Read Alana's short fiction on the Web: “The Valley” at The Edge of Propinquity, “Nomi's Wish” at Coyote Wild, and “No Matter How You Hide Her” at Baeg Tobar.

Can't Breathe, Can't Fight

08/19/2010 11:42 PM

jimhines talks a lot about martial arts and writing on his blog. An experience at kempo tonight lent itself to this kind of comparison as well, so I thought I'd try an analogy over here.

I'm allergic to citrus-scented cleaning solutions. While this gets me out of certain housework tasks (Twostripe is incredibly accommodating about mopping the kitchen floor while I'm out of the house), it also comes with the inconvenience of not being able to breathe around that artificial smell. So tonight at the dojo, when trying to clear out the smell in the waiting room, one of our instructors sprayed some air freshener containing whatever ingredient it is that makes me choke. When he came back into the dojo, I could feel my lungs tighten.

There's a saying: "Can't see, can't fight. Can't walk, can't fight. Can't breathe, can't fight." It's meant to list targets on an opponent that will end fights fast (which is one of the things kempo is about). I suppose it's also a list of the targets you need to carefully defend: eyes, knees, and throat. Suddenly not able to fully breathe, I bowed out and hung out in the parking lot for a few minutes before my sensei came out to find out what happened. I explained; he apologized profusely; I accepted and said I'd just wait ten minutes or so to see if I could come back in. It didn't end up clearing up, but one of the other instructors came out to work with me on the lawn in front of the dojo, so maybe we were good street-side advertising as a bonus.

Breathing is really important -- and not just when you can't do it. You can't forget to breathe when you're working out, or you'll drop. You can't forget to breathe while you're, say, in labor, either. That's the literal. But, metaphorically, if you can't breathe -- if you can't just take a bit of time to live, to enjoy life, to just *be* -- you can't write. For me, the more anxiety and stress I cause myself by worrying about whether or not I'm writing enough sometimes keeps me from remembering to breathe.

I finally turned in some chapters of Blood and Tumult to lyster last night, and I wrote a review this morning. There's other work to be done, but for most of today, I just took a little time to breathe. And I feel recharged.

YA Whitewashing redux? (an open letter to Harper Teen)

08/18/2010 07:41 PM

Dear Harper Teen,

Do you remember the controversy that surrounded Justine Larbalestier's Liar? It had a white girl on the cover of a book that was about a mixed-race teen. Bloomsbury withdrew that cover with apologies and changed it to one that more accurately represented the novel's heroine after fans spoke out against the whitewashing of the cover. That was in 2009.

Then in 2010, Bloomsbury did the same thing with Magic Under Glass by Jacelyn Dolamore. Probably because people were still watching Bloomsbury, there was further outcry -- debut novelist Dolamore didn't have the pull of Larbalestier, but there was enough criticism that it got a beautiful new cover featuring a dark skinned girl who looks like she's from the "Far East" (which reflects the character).

I'm asking you to remember this because I'm really afraid of what's going on with Cindy Pon's new novel, and the rerelease of her earlier book, Silver Phoenix. Cindy has released the new cover image on her blog, and while it's pretty, it has a white girl on it. The main character in the book, Ai Ling, is not. I understand that repackaging happens, and while I don't particularly care for the new look of the cover -- it looks the same as a lot of other YA covers right now, so obviously the trend is working even if it's not to my taste -- the look isn't what I'm concerned about. I'm concerned about this trend in YA and YA fantasy to put white girls on the covers of books that are about girls of color.

Bloomsbury, troubled though the path was, eventually made a valorous choice in representing the characters on the jackets. I sincerely hope that Harper Teen will consider that same route. We want more multicultural fantasy to be published. We also want those characters to be represented in the cover art.

Sincerely,
Alana Abbott
author, reader, and buyer of books

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Edit: dpeterfreund below in the comments notes that she did not assume the new cover model was white, but did assume she was Chinese. I'm glad to hear a dissenting voice to my own take on this scenario -- and I wonder what it says about me, as someone looking at the new image, that I assumed the model was white. Perhaps she's not! I do think, however, that when there is room for that question, the issue is still worth discussing.

Shameless Friend Promotion

08/13/2010 10:27 AM

One of my very favorite editors, who I've worked for on D&D projects, and who was my editor for Departure, has started a new column over on Critical Hits. Shawn Merwin is just an awesome possum guy, and he has a lot to say about gaming (including some tips I'd forgotten to think about in my home games) and about the nature of writing and editing. This is definitely going to be a column to follow, especially for gamers who are writers (and writers who are gamers).

Go check him out!

Just dropping by...

08/11/2010 08:03 PM

It was a wacky week, with Bug's baptism this past Sunday. The ceremony involved the baptism gown that I wore when I was a baby, and my sister wore when she was a baby, and now my daughter has also worn. It also involved the christening bowl from Twostripe's side of the family, which has been used now over the course of three centuries, with the first baptism taking place in, I believe, the 1880s. Three adults were also baptized in the same service, and all of the candidates had water poured over their heads with sea shells. It was quite lovely.

The biggest joy for me was having my family out to visit from Michigan/Chicagoland. They visited for nearly a week, and it was great to have them. It did impact my ability to get writing done, of course, so there's not much to report for KSC this week.

I do have some sooper sekrit news, though, which I'm hoping to announce soon. I never get to be the writer with sooper sekrit news, so it's totally exciting to post that! One hint: it involves pictures. Vague enough?

But here's the reason for my post today: there's a fantasy cage match going on that features two awesome duos: Alanna of Tortall vs. Meliara of Tlanth/Remalna and Aerin from The Blue Sword vs. Astrid from Rampant. Man, talk about tough choices between heroines I admire! Go visit and see the other duels -- and vote!

Edit: Just found out that Aerin was withdrawn from the competition by the author. Congrats to Astrid (whose author is dpeterfreund) on the default progression. (I'm assuming y'all know that Alanna's author is tammypierce and Mel's author is sartorias.)

E-book question for writers

08/02/2010 10:13 PM

So, there's been news lately about Wiley Agency starting an Amazon only imprint for their writers. It's sort of a weird deal -- a literary agency acting as a publisher and giving exclusivity to a single seller -- and it's much debated (which I won't get into here). It has got me thinking, though: in theory, writer royalties are supposed to be larger in e-books. (That's another thing being batted around the news lately.) If that's true, it would make sense for me to exclusively buy e-books instead of mass markets, as they're priced very similarly, and on e-books, my money would go more directly to the writer.

So, writer friends:

1) Are your royalties better on e-book?
2) Does my math make sense?

Twostripe has looked at my to be read pile, which I've now divided into three as part of the baby-proofing efforts at the house (it's far less likely to topple now). When I talk about buying a new book from my release list, he makes a funny gurgling noise that isn't at all a sound of approval. He suggested, however, that I look into saving us shelf space by buying digital, so I'm headed that direction. (I picked up Nalini Singh's newest, Bonds of Justice, when Kobo Books was having a sale the other day.)

This messes up my "I like all of my books to look the same on the shelf" strategy -- I'm compelled to buy matching book sets, which is why I have all the Percy Jackson books in hardcover, and why I at one point had three different incomplete sets of the Harry Potter series, since I picked up paperbacks of several of the books in England over two or three trips. On the up side for the blog, slimming down my print collection could mean a lot of fun prizes and contests coming up here.

Guest Blog: Daniel Tyler Gooden

07/30/2010 08:52 PM

It's one of the wonders of the age that I have never met most of my coworkers in person. I realized when reading one of the science fiction stories about people living in an online reality that actually, that's not too far different from what my life as a writer is like. I contract with, network with, and hang around virtual water coolers with other freelancers who work in bubbles like I do, or editors with whom I'll never share a real world cup of coffee. The really amazing part about this, however, is that you actually do get a feeling for these people you may never meet, and you get to know them about as well as you know coworkers the next cubicle over. Some you know better than others.

It's been my tremendous privilege to get to know Daniel Tyler Gooden in this way. He's a wonderfully talented writer (he's the author of the BT novel The Unmade Man and cowriter of the main storyline web comic, The Torn God), a great editor, and an ace with keeping continuity in his head. As the Baeg Tobar content editor, he worked pretty closely with lyster and me when we first started fleshing out Blood and Tumult, and once our draft is done, I imagine we'll be chatting more frequently again. I'm also hoping we'll start talking parenting: his son sounds just a bit older than Bug, and it's always exciting to watch kids just a bit older than her do momentous things -- like take their first steps -- when I know that's in Bug's near future.

Without further ado, here's a musing from Daniel on my favorite subject: mythology in fiction.

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I had been mulling around the importance of mythology in fiction when Alana asked me if I would like to guest blog. Knowing she is a fan of the topic, it seemed destined to be the subject of the day.

Two works recently had me thinking about mythology’s importance in fiction, specifically for world building. I read Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind. In the same week, I ran across an article in Analog, September ’09, by Richard A. Lovett, "From Atlantis to Canoe-Eating Trees: Geomythology Comes of Age."

Rothfuss has a well-developed world, much of it due to his main character, Kvothe, being born into a traveling group of entertainers. Stories spill out in every direction, as Kvothe performs with his family and learns of the legends and lore that are the core of the troupes’ trade. Rothfuss takes it one step further with Kvothe’s father's quest to writing an accurate song around the world’s greatest boogieman, the Chandrian. What I liked best about the Chandrian is that they are so feared that the only place you hear their name not whispered is in the play songs of children. Needless to say, the Chandrian take a big part in the storyline as it develops.

The use of bards, minstrels and storytellers to flesh out a world certainly is not new. For me, though, Rothfuss used it so well that the importance of mythology for building solid back-story really drove home. I felt I had a solid sense of not just the history of Rothfuss’s world, but why its people were who they were.

Lovett’s article further shored up the great value of mythology with a number of excellent examples of our own legends explained through the study of Geology and science. The story that stuck with me is from the Indian legends of the Pacific Northwest.

Twin sons of the Great Spirit, Wyeast and Pahto, spent their time feuding from opposite sides of the Columbia River. The cause of their spat was the beautiful woman Tah-one-lat-clah. Tired of the sons throwing fire and rock at each other, the Great Spirit intervened. To honor the brother’s truce, the Great Spirit built a stone bridge over the Columbia, near present day Bonneville Dam. Long story short, the brothers couldn’t keep the peace, accidently set the woman on fire, and all three retired to be later known as Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood, and, as Tah-one-lat-clah, Mt. St. Helens.

It is a good myth -- just a good story -- until you look at Louis and Clark’s journals. They found tall trees submerged in a slow section of the Columbia. It was figured that a large landslide had blocked the river. Geological studies of Mt. Adams and Mt. Hood show evidence of eruptions several hundred years ago, and Mt. St. Helens somewhere in the late 1400s. Dating on the tree trunks in the Columbia put the landslide early to mid 1400s, right in line with the legend. Lovett produces many more such examples, and if you like this kind of detective work, hunt down this article.

For myself, I have used mythology a handful of times in a world-building project, Baeg Tobar, Alana and I are involved with. Needing a legend surrounding a tall natural stone tower, I wrote of a curious boy who wished to see all the world. Climbing for days, he reached the top but found his curiosity unabated. Following the gods' advice (everyone knows you can hear godly voices better from high altitudes) he casts himself off the tower. The boy hits the ground, shattering into hundreds of crows who spread their race around the globe, ever watchful and curious. The best part of writing this as fiction is it might be a story wrapped around a more plausible event, or maybe it is just true.

Thanks for lending me your time, even though, if you are a writer as well, you know you should be writing.