Technical Difficulties

1. Went to the vet's office this morning to buy cat food and got to see a Newfoundland heading into one of the exam rooms for his or her check up. I love Newfies; they look so exactly like small bears, and those that I have seen have clearly been deep in love with the whole wide world.

2. My dreams last night starred Avery Brooks and Hulk Hogan. I'm still decidedly nonplussed about that.

3. I now know of two cats named Mildmay (thank you, hominysnark and topknot, both for choosing that name and for telling me about it). Of all the things I imagined before I became a writer about what a writing career would be like, I never thought people would be naming their cats after my characters. I have to say, it's kind of awesome.

4. No, neither Felix nor Mehitabel is named after the famous cats of those names--although Mehitabel is more or less named after a cat, as my first exposure to the name was a neighbor's cat when I was a kid (and that cat may have been named after Don Marquis' mehitabel, although I don't know for sure either way). That wasn't in my head when I was naming her though; all I was after was to replace her original name, which was Hephzibah.

5. Today, in pursuit of my job, I found both an Old Norse dictionary (ON to English and English to ON) and some Old English resources. The word for "poison" in Old Norse is eitr, and the word for "poisonous" in Old English is aettryne. (The word "poison" is from Latin, potio, -onis by way of Old French and Middle English pocion.)

Best job in the world.

108,000 words. (My target, for those of you playing along at home, is 110,000 words, and due February 1st, i.e., Monday.) The draft is complete except for the final chapter and one scene in the middle--both of which, oddly enough, have to do with the same subplot. Chapter Thirty-Five will be finished tomorrow, and hopefully I can fix some of the lesser worldbuilding as well. The missing scene probably won't get finished, as it requires technical details which I may need to research instead of just making up as is my usual wont, but I'm actually okay with turning the novel in with that scene still missing. (Brackets are your friend.) Because my editor is going to have suggestions anyway, and there is no way on earth to be proactive enough to avoid it. I am at peace with that. Really.

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Macmillan CEO John Sargent wrote an open letter to Macmillan authors and illustrators about the current Amazon contretemps. I've personally been refusing to use Amazon for years. I dislike many of their business practices, and this is another one to add to the list. (Dear Amazon, No, your format is not more important than my content.) The thing's already been talked to death (ah, the radioactive half-life of a meme on the internet), so I'm going to do us all a favor and not weigh in.

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I dreamed last night that Mary Robinette Kowal was a wizard. Even awake, I find nothing implausible about that at all.

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For some reason, I find this video both charming and comforting. Possibly because the Elder Saucepan is prone to a very similar meow fail.

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And now I'm going to bed. Tomorrow, the book is GOING DOWN.

It amuses me that one of my most immediately recognizable dream-genres is the Escape from Dystopia Dream. Sometimes they're nightmarish. Sometimes they aren't. Generally, I find them more interesting than the vast unwashed masses of my dreams (I love enjoy am fascinated by dystopias, so it's really very generous of my subconscious to generate them for me), and sometimes, as a bonus, they give me story ideas.

This one was clearly YA lesbian SF noir.

Behind the cut is, not so much the dream itself, but some maundering about how I'd make that dream into a story.

( click if you're interested )

And there. It needs more Cool Shit, worldbuildling, and general SFnality, but that's the bones of a story.

Not, of course, that I have time to write the flesh.


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*Notice that while my subconscious--on the basis of a dream earlier this month--cannot tell the difference between Minnesota and Switzerland, it's quite clear on the geography of Detroit, particularly wrt Canada.

The dreams about failing high school calculus HAVE GOT TO STOP. Especially like the one I had last night, in which I dreamed I was failing high school calculus and then woke up to discover it was true. ARGH.

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Made progress on the new wolf book yesterday. Let's be generous and call it 500 words. Which is 500 more words than I've written in a kind of appallingly long time.

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The indefatigable fidelioscabinet has found an awesome photo-reference for Mehitabel. This is Natalia Alexandrova Pushkina, the younger daughter of Aleksandr Pushkin, and if I could have had her on the cover of The Mirador, I would have been a very happy Mole. (No, it isn't an exact match, but it's really startlingly close.)

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I'm not bothering with segues today, but if I were, this would be a good one to my first Q&A question:

Q: I am super interested in what you told the cover artists of ACE. From the previous posts, I am inclined to believe that you had very little input in the whole cover art business, but you did mention that you described the tattoos and they listened. Would you have wanted the cover art done any other way? If you had said you weren't satisfied, what would have happened?

A: My input extended only so far as the artist and the production team decided to listen to me. (I did object to the cover of The Mirador because I found--and, honestly, still find--the size and shape of Mehitabel's head disturbing. It did me no good.) When they asked me questions, I answered them and was delighted when my answers showed up in the cover art: Felix's tattoos, the cityscape behind Mildmay--the cover of The Virtu is probably my favorite for precisely that reason--Mehitabel's dress. In three of four cases, my descriptions of the characters were followed: Kay, for instance, does look like David McCallum on the cover, and that's exactly how I described him for the artist. Mehitabel is the exception there.

Okay, that's an honest answer to your question, but I want to be clear that it isn't a complaint. I think the covers for these books are fantastic. They're compositionally strong--which many fantasy covers aren't--they have coherent color schemes, they give an impression of lush baroquerie which is exactly what's called for. Most importantly from the purely mercenary point of view, they do exactly what they're supposed to do, which is catch people's attention. I've gotten emails from several people who have confessed to picking up Mélusine on the strength of the cover alone. The fact that devoted readers (and the neurotic pink circus poodle of an author) can list everything the covers get wrong is, well, par for the course.

Q: How did you choose the titles of the individual books of DoL? The main reason that I can think of is because most of them are the places all the events which transpire in, but then Virtu throws a wrench right at that reasoning, and it's really gnawing at me like a rat.

A: I did not choose the titles. Ace did. My titles were Strange Labyrinths, The Labyrinth's Heart, Labyrinths Within, and The Labyrinth of Summerdown. (I've mentioned before that I suck at titles, right?) And even after they'd explained their single-word evocative-of-fantasy title theory, I wanted to call the second book Kekropia and the fourth book Summerdown, and got vetoed again.

Q: ( spoilers for Corambis )

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Q: I have been trying to find a paperback copy of The Virtu, and nobody seems to have one. Do you happen to know where I could find one? All the others in the series are available, but that seems to have disappeared...

A: The Virtu is out of print in both hardback and paperback. I am really really sorry. My agent is making a formal protest on my behalf to Ace, and if/when the situation changes, I will definitely make an announcement.

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Q: I have a question more about one of your short stories than about your books (which I liked a lot, but I can't think of any question that has not been asked yet): I enjoyed "A night in Electric Squidland" very much and remember faintly that you said you wrote or planned on writing more short stories with Mick and Jamie. If you have written and published them, is there a way for this fan from beyond the sea (Great Britain) to buy or read them?

A: I have not managed to publish any more stories about Mick and Jamie. (I have one written that no one will buy, and something else that seems to be the first chapter of a novella, and then three or four other ideas that are thus far obstinately refusing to be phrased in the form of a story.) Hopefully, this situation will change for the better.

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Q: What's your preferred baseball team, if any? I only ask this because of, well, I suppose an auxiliary reference question--the writer Ynge, is it a reference to Brandon Inge?

A: I forget where I got Ynge's name, but no. It wasn't that.

I was raised an Atlanta Braves fan. Now, mirrorthaw and I follow the Milwaukee Brewers on the radio. But I'm more a baseball fan than I am a fan of any particular team.

[You can still ask your question(s) here.]

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ETA: The Sekrit Origin of the Virtu revealed! (Hint: it isn't the toaster.)

So the cem of The Mirador has arrived, and I am having an anxiety attack. And watching myself having an anxiety attack and thinking that there's something quintessentially life-of-the-writer about it. Also, you know, utterly counterproductive.

Yes, in my brain, the commentary track feature is always on.

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I dreamed last night that heresluck and I were discussing Tolkien (and along the way proselytizing someone we'd met in a library who thought she wanted to read Tolkien but wasn't sure about it)--and in the dream I was trying to explain something that I think is actually kind of interesting.

Maybe.

(Look, I'm having an anxiety attack, Giant Spotted Snorklewhackers and all, just smile and nod, okay?)

See, the thing is that secondary world fantasy, as a genre, has gotten the idea that it must have Epic Sweep and Casts of Thousands and go on for reams and reams, and we all know we think that because of Tolkien, because this is what happens when you redact a genius into a rubric. But Tolkien himself is doing exactly the opposite. He's doing that thing that they tell you to do when you're trying to learn to write short stories, which is that you figure out what the climax is, and then you work backwards to the minimum amount of information you can give to have that climax make sense.

And, really, The Lord of the Rings is a remarkably well-focused narrative, all things considered.

( click here for the world's longest digression into raw geekitude )

And now, having digressed ourselves RIGHT OFF THE MAP, we return you to the discussion of Tolkien in progress:

As per usual, the trick is to imitate the deep structure of The Lord of the Rings, instead of the surface structure. Because they are radically different. Surface-structure TLotR gets you D&D and bloated fantasy "epics" and ObQuests and all the other trappings of what papersky calls Extruded Fantasy Product and the essential intellectual and emotional bankruptcy that gets secondary world fantasy so often tarred with the brushes of "escapism" and "hackwork" and all the rest of it.

It's the deep structure you've got to look for, the machinery that's doing the work. Because that's the stuff that lets the narrative reach out. It's not that there are elves and dwarves and dragons. It's what the elves and dwarves and dragons mean, what Tolkien makes them mean. And not in an allegorical sense, but in the sense of intellectual and emotional investment. That's why Tolkien is a genius rather than a rubric. And that's what we've got to learn.

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.

I had a very strange dream last night.

And not strange in the way my dreams are usually strange, with the megalomaniacal squirrels and the houses that are bigger on the inside than the outside and the unnaturally colored cats everywhere, watching and blinking.

This one was philosophically strange.

I dreamed that, many years ago, elisem had started an artists' commune somewhere in Europe (part of the dream seemed to think it was set in Greece, and part in East Germany, so I'm gonna go with somewhere in Europe), and at some point had left it to pursue other things--like ya do. (In this dream, Elise worked in textiles instead of metal, I assume to make things easier for my subconscious.) So she and I were traveling through Europe, unlikely though that seems, and we visited the commune.

It had changed, and not for the better. It was now being run as a sort of artists' retreat, and what they were teaching all these eager and malleable young artists was the value of professionalism.

No, that's not how it was. Excuse me.

PROFESSIONALISM

Like that.

Professionalism was what would make them real artists; professionalism was what would keep them going through the rejections and starving-in-a-garret and whatnot. Professionalism was the most important characteristic any artist could cultivate.

In the dream, I knew this was wrong. (Well, in the dream, I had a screaming hissy-fit, and told them all what they could do with themselves for sneering at Elise and me for not being "professional" enough and betraying the principles of the commune and art and all the rest of it. But never mind that.) And then I woke up, and lay there kind of blinking for a minute, and an hour later, I'm still kind of poking at it with a stick, going hmmm.

Because the thing is, I think professionalism is a valuable mindset to cultivate. I actually think artists (in all fields) have an obligation to cultivate it if they intend to inflict their art on anyone other than their family and close friends. And I think they make the rest of us look back when they insist on being prima donnas or woolly-minded oh I just do it for the love of it fruitbats or any of the thousand and one other "artistic" poses that people use as excuses when they don't want to behave like responsible adults.

Let's be clear. I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about the attitude with which you present your art to the world. I'm talking about people who assume that standard manuscript format doesn't apply to them, or who ignore submission guidelines because surely the editor/agent/grand panjandrum will see how Special they are.

If you want to play in a communal sandbox, you need to obey the sandbox's communal rules. If you don't want to play by the rules, that's your choice, but in that case, stick to your own sandbox where the rules can be whatever you want to make them. Let the rest of us get on with trying to play nicely together in as much peace as we can manage. Because it's a big sandbox, and there are a fuck of a lot of us in it, all clutching our little spades and buckets, and if we don't stick to a few basic rules together ... well, we've seen this movie, and it's The Lord of the Flies. And most of us, let's be honest, are Piggy.

So, given that that's my stance on the subject of professionalism, what on earth is my subconscious on about in this dream?

I think it's trying to talk about passion.

Because the ultimate professional, of course, is the hack, who will write/paint/dance/act anything, as long as the right kind of money is involved. Who lives and dies by "professionalism" because there's nothing else there.

And I fully support the right of the hack to earn a living. Laissez-faire capitalism saith, you gotta earn a buck somehow, and if hackery gives you what you need, more power to you.

But it's not who I want to be.

It's hard, if you write science fiction and/or fantasy and/or horror, to talk about your work in terms of art. Because the wider world is determined to see it as pulp. As the ultimate bastion of hackdom. (As opposed to the ultimate bastion of hackerdom, which one might argue it also is, on certain days and in certain lights.) SF isn't "serious" literature (witness the haste of certain "serious" authors to disassociate themselves from the vulgar words "science fiction"), and if you're serious about it ... well, you get the fishy look and the hairy eyeball and the blank incomprehension. It's so much easier to talk about it in economic terms, because everybody understands those. Laissez-faire capitalism, like I said.

Also, like P. T. Barnum said, There's one born every minute.

And it's always easier, always less threatening, to pretend you don't really care about your life's work. If you take the pose of the hack, no one looks at you like you've got a squid on your head. No one makes fun of you for being "too serious." No one condescends to you about these silly little things you've been childish enough to imagine are important.

"Professionalism," in other words, can be armor. Not the kind of professionalism I was talking about earlier, the responsibility to be an adult and abide by the rules, but the kind of professionalism that denies passion, that says, with a shrug, Well, it pays the bills. That despises its own audience for caring about these lies.

For isn't that what's at the bottom of it? That grim Puritan notion that fiction is lies and therefore unimportant? That if you care about the lies you tell ... well, at best you're a fool. At worst, you might be a witch--in the Puritan sense of one who consorts with the Devil. But also in the sense Bear and I talk about in this glass_cats post.

Because witches, like harpies, care. That's what makes them dangerous. They've found what's important, and they're telling the truth about it (even if through the medium of lies). And this makes the rest of us--who aren't sure we know what's important and are afraid of being laughed at if we try--uneasy.

How can you say that make-believe is important?

How can you say that it's not?

If you deny your heart often enough, sure enough, you'll turn it to stone. That's what the people in the dream were doing, in the name of professionalism: teaching artists to deny their hearts. And a stone heart can't be hurt.

But it can't dance, either.

My dreams last night ran the gamut, from trying to explain to somebody how David Eddings is a lazy writer, to writing an lj post about a dream I'd had earlier in the night, which itself was The Lord of the Rings with The Flying Dutchman added in.

( What follows is maundering about visual representations of JRRT's works, namely Peter Jackson vs. Rankin/Bass. If this is going to traumatize you for any reason, don't click here. )

No nightmares, anyway, which is something. I woke up with menstrual cramps, but oursin has managed to make me feel better even about that.

Virtu-wise, I got myself from Chapter 12 to Chapter 14 yesterday, but Chapter 14 is where everything gang aft agley, so we may be here for quite some time. Don't wait up.