Archive for the ‘Recommended Media’ Category

The Downside of Reading Popular Nonfiction and Blogging

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’ve real­ized that most of the inter­est­ing thoughts I’ve had lately are about the non­fic­tion book I am read­ing.  However, I hes­i­tate to share the cool things I learned in there because The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements is pop­u­lar enough that a good chunk of peo­ple are prob­a­bly read­ing it already, and I don’t want to just post cool tid­bits of sci­ence trivia that come from read­ing the book.  Well, I want  to, but I’m not sure it’s appropriate?

Rather than give away any of the book’s knowl­edge, I’ll just talk a lit­tle about the thoughts I have while read­ing it.  You should def­i­nitely read the book for yourself.

A book like this that cov­ers a lot of his­tor­i­cal sci­ence gives me a lot of “what-​​if” thoughts.  Especially because so much chem­istry was impor­tant in the even­tual cre­ation of the atomic bomb—there are var­i­ous moments you can look at and say, “What if they didn’t really fig­ure that out there?” And then there are alter­nate uni­verse ideas, where you think, “what if it didn’t actu­ally work that way?”  Miniature thought experiments/​story pos­si­bil­i­ties come to mind quite often with some­thing like this.

It also reminds me what sci­en­tists, real sci­en­tists, are like, and how they behave—what their dreams and career aspi­ra­tions are like.  I was once on track to be one of those peo­ple, ulti­mately decid­ing to give up aca­d­e­mic sci­ence for work­ing with com­put­ers.  I had for­got­ten what it was like to live in that world of the mind that they do for such huge chunks of their day.  I had for­got­ten some of the eccen­tric­i­ties of the per­son­al­i­ties as well.  Which is funny con­sid­er­ing one of my really good friends is Mike Brotherton, an astron­omy pro­fes­sor, and my father-​​in-​​law is a pro­fes­sor in mol­e­c­u­lar biol­ogy and organic chemistry.

It also shocks me how the knowl­edge of how mol­e­c­u­lar bonds work, and how to read the peri­odic table, never really left me, even though I haven’t had a need to do it in ages.  I have a pretty weak mem­ory for many things.  I was telling some­one the other day that I’m mis­er­able at cross­word puzzles—not because I have a bad vocab­u­lary, but because it tends to oper­ate in only one direc­tion.  I rec­og­nize words and know what they mean, but if you pro­vide me the def­i­n­i­tion in cross­word for­mat, I often draw a blank.   Additionally, I tend to remem­ber big pic­ture broad the­ory, but when it comes to specifics, I rarely recall any­thing but the eccen­tric and strange.   Until some­thing prompts me, and then it can all come flood­ing back.  I haven’t thought about elec­tron shells since sopho­more year in col­lege, but here I am fol­low­ing along with this book and it’s like I learned it all yesterday. 

I read books like this in the hope that they will spark a good story I can tell, but really, the pure knowl­edge I gain for my own ben­e­fit is just fun.  I don’t care if I can’t work a story out of the details of the events sur­round­ing the dis­cov­ery of yttrium.   Just know­ing it makes me feel like a more evolved per­son.  Maybe that’s enough.  Maybe *every­thing* I do doesn’t have to some­how con­tribute to some vague career goal I have. 

The Simpler Times of Early X-​​Files Episodes

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Alien inva­sion, gov­ern­ment con­spir­acy.  Feathered hair.  I’ve been watch­ing a lot of X-​​Files (up to sea­son 3 right now) on Netflix, and it’s mak­ing me very nos­tal­gic for the 90s.   Despite being a show about evil con­spir­a­cies, it still has this inno­cent vibe to it, a feel­ing that the world was sim­pler then.  It was still con­sid­ered dark fic­tion that the gov­ern­ment would tor­ture peo­ple, for instance. America pre-​​2001 really was a dif­fer­ent place. 

It takes watch­ing a show like this to really remind me of that.  There’s a scene in which Scully pre-​​buys an air­plane ticket to one loca­tion and then, at the ter­mi­nal, buys a new ticket for another des­ti­na­tion, and the attendee doesn’t bat an eye.  No iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is shown.  Off she goes.  Shocking!  And yet I can remem­ber how in high school I took the place of another stu­dent on the Model U.N. team and flew to Chicago on his ticket, in his name.  No prob­lem at all.  I held the ticket and that’s all I needed to board.

Certainly, the show reminds us of the olden days, but not always in good ways.  I’m appalled at how often Scully is used not as a pro­tag­o­nist but as a moti­va­tor or plot point.  It seems like she’s being kid­napped or held hostage in every other episode, and it’s always up to Mulder to save the day.  There was finally a moment where Scully was in peril, about to be devoured by a fat-​​sucking vam­pire when, out of nowhere, the mon­ster is shot.  And it’s not Mulder!  It’s the other woman who was about the be the vampire’s vic­tim.  The scene shocked me for no rea­son other than how it broke the for­mula finally.  I imag­ine it passed with­out notice when the episode aired, but it seemed like a move for­ward as far as the gen­der roles.  Additionally, the episode fea­tured an old-​​fashioned detec­tive who doesn’t think women like Scully should be work­ing such cases, and he gets eaten by the mon­ster in the sec­ond act. Methinks the writer of that episode knew what he or she was doing when they wrote it.

On another tan­gent, I learned that the writer of my favorite episodes, the ones with darkly comic sen­si­bil­i­ties, Darin Morgan, now con­sults on Fringe.  This guy wrote bril­liant, hilar­i­ous episodes such as “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” (in which a psy­chic sug­gests that Mulder will die via auto­erotic asphyx­i­a­tion and that Scully never dies), or my all-​​time favorite, “War of the Coprophages” about cock­roaches.  Digging around on Wikipedia revealed to me that not only did he write for the show—he got his start play­ing the creepy fluke man in an early mon­ster of the week episode.    Darin Morgan, if you’re out there listening—you’re a hero of mine and have had a huge impact on my sense of humor.  Sorry you had to spend so much time dressed up as a human fluke.  That episode gave me and count­less other kids night­mares though, so you could say it paid off in a way.

This is how I know I’m get­ting older.  I begin to obsess about things from the past more than I do about mod­ern things.   Nostalgia is not a young man’s emo­tion.  But I miss those days when the biggest worry we had was that the gov­ern­ment was lying to us about the exis­tence of extrater­res­tri­als. I miss the days when I was cred­u­lous enough to believe in UFOs, ghosts, and the like. The world was both more sim­ple and more won­drous then.  As I grow older, the world merely grows more com­plex.  But per­haps that’s my own fault.  Wonder is, after all, in the eye of the beholder.

Books Read in 2010

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I read more books in 2010 than I prob­a­bly did in the three years prior.   I don’t regret read­ing any of the books on this list.  Here are some quick thought son each.

1. Transition by Iain M Banks

I picked this up because I’m a huge fan of Zelazny’s Amber series, and the cover copy reminded me of it, with the trav­el­ing between worlds.  Parts of this book worked well for me, and parts did not (most notably, the unre­li­able nar­ra­tor aspect).  I would read fur­ther books in the milieu if they are published.

2. The Blade Itself, 3. Before They Are Hanged, 4. Last Argument of of Kings by Joe Abercrombie

It’s nice once and a while to read an entire series back to back.  The strong char­ac­ter­i­za­tions and rapid plot­ting worked well for me. 

5. Photographing Nature by Ralph A. Clevenger

I learned a lit­tle here, but not much.  Wet-​​belly pho­tog­ra­phy being the strongest con­cept I took away (macro pho­tog­ra­phy, taken at ground level, using a trash com­pactor bag to keep your­self dry).

6. Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

Weird fan­tasy noir.  Very much enjoyed it, and will read Jeff’s books from now on.

7. Paragaea by Chris Roberson

This took me back to what it was like to be 13 and read­ing the John Carter series.  I didn’t want it to end.

8. Monster by A. Lee Martinez

I enjoyed the pro­tag­o­nist quite a bit here, espe­cially his voice.

9. Linchpin by Seth Godin

This book will influ­ence my think­ing about cre­ative work for decades to come. Highly rec­om­mended for all artists and writers.

10. His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik

Now I know what all the fuss was about.  Temeraire is a really mem­o­rable and lik­able character.

11. Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik

More Temeraire can only be a good thing.

12. Rework by the 47 Signals Guys

Another very influ­en­tial book on my think­ing regard­ing cre­ative work.  I didn’t find it quite so con­tro­ver­sial as some did.

13. Dead Mens Boots by Mike Carey

Every day read­ing a new Carey book is like Christmas.

14. Black Powder War by Naomi Novik

Novik’s China was fas­ci­nat­ing, and Temeraire is com­ing along nicely in his evo­lu­tion as a character.

15. Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Jungle City by Greg Grandin

I learned a lot about Henry Ford and his ethics and prin­ci­ples here,  and while at times he was quite repug­nant, there was some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing about his drive and deter­mi­na­tion.  Even his fail­ures, doc­u­mented so well, are inter­est­ing lessons.  I hope to write some space col­o­niza­tion sto­ries that take lessons from Fordlandia.

16. A Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik

That dragon is just awesome.

17. For the Win by Cory Doctorow

I’m still try­ing to learn how to write about the inter­net in an inter­est­ing way from Cory.  I gath­ered a hand­ful of lessons from this one.

18. Kraken by China Mieville 

China Mieville spoofs urban fan­tasy.  This was a wild ride.

19. Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez

I read this as a meaty hard-​​cover.  Wonderful line work by Rodriguez and Hill sets the stage with fas­ci­nat­ing world build­ing for what I hope con­tin­ues to be a com­pelling series.

20. Mice Templar by Brian J. L. Glass and Michael Avon Oeming

Epic, in the true sense.  The art­work is breathtaking.

21. Scott Pilgrim Volume 6

A very sat­is­fy­ing con­clu­sion to one of the best graphic novel series in a decade.  Although I liked the end­ing of the movie better.

22. Ghostopolis by Doug Ten Napel

No one does whimsy in graphic nov­els like Napel.  Tackling the after­life was a bold choice here that I thought paid off pretty well.

23. Transhuman, The Sword, DV8, Wasteland, Victorian Undead, Pax Romana, and more comics

DV8 is espe­cially great as a med­i­ta­tion on super­pow­ers and gods.  Pax Romana was the usual aston­ish­ing work by Hickman.

24. Writing for Comics & Graphic Novels by Peter David

Valuable lessons I’ll prob­a­bly never put to use, but I’m glad I read it.

25. The Elephantmen by Richard Starkings with art by Moritat

Lush art­work, detailed world build­ing, and really fan­tas­tic char­ac­ter in the form of Hieronymus (Hip) Flask. I hope they make a movie.

26. Year’s Best Science Fiction 27th Annual, edited by Gardner Dozois

The usual astound­ing col­lec­tion of short fiction.

27. Dark Reflections by Samuel R. Delany

Recommended by Nick Mamatas—this is my first Delany and cer­tainly won’t be my last. 

28. About Writing by Samuel R. Delany

Fantastic lessons about plot­ting and struc­ture to be learned here.  Must read for writers.

29. Lake Woebegotten by Harrison Geillor

I read an ARC of this and devoured it in a sin­gle sit­ting.  That Geillor nailed the voice and the genre, syn­the­siz­ing some­thing supris­ingly fresh.

30. Kill the Dead by Richard Kadrey

Sandman Slim is back!  I am a huge fan of Kadrey’s super­nat­ural noir style.

31. The Bookman by Lavie Tidar

Nobody writes like Lavie Tidar. I never had any clue where this book was going.  I’m really look­ing for­ward to pick­ing up the next one. 

32. Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

More super­nat­ural noir, set in South Africa with really, really good world build­ing and an inter­est­ing sys­tem of magic.

33. Shipbreaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

Paolo writes the future not as we want it to be, but as it will prob­a­bly turn out, and it breaks your heart.  Anything he writes is a must-​​read for me.

34. Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld

The world build­ing here is just amaz­ing.  We have less of the awe­some biotech from the first, but more giant robot awe­some.  I can’t wait for more.

35. The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry

I lis­tened to this on my road trip to Ohio for World Fantasy, and I was utterly enthralled.  Stephen is not just a national trea­sure of Britain—he’s a trea­sure for all of us.

I’m happy to dis­cuss any of these fur­ther in the com­ments.  Just prompt me!

Recommended Viewing: The Sleep Dealer

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I have often thought that the future of sci­ence fic­tion isn’t in tales of first world nations like the United States. The future sto­ries we should be explor­ing and con­tem­plat­ing more are the ones involv­ing (and told by res­i­dents of) life on the fringes, in the fave­las and the bor­der towns, in the devel­op­ing world, where raw human­ity bumps up against the shiny and anti­sep­tic American cap­i­tal­ist way.

Most do not live the lives of rel­a­tive lux­ury we do, but one of the promises of glob­al­ism has been said to be an ele­va­tion of those who are in poverty. Will those liv­ing in Brazil, Mexico, Kenya, or China one day know lives with bet­ter amenities,health care, and basic nutri­tion? Or will the same web of post-​​colonialism, transna­tional bank­ing deal­ing from decks stacked against the poor, and cor­rupt gov­ern­ment regimes keep third world coun­tries rooted in poverty?

The Sleep Dealer is an exam­i­na­tion of American glob­al­iza­tion as it impacts our lives today, where resent­ment to ille­gal immi­gra­tion in America is as high as it ever has been, but where there are still jobs to be had for those who brave the cross­ing (at least, prior to our eco­nomic woes). The world of the Sleep Dealer is not so dif­fer­ent from our own, except in a few very impor­tant ways.

The United States of the sleep dealer is mostly seen indi­rectly, through the lenses of telep­res­ence drones, or in the cramped con­fines of vir­tual oper­a­tor sta­tions where sol­diers pilot drones to pro­tect cor­po­ra­tized water in places like Mexico. America appears to be sealed off com­pletely to immi­gra­tion, at least from Mexico. A wall has been built, and it’s guarded by remote-​​controlled cam­eras with heavy machine guns. A future that seemed much less implau­si­ble 2 years ago when the anti-​​immigration sen­ti­ment seemed to reach its peak.

The U.S. of this future still requires cheap labor, even if it can­not abide the phys­i­cal pres­ence of immi­grants, legal or oth­er­wise. In this near future, vir­tual real­ity tech­nol­ogy, por­trayed in a way that would fit in with any cyber­punk novel (a series of plugs along the arms and shoul­ders that allow a kind of neural inter­face), allows the poor to work within the States. It’s best not to think too hard about the por­trayal of the equip­ment here, which seems more tai­lored toward a par­tic­u­lar visual aes­thetic than mak­ing log­i­cal sense. What was with the gas masks pip­ing in oxy­gen? Nevertheless–

The back­drop of the world in the Sleep Dealer feels lived in, well worn, and not implau­si­ble. Our pro­tag­o­nist is an intel­li­gent young man with an inter­est in escap­ing his tiny, water-​​impoverished farm­stead. He tin­kers with hack­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions satel­lites as a means of escape, but soon he over­hears some­thing that he should not, and the events of the story are set into motion.

In the after­math of a tragedy, Memo (a very Gibsonian name, I thought) trav­els to Tijuana to receive the implants that will allow him to work in the vir­tual labor fac­to­ries. He meets a woman, a writer who sells her mem­o­ries uploaded to the net­work, who takes an inter­est in his painful past and whose sto­ries about Memo are funded by a mys­te­ri­ous buyer.

I’ll say no more about the plot, except to say that while this is a sci­ence fic­tion film, it is also an inde­pen­dent film in that sense that it is not the tightly shot, leave-​​nothing-​​unanswered big stu­dio style of sto­ry­telling. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy is often dream­like, and the story’s gen­tle nar­ra­tion rein­force this. The story in some ways feels like a character’s lucid dream.

It’s a con­tem­pla­tive film in its pac­ing as well. Those expect­ing a tightly plot­ted thriller or action film should look else­where. This is a film that is more inter­ested in let­ting the audi­ence come to its own con­clu­sions than lec­tur­ing morally (or otherwise).

This was some­thing dif­fer­ent than what we are used to see­ing. While some of its ideas may not seem so fresh to long-​​time read­ers of sci­ence fic­tion, I don’t think this is some­thing we’ve ever seen por­trayed this way on the sil­ver screen. It’s worth pick­ing up on DVD or rent­ing at the very least.

Write a Complimentary Note to a Writer or Editor Day

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I am declar­ing today one of those non-​​holiday hol­i­day days.  You must all put this day in your cal­en­dar, and spread the word far and wide.

We all con­sume a tremen­dous amount of media these days, whether it be books, tv, mag­a­zines, or blogs.  But how often do we really express our grat­i­tude and appre­ci­a­tion to the cre­ators of these things?

I’ve long tried to make a point of writ­ing notes to writ­ers in my own field when I read a piece of work that I really enjoy.  I know how great it feels to receive such notes.  When you don’t make a lot of money in your cre­ative pur­suits, the appre­ci­a­tion from other human beings can really make it all worthwhile.

So, I declare today “Write a Complimentary Note to a Writer or Editor” Day.  Has some­one done a won­der­ful job with a story, or putting together an issue of a zine?  Tell them.  You’ll feel good, they will feel good, and a lit­tle more hap­pi­ness in these dark times can only be a good thing.

So how often should “Write a Complimentary Note to a Writer or Editor” day come about?  I’m think­ing weekly…  Hey, it’s not like Administrative Assistant Appreciation Day where you have to buy gifts.  This is just a few min­utes of your time to dig up an e-​​mail address and send a mes­sage to it.

The peo­ples of the inter­nets are so quick to say when we don’t like some­thing.  Let’s try to bal­ance that out a lit­tle bit.  Who’s with me?

5 Writing Lessons Learned from Land of the Lost

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This past week­end, I spent my hard-​​earned money to see the new Land of the Lost movie. In terms of enter­tain­ment, I do not feel that I got my money’s worth out of it. So here I sit, try­ing milk­ing a blog post out of the film in order to get some writ­ing lessons from the thing. I’ll be damned if I am going to actu­ally waste money in these hard eco­nomic times!

I guess my child­hood appre­ci­a­tion of the orig­i­nal series col­ored my expec­ta­tions for the film. No wor­ries, it won’t hap­pen again. At least, until G.I. Joe comes out. And Transformers 2. Ahem.

This post is going to be rife with spoil­ers, but hey, if you don’t want to see the film (which you shouldn’t), or god for­bid, saw it already, then those won’t bother you. Lessons behind the cut. Oh, and yes. I’m dis­card­ing my usual “don’t say it if you can’t say some­thing nice” ethos here, because, well, some­times you wake up on Monday morn­ing and want to tear apart a bad film. Onward!

Continue read­ing ›

5 Writing Lessons I Learned from Pixar

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

It’s my per­sonal opin­ion that some of the absolute best sto­ry­tellers on the planet today work for Pixar. Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant is eas­ily my favorite tra­di­tion­ally ani­mated film. And now, I think Up, the lat­est Pixar mas­ter­piece, has man­aged to top all the films that came before it.

I’m rarely as touched and thrilled by an expe­ri­ence as I am by watch­ing their movies.

  1. Writing doesn’t have to be YA, or for Adults. It can be both.

    The book world may have sto­ries divided down lines based on age and level of matu­rity, but the line between enter­tain­ment for adults and enter­tain­ment for younger chil­dren has never been as blurred as it has been by Pixar’s films. It’s indis­putable that their films are pop­u­lar with chil­dren. The sheer vol­ume of Nemo mer­chan­dise I see to this day backs up that asser­tion. At the aquar­ium, no kid could see the fish from that film with­out shout­ing out their names. “Look mommy, Dory!” I lis­tend to vari­a­tions of this for two hours.

    I think Pixar is the very model of fam­ily entertainment–films that can be enjoyed by every­one. And the more I think about it, the more I real­ize that much of chil­dren or YA lit­er­a­ture is the same way. There’s a kind of sub­con­cious stigma for adults read­ing YA fic­tion in my expe­ri­ence. I saw this often when Harry Potter was pop­u­lar. Some could not get past the idea that “Harry Potter is for kids.” It’s not. It’s for peo­ple who enjoy sto­ries. Just like Pixar’s films. I have a lot of respect for some­one who can tell a story so broadly appeal­ing, and per­son­ally, I want to learn how to do it too.

  2. Don’t Be Afraid to Put Heavy Stuff in a Light-​​Hearted Story

    This les­son has never been dri­ven home so well as by Up. The pro­tag­o­nist is a wid­ower, and we spend the first 20 min­utes get­ting to know his free-​​spirited wife. We see their lives pass before our eyes, and when she passes, we feel it deeply. I had a hard time keep­ing my eyes dry, I admit it.

    Funny with­out bite is like a fluffy cake. It lacks sub­stance and grav­ity. The under­tones cre­ated by the loss of a loved one, absen­tee fathers, and lifes not lived, those are the things that take an enjoy­able story from being fun but for­get­table to being great and unfor­get­table. Make us laugh. Make us cry. Make us laugh and cry in the same breath. If Pixar can do it, we can do it in our sto­ries and nov­els too.

  3. A character’s first inter­ac­tions can often tell you every­thing you need to know about them.

    In Wall-​​E, the first inter­ac­tions with another crea­ture we see are between the robot and a cock­roach. Does Wall-​​E smash the bug, dis­gusted? Of course not. He befriends it. The essence of his char­ac­ter is revealed in that sim­ple scene, and we fall for him.

    Pixar’s char­ac­ters appear­ances often reflect their per­son­al­ity, some­thing that can­not so eas­ily be done in fic­tion itself. But it’s not just their appear­ance. Watch each one of the films. In a few brief moments, we learn that Marlin will do any­thing for Nemo, that Woody is a leader and likes help­ing other toys, that Mr. Incredible is a bit full of him­self and dis­mis­sive of oth­ers, but loves his wife, and then, his fam­ily, very much, and that Remy loves food. Often, the cen­tral con­flict of the story arises from this char­ac­ter­i­za­tion as well. Wall-​​E needs to love some­one, and fol­lows EVE into space itself. Woody butts heads with Buzz. Mr. Incredible makes his own arch-​​nemesis because of his rude­ness. And so on.

  4. The work is found in the process of rewrit­ing. Also, write for yourself.

    In this inter­view with some of Pixar’s writ­ers, a cou­ple of com­ments really struck home with me, align­ing with things I had noticed from watch­ing the Behind-​​the-​​Scenes extras on their DVDs. Pixar doesn’t do focus groups. They write what they love. And they rewrite and rewrite until they get it the way they want. The story often changes dra­mat­i­cally in the course of revi­sions. Sometimes, we get obsessed with our first drafts, and our hopes rise or sink with the rel­a­tive suc­cess of it. I am par­tic­u­larly guilty of giv­ing up on sto­ries when the first draft doesn’t turn out as well as I imag­ined it.

  5. Amazing char­ac­ters can be born from the sim­plest of ideas.

    The gen­e­sis of the pro­tag­o­nist Walter in Up was a sim­ple sketch of a grumpy old man hold­ing a bal­loon. “Grumpy old man” is a hoary stereo­type, but stereo­types in and of them­selves aren’t wrong. It’s stop­ping with a stereo­type is a mis­take. From that sim­ple sketch, Pixar build a fully real­ized and appeal­ing char­ac­ter. They took some­one and made him both unpleas­ant and lov­able at the same time.

    Russell, seen right, is designed as a char­ac­ter to coun­ter­point every­thing about Walter. He’s round where Walter is angles. He’s kind and inno­cent and youth­ful. The con­tra­dic­tion of the essence of these two char­ac­ters gen­er­ates much of the humor and the con­flict to drive the story.

an Interview with Greg van Eekhout, author of Norse Code

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Greg van Eekhout is one of the fun­ni­est con atten­dees I have had the plea­sure of being around. On top of that, he’s a damned good writer with sto­ries like “The Osteomancer’s Son” and “Will You Be An Astronaut?” (appear­ing at EscapePod soon, read by Christiana Ellis).  Greg’s first novel was recently released.  I’ve watched the progress of Greg writ­ing this book on his blog, and so I’ve really been look­ing for­ward to read­ing it.

A Quick Review of Norse Code

Norse Code is Greg’s debut novel, and it’s a fun one. The book focuses on two char­ac­ters pri­mar­ily. The first is Mist, a recently recruited Valkyrie who is work­ing for the Norse Code project. The goal of the Norse Code project is to find and recruit the descen­dants of Odin to pre­pare for the com­ing Ragnarok. The sec­ond is the iten­er­ant Norse god Hermod, the only liv­ing entity to ever travel to Helheim and return.

It’ll come as no sur­prise to you that the paths of these two pro­tag­o­nists cross in the inevitable run-​​up to Ragnarok. Along the way, we meet a cast of char­ac­ters both drawn from Norse mythol­ogy and not, but all are  imbued with a pecu­liar van Eekhout sense of humor. This is not a comedic story exactly, but aspects of it are very funny.

Norse Code does feel at times like a first novel in that you sense the author feels a bit uncer­tain about the plot in places, but van Eekhout’s will­ing­ness to take what you know about Norse mythol­ogy and twist it for his needs makes this a hell of a lot of fun to read. Mist and Hermod are heroes in an older sense, not ter­ri­bly flawed, but sim­ply decent peo­ple with rocky pasts deter­mined to do the right thing despite that.

It’s a short read, one I man­aged to burn through in an after­noon, so you really have no excuse for not pick­ing it up and giv­ing it a try. While the novel didn’t pack the same punch for me as some of Greg’s short sto­ries, it’s a fine first out­ing and demon­strates that he’s an author to keep Odin’s eye on in the future.

The Interview

Can you share with me a lit­tle bit about the day-​​to-​​day nuts-​​and-​​bolts of your writ­ing process? How did you make time to write the book? How long did it take you to write the book from first con­ceiv­ing the idea to fin­ish­ing the book and sub­mit­ting it for publication?

I used to be able to talk about mak­ing time to write with at least some small degree of cred­i­bil­ity, because I had a job that often took up way more than forty hours a week, and I still found time to write sim­ply by mak­ing sure I started each day with an hour of writ­ing. For me, that kind of con­sis­tency was the key. But I don’t have a day job right now and I have the lux­ury of more writ­ing time, and I don’t blame peo­ple if they don’t want to lis­ten to me talk about carv­ing out time and ded­i­ca­tion and all that. That being said, peo­ple who really want to write find the time, some­how. Maybe by giv­ing up TV or games or what­ever. Maybe by devot­ing one hour before work to writ­ing, as I did. Maybe by writ­ing on their lunch break or on the bus. Maybe by just get­ting ten min­utes here, five min­utes there. It adds up. Really, it does.

It took me years and years and years to write Norse Code if you count all the false starts, words that got tossed out (at one point, 30,000 of them in one fell swoop), time squan­dered think­ing about writ­ing the book instead of writ­ing it, and time spent writ­ing short sto­ries and other things because I was stuck on the book. I’m going to say maybe ten years want­ing to write Norse Code, and maybe two years actu­ally work­ing on it. Fortunately, the book I wrote after Norse Code went much more quickly and smoothly.

I noticed quite a few L.A. cof­fee shops men­tioned. Are these all real places that you know from grow­ing up in L.A.? We’ve seen the pho­tos you take for each writ­ing ses­sion of your empty cups. How many cups of cof­fee did you drink in the process of writ­ing Norse Code?

I did grow up in L.A., but there really weren’t many cof­fee joints back then. Instead, we had “spooky houses,” where you were given a pot of a thick, pudding-​​like bev­er­age, an open flame with which to soften it, and sort of a com­bi­na­tion of spoon, fork, and hook, which we called a “spook.” Nonetheless, the cof­fee houses in Norse Code are real places. I think a con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mate for the num­ber of cups of cof­fee con­sumed dur­ing the com­po­si­tion of Norse Code would be 1,000. It takes a mil­lion bad words, 10,000 hours of prac­tice, or 1,000 cups of cof­fee before you can begin to say you’ve passed out of your appren­tice­ship. Really, the point of all those pic­tures of cof­fee cups next to my com­puter weren’t to show how much cof­fee I drink, but just a way of mark­ing the fact that, on the day each photo was posted to my blog, I worked on the book. Just some­thing dif­fer­ent than post­ing a word count.

What kind of research did you do to write the book–it’s clear that you famil­iar­ized your­self with Norse mythol­ogy. Can you talk about your research process and how it led to the plot you came up with for the book?

The pri­mary mate­ri­als that give us most of Norse mythol­ogy are short and finite: The Elder, or poetic, Edda, and the Younger, or prose, Edda. We’re only talk­ing a few hun­dred pages here, and they were my chief research mate­ri­als. H.R. Ellis Davidson also has some good books on Norse mythol­ogy, and I used wikipedia and pan​theon​.org some­times as well. My method was to read the Eddas and just sort of keep track of things that seemed par­tic­u­larly cool, like wolves eat­ing the moon and stuff like that. Sometimes it just led me to think through the impli­ca­tions of the myth, which made the plot obvi­ous to me. For instance, when you’ve got a story about the end of the world, and the myth tells you some gods are des­tined to sur­vive it and pre­side over the world that comes after­wards, you apply a basic what-​​if to that sit­u­a­tion. What if I were a god des­tined to sur­vive the end of the world and take over ruler­ship? Would I just wait for the end of the world to hap­pen? Would I encour­age it along? How would I do that? And so forth.

Some parts of the book seemed a bit trun­cated, like the Norse Code aspect itself. Did the Norse Code project play a larger part in the book in ear­lier drafts, and if so, what led to its role being reduced?

I think when you have a book titled Norse Code, peo­ple are right to expect a big part of the book to be devoted to Norse Code (which in the book is a genomics oper­a­tion run by Valkyries). But I never intended that par­tic­u­lar aspect of the book to play a huge role. What hap­pened was, the book was called “Greg’s Damn Norse Novel” for most of the time I was writ­ing it. When it came time to sub­mit it, it needed a real title. Norse Code is all I could come up with. I sort of expected the pub­lisher to give me a “real” title, but I guess they were happy with it, so it stuck.

What’s next from Greg in terms of books? It seems that Norse Code is a stand-​​alone book, which is sur­pris­ing given all the tril­ogy deals genre writ­ers seem to be get­ting lately.

I actu­ally can’t talk about what’s next! I’m not con­tracted to write any­thing else for the pub­lisher of Norse Code, though they get first look at the next book I write for adults. But the next thing out from me won’t be a book for adults, and when I’m free to talk about it, you can believe I’ll be Mr. Blabby McInterHype wher­ever I can.

Is Norse Code your writ­ten first novel in addi­tion to being your first pub­lished one, or did you write oth­ers before sell­ing Norse Code?

Norse Code is actu­ally the sec­ond book I’ve fin­ished. Somewhere in the mid­dle of that stalled-​​out time I men­tioned ear­lier, I wrote a whole other book. That one’s trunked for now, but you never know. Another whack or two at it, and it could pos­si­bly be decent enough to try to sell. If not, though, that’s okay. My goal with the cur­rently trunked novel was just to fin­ish a book, so I con­sider it a suc­cess even if it never leaves my hard drive. Writing it gave me the con­fi­dence to fin­ish Norse Code, and fin­ish­ing and sell­ing Norse Code gave me the con­fi­dence to write other books, so that first, unsold novel will always be impor­tant to me.

Thanks for answer­ing my ques­tions, Greg!  So have any of you read Norse Code? What did you think?

An Interview with Fantasy Author C. C. Finlay (with a side of review)

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Charles Coleman Finlay is an author you are famil­iar with if you’ve read more than a cou­ple of issues of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. His recent story, “The Political Prisoner” was a Nebula Award nom­i­nee and is cur­rently a Hugo Nominee and a Sturgeon nom­i­nee. And of course, it’ll be in the next vol­ume of Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best.

I’ve known Charlie since I started writ­ing through his involve­ment with the Online Writers Workshop. Charlie was the first pro­fes­sional author I really got to know, and he was immensely help­ful in help­ing me learn the ropes. It’s been really edu­ca­tional to watch his career progress, as he’s always been will­ing to share the ins and outs of his expe­ri­ences in publishing.

Let’s talk about the first book, and then head into the interview.

A Quick Review of The Patriot Witch

The first book of his Traitor to the Crown series, The Patriot Witch intro­duces us to the world of 1770s America on the verge of a war with the Empire. Our pro­tag­o­nist, Proctor Brown, would appear to be your aver­age farmer of the period. He has his wife picked out, plans to expand his farm. He’s a min­ute­man, but hopes that the scuf­fle that’s brew­ing doesn’t turn into a war, but if it does, he’ll clearly side with the patri­ots. But there’s just one other thing– Proctor Brown is a witch. He’s inher­ited his abil­ity from his mother, who is orig­i­nally from Salem, and has kept her tal­ent secret.

When Proctor wit­nesses the use of magic by a British sol­dier, he begins to real­ize that he may have to use his tal­ent and fight magic with magic. And he’s off on a wild adven­ture that takes him through some of the early bat­tles of the war.

Finlay’s writ­ing is tight, lean prose, and he espe­cially writes action well. I found myself hold­ing my breath a bit dur­ing some of the tense bat­tle scenes. One thing that really stood out is that war kills peo­ple much more inde­scrim­i­nately than I expected. The pro­tag­o­nist will be hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one and then five pages later, their leg will be blown off by a mus­ket. It really drove home the nature of war in this time period for me.

His take on magic is really inter­est­ing, and def­i­nitely draws from the lore of the time period regard­ing witches. Proctor is only just learn­ing what magic is capa­ble of, but by the end of the first book, he’s con­sid­er­ably more skilled than before.

The series is made up of 3 books: The Patriot Witch, A Spell for the Revolution, and The Demon Redcoat. The first two books are already released, and the third will be out shortly.

An Interview with C.C. Finlay

Can you share with me a lit­tle bit about the day-​​to-​​day nuts-​​and-​​bolts of your writ­ing process? How did you make time to write the book, with your full fam­ily life and a full time job? How long did it take you to write the book from first con­ceiv­ing the idea to fin­ish­ing the book and sub­mit­ting it for publication?

There are four of us at home, includ­ing two writ­ers and two teenage boys, all piled up on top of one another. Our house isn’t big enough for us to have a room where Rae (my wife and some­times co-​​author, Rae Carson Finlay) or I can get away for enough peace and quiet to write. So when I’m work­ing on some­thing, I either do it late at night after every­one else goes to bed, or I leave the house and find some­place else to work. You’ll see Luck Bros Coffee in Grandview Heights, Ohio, men­tioned in the acknowl­edge­ments of my books. That’s because I set up office for months in one of their front booths, and they kept me qui­etly and effi­ciently sup­plied with fresh cof­fee and grilled cheese sand­wiches while I wrote.

How did you make time to write the book, with your full fam­ily life and a full time job?

The only way to make enough time to write was to take it away from other things. I gave up week­ends. I spent my weeks of vaca­tion hun­kered over the key­board. I neglected wash­ing dishes or vac­u­um­ing the house. I have three years’ worth of papers spilling out of boxes in need of sort­ing and fil­ing. But I don’t miss work, and I don’t skip my kids’ soc­cer games or school plays unless I’m out of town at a convention.

How long did it take you to write the book from first con­ceiv­ing the idea to fin­ish­ing the book and sub­mit­ting it for publication?

Back in 2006, my agent called me and asked if I had any ideas for his­tor­i­cal fan­tasy series. He thought that would take advan­tage of my back­ground as a his­to­rian and play to my strengths as a writer. I didn’t have any ideas at the moment, but I said if he gave me a week­end I’d see what I could come up with.

That was on a Thursday after­noon. By Monday morn­ing, I had a detailed out­line for the Traitor to the Crown series. Once I had the idea for a secret his­tory about witches fight­ing the Revolution, every­thing sort of clicked into place. Over the next cou­ple weeks, I wrote sev­enty pages of sam­ple chap­ters. Then my agent took the series to Del Rey to see if they were inter­ested. The nego­ti­a­tion process took about a year. I rewrote and added to the sam­ple chap­ters (sell­ing a short story ver­sion of it to Fantasy & Science Fiction), did research on the period and on witch­craft, and refined the outlines.

At the begin­ning of June, 2007, we had a deal. That’s when the writ­ing took off like a rocket. I was sup­posed to write the three books over nine months. It was closer to eigh­teen. The sec­ond book was the hard­est one to pull together. The third book devi­ated the far­thest from the orig­i­nal out­line, but all the pieces fell into place. I turned in the final book in January, 2009. So from first con­cept to all three books fin­ished and pub­lished took three years. The actual writ­ing was more like eigh­teen months.

I know that you’re the founder of the nov­el­ist work­shop Blue Heaven, with past atten­dees includ­ing Tobias Buckell, Greg van Eekhout and Sarah Prineas, and you thank sev­eral of your fel­low work­shop­pers in the acknowl­edge­ments. Can you give some spe­cific exam­ples about how the work­shop expe­ri­ence improved The Patriot Witch and the sub­se­quent books?

In 2007, I took 114 pages of The Patriot Witch and my out­line to Blue Heaven, and I hashed out the strengths and prob­lems of the novel in detail with Greg van Eekhout and Holly McDowell. In 2008, I only had about 250 pages of A Spell for the Revolution done, but Paul Melko and Daryl Gregory put it through the paces and made sure I got on track for the right end­ing. In both cases, being able to work­shop the par­tial novel and talk about the direc­tion it appeared to be going and the bet­ter direc­tions that it could go was essen­tial to my process. I didn’t have time to work­shop the third book, but by that time every­thing felt like it was click­ing. And I had Rae to help me as I wrote.

How did you con­ceive of writ­ing the story of Proctor Brown as a three book series? Was it a deci­sion made by the pub­lisher? Also, can you tell me a lit­tle bit about why the books are being released so closely to one another, seper­ated by only a month?

The Revolution lends itself nat­u­rally to a three-​​part nar­ra­tive divi­sion. The first stage of the war took place in New England, in and around Boston. The sec­ond stage of the war involved the over­whelm­ing British vic­to­ries and Washington’s ulti­mate recov­ery in and around New York and New Jersey. The third stage of the war involved the guer­rilla con­flict in the south­ern states and diplo­macy over­seas. There were many vol­un­teers who fol­lowed the war from one stage to the next, so it was easy to imag­ine Proctor as one of those men.

On the pub­lish­ing side, Del Rey was inter­ested in three books. The num­ber one rea­son read­ers buy a book is because they’ve read some­thing else they like by that author. Bringing the books out in quick suc­ces­sion cre­ates a shelf pres­ence and a chance for read­ers who like the first book to imme­di­ately move on to the sec­ond. Del Rey had done some­thing sim­i­lar with the Naomi Novik books and wanted to try it again.

It sounds like, also from your acknow­eldge­ments, that much of the research for the book came eas­ily due to your job as a research assis­tant. One thing that always strikes me as ter­ri­fy­ing about writ­ing sto­ries with a his­tor­i­cal basis is get­ting some of the details wrong. Was your approach here to basi­cally steep your­self so utterly in the time period via pri­mary lit­er­a­ture? Did you find any aspects dif­fi­cult to get “right”?

You’ll always get some­thing wrong. Four dif­fer­ent peo­ple copy-​​edited or proofed the book and a cou­ple errors still slipped through. It’s even worse when you’re doing the his­tory because you don’t have some­one there to check you on every sin­gle detail. Sherwood Smith, in her oth­er­wise favor­able review of the book, points out a mis­take about young ladies’ head­wear in the very first pages.

That said, what I did was spend as much time in pri­mary sources as I could, and not just writ­ten sources, but images of the cloth­ing, weapons, and archi­tec­ture of the period. Whenever I assumed I knew some­thing, I double-​​checked it, because you make the most mis­takes on the things you think you know. I tried to make sure the details enhanced the story, mak­ing it vivid and imme­di­ate, so I was also ruth­less about cut­ting out infor­ma­tion that didn’t drive the nar­ra­tive for­ward. In the end, the his­tory must serve the story, not the other way around.

The Traitor to the Crown series marks your first series. Your first novel, The Prodigal Troll, was pub­lished by Pyr. What were the pro­fes­sional lessons you learned from your first book that you took and applied in the writ­ing and mar­ket­ing to pub­lish­ers of your lat­est series?

The only lessons that I applied are in the writ­ing of the books. The Prodigal Troll was struc­tured more episod­i­cally, with dif­fer­ent POV char­ac­ters that made each sec­tion feel like it had come to a full con­clu­sion. That was a nat­ural out­growth of the lessons I had learned by writ­ing short sto­ries. In the new series, I kept the POV sim­pler and the nar­ra­tive whole so that these would be fast-​​paced books.

I don’t know that I have any use­ful lessons about mar­ket­ing to pub­lish­ers. Lou Anders was just get­ting Pyr started and he came to me as an up-​​and-​​coming author for his debut sea­son. He did every­thing he could to get The Prodigal Troll in front of read­ers, and I’m very grate­ful for the chance I had to work with him. With the new series, it’s a sit­u­a­tion where my agent and I were talk­ing with Chris Schluep at Del Rey from the start. Del Rey pub­lishes Naomi Novik, Harry Turtledove, Greg Keyes–it just seemed like a good fit. Luckily, they agreed!

Thanks again to Mr. Finlay for tak­ing the time to answer my ques­tions. I hope that you all check out his books. I can’t rec­om­mend the first one enough, and the sec­ond title is sit­ting in front of me as I type this, taunt­ing me.

Recommended: The City and The City by China Miéville

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

When I stum­bled upon a copy of The City and the City at Barnes and Noble on Saturday after­noon, I knew my week­end was doomed. Ever since Perdido Street Station, and despite the dis­ap­point­ment of The Iron Council, Miéville is still pos­si­bly the most excit­ing author work­ing today for me.

This book is not a New Cobrazon book. It is not out­right fan­tasy in any way, actu­ally. But it’s still fan­tas­tic in a more sim­ple sense of the word. The story is essen­tially a police pro­ce­dural, but one set in the kind of city that is dis­tinctly Miévillian.

If there is a com­mon theme among Miéville’s work, I would say that it is “the city as char­ac­ter.” Because even here, the city takes the fore­front. Bas Lag, also, in most of that series. China has a preter­nat­ural sense for cities, and for what makes them tick. As some­one who has never lived in an urban cen­ter with more than 100,000 peo­ple, I find it utterly fas­ci­nat­ing. It’s as exotic as the Far East to me.

The cities of Bezel and Ul Quoma are utterly unique, at least to my expe­ri­ence. I won’t even say another thing about them, because learn­ing about them as I did, with lit­tle pre­con­cieved notions, was a great way of expe­ri­enc­ing the book. Trust that things are not all that they seem in the open­ing pages. This is no bog stan­dard police pro­ce­dural (and that it would been fine if it was). This is some­thing more, dis­tinctly from the author who gave us one of the best cities in fan­tas­tic literature.

Am I dis­ap­pointed that this wasn’t another book set in his wilder, more fan­tas­ti­cal uni­verse? Before read­ing it, yes, I was. Now that I have read the book, no, not even a lit­tle bit. This new place will have much more main­stream appeal, and any­thing that sells more books for Miéville makes it that much more likely we’ll get more fan­tasy novels–at least I hope so. Miéville clearly has break-​​out poten­tial with the main­stream, and if I have a fear, it’s that the money will be so much bet­ter, he would be a fool not to go down the less fan­tas­tic road and to its broader audi­ences. Everything I have read about China indi­cates that he would never aban­don sci­ence fic­tion and fan­tasy entirely. So I have to go on faith that he won’t.

But even if he pulls a Lethem, I’ll fol­low him wher­ever he goes. I can’t wait to see what’s next.