Love in Dark Settings

"So all right, you're perfectly safe [on safari in Botswana], and you're trudging along through the tall grass, and the sun's beating down, and the soil in many places is quite sandy, so it's uncertain under your feet, and then your guide says, 'Oh boy!' And you look over and there across the ridge you see a tree, and under the tree there are five little heads, and those are lions that were supposed to be all the way on the other side of the area. And they're watching you, and you're on foot in your hiking shoes and your hat, and there's your guide who has this gun with only one bullet in it because they're not in the business of shooting the animals; they use the guns just to fire warning shots. There's nothing between you and the lions. . . . Nothing happened, of course; we came back to the camp and they said that lions never hunt people on two legs, lions don't attack people, and that's all well and good, but you don't really know whether the lions have been told this."

--Naomi Novik in an interview with Strange Horizons.

Topics in this post: booktrailers, Age of Sail / Regency fiction, alternate history military fiction, small presses, partial sightedness, writing and editing historical fantasy, religion in alternate history, fan fiction, dinosaurs, turn-of-the-century history and fiction.

*** 11 February 2008

Okay, more goodies from online:

Tor, the science fiction and fantasy press, is offering free e-books. You all know about Baen's free e-books, don't you?

Unasked-For Advice to New Writers About Money, by John Scalzi. Beautifully ethical. A sample:

"The reason that Americans are as generally economically screwed as they are at this moment in time is because they bought into the fundamentally insane idea that buying tons of shiny crap they didn't need on a high-interest installment plan made any sort of rational sense at all. And as completely idiotic as it is for the average American, it makes even less sense for a writer, who often doesn't know when or even if they're going to paid again. . . .

"But you want that 42-inch 1080p TV! I understand; I want it too. What you do is save for it. When you save for something, it's like you're making a payment on it, except that you don't have an evil credit card company charging you 19% for the privilege."

This has been circulating round the blogosphere: Book Trailers: My Two Perspectives. Sadly enough, even though I Webmaster the Booktrailer Links site and moderate the booktrailers community and, of course, have my own booktrailers, I have to agree with the blogger that most booktrailers are poorly made. I think this is mainly because booktrailers are such a new art form; a lot of the early music videos were poorly made too (as I recall, having seen quite a few in the 1970s).

On the other hand, my tastes go in a different direction than the blogger's - and some of the respondents - as to what types of booktrailers work. I think this is because they're thinking "blurb," while I'm thinking "art form." It's like the difference between someone who watches a music video just to figure out whether they should buy the album (they want the video to be short and sweet) and somebody who watches a music video because they think music videos are fun to watch (they want the video to last as long as possible).

*** 13 February 2008

"The vision stood at a distance almost bewildering, now; mythical, softened by a comfortable blind innocence. He might have regretted it; he did regret it, now, except there was no room in the gardens of that house for a dragon to be sleeping in the sun."

(*Sound of Dusk pulling tissues out of the box.*)

I just finished reading "Empire of Ivory." Evil Naomi Novik. That's what I get for reading an author who got her start writing online fiction; online authors always know how to write cliffhangers. But with online fiction, you don't usually have to wait a year to find out how the story will work out.

[Later: I checked the publication date for the next book; I only have to wait five months. Whew.]

I'd have a lot more to say about the beauty of the concluding chapters of the novel - especially the final four paragraphs of Chapter 15, which are wonderfully structured, and especially the final sentence of Chapter 15, which made my breath catch - except that I'm too busy pounding on the desk. I can't remember being this frustrated by a novel ending since I read The Riddle-Master of Hed at age sixteen - and I had the good fortune to read that novel when the next two volumes in the trilogy were already published, so I merely had to beg my mother to let me walk to the library after dark to get the second volume. I walked home while reading the novel, flashlight in hand.

(Drums fingers, waiting for the next volume in Ms. Novik's series.)

Later:

Well, I've done what is a gigantic splurge for me: I've pre-ordered the next book in the series, and I've ordered the latest novel by Sylvia Engdahl, who's one of my favorite writers. Having grown up in a family where frugality was the Eighth Cardinal Virtue, I really hate buying new books (as opposed to used books), and I really, really hate buying new books I haven't read yet. But these are both authors I want to support - Ms. Engdahl especially, because she hasn't received nearly as much attention as she deserves. And that poor author was one of the recent victims of Meisha Merlin going out of business; she'd just had some of her novels come back into print, and then Meisha Merlin crashed.

Similarly, Susan R. Matthews was stranded. Meisha Merlin, having published her latest novel, was planning to bring some of her older novels back into print - expanded version of her novels. Then, alas, Meisha Merlin went under. A good press going out of business is like a major traffic accident; there are corpses all over the place afterwards.

*** 14 February 2008

I laid out the second part of Blood Vow for my lists today, and also took a rare dive into cooking. My Muse seems to have wandered off somewhere - probably to Palm Beach, like Maizy the lazy bird.

My eyes were cranky all of today, so I think I'm going to have to switch to braille tomorrow, after I finish rereading Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon, so as to save my eyes for the editing I need to get done. A braille edition of Patricia A. McKillip's Ombria in Shadow has been waiting for me to finish reading it for two years - or is it three? Lord, I hope I still remember the contractions.

*** 15 February 2008

Oh, my. Those of you who have already read Empire of Ivory should go back and reread Chapter 11 of His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire in the U.S.). It's very interesting in light of later events . . . and it sheds light on how well-planned this series is.

Before rereading that chapter, I made a prediction for what will happen in the next book. We'll see whether it comes true.

Later:

Instead of switching to braille, I tore my eyes out by starting on rereading the second volume in the Temeraire series. (If any of you are acquainted with Naomi Novik, let her know: Her novels are that compelling.) Other than that, the only thing I'm doing with my reading eyes is writing blog entries and editing fiction. Writing fiction, as I think I've mentioned before, I can do with my eyes closed. I'm down to thirty minutes of eye time before I have to do something to restore them, like taking a shower (the mist does my eyes good) or eating (I love a medical condition that can be ameliorated by eating). Thirty minutes is still plenty of eye time to get things done in.

Since my eyesight goes up and down throughout the month, it's hard to know whether my eyes will get better, worse, or remain the same, but I still have a month to go before warm weather comes, so I'm guessing that my eyes are going to be in travails till spring. At least this occurs each year during Lent; I know that other people are undergoing deprivations during this same period.

My Muse, who cares not the least what condition my eyes are in, cheered me up by popping in today briefly. Likewise, things are going as well as ever with Doug and my apprentice. And I don't need to worry now about my Internet addiction taking me over the next time I go online; my eyes have a built-in timer now. So, for now, matters are relatively pleasant.

*** 16 February 2008

A wildly successful week: I spent thirty hours on reading, writing, and editing fiction, my highest total ever since I began keeping records in September 2006. Another thirty hours was spent on other necessary activities.

I'm especially pleased with the totals because I've been having trouble sleeping this week; not only do my aching eyes keep waking me up, but my humidifier has chosen this week to start making grating noises. Doug and I have renamed it the Lawnmower.

*** 17 February 2008

I replaced the malfunctioning humidifier in my bedroom with a back-up humidifier. (Some people have spare computer parts in their closet in case anything goes wrong with their usual model. I have spare humidifiers.) Not only is it quiet, but it blows the humidity toward the bed rather than the ceiling.

I had a wonderful night's sleep, and my eyes feel great this morning. It's amazing what a difference a well-functioning humidifier can make.

All this means I can actually get some editing and maybe writing done, which I couldn't yesterday, because I was so sleepy. I'm planning on doing the rewrite of Right or Right this week.

Later:

Doug had dinner with my father and stepmother this evening; I had to decline the invitation because I can't be away from my humidifier at this time of year. He came home with an MP3 player that my father had given us - the first MP3 player we've ever owned. It's not quite as stylish as an Ipod, but it's wonderfully simple to use. I'm hoping to use it to listen to podcasts while walking around Greenbelt Lake, but we'll see whether it lasts that long. Five minutes after severely warning Doug not to drop the player on the floor, I dropped it.

I wasted two hours tonight putting together an unfortunately-necessary Web poll for my readers to try to determine which of my stories they're reading. I sort of get the feeling that The Eternal Dungeon has the most fans, simply from the number of readers who wistfully ask me when the next story is coming out, but I'd like to get some sense of whether there is any demand for my friendship fiction. That will help me to figure out which order my books should come out in.

*** 18 February 2008

To console myself for there being no more Temeraire novels till next July, I downloaded a bunch of Temeraire fanfic. The problem with small fandoms is that everyone is writing missing-scene short stories to make sense of subtle details in the canon, when what I want is an AU mega-novel. I don't want to read someone's little story about what a character thought when he fell off a dragon in Book Three; I want a meaty plot, darn it, one that would be substantial enough to engage me even if I'd never read the canon series.

[Writing this later, I remember with amusement that, out of the four fanfic stories I've written, three of them are - you guessed it - missing-scene short stories.]

Preferably prisonerfic, because the number of times that characters end up in irons in this series, is, um . . . Did I mention that I like the novels?

I'm just teasing, because I would have read the series anyway; the relationship between Laurence and Temeraire is such a good one.

I spent most of the rest of today working on getting my unfinished stories organized for my literary executors, so that the stories can be posted online if I should pop off unexpectedly. Used to be that I thought I had a millennium and a day left to get all my stories done; now, even if I have the good fortune to live to the end of my natural life without acquiring Alzheimer's or the like, I'm a bit nervous about whether I'll be able to get all my series done, thanks to my slowed-down rate of getting novels done - no more than two or three a year, even if I really work hard. I have a lot of unfinished novels, especially in the Three Lands series.

Later:

Ah, just what the doctor ordered: Temeraire prisonerfic, eighteen thousand words long. Mildly interesting, I thought. (I'm afraid that, as a prisonerfic fan, I have high standards for what constitutes a good prison story. This one didn't quite make the cut.)

I'm in a good mood this evening because eleven people have responded so far to my reader survey. Yay! Eleven people are interested enough in my writings to fill out a long survey about them! The results so far have taught me a few things I didn't already know about my readers' responses to my stories. I'm looking forward to any more results that come in.

I got back one of the beta reports for "Compassion's Keeper: Trial" in the Life Prison series. I'm just waiting on the last one now. I also had the promise of at least a partial beta on the first two stories of "On Guard" in the Eternal Dungeon series. If I ever gain the ability to clone humans, I'll make sure that they're all beta readers working for me; it's difficult as heck for me to obtain beta readers. (Yes, this is a subtle nudge for volunteers, especially ones with copyediting experience.)

Other than that, I'm afraid I wasted most of the day with an Internet addiction fall - the third day in a row that I've been online. I'm putting my laptop back into the drawer. Tomorrow I really must start work on rewriting "Right or Right."

*** 21 February 2008

Temeraire commentary #1:

Two passages from Black Powder War.

"Tharkay led them unerringly through the dragon quarter and skirting a small mosque beautifully painted, the square before it full of men and even a handful of dragons prostrating themselves on soft woven prayer-rugs . . ."

"'It is only unfortunate that you should have been taken in by those wretched creatures; but then it is as the imams have said, that the dragon born in the wild does not know the Prophet, and is as a servant of the Devil.'"

This begs the question: Are there Christian dragons?

I have to say that one thing I find missing from the Temeraire series is religion. Granted that this was the period when Christianity was beginning to become a Sunday-only religion; still, Laurence describes himself in Empire of Ivory as a Christian, and I can't see that. There's never any mention of him attending services, he never prays, he never asks himself what God would want . . . In short, he acts more like a twenty-first-century agnostic than an early-nineteenth-century Englishman. The only indication I find that he's concerned with spiritual matters occurs in Empire of Ivory, in his brief discussion with the missionary about original sin, but that's too little too late.

Temeraire commentary #2:

I should start this commentary by saying that I really don't have the slash mentality. When I see a television scene in which a policeman is shot by a villain, and his best buddy cradles him in his arms and is moved by the moment to speak of his love for his friend and to kiss his forehead, I don't think, "Oo, gay subtext." I think, "Thank goodness friendship drama isn't dead."

On the other hand, I can understand the slash mentality. I grew up reading Arthurian novels, which took the original legends and twisted them into dozens of new patterns. Serious, solemn Merlin was turned by T. H. White into a buffoon, Uther the loving father was turned by Mary Stewart into a king who hated his son, and needless to say, every second novelist turned Mordred into a semi-hero.

So when, sometime in my early twenties, I read Rosemary Sutcliff's 1963 novel Sword at Sunset, I wasn't shocked in the least when I discovered that she'd turned two male Arthurian characters into lovers.

Therefore, I can happily read slash fan fiction, even if I find it very difficult to come up with such scenarios myself. As a result of my difficulty in turning friendship stories into gay subtext, though, I'm always faintly surprised when I discover what pairings slash writers have come up with. It's rare that I'm ever surprised that they haven't come up with a pairing.

So anyway, I've downloaded a number of Temeraire fan fiction stories at a LiveJournal community, and I'm reading the comments posted in reply to them. "I can't see Laurence/Granby," says one person. (A pause as I blink at the idea of Laurence and Granby as lovers.) "For me, it would have to be Laurence/Tharkay." (A pause as I blink some more.)

I wait for somebody to make the obvious comment. Nobody does.

"Oo, did you read the Laurence/Granby story at Yuletide Treasure?" somebody else asks.

"Oh, yes, that was quite good," someone else comments.

I read through the stories that have been posted at the comm. They're mainly gen or het, but when slash occurs, it's always Laurence/Granby. I glance over at the index for the Temeraire fic at Yule Treasure. No slash there except Laurence/Granby.

"Um . . ." I'm going in my mind. "Um . . . um . . where are the Laurence/Temeraire stories?"

Unless these stories are in some obvious place I've missed, the absence of this Really Really Obvious Slash Pairing must be due to some sort of anti-bestiality taboo, though that shouldn't stop anyone from writing a PG-rated Laurence/Temeraire story, which is considerably tamer than what we're given in canon, for heaven's sakes. (See the passage beginning "He was still anxious at the change in his looks" in Chapter 8 of the first volume.)

Oh, well. I'll just go back to reading Laurence & Temeraire friendship fiction, which makes me perfectly happy.

Temeraire commentary #3:

Being harnessed for work the moment you're out of the shell? Boy, talk about child labor.

*** 22 February 2008

Snow yesterday, or was it the day before? The snow didn't stick, alas. The weather has been in the thirties for the last couple of days, as my eyes have pointedly noted. My sleep schedule has gone all to pieces again, what with my eyes drying out so rapidly in the night that I wake up in the middle of my dream cycles; fortunately, I've had no great pain so far. But I'm glad that spring will be arriving next month; it's becoming harder to get work done during the day, since I'm so sleepy.

I'd also like to leave the house some time, thank you very much. I've been to the library once, and to the grocery store a couple of times; those are the only trips I've made outside since Christmas. I make a lousy hermit - not enough desire to live apart from the world for months at a time - but at least I've gotten sixty thousand words written since the beginning of December, which is a lot better than the ten thousand words I wrote in the three months prior to that.

At any rate, I've put myself on a simplified schedule again for my eyes' sake: Reading and writing fiction (plus editing any scenes I've just written), composing blog entries, exercising, and phoning my apprentice (and maybe a friend or two whom I owe a phone call to). Correspondence will have to wait till the weather turns warmer; fortunately, since I'm offline so much these days, I'm no longer bombarded with e-mails, but I do need to respond to the kind folks who sent in answers to my reader survey.

*** 22 February 2008

Naomi Novik said in her interview with Strange Horizons that Maximus - one of the dragons in her series - was the size of a brontosaurus (an apatosaurus, if you want to be technical), so I dug out my dinosaur books to see what size a brontosaurus was.

Doug was somewhat disconcerted when he came downstairs shortly thereafter and found eighteen dinosaur books on display, everything from Dinosaur Bob (a brontosaurus makes the winning hit in a baseball game) to Going Hollywood: A Dinosaur's Dream (a tyrannosaurus rex goes to Hollywood) to Life Story (pre-history in the form of a stage play, by Virginia Lee Burton, better known for The Little House and Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel) to Tunnel Through Time (Lester Del Rey's time travel novel, not the later television series of the same name). I have illustrated books for every occasion.

Meanwhile, I'm feeling all grumbly today because the writers of Regency fiction have wonderful resources like despatches, whereas those of us who write turn-of-the-century stories have nothing like that. The reason, of course, is that there are a whole bunch of fandoms set during the Regency period; I don't know of any fair-sized fandoms that are set in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Can anyone here think of any? (Oh, wait, I just thought of one: Sherlock Holmes.)

I rather suspect this is because historical fandom tends to center around wars, and there aren't any wars between the Civil War and World War One that have inspired large amounts of films and TV programs. I think I can assume that I'm the only person in the online fiction world who's working on a story inspired by the Boer War. :/

Yet the turn-of-the-century period is a really exciting one, what with all the technology changes and the battles for social reform.

When I was young, I read Father's Big Improvements, by Caroline D. Emerson, which is set between 1888 and 1890. In the novel, a family is introduced to the fashionable technology of the time: running water, a furnace, electric lights, telephones, bicycles, automobiles, and gas stoves. I was amazed at how much change occurred in just a short amount of time. I tried to imagine what it was like to live in such an era, when technology was revolutionizing daily life.

(I pause from typing this into my desktop computer in order to push aside my MP3 player, take some papers off my scanner, cover my calculator, organize my downloaded videos, check the answering machine of my wireless phone, and go downstairs for a microwaved meal. And just think, some of you twenty-somethings won't even be able to get the point of the previous sentence.)

There are communities on the Web that are interested in Victorian life, I know, but the Victorian Era was a long period, going from 1837 to 1901. Life in 1901 was very different from life in 1837. I'd like to find some place where there are regular resources being posted about the 1880-1914 period.

The reason I'm having these gloomy thoughts is that I suspect that Naomi Novik would not have been able to write the Temeraire series if she hadn't spent a fair amount of time hanging around with Age of Sail writers. Writers learn from each other, and I really need to be learning from other writers of turn-of-the-century fiction.

Later:

Just got off the phone with my apprentice. I asked him about fandoms set at the turn of the century, and he replied, "But nothing exciting happened then."

Oh, dear.

So then I gave him the whole run-down on the Progressive Era, with social reformers taking part in the fight against crime, poverty, exploitation of children, exploitation of the poor, exploitation of workers, exploitation of prisoners, and dozens of other stirring campaigns. "The battles of the time weren't taking place on warfields," I said, rising to my theme. "They were taking place on the city streets. You can tell that from the children's literature of the time - books like Anne of Green Gables and A Little Princess were about the harsh lives that the poor led."

"I always found those books rather syrupy," he responded.

Oh, well; to each his own.

ACTIVITIES SINCE MY LAST DAILY LIFE ENTRY

Fiction written and edited:
--"Compassion's Keeper: Initiation" (Life Prison).

Fiction edited:
--"Overlord."
--"Two Masters."

Fiction laid out:
--"Blood Vow: Land of the Chara."

Fiction read:
--Naomi Novik: "His Majesty's Dragon."
--Naomi Novik: "Throne of Jade."
--Naomi Novik: "Black Powder War."
--Naomi Novik: "Empire of Ivory."
--Online writings by Naomi Novik.
--Assorted Temeraire fanfic.

Research literature read:
--Thomas Heron McKee: "The Gun Book for Boys and Men" (1918).

Music bought:
--Get Set Go: "Die Motherfucker Die" (which wins the award for prettiest music set to the most disgusting lyrics).