Category Archives: Reading

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

Snippet Time – The Long Look

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Sometimes excerpts are the sort of thing you put up when you can’t scrape a real post together, but I think there’s something to be said for them on their own merits. I don’t assume for a moment that everyone or even most people who happen across this site will have a clue as to the sort of thing I do or will have read any of it. Excerpts are a quick and easy way to remedy that. So this will be in addition to the “Story Time” link, but I promise not to do it too often.

Today’s snippet is from The Long Look, Chapter 1 – Fairy Tales:

Tymon the Black, demon of a thousand nightmares and master of none, came to a sudden understanding. “It’s raining,” he said. “And I’m cold.”

He sounded surprised.

The dwarf Seb was not surprised. The chilling rain had started the moment they reached the foothills of the White Mountains and continued all afternoon. Seb’s long fair hair hung limp about his face, and he peered out at the magician through a tangled mat like a runt wolf eyeing a lamb through a hedge. “At last he deigns to notice . . . I’ve been cold for hours! At the very least you could have been miserable with me.”

“Sorry,” Tymon said. “You know I have trouble with some things.”

Seb nodded. “‘Here’ and ‘now’ being two of them.” While day-to-day practical matters were Seb’s responsibility, there was some comfort in complaining. In his years with Tymon, Seb had learned to take comfort where he could.

Nothing else was said for a time, there being nothing to say. Seb, as usual, was the first to notice the failing light. “It’s getting late. We’d better find somewhere dry to camp, if there be such in this wretched place.”

It was beginning to look like a very wet night until Seb spotted a large overhang on a nearby ridge. It wasn’t a true cave, more a remnant of some long-ago earthquake, but it reached more than forty yards into the hillside and had a high ceiling and dry, level floor. It wasn’t the worst place they’d ever slept.
“I’ll build a fire,” the dwarf said, “if you will promise me not to look at it.”

Tymon didn’t promise, but Seb built the fire anyway after seeing to their mounts and the pack train. He found some almost-dry wood near the entrance and managed to collect enough rainwater for the horses and for a pot of tea. He unpacked the last of their dried beef and biscuit, studied the pitiful leavings and shook his head in disgust. Gold wasn’t a problem, but they hadn’t dared stop for supplies till well away from the scene of Tymon’s last escapade, and now what little food they’d had time to pack was almost gone.
Seb scrounged another pot and went to catch some more rain. When he had enough, he added the remnants of beef and started the pot simmering on the fire. The mixture might make a passable broth. If not, at least they could use it to soften the biscuit.

Tymon inched closer to the fire, glancing at Seb as he did so. The dwarf pretended not to notice. Tymon was soaked and neither of them had any dry clothing. Tymon catching cold or worse was the last thing Seb needed. As for the risk, well, when the inevitable happened it would happen, as it had so many times before.

“I never look for trouble, you know that,” Tymon said. It sounded like an apology.

“I know.” Seb handed him a bowl of the broth and a piece of hard biscuit, and that small gesture was as close to an acceptance of the apology as the occasion demanded. They ate in comfortable silence for a while, but as the silence went on and on and the meal didn’t, Seb began to feel definitely uncomfortable. He finally surrendered tact and leaned close.

“Bloody hell!”

It was the Long Look. Tymon’s eyes were glazed, almost like a blind man’s. They focused at once on the flames and on nothing. Tymon was seeing something far beyond the firelight, something hidden as much in time as distance. And there wasn’t a damn thing Seb could do about it. He thought of taking his horse and leaving his friend behind, saving himself. He swore silently that one day he would do just that. He had sworn before, and he meant it no less now. But not this time. Always, not this time. Seb dozed after a while, walking the edge of a dream of warmth and ease and just about to enter, when the sound of his name brought him back to the cold stone and firelight.

“Seb?”

Tymon was back, too, from whatever far place he’d gone, and he was shivering again. Seb poured the last of the tea into Tymon’s mug. “Well?”

“I’ve seen something,” Tymon said. He found a crust of biscuit in his lap and dipped it in his tea. He chewed thoughtfully.

“Tymon, is it your habit to inform me that the sun has risen? The obvious I can handle; I need help with the hidden things.”

“So do I,” Tymon said. “Or at least telling which is which. What do you think is hidden?”

“What you saw. What the Long Look has done to us this time.”

Tymon rubbed his eyes like the first hour of morning. “Oh, that. Tragedy, Seb. That’s what I saw in the fire. I didn’t mean to. I tried not to look.”

Seb threw the dregs of his own cup into the fire and it hissed in protest. “I rather doubt it matters. If it wasn’t the fire, it would be the pattern of sweat on your horse’s back, or the shine of a dewdrop.” The dwarf’s scowl suddenly cleared away, and he looked like a scholar who’d just solved a particularly vexing sum. “The Long Look is a curse, isn’t it? I should have realized that long ago. What did you do? Cut firewood in a sacred grove? Make water on the wrong patch of flowers? What?” Seb waited but Tymon didn’t answer. He didn’t seem to be listening. Seb shook his head sadly. “I’ll wager it was a goddess. Those capable of greatest kindness must also have the power for greatest cruelty. That’s balance.”

“That’s nonsense,” said Tymon, who was listening after all. “And a Hidden Thing, I see. So let me reveal it to you—there is one difference between the workings of a god and a goddess in our affairs. One only.”

“And that is?”

“Us. Being men, we take the disfavor of a female deity more personally.” Tymon yawned and reached for his saddle and blanket.

Seb seized the reference. “Disfavor. You admit it.”

Tymon shrugged. “If it gives you pleasure. The Powers know you’ve had precious little of that lately.” He moved his blanket away from a sharp rise in the stone and repositioned his saddle. “Where are we going?”

Seb tended the fire, looking sullen. “Morushe.”

“Good. I’m not known there—by sight, anyway.”

Seb nodded. “I was counting on that.”

“It will make things easier.”

Seb knew that Tymon was now speaking to himself, but he refused to be left out. “I know why we were heading toward Morushe—it was far away from Calyt. What business do we have there now?”

“We’re going to murder a prince.”

Seb closed his eyes. “Pity the fool who asked.”

“I never look for trouble. You know that.”

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Look It Up in Your Funk and Wagnall’s

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Yeah, I know. Ancient history reference. Which is appropriate, because today I’m going to talk about research.

The subject of research came up elsewhere recently. Specifically, some people make the argument that, for fantasy especially, “You’re just making stuff up and so you don’t have to do research. Even for work set on earth in a particular point in history, no one’s going to ding you for minor oopsies other than some anal history types. Regular readers don’t care.”

To start, I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a  “regular reader.” I think readers are varied people with varied interests, and are likely to know a bit about the period you’re writing in and dang well do care, but that’s actually not what I want to talk about (ok, “write about.” Don’t be so dang literal). See, I believe the premise that research is unnecessary is wrong-headed on at least two levels, and I want to concentrate on the second, not the first.

On the first level, yes, you do research to “get it right.” This is the “Will this be on the Test?” theory of research. To a degree I can sympathize. Put this way it sounds a lot like scutwork, but there’s a lot more to it than not giving the Normans 13th century English longbows at Hastings or referring to an 11th Century Japanese nobleman as a “samurai.” Research isn’t just about avoiding mistakes. That’s important but secondary. Even if you’re working in a world of your own, it’s going to be based on or a reaction to historial analogues. Nothing comes from nothing. So you do research to enrich your story and, in some cases, to find the story in the first place.

I’ll use examples from my own stash since, well, they’re the only ones I have. One of the Goji Yamada stories (Prime Books 2013, plug or fair warning) concerns Kenji and Goji making a trek to the frozen north ofJapan to help with a delicate political matter. That delicate matter proves to be that the local “barbarian” leader’s daughter-in-law has been kidnapped. Two problems: the leader’s son is dead and his daughter-in-law is a wooden doll. No, the leader is not crazy. It was the custom in that part of Japan that, when a boy or young man died before marriage, the family would create an effigy of a bride, have it blessed by a priest, and symbolically marry the figure to the deceased before donating it to the temple for safe-keeping. It was believed that the doll’s spirit would then serve as the deceased’s “wife,” giving him the company and support in the spirit world that he never had in life. Now, was that merely a research detail? Heck no. It was the genesis of the entire story. I stumbled upon that piece of information while doing research for another piece, and once I found it, I knew there was a story there. No research? No story.

Besides providing the germs of story ideas, research enriches what you’re already doing. Does this really need to be explained? Probably not to anyone here, but you never know. I’m amazed any working writer would take the “research is unnecessary” position in the first place, but apparently some do.

In “Moon Viewing at Shijo Bridge,” I needed a letter to disappear from a heavily-guarded Imperial compound and a princess to vanish in front of two alert guards, and both in a way that was both integral to the story and plausible in context. Related reading on the nature on Japanese theories of magic in the Heian period gave me exactly what I needed–the shikigami. In To Break the Demon Gate (PS Publishing, late 2012), a bad guy has taken over a temple that guards the eastern approaches to the Capital. A temple? How is that a threat to our heroes? Two reasons: Warrior monks (sohei) and the concept of the ikiryo, the first from historical reading and the second straight from The Tale of Genji. Could I have written the book without those two bits of information? Sure. Would it have been as good as I humbly think it is? I seriously doubt it.

Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Captain Obvious. Ok, here’s something not quite so obvious, and why this particular meme is so insidiously dangerous–when someone says, “Oh, I never do research” what they’re really saying is “I’ve already done all the research I’m going to do.” They already have what they need, in their opinion: HS or college-level history. Earlier readings and stories, including childhood reading that they’ve already done ages ago. There’s some validity in this. I didn’t do any new research when I wrote “Kallisti,”  because I really had already done what I needed. I knew the story of the Judgment of Paris so well that it was no problem at all to do my own take on it. I didn’t do any new research for “The Plum Blossom Lantern,” because I already knew the Edo period ghost story that it was based on. The research was already done. This is extremely useful when it happens, but it can also be a trap.

That’s right—trap. Once you stop searching, once you think “Ok, I’m done” it means you’ve lost interest, both in your subjects and in the idea of getting better. You’re no longer finding new information, and more to the point, new connections between those bits of information. You’ve stopped looking for the tools that would help you grow as a writer. You write about the same things, with the same toolkit, that you’ve always had. You have a hammer, so to speak. It may be a very fine hammer, but that’s all it is. All you can do is assemble the pieces of wood as they are. Pretty soon you’re repeating yourself because, well, you can’t do anything else.

That’s the trap. And the ones caught by it don’t even realize it. But I can gurantee you their readers do.

Things That Go Bump–Live!

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The event’s in full paranormal swing. I’m talking about books and Carol’s drawing my aura. Apparently, I have a lot of red surrounding me today. That’s energy, which I do need. I’m on. It takes a lot to be personable when that doesn’t come naturally. But it’s a friendly crowd here at Vicksburg Library, and we’re rolling with the fun.

People are almost more interested in the eBooks than the actual paper ones. Feel the paradigm shift? I sure do.

Edited to Add (since live blogging wasn’t practical):

Had a great time. Sold a number of books, met people, said hello to people I already knew, and generally mingled. Carol’s aura readings were a huge hit, and between us (though mostly her) we raised $239 for CAPS, the Vicksburg chapter of the Child Abuse Prevention Center. I’d call it a good day.