Four Months of Books: January, February, March, and April

On By R. J. HowellIn A Month of BooksLeave a comment

Oof, I’m slacking with this, aren’t I? We’re almost back to grad school delays for updating this series. I also missed the first of May, so, er, I’ll say I’m posting in honor of Star Wars Day? May the 4th be with you?

A Conspiracy of Truths by Alexandra Rowland: Oh, this was a delight. Chant’s voice is just so bracingly irreverent and makes for such an interesting viewpoint for this world. I’m writing this a few weeks after having finished the book, so it’s a little fuzzy, but I love when there’s a fun narrative conceit for the format and presentation, and this one is a good example of it (Chant is speaking to someone in his first person narration, and he 100% lies through omission and understatement, particularly about the things he doesn’t want to talk about…like feelings). It’s also unexpectedly hilarious, especially once Chant and Ylfing are in a room together. Much like A Taste of Gold and Iron, A Conspiracy of Truths are quietly but refreshingly queer normative (as the two books are set in the same world, if very distantly related), and I just found the whole reasoning behind society-wide polyamory fascinating. There’s hints in here of an almost Pratchettarian approach to societal commentary and the snapshots of fully realized secondary characters who basically just walk onstage and exit stage left, who are both very real and very ridiculous. Also, bonus points for having a viewpoint character who is older! Like, grandparent-age and fully embracing the role of “curmudgeonly old geezer who doesn’t give a fuck what anyone thinks and will be rude because he’s in a bad situation and it’s his only outlet.” Excellent!

Stargazy Pie by Victoria Goddard: I may have eaten these. Like, the whole series, in a week. I am also biased, because I love the other companion series (serieses?), so it was likely I was going to enjoy these. Stargazy Pie does fill in so many of the little gaps in the world building lore I just sort of skated over while reading the other books from the other series(es), and is both very much like the other books but also…a bit different. This one does feel a bit like a first book, as the lore is a little amorphous and the connections between revelations and mystery are a little convoluted, but it’s very much set up in that mode of small English village murder-mystery cozy, where bizarre things occur and you just roll with the weird. And the final reveal for the mystery feels like a homage to those very complicated cozy mystery novels, where if you don’t note that one little detail, you probably aren’t going to figure it out, but that’s also fine? Because it’s super entertaining anyway? Also, there forbidden magic and cults and secret drug farms and mermaids and mysterious pies that is made, in fact, of red herrings–it’s entirely one giant literary homage and easter egg, and quite a fun romp. The series are quick reads, which is why I, er, read so many, so quickly.

Bee Sting Cake by Victoria Goddard: Greenwing and Dart hits its stride and this was the point where I got what these books are doing. Also, poor Jemis. He’s just not catching a break here… Though I love his recognition that no only is his life a melodrama, it’s now a gothic melodrama, complete with curses, spooky forests, ancestral homes that are covered in three inches of dust and decay. And a dragon. Admittedly, yes, the dragon makes sense in context. Just roll with it. Also, cake. Also, Hal. I love Hal.

Whiskey Jack by Victoria Goddard: Though technically Stone Speaks to Stone comes in between book 2 and 3, I do recommend NOT reading it before reading Whiskey Jack, but after, because there is ONE major reveal that if you know a certain character’s name, you will TOTALLY figure out everyone’s secret identity and be stuck with Jemis pottering about in complete ignorance. Which…depending on you, I guess, might be entertaining, but it might also be infuriating, since he blithely waltzes past certain clues that, even NOT having read Stone Speaks to Stone, you might start putting two and two together. Anyway, the melodrama continues! Along with narrative coincidences! Which do get explained later (spoiler: it’s wild magic. There’s a wild mage in this, and wild mages always attract the most extraordinary coincidences. If there’s a wild mage, and that one thing would have a .0001% chance of actually happening, but would be narratively dramatic, it’s a guarantee it’s happening–I love this conceit).

Stone Speaks to Stone by Victoria Goddard: Short, but fills in the blanks of what actually happened to Jemis’ father. Saying much about this one might end up too far into spoiler territory. Quick read!

Black Currant Fool by Victoria Goddard: This one is the point where what appears to be, on the surface, fairly cozy (if a bit strange) literary homages stumble straight into the epic, and the whole tone shifts. Which isn’t bad! There’s been plenty of setup for this throughout the other books, but once you get to the prison, suddenly, things start snowballing. And then the twist near the end happens, and things take a sharp left turn. But as usual, there’s a lot of literary homage, some cracking codes and finding hidden messages in seemingly boring poetry (it’s a little Da Vinci Code, though I vastly prefer this over that). And then the walloper of an end. Also, I really am wondering if we’ll get to witness that certain second play…

Love-in-a-Mist by Victoria Goddard: Is it a spoiler to say this one is a Clue-style closed-room mystery? *checks back cover blurb* Nope! Not a spoiler, it’s in the blurb! Though it takes a bit for the murder to happen, and when it does, you might be able to work out the culprit rather quickly, the mystery itself isn’t the driving impetus of the story. Rather, it’s the fallout from Black Currant Fool, Jemis’ character growth/change, and the unfolding complications/revelations of what role Mr. Dart (and Jemis) are going to play and what kind of story, overall, these books are telling. I did, however, appreciate the how of how the final reveal of the murderer went down. Very classically closed-room mystery! Very Agatha Christie! Also, there’s a surprise unicorn.

Plum Duff by Victoria Goddard: The food-titles are starting to get a little stretched in this one. The Plum Duff pudding doesn’t show up until, like, the last 10%. This book in general is a bit slower paced than the others, more of a rest-and-recoup book for what feels like setup for the grand finale in the not-yet-released book 7. But! Readers of the other series(es), especially the Red Company ones, might recognize certain enchanted diamonds, bags, and poetry. There’s also an interesting framework with the Twelve Days of Christmas (Wintertide) which…fits but also leaves me with so many questions. Especially regarding Sayu Fox. However! Certain small details make me realize that this series is very closely tied with both the Red Company books and The Tales of the Hearthfire, which…shall be intriguing to watch collide. Also, spoilers, but Jemis’ character arch between all these is, honestly, staggering, and I do wonder where he’s going to go next. Because sainthood is an interesting character twist, and there’s one other series of books with a certain sainted character that is dear to my heart, and I’m really starting to wonder if there will be parallels. Anyway. The series as a whole is taking a rather sharp sideways turn, but as always, everything is a literary homage to something. And is quite enjoyable.

The Saint of the Book Store by Victoria Goddard: Blurbing this one would be very spoiler heavy, though it’s fun to see all the characters from an outside perspective! Read these books! Join me in loving these books! *foists Nine Worlds at you*

Three Months of Books: October, November, and December

On By R. J. HowellIn A Month of BooksLeave a comment

It’s been spooky, turkey, and pine tree season! I seem to instead be channeling an overall desire for flannel, knit sweaters, and warm drinks, since most of my reads this month fall, once more, into that “cozy” category and heavy on the romance. Frankly, not too many books read these past few months or, at least, not many books that are published. I did read quite a few books as a beta-reader and then was up to my neck in revisions, so I was mostly reading my books, which don’t count. Either way, without further ado, three months of books!

A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland: This was a delight. Very, very slow burn romance between a prince and his bodyguard, who are very opposite yet work so well in contrast with each other. The mystery element was a little transparent, much like it was with A Strange and Stubborn Endurance and yet, I found myself not minding it, since it honestly doesn’t matter, as the book isn’t really about the mystery, it’s about the romance and the politics. I adored the world-building, especially that it was so, so casually queer-normative and not once was a character’s sexuality or gender identity used for “drama” or weaponized against. People were just queer and the way it was done was so deft, never once did I feel it would stray into the whole “oh, this person is being hurt because they’re [insert queer identity here].” As for the characters, Kadou is a wonderful depiction of living with anxiety and I found his experience rather…eye-opening, seeing that I never realized I struggle with anxiety till I saw a character with anxiety and I was like…oh, his brain beats him up just like mine does me! …oh. Wait a minute… Evemer (and his mother!) is wonderful and I just love how he has to learn to use, y’know, words. Complex sentences. Express himself. Not just rely on grunts ’cause that’s going to trigger Kadou’s anxiety terribly. Aaaaand, slightly spoilery, but there was a certain character I had enjoyed greatly and braced myself for his death, probably in a dramatic moment of self-sacrifice because of course that’s what you do with the ex in romance novels…and he didn’t die. In fact, he not only lives but recognizes that his feelings are his to work through? Which was unexpected, refreshing, and very much welcome. Also, there’s a positive hat-tilt to the importance of therapy. My only moment of marginal disappointment was when I realized the romance was definitely monogamous but there were a few hints that it could have gone down a poly amorous path. There just isn’t enough poly am representation in mainstream publishing…

Immortal Rising by Lynsay Sands: Ah, the installment for the long-running Argeneau series that I missed. This one was different, and had a refreshingly different pace/approach/formula. The last few (er, like dozen) have had older immortals who are well past their first couple of centuries and uninformed mortals as their life mate, so you get a lot of the same sort of structure of the immortal dancing around the reveal, and eventually the reveal which if, like me, you’ve been reading all thirty-something of these for years, you can recite near verbatim in your sleep. This one had a young immortal (who, even more intriguingly, is one of the “fangless” variety) and a…well, I hesitate to call him just a mortal, only because he, er, is genetically modified to have wings and his mortality is a little questionable? Either way, he’s already in on the secret, so the obligatory explanation is extremely brief. There was a twist I wasn’t expecting, and another which…eeeeeeh, okay, fine, I’ll give it though it borders on silly (however, this series knows it’s campy and embraces the camp, so again, didn’t bother me even as I rolled my eyes…but smilingly so), and a certain enemy arc is brought to a conclusion. I wonder who the next antagonist will be for the next batch of life mate couples…*

After the Bite by Lynsay Sands: The new installment of that same long-running series. To be absolutely honest, I can finish reading these in a day, and often do, which is why they tend to be on here in batches. They’re fast reads, usually funny, and just pleasantly entertaining with a rather creative approach to the world-building (I mean, vampires who aren’t vampires, but nano-infested immortals from the lost city of Atlantis…that is just so campy and embraces the camp wholeheartedly). This one was back to older immortal and ignorant mortal structure, which was okay, and there might be a new antagonist being introduced, though we’ll see. Admittedly, the one issue I’m starting to have with these is when they inevitably call for reinforcements and we get ALL the cameos from a bunch of previous books…only, it’s been a few years since I read them and I don’t know who half these people are anymore anyway… Still, I do still enjoy the idea that, oh, sure, finding your life mate is incredible, once-in-a-lifetime chance that every immortal dreams of…but it’s also WILDLY inconvenient, seeing that you keep passing out from incredible, and incredibly brief, sex. And, er, everywhere. Woe to the life mates who have sex in a confined bathroom with an awful lot of sharp edged counters and hard tile everywhere, for they are doomed to head injuries (which, er, has happened in previous books).*

At the Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard: This book. This book. This book was incredible. I’d been waiting for it for a few months now, and it was worth that wait in every way. But most importantly, this book gave me that queer experience of seeing oneself finally, FINALLY reflected in a character and feeling validated. This book made me cry. A lot. I devoured it in three days, and even then, I had to take breaks because of the sheer amount of feels it inspired in me. Because I understood. But more than that, this book understood me. Up until reading this one, I have never had the experience of reading an ace character who is not only explicitly described as ace, but has the way they love not only validated but shown as being just as important as allo-experiences of love. I have never read that before, never experienced a book that said to me, “Hey, the way you experience love? Yeah, that’s valid, and here’s a whole book with a character who experiences love the way you do and it’s beautiful.” I finally, finally have a book that, when someone asks, “So what’s it feel like to be ace?” I can point at and be like, “Read that. It’s very close to my experience.” And that is just the romance. The rest of the book is just gorgeous, and I adored every bit of it. Will I reread this 1000-page behemoth? Oh, yes. Reread and re-experience and love every moment. Again, I just adore the way this world depicts both the concrete reality and the fantastical—not just fantasy, per say, but whimsy and myth and folklore and story. And the way Goddard writes characters is truly just extraordinary. And you have no idea how utterly delighted I am to discover that not only are there two more Red Company books planned, but there’s also a third for Lays of the Hearth-Fire. I thought this one was going to be the end, I really did, but then…I learned there will be more. Adore, I simply adore. And I foist! Read, read, and join me in my adoration!**

Also, it’s very, ah, fitting that I featured both Alex Rowland’s new book and Victoria Goddard’s new book in the same blog post. For reasons.

* Just as a note, though I mostly read queer-leaning romances, this series is almost painfully het and follows the mainstream category romance market formula very closely. This is not a knock to category romances or het relationships, but if you’ve come across my blog because of the queer SFF romances I feature, just know that these are not those.

** This review has very little, ah, content, mostly because if I get started, I won’t shut up, and I would prefer to keep in as unspoilery as possible. Because I will babble. And I will give things away.

Show and Tell and Why I Don’t Think It Matters

On By R. J. HowellIn Musings, writingLeave a comment
Photo of a road with two solid yellow dividing lines down the center disappearing into the distance.

All right, confession time:

I despise the adage “Show Don’t Tell.” With a passion.

Once a week, usually more, someone on Reddit or Discord or a forum I’m part of will ask the dreaded question, “How do I show instead of tell?” or “Is this showing or is this telling?” or “How do I show emotion?” That last one then gets comments about how you ought to describe characters clenching fists or gritting teeth or laughing uproariously. Or someone will level this flippancy at someone and call it critique, causing the other person to spiral into an endless self-destructive cycle of ripping their work apart for no damn good reason.

So I’m going to be contrary and confess how much I hate that adage and how utterly useless I find it. If ever there was a piece of writing advice I could expunge from the grand lexicon of writing advice, it’s this one. I believe it was Chunk Wendig in his book Damn Fine Story who pointed out how useless the idea of it is. Because at the end of the day, no matter what you do, you are still telling a story because you are using words not actual pictures. On some level, everything is always told. Is that a pedantic way of viewing it? Of course. Do I know what is meant by “Show Don’t Tell”? Also, of course. But that frankly isn’t the point, because very, very rarely is the meaning of it ever explained when someone bandies it around as wisdom.

I will also get on my high literary horse and claim that the predominance of “Show Don’t Tell” has led to some exceedingly lifeless, emotionless, voiceless prose, and I make this claim as someone who often beta-reads and has noticed this trend of fist clenching, teeth gritting, uproarious cackling, but other than those rather visual markers of emotion, experience utterly no intimacy or deeper emotional connection with the characters. And, dare I say it, I believe this has its roots in the erroneous belief that “telling” the reader what the character is thinking or feeling or experiencing is “Telling” and thus, must be removed in favor of almost cinematic—and lifeless—depictions of the visual action.

Photo of a forest from above, divided down the center by a river, one half dark, the other light/frozen.

Except. Except, except, except—the strength of the written medium is that it isn’t visual, or isn’t just. Cinema, being a purely visual and auditory medium, uses exaggerated expression but, also, vitally, the soundtrack score to create emotional resonance because we, the viewers, usually can’t get a snapshot at what is happening in a given character’s head. Written words, however, can, but don’t have the ability to, say, balance a purely visual depiction with an emotionally resonant soundtrack, so instead, ought to invite us into the that character’s head and emotional space so that we can feel and experience what’s happening. To insist only on “Showing” and depicting only what an outside observer might “see” and allowing us none of that character intimacy, that snapshot into the emotional topography of the story, is essentially denying one of written media’s strongest tools, in favor of one of its weaker (because the strength of a visual depiction is only as strong as its clarity and both the writer’s skill at description but also the reader’s skill at interpretation and imagination—because written media is a method of communication, and as much as we writers like to think it’s a solitary art, it’s not, it’s an act of communication and cooperation with at least one other person, your reader, who is also an active participant and in many ways your co-creator…but that, frankly, is a whole ‘nother blog post*). Because the written medium is not entirely a visual medium—yes, there’s some extraordinary things you can do with layout and typography and font and the visual construction and depiction of the story, but that’s secondary to what it excels at: creating a facsimile of an experience in all its many facets by tapping into the imagination and mining a potential shared past experience of your reader.

The way one can most easily create that deeper intimacy with a character…is by telling the reader what they’re thinking. Not, “They thought this” but a deeper dive, one that breaks down the barriers and filters between reader and character, letting them, for that moment, experience that fictional perspective, which, on the surface, may look like the “telling” of that adage, but “Show Don’t Tell” simplifies the technique and craft of this to a detrimental degree. What I argue the “Tell” of “Show Don’t Tell” actually refers to is a prose depiction that does not invite the reader in to experience the emotion and the character’s perspective, and thus, reads as almost authoritative in its direction…because readers want to feel, want to experience (broadly speaking) and when they are instructed “Feel this!” but the story, the prose, the depiction hasn’t invited them to invest their emotion and imagination, have a contrary response of rejection—which creates the oft-ill-named “Tell.” It’s not the “Tell” that’s the culprit, but that the story/prose/character hasn’t built the relationship with the reader to invite their investment, and so, when they are instructed the character feels this or thinks this or emotes this, but they themselves are not experiencing it in tandem, it creates a dissonance, and the “Yeah, Right” response.

Photo of a bizarre and fantastical teetering stack of a book, binoculars, an apple, and other objects.

It’s harder for that response to be evoked with pure “Show.” Because pure “Show” doesn’t invite their investment the same way. In many respects, pure “Show” forces them to have to embroider the story with their own interpretation and emotional experience, which creates the illusion of great emotionality…except, it isn’t the story that is bringing that emotional resonance, it’s the reader. Which covers the deficit and causes most to think, “Ah, yes, this is properly emotional storytelling.” Now, there are some masters of this style, who do create true emotional resonance through a lack of deep point of view intimacy, an external narrative “camera” as it were relaying the outside representations of the characters and events, forcing the reader to, yes, embroider…but the art behind this technique is that the writer is consciously presenting particular elements that will most likely draw a particular emotional parallel and, thus, create emotionality and the experience of intimacy through the reader’s interpretation. This is deceptively simple on its surface; it’s honestly a lot harder to pull off and pull off well, and, I argue, not universally applicable to all forms of storytelling. It is one approach, one technique, much like a visual artist choosing to use only a palette knife and gouache as their medium and tool for the visual effect, for the challenge. But this does not mean that everyone should only use a palette knife and gouache, nor that that particular artist will continue to only use that medium and that tool. Perhaps it will become a hallmark of their style. Or perhaps it was just for that one piece or series of pieces. It’s an approach, not a rule.

Thus, my parallel to “Show Don’t Tell.” It’s an approach, a way of creating and depicting a facsimile of an experience. It’s not a rule. If you choose, as a writer, to follow this method, know that it’s a method, a choice of tool and medium within your medium, not a rule and not broadly applicable to all forms of writing. You have no idea how many times I see critique leveled at, say, Romance novels that they don’t show enough, only tell…except, that genre uses a different array of tools to create emotional resonance, and one is a deep-dive intimacy with the viewpoint characters and often high octane emotional content because the goal of a Romance novel is to make a reader feel, and feel deeply. That’s the attraction of the genre. That’s the whole point. Of course it’s exceedingly transparent and almost totalitarian with its instruction of what emotions to plumb and what a reader should feel…and, by the way, most Romance readers are consenting and complicit in that, and are, in that way, actively contributing to the emotional resonance of the story.

These are all tools and methods and technique—elements of the craft of writing that are more nuanced with greater degrees of applicability than some flippant “Show Don’t Tell” supposed “rule.” You want to depict deep intimacy with your viewpoint character’s mental and emotional state, regardless of whether it’s in first or third person? Of course, tell the reader what they’re thinking and what they’re feeling. At first, if your skill isn’t quite up to snuff, you will likely run into that dissonance problem and people will, erroneously, advise you to stop “telling.” I argue to ignore them, because the problem isn’t that it’s being told, it’s how it’s being told. Instead, level up your telling skills until a reader simply forgets that they’re reading (or hearing) a story, and instead experiences this scenario of fiction you’re creating for them, with them. Because, like a mentioned, writing and the experience of writing is a two-person road of communication; both you and your reader are reaching out to each other and creating something in that space between.

Photo of a road disappearing off into the foothills of mountains.

And, oh, by the way, one of the other possible contributors to a feeling that a story is “Tell” is that you, writer, aren’t leaving enough room for your reader to dance in this act of co-creation with you. That, too, can create a feeling of being constrained, being stifled—because if you don’t trust your reader and leave them space to imagine and interpret what you are offering them, that, too, creates that contrarianism. It’s a hideously delicate balance, to give just enough that the reader trusts you and imagines with you, but to also leave them room to make the story and the experience their own…while also having their hand held just enough that they are experiencing and interpreting your intent. It takes practice. It takes a lot of practice. And writing is an art—meaning, as you reach the goal, the bar, the “good enough” level, you look up to find…there is simply another level to reach for after that. It’s a lifelong pursuit.

Which, I realize, might sound rather defeating, but to me at least, it sounds galvanizing. Because I can write all my life and still learn new things.

This is not to say that prose that “Shows” is somehow wrong. Far from it! It’s a tool, and if your writing lends itself to it, by all means, embrace it wholeheartedly. I’m only suggesting that there’s more than one way to achieve emotional resonance in your writing, and that “Show Don’t Tell” is denying a whole range of other approaches. Or the entirely delightful possibility of using that range and variety of techniques in one story to create a variety and range of experiences.

And, really, every time I see that advice, I just want to scream…

* Actually, that’s the topic of my thesis that I submitted for my MFA and a presentation I gave at ICFA a few years ago. But that’s neither here nor there.

Photo credit: Photo by Joshua Woroniecki, Photo by Anthony Intraversato on Unsplash, Photo by Pickled Stardust on Unsplash, Image by MaxWdhs from Pixabay

Two Books in Two Years: Exile and Witness

On By R. J. HowellIn Musings, Prophecy's Exile, Uncategorized, Witness, writingLeave a comment
Photo of my computer with the current draft of Witness on the screen, a candle, and a lukewarm cup of coffee.

And so, two small behemoths of books are now complete. Or, well, rather, one is complete and the other is undergoing a proof-read. And in two years. I wrote two massive, doorstopper fantasy novels in two years. Prophecy’s Exile was drafted in 2021, and I’m currently wrapping up revisions and proofing at the tail-end here of 2022, and Witness was written and proofed entirely in 2022 (no beta-reads on it yet, but I do question what I’m going to do with it, so my approach on beta-reads and revisions is a bit skewed compared to my usual go-tos).

An absolutely adorable illustration of a garn a friend of mine made me.

SUMMARY: A bit of babble about the current state of Prophecy’s Exile and Witness, followed by some impromptu compare and contrast, and a bit of a digression on ace-representation in fiction, and an awful lot of footnotes.

Exile has been expanded a bit, and I’m currently doing a proof-read via turning it into an ebook and reading it on my phone’s e-reader.* I took it to Futurescapes for the 200-page workshop (which…had some good and some bad, and I recognize I was insanely lucky with my workshop lotto numbers) and got some amazing (and amazingly) applicable feedback, which led to some expansion of the beginning.

Gev now gets some fried noodles, tours the city of his birth and expounds semi-poetically (he’s not very poetic) on why he loves it so much and what being home means for him, and runs into a friend. They talk shop and politics and military assignments and deployment. A great deal of world-building which hit a reader all of a sudden in chapter, like, 10 has been seeded throughout the beginning. Some later things have also been tweaked so that Exile and Witness match up better, since Witness did a bit of retroactive patching of some very minor logic gaps in Exile, and it isn’t like Exile is published, so I can still tweak with little difficulty. I kinda find the idea of writing the whole trilogy out before it ever sees the light of day a bit attractive, though that approach has some logistical issues. However, it would guarantee that nothing contradicts anything and I don’t accidentally write myself into a corner because I said one thing was true in Exile, then later find that it constrains the story unduly, so I have to do narrative backflips to work around it.

Anyway. Exile is now about 170,000 words (compared to the 158k it was when I finished drafting—I feared it would grow, but not quite that much!). Woo! Nice big chonky epic fantasy. …book 2 is going to be a beast.**

My favorite "Gev is a Potato" illustration.

This week is proofing-time, and getting to know Gev again, since it’s been a bit since I wrote him extensively, and I’d like to dive back into Incarnate for next year.

As a fun data-point, this Sunday will mark the end of me submitting it in 4-6k chunks to my critique group, which took about a year and a half. It was an experience! It made the book stronger! But was also a hella frustrating approach, as scenes or chapters which, in story, take place over the course of, I don’t know, fifteen minutes could take up to a month of real-world submission time, since my crit group meets every two weeks. It is a decidedly odd and unnatural way to read a novel. That said, my crit group was able to dig into chapters and scenes and pull things out that might not have been noticed in a full read-through over the course of days or weeks. Will I continue to sub novel chunks to my group? Of course! But will this approach possibly need some tweaking? Er. Yes. Maybe. We’ll see.

Witness (which needs a better, more evocative, more intriguing title—and I can’t call it “Fuck Mandate,” the same way I couldn’t call Exile “Prophecy’s Bitch”) has been proofed and is now (mostly) free of typos and general oddities, though I’m sure there are artefacts left over from drafting. Complete at 204,000 words, it’s officially the longest single thing I’ve ever written, and unlike Exile, a standalone…although it is a spinoff prequel, so does assume you’ve read Exile and are familiar with the world, so it’s not exactly a standalone, but it is a complete full story. I’m not currently planning a book 2.

The contrast between the two books fascinates me, to be honest. Gev’s story is a traditional hero’s journey type plot***, whereas Asheru’s story is very much not. Asheru doesn’t physically travel much, and most of the story is constrained to a mile-square space (with some exception right at the end). Gev travels everywhere. Most of Exile is a glorified travelogue. Witness is quieter, but spans six years of events. Mostly small, day-to-day life events, but still, six years. Witness is also, frankly, a romance? Well, okay, it’s a love story, and a story about healing, recovery, and finding your way again after some hefty trauma. But about half of it is a romance between two characters, and it is, er, rather on-screen. Which was fun! And if I wasn’t quite so stressed, and quite so far into my “fuck it” philosophy, I probably would have froze a whole lot more than I did, ’cause it’s got quite a few sexy scenes, which is something I, personally, as an ace person, have a limited range of experience with—definitely writing outside my comfort zone there. But it turned out okay. Will I let my mother read it? …er, probably not. Is it fan-fic levels of smut? Very much no. But it isn’t, ah, fade-to-black either. And it was a delight to write two characters who not only enjoy each others’ company, but are clearly having a great time with each other, so it’s less steamy and more sweet—with an awful lot of conversation and talk of not just consent, but where they want their relationship to go and what they want to be. Which makes for a very un-sexy synopsis? “They bonk, and then talk about boundaries.” Oh, and the romance is definitely queer. If we’re going to use modern queer terminology,† Asheru is allo-pan, and his lover is genderqueer/genderfluid, also allo, and has a clear preference for men (or, at least, one man in particular).

Cover of Ace by Angela Chen.

Which is sooo opposite Gev. Gev is more ace-coded in Exile, but by the end of Incarnate, it’s pretty explicitly stated—but he also probably falls heavily into the aro-spectrum, too, and while he forms friendships (some quite deep), I plan for them to be more platonic (if leaning more on the scale toward queer-platonic††). He’ll never have a romance arc and there will be no kissing—because that isn’t something on his radar. And I will fight you if there’s a suggestion of him being somehow deprived; there are more ways to experience love than just sexual, there are more forms of intimacy than just that one, and I fully intend to embrace that and make it abundantly clear. Because there aren’t a lot of books out there with ace and ace-coded protagonists (and all gradations of that spectrum under the broad umbrella of “ace”) that aren’t robots or ancient dragons or immortal wizards. While an ace-character can be a robot or dragon or wizard, it’s usually implied or depicted that their ace-ness is because of an unnatural or supernatural impetus, not because real people can, y’know, be ace/aro. There’s more representation out there with secondary characters, but rarely viewpoint characters in my experience. I admit, I’m biased because I intentionally don’t seek ace-characters out because of the number of times I’ve been burned (they’re ace because they were sexually abused! they’re ace until they meet their love interest and suddenly it’s revealed they were repressed the whole time! they’re ace, but only ace-coded because the book has them, idk, moored alone out in a tundra, so we never see them interact with another person, so they could be ace, they could be allo! they’re ace until the next season retroactively changes their sexuality and they are revealed as being allo the whole time! Am I salty about this? …yes).

Gev is also rather emotionally reserved and prone to unemotive understatement. His narrative can sometimes seem empty of his reaction and feeling…because it is. Because he has a history of emotional repression. And because he’s also just a phlegmatic sort of person in general. This will, hopefully, be made clearer in Incarnate, since Exile is entirely from Gev’s PoV, and Incarnate will introduce a second viewpoint character who isn’t emotionally repressed and can view him from the outside. And comment on his staid, erm, Gev-ness. Asheru, however, feels everything. He is very emotive, and because of certain narrative concerns, sometimes, it’s just his emotions the reader has access to, ’cause he can’t read the expressions on other people’s faces and has to rely on others’ tone, which doesn’t lend itself to nuance. He’s also an anxious ball of insecurities. Gev can be paranoid, and sometimes jumps to the most negative conclusion (out of a sense of self-preservation). Asheru is…a different flavor of paranoid. Gev struggles to maintain relationships outside of very specific location-centric structures. Asheru is absolutely surrounded with family and friends (to the point that there’s a whole arc about where the hell do we have sex without someone seeing us, why are the walls so thin, why do we not have DOORS, good gods).

Writing as self-therapy! Wee!

Photo of spices: peppercorns, curry powders, chili flakes, cinnamon sticks, rosemary, saffron, star anise, and a dried herb.

Also, in Witness, I got to wax poetically about food. Gev eats food, he likes food, he enjoys food, but he doesn’t know the why of food. Asheru is a chef. Asheru talks not just about food, but about technique and process and color and texture and taste, and moans over homemade chili oil and sticks his nose in spices and describes that, and I finally, FINALLY got to write a character who likes to cook. I like to cook, though just as a hobbyist. I also love to bake, though specifically sweets, pastries, and cakes (as much as I adore bread, every loaf I attempt comes out dense. Like, a slab of bread is an entire meal sort of dense. I’m a terrible bread-baker). Gev talks about food as he eats it. Asheru experiences food. Is my goal to make readers hungry? …maybe. Also, I want more fantasy about food! I want more feasts! I want more variety and not just “it’s stew!”

In contrast, Gev mostly waxes on about setting description, culture, and language (all the linguistic geekery! Except, with a character who’s poly-lingual, not a linguist, so has no idea the why behind why he’s having so many issues with grammar). Lots of culture and culture-contrast and lots and lots of language. Because I also want more conlangs in fantasy. I miss the days of glossaries at the backs of books, and not the glossaries of nowadays which seem designed more for quick recaps if you put the book down and come back three months later and forgot what that word means. I mean glossaries, which are their own meaty extension of the world-building, very much in the vein of Tolkien-look-alikes.

Yet, for all the differences, they both definitely have a similar texture, and not just because they are set in the same universe and written by the same person. Idk, they just bookend each other well, at least, in my head.

And good lord, this blog-post inflated. It was just supposed to be a little update on what I’m working on and instead transformed into, er. This. Anyway, so that’s what I’m working on. Once I’m done proofing Exile, it’s on to drafting Incarnate, because I’m still obsessed with this world and I want to explore it more.

Anyhoo, wrapping this up before I get ambushed by another digression.

* Highly recommend this approach—it changes the format, the font, and the, ah, setting of the manuscript, and typos and missing words leap off the page in a way I find doesn’t happen so much with a word processor. I draft in my tired old workhorse of a word processor (Word 2007, and no, I will not upgrade, Windows will pry that program from my cold, dead, driver-less fingers, thank you; I can’t stand the later Word’s weird animated cursor and typing lag) then convert the file to an ugly, but functional, ebook with Calibre (a free ebook/epub conversion program). And then I read. Mostly like a reader, but also like a writer, but not necessarily like the writer of the work, if that makes sense. It allows distance to really catch all those accidental repetitions, echoes, weird/unclear phrasing, and so on.

** Exile is one PoV character, Incarnate is planned to have two, and has just as much traveling about, doing things as Exile, if not more.

*** Though if we’re going to get technical about it, it’s more a heroine’s journey for many reasons, which is why I strongly suspect the story can be a bit polarizing since Gev doesn’t, ah, act like a traditional masculine hero, but if you gender-flipped him, I have a sneaking suspicion that if he was she, people wouldn’t get so frustrated with his seeming passivity quite the same way…

† Which doesn’t come up in the book, ’cause it’s a fantasy book and queer-normative and I’m leaning into the theory of no modern labels because they wouldn’t necessarily view it that way because they don’t have our world’s history of prejudice and oppression. Which is just my approach, and for this book universe.

†† If you’re new to this terminology of ace/aro/queer-platonic and so on, I do recommend checking out the book Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen. It’s a useful primer for those new, and useful also for those like me who aren’t/weren’t part of a community and discovered their own ace-ness by trial and error and don’t know that there are words to describe this stuff. Or that other people experience the world the way I do. That I’m not weird or freakish or just a prude (hah, hah—no. I might not experience sexual attraction unless I actively choose to and work at it, but that doesn’t mean I’m sex-repulsed—btw, there are gradations within the spectrum, which Ace does discuss).

Image credits: Photo by Marion Botella on Unsplash

Many (Many) (Like 12) Months of Books

On By R. J. HowellIn A Month of BooksLeave a comment

Well! It’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these, mostly due to grad school and work devouring the whole of my attention, but even while I was doing said grad school and work, I did manage to read quite a few books new to me (I try not to feature too many rereads on this, since I tend to reread when stressed, and I have been quite stressed). You may also see a certain trend of the kind of book I’ve been consuming lately. Mostly “cozy.” A lot of cozy.

This shall be a very long post. Please keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times.

The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard: My favorite, favorite book discovery this year is, hands down, The Hands of the Emperor. It is THE most delightful, wholesome doorstopper of a book. It’s the Goblin Emperor but, like, leveled up, and a thousand-ish pages of heart-warming, with amazing characters, relationships, and people who are in government bureaucracy who are…actually and actively trying to make the world a better place in tiny increments. It’s also the only fantasy novel where you have radical communist communes and tax auditing right next to flying sky-trees that can be turned into sky-ships and the literal god of the sun incarnate, where magic and myth and mysticism are just as real as grant applications. It’s also about culture and family and work and trauma and healing from trauma and deep, deep friendships that exist in defiance of taboos and—oh, so many things. I admit, the beginning is a bit, all right, not sure where this is going, but the second Cliopher sees that summer mansion and makes his plan to invite his emperor on vacation, I was utterly hooked. And then I loved it so much, I read it twice! It’s a beautiful book. I absolutely cannot wait for At the Feet of the Sun*.

Petty Treasons by Victoria Goddard: A companion/prequel to The Hands of the Emperor that adds the delightful (and often aw-inducing) context from the emperor’s perspective. Highly recommended, but definitely to be read after reading THotE, otherwise, it’ll make only a marginal amount of sense, and it’s really designed as a supplement—the moments that made me gasp with recognition and realization wouldn’t quite have the same punch without seeing those same moments from Cliopher’s mildly unreliable point of view (he really does downplay things). But! I would say read this one before Return, if only to get used to this other narrative style.

The Return of Fitzroy Angursell by Victoria Goddard: AKA, The Return of Spoiler Spoiler. While technically it can be read alone, it has far more significance when read after THotE. Like THotE, this was an absolute delight, but for different reasons, and it’s wonderful to finally have a viewpoint character who is able to experience the magic, and I adore the idea of a wild mage being the reason narrative conveniences occur—because they’re wild mages, wild coincidence just happens, and that conceit is delightful. This one sort of has the feeling like a retired D&D group is coming together again, but they were adventurers in their twenties and thirties, and now they’re in their fifties and sixties, and have lives and careers and spouses and children, but want to have just one more adventure together. And they will, it just might take some time, because they’re still trying to fit each other into those thirty-year-out-of-date versions of themselves, and haven’t quite got a handle on who everyone has become. I also have theories for why this one is in first person.

The Redoubtable Pali Avramapul by Victoria Goddard: I devoured this one in a day, then went back and read it again. Ooooh, what Goddard does that is amazing is having the same scene told from two points of view, and realizing that, um, yeeeeeah, from another vantage, that had a totally different result. I look forward so much to Pali meeting Cliopher again, I really do. And whether or not she’s gonna murder him. But that’s neither here no there. Really, the character work in this series is extraordinary. These people could just sit in empty rooms and talk and I’d be riveted. And there are so many moments where, as a reader who has read the others, I knew why one character was doing something, or what they might’ve been thinking, and oh, the heart-wincing I endured as Pali…couldn’t pick up on the subtext. Also, Tor needs a hug. But. Um. Maybe with a lot of advanced warning…

The Assassins of Thasalon by Lois McMaster Bujold: Wow, it’s been a-while since I’ve done a Month of Books post. This one came out ages ago, but it would appear, I never featured it on this mini-series of blogs. Unlike the rest of the series, this one is novel-length! A short novel, but still a novel! It also ties together so many of the dangling threads laid out in the other novellas, and feels, half the time, like the end of the series (it isn’t though!). The other half of the time, there’s a bit of a recap on how demons and sorcerers and saints work, but as it centers on a very intriguing abuse of the demon-sorcerer system and the powers of a saint, the retread isn’t unwelcome though if, like me, you chose to reread the whole series in preparation for Assassins, you might find yourself skimming a little of the education-during-the-carriage-ride scenes, but I still enjoyed them. Also, there’s quite a few familiar faces, which are always a treat, and a few characters whose names we’ve heard but never met being onscreen.

Knot of Shadows by Lois McMaster Bujold: This one was the surprise gift. I totally thought Assassins was the end of the series, and then, ‘lo and behold, Knot of Shadows is released, which ties the Penric and Desdemona novellas to The Curse of Chalion in a way that it hadn’t before (Pen and Des are more obviously connected with The Paladin of Souls, for obvious, demonic reasons) and re-explores that central concept of death magic/the miracle of justice (along with a threat/concern introduced in TCoC which was a source of tension but not, er, something that came to pass). It also makes me cry. I’ve read it twice now. I still cry. As always, anything by Lois McMaster Bujold is gold.

Paladin’s Hope by T. Kingfisher: Another paladin book! This time, it’s a romance between a berserker paladin with night terrors and a coroner with the ability to touch a dead body and experience their death (there’s a reason he’s a strict vegetarian) as they work together to escape a trap-filled dungeon, and is just filled with those tiny references to RPG-related logic holes…like why would you have lethal traps in a place people walk around in? Unless, of course, it was never designed for people… Also, the developing tensions and relationships between humans and gnolls are fascinating to me, and I thoroughly enjoy how the world shifts and changes as the series(es) progress. Another absolute delightful installment of the series, and routinely laugh-out-loud funny.

The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison: So I appear to have a thing for protagonists that understate the situation a tad, and Celehar very much understates. But now he has a partner! Who is marginally more emotive than he is (though there’s this delightful moment where he has a moment of weakness and laughs and…everyone else is like, “…I’ve worked with you for years. You have never laughed.” “I’m a little stressed.”) The slow-burn relationship continues to be very slow-burn. It’s possible in a book or two, they might even hold hands! Maybe. But I am a sucker for the “shift from last names to personal names” trope. The mysteries weave together nicely, and I devoured the whole of it in a day. And that one development! It was both surprising but inevitable, and leaves me hungering for the next to see how this plays out. (Trying not to spoil!)

Sword Dance by A. J. Demas: I stumbled across these in a “Books Like” list as I was looking for cozies to scratch the itch left by The Hands of Emperor, and ended up falling in love with this series of very queer, classic era-Greece analogue fantasy that almost, almost reads like historical fiction except…not. There’s some nice echoes here of Swordspoint, but also locked-room historical mysteries (murder! in a villa! but the murder doesn’t happen till the 1/3 mark and the first third is setting the stage and letting you get to know the players and the suspects) and romance (and these two people who are awkward around each other work together to solve the mystery and end up falling in love!). This one hit so many of my personal “favorite tropes,” and I love that it’s so casually queer, with a romance between a bisexual man (Damiskos) and a genderfluid enby (Varazda).

Saffron Alley by A. J. Demas: Book 2! Varazda invites his lover to his home to meet his family–and his family, er, have a range of reactions. Like Sword Dance, there is a mystery element, though unlike the first book, there isn’t a, ah, body, so to speak. More delightful coziness of the two’s deepening relationship as Damiskos is vetted by Varazda’s family, and still so wonderfully casually queer (especially with the found-family and adoption aspects). Mostly, everything here is still just sweet and makes me smile. (Also, just as a note, for all of these books, there’s a massive content warning for slavery and trauma and questions of consent; A. J. Demas’ website lists the content warnings for each book, which is both helpful and considerate.)

Strong Wine by A. J. Demas: And the conclusion of the series. Book 3 alternates from Varazda’s and Dami’s viewpoints, and Varazda now gets to meet Damiskos’ family (who are…odd). Once more, it has that combination of murder mystery, romance, and historical fiction-textured secondary world fantasy which works so very well—but now with courtroom drama! And you have no idea how refreshing it is to have a character introduce his boyfriend (sometimes girlfriend) to his family, and they’re just like, “Oh, you usually don’t bring your lovers by to meet us,” and that’s it, that’s the extent of the drama. Although, I do have to warn, there are some unpleasant insults thrown Varazda’s away about his gender presentation (but by the book’s antagonists, so I feel like that’s a given?) Oh! And quiet autism rep, which is also refreshing (the parents are vile about it, but are the disapproved-of minority). I enjoyed these three so much, I read them twice.

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree: You may have noticed a trend to my reading lately, and that is cozy fantasy, and if you spend any time in cozy fantasy circles, you will hear of Legends & Lattes, and for good reason. It is the epitome of cozy. It also is full of RPG references (I mean, even the title is riffing off of Dungeons & Dragons) and coffee shop AU tropes, and is just, frankly, wholesome and pleasant to read. Yeah, sure, you kind of suspect the conflict and, like me, you might catch early on what’s going to happen to that coffee shop, but it’s the kind of comfortable predictability of a romcom; you know it’s coming, and that’s part of the pleasure of it.

A Strange and Stubborn Endurance by Foz Meadows: This one…I’m a little conflicted about, but I think the root of it is that I went in expecting one thing (political-leaning fantasy with rich world-building, assassination plots, and a slow-burn MLM arranged-marriage romance) but got something very different different (light world-building, political-leaning but in the background, an assassination plot that ran tangentially to the romance, but the two seemed a bit…disconnected? Not as enmeshed as I would have preferred). I was very committed to the first 30%, but the general feel started to shift around the 40% mark, and by the end, I wasn’t as invested as I would have liked. However, a friend of mine adored it (for many of the reasons I didn’t!). The hardcover edition, by the way, is gorgeous. I do recommend it for fans of Winter’s Orbit who are looking for that same MLM arranged-marriage, sweet slow-burn romance with a backdrop of politics and a central mystery, but fantasy rather than space opera. CW, though, there is an onscreen rape of a viewpoint character within the first 30 pages**.

* All right, yes, I can wait, and will wait as much as necessary, but the anticipation! Aaaaah! Also, I’ve been foisting this book and the rest of the series and parallel serieses on anyone foolish enough to get me on my new favorite topic. Consider it foisted on you.

** Honestly, what is it with MLM romances and rape? I can name half a dozen off the top of my head where this is either a plot point or a backstory element.