shamelessly pleading for fiction recs

[truepenny]

Because I have so few books to read. *g*

Actually, because I'm setting myself up to do some difficult things in The Project, and I'd like to see how others have done them. I believe firmly in learning from examples, which is why I've been gnawing on A Civil Campaign like a dog with a bone for the past, oh, month. So I'm looking for stories--any length, but, please, original fiction because of my ethical Issues--y'all would particularly recommend (either as good models or Horrible Examples) which have either or both of the following:

1. a blind protagonist/narrator

2. explicit m/m or f/f sex (R to NC-17) written by actual practitioners of same, because I don't want to fall into the het woman trap of writing the sex scenes like it all assimilates to my experience. Vanilla, BDSM, various flavors of kink, it's all good. N.b., I am NOT looking for erotica; I'm looking specifically for stories in which the sex, while steamy, is part of the plot, rather than the raison d'etre. Actually, come to think of it, if you know any het fictions which use their steamy sex scenes for more than just steamy sex, stick them in, too.

And because--despite my brain the size of a planet--I am sadly lacking in intellectual staying power, the more sfnal the story the better.

*looks at post*
This will be interesting.

Comments

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

1) Peter Dickinson's Annerton Pit has a blind narrator, but I haven't read it yet. (Ha! The PD references will NEVER DIE!) Joanne Greenberg also had a novel with a deaf and dumb protagonist, Of Such Small Differences, which I liked as a teenager.

2) Sarah Waters has very good and very explicit f/f in Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith. (I think Affinity is much better than the other two, but it isn't explicit.) Nicola Griffith might have explicit f/f in Slow River and The Blue Place; I don't remember them well enough. I think Delany gets pretty explicit in the Neveryona books, but I don't recall. He never strikes me as erotic.

I don't know if it's explicit enough for this particular goal, but try Jennifer Crusie's books--tremendously funny and sexy romance novels. May be in romance, general fiction, or mystery.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Oh! Duh! Plot. Strike Crusie, maybe. Or not.

Laura Kinsale uses the sex scenes to further the plot/show character in rather striking ways in The Shadow and the Star and My Dear Folly (genre romance).

And there's always Cyteen. Hmm. Explicit sex which furthers the plot and isn't rape?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Well, y'know, book recommendations are book recommendations. Books to enjoy are just as important as books to learn from.

And, um, yeah. For my particular purposes at the moment, rape is not so much what I'm looking for.

(There's a whole 'nother post about recuperation (rape/other trauma/being evil for a century/whatever) and how and why it habitually gets booted in fiction (say it with me, people, Redemption is boring!), but I'll hold off on that a bit.)

You'll tell me how the Peter Dickinson works out, right?

You're right about Nicola Griffith (god I wish I liked her better than I do), and also about Delany, whose sex scenes are about as erotic as chopped liver.

Am reading Affinity right now (borrowed from heres_luck, who came downstairs and said, You must read this). Liking it muchly, so will probably go on to others.

Okay, my parentheses are totally out of control. Shutting up now.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I have infected you with raging parentheses. I am so sorry.

I have difficulty defining "explicit" and "further the plot," which is interfering with my pushing books on you. Also the question of the author's sexuality.

I love Sarah Waters. I bought Affinity on a whim when I was ordering books from Amazon.co.uk, and it was one of my best whims ever.

I thought I was the only person who didn't like NG's writing? Everyone else raves about it, and she's writing about things I usually like, so I keep trying and bouncing. Also, I keep needing to have lesbian sf to recommend, and it's immensely frustrating that her books are in stores and lesbian sf I like better is not. Damn it.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I am totally spamming your in-box. I feel vaguely guilty, but not the least little bit sorry. And the parentheses are so not your fault. They're a vicious habit I had in high school, broke myself of (very slowly) in college and grad school, and am now finding creeping back--although, so far, they are confining themselves to informal communication, which is okay with me.

If instead of saying "further the plot," I say, "develop character and/or relationship," does that help? I don't mean that the sex has to be part of some Tantric Grail Quest (god, now I think I need to scrub my mind out--sorry!); I mean that the sex has to serve some purpose in the story beyond merely two characters getting it on. Although tastefully non-explicit, Swordspoint (as per usual) is a good example of the kind of thing I'm talking about. The sex scenes tell us way more about Alec, in particular, than anything else in the book. And I'm perfectly willing to loosen up on the sexual orientation of author criterion; I just want to find scenes that aren't replicating heterosexist assumptions about partners' roles in bed.

I admire Nicola Griffiths's writing intensely; I just don't like it very much. Like you said about Barbara Vine over in that other conversation, she's just too cold for me.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

*sigh* I am stupid. I mar your journal with many follow-ups that would not be necessary if only one could edit comments.

Of Such Small Differences is about a *blind* and *deaf* protagonist.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Is that the same Joanne Greenberg of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (which I liked a lot as a teenager and then really not so much as an adult)?

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Yes, I believe it is.

[marith.livejournal.com]

Ow. My brain hurts, because of all things what comes to mind is an old
Darkover novel called _The World Wreckers_. Which ought to meet
your second criterion; steamy m/m sex central to plot and character development...
oh my, MZB was writing yaoi, wasn't she? (Whether it was any *good* or not
is another matter; my little teenage hormone-driven brain thought so at the
time, but that was many years ago.)

There aren't too many other examples I can think of and that just seems wrong. Again going back to ACC and GN - in each of them the heroine who has deliberately locked sensuality away for years becomes aware of it again, and it is important. But...that's because of who those particular people are. (Snork. Suddenly reminded of the very silly scene in GN where Peter is giving Harriet rudimentary self-defense lessons, and it occurs to her that _her_ fictional characters would most certainly turn this into sex.)

How much reason does one need for a sex scene, as an author? If two of your characters become romantically involved over the course of the story then showing how that develops is important; but if that were enough reason in itself you wouldn't be needing to ask for recommendations.

(It's been interesting to work on the question from the opposite direction, in writing smut; one starts with the sex as a given, and tries to build characters and story that flow naturally around and through it. If the reader isn't genuinely interested in who these people are and why they're making out on a blanket with Kurdish yak herders or whatever, then they're going to lose interest after a couple of rereads, and that's a failure.)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Another way round to put my question, I suppose, is: how many different things can a sex scene be used for? Because there's nothing wrong with erotica, but I have noticed that it doesn't matter how graphic the sex is--if it's pulse-pounding, it's because there's something more than an orgasm at stake. (Which I think is the same thing you're saying with your Kurdish yak-herders. *g*)

See, I've got Things for these (at the moment sadly hypothetical) sex scenes to accomplish; what I'm looking for are models of how to go about integrating the sex and the Things. I mean, yes, I have my own ideas, and probably that's how the scenes will turn out anyhow, but I'd really like to see other people taking a swing at it.

[rliz.livejournal.com]

I can't remember *exactly* how explicit it is, because I keep giving my copies away, but Emma Donoghue's Hood is lovely-- technically brilliant, I think, on both a structural and line level; and also pretty damn hot, in its moments, along with sad and funny and sweet and chilling.

(Your moral aesthetic precludes fan fiction? That's so cool. I've been waiting to meet someone who leans that way... and lives by it; because I know I certainly *do* feel it's an aggressive, invasive act, to read and write stories about someone else's characters; I just keep doing it anyway. In spite of; or because of; &c.)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Aha! Another book I can borrow from the charming and talented heres_luck.

*sigh*
The sordid history of me and fanfiction. (Look here (http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=truepenny&itemid=10033), here (http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=truepenny&itemid=14162), and here (http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=truepenny&itemid=14735) for details.) The condensed version is that, in fact, I like slash. I wouldn't write it--I'm bored by the box of working with preassigned characters and world--but I'll read it like eating popcorn. And I think copyright law is in an abysmal state--because our notions of copyright are in an abysmal state--and the entire thing needs to be rethought ANYWAY. Fanfiction is merely one place where things get murky, and my ethical stand-point, in the abstract, is (a.) get permission and (b.) don't make money off it. What it all comes down to, though, is that the thought of anybody writing fanfiction in MY world with MY characters gives me the creeping crawling, cringing horrors. It's squicky. And so, despite the fact that I adore slash, I can't abide the double-standard of reading something perpetrated on other authors that I wouldn't want perpetrated on me. I confess to some backsliding while ill, but I've rethought and reaffirmed my own reasoning, and I do mean it. I don't get to go tramp around in other people's gardens if I won't let them in mind.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I ended up deciding the other way: if I was going to play in other people's playgrounds, I had to let other people play in mine. The problem is, of course, that this still doesn't justify my playing in other people's playgrounds; permission and property don't work that way.

I've got some tentative justifications based on my real beliefs about copyright and creativity, but I also know they were born out of self-justification and are therefore suspect.

Oh dear, this is the very thing you didn't want to get into, isn't it? Don't feel obligated to respond.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

No, it's okay. I didn't want to get into it more because of respect for rliz's inbox than personal reluctance--although I'm afraid my thoughts (and I use the word loosely) are ill-defined and incoherent.

My favorite exemplar in this arena is one a friend uses: Cervantes and Don Quixote. When someone infringed copyright (she says anachronistically) on Part One of DQ, Cervantes responded by writing Part Two. Which gave the world Part Two of Don Quixote instead of yet another lawsuit and incidentally made the copyright-infringing moron look like the loser that he was. I think copyright, the way it's used now, is largely a hobble on the culture's collective creativity (as, for example, the current spat over Peter Pan). Another example from the past is, of course, Shakespeare, who stole plots from everywhere he could. He'd be in hot water over some of them today (especially if Plutarch were alive to howl PLAGIARISM in every forum in town), but that doesn't actually harm either his plays or their sources.

My reservations are twofold. One is my personal qualms, as mentioned above. I can be all in favor of public domain in the abstract, but there's still a selfish little goblin in the back of my head that screeches MINE! and clutches masses of manuscript close to its skinny, heaving bosom at the mere idea of someone else borrowing my characters.

The other, even dicier, is that issue of permission, and the ways in which fanfiction, with or without permission, can turn around and bite the original author on the butt. papersky adduced the example of, er, Tanith Lee? Somebody, anyway, who lost a movie deal because the producers saw fanfiction (for which permission had been expressly denied) and got antsy about intellectual property rights (or whatever the correct legal term is). And Terry Pratchett, totally aside from fanfiction, has had (or had in the past--I'm not up-to-date) to stop reading newsgroups devoted to him because of the whole you-stole-my-idea! thing (which really grates my cheese). Anything that can interfere with the original authors' rights and abilities to publish whatever they want with their own damn characters/worlds/ideas is WRONG. Wrong wrong wrong.

And there's the whole current flap about NC-17 HP fiction. Which is confusing and distressing because (1) it's a hypocritical piece of PC-ness anyway with which I COMPLETELY disagree from a pure First Amendment standpoint, (2) it's impossible to tell (from the distance at which I stand) whether Rowling herself cares one way or the other, and (3) the other half of my brain still says, they're her creations. SHE gets to say what happens to them. No matter how talented, dedicated, and pure of heart the fanfiction writers are, they're still playing with her toys in her sandbox, and she has the right to ask them to leave if she thinks they aren't playing nicely. Or if she doesn't want them to play at all.

And I don't know what would happen if an author made a official disclaimer (instead of the sort of informal, interview-response, Oh, I don't mind really, that is mostly what happens) saying people could write any fanfiction they damn well pleased. I don't know if the legal apparatus could handle it. It's disturbing and makes my head hurt and gives me a vague itchy feeling of hypocrisy no matter which side I come down on. Bleah.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

It was MZB, not Tanith Lee. Part of *my* sordid history with fan fiction is that the first story I ever sold was to one of the Darkover anthologies. The really funny thing about it is that at that point I was so focused on professional publication that I found the whole history of Darkover fanzines, as I heard of them in the ads in the back of MZB's books, to be very odd: why were people writing things they knew couldn't get professionally published? I never would have written that particular story if I hadn't known there was a market for it.

I tend to think of fan media more as a marketing aid to the producers of the source product than as a deterrant to it, but I understand why producers might not think so, in a world where they aren't even supposed to read spec scripts based on their own show because of infringement issues.

Then again, it cheers me to a silly extent when I find out the producers of a cancelled show were pleased by fanfic, and actually appreciated one writer *as a writer* and not just someone paying compliments to their show.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Christ, it's almost ten years later and I STILL twitch at the mention of MZB, sender (as metonym for the eponymous magazine) of the most hateful, vicious, destructive, and downright mean form rejection letter I have ever seen in my life.

(I still have it, I think, in the folder I keep of rejection letters, but I'm afraid if I looked at it, I'd just start crying again.)

Back on topic (yeah, I know, my LJ, my rules, the topic's anything I damn well please), I suspect you're right, that fan productions increase both number and commitment of fans. I don't think it's a pernicious phenomenon; I understand why people write it, and I do think it's cool that creativity can spread out like that from a single nexus in so many different directions.

Like I said, mine is a personal, visceral, irrational reaction (also monumentally egotistical, in assuming that anyone would ever even WANT to write fanfiction of my stuff, but we'll let that slide), and I don't mean to suggest in any way that I have some kind of moral high ground on the subject (in case any of this has looked like I think I do). Frankly, I'm not sure where the moral high ground is.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

No, it was Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and one of her vampire books. She lost a film deal, and money in the hundreds of dollars scale.

The MZB case is murkier -- apparently Jean Lamb had written a fanfic, and sent it in as a submission, and MZB was currently writing a novel with some of the same elements, and she wrote to Lamb and said that she couldn't publish it because of this but she liked what Lamb had done with Y and could she MZB use Lamb's use of Y in her novel, thanking Lamb in her thanks. Lamb threatened to sue if MZB produced anything with any element of her story without payment and acknowledgement of her as co-author. Case went to court, or maybe was settled out of court but lawyers were involved heavily, MZB did not write her novel.

Jean Lamb is alive, MZB isn't, there are rights and wrongs on both sides, if anyone writes fanfic in anything of mine I will eviscerate them.

[heresluck]

You want queer sex? We got queer sex. Come on upstairs and let's raid the bookshelves.

[pameladean]

For the sex-in-plot stuff, and some f/f sex, you might want to look at Sarah Schulman. AFTER DOLORES and PEOPLE IN TROUBLE are the ones I've read; either would do. AFTER DOLORES is very, very weird; PEOPLE IN TROUBLE is more like recognizable fiction. (I like them both but AD puzzles me mightily to this day.) Originally introduced to me by elisem, who might have a comment or two about them.

Pamela

Book recs

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about this some more, based on your offering Swordspoint as an example, and what I *can* do is recommend some books/stories where the sex scene is about more than just having a sex scene. Most of them aren't at all explicit, though. But:

- I do continue to recommend the Kinsale. The plot of My Sweet Folly is a wreck, but the way the sex scenes serve characterization in that one just leaves me breathless. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but it turns out to be very key that the scenes are just exactly as explicit as they are.

- I would second Marith's recommendation of The World Wreckers or else The Heritage of Hastur; it's not nearly as good as I thought it was in high school, but it still fits the bill here.

- Possibly Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea. Though that's a bit whimsical of me.

- Sharon Baker, Quarrelling, They Met the Dragon, Journey to Membliar, and Burning Tears of Sassurum. The covers are even worse than the titles, but the books themselves are very good.

- John M. Ford's The Last Hot Time ultimately doesn't work for me, but it's trying to do things with sex and desire that fit the bill. And it might be a very instructive failure.

- Jean Ross Ewing's Illusion. Another romance novel. Mild but significant bondage and domination elements; Dunnett-influenced. Lucia Grahame's The Painted Lady is another one that tries to combine BDSM and romance tropes, but the elements that make it work as erotica make it fail as a romance novel. Might be an instructive failure.

- Carol Emshwiller, "Sex and/or Mr. Morrison"

- Geoff Ryman, Lust. (Never got published in the US. If you can't find a copy, you can borrow mine.)

Re: Book recs

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Have read Wide Sargasso Sea, which I disliked. (Although possibly that's because, way back in the day when I was reading rec.arts.books, somebody posted insisting that Jean Rhys's version was "correct" and Charlotte Bronte had gotten her own book wrong. I went moderately nuclear.)

Also have read The Last Hot Time, which I both love and completely understand your reservations about. It works for me, but it's so terribly oblique and restrained and mannered that I think it only works for me because I am exceptionally willing to let it.

WANT to read the Sharon Baker, but have not yet managed to get my paws on a copy.

I've read other Geoff Ryman and been left cold. Is this one likely to change my opinion, or not so much?

Other recommendations gratefully received and noted. Thank you!

Re: Book recs

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

My problem with The Last Hot Time is that everyone in it seemed to be making assumptions about Danny's political fitness whose source remains entirely unclear to me. The connections between the interpersonal and the sexual were clear enough; the connections between them and the political were not.

All of the characters seemed to be feeling the effect of a charisma that I myself could not see. This was true of Danny's effect on them, and the effect of--eck. I forget the name. The political head honcho.

The effect made sense for someone repressing himself so much he could hardly articulate his own desires, but it didn't do much for me as a reader. And resulted in the odd lacunae I mentioned.

Hmm. It is really hard to talk about this, trying to remain oblique enough not to spoil passers by, and also going on only one reading, and that at least a year ago.

My review of Lust is here (http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=melymbrosia&itemid=141690) (and has proven to me that Obsessive Indexing Is the Way to Go), and contains a link to a review of same by Papersky. If you didn't like the other Ryman you tried, I can't imagine you'd like this.

Baker I can lend you, if you will be very very careful with the spines of my paperbacks. Well, and if I can find them in storage. I have been wanting to reread them, though.

Re: Book recs

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you tremendously much for the offer.

It is sadly true, however, that my household tends to be very hard on books, so I would rather not borrow those that are precious to you. I've never had anything dreadful happen to a borrowed book (yet), but the responsibility would make me twitchy.

Don't worry about it. I'll find 'em sooner or later.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

_Annerton Pit_ has been mentioned. It's good. Another children's book, Nina Bawden's _The Witch's Daughter_. It has three child characters, one of whom is blind. It's not SF or fantasy really, and I can't tell if I'd like it if I read it now cold, because I first read it when I was about six. Bob Shaw's _Night Walk_ has a blinded protagonist who has a handwavium goggle that allows him to see through the eyes of other people/animals within range, he's really blind when alone. Very SFnal.

As for sex, I'd second the recommendation of _Lust_, even if you don't like Ryman, he's doing things with sex and desire and plot that would be really useful to consider. I'd also suggest _Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand_ by Samuel Delany, _Earthly Powers_ by Anthony Burgess, and (sorry) _The Fall of the Kings_. (BTW, at Boskone, there was a conversation about becoming overly attached to books and not wanting to read the sequel, and I mentioned you and _Swordspoint_, and Ellen said this was OK as long as you bought _The Fall of the Kings_, joking, and then that it was so strange to think of writing things that people care about at that level, and Delia said you probably shouldn't read it if you couldn't bear it, and Ellen said she was writing another book, alone, directly about R and A later than _Swordspoint_ but before _Fall of the Kings_ which might or might not be easier for you, and then we started talking about metaphor.)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thanks muchly for the recs.

I'm glad my drooling fangirlism has furthered conversation. *g* I do need to try The Fall of the Kings again anyway, and now I know I really should.