The AFICTIONADO® Blog

Relatively quiet week, trying to make sure I do some writing each day.  My apologies if anyone has been looking for this blog on Goodreads.  Something has happened to the RSS synch and it’s not coming through there, even though it does to the Amazon author page.  I’m hoping this is easily fixed – that is, something I did wrong – but we’ll see what support has to say.

Took time to read “The Expert Sword-Man’s Companion” by Donald McBane, issued as a new edition by Jared Kirby a couple of years ago.  McBane was a soldier in Marlborough’s armies at the end of the seventeenth century and beginning of the eighteenth.  He was a master of the sword as well as other hand weapons in use at that time.  The book is part manual on sword-fighting and part autobiography.  McBane’s story is fascinating and astonishing.  Based on the preface to this edition, some of the events that he relates can be corroborated by other, contemporaneous, sources so it is reasonable to accept his story as true.  It is an amazing story.  McBane recounts numerous sieges and battles that he was involved in and even more fights over the brothels and gaming he ran while he was in the army.  This all resulted in numerous wounds by ball, bayonet, sword, having his grenade blow up and being beaten and left for dead (more than once).  He also left a long string of wounded or dead men who made the mistake of challenging him.  After all the campaigning, he returned to London and fought in thirty-seven “prize-fights” (sword-fights) until, at age 63, he resolved “never to Fight any more, but to Repent for my former Wickedness.”  It is worth reading, both for the story itself and for anyone interesting in writing stories set in a similar era.  A couple of words of warning: 1) The first part of the book may be difficult for someone without any background in fencing or seventeenth century weaponry; 2) McBane wrote in the early eighteenth century and was a soldier and fighter, not a scholar nor very learned.  This shows in the syntax, grammar and spelling.  There are, as well, what appear to be typos in various places but I cannot tell whether these have been faithfully reproduced from the original or were introduced when this edition was produced.  With those caveats, this book is well worth the investment of time to read it.

Working hard on a new story, which means days when it feels like it’s really coming together and other days when the predominant thought in my mind is, “Who would ever want to read this?”  It’s always like that early on.  I tell myself to tell the story and we’ll see when we get to the end.  I do set a goal of writing something each day.  It may not be a lot, but I want something down on paper.  I don’t have a set word count for the day, although I do want to fill at least one page of my writing pad.  It’s easier now that the office job has been retired, but there are still some days the brain doesn’t want to work.

A couple of notices.  The folks who do Boskone (Nesfa) are having a virtual meeting on Aug 15th – ReCONvene20.  I’m excited to see this program and looking forward to the con.  Check their site (nesfa.org).  This may turn into a dress rehearsal for Boskone 2021, if we are still not able to hold an in-person con at that point.  Personally, I fear that is a realistic consideration.  Concerns for the future aside, check this one out on it’s own merits.  On a non-fiction, serious science side, check out the Mars Society convention October 15-18.  This one has moved online as well, which means that you can attend from anywhere.  This is a serious scientific and space-flight meeting (the goal is humans on Mars), but for folks who read and love science fiction, it’s worth seeing our fiction come to life.  The program is top notch and I recommend looking into it.

On  the reading side, I finally got to “Every Heart A Doorway,” by Seanan McGuire.  I wish I’d read it sooner.  This is a delightful and delightfully dark story of children who have found their way through portals to fantasy worlds and, having returned, want only to go back.  They are out of place in our world and considered crazy, so they are placed at a “school” that will help them get better.  The characters are all unique individuals and uniquely twisted.  This is a really short book, but McGuire’s prose makes all of these teenagers come alive.  That’s an interesting sentence for this book, because then we get to the murders and the mystery of who is doing the killing (and why).  Perhaps the one point I did not like (other than I didn’t want it to end) was that I was sure of the killer earlier than I would want to be in a mystery.  Bottom line: I am ordering all four of the subsequent books in this series.

I would like to wish everyone a happy 4th.  It is certainly a difficult time this year, but I hope we can all enjoy our holiday.

I’ve started on the idea for a new story and I find, as with everything I’ve written, that I have to start with a pad of paper and a pen.  I’m sure the draft would move more swiftly if I could start at the keyboard, but that doesn’t seem to work.  The brain seems to work only when connected to a pen and I see ink on the page.  I wonder how many others still do  their first drafts long-hand.

Read “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” by Suzanne Collins.  This one was on my to-read list from the day I could pre-order it but it took forever to get to me.  Somehow, it was forwarded halfway across the country and had to come back.  Anyway, this is the story of Coriolanus Snow, the villain of the Hunger Games trilogy, as a young man struggling to find himself.  I liked this book.  A lot.  Snow emerges as a complex figure; he feels real.  The choices he makes, bad as they are (from my – and probably your – perspective) become understandable in light of who he is as a person.  His relationship with Lucy Gray provides a good mirror for his problems and his struggle, although we do know how that is going to come out.  Collins also provides a great deal of interesting backstory to the Hunger Games themselves and to how the relationship between the Capitol and the Districts evolved.  The biggest problem with the book is that we do know how it comes out.  Snow will survive his trials and tribulations and he will emerge corrupt and power-hungry because we have already seen him in the Hunger Games.  There is no way around this.  (I do wonder how it will be for future readers who, perhaps, read this first.)  Still, I found the book a good read (enjoyable is a tough word when the main character is Snow).  I do recommend it.

Completely missed last week.  Too much going on.  In my little book world, new covers are coming for Accidental Warrior and Starman’s Saga.  Assuming everything passes validation, the books with their new cover art should be available by this weekend.  I hope everyone likes them!  On the writing side, made a lot of progress on the new project.  I am still hoping I can go from here to published before the end of the year, but a lot will need to fall into place for that.  Starting with the final title — soon.

On the reading side, read Kel Kade’s “Fate of The Fallen.”  I wanted to like this story.  It’s a neat take on the concept of a chosen savior who is foreseen in a prophecy. As such, I feel it belongs to the large number of stories that follow the “Hero’s Journey” character arc and plot.  I happen to enjoy that type of story and had high hopes at the outset.  The book is clearly the first of a series, so I was prepared not to have explanations for all of what was presented (such as the rules for the magic in the book or just who the “gods” were).  Unfortunately, I ran into a number of things I didn’t like.  To me, the characters represented stereotypes rather than three-dimensional individuals.  Too much of the dialog came across like what you might hear on a 21st century school campus rather than in a world such as the book describes and some of the syntax left me wondering if I had actually read what was on the page.  In the end, the problems outweighed the positives and I came away with a feeling of “meh”.

Trying to get myself back to work this week.  There is a draft of the new manuscript and that needed to be completed.  Got that done, then went back and forth over the title.  Still planning to have this out by year end.

Read Alix Harrow’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January and the author had me from page 1.  I really enjoyed this book.  It’s a different take on the multiverse concept and on portals between different universes.  Oddly, what popped into my head after I finished, was how this was almost the antithesis (both in main character and what was driving the plot) of Cherryh’s Morgaine series.  I particularly liked the way the main character was presented.  January drove me crazy in places with her actions and decisions, but they were in character for the person that she is.  I also enjoyed the writing style, the prose if you will.  Intentionally flowery or ornate, it still flows smoothly.  My dislikes are limited.  The bad guys ended up being one-dimensional and (in one case) unnecessarily weird.  The “eternal love at first sight” concept is one I have trouble with and the consequences of being shot at close range would be greater than portrayed in one scene.  Overall, this is definitely worth reading.

When I started this blog, I was determined that it would be about books and about writing.  I was not going to inject politics or other comments on the state of the world.  I cannot keep to that tonight.  From the tragedy in Minneapolis to the theatre of the absurd in Washington DC, I am appalled and ashamed.  It is time to say: enough.  We need to make an end to racism; it is a malignancy that eats away at our society.  We need to make “Equal Protection Under The Law” a reality, not just words carved in stone.  We need leaders who will work to unify this country and will work toward those goals.  These are jobs for all of us and it is long past time that we got to work on them.  As for leadership – there is an election in five months.  Vote!

Looking forward to the online Nebulas this weekend, albeit with a little trepidation as to how it will work.  Well, I’m game to try it.  One of the more interesting parts of the weekend is that this year the Nebulas overlap with a professional meeting that I usually attend.  I had figured that I would have to choose between them: I could only fly to one city after all.  Now, with everything online, I think I can toggle between sessions at the two meetings.  Maybe crazy and I may end up with a cranium full of mush, but it’s worth a try.  We’ll see.

Read To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers this week.  She is possibly my favorite new writer (well, pretty new).  I’ve read and loved all of her first three novels.  This is really a novella (it’s labeled that way) as it’s only 134 pages (that’s the length of the story, there is extra material at the back).  Things I liked most about the book start with the characters.  As always, Chambers has drawn a set of compelling individuals that come across as real people.  I could see them crowded around one of those small tables in Starbucks, deep in conversation, (well, in non-COVID 19 times), even if I don’t think I could join them.  They really do come across as a tight group.  She has also done a brilliant job creating not one but four worlds, each with its own interesting science aspects.  (And the realistic science is focused on biology and chemistry, which I like.)  There were also a couple of things I didn’t like.  The plot is rather thin.  Okay, in only 134 pages with all the detail on the characters and the worlds, there isn’t much room left, but I would have liked to understand a little more about what was happening.  What I really didn’t like, though, was the ending.  The storyline sets up several ways for the book to end and – I’m sorry – I felt that the one chosen was the weakest possible.  I’m not going to do spoilers, so I will bite my tongue and stop, but that ending was a big let down.  Sigh.  I would still recommend this book to both general sf readers and especially hard sf readers.  It is fun.

A fairly light week this week, but then we have the online Nebulas at the end of next week.  Very interested to see how this works.  While the scale will be reduced and the spontaneous personal connections can’t happen, the online modality does make it possible for people to participate without having to buy airline tickets and hotel rooms.  So, maybe there is a silver lining here that we can find a way to use in the future, even after we can have in-person conventions again.

Took a look at my to-read pile and it is heavy with non-fiction, particularly history and biography.  So, why does a guy who writes science fiction (and has been reading science fiction since he was ten) spend so much time reading history?  Part of it, I think, is that the old saying, “truth is stranger than fiction” is really true.  In fiction, the writer has to convince his reader (and his editor in a traditional setting) that the story is credible, that it’s believable.  History, on the other hand, is simply what happened regardless of crazy or unlikely it might seem.  I like that.  It is a good place to get ideas.

The audiobook is now on sale!!  Check it out on Amazon or Audible.

Mostly buried in the new draft this week.  I did have time to do some reading, though.  Picked up Sharan Newman’s Defending The City of God, non-fiction history of the Crusader states concentrating on the first half of the twelfth century.  I had picked it up primarily looking for information on Melisende, Queen of Jerusalem.  She was a true ruler and, from the little available, seems to have been a strong one.  The book is interesting and the author frequently gives her opinion or impression of what was going on, which is different than your typical history.  I found it a bit thin, I’m afraid, particularly where Melisende is concerned.  This is not the author’s fault, really.  The problem is that there simply isn’t enough about Melisende that has survived the years and, ultimately, it left me disappointed.  I think this would be a great topic for a writer of historical fiction; there is enough there to pique the imagination while so much of the story is unknown that a writer could let their imagination roam.  That brings me to the topic of female leads and that is something I will leave for next week.

The Nebula Awards have put up the schedule for the meeting 29 – 31 May.  Many of the sessions look good and I plan to attend a number of them.  Zoom has been working well for a number of different meetings; it will be interesting to see how it goes for a very large one.  I’ve been looking at the set up for the Book Depot and hope to be able to make my titles available.  This is one area, though, that may not work as well as a physical meeting.

A few minor issues showed up on the QA of the audiobook.  Those have been fixed and now it’s back to QA at Audible.  Hopefully, not too much longer.

Back to last week’s comments about realistic (as opposed to two-dimensional) characters, I think the following are important: 1) they must have a back-story, how they got to be who they are; 2) they need to make both good and bad choices and, in the same way, they need good and bad characteristics; 3) their decisions and choices are not simply actions to move the plot forward.  My final criterion is a personal one.  I need to be able to picture an interaction with them and that could be anything from a conversation at Starbucks to an argument in a bar.  I’m sure some of this is personal perspective.  I’ve seen plenty of reviews comment on “cardboard characters” when I thought the characters were very good (or maybe it’s just me).