The Putty-Theory of World Building

As a teenager, I attended a local day-camp for writers with several friends in what would turn out to be my first creative writing workshop ... workshop-ish. The lead instructor was perplexed (and yet fascinated) as to why my three friends and I all wanted to write fantasy, only occasionally dabbling in realism. None of the other workshoppers dallied across genres that summer, and he'd never seen teens so adamant about fantasy fiction. (Note: this was the universe pre-Harry Potter.)

We told him that the fiction we enjoyed reading the most was fantastic in nature, but this answer didn't appease him as we all admittedly read across many genres

It wasn't until I told him why fantasy was, at the time, easier for me to write that he seemed enlightened. At sixteen, I had (perhaps) half-a-clue as to why people behaved the way they did. Oh, I was engaged in social groups, but half the time I wasn't able to predict how I would react in a situation let alone how other people would. I didn't understand fully what motivated people or how they expressed those emotions, but I cared about getting it right in my fiction. And I just wasn't able to. But when I wrote second-world fantasy, I  could make up some cultural/magical reason for my character's behavior. Having a malleable world let me fill plot holes with fantasy putty.

I've since come to what I hope is a more sophisticated understanding of plotting and world building than I had at sixteen, but the putty or plaster-and-paint-over of fantasy writing was necessary to keeping me writing for years as I came to understand better how humans worked and how the adult world worked. I suppose I could have solved the same problem by setting all my stories in a high school, but that approach brought its own risks (and still does): anytime you write about a setting that too closely resembles your day-to-day life, people assume that you're writing about yourself / people you know. Getting caught in such a situation in high school can be the end of the world. Post-high school it's still pretty damn annoying.

Recently, a discussion came up about which genre was more "freeing" for a writer, science fiction or fantasy. As in, in which of these speculative sub-sets does a writer have more freedom to "just make stuff up." The initial question was posed with a predisposition toward sci-fi as freer, which given my experience, struck me as a goose of strange feathers: I would have never been able to use fantasy as putty if it hadn't been freeing.

As as teen, I also tried writing sci-fi, but like urban fantasy, sci-fi rests on the presupposition that our current society has developed into the story's society. So I'd still have to understand people to build the story. Unless the story was full of aliens, then rock on. But for fantasy set in a secondary world, even if it was pseudo-medieval, it was never actually "earth," so I could wend as I wanted.

Classic (i.e. mid-century) science fiction was open to a lot more possibilities. Recent trends in sci-fi suggest that it should be bound by known physics ... which has led us to lots of post-apocalyptic Earth-based stories since so many scientists believe that faster-than-light travel was impossible (although that opinion might be changing), so we couldn't have space operas or alien encounters (the odds of humanoid life developing independently on another planet are ... minuscule), or space federations or Death Stars, or ray guns, or living ships ... in short, it got serious about its science, which curtailed the freedom of writing sci-fi while sucking the fun out of reading it.

Similarly, there's been a movement in second-world fantasy fiction to make the worlds more rule-based and harshly criticize any novels that don't make rigid physics-like rules for their worlds. Destroying the freedom of bending fantasy into any shape you want and -- to make a personal appraisal -- giving us fantasy novels like Game of Thrones which has a pseudo-medieval setting but very, very few traces of magic and speculative wonder in it. And what magic there is, is disapprovingly scrutinized.

Anecdote: I once heard that a reader, upon meeting George RR Martin, questioned him on why he had a giant wall of ice in his novel as it was physically impossible. GRRM (not pleased by the question) responded, "it's magic."

Personally, I think it's a question GRRM set himself up for by having a world that was so rule based, so seemingly real that the presence of magic sat with the reader as ... odd.

But the notion that science fiction should be bound by physics and fantasy should be bound by a rule system as rigorous and rigid as physics is only one school of thought.

There's another school of thought out there that writers should reclaim the fun and freedom of science fiction and fantasy. That says let magic be magical, not so rigorously studied and understood that there could be a Wikipedia page on it. See N. K. Jemisin's beautiful piece where she asks "Why Does Magic Have to Make Sense? A piece she opens with the Arthur C. Clarke quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." There's a revival of this fun and freeing fiction going on. I feel it's more noticeable in science fiction as editors and writers take a stand against the dark depressing overtones and produce works like Far Orbit: Speculative Space Adventures, which is coming out in spring 2014.

I say hurrah! to putting the fun and freedom, the mystery and magic, the awe and wonder back into science fiction and fantasy. A novel should, of course, always make sense, but I say that having a malleable world is a beautiful thing, and so long as a writer is willing to sand and paint after they've plastered some strange magic into their world, then bravo!, it need not be one continuous, unblemished piece of drywall. Why take some beautiful, wondrous, unexplained but unblemished creation like an energy field created by all living things that surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together ... then go and kill the wonder and restrict its freedom by quantifying it into a threshold number of midichlorians?

Top photo credit: "Students' notice board, 1973," LSE Library via Flickr.

Market Monday: Speculative Coffee Reprints

Listing: COFFEE: 20 Speculative tales of the fantastic

Each story must somehow involve coffee as a major plot element. It’s not enough if an unrelated story is set in a coffee shop. I will also consider a few TEA stories as well. These stories must feature an element of the fantastic (fantasy, SF, light horror). No literary fiction please.

For the moment, I will only consider reprints. If you published a story that you feel might fit the theme, please e-mail it to me at ufopublishing at gmail dot com. Please include information as to where and when it was first published, and confirm that the rights have reverted to you.

The Next Doctor

Matt Smith is officially slated to leave Doctor Who during the 2013 Christmas special -- now I'd heard this news as likely coming from credible sources (namely the way that the show's creators/writers/producers were phrasing the way the talked about the future of the show) but people kept telling me it was "just a rumor," "allegedly leaving," "don't believe it."

Regardless of the naysayers, I trusted my own ears and intellect  -- it's been a four year run, after all. Consequently, I've had some months to think about my top choices for which actors I'd like to see as The Next Doctor.

** Although, I should note that in the best of all possible worlds, the Doctor re-regenerates back into David Tennant. Just saying. **

Paging doctor cranky-pants
English actor Hugh Laurie, best known to Americans for his dramatic role in House M.D. We're already used to seeing him as a cranky, eccentric, meddling, lying, smartest-man-in-the-room doctor. Why not upgrade to being the Doctor?

(Note: I would probably pee my pants if this absolutely awesome idea came to fruition.)

Laurie is an amazing actor -- watching the wheels in his head turn (his characters' heads, to be exact), is fascinating. It would be so much fun to see him in an action-ish role. Lot's of running in Doctor Who, you know. But it would be beyond fun to see the Doctor with the cynical-romantic edge that Hugh Laurie portrays so well.


Am I a ginger?
The Doctor's always wanted to be a ginger, why not let him? And here I turn to suggest a former member of the Harry Potter cast -- but not one of the leads. Puhleeze. Can't imagine Ron, Harry, or Hermione stepping from one iconic British spec fic lead into another -- my little brain would explode. Although to be honest, just about all of England's finest actors and actresses have played in Harry Potter at one time or another.

I suggest for the role of the Doctor, Domhnall Gleeson who played Bill Weasley. A redhead and an Irish actor -- does that DQ him? We've had Scottish actors play Who after all. I have to admit that I'm an ignorant American when it comes to the sometimes prickly nature of English-Scottish-Irish-Welsh cultural overlap.

But how can we let such notions stand in our way when there are already movies stills of Domhnall Gleeson like this one that could come from just about any episode of Who? Puts you in mind of William Hartnell, no?

I'm a girl!
Every time the public scents a regeneration in the air, the question becomes when will everyone's favorite Time Lord appear as a Time Lady? A prospect reanimated not that long ago in the episode "The Doctor's Wife" when the 11th Doctor mentioned a particular tattoo a Time Lord friend of his got every regeneration -- whether he regenerated as male or female.

My top actress pick -- just for its timey wimey impossibilities -- would be Georgia Moffett. How awesome would it be to have the actress daughter of the 5th Doctor (Peter Davison) and the wife of the 10th Doctor (David Tennant) play the 12th Doctor? Oh yes, wibbly wobbly timey wimey goo indeed.

Alas, that seems unlikely to happen as she's already played Jenny, the Doctor's cloned daughter, and the writers of Doctor Who prefer to make sense of actors who reappear -- even going so far as to have characters take a time out while trying to save the universe from imminent destruction to explain why the Reboot Season 1 Episode 2 actress Eve Myles appears as part of the Torchwood team (a Welsh family with deep roots, apparently). Other actresses that reappear in unrelated episodes get entire story lines to explain themselves (see: Impossible Girl).

So Georgia Moffett appears to be an unreasonable addition to my list, but maybe her adorable son will one day take up acting.

Let me get sidetracked for a second: dangling story line here people! The Doctor's cloned daughter is still out there! Someone! Write an episode, or five, about that! Please!

In all seriousness though, what about Jennifer Ehle? An English-American actress I'm most familiar with for her roles in Pride and Prejudice (BBC version) and The King's Speech. Narratively speaking, I think that if the Doctor were to regenerate as a woman, she would need to not be a barely legal hot young thang, she would need to be a bit more mature in order to deal with all the bits and people of her past ... including her dead wife.

That's the shortlist. I'll be waiting with bated breath this Christmas to see just what the heck happens on screen. I might cry. Well, there might be tearing up. Gotta admit that I'm not likely to shed the tears I did when Tennant uttered the line "I don't want to go."

And if, for any reason, the Doctor Who production team wants to hire me to help write for the show, or cast actors, or shine Dalek chrome tops -- call me.

Ad of the Week

This may be the best campaign I've seen all year: GE's "Agent of Good."

Dear Impossible Girl,

We've solved your existence. More or less. Now I'm half-certain that I must go and rewatch the past half-season. How am I supposed to divine the emotional thread of these things if I don't line them up end to end to analyze? This whole one-every-week thing is a nice way to watch TV, but nice apparently doesn't do it for me. I must be immersed.

And yes, I'm also the kind of person who, when I get a good novel,  will stay up all night to finish it.

My thoughts on season seven part two (without divulging spoilers):

We had an over arching question -- how is the Impossible Girl possible? -- which we answered in the final episode of the season. Not to say that there aren't going to be more impossible attributes to her existence, but we did learn her origin. But we really didn't chip away at that question except in the very final episode. Personally, I was hoping for more hints, I was hoping to chip away the way we did when we got to see Rose Tyler calling out to the Doctor in her failed attempts to punch through dimensions, then her discussion with Donna, eventually heralding her actually punching through dimensions.

The end of season seven poses loads of new questions, all of which make me very excited for season eight. Of course the existence of Clara as posed by the season seven Christmas special made me very excited and well ... it sort of panned out. The final two episodes were great. The stuff in the middle of the season? ... I guess every season needs filler. Like that episode with Rose and the 10th Doctor about the support group that got assimilated into the alien's body fat. Yeah, could have done without that one too.

When people raved about Neil Gaiman's "The Doctor's Wife" a few seasons ago I raised an eyebrow -- but Mr. Gaiman has redeemed and outdone himself with "Nightmare in Silver." Not only has he upgraded Cybermen back into the realm of scary but he gives as a brilliant statement from the Cyber Planner: (to paraphrase) you may have erased yourself from history, Doctor, but there's much to be learned from the shape of the hole you've made. 

Now that's cool.

We finally get sense made of the stupid leaf. The leaf was cool when it was in her book. It was stupid when it was fed to a giant planet-ish vampire. Now, come the end of the season, we understand the leaf's importance ... but it was still stupid in episode two. A bit like Rose Tyler using Bad Wolf to keep herself from burning up in the second episode then sitting on it until the finale when she realizes what it means. Although in this case I guess she was always supposed to have known what it meant, we just weren't really privy to an understanding of that information? Maybe? I feel like I'm reaching here.

Two other interesting revelations which I'm still teasing out -- and since these do have spoilers, I'm putting a cut, which you'll have to click on to read more ... unless you came to this page via direct link, in which case: ahoy! spoilers ahead!

Ad of the Week

Battle of the two Spocks.

A Whovian Problem: Old men, young men, and decorative vegetables.

We've entered into a season seven (part two) Doctor Who problem which either qualifies as meta sci-fi, or the show and its production have been sucked into the Twilight Zone without its knowledge. Which is, in fact, a meta plot. So I guess that first sentence isn't so much a statement of this or that but more of a this or this non-option.

First problem: In the first few episodes of season 7.2, Clara, the current companion, comes across as more Doctor-ish than the Doctor himself. As if she's the timelord. Or as if she's draining him of his Doctor-ish mojo and his portrayal is becoming that of ... the companion.*

I told you it was very meta.

Clara is bright, witty, spunky. She delivers quick intelligent banter. And while her statements don't necessarily possess all the knowledge of centuries spent traveling the universe in an impossible time machine, she is always intelligent. Sometimes more intelligent than the Doctor. Clara also got to save the day in her first off-earth adventure ("Rings of Akhenaten") in a way that most of the other companions had to earn -- with the possible exception of Amy Pond in "The Beast Below"; although that was more of a save-the-day by gut instinct and the quick, last minute push of a button, whereas Clara had this whole drawn out speech proceeding her high-concept saving-of-the-day. All the other companions had to work up to that sort of Doctorish-understanding of how to save the universe, which makes Clara ... ahead of the game?

Unlike some past companions, Clara doesn't ask dumb questions or jump to mundane conclusions. Where Rose, Donna, and even uber-educated uppermiddleclass Dr. Martha Jones blundered into things in a very modern earth-centric human way, Clara ... doesn't.

Will this become an important aspect of her Impossible Girl conundrum? I sure as hell hope so because otherwise it's just dragging down my viewing experience. Clara's the Doctor, and the Doctor is ... old.

The character of the Doctor in season seven part two, is becoming an old man. But he's a thousand years-old, of course he's an old man! But he was so sprightly and spry when he was a mere 900 years-old, and now he's acting like when we first met him back when he was still traveling with his granddaughter Susan!

Don't think too hard on the problem of the older character now seeming older like he did when he was much much younger -- I tried and all I ended up doing was giving myself ice-cream-style brain freeze. But consider this:

The first few actors to portray Doctor Who played the character as if he were an old man. A weird old man, yes.  But it wasn't until a few actors later that the Doctor gained a youthful energy.

Let me explain. No there is too much. Let me sum up.**

Anyone else see the pilot of Defiance and think, 'Hey, Syfy just repurposed Eureka'?

Consider this: A new guy traveling with his angry teenage daughter arrives in town after losing his car. He strikes up a friendly relationship with the current sheriff based on one's admiration of the other. The town bosslady, however, is not so keen on him staying in town. Bosslady is hot and the new guy obviously has a thing for her, but he's not going to act on it because he's getting out of dodge as soon as his vehicle situation is remedied. But as it turns out, he has the sort of street smarts that make him useful in solving the town's problems -- and manage to alienate him in the eyes of the male tycoon. He solves the town's crisis (well, one of the town's crises), then leaves with his daughter only to return without her before the end of the episode. Don't worry, she'll be back. And by the end of the pilot, the new guy has been installed as town law man after an unfortunate incident rendered the former sheriff incapacitated.

Mmmhmm. It's true: The Eureka pilot episode is the Defiance pilot episode.

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Who's Your Friend?

No sooner had I posted what I've now come to think of as my Love Letter to Doctor Who, then my friends and acquaintances already of Who-fandom welcomed me with open arms and told me that now that I've declared citizenship, it was time to pick my favorite Doctor, favorite companion, and favorite villain. I balked. But after careful consideration of Doctors 8-11 ... I can't pick a favorite Doctor, not yet at least. But I can tell you what I think of all the companions from that time frame.

My definition of "Doctor's companion" may be looser than some's. I've expanded it to one who travels on the Tardis through time and/or space and either chooses to travel or embraces the journey. This latter qualification is the difference between Rose's mother making the list or not. I've decided not. Jackie Tyler never really embraces the journey. She boards the Tardis mainly for the purpose or getting her daughter back or getting the hell back home. While some of the list below are Tardis-kidnapped like Jackie occasionally was, they eventually got into the spirit of the thing, accepting, learning, and growing from the experience. Or they just wantonly hitched a ride with an alien. Either way, here are my top ten companions from Doctors 8-11 in descending order.

[contains spoilers through season six, and mild season sever spoilers -- I've stayed away from the biggies]

10. Dr. Grace Holloway. Welcome to 1999 via 1996. The smart, moral, cultured, disciplined, career driven woman who has a gorgeous if foppish boyfriend who can't come to terms with her demanding career cutting into their relationship. It's a very early-to-mid-1990s relationship crisis. Not to mention the whole thing feels like a giant tipping of the hat to the first two films in the Terminator franchise. But Dr. Holloway is great from a feminist point of view: she's not only smart and powerful, when the hospital head honcho says go against your integrity and cover this up she tells him stick it up your ass, and quits. Which is nice plot-wise because it frees her up for an adventure with a rather uninteresting Doctor. But Dr. Grace first falls for the Doctor against what would seem to be her better judgment only to have rationality rear its head and by the time she believes again she's become a bit of a worry wort. Terribly hard to like. Sorry Dr. Grace Holloway, you're the bottom of my list.

9. River Song. I could not get into the River Song story line. In the library episodes when she first appears, River Song presented a fascinating conundrum -- intersecting timelines that never meet in order. Wait, isn't that the plot of The Time Traveler's Wife? In this case, The Time Traveler's Time Traveling Wife? Theoretically  I love the concept of two people falling in love with each other because when they met the other, the other was already in love with them. And I think if we'd seen the chronology from River's point of view, I would have enjoyed it the way I did Daughter of the Blood from Anne Bishop's The Black Jewels trilogy. But I never found a way to enter into this story line and let it sweep me away. River and the Doctor bickering like a married couple was charming, but the apparent age gap between the actors threw me -- what can I say, Time Lords screw with my perception of who is an appropriate couple.

8. Sarah Jane Smith. I don't dislike Sarah Jane, she's just not up to snuff with my third wave feminist notions. Oh yes, she's the intrepid explorer who doesn't want to stay safe or stay home -- Well done, Sarah Jane. Well done. -- but when she runs smack dab into daleks, she's a bit too quick to throw her arms over her eyes and scream like a damsel in distress. When Sarah Jane talks to Rose in season two, we get the impression that the Doctor leaving Sarah Jane ruined her life; she couldn't ever get back to "normal," because she didn't want to and she didn't know how. While it appears that The Sarah Jane Adventures portray a further tale where she reclaims much of what she "lost," I still dislike the feeling I get that the character thinks it's been "taken away from her," and frankly, I don't do victims.

7. Amy and Rory Pond. The Ponds, as we come to think of them over season six, are the ones who waited. Two of Amy's voyages are among my all time Doctor Who favorites because they feel like Classic-Who to me: "The Beast Below" and "Vincent and the Doctor." But I could forget all of season six without regret. From a plot or gender-theory point of view, the Doctor traveling with a married couple is a fun new take. Doctor-as-third-wheel is an interesting bit although the uber-nerdy Matt Smith portrayal may take this overboard. Their attempts to reconcile youthful travels-with-the-Doctor with the "average" life of the settled 21st century earthling is endearing, and very much a contemporary struggle of interest. Although personally speaking, there are other struggles I find more emotionally intriguing (and emotionally intriguing trumps intellectually intriguing any day) such as Rory, initially a pushover, managing to find his own ground to stand on, and both Rory and Amy coming to recognize the other as strong and just as much in love as the other. Amy-the-little-girl and the Doctor is a heart-wrenching tale, one that is seemingly an absent-father tale where the father figure spends the rest of her life trying to make it up to her. In the end, he can't save Amy-the-woman, but at least he has another chance to save Amy-the-little-girl. Someone very old and very kind, the last of his species, who can't stand to see children cry. I respect the Ponds, but I never came to love them as more than a lens through which to view the Doctor.

6. Wilfred Mott. Donna Noble's grandfather just about breaks my heart (in a good way) every time he appears on screen. From the first time we meet him, conversing with Donna around the telescope he has pointed to the sky, to the moment Donna does her blue-box-flyover, to Wilfred's discussion with the Doctor on what it is to be an old man, to the moment the Doctor leaves Donna and Wilfred tells the Doctor that no matter what, he'll wave up at the sky every night, for him and for Donna, so that the Doctor doesn't have to be alone. Wilfred is a fabulous foil to the Doctor; we often forget that the Doctor is an old man due to his youthful face, but next to Wilfred, we realize how similar the two are. They're seen a great deal of the world and feel it keenly, although Wilfred, unlike the Doctor, is actually able to express those feelings.

5. Captain Jack Harkness. You're never sure whether to love Jack or be suspicious of him. The Doctor is suspicious, and with good reason -- Jack's pulling a con when we first meet him. But Jack is rather lovable. An incorrigible flirt ("Jack stop flirting." / "I was just saying hello." / "For you that's flirting.") and he's just as quick with the witty line as the Doctor, he's great fun to be around, and not at all hard on the eyes. We get to see more of his backstory in Torchwood but like some other characters, we get to see his eventual death before we ever see his beginning. Crossed timelines and all that. It's also easy to love Jack because, like Martha, Jack loves the brokenhearted Doctor. Some of my favorite moments are when Jack and Martha are commiserating about men who don't even think to look at them because they're still in love with some blonde.

Doctor What? Doctor Who?

I'm neck deep in my Doctor Who indoctrination period, so please pardon my rabid descent into unbridled fandom. I started with the Ninth Doctor and have not yet caught up to the newest Doctor. Yet I'm both regressing and progressing in terms of timeline ... which, coincidentally, feels very situation appropriate. Like Tardis via DVDs.

My father and I periodically exchange chatty phone calls. On Tuesday evening, I told him, "I've started watching Doctor Who."

He laughed. "Oh, really? I thought that would be too campy for you."

I should take this moment to note that my dad and I are both sci-fi/fantasy fans. I stole his Anne McCaffery and Robert Heinlein. We sat on the same couch every week to see the new FarScape episodes as they came out while I was a teen.

"But it's got this great narrative storyline." I said. Each season is downright brilliant in its structure and foreshadowing which draws to an inevitable yet surprising conclusion -- exactly what good fiction should do. "And I'm willing to forgive the campy aliens and cyborgs since I understand that they're based off a storyline born out of 1960s special effects creations." A lesson Star Wars could use (or one the Who-reboot producers derived from the utter patheticness of Star Wars I-III). 

Yet, it's both more and less than that.

Doctor Who is humor and levity. There's that fight to overcome odds. There's the notion that the most ordinary and idiotic and absurd among us, those with menial jobs, and too much eyeshadow, and not enough self-worth can save the universe. A brilliant message that ordinary humans are fabulous creatures. Brilliant. 

Several years ago, I unknowingly caught the latter half of one of the Christmas specials on TV. With no Whovian knowledge -- no campy effect background info or larger-message notions -- I could hardly stand watching Voyage of the Damned. And to be honest, it's not the best of the Who-verse. Not by a long shot. Although, as absurd as a giant spaceliner named Titanic was, I flipped back to the channel as many times as I flipped away. Even then I wanted to know what would happened. But arriving at it now, via a greater understanding of the mythos, I gladly watched the whole thing end to end. Not just because I know the tales of the mythos and therefore the set up and plot forms a better sort of sense in my mind, but because I have finally learned to embrace the inherent message in Doctor Who:

It's not just about ordinary people saving the world, although that is a great big giant wondrous part of it. It's about not taking yourself too seriously and yet fighting for everything that is right and important and worthwhile. That flourish and verbosity are not bad things. That shoot first and ask questions later is a bad policy. That even the malicious deserve a chance to change. That allowing someone to change their mind is a kindness, not a weakness. That we are nothing but the sum of our choices, a sum that is always changeable.

But I think I got carried away.

I just meant to say that I've previously had an issue with taking myself too seriously for my own good. It's hard to laugh at yourself if you wrapped up in (the possibility of) achieving accomplishment, accolades, recognition and advancement. Too focused on facts and figures and praise.

The new Doctor Who may have started airing seven years ago, but I wasn't ready for the message back then. But now I'm finally ready for the Doctor's visit.

Odyssey Writing Workshop Application Time

It's that time of year again! Odyssey Writing Workshop (which I continue to highly recommend) is accepting applications for the summer 2013 workshop session. They take only 16 students per summer for a six week, five-day-a-week workshop, lecture, and writing experience that's unlike any other. I'm both an Odyssey graduate and an MFA grad; and in many ways, Odyssey was a more useful experience in regard to my writing -- it was definitely more personalized, more intense, more ripe for having personal breakthroughs, and understanding my genre.

This year there's even some full and partial scholarships to be scored for the program.

Odyssey 2013 announcement:

Make a quantum leap in your writing this summer! The Odyssey Writing Workshop for fantasy, science fiction, and horror writers will run from June 10 to July 19 in Manchester, NH. Participate in the program that has led 58% of graduates to professional publication, with their work appearing in top magazines and published by major publishing houses. Challenge yourself and pack two years of learning into six weeks of intense work. Four-hour classes five days a week, an advanced curriculum, daily writing and critiquing assignments, weekly stories/chapters due, in-depth feedback on your work, personal guidance from Jeanne Cavelos, former senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell and winner of the World Fantasy Award, and guests Nancy Holder, Holly Black, Adam-Troy Castro, Jack Ketchum, Patricia Bray, and Sheila Williams. The early action application deadline is January 31, and regular application deadline is April 8. Four scholarships and one work/study position are available. Read more here: http://www.sff.net/odyssey/workshop.html

A Year in Reading, 2012 Edition

For the past couple of years, I've posted my end of year reading summary. It's not necessarily books published only in 2012, it's simply what I've read in 2012. It's not even the best of what I've read in 2012. It's simply a reading retrospective with a few words about each. Since I've read about 75 books or more this year, this list will be a bit more summary than in previous years. (Which will probably be a good thing because in 2011 I don't believe I finished my retrospective — oh my!)

The most awesome book series I read in 2012: Grave Witch by Kaylana Price (Series title: Alex Craft, Grave Witch, Grave Dance, Grave Memory). These are great, fascinating, urban fantasy novels featuring a witch PI in a world that's not really comfortable with the overt magic it's soaked in. The fae are omnipresent, but humans would rather believe the glamour they see than reconcile the creature beneath — ditto for the witch-made charms. Top that off with the personal struggles of Alex Craft — she's estranged from her family, barely making rent, and the only thing she's good at monetizing is her Grave Sight, an ability that leaves her night blind and sometimes worse. Oh, and there's a love triangle that gets more and more and more tangled as the series continues. The closer Alex Craft gets to accepting a relationship, the more alone she finds herself.

I actually read these books before I read Kim Harrison's The Hollows/Rachel Morgan series (more on that later) but once I had, I found Grave Witch extremely similar yet much more mature in world and premise. The Grave Witch world and character development leaps into the arena that the world of the Hollows only achieves in books six and on.

Favorite YA series of the year: I was surprised to fall in love with the YA sci-fi Cold Awakening Trilogy by Robin Wasserman this year. In this not-too-far-future dystopia, a rich, spoiled, self-centered teen ends up in a near-fatal accident that leaves her “skinned” — her brain is sliced, scanned, and uploaded into a synthetic body. I have a problem with whiny teenage characters (even if the whining is realistic) but the fascinating science and technology milieu pulled me through Frozen, and once we got into the larger social and political issues of Shattered and Torn, I found myself staying up way past my bedtime to gobble up this series.

Series that made me gain over 5 lbs. in a month: I read Janet Evanovich's One for the Money because the movie looked cute. Truth. I loved this book and snapped up Two for the Dough, Three to Get Deadly, Four to Score ... all the way through Fearless Fourteen before I stopped because I realized they were all awesome, but they were all the same. I have no doubt I'll go back and visit the Berg and the Plum family, Morelli, Ranger, and Stephanie Plum's inexplicable ability to destroy cars and read through the latest Notorious Nineteen. But I had to stop reading and take a break. Take a breath. Stop my constant reading about doughnuts, fried chicken, and pot roast — a devastating trio to have on the brain in the middle of winter.

Although the endless pot roast discussion did lead me to find a great, easy, pot roast recipe for crock pot: trim roast, place in a crock pot that's been lightly coated in PAM (for clean up), and then for every 2.5 lbs. of roast add one can cream of mushroom soup and a half-packet of powdered onion soup. Cook on low for eight hours. Don't add water! The roast will create its own gravy from this concoction. And it comes out super tender. The pot roast wasn't as debilitating a factor in my Evanovich inspired weight gain, it was more the doughnuts and fried chicken cravings that did me in.

So later, when I came across The Haunted Housewives of Allister, Alabama by Susan Abel Sullivan, I immediately recognized the protagonist Cleo Tidwell as a Southern, thrice-married Stephanie Plum. The humor's spot on, the crazy-but-lovable family is there, the zany problems that emerge in the course of solving the mystery and staying alive in the process — all the things that made Janet Evanovich's novels something which I felt like I read without breathing, were there in deep fried package from Susan Abel Sullivan. I highly recommend The Haunted Housewives of Allister, Alabama to anyone who's read and enjoyed One for the Money and the other Stephanie Plum mysteries.

The series with the devastating emotional roller coaster: JC Andrijeski's Allie's War, Book Four Shadow. I've posted before about this series. Everything I know about fiction tells me this series shouldn't work, yet oh-baby does it work. I read the first three in a madcap dash then waited for book four — a whopping 200,000+ words in length — and kept biding my time to start it because these books are an emotional roller coaster. I have a copy of book five, Knight, but every time I go to start it, I take a deep breath and ask myself are you ready for this? So far, I've not been prepared. Part near-future dystopia with some aspects of a tech thriller, part paranormal romance. These books are — and this doesn't often get said about PNR — epic.

Holy hell, how did I manage to ignore this series this long? Actually, I know how. Book one of Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan/The Hollows Novels, features cover art of a half-naked red head with handcuffs dangling off the belt loop of her hip hugging leather pants. Excuse me? You want me to believe your urban fantasy is a strong ass kicking chick when she's depicted wearing a bandeau bikini top on the streets of Cincinnati? Yep. That's the idea. Except the funny part about this depiction (and my subsequent reaction to it) is that Kim Harrison actually writes the character Rachel Morgan as dressing in precisely this fashion ... and then having people try to proposition her because they think she's a hooker. Oops! In later books in the series, Rachel's vampire friends and roommate try repeatedly to class her up. Her taste level is constantly in question and Rachel's not thrilled to hear it. So I zipped on through this great nine book series (book ten out this spring) starting with Dead Witch Walking of the bikini top infamy, then up through The Outlaw Demon Wails before I took a break from the series for a bit. Even then I caught myself saying "crap on toast" anytime something went wrong in my life.

After (not a spoiler) one of the main characters dies, Rachel loses a sense of focus, and I lost a bit of my interest. But after reading a half-dozen other novels by other writers, I started to wonder what happened next. So I happily turned back to the series and cruised on through to Pale Demon. These more recent titles bring Trent back more interestingly into the picture and I actually loved the cross-country road trip which allowed us to see just how different this post-genetic-crisis world is from our own — not something we were really able to see in the previous urban Cincinnati and touristy Mackinac locations. I'm looking forward to Ever After coming out January 22, 2013.

Because fairy tales are pretty. Opal is a YA fantasy by Kristina Wojtaszek that features multiple, nested fairy tales (some of which you'll recognize) within a fantasy world. The prose is lyrical and rich. Fans of Patricia McKillip take note of this new voice in the world of fantasy and fairy tale retellings.

Books I re-read. Elizabeth Vaughn's Warprize is just an absolutely stellar example of romantic fantasy (second-world setting). The rest of the books in the trilogy don't live up to the awesomeness of this first installment. I've not read the further books set in the same world, but might yet one day.

I also re-read the Others Series by Jess Haines as Stalking the Others was coming out during summer 2012 and I could remember that I liked the series but I couldn't remember what all the rules of that particular urban fantasy world were. Hunted by the Others (book one) was just okay. It took me two years before I bothered looking around to see if there was more in the series. Books two and three get more interesting. No longer does the main character think all vampires are Evil and most werewolves are okay but really the only species you can trust are humans — sorry, but that sort of thinking in a book is boring. Anyhoodle, book three ended with a doozy of a cliffhanger: the heroine might have been changed into an otherworldly creature against her will! So I was going to relish the fourth book, damnit, and that meant re-reading, re-skimming the previous three.

Promising beginnings. Silver by Rhiannon Held is an interesting, slightly grittier, werewolf urban fantasy. The two main characters aren't your typical heroine and heroine a la paranormal romance, rather they remind me of The Fifth Element's Corbin Dallas and Leelo. (My full review of the novel can be found on NewMyths.com.) Book two, Tarnished, comes out this spring. I'm hoping this series delivers on its promising beginning.

I used to love the Katie MacAlister series with the dragons. Actual, this is her third series of books featuring the same world/characters just switching narrators. But Sparks Fly completely lost me. Maybe I skipped over the previous book, because I constantly felt like I didn't know what was going on. Maybe it'll all make sense to me if I go back and re-read all ten books...?

Another promising beginning that's petered out, is Thea Harrison's Elder Races novels. Romances set in a modern world with were-creatures that can shift into giant animals like dragons, griffons, and thunderbirds. Dragon Bound, the first in the series, was awesome. Loved it. Read Storm's Heart, the second in the series, and it was okay. Read a novella out of order that I really had no idea why I finished. Sadly, I'm done with this series that had previously shown so much promise.

Matriarchal fantasy world — a bit like Scott O'Dell meets Anne McCaffery. Shards of History by Rebecca Roland is a fresh new fantasy world where the main civilization puts one in mind of southwest Native American cultures. The heroine, Malia, finds out a truth about the hated and feared creatures that live on the fringes of their civilization, one that can save them from the dragon-riding army that's poised on the edge of the valley, waiting to kill, capture, and enslave Malia's people. Of course, if she can't get her people to believe this newly discovered truth, it'll be their destruction. Time is running out before the sky — literally — falls down on them.

A return to Jeaniene Frost. I adored the first two Cat and Bones books. Halfway to the Grave was so good it made me want to hate Jeaniene Frost for her storytelling ability coupled with her writing skills. But as the series wore on, the spin-offs and one-off novels appeared, and the vampires become and and more powerful (an annoying problem that means they have to go to extreme lengths not to have other vampires in a half-mile radius overhear their conversations), I sort of slipped away. Since Cat became a vampire, I let the series go on without me. But then along came Vlad. And more importantly, Leila. I like Leila. And I like that she's not becoming an all-powerful vampire. She doesn't know much about the vampire subculture she's been sucked into, so we get to go on the journey all over again. I'm down with that. Once Burned brought me back to the Night Huntress franchise. I look forward to Twice Tempted coming out in late-March.

Non-fiction. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is a fabulous braided narrative of Skloot's research and her research process into the life of Henrietta Lacks — the African American woman from whom HeLa research cells were derived — and her surviving family. Henrietta never knew that she was "donnating" cells, and it would be decades before her family knew that their mother's cells had been instrumental to 20th century health science, having been key to producing a functional polio vaccine among many other advances. Skloot keeps a human interest angle to her book even when she's discussing science and legal precedents. Eminently readable and jargon-lite in spite of its science rich content.

Books I picked up for free and was happy to have found! Delilah S. Dawson's Wicked as They Come is vampire, steampunk romance FTW. The dialog is quick and witty (sometimes too quick as I love a good angsty brood), the heroine is spunky and capable, and the world of Sang is fascinating. An alternate dimension where the reasons for steampunk are simple: there's magic and vampireish Bludmen so you better lace up that stiff collar and cover your neck! Not to mention the hero is equally fascinating as our tour guide through the world. I'm willing to forgive this book its trespasses because reading it was just plain fun. The teaser scene from Blud Book #2 shows us a different first person protagonist in a different city, which saddens me only because Criminy and Tish's storyline did not feel finished. I'm holding out hope for Criminy & Tish the Sequel! I've also picked up the novella in this series, The Mysterious Madam Morpho, which is a cute, brief tale of the traveling caravan show that Criminy runs. Liked it. Will likely pick up Wicked as She Wants this April. Bludbunnies — now there's something I can't get out of my head!

The Scottish historical romance, Claire Delacroix's The Beauty Bride, was a free ebook download (I think it's still free at most major retailers and is the first in Delacroix's series). I admit that I judge books by their covers, especially in the age of free and cheap ebooks, a shoddy cover is often a sign of shoddy writing within — but don't let this cover fool you! Delacroix's writing and historical research are fabulous. I believe this ebook version is a reissue of an earlier title which was published by a major publisher, and since it went out of print the author has brought it back on her own (that's my speculation at least). I didn't expect to enjoy this book as much as I did. I didn't expect to stay up reading all night only to look at the clock and say, "How the hell did it get to be 5:00 AM?" I'll likely be seeking out the rest of the series in 2013 when the historical mood strikes me.

Books I picked up for free ... and sort of wish I hadn't. Waking Up Married. Harlequin is promoting this book as the banner carrier of their new KISS line. From all the hype I expected something youthful and fresh, like if the KISS line was a dessert, it would be a crisp and sassy, low-cal dessert. With citrus. Instead I got a Diet Coke. With lime. At the very least I expected it to feel more "youthful" because that's how it's being promoted. But except for the fact that the heroine isn't in a work/family position where she's subservient to the hero (he's her boss, etc.), this felt exactly like the PRESENTS novels I used to read. The heroine has a career. Bravo. But she didn't feel any more like a modern twenty-something than any other Harlequin heroine does (Harlequin's selling point for KISS). And I happen to be something of an expert on modern twenty-somethings: I am one.

Nora Roberts. Yes, Nora Roberts is her own category of reading. Her shelves are my go-to section of the library whenever I'm feeling glum or overwhelmed by life. I know that I can escape into her worlds and that the books are always satisfactory — they'll never rock my world, but I know they'll never disappoint me either. In 2012 she wrapped up her Inn BoonsBoro trilogy with The Last Boyfriend and The Perfect Hope. The cool part about these books? A hefty component of each is running a small business (bookstore, pizzeria  bed-and-breakfast) and decorating/building the inn. So it's a bit like reading a romance and simultaneously leafing through a home fashion magazine. Still not as cool as the Bridal Quartet which was like reading a romance and leafing through a bridal magazine.

Also in the Nora Roberts category this year, I read the Key Trilogy and most of the Dreams Trilogy. The Key books involve three women helping otherworldly creatures free three women who are sort of trapped in a sleeping beauty spell and was among the more memorable of Nora Roberts stuff (although when it comes to her novels with paranormal elements, my favorite is still The Jewels of the Sun trilogy).

The unmemorable odds and ends. I picked up The Wrangler as part of a free promotion. I'd never read a western romance before. It's not likely to become my genre of choice. Marked by Elisabeth Naughton is another title that I only know I read because I wrote it down on my list of finished books. I vaguely recall something about the Greek gods. Another paranormal romance that's selling well that didn't catch my fancy. Ditto for Goblin King  and Kiss of the Goblin Prince by Shona Husk. I will give these goblin books props for choosing a more original  paranormal creature (the goblin) than the majority of casting for paranormal heroes and heroines out there.

There were other books I read in 2012. I've recently started but not finished Clean by Alex Hughes which seems promising. I can't forget to mention all the ghost stories I read in 2012, published and submitted for publication, as I worked on editing the anthology Specter Spectacular: 13 Ghostly Tales. There are books of poetry such as Jay Nicorvo's Deadbeat and the poem a day I get to open courtesy of NPR's Writer's Almanac, along with numerous short stories from Daily SF and other magazines and anthologies.

What of note have you read in 2012? 

Ad of the Week

Revolution: The Newest TV Show Worth Watching

Revolution is slowly becoming The Show of the season, in my opinion. It's certainly the best new sci-fi on television in a long time, but as a near future, dystopian, what-would-we-do-if-the-power-went-out? series, it's got appeal for the fans of westerns/historical dramas about power and fighting, fans of the Hunger Games, sci-fi enthusiasts, survivalist types who want to double check the likely methods and outcomes of the characters actions and remedies. It also has a trek-across-the-country-on-a-mission element that fantasy fans often enjoy. Sort of J.J. Abram's take on Firefly without the spaceship.

The premise is simple, yet complicated. It's fifteen years in the future -- fifteen years after the power went out completely. No electricity, no internet, no phone service, no internal combustion engines. There's a certain stability yet instability which starting the fifteen years post tragedy allows for. Those who've survived the transition to a non-powered culture, have learned how to survive in it which means a shift in how we go about doing the necessary and how we structure our society. Flashbacks to the days after the blackout feed us breadcrumbs about what happened to the world and how the characters went from mild mannered insurance adjusters to maniacal killers, etc.

Yet it's not just about the characters, there's a fabulous techno thriller mystery that underlies it all -- why did the power go out? And go out so fully and totally so that no one could start it again? That surely isn't the sort of big "oops" that caused the giant blackout that stretched from NYC to Detroit the summer of 2003. And slowly over the first six episodes of the season, we're being dropped hints which suggest that if humans turned off the power, then there has to be a way for humans to turn it back on. And there is perhaps a bigger and badder villain out there who'll make Monroe look like nothing more than an opportunist ... but now I'm getting ahead of myself.

While I love the layers upon layers, onion-feeling to the show, I also love that the it's primarily Midwestern.

Let me tell you, this is the most airtime rural Indiana's gotten on scripted prime time television since half the cast of The West Wing got stranded in a soy field courtesy of the state's former county-by-county time zone laws. (Note: Indiana stopped that strangeness not long after said episode of The West Wing aired. Coincidence?) Then again, the location makes sense. I'm not the first one to point to Gary, Indiana, as the perfect example of what happens to modern infrastructure when it's not kept up for several decades -- those Life After People shows did just that when they explored how proximity to Lake Michigan would affect a major city.

So here we are, wandering around Indiana, and Chicago, and Wisconsin, without power, without jack shit except what we can make, grow, and scavenge. In fifteen years we've gone from looters and random violence, to militias and communes. Guns still exist and work, but bullets -- the fancy, reliable kind -- are scarce. But musket balls? Those ones you can cast over a camp fire and have to be loaded with powder and a ramrod? Those are back in vogue. Of course, they're illegal for non-militia citizens to own. There's no second amendment when there's no more US Government.

The set dressing becomes its own character and proves endlessly fascinating. The pilot shows us a little village living in what was obviously once a suburb cul-de-sac. They have five sturdy, cookie cutter houses with brightly painted doors that scream, "I was bought at the Home Depot!," with backyards full of corn, and out front a Prius full of dirt for growing herbs. The interiors of homes, hotels, even the shells of amusement parks are part modern, part 19th century, part medieval. Candles and flame-filled sconces abound. The military camps in tents that look straight out of a Civil War reenactment. People carry cloudy glass flasks and plastic juice jugs. They wear cloth that looks not-quite-homespun and carry rucksacks which are distinctly modern with their zippers and seaming. The show has yet to bore me with their depiction of modified-modern convenience.

It's those rucksacks, and the fact that they're carting them, along with bedrolls and weapons, on foot, from Chicago to Philadelphia (and farther) that puts me in mind of Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried." Of O'Brien's characters, the Vietnam soldiers who knew precisely what they carried and how much each piece of it weighed because wherever they went, they humped every piece of their gear there with them.

There's also a disturbing and dramatic mortality element to Revolution, and not just in the kill-or-be-killed situations so often facing survivors of the blackout. Unlike shows like Grey's Anatomy, where the characters live through all manner of should-be-deadly injuries and usually go back to being completely freakin normal within the course of a year if not merely a few episodes, injury in Revolution is almost always fatal. There are no fancypants hospitals. There's the occasional doctor, but that doesn't mean you won't die of tetanus. Or asthma  Or infection. We've yet to hear anything of pandemic or viral or microbial illness, but it's bound to enter the plot line sooner or later. While they've not alluded to it, I'd bet that after the power went out, illness swept the country. But for now, most of the medical/mortality troubles come from characters bodily defending themselves, usually with swords -- the kind of swords with hilts that double as brass knuckles -- and that sort of thing is almost always fatal in a world without Emergency Rooms. Stomach wounds. Nasty buggers.

But there is a touch of humor and a good deal of poking at what we consider to be oh-so-important today. One of the characters tells how, before the blackout, he owned a plane -- one of the perks of getting rich while working for a place called Google.

"Google, that was a computer thing, right?" says the girl who was only seven when the blackout happened.

"It was an internet thing," he replies. Then, "Eighty million in the bank and I'd trade it all, right now, for a roll of Charmin."

Then there's the woman who, after fifteen years without power, still carries around her iPhone, because that phone was the only place where she had pictures of her kids.

The iPhone, and later the same woman's printed copy of The Wizard of Oz -- poignant for several reasons, not only was this the book she read to her children, but the character is the ultimate Dorothy, trapped a continent away from her family but no amount of wishing and heel clicking can get her home -- these are the only item we've been privileged to see in "The Things They Carried" style, but it's already proven damn powerful. I look forward to the writers further use of this narrative tool to color and define the characters.

Makes you really stop and question what we keep squirreled away on bits and bytes.

At the same time that it makes me stop and praise certain analog tendencies, it devastates me to look around my home and think about what I might have to leave if I were in the same situation -- namely all the books I'd have to leave. The thought of abandoning my books in order to carry with me necessary things like food and water is almost as disturbing as the medical regression that has made our lives so cushy. (What can I say? We all have our priorities and our soft spots.) And that doesn't even touch on my love of Charmin.

In this week's news

Cross-posted from World Weaver Press as "Books & Pieces" where I'm in charge of their weekly round-up of news and factoids.

If you enjoyed Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog there’s more Dr. Horrible in the works according to wired.com! Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion will both be returning for the sequel.

This is your brain on fiction. A New York Times article highlights recent research which shows the brain functions at a different level when reading fiction than it does when doing other types of reading. Particularly that it processes sensory details like sound and smell as if it was receiving real stimuli — all the more reason for to incorporate more and more awesome sensory details in a story!

Writer Jay Ridler gives us five reasons to love short story collections.

And speaking of short story collections, there are contests going on right now on two blogs for free copies of Susan Abel Sullivan’s first collection Cursed: Wickedly Fun Stories.  Check out Fang-tastic Books and I’m a Reader, Not a Writer to find out how to enter.

Last night, the Hunger Games movie took in an estimated $20 million just from its Midnight showing according to Publisher’s Marketplace (via). Even Weather.com's lead story is Hunger Games related this morning.

The top ten sword fight scenes  ever were  given to us by io9 this week (sci-fi and fantasy only). We have only one thing to say on the topic: My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die.

World Weaver Press answered the question this week: Just what is “speculative” fiction, anyway? 

World Weaver Press author Susan Abel Sullivan stopped by the UK-based Becky’s Barmy Book Blog to give a fun little post about first realizing that she was a humor writer. On her own blog, Susan crafted an insightful post about her early love of monster movies.

Lastly, these little robot-dudes are so cool. And supposedly Amazon is going to have a whole warehouse full of them along with Walgreens and a few other American companies that already employ the inventory-finding bots.