Update January 2023!

Ahhhh it’s a whole new year! Reminder that this is mirrored from my Patreon, which I encourage you to check out and subscribe to if you’re interested in more details about what I’m working on and lots of chatter about writing in general.

I usually seem to hit the ground running in the new year. It’s such a great time to make lists, review and assess plans, and get going on them. I’ve already finished reading a whole book, Also a Poet by Ada Calhoun, which is extraordinary. It’s a memoir about writing the actual memoir you’re reading. I loved it so much and highly recommend it. I’ve also already sent off a new short story, one of the three I wrote in December. (And…it just got rejected. Just got the email. Welp, time to send it right back out again.)

Great, right? Mind you, I usually crash by the time I get to March, when some of the plans start to go awry and I’m staring down the barrel of the rest of the year. I’m telling myself that recognizing the pattern is half the battle of dealing with it. We’ll see how that goes.

This month’s lesson: How to start. I mean this to be really basic: how to start when you’ve never written before. Every now and then I talk to someone who tells me they have ideas, their mind is full of stories. But they’ve never written. They don’t know how to start. I’ll offer some suggestions.

Work: Started a new thing. I spent all last year making notes and it and it’s taken awhile to find my way into it, but I finally did. I also have two more short stories to revise. Let’s see what else I can get out the door this month.

Two of my succulents are blooming. Woohoo!

A couple of announcements:

The fanzine Journey Planet invited me to write for their special issue all about Andor, which I was happy to do. It’s free to download, check it out!

I’ll be a Guest of Honor at Bubonicon in Albuquerque in August.

I almost went to see a movie and then I didn’t. Attention span still wonky.

TV: We really are living in a new golden age of fantasy, aren’t we? I’ve now had the same realization I had with superhero movies a few years ago: I don’t have to see every single one. I used to make such an effort to see them all, remembering the times we didn’t have any. Well, now it’s that way with epic fantasy. I can entirely skip House of the Dragon and Wheel of Time and not feel bad about it at all. Instead, I binged The Witcher: Blood Origin, which was…abrupt. Only four episodes, so just when I got attached to all the characters, it’s over. Minnie Driver makes a shockingly cool elf, though.

I’m adoring Willow. It’s so weird! I love how teenager-y the teenagers are. I love how it’s lining up tropes and shooting them down. I love the modern music. (I’m also the only person I know who loves the soundtrack to Ladyhawke so there we are.) I love the callbacks to the movie. I’m so pleased to see a sequel when everything else has been prequels. (Even Andor. As much as I enjoyed it, it’s rather elegiac and sad since we know how Andor’s story ends.) I’m just really enjoying it and sometimes that’s all I need.

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September 2022 Update

Update! State of the Me! (Reminder that I’m primarily on Patreon these days.)

It’s September! Cue the litany of “Wow this year is going so fast.” I’m actually looking forward to autumn. Summer has been kind of a slog. Too hot, and too much feeling like I’ve got one foot in the pandemic world and one foot testing out the new normal. Jumping back and forth between them. Nothing much happening despite all the fires I’ve been lighting. (Am I cooking something? Committing arson? Who knows!) That first hint of cool has started creeping into the air, and the summer birds have migrated – the blackbirds and grackles are gone, the warblers and swallows are mostly gone. I’m starting to look out for the waterbirds that spend their winter here in Colorado.

This month’s lesson:  Dealing with rejection. I know this is a huge deal for lots of aspiring writers. I learned to deal with it because I started out too young to know any better. I’ll tell you how I feel about it and suggest some concrete strategies for getting over it.

I spent last weekend at Bubonicon, Albuquerque New Mexico’s local science fiction convention. I’m so out of practice that I almost forgot to tell anyone I was going! Gotta start back with that publicity thing… Like the rest of the summer, it almost felt normal. (Almost… as one friend said, “We’ve all gone feral!” Yeah, and I maybe kind of like being feral?)  I had actual conversations with multiple people! I bought art in the art show! And I got a lifer bird while staying with a friend nearby:  a ladder backed woodpecker.

What I’m working on: Well. What am I working on? I have a short story I need to write for a workshop I’m going to in a couple of weeks. I’m still plowing ahead on the current novel. I’m almost at the point where I need to stop and go back from the beginning to fill in all the holes. And I just got notes back from my agent on the previous novel. Suddenly, my brain is full again and that feels good.

The Cormac and Amelia Case Files is happening. This is a compilation of all my Cormac and Amelia stories, and will have a print edition. I’ll post pre-order links when I have them. At some point I’ll talk about my experience with self publishing, why I went hybrid, and all that stuff. But this is going to be my big release this year. 

Reading:  I’ve been in a bit of a reading lull, but I did finish and can recommend Cosplay: A History, by Andrew Liptak. It leans heavily into Star Wars and the 501st because Andrew’s a member, but it also digs into earlier histories of costume and fandom – Victorian costume parties, historical re-enactment, and so on. People have liked dressing up as other people for a very long time!

Watching:  I’m still so far behind on my watching. I loved Prey, the latest in the Predator franchise. I’ve been a fan of Amber Midthunder since Legion (one of my favorite TV shows of the last ten years) and she’s wonderful here.  I watched The Sandman, and it was fine – but it’s not clear from the outset that it leans heavily into horror/dark fantasy and people need to know that. Looks beautiful. I read the graphic novel something like twenty years ago and don’t remember it well, so can’t speak to it as an adaptation. The one thing I tell people about the book:  It’s a product of its time, very 90’s post-punk. Same milieu that produced The Crow and Worlds of Darkness RPGs. And while I was exactly the right age for all that when it was coming out, it never spoke to me as strongly as it did a lot of other people my age. I was all over Wild Cards, Star Wars spin-offs, and The X-Files.

And…it’s back to work. Is it too early to be looking for the first snow?

state of the desk & the vaccine

In the interest of getting more data points out there, I had a pretty noticeable reaction to the J&J vaccine last week. It started about 4-5 hours after getting the shot, like a pretty sudden onset of flu symptoms. You know how on day 5 of being sick, you start to feel better but you’re still all wrung out and your whole body feels like it’s been beaten up and you have no energy? That’s what I had. Lasted for maybe a day and a half, then I was fine. No pain or soreness at the injection site. Anecdotally, I’m hearing about a huge range of reactions, from “nothing at all” to “in bed for three days.” I landed in the middle. An odd and interesting experience. It was weirdly kind of nice to have a reason to just go to bed and not worry about things for a little while.

Meanwhile, it’s been a pretty good week. Spring has sprung, my crocus came up late but they did come up, and we’re due for another spring snow which will be fun.

And I’m working on stuff. I’ve got a whole bunch of new thoughts about the War of 1812, how it seems to have been mostly organized by really incompetent people and it might have gone very differently if that had not been the case. This reading has me thinking about the Star Trek vs. the Expanse models of space battles.

Also, I made chicken pineapple curry last night and it was REALLY GOOD.

next research topic…

Working on a new thing. I say that a lot, don’t I…

(Image is a book cover: 1812: The Navy’s War, by George C. Daughan)

My library is still closed but has curbside pickup, which is lovely, except that I can’t browse, boo. But I can pick up my books and then pickup my curbside BBQ dinner the next block over and nice food plus new reading makes for a very nice evening indeed.

 

reading 2020

According to my record I read 48 books in 2020. This includes novellas and graphic novels, of which there were quite a few. This didn’t include a lot of books I started and didn’t finish. Twelve of those were non-fiction. I’m feeling fortunate that my reading brain didn’t shut off last year like it did for many people I know. I will say that a lot of my reading was comfort reading: I think I re-read most of the Vorkosigan Saga, some Jane Austen, and some Star Wars stuff.

A lot of specifics I already talked about throughout the year, but here are my favorites:

Novels: Network Effect, the latest Murderbot book by Martha Wells, which I thought really moved the whole idea forward and took it to the next level. I can’t wait for the next book.

A Brightness Long Ago, by Guy Gavriel Kay. Re-discovering Kay through his latest couple of novels, in his re-imagined Renaissance Italy, has been so lovely. I read his books avidly through the 90’s and just kind of stopped. Glad to start up again.

The Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel. Just masterful. Some of the best fiction I’ve ever read, full stop. It also gave me so much insight into the culture of the Tudor court, which I’ve been reading about academically for 25 years, but it’s never really come alive for me until these novels.

Star Wars: A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller tells the story of how Kanan and Hera from Rebels met. It’s adorable and it made me happy.

And in non-fiction, I’ve been recommending Jack Epps Jr.’s Screenwriting is Rewriting to every writer I know and we’re all still raving about it.

 

media consumption update

I’ve just finished reading The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad. I love Conrad’s writing and there are still a number of books of his I haven’t read. I’m working through them. This one is slow, but great, if that makes sense. So one of the things I love about Conrad — he’s been elevated to the canon, he’s considered a classic, literary author. But that wasn’t how he published. He was a contemporary of folks like H. Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle, and he was writing the same kinds of things they were — adventure stories, mysteries, and so on. I mean, he’s such a good writer and his work is complicated and deep. . . but read him back-to-back with Haggard and you suddenly realize that Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim are adventure thrillers. I love that.

The Secret Agent is a crime novel. It’s also a whole collection of character studies. But the chapter where it all comes together, the murder that marks the climactic moment. . .it’s masterful. Whew. I’m taking notes.

Moving on to my current obsession, The Witcher, which I have now watched through twice. How long do we have to wait for more? Hrm.

Wanting not just a fantasy fix, but the very specific fantasy fix I feel like The Witcher offers, I rewatched Dragonslayer.  I know I’ve sung the praises of this 1981 movie before. But it’s still great!  And it really does push the same buttons as The Witcher, which made me happy. I’m trying to figure out what makes this kind of fantasy tick. I think Willow and Ladyhawke fall into the same category.

What I’ve got so far:

Likeable, competent characters who are basically good people trying to do good. Even if they are wearing black leather.

Magic that is commonplace but also wondrous. That is, this is a world where there’s a kind of standard magic technology — but that only makes it all the more surprising and inspiring when someone pulls out some real genuine badass wild magic. It’s about pushing past what the characters think is possible.

The world may be grimdark, but the characters aren’t. The protagonists coming together to look out for each other in a grimdark world is one of the great appeals of this kind of story.

Doesn’t take itself too seriously. Jokes are allowed. Poking fun at itself is allowed. Silliness is allowed.  Something Connie Willis says about romantic comedies — for a romantic comedy to work, the story can make fun of everything except the feelings of the main characters for each other. Mock and satirize whatever you want — but that relationship has to be real and genuine and honest.  I feel like there’s something similar going on with this kind of fantasy.  It can be funny, it can be cheesy. But there’s a core to the story — the goodness of the main characters, the power of magic when it’s used unselfishly — that has to be in earnest.

And that’s what I’ve got so far.

 

reading review 2019

I read 48 books in 2019. This includes novellas and graphic novels — if you take out the novellas especially, I didn’t read that many books at all. But there’s some really good work being done in novellas right now, so why not?

Eleven of these were re-reads, which seems like a big number. A chunk of that is the Ursula K. Le Guin collected Earthsea novels that came out last winter — read the whole thing, most of which I’d read before, and I decided to count those separately rather than as just one book. Several were revisiting books I read as kids, because I’ve been interested in getting a handle on my teenage/preteen reading aesthetic. I really liked short zippy adventure stories as a kid. I feel like this explains a lot about me.

Ten of these were non-fiction.

Four of these were Robin Hood novels, not my own. I haven’t even scratched the surface of Robin Hood novels out there — four new ones, not my own, came out just this year. I’m debating whether I should try to read more. This is a subject where everybody has wildly different takes. It’s fascinating.

My Robin Hood is completely different from any of the others I’ve read. Completely. As I said, it’s fascinating. You know, I do think I want to read some other takes on him. . .

 

books everywhere

I’ve got a bunch of books on my coffee table at any given moment. Just stuff I’m going over and want to have on hand. Or stuff I want to go over, or keep meaning to look at, and so on. This is also a pretty good snapshot of what’s happening in my brain most of the time. Which is why I’m usually distracted by five or ten or twenty different things. I don’t really mind so much. I usually manage to get stuff done, and I’m never bored.

Here’s what’s currently on my coffee table:

Marvelocity, Alex Ross. My favorite comic artist’s retrospective of his work with Marvel heroes, plus talk about his journey as an artist.

The Company They Keep, Diana Pavlac Glyer.  An academic examination of collaboration between the various members of the Inklings.

Jane Austen In Style, Susan Watkins. Survey of the fashion, culture, and manners of the English Regency period. (Yes, I want to write more Regency werewolf stories.)

Lord of the Rings Location Guidebook, Ian Brodie. For possible New Zealand trip.

Respect the Spindle, Abby Franquemont. Because I’m trying to actually learn more about spinning rather than just doing it.

Handspindles, Bette Hochberg. Ditto.

The Book of Kells. The guidebook from the Trinity Library exhibit, just because.

Celtic Heritage, Alwyn Rees and Brinley Rees. Still in absorbing mode from various early Ireland research.

Early Celtic Art in Ireland, Eammon P. Kelly. Ditto.

This will probably all change in a couple of months.

 

 

Cherryh’s Merchanter Universe

I’ve recently had a chance to dive back into one of my favorite space opera universes, C. J. Cherryh’s Merchanter series. There’s a new book out this year co-written with Jane Fancher, Alliance Rising: The Hinder Stars, with the hope of more to follow.

I finished it and immediately had to re-read the first book in the series I ever read, Finity’s End. They’re tied together in some pretty big ways. Some epic ways. The ship Finity’s End features in both, but in Finity’s End we’re at the end of Captain James Robert Neihart’s career. In Alliance Rising we’re at the start of it. One of the main characters in Finity’s End is Fletcher Neihart, and a big deal is made of the fact that he’s named for one of the heroes in the ship’s history. In Alliance Rising, we meet that heroic Fletcher — before the self-sacrificing heroism became necessary. And ugh, we’re in for a ride in any future sequels.

You see why I had to immediately dive back in to the earlier (chronologically later) novel to get my bearings? It’s a bit of a gut punch and I’m emotional about it all over again.

I’m trying to figure out why these books draw me in so hard and why I get so wrapped up in them, because on the surface, technically, they shouldn’t work. They’re full of exposition. Long chapters of nothing but exposition, with a few observations from the viewpoint characters. I thought maybe it was just Alliance Rising, that the writing was maybe a bit stilted after so long away from the world, but no, Finity’s End does the same thing. I remember being swamped by exposition in Downbelow Station and Cyteen. These books dive deep into the four-way politics of merchant Families, stations, Earth, and Union. We get lots of descriptions of trade routes and why everyone is suspicious of Cyteen and why the sovereignty of the Family ships is so important and why some stations are rich and others aren’t, and what Earth has to do with it all, and how hyperspace works, and, and…

And then, just when I think I’m getting bored, I get to a chapter with a sharply drawn character moment and I start crying because somehow, all that exposition and the people involved with it have hooked me and I’m emotionally caught. Ross Monahan and the Galway, you guys. Broke my freaking heart.

I think Moby Dick does something similar. That one gets dinged for all the exposition, the seemingly endless details of whaling. But you need all that to understand what’s happening. By the time you’re neck-deep in the climactic battle, the story doesn’t have time to stop and explain — and it doesn’t need to. The book was teaching you how to read itself the whole time. I think the Merchanter books do the same.

Writing workshop are always telling us to avoid long passages of exposition.

But then I’m reminded of the primary, number one, rule of writing, as told to me by John Crowley:  Whatever you can get away with.

You’d just better be sure you can get away with it.

 

Tolkien and Chess and Gaudy Night

I took a break from Robin Hood this weekend to see the new biopic Tolkien; the Longmont Theater Company’s production of Chess, which I had never seen despite knowing the music from it; and to finish reading Dorothy Sayers’ Gaudy Night and then watching the TV version with Edward Petherbridge and Harriet Walter (who also played the very sympathetic medic who soothes Chewbacca’s ego in The Force Awakens, which is just wonderful, isn’t it?).

Tolkien:  This is about J.R.R. Tolkien’s formative years, his boyhood friendships, his romance with Edith, and his time in the war. It’s very beautiful and heartfelt. I have some quibbles, and not with the bio part of it but with the story part — it really needed another scene with Ronald and Christopher after the war. I personally also could have used a lot more of Nicholas Hoult reciting Middle English but I’m sure that’s just me. I’ve got a long review of this coming up from Lightspeed.

Chess:  Much more operatic than I was expecting. The local talent is very good, the music is very good. It moves very fast. And the characters are all just really unlikable, aren’t they? I want to see it done as a solid period piece — this one wasn’t, which is fine, but it felt wonky.

Gaudy Night:  All right, I’m completely smitten with Peter and Harriet now. Why did no one tell me just how ragingly feminist this novel is? It’s great. Rwaor.