Category: Adventures in the Writing Life

Take Care, People.

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Hurricane Matthew looks set to romp and stomp all over the state of Florida, and possibly a goodly chunk of the Atlantic coast.  Some people who might have otherwise been reading this have probably already evacuated to safer climes; for others, I direct your attention to this web page on emergency jump kits, also known in the trade as bug-out bags.  (Full disclosure:  The author of the list is also my co-author.) They’re the bag you keep packed to grab when the state police come around your neighborhood telling everyone that the dam has busted/the wildfire has jumped the firebreaks/the chemical plant has exploded and you need to get out of there now.

If you’re a writer, your jump kit might also need to contain a means of continuing your work – anything from a paper notebook and pencils to a cheap netbook and a mouse, depending upon your purse and your habits.  And it’s never a bad idea to keep a current backup of the work-in-progress on a thumb drive you can grab on the run and shove into a pocket, as well as another backup on Dropbox or Google Drive or whatever offsite server you trust with your data.

For right now – stay safe, and take lots of mental notes on the storm while you’re getting slammed by it.  You’re writers, and everything is grist for your mill.

Lo! A Review!

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Speaking as an editor and instructor of writers, one should never obsess over reviews, because that way madness lies.

On the other hand, there’s nothing like a good review to brighten a writer’s day.  If you’re friends with a writer, and spot a good review of their work, it’s an act of kindness to let them know about it.  If you spot a bad review, don’t bother – even if it’s one of those completely off-the-wall, did-the-reader-even-read-the-story bad reviews – because for one thing, they’ve probably already heard about it from those other friends who make a habit of kindly supplying people with all the bad news they might ever need, and for another thing, it will only depress them.  See madness, above.

All that being said, there’s a nice review of the Altered States of the Union anthology over here at the Legendarium, in which the reviewer calls our story “Gertrude of Wyoming” a “shrewd and intelligent thriller.”  Considering that those were exactly the qualities we were aiming for, I for one am pleased.

One of the Pleasures of This Job

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It’s always good when a student, or a client, does well.  Debra Jess was one of the workshoppers at Viable Paradise XVI, where I was one of the instructors, and after that, she was one of my editorial clients.  And I’m pleased as punch to say that her novel, Blood Surfer, has won the National Excellence in Romance Fiction Award (NERFA) in the Paranormal and Futuristic category.  Blood Surfer was also a finalist in the Best First Novel category.

Needless to say, I am tickled pink on her behalf.

A Trio of Links

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The Folger Library is sending Shakespeare’s First Folio on tour.  It’ll be making one stop in each of the fifty states, including Hawaii and Alaska; you can find your state’s Shakespeare stop here.

Also, a reminder for writers who might want to transform lived experience or known history into fiction:  Fiction has to be believable, while reality is under no such constraint.

And finally, an interview with one of the many authors over the decades who have been Carolyn Keene, about writing Nancy Drew novels.  Full disclosure:  I’ve never been Carolyn Keene, but I have been one-half of Victor Appleton.  Twice.  And I can vouch for the truth of this article.

My only beef is with the interviewer and/or the editor on the Slate end of things, who persist in referring to the author as a “ghostwriter.”  She was not – and doesn’t call herself one.  A ghostwriter is writing under the name of, and in the persona of, an actual person who is the purported author of the book.  Sometimes this is a flagrant pretense, but sometimes it’s for a good reason – if, for example, the “author” has an important or interesting story to tell, but absolutely no writing chops whatsoever.

At any rate, a writer for the Nancy Drew books, or the Tom Swift books, or any of a number of syndicated properties, is not a ghost writer.  The proper term for what they’re doing is writing under a house name – so-called because the name “Carolyn Keene” or “Victor Appleton” or whatever is owned by the publishing house, not by the writer of a particular book.  Which is how I can have in my personal library a Tom Swift hardcover from the mid-1920’s that used to belong to my father, and a couple of Tom Swift paperbacks from the early 1990’s that were co-authored by me and Jim Macdonald.

And “Victor Appleton” wrote them all.

One of the Good Things About Teaching

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— and about editing, for that matter — is the the opportunity to point with pride at a student’s (or client’s) success.

On this occasion, I can bask in the reflected glow from Viable Paradise alumna Fran Wilde’s winning of the Andre Norton Award for YA science fiction at the Nebula Awards just past for her novel Updraft, which also won the Baltimore Science Fiction Society’s Compton Crook Award for best first novel.

And as if that weren’t enough illumination, there’s a further glow coming by way of Debra Jess, another VP alumna and a Dr. Doyle’s Editorial client, for her novel Bloodsurfer, which is a finalist in two categories (best first novel and best paranormal) of the Greater Detroit Romance Writers of America Booksellers’ Best Award. The winners will be announced at this summer’s RWA convention.

Needless to say, I’m tickled pink for them both.

Playing Catch-Up

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It’s been a long winter.

Also an unseasonably warm one, which is never good for the local economy up here in the wilds of northern New Hampshire.  And I’ve been mostly quiet, for which I apologize – I took a wrong step at the bottom of an unfamiliar flight of stairs in the dark, and ended up straining a muscle in my back.  The alternative would have been slamming my head up against the corner of the table next to the stairs, so I can’t really regret the spine-wrenching contortions I put myself through on the way down, even if they did give me over a month’s worth of sore muscles.  In any case, there’s something about not being able to sleep comfortably for several weeks that turns one’s get-up-and-go into more of a lurch-to-one’s-feet-and-shamble.  The whole thing put me at least a month behind on everything, and I’m still digging my way out from under the resulting backlog.

A couple of things that happened while I was in Shamble Mode:

Our story “One Night in Bavaria” came out in the Tom Easton and Judith Dial anthology Conspiracy! , from NESFA Press.

The Viable Paradise Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop opened up for applications.  This year’s workshop will be held at the Island Inn on Martha’s Vineyard, from  Sunday, October 16th, through Friday, October 21st, 2016.

A thing that will be happening next month:

The contributors to Conspiracy! (some of them, anyway – time and distance happen to us all) will be doing a signing at Toadstool Books in Peterborough, New Hampshire on the 23rd of April.  Watch this space for the exact time.

Finally, a trio of links for your amusement:

An article on American Sign Language and its relation to French Sign Language, and the Philadelphia ASL accent.

An article on the New York Public Library’s Erotica collection.

And finally, a link to the University of Arkansas’s* new on-line archive of its Ozark Folk Song Collection. The UofA was my undergraduate alma mater, and I was fortunate enough to take a folklore class with Mary Celestia Parler, the scholar primarily responsible for collecting the music in the archive, near the end of her teaching career there.  Having this major resource made available on-line to the public is a wonderful thing – go Razorbacks!

*Yes, that is how you form the possessive.  The state legislature officially said so.

The Unified Doyle-Macdonald Arisia Schedule

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The Arisia Science Fiction Convention is being held this coming weekend at the Westin Waterfront Hotel in Boston, and (barring unforeseen disasters) Jim Macdonald and I are planning to be there.  Our schedule for the convention:

5:30 PM Friday  (Three bells of the First Dog Watch)

Thrown with Great Force:Classics We Won’t Finish – Literature, Panel – 1hr 15min- Marina 2 (2E)
This is a panel for all of you who didn’t finish LotR; everyone who needed to self medicate through Infinite Jest, exiled Frankenstein to the frozen wastes, or wanted to flush the Foundation. What did you fail to finish, which ones do you feel guilty about not finishing, and which ones do not make you feel any twinge of guilt at all?

    Kate Nepveu (m), Mark L Amidon, Vikki Ciaffone, Debra Doyle, Catt Kingsgrave-Ernstein, Ken Liu
10:00 PM Friday  (Four bells of the First Watch)

Trains and SF/F – Fan Interest, Panel – 1hr 15min – Faneuil (3W)
Perhaps the most iconic development of the Industrial Revolution was the steam locomotive, and science fiction and fantasy has made great use of locomotives and trains throughout its history. Whether the “lightning rail” of D&D’s Eberron setting or the popularity of locomotives in steampunk, SF/F is no stranger to the love affair and sense of wonder people have for trains. Come “all aboard” with Arisia ’16, as we explore this phenomenon in the realm of fantastic fiction!

 Dennis McCunney (m), James Macdonald, Daniel Miller
10:00 AM Saturday  (Four bells of the Forenoon Watch)

The Founding Mothers of SF/F – Literature, Panel – 1hr 15min – Marina 2 (2E)
As we know, women invented all our favorite stuff! Mary Shelley defined science fiction with Frankenstein; Baroness Emma Orczy invented the superhero with The Scarlet Pimpernel. Let’s discuss the founding mothers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

Catherine Lundoff (m), Debra Doyle, Greer Gilman, Victoria Janssen, JoSelleVanderhooft

10:00 AM Saturday (Four bells of the Forenoon Watch)

How to Write a Fight Scene – Literature, Panel – 1hr 15min – Grand CD (1W)
Come find out how viable your fight scene really is. An experienced panel of talented authors, martial artists, and maybe one hapless would-be victim will take your quick fight scene and act it out while our esteemed panelists help you work out the physical and literary kinks. Please no epic wave battles.

Keith R. A. DeCandido (m), Genevieve Iseult Eldredge, James Macdonald, Mark J. Millman
1:00 PM Saturday  (2 Bells of the Afternoon Watch )

Shifting the Language of SF – Literature, Panel – 1hr 15min – Marina 2 (2E)
Very few SF authors of the many who set stories in the far future ever speculate what language may sound like in following centuries and distant stars. Some formative works, like Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange and Orwell’s 1984 include this as a theme. Who else? What are the dangers of speculating vernacular? How might the language our descendants speak differ from ours? What works in SF imagine how the kids talk in the far future?

John Chu (m), Heather Albano, Debra Doyle, Greer Gilman, Lawrence M. Schoen

1:00 PM Saturday  (2 Bells of the Afternoon Watch)

Cinematic Writing and SF/F – Literature, Panel – 1hr 15min – Burroughs (3E)
SF/F literature gets a lot of its fans from other media, especially visual media like TV and film. How has it affected the writing of spec fic? Can writing be truly cinematic? What does cinematic literature look like? What techniques in SF/F point back toward more visual techniques in other media?

James Macdonald (m), Marlin May, John Scalzi, Sarah Smith, Ian Randal Strock

It’s Thanksgiving, Again.

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At least, in the USA.  (Canada has been thankful already.)

And speaking as a writer, here are a few things I’m specifically thankful for:

  • The personal computer revolution, which came along just in time to enable an epically bad typist like me to produce submittable manuscripts that didn’t shed white-out like dandruff and didn’t take roughly thirty minutes per page of final copy to produce.

    (Does anyone even use correction fluid any more? Or does it hang out with carbon paper in the Land of Obsolete Office Supplies?)

  • The internet, starting with bulletin boards and on-line services like AOL and CompuServe and GEnie, and moving on through mailing lists and blogs and the wonders of the world-wide web. No longer does an aspiring writer have to move to New York or Boston or Philadelphia in order to have a finger on the pulse of the literary world; anywhere with internet connectivity is only a click away.

    Research, also, has been made oh-so-much easier. Once upon a time, if I needed to consult an obscure text — a monograph about daily life in Minnesota’s Stillwater Prison in the late eighteen-hundreds, to pick a not-coincidental example — I would have had to drive at least two hours to the nearest major university library and consult their card catalogue to determine if they had a copy (which they very probably wouldn’t.) Then I would need to either try for interlibrary loan through my local library, which could take a month or more, or try to wangle university library privileges (good luck with that), or hope I could get everything I needed before the library doors closed for the day. Now, that book and hundreds like it are gloriously digitized and available on-line.

  • And this year, the World Fantasy Award people decided that henceforward they wouldn’t be using the bust of Lovecraft as the design for the award.

    This is a good thing, because now award winners who would prefer not to have a portrait of a howling xenophobic racist* on their mantelpiece won’t have to; also, the H. P. Lovecraft Memorial Bludgeon was possibly the ugliest major award in this or any other biz. (Back where I come from, the phrase “homely as a mud fence plastered with tadpoles” would just about cover it.) Gahan Wilson, who designed it, is an excellent cartoonist, but his gift does not, in my opinion, translate well into three dimensions.

    Not all blessings are unalloyed, since the change means we’re in for several rounds of acrimonious debate about what sort of design should replace the current one. (“A dragon!” “God, no. No dragons, no wizards, none of that extruded fantasy product stuff!” “Mary Shelley!” “Are you smoking something? Mary Shelley wrote science fiction!”) at the end of which the World Fantasy Committee will come up with something either boring or ugly or controversial or all three.

    Because such is the way of our tribe.

*Really.  Even by the standards of his day — which by the standards of our day are pretty appalling all on their own — he was extreme.

Sometimes Life Hands You a Sack of Ingredients

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Maybe you have a friend with a garden that’s overproducing, and you get a surprise gift of a bag of zucchini and homegrown potatoes. You already know about making zucchini bread out of other people’s excess zucchini, but the potatoes deserve to have something good done to them before they go to waste, so you decide to make this;

Spinach and Bacon Potatoes

Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 1 large or 2 medium onions, chopped (when in doubt, err on the side of more onion, rather than less)
  • 1/2 pound bacon, finely chopped (the original version called for pancetta, the which we do not have, up here in the wilds of the north country, but regular bacon works just fine so long as it isn’t maple-cured or something like that. I buy packages of bacon ends and pieces at the IGA, and they do just fine as ingredient-grade bacon.)
  • 5 large potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced (throw in a couple extra if your potatoes are running small)
  • 1 box of frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
  • 4 cups shredded Mexican cheese blend (cheddar will also work)
  • 1 pint heavy cream (or half and half, if you’re being economical with money or fat)

Directions

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a medium baking dish.
  • Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat, and sauté the onion and bacon until onion is tender and bacon is cooked through.
  • Alternately layer the potato slices, the bacon and onion mixture, the spinach, and the cheese in the prepared baking dish.
  • Pour the heavy cream evenly over everything.
  • Cover and bake 1 hour in the preheated oven.
  • Uncover, and continue baking 30 minutes, until bubbly and lightly browned.

The writing life can be like this sometimes, as well.  You may be going along, working on the project or projects you currently have in hand, when your personal muse shows up with a basket full of ideas and says to you, “Here.  I’m sure you can make something tasty out of these.”

Since it’s a bad idea to ignore gifts from your muse, even inconvenient ones, you’ll have to do something with all those fresh ingredients.  Maybe they can go together to make something you can whip up in a hurry before getting back to your main projects – a quick short story stir fry, as it were.  But maybe they’re better suited for something complex and long-simmering that you don’t have time for right now, so what else can you do?

Well, that’s where food preservation techniques real or virtual scrapbooks and idea files come in.  Get that gift basket full of ideas safely frozen or pickled or salted down and stored in the root cellar, and come the cold midwinter of the mind, they’ll be waiting there to nourish you.

When Writers Get Bored

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My husband and co-author James D. Macdonald got bored the other day – he’s also an EMT, and he was sitting around the ambulance HQ waiting for somebody in their area of operations to have chest pains or run their car into a tree, but nobody did – so he wrote this.

(This also explains why, in our collaborations, he’s usually the plot wrangler and I’m the prose wrangler.  The secret to picking a good collaborator is locating one who thinks that the stuff you find difficult is actually easy, and vice versa.)