Yeah, I’m Reading Janet Evanovich, You Gotta Problem with That?

Fresh off ingesting Jack McDevitt’s Alex Benedict series, I’m in the mood for a little fluff. A bit of chick lit, but even then, I’m learning something about writing.

Evanovich’s long running Stephanie Plum series sets the bar for women out of their depth. Like Sookie Stackhouse, Stephanie’s got money troubles. Both characters have down to earth problems that help ground them in reality despite their outlandish adventures. Money’s a problem for Stephanie, so she stumbles her way into bounty hunting.

I’m more immediately fond of Stephanie: she’s thirty-something, more mature, with an outlandish, though believable, family and a nasty divorce under her belt.
Stephanie doesn’t pick up a gun, go after her bounty, and proceed to blow away the bad guys matrix-style. She comes across realistically: afraid of her weapon, clumsy in her pursuit, and occasionally downright stupid in her mistakes.

Evanovich moves things along with short sentences and unexpected turns of phrase that freshen up clichés. Her descriptive paragraphs have an almost staccato rhythm. Stephanie usually gets her man, but never without threat or setbacks.

A “serious” writer might argue that there’s little value in such a read. At that I stick out my tongue and get back to reading. Good writing reads quick, doesn’t mire the reader, and above all, entertains. I love a deep read, but they really make me smile. Evanovich makes me laugh out loud or cringe with concern. She provokes an emotional response, which not enough science fiction or fantasy do well.

Historical Mysteries Out Among the Stars

Big ideas are the foundation of a great Science Fiction story. Where fantasy enchants, science fiction inspires. I know I’ve enjoyed the read when I put down a Sci Fi book and find my brain spinning as I ponder the implication of a technology or social development.

Science Fiction isn’t an easy sell these days. Most agents won’t touch it and few publishers show interest. In a time when fantasy is thriving, largely due to the urban, Science Fiction is languishing. I suspect that a large part of the issue is that Sci Fi is often inaccessible. It isn’t easy on the brain, and stories based on science can be dull.

A good science fiction story needs neither aliens nor lasers (look at Battlestar Galactica) to work. Not that I’m opposed to aliens and lasers. I am after all, a devoted Farscape fan who never got over its cancellation, but it’s depth I’m seeking in a good science fiction novel. I want that feeling of my brain spinning, of big ideas looming on the horizon, and of course I want to be entertained.

Jack McDevitt’s Alex Benedict novels give me all of these things in a slick package. Alex isn’t the most highly regarded guy around: an antique dealer accused of damaging historical sites, he’s nevertheless very good at his profession. McDevitt made a good turn when he switched the point of view in the books from Alex to his partner Chase. She’s a more dynamic character and being out of the loop of Alex’s brilliant insights, is more relatable for the reader.

McDevitt places a juicy mystery at the heart of each novel, and it’s usually something Alex and Chase stumble into on their way to something else. The reveal is always bigger than life, though the victory is occasionally bittersweet.
My original intent in reading this series was to read one, review it, then read another; but I became so entranced that I ripped through the series in a couple of weeks.

I enjoyed Polaris, but find that the books get better with time.* Seeker, with its discussion of the role of history in contemporary life, captivated me. McDevitt seasons the plot with questions on government and politics. The place of religion in a cosmos where man has spread out among the stars is a major theme in all of the books, particular in Firebird, but I think my favorite so far has been the Devil’s Eye. It has everything I love in Science Fiction: the big idea, a terrible secret buried by authority, remote stellar outposts, and even an appearance by McDevitt’s one alien species, the telepathic mutes. The Devil’s Eye delves into the tensions we all face with our governments and our place in things. All of the books use quotes to start new chapters, usually these are from future books McDevitt has created. The Devil’s Eye draws heavily on a series of horror novels, and McDevitt uses them to inject some commentary on the art of writing into things.



*There’s a point I’d like to make on this, which is that mid-list authors are struggling these days. A lack of high sales is pushing a lot of writers out of writing and it’s unfortunate. McDevitt is a perfect example of a talent that needed time to mature, and he’s a great example of tenacity too.

Faith and Fantasy: Why You Should Read the Curse of Chalion

I was raised with a strict ban on magic, during the 80s when people thought playing Dungeons and Dragons might cause you to kill yourself. Mike Warnke’s the Satan Seller was required reading in our house, and there lurked this terrible fear that Satanists and witches lurked around every corner, ready to maim or kill you. But by banning fantasy, my mother deprived us of a mirror that might have helped us think about good versus evil and our relationship to religion. Fantasy can open the mind, and theology, as it often arises in fantasy, can lead to deep discussions on the nature of faith.

It’s easy to ascribe a coincidence to divine intervention. You think of someone you haven’t seen for a while and run into them the next day, or the person you sit next to on a plane turns out to have been in your high school class. Coincidences often demonstrate that the world is truly a little place.

In fiction coincidences are common by necessity. A good plot relies on chance encounters, connections and events driven by nothing more than the need for them to happen. Connecting plot elements through coincidence can reduce the number of extra characters and help keep the reader interested.

In the Curse of Chalion, coincidence reflects the will of the gods and their limited ability to affect the actions of mankind. I’m going to try and discuss Lois McMaster Bujold’s technique without spoiling too much, but it may not be possible to avoid giving some key elements away. Bujold’s theology holds a logical depth that goes far behind the simplistic deus ex machina employed in so many stories. The gods struggle with their own goals, which might coincide with the goals of man, but in Chalion, the gods simply cannot work upon the world. They are barred by man’s free will. To effect a change upon the world, they must find an agent who’s willing to cast their own will aside. Most often this takes the form of characters who’ve been driven far beyond their limits. Their broken nature leaves them open to the gods’ use.

The Curse of Chalion ignores many of the typical fantasy devices: there are few action scenes or swordfights. Bujold could have chosen to tell the story of the handsome young prince new to his throne, or she could have focused on the Royess Iselle, a fascinating character who despite the limitations placed on her power by her gender, is a powerful young woman who finds ways of succeeding inside those limitations. Instead Bujold chooses for her protagonist Caz, a broken man in his thirties who’s middle-aged in his society. He arrives on the scene irrevocably changed by unfortunate circumstance, unable to lift pen or sword, poor and unrecognizable to even those few nobles who might remember him. From there Bujold weaves Caz into the politics of his day. Caz finds himself caring about more than mere survival again as his spirit heals from his terrible ordeals. Yet it’s not long before he’s once again pushed past his limits, and in that space, the broken man takes actions he never would have considered before.

The Curse of Chalion is a thoughtful fantasy, the sort of story that you ponder long after the book is closed. I put it down and immediately wanted to read more theology and philosophy.

The Magic in the Mundane: A Home at the End of the World

Genre fiction offers escape, entertainment, and release from the boring. Reading it, we spend time with vampires and witches, sexy wizards, and complex villains. Genre fiction is often bigger than life, with an almost comic book feel. Regular life, and literary fiction, don’t usually involve the fate of the world.

Instead, the best literary books amplify. They hold a lens up to simple, common experiences, and if written well, encourage us to see them in another light. A good book can take a cliché event, polish it off, and find a new facet we haven’t seen before. That facet, often something universal, strikes a chord with us because it reflects our own lives and experiences.

Michael Cunningham’s a Home at the End of the World is such a book. Transformative, it’s a book that revels in events that could be sentimental but resists painting them with those colors. Four points of view cross and overlap at just the right intervals. Big events in the characters’ lives often occur off screen, between points of view that highlight more important, more intimate moments. What shapes these characters isn’t the death of a parent, at least not by the end. Rather, they grow through the tiniest bit of personal introspection and struggle to explain this to one another.

At its core a Home at the End of the World is dealing with a particular existential malady, one we all feel: the sense that we’re waiting for our lives to start, even as life passes us by. Yet it doesn’t try to remedy this feeling. The characters move through the decades without a resolution until the very end, when Cunningham conjures an ending for them that perfectly reflects much earlier moments while showing us that the characters have truly found a change in their internal landscape.

I read a lot of good books. A Home at the End of the World is a truly great one.

Failing to Fall in Love or "Just How Timelagged Are You?"

We all love certain books a bit more than others. They might not be bestsellers, or they might be critically acclaimed, but we think of them as ours, like no one else knows they even exist.

My ex used to carry a copy of Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog around almost constantly. His copy was dog-eared and worn, yet he'd faithfully re-read it, annually. For perhaps that reason, like I felt that I'd be trespassing on his devotion, I didn't read the book until now.

What I found was a novel of comic misadventure and wonderful misdirection as two time travelers stumble about the Victorian era, trying to find a hideous piece of sculpture whose whereabouts are responsible for a possible melting of the continuum. No pressure. And yet, the contemporary Victorian characters, completely oblivious to the situation, thwart the travelers through all their eccentric meandering.

The book satisfied, particularly at the denouement. Pets, who I think don't get enough presence in fiction, are a large part of it all. Mysteries compound and resolve. As much as I enjoyed the story, I didn't love the book. I can analyze it to death: the tension took a bit too long. I was never as caught up in the circumstances as I wanted to be. Willis' characters are clever. The end really wrapped it all up nicely. I think this is what agents mean when they reject a manuscript with the confusing statement "I just didn't fall in love."

To Say Nothing of the Dog is a good book, one I'm glad I finally read. Yet it definitely didn't inspire in me the devotion it does in Brian. Conversely, I know that trying to explain my love of Gail Carriger or Margaret Atwood and convince people to read their books doesn't always go very well.

What drives us to fall in love with a book? What makes a book so important to one person but completely passable to another? I don't think there's a good answer, which is what makes that agent response so frustrating to the aspiring author. It's as an ineffable quality as what makes us love a person. Sometimes, to the outside observer, it's something only we can see.

Safe Flying, Anne McCaffrey

Time flying, chronal refugees, eugenics, lost and found heirs to great houses, sexual politics, and of course, dragons. These were all elements of the Dragonriders of Pern, Anne McCaffrey’s wonderful series.

In the eighties science fiction and fantasy were dominated by women: McCaffrey’s books stood beside those of Marion Zimmer Bradley, Mercedes Lackey, Andre Norton, C.J. Cherryh, Melanie Rawn, and Margaret Weiss (though I must fairly mention Tracy Hickman). Many of these writers discarded the tired retread of Tolkien’s conventions and mashed Sci-fi into their fantasy creations. Pern was such a world.

I haven’t been to Pern in a while, though I can picture the covers in my mind as though I were still a kid browsing my local Waldenbooks. I found out today McCaffrey had died at the age of 85. She had a long run, a long life, which I’d hope for anyone. She was a prolific author with a decorous career.

Safe flying, Anne. We’ll miss you. Thank you for the stories.

A Mirror Too Dark?

I wasn’t too kind to Richard K. Morgan’s the Steel Remains when I read it, and yet I found myself eager for its sequel, the Cold Commands. What happened? The initial shock of Morgan’s brutal world wore off, and I saw past my expectations for his protagonists. I say protagonists, and not heroes, because there is often little about these characters that’s heroic. They don’t stride victoriously through Morgan’s world. They survive it, and what that takes out of them makes them often highly unlikeable people.

Morgan’s trio are war heroes who’ve seen better days. As in the first book, their separate plot lines eventually converge. Along the way the world gets built up from the foundations laid in the first volume. We learn history at the hands of a sentient, sarcastic, and possibly disingenuous machine. There’s raw sex and enough adult language to make the writers of Deadwood sit up and take notice. The gods multiply, remain enigmatic, and perplex with their deus ex machina intervention. Magic is madness-inducing, or possibly just madness on the part of its wielder; and the action is fierce and bloody. Morgan knows how to turn a phrase and some of the dialogue made me chuckle out loud.

Yet as I read the Cold Commands, I often found myself asking if a protagonist needs to be likable? The main doubt for me surrounds Ringil, the swordsman whose homosexuality makes him hated where he should be famed. Early in the book, Ringil pays a slaver back by allowing her repeated gang rape at the hands of the mercenaries under his command. This choice strongly overshadowed any pity I wanted to feel for Gil. Yet I still followed his story to the end.

I’ve often thought that good fantasy should hold a mirror up to life, provide us with questions we ask ourselves, and take us down roads that we’ll never follow in reality. Compelling characters cross lines, inside themselves, outside themselves, and we watch them do this out of admiration or shock.

Gil, and his companions, cross every line imaginable. While not likeable, Morgan’s trio are more proactive than many protagonists, and it makes them compelling. They make the hard choices, bleed for it, and most definitely don’t walk away unscathed.

I suspect I’ll ponder this book for a good while, just as I pondered its predecessor, and about the time third volume is ready for purchase, I’ll be ready for it.

In Keeping With the Theme of Birds: The Engines of a Story

I recently finished Gordon Dahlquist’s the Glass Books of the Dream Eaters, and while I felt like it took a while for things to get moving, I was struck by the fundamental sense of change overcoming the protagonists.

Dahlquist is using three main characters. They overlap, interact, and separate. By volume two’s midpoint, I realize that what’s compelling me to keep reading is that the characters are changing. This far in, they aren’t who they started as, and the story isn’t leaving them any choice in the matter.

It’s led me to ponder that change is the engine of a story. In fantasy, the change is usually portrayed as a journey, the door that opens, the answered call to a quest. Home is left behind or outright destroyed.

Baby characters get a violent kick out of the nest of their comfort zone. That’s certainly where Dahlquist’s heroine, Miss Celeste Temple, starts. Her engagement to one Roger Bascombe ends without explanation, and with a determined behavior we’d call stalking in our century, she sets off to track down his unstated reason. Where this investigation takes her is far past the point of safe, into a world of intrigue and danger, where a powerful cabal threatens to upend Victorian society.

And all through it, Celeste and her compatriots change. When traumatized by her adventures, Celeste’s reaction isn’t to linger overly long about it. She reacts. She researches. She gets back into motion to discern exactly what it is she has uncovered. What occurred left a mark on her.

It seems like such a simple thing: but in fiction, characters can change so much more readily than we can in real life. You hear people say “he’s changed,” but how often is it true? Time and life can certainly make a difference in people, and definitely alter our perception or understanding of a person; but actual change doesn’t come naturally. In fiction, it’s entirely possible that a character become someone different. The story drives them to it, forces it on them. That’s the power and effect of fiction: something is possible that isn’t easy in real life.

When is a Beginning not a Beginning?

You’re at a party. The hostess wants to tell you a story, but while the anecdote itself has a stellar punch line, she insists upon giving you a lot of tangential detail as set up. The story itself would have been funny, but by the time it really starts, you’re distracted. Why did she mention the pony if the pony doesn’t play a part?

A beginning is not a beginning when it feels like one for the reader and not the character. Put another way, if there’s going to be a pony, it really needs to matter.

I’ve always felt that a high fantasy writer has a bit more work to do than one writing urban fantasy: we’ve got to weave it all from whole cloth. Both writers have a particular challenge in that they must begin and explain without looking like they’re instructing you.

And I think this is why fantasy queries to agents fail so often: an elevator pitch is damn hard if the world intrudes upon the hook too much. Airships and dragons are familiar concepts. We can face those without too much explanation, but if gravity doesn’t work the same and the sky is pink, we’re going to need a little more to work with. So the world must intrude, and do you see where I’m going with this: balance, balance, balance…

That said, make no mistake, backstory can be the bane of any novel, and the amount of it required to get the story started is directly proportional to the risk of losing the reader’s interest.

The story should start when the hostess’ anecdote is getting good, not during the preamble. That’s when the tale starts for the character.

There’s always a door that’s not to be opened...

There’s always a door that’s not to be opened.
A thing you promised you would not do.
A warning, unheeded, instinct ignored.
The person you said you wouldn’t become.
Not quite seen,
Chasing after you.

With autumn and the first snow looming over Colorado, I’m reading the Shining with a couple of friends. It’s my first exposure to Stephen King’s fiction, and I find myself looking over my shoulder and double checking the locks on the doors at night as he builds to the inevitable thing that’s coming for his characters.

I see now why King is considered a master of suspense: the three characters, a tight little family, struggle with their personal demons or limitations in the narrowing window of a looming external threat. What might be strengths in the outer world are turned against each character as they’re isolated and marooned amidst the deep mountain snowfields. Each is given multiple warnings as the plot advances, multiple hints that their course is unsafe, and each fails to heed the voice telling them not to go.

The son, Danny, has the strongest voice. Five years old, precocious and psychically gifted, he can’t read the warning signs as they’re presented to him. His age limits his vocabulary and understanding, preventing him from being able to communicate his dread or help his parents. Wendy, the mother, is haunted by the specter of her own hideous mother, and the fear of that woman overrides Wendy’s maternity and instinct for self-preservation. Jack, the father, a writer reminds me of the dark cave in the Empire Strikes Back: the demons he finds in the Overlook Hotel are the ones he brought with him, packed tight in the spacious hallways with his wife and son.

Bluebeard comes up more than once, and the reference is more than passing. There’s more than one door in the Overlook that should not be opened, whether it’s the hotel’s past, revealed in a morbid scrapbook Jack digs out of the hellish basement, the inner door to Danny’s burgeoning psychic powers in his own mind, or locked door to room 217: in which the question of whether the unreal things in the Overlook can truly harm you or not is answered.

King’s talent lies in a twisted form of magical realism where the mundane, and everyday things, can be deadly. I’ve never seen a better transformation of a simple thing, an old-fashioned fire hose, into something to fear. But this too, like Bluebeard’s tale, is something we can all remember when we were Danny’s age: things in the shadows that might be a lurking devil face. An item we first mistook for one thing that proved to be another. In reality, we always find the face was just a shirt hung to dry. In the Shining, it’s quite likely not a shirt at all. And that chill you felt, that sense that you can be hurt by something that first appeared quite innocuous? You should have listened to your instincts.

Saving the World One Parasol at a Time

I took a long road to my Lit degree: four schools in two states over fifteen years to be exact. While I earned my History degree somewhere inside that, I never felt like I’d finished my undergraduate schooling until the Literature degree was in my hand.

Every school attended found a reason to consider my knowledge of British Literature inadequate. In the end I completed six Brit Lit and two Brit Drama courses. I am well acquainted with Austen, Donne, Shakespeare, Marvel, and many others.

Reading Gail Carriger’s Alexia Taraboti novels takes me back to my Brit Lit immersion. I laugh out loud as she weds comedies of manners and paranormal romance with bits of steampunk window dressing and snappy dialogue.

Alexia is an outcast in Victorian society: half Italian, too big, and a spinster at twenty-five. Soulless, the first book, starts in media res with a vampire slaying whose silent victim is a treacle tart the voracious Alexia had been eyeing.

While the romance elements in the first book dive into the sexual (an essential component of paranormal romance), they are a culmination after a novel’s worth of awkward flirting which isn’t recognized as flirting for a long while.

My favorite element is the language: Carriger captures the Victorian overspeak and neatly weaves in facts I’d forgotten, like novels being considered lowbrow, popular, entertainment. Soulless has a bit of a mystery to its plot, as the vampire Alexia dispatches is neither registered nor part of the regular, well-dressed supernatural community permeating and ruling London society. Soulless is a satisfying read.

While I felt like Changeless, the second book, loses some of the first’s steam in a journey to Scotland, it does introduce an excellent new character and delves nicely into Alexia’s nature. More mysteries are set up, some of which aren’t resolved until the end of the fourth book, Heartless.

The third book, Blameless, continues the second’s book travel theme. Alexia flees to Italy, getting deeper into her own history and that of her rakish father. The chase, adventure, and conflict resolution is quite satisfying.

Fourth, and as strong as the first in my opinion, is Heartless. Several long boiling mysteries come to fruition. Alexia has physical challenges to her goals of protecting kin and country that I’d rather not spoil; but she manages it with the intensely pragmatic nature of the Soulless.

The series has me hooked, and I’m quite ready for the fifth, which is out next year. If you’re looking for a charming read with quick wit and a fun take on the tired paranormal tropes of vampires and werewolves, bring a cup of tea, take a seat, and spend some time in the world of the Soulless.

Bone Shake, Rattle and Roll

When her son takes off into the ruins of Civil War Seattle, Briar Wilkes packs up her father’s rifle, her gasmask, and her polarized goggles to go in search of the boy. But Seattle is walled off for a reason. A disaster brought the city low, infesting it with poison gas and the walking dead, a disaster caused by the husband Briar left for dead sixteen years ago. To get her son back, she’ll face all that and the specter of her past: a specter in the form of a man claiming to be her dead husband.

There’s an elegance in two points of view that tangle, overlap, and eventually converge. When it’s done correctly, you jump from train to train with a building sense that the two will soon collide. You wait with baited breath at every near miss. When the two finally come together, it feels organic, natural, and often explosive.

Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest, isn’t just a great steampunk read: it’s a well-oiled machine. Priest locks down every bolt as Briar and her son, Zeke, slide towards the conclusion. Secrets get dosed out in just the right amount, and Priest brings her alternate history alive without burying you in exposition or description. The first chapter, a little light on action and a bit heavy no backstory, get the necessities out of the way. From there Boneshaker hums along. We follow Briar’s desperate search for Zeke even as we’re treated to his perspective as he foolishly enters the ruined city. Priest slows things just right at the end, and the conclusion holds a few more surprises while feeling altogether natural.

Multiple Masks: Hero, by Perry Moore

Thom Creed is keeping two secrets from his father, and it’s a toss up on which one’s revelation will cause the most disappointment: Thom is gay, and he has superpowers. His father’s past as a masked crime fighter is responsible for one being a problem, his desire for a family legacy, the other. Yet Thom can’t help either fact. When an aborted runaway attempt brings him to the attention of the League, the world’s premier superhero team, Thom is soon juggling his own dreams against his father’s. Family secrets, including the cause of his mother’s disappearance will get outed, and Thom will have to choose between doing the right thing and losing his anonymity along with his father’s love.

Perry Moore’s Hero is yet another book, highly recommended, award-winning, and endorsed by no less than Stan Lee, that I’ve meant to read for a long while. I finally pulled it off the shelf this week and found myself deeply engrossed. It’s not often I finish a book, put it down, and contemplate immediately cracking it open again.

Hero draws a lot on themes of romance, being an outsider, and the search for a parent’s love and approval; but they’re given a good twist in the protagonist’s dual secrets. Moore weaves a world deeply inspired by those drawn by DC and Marvel. He lets the super-hero motif come to life with all the camp that spandex and capes imply. Moore writes frankly, imbuing Thom with honest commentary on his sexuality while perfectly capturing many awkward young adult moments. I cringed at a lot of these, because they often felt so genuine and familiar. The romance, a slow burn, is touching and difficult, as only first love can be. Thom’s need to be his own person while keeping his father’s respect is the central conflict, and it’s that issue which resonates the most.

Hero was especially hard to read knowing that Moore recently died and that we won’t be getting a follow up to Thom’s adventures or see any other great stories. I’m sad to see such a voice silenced so young and with so much potential. I will re-read Hero. It’s earned a permanent place on the shelf. This, and a strong recommendation, are the best testaments I can give.

Our Ancestors Were Us, but They Also Weren’t

“The past is a foreign country.” It’s a quote many of my History professors were fond of. What they meant of course is that the culture differences between us and say, the ancient Romans, are vast. Religious practices, sexual mores, familial relationships all might see familiar, but there’s a danger in ascribing modern perspectives to people who lived thousands or hundreds of years ago.

While accepting the differences, it’s also important to remember that they had the same minds, the same capacity for belief and treachery, love, and betrayal.

I’ve been a long time listener of Mike Duncan's History of Rome podcast. It’s been a great way to remember details I’ve forgotten since my History degree and for filling in many blank spots. The audio book recommendations, couched in a plug for Audible.com, given at the start of each show have really rounded out my library. A recent fiction recommendation was the Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis, a Roman noir novel.

Marcus Didius Falco literally collides with a fresh case in the Forum. The girl he saves from a pair of thugs knows far less than the full plot, but Falco is soon protecting the lady while avoiding his landlord, an aggressive Aedile, and his overbearing mother. Despite her innocence, the girl is tangled up in a crime whose reach crosses the Roman empire.

Davis does a fun job of weaving the ancient with more modern detective conventions. Falco has a big case to solve, and the job will take him from Rome’s seedier districts to the emperor’s palace and across the sea to Britain, a place he hoped to never see again.

Written in 1989, the Silver Pigs is a bit older, but you can do far worse in a detective story. There’s a bittersweet flavor to the ending that I really enjoyed, and if I happened to learn a bit about ancient history, well, that’s just a bonus.

On Voice and Language: You say Les-tat. I say Les-tah.

You know you’re a writer, or at least obsessive compulsive, when you wake up at 4 am with the thought: Did I use ‘sodden’ correctly in my Facebook wall post? Language is our biggest tool as writers. We study grammar and punctuation, knowing all the rules and following them before deciding when and where to break them. (Strict and proper comma usage is usually the first victim). But being able to spell or write a well-formed sentence doesn’t make one a good writer or create lucid prose. There’s a particular alchemy that occurs when you first write something that springs to life beneath your fingertips. Grammar provided the bones, but somehow you managed to tack on flesh and imbue the work with breath. It’s been compared to divine possession and called inspiration, but what you’ve done is feel the first stirrings of voice, the elusive, creative quality every writer seeks to find, retain, and master.

Language is the framework in which we play, and if we’re very good, we get to color outside the lines from time to time. In fantasy, there’s a strong tendency to twist language into lovely, unpronounceable forms. I’m guilty, and in all honesty, original names are one of my favorite elements of the genre. Yet at the same time, there’s a certain useful simplicity in naming your main character Will, Sally, or Brandon. Your reader isn’t thrown out of the story every time they see the name in print. Sometimes I listen to an audio book and when I see the protagonist’s name later. I can’t even recognize it, though I’ve heard it aloud a thousand times.

So what’s the answer in my opinion? It’s the answer I always give: balance. Keep it accessible. Don’t send me scurrying to the Internet to look up Old Norse phonetics unless you’re clever enough to sneak in some clues along the way. If your character has a much clearer nickname, just make that their common name. You can tell me they have some meaningful, twisty name later. You might be sacrificing some of the depth, but your reader won’t notice because they’ll be more deeply engrossed in your story.

A Hel of a Ride: Hammered by Kevin Hearne

Deicide is a serious affair. If you're going to take down a god, especially one on Thor's level, you're going to need a pretty big sword and some serious cojones. Kevin Hearne's Hammered, the third book in the Iron Druid Chronicles, takes things to a whole new threat level. Atticus O'Sullivan has a couple of promises to keep, and doing so will put his very long existence in danger as both commitments involve a trip to Asgard and a confrontation with the Norse pantheon. Worse, in Asgard, he's outside the protection of his own gods and things back on earth aren't going so well as the area of Arizona under his protection suffers a vampire invasion and attack from a group of Kabbalah practitioners out for his head.

Hammered is a great ride. We get some new companions for Atticus, a cameo from a major deity, and a clever recounting of backstories in a style reminiscent of Chaucer. Putting more pieces on the board serves Hearne well, because not everyone makes it out alive. Hearne isn't afraid to raise the body count and says goodbye to some supporting cast members, a trait other urban fantasy writers could study. My only complaint is that we have to wait for the fourth book, Tricked.

Death Takes a Holiday - Torchwood: Miracle Day

Death is the simplest and most obvious threat your protagonist can face, but you generally can’t kill them. In some fantasy it’s possible to get them back with magic, but first person point of view isn’t going to work so well if your main character is taking a dirt nap. (I’m very anxious to see where the Dresden Files takes this in the next volume).

It’s easy to raise the stakes in a book or movie by killing off members of the supporting cast. I have a hard time thinking of many action movies where the hero’s girlfriend survives. Family members are usually a goner the moment they walk on screen. In television, an ensemble cast is relatively safe. Headliners don’t die unless the actors are leaving. Then you get one or two fatalities as the seasons drag on. One show where you get the sense that no one is safe is Torchwood.

By the end of the third series the cast had been whittled down to two headliners and a few second tier characters. Now Torchwood is back, in a partnering between BBC and Starz. They’re certainly giving it some solid promotion. Even Denver has billboards advertising it.

Torchwood benefits from being a British series. Its seasons, or series, are shorter, meaning we don’t get stuck with a lot of padding. Conflict can remain at the forefront. Whene an American series might stick in twenty episodes to create a season, the BBC format is fine with six to thirteen.

The first episode of the new series, Miracle Day, changes the rules of life and death on us. People cease to die, regardless of their injury. Complicating things further, the immortal Jack Harkness can suddenly be hurt, indicating that the writers aren’t afraid to sacrifice even him if the story calls for it. By offing the rest of the cast from the first two seasons, Torchwood let us know that anyone can be a target. Putting Jack’s mortality in play also helps to break up one of the problems of immortal characters in television (usually vampires): the current crisis is always related to some aspect of their past. If Jack is no longer immortal then the cycle of unfinished business always coming back to bite him can end. I’m glad Torchwood is back, but I suspect the body count is going to rise again, so I’ll be holding on to my seat.

Savants Make Me Nervous

I’ve never quite trusted people for whom things come too easily. Anything I’ve ever found worth doing took patience, practice, and craft. When another writer asks about my work, they aren’t asking about my leisure. Granted, the effort of writing a book is mitigated by the sense of enjoyment it gives me and the love I hold for it, but the sweat still falls. The apprenticeship doesn’t end, regardless of your success. This holds true for most things: effort and struggle are not only the rule of life, but they bring results.

This sense of reward for effort, the goal achieved after endless practice, is what makes me leery of over-powered protagonists. We’ve all seen them: the unbeatable swordsman, the uncatchable rogue or the mage who effortlessly slays demons and binds gods with his spells. Sometimes a protagonist embodies all of these types. He’s so powerful that he might as well not bother with companions. After all, he’s smarter than anyone else in the party, stronger too. Companions are only there to reflect upon how powerful and perfect he is. No matter what conflict arises, you never truly believe that the super-protagonist will be defeated, and this makes his epic journey (and it’s always epic) a terribly hard read.

When I read about an unbeatable protagonist, I never buy his backstory of poverty or struggle. He’s a savant, a natural hero destined to save the day. I put the book down, and then I think about Frodo.

Lord of the Rings kicked off our genre with a protagonist whose very people were the weakest, slightest, and least warlike in the world. Tolkien didn’t just saddle Frodo himself with some serious handicaps, but the other hobbits share them. Gandalf, the most powerful member of the Fellowship of the Ring gets his ass kicked pretty early on, letting us know the odds against Frodo’s mission to the Cracks of Doom is no cake walk.

Tolkien might have really stacked the deck against Frodo, but you do need some sense that a protagonist is truly facing a challenge. The antagonist or adversary needs to feel like a real threat. That’s the essence of conflict, and without it you’ve got a very boring book.

Into the Deep: Learning to Swim by Sara J. Henry

Troy Chance thinks she knows who she is. She’s got a comfortable life, with all the right people at just the right distance. She’s safe. When an impulsive act of good sends her diving off a moving ferry in search of what might be a child thrown overboard, her previous self is washed away. Troy is soon balancing this upheaval against the mystery of the child’s abandonment, but solving it threatens to take away the catalyst of her new life.

Sara J. Henry’s Learning to Swim is just my kind of thriller: an intense opening with a mystery complex enough to keep me guessing and a thinking protagonist I can relate to. Henry gives Troy a rational mind, and even when she goes off half-cocked, there’s calculation in her actions. It makes her a nice change from main characters who act without thinking or against their better judgment.

The door Troy opens when she takes that dive changes everything. She’s soon reevaluating relationships and choices while trying to protect a discarded five-year old. The who and what of the mystery are too good for me to spoil, so I recommend just picking up the book. I couldn’t put it down, and it’s rare I find an old-fashioned page turner this intriguing.

And Then All Fell Down: This Year's Hawthorne Moon Sneak Peek

An assassination costs Tris Drayke a key pillar of support for his shaky rule and a member of his family. Things in the Winter Kingdoms are getting worse, An invasion force led by a Dark Summoner had landed, and Tris must forge new alliances to save his people, throne, and the lives of his friends, wife, and child.

Gail Martin’s Fallen Kings Cycle concludes with more ancient spirits, magic, and intrigue with the Dread. Just reading the excerpt she released on twitter (@gailmartin) tells me she’s upping the stakes. Evil has the good guys on the ropes, and things seem at their bleakest before the conclusion.

If you’re new to the series, you can catch up in time, as the Dread won’t be released until February.

And when you’re ready for a teaser, click below to hear Gail read from the first chapter:

You can download this excerpt here.

Here's a video of Gail describing her sneak peek event, the Hawthorne Moon, and how you can find excerpts, giveaways, and other goodies:



Visit Gail at her site, http://www.ascendantkingdoms.com to get started.

Plot as Engine: By the Hammer of …

This post is going to be pretty spoiler-ridden regarding Thor comics over the last several years.

Let’s just skip the movie for a moment and talk about the revitalized Thor comic. J. Michael Straczynski brought Thor back a few years ago, deftly displaying that he gets what makes mythological characters tick.

After a few necessary developments to bring Asgard back from Ragnorak, and cleverly dropping it in my home state of Oklahoma, Straczynski got on with the nifty plot twists: Loki’s return, his clever means of getting the more dubious Asgardians back on their feet, and his manipulation of time and Thor to put Balder on the throne were great reading.

We’ve moved on to other writers (most notably the talented Kieron Gillen) and seen combat and horror as Marvel’s Siege crossover centered on Asgard. After Siege we had a great trip to hell and a battle for the dead Asgardians’ very souls. Then came the most recent volume, the Worldeaters, and I felt like the series lost some steam.
Odin’s return and his reclamation of the throne from Balder felt forced. The status quo was largely reset to how things were before Ragnorak, and yet some excellent new ground was cleared and seeds sown for fresh stories.

I’m still reading as Thor once again became Journey into Mystery, and back to loving the scale and scope of the stories, but let’s focus on the bad for a moment. To set up some conflict in the next crossover, Marvel needed Thor, Odin and Asgard in certain positions to race them towards the next big event. The result will no doubt be compelling, but for a moment, the hood came up and we saw the gears of the plot moving.

It happens often. Sometimes plot necessitates a loss of story. Characters make a decision that feels disingenuous or unnatural for them. I don’t mean an act that forces them to go against their nature, which can be an important moment in their development, I mean a choice freely made. When it happens you recognize that the writer is manipulating things to bring about a certain outcome. The best analogy I can think of is watching a play. Rather than having the curtain go down for the stage to be rearranged, you catch the stage workers in the act. They intrude into the scene and start moving furniture while the curtain is still up. Your focus shifts entirely to them. Plot is an essential mechanic. Even the most literary book needs motion, for something to happen, but at the same time, obvious rearrangement and changes for the sake of the plot can throw the reader out of the story. It takes a careful hand to shoehorn in a game changing plot event in so short a medium as comics.

Kevin Hearne: A Fresh Voice in Urban Fantasy

"And the druids, they were into sex and death in an interesting night-time telly sort of way.” – Eddie Izzard

Atticus O’Sullivan is youthful in more than looks. A bit of a tree hugger and susceptible to the sexual charms of various Irish deities, Atticus is livelier than many urban heroes. Yet he’s also ancient, an immortal druid operating in modern Arizona. His magic is subtler than many urban heroes, giving him strong limitations that make his battles of a less certain outcome.

Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles get off to a rousing start with the first two books, Hounded and Hexed. I’ve happily burned through both. The series gives us some of the genre’s exhausted elements: vampires and werewolves, but they play third string to his use of less common tropes and get blended into Atticus’s well-developed supporting cast.

Hearne puts fresh spins on witches and gods without making them seem silly, as often happens when you try to update a cliché. Some immortals are better at blending into the modern world than others, giving them a nice contrast to Atticus, who poses successfully as an early twenty-something.

Little missteps, like a werewolf surprised by Atticus’s nudity after shape-changing can get overlooked when Hearne uses the scene for effective comedy. The mix of serious with light-heartedness is probably my favorite element of the series. I know I’m in for a fun ride without the constant weight of dire consequences that looms over so much epic fantasy.

The stakes are very personal for Atticus: threats are aimed at him, not the world, and I actually like seeing things toned down from the epic threat level of so much fantasy, though I don’t doubt that the looming conflict with a certain thunder god in the third book, Hammered, will take things to a higher level.

Great Expectations - So that’s what the Fuss is about

My experiment with audiobooks is paying dividends. Having gone through Treasure Island, I’ve turned to another classic I’ve long meant to read, Great Expectations. I finally understand why they assigned it in high school. I wasn’t a great student, something I still regret, and when they put Dickens on the lesson plan, I never saw the value in reading it. Mrs. Clark, wherever you are, I apologize. Great Expectations was boring. Too many details, too little story. I thought of the narrative as too stuffy and read Terry Pratchett and Roger Zelazny instead.

I’ve since learned that Great Expectations was a newspaper serial, which changes my perspective quite a bit. Some of the repetitive details and phrasing, for example, makes better sense when you know that readers may have gone a month without fresh material. I still don’t find that Dickens to work well in large blocks, like the hundred page weekly readings assigned in sophomore English. Taking it chapter by chapter, or in hour long listenings, creates a different experience. I’m even finding it funny, and I never expected that.

Lad Lit with Arrows

When I was young, I read a lot of what I tend to call lad lit: books for boys that usually involve runaways and survival. I was never a boy scout, but a rural upbringing imparted a lot of the skills you might associate with them. I could make a fire, fish, nock a bow, and identify a number of edible things in the woods. In my too rare camping trips I tend to surprise my friends, who think of me as way too urban to set up a tent or own a gun. While I live an urban life, I sometimes itch for a bit more of the self-sufficiency those stories imparted.

John Flanagan’s Ranger’s Apprentice series fully embraces the style of old-fashioned lad lit I grew up with. His main character, Will, gets out of tough scrapes with the use of his training and endless self-discipline. With the help of his friends, he performs feats of heroism often worthy of fully grown knights, and keeps to his principles while often making friends of his enemies. At its core, Flanagan’s narrative embraces the idea that Rangers are a mysterious, solitary bunch, needing years of practice to become good at their craft; and Will never fails to disappoint when given a choice between taking the easy route or keeping to his training. Will’s key relationship is with his mentor, the grim-faced Halt, and this relationship keenly affects both master and apprentice. While Will is the main character, he’s far from the only important one. Flanagan switches point of view often, sometimes too much.

Written for a young audience, the books are a quick read for adults, and I ripped through the first four fairly quickly. The first book is mostly set up, with Will entering Halt’s tutelage. The plot of the first book is a bit secondary to setting the stage for the series and introducing us to Will’s world. By book two things are ready to go and the next three books end on cliffhangers and can be read as one.
Like a good series for young adults, themes slowly advance towards the mature, but always with an old-fashioned morality that I found refreshing. Though I was ready for the shift to PG when it came, I didn’t mind spending time in a less complicated worldview. Flanagan’s is a low to no magic world. Men are knights and warriors while women are diplomats and princesses. I’m so used to the female action hero trope that it was a little refreshing to get a break from it, though I was glad the character of Evalyn showed resolve and courage at every turn instead of being portrayed as some kind of delicate flower. The Rangers succeed by guile and clever tactics in a neat display of brains over brawn. Flanagan thinks his battles through, and I saw some old tricks like the false retreat turned on their head.

If you’re looking for a good kid’s book with a strong, moral protagonist, I recommend the Ranger’s Apprentice series, and I’d like to find a series with as much heart written for girls if you can recommend one.

Giving It A Listen

Despite my literature degree, there are plenty of classics I’ve never read. Some of them were never assigned. Many weren’t considered important, or they simply weren’t part of the canon. Often I found the same works assigned over and over. I’ve read Hamlet and the Iliad more often than I care to contemplate, while less serious books were never placed on the reading list. Worse still, I was a horrible high school student, so I glossed over Dickens and other books I should have read twenty years ago.

We can add to this problem that there’s a simple truth that education isn’t what it used to be. Nothing makes this plainer than opening my aged copy of the Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Printed in the 1940s, it’s listed as a book for boys. It’s a problem that’s getting worse, as some curricula have dropped novels altogether.

It cannot be said often enough that reading widens the mind, and that the best means of becoming a better writer is to read. But knowing there’s a gap in my knowledge and filling it are two very different things. Sitting down with a classic book for an evening never makes my list of top priorities, so I’ve taken to audio books to try and make up some ground.

David Cordingly’s many references to Treasure Island put it at the top of my list to see if I can listen to a book and still analyze it. As I listen to the adventures of Jim Hawkins, I’m immediately struck by Stevenson’s approach to his narrative. Treasure Island has many of the traits and techniques of a good, modern young adult novel. First, there’s always action. We spend little time in unnecessary detail and much of it following Jim’s fight for his life. We’re dropped into the sailing vernacular without a glossary or explanation of terms. Stevenson avoids a pedantic approach. He’s not telling us a story to teach us about pirates, but instead lets events take their course at a quick pace. Jim, as a character, grows from cowering at a single pirate to boldly telling a roomful of them how he’s foiled their plots.

One inconsistency in the book is a brief point of view shift about halfway through. Stevenson needed this shift in order to fill us in on plot details Hawkins isn’t present for, but it does break up the overall flow of the narrative in a jarring way.

Listening to a book is a very different experience for me, but I find it does wonders for helping to tune my ear to pace and dialogue. Whenever I think things are slowing down, Stevenson inserts a plot twist, a betrayal or reversal of fortune. Like any book written in another age, the language is different. The pirates patois is coupled with outdated phrasing that makes a reader blink; but in a way this adds to the exotic air of the story as we’re not only looking at another culture but into another time as well.

The Pitfall of History

Your town, your family, your country: these all have a greater history than you’re aware of, than you can be aware of. Even the most learned scholar couldn’t uncover it all. Even in America, where our cities are striplings compared those of Europe, there is a far deeper past than what we can unearth. We see it in snapshots and glimpses, bits, really. The larger portrait of the past is simply lost to us. The present occupies its space, bumps up against it, paves it over. Recovering the past might be possible, but at the loss of the present and the history we’re currently writing together.

After thinking a lot about backstories, I turned my attention to fantastic history: the background of the worlds we write in, and I find it a bigger pitfall than even character backstory. There is so much background to a place, so much a writer could convey about the kingdom or empire where events are occurring. How much should they bring into a story? What’s the cut-off point for history and tangents? When we work at the epic level, the massive cycle spanning continents, dynasties, and centuries, the danger widens. So often a series can spin out of control. We end up spending hundreds of pages with characters the readers aren’t as invested in, merely because we can; and this sort of over-writing can keep a new author from publishing.

Older fantasy, like Tolkien, reads a lot like good history. Events transpire in the present, but the ancient past lurks around every corner. At some point fantasy became more action oriented, and I think this is a positive change in the genre. When comparing a more detailed book, like Tolkien, with a more action-oriented one, say Mistborn, there’s no doubt which one is more concerned with telling an entertaining story. Not that Tolkien isn’t entertaining, or even a page-turner, but the writing style is so far apart that you can almost consider them different genres. Both stories rely on some very ancient history to drive them, but only one is invested in sharing more of that history than is necessary to resolve its plot.

Maybe it’s a bit mercenary, but it seems that a modern book requires authors to use only the most essential elements of their worlds. Side trips into unnecessary characters, detail, and history aren’t given much real estate in the current publishing market. Hook your readers, keep the tension high, and move the story along with every chapter or you risk losing them. I cannot say if this shift is good or bad, but it is more apparent as I read more current books.

When you’re writing fantasy, in a world of your own making, you can easily become entranced with your creation. Unlike the real world, where the full history of any place is denied to posterity, you have the opportunity to dig as far back as you want. Each forest and island opens itself to you, and it has a story to tell. This history enriches the fictional world, but not necessarily the story you’re telling. The art lies in knowing what to reveal and what to hide. Your characters may be hiking through a wood which was the site of a crucial battle three thousand years ago, but unless the spirits of the dead soldiers are going to menace your heroes, or their discarded gear and burial mounds are going to provide compelling atmosphere, there’s little point in bringing in that history.

The further I examine genre fiction, and fantasy specifically, the more I develop a philosophy of balance. For so many of the elements I’ve written about, there is a golden mean, a right amount. They give your story flavor and your world heft, but you never want to overdo them. History is the same sort of element. Keep refining your craft until you’ve learned the exact dose.

We All Come from Somewhere, but Does Anybody Care?

Each of us carries a backstory. We share the details of our pasts with others. They pay attention depending on their investment in us, or how well we tell it. Or they don’t. Someone who wasn’t there, who didn’t share the experience, simply cannot feel it the way we did. The inherent challenge in sharing our history is to make it exciting. You can probably recall a time when someone told you a boring anecdote. Maybe they included too much detail or unnecessary tangents.

Fictional characters are much the same way: their background informs and shapes them. It helps to establish who they are. Often a characters’ past includes vital information, but writers can err and include backstory in large boring lumps that readers don’t want or need.

Fictional characters aren’t real people. Their psychological composition just isn’t as complex, no matter how well we write them. Yet this isn’t a lack. It actually gives writers an advantage. We can determine which parts of the character’s background aren’t yawn-inducing and which are compelling enough to be worth sharing. We can tweak a characters’ background to make it serve the story, and we can learn what to tell the reader or what to leave out.

Any piece written in third person narrative is a recount of the characters’ past. The narrator is looking back on events and telling us what happened. To the reader this recap seems to happen in real time. A sense of immediacy is crucial to pace and keeping things in motion. Backstory is important, but it should never be more compelling than the main tale. If the past is so juicy that it must interrupt the present action, then you’re probably starting the story in the wrong place.

This is one of those areas where a writer must be honest with their self. Much like that tale you’ve told on every first date, it might not be that funny or interesting to the other party. Look at the level of backstory you’re including. If an objective reading tells you it’s essential, consider if it deserves to be center stage. If it bores you, keep it to a minimum.

“The Book I’m Not Reading is Riveting” – Patty Larkin

As I prepare for another move, it’s time once again to sort, pack, and hopefully reduce the library. It’s that last bit that’s hard. I own a lot of books. Two liberal arts degrees and a lifetime of reading adds up. I have antique reference books, highlighted textbooks, first edition Margaret Atwoods, tacky paperbacks, graphic novels, loose comics, and everything in between.

I have a whole shelf of loaners that need to get read and go home; and another of blank journals that I may never fill (having long ago succumbed to typing everything in). While it has been suggested that much of this content could be transferred to the Kindle, and my inner minimalist does like that idea, I struggle with disposing of books, particularly those I may never read.

Is there anything sadder than an unread book? Probably not for its author. Just writing two practice books I could not publish was a little heartbreaking. Publishing and having your book flop must be doubly so. This touches on why we write, or at least why I write: which is to share and connect. You do a very private body of work when writing, then share it with people in the hope they’ll read, enjoy, and respond by wanting more.

Even a textbook contributor wants her book read. Every review, negative or positive, must sting or lift, especially until you’re sure you have an audience. That makes every unread book on my shelf something of a promise: a commitment on my part to connect with that author. Dead or alive, they put something out there for me to read; and at some point I had a reason to read it. Maybe someone gifted it to me. Perhaps a professor was trying to instill some knowledge, or on a whim I thought the cover was well designed. So I’m packing up the unread books and bringing them along where they will rest on their shelf as I whittle down their numbers and they get replenished.

Green Shoots and Spring Fever

Winter in Colorado comes and goes. We get storms, but the mountains usually do a great job of walling the snow away from the city. When storms do scale the Rockies, they’re often gentle. I woke Monday to a slushy snowfall that gave the city a much needed bath and hopefully doused the fires that have been threatening so many homes out on the plains.

I usually disdain talking about the weather, but I was struck by the contrast of soft snow on budding trees and fresh shoots poking up through the blanketing white. I love the way snow quiets the city, muting the sounds of cars and traffic. I just wish it inspired me.

Spring is a strange, contrasting time for my writing. While everything around me is budding with life, I tend to find myself withdrawing, curling up inside and waiting to work. Fall inspires me the most, and there are long stretches in that season when

I can’t break away from the keyboard; but spring makes me contemplative, a little depressed, and I have to force a balance between breaks and productivity if I’m going to write a good book I can sell.

I have a deadline I’ve set myself. It’s an important component of the self-discipline I’m developing for the day when I am published and my deadlines come from without.

It helps to remember that forcing myself to write when I don’t really want to has produced some of my best work. I have to push myself to be engaged, and it often pays off. I’ve delivered a nice chunk of my work in progress to my critique group, and their feedback gives me something to chew through while I wait for inspiration to light.

I’ve often written about the need for continual improvement, but not enough on the topic of continual work. The comparison that stands the strongest as I look back on my thoughts on the topic is the gym: once you’re out of the habit, it’s hard to get back to doing it every day; but it’s important for your writing health. Just like muscles, your craft can atrophy. So keep to it, even if you’d rather stare out the window at the coming spring.

A Lucky Coincidence Between Research and Exhibition

A good brief history book is a gloss, covering a topic and referring to larger works. It’s excellent for getting you started and pointing you down further roads if you wish to take them. Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates by David Cordingly is such a book.

Cordingly pinpoints a singular era in the vast history of piracy, focusing almost exclusively on the Golden Age, when the New World was sending gold back to the Old by the shipload in exchange for slaves from Africa. He draws on the texts that inspired Robert Louis Stevenson and Daniel Defoe while also drawing extensively on naval records.

Where the book comes alive are the areas where Cordingly analyzes a pirate’s fictional depiction, such as in Treasure Island or Peter Pan, and compares it to the historical record. Cordingly navigates the differences between the two and notes how right fiction has often gotten it. He delves into the appeal of piracy, revealing why so many would gladly take to it. He also does not shy away from discussing piracy’s darker side: torture, the impacts of slavery, racial tensions, class, and economic motivations while dispelling a few myths about the romantic gentleman pirate along the way.

One wreck Cordingly references more than once is the Whydah, a slave ship captured by a North American pirate named Sam Bellamy and converted for his use. Its artifacts and history are beautifully assembled in the Real Pirates exhibition currently at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The combination of reading Cordingly’s book and touring the Whydah exhibition truly brought the research to life. There are many references to ships and places in the exhibition which Cordingly explores, and the exhibition provides a close up on the Whydah which Cordingly did not.

The exhibition is probably the best I’ve seen. The collection is assembled in such a way that you follow the history of various crew members through their careers and deaths, moving through set pieces that would make your local Renaissance Fair cry. I was impressed by the actors drifting through the exhibition. They provided a nice bit of unconsidered perspective, such as those of the wives left behind.

The ship’s own history is discussed, as are the modifications necessary to convert her from slaver to pirate vessel. The exhibition also helped by clarifying terms Cordingly used without definition. I can tell a pink from a sloop now, should the need ever arise. While the exhibition does not polish over the role of the slave trade in piracy, it perhaps takes the democracy of pirate crews to a bit of an idealized place.

It’s not often that I’m lucky enough to see a tactile display at the same time I’m reading a good book on a historical topic. If you can catch the exhibition when it comes to your area I recommend it, and I recommend Cordingly’s book even more highly.

The Point Might Be the Journey, but the Destination Still Matters

A book’s ending has to satisfy. You want to close the door on your story in a way that lets the reader move on, knowing it’s finished. Maybe you conclude on a question or open a new door, but either way you turn out the lights and close up shop. Something has to indicate that a book is done. In a series you might leave with a cliffhanger or a new development, a wrinkle that will grow into the next book’s conflict.

Endings are tricky things. A good one leaves you with a positive remembrance of the book. Bad endings can make the entire exercise of reading the story unfulfilling, like a long meal capped with a flavorless dessert. When I look back on the books that really captured my attention, their endings are usually strong. They evoke emotion years later, such as in Three Junes when two major characters drive into New York. When I try to specifically think of books whose endings were weak, I have a harder time. The books themselves are less memorable. Some books, Smilla’s Sense of Snow comes to mind, do not seem to know where to end. They just come to an abrupt stop. Cliffhangers that are never resolved trouble me the most. Much like a television series which is suddenly canceled, you’re left wondering how the story ended.

In fantasy, the story is too often a showcase for the world, a vast travelogue for amazing places and robust vistas. Endings can become less important. The longer a series, the more epic the scope, the more weight gets placed on the climax and the subsequent conclusion. The payoff has to be worth the buildup, or the reader is let down. I often find that the climax isn’t the part that sticks with us. The villain is defeated, the world saved, but there’s always that little moment after that truly settles in as the bit we remember. The ending has the opportunity to sound a little quieter, The heroes retire. Luke joins his circle of friends at the campfire. Terry Brooks seems fond of marrying his heroes, giving them a reason to leave the adventuring life behind. Jim Grimsley, ended Dream Boy with a mystery that I still ponder to this day.

Beginnings are when you hook the reader, drawing them in. Middles are where you hold them. It’s crucial that you don’t lose them when the pace slows a little and the characters catch their breath. But every part of a story is important, so don’t forget the ending.