Skull Honey

Because I Love Statistics:

2012-03-03T00:21:00.000-06:00

Here are some statistics from the Clarkesworld slush pile.

Aoife's Kiss!

2012-03-01T14:06:00.004-06:00

My story "I Fall to Pieces" appears as a reprint in this month's Aoife's Kiss! Go pick one up, it's a groovy place that publishes both a lot of writers I love.

Ten Non-Rules

2012-02-28T23:37:00.000-06:00

From the fabulous people at io9.

Food and Fantasy

2012-02-26T15:25:00.001-06:00

A fun little article about food in fantasy, with a couple of charming links, including Inn at the Crossroads, which is a recipe site for food featured in the Game of Thrones.

I'm actually a pretty big fan of food in stories, and have written various stories about people who work in kitchens and restaurants, people eating people, glass, money, mold, hearts, butterflies, flowers, and so on. I had hero win the day with a cinnamon bun. Another hero was a sentient carrot cake.

Damnit, now I'm hungry.

Some Recommendations

2012-02-24T00:31:00.000-06:00

Rachel Swirsky made a big ol' list of year's best recommendations over at her blog. While I don't necessarily agree with all of the ordering (I would have put Lessons From A Clockwork Queen way higher, for example) it's still a really spectacular list, with lots of links to the archived works. Go, play, have fun.

The Romantics

2012-02-22T23:50:00.000-06:00

So very cute.

On Tribe

2012-02-21T19:47:00.002-06:00

Oy, out there. Oy, I say!

I get, I really do get, that it's human nature for people to put up totems, to define themselves as one group, to mark everybody else as outside people, and to loudly proclaim how it's the inside people who are the best and the rightest. It's tantalizing to belong, to feel special, to have a sense of an order in which the things you associate with yourself are of central importance.

But really, relax and get to know your neighbor. It's totally worth it.

So I got to see the Circle Jerks play at one point. It was, all in all, a pretty good show, but I was struck especially at one point when Keith Morris, in between songs, urged the people who had come to see his show to look around the whole festival, and not discount the techno and house stuff, because some of it was really cool, cutting edge music. He actually had people boo back at him.

I get liking something, and wanting something more of what you like. There's absolutely no evil in that. I think the problem is when we start to define ourselves as Spaceship and Explosion people, or Dragon and Elf people, or Only in the New Yorker people. I hear genre folk talk about literary fiction like Jane Austen is hiding under their bed ready to strangle them if they put down their light saber. I read people over and over again talking about the defining differences between the way literary and genre fiction writers think (and when you provide counter examples like "what about Kafka?" or "have you read Gene Wolfe?" mostly they blink at you and go "well I haven't read that one specifically").

I am infinitely richer as a reader and a writer for having read Nabokov, Austen, Tolstoy, Faulkner, and Hemmingway, and I consider myself a pretty straight genre person. It's not something to be afraid of. These guys aren't some tribe from over the mountain that sacrifices to strange unholy idols and has a blood feud with your people. They're more like the aunts and uncles you don't talk to enough. Go and say hi.

Seriously, guys. It's okay. Take off the war paint and put down the standards for a bit. Make a fruit basket and go say hello. I bet you'll be glad you did.

Dear Literature

2012-02-20T12:51:00.000-06:00

A really adorable private letter to Literature, from Genre.

Robot Camel Jockeys

2012-02-18T03:03:00.000-06:00

This came up in conversation recently.

In Soviet Russia, Culture Counters You.

2012-02-16T14:02:00.000-06:00

A really delightful article about Soviet culture and counter culture, up to the recent protests. This is long, but it's amazing. Check out "rib records" and Soviet punk.

The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name

2012-02-14T19:42:00.003-06:00

Happy Valentines Day, Internet!

While I wait for my heart-shaped sausage pizza to be ready, I thought I'd talk about something topical: Sex.

Or more specifically, the writing thereof.

I generally tend to think of sex as something I don't write much, but that doesn't hold up to any serious scrutiny. Most of the characters in my stories are sexually active, many even sexually aggressive- I don't have a lot of patience for that coy, nervous first part of romances, where people are wringing their hands and thinking "ohmygosh does he like me?" The story that's being reprinted in Aoife's Kiss next month starts out with a casual hookup (followed by a vivisection, because... well, why not?), but on the other hand I do tend to glide over a lot of the details. I find myself generally treating it much like I do other character traits and interactions. Unless a character is a fanatic about her car, I'm probably not going to give more information than, for example "a black SUV in good condition" or "a red Mustang" or "the pickup her father had kept running since the depression" (since I'm not personally a car person, I'll generally give less). I'm certainly not going to write a whole paragraph about it, unless it's a major point in the story. Likewise, I find I tend to give information about sex that's little more than "on the cold stove", "messy and embarrassing", "well, at least it seemed like she had a good time", or "with handcuffs and heavy tongue; standard, but adequate". I think part of it is that if I've written a character conflict, by the time the characters have sex, either it's resolved successfully or the sex came before and isn't related to the conflict. And if the conflict isn't between the characters making whoopie, then the sex is not any more narratively important than that pick up truck- it's interesting and it adds character development, but it doesn't need its own paragraph.

I've read a number of books with sex scenes, and they have a tendency to fall into three camps: 1) good sex scenes were two developed characters come into a scene with an established conflict of dominance, emotional attachment, confidence, etc- whatever it is, something that can either get better or worse by the end of a sex scene; 2) lame sex scenes in which there is no conflict, just a kind of point by point "and then this happened" in a way that kind of feels like the writer's nudging you for a bro high five (I say that, but lady writers are just as guilty); 3) rape scenes, where the conflict is, of course, obvious.

Actually because I enjoy horror, I should probably add a subset 4) the scene where there's endless, off-putting objectification and sexual tension build up, and then one party turns into a monster and eats the other. Seriously, this is not a twist ending anymore. Please stop doing it.

I have to give props to romance writers here. While the romance books I've read have some sex scenes that have made me giggle like a middle schooler looking up "butt" in the dictionary, I've also never scanned over them thinking "blah blah blah penis blah blah blah oh baby blah blah suck". I've read thoroughly and turned the next page (also there's not very many sex scenes in romance books, and allegedly if you read a lot of them, you can open straight to the page number where you know they will be, based on a formula of sexing). But then again the central romance plot is pretty much always getting to know the other person in a new relationship, and sex is a reasonable part of that process.

The second class of sex scene- the one where it seems to happen on some remote island with nothing to do with the rest of the plot (or in the worst case scenario where the "plot" appears to be nothing more than a framing device for the sex scenes)- always makes me uncomfortable. In practice it tends to be the longest and most explicit of the examples (unless we're counting four) even though in theory there's no reason it needs to be and I always get the feeling that the author expects me as a reader to be having a menage-a-une over. I mean... if it's not doing anything narratively productive, then clearly it's pornography, right? Which I suppose is all well and good if you want pornography, but is obnoxious if you've come into it looking to read a story.

It's also very hard not to feel about it the way one feels about Mary Sue fiction- that it's self-indulgent wish fulfilment, especially because this sex tends to involve at least one super hot character, usually not the one whose viewpoint the story is told through.

I think there is a part of us that wants there to be perfect sex- maybe as a kind of breather, maybe as a reward or even just something nice for characters we identify with. Maybe even just because we hate to write about sex being disappointing or conflicted- the same way we often like happy endings to be wrapped up and cleanly happy. But, I mean, how much space would you devote to a character having a really delicious piece of cake? How much cake eating would you read before you start scanning down to the point where the ship blows up? Even if the cake is a reward for a character having gone through fifteen pages of horrible unsuccessful diets, isn't there an upper limit?

Anyway, I'm off to pick up a heart shaped pizza. Y'all go on and celebrate love in your own special ways.

Happy Valentine's Day, Internet!

Sita Sings The Blues

2012-02-12T15:02:00.000-06:00

I can't believe I hadn't put this up here. Sita Sings the Blues is a creative commons movie that mixes American blues, personal narrative, and a retelling of the Ramayana. Enjoy it and share alike.

John Skipp!

2012-02-09T11:28:00.002-06:00

John Skipp (New York Times bestselling author, editor, zombie godfather, compulsive collaborator, musical pornographer, black-humored optimist and all-around Renaissance mutant" per Amazon, and, I might add, fabulously nice guy) has a brand new blog and so far it's lovely! Go check it out.

What Do You WANT to Write?

2012-02-08T11:37:00.002-06:00

It's actually kind of funny, because I've said, multiple times, that knowing the answer to this question is (and should be) one of the fundamental parts of writing. But when I sat down and asked myself, my answers were really pretty vague. I want to write something fun and beautiful, I want to write something of lasting quality. Statements like that mean only a little more than nothing.

The first things that come to mind are in terms of other people's fiction where I think "yeah, that's the sort of thing I'd like to write," rather than something really sui generis. For specific stories, I'll sometimes have a very clear picture of what I'm trying to achieve, but just as often I'll be flying be the seat of my pants, and vision is something that will come up int he rewrite. I don't think either is necessarily a bad way to work, but it has been weirding me out since I asked myself the question.

I'm also forced to admit that sometimes when I have a specific idea in mind for a story, particularly if it's ambitious or important to me, I start to slow down and fret every time the story veers away from living up to that expectation. I don't think goals are necessarily counterproductive- I tend to think you actually need them if you're going to right focused, directed fiction, but I also can't exactly ignore my own experiences with this pitfall.

So... all you out there in internet land- what is your relationship to goals writ large and for specific pieces of writing.

Chilling Effects

2012-02-06T12:55:00.001-06:00

Chilling Effects is a website that tracks free speech, censorship, and intellectual property concerns, if that's something you're interested in following.

Project Unbreakable

2012-02-04T12:19:00.000-06:00

This is more rape stuff, just so you know.

I got pointed at Project Unbreakable recently, which is an art project for people who have been raped to talk about their experiences. Most of it is men and women holding up signs with quotes from their rapists on them. It's really powerful stuff, and hopefully this helps get the word out to someone who needs it.

On Picking Projects

2012-02-01T00:20:00.002-06:00

I have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to things I could be doing with my writing time. I have multiple notebooks full of ideas- some of them even sketched out into acts and arcs. I have what's frankly become a shameful number of first drafts and stories I really meant to finish. I have some novels that are not ready to send out yet. And on top of that, I'll very often sit down and just bang out something new, either for a prompt or a specific anthology opening.

Picking what to do is something I really need to be better at.

Mur Lafferty once said she has a big jar with all her projects in it, and she will draw one at a time from the jar, work on it until it's done, and then draw another one. I'm not quite that disciplined- in fact I find when I'm stuck, going off and doing something small and different will often jostle me out of my funk. On the other hand, there have certainly been things I've walked away from and failed to come back to.

At present, the first for me is social- if I've promised a story to someone, if it's a group activity with friends, if it's something for a project someone I like is doing, that will usually take precedence.

Secondly it's impersonal deadlines- deadlines have just always been a big kick in the pants for me, and I'm trying to stay more aware of upcoming anthology and themed publication deadlines, and either write to them or find a story that fits well enough but needs a little polishing.

Then there's the question of moments of inspiration. Lately I've been of the opinion that when you've got the surging drive to work on something, you may as well work on it until it's done, so that's a spanner in the works. Fun is very often a main motivator for me, because I'm resigned to not turning a great deal of profit on this.

Then there's shame. There are things I've started and meant to finish, and knowing I haven't finished them fills me with that productive sort of self-loathing that means I have to correct the deficit I have allowed to happen.

Honestly, this is something I need to be much more disciplined about, and probably something for which I need to form some sort of plan, but on the other hand, I really do enjoy the strange spontaneous turns things take when I fall in love with an idea, or rediscover something fun.

I don't know, how do you fine folks out there in internet land handle this situation?

From the Publisher Side

2012-01-30T00:04:00.000-06:00

A blog post about a day in the life of the publisher.

Dungeons. With Dragons in Them

2012-01-28T09:24:00.002-06:00

The recounting of a Dungeons and Dragons game at ConFusion populated and led by a mess of Sword and Sorcery authors. It's a hoot.

Cyberpunk Future, Today!

2012-01-26T12:41:00.002-06:00

moodINQ is a programmable tattoo. They recommend using it to keep your grocery list if you need to.

Right now it only does black and white, and requires surgical implantation, but I feel very positively about this step.

On Length

2012-01-24T19:56:00.003-06:00

Actually they say it's the girth of a story that determines how satisfying it is.

Right then, penis jokes aside, I've been thinking quite a bit about the length of stories recently.

I am a woman who deeply enjoys a good bit of flash fiction (under 1000 words). I've had folk who are more oriented toward long fiction express to me that they can't imagine what kind of story you can tell in 1000 words or less. After all, it's not room for a complex plot, it's not enough space to develop characters, not much can really happen. That's sort of true, but the other side of it is that 1000 words is just about the amount of time it takes to set up an expectation in the reader and then confound it. It's the length of a surprise. It's the tipping point where a really good joke becomes a story. It's the time it takes to survey an iceberg and realize 90% of it is under the water. When you already know the characters because they're stocks, archetypes, or allusions, it's the amount of time you need to get the other side of a story you've heard before. It's the time you need to establish a mood, whether it's paranoia, sadness, terror, joy. It's about the length of time a reader will put up with something daring and experimental.

Bruce Holland Rogers has some great articles on flash and the different ways to write it, and he does far more credit to it than I can here. I like flash in part because I have trouble sitting down and committing to big projects. I get ideas quickly, and if I'm doing something longer I get them mid-project, so flash is a length I can finish without distraction. I'm always amazed when I write something very short, and people tell me they think I could really expand it out. Often I don't want to. All the interesting bits of the story are there- the parts from the point where the characters resolve that the problem can no longer be avoided to the point where the solution becomes inevitable. Everything outside of that is just set-up and clean-up, and not the real show. And if you're just there for the guitar solos, why watch the roadies?

I suppose I read more short stories than anything. I didn't use to so much, when I was a teenager, but around the time I got my first job I realized how much I love fiction you can finish in one sitting. If there's any single person to whom I owe the largest part of the writer I am now, it's probably Ellen Datlow, who was the horror editor for about 20 years of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (though honestly the line between Horror and Fantasy was always very fluid in these books). Shorts don't have the attention-deficit, pure sugar rush of good flash, but on the other hand they give you time to develop at least one world-changing idea, one interesting character, or one poigniant relationship. You can still do very good iceberg work in short form- New Yorker style literary fiction is really good for condensing a person's entire life into 5000 words or less. Or you can tell one decent adventure or detective story- you have room for clues and minibosses if you're good at pacing. It's enough time to explain and explore the main different thing about your alien world. It's long enough that you get invested, but not so long that a surprise at the end feels like you've been had. It's enough time for somebody to have one epiphany.

Still, it's very easy to feel like shorts are stalling and puffing out their word count. The margin of error is smaller (though not as small as flash). Lately I've been writing more of my stories at around the 7000 word mark. There's a couple of reasons for this- the main one is putting in more characters and concentrating on a changing relationship. I enjoy the type of stories I'm getting out of it, but at the same time I'm still learning how to make a story that size not feel overburdened and unfocused. It feels like a weird place for pacing, but I'm convinced with practice I'll get more comfortable with it.

Novels. Oy vey novels. I really do understand that if I ever want to make money, I need to write novels, and I promise I do get the allure of following a set of characters through something complex, weaving in little subplots, giving everything weight and complexity, having the space to develop multiple in jokes and expectations, having space to luxuriate in scene-setting tangents, motif action, and other relevant and buttressing digressions. And the rate at which you can parcel out information, not to mention the ultimate amount you can disperse across the length of the work, is pretty appealing; you can deliberately bury quite a bit and dig it up later. All that is awesome, but... It's frightening to think of having that many moving parts, that many potential loci of failure. I've had friends stop me brainstorming the novels that I've worked on to go "...really, relax. It's okay to have a scene that only does one thing. You've got time. Just chill out and enjoy it". And I looked at the computer screen through which we were communicating like it had grown first, second, and third heads. It's a hard mindset to get into.

Series. Series. I admit, I resent series. I know so many people who want to write seven and more book series, and it boggles my mind in the same way that people on the other side, I imagine, look at me like I'm a lunatic when I say all the interesting parts of a story can be done in 1000 words or less. I can't imagine working on the same story for five, ten, fifteen years. I think I would break my teeth in frustration if I had to try to stall the development of characters and steer them away from epiphanies so that they would be recognizably the same person seven books down the road from where they started. I like to read a good fast paced trilogy, but even as a consumer I get annoyed when the situation doesn't seem to be advancing toward a resolution within 200 pages. Nevermind 1000. And that's without the problem that series' beginnings are likely to be already published and fixed in the reader's mind as you're writing the middle and ending parts, so you can't go back and add the foreshadowing for something huge you just thought of- no, if it's going in it has to go in as a giant, potentially shark-jumping ret-con (I'm looking at you, Mr. Martin). I have never read a series of four or more books that didn't feel in some ways padded, even in the type of series that are not a single linear narrative, but rather recurrent episodic works.

Then again, there's the strong point of series, and why I think we like reading them at all, and that's the real relationship that readers build with the characters. Enough so that you never want to let them go, even past the point where they should legitimately not be main characters anymore. I've done this. It's repeatedly ended in tragedy for me, but more than once I have picked up the next book in the series because I just could not say goodbye to a character I'd loved. Even when the stories were no longer my favorite, I'd hang in out of loyalty to the imaginary person at the center of it, because I knew them, and somewhere in the back of my mind I thought of us as friends.

Yeah, I get the appeal of that as a medium. The rest of it, though is intimidating as all hell.

Advice Not to Give New Writers

2012-01-22T11:05:00.000-06:00

I agree with all of this.

The Value of Having a Blog

2012-01-17T22:39:00.002-06:00

I have a friend who refuses to make a blog for various reasons, but who does get worried sometimes about the constant message that writers need to be participating in new media at every possible opportunity. I don't really feel like I can say definitively one way or the other, but I can share my observations and my own experiences.

Why I like having a blog:

The way I blog at least makes me feel sort of accountable. I keep track of my sales, I publicly announce goals. I have a thing I need to feed and care for at least once a week, and if I'm keeping up the blog but not writing I feel kind of like a loser and a fake, so it's good for shame-induced productivity.
My blogroll. I know there are other tools I could use for that, but it's very convenient to have a lot of blogs I want to read scrolled down across the bottom of my screen.
Statistics and hit tracking. I love the idea that someone in Argentina has been reading my blog. I have no idea why they would be, but it's nice that they're there. Whenever I have more hits than the month before, it makes me smile.
If I want to find a link to one of those little tidbit articles I post, all I have to do is look back through the blog.

There are things I don't like as much. There are certainly weeks I don't feel like I have anything all that productive to say. There's also the constant weighing of "is this too personal? Is this too political? Is this interesting enough? Will someone think this is unprofessional?" I suspect it's going to surprise at least one of the people who reads this blog, but I try hard to be relatively a-political in this space, which is sometimes frustrating, because I have divisive things I believe and want to talk about. I just don't think this is the correct space. And then of course there's "am I just talking into the void?"

I know my blog has a few regular readers from among my friends, which I do really like. It's sparked some fun conversations, and it's always nice when they write me back with a little chuckle or correction. Do I feel like it's been instrumental in getting my name out? Not really in any way I can see, but then again I'm a pretty small potatoes writer. I have occasionally attracted the attention of an author I really adore, and that's always been a blushy, stammery affair. I'm not sure they remember me any more than they do anybody who's come up and asked to have someone signed, but it's definitely been nice to have them visit. For networking, I would really say conventions eclipse the blog by leaps and bounds.

But I enjoy the blog, and there does seem to be a tipping point of success after which it's very handy and having a big back-archive will be a useful thing.

So, observations.

There are certainly authors out there whose blogs and new media presence have seemed to contribute mightily to their success. Nick Mamatas , Scott Sigler, and Mary Robinette Kowal spring to mind. It's not just blogs, though, these are people who write articles, do interviews, host podcasts help organize cons, participate in professional organizations, and maintain an active presence in the blogsophere. They're also very charismatic people. Not everybody has the time, energy, or personality to pull this off, but it works well for the people who can. I know I follow Nick Mamatas especially because he's always posting something or other that makes me giggle wickedly.

There are people who seem to do new media first and writing somewhat second; which is not to say they're not excellent writers, but I bet if you ask 10 of their fans how they came to their work, at least 7 will cite things like podcasting or digital advocacy- basically their new media presence. Corey Doctorow and Mur Lafferty would be some key examples here. Their success seems unrepeatable, and I would not advise anyone to try.

Most of the authors I follow blog less than I do, but the posts are significant, well crafted things, and a treat to read when they do come up. They're little bits of prose, or essays that I forward to friends I think would enjoy reading them. Benjamin Rosenbaum and Catherynne Valente have blogs like this. Generally they seem to focus most on their work, but what they do put out in a blog will get passed around to people who might not have heard of them otherwise, so that's something cool for them.

There are other authors who post more than I do, and post a good deal about their personal lives. Mary Anne Mohannraj and Amal El-Mohtar spring to mind here, of the people I've read. I admit, I tend to skip most of the personal stuff. It's not that they don't seem to have lovely lives, and I'm happy when they meet health goals, in an academic sort of way. It's just not something that holds my interest terribly, but I know there are other blog readers out there who get a real sense of personal connection from this sort of blogging, and people become more than just a name on the cover of a paperback, they become real people. It's not something that clicks with me.

I also have some people that I follow who have a very strong and open political stance. K Tempest Bradford, who also blogs for Angry Black Woman, or Rachel Swirsky would be examples here. Will Shetterly would apparently also be an example, but he's not one of the ones I follow particularly. No matter what else you might think of them, these are people who are willing to stand up for their principles, even if it means making enemies. Which is a point if you're thinking about blogging. For every post, well intentioned or not, you have the potential to put your foot in your mouth or unintentionally offend someone. The more out there you put yourself, the more there's a chance. Elizabeth Moon had a bad run with this, and I know things Dave Sim has said online mean I'm not ever going to purchase anything of his again (though the offense given there is I think the definition of intentional).

So, yeah. It's a path that wins you some loyal and enthusiastic supporters, and convinces some people not to touch your work with a ten foot pole.

There's also some authors- and I follow precisely none of them- who only ever blog about their sales, where they're appearing, when their book is coming out, and so on. Occasionally when I read something of theirs I like, I will look up their blog and see what else they've done and where I can get it, but it's a directory, not a relationship, and being on their mailing list feels a lot like getting advertising spam. Please don't be that author.

There are also authors that either never update their blogs or don't blog at all. They'll have maybe a webpage with a few links or a splash graphic. Maybe. Again, these are useful as directories, and I have to say if you have work out there, I think it at least behooves you to have a search-findable site where people can get information about how to contact you.

All told, I really do think that there's not much good reason to put more content out than you're comfortable with. If you enjoy your blog, it will show. If you don't enjoy your blog, it will also show. And people will follow you, or not, according to their own inclination, the same as it is with any other work you do.

So, yeah, like writing. Do it for yourself, because you probably won't make money and it's possible only your mom will ever read it.

Futurama (in the World's Fair Sense)

2012-01-16T09:33:00.000-06:00

A fun bit of "the future will have jetpacks!" level speculation from 1911. Some bits of it, like where he predicts the X-ray/MRI or pizza delivery are pretty cool. Other bits like free education for everybody to the university level, complete elimination of rats, or public transportation that gets you from your suburban home to your downtown office in 10 minutes and costs a penny- well those bits make me feel disappointed in our time.

Phantom Menace Review

2012-01-13T22:40:00.000-06:00

Warning: if you have violence or abuse triggers, these may not be the videos for you.

For the rest of you, this guy here gives an insanely trenchant (and... generally insane) dissection of why the phantom menace does not work as a narrative. It's point by point excellent, and it's both a good how to and how not to for adventure stories, particularly in the epic venue.

There's also some bits about gassing prostitutes to death as they scurry through crawl spaces trying to escape. I'm just saying.

Warning: Gross Pictures

2012-01-11T22:31:00.000-06:00

A cheap home-cooked Russian heroin knock off actually causes people's flesh to rot away. It's called "krokodil". It's like meth, but with the extra fun of gangrene.

Review: Arcane, Edited by Nate Shumate

2012-01-09T14:08:00.011-06:00

Arcane, edited by Nathan Shumate, can be bought here. Kindle versions also available.

Short Version (for those who hate to read, but still want to buy a sizable anthology):

Good solid mix of dark, unsettling stories, with more light and funny stories thrown in than I expected. Some prose-pretty and interesting format pieces, some faster paced and action oriented ones. There's going to be something here you like, especially if you like the undead.

Disclaimer:

In the interest of full disclosure, Jonathan S. Pembrook, whose story "A Capella" is the second in the book, is a good friend. As such, I feel it's incumbent on me to tell you fine internet folks that you may as well just hand him the Hugo and Shirley Jackson Awards now, and not bother with the formalities of voting. In all seriousness though, he does get first mention because he's my buddy, but this is a story that made me wince. Physically. In the good way and more than once. And that's coming from somebody who accidentally writes cannibalism stories. It's a story about disassociation and making art, and it lives up to that promise with startling acts of casual cruelty. The format is classic style soft sci-fi, the detail is close-up horror. It's a nice mix, which is actually a pretty good microcosm for the rest of the anthology.

My Favorites:

CORPORAUTOLYSIS by Christopher Slatsky

I love language and atmosphere, and this story layers on ambiance like a fine and desolate parfait. It's about grief and losing touch. It's also about mushrooms. And it's awesome.

IT’S NOT THE BOYS IN THIS FAMILY THAT HAVE TO WORRY by Brady Golden

It's really something when a story can take a setting that is in and of itself a little horrific (an isolated, controlling, cultish family compound), and take it to a place that's infinitely more horrible. The fact that you see the end coming is, I think, part of the appeal. The story itself is about inevitability.

INCIDENT AT THE GEOMETRIC CHURCH by David McGillveray

There's a theory that what you don't show is always scarier than what you do, and I think that makes the oblique found-object structure of this Lovecraft-esque avant garde band story such fun. There are some more traditional and straightforward stories in this book, but this one does the best at coming at things sideways.

THE BEST AND BITT’REST KISS by S.K. Gilman

A story about poetry, love, habit, and the mortuary arts. The character of the mortician in this particularly shines.

KISS OF DEATH by Jeremy Zimmerman

This is one of the light ones. Actually I was delighted by every single funny story in this anthology ("The Truth About Mother" and "All Coated in Bonemeal" are also straight up hilarious, which you don't always get in horror). Of the three of them, this is my favorite, because it speaks to the part of me that has played Dungeons and Dragons since I was a kid. It's also a very special sort of relationship drama.

I could go on. "We Belong to Her" is a great opener with a pitch-perfect feel of being in the historical moment. "Reyes Rides the Deville" is delightful post-apocalysim. "Mallecho" has a very Shirley Jackson vibe to it, and I mean that in the best way. "Beneath the Arch of Knives" is whimsical and playfully cruel. "God of the Kiln" plays off its two narrators nicely to tell a story that feels very classic, even Kipling-esque in its presentation. "In One There Is Many" features a zombie feeling tenderly paternal toward his maggots. "Black Bush" has a beautiful, poetic, trashy, intensely southern voice that's just as welcome at the end as it was in the beginning. I actually feel kind of guilty not mentioning every story, but it's a very big book.

The Less Shiny Spots:

I think no matter what you like within the realm of dark stuff, there's going to be something here for you. The flipside to that is that there will be a few that are there for somebody else. I couldn't get into "The Delivery," for example, but I bet if you're a fan of Grant Morrison you'll enjoy it quite a bit. It's got that manic surrealness to it that feels like his work.

There were also a couple of places where I wondered why stories were positioned as they were. A third of the way through the book seemed like an exceptionally masculine anthology (not an inherently bad thing, just something that stuck out). Not flatten-a-beer-can-against-your-head macho; the stories were about fatherhood and obligation and being master of your own house/world/workplace or not. Enjoyable but definitely enough to make me notice. Then suddenly it shifted and the ratio went in a different direction. There was also a place or two like "The Best and Bitt'rest Kiss" running right before "Visiting Hours" where I feel like the subject matter being so close worked against one of the stories. On the other hand, it's an anthology, and you're really free to skip around as much as you like.

In Summary:

This is a very solid collection. You might not like everything because it's very varied, but that's to its strength. It showcases a broad range of talent and stories that bring in a myriad of subgenres. Did I mention how big this book is? Even if you're a very fast reader, it's days of entertainment.

Actually I feel like I've already said everything I need to. Go pick it up. Support dark fiction authors and expose yourself to a few surprises. There's no way you're anticipating everything in this book, and the best part of the genre is the things that jump up behind you and go "boo".

Table of Contents:

5 INTRODUCTION: YOU GOTTA HAVE A GIMMICK Nathan Shumate

7 WE BELONG TO HER Joe Mirabello

17 A CAPELLA Jonathan S. Pembroke

27 THE TRUTH ABOUT MOTHER Van Aaron Hughes

41 THE WEB OF LEGENDS Damien Walters Grintalis

45 REYES RIDES THE DEVILLE Dan Cavallari

57 THE HEART OF THE MATTER Paul L. Bates

67 EL DIABLO DE PASEO GRANDE Milo James Fowler

83 THE DELIVERY A.A. Garrison

97 CORPORAUTOLYSIS Christopher Slatsky

107 MALLECHO Stephen Willcott

111 GOD OF THE KILN Eric Francis

123 TIED D.T. Kastn

137 LADY OF THE CROSSROADS Christine Lucas

149 BENEATH THE ARCH OF KNIVES James Lecky

159 ALL COATED IN BONEMEAL Bartholomew Klick

165 POSSESSED OF TALENT Thomas Allein

173 SWEET HEAVEN IN MY VIEW Frank Stascik

179 IT’S NOT THE BOYS IN THIS FAMILY THAT HAVE TO WORRY by Brady Golden

191 KISS OF DEATH Jeremy Zimmerman

205 LEGACY S.M. Williams

221 AN UNQUIET SLUMBER Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein

233 A FRIEND, THE SPIDER Caitlin Hoffman

239 DESTINATION UNKNOWN Anthony J. Rapino

245 IN ONE THERE IS MANY Max Vile

257 INCIDENT AT THE GEOMETRIC CHURCH David McGillveray

265 BLACK BUSH Gemma Files

289 THE BEST AND BITT’REST KISS S.K. Gilman

305 VISITING HOURS Josh Strnad

309 SWEET DREAMS Fran Walker

321 THE BUSINESS OF HERMAN LACZKO Mark Beech

333 CONTRIBUTORS

(If you're one of the authors and I was not able to find your personal webpage, or have linked to an incorrect or outdated page, just let me know and I'll fix it)

Even More Podcasts

2012-01-07T17:38:00.002-06:00

Fantasy Magazine, like it's sci-fi sibling Lightspeed has a podcast. They have a tendency toward accents and over-enunciation but the stories are really fabulous.

Dark Fiction Magazine is aggressively british, but that's fun. I wouldn't call most of these horror, though there are some straight up horror stories. Mostly they're just dark. My favorite ones so far have been their cyberpunk-ish offerings. They've even got a Christmas dark fiction special. Go and enjoy!

Cast of Wonders is a Young Adult genre podcast from the same fellas who brought you Cast Macabre, so you know it's groovy. It's generally pretty light fare, but that's not necessarily a problem. I've also been looking into Clone Pod which is Young Adult genre as well, though I've only listened to a few of those and don't have a lot to make a report on yet.

Hooting Yard on the Air! Jimminy Christmas, there's nothing I can type here that will encompass what Hooting Yard on the Air is. I love this podcast to death. It's not what you would call polished in the way, for example, drabblecast is. It's recordings of a live radio show that includes speculation that Julian Assange is some chromatic version of goblin, some of the most joyfully, whimsically evil prose in the world, and of course, the entire history of jiggery-pokery from ancient times until yesterday morning. It's very surreal. I love it.

Ego Dialogues

2012-01-05T11:03:00.000-06:00

A fun little blog scrapbook site that was linked off of Penny Arcade. It's a collection of things the blogger finds beautiful and after clicking through it, I'm inclined to agree.

Another Notch In My Lipstick Case

2012-01-03T01:54:00.000-06:00

I was scrambling around frantically most of December and I missed this post by Ken Allen Wood about authors promoting magazines in which their work has appeared. (Mr. Wood is, by the way, the editor of Shock Totem, which was the first magazine I ever sold to, and currently has all its back issues available electronically for a mere 99 cents each or free through amazon prime.)

I've promoted Shock Totem a couple of times on the blog, in part because they keep letting me write little things for them, and in part because Ken is a really stand up guy who's kept in communication with me this whole time. He didn't just buy my first sale, but he clued me in on the opportunity that resulted in my second one. He also comes by and comments on the blog. He's just generally been someone who I feel has gone over and above, and that's the sort of thing I want to pay back. (I admit, I've also done it because Shock Totem has some of the most gorgeous cover illustrations in all of horror. I mean just look at it.)

I've promoted the magazine less in my personal social media spaces because I've kind of skittishly compartmentalized, and I'm not 100% sure I want my conservative christian relatives asking me about stories where people eat each other next Thanksgiving (though it's going to happen anyway, I think. My mother and father have been pimping this magazine pretty hard).

I guess I'm sort of torn on it. I feel a little strange promoting aggressively if it's something I'm published in; honestly, it's easier for me to tell you Shock Totem is something you should buy when it's not my particular issue, because that feels less like I'm just beating you over the head to pay attention to me. I've also got no problem pointing you at places I haven't been published but I like to read. And I know I gushed like a cat-ear-hat-wearing fangirl when Drabblecast said they'd take one of my stories, but I'd also gushed about them before that.

Ken's question is "are writers obligated to promote the places that publish them?" I guess I kind of fall in the general area of "no, not obligated, but unless the publication has actively dicked with you, it seems like the decent thing to do, whether they publish you or not". Magazines don't necessarily make a lot of money, and most of these guys are alive by the skin of their teeth. We writers and readers have a symbiotic relationship with magazines. The better they do, generally the better they're able to do by us. Sometimes that means buying a digital copy of Clarkesworld instead of a chai latte. Sometimes that just means that when you read a really good story, you point it out to everyone else you know who might like it. Yeah, magazines absolutely can't take either their writers or their readers for granted (or even their potential writers or readers), but that goes both ways. If you want the genre to be healthy, the best thing you can do is buy, give, and promote, especially if it's a magazine you think does it right. Pimp your favorite semi-pro zine and see if you can help it go pro. Help us build a thriving short fiction ecosystem.

Or at least that's how I feel about it. What do you guys think?

January 1st

2012-01-01T01:28:00.001-06:00

Happy New Year, Internet!

If Famous Writers Had Written Twilight

2011-12-29T13:38:00.001-06:00

Good for a quick literary laugh.

My Year in Blogging

2011-12-28T01:58:00.001-06:00

Alright, retrospective time!

Aw, it looks like I missed the chance to point out my 200th post. This one should be number 206. I'm also approaching 5000 page views (thank you, Russian spybots!)

So... one of my favorite things in the world is raw data. Because I love it, I assume others must love it as well. I will also be providing some comments and analysis. And I guess a wish

list regarding the data set.

More or less steady upward growth in hits this year, except for a weird drop off in July. I guess there were only 12 posts in July, but there were only 13 in September and that got about 60% more hits. May, which only had 10 posts, was 40% higher.

What the heck, some math!

Hits per post:

January 16.40

February 15.58

March 16.18

April 19.59

May 38.70

June 24.61

July 24.67

August 27.50

September 38.69

October 30.12

November 34.07

December (not counting this post) 32.73

Overall views per post on the blog as a whole: 23.90

It's worth remembering that the hits for that month do not necessarily coincide with the posts put up during that month, as all hits on the past archives are also counted, so that may not be the best metric, but I was curious and there it is. It's funny to see July actually be slightly up from June in that count.

There's also some explanations for the high discrepencies. May was the month I went to World Horror Con and not only met a number of people but mentioned them on my blog. September saw both the Angry Black Woman link and the creation of Fwoorg, which was kind of a link site for authors from the same internet writing group, and both of those things directed traffic back this way. I also did my write up for Armadillocon on August 30th.

Speaking of which, most popular posts:

Shameless Angry Black Woman Repost

Sep 17, 2011, 8 comments

103 Pageviews

ArmadilloCon Roundup

Aug 30, 2011

57 Pageviews

Cross-gender and Multicultural Writing

Sep 20, 2010

46 Pageviews

Post Traumatic Stress and Controlled Rape

Jul 15, 2011, 4 comments

43 Pageviews

Siberian Silver Fox Study

Nov 14, 2010, 1 comment

38 Pageviews

Generative Ethnography of the Fantastic

Sep 28, 2011, 8 comments

31 Pageviews

Happy Birthday, Blog

Jul 6, 2011

31 Pageviews

Every Who down in Whoville, the tall and the small...

Dec 23, 2010

28 Pageviews

Goodkind Parody Blog

Apr 12, 2011, 1 comment

27 Pageviews

Jailbreaking the Patriarchy

Nov 19, 2011, 1 comment

26 Pageviews

The Shameless Angry Black Woman thing came totally out of left field for me. It's really just a link back to an article, and not a recent one at that. It's not something I expected to be provocative or even occasion comment- it was just sort of a list of things one could do if one wanted to attract more minority writers to a publication.

The Armadillo Con Round Up got linked from outside my site, so that was cool.

The Multicultural writing makes me happy, but that's also the one on there with the most time to accrue views.

The Rape one is of course actually provocative.

The Siberian Fox one is amusing, because for a long time that was the thing with the most hits, at a point where I was still trying to talk mostly about writing and had just thrown that up as an aside. Where it proceeded to dominate the list for quite some time.

(Yes, I do realize those are tiny numbers in the grand scheme of things. I expect to look back and have interesting things to compare them to.)

I'm pleased a couple of those are actually written posts and not links. I'd say it seems to represent a pretty fair swath of what I actually put up.

Referring Sites

stoneaxe.livejournal.com

566

www.google.com

530

fwoorg.blogspot.com

152

www.scribblingseasprite.blogspot.com

www.fantasy-writers.org

domar.ru

scribblingseasprite.blogspot.com

acceptableschizophrenia.blogspot.com

www.google.ca

yandex.ru

Domar.ru is a spam site. I would advise not clicking it. I don't read Russian, but Yandex.ru appears to be a legitimate search engine. And of course Stoneaxe.livejournal.com is Jonathan Pembrook's site.

Search Keywords

skull honey

219

leslianne wilder

siberian silver fox

"saladin ahmed"

lesliannewilder.blogspot.com

every who down in whoville

armadillocon

author statistics

day old baby rats

the stories come

This is terribly funny to me, because I don't think I've ever actually mentioned Saladin Ahmed on the site. I like his work, particularly "The Faithful Soldier, Prompted", but what this comes from is the fact that I tried to link to his blog in my little blogroll down there on the bottom right. I got a message back saying it couldn't locate the feed, so it never showed up, but since then I've been getting search hits for the poor guy.

I also suspect people are not looking for me when they type in Skull Honey. I hope they're at least enjoying the illustration.

Other recent search queries include "author statistics", "unicorn enluminures", "honey march", and "by Lee Thompson".

(And just to fuck with search engines a bit more: "sex with pandas", "rotator cuff injuries", "interstitial jelly", "Queen Beatrix/Angela Merkel femslash", "evangelical sex scandal", and "Justin Bieber makeout". Put that in your Google and smoke it, Internet.)

I've also gotten hits from Noway, Sweden, Argentina, Iraq, Estonia, Java, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, India, Australia.... honestly I wish Blogger would save and show them all to me. They always make me so happy.

Also at the risk of summoning them further without particularly good reason merely by uttering their names, I've gotten comments on the blog from Lee Thompson, Benjamin Rosenbaum, and Tim Pratt, all of whom I just adore.

So all in all I think it's been a good year. Hooray for blogging.

Women Fighters In Reasonable Armor

2011-12-27T09:42:00.000-06:00

Just what it says on the label.

Also, I love you, tumblr. Let's get married and have cyborg babies.

December 25th

2011-12-25T13:10:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas, Internet!

And Happy Holidays and New Year as well!

Lessons from a Clockwork Queen

2011-12-23T23:45:00.000-06:00

A lovely, whimsical, AND educational story up at Fantasy Magazine.

My Year In Rejections

2011-12-20T22:55:00.004-06:00

So far this year I have twenty-four rejections.

This isn't a pity party (if anything, I feel this is too few rejections, because it means I have not been submitting more), I bring this up because I've been speaking to a number of writers who are fretting about the sting of rejection. Really, it's not that bad, and the more you do it, the easier it gets. Also, it's not like these guys have terrible fangs on them. As an illustrative example, I've collected my rejection letters for a year. I've taken the names and the stories out of the letters because that's not really what this post is about.

Seriously, new writers. It's not as bad as you're worried it is.

So, here you go: My Year in Rejections.

Edited to Add: I write quick thank you notes for all my rejections, even the form ones, unless the letter specifically says not to. I don't know to what extent this helps, but I figure it couldn't hurt.

Digital Theatre!

2011-12-19T12:09:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I was pointed at Digital Theatre specifically because David Tennant and Catherine Tate (my favorite Doctor and Companion set) are co-staring in Much Ado About Nothing (my favorite Shakespeare), but it's a very generally cool site, if you're into the theatre. Go! Enjoy. Stream or download yourself some Bard.

Good Advice from Lee Thomspon

2011-12-17T11:12:00.000-06:00

I think I've mentioned before that Lee Thompson is one of the sweetest folk I've met. Here's his advice to a new writer.

Pearls Before Breakfast

2011-12-15T19:16:00.000-06:00

Like many, many things, I owe E. J. Fischer big for pointing me at this article about a virtuoso violinist and how few of us take the time to appreciate beauty. It's long, but I really think it's worth your time.

On Reasonable Goals

2011-12-13T23:54:00.000-06:00

Short version: I'm against 'em.

I was going over my goals for the year with a member of my writing group. I've only achieved one of them so far, and only one more of them is even conceivably achievable at this point. And while I'd certainly rather be eligible for an SFWA membership with a novel out in circulation to agents and 30 stories currently out to editors, I personally think I probably wouldn't have gotten as much done if I were only shooting for a fraction of that.

I have a friend who used to sign her correspondences with "shoot for the moon, that way if you miss you'll be sure to land among the stars."

Like most everything, this is seems like something that will be highly individual. I certainly know some people who seem like if they set any goals, reasonable or otherwise, and didn't make them they'd quickly spiral into unproductive self-loathing, and others where if they feel like there's a chance they won't make their goals there wasn't really any point in setting them. But generally for me I think it's not a bad motivator, as far as all that goes. Nobody's depending on me making these goals; I'm not going to starve if I fall behind. So why not set them high enough that it'll really be something if I accomplish them?

As such, I'm keeping my unreasonable goals for the coming year and adding a couple of extra ones.

365000 words written or edited (it being a leap year I am generously giving myself 1000 words off)

Two novels in circulation to agents (I have two partial novels. I plan to get cracking in January on getting them into shape)

Seventy short stories in circulation (either waiting reply from publishers, or published and waiting for rights to free up)

Fifty-two new completed first drafts (I figure if I made the thirty stories goal for May I should be able to pull this off)

At least one writing exercise of some type every week (I feel like one of my problems this year was being complacent about my skill level)

At least one critiqued story or novel chapter per week (need to build some strong critiquing relationships)

At least one blog post that is not just a link to someone else's blog post per week.

Panelist at a convention (I'm pretty sure I can make this happen! And think how fun it will be!)

Contestant in Writers of the Future every quarter until I am no longer eligible.

Am I going to accomplish all that? I don't think it really matters. What matters is that I'm damn well going to try.

Goodnight, Internet. Sleep well.

Horror Film Festivals and Awards!

2011-12-12T00:58:00.000-06:00

Hey! Yeah you! If you're interested in Indie Horror Film (which is actually really quite interesting. You'd be surprised how much of it there is out there!), you should pick up Thomas M. Sipos's Horror Film Festivals and Awards.

I've met this guy, and this is a cool subject he's legitimately passionate about. Also, check out the Tabloid Witch Awards, especially if you're the kind of person who has a camera, a dream, and a pressurized hydraulic gore cannon.

(Incidentally, if you DO have a pressurized hydraulic gore cannon, why not fill it with Hawgfly brand Hawg's Blood? Hawg's Blood, now in smooth AND scabby varieties for all your high definition arterial spray needs!)

Surveys on Symbolism

2011-12-11T13:52:00.002-06:00

This is a really cool article- to settle an argument with an English teacher, a 16 year old student in 1963 sent out about 100 surveys to serious literature heavyweights and asked them if symbolism in their work was deliberate. And a bunch of them wrote back. Some of the responses are collected in the linked piece above.

Codified Nobility

2011-12-09T12:48:00.000-06:00

Nyki Blatchley breaks down noble titles for all you fantasy writing folk.

Stick Man!

2011-12-07T13:45:00.000-06:00

Draw a stick man(or woman!) for a fun time in flash.

2011 in Pictures

2011-12-05T12:29:00.001-06:00

Compilation of news images. It's very US and September 11th focussed, but it's still very good.

Traffic Poetry

2011-12-03T13:38:00.001-06:00

Every now and again, I think I love New York a little. Check out their new haiku traffic signs.

Anecdote IV

2011-12-01T14:14:00.000-06:00

My partner told me this one, and I believe even for him it was apocryphal, but he does maintain it actually happened. The story is as follows: a writer is circling about one of those New York parties where influential and cultured people go to reaffirm their status as lords of all from the sainted seat of Manhattan, and he gets into a conversation with a surgeon and his wife. During this back and forth the surgeon mentions he's always thought it would be delightful to take a few months off some summer and write a novel. A sort of leisurely gentleman's jaunt.

Oh, says the novelist. That's such a coincidence. I've always wanted to take a holiday and try brain surgery.

Preemptive Debriefing

2011-11-29T13:49:00.003-06:00

Don't worry, I'm keeping my shorts on. This is about National Novel Writing Month.

I'm calling it, I don't expect to win this year. I'm planning to finish between 40 and 42 thousand words. So I'm not going to get a T shirt this year, but I am going to get about 40,000 words, so that's nice. This is my third year to do national novel writing month, and I do feel like every year I get a little better (though every year I also try to do something more ambitious than the past year, so I also feel like I fall slightly farther behind my goal each year. Live and learn).

This year one of the main problems was nailing down the tone. I was trying to write something that was both funny and horrific, and deciding on the measure of each was difficult. It took me a long time to get right and the sections where the tone felt off kept sapping the willingness to continue out of me, even though I knew it was something I could tweak in editing. Tone was an issue last year too, when I had more than one moment of paralyzation trying to figure out if I was writing a mystery or an adventure that happened to have a murder macguffin. I hereby resolve that in the future, I will deal with this before I start writing a book.

I also had a little trouble getting the characters down in the first chapters, and the result was me fumbling around in the narrative dark until I got my feet under me. Like the year before last, I had a good picture of the main character in my head, but it did not translate well to paper (by contrast, last year's two main characters were not terribly fleshed out and flowed out well). Both of the main characters I had done more advance work on in order to make them more complex ended up feeling, especially at the beginning, both terribly static and less complete than I would have liked- I was spending too much time trying to get them right according to how they were in my mental plan for the novel. I don't think this necessarily means I need to discovery-write characters, but I do think I need to approach them from a starting point of a more focussed characterization to get things started, then build outward from that through actual steps in the plot.

I could have outlined better, and I say that despite a pretty thorough plot outline. This time around I was trying to write a pretty complex story in terms of plot, with a lot of betrayals and reversals and the like. I did a lot of work on it before hand, but I still hit points while writing where I went "wait a sec, that doesn't actually work". This has happened in every book so far, and I'm not sure what to do about it, as I've already taken steps to correct for it. I guess just keep at it.

I have been reminded how much help it is to talk things out. For various reasons, most having to do with work scheduling, I didn't meet with my national novel writing month group for most of the month. I've also tried to avoid discussing specifics with people I intend to bother to beta read the manuscript. Those times I have sat down and talked out problems with the novel, it's not only usually solved them, it's reinvigorated me for the writing. Apparently, this is a necessity for me for longer works. I will keep this in mind next time.

I need to sit down further in advance next time and work out universal rules for magic and religion, as well as make maps so I'm confident of both distance and direction when my characters are running for their lives. Distance is an especially big one that's come up in every single novel I've written so far. I suspect this is one of those things where no matter how much you plan you're going to end up writing a spontaneous scenario that you hadn't done the calculations for, but I know I can do better than I am.

So that's it. While I don't expect to get my 50,000, I certainly don't consider it a waste. Every single one of these things has been a learning experience. And honestly, without them I don't think I'd have had the gumption to start a novel at all.

So how did y'all do, what did you learn, and what novel writing wisdom do you have to impart?

Happy National Novel Writing Month, internet.

Butching Up Lab Mice

2011-11-25T20:12:00.000-06:00

An interesting study on mice brain chemistry. And while it's not the main point of the article, tremble at the casual rearrangement of mouse personality via engineered virus.

Happy Thanksgiving, Internet!

2011-11-24T13:24:00.002-06:00

Because this blog is for a principally horror writer, I typed the phrase "hideous nightmare turkey" into google images to try to find an appropriate .jpeg for the occasion.

This is what I found instead:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Can't Blog, Gotta Write

2011-11-22T23:02:00.002-06:00

Sorry guys, there's trouble on El Rancho National Novel Writing Month. More blog posts later.

Written? Kitten!

2011-11-21T15:13:00.001-06:00

Okay, so, I still think Write-or-Die (putting the prod in productivity) is a better motivational tool for me personally, but for those of you who don't like flashing red lights and your completed words being taken away from you if you slow down, may I present Written? Kitten! You can set your reward intervals and after each you will receive an adorable kitten picture. How could you not love it?

Jailbreaking the Patriarchy

2011-11-19T22:16:00.000-06:00

Jonathan, I am prepared for your bemused annoyance!

Okay, so a nice lady named Danielle Sucher wrote a Google Chrome add-on that automatically reverses all gendered terms (you can toggle it on and off). For extra fun, install it and read dating advice. Or porn.

Shock Totem Holiday Special

2011-11-17T22:10:00.000-06:00

God, this magazine never has a bad cover. Look at how gorgeous that is!

Shock Totem is putting out a holiday e-book special and you should buy it. You should buy it because Jack Freaking Ketchum is going to tell you a story about his Christmas. You should buy it because horror needs a holiday too. You should buy it because, hell, look at it! That's a switchblade snowflake and it's gorgeous.

Yes, absolutely, Skull Honey readers. Get out there and indulge in some holiday cheer.

The Superhero Genre

2011-11-15T14:13:00.000-06:00

I know that I've mentioned my love of the Superhero genre before, even though I don't really write much in it. In part, it comes from my love of comics and animation, and I do take in a lot of both that have nothing to do with people with strange obsessions putting on tights and capes and beating up street thugs and space invaders. I like Sandman and Bone and Transmetropolitan and Strangers in Paradise. But I also really love Superheroes.

I don't know if part of it is a hold over from growing up reading X-Men- the sort of crunchy sweet nostalgia that makes you adore something you rationally know is silly or bad for you. I think that's part, but not all of it, because I can certainly recognize good and bad stuff within the genre and I really do think when it's good, it stands up well against any other genre I enjoy reading, with its own little tropes and idiosyncrasies that it comes back and tries to address (you couldn't very well have had Watchmen or Identity Crisis if you didn't have a set of expectations).

Actually, when you get right down to it, I think the tropes are why I love it. Because superheroes are a genre that's grown up in comic books principally aimed at kids, there's a lot of inherent ridiculousness that's not only gotten a pass, but become enshrined as a genre hallmark. Superman can hide his identity just by wearing glasses. One single mutant gene produces a limitless array of magic powers including controlling the weather, super speed, talking to machines, laser eye beams, turning into metal, and randomly cutting from our dimension to a hell dimension full of monsters and back with a precision that allows you to get wherever you want to go. It's not weird for there to be man-eating alligator people in the sewers. Batman has a billion dollar computer inside a secret cave that can monitor and analyze whatever he wants. The Flash can run into things faster than the speed of sound and not become a red and yellow smear against them. One crazy person in a mask with a few fancy gadgets is more effective than either the army or the police. The best way to fight crime is in brightly-colored, skin-tight spandex. The only other genre I can think of that has near as many completely accepted bits of utter insanity is Fairytales.

But let's be honest, I'm also a big fan of Fairytales. It's the juicy archetypes and tropes that become something terrifying and ridiculous on close scrutiny. It's the fact that readers have some very concrete and silly expectations waiting to be defied or refined in a million different ways. Or alternately, lived up to in ways they didn't expect.

Also, in a way very much like Fairytales, Superheroes have gotten bigger than whoever's currently writing them. Because these guys come out in comics that are printed generally once a month, with a rotating stable of authors, and in many cases with canon alternate versions of themselves and constant reboots and redefinitions, nothing about them is particularly fixed. It can be hugely frustrating if you're a reader who's been following a character, getting to know and love them, watching them evolve over an arc, only to suddenly find they're not behaving like themselves anymore. But on the other hand, it means that you're looking at the worlds and the characters almost through a hall of mirrors, with a million different acceptable distortions, so long as the essential characteristics are maintained. One of my favorite things ever in all of comics is called Superman: Red Son, by Mark Millar.

It's a stand alone, which is generally my favorite type of superhero story, in part because of the problems expressed above, and it's also a "what if?" story. In this case "what if instead of landing in middle America and being raised with all the wholesome American ideals that make Superman the guy we know and love, he came down in the Ukraine and was raised to be the paragon of communist values?" It's a fun, smart treatment that uses a twist on a very iconic character to talk about the cold war that dominated so much of the last century.

Then of course too you have things like Alan Moore's Watchmen, which takes the perspective of trying to look at what kind of people would really put on tights and punch criminals, and just how screwed up you really have to be to do so. (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, also by Moore, is superheroes as per English pulp/adventure literature of the 19th century, and it's quite a hoot.)

Another good one is Vaughn's Ex Machina, which is about a superhero who decides he could actually do more good in politics, and runs for and wins the mayorship of New York City. There are flashbacks to his tights and jetpack days, but it focuses more on what it means to do good and to make a difference in a world that doesn't just have super powered serial killers, but also the kinds of moral and social quandaries we deal with every day.

None of this is to say I don't enjoy straight superhero stories, because I really do. It's thrilling to watch one person or a handful of people stand up to comically exaggerated violence and terror and win (though my preference is often for the off-beat heroes where the licenses leave more room to goof off and experiment. The Question, Booster Gold, Green Arrow, Birds of Prey, Secret Six, Plastic Man). And some of the straight stories, particularly in the Batman and X-men lines, which do some of the most business and consequently attract some of the absolute best artists and writers, are well worth reading. There are also some absolutely wonderful writers who are absolutely worth following no matter where they go: Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Gail Simone, Brian K. Vaughn, Warren Ellis, Mark Millar, Robert Kirkman (some people would also say Grant Morrison, who I'm more ambivalent to. Some others would also say Frank Miller, but I really have to draw the line there).

It's not that there aren't problems with the superhero genre. There's a lot of places it lends itself to jingoism, simplicity, misogyny, senseless violence, and irredeemable silliness. It is still a pulp genre, after all. But the beautiful thing about it is how big and how diverse it actually is, and for everything out there that's rote good vs. evil ultraviolence or cheesecake exploitation, there's someone else pushing a fascinating character to their outer limits, asking unanswerable questions, and making you look at the world in a way you only can when you give individual characters agency that extends across the laws of physics. As uncle Ben said: with great power comes great responsibility. And whether the character you follow is equal to it or not, that by itself is a great story.

Verily Doth This Look Tapestry Shopp'd

2011-11-12T14:09:00.000-06:00

I was speaking to a friend of mine who studies medieval history, and the Bayeux Tapestry came up. Not specifically recalling all the details of the tapestry, I typed it into google, with delightful results.

Rebranding

2011-11-10T14:38:00.000-06:00

285 girls in Satara, India whose families gave them a name that means "unwanted" got a chance to pick new legal names in a ceremony put on by the local government. I say good for them, and good for the government. Thumbs up, guys.

Anecdote III

2011-11-08T16:59:00.001-06:00

This one's about language and how it can kind of trip you up.

I was in an introduction to psychology course, and it was our lecture on language and psychology, and the whole Sapir-Whorf concept that the language in which you think necessarily constrains the concepts you are able to articulate and conceive. (The example you will have heard is Eskimos having 52 words for snow, and to a lesser extent, Germans having their own broad clutch of beer words). I believe the book took the stance that language reinforces culture which then turns around and reinforces language.

One of the examples in the book was how the Japanese are a conformist culture, where the same word means both "to be different" and "to be wrong".

My professor knew I was taking Japanese classes as well, so he turned to me and said "you're studying this, is that true?" And I said, "well, yes, the word they're talking about is 'chigau'." But it kept niggling at me. The thing is, chigau isn't a word that carries a lot of moral weight. It absolutely means "to be wrong" but it means it in the sense of getting a question wrong, or having your facts incorrect- literally different from the truth. If you tried to use it to say "that's so wrong" or "what you did was horribly wrong" it would sound weird. In that case you'd want a word like warui or yabai.

That's the thing. There's probably something to the whole "different" = "incorrect" statement, but I can't help but think there's also something important to the idea that the concept "incorrect" in English uses the same word as "morally abhorrent".

We take some very strange things for granted.

2011-11-07T00:30:00.000-06:00

Did you know that the spectacular magazine Shock Totem now has its back issues in e-reader format? Yes, I'm just straight up pimping them. Ken Wood is a fantastic guy and these are high quality magazines. Look at that thing.
So, yes, if very well put together print editions are not your thing, or you only have ninety-nine cents in the world and you want to put it to the best possible use, you can go buy the first issue digitally and bask in its glory.

Captain Grandma

2011-11-05T11:42:00.000-05:00

This is just the sweetest. Photographer Sascha Goldberger dressed his grandmother up as a super hero to cheer her up when she was depressed. These photos are the result.

Corvus

2011-11-04T12:28:00.001-05:00

Issue #1 of Corvus is up, featuring a reprint of "Sweepers". These ladies seem like nice folks. Go read their magazine.

Well, It's Now Midnight

2011-11-01T00:01:00.000-05:00

National Novel Writing Month Go!

(my name on the site is "leslianne" if you want to find and friend me)

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T00:43:00.002-05:00

Have a Happy Halloween!

Men-ups

2011-10-29T00:18:00.000-05:00

Gender points made elegantly and adorably by one-to-one substitution.