Myth, the Universe, and Everything

Happy New Year! It's been some time since I posted; it was a busy year at Casa Abbott for non-writing reasons. We've welcomed baby Fish into our family, joining his sister Bug, Three-stripe, cats Jack and Tollers, and I as members of our household. But while I'm behind on many things, I've continued to read a lot! Since I posted last year and the year before about my reading goals, I wanted to post last year's results and this year's goals before 2015 progressed too far!

This year, I did not count all the picture books I read, but I did count all my review picture books individually. For the year, I totalled 163 books, which is up from last year's 129 (probably in part due to counting all the review books individually). There was a method to my madness, however: I wanted to see what percentage of titles were review books as compared to non-review books. Here's some of the interesting breakdown:

• 89 titles were review books


• 106 were children's or YA books


• Only 12 were graphic novels, which is rather low


• I read 7 romance, 69 SFF, and 2 nonfiction

I did reasonably well on my goals. The 2 nonfiction titles beat my goal to read just 1. I read 13 out of the 15 novels from my TBR pile I'd hoped to read, 4 titles by autobio writers, 6 rereads (out of a goal of 3), and read one non-genre novel.

The most interesting statistic I kept last year was print vs. digital. I surprised myself by reading 91 books in paper and 72 digitally. I thought I skewed toward e-books, so it's interesting to me that I'm not even at 50% digital reading. Some of this is due to reading for the MFAs. I rely heavily on the library to provide me with MFA reading, and though some are available as e-books, most are more readily available in print.


Highlights of the year?

• Rereading Max Gladstone's Three Parts Dead--and seeing it make the MFA finalists list--was great fun. It's been especially fun to read more of the Craft books, both post-publishing and in mss format, in combination with playing Max's Craftverse game Choice of the Deathless. Without the books being required for the game and vice versa, they work so well in conjunction!


• Finishing Devon Monk's "Allie Beckstrom" series was bittersweet, but starting the "House Immortal" books makes me confident there's more excellent reading to come.


• I had the fantastic opportunity to interview Gene Luen Yang for the autobio project, and I read The Shadow Hero and Boxers and Saints in preparation for that. They were both some of my favorite reading for the year, for very different reasons. I'd recommend The Shadow Hero to anyone, but especially readers who have a fondness for Golden Age superheroes. Boxers and Saints is a fabulous moral and ethical investigation of a historical period with a lot of magical realism thrown in, and I found it both enjoyable and tremendously moving.


• The biggest surprise read was probably Eleven by Tom Rogers. It's a book about 9/11, mostly from the perspective of a boy who's just turned 11, and it's fantastic both as an exploration of the event through fiction for middle graders and as a coming of age story. It was also pretty wild to realize that 9/11 happened before the middle grade age group was born--so it qualifies, on some level, as historical fiction.


• I'd also recommend without reservation the Super Lexi middle grade books by Emma Lesko. Lexi is neurologically and developmentally different from her peers, which makes her a fascinating POV character, and Lesko's commitment to neuro-diversity in children's books shows in how beautifully she captures Lexi and makes her so easy to empathize with.


• I loved finally finishing Shanna Swendson's "Enchanted, Inc." series, which for ages looked like it wouldn't get to continue beyond book four. (I'd still read more books in that world!)


• I'm also really eager to see where the "Kate Daniels" (Ilona Andrews) and "Safehold" (David Weber) books end up next!

There were, of course, a lot of other great books, but listing them all would be fodder for TLDR (if I haven't already hit that point).

I was pretty happy with this year's goals, so I'm planning to keep them the same. Here's to another year of good reading!

Yesterday, Bug and I went to Schemitzun -- the Green Corn Festival Powwow at the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation (with busses transporting us from Foxwoods Casino). It's been about eight years since I went, and some of those years the powwow was cancelled due to the economy. It's much smaller now that I remember it being before, but Bug and I still had a great time. Much to my dismay, she does not like fry bread yet. This is disappointing, but I can hope she'll acquire a taste for it in the future.


Photo by Abigail Pheiffer of tiny tot dancer Chaske Hill, Schemitzun 2012

We made it in time for Grand Entry, much to my surprise, as we were there forty minutes after it was supposed to start. It's been a while since my world ran on "Indian Time," as they told me to call it when I worked at Ziibiwing Center, but it was comforting to be back at an event where punctuality wasn't the most important thing. I talked to Bug about jingle dresses and grass dancers and fancy shawls; we had fresh strawberry lemonade complete with real strawberries and I had an Indian Taco. We got up close to the drums so we could watch them play, and we saw the tiny tots (dancers under six) make their grabs for candy in the Candy Quest Dance. All kids, even the ones who aren't registered, are allowed in that dance, so next year we'll give it a try.

So we had a great time, and though I'm a little nostalgic for the huge event that Schemitzun used to be, with an indoor arena for the dancers and a rodeo on another part of the grounds, I'm mostly curious if anyone has written up a history of the powwow. And if they haven't, I wonder if there's a market for a piece like that if I decided to do the research on my own...

We did it! This morning, an increased pledge pushed us $55 over our funding goal on the Regaining Home Kickstarter. Regaining Home is go!



(Clearly, I am influenced by Bug's taste -- when I hear the phrase "We did it!" I can't help but hear Dora the Explorer's ending song.)

What this means so far is that we definitely have the funds to bring out Regaining Home sometime by the end of this year. We are less than $300 short of our first stretch goal, which would allow us to edit the first two novels and make them available in multiple formats, rather than just pdf. As I write this, we have 69 hours to go -- it could still happen!

Thanks to everyone for continuing to support the project. Seeing so many familiar names among the donors -- or the retweeters or the facebook posters -- has meant the world to me.

Two projects have been keeping me busy enough to take up blog time, but both are coming to a head. The first is my Choice of Games kung fu project, which is coming to the concluding chapters and is planned for a before-Christmas release. Which means you all will be able to see what it is I've been working on! I'm very grateful to my playtesters, who have been helpful not only in finding errors and typos and parts of the game that freeze up, but also because their enthusiasm makes me want to keep going.

The last chapter I wrote necessitated rewatching some kung fu favorites -- mostly just scenes of battles where the hero is fighting a rival. Three-stripe and I chose some battles from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, and Ip Man 2 as starters, but it was really Jet Li's Fearless that helped the most. Early in that film, Jet Li's character meets a challenger atop a tall tower where the two battle it out, and I used that setting as the basis for a fight between the player character of the game and a challenger character.



I had wanted to do a bamboo forest fight, like in Crouching Tiger or House of Flying Daggers, but it didn't work out for this chapter. There's always the next one!

Meanwhile, I'm preparing for my own black belt test, which is happening this Sunday, and I've been spending a lot more time at the gym in preparation for it. I've never been a heavy gym user, but our local Y has been great for me, not only in keeping up with physical therapy for injuries I've had to my knee and shoulder that I've finally been dealing with, but also for providing a great place to take Bug swimming. At any rate, I am repeating my "Noodles, don't noodles" mantra and trying to be serene about the coming challenge on Sunday. It is working in some moments better than others, but I suppose that is why we take things one moment at a time!

Apologies for the long blog absence without warning! I was off on a family vacation that involved not one but two family weddings in beautiful Michigan. We had a lovely time, and when I returned home I jumped right into finishing up the last round of autobiographical essays, which included an original piece by Tananarive Due. Due and her husband, Steven Barnes, who has also written an autobiography for the autobio project, ought to be considered one of the power couples of the SFF world (if they're not already). They're both amazing. If you've not read either of them, you're missing out. (Luckily, their books are pretty widely available, so it's a loss that can be rectified pretty easily at your local library.)

So the last round of autobio has wrapped up, I got to do a cool secret project for Wizards of the Coast, and a computer crash didn't stop me from completing an assignment of obituaries. All in all, things are good on the work front, and I'm looking ahead to the assignments that come next! The Steampunk Musha Kickstarter's success means I'll be doing some adventure writing with Rick Hershey and maybe a short story or two coming up!

I'm also catching up on Eureka. Since my writer-buddy Margaret Dunlap worked on that show, I ponied up and bought a season pass on Amazon so I can watch it on the television. I just finished watching episode 4, which involves a scene where two characters start a D&D game, basically functioning as a step toward helping one of them cope with grief. I thought it was an incredibly touching moment and a wonderful way to celebrate the power of shared storytelling.

Speaking of writer friends, several writer friends of mine are already on to the next project, and here's their news:

• Since in writer-time, Eureka wrapped ages ago, Margaret's been keeping busy working on a new project, the web show The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. It's a modernized Pride and Prejudice, and it sounds right up my alley. More when I've had a chance to catch up on the already-existing episodes!


• Fellow Substrater Max Gladstone just announced his fantastic news that he's sold an additional two books to Tor. This comes on top of his first two book contract -- his debut novel releases this October and is available for preorder now.


• I can't remember if I linked back to Francesca Forrest's "Tilia Songbird," which was published in Gigantosaurus at the beginning of May. If not, here it is! If I did, and you didn't read it the first time, I hope this inspires you to go check it out.


• And for a celebration of meta-text, John "jaQ" Andrews just had his e-book guide to Castle come out! (It's a book about a show about a guy who writes books -- it gets awesomely circular, and I can't think of a better person to write about it than John.) Check out Quicklet on Castle Season 3, in which John has promised to explain the conspiracy behind the death of Beckett's mother.

I love good news like this!

Rather than launching into industry news after a month of minding my own business (and neglecting to post here), I thought I'd write a little bit about some thoughts I've been having this holiday season in relation to my own personal mythology (i.e. religion).

Not long ago I had a conversation with a friend about the futility of the universe -- the idea that, eventually, it's likely to all draw back in on itself, thus erasing everything that has gone on before and reducing humanity to a footnote of the universe (if anything in the universe is taking notes). I don't remember it that's the current popular theory for the end of the universe -- there's another one that we'll expand indefinitely, as I recall, but I've long since stopped worrying about the end of everything, as I won't be around to see it. What the conversation ended up coming around to was whether or not anything humanity did mattered, in the grand scheme of things, and whether there was any hope. I said, "I know this sounds like a cop out, but I think it's just in my nature to hope."

There is power in hope -- something supported by science as well as by common/folk wisdom. My sister recently visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, and a friend of Frank's said at one point that Frank thought all her family members were dead. The friend believed that if Frank had known her father was alive, she would have survived -- but she'd lost all hope. If she'd known that the concentration camp where she was located would be liberated in two days, might she have made it? I suspect so, because I think hope gives people a reason to hold on, even when they don't precisely know what they're hoping for.

I was a reader for our Christmas Eve church service out here, and one of the passages I read was from Luke 2 -- the story of the shepherds. I've sung it before from Handel's Messiah, and I had to focus on the translation I'd been instructed to read in order to avoid the "sore afraid"s and the "And lo!"s. Reading it aloud this year made me think about how a lot of my world-view ends up being rather like the way the shepherds react after they leave the manger scene: they are full of awe, wonder, and hope.



At the end of all things, will any of what we've experienced here have mattered? Will it have had any meaning bigger than just the components? I can't guarantee it, but I believe that, in some grand scheme of things, our experiences matter and our stories matter. And I can't help thinking that it's much nicer to be filled with hope that to not have any at all.

Happy Halloween!

The news I know that some of you are eagerly awaiting is about the print release of Haunted. It looks like the anthology will be out in paper copy next week -- but sadly not in time for a Halloween impulse purchase. For e-book readers who may have hesitated in making the purchase, however, some news! Haunted is now available at Barnes and Noble for your nook; it's also on super sale (50% off) at DriveThru.

This is my first year in ages to not have a costume for Halloween. Bug is the real star anyway, so I'm not complaining! It does feel weird to be wearing my teaching clothes (for Mom Baby Fitness) and a "Serenity Valley: Historic Battlefield, Hera" sweatshirt on costume day, though. I am thinking of acquiring some hats over the next year, as with a bowler hat or a fedora, I can come up with costumes in my wardrobe without real effort. The hat makes the difference though!

Flash to the past: my Flames Rising article about costumes for 2010 and my creature feature from 2008.

Wishing you all a deliciously fun and spooky day (and, for those of you in New England like me, a warm reprieve from our sudden snow!).

For the last two days, I've covered breaking news that has involved our stormy weather here along the Shoreline. Yesterday, it was the story that our local high school graduation had been moved indoors due to the rain. Today, one of the main thoroughfares in town flooded and the road was closed.

Both stories ended (on the personal end) with me getting soaked in the name of journalism. Twostripe finds this incredibly amusing. I find it sort of soggy. (I was pleased with some of the shots I got of the water under the bridge, particularly -- art requires sacrifice, even if that just means wet socks, right?)

We'll be back to our (ir)regularly scheduled posts about mythology and fiction in the next few days -- just as soon as I dry out!

The family and I had a fantastic week in Colorado (the editorial assistants did a nice job keeping the house in order while we were gone). Now I'm back at my desk, trying to catch up on the work I didn't take with me (and yes, I took work along, because I am a bad vacationer). Big news: next week I start my class as a Mommy-Baby fitness instructor. If you know anyone in shoreline Connecticut who has a wee one and is looking for a good way to exercise and socialize with other moms, send 'em my way!

On a similar note, Dancing Thru Pregnancy founder Ann Cowlin was interviewed at Branford Patch about DTP's 30 year anniversary here in New Haven area. Ann's an amazing teacher to work with, and I feel both incredibly lucky and grateful that I ended up in her class!

So, next week will involve all sorts of new work for me: my class begins, and I'll be the substitute editor for Branford Patch, which should be a great challenge. In the meantime, we've got the Branford Festival this weekend, complete with the Branford Historical Society's Strawberry Shortcake Festival. (Does the tradition go all the way back to Quinnipiac roots? I posited that in my recent article on Patch, but it's just a supposition!) Summer certainly has come with no intentions of slowing down for me, and I'm going to do my best to keep up!

We've been going through a lot of kids' movies from the library here at Casa Abbott, as Bug enjoys a little bit of screen-time to settle down when she's getting sleepy. It typically takes three or four days to make it through a regular cartoon movie (unless I finish it after she's gone to bed), since we watch it in spurts, which is not an optimal viewing experience for me -- but it does give me the excuse to catch up on the cartoon movies I've missed over the past few years. I'd missed Disney's Meet the Robinsons, for example, which I think was pretty poorly branded and misrepresented by the trailers. (I ended up thinking it was pretty cute.) We've seen Tangled (which I loved), Ratatouille, and we're in the middle of The Tigger Movie now. We also picked up Megamind, which I decided was not really a kids' movie after all, and so finished on my own.

If you're not familiar with the story (and it's a familiar one), Megamind is one of two aliens that get sent off in small space pods from their dying worlds to live on earth. Metro Man has all the super powers you'd expect, while Megamind has a big blue head, a minion that's a fish, and can make crazy mad science inventions (but otherwise doesn't seem too inherently bright). He also ends up being very good at escaping from jail. They go to the same school as children, where Metro Man is the popular one, and Megamind is always picked last for everything. Naturally, they become rivals, with Metro Man as the hero and Megamind as the villain. The story ends up having this great feel of the hero and the villain completing each other in a fluffy bunnies version of the Batman/Joker relationship, but it takes awhile to get to that realization.

In the mean time, I started wondering just what has happened to heroes lately.

I admit that I'm behind on some of the great super-stories that have come out lately, so I can't speak to the trend in its entirety. (I even own Black and White by Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge and haven't read it yet; I'm super excited to get a hold of Carrie Vaughn's After the Golden Age as well.) But here's what I've noticed based on a few recent samplings of the spin-the-super-story genre. The hero? Not really the good guy. Megamind is a prime example of this: despite the fact that Megamind is all about being the villain, he ends up being the character the audience really identifies with -- and, no real spoiler here, he ends up turning a new leaf by the end of the story. (Thus, it may actually be a kids' movie after all.) Better still: Doctor Horrible's Sing Along Blog. Metro Man ends up having some redeeming qualities; Captain Hammer's only redeeming quality is that he's played my Nathan Fillion -- otherwise, he's a complete jerk. Even in Austin Grossman's Soon I Will Be Invincible, the villain, who is a mastermind (also the common thread here), is extremely compelling as a sympathetic figure.

Now, take a look back at the uber-superhero: Superman. Apparently he can sort of be a jerk in some of the early comics, too -- but not at the expense of a nerdy rival. No, Supe's secret identity *is* the nerdy guy. Originally created by a couple of pretty nerdy guys, Supe was a fantasy that bought into the whole Charles Atlas mentality of self-improvement: even nerds could have awesome body-builder style strength. (Of course, Superman was even more awesome than just a strong man -- but still, he's a fantasy that nerds were supposed to identify with, rather than despise.)

And Clark Kent isn't the only super-nerd. Let's wander into the Marvel-verse. Take Spiderman. Peter Parker: total nerd to start with. Reed Richards? Actually makes a name for himself as a nerd -- who cares that he can go all bendy as Mr. Fantastic when we need his super brain? Even Tony Stark has some serious nerd cred (though, granted, he never really embraces the nerd lifestyle, and no one ever gives him crap for being smart, unlike the other heroes I've mentioned).

So, nerd has always equalled good in the comics world -- but strong has not always equalled jerk. I'm wondering if this trend of the super-strong hero-as-villain trend has to do with embracing geeks-as-overlords. (That's mostly tongue in cheek -- but, as Alec Hardison on Leverage says: "Age of the geek, baby. We rule the world.") The thing is -- I get the geek-as-hero trend (see: Chuck as an example). But this geek-as-villain thing? Is this a subversive, refusing to work for the man thing? Is it supporting the idea that we who were picked on for our nerdiness as kids are out for revenge (rather than being willing to save our tormentors)? Clearly, Doctor Horrible doesn't end up happy with his career choice, and Megamind converts to the side of good... but still. What is going on right now to make the supervillain nerd anti-hero a popular trope?

I would love to hear thoughts on this that don't come from inside my own head. :) In good news, the whole thought process inspired a quick short story, which I drafted in one day and Max Gladstone has already gotten me crits for. Hooray for creative contemplation resulting in actual word count!