My Goodreads Reading Challenges, part 1: 2020

 A few years ago, the end of 2018 to be precise, I thought I would have an easier time reading and finishing many of the many, many books in my To Be Read pile. The reason was, I was no longer a full-time employee anywhere, but freelance, and given my lazy approach to finding work I thought this would mean more time to knit, more time to read, more time to Do Things that were not directly employment related. For example, I finished writing a second novel, and kept working on my third and fourth! And started cleaning out our crowded apartment of superfluous things. And pampering my plants.

As for more time to read? Once upon a time I read short stories voraciously, subscribed to all the SFF mags and bought collections and anthologies. But my tastes shifted over the years, and I began craving longer and longer stories practically to the exclusion of true short stories. The quality of available reading material had nothing to do with it. Just personal taste.

Things didn’t happen quite the way I imagined. During 2018, when I still commuted an hour each day by bus, and often spent lunch time at my desk, and we flew on lengthy trips several times, I read a lot of books. Seventy two! Same as 2017! And back in 2016 I read 77, perhaps an all-time personal best. I’ll write about those books some other time. (And yes, I’m using Goodreads to track all that.)

In 2019, I made the same modest goal of reading 50 books that I had for years past. And read 55! I blamed it on shorter bus rides, not traveling by air as much, and having generally more stuff to do.

Then…pandemic. Surely, even the distraction of having Spouse home all day working from home could not prevent me from continuing to tackle my book-reading goals head on. Surely I’d get lots of knitting done, lots of reading done. I once again set a goal of 50 books, which seemed eminently doable.

But I read only 39 full books in 2020. Many were but novellas, or even shorter. Graphic novels, with not much dialogue. I know now, that between pandemic and politics I wasn’t alone in struggling to concentrate enough to get through some very anxious periods. I thoroughly enjoyed what I read. But I worried about my aging brain, and set the same goal of 50 books for 2021. Which I missed. By a lot.

(I will report that thankfully neither I nor Spouse actually contracted Covid that year. Nor since, so far.)

2020 books included:

The Death of the Necromancer, by Martha Wells
Rogue Protocol, and Exit Strategy, and Network Effect, by Martha Wells
The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders
Paladin’s Grace, and A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, by T. Kingfisher
Life of David Hockney, by Catherine Cusset
Stormsong, and Midnight Bargain by CL Polk
Gideon the Ninth, and Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow
Beneath the Rising, by Premee Mohamed
The Haunting of Tram Car 015, by P. Djeli Clark
Color, by Victoria Finlay
The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie
Blackfish City, by Sam J. Miller
The Empire of Gold, by SA Chakraborty
The Vinyl Detective: Low Action, by Andrew Cartmel
Rag and Bone, and Slippery Creatures, by KJ Charles
Storm of Locusts, by Rebecca Roanhorse
The House of Sundering Flames, and Of Dragons Feasts and Murders, by Aliette de Bodard
Solutions and Other Problems, by Allie Brosh
A Pocketful of Lodestones, by Elizabeth Crowens
The Morning of the Magicians, by Louis Pauwels
Daemon Voices, by Philip Pullman
The Physicians of Vilnoc, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Girl Genius: Queens and Pirates, by Phil & Kaja Foglio

(I am omitting several things I read mostly for research purposes for my own writing.)

TO BE CONTINUED...

Welcome to My World: The Magpie Prince Tales

Books help soothe us, inspire us, inform us, distract us, thrill us, terrify us, amuse us. Etcetera. I love to read all sorts of stories. Turns out I like to write all sorts, too, all within what I'm calling The Magpie Cycle, or Tales of the Magpie Prince. 

SEVEN FOR A SECRET, the first novel I finished a couple of years ago, is not soothing. It's a story about trauma, hubris, psychological abuse, misuse of authority, the urge to violence, and the terrible burden of trying to love one's family no matter what. The characters are nearly all demon-bred witches with varied magical powers, none of which keeps them from making terrible mistakes. There is bloodshed. Children suffer PTSD. It's set in 1955, in postwar northern England, and things that happened during WWII are still fresh in people's minds. The story is narrated by Gerry, the child most affected by events in the books, describing events from the perspective of an older man looking back.  

I don't think I realized quite how nasty all that was, when writing it, but it felt right, given the set of characters I'd created. They are likeable and also dangerous. Some of them have done terrible things but it's brushed off by those who love them, owing to social expectations. It's okay if this person has done terrible things...the results were worth it! They did it for the best reasons! And children take that in, and some of them learn to also accept it, and others do not and never will. 

This is the descriptive for the sales sites:

Gerry Llewellyn's mother is teaching him death magic, and his grandmother thinks he might help their family take over the world. He's eight. 

Waning magic in their land, and a legendary curse, meant British demon-bred witches were unable to enter the Otherworld, source of their strongest magic, for 200 years. Gerry and his father are the first seventh-born witches in all that time, a signal the curse may soon end, heralding a new era of greater power for them. But even his family can't agree whether this is a good thing. They have peaceful lives, blending in with the rest of humanity, doing much as they please in the more tolerant postwar years of the 1950s. Are vague promises of fabulous divine gifts worth upending that?

Already scarred by family secrets and politics, precocious Gerry hates being treated as a miracle child. And now Gerry's eldest brother is getting married, so the Llewellyn children have lots to do besides dealing with their emotionally damaged parents, death demon siblings, and a sundry lot of fractious relatives.

They are all about to learn that seventh sons are special all right, but it's their mothers you really need to watch out for...

THE RAGE OF CALIBAN is, I think, more amusing and inspirational.

I won't include spoilers, but will explain a bit. The book takes place ten years after SECRET, and includes many of the same characters. SECRET is set in 1955, CALIBAN in 1966. Lots and lots of things have happened to those characters since then, both good and bad. Gerry, the narrator of SECRET, is mentioned as “Morgan’s baby brother” but not by name, and does not actually appear. That was deliberate, as Gerry tends to take over a room. His brother, sisters and father are major characters, however, and his Manchester aunts and uncles, and even his grandmother. 

CALIBAN's main character, Phoebe Starwood, marries Gerry's older brother Morgan in 1964. She alludes to the wedding having been a bit of a disaster because of Gerry, but they remain happily coupled and now have an adorable and very loud infant daughter. 

I’m working on what may end up being three VERY long stories that happen between SECRET and CALIBAN. All are told from Gerry’s POV, and document his adventures between 1960, when he turns thirteen, and 1965, when the massive mess he’s made of his life really catches up with him. LUCKY THIRTEEN, GIRLFRIENDS AND BOYFRIENDS AND OTHER BAD HABITS, and HELLHOUND ON MY TRAIL will show up…eventually. Most of the story is written, but not properly stitched together. I'm writing as fast as I can. 

Phoebe and Morgan’s wedding takes place in GIRLFRIENDS. Other characters in CALIBAN, including Lizzie and Daphne, show up in HELLHOUND. Saying anything else would be spoilers…

I'm also working on a related book that takes place at the same time as CALIBAN, with other characters we see in Gerry's stories and who are mentioned in CALIBAN. I'm tentatively calling it THE STINK OF MAGIC. 

My explanation for my (extremely fictional) demon-bred witches is that long ago, demigods (offspring of humans and godlike beings, see many ancient mythologies) kept mating with mortal humans gifted with a certain amount of fortitude. Some of those offspring went and did great deeds in the mortal realm—both good and bad—while others withdrew to the Otherworld of wherever they lived, and marinated in magical power and became what many mythologies think of as demons. A lot of magically gifted people ran into all sorts of trouble, and over the centuries their numbers rose and fell and rose. They learned to escape persecution, they developed new cultures within their families and clans, and now and then mated with demons to bring fresh magic powers into their blood lines. Non-human magical beings also exist, but are largely unseen by non-witches. I have a lot of fun with this idea.

I do also have a LOT of fun designing my book covers. Art school had to be good for something. 

The Rage of Caliban: NEW BOOK FROM ME!

The world is burning down. Other people have terrible, true stories to tell. I am astonished I have the nerve to write fiction and try to finish it and hope other people will like it. 

 I bloody well did it. I finished a second novel. I have self-published it as an ebook on all major platforms available. I am very bad at marketing and self-promo, but I'll do my best. 

Available: Kindle Amazon, Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo, Apple iBooks, Scribd and some library apps. 

"Never, never ever make a witch annoyed with you. Just…don’t.

Painter Phoebe Starwood-Llewellyn is struggling to create an art career despite specializing in portraiture, which simply wasn't fashionable among mid-sixties English art critics. A young woman, and a mother, she is also a witch, part of an ever-growing tribe of people with demon ancestry and inherited magical powers.

Phoebe doesn't consider herself particularly skilled in magic, but a wealthy art collector tempts her with a lucrative if morally questionable challenge requiring spells her fellow witches think impossible. She becomes determined to see if she is up to creating a version of one of the most famous pictures in English fiction: The Picture of Dorian Gray.

As you may already know, there’s never any telling what a witch might do."

No spoilers for my own book, duh, but I'll say there's LGBTQ characters, an adorable and very loud infant, adult smooching (no graphic sex, which simply didn't belong), and stuff about painting, art critics and art collectors (hey, I was an art major). Phoebe was a lot of fun to write. She is quite level-headed for an artist, probably has a touch of ADHD, and just enough self-confidence in her talent to make a serious art career. The question was, did she have enough confidence in her magical abilities to meet a mad challenge? 

THE RAGE OF CALIBAN is, I think, more amusing and feel-good than my first novel, SEVEN FOR A SECRET, which is kinda violent and filled with traumatized kids.

I'll discuss the relationship between SEVEN FOR A SECRET and CALIBAN in greater detail in another blog post. Suffice to say this book contains many of the same characters, but ten years older, taking place in 1966. CALIBAN also alludes to things that happened in SECRET, and to things that are still unpublished in the greater cycle of Magpie Prince Tales, the story of Gerry Llewellyn and his large family. Phoebe was a relatively minor character, aside from marrying Gerry's older brother Morgan, but I always knew she was an artist. 

I truly appreciate who read this and liked it, and those who helped make it better, and 

SEVEN FOR A SECRET is also available from all major ebook sources:
Kindle Amazon, Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo, Apple iBooks, Scribd and some library apps. 

Reading is Hard

 I used to read something like 50-60 books a year. 

I never thought I would burn out on reading. Or just find it difficult 

I have burned out on knitting, a couple of times, for varying lengths of time...once for nearly two years, more recently for about a year. Odd, how that coincided with my reading burnout. But I'm not alone, in that people who have taken the pandemic seriously have often found it hard to concentrate on things that were once enjoyable pastimes. Many of my friends have complained they can't focus on reading fiction anymore, or finish simple knitting projects, or paint, or...whatever they do. My plant growing friends seem to be an exception: the plants need care, and abandoning them seems cruel. Um, likewise. My orchids are doing pretty well. New shelf arrangements, new light fixtures, new plants via online order. 

The knitting is still going v e  r   y    s   l   o  w  l  y  these days but my once-a-month knitting group helps a bit, I actually made progress on a new piece the other day. And I'm nearly done with a super-super simple garter stitch shawl I only work on during long phone calls. 

But finding myself unable to dig into books properly, and read for several hours on end like I used to, is a whole other world. I began hitting a few roadblocks several years ago, even before pandemic times. I started to fall asleep while reading. Didn't matter what book, what subject, how fascinating...after about 20 minutes, zzzzz. Self hypnosis? Annoying as hell, whatever the reason. I get plenty of sleep! I don't work in an office, I sleep late if I need to! 

I used to read a great deal while commuting to/from work, on city buses that often got stuck in traffic. Yay, more time to read! Tore through a lot of paperbacks that way, then started to read ebooks on the move instead, with the Kindle app on my phone. If I wasn't knitting knitting knitting on a longer trip, I was reading reading reading.

Then something happened. Was it writing my own stories that absorbed all my reading desires? Was it just a shift in mindset? I still WANT to read. But starting a book...stopping after a few pages...not returning to it for days...that just wasn't ME. And the sleepiness thing often curtailed my stubborn attempts to dig into a new book. 

I came up with strategies. Read shorter books! Read novellas! Fortunately several favorite authors (Ursula Vernon aka T. Kingfisher, Premee Mohamed, CL Polk, KJ Charles, Martha Wells) are also prolific authors of shorter works. Other faves came out with new books I absolutely had to read (Becky Chambers, SA Chakraborty). I caught up with several rock musician memoirs, finally started tearing through the Johannes Cabal books (Jonathan L. Howard), finally read The City We Became (NK Jemisin), Piranesi (Susanna Clarke), Song of Achilles (Madeline Miller) and some older novels, as well as some pretty interesting non-fiction. I tore through both of Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb novels as soon as they were released, so there's that, too, and hope the third will be equally easy to devour. 

So I'm feeling a bit better now about my reading pace. It's MARCH dammit and I only just finished four books so far this year! Two of which I started LAST year! 

The two big things on my reading plate: The Tyrant Baru Cormorant (Seth Dickinson) and Perhaps the Stars (Ada Palmer). Tyrant is third in an incredible trilogy, a masterpiece of worldbuilding and character development, and I TORE through the first two books. This one is still sitting moribund in my Kindle queue. I haven't been confident enough to attempt it. But I will. 

The Palmer book is fourth in a series. I hardly ever buy hardcover fiction, but I made an exception for these books. The long wait between each one was no obstacle, for the first three. But now...I opened the new book and my heart dropped. I'd FORGOTTEN everything. I couldn't remember the salient details of what happened in the third book, or the others. I read five pages in a total fog, and realized to my dismay I'd have to go back and at least partially re-read the third book. That's fine, as I loved it. A lot happened in it. But oh, the delay in gratification...

NaNoWriMo 2019 OMG

WHAT HAVE I DONE

I wrote 40k words of a NEW NOVEL in one month. I did THE THING.

National Novel Writing Month has become quite a phenomenon among young writers. I do NOT say would-be writers, as all writing counts. I don't care if you only write fanfic for personal consumption, or share it on AO3. I don't care if you only write blog posts twice a year. I don't care if you have dozens of short stories that still haven't sold, or have sold only one story of those dozens. Writing is writing. Art and self-expression matter. If you're not a writer, maybe you draw or paint or knit or sew or bake cakes or sing karaoke or dance or weave or make your own soap or take pictures of birds or collect cat figurines. If you're not hurting anyone with your art -- including yourself -- then enjoy it.*

And even if I didn't already believe that with all my heart, meeting a lively group of fellow NaNoWriMo participants last month would convince anyone. These were terrific folks who love to read and want to write but need some extra incentive to sit and commit words strung together into stories. Some were doing NaNo for years already, and had never finished anything, or worked on their novels the other 11 months. That's ok. Others had finished novels of varying lengths but hadn't done the cleanup necessary to try and find an agent or publisher.

Some of these folks are incredibly busy working and raising kids and managing elder care and facing all sorts of other challenges. Some are just young and still finding their voice. Others are trying to find the right idiom for their expression and aren't thinking about being published.

All of it is good. NaNo is a great challenge to just SIT and WRITE and get a story told. I'm glad more and more people take the challenge. Now, I do hear that agents and publishers get absolutely inundated with barely-finished, sub-par 50k novels every December and January -- that a lot of NaNo folks feel their stream-of-consciousness masterpieces are DONE once the calendar ticks over to December 1. Well, those folks are unfortunately delusional, and are cluttering up the lives of publishing professionals with unprofessional work, and that's a shame.

Very few people who write ever get published. That's a fact. That's why there are millions of self-published stories and novels out in the world now (hey, including mine). Publishing is a very weird business and not everyone can stand the weirdness. Lots of writers have one published novel and then are never heard of again -- sometimes its the publisher's fault, sometimes the agent's, sometimes the writer just can't produce more good work, sometimes the next work gets rejected. It's disheartening to hear the stories writers can tell about this.

BUT ENOUGH ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE. Here's what I did: I took what I thought was a pretty good short story, took my writing group's advice on making it much much better, and then started looking at SFF genre short story markets. They are incredibly hard to sell to. There are thousands and thousands of really good writers selling short fiction and I've realized I'll never be one of them. I don't think in 1000 - 10,000 word bursts. I'm one of those elaborately wordy bitches who can't build a world or a story that short. The story I wrote, "The Rage of Caliban," takes place in the same world as Seven for a Secret, with many of the same characters (now about 10 years older). The group thought it was a great opening for another novel. NOOOOOOO. I was already working on three other novels in that story cycle!

But I thought about it for a few months, and ultimately gave in. So in September I started expanding the existing 8000 word story, and by November 1 I had 23k done. I plunged into NaNoWriMo with great enthusiasm. It seemed the ideal way to approach just getting the whole darned thing done.

And it worked! I fell short, I only achieved 39k on the scoreboard. Tacked onto that original 23k I ended up with 62k of a nearly-finished novel. I've kept going, I have no intention of NOT finishing this sucker. The Rage of Caliban will probably end up around 80k, a respectable length. I've started back-editing as a way of correcting some continuity issues, and shuffling characters around,

Seven for a Secret is about the angst of a young demon-bred witch boy born into an impossibly damaged family confronting an impossible situation. Gerry's not a "chosen one" among his people, he's the thing that allows someone else to do the thing a chosen one customarily does. And that's much worse, from his point of view.

The rest of his story cycle -- four more novels and novellas, if I'm dogged enough to finish them -- takes Gerry on his life journey towards adulthood. He's not nice. He's scarred, selfish and arrogant, thoroughly an asshole, though he tries to be better. He loves deeply and hates fiercely. He makes some terrible mistakes that ruin other people's lives. Everything good he tries to do goes wrong. The people around him try to forgive and forget -- he was born special, after all, and they can't quite shake that -- but eventually the mistakes pile up and force him to humility and responsibility. This arc covers 1955-1965, mostly in northern England. The cast of characters is bloody enormous, and I refuse to apologize for that. It's still smaller than that of Game of Thrones. I also really enjoy all the British Invasion blues and rock research I continue to do.

The Rage of Caliban takes place in 1966, with Gerry's older brother's wife as the focus. (Gerry doesn't appear in the story at all, except for a couple of mentions.) I adore Phoebe Starwood, I created her years ago but didn't do much with her--mainly, she stood by rather helplessly as Gerry and his girlfriend unintentionally wrecked her wedding. I knew she was an artist. She liked snapping pictures of family events and travel scenery, and made the best of having fallen in love with a member of the most notorious (and dangerous) coven in Britain. When a story idea popped into my head, I knew she would be the POV character, and would deal with the situation with stubborn intelligence. I knew I would really enjoy torturing her! It was also really fun to get myself out of Gerry's head, and into hers instead. Unlike her terrible brother-in-law, Phoebe is not an asshole. 😁

I really hope I can finish Rage by the end of December...I'll definitely do a new round of agent queries with this one. Wish me luck.


*"Harm" takes many forms. Endorsed bigotry and racism and misogyny in a story is harmful, as opposed to your narrative making it clear why those things are bad and have bad consequences. Harming yourself or people around you can happen if you begin to ignore the real world and its responsibilities, and possibilities -- you might start acting like a dick without even realizing it or getting therapy or other help. Don't be a dick.

Southern African Epiphytic Orchids, by John S. Ball

At one point I obsessed over collecting rare or unusual orchid books, aided and abetted by several friends who also delighted in used bookstore finds or eagerly and impatiently awaited new publications. Magpie, you know. I was so eager to expand my knowledge of ALL types of orchid I'd read pretty much anything. I honestly don't remember how this wonderful old book ended up in my collection, it might have been a gift or a lucky purchase.

Epiphytic Orchids of Southern Africa is a treasure. The paintings by Patricia van de Ruit are exceptional, made life-size for the oversize pages. The book was published in 1976 after Ball's death, from his detailed notes, and edited by his sister, Jane Browning, with the assistance of Peter Ashton.

The plants depicted include a number of species even now only rarely seen in cultivation in the US. Thanks to people like Fred Hillerman back in the 60s, 70s and 80s whole tribes of Angraecums, Aerangises and related genera were introduced to our collections, and my friends in New York in the 80s included several fanatics who had to have all the plants and all the books. Nowadays many of the species are somewhat easier to come by, and many are raised from seed. This book is still a great place to learn more about them.

I'd love to get his other posthumously published book Terrestrial African Orchids. To quote the blurb on Lulu.com, "The 128 orchids illustrated in this work were collected from the wild in many localities by the late John S. Ball, mainly during the early 1950s when he worked as a forester in the Melsetter area close to the Chimanimani Mountains in Zimbabwe. Many of the species from this area are recorded to the North in the Flora of Tropical East Africa floristic region and to the South in the Republic of South Africa, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal. In 1978 John Ball's work on epiphytic orchids from this region was published in the book Southern African Epiphytic Orchids. The present work is edited by Jane Browning (John Ball’s sister) assisted by Esmé Hennessy."

Ball was one of those obscure but vital people in science, Born in 1926 in Rhodesia, he was also a Rhodes scholar, and then returned to Africa to work in forestry. He died in a car accident in 1976. It's a pity he never got to see his books published and enjoyed.

Vintage SF: I Have Another Tumblr

It's odd living with so many books I still haven't read. Inheriting my father-in-law's huge collection of vintage SF books was an astonishing but mostly overwhelming privilege. Years later we're still working our way through the treasure trove. Some books are easy to deal with, depending on age, condition and rarity: given to friends, given away at an SF convention or to a thrift store, or sold online. There are a terrible lot of keepers, though, books I always meant to read and now here they are, in my own house, for free, no limits! And worse, there are books I never knew I wanted to read but here they are, in my own house, instead of lying on an easy-to-ignore dealer's room table...

Anyway, I've decided to put the many many MANY books we still have into a Tumblr blog all their own. I've lately been on a decluttering kick, and so have once again begun to sort the unsorted and get rid of a bunch of these lovely old SF books. Some are not rare, just old, and are headed for either the local library bookstore, a local thrift store, or the freebie table at Readercon. Others may yet find their way to a vintage paperback dealer.

It's extremely satisfying to open up some shelf space for newer books. Much as I still love the older generations of SF and fantasy, I love a whole lot of the new stuff too.

I Have a Tumblr

Ha, even old ladies like me can eventually figure out stuff like Tumblr! IT CAN BE DONE. Laugh all you want, kids, just not on my lawn!

And so now Tales of the Magpie Prince is a Tumblr thing, and I will update it fairly frequently with musical, magical and folklore asides that add some background to the story: stuff about magpies, British blues music, seventh sons, counting rhymes, totem animals, potions, and other things I encountered in the course of my research.

I knew in elementary school that I wanted to be a writer someday. I wrote a bunch of Star Trek fiction in high school and college. That was how I discovered that RESEARCH is like the best habit to develop in school for being a writer. Good thing I was good at it.

Also, and this is important, if the research isn't engaging and absorbing and totally fun to do, then DON'T WRITE THE STORY. I discovered this when years ago trying some sci-fi world building for a (terrible) story idea I had. There are now books on how to do this, but I went about calculating planetary orbits and climates and food and animals and putting a whole world together...and didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I thought I would starting out. The parts I enjoyed most were inventing food plants, recipes and clothing styles for my aliens. Never stuck with it anyhow, but I suppose I could still salvage that story with an emphasis on cookery...

A Book A Week, 2015, nearing the end...

So at of the beginning of June I'd only read 18 books of my postulated 52 for the year. Not bad for most people, but well short of my goal. I determined to do better! Crack down  and make more time! But...but...knitting! Bird watching! Orchids! Cooking! Sleeping! Yeah, yeah, excuses.

Including graphic novels/collections like Saga 4 and Saga 5, Rat Queens 1 and 2, Sex Criminals 1 and Fun Home, I've managed to start & finish -- in some cases just finish -- an additional 14 books, making my total for 2015 a measly 32 so far, with only 6 weeks to go. I just finished Tananarive Due's My Soul to Keep, not as quick a read as I first thought. I finished it thanks to a long bus ride midweek, despite also having a lot of seasonal knitting to do and a scarf pattern to write.

Finishing The Story of Spanish and The Emperor of All Maladies, which I read a few pages at a time for months and months, also count for 2015. I also finally finished Moonwise, both delightful and maddening; it went easier when we were staying in the country for a few days, where the setting of the book blended better with my mindset. Funny how that matters more for some books than others.

Reading Jazz Singing in bits and pieces as well -- it's history blended with Will Friedwald's opinions, in sometimes weird ways, but overall I'm glad I grabbed the book from a thrift store bin on impulse. It's hard to learn about the history of jazz from just liner notes and encyclopedia entries, and being partial to vocals I'm enjoying learning the stories of the men and women who shaped the genre. Good discography recommendations above all.

Hild and The Martian were both amazing, in very different ways. I picked up a copy of Hild just a week before we went to Readercon, with author Nicola Griffith as Guest of Honor. I wished I'd read it sooner!!!! so I could have appreciated her even more. Many have remarked on the book's power to transport you to another time and place in ways most fantasy authors wish they could, even though there really isn't any fantasy going on. I entirely agree. The Martian is about as different from Hild as two books could possibly be, but has a similar power to transport you to another place, inside another mind. I loved both books a lot. And I'm very happy Griffith is writing a sequel!

Three more of the best were "more of the same" books: The Magician's Land (#3 of that series), Last First Snow (#4 of Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence) and Ancillary Mercy (#3 of Ann Leckie's deservedly highly-praised series). I dearly love a good trilogy, a good quadro-trilogy, a good long series of stories sharing characters and universe. (Seeing the news on Gladstone's blog that he intends a total of 10-12 Craft books made me squeal with unholy glee.) I also finally read Scalzi's Old Man's War, but I probably won't read the rest of that series anytime soon.

I'm a little bit awed by authors who manage to world-build within the confines of a single story or novel and then -- just walk away. How do they do that?? How do their brains work so differently from mine and George R.R. Martin's and Robert Jordan's and Anne McCaffrey's???

Working hard to finish Roboteer by my friend Alex Lamb, this is his debut novel and it ROCKS. Hard SF with great characters and riveting action. I'll be posting reviews!

Seven for a Secret: My book, it is ALIVE!

Seven for a Secret on Amazon Kindle.

Seven for a Secret on Apple's iBooks.

Seven for a Secret on Barnes & Noble NOOK.

Seven for a Secret on Kobo.

Seven for a Secret on Scrib'd.

Seven for a Secret on Inktera/Page Foundry.

Thanks to the miracles of our modern digital age, I was able to get my book published to several major ebook markets in just one evening! Still waiting for notifications from a couple. But this is pretty cool, I have to say. I was able to check the Amazon Australia site and provide a link to a friend down there. Amazing. Love it!

And, the book is also on Goodreads already, which totally surprised me. I intend to find out which market caused the entry to be generated.

Now I have to catch up posting reviews of my friends' books on Amazon and Goodreads! And return to my read-one-book-a-week attempt for the rest of the year. I was doing OK with that until I hit a few big ones...looking at my to-read pile of actual books, and the huge Kindle queue, I think I'll try to get to the shorter ones first!

I'm About to Commit Novel: SEVEN for a SECRET

SO this is the saga of my fantasy novel "Seven for a Secret":

Many years ago, I had a vague idea for a novel and brought a few random chapters of absolute crap to my writing group. Then about 9 years ago the whole idea suddenly clicked, and most of those chapters ended up in the shredder but a few scenes stayed.

I started with an idea for a slightly magical kid in Northern England in the 60s who fell in love with blues music and went on to become a rock star. Big twist, he'd discover hidden magic talents along the way. MEH. The click I needed was to have the kid always know he was magical. In fact, he's part of a growing tribe of born witches living under everyone's radar, but becoming bolder now that society is more tolerant of those claiming magical abilities. He was born already walking a hero's journey, knowing he's special, but he's pretty sure it's a mistake...pretty sure the daring feat he's born to achieve is hardly worth achieving. Other witches beg to differ. Which of them are right?

(Yes, the Chosen One kind of story is overdone and lame, but frankly I hate the "ordinary person suddenly sprouts magic and saves the world" kind of story too. In myth, the hero is always a demigod with the gods stacked against him. So how badly can a demigod mess up? See Jason & Medea, for starters. Yes, it is popular belief that ordinary people can perform magic, even if it's just casting an evil eye from jealousy. We all ask water spirits for wishes in return for coins -- that's simple divine intercession on our behalf, similar to prayer. Divination by tarot cards, love charms with herbs and candles, they're all part of popular belief that pretty much anyone can learn magic spells if they just try hard enough. In my story, In these stories that simply isn't true. I have no opinion whether it's true in our reality.)

Eventually the story arc broadened out into 4 books. I kept adding story complications, and my reallllllllly long "teen witch blues saga" grew backwards into Gerry's traumatic childhood.

I've been shopping book 1 to agents and publishers for several years now -- alas I now realize my early pitches were just terrible, and I do still have some agent queries out there and have more to send. But at my advanced age for a never-published author, I really have nothing to lose by just getting the damn book OUT THERE so I can STOP FIDDLING WITH IT and move on and finish books 2, 3 and 4, most of which are written. So doing this is both cathartic and practical! So there.

I created my own cover for the darn thing, too.

No Man on Earth, by Walter Moudy

Yet another vintage SF paperback from our groaning bookshelves. It was published in 1964, though, so I'm OLDER than this book, and I do rather not enjoy the idea of being vintage. Still. It clearly belongs to another era of publishing, of slender action-packed novels with somewhat generic covers that looked a bit slapdash but were certainly colorful.

"A Science Fiction novel of a strange quest in interstellar space."

"Thad Stone was like no other man on Earth. Born with superhuman powers, he knew from his earliest days that he had been sired by no mortal man...In the world of 2081, Thad sets out to find his father -- a search that carries him into the farthest reaches of interstellar space. The search is long and at its end Thad discovers just why he had been given his superhuman powers..."

The back cover copy doesn't quite do it justice. A nifty story, well written. Lots of interesting touches for the space travel and confrontations.

This was Moudy's only novel, he also wrote a few short stories, and passed away in 1973.

In case you're interested, it's in very good condition, shows shelfwear, otherwise clean, binding tight, no loose pages. Berkley Medallion paperback #F987, 50 cents. 176 pages.

Sundog, by B.N. Ball

Been a while since I visited our VAST collection of (mostly) inherited vintage science fiction novels. While I was happy to see many of them find new homes via eBay, the majority still reside with us. Slowly but slowly we're working our way through them, I love the covers, and the breathless cover copy. This guy's head looks all xplody, but maybe in a good way?

This1969 paperback from Avon was 1st American printing, Prev. 1965 British publication.

The front says: "A power from outside our universe had imprisoned mankind in the solar system -- until one man dared to confront the captors."
The back cover says: "An unthinkably vast, invisible, and absolutely impenetrable screen imprisoned man within the solar system. Cut off from the stars, men applied their ingenuity to themselves, setting up a world of total control -- where even dreams were programmed."

Hm, that sounds a lot like a very popular current SF novel that's got a lot of attention!

This was Brian N. Ball's first novel. He's since produced a number of sf series and standalone novels, even including a couple of Space:1999 novels.

A 22-Week Reading Challenge...

So there are 22 weeks left in 2014, and I've set myself a new goal that is kind of already 2 weeks old: to read and finish a book a week.

Since I've got 39 books in my To-Read section on Goodreads, and lots more than that just sitting on the actual shelves of the actual house -- and a few on my Kindle-for-Android app for good measure -- this ought to be easy. Especially since most of them aren't Huge Thick Weighty Tomes, but a bunch of reasonable length novels. (Aside from Vernor Vinge's "Children of the Sky" and the final 6 books of Neal Stephensons "System of the World", that is.)

I do most of my reading while commuting, so that's about 40-50 minutes of reading time a day. Last year I somehow only read about 20 books, but then 2 of them were enormous Iain M. Banks novels, one of which I only got through as quickly as I did thanks to some plane travel.

So far this year I've managed to start AND finish a whopping 15 books of varying lengths: from quick-read graphic novels Saga #3 and Girl Genius #13, to short story collection "Her Husband's Hands" by Adam-Troy Castro, to weighty "The Monuments Men" (less than 2 weeks, yay). "Annihilation" and "Authority" by Jeff Vandermeer only took like 1.5 days each. "Emma" by Jane Austen took a week. I just finished the last of the Diana Wynne Jones Howl books, "House of Many Ways" in just a couple of days -- quite a fast read like most of her books. "The Ghost in Love" by Jonathan Carroll, though ultimately disappointing (and I love his work), was a quick 4 days.

I suspect, though, that my current choice, "Cloud Atlas," might just sink my efforts straight off. It's a big thick tome. It's kind of like reading 6 books at the same time.

And I haven't quite decided what's next after that. I've got some nifty contenders. Guess it depends how I feel once done with this one.

Belated Book Enthusiasm: John Thorne

I meant to post this on September 25, but forgot to copy it from facebook.

All of John Thorne's books are good. I'm finally settling down with "Mouth Wide Open: A Cook and His Appetite" which actually came out last year but I gave away my copy as a present. New copy showed up today. Hard to stop reading and actually cook dinner!

Thorne writes about food in ways that bring little gasps and smiles of recognition to any true food lover. He truly loves things that taste good, whether highbrow or lowbrow. He has a gift of sharing the sensation he's enjoyed. Choosing a recipe by appetite, slicing an onion, frying an egg, even doctoring canned tamales with shredded cheese and pricey Austrian pumpkinseed oil: all grist for his mill. And the tiny essay "Five Month Old Croissant" made me laugh out loud.

Here is a sample of what I love about Thorne, comparing soup to a bright spring morning: "When Matt and I began to eat the minestrone, we kept wondering what the spinach, the zucchini, the parsley, the potato, etcetera, did for the dish; perhaps some of these components could be left out. But gradually we came to understand that each did do something, even if we couldn't easily put our finger on it...pause and pay attention and a quiet pleasure unfolds, one that has a depth to which you were previously oblivious, a harmony composed of many now identifiable parts...the main goal of the cook is to let all the parts shine through."

This minestrone recipe is about technique as much as ingredients, like nearly every dish Thorne dissects and analyzes. Days after reading the chapter, I went and made a pretty good minestrone out of the leftover vegs in the fridge. It wasn't quite his recipe, but now I've made it my own, which is the whole point of his cookery exercises.

And I can particularly relate to this passage, having once been a recipe hoarder:

"...you would have found a single file folder containing, say, twenty or thirty recipes for French onion soup. I didn't collect these because I thought that one day I'd hold a cook-off to discover which one was best. No, like a teenage boy who covers his bedroom wall with photographs of Christina Aguilera, I just couldn't have too many glimpses of the same desirable object."

He goes on and on about spaghetti with simple savory toppings, such as anchovies, olives and capers. Similar to a dish I used to make but forgot about. Now I've rediscovered it for weekend lunches. Spouse heartily approves, since I seem to have a blind spot about cooking weekend lunches.

The recipes are nice, but I also read Thorne for the same reasons I read Oliver Sacks or Stephen Jay Gould. I learn something and enjoy the intellectual exercise, but I enjoy the words for themselves too. Damn good writing.

Reading again

Two new old books this week:

The Curse of the Giant Hogweed, by Charlotte MacLeod. I read this book when it was new in 1985, as at the time my father was still hauling all new mystery books home from the library quick as they were stocked. It was delightful, one of the silliest things I'd ever read, a horticultural fantasy romp full of British myth and daunting Welsh names, and I remember absolutely nothing else about it. With a glad cry I pounced upon a copy in my library's book sale room. I shall begin re-reading it immediately.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, by Anita Loos. Everyone knows "diamonds are a girl's best friend," and might vaguely remember Marilyn Monroe in the movie. I never finished the book years ago, so I'll be having a new go at it.

A great passage from near the beginning:
And Mr Eisman likes me to have what the French people call a "salo" which
means that people all get together in the evening and improve their minds. So I
invited all of the brainy gentlemen I could think up. So I thought up a gentleman who is the professor of all the economics up at Columbia College, and the editor who is the famous editor of the New York Transcript and another gentleman who is a famous playwright...so Sam asked if he could bring a gentleman who writes novels from England...and then we all got together...and the gentleman brought their own liquor. So of course the place was a wreck this morning and Lulu and I worked like proverbial dogs to get it cleaned up, but Heaven knows how long it will take to get the chandelier fixed.

More Book List

The unread book pile has grown, dagnabbit. I realized I left off a few from an earlier list, and now somehow more books have sneaked into the house when I was trying not to look.

The newer list:

• The Welsh Girl > Peter Ho Davies
• The Yiddish Policemen's Union > Michael Chabon
• Empires of the Word, a Language History of the World > Nicholas Ostler
• The Crow Road > Iain Banks
• Something Rotten > Jasper Fforde

There are also of course all those terrible terrible accusing SF and fantasy books looming on the shelves unread, unread. Too many books. Sarah Canary, Passage, Jack Faust, Iron Council, things from years ago still unread...

Lud-in-the-Mist

Finished "The Singing Sands," Josephine Tey. Love. Need to read/reread all other Tey.

Finished "Lud-in-the-Mist," Hope Mirrlees. What an odd little fantasy novel! The writing is wonderfully approachable, even when it goes off into wild flights of descriptive fancy of the weather or flowers or the characters. The style very much follows convention of the time of Tell Don't Show, but I found it delightful nevertheless. I have little to add to Michael Swanwick's excellent analysis, but that I wish more modern fantasists would take heed of her lesson and follow unconventional models in world building.

Finished "Soon I Will Be Invincible," Austin Grossman. This book is prominently displayed in many B&N and Borders. BUY IT. The casual asides that tear asunder the tropes of comic book villainy and heroism...page after page that demand to be read aloud...it does not matter whether you know or even like comic books. If you've ever seen a Superman or Batman or Spider-Man movie, you will love this book. Seriously.

Finished "Black Powder War" and "Empire of Ivory" by Naomi Novik. Nice dragons, babe. I do like Temeraire. He's like a large precocious child challenging everything his human companions hold dear, and yet they learn nothing at all. And will Laurence for heaven's sake please finally quit acting on his pre-judgements as they are always wrong? He's always wrong but so damned pleasant about it that Temeraire still hasn't eaten him. Maybe in book 5???

Currently reading: The Flanders Panel, by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Spouse found this book used, and because it involves chess he had to have it. On his recommendation I began it. I am hooked. Hook-ed, like a fish. It's extremely Euro in style, and I have no idea if the translation is any good but I really like the descriptions of art and the way the characters interact. The author's other novels sound interesting but I doubt I'll get to them any time soon.

Besides, I have lots and lots of knitting to do. Lots and lots. Before Christmas. Gotta go.

Josephine Tey, she Rocketh

Add "The Singing Sands" to the Just Completed booklist. This novel was published posthumously, so it was the last Inspector Alan Grant story.

I read half the book aloud to Spouse, both of us delighting in the lively dyspeptic prose, its ascerbic assessments of Scots, Englishmen and the world in general. Nothing very much happens, there is hardly any action other than people going back and forth in cars or boats, people going fishing or talking to one another. Nevertheless it is a true page-turner. 200 pages. The ending was a bit of a letdown, but I wonder if Tey hadn't a chance to rework it before her death. The tantalizing glimpse of Grant's future is left to our imaginations.

I'm seriously annoyed I can't find my copy of "Daughter of Time" as it remains a shining example of how to make scholarship and history enjoyable. My parents had the paperback but I read it only after having to read "The Franchise Affair" in high school English (god yes Hunter was a very strange school). Meanwhile "Brat Farrar" is on the shelf awaiting its turn. (On the bright side, digging through the 2 paperback bookcases looking for "DoT" turned up about 20 paperbacks we no longer needed or somehow had 2 copies of despite our frequent doubles-purges. Scary but not suprising how many doubles books we really had when blending our collections. How we ended up with triples of the Journal of Irreproducable Results is however a mystery.)

Too...many...books...

So o god we've inherited about 8 cartons of (mostly) sci-fi books from friends who are moving. I'm supposed to sell most of them if possible. Right. Of course while examining them, looking up their ebay prices etc I end up, um, reading many of them. I don't have time for this.

Currently reading (not from the inheritance collection):
• Soon I Will Be Invincible > Austin Grossman
• The Last Witchfinder > James Morrow
• About Writing > Samuel Delany
• Clapton the Autobiography > Eric Clapton*
• Blues: the British Connection > Bob Brunning*
• The Cult of the Mother Goddess > EO James*
• Black Powder War > Naomi Novik

Just finished (not from the inheritance collection):
• Sorcery & Cecelia > Patricia Wede
• His Majesty's Dragon & Empire of Jade > Naomi Novik
• Gentlemen of the Road > Michael Chabon
• Musicophilia > Oliver Sacks
• The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies > Robert Kirk, Andrew Lang*
• The Execution Channel > Ken MacLeod
• The Nag Hammaradi Scriptures (only skimmed)
• The Search for the Last Undiscovered Animals > Karl Shuker
• The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Horse Breeds & Horse Care*

Queued up (not from the inheritance collection):

Lud-in-the-Mist > Hope Mirrlees

The Iron Dragon's Daughter > Michael Swanwick

The Confusion > Neal Stephenson

The Singing Sands > Josephine Tey

The Alchymist's Journal > Evan Connell

Halting State > Charles Stross

Girl in Landscape: A Novel > Jonathan Lethem

Books marked * are technically research for the novel, but I'd be reading them anyhow most likely.

Yep. Too many bloody books.