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Today and tomorrow I’m REALLY trying to get A Fatal Stain to the editor, either before she leaves for the holiday break, or so she can get to it as soon as she gets back. Besides, the guys come on vacation at the end of the week and I’d like to be able to hang out and be silly with them, as opposed to working through it as normally happens.

However as you know — or possibly not — I’ve been reading OLD regency romances (no, not Heyer. I’ve read those. These are from the seventies and eighties) while exercising in the morning. Several reasons: First, I don’t want my kindle balanced up on the treadmill as I use it, because I’m afraid it will fall and crack. Second, I don’t want to read something so riveting that I can’t put it down and work the rest of the day. Third, I don’t want to read anything with such a powerful voice it will influence my final of AFS.

I want to say a couple of times I’ve been shocked — not that way. Most of them have less sex than just about anything now — with the quality of the book, in a good way. Or perhaps bad, as sometimes I have to take another hour to finish the book, since it engaged me.

Also, for those like me who grew up as “other genre fiction snobs” who didn’t read romance, it’s enlightening to see most of these books — from imprints that were written “by the yard” and usually under flat fee contracts — are eminently readable and a few are actually very, very good. (As I said, good enough to make me sit down and read them.)

On the other hand, sometimes you hit the appallingly bad. I don’t care how rushed a novel is, or what terms the contract let me say this — there is NO excuse — none — for not doing minimal research. Particularly not when writing regencies, where you can practically do your research (except for fine details) by reading Georgette Heyer.

This novel started out rubbing me wrong, in subtle ways. For starters there was the feeling that this was a parallel world regency, where “the Carlton house set” was a safe place for a young matron and in fact, something society wives aspired to. Also, that dancing with the Prince Regent was THE way to launch an innocent young debutante into society.

Then, there were the subtle ways that the language was wrong and the — not just regency — confusion of capital with capitol. (Hint, when you ride through the Capitol in a phaeton, DC police get REALLY upset.

And there was the whole “the main character is an American heiress” which to me had more of the feel of the late nineteenth century, not early. Let’s face it, if she were an American heiress, early in the century, her parents probably owned tobacco plantations in Virginia or were wealthy Boston blue bloods, likely cousins of British aristocracy in either case or the like not “she comes from the middle of the country, where she grew up in a cabin and her father was a cobbler.” (WHAT? How MUCH did shoes cost in the early-settled Midwest? I mean, I heard the streets were paved with gold, maybe the cobbler just scraped the soles before replacing them?)

Then there is the way that the character thinks of adultery as A Scarlet Letter sin — yes, capitalized, because she obviously knows it’s a literary work in the future, and wants to be properly respectful — because the author is apparently under a kindergarten sort of hazy impression that everyone at that time in America were puritans and very strict. (Sorry, several very hazy impressions. And wrong ones. Strict puritans were a limited group amid settlers, and — if the hazy impressions of my own reading are true — by that point they had started becoming more main-stream protestant than the theocrat-like early settlers.)

But then came the crowning time-space disorientation. The prospective mother in law hates Americans, ever since those Californians bought her ancestral estate.

Ladies, Gentleman, Children, puppies and carrots — California at the time was part of Mexico. Even granting you some Mexican grandees might have bought the woman’s estate (wouldn’t they have bought one in Spain, instead? Never mind) why would this make her resent an American from New York City?

California did not in fact become a part of the US until 1848, following the Mexican American war, by the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. And I don’t think — even though I’m not going to look now — “rich Californians” were much in evidence until the Gold Rush in 49 and even then there weren’t many of those who decided to buy English estates. Certainly not to qualify as a “Stampede” which the author calls it. At the end of the nineteenth century, California was still largely agricultural and rural. In 1811-20 I doubt there was even a stampede of ONE Californian buying a British estate.

I went back and checked, to make sure I hadn’t got the time period of the book wrong because the feel of it, from dialogue to the character history reminded me more of the situation in Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Cracked. Nope. References to the Prince Regent, the Carlton House Set and Rotten Row all present and still largely unaccounted for.

The characters are middling to interesting. The story is not bad by the standards of “something I can read while working up a sweat” but I don’t think I CAN read anymore because now — to me — the background is all weird and I keep looking for more tells that it’s a parallel world or perhaps that time is melting or something, and have to keep reminding myself it is NOT Science Fiction. Way too much work.

What’s frustrating about this is that I think the book is only ten years old, so they COULD have done an internet search. But even barring that, there’s the fact that they COULD have read a book. And by they I mean — the author, the editor, the copyeditor, the assistant editor, the mail room tea-bringer at the publishing house.

Oh, yeah, that’s the other thing I forgot to mention: This book was not one of the written-by-the-yard, oh, no. It was published by a reputable house… and it was a bestseller.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, dragons and germs, is — depending on how you look at it — a hopeful or a dispiriting thought to take with me into a day of writing.

I choose to see it as hopeful :)

*This story was written for a steam punk extravaganza on a website. The location was dictated. The story had to be in the voice of the main character of Heart Of Light the first of my Magical British Empire Trilogy. It is a world in which magic is the basis of civilization, but shape shifters are outlawed and condemned to instant death throughout most of the civilized world. (For fun, a friend and I wrote what Pride and Prejudice would be like in this world. The story A Touch Of Night is for sale at Naked Reader Press.) I don’t know if this short story stands up on its on, but I hope so. Enjoy!*

Mama was in a bad mood before they ever got to the station. She hadn’t wanted to take this trip. “A shocking way of traveling,” she always said of the trains. “So very mixed.”
But papa had been firm about the family taking the Devonian express to London. “My dear, I regret to subject you to it,” he’d said. “But indeed, this is not a normal train.” As he spoke – with the whole family assembled in the drawing room of their house at Inklefield, the six girls embroidering, mama hemming handkerchiefs – he’d given his little sniff, which he always did when he was sure Mama would disapprove of what he had to say. “This is a chartered train, m’dear, and only the very best people will be allowed on board.”
He’d helped himself to brandy from the sideboard decanter, and after two swallows warmed to his theme, “You see, the thing is, the foreign office has asked me to visit the fair with my family. Not supposed to be particular or anything, but there’s all the new machines brought in run with foreign magic and… well, it is important to make sure no impious black magic is being used.”
Since it was for Papa’s work – though of course Mama never referred to his position with Foreign Affairs as a profession because though Papa had first been in the army and now worked for the government he was a gentleman and a gentleman’s son – Mama could not refuse it. But she did not have to like it. And she meant for everyone to know it.
The everyone, as almost in every case, was Emily. In the midst of Mama’s very fair daughters Emily, with her nutmeg skin, her dark, dark hair, looked as incongruous as a black swan in a flock of white ones. This was no great surprise, of course, since she was the daughter of Papa’s first wife, who had died on the carpetship on the way from India. Mama was Papa’s second wife.
However, the fact that Emily didn’t look English at all drove Mama to distraction. Almost anyone they met while on an outing, was bound to address Emily as though she were at worst the maid and at best a poor relation. “Which I’m sure,” Mama was fond of saying. “Is no fault of mine, since I always make sure she’s as well dressed as the girls, if not better.”
In fact, Mama always made sure that Emily had the prettiest dresses and the best cut. She was not unkind, Emily thought, not like the stepmothers in stories. It was just the way she casually referred to the girls as though Emily were something quite other – a strange being dropped into mama’s cozy family that made Emily want to burst into tears, or run away, or perhaps never talk to Mama again.
She lowered her head, and did her best to march steadily behind Mama – with her sisters duckling-like behind her – as they entered a crowded station, roofed over in glass. Only the magic of the large factories, run by a group of bourgeois, each of them with a little bit of magic, could produce panels of glass that large or that sturdy. Of course the same magic ran the trains. Which was probably another reason Mama hated them so. She would have preferred society to remain as it had been in the middle ages, when only kings and their relatives had magic. Unfortunately for Mama’s hopes, kings relatives were not always those conceived in holy matrimony. With the result that now, centuries later, most people in Europe had at least some degree of magic. And a few inventive men, possessed of enough magic, could run factories.
From this great things had resulted. The looms in the magic-powered factories had covered the world in the cloth of the British kingdom. Carpetships – buildings atop magical carpets, sustained and run by half breed magicians – transported Europeans everywhere in the world in the greatest degree of luxury. And within Europe herself, and in the isles, trains ran, carrying people with much greater ease and safety than horses and carriages had ever managed.
But this of course would not calm Mama’s sense that something precious had been lost when poorer people could mingle with noblemen.
“Emily!”
Mama’s yell served notice to Emily that she’d almost walked into one the magic-powered humunculus – androids the tradesmen called them, though Emily was sure she didn’t know why – who was carrying luggage about. She checked, holding still, while the creature, made of metal and ceramic, clicked by, walking with the stiffness of magic-animated joints, carrying in its arms a pile of luggage that would crush a living a porter. Like the living porter who now approached mama and, bowing obsequiously, asked her if she needed help finding her compartment and seeing her luggage conveyed aboard.
Mama did. Though Emily, who had seen the tickets, knew very well that she and her mother, and her sisters, were in the third compartment in the second carriage and therefore Mama must know so as well, Mama would say it wasn’t proper for a lady to be too forward with her reasoning. And so she let herself be led by this short man with ginger hair. They cut through a throng of people, until he halted at the door to the carriage and doffed his cap – emblazoned with Devonian Express as he let them in. Mama paused at the door to give her last instructions on how he could find the carriage and Jennings, their man, with the bags that should be loaded into it.
“You see, Emily,” Mama said, always addressing herself to Emily as though Emily had disputed Mama’s words. Which Emily hadn’t, not being stupid enough to speak her thoughts. “It is always best if you can procure human help. All these newfangled magical machinery will bring you nothing but grief, you mark my words.”
Emily inclined her head and did not tell Mama that, more than likely, at this moment, a mechanical porter would be carrying the bags to the luggage train. Instead, she looked about their quarters in some pleasure. Since she’d traveled to England from her native India, she’d not left Papa’s manor house except by carriage. Their compartment looked like a little drawing room, containing even a little tea table with its own cloth. It was easy enough to overlook that the table and the overwrought chairs were bolted to the floor, to avoid a lurch in the train movements. Next to this compartment was another, equally small one, which contained beds, three on each side, stacked to the ceiling. Yet another compartment had a wash basin, already containing jars of water in stasis fields, so they would stay hot.
The inspection completed there was nothing for it, but to sit back in the compartment, where Mama was giving orders to Emily’s next older sister, Jane, to ring the bell for tea. And then it was exactly like an evening at home, save more suffocating with Mama and Emily’s sisters and Emily in close confines, embroidering and talking. Fortunately Emily could not be requested to play the piano, as there was none available. Though piano music filtered in from somewhere in the train and Emily wished she were there.
Looking out the window, at the sun setting over the Highland gorse, she thought that she would rather be anywhere at all but here. Somewhere there was high adventure. Somewhere people were discovering new things. Somewhere, other continents sprawled where she might be happy.
They went to bed at the appointed time, and Emily lay in her bed a long time, awake, listening to Mama snore from the berth above, and feeling now and then the slight shake of the train beneath her. It was too like the shake of the carpetship, where she’d been scared and alone, while her real Mama had been locked in her cabin, dying.
At last, unable to sleep, she threw back the covers and put on her dressing gown, and stepped back into the little drawing room, to look out the window.
If she had not already been awake, she would have slept through the rattle and groan that echoed through the carriage as the train came to a stop. Emily looked out. They stood in the midst of wild country, with crags all about, and pouring rain was falling, cut now and then by lightening. Emily had never heard that lightening disrupted magic on trains, but she could just imagine the scene Mama would make. She opened the door of her carriage, cautiously, conscious it was indecent to do so in her dressing gown, but wondering if someone was about who would tell her what had happened.
As it chanced, a conductor coming down the hallway, holding a magical glowing lantern smiled at her, “It’s all right miss. Just a spot of bother with the Royal Were Hunters. They say there is a wild were lose on the train and they came on flying rugs and stopped us so they could inspect. I think it is all nonsense and I bid them proceed quietly, so as not to disturb the passengers. Go back to your bed, Miss, we shall be on our way now and now.”
Emily obeyed. Except she didn’t go to bed. Instead, she sat in the little dark sitting room, wedged between the table and the chair. She didn’t turn on the magelight because the door between the sleeping quarters and the sitting room didn’t seal properly, Mama might see the light and wake up. And Emily didn’t wish to explain why she was awake, much less what was happening to stop the train. So she sat in a chair in the little room, her hands demurely folded on her lap.
Now and then a ray of lightening starkly illuminated the landscape outside, revealing snatches of unexpected action. One of those flashes allowed her to see – for just a moment – a company of gold-attired men carrying vicious looking power-sticks. Another and she saw one at the door of her carriage, seemingly standing guard.
Of course there would be a guard at the door to every carriage. And the Royal Were-Hunters were, Emily supposed, to be admired for taking on the task of keeping the kingdom free of dangerous magical creatures who could shift their shapes into animals then back again to humans.
The history books were full of examples of these creatures, unchecked, wreaking havoc on the lives of all around them. Richard the Lionhearted had in fact been more lion than man and when, returning from the crusades, he’d revealed his true form, he’d brought half the court down before he was stopped. Which was why from that day on, any were found under the rule of the English monarch, was condemned to death without a trial.
Even the small wares were of such a slippery nature – witness Anne Boleyn who was a were hare – they could hardly be trusted. And besides, their magical fields, particularly when transformed, were such that the flying ones could bring down carpetships and the others could stop entire mills. Why, only last week there was a story of a were-mouse in Sussex who had stopped manufacturing in an entire town.
She knew all this, and she tried to feel admiration of the were hunters, but she could not. Perhaps she was naturally wicked – Mama certainly had told her so – but she could all too vividly imagine what it would be like to be born with the capacity to change into another creature. Surely it was neither something you wished for nor something any sane being could relish. What special power could it give you? Oh, surely, animal strength. But what was that to losing the ability to control yourself as humans did?
And for this to be hunted down and persecuted – for something you had no control over…
Emily got her luggage down from the top rack, the only thing that gave away this was not in fact a small sitting room, and from within her work trunk – where she brought the embroidery and such that Mama thought proper for a lady of quality to engage in – she pulled out a shawl. It had been her mother’s and was vividly embroidered in silk, with the exuberant flowers that, Emily imagined, must be common in India.
She barely remembered India, not having seen it since she was six. Her real Mama had been a half-Indian beauty, the daughter of a British officer and his Indian mistress. The shawl was all that Emily had from her, and wrapping herself in it made her feel what she imagined other people felt from a maternal embrace. How many times, since coming to Great Britain, had Emily felt as though everyone stared at her because she didn’t look like any proper English Miss? And her magical power was odd too – much larger than the amount of it she could use. Her teachers at the boarding school she’d briefly attended had told her that it was alien power and they could not work with it. And all the while, they’d treated it as though it were al her fault. Just like weres. Perhaps that was why she felt such sympathy for the were being mercilessly hunted down.
Emily heard feet in the hallway, disciplined feet, walking as if they were on parade. The Royal were hunters were in the train. She cowered nearer the window and wrapped the shawl tighter around her.
There was silence for a while, and then she heard a snuffling, like a large dog at her compartment door. She started up, with fear, ready to sink into the seat, or perhaps to run into the sleeping compartment and wake mama and demand protection.
But before she could move, the door to the compartment moved. Through the narrow opening, she saw a paw, claws, and, above it, a large, golden-yellow eye.
For a moment in the glare of that baneful eye, she thought her heart would stop. And then she realized that the eye looked… frightened and pleading. And her heart resumed beating. An overwhelming surge of pity overrode her fear and carried her to the door, led her to open it.
The large cat on the other side was massive and black and – as a flash of lightening illuminated it – cowered against the floor for all the world like Tabby, back home, when she was afraid of being punished for stealing the dinner fish.
Emily reached forward and, tentatively, touched the great head of the creature that looked like a black panther. The animal let her touch him – there was no doubt in her mind it was a him. There was something very masculine in the set of that large head, in the muscled hunch of those massive shoulders – but he did not look less scared. Instead his eyes went one way, then another.
“They’re after you, of course,” Emily said, and as she said it, heard the stomp of the feet from the other side of the carriage again. It was more than she could bear. She would not have this magnificent creature slain in front of her. Quite sure she was sinking herself below reproach, as well as courting the worst penalties of law, she stepped aside. “Quick,” she said. If you understand me. If you curl up beneath the tea table, I shall lay my shawl on it, and it will hide you most completely.”
The beast hesitated only a moment then darted in, curled tightly under the tea table. Emily lay her shawl on it. The shawl was long enough it dragged on the floor, hiding the animal from view. Just as quickly, Emily pulled her current embroidery out of her work box, and the smallest of magelights out of Mama’s own work basket. Mama often used it to read or work by. Of course, even touching Mama’s work basket was sacrilege. Taking her light… But Emily was in much worse trouble now. She must save this person there, under the table. His very actions showed him to be human. She must save him.
When the scratching at the door – in lieu of knocking so as not to startle the passengers – came, she was prepared. She left the little magelight on the table and her work on it, and she opened the door with every appearance of fear and reluctance.
The men on the other side wore gold uniform. There were five of them. Beside them was the fatherly conductor she’d seen before.
“If you pardon me, Miss, these men would like to assure themselves the Were is not hiding in your cabin.”
“But… I’m the only one awake and mama and my sisters…”
“Did you see a panther, madam?” the leader of the Were Hunters asked. “A large, blackish cat?”
“Oh, no, never.” Emily answered. “I would have screamed.” It seemed to her she could hear the breathing of her visitor, beneath the tea table.
The man frowned. He lifted a gadget that looked like a golden compass wheel and that, when held in front of the compartment, gave off a glowing golden light. “And yet, my indicator says there’s were energy from there.”
Emily was never quite sure how her magic worked, but now she wished very hard that the little compass wheel would malfunction. She concentrated on it pointing the members of the were hunters, themselves. Normal magic would be detected, but she had always been told hers was not normal magic. She wished and wished with all her might, as she said aloud, “I see. I would not for the world stand in the way of your completing your duty. You’re ever so brave and I–” She blushed and looked away, all the while throwing all the magic she could use at that cursed instrument. “And I will not dare… But is it possible it’s malfunctioning?”
At the same moment, she heard an exclamation of dismay. “But… it must be!” the man said. “It’s now pointing at my squad. Useless implement. Miss, are you quite sure–”
“Quite,” she said. “Oh, quite.”
“Well, we’ll take our leave, then.”
Emily closed the door and resumed her embroidery. Her visitor did not move or make a sound. Emily was cheered it was smart enough not to do anything of the kind. It could be a trap.
But after a while she heard the sentinel outside the carriage called off and heard a conversation as they passed the window, “It appears some magical disturbance made our instruments indicate a were here, but there really wasn’t. I grant you, we thought Lord Ilsidor was a were panther, but those anonymous letters must be wrong.”
“Yes, but shouldn’t we have found Ilsidor, if he’s not a panther and is a passenger?”
“Ah, well, old man, if he’s not a panther, the instruments wouldn’t find him, and you know what goes on in these trains. All the sleeping compartments. I’d say other than a panther Ilsidor is a knowing dog.”
They passed out of her hearing still laughing. She saw a large black paw come from under the table and touch her foot gently.
After a while the train started moving and after another while something like a long, low groan emerged from under the table, and the paw became a human hand, well shaped, with long, sensitive fingers. After a while more, a hand tugged at the little white table cloth beneath the shawl. Emily, understanding his purpose, lifted the shawl and allowed him to pull out the cloth.
When he got out from under the table, he held it in front of him for modesty’s sake, which did not hide the broad, muscular chest. She looked away, her cheek’s glowing.
“Thank you,” he said. “I beg you to believe I’m not guilty of more than being born a were. Thank you. You have the compassion of angels.”
“Not… not at all. But how are you…”
He smiled. He was a dark man in his middle years, with an aquiline nose and crisply curling dark hair. “I will be fine now,” he said. “I am quite used to…” he sighed. “Finding myself in this sort of situation. And my sleeping compartment is not too far off. Thank you again. I can never thank you enough.”
He opened the compartment door, quietly, and was gone.
She closed the door, put away mama’s magelight, her own work and the shawl. The train must be moving away from the storm or the storm from the train, because the thunder had diminished. And the excitement of the last few moments made Emily very tired indeed. She crept into her bed and was sound asleep when she woke in the morning to the sound of Mama berating one of the maid who waited on passengers for stupidly losing the white tea cloth that had been on the table the night before.
By the time she reached London, she was much inclined to think the whole thing a dream. And she put it all behind her when Papa told her he wanted her to meet a young man called Nigel Oldhall with whom he hoped she would contract an alliance.
But one night, returning to her lodgings, she found a small parcel and a note on her dressing table. The note read, “To the brave Miss who was an angel in my time of need.” The parcel contained a small gold pin in the shape of a panther led by an angel.
Emily blushed at the impropriety of it, but from now on, no matter how Mama raged, she could not dismay Emily. For Emily had found that no matter how strange her magic, how odd her appearance, both her heritage and her odd power had allowed her to save a life when no one else could.

And I can self promote if I want to. I’d like to remind you that Darkship Thieves is available in mass Market Paperback at Amazon. And still available in trade paperback, if you want to impress someone.

And, oh, yeah, this is what Jerry Pournelle had to say about the book in March:

The light reading of the month is Sarah Hoyt’s Darkship Thieves from Baen Books. Hoyt has a knack for story telling, and the ability
to blend elements of science fiction and fantasy into believable worlds. Darkship Thieves is the story of Athena Hera Sinistra, a
princess of an Earth that has continued to evolve and build structure until there is very little freedom left in human life, who
meets a hero from a society that might have been developed in consultation with Ayn Rand. Both societies have developed space
travel, but this isn’t a technological novel; it’s a classic adventure romance, and very readable.
Update: Email from Jerry — he’s re-reading it and still enjoying it the second time around. (Yes, I AM incredibly flattered.)

Another day of my brain not quite engaging. There is something physical going on, not sure what it is. The book makes crawling progress and I want it done already.

More tomorrow, including a rather long post (I mean REALLY long) percolating.

Hopefully the cats let me sleep tonight, instead of having cat fights over who gets to sleep on my legs.

Meanwhile, I have homework for you kids. Tell me what you think of “mashups”. A) what they are. B) what appeals about them and how lasting their appeal.

Most people seem to think that my musketeers/vampires book is a mashup, but I never thought of it that way – no more than the mysteries. Perhaps they are an elaborate, professionally written form of fan fic. I stole the setting and the characters (well, more or less the characters. Dumas never delineated them very deeply. Not that this is a criticism, but it was a picaresque adventure and a different time) but the situation, the development and the plot have very little to do with the Three Musketeers other than occasional nods to it. It’s more of a – what would the Three Musketeers be like in a world taken over by vampires. I certainly don’t use any of the original text.

I know Pride and Prejudice and Zombies did very well, and the idea was interesting and cute, but it seemed rather a bit of a “one trick pony.” Like knock knock jokes, it seemed like something that would be fun once. I can see – sort of – a future for what I tried to do with the musketeers, because it’s more like altered art from found objects… which, in itself is an idea as old as time. Much of the work of Greek playwrights — some of it excellent — was improving on, elaborating on altering or expanding the works of Homer.

But strict mashups… I’m not sure about.

Perhaps I’ll have a clearer idea when I’ve read Sense, Sensibility and Sea Monsters, but in the interim, what do you guys/gals think?

There’s this disturbing trend I’ve observed recently – okay, the last thirty years.

It’s part of what I was talking about yesterday, in a way. For a book to be considered serious, or introspective or relevant, it has to attack the past or western culture or civilization or tech or… humanity.

Not that there is anything wrong with attacking these, mind, to an extent. And they used to be shockers and a very good way to attract attention immediately. And I’m not saying the mindlessly chauvinistic “our people, right or wrong” was much better. For instance, the cowboy-and-Indian trope became really tired after a while and when my brother gave me a book called – I think – (in Portuguese translation) The Mace of War, detailing all the injustices against Native Americans it was a mind-altering experience. Literally. And very worth it.

I’m just saying that these days, by default what you hear is against-whatever-the-dominant-culture is.

I first realized this when I was studying for my final exam in American culture in college. The book changed opinions and contradicted itself but it was ALWAYS against the winners and against whatever ended up being the status quo. So, the book was against the North of the US, because the North… won. Even though it had before been against slavery. It was very much against modern US and raged against… embalming practices for three or four pages. (Because they divorce us from the Earth. Just SILLY stuff.)

And then I started noting this trend in everything, including fiction. Think about it. Who is to blame in any drama: the US; the successful; the British; the Europeans; the… humans.

Years ago when Discovery Channel put out its “future evolution” series, my kids and I were glued to the screen. We’re the family for whom the Denver Museum of Nature And Science is home away from home, the place we will visit if we have an afternoon free, the place where we have watched lectures and movies. I refer to it as “molesting dinos” and it’s usually my way to celebrate finishing a book.

So we were glued to the TV. Except that after the beginning, I realized the way it was going, and I started predicting it. Instead of taking a “what might humans become” the people who wrote this went down a path where first humans and then everything VAGUELY related to humans became successively extinct, till the only warm-blooded survivor was a bird, and then that too became extinct. In the end, tree-dwelling SQUIDS inherited the Earth.

Yes, you DID read that right. Tree. Dwelling. SQUIDS.

The contortions were capricious and often absurd, but you could predict where it was going.

It’s been a while since we had cable, but I understand there was a very popular series called “Life After US” about what would happen to the works of humans if we were suddenly extinct. And people watched it, fascinated and – from the tones of posts about it – a little wistful.

This is when you must step back and go “What is wrong with us?” “Is this a sickness of the soul?”

The answer? Yes and no.

Part of it, of course, is wanting to shock, wanting to revolutionize, wanting to be innovative… in safe ways – in (dare we say it?) politically correct ways. It’s easy and approved of to attack: males, America, western civ, humans.

People who select works at publishers and studios and all that are often liberal arts graduates and they come from this curious world where they still think the establishment is circa 1950s and that they’re telling something new and wonderful.

Part of it is, of course, that we do see problems in our own culture, in our own society, in our own species. Of course we do. We are an introspective culture. We examine our consciences, we find ourselves lacking, we try to improve. This is, in general a good thing – though perhaps a little perspective is also in order.

Part of it is politeness/sensitivity to other cultures, mingled with the consciousness our ancestors were often wrong. We’ve been taught the crimes of colonizers in various lands and most of those colonizers (and colonized, at least for most of us) were our ancestors. We’re conscious we’re big and others are smaller. It’s a peculiar form of noblesse oblige. We don’t want to trample others by pointing out faults in other cultures or other species. I understand this, because I learned to drive in my thirties and lived in a mountain town with lots of foot traffic downtown. I was excruciatingly careful driving through there, because I could crush a pedestrian and not notice. This is why we tend to turn our flagellation upon ourselves.

And part of it is sicker/darker. I notice this tendency every time we discuss a great figure of the past, from George Washington to Heinlein – as different as they are. I call it “counting coup.” George Washington? Well, he was slave owner. And he had wooden teeth. And Lincoln? Well, he was very ill, and besides, he was probably gay and in the closet. Heinlein? Despite all his efforts at including – for his time – minorities and giving women starring roles, he must have been closet racist and sexist, donchaknow? Because he doesn’t fit OUR superior notions of inclusiveness.

What is going on here – besides tearing at our own past, and thereby continuing the self-flagellation – is being able to prove we are “superior” to these high achievers. We might do nothing and achieve nothing, but we are superior beings because we’re more moral than they are.
Individually, none of these trends is really bad – or at least not for those of us who grew up with the opposite tradition.

Oh, the constant and predictable chest-beating becomes boring. At least it does for me. Maybe it doesn’t for other people?

But think of (grin) the children. They have no perspective. All they hear is how their country, their culture, their SPECIES is evil. How things would be so much better without us… How things would – ultimately – be much better if… THEY hadn’t been born.

It’s not healthy. It’s vaguely disgusting. And the best it can do is engender the MOTHER of all backlashes and bring about a cultural chauvinism the likes of which you’ve never seen. The worse… well, one of the other cultures we don’t criticize because they’re small and we’re big becomes the norm.

And before you cheer them on, let me put this in perspective: Western civ has committed crimes. ALL human cultures throughout history have committed crimes. Slavery? Since the dawn of time. Exploitation? Since the dawn of time. Murder? War? Genocide? Yep, and yep, and yep. And many of those cultures STILL do all of those things and don’t feel in the slightest bit guilty, mostly because we handily and frequently blame OURSELVES for their behavior and they get our books, our TV series and our movies.

Such as it is, the West has brought the greatest freedom, prosperity and security to the greatest population.

Yes, there were crimes committed, but a lot of them were the result of a clash of world views – tribalism met the state. Look, it’s not that Native Americans or Africans lived in a state of innocence and harmony with nature. If you believe that, you need to study history and put down Jean Jacques Rosseau. And get out of your mom’s basement. And take the Star Trek posters off the wall. And the Avatar poster, too, while you’re at it.

To the extent the native were innocent and helpless, it was because of their mental furniture. What gave colonizers the edge was not their weapons or civilization (Oh, come on, back then, there wasn’t that much of a distance.) It was their mental furniture. To wit, they had overcome tribalism and organized on a large scale. Most of the colonized (excepting some small empires) hadn’t. So they would attack in ways that worked in tribal warfare: exterminate a village or an outpost. And the reaction of the colonizers (who by the way also didn’t understand the difference in mental furniture and therefore thought this made the native peoples’ “bestial” or “evil) was to exterminate all of a tribe or a federation of tribes. And it worked because westerners were united as a MUCH larger group. Which made them stronger. Western civilization started overcoming tribalism with the Romans. That was the real innovation.

If you think that we’re rich because of those acts, you must study economics. It doesn’t work that way. If anything those acts made all of us worse off. We’re way past any wealth we could plunder off others. We’ve created wealth. The whole world lives better than it did five hundred years ago.

And if you’re going to tell me the fact that all humans are flawed proves that we’re a bad species, you’ll have to tell me: As opposed to what? Dolphins are serial rapists. Chimps commit murder. Rats… Every species we examine has our sins, but none of our redeeming qualities.

Heinlein said it was important to be FOR humanity because we’re human. Beavers might be admirable, but we’re not beavers. He was right. But beyond all that, we’re the only species that tries self-perfecting. We exist – as Pratchett said – at the place where rising ape meets falling angel, but as far as I know, we’re the only species reaching upward. (Of course, we wouldn’t know if there are others and again, we have to assume we are it. The others have flaws too.)

We are part of the world and in it. To love the other animals of the Earth – or the hypothetical alien – and hate us is strange. Are we not animals? Are we not of the Earth? And who the heck can compete with sentients who exist only in the story teller’s imagination.

By all means, let’s protect the weaker. Let’s shelter the little. But let’s not beat ourselves because we’re bigger and stronger. Let’s USE our powers for good instead.

Am I saying that you shouldn’t tell these stories then?

No, I’m not. I would never repress anyone’s right to create, or anyone’s opinion. But I’m asking you to think. I’m asking you to pause and go “The west is bad… as opposed to? Humans are bad… as opposed to?” And tell your kids that, ask them those questions.

And then, perhaps, every now and then, try to imagine a story from the contrary view point. Just to wake things up. And to keep others thinking.

*Crossposted @ Classical Values.*

Finger Painting

One of my earliest memories, when I became conscious of being an artist of sorts – or of being compelled to create that which didn’t exist – was a strong envy of plastic artists. You see, in Porto, Portugal, when I was growing up there was the Academy of Fine Arts for the plastic artists, but there was nothing for writers.

Even here, there still is very little for writers. Kris Rusch and Dean Smith gave as their reason for starting the Oregon Writers Workshop the fact that there is no mentorship system, there is no established pathway to become a professional writer in this country. Or, frankly, in most others.

This is because as writers we use tools everyone thinks they know how to use. Words. We shape entertainment and, yes, often art, out of an instrument that other people use to order dinner, ask for coffee or yell at the cat. (Yeah, we use it for those things too.) And it’s no use whatsoever saying that there are also finger paints used by toddlers and whistles used by referees. Most of those instruments are of a different quality than artists’ instruments. It’s easy for people to understand that. More important, it’s easy for the artists themselves to view themselves as artists. They have to use specialized means. There is an instruction. They are “real.”

We writers, on the other hand aren’t very “real.” Most of the time I start my mentoring by assuring the mentee that he or she is indeed a writer. This must be the only career in which one needs that assurance. Not that they are GOOD writers, mind. Not that they have the kiss of the muse, just that they are, in fact, artists.

And in the dark of night, in the secret of my own soul, after twenty books and over a hundred published short stories, I wake up and wonder. Am I real?

Those of us who progress beyond the beginning; those of us who continue and persist soon realize that words are just the… fingerpaint. What we really, truly deal in are emotions.

The Greeks writing their theory of drama knew this. The purpose of the play was to manipulate the emotions to produce a cathartic release. I’m not sure anymore what the purpose of that release was – other than the fact that people seem to want to experience emotions and therefore will patronize your play. It’s entirely possible that was the only reason, though I suspect it was more that it would bring you closer to the gods.

For me stories serve the purpose of amusement – always and of course. If the Odyssey weren’t a thumping good tale it wouldn’t have got retold, no matter how grand its aims – but more than that, they serve the purpose of… allowing us to be other people. They allow each of us, in a small way, to leave the confines of his own skull, of his own circumstances, of his own appearance and to – outside his/her body – experience things he or she couldn’t otherwise experience. Cathartic release – as I’ve posited in another post – might serve the purpose of imprinting people with experiences in the way that false memories can be created. Make something vivid enough and it’s as if people lived it. Only this experience can be shared by a lot of people.
Needless to say, in the past, this art has been used for a lot of purposes, one of them being forging national identity (google Lusiadas) and glorifying heroes (Odyssey) as an ideal for people to be.

Enter the modern era where we compete for the limited attention span of people with a lot of other entertainment. We writers – who aren’t quite “artists” or aren’t sure of being quite “real” artists, remember. Let’s call us velveteen artists – sometime ago realized one of the easiest ways to get attention was reaching for the shock, particularly at the beginning of a story or novel.

Look, you can do this with words, or unlikely situations, but when you’re trying to get out of the slush pile, you often try to do it with the concept of the piece. You reach for the biggest, boldest, most twisted concept.

There’s nothing wrong with that – to an extent.

But like looking at canvas with big splotches of paint might have been liberating in an era when the normal art was carefully delineated and worked with a fine brush, reading stories that start with, say, the character being raped, might have been – no, were – pulse pounding works in a time when most works wouldn’t even show your character going to the bathroom.

Showing your character in pain, bleeding, suffering, showing the horror as well as the glory of war – all those things were important. They were new, they were fresh, they would induce catharsis at their resolution.

The same with works that questioned our history – works where Western civ was the villain. Works where – say – women were the more powerful gender, or all humans were hermaphrodites. In the seventies – yeah, I was young, but I remember – these were innovative concepts that made you draw a sharp breath, just on the edge of being repulsed, but not quite – and then keep going.

You didn’t need much more, mind. Hit upon a concept big enough, powerful enough, and you didn’t need the fine detail, the painstaking brushwork you needed for more “mundane” work. (Part of the reason “literary” fiction writers hate us genre writers, is because they think our concept mojo gives us an unfair advantage. Which it does, if we know how to use it.)

But art has cycles. Everything that was new and shocking becomes the establishment; the expected. Throwing paint at canvas now has to follow rules, obey ideas of “good taste.” And there is a movement afoot to create realistic paintings once more. Paintings that are “better than real.”

In writing? I don’t know. If there’s anyone out there who still thinks attacking western civ – or males, or for that matter humanity – is shocking and induces catharsis, they must have been living under a rock or perhaps too much in their own heads. This has become the expected – the established. It’s easier to sell a female action character than a male one. Particularly if you are female. It’s easier to sell a YA with a heroic female character than a male one. A male one is almost unexpected and shocking. I can’t even imagine a work that glorifies western civ. And don’t sneer. There’s at least as much – more, from a prosperity-perspective – to glorify in Western civ as in any other culture. But it feels somehow indecent, of course. It feels like running other cultures down. (It’s not, but never mind.) It feels taboo. Which, of course, would shock us and surprise us. Which is risky. And daring. And will have trouble getting past the gatekeepers, and we all know it.

And there hinges part of the issue. We have to pass the gatekeepers, and most of the mass of writers – as of everyone else – are not rebels. They have to wish to challenge the establishment. They want to be “real” artists and some of that involves the kiss of the establishment and the appropriate laurels.

More difficult – far more difficult – is to build that catharsis of everyday elements, until the realization hits you, until the understanding explodes in your mind, until you “get” it.

Even more difficult is to write in such a way that your reader questions the easy answers; that your reader thinks and discovers unexpected facets in his world.

And that, my dears, is when the blue fairy of art touches you and you became a real artist.

I’m not there yet. I’m working on it. But Dave Freer is – I highly recommend Dragon’s Ring. Heck, I highly recommend everything Dave Freer writes, but I insist you go and order the paperback of Dragon’s Ring, if you haven’t.

Terry Pratchett is also a real writer. He rarely starts with shock. He weaves HUMOR into his work. He dares you to laugh, in the midst of the most serious parts. But when it all comes together, you get it, suddenly and completely. If you don’t believe me, go and read I Shall Wear Midnight. Read Night Watch. Read Monstrous Regiment.

Heinlein was real as well. Read The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. Or Revolt in 2100. Or Have Spacesuit, Will Travel.

Other names off the top of my head in no particular order: Georgette Heyer; Shakespeare. Go read. See how art can be found in the subtle tints, in the chiaro escuro, in the subtle shading between light and darkness – in the turnings of the human heart, the coils of the human soul.

Finger paints are well and good when you’re making a poster. Hate and Love, murder, betrayal and eating babies for breakfast are fine, strong, shocking ideas. But adults find catharsis and joy and sorry in the more subtle shadings.

There’s an infinite spectrum between red and blue. Use all of the shades.

*Crossposted @ http://madgeniusclub.blogspot.com*

There used to be a type of science fiction that was the equivalent of the current craze in craft mysteries (which is itself an outgrowth/side spur of the craze in cozies. Remind me sometime to explain how the cozies became craft mysteries. I have the sane theory and the one that involves my certainty that people unnamed are fostering an unhealthy trust in authority. I can give you either or both, depending on the day.) You have mysteries for basket weaving, mysteries for scrapbooking, mysteries for crochet, and mysteries for house-flipping. My own furniture refinishing mysteries (under the pen name Elise Hyatt) sort of kind of tie into that genre. I do talk about furniture refinishing, but I like to believe (maybe I’m fooling myself) that they stand on their own without the craft interest.

The idea, is, of course, simple – the publishing houses believe that people who either practice or are interested in any given craft will also want to read about it. I don’t know if this is true, but I do know that some of the crafts/ideas will draw me, as a matter of course. Say, a mystery where the main character is an amateur chef will always interest me, because I like to cook elaborate dishes. Ditto a mystery where the character likes to make clothing from vintage patterns. I don’t do this, but I intend to, as soon as I have time. I’ve bought the patterns and I day dream about it, so… I’d also be interested – though it’s not a craft – in mysteries about a Natural History Museum, investigated by a volunteer, because I’d like to have time to volunteer at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Back when science fiction was healthy enough to – without fantasy, or with minimal fantasy – take up a whole block of shelves in a bookstore there were many subgenres, ranging from hard science fiction through soft sociological science fiction, through various situational subgenres like post-apocalyptic; colonization of new planet; space war, etc.

One of these subgenres was the episodic, gimmick science fiction. I say that with the greatest respect. These were ideas that were so cool in and of themselves, that they drew readers. They’d also draw readers from people interested in that field. They did, usually, require at least some specialized knowledge. Not always – Star Trek could be considered episodic, gimmick SF in that you have an initial setup that allows for meeting tons of aliens and having a new adventure each episode, and there were any number of “galactic federation clone” sf.)

My favorite of these, which did require specialized knowledge, was James White’s Surgeon to the Stars and other such books. In fact, when it became clear that my older son’s bent was towards medicine, I gave him those books to read, one summer. He enjoyed them immensely – just as I had when I was a young teen, savoring the setup of wildly alien life forms and the problem solving that hinged on alien biology/medicine.

Recently I stole them from my son’s room and have been re-reading them. Oh, the story telling could stand some updating. We tend to demand a different time of setup these days. But that’s current narrative fashion. I still enjoy them a lot.

And I wonder if there would be a market for this still. Did Science Fiction die? Or was it murdered? I keep hearing that kids today don’t read sf because they’re living it, but that doesn’t wash. I fell in love with sf though my life was, by my parents’ standards, more wildly futuristic than my children’s is by my standards.

I think science fiction was a victim of publishing trends emphasizing things like “social relevance” and “scientific accuracy” and such. Not because I’m an absolute believer in fluff. I mean, yeah, sometimes readers just wanna have fun, but it’s almost impossible to write something that’s totally devoid of the author’s beliefs and views.

It’s just that when you demand “social relevance” you’re falling into what’s now trendy and considered a worthy social concern. In the same way “scientific accuracy” tends to mean “accurate to what we know today”. In conjunction, those two make for very boring stories, which I think turned the readers off in droves.

But perhaps I’m full of it and what killed sf was its own success and the publishing of masses of stuff that wasn’t so good.

In any case, now that electronic publishing is providing a greater field to play in, will there be place for fun again? Will there be – once more – the episodic gimmicky science fiction? Will there be a place for my Translator to the Stars series?

What do you think? Is my enjoyment of this type of subgenre proof that I need to bring out the tweezers and elevate my eyebrows some? Or is it, once again, that all readers “just wanna have fun” and ready-built niches are easy to get into and enjoy?

This is where I get picky on words. Today, in the middle of reading an otherwise enjoyable romance, I was brought to a complete stop by the misuse of the word “ancestors.”

The author speaks of the founder of the main character’s line, and then assures us “his ancestors went on in that way.” It is clear the “his” refers to the founder.

I don’t know why but this is a peculiar American mistake. You rarely find it elsewhere. And it gives me a complete sense of disorientation EVERY time.

“Ancestors” come before the person. (from Ante — before.)

DESCENDANTS are those who come after the person.

I have at times wondered if the peculiar American antipathy to this term comes from the fact that it comes from descendere and implies that one’s descendants are less than oneself — something that is a denial of the whole concept of continuous improvement.

Such a sentiment is, of course, laudable. But attacking the meaning of the words is not. And confusing a poor writer who all of a sudden goes “oh, time travel! It’s science fiction, after all” is definitely NOT a goodness.

Over the last two months all machines in this house have been failing — dishwasher, washer, and the cat boxes (Litter robots. Yes, they are worth it, but they cost as much as our newest dishwasher.)

Because the wave of breakdowns hit JUST as we started doing the con circuit, we didn’t have time to shop for the machines. (I’m convinced I’d love cons if only there were a portal directly from my living room to the con. What I dislike is not cons or interacting with people — I’ve mentioned I like fans, right? — but the travel, the disruption travel introduces in my life AND the stuff I have to deal with when I come back, due to either leaving the guys/kids here alone, or our having forgotten stuff that was supposed to happen while we were gone.)

Over the Thanksgiving break we bought the dishwasher, plus washer and drier and replaced the sofas. Today the washer and drier were relieved.

Still outstanding is a freezer which we bought because our deep freezer has been defrosting/refrosting willy nilly. Considering it’s older than our marriage well… poor thing has earned retirement.

And where is the money for all this coming from, you’ll ask? Ah. Well… let’s say I’m going to have to write more and hope it sells. Particularly since I’d dearly love to kidnap my husband somewhere the last week of December for our silver anniversary.

However, until then, at least I’m spared losing a day a week at the laundromat and two hours a day washing dishes. Which goes to show you saving time/lacking time is the same thing as saving money/lacking money. You need to have money to make (or even save) money, and you have to have time (to shop for appliances that allow you) to save time.

Now, somewhere along the line, I’m going to need to find the time to tuck-point the basement entrance (don’t ask.)

A friend of mine says my husband and I buy Victorians so I have an excuse not to write. I don’t think so. On the contrary. I need money so I don’t have to rebuild this house from the bottom up with my bare hands.

As such, perhaps I should shut up, bid you good night, and go to bed. Tomorrow, hopefully, I’ll get to write most of the day.

The non promotion promotion