Category Archives: Writing

Muse and Writer Dialogues #6 – “Anger Management”

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 FADE IN

 A room that passes for an office. There are bookshelves on one wall, a motley assortment of carvings, signed storyboards, and framed magazine covers on the free wall space. On the far wall is a medieval-style heraldic wall display of a cockatrice and a banner in bad Latin “Pullus non Est.”  Horizontal files sit beneath the window , and on top of those a free-standing rack holding Japanese swords, and a pile of unsorted papers, old mail, receipts. The computer desk is on the wall nearest the door, facing away from the window. Beside that is a printer on a stand. It’s a bit dusty.

Enter the Muse. Her appearance tends to change every now and then, but mostly she appears as a Greek goddess type in a flowing chiton. She is glaring at Writer, who  is sitting at his desk, but he’s not looking at the screen. He is also glaring, though at nothing in particular.

MUSE (tapping foot): Why am I here?

WRITER: You’re my muse.

MUSE: This I know. I mean why am I here now? You’ve got a project to write and you’re already well into it. I will appear at various times to give you little shoves in the right direction, but that’s it. Nothing of the sort is currently indicated.

WRITER: The Ideal of Inspiration is not confined to writerly projects. What if I need help with something else?

MUSE: Such as?

WRITER: Well…why am I so damn angry?

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Word of Podcast

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If you’re interested in the sf/f field in general, the SF Signal web site is probably already familiar to you. This week they’ve put up one of their regular podcasts, this time a panel discussion on the state of the Swords & Sorcery (S&S)subgenre and where the genre is at the moment, (Episode 108): 2012 Sword & Sorcery Mega Panel Part 1
.    Panelists were:

Lou Anders is the editor of Pyr Books, Scott Andrews is the editor of  Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Violette Malan and James Sutter are authors, Jaym Gates and Patrick Hester are the SF Signal podcast moderators. Besides being an interesting discussion in itself for anyone even remotely interested in the subject (and I’m looking forward to part 2), it was interesting to me personally because my name came up several times as a modern S&S author in connection with the Lord Yamada stories.

I can see it. For one thing, as subgenres go, S&S is pretty mecurial. Any subgenre that can encompass at various times Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, C.L. Moore, Joanna Russ, G.R.R. Martin, and Michael Moorcock, has to be a bit of a moving target. For another, at various times in my development I was very deliberately writing S&S. For one thing, I went through an early phase where I didn’t read much else. For another, when I was first trying to break into the fantasy magazines (all maybe three of them at the time), S&S was in the ascendant, as hot or hotter than Steampunk is now. I wrote a fair bit of it, and apparently I still am.

I’ll grant you, I wasn’t thinking of Yamada as S&S when the series first came to me. I had him envisioned more as a Heian-era noire detective, sort of Sam Spade with a tachi. He quickly grew past that limited conception, and thank heavens for that, but the tone remained that of a generalist fantasy with mystery overtones. And yet the stories still easily fit under the S&S umbrella. I hadn’t thought of them that way, but it’s true, and perfectly fine with me.

Categories aside, I think this is the first time that my name and work has come up in a podcast that wasn’t a podcast of one of my own stories. Getting a reminder now and then that other people do read and like what you do doesn’t entirely suck.

In Which I Diss Zombies

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I’m having a bit of an internal monologue, which I’m going to share here in lieu of actual content. Sometimes I have to think about these things, whether there’s any good reason to do that or not. My thought for today is a mediation on why I’ve never written about zombies.

Yes, why? Good question, and I’d like to thank me for asking it. Not that I have a good answer; I don’t fully understand my motivations for doing or not doing anything. But if I had to guess, I’d say it’s for the same reason I have never written a story about werewolves or unicorns: they just aren’t very interesting. Ok, I know that some people who read here are very fond of zombies and/or werewolves and unicorns, so before you get the knives out, let me explain: They just aren’t very interesting. ‘Kay. Now you can get the knives out.

 Is there a point buried in this pile of nonsense somewhere? No promises, but maybe I can borrow a few knives to dig it out, as we seem to have a few handy. I could dwell on why zombies aren’t interesting–there’s the lack of complex motivation (ala Romero) or the lack of any higher brain function (ala traditional). Scary? Sure. Horrifying? You betcha! Interesting? Not so much. Yet I know that these are simple rationalizations after the fact. It’s perfectly possible to write a zombie story where neither of those restrictions apply, just as it’s quite doable to write a good werewolf or unicorn story. I’ve read a few. One or two I’d rate as classics in the field, so it can be done and has/is being done. Just not by me.

Why? They just aren’t very interesting.

And here we are again. It’s not even that, as subjects, they’re pretty cliché. Subjects become cliché for a reason, and just because their ubiquity level has been raised to cliché it does not mean that new and interesting work can’t be done. As penance for my lack of appreciation, I will now inventory fantasy clichés in my own work:

  • Fairies/fey? Check.
  • Vampires? Only twice, but check.
  •  Dragons? Multiple offenses.
  • Witches/Wizards? Ditto.
  • Sphinxes? Yep.
  • Ancient Gods/Goddesses? Darn right.
  • Demons? Uh-huh. Just ask Yamada.
  • Monsters? Duh.
  • Ghosts? All the time, and Eli Mothersbaugh’s specialty.
  • Deal With the Devil? And proud of it!
  • Mermaids? Of course.
  • Personifications, as in Death or Fate? Guilty.

Let’s face facts here—anyone who’d willingly write a “Deal with the Devil” story is capable of anything. So why no zombie, unicorn, or werewolf stories? They just aren’t – [Visual of the blogger being whapped on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. Heaven knows where they found one] Besides being painful, that interruption reveals the true answer. Why no zombie, werewolf, or unicorn stories? Because there aren’t any, as in “aren’t any rattling around in my brain.” No matter how many times I turn the notion in my head, it just comes back to this. I’ve already talked about recognizing a story when you see one, and this is the real reason I’ve never done unicorn stories or zombie stories or werewolf stories–I just don’t recognize anything relating to them as a story.  It’s really as simple and ungrammatical as that. The fact that I don’t find them interesting is effect, not cause.  I haven’t had a zombie or unicorn or werewolf story to write. In the case of the unicorn, I can’t see the point. Until and unless I come up with something that is at least as interesting to me on a story level as Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn or Theodore Sturgeon’s “The Silken Swift,” the subject is a closed door. If I ever do get such a notion, the door will spring open and I’ll find that particular subject is as interesting as anything I’ve ever written about and I’ll eat whatever steaming plate of crow is required. Will it happen? Dunno. I’d say it’s even odds. But until then, “They just aren’t–”

[Whoosh] Ha! Missed me!

In the Palace of the Jade Lion

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When Realms of Fantasy closed it had two of my stories in inventory, and now that the contracts are signed I can mention that the first of them, “In the Palace of the Jade Lion,” has sold to Beneath Ceaseless Skies. This is a 12,000 word ghost story set in ancient China during the Warring States period, and the first non-Yamada story that I’ve placed there.

I’m rather proud of this one. Which I suppose is the kind of thing a writer would normally say, but it’s true. I think it’s a fun story and I’m rather pleased with the way it turned out. Naturally I’m happy that it found a good home.