The Magic River

Yoga and Writing

2009-11-13T16:49:00.000-08:00

A writer's life can be active: speaking at conferences, attending book signings, giving interviews. But, most of my time is spent typing at my laptop or sketching out ideas in a notebook. Long hours of this sedentary type of work causes muscle strain and headaches.

When I become focused on what's going onto the page, I no longer pay attention to my posture. Without realizing it, I'm soon hunching over the keyboard, sometimes remaining in the same position for an hour or two, and even clenching my jaw. To soothe my cramped hands and alleviate the crook in my neck, I do yoga.

The practice of yoga began thousands of years ago in India. The same poses are still taught today around the globe. Gyms, fitness centers, and spas offer instructor-led classes for groups while many personal trainers now include some yoga in regimes for private clients. Novices can also teach themselves through a variety of media such as cable fitness programs, DVDs, and books.

For a decade I have maneuvered my body through poses and stretches in order to work out the muscle kinks caused by daily life. When I started writing full time three years ago, sticking to a daily yoga routine provided me with benefits beyond keeping limber and honing my balance.

Practicing yoga for one half hour a day forces me to leave the computer behind both physically and mentally. This break is part of my everyday schedule, as important to me as meeting a deadline because it has become a step in my writing process.

One of yoga's basic tenets is breath. We breathe constantly, yet seldom do we take the time to concentrate on our breath, to be in the present moment. For writers, breath can be both the literal action of inhaling and exhaling, but also the metaphorical stirring of creativity.

Sustained yoga breathing allows me to focus on what's happening at that moment without worrying about what still needs to be done or what transpired earlier. I stretch my limbs, lower my heart rate, and clear my mind. Breathing through poses with names like upward facing dog, butterfly, and warrior one, reminds me about the whimsy in life and never to underestimate the value and strength of even the smallest part of our world or my creative musings.

Since I've been doing yoga for many years I've learned to customize my practice every day. Depending on which muscles need the most attention and just how sore they are, I concentrate on specific poses and determine how long a session should last. I always end with savasana, a resting pose where I lay flat on my back and allow all of my muscles to relax and "sink into the ground," starting at the tips of my toes.

After a yoga session, I feel confident and rested. Because I am refreshed mentally and renewed physically, my creativity rises, and I look forward to sitting down to write again. I can look at my goals realistically and work on completing them one at a time, even if that involves hours at the keyboard or hours signing books at the local bookstore.

Think of the Scene

2008-10-05T00:08:00.000-07:00

I have always been an admirer of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I may have just a small prejudice because he is a Minnesota boy, but beyond that, he was just a great writer. His descriptions were always genuine and precise. Nothing he wrote ever detracted from the story. And so I look to him when I need help with my own writing.

One problem we writers might have is showing what each character does during a scene. When characters speak, how should we show that? Or what happens when a character needs to react? What if they are suddenly surprised, or angry? A common error is what is called, 'head bobbing'.

To show what I mean, imagine two characters sitting across from each other. Call them Tony and Jeff. Tony needs to tell Jeff that he lost the contract for the job. Jeff will blame it on Tony and they'll end up in a fight. If we do head bobbing, it would go something like this:

Tony thought about what he should tell Jeff. He tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair for a moment and ran his fingers through his hair while Jeff watched him. Finally he decided just to spit it out. "You lost the contract, Jeff."

Jeff stared at Tony. He was stunned. He finally stood up so quickly his chair clattered on the floor. "That's bullshit!" he said.

Tony squirmed in his chair. "I didn't have anything to do with it," he said.

Jeff glared down at Tony. He was filled with a rage. His mouth curled into a sneer. "You're a liar."

"It was Jake," Tony said as he looked around for a way to escape. "Jake wanted the job. He out bid you."

Jeff puffed up and clenched his fingers into a fist. Then he slammed his hands onto the table. It hit Tony in the legs and he fell forward. Jeff leaned over and grabbed Tony's hair and with a fit of anger, slammed him on the table.

The writer wants to show what Tony does when he thinks, so he shows him tapping his fingers on the arm of the chair. And Jeff needs to react, so the writer shows him curling his lip into a sneer when he talks back to Tony. Somehow this all comes out as contrived.

When I re-read Fitzgerald, I saw that he did what all great writers do. He didn't do anything. There wasn't a single bit of head bobbing. The characters did only what they were supposed to do. His writing was transparent.

But how do we change the example above to reflect this? We don't focus on the characters moment by moment. We focus instead on the scene. With Tony and Jeff, we need to first see what the scene is about. Tony has to tell Jeff that he lost the contract. So we only show the action that will get us to this end.

Tony slouched in his chair. Jeff watched him from across the table. Jeff wasn't going to like what he heard, that was for sure, but if he didn't hear it, he'd hate him just the same.

"What are you thinking about?" asked Jeff.

The comment pulled Tony out of his reverie. "Uh--"

"Just spit it out, Tony."

Jeff was right. Best just to tell him. "You lost the contract."

"Bullshit!" Jeff jumped up so quickly his chair clattered on the floor.

"Look, I didn't have anything to do with it."

Jeff glared down at Tony. His eyes filled with a rage that was going to explode in just a second.

Tony eased himself away from the table. "It was Jake. Jake wanted the job. He out bid you."

"You're a liar!" Jeff slammed his hands into the table. It slid across the floor and hit Tony in the legs and he fell forward. Jeff leaned over, grabbed Tony's hair and slammed his head onto the table.

I got rid of anything that wasn't necessary. Of course, we can add a little bit of information, such as Tony running his fingers through his hair. But we should use it sparingly. It seems to add to the scene when we write it, but it only detracts in the end.

In a nutshell, rather than focusing on dialog and actions for each character, focus more on how the scene will come out at the end. This will avoid the head bobbing.

Past is prologue

2008-10-04T17:35:00.000-07:00

Pet gripe: Those who say we shouldn't feel any compunction read the classics because they aren't written in today's wonderful, exciting, easy-to-read style. My response: Today doesn't last more than today, and pretty soon "today's" wonderful style will be relegated to the same position as the styles of bygone ages. If we aren't versatile enough to be able to approach style via the parameters of its particular age, then we have become slaves to shallow fashion and the future looks bleak indeed. Literature is a growing language, one that brings about a cumulative understanding over years, decades, centuries, millennia. To read, or write, without reference to the past risks a hollow, dare I say, dangerous, experiencing. Don't forget Toynbee's admonishment. Oh, sorry, you probably haven't read Toynbee since he wrote so long ago and his style is too archaic to stomach. It's like a captain of a ship dismissing any prior experiences at sea and any knowledge of the principles of navigation. That ship will get nowhere fast. I am not against new, "modern" styles--far from it--but for goodness' sake, don't tell me we should reject what has come before as rubbish just because we are too stubborn to imagine a different time and a different place. I think with a little discernment and loosening of now-centric attitudes, we can see that those in the past aren't as different from us today as we might think. And if they are, so much the better for opening up new perspectives for us today.

Two new Philip Jose Farmer novels

2008-07-28T05:35:00.000-07:00

Normally here at the Magic River we restrict ourselves to talking about "other stuff," and leave the shameless self-promotion to our personal blogs.

Hopefully a brief exception is warranted in this case:

http://woldnewton-win.livejournal.com/24082.html

http://cpcarey.blogspot.com/2008/07/just-announced-song-of-kwasin-novel-by.html

Now back to your irregularly scheduled Magic River programming.

Quick Hits

2008-07-22T13:36:00.000-07:00

Ganked from the GalleyCat at Mediabistro.com: Dueling Sci-Fi Blogs from Big Publishing Houses.
Old School Wold Newton: I've revised my MySpace profile. For those of you who have been visiting my Wold Newton Universe website since it launched in 1997, the new MySpace wallpaper might provide a nostalgic trip down memory lane.
Hard Case Crime goes meta-fictional: Celebrating 50 years of Hard Case Crime! Okay, not really.
In more Hard Case Crime news, publisher Charles Ardai says: "Coming in 2009: an entirely new series that I'll be editing and the folks at Dorchester will be publishing, called THE ADVENTURES OF GABRIEL HUNT. This series is intended to be to pulp adventure fiction what Hard Case Crime is to crime fiction. It will tell the continuing story of a modern-day adventurer traveling the globe in pursuit of priceless artifacts and lost civilizations. Anyone who grew up reading H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs, or Alexandre Dumas and Sax Rohmer, or Doc Savage and the Avenger...or who grew up watching adventure movies starring Buster Crabbe or Harrison Ford...will find a lot to enjoy in the Hunt novels. You can get a glimpse of the cover art for the first book at www.HuntForAdventure.com."
I guess, given that I was moved to post not one, but two gorgeous, retro covers hearkening back to the golden age of illustration, I'll add that Glen Orbick is my new favorite cover artist.

Free Battlestar Galactica Novel

2008-06-27T10:30:00.000-07:00

Ganked from Matt Forbeck:

"Tor has been making e-books versions of some of their novels free for a week at a time over the past few months. This week, they actually have a tie-in novel available for free: Battlestar Galactica by Jeffrey A. Carver. Just go to Tor.com to register and get your copy.

Each novel is only made available for a week at a time, but Tor posts a new one each week, with a couple of gorgeous desktop wallpapers to go along with it.

Although Tor’s been at this for a while, this week’s offering surprised me because it likely meant that the licensor had to sign off on the free release. It’s one thing to persuade a novelist that putting up a free copy of a book is a good idea. It’s another to convince a major licensor that it’s okay too."

As one who's been dipping my toe into the licensed property tie-in waters, I find this very interesting indeed.

Writing a Script

2008-06-23T21:02:00.001-07:00

If you're a writer of novels or short stories, there may be a chance that you've wanted to try your hand at writing a script for either TV or a movie. The difference in format may seem daunting, but once you overcome a few formatting rules, you'll get the hang of it. Mind you, I'm showing the equivalent of chapter, paragraph and dialog rules. However, since you all have the story structure technique down for novel writing, it isn't much of a jump to apply the same storytelling rules to the visual medium. If you see a script with terms like "CUT TO" and "FADE TO" interspersed through the story, you are looking at a shooting script. The writer's job is to write a spec script and it never contains technical directions. That makes things a lot easier.

Here are three important formatting rules:

The Master Scene Heading:

This is written in caps. It establishes three important points for the script reader and (hopefully) the director. It states whether the scene is indoors or outdoors, where it is located, and the time of day.

INT. LIBRARY - EVENING

Once the establishing scene is written, and the action, say, stays indoors, then you don't have to get as specific. You could write the next scene by saying:

CONSERVATORY - LATER

Once the Master Scene Heading is written, the next step is to indicate the characters of the scene and what they are doing. It is written in plain text and it uses the present tense.

INT. THE LIBRARY - EVENING

Colonel Mustard leans against the fireplace with half a glass of brandy in his hand. He glances nervously at Miss Scarlet, who idly runs her finger across a candlestick. Professor Plum and Mrs. Green play a game of Gin Rummy in the corner.

The final formatting rule is dialog. The character's name is written in caps and is set at column 33. The following dialog should be at column 22. This is handled by all the screenwriting software programs and there are several templates for Word documents, so this isn't a worry. There should be no space between the character's name and the dialog. (Unfortunately, this blog won't allow me to single space the dialog, my apologies.)

MISS SCARLET

I do believe that you're nervous, Colonel.

COLONEL MUSTARD

Nonsense!

And that's it! Of course there is a lot more, but if you've had any experience writing in other mediums, you're already far ahead of the curve. The best book to read is "The Screenwriter's Bible" by Dave Trottier. And if anyone is interested in knowing more, just email me.

No One Reads That Old Stuff Anymore

2008-06-23T10:37:00.002-07:00

I'd been thinking about this post for a while ... as a response to comments I've heard here and there to the effect that there's no market anymore for classic pulp adventure. My own, admittedly somewhat arbitrary perspective is this: if classic pulp adventure is dead, if no one cares about these characters and series anymore, if there's really no market for this old stuff ... then how come I can walk into my local bookstore, either the local chain B&N or Borders -- or even better, the independent Tattered Cover -- and buy this old stuff right off the shelves?

So this is an overview of what the bookstore buyers have decided I can just walk in and get off the shelf, without special ordering it in, or turning to online bookstores, etc. (This is not meant to be a dig at, or utterly dismissive of, publishers with non-traditional distribution models -- heck, anything but, because some of them publish me. I'm trying to make a point about the market viability of this genre, and let's face it, bookstore distribution is still very important.)

Nostalgia Ventures reprints of the Doc Savage and The Shadow pulp novels, two novels each coming out each month in very nice reproduction volumes, are available at online bookstores, via the Diamond catalog which mainly serves direct-market comic shops, and mail order services. But better than that, imagine one of the most thrilling pulp-buying experiences of all, that of walking into a B&N and seeing this shelved cover out in the sf section:

I haven't had the pleasure of that experience since buying the many of the Bantam Books Doc Savage reprints from my local strip mall B. Dalton when I was a kid. And the local B&N didn't just have the book pictured to the left. There was half a shelf devoted to many in the series, right up there with the Doctor Who, Torchwood, Star Trek and Star Wars books.

Too cool.

Paizo's Planet Stories line also deserves special mention; it was, amazingly, launched just a year ago and is putting out an impressive one book a month. R.E. Howard, C.L. Moore, Michael Moorcock, Henry Kuttner, etc., what's not to love?

Baen Books is putting out omnibus editions of The Spider novels. The first trade did well enough to warrant a mass market reprint and a second trade.

The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
Tarzan of the Apes (B&N Classics)
The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril (Simon & Schuster; to be fair, a fiction adventure of two pulp classic pulp writers rather than a revival of older pulp characters ... but still...)
The Indiana Jones series (Bantam Books & Del Rey; again, the character did not originate in the 1930s, but is an homage to the pulps and serials)
The hardboiled and noirish mysteries from Hard Case Crime (a mix of rare and classic reprints and new novels ... and check out those beautifully lurid covers)
The Mark of Zorro (Tor Books)
Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammet remain constantly in print (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)
Robert E. Howard's Conan, King Kull, Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, etc. (Del Rey/Ballantine/Random House, Wildside, Dark Horse Comics, Paizo, Subterranean)

H.P. Lovecraft (Penguin, Del Rey/Ballantine/Random House, etc.)
New stories of classic pulp heroes The Spider, The Avenger, The Domino Lady, Zorro, and Lost Radio Scripts of Doc Savage (Moonstone Books; and in the interests of fair and full disclosure, I'm privileged to be a contributor to the Avenger book)
A Princess of Mars (Penguin, Dover)
Fantomas (Penguin, Dover)
Arsene Lupin (Penguin)

Now again, this survey was arbitrary in that it sets as the bar what can I reasonably expect to walk into a brick-and-mortar bookstore any buy off the shelf ... and that's a damn good list. I also should point out that some of the entries above are in the public domain, and thus presumably much cheaper to reprint (and I left out many PD reprints which appeared to be on-the-cheap, focusing on traditionally quality reprint editions from the likes of B&N Classics, Penguin, and Dover). But ... most of the list above is not PD. That means publishers are paying license holders $$ to reprint old stories or write new ones.

Also, the definition I used for "pulp fiction" was strictly narrow (tales actually and literally published in pulp magazines from the 1910s-1940s, and I noted where I deviated from the strict definition), whereas my own definition for my personal reading is much more wide-ranging, to include the Sherlock Holmes stories, the James Bond novels, and so on.

There's other great stuff to be had and -- let's admit it -- some not so great, both in reprinted pulp fiction and in "neo-pulp," that doesn't fall into the "buy-it-in-a-bookstore" category. You can check out Bill Thom's weekly updates to his Coming Attractions site for the latest in pulp-related news in books, comics, and movies. There's a lot to digest at Thom's site. I'll save some of my favorite high-quality non-brick-and-mortar recommendations for a later post, but one thing is certain: pulp is not dead.

Illuminating the Depths, or, Why the heck aren't you reading David Herter?

2008-06-15T11:25:00.000-07:00

The careers of most writers take many unexpected turns, most of which are completely out of said writers' hands. I have a hunch that's one of the big factors as to why perhaps one of the most artful and innovative writers I've read in the past few years is getting so little press these days. I'm talking about David Herter, whose wonderfully moody and entrancing 187 page novella The Luminous Depths was recently released from PS Publishing.

I first encountered Herter's work in 2002 with his novel Evening's Empire, about a man who is trying to deal with the loss of his wife by returning to the site of her death, a cheese town on the Oregon coast (a thinly veiled Tillamook?) where the members of the community hold strange secrets in hidden tunnels beneath the town (a slowly revealed closed community that for me conjured up Frank Herbert's Santaroga Barrier and Hellstrom's Hive). I enjoyed the novel quite a bit (how can you go wrong with a book where the protagonist is composing an opera based on Twenty-Thousand Leagues under the Sea?), but I am wondering if the book may have been so hard to categorize in this write-for-the-market world that it contributed to the temporary stalling of Herter's literary career. Certainly many sf readers who had previously picked up Herter's Gene Wolfe-like Ceres Storm would not have been pulled in by the cover of Evening's Empire, which depicts a man standing midway down a spiral staircase looking out a window, framed above and below by musical notes and a pool of water. Can you scream "mainstream" any louder? And yet the book was placed in the science fiction sections of the major chains, at least where I purchased it.

In any case, I digress. Herter is back, and you should be reading him! The most recent work, The Luminous Depths (which bears awesome cover art by Vladimir Verano that fits the story perfectly, by the way), is the second installment of Herter's Czech trilogy, which began with On the Overgrown Path, a beautifully voiced novella about the composer Leoš Janáček, which for the most part reads like magical realism until you get to the end and experience a rewarding "ah ha! this is really sf!" moment. The Luminous Depths picks up where OTOP leaves off, but with a change in characters. And as for characters, the love Herter has for his own (this time the brothers Karel and Joseph Čapek) transfers quite easily to the reader, although I get the feeling I am sometimes missing historical easter-eggs that Herter has planted throughout the book for his own amusement. The Luminous Depths starts off with a more typical sf trope, a timeslip, but Herter makes the trope his own both with his artful language and the circumstances of the timeslip itself, which in this case revolves around a 1920 production of Karel Čapek's play Rossum's Universal Robots. The shift to World War II German occupied Brno, with its golem-like creature prowling the cold dark back streets seeking bloodthirsty vengeance, is bone-chillingly creepy. Along with his daring to buck the trends of market-driven fiction in favor of telling a deliciously original story, Herter's strengths are voice and mood. I can only describe reading about his depiction of war-torn Europe as both touchingly poignant and deeply horrifying.

But that's all I'm going to say about it, other than to mention that I look forward with keen anticipation to the conclusion of the Czech trilogy (One Who Disappeared, due out in 2009), which I understand will hopefully one day be collected in a single volume with added material. And then there's the horror thriller dark carnivals, the Ceres Storm-related Yan Tan Tethera and In the Photon Forests (a sidequel and a prequel respectively), and the Viennese planetary romance The Fiery Angels to look forward to at some point in the future. But if you haven't read the first two installments of the Czech trilogy, what are you waiting for? Go read some Herter!

The Implicate Order: Just Read

2008-06-14T01:26:00.000-07:00

There's long been a lot of chatter about "literary" fiction vs. genre fiction, especially in science fiction circles; the merits of both, the weaknesses of both, the desire by some to get sf out of the "gutter," etc. Quite often, following the lowest common denominator of human nature, the issue becomes polarized, with readers of literary leanings criticizing pop fiction as plebeian and lowbrow, and those who mainly read pop fiction talking about the pretensions or the yawning longwindedness of mainstream. Beyond the fact that what now is often considered literary was often in its day presented, packaged, and regarded as popular fiction, such polarizing arguments may miss the point of reading completely. Why is it that when we go to the movies, it is perfectly acceptable to one evening go see the most critically acclaimed and poignant of dramas, or perhaps the chicest of art house films, while the next week it is also perfectly acceptable for us to go see Transformers, or Indy IV, or Kung Fu Panda? Nobody chatting at the water cooler even blinks about such a substantive shift in creative tastes when it comes to the silver screen. But when it comes to reading novels...let the dueling between the refined and the coarse begin--to the death!

The answer to the question above of course is motive. Why do we want to go see a knock-down-silly comedy? To experience the heaviness of our own mortality? Or to drop thoughts of our mortality for an hour and a half and experience the visceral forgetting that comes of extended periods of belly-laughter and amusement? And yet at times we do want to immerse our beings in pang-filled soul-searching, in order that we might put our lives into perspective and experience the world in a new way. Is laughter qualitatively "better" or "worse" than pang-filled soul-searching?

Its the same way with books. There are as many protocols of reading novels as there are writers, and perhaps as there are novels. And it's pretty undeniable to those trained in the protocols of both supposed camps of literature that there is as much bad literary or mainstream fiction as there is pop or genre fiction. But we come to one type of fiction or another based on the type of experience we hope to engage in. This is different from saying we dump our expectations on the books we read, for in appreciating any creative art or craft we should come with an open mind. The attentive reader will sometimes find that the polar opposites of "literary" vs. "popular" disappear in the experiencing of story. Reading is a form of contact between something beyond us and something deeper than we can be aware. And that contact connects two halves of a circle into one, causing the clashing of polarity to drop away in favor of wholeness. So don't worry if you're reading Dostoevsky or Doyle, Pratchett or Proust, and your neighbor's nose scrunches up at you. You're okay, trust me. Just read.

More of the Pulp Geek's Reading List

2008-06-02T18:06:00.000-07:00

Continuing that strange (to me) phenomena known as "reading for pleasure" (I was fortunate enough to have a vacation last week, during which I spent much time soaking up the Riviera Mayan sun and reading, snorkeling at Xel-Ha, and exploring the wonders of Tulum), here is the latest:

THE KATRINA PROTOCOL by Jean-Marc Lofficier was very good, lots of zombie, Voodoo, and conspiracy fun set in one of my favorite cities, New Orleans.

THE ASTONISHED EYE by Tracy Knight was also exceptional, sort of magical realism. I highly recommend it.

Books 2 and 3 in THE BARONESS series by Paul Kenyon, from the mid-1970s. The Baroness is a sort of female James Bond spy-type, with the difference that she has an almost Doc Savage-like group of team-members with various specialties. The books also feature as lot of graphic sex, written in typically cheesy 1970s porn prose, with The Baroness engaging in as much gratuitous and serial-partner activity as the author can slip in. Book 3, DEATH IS A RUBY RIGHT, was a good adventure, but was extremely disappointing and distasteful in two aspects. 1. The Baroness gets gang-raped (by uncivilized Mongols, of course) and has absolutely no emotional reaction to it whatsoever; in fact, she continues right on with her promiscuous sexual escapades as if noting happened. 2. She and her team are supposed to be operating undercover. She takes pains to conceal her own real name on the mission, but routinely refers to all of her teammates by their names. Major faux-pas.

Reading right now: SPECIAL ASSIGNMENTS: The Further Adventures of Erast Fandorin by Boris Akunin and it is absolutely brilliant, as are the other Fandorin mysteries.

Still in the midst of THE LOST JOURNAL OF INDIANA JONES. Loved the new movie, I don't care what the critics say.

Still on the upcoming list to be read:

FANTOMAS IN AMERICA by David White

FRONTIER CTHULHU (featuring a short story by my pal Matthew Baugh)

YOUNG ZORRO: THE IRON BRAND by Jan Adkins

THE DECEPTION OF THE EMERALD RING by Lauren Willig (the third book in the SECRET HISTORY OF THE PINK CARNATION series)

"Sorcerer Conjurer Wizard Witch," a long novella by Kim Newman, the latest in his Diogenes Club series (in the collection A BOOK OF WIZARDS, edited by Marvin Kaye)

DEVIL MAY CARE, the new James Bond novel by Sebastian Faulks, of all people; written to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Ian Fleming's birth, the book goes back to the literary Bond's original timeframe (the 1950s and '60s) with a Cold War 1967 setting. Really looking forward to this one.

A pulp geek's reading list

2008-05-13T18:11:00.000-07:00

After spending close to the last two years on two books, one a non-fiction -- okay, meta-fiction -- world-building, encyclopedic monstrosity, and the other a novel (the writing of which was prefaced by over a year of research), I had almost forgotten that strange experience known as "reading for pleasure."

The past month has witnessed a writing lull, so without further adieu, here is this pulp geek's list of recently read, and books on the short-list to be read:

The two books of Jules Verne's THE BARSAC MISSION (INTO THE NIGER BEND
and THE CITY IN THE SAHARA, published posthumously in 1919; apparently the books were a fix-up of two unrelated works, but they read well).

LET'S KILL AMES, a Doc Savage novel by "Kenneth Robeson" (the Street & Smith "house name" for pulp writer Lester Dent).

IRONCASTLE by Philip José Farmer and J.H. Rosny (read for the second time).

Started reading The Shadow novel SHADOW OVER ALCATRAZ by "Maxwell Grant" (the Street & Smith house name for pulp scribe Walter Gibson) last night. The first chapter kicks off in my town, Denver, at a hotel which, although unnamed, has to be the Brown Palace Hotel, which is literally right across the street from the church where I was married to Lisa almost nine years ago.

Also in the midst of THE LOST JOURNAL OF INDIANA JONES.

Next up:

THE KATRINA PROTOCOL (A Club Van Helsing Adventure) by my friend and colleague Jean-Marc Lofficier

FANTOMAS IN AMERICA by David White

FRONTIER CTHULHU (featuring a short story by my pal Matthew Baugh)

YOUNG ZORRO: THE IRON BRAND by Jan Adkins

SPECIAL ASSIGNMENTS: The Further Adventures of Erast Fandorin by Boris Akunin (features two novellas, "The Jack of Spades" and "The Decorator")

THE DECEPTION OF THE EMERALD RING by Lauren Willig (the third book in the SECRET HISTORY OF THE PINK CARNATION series)

THE ASTONISHED EYE by Tracy Knight

"Sorcerer Conjurer Wizard Witch," a long novella by Kim Newman, the latest in his Diogenes Club series (in the collection A BOOK OF WIZARDS, edited by Marvin Kaye)

That should keep me going for a couple more weeks, until it's time to tackle the next short story.

P.S. You may have noticed no links to Amazon. There's a reason for that.

Memories of My Melancholy Whores

2008-05-12T05:48:00.000-07:00

Not my whores, rather Marquez's.

"From then on I had her in my memory with so much clarity that I could do what I wanted with her. I change the color of her eyes according to my state of mind: the color of water when she woke, the color of syrup when she laughed, the color of light when she was annoyed. I dressed her according to the age and condition that suited my mood: a novice in love at twenty, a parlor whore at forty, the queen of Babylon at seventy, a saint at one hundred. We sang Puccini love duets, Agustin Lara boleros, Carlos Gardel tangos, and we confirmed once again that those who do not sing cannot even imagine the joy of singing. Today I know it was not a hallucination but one more miracle of the first love of my life at the age of ninety."

It's not often that I'm inspired to blog anymore, a tendency I really hope to change with CPC's new creation here. And it's less often that I've been inspired to write about a novel I've just read. In fact, I don't think I've ever written anything resembling a book 'review' on a blog. But the strength of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's prose, the beautiful simplicity of the plot and his overall ability to just tell a story reminded me of why I love to read, and has moved me to want to be a better writer.

While pursuing my degree at Seton Hill my reading tastes matured and diversified, but I never really felt the pull of genre fiction the way some of my peers had. For a few semesters I even wrote as if I'd ultimately pitch my novel as urban fantasy or suspense/thriller. But the conventions of genre always seemed to steer me back toward mainstream, not only as a writer, but as a reader as well. I never thought Charles de Lint, or any Fantasy writer, for that matter, did magic as well as Marquez or Sherman Alexie or Yann Martel. And to me, Romance seemed to rarely be about love.

And that stance, since so many of my peers wrote Fantasy or Romance, was an unpopular one. And often, when there was a discussion about popular versus literary or genre versus mainstream I'd find myself in the literary/mainstream minority. It was a popular fiction program, so that was to be expected. But I believed, and perhaps still do, that popular fiction can be literary and vice-versa. Some would say that the best writing is both popular and literary. And without getting into definitions for either I'll leave my digression by saying that Marquez has rekindled the spark that I used to feel for reading and writing. I think I see in his work things--passages, sentences and paragraphs-- that are meaningful to me. Things that force introspection or nostalgia. Bits of prose, that, as a whole, make me feel like I do after a concert or a long hike. Rather than just a story, I want to read books that become part of who I am. Books that stay with me and change when I do. And don't get me wrong--I have always--and will continue to--read genre. Always have. But I don't think I'd ever reread Clive Cussler like I've reread Kerouac. Because in Kerouac's novels I see bits of myself, whether in the past or in the moment, I can measure myself by the way I see his characters. When I first read DHARMA BUMS I wanted to be Japhy. The second time I resented him. Not because the book had changed, but because I had changed.

I picked up DHARMA BUMS for Tim's Passage Party last year and chose not to read from it. Ultimately, it wasn't the book I remembered, so I put it away hoping that one day it would become that book again.

THAT'S the kind of book I want to write. Something that I feel has soul, or has a soul. Something that maybe isn't as popular as it is rereadable. I don't know. If I know anything about the business it's that at this stage in the game we don't get to choose.

Soul, and recognizing it, is another post entirely. But soul, I believe, is contingent not upon genre as much as it is the desire of the author to be a small part of a reader's life.

"I began to read her THE LITTLE PRINCE by Saint-Exupery, a French author whom the entire world admires more than the French do."

The River Paddlers

2008-05-11T11:33:00.000-07:00

Christopher Paul Carey is a writer and editor living in the Seattle, Washington area, where he works in publishing. He holds a BA in Anthropology and an MA in Writing Popular Fiction.

Win Scott Eckert first read Philip José Farmer’s Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life at the age of eight, and was instantly hooked. After graduating with a B.A. in Anthropology, and in preparation for law school, he served as a graduate assistant at the Savage Crime College in upstate New York. Thereafter, he received his Juris Doctorate.

In 1997, he posted The Wold Newton Universe, the first site on the Internet devoted to expanding upon Farmer’s original premise of the related pulp heroes of the Wold Newton Family.

He has also served as an expert consultant on crossovers involving characters from pulp fiction and Victorian literature for an intellectual property lawsuit concerning a major motion picture. He has participated in panel sessions on Wold-Newton studies, pulp pastiches, and crossovers at the Comics Arts Conference at the San Diego Comic-Con International, the 9th NASFiC Science Fiction/Fantasy Convention, the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention, and FarmerCon.

Win is the editor of and contributor to Myths for the Modern Age: Philip José Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe, (MonkeyBrain Books, 2005), a 2007 Locus Awards finalist. He has written pulp tales for a yearly anthology of Wold-Newtonish stories, Tales of the Shadowmen volumes 1-4 (Black Coat Press, 2005-2008), mostly centered on the adventures of Doc Ardan, a French version of Doc Savage. His other credits include yarns in The Avenger Chronicles and Captain Midnight: Declassified (both from Moonstone Books, 2008). He is a regular contributor of Wold Newton essays and stories to Farmerphile: The Magazine of Philip José Farmer, and he was honored to contribute the Foreword to the new edition of Philip José Farmer’s seminal “fictional biography,” Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke (Bison Books, 2006). Win’s latest book is Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World, coming in 2009 from MonkeyBrain Books. He has also co-written a pulp-inspired novel, which is currently looking for a good home.

Find Win on the web at www.winscotteckert.com.

Jon A. LaBarre is a science fiction writer who lives only a short walk from the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle, Washington. He has written one novel and a number of short stories. He also has an interest in scriptwriting and has just completed a screenplay that ranges somewhere between the movies “Network” and “Repo Man.” He holds a degree in physics with a concentration in French and History. He spent five years in Japan and has used the sum total of his life’s knowledge in the pursuit of purveying fine hats for men.

Find Jon online at http://jonalabarre.wordpress.com.

Heidi Ruby Miller holds undergraduate degrees in Anthropology and Geography with specialties in Spanish and French. She also has a Master's in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University and belongs to the Authors Guild, Penn Writers, and the Science Fiction Poetry Association (SFPA).

Heidi is represented by Rita Rosenkranz Literary Agency. Her travel guide MOON Pennsylvania Camping is available at bookstores, outdoor stores, and online.

Find Heidi online at http://ambasadora.livejournal.com and http://www.myspace.com/ambasadora.

Jason Jack Miller is a writer, avid backpacker, and former whitewater raft guide. He began writing trail reviews for websites as a way to get free gear, a practice that quickly evolved into larger projects, such as articles for environmental groups and conservation organizations. A graduate of Seton Hill University's Writing Popular Fiction Program, he won the Rooney Award for a short story taken from his second novel. He is currently working on his third novel.

Jason is a member of the Authors Guild and Penn Writers, and is represented by Rita Rosenkranz Literary Agency. His travel guide MOON Pennsylvania Camping is available at bookstores, outdoor stores, and online.

Keep up with Jason online at http://jaguarpaddler.livejournal.com and http://www.myspace.com/jaguarpaddler.