A short movie for M.T. Anderson's* The Suburb Beyond the Stars. Complete hilarity ensues:
The Suburb Beyond the Stars from Sang Lee on Vimeo.
(Via Leda, a brave soul who lives in the land of Vermont.)
*That is one spiffy website.
It Came From the Woods Read More »
I don't usually do the Friday five thing, but I didn't want to leave this week with just a couple of posts (given my recent return to regular blogging) and needed an organizing principle for the swirling random that surrounds me. So, five things, ahoy, with plenty of parentheticals in sight.
1. Captain Caprice! While Christopher has been out of town this week (leaving me to DIE of scurvy and other malnutrition-related maladies), I've been borrowing my grandmother's car in an attempt to be frugal and because it makes her happy. (He has our lovely little Honda up on the mountain.) Said car is a Caprice, and it's a sweet ride–need I say more? Fourth generation, baby. Also, let's leave the planet out of this, shall we? I'm sure this is not the, shall we say, greenest option on the road… but, hey, it hardly ever leaves the driveway. Anyway, driving this thing has actually been a blast because it's the closest I'll ever get to being a ship's captain. I can yell "Starboard!", "Avast!", and "Going about!" at the appropriate moments, and, when parking for the evening, "Splice the mainbrace!" (That may be one of my favorite Wikipedia pages ever, by the way–who knew that another name for a personal flotation device was a Mae West after THE Mae West? Not I, and I'm a captain, ye landlubbing scum! Also, the origin of son of a gun.) All was well until the ship went down for the count in our vet's parking lot, meaning I had to lug a bag of groceries and another of 10 lb. dog food to a nearby Starbucks to await a cab. I think my mistake was skipping the official christening ceremony. And I'm sure the people of Starbucks were confused by my cries of, "My ship! My ship!" But it's all better now, after having a new alternator installed, and shall be returned to safe harbor soonest.
2. Team Backbone! The inconvenience of a forced day off to deal with the car issue, however, allowed me to take the lovely and hilarious Karen Meisner up on her suggested shameful indulgence of seeing Eclipse on opening day. We synchronized our Swatches and "met up" for a long distance viewing of the movie, which led to a flurry of texts and tweets afterward. The next day, I felt I had a Twilight hangover, as did Karen, due to the text and subtext of it all. We talked about putting up our convos in memoriam, but I think that Annalee has said all that need be said over at i09, following off the tweet flurry. Go read her post about why Team Jacob will always lose. (WHY is there a Team Edward? He has old lady lipstick and horrible Dynasty-esque taste in jewels. As Karen texted me, "Lady Gaga looked at that thing, raised her eyebrows, and said, "My dear, it's too much.") Still, Karen's a great date.
3. Geeks & Freaks! One of the books I read this week was Andrew Auseon's Freak Magnet and I love it so much I can barely stand not to talk about it right now. Instead, I'll give it a proper review next week and I'll have an interview with Andy. Seriously, seriously, do not miss this book, guys. It immediately became one of my favorite love stories ever. EVER.
4. I can't cook. I may have scurvy.
The Five of Friday Read More »
This morning Mr. Rowe took off for the Sycamore Hill Writer's Workshop to spend a week in the North Carolina mountains critiquing stories and all the other stuff writers do when they're in an isolated spot together (gossip, drink, generate funny anecdotes for later, etc.). For those of you not from the Land of Science Fiction and Fantasy (and, according to Wikipedia, Slipstream, which I think in this context probably just means psst, literary), there are several peer workshops in the field that have been going on for long enough that history and reputation accumulates around them–Syc Hill is one, Rio Hondo in Taos is another, Turkey City down in Austin and, created especially for novels, Blue Heaven in Ohio. Many fine writers go to these workshops (and lots of other workshops and retreats, of course). I've been to all these except Syc Hill, but this week I'm declaring myself an official Workshop Widow.
While Christopher's gone my big plans seem to be of the virtuous variety. I plan to write LOTS–in fact, I already got in 1400+ words on my new novel and finished a proofing project today–and make sure the dogs are relatively happy. That's about it.
I bring all this up because recently I identified a phenomenon. I first cottoned to the possible existence of said phenom in grad school, where I would depart for 10 day residencies. I would come home and find things like charge slips from Wing Zone and TGI FRIDAY'S (apparently, it's next to the Barnes and Noble, open late for paperback fantasy cravings). Perhaps The Da Vinci Code movie or The 300 would have been watched. Sub par beer in the recycling bin… I think you get the picture. Clearly, the mister felt the need to indulge cravings he doesn't even really have (except for the wings) while I was out of town.
I wondered if this was true of other guys when their wives/significant others are out of range. So I did an informal survey at Wiscon and turned up some unsurprising but hilarious data to suggest this is A THING. One friend, an acclaimed novelist and short story writer, confessed that he'd purchased BLIZZARD-FLAVORED Oreos* and a pound of bacon while his wife was at one of the workshops mentioned above. Another confessed that wings sounded very familiar indeed. The confessions kept on coming.
None of the women I asked said they fit this pattern, though, because the stuff they did was stuff they'd also do normally.
Which brings me to the point of this post. I'm thinking I should strike a blow for the fairer sex and indulge in one SHAMEFUL, materially irredeemable activity per day. Things like going to see the new Twilight movie on opening night**, maybe? … I'm going to need to suggestions. They should probably be of the baby steps variety, as it just feels so … unseemly. (NO WINGS.)
Updated: See addendum below. Also, I am loving your suggestions and your confessions. It seems the ladies *do* indulge in such behavior, but I think the guys are still winning. Clearly, however, I need to feel MORE shame for my regular activities.
*So, after posting I remembered that he didn't actually buy the Blizzard Oreos, because they were too wrong. (Too wrong to exist, but that's another post–seriously, they taste like ice cream flavored with Oreos? What is this product? Who is it for?) He bought another variety of Oreos instead. And while I usually would come down on the thoughts don't equal actions side, for the purposes of this post I'm saying, contemplating the Blizzard Oreos alone is evidence! Plus, the bacon.
**These are not value judgments, but totally subjective. My SHAMEFUL materially irredeemable is someone else's Reason For Living.
Secret Shames (updated) Read More »
Here is what I love most about White Cat: It's filled with surprises.
This is, of course, the newest novel by Holly Black (Amazon | Indiebound). Long time readers know how much I heart her books, and a new one is always, always a treat. And it's the first in a series, even better. I actually read it some time ago, and have been meaning to write about it ever since. It's a book that crawls around in your brain for weeks afterward–or it did mine anyway.![Holly_black-whitecat2[1]](https://www.gwendabond.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/6a00d8341bf99653ef013484ed01a2970c-200wi.jpg)
I'm sure you know the premise already, but just in case. White Cat features an alternate version of our world, close in many ways, but different in a major one: Magic is real, but only a small percentage of the population known as curse workers can do it. Cassel is from a family of curse workers, but isn't one. Curse work is akin to the mafia in our world, and it's accomplished through touch, which means bare hands are forbidden by society. This first in the series begins with Cassel waking up on a roof at the boarding school where he's been playing at normal, only running a light bookie racket. The implication is that he's being worked, and he finds himself obsessing over the memory of a murder, one he himself committed. The journey that follows is witty, sly, and complicated. True darkness waits in the shadows of this world, and the reader is riveted by the twin hope that Cassel will manage to both master that darkness and escape it.
I don't want to toss out spoilers, because as I've said, the surprises this book holds are one of its great pleasures. In fact, the reason I said the surprises are what I love most about it is because it gives up twists and revelations with ease. Too often writers hoard twists and reveals, as if they're afraid to spend them and must draw them out as long as possible. Here is a writer who isn't afraid to spend a twist, because she can pull off an even bigger one later in the book. A writer who isn't afraid to give you (and the character) a revelation early on rather than saving it for the end, because the character is rich enough to possess a deep well of secrets. Even the way in which the titular fairy tale is recalled and reworked is a surprise all its own.
White Cat should win the YA Edgar next year; it's a crime novel with a mystery at its heart. And I'm also hopeful that it will help reopen the way for a broader variety of contemporary YA fantasy than we've been seeing in the field recently. (I'm in for a good paranormal romance just like the next person, but there's room for so much more.)
Writers who take real chances in their work are far too rare. I bet we can all easily think of a dozen writers who seem–from the outside at least–to have identified their comfort zone and decided not to leave it. How fabulous, then, to see someone who is hugely successful still pushing the limits of their craft, willing to take on a major departure from what came before. Willing to keep surprising us. Old fans will love this, and I predict the series will draw even more new ones. IF THERE IS ANY JUSTICE IN THE WORLD.
And now, an aside: The thing about Holly is, she's just as excellent and amazing a person as a writer. And she's effortlessly smart about storytelling and writing. When she and Sarah breezed through Lexington on tour, we were talking after their event about revisions because Christopher was just getting started on his first-ever substantial revision for his first-ever novel (just turned in last week!). We came around to the subject of character and how protagonists often need a lot of work in second drafts and revisions, that they can feel like ciphers. Not quite fully formed. And Holly said something I'm sure I've heard a variation on before, but at that specific moment clicked into place, opened up something for me like a key. I'm going to now paraphrase it in an undoubtedly far less elegant way than actually said. Holly said that often happens because you're so close to the protagonist when you're first telling the story, and the protag is looking around describing what they see, discovering the world, and so they aren't present on the page yet.
This, for me, is SO TRUE. And it's so strange to realize a character isn't on the page yet sometimes, when you've been really close to them and understand them inside and out and they feel fully developed. But that's not on the page yet. What's on the page is what they see, what happens to them. So I'm now trying to pay more attention to that while drafting, but especially in early revisions. Anyway, I pass on this aside in case it is similarly revelatory to any of you.
So, White Cat. It's being published for adults in the UK, I believe, and so clearly has metric tons of cross-over potential for the adult audience. If you like dark fantasy or twisty con stories or reinvented fairy tales or, well, awesome, then give this one a try. You'll probably be surprised.
I leave you with a random lovely snippet from early in the book, when Cassel goes back to the house he grew up in:
Someone could cut through the mess in our house and look at it like one might look at rings on a tree or layers of sediment. They'd find the black-and-white hairs of a dog we had when I was six, the acid-washed jeans my mother once wore, the seven blood-soaked pillowcases from the time I skinned my knee. All our family secrets rest in endless piles.
Sometimes the house just seemed filthy, but sometimes it seemed magical. Mom could reach into some nook or bag or closet and pull out anything she needed. She pulled out a diamond necklace to wear to a New Year's party along with citrine rings with gems as big as thumbnails. She pulled out the entire run of Narnia books when I was feverish and tired of all the books scattered beside my bed. And she pulled out a set of hand-carved black and white chess pieces when I finished reading Lewis.
Capable Hands: Holly Black’s White Cat Read More »
Wednesday Hangovers Read More »
From Philip K. Dick's thoroughly charming author's note on his first sold story, "Roog":
"So here, in a primitive form, is the basis of much of my twenty-seven years of professional writing: the attempt to get into another person's head, or another creature's head, and see out from his eyes or its eyes, and the more different that person is from the rest of us the better. You start with the sentient entity and work outward, inferring its world. Obviously, you can't ever really know what its world is like, but, I think, you can make some pretty good guesses. I began to develop the idea that each creature lives in a world somewhat different from all the other creatures and their worlds. I still think this is true. To Snooper, garbagemen were sinister and horrible. I think he literally saw them differently than we humans did."
Snooper was PKD's dog, who became the dog in the story. Puck the Dog agrees with Snooper. That's why he sleeps, ever vigilant, next to my Buffy stake.
(It's not that I can't figure out how to rotate the picture… it's that this is a Puck's eye view of the world, okay? Note: Dog decidedly unalarmed by lurking Kim Stanley Robinson and Justina Robson novels.)
Actually, that'd be a good name for an autobiography (or perhaps a band). Miscellanea does often tend to be of the glorious variety, but don't get your hopes up.
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So maybe you've noticed I've been dropping more short little posts around here. I finally realized that this is the only way I know how to run this blog. If I don't put up small posts when I have time, I'm far less inclined to do lengthier posts now and then, or even conversational ones like this (nattering is secretly my favorite category of posts). When we were in Madison, actually while leaving the fabulous Strange Horizons Tea Party to go see one of the best readings I've ever been to–Karen Joy Fowler, Carol Emshwiller, Eileen Gunn, Pat Murphy and Terry Bisson–Dave Schwartz and I were talking on the elevator about blogging and I said I don't post much these days because I feel like an impostor. And he said, "Oh, did you just come from the panel on impostor syndrome?" and I said, "No, but I have it!" And apparently this is common enough that it needed a panel.
Anyway, what I meant was that I don't feel comfortable doing weightier posts or even just longer ones when I'm only poking my head up rarely. They start to feel like work then, as if they loom too large and will sit at the top of the site for ages. I always said I'd keep doing this as long as it was fun. Thus, the return of little posts in addition to hangover links. Doing those, it feels far more in balance to drop in for something like this.
This is actually not the meta-blogging post, bizarrely, which is saved as a draft and will probably stay that way. Too much meta isn't nearly as fun as too much miscellanea. But, suffice to say, I'm thrilled that Lizzie's back blogging, and Carolyn's been posting quite a bit too, and Sarah had some interesting things to say about awards the other day, and so maybe we're having a little old-school litblog renaissance. I like it, and I'll be here more often. The more voices in the conversation, the more fun it is to be a part of it.
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These thoughts are also tied up for me with the semi-hilarious furor recently caused by Laura Miller–one of the smartest readers and critics on the planet–doing something crazy, aka Putting Links At The End Instead Of In The Main Text Of The Post. Her follow-up post asserts that not leaning on links in text can make for better writing.
I'm not going to start griping about the internet and what it does to our brains here. I believe these machines and the stuff we do with them online is wonderful and magically connective and, overall, a force for good. BUT I did begin to notice that while I read lots of stuff online, much of it seems to be teaching me about the same things. Rather than encountering completely left-field stuff, or learning about new things in depth, the things I absorb most seem to be the whipped cream on the top of the coffee. This is undoubtedly more about my own browsing style than anything else, but I decided I wanted to issue a bit of a corrective.
So we subscribed to a bunch of magazines that were heavier on nonfiction than our usual wont. Smithsonian, Harper's, The Oxford American, Bust (the closest thing left to Sassy, but also it's own thing), National Geographic, and Cabinet. New Scientist is next. (Feel free to recommend your favorites.) I had nearly forgotten how much I love magazines on a purely tactile level. They are perfect for so many things, including a different kind of browsing than the internet is. They are also a good source of story ideas, which there's been discussion about lately, following on Kelly's post. And, of course, not just the big ideas which fuel an entire story, but the dozens of little ones that can help fuel any one page of said story. There is a great deal of raw fictional power in any good nonfiction.
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Apropos of nothing: TV.
I watch almost no TV while it's actually airing. As a Certified Old Person, 9 p.m. is the latest I'll stay up to watch something, and usually, it's more like 8. After that, it officially gets shifted to whenever's convenient. (I have to read books sometimes, and that's usually at night.)
True Blood is one of the only shows I watch live–and, in fact, gave in to weakness and renewed our HBO subscription just to watch it. And I don't think it's a perfect show, but it's a nearly perfect hour of the television viewing experience. Anyone who wants to study cliffhangers and how they work, this is the show–I never watched 24, which is the only show I can think of where this would also make sense, but I love the commitment to never interrupting the time span of the narrative. Each episode picks up *exactly* where the previous one left off. None of that handwavery and three months later, which is an interesting constraint.
I'm convinced True Blood's the modern answer to the serial novel. I'm just glad I only have to run to my couch, and not down to the smelly docks.
We've also been watching the first season of Fringe, which is way more enjoyable than I expected. The thing I'm loving about it so far is that it's completely illogical but makes sure that each episode's internal logic–while laughable–is so consistent it carries you along anyway. This is how science works when it's magic instead. Speaking of which, we have invented a Fringe drinking game. You drink anytime someone on the show offers up a definition of the singularity without actually saying the word.
It happens at least once an ep, but rarely more. Perhaps as a drinking game this needs work, then. We could add: for each shot of the cow, each outburst from Walter, each time someone has wires stuck up their nose in service to a ridiculous machine? Maybe I'll revive the old TV posts for new episodes this fall.
Also, SYTYCD is back! I can't bring myself to vote, because I like all the dancers so far. The SYTYCD drinking game would definitely involve drinking whenever Nigel says something pervy and everyone laughs in that "Oh, granddad, you rascal–in your day!" way. Actually, that might be *too* successful a drinking game, especially considering how often the show airs.
Related links:
Strange Horizons tea party/send them some loot
Lizzie announces she's reopening Old Hag (a must read and adore), and smackdowns the mefi crew
A for instance Carolyn's blogging more post
Glorious Miscellanea Read More »
I'm working on a hopefully-not-too-lengthy post about blogging (meta!), but in the meanwhile a reminder that I'm continuing to update links to Kelly Link's blog tour stops in this post. Yesterday she wrote about coming up with story ideas and a bit about her own process:
As well as useful ideas, there's a particular category of ideas that you, the writer, will never ever use, but which are pleasing, for whatever reason, to contemplate. I welcome these ideas even as I recognize them as ridiculous. They seem like but-wait-there's-more bonus! ideas that you get, for some reason, along with the useful ones — and sometimes I like these bonus! ideas even better than the ones that become stories or projects. In this category are two titles for anthologies that I will never ever edit, but which I love to contemplate: Manthology is one; the other is Unicats!.
I still like Singularicats! better.
Oh, and there's this:
And yet, wouldn't it be a blast to remake the movie "Bringing Up Baby" as a paranormal romance? I keep having this vision of the scene in which Cary Grant's character is wearing Katherine Hepburn's negligee. Doesn't the reason why seem obvious? He's just turned back from were-leopard into Cary Grant.