealized mirror self (the other) and their sense of societies interpretation of themselves (i.e. "Other"). This is practically the psychological root of the Dogsland trilogy. How we create the self is to reshape the past into a cultural image with story about the self. It's also how we talk about things we cannot see. We describe nothing in detail, only marking enough reminders that those who have also seen can delineate what it means to have seen between us.

Think about Raymond Carver's Cathedral, right? We all know it by now, I hope. The blind man, and the uncomfortable scene in the living room, when the wife's blind friend asks the narrator what a cathedral is, and the blind man has it described to him, and when that fails, the blind man places his hand over the narrator's hand, and a cathedral is drawn and drawn and drawn to signify this cathedral, which, subtextually, is itself a work of art that draws the unseen reality of faith. All of these significant markers of reality represent something lost. The man with the pen in his hand, narrating the story, is talking not about a cathedral, but about a television show about a cathedral, and drawing what he sees on the screen. The screen image captures a building far away, the product of a time lost to mankind. All of these artifacts built upon the backs of other artifacts are placing a marker on the ground. They declare, "People" and "Person" and "Human act of will" and even, in the case of a cathedral, hearken back to a divine act of will that caused the salvation of all mankind through the defeat of death through the mysteries of faith. We see cathedrals therefore we existed once to have seen. We share the signifier of them, and they blur and disintegrate away from the true beauty of faith. At once glorious, until such a time as the blind man who draws a picture can only capture a small sliver of the true shape. There is a Platonic nature to this disintegrating signifier, where a true source is bent out of beauty, into a series of lines, like an artist's perfect representation of an animal distorted over time to become cuneiform to become calligraphy to become a cursive letter made from a single stroke of the pen with only a small echo of the original meaning.

But beyond just this echo of meaning flowing out from a source, there is an echo backward. The letter still contains the suggestion of the animal, and becomes part of that animal's symbolic word. The relationship between an echo and what meaning it carries is not one way. The word cathedral becomes a metaphor for all spaces grand and holy. To describe a cavern as a cathedral, or a night's glorious starry sky as a cathedral takes part of the meaning of the word and imposes it as an echo of it's true meaning, back up towards the heavenly moment of creation.

Carver wrote a story that does just that, calling upon the holy weight of cathedrals to bear the brunt of the meaning of the story. This is not a story about drawing turtles or warehouses, but about drawing something beautiful. It is an ekphrastic story, celebrating the beauty of artistic creation, suggesting in the echo of the symbols, even in the rudest, plainest echoes for those blinded to the point they cannot see these echoes, that there is still a beauty in them.

Okay, Zizek is maybe not concerned with a single application of a single signifier in one short story that I'm maybe beating like a dead horse. But, I use it because the example is obvious and easily understood.

Let's call the echo down from original glory the "Echo Down", and the echo that reverberates away from the story both back towards the original source and outward to other rippling meanings and other reverberations the "Echo Away". As this idea relates to slightly less-obvious fictions current in the periodicals, I have been reading lots of short stories involving re-imagined fairy tales, of late, and a couple standouts reminded me of this notion of mine with enough clarity for me to wish to talk about it a little bit, here. Firstly, Kelly Link's Swans in Fantasy Magazine (here) and Theodora Goss' modern classic of short fiction, recently reprinted at Apex Magazine, The Rapid Advancement of Sorrow, (here). You see, one of these two stories seems to embody the notion of "Echo Down" in the semiotics of power in a society and the other story relates as an ideal example of "Echo Away". I should probably have said the Goss story first, because hers is the "Echo Down" story, and the Link story is the "Echo Away" story.

Entropy is the state of the universe, and without reinvention of ideas, all things and structures and sources of energy will fade into "sorrow", a state of stasis where ideas have fallen away in the farthest place from the original moment of glorious creation. How like our Carver's cathedral story with the separation of segments of things behind walls and rituals that cannot be breached. The Empresses of Sorrow speak directly to a Religious Brotherhood, themselves separated by their cowls, to pass the commands down, until such time as Empresses are cloistered in convents to offer discoveries that seem to come from a distant, genius source, until the discover of Ilona, I presume the ideal candidate for the next empress, reached a terrible knowledge announcing a point of decay so absolute the lips of her mouth stiffen, her cowl is pulled low over her frozen, wintry face, and the message she seems to carry in a touch is one of "sorrow" and loss where all things have fallen into a ruined nation. Despite all the advanced discoveries of prior empresses, the ultimate discovery was Ilona's entropic obsession that grips, as well, the community in which she lives and loves. In the context of the glorious Eastern European states that seem to have inspired Goss' tale, there is the moment of creation, at the birth of a state where the state is a glorious, shining thing to inspire others at some point in the beautiful history of the city, but this public people's dream disintegrates as the dream intersects with reality and cynicism and corruption that form the entropy destroying the systems of society. Eventually, the miraculous flowers of winter, a symbol of the people's natural desire to end the regime (and, to me, strongly reminiscent of the spray paint rebellion slogans of East Berlin) come on their own in Spring time, naturally. A touch, a flower, a notion of suffering and sorrow and entropy, and a kingdom crumbles beneath the weight of inevitable insurrection. All nations fade in this manner, even our own, and the narrator sitting in the cafe in Budapest learned this, and knows that nowhere is secure from the inevitable march of sorrow. This "Echoes Down", because it juxtaposes the glorious past of the kingdom of Sorrow with the cold reality of the moment of Sorrow, that is lost even as it is described by the narrator. Every word in the story is a cemetery stone, announcing what is lost. The original glory can never be known, for we have only these words, and the knowledge that what was lost was glorious, without knowing exactly, precisely why. All the descriptions of the town do not paint a complete picture of happiness before the sorrow of the insurrection. All it can do is tell us, the reader, that the narrator believed in this glorious past, before the flowers and the silent rallies and the inevitable decay of the state.

Kelly Link's story, "Swans", does something similar but different. On the one hand, reimagining fairy tale stories is an act of "echoing down", for it never hopes to capture the original moment of creation of a fairy tale for a particular audience for that tale. Rather, the reimagining hearkens to waves of reimaginings. But, it isn't just reimagining fairy tales that happens, it's a reinvention. The narrator of the story is the wordless girl of the fairy tale, who rarely is afforded the opportunity to speak for herself, and the scene shifts enough that the original is not really present in the ending. The modernizing of the setting, and the changes made to the tale bring a distinct appropriateness to the quilt in the end. Kelly Link, herself a literary "daughter" of so many fairy tale "mothers" that are dead and gone resolves her version of the fairy tale by allowing the narrator of the story to use, not a bunch of nettle shirts, but the beautiful quilts representing the many fabulous fairy tales that all have the power to lead to a happily ever after. This is where I see the "echo away". There is an original fairy tale involving seven swan brothers and a wicked stepmother. However, Kelly Link engages in a literary conversation with the creators of this fairy tale and the many versions of it, and other fairy tales, and writes new versions that respond back at them. She is addressing all fairy tales directly, and trying to reshape the way the collective unconscious thinks about the archetypes like fairy godfathers, fairy godmothers, evil step-mothers and the like. The evil step-mother, for instance, is not malicious evil. She is merely an unknowable creature with motivations and instincts that cannot be understood by humans. The fairy godfather cannot solve every problem, and is a very busy fellow. The heroine, instead of being a silent and beauteous vision of ideal womanhood, speaks constantly, just not in a manner that the people around her grasp completely, though her different way of life is perfectly acceptable to the people in her life. As a critique of the heroic and evil women of fairy tales, I find it to be a fabulous reinvention of tropes, modeling identities for little girls and young women that find heroism not through perfect, womanly acceptance of her role in society (like in the disturbing original I remember...) but through indescribable, unknowable mysteries that suffuse the fairy tale genre like a constant dream-state speaking back to archetypes and problems as old as human imagination.

I think, therefore I was. I have this image of Kelly Link as a girl, thinking about how she would handle the situations in all these stories being read to her at bedtime. I have this image of Theodora Goss turning to stories to make sense of the way Eastern Europe collapsed in a heap of steel and failed dictatorships of the last century even before she was writing about them. I have this image of these two stories acting as signifiers to the ideas of the past, trying to communicate what it "was" like to be alive. But, these are cemetery signs of life that was, memorials of other memorials of other memorials, on the one hand of lost kingdoms crumbling into an inevitable end and on the other of lost identities of what heroic girls were supposed to do, and supposed to be. Still, by reshaping them into these fairy-tale-like stories, the echo of the idea, like the soundwave of Jericho's crumbling walls, tumbles down from history, and out from history. The original idea is almost like a living thing, evolving upon the bones of lost words.

I guess I should explain that idea more, but I wonder if I shouldn't. This is a blog entry, after all, not a treatise on ontology. I think it is better to leave my idea where it has fallen, and hope that the spark of it carries through to you.

Revisions Came, and Revisions Happened, and Revisions Left

2011-07-27T09:30:00.000-04:00

When We Were Executioners, the second book of the Dogsland Trilogy, came back with some minor editorial notes (like "'demonweed' should be 'demon weed' in all cases, including these seventeen you've whiffed herein) and left my desk yesterday. Afterwards, I washed dishes, ate a sandwich, and got some exercise. My fiance came home from work, and we hung out a while, just talking about our day, our week, and all the miserably dull things people who live together talk about when they are extremely happy.

Books never leave your desk for good. They always come back to you. Always save your notes, your spreadsheets, and your earlier drafts, because the books always come back to you, and they always come with letters full of questions.

Expect When We Were Executioners in February, 2012. I've only got one book left to finish revising in this trilogy. Rome may have burned in a night, as did Chicago, but the cities in literature take a little longer.

In the mean time, pick up the first book to start the journey.

I've got two things to finish this week that don't really merit mention here, but they shouldn't take too long, and I expect to spend a large amount of time reading Thomas Pynchon books. I'm re-reading Against the Day, and might even re-read some of Mason & Dixon. If you've never read either one, Steampunk fans should pick-up Against the Day, and epic fantasy fans should pick-up Mason & Dixon. Regardless, both are relevant to a super secret project I'm working on, that I'd like to get back to, now, so...

While I was away...

2011-07-23T09:52:00.008-04:00

While I was away, and I'm not saying I'm back on-line or anything, (because I'm slogging through copyedits and grinding through a game project right now) but while I was away, I seemed to have attracted the attention of one very curmudgeonly John Clute at Strange Horizons, who will probably not be happy if I don't get back to work on the edits of the sequel forthwith.

So, it has come to my attention that John Clute is watching me, now, while I work, from the timewarped delay dreamtime way readers are always watching writers work.

http://www.strangehorizons.com/2011/20110620/clute-c.shtml

The write-up ends on a strong upswing:

"... this could mark the beginning of something very good indeed from a genuine hard puncher. So please. Keep shaking us like this."

You know, as a total aside, I do happen to like the books that walkabout. In fact, my favorite books are almost entirely walkabouts (Like Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjiang). Plot is so boring. (The hero gets the girl, then she dies, and he is emo forever. Hey, there's a TWIST! and then the friend is the enemy. Oh, noes, everything that can go wrong does but the hero invents a way to save the day, hooray for Dr Who!) I want to wander the space stations of tomorrow, not blow them up or chase ships around. I want to wander art museums, not just dart in for a few postcards from the gift shop. I want to feel like I'm moving where my curiosity as a reader leads me, not where some machinery dictates movement.

Literary Walkabout is a good thing. It is a beautiful thing, when done well.

Eh, I'm just glad people are reading my books.

Get your groove on...

2011-07-22T10:42:00.000-04:00

I'm not really on-line right now. I'm just hopping in after a couple e-mails to give a more general update on something appearing in my Facebook messages with enough regularity to merit a note.

I'm a big guy, but that don't mean I don't like to get on the dance floor and bust a move. Recent-like, I shared some of my favorite hip-hop and world beat with folks in Maine who often asked me what that awesome music was, because it was new to them.

Herein I recommend some of my favorite groovy tunes.

N.A.S.A. was discovered via BoingBoing, and won me over with the Tom Waits+Kool Keith collaboration "Spacious Thoughts", but many solid numbers will get you moving, including the excellent "People Tree" with David Byrne hook and smart, smart rap lines.

Not so much for disco dancing, but groovy nonetheless, I first encountered Gjallarhorn at a Goth Club in Dallas, and have not forgotten it. It's great fantastickal sounds for your strange fantasy, and it's also got a beat that you can move to, if you are crazy enough to try it.

Most SF/F fans are well aware of Janelle Monae, but if you aren't, get thee to the youtube videos and educate yourself in one of the most impressive R&B acts of our time, with lots and lots of SF-nal goodness layered on thick and smart with a beat that's impossible to ignore.

Anyway, not really on-line much, what with three pressing deadlines. That's what's playing while I work, though.

Home Safe to a Thousand e-mails...

2011-07-20T08:42:00.000-04:00

I graduated with an MFA on Saturday, from the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast Program in Creative Writing. For budding writers at most points in their career, learning is good and wholesomd and true. I read books I would never have read, wrote stories I did not know I would write, and made many good friends. I came home to a thousand e-mails, and two deadlines, and some news: the second book of the Dogsland Trilogy comes in February, called When We Were Executioners. I am diving into the wreck, reaching at bones and jewels for a while, and savoring this time away from wires. Sweet dreams until my return, oh internets.

2011-07-04T13:08:00.001-04:00

The move is done. Still unpacking. Homework is not done. Expect light activity until after I graduate.

Peace out, intertubes!

What's the Plan, Man? Here's the plan:

2011-06-24T18:00:00.000-04:00

So, I'm taking a moment on a pirate WiFi signal that magically appeared while I was sitting down for a minute to rest after spending all sorts of annoying time piling all of my precious books into boxes to move from Alpharetta to Decatur.

Let me tell you about housing and renting prices in Atlanta. I'm moving from a one-bedroom apartment to a two bedroom. I'm saving about 10 % of my rent making this move into a new neighborhood that's about the same as this one, except that it's closer to all the places I like to hang out. (Little Shop of Stories...Noodle... Decatur Farmer's Market... Shambala Buddhist Center... a very pleasant Catholic Church in Stone Mountain...) It's also in a part of the city that is actually more centralized and more likely to offer work. Out on the fringe of North Atlanta is yuppie country, with golf clubs and the "nice" Wal-Marts. Not exactly an economic hub for the sort of things I'm looking to do. I only lived here, at all, because it was close to a job that has since dried up.

The only thing I think I'll really miss is the amazing Indian restaurant across the street.

It's weird to move into a better town, and a two-bedroom apartment, for quite a bit less than I'm paying for a one-bedroom up here in the yuppie end of town.

I'm really excited by this move.

In the mean time, expect contact from me to spotty for a week or two. Almost as soon as I finish moving, I'm traveling to Maine for my final semester of Stonecoast. I'll be giving a presentation on the more practical stuff on creating Mosaic Fictions to my fellow Stonecoasters, and introducing a very talented writer named Zachary Jernigan at his graduate reading.

When I get back into town, I'll be looking for work, particularly part-time work. I've got enough writing projects right now to make me want to tear my hair out some nights, but this is exactly why I need a part-time job. I need to be able to say "no" to things, and I need to be forced away from my computer screen for a few hours a day. If anyone has any leads, just drop me a line.

In the mean time, expect a slow signal from here.

One of the things I'm working on, by the way, is a review of this excellent little eBook:

Over at Apex...

2011-06-17T07:49:00.000-04:00

First, I reviewed Eric Basso's BEAK DOCTOR, and I liked it:

[quote]
Style and substance, inextricably linked together in the form of fiction, occasionally make strange bedfellows. For instance, approaching the truly horrific with the plain, mechanical prose popularized in pseudo-Hollywood thrillers does not truly frighten or unsettle or make strange. Rather, what happens is the lens itself normalizes the experience. By approaching the unknown through such familiar formula, the reader is not thrown akimbo, but allowed to maintain a sense of comfort even in the mouth of hell. Basso, no stranger to horror aficionados but new to my bookshelf, eludes me. I’ve read his collection The Beak Doctor: Short Fiction 1972-1976(Leaping Dog Press, 2005) three times this year. It isn’t very long, and it is the kind of book that merits careful study.
[/quote]

Read the rest over there:
http://www.apexbookcompany.com/2011/06/eric-bassos-lovecraftian-gothicka-beak-doctor/

In other news, Apex has secured a National and International Distribution Contract with a big league distributor. Their seeking peerbacking to offset the sort of loans and investments required to ramp up their operation to that level in a month.

http://www.apexbookcompany.com/2011/06/our-peerbacker-project-apex-lands-book-distribution/

Do consider dropping a few dollars their way, if you're interested in seeing MAZE in nearly every bookstore in the country. This deal pending has held up the release date for MAZE. Personally, I'd rather launch the book with national distribution from a major distributor than early without.

I know some of you don't like waiting so long for MAZE when you heard it would be out in April, and we're working on something to address that concern. Just hold out a little longer, and I'll let you know what it is, exactly.

Also, and just an addendum, while I was putting the review together for Beak Doctor, I found a totally awesome costume!

I want it.

I Know What You Are: You're a Nowhere Kid

2011-06-13T16:10:00.000-04:00

What is the mindscape of a Nowhere Kid. You know what a Nowhere Kid is? It's the lost ones, sexually abused, disassociated, drugged-out, dropped-out, gone. I borrow the term from Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa, a film that has a group of violent, dangerous, anarchist kids living in junk cars and big spare tires out in the desert, stealing bags of beans from people that don't have much. All of them runaways, abuse victims, waste-outs, gone.

Gone. That's the story of Orange. She's gone. She's runaway. She's disassociated. She's running through the dark with creeps and charismatic drug-addict vampires. Are they vampires, or are they just looking for the only explanation for what they are? ESP is what you feel when you separate and cast your long, hard gaze inward into your own sense of disassociation. The mind reaches out demanding a connection to the world. Finding none, it invents connections. Drugs don't help much.

What is the mindscape of the broken and the damned in the shadow of the consumerist dream, feeding off the scraps of society at twenty-four hour convenience stores and truck stops and drinking blood and drifting in and out of the flow of life with ESP and searching for a sister and drinking blood and using each other's bodies and drinking blood and the vampires are out there, in the nowhere places, slipping in and out of the edge of society, predators after prey, prey running from predators.

did I even read this book? is this the kind of book that can be read, or is it something inhaled like methamphetamines? Words of darkness and the end of the world straight mainline to the brainpan.

There's a rock show going down right now in an abandoned building.

Scrounged is better than bought. Sponging is better than working. DIY perverts cut adrift, foster care kids propping up the misery of the trucking industry with sex and death.

Orange is looking for her sister, Kim. Orange is out there looking through the wires and dangerous, deadly, messed-up stuff that is out among the nowhere kids, living with them, being with them.

Look out, Orange. Look out, Kim. Look out, kids.

Eat this book. Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich from Two Dollar Radio, 2011.

Narrative Breeds Narrative

2011-06-11T07:56:00.000-04:00

So, there’s the story told by the events that happen which are reported upon. Then, there’s the story that’s told by the events that happen being connected together into a narrative for consumption. (Often, these first two stories are told hand-in-hand, but occasionally the way one receives event reportage does not involve a whole news article. Rather, it may just involve a headline or a tweet.) That’s not all. There’s also the story that connects the connected story into a higher narrative in the zeitgeist. For example, any story about a sex scandal among politicians is part of the zeitgeist of powerful men who engage in selfish, sexist, or hypocritical behavior. Out from this are angle stories that focus on specific periphery characters to flesh out the scene presented. For instance, the only time most political wives and mistresses are newsworthy is when their husbands are publicly apologizing to them. After all the events happen, or even as they are happening, editorialists will analyze the events from their particular slant. I’m sure I could keep layering on levels of narrative on top of narrative on top of narrative to continue describing all the layers of a “story” as it appears in the “news”.

In all this, a web of media narrative happens, tumbling forward from the mere reporting of events, into the appearance of a whole series of discoveries and compromises, as the weight of story creates more story and adjusts to fit into the network of other stories.

I mention this because it doesn’t just happen in the news.

There's the narratives of the author's book, then of the author, then the narratives constructed by the story of the critical reception, the story of what people talk about when they talk about your characters or plot, then of the author's public appearances, then of the blog, the friends, what your friends say about the book, then the narratives that you feel are influenced by the book or that influence the book, then the narrative of books as they relate to other books in the author's career. Oh, there's more. There's a narrative in every conversation, or pieces of them tumbling through the zeitgeist half-formed, malformed, broken and still spilling into the aether of life whole across space and time.

There are all narratives that influence the interpretation of the book, the author, the place they have in the world of books and the world beyond books.

Every book, every creative act, every act that works for change in the world, creates a spiraling sea of narratives peripherally related to the central one.

2011-06-09T07:54:00.000-04:00

Mercy Street

by Peter Gabriel, about Anne Sexton

Be merciful while I'm off-line, away from here.

2011-06-08T16:56:00.000-04:00

All the Gold and the Guns couldn't get me on-line long enough to blog.

Writing, Moving, Prepping for my last Stonecoast Residency...

I'm down. I'm down.

"God Does Not Want You to Be a Punching Bag"

2011-06-06T00:39:00.000-04:00

I think I mentioned that I'm getting married, one of these minutes. Still working out the details, and all that, but one detail that we recently worked out was pre-marital seminars with the Catholic Church. We did 7 hours of Pre-Cana Counselling in one day, with various volunteers from the local diocese. (I'm Catholic, and my future wife is not. But, she is very understanding about my desire for a Catholic service.)

Lots of stuff and information was delivered to us. One quote really stood out. A Franciscan Brother who works with the Marriage Tribunal for Annulment proceedings made it absolutely, abundantly clear to the whole room that if a marriage turns out to be an abusive one, it is not a valid one and repeated a couple times that "God does not want you to be a punching bag." It didn't matter whether that was for emotional, verbal, or physical abuse. "God does not want you to be a punching bag!"

The Catholic church, I must admit, has given some people I know some bad advice a few decades ago, and I'm glad to see that's changed. I've had this phrase bouncing around my head all weekend. It's something that's true in your work life, as well. If you work for abusive people, God does not want you to be a punching bag. If you find yourself in a dangerous situation, get out because God does not want you to be a punching bag.

Canon law, I think, should include this phrase somewhere. Why doesn't the Baltimore Catechism include this simple, important idea? Why can't we add it to the Bible somewhere, in one of the Letters of Paul? There's been so much funny business with the Word of God as it gets translated in and out of so many dead languages and toyed with by new generations with such good intention behind their changes, I think there's room for a simple addition that "God does not want you to be a punching bag."

"God Does Not Want You To Be a Punching Bag" belongs on T-Shirts. Such a simple, clear message, and so many useful social applications as a dogma. When one finds oneself in an abusive situation, getting out is okay.

Jesus was the martyr, so you don't have to be one when it means is using you as a punching bag.

I certainly like it.

A Good Example Why Publishers Are Still Important

2011-06-01T14:33:00.000-04:00

So, I bought an ad at one of my favorite magazines, Fantasy Magazine, a while back. Just a small one, to run for a couple months under the assumption that people who like my books will probably also like my favorite magazines. I sent over the money, and alerted my editor that I was going to need an ad to run right at that particular size.

That was it. The ad was handled by the publisher. All I did was let them know I had picked up the space.

I know, ideally, the publisher would pay for the ads but I'm basically an Indie Author without a huge following, and I'm also not exactly writing bestsellers. I'm willing to invest time and money in my own publicity and marketing, and I don't think it's unreasonable to pick up a few advertisements to promote my book while I help out my favorite publications!

If I was self-publishing, I would have had to either beg or bribe someone to put together a professional-looking advertisement. I think we all know that my graphic design skills are lacking. (Evidence: investigate the book cover I put together in MS Paint with some art I was able to beg from Flying Tangerine Studios, a.k.a. my lovely and generous fiance.) If I had tried to do that myself, it would have been a hassle of calling in favors and/or frantically wrestling with MS Paint to create something not-completely-embarrassing. Instead, because NEVER KNEW ANOTHER is out from Nightshade Books, all I had to do was alert the publicity person, Liz Upson, and it happened like magic.

We need publishers, still, and will continue to need them because there are skills authors don't have, and probably shouldn't have. Writing is time-consuming enough. Partnering with a publisher is a great way to maximize my time so I can spend more of it doing exactly what I'm doing right now, this afternoon: writing!

Hi-ho, Hi-ho, Back to the word mines I go...

Winners and Good Advice for Writers from a Composer

2011-05-29T08:12:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to Josh Ennis and William Ward for their victory in names out of hats!

They have their choice of prize, and will receive what they prefer best!

William's Winning Review was one of the two reviews for Death Mask and Eulogy, reposted to Barnes and Noble:

Josh Ennis' winning review was for LAST DRAGON:

Josh Ennis' Victorious Review

Thanks to everyone who posted a review!

Remember, as readers, that reviewing books on Amazon and GoodReads and LibraryThing is one of the two things you can do to help the world make more of the books you like. Buying books you like, and telling other people about them to encourage them buying books, is the way to make sure the world produces more of the kind of books you love! Doing a favor for an author is also doing a favor for your future reading habits!

In other news, I came across this interview of a famous conductor, Sir Colin Davis, and it seems to accurately depict my own, personal theory of writing, pretty closely.

[quote]

"The less ego you have, the more influence you have as a conductor. And the result is that you can concentrate on the only things that really matter: the music and the people who are playing it. You are of no account whatever. But if you can help people to feel free to play as well as they can, that's as good as it gets."

[/quote]

Replace "the music" with "the words" and "the people who are playing it" with "the characters who are living it", and you get a pretty good insight into the writing process of novels, in particular. Novels don't really have the room or structure to be as clever as short stories can get sometimes, because clever ideas rarely extend successfully to any great length. At length, it's all about characters, and their cleverness or failure to cleave.

(I made up a new usage of "cleave" as a verb of "clever". I think it works, as sharp wit is a dividing thing.)

There is a CONTEST so what are the prizes?

2011-05-27T08:26:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned yesterday, there is a contest. By the end of day, Saturday, post a review of any of my available titles, and you will be entered into a drawing. Each review you post and repost at any of the review sites of the world will get you entered into the contest.

There will be two winners. There are two prizes. You get one.

First, for any aspiring writer out there, one prize is a critique of up to 8,000 words of fiction, wither a story or part of a story. I've published dozens of stories in magazines as prominent as Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Weird Tales, and Escape Pod!

Second, for any interested readers, I've got a PDF of my forthcoming novel MAZE. People have been asking me about MAZE. People have called me on the phone to ask about MAZE. Apex is running behind schedule in all their publications, and MAZE is not scheduled for sometime! But, you could get it early! All you have to do is enter this contest, and if you win, you get a copy of MAZE early!

Post a review to any of my work, NEVER KNEW ANOTHER, LAST DRAGON, the short, inexpensive novelette DEATH MASK AND EULOGY, or even the very short I AM NATURE released with Alien Shots, and you can review them anywhere, like Librarything, Amazon, Borders.com, GoodReads, Barnes and Noble, your personal blog, or anywhere else at all! Just link me to your review to be entered (sankgreall gmail com). Reposting your review counts as a new entry, and will get you entered again.

But, when I'm drawing names out of a hat, I will make sure there are more than one winners. You can only win once!

Not a lot of folks have entered, yet, so your odds are very good!

CONTEST: Write a review of NEVER KNEW ANOTHER or LAST DRAGON, and...

2011-05-26T10:41:00.001-04:00

I want to encourage everyone to post a review of NEVER KNEW ANOTHER or LAST DRAGON at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, GoodReads, LibraryThing, and etc. Heck, let's go ahead and throw in I AM NATURE from Alien Shots, and DEATH MASK AND EULOGY, too. The digital shorts could use some review love!

Many of you fine folks already have done this. Some of you have not. I want to encourage everyone who has written a review or thinks they could to write a review.

For the rest of this week, send me a link to any original, newly posted review by you that posts sometime this week. This review can be just about anywhere. Your personal blog, Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com, GoodReads, LibraryThing, a message board, a website where you write reviews... You write it, and you get entered into the contest.

Have you already written a review? Awesome. Just take that review and re-post it to new places. Every new spot is a potential winner!

Everyone who posts a review somewhere, anywhere, is entered for every website where a review is put. Of these, I will randomly select two winners by drawing a name out of a hat to receive a totally awesome, super-secret prize via e-mail!

(I will announce the prize soon. It will be awesome. You will love it. Ooh... What could it be? It might even be a choice between two totally awesome things... Ooh... Exciting!)

This ends on Saturday, at noon!

Poland, and Penelope Wove Her Husband Back to Life in Nineteen Years

2011-05-25T10:54:00.001-04:00

Angie and I drove from Philadelphia to Atlanta in one, long day. We drove up slowly, stopping along the way to visit with family members. But, we had to get back for her job, so we had to make the trip back in one. Along the way, I experienced an amazing, terrible allergy attack when we stopped for a picnic in Virginia in a freshly-mowed park. My eyes are still recovering.

I'm sore. If you're waiting to hear from me, I'll start getting through my e-mail this afternoon.

Before I left, I got some excellent news from Poland!

I have accepted an offer from Polish publishers Proszynski for NEVER KNEW ANOTHER! Polish fantasy fans, I hope, will be pleased to discover the world of Dogsland. I'm sure they'll do a great job! This is my first work to be translated into a foreign language, and I'm very excited to work with Proszynski to help the book succeed!

Yay!

Want to read it before it goes to Poland?

In other good news, Penelope wove her husband back to life in 19 years. Arachne wove greater than this.

Arachne is live at the Journal of Unlikely Entomology's Inaugural Issue, leading off the exciting new publication!

[quote]

If it bends, it can be woven. Hair braids, rivers braid, and fingers fold together in prayer. Cars crash into each other; the metals bend around the engines. With a strong enough machine, cars could be woven into each other — crumple zone to crumple zone, gas lines snaking like Hermes' staff between two twisted engine blocks. I'm too disciplined to stop what I'm doing to doodle the weaving of cars on the naked particleboard walls of this café. In a few weeks, I don't know if I will still have that discipline. I may lose my mind if I keep this up.

Dr. Paris, Karen if we're being friendly, brings me food. She used to be my professor. I haven't been to class in a long time. She brings me new threads, new yarns. She lingers long enough to ask if I've heard Nicole's ghostly voice falling into my weave, yet. I don't answer her. Nicole is gone, and I'm trying to save her. I'm trying to catch her in my weave. Until I'm done, I have nothing to say.

[/quote]

Go over and read the rest?

This story is part of a whole series of stories I wrote, including Gaia in the Raleigh Review, that feature surreal re-imaginings of women and monsters and monstrous women from Greek Myths, that should start appearing here, there, and everywhere. Maybe, if we're lucky, someone will put them all together into a whole collection of stories.
Right, I'm going to go do laundry and take care of all the exciting things that need taking care of after a road trip...

With an excellent illustration from Michael Kaluta!

2011-05-13T15:18:00.000-04:00

New INTERFICTIONS ZERO essay by Joseph M McDermott is up! Edited by Delia Sherman & Helen Pilinovsky, IF0 is a rolling online anthology of criticism of interstitial texts. This essay cites work by Maureen McHugh,Jeff VanderMeer & Charles Stross, among others. Please read, enjoy & respond!

http://www.interstitialarts.org/wordpress/?p=1091

With an amazing illustration from Michael Kaluta!

In Case You Were Wondering, I'm an Interstitial Artist...

2011-05-12T10:58:00.000-04:00

I bet regular readers may be bone-weary of this material by now, but if you aren't, I wrote an article for Interfictions Zero about the Mosaic Text, and it comes with a beautiful illustration by Michael Kaluta!

http://www.interstitialarts.org/projects/interfictions0_onmosaicnovels.php

[quote]
I am going to make a huge presumptive leap. I'm going to propose that there exists such a thing as a Mosaic Novel, as I will define it contrary and in addition to any definitions that may already exist from any number of critics. In this imaginary category, individual pieces of story, potentially disjointed from other pieces of story, are arranged into the shape of a narrative. This whole shape, comprised of and beyond the individual pieces, reveals more than the sum of the parts of each of its fictional segments or sections. In fact, placing the pieces into this shape invites interconnectivity that allows the imagination to fill in the blank spaces.
[/quote]

Read the rest over there!

(Of note, my google alerts tells me my notion is catching on across the internet: http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Write-a-Mosaic-Novel I hope I started something good among writers!)

Ekaterina Sedia's House of Discarded Dreams Should Not Be Discarded Lightly

2011-05-09T09:24:00.000-04:00

We carry memories with us, and memories that don't necessarily belong to us. We carry cultural memories, the imposed memories of science and theology. We carry our heartache's memories. We carry our loneliness and our despair and our hope for a better, brighter future.

Consider the memories of horseshoe crabs. They have lived and thrived since before the dinosaurs stomped upon their lonely beaches, and continue on, drained of blood by pharmaceutical companies that use their blood for serum. What strange dreams haunt their memories and societies?

In Ekaterina Sedia's latest novel, House of Discarded Dreams, Vimbai is adrift in life, caught between the African culture of her immigrant parents in Boston, and the strange, bright, loud America. She doesn't fit in. She doesn't have close friends. She lives at home and studies biology at the University where her mother teaches. Growing tired of her family's constant pressure to conform to an African and an American ideal, both at the same time and contradictory, she decides to move out. She locates a house that should probably be condemned, where strange creatures live under the porch, and a young man named Felix has a black hole where other people would have a head of hair. She is drawn to this house, bound up in it like the other residents here, who are also adrift. The house accumulates people's lost hopes and dreams, and the people who carry too many of them.

Soon, the house takes to the sea. The ghost of Vimbai's African grandmother is doing the dishes in the kitchen. Felix catches a psychic energy baby by sticking the phone (where a psychic energy baby is hiding) into the pocket universe upon his head. The only way anyone is going to get home is to trust int he horseshoe crabs, who promise to carry Vimbai home, as long as she promises, as in any good fairy tale, not to peer under the water where the horseshoe crabs pull at ropes cast into the water.

Ekaterina Sedia's House of Discarded Dreams is a beautiful book. It is probably an important book. I hope more people find out about it.

Want to hang with all the cool kids next week?

2011-05-06T20:47:00.000-04:00

Well, do ya?

Go get this book:

Read it. Review it. Next Week. Starting Monday. 9 AM.

Feel free to drop me (or Paul Jessup) a line to let us know where you reviewed it.

And if you don't know what I'm talking about with this one, you're missing out and I hope you spend some time this weekend correcting the error of your ways.

(Watch here for more, starting Monday!)

My little experiment stumbles forward

2011-05-05T14:48:00.000-04:00

So, as I've recently mentioned, I'm experimenting with self e-Publishing. So far, I can safely say my agent's job is more secure than it was ten days ago, because I have numbers to back up my impulse to remain with an agent, and keep publishing through trade publishers like Nightshade and Apex.

The novelette experiment, a story too odd in many ways (an odd length, a gay main character, grotesque and gruesome subject matter) has stumbled onto the Nook at Barnes and Noble, thanks to someone showing where to go to do it. (Thanks, Paul!)

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Death-Mask-and-Eulogy-a-Novelette/J-M-McDermott/e/2940012596628/?itm=1&USRI=death+mask+and+eulogy

This little novelette has also garnered exactly one review, from Paul Jessup, at the Amazon.com site:

Paul Jessup says, "McDermott is at the top of his game in this one, and it will haunt you for days afterwards. Really great stuff"

Here's a link directly there, if you want to know how many stars it got from Paul:

In a totally related note, my sales remain in the single digits. The low single digits.

So, there's a lot of hype in the world about the eBook revolution, and I can say that I honestly have done more promotion of this little novelette in its first week then I did for NEVER KNEW ANOTHER, and my sales in the first week for that book, published through Nightshade and available wherever books are sold, has a pretty significant difference in units sold. (Specifically, more than two units have sold.)

I'm going to leave my little experiment up and out in the world, because this is an interesting experiment, even if it is not a lucrative one. I have heard that you have to give people time to find your book and see if something happens. Naturally, I did not expect to stumble into riches through self-publishing. (In fact, I'm doing about what I expected to do with this, if not less, and am relieved to see my anti-self-publishing prejudices justified by SCIENCE!)

Okay, the experiment must continue. There's something funny about my eBook: the cover. If I want to take this experiment to the next level, I'm going to need a cover that's built and designed "better", with an image that might have something to do with the actual story.

Anyone want to volunteer to make a new cover sometime next month? I'll pay you with free books.

Woman on a Mission, a Review of Maureen McHugh's "Mission Child"

2011-05-03T13:09:00.000-04:00

What is Colonialism, anyway? It'a word thrown around so much that it has become pretty devoid of meaning. Colonialism has become a dirty word. But, if you add the word "space" in front of colonialism, it becomes the greatest thing in the world: Space Colonialism! Colonizing space is not only a moral imperative, it is also probably going to be a messy affair, with waves of colonization following waves as the wide, vast distances we must cover to reach new worlds creates strange economic and social constructs once people get down onto the ground.

What is appropriate technology? If we think about a global economy, should we be flooding deserts with water to grow out-of-season bananas? Should we be flooding Africa with our cast-off clothes as charity until no African textile industry exists to make their own new clothes?

In space, colonialism can still become a problematic thing. Maureen McHugh brilliantly explicates the life and travels of a young woman, Janna, who experiences firsthand the effects of a colonial system that is hauntingly reminiscent of our own. Her planet was abandoned for centuries after initial colonization. When new waves of settlers come, the economic balance of native goods and services are torn asunder as guns, medicine, plagues, and computers sweep over a world that was not prepared for these things. The world that had evolved and settled into place is quickly destroyed and remade into something different, and often lesser. McHugh aptly portrays the marauding hordes that use guns to take what they want from the Mission that does not embrace off-world technology. The city, then, with refugee camps, and ill-prepared native peoples living in poverty working in low-paying, rote positions and dabbling in black markets and crimes, is no place to live with the old ways. Janna runs across a planet, always struggling to get ahead of the off-world technology that ruins everything that is beautiful and established in their worlds, until, in the end, a plague comes and the off-world tech is all that can save the people.

By presenting this familiar theme, of the technological imbalance of cultures in contact with each other, on a foreign planet in deep space, McHugh is able to sidestep a lot of the resistance to the ideas one would find by dabbling in anti-capitalist ideas. The economy of the planet is one of self-sufficiency, where things grown and produced on-world are kept on-world and people live in peace. Once that balance is destroyed, the power structures of the world are quick to turn against the weak and the helpless. Don't mistake that message for Marxist or anti-capitalist. It's simply a fact that when power is available over others, the weak and the helpless are quickly tossed aside. This message is an important one for anyone interested in acting appropriately with appropriate charity in a world where aid sent to regions can often end up in the hands of the warlords that cause the suffering. McHugh's message is human, and pro-human.

And heartbreaking. And beautiful.

Is this novel not in print anymore? That's a shame, if true. Someone should pick this up and reprint it.

dipping my toe in the wide, black, piranha-infested waters of the Amazon...

2011-04-29T05:42:00.047-04:00

So, I'm going to be experimenting just once, to see what happens. I have released one of my unpublished stories into the world on the Kindle only, under epic fantasy, as a dollar novelette, as close to a free giveaway as I can. Novelette's an oddball length in today's market, and this one is strange enough that it isn't really perfect for any market that I know of. And, with all the folks experimenting in new publishing paradigms, I could easily sit on the sidelines and watch. But, the sidelines aren't where the action is at. I'm curious. I'm scatterbrained and curious. When a bee hits my bonnet, I've got to see it through, somehow.

I feel pretty conflicted by this. I'm not pro-self-publishing, as a general rule. In fact, I'm pretty outspoken against it most of the time.

What's different this time?

First, there is no upfront cost at all. The money flows towards the writer. If I don't make a dime, I also didn't spend a dime.

Second, other people I respect are running similar experiments. Cory Doctorow and Jeff VanderMeer and Jason Sizemore of Apex are running some interesting self-publishing experiments. Sizemore, I think, has the right idea with the Apex books: drinks of water that act as low-cost promotional materials for the larger works. I also think Jeff's got something very smart with cheekyfrawg because we may see the rebirth of fiction that is not between 100k-120k and designed for maximum paper printing cost-benefit-analysis. Many of CheekyFrawg's titles look fascinating.

Third, I don't believe in the speculative fiction marketplace regarding this particular story. The main character is gay, and lesbians and bisexuals are featured prominently. And, if that wasn't bad enough, it falls into a wordcount category that's generally a difficult sale. Novelettes are kind of a weird length.

Fourth, the quality to crap ratio on the kindle is pretty bad. Good stuff is there, but it is often high-priced in the market, and it is drowning in crap. Because self-publishing is so relatively easy on this device, lots of people are doing it. Putting something good in this marketplace at a competitive price point seems like a good idea. in part, this is because...

Fifth, people will want to use the expensive devices they just shelled out a hundred bucks to acquire. Unlike paper books, which are flooding the market in paper, there isn't as many books available on a Kindle as one could find in a used book store. People who buy a dedicated eReader are probably going to be sifting through the crap, if only to make their purchase worthwhile.

My experiment isn't perfect. My cover was done in MS Paint. By me. I'm not an artist. I borrowed a line drawing from my fiance and did a quick fiddling in MSPaint to make it look cover-like. I'm competing in a marketplace with very pretty books. My interiors were done in Word. I'm terrible at describing my own work.

In this, I think, the experiment can run alongside the "Alien Shots" short story, I Am Nature, with the cover design and interiors done by the much-better-at-that-sort-of-thing Jason Sizemore. Ergo, it will still be an interesting experiment in relation to other pieces in play.

I'm curious. I'm doing this because I'm curious.

I'm not generally a fan of self-publishing. But, I keep hearing how the paradigms are shifting. It seems to cost me nothing but a couple hours to put that paradigm-shift to the test.

What will happen next?

Well, I have no intention of blogging or promoting the book in any form unless something interesting appears out of the data. If nothing happens that is interesting, I might just pull the novelette down and do something else if the mood strikes me.

Who knows what will happen?

Sensual Mysticism in an imaginary Birdland

2011-04-28T11:34:00.000-04:00

Recently, it has come to my attention that many speculative fiction readers are unaware of the marvelous prose stylings of Rikki Ducornet. I know I've mentioned this fabulous author a couple times on this blog, and while out and about. I know her work is beginning to appear in anthologies edited by "genre" editors, like Jeff VanderMeer's CheekyFrawg eBook Imprint. But, for many in genre circles, she's an unknown.

How unfortunate for us.

Phosphor in Dreamland is a book about an artist and inventor. It is also a book about the human relationship to the world of the sublime. It is also a book about the extinction of the native people and cultures facing the brunt of colonialist arrogance. It is also a book about beautiful imagery, and grotesque characters behaving badly and strangely.

There's a bird in this book. This should come as no surprise on the island of Birdland where this book is set. However, what makes this island a "Birdland" is that there is a native bird, reminiscent of the dodo, but one famous for how human it seems when it is begging for its life. This peaceful bird rummages for shellfish and lives in harmony with its native surroundings. Humans have, even before the arrival of colonial expansion, killed the bird for its beak alone. The hunted creature begs and begs, and all for nothing. The colonial settlers does not help the extinct bird. The last of the Auk is killed in this book, and it is a harrowing thing to read.

I mention grotesque. the main thrust of the narrative is the discovery of a kind of photography by a young artist, poet, and inventor -- the Phosphor of the title -- who is taken in by a local rich man that sees in this invention an opportunity to own the whole island, photograph everything in it, and make images of beauty, lust, and possession of everything around him. How colonial of him, no? The artist and dreamer is appropriated by this wealthy maniac and led on an expedition into the wild heart of the island, with a spiritual adviser in tow that is so lost in his hideous pontifications that it is all that holds his soul and skin together. There's more, of course.

I read this book a few weeks ago. I have considered many things to say about it here. I have landed upon this: What is magical is often taken for granted, and what is factual is often misrepresented as magical, and what is beautiful is often taken as a sign of human weakness and frailty, and what is a human failing is often taken as a sign of an individual's strength or prowess. The best thing we can do about all of this is to make love.

Are you a book pirate? Do you feel guilty about it?

2011-04-27T14:04:00.000-04:00

I decided to put a "donation" button on my blog, not because I am looking for donations, but because I can't think anything would be wrong if random people of the internet decided to offset their book piracy guilt by sending me a few dollars over paypal. Or, you know, if someone just feels like giving me money. Also, I've been asked a few times by publishers of litmags if they could just pay me through paypal, and I could just point them to the button.

I can't stop piracy. That's crazy. And, I would encourage pirates to buy legal copies of books and ebooks to mitigate their guilt. (Publishers deserve their share, and work very hard for it. At least as hard as authors, in fact.)

But, I can guarantee that money donated to me will very likely end up in the hands of book publishers and other authors, because I have a book buying habit that I cannot seem to stop.

How it works with series books...

2011-04-23T00:41:00.000-04:00

So, when someone is writing a series, and someone else (for instance, you) is reading a series, there's only one way to make sure the series continues.

It's pretty obvious, right? People vote for the sequel by buying the book that comes before it.

I'm busting my behind right now writing a sequel, and though this particular project is not in any danger that I'm aware of, I cannot help but be aware of the cold, hard reality that without strong sales, there is no real future for Dogsland beyond this one book that I'm writing now.

Fact: If you liked NEVER KNEW ANOTHER enough to want to read the whole trilogy, you should have at least a passing interest in the sales figures of NEVER KNEW ANOTHER. How does anyone concerned express their interest in Dogsland in a manner that helps create a future for the series? Well, tell people about the book. Write reviews in places where people go to find new authors and new books. Basically, spread the word. Recommend the book to friends. Boost the signal. Sales aren't imploding, or anything. This isn't to say that we are in danger. We aren't. But, sales could always be better, and good enough does not exist in the world of media artifacts. If you believe that books like NEVER KNEW ANOTHER should be the kind of books that go on best-seller lists, you can actually take an active role in making that sort of thing happen.

(I'll be the first to admit that I am probably preaching to the choir, here, because I know many of my readers here have done exactly this...)

Fact: Word-of-mouth sales are the most effective marketing tool in the universe. All you have to do is tell your friends you liked this book you read. Tell them on Facebook, in person, on a blog, on twitter, in passing in a book store, as a request to your library, or anywhere else the topic of books comes up.

What's great about spreading the word about books you like is it's a great way to find out what other people liked, so you can be the recipient of the same sort of marketing. So, when you meet someone cool and mention a book you like, you tend to get that in return. You can check out these books, and discover something awesome and new. This is how I found out about Kurt Vonnegut, once upon a time, when someone I went to high school with recommended Vonnegut to me because I liked John Varley (I was 14, and didn't know anything about Vonnegut at all, yet). This trend continued. Garcia-Marquez came to me this way. Borges did, too. Other books, lesser and greater, all came to me this way. People talking to each other about what they liked to read, and what I might like, and what everyone is reading were effective marketing tools to get me to purchase stuff and check things out from libraries.

I remember my Uncle Andrew introducing me to Eduardo Galeano when we were talking books at a family gathering my sophomore year of high school, and buying Walking Words in a Border's in New Jersey later that day for the drive home. It was fantastic. I still have that book. I still check it out now and then, and wonder why I have such trouble finding more Galeano in the world. I remember girlfriends and friends all long gone with Umberto Eco, Ursula LeGuin, and more.

Most, if not all, of the authors I love the most were found not because I went looking for authors, but because I was talking with other readers. Most of the authors I hate, as well, came through this method, but I'll spare you the list. (Needless to say, it is educational to discover that one of your friends or girlfriends has terrible taste in books either occasionally or constantly. It is enlightening, in fact, to know this about your cohorts.)

Many of you have done what I'm suggesting already, and I cannot express how grateful I am. I hope that at 12:25 am on a Friday, at my computer screen, and after about my third or fourth night in a row toiling into the wee hours since early morning (just for you and your entertainment and enlightenment, because I love all of you, and I am grateful to anyone who reads my books) that I deserve your support. I do all I can to earn it every time I crack open this laptop, and type into the webwires what imaginings crawl out of the black hole where I have an imagination like some people have a psychosis.

To those of you that have said something -- anything at all -- thank you.

To the rest of you, remember this: If you like a series of books, and want to see more of them, there is only one thing you can do to help make that happen. Boost the signal of the series.

Please, if any of you are reading a series (not mine!) drop a line below, and let people know. I'll check things out as I can. Because, I'm not the only writer out there busting the ass. There's quite a few of us, with quality stuff if only people hear about them in this very psychically-crowded media-saturated world we live in.

Personally, my favorite (completely, wildly different) two series at the moment are the light, fluffy milSF Vatta's War series from Elizabeth Moon (especially Marque & Reprisal), and the Ambergris books of Jeff VanderMeer, most recently with the masterful weird noir Finch.

Anybody got a signal to boost? There's a few folks that come here regular-like, and I know they might like to hear about your favorite series of books to read. I know I'm curious. I'm known to buy a few books.

Boost the signals, people. Believe it or not, Whedon was wrong: It is very, very easy to stop a signal by choosing not to boost it. You can stop signals. Signals are stopped all the time.

The Real Question About Ayn Rand

2011-04-20T23:26:00.004-04:00

There are people in the world who think Ayn Rand's books are the bees' knees. I am not one of these people. I don't think Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. or even Doctor Who would approve of the message of the work, and even allowing that Ms Rand is not a native speaker, her prose is wooden and her characters are somewhere on a flatness scale between a supporting role in a James Cameron epic and a photograph of a model who is posed to make one believe that the model is in the midst of some sort of dashing, amazing adventure far more exciting than a mere, excruciatingly dull photo shoot.

No, she is not a great writer. She might be, generously, an okay scribbler, if you don't mind rape, annoying narcissists, and extreme pro-capitalist-wealth-industrial aristocracy. If your idea of a good time is counting your money on your second yacht while your fifth wife is sleeping off a hangover in preparation for another hangover, you are probably a fan of Ayn Rand. It's almost inevitable, in fact. The closer you aspire to that idealized, stereotyped superrich made-up example that I made up, the more likely you are to like Ayn Rand.

The whole question of the material, then, as a critic of literature is nothing to do with Ayn Rand at all. What interests me more about the whole thing is the (slightly unsettling) question of my own tastes as a reader and my aesthetic as a writer. How much is what I read and write predisposed based on personal stuff? More specifically, how many books do I like simply because I agree with their message before I even pick them up? Even more specifically, how many relatively trite, trivial books do I adore (and the people in my social sphere, all of us barking praise, forming a tunnel of sound like a song of praise) simply because I am pre-disposed to enjoy the book? How many times have I written something based on my pre-disposition towards it despite the subject matter's actual triviality? How many books are considered great literature not because they are truly great, but because the people who make curriculums are pre-disposed to enjoy the book because of weird quirks of their collective background?

Kafka, for instance, looms large in my literary canon. The Hunger Artist's peaceful, self-negating, act of performance seems like exactly the sort of thing I am supposed to love. And I love it. I think of it as an artistic ideal I will never achieve, performing for an empty room if I must to be allowed to be doing what I was born to do. Doing it on stage, indifferent to the crowd. Doing it, like Jeffrey Ford's "The Way He Does It" all over and everywhere and no one can stop it even if they wanted to. But, I look to quirks of my background -- like my disaffected suburban upbringing, the moving as a child that took away my sense of space with the big box stores and chain stores at every corner, and the constant, insufferable "branding" of everything around me that's always for sale or selling something. I am pre-disposed to love Kafka.

I have never read it in the original German. At one point in my life, I could have, but I never had the inclination to give it a shot. (I was always better at speaking German than reading it. Curse my audio-holic learning style!) I consider Kafka's work marvelous, haunting. Ten minutes ago, I would have automatically told you it was "classic" literature. Yet, the translations, to me, are all I know of the stuff, and more than that the pre-disposition to love the work exists too deeply to be extricated from fair and equitable judgment. That others like Kafka seems to speak as much to the reality that there are many disaffected modern folks, watching wars on television with full bellies and the vague sense of ignorant impotence one gets from watching CNN. There are programs that exist to train people both in the critical appreciation of the arts and the indoctrination in passing that appreciation forward to new people. We call them graduate school. In the test one has to take to even apply to graduate school in English, one is asked all sorts of questions about writers and works that demonstrate both a working knowledge of the books, as well as a working knowledge of a general critical consensus about these works. Have you read enough, and correctly, to get in? Do you agree with us by default when pressed for time in a timed test? Are you one of us? Do you like Kafka?

Well, do you? Or do you like Rand?

What do you think that says about you as a person? Are you predisposed to loving that shit?

How much of what we do as writers is just creating a mirror for someone else's desire, and how much of it is changing the world one line of ink at a time? How much of what we do as readers is seeking out that mirror of our own desires writ large by someone not-us, like a daily affirmation?

I'm almost done with this revision, and I'm not even sure it's worthwhile. The only people who will love this book are the people who are pre-disposed to loving it.

I guess that makes me a Literary Calvinist. It's not so bad, I guess. I find that I'm completely indifferent to negative reviews. I am completely indifferent to following trends. Money will come or it will not come. All of it, pre-determined.

I make flags, not books. People rally behind them if they want to, but one needs to be a patriot to love the thing, and I only write for patriots of the nation I would want to be a citizen therein, of compassion and humanism and unending hope against hope.

At least, that's what I believe tonight. Tomorrow, I may come up with some new personal philosophy or aesthetic ideal.

The other question about Ayn Rand is how anyone could read as much as she did and as widely and never change her mind about anything at all, though her marriage and her world burns down because of this ideal, and her friends drop away from her never to return. How could anyone read so much and feel so much and never change her mind?

It's not as interesting a question, to me, but there it is.

no photographs

2011-04-18T14:14:00.001-04:00

In North Carolina, I don't believe anyone photographed the events of the hour. The North Carolina crew of BullSpec was on-hand to launch their latest issue: #5. (I've been working my way through the issues as I can, and I have been very impressed with the production quality and the fiction. Definitely a magazine to watch out for in the months and years to come!)

I drove up through the wooded hills and mountains of Georgia, South Carolina, and over into Raleigh. I was pleased to discover that Quail Ridge Books is an excellent, excellent bookstore with lots of great titles. I made a few purchases of my own, while there, including David Halperin's novel, and an issue of TriQuarterly.

When the panels and readings began, quite a lot of excellent stuff started happening. David Halperin and Jay Requard both read from their latest novels. The Crossed Genres crew made a strong showing with some excellent fiction and talks by editors. Bull Spec, as well, had a strong showing with the excellent story "Absinthe Fish" by M. David Blake, and part of the cover story to issue #5 (that I'm not up to in my reading, yet...)

Basically, it was awesome. If you were there, you know that. If you weren't there, you wish you could be. If you get a chance to attend an event put together by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn, I recommend it. A great time was had by all, and everyone walked away the better and the stranger for the fiction that was present and presented at the night in question.

PS I've come up for air, before diving back into the water. I'm trying to finish this thing so I can finish something else and so I can find new things ot keep my hands busy. Dogsland is deep in me. Dogsland is everywhere I look. Always Dogsland.

PPS Maze is coming

Last Night and Later this Week

2011-04-13T13:05:00.000-04:00

First off, I'm going to North Carolina this Friday for a big gathering at Quail ridge books, and I'm really looking forward to meeting all the awesome folks of North Carolina, and the excellent crew responsible for the rising star (with good reason!) of the Speculative Fiction Magazine Marketplace: BULL SPEC. (www.bullspec.com)

Last night, my fiancee was off work, so we took the opportunity to take care of some pressing business. First, I tried my first Durien. Neither one of us had any idea what it would be like. We were at the Farmer's Market in DeKalb County, buying fancy local honey, and we noticed some frozen Durian hiding in the back of the fruit section. We decided to give it a shot.

At her mom's house, with no idea of how bad of an idea this was, we cracked it open and took a taste. The smell was just as bad as everyone says it is, and even worse: It lingers! The taste was like eating rancid custard, complete with strange fibrous skin-like things that were reminiscent of bacterial goo. Awful. Just awful. People eat that on purpose? WHY?

And the smell... We sealed up what we could not eat. We lit incense. We apologized to Angie's mom, who walked in to her own house not expecting the release of such an awful thing unto the kitchen.

Angie liked the fruit a little, but not by itself. She thought it would need to be in a fruit salad, with pineapple and other bright, sweet things to cut the rotten egg flavor. Personally, I thought it was one of the most odious foods ever placed inside of my mouth and swallowed. The only good thing I can say is that it is clearly -- surprisingly -- edible, because what I tasted went down smooth and easy and never even made my stomach grumble a little. As bad as it was, it didn't trigger a gag reflex, somehow, which most things that foul tasting would trigger. So, if you're starving in a jungle and about to die, be sure to know what a durian is. It won't kill you. It will just make you wish it wasn't food. Other then that, avoid the durian whenever possible, and never let anyone convince you that's a delicious treat. No. It is gross.

Second, I was going to go to a local writer's group that meets up just to write, but we were running low on time to make mead, and we are hoping to make much of the alcohol for our wedding, so we need to get on that pretty quick! Alas, boiling the three gallons of water in the giant stainless steel pot after cleaning and sanitizing everything takes a while, and we were up until about eleven getting it all done. That's another week where I mean to go to this writing group, and get dragged into another pressing project. Next week! Next week, I'll try! I'm leading the busy life of a freelance writer/graduate student/soon-to-be-groom! Things just get crazier and crazier as I take on and complete projects. I don't know why things never seem to settle down. I guess I'm just too much rock&roll to ever let anything settle down!

Third, we started our first mead! Hooray! We're making a simple sack mead with local wildflower honey. We had the help of Angie's mom, who used to make all kinds of wine and clearly knew what she was doing. We also had the help and recipe from this book for a basic sack mead:

Hopefully the results will be delicious.