I haven't been around to visit blogs for several days, and when I stopped into my feed this morning I had close to 400 posts to look at. I'm afraid I just didn't have the strength and marked them all as read. Sorry for that. I know many of you spent quality time developing those posts and I generally like to give them their due. This week it was just impossible.
I've often described my job as feast or famine. I might go through a week without a lot of paperwork, then get three weeks' worth of it the following week. That happened to me over the past five days, with papers coming in from my writing class, two tests to develop for next week, and half a dozen research proposals to evaluate. Add to that some health related issues, and a sudden surge in emails asking for my input on writing related issues. I'm hoping to get back to blogging this weekend, but Monday through Thursday of next week may be a problem as well once I give those tests and start grading them.
I did zero writing of my own this week, but on occasion a writing related thought has been able to get through the haze of work. I was thinking this morning about fiction and this little phrase popped into my head. It's just below. What do you think?
Fiction = character, clothed in language, embedded in story.
Later.
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Friday, February 27, 2015
Friday, February 20, 2015
Resonance Dark & Light
Should we call Bruce Boston the hardest working man in
speculative poetry? I don’t know anyone else who has a better claim over a
career, and certainly no one who has demonstrated the kind of consistent
brilliance that Boston has. His poems are widely published for a very good
reason; they resonate with readers. Boston’s latest collection, currently
available for preorder at Eldritch Press,
even has “resonance” in its title, and ends with a masterful piece entitled
“Resonance Redux.”
Resonance Dark & Light
contains fifty-two poems. Many of these have been published in poetry magazines
around the world, although several are new. Several are also award winning
pieces, such as “The Music of the Stars,” which won the 2013 Balticon Poetry
Award. Such is the quality of all these pieces, however, that the award winners
don’t generally call any special attention to themselves among the other fine works.
An exception to this, for me, is “Surreal Shopping List,” which won the SFPA’s
2014 Dwarf Form (under 11 lines) Category. I don’t know that this is my
favorite Bruce Boston poem ever, but it’s my favorite right now. It seems so
deceptively simple as well, and yet I’ve been trying—without succeeding—for a
month now to produce even a semblance of its “coolness.”
I don’t know that it was Boston’s intent, but I felt like
the first poems in this collection were more light-hearted than much of the
previous stuff I’ve read from him. The pieces then turned darker, and darker,
before lightening up again toward the end. It felt much like the passing of day
into night and back to day, or perhaps like the progression of the seasons. The
title itself suggests such a passage.
All I really know is
that Resonance Dark & Light,
tickled me, chilled me, and set me to thinking.
Ranging from the Bradburyesque imagery of “The Music of Skeletons,” and
“Chrononaut Inductees,” to the science fiction terrors of “Tasty Horrors,” to the
sheer fun of “Not Only Thoats,” to the impossible to categorize pieces like
“Surreal Shopping List,” this collection is hard to pigeonhole but impossible
not to enjoy. For more information about
Bruce Boston and his work, you can also check out his website.
And just remember, “not only thoats need the warm dark.”
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Tuesday, February 17, 2015
The Crusader Series, by John Cleve. Grove Press. Review
Between 1975 and 1976, John Cleve wrote four books in “The
Crusader” series, about a young man from Cyprus who saves Richard the Lionheart’s
life and then accompanies the great king on his crusade to the Holy Land. Guy “Kingsaver”
becomes a great hero of the crusades, admired or feared by men, and desired by
every woman he meets. The four books are: I: The Accursed Tower, II. The
Passionate Princess, III. Julanar the
Lioness, and IV. My Lady Queen. In
1986, Cleve apparently returned to this series for one more book, V. Saladin’s Spy. I’ve read the first four
but not the last.
John Cleve is actually a pseudonym for andrew j. offutt, who
also wrote fantasy fiction under his own name, most famously a number of
pastiches of Robert E. Howard’s Conan and Cormac Mac Art characters. Offutt did
his own original Sword & Sorcery fantasy series as well, and branched out
into Sword & Planet fiction with such books as Messenger of Zhuvastou and Chieftain
of Andor. Offutt also edited a highly acclaimed, and deservedly so, series
of Sword & Sorcery anthologies called the Swords Against Darkness series. That series was my introduction to
offutt, and when I first started fooling around with writing it was my dream to
one day have a story in it. The series ended before I ever had a chance to
submit anything.
Around the same time as offutt was editing Swords Against Darkness, I began reading
his Howard pastiches, particularly his Conan ones, and although they were
somewhat workmanlike I enjoyed them well enough to seek out more of his fantasy
stuff. I have generally enjoyed the ones I’ve read so far, and still have a
number to go.
I didn’t discover that offutt was also John Cleve until
after I started reading the first two “Crusader” books. I then tried one of his
“Spaceways” books, which was an adult SF series that he wrote in the 1980s. I liked
the first Crusader book all right but really disliked the Spaceways book and never
read another. It wasn’t until recently, when I stumbled upon a piece written by
offutt’s son, that I found out that offutt wrote more books as Cleve than he
did under his own name, and that most of his output was “adult” fiction, which
I believe we can simply refer to here as pornography. Apparently, offutt
considered Cleve a kind of alter ego, and spoke as if some of the other
pseudonyms he used for pornography were alternate names for Cleve rather than
offutt. If you are interested in learning more about that aspect of this
writer, the link to his son’s post is here.
But what about the Crusader books, which is the major
consideration for this post. Well, the first book I bought in this series was
an omnibus of the first two volumes, and I thought it was historical fiction set in the Crusades, a time period that I'd often read and enjoyed stories about. The first book, The Accursed Tower, had quite a lot of graphic sex in it, but also
a lot of historical adventure that I thought was decently done. Since the
second book was part of the omnibus, I read it immediately after the first.
This was The Passionate Princess, and
it had more sex and less adventure. I knew there were more in the series but completely
lost interest after the second volume and gave the books no further thought.
Fast forward a number of years and I’m in a bookstore and
find an omnibus collection of the third and fourth books in the Crusader
series, Julanar the Lioness, and My Lady Queen. On impulse, and hoping
for a return to a more “adventure” format, I picked them up. The “Lioness” book
started out with a bit of adventure, a kidnapping of the series hero, “Guy,”
and that led to an interlude with the Julanar character, a warrior woman in
command of a band of warrior women, and quite an interesting character. Although
this was promising, the book never carried through with the promise and instead
focused on the sex. The fourth book, My
Lady Queen, made only a token effort to create any sense of adventure at
all. Sex was clearly its only focus. I pretty much just scanned it.
Here's the
thing. The sex in these books is extremely graphic, and it sometimes descends
into brutality. There are rapes, sexual torture, and even an event where a
villain strangles a women to death while having sex with her. Such scenes were
highly distasteful and too common, and would lead me to recommend against anyone reading these books. However, such scenes did not, at least, make up the bulk
of the sexual content, which most often involved the hero, Guy, showing off his
incredible prowess as a lover with a wide variety of willing women, most of
them noble born. Strangely, given the clearly pornographic intent of these
works, almost none of the abundant sexual activity seemed at all exciting to
me.
So why did I
keep reading these books, particularly the last two? Well, I found many of the
non-brutal sexual descriptions to be absolutely hilarious. I frequently read
some of the more extreme examples of pornographic prose to my wife, and we had
quite a good time laughing at them. The descriptions are so over the top and so
egregiously graphic that they boggle the mind. Cleve employs every possible
term that you can imagine for the sexual organs, and many of these sentences
are also long and convoluted. Imagine William Faulkner writing the most turgid
pornography possible and you have a glimpse of Cleve’s literary style. Since I
consider this blog to be no more than “R” rated, I’m not going to quote the
most extreme examples. But let me give you a taste of some fun phrasing from
the Crusader series. This stuff is still pretty graphic in some cases so
readers beware!
1. "He
poled it to her, good."
2. “‘Ahhh’ she
breathed, staring like a serpent-fascinated bird at the snake she had
uncovered, still limber and sinuous looking, emerging lazily from the bushy
shelter of his loins.”
3. "He stuck her with it in one good swift
lurch, and in an instant her excited and welcoming cleft had taken it all, all
the way to his hairy scrotal pouch."
4.
"Inside, she had become a frenzied well of desire in which he submerged
his virile meatstaff."
5. “And he
slipped it on into her, drilling in and in, straight for her cervix, long and
hard and cramming, filling and feeling the extreme constricting heat of her
buried passion.”
As if this were
not enough, I realized after I sat down to write this blog post that three of
the four novels begin with some variation on: “The moon hung round and white as
a buxom maiden’s breast over the….” And books I and III are almost identical
for the first few pages. So, while I didn't think these books were well written
or entertaining as novels, I did get quite a few laughs. Nuff said?
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Saturday, February 14, 2015
THINGS I DON’T UNDERSTAND
On occasion I will post about some of the things that happen
in this world that I just don’t understand.
Here are some of my latest, or continuing, sources of confusion.
1. Why is it that
when someone is brutally murdered these days, the first concern expressed by
many people seems to be whether the murderer was: Christian, Muslim, Atheist,
black, white, Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative, pro-gun or anti-gun?
Their point, of course, is that the murderer is something different from what
they are. Isn’t itactually more important that someone was brutally murdered?
Corollary to #1. How exactly does the fact that a brutal
murderer is not a member of your particular religion or political affiliation serve
as a justification for your beliefs and a condemnation of someone else’s
beliefs? As should be absolutely clear by now to everyone, murderers come from
every kind of walk of life imaginable.
2. Why do people care
what a celebrity thinks about some political issue, or about any issue that the
celebrity wouldn’t be considered an expert in?
For example, I like Clint Eastwood westerns. He’s starred in many,
directed quite a few, and I would consider him well versed in the genre of
western film. Therefore, if he made a comment about modern western film I would
be interested, although I might not necessarily agree. However, I couldn’t give
a crap about what he thinks about any American president.
3. Why is it that
when someone proves him or herself to be an idiot, so many folks feel the need
to point out that the person is an idiot to other people who already know the
person is an idiot? For example: Kanye West. I was blissfully ignorant of this
guy until a few years back when he did an idiotic thing at the Grammys. Now he
has apparently done another idiotic thing at another Grammy award show, and
even though I have never watched the Grammys and have no intention of ever
doing so, I now know far more about the event and about Mr. West than I ever
wanted to. Don’t get me wrong, the jokes can be funny. It’s more the serious
stuff I’m talking about.
4. Why do some people
believe that what is happening in their neighborhood is indicative of what is
happening world-wide? The best example I’ve seen of this is people who believe
that the weather in their little neck of the woods either supports or negates
the concept of “global” climate change. When I first heard that people did this
sort of thing I thought they must be joking. But having been on Facebook for a
few years I have actually found folks who believe this. I used this in class
the other day as an example of “Concrete Operational Thinking.”
5. Why is it that,
for so many people, the perceived intelligence of other people goes up or down
exactly in proportion to which those other people agree or disagree with the
first person on a complex issue, such as politics, gun control, or climate
change? (Oh, wait, I do this too! Nevermind.) J
6. Why is that many people still believe that calls to
boycott a movie or book, or making public claims about how awful it is for humanity,
will then make that movie or book less popular? Of course, some will accept the
call and boycott the book or movie, but the outcry will inevitably produce
greater interest and curiosity about the piece, especially in people who had
absolutely no interest in it before. Case in point: Fifty Shades of Grey. I never gave a thought to seeing the movie
until I started hearing the attacks on it. Now I have to admit to some level of
curiosity. Can it really be as awful as it is proclaimed? I still probably
won’t see it but now it is at least on my radar. A similar event happened for
me a number of years ago when people were attacking The Passion of the Christ for being anti-Semitic. I grew up
Catholic so I knew the story, and had no interest seeing a film about it. It
was the criticisms that drove me to see it. People kept telling me what I
should think and I ended up pushed far enough that I had to see the movie so I
could figure out for myself what to think.
7. Why isn’t at least
one literary award show televised like the Grammys and the Oscars? I’ve never
watched either of those but I’d watch the Hugos or Nebulas.
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Wednesday, February 11, 2015
WIP It Good?
Here is a snippet of what I've been working on lately. This is a novella project entitled "The Razored Land," and it's finished except for the final read through. I hope to have news about where it might appear soon.
Two Kainhite warriors came striding
toward him across the field. From the whispering of their movements, Loerd knew
that both retained their wings. For this moment, he gave that fact no thought. In
the reflected glow of their scarlet eyes, he studied instead the wheeled cart
they dragged behind them on a length of chain. Upon the cart sat a cage, and
within the cage stirred a violent thing.
The
warriors stopped a few feet from Loerd, dropped the chain, bowed, and backed
away. Loerd approached the cart. The thing penned upon it began to smash back
and forth against the bars of its prison as it voiced a throbbing snarl of warning
and threat.
“Shhh,”
Loerd murmured. “Shhh.”
The
creature’s snarl grew instead, reached a crescendo of bestial rage. A
dark-furred limb thrust suddenly through the bars and slashed at Loerd with
claws as sharp and long as pitchfork tines. They did not quite reach to where
Loerd stood, and the master of the Kainhites smiled. Then he vented his own
snarl, a very soft one, and he opened the pores on his body so that his scent
poured out and over the thing in the cage.
The
thing huffed, then backed quickly away as far as its bars allowed. Loerd
stepped closer. He drew the soul-black blade that hung at his hip and the
dimmest flickers of light played along its edge. The thing in the cage crouched
low; a whimper escaped its throat.
“Release
it!” Loerd ordered.
One
of the warriors who had brought the cart tugged on a rope that it
held. The side of the cage furthest from Loerd fell away. The thing within
recognized its sudden freedom and leaped out onto the field. But, where moments
before it would have been happy to rend and tear every living thing around it,
now it fled on swift feet for the woods.
Loerd
gave the thing a head start before he followed.
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Sunday, February 08, 2015
Reading across the Genres
Over the past few days I finished a graphic crime novel set
against the backdrop of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. At the same time I
was reading One Day in the Life of Ivan
Denisovich, originally published in Russian as an indictment of the Stalinist
era. Meanwhile, I was into a historical novel about the crusades, which turned
out, somewhat to my surprise, to be basically porno. After finishing the “Ivan”
book, I started a philosophical treatise from Kierkegaard on The Present Age, and a textbook on
evolution. The New Orleans graphic novel transitioned into a weird western
featuring Jonah Hex. Throw in two novellas, a sword & sorcery piece and a
southern noir. Before that, a collection of short stories about the Jim Crow
era, a nonfiction documentary piece on Hair Metal, a video game tie in called Metal Gear, some space opera, a
collection of Poeesque horror stories, a big book of science fiction flash
fictions, and a post-apocalyptic western by Edward Abbey. I wonder what is
next.
Do you tend to read across many genres, or focus on one or
two? If you do read across genres, do you jump about willy-nilly? Or do you
tend to do a few books in one genre before switching to another? Just
wondering.
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Wednesday, February 04, 2015
My Days and Nights with Vitamin B
Lots of pain in my legs and back last week. Some of you know
that I have neuropathy in my legs and feet, in large part due to spinal damage
caused in a motorcycle wreck. As with many things, some days are worse than
others. But I’m pretty sure I know what led to last week’s increase. It had to
do with sleep and the role of Vitamin B, particularly B-12 and B-1.
For many years my sleep cycles were extremely regular. I
went to bed, fell quickly to sleep, slept an hour, woke up at the end of my
dream period, and….repeated the process throughout the night. But in the last
year or so my cycles have been shortening. I have frequent periods where I
sleep 20 to 30 minutes and then wake up from a dream. I suspected Vitamin B
might be partially responsible, since it acts in me somewhat like a stimulant.
I began taking high doses of the vitamin a couple of years
ago to help counter the effects of my neuropathy. It works, in large part, I
imagine, because Vitamin B can act as a neural growth stimulant. It facilitates
the ability of nerves to recover from wear and tear. But, since the changes in
sleep cycles seem to have correlated to some extent with my increased intake of
“B,” I stopped taking it for a few days to see what would happen.
I seemed to sleep deeper without B but the increase in
cramps and pain countered any benefit from that. I began waking up from the
pain of the cramps in my legs and feet rather than from the end of a dream
period. I went back to taking the vitamin and within a day the cramps had
subsided. That was a relief.
I’ve also noticed that I have an upsurge in energy levels
when I take Vitamin B, and that is nice during the day but may partially
explain the shortening of my deep sleep periods. I have certainly noticed an
increase in dream intensity while taking Vitamin B, although I’ve always had intense and vivid
dreams since I was a little kid. Unfortunately, increasing dream sleep
generally means decreasing deep sleep, which is where we get most of our “rest.”
Monday night, after having returned for a couple of days to
my Vitamin B regimen, I had one of the strangest dreams I’ve ever had, and
those of you who have followed my blog over the years know I’ve had some odd
ones. Even my weirdest dreams, however, can usually be traced to recent
real-life experiences, such as something I’ve read, or written, or seen in a
movie. This dream was, to put it mildly, Freudian. Here it is. Make of it what you will.
I’m in what appears to be a covered canal. The floor looks
like cement and there is a trickle of water running down it, but the walls and
ceiling are made of rough rock. Though the canal is enclosed and no sunlight
can get in, I can still see pretty well. It’s dim but not dark. There’s a clear
glow of light coming from some unknown source.
As I venture deeper into the canal, working my way upstream,
I come upon a skeleton lying on the rocks to one side of the central water flow.
I feel horribly sad for the person who has been lost here, and I decide to pick
it up and carry it out of the canal. I
turn and start downstream toward the exit with the skeleton in my arms. As I
walk along, however, the skeleton begins to reflesh itself. Blood vessels,
muscles, and skin begin to reappear on the body. I am untroubled by this and
continue on my way.
Soon, I can see a brighter light growing ahead of me and
know it is the exit from the canal. As I
step out into the light of day, I look down and realize that I’m carrying my
fully grown son in my arms. He is sleeping peacefully. I turn and gaze back at the canal. Although it looks physically like no more
than a rounded opening into a mountain, I “know” in my head that I’m looking at
a womb and that I just “delivered” my son by carrying him out through the birth
canal.
OK, so there’s some weirdness to start your day.
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Sunday, February 01, 2015
Breakfast on the Deck
I hear it’s winter in some parts of the world. I certainly
can’t verify that locally. Lana was up before me this morning and when I got up
she had the air conditioner running. Then I went out to feed the birds, and though
there was some rain last night today’s skies were bright and blue. It was so
nice that we decided to have our breakfast on the deck. I made bacon and eggs
and toast while Lana set up the table and chairs. We even had a tablecloth this
morning. How classy is that?
The primary signs of winter that we could see were, 1) the
carpet of dead leaves in the back yard and the steady fall of others leaves,
and 2) the types of birds swarming our feeders. Most of these were goldfinches
and chipping sparrows, which are migrants that come through here during the
winter. A few of the local cardinals came around but seemed rather bewildered
at all the newcomers. We counted around eighty birds in and out of the trays in
the yard as we ate. I’m sure we missed quite a few.
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