Ben Godby

"Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell (2004)

2012-01-28T10:34:00.001-05:00

"Despondency makes one hanker after lives one never led. Why have you given your life to books...? Dull, dull, dull! The memoirs are bad enough, but all that ruddy fiction! Hero goes on a journey, stranger comes to town, somebody wants something, they get it or they don't, will is pitted against will. 'Admire me, for I am a metaphor.'"

"Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell is a travelogue being read by a composer whose letters are received by a scientist who is murdered in a mystery novel that is published by an editor whose memoir is turned into a movie that is watched by a clone in the future whose testimony becomes a historical document that inspires a religion after the apocalypse. It is complex, wide, and at many times very satisfying - humourously, poignantly, and tragically - but it appears, too often, to be a very long and unnecessarily contorted piece of literature into which the author can insert such philosophic assertions as the one above - many more of which exist, and, as it can be seen, are even grander and more wider-ranging:

"All those [boys] jammed like pilchards in cemeteries throughout eastern France, western Belgium, beyond. We cut a pack of cards called historical context - our generation... cut tens, jacks, and queens. [Theirs] cut threes, fours, and fives. That's all."

Although the book is well written, its philosophical musings perceptive, and possessed generally of a multitude of engaging moments, it feels like something written deliberately for Oprah's Book Club. These philosophical moments, which - owing to the fact that the book has no central plot line or premise other than the vague and supposedly profound wisdom that runs through it - are the very core of the book's wholeness and being, are presented to us in such a way - viz., intricately vocalized and explained, rather than revealed - that they lose most of their force. We are not ushered into wisdom, but, especially in the later chapters, have it beaten into our heads.

"People b'lief the world is built so and tellin 'em it ain't so caves the roofs on their heads'n'maybe yours."

The book is also fundamentally marred by its "apex" structure. The narrative is broken into six voices, and these voices appear - and the story is told - in the structure A, B, C, D, E, F, E, D, C, B, A. I actually find this structure new, and interesting in theory; but in practice it was very annoying. After finishing the first three sections of the book, I thought that Mitchell had put together a tome of cliff-hangars. Flipping forward, I perceived the structure and decided to finish the book. Suffice to say, this is not how a book should feel. In my opinion, at least, one should be driven towards the ending, not frustrated for its lack of them. But that's not all: the actual endings - the descent from F back to A - was not very climactic or exciting. The stories wrapped up, but their endings were not very spectacular. They just kind of dribbled away, the holes filled with - yes, you've got it now - burbles of wisdom.

"The media... is where democracies conduct their civil wars."

"Cloud Atlas" is an interesting book, and not without merit. But it is a very long book, in my opinion (500 pages), for a theoretical / experimental lark, and one that ultimately fails to deliver really, comprehensively interesting characters and stories - instead patching those holes with maxims that seem designed for consumption by those whose deepest thinking must be done by others.

Old people can't write?

2012-01-26T09:04:00.000-05:00

Normally this is the sort of linking I would do on Twitter or Google+, but since this is pretty insanely perspicacious, since it hints at dark inklings that pretty much every writer will reject as abomination, since it is written by someone who seems vastly more fannish than myself and hence has more source material and provides new perspective, since it falls into the general mentality of the science-of-writing or "craft"-oriented thinking about writing and yet directly opposes the spiritual modus operandi of those who think about writing as a discrete set of operations that lead to artistic success, since it's generally scary and depressing and worth thinking about not only in regards to writing but all artistic and productive forms, I'm linking to it here: Scott Taylor's article at Black Gate, "The Age of Perfect Creation:"

"Writers have a window of 'perfect' production, and although it's much more forgiving than the 4 years of an athlete, it still exists. I mean, there's a reason you know famous works by authors and yet don't know what they’ve done in the past 20 years of their lives until their obituary is plastered all over the internet."

Personally, I don't doubt it. I can think of even more examples than Taylor offers. But, man... what a terrible thing to suggest. What a terrible thing to think, to know, not only as a reader, but - perhaps more importantly - as a writer.

Any thoughts, Internet?

-bn

Dear Kobo: Reading is not an achievement (in a society that can afford eReaders)

2012-01-22T18:44:00.000-05:00

So my Kobo has started to give me achievements. Sort of like when you're playing a videogame, and you unlock a certain effect: maybe you blow up six enemies at once, and you get "Explosive Temper!" or some other such silly phrase emblazoned across the top right of your screen. I've picked up "I Eat Books for Lunch" and "Happy Hour," among a few others, though I have so far declined to share these "achievements" on Facebook.

Why? Because, honestly, reading is not like videogaming: it's not something I imagine making light of. We should not, in short, get achievements for reading in the context of a society that can afford to produce eReaders and eBooks. We're enormously technologically advanced: basic literacy - and a desire to occasionally indulge in some reading - should not be something to gloat over on Facebook.

But then again, I have to realize that literacy is still a thing that must be fought for; that not everyone, even in advanced industrial societies, is literate; and, despite my cynicism and mockery, maybe these achievements can actually help induce kids - of all backgrounds, from all places - to read more.

I certainly hope so, because I just think it's kinda goofy.

Weigh in, Internet: Is Ben Godby just a cynical jerk?

-bn

In which I tango with the critical-massing of my dislike for fantasy

2012-01-21T10:44:00.000-05:00

There's this writer I have for some time really admired. When I first read this author (maybe a year and a half ago), their writing seemed brilliant. I loved it. I nodded and said, "Now, that is some fantastic fiction," in which 'fantastic' denoted both genre and quality.

However, I recently read some new stories by said author, and was massively under-impressed. I did not like the stories I read at all. I couldn't even finish them. But when I turned a critical eye on this and looked back on the stories I had liked, I saw there was no change in quality, really. Neither had the genre changed. And that was the problem. I threw up my hands and said, "This is too fantasy for me."

I started writing before I started reading. Okay, that's a little 'wrong' to say, but when I started writing, I was only reading philosophy, Buddhist sutras, and non-fiction (usually about wars that confirmed my hypothesis that human beings are insane). When I started writing, my fiction came out 'fantasy-like;' and, since I've always played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons, and since I read "The Wheel of Time" in middle-school, I figured I was a fantasy kind of guy.

In the past year I've struggled - in both reading and writing - to come to grips with the fact that, in general, I hate fantasy. There is fantasy that I do like, but in the same way that I just might happen to like anything else; and I can guarantee you it's not the stuff that Tor, or Lightspeed, or Clarkesworld publishes. As a genre - or, even, as a "movement" - fantasy has got to be the most childish and stultifying product of the human imagination ever conceived (here's some reading on the subject: The Persistent Neoteny of Science Fiction by Athena Andreadis). There was a time when it was probably revolutionary, but that was probably half a century ago. Now, it's a formula.

This is not really an easy thing to tango with, though. On the one hand, I've been writing more surreal, magic-realist, and bizarro fiction these last few months; but how do I find new heroes? This might sound like an all-too-fantastic request, but I won't shirk from the fact that I crave role models who can point out new directions, provide inspiration, and generally show what kind of things can be done with the various tools of the fictioneer.

The other problem: I'm in the middle of writing an extravagantly classic sword-and-sorcery novel right friggin' now. However, this only seems to be a problem. For one, it's a flight of fancy written with deliberate and ironic over-zealousness (flagrant good-evil axis; flagrant manliness; flagrant Anglo-Saxon countrysides); for two, I'm doing it for fun and on the off-chance I get rich; and for three, I'm also writing a magical-realist novel that experiments with at least five different modes of narration, which I figure at least balances out my sins. And, of course, I've always been a big proponent of hypocrisy.

I'm not leaving fantasy completely empty-handed: I've got the VanderMeers, who are, if not pure fantasists, at least relatively rooted in that realm; and, as impure fantasists, have provided much of the inspiration for "getting out." But other than that, I'm looking for new models and new directions. Some promising ideas have already begun to sprout, and I'll certainly blog about them here in the future.

Onwards! To something else!

-bn

The most enjoyable videogames are the most insane ones

2012-01-20T08:18:00.002-05:00

The funny thing about video games is that they are essentially incredibly - indeed, impressively - complex and convoluted ways of making you do the same thing over and over again and not getting bored (in other words, something like Einstein's oft-heard definition of insanity, "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" - which in this case, I guess, is a new high score). No matter how sophisticated games have become, they're effectively just riffing off of Asteroid and Space Invaders. The enemies change, but the objective remains the same.

Because of this, I find it really easy to become jaded by games. Especially these days, what with the trend of marketing games as "sandboxes" and "open worlds." Skyrim, the latest game in the Elder Scrolls series, is praised for its level of detail and freedom, and the dynamic nature of its dragon attacks. These are indeed cool facets, yes, but it's still basically just a game where you go around killing stuff, finding pick-ups, and reaching the end of quests. That's right: it's Super Mario. If "open world" just means you can smith, sneak, and enchant, then presumably the real world is just composed of mere addenda to eating, sleeping, pooping, and fornicating.

...well, that was an injurious analogy - metaphysically-speaking.

But, look: this shouldn't be seen as some terrible conspiracy or an awful ontological premise; it's just the facts of the matter. It's impossible to create a videogame that gives the player the same freedom as real life - and once that game is created, our lives will in fact change for ever, and the games won't be games any longer. But, as I said, it's very easy to get jaded about games when developers do little more than change the faucets. There are exceptions: I've played a ton of Mount & Blade lately precisely because the game has an incredibly well developed melee combat engine. There's literally no other game out there that can compare with M&B's multidirectional, manual-blocking medieval sword fights (and if you find one that can, tell me immediately). By way of contrast, Skyrim's melee combat feels like peanut butter monsters fighting each other with giant foam hands - inside a jar of pickle juice.

But there's also another type of game, a type of game that's getting more and more popular as indie developers rise and publish sweet, sweet videogame nostalgia-nirvana. These are the games that make you happy to play with the same old machinery you've always played with, just by weight of their sheer awesomeness. Super Crate Box is one of those games.

What is Super Crate Box? It's a single-screen platform shooter where your objective is to pick up crates. Every time you pick up a crate, you get a random weapon. Oh, and monsters are spilling from the sky.

Oh, and if you don't kill the monsters, they turn into undead monsters and come back to kill you.

Oh, and you score points by picking up crates.

Yeah. It's amazing. It's ridiculous. It's the same thing over and over again, and it doesn't try to hide it. And it's amazing.

Super Crate Box, ladies and gentlemen. Get to it. My high score is a paltry 68; what's yours?

-bn

Slow and sensual versus hard and fast: the Writer's edition

2012-01-19T08:51:00.000-05:00

I am currently in one of those moments, those moment-periods (periods that are composed of moments?), wherein I am possessed by whatever muses/demons/chymical reactions exist that cause one such as I to produce vast amounts of creative output. I am working on two separate novels, both at what effectively feel like blinding, absurd, profane, ecstatic paces; except that I am working on them in two radically different ways.

The first novel is being handwritten. To wit:

did you think this post was about sex? don't be so callous!*

Unfortunately, the fattening binder of completed pages is not visible in this photo: here we see a mere tablet in progress. I'm really enjoying this method of writing, and I suspect it has to do with the fact that this is the sort of the novel that can't really be written fast. It's the only thing I've ever written, I think, that's deeply, essentially character-based. I simply can't think through who/what/why my characters are quickly enough to keep up with my keyboard typing, and if I tried to write this novel on a computer (and, actually, I did; the post-surrender files are still on my hard drive) it would turn out badly (it did!).

On the other hand, I'm also writing a novel that is pure cream. And when I say cream, I mean it is a disgusting, filthy, awful thing that is produced by a terrible industry that takes advantage of weaker creatures in order to nourish disgusting human habits. Yes, that's right: I am producing a pulpy sword-and-sorcery for the masses. It's really wicked-awesome, and I am just as excited for this novel - and all its ancient artifact-wielding, monster-crushing, demon-raising goodness - as the other. This novel, however, is based entirely not on characters, but rather on archetypes, tropes, venial expectations and irascible wit. You can without doubt guess which tool I am using to produce this feckless tract:

it's FocusWriter, bro, get with it.

Yes, my caption writer has got it: it is FocusWriter, and you better get with it. What a swell program. It keeps me fully attentive for the hour I demand of myself - the hour in which I grind my nose to the screen - and saves my product in a neat RTF file that it automatically reopens when next I open FocusWriter.

But, seriously, what strangeitude! Until now, quite honestly, I'm the sort of guy who would say god dammit but there is only one way to do things and that's the way it is, and if you're not with me well then I'll have to line you up against this wall and make an end of you. But no longer. I have indeed made an end of that very Ben, for that Ben did not realize that there is more than one way to do things, and the only way to do things is to realize that there is more than one way to do things. If you don't realize that, you ought to be shot.

Well, alright, that was my post. Thank you.

-bn

*If you didn't get this pun, you no longer have permission to read my blog.

SOPA SOPA SOPA

2012-01-18T09:22:00.002-05:00

SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA SOPA

"There Is No Year" by Blake Butler

2012-01-17T19:57:00.002-05:00

"…and in the midst of all of this, from the outside, from neighor's doors or windows and in the street – from all but a certain very minor other angle there was no way for most to see what had gone on – you could not see that this wasn't one of many houses – from the street the house was fine – A-OK – today, tomorrow – on the walk the neighbours passed in silent indecision – what for dinner? glass or chicken? – though in the minute on the hour their skin went prickled near their teeth, they looked a second time in one direction, pulled their pets along to shit on somewhere else – that night they didn't kiss their sons or wives – they grew one more new long hair or felt a ticker in their thigh – only in their sleep then could they see what they had seen."

This is the sort of portentous, power-of-suggestion horror that made Blake Butler's "There Is No Year" a terror to read. Never mind that the volume itself is oddly shaped, developing physical discomfort in the reader from the get-go; and never mind, too, the disturbing photographs of blurred faces, blurred lights, and unidentifiable black and white matter interspersed throughout the book that impresses deeply on the subconscious. Butler's prose – which is a sort of constant decay, a man's thoughts cycled through a machine that endlessly repeats them while adding and subtracting words almost unnoticeably – is adequate alone to produce the sensation of scare, even if it never tells us exactly what is happening or quite what exists in the funhouse/haunted-house that is the book's setting. Just as his protagonists (the nameless Father, Mother, and Son) are constantly unable to recall things, unable to see, unable to move, so the reader is trapped by the inability to perceive totally into the book; and so, on the edge of things that are horrible – a videogame character trapped in an endless hallway begging the son for help, for example – we can't tell if these things are horrible because they have been written here, or because they have been written – perhaps slightly differently – somewhere inside of us before.

Impenetrability is the dominant theme that runs through this work, whether in the form of immense, endless, and inexplicable boxes, or of light that stuns and drowns, or of air that holds and restricts, or of questions that cannot be answered, or the book's underlying teleology – which the reader can feel there even if he or she cannot grasp it (perhaps because its existence is only the possibility of an existence – a hangover of expectations). And yet, despite the fact that the book is fundamentally holding out against the reader – and despite the fact that this holding-out makes it even more likely that a fallible human reviewer will be unable to adequately synthesize the (sub)conscious theoretic foundations of a work – I found "There Is No Year" to be philosophically simple. Namely, this is a book of existential alienation, bearing all the trappings of the dissatisfied suburban youth. This is a book where the ultimate horror is the Home and the Family, even if it sometimes branches out to thrash us in the horror of Work and the Coming-of-Age – which are really not so distant or out-of-place in a writing that fears domesticity.

For this reason, I doubt this book can speak to everyone. It spoke to me quite strongly, insofar as I am a product of middle-class suburban upbringing, and, socio-economically speaking, identify strongly even now with the complex of emotions, ideologies, and rebellions contained within that worldview. I don't know, however, that this book can be nearly as powerful to women – insofar as the mother character is brutally stereotyped, sidelined, effectively ridiculed, and appears infrequently – or to non-whites or people of working class backgrounds (who simply do not appear - although this may be blamed on the prejudice of my inner eye). Engrained deep within this book is a "first world problems" sensibility that, though it does nothing to lessen the horror during the reading, makes one question the book's potency at its end.

On the second day, God referred to things in their complex whole as "good'nough" and threw in the towel

2012-01-17T14:45:00.003-05:00

Well, there you have it: my blog has been re-designed. This new palette, this new structure, these new fonts and images bespeak a certain je ne sais quoi: an addition of mirthfulness, a subtraction of seriousness, an addition of a certain aloofness and nearly-as-holy-as-thouness to which the previous incarnation of this webdevice could not attain. Or, you know, whatever.

It's funny how things don't ever actually even once ever progress smoothly, but rather lurch along in dangerous, frightful jerks. Just the other day this blog was rather different (of course, it's still pretty similar; but I think we can all agree that there's a significant separation between a mostly red theme and a mostly blue one). Some days, I write a lot, and some days, I play a lot of video games. Some days I despair I may never write again; others I swear off the pixel juice. Yes, yes, this life is a strange one. Yours probably is, too.

Anyhoo, the gist of the motivation to recreate the visual subtexture of this blog was the general realization over a certain period of indefinite time (this one thing, and only this thing in all the things that have ever happened in the world of things, having happened gradually [I swear]) that I didn't really associate with some of the associations I had until now made. I realized, for example, upon perusing my LibraryThing, that I don't even read genre fiction (N.B. that the majority of genre books on that list, like the Octavia Butler and the Lavie Tidhar and the Cory Doctorow and the R. Scott Bakker, I abandoned after nary a centain of pages). Not only do I not read the genre magazines to which I submit and profess adoration (in the hopes that my fanboyishness will earn paycheques); I don't even read the books! Geez! Wowza! Yikes! (I mean, okay, hold on, I read some stuff, like things edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, and, I guess, things they suggest on their various Internet mouthpieces - so, yeah, I'm a big fanboy, but back off it bro you don't know what you're getting into.) And yet my fiction, my fiction, the stuff that I churn from the depths of my belly, is so obviously nothing less than genre. It may smack of pretentiousness, yes, it may lack good character development, this is true also: but it is most definitely genre. It is most definitely the product, ultimately, of elves (or, at least, of black-hole-monsters), and this alone demonstrates how rooted I am in something I don't actually appear to enjoy.

Oh, well. Whatever, amirite? Such is life. I'll have to continue being not exactly what the magazines are looking for; I'll have to continue to foist my vision upon an undesiring public. Make it so!

Now, please foist this blog upon yourselves. I have more important things to do.

-bn

The design was in the creation and the creation was in the design

2012-01-16T18:58:00.000-05:00

I've decided it's time to spruce things up around here a bit. Yeah, spruce 'em up! I'm going to be re-designing the look of the blog, and since I can't save drafts of Blogger templates, and since I won't be done in a single evening, and since and since and since, you can expect things to maybe look moderately odd around here for at least a certain amount of time.

I know how hard this will be on all of you, so please accept this massively long, totally rockin' tune from the guy who once played in Emperor.

-bn

"All of a Twist" by Reza Negarestani at Weird Fiction Review

2012-01-06T12:04:00.000-05:00

I read Reza Negarestani's "Cyclonopedia" this past summer (I think it was summer) and much hated it. I'm not sure how Negarestani has somehow managed (perhaps by black Arabian majicks) to delude the likes of the VanderMeers and China Miéville into considering him a weird fictioneer, or even someone worth mention, rather than a philosophic imposter, insofar as I found "Cyclonopedia" to be not a piece of fiction at all, so much as a helter-skelter of vapid theory convoluted with fat, Cyclopean language. Yes, "Cyclonopedia" has moments where it shines, where great depth is unearthed with the Cthulhean shudderings of Negarestani's laborious conjurings; but, generally, I call it total farce and neither here nor there.

That said, this is actually a really intelligent article. It is also a real piece of cogent theory (unlike "Cyclonopedia," which was like sifting through the remains of the author's vomit to discover what he had digested). It would be perfect if Negarestani didn't fall back on plugging his half-baked "novel" to wrap up the text... but I recommend it anyway.

oh what the hell, I guess it was alright.

From "All of a Twist" by Reza Negarestani at the Weird Fiction Review:

"Now if narration is both ‘to know’ and ‘to relate’, not only is the narration of/about the contingent reality twisted with a logic endemic to tales of spirit possession (when I think, it is actually the outsider, the demon inside me that thinks through me), but also it is unfolded with the dynamics inherent to conspiracy theories (all relations, adventures and plots are twistedly driven by a secret agreement – or complicity – between contingent and indifferent objective worlds… the more epical the narration, the thicker the conspiracy, the more elliptical the depth of the complicity)..."

Zing!

-bn

Dear semi-pro publishers: Please try to look a little more professional

2012-01-05T18:39:00.000-05:00

It's that time of my submissions cycle - i.e., the time when I run out of known good markets and start looking for new ones - when the anger and frustration which are the inheritance of the Writer-Aspirant boil out in a tirade directed at the inadequacies of others. Thus:

There are some fantastic semi-pro magazines out there. There is Shimmer. There is Ideomancer. There is Kaleidotrope. What is fantastic about these magazines? It is not, dear reader, their fiction - per se. It has been my general impression that even the tokenest of token-paying markets deliver good stories unto their clientele. The profusion of generally good writers, their profusion of stories, and their unremitting desire to see publication through whatever means possible produces this more or less universal result. There is, I find, essential parity between the quality of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and the quality of Abyss & Apex. I even sometimes find that there is more willingness to publish with a certain derring-do among the semi-pros: I've always found that Canada's Neo-opsis produces less-polished but more interesting issues than Canada's higher-paying, better-polished On Spec. What really sets a semi-pro apart from the rest is their... how shall I put it... sex appeal.

...insofar as readers are having sex with their book design/cover art.

That is a really complex and perhaps crass way to say that there is no reason a publisher that can only afford to pay semi-professional rates ought not to try to look and feel every bit as good as a the pros. After all, the writers are doing the writing; how hard is editing, really? Can we please have some Frank Frazetta on the dance floor? CAN WE PLEASE.

This image pre-approved by David Barron.

This, however, is not the case. It does not cease to astound me how many promising semi-pros crop up in the world of genre publishing, only to appear as stunted, disgusting publishing trolls when they at last bear fruit. They extoll virtuous ideas, they hunt out great words, but they clothe these relics of gold in... in... I'M OUT OF METAPHORS BUT IN SOMETHING TERRIBLE. And the thing is, I cannot abide the idea of submitting work to a publisher whose website is less awesome than mine, no matter the quality of the thing inside; and how could I? All I've done with this blog is make some template corrections and slap-dash a banner together - with dragon fruit. If you can't look this prime, I ain't got the time.

And honestly I would say my content is pretty bitchin', so.

I won't name names only insofar as it would single out unfairly those whose names that I haven't in psychological trauma repressed; and, more importantly, because the reason I find them so disappointing is that, in general, they are promising. It is their failure to live up to expectations that depresses me; but I can still be bolstered by the possibility they might one day turn out alright, like ugly children who grow, one day, to be more beautiful than you, causing great sorrow and regret that you once teased them without mercy upon the playground blacktop.

This is really just to say that, if nothing else, one thing that the "Indie Publishing Revolution" has without any doubt shown me is that it is incredibly, incredibly easy to be a self-made professional in this world. All you need do is try. I mean, look at the Red Penny Papers: they're a token market, and they're hotter than hell! I mean I'm just saying...

-bn

New eBooks for a New Year

2012-01-04T12:14:00.002-05:00

I haven't done any eBooks since October, and I wasn't, of late, really in a mood to do any more; not for any particular reason, but for a certain lack of je ne sais quoi and a general alignment towards laissez faire writerism.

Then I read Annie Bellet's year-end recap of her eBook sales. Annie's doing quite well for herself in the indie publishing realm: she's made $3,000 this year, which, by my reckoning, is absolutely fantastic. My nod to Ms. Bellet's literary skill and business acumen.

What really drew my attention, though, was how her sales broke down: namely that more than half of her sales were for short stories. Although I've only published short stories myself, that never before divested me of the opinion that short stories should, theoretically, not sell well. I based this on the fact that novels are more bang for your buck, and, honestly, that, despite being a short story writer, I very rarely read short fiction.

Annie's numbers made me think otherwise. Maybe she's got more "eCred" on account of the novels and collections she does have out there, but the brute reality is that she's mostly selling (volumetrically) short stories.

Thusly: on to the bandwagon, with me!

Of course, making eBooks isn't just about making money: I find it to be pretty fun, mostly because it gives me an excuse to diddle around in Photoshop to make covers, but also because it's super gratifying to see "thine eBook" and "thine Amazon store." Annie's post reminded me of what I can do as a writer (i.e., other things than just writing). So, I present to thee, one and all, my latest two eBooks, a pair of fantasy tales from the deep history of the Everlasting Planets: "The Clockist" and "The Master is Equal Parts Guile and Evil." Enjoy!

-bn

The revolution will come standard with a selection of typesets and customizable line spacing

2012-01-02T21:16:00.000-05:00

My parents finally wised up this year and got me a Kobo e-reader - which was convenient, since I didn't have the heart to tell them I was sick of all those darn paper tomes. No, but seriously: it was a fantastic gift. I'm a writer, and a young person, aren't I? Thusly, it's also a slightly worrisome gift, since it suggest my parents are more hip and future-forward than I am. I'm the one who reads science fiction; who thought I would be getting gadget advice from those old fogies?

the device in question is visible centre-bottom,
though this photo is really just an excuse
to show off my wine stash

Anyway, with the holidays basically finished, I've finally had a chance to sit down and set up the Kobo. It is, in sum, pretty awesome. It's nice to read on, for one thing. I can barely stand to read blogs on back-lit screens, let alone a whole novel, so the gray-scale is by my eyes much appreciated. It's also touch-screen, which keeps things feeling natural.

But by the far the greatest part is, obviously, the possibilities it opens up. Not just because Project Gutenberg has 36,000 free eBooks: also because I've got many a chum who be an eWriter - or an Indie Publisher, or a Literary Communist, or whatever those yellabellies call themselves these days. I can finally read the eBooks of such literati as David Barron, Joseph Vasicek, and Jeff Ambrose. As a matter of fact, I have six eBooks of my own that I can finally read as they were meant to be!

AND DID I MENTION YOU CAN PURCHASE THEM HERE.

Anyway, this is a really cool little tool, and I'm pumped to have it - despite the fact that, being an obstinate young man who acts like an old man when it comes to technology, I would probably not have acquired one for myself until a few days after people starting uploading books directly into their cerebellums.

Onwards, to the future!

-bn

2011: A year of satisfaction and snobbery

2011-12-22T09:53:00.000-05:00

It's not yet the calendar New Year, but it's the Solstice, and the darkest day of the year is, I figure, a perfectly appropriate time to offer up one's analysis of one's own artistic pro/re-gressions. Besides, everybody's doing it, and this blog needs content, content, content for the masses of abiding fans.

2011 was a pretty awesome year insofar as it was the year I began selling fiction. Brain Harvest served up my inaugural publication, followed by Bards & Sages, Fusion Fragment, and Brain Harvest again. I've also got work forthcoming in Kaleidotrope, Weird Tales, and Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine.

It is also the year that has seen the most turbulence in my self-consciousness-as-writer and aesthetic-consciousness-as-artist. In short, I've radically departed my once-ambition to be the sort of writer who makes a living at the craft. This evolution has a twofold source:

1. I started a new job in April of 2011, which I actually like. I do a lot of creative stuff at work, I have a great boss, and I enjoy the milieu in which I work. This means that I don't feel the desperation that consumed me when I began writing, namely the desperation of what shall I do with this life? Therefore, writing is no longer an act of necessity - I don't care if I make a living at it since I can make an enjoyable living other ways - but an act of leisure, spontaneity, informality and joy, on par with playing video games or reading in its "utility" but surpassing them by volition of the endorphins (or, y'know, whatever neuroscientological-object) released by the creative accomplishment.

2. I grew sick of genre fiction. I've never been a genre-purist; I've always preferred the weird fantasies of Jeff VanderMeer and China Miéville to the epic/heroic brand, and I was never a big fan of science fiction (although I've come to realize that SF is a far more noble and "real" form of fiction-as-artwork than fantasy [typically] is; that's a subject for a future post, however). But with two and a half-years of genrefication under my belt, I feel as though I've experienced most of what genre-as-designated can offer me. There are exceptions: Michael Cisco's "The Narrator," which I read this year, is fantastic but far more than fantasy; Joe Abercrombie's books are vapidly pulp medievalism, but told so well that I cannot resist their allure. In the final measure, though, I've been finding it more and more interesting to read "literature," or, more appropriately, "realistic novels," for perhaps the reason that I find them less predictable (even though they might obey the physical and historical contexts of "real realities"). Since the "realistic novels" I've been picking up are always books that in various ways have been nominated for or awarded prizes (since these are the ones, I suppose, that I hear about), I'm exposed to really good writing on a daily basis; and this in turn has made me far, far more critical of my own writing.

These two factors have a similarly dual outcomes:

1. I am writing less. Far, far less than I did last year. I don't track my output, so I can't say, proportionally, how much less. For all I know, I'm not actually writing less in terms of word-output; but I am without doubt putting in less time, and producing fewer completed works. This is because, no matter the majestic corona that I feel surrounds me when I write/have written, there are some days I just want to loaf around and be distracted by this year's Quadpartite Threat:

f'in videogames

Not-writing is to writing as to winter is to summer: you've got to have them all to thoroughly appreciate.

2. I am writing far more interesting stuff. Notice I do not say "better," as even if there were a good way to evaluate this (and we might say that sales is one, and since I haven't sold any of my "more interesting" stuff yet, "better" is in fact the opposite of what we might judge this year's work to be), I figure the condition of having-written-solidly-for-another-year would predict exactly a general betterness. No, I'm more interested in the fact that I've tried writing differently. In the last six months, I've made attempts at new styles, structures, and themes that I would not have broached in 2010. Overall, I would say that I've realized I am most interested in writing "idea" fiction, as opposed to character- or plot-"based" (obviously that's a somewhat loaded term, but hopefully you get it) stories, as well as word-heaviness - in terms of description, atmosphere, streams of consciousness, etc. - rather than sparse, action/speech-oriented prose. In short, in 2010, my objective was to produce fiction for large, extant markets; in 2011, it became to produce stuff I think is wicked.

The Fyutcha

I don't have any particular resolutions for the New Year - although it will be the Chinese year of the Dragon, which seems to portend a general need/propensity for awesomeness. A lot of my compatriots (to be found in the sidebar under "Writer Friends") seem to have plans to Write A Billion Books, but I can't make such a resolution - not because it isn't admirable, but because I once possessed that kind of vision and found it didn't match with what actually produces happiness for me. In a rather unnecessarily philosophic way, I've found I'm transitioning from a writing model of "work" to "action" in the Arentdian definition - not insofar as my work is in any way political, but insofar as it is becoming an end-in-itself, combining the what-it-is with the who-I-am, where I once sought to reify the greater-than-myself in totemic texts.

MIND BLOWN, RIGHT?

Actually I'm pretty sure I'm interpreting Arendt incorrectly.

Onwards, to 2012!

-bn

I love you, Facebook, but we can't be together anymore

2011-12-21T10:35:00.000-05:00

I've only ever quit Facebook once before, but this time... this time it's different. This time, I'm not going back.

I actually only started really using Facebook on a regular basis about a year ago. The precise reason I did so was because my outre ville friends basically told me that they would not respond to e-mails and that the way of the future was to connect to them with Facebook. I can definitely say that it brought me closer with a lot of my friends, because Facebook makes it easy to share the funny, random minutiae that comprise life, and also because Facebook chat is a fantastic way to keep up with people. Even before that, I had been "hanging on" to my account for the purpose of maintaining tabs on people I may eventually wish to get back in touch with, even if I don't speak to them regularly. That, too, has proven useful.

But when I figured out what the introduction of Timeline meant, I sort of grimaced and shivered. Granted, I heard about Timeline through this article at The New Inquiry, which is the sort of publication bound to make you hate things that in any way resemble mainstream culture. But although there are various and sundry concerns one may have about Timeline - namely, I suppose, privacy - I am simply no longer satisfied with what Facebook is as a service.

Esssentially, I see Facebook becoming what we might call a Personality Curation service. Timeline is a tool for putting together an electronic, real-time scrapbook of your life: you can determine what stories and information already present on your Facebook (in general, not just your profile but all thine activity upon ye Facebooke) to include in what is essentially an enormous content-management page (which, notably, is basically impossible to manage effectively because, one, you have to manage activities on a case-by-case basis and, two, there's no good way to flag certain kinds of posts or activities that may have occurred in the last - in my case - seven years), as well as having the option to go back in time and populate your life before Facebook (by, of course, adding it to Facebook: Epicentre of Meaningfulness), or giving yourself a splash banner of some sort (much as most blogs, like this one, possess). Now, more than ever before, users [can/will/should(n't)?] devote time to curating their personas on Facebook.

But I don't want to use Facebook for that. I never have. That's why my profile was static between its creation and sometime in 2009 when I wiped it and it became empty (except for a super bitchin' quote from Hannah Arendt's Human Condition). I use it, essentially, out of necessity, as quite literally "social media:" an object with which to perform social interactions.

Now, though, Facebook threatens to turn my social life into an object, and one that can be more easily searched than ever before: at the click of a button, one can return to September 2006 and see with whom I was talking then, and what I had to say about it. I've never had many photos on my account - and most of them are just wicked creatures pulled from the D&D Monstrous Manual - so there really wasn't much one could do in terms of skimming my profile. Now, though, you can skim through everything I've ever said, and although I don't really think I'm interesting enough to Facebook-stalk, it is more feasible. More importantly, though, I'm terribly afraid of seeing what kinds of things I said and did on Facebook four or five years ago - namely because Facebook is never a tool I used self-consciously as something radically public.

In short, Facebook will (or, rather, would, had I not kicked it to the curb) be doing things with my information in which I have no confidence - and, importantly, it's not just the "doing with" I don't appreciate, but also the information to be "done." This is, in short, an evolutionary result of the growth and alteration of Facebook.

Therefore, I've deleted my account and have begun the migration to Google Plus.

Which is actually really cool. I never really bothered to figure G+ out before, because, well, everyone's still on Facebook; but already, it seems pretty good to me. I don't think it's groundbreaking or earth-shattering compared to Facebook, but as a social media it's far more effective. For example, for my purposes, simply crossing my Facebook and Twitter activity in G+ makes things far simpler. (Note, too, that this means this is truly a revolution for me, since I intend to phase out of Twitter, also.) I can keep my various purposes distinct with Circles - fellow writers over here, friends over there, family right here and people I knew in high school whose success I will interminably compare to my own right there where I can keep an eye on them - and accomplish micro-blogging/sharing tasks without the need of switching screens.

As for personality curation? Shit, I've already got this whole fucking blog to take care of. I don't need a website, Facebook. Because I'm a real man and I've got my own.

-bn

Genre: literature's codpiece, foppish hat, &c.

2011-12-13T12:03:00.001-05:00

I've spent some energy before wondering what precisely makes literature different from genre fiction, and vice versa. I think we can say with some certainty that they really are different modes - or, perhaps more accurately, different states - of fiction. However, although many examples exist that can purely distinguish between these modes, there are many times when the lines between them blur to a lack of recognition.

It is this gray zone that is fiercely debated. Being a reader and writer primarily of genre (viz. fantasy), I see this almost entirely from the side of other fans and creators of genre (whose blogs and forums I read). And the main thing I see there is anger: visceral diatribes and furious condemnations. A recent rant by Sam Sykes typifies the kind of furor I see the entire community raising against the mainstream: Fuck off and die, it all essentially says. Genre enthusiasts seem primarily concerned that (1) literary types demean their chosen practice, but also that (2) genre material is stolen or ripped-off to produce work that is then called "literature."

I don't know about the first claim – I don't read the kind of blogs, journals, or papers that would expose me to the evidence – but the second is thoroughly evident. I was really annoyed when I had to pick out Margaret Atwood's "The Year of the Flood" from the Literature section of Chapters, rather than the Science Fiction shelves. Genre fans similarly complain about the assimilation of Cormac McCarthy and other writers, who are perceived as being genre writers whose works are "pillaged" by the literary establishment. As Daniel Abraham writes in a response to Sykes' post, "All of our best stuff it appropriated... Your post would be more accurate if... mainstream were sneaking into the apartment and stealing genre's panties."

This comment raises an important question: is genre only clothing? I think this is what genre writers and readers want to believe: that, fundamentally, genre and literary fiction deal with the same set of essential bodies – i.e., the same philosophical foundations and spiritual themes. And I think this is without doubt true: no work of genre fiction is free of speculation or ideology, whether those ideas are expressed explicitly or subconsciously; pretensions exist and take form by volition of our will. And what we call "literary" is, effectively, only the "realistic" style, and acquires no special virtues purely because of its realism. I think we can all agree that there are just as many hollow realistic works as vapid fantastic adventures.

But the kind of thematic maturity and complexity that deserves (according to my superb and irrefutable aesthetic sense) the label "art," is not to be had by every writer, or even every work by any single writer. I consider Jeff VanderMeer's "Shriek: An Afterword" to be thoroughly literary, insofar as it deals fundamentally with problems of knowledge, censorship, and truth; but his work "Finch," a book from the same series, lacks the depth of the previous book. It is, as we might say if we are feeling crass, "just genre;" but in truth, what we're saying is, "it's not as good as..."

The problem for genre writers – the thing that makes them huff and puff – is that the stuff that is "appropriated" by the cult of the literary is the stuff that, beneath its genre trappings, is in fact thoroughly constituted of grand ideas. It is, in short, the very best that genre has to offer; and because of this, I can only conclude that those who complain about the genre/literary divide are writers whose thematic contributions to the field of literature are inconsequential, the readers whose own philosophical depth is shallow, and those who in general blame their personal inconsequentiality on their aesthetic choices - rather than seeing in those choices a preference for the inconsequential.

I don't think this is unduly harsh. There are just as many "mainstream" writers – the kind that might luckily be dubbed "literary" because of their "realist" bent – that don't contribute to literary canon as there are writers of genre whose work is philosophically mediocre. Will history remember Jodi Picoult any more than Robert Jordan? I've forgotten Jordan already, and I've never picked up "My Sister's Keeper..."

In a follow-up comment to his post, Sykes says, "We need to be comfortable with who we are ourselves and stop drunkenly calling [literary fiction] up about it." I agree. The quality of a book, just as of all works of art, is independent of its style. It is unfortunate that the realist style is the one that has been most confused with literary artwork; but for those of us who are comfortable seeing things for what they are, the labels at the book store soon cease to matter. For the same reason, it's important that genre writers stop whining when literary stories dressed in fantastic clothes draw the attention of the literary elite. It's what's beneath that counts.

For the record? I love the inconsequential and the rabidly pulp. Sometimes, too, I need a little depth. But being able to distinguish between them is important to my intellectual well-being, and I know that the difference does not reside in leather armour versus leather jackets.

FYI: "Literature, Genre Fiction, and Standards of Criticism" by James Harold was considered in the writing of this drivel.

Now let's rawk.

-bn

"Seedling" @ Fusion Fragment

2011-12-13T08:42:00.000-05:00

My tale of ecoterroristic biosuperdestruction and love, "Seedling," is now live at Fusion Fragment. Go peep it.

haha get it

-bn

The Protomen f'yeah

2011-12-08T11:54:00.000-05:00

A short time ago my pal Serpent Skin Facelinked me to a song by The Protomen. Not only are they a wicked band making wicked rock'n'roll without equal in either quality, style or passion; they've also got a great tale behind them. Namely, their songs, which form a rock and roll "fable," are loosely based on the Megaman series - mixed with a dark, cyberpunk bent of their own design. Lead vocalist Panther quoted from the 'pedia:

"We noticed a void in rock and roll. A hole that could only really be filled with grown men and women painting up like robots and playing some fierce and furious rock music based on a 1980s video game. We were fairly certain no one else was going to fill that hole. But, by god, it's filled now. You can thank us later."

If you don't suck, you should consider listening to them. DO IT NOW.

-bn

Rite True CanLit

2011-12-06T12:30:00.002-05:00

I've been acting a Rite True Canuck lately and reading nought but Rite True CanLit. Honestly, I'm just flipping through the catalogue of variously short-listed/awarded books that still fills my head from my days at the Canada Council for the Arts, and quite frankly, I've developed a new respect for the organization's ability to choose good artworks for recognition. I haven't really hit on a bad book yet, and the Governor General's Literary Awards scroll on...

Suffice to say, though, I'm not reading Robert J. Sawyer (he's a bit of a dink, after all, and I've never really liked science, have I?). I'm sticking to the Rite True Literature. Which is strange, because ever since I "got back into reading" (I had a hiatus between, roughly, 2003 and 2008, when I devoted myself to reading German philosophers and Indian mystics), I've only really been reading fantasy, science fiction read: space opera, or some weird juncture of said genres. But reading "mainstream" or "realistic" fiction is a really nice break from genre. I can't quite put my finger on why it's a nice break: even if it's more "realistic" in "physical" terms, it can be a lot less real in mythopoeic terms - and I've always been a guy who can't resist a little mythopoesis. Then I also have to wonder if reading specifically Canadian literature has any effect on me. Since fully half of all Canadian fiction takes place in Montreal, and I lived there for four years, it certainly helps the literary visualization. But are there themes/modes that can actually appeal to me on a subconscious cultural basis? Only once I've branched out and explored American, English, and Australian literatures can I truly say.

Anyway, good books. Thus far, Patrick Lane's Red Dog Red Dog has been my favourite, for its poetics and killer finish. Annabel by Kathleen Winter brought me to the cusp of drudgery: the prose style was far too basic to be interesting, and the switch from narrated child to child narrator that the book affects was impossible to sympathize with. Room by Emma Donoghue and Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden were both great; Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner (translated from the French) was good but ended like a wet bag. I'm reading Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill at the moment, which I'm really enjoying, and I'm sniffing out future catches as well.

I've got some spec fic on the horizon, too: The Silent Land (which got a good review at the OF Blog) and The Dervish House (which I guess I heard about somewhere), as well as The Great God Pan (as referred by Neil Gaiman on The Weird Fiction Review), await me. I don't know how the books have piled up, but there they are, beckoning. It would be easier to move through them if it weren't for Skyrim...

An interesting development, though: I'm in the process of completing my first "realistic" short story that doesn't suck (wherein I seem to be making all the funnies at the expense of the Canadian civil service). And, from my recent readings and writings, I will propose this general judgment: realistic fiction can make far, far better use of the first person narrative. In fact, third person narrative kind of stinks up realistic fiction... and, you know what, first person's pretty good for spec fic, too.

SO Y U EDITORS HATE ON 1ST P?

Whatever, let's keep it cult.

-bn

Selling free eBooks? Pay with a tweet instead

2011-11-23T10:20:00.000-05:00

I went to a meeting of Social Media Breakfast Ottawa this morning and heard about Pay With a Tweet. The service is pretty much self-explanatory. Dear authors, if you're giving away any eBooks, this might be a far better and more effective promotional tool. Note that they can pay with a tweet or a Facebook mention.

-bn

You're incorrection lawl

2011-11-17T12:06:00.000-05:00

Although I have several amazing story ideas, and at least two of these amazements are half-finished, I have no gusto. Gusto, in my opinion, is the most important thing when it comes to creative work. Also all work, but that's a story for a different sort of blog. The point is that my writing is constipated, and, therefore, my free time is being split between videologic medieval warfare and considering the greatness of the Oxford comma. Alas.

Oh, also wondering why there seems to be no one blazing a middle-path of wisdom in the Occupy [insert placename] debate. For the record, Occupiers are stupid, but the cause is just. I don't see why people don't see that the various equations so far proposed don't add up precisely because the whole mess is non-mathematical.

-bn

The sale of Lightspeed and Fantasy: sort of like good touching/bad touching?

2011-11-16T13:21:00.001-05:00

I find it intriguing that, seemingly, no one else finds it intriguing that Prime Books sold Lightspeed and Fantasy Magazine - i.e. two incredibly popular, professional, and hot-button e-zines - to John Joseph Adams, their editor (viz. THE editor of science fiction and fantasy in today's world). I don't find it intriguing because I doubt Adams' abilities in the least: I'm more than sure he can handle the job. I just find it strange that everyone's too busy congratulating John to ask:

WHY WOULD A SUCCESSFUL PUBLISHER OF SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY BOOKS DIVEST ITSELF OF TWO OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY MAGAZINES CURRENTLY IN EXISTENCE?

It took Tor years upon years to realize the potential inherent in loss-leading with short fiction by huge names. I scroll through Lightspeed's fiction list and see David Farland, David Brin, Ursula K. Le Guin. And Prime wants to let all that go? Then again, I don't see Prime's name in any highly visible real estate on the website - so maybe they just Business Model-Failed. But I just can't fail to notice that John's comment, "I believe the possibilities for growth are tremendous," must be in stark contrast to what Sean Wallace believes.

It's great that these magazines will continue to live - for now. But what, exactly, was the conversation between Adams and Wallace? Did it start with Wallace saying, "Things are going so incredibly well with the magazines right now that I would like to divest myself of my most speculatively valuable and innovative assets!" I suggest: probably not. It's more likely that these magazines are sinkholes or financially stale. And that possiblity clashes mightily with any optimistic vision one might hold of the future of short, electronic fiction.

That said: the "labour of love" thing is great. I respect, for example, that Strange Horizons thrives on donations. That's incredible. That's awesome. But Lightspeed is a pay-zine, and they just got sold to the editor, and John Joseph Adams didn't respond to my tweet inquiring after the physical state of his magazines' finances (solid, liquid... gas?), so now I'm going to point my finger at this mess and demand explanations, controversy, sex and debauchery from all parties.

Please someone expose the flaws in my logic. Please someone elevate me on a pedestal. Please, Internet, GIVE TO ME YOUR RESPONSE.

-bn

Nuclear zombie holocaust

2011-11-14T09:11:00.001-05:00

I just noticed that in the past month I've sold eight units of my self-published short "The Vault." Considering only my grandpa buys my other shorts, this is nearly without doubt because I tagged it as "nuclear zombie holocaust."

-bn

Give to me the stories that are not

2011-11-03T10:34:00.001-04:00

Ben Godby relaxing on his day off.

I got an interesting rejection letter yesterday. I did a rewrite for a magazine that's expressed interest in my fiction a few times (namely in rewrite requests and personal rejections), but it was ultimately turned down by the head editor. That's fine, but what was curious was that the editor broke down an overall dissatisfaction with what I'd been submitting: that while, "as usual," it had nice descriptions (what I'd love to generalize as "poetic language," but let's forget that lack for the moment), it was, "as usual," lacking in "story."

This is interesting because she's right - at least in the primary market notion of "story" as the evolution of characters through challenges. I wrote stories like that for a while when I was on a binge of "story advice," hunting for "the formula" that would bring me success. However, I always had trouble cranking those out, because I don't inherently have interest in characters as a writer. I love reading about characters, but I don't like to mould that kind of story myself (i.e. I'm bad at it). Me, I prefer to deal in ideas.

It took me a long time to realize this. I actually recently went back to the archives from my early days of writing and realized that I had construed those works as "bad" or "poor writing" precisely because they didn't conform to the normal set of objectives for marketable fiction. I used a lot of first person, a lot of passivity, a lot of unresolvability, a lot of ideas and, generally speaking, a preference for anti-movement or even regression rather than change or transformation. The story in question above, that was rewritten and then rejected, was actually a very old story, and it fit this form exactly: in it, nothing happens.

Of course, nothing happening is a great foundation for meditating on various facts of life. I'm reminded of a rant by Aliette de Bodard:

"I'm tired of plots that value individualism and egotism above all else; of heroes that always have to be the masters of their own fates, to be active and not take anything that life deals at them lying down (whereas most of the time, we lie down, we accept, we deal with what we have been given)..."

Suffice to say that, after various existential crises (I mean, whatever, right? Camus already did it), I'm going back to those forms. I don't know exactly what it is I'm writing now, but I think it's going to push me out of the running in a lot of markets. The philosophies driving me to write fiction that is interesting to me - as opposed to the philosophies that (I now shamefully admit) I followed in an attempt to please others - are incongruent with what most market-driven editors are looking for.

ALSO NOTE THAT THIS IS SECRETLY A PLEA FOR EDITORS TO LIKE MY WORK FOR MY BRAZEN, COURAGEOUS INDIVIDUALISM AND FORTHRIGHT VANGUARDISM OF AWESOME EXCELLENCE.

And now: Goat Horn tribute by awesome metal kids. I'll always have you, metal.

-bn

"Red Dog, Red Dog" by Patrick Lane

2011-11-02T09:01:00.000-04:00

Though Canadian and a consumer of literature, I am not a gourmand of Canadian literature. However, I worked for some time in the Writing & Publishing section of the Canada Council for the Arts - i.e., one of the public organizations that permit the bare survival of the vast majority of Canada's art scenes - and it was there that my brain became filled with half-conscious knowledge of the various players in Canada's literary community.

In my time there, I actually resisted any kind of mental appropriation of the Canadian novel or short story. I was convinced that to do so would short-circuit my finely tuned sense of the fantastic, diluted as it would become by the taint of The Real (Honest Reality being, as far as I was concerned, the only possible subject of "the mainstream"). However, in these last few months, the opposite has occurred: my appreciation for fantasy has been short-circuited by volition of what now feels to me like the genre's hollowness (probably because of my over-fixation, but that's beside the point), and, in search of salvation, I devoured a few substantially weird books (some Kafka, The Orange Eats Creeps [which gets five stars, though I utterly oppose the notion that it's a fantasy novel - hint: they're not really vampires], Cyclonopedia [massive disappointment, literary conmanship], Thomas Ligotti and Steven Erikson [both superb]), and finally ended up on the doorstep of CanLit when I spied Patrick Lane's "Red Dog, Red Dog" in the library and remembered how it had once been lauded in a CAC jury room.

"Red Dog, Red Dog" tells the story of a family residing in the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia in the late 1950s. It is a paragon of that critical sentiment that declares Canadian literature is depressing, because it starts, ends, and goes on about death, failure, and sorrow. In fact, before I checked "Red Dog, Red Dog" out of the library, I sat down to read it for a few minutes and got choked up. I was nearly crying in a public space within the first three pages.

But it's not just that it's a sad book: Lane is a really great writer. This is actually his first novel, as he's a poet by trade, and his felicity with words comes off as beautifully orchestrated descriptions of nature and the simple world that the work describes - or perhaps circumscribes. Keeping in mind that I'm really no literary expert, most of the other "literary" works I've read developed intensity by creating immediacy, forcing me into a story by creating a sense of "readiness" or "presentness," "meatiness" even, of the world being described. Lane's prose, conversely, pushes the world out to a magical distance that revivifies it - the world seen through a heat haze, as it were, its colours and borders the more vivid for being radicalized.

It's also kind of weird. The story has several interludes told by a dead infant, and it was this child's introduction to the story that nearly had me in tears:

"He lifted me from the crib where I'd whispered my breath for six long months and rolled me in the sheet Mother had left me lying on when I was born. My baby sweat had marked the cloth a yellowed grey. I loved him holding me. He bound me tight in thin cotton and lifted me onto a leftover square of tent canvas, folidng me up. My body moved light as a bird carcass among his fingers."

And, lastly, Lane yarns it out well. It's a classic "novel" insofar as most of what happens is "what has already happened," story developed by plunging the past depths of the characters rather than pushing them forward through the twist and turns of the plot as genre stories do. It also ends with a beautiful twist, one that is so right and so poignant, so cleanly affected but so utterly unexpected, that when it happened I just sort of put the book down and nodded. The last few pages that came after that were the sweeping up of the dust that remained of the story.

Final word: great book. Going to read more CanLit.

-bn

"The Cretins" @ Brain Harvest

2011-10-31T08:47:00.001-04:00

I've got a new story up at Brain Harvest, "The Cretins." Go! Read! Be amazed!

-bn

A lesson in static

2011-10-27T08:55:00.002-04:00

People are always talking about things as if things are different now than they were before. People are also usually saying something along the lines of "we ought to learn from history." But if I've learned one thing from history, it's that things don't change. It's like Ron Perlman narrating the Fallout introduction videos: "War never changes." And if Hegel is right that the quiet moments of history aren't historical at all - that they are ahistorical by volition of their quietude and peacefulness - then we may as well say, "History never changes."

That said, I do think there is a unified historical mover: technology. Feudal societies were built, more or less literally, on metal: weapons, tools and armour. Mercantilism and imperalism owed their rise to gunpowder and, hence, to ships-of-the-line. Ancient democracy slavery, and modern democracy the printing press; superpowerdom nuclear powerdom, and the Occupy movement, the Internet.

This is all to get to a certain, if rather circumlocutuos [sic] point: the Library of Fantasy and Science Fiction cancelled a buttload of anthologies yesterday, one of which was "Attack of the 50FT Book," to which I had contributed. I was unsurprised: my story was accepted in February and I'd heard little since then. I'd also noticed that, while the Library at one time had probably a dozen anthologies open for submissions, they'd utterly shut down new productions in the last few months.

They're also... well... "the Library of Fantasy and Science Fiction."

I appreciate what these guys are trying to do, but it's interesting to notice that there are a lot of semi-professional publishers now doing what any semi-professional writer can: bump their work via Amazon, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble. My latest release was with Bards & Sages Quarterly, and - though it's a great review - it's quite literally an e-book with a .jpeg cover. I could've done it; so could you. I do do it, regularly, with my own ebooks.

And this is all to get to: mi hombre Alex Kane's reflections on the matter (and pardon my utter butchery of the Castilian). Alex chews out those writers who are so desperate for publication that they'll accept token payments or even help out with production costs to see the anthologies go to print. "Dammit, writers, stop giving away your work for free. Writers get paid[!]" he says (my exclamation).

I agree with Alex. But I'm also going to take it one step further and tie this shit all together. The advent of ebook technology is not a historical movement as such, but a technological advance that enlarges the sphere of publishing hucksters. Vanity publishers have been around a long time: writers paying to produce their own books, and then buying the remainders (i.e. the entire stock) from the publisher, still happens. When I worked at the Canada Council for the Arts, we were right across the street from Baico, a self-publisher who advised their writers (i.e., their patsies) to come up and ask us for grants. Then we had to explain to Baico's clients how they weren't eligible for grants, because they aren't real (viz., professional) writers.

In short, being paid for your work says something. But I think for most writers - those whose main desire is to write, and only derivatively to publish - it's really not about the money. It's about dignity. Being published shouldn't really matter: you should do what you like. And if you like self-publishing and self-promoting - or if you have a visceral need to be published but can't break into the major leagues - then that is exactly what you should be doing. But keep in mind that, even before ebooks, you had the choice to do so. Now, you only have a responsibility not to be taken in.

That said? A rather significant slice of of my forthcoming stories are from publishers who haven't paid me or given me a firm timetable for production. And, with the crash of the Library of Fantasy and Science Fiction, I'll certainly be more selective in where I submit my work. I'd like people to read my stories, whether it's for one buck or a hundred, and I'd also prefer to appear in an e-zine than make my own ebook; but I don't like waiting eight months to learn that the story won't be published unless I cough up for something that could be released for free in digital.

-bn

How the Golden Age of science gave rise to the Dark Age of SF

2011-10-17T11:04:00.003-04:00

I was listening to an interview with Robert J. Sawyer on CBC Radio this morning wherein he claimed that the writing of dystopian SF is "easier" than writing an optimistic science fiction, and continued to imply that dystopian or non-optimistic SF is a sort of lurid bane similar to space opera. Sawyer is here completely missing the point.

There are a lot of Golden Age whiners out there these days, probably not unduly because a lot of science fiction that is published is pessimistic and has none of the "bright futurism" of the earlier incarnations of SF. There are even magazines and anthologies that devote themselves to "optimistic" SF, obviously trying to provide a venue for a sort of fiction that isn't quite as popular as it once was.

The problem here is that science itself has given rise to pessimistic science fiction. Dystopian SF is not unscientific; nor is it any easier to write (well) than any other sort of fiction. But, principally, I'm interested in uncovering and disputing the idiocy that says, "dystopian/pessimistic SF is bad business."

Skepticism and critical thought are - or should be - the hallmarks of any scientific endeavour. Science has given rise to greater criticism and skepticism among general populations primarily because it improves our lives by giving us access to more information. Pessimism grows more easily the more context you are provided with.

iPhones, for example, are fantastic tools. But they cost several hundred dollars even as those relatively cheap prices are supported by the brutal exploitation of the Chinese workers who assemble them (not to mention the pollutions and dangers of primary resource gathering). This holds the same for basically every technological product on the planet. And, on the other hand, despite the fantastic stuff medicine can do, it's not like we're freely distributing HIV medicines throughout Africa. (Economics is a science, too.)

If we project our skepticism into the future, we can get into the same problems. What if we suddenly ran everything on solar power? There would be no more dangerous fossil fuel emissions to ruin the environment and we'd have access to much cheaper power; but the equatorial countries would have vast power resources while places like Canada and Norway would show deficits. The entire balance of political power would change, resulting in at worst war, at least the oppression of countries that, historically, have hitherto been oppressors.

Science isn't just math and pretty devices. Science - which comes from the Latin meaning "knowledge," and nothing more specific than that - is a way of approaching things, of knowing and understanding them, of being critical and interested and inspired. The Golden Age of science gave rise to the Dark Age of SF precisely because it gave us the tools to more critically engage the world.

Suffice to say, I'm sick of all these whiny jerks who want more optimistic SF. It's a real pain to see the world for what it is; if you want to be a mindless cheerleader, be my guest, but I'm going to make fun of your lame idiocy on my blog, Mr. Sawyer.

-bn

P.S. I do give major props to scientists for the work they do. Physics, chemistry, biology and all the rest is meca-important. But you can't do it in a wormhole.

The correct formula is Less Formula

2011-10-13T10:31:00.000-04:00

I hadn't listened to Writing Excuses in some time when this week I went back and laid my earbuds upon me with the podcast, "The Hollywood Formula." This, actually, was immediately after trying to listen to the podcast on "Writing Assistants," which I found absolutely sickening in just about every way, and could possibly have laid a very negative foundation for my next listening experience. Nonetheless, I think - as dispassionately as I can - that "The Hollywood Formula," and the idea that this is something that ought to be taught, praised, or otherwise actively perpetuated, is a terrible thing.

The Hollywood Formula, as Anders describes it, is a sort of division of literary tasks, objects, and progressions. It is, effectively, the cementing of the three act structure and the protagonist/antagonist/sidekick/villain schema. This formula, Anders claims, will provide the "most emotional impact" for readers/viewers; Mary Robinette Kowal describes how, when she implemented this formula, her alpha readers started to cry. That's great: I love fiction that is moving. So it's not necessarily the formula that disturbs me in and of itself, but the idea that a certain way of formulating stories will always create the "most emotional impact" (it doesn't), and that, therefore, it demonstrates its own utility/goodness and deserves to be perpetuated, not because of any artistic or visionary qualtities, but because of economic, utilitarian, and mass-effect possibilities (which may be real, but certainly aren't deserving of laudations).

That said, there was a time when I believed in this kind of teaching. I was really, really into the idea that you could produce books-as-objects, that a story was like, say, a computer, and if you hooked up all the parts properly it achieved a certain objective. But now, I am virulently opposed to it in just about every way.

As a reader, do I want to hear that there is a certain structure that will affect me in the most affecting way? First of all, I don't believe this, especially because, as I've become a more sophisticated reader, I find books that follow or try to follow this structure (i.e., most of the books that are on the shelves) to be veritable snore-fests. But, just as if not more important: Do I really want to think that this is what writers are thinking? Do I want to pick up a book that has been calculated for emotional impact? Absolutely not. I don't want to think of books as a device, and I don't want to think of writers as technicians. Although I want my car to utilize as little gasoline as possible, I don't want my art to be figured scientifically: I want it to represent an authentic creation/outpouring of another human being.

Because do you know what we call people who have emotional/spiritual outpourings that are based on formulas? Drama queens.

Make whatever you want! ... using these bricks.

On the other hand: as a writer, do I want to reduce my own creativity to "playing with" a formula? This is quite literally how Mary Robinette Kowal and Lou Anders go off with excitement about the formula: that one can play with it. Listen, guys, art is not Lego. I've got videogames to play with. When I write, I want to stun myself; I don't want to say, "look how I shortened the second act and lengthened the third!" This is not interesting. I want to discover new bricks, I want to break bricks, I want to piss into the pile of bricks and laugh at those who think I'm insane.

But, look: I know how we got here. I mean, Anders says it himself: Hollywood perfected this kind of emotional game with Casablanca. I.e., they learned how to make the artpiece that will make the most revenue. Now, that doesn't mean all formulaic/structured stories are necessarily bad or created in bad faith; certainly, many excellent books and movies have been sold on this premise just as much as they've been sold on their authentic greatness. And - I cannot tell a lie - I've definitely enjoyed many of them. The problem is rather in thinking that "The Hollywood Formula" represents the pinnacle of storytelling, and that on the other side is only the downward slope of the mountain - that we can't get past it without its shadow at our back. Let me tell you something: something always comes next if you remain a visionary.

My point is, if you want to write to the Hollywood Formula, you're doing yourself in as a creative person. Maybe you'll make a bunch of money like Brandon Sanderson, but I'm not going to read your books (I certainly don't read his, eloquent though he may [sometimes] be on the subject of writing). So good luck playing around; I'd rather fail at making art than succeed at building furniture.

-bn

Thanks: Give it up

2011-10-11T08:27:00.000-04:00

This weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving. Although there are a lot of things in my life to be thankful for and about which to be happy, there's only one I can truly say I love more life than life itself: my girlfriend Elizabeth.

Oh, sure, it sounds sappy. But it's true. She's the perennial nursery rhyme sunshine in my life, bringing light into the grayest days. She's my best friend, my inspiration, my motivation, and the most beautiful girl in the world, and I'm crazy about her.

So this year, I'm giving thanks both to and for Elizabeth: for whatever cosmic conspiracy brought us together, and to her for being the woman that she is, making me laugh and smile and try things I'd never have the courage to do alone. She's made me the happiest person I can be for nearly six years, and I wouldn't be the man I am today without her.

I love you Elizabeth!

The problem with music videos

2011-10-08T21:07:00.001-04:00

The problem with music videos is music videos with narrative. Music videos sans narrative are just dandy; I, personally, love music videos of bands just rockin'. So I don't get why bands - or their managers/producers - think that a story needs to be told for us to fully appreciate the music. It actually takes away from appreciating the music, because you're caught up trying to "figure out" the video when you should be slipping into the music.

Here's an example: "All or Nothing" is a great tune. But the video just ruins it for me. I understand what it's trying to say, but... I don't need the video to do that. In fact, I prefer the music speak to me itself.

Even if you're not into metal, try watching this video, and then just playing it while you browse the Internet or whatever. I suspect they will be for you, as they are for me, massively different experiences.

Edit: Cauldron rules, by the way.

Videogames ruined my life

2011-09-29T08:48:00.000-04:00

I read a really great article yesterday called "Who Killed Videogames?" by Tim Rogers (via Boing Boing). It's basically a look at the mathematics of "social gaming," from inception to entrapment, from an insider's perspective, and how the dumbest possible imaginable games - games that, to actual gamers, probably don't even seem like games - are able to make thousands of dollars without giving people any actual satisfaction.

I've done a lot of hard thinking about videogames in my time. I'm really not even that a big of a gamer: most of my good friends are several times more "hardcore" than I am (a friend of mine is currently building a new box he intends to christen "SHODAN"). But, at one point or another in my life - and I guess, really, this was only about three or four years ago - I started thinking that videogames were sapping any zest for life I had, and prohibiting me from accomplishing anything truly interesting.

It was then I decided I would write a memoir called, "Videogames ruined my life."

That never happened; and not, not-ironically, because of videogames. It just wasn't a very interesting premise. Why? Because videogames didn't ruin my life. They enriched it. Practically every story I write goes back, in some way, to videogames; my science fiction and fantasy aesthetic is more informed by "Warcraft" and "Fallout" than Tolkien or Heinlein. Granted, there are times when I have to ensure that I do not become absorbed by a game: videogame addiction is pretty easy. But being addicted to a cool game - like, say, "Deus Ex: Human Revolution" - isn't the same as being addicted to "Tap Petshop" (and not just because the basic physical mechanic of its gameplay is described in its title - although that, too, is Massive Lame).

Being a "real gamer" - even if I'm not the truest of the true - makes it really hard to understand social gaming. I think it was about two years ago - or maybe it was only one - that there was an enormous flurry of activity on Facebook, where I was constantly being invited to take part in castle sieges, mafia wars, farming operations, &c. I didn't do one of them: the only game I ever played on Facebook was a "Risk" analogue. What could I possibly get out of any of these "social" games, when the "real thing" was sitting on my desktop?

Obviously, though, certain suits have managed to cook up a way to convince people that paying for a monkey - or a cat condo, or whatever - is a good idea. Or, in the more disgusting example Rogers gives of "The Sims Social," a bookshelf (that is more expensive digitally than in reality). The mathematics and strategizing that goes into it - even only the little bit that Rogers describes in his short article - is mind-boggling and powerful: I totally agree that I would want to make money that way (viz. easily). But, as a gamer, it's terrible.

As a contrast to these kinds of games - i.e. the ones that make you either 1) wait, 2) promote the game to your friends, or 3) pay actual currency in order to advance in the gameworld (in a meaningless way, albeit) - "real" games, in my opinion, are self-contained. You should only really have to pay for them once. I've never even liked expansion packs; why don't they make a new game? And the World of Warcraft model (now being taken up by The Old Republic, if I'm not mistaken) is also pretty heinous. Having to pay repeatedly for something creates the sense that you ought to be doing it; WoW players are chronically addicted not because it's necessarily a good game (it could be; I've never played it; I'm just saying not necessarily), but because they are paying for it, right now. A "real" game, by contrast, you pay for once. It then becomes a sunk cost: whether or not you play it does not matter, because you'll never pay for it again.

This is important because these games then contain within themselves all the elements you need for fun. You don't need to acquire addenda and devices to further enjoy the game: it contains the experiences of your amusement. When I play Mount & Blade with my friend, even though we get more gold to spend on equipment the more kills we score (and, thus, my friend rapidly outperforms me), we both have entirely the same potential to score kills and get gold. There's no online store to buy in-game "premium coinage." It's all about you - You, Kicking Ass.

"Real" games are also about a gajillion times more social than "social games." Think about Minecraft: I paid twenty bucks for it, and anytime I want, I can join my buddy's server, see all the cool shit everyone's been building, and build my own cool shit for people to look at. This is a much more "truthful" social interaction than, say, Sims Social, because my actual creativity is going into the production, and the only constraint to advancement is the time/creativity I want to input. Granted, one of my friends pays the server costs; but the game itself will never require us to spend more in order to get more. Mojang updates the game, and we get the updates.I can't simply buy a Bendenberg.

Yeah. That's the Bendenberg. (It used to be on fire, but apparently the addition of snowy biomes killed that...)

Anyway, Roger's is a great article. If you play any kind of games, I'd suggest reading it.

-bn

"Breakfast" @ Bards & Sages Quarterly

2011-09-28T13:47:00.001-04:00

Oh, and look: this has been published! My story "Breakfast" is sure to make you laugh (just so long as you think violence and bodily degradation are hilarious), and, in buying the latest issue of B&S, you'll get a whole bunch of other awesome stories along with it! Mostly mine, yes, I agree, but we can't all be Ben Godby.

Now go buy it fer yer Kindle.

Rejuvenate the despotic font

2011-09-28T13:36:00.001-04:00

This is me. You do not appear in the photograph.

Insofar as this blog is the nexus of my power - a nexus of hyperspatial spirals over which even I, its inseminator, have little to no control, so great is the public's frenzy to imbibe it (that it [re]creates itself [eternally/retroactively]) - it seems proper to infuse it with a dose of my verbiage from time to time, even mindful of the fact that, in the words of Ben Godby, "But I have nothing to say." However, I, being of pretentious, anti-populist, anti-realist, anti-you, and anti-me bent, can never simply provide a blog post entitled, "Update" - and therewith give you the various and sundry details of my private life as though you care about them (even I don't care about them). No: that is for the poseurs. For the true beings of literary greatness (mostly myself and a few others who are unwittingly clutching at my tailcoats while basking in successes/acclaims they unknowingly owe to me), one must be suitably more... uh... verbose.

For your information, you worm, these things are happening:

1. I am drinking the wine I made with my girlfriend. It is pinot grigio. Is is a hundred times more delicious than expected. I may have been/be facing a cut off.

2. I am not writing genre fiction. I have thought more than once and less than eleven times, "Do I really want to tell people I write science fiction and fantasy? Do I even read that? Like that? What am I doing? What's wrong with me? What should I do?" I am instead writing some stuff that I guess is bizarre-slipstream-imperialism. (That last one because I don't know what "Bizarro" or "Slipstream" are, but have no compunctions against assimilating them into my ego-lexicon.)

3. I've been writing in a notebook, not on a computer, because computers are way too commercial, you're a sellout, man.

4. Been playing a bunch of Mount & Blade, riding down poseurs.

I have the full intention of returning to exactly those four things the moment you ride out and purchase my new e-book. Do it, or I shall lance thee in the back.

-bn

New book, new art, first sale

2011-09-07T12:30:00.000-04:00

Released another e-book: "The Man Who Went to Mars," a tale of cosmic horror. In so doing, I realized various techniques - namely of word art - that would allow me to massively amp up the visual appeal of my covers. To wit:

Really not that much different about the covers - except that I rotated the pistol on the cover of "What the Market Will Bear" - but I think the words pop a lot better and make the whole look more professional. I'm also just plain standardizing my byline; working in the "Isomorph Press" was a pain, and the images I'm constantly massaging from stock.xchng are barred from being used in logos, so I can't really go that route.

(Although, technically, I might already be breaking that stipulation. But, alas... a tale for another day.)

New banners, also. Me like.

I also sold my first e-book - namely the new one. I'm already plotting what to do with seventy-six cents: will I buy a flim-flam or a fling-dong? A fuzzle-puzz or wizzle-wang? Certainly I will purchase something valued at less than a dollar!

-bn

Take the other hemisphere!

2011-09-07T08:19:00.000-04:00

My story "The Cretins" has been harvested by Shane, Eden et al. at Brain Harvest. At this rate, I soon won't have any left (brains, that is).

It's coming out October 30. That's right, friends: Hallowe'en issue.

-bn

"Secret Life" by Jeff VanderMeer

2011-09-06T16:12:00.001-04:00

This was a cool read for two reasons: that "Secret Life" exposed me to a side of VanderMeer's work I hadn't known existed; and that, this being a relatively old collection that contains stories even considerably older than itself, it unveiled to some degree his development as a writer. This second was particularly interesting to experience.

Granted, I haven't read that much of VanderMeer's oeuvre: "Finch," "Shriek: An Afterword," and now "Secret Lives." But, by my standards, this an enormously in-depth exploration of what an author has to offer, being exactly 200% more books read than 90% of the authors I read. However, "Secret Life" (2004) contains kernels of what was to become "Shriek..." (2006) and "Finch" (2009), making it a sort of vale of Easter eggs even for a reader so little read as myself. In fact, one of my favourite stories in this volume is "The Machine," which is basically transposed word-for-word into "Shriek" as a journal entry. However, the episode (if you've read the story or its novelized fragment, you know what I mean when I call it an "episode") struck me as much more terrifying in its isolated form.

Suffice to say, the ability to survey the evolution of VanderMeer's fantastic wor(ld/k) from the standpoint of these older stories is pretty awesome. "The Festival of the Freshwater Squid," for example, besides being both lol-worthy and a fantastic story in its own right, presages VanderMeer's later work: there's a character by the name of Janet Sheik, who I have no choice but to envision as the precursor of Janice Shriek from "An Afterword." Albumuth Boulevard, the main thoroughfare of Ambergris, appears in the story "Learning to Leave the Flesh," which, though it takes place in an "oddified" city, is otherwise decidedly not Ambergris. "Exhibit H: Torn Pages Discovered in the Vest Pocket of an Unidentified Tourist" is an early - and very interesting - go at the creatures that would later become the gray caps (in this case called "mushroom dwellers"). If I'd read VanderMeer's weird SF novel "Veniss Underground," I'd probably have noticed even more of these Easter eggs, because there are four stories set in the same world as the novel.

Obviously, seeing the early incarnations of VanderMeer's later work isn't the only interesting thing about this book. In fact, most of the stories are historically-set, magical-realist fairy tales - very different from what I've experienced of VanderMeer until now, and finally explaining that line in his biography that reads something like, "his travels have deeply influenced his writing." The title story, "Secret Life," is massively hilarious, and very possibly the most entertaining thing I've read by him - let alone one of the best pieces of written comedy I've ever come across.

But, its various virtues aside, the reason "Secret Life" struck me so deeply was because VanderMeer is an author I admire - again, I usually don't read any writer more than once, let alone thrice - and because this collection basically revealed, in snips and snatches, his development, his different ambitions, experiments, and interests. It humanized his work to some degree: I could see that the mastermind behind "Shriek: An Afterword" - one of the most engrossing books I've ever read - was in fact a living brain, that hadn't simply grown up out of the mushroom patch, but had fermented in the brine of different literary styles, approaches, and achievements.

But the best part? Normally, when I go back through an author's catalogue rather than forward, I'm dissappointed. This happened after I read Joe Abercrombie's "The Heroes" and "Best Served Cold," which were excellent, and then picked up "The Blade Itself." To be spare, "The Blade Itself" was horrible writing, and I couldn't read it after Abercrombie's later works had set the bar for me. But with this collection, I wasn't disappointed. The works are significantly different from what I've come to expect from VanderMeer, but they were just as well written, just as engaging, and just as fantastic. The collection was well worth reading, and only got me more interested in reading VanderMeer.

This suggests something to me: some authors don't need editors as badly as others do. VanderMeer, it seems, is one of those writers.

But that's probably a topic for another post. For now, let it be said that this collection gets a thumbs up.

-bn

Why I no longer have readers

2011-08-27T10:29:00.002-04:00

I've stopped having people read my work basically entirely. I used to have family, friends, girlfriends (well okay girlfriend), and other writers (those I know personally and those I anonymously encountered through the Critters Writers' Workshop) read my work to get feedback and try to improve the story before it went to market. But now... I don't do any of that.

It's not that I disliked any of my readers; in fact, I met a lot of really cool people in my hunt for readers, including Alex J. Kane, David Barron, and Jeff Ambrose. I did, however, find criticism generally unuseful. The only real reason for this unusefulness was that I felt it was too easy to counter the advice: stories can always be written in a different way, but that doesn't mean that they'll be better. I also get bored with my stories quite easily, so the idea of going back and re-working something is not just unattractive: it's potentially threatening to the possible goodness that already potentially exists within a story, since I'd always be going back to the work, not with the enthusiasm of its original composition, but with a sort of lacklustre attitude.

In theory, unanimous or near unanimous criticism should be useful; but I've even seen instances of Fail in that context. My story "Seedling," which sold to Fusion Fragment, was roundly rebuffed by Critters for having too much swearing. And, yeah, it's got a lot of swearing: particularly a great deal of F-bombs. That happened because it was a story for which I "unleashed" - I told myself I was just going to write it however it came out and not judge it - and I suppose I curse a lot in daily life. Ultimately, it seems not to have mattered too much.

Most important of all, though, I just don't seem to have the time for critiques and revisions. Writing and revising the first, second, and third drafts is hard enough. I just don't have the stamina to do more of it, and to other people's possibly erroneous feelings, to boot. Not, again, that I don't think people have valid points: but validity is a pretty easy thing to acquire - criticism, in short, is easy - so criticism is ultimately a sort of futile gesture, a "it could be otherwise" that is not objectively necessary. I've even rejected really good criticism I've received in personal rejections from editors, because what they see as fault - for example, loose-endedness, not enough action, unclear motives - might be a story tactic that appeals to someone else.

That said, I do take rewrite requests from editors seriously, and not even primarily because it's a chance to sell. Most of my rewrites have been returned to me, but I've ended up with stronger stories because of it. I think a rewrite request offers a fundamentally different nature of advice than even the most involved personal rejection, because an editor sees a possible way for something to be that is more attractive. I suspect this is because editors are artists much like writers, putting together an ensemble of works meant to have a holistic effect, so they can see a way to bring out more of a story in a very specific kind of way. This, of course, means that some of the original effect of the story may be lost; but in my experience this has been the effects of "overload" and "too muchery."

Although, actually... you know what? It usually destroys subtlety.

But whatever. I'm probably just money-hungry, anyway.

Anyway, I kind of wish I did more critiquing: it's a fun, social sort of thing to do, and writing can be lonely. But ultimately, my lack of critique-ness exists for the same reason that I haven't tried to get a slush-reading gig, spend more time on Twitter with the writing bros and hos, or participate more actively in the actual social scene of SF&F by going to cons or whatever: I want to focus, for the most part, on writing, and time is precious enough as it is.

-bn

Criticize this blog post

2011-08-26T12:34:00.000-04:00

I always get crotchety when I read a blog post that is just a rehashing of someone else's blog post or article or whatever. You know the kinds of posts I'm talking about: he-said-she-said-I-said-we-think-alright! I mean, can I get a little originality here?

Of course, I get crotchety with absolute hypocrisy, not necessarily because I do the same thing (although I've been known to partake), but because it is due to the re-writing of others' work by people that I actively follow that brings work hitherto unknown to me to my attention. Like last night: I read a blog post by Shaun Duke that was about a blog post by Mark Charan Newton that was based on a quote from an interview with Tobias Wolff at The Guardian. It was all very interesting, and I wouldn't have heard about it if it weren't for the fact that I follow Shaun's blog.

But I still get crotchety.

I think this is because these chains of social-mediatic-idea-flow are usually predicated on complete agreement. Nothing, essentially, was added in the chain of events that led me from my source to the original article. And this is what happens most of the time: people are riffing off each other, gleeful of their agreement.

And that's awesome. I'm a very agreeable person. When I disagree about something, it's usually with a certain vehemence, because in 99% of situations I always see the other side, and think, "Yeah, well, okay!" I mean, heck, Israeli-Palestinian conflict? I dig you! I dig all of you. I would totally be killing those jerks so hard if I was you! Or, conversely, if I was you. So, if I disagree, it's probably with passion.

But the point is that it's always kind of disappointing to watch the chain of regurgitation. Just re-tweet it, bro! I don't need commentary: I need criticism. I've been more or less plugged into the SF&F blog/web cycle/circle for the past year, particularly on the writers' side, and especially particularly on the aspiring writers' side, and all too often everything is just pat, just wonderfully fucking agreeable. Laudations everywhere! Drool for the latest books! Exhortations for everyone in the world to read every author! Liberal politics expounded and re-expounded! Hooray!

Alas: there just aren't that many blogs where people will just rip into whatever. This is probably because I'm reading a lot of writers who fear that some misplaced word will kill their career. Nonetheless, this forces me to turn for my more substantive blog-reading to, mostly, the OF blog, and a few other select places that will occasionally provide actually stimulating criticism or examinations of things that aren't just part of the great canons of art/text/ideas handed down from Tor/Gollancz/their major authors/and/or/whatever. The Mumpsimus is another blog I recently came upon - linked to, in fact, from the OF blog - that actually doles out criticism. In the latest post about Chaos Cinema, the blogger isn't just vapidly spewing up something he heard somewhere, but actually encountering and interoggating someone else's hard-won thoughts in order to arrive at new, full ideas - and giving me a chance to consider and re-consider my own conceptions at the same time. In short, he is expanding the realm of the text(s) in question.

It's way more enjoyable reading, suffice to say.

Anyway, it's not like I'm a terribly critical person or anything, and I like that I can snatch at interesting stories through "the grape vine;" but I really do wish more writers were willing to be critical. Larry at the OF blog and Matthew at Mumpsimus aren't really "writers," they're critics; but I don't understand why so many writers are afraid of being both.

-bn

"The Imperfectionists" by Tom Rachman

2011-08-25T16:40:00.000-04:00

Ah, literature! Oh, the literary novel! How you do draw me forward with the strings of guilt for reading so much that is not you while meanwhile the world around me stews with titillitation for thee. How your tragic endings are so much more tragic than the tragic endings of genre fiction because fantastical worlds have so many things to distract one from tragedy! How you bare before my eyes the fact that your daughter being killed by a fireball just isn't as tragic as your daughter being run over by a car.

"The Imperfectionists" tells the tale of a failing international newspaper based in Rome. It does so by means of telling short stories about a dozen or so major faces at the paper, interspersed with historical vignettes that reveal the foundation and rise of the newspaper. As pages pass by, the newspaper fails, and, around it, so do all of its staff.

This is probably too tragic of a book. Don't get me wrong: I really enjoyed it. I haven't read a book this fast since... John Scalzi's "Old Man's War," I think (although that I read faster). But! By the end of "The Imperfectionists," I was thinking: "Come on. Not even one person ends up happy after all this?" Actually, one of the characters is not reduced to unhappiness; but he is, at least, dissapointed.

The theoretical problem with this perfusion of misery, though, is that it works: "The Imperfectionists" is poignant and a very enjoyable read because of, well, the misery. The misery had me coming back, folks: it made the characters seem real, the stories seem true, and the lessons seem anomalously useless, dead-beat, not there. Is there some resonance of life here? God, I hope not. But I fear so.

However, there's at least one more theoretical problem of liking this book: namely, the theoretical problem of liking this book. In reading this novel it was hard not to keep thinking of this article by Michael Cisco, in which he is (according to me) basically saying that the novel - those books, I suppose, that have "a novel" written under their title on the dustjacket - is basically a means for the middle class to fellate itself. He says:

"Any people anywhere in the world, irrespective of class, may have elaborate Freudian inner lives; my point is that the middle class have turned the elaborate inner life into a fetish which serves as one of the fundamental componants of class identity. In principle, every middle class person lives a novel. Middle class life is a novel. Not every novel is a middle class life."

I found this argument terribly compelling. A lot of modern literary/mainstream novels are about middle class people and their bland, generalizable issues that are not really terrible problems coming to the fore in ways that make them seem like terrible problems - namely by aggrandizing the inner life and all its attendant jealousies, eroticisms, fetishes, quirks. That's probably why most "literary fiction" can be boiled down in some way to "relationship fiction," since that's what most of it seems to be about. But it's also probably why it's compelling - at least for middle class people.

So, in thinking thoughts like these, is it still possible to think well of this book? I mean, should I? Can I? It's not written in lavish prose or some special kind of writing that makes me want to read it just for the writing: I was reading it for what it was written about. But, I mean... it is very entertaining. And, though it isn't exactly "proetry," it's written in a very interesting way, presenting a bunch of different interesting characters and slowly weaving them together, drifting together and floating apart, portraying (for the most part) very real lives, ambitions, failings, loves, losses, etc. It's convincing. It drew me in, and I read it incredibly rapidly (a good sign, judging by my reading habits), and I liked it.

But in theory I maybe shouldn't have.

But what's theory got to do with it?

-bn

Inertia, thrust, dock fuel station, rotate into solar alignment

2011-08-24T08:06:00.000-04:00

I just got back from a vacation, which gave me some time to mull over some theoretical problems I'd been having with writing fiction lately - namely, how to try new things, do more creative stuff, and write things of which I can be more proud and derive more satisfaction as a creator. What I realized today is that, last year, just after getting back from vacation, I had a similar struggle, which resulted in writing a novel (one I recently halfway edited); and, ever since then, writing has essentially been an enormous struggle.

Struggle in a good way, though... I think.

I've accomplished a lot in the last year by constantly pushing against not just what I think it is good to write, but also how I think it is good to write. Although I've developed various skills and coping mechanisms, though, I've basically realized that this "strugglingness" is just my natural creative flow, and having to constantly fight with rationalizations, pipe dreams, glorifications, failed experiments, and all the rest is essentially par for the course.

One thing I have finally to admit to myself without any further reservations - for the sake of my continued sanity and ability to write in a way that satisfies me pragmatically and creatively - is that I am not an "inspired" writer but a "driven" writer, and that drive is founded on a self-directed despotism of creativity. Although I get a lot of ideas and can write something cool about every one of them, I can never finish a story without grabbing myself by the lapels and demanding of myself a story's completion. Sometimes this results in good stories, sometimes bad; but it's the only way to the end, it seems, for me.

Something that struck sparks with me recently was a paper I read by Dyske called "Difference Between 'Real' Writers and 'Wannabe' Writers." Essentially, Dyske argues that a real writer doesn't suffer resistance - what we could also call procrastination, inertia, etc. - but will rather explode with inspiration and complete their works as though in a breeze of divine capability. This resonated very positively with me at first, despite the obvious fact that I do not write in any such fashion. And then, having experimented with myself - allowing myself the opportunity to explode with brilliant words - I realized how wrong this conception is.

Mostly inertia

Granted, there are many different kinds of creatives, and certainly some people will produce their writing or whatever other art in this way. But I personally experience resistance in every activity: work, social gatherings, creative endeavours, you name it. I have to overcome resistance just to roll out of bed in the morning. What does it mean in a philosophic way if I have to will myself to will things, rather than freely willing them? I hardly think it makes me less of an artist - or at least, I hope it doesn't.

(I mean, if I'm being honest, in a philosphic way, it probably means I'm perpetually in bad faith. BUT SARTRE WAS KIND OF AN ASS ANYWAY.)

Anyway, it's sinking in now that I simply have no choice, if I wish to continue doing anything productive at all - whether it's at work, in my writing, or just in fulfilling the basic obligations that make me a human being within my particular society - that I'll always have to overcome inertia and create specifically attainable goals in order to please myself. As far as my writing goes, along with the recent thinking I've been doing regarding stretching creativity and trying new things, I'm going to need to strike a balance where I can take time off to think critically about writing, in between taking the time to actually do the writing that demonstrates those critical theories.

For now, I'm writing a story about octopi, so... I guess I'll get back to the theoretical stuff later.

-bn

"Kill'em Dead," an ebook fairy tale with cussin' and shootin'

2011-08-23T14:55:00.001-04:00

I just finished publishing my third ebook, "Kill'em Dead," a (to borrow a phrase from The David Barron) "Science Fantasy Romance" with fairy tale flavours. Available, as usual, from Isomorph Press - which is to say, yours truly by any other name.

(The pun was not intended but thoroughly enjoyed.)

"Kill'em Dead" is one of the earliest stories I wrote and has actually been my favourite story for a long time. It was roundly rejected by literally every editor I could put my paws on: I persecuted its submission with such alacrity that there are quite literally no markets left for it. Such was my faith in the tale! But, I see now, better things were in store for "Kill'em Dead:" I can make it directly available to the reading public, instead of advancing through the slosh of editorial slush.

A funny aside about this story is that my dad's advice re: its editing was that it needed more (read: any) sex. I think that's been my dad's advice for all my stories. He's entirely right, but, heck, I've got principles to stand for! For which to stand. I mean, they're lying around here somewhere... and in all good faith I should probably at least attempt to counteract the wild profanity, loose morals, drug abuse, violence, and stereotyping so rampant in all my other work with the occasional feel-good, gently-toned tale.

All that aside, this story has always touched my heart, although the fact that I wrote it may make that count for nothing.

Enjoy! Or do not. I haven't sold any ebooks yet. You could be the first! Be the first and I'll post a blog post about you. Be the first and e-mail me to remind me or else I might forget.

Be the first!

Do it live.

-bn

Ann VanderMeer no longer editing Weird Tales, sold to Marvin Kaye

2011-08-23T13:00:00.000-04:00

Super rough. Ann VanderMeer is an awesome editor. I sold two stories to her this year, and what was cool about that for me was that my work was being bought by Ann VanderMeer. The idea of appearing in Weird Tales is really cool, too, but I know Ann's work much more from the anthologies she's edited with her husband Jeff VanderMeer than from the magazine itself. The whole experience was massively surreal in a very positive way, just as this revelation is producing feelings that are not so good.

Anyway, the magazine has been sold to Marvin Kaye, who will fulfill the dual role of publisher/editor. I don't know Kaye's work, but he's got a massive bibliography and has won a World Fantasy award for Best Anthologist, so I expect he's no bad dude - likely the opposite (though perhaps possessing demoniac/lunatic underqualities like most fans of speculative/weird fiction). I'm interested to see how the magazine further evolves under his leadership.

On a selfish note, I'm also interested to see what happens with my stories. Even though Weird Tales bought my work, there's no obligation for them to use the stories, and Kaye may have a different direction in mind when he takes over. I suspect it will be an interesting learning experience vis-a-vis the ravages of the publishing world.

The ravages.

Anyway, Ann and Jeff are currently producing a mammoth anthology called "The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories" (750,000 words - wowza), and Ann seems to have plans for a blog re: "the weird," so it's not like we can't expect some more awesome weirdness from her in the near future.

Also generally it could be said THINK POSITIVE THOUGHTS OR BE CAST INTO THE ABYSS.

-bn

Michael Cisco's "The Narrator"

2011-08-21T14:50:00.000-04:00

"The Narrator" is probably the craziest book I've ever read. By "craziest" I guess I mean "most surreal;" but this might cover up the fact that I enjoyed "The Narrator" as much as I did because it agreed with me in a lot of ways about "real" things, even as at the same time it presented a world so fantastic that, trying to locate it within the locus of science fiction/fantasy/literary/experimental/slipstream/whatever, it shattered all these distinctions with an absolute and distinguishing calm, a literary poise and acuteness I've read probably nowhere else.

Some of the reviews I read about "The Narrator" (which ultimately led me to buy it) suggested that it was a sort of critique/investigation of narration, truth, stories, histories, etc.; and, although it was, I don't think that Cisco pulled those elements off in a really interesting or special way, or that what he did hadn't been done before. Most of the elements that bore directly on narration I found cutesy, hackneyed, or pure fail (the statement "Who is narrating this?", the correction of grammatical errors in-text, metaphors accompanied by descriptions of how the narrator cannot possibly use this metaphor in good faith, or the switching between first/third person that I found ineffective or purely plot-based); I think the question of questioning narration can be far better accomplished in a pure essay format. But this fact didn't actually matter, because "The Narrator" succeeded the most, in my opinion, by its poetics, and its structure as (anti-)war story.

Cisco's images are intense. The book was, for me, a series of massively intense images that preyed on my senses of beauty and horror. They are created via different modes of writing - short passages, long passages, dialogue, action, description - but it was very rare that a passage - any single passage in the entire book - failed to bruise up against me.

To wit:

"Winter comes so swiftly in the mountains that the leaves are frozen green on the trees, the grass in the meadows. The foliage never turns color or falls, but hibernates in clear ice casings until the spring thaw restores their interrupted life again. So the winter landscape is tinkling green, dazzling with flakes of light, crisp through the snow. The many rock-lipped streams freeze clear as well, and the fish are suspended in place like spangles of precious metal until spring." (pg. 7)

"Without any urgency I can detect, a distinct, earnest murmur escapes his lips. He may be speaking to me, but he seems instead to be speaking to space, or to an invisible presence. I've heard the language, and I recognize it, but something is wrong with my hearing, because it sounds like gibberish to me. 'A, ab ab ab ab a abab ab, ab aba ab abab ab ab ab ab ab ab aba ab ababab ab.' Some time passes, and I become aware again of his voice, which had not, I think, paused once." (pg. 274)

Picking these citations is difficult, but also senseless, because there are so many in the book that are just as powerful or that made just as much an impression on me. There were a few things that annoyed me - there's just too much fog in Cisco's world, and a little too many instances of the colours blue, silver and black - but, in something this image-laden, repetition, and a revelation of the author's visionary psyche by the reader, is, I suppose inevitable; and, overall, I was not just impressed, but consistently overawed by the power of the author's language.

What struck me the most in this book was "The Narrator's" depiction of war. We could say that this is a war book where everybody dies and nothing is solved, and this might make us think of the trend now in fantasy, started (from what I understand) by George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, of writing "amoral" fiction, where opposing viewpoints are observed to instill a sense of the lack of right and wrong in matters of war/life. That's great, but what I've noticed, for example, in reading Joe Abercrombie (who is frequently compared to Martin; I haven't read any of the Song of Ice and Fire books), is that just having all the characters be enemies doesn't reveal the absurdity of war, because in these kinds of stories you still tend to root for characters and see things solved by violence. In "The Narrator," violence is completely senseless, deadly, and terrible, and nowhere can we find something over which to exclaim, "That [i.e. this violence] was awesome!" Rather, it all falls flat and meaningless.

"The war is up there on the island, where we're going to meet it, but there's no war there, nor could there be... Where is the war? In the guns and helmets and uniforms? Is it in the rock from which the ore to make the gun was mined, the grass that fed the sheep whose wool went into the uniform, or the sun that lights the battlefield?... Two men meet, and one will give his life for the other, or they will each try to kill the other, while the day is still blandly unfolding around them." (pg. 145)

There's even more powerful dialogue on the subject of war later on; I found the end of the book incredibly satisfying (in a... bilious kind of way) just because of its final treatment of war, the blandness of it, the stupidity of it, the kinds of stories people tell themselves about it. But it would be better if you found it out for yourself.

I highly recommend this one. It is one of the few books I've read in the last year that has truly been worth reading. Perhaps that's because I'm perusing the wrong shelves most of the time, but I feel like it is rather because there aren't many books like this published.

-bn

Well dang tarnation long books you better do a better job

2011-08-21T11:26:00.000-04:00

I've said somewhere before that I hate trilogies/series, but I think that statement may be slightly flawed/biased insofar as I seem to just have trouble remaining interested in the same characters/conflicts/ideas for very long. To wit: I spent the last two weeks on vacation and tried to read Tolstoy's "War and Peace," but had to stop after 1000 of about 1350 pages. It wasn't that it was a bad book; quite the contrary. But I'd plain and simply had enough.

I can think of one case where I've been genuinely interested to read a series in the last five or so years, and that's Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris Cycle; but each book is pretty considerably different, not just in terms of subject matter (which is only so different, considering it's all about, y'know, Ambergris), but more particularly in terms of form. I know of no other series that makes use of the sentence-fragmenty noir detective flavours of "Finch" alongside the double-memoir double-first-person unreliable narrators/crazy fantasy history tale of "Shriek: An Afterword." That was, suffice to say, enough to bring me on back.

I still feel like a douche for not finishing "War and Peace," though. It seems like something I should have manned up to. Ahem: to which I should have manned up.

Oh, well. You can't fight what keeps you interested, I suppose, and my mood palpably improved when I switched W&P out for Michael Cisco's "The Narrator." Books should, in the final analysis, not make you depressed/guilty.

-bn

Creative fragmentation

2011-08-17T11:23:00.000-04:00

HEY HAVE YOU NOTICED I HAVEN'T BLOGGED RECENTLY? What's funny is I'm averaging fifty hits a day not-blogging. Weird.

I've been creativity-stricken for about a month, or at least writing-stricken (not blocked, stricken), although even creativity (&c.)-stricken I wrote one or two cool stories and edited one or two hot tales that were in need of my needle-brush. There are a lot of reasons for my auctorial seizure, but I have already written six or seven blog posts in an attempt to explain them all and find it an unpossible task. My internal life is an ineffable force, folks. Ineffable.

Totally ineffable.

But:

The gist of the outcome is that I no longer wish to follow the Heinlein model - an equation expanded upon by writing teachers like Dean Wesley Smith, David Farland, and Kevin J. Anderson (and then utilized by me) - because even though it has brought me tremendous success and ability, I don't think it has fostered happiness. Actually, it has, because it made me write awesome stuff and submit it and get it published and developed my confidence to a level where I am confident. But Fictionalist Extremism is no longer the sort of extremism I wish to follow (mostly because I'm sick of dogging myself about writing and would rather just, uh, enjoy it? I guess).

I could also argue that this method has not fostered creativity, although in a lot of ways it has; but specifically my focus on production has left no room to pause and meditate and theorize about what kinds of fiction I would actually like to produce. If I'm being perfectly frank, I have never and never will read any of the authors I have until this time taken as role models for my own writerly behaviour. And then I look at, say, China Miéville's blog, and, like, I don't understand. And I want that. I want to be... ununderstandable.

Probably not the kind of thing that can be striven for, probably the kind of idea I'll abandon tomorrow (because I'm not a terribly fascinating, deep, or interesting person), but okay, alright, whatever, I'm better than that, jeez leave me alone.

Anyway, general malaise caused great burps and hiccoughs in my writing output and my ability to write regularly, so now I am just writing fragments. Fragments! Fractals. In miniature they replicate me in macro! At least one a day, always a different story/subject, usually hopefully something not in third-person limited point of view (for God's sake). The purpose? To make me more creative, hopefully more interesting, hopefully less bored with writing.

Also probably going to try and write a metal EP with the theme, Hard as Schist. (It's "rawk and lawl," as it were.)

In this turn of events I would say I am mostly inspired by some of the essays and writings appearing in the anthology "The New Weird" by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, Rahul Kanakia, who always talks about how he basically just diddles around and then comes out with amazing stories, and a series of articles by Nick Mamatas appearing at BookLifeNow.com: "Against Craft" and "Against Story." There's also "Against Professionalism," but that one is so lame.

It's actually really good and I'm just failing to be ironic.

Alright! Creative fragmentation.

-bn

Arise the lit-lich

2011-08-16T17:38:00.000-04:00

I made my first-ever zombie story sale to Bards & Sages Quarterly this week. With the exception of the other zombie story I wrote, "Breakfast" is probably the only zombie story written in the past decade that is actually worth reading.

Posterity will be my judge - both of my artistic ability and my, uh, attitude? - but I hope you B&S readers get a good larf out of Breakfast, which will be appearing in the October issue. Whatever the case, publication of a zombie tale is probably a rite of passage for all genre writers in this day and age.

Let's hear it for rite true zombie tongue-in-cheekery!

-bn

Canada puts the divine right back in the murder machines

2011-08-15T22:08:00.000-04:00

Thank God our righteously mandated conservative government is doing some serious conservation and putting "Royal" back in the names of Canada's navy and air force. I can finally stop pretending that I don't vote because of revulsion with my democratic options and reveal that all along I've just been waiting for an opportunity to flaunt my shriveled, impotent, monarchistic penis. Why perpetuate the democratic and multicultural principles of a proud nation of thirty four-odd million souls when you can worship a single inbred, violently ascendant, beautifully porcelain and slightly balding European household?

Personally, I think we should use our newly revitalized air and sea forces to rescue Will and Kate from the clutches of Great Britain. I'm sure they'll have some great ideas about where we can use our awesome new Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. Maybe they'll let us do the whole India thing again? I've always thought they didn't get it hard enough the first time. Let's hear it for the scepter of divine right!

Roleplaying time... alright

2011-07-16T10:09:00.000-04:00

2nd ed, the version for men.

I started a new Dungeons & Dragons campaign with my friends on Tuesday. It was awesome. If I'm counting correctly, it's been almost three years since I've been legitimately involved in a campaign, as opposed to one-off sessions (which were usually of home-brewed, gun-totin' campaigns - just as fun, granted, but more easily lost to the sands of time).

I'm the Dungeon Master this time around, which is really exciting in that Dungeon Mastering is basically just storytelling - which I've been doing a buttload of the last two years with my writing. That means I've got the practice and chops - in my opinion, at least - to build a cool campaign world. However, what's even cooler about the way pen-and-paper RPGs tell stories is that it's never just the DM telling a story: the PCs are involved in a way that's just as, if not more, fundamental. It's a communal form of storytelling - and, in my group's case, a communal form of awesome-making.

When I was younger, I was a really bad DM. Reason being, I spent all my preparation time working on a single adventure, honing it to minute precision. Despite that, I can only remember a single session where things went according to (my) plan. This really frustrated me, and, back then, I blamed the PCs: I couldn't see that it was their world, their lives, also, and that they might not share my conception of what the best course of action for their characters would be. In fact, this kind of strategic planning is what makes roleplaying roleplaying: no idiot is just going to dive into the dragon's proverbial maw.

This time around, instead of working on one arc, I diversified. I wrote a bunch of hooks, drew some maps, and defined some monsters (I'm basically creating all fresh creatures, rather than use the Monstrous Manual, because it's a lot more fun). I didn't know which direction my PCs would travel, who they would take a liking to and who not, and what kind of expectations and goals they would have. It worked much better. Granted, they keep refusing to enter the dungeon that is opening up in the rocky soil beneath them - but that is probably because there are giant, man-eating earthworms spilling out of said holes. It's funny, because as a DM, I tend to expect that adventurers will want adventure; but as a player, I only want loot and experience. The former does not necessarily mean the latter, since it more often than not means death for some of the party. So, good on my PCs; and besides, there are always more Dungeons in D&D.

I actually based the campaign world on a world I built in a short story. I had pretty big plans for Fourland in a literary kind of way, but those dropped off when I found it incredibly difficult to make stories out of the characters I was writing. On the other hand, those characters make excellent villains. My party has also created a great cast of characters, and they're all excellent roleplayers - which makes for tons of fun just watching them talk to each other in hilarious voices, or abandoning comrades to the vulture-people when the battle goes the wrong way.

Suffice to say, I can't wait for more.

Any of you guys roll the twenty-sided die?

Unintentional Ubuntu... alright

2011-07-08T14:10:00.000-04:00

So I did basically the dumbest thing possible last week when I attempted to crack Diablo II onto my netbook and blindly accepted the idea of a loader being required to complete the operation rather than your standard, "copy this .exe file over the old one" kind of crack. The worst part is, of course, that I own Diablo II, but my netbook has no CD drive - necessitating the crack even though it is so obviously unnecessary.

Of course, I shouldn't have been so dumb as to install what was so clearly malware. I was probably possessed at the time. Maybe I was under mind-assault by an illithid. I'm not sure. But I ran a crack from gameburnworld.com - let that be a lesson to you - and ended up with PRN.EXE, a virus that wrote itself into my registry, drivers, and frequently used software.

And thus began my march toward Unintentional Ubuntu - also known as Last-Chance Linux.

Also unfortunate about the HP Mini 110-1100 netbook: no factory reset function. Drive recovery (ahem) "worked," but didn't eliminate the virus (I just love how recovery doesn't affect your files and folders. What use is it, exactly, if not for that?); neither did a battery of free anti-virus/malware/spyware software. My only options were to reset to factory conditions by ordering a fifty dollar CD from HP - and then buying a USB CD drive - or to buy a license for big-name anti-virus software on the off-chance it might be able to clean my system.

Besides the fact that I've had basically zero positive experiences with McAfee and Norton, there's the matter of the hardware itself: the netbook cost something like $250-300 dollars, no more. I really wasn't in the mood to drop a sixth of its value on something that may or may not work.

Thusly: Ubuntu.

I'd heard of Ubuntu via Cory Doctorow, that champion of the open source, at BoingBoing. Ubuntu's whole thing is that it "Just Works," and, okay, I can dig something that works. I had to go buy a flash drive - my last one ended up in the washing machine, and then the dryer, and then the garbage - but after I formatted the disk and booted my 'book from it, all was joy.

So far, Ubuntu does in fact work - in a sense. I can perform all the operations on it that I want to (so far), except that installing software is cumbersome. It is cumbersome because Ubuntu is intensely, highly secure - the kind of security an idiotface like me obviously requires to keep himself from ruining his operating system. Still, the constant demand for passwords and permissions is not so much reassuring as teeth-grinding - at least in the moment. When I think about it later, though, it makes me happy. It's sort of like how one of my thief characters, Benjamini (my originality is mind-boggling), read a magical trap and the word 'DOOM' resonated inside his skull until his brain exploded, and I got really pissed off at my DM for a few hours but, now, looking back on it, it's hilarious.

Similarly, Ubuntu is theoretically amazing: I appreciate its security features when not actively engaged with them.

However, I really should give credit to the ways in which Ubuntu truly is awesome in a practical sense, because it's not a bad OS in the least; if it weren't for it's compatibility, it would probably be entirely preferable to MacOS or Windows. For example, it has elements of cross-pollination between Windows- and Mac-style GUIs that make it highly likeable - as though, being open source, its creators don't care about brand or corporate legacy, but just want to make something that... aw, jeez... just works. It reacts really well to the user, and it's basically perfectly suited for a netbook - especially one used in an Internet/Word Processor capacity, which is (mostly) what mine is for. It may be a bit of a pain to get things running, but when you do, they run effortlessly. Even just browsing through my new system, I realized how often I grumbled about browsing through my Windows Explorer. Perhaps I just had things set up poorly in Windows, but, again: idiotface needs direction.

I have yet to attempt any sort of Windows emulation - namely with Wine, the Windows compatibility layer for Linux (also for, uh, real Windows: Wine offers better compatibility support for legacy versions than do new versions of Windows. Yikes...). This is mostly because I plain and simply wiped my entire harddrive when I installed the new OS, with the objective of thoroughly obliterating PRN.EXE, and was therefore left with none of my games. I'm sure I'll have them back on there soon, though, and that's when Ubuntu's true capacities will really reveal themselves to me. Can Wine let me kill Nazis as effectively as Windows? That is the question...

Any of you Others Out There use Ubuntu and have experiences to share? Or run Windows, are an idiotface, and have malware issues to lament? I would love for you to join my pot of misery/unfortuntely necessitated electronic adventurism.

-bn

Good on ya, you terribly biased newspaper you

2011-07-05T13:04:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure how, but the Ottawa Citizen - the leading (oh, wait, only) newspaper in Canada's clean, polite capital city - actually managed to publish something that wasn't written by a whiny neoconservative. Paul Robinson, a professor at the University of Ottawa, must have brainwashed the editors with some sort of magic powers to get them to print his article which includes the phrases:

• "militarism has highly undesirable consequences;"
• "war has become almost the option of first resort [in Canada];" and
• "Armed forces have bureaucratic interests in the same way as every other organization, and firm control is needed to hold them in check."

If you've ever read the Citizen, you know that this is literally the exact opposite of their normal editorializing. In fact, the Citizen's standing line is probably something like:

Because of its desirable consequences, war is our option of first resort; and, therefore, we ought to remove controls from the armed forces in order to streamline its capabilities.

No, seriously. I think they've said that somewhere before...

You can read the Citizen's first piece of intelligent journalism of 2011 here, though be forewarned it's not actually anything spectacular. It's just... not stupid.

Hooray!

-bn

Post-Earth anti-colonial pot smoking saboteurs &c.

2011-07-04T08:38:00.000-04:00

I've just got word from Fred Coppersmith, editor of Kaleidotrope, that he'll be publishing my anti-hippie, pro-violence, substance-abusing, wormhole-generating, death-spiraling slur-hurling minimum-wage pimpin' operatic space turd "Children of the Earth" in a coming issue. Probably not until 2012, so you guys are all going to have to wait a little while until that amazing promo I just did comes to fruition.

Sorry for writing awesome blurbs.

-bn

Growing older every year

2011-06-21T21:13:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, the 20th of June, was the year anniversary of this blog. When I discovered this, I became very excited, although there is no particular reason that having blogged for such a length of time is inherently exciting. It is, I suspect, a bit like personal birthdays: the first few are exciting, but eventually, they get old.

Nonetheless, since I recently purchased a domain name - that's right, folks, www.bengodby.com, mark it in your browsers you faithful followers - I'm retroactively declaring that ten-dollar action Celebration. An anniversary present to myself, as it were. Thank goodness I'm a cheap date.

And anyway, it's been a good year. This blog has done reams of good for me, helping me meet new people, develop new skills including graphic design and not-swearing-slash-being-offensive-so-much, and provide a place to self-reflect upon my abilities and ambitions as a writer.

I shall certainly be continuing it. And remember: if you don't like my blog (read: America)...

The joys and perils of finding new markets

2011-06-17T14:14:00.000-04:00

I've got enough stories in circulation at the moment that, if I want to submit anything over 7,000 words long, I am hard-pressed. Hard-pressed like a pixie being stepped on by a giant. I wouldn't be quite as pressed if it weren't for the fact that Canada Post has gone on strike - making it impossible to submit to the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction until they stop striking, or until I visit the USA next week and take advantage of non-striking postal outlets. (Or, perhaps, pay a surprise visit to the F&SF offices in Hoboken. I suspect, however, that that is a bad and terribly unprofessional idea.)

However, running out of markets is always a good chance to re-evaluate the markets I haven't considered yet - because there are always more markets. And sometimes, something you pass over once - either because of the way it looks, sounds, or pays - seems a good option on a second try.

A good example of a magazine I frequently pass over is M-BRANE SF. M-BRANE is by far and away one of the most enjoyable SF 'zines out there - I actually prefer the stories they publish to the stuff put out by some of the heavyweights - but I always miss it in my Duotrope searches because they pay relatively little. However, they're considerably more awesome than a lot of markets that pay more than they do; so I've had to make a little note for my desk to remind myself to submit there.

I found another one today: Murky Depths. Granted, I haven't read it; but it looks so incredibly rad. You might protest: "Ben, you are being swayed by the cartoonized objectification of women on their covers." This is correct. Good art is a rare thing in magazine covers, and just because they do not subscribe to the ideals of radical feminism as I do is no reason not to submit there.

There's also always some crazy fledgling markets that pop up, usually causing me to make faces. The newest is Buzzy Mag, following on the heels of Astra Publications (i.e. the supposed publishers of the supposed magazines Atomic Chipmunk, Lightspeed SF, and seven other allegedly pro-paying markets) and FaePublishing in the general level of anonymity and inexplicably high purchasing power. Fae, granted, went on to actually begin producing content; Astra Publications seems to have folded. Buzzy, now, will only accept mailed submissions, which is pretty crazy for any new magazine and suspicious in its own right - although it seems like they might actually be producers of audiobooks. I'm too lazy to research it thoroughly, but magazines like this - where there's no fiction to be found and no names of editors - always make me frown and hold on to my stories.

Which is a huge pain, because I just finished editing an amazing 10,000 word space western I originally wrote nearly two years ago. It's so awesome, and Canada Post is keeping me from delivering it to Gordon Van Gelder as is good and proper. That Van Gelder - or, rather, one of his assistants - will probably reject it, is no matter. It's the principle of the thing.

The principle, Canada Post.

-bn

The factory method of creative production

2011-06-16T12:30:00.000-04:00

I've been writing a lot lately, a trend following on the heels of my not-writing-a-lot (what we shall call "recharging" though was in fact "videogaming"). I've finished four short stories in ten days, writing about 40,000 words (two of said tales were novellas, essentially, so...). This is directly attributable to my for-now adoption of what I whimsically refer to as the factory method of creative production.

The basic motivation operating here is the fact that I have so many unfinished stories. These come in two brands: stories that were started and never finished, and stories that were finished but never edited. Therefore, I made it a goal to get all of these stories finished, edited, and "in the mail." I'll probably flop out before it's all done, because my to-do list includes four novel revisions, and all but one of those books have I tried (and failed) to edit before. Nonetheless, the objective remains: get some of that unfinished business out of the way before moving on to shiny new ideas.

And, basically, it's worked (for ten days, anyway). There are only really a few principles/rules at play here:
1. Give it a bracket-outline. A bracket-outline is something I contrived, somewhere along the way, from advice imparted by The Thai Barron: basically, slap down the major movements/scenes/actions/events in little square brackets on a page, then fill in the blank space below them with the actual story. This gives form and concrete direction without the kind of intense plotting and development that can detract from fun/time-management.

2. Write one story and don't write anything else. This is pretty important, considering how many ideas one tends to get in a day and how many shiny diversions there are in the world. So long as I don't start any new fiction - blog posts and other stuff's okay, of course - then, at some point, that piece is going to be finished.

3. Write crap if you must. This is a really important rule for me. I love conceiving ideas, and I love starting stories, and I love finishing them, and submitting them, and of course most obviously getting them published. I do not, however, always enjoy the writing of them. For me, a story is like giving birth: it starts with sex (pro), culminates in labour (con), and ends in a child (usually pro). But the time for natural birth has come and gone and now we must do a Caeserean. I need that baby out of me, and that means that, even if I'm not "inspired," I've got to write. I can fix the bad stuff later. (I don't know if you can do this with a child, but, whatever. The metaphor stands.)

4. Gestate. I need time for my stories to ferment (i.e., for me to forget them) before I can go back and do good revisions. We'll have to kill the metaphor here, since babies do their gestating in the womb, but I can't help pointing out the backwardness since it provides me, at least, Teh Laffs. So, yeah. Post-birth gestation.

5. Revise crap to goodness, and do not make more crap while revising. Since I permit myself to write crap, I cannot revise-unto-crap. My revisions have got to be, more or less, final. That's why I can allow myself to write crap, and also why I have to give time for things to ferment.

Anyway, it's going great so far. I'm going to take a break from finishing in-progress stories now and move on to some stuff I have to edit. There's something like twenty tales awaiting my revisions at the moment, and if I could just get those done, I could make it even more difficult for myself to find good markets because I have so many stories out there. But that's a really good thing, and when I'm really out of markets, I can send the stories to my editor at Isomorph Press - real swell guy, name of Ben Godby? - and make e-books out of 'em.

Of course, talking about creative production like it's a complete manufacturing process makes me sound pretty shallow, but I still find that it's an artistic process. That said, here is a really great post by Nick Mamatas at Booklifenow.com about rejecting the notion of craft and striving for art. I think it's a really good shake-up, considering how many folks be talkin' 'bout craft and forgetting to reach for the (st)ar[t](s).

-bn

Totally hawt image via sxc.hu user macrunning.

I am psychically unoriginal and possibly a plagiarist

2011-06-15T08:33:00.001-04:00

Stumbled over some fellow's blog/website today promoting his fantasy series, "The Four Part Land." Funny how that happens: just a few months ago I contrived an entire novel/RPG setting called Four(th)land, bordered by the enslaved, enumerated countries sequentially arriving at said integer.

Of course, even though I may not have known about The Four Part Land, sticking a number to a basic word could hardly be said to be revolutionary. Not to mention that I'm a huge fan of Steph Swainston, whose own "Castle" series takes place in "the Fourlands."

Of course, my enumerated fantasy world is radically different from either example - for reasons so original I can't even tell you lest you rob me for all I am worth (although ideas, unfortunately, purchase little in the commodities market). Nonetheless, maybe I should contrive a title a little less, uh... obvious.

With luck the opposite of "Following" is "Trailblazing," though luck be a fickle mistress

2011-06-14T19:30:00.002-04:00

So, yeah, I just went through and cleaned up my Google... FriendFinder? Google Connect? Google Reader? The thing that appears on my Blogger dashboard and allows me to follow other people's blogs. The list of blogs I was following had gotten mighty lengthy, and though information on the whole is good, too much unsegmented data is bad. I was in a position where I had to scroll through a bajillion blog entries to find ones by the people I actually know/like, or just things that sounded like worthwhile/interesting reading.

Boy, that sounds harsh. Makes it sound like the Internet is full of suckers. And yes, it is, but really the problem isn't other people so much as myself: willy-nilly following whatever blogs seemed potentially relevant to me as budding writer/genre enthusiast. By doing this, I've kind of put myself in a position where it's hard to genuinely connect to any sort of community, or even keep up with the friends I've made in doing this blogging thing.

Because instead of following good pals/top writers/cool blogs, my reader/connector/impluginator (or whatever you call it) was top-heavy with those silly blogs where people blog about writing and publishing but don't seem to do a lot of it themselves, and in fact don't really seem to even have good advice to offer as outsiders or anything worth reading as writers (there's a surprising amount of these things out there, and they're strangely popular... I was following, like, a half-dozen, along with six thousand other people). I also somehow added a bunch of personal blogs of people I don't remember ever checking out. (Although, granted, a brief glance at my own followers demonstrates that I am not the only one doing this. Hello, silent visitors! I adore you.) These things aren't necessarily good or bad in and of themselves, but, I've got other reading material - namely, the personal updates/professional insights of what passes, in the digitalnonymous world, for a Writers Circle.

The point is that, effectively, I'll still be reading all the blogs I always have; I'll just be less prone to missing posts or important details, like how three of my favourite blogs have moved to new webpages. Also, if I try to stay more focussed in this way - following blogs in which I actually intend to participate (comment...arily?) - I should hopefully develop a better sense of what's going on out in the world (since I'm usually just plugged into a writing document).

Onwards, efficiency. Towards... socialization.

Towards a world where we are all the light in the tower.

... actually, I just needed an excuse to post this wicked GIF.

-bn

Reading noir fiction is getting me all illuminated

2011-06-10T08:00:00.000-04:00

Publication approved.

I've spent the past week or two reading "handsome paperbacks" published by Hard Case Crime, an imprint that puts out paperback mysteries/noirs from new authors as well as classic tales from the 50s and such. I have Pornokitsch - one of the best review sites for geek/nerd/dork paraphernalia - to thank for tipping me onto them. The experience is one I should wish to lather, rinse and repeat.

Until this point, I hadn't really seen the allure of mysteries; and it's possible you could say I still don't, in one sense, since I'm not exactly flipping my reading/writing preference from "F&SF" to "M." But I do now "get" why people read these books, and understand that these books are worth reading, and, without further ado, it's been a blast to enjoy them for myself - for two reasons.

One, they're awesome. Hard Case Crime has yet to disappoint me. Partly, this may be because I'm new to the genre, and certain little gooferies - like two-dimensional villainesses, and generally shallow protrayals of women all around - I can laugh off, insofar as I'm a novice to the club and I haven't yet seen how the club next door is a lot nicer (proverbially speaking). Contrarily, when I read a fantasy novel, the writer's got a lot of work to do to impress me - because I've seen this, this and that already, and I'm about to go for it again. Still, I'm generally impressed with Hard Case's authors: the works are short (me like), fast-paced (me also like), and deliver satisfying tales with good apotheoses (also also like).

But the other reason it's good to read this stuff is just simply that I don't read this stuff. It's a blast to pack away some enjoyable fiction that's written in a realm I don't quite understand. The fact that this is still a "genre" definitely weighs on the tomes: I can smell the capital-M mystery shelves from which they have come. But that's in a good way, and the various structures, dialogues, archetypes and techniques that these authors use are handy material for expanding my own vocabulary of style. Much as I love fantasy and sci fi, you've got to get beyond your comfort zone sometimes - especially when you get really, really picky about your comfort zone.

Although, in a cosmic irony - or, whatever - it was fantasy that turned me on to noir in the first place. Although Pornokitsch gave me the necessary tools, the inspiration was drawn down when I read in an interview that Joe Abercrombie was reading a bunch of noirs before he got cracking on his First Law trilogy. I, being an enormous fan-boy, decided to do the same.

Because, y'know, I've got a best-selling fantasy series awaiting me in the near future.

-bn

Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity

2011-06-09T12:00:00.000-04:00

Rahul Kanakia linked me to this. Though it is true that I am the sort of gentleman suspicious of authors whose works are turned into Julia Roberts blockbusters, Elizabeth Gilbert is here giving an amazing speech and talking about some experiences with creativity that, in some form or another, I can directly relate to. You probably can, too. It's awesome. Watch it.

Myriad strategies and sundry spires

2011-06-08T08:50:00.000-04:00

I've been playing a lot of videogames lately. Funny how, graphics aside, PC games haven't really gotten any better for a decade. Perhaps I'm prejudiced insofar as I mostly play strategy games; but, honestly, Crysis had nothing to it that Half-Life didn't - except for more buttons to recall. So that's why, these last few weeks, I've been hung up playing Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and Sid Meier's Colonization.

The original Warcraft, it seems to me, supersedes all other examples of Real-Time Strategy games. Mostly this is because every other RTS I've played - whether it be a Westwood, a Blizzard, or a somebody-else - relies on rushing and mobbing, and over time their titles have diversified gameplay by adding a whole buttload of complex stuff I don't feel like figuring out. The Age of Empires series is nice, but, honestly, I just don't care about all those stupid upgrades. Warcraft, by contrast, sets a pace that forces you to worry about tactics: how are you going to draw those orcs into a trap to kill all their Raiders and Warlocks before they can poison/knife the crap out of you?

Colonization is obviously a radically different game, but I'm finding myself enjoying it much more than El Sid Meier's more popular Civilization series. Actually, the latter editions of Civilization added some cool elements - I really enjoyed the addition of religion and the various cultural organization tables. So, in one sense at least, that particular series sort of defies the logic I'm trying to prove/expound upon herein, since, in Civilization, Complexity = Approved whereas elsewhere Complexity =/= Approved. Nonetheless, I find Colonization a much more intriguing game - again, in defiance of my earlier logic - because it has an even higher level of complexity than Civilization. Colonization is more about micromanaging trade goods and keeping up a nice flow of immigration - whereas, in Civilization, it is the heavy hand of Population Explosion that ye must wield. It's sort of like a really old school Dwarf Fortress - or maybe Drawf Fortress is a science-fictional future-precursor to Colonization.

I guess what it is, is that turn-based strategy games can handle complexity; or, rather, within turn-based games, Ben Godby can handle complexity. Far be it from me to tell anyone else what they can or cannot handle (you mutant loser pie-faces). But I still really enjoy RTS games - the tension of the real-time act - and I wish there were more games made like the original Warcraft. Actually, I guess it's a little like Medieval: Total War in its battle-execution - lumbering and deadly - but the fact that you're stockpiling resources and building units in real time augments the tension and the stakes. Conversely, most RTS games - from Warcraft II, on - dialed down that intensity by falling away from actual battle and back onto enormous tech trees, constant upgrades, and ridiculous speeds of play that always end in The Ogre Rush (or some equivalent).

That's my videogame vendetta for the day. I will now very slowly return to my videogames - where the orcs are presently doing a painfully good job of defending Black Rock Spire.

-bn

P.S. The other really awesome thing about classic DOS games? The music. (Skip to about 0:50 if you're too much of a wuss to handle the enormous tension of the build-up.)

A day of glory

2011-06-06T08:51:00.000-04:00

Just found that my short story "Seedling" will be appearing in Fusion Fragment at the same time that my other short story "Anuta Fragment's Private Eyes" will grace the pages of Weird Tales.

Since I am a talentless hack, the following video is probably at least poetically appropriate.

-bn

I would certainly edit more if there was more reason to

2011-05-21T11:51:00.000-04:00

I just published my second e-book - the interstellar dog-fight and boarding operation of "Bradfer's Pirate" - available, as usual, from Isomorph Press. Before I put it up, I spent several hours editing the story and really brought it to maximum effect.

Similarly, I'm currently doing a re-write of another story for a magazine. It's also going well, and I'm enjoying the editing process. The funny thing is, even though I'm enjoying these projects, and even though I can very clearly see the improvements I'm making to these stories, I normally hate editing.

That's unfortunate, because I can obviously create better product if I spend more time editing. I guess the incentive of knowing well and truly that there may be a potential audience for a story makes me want to work harder on my writing. If I'm the only one to see it, I don't care so much.

Maybe I'm not the discerning reader I thought I was; or maybe I just need more lag time between readings. I've started putting my shorts aside for at least a month between initial composition and editing, and it's a great strategy.

In any case, you have nothing to fear with Bradfer's Pirate: I can guarantee it's a bang-up job. All those rejections from the professional 'zines were the antidote I needed to swallow to produce an awesome tale in the long run. Besides: there's really nothing more awesome than space-grapples - and that's all I have to say about that.

-bn

Joe Abercrombie: doin' it right

2011-05-18T12:25:00.001-04:00

A few weeks ago I read Joe Abercrombie's novel "Best Served Cold," which somewhere or other I'd heard reviewed as "blood-soaked fantasy." Or, maybe that's just the phrase I conjured up because the dustjacket was literally spattered with blood.

Alright, the blood spatter was graphical, but still. I loved the book. It was far and away one of the best and most original fantasies I had read in some time. Abercrombie writes some of the best characters I have ever read, his action is skull-gripping, and his humour hilarious. In fact, Abercrombie is so good that I actually bought his new tome, "The Heroes." I haven't bought a book in, like, a year. But I had to buy this one - because Joe Abercrombie wrote it.

What is particularly "original" about Abercrombie, though, isn't his settings, or his characters, or his stories per se. There's a lot more "creativity," anyway, in a weird fantasy like a Jeff VanderMeer or China Miéville book. The genius of Abercrombie's work is that it is in many ways entirely "standard," predictable fantasy, but the edge he brings to it is so much more modern than pretty much every other ("modern") writer of epic/heroic/sword and sorcery fantasy.

To wit: Having been greatly enamoured of "Best Served Cold," I was reading some interviews with Joe and discovered he'd contributed a story to an anthology by Lou Anders and Jonathan Strahan, "Swords and Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery."

Whoa, thought I, I have stumbled upon a repository of literature the locus of which Joe Abercrombie falls beneath. This book will change my life.

NO IT DIDN'T. Let me disclaim that the next sentence is not a condemnation of the anthology or the editors in general, but: the phrase "The New Sword and Sorcery" is lies, drivel, poppycock. "Swords and Dark Magic" is an anthology of sword and sorcery. Really, really good sword and sorcery; I enjoyed, for example, C. J. Cherryh's contribution. But there is little in this book that's going to blow the hinges off the Moorcockian-Harrisonian paradigm (indeed, there's an Elric story in the anthology). There are but two exceptions, in my opinion; stories that really smell like "swords and dark magic." Namely, Abercrombie's "The Fool Jobs," and Steven Erikson's "The Goats of Glory."

What was different about these stories? There's true grit to them. Granted, there's a lot of true grit to Moorcock. But not quite so true. A lot of classic sword and sorcery has a fairy-tale quality to it. And what's strange is that this fairiness is quite peculiar to sword and sorcery, not being replicated by, say, epic fantasy: The Wheel of Time has much greater "truth value" as a secondary-world than Melniboné.

Anyway, the point is not to rag on sword and sorcery, which I enjoy (or at least have enjoyed), but rather to point out that an artist like Abercrombie has, in my opinion, overcome the tendency of much sword and sorcery to lend an air of unreality to its pages and thereby opened the door to a whole new way of seeing fantasy (granted, I haven't read any George R. R. Martin yet, so I may be, y'know, jumping the artillery piece). Abercrombie's characters and settings are intensely real; his characters do intensely real things. Magic, not surprisingly, plays a small - but insanely awesome - role in his worlds. Steven Erikson, though a much bigger fan of the "sorcery" side of things, nonetheless creates worlds that work in a similar way: if you drag your fingers across the pages, they might just bleed.

Granted, I am terribly biased: if Abercrombie is my new number one fantasy writer, he has displaced Erikson as my previously-number-one fantasy writer. But they are my favourites because they write so much awesomer (indeed, awesomest) fiction than other fantasists.

ALL THIS IS TO SAY: I'm looking for more swords and dark magic; or, rather, to follow up the specifically Abercrombian taste, "swords and split skulls" fantasy. I still like the old styles, of course; but I tend to get bored quickly.

Which is precisely why I must now depart and read some more Joe Abercrombie - before New Joe Abercrombie - Zombie Joe Abercrombie, as it were - appears on the literary scene.

Keep your swords sharp and your strife strifey,

-bn

Why I still basically don't like science fiction

2011-05-09T12:30:00.000-04:00

A little while ago, I wrote a short series of articles for the website Fantasy Faction, wherein I effectively reduced science fiction to fantasy and criticized it for not being more awesome. Someone commented that I was being too harsh on the genre; and, for a moment, I actually thought: "Yes! Who am I to wield the censer of censor over SF? Shame on me! I need to give this genre a chance."

Then, last week, I tried reading Octavia Butler's "Dawn" - and remembered that, yeah, science fiction is a pretty bogus genre.

Now, don't get me wrong: I dig space opera. And I dig space western. Like fantasy, I don't perceive those genres as possessing pretension. "Science fiction," however, is a genre rife with it. Take, for example, the aforementioned Butler novel. It interested me enough when I began; the premise: a species of spacefaring gene-traders saves humanity from destruction in exchange for their life-code. Now, first of all, any premise like this reduces to fantasy: it is no more realistic than necromancy, as far as I'm concerned, as long as we have no empirical evidence of spacefaring gene-traders saving humanity.

But that's not the real problem, in my opinion, though most SF fans will howl at the ignominy of my reductio. The real issue is that the story came with what I perceive to be the bane of good reading: The Lesson.

Science fiction is terribly prone to lessons. Perhaps this is because the people writing it are terribly smart and have put a great deal of thought into their world-building and the concomitant consequences, values, and norms that arise from science fictional situations. It seems difficult, in short, not to think really deeply about something that has ambiguous consequences without trying to disambiguate its portrayal. "Dawn," for instance, was rife with people getting all righteous about their rights not to be tampered with (genetically speaking) and the gradual coming around to the acceptance of variance (i.e. having aliens transmogrify you) that was the painfully obvious lesson behind the story.

Lessons are fine, in one sense - that sense being, "if it is not immediately obvious what the author's agenda is." But Octavia Butler was an African-American writer speaking about perceptions of difference and xenophobia through her works. Similarly, the last time I read Robert J. Sawyer, the lesson was, "science right, religion wrong." It literally hurts my brains to read works so obviously didactic. Science fiction, in short, tends to obliterate the fourth wall. How can you immerse yourself in a story when you see the author behind it? For me, science fiction is an entire genre of lessons - a whole tradition of people telling you what to think and do.

Personally, I prefer lessons be taught by-the-by - in other words, that the lessons of fiction are no different from the lessons of life, i.e., non-didactic. Iain M. Banks' Culture novels are good examples of science fictions that are instructive in an entirely non-pedagogic manner; "Player of Games," for instance, is about a guy being manipulated into destroying an entire race of people by - y'know - playing a game. The story is great, and at the end of it, you've experienced something that might teach you something important about life - or maybe not. And if it does, the content of that lesson is up to you, since the author has nowhere written anything on the blackboard - as is so often the case in science fiction.

Fantasy, on the other hand - for all the absurdities it suffers under the yoke of mystical Zoroastrianism - rarely strives to teach. It seems to be telling us only things we already know, but that we should all like to learn again and again. I enjoy reading fantasy precisely because - high sorceries and vile bestiaries aside - I can see myself in it: both who I am, and who I'd like to be. Too often, science fiction lacks any human component: it is wielded instead as a social pedagogic device.

The question that will be thrown at me by the science fictionalists, of course, is: "But don't you want to be made to think?" The answer is "yes," and the rebuttal is, "I can read non-fiction, philosophy, actual science, history, and, even - gasp - fiction, and be given freer reign to exercise my own faculty of reason than SF allows me due to its pretensious didactic conclusions and its unrealistic, lesson-driven characters."

Now keep your science out of my fiction!

-bn

Good books: the writer's worst enemy

2011-04-26T17:30:00.000-04:00

Not a bad read.

Lately, I have come to realize that the writer's worst enemy is a good book. Granted, a good book is many wonderful things: it can teach you how to write better; it can enlarge, stretch, and otherwise exercise your imagination; and, much more generally, it is a fun and relaxing way to spend one's time. However, this does not change the fact that good books are incredibly dangerous for a budding writer, namely for two reasons:

One, because they're awesome, and, two, because you suck.

The last book I read, "A Very Private Gentleman," was awesome. Similarly, Joe Abercrombie's "Best Served Cold," which I'm reading right now, is awesome. And, on the one hand, that's awesome. There's no greater feeling to have when you're going about your day than knowing that you have a phenomenal book to get to at the end of it. Indeed, I sometimes find myself quite literally shivering - sometimes even dancing in my chair - at the prospect of a good read.

But, by all the darns in the heck, a good book is a terrible thing for a writer. The whole time I read Martin Booth's assassin story, I just wished I could write an assassin story. Now, reading Abercrombie's fight-fest, I just want to write really bloody heroic fantasy.

This actually happens to me quite frequently. Sometimes, it can be a real pain, because I will actually start projects in whatever genre I'm reading just because the book I'm engrossed in is so darn good. The problem is, just because someone else can make a good go of it, doesn't always mean you can. Every writer tends to be stronger in some genres than others; I, for example, write really terrible magic systems, whereas I tend to write absolutely deadly puns.

(What? Don't bereave me?)

You want the solution? Please allow me to tell you: read books unrelated to your current project. While reading "A Very Private Gentleman," I worked on an epic fantasy story; now, reading "Best Served Cold," I'm writing steampunk. This means that these great books, while they might encourage me to write better, won't induce me to... plagiarize.

How about you kids? Do you get charged up by the books you read? Are you an insatiable copy-cat at heart like me?

Wait. I didn't say that last one. I got it from... another author.

-bn

Book Thievery #7: "A Very Private Gentleman" by Martin Booth

2011-04-21T08:00:00.045-04:00

I heard of Martin Booth's subtle thriller, "A Very Private Gentleman," when I watched "The American" - the film adaptation of the novel. Obviously, the character in the novel is English, and less of a wuss than George Clooney; but, nonetheless, it would be impossible to deny that the statement "I loved The American" is entirely truthful. And now, having read Booth's original, I am happy to say it was a very faithful movie.

It's just worth noting that the book is even better.

There are a few elements in particular, jiving with my taste for "genre," that contributed to the palatable excellence of this story. Namely:

1. Gunsmithing: The protagonist of "A Very Private Gentleman" builds guns for assassins. Thus, the book gives an awesome look into the precise, metallurgic world of the craft: building silencers, manufacturing explosive ammunition, filing stocks, and all that jazz. Whereas most thrillers thrive off the use of the firearm, this novel is built up with an incredible tension where the un-fired status of the gun is a constant threat: as the gun takes form, so does the action and suspense. It's not only awesome to read about building guns: it's also an awesome metaphor.

2. Beverages: Some books take a somewhat perverse interest in food. This book is like that, only with beverages. In fact, this book is also obsessed with food; but I found the meditation on beverages far more fascinating. Since the story takes place in Italy, we're specifically talking about wines (frizzantes and biancos and all that) and coffees (the latte kind as well as the more classic espresso). There's also some juice involved. Regardless, the amount of beverages the protagonist drinks is just staggering - until you realize that you, too, drink a lot of beverages. I mean... beverages. They're everywhere. It reminds you that this very private gentleman is really quite a homely dude (gun-building aside). The beverages, as it were, hit you right in the heart.

3. Golden-hearted hookers: This probably shouldn't get me every time. But it gets me every time. 'Nuff said.

Really, though, what commanded my attention through this whole tale was the simple depths that Booth plunged to make his story fully flesh. It reminded me of a Hemingway story, in terms of its visceralness and tactility. There are peaches; there is sun; there are bullets, butterflies, and mountains. Everything that you experience in your daily life is also here, in all its beautiful starkness and familiarity. Booth's ability to describe never runs dry; it is "cold and hard." It is beautiful.

The magical simplicity of Booth's prose keeps the story going. If this book was only a thriller, it would have no magic to it; it would still be a good yarn, yes, but it wouldn't be beautiful. Instead, thanks to the author's sense of poesy, you find yourself walking along the streets of a little Italian town, arm in arm with the gunsmith, sitting to enjoy a pizza before moving on to read the paper or post a letter. It is a life in fullness inhabiting the words.

There is also some sex and people dying. So, yeah: it pretty much rules.

-bn

The Churn: My poor hands, my poor eyes, my etc.

2011-04-19T19:30:00.001-04:00

I've spent the past two weeks doing nothing but editing old stories that I once considered of utterly, irretrievably poor quality. The results have been quite spectacular: from an editorial circulation of about 18 tales, I've gone up to 26, and more are set to roll out in the coming days. I've found the editing process a fun and refreshing change from writing new material.

Indeed, I have come somewhat to resemble this fine old lady (pictured). My objective is to create the finest, most delicious butter for the other peasants of the village; a burdensome task, requiring much physical stamina, but one that generates a product of which one can be proud. There is perhaps only one real downside: that what is to become fine cream begins as rancid cow piss.

Which is not to say that editing is particularly difficult; only that residing in the presence of "old stories" can become, you might say, "stinky" after a certain amount of time - beyond the certain tiredness that comes along with reading, writing, deleting, etc.

For me, the challenge is principally a matter of volume. I today finished edits on a 15,000 word novelette, which ended up running to 19,000 words. That is so many words - especially when you're reading them for the second time. I was exhausted by the end of the work; but, afterwards, I somehow also managed to spin out the edits on another 1,500 word short.

That, then, is the trick: to move quickly. And, on the bright side, many of the stories residing presently in my trunk are indeed short - which is precisely the reason I've been able to add nearly ten of them to my "submittable" repertoire. However, with three novels sitting on that there back-burner awaiting edits, I am somewhat anxious as to how difficult perpetuating this task in the direction of the romanesque might in the end prove. Granted, I edited 15,000 words in under a week, and two of my so-called "novels" are only about 45,000 words long - precisely triple the length of the novelette. Therefore, I can expect to edit one such novel in just under a month.

...can't I?

I certainly hope so, though very long fiction tends to tire me. But I've made it an objective to spin one of those novels out: I'm utterly sick of having them just sitting there, instead of sending queries to agents (or, for that matter, e-booking them up myself). The novelette, then, was good practice. This next week, I'll take it easy, working on the yarns that I can do-up in a day or two; then, it's on to the big guns.

Hopefully, I will have the fortitude of my elderly butter-churning compatriot, and be able to lift and squish until the very end of my 45,000 words - which must, I suspect, have some equivalence in gallons. If granny can do it, why not I?

-bn

The Writer's Trunk: a.k.a. the secret goldmine

2011-04-14T07:29:00.001-04:00

I've started dipping into my trunk. Oh boy, I have. And it's friggin' awesome.

My trunk started the same way that everyone's trunk does. You write a story, then you look at it and you think: "Jeez, what've I done?" and you hurl that scrappy concatenation of words and phrases down the electronic toilet: a folder dedicated to stories you never want to see again.

That's just fine. Sometimes, what comes out of the end of your fingers seems as though it ought to have extruded from some other anatomical appendage. But I've realized that you can't just write a story off based on your first impressions - or, for that matter, the first impressions of slush readers/editors.

To wit: the other day, I was bored with my work-in-progress, and decided to dredge, for the sake of interest and amusement, the - how shall we say it - septic of my literary career. And I realized: no matter how bad something looks going down the drain, two years later, you might discover that you accidentally swallowed and passed gold; and, as a consequence, you will be very glad that your plumbing isn't connected directly to a city line (in this metaphor, roughly indicates the Recycle Bin).

But, indeed, it is at that moment that all metaphors cease; and you begin thinking about the prospect of making real money, just as the hard work begins.

Now go crack the lock off that trunk. Unless you're a suckier writer than I am (a feat you'll be hard-pressed to accomplish), there's something lurking in there with your name on it.

Hopefully it is not rising to the top.

-bn

The Wreditor: a breed oft misunderstood (by me, anyway)

2011-04-13T12:30:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, I got a rejection... from this guy whose blog I sometimes follow. He's a blogger, writer, and assistant editor for a magazine. And he's not the only one. There are a whole slew of Wreditors - writers-cum-editors - in the genre field whose blogs, Tweets, and livelihoods I follow/stalk - primarily in an effort to garner their sweet, sweet wisdom.

But for all my interest in this species of writerly being, I don't understand them in the least. After all, who the hell wants to be an editor?

Hopefully, my "cuss-and-fuss" tagline incited you to click Read More, because it would be a shame if people went away from my homepage thinking I misunderstand editors. Indeed, there's been many a time I've thought of kickstarting a magazine and filling it with fiction I love (read: babes, rays, and felonious sword-play). It would be amazing to hold something in your hands (slash, web browser) and say: "I put this together. It is a collection of things that I like. Now, others may enjoy it, also." But what holds me back is that I'm too busy... writing fiction that I love.

Thusly, although I understand the Editor - who loves to read and loves to share what they love - I cannot get into the skull of the Wreditor. Indeed, it seems that the typical Wreditor shares my consternation with Time Management, because half of their blog posts/Twitter tweets concern topics to the effect of: "Finally going to get some of my OWN writing done!" or "Time to read more slush *groan*." In the parlance of Internetz, this always makes me say:

"wut"

Basically, I just don't understand why you would sign up for an editing gig if what you really want to do is be a writer. No matter how good it looks on a literary CV, editing isn't a substitute for writing practice or good storytelling.

And again, it's not like I haven't thought about it myself: when Strange Horizons was looking for a slush reader a few months ago, I was very interested in applying. I like the magazine, and I thought it would give me a chance to expose myself to more styles and ideas (and add a line to my cover letter). But then I realized that my writing time is preciously gained as it is. How could I dedicate hours a week to reading other people's stuff?

So I guess it's not that I don't understand the temptation that the Wreditor feels; I just don't understand their logic/decision-making process.

Not that I don't love them. Wreditors make life great for Writers like me. They're like spies: every now and again they sneak out of the Presiditorial Palace, make it to their safe house (i.e. blog), and announce: "Psst! Hey, you writers! Guess what I just overheard El Presiditoré saying about you guys? Well, he/she said..."

Ah, the informal spy network! Thank you, Wreditors, for all your hard work. I will reap it, and, in return, raise a glass to you. I may not understand you, but you are doing hard and important work for those of us too lazy to do it.

Merci, mes amies. But the journey has only just begun. Now, I have a real mission for you: you must convince El Presiditoré that he desperately needs my next short story...

-bn

Opinion: Anarchic thought for the plebian artist

2011-04-08T12:44:00.000-04:00

Last night I picked up the spring issue of Maisonneuve, a Canadian "Quarterly of Arts, Opinion, and Ideas." I was looking forward to it: I got a subscription last Christmas, and I really enjoyed the last issue. But as I started flipping through the pages, I couldn't find a single article worth reading. I wondered what it was, and then I realized it was that Maisonneuve is an honest-to-goodness, barefoot-and-naked, capital-L liberal magazine.

You can imagine how stunning this thought was. After all, aren't I a liberal?

Let's count the things that ought to put me in the Lockeian camp. I'm a vegan and a pacifist; I'm pro-choice and believe in gay marriage; I support programs of positive discrimination that rectify historical imbalances and elevate minorities, and I like big government spending to fill niches in the social sphere that support civil society - like cheap daycare, accessible higher education, and affordable healthcare.

But! I'm still a fiscal conservative. I don't like the government wasting money, even though I approve of the government spending it wisely. And there were two things that really pissed me off in Maisonneuve, two articles that lamented the fact that the government isn't wasting more money: an article about a lack of material support for aging artists, and another about the supposed detrimental effect that algorithm-generated web content - like eHow and other sites cobbled together by Demand Media - will have on journalists.

The funny thing is, I'm an artist. But I despise the sense of entitlement most artists seem to feel. I work forty hours a week to pay my bills, and find time in between to practice my craft. When I worked for the Canada Council for the Arts, I would read the project reports of artists who received $25,000 grants to write a book - and took two years to write a first draft. Honestly? In two years, I've written the first drafts of five novels, and more than thirty short stories. Oh, and I blog, and I write for Fantasy Faction, and I volunteered with two different newspapers, and I learned how to e-publish in the meanwhile.

Without a grant - by the by.

As for the issue of algorithm generated content, it boils down to the same complaint: people, namely creative people, are mad that other people don't care about the same things they do. People want to know how to trim their hedges, and they run to Google. If that puts you out of work as a journalist, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. You have to have a customer to make a living, and whining that the customer is broken isn't going to fix your ill-conceived career.

All this made me think how weird it is that most people don't think in terms of, y'know, rational thought, but align themselves with models of previously established sociopolitical systems. If I didn't exercise my brain, I wouldn't simultaneously be a pacifist vegan, and an artist-who-hates-(capital-A)-artists. I'd be blowing glass statues of Mao Zedong and demanding the government pay for my physiotherapy; or I'd be writing stories about tripping on ayahuasca and criticizing people for being more interested in snorting cocaine. That's why I maintain that, though I'm not an anarchist, I'm an anarchist thinker: a few beers can rule my brain just as easily as a sophisticated political tract, but, in the long run, it's always going to be the strongest argument that wins.

Art is great. I love it. But don't expect people to pay you for it, and especially don't expect the taxpayer to support you career choice. There's a nasty habit - in Canadian art circles, at least - to lament that the public "ought" to appreciate The Arts (capitals again), as though they didn't. Wake up, buddy: Canadians buy Taylor Swift albums, they read Twilight, they watch the latest techno-thrillers (did you see Source Code? It wasn't half bad!). But according to the Real Artists (read: jerks with MFAs and some government graft in their pocket), "good" art is always the unpopular stuff (that taxes ought to pay for), and the popular stuff can never be good. Something, someone, somehow, is always ruining art. Somewhere.

Cripes.

I'm going to go back to being a productive member of society and an artist at the same time. Thanks for listening, and remember: don't be a jerk, free your brain from dogma.

-bn

What to edit: personal details vs. fluid story

2011-04-06T07:43:00.001-04:00

When I edited my short story, "What the Market Will Bear," for e-publication, I cut about 500 words from the manuscript that I'd been sending to editors. This tightened the story, at the expense of a few, what we could call, "personal details." However, the cost wasn't very high: it's an 8,000 word story, so there was still plenty of character to go around.

But it made me start thinking about editing, and, in particular, why I normally don't cut those little personal details, anecdotes, and stream-of-consciousness absurdities from my stories - despite the fact that, without them, stories are almost invariably "tighter." I keep wonky little bits of detail in my short stories, however, because stories - even the short kind - are about characters, and characters are nothing without their 'ittle bits.

The maxim of, "cut, cut, and cut again," far from belonging to a suicidal's miscellany, is rather the industry standard advice for writers revising their manuscripts. In a lot of ways, this makes sense. When you first write a manuscript, a lot of random stuff gets in there; in revision, you ought to remove the pieces that are obstacles to the story.

The problem arises when you start to realize that what seem like obstacles to plot actually help develop story, if your story has any interest whatsoever in the peoples and worlds it contains. To wit: a recent story of mine contains a character who, at two points in the tale, listens to "audioporn:" a cassette tape of, effectively, sex sounds. This detail has utterly nothing to do with the story; the character doesn't defeat an evil demon or an alien menace by figuring out that, say, these creatures abhor audioporn, and, should he link his cassette through an amplifier, his enemies will be vanquished. He just does it, just like I enjoy eating pickled onions and reading in the bath. It's fun - and funny - and so I've kept it in the manuscript, because that detail marks out who Ty (the character in question) is for me in my creative consciousness.

I'm a big fan of fun characters, so keeping these kinds of ridiculous details in my stories makes sense to me. At the same time, I know there's a balance to maintain with fluid story. Depending on the length of a particular tale, more or less detail might be appropriate. But I'm kind of getting sick of characters whose every flaw and facet contributes to the resolution of the plot. And so, even when I'm being my own editor, I'm retaining those details that the conventional wisdom says to chuck, because characters - even shallow ones - are a deep part of story.

...that, or I'm just making excuses not to cut, cut, and cut again.

-bn

Indie publishing: best e-book ever

2011-04-04T12:09:00.003-04:00

I have officially finished my first ever e-book. "What the Market Will Bear," my dystopian science fiction comedy of mercantilist mercenaries, has been released by Isomorph Press (a fancy name for a corporate analogue of myself). "What the Market Will Bear" is available for Kindle via Amazon, and a host of other formats via Smashwords. In a few more days, barring any unforseen consequences, it should be available by way of Barnes & Noble and the iBook store. Buy your copy now! (Duh...)

Anyway, I'm very pleased with the product. But let it never again be said that self-publishing is the "easy way" to get published. Not that making an e-book is terribly difficult; but an author who self-publishes a few digital titles will need to have a much larger bank of practical information than an author who doesn't go indie. Furthermore, they must be willing and able to adapt to more confusing, frustrating, and delicate circumstances than their auctorial forbears.

Let's just lay down the things I learned in the past few days:

1. Where to get the hot free stock photos: SXC.hu, in case you're wondering. Thanks, Jeff!

2. How to turn them as quickly and effectively as possible into e-book covers: PowerPoint, or the OpenOffice equivalent. GIMP, Photoshop, and InDesign were too much work (in my opinion) relative to the desired product.

3. Building and managing a "professional" "publisher" "website": 'nuff said.

And those were the things that didn't cause me any trouble.

The real learning (or "raging," depending) starts when you actually begin the publishing process. Getting the look and feel down is back-end; and so is all that writing that I (you) already spent years working on (you've spent years, right?). No, the hard part is working within the confines of the utilities that let you self-publish: Smashwords, Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing, and Barnes & Noble's PubIt!.

PubIt! I'm precluded from using for now, on account of the fact that I lack any American tax status. On the bright side, Smashwords is incredibly client-friendly, and will, with time, hook me up with the required paperwork to get the ball rolling on acquiring an American tax number.

KDP is slightly less user-friendly - by which I really mean less noob-friendly - than Smashwords, but it gave me utterly no trouble with the actual conversion from .html to .mobi format. On the other hand, some of their dashboards are confusing: on the current Kindle edition of "What the Market Will Bear," the stock photographer is listed as one of the contributors. Yes, I appreciate his photo; but listing him as a "contributor" to my e-book was rather distant from my intentions. That's been fixed, but it might take 24 hours to register.

Finally, Smashwords is, by far, the greatest self-publishing provider in terms of client service. Helpful advice, guidelines, and regulations abound. But some of their conversions - namely to HTML, Java, and RTF - just don't pan out as hot as I'd like them. Nonetheless, the ultimate objective is to provide the product to the readers in as many formats as possible, and Smashwords is the only company who can give you so much for so little. Honestly, they're revolutionary.

Suffice it to say, I'm very happy with the e-book I've produced, the (relative) ease of the process, and the knowledge I've acquired. I've developed a new respect for the people who do this more regularly than I; and I have every intention to continue creating e-books of my stories. I'll continue blogging about indie publishing and the rest of my writing adventure on this blog, but for future titles, be sure to check out Isomorph Press.

Oh, and what's next on the list? A real logo for Isomorph Press. Purple shadowed text just isn't the industry standard...

-bn

Sale to "Attack of the 50-foot Book" Anthology

2011-04-03T14:14:00.000-04:00

I am most titillated to inform mes lecteurs (et lecteuses?) that my short story, "Wizard Versus Sorcelator," will be appearing in Wayne Goodchild's Library of Fantasy anthology, "Attack of the 50FT Book." The table of contents has been announced here. I look forward to reading my fellow anthologists' contributions.

I'll post further updates and links on this blog - including a planned advertisement that, keeping in the theme of the anthology, I will build purely out of proto-Celtic menhirs and sunken world war-era battlecruisers.

-bn

Book Thievery #6: "Foucault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco

2011-04-03T11:36:00.000-04:00

"Foucault's Pendulum" is the book you ought to read if you enjoy conspiracy theories, but have surpassed the intellectual threshold required to disbelieve in them. It is part academic text, part satire, part really great all-around novel. Although there's probably no way for any writer to approach Eco's masterful knowledge of the occult sects and hermetic beliefs that swirl around in the Old World's cultural-intellectual heritage, the themes of Foucault's Pendulum bring into relief the social power and mental aesthetic that secret societies and conspiracy theories hold over the human mind. It is these themes that, I propose, we all start riffing off of right now.

1. The Knights Templar: Uh... yeah. The Templars occupy such an enormous part of the European cultic heritage that to do without them with be a life half-lived. Eco knows enough about the Templars to, within the confines of his story, make of them real people with real concerns and a very special kind of life - rather than just wild, heretical crusaders. But he also knows enough about the mysteries that still surround them to preserve - and even augment - their mystique. The Templars, as presented by Eco, are an awesome theme even if you're not writing modern occult thrillers; they're a fantastic template for any secret order, especially in a book of fantasy or science fiction. Wearing heavy metal in the desert heart, kundalinis arising, spitting on the cross and cavorting with the enemy: the clash of the obscene, the pious, and the antithetical is the genius of the Templar mystique.

2. The Old Man of the Mountain: Double yeah. The "hashishins" or assassins of the Shia Ismailis, with their fabulous and impenetrable fortress of Alamut, are the Muslim counterparts to the Templars: religious, but only to the degree necessary for power; esoteric, but not so much as to be close-minded or impractical; and awesome, indefatigable warlords. Their devotion to the cause is probably what most arouses our curiosity, and it is that kind of loyalty to a cause that cements the wonder of the conspiracist: obviously, they must be hiding something. An equally powerful template for your own secret society.

3. Cabala, Sefira, and Tetragrammatons: Due to the particularities of the language, Hebrew occultism has always had a special place in the world of the Initiates. The numerological-linguistic connection is fascinating, even if, rather than solving the riddle of the world, it seems to make it even more meaningless. But this kind of intricate system, a certain magic of words - a nomenclomancy, as it were - is fascinating. And the esoteric, secret nature of the knowledge is another thing to mimic when generating secret societies in your fantasy worlds.

It is all happening according to a plan...

Unless you're a serious scholar, it's going to be pretty hard to produce anything like what Eco has done with Foucault's Pendulum. But reading this book made me think deeply about the nature of the secret and mysterious, and how it holds such a sway over the thinking of so many people in the real world. Secret societies are actually an ideal element in the genre of speculative fiction, and if I take one thing away from this book, it will be the manipulation of this theme in my own work. The question is: will I portray them as real, all-powerful entities, or the dupes and charlatans of Eco's depiction?

-bn

The writer's life: writing versus writing business

2011-03-30T09:34:00.002-04:00

More and more I'm finding my writing selves in conflict: to write, or to deal with the nitty-gritty writing business. By "writing business," I actually mean a lot of things: editing, making submissions to 'zines and publishing houses, proofing e-books, prepping e-book covers (these last two being recent additions to my must-needs-doing column), blogging, and even tweeting. All of these activities are fun in their own way, but whenever it comes right down to it, I pick "writing" every time. After all: I'm a chicken, and if I want to succeed, I've got to lay some eggs. But then, the debate just resurfaces, because the real problem is, what am I going to do with all these stupid eggs?

Now, it's not like I hate the business of being an Ahem-Professional-Writer-Ahem. Take blogging: I love it. It lets me crow my opinions at the enormous and vapid space that is The Internet. And I love egotistically petting my stories - whether that somewhat off-putting metaphor means loading my writing into the Submission Cannon for an assault upon the bastion of the editorial elite, proofing them for e-booking, or tweeting about story sales to 'zines. But the fact remains that these activities are pointless if I'm not writing new material and practicing the craft with the intent to write better. So, when I've got ten stories that need submitting, but I'm writing a hot new tale - well, the decision is easy. The hot new thing gets my attention - not only because it's hot and new, but because I've got to lay the eggs to throw, fry, boil or hatch them. (Or... whatever.)

But, more and more, this simple path of action isn't good enough. Firstly, I'm producing more and more stories; that means I have to spend more and more time submitting those stories. I've got to find markets, track the submissions, make sure I don't mix up information... all I can say is, thank God for Duotrope. But, even worse, now that some of my favourite stories are literally burning out of markets, I've got to start self-publishing. Not that self-publishing is bad; just that, this is even more work I have to do to keep going as I writer. I've got to learn e-book formats, put together covers, proof the texts, and blog about the work. And that's before I've even got to setting up a proper publishing website.

It's enough to drive me batty.

Most importantly, though, it cuts into the writing time. No longer is it simply a matter of: "Well, I'm a writer; obviously, writing comes before writing business." The goal of the writing is to have fun; but once the writing becomes a piece-of-writing, the objective is to put those words into the reader's hands/ears/eyeballs/etc. And to do that, I've got to keep trying to force my words down New York's gullet, or - when the big suits refuse to swallow - I've got to find new distribution channels to get the product to the customer myself.

All this is just to say that you can't only be a writer - unless you want to be one of those writers that whines about being a writer. And I, for one, do not. I want to say, wham-bam, I'm a writer: you can read my fiction here, here, and there, or you can go buy it for yourself in a highly convenient location. Being a writer is sort of like Schroedinger's cat: your writing might be dead, if it's still locked in the box. So, let's face it: you just can't make eggs if you act like a rooster all day - preening, strutting, and otherwise acting like a cock.

-bn

The psychology of writing more: double-space, page count, and never look back

2011-03-26T13:04:00.000-04:00

Best body double ever.

I'm working on a piece right now that might end up being rather lengthy. That means I've got to write a lot of words. Writing a lot of words is something that can sometimes make me scream, but this effect tends to lessen depending on the number of pages that appear as a consequence. The best way to deal with writing long stories? Double-space for better page count, and, as usual, never look back.

Now, I'll be honest: I used to be averse to double-spacing my work. I'd never do it before I'd finished the story. I felt as though double-spacing was for manuscripts, and it wasn't right of me to feel like I was accomplishing any more than I really was just by boosting the page count with extra space. Double-spacing, in short, might be good for the eyes of editors, but for writers it's cheating. I had to keep it real and do it live.

But, alas: life is a vale of tears and sorrow.

I'm a manic-depressive writer, and although there are times when 2000 words can appear like a genie from a bottle, other times, getting those 600, 12-point, Times New Romanians down on the page is just tough work - and when you're done, you're still on page whatever. After all: there are days when I only write 600 words in total, and sometimes I write even less. In a standard word processor, that means I have to select a few menus and bring up a pop-box to visualize my progress for the day.

But double-spacing fixes this problem: it makes the torture of this literary purgatory into a joyful revelation where one is constantly being reward. The pages just fly out of your fingers when you only need to churn out 300 words; and if you write in Courier New, you've only got to put down about 250! That's awesome. And, best of all: you're already formatted in Standard Manuscript, so there's no need to return to the work after the fact and set it up for the editor or the presses.


Be this guy. Be him right now.

I'm not sure if this works for everyone, but it works great for my personal writerly psychology. I feel like I'm "gettin' 'er done" when I see the length of my manuscript rapidly piling up. Furthermore, because of the standard format, I can already imagine the work being slapped into a book, done up all nice for an e-zine, or otherwise published for consumption. In other words, I feel as though my conquest of the literary world is a fait accompli.

Of course, it's not. But half the battle is getting in the right mental state. Double-spacing your writing from the get-go helps put the words on the page and fill out those pages. Just look how much you're writing! You're awesome. You rule.

Go get published.

-bn

Homepage versus blog: titanic grudge match

2011-03-24T09:45:00.000-04:00

The past few days, I've been reading up and refreshing my knowledge on web-design and content management. I've realized there are several basic principles that my website is, we might say, "violating." Principally, I've used this blog as a personal tool to express my thoughts and feelings about writing, rather than as a business tool to represent my fiction writing professionally. The cost of this direction is that my website doesn't easily provide information about myself and my work to potential readers/customers/etc. So, the question is: how to reverse this trend, and, is it worth it?

Because of this little program of study, I'm starting to wonder if I ought to create more of a "homepage" for myself as a professional writer rather than a loosely collected set of articles that collectively form a "weblog." As I start to sell more of my fiction, make more contacts in the publishing industry, and - perhaps most importantly - as I prepare to delve into electronic publishing, there are good reasons to ensure that my blog is more focused, direct, and functional.

But at the same time, I don't want to be complete nerd-ball. Part of the reason I enjoy blogging is because it's fun. It gives me a place to relieve the stress of writing and trying to get published, as well as a chance to write in a sort of essay/memoir style that, due to its informality, allows me to express my own sense of humour and irony (something I cannot do as readily in fiction).

Nonetheless, I've decided that in the coming weeks, I'll be reformatting the look and feel of the website to make it more functional, as well as being slightly more choosy about the content I include and how I present it. Hopefully, this won't, you know... ruin the fun.

The key things I'll be focusing on are:

1. Simplicity and language

I love to make clever titles and fill my posts with witty language. This is enjoyable to me. But since most of this wit and cleverness is devoted to what are essentially inside-jokes with myself, it's not quite clear whether this humour translates to my readers.

Furthermore, if I want to provide content that people are actually interested in reading, I have to make sure that I make clear what my various post topics are. I recently switched to a blog format that displays only a sample of each post on the main blog page, so that readers who aren't regularly reading all my posts have the opportunity to choose what they read; after all, some of my posts equate to "hurpadurp," which is not exactly what everyone is looking for on the Internet. But, generally speaking, this "Read more" format works better if I have clear, simple, and communicable topics and headlines. Thusly, I will strive for post titles like the one above, which is a compromise between "serviceable" and "massive jokesterism."

2. Layout and menus

At the moment, I've got a bunch of random sidebars, links, and menus, that I created with a view to providing more stuff generally rather than providing functional, useful content. By distributing my "extras" over several sidebars - i.e., two side menus and one main "page" bar at the top of the site - readers can better guide themselves to information about myself that is pertinent, or find links they might find useful.

Nonetheless, I'll probably discard that idea. Two sidebars is one too many. But I'll definitely be expanding the "Pages" section of my blog to include more static information about myself.

3. Message and direction

Who is this blog aimed at? Until now, it's basically been... well, me. Going into the future, I hope to draw in more readers who are fellow writers, readers who are interested editors, and - as I start to work with e-books - readers are potential customers. By creating content that is specifically interesting to specific groups of people, I can:

a. lighten my workload by discarding trivial post topics, and

b. maximize reader interest and commitment to the blog.

By making sure that the direction and purpose of the blog is clear and concise, I won't draw in readers who were actually looking for some other kind of information, and I'll retain readers who have a broad interest in the general topics I'm covering.

What this doesn't mean...

The last thing I want to accomplish with this kind of redesign is to lose the "personal" touch that has so far imbued this blog. Although the structure of my website might be considerably different, and although certain aspects of the content - namely language, titles, headers, and links - might appear, on the face of it, more "formal," I fully intend to keep this blog relevant to me as an individual: funny, light-hearted, and personable. Blogging is fun at the moment, and I want to keep it that way.

Comments? Suggestions? Concerns?

Feel free to drop a note in the comments below, or send me a message at beniliusbob@gmail.com. Of course, I absolutely have no real desire to hear from you, and my seemingly personable offer is in fact only a facade. Ah, the vagaries of public relations...

-bn

The ever-expanding writer's toolkit

2011-03-18T12:30:00.000-04:00

It just came to me what an absurd amount of tools are required for me to be a writer. Sure, it seems like I only need a pen and a pad, and maybe a laptop. But the amount of computer programs and utilities I use to keep track of my writing "career" (can I call it that yet?) has gotten absurd. (Aside: the French word for computer program, "logiciel," is a lot better than the English.)

Word processors, text editors, manuscript preparation, oh my!

Flying free, somewhat ineffectively.

The good ones? Cost money. OpenOffice is free, but can't properly convert to RTF format, and, compared to Microsoft Office, is ridden with a clunky interface. Q10 and other text editors are great tools, also, but eventually everything ends up in a proper processor; and the sheer superfluity of means I seem to require just to produce a manuscript - and the fact that, due to my material paucity, I can only afford the free ones - is just ridiculous. How many quick buttons do I need on my taskpane just to write a story?

Dropbox... and hard-boxes.

Don't drop the box.

Dropbox is a fabulous program, because it lets you access your files anywhere. When I went down to New Jersey to visit my girlfriend's family for Christmas, I forgot my USB flashdrive, and when I returned to Ottawa I was mired without my writing. Dropbox is a great solution to my particular brand of forgetfulness. But e-folders are slower than hard folders, and since deleting something in Dropbox's interface - wherever you access it - will synchronically delete it everywhere else, Dropbox is just as much a liability as an asset. Therefore, I just end up backing the thing up onto USB flash drives and hard disks. Yikes.

Duotrope's Submission Tracker, to the power of whatever.

I don't even check if I'm
allowed to use all these images.

Duotrope's Digest, a web program for market listings, is probably the single best tool for writers; other than the actual word production software, it is the last thing I would give up. But, now, it takes four instances of Duotrope in my web browser to effectively generate a submission plan: "Your Pieces," two instances of "Submission Tracker" (historic of piece-in-question and up-to-date listing of current submissions), and "Search." Who thought submitting would be so complex?

Social media, e-mail, and professional logistics.

Adroit subtlety.

Twitter, blogging, e-mail: commitments. I can't stand to go too long without tweeting or blogging, because possessing these assets sort of demands that they appear at least moderately current. Then, I require a "professional" e-mail besides my "personal" one, and have to forward messages from one to the other so I don't have to be entering passwords wily-nily all day. And yet, I still do, because I have to reply from the address to which the e-mail was sent. There are so many ways to communicate, so many ways to market, that a writer could go insane if they really tried to tackle them all.

The future?

Facebook. E-books. Podcasts? Interviews? Who knows? There are so many other items I could add to the repertoire, and I already I sometimes feel overloaded - as though I don't have enough time just to write. Nonetheless, I feel it is all quite possible. Adding just one element at a time to the Ben-Engine - the Bengine if you will - keeps things (relatively) under control. There is much more to learn and many more stories to sell before I master it all.

-bn

Writer, beware: Minecraft

2011-03-17T12:30:00.000-04:00

I've had some trouble getting down to writing business lately, an effect which is directly attributable to my recent purchase of Minecraft. If you haven't heard about Minecraft, presumably you dwell beneath a rather monolithic stone, and how you're reading this blog I am unsure. But the point remains Archimedean: if you're a writer, and you start playing Minecraft, your writing will probably suffer immediately and catastrophically.

This isn't Minecraft's fault. This is Minecraft's virtue. Minecraft is one of the single most creative games I have ever played. In Minecraft, you do, effectively, three things: mine blocks (of stone, wood, or ore); craft those blocks into other blocks or objects; and build insane constructions, like the temple pictured above. Minecraft's cardinal strength, above similar games like Dwarf Fortress, is that it is incredibly simple. You basically just, you know, punch stuff. To craft items, you arrange blocks in patterns that resemble the item you're crafting. Brilliant, right?

Minecraft, of course, is incredibly addicting. Despite the fact that it is all based on blocks (a friend of mine refers to it as "a videogame of Lego"), it is visually stunning, and enormous castles, palaces, railroads, and other objects of childish fantasy abound in the worlds of Minecraft players. Since the game has no definite object, you're free to build whatever you want, for as long as you want, however and whenever you want. This creates a situation where there is always more Minecraft.

This kind of creative game is a bad thing to throw at a writer, mostly because it satisfies a lot of the same needs that writing does - and it's easier. Creatively, the game is very satisfying; even building a little Minecraft house is fun. And doing so is much, much easier than writing a short story, much less a novel.

Nonetheless, I managed to get over my immediate Minecraft obsession quite quickly: about five days. I suspect this is because, having previously played Dwarf Fortress extensively, I quickly realized both the peril and inanity of this kind of game, namely: "Wait a second... I'm not doing anything!" Building things is fun, until you realize you're just building things in a virtual world that will be destroyed or abandoned. Fun, yes, and absolutely unreproachable in that aspect; but Minecraft's boast of "creativity" is deceptive to the True Creative, who makes things that are literally "sandbox." After all, there is no bigger box than the universe into which we've been thrown; and sometimes, videogames are most enjoyable when they are not freeform, but rather propose specific (usually destructive) courses of action that bring us to a Videogame Conclusion.

Still, if you like games, and you need a break from stress - and, let's face it, even writing can be stressful - I recommend Minecraft. It's easy, it's fun, and it's a game without pressure. Plus, it does allow you to flex your creativity and your flair for design in a really beautiful environment. Above and beyond anything else, Minecraft is a worthy game for the beautiful worlds that it generates.

Too bad that, ultimately, they cannot compare with the realm of the mind.

-bn

'Read more' in an effort to bounce less

2011-03-11T08:30:00.005-05:00

I've altered the structure of my blog so that, instead of presenting the whole of each article on the main face of the blog, only a snippet is provided, and the rest of the post can be accessed by clicking the link 'Read more >>' at the bottom. I'm not doing this with the purpose of annoying my regular readers (although I wonder whether that will occur), but rather with the intent to create a site that can better be analyzed by Google Analytics. In particular, I'm interested in seeing if my bounce rate - the rate of visitors who arrive on the main page and then immediately depart from it - will improve if my full articles can only be accessed by clicking onto a derivative page.

My bounce rate, of course, is really not that important to me at this stage in the game. I'm not selling any product, and I have no ads on my blog with which to garner income, either. Technically speaking, my readership will probably be no different whether or not I have the 'Read more >>' function enabled, and my bounce rate will probably not differ other than to more accurately reflect who is actually reading. However, I'm interested - on the one hand - to know how many people are actually reading my posts - which can only be determined with complete accuracy by forcing a knowledge of how those 'bounces' actually break down - and - on the other - I'd like to improve my knowledge of how to create websites that thoroughly engage visitors.

The purpose? In the long run of things, whether I'm self-publishing e-books or if I get published by a big house, I'm going to want to sell books. And an important part of doing that is having a website that is engaging to readers, and that draws them in in such a way that causes them to want more. Creating the 'Read more >>' buttons creates a situation that, although it doesn't necessarily make the blog more engaging in and of itself, allows me to better analyze what kind of blog content is most interesting to readers, and how readers act while they're on my site.

By the way, if you have a website and you're not currently using Analytics, do it now. It's easy, and even if you don't use it in a 'hardcore' way, it's fun to look at the graphs - variously pies and lines - that show the action on your site, as well as the worldmap that shows where your hits are coming from (that's exactly what I've been doing until now). My objective with this new blog style is, in fact, to actually take full advantage of Analytics' capabilities, and make use of those capacities to determine the way my blog is experienced by readers, rather than just the raw numbers that are concerned.

Wish me luck!

-bn

Book Thievery #5: "The Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson

2011-03-10T12:30:00.000-05:00

I read "The Haunting of Hill House" as a deliberate attempt to set out and read, digest, and appreciate good horror. However, I did not find exactly what I expected.

"Hill House" is an incredibly well-written book, and highly... spookifying. Of course, one could expect nothing less, considering that Shirley Jackson is the author of "The Lottery" - a rather terrifyingly disturbing short story they had my class read in - I believe it was - elementary school. However, I was not exactly terrified by "Hill House," although I think I could have been; my lack of terror is explained, I suspect, by the fact that I read the book while enjoying a pint of Mill Street Brewery's Lemon Tea beer, with two cuddly pugs on my lap and a fuzzy cat on my head.

Not, you could say, an environment conducive to being frightened.

But, should I have been reading this in, say, my grandfather's cottage in Gatineau - with its Catholic shrines in the nearby woods and truly awful amounts of seaweed about - I'm sure I would've lost my head. Here is why:

1. Animate houses: Things are so rarely effectively "animated" - i.e., brought to life, though still possessing their thingness (as opposed to, say, golems in fantasy) - as Jackson's Hill House is. That thing becomes a monster. Not some aspect of the house, mind you; not some room, and neither some particular spirit that lies in wait. The house itself - from the very first moment Eleanor, the main character, catches sight of it - is evil. It is also sorrowful, ancient, and lonely. Hill House is truly a character in this novel - in fact, I would argue it is the protagonist - with a highly articulated personality, very specific actions, and a notion for quite awful strategy. And... that's awesome.

2. Phenomena: From reading so much fantasy of late, I am very used to "grittiness:" fantastic elements that seem real, plausible, and believable; elements that are without doubt part and parcel of the world in which I read. Contrarily, "Hill House" espoused many events that were intangible and unreal, or phenomena that appeared for a time and then faded. As certain characters seemed privy to only certain phenomena - and were loathe to discuss their visions with their peers - the sense of mystery was heightened. The sense of "phenomena" - of things happening or seeming to be happening, but of whose truly happening we cannot be entirely certain - was fantastic in this book. I fully intend to make off with this literary device and never return. Because it's pretty darn scary.

3. The inhumanity: In "Hill House," there is a definite sense that one character is "broken" because they are weakest. Early on, I experienced definite and excellent chills as this character partly invented her life story, and partly incorporated elements of her surroundings into it; and then saw this life-story crumble. The horror of that was considerably stronger than any hauntings in Hill House. Indeed, there is a strong sense of injustice in "Hill House," which is nonetheless fully vindicated and borne out by the characters. The inhumanity is, indeed, endemic; and it is this true-to-lifeness that makes "Hill House" as scary as it is.

"The Haunting of Hill House" is a deep book; it is much more than "horror," I think. I was much less scared by it than I expected, but I was nonetheless very chilled; and I suspect that a more authentically tragic horror story will be hard to find. I recommend it to anyone who wants to read a good book, whether or not they want to read good horror; I was transfixed - I had to know - from the beginning to the end of this tale, and that's the very best kind of book to read - genre conventions all aside.

-bn

Dramatica as food for story-thought

2011-03-09T17:30:00.001-05:00

By way of David Farland's "Daily Kick" writer's newsletter (a worthy thing for any aspirant to receive), I yesterday discovered the story-writing theory of Dramatica: the theory that, in short, stories are the complete working out of some problem.

Dramatica is a great tool for any writer. In fact, Dramatica was developed for screenwriters, but its theories are just as handy to the fictionalist. Principally, Dramatica offers a complete set of tools for working stories out in terms of their archetypal form, and for using these archetypes to create the sort of Grand Unified Story that takes a problem, looks at it from every angle, and then resolves it in a way that convinces the reader that the chosen way is the best possible.

I've already found some great uses for Dramatica. Firstly, it's encouraged me to think in a duality of protagonist/main character and objective/subject story, which is an incredibly handy way to maintain a very exciting and engaging story (the subjective adventures of the main character) while still tackling an interesting philosophical issue (the objective trials of the protagonist). All too often, the authors of Dramatica note, protagonist and main character are unified in the same "player," resulting in a sort of narrative schizophrenia. Also, its extensive examinations of archetypes has encouraged me to look at my stories and find where various sorts of views or reactions are underrepresented, or where the addition of some type of character can create more action, more tension, and more excitement (my stories, by the way, are usually terribly underpopulated by interesting characters).

Still, I don't intend to become a Dramatica disciple. This has nothing to do with the shortcomings of Dramatica; in fact, the authors of the theory are very forthcoming with the fact that Dramatica is a theory of story, and that it won't work for everyone (which really made me much more open to the theory to begin with). Rather, I've "discipled" myself in the past, and found it stultifying or ultimately unsuccessful as a development strategy.

But I have no doubt in the capacity of Dramatica to serve as a wonderful device to theorize about stories, and to create a more mature conceptualization of storytelling in an aspiring author. It's already worked wonders for me. If you haven't checked out Dramatica, do it now: the theory book is entirely free!

-bn

No mysteries in the short story room

2011-03-08T18:00:00.008-05:00

Yes: that is a reference to a classic Chris Rock skit.

... I think.

I finished another short story this morning: the wild, fortress-bound romp of "In Fourland." It was fun and gave me a chance to stretch my wings within the realm I had envisioned - a realm particularly dominated by lightning and lightning-bolts. But I realized, upon completion, that - fun world-building, creativity-enlarging, and power-axing aside - it went in directions unsuitable for short story publication.

The problem was that certain promises were made to the reader, and certain mysteries could be proposed within the context of the story but not resolved therein. The same effect occurred when I wrote "The Hell Patrol;" namely, that the satisfaction of the story-as-read could not be fulfilled because the end was held back by mysteries earlier proposed. Theoretically, any sort of uncertainty that arises early in the story - whether it be the identity of a character or the meaning of someone's actions or beliefs - ought to be resolved by the end. I can conceive of some exceptions, probably some very minute details of world-building or characterization. But, if these things add up to insignificance, I think we can say that they are not mysteries at all, and never needed to be resolved.

Fig. 1: Satisfaction.

I suppose what I am speaking to specifically is that both of these stories create scenarios that give room for follow-up, serialization, or novelization - in short, continuance. This is fine; I would like to write more in those worlds, because they are fun and I like the characters I've found there. But the stories, if they are going to be short stories, or indeed "stories" that can stand on their own at all, must have closed ends: they must find satisfaction, and leave the reader not demanding: "What? What?" (Which is pretty much what I was thinking when I read them over, and, heck, I'm the writer.)

Thus, going in to my next tale - which is sort of about a biker gang if they didn't ride motorbikes and ate radioactive heavy metals instead - I've fleshed out very concrete firsts and lasts. There will still be room for "more," if more should be hungered after, but the story will form a complete line segment: a beginning, middle and end with every piece thoroughly in place and identified to some degree or other. In short, it ought to be roughly as satisfying as strawberry rhubarb pie.

To wit: go back and look at that delicious pie!

-bn

I have nothing to blog about today

2011-03-07T17:30:00.000-05:00

I have so little to blog about that it has obliterated my dearth and made of it a wealth.

Less than a week ago - indeed, some span of time that seems recent but not recent enough to quantify specifically - I decided I would blog every day. The purpose? To maintain accounts of my writing. To be accountable to myself in full view of the public. To... while away the hours.

My lack of bloggable material relates directly, however, to the voluminous amount of stories-I-wish-to-write-that-reside-temporarily-within-my-head. My creativity has been struck by flame, and, magnesium oxide that it be, has exploded into white fire. (Aside: Is this metaphor accurate? Chemists? High school students? Weigh in.) This has, countervailingly, pushed out all subjects of whimsy and fancy which normally occupy this blog. I have today tossed out the following blog ideas:

• The beauty of my pen, and the lack of exercise it gets in comparison to my dull, but serviceable, keyboard;
• The unsatisfactory nature of all podcasts when compared to Writing Excuses (sorry, all other podcasts);
• A funny story about my dogs (one of my dogs got locked inside the escape stairwell by accident when I went to take them for a walk this morning and me and the other dog had to run all the way around the building to get back to her and when we got there she looked all sad but cute in that sad way that dogs do and there I've gone and said it all).

All these things are, of course, of great metaphysical merit; but they cannot come up against the enormity of my fantastical creativity. I shall, in the next few days, endeavour to write about plutonium-consuming alien gangsters and pcyber-axe wielding fief lords.

Yes.

In any case, I'll soon offer a full update on what I am convivially referring to (to myself, and now to thee, O Audience) as the "Short Story Assault," my all out war on the short form. It is so far better going than, say, Gallipoli: since last Wednesday, I've written about nine thousand words parsed into two tales and a flash. Tonight, I shall begin "In Fourland," the cyber-fantasy of which I recently spoke.

Yes.

I leave you with comedy:

Pretty much how I felt about Inception.

-bn

Fantasy isn't my forte

2011-03-06T19:27:00.000-05:00

Writing my latest short, "Nomenclomancers I Have Known," I am forced to admit that, despite the panoply of fantasy in my library of compositions, I just can't really get into writing classic - "epic," "heroic," "high" - fantasy.

This is a weird thing to be thinking when, just the other day, the first article of my six-part series, "Keeping Fantasy Fresh," appeared at Fantasy Faction (you can read the article here). Shouldn't I, y'know, enjoy writing fantasy if I'm proselytizing and/or pontificating on this sort of subject?

But, looking back on those articles (I wrote them several weeks back), I'm realizing that part of the problem is that I approach writing fantasy with disregard for my own theories about fantasy. In other words: I'm not trying to keep fantasy fresh.

Take the latest, for example. "Nomenclomancers" is about, well, nomenclomancers: spellcasters whose power is founded in names, naming, and secret words. This is cool, but other than that special magic aspect (which has probably been used before, somewhere), it's quite standard fantasy. However, what I ought to be doing is finding genuinely new - and viscerally so - landscapes and characters; new types of fantasy, in short, rather than just different modes of the old. Ideally, these new zones of exploration would be just as enthralling as classic high fantasy, but more modern, more imaginative, and, well, different.

Those who've read my blog much probably know I'm a big fan of China Miéville and Jeff VanderMeer, who, though fantasists, are of a wholly different order than the "classic" authors of the genre. With these thoughts and influences in mind, what can I bring to the table that would make me more like the stuff of legend?

I've toyed with the idea of cyber-fantasy before - i.e., cyberpunk fantasy. Although it seems counter-possible, I really just mean psi-battleaxes and magi-optic eyeball enhancements; lightning rods and typhoon trains. I guess, in some strange way, I sort of mean "heavy metal fantasy." Whatever it turns out to be, fantasy that is seen, as it were, through a glass darkly, would be more interesting than my own imitations of the old masters.

The point is, classic fantasy isn't my forte because I think it's boring to reproduce things that have already been done, and done well, by others. And yet, I keep writing it. Thusly: I am writing stuff I don't like. There must be some deep-rooted psychological mechanism at work here; but, in any case, the resolution is simple: this is the last conventional fantasy story I will write. After this, it's on to weird fantasy, first and only.

-bn

The allure of colourful text

2011-03-05T18:12:00.000-05:00

I've started using Q10 to write again. It works very well for short stories, since you don't have a ton of text to scroll through and the story tends to end before it clogs up the program's memory. But, its appropriateness for such writing notwithstanding, my favourite feature of Q10 remains its visual customizability.

What is it about lime green, cyan, and magenta text that so allures me? I suspect it is that these outlandish colours most put me in the mood for writing speculative fiction. Green is great for biopunk; azure for space opera; gold for epic fantasy; and blood red when writing horror. All of these, of course, go against a black backdrop, on account of the fact that black goes with everything.

It may be only a small thing, but the ability to create your visual workspace while you write is incredibly refreshing for me. Q10 retains full points for its ability to constantly revivify my writing with the parameters of the very program within which I am doing my writing - and, of course, for doing so within a fullscreen setup.

There's also those great typewriter sound effects...

The line betwixt inspiration and plagiarism

2011-03-04T12:30:00.000-05:00

I've always found that my writing is more inspired by the music I listen to than the books I enjoy. This isn't a hard and fast rule, but generally speaking, my writing is coded with references to innumerable heavy metal bands that I heart. I actually rarely listen to music while I'm writing, so it isn't that lyrics are seeping into my work; and, in fact, I never use lyrics, since I feel this would be direct plagiarism. However, I often utilize the titles of songs and albums - namely those that form, for me, powerful images - to draw inspiration and flavour for my work.

My latest short, "The Hell Patrol" - which I hope to turn into some sort of serial - is such an example, being directly inspired - in its feeling, though not in its content - by the Judas Priest song of the same name. A quick search also turns up a zombie apocalypse movie called The Hell Patrol.

Apparently, the Pantera fan club is also known
as the "Hell Patrol."

So... is this "fair use?" There are many instances where I do something similar; but in large part it is only due to the fact that music makes my spine shiver, and the words associated with some songs become so powerful that their use in my own work just makes me... happy. For example, if I refer to "seasons in the abyss" in a piece of writing, it is a direct tribute to the Slayer tune. But to readers, it may not be. The question, then, is whether that is a fair thing for me to do. I'm capitalizing on someone else's brilliance.

Again, this is something I do all the time, and not malicious; and I don't dip into lyrics because, in effect, I'm already quite certain that would be unfair to the composers. But before I start getting all big-headed, is this something I ought to stop? Despite the fact that my stories have nothing - and I do mean nothing - to do with the songs in question, they still draw colour from those tunes. And, can I really say they are "nothing" alike? I mean, my "Hell Patrol" is still about "The Hell Patrol," whatever the contents of that august company of soldiers might be, and no matter how different it is from the same patrol represented in Judas Priest's music.

In literature, allusions are quite common; and it may be that I am only worried because, in the digital age, there is so much hullabaloo about copyrights and fair use. But I don't allude to other people's writing; I allude to other people's music. And since the boundaries between these works is immense (whereas referring to one fantasy world in another fantasy world might draw a sort of smiling appreciation, insofar as fans/readers might enjoy both series and, as such, diminish the "hidden" aspect of the allusion), I worry that I am carrying off with something and making it my own a bit too much.

What do you think, O Internet? Please, save me from myself...

-bn

Revivifying the writing strategy

2011-03-03T18:00:00.000-05:00

In view of the fact that I can't seem to finish a novel, and have piled up my fair share of partially complete works, Jeff Ambrose remarked that continuing to do so might build a bad habit. I agree: it is imperative that the next novel I attempt not be an attempt, but a completion. Otherwise, my subconscious may very well write itself into a wall again and again.

To that end, I'm revamping my writing tactics. The grand strategy remains the same: write a novel I love by the end of 2011. But the particular way in which I go about achieving that task must, obviously, change.

So, firstly, from here onwards I will only write stories I can finish; and for stories that scream for more, write serials.. This ensures that I am constantly massaging my creativity and trying new things. Nothing less than an immensely creative Ben can accomplish El Grando Strategeo (no, that's not a real language), and since I'm stuck on my novels, obviously my creative muscles need better workouts. Thusly, complete a lot of writing.

Second, I intend to read ever more widely. I have neglected short fiction for ages, now (alright, I guess, like, six months, but that's still a significant fraction of my life), in favour of reading novels, but reading short fiction might stimulate me in new ways and, paradoxically, contribute to my ability to write a novel. (Perhaps, even, reading all these novels is suppressing my own inner novelist?) I will also strive to read more widely in the genres, namely horror, mystery, and thriller; possibly, even, in romance (probably not, though, if I'm being frank about that there last one). I've been reading "Viriconium" by M. John Harrison lately, and, excellent fantasy though it is, there's really very little for me to take from reading really good - or bad - fantasy any more. So: on, to the genres!

Thirdly, I intend to update this blog every day, or as often as possible. I've done that before, and even though sometimes it was annoying, I think overall it improved my creativity and my dedication to writing. It forces me, in essence, to face up to my writing career - whether it's a "giggidy-giggidy!" kind of day or a "I shall never achieve release!" kind of one.

Finally, I will develop a dedicated writing time. This... has eluded me. Namely because the best time for such a time is in the mornings, before I go to work, and waking up at 6 AM can be... unpleasant. Nonetheless, I think it will be necessary to truly realize the full potential of my tactics and achieve that city-on-the-hill, The Novel. With time, I think I can wake up early and square my writing away every morning, leaving the rest of the day for Real Work, Schmoozing, and &c.

Well, there you have it: it only took two months to fully develop my New Years' resolution. Huh! I don't know how long I will have to pursue these tactics to make a novel work, but I suspect it will be as long as feels right, plus at least four weeks. I've jumped ship too early before; I can't afford (okay, that's too dramatic, but get off my back about it) to make the same mistake again.

-bn

Back to basics

2011-03-02T20:00:00.000-05:00

But not lameitudes. No, never those.

So, I guess I can't write a novel. Not easily, at least; not with the present thoughts and feelings that course through various bodily organs. My attempts to do so are constantly thwarted and reviled by the soul that stands at the keyboard. Unfinished novels abound on my hard-drive.

I've done plenty of thinking about this kind of stuff before - some of it good, some useless - and I won't again. The novel will have to come to me, next time round. For now, I'll be returning to short stories.

The advantage to this strategy is that I can engage a lot of ideas fast. It's also a lot of fun and it creates a lot of potential sales: more product, more market. The main thing, though, is that I want to keep writing - I need to keep writing - and the novels I'm attempting just don't create that imperative. I've had a blast since yesterday, working on "Oscar Coronation" - a character name I pulled directly from my own confusion regarding the New York Times' headline "Oscar Coronation for King's Speech," which I figured meant some actor featured in said movie rather than an "Oscar coronation" - and, now, a story I've long meant to work on, "Hell Patrol."

Ultimately, I still want to be a novelist; that's where it's at. But forcing things just never works.

-bn