A Podcast and a Pub

I received a very nice, and I thought very accurate, review of “Swords of Talera” in a podcast from Dial P for Pulp. The mastermind behind “Dial P” is David Drage, who lives in Aberdeen, Scotland with his wife and son. David is a Pulp fan and advocate with a particular interest in Robert E. Howard. We made contact on one of the online Robert E. Howard fan groups. David really seems to know the genre well, and respect it, and he acknowledged both the traditional qualities of “Swords” and the strengths of how those qualities were portrayed. If you’re interested, the podcast is on “Show # 5,” but if you want the direct link it’s here. It will take a little while to load, or at least it did on my computer. The “Swords” review is about a quarter of the way along the podcast. But there looks like a lot of interesting stuff on the site.

In other news, Strange Worlds of Lunacy has just been released, which contains my story, “Mirthgar.” This is a big collection, with over 50 humorous stories. I haven’t even gotten my contributor copy yet so I haven’t read any of the other stories, although I know a number of the authors. It looks like a good collection. The cover is above. I posted a piece from my story before, but here’s another taste. Remember that a “pale,” which is basically a horrible, lingering fog, has fallen upon the fabled land of Mirthgar.

“Ill omens abounded. A question mark was found crop-circled into a farmer’s lotus field in Mirthdale, while in Mirthhedge an albino Irish setter was born to a pair of bluetick coon hounds. In the very halls of the Queen’s palace, the infamous ghost of King Hornrey the First was seen to slip on an ectoplasmic banana peel and do the splits with an expression of considerable pain. The habitual hilarity had already fled from the people of Mirthgar, and now hope joined hilarity in exile.”

And, BTW, I recieved the following award from Anna-Lys. I really appreciate it since it's something I hope to do in my blog. Thank you!

The Wheels of Science

One of the points I'm going to make in my current nonfiction project is that science is self-correcting, although the process is not necessarily fast. Consider the story of the Martian canals. Initially, it appears that an Italian astronomer named Giovanni Schiaparelli observed channels on the Martian surface in 1877 that he referred to as “canali,” which was translated into English as “canals.”

An amateur American astronomer named Percival Lowell became fascinated with the topic and had an observatory built in Arizona through which he studied and mapped Mars. Lowell published a book in 1903 that included detailed maps of Mars, including an elaborate canal system. Lowell suggested that the “canals” were irrigation waterways used by the Martians to bring water from the poles down to the rest of the planet.

The public’s imagination was captured, and two writers who were strongly influenced by the story of the canals were Edgar Rice Burroughs and Ray Bradbury. There was, however, intense disagreement among scientists as to whether the canals existed at all, and, if so, what that existence meant. Some astronomers claimed to see them; others did not. Some thought that they were natural features or mere optical illusions, while others believed them to be genuine evidence of intelligent life on Mars. It wasn’t until humans sent the Mariner probes to Mars that we discovered that the “canals” appeared to be nothing more than optical illusions aided by wishful thinking among some observers.

The scientific story of the Martian canals finally ended in 1971 when Mariner 9 obtained close range photographs of the Martian surface and showed no canals. From 1877 to 1971 is almost 100 years in which the possible existence of canals on Mars remained ambiguous. But in the end, the evidence triumphed. An error was corrected. This is the way science works.
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The Illuminata, and Other Illuminating Things

Well, the newest Illuminata is out and the relaxed schedule seems to have pumped up the content. I’m talking 26 pages of material about SF, Fantasy, and Horror literature. There’s pieces for writers on “Names in Fiction,” on “Suspension of Disbelief,” and on “Information Overload.” The last one is my “Writer’s Block” column entry and is a large scale expansion on a post I did here on the issues of front loading and back loading of informational material in stories. If you don’t already get the newsletter sent to you, and it’s free, you can download the issue from the link above. Go to the bottom of the page there and select Volume 6, Issue 6.

As an additional note, another of our blog friends is responsible for the piece on “Suspension of Disbelief.” This is a fine essay by our own Rachel, and she also has a book review in the issue. So support her and download a copy.

Finally, I want to thank Bernita for her most wonderful review of Swords of Talera on her blog. Bernita has such a wonderful way with words herself that it was really an honor to have her compliment my prose. And I really appreciated her comment on: "One of the reasons I am fond of sword 'n sorcery is the assertion, without apology, of a certain idealism, of nobility, of qualities such as honour, loyalty, valour and duty." I feel the same way and I'm glad that came through in the book. I'd also like to thank all those who made great comments in response to her post.
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The Winnas!

*A Drumroll begins slowly and builds toward a crescendo. Charles, in a gold tuxedo complete with gloves, bow tie, top hat, and cane, strides onto the dawn stage. He lifts his hand for quiet and immediately the drum whispers to silence.*

“The Envelope Please,” Charles intones.

*The Lovely Lana, in a matching gold evening gown and delicate silk stockings, slinks onto the stage in six inch stiletto heels, holding a silver and copper tray upon which rests one snowy white envelope.*

*Pausing for a long moment to enjoy the view, Charles is reminded of the contest by a soft clearing of the Lovely Lana’s throat.*

“Oh, yes. The…uhm…contest,” he says.

*He takes the envelope, borrows one of Lana’s heels to slit the top, and then pours into his hand a micro-thin piece of ivory parchment. The drum roll resumes.*

“From a field of twenty-six nominees, the winners are. In the category of, ‘lucky enough to be drawn from a hat by Lana’s own hand.’ In no particular order. Bernita Harris and Shauna Roberts.

*The Drum Roll reaches its crescendo and falls silent while thunderous applause breaks from the packed house.*

“Congratulations to the winners,” Charles says when the wild applause has finally settled down. “Please, Bernita and Shauna, send me your choice of prizes and your address and I’ll get your book in the mail to you post haste. Contact me at: kainja@hotmail.com. If you need to refresh your memory of the possible prizes, the contest link is here.

*Charles watches Lana slink off the stage and follows post haste himself, twirling his bow tie while fire pots explode behind him and send glittering sparkles high into the air.*

*The rest is history.*

File Under Weird

I heard this on the radio this morning, and the disk jockey, who is normally reliable, swore it was true. A 54 year old man needed a heart transplant and got one from a 33 year old man who had committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. After about a year, the transplant fellow was feeling so grateful for his new lease on life that he contacted the suicide's widow to tell her how much the heart had meant for him. The two became friends and after a while began dating and eventually married. All went well for a few more years until the man began to get very depressed. He then killed himself by shooting himself in the head.

Think it's bad because your relationship history involves repeated breakups? Hey, it could be worse. How would you like to be this woman?

In other news, my contest is over. I had almost 30 entries and will do the drawing tonight or tomorrow and announce the winners here. Everybody who posted a title, unless they specifically stated otherwise, will be entered in the contest. There were some great titles, and a few that are already on my list of favorites, like "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" and "Repent Harlequin, said the Tick Tock Man." Congratulations to all who entered.

A Few Updates

Just a couple more days to enter my contest if you're of a mind to. The deadline is midnight Sunday, April 6. I'll do the drawing sometime next week and announce the two winners here.

I didn't make it around to blogs yesterday. I spent the whole day, from 7:00 in the morning until 7:00 at night at am OHRP conference. OHRP stands for Office for Human Research Protections. This is one of the major government agencies that overseas human research in the United States to make sure that it meets ethical standards. How did I end up at such a conference, you may ask. It's because, at Xavier University where I teach, I'm also chairperson of the IRB (Internal Review Board), which is often known as the Human Subjects Committee. We are sort of the OHRP of Xavier and oversee all the human research there.

Although I generally don't care a lot for conferences where you spend your day sitting, sitting, sitting, taking notes, there was a fair amount of interesting stuff at this one. And it was stuff I needed to know and my committee needs to know. Plus, I had to present on problems and solutions to the difficulties that IRBs at small universities experience. The presentation went well, despite the fact that I'd been rather dreading it.

Anyway, I'm back today, just in time to get notice that "Love in the Time of Cybersex" has been rejected once again. And this could be the ultimate indignity. The story was rejected from a magazine that was publishing an "all rejects" issue, all stories that had been rejected before by other magazines. Ouch! Well, it was actually outside their word count so I can console myself with that as the reason for the rejection. I'm not giving up on this tale, though. Each rejection makes me believe in it more. (Talk about irrational thinking!)

PS: If you haven't had a chance to read and vote for my wife's (Lana) hilarious drinking story yet, time is running out. You need to vote today, and she's in a neck n neck race for the championship. The link is HERE. Check it out!

And now, off to visit blogs and comment on the comments made on my recent post.

Sheer Creation

Writing is the closest we humans can get to experiencing an act that we usually associate with God. That is, sheer creation. It is certainly the most enjoyable part of writing for me, and is one reason why I’m particularly drawn to fantasy. No genre allows, nay demands, so much creation.

You may create characters and events in historical fiction, but the world itself is precisely successful to the degree that it evokes a world that really existed. You don’t “create” 1870 London, for example. You recreate it. You don’t, in horror, create the haunted malls and the lonely highways as much as you “adapt” them from actual experiences you yourself have had. In science fiction, the sun is the real sun, Mars is the real Mars. Of course, there is creation all through any type of fiction, but with real-world based fiction there are limits, for example, to what can you do with plants and animals.

I don’t mean to imply that there are no limits in fantasy. The fantasy world has to make sense and has to evoke a sense of realism, but the limits are broader. I’m reminded of what Morpheus said to Neo in The Matrix. It was something like: “Some of these rules can be bent. Others can be broken.” Well, you can bend and break more rules in fantasy than in any other genre, and that sheer imaginative act feels so powerful. At least to me.

I remember how much absolute joy I felt in writing Swords of Talera, and a lot of it was the first creation of the world itself. Even before I started writing “Swords,” I started creating the world, and I kept all that information in what I called, perhaps a bit melodramatically, my Taleran Encyclopedia. I’ll end this post with a few entries from that file.

Kahurra: a plant that may produce a kind of natural steroid. It is used by gladiators and often by assassins. It increases strength and aggressiveness but sometimes creates violent, uncontrollable rages.

Tris: Also called candle-bugs. Small, light giving insects. They live in many underground places, such as sewers. They are smaller than a lightning bug but their light is pretty much constant, only occasionally dimming or brightening slightly. They are also flightless and move in large masses. They give off a turquoise light.

Moons: Talera has four large moons. They do not wax or wane but always present their full face and the same face to the planet’s surface. They are, in order of appearance:

1. Nimeru – The smallest. It’s name means “The Dreamer.” It rises at dusk. It has a delicate blue color. In some cultures, Nimeru is the goddess of love, and in others the god or goddess of poetry.

2. Sieona – A little larger, and turquoise in color. It’s name means “The Storm Queen,” and many legends are told about its power to evoke storms. It rises at what would be about 10:00 on Earth.

3. Tisiminna – Golden in color, and larger still. The name means “The Beauty.” There are two smaller orbs that circle Tisiminna and these are sometimes called the “lovers” or the “courtiers.” There are whole story cycles about the relationship between the “beauty” and her “courtiers.” It rises at midnight.

4. Rath – The largest of the four moons, and red in color. Like Mars, it is often associated with war and battle and is called “The Warrior.” It rises at about 2:00 earth time.

Man, I love creating moons. How about you, what kind of creation do you love?
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PS, don't forget that there are still a few more days, until April 6, to enter my contest
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April Again

One day before
Gray sky turns April
The weight is already here
Gathered like flood waters
Black behind my eyes

Memories press down
Like tombstones
Like leaves piled by wind
In a hollow

How many miles
From here to there
How many years
And no bridges between

Within lies the dust
Of faded roses
A cracked smile
A whisper of prayer

Eyes of fair blue
Smokey with the past
Still he waits
A ghost in rosary

I cannot reach
No hand can grasp
But yet I wave
Once more in passing
April again

Bits and Pieces

You see them occasionally in your home town. They are always passing through. They are young men with long hair and blue jean jackets, and the look of the ascetic on their faces. They are derelicts clutching a paper bag, who make humped shadows in alleyways. They are young girls with flushed cheeks and too bright smiles, and women who seem always to be watching you. They may even be you. You can recognize them. In one way they are the same. They all have fangs in their eyes.

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On the first day of the month of Harps he had not returned. And on the second the wind blew black with dust. I stood on the walls of Kaleri, my eyes red from seeing, and waited to watch him ride in gray out of the wind shadows. But he did not. On the third day I went out after him.

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"High IQ," he said, "but the patient shows paranoid delusions of grandeur with ideas of reference."

"Ahhh," I said, as if I agreed.

"Attributable to Oedipal disturbances in childhood and complicated, I think, by an organic syndrome induced by narcotics abuse around the onset of puberty. The client also appears to exhibit concomitant antisocial characteristics and it may prove difficult to establish rapport."

"Yes. I fear you are right," I said, and turned him gently from the mirror.

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I suppose no man can forget what he now is when he speaks of what he once was. He can only hope to remember what were, for many of us, happier times, softer days, when moments without hardness were like leaves on the trees.

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A Review

Travis Erwin has posted a very nice review of Swords of Talera over on his blog, and I much appreciate it. I didn't even have to pay him. Travis is working on a manuscript called Plundered Booty, which many of us are hoping to see published soon.

For other comments, I just have to say what a gorgeous place the area around our Abita Springs home is. The Azaleas are blooming everywhere. Most are a gorgeous dark pink, but there are quite a few different shades, including a wonderful red. There is purple wisteria in the trees, several varieties of white flowers, and some lovely yellow flowers in the woods whose name escapes me right now. It's Carolina something or other. Add to that a lot of wildflowers in the ditches, the crimson clover bordering many of the roads, and the budding maples and dogwoods and you have a world clad in festival clothes.

Life is pretty good.

Biopunk: A referral post

Today I'm just going to refer you to something that I found very interesting. It's a post by William Jones about Biopunk. Biopunk appears to be a particular type of post-apocalyptic fiction, in which the apocalypse is brought on by some kind of biological pandemic. I suggested in my comments to William's post that The Stand by Stephen King might be an early example of this relatively unknown genre.

I also suggested that post-apocalyptic fiction in general arises out of the fact that humans, alone of all the species on earth, know absolutely from early on that we will die, and because we also have a strong suspicion that our civilization itself and the whole human race will eventually die as well. In fact, I think this is a driving force behind much of what humans do, but that probably needs to be expanded in a longer post.

Books Read, and BabelCon

The Contest is still running, but I thought it time for another post. I probably won’t post a lot this coming week since we have more job candidates in and I have tests. I really enjoyed most of my week off, although I was pretty sick from last Sunday through Tuesday. I got a lot of reading done and plenty of sleep, though, and a fair amount of writing. I managed to visit blogs every day. Here’s what I read:

The Narrows by Michael Connelly. This is the first book I’ve read by him. It featured a recurring character named Harry Bosch, who is a private detective in this story and who stumbles upon the key to a serial killer case. The book is a sequel to a book called The Poet, the “Poet” being the serial killer. I liked the book and will read others of his. However, he did one thing that bothered me, although I got used to it over time. Part of the book is told in first person by Bosch, but parts are told in third person and feature the character Rachel Walling, an FBI agent who has dealt with the Poet before. Although the book was enjoyable, I was disconcerted by the switching from first to third person.

Then I got on a western kick and read He Rode Alone by Steve Frazee and Gunsmoke by Wade Hamilton. Both were enjoyable. I also started Three Rode South by Jake Foster, but only made it 8 pages before abandoning it. The lesson, don’t make your first 8 pages consist primarily of an info dump of background information. There was even the dreaded “as you know” type dump. That happened on page 2.

Continuing with the western theme, I’ve started All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. Beautifully written, but it took me 25 pages to figure out what the hell was happening. McCarthy doesn’t make it easy on you. I’m around 100 pages now and it’s going pretty well, although I wish he’d stop being a "literary writer" long eough to use quotation marks around his dialogue. There’s no sense in it. Still, the prose itself makes the read worth some effort.

In other news, I’ll be a guest at this year’s Babel Con, in Baton Rouge. They’ve talked me into doing three presentations, which I’ve listed below. Join us if you can.

Alien Evolution II
Most of the Aliens that stalk popular science fiction films and TV are based on earth-like forms, especially reptiles and mammals. True aliens would be quite different, although there are some earth forms that might make good models for filmmakers and writers to follow. Come join a presentation and discussion about what is wrong, and right, about the way creative artists currently feature aliens, and about how an understanding of actual evolution could help us develop better extraterrestrials.

Blessed With Nightmares - Using Dreams to Enhance Creativity
Besides being fun for us all, dreams and nightmares contain both imagery and meaning that can help creative artists and writers ignite their imaginations. But first you have to remember them. This presentation will talk about the biological and psychological basis of dreams and dream disorders, suggest some ways for people to improve their recall of dreams, and also discuss where the meaning comes from in dreams.

Beyond Fear - The Psychology of Terror
Some people like scary stories while others hate them. Why the differences? And for those who like scary stuff, what is the attraction? This presentation will discuss a trilogy of dark emotions: Fear, Horror, and Terror. How are they similar, and different? And what are the biological and psychological forces that underlie them? Finally, how can these emotions be used to help writers and other creative artists strengthen their work?

Pay it Forward Contest

OK, quite a while back I won Sarai’s “Pay It Forward” contest and now I need to run my own. Like Angie, who also won, I’m going to do it a bit different.

The Rules:

Comment to this post between now and April 6 and include the following information: the words “Contest Entry,” and your favorite “title” of a book, story, or poem. That's all! My favorite title, for example, is, “I have No Mouth, and I must Scream.”

After the deadline, I’ll put everyone’s name into a hat and draw two winners, and will announce them on this blog. Winners pay it forward by running some variation of this contest on their own blogs.

The Prizes:
Each winner can select one of the following:

1. Support New Writers -- Pick a writer whose book was first published in either 2007or 2008. Either mass market or trade paperback. And I’ll send it to you. $20 dollar limit please.

2. Try Something from Me -- Pick one of my novels, and I’ll send it to you. That would be Cold in the Light, Swords of Talera, Wings Over Talera, or Witch of Talera. Cold in the Light is a horror thriller. The others consist of a fantasy trilogy, so if you haven’t read any of them you might want to start with “Swords.”

3. Try Something Sallis – Pick anything by James Sallis under $20 bucks and I’ll send it to you. His books are listed on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I will purchase the book from Barnes & Noble unless it is unavailable there.

4. Pick something under $20 bucks from the following writers and I’ll send it to you. Wayne Allen Sallee, C. S. Harris (or Candice Proctor), Farrah Rochon, Laura Joh Rowland, Sidney Williams, O’Neil De Noux, James Reasoner, David Lanoue, Bret Funk, Rexanne Becnel, Del Stone Jr. If you’re wondering how I generated this list, well I know a lot of writers so I had to limit the list somehow, and these are all folks I’ve met face to face and have had a beer, or other type of beverage, with. They’re all fine writers, as well as my friends.

"A City Equal to My Desire"

A City Equal to My Desire is a collection of stories harking back to James Sallis’s early days as a writer of speculative fiction and SF, although all were produced after 1998. The book's front and back cover blurbs suggest that the collection is primarily crime and mystery fiction, which is where James is best known today, but only about a third of the stories are actually crime tales. The rest are speculative fiction and include pieces published in Asimov’s, Fantasy and SF, and Talebones.

In keeping with the marketing, the first two stories in the collection actually are crime fiction. They include “Ukulele and the World’s Pain,” which I thought was the weakest tale in the collection, and the excellent “Drive,” which Sallis later expanded into a novella of the same name that I believe is one of the best noir thrillers ever written.

For me, however, the true gems in the collection are the speculative stories, especially “Roofs and Forgiveness in the Early Dawn,” about an unusual alien invasion, “Pitt’s World,” which tells the story of a survivor of a spaceship crash, and “Telling Lives,” about a writer who has discovered a niche for himself in writing biographies of everyday people. Another great story is "Day’s Heat,” which features an unusually close set of triplets and ties with “Roofs and Forgiveness…” for my personal favorites.

Wonderful characters and character interactions are Sallis's strengths, but we also find lovely language and beautiful imagery. Be aware, however, that these are literary quality stories and the endings may not be as clear cut as some genre readers would prefer. Since I love Sallis's creativity and verve, I don't mind the lack of neat and tidy endings. His characters are alive and his tales stir both the emotions and the imagination. I highly recommend them.

Last Post on Creationism

This will be my last post on Creationism for a while. I hope I didn't bore everyone too much but it was fresh in my mind from the project I'm working on. Below, I give you the most open minded approach yet mentioned.

Theistic Evolutionists: That there is no necessity for conflict between science and religion is shown by the existence of theistic evolutionists. These people are creationists, and evolutionists. They believe that God set the universe in motion but that He works through natural processes that were encoded into the universe at the beginning. Natural selection and other evolutionary processes are examples. The majority of professional scientists in the United States who are believers in God would fall into this category.

However, there are subtypes even here. Many theistic evolutionists believe that God can and does occasionally intervene in the natural affairs of the world. This would allow for miracles, although they would be rare events. However, some theistic evolutionists are also “Deists.” Deists place great store on the ability to “reason” and do not believe that God intervenes in his creation. The universe was set to run in a particular way and God leaves it alone to do so. Thus, Deists would be unlikely to pray for God to directly intervene in their lives, as in to cure some illness, while non-Deist theistic evolutionists (say that three times fast) might well do so.

Surprisingly to some, theistic evolution, although not of the Deist subtype, is actually the officially sanctioned view of the Catholic Church and many mainstream Protestant religions, as well as of many Jewish people. With this viewpoint, there is no conflict between science and religion because no line is drawn in the sand. Churches reserve spiritual matters for themselves and leave physical explanations of the world to science. Science as it exists now simply cannot adequately investigate supernatural phenomena because they are—-by definition—-outside of nature. At the same time, science, with its slow but ultimately self-correcting approach, is the only method thus devised by human beings to uncover ultimate physical truths.

Another Form of Creationism

Here's another type of creationism that I thought I'd share with you from my research.

Gap Creationists: There is much more variability among adherents of this group than among young-earth creationists. Many members of this group accept that science has proven the earth to be very old, but they still generally want to interpret the Bible literally. The result is the concept of the “gap.” Essentially, gap believers think there has been both a creation and a “recreation,” and that the period between these two is not recorded in the Bible and could be very long. Humans appeared only in the “recreation.” There is debate about exactly when the “gap” occurs in the Bible, but it is definitely before the “fall of man,” meaning when Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden. Gap creationism is one type of “old-earth” creationism.

Creationism Versus

This may seem like a rather weird post but I'm working on a non-fiction book about the conflict between evolutionists and creationists, and I've been doing a lot of reading lately on the creationist positions. (There are more than one.) Last night I was working on a section on Young-Earth creationists and I thought I'd post it here.

Why you ask? Two reasons. 1) I think it's pretty interesting that folks can hold the Young-Earth view despite the evidence against it. 2) I do not want to give a false or misleadingly negative description of anyone's views. So, if you happen to know anything about this issue, please let me know if you feel I've misrepresented anything in my description of the Young-Earth viewpoint. I want to get it right.

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The term “Creationist” is often used to designate people who believe that God created the universe, the Earth, and human beings in pretty much the form that these things exist in now. Creationists are often depicted as accepting the Bible literally, not only as a guide to how humans should live, but as an actual history of the universe and its life forms. These commonly held beliefs about creationists are incredible oversimplifications. I want to talk here about some of the different viewpoints within the creationist camp.

Adherents of the young-earth view most closely resemble the stereotype that people at large have of creationists in general. Although there is variability even here, most young-earth creationists accept a literal interpretation of the Bible’s Book of Genesis for the creation of earth. They believe that God took six literal days to do the work, and that the earth is only about 6,000 years old. This date is arrived at by counting the generations listed in the Bible. They also tend to support the Biblical report of an earth-wide flood, which is thought to have happened about 4,000years ago.

One of the most outspoken proponents of young-earth creationism is Duane Gish, an American who is trained as a biochemist, although his work for the past few decades has been outside the laboratory and in the creationist arena. Gish, who is also considered to be a fundamentalist Baptist, denies that evolution meets the criteria for a scientific theory, and urges the teaching of “Creation Science” in the classroom. This would include teaching the “young” age of the earth, and that most “fossils” are the remnants of animals killed in Noah’s flood. He is currently affiliated with the Institute for Creation Research.

Much To Do

Really feeling pretty swamped today so only a brief post. I may not be making the rounds of everyone's blog for a day or two as well. We have job candidates interviewing this week, as well as many other things to deal with.

The picture is the cover to an anthology that should be coming out in April. I have a humorous fantasy story in it called "Mirthgar." I'll be posting more about it as the publication time arrives. Also, The Illuminata will be publishing it's first issue on its new bimonthly schedule within a few days. I'll announce it when it happens but I'll have a piece in there on Front and Back loading of information in stories. I'm pretty sure that Bret, the editor, is still looking for reviewers for the newsletter so if you like reading and reviewing SF, Fantasy, and horror, you might check it out.

Have a great day.

Flashback Corner

I thought I hated poetry when I was a kid. It wasn't until I discovered Poe and Dylan Thomas in college that I came to understand how powerful the medium could be. I never wrote what I thought of as poetry in high school, but I did write song lyrics, mostly for the band Crash, which I sang with, or sometimes just for myself. Only two full sets of lyrics survive from that period of my life. Below are the words to a song called "She's a Killer," which I eventually sold as a poem.

SHE'S A KILLER

Everywhere I look in the darkness, I see her watching me
Faded scarlet on her lips, dry chalk in her face
Eyes of need that beg into mine
A kiss so sharp it pricks like wine
Only wish I'd seen in time

She's a killer

Beneath the moonlight, her hands reach out to capture me
Ivory thorns in her hair, dark wind at her back
Open those lips and the room goes cold
What she offers? A body unsouled
All the deaths that were foretold

She's a killer

In the pearl of dawn, the dreams she gives come to life
Gleaming tears in her eyes leave fangs in my mind
Screaming to white, I await being taken
Heart twisted shut and breath so shaken
By all the memories her teeth awaken

I'm a killer

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Today, poetry is a big part of my life. I love reading it and writing it, and it is a very big influence on my prose style. How about you? Do we have any poetryophiles out there? Do you have a favorite poem? Or do you hate poetry? Do you have miles to go before you'll cross the road to read a poem? The poets want to know. They're keeping a list. ;)

Information Overload

Curious about exactly what an info dump is? Well, here's one from page 18 of the hardback edition of The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown:

“The new entrance to the Paris Louvre had become almost as famous as the museum itself. The controversial neomodern glass pyramid designed by Chinese-born American architect I. M. Pei still evoked scorn from traditionalists who felt it destroyed the dignity of the Renaissance courtyard. Goethe had described architecture as frozen music, and Pei’s critics described this pyramid as fingernails on a chalkboard. Progressive admirers, though, hailed Pei’s seventy-one-foot-tall transparent pyramid as a dazzling synergy of ancient structure and modern method--a symbolic link between the old and new…”

Many writers, including myself, dislike info dumps. They smack of laziness, and most of the time the information works better when it's integrated into the storyline and doesn’t call attention to itself. However, many readers don’t seem to mind info dumps. In fact, some readers seem to enjoy the chance to learn tidbits they didn’t know before, even if it interrupts the flow of a story or is irrelevant to a story.

As a reader myself, if the information is interesting I hardly notice an info dump, but when they are boring I quickly start to squirm. I like learning stuff, but I'm not reading a novel primarily to be educated. (I read nonfiction for that.) I want to be entertained first and foremost. I didn’t feel that the passage from Brown was a good one. There’s a lot of information but I frankly didn’t find much of it interesting, and it really slowed the story's pace. Plus, it had nothing to do with the plot and never showed up again. Other than the fact that the main character will go through the entrance to the Louvre to get into the museum where things will happen, none of this information has anything to do with the story.

So how do you feel about "info dumps?" As a writer? As a reader?

More Poul Anderson

I suppose most have heard that Gary Gygax died. He was co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons. I’ve never played the game, and haven’t read anything by Gygax, but I know he had a big following and was a big popularizer of fantasy. Thus I raise a toast to him.

As for my post today, it’s more on Poul Anderson (1926-2001). I don’t want to bore folks but I wanted to mention some of his other books that I really enjoyed. I’m not discussing his Dominic Flandry series, which is exclusively SF, but I did very much enjoy that series. If you want to know more about it specifically, check here

The Broken Sword is probably the best book Anderson ever wrote. It’s a mixture of High Fantasy and Sword & Sorcery. The High Fantasy part comes because of its setting in the magic land of Faerie, and the fact that most of the major characters are elves and trolls. However, there is also a lot of the good bloody action that usually characterizes Sword & Sorcery more. The Broken Sword is the story of Skafloc, a human child stolen and raised by elves, and of Valgard, the half-elf/half-troll who replaces Skafloc as a changeling. It also involves Skafloc's sister, who unknowingly falls in love with Skafloc. It evokes the "otherworldliness" of Fairie very well, and there are some strong battle scenes. The prose is just beautiful. It shows some similarities to the work of both Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock, but I suspect most of the similarities occur because all three writers drew on similar source material from Norse and British myths.

Hrolf Kraki's Saga: Despite the name, only a small part of this book is about Hrolf Kraki, and he only gets the name Kraki toward the end. This is a good book, though, quite similar stylistically to ¬The Broken Sword¬. It even includes another incest twist. "Kraki's Saga" is much more ambitious, however, which is good in some ways and not so good in others. I would classify it as Sword and Sorcery because it focuses primarily on human heroes, though there are various half-breeds and some other supernatural entities to be found here. The Broken Sword¬ is simpler and more emotionally touching. But Anderson really does not write bad books and I liked this one quite a bit, too. When Anderson describes the northern world he is just fantastic. There is also has a powerful and well-done climactic battle, a trademark of Anderson’s work.

Fantasy is an excellent collection of Anderson's short fiction, with a non-fiction essay or two thrown in as bonus. Among the strongest stories are "A Logical Conclusion," which is interplanetary adventure (read Sword & Planet) at its best, "Superstition," which is about a future governed by "scientific" magic and is one of the more memorable tales I've read, and "Interloper," about someone surprising who saves Earth. The last story is also notable in that it has a character named "Kane" in it. The book also contains the excellent, and somewhat famous, essay "On Thud and Blunder," which is a succinct lesson that any would-be fantasy writer ought to read. There is also Anderson's contribution to the "Longbore the Inexhaustible" genre of humorous fantasy. That story is called "The Barbarian," and features one "Cronkheit." I found it considerable funnier than most such tales, but still not that good in comparison to his serious work. This collection is apparently hard to find. My copy is Tor 1981.

The Queen of Air and Darkness collects more of Anderson’s stories. It is superb, and the title story is one of my all time favorite Anderson tales and has made my short list of the best all time SF/Fantasy stories ever. It is only partially an SF story, and far more fantasy, and is tremendous both in style and in content/plot. Of the other five stories in the book, only "The Faun" seems rather slight, though I did enjoy it. The rest of the stories are good, but not nearly as powerful as the title tale.

Two other good fantasy works by Anderson are The High Crusade, which is a humorous look at 14th century humans getting loose in the universe with a captured spaceship, and Three Hearts and Three Lions, which follows a modern (1950s) earthman who is cast onto a parallel Earth where fantasy and magic are real. I liked both books, but the latter is by far the better.

Poul Anderson Recalled

One of my favorite authors is much forgotten these days, so I thought I might take a few posts to refresh people’s memories. This is Poul Anderson (1926-2001). Anderson wrote both fantasy and SF with ease, although I personally prefer his fantasy. One of his fantasy series has been on my mind of late. This is his Last Viking trilogy, consisting of The Golden Horn, The Road of the Seahorse, and The Sign of the Raven, all published in 1980 by Zebra books.

These books tell the story of Harald Sigurdharson, better known as Harald Hardrede, who is sometimes called "the real-life Conan." The books are based on as true a history as Anderson could put together from many sources, and though he admitted taking some liberties, he believed that the books were very close to a true picture of Hardrede and his times. The books often do read more as history than fiction.

Hardrede certainly makes a good historical model for Conan. He was born from the blood of Kings, which is different than Conan. And he was never a thief, as Conan was. But he was definitely a reaver and a man of great mirths and melancholies. He was a lover of drink, and of many women--he took two to wife--and he was, quite probably, the greatest warrior of his age. It is said that he was seven feet tall and that he fought with an axe. And even in his fifties he was powerful in battle and always in the forefront. None could top him.

In his youth, Hardrede was much traveled and was quick with languages. Near the age of 15, but already as tall as most men, Harald fought in a battle in which his King and the King's army was cut to pieces. He was one of the few that lived (sounds like Conan), and afterward he traveled to Russia where he lead men in battle for the first time. From there he went to Constantinople where he served the empire and became chief of the Varangian Guard, which was made up of fair-haired northern warriors. He made a name for himself and earned much wealth, which he put to good use in later years when he returned to the north and made himself King of Norway.

Hardrede wanted to be King and yet he chafed at the restraints this placed on him. He was ambitious. He dreamed of a northern empire that no one could break, and he wanted a place for his sons to rule after him. And yet, he also dreamed simply of exploring, of seeing Vinland, or of finding out what lay north of his lands, over the curve of the world. He even took ships into the arctic, though ice turned him back in the only major defeat he ever suffered. Save for his last.

Harald Hardrede died trying to conquer England. He fell at the battle of Stamford Bridge, warring against overwhelming odds, and this was chronicled in the trilogy’s third volume. Anderson did a great job “showing” this battle, making you feel the sweat and the exhaustion, making you smell the blood and hear the shock of shields on shields and axes against flesh.

I remember when I finished the battle scene, I put the book down and just sat quietly for a long time. Hardrede's standard was a raven banner called Landwaster, and it seemed that I could hear the snap of it in the wind behind my head. Though there was no wind in the modern office where I sat.

I tell myself, as an enlightened 21st century man, that war is a nasty and evil thing. That there is no good way to die. I know how desperately I would pray that my son be spared such pain. My rational mind knows that glory is a fleeting thing and not worth its price in pillaged lands and fatherless children, or in trampled fields and dead kine. But sometimes there is a thing in my soul that doesn't quite believe it. I don't like that in myself. But I can't deny it.

I close my eyes and think of frost glittering on spears, of streaming light flashing from helmets and mail and the broad hilts of swords. I think of warhorses, of steam bleeding from their nostrils and their eyes wild. I think of the tramping boots of warriors, and the shock of battle lines coming together beneath black and red banners. I can see the axes, their edges turned copper with gore, and the sleeting drench of arrows. I can hear the whisper of steel, like tearing silk, and the white din of weapons and armor and hate.

And God help me, I think of Harald Hardrede and say: "There was a man."

Quick Notes n Updates

It's a beautiful day here so I'm probably going to get out and do some walking, but I thought I might mention a couple of quick things.

Unified SciFi Forums is no more. I was the horror moderator for several years at the site and met some good folks and made some good friends. Visits there had been declining for some time and when they ended up with a software problem that would be costly to fix they decided to shut down. I've taken them off my links. I'll miss 'em, but nothing hangs around forever.

The March issue of Niteblade is out, with a poem by me called "Recompense Reprise." I believe you can click on the link below the cover and get to a page where you can read some of the material for free, including my piece. This is a great magazine, though, something like 133 pages of material, so if you like Fantasy, Horror and SF check it out.

I'm thinking about a post I want to do on "Front Loading" versus "Back Loading." In a novel one can spread the needed "explanations" of plot across the entire book, but in short stories this material often clusters at the beginning or the end. For example, the story I'm working on right now has more back loading than front, and want to give this pattern a bit more thought.

In the meantime, I hope it's gorgeous where you are. If so, get out and breathe.

A Father's Tale

Shauna put up a wonderful tribute to her father and I thought I’d follow her lead and say a few things about my father, who died in 1972. His name was John Vandel and he was 58; I was thirteen. He was a wonderful man and a great father and I still miss him very much.

1. My father lived his life knowing he would likely die young. He was born with a congenital heart problem that kept him out of World War II. He had his first heart attack when I was about 8. No one told me how serious his attack was and I didn’t understand until later how close he came to dying then. I remember him often taking a little nitroglycerine pill, which he always carried with him in a little tin. Years later my mother spoke of how doctors had told her that daddy could die at any time, and how much she worried. Their bravery amazes me. They lived their lives, worked, and raised five children all the while knowing that dad might die at any moment. These pictures are of their wedding day, and of another day not long before he died.




2. My father was a farmer and that is all he ever wanted to do. We raised cattle and chickens, and cash crops such as maize or peas. We also bailed hay for the cattle and always planted at least two, and often three, gardens. Despite my father’s poor health, he worked hard every day.

3. One thing that embarrasses me now is how I sometimes got a bit angry with my father for planting three gardens when one would have provided for our family. He would give away the rest, and I hated having to pick stuff that was then just handed away to others. Now I realize what a generous man he was and how he brought joy, and food, to the lives of many of our neighbors who couldn’t grow gardens for themselves. And all it cost me was a little work.

4. My dad had blue eyes and to this day I remember how they sparkled when he laughed.

5. When dad died, his generosity came back to him. The church was literally full of flowers from those he had helped and who loved him.

6. My father did not care for rock music, which he called “Duck Quacking music.” I don’t think he was a big music fan in general. We had a radio in the house but as I remember it was always tuned to the weather report. He would watch Hee Haw and seemed to like some country music.

7. From the time I was very little, my mother worked at a chicken processing plant while my father farmed. We didn’t have kindergarten in Arkansas in those days, so my dad pretty much raised me until I went to first grade. The story is told that when mom first went back to work she selected a local lady as my babysitter, but my dad went one day and brought me home because he didn’t think she was doing a good enough job. From then on I went wherever he went, carrying my bottle in the pocket of my kid overalls.

8. My mother left for work around 5:00 in the morning, so once I started school my father always got me up and fixed me a good breakfast, usually bacon and eggs, or his own sausage recipe, before I caught the bus. On the day he died, he and I worked a bit in the garden just before the bus came and I told him that I loved him and hugged him before heading off to school. The next time I saw him was when he was in his coffin. I’m glad I got to tell him I loved him. A picture of his gravesite is below.


Our family website, maintained by my niece Stacey, is here.

What's Wrong with this Critique

Note: A version of this post appeared way back at the beginning of this blog, but since there were no comments made on that original post, and since most people reading this blog now didn’t even know it existed then, and since I consider it an important point, I’m going to rerun the basics with some added commentary.

Although I certainly recommend Storyteller, by Kate Wilhelm, there was one place where I strongly disagreed with her. She mentioned a male writer at Clarion who turned in a 10,000 word story about a hero and his battles. She then said: "The students loved it, called it exciting, and we said no. It was static. Nothing happened." She went on to explain that it was static because: "Something had to change, either in the character, in the situation, or in the reader." She is, of course, wrong! And I wonder how many fine reads have been nipped in the bud by such awful criticism.

I don't mean to downplay a character's evolution as a person. I love it when that happens. But what is wrong with a story that is just an exciting read? Edgar Rice Burroughs didn't have a lot of character development in his John Carter of Mars books but I certainly devoured them. I still remember them far more fondly than some stuff I've read where the character "develops."

In my opinion, Wilhelm is wrong for many reasons. 1) She admits that the students loved the story and found it exciting. In other words, the "readers" liked it and she's correcting them. How can a reader be wrong about what they like? 2) Male readers, in particular, enjoy action, and what's wrong with a work that appeals primarily to males? It used to be that most books were written for males. Now it seems that most books are written for women. I don't think either extreme is desirable. I certainly enjoy many books that my female friends like, and I enjoy some they don't. That fact doesn't bother me at all. 3) Relating to the story in question, there actually is change if Wilhelm thinks about it, change in the readers. If they experience a lifting of mood, an escape for a few minutes from their worries and cares, then they have been changed. Maybe they haven't had an epiphany, but how often do those come around anyway?

Books and stories touch us as readers for different reasons. I treasure Peter Matthiessen's Snow Leopard because it took me on a spiritual journey with its transcendent prose. I loved Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men because of the relationship between the characters and how they changed. I've reread Louis L'Amour's To Tame a Land four times because it brims with action and excitement. I read the essays of Lewis Thomas and Loren Eiseley because they make science rich with mystery and possibility. Together they all changed me.

Not every writer has the same goal. Not every piece of writing has to achieve the same things. Change for change sake is, in my opinion, the biggest “bill of goods” that is sold to would-be writers. Character change is a writing “technique,” not a writing rule. It’s a good technique, one that enriches many stories, but there may be times when it is inappropriate. Consider: An author has a worldview that humans are largely incapable of personal change and she writes a story where characters go through relationship hell and end up getting right back into exactly the same kind of relationship next time. According to Kate Wilhelm, such a story would be static and, therefore, a bad story. Unfortunately for the critic, the story would also reflect the basic truth of many lives. Are stories, then, not to strive to tell the truth? To me, telling the truth is a rule of writing, not a technique. It trumps change for change sake.

What do you think?
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Some Gramlich Weirdities

I’ve been tagged by Billy to reveal seven weird things about myself. Although I am a very normal and average sort of guy, I’ll attempt to come up with some suitable oddities. As is usual of my response to memes, I won’t tag anyone else. This is actually one of the easier memes, though, so if you feel the urge have at it and consider yourself tagged by me.

Weirdities:

1. Despite the fact that I’m 49 years old and a rather staid college professor, I get hassled quite often because of my long hair. I could relate many examples of this, but here’s one that happened Sunday. I’m out for a walk, as I do quite often on nice days around the neighborhood, and I happen down a dirt road I’ve only been down a few times. A couple of women in a truck turn into a driveway some way ahead of me and seem to deliberately wait for me to approach. I offer a smile and move to pass them when one woman asks: “Can I help you?” “No, I’m just out for a walk,” I reply, and continue on. “You live around here?” the woman demands. Her voice is clearly confrontational and suspicious. I stop for a moment and start to answer her, but then decide to be contrary because of the tone of her voice and say instead. “Why do you want to know?” “Well, I’ve lived here 23 years and I haven’t seen you around and we’ve had a lot of robberies in the area and I’m just protecting my home,” is the reply. I could have sympathized with her concern if it had not been for the fact that her angry attitude seemed already to have convicted me. The fact is, I pissed her off by walking by her house, and I’m sure the long shaggy hair was a big part of her issue with me.

2. I’ve never been one to believe much in astrology, but it sure is interesting that my birthday is the day after Lana’s and that we are both so compatible. We are Libras. Of course, her sun is in art while I’m a rising drunk. But nevertheless.

3. I’ve walked away from four motorcycle wrecks, three of which totaled the bike I was on at the time. Actually, limped away is a more accurate assessment. There were various broken bones as well as lots and lots of missing skin and meat.

4. I have been shot in the face with a shotgun at far too close a range. When I was about twenty-four I was dove hunting with others on our family farm. A teenager who had not hunted with us before was in a creek about thirty yards from me. A dove swept down between us and he shot at it while I was directly in the line of fire. At least a dozen bird shot BBs struck me across the face and chest. Two BB’s actually penetrated my cheeks and one lodged under the skin. Another BB bounced off my nose, leaving a nice bloody spot behind. I’m glad I didn’t get BBs in the eyes. Although bird shot at such a distance is not lethal, it sure as hell hurt.

5. I wrote a western novel at age 18 but it will never see print. It was a poor pastiche of a bad Louis L’Amour knockoff. I called it “The Bear Paw Valley” and I didn’t even break it into chapters. However, a character in that book is the ancestor of Ruenn Maclang from my Taleran novels. And a short section of that book has since been greatly polished and published as a short story.

6. When I was about 11 years old I wanted to be a priest. I would even bless my food at supper. I think it’s a good thing the priesthood lost out on getting me. Good mostly for the priesthood.

7. I often remember important events in my life by the book I was reading at the time. For example, I was reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich when my son was born. I was reading Brain Control on my first and only trip to Boston. I was reading a fantasy collection called Amazons when I first went to visit Lana in Canada.

Kate Wilhelm, Storyteller

One of the better books I’ve read on writing in recent years has been Storyteller by Kate Wilhelm. I got mine in hardback from the SF book club. It’s copyright 2005, from Small Beer Press. She made one particular suggestion in that book that I’ve tried a couple of times and found informative.

On page 17, Wilhelm suggests taking one of your stories and going through it paragraph by paragraph. Next to each paragraph write whether it’s “setting,” “character description,” “action,” and so on. This should give you a nice visual on how you’ve constructed the story. On page 53, she gives an alternative way of doing this exercise. Take a copy of a story or book that you don’t mind marking up, get some colored pencils, then underline the material that is about character, setting, action, etc., in different colors. Wilhelm says that a good story should have a “rainbow effect” when you are done.

Certainly, too much “setting” would suggest a static story. I’m also guessing that literary stories would have a lot more “character” paragraphs in them while genre stories might be heavier on “action.” I would imagine fantasy and SF stories would have heavier amounts of “setting” than contemporary thrillers.

To take this suggestion a step further, it might be a good idea to try this exercise on writers you admire. Select particularly effective examples of writing and examine them to see how the writer put the piece together. I haven’t tried this on other writers yet, but I think I’m going to have a look at one of Dean Koontz’s older thrillers.

Sacred Time

One problem for the writer today is the frenetic daily pace that many of us maintain. Work, which means emails, phone messages, projects, proposals, letters etc., is a big source of this fast paced lifestyle, and in a world of computers and cell phones even home is no haven. But our jobs are only one source of strain. Children if we have them, bills, grocery shopping, maintaining automobiles, households, and adult relationships are other sources. Some of these can be pleasant but they all require time. And Lord forbid we try to maintain friendships and attend social events. Or that we get involved in blogging!

I don’t know about you, but if I allow it then every moment of every day soon becomes filled with chores and commitments. And there is no time to write. But worse, there is no time to think, and thinking is an absolute necessity if we are going to write well. For me, thinking is also a necessity for maintaining my own mental health. When I have no time to contemplate I get frustrated, irritated, and short tempered.

I’ve struggled with this problem for years, juggling the demands of my job, my commitments to other people, and my writing. Too often I’ve let the writing slide, giving up my own self fulfillment to meet the needs of others. I’m sure most of you are the same.

But lately I’ve been thinking about “sacred time.” This is time set aside to feed one’s own needs, and not the needs of others. This is time that has to be kept inviolate, or as near as possible to that goal, because without it we can’t do that which makes us more than a collection of impulses and behaviors.

Right now I have two ways of trying to achieve sacred time. One is my daily commute, an hour and fifteen minutes each way. In the morning I am usually planning lectures and going over my to do list on the way to work, but in the afternoon I allow myself to day dream. And I have a tape recorder in the car in case something really interesting comes to mind. The second sacred time is when I go on walks alone around my neighborhood. Walks have always been the best way for me to escape into my own thoughts, but I can’t always manage them.

How about you? Do you have sacred time? If so, how do you achieve it? How do you learn to put yourself first sometimes without feeling guilty or selfish? How do you break away from the frenzy and find the calm?

Titles Revisited

I've posted about titles a couple of times but it's a topic worth revisiting. Titles are important parts of books and stories, and it’s always easier for me to write when I have a good one in mind. I keep lists of possible titles, and when I think of a cool one it often triggers story ideas that match and I’ll start writing immediately. “Still Life With Skulls” was such a story. The ideas that carried that tale came with the title, and it was like doing a shot of Absolut straight. “Still Life” was my first story accepted for publication.

I also consider myself something of a connoisseur of titles. Harlan Ellison’s "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" is my favorite. Another great title is John Farris’s, "All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By." Or who can resist "Something Wicked This Way Comes?"

Where do titles come from? Some authors borrow them from The Bible, or from Shakespeare and other classic works of literature. Hemingway did this with "The Sun Also Rises" and "For Whom the Bell Tolls." Ray Bradbury borrowed "Something Wicked..." from Shakespeare, and "I Sing the Body Electric" from Walt Whitman. Those sources have been mined pretty thoroughly, but there are almost surely more titles waiting to be discovered this way, even in Shakespeare. For example, I've always wanted to title a tale, "Why Mourn We Not in Blood?"

A good source of titles for me seems to be music. I hardly ever pay close attention to lyrics, but sometimes a phrase will stay with me, or I’ll mishear a line that twists my thoughts into strange byways. (Mishearing is an important writing techinque, btw.) I didn’t realize until years after it was published that the title for Cold in the Light was quite possibly borrowed from a line in a song by W.A.S.P.

I’ve also come up with some titles that I really like but which haven't yet spawned good story ideas. One is, “The Girl with the Seashell Eyes.” Another is “Once Upon a Time on the Wine Dark Sea," although I've actually written a couple of paragraphs of disconnected prose inspired by that title.

How about you? Do you consider titles important? Do you agonize over them? What are your favorite titles?

Future Earth

Last night I visited a future Morocco. A friend and I, wearing dusters and face wraps against the wind and sand, stood in a bazaar while movement foamed around us. There had been a war. Somehow I knew this. A war against non-human forces that had nearly wiped out the human race. My friend and I had fought in it.

The human population was just starting to bounce back. Conditions for survival were harsh. I saw a family waiting to board a white hovercraft. Mother, father, two children. They were escaping north to safer lands. The father held a boy child of maybe two while a daughter of eight or so stood beside them.

There was no ladder into the hovercraft. The mother and father climbed over the side with the boy but the daughter could not reach high enough. She cried out, holding up her hands, but neither her father nor mother helped her, though they had tears in their eyes. I understood they were leaving her behind, that they felt they had to make a choice to save one of their children and the boy was more important to them than the girl.

The hovercraft began to move. The girl ran beside it, the swirling sand spraying her, making her blink and stumble. I couldn’t stand it. To one side of us two traders were bargaining with a merchant at a stall, their mounts tethered beside them. Those mounts were dragonflies the size of horses.

I ran to one of the giant insects, yanked its reins free and leaped onto its back. Together we tore upward into the brazen air, the creature’s wings humming, then swung back and down and the dragonfly scooped up the fallen girl in its front legs. We caught the hovercraft only a short distance away and deposited the girl on board. She ran to her mother, who hugged her desperately.

I leaped off the dragonfly into the craft, saw that other families were huddled in the bottom of the ship. I knew that some of them had also left loved ones behind. I shouted at them. “They’re human beings. You can’t leave them. They’re human!”

A young mother burst into tears. I awoke.

The Power of Beauty Compels You

Is writing an art or a craft? In day to day practice I usually approach it as a craft. I have a certain amount of work to accomplish, and I must accomplish that work even if I’m not particularly inspired, even if I’m feeling under the weather, even if the work is more reportage than imaginative. But I understand that what attracted me to writing in the first place is the artistic heart of it. This is one reason why I look forward to the times when I can write fiction. This is not to say that nonfiction can’t be art, but most of the nonfiction I do is focused on the reporting of facts. The key requirement is clarity, not artistic flourish. The old adage of “kill your darlings” is more important in nonfiction than fiction, I think, because metaphors and other beautiful turns of phrase may serve to obfuscate facts.

For me, however, fiction is about more than just a good story. I can read a book or story that is plainly written but in which the prose doesn’t sing, as long as the plotline keeps me wondering what happens next. But, the works that I remember are those in which the words and sentences are infused with beauty as well as functionality. Consider:

“The evening sky was streaked with purple, the color of torn plums, and a light rain had started to fall…” James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain.

“Johnny James was sitting on the front porch, sipping from a glass of gasoline in the December heat, when the doomscreamer came.” Robert R. McCammon, “Something Passed By.”

“That country where the hills are fog, and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay.” Ray Bradbury, “The October Country.”

“To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.” John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath.

“Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves.” Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian.

“In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.” Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms.

The beauty of these lines compel me. There is meaning “in” the words, and also “behind” the words. I “feel” things in these pieces that go beyond the vocabulary and grammar. Therein lies the art. To do more than just tell a story. To do more than just move the reader from one scene to the next. That’s what I hope to do every time I sit to write a story, what I hope to do and too often fail. Art is a goal that is always difficult to achieve. But it is a goal that is worth the effort.

Weather Report from the Front Lines

Back in the early 1980s, when I decided that I’d be a college teacher, I never imagined that the next century would place me on the front lines in a war. It’s a strange sort of war, a war of attrition rather than a holocaust, and no one wears uniforms to indicate what side they’re on. Like any war, there are moments when the trenches are at peace. But there are also moments when spectacular violence erupts, when the cold war turns hot.

I’m talking about school shootings, of course. Our latest, as of this writing, was at Northern Illinois University, in DeKalb. A man carrying a shotgun and at least one pistol stepped out from behind a curtained area in a large lecture hall and opened fire. Seven have died so far and a number of others were wounded, including the lecturer. The gunman killed himself before the police arrived. It happened on Valentine’s Day.

This wasn’t even the first school shooting of the month. On February 8, a nursing student at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana—about an hour drive from me—shot and killed two fellow nursing students and then herself in a classroom on campus.

Certainly, every one remembers last year’s Virginia Tech shooting, where 32 died, and the worst High School shooting in history, at Columbine in 1999, at the turn of the century. But there have been shootings at many other schools. One that’s not on the list at that link occurred at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville a few years back. It happened in a building I frequented while in graduate school there.

I’m sure there are many reasons for the upswing in school violence and it’s unlikely to be due solely to one factor. For example, it’s clearly not due just to easy access to guns. Guns were readily available when I was growing up in the 1970s, more readily available than now. In fact, I took guns to school with me many times. I didn’t carry them into the school, but left them in the car because I was going hunting after school and didn’t want to go home first. Growing up in Arkansas you would frequently see trucks in the parking lots of schools, churches, and everywhere else with loaded gun racks in the back. No one got shot with those guns.

I’ve noticed that quite a few of the shooters have been graduate or professional school students, like in DeKalb and at Louisiana Technical College. I wonder if the stress of graduate/professional school, along with the fact that many (not all certainly) graduate/professional school students are not the world’s most socially apt individuals, could be a contributing factor. When you’re stressed, and you don’t have the social support network you need, bad things can happen.

What I really wonder, though, is how soon the next school shooting is going to take place. And where. And I wonder if maybe I should start requesting hazard pay from my school.

When Life Imitates Art

OK, this is weird. I’m working on that horror story I mentioned here a few days ago, which is going pretty well btw, and on Sunday night I wrote the following scene: The elevator dinged. Wayne pressed forward but the elevator doors hadn’t opened yet. He heard a smashing sound, looked again toward the end of the hallway. The glass in the doors there was starred with cracks, and even as he watched one of the monkeys swung a rock again into the glass, smashing a gaping hole. Rats poured through.

The story is set at a university so I’m using my university and my particular building as the model. The glass doors described above are exactly like the doors in my building, and they open onto the parking lot where the attack comes from.

Now for the weirdness. I came in Monday morning to work, and in the afternoon I had a chance fiddle a bit with the above scene, and I also wrote another scene with a window being smashed. As I leave the building about 6:00 that evening I see that the bottom glass panels on both doors into the parking lot are badly cracked and starred in reality. It’s only the lower panels, the same panels I envisioned being smashed through by the monkeys in my scene.

To top it off, the story takes place on a Monday, the same day of the week that this happened. Now, I’m not much of a one to believe in weird things so I’m pretty sure this is a coincidence. But it is certainly one of the strangest coincidences I’ve ever experienced. Strange enough that I’ve been telling everyone about it.

Cue the Twilight Zone music.

How Not to Write a Pastiche

Back in the 80s and 90s Tor published a lot of pastiches featuring Robert E. Howard's Conan. Many authors, including Robert Jordan, wrote some of these books. Most were not very good. Here's my review of one of those books, with some asides on problems with the story and characterization that may help the writers among us think about our own works in progress.

Sean A. Moore, Conan the Hunter, Published by Tor. 1994. 245 pages.

This was Moore's first book and I haven't read anything else by him. I do think he showed promise but none of us will get to see it developed since he died in a car crash in 1998 at age 33. This book's strengths included fast pacing and generally pretty good descriptions of physical combat. The book also got better toward the end, and I found myself turning the pages to see what would happen next. That’s a step forward compared to other pastiches I've read.

There were, however, a number of problems that made the book less than a standout. First, Conan the Hunter failed to capture the flavor of Robert E. Howard. Anyone who has read REH's Conan would never be fooled into thinking that Moore's Conan is the same character. In fact, Conan in this story was only one of several central characters, and there were times when he didn't even seem the major one. Had the book been called "Gorum the Hunter" I probably would have enjoyed it more, but when you do something called "Conan" it seems to me that you try to stay true to the character as Howard created it. This was the weakest part of Moore's book. In fact, in several places the author seemed to draw Conan as little more than an ineffectual buffoon. For example, on page 13, a city guardsman, admittedly described as very strong, grabs Conan by the wrist--and snaps it just like that. It appears Conan needs a few calcium tablets in his diet.

On page 54, Conan is trapped in a sewer when he is attacked by a tentacled monster (from the cover drawing by Ken Kelly). Conan leaps into the air to avoid the creature, misjudges the tunnel’s height, and cracks his skull against the ceiling hard enough to bring down rocks and dirt. This stuns Conan long enough for the creature to get hold of him. By the way, it also sets off an avalanche of dirt that opens the sewer to the outside (described as 80 or 90 feet above.) This dirt, described as "tons," buries the creature.

On page 60 Conan becomes a total buffoon. He tries to sneak up on a gardener to steal his clothes to get inside a palace, but he screws this up and ends up on his face in the dirt with the gardener yelling for the guards. He then knocks the gardener down, but as he stands up the gardener's horse bolts and the cart it is pulling hits Conan's shoulder,
knocking his sword out of his hand. In reaching for his sword, Conan sticks his foot into a loop of the harness; the horse bolts again, and Conan is dragged unceremoniously along behind. When Conan finally gets free of the horse, he stands up and the gardener walks up and knocks him out with one punch. Just who is this gardener? Mike Tyson?

In yet another place, page 92, Conan takes a swing at a guard and ends up punching his fist into the other fellow's armor. Now true, Howard did not show Conan as infallible or as never making mistakes, but all this just seems a little too much for me. As I said, this might have been fine, or even appropriate, for "Gorum," but it just didn't fit "Conan."

What else? Well, despite the fact that Conan's wrist could be broken simply by being grabbed by another fellow, his head certainly seemed to be hard enough. On page 94, a man who is apparently incredibly strong hits Conan upside the head with a direct, sidearm blow from a heavy mace. Conan is merely stunned! Does that seem reasonable to you?

My overall evaluation is that Conan the Hunter was readable, and even enjoyable at some level, but that its attempt at a pastiche of Howard was unsuccessful. The main problems were with the characterization of Conan, and with the occasional lapse in internal logic. This book should have been published as a non-Conan book and should have had the more egregious errors edited out or toned down. I mean, did anyone along the production line for this book even stop to imagine what would happen to a human skull when impacted by a mace traveling at full speed?

Crazy stuff

I'm still a member of the Science Fiction Book Club, and occassionally pick up hardbacks of old classics, or sometimes omnibus editions. They also have a section of their offerings devoted to graphic novels, and to movies. This month, stuffed in with such fare as Missile to the Moon where "Lunar She-Devils lure Earthmen into their lair of doom" and Dinosaur Valley Girls, where an "action-movie actor" is cast into the past and must use his "prodigious skills to win the cavegirl of his dreams" while being tempted by a "tribe of love-starved exotic cave-women," there was--perhaps--the greatest come-on for a movie ever. I give you: Babes in Kong Land.


It's good that I stumble upon such fare once in a while. Just when I begin to feel smug in my own imagination, something like "Babes" is waved before my face and I know I am but a child. I dare say I would never have imagined quite this sort of scenario. I bow to the creators, and I know I can never watch this DVD. I just don't see how it could live up to the promise of the description.

On the other hand, this Andromina: The Pleasure Planet sounds interesting. After all, who wouldn't want to visit "the most famous pleasure planet in the galaxy?"

A Question on Finding Markets

One comment on my Tuesday’s post asked where I found out about the markets I submitted to. I thought I might take a moment to answer. Although there won’t be any great revelations here, I’m sure.

First, I’m a member of HWA (the Horror Writers Association) and they send out a periodic newsletter that lists market guidelines and provides information on editors and such. Most genres have their own professional organizations, including Westerns, Romances, Mysteries, and SF/Fantasy. There’s even the relatively new Thriller writers groups. If you’re serious about writing in a genre, then joining such a group has many benefits. In most cases, even unpublished writers can join, although they may not necessarily get all the benefits that professionally published members get.

I’m also a member of SFPA (The Science Fiction Poetry Association) and they include marketing information in their official magazine, Star*Line. There’s a link on my sidebar, at the top.

Online forums are also a great way to find out about markets. I’m active at two, Unified SciFi Forums, which is linked on my sidebar, and SF Reader Forum, which I just put up a link to this morning. Both are in my top set of links. My last two short story sales came to markets I found out about on SF Reader Forums.

Another thing I do is check out magazines about genres or topics I’m interested in every time I visit Borders or Barnes & Noble. The magazines themselves might provide potential markets, but they will also contain ads inside for other magazines and, thus, potential markets.

In the last year or so, I’ve been getting a lot of my information about markets from the blogosphere. My last three poetry sales came from markets I learned about by visiting Greg Schwartz’s website. Greg is an excellent poet and although he doesn’t update his blog as often as I’d like, he has links to several markets that publish the same kind of poetry that I like to write. I’ve found markets listed on many, many blogs, though, far too many to follow up on them all.

Finally, if all else fails I “Google.” Searching “Literary Markets” or “Memoir Markets” will give you lots of hits to check through. Some will be out of date or otherwise useless. But a little effort can usually reveal some suitable places to launch your manuscript toward.

That’s pretty much it.

Hope Springs

Well, I’m officially silly. I’ve been striving for this recognition for quite some time, and although I was recognized for my silliness by Lana, I have to admit that I half suspected her of bias. Now I have independent corroboration of my silliness, however, and can feel comfortable in proclaiming it to the world. Lest some of you doubt my achievement, just eyeball the pretty little picture below. Read the caption. And bow, or at least offer the glorious raspberry of goofiness, to my greatness.



Why did I receive such an award, you may well ask? And if you don’t I shall tell you anyway. It’s for a story called “Mirthgar,” which I recently submitted to a humorous fantasy anthology. And which was acknowledged today as “worthy” of inclusion among other jewels of jocularity. I’m not sure when this will be published but will let everyone know.

Just in case readers of this blog begin to suppose, based upon my last couple of posts, that every word that falls from my word processor is immediately snapped up for publication, let me copy a selected section of my submission record below:

Dec 1, 2007 – Sub “Love in the Time of Cybersex” to Space & Time. Rejected.
Dec 1, 2007 – Sub “Life is Football” to Today’s Christian. Rejected.
Dec 1, 2007 – Sub “Charade You Are” to Otherworlds Anthology. Rejected.
Dec 1, 2007 – Sub “Unicorn Lost” to Coyote Wild
Dec 6, 2007 – Sub “Insomnia in a Quantum World” to Abyss & Apex. Rejected.
Dec 6, 2007 – Sub “Silence Razored” to Abyss & Apex. Rejected.
Dec 6, 2007 – Sub “You Were There” to Abyss & Apex. Rejected.
Dec 7, 2007 – Sub “Blue Soul” to Dreams & Nightmares. Accepted 12-23-07:
Dec 7, 2007 – Sub “With Souls Electric” to Dreams & Nightmares. Rejected.
Dec 7, 2007 – Sub “Exquisite Machine” to Dreams & Nightmares. Rejected.
Dec 7, 2007 – Sub “In Poetry We Trust” to Dreams & Nightmares. Rejected.
Dec 7, 2007 – Sub “Neuronomicon” to Dreams & Nightmares. Rejected.
Dec 7, 2007 – Sub “Recompense Reprise” to Niteblade. Accepted, one line change
Dec 7, 2007 – Sub “Psychosorcery” to Niteblade. Rejected.
Dec 7, 2007 – Sub “Need” to Niteblade. Rejected.
Dec 11, 2007 – Sub “Emotion and Medium in Writing” to Bret Funk. Published
Dec 28, 2007 – Thank you note to Dreams & Nightmares.
Dec 29, 2007 – email note to Space & Time, thanks for consideration.

START OF 2008
Jan 1, 2008 – Sub “The Unshriven” to MicroSpec.
Jan 1, 2008 – Sub “Inspiration” to MicroSpec.
Jan 1, 2008 – Sub “Love in the Time of Cybersex” to Strange Horizons. Rejected
Jan 2, 2008 – Sub “Worms in the Earth” to Flashing Swords. Contract Sent.
Jan 3, 2008 – Sub “Plague” to Whispers of Wickedness. Rejected.
Jan 3, 2008 – Sub “In Poetry We Trust” to Whispers of Wickedness. Rejected.
Jan 3, 2008 – Sub “Forever” to Whispers of Wickedness. Rejected.
Jan 3, 2008 – Sub “Exquisite Machine” to Whispers of Wickedness. Rejected.
Jan 3, 2008 – Sub “Neuronomicon” to Whispers of Wickedness. Maybe?
Jan 5, 2008 – Email thank you note to Flashing Swords.
Jan 5, 2008 – Sub “Grammar Primer” to Bret Funk. Published.
Jan 6, 2008 – Sub “Branded” to Star*Line. Rejected.
Jan 6, 2008 – Sub “She Is” to Star*Line. Rejected.
Jan 6, 2008 – Sub “Song to a Rose” to Star*Line. Rejected.
Jan 6, 2008 – Sub “Remember” to Star*Line. Rejected.
Jan 6, 2008 – Sub “Far Beyond Home” to Star*Line. Rejected.
Jan 10, 2008 – emailed note back to Whispers of Wickedness.
Jan 26, 2008 – Sub “Mirthgar” to Silly Fantasy Anthology. Accepted
Jan 29, 2008 – Sub Where it Wanders, 500 words to blog contest. Rejected.
Jan 30, 2008 – email Strange Horizons thank you for consideration.
Jan 30, 2008 – Sub “Love in the Time of Cybersex” to Heliotrope.
Feb 2, 2008 – email Abyss and Apex acknowledgement to their email.

Rejections are a fact of life for writers. 2008 has been a good year for me so far, but as you can see from the entries above there have been more rejections than acceptances. So what. You keep going. A story comes back, it goes out again. I got a rejection on “Love in the Time of Cybersex” on January 30 and sent it out again later that same day, even though I had to edit out 250 words to get it down to the submission requirements for that market. You get a rejection, you send a note to that magazine saying thanks for their consideration. Because you know it’s nothing personal. And one day you might send something their way again. Maybe they’ll even take it. Hope springs eternal in the mind of a writer.

ADDENDUM:
By the way, when I first posted this I forgot to mention that many of these subs are poetry. To avoid confusion, the stuff to Star*line, Abyss and Apex, Niteblade, Whispers of Wickedness, and Dreams and Nightmares is all poetry. The stories here are "Love in the Time of Cybersex," "Charade You Are," and "Unicorn Lost." "The Unshriven" and "Inspiration" are microfictions. "Life is Football" is an essay.

Also, this is not all recently written stuff. Some of it's new. Some is older stuff I'm still submitting.

Of Publications and Cannibals

Just out is Dissecting Hannibal Lecter, a collection of essays on the work of Thomas Harris. It’s edited by Benjamin Szumskyj, with a foreword by Daniel O’Brien. I wrote the afterword, entitled “Mythmaker, ” about the developing “myth” that surrounds the “serial killer.” This is illustrated very well by the three novels featuring Hannibal the Cannibal. Below is the first paragraph of my piece.

“When we think of mythmakers and myths, most of us think of ancient times, of writers like Homer and Gods like Zeus and Apollo. We think of dragons, and the land of Faerie, and stories of Valkyries and Amazons. Yet, myth making didn’t stop with the ancients. It continues into the modern age, around Boy Scout campfires and on the silver screens of Hollywood, from the mouths of everyday folk and from the word processors of writers throughout the world.”

There are quite a few well known writers with essays in the collection, although the best known in the circles I move in is probably S. T. Joshi, who has written a lot of horror-related criticism, particularly concerning H. P. Lovecraft. I’m glad to see the book has come out. I found from my records that I submitted the completed piece in January of 2007, so the book has been a while in the making. I’m looking forward to delving into it.

Nothing much else to post today. The picture at bottom is my car, a Toyota Scion TC. I’ve been very happy with it so far.

It's the Emotion, Stupid!

I’m working on a horror story at the moment, and I’m struggling. Oh, the plot is there. And the characters. I know what is happening and going to happen (within some general limits), and I know who those things are going to happen to. What I don’t have is the “feel” of the piece. In short, I’m not making myself uncomfortable yet. I’ve found from experience that I don’t necessarily have to scare myself when I’m writing a horror story, but my gut damn well better be involved. I better remember to tell myself, "it's the emotion, stupid!"

I think the main problem is that I haven’t mentally switched gears from nonfiction to fiction yet in this piece. I’ve been doing so much nonfiction lately, particularly scientific writing, that it’s hard for me to force my intellect into the back seat and put my feelings into the driver’s seat. I’ve often said that I believe nonfiction, especially objective work like that which scientists write, can be created from the intellect alone. Fiction, on the other hand, demands, requires, cannot exist without, emotion.

Part of the problem also lies in the fact that I’m in a very busy period at school and I have not had the time to let the story soak into me in an emotional way. But because of Mardi Gras I’m now set for a four day break after today. I’m going to reintroduce myself to my fears and anxieties and all my other feelings. I may use the basic outline of what I’ve already constructed, but the viscera are going to be torn out and strewn around. One way or another, I’m going to remember what it’s like to look into a dark hole and feel like something is down there waiting for me. Or maybe not…waiting. Maybe it’s coming closer. Coming for me. Coming right now.

Maybe it’s right behind me!