Internet Meme Participation

Brad Green has tagged me to participate in an Internet meme that he’s calling Seven Degrees of Separation. The idea is for me to list seven things about myself and then tag seven other bloggers to do the same. Because Brad Green is a writer (and therefore must be expecting sheer literary genius?), I will now have to wage a terrifying battle against the urge to try to be incredibly clever and poetic as I write these seven things (thereby dooming myself to paralysis and shame as I become an Internet loser who never gets around to answering the tag). I will defeat this urge by completing the list, but I won’t promise that it won’t come out pretentious, or full of painful attempts to be witty. I’m usually not into this sort of thing. I’d like to act like I’m way too cool for it, but, the truth is, I’m pathetically grateful for the sign that someone reads my blog…

1. I love socks. Gifts of socks always make me happy, no matter how ugly the socks are. When I lose one sock in the laundry, I embark on such an intense search that I remind myself of that Bible story about the shepherd who only has one sheep.

2. My car seems connected to my body. When it gets dented, I feel physical pain. When I drive, I relish the connection of my feet to the machine. This would make sense if I drove a Lotus Elise, but I actually drive a 1997 Honda Civic.

3. The first thing I can remember writing was an (illustrated) story of two girls who beat the hell out of each other and then say they’re sorry at the end (Can’t remember how old I was).

4. I have five first drafts of novels in the proverbial drawer. I love to write, and I hate to revise (though I am trying to learn).

5. I did not own a computer until 2005. I wrote all four full drafts of my senior thesis in college in longhand, and accepted my roommate’s boyfriend’s offer to type it. I am now a technology journalist who specializes in writing about computers and the Internet.

6. I have pretended to be a man online on several occasions.

7. I can walk just about forever without getting tired or tired of it. I can’t stand any other form of exercise.

Required analysis of list construction:

It took me about an hour to choose seven things. How to be amusingly self-deprecating without making myself sound pathetic? How to talk about writing without sounding like a braggart (or a loser)? What tidbit will be odd and a bit titillating without making me feel ashamed?

The way I write about something shapes the way I see it, and the way a reader sees it. It’s uncomfortable to write about myself for that reason. This makes me think of Wired’s story on Internet-famous self-promoter Julia Allison:

Allison’s greatest accomplishment isn’t the volume of content she creates; it’s that she gets anyone to care about it. Her trick, she says, is to think of herself as the subject of a magazine profile, with every post or update adding dimensions to her as a character. “I treat it like a fire,” she says. “You have to add logs, or it’ll be like one of those YouTube videos that flame out.”

I was fascinated by this paragraph in particular. Since I was young, I’ve periodically “written” third-person narration about myself in my head, usually making myself into a heavily romanticized character full of brilliance and importance to the world (“She settles herself on the couch and opens her laptop. She is impossibly beautiful, her long, dark hair falling across one eye as she peers at the glowing screen. She doesn’t know it yet, but what she is about to write will be remembered forever.”). Part of becoming properly socialized, I think, is to learn to keep this sort of thing to oneself, as well as its close companion, the urge to paint oneself as completely helpless and lame. Like anyone who has a blog, microblog feed, Facebook page, and so on, I do think about how to present myself. But I avoid directly confronting the question. Wired got some flack for writing this story (people complained that it wasn’t an important subject), but I think it is important because of the mirror it raises. We all flirt with being self-promoters. That’s clear to me when I spend a tortured hour coming up with seven things about myself, or when I’m trying to fill out one of those cursed bio boxes when I’m submitting a story. Julia Allison provides excellent material for thinking about this issue, and clearly thinks about it herself.

OK, analysis over. Now, the final problem of choosing seven bloggers who might accept a tag from me:

1. Jason Stout

2. Diane Gallant

3. Rhonda Eudaly

4. Matt Bell

5. The Weaklings (Is it cheating to tag a group?)

6. Laura Madeline Wiseman

And, what the hell:

7. Julia Allison (I don’t know her, but, now that she’s come up in my analysis, I’m curious how she would approach this task, and it seems worth a shot)

Next post will be back to the regularly scheduled program of effusive rants on publishers and stories that I like.

The Myths

Not all of my posts on publishers’ lists that make me drool will be as long and involved as the one I did on Hawthorne. This is the second in that series, on Canongate’s The Myths.

The Story:

I think I was introduced to the concept of novels retelling myths or fairy tales by Robin McKinley’s Deerskin, which uses the fairy tale “Donkeyskin” as its mythic substrate. I dove into the genre of retellings wholeheartedly. For example, I own a bunch of the titles in the excellent Snow White, Blood Red series, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.

I first discovered The Myths at the St. John’s College Bookstore. The manager there has an incredible eye for lovely books. The series pays satisfying attention to the sensuality of books, and the titles look lovely together on a shelf. I point this aspect out often, because the first impression a book makes matters to me. I always notice beautiful, artful publishing, and investigate further. Aside from aesthetics, I love the concept. Contemporary authors such as Jeannette Winterson get assigned mythic source material (in her case, the story of Atlas), and come up with retellings. The list of works so far has a great lineup of authors and myths, and they seem to have a lot more lined up (though I’m not sure how the current economic situation will affect this).

One thing I like is the authors have experimented with formats. For example, Victor Pelevin’s Helmet of Horror, based on the story of Theseus, which I own (but haven’t finished), is written as a series of instant messages. I like the association of the Minotaur’s maze with the Internet.

I feel sheepish as I write up posts on these amazing lines of books when I have to admit that I haven’t read the whole list. But that’s the case here again. Still, very drool-worthy, and I would read all of them.

Stats:

Publishers/Editors: Canongate’s Jamie Byng, working with 40 other publishers.

Number of books in series so far: 10 (bonus points for reading the series along with the source material that inspires each title, which doubles this number, I suppose)

Number of books I’ve read: 0 (But I do own 2. Never enough time to read.)

Feature summary: Attractive hardcovers, excellent overarching vision, interesting mix-and-match of famous authors and myths.

Hawthorne Books and Literary Arts

This is the first in my series on publishers that make me drool. Hawthorne Books and Literary Arts is the publisher that solidified my thinking on the reasons to read through an entire catalog, because everything about this company is so damn beautiful.

The Story:

I had the privilege of meeting Hawthorne publishers Rhonda Hughes and Kate Sage at Book Expo America 2006. For those unfamiliar with this event, it is a massive convention of booksellers, publishers, editors, and authors. Publishers exhibit their lines to the booksellers who will then (hopefully) order and sell their books. The exhibition hall was gargantuan, and full of everything from well-known publishers such as FSG to university presses to that guy who self-published a book about how his cat is in communication with an alien race that wants to mate with Earth women. I was able to go as part of the St. John’s College Bookstore’s entourage, since I worked there at the time (You can’t tell much from the website, but never have I loved a bookstore the way I love this one). There are tons of giveaways, and I walked away with as many books as I could carry.

All this to say, that, in spite of being dazzled by dozens of high-quality publishers putting their best foot forward and suckering me with free books, the company I remember most vividly was Hawthorne. I am thorough and obsessive when it comes to books, and so I insisted on exploring every aisle, afraid of missing some diamond in the rough. Publishers obviously had to pay for their position on the Expo floor, and it did turn out that most of the high-quality publishers had paid the money to be in better locations. I was off in some aisle close to the back wall, talking to that guy I mentioned (the one with the cat who talks to aliens), and wondering if I’d been wrong about this diamond in the rough idea. I turned around and saw Hawthorne’s table, and my life was changed.

Hughes and Sage had put up none of the bells and whistles I’d seen closer to the center of the action. They were literally sitting at a table with some books in front of them. But that was all they needed to be doing. The first thing you notice about Hawthorne’s books is that they’re physically appealing. They’re all trade paperbacks, printed on high-quality paper, with lovely fonts, and French flaps. French flaps are the thigh-high white stockings of book publishing. They have this innocent sexiness that I can’t explain. A moment’s glance told me that these people understood the sensuality of reading.

Then I saw Poe Ballantine’s name on multiple covers. I knew him from The Sun Magazine. If you’re like me, you have this fantasy about getting on a Greyhound bus and traveling all over the country, writing about the people you meet there, and supporting yourself with words and odd jobs. Ballantine is the guy who’s done that, and reported back on the lifestyle in all its glory and loneliness. I love his range. Sometimes, he romanticizes and I want to get on the road and follow him. But he always gives you the grit as well. Not just the cockroaches doing water ballet on the ceiling (his words), which are part of the romance, but the masturbating alone in a motel room, wondering what kind of loser the management thinks you are. Turns out, Hawthorne was publishing his essays and novels. Here was my diamond in the rough.

I heard Sage and Hughes admitting to an acquaintance that they hadn’t wanted to pay the rates for a better spot at the Expo. I enthused to them about Ballantine and admired the French flaps. A friend with me pressed them for a freebie and received it, but I sensed their reluctance and didn’t want to take from them. I went home later and ordered Ballantine’s Things I Like About America (excerpt here), which instantly became my favorite book of all time. Go to their website now and take a look. Its design tells you a lot about the publishers’ sense of style and grace. There are also nice touches, like the price of shipping is included in the price of the book.

But I told you yesterday that a publisher’s catalog has to make me want to read every one of the books, based on trust in the publisher alone, in order to make this series of blog posts. Hawthorne is the original example of that for me. Sure, I know I love Ballantine, but what about the rest of what they do? Looking over Hawthorne’s catalog (which they spell with a “ue”), I was fascinated by everything. If they publish Ballantine, I thought, who are these other people? Some highlights: D’Arcy Fallon’s So Late, So Soon, the story of life in a Christian commune; Mark Mordue’s Dastgah: Diary of a Headtrip, the story of a journalist’s journey around the globe; Scott Nadelson’s The Cantor’s Daughter, a collection of short stories that come up regularly in my mind, more than 2 1/2 years after I first read them. The list shows every sign of being handpicked by discriminating and adventurous readers.

I’ve gone on about this press at greater length than I should have, probably, but I truly can’t say enough. I haven’t read the entire catalogue (I give in to their elegant spelling), but I would read it, I want to read it, I am working on reading it. I fully believe that I could randomly purchase any book published by Hawthorne and enjoy and admire it. This is a great example of what I mean when I say a publisher has a voice: Hawthorne’s comes through with such clear elegance. It’s graceful and literary, but not snooty. It’s exciting, very much about poking into the wild streaks running through life. It’s bold, but without the need for tragic hipster posturing. In short, it’s the best publisher I know.

I’m including some stats below (I may experiment with what goes in this block as this series continues). In filling in how much of the list I’ve read, I’m embarrassed that the number’s not higher. It’s totally doable to read everything this fantastic press puts out, and, considering how much I love what I’m already seen, it’s worth doing. I’ll take a look at that in the new year.

Stats:

Publishers/Editors: Rhonda Hughes, Kate Sage, Adam O’Connor Rodriguez

Number of books in “catalogue”: 19

Number of books I’ve read: 4

Feature summary: Broad range of literature: essays, stories, nonfiction, novels; excellent website, Poe Ballantine; reprints great literary novels; French flaps.

P.S. Never fear. I doubt all these posts will be this long. I just have a major crush on Hawthorne, and I also have the day off.

On Publishers’ Catalogs

I love to make lists, cross things off methodically, and emerge at the end with a feeling of accomplishment and thoroughness. I find that this translates to my reading in the following way: when I like a publisher, I want to read through that publisher’s entire catalog.

I haven’t met a lot of people who read this way. Most people, if they’re inclined toward lists, will focus on authors (i.e. read everything Neil Gaiman ever wrote), or compilation lists (50 science fiction books that shaped the world of today). But a publisher’s list is often a lovely package of interesting titles, reflecting the tastes of particular editors.

I’ve loved fiction magazines for as long as I can recall, starting with copies of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction that I bought on the newsstand when I was a kid, and progressing from there. One of the things I love about them is that they also reflect an editor’s vision of which stories (based on length, subject matter, or any number of considerations) work together well. Editors think of the mix of stories in terms of a particular issue, as well as from the perspective of what other stories the magazine has published recently, and what other magazines are publishing. I love the moment when I know a magazine well enough to hear its voice, by which I mean, to get some understanding of how that magazine is steering itself through the sea of words out there.

I see a publisher’s catalog as the same phenomenon on a larger scale, and it recently occurred to me that others may not. I think one reason for this is that larger publishers don’t speak with as clear a voice as a smaller publisher. To get the same sense I’m describing from a larger publisher, you have to pay attention to imprints, or to the acquisitions made by a particular editor.

Lately, I’ve been intrigued by the role editors play. It probably stems from the fall editors’ note in Narrative Magazine, which got me thinking about the ways an editor’s presence can be felt. Of course, as a writer, I benefit from editors on a daily basis, but I’m interested in exploring how editors affect me as a reader.

So, I plan to do a series of indeterminate length on lines of books I love. The criteria will be subjective, but important: to qualify for the series, I have to want to read literally every book the publisher has printed. I have to look at it, and, based on some factor, decide that I trust the editors’ judgment so much that I’ll open my mind to any book they’ve acquired. There are catalogs that make me start calculating (how quickly can I read a book, how many are there, how many months would it take to read them all?). Those are the lines I’m going to talk about here.

I’m not coming to this as any kind of insider, and I’m not going to play to any particular genre or type of book. Just things that I like as a reader.

On Contests

I spent a lot of time entering writing contests this year, and, upon reflection, I don’t think I’ll repeat that next year. I’m not sure how competitive contests are compared with submitting directly to a magazine (probably depends on the contest or the magazine). However, my experience has narrowed it down to a few pros and cons worth considering.

Pros:

The prize money for a contest seems to be larger than the regular pay I would get in many cases. Earlier this year, I was privileged to win second place in an On The Premises contest. It was an incredible experience. Working with the editors after I placed in the contest was incredibly valuable. I also think that contests draw more attention to specific stories than might otherwise come to a story alongside others in a magazine. Whatever my decision about contests in general, the On The Premises contest specifically was well worth it, and I plan to continue participating next year.

Cons:

I thought I’d heard the cons before, main one being that contests often have entry fees. I don’t care so much about that. However, I recently observed a con that is going to be the major factor keeping me away from contests in the future: the chance of receiving editor comments on rejected entries is slim to none. Every mature writer knows that there are many rejections along the road to publication. But I’m learning that not placing in a contest is significantly different from not being selected by an editor for a magazine. While not all editors provide comments, some do. Even for the ones that don’t, I can sometimes glean hints about what may have been the issue with my submission based on how the editor responds (sometimes this is based on facts such as how quickly I received a response, and sometimes this is just a gut feeling). The thing is, whether my piece is accepted or rejected, I’m establishing some relationship with an editor, however slight, when I make a regular submission. Contests, on the other hand, don’t have this personal touch for those rejected. While I had a great personal experience with On The Premises once my story placed, my experience with other contests has been that it’s otherwise a wad of nothingness. I’m not connected to or learning from a person. I get some hint from the winning story, but no targeted clues that I can learn from.

Earlier this year, I got some comments along with a rejection that were revelatory in revising the piece (which I still haven’t placed yet, though I do like it much better now). I started craving that. When I realized that contests aren’t likely to provide me those kinds of clues, I made a decision to focus more on straight submissions.

New Territory

If you follow me on Identi.ca (an open-source microblogging service), you know a lot about what a day in this writer’s life is like. My posts on a typical day look something like this:

– Writing.
– Stuck.
– Pithy thought about what to do when I’m stuck.
– Comment on something I bought from the office snack machine.
– Comment on something I found on a blog while avoiding being stuck.
– Attempt to regroup.
– Wow, this piece/revision I’m working on is taking a lot longer than I thought it would.
– Real progress! Woot!
– Stuck.
– Pithy thought about what to do when I’m stuck.
– Rinse and repeat.
– Piece is done! Woot!
– On to a new piece…

With experience, I’ve learned to be dismayed by this process a little less. I’ve also learned that pretty much the only way I can get through those stuck places is by employing some trick to get past the blank page hurdle. Over the years, I’ve amassed a large quantity of tricks, but here’s the weird thing: they expire. A trick that seems surefire for some number of years suddenly loses its magic, leaving me to flail like a n00b.
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My most reliable magic trick for quite some time was to write fast, and then fix the words once they were on the page. I’ve also tried writing slow, making sure that my hand moves even slower than my brain. Lately, my trick has been to start writing at the end, and basically work at a piece from the end as well as from the beginning. When I get stuck in one, I switch to the other.
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The specifics of my tricks aside, it’s mysterious to me how writing makes me treat every piece as entirely new territory.

Focus

I’ve been reading a lot of tie-in novels to Wizards of the Coast’s Eberron world, largely because it’s an enjoyable way to gather source material for the Dungeons and Dragons games I run in Eberron — especially compared to the alternative of reading encyclopedic source books. For a long time, I had a prejudice against these kinds of novels, expecting them to be lower quality than straight genre fantasy novels. I have to say I’ve been pleasantly surprised. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read, and was very impressed with the writing in some of them.

Though it’s been out for a while now, I wanted to give a special mention to Marsheila Rockwell’s Legacy of Wolves. Rockwell clearly paid a lot of attention to characters, and I noticed that her female characters in particular were much better developed than the female characters in many fantasy novels I’ve read. Distraught mothers have some depth to them beyond their grief, the main female character has a broad range of motivations, and the romantic tension in the story is fueled by more than two hot people sleeping in nearby bedrolls. That said, Rockwell doesn’t sacrifice action at all. One of the big pleasures of these gaming novels is that they’re littered with awesome fight scenes, and she certainly doesn’t stint there.

For those unfamiliar with Eberron, it’s an interesting world. It’s extremely magical, but the magic often powers devices that bear similarities to modern technology, such as airships and a lightning rail. It’s also meant to have a noir feeling, and Legacy of Wolves is essentially a mystery novel. It was by far the most satisfying Eberron novel of that type that I have read. Rockwell sets up an interesting scenario: serial murders that seem to be getting blamed on the wrong people. Then, she throws out lead after lead, all of them plausible. It was a lot of fun to work on untangling these leads along with the characters, and to discover in the end that she played fair — the true clues were there all along the way.

I did think there was a bit of a stumble at the end [SPOILER -- since I'm talking about the end, I may give something away now]. One of the main characters is gravely wounded in the last fight scene, to the point that I thought the character might be dead. The epilogue made it clear that the character lived, but that character doesn’t appear again onscreen, so to speak. I’ve come to feel that it’s necessary to actually bring a nearly-dead character before the audience in the end to give a satisfying feel to the fact that he or she survived.

I’ve seen Rockwell’s work before — I read a short story she published in Space and Time about a year ago, called “Lab Rats” (print only, as far as I can tell). After being impressed by this novel, I decided to look her up, and was very impressed by her blog [linked to her name above]. She tracks submissions, rejections, acceptances, and a variety of stats, out in public, in a disciplined and focused way. I admire the guts involved with making all that public, and I admire what it says about how she approaches writing and publishing. I’m personally rooting for her to publish another novel. I look forward to reading it when she does.

Never Underestimate Science Fiction

When I wrote yesterday about Tarl Roger Kudrick’s “A Pocketful of Silence,” I didn’t mention anything about the science fiction premise of the story. The narrator discovers a noise-canceling goo, and takes it home and starts investigating it:

Even though it looks sticky, it only adheres to itself. When I slap it onto a wall, it falls off. I put it on the couch, which is covered with cat hair, and when it’s lifted off, not one hair is removed. More intriguing is how it silences anything it’s spread over. I coat pencils with it and break them: no sound. I spread it over a blender, and the blender works silently.

But what happens to the sound? I can’t see how it could be emitting modulated waves like some noise-canceling devices do, and it glows blue when it’s coating something noisy enough. So does it convert sound into light? I guess what’s really going on when I scrape the gunk off the blender and get a nasty shock. I confirm it with a few more experiments.

Somehow, this stuff converts sound into electricity.

At this point it’s almost midnight and I’ve figured out that by sticking the blender’s plug into the goop, I can make the blender work just by yelling at it.

At the time, I thought this was a fun science fiction concept, but not terribly realistic. Imagine my surprise when I was going through press releases this morning and discovered this:

Imagine a self-powering cell phone that never needs to be charged because it converts sound waves produced by the user into the energy it needs to keep running. It’s not as far-fetched as it may seem thanks to the recent work of Tahir Cagin, a professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University.

…

“Even the disturbances in the form of sound waves such as pressure waves in gases, liquids and solids may be harvested for powering nano- and micro devices of the future if these materials are processed and manufactured appropriately for this purpose,” Cagin said.

Key to this technology, Cagin explained, are piezoelectrics. Derived from the Greek word “piezein,” which means “to press,” piezoelectrics are materials (usually crystals or ceramics) that generate voltage when a form of mechanical stress is applied. Conversely, they demonstrate a change in their physical properties when an electric field is applied.

One of the things that amazes me about science fiction is that it shows how close the fictional imagination can be to other forms of human creativity, such as scientific creativity. I don’t know if Kudrick was aware of this research and based the goo on fact, but I’d guess not. A striking coincidence for me, in any case.

Another View

I’ve just discovered “A Pocketful of Silence,” a story by Tarl Roger Kudrick, one of the editors of the excellent On The Premises, published in Anotherealm. I’ve had the privilege of being edited by Tarl, and gained a great deal of respect for him in the process. It’s nice to see what his work is like on the other side of the equation. 

“A Pocketful of Silence” is about a brush with adventure. I recognize the narrator’s burning longing for it: 

When I was fourteen I hated my life, and it was no longer Nancy Drew’s fault, but Dana Scully’s. Yes, Agent Scully from The X-Files. I wanted to embrace the sexy danger, mystery, and wonder that surrounded her in every episode, and never see a well-manicured lawn again. Back then I wrote protest songs and stood outside malls, flailing away on a guitar and screeching at everyone who dared to walk by. I had the kind of passion I thought would fuel my heart forever, but always burns out eventually.

Even though I like my life now, some days I miss feeling like I’m giving off so much light, people have to look away or go blind.

What stands out in this story is the attention to detail. No character is wasted. For example, the narrator is close to a boy she tutors named Damon. The boy’s father is a fairly minor character, but quite vivid: 

I haven’t been in Damon’s basement since his eighth birthday party, when the plumbing broke. His dad made a pinata out of a pillowcase, hung it from the water pipes running along the unfinished ceiling, and gave all the kids hockey sticks. His dad tries, I’ll give him that.

Similarly, here’s an image of a friend of the narrator: 

Two nights later she comes over and I buy the pizza. It’s an apology she’ll recognize and accept. I dance around exactly what I found, but tell her everything except the telepathy, which even I have trouble believing. I can tell my vagueness grates on her from the way she tears her pizza into little bits before eating it. 

I’ve seen a certain taste for quirkiness in some of the stories On The Premises has published. In “A Pocketful of Silence,” I thought I recognized some of that same quirkiness from a different angle.