Myth, the Universe, and Everything

I've been saving up links to post here and just realized I'm getting overwhelmed, so I'd better post em here!

Big news: Tales of Rosuto Shima, the short story collection from the Steampunk Musha kickstarter, was just released in its first edition to the Kickstarter backers -- and it's also up on DriveThruRPG. My story, "The Gamelan Device," will be added to it soon, Update: is already included!, and excerpts from the comic Riddle in Red that we worked on in the setting are included. If you buy it now, you'll get a message when the newest version is uploaded in place of the current, original version. So, go forth and buy!



Other links of interest:

The Oglala Sioux and the federal government are teaming up to open the first tribal national park. Katie Gustafson wrote about it earlier this month for the World Wildlife Federation. I think it's a really cool initiative, and I'm excited to see it happening!

Donald T. Williams, who I know from the Mythopoeic Society, blogged recently on that same topic that's been coming up in my life lately: how the stories we read/watch impact our own life story. His entry has a Christian bent, but includes quest narratives like Odysseus and Dante as recommendations.

My new friend and writing buddy Elisabeth Adams had her story Subversion published on Escape Pod. Congrats Elisabeth!

And this news is long-belated: Shanna Swendson (shanna_s) has had the last three books in her Enchanted Inc. series picked up and published! The fifth book was published last August, but I just found out the good news today. Go Shanna! Yay for more Katie Chandler adventures!

And the final bit for today: I got a direct message on twitter from an aspiring author I conversed with about publishing back in 2010. He's soon to have a novella released on amazon, and he gave me credit for helping inspire him. I'm going to carry this feel-good moment with me for awhile!

What's the good news do you have to share?

Most of what I've been reading in the past two months are books on the Mythopoeic Society Fantasy Awards longlists. We can't talk about the selections, and from the conversations via e-mail with the other judges, I think I may place more value on fun novels (or, novels that are both worthwhile and enjoyable, rather than worthwhile but wearing to read, or enjoyable but fluffy) than some of the rest of the committee. But, as Twostripe says, diversity in judges is important, and if I shift us slightly away from valuing style above many other qualities, I'm all right with that. I've remembered that I really enjoy reading what I think Shanna Swendson (shanna_s) calls a transparent writing style -- writing that you don't notice for itself, because you're so into the story being told.

At any rate, I've just turned in my votes for the final five in the children's category. I turned in my adult votes on Friday. I am very eager to see what comes out on the finalist list! I'll probably talk a bit about them here when the list is announced.

In the meantime, I need to get some writing done. Twostripe has promised me an hour or three tomorrow to focus on writing while he watches Bug; this should allow me to get caught up with Blood and Tumult and possibly get some work done on the autobio project, making the final corrections before I start the typesetting process. But outside of that time, we're planning to spend most of the day at the beach! We had a cookout with the Mythic Greece gamers, niliphim, and the bananapants/bananaplants family. Gaming and a cookout at the beach? Can't be beat!

Back in October, I contributed to Flames Rising's Halloween Horror Creatures series--and since I missed blogging for that whole month, I never mentioned that it had gotten posted! I did a piece on hounds of the Morrigan, using bits and pieces of real Celtic lore mixed with what I thought would be a fun monster, which is accompanied by a cool image from artist Jeff Preston.

Via Barbara Vey's Beyond Her Blog, the Carolina Romance Writers are hosting an online writing workshop using Firefly as the course material. It runs from January 5 through 30, and the cost runs $20. (I don't know what online writing workshops usually charge, but that sounds pretty reasonable to me.) If I thought I could actually commit to the online course structure, I'd definitely be there.

This one's interesting for web comic writers and artists--uclick is not only putting comics into format for iPhones, they are considering creating original content. Cell phones have already had an impact on the comics industry in Japan--whether the industry here will see a positive or negative spin if this catches on, we'll just have to see. And hey, this could be the next Zuda...

In other news, my new first reader (joining prior solo first reader Arielle), violet_whisper, did an awesome job going over "Rodeo in Area 51" with me. It clocked in at just about 7500 words after an edit I did with her notes. The most exciting part about it, though, was that she really got what I was trying to do. Since I knew from the beginning what the story was about and how it would end, I wasn't sure if all the ideas would come through--they were so clear to me, would another reader pick up on what I was doing? So talking to her about the piece and hearing her thoughts on what the story was all about was a great experience, because it meant that it worked as a whole.

I also just finished reading mindyklasky's Girl's Guide to Witchcraft. I'd already read Sorcery and the Single Girl, the second book in the series, without realizing I'd started in the middle. Having now read the first two, they actually work pretty well as stand alone novels; some series you have to pick up and read in order or you'll be lost. Klasky's seem to be enhanced by reading the other volumes, but also independent enough that they're still enjoyable out of order. They're both a lot of fun--I'd recommend them to folks have read and enjoyed shanna_s's "Katie Chandler" series. Both series are good, light-hearted contemporary fantasy without the grit of most urban fantasy or the described-in-detail romance scenes of paranormal romances. And they're fun.

Thanks for all the well wishes for safe journeys! We did have a wonderful time abroad, and of the novels I brought with me, I finished almost all of them. If you knew the reading load for the course itself, you would realize that this is either an astonishing feat of speed reading or a realization that I wasn't, in fact, getting graded. (I did read quite a bit of the course material--but when on an airplane, boat, the beach, it's hard to read about sacred geography and Greek religion while also enjoying the journey or the sunshine. Balance is key.)

And so, without further ado, I present world traveling novels.

( Read more... )

And with that, our tour is complete. Some pictures remain, of course--there are bookstores in Greece, and in the airport in London, and I followed blue_succubus's example and took some photos. But given the number of photos already here, that will have to wait for another day.

Nearly all of my B&N preorders have shipped and should be arriving on my porch in the next few days. So I'd like to take this moment to wish a happy Book Birthday (in some cases, belated from earlier this week) to:

• frost_light's One Foot in the Grave,


• melissa_writing's Ink Exchange, and


• shanna_s's Don't Hex with Texas

Welcome to the world, books!

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Quick notes on why I've gone missing lately (and a further demonstration that I am actually learning html coding--the more that I use it, I figure the less I'll have to look it up every time I want to bullet a list). Since last Friday I:

• Read the first chapter of The Lightning Thief aloud at a storyreading night.


• Ran three Xen'drik Expeditions D&D games.


• Committed my very first TPK as a DM.


• Finished going over the edits for the d20 Steampunk Musha Player's Guide.


• Signed a copy of Into the Reach for a facebook friend who managed to find one used and mailed it to me.


• Wrote a review for Flames Rising.


• Wrote a biographical essay about Marc Aronson (which was incredibly fun--he's a great representative for nonfiction for younger readers, and when John Scieszka's term as National Ambassador for Children's Literature ends, Aronson should be a serious candidate).


• Read Nalini Singh's award winning paranormal romance Caressed by Ice, which I ended up very much enjoying, despite its having two themes that normally make me put a book down (a serial killer/stalker as a major threat and one of the characters having been raped--the former which really doesn't ever sit well with me, but worked out, and the latter of which Singh handled in such a way that the healing process was compelling rather than distressing).


• Watched The Sting with my husband.

Huh, it felt like so much more before I wrote the list. At any rate, it's been very busy around here, and I'm trying to catch up on my blog reading while not falling behind on my schedule of assignments. We'll see how that goes.

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.

Today I got 27 hipster points from a teenage writer I know for quoting "Questionable Content" in my status message on my online messenger. (He had previously awarded me some hipster points for having a facebook profile.)

I lost 5 hipster points because I just started reading it the other day. But hey, I'm still up 22 points for the day, so I'm feeling pretty good about myself. I have a feeling I'm too big a geek to be an actual hipster, but if I can pull off the "stealth geek" profile (coined by Shanna Swendson/shanna_s, whose Damsel under Stress I hope to write about before Monday), I'm happy with that.

(Quick thanks to banana_pants, as he gets credit for these hipster points. plura gets credit for the previous ones. I'm apparently not hip unless introduced by exterior sources.)

Okay, not for me. I'm still writing book three. But here are the books that come out today that I desperately need:

Damsel under Stress, by Shanna Swendson (shanna_s)
Senrid, by Sherwood Smith (sartorias)
Titan's Curse, by Rick Riordan

jenlyn_b has a list up today of other fabulous authors whose books are releasing.

Happy May Day!

shanna_s recently posted about a new contest over on her blog--something she's calling a blog campaign. Here are the basics:

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If you want to participate and want to interview me, have me write a guest blog, interview a character, have a character do a guest blog, or otherwise come up with an entry that requires my input, please e-mail your requests to me at shanna@shannaswendson.com. Put something specific in your subject line so I can recognize it right away. My spam filter sometimes goes hypervigilant, and when I skim through the spam folder I look for subject lines that look real. If I don't recognize your name and the subject is blank or something generic like "hello," the message may get deleted. I will work on these throughout the next couple of months and send them all back just before it's time to start posting. Deadline to send me questions or other requests is April 23, but I will be dealing with these in the order I receive them, so if you wait until the last minute and I get crazy, there's always a chance that I'll spend less time and effort on yours. If there's a question I don't want to answer or don't feel comfortable dealing with, I'll let you know and give you a chance to come up with something else.

Remember that you don't have to use me. To be eligible for prizes, you just have to mention the book name and my name (and it would be nice to mention the first two books, for new readers to find). These should all be posted the week of April 30-May 7. Our goal is to get enough awareness and sell enough books that first couple of weeks that my publisher gets excited (going into a second printing really fast would be cool, too).

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This seems like brilliant viral marketing to me, and I'm eager to see how it works.

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As a note, I am officially caught up with livejournal. I may now go about my day.

I mentioned awhile ago that Shanna Swendson (shanna_s) is hosting an alternate "get a lot of writing done" project, because NaNoWriMo is scheduled in the difficult month of November. Now, all of us who didn't do NaNoWriMo this year as we were preparing for holidays have a chance to do something a little different with our New Year's resolutions.

If you decide to participate, let me know! I'm going to work on Book 3 (Regaining Home) so I can get my motivation back up after the holidays have worn me down.

The rest is swiped from Swendson's blog.

Or, if you want an advance copy [of Damsel under Stress], you could participate in the Non-Conformists Writing Month in January! Here's how it works: On or around January 1, you can post your goal in the comments or e-mail me at shanna@shannaswendson.com (please put "Writing Goal" in the subject line so I can sort it). Because we're non-conformists, you can set your own goal, but it should be something that's approximately equivalent to writing a 50,000-word novel. You can complete a book you've started, do a major rewrite on a book, write a book from scratch, write something longer than that, write a screenplay, or write something somewhat shorter if it's a project that requires intense research or documentation. Those who reach their goals by February 1 will be entered into a drawing for prizes, including some advance copies of Damsel Under Stress (these are bound galleys, so aren't exactly the final book and don't have the real cover, so you may still want to get the final one when it comes out). There will be other book prizes provided by Ballantine Books, as well. I don't know how many we'll end up giving out. I guess it depends on what they have handy.

You will need to post your progress at the end of the month to be eligible for the prize drawing. Posting updates along the way is optional. It may help to have accountability and support, or you may just want to plug away in private. I'll post some of my hints and tips about writing throughout the month. I think my project for the month will be revisions on book 4, although I'd wanted to take a stab at writing book 5 (maybe I'll start it, depending on how extensive these revisions turn out to be). Spread the word to any writer or aspiring writer friends you know who may be interested. They don't even need to read my books to play. We can all be insane together!