Hugo 2013 Reviews: Fan Artists

Since I covered Pro Artists (and since I don't have a review ready yet for 2312), I thought I might touch on Fan Artists.

In many ways, this is an easier category for me to judge than Pro Artist for the past few years.  Again, I don't know much about the technique of art, but my guess is that the Fan Artists presented in the category tend to have less wide-spread appeal (for whatever reason), and so in a sampling of the art, I am more likely to be strongly drawn to some and not at all interested in others.

Again this year, one of the fan artist nominations was for sculpture rather than just images, which I appreciate even if I didn't rank it the highest.

Normally I'd go from bottom up, eliminating what I think is the weakest from a strong group of contenders, but in this case the work from one artist that was included in the nominating packet stands out so much for me that I'll skip right to it.  That is Galen Dara, with a strong showing across the board.  Each of the pieces included in the packet intrigue me, and each of them have further details for me to notice when I am looking at them.

Next I'd go for Brad Foster.  His samples in the voter packet are hit-and-miss for me, but they appear well-drawn, and a couple of the samples really catch my eye.

Third I'd take Maurine Starkey.  None of the samples of her work appealed to me as strongly as did Brad's (or even others ranked lower), but they are all consistently interesting and appear well-done.

Fourth, then, I'd take Spring Schoenhuth.  This kind of irritates me, because I'd like to take sculpture higher, but I'm afraid that the very form doesn't appeal to me as much as the images do.  All of the sample sculptures presented looked neat and I'd love to have them, but I just am attracted to the images more.

Finally, then, comes Steve Stiles, who loses out not by being bad (the Scalzi piece included as a sample I thought was really good, individually) but by having 2-4 eek out victories over his stuff this time.

1. Galen Dara
2. Brad Foster
3. Marine Starkey
4. Spring Schoenhuth
5. Steve Stiles

July Goals Update

How am I doing on my July goals?

1. 250 words written a day -- done so far.
2. Revise 3 stories -- 1 done so far.
3. Clean up email -- not done yet.
4. Critique >= 6 short stories or submissions -- 2 so far.
5. Get >= 2 stories critiqued -- 2 so far, but I'm not calling this done yet.
6. Renaming exercises for story titles -- 0 so far.
7. Submit >= 1 story -- 0 so far.

So, two-thirds of the way through the month, more or less, and it's not looking good so far.  I'm really going to have to hit these hard this weekend, and I'm already booked.

Hugo 2013 Reviews: Pro Artists

This isn't exactly specific to writing, but since I'm doing reviews of the Hugo nominees, I figured I could write a few notes about the professional artists as well.  This will be a bit different as well in that I have minimal ability to analyze or critique the art.  Instead, I have to go entirely with what I feel.

Actually, sometimes that doesn't seem as different from the written works as I thought at first.

So, the professional artists are always hard for me to judge, because I feel all their works are good.  For many if not most of this year's nominees, I even recognize a number of the works as covers of books I've read.  I'm not sure if that makes a difference, but I suspect I can't help but like or dislike a particular work a little more based on my feelings for the book it was on.

Sometimes I also feel like throwing a dart and being done with it.  Nice and simple.

Instead, I'll rank them from bottom to top, totally in my opinion and with no credentials to rank them whatsoever.

Coming in last, but still hard to say anything bad about, I have Julie Dillon.  I don't know why in particular, but I think it's because most of the works shown in the packet represent basic scenes I've seen represented before.

Next, Vincent Chong.  Primarily because, despite how generally good the packet submissions are, none of them really held my attention for long.

Third, Chris McGrath.  I liked the two browner pieces a lot (one of them being the Alloy of Law cover), but made this elimination due to the similarity in scene construction for all of the submitted pieces.

Finally, and this is a really tough choice, I go with Dan dos Santos in second place.  I really like the detail in his works, and could look at them for a while just finding new neat things about it, but even though it might be nearly a toss-up, I have to give the nod to John Picacio.  This makes me a bit of a hypocrite, I suppose, since all of his pieces in the packet are also composed the same way.  However, each one evokes a sense of wonder in me, and a desire to read the story (or in the case of Hyperion, re-read the story) they represent.  Granted the Shrike isn't quite like I imagine, but that's the risk on cover portraits, and it is still a really cool painting.

Hugo 2013 Reviews: Blackout by Mira Grant

Blackout is another of the Hugo nominated novels that is one book in an ongoing series -- this time, the culminating novel of the Newsflesh trilogy, one of my favorite settings since I read Feed as a nominated  story a couple years ago.

Like the other two, the use of blog updates (published and private) add good texture and additional viewpoints to what is happening in the story.  Having tried blogging myself (this is my third? fourth? attempt at blogging), I do have a bit of difficulty in suspending my disbelief that everybody seems to blog -- from the vice president to random scientists, not just those making their living from it.  That aside, though, the world continues to be richly detailed and this book exposes even more natural consequences and developments in the world it has created as events continue.

In Feed, the story was first-person POV until [redacted for spoiler], at which point another first-person POV took over (not counting the alternate viewpoints shown in the various blog entries).  In Deadline, that POV was continued (to the best of my knowledge, and I haven't double-checked), except for one twist at the end.  In Blackout, the story alternates first-person POVs between the two POVs from the first two books.  This could be confusing, and indeed it was a bit difficult for me to get used to at first, but the strict alternation of viewpoint chapters helps keep everything sorted out, as well as the fact that the two storylines are unrelated for the majority of the novel.  This also allows more tension to be introduced as, when the storylines were drawing together, one POV would show actions that would unknowingly affect the other POV, and vice-versa.

I would generally classify the novels as horror, and though I don't usually claim to read horror, some of the recent items I've read in the genre have been pretty good, and not at all what I would expect.  That said, there is still a quotient of horror that must be had, a minimum level, as it were, and in a book and trilogy dealing so closely with the zombie uprising, it almost had to end with a fight against hordes of zombies, and with some characters dying.  It seems a necessity of the genre to do so, and although I have no objections to how the novel ended, to me the need to include those elements made the ending less memorable, rather than more.  The reveals were great, but rather than face down the (face of the) smart enemy, the good guys had to face mindless zombie hordes instead.

Still, a smart book and a good end to a well-done trilogy.

My current ranking:

1) Redshirts

2) Blackout

3) Captain Vorpatril

4) Crescent Moon

Hugo 2013 Reviews: Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold

I've been reading Bujold's Vorkosigan saga for years, and at it's best it is some of the very best speculative fiction I've read, let alone some of the best space opera I've read.

Unfortunately, this isn't one of the best entries in the series.  However, given where the series has been and how Bujold has expressed the desire to show growth and change in her characters, it is inevitable that the focus had to move to other characters, and Ivan ended up being a nice choice for it.  It gives a breath of fresh air to the series, and even though it's inherently more lighthearted, this hearkens back to some of the origins of the Vorkosigan saga, before Miles had kids and responsibilities (and, dare I say it, a bit of restraint).

So, how does it hold up on it's own merits?

Bujold is one of the best writers I've read lately in multiple aspect of the craft, and I can't do much but pick nits here.  Here, due to the light-heartedness and the POV character (and somewhat due to the genre), we have another episode of plots threads that are driven in large part via external conflicts and circumstances.  Both Ivan and Tej do have their own internal conflicts, but while they struggle with the internal ones, there really isn't much in try-fail cycles for them.  Instead, we have a good rom-com in space, with events conspiring to alternately drive the couple together and then try to keep them apart.

The technical skill in the writing is excellent, and the characters are well-drawn and properly hit the right emotional notes.  The circumstances flow well, and actions have consequences.  Basically, all the ingredients are there... but this still falls short for me.  Maybe it's overshadowed by it's more prestigious previous books (definitely true, IMO), but I also think that, considered on it's own merits, it ranks as a good story but not a great one.  And, in continuing my reviews, what is needed to rank on top is a great story.

Current rankings:

1) Redshirts

2) Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

3) Crescent Moon

Hugo 2013 Reviews: Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed

Of the five nominees, this is the novel I have read (completely) most recently.  I finished it a little under a week ago, but have been waiting a bit to give the novel time to percolate before I review it.

Throne of the Crescent Moon is Saladin Ahmed's first published novel, though he has had multiple shorter works published, and overall I thought it was very polished for a debut novel, though in a couple of places I thought it could have used a touch of improvement -- mostly in POV clarity.  I recall two or three times when I got confused about exactly who the POV is, which isn't exactly good in a strict 3rd-person limited story.  At least one of those I can blame on the book's layout, as what appears to have been a space break in a chapter happened to fall at the end of a page and was lost to the margins, but others happened as well.  Every time I got confused I went back and reviewed the section and realized that it was still in a particular person's POV, but not so firmly that it was unambiguous to me without double-checking.  In particular, I think that a couple times started by mentioning the POV character's names and one thought on what was happening, followed by paragraphs of other people's actions and reactions -- oftentimes, one main actor, who I would start to think was the POV character, until a thought was presented from the original POV character once more.  My takeaway from this is to always make sure I have the POV character firmly established, and possibly default to too much reminder rather than too little, even if occasionally I need to wedge a reference to the POV character in among other character's actions.

There is also common advice to limit the POV characters, especially as beginning authors writing a novel, and that might have helped here as well.  I believe there were at least 5 POVs -- 6, counting the guard's POV in the prologue -- and I'm not convinced that we were always, to use the often-given advice, following the POV of the character who was in the most pain.  (Of course, there are other valid reasons to choose a POV character, one of which is to remind the reader of that POV's plot thread, but since this book followed one main plot thread from multiple POVs, that doesn't apply as strongly here.)

So far as the plot goes, it was very externally-heavy in conflict, or at least in progress during the conflicts.  Each main character seems to have been given one (1) internal conflict to deal with, or possibly 2 for some of them if you count "I'm getting too old for this" to be an internal conflict.  Most of the internal conflicts were introduced and stayed constant until the end, after the external conflict was resolved, whereas the external one had them doing the try-fail cycles.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and so far as I understand it is more of the norm for the sword-and-sourcery subgenre, but it still makes for a work that is less engaging to me.  I want the characters run through an internal-conflict mangler as well as the external-conflict one.

Overall, it was a fun, fairly quick read, with a handful of problems I can hopefully take and learn something from.  I wouldn't rank it the best story I've read that was published last year, but it was by no means a bad story either, and not disappointing as a Hugo nominee.

Current ballot rankings:
1) Redshirts
2) Throne

Hugo 2013 Reviews: Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi

I think this is the first novel of this year's nominees that I read, which means it's been sitting my my memory and fading the longest, and yet I can still remember large parts of what I felt.  The plot, yes, if I concentrate, but especially what I felt while reading it.

To begin with, the only other Scalzi fiction I'd read was Old Man's War -- a nice little tale, though given all the praise I'd heard of it, I thought it fell a bit short.  I had been meaning to pick up more of his works since then, to see if they improved and how much, when Redshirts came out.  I requested it from the library, got it a few weeks later, and settled in to read one night.

In the first part of the novel, I remember being surprised and amazed that such cheesy writing had been published, honestly.  Still, there was something about it -- Scalzi walked a fine line there, since for the novel to work it had to be cheesy, and yet keep the reader going.  In retrospect, the prose must have been nicely crafted for that effect, but at the time I was almost on the border of giving up on the novel.  (Sidenote -- the name, cover, and blurb all helped as well.  They pointed out that this was not a novel that was taking itself seriously, so I could sit back and go along for the ride a bit more than I might otherwise.)

The next part I remember was that same night, as I got to the part where the Narrative was introduced, and having some strong disbelief -- again, not that it was wrong for the story, but that an author could get away with something so meta.

By then I was hooked, though I had to stop for the night.  I picked it up again the next night, a Friday, and devoured the rest of the story.  Really, once I got to the audacious plan to fix things, there was no stopping me.  Sure, the novel was cheesy and meta, and still felt a bit like a popcorn-flick, but it gloried in being so, and I gloried with it.  Then it's characters started struggling even more, and I cared about them, and even as the cheese faded away and it actually became a (kind of) serious novel, I enjoyed it.

The story came to an end, and it was satisfying.  It worked, and tied everything together, and it was a nice little story.  I was satisfied, and considered stopping there, but I had time before bed and there were the three codas remaining.

The first one intrigued me, spinning a new perspective on the story's events.  It was plausible enough to wonder if the whole thing was in fact the writer's delusions causing him problems.  It added some interesting ambiguity to the novel, which I appreciated.

The second coda started slow, but hit me hard.  I've not exactly flitted from thing to thing (heck, I've been programming computers for more than 20 years now, and over 15 of that professionally, which is almost the opposite of flitting), but some of my hobbies feel that way.  I pick something up, then drop it.  Pick up another, and drop it.  At the time, I had been considering if writing was going to be that way or not -- because let's face it, writing can be hard sometimes, and when things get hard, a big part of my subconscious thinks I've been doing something wrong, because how hard can it be to sit down and produce professional-quality output, right?  I mean, I do it at work all the time (nevermind those 20 years of practice -- those aren't the reasons you're looking for, my subconscious says while waving a hand).  So I felt somewhat indicted by the end of that coda, even though it was a story and fictional character who had been doing something wrong.

As an author, I'd also note that this coda was another extremely effective use of second-person writing. Either these are getting more common, or I'm just noticing them more, but either way I should pay attention to when they are used and why.

So, thus set up and already somewhat reeling from the second coda, I read the third one.

Look, I'm a guy, and talking about emotions is sometimes hard for me.  Also, I don't analyze them much or spend time thinking about the hows and whys of them -- quite possibly to my overall detriment, I'll admit.  However, I'm not ashamed to admit this coda nearly brought me to tears.  I was, frankly, shocked at how much it affected me.  I was moved to send @scalzi a tweet about it, something I'd never done about a story before (or since, so far).  I had to, quite literally, sit on the couch with the closed book in my hand for fifteen minutes or more before I could get my mental and emotional balance enough to do anything else -- like remove my bookmark and put the book in the "return to library" pile.

So, you might say that I have a high opinion of this book, and you'd be right.  I liked it enough I actually made a note to nominate it for a Hugo when the nominations opened, and followed through on that.  Will it get my final vote?  I haven't finished two of the novels yet, so I can't be sure, but it is certainly a very strong contender.

Hugo 2013 Reviews: Novellas

I enjoy shorter works, but with the novellas I sometimes get the best of both worlds: small enough to be read in a day, or sometimes even half a day, if I have nothing else I need to be doing, but long enough to get some depth and a full plot, sometimes with a couple of subplots.  While they can't do the intricate tie-together of dozens of plot threads that the best epic stories can, they can still pack a wallop at the end.

How did this year's nominated crop do?  In what seems to be a trend this year, many solid pieces and none that jump out at me, forcing me to vote for them.

• After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, Nancy Kress (Tachyon Publications)

Of all the stories here, this was the one that felt the most like a complete novel -- and I could be mistaken, but it might have been the one with the longest wordcount as well.  It certainly sticks in my mind as one of the longest to read.  That said, the story was also one of the most intriguing to me.  I loved the way it wove the three timelines together, raising questions in some just to answer them in the others, only to have those answers reflect back and then cause more questions again.

On the (small) downside, some of the character actions felt a bit undeveloped to me -- that is, they could well have been justified, but what was in the text might have been a touch too sparse.  Also, while I enjoyed the "we did it to ourselves" aspect of the ending, I thought the reference to Gaia specifically protecting herself was odd, and in my mind there was no need to introduce it; one or two catastrophes leading to nuclear armageddon is plausible enough by itself.

Back to the plus side, the Tesslies were never explained, which surprised me but in a good way.  I think including something for them would have been too neatly wrapped up.

• The Emperor’s Soul, Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon Publications)

Brandon offered an electronic version of this to nominating members of Worldcon, and I took him up on it, having otherwise little chance to read the story.  I can't say how much that effort helped in getting him nominated, but I feel it holds its own when laid next to the other selected nominees.  As usual with his fantasy stories, the magic system is both unique and well-thought-out, and is one of the strengths of the story. (I found after reading the story that this was set in the same world as Elantris, which I didn't grasp during the story but after learning this found a couple hints scattered throughout.)

On the negative side, I'm of split minds about the ending -- specifically, the action scenes.  The majority of the story is more along the lines of a mystery or court intrigue, with the various players and factions maneuvering against each other.  The flight and fight to wrap up the story is a good thing for paying off some promises about how the magic system can be used on a person, and yet the fighting in particular seemed off from the tone of the rest of the book.  While I'm being critical, I'll add that I don't recall much of a growth arc to the MC through the story.  Both of these are rather small nits to be picking at, however, and the overall story is quite solid.

• On a Red Station, Drifting, Aliette de Bodard (Immersion Press)

This story is apparently set in the same world as some others by Aliette de Bodard, including the short story Immersion.  In this particular case, I wonder if the story suffers just a bit for it.  The worldbuilding is comprehensive, and the look into another future culture is fascinating, but despite my general appreciation for this length of story, in this case I think it was the wrong choice.

In a bit more detail, schematically I can see how the story is structured such that the ending matches the beginning, the arc for the main character is there, there are hints of arcs for other characters... but in the end, there is so much happening in the story, and so many references to other things happening, and so much detail that is glossed over, that I thought the story would benefit from more room dedicated to these things.  The threads weren't dangling, necessarily; we were given the information about where they tied up, but not where they went in between, or, from my perspective anyway, sometimes enough information to see how it should impact the rest of the story.

My other complimaint (that's a combination compliment and complaint) is that the characters were realistically drawn, each of the prominent ones with their own goals and troubles, but I really didn't know who to latch on to and none of them elicited that sympathy in me that makes me want to keep reading and see what happened to them.  Probably the closest in that regard is the grandmother AI, who is unfortunately silenced before the end of the story.

• San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats, Mira Grant (Orbit)

This is another that ties into other fiction, but in this case I've happened to have read the other fiction.  I can't know for sure, since I haven't approached it from a blank slate, but I believe that having read the novels adds just a bit of resonance to the story, and in particular the framing device.  The interview and look back adds to the suspense, because you know something bad is going to be happening, but without having read the novels I doubt I'd care who is doing the interviewing or want them to be able to succeed in getting the subject to open up.

Likewise, I can't recall if the story explicitly mentioned that this was one of the first giant zombie outbreak problems, or if that information came with the other novels.  That said, I found the portrayal of a zombie attack in an environment set very close to current days to be pretty realistic.  I liked that each of the people presented in the meat of the story had their own reasons for being there, their own behaviors, and their own goals as things started to get bad.  And their own responses to the events that were happening.  Plus, of course, Mira Grant did a wonderful job in getting me to like most of the characters even though I knew they were going to be killed by the end.

An interesting side-note to liking the characters -- she didn't make all of the characters likable, though they almost all had something about them that the reader could identify with, even the ones who made poor choices.  I think this made it feel a lot more realistic, rather than making it feel heavy-handed.  In the same vein, the one character we know survived isn't incredibly likable either.  She's not horrible, but she's a typical teenager who isn't having a good day, and takes it out on people around her.  Rather than make the reader dislike her, though, it actually causes empathy and pity.

• “The Stars Do Not Lie”, Jay Lake (Asimov’s, Oct-Nov 2012)

I don't know if the world this story is set in is a larger one populated by Jay Lake in other stories or novels, but this is another with a large amount of worldbuilding evident.  The amount of ideas in the story is impressive, as is the author's ability to convey so much of the setting without bogging down the story.  Part of that is due to playing on some strong parallels to our history -- and playing on a few tropes -- but a lot of it is due to good writing.

Unfortunately, this one fell down more than the rest for me, due mostly to plot.  There is plenty of conflict, and (at least somewhat) sympathetic characters on all sides of the inciting event, but in the end it seems more like a chronicle of events and what the characters did during them than it does a story.  I'm going to take a stab at why with the MICE quotient -- the story starts with a scientist announcing a discovery that upsets the religious teachings of the time.  To me, this indicates a clear event story, since the status quo is upset (and if that's not enough, the later revelation that his evidence will only become more and more obvious to others as well clearly indicates that the status quo will not continue).  However, after a fight in the end, we have an event that doesn't restore the previous status quo (the church's figure running off), and a character-arc resolution for the scientist follows -- where he resolves to not push his discoveries on others, which undermines the idea that a new status quo has been accepted.  I think this ending, as much as anything, leaves a feeling that things are still unresolved, which is what leads to my feeling of stuff-happened rather than story-occurred.

My Opinion
As the discussion of "The Stars Do Not Lie" may indicate, it quickly falls to the bottom of my rankings. For the remaining four, I'm afraid I have to rank On a Red Station, Drifting fourth, followed by The Emperor's Soul third (despite it's magic system creativity, the story didn't strike me as hard as the remaining two).  Finally, between San Diego 2014 and After, Before, During, I have to give the nod to After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall.  This is primarily due to how well it kept me engrossed in the story, and despite my feelings about the Gaia explanation in the end.  San Diego 2014 didn't maintain that level of interest from me, but it did provide a more satisfying ending (IMO), so I may end up swapping before I cast my final ballot, but I doubt it.

A Giant Pain in the Neck

So, I haven't been writing as much as I had wanted to over the weekend.  In fact, it's been a struggle to meet my daily word count, and I haven't made any progress at all on my other writing goals.

The reason?  A giant, and literal, pain in the neck.

I suppose, to be fair, I have a pain in my upper back also, and my shoulders.  It all started last Wednesday, when I went to a Personal Training appointment after work, and spent a lot of time working on my back and shoulder muscles in various ways, including the dreaded pull-ups.  I should say that I don't like pull-ups, and I doubt I ever will, but I do appreciate being able to do a few of them, and that I am starting to be able to do more.  In this case, however, I think I strained too hard attempting a new personal best.

That night was fine.  The next day was 4th of July, and I woke up stiff and achey, and it never really went away, though it occasionally got better.  Friday I went to work stiff and sore, though by the time I was there for an hour or so I was basically functional.  That lasted until Friday night, at which point I spent way too long hunched over my laptop.

What followed was excruciating pain, only slightly relieved by a very unpleasant and persistent -- but effective -- massage from my wife.  That got me good enough to fall asleep, but every time I rolled over in my sleep I was jolted awake in pain.  In the morning, it was so bad that I couldn't sit up like normal, because I literally could not stand the pain that came from supporting my head while lifting my body from the bed.  I had to use a hand to hold my head in position while sitting up, which is not the simplest thing to manage; nor, fortunately, have I had much practice at it.

So there I was, Saturday morning, and I couldn't even turn my head side-to-side or lean over more than a couple inches without large warning pains shooting through my neck and back.  Saturday morning, the time I had set aside for making good progress on my writing goals this month.

Instead, I spent an hour, maybe more, stretching and loosening those muscles.  Then I got a massage.  I went on a gentle walk, and then stretched again.  Eventually I could move my head around, though not 100%, and I only needed one painkiller every 4-6 hours, instead of two.

As part of my rehab, I avoided the computer.  I couldn't avoid thinking about my story, and many other things I wanted to use the computer for, but I avoided it as much as I could.  I spent about 20 minutes on it Saturday, writing a blog post so I could get my daily word-count.  I've spent a bit more today -- I'm probably up to 30 minutes working on it (and an additional 45 minutes video chatting with family that I don't count due to standing in a neutral position the whole time).  Doing all of this at a standing desk helped a lot also, though I'm actually about at my limit now, which means I should set this aside and do more stretching.

So, my long-term take-away from this pain?  Keeping my body in shape is important, and part of that is stepping away from the computer for frequent breaks.  That I can try to do both at work and at home.  Another is to use my standing desk more again.  Finally, I need to get in even better shape so I can hit those workouts without the long-term pain, and also bear in mind my limits while doing so such that I don't repeat this incident.  Especially not this week -- I'm already too far behind in my goals as it is.

July Goal the Seventh

My last writing goal for July, and potentially one of the hardest for me, as it's a step I haven't done since college: submit at least one story for publication.

Of course, I can't just make it easy on myself.  I intend to use one of the stories I edit into better shape, and I intend to do some research to figure out where best to submit it first.  I have decided I will submit to the most prestigious market I can find that it fits in first, and go down the list from there.  Hmm, perhaps a spreadsheet is in order...

Due to vacation vagaries and timing issues, I'm willing to cut myself a bit of slack on this one.  Since I'm on vacation in the last week of July that will entail me being cut off from internet access for the majority of the time, I'm willing to accept a detailed submission plan and prep instead: specific publication chosen, story formatted appropriately, and query written, all ready to be sent as soon as I return from vacation.

Hugo 2013 Reviews: Graphic Story

A detour from the regular fiction here, to deal with the pictures with words attached.

I always have an interesting time with these.  On one hand, I like graphic novels, and think they can do some pretty awesome stuff with the pictures, as opposed to just words.  On the other hand, I have a preference -- a strong preference -- for complete stories, or at least complete story arcs.  For the few years I've done the Hugo thing, I've struggled on how to rate the graphic novels, especially for many of them that are published collections of ongoing stories, but are not a complete story, or even a complete arc in a story, in and of themselves.  For many of the nominated works in the past, they read more as a chapter in a story than anything else.

This year continues the same tradition for at least two of the nominees (Saga and Saucer Country, both just starting out), while two others (Grandville and Schlock Mercenary) tell what seems to me to be a complete story.  The fifth, Locke & Key, further blurs the lines, because it seems like a chapter in the overall story (some of which I've also read), but also presents at least a story in the flashbacks.

So.  There's that.

• Grandville Bête Noire, written and illustrated by Bryan Talbot (Dark Horse Comics, Jonathan Cape)

Last years' voter packet was my first exposure to Grandville, and I loved it.  I thought at the time that it was a one-off book, though it had a lot of worldbuilding involved.  Silly me.  This year saw another nominated, and now I know that it is an ongoing story, and that I should be paying more attention to what it is doing.  Last year's was one of my favorite graphic novels ever, and unfortunately this year's entry didn't quite hit the same notes, for me, though it's a very solid entry and quite worthy of the nomination.  The art is top-notch, and the worldbuilding remains wonderful.

• Locke & Key Volume 5: Clockworks, written by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez (IDW)

As I mentioned before, this was a very interesting one.  It continues to be wonderfully illustrated, and the subcurrents of the plot keep it tense for me.  The horror is well-done also.  However, I continue to find it hard to rank the chapters in a longer tale as the best among nominated works.

• Saga, Volume One, written by Brian K. Vaughn, illustrated by Fiona Staples (Image Comics)

I love this introduction to the world and story -- for the most part, at least -- and it has some very effectively creepy images in it.  I am in awe of the imagination that can come up with these images and situations.  However, it suffers twice in my opinion; once from being only part of a story (though it did complete the mini-arc of finding the transportation location), and once from being the introduction, which to me means there's more setup and less payoff in this part.

• Schlock Mercenary: Random Access Memorabilia, written and illustrated by Howard Tayler, colors by Travis Walton (Hypernode Media)

I've been reading Schlock Mercenary for longer than I've been voting on Hugos, and continue to enjoy it on a nearly daily basis (my misses on some days; Howard Tayler's update record is near legendary).  That said, while Random Access Memorabilia is a decent story, it suffers a bit from the same symptoms as Grandville does this year: for me, I've seen these characters in a story I felt was stronger, and though I try not to let that color my opinions too much, it undoubtedly does.  The artwork, while different than all the others, hasn't been any sort of weakness for years now either.

• Saucer Country, Volume 1: Run, written by Paul Cornell, illustrated by Ryan Kelly, Jimmy Broxton and Goran Sudžuka (Vertigo)

I could almost copy and paste sentences from above for this one.  The premise is interesting, and I want to read more of the story, but that's the problem as well in my opinion; this was almost all setup, and really very little payoff (though playing the psychologist was a nice touch).  None of the entries had anything less than solid artwork, and though this is one that I remember the least about, I think that has more to do with what it depicts (mostly modern, non-fantastical settings) than anything else.

My Opinion
I can't go against my strongly-held inclinations toward complete stories.  I inevitably enjoy those stories more than those I only get a chapter of.  With that said, it comes down to a choice between Grandville and Schlock Mercenary for the top choice, and as much enjoyment as Schlock Mercenary has given me through the years, it comes in second in this comparison.  Following that, I'd have to rank them Locke & Key, Saga, and then Saucer Country.

July Goal the Sixth

As mentioned in one of my retrospectives from last month, I need to work on my story titles.  This goal is to go through at least 5 stories -- probably the ones I think have the most potential -- and do some renaming exercises for them.

Story-A-Day Retrospective: Final Thoughts

My last thoughts on the Story-A-Day challenge are mostly about how I accomplished it, and what helped me do so.  In particular, I gave myself more accountability than I often do, and I think that helped force my way through it.  Without the built-in support and accountability of NaNoWriMo, I felt I had to do something to help myself out.

The main outlet for this was posting my goal and occasional progress on the goal to G+, to the survivors (at the time) of Mary Robinette Kowal's online writing class.  In particular, I think staking the goal out early and publicly helped, and I've continued the tradition for July.

The other tool for online accountability was using the Magic Spreadsheet, which a local writing friend introduced me to.  The idea there is to build up the chain of writing (at least a small amount) every day, and it gives you points -- more based on the chain you develop than on the amount of words that you write.  Since I had already decided I wanted to end up with 30 stories in 30 days, and mostly write them one a day, it was a natural fit.  So I started at the beginning of June, and was encouraged to see my words and points pile up through the month.

I've continued the habit as well, allowing my points to pile higher in the spreadsheet.

In conclusion, it was a great exercise, and I'll probably do it or something like it again -- but not too soon.  I've much enjoyed not having as much pressure when I've been writing for these past few days.

Hugo 2013 Reviews: Novelettes

A full slate of novelettes to consider this year.  This is usually one of my favorite categories, since there's a bit more room to play in than short stories allow, but they are still short and focused enough to read in one setting.  Also a unique aspect: two nominated stories by the same author (Seanan McGuire).  Also interesting is the pervasive melancholy or couple-doesn't-get-together endings through this set of stories.

• “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow”, Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Postscripts: Unfit For Eden, PS Publications)

An interesting story that glosses over the magic/science behind it to deal with people who are made of different stuff -- literally, in the case of the boy made of glass.  I liked the melancholy tone the end set, and indeed the whole endpiece once the two decided to run away, but overall this one left me feeling so-so.  I wonder how much was potentially lost in translation for this one, since it was originally published in Dutch.

• “Fade To White”, Catherynne M. Valente ( Clarkesworld, August 2012)

The advertisement interludes sold it for me, and a good thing too, because otherwise the full-immersion effect may have been too much for me to keep reading (other than the Hugo nom, of course).  I liked how it worked the post-apocolypse angle, and all the changes to society seemed very believable, along with the daily concerns of the POV characters presented.  A bit of credulity-stretching with the teenage interest in older movies, but that added an important element of translation from my world to that of the character's, so it's hard to complain too much.  The two POV characters don't end up together, and I'm not sure if I applaud this as not being cliched, or am sad because they were nice characters and could have made each other happy.

• “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi”, Pat Cadigan (Edge of Infinity, Solaris)

Space exploration and body modification, with a hint of lawyer struggle and oppression from the home world?  Sounds like a lot, and for all the world-building that seems to have gone into this, I hope there are other stories or novels set in the same world.  Still, the density of world-building made this one of the easiest for me to get into, and I liked it all-around.

• “In Sea-Salt Tears”, Seanan McGuire (Self-published)

Each of Seanan McGuire's stories were apparently set in a larger world of her own, and deal with at least some of the same characters as appear in her novels.  I haven't read those novels, and yet for neither of the stories did I feel like I was missing anything vital to my understanding.  This story seemed early-on like it was going to be a twist on The Little Mermaid, and I was happy it didn't end up that way.  I was also invested enough in the relationship that I was hoping the MC wouldn't accept the transition after all, though I knew it was probably a forgone hope.  I liked how the choices seemed to come from the characters and incidentally create conflict, rather than appear to be done by authorial dictate.

• “Rat-Catcher”, Seanan McGuire ( A Fantasy Medley 2, Subterranean)

As above, the story was well-contained enough that I didn't feel lost without having read any of the novels that these characters appear in.  I've always liked stories about intelligent, prankster, or fae cats, and this one delivers.  I also like the idea of cats sitting and watching the Shakespeare plays, way-back-when.  This one does hit the somewhat-cliche result of the self-fulfilling prophecy -- or at least, it strongly hints at it -- but really the prophecy and its fulfillment are almost just background texture around which the story takes place; that of the new king of the Cat Sidhe taking the position from his elder.

My Opinion

These are a hard lot to choose between.  None seem unworthy, but none jump out and force me to move them to the top of the list either.  I think for sheer fun and world-building, Fade to White and The Girl Thing... move to the top of the list, with The Girl Thing Who Went Out for Sushi first, Fade to White second, followed by In Sea-Salt Tears, The Boy Who Cast No Shadow, and finally Rat-Catcher... unless I change my mind between now and when I lock in my vote.

July Goal the Fifth

I need to get critical feedback on my stories.  I will chose two of them specifically to submit for critique.

Once I have that feedback, I'll integrate it into a new draft.

Ideally, I'll go through two rounds with each story  (fresh readers each round).

Hugo 2103 Reviews: Short Stories

Only three short stories were nominated this year, due to the minimum vote threshold.

• “Immersion”, Aliette de Bodard (Clarkesworld, June 2012)
• “Mantis Wives”, Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld, August 2012)
• “Mono no Aware”, Ken Liu (The Future is Japanese, VIZ Media LLC)

Immersion

I thought it was an interesting concept and story, though I found it hard to get into initially.  Many reviews mentions parallels with Google Glass and smart phones and what-not now, and it's easy to see why.  One of the reasons I found it hard to get into is also one of the neatest tricks about the story, writing-wise: the use of second-person present tense.  It is jarring, and used for good effect to present everything from the POV of someone so fully immersed with their computerized helper that they can't do anything for themselves anymore.  Possibly a warning, and possibly a promise of what may come.

Mantis Wives

This made me nauseous.  I can say it was well written, because it drew me in enough to have that effect, but in the end I was left wishing I hadn't read it.  As art, it is worthy of the nomination, but as for my taste, I didn't care for it at all.

Mono no Aware

A nice story that sets up a bit of a mystery, with it's twin timelines, and telegraphs the answer to the mystery before setting up the final problem in the future timeline, and resolving it.  I have seen criticism that the ending is too predictable, and it is somewhat, but it is still quite well written and the how of getting to the ending is still very pleasant.  I especially liked the way the MC's fading awareness and bits of delusion were woven in near the end, as he struggled to stay awake for the 36 hours (I think?) it was going to take him to travel.

My Opinion

As if this whole thing isn't my opinions, but ranking these stories against each other is kind of difficult for me.  I will say again that the art and technique of "Mantis Wives" was top-notch, but due to my own personal reaction to it, I'll be ranking it third when it comes to the voting.  "Mono no Aware" and "Immersion" are also both solid entries, and in my mind nearly equivalent in their impact on me.  The second-person present-tense sections of "Immersion" almost tip the scales it's way, but in the end I go with "Mono no Aware" as being a more accessible, and therefore slightly more enjoyable to me, story, and plan on ranking it first in the vote.

Hugo 2013 Reviews: Intro

In order to get my own thoughts arranged (and recorded for future memory), and in order to potentially foster some discussion, I'm going to record my thoughts on the 2013 Hugo nominees, concentrating primarily on the fiction.

I've been reading, nominating, and voting for the Hugos for about 3 years now.  In some ways, I'm just getting the hang of things.  In others, I'm sure I'm still a beginner.  However, one of the things that struck me this year was that this was the first year in which I had read more than 1 of the nominated Hugo novels, having read three of them (Redshirts, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, and Blackout).  This will give me an incredible boost in my attempt to get through the entire packet this year, as most years I haven't found the time to read all the novels, and thus usually don't vote for them -- besides, they are well-represented in the voting.

I prefer to start with the smaller stories and work my way up, and so that is the way I'll be doing the reviews as well; starting with Short Stories and working my way up to Novels, with possibly a digression or two to the other categories.

July Goal the Fourth

While I'm furiously writing, I will often avoid reading much of other people's work, especially those that would cause me to switch into editing and critiquing mode.  I did do a few of these during June, but now that I'm not writing a story each day, I should take the time to repay (and pre-pay) the kindness of having others critique my own works.

Specifically, I want to critique at least 6 other stories by the end of July, and have those critiques written and posted to the appropriate people before the end of July as well.

Short critical looks at already published items don't count.

July Goal the Third

It's impressive how much email can accumulate when you're not doing anything with it for a month or so.  I handled the important stuff, but now I need to catch up on the rest and get things cleaned up by the next month.

Story-A-Day Retrospective: Names and Titles

On character names: if you had seen the first couple of stories I wrote, you might have seen names like Bran SelfPossessednamehere or even Sir Eugene McNamehere.  I wasn't taking the time to find good names, and it was showing all over the place.  After a couple days of this, I decided I was tired of this and that, while the names could always be changed later, I wanted to have real names involved.  Thus, I took refuge in Scrivener's suggested names list.  I had already set it up to provide a decent variety of mostly English-ish names, and I would just scan the list for a name I liked.  If I was particularly taken by a first name but didn't like the last, or vice versa, I'd take the one and combine it with another on the list.  If I didn't see any I liked, a new list of 30 was a button-click away.

Surprisingly, this allowed me to connect with my characters more than I thought I would.  Having a name for them that I didn't come up with directly out of my head (even if I chose it from a list), gave them a bit more identity in my brain, I think.  I would usually come up with one or two traits about the character that I didn't have before, just from free-associating with the sound of the name.  It was a fascinating process, and one I think I'll keep around.

I also named every story I wrote, but many of them had very business-like working names; names like "The Test" or "The Slayer" or "The Choice" (ugh) or "The Quarry".  Many of those were either put on right away when I figured out what the story was going to be about, or at the very end when I needed to name it and wanted to be done with the story so I could go to bed.

On the other hand, many of the titles I really like came to me as I was writing the story.  Somewhere in the middle, I would have an idea for a title, and if it stuck around for a paragraph or two, I'd stop for a bit to officially name the story before continuing.  Of those titles, the ones I like the most are "The Sharp Edge of Opportunity", "Mary Brune as Cheetah", "Angels, Multiplying", and most of all, "The Stone Weight of the Survivor".

To pick out a couple of others, I came up with the name "Elephantine vs. The Stoat" first, but I had an idea that I wanted to do a superhero/supervillain story, and so first chose appropriate hero/villain names before filling in the title, and then writing it.  The title does well enough for the story.  "The Neo-Cheo Hunt" and "A Catgirl Adrift", "Birth of the Engineer", and "Ruby and the Dragon Slayer" fit in the passable-but-not-great category.

I may have to add to my goals going through some of the stories that I like but don't really go for the title, and making a list of possible titles for the story.  Hopefully I can come up with some better ones that way.  I may also want to study the ones I like to see if there's something about them in particular that I like and that I could then emulate for the others.

In conclusion on the titles, however, I have to say that sometimes an inspired title strikes me, and sometimes none does.  I need to practice if I'm going to get better at naming, and I know from my reading experience that a good name can really help pique interest in a story.

July Goal the Second

Revise at least 3 of the stories I wrote during June.  This means analyze them for MICE (or other aspects as considered beneficial) and modify them so as to be better stories.  Ideally, I'll read back through one or two of my editing books, and do the exercises therein on these stories.

Story-A-Day Retrospective: Times and Word Counts

Continuing my retrospective:

During the work week, I always wrote in the evening.  Mornings for Saturdays, and Sundays were a crapshoot, with me writing anywhere in the day (but usually not first thing in the morning).  Looking back, I felt better about most of my Saturday writing, but maybe that was because I wasn't under a time crunch, nor did I constrain myself as much for word-count (due to not having the time crunch).

Because of that, I'd expected my Saturday pieces in particular to be both longer and better, and somewhat for Sunday as well.  However, when I choose my current favorite stories (detailed later), only only half of them were written during the weekend.  That's a higher output per number of days, but less than I had expected.  Also, my two favorites (so far) were written on a worknight.

Word count also tells an interesting tale.  It turns out that Thursday nights were my best for number of words, with an average of 1956.  That was followed closely by Saturday with 1839, then Sunday (1645), Wednesday (1635), Friday (1549), Tuesday (1512), and finally Monday (1477).  Obviously some variability, but I showed I can regularly crunch out an average of over 1650 words a day for a month when writing shorter pieces, which is just a hair less than a winning NaNoWriMo pace.

Continuing to look at word counts, my longest (fully completed) story was 3693 words, on the first day.  My shortest was on the fourth day, with 771.  (Neither what I expected when I started reviewing, though I knew both were in the mix).  On only three days did I have less than 1k words for a story.

The reason I mentioned (fully completed) above was that three times, in the middle of the story, I decided that it was going too long and that I had to resort to summarizing the rest of the story in order to get to an "ending".  Currently, those sit at 2494 words, 2725 words, and 1409 words.  By the last one, I obviously decided faster that I had to summarize.  I'll declare that an improvement for this month's exercise, calling it better knowledge of the short story effort, rather than me being lazier.  It might have been both.

July Goal the First

My first (writing) goal during July is to continue the writing streak I've started in June.  I wasn't writing as consistently as I'd like prior to June, and since I managed to write each and every day in June, I plan on trying to do the same during July.

The goal is at least 250 words a day.  Why 250?  Because I also signed up for the Magic Spreadsheet online at the beginning of June, and 250 words is the minimum to keep a writing streak going.

They have to be new words.

However, that is the only limit I'm placing on the goal.  The words can be part of an existing story, to flesh it out.  They can be part of a brand-new story.  They can be about writing (like this blog post, or critiques), though I'm going to try to keep those down.  The cannot be words I wrote for work, because that would just be silly.  They just have to be new words, trying to further my writing in some way.

Two days done so far.

Story-A-Day Retrospective: Ideas

Ideas!  Where do they come from?  What are the characteristics of the ideas I had?  Let's look back.

One of my fears going into the effort, and one of the reasons I made myself do the 30 short stories in 30 days, was that I'd run out of story ideas on about, oh, the third day.  Happily, that didn't happen.  I did feel I was running lower on story ideas toward the end of the month.  Perhaps I was pickier, but I think I was running lower.

On the other hand, there were a couple of dud days early in the month as well -- I'm thinking in particular of the day I had my shortest story, but then again I just looked it up and it was a few days later.  I suppose if I can forget work-related things over just one weekend, I can easily forget the difficulties I had getting an idea to write about early in the month by now.

Many of the ideas I had were too big for short stories.  (Thanks, Mary, for your rules-of-thumb on story size, and more importantly the emphasis on keeping the story focus tight.)  Having ideas that were too big was tough, especially on the days I was struggling to find any ideas for a short story, but kept having nice novella- or novel-length ideas.

I did write the bigger ideas down, and many setting- and character-related ideas that hadn't quite hit the write accumulation to become a story.  A number of my jotted-down ideas are actually just cool background or setting ideas, without the conflict I was looking for to be able to generate a short story.  I'll be revisiting all of these, possibly in the near future.

By the time I got to the middle of the month, I could see certain themes for these stories.  In no particular order: uplifted species, fantasy creatures in the modern world, and superhero/supervillain.  I don't think I'd previously written a story with any of these elements, which was interesting.  I wonder if they'll stick around, or if I'll look back and recognize a phase I was going through.

Judging by how interesting I find the story ideas right now, I'll be keeping those themes.

Sources of inspiration:

• Early on, a web search for "story prompts" helped, though not as much after I had run through all that I found interesting in the early results list.  Those were pretty hit-and-miss, but a few good ideas came from them.
• Mythology, in various forms: skimming through my encyclopedia of mythology book looking for interesting characters, facts, themes, or even wholesale plots was the most common.  Second most common was reading descriptions of mythological beasts I had previously not known about, and what they were known for, and putting something in that situation.
• Just thinking about cool things in stories and how I could make a story with that cool thing in it.
• Other stories, when I felt I understood the underlying idea enough translate it into an entirely different setting.

As for MICE, I found I didn't use it as much as I thought I would to generate ideas; in fact, I hardly used it at all that way during the month -- possibly for 3, maybe 4 stories.  I think part of that is due to the time constraints not allowing me to generate a bunch of story ideas and fleshing them out before picking one.  I hope part is due to better internalizing the ideas behind the technique.

Story-A-Day Retrospective: Intro

I'll be doing a series of blog posts for the next few days doing a retrospective on the past month of writing, in which I successfully wrote a short story each day for the 30 days in the month.

Initially, let me take a moment to point out the obvious achievement, so that it isn't missed: I set out a writing goal at the beginning of the month, and I met it.  Though it was difficult at times, the goal (and specific time frame) gave me extra motivation to get it done, which is important when I'm writing on my extra time right now, with no external deadlines.  I'll be doing a post with July goals later in the month, but rest assured I have some and already have them recorded.

First up in the retrospective: ideas.