This past year in writing

Livia Blackburne has a post about how she's improved in writing this past year, namely how she's improved her style of writing.  That got me to thinking about ways in which I've improved as a writer this past year.  I don't think I can point to any particular aspect of writing in which I've improved, but I have improved in one way: I've become a more disciplined writer.  Not perfectly disciplined, mind you, as I still have lapses, but I've become better at setting aside time for writing, and writing stories from beginning to end.  I've also broadened my horizons and begun writing in more genres, tackling ideas farther afield from my usual area.  There are plenty of ways in which I'd still like to improve, of course, but I think that's a significant step in the right direction.

Storyblogging Carnival coming up

The next Storyblogging Carnival will go up on Monday, January 10th. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, January 8th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Review of "From Words to Brain" by Livia Blackburne

Disclosure: Livia is a friend of mine, and sent me a free review copy of this essay.  I will nonetheless endeavor to be as balanced as possible in my review.

Livia's essay, "From Words to Brain," is a 7,700 word overview of the scientific literature on how the brain interprets stories.  Using the example of the story of "Little Red Riding Hood," she reviews how the brain recognizes letters and words, visualizes the scenes and actions, empathizes with the characters, and draws moral conclusions from the story.  The writing is tight without being dense, and easily understandable by the layman.  And I, at least, find the subject fascinating.

The essay's weakness is that it is too short.  As a writer always looking for ways to improve my art, I'm certainly interested in what brain science tells us about how people read, and write, stories.  While there were some useful tidbits in the essay, most of them are tricks that experienced writers already know--such as that readers fill in the details in a scene without requiring overdone description. There were a few things which I had never thought about or didn't know, such that women tend to sympathize more with the antagonist than men do, but I feel like there's a lot more that Livia could have shared with us in a longer essay.

This probably wouldn't affect how I viewed a free essay available online, but the publisher is charging over $5 for the essay.  Considering that you can get entire classic novels for free on Amazon's Kindle, this seems like too much for this essay.  I would still recommend it if you are interested in the subject, and would like a stepping stone to more advanced work, such as the literature Livia cites.  But I'm hesitant to recommend it to those on a writer's budget.

Experimental Archaeology

As I mentioned the other day, Kristin and I did some ancient Roman cooking a week ago.  The great challenge in doing something like this is finding the ingredients.  Garum, a popular fish sauce in ancient Rome, isn't exactly available at the grocery store (although there's a reasonable substitute used in Vietnamese cooking).  We managed to make do there.  Harder to find was a substitute for defrutum, which is reduced grape must.  We had to go to a wine supply store to get something roughly equivalent.

That was the most difficult part from our end, but in reality the most difficult part of Roman cooking is figuring out the recipes.  There are a few ancient sources of Roman recipes, Apicius being the most famous.  However, Roman recipes tend to lack such niceties as amounts and cooking times.  For example:

For mussels: Garum, chopped leek, cumin, passum, savory, and wine. Dilute this mixture with water and cook the mussels in it.

(This is taken from the Nova website, which is quoting from the book we used.)

This brings us to the topic of this post, experimental archaeology.  Experimental archaeology is when modern scholars attempt to reproduce the work of previous generations, doing their best to follow their techniques.  This can include reproducing an Ancient Greek repeating ballista, running an Iron Age farm, or cooking a Roman meal.  There is of course a lot of variation in how rigorously this is done.  Our cooking, for example, used a lot of ingredient substitutions, along with modern kitchen appliances, following an interpretation of the Roman recipe.  So not very rigorous on our part.  The authors of the various cookbooks based on Roman recipes are, fortunately, better scholars.  They were the ones who did the actual experimental archaeology in order to turn the the recipes into something usable in a modern kitchen in the first place.

Another way that Kristin and I have taken part in experimental archaeology is in the medieval swordfighting lesson we took earlier this year.  Medieval swordsmanship is a lost art--no one's practiced it for hundreds of years.  The Eastern traditions fared better, as practitioners continued to pass down their fighting techniques, even after they had been surpassed by the gun on the battlefield.  However, European sword techniques have been preserved in one way: there are a number of surviving fight manuals, which display the techniques used in medieval swordsmanship.  They look something like this:


Usually, with a one or two word caption.  This, from Talhoffer (the most famous of the fight books), has the caption War-work.  ARMA (the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts) has lengthy excerpts available online.  Even with the complete fight book, it's hard to make out exactly what's going on in the images.  That's why experimental archaeology is so valuable.  It brings together all the manuals, with real swords, experience with related martial arts, and actual sparring, and attempts to reproduce the techniques which are only hinted at. 

That turns a number of images like the above, into something like this:




Aside from the exercise, why would anyone want to reproduce sword fighting techniques from the late Middle Ages?  Or, for that matter, recipes from the late Roman era?  It's partly a scholarly exercise, useful for archaeologists.  But I find it very helpful for a different reason.  As a writer of fantasy that draws inspiration from both Roman society and the Middle Ages, such experiments give me a better understanding of how the people of that time lived, allowing me to write with greater verisimilitude.

Plus it's fun.  And I, at least, thought the Roman food was pretty good.

Storyblogging Carnival?

Since Christmas is coming this next week, and I think people might be a mite busy, I'm going to delay the Storyblogging Carnival by a week.  The normal announcement will go up next Monday, and submissions will be due by Saturday, January 8th.  Of course, if you send me something early, I'll hold it in reserve until I start accepting submissions.

Roman cooking

Kristin and I made a meal based on Roman recipes today.  Well, mostly Kristin made it, and I helped.  She has all the cooking details, if you're interested, in a post on her blog:

Today Donald and I thought it would be fun to prepare an “authentic” ancient Roman dinner. I have several books on Roman cooking, most making liberal use of Apicius (the most famous ancient Roman cookbook author). I’ve found the most accessible and interesting to be Ilaria Gozzini Giacosa’s A Taste of Ancient Rome (translated by Anna Herklotz; original title was A cena da Lucullo). The author is a foodie with an archaeology background, and her goal was to take recipes from Apicius, Cato and other sources and provide a version that a modern cook could follow. The ancient sources tend not to provide a lot of detail. They’ll give the ingredients (most of them), and some vague clues as to preparation. America’s Test Kitchen it ain’t! Giacosa’s versions of the recipes should, theoretically, be doable in a modern kitchen.

It was a lot of fun, and I thought the result was pretty tasty.  It did take more work than I'd be willing to spend on cooking with any regularity, though.

Storyblogging Carnival CXV

Welcome to the 115th Storyblogging Carnival. There are six entries this time, four of them from new contributors.  Enjoy!

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Trippy Limerick
by Madelein Begun Kane of Mad Kane's Humor Blog
An under 100 word brief story rated PG.

The tale of a foiled vacation trip told in a two verse limerick.

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Just like old times!!!!
by Witty Jester of Witty Humor
A 200 word graphic story rated G.

A different take on "Noah and his ark"

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The First Legion: Part IV of The History of the Domini (To the beginning)
by Donald S. Crankshaw of Back of the Envelope
The next 340 words of a 2,500 word story in progress rated PG.

Randall continues the story of the Domini by recounting the summoning of the First Legion.

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This is Necessary
by Mr. Squarehead of Squarehead Diaries
A 388 word short story rated PG.

The world, as I see it from inside out.

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WOLFDOG
by Ingela Richardson of storywishes
A 997 word brief story rated G.

"When Wolfdog was a puppy, he was very cute and fluffy. He was taken from his mother and given to a boy for a pet one cold and snowy Christmas."

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On Giving Thanks: grateful I am not a cranberry
by GrrlScientist of Punctuated Equilibrium
A 1,073 word short story rated PG.

My favorite Thanksgiving memory.

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This concludes the one hundred and fifteenth Storyblogging Carnival.
If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts. Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

The History of the Domini: Part IV

Old Post: Part III can be found here, while the beginning is here.

Being a further account of the history of the Domini, as recorded by Randall Aurelius.

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Part IV: The First Legion

The details of the magic involved in the calling of the First Legion are long forgotten.  We do know that it was the first of only two times that the disparate magics of the Shades and the Amaranthine were combined.  The Circuit involved hundreds of magic-users, and many of them died in the effort.  But when it was done, an army had been summoned to our aid.

From where they were summoned is still a mystery.  The First Legion neither spoke our language, nor understood what we wanted from them.  They were angry at being ripped from their own land, but terrified of the magic we wielded.  With great difficulty, we found a way to communicate.  From what we were able to learn, they came from a land similar to ours in many ways, but there they had no contact with naka or goblins or Malwer.  Instead humans warred upon each other for control of the land and the sea.  It is difficult to understand now how strange that was to us then, humans fighting wars against each other.  We were far from a peaceful people even then, but we had no understanding of conflict on such a scale.  The First Legion did, and we needed that understanding.  After a great deal of bargaining, with threats on both sides, we were able to reach an agreement.

The numbers which the First Legion added to humanity’s beleaguered forces were small, but the expertise was considerable.  They were among the best trained and most disciplined soldiers in their land, and they shared their training and experience with us, first strengthening our defenses against the naka and goblins, and then leading the assault to drive back the invaders.  Unprepared as they were to face competent warriors, the nakan advance faltered and then collapsed, and their conquests were quickly retaken.  Emboldened by our successes, we pursued the naka and goblins as they retreated, and may have succeeded in eliminating both races entirely, had not the Malwer themselves taken the field.

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This is a 341 word continuation of a 2,500 word story in progress.

Upcoming Storyblogging Carnival

The next Storyblogging Carnival will go up on Monday, December 6th. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, December 4th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Storyblogging Carnival CXIV

Welcome to the 114th Storyblogging Carnival. It's a bit late, partly due to me being overloaded at worked, but also due to the fact that I was fishing for more entries.  In the end we have six total.  Enjoy!

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First Christmas in a Queen Sized Bed
by Tash of Love Santa
A 99 word brief story rated G.

A child's short story about a special Christmas memory

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Pigheaded Limerick
by Madelein Begun Kane of Mad Kane's Humor Blog
An under 100 word word brief story rated PG.

The tale of a stubborn man whose car is towed, told in a three verse limerick.

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Introducing the Venkman Brothers
by Mark A. Rayner of The Skwib
A 150 word short story rated PG-13.

The epic tale of Herbetron and Merculia Venkman, brothers from a proud tradition of Norwegian clowns.

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The Amaranthine: Part III of The History of the Domini
by Donald S. Crankshaw of Back of the Envelope
The next 750 words of a 2,200 word story in progress rated PG.

Randall continues the story of the Domini by recounting their relations with the Amaranthine.

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How to Keep Good Time with Rare Cogs and Orphan Springs
by Klara Bow Piechocki of Violet Hustle
The first 3,148 words of an ongoing story rated R.

"Kumiko had only had her baby four hours ago and her body felt exhausted. She had let herself into Rheam’s quarters and turned down the corners of the fresh bed sheets for him, before she sat on the edge of the bed and waited for his return. She knew that it was a job for his courtesan, but she had been eager to see him." 

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Wizards Don't Have to be Smart
by CJ Burch of Divas for Geeks
A 5,500 word short story rated PG.

A Weird Western.

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This concludes the one hundred and fourteenth Storyblogging Carnival.

If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts. Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

The History of the Domini: Part III

Old Post: Part II can be found here, while the beginning is here.

Being a further account of the history of the Domini, as recorded by Randall Aurelius.

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Part III: The Amaranthine

To humans, a hundred years is three to four generations. Events that happened that far back are no more than legends to people without written histories. To the Malwer, it was just enough time to prepare the means to avenge themselves on their escaped slaves. By that time, the humans who had fled the Malwer had lost all contact with those who remained behind to fight. The communication had slowed to a trickle over the years, stories of a distant war that most of the newly free humans did not believe was worth fighting. When it finally stopped, there was some worry, but a few years passed and the worries ceased.

The free humans were focused on the business of surviving and building farms and communities in the their new lands rather than on the distant, mostly forgotten threat of the Malwer. The Shades among them were likewise occupied with building their cloistered communities and finding recruits among the other humans. Over time, methods of recruiting were developed to take young men with the ability while minimizing the trauma to him or his community, but in the process the Shades became more and more isolated from the rest of humanity. Some preferred reclusiveness, while others used their power to try to force people to serve them. Occasionally, Shade communities of differing philosophies would clash, but these were mere skirmishes compared to the later wars.

The Malwer would have overwhelmed humanity when they finally came upon them in force, if not for the Amaranthine. The Amaranthine are nearly as great a mystery as the Malwer. They lacked the Malwer’s ability with magic (although there were a few among them, called wizards, who had powerful magical abilities), but they were similarly long-lived, and they knew a great deal about the Malwer, whom they held a bitter grudge against for unknown reasons. They looked nearly human, although with odd coloring and strange characteristics. Many today say they were related to the Kawyr, although they regarded humans with more sympathy than the cold Kawyr ever could. When the Amaranthine first came, warning that the Malwer were coming with a large force of creatures which no one had ever heard of, no one knew what to make of them, including the Shades. Just a few messengers came at first, but soon it became clear that there was a mass migration of the Amaranthine, women and children along with men, fleeing from something. Although many took their warnings seriously, a few saw them as interlopers. The Shades themselves were divided, and many of the communities forbade the Amaranthine from entering areas under their control. There were a few skirmishes, but no widespread conflict, and eventually the Amaranthine settled just outside the human areas. They continued to warn of brutish, violent creatures behind them, but the humans saw no reason to take their warnings seriously, until the Orcs came.

There were, in fact, creatures of two types in the initial invasion: Orcs and Goblins. Orcs are roughly as tall as humans, but more muscular. While most of them are not very intelligent, the commanders of their armies are as smart as we are. There were no warlocks or witches among them at this time. Goblins are smaller, uglier, and stupider. The humans had little chance against the invaders. In the hundred years they had been free, there had been no wars more serious than a skirmish, and no human community had formed anything resembling an army. The Shades fared little better. They too had only skirmished, and they had developed little magic capable of facing armies. While the goblins were less an army than an unruly mob, forced to fight by their Orc masters, the Orcs showed a surprising grasp of tactics and strategy, even though their forces were lacking in discipline. And if what the Amaranthine said was true, the Malwer were the ones truly behind the attack. They had recruited the Orcs to carry out their vengeance on the humans.

Fortunately for the humans, the Amaranthine had been fighting Orcs for years, and they lent their aid against them. It was not enough, though, as the Amaranthine were few in number, and their wizards were even fewer. Humanity was forced to retreat from their attackers, driven towards the sea in a narrowing strip of land as the Orcs laid claim to the countryside. In desperation, the Shades and the wizards pooled their abilities, and performed an act of magic unlike any seen before or since. They called the First Legion.

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This is a 750 word continuation of a 2,200 word story in progress.

New Post: The next part can be found here.

Review of Towers of Midnight by Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan

In 2007, James Oliver Rigney, who authored the best-selling Wheel of Time series under the pseudonym Robert Jordan, died.  He had not yet completed the series.  His widow selected Brandon Sanderson, the author of the Mistborn series, to finish the work.

The first result of that effort was The Gathering Storm, released last year.  It was a promising effort which, despite some flaws, captured the spirit of the Wheel of Time and moved the plot towards completion.  Now the second book, Towers of Midnight, has come out.  How does it compare?

I hate to say it, but I was disappointed.  As much as I like the Wheel of Time, and Brandon Sanderson's work, this one doesn't feel quite right.  Or maybe, it's because I like them both so much that I was disappointed.  It's not a bad book.  It's about average for a Wheel of Time book, which makes it above average, even good, compared to a lot of fantasy fiction.  But I expected better from the penultimate book of this 14 book series.

The first problem I noticed is one of chronology.  Much of this book focuses on Mat and Perrin, and follows their character arcs as they are prepared for the Last Battle.  I found both these stories engaging and productive (something which Jordan's books sometimes just aren't).  The problem is that their stories begin well before the end of the last book.   Which wouldn't have been so bad, except that Brandon switches viewpoints much more often than Jordan did, and their chapters were interspersed with Rand's and Egwene's chapters,which start after the end of the last book.  So one chapter you jump ahead in time, and the next you jump backwards.  This leads to some odd moments, such as Tam al'Thor being in two places at once. 

The second problem is one of characterization.  Most of the characters are fine.  Perrin, in particular, I think is handled well, finally growing into his role.  It was a little quick after just wanting to be a blacksmith for the past 12 books, but there really wasn't a lot of time left, and it happened in a way that made sense.  Elayne's a lot nicer than she used to be (since when did she feel affection for Galad?).  But since a lot of people didn't like the old Elayne, we'll just say she's mellowed with pregnancy and move on. Rand.... I'm not sure what to make of Rand.  It's good to see him sane again, but throughout this book he's just a little bit too perfect.  Messianic, in fact.  I know that he's supposed to be taking on a messianic role, but I'd prefer it if he were closer to how he was in earlier books, rather than suddenly being wise and calm and kind of dull.

Mat... ah, Mat.  It's sad to say, but I don't think Brandon really gets Mat.  Mat's supposed to be funny, and he is, but Brandon's Mat is... well, he's kind of dumb.  Now Mat's certainly not an intellectual, and he can be foolish, but Jordan's Mat is clever.  Very clever, in fact.  He has to be, in order to be the best general of this age.  His foolishness is due to the fact that he doesn't think things through.  Not because he can't see the consequences, but because he doesn't bother to consider them. He shines when he's forced to think and plan, such as when he's leading a battle.  It's hard to see how Brandon's Mat could ever be a successful general, even with his luck and the memories in his head.

One particularly egregious scene comes when he's explaining why he doesn't want to be a noble.  It's the boots.  A normal man only needs three pairs of boots, but a nobleman needs dozens.  He doesn't want to deal with that.  Another character asks whether that's a metaphor (doing so with one of those jarringly modern phrases that Brandon sometimes uses), and Mat explains that no, he's talking about boots.  Now, aside from the fact that Mat's shown the most interest in clothes of any male character (though he'll deny it if asked), the simple fact is that it's obvious why Mat dislikes nobles and doesn't want to be one, and that he's fully aware of those reasons. Mat simply values his freedom too much.  Nobles (and Aes Sedai) threaten that by telling him what to do.  Mat doesn't let anyone tell him what to do.  And worse, they try to manipulate, bully, and force him to do what they want, and Mat can't stand that.  As for why he doesn't want to be a noble, he realizes that being one would threaten his freedom even more.  The Pattern has had to drag Mat kicking and screaming into the responsibility he does have.  While he'll do his job as well as he's able (he doesn't like responsibility, but he definitely feels a sense of duty), he'll do his best not to take on any more responsibility than he absolutely has to.  Unfortunately, that really doesn't come through in Brandon's Mat.

Finally, there were a few continuity errors.  This was the book where the characters finally start learning each others' secrets.  The problem was, Brandon lost track of who knew what secrets.  For example, he forgot that Perrin's Asha'man told him about saidin's cleansing right after it happened.  And there were a few places where people suddenly knew things, and we're left to wonder whether Brandon just forgot or the reveal happened off-screen.  There were other places where it looks like Brandon might have forgotten a detail earlier and then hastily tacked it on in the revision.  And at least one reveal that I think should have gotten more attention, and resolution, than it did.

Okay, now that I've listed all the things that the book did wrong, did it do anything right?  Well, yes, it did quite a bit right.  Even with the Mat characterization off, I think Brandon managed the character arcs of Mat and Perrin very well.  They both grew into the roles they would need to fill in the final book.  Granted, Mat didn't have as far to go as Perrin, who had gotten stuck a while back.  Perrin gets to resolve a few nagging issues, and then make something really, really cool.  Mat, even suffering from a sudden drop in IQ, managed to accomplish some things which we've been waiting a long time for.  I think the cover of the book is enough that it's not a spoiler to say that he finally made it to the Tower of Ghenji.  Not all of that went as I expected, but the final key was very clever.  I didn't see it coming at all, but it made perfect sense once it did.  Other plot threads were resolved at an alarming rate... something I don't think Jordan could have done as well as Brandon, not without giving many of them short shrift.  But don't think that this was just about wrapping up plot threads that have been hanging for a long time.  There were a few surprises that actually, sincerely shocked me.  Pay attention to Aviendha--that was one of those scenes where I was thinking "let's get back to someone interesting" until I realized just how intriguing what was happening was.  And the epilogue... well, let's just say Olver's first POV is a gut-wrencher.

A few links

I've come across a few interesting links recently, and I figured I ought to share:

Jonah Goldberg talks about one consequence of the election: there'll be a lot of infighting in the Republican party. Why? To quote:

It's the nature of politics that when you're out of power, everyone can agree on what the top priority should be: Get back in power. But, the only way to get back in power is to attract people who might not share all of your goals or your passion. Majority coalitions by definition have diverse groups within them. FDR's coalition had everybody from Klansmen to blacks, socialists to industrialists. The new GOP coalition isn't nearly so exotic, but it does have its internal contradictions.

Marcia Morrissey asks "What does God really look like?" Marcia, who has never seen her husband or child, has a unique perspective on this question.

Jason Wire shares twenty untranslatable words from over a dozen languages. He writes:

Thus these words, while standing out due to our inability to find an equivalent word in out own language, should not be appreciated for our own words that we try to use to describe them, but for their own taste and texture. Understanding these words should be like eating the best slab of smoked barbequeued ribs: the enjoyment doesn’t come from knowing what the cook put in the sauce or the seasoning, but from the full experience that can only be created by time and emotion.

Sue Granquist shares what she's learned about the folklore of the Jinn in Morocco:

In Moroccan myth, each time a human is born into our world, a “Jinn” is born into another, adjacent world; more specifically the underworld.

Human beings are created from clay kilned in fire while the Jinn is created from the black smoke produced by the fire; two products of the same creation process.
...
This genie is evil incarnate and is each human beings’ personalized gift straight from Satan himself, so Happy Birthday!

As the story goes, the Jinn’s entire purpose is to stick close to its human counterpart like a dedicated poltergeist pushing him to wicked deeds, tempting him into acts of damnation and generally being a lifetime nuisance.

The Jinn love excess and whisper in the ears of their humans encouraging them to over-indulge in all things because apparently, if we’re too fat and happy, the Jinn finds it easier to plant nasty notions into our psyches.

This potentially explains a whole lot of unaccounted for chunks of time in college if you ask me.

The Jinn also know our deepest, darkest desires and use these “wishes” to tempt us into wickedness.

Livia Blackburne talks about a study showing that how erotic romance is written can have a measurable effect on condom use, and then asks the question: "What, if any, obligation does an author have to avoid promoting dangerous or self-destructive habits in their fiction?"

All in all, a lot to think about.

World Fantasy Convention Report

I'm currently on my way home from World Fantasy in Columbus, Ohio, one of the bigger conventions for speculative fiction professionals, including writers, editors, and agents. It was fun, but exhausting. Most nights, there are parties going on until 3 am or so, and the hotel bar is where most of the networking is going on.

On this convention, I met John O'Neill, the man behind Black Gate. John was fun to talk to, and introduced me to many of the people involved in Black Gate, including Howard Andrew Jones, Ryan Harvey, and James Enge. I also got a chance to participate in my first Con reading with them. I read an excerpt from A Phoenix in Darkness, which will be coming out in Issue 17. I'm not great at readings, but I think it went pretty well. At least, a lot of people remarked that the image of little girls cutting up dead bodies will be sticking with them . . .

I also got an opportunity to chat briefly with Dan Wells, the author of I am not a Serial Killer and Mr. Monster. I complimented him also on the work he does on Writing Excuses, the writing podcast. He did ask me whether it was still helpful when applied to short stories. It is, but as I told him, you have to do more in less time in a short story, and that's often a challenge. In fact, I'd say the hardest thing to do in a short story is wold building. How do you create a unique, secondary world, when you only have six thousand words to do that, while still telling a story with interesting characters? It's an interesting question, and may be worth pursuing.

I met lots of other interesting people, but it's hard to type up long posts on my iPhone, so I'll wrap this up for now.

Storyblogging Carnival coming up

The next Storyblogging Carnival will go up on Monday, November 8th. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, November 6th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Next Storyblogging Carnival

The next Storyblogging Carnival will be going up on November 8th, rather than the 1st.  I'll be traveling next weekend (going to World Fantasy), so it'll be a week later than usual.

From the iPhone

So I'm posting this from my iPhone. I'm really just playing around with the software that lets me do that. It seems to work okay, though the free version doesn't have a lot of options.

Review of Mr. Monster by Dan Wells

Mr. Monster is the sequel to I am not a Serial Killer. John Cleaver is a teenage sociopath.  He lacks empathy and compassion, and shows most of the traits of a burgeoning serial killer.  He is not, however, a bad person.  He knows the difference between right and wrong, and has a list of rules he follows to keep himself from becoming the monster he knows he might be.  Mr. Monster is what he calls that part of himself that dreams of torturing those closest to him.  He might be able to hold Mr. Monster in check, but he can't slay him.  Because sometimes, he needs that part of himself.

In the first book, John's small town is haunted by a real serial killer, and it's not long before John discovers that the killer is not human.  It is only by letting Mr. Monster out, just a little, that John can stalk and kill the real monster.

The question of the second book is whether John can contain Mr. Monster again.  At first, it looks like he'll be able to manage as long as he starts keeping his rules, even the ones he had to break last time.  But the killings have started again, and John may need to let his own monster out to stop them.

Mr. Monster is what is sometimes called a Terror novel--one that's more psychological, where you fear for the sanity of the protagonist rather than his health.  And that is certainly the case here.  John is scarier than any of the supernatural dangers we've seen so far.  The absolutely most frightening part of the book is not when John faces down the demon, but when he starts dating.  He likes the girl, and she likes him, but he has to break many of his rules to act normal on a date, and we get to watch as his control on Mr. Monster slips further away.  I won't tell you exactly how far it slips, but it's a relief when he's fighting for his life against the real serial killer.

And that is in large part what makes this book different from the first.   In the first book, John knew who the monster was, and spent most of the book stalking him--in the modern sense.  That included threatening letters and anonymous tips to the police: ways he could keep the demon off-balance until he could find a way to kill him.  The way he does find shows exactly how dangerous John can be.  But in this book, we spend most of it not knowing who the new demon is.  He's just background while we watch John's psychological drama unfold.  To his credit, Dan Wells brings the drama to a head in the confrontation with the real demon.  Unfortunately, when we did see the real demon, he was something of a let-down.  He just seemed a lot less frightening in the end than the first one.

Overall, I do think this was an excellent book.  The psychological drama worked well, which it had to, since the external threat was ultimately disappointing.

Storyblogging Carnival CXIII

The latest Storyblogging Carnival is up at Divas for Geeks.

Trip report

Back in September, Kristin and I went to Houston for a wedding, and then visited my family in Louisiana.  I haven't talked about it, but Kristin's been blogging away, with pictures.  See what she has to say, starting with Houston, then St. Francisville, and finally Avery Island.