Writers are so good at beating themselves up for all sorts of reasons, some valid, some not so much. Here’s some encouragement for dealing with writerly quilt.
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Writers are so good at beating themselves up for all sorts of reasons, some valid, some not so much. Here’s some encouragement for dealing with writerly quilt.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
Words achieved today: 3045 (letting myself get away with less because it’s a teaching day, but maybe I’ll get in a few more tonight)
Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 87687
Total word count for the week: 13067
Total word count for this retreat: 13067
Worked on Hearts of Tabat, Exiles of Tabat, short story (“You Remind Me of Summer”)
Time spent on SFWA email, discussion boards, other stuff: 30 minutes, plus whatever I do tonight
Other stuff: Taught the first section of “Writing Your Way Into Your Novel”, prepped for Sunday’s class
Steps: 6410
From Hearts of Tabat:
Adelina paused by Serafina’s desk. She studied the secretary, who looked up. She wore her usual plainly cut clothes, one of the signs of a worshipper of the Moon Temples. That was, as far as Adelina could, Serafina’s only similarity with Eloquence, but most of what Adelina had ever known of the temples previously had been via the instruction or example of her secretary.
She asked now, “Serafina, how does the Temple handle marriages?”
“The priests arrange them, when people are ready,” Serafina said.
“How does the priest know when they are ready?”
“They come and ask the priest to find them someone, and they prove in conversation that they are ready to be with someone in that way, and to begin to raise a family.”
“Is that the point of the alliance, the family?” Adelina said, intrigued. “Are there Triad marriages, as there are among the merchants?”
She felt foolish as Serafina eyed her. I am treating her as though she were some sort of menagerie creature, she thought, and that is unkind. Shame twitched at her even harder when Serafina patiently said, “No, our marriages are not about economic alliances in the way that merchant marriages are. Such alliances would be reckoned a little sinful because they are apart from the norm, truth be told.”
“What is their purpose then?”
“To create children, who will spread the faith.”
“Should the faith not spread it, if it is good enough?” Adelina asked, fascinated, and realized her misstep when she saw Serafina’s frown. “I beg your pardon,” she said quickly. “It is only that”¦”
“It is only that the Moon Temples are not much regarded among the merchants and the nobles because it is a religion of the poor,” Serafina said frankly. “To speak of things that are not reckoned in profit or loss is thought a little shameful among the merchants, and the nobles do not like talk of doing good for its own sake.”
That startled a laugh out of Adelina, who had never heard her clerk be so cynical. “What has flushed all this truth from you, then?”
“You should not pay attention to Eloquence Seaborn,” Serafina said severely. “It is not a match the Temples would approve of, and he is a fine young man, with a good future in them ahead of him.”
“Is he to become a priest?”
Serafina shook her head, then nodded. “A layman’s priest, someone who does not live in the Temples and do as the Priests do, but lives among other people and acts as a go between and an example. That is a special role, and it is the one that has been prepared for Eloquence.”
It occurred to Adelina that the Temples were a relatively small gathering and so Serafina had known Eloquence and his family all her life. She said, “I am thinking of taking an apprentice, one of Eloquence’s sisters.”
“That,” Serafina said slowly, “could be a good or bad notion, depending on which you mean to do so with.”
“The youngest one. Perseverance.”
“Ah.” Serafina’s frown cleared a little. “She gets picked on by the rest of them, I think. To be out from under all of that would be a good thing for her, let her shine a little and come into her own. But I thought she was apprenticed to the tanner?”
“She is, but she says she hates it. I found her crying over it.”
Serafina pursed her lips. “It is not for the child to determine her own apprenticeship. That is for her elders to do, with the Temples’ advice, in order to place her where she will be best prepared for life.”
“But at the time she was apprenticed to the tanner, this opportunity was not available to her for the Temples or her elders to know about,” Adelina pointed out.
“That is true.” Serafina wavered. “You should consult her brother,” she said finally.
“I will,” Adelina said. She did not mention her earlier conversation with Perseverance or the fact that she had already promised the girl an apprenticeship. There was no need for Serafina to know the exact timeline.
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In the last year or so, I found a genre that hadn’t previously been on my radar, but which I really enjoy: furry fiction. Kyell Gold had put up his novel Black Angel on the SFWA member forums, where members post their fiction so other members have access to it when reading for awards, and I enjoyed it tremendously. The novel, which is part of a trilogy about three friends, each haunted in their own way, showed me the emotional depth furry fiction is capable of and got me hooked. Accordingly, when I started reviewing for Green Man Review, I put out a Twitter call and have been working my way through the offerings from several presses.
Notable among the piles are the multiplicity by T. Kingfisher, aka Ursula Vernon, and two appear in this armload. Clockwork Boys, Clocktaur War Book One (Argyll Productions, 2017) is the promising start to a fantasy trilogy featuring a lovely understated romance between a female forger and a paladin, while Summer in Orcus (Sofawolf Press, cover and interior art by Lauren Henderson) is aimed at younger readers and will undoubtedly become one of those magical books many kids will return to again and again, until Vernon is worshipped by generations and prepared to conquer the world. Honestly, I will read anything Kingfisher/Vernon writes, and highly recommend following her on Twitter, where she is @UrsulaV.
Huntress by Renee Carter Hall (Furplanet), which originally appeared in 2015, and whose title novella was nominated in the 2014 Ursa Major Awards and Cóyotl Awards, is a collection of novella plus several shorter stories. I’d love more in this fascinating and thought-provoking world, particularly following the novella’s heroine, the young lioness Leya, and the sisterhood of the huntresses, the karanja.
Always Gray in Winter by Mark J. Engels (Thurston Howell Publications, October, 2017) demonstrates one of the difficulties with furry fiction, which is the reader’s uncertainty where to site the fact of furry characters, primarily whether to take them as a given or have some underlying science to it, such as bio-modified creatures. Here Pawly is a were-cat, but the unfamiliar reader is forced to spend so much time figuring out whether this is something people take for normal or not that the story sometimes gets confusing, and with multiple POV shifts, the reader keeps having to re-orient themself. It’s tight, sparse military SF that readers familiar with the conventions of the genre will find compelling, entertaining, and quickly paced; newer readers may find themselves floundering a bit.
The Furry Future, edited by Fred Patten (Furplanet, 2015) is a solid and entertaining anthology that showcases how widely ranging the stories that use the rationale behind the existence of anthropomorphic beings as part of the narrative can be. Authors in the collection include Michael H. Payne, Watts Martin, J. F. R. Coates, Nathanael Gass, Samuel C. Conway, Bryan Feir, Yannarra Cheena, MikasiWolf, Tony Greyfox, Alice “Huskyteer” Dryden, NightEyes DaySpring, Ocean Tigrox, Mary E. Lowd, Dwale, M. C. A. Hogarth, T. S. McNally, Ronald W. Klemp, Fred Patten, and David Hopkins with illustrations by Roz Gibson and cover art by Teagan Gavet. This book is one that scholars writing about furry fiction will want to be including on their reading lists for reasons including its focus, its authors, the snapshot of the current furry fiction scene that it provides, and the variety of approaches to anthropomorphic body modification.
Along with the furry fiction, I wanted to point to an indie humorous horror collection that is one of the most specifically themed I have yet encountered, Ill Met by Moonlight by Gretchen Rix (Rix Cafe Texican, 2016), which features evil macadamia nut trees, including “Macadamias on the Move,” “Ill Met by Moonlight,” and “The Santa Tree” in a lovely sample of how idiosyncratic a sub-sub-niche can get. The production values of this slim little book show what a nice job an indie can do with a book and include a black and white illustration for each story.
You can read this review at http://thegreenmanreview.com/books/armload-of-fur-and-leaves/
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