Insert Catchy Title Here

Another week gone by, and still no good title for a links post! Oh well.

---Sadness is the main response I have to hearing that Robert Holdstock died suddenly today, after failing to fight off an E. Coli infection. Holdstock was a writer of deep matters who combined complex ideas and symbolism into his work. Mythago Wood, his most well-known work, was really a starting point for an extended literary meditation. I would have loved to see what else he was going to do with that.

---a snippet for WIP from my current story:

“You’re a Valley Boy,” First Jay said with a sneer. “Valley’s nice; don’t get the crickets much.” He swung his hawk at his side. “They don’t let other folks come around in times of trouble.”

West Wind shook his head. “The Valley is nothing now. They’ve given in to gluttony and envy. Hogtamer’s land now.” He tilted his head at First Jay’s scowl. “Nothing there for any of us now. Hogtamer's feasted it out.”

“And that’s why he’s coming here,” Third Jay said. The folks all turned to look at him. He fixed West Wind with his glaring white eye and lifted his staff a bit, let the tattered feathers and pieces of old flags shift in the breeze. “He’s on his creature of many backs headin’ this way.”

West Wind nodded. “And he’s not the only one.”

“Skull-face,” Little Kee whispered from the dust, and now everyone looked at her. She winced from the attention.

West Wind bent down towards her and inclined his chin. “Yep, true in one. He’s feeling the pinch and looking for new souls.”

---NPR did a story on fantasy fiction today, interviewing Jeff and Ann Vandermeer. It was fine, and it contained two good tidbits for further thought. The first was the idea of fantasy being a device for talking about things that could not be written out explicitly; the second, that all literature is, in some sense, fantasy. These are both compelling ideas for me. The latter has been a notion that I have contemplated a lot lately. I mean, all fiction is specifically a fantasy, a made-up story about things the author wants to describe to us. The grittiest mystery, the dourest contemporary tragedy, the flightiest romance are all fantasy tales. Unless you are just writing down exactly what you observe with no conjecture and no induction into a narrative, when you tell a story you are creating a fantasy. Some may have a stronger link to what they represent, but all are creations of the imagination as it makes sense of things, assigns meaning, and casts people and issues in a particular, subjective light.

I'd like to write more, but it is bedtime. Dream well, all!

A Little Ole Roundup

I guess I need a catchy name for blog posts that are a bunch of little tidbits. Hmmm.. . .

---I got a nice #followfriday twitter boost from @revolutionsf today. If you haven't checked out their website, do so! They're really trying to make SF, in all forms and permutations, fun AND thoughtful again. Today's Prisoner watercooler chat is a great example of that.

---Our child has fallen asleep before midnight for the SECOND NIGHT IN A ROW, and as soon as this bloggery is committed I am hitting the writing folder. Need to work on the Four Horsemen thing (I'll put up some WIP when I have something intriguing to share) and get a comic idea out of my head. One of the projects I've been developing is a comic book called THE FORCE! (yeah, it needs a better title), which is about a government superhero team full of misfits who turn out to have their own agendas, led by the smartest creature to ever walk the earth, who also has his own plans. I'm trying to combine superhero action with emotional realism, and poke a bit of fun at the genre as well. I have an 18-issue story arc laid out in the most basic terms, but got some great ideas for twists that need to get plunked into the file.

---I've been obsessing over Warren Ellis' latest T-Shirt of the Week. It's just so brutally perfect. Trying to figure out affordability, because with shipping the one I want (2x,charcoal gray) is $30. Grargh. But I love the idea of the shirt itself, and I love the DIY, POD aspect of the project. It shows some of the potential for creative use of the web on your own terms. That last part is so important; maintaining artistic and to some extent financial freedom is one of the more alluring aspects of putting your art and goods out on the web.

---I commented the other day on David Pomerico's post about the future and zombies. Given that I'm writing Aetas Nex, this is a topic near to my interests and to my slightly-swollen heart. Apocalypse and dystopia are great spaces for zombies to arise, and they have a versatility that can be exploited if you're willing to innovate and break a few rules. In the case of Aetas Nex,it becomes obvious that zombies are a symptom of a larger problem, and also themselves a dynamic force. For me, that was key: zombies cannot just all be brainless shamblers. Zombies develop, sometimes in lethal ways, sometimes in ways that are uncomfortable for the regular humans to face. Once they are a part of the world, and also harbingers of something bigger happening, they become more interesting as a subject themselves, and also a dynamic plot device that can throw a lot of surprises at the reader. I think there is still some potential for zombies to be useful in SF, and not just as lurching boogeymen.

And other boogeymen as well, but that is a post for another day.

New Column, New Ailments

First of all, my new Forces of Geek column is up. I forgot to change the title before sending it (the topic altered itself as I wrote it), but otherwise I like this column a lot. Do comment!

Second, I have been afflicted with a series of respiratory ailments, including some weird month-long coughing affliction, that have left me barely enough energy to write a tweet or two, never mind write stories and thoughtful blog posts. It is slowly getting under control and I hope to be back to the keyboard soon. In my decrepitude I have been able to do some thinking about writing, and hit on some good ideas for continuing Aetas Nex and fleshing out the background of the main elements of the "Skull-face" story.

Third, that damned Cory Doctorow wrote a great piece on "radical presentism" in SF that is full of notions to respond to and ideas to unpack. I share his conclusion, but I think that there is much more to say about how this works.

OK, running out of steam already. More later.

From Hell's Heart, I Write at Thee!

Despite still being under the weather, I managed to hammer out a new Forces of Geek column. Who knew it would be "timely" and all that, given SF Signal's Mind Meld question today?

Right after submitting the column I followed one of the links from the Mind Meld thing to a larger discussion collated at Lou Anders' blog. I love the quotation from James Enge about the effect of mainstreaming, but don't we already have that today with some of the paranormal romance stuff and SyFy movies? I think his remarks, and the article Lou points to, require some more consideration. After all, this kind of stuff is an important part of the social life of SF (as I talk about in my FoG column!).

But I am out of juice for today. Hopefully a bit more rest and good night's sleep will knock this bug or whatever out of me.

Completion

I am happy to announce that the following projects are done:

1) My new column at Forces of Geek is up: go enjoy it!

2) I finished the rough draft of my story "A Fine Day to Watch the Dragons Die." Hopefully it will be read by a few folks and commented on so that I can get back to it over the weekend and polish it up. It needs work, especially towards the end, but it feels like the important elements are all there. I am thrilled that it's done. And what really got it done was giving myself a firm deadline and a basic word count. When I got stuck about 2/3rds of the way through, I had to set some endpoints, and once I did, it got done. Whew!

3) I decided on the next story and have begun writing it. The working title is "Skull-face, Hogtamer, and the Dead Cricket Society." It's hard to describe; the idea came out of a daydream I had after selling some Hunter S. Thompson and Beat books to what appeared to be a goth biker gang. It's part post-apocalyptic fable, part postmodern farce, and part thought-exercise on what's important about life. I think the hardest part will be maintaining a consistency of tone that incorporates all of those pieces. And not going insane half-way through.

4) Earlier in the week, in a bout of brain-freeze over my writing, I did some thumb-drive cleaning and I think I finally have all of my writing files in one place on my computer (and backed up on 2 different thumbs!). I found a lot of cool ideas and silly fragments. They aren't well-organized within the file, but they are there. I have a big pile of ideas; now to start breathing life into them. . . .

5) I think I found a good image to use for Fantasy Magazine's 2009 Halloween Flash Fiction and Graphic Contest. I just need to make sure I can use it. And, y'know, write a good 1,000-word story in a week.

Because I said I would. . .

. . . even though it's about 12 hours too late!

Prepare for Blogging Tidbit Madness!

1) Writing output was low this week because the family was home. My wife is a Renaissance Faire performer and is on the road some weekends, and recently her father needed some help, so she is with him every other week, which means that I see her and our daughter for about 4 days every two weeks. This is a temporary thing for now, but it means that when they are here I try to concentrate on them and very little writing gets done.

2) However, I did do some organizing, which was great because I found some ideas and writing info in odd places. And I did it while engaging in razzberry contests with my daughter :-).

3) Felicia Day was interviewed by Wired AND Time this week. Quite a coup for an indy web entertainer! She was also on Jimmy Fallon's talk show, so she's getting some heavy press attention for herself and The Guild. I came to watch The Guild rather late (end of Season 2), but it's a great show and, most importantly to me, well-written. The amount of care that goes into the series, and the obvious affinity that Day has for the subject matter, comes through very clearly and makes it even more enjoyable to watch. I like the fact that despite their length each installment feels like a full TV episode. I credit some of that to the combination of concise dialogue and narrative pacing; without musical interludes, random pans of exterior settings, and other fillers that you find in many TV shows, The Guild boils your viewing experience down to the essentials and lets you connect to the moment the characters are experiencing. Without a lot of foreshadowing or extraneous character interaction, you are immediately plunged into the story. That unfiltered, yet down-to-earth, quality gives The Guild its combination of punch and hilarity.

4) It's Steampunk Month at Tor.com. This seems gimmicky, but so far I've enjoyed what they have to offer, including a guest blog from Cherie Priest and a roundup of steampunk animation, including the wonderfully-done The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello. I highly recommend it; not only is the story good, but the shadow-puppet animation sets an eerie, crisp visual tone to the tale. It is another good example of how short-form web entertainment can be done professionally and wonderfully.

WIP: "A Fine Day to Watch the Dragons Die"

This is the first page of the short story that I'm about to finish (in draft form). It looks to be about 4000 words, maybe a bit more. I like it, but I'm not sure I'm getting the point across.


Dorlé awoke to a rumbling chorus of dragon whimpers.

As he opened his eyes he had to shield them from scabs of mud that were flaking off of the hut wall next to his cot. The ground trembled like a rapped drumhead and sent a quivering melody through the stances and framework of the little shelter. Dorlé pulled his thin blanket over his head and buried his face into the bundled old deerhide that was his pillow, and waited for the shaking and flaking to stop.

After a few minutes quiet returned to the hut. Dorlé slipped out of his cot and right into his sandals. He looked around as he rose; the other two cots were empty, one neatly covered with a threadbare quilt, the other bereft of bedding. Two cups and plates sat on the only other piece of furniture in the shelter: a high, three-legged table with a round top, like an ogre’s barstool. A breadbox was between the plates, and a single bowl, crudded with soup stains. Near the table was a small fire whose thin smoke wound up to the smokehole in the roof, and through a few other holes near it.

This hut would be poor shelter if it rained much here. Dorlé went to the fire and opened the small stewpot that was hung over it on a rickety tripod. A burst of steam rolled out of it and he turned his head away so fast his ‘prentice lock whipped around and snapped its small iron burr into his forehead. He yelped and skipped away from the fire entirely. He stood rubbing his temple for a moment, swearing in his mother tongue. The dragons didn’t seem to know Kharutun, so he felt it safe to question their heritage and the gods they had served in the language’s harsh vowels and sighing suffixes.

He turned back to the fire and sniffed the steam curling over the stewpot. Old meat and sickly broth fought over the honor of making him gag. He coughed and snorted, and this time skipped away from the fire to the back door and pushed through the stiff goatskin cover into the morning.

He emerged into the beigeness of another day. The sun was filtered through clouds the color of trail dust and worn saddle leather. A few tints of gray delineated cloud banks, but the light that reached the ground was the kind that muted brightness and washed out dark tones. Sky and earth were the same color, except that the earth had slightly more vegetation. Dorlé walked to the small garden plot behind the hut and surveyed its lack of bounty. When they had first arrived, they had planted herbs, medicinals, wonder-leafs, and even some flowers. Bristletack had been coaxed to form around the plot to keep out vermin and a night-singer had been granted a home in the middle of the plot to call out when unfamiliar people came near.

Now it was little more than several disheveled rows of withered shoots and petals. A few things flourished, like the garlic and the pepperleaf. The toughest herbs and tubers stood out amongst the clusters of limp stems and frills. Dorlé walked up and down the rows, toeing a few plants, then he shrugged and bent down to pull what he hoped was some sort of onion. “All dying,” he muttered as he dug at the ground, which actually seemed quite black and moist.

“Not dying,” a dry voice said behind him. He tilted his head backwards until he could see the speaker, who stood with a slight bend on the roof of the world to Dorlé’s overturned eyes. “Not dying at all, pupil. Just. . .” the man sighed, his thick master’s braid, weighed down with silver stars and small wire-bound rubies, swaying next to his downcast face. “Just. . . bereft.”