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Other People's Books

And now, I need to talk about The Hum and the Shiver

I said as much in my previous post, but I’m pulling this up to a post of its own because it’s absolutely worth it: I’m about halfway through The Hum and the Shiver by Alex Bledsoe.

I could and should tell you that, pursuant to the previous post’s topic, this book is a) written by a male author, and b) passes the Bechdel at least twice, and this is with me being only about halfway through. But what I really want to tell you is oh holy hopping gods I love this book so much. It could commit several sins in the second half–though I’m really hoping it doesn’t, because I want to finish this up and plow straight into Book 2, Wisp of a Thing, now that it’s out–and I’ll still love it. And here’s why.

For one thing, I’ve posted before about how, although you couldn’t pay me to live again in the South, I am indeed from there, and stories set there tend to resonate with me. Like this one.

But for another, and way more importantly, Bledsoe has created the Tufa, a people who live and breathe music. And when I say ‘live and breathe’, I don’t mean just to the degree you might think of if you’re part of a culture where music is important. The Tufa aren’t just people with a musical tradition. These are people for whom music is woven into the very fabric of their lives. All of them sing, play instruments, and make songs. They get together every night for that express purpose.

The book starts off with Bronwyn Hyatt, a veteran of the war in Iraq, coming home to her family after being severely wounded. And because of the trauma of her injuries, she’s taken a bad hit to her ability to make music. Many of you will probably remember that back in 2003, I broke my arm. Which wasn’t remotely in the same league as the injuries that Bronwyn sustains in the story–but I’m here to tell you, my heart cracked for her when she tried to hold her mandolin and realized she couldn’t play. Because I remembered exactly what it felt like to be unable to play my guitar.

And without going into spoiler territory, I’ll say also that in the bits I just read today, there’s a scene where all of Bronwyn’s family has finally gathered in their home. The very first thing they do when that happens is whip out their instruments and start playing “John Barleycorn”. And again, my heart cracked, because I want to be in a family like that. And a third time, when the music began to work palpable magic on Bronwyn and she was able to play with her family.

There’s a subplot too, involving another character of partial Tufa blood, who reaches out to that part of him and begins to rediscover his musical ability. That, too, makes my heart sweetly ache. Because hi, yeah, I’ve been doing exactly that the last several years of my adult life, after losing the connection to my music when I broke my flute in school.

In the context of the story it’s very, very clear that music is literal magic to the Tufa. “Yes, well, fantasy novel,” you might say. But anyone who’s ever picked up an instrument in their lives will tell you that it’s absolutely true.

There are reasons the Murkworks has so many instruments, played by myself and Dara both. Reasons why you will find at least one musician if not more in almost everything I write. And most of all, reasons why I have to go to session even if I play only one or two songs. There is a special kind of power in a gathering of people who are there for the express purpose of making music.

And I adore this book for celebrating that power no matter what else I’ll find in the second half. I can’t wait to finish it up. And I fully expect that, like any good song, it’ll stay in my heart forever.

July 17, 2013 by
Other People's Books

Representation matters, part 2

Dara’s just put up an excellent post on the topic of how even progressive, liberal people can commit unintentional acts of sexism in their creative work. She’s responding to the question brought to her by a male comics artist who was told his mostly male cast is sexist, despite the political tone of his work leaning to the left. He wanted to know what Dara thought. Picosummary: Dara says the woman who told him that is right, actually.

Go click over to what Dara has to say, won’t you? And to her words I’d like to add: yes, as with race or with sexual orientation, representation in gender matters too. Especially in our storytelling.

As you all know, I read. A lot. But if you take a peek at the titles that’ve been on my reported reading lists for the last couple of years, you’ll probably notice a thing: the majority of novels I read are written by women. Someone who doesn’t know me might immediately conclude that “oh well Anna, she’s a girl, of course she wants to read girly books like romance or chick lit with girly things in them! Like FEELINGS!”

And if you thought that, you’d be wrong.

Most of the authors I read being female boils down to something much more simple: female authors are way more likely to give me a cast of characters with more than a single token female character. You’ve heard about the Bechdel test, right? Y’know, how in order to pass that test, a story needs to have more than one woman, and they need to talk to each other, about something that isn’t a man?

Kinda funny how I find this a lot more often in books written by women. And by funny, I mean frustrating. Don’t get me wrong, there are shining exceptions to this tendency in my library–Jim Hines comes immediately to mind, with his Princess series. And while I have several more excellent male authors in my library as well, I genuinely have to wrack my brains to think of any others who’ve managed to pull this off.

Even if a book doesn’t pass the Bechdel test, at minimum, I like to see women in lead roles. And I’m not just talking romance, either, though I am a documented romantic sucker. Nor am I talking the now-stereotypical “strong female character” that’s usually shorthand for “woman who has more sarcasm than sense and solves all her problems by hitting them with weaponry”–though in the right hands, I like this, too. But give me women who are leaders among their people, whether human, elven, dwarven, or whatever other species they might happen to be. Give me women who are heroes, women who are mages, women who go on quests and get to save the world.

Give me women who are scientists, and who do actual science, as opposed to just parading around a book wearing glasses because that’s shorthand for “this character is smart”. I want to see that woman being smart. Bonus points if a woman wearing glasses at no point is ever thought to be prettier without her glasses.

Give me women who are superheroes. Give me Wonder Woman, goddammit–and a Wonder Woman who is defined by more than just “she’s got superpowers so she gets to be Superman’s girlfriend now”.

Give me secondary female characters who are in positions of power, and who are there to do more than just encourage the female lead in whatever relationship the plot’s setting up for her. Give me hunters and scouts and healers and fire-mages and queens and priestesses. Give me starship captains.

Give me a series who does any of these, and I’ll be giving that series my money, support, and reading time and love.

Representation matters.

ETA: I’m already starting to get a couple of recommendations from folks about male authors who’ve written female lead characters. That’s awesome, but it’s also not the point of this post. Like I said, I’ve gotten several excellent male authors in my library. A couple of them have in fact written good strong female lead characters. But male authors who’ve got not only female lead characters but also a good representation of females in their cast in general are harder to come by.

I find it problematic for some urban fantasy or paranormal romance written by women, too, for the record. One of the biggest problems I have with some long-running urban fantasy series is the dearth of female characters in them other than the leads, and how a lot of the time, the only other women who show up are there to be bitchy to the heroine, or to be romantic rivals.

And really, y’all, I ain’t hurting for books to read right now. You DO know I’ve got over 1,100 books on my To Read list, right? 😉

ETA #2: And while I’m on the topic, it’s worth noting that the book I’m reading right now, i.e., the excellent The Hum and the Shiver, is a) written by a guy, i.e., Alex Bledsoe, and b) does indeed pass the Bechdel at least twice so far, and that’s with having two other notable female characters interacting with the heroine.

So yeah, trust me, I’m paying attention on this, guys. Also: really digging The Hum and the Shiver.

ETA #3: And OH HEY well this is timely to my post, now isn’t it? The Mary Sue has a piece up now about the need for female villains. They are correct. Powerful female villains are just as important as female protagonists!

July 17, 2013 by
Other People's Books

On nerds and geeks in romance and other genres

The fine ladies of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and Dear Author, who’ve been doing a joint podcast for a while, just released an episode about nerd-based romances. As I am a) a nerd/geek and b) a reader of romance, you may expect that WHY YES, I did in fact find this episode highly relevant to my interests!

One big thing that leapt out at me though was Sarah and Jane, the podcast hosts, getting into a debate about what actually constitutes a nerd or a geek. I just had a little chat with them on Twitter on that very topic, and what I had to say started off like this:

Anna Geeks Out On Nerd Vs. Geek

Anna Geeks Out On Nerd Vs. Geek

‘Cause yeah, this is pretty much where I am on what a nerd or a geek is. I generally consider myself both. As someone with a B.A. in Computer Science (and yes, my college gave me a B.A., not a B.S., they handed out B.A.’s in everything) and whose day job career all her life has been in computers, I’m legitimately a computer nerd. But I’m also a computer geek, since I have that component of strong enthusiasm about computers. A lot of the time, I slant more towards geek than nerd here.

Likewise, I’m a bit of a language nerd, as y’all might guess what with me doing the Trilingual Hobbit Re-read. Languages are also one of the big reasons I love Tolkien so much, what with all of the work he did building the languages of Middle-Earth. And I’m absolutely a Tolkien nerd. Yes, I’m the one who actually rather likes digging into the minutiae of The Silmarillion. 😉

But I’m also a geek about all sorts of things. Doctor Who. Battlestar Galactica. Firefly and Buffy. SF/F culture in general. But also trad music and Great Big Sea and all my Quebec groups. In all these cases it’s more of a case of passion and enthusiasm for me than of intellectual understanding, but because I also have nerd tendencies, that’ll often drive my explorations of any of these things. This’ll be why Quebec music is making me learn French–because I want that better understanding of music I’m passionate about.

Sarah and Jane have a couple of other discussion points that I feel are worth addressing, too. There’s the idea that nerds and geeks are socially awkward, which Sarah was saying she usually expects when she’s reading stories involving these types of characters. As I pointed out in my tweets, I feel this is stereotypical. A lot of us are socially awkward, but not all of us. And there’s also this idea that the social awkwardness of nerds is the extreme “loser living in their mother’s basement” sort of awkwardness, whereas in my experience, there are absolutely different levels of social comfort. Some nerds and geeks do have that extreme awkwardness. A lot more of us are still kind of awkward in social situations with non-nerds and non-geeks, but honestly, this is often more about ‘what the hell do I say to these people?’ than anything else.

I mean, think about it–if you take a nerd and put her in a room full of people who don’t share her interests (e.g., sports fans), it’s asking a lot to expect that person to be sparkling and vivacious to the others. The reverse also applies. Take a woman who’s passionate about, say, fashion, and put her in a room full of people geeking out about Doctor Who–should you expect that person to be a hundred percent comfortable in that scenario?

The ability to be vivacious to a room full of people who don’t necessarily share your interests is hard for anybody, not just nerds and geeks. It’s popular to expect it of nerds and geeks, sure. We do have a long history of our interests being sneered at and looked down upon specifically because they didn’t match up with mainstream interests.

But this is actually changing. To be a geek is becoming cooler. ‘Nerd’ still carries a pejorative weight in some circles–hell, I’ve seen people in my own profession snarkily call each other nerds–but that’s fading, too. Nerds and geeks are starting to show up in mainstream TV, albeit still often with a weight of stereotype (but then, hello, Hollywood, they never met a stereotype they didn’t like).

And we’re showing up in books, too. Like romances, which is what the podcast episode was all about. One of Sarah and Jane’s listeners wrote in to ask what nerd romances they’d recommend, and of those, I can note that yeah, I’ve actually read the first four of Vicki Lewis Thompson’s series. I very much liked the first one, due to her nicely skewering a lot of nerd stereotypes (e.g., lack of fashion sense). The subsequent ones didn’t grab me as much since they struck me as way less about actual nerdery and more about superficial adherence to nerd tropes (e.g., a heroine who wears glasses and dresses frumpily as a shorthand for being smart, rather than showing her, y’know, actually being smart).

One Con Glory by Sarah Kuhn is another nerd romance I liked–lots of con culture described there.

I’ve also talked about Tribute by Nora Roberts before, which while not a nerd romance per se did have a hero in it who was an absolute geek–a graphic novelist who was into Battlestar Galactica (both versions!), and who legitimately thought along the lines of “what KIND of Kryptonite?” when the heroine lamented that love was her Kryptonite. Because yeah, I’d totally expect a geek to understand that much about Superman lore.

I still find that SF/F books are way more likely to have nerds and geeks showing up in them, ’cause, yeah, well, that’s where a lot of us are in our primary reading tastes. But as I’ve pointed out in a previous post, a lot of those tales are still going to have love stories front and center. In romance, I expect nerd-friendly characters to actually be showing up more in stories that aren’t ostensibly about nerd/geek culture–which is why I tend to slurp historicals with bluestocking heroines RIGHT UP. I really rather liked Nina Rowan’s A Study in Seduction for having a mathematician heroine, and y’know what scene in it stands out the most for me? The one where the hero drives himself a little crazy trying to solve a math problem that’s quite hard for him, specifically to express to the heroine that yes, he appreciates her and her interests. And I totally loved how he showed up disheveled and a little frantic to present her with the answer.

Zoe Archer’s Stranger, Book 4 of her Blades of the Rose series, is another excellent example. I loved her hero Catullus Graves, for being a man of intellect and whose scientific creations are integral all throughout the series. And I loved that while he had some traits that fall into nerd stereotypes (i.e., he had issues talking to women), he had other things to balance that out (i.e., the man could rock the hell out of a waistcoat).

Because ultimately, what a nerd character should be about for me is that character using their brains effectively as part of the plot. If it’s in a contemporary setting, bonus points if actual nerd/geek culture is shown–and shown effectively–but I don’t actually require that. It’s all about the brains for me. If you’re going to claim your character is a scientist, show me some science. If she’s a computer geek, I want to see her hands on a keyboard–I don’t want to see men in the plot solving her computer problems for her.

So talk to me, people! Sound off about your favorite nerd/geek characters, and what books they show up in!

June 19, 2013 by
Other People's Books

About Bridget Zinn and Poison

The other day I heard about an author by the name of Bridget Zinn, whose first book, a YA Fantasy novel called Poison, has just been released.

Thing is, it’s been released posthumously–because Bridget died of cancer in 2011. Now, her book’s finally seeing the light of day. And her loved ones are asking people to spread the word about it, particularly asking that authors post about their first releases, or that non-authors post about other momentous firsts in their lives.

I could post about my own cancer diagnosis and how, even with the reasonably low-impact scenario I went through, hearing about Bridget dying before she could see her own book published really hit home with me. Instead, though, I’m going to focus upon what the Help post I linked to asked for, and talk about my first book.

As y’all know, Valor of the Healer is about to drop in another couple of weeks. But it’s NOT the first book I professionally released. That of course was Faerie Blood, my urban fantasy, which was originally published by Drollerie Press in 2009 and which I resurrected via Kickstarter last year. While I am extremely proud of Valor of the Healer, and am secure in proclaiming that it’s a more complex and mature work, in many ways Faerie Blood is the book of my heart.

I wrote the bulk of it in 2003 for Nanowrimo, and kept going until I had a full novel’s worth of words. I threw everything I loved into it: music, magic, elves, Seattle, biking, computers, and all sorts of geeky references to things like Linux and Nethack and Calvin and Hobbes. My love of the music of Elvis Presley AND the folk music of Newfoundland influenced two major characters in the cast. It is, after all, no accident at all that Faerie Blood‘s hero is a bouzouki player from Newfoundland!

I wasn’t diagnosed with my breast cancer until 2007, by which point I’d gone through several query cycles with the book. And it wasn’t until 2008 that Drollerie agreed to publish me. The book finally was deployed for sale in 2009, and by then, I’d gone through radiation treatment, a mastectomy, and reconstruction surgery. I’m in good condition now, and am immensely grateful that Evergreen Medical Center has looked after me so well, and that I am in fact here to see my next book about to be released into the digital wilds.

So yeah, very much feeling for Bridget’s loved ones. And I’d like to encourage you all to consider going to check out the site that remains up in honor of her and of her novel. If you’d like to help spread the word about her and do something in her memory, check out her family is asking for folks to do over here.

And if the book sounds like fun to you, buy it! And review it! It certainly sounds like fun to me–and since it’s described as being full of “adventure and romance and fun”, I can’t think of a better way to celebrate its author than to indulge in what the book’s got to offer. Go check it out. For Bridget.

Thanks all.

March 25, 2013 by
Guest Posts, Other People's Books

Guest Post – Geekiness and Writing

Hey there Internets! One of the fun things about being a Carina author is the very strong community I’ve joined–and in particular, the community of Carina authors who write fantasy, urban fantasy, and paranormal romance. We’re all on an author blog called Here Be Magic, and I’d like to start introducing you to my fellow writers who post there. Starting today with Tia Nevitt! So y’all grab a chair, raise a jar, and give Tia a listen, won’t you? — Anna

Hi, there. I’m usurping Angela’s blog for a day. With her permission. She actually gave me an account here so I can write up my own blog right here in her site dashboard. I don’t know if that was uber-cool or uber-lazy, but I’ll be returning the favor for her about when her latest book,  Valor of the Healer, arrives on my Kindle in April.

In trying to think about what y’all would want to read about, I thought about what Angela and I have in common. Quite a bit, actually:

  • we both know our way around webservices, a linux command prompt, and general geek tech.
  • we know what muds, mushes and moos are, and how Diablo was a ripoff of a game called nethack.
  • we both write.
  • we both like fantasies and romances all mashed up together.
  • we both have a lot of writer friends.

So I thought I’d write a geeky writer post.

To be a geek is to be somewhat eccentric, and to be just fine with that. Geeks are nerds with aplomb. Nerds were ostracized. Geeks are celebrated.

To be a writer is also to be somewhat eccentric. After all, writers are kind of rare. If you’re not a writer, how many writer friends do you have? Hmm? If you are a writer, how many writer friends do you have, who you did not meet through a writer group of some kind? I can count the number on one hand, and several of those are wannabes who don’t actually write.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Even if you do have writer friends, you probably don’t know it. Writing is very much a closet activity. It’s kind of like being a geek without the cool.

Oh, you think being a writer must be cool? Well, maybe once you’ve been published, but not until then. Here’s how it goes.

Acquaintance: “Oh, you are a writer? Well, what have you published?”

You: “Well, nothing yet.”

Acquaintance: “Oh …”

And the conversation fizzles. And once you’re published? Well then, you’re just trying to sell people something.

I did write a book (or two), but instead of trying to sell you something, I’ll assume you guys are writerly geeks too, and I’ll share some of my favorite writer geeks from history.

Mark Twain

OMG, was he ever a geek. He not only write A Connecticut Yankee in King Author’s Court, which was a very geeky book to write, but he wrote the steampunky Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective. Plus he wrote an autobiography with strict instructions that they were not to be published until a hundred years after his death, and he actually managed to pull that off. Plus he was born and he died while Halley’s Comet was in the sky.

What a geeky way to go!

Jane Austen

Jane was a bookworm who tested out her novels by reading them aloud to her family. I think most of Jane’s personality shines through in Northanger Abbey, where she puts a spirited defense of the reading of novels into the mouth of her hero, Henry Tilney. It is easy to imagine that Jane’s contemporaries saw the reading of novels as something slightly disreputable in a geeky kind of way, like the playing of role playing games.

Louisa May Alcott

Young Louisa was a writer geek among writer geeks. I had the opportunity to tour one of the Alcott family homes once while in Concord, Massachusetts, which is a literary town that also included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. If you’ve read her book, Little Women, you probably know that she is basically Jo.  She was raised by transcendentalists and they lived in a commune for a few years while she was growing up.

Groovy, man.

~*~

I always love to chat with other writerly types, so consider this an invitation to stop by my blog. You’ll find some other geeky writers there as well.

Till then, a question for you. I tend to think that every girl’s got a little geek. What is your geeky proclivity? I’ll be by after work tonight to read and share as well.

 

March 15, 2013 by
Carina Press, Other People's Books

Call for topics for visiting Carina author!

Hey all!

As part of increasing my general visibility as a Carina Press author, I’m going to occasionally have some of my fellow Carina people do some guest posts here on my site. You may expect that these will be people who are part of the Here Be Magic group that I’ve joined–the Carina authors who write fantasy, urban fantasy, or paranormal romance.

On Monday the 11th, Tia Nevitt will be doing a post here for you all to introduce herself and talk a bit about her two Carina novellas. But! We’d like to liven it up a bit, and so my question for you all is this:

What would you like to see Tia post about? Any questions you’d like to ask her? Talk to us, folks!

If you’d like to check out Tia’s work for an idea of topics, I highly encourage you to go visit Carina’s site and look at her titles on sale right over here!

March 5, 2013 by
Carina Press, Other People's Books

And now, a Carina Press Christmas Eve ebook roundup!

Jumping the gun a bit with starting to post these ebook purchase roundup posts on this blog rather than annathepiper.org, but I figure what the hey, it’s Christmas Eve and I’ve just picked up a bunch of ebooks by fellow Carina Press authors! Here you go, folks:

  • An Infamous Marriage, by Susanna Fraser. Historical romance. Grabbed because I’ve enjoyed her previous two historical romances immensely.
  • Ruined by Rumor, by Alyssa Everett. Also historical romance. Grabbed this one because a) I actually quite like that for once the couple depicted on the cover is fully clothed (which is often significantly sexier to me than a half-naked couple because I like things that are left to my imagination), and b) this book’s hero, described in the blurb as “responsible” and “tongue-tied”, sounds like a refreshing switch from the rakes that usually populate Romancelandia.
  • All For You, by Dana Marie Bell. Paranormal romance. Boy Meets Girl, Boy Protects Girl Because Boy is Sekritly an Angel, OHNOEZ Girl is Being Stalked by Something Nasty, Will Boy Reveal Himself and Take Out the Nasty Thing? Okay yeah I don’t normally read angel-based romances, but I liked the cover on this one (again, I’m drawn to covers that don’t make a big point of showing me Shirtless Sexy Guys; this one’s got more emphasis on the hero’s hair and that IS one of my swoon points), and the concept sounded fun. So I’m checking it out.
  • Cruel Numbers, by Christopher Beats. Steampunk mystery novella. Buying this one because a) mystery, b) doing my bit to support the lesser-emphasized genres on the Carina site, and c) even though steampunk per se is not my thing, the blurb sounded interesting.
  • Dangerous Race, by Dee J. Adams. Romantic suspense. Racing is generally not my thing at all, but hey, this book is free for TODAY ONLY so I figured what the hey, I’d give it a shot. The heroine’s a race car driver, there’s sabotage going on, OHNOEZ!
  • Compromising the Marquess, by Wendy Soliman. Yet more historical romance. This one’s got a girl pretending to be a boy gathering stories for a scandal sheet, who finds that the local marquess may be involved with treasonous activities, except he’s really a spy! And they have to team up to not only counteract her own rumors, but to find the actual bad guys! Might be fun. Giving it a shot.

And one more that isn’t actually out yet, but which I’m grabbing because it’s SF, and again, this is me trying to encourage the sales of SF/F on the Carina site:

  • Caught in Amber, by Cathy Pegau. The heroine is a recovering junkie with a prior history with a drug called amber, and she’s got a chip in her neck that’s supposed to control her cravings for said drug. But she’s handed an opportunity to win her freedom from parole and the chip and the drug–if she helps an agent whose sister has been taken in by her own former lover, the top drug lord of the mining colony. So yeah, sounds pretty gritty and potentially interesting, and I wanted to go ahead and snag this even though it doesn’t come out for another couple of weeks!

This should bring me up to 146 for the year. Previous book roundup posts are over on my other blog.

December 24, 2012 by