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Cabin days

Posted on by Patrick

4000 words today, and I think I’ve most­ly worked out the endgame of The Shad­ow Cru­sade now. The pri­ma­ry antag­o­nist is not a par­tic­u­lar­ly com­pli­cat­ed man, but his pup­peteer has a lot going on. Some­one made the wrong choice.

Writing retreat

Posted on by Patrick

Sure, we’ll call it that.

I’ve tak­en a week’s vaca­tion, packed my lap­top, my cam­era, and a change of clothes, and rent­ed a friend’s cab­in on a near­by lake. Writ­ing, explor­ing, and cycling by day; attempt­ing some astropho­tog­ra­phy by night.

Cur­rent sta­tus: happy.

The Once and Future King

Posted on by Patrick

For many years I fobbed it off, since it was fan­ta­sy, and I was for a long time a snob about such things. (Sci­ence fic­tion was good; fan­ta­sy was not. Thanks, Sir Ter­ry Pratch­ett, for final­ly show­ing me the error of my ways.)

For years I’ve meant to read it, but nev­er got around to it.

Now I’m read­ing it, and I’m won­der­ing two things:

  1. Why did­n’t I read this years ago?

  2. Why did no one ever tell me how fun­ny it is?

Cur­rent read: The Once and Future King by T. H. White.

(Well, so far it’s fun­ny, but I’m only get­ting near the end of Book I (of IV).)

Music Monday: Sol Invictus

Posted on by Patrick

I’m not sure if Music Mon­day is a thing, or if Chad­wick is just try­ing to make it a thing, but either way here’s my response (riposte?) to his Queen post.

Faith No More put out a new album ear­li­er this year, their first release in 18 years. Because I’m old, I bought the CD. Here’s a live ver­sion of the first track, “Sol Invic­tus” (which is also the title of the album). It’s a qui­et med­i­ta­tion on the loss of faith.

I believe in some­thing, I think — for some rea­son that line real­ly gets me.

Also, for those look­ing for some­thing a bit loud­er and more aggres­sive, well, the new album has you cov­ered, too.

Here’s “Super­hero”, the sec­ond track:

 

As rejection letters go…

Posted on by Patrick

…it’s a pret­ty good one.

I sub­mit­ted a short-sto­ry pro­pos­al for a forth­com­ing anthol­o­gy in hon­our of Sir Ter­ry Pratch­ett. I knew going in that it was a long shot — they’re look­ing for humor­ous writ­ing, and the sto­ry I pro­posed is about a 9‑year-old child deal­ing with his father’s can­cer diag­no­sis — so I was­n’t ter­ri­bly1 surprised.

From the rejec­tion let­ter2 itself:

The rea­son we didn’t select your work on this occa­sion was that

  • It did­n’t quite have the humor­ous char­ac­ter­is­tics we’re look­ing for.

  • The sam­ple was occa­sion­al­ly a lit­tle con­fus­ing.3

  • We both enjoyed your sto­ry, and it was a close call as far as sub­mis­sions went.

  • Please don’t judo us for the rejec­tion, and best of luck in your future writ­ing projects.

Please under­stand that while your mate­r­i­al does not fit the bill for our cur­rent project, we encour­age you to con­tin­ue writ­ing, and wish you the best of luck in future. 

So… I will con­tin­ue with this lit­tle tale, and find a new mar­ket for it. (Any­one inter­est­ed? It’s about the col­li­sion of fan­ta­sy worlds and real-life pain.)

 

  1. Ini­tial­ly I wrote real­ly here, but I recent­ly went over this list with my appren­tices, and maybe I should try to prac­tice what I preach. ↩
  2. Well, email. ↩
  3. My dar­ling wife, read­ing over my shoul­der, said, “See? That’s what I keep say­ing too!” ↩

Short fantasies

Posted on by Patrick

There’s an arti­cle in The Guardian by one Natasha Pul­ley which posits that prop­er fan­ta­sy world-build­ing can’t be accom­plished in a short sto­ry, and that’s why so many fan­ta­sy nov­els these days are a) hefty and b) con­tin­ued in mul­ti-vol­ume series.

I offer the fol­low­ing counterpoints:

  • the short fan­tasies of Michael Swan­wick (for exam­ple, “The Drag­on Line” or “Radio Waves”)

  • the very exis­tence of the Mag­a­zine of Fan­ta­sy and Sci­ence Fiction

  • …and Beneath Cease­less Skies

  • …and Fan­ta­sy Faction

  • …and so forth.

Action scenes

Posted on by Patrick

Ear­li­er this week I read an arti­cle on io9 about why you should­n’t write action scenes, an arti­cle aimed at screen­writ­ers, espe­cial­ly those mak­ing big-bud­get action movies. Then this after­noon, I went to see one of the biggest action films cur­rent­ly in the­atres: Avengers: Age of Ultron.

From the article:

You don’t do an action sequence for the sake of doing a damn action sequence — you do an action sequence because it’s a new or more effec­tive way to advance your char­ac­ter or story. 

Ultron fea­tured a lot — a lot — of action sequences. The bulk of them, to my eye, were action for the sake of action. A few of them — the mass fight at the start, for exam­ple — fea­tured some char­ac­ter build­ing. Among oth­er things, it estab­lished the team as an actu­al, cohe­sive team, and it showed the start of the Widow/Hulk sto­ry­line. But a lot of the lat­er action sequences were there, it seemed, to Make Things Explode. More than once I found myself won­der­ing when they were going to get back to the sto­ry. (That, or try­ing to cal­cu­late just how much mon­ey Stark’s rebuild­ing fund must burn through in a year. It’s got to be a lot.)

This is not to say I did­n’t enjoy the movie. I liked it. It was a pleas­ant diver­sion. For a big stu­pid fun movie, it was decent­ly smart (though the whole plot hinged on a cou­ple of super­ge­nius sci­en­tists mak­ing some pret­ty bone­head­ed decisions).

Once more, quot­ing from the article:

Don’t write action sequences. Write sus­pense sequences that require action to resolve. 

We’ll call Ultron a par­tial suc­cess there. Here’s hop­ing that the next film I see — slat­ed to be Mad Max: Fury Road1 — does as well or better.

Update: I watched Mad Max: Fury Road on the hol­i­day Mon­day. Even though the movie is one pro­tract­ed action scene (or maybe it’s more like a dozen or so action scenes, linked togeth­er with brief paus­es so the audi­ence can catch their col­lec­tive breath), it had more char­ac­ter devel­op­ment and sense of sto­ry than Avengers: Age of Ultron. So that’s a win.

  1. I appear to have a thing for com­mas2 colons in movie titles. ↩
  2. Typo. Gah! ↩

Daily SF: “Person to Person”

Posted on by Patrick

Update: Well, today’s the day. “Per­son to Per­son” is now up on DSF’s site.

On May 18th, my short sto­ry “Per­son to Per­son” will appear in Dai­ly Sci­ence Fic­tion. When it’s post­ed, I’ll be sure to add a link to his post.

Here’s a teaser:

Jake called from Heav­en again.

That’s the first line, and it just came to me, a gift from on high1, and I knew I had to use it. I spent some time decid­ing whether I meant it lit­er­al­ly or not; once that was set­tled, the sto­ry essen­tial­ly wrote itself (which is in itself anoth­er gift).

  1. cf. “Res­ur­rec­tion Radio” and the long-ges­tat­ing Every­thing that Nev­er Hap­pened. ↩