Wednesday Magic District: Books as things

Today’s Magic District riffs straight off the ARCs post earlier this week: I’m still puzzled by how much of a disconnect there is between my perception of the book and the story I wrote.  I don’t think it’s just me, but then again, I know I’ve got all these weird mental tics about writing.

Also, I have my contributor’s copies of The Best Horror of the Year vol. 1!  They are beautiful (okay, for a value of beautiful that includes naked flayed guy on the cover BUT THEY’RE STILL BEAUTIFUL OKAY) and, from what I’ve read of the other stories, chilling.  I had to stop reading so that I wouldn’t be up till two shivering.

Arc! Arc! Arc!

I am terrible, terrible about news.  I hang on, not wanting to post unless I have something interesting to say, and then when something does happen I either squirrel it away or lack the time to write “a proper post” about it.  The end result is a slow blog and news that hasn’t gone out.  But here it is, late but no less relevant:

Yes, I have my Advance Review Copies for Wild Hunt!  And they are beautiful.  I’ve been told that there’s a particular “new book smell” about the copies you receive, or a different feel to them, but for me the most wonderful and strange element of the whole experience is opening it to any page.  There’s always a moment where I don’t quite recognize the words, and then a burgeoning sense of deja vu as it finally clicks that yes, I know this part because I wrote it.

Even though I spent so much time writing this novel, choosing those words, tracing those plots, it seems so far from this bound copy in my hands.  Maybe it’s still some magical quality that I assign to books, maybe it’s that I still can’t quite believe this whole situation, but it still feels strange that there are books — multiple books, now! — that are full of the stories I’ve told.

Release date is January 12.  Just in time for Arisia!

Wednesday Magic District: Aliens and radio

Today’s (late) Magic District touches on one local show — the Big Broadcast of October 30, 1938, taking place this weekend — and on audio fiction in general.  It’s a little scattered, but mostly it’s about how fiction in a radio or podcast format or even just reading a piece aloud makes different demands on the audience and author alike.

I wonder: are there any stories that are solely meant to be read aloud?  Not oral histories as such, but stories that don’t function nearly so well in written format.  Hm.

Wednesday Magic District: Down from Monadnock

Today’s Magic District post is pretty much one big extended metaphor, probably the result of one part of my brain seizing onto an idea while the rest of it works out the last couple of chapters before I hand the MS over to BRAWL on Sunday. Here I am trying to get the big climactic scene fixed, and one part of my brain refuses to think about anything but mountains.  Go figure.

This is belated, but the reading in Williamstown with Elizabeth Bear was fantastic!  Thank you to all who came — I’m so glad I got the chance to see you.  And thanks to Inkberry and the Williams English Department as well, for sponsoring the event in the first place!

More news tomorrow. Right now, chapter nineteen is giving me a funny look, and I must do something about that.

Wednesday Magic District: Dreams

Today’s Magic District explores the well of my subconscious mind.  It’s not a pretty place.  It also doesn’t make much sense.  Don’t ask about the severed heads; I still don’t know what’s up with that.

Also — and on a completely different and much less creepy note — just a reminder that tomorrow night I’ll be in Williamstown, reading with Elizabeth Bear at 7:00.  Come join us!

Dross

I’ve finished a new draft of the third Evie novel, and it’s starting to feel like a book now.  Well, at least the story’s now hanging together, which it certainly wasn’t last draft.  Now I just have to spackle it together before handing it to the writers’ group so that they can tell me what sucks about it.

But here’s the thing: I kept a scrap file while I was working on this draft, since a lot of my revisions consisted of cutting and pasting and shifting around whole sections.  (Turns out when you move Chapter 14 to Chapter 3, then it wonks up everything else.  Who knew?)  The novel, as it currently stands, is a little over 100,000 words.

The scrap file?  40,000 words.

I’m starting to think maybe this is not the most efficient method.

News: Off to the Berkshires

Your promised news: nothing to do with new fiction, sadly (bangs head against manuscript), but something a little more entertaining.  On Thursday, October 15, I’ll be heading back to my alma mater Williams College (nestled in the scenic Berkshires, right next to Colonial Pizza*) for an evening talk with Elizabeth Bear.  Sponsored by Inkberry and the Williams English Department, the event starts at 7:00 and, as far as I’m concerned, goes till people are tired of listening to us.

The official description’s below.  If you’re in the area, come and see us!

An Evening With Elizabeth Bear & Margaret Ronald

Enjoy an evening of speculative fiction with award-winning author Elizabeth Bear and up-and-coming author Margaret Ronald ‘97 . Bear is author of the Shakespearean fantasy novels of the Promethean Age series (most recently Hell and Earth) and of two trilogies of Norse fantasy, as well as two trilogies of science fiction. Ronald is author of the critically-acclaimed Spiral Hunt and its forthcoming two sequels. After each writer reads from her published work, both writers will take questions about their work, speculative fiction, the literary life, how they got into “the business,” etc. Book-signing to follow. Presented by the English Department and Inkberry.

* Actually, is Colonial Pizza still there?  I mostly remember it from the WCFM carts; I think I ate there maybe once in four years. And just asking that question makes me feel old and cranky . . . I gotta get a lawn so I can tell kids to get off it.

Wednesday Magic District: Point and laugh

Well, the brilliant idea of “compose half a post before work, then finish it as soon as you get home!” got torpedoed by overtime tonight, so today’s Magic District post is up far too late.  Bah.  I do, however, manage to mention the Nakatomi Protocol and “On Fairy-Stories” within a few paragraphs of each other, so that’s something.

Some news to come, but it’ll have to wait till tomorrow morning, because right now I can manage about three words at a time before shutting down.  It’s like my brain is a faulty laptop…no, better stay away from that analogy.

Wednesday Magic District: Force of habit

First of all, go read this.  Okay?  Apparently this author has been camping out IN MY BRAIN because that’s the thought process that’s been going on when it comes to sales.  I don’t know how Spiral Hunt is doing.  I assume it’s all right, because angry mobs haven’t come chasing after me with pitchforks and torches.  Saundra Mitchell seems to have the right idea about how to think of this, though — she wrote a book, she got an agent, and her book’s on the shelves.  That’s pretty damn cool.  Occasionally I have to step back from the Amazonomancy and the revisions and remind myself that yes, this is really, really awesome.  I make stuff up!  And then people read it!  Woo!

Also, she’s got the best blog title ever.  Wish I’d thought of it first.

For today’s Magic District — which has absolutely nothing to do with that, unless you want to put both in the broader category of “writer neuroses” — I contribute to the stereotype of the Weird Writer, confess that coffee doesn’t have to be coffee, and try to make sense of habits that make no sense.

Wednesday Magic District: The long dark night of the revision

There will always be those times when writing becomes a chore and you can’t see a way out of the dilemma you’ve written yourself into.  And neither can your characters, because you’ve written them all as implausible idiots.  And what’s with that setting? Internal consistency has gone out the window, has it?  And we’re not even getting into the plot problems…

Yeah.  Always that point where the entire work feels like a waste of time.  Hell, I hit that point a couple of weeks ago and I’m fully expecting to have a recurrence before I finish this draft.  But I have to keep on writing.  It’s too bound up in my belief in who I am.  I am a writer, therefore I write even when I’m convinced it’s terrible.

So that’s what today’s Magic District is about: writing even when it doesn’t seem worth it, and getting through the bad patches.  Because it will be worth it when it’s done.  You just have to get there.

Wednesday (evening) Magic District: Dilettante

My trusty online dictionary (It’s on the Internet!  It must be true!) says that the word dilettante is originally Italian, “person loving the arts,” from dilettare, “to delight.”  That’s a nice etymology, which makes me feel a little better about the word even though the real meaning is “someone who’s interested in a subject but not necessarily knowledgeable or committed to it.”  So today’s disjointed, scrambled, late Magic District post covers part of what I like about skipping from genre to genre, both as a writer and a reader.

And now, back to slogging through the revision.  I can make this work, I know it, I’ll just have to add pirates keep writing.

Wednesday Magic Brains: Braaaains

Brains.

Braaaains brains brains braaaaains.  Brains: Braiiins brains Brains vs. Brains.  BRAAAAINS.

Wednesday Magic District: Afterglow

Today’s Magic District is more about the act of reading than about any book in particular.  It’s also about taking in fiction through other mediums (TV, movies) and how I have this weird, uncritical first response to it, which results in such problems as trying to justify The Phantom Menace, Jar-Jar and all.  Not my best critical moment, certainly.

Totally irrelevant thought to start the week

It’s almost worth the mental dissonance involved in listening to Metallica cover “Whiskey in the Jar” just to hear the lead singer growl out “whack-fol-a-derry-o.”

Wednesday Magic District: To the city

(…Anyone else hear the opening bit of that one Information Society song whenever they hear those three words?  No?  Okay, it’s just me.)

A little late, but today’s Magic District touches very lightly on cities in fantasy — specifically, how each has its own personality.  Montreal got me thinking about the soul of a city, partly because I could not pin down what it was I loved so much about the city.  (Aside from tasty food everywhere.  EVERYWHERE.  I had the best sandwich I’d ever had, and that was just from a stall at the Les Francofolies music festival.)  I’d be curious to see what other fantastic cities I’ve forgotten — the ones that came to mind were a bit scattershot.