Finding the Magic Bullet

Eric here. Regular readers of Heroines of Fantasy have probably been wondering just where the hell I've been, since my "regular contributor" status was revealed on the HoF About page long ago. Right?

Well, here I am, and I'm about to get all meta on your collective behinds. Because I'm a writer...with nothing to write about.

No, not fiction. That I've got plenty of, and I'm way behind.

But blogging and writing about...writing? Much harder.

I used to be addicted, utterly and completely, to reading about writing. I remember in college, when I had a free hour or so, heading into the school library, up in to the stacks on the top floor and finding bound copies of years old issues of Writers' Digest magazine. I'd sit at a privacy carrel with them until I was out of time, soaking in advice and tips I don't follow because I can't remember any of it.

(I did get my book KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY personally critiqued at a WorldCon years later by WD fiction columnist Nancy Kress though. That was cool. But I digress. Probably not for the last time.)

The problem was, I was looking for a magic bullet. I was lazy. I wanted a way to find a way to make writing not only less work, but instantly successful. I'm not saying I wanted that over-night fame and fortune of authorship because I spent my collegiate years toiling in food service...but I'm also saying I ruined a lot of neckties as a dining hall supervisor by carrying giant pots of soup out to ungrateful undergrads. So you do the math.

The problem with the magic bullet is, it's not there. It took me a long time to really and truly believe that. The world loves an overnight success story and I thought I'd be one—if I could just find the secret before I put in the work.

Guess how much writing I got done?

It wasn't even so much that I didn't get much done—I was too lazy to work at it at all until, finally, in my mid-30s, the incessant nattering voices in the back of my head became too much. I had to get all the thinks out of my think-meat and converted into readable pixels worthy (perhaps) of being ink on paper.

What I'm trying to say is: if you've got voices telling you to write, do it. Now. Don't wait. It doesn't matter what age you're at, from 15 to 95, start getting it down. (I'll excuse the 1- to 14-year-olds that lack for skills and training; anyone greater than 95, you've earned your time in the La-Z-Boy gumming prunes to your heart's content. Seriously. I already envy you.) The skills to tell a story only come with practice. Writing was something I almost gave up on without really trying. Coming back to it when I did meant I was better than I probably would have been had I started younger... but I was nowhere near close to as good as I could have been, had I been writing when I was ingesting dusty, musty WD issues. Not to mention all the dust and must I ingested.

What does that have to do with me writing about writing and being a writer? I just feel like...it's all been done! What's there to say that isn't already covered in WD or a thousand other places? All I can do is point you toward your own keyboard and hope you'll join those of us on this silly enterprise we call "being writerly" [NOTE: No one calls it that.]

Because there is no magic bullet, no spell for success, no way to instantly achieve what you want.

But if you try sometimes, you just might find... you get to succeed.

My apologies to the Rolling Stones.


ERIC GRIFFITH is the author of BETA TEST from Hadley Rille Books and KALI:THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. He's currently writing about homeless people with super powers. Visit Eric at http://egriffith.info.

Music As Time Travel...

In my last two posts, I focused on the myth and reality of medieval women.  Now I’m going to change tack completely, and talk about music, and how useful it is as a way of world-building, particularly when writing historical fiction. 

Some of you won’t like listening to anything while either reading or writing.  But music has always been an integral part of my life, so I’m one of these people who often associates a certain track with a certain scene, or a certain character. If I’m working on something, I’ll quite happily play the same track over and over again to get the vibe right until I’m done.  This drives my husband batty, of course!

When I’m writing historical fiction, the first step I take in thinking my way into the minds of my characters is to listen to the music that would have accompanied their lives.  This was particularly appropriate for John Sempill, for we know that the ‘real’ John Sempill had an interest in music.  Documentary sources tell us that there was a harper named John Haislet amongst his retinue, who performed before King James IV at Ellestoun in 1504 (William Haislet, who has a strong supporting role in ‘Fire & Sword’, is his hypothetical father, though sadly in reality we know virtually nothing about John Haislet's life and background).

The Collegiate Church of Castle Semple, Near Lochwinnoch

Sempill also founded a school for choristers – a ‘sang school’, in the Scots parlance – at the Collegiate Church of Castle Semple near Lochwinnoch.   The founding charter even tells us something about the boys’ training: we know that in addition to basic schooling in literacy and numeracy, they learned a new form of singing  called ‘prick song’.  No puerile sniggers please – this is the late medieval term for polyphony, where multiple lines are sung simultaneously by the vocalists. It was still fairly new and avant garde in the late 1400s/early 1500s, but Sempill seems to have been eager to promote it.  

What did it sound like?  Well, thankfully, we can still hear the same music that John Sempill would have been familiar with all those centuries ago.  Collections of Scots lute music dating back to the early 1600s still survive, for example, and while these originate from a later historical context, many are ‘traditional’ airs which had much earlier origins.  

But it’s in the realms of religious choral music that later medieval Scotland really excelled. Our foremost figure was the composer of polyphonic music, Robert Carver (1485-1568), who can to this day arguably claim the top spot as Scotland’s most talented composer. Some of his music survived the cultural purges  of the Reformation so we can still hear it performed by groups such as Scottish early music ensemble ‘Capella Nova.'

James IV was an enthusiastic patron of Carver's work, so much so that we even know which music was played at specific events in his life. We can hear both the mass that was sung before the ill-fated departure of the Scots army for the fatal field at Flodden, and the mass which was performed in its aftermath just a few weeks later when the shattered remnants of the Scots government (including, no doubt Hugh Montgomerie) gathered in Edinburgh for the coronation of the infant King James V. You can hear it performed here:

With such a rich musical heritage to accompany my writing, you’d think I’d listen to nothing else, wouldn’t you?  That’s not true – I’m writing a novel aimed for modern audiences which uses contemporary dialogue, and besides, I’m a child of my own time. So I’m afraid that you’ll usually find me listening to indie rock music as I batter away at my keyboard.  But every so often, when I need some extra inspiration, I’ll put on some Robert Carver, and suddenly, I find myself transported back into another world!

Wednesday Review: The Reluctant Prophet

Title: The Reluctant Prophet
Author: Gillian O’Rourke
Publisher: Kristell Ink

Publication date: 2013
Genre: Fantasy
Price: Kindle $4.99, Paperback $15.29
Where to purchase: Amazon
Reviewer: Cybelle Greenlaw

Book description:
There's none so blind as she who can see . . . Esther is blessed, and cursed, with a rare gift: the ability to see the fates of those around her. But when she escapes her peasant upbringing to become a priestess of the Order, she begins to realise how valuable her ability is among the power-hungry nobility, and what they are willing to do to possess it. Haunted by the dark man of her father's warnings, and unable to see her own destiny, Esther is betrayed by those sworn to protect her. With eyes newly open to the harsh realities of her world, she embarks on a path that diverges from the plan the Gods have laid out. Now she must choose between sacrificing her own heart's blood, and risking a future that will turn the lands against each other in bloody war. The Reluctant Prophet is the story of one woman who holds the fate of the world in her hands, when all she wishes for is a glimpse of her own happiness.

Hi, Cybelle here again. This week I read Gillian O'Rourke's The Reluctant Prophet. The story is told in the first person by Esther, a young priestess who struggles with her prophetic gift and faith. The book is well-written overall and very engaging. O'Rourke creates vivid descriptions of the places in Esther's world, and the supporting characters are believable. It is a page turner, but I found certain elements of the book problematic.

The setting is a fantastic, medieval world, where most people worship a trinity of gods, Tyrus, Lo and Era, who are depicted with animal heads and can be male or female. Esther sees them all as female, basically ranging in age from young woman/warrior to crone. The priestesses are initiated through a series of painful ordeals and are generally held in high-esteem, but elite members of the Order despise Esther's peasant origins and find ways of abusing her and her gift. For me, the religion and religious order O'Rourke creates are the least credible aspects of the story. Generally, when a culture worships gods with animal characteristics (or changing sexual identity), it has clear reasons for doing so. Animals and their attributes did not feature prominently in the story, and I was left wondering what was so special about wolves, cats and owls that the deities would be represented in those forms. Going beyond the physical characteristics of the gods, the religious beliefs of the people seemed exceptionally Catholic, and the abuses perpetrated by corrupt members of the Order clearly reflected current criticism of the church. At certain points, I felt like I was reading a subtle criticism of the Church.

Regarding style, there were also a few problems. Much of Esther's internal dialog was mirrored in later action/conversation, which slowed the pace a little. Occasionally, in sections of dialog, it was difficult to tell who was speaking. This was partially because some of the characters had similar speech patterns, but a few dialog tags would have been helpful, too.

Despite my criticism, this book was an interesting read, and I think it would be especially popular with teens. The main characters are young, vibrant, and easy to love, and their struggles are common to many.

When your favorite author disappoints you...

Hi folks, Mark here with a few thoughts on disappointment.

One of the ways I keep myself sane during the busy months of the year is to assemble a pile of books in a to be read file and work through them one at a time. I would carve out moments during the school terms to get my mind away from papers and re-teaching similar lit units all the time by wandering in the realms of others.

This practice helped me discover a number of my favorite authors over the years.  These writers have become my go to group when I really need something special.  Every six months I would find a way into a bookstore and make my circuit of the shelves looking for the latest crop.  I rarely failed to find at least one among the throng with a new book out.  I think my best day came around a decade ago when I walked out broke but the proud possessor of no less than eight expansive, page-turner epics. Glorious. Distracting. Instructive. That haul kept me occupied through the bulk of the school year and on into the summer. AND, there wasn't a stinker in the lot.  As a result of similar success over the years, I feel I have become a loyal reader.  Such is the life of the reading geek, I guess.

Last week I ran into my first dud in quite awhile, and the experience has me wondering how best to respond when a favorite author disappoints me. By disappointment I mean real disgust in multiple areas: bad plotting, clunky delivery, muddled pov, flat language, cardboard, cardboard and more cardboard.

I'm not going to name the author of this current stinker because I have enjoyed their work for many years. The novel in question is an historical fiction set in dark ages, post-roman Britain. The premise held such promise, and this writer has made a career out of the period in a slew of great stories.

But this one. No. On so many levels. I'm barely halfway through, and I'm ready to capitulate. What galls me the most about this effort are the frequent shifts in point of view often in the same scene and, all too frequently, IN THE SAME PARAGRAPH. At times I find myself gawking at pages  rather than reading them. I get tossed out of the story altogether. I find I don't care much about the author's characters. There's no glammour. I've come to the conclusion ambivalence might be the worst thing a writer could engender in their audience. To paraphrase Melville: "Call me, Ambivalence."

I want to shake the author by the ears. I want to excoriate their editor for allowing such turgid stuff to go to print. Did the publishing house just figure the name alone would recoup printing costs? What about the cost to the art? What about the damage done to the author's reputation? I sense a conspiracy theory screenplay in the making here.

What I do not want to do is give up on the writer. I will forgive this one time, and I hope any of my readers would grant me the same grace. Heck, maybe they already have.

And yet there is instruction here. My current reaction reminds me that the art demands our utmost attention. Silly errors create not just disappointment but potential rebellion. This current fail by one of my favorite authors won't cost them my loyalty, but I expect to think twice before reaching for their next effort.

What do you do when a treasured writer disappoints you?

Mark Nelson

Wednesday Review: Cracklescape by Margo Lanagan

Title: Cracklescape

Author: Margo Lanagan

Publisher: Twelfth Planet Press

Publication Date: August 2012

Genre: Horror and Science Fiction

Price: $5.95 (ebook)

Where to purchase: Amazon

Reviewed by: Julia Dvorin

Hi all, Julia here, coming to you a second time with a review of Cracklescape, an ebook collection of 4 short stories by award-winning Australian author Margo Lanagan that I picked up at World Fantasy Convention in Toronto back in 2012. I first heard of Margo Lanagan back in 2009 when I attended the World Fantasy Convention in San Jose. At that time, her book Tender Morsels won Best Novel in the World Fantasy awards, and I read it and was completely blown away by it. So when I had an opportunity to read something else by Lanagan, I was really excited (even though yes, it took me over a year to finally get to it...you should see my crazy TBR pile, it’s a looming threat to my bedside security. Good thing this one was an ebook). This collection is apparently part of a series of other books in the “Twelve Planets” series by Twelfth Planet Press, an Australian publisher of women-friendly speculative fiction--sort like of Hadley Rille Books’ Down-Under counterpart.

Anyway, enough intro, let me tell you about this collection.

There are four unrelated stories here. If anything does unify them, it is perhaps, as Jane Yolen says in the introduction, that they are all about ghosts or some kind of unreal being. But it is also, as Yolen points out, the lush poetry of Lanagan’s writing. Like any great poet, Lanagan’s language is evocative, perceptive, specific in its details—it is worth reading slowly, on a sentence-by-sentence level (if you can be that patient...sometimes I can’t be so I have to go back and read again).

The first story is “The Duchess Dresser”, about a young urban flat-dweller who finds his dresser is possessed by a female ghost from a previous era; she possesses him as well, and then appears to his flat-mates. I really liked the set up of the whole story, the gorgeous and vivid descriptions, and the relationships between both the main character and the ghost and the main character and his flat-mates, but ultimately I was frustrated with it because the story felt like it ended far too abruptly and unsatisfyingly. We never found out who the ghost was or why she was there or what ultimately happened to the main character and his flat-mates....for a few minutes there I actually thought I might have gotten an incomplete book, it ended so mid-stream.

The second story is my favorite of the collection: “The Isles of the Sun”, about a boy named Elric (no, not of Melniboné) who sees beautiful golden aliens and winds up leading the kids in his small town to follow them to another, lighter, world. I loved Elric’s insistence on The end of the story really hit me in a personal way when it switched point-of-view to the boy’s mother, who discovers her son missing early one morning and follows his tracks just in time to watch all the kids seemingly disappear. Though she doesn’t encounter the grim disaster she expects, she still loses her child in a way that makes no sense—and Lanagan really made me feel that parental loss and despair and confusion.

The third story, “Bajazzle”, is the most “horror”-genre story of the collection, about a self-centered, self-righteous, sexist pig of a man we first encounter on a train with his wife on his way to a beach party. He definitely gets his comeuppance in a very creepy and graphic way when he encounters a succubus at the party, and Lanagan’s description of the whole encounter (complete with freaky tikis) is really hard to scrub out of your brain. This story also felt not completely successful to me because the first part (on the train) and the second part (at the party/with the succubus) were so different and didn’t seem strongly related enough to me. Howeer, to Lanagan’s credit, I was so happy just wallowing in her language and the sheer “ewww” factor of the fantastical elements that I didn’t mind.

“Significant Dust”, the last story in the collection, was about Vanessa, a young woman out on her own trying to make sense of her life and her traumatic past by living out on the edge of nowhere, and the area 51-like alien encounters that start to happen there. It was my second favorite story, though I felt like it too suffered from a rather abrupt ending just when things started to get interesting. The speculative element was very light in this story, definitely serving as more of an intriguing mysterious background to Vanessa’s own unfolding backstory, which was beautifully drawn and compelling.

This is definitely a collection to pick up if you love gorgeous prose with a dash of the fantastical. It definitely made me want to pick up some of Lanagan’s other story collections (Black Juice won some World Fantasy awards also, apparently). I’m also intrigued to try some of the other Twelve Planets series from Twelfth Planet Press. I’ll have to get that TBR pile down to a reasonable level first...nah, why wait for something that’ll never happen? :)

On War and Women

Louise, thank you so much for inviting me to fill a guest spot for Heroines of Fantasy on your watch. I'm a big fan of historical fiction, even though I don't write it (yet), so in return for this little moment in the spot light, I promise to bring in some historical fiction authors on my watch next autumn.  

This month we're celebrating the release of my second novel, High Maga. The writing of this novel was such a rich experience, and today I'd like to share some thoughts on the events that inspired the story. So, without further ado, here's my guest post for HoF:

On War and Women

I’ve learned from our discussions on Heroines of Fantasy that one author’s “tired old trope” can be another’s world of opportunity. This message came home to me again just a few weeks back, when one of our guests listed war as a worn-out topic of fantasy.

That got me thinking.

High Maga, which debuts on the market this month, is essentially a story of war and violence.

Had I just spent the last three years crafting a tale that has been told too many times?

Or worse, was I telling a story that should not be told at all?

About a year ago, after reading a draft of High Maga, one of my critique partners questioned the content of the novel.  “Why so much violence?” she asked. "And why, in particular, the violence against women?"

The short answer is that war is a violent event. If an author chooses to tell war from the women’s perspective, sooner or later she will have to address the violence witnessed or encountered by those women.

The long answer has to do with my personal history and the history of my family.

I grew up with people who knew war on an intimate level. Not the battles of soldiers and veterans, but the struggles of the women left behind and the children they tried to protect as the world fell apart around them.

I heard about women who gave birth while bombs rained down on the city, of endless periods of fear and starvation and begging, of homes transformed to rubble, of daring escapes from occupied territories through dangerous midnight landscapes.

I came to understand war not as a heroic sequence of decisive battles, but as a desperate struggle for survival by civilians caught in the brutal crossfire.  

I learned that that a woman’s journey through war carries its own style of heroism. This is not always the charge-into-battle style that inspires our songs and movies. Rather, it is a heroism born of incredible endurance under some of the most brutal circumstances ever visited upon the human spirit. A heroism reflected in an awe-inspiring capacity to rebuild one’s life in the wake of utter destruction.

This is the vision that fed the writing of High Maga.

Deep inside, I wanted to pay tribute to the kinds of stories I heard as a little girl and to bear witness to the terrible loss that war causes, no matter how or why it is waged.  I sought to give a voice to those swept away by convulsions of violence, suffering through no fault of their own, their history silenced by death.

Above all, I wanted to paint my characters with dignity, even as they wandered -- or were thrust -- into the heart of darkness.

Did I succeed?

I will have to let my readers decide.  

But I am glad to have attempted the journey, and I am very grateful to all the characters of High Maga for entrusting me with the gift of their story. I hope I have done them justice.

~*~

About High Maga

Lands ravaged. Dreams destroyed. Demons let loose upon the earth.

War strikes at the heart of women’s magic in Moisehén. Eolyn’s fledgling community of magas is destroyed; its members killed, captured or scattered.

Devastated yet undaunted, Eolyn seeks to escape the occupied province and deliver to King Akmael a weapon that might secure their victory. But even a High Maga cannot survive this enemy alone. Aided by the enigmatic Mage Corey, Eolyn battles the darkest forces of the Underworld, only to discover she is a mere path to the magic that most ignites their hunger.

What can stop this tide of terror and vengeance?

The answer lies in Eolyn’s forgotten love, and in its power to engender seeds of renewed hope.

“War propels the book forward, and the characters are at their best when the events engulfing them are at their worst. . . . Fans of Gastreich’s previous work will want to catch this continuation of her story.” –Publishers Weekly

Purchase links:
Paperback
Kindle
Kobo

About the Author

Karin Rita Gastreich lives in Kansas City and Costa Rica. An ecologist by vocation, her past times include camping, hiking, music, and flamenco dance.  Her first novel, Eolyn, was nominated for the 2012 Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award.  Her third novel, Daughter of Aithne, is scheduled for release in 2015. Karin’s short stories have appeared in World Jumping, also from Hadley Rille Books, as well as in Zahir, Adventures for the Average Woman, and 69 Flavors of Paranoia.  She is a recipient of the Spring 2011 Andrews Forest Writer’s Residency.

Follow Karin’s adventures into fantastic worlds, both real and imagined, at
Eolyn Chronicles
Heroines of Fantasy
Eolyn on Facebook
Eolyn on Twitter

Claire's Wednesday Review, Now Insights

Hi all! I'm supposed to have a review for you today.  Unfortunately... that's not the case.

You see, I selected a book (which shall remain unnamed), purchased it with much anticipation, and cracked it open that night.  When I began reading though, I had a hard time connecting with the story.  Figuring it was me, and I was just in some weird funk, I set it aside to come back to the next day or so.

Two days passed, and I had a chunk of reading time available.  This time, I made it to chapter five before I had to set it aside again.  This time,  I wasn't in a funk--there was something wrong with the story and not only that, the delivery of it as well.  But there were real snippets of beautiful writing that I couldn't let go of, and I returned the next evening.  I got another several chapters read, when I finally had to accept I wasn't going to finish this book.  I didn't want to, reading further felt like a chore, and any review I wrote as a result would be extremely negative. And in this case, because of my schedule and how long it took me to reach that conclusion, there was no time to ask for someone else to step in today.

I don't believe in lambasting a book on a public forum.  It doesn't solve much of anything.  Will it give the author feedback? Of course, but anything constructive is going to get lost in a defensive reaction, be that actual or internalized. Will it give readers insight?  Sure, it will scream "don't rush out and buy this book".  Perhaps that's part of my responsibility.  But I'm not a stop-gap nor do I want to be a block to sales.  There are plenty of other people out there who don't mind that role. I'm not one of them.

This blog, however, is designed to provide thoughtful, analytical evaluation of books we've read.  And leaving a review that says, "I read Sam's Multimillion Dollar Project and I couldn't finish it." isn't thoughtful and analytical.

So what I thought I'd do with this entry was take a few minutes to share the three biggest things that appeal to me in a book, and perhaps that will help be insightful for those submitting books for review.

1. Epic world design.  By this, I don't want to be told I'm in some fantastic place with awesome gadgets, knicknacks, and other "cool stuff".  I want to see it.  I want to know what the magical gold-infused Elven steel feels like to the handler.  I want to know the color of the three moons as they set, or how they set, even.  I want to see how the clan in the east hates the clan in the west, not just have it stated as part of the narrative...and more importantly, why.  I want the rules for world functionality to be enforced, not randomly altered to fit a plot need.  Make the world come alive.  Make me feel like I've stepped into another time and place.  And the more complicated and layered it is, the more I'm apt to like it.

2.  Strong but believable heroines.  A five foot three woman who is seeking to avenge her father's death and can wield a dagger with lightning-fast reflexes and who doesn't scream at spiders but does weep for an eviscerated bunny, is believable.  A five foot three woman who can wield two greatswords with lightning-fast reflexes and overpower a stone golem who has no fear of anything and never encounters an eviscerated bunny is not believable.  Women are emotional creatures.  Stronger women repress those emotions or express them in varying ways other than constant tears.  But emotions don't just die for women--not without good explanation.  You can have a strong heroine, but she can't be over-the-top and implausible, or I'm simply going to set the book aside.

3.  Gripping Conflict.  A hero quest is one thing. It's a goal, it's a purpose and it's bound to involve battle and action scenes.  But give me gut-wrenching choices, decisions that aren't black and white and pose some insurmountable choice for the hero or heroine.  I like internal conflict over external conflict, though the external conflict keeps me moving through the story.  I want dire consequences.  People twisting in the wind.  And people truly affected by the decisions they make.  Simply creating battle scenes that have no consequence, or having everyone support the hero's decision no matter what it may be, gets ... well... boring.  And that was the largest issue with the book I set aside.

Anyway, those are a few of my biggies.  If your book matches, feel free to throw my name in on the review request!

Hope you all had an enjoyable holiday. And may you encounter greater books than I!

Till next time...

~Claire
www.claireashgrove.com