The Story of How Brownie Learned to Play Piano

One day, when Brownie, the elk who looks like a chipmunk with horns, was doing her job in Yellowstone National Park, conducting a nature talk, a little boy said to her, "Did you know you are an elk?" And Brownie had an enormous freak out and made the boy cry, and then she apologized and gave the boy a candy, but she still decided she needed to have a vacation.

So she talked to her supervisor, who was not an elk, and he suggested a trip to New Mexico. "I hear the desert is lovely this time of year," he said.

So Brownie the elk, who looks like a chipmunk with horns, got a Greyhound bus to Albuquerque. The bus driver looked at her when she got on the bus and said, "Did you know you're an elk?" But she just took a deep breath and said, "Yes."

She wandered around the desert, which was lovely that time of year, and took pictures. She met a man in the desert, and his name was Tom. The man's name was Tom, not the desert. Tom said, "I've never seen an elk in the desert in New Mexico before." He offered to show Brownie the special places in the desert where flowers grow, and which are especially lovely this time of year.

Tom took Brownie to special places in the desert, and she took lots of pictures of flowers, and felt very glad she had taken a vacation. She was so happy she thought she wouldn't even have a big freak out if someone asked her if she knew she was an elk.

Now Tom was a pianist in a blues band in Albuquerque, and he was a very good pianist. Brownie went to see Tom playing piano many times, and sometimes she took pictures of that, too. Tom showed her how to play "Chopsticks."

Plink plink plink plink plink plink.
Plink plink plink plink plink plink.
Plink plink plink plink plink plink.
Plink plink plink plink plink plink.

Then her vacation was over. She said goodbye to Tom and the desert and the flowers and took another picture of all of them, and got on the bus to Yellowstone. When she got back she went happily back to her job giving nature talks, and when children and bus drivers asked if she knew she was an elk she would say, in a very friendly way, "Yes, and I can also play piano!"

The End.

Book Review

The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Three

Picked this one up at World Fantasy this year (er, I mean last year), mainly because Tim has a story in it, but it turned out to be a pretty good collection overall.

There's no real theme connecting the stories, except that they could all (sometimes with a little stretching) be called science fiction. There are crossovers into alternate (SF-nal) history, and borderline works of fantasy, but basically it is what it says on the cover: new, and science fiction. Here are some comments on each of the stories, in the order they appear in the book:

"Rescue Mission" - I found this one a little weak, especially as a way to start the book. For most of the story it was a somewhat creepy and weird bit of suspense. At the end it did a switch so that the main character could have some character development and save the day at the same time. The ending seemed a bit pat and hand-wavy, and not all of it even made sense. OK, but not great.

"The Fixation" - Spooky quantum effects create order by shunting entropy into other universes, leading to unexpected, horrible effects. Successful as far as it went, but the idea seemed too easy, somehow, and it lapsed off into a fantasy toward the end. A good effort, but still not great.

"Artifacts" - A "What if this is the way the whole universe works" story. The reader is supposed to be left in awe of the stupendous metaphysics, but it seems trite, somehow unimportant. Stories that hinge on metaphysical systems like this end up being a bit like those times in university (or high school) when you first discovered ideas like, "What if we are all brains in a vat?" The Matrix (which is a film that works, in my opinion) came out ideas like that, and the answer plays a large part in driving the story in that film, but it still comes down to a story, a conflict between characters and forces. This story, unfortunately, stopped after the reveal. "Look! This is how it works!" OK... but so what?

"Necroflux Day" - I was worried at this point. This story starts off with something I don't much like about most modern short fiction: The "Oh my God it's so weird!" description. Look how much odd shit I can put on the page. I am the master of strange. But strange doesn't make a story good. Pointlessly strange details, or just pointless details, distract me. They worry me. I immediately begin to wonder if the author is trotting out this stuff to try and cover for the fact that they don't have anything to say. Luckily, this was not the case. Soon the author found his rhythm, and, although he continued with the weird, it was in service of actual people who were actually interesting and had actual, actually interesting problems. Can you actually believe it?

The fact that part of the story revolves around a completely mundane task (a child writing an essay for school) jarred me out of the rest of the world from time to time. It didn't fit very well. But the story itself hung together nicely and the big reveal, the awful, weird thing that short fiction authors are required to put in their stories and spring on the reader at the end, was used in the service of a character's realistic and involving emotion, rather than just being this big thing that's supposed to be impressive because it's so big and, like, weird. Good story. A. Saved the book for me.

"Providence" - I find Paul Di Filippo's work mildly annoying at the best of times. Maybe that makes me a bad person. Here we have a throw away story around a flimsy artificial premise, and lots of beep beep noises. That's about it. I didn't care about any of the characters or anything they did or saw. About a page in I had determined everything the author wanted me to be surprised and impressed by, and I was not surprised or impressed. They're robots, hooked on records. Woo. Hoo. That is just so amazing and cool. Not.

Back to being worried, but almost halfway through now, and I felt I should go on.

"Carnival Night" - A serviceable little story, basically a crime story but with a few SF-nal trappings and SF required to make the reveal work. Brief and to the point, and reasonably entertaining even if the characters were flat.

"The Assistant" - Again, a reasonably entertaining, small story. The author relies a little too heavily on the hook (What if the office cleaners who empty the trash cans were super high-tech industrial espionage prevention teams!?) and leaves the rest of the story a bit thin, but gets in enough engagement with the characters to make a passing grade.

"Glitch" - Odd, but it worked OK. There was a bit of dragging, here and there, and a bit of that old chestnut (the robot wants to be human), but with a somewhat interesting twist. I'd give it a B.

"One of Our Bastards is Missing" - Alternative history, maybe, or maybe just fantasy, with a bit of a SF twist. The story managed to keep some balance between the weird ideas of pocket dimensions, the somewhat less weird but still alien pseudo-Elizabethan mannerisms, and the slightly two-dimensional but still interesting characters. In the end, an interesting package. A.

"Woodpunk" - A little plodding. This is a message story. The trappings are fairly nice, but we've heard this message before. And even though it's an important message, repeating it doesn't help the story. Not bad, but on the low end.

"Minya's Astral Angels" - Some cute ideas and OK characterization and development carry this story. Solid. Not superb, but solid.

"The Best Monkey" - Started off not really liking this one, but it grew on me, and eventually I found it one of the better stories in the collection. The characters (character, really) clicked after a while, and from there on it was an engaging detective story towards an interesting reveal.

"Long Stay" - An odd little story which has potential and then seems to go plonk right at the end, as if the author had run out of things to say. I did quite like the setup though, especially since I was reading it on a plane.

"A Soul Stitched to Iron" - Tim's story. This story features Jacob Burn, the somewhat abrasive protagonist of Tim's novel Heart of Veridon. It's a solid entry. I can't say I thought it was brilliant, but it was pretty good. It works best in the descriptions of the weird and often chilling entities hiding in the shadows of Tim's invented city. Unfortunately the story itself felt strangely inconsequential. Even though there are big implied effects (death, destruction of families, another eon of sleep, etc. etc.) for other people, nothing really happens to the main character except he watches people (and things) go down, and nudges things along here and there. Still, not bad.

"iThink, therefor I am" - A rather short, silly, and slightly preachy piece. Vaguely amusing, but not one of my favorites.

Looking back over all that, I think I may appear more negative than I mean to be. It's a solid collection of quite readable stories. A few of the stories didn't work for me, but most of them did. None of the stories were absolutely mind-blowing, but maybe that's because I'm just a jaded husk of a man without a spark of wonder left in my soul. Maybe that's it.

It's worth reading.

And Writin'

I was going to post an excerpt from the latest novel slash comic-book-without-the-pictures, but everything I've written recently seems to reveal too much. It seems like it would be better to come to it without knowing anything, except what came in the books before.

(It might work as a stand-alone, too. But I think knowing the characters and relationships from earlier books makes it much better.)

Feedback

Feedback is fantabulous. I love feedback.

Today I got a nice chunk of feedback on my latest fictional endeavor. Very nice indeed. It was full of accurate, incisive indications of things that need fixing, and which will be, I think, hugely difficult to fix. Weeks of head-pounding revisions loom ahead. But! It also said the reader enjoyed the story. That makes everything twinkle with pink fairy lights.

Three or Four Problems

So, with just two weeks of distance, I'm rereading and editing. I've read the whole thing again. The last half certainly goes smoother than the first. I wonder if I'll be able to fix that. Other than that, I've fixed the easy problems, hopefully, writing a new scene in the process, and now I have three major problems left. One is a relatively simple problem of characters not behaving in a way that makes sense (failing to realize or know things they should, for the sake of a piece of dialog I wanted to have-- classic darling killing required). Two are more difficult, in that they involve things which are mentioned, but then don't get the air time they need in the story, basically a couple of themes which are shortchanged. That's going to be troublesome to fix, and it also probably means more happening, rather than less.

Can I get this done by the end of the week as planned? Stay tuned...

The 44,000

After much round-about writing and rewriting, I have about forty-four thousand words which seem to hang together. However, I'm still not sure exactly what's going to happen next. I can only hope this doesn't end up being another one of those sticking points.

Something Positive

To contrast with that negative semi-review I posted a while ago, here's something positive.

I just finished reading "In the River" by Justin Stanchfield, printed in Interzone 205. This is more like it. First of all, it's a story about people in an interesting situation, not a story wrapped around some point where you're supposed to say "aha!" as you figure out what the author has been hiding from you. Secondly, the prose flows, not trying to impress you with colorful language, fantastic sentence structure, or the author's spectacular ability to use a thesaurus. It uses evocative language that supports the reader's imagination, instead of drawing attention to itself.

There are no explanations, but you understand what is happening.

In other words, it's what a good short story should be. Even the artwork was good. My only problem with it is that it is a bit too short. The interactions between the characters are slightly abbreviated, and the story ends fairly abruptly (and, to be honest, a little predictably). But Mr. Stanchfield writes the kind of stories I like to read. I hope to read more.

On the Writing Front

I've backed up a bit. While reading and revising the other day, I came to a point where I felt everything up to that point had been at least OK, but everything after was really bothering me. I've gone further back, added a bit to a scene, and I'm now in the process of trying to derail/re-rail what happens after the problem point. What this means is that roughly four thousand words out of nearly forty five thousand are... if not completely lost, at least in serious jeopardy.

Which is not so bad. So, I'm back to 41k. But it's better, I think.

And I'm calling it a novel. So there.

Inconceivable

I am reading through my backlog of Interzone magazines during lunch. Recently I finished a story (which I will not name for reasons that will soon become apparent), and I thought, "wasn't that one of the readers' choice stories?" IZ had the results of a readers' choice poll in issue 209. I pulled the issue, and sure enough, there was the story.

I can't say I was surprised, but, I have to be honest, I thought the story was gut-thumpingly awful. It was built around a gimmick, and it was written entirely to make a point that was bland, simple, almost trite (although true, but being true isn't enough). It assumed that the reader was too dim to have appreciated the point before, while being at the same time so sensitive as to be moved by the author's treatment of it. The author basically clubbed the readers over the head with this point and nothing else and sat back, satisfied this was sufficient to make a story worth writing. It was a ode to the author's own sense of what his writing could do for the world. And I thought it was terrible. It was the kind of thing I would expect from a gifted* high school student in creative writing class, not being published in a magazine that people pay for.

This was one of the readership's favorite stories of the year.

Obviously I don't understand what people like to read. Did they like that the story was oh so clever? Did they honestly think it was insightful? I'm baffled.

* Yes, gifted. It was well enough written for what it was.

And

You know what's really annoying? I can't post any of this stuff, because I don't want to ruin the impact when read in its proper place (assuming I ever finish this damn thing).

38k

Finally passed the 38 thousand word mark. It has been a long time coming, for whatever reason. I had to go back to the beginning, basically, and work through all the stuff up to this point, fixing things, to finally get to a point where I was able to go on. But today, it did go on, finally (I said that didn't I?). I'm even happy with the results, although, as usual, that is tempered by the fact that I will still have to come back and look at it again later.

Deleting is Progress

Yes it is, dammit. Thanks to your support, I did make a bit of progress last night, although that progress mostly consisted of deciding that a certain dialog could end right where it was, and another dialog was extraneous and could be deleted. So delete I did, and finally felt free to continue on.

Back to the Stuck

So, connectivity problems over the past three days with Comcast. I finally break down and schedule someone to come take a look at it... and it starts working again. (Actually, it worked for a few hours last night, so I'm still not trusting it to stay up.)

I haven't drawn much of anything for a while, but I have tried to start writing again. I promptly got stuck, and still am. Tonight, I will stare at the words I have written and wonder what to do with them for another hour or two. Wish me luck.

34048

So, here we are, at the end of August. I got about thirty-five hundred words done in the last two weeks. If I can get six or seven thousand done in September, the first draft will be done. That is, assuming I can fit the rest of the happening that is supposed to happen into six or seven thousand words. I'm feeling it might take a bit more than that. (You never know, though. It could take less.)

Am I rushing along to try and get to the end? I think I might be. I think maybe I should, because once I have a framework in place, I can begin the serious carpentry. I think I like that part. Then again, maybe that's just me forgetting what that part is like.

30589

Woohoo, past the 30k mark. That makes about 2000 words in two days.

...

OK, so actually that should be par for the course, but, for me, it's about two or three times regular speed, so I'm happy. 30k is also a nice round number. It means, hopefully, I am almost three-quarters there.

I note that in my ancient Twenty Thousand post, I estimated I might have the first draft done three months later, at the end of August, assuming about 8500 words a month. Here we are in mid-August, and I'm at 30k, so even that estimate (which I thought was a horribly long time then) was too optimistic. I may be able to finish the first draft by the end of October, and show it to people in time for Christmas. Damn slow work, this.

28433

Just about to begin on chapter twelve. Except, I don't really know what's going to happen in chapter twelve. I have a better idea of what might happen in chapter thirteen, but I feel like I need a little side story, some kind of intermission before the music starts again.

Hmm... we leave our heroes, variously sleeping in caves or tied up on motel room floors, and turn our attention to... something else.

24K

Not 24 Karat, 24 thousand words. It has been a bit more than half a month since I last talked about this, and I seem to be keeping up my lethargic pace.

The story is progressing, but I'm not at all happy with the last few thousand words. This whole section will need a rewrite, probably several. There's too much bumbling around jumping off buildings and onto moving cars. Characters express no character. The set pieces don't flow, and the rhythm is non-existent. Very frustrating, but I think it's better to push on. If I can get to the end, then I'll have something to work with. I hope.

What do you do...

If your protagonist character gets into a conversation with the "bad guys", and they end up being pretty convincing and reasonable? Time to reconsider where your plot is going, maybe.

Shuffling Forward

21006 words. That makes pretty good progress, for me. I also scribbled away a little at the current Ran's Daughter illustration, finally getting something which isn't too horrible to contemplate posting. Now I just need to color it.

So, all in all, things are going well on the creative front.

I can't post an excerpt from last night's work, though, because it would either make no sense or be too revealing. I also can't post any artwork, because I'm embarrassed how slow my progress has been, and I want to have a sequence complete before I let others see it again.

What was nice about last night was the way, on the way to one scene, I found something else happening that I hadn't anticipated. I love it when the characters start taking control.

Twenty Thousand

Last night I finally broke twenty thousand words on the first draft of that novella I'm working on. I say it's a novella, because I expect to get about thirty-five to forty thousand words out of it. So, 20k is about half way.

It has been a month since I regained my enthusiasm for writing this thing. The past month I have, by my standards, been racing ahead. In that month, I have gotten down roughly eighty-five hundred words.

Eighty-five hundred words. Of first draft. In a month. At this rate, finishing the first draft will take nearly three months more, and then I have to let it sit for a month or two, and then revise it, so, let's say five months. It's going to be October before I can even show this to anyone else.

Of course, right now it's not even in a state where I want to show it to anyone. I'm worried that there's not enough meat. It seems to be rushing, and I'm not sure the set-pieces are working. Right now I'm coming up on writing a scene I've wanted to write for months, but now I'm scared. I'm scared that I'm driving the story to this scene just because I like the scene. I'm scared that what I see in my mind's eye doesn't actually translate to words. I'm scared that the scene isn't going to work.

Mid-novella crisis. I should buy a sports car or something.

Linda ran off the edge of the building, carrying us, out into the hollow air. I looked down at the street four stories down, and felt every inch of that distance slap me in the face. We seemed to hang there for eternity. I heard somebody whimper. I think maybe it was me.