The Undertow

Yesterday dissolved in a haze of City of Bone with the result that I've gone rather cold on the movie. Something about the world-building, possibly the shiny teens at the center of it, felt like too much glitter on too thin paper. It's probably a case of right book, wrong time...it came pretty highly recommended and I may try the second book later. Then again, it could be that I can't help but compare it to Supernatural, the TV series in which there are angels, demons, and monsters but a more (to me) coherent link between them. Everything isn't quite true in that universe.

I wasn't planning to read today, at least not as long. I was a third of the way into Soon I Will Be Invincible and that was about were I flipped a page too deep and became caught up in the undertow, dragged from chapter to chapter trying to guess what the ultimate twist or reveal would be. Mr. Grossman kept throwing up these descriptions that would flash against the the pull, such as the description of a punch from the summer of 1976. Each of these would give me chance to catch my breath as it precipitated an emotion or scene from the plot. Even if nothing seemed resolved (and I guess super narratives don't, as a rule), it was difficult to put the book down. Except for the character list that followed and just seemed to repeat info previously presented. Why?

Soon it will be cooling down and I will stop hiding out during the day and the book stacks might grow again. Guess I should give in and just move on to the next one.

Phantoms

I came home with a short stack of library books yesterday and then a wiggly puppy and a critique partner's draft sent me to the one shelf of books from my parents' house to pick upThe Phantom Tollbooth. This is joy pressed in ink and paper, a back pocket adventure of beguiling charm.

It is also the answer to a riddle I've been pondering in a draft of mine. A trusted, gifted reader suggested that this draft lacked an effective path, dropping the reader in a pile of tentacles-from-nowhere and undercutting the thrust of the beginning. I did what I generally do, grumble to myself, put the draft out of sight for little while, and then poke at it until I was ready to revise.

The revision did not begin well. I agreed that the tentacles were confusing; they had snuck up on me while I was in the middle of a soporific beach scene and I decided to let them flail away. I added some stuff to the beginning, slowly setting up the conflict and brushing on some sepia nightmare tones, remembered from old movies. Movies that I had, to be honest, hated. The kind where a sliver of the monster scuttles off to terrorize again in a sequel. Perhaps we don't defeat monsters, really, and yet, I don't want to use a template of something I dislike for a story that is close to my heart. The tentacles needed a reason, though.

As i was thinking (daydreaming) about the draft, my brain picked up the memory of a recent draft shared in my writer's group. One of our members is skilled at using a kind of fairy-tale rhythm and this, combined with my own ideas about my beginning, brought me to the Tollbooth. One of the great things about this story is the way that the author limns an initially unlikeable character and yet doesn't lose the reader. In the beginning Milo is bored and restless in that annoying manner of someone who could be diverted but is too lazy to make the effort. By the end, you are feeling Milo's regret at his journey's end and regret at leaving Milo's company. Along the way, you encounter creatures that are the essence of fairy--language made fanciful and dizzy until you are caught in the spin.

I think I need to lose myself in that spin again to find out what path my story needs to take--it isn't yet twirling fast enough to cohere. I am already in the fratchetty, diverted-by-shiny-Internets mode, it's time to make the effort to steer this draft into the swirl.

Rain Officially Still Scares the Crap Out of Me

Okay, I thought the panic occasioned by being out in the rain was finally over and done; however, it's not. A meeting at the library this evening coincided with "pop-up" thunderstorms, now conveniently trackable in all their, green, orange, and purple glory over a wide swath of the state via my notebook. It's like my own private adrenaline shot.

At least it gets me to leave early enough to scour the shelves (Don't you have books at home? Yes, yes I do.) for more HP Ryan novels. Of which there is one and it happens to be the one I polished off this afternoon. So no more Jake and Jane until September and none of anything else right now. Well, no suspense novels. I don't really need suspense novels AND rain, do I?

The Pumpkin King actually has to drive home in this, but it doesn't freak him out.

The library is actually relaxing right now, bright lights, murmur of the children's section, clicking of the PCs behind me. Books everywhere with crinkly jackets like candy. How could I resist taking some home? This week's stack includes Soon I Will Be Invincible, Bass Cathedral, and The Photograph. All of them are short and one of them is an epistolary novel (one of my favorite kinds...I fear it bespeaks a certain nosiness of character); all of them are spread out on the table in front of me.

Not sure why this week doesn't include nonfiction. Unless I'm finally acknowledging that my nonfiction reading tends to be less diligent than otherwise, particularly with library books. So far, I'm learning more by listening to the historian in our writer's group. This October, when I'm doing Nano warm-ups, I'll have to pick the Texas history up again for some background for a haunted house story. I'm trying to get a better handle on settlement patterns and community make-ups for...late 1800's? Early 1900s?

Yikes. Chorus of children's voices rises in a half-song in a language I don't know on a rainy night in a far corner of the library? Creepy. Better get my brain out of October and back in August.

Cozy reading, y'all!

Digital Beaches

Before I was in school, when the library was a storefront full of metal shelves, pale linoleum, and an odd entrance fountain, joy in reading has been linked to the physical sensation of the books themselves. Paper edges that fur as you thumb them, spines that relax as you bend them, and ink and air and paper that combine into a certain smell that breathes over you when you ruffle the pages. Books could be a type of pet, carried around and cared for.

This doesn't make me a great candidate for digital readers. My eyes are tired from years of reading, low contrast screens don't help, and there is something about that glass window that doesn't yet let me in as deeply as the crease between the pages. However, some stories do lend themselves to the medium and I'm discovering that my gateway into digital books is through an unexpected avenue.

Despite being a lifelong reader, romance novels were something that I gave up years ago, never making the leap from Sweet Valley to the historical or contemporary shelves. Instead, I gravitated to the fantasy and mystery shelves and then, slowly, to the literary fiction shelves and essays. Then, romance decided to make a beachhead in fantasy and urban fantasy and paranormal romance began to move into the section. Books seemed to suddenly bloat, trying to distinguish themselves from those "other" stories by way of excessive page count or hyper violence. I thought I should get serious about my own writing and shifted my reading into non-fiction.

During this time my husband has been consuming e-books like candy. He reads on his reader, on his cell phone, on his screen. I tried a reader, eschewed it, and stuck to books. Then we found a reader that I could play with, do other things on, become comfortable with all without using it for reading. I could IM, follow my e-mail, play Frogs (become addicted to Frogs, go cold turkey on Frogs), and write on the thing.

At the same time, a few members of our writer's group started to work in the romance genre. There was no one left to object to this turn of events (not to say that anyone would have originally) and I found myself taking a second look at the genre.

Shazaam! This turned into the perfect mix of device and story to finally convert me to the e-reader. Having recently completed the fun Gaming for Keeps and well into The Other Woman, it seems that I'm finally learning warming up to digital books.

However, I'm still mostly a book-in-hand reader. In addition to the stories mentioned above, I read Garth Nix's Sabriel over the weekend (paperback, of course) and loved it. It is a compelling story and one that I'm glad I have sitting beside me at the moment, reminding me of the great story within. It's the kind of book that warrants rereading, if for no other reason than that the world-building is stellar and different from what I've seen before.

Perhaps the digital/paperback divide in my head runs like this: Paperbacks are the Old Kingdom; their magic is real and substantial and links me to the past while digital books are Ancelstierre; they work best when structured around a recognizable, social milieu whose present is concurrent with my own? Not sure if that makes sense or if it will continue to be that way, but that's how it works for me, for now.

Good reading,
Chrissa

Buckle Down and Turn the Page

Whether it turns out to be one or not, this past week has felt like a pivot point. One of the potential changes deals with the way my day is structured and which family commitments I'll be able to keep in the coming months. As I was thinking about this, I went back to Lake Jackson to spend a few days with my parents. I had just finished reading Stina Leicht's of Blood and Honey and was reeling from that novel. Traffic on I59 was awful; the slower the traffic moved, the more present the novel was in my head. The story was less fantastic than I had expected and yet the layering of the fantastic and historical conflict keep me reading. I didn't really want to.

Having read all the "good for you" literature that I ever wanted to read as an English major, I gravitate toward stories that are lighter in tone. I don't understand why anyone would want to read about war and cruelty when it is too present in everyday news. There is an unsettled layer, a kind of emotional fault line, I possess that responds with absolute fury to cruelty or certain kinds of inevitable destruction. It takes time to come down from that. Not only was this story darker than I'm used to, it was also set in a time period in which I was living a calm, happy suburban childhood in Texas and I kept flashing back on that with each new chapter and date indication. It was this contrast that partially triggered the trip to LJ.

of Blood and Honey refused any escape. The fae heritage of the main character didn't take away the human concerns and decisions he made and it didn't make him a hero by some kind of magical genetic ethical absolution. And why should it?

When I got home, I had the opportunity to take a day trip with my dad. We argued about whether we'd taken a trip to an old plantation near West Columbia and whether I'd been old enough to remember it. Despite hours of reconstructing family vacations, the move to Lake Jackson, the birth of my younger brother, etc., I never did remember going to the planation as a child. What I did remember was that one of my favorite things was going on family trips and being in that outward-focused mode that let us elide any internal conflicts.

My approach to conflict is to dive into details of something else, something concrete and factual. It shows up in my stories, as the detail grows excessive while the conflict withers into implication and elision. Fantasy was a good place to hide.

I'm not sure whether it still is.

Consternation

So...this post is partially to keep from slapping my monitor after running into the political morass that Facebook tends to be when people are otherwise occupied. My monitor doesn't deserve the abuse.

Instead, let us focus on Apollocon 2013, which ended today but lingers for us until tomorrow morning, when we will be cleared out of our hotel room and back home with the dogs. Based on this year, neither of us is sure we're going to attend next year and I'm back in anxiety mode. This year, the primary hallway along which in previous years various clubs, self-pubbed authors, and crafters have set up tables mostly consisted of tables advertising other conventions. There were fewer authors in attendance and fewer new authors.

We attended interesting panels and had fun poking around in the dealer's room and daydreaming our way through the art show. For the first time in the years that we've been attending, the Sunday panels stole the show and weren't denuded of people due to early departures. The Friday panel (Cows in Space!!) was bloodier than expected but hasn't left my head in the days since. If we are considering leaving the planet, what will we take with us? What kind of biosphere will we pursue? This was reinforced by the sci-fi transportation panel in which the idea of increasingly sentient transportation was brought up. If horses were an important way to extend our perceptions and travel ability on earth, do we need similarly (or more advanced) sentience in our space vehicles? What about here on earth? Do we need intelligent transportation? Do we want it? What kind of cultural space will this create and how will we adapt? While I'm not enough of a sci-fi person to work on stories directly addressing these questions, they will inform the short stories that I'm currently working on and how I build the world of the new-ish novel I may or may not be drafting. On the whole, I was energized by the discussions.

This is the first year, however, that made me really feel as if books were over. For the first time, many panelists mentioned short stories rather than novels and e-books weren't mentioned at any of the panels I attended. It was almost as if we were attending a wake for all the physical culture that is dying as we move into the future. For a sci-fi based con, the potential of that future to be alienating was an oddly chilling component of the weekend. I never really felt that I was plugged in to the con, which seemed to be taking place for the exclusive amusement of the invited panelists.

On our way to breakfast this morning, the Pumpkin King & I were discussing the bad dreams we'd both had the previous night and I brought up the way that my dreams have for the past several years had a component of distorted space--stairs that lead to tiny crawlspace doors, giant stores that are barely navigable until they run out into small hallways, second story rooms that are barely large enough to stand in. I had assumed that this spatial distortion was just one of the components that everybody experience; however, the Pumpkin King assured me that it was just me. Or, at any rate, not him.

Perhaps, then, I just have a distorted perspective.

I do know that I'd like to attend Space City Con this August and see whether I feel the same.

The Wind, A Creak, and The Glory of the Morning

Let's begin with the morning glories. A cool spring has twined around the trellises and rung the sky-blue trumpets for each morning, rainy or clear.



Remembering last year's moonflowers, I spent one morning waiting for the morning glories to open by the back fence. As it turns out, morning glories do not unfurl like a belly dancer's skirt, they shiver themselves awake bit by bit for about an hour and then flop open, exhausted.



Until then, however, they form blue stars that grow larger and looser.

Early in the season, the front vines filled their space with blooms and it looked like the wind was blowing a kind of verse to the sky on the open lyre of the fan trellis.



When then wind rises, as it has today, they dance.



And although I spent the morning the morning in the park, fascinated by the vines that formed elf hollows of the log piles and small trees and by the creak of a pair of pines, one toppled against the other and both thin and shifting against the sky, it this image of the edge of the sky from the shore of a morning glory by which I am ultimately enchanted.