Tag: writing

Categories
feminism rants sfwa women in science writing

Lady [Insert Job Title Here]

This may come as a shock, but I am not a “Lady Geologist.” I do not examine women visually and use lab tests in order to understand their physical properties, provenance, and environment of deposition. I have never gone up to a female stranger, hammered a chunk off of her, and sent it to the lab so I could determine the abundance of her constituent minerals. That kind of thing would, I assume, land me in jail.

I’m a Sedimentary Geologist. I commit those sorts of friendly acts on sedimentary rocks, which are mineralogically more interesting and also don’t mind if you take a hammer to them. (Okay maybe they do mind, but they have no legal standing under current US law.)

I would likewise think that “Lady Lawyers” don’t limit themselves to female clients. And “Lady Engineers” don’t spend their time designing more durable women in AutoCAD. And “Lady Writers” (this I can speak to personally) don’t just write women or about women. And “Lady Editors” don’t leave trails of women in their wake, panting and covered with marks made in track changes.

Oh, right. The “Lady” is supposed to indicate that we’re a professional of some sort that happens to be a lady. And what’s wrong with that?

It’s simple. By feeling the need to point out that holy shit, that engineer is a woman, you are paying lip service to the idea that it’s only normal for men to be engineers. That women are the exception instead of just a normal part of the professional landscape. When you append or job titles with the unnecessary flag of gender, it effectively removes us from the work ecosystem and marks us as an invasive species, abnormal and not belonging.

Maybe I could have understood that more back when women were just starting to claw our way as a group out of the role of housewife, but our presence in the workforce hasn’t been a surprise in decades or far longer. (At my ripe old age of 32, I literally do not remember a time when women were not doctors, lawyers, and engineers, though admittedly not without struggle.) It isn’t shocking–SHOCKING!–that women write scifi. You have heard about this little book called Frankenstein, right?

And using the word Lady instead of Woman? Just makes it sound more cutesy and condescending because it’s a callback to all that chivalry bullshit. I’m not a lady, guys. I’m a woman. I’ve yet to hear someone referred to as a Lady Anything when her accomplishments or her gender weren’t then subsequently (if subtly) belittled. Wow, look what she did, and she’s a lady! Look what that lady did, unlike all those other women! Pretending to be amazed over and over again that we are here and working and doing just fine effectively erases our presence in the past.

Do you get what I’m saying? Do you get why I (and many of my fellow women, though please don’t think I am in any way claiming to speak for all women) are getting a little tired of that shit? Do you get why, even if it wasn’t meant to be patronizing or paternalistic, it might sound that way?

Good. Now kindly knock it off.

When I’m at work, I’m a goddamn Sedimentary Geologist. I’m a Writer. The presence or absence of tits does not change either of these facts.

Categories
writing

Kindle Worlds – fanfic for pay

If you know any writers, you’ve probably seen this spewed all over social media today. Well, it’s my turn to spew. Amazon is starting a new scheme, this one to sell fanfiction. For profit.

That’s right. Fanfiction. Making money off of it. This is a thing now. Well, it had the feeling of inevitability as soon as everyone realized 50 Shades of Gray was tarted-up Twilight fanfiction.

I have some very complicated feelings about this, both as an author and as a fan. The author gets to go first:

I had one moment of pants-shitting terror until I actually read over the terms. The fact that this for-profit fanfic will be limited to only properties Amazon has a deal with, and that royalties will be paid to the owners of that property soothes a lot of potential worries that I might have had, and goes a long way to explaining how this venture would even be possible. They’re not going to go selling fanfic at random. And there’s actually a lot of control by the owners of the original properties (from the Kindle Worlds authors page):

World Licensors have provided Content Guidelines for each World, and your work must follow these Content Guidelines. We strongly encourage you to read the Content Guidelines before you commit the time and effort to write.

So that’s certainly offering more control over content than regular fanfiction does. This means if the original property owner wants no slash, there will be no slash. (More on this later in the fan section.) Honestly, this doesn’t sound like fanfiction so much as a new model for writing tie-ins. So yeah, from the viewpoint of writing, it sounds like it could be beneficial – original property owners could make some money, starting writers could make some money for something they’d otherwise give away for free, win-win, right?

Hm, maybe. One of the major issues that’s making me feel uncomfortable with this scheme is right in the terms as well:

When you submit your story in a World, you are granting Amazon Publishing an exclusive license to the story and all the original elements you include in that story. This means that your story and all the new elements must stay within the applicable World. We will allow Kindle Worlds authors to build on each other’s ideas and elements. We will also give the World Licensor a license to use your new elements and incorporate them into other works without further compensation to you.

And.

Amazon Publishing will acquire all rights to your new stories, including global publication rights, for the term of copyright.

Emphasis in both passages added by me. First off, all rights for the term of copyright is something that had writers across the internet shitting their pants over the originally proposed contract terms for Hydra and its sister imprints. These are bad terms. The term of copyright at this point, with the ludicrous nature of copyright law, means “as long as we can squeeze even a dime out of your work’s rotting corpse.” Copyright effectively does not end as long as someone cares enough to renew it.

Add to that the other part. Basically, any original work you add in this for-profit fanfiction, be it plotline or world element or character effectively ceases to belong to you in any useful sense. If I’m reading this right, you can no longer use these original elements of your own outside of this fanfiction. And even better, the original owner of the work can use your story elements without so much as giving you credit. This may sound fair at first blush (this is fanfiction, after all, right? You’re getting paid, right?) but I’ve known a ton of people who write fanfic (including myself) who have gone on to use elements they first developed in fanfiction to fuel their own original endeavors. Come up with a cool side character that you can transfer into your own original universe and then write awesome novels about? Tough titties.

So that’s something I find incredibly worrying.

In a more abstract sense, I’d also like to throw in a little “won’t someone think of the children?” Part of what had people up in arms about the Hydra debacle was that it blatantly targeted struggling writers, because they were the most likely group to go for shitty contract terms and not know better. This has all of the same hallmarks, but potentially worse since the series in question could have a very teen-heavy fan (and writer) base. Get ’em while they’re young, eh, and then they’ll think term of copyright is a-okay?

It’s not entirely downbeat. I think this might be a shot for new writers to start building their own fan base, which could be useful when they branch off and start writing their own work. Hell, it could be a way for talent to get noticed by the people who run these properties. Who knows.

Though that does circle us back around to the question of quality control. Obviously there will be some, thanks to the “Content Guidelines.” But I’m curious to know how much editing will be done. How much will this be an opportunity for writers to actually improve their craft? I’ve already seen epublishing treated often as a “well fuck the editors they don’t see my obvious talent I’ll just self pub online” escape hatch by writers that honestly need more work. (Please note, I am not saying all self published work is like this. Some of it is phenomenal.) Will the Kindle Worlds get swollen with badly written works by writers who are not getting the necessary guidance to improve? Look at the internet, man. There is a lot of fanfic out there. And a lot of it is really, really bad.

Which brings us around to my much less mixed and generally less positive feelings as a fan.

Let me just put it out there that I find the idea of for-profit fanfiction thoroughly repugnant, as someone who has been writing fanfiction nearly her entire life. This is a little less so on the grounds that it’s done in concert with the creators, but still. In the depths of my fannish soul, I do not like it. Maybe I’m one of a dying breed.

Beyond that, there are two main concerns that I have as a fan:

1) If this becomes a useful revenue stream for the property owners, will this give them incentive to try to crack down on free fanfiction on the internet? While we know that fanfic has a way of surviving even when the holder of copyright doesn’t like the fact of its existence, this could make life very unpleasant for people. Obviously, this is a moot point unless the “licensed” fanfiction starts making a lot of money. But one does have to wonder, why bother paying even a pittance for fanfic on the Kindle when you can get it for free at AO3 or Fanfic.net?

Other than for the shiny badge of sanction, I suppose. Which brings me to point the second:

2) The “Content Guidelines” were mentioned before, but we don’t know why kind of things might be in them, other than no porn. How strict a control will there be on what is depicted in these stories?

While much of fanfiction is pure, joyful (and often badly written) brain crack, the one thing it can do, at times unwittingly, is give voice to viewpoints and characters that are marginalized in the original properties. For example, while a lot of slash can be porn for the sake of porn, it’s also there as a vehicle for depicting relationships between male characters where there wasn’t one in the series. While homosexual characters are becoming more common in the actual shows themselves, if you believed fanfiction you couldn’t throw a rock in a given episode without hitting a gay character. And while this may sound flippant or trivial to you, I believe it can have a profound impact. Frankly, yaoi and slash fanfiction were what started me as a teenager on my journey to realizing that gay people are (holy shit) people, and that I’m bisexual. Fanfiction can let side characters, often people of color, shine when they are given no opportunities in their original show. How will this work with content guidelines, and so on?

There’s a lot of fanfic out there. And there’s a certain magic to having to sort through it all to find stories you like. In the process, you’ll often find out that what you like isn’t necessarily what you thought you’d like.

A lot of this is just me spinning my wheels. Kindle Worlds is a thing that’s going to happen, and there’s no stopping it. There’s also no knowing how profitable will be. It could be a massive hit. It could be dead and forgotten in a year. We’ll find out. But while we wait to see how it develops, I can’t shake my feeling of profound unease.

While I’ve seen several blog posts that include, “If property X were in Kindle Worlds, I’d sure be tempted to write for it…” I’m not going to join that club. I have no interest in this scheme, not under those terms, no way, no how. Not even if it were Avengers. Because I do it for the love. And because some day I’m going to write the adventures of the little waffle iron that could.

Further reading:

Categories
steampunk writing

Read it now – The Ugly Tin Orrery

theuglytinorrery-500

“You wouldn’t dare.” The conductor, a fit man in a crisp blue uniform now unfortunately stained with sweat and powder thanks to his insistence on resisting rather more athletically than had been necessary, gave her a wide-eyed look. Recognition and horror dawned in his eyes as he took in her scarlet coat. There was only one pirate who had that particular quirk of dress, after all. Perhaps he’d missed the memo explaining that the infamous Captain Ramos was female.Marta smiled at him. It was an expression she had, quite literally, practiced in front of a mirror for years to perfect. In her role as pirate captain, that smile was calculated to state, why yes I am quite mad and have a fraction of concern for human life so small, you might as well save your time and round it to zero. “Pirate, Mister…” she peered at his little name badge, “…Lewis. I’m a pirate. Is there anything my ilk does not dare?”

Mostly a bluff, that. Captain Ramos was not one to slaughter droves of innocent civilians, though she had in fact shot a conductor once, because he’d gone after her with a paring knife from a nearby fruit bowl. It had been an embarrassing incident for all involved—terminally so for the conductor in question—but Marta had made good use of it nonetheless in the cause of convincing other potentially brave souls that she really was that mad.

“You’re a madwoman.”

“If I must keep repeating myself, this conversation will become intensely dull.” But she examined him carefully, taking in the signs of distress and mentally calculating which way he would crack if just a bit more pressure were applied. She drew her pistol and pointed it squarely in his face.

The man’s eyes went wide, and he tried to jerk his hands up defensively, only to be stopped by the firm hands of one Lucius Lamburt. Lucius played his part beautifully by growling into the man’s ear, “Now then, sonny, you don’ want ta give us no trouble.” Lucius also played the part beautifully of having been born, as far as anyone could tell, as some sort of gorilla who was subsequently partially shaved and outfitted with the surprisingly well-tailored clothes of a man.

…though knowing Lucius, Marta reflected, he was quite likely serious. The man was unhinged in all of the most useful ways. “If you please, Mister Lewis. I wouldn’t want to overexcite our Mister Lamburt with the sight of blood.”

Lucius laughed in the conductor’s ear, accompanied by a fine spray of saliva. That, at least, was more obviously an act. Lucius had a bit of a thing about bodily fluids.

The conductor was quick to lead her into the third freight car then, and rip up the floor paneling that hid the safe. While the main point of the raid had been the train’s cargo-a shipment of steel bars and some much-needed, delicately machined replacement parts for their various engines-there was really no reason to leave the store of gold and silver on the train behind. It was just good business.

“Captain, this ought to be the last of the crates,” Simms called from behind.

Marta glanced up to see the tall man walking down the narrow hallway toward her. He held one end of a wooden crate that had been painted a rather odd shade of green. “Are you certain, Simms? That doesn’t look like the rest.”

“The maker’s stamp–” Whatever Simms might have been about to point out was lost when the door to the car crashed open and a man with a shock of wild yellow curls flung himself through. His dove-gray jacket was torn and his tie in complete disarray, one glove missing as well, the other stained with ink or possibly grease, it was difficult to tell from this distance.

With wild desperation he flung himself at Simms, arms flailing. “That is my trunk! Mine! You can’t have it!”

The attack was sudden and ferocious enough, despite the almost comical size difference that was revealed when the short, slight man proceeded to cling to Simms like a monkey, that Simms dropped his end of the crate. It hit the floor with a crash and the man who had been holding the other side lost his grip as well, cursing as he did so. One side of the crate lost its integrity, boards splintering outward.

As Simms tried to pry away the fingers of the much smaller man free, bearings cascaded from the splintered crate. Swearing, Simms stumbled and then began to slip freely on them, arms windmilling and legs skating to and fro as the much smaller man pummeled him about the head and shoulders with one hand.

Marta, Lucius, and the conductor, momentarily forgetting he was a captive and this might have been the perfect opportunity to escape, openly stared.

“Ah… shouldn’t someone help that man?” the conductor said, after a moment.

“Naw, ‘e’s fine. Winning even, I’d say,” Lucius answered.

The sad truth of it was, Marta wasn’t entirely certain to whom they were referring.

Released today at Musa Publishing! If you liked the excerpt, there’s more where that came from!

Categories
writing

The Dining of the Cats

Chapter 1

Lorn Gorstorfsson stood at the parapet, eyes piercing the uneasy night from above a gnarled red beard in which a sparrow could easily become lost. Overhead, the Harvest Moon hung, fat and full; much fatter and fuller, he thought bitterly, than the actual harvest.

That was the price, he’d been told, for ignoring tradition for so many years. Traditions existed for a reason, even when they seemed nonsensical, or even silly. They’d kept the people of Tyrafyl safe for countless centuries. It was only in the reign of the most recent king that things had fallen by the wayside.

And what a terrible harvest had been reaped, for that time of inattention: floods, terrible storms, bad harvests, and all while the king engaged in debauchery, ignoring his closest advisors and taking shelter behind the supposed infallibility of the crown.

Well, Lorn thought to himself with grim amusement, the man hadn’t seemed all that infallible when he’d fallen down those three flights of stairs and onto a pike someone had left so carelessly propped against a table.

Someone. Oops.

Only now there was a vacuum of power at the top of the onyx steps that led to the throne. And while life was unpleasant enough for the peasants and even minor (if ambitious) nobility like Lorn, with belts tightening by the week, there was something about that massive, carved wooden throne. Everyone wanted to sit in it. Everyone thought they knew best.

Even Lorn himself. He had ideas, about defending the country, about expanding the borders to compensate for the harvests and bringing new lands into the kingdom. No one had listened to him seriously before now, but perhaps they would.

This had been his idea, for all he regretted it now. A return to the old ways to place himself in better attention, bring some light onto his rather convoluted bloodline. And that was why he found himself standing out on the walls, breath steaming in the air, boiled leather armor the only thing between him and freezing in the unseasonably cold autumn night.

By all rights, there should have been a storm, perhaps one of the great autumn blows where there was snow and purple lightning, crashes of thunder crackling through the ice riming the streams. But no, it was just cold, cold and calm, not a breeze stirring the bare branches of the palla trees.

From within the keep, an unholy howl rose, cat after cat raising its voice as if shrieking at the moon. The hairs on the back of Lorn’s neck stood, as did those on his sinewy arms, what few were left behind after the wash of dragon fire he’d taken as a young man.

Four times, the cats howled, once for each of the quarters. He’d read in the tomes of lore this would happen, but had not truly believed it. After all, this festival had not been observed in his lifetime.

The doors of the keep boomed hollowly, four measured strikes, someone indescribably ancient and powerful asking to be admitted.

Lorn licked his suddenly dry lips, smoothing his beard down with one hand. “Destarn River Keep bids you welcome!” he shouted. After a moment of hesitation the other sentries followed suit. “Open the doors!”

As two guards, their own boiled leather armor less impressed and adorned than his own, hurried to man the giant winches that would open the formal gates, the cats howled again. In the sky, the moon washed red. And in the inner court of the keep, somehow over the din he thought he could hear the soft weeping of those chosen. Girls, their curls adorned with thorns and holly, waited with their milk white backs bowed under massive stone serving platters.

The Dining of the Cats was about to begin.

Categories
Uncategorized writing

I’m number one! (in the Strange Horizons Readers’ Poll!!!)

762881Strange Horizons published the results of their Reader’s Poll this morning and EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Comes the Huntsman is first place for short story! Thank you everyone who voted for me! Thank you so much!

Comes the Huntsman is a story that’s still incredibly special to me (and not incidentally the story I wrote in 2012 for Tom Hiddleston’s birthday – my ‘Hiddlestory’ if you will). I donated the $105 payment I received for it to UNICEF.

So today, in celebration of taking first place, here’s what I did:

new donation

Thank you to everyone who read and everyone who voted! I’ll try to keep making good art!

Categories
free read writing

Utar the Radish Farmer

So, this is entirely @mbennardo’s fault. LET IT BE KNOWN.


On a hill overlooking the Camsted valley stands a man, six feet tall, broad-shouldered, hands with short, stubby fingers and square palms. Earth hands, his Mam had called them. Stone hands they also got called, by anyone unlucky enough to mistake soft-spoken for weak after a night of drinking.

Utar the Radish Farmer leans on his hoe, watching black clouds of crows swirl above the valley. He leans back his head and whistles piercingly through the generous gap between his front teeth, a special combination of tones and trills that some might call magic, but he just calls sense.

One black dot breaks away from the cloud and spirals through the air toward him. Utar waits patiently, squinting against the cheery yellow sunlight of the afternoon. A few minutes later, a crow lands on the handle in a flurry of wings, balanced on one foot. Utar tilts his head back, squints against the feathers until she’s gotten settled.

He knows this crow. She has a set of golden dots on top of her head, like the beauty marks of a lady. They’ve talked before. “Good day, Lady Crow.” He’s also heard this called magic, being able to talk to birds. Seems like more good sense to him.

She clacks her beak. “Very good for us, Utar.”

Utar tilts his chin toward the valley. “There a battle on?”

“Have you ever known anything else to draw us in such numbers?”

“Nay, ’tis true. What’s the chance the lines might move this way a mite more?”

She inspects him with one black, sparkling eye. “There’s a soothsayer on the side of the man in red. We could trick him in to it easily enough.” Then she turns her head to inspect him with the other eye. “For the normal price.”

Utar nods slowly. “Agreed.” Man in red probably means the Duke; he’s always sounded like the superstitious sort.

The crow takes off and Utar heads back down the hills of his radish farm. “Mattie,” he calls to his wife, “get the girls. Battle’ll be coming this way soon.”

Mattie throws down the lump of dough she’s been working and gives him an annoyed look. “I’m in the middle of baking.”

“The high and mighty don’t consult with the likes of us.” He smiles, catches her by the waist, nuzzles her neck with a stubbly chin until she shrieks and gives him a playful slap. “Get the girls. We’ll be wanting to bury anything we can’t carry.”

“Aye. But if they burn my house down again, the next one better have an extra bedroom. And a bigger kitchen.”

He nods slowly. “Agreed.”

By nightfall, they hear the drums of the marching armies, but they’re already cleared out, up a hill and into their neighbor’s fields, backs bent under bundles of clothes and cooking pots, with a basket of winterberries as a peace offering for letting them stay a few nights.

Three days later the crow with golden spots finds Utar again. She’s flying heavy and drunk, gorged with carrion. Utar has to steady her with his fingers when she lands on the haft of his ax; he’s been helping out with the firewood.

“Battle done, Lady Crow?”

She belches in the least ladylike way imaginable. “And a big one at that.”

“My thanks. I’ll get the sweet red corn for you this year, my word on it.”

“It strikes me, Utar. You never ask us who won.” The crow lets out a croaking laugh, interrupted by another belch.

“Aye.” He shoos her away and calls for Mattie to get the girls, finish breakfast, get ready to go home. He doesn’t even wait for goodbyes; he spikes the ax into the nearby stump and heads back over the hill.

Utar only spares the briefest of looks for the smoldering ruin of his house. He collects his hoe from its hiding place and wades into his fields, feet sticking in the churned up battlefield muck, more blood than dirt. The scent of decay coats the back of his throat, but he’s used to it by now. Humming a working song, he sets to hoeing the blood, the burned cloth and charred wood, the hacked-up flesh and bone into his fields.

It doesn’t matter to him, who has won or lost. All he cares about is the good earth and its feeding, the way the soil drinks in death and turns rich and black with life. What he gives to his fields, they return ten fold in the best radishes in the fief.

And if it makes him smile, sometimes, to think that noble kitchens seek out his produce and feed their new crop of warriors on their previous crop of warriors, well.

He’s just a radish farmer, simple folk. What does he know.

Categories
writing

2012 Stories

We’re now into 2013 which means it’s time to start thinking about awards for stuff from 2012! Woo!

I have three short stories that are eligible:

The Jade Tiger – Penumbra, March 2012
Comes the Huntsman – Strange Horizons, July 2, 2012
Entangled – Specutopia, July 13, 2012

Regarding Entangled, I’ll be posting it on this blog in February since Specutopia seems to have gone defunct.

Please think of me kindly!

(Completely coincidentally, nominations are now open for the Hugo Awards, she types while ducking her head with shame.)

Categories
writing year in review

2012: Writing Year in Review

Written This Year

Novels: Zero, I’m sorry to say. I did a lot of editing on Fire in the Belly and Throne of Nightmares but grad school really prevented me from making much progress. I think I might have added another 10k words to King’s Hand.

Shorter Stuff: Relatively more success on this front, perhaps because shorter stories are ideal for picking up and putting back down while dealing with horrible grad student things.
Flash: 5 (spoiler: I still suck at flash)
Short Stories: 12 (six of which I wrote during the Clarion Write-a thon, one I wrote today!)
Novellettes/Novellas: 2 (just finished the rough of The Ugly Tin Orrery!)

Consigned to the trunk of awfulness, never to return:  None yet this year, but there are two that I’m giving the stink-eye that might be vanishing once I have the brain power to look over them better and do more editing.

Best/favorite story of the year: Comes the Huntsman, no question. It was an intense story to write, and I’m still very proud of it. It was also published by Strange Horizons, which has been a personal dream of mine!

Considering last year I wrote well over 200K words, by any measure my productivity has been much, much lower this year. To the point that I started getting a bit weird about it back in October because I hadn’t gotten to just write fiction in what felt like so long.

On the other hand I’ve written two drafts of a Masters Thesis, so I think that should count for something.

Publishing
Queries sent: 102
Rejections received: 72
Most rejections received: For just this year, A Crack in the Mirror is leading with 10. For all time (discounting Throne of Nightmares) Entangled had 18 when it was accepted for publication by Specutopia.

This was an amazing year for me for publishing. I had four sales, two of which were pro-level, and signed the contracts for five novellettes/novellas, only one of which I had already written. The two pro sales this year kicked me over to three total, which means I get classified as a professional writer. That was incredibly exciting as well, and Comes the Huntsman was the story that did that for me.

Published this year:

  1. Entangled in Specutopia (which seems to have vanished, I’m sorry to say)
  2. Comes the Huntsman in Strange Horizons
  3. The Jade Tiger in Penumbra

Slated for 2013: 

  1. Hyperion from Scape
  2. A return of The Jade Tiger in the Best of Penumbra Anthology
  3. Murder on the Titania from Musa Publishing
  4. The Ugly Tin Orrery from Musa Publishing
  5. The Curious Case of Miss Clementine Nimowitz and Her Exceedingly Tiny Dog from Musa Publishing
  6. Blood in Peyote Creek from Musa Publishing
  7. Do Shut Up, Mr. Simms from Musa Publishing

Stories put online this year: 

  1. Infection 
  2. The Last Lighthouse

Unless Specutopia reappears, once I’ve run out the six month exclusive period in the contract, I think I’ll probably put Entangled online here to be read for free in February. It’s a story that I really like and I don’t want it to just vanish.

Also, I’m hoping to get back to my little fanfic habit once the thesis is done and I have spare time again. I’ll be working a real, 40 hours per week job for the first time in five years, but I’m pretty sure I’ll still have more spare time then than I do now.

Goals for 2013: 

  1. Finish King’s Hand
  2. Finally get representation nailed down for at least one of my novels
  3. Work with Kat on our joint project and get it done!
  4. Write another birthday story in February for Mr. T.H.; an important goal for me because the one last year turned out so stunningly well I’m terrified another attempt won’t produce anything at all good.
  5. Keep the novellettes rolling in on time to Musa and be faithful to my contracts there.
  6. Finish editing the stories I wrote for this year’s Clarion Write-a-thon
  7. Participate in the Write-a-thon again
  8. Be generally more productive than I was this year, since I’ll no longer have a thesis hanging from my neck like a stone.
  9. Flash fiction – how the fuck does it work?
Categories
free read writing

The Last Lighthouse

Well, I wanted to write something for the lovely @lindsqualls since it sounds like she’s had a rough few weeks. And I wanted to write something that didn’t involve sentences in passive voice about paleosols, so there you go. I have such awful thesis brain right now I’m not going to claim it’s any good. But it felt nice to write.

Love!

The Last Lighthouse

The undines are on the beach again at sunset, smooth black and white pebbles skittering under their tiny blue feet. Meg limps down the steps of the lighthouse, waving her apron to shoo them away. They run only when she’s but a few feet away, liquid giggles following them into the waves.

“Little devils,” Meg mutters, scraping a few stray gray hairs from her forehead with fingers bent by age. “Either you’re getting faster, or I’m getting slower.” The pebbles are now mixed with shards of glass, stray scraps of paper fluttering in the endless, damp breeze. The undines think it a game, smashing the bottles or flinging them back to sea.

Meg picks her way through across the beach, smiling at the slick sound of her footsteps. There are a few bottles left unbroken: two clear flasks, one brown beer bottle, and a green thing with a treacherous, curving neck. She gathers these up in her apron and carries them back to the lighthouse.

Three of the notes shake easily from their bottles. For the green bottle – who thought that was a good idea? – she uses a chopstick, half of a pair whose mate has long since been lost, to draw the slip of paper slowly out. She unrolls the slips of paper and pins their corners with rounded pebbles.

He’s been lost for six months…
Hello, my name is Ryan…
My mother was diagnosed this morning…
I don’t know what to do.

The first three notes, she reads, taking in that joy, sorrow, confusion. It’s a dull, sweet pain in the heart. She carries them to her pot-bellied stove, sets the papers inside one by one with a whispered, “You are not so alone as you think.”

This last note, unsigned, she smooths over and over with her fingers. There is a story here, too nebulous to name, too desperate, begging for more answer than a silent, listening ear. Meg collects up note and its bottle – one of the clear flasks – and carries them up the winding stone staircase to the top of the lighthouse.

At the top, she waits out the short night, watching stars streak by in the sky, warming her hands by the captured light that powers the great lamp. The horizon slowly draws from black to red, heralding the rising Sun. She turns down the lamp and adjusts the mirrors, angle precise.

At the end of the world, the light is thick and warm, more particle than wave. She collects up the first rays with the mirrors, ushers them into the little bottle, then stops it up with the note. Of all the stars, the Sun has always been Meg’s favorite, close and loving, the one her Papa told her long ago to wish on because it is the giver of life.

The Sun also powers the last lighthouse, calling all good ships home.

The undines are back on the beach, searching for more bottles. They creep away, but she beckons one forward, offering it the bottle, miming to throw. The little creature has a much better arm than her; the glass, still glowing with morning light, arcs out of the water and then is nothing more but a distant flare on the waves.

Meg watches until it’s gone, hissing when one of the undines takes up another bottle and makes to break it.

There is no telling, if her answer will make it back to the person desperate enough to ask a question to the void. But perhaps that doesn’t matter; it is an answer, and someone will find it.
I don’t know what to do. 
–Follow the light. Always.

Categories
worldcon writing

[Worldcon] Military SF – Reality vs. Writing

Friday (August 31) at 1500: Military SF – Reality vs. Writing
Panelists listed in program: Mike Shepherd Moscoe, John G. Hemry/Jack Campbell, Elizabeth Moon, Jim Fiscus; in Atlanta at Dragon*Con: Kacey Ezell, Louis Hibben, Mark Malcolm, Michael Z. Williamson

Disclaimer: These are my notes from the panel and my own, later thoughts. I often was unable to attend the entire panel, and also chronically missed panelist introductions. When possible I try to note who said something, but often was unable to. Also, unless something is in double quotes it should be considered a summary and not a direct quotation. 

This panel took place half in Chicago and half in Atlanta. Yay videoconferencing. Weird echo, though.

“In war everything is simple, and everything simple is hard.”
Most of the time everything works out too easily, equipment never breaks down, etc. There should be a lot of difficulties that much be conquered.

Hazing – the Mickey Mouse and the shit you have to put up with.

EM: battle scenes need plot relevance and shape. Real battles often do not have the kind of shape that a story requires. The stories of real battles often are not of the right kind of shape and have to be retransmitted
A lot of civilians don’t believe what happens in the military. – e.g. GI Jane the military liked the training sequences, civilians thought they looked ridiculously brutal.

Esprit de corps comes from the Mickey Mouse shit. In short fiction you don’t have the word space to build the spirit up. In longer works you can have the Mickey Mouse shit and actually build the reader into the cohesive unit, which means the reader feels part of it when you refer to it later.
“Things are funny to us aren’t necessarily funny to anyone else.” – e.g. “I need fifty yards of flight line.”
Military people know that stupid orders get given all the time (e.g. clean the deck with a rag) where civilians won’t believe it.

EM: There is stupid stuff… and there is also stupid stuff coming from editors. e.g. instead of “manning” the weapons on a spaceship, you should “staff” them. /facepalm There is a different between staffing and manning.
EM: Conversely some veterans are so enthralled with their experience that they tend to miss out on the issues inherent to fiction.

EM: Wants to hear about specific things that just make a vet’s toes curl up.

  • One I see repeatedly is the general that loves war and wants to fight! Someone like that wouldn’t last that long for a multitude of reasons. They’re answerable to the people both above (money holders) and below them. Someone would kill them eventually!
  • Writers cross-pollinating service terms. In the Navy you stand on a deck. If you’re anyone else, it’s the floor. 
  • “Tell the different services to secure a building…” the Navy would turn out the lights and lock the doors, the Army would occupy the building so no one else can get in, “the Air Force will get a six year lease with an option to buy,” “Marines will blow it up and call in from the smoking crater, ‘sir the building has been secured!'” The word means wildly different things across services!
  • Misrepresentations of the relationships between the officers and the enlisted. Officers often portrayed as autocratic jackasses and the enlisted don’t do anything about it and feel like they can’t. Now it varies, but from her personal experience the enlisted guys kept her alive and she appreciated that. The relationship can’t really be that adversarial. 
  • Discipline is what keeps people alive. It’s a survival tool. It doesn’t need to be dumbed down or dull. It’s not a weapon for officers to wield against the enlisted. 

EM: We think of discipline in the school sense but it’s not. It’s not punishment. It’s not discipline for someone to be disrespecting the person they’re giving orders to.

  • In Star Trek the officers know everything and the specialists always turn to the captains and they figure out how to fix it. The officer is usually the generalist and the enlisted are the specialists who know their subject much better than you do. That messes up the entire relationship. 

Q&A
You can’t really put the boring mandatory trainings and stuff in works (even longer works) because they are boring and you’ll lose the reader. (and in short works there isn’t room)

You have to make a choice between details and action/adventure. EM gets a little too tangled in the details because she’d rather read the story than get distracted by math. This is more a writer question than a military experience question.

The relationship between officers and enlisted has changed over time – historical fiction means you need to research. In history it wasn’t the same as it is now. You need to put thought to why people were loyal as well. (Merc vs. personal loyalty, etc.) Also need to keep in mind the differences between the types of different units. e.g. it will be different between electricians and infantry. The electricians for example might be older and have spent more time in civilian life before enlisting. Everyone interacts with their superiors differently.

In the Army, under fire the instinct is to shelter in the vehicles. In the Air Force, the engineer gets the hell away from anything that could be a target.
“Marines return fire.”
EM: If you shoot at us, we will shoot back.

For historical battles, you can’t really recreate historical battles with different technology. You can’t recreate Agincourt with machine guns and tanks. Be very careful about trying to borrow. Space battles in particular can’t be recreations of terrestrial battles because there are three dimensions of complete movement instead of two.

(Now the people at DragonCon have been shut down)

If you want to change the commands (historically) you have to change the commander. Commanders have a command style.

EM: every war changes the ethics of war. Everyone goes in to the war thinking they won’t do X and then have to violate that thing to save themselves/their platoon. If enough people do X, that will change the moors. The problem is the people in charge haven’t been in the pit. They don’t know about fighting and are unrealistic.

The ethics of warfare are constantly changing. WWII we indiscriminately bombed cities… we don’t do that any more.

EM: There are things I was taught in the 60s/70s that were thrown completely out the window in Iraq. It made people very angry, and they complained, wrote letters in protest, and it made no difference. When you have people who think war is profitable and a good idea, and who will never fight it and their kids will never fight it, it’s out of control. Armies get out of control too. The worst things that happen are religious wars because every action is justified at that point. Any society saying god is on their side is bad. War is never good. War is hell. Fighting when you don’t have to fight is really stupid.

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The entire last paragraph is in bold for a reason. I wish, oh how I wish, that my little fingers could have typed fast enough to get down what Elizabeth Moon said verbatim. Or even more, I wish that you all could have been there to hear it, because it was a thing of beauty. I could feel her frustration and anger in those words.

I checked youtube, but if someone recorded the panel, they haven’t put anything up yet. I live in hope.

Mike Shepherd Moscoe is listed in the program book as being the moderator for the panel.(Edit) He was there, but because he had been running late, Elizabeth Moon took over moderating the panel. And I will say, she was one of the best moderators I saw all weekend as well. The panel was fun, interesting, and she managed twice the normal number of panelists with efficiency.

Honestly, I have nothing else to add about this panel. It was fascinating and a good reminder of why, if you want to write military SF/F and have had no military experience yourself, it’s a good idea to do some research and talk to people who have actually done active duty.