Category Archives: Reading

Anything to do with Reading and Enjoying (or not) Books.

Telling Vs Showing, Or Is It?

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The advice is hammered into a baby writer’s head almost from Day One: “When writing anything,show don’t tell.”

I’m not the first to point out the following, but it bears repeating, so let’s think about this, shall we? And let’s begin with two character descriptions:

“Jim Bob Hattrick was the sort of man who would have everyone in the county attending his funeral, if only to see for themselves that the sumbitch was dead.”

“In orderly fashion, the long line of people in their Sunday best filed by Jim Bob Hattrick’s open casket. Some made a show of spitting on the corpse, but most were content to glare. No one cried, but a few did laugh.”

Which one is telling, and which one is showing? Continue reading →

Beneath Ceaseless Skies #79 – Double Issue

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Beneath Ceaseless Skies #79 is now live. This is a double issue, with the latest Lord Yamada novelette, “The Tiger’s Turn,” as the lead story.

ToC:

Richard Parks – The Tiger’s Turn
Kat Howard – The Calendar of Saints
Nicole M. Taylor – A Spoonful of Salt
J.S. Bangs – The Judge’s Right Hand

The stories are free to read, but if you like what you find, consider supporting the magazine. It’s the most consistent source of literate adventure fantasy around.

Speaking of Lord Yamada, and for those who were wondering, the Yamada collection is still a go. It should be out from Prime Books in 2013. More information when there is some.

Note to Self: Doublecheck the issue number. Especially when it’s really, really early in the morning.

Analyzing the Leaves and Missing the Forest

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I’m acquainted with some very smart people, and as a general rule I like to hang out with very smart people. For one thing, the conversational levels are usually higher. And, while nearly everyone has something  to teach, in general you’re more likely to learn useful things from people who are smarter than you are. One thing you eventually learn, as the Zen masters have known for centuries, is that intellect and analysis, wonderful tools that they are, sometimes just get in the way. You can wind up focusing your energy on understanding a description of a thing, rather than the thing itself. Naturally, the Zen masters’ “thing” was  satori . Here I’m talking about story, with the following example:

There’s a writer I admire. Call her Writer A. Sexes changed or not for demonstration purposes. There are several writers I admire, and what I’m saying here could apply to almost any of them. Anyway, I like this person’s work. Not in the “I wish I’d written that” vein, since if I were writing like this person I wouldn’t be writing like me, but in the “it’s always interesting to see the world through her eyes for a while” vein.

There’s another writer I admire a little less, call him Writer B. Continue reading →

It All Begins at The End

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There was much buzz at the World Fantasy Convention a few years ago about a book containing, shall we say, an unfortunate turn of phrase. I haven’t read the book in question so I don’t know if this was a lapse or par for the course, but surely there’s nothing worse than a passage written with serious intent turning out to be unintentionally hilarious?

Well, yeah. There is. Continue reading →

In Which I Am Self-Indulgent and So Should You

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Well, sort of. I can fool myself sometimes that this isn’t what I’m doing when I’m reading an unsold story of mine. Re-reading a story is an activity that at least resembles useful work, and I proceed on the theory that I’m doing a light edit. Yeah, that’s the ticket. A light edit. Making improvements. But the fact of the matter is that I’m simply re-reading a story. Specifically, one of mine. A story that hasn’t found a home yet.

I know writers who have great difficulty re-reading their own work. I understand that. After fifteen or so passes to get everything right, it’s natural that the bloom would be just a tad off the rose by then. Yet even time and perspective don’t seem to change their attitude. I’m a little different there, and it seems more than a bit egotistical, but the only time a re-read of one of my own stories causes psychic pain is when I, to be blunt, screwed up. A failed story is painful to read, always. A failed story that you simply do not know how to fix is even worse. Sometimes I eventually sort out what to do, sometimes not, but the process hurts, whatever the outcome.

This one is different. Continue reading →