I am so very stuck on how this character outsmarts a nemesis. I’d go write the other story, but I’m stuck on how those characters outsmart their nemesis.
Basically, I have made the critical error of trying to write stories about people being smart, which means I have to be smart.
*sigh*
I have my first pair of new glasses since 2009. I can see leaves on trees! And freckles on the lovely person who helped fit my glasses!
In other news, I am apparently nominated for four separate Locus awards in four separate Locus award categories: Novella, novelette, short story, and collection. All three of the short fiction offerings are available in their entirety, for free, online. You may read them here, if you like:
Novella: “In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns“
Novelette: “Faster Gun“
Short Story: “The Deeps of the Sky“
Congrats to all the other nominees! Here’s the complete list:
SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL
FANTASY NOVEL
YOUNG ADULT BOOK
FIRST NOVEL
NOVELLA
NOVELETTE
SHORT STORY
ANTHOLOGY
COLLECTION
MAGAZINE
PUBLISHER
EDITOR
ARTIST
NON-FICTION
ART BOOK
And I’m interviewed at Amazon’s Omnivoracious regarding the awards.
Excelsior!
Let’s talk about the fact that Amanda Berry is a hero, and that she rescued herself, her daughter, and two other women from a horrible situation.
Let the record show that she did what she had to do, and if she hadn’t, those four women would still be in that house.
Because the media seem to want to cast her and the other women only as victims, and that narrative is a lie.
Let’s talk about the fact that Charles Ramsey is a hero, too. Because he saw a person obviously in distress, and he acted. And the fact that that person was white and female, and that he was black and male, living on a job as a dishwasher, and that his police record would be brought up afterward, definitely entered his consciousness; and he did it anyway. Because he saw a person who needed help.
That does not decrease his heroism. It increases it.
Let the record show that he did what he had to do, and if he hadn’t, those four women would still be in that house.
And Ariel Castro might be getting away with it for another fifteen years.
And now I’m speaking here as an abuse survivor.
That Mr. Ramsey allegedly has a record for domestic violence is not beside the point; it is the point. It’s people who abuse other people, and it’s people who help other people. And people can learn better, or make a mistake one time and do something to repair it another.
Ramsey doesn’t have to be perfect to be a hero. Berry didn’t have to be perfect to be a hero. Michelle Knight was a hero when she delivered Ms. Berry’s baby daughter, with no experience and no support, and she doesn’t have to be perfect for that to stand, either. Gina DeJesus has no doubt done some pretty heroic stuff in the last ten years or so as well.
Our absolutist cultural narratives do nobody a service. People do not have to be perfect and blameless to be worthy of respect and admiration; they only have to be trying.
And one of the effects of that absolutism is to tell survivors who are not perfect and blameless (and who is, and who who has been abused can see themselves as perfect?) then they are somehow villains too, or responsible, or that they bear guilt for what they’ve suffered.
Another effect is that people who are capable of making a change may not, because they are scared of how they will be perceived if they aren’t perfect.
***
(As for Mr. Ramsey’s drug charges: if you don’t understand the interplay of race, class, and drug-law harassment, I suggest you do some reading, and understand that middle class suburban white people can get away with a lot more than some black guy from Cleveland.)
It’s finally Spring in New England (I got out of Wisconsin just in time, apparently; I beat the blizzard by a day) and I get to be home with my dog for a whole three weeks before I head back to the Midwest.
With spring come the historical re-enactors. There’s a pile of them camped out on the town common currently, firing off muskets and terrifying my poor dog. He would like you to know that he is not a gun dog. He doesn’t mind thunderstorms in the least, but the musketry was bad enough that he had to climb into my lap and tremble.
I was half tempted to go out there and give them a piece of my mind, but I suppose it wouldn’t be neighborly. And they probably have a permit or something.
The bugler playing Taps horribly was more frightening to me. But I’m not a Briard.
ETA: Oh, god, now they’re playing fiddle. Badly.
I delivered the publication version of Steles of the Sky at about 4 AM this morning. It goes to production now, and if all goes well, next April you will have a lovely bundle of pages or pixels in your hot little hand. (I’ve already seen sketches for the cover art. Oh man. This is not going to suck. The roughs are currently my computer desktop. Thank you, Donato Giancola, for another gorgeous cover.)
It’s the longest of the three books at 153,000 words Microsoft word count, and about 190,000 words manuscript word count.
Why the big disparity? Well, here. Because I keep getting asked what the difference between a word processor’s word count and “manuscript word count” is, I explain.
No, take too long. I sum up.
Your word processor will generally give you a word count when you click the proper button. This word count will vary from word processor to word processor, because Scrivener uses a different algorithm than MS Word than Wordperfect than Open Office than what have you. How can algorithms vary? Because wordcount is a judgment call. Is fire-fighter one word or two? Do we count letters and punctuation? MS Word thinks a hash mark for a scene break is a word. Not all word processors agree.
Manuscript word count is calculated a different way. It is not a measure of the number of words in a piece, but the number of “words,” where “words” are bundles of five characters and a space. Like column inches, it’s meant to tell an editor or a compositor how much space the piece is going to take up in a finished work. So a page of dialogue may have far fewer words than a page of description, but the same number of “words.” (Dialogue, you see, has a lot of white space.)
In the era of typewriters, you didn’t calculate your word count by counting every word on the page. You calculated it by setting your margins such that your page had either 24 60 character lines on it, or 25 50 character lines. This gives you (very roughly), ~250 words to a page. (This is one reason why standard manuscript formatting calls for a fixed width serif font such as Courier, double-spaced. Another reason is that fixed width serif fonts, double-spaced, give editors and copyeditors and compositors room to scribble all over your manuscript. Another reason is that you get used to reading it, and picking out errors becomes easier. Proportional fonts (where the letters are different widths) look prettier and save space, but also hide errors and make it harder to guess how much space (how many pages or column inches) a given story will take. Sans-serif fonts make it harder to tell a 1 from an I from an l.
In the ebook/webzine era, the industry seems to be transitioning from manuscript word count to MS word count in general–both in terms of payment for stories that pay by the word (alas! because we get paid more for manuscript counts: they average 15% higher, especially if you’re a sesquipedalian bastard like me) and in terms of award eligibility categories.
It doesn’t matter so much with novels, where you’re not paid by the word and the chief issue is the price of printing additional signatures. (Google it.)
But I find I can’t accurately compare word I do now with work I did ten years ago unless I keep track of the manuscript word count.
(By the way, this makes Steles of the Sky the second-longest book I have ever written, after The Stratford Man. Which was a 290,000 word monster eventually published in two volumes: Ink and Steel and Hell and Earth. The manuscript was 1190 pages long.)
Excelsior!
I just handed in the manuscript for Steles of the Sky. 6000+ words today.
It’s only about a quarter again as long as it was supposed to be. I guess that makes it a real epic fantasy now.
Going to go soak my hands in ice now. And read somebody else’s book for a change.
Tah dah:
Nov. 6, 2013
I’m thrilled that Range of Ghosts is the 2012 Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best Epic Fantasy! The other SF/F category winners are John Scalzi and N. K. Jemisin.
Yay books!
I’m absolutely thrilled to announce that my short story “Karen Memory” will be appearing in the new John Joseph Adams-edited anthology Dead Man’s Hand, collecting some of the finest in all-new, original Weird West tales to be published in May of 2014.
“Karen Memory” is the short that gave rise to the novel of the same name, which will be coming out from Tor in 2015, if all goes according to plan.
The rest of the TOC is pretty astounding:
Seriously, it goes not get better than this.
I’ll be a Guest of Honor at RavenCon in Virginia next April! And I will be joining That Boy I Like at NYC ComiCon for One! Day! Only! in October.
And now, back to the word mines.
travel and appearances 2013:
Boskone: Boston, MA, February 15-17 2013
Signing: New England Mobile Book Fair, Newton Highlands MA, March 20, 2013
Signing: Bookpeople, Austin TX, March 27 2013
Signing: Dragon’s Lair, Austin TX, March 28 2013
Minicon: Minneapolis, MN, March 30-31 2013
Signing: Uncle Hugo’s Bookstore, Minneapolis MN, April 13, 2013
Up in the Aether: Detroit, MI, May 23-27 2013
4th Street Fantasy: Minneapolis, MN, June 21-24, 2013
American Library Association (guest speaker): Chicago IL, June 28-30 2013
ConVergence: Minneapolis, MN July 4-8, 2013
Readercon: Burlington, MA, July 11-14, 2013
Space City Con: Houston, TX August 2-4, 2013 (Literary Guest of Honor)
Lone Star Con (San Antonio Worldcon): San Antonio, TX, August 29-September 1 2013
Context: Columbus, OH, September 27-29 2013 (GoH)
Signing (and Scott Lynch’s The Republic of Thieves book launch!) : Pandemonium, Central Square, Cambridge MA, October 8th 2013
NYC ComiCon: NY NY, October 11th 2013 (only)
Viable Paradise: Oak Bluffs MA, October 12-16 2013
World Fantasy Convention: Brighton England UK, October 31-November 3, 2013
2013:
Steles of the Sky rough draft: March 2, 2013
Book proposal madness!
OWW EC: March 15, 2013
Metatropolis III story: March 31, 2013
OWW EC: April 15, 2013
Popular Science flash: April 22, 2013
“Dark Leader”: April 2013
Steles of the Sky final: May 1, 2013
“Green and Dying”: May 1, 2013
Venusian story: July 1, 2013
Hieroglyph story: August 10, 2013
“Something’s Gotta Eat T. rexes“: October 2013
An Apprentice to Elves: ?
2014:
Karen Memory: January 6, 2014
travel and appearances:
RavenCon: North Chesterfield, Virginia, April 25-27th, 2014 (Guest of Honor)
ConVergence: Minneapolis, MN, July 3-7, 2014
Finncon: Jyväskylä, Finland, July 11-13, 2014 (Guest of Honor)
Worldcon: London, England, August 14-17, 2014
No fixed deadline:
Smile (unless its name is actually Salt Water)
Unsuitable Metal
Gotham Jazz
Untitled Gangland Urban Fantasy That Keeps Bugging Me
“Gallowglas”
“Untitled Space Opera Thingy” aka “Periastron”
“Posthumous Jonson”
“Steel”
“On Safari in R’lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera”
“This Chance Planet”
“Flush”
“Coronado”
“Patience and Fortitude”
“A Time to Reap”