Here's a crazy attempt to document and review various speculative fiction written by Filipinos:
Publication: Rogue Magazine February 2009
"The Cheap Legend of Juana Chupacabra" by Benito Kampf
Benito Kampf is not without talent and it is evident in the first paragraph of the story as the author paints this scene which is a combination of gruesomeness and eroticism. The reader is assaulted by tantalizing and visceral descriptions and this would have otherwise fit in perfectly with some of the best-written porn if not for the usage of one of the country's most iconic horror monsters. But this is not a story about an aswang assaulting a hapless prey but instead the relationship of two lesbian lovers.
Unfortunately, word play and sensual stimulation seem to be the strongest points of the piece and as we move into the rest of the narrative, it feels like eating eating bread and butter for dinner after having lobster as an appetizer. Which isn't to say it's horrible but rather everything else--including the plot--is awfully mediocre after such a strong opening. It would have been forgivable had this been longer (it straddles the border of flash fiction and the minimum of the short story) but as it is, it's the equivalent of riding a pornography roller coaster: exhilarating during the act but leaves a void when it comes to mental satisfaction.
Kampf gains bonus points for creative usage of old tropes and wonderful imagery but it isn't enough to elevate this story beyond fanciful language. I think most of my disappointment stems from the format, flash fiction, as this story feels like it still has so much to tell. I consider this a good read, mind you, but it's material you take with you to the toilet rather than the couch. And if you're just looking for erotic speculative fiction, Kampf has my erect member. There are horror elements to "The Cheap Legend of Juana Chupacabra" but if you judge it by those standards, it's stale and predictable.
Publication: Fantasy Magazine February 2, 2009
"Teaching a Pink Elephant to Ski" by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
While the epistolary format isn't anything new, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz uses it to create a story that's simply fun, as can be derived from the title. The writing style isn't particularly praise-worthy as it's more functional (this is an epistolary after all) but what instead comes across to the reader is the heartfelt personality of the characters involved. While little is directly said about our protagonist, a lot can be inferred from the text and that's the beauty of "Teaching a Pink Elephant to Ski," not that it's a story about elephants but it's a story about people. In certain ways, the elephant element could easily have been swapped for children and you'd still get the same story, albeit one with less laughs. The fact that Loenen-Ruiz actually uses elephants elevates this piece as she makes the most of the metaphor.
One complaint however is that while reading through the story, I feel that the author explained a bit too much, as if she was afraid the reader might not grasp the subtleties of the piece. This could use some snipping to make it tighter and while one could make the argument that it's better to err in favor of making the story clearer, I honestly don't feel that way.
"Teaching a Pink Elephant to Ski" isn't aiming to be this revolutionary story and succeeds in being a light and enjoyable piece. Characterization is at its heart and that's not an easy thing to accomplish considering the lacuna technique Loenen-Ruiz uses to tell the narrative.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
February 5, 2009 Links and Plugs
Quite busy again so I'll make this short:
- Yet Another Cultural Appropriation Post.
- Victoria Blake on One Slightly Skewed View.
- Jay Lake on Superpowers, psychotic persistence, and success in writing.
- John Joseph Adams interviews Caitlin R. Kiernan.
- Alison Morris on How Many Books Would YOU Order for This Event?
- France honors Harry Potter author Rowling.
- Stephen King on J.K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer.
- Bad Idea Theater: Stories From the Slush Pile.
- Nancy Kress on Biodefense.
2009/02/05 Tabletop RPG Podcasts
Every Thursday, I post links to various podcasts that deals with tabletop RPGs.
Tabletop RPG (Mostly)
General Discussions/Reviews/Everything Else
- Pulp Gamer episodes: Lunar Rails (The Game Kennel).
- The Podge Cast episodes: I Feel Like Less of a Man.
- Fell Calls! episodes: In 3-D!!
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- The Tome Show episodes: Martial Power.
- Wapcaplets episodes: Shaintar: Immortal Legends.
- Trapcast episodes: Handling Roles.
- Bear Swarm! episodes: Setting Scope.
- Animalcast episodes: Must Watch Free Movies.
- Fear the Boot episodes: Tangible Goodies.
- Gateway to the Megaverse episodes: Groundhog Gateway.
- Narrative Control episodes: Episode 19.
- Game On! episodes: Poor Gamer's Almanac.
- Radio Free Hommlet episodes: DDXP 2009 Product Announcements.
- THACO episodes: 2008, A Year in Review; Old World of Darkness vs. New World of Darkness.
- Geekson! episodes: Episode 106.
- Have Games Will Travel episodes: For a Few More Game #35.
- HeadGames Podcast episodes: EuroGames vs AmeriTrash.
- Hidden Grid episodes: Episode 005.
- Small But Vicious episodes: Episode 3.
- Return to Northmoor episodes: Session 4 Adventure.
- Save Against Frostbite episodes: Captain Rainbow Bukkake.
- The Game's The Thing episodes: [Review] Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood and Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game.
- This Modern Death episodes: Big Macklin’s House.
- Wandering Geek episodes: Transitions and Lost Audio.
- Atomic Array episodes: Kobold Quarterly.
- Kore Dice episodes: Interview with Freelance Cartographer Sean Macdonald.
- 3.5 Private Sanctuary episodes: Polymancer Studios.
- The Voice o the Revolution episodes: Krista White interview.
- The Walking Eye Podcast episodes: Fred Hicks.
- Theory from the Closet episodes: Interview with John Wick.
- Yog-Sothoth episodes: Keith Herber Interview.
- Heroic Cthulhu episodes: Wandering Around (1, 2), Subtly, Tact & Diplomacy (1, 2, 3, 4), Typewriter (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), Yeti Redoux (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), Face Off - Continued (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), Colorblind (1, 2, 3), Holmes' Hellish Holland Holiday (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8), Intelligence Gathering (1, 2), Alien Nazis (1, 2, 3, 4), Give Me A Hand (1, 2, 3, 4).
- RPGMP3 episodes: Beyond the Mountains of Madness (14), Sorcerer Cyberpunk (9).
- Kore RPG episodes: Burley's a What?!
- Gamer's Haven episodes: Deadlands Reloaded (02.1, 02.2, 02.3, 02.4, 02.5).
- Icosahedrophilia episodes: The Wellspring (6), Isla Calipha (1).
- Role Playing Public Radio episodes: 4E D&D The New World (3).
- The Myth Weavers episodes: “Howl of the People” Season 1 Mid-Season Recap.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Wisdom from Cheney
"But for some reason when it comes to literary texts, the expectation is different: your fun is supposed to be my fun, and that fun should be easy fun. How dull the world would be if that were true!" - Matt Cheney
February 4, 2009 Links and Plugs
Busy busy busy...
- Not spec fic related but in case you happened to be in San Francisco and Filipino, Celebrate the 5-Year Anniverary of the Kababayan Program!
- Some interesting Black Gate articles: The Wizard Howl and Confessions of a Speed-Reading Instructor.
- Read here how buying a Wheatland Press book can help raise awareness that heart diseases is the #1 killer of women.
- Monster Librarian has an interview with Joel Sutherland.
- Jim C. Hines on Writing Book Proposals.
- Vote at the Dead of Night Awards.
- Matt Staggs interviews James Morrow.
- In honor of Black History Month, Lethe Press is selling the eBook of Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories for only $3.25!
- Victoria Blake gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Brian Evenson's Last Days.
- Catherynne M. Valente on Programming Languages Are To Literary Schools As...
- Speculative Fiction in Conversation Part 4 with Eric Rosenfield and Matt Cheney.
Pet Peeve: On the 3rd Graphic/Fiction Awards
It's time for some tough love. For the past few months, various people inquiring about the 3rd Graphic/Fiction Awards. It's perfectly all right to wonder when they'll hand out the awards. I'm tired though of seeing people inquire it in message boards and the comments section of various blogs, including mine, especially when the said people are in no way connected to Fully Booked, the host of the competition.
Look, again, we're not employees of Fully Booked. I myself joined the competition and I'm just in the dark as the rest of you. If you honestly want to find out when the results of the competition will be declared, contact Fully Booked. And I suggest you talk to their marketing department as I doubt if Customer Service is aware of every decision of their employers (they're too busy running the day-to-day workings of the actual bookstore).
This isn't just a rant about people pestering me about the results of the contest though. It's a symptom of something bigger. Since this is, for the most part, a book blog, I'll address the writers.
Why did you join the competition? Or rather, what are your aspirations?
Is it the P100,000 ($2,000) cash prize? That's certainly a lot of money--easily the year's salary of someone earning minimum wage. If you joined the competition solely for the money, honestly, there are other ways of earning money, and certainly more than P100,000 in a year. Heck, there's always the Lotto, and they always give you the results every Wednesday.
Is it to be published? Welcome to the life of a writer! If you joined the competition because you want to get published, the fact of the matter is, you're not trying hard enough. Listen, if you want to be a writer, you can't have your eggs all in one basket. There are a lot of other local publications: The Philippines Free Press, Philippine Graphic, Story Philippines, etc. Still not enough for you? There's a ton of other international and online markets. Send your manuscript to them. You only have one story to send out? Guess what, start acting like an actual writer and write! It's what writers do. Instead of spending all this time Googling "Fully Booked Contest" and trolling various blogs, message boards, and websites, you could be out actually writing another short story and hopefully one that you can sell to a paying market.
Did you join the competition to impress or have a date with Neil Gaiman? Again, you're not trying hard enough. There are other ways to impress him. Create something else that'll be so good it'll catch his attention. Or be involved in a similarly ambitious project. If this is your goal--and I hope it isn't your only goal--don't depend on a third party to simply hand you your dreams.
In case you missed all of that, here's the deal. Writers write, edit, and send out manuscripts. The editors or whatever publication or competition you're joining might respond to you within the day. Or they might respond to you in two years. Whatever the case may be, it's out of your hands. You might follow up from time to time but aside from that, will you be idle the rest of the time? Write new stories, create new fiction. Then send them out to other markets. It's the only thing you can control. Be proactive.
Still not convinced? Fine. I'll give you my hypothesis what's happening with the 3rd Graphic/Fiction Awards.
First off, Fully Booked published a book. It's called Expeditions. Did you buy a copy?
If you answered no, then now you know why there's no announcement of the 3rd Graphic/Fiction Awards yet.
Look, publishing is a difficult business. Fully Booked took a big risk, in my opinion, in choosing to publish a book featuring the winners of the competition. Heck, quite frankly, not a lot of local books are selling and Fully Booked is no exception.
When did the announcement of the winners of the 2nd Graphic/Fiction Awards take place? Shortly after Expeditions was released. And when Neil Gaiman was in the country. Personally, I feel that was a brilliant marketing move. Because otherwise, few people would probably take notice of, much less purchase, the former. Hey, let's face it, the Graphic/Fiction Awards wouldn't be what it is if it weren't for the brand recognition of Neil Gaiman. I don't have the stats but I presume a lot of copies of Expeditions sold happened during the 2nd Graphic/Fiction Awards which not only had the presence of Neil Gaiman (yay media coverage!) but raffled off some signed material (and some hoped that they could meet or have Neil Gaiman sign some of their stuff).
Having said that, my theory is that the 3rd Graphic/Fiction Awards will take place when Neil Gaiman drops by the Philippines. I don't think it would be anytime soon (any time being this month or the next) considering the author's busy schedule (you can read his blog for updates). I do think it's going to take place this year, I just don't know when.
Don't like that deal? Well, you're not the contest organizers.
Now if you're like me, you can probably wonder how we can change the fact that there's this huge delay. For one thing, you can start making the publication of winners feasible rather than a necessary expense for the contest (or that they have to time its release with Neil Gaiman's presence). Buy a copy of Expeditions if you haven't. I mean you're hoping the next volume will contain your name right? How would you feel if only the winners and their friends and family were the only ones who bought the book?
By no means am I telling you to buy the book if you think it's utter crap. Or if you're not a fan of speculative fiction. But if that's the case, why are you joining the competition? Why don't you look around and educate yourself? I wouldn't say the Philippine speculative fiction scene is at its peak but it exists. Read it, support it, participate in it. If not, it'll wither and die. The same goes for the Graphic/Fiction Awards. It won't always be there. And whether the organizers will continue to support it depends on whether the business is feasible (on one hand, we should be grateful that Neil Gaiman provided the seed money but on the other hand, relying on donations is seldom [there are exceptions] an effective method to run a long-term institution). The best way to support the Graphic/Fiction Awards is to actually buy the books it puts out.
If you can't do any of that, isn't it presumptous of us to whine and complain about the lack of results of the Graphic/Fiction Awards? We're in it for the money and the glory and the fame but none of the gratitude. Guess what, a lot of businesses and institutions are closing down simply because they're not getting enough patrons or support. Again, I can't control whether I'll be the the winner of the contest and when it'll be announced but I can definitely control who I promote and support.
Look, again, we're not employees of Fully Booked. I myself joined the competition and I'm just in the dark as the rest of you. If you honestly want to find out when the results of the competition will be declared, contact Fully Booked. And I suggest you talk to their marketing department as I doubt if Customer Service is aware of every decision of their employers (they're too busy running the day-to-day workings of the actual bookstore).
This isn't just a rant about people pestering me about the results of the contest though. It's a symptom of something bigger. Since this is, for the most part, a book blog, I'll address the writers.
Why did you join the competition? Or rather, what are your aspirations?
Is it the P100,000 ($2,000) cash prize? That's certainly a lot of money--easily the year's salary of someone earning minimum wage. If you joined the competition solely for the money, honestly, there are other ways of earning money, and certainly more than P100,000 in a year. Heck, there's always the Lotto, and they always give you the results every Wednesday.
Is it to be published? Welcome to the life of a writer! If you joined the competition because you want to get published, the fact of the matter is, you're not trying hard enough. Listen, if you want to be a writer, you can't have your eggs all in one basket. There are a lot of other local publications: The Philippines Free Press, Philippine Graphic, Story Philippines, etc. Still not enough for you? There's a ton of other international and online markets. Send your manuscript to them. You only have one story to send out? Guess what, start acting like an actual writer and write! It's what writers do. Instead of spending all this time Googling "Fully Booked Contest" and trolling various blogs, message boards, and websites, you could be out actually writing another short story and hopefully one that you can sell to a paying market.
Did you join the competition to impress or have a date with Neil Gaiman? Again, you're not trying hard enough. There are other ways to impress him. Create something else that'll be so good it'll catch his attention. Or be involved in a similarly ambitious project. If this is your goal--and I hope it isn't your only goal--don't depend on a third party to simply hand you your dreams.
In case you missed all of that, here's the deal. Writers write, edit, and send out manuscripts. The editors or whatever publication or competition you're joining might respond to you within the day. Or they might respond to you in two years. Whatever the case may be, it's out of your hands. You might follow up from time to time but aside from that, will you be idle the rest of the time? Write new stories, create new fiction. Then send them out to other markets. It's the only thing you can control. Be proactive.
Still not convinced? Fine. I'll give you my hypothesis what's happening with the 3rd Graphic/Fiction Awards.
First off, Fully Booked published a book. It's called Expeditions. Did you buy a copy?
If you answered no, then now you know why there's no announcement of the 3rd Graphic/Fiction Awards yet.
Look, publishing is a difficult business. Fully Booked took a big risk, in my opinion, in choosing to publish a book featuring the winners of the competition. Heck, quite frankly, not a lot of local books are selling and Fully Booked is no exception.
When did the announcement of the winners of the 2nd Graphic/Fiction Awards take place? Shortly after Expeditions was released. And when Neil Gaiman was in the country. Personally, I feel that was a brilliant marketing move. Because otherwise, few people would probably take notice of, much less purchase, the former. Hey, let's face it, the Graphic/Fiction Awards wouldn't be what it is if it weren't for the brand recognition of Neil Gaiman. I don't have the stats but I presume a lot of copies of Expeditions sold happened during the 2nd Graphic/Fiction Awards which not only had the presence of Neil Gaiman (yay media coverage!) but raffled off some signed material (and some hoped that they could meet or have Neil Gaiman sign some of their stuff).
Having said that, my theory is that the 3rd Graphic/Fiction Awards will take place when Neil Gaiman drops by the Philippines. I don't think it would be anytime soon (any time being this month or the next) considering the author's busy schedule (you can read his blog for updates). I do think it's going to take place this year, I just don't know when.
Don't like that deal? Well, you're not the contest organizers.
Now if you're like me, you can probably wonder how we can change the fact that there's this huge delay. For one thing, you can start making the publication of winners feasible rather than a necessary expense for the contest (or that they have to time its release with Neil Gaiman's presence). Buy a copy of Expeditions if you haven't. I mean you're hoping the next volume will contain your name right? How would you feel if only the winners and their friends and family were the only ones who bought the book?
By no means am I telling you to buy the book if you think it's utter crap. Or if you're not a fan of speculative fiction. But if that's the case, why are you joining the competition? Why don't you look around and educate yourself? I wouldn't say the Philippine speculative fiction scene is at its peak but it exists. Read it, support it, participate in it. If not, it'll wither and die. The same goes for the Graphic/Fiction Awards. It won't always be there. And whether the organizers will continue to support it depends on whether the business is feasible (on one hand, we should be grateful that Neil Gaiman provided the seed money but on the other hand, relying on donations is seldom [there are exceptions] an effective method to run a long-term institution). The best way to support the Graphic/Fiction Awards is to actually buy the books it puts out.
If you can't do any of that, isn't it presumptous of us to whine and complain about the lack of results of the Graphic/Fiction Awards? We're in it for the money and the glory and the fame but none of the gratitude. Guess what, a lot of businesses and institutions are closing down simply because they're not getting enough patrons or support. Again, I can't control whether I'll be the the winner of the contest and when it'll be announced but I can definitely control who I promote and support.
Essay: My Worst Fear as an Interviewer
Every Wednesday, I'll have an essay or a feature on any topic that catches my fancy!
During my junior year in college, I attended a Features Writing class and for a few sessions, one of the topics we discussed was the art of the interview. Out teacher didn't simply give examples of good interviews but she also narrated horrible ones. One example is when an interviewer asked a celebrity what his book was about. The interviewee replied that the interviewer should read the damned book and then abandoned the rest of the interview. (And after reading much author blogs, I can understand the trepidation. Book synopsis and summaries scare some authors: how can you condense your 100,000-word novel into less than a thousand words? Or better yet, why bother writing all that when some smart-ass is just going to ask you to summarize the book in a few words.) There were other examples of bad interviews but that one sticks in my mind. As an interviewer, that's the kind of interviewer I dread most.
Thankfully, in all the interviews I've done, that hasn't happened yet. Last week though, several people latched on to Pat's (of Pat's Fantasy Hotlist) interview with Glen Cook. There's already some tension right from the very start. Jeff Vandermeer for the most part attributes some blame on the interviewer. Matt Staggs, on the other hand, gives examples on how the author could have turned it around. If you read the comments section, the blame is similarly spread out. Some people think Pat should have asked better questions. Others think Cook was rude or didn't spend as much time thinking of concise answers. Larry Nolen has an example of an interview with Cook that fared significantly better. So what exactly happened here?
Let's go back to the basics of an interview. First, before anything else, a good interview should already know beforehand who his target audience is. Pat's Fantasy Hotlist for the most part strikes me as an entry-level type of literary blog. It doesn't include academia-level questions for example. With that in mind, Pat's questions to Cook isn't surprising. However, this is where the lack of synchronization comes in. Glen Cook might not be as famous as J.K. Rowling, but he's not new to the publishing industry either. I don't think he was really prepared for basic questions--especially ones you can dig up on the Internet--or for some poorly worded questions (and to be fair to Cook, he did ask Pat to clarify but the interviewer failed to capitalize on that).
This is where methodology comes in. As an author, when you're frustrated by a question, there are several ways of reacting to it. You can be a Neil Gaiman (although granted not everyone can be as patient as he is) and graciously answer it as if it was the first time you were asked that question. (When Neil Gaiman came to visit the Philippines, he gave great answers to all these questions and it was only later that I found out that these answers were available elsewhere, either in Gaiman's books or in other interviews.) Author P.N. Elrod has on her site a FAQ which are essentially "questions she's tired of hearing" so it's listed there, with the answers, so that you don't have to ask them over and over again. Or third, you can be as opinionated as you want to be. And I'm not saying that's necessarily wrong. I really liked Glen Cook's answers because well, he actually gives an opinion and doesn't play it safe. He tells you things as he sees it, which might lead to some interesting fireworks. And in many ways that's the appeal of more volatile personalities like Harlan Ellison. (And from a publicity standpoint, Pat's interview was a success in the sense that it's garnering all this attention.)
It's not all in the hands of the interviewee though. Contrary to what some people might think (especially in the proliferation of the first kind of interview in blogs), there are two types of interviews. The format that Pat follows is the Q&A style format, which basically reprints verbatim the interview that was conducted (it's also the same format that I use). The alternative is to write the interview like a feature, summarizing most points about the author (which didn't necessarily take place in the interview as this could have easily been researched facts) and including some choice quotes. That's what basically happens in the Locus Magazine interviews or John Joseph Adam's profiles for SCI Fi Wire (here is a recent example). And even if you're doing a straight-up Q&A, you can take elements of the latter by starting off the interview with an introductory paragraph explaining some basic details about the author so that you don't have to ask questions like "so what is this book about?"
Another element that comes into play is in how the interview was conducted. This was obviously an interview conducted via email. Now there are significant differences between an interview done through live chat and one via email. Perhaps the biggest difference is the innuendo. In an email, you don't get a sense of the hesitation, the fear, or even the excitement of the author. You obviously can't tell whether they're uncomfortable with the question unless it's too late (i.e. they've already answered the question). Sometimes, you can't even tell whether they're joking or being sarcastic. Having said that, that's not to say live chat will always be superior to email interviews. The latter certainly has its own advantages.
Some of Pat's readers blame the email interview process. I do think Pat failed to adapt to the email interview but let's not abandon the art of the email interview altogether. I've done almost a hundred email interviews in the past fourteen months and thankfully, while there were certainly some times when I definitely asked an inappropriate question, I don't think it ever reached a point where it was consistently disastrous or as controversial as this. Of course then again, the skill didn't come naturally and my own methodology had to be developed over time.
What's not readily apparent is that there are several methods available when doing email interviews. Saying that "this is an email interview" doesn't convey all the necessary information, at least as far as observing how it went goes (to the reader, it doesn't really matter which method you use, as long as the final product is excellent). For me, there are three types of email interviews.
The first method, and which I think Pat utilized, was to simply send out a batch of questions to Cook. Most of my interviews are done this way (and I'm flattered when people think there was an actual live conversation that occurred with my interviews--that only goes to show that an email interview can indeed be effective when done right; of course I'd like to think my interviews were a successful due to the interviewees rather than the interviewer). The advantage for both parties is that you send/receive all the questions in one email. The disadvantage of course is that as an interviewer, you can't adapt to the interview. "Shaping" the rest of the interview becomes a burden on the interviewee. This is partially remedied by follow-up questions (and I've done those), especially when the interview steers into a direction you didn't expect. There are other techniques to bear in mind when conducting this type of email interview but that would be a separate post as it's too long to enumerate all of them here. For the most part, the important thing to bear in mind is that there's less room to react on the side of the interviewer and if I were in Pat's place, some of the problems could have been solved with follow-up questions.
The second method is to send the questions via email one at a time. This obviously leaves you with much wiggle room to maneuver and one can get a sense of what works and what doesn't work in the middle of the interview. I've only done this type of email interview with Nick Mamatas and the reason this is seldom the case despite its many advantages (or similarities to a face-to-face interview) is that it's a huge time sink for both parties (and in my case, more on the interviewee's side rather than mine). For example, I think me and Mamatas resolved our interview pretty quick at five hours, but that was only because we were both available at a common time. Another thing that worked for us was technology: we were both using Gmail. Using any other email service, it would have flooded both our inboxes. The final count on both our correspondences was 48 in total. I'd love to conduct this sort of interview but it can also be the most inconvenient method for interviewees. There are also some advantages of using the email format that you lose via this method (such as having the time to ponder and edit your answers). And honestly, there are some interviews which I conduct via the 1st method that come in 2-3 months later (the longest was 6 months) that time and convenience are valuable assets for interviewees. If you do choose this method however, you might want to look into other mediums other than email. A chat room seems more apt for this kind of method. Or you might want to conduct it over Skype (it's how some podcasters conduct their interviews).
The third method is a hybrid of the first two. From what I know of Nolen, this is the method that he uses when he conducts his interviews. Basically, you send your questions in batches (i.e. the first email has three questions). This gives you some of the flexibility of the second method without requiring both of you to be hooked to your computer all day. This was honestly the method I tried in my first email interviews (JM McDermott comes to mind) but I later abandoned it because I found the first method to be more efficient (you have to bear in mind the number of email interviews--around 80--I conducted last year). However, Nolen does produce satisfactory interviews using this method so it might be a process prospective interviewers might want to work with.
Another criticism against Pat was that he used stock or even cliche questions. Personally, those type of questions work depending on the context that they're used (and if you look at my interviews on this blog [it's a different matter altogether for the interviews I conduct for external sites because they have a different target audience], there's a common thread to my questions). Again, I think what one has to bear in mind is the target audience and the format of the interview. For example, since my interviews follow the Q&A format, there's a certain "narrative" to it so to speak that sometimes you ask stock questions to fill in or start out the interview. This isn't necessary if you're doing the interview-feature. In the case of Pat, again, his target audience was the casual science fiction/fantasy fan hence some of the stock questions. It works for some interviewees and not for others.
Context for me is important. Asking an author a cliche question such as what their writing process is like only sounds repetitive if it's been asked before (something to bear in mind when interviewing debuting authors) or if your target audience doesn't have convenient access to the previous interviews where it was asked (either it was conducted in an obscure publication or the publication you're doing the interview for is a mainstream publication when it comes to genre personalities).
Sometimes, some stock questions are indispensable for their value that you can't ask them. For example, my target readership for my blog tends to be people curious about the science fiction/fantasy industry, usually writers and aspiring writers, and so I tend to ask my interviewees what advice they have for aspiring writers. There's honestly no roundabout way of asking that question, not without convoluting what I meant to ask (and that's probably one of the mistakes of Pat: some of his questions were more complex than they needed to be).
There are also some questions that have been asked that you want to ask again in the off-chance that the interviewee might give a different answer (because people change). Of course having said that, there are some questions in which the answers won't change (the interviewee's birth date won't change for example just because it's been asked a hundred times). Overall, I think this is where you start evaluating risk vs. reward. Is there a reason why the interviewee would give a different answer? I think a good example of this would be Ursula K. le Guin. In between writing The Wizard of Earthsea and Tehanu, she certainly had a paradigm shift. If you asked her what the former book was about four decades ago and today, I'm sure she'd give a different answer when you compare both answers.
Ultimately though, as far as I'm concerned as an interviewer, the interview isn't about me. Certainly there are some interviewers whose personalities are dominant in the interview--and that's certainly a valid paradigm when it comes to doing interviews--but I'm not that kind of person. For me, interviews should benefit the interviewee (although the reader/target audience should be the priority of course) and the interviewer should be in the service of that philosophy. If I conduct an interview where I look stupid or embarrassing but make the interviewee come out of their shell and appear intelligent, so be it. Thankfully, I think Pat echoes this mentality in the comments section of his interview: "Contrary to what some appear to believe, I don't feel bad about how the Q&A turned out. Truth be told, I laughed out loud on more than one occasion! I don't think that author came across as an asshole. I think he came across as Glen Cook." And in that sense, Pat should be applauded.
During my junior year in college, I attended a Features Writing class and for a few sessions, one of the topics we discussed was the art of the interview. Out teacher didn't simply give examples of good interviews but she also narrated horrible ones. One example is when an interviewer asked a celebrity what his book was about. The interviewee replied that the interviewer should read the damned book and then abandoned the rest of the interview. (And after reading much author blogs, I can understand the trepidation. Book synopsis and summaries scare some authors: how can you condense your 100,000-word novel into less than a thousand words? Or better yet, why bother writing all that when some smart-ass is just going to ask you to summarize the book in a few words.) There were other examples of bad interviews but that one sticks in my mind. As an interviewer, that's the kind of interviewer I dread most.
Thankfully, in all the interviews I've done, that hasn't happened yet. Last week though, several people latched on to Pat's (of Pat's Fantasy Hotlist) interview with Glen Cook. There's already some tension right from the very start. Jeff Vandermeer for the most part attributes some blame on the interviewer. Matt Staggs, on the other hand, gives examples on how the author could have turned it around. If you read the comments section, the blame is similarly spread out. Some people think Pat should have asked better questions. Others think Cook was rude or didn't spend as much time thinking of concise answers. Larry Nolen has an example of an interview with Cook that fared significantly better. So what exactly happened here?
Let's go back to the basics of an interview. First, before anything else, a good interview should already know beforehand who his target audience is. Pat's Fantasy Hotlist for the most part strikes me as an entry-level type of literary blog. It doesn't include academia-level questions for example. With that in mind, Pat's questions to Cook isn't surprising. However, this is where the lack of synchronization comes in. Glen Cook might not be as famous as J.K. Rowling, but he's not new to the publishing industry either. I don't think he was really prepared for basic questions--especially ones you can dig up on the Internet--or for some poorly worded questions (and to be fair to Cook, he did ask Pat to clarify but the interviewer failed to capitalize on that).
This is where methodology comes in. As an author, when you're frustrated by a question, there are several ways of reacting to it. You can be a Neil Gaiman (although granted not everyone can be as patient as he is) and graciously answer it as if it was the first time you were asked that question. (When Neil Gaiman came to visit the Philippines, he gave great answers to all these questions and it was only later that I found out that these answers were available elsewhere, either in Gaiman's books or in other interviews.) Author P.N. Elrod has on her site a FAQ which are essentially "questions she's tired of hearing" so it's listed there, with the answers, so that you don't have to ask them over and over again. Or third, you can be as opinionated as you want to be. And I'm not saying that's necessarily wrong. I really liked Glen Cook's answers because well, he actually gives an opinion and doesn't play it safe. He tells you things as he sees it, which might lead to some interesting fireworks. And in many ways that's the appeal of more volatile personalities like Harlan Ellison. (And from a publicity standpoint, Pat's interview was a success in the sense that it's garnering all this attention.)
It's not all in the hands of the interviewee though. Contrary to what some people might think (especially in the proliferation of the first kind of interview in blogs), there are two types of interviews. The format that Pat follows is the Q&A style format, which basically reprints verbatim the interview that was conducted (it's also the same format that I use). The alternative is to write the interview like a feature, summarizing most points about the author (which didn't necessarily take place in the interview as this could have easily been researched facts) and including some choice quotes. That's what basically happens in the Locus Magazine interviews or John Joseph Adam's profiles for SCI Fi Wire (here is a recent example). And even if you're doing a straight-up Q&A, you can take elements of the latter by starting off the interview with an introductory paragraph explaining some basic details about the author so that you don't have to ask questions like "so what is this book about?"
Another element that comes into play is in how the interview was conducted. This was obviously an interview conducted via email. Now there are significant differences between an interview done through live chat and one via email. Perhaps the biggest difference is the innuendo. In an email, you don't get a sense of the hesitation, the fear, or even the excitement of the author. You obviously can't tell whether they're uncomfortable with the question unless it's too late (i.e. they've already answered the question). Sometimes, you can't even tell whether they're joking or being sarcastic. Having said that, that's not to say live chat will always be superior to email interviews. The latter certainly has its own advantages.
Some of Pat's readers blame the email interview process. I do think Pat failed to adapt to the email interview but let's not abandon the art of the email interview altogether. I've done almost a hundred email interviews in the past fourteen months and thankfully, while there were certainly some times when I definitely asked an inappropriate question, I don't think it ever reached a point where it was consistently disastrous or as controversial as this. Of course then again, the skill didn't come naturally and my own methodology had to be developed over time.
What's not readily apparent is that there are several methods available when doing email interviews. Saying that "this is an email interview" doesn't convey all the necessary information, at least as far as observing how it went goes (to the reader, it doesn't really matter which method you use, as long as the final product is excellent). For me, there are three types of email interviews.
The first method, and which I think Pat utilized, was to simply send out a batch of questions to Cook. Most of my interviews are done this way (and I'm flattered when people think there was an actual live conversation that occurred with my interviews--that only goes to show that an email interview can indeed be effective when done right; of course I'd like to think my interviews were a successful due to the interviewees rather than the interviewer). The advantage for both parties is that you send/receive all the questions in one email. The disadvantage of course is that as an interviewer, you can't adapt to the interview. "Shaping" the rest of the interview becomes a burden on the interviewee. This is partially remedied by follow-up questions (and I've done those), especially when the interview steers into a direction you didn't expect. There are other techniques to bear in mind when conducting this type of email interview but that would be a separate post as it's too long to enumerate all of them here. For the most part, the important thing to bear in mind is that there's less room to react on the side of the interviewer and if I were in Pat's place, some of the problems could have been solved with follow-up questions.
The second method is to send the questions via email one at a time. This obviously leaves you with much wiggle room to maneuver and one can get a sense of what works and what doesn't work in the middle of the interview. I've only done this type of email interview with Nick Mamatas and the reason this is seldom the case despite its many advantages (or similarities to a face-to-face interview) is that it's a huge time sink for both parties (and in my case, more on the interviewee's side rather than mine). For example, I think me and Mamatas resolved our interview pretty quick at five hours, but that was only because we were both available at a common time. Another thing that worked for us was technology: we were both using Gmail. Using any other email service, it would have flooded both our inboxes. The final count on both our correspondences was 48 in total. I'd love to conduct this sort of interview but it can also be the most inconvenient method for interviewees. There are also some advantages of using the email format that you lose via this method (such as having the time to ponder and edit your answers). And honestly, there are some interviews which I conduct via the 1st method that come in 2-3 months later (the longest was 6 months) that time and convenience are valuable assets for interviewees. If you do choose this method however, you might want to look into other mediums other than email. A chat room seems more apt for this kind of method. Or you might want to conduct it over Skype (it's how some podcasters conduct their interviews).
The third method is a hybrid of the first two. From what I know of Nolen, this is the method that he uses when he conducts his interviews. Basically, you send your questions in batches (i.e. the first email has three questions). This gives you some of the flexibility of the second method without requiring both of you to be hooked to your computer all day. This was honestly the method I tried in my first email interviews (JM McDermott comes to mind) but I later abandoned it because I found the first method to be more efficient (you have to bear in mind the number of email interviews--around 80--I conducted last year). However, Nolen does produce satisfactory interviews using this method so it might be a process prospective interviewers might want to work with.
Another criticism against Pat was that he used stock or even cliche questions. Personally, those type of questions work depending on the context that they're used (and if you look at my interviews on this blog [it's a different matter altogether for the interviews I conduct for external sites because they have a different target audience], there's a common thread to my questions). Again, I think what one has to bear in mind is the target audience and the format of the interview. For example, since my interviews follow the Q&A format, there's a certain "narrative" to it so to speak that sometimes you ask stock questions to fill in or start out the interview. This isn't necessary if you're doing the interview-feature. In the case of Pat, again, his target audience was the casual science fiction/fantasy fan hence some of the stock questions. It works for some interviewees and not for others.
Context for me is important. Asking an author a cliche question such as what their writing process is like only sounds repetitive if it's been asked before (something to bear in mind when interviewing debuting authors) or if your target audience doesn't have convenient access to the previous interviews where it was asked (either it was conducted in an obscure publication or the publication you're doing the interview for is a mainstream publication when it comes to genre personalities).
Sometimes, some stock questions are indispensable for their value that you can't ask them. For example, my target readership for my blog tends to be people curious about the science fiction/fantasy industry, usually writers and aspiring writers, and so I tend to ask my interviewees what advice they have for aspiring writers. There's honestly no roundabout way of asking that question, not without convoluting what I meant to ask (and that's probably one of the mistakes of Pat: some of his questions were more complex than they needed to be).
There are also some questions that have been asked that you want to ask again in the off-chance that the interviewee might give a different answer (because people change). Of course having said that, there are some questions in which the answers won't change (the interviewee's birth date won't change for example just because it's been asked a hundred times). Overall, I think this is where you start evaluating risk vs. reward. Is there a reason why the interviewee would give a different answer? I think a good example of this would be Ursula K. le Guin. In between writing The Wizard of Earthsea and Tehanu, she certainly had a paradigm shift. If you asked her what the former book was about four decades ago and today, I'm sure she'd give a different answer when you compare both answers.
Ultimately though, as far as I'm concerned as an interviewer, the interview isn't about me. Certainly there are some interviewers whose personalities are dominant in the interview--and that's certainly a valid paradigm when it comes to doing interviews--but I'm not that kind of person. For me, interviews should benefit the interviewee (although the reader/target audience should be the priority of course) and the interviewer should be in the service of that philosophy. If I conduct an interview where I look stupid or embarrassing but make the interviewee come out of their shell and appear intelligent, so be it. Thankfully, I think Pat echoes this mentality in the comments section of his interview: "Contrary to what some appear to believe, I don't feel bad about how the Q&A turned out. Truth be told, I laughed out loud on more than one occasion! I don't think that author came across as an asshole. I think he came across as Glen Cook." And in that sense, Pat should be applauded.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
February 3, 2009 Links and Plugs
Thankfully, I didn't break the Internets.
- Please support the Shirley Jackson Awards Fundraiser with its aptly titled Lottery. It's only costing you $1 (feel free to buy more!) and you get to win prizes such as books or keyboards signed by Neil Gaiman.
- Check out Cat Rambo's interview with Nalo Hopkinson over at the Nebula Awards (which I didn't break I tell you!).
- Larry Novel Nolen interviews Brian Evenson.
- Here's the first speculative fiction story published for the year (I think) by a Filipino author: "Teaching a Pink Elephant to Ski" by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz.
- Here's the Table of Contents to John Joseph Adams's upcoming Federations.
- Locus Magazine's 2008 Recommended Reading List.
- Lilley Press has an call for submissions when it comes to novellas and short novels for Valentines 2010.
- Bookspot Central has a Jacqueline Carey "reloaded" Q&A an essay as well as a Race and Science Fiction article by Sarah Zettel.
- Over at Storytellers Unplugged, here's a couple of interesting articles: One Author’s Commentary on Promotion & the Net and The Muse and The Marketplace.
- Over at Mental Floss, Found: A Vampire Graveyard.
- Janet Reid on having a bio ready at hand.
- Booksquare on No Petitions, Just Action.
- Brian Slattery on Who Gets to Write Reviews?
Interview: Matthew Cheney
Every Tuesday, I'll have an interview posted.
Matthew Cheney's work has been published by English Journal, One Story, Web Conjunctions, Strange Horizons, Failbetter.com, Ideomancer, Pindeldyboz, Rain Taxi, Locus, The Internet Review of Science Fiction and SF Site, among other places, and he is the series editor for Best American Fantasy. He teaches high school in New Jersey.
Hi Matt! Thanks for the interview. How did you first get involved with speculative fiction?
As for many people, it goes back to childhood. I was a precocious reader -- more precocious in my desire to read than in my capacity to understand what I read, which is probably a good thing, given that I was reading Stephen King in fourth grade. I started reading SF when my mother's boss loaned me some of his issues of Asimov's in the mid-'80s, and I read whatever I could find at the local college library -- the Hugo Winners anthologies were hugely influential. I kept reading SF all through high school, then stopped for a while during college and after, returning about six years ago when the "New Wave Fabulists" issue of Conjunctions came in the mail and I realized that there was interesting stuff still happening in the field, and particularly interesting stuff happening in the borderworld between the SF and literary communities.
You've developed quite a following over at Mumpsimus. What made you decide to start up that blog and how has it helped your career?
I started the blog because I wanted a place to write about my explorations upon returning to reading SF, and I wanted to experiment with ideas about fiction in general, genres, audiences, etc. A blog seemed like a nonthreatening way to do that. When I started, there really weren't that many blogs devoted to books -- most were political or personal blogs -- and so I gained a bit of a readership simply by being one of the few people doing it. It ended up being a tremendous help to me in terms of writing because it put me in contact with writers, editors, fans, etc. with whom I would never have had the chance to correspond before. It also served as a kind of portfolio of my nonfiction work, so led to other things -- for instance, Strange Horizons decided to hire some columnists about 6 months after I started the blog, and the editors asked me to try being a columnist because they'd seen what I was up to with the blog and thought that sort of thing would fit in with what Strange Horizons was trying to do. I'm not sure it's helped that much in terms of my fiction writing, because if anything it led to people seeing me as a nonfiction writer and a critic, but being part of the conversation certainly helped me find the kinds of markets and editors that would be most receptive to the sort of fiction I write.
What made you decide to pursue fiction writing?
I started as a fiction writer, actually, and spent much of my time throughout adolescence writing stories and even a novel (now, thankfully, lost). Toward my last years of high school, I began thinking of myself more as a playwright, and I studied playwrighting for three years as an undergraduate, but fiction-writing is really my oldest love. It's also the hardest form of writing for me, the most consistently challenging -- in some ways the least natural. That, too, is an attraction: the attraction of the difficult.
What was it originally about theater that appealed to you and made you want to become a playwright?
I hear voices! For many years, I did a lot of acting and directing, though not so much recently. I love creating things for a particular moment and working with people to shape what the thing will be. Certainly, dialogue is what I find comes most naturally to me as a writer, but the challenge for me with playwrighting is creating a structure within the confines of what can be accomplished on a stage for an audience. Theatre can be a tremendously language-focused art, and I love the way words and silence and action all mingle on stage. It's always collaborative, and the writer has no control over many elements, which can be exasperating to writers who are control freaks, but though I've been accused of being many things, being a control freak is not one of them. The ideal of theatre -- seldom achieved, but always reached for -- is to write something and then see it produced in a way that makes it much more than you ever envisioned. I don't know of a greater thrill than that.
Do you think there's lots of overlap between writing fiction and writing plays?
For me, yes, but that's purely at a personal level, and I'm not sure it's to the benefit of either my fiction or my plays. I tend to use them to revitalize each other for myself -- I returned to writing fiction after I burned out as a playwright, and I've written plays again when I've struggled with fiction. I've reached some sort of end with nonfiction recently, I think, and need a break from that, and so I'm working on a play for the first time in about five years. A friend once told me I write fiction like a playwright, which he said he meant as a compliment, but I think even if it's not a compliment it's probably true -- I am very much attracted to creating voices in fiction and creating unreliable narrators, because I think all interesting narrators are unreliable, and a play is in some ways nothing more than a bunch of unreliable narrators getting together for a couple hours.
What is it about the short story that appeals to you?
That it's short! Fiction is such a challenge for me to write that keeping it within a small frame helps a lot. Playwrighting appeals to me more than screenwriting primarily because it's much more limited, and short fiction is more limited than a novel, so I am comfortable within its frame. (That said, my primary fiction writing at the moment is toward a novel.) I tried poetry for a while, in search of new limitations for myself, but it brought out all my worst tendencies as a writer, so I tend not to spend much time on it.
Are you planning to write (or have you written) a novel in the future?
I've written bad novels, one of which was not quite bad enough and so got me some interest from agents six or seven years ago. Luckily, though, the agent who was most interested lost her job and wasn't able to take me on, and in the wake of that I reread the novel and realized that I would have been deeply embarrassed if it had ever been published, because it was both ridiculous and mediocre. I don't mind being one of those things, but both at the same time is too much for me to bear. I've salvaged the title of it, though ("The Midnight of the World") and am using it for a new novel that I've been planning for two years now and have just begun to make real progress on. It might be just as ridiculous and mediocre as the previous one, but I enjoy the challenge and the work right now, and that's what matters. It's 2/3 "realistic" fiction and 1/3 SF, which seems to be the right proportion for my personality at the moment.
How did you get your start writing book reviews?
Mostly from a desire to record for myself my thoughts about what I'd read. I started, actually, with a fanzine review of L.E. Modesitt's "The Magic of Recluse" back when that novel first came out, then in college I wrote theatre reviews for the NYU school paper as a way to go see shows for free, and then didn't write any more reviews until I started The Mumpsimus. I have a love-hate relationship to the world of reviewing -- I love being able to work out my ideas about books that cause me to have ideas, but I also feel horribly arrogant doing it and am tremendously self-conscious when anyone takes notice of anything I've written. I tend to always want to agree with the people who disagree with my reviews and to think that the people who agree with them are crazy.
What's your philosophy or criteria when writing book reviews?
Mostly, I try hard to write something that will be interesting even for someone who completely disagrees with my fundamental judgment of the book under review. I expect I fail at this more often than I succeed, but it's what I try for. As a reader, I don't like reviews that just summarize the plot and then render a judgment, because I don't find that very helpful -- if I don't have a sense of the reviewer's taste, then I don't know how to calibrate my own taste to their judgment, and I find plot summary really boring. (A weakness of my own reviews is probably a lack of plot summary. Plot in general doesn't much interest me, and plot summary feels to me like all the worst parts of a plot with none of the benefits [e.g. suspense, which can be fun, but is rare in summaries].) Again, because I'm so attracted to voice and subjectivity, what I love as a reader is getting a sense of a reviewer as a person relating a subjective experience: the experience of reading a particular text.
I've tended to shy away from negative reviews more recently, mostly because I rarely finish books I don't like (unless required to because the assigning editor won't let me wheedle my way out of the review), but also because most of the time I feel like they're easier to write than more nuanced reviews, and they don't end up saying as much. But a brilliantly written negative review -- even of a book I love -- can be a wonder to behold. (My theatre background tends to make me value the performative aspect of writing.) I remember a review by Adam Roberts of Jeff VanderMeer's nonfiction collection "Why Should I Cut Your Throat" that just blew me away, even though I've read Jeff's book a couple times with much pleasure. I think both writers are geniuses, and regardless of what they make of each other's work, watching one experience the writing of the other is, by my definition at least, a great performance.
Currently, who are the publishers in the field that excite you?
Oh, that's a dangerous question -- what if I forget somebody?! My tastes are so odd and so mercurial that there's no publisher out there releasing books that I inevitably like, but there are some that are doing things in interesting ways that I particularly respect. I've long admired Prime's willingness to take risks on writers and books that would never otherwise find a home. I think Small Beer Press is the gold standard of indie publishing -- a carefully-selected list of books, each produced with great care, and the press as a whole has a real sense of identity. Tachyon deserves the love of the entire world for their commitment to short fiction. Night Shade continues to publish an eclectic list of books that appeal to a huge range of readers -- they are, in many ways, the embodiment of the ecumenical spirit that I so admire in the SF community. Underland Press is a new publisher that looks to be gearing up to become a powerhouse, and I expect we'll be seeing a lot of really interesting books from them. Outside the SF world, I'm a big fan of Soft Skull Press, McSweeney's, Tin House Books, Dalkey Archive, Coffee House Press -- all publishers of books that are wonderous, strange, and often beautiful. Oh, and I should mention Open Letter Books, where the great Chad Post is an editor, and which is devoted to work in translation, a noble cause indeed. And speaking of translation, the venerable New Directions earned my eternal love (though they had it before) for bringing the work of Roberto Bolaño to the U.S.
You've conducted several interviews with various authors. What for you makes a good interview? Any tips for someone like me?
In the theatre, we often say that 90% of the work of directing is in the casting, and that's true for interviewing, too. The people I've interviewed are all people I wanted to know something from. Sometimes they were famous, but just as often they weren't that well known. But something about their writing had made me wonder about their process or their view of the world or their experiences. Sometimes it's just been that the person seemed so completely different from me that I wanted to know what made them tick. Then the questions write themselves. I'm a big fan of follow-up questions, too, because the playwright in me likes things to read like a conversation more than a questionnaire.
What I was naive to when I began is that not every good writer is able to give a good interview. With some, I worked hard to keep my questions short and as provocative as possible, and still got back lots of one-sentence answers. I'm perfectly happy to edit an interview (and then get the writer's approval so they don't think I'm misrepresenting them), but some people get so self-conscious that they don't really give you much material to work with.
So far, I think you're doing just fine!
How did you become series editor for Best American Fantasy?
As with so much of my life, it was purely a matter of luck and not knowing what I was getting myself into. Jeff VanderMeer and I had been talking for a couple years about what we liked and didn't like about various anthologies of all sorts and in lots of different genres, and we'd both said at one time or another that despite the plethora of genre anthologies we thought both that an entire world of fiction was getting left out (because editors have to focus) and that rotating guest editors -- a common model outside genre fiction -- would be a good thing for a genre anthology series. Then one day Jeff asked me if I wanted to be series editor for BAF, since Prime had agreed to give it a try, and he cleverly (for he is a clever, clever man!) told me that there wasn't really time to think about it because we were already behind, and he dazzled me with flattery, and I didn't even bother to think about what I was getting myself into and how crazy and improbable it all was, and here I am!
What exactly is it that a "series editor" does?
This has been a continuing question for us! We all agree that the series editor reads a lot, and usually reads a bunch of stuff before the guest editor, though in the case of the third book this is not quite true because Kevin Brockmeier, who is editing volume 3, has some deadlines early in 2009 and so has been reading a lot more 2008 material than I've been able to get to yet, given various commitments I have at the moment, though I've been reading a lot of online material and pointing him toward it while he's been telling me about all the great stuff I really need to get reading in the two big boxes of magazines and books sitting on my living room floor. Aside from reading, I serve as a sounding board and sometimes as a devil's advocate and sometimes as the meanest and nastiest and most biased and least sympathetic reviewer we might ever encounter, because my primary job, as I see it, is to ensure the continued qualitiy of the series, so I want to make sure that our guest editors are confident about their choices. Because of the nature of the project, we'll always get really varied reviews, we'll always have readers who have vastly different responses to the stories in the book, but what matters to me is that the book pleases the guest editor(s). I want them to be able to sit down with a copy of the book ten years from now and still love it, because if they do then it's likely that the book will find an audience (of whatever size) that is hungry for it. I've seen that sort of passionate response to the first book -- people who have told me, "This is the book I've been waiting for for a long, long time," and I expect the next volumes will have the same effect, though perhaps with different readers. In fact, I'd be happiest if people respond to the series in the way I respond to, for instance, the various non-genre anthologies with guest editors: passionately love some volumes, am completely mystified by the choices in others, and am always excited to see what next year's edition will bring.
In addition to all that abstract stuff, I have other basic duties, like being the point person with publishers, being the first person to contact authors and ask for permission to reprint their story, collecting biographical notes for contributors, assembling the list of publications received, etc.
What for you makes a good story?
I wish it were something simple and reliable -- I wish, for instance, that I loved every story with the word "arugula" in it. That would make writing and reading much easier. But, alas, it's all more ineffable than that. Generally, it boils down to surprise and individuality. I don't continue reading stories if they don't contain some element of surprise -- if they don't make me wonder where the writer will take the next sentence, the next paragraph, the next page. I'm not a fast reader, so if I feel like I can write the rest of the story in my head, I stop reading. Similarly, I want stories that are not like all the other stories I encounter -- I want stories that create a sense of individual voice and craft. Thousands and thousands of stories are published every year, and most of them have far too much in common with each other.
How different/similar is your "writer hat", your "reviewer hat", and your "editor hat"?
The editor hat is more of a bandanna, and a loosely-tied bandanna at that, because I'm only a partial editor, and the hat blows off in the wind. I don't make final decisions as an editor, so I think of myself more as a sifter -- I look for things our guest editor(s) might respond well to. I throw stuff at the wall of the guest editor's brain with the hope that something sticks. (How many more metaphors can I mix here....?)
The writer and reviewer hats are actually one and the same: much like a traditional jester's hat, they are one structure with a few different peaks. The prejudices and proclivities that cause me to respond to books in particular ways are the same prejudices and proclivities that cause me to write fiction and plays -- it's all about solving a problem of language, and matching some language to a desired effect or to an image or impulse. Reviewing is much easier, though, because the material is, to some extent, already there, and all I have to do is shape it.
How do you manage to find the time to juggle your day job and everything else?
I'm not sure I do. I'm always behind on something -- email sometimes goes unanswered for a while, deadlines loom, tests and papers accumulate as I procrastinate grading them. And now I have a television for the first time in my adult life; I never wanted one, but inherited a great one, and all my fears about myself as a TV owner have come true: I am completely capable of watching three hours of Bravo without even realizing it.
Actually, I'm trying now to focus more on particular projects that feel most rewarding, and I'm trying to say no to things and pare down my life a bit. I've published enough now that I no longer feel a great impulse to get published all the time, or even very often, and the joy for me in writing is in the problem-solving part, the creation, not whatever happens after.
As a teacher, what's a lesson you hope to impart to all of your students?
I hope I don't make them hate reading. I make them read a lot -- probably more than they would like -- because I want them to see the variety of what is possible with written language. If anything, I can be a model of a person who is passionately interested in words and sentences, which these days is a kind of freak. I'm not sure if I want them to be passionately interested in words and sentences, since such a passion is not necessarily more ennobling or useful than a passion for collecting different types of string, but I want them to at least see that such a passion is possible. That way if they don't find string exciting, they have at least one other option for finding meaning in life.
What advice do you have for aspiring writers?
I wonder what they aspire toward. If they aspire to make patterns with words, then I think they might discover some real happiness as a writer, but if they aspire for the things so many people seem to aspire for -- fame, wealth, admiration -- then they are most likely headed toward a lot of misery and disillusionment, and they'll probably become bitter and unpleasant and find that they have sacrificed their friends and family for a false hope and an empty promise. Perspective is important. The world doesn't need your writing. Instead of letting that fact depress you, let it be a liberation.
Advice for aspiring book reviewers?
Don't devote more than 1/4 of your review to plot summary. Better yet, keep the plot summary to one sentence. Tell us how and why the book matters to you. That's what we're really reading reviews for.
Anything else you want to plug?
Holes.
Matthew Cheney's work has been published by English Journal, One Story, Web Conjunctions, Strange Horizons, Failbetter.com, Ideomancer, Pindeldyboz, Rain Taxi, Locus, The Internet Review of Science Fiction and SF Site, among other places, and he is the series editor for Best American Fantasy. He teaches high school in New Jersey.Hi Matt! Thanks for the interview. How did you first get involved with speculative fiction?
As for many people, it goes back to childhood. I was a precocious reader -- more precocious in my desire to read than in my capacity to understand what I read, which is probably a good thing, given that I was reading Stephen King in fourth grade. I started reading SF when my mother's boss loaned me some of his issues of Asimov's in the mid-'80s, and I read whatever I could find at the local college library -- the Hugo Winners anthologies were hugely influential. I kept reading SF all through high school, then stopped for a while during college and after, returning about six years ago when the "New Wave Fabulists" issue of Conjunctions came in the mail and I realized that there was interesting stuff still happening in the field, and particularly interesting stuff happening in the borderworld between the SF and literary communities.
You've developed quite a following over at Mumpsimus. What made you decide to start up that blog and how has it helped your career?
I started the blog because I wanted a place to write about my explorations upon returning to reading SF, and I wanted to experiment with ideas about fiction in general, genres, audiences, etc. A blog seemed like a nonthreatening way to do that. When I started, there really weren't that many blogs devoted to books -- most were political or personal blogs -- and so I gained a bit of a readership simply by being one of the few people doing it. It ended up being a tremendous help to me in terms of writing because it put me in contact with writers, editors, fans, etc. with whom I would never have had the chance to correspond before. It also served as a kind of portfolio of my nonfiction work, so led to other things -- for instance, Strange Horizons decided to hire some columnists about 6 months after I started the blog, and the editors asked me to try being a columnist because they'd seen what I was up to with the blog and thought that sort of thing would fit in with what Strange Horizons was trying to do. I'm not sure it's helped that much in terms of my fiction writing, because if anything it led to people seeing me as a nonfiction writer and a critic, but being part of the conversation certainly helped me find the kinds of markets and editors that would be most receptive to the sort of fiction I write.
What made you decide to pursue fiction writing?
I started as a fiction writer, actually, and spent much of my time throughout adolescence writing stories and even a novel (now, thankfully, lost). Toward my last years of high school, I began thinking of myself more as a playwright, and I studied playwrighting for three years as an undergraduate, but fiction-writing is really my oldest love. It's also the hardest form of writing for me, the most consistently challenging -- in some ways the least natural. That, too, is an attraction: the attraction of the difficult.
What was it originally about theater that appealed to you and made you want to become a playwright?
I hear voices! For many years, I did a lot of acting and directing, though not so much recently. I love creating things for a particular moment and working with people to shape what the thing will be. Certainly, dialogue is what I find comes most naturally to me as a writer, but the challenge for me with playwrighting is creating a structure within the confines of what can be accomplished on a stage for an audience. Theatre can be a tremendously language-focused art, and I love the way words and silence and action all mingle on stage. It's always collaborative, and the writer has no control over many elements, which can be exasperating to writers who are control freaks, but though I've been accused of being many things, being a control freak is not one of them. The ideal of theatre -- seldom achieved, but always reached for -- is to write something and then see it produced in a way that makes it much more than you ever envisioned. I don't know of a greater thrill than that.
Do you think there's lots of overlap between writing fiction and writing plays?
For me, yes, but that's purely at a personal level, and I'm not sure it's to the benefit of either my fiction or my plays. I tend to use them to revitalize each other for myself -- I returned to writing fiction after I burned out as a playwright, and I've written plays again when I've struggled with fiction. I've reached some sort of end with nonfiction recently, I think, and need a break from that, and so I'm working on a play for the first time in about five years. A friend once told me I write fiction like a playwright, which he said he meant as a compliment, but I think even if it's not a compliment it's probably true -- I am very much attracted to creating voices in fiction and creating unreliable narrators, because I think all interesting narrators are unreliable, and a play is in some ways nothing more than a bunch of unreliable narrators getting together for a couple hours.
What is it about the short story that appeals to you?
That it's short! Fiction is such a challenge for me to write that keeping it within a small frame helps a lot. Playwrighting appeals to me more than screenwriting primarily because it's much more limited, and short fiction is more limited than a novel, so I am comfortable within its frame. (That said, my primary fiction writing at the moment is toward a novel.) I tried poetry for a while, in search of new limitations for myself, but it brought out all my worst tendencies as a writer, so I tend not to spend much time on it.
Are you planning to write (or have you written) a novel in the future?
I've written bad novels, one of which was not quite bad enough and so got me some interest from agents six or seven years ago. Luckily, though, the agent who was most interested lost her job and wasn't able to take me on, and in the wake of that I reread the novel and realized that I would have been deeply embarrassed if it had ever been published, because it was both ridiculous and mediocre. I don't mind being one of those things, but both at the same time is too much for me to bear. I've salvaged the title of it, though ("The Midnight of the World") and am using it for a new novel that I've been planning for two years now and have just begun to make real progress on. It might be just as ridiculous and mediocre as the previous one, but I enjoy the challenge and the work right now, and that's what matters. It's 2/3 "realistic" fiction and 1/3 SF, which seems to be the right proportion for my personality at the moment.
How did you get your start writing book reviews?
Mostly from a desire to record for myself my thoughts about what I'd read. I started, actually, with a fanzine review of L.E. Modesitt's "The Magic of Recluse" back when that novel first came out, then in college I wrote theatre reviews for the NYU school paper as a way to go see shows for free, and then didn't write any more reviews until I started The Mumpsimus. I have a love-hate relationship to the world of reviewing -- I love being able to work out my ideas about books that cause me to have ideas, but I also feel horribly arrogant doing it and am tremendously self-conscious when anyone takes notice of anything I've written. I tend to always want to agree with the people who disagree with my reviews and to think that the people who agree with them are crazy.
What's your philosophy or criteria when writing book reviews?
Mostly, I try hard to write something that will be interesting even for someone who completely disagrees with my fundamental judgment of the book under review. I expect I fail at this more often than I succeed, but it's what I try for. As a reader, I don't like reviews that just summarize the plot and then render a judgment, because I don't find that very helpful -- if I don't have a sense of the reviewer's taste, then I don't know how to calibrate my own taste to their judgment, and I find plot summary really boring. (A weakness of my own reviews is probably a lack of plot summary. Plot in general doesn't much interest me, and plot summary feels to me like all the worst parts of a plot with none of the benefits [e.g. suspense, which can be fun, but is rare in summaries].) Again, because I'm so attracted to voice and subjectivity, what I love as a reader is getting a sense of a reviewer as a person relating a subjective experience: the experience of reading a particular text.
I've tended to shy away from negative reviews more recently, mostly because I rarely finish books I don't like (unless required to because the assigning editor won't let me wheedle my way out of the review), but also because most of the time I feel like they're easier to write than more nuanced reviews, and they don't end up saying as much. But a brilliantly written negative review -- even of a book I love -- can be a wonder to behold. (My theatre background tends to make me value the performative aspect of writing.) I remember a review by Adam Roberts of Jeff VanderMeer's nonfiction collection "Why Should I Cut Your Throat" that just blew me away, even though I've read Jeff's book a couple times with much pleasure. I think both writers are geniuses, and regardless of what they make of each other's work, watching one experience the writing of the other is, by my definition at least, a great performance.
Currently, who are the publishers in the field that excite you?
Oh, that's a dangerous question -- what if I forget somebody?! My tastes are so odd and so mercurial that there's no publisher out there releasing books that I inevitably like, but there are some that are doing things in interesting ways that I particularly respect. I've long admired Prime's willingness to take risks on writers and books that would never otherwise find a home. I think Small Beer Press is the gold standard of indie publishing -- a carefully-selected list of books, each produced with great care, and the press as a whole has a real sense of identity. Tachyon deserves the love of the entire world for their commitment to short fiction. Night Shade continues to publish an eclectic list of books that appeal to a huge range of readers -- they are, in many ways, the embodiment of the ecumenical spirit that I so admire in the SF community. Underland Press is a new publisher that looks to be gearing up to become a powerhouse, and I expect we'll be seeing a lot of really interesting books from them. Outside the SF world, I'm a big fan of Soft Skull Press, McSweeney's, Tin House Books, Dalkey Archive, Coffee House Press -- all publishers of books that are wonderous, strange, and often beautiful. Oh, and I should mention Open Letter Books, where the great Chad Post is an editor, and which is devoted to work in translation, a noble cause indeed. And speaking of translation, the venerable New Directions earned my eternal love (though they had it before) for bringing the work of Roberto Bolaño to the U.S.
You've conducted several interviews with various authors. What for you makes a good interview? Any tips for someone like me?
In the theatre, we often say that 90% of the work of directing is in the casting, and that's true for interviewing, too. The people I've interviewed are all people I wanted to know something from. Sometimes they were famous, but just as often they weren't that well known. But something about their writing had made me wonder about their process or their view of the world or their experiences. Sometimes it's just been that the person seemed so completely different from me that I wanted to know what made them tick. Then the questions write themselves. I'm a big fan of follow-up questions, too, because the playwright in me likes things to read like a conversation more than a questionnaire.
What I was naive to when I began is that not every good writer is able to give a good interview. With some, I worked hard to keep my questions short and as provocative as possible, and still got back lots of one-sentence answers. I'm perfectly happy to edit an interview (and then get the writer's approval so they don't think I'm misrepresenting them), but some people get so self-conscious that they don't really give you much material to work with.
So far, I think you're doing just fine!
How did you become series editor for Best American Fantasy?
As with so much of my life, it was purely a matter of luck and not knowing what I was getting myself into. Jeff VanderMeer and I had been talking for a couple years about what we liked and didn't like about various anthologies of all sorts and in lots of different genres, and we'd both said at one time or another that despite the plethora of genre anthologies we thought both that an entire world of fiction was getting left out (because editors have to focus) and that rotating guest editors -- a common model outside genre fiction -- would be a good thing for a genre anthology series. Then one day Jeff asked me if I wanted to be series editor for BAF, since Prime had agreed to give it a try, and he cleverly (for he is a clever, clever man!) told me that there wasn't really time to think about it because we were already behind, and he dazzled me with flattery, and I didn't even bother to think about what I was getting myself into and how crazy and improbable it all was, and here I am!
What exactly is it that a "series editor" does?
This has been a continuing question for us! We all agree that the series editor reads a lot, and usually reads a bunch of stuff before the guest editor, though in the case of the third book this is not quite true because Kevin Brockmeier, who is editing volume 3, has some deadlines early in 2009 and so has been reading a lot more 2008 material than I've been able to get to yet, given various commitments I have at the moment, though I've been reading a lot of online material and pointing him toward it while he's been telling me about all the great stuff I really need to get reading in the two big boxes of magazines and books sitting on my living room floor. Aside from reading, I serve as a sounding board and sometimes as a devil's advocate and sometimes as the meanest and nastiest and most biased and least sympathetic reviewer we might ever encounter, because my primary job, as I see it, is to ensure the continued qualitiy of the series, so I want to make sure that our guest editors are confident about their choices. Because of the nature of the project, we'll always get really varied reviews, we'll always have readers who have vastly different responses to the stories in the book, but what matters to me is that the book pleases the guest editor(s). I want them to be able to sit down with a copy of the book ten years from now and still love it, because if they do then it's likely that the book will find an audience (of whatever size) that is hungry for it. I've seen that sort of passionate response to the first book -- people who have told me, "This is the book I've been waiting for for a long, long time," and I expect the next volumes will have the same effect, though perhaps with different readers. In fact, I'd be happiest if people respond to the series in the way I respond to, for instance, the various non-genre anthologies with guest editors: passionately love some volumes, am completely mystified by the choices in others, and am always excited to see what next year's edition will bring.
In addition to all that abstract stuff, I have other basic duties, like being the point person with publishers, being the first person to contact authors and ask for permission to reprint their story, collecting biographical notes for contributors, assembling the list of publications received, etc.
What for you makes a good story?
I wish it were something simple and reliable -- I wish, for instance, that I loved every story with the word "arugula" in it. That would make writing and reading much easier. But, alas, it's all more ineffable than that. Generally, it boils down to surprise and individuality. I don't continue reading stories if they don't contain some element of surprise -- if they don't make me wonder where the writer will take the next sentence, the next paragraph, the next page. I'm not a fast reader, so if I feel like I can write the rest of the story in my head, I stop reading. Similarly, I want stories that are not like all the other stories I encounter -- I want stories that create a sense of individual voice and craft. Thousands and thousands of stories are published every year, and most of them have far too much in common with each other.
How different/similar is your "writer hat", your "reviewer hat", and your "editor hat"?
The editor hat is more of a bandanna, and a loosely-tied bandanna at that, because I'm only a partial editor, and the hat blows off in the wind. I don't make final decisions as an editor, so I think of myself more as a sifter -- I look for things our guest editor(s) might respond well to. I throw stuff at the wall of the guest editor's brain with the hope that something sticks. (How many more metaphors can I mix here....?)
The writer and reviewer hats are actually one and the same: much like a traditional jester's hat, they are one structure with a few different peaks. The prejudices and proclivities that cause me to respond to books in particular ways are the same prejudices and proclivities that cause me to write fiction and plays -- it's all about solving a problem of language, and matching some language to a desired effect or to an image or impulse. Reviewing is much easier, though, because the material is, to some extent, already there, and all I have to do is shape it.
How do you manage to find the time to juggle your day job and everything else?
I'm not sure I do. I'm always behind on something -- email sometimes goes unanswered for a while, deadlines loom, tests and papers accumulate as I procrastinate grading them. And now I have a television for the first time in my adult life; I never wanted one, but inherited a great one, and all my fears about myself as a TV owner have come true: I am completely capable of watching three hours of Bravo without even realizing it.
Actually, I'm trying now to focus more on particular projects that feel most rewarding, and I'm trying to say no to things and pare down my life a bit. I've published enough now that I no longer feel a great impulse to get published all the time, or even very often, and the joy for me in writing is in the problem-solving part, the creation, not whatever happens after.
As a teacher, what's a lesson you hope to impart to all of your students?
I hope I don't make them hate reading. I make them read a lot -- probably more than they would like -- because I want them to see the variety of what is possible with written language. If anything, I can be a model of a person who is passionately interested in words and sentences, which these days is a kind of freak. I'm not sure if I want them to be passionately interested in words and sentences, since such a passion is not necessarily more ennobling or useful than a passion for collecting different types of string, but I want them to at least see that such a passion is possible. That way if they don't find string exciting, they have at least one other option for finding meaning in life.
What advice do you have for aspiring writers?
I wonder what they aspire toward. If they aspire to make patterns with words, then I think they might discover some real happiness as a writer, but if they aspire for the things so many people seem to aspire for -- fame, wealth, admiration -- then they are most likely headed toward a lot of misery and disillusionment, and they'll probably become bitter and unpleasant and find that they have sacrificed their friends and family for a false hope and an empty promise. Perspective is important. The world doesn't need your writing. Instead of letting that fact depress you, let it be a liberation.
Advice for aspiring book reviewers?
Don't devote more than 1/4 of your review to plot summary. Better yet, keep the plot summary to one sentence. Tell us how and why the book matters to you. That's what we're really reading reviews for.
Anything else you want to plug?
Holes.
Monday, February 02, 2009
D&D PHB 2 Races (and Classes) Ponderings
Some scans of the recently-released character sheets at D&D XP can be found here.
Here's what I managed to reverse-engineer (I could always be wrong) about the Deva (the new Aasimar) race:
Encounter
No Action Personal
Trigger: You make an attack roll, a saving throw, a skill check, or an ability check and dislike the result.
Effect: You add 1d8 to the triggering roll.
I like the +1 to defense against bloodied foes. It has that "reverse Tiefling" feel to it.
Memory of a Thousand Lifetimes at first sounds like it's a better version of the Elf racial power but if you do the math, it's not. In many ways, the saving throw option is the most optimal (since most of the time you're only aiming for a 10 and a lucky d8 roll can reduce your chance of failure down to 5%). Worried about the No Action descriptor though. Shouldn't it be Free Action?
Half-Orc:
Encounter
Free Action Personal
Trigger: You hit an enemy.
Effect: The attack deals [1w] extra damage if it's a weapon attack or 1d8 extra damage if it isn't.
Based on the ability score bonuses (assuming they're correct), it really opens up a lot of Strength-based classes, especially the Fighter, Cleric, and Paladin.
There's probably some strange math to Half-Orc Resiliance but I haven't figured it out.
Racial power, again, is suitable for Strength-based classes.
Avenger:
Encounter (Special) * Divine
Minor Action Close burst 10
Target: One enemy you can see in burst.
Effect: When you make a melee attack against the target and the target is the only enemy adjacent to you, you make two attack rolls and use either result. This effect lasts until the end of the encounter or until the target drops to 0 hit points, at which point you regain the use of this power.
If another effect lets you roll twice and use the higher result when making an attack roll, this power has no effect on that attack. If an effect forces you to roll twice and use the lower result when making an attack roll, this power has no effect on that attack either.
If an effect lets you reroll an attack roll and you rolled twice because of this power, you reroll both dice.
Primary stats looks like Dex and Wis, the former for weapons while the latter for implements and possibly Str as the "kicker" stat.
As a striker, it's an interesting concept with a focus more on accuracy rather than extra damage. It's also the anti-flanker.
Interesting wording on Oath of Emnity. Difference between an Elf and a Deva's racial powers? With the former, you end up rolling four dice all in all. Deva lets you roll two dice and add a 1d8 to the result. Also, you might want to pair up an Avenger with a ranged Striker (preferably a Ranger).
Elves possibly make for great Avengers.
Here's what I managed to reverse-engineer (I could always be wrong) about the Deva (the new Aasimar) race:
- +2 Int, +2 Wis.
- Astral Majesty: +1 to all Defenses against Bloodied foes.
- Astral Resistance: 5 + 1/2 level Resist Necrotic and Radiant.
- Memory of a Thousand Lifetimes racial power.
Encounter
No Action Personal
Trigger: You make an attack roll, a saving throw, a skill check, or an ability check and dislike the result.
Effect: You add 1d8 to the triggering roll.
I like the +1 to defense against bloodied foes. It has that "reverse Tiefling" feel to it.
Memory of a Thousand Lifetimes at first sounds like it's a better version of the Elf racial power but if you do the math, it's not. In many ways, the saving throw option is the most optimal (since most of the time you're only aiming for a 10 and a lucky d8 roll can reduce your chance of failure down to 5%). Worried about the No Action descriptor though. Shouldn't it be Free Action?
Half-Orc:
- +2 Str, +2 Wis
- Half-Orc Resiliance: The first time you are Bloodied in an encounter, gain 5 hit points.
- Swift Charge: +2 to speed when charging.
- Low-light vision.
- Furious Assault racial power.
Encounter
Free Action Personal
Trigger: You hit an enemy.
Effect: The attack deals [1w] extra damage if it's a weapon attack or 1d8 extra damage if it isn't.
Based on the ability score bonuses (assuming they're correct), it really opens up a lot of Strength-based classes, especially the Fighter, Cleric, and Paladin.
There's probably some strange math to Half-Orc Resiliance but I haven't figured it out.
Racial power, again, is suitable for Strength-based classes.
Avenger:
- +1 to all Defenses.
- Healing Surger Per Day: 7.
- Hit Points at 1st Level: 15 + Constitution Score.
- Hit Points Per Level Gained: 6.
- Armor Proficiencies: Cloth, Leather.
- Weapon Proficiencies: Simple Melee, Military Melee, Simple Range.
- Armor of Faith: +3 AC in Light Armor and no Shield.
- Censure of Pursuit: If Oath of Emnity target moves away from you willingly, gain +5 damage (3 + Str modifier?) against the target until the end of your next turn.
Encounter (Special) * Divine
Minor Action Close burst 10
Target: One enemy you can see in burst.
Effect: When you make a melee attack against the target and the target is the only enemy adjacent to you, you make two attack rolls and use either result. This effect lasts until the end of the encounter or until the target drops to 0 hit points, at which point you regain the use of this power.
If another effect lets you roll twice and use the higher result when making an attack roll, this power has no effect on that attack. If an effect forces you to roll twice and use the lower result when making an attack roll, this power has no effect on that attack either.
If an effect lets you reroll an attack roll and you rolled twice because of this power, you reroll both dice.
Primary stats looks like Dex and Wis, the former for weapons while the latter for implements and possibly Str as the "kicker" stat.
As a striker, it's an interesting concept with a focus more on accuracy rather than extra damage. It's also the anti-flanker.
Interesting wording on Oath of Emnity. Difference between an Elf and a Deva's racial powers? With the former, you end up rolling four dice all in all. Deva lets you roll two dice and add a 1d8 to the result. Also, you might want to pair up an Avenger with a ranged Striker (preferably a Ranger).
Elves possibly make for great Avengers.
February 2, 2009 Links and Plugs
To quote Matt Staggs: Superbowl Schmuperbowl.
- Pssst, check out the latest issue of Lone Star Stories.
- Haven't had the time to read through the stories from Fantasy? Here's the reader's choice for The Best Fantasy Story of 2008.
- While you're at it, check out Eric Rosenfield's list of Fiction Magazines Worth Reading.
- Here's an open call for submissions entitled Thoughtcrime Experiments. Not the most professional of guidelines that I've seen but it's promising to pay $200.00 for your story (and a kill fee of $75.00).
- Publishers can learn a thing or two from Night Shade Books which lists all their possible nominees for the Hugo Awards in one neat page.
- Rick Kleffel on Buying Local, 2 : Phone Call Versus Mouse (support your local bookstore!).
- I mourn thy loss, Scrye Magazine. There's always Inquest Gamer. Ooops, that ceased publication a few years ago. This image is apt.
- Jay Lake On Greebles and Telling Details.
- Here's an interview with Shaun Tan.
- Check out these Goblin Miniatures.
- Congrats to Nnedi Okorafor who sold her first adult novel to DAW.
- For some strange reason, over the weekend, people latched on to Pat's interview with Glen Cook: When an Interview Goes Wrong: Glen Cook by Matt Staggs; Remember What Being Genuine Looked Like? by Jeff VanderMeer; One Way to Do An Interview by Andrew Wheeler.
- The Book Publicity Blog on What You Need to Know About Off-Site Book Sales.
- Here's io9 on Create Your Own Original Star Trek Story flowchart.
- Time has a magazine feature on Podcasting Your Novel: Publishing's Next Wave?
- Matt Staggs On Book Trailers, and How They are Done.
- ForeWord Publishing Insider has an article entitled Book Design Primer. Your mileage may vary.
- Congrats to the winners of the Sofonaut Awards.
- James A. Owen on Regarding Comics Distribution.
- Having writers block? Reblock Yourself the Polly Frost Way!
- Last but not least is this video on writing/publishing. Unfortunately, my name-that-author Fu is weak.
Book/Magazine Review: Clarkesworld Magazine #29
Every Monday, I'll be doing spoiler-free, bite-sized book/magazine reviews.
This month's issue seems huge with four non-fiction articles but that can be deceptive as I'll discuss later in the review. I'll start the review with the cover, then progress to the fiction and finally the non-fiction.
When it comes to the Clarkesworld covers, I find it handy to click on the images for a larger picture as there are some details that I might miss out and "Signs of Life" by Geoff Trebs is no exception. What seems like an innocuous artwork is actually eerie thanks to those staring blue eyes. Other than that, it's not as striking as other Clarkesworld covers, most likely due to the neutral colors. The only bright colors seem to be blue and yellow but they're too little to make the entire image pop out. Not bad but I'm not too crazy about it. Oh, and for once, I'd like the covers to actually relate to the content of the magazine.
"The Second Gift Given" by Ken Scholes starts out slow and alien but it quickly becomes evident what this piece is about. Scholes is clearly aiming for some emotional resonance as the main conflict stems from the protagonist's dilemma of freedom and choice. It isn't particularly original but for the most part, I feel the author handles it competently although clearly you're not reading this story for the language as it tends to be functional and direct. What I particularly enjoyed about this piece is the way it parallels the Christian Adam and Eve story. I do feel Scholes earns the right for the title which becomes evident with the ending.
Mike Allen does the reading for the feature story and in line with the previous podcasts, he is quite eloquent. His persona is that of the omniscient narrator and the story comes out clear and concise. There's no room for doubt who's speaking when it comes to dialogue as Allen does distinguish between the various characters. The tone isn't exaggerated but rather controlled and carefully neutral most of the time. If the reading lacked that "personal touch", I feel it's because the story itself is too distant in terms of language and the dialogue is all too brief (which is in the service to the story's conceit).
If you're familiar with either Japanese or poetry, the ending of "The Jisei of Mark VIII" by Berrien C. Henderson should come as no surprise. As far as the technical craft is concerned, I don't really have much to criticize Henderson on. Nothing that particularly stands out but nothing to chide him either. What rubs me the wrong way however--and this is a personal preference--is the story itself. For me, this type of story is indulgent especially in the way the author's agenda is to reminisce the glories of the dead-tree medium in a futuristic society (and this isn't a case of Fahrenheit 451). This is an example of geeks writing for geeks. Of course having said that, this might be the type of story that appeals to you. Other than that complaint, the story was fairly traditional.
The part I honestly look forward to reading is the non-fiction. Neddal Ayal's "An Interview with Jeff VanderMeer" is one of the best solo interviews yet. VanderMeer knows how to elaborate and expand on his answers, making sure that each question Ayal asks is a treasure trove. For the most part, the interview focuses on VanderMeer's craft of writing, specifically his novel Shriek and later on in the feature, his upcoming book Finch. I think those who've read Shriek will get the most out of this interview, although there's an excellent section where the interview utters a word or phrase and VanderMeer informs us his thoughts on them.
"The Most Important Genre Novel You'll Never Read" by by Robert N. Lee is quite political in nature and by the end, actually draws the dilemma of encouraging you to read a book but not to support or purchase it. Lee draws a fascinating comparison between two books that aren't usually classified as genre but should: the Left Behind series and William Pierce's The Turner Diaries. The author's analysis is rich and Lee gives examples that are scary to ponder, especially if you're living in America. Definitely an eye-opener for the insular genre fan but otherwise compelling reading.
"Change the Hugos? Yes You Can!" by Cheryl Morgan is aptly labeled as an editorial as for the most part, it's propaganda (albeit a well-written one!) for you to vote at the Hugos. But aside from encouraging you to participate in such awards, Morgan does point out some fallacies regarding this particular competition. This editorial was fairly quick and easy to read and the title honestly shouldn't leave you with any surprises as to what to expect.
Speaking of expectations, "2008 Clarkesworld Reader's Poll" is just that so don't really expect content here. Post-election season, you get two entries from Clarkesworld asking you to vote!
Overall, I think this month's issue of Clarkesworld has a strong non-fiction section. Again, while it might seem that you're getting four articles, I'd probably gauge it as two and a half but honestly, anything beyond two is more than what Clarkesworld promises and so far, the magazine hasn't failed me in that sense. Scholes's story is clearly the superior of the two fiction pieces and Allen's reading was terrific but as far as personal preferences goes I'd say the fiction section this month was ho-hum.
This month's issue seems huge with four non-fiction articles but that can be deceptive as I'll discuss later in the review. I'll start the review with the cover, then progress to the fiction and finally the non-fiction.When it comes to the Clarkesworld covers, I find it handy to click on the images for a larger picture as there are some details that I might miss out and "Signs of Life" by Geoff Trebs is no exception. What seems like an innocuous artwork is actually eerie thanks to those staring blue eyes. Other than that, it's not as striking as other Clarkesworld covers, most likely due to the neutral colors. The only bright colors seem to be blue and yellow but they're too little to make the entire image pop out. Not bad but I'm not too crazy about it. Oh, and for once, I'd like the covers to actually relate to the content of the magazine.
"The Second Gift Given" by Ken Scholes starts out slow and alien but it quickly becomes evident what this piece is about. Scholes is clearly aiming for some emotional resonance as the main conflict stems from the protagonist's dilemma of freedom and choice. It isn't particularly original but for the most part, I feel the author handles it competently although clearly you're not reading this story for the language as it tends to be functional and direct. What I particularly enjoyed about this piece is the way it parallels the Christian Adam and Eve story. I do feel Scholes earns the right for the title which becomes evident with the ending.
Mike Allen does the reading for the feature story and in line with the previous podcasts, he is quite eloquent. His persona is that of the omniscient narrator and the story comes out clear and concise. There's no room for doubt who's speaking when it comes to dialogue as Allen does distinguish between the various characters. The tone isn't exaggerated but rather controlled and carefully neutral most of the time. If the reading lacked that "personal touch", I feel it's because the story itself is too distant in terms of language and the dialogue is all too brief (which is in the service to the story's conceit).
If you're familiar with either Japanese or poetry, the ending of "The Jisei of Mark VIII" by Berrien C. Henderson should come as no surprise. As far as the technical craft is concerned, I don't really have much to criticize Henderson on. Nothing that particularly stands out but nothing to chide him either. What rubs me the wrong way however--and this is a personal preference--is the story itself. For me, this type of story is indulgent especially in the way the author's agenda is to reminisce the glories of the dead-tree medium in a futuristic society (and this isn't a case of Fahrenheit 451). This is an example of geeks writing for geeks. Of course having said that, this might be the type of story that appeals to you. Other than that complaint, the story was fairly traditional.
The part I honestly look forward to reading is the non-fiction. Neddal Ayal's "An Interview with Jeff VanderMeer" is one of the best solo interviews yet. VanderMeer knows how to elaborate and expand on his answers, making sure that each question Ayal asks is a treasure trove. For the most part, the interview focuses on VanderMeer's craft of writing, specifically his novel Shriek and later on in the feature, his upcoming book Finch. I think those who've read Shriek will get the most out of this interview, although there's an excellent section where the interview utters a word or phrase and VanderMeer informs us his thoughts on them.
"The Most Important Genre Novel You'll Never Read" by by Robert N. Lee is quite political in nature and by the end, actually draws the dilemma of encouraging you to read a book but not to support or purchase it. Lee draws a fascinating comparison between two books that aren't usually classified as genre but should: the Left Behind series and William Pierce's The Turner Diaries. The author's analysis is rich and Lee gives examples that are scary to ponder, especially if you're living in America. Definitely an eye-opener for the insular genre fan but otherwise compelling reading.
"Change the Hugos? Yes You Can!" by Cheryl Morgan is aptly labeled as an editorial as for the most part, it's propaganda (albeit a well-written one!) for you to vote at the Hugos. But aside from encouraging you to participate in such awards, Morgan does point out some fallacies regarding this particular competition. This editorial was fairly quick and easy to read and the title honestly shouldn't leave you with any surprises as to what to expect.
Speaking of expectations, "2008 Clarkesworld Reader's Poll" is just that so don't really expect content here. Post-election season, you get two entries from Clarkesworld asking you to vote!
Overall, I think this month's issue of Clarkesworld has a strong non-fiction section. Again, while it might seem that you're getting four articles, I'd probably gauge it as two and a half but honestly, anything beyond two is more than what Clarkesworld promises and so far, the magazine hasn't failed me in that sense. Scholes's story is clearly the superior of the two fiction pieces and Allen's reading was terrific but as far as personal preferences goes I'd say the fiction section this month was ho-hum.
Book/Magazine Review: Strange Wisdoms of the Dead by Mike Allen
Every Monday, I'll be doing spoiler-free, bite-sized book/magazine reviews.
I thought Strange Wisdoms of the Dead would be one of those attempts to brainwash me into speculative poetry but leafing through the pages of this book is something more massive. This is the Mike Allen ensemble, compiling not just his poems but his fiction and collaborations as well.
The elephant in the room of course is Allen's poetry and that dominates this book. Whether he's talking about time sharks, spiders, or decapitated heads, Allen evokes visceral images that surprise and entice. If you're just looking for variety, Strange Wisdoms of the Dead delivers as the poet tackles fantasy, science fiction, horror, and an array of tricky and fanciful poems. "Morse Code" for example tackles the title through more "natural" means, evoking the buzzing of insect's wings to replicate what seems like a monotonous sound. "Momentum" on the other hand is a real rollercoaster and don't worry if it's not readily apparent how to read/recite it--that's part of the charm.
Another impressive aspect of the book is its division. It's broken into four sections and at the end of each section is a fiction piece. While I wouldn't identify the stories as the best of the best, they certainly leave an impression. The first story, "Humpty," for example, is both fanciful and tense, diving directly in the action and by the time you reach the end, there remains a sense of dread that a longer or more complicated piece couldn't capture. The fourth section is also interesting because this is where Allen showcases his collaborations with other authors/poets and while there's a difference from the rest of his work in the book, it also gives us a glimpse of the end-result of such fusion.
My one regret is that Allen's poems need to be re-read and savored. A hundred-plus page book is already a lot when it comes to poetry and going through it in one sitting doesn't do it justice. The format is certainly to be lauded, from the sequencing to the combination of poetry and token prose. If you've been following Allen's body of work, Strange Wisdoms of the Dead features some of his more daring and experimental work and so you might want to check this out for that. Otherwise, this is a splendid collection that you must get for its breadth if nothing else.
I thought Strange Wisdoms of the Dead would be one of those attempts to brainwash me into speculative poetry but leafing through the pages of this book is something more massive. This is the Mike Allen ensemble, compiling not just his poems but his fiction and collaborations as well.The elephant in the room of course is Allen's poetry and that dominates this book. Whether he's talking about time sharks, spiders, or decapitated heads, Allen evokes visceral images that surprise and entice. If you're just looking for variety, Strange Wisdoms of the Dead delivers as the poet tackles fantasy, science fiction, horror, and an array of tricky and fanciful poems. "Morse Code" for example tackles the title through more "natural" means, evoking the buzzing of insect's wings to replicate what seems like a monotonous sound. "Momentum" on the other hand is a real rollercoaster and don't worry if it's not readily apparent how to read/recite it--that's part of the charm.
Another impressive aspect of the book is its division. It's broken into four sections and at the end of each section is a fiction piece. While I wouldn't identify the stories as the best of the best, they certainly leave an impression. The first story, "Humpty," for example, is both fanciful and tense, diving directly in the action and by the time you reach the end, there remains a sense of dread that a longer or more complicated piece couldn't capture. The fourth section is also interesting because this is where Allen showcases his collaborations with other authors/poets and while there's a difference from the rest of his work in the book, it also gives us a glimpse of the end-result of such fusion.
My one regret is that Allen's poems need to be re-read and savored. A hundred-plus page book is already a lot when it comes to poetry and going through it in one sitting doesn't do it justice. The format is certainly to be lauded, from the sequencing to the combination of poetry and token prose. If you've been following Allen's body of work, Strange Wisdoms of the Dead features some of his more daring and experimental work and so you might want to check this out for that. Otherwise, this is a splendid collection that you must get for its breadth if nothing else.
Book/Magazine Review: Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand
Every Monday, I'll be doing spoiler-free, bite-sized book/magazine reviews.
Some books simply ensnare you in the first few chapters and some would dare say that it's easily the best part of the book. That's pretty much how I feel with Generation Loss. It starts out too perfect in fact. First is our protagonist, someone that in the hands of a different writer, would paint her as pathetic and pitiful. Yet she's compelling and one easily falls in love with her despite all her faults, the rebellious girl you know you should avoid but can't help feel attracted to.
Then there's the tone. The book is indicative of a certain generation, one that Hand successfully conjures. I'm ignorant of the punk scene yet when Hand writes about it, it not only sounds authentic but actually feels familiar. This is compounded by the heroine's passion for photography and through a combination of details and apt metaphors that are consistent throughout the whole novel, one has an anchor to tie the narrative and the title.
Setting is another powerful tool in Hand's arsenal. One can feel the chill and the gloominess of the atmosphere, as if it's a forgotten memory rather than a fabricated vista. There are a lot of dark themes and motifs tackled in the book and this is not a clear-cut story of redemption. That would be too easy and Hand steps up to the plate. Again, perhaps the highlight for me is Hand's characterization. Her protagonist remains faithful to herself, all the while skirting the life of an actual rebel. There are no apologies, simply choosing the best course of action at the time. There's a certain romance in her tragedy and the author nurtures this aspect, giving readers an incentive to stick for the entire ride.
Generation Loss definitely impressed me, a book that hooks you and drowns you with its many layers. Whether it's technique or overall impact, Hand succeeds on both counts.
Some books simply ensnare you in the first few chapters and some would dare say that it's easily the best part of the book. That's pretty much how I feel with Generation Loss. It starts out too perfect in fact. First is our protagonist, someone that in the hands of a different writer, would paint her as pathetic and pitiful. Yet she's compelling and one easily falls in love with her despite all her faults, the rebellious girl you know you should avoid but can't help feel attracted to.
Then there's the tone. The book is indicative of a certain generation, one that Hand successfully conjures. I'm ignorant of the punk scene yet when Hand writes about it, it not only sounds authentic but actually feels familiar. This is compounded by the heroine's passion for photography and through a combination of details and apt metaphors that are consistent throughout the whole novel, one has an anchor to tie the narrative and the title.
Setting is another powerful tool in Hand's arsenal. One can feel the chill and the gloominess of the atmosphere, as if it's a forgotten memory rather than a fabricated vista. There are a lot of dark themes and motifs tackled in the book and this is not a clear-cut story of redemption. That would be too easy and Hand steps up to the plate. Again, perhaps the highlight for me is Hand's characterization. Her protagonist remains faithful to herself, all the while skirting the life of an actual rebel. There are no apologies, simply choosing the best course of action at the time. There's a certain romance in her tragedy and the author nurtures this aspect, giving readers an incentive to stick for the entire ride.
Generation Loss definitely impressed me, a book that hooks you and drowns you with its many layers. Whether it's technique or overall impact, Hand succeeds on both counts.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
My Email Interview Process Part 2
Sending out multiple interview requests (at least 2) per week. Because not everyone will respond or respond in time to sustain a weekly schedule.
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