Myth, the Universe, and Everything

...and here I am blogging. Figures, no?

The count so far is four obituaries left and three short essays, but at this point I've gone through all the research and made notes. In theory, this should make the work go faster. In practice, well, I'm blogging. Which is not getting work done.

I did get a good bit of reading done yesterday, getting me closer to finishing at least one of the three reviews left.

The scanning project... well, I may decide to bring it with me. There are quiet evenings on the trip. Last year, I edited the first quarter of Regaining Home on a computer that has since died--so all of my edits have vanished, though I still have the original work from Shawn. Now, a year later, I suspect I'll make different changes anyway.

My edits on "Don't Let Go" are about half-complete as well. Dylan (eyezofwolf) was great at getting the edits back to me nearly immediately. His changes will make the story better, which is the thing I love most about the editing process. It's like putting rocks through a tumbler--they're prettier when they come out. (There are a few rare exceptions, and I suppose that might be true of the editorial process as well.)

Despite all that stuff still on my to-do list, it was great going back to campus yesterday and seeing people I've traveled with or shared meals with (and one classmate of mine who is finally a graduate) receive their degrees. It was an absolutely beautiful day for it (unlike my own graduation, which was rainy and cold), and I actually got sunburn on my face from being out in the sun for several hours. (The sunburn isn't fun, of course, but spending that much time in sunshine is certainly lifting to the spirits!) Which reminds me that I still need to pack the sunscreen for my trip.

My main character is now twelfth level. Huzzah! We had a great fun weekend, with an official RPGA mod, a tailor-made DM's Mark, and outdoor cooking on the grill. We even started one of our games out in the back yard. How can that not be fun? (We didn't even lose any dice outside, which is the real challenge to backyard D&D.)

In other news, I got the trip itinerary for Greece and Turkey today, so the countdown can officially start. Here's what I have outstanding before I leave:

1) I have the rough of "Don't Let Go" out with Dylan (eyezofwolf). I don't know if edits will actually happen on that before I go or not.
2) I have an edited version of "The Best Things Get Better with Age," my contribution to Serenity Adventures, out with Jamie Chambers. I don't know if I'll be getting any more edits back on *that* or not, either.
3) I have three essays and eight obituaries to write.
4) I have a scanning project that I had fully intended to get done before I left.
5) I was hoping to actually do some comic writing before I left, in case C&AII possibly comes off hiatus while I'm gone.
6) I've been asked to finish two more reviews for flamesrising and two for School Library Journal.

There are some other incidentals (like following up on contracts, etc.). But really? That's a lot to get done by the 20th. Along with plans to get together with friends (including lunch/coffee with jenlyn_b and amanda_marrone tomorrow--so excited!) and attending graduation at Simon's Rock on Saturday to see some friends get their shiny new pieces of paper that kick them out of being undergrads, I'll be cutting it close. Eight days left. Wish me luck!

We had a lovely Christmas and New Year's off in the arctic lands of Michigan, staying with my family. While delightful, this led to a very long cold that persists in hanging on, so I've been a little slow getting back into the swing of things! I'm looking over some guest blogs that have come in and getting ready to figure out a posting schedule (as well as deciding my best course of action for pestering the folks who were excited about writing guest entries but haven't yet). I've been reading some books for review for FlamesRising (Happy Hour of the Damned by mdhenry, which is going to get a very good review), some books for School Library Journal (the best series of mythology books for kids that they've yet sent me!), and some books just for fun (Skullduggery Pleasant, which is a delightful Irish YA fantasy novel with some of the best banter since Firefly was on the air).

In the news this week, the United States has decided to follow the example of the U.K. and has formed a "national ambassador for children's books" position much like the Children's Laureate in Britain. It is a two year appointment, supported by the Library of Congress and the Children's Book Council. Their selection for the first author to fill this position? None other than "Guys Read" founder and proponent of helping more young people become readers-for-life, Jon Scieszka. Long a favorite of mine (since the days of The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs and the beginning of his "Time Warp Trio" series, which I was theoretically too old for when they came out, but I don't quibble over the details), Scieszka is amazingly enthusiastic at doing outreach for reluctant readers. I was lucky to write the update essay on his work in 2005 for the Something about the Author series, and reading about what he's been working toward—not just with his own work, but with trying to bring in other writers to encourage reluctant readers, especially boys, to get hooked on reading—really impressed me. If anyone will do a great job as the first person in this position, he's at the top of the list. (Right up there next to him is Rick Riordan.) So congrats, Mr. Scieszka!

Exciting book find of the day: Don't Know Much about Mythology: Everything You Need to Know About the Greatest Stories in Human History but Never Learned. I assume this is from the same folks who put out Don't Know Much about History a number of years ago, which had a reputation for being both entertaining and informative. More news as I actually read the book. ;)

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I got a package in the mail today from flamesrising (Thanks Matt!) with books and a CD for reviewing. Much to my delight, one of the books was Ilona Andrews's Magic Bites, which I'd already started reading. Now I have a copy of my very own!

(Ilona has a livejournal, but I can't put my finger on her username at the moment. I may update later.)

Edit: It's ilona_andrews, obviously. *facepalm*

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Over at Cowboys and Aliens, we've announced a contest to have your likeness become a character in chapter two of our story. Go visit and enter!

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And last, but not least, SpaceWesterns.com is having a limerick contest, to be judged by Jane Espenson and Keith R. A. DeCandido. The results should be amusing! I'm getting my five line rhythm going to prepare my entry.

On my desk is The Greek Myths: Complete Edition by Robert Graves. On its way here from the library is The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell (as I, alas, don't have a copy of my own). In my purse are articles about heroes and modernity (or the heroic in modernity, as one of the authors believes that democracy cancels out the need for actual heroes and instead praises the heroic in ordinary people).

And away in my e-mail went my abstract to Dr. Jes Battis as an application for inclusion in A Dragon Wrecked My Prom. Wish me luck! (If I had anything to give away right now, I'd offer a prize for anyone who figured out what teen hero I've chosen for my essay given the resources mentioned above.)

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Complete tangent: I love the people at School Library Journal. They send me such awesome books. Granted, some are less awesome after reading than others, but all of them are awesome in concept. I get books about mythology, martial arts, comics, and teen fantasy. Being a reviewer rocks! I love that the editors are totally in tune with the types of books I'd be likely to pick up for myself--it seems like such a good plan to send books to people who are actually likely to appreciate them, rather than sending them out to an already reluctant audience.

For those of you interested in reading the reviews of my novels, Matt at Flames Rising just posted a great review of Departure. Thanks Matt! I feel like Matt really got what I was trying to do with the novel, and that's thrilling. ;)

Oh, for those who have read Departure and are as frustrated as Matt with the cliff-hanger, I promise I didn't know Regaining Home was going to be delayed! I had no intention of being quite this mean! As soon as I hear word on when Regaining Home will be back on the schedule, I'll let you all know.

(Not that the Rupert Grint quote isn't cute. It's pretty much made me smile since I found it yesterday. But that's not what I meant to write about.)

I just got the second volume of Sorcerers and Secretaries by Amy Kim Ganter in the mail yesterday. The manga is a two-volume set, so the whole story is told in two books, and it's adorable! The plot isn't hugely complex: it's a story of romantic tension between a directionless bookseller who finds direction by helping a writer follow her true path. Along with being a great story about budding friendship/trust/romance (following some of the basic romantic comedy movie plot tropes), it's also a story about how fiction can bridge the gap between two people to reconcile their differences. The resolution may be a bit too easy, but it's a sweet story that, if you read manga, I highly recommend.

On the trip home, I finally finished Depths of Madness by Erik Scott de Bie (eriksdb). This novel was far less linear than his previous book, Ghostwalker, and had a lot more character development--in sort of an odd way. Only one of the main characters who shares the story from his/her POV continues to be a main character right through the very end. The whole story, being about madness, keeps reality spinning from the very beginning. Is any of it really happening? If it is, who's the spy among the group? Even as the story ended, I wasn't sure if the villain would twist into a different identity, leaving one of our heroes innocent after all. The novel is extremely creepy, darker than a lot of the sword and sorcery novels in the Forgotten Realms line, and sets up the potential for more stories with the main character--an incredibly bitchy, independent anti-hero who is utterly likable despite her flaws (perhaps because of them).

I've mentioned here a couple of times that I've been reading this novel, and to tell the truth, it took me awhile to get into the story--not due to any real fault of de Bie's, but because there were so many references to Forgotten Realms gods, places, and words that I had no connection to (I'm not a big Realms reader, as I decided ages ago that there was no hope of my ever catching up; I've enjoyed Douglas Niles, a chunk of R. A. Salvatore, and a little Ed Greenwood, but they're the only ones besides de Bie that I read). Realms fans will have no trouble keeping up, but I struggled with figuring out why some things that were said were cause for contention inside the group.

Overall, if you enjoy fantasy with a healthy does of creepy, a non-linear plot, mixed with a little bit of mystery as you second guess what's going along right along with the characters, definitely pick up Depths of Madness. Particularly if you're already a Forgotten Realms reader.

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Upon arriving home, I finished Senrid, which I started before I left but didn't pack, as I didn't have room for another hard cover. When I started the novel, I was worried that I wasn't going to like it--an emotion I hated because I've always enjoyed Sherwood Smith's (sartorias) writing so much! As stated on the back of the novel, Senrid was written when Smith was only fifteen, so it lacks the polish of her later works (despite its being published more recently). Unlike Crown Duel and Inda (and even in her online novel Shevraeth at Marloven Hess), magic is far more powerful and accessible in Senrid. Several of the main characters come from other worlds--a detail that no one seems to think is unusual. Of the other worldly characters, several are actually from Earth, instantly putting the novel in the category of "earth kids have adventures in fantasy worlds," something I hadn't been prepared for when I picked up the book. But as my brain adjusted to the ideas, the way the world worked during this time, and the idea that this story in fact happened in the middle of several other tales, I was able to suspend my disbelief in a way that hadn't been required of me by Smith's other books.

After I left, having read half of the book, I kept thinking about it. What was Senrid doing while I was away? Would we meet Sartora in this book? Was Kitty the simpering little girl she seemed to be, or would she actually develop a spine? The more I returned to the story in my head, the more I was desperate to read the novel when I got home. When I arrived home, I eagerly snatched it up and read the rest of the story, watching Senrid's conversion from outright villain to anti-hero to something approaching an actual, kingly hero.

The quote on the back of the book, explaining that Senrid is a peek into Smith's imagination as a teen, is spot on. Taking it in that frame of mind and accepting that yes, there are Earth teens involved, the novel is absolutely wonderful. I would recommend it to the "Redwall" crowd, anyone who enjoyed Smith's "Wren" books, and readers who have grown out of the Narnia books but don't yet read more sophisticated books like Smith's Crown Duel or any of Tamora Pierce's series. I'd also recommend it to anyone who has read the other works set in the world, with the warning that despite its label as YA, it's more of a novel for children than young adults. Had I known all of that, I would never have had to worry about not liking it--I'd have loved it from the first page.

Now, of course, I'm desperate for more. When was Senrid a captive of the Norsundarians? When did he meet Sartora? There are gaps in my understanding of the world, so I hope that Senrid does well enough that we'll see the other texts from Smith's teen writing years to fill out the holes.

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I watched two movies on the flight home: Eragon, which I'd missed in theaters, and Music and Lyrics, which I don't really have anyone to watch with me, as my chick-flick buddies live in California and Boston. There's really only one way for me to describe Eragon: OAV. As explained to me, and OAV is an anime that is designed just so that fans of a manga can see their favorite characters animated. It's fine to leave huge gaps in the plot, because everyone already knows what's going to happen, and it's just the novelty of their favorite characters moving that keeps people watching.

Eragon the movie stripped the Eragon story of everything that made it interesting to me as a reader. This is not in any way the fault of the actors, who I thought were quite good. Jeremy Irons was great, and the new actor playing Eragon did a nice job with the script he was handed. The script, however--ugh. Part of what makes Eragon (the book) interesting is that Paolini plays with the idea of consciousness and makes Saphira, the dragon, feel qualitatively different than her human companions, just by the way she thinks and talks. The other part that I remember being extremely appealing to me is that Eragon questions whether he's doing the right thing by going to the Varden. Only a very little bit of that moral quandary comes across--it's mostly swept by in the effort to show more special effects. Angela, one of the most intriguing characters in the novel, is completely ruined.

General assessment? If you can see it for free and have three hours of your life that you don't have to spend on anything else, sure, go ahead and watch it. It worked for me, and it was at least diverting if not enjoyable.

Lyrics and Music, on the other hand, had me in stitches. I think it's one of the best romantic comedies I've ever seen. Drew Barrymore, who I usually don't much care for, is stellar in her performance of a completely nutty writer. The commentary on the music industry (both in the eighties and now) is hysterical, as is the use of things like VH1's Pop up Video. It's a movie I think Shanna Swendson (shanna_s) would approve of, and as she's had some rather harsh criticism of the romantic comedy industry as of late, I think that's probably a good sign.

I will be the first to admit that I am not a print newspaper reader. I actually detest the format. The pages are unmanageable and unweildy. The print makes your fingers black just from touching it. They even smell bad. So when the announcement comes in from both Publishers Weekly in this week's talk-back section on PW.com and the NYTBR (which I read online) that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is dropping their book review section, it matters very little to me. I get my book reviews, as a reader, from industry magazines (which I read online), the NYTBR (which I read online), industry news sites, and blogs. I get monthly e-mails from the publishers that offer such things that tell me about their new books. I check amazon and BN.com for pub dates. (Okay, so sometimes I actually call my local bricks and mortar B&N. I'm not so online-exclusive that I won't use the phone.)

But I realize that just because I'm completely unaffected by the increasing trend over shorter review sections (or no reviews at all) in print newspapers, that doesn't mean it's a non-issue. So I highly recommend reading this week's NYTBR (which also features a delightful article on why bad books are valuable and a review of a book putting forth the remarkable idea that communication, perhaps even language, stemmed from alcohol), and perhaps popping over to PW's Talk-back before they change the topic.

I'd also love to hear what the writerly and editorly type folk who occasionally comment here think about a) newpaper reviews, b) online reviews, and c) reviews in general. We've been told for ages that they're a useful marketing tool, but all of us who have watched Spidey 3 know that a bad review can just about end a career as well. What is a review's value in an electronic age, and how do you gage the value of one type vs. another's?

Having just caught up on various live journals, I paused to pay attention to Neil Gaiman's recent mention of Library Thing's UnSuggester. The idea is that they'll run some mathematical scan to see what books owned by Library Thing members are *unlikely* to be owned by Library Thing members who own other books. Hopefully that makes more sense when you read it than when I just typed it.

Here's an example, which I did as a test in response to Neil Gaiman's comment that people who own his books are unlikely to own books about Christianity. I plugged in Dark Night of the Soul, by St. John of the Cross, and got the following result. Of the 71 titles listed, I have either read or own 41 one of them. (Granted, some of what I've read I do not own, which is not the statistic they're measuring, and some of them I own I have not read, but that is a statistic they're measuring, so I believe it evens out.)

I think Library Thing is a great idea, but don't have time nor patience that would be required to log all my books, so it seems my status as a statistical anomaly will go unchanged.

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I wish I had news on Departure for all of you, as it was supposed to be released this weekend, but alas, I don't. Or that I could tell you that both Amazon and Barnes and Noble were carrying Into the Reach before the holidays, but it looks like mid-January is the best we'll be able to do.

I did find a fun review online the other day though. Hurrah for google!

Here's a look at Steampunk Musha from The RPG Site.
Matt from Flames Rising was kind enough to post his review of Into the Reach in the comments of a recent entry here, but I forgot to actually post it on my page. Here it is.

There are also some comments about Into the Reach in forums, but those aren't full reviews, so I won't post them here. They're largely nice, though, which is a good feeling.

No word on whether Jewel Staite read the novel yet, but maybe someday we'll hear...

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Edit: Oh! I almost forgot. After the review from the good folks over at RPG Blog, I checked out a novel by David Gemmel, Legend, due to the favorable comparison. I finally finished it last week (after it spent some time in my library pile) and I have to say it blew me away. I'm truly honored that his name came up in a review of my novel. We just bought another of his books, so I'll be reading that soon, as well. If you haven't read David Gemmell, do yourself a favor and put him on your reading list.