Mira Grant: Deadline trailer

Okay, so I am a bit in love with Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant, and I'm quite sure the Other Half will understand.  She's crazy talented, writes books that are engaging and awesome, and has some sort of masterful, magickal, hyper-productivity level that means she has either given up on sleep entirely or has discovered the secret to freezing time so she can work on twenty projects simultaneously (at a minimum).  I've kindle-purchased everything of hers that is in print, and have entered the stage where I must preorder anything she does, because I know I will want it immediately upon release.

Her most recent release -- Deadline, the sequel to Feed.  It's an awesome zombie trilogy, and I recently contracted something akin to the plague, and I had the good fortune to have Deadline come out two days into my abject misery so at least while I suffered in my first solid illness in a decade, I had a great read to keep my mind off the fact I thought I was dying/wished I would. ;)

And now, she's got an amusing trailer out for Deadline -- you can find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUXWlXK985U&feature=youtu.be and I totally recommend you run over and watch it, and then run out and by the books (start with Feed obviously, but by them both at once, so you've got them handy.  That way, you'll be eco-friendly and save some gas, and you'll avoid the wailing and gnashing of teeth that would inevitably occur should you finish at midnight when the bookstores are all closed and are kicking yourself for not buying both at once).  While you're at it, look her up under McGuire and get all the October Daye books too.  You won't regret it.  Seriously.

Er -- why are you still here reading this? Didn't I just send you to the bookstore.?

~The Never-Blogger Who Was Motivated to Blog by a Contest of Seanan McGuire's ;)

The Fun of Parenthood

I teethed my children on sarcasm and fantasy novels. If there's a better way to plan for real life, I'm not sure what it is. You are schooled in the art of snappy replies to idiots, and when real life get too much, you have been taught where to run to refresh yourself.


Parenting is not always fun and not always rewarding, but it has its moments where you go, "YES!"

You know you've done your job right when your eldest, a boy of nearly sixteen, tells you "Mom, if you weren't my mom, I'd love to hang out with you. You're cool. And my friends would like you."

You know you've REALLY done your job right, when he looks at you contemplatively and remarks, "When you're not being evil, you're kinda cute."

What I love about the first statement is it shows that he has seen me as a person, but still sees me as a mom, so I have that power and fear factor over him. Fear is important when you're only 5'1" and your children will all be taller than you. I hate parents that are "friends" to their kids at the expense of being PARENTS. I also hate parents that are parents at the expense of being HUMAN. I mean really, you were just like them in high school. You wanted to try booze and pot and feel someone up and get felt up. You were rebellious prats oozing hormones at every pore. Your kids know this. So don't be a jackass and get all holier-than-thou now that you realize how completely retarded you were as a teen.

Don't. Be. Richard. Vernon.

You don't have to give details about how you groped around in the backseat of an Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight to the amorous beats of Judas Priest. Trust me, NO ONE wants those details. Just be honest. It's more real to explain how you screwed up than to hide from your kids that you ever did anything wrong. And if it was fun, that's okay to admit too. You can teach while admitting that while fun, it might not have been the safest/best/smartest thing ever. That's what we do, and it seems to be working.

What I love about the second statement is that I've obviously been doing my job right if I'm mostly evil. This is good. And the kinda cute comment can either be a showing of true admiration or advanced sarcasm. Either one is acceptable.

Tonight, I'm going to get them to watch Suspiria and try to make them scream. Terrifying without permanent scarring is an art form.

God, I love being a mom.

The Librariers

Such a very rought draft, but I figured what the hell...it's amazing what a random typo can inspire.  Now I have this whole world and story swirling around my head.

The Librariers

By Heathyr Fields Ford
Creation notes: Inspired by a typo in my facebook post on the morning of 29 August 2009.

Prologue
In 5870, the end of the Fifth Age came with a bang. Literally. The demarcation between Ages was always something of debate, giving rise to scholarly battles of pen and vellum across the continent of Antiola. Rapier wit and sharpened stakes of metaphor struck against the stone ramparts of stubborn opinion and the dungeons of simile. The Scholar Battles, as they were jokingly called in taverns and castles alike, were typical--vitriolic, passionate, and mind-numbingly boring. No one sane cared if the Fourth Age started in 5102 or 5104 or if the Third Age’s entire existence was under debate. They cared about food and drink, about sex and love, about living and possibly thriving.

Perhaps tired of such idiocy, or perhaps just being a crazed madman of aggressively intelligent proportions, Barl the Chief Scholastic Alchemist solved the problem of when the Fifth Age would start by blowing up the Library of Paraxandretta. The size of a small city, the Library held the history of Antiola, secrets to magicks long forgotten, and countless important documents, all meticulously catalogued and cross-referenced by the Monastic Order of Preservation and Education. Known officially as the Order, and not-so affectionately as the Mopers, the monks lived up to their nickname by bemoaning the general public’s lack of regard for books and took inordinate pleasure in rapping the knuckles of errant scholar initiates who did not handle a scroll with the level of respect it deserved.

Several Mopers lost their lives in the Library explosion. Mourning was minimal.

Barl overestimated the power of his concoction, whatever it was, and laid waste not just to the Library, but to the entire city of Paraxandretta, its million denizens, the only School of Alchemy and Science in the world, and himself. No one could come within a ten leagues of Paraxandretta as the air turned acrid and burned the chest of any who dared breathe. Numerous looters and treasure-seekers died before this was discovered.

The loss of the Library was unequivocally declared the end of the Fourth Age and the beginning of the Fifth: the Age of Searching.

Several dozen Monks were, at any given time, abroad in the world, seeking new volumes to add to the expanse of Paraxandretta. Their goal was to gather the world’s knowledge entirely in one place, organize it all, and know everything. Barl fucked that up royally, and his name became blasphemy, but what he couldn’t destroy was the Mopers’ beliefs. And what he hadn’t taken into consideration was their remarkable adaptability. The remaining Mopers gathered together in a secret conclave on the first anniversary of Barl’s Folly. They formulated a plan and went back into the world. On the tenth anniversary of Barl’s Folly, they gathered again, this time sequestered with numerous royals from the small countries that dotted the continent’s landscape.

The Accords of Paraxandretta (called such despite being held in Vanot’s capital city of Calvern, quite possibly because Paraxandretta sounded cooler than Calvern) were struck and a militant arm of MOPE was formed. Sanctioned by all royalty across Antiola, the Protectors of Knowledge spread across the lands, seeking out small libraries and privately held collections and offering themselves up as guardians.

Five hundred years after the destruction, rumors arose that Paraxandretta’s air was clearing. It was only a matter of time before looters could sift through the rubble of the greatest repository of mankind’s knowledge. The last half-millenium had been hard on Antiola’s people. Much was forgotten. Much was lost. And the world suffered horribly. Would they find what they needed at Paraxandretta?

The Order and its Protectors were determined to stop that from happening.

Love of Libraries

Few things bring me back to childhood like books. I was shy, and I loved reading, and as a kid, I had a love affair with my town’s library. I can picture the layout of Colville’s library to this day, and my inner self longs to go back there and be that little girl, standing in front of all those books. I had my favourites—obscure kids’ books whose titles tickle at the back of my mind, sometimes coalescing into something searchable on google, most of the time eluding me entirely. I was big into fantasy and into mystery, and if you combined the two, I was in heaven. I ate up old Tom Swift, Hardy Boys, Cherry Ames, Nancy Drew, Vicki Barr, Bobbsey Twins, Happy Hollisters, and more. Phyllis Whitney’s young adult suspense drew me in too. As I grew older, biographies and histories and romantic suspense mysteries, but always, the books of my childhood were there. I never outgrew YA lit, young or old, and I credit my love affair with libraries from an early age for that.

Up the steps, through the door, and to the left were stacks, regular fiction, I think. The main desk of the librarian in front of me. A table to my right and the wide entrance into the kids’ area. Into the kids’ area and turn left immediately to start at the A’s. There—my favourite shelf, filled with L. Frank Baum’s Oz books. All of them checked out by me over and over again, especially The Emerald City of Oz and The Lost Princess of Oz. I had to kneel to look at them. I spent a lot of time on my knees gazing reverentially at rows of books, trying to determine which ones I’d take home with me that day (I still do, but now I like to *own* them, so my kneeling is perfected in bookstores). Stand and follow the wall-inset shelving to the next wall, but then it broke to a door leading into grown-up land. You had to skip that and go to the back wall, where you wound up between a short stack jutting into the room and the books on the walls to the side and behind it. I know this picture makes no sense to you, I would have to draw it to adequately explain it, but I can picture it, I can walk it. I loved being in this corner because it was enclosed by books. I’d sit and have books on three sides of me and towering over my head, and I could glance out and see more books and brighter light and people. Here—Astrid Lindgren. I owned Pippi Longstocking, but this was the Bill Bergson series. Lesser known. Out of print. Impossible for me to find. Today, I can find copies, but I can’t afford them. I want copies, preferably old library copies in hardcover with their plastic protections over the dustjacket. I’m not buying collectibles, I’m buying memories. But these memories come at too dear a price for now. Maybe someday.

Over there—the Thompson continuation of the Oz series. I read some with trepidation and never enjoyed them as much as the Baum originals.

Everywhere—the one-offs, the lesser knowns. Many books before my time, before my parents’ time, but I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that favorite book over there with its idyllic setting and its brave young heroine pre-dated my parents by a good ten years. I just knew it painted a world I liked. This shaped me in ways so intrinsic they are hard to define. I learned words and concepts and occupations and ideals of a multitude of eras and cultures without even realizing I was learning it. To this day, I can be shocked by someone not knowing something that to me seems incredibly basic. Then I remember, I learned it by reading some obscure kids’ book.

It was a perfect spent youth, in retrospect. I wouldn’t change it for the world.

I can picture each of my school libraries as well: Aster Elementary’s is vague and tastes like Dr. Seuss and Put Me In The Zoo (the book I learned to read on in kindergarten). Hofstetter Elementary’s draws me to one particular section where I once found a book that I’d swear had the words “green,” “lacquered,” and “clock.” It was one of those anonymous mysteries where I obviously have the name wrong because I can’t find it anywhere. I read it several times in 4th and 5th grade, but by 6th, I couldn’t find it any more. I couldn’t remember the actual title or the author, so card catalogs were no help. I remembered *where* it was, and I remember looking and looking to no avail, reading through books with unrelated titles in the off-chance I was horribly wrong on the title. I never found it, but I still sometimes dream I’m standing in front of that western wall of books reading title by title by title. It’s a tactile memory, full of a grade-schooler’s interpretations of what something green-lacquered was and the vague recollections of the feel of the book, knowing that I’d recognize it when I saw it. The Junior High library was odd, with its center-set presence between the hallways with no walls, only short stacks, so you could see all around. I still found treasures there, books only I checked out in the three years we spent in its halls. The High School’s library memories are more centered around friends and gathering. I didn’t check out much from that library that I remember. But I remember spending mornings before school at a table with Yvonne and Sarah and Eric and others.

I am happiest surrounded by books. It’s no wonder that when I went to the University of Washington, my safe place was not my dorm room, but Suzzallo Library. Odegaard was all right, with its modern look and bright lights and stacks of books, but Suzzallo was incredible; gorgeous architecture. I walked into heaven the day I walked into Suzzallo, and in the basement, I found my heart’s content – the children’s literature stacks. Dim, musty, and crammed with tall stacks of all the books from childhood I could remember and then some. If I wanted to hide, I would hide down there with a stack of memories at a corner table. It was quiet and peaceful. If I wanted to observe, I’d hit the stacks of medieval lit upstairs. Brighter and busier but still Suzzallo. I would find a book to fit the mood and fit myself in at a personal carrel or a chair in the corner and read and watch and listen.

I’m sure there are secrets to Suzzallo I never discovered, and I need to go back and find them. I’d go back to the Colville Public Library, but I’m afraid it is so changed I would be too disappointed.

These thoughts leave me happy and melancholy, content and full of longing, peaceful and disappointed all at the same time. Do we ever become what we thought we would be?  And would we want it if we did?

MSO (Mary Sue Overdrive): A Laurell K. Hamilton Rant

Several years back, I found an intriguing book on the shelves of some random chain bookstore in some random mall in some random town I happened to be visiting. It was called Obsidian Butterfly, and the cover looked fascinating. I missed my due diligence process and somehow managed to not realize this was several books into a series. Reading it through, I quickly discovered this must be a piece of a larger whole, but the story itself stood alone enough that I enjoyed myself. Indeed, I promptly looked up the author and got a full listing of the books in order, ordered them all from amazon.com (books sent to my door. I love technology), and eagerly awaited their arrival.

I ate up the Anita Blake books right up through Obsidian Butterfly again, this time enjoying it even more with my increased understanding. Little did I know at that point that I’d hit the last excellent book in the series with the first one I’d read.

The next book, Narcissus In Chains, is an transitional book. This is where the books truly metamorphosizes from a supernatural private dick series with some great sex into a supernatural sex series with some mediocre private dick stuff. The books got longer. The sex scenes got worse. The plot disappeared. I soldiered my way through The Harlequin in 2007, still stupid enough to buy them in hardcover, because I had SO loved the original Anita Blake, and I kept hoping that Hamilton would find a way to meld her two very disparate styles into one awesomesauce blend, and I could rest happy again.

She didn’t, and I gave up. To compound the problem, once I realized I was loving the Anita Blake series, I started in on her brand new Meredith Gentry series as well. The first one sucked me in, and I liked her new world and new characters. Unfortunately, these followed the same course as the Anita Blake ones: large, cumbersome, no plot development, no storyline movement, and lots and lots of repetitive sex. I gave up at A Lick of Frost.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good sex scene, and Hamiton writes a frickin' awesome sex scene usually. Heck, I love writing a good sex scene. The first problem with Hamilton is that she doesn’t know when to stop. The second problem with Hamilton is that she found an entirely new reader base that doesn’t want her to stop and is okay with the lesser quality of her works. The third problem with Hamilton is that she is so flippin’ insecure that she can’t take any criticism whatsoever. Have you ever read her website’s forums? There’s so much stroking and “taking care of Laurell” that it makes me ill. And if you have a negative opinion of one of her works, you are just not that intelligent apparently.

Despite already hitting a trifecta of “why not to read” points, Hamilton’s works pile on the reasons.

Her two series sometimes seem to blend, as if she forgot which one she was writing a (sex) scene for. This leaves the reader with zero character continuity. The fae of Genry shouldn’t be piled up in “puppy piles” like the lycanthropes of Blake. It just doesn’t fit what she told us.

Hamilton is also incredibly repetitive in her phraseology. So many of her sex scenes involve a spine bowing that by now, Saint Louis must not possess a healthy spine in its populace.

Several of her later books also take place within a very short time frame (like hours or maybe a day), but they were supposed to be leading up to something and you NEVER GET THERE. One of the Gentry books stopped every few paragraphs to go into lengthy sex scenes and some old fey getting new powers (or the return of their old ones) just by screwing Merry in a hallway or something. We never get to the ball in this book, and it seems completely ridiculous that we don’t.

On the sex bit: one thing she has not learned is that sex can and should be implied sometimes. You can have a paragraph-long bit that shows they just had sex instead of breaking out the six page, spine bowing, omg sex is so good thesaurus.

And Hamilton’s two main characters are not content to be awesome. They must be Everything. They are the Jesus Christs of the Erotic Fantasy World. These are Mary Sues of epic proportions. They are so Mary Sueish as to make most Mary Sues look downright blasé. This is Mary Sue on crack. Anita can’t just be the best damned animator and vampire killer ever with some smattering power and an interesting psychological profile to intrigue the men, human and otherwise. Nope. Not good enough for Hamilton’s little fantasy world. Her Mary Sue has to be everything to everyone and everyone must want to fuck her and once they do, they must love her. I’ve never seen more men willing to confuse a nice lay for a soul mate.

Hamilton’s antics lead one to ponder, “what the hell happened?!” and while I have theories, they are of a fairly personal nature to the author’s psyche, so I’ll stay away from meandering on about them, lest someone interpret them as a slam on her. I’m not. I don’t know her, so I have no opinions about her personally. However, Hamilton as an author has let down a decent-sized fanbase of avid, intelligent readers to produce mass marketed sex books, and she doesn’t have the courtesy to admit it.

Laurell K. Hamilton owes me nothing; this I know. She has made her decisions, they are her creative works, and she gets to do with them what she will. She is successful, and (I hope) happy.  She seems like a good person in general, and she's a damned talented author.  I still feel she betrayed her work for a buck at a point where she didn’t even need to, since they were selling well anyway. I wouldn't have cared if she had started a series with this new genre and purpose in mind, absolutely not! 

So I am done with Laurell K. Hamilton and her Mary Sues and her “working out her life’s angsts via defensiveness and sex”. I miss the old Anita. I miss what Merry could have been. I miss the money I spent on hardcovers and hope.

Recommendation: Don’t bother with the Merry Gentry. Read Anita up to Obsidian Butterfly.

Review: Unclean Spirits by MLN Hanover

I am known to pick up books by unknown-to-me authors frequently just based off gut instinct or because something drew me to it. Very rarely is it because I read something about it and am going off recommendation. I like this fly-by-the-seat-of-my-instinct method of book selection, and it has yielded some fascinating reads. Some horrible, some great, some okay, but very few boring. My other half sometimes does this, but I am, apparently, drawn to the weird. Or so he says. I just think I have more eclectic and free-spirited tastes. Oh, I also have an unfortunate tendency to forget to read some of them, so they sit on my shelf awaiting the time when I am back in that same mood that drew me to the book originally. I never regret these purchases though, because I know some day I will be there! There are so many books out there, that if I don’t snag it when it catches my eye, I might never remember it again. {Yes, I have heard of libraries. I love libraries. I support them in concept and theory. In actuality, I like to own stuff and returning a library book is difficult for me to do; it’s like giving up a favourite child. I don’t even sell back stupid textbooks. I keep them forever. It’s an illness. More cowbell and Christopher Walken might be the cure, but I don’t want fixed.}

Books picked this way include: The Good Fairies of New York; Vellum (still on the unread shelf, damn it); Gun, With Occasional Music; Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse; Pride and Prejudice and Zombies; The Secret History of the Pink Carnation; The Alphabet of Thorns; The Pillow Friend; several others I’m sure, and of course, the whole point of this blog entry, Unclean Spirits.

I worried about this one. There is a glut of “urban fantasy” out there and people trying to tap the massive market potentials. Lesser or lighter works tend to skyrocket to the top, yielding the opinion (much-maligned by myself but still at times true I think) that the more popular something is with the average masses the more pablum-based it is. The average masses buy romances, for goodness’ sake, so when they start clamouring for fantasy, I weep for the genre and its eventual ruination under the crush of underwhelming intellects and undiscerning tastes.  Then I realize how elitist I sound, and I fight with my inner self over it for awhile.

I don’t mind books appealing to the masses. Unfortunately, once something appeals and is high-quality, a gagillion low-quality publications come out, and we have to sort through and find the winners.

So yes, I worried, for when I see a hot, tough woman with tattoos on the cover, because I don’t want to get hurt again. I am scarred by diving into the Anita Blake series and being treated like so much flotsam on the sea of Screw My Original Fanbase – I Want The Big Money. I worried more spines would bow, and I would weep.

Fortunately, at least with this first book in the series, I made the right choice in pulling it from the shelf and keeping it with me all the way to the register (I change my mind frequently in the book store). It was fun and had depth. I didn’t feel like I had hit one of those more popular urban fantasies where the goal was to suck in the reader with witty banter and a penchant for naughtiness and then toss them around on a frothy wave before kicking them ashore at a quick, pat ending. There was meat to this book, and it lived up to what I consider true urban fantasy.

Unclean Spirits is one of the winners. I am looking forward to the next book to see if he keeps it up.

Recommendation: Yep, read it.

Review: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

The first thing I have to say about Patrick Rothfuss is wow.

And OMG.

And wow.

And give me more NOW. Please? What if I insert a cute lolcat with begging eyes? THEN will you give me more?  How about I follow directions on your fortune cookies? ;) 

With his debut novel, The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss set himself up to either be an amazing success or a complete failure. The book is to tell the story of THE legendary bard, THE wizard, THE storyteller, THE musician (you get my point. The dude is supposed to be able to tell a story like no one else can). That in and of itself doesn’t set an author up for failure. The setup is that the story itself is meant to be told as the legendary bard is relating it to someone else, so in his words. In short, the novel itself must therefore be as compelling as if the greatest storyteller of all times had told it, not as if an author was writing about the greatest storyteller. Nothing like reaching beyond the moon, eh?

Patrick Rothfuss succeeded. He hit one past the moon and the stars. This book is amazing. I almost want to pick it right back up and read it again.

I kept interrupting the other half’s obsessive Playboy-catchup (see previous blog) and WoW playing to quote non-spoiler bits of awesome prose. {Oh and to be fair, the PB-catchup is also tempered by a reading of a very thick, very excellent book on medieval history. However, it’s getting in his way of reading books I want him to read so I can talk about them to him, damn it.}

Recommendation: Absofuckinglutely. Run, don’t walk, and buy this book and read it immediately.