Technical Difficulties

Romantic SF & Fantasy Novels reviews The Virtu.

They've previously reviewed Mélusine (and I'm chuffed to be in the same blog entry with naominovik and Temeraire). And there are two other takes from the same site.

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I link to all substantive reviews (that I find, of course), positive or negative, because it would be disingenuous to pretend I don't read them. And because I think the spectrum of responses is fascinating--both in a personal writerly sort of way, and in a more anthropological way.

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"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," Wallace Stevens.

Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji, Katsushika Hokusai.

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I dreamed a lot about Felix and Mildmay last night--a bizarrely sfnal planetary romance kind of dream, but they were ever so recognizably themselves.

I frequently dream about persons who become story characters (the narrator of "Straw" is one), but Felix and Mildmay are the only characters of mine (thus far) who have gone over to being persons in my dreams. I don't dream about them frequently, and the dreams are never germane to the actual books I'm actually writing, but I enjoy it when it happens. It's the only way I can spend time with them without the meta-level of being responsible for engineering their lives.

And it's good to have thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird.

Currently, there are four reviews on Amazon.

CA Reviews hits both this and Mélusine.

I think I've linked to Finder's disappointed review before, but wotthehell. Might as well corral all these broncs.Gavin Grant reviews it for BookPage (scroll down past the Powers).

Here's the SFRevu review.

I know I've linked to Charlaine Harris before.

Did I link to papersky's remarks?

And in the blogosphere. (WARNING: Spoilers henceforth, ranging from mild to extreme. Proceed with caution.)

Chad Orzel says there's too much angst.

whistlerose has an opinion. So does gornishka. And txanne here. xoverau here. lareinenoire here. ariss_tenoh here. ase here.

sosostris2012 likes the Titan Clocks.

The Mirador, Chapter 5: 10k and change

I may yet be able to make a real book out of this.

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My copies of The Virtu and the paperback of Mélusine arrived today. This has thrown my concentration utterly into a cocked hat. Because omg books! Books!

Finder reviews The Virtu for GLBT Fantasy Fiction Resources, and is disappointed.

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My contributor's copies of All Hallows 41 arrived today. My story, "Drowning Palmer," is a Booth novella, and I am very bouncy over it seeing print.

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There is an irony involved in the fact that I have been beating my head against the wall over a sex scene for the past several days, when some large percentage of the people who read the book will probably not notice anything except the sex. And some of them will be offended by it.

But it's my own fault for giving my protagonist such a wealth of psychosexual hangups, and anyway, I'd know if I cheated and would not like myself for it.

Chapter Three of The Virtu (plain-text version here) is live.

Have fun!

Congratulations and so on and so forth to wicked_wish and her newly minted husband!

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I have sold a Kyle Murchison Booth story to Say ... for their 6th issue. "The Bone Key" will appear in Say ... What's the Combination?, which will be appearing in time for WisCon 30.

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And I have finished the pass through the page-proofs. Tomorrow I go back and deal with all the fiddly bits, so that maybe on Monday, or perhaps Tuesday, I can send the proofs back to New York, and the damn thing can officially be Someone Else's Problem.

So I did something really stupid to my website.

I don't know what yet. I am waiting for my (sadly no longer resident) code geek to call me back and explain it to me in small words and maybe with brightly colored diagrams, although those are tricky over the phone.

So there will be an update to the website, as soon as my ass has been sorted out from my elbow for me. And it will have groovy things, like the first chapter of The Virtu online and freely available to read.

In the meantime, matociquala is being smart and helpful about learning to write. Or learning to be a writer, since they're not quite the same thing And so is buymeaclue.

And I've been invited to be on programming at DucKon 15. I shall get to see papersky for the first time in what feels like forever!

::happy dance::

And I'm on p. 250 of the page-proofs. For lo they are endless.

Some of you deserve congratulations for things that have happened since Wednesday, and some commiseration. Please take both as read.

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Boskone was wonderful. I was on intelligent and interesting panels, met lovely people, and had excellent seafood. Also got to go to the New England Aquarium and the Museum of Science. The latter was notable for the three-story tall Van de Graaff generator, the former for the excellent penguin habitat (I especially love the Little Blue Penguins, who are both the smallest and loudest species of penguin) and the Giant Ocean Tank, where matociquala got to witness me making an utter fool of myself over the rays. And we still want to know what those horrifying prehistoric quasi-catfish were.

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On the "Is Fantasy Necessary?" panel, I found myself talking about genre (again) in a way that turned out to be unexpectedly helpful, at least to me, and so I want to write it down while I still remember it.

We had been talking about the rise of the novel and the concomitant privileging of realism (I'm using the word "realism" in its narrow, rather technical sense, as a genre of writing with its own canons and conventions) and the relationship of that shift to fantasy and science fiction. I was trying to explain about the forms of fiction that came before the novel and I ended up saying something like this: if realism goes with the mainstream novel, and fantasy is allied to romance, then you can get to science fiction via one of two evolutionary paths. The rigorous extrapolation from the present, both scientifically and socially, is the child of the mainstream novel--but that's not the only way to write science fiction. Science fiction can also be romance, as many science fiction novels are not an extrapolation of realism but a dream of science and/or technology. And, of course, some science fiction novels are both.

In some ways, I think the point of fantasy is to abjure realism. Which is to say, I can't see the point to trying to replicate the canons of realism in fantasy. You could do it, but I don't think it would get you anything. (And if someone wants to prove me wrong, I say more power to you.) Which isn't to say fantasy can't and shouldn't strive for verisimilitude. But that realism, in its narrow, technical sense, is the antithesis of the urge or longing that makes us write and read fantasy in the first place. But science fiction can, if it wishes to, play the Hegelian synthesis.

And that's really pretty darn cool.

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The page-proofs for The Virtu arrived this morning. It's going to be another pretty book.

I have to admit, I think that writing Year in Review meme that's going around is the most depressing thing ever. Because at the beginning of January this year, I was working on The Virtu, and on this, the antepenultimate day of December I was ... working on The Virtu.

Finished, though. It's ready to run away to New York tomorrow.

As for me, I believe I am ready to crash like a crashing thing.

(My icon is what happened when I couldn't sleep last night, after too long admiring matociquala's Let the Wookiee STET icon. I also made this one, which is even snottier.)

The CEM* of The Virtu has arrived.

Unfortunately, since I am not a cat, the time-honored tradition of Hiding Until It Goes Away will not work.

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*Copy-edited manuscript.