I'm Discontinuing This Blog, Check out Sci-Fi Fan Letter

In case people still find themselves here, I'm sure you've noticed the paucity of posts in the past few months. Well, I keep trying to maintain two blogs and with all the other things going on in my life it's not working. So, I'll be dedicating more time to my scififanletter.blogspot.com blog. Please look there for interviews, book and movie reviews and sf and fantasy related reading lists.

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers - Book Review

I did a proper review of this book, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to edit yourself into print, over at my Sci-fi fan letter blog, wherein I posted the table of contents and some of the basics about this book. Here, I thought I'd expound a bit on what I learned from reading it.

First off, the book is great. If you want to improve your writing go out and buy it (or borrow it from the library :) ). After finishing this book I came up with a significantly better opening for a book I'll need to reedit in the future. Not my current project, but it's nice to know that even an older project can be improved, and potentially edited to the point where it is more professional and saleable.

The first chapter deals with something all writers are familiar with: Show and Tell. What Renni Browne and Dave King do, however, is point out that a balance is required. Showing and telling are both important tools for a writer, provided you know how and when to use each one to improve your novel.

My favourite aspect of their book is the 'checklist' at the end of each chapter, point form notes of things you should examine your manuscript for in order to improve it. And these are not simply 'remove this' pieces of advice. They want you, the author, to understand what your doing in each paragraph, each word of dialogue, each word period, in order to make your story the best you can do.

Wish You Were Dead - Todd Strasser

Todd Strasser's new book, Wish You Were Dead, is like a modern technology Christopher Pike novel. I loved Pike's books as a kid, and I think today's teens will enjoy this book just as much.

The book is told through three mediums. The first is a blog. The blogger has been tormented by the popular kids at school, especially Lucy Cunningham, for years. So when Lucy disappears the blogger is glad. Then we see through the kidnapper's eyes and learn what happens to those who vanish. The book is predominantly told through the point of view of Madison, a high school student whose popular classmates are disappearing one by one. She's friends with these people, though she's considered more of a goody two shoes in that she's polite and kind to those 'below' her in the school popularity chain. Though her cyber stocker still thinks she's a little too stuck up.

People paying close attention will figure out who the kidnapper is before the end, but the book is a lot of fun to read and shows some of the dangers of airing all your personal grievances on the internet. The characters are realistic high schoolers - in all varieties (the cool, the cruel, the picked on, the jocks, etc.). The story is quick to read and seeing the kidnapper's viewpoint keeps things tense and fast paced.

Scheduling Writing Time

I wrote a post about this several months ago. Guess I should have listened to my own advice. I finally got around to doing up a basic schedule showing when I get up and when I have to have all my work done (when the hubby gets home). Then I wrote down the various chores I needed to do during the day and you know what? I realized if I get up late I can eat lunch late and my afternoon doesn't have to start at 12 like everyone else's. It can start at 1:30 or 2, or whenever I want it to. I have this idea that at 12 I need to have lunch and that's when more active chores should commence. But if I push that back, then my morning writing time doesn't vanish because I had too many emails to read through or because some chore *needs* to be done NOW. I can see (because it's all written out) that there's plenty of time. Indeed, if I waste less time on the internet there's more than enough time to write, read and do everything else that needs doing.

And so this morning I sat down to write and actually got some writing done. Not just editing, which is where I've been spending time lately (I've made some changes to major characters that needs some back editing in the segments already written in order to go forward). Today I found a few side scenes that needed to be written, and it's a lot of fun to be writing new scenes again. And I LIKE editing. I think I've been working on this novel much too long (over 3 years, though to be fair I spent 1 1/2 years of that writing a different novel).

Recipe For Death - Mystery Reading List

I've been posting my SF & F reading lists over at my scififanletter blog for years, but it occurs to me that I prepared several mystery endcap displays at the store and I might as well post those here. This list is a few years old so I'm sure the authors have 1 or 2 new books. The list was not meant to be comprehensive, merely to fill a display. Each book deals with food or drink. I highly recommend A Debt To Pleasure, though it's a tough read and definitely not for everyone. The books are in no particular order.

A Debt to Pleasure - John Lanchester
Rueful Death, Rosemary Remembered, Thyme of Death - Susan Wittig Albert
Death Dines In - Claudia Bishop
Murder Can Spoil Your Appetite - Selma Eichler
Creeps Suzette, Just Deserts, Legs Benedict - Mary Daheim
Shades of Earl Grey, Jasmine Moon Murder - Laura Childs
Death Du Jour, Spice Box, Stiff Risotto - Lou Jane Temple
Chocolate Quake, Crime Brulee, French Fried - Nancy Fairbanks
Crepes of Wrath, Custards Last Stand - Tamar Myers
Catered Murder - Isis Crawford
Courting Disaster, Cook In Time, Red Hot Murder - JoAnne Pence
Fudge Cupcake Murder, Strawberry Shortcake Murder - JoAnne Fluke

Cat Who Cookbook - Julie Murphy (a cookbook based on the 'cat who' mysteries by Lilian Jackson Braun)

My historical Pet Peeves + Europe's Inner Demons Book Review

There are two items of 'common knowledge' that really bug me as a history graduate. The first (which I won't discuss here) is the idea that 'everyone' believed the world was flat during the time of Christopher Columbus. How people continue to believe that when navigational instruments of the time required a knowledge of a circular earth in order to work astounds me (and yes, I'm sure some peasantry in Europe didn't know the earth was round and probably wouldn't have cared either. My complaint is that the people who were in charge WOULD have know and WOULD have cared).

The second historical 'knowledge' is the idea that the witch hunts were a medieval invention brought forth from the smelly dirty time where people had no sense of reality. Luckily we were saved from this nasty brutish existence by that wonderfully golden age the renaissance.

I just finished an incredible book, Europe's Inner Demons by Norman Cohn. In it, he examines where the ideas of the witch hunts come from. Yes, the roots of the beliefs came out of the middle ages (based off of beliefs attributed to heretics, folkloric beliefs and the practice of ritualistic magic) and yes, there were a few isolated witch hunts (or, more accurately, heresy hunts in which heretics - proved or not - were burned singly and en mass). But the witch hunts from popular imagination did not take place during the middle ages. They were a later invention. Read the book to find out his reasoning. It's extremely well documented and carefully considered. He examines the secondary sources from which the idea that the middle ages started the witch hunts and then examines the primary sources they quote in order to check their validity. What he discovers is quite remarkable, and debunks much that is considered 'common knowledge' with regards to the witch hunts.

About how the witch hunts actually started I'll quote a little from his book, page 215. Information in [ ] brackets is supplied by me to explain things the author explained earlier.

"Almost throughout the Middle Ages - very generally until the thirteenth century, in some parts of Europe even to the fifteenth century - the accusatory form of criminal procedure obtained. That is to say, the legal battle was fought out not between society and the accused [as was the case in the witch hunts and heretic trials, where the Church was often the accuser and could employ torture to achieve 'confessions'. This was also the case when asking an accused to denounce others, something that wouldn't happen in trials brought forth by an individual.], but between the accused and a private person who accused him. In this respect there was no difference between a civil and a criminal case; in the latter as in the former the individual complainant was responsible for finding and producing proofs such as would convince the judge.

The accusatory procedure was derived from Roman law, and it retained all those features which had characterized it under the later Empire. By and large it favoured the accused rather than the accuser. The accuser was obliged to conduct the case himself, without the assistance of prosecuting counsel. Moreover, if he failed the convince the judge he was likely to suffer as heavy a penalty as would have been visited upon the accused if he had been convicted. This was known as the talion.

The intention behind the talion was simply to discourage malicious or frivolous accusations, but the effect was far more sweeping. How was the law to distinguish between a mere mistake and deliberate calumny? In practice it seldom distinguished; everyone knew that an unsuccessful complainant would almost certainly be penalized, whatever his motives. ...

Everything possible was done to impress the would-be accuser with the risks involved. When notifying the judge of the proposed action, the accuser had to give a written undertaking to provide proof and, if the proof were found inadequate, to submit to the penalty of the talion as a culminator. And that was not all: once the inscription had been accepted by the judge, the accuser could not withdraw without incurring the penalty of the talion."

Now, this does not mean people were never tried for maleficium (witchcraft) and punished. Nor does it mean the middle ages were an entirely lawful time, as lynching of suspected witches sometimes and maybe even often took place. There are a few isolated group trials of heretics and others performed during the middle ages by religious fanatics. But by and large the majority of witch hunts as considered in popular belief were, at best, late medieval and renaissance inventions.

Mr. Cohn concludes his work with the idea that later Ecclesiastes and bureaucrats were more willing to accept the truth behind accusations of witchcraft and evil doing in ways that those of earlier times were not. Allowing for miscarriages of justice where individuals were forced into confessions and then forced to denounce family and friends as being participants in an underground movement wherein the practitioners had denied Christ and begun worshiping the
Devil and performing malicious acts upon their neighbours.

At any rate, the book is fabulous - though it is fairly dry and scholarly - and the topic is fascinating.

Wikipedia's entry on the witch hunts is accurate and is a great jumping off point for learning more.

Infinite Flickr: The Movie

A couple years ago my husband (known as "Monkiineko" on Flickr) put together all the photos posted (at the time) to the Flickr group, Infinite Flickr, and set up animated transitions from one to the next to make a continuous video from the images entitled "Infinite Flickr: The Movie". It's pretty cool.

The music is "Tribute" by Eric Hamilton - check out his royalty free music at www.dilvie.com and click on the "Music Archive" link in his right hand navigation column.

If you wish to download a high quality version of this video, you can use the following link:

105 image version (H.264 codec, 640x480, 30fps) 167 seconds, 19.5 MB
(right click the link and use "Save Link As..." or "Download Linked File")