ICFA (Are You Going?) and Disappeared Shaun (Temporary!)
Two things: I am presenting at this year’s ICFA (International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts). That means I will be rather busy this week with, well, paper stuff, conference stuff, and stuff stuff. However, if you are attending ICFA and would like to get together, send me an email or leave a message or something. Should be fun! (FYI: I’m presenting a paper on the adaptation of Cloud Atlas. I’m also creating a list which will include that film. Mwahaha.) Due to #1 and to some PhD stuff I need to finish, I am putting the blog on a temporary hiatus. And I mean temporary. At most, I’ll post nothing new until the end of next week. However, I strongly suspect I’ll be back at my old games on Sunday or Monday. In any case, that means all the stuff I had planned to post this week is getting moved until later, including the Retro Nostalgia feature. I just don’t have the time to put my heart into it right now (PhD stuff, conference stuff, and teaching stuff = super busy Shaun). Again, this is temporary. I am not disappearing. This blog will fill up with my nonsense before the end of the month. Promise. And that’s that.
Becoming Pretentious Over Time — Cue Pipes, Long Diatribes About Literature, and Writing
Fact One: Apparently button-up shirts, nice ties, nice sweaters, and nice slacks are my new thing. They’re so much “my new thing” that I’m wearing them even though I have no intention of leaving the house (I’m currently sitting at a table on a houseboat that overlooks the Columbia). Hello! I’m a houseboat on the Columbia. You’ll have to excuseme for not having anything green growing. It’s winter, whichtypically means that nature decides to hibernate…unless youlive in Florida, where nature is constantly trying to kill you… I see all this as my slow decline into pretentiousness. Call it an evolutionary pathway for all PhD students. The longer you stay in academia, the more likely you are to fall into its grasp, from which no human being can escape! And if I’m falling into the pretentious hole of wonders, where my days are spent contemplating my research or the literary merits of obscure small press novels (hey, they’re good, so shut up), then I might as well embrace it, right? No? Really? Oh. Good. Glad that’s settled. All this is a really abstract way of explaining that things are changing around these parts. I’ve finished with Fall Semester’s insane grading cycle and have begun this thing they call vacation. At some point, I’m going to start writing fiction again, because I’ll have the time to actually think about stories and narrative and characters (90 hour work weeks make that somewhat difficult, to be honest). On top of that, I’m going to do some more reading (partly for interviews I’ve got lined up with some amazing folks and partly for my own enjoyment). And some where in all that, I’ll blog about more literature-related stuff (some SF/F, some not), more movies, more things that interest me (and, by extension, you). Wish me luck or something. ——————————————————- P.S.: If there must be a second fact, it is this — somewhere in all this strangeness is an elf with a missing sock; he wants it back and will kill for it. Watch yourselves.
Adventures in Writing: So Begins a New Project (of Doom)
I’ve also started a new writing project, which I’m tentatively calling The Last Fable of Maxine Swansey, which takes place (currently) over three different time periods in a character’s life (1984, 2050, and 2155). I may add more time periods, and possibly other characters across the years inbetween. I don’t know. What I do know is that the writing style for this piece is nothing like anything I’ve written before. It combines stream of consciousness and a literary writing structure reminiscent of someone like Pynchon or Salman Rushdie (more Rushdie than Pynchon at the moment — these are just comparisons to give an impression of the style I’m working with, not an assessment of quality or an admission of copycat behavior). I’m not sure why I’m doing this, though I like how inserting stream of consciousness in the middle of third person does some interesting things to destabilize the narrative (in a way that I think works). We’ll see what happens as I continue to write this thing. Point is: I’m having fun doing something weird, but also mundane. There’s a lot of intersection between the everyday and the strange, and the often fuzzy border that exists between the two (the first chapter involves a character discovering a man in a random Spanish courtyard trying to convince people he has learned how to control animals through martial art dance — in this case, a bull — and there’s all kinds of other weirdness going on, too — coincidences upon coincidences, some strange technology, odd characters, and so on and so forth). And that, I think, is what I really need. I need to have fun just writing something. Something I can insert more of my life into, as writers are wont to do. Anywho. What are you all up to?
My PhD Reading List — For the Exams of Doom
Obviously, I’m in this thing called a PhD program. In English (not Creative Writing). And that means I have to take a series of exams (half written component and half oral). As such, it’s necessary for me to have a reading list of primary and secondary texts (in my case, literature for the primary and theory/history/architecture for the secondary — some English majors do it the other way around). Before I give you the list, it might be important to tell you want I’m doing. I am studying the spatial organization of empire in the Caribbean. In other words, I want to know how empires constructed themselves as physical and social spaces and how that reflects in the literature of Caribbean peoples. That’s the short version anyway. Now for the list: Novels (Early Period) The English in the West Indies, Or, the Bow of Ulysses by James Anthony Froude (1888) Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands by Mary Seacole (1857) Rupert Gray, a Study in Black and White by Stephen N. Cobham (1907) Emmanuel Appadocca by Michel Maxwell Philip (1854) (Modern and Mid-20th Century) Minty Alley by C. L. R. James (1936) A Morning at the Office by Edgar Mittelholzer (1950) Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (1966) Brother Man by Roger Mais (1954) (Contemporary) The Enigma of Arrival by V. S. Naipaul (1987) Frangipani House by Beryl Gilroy (1986) Cambridge by Caryl Phillips (1991) A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging by Dionne Brand (2004) (Genre and Related Contemporary) Crystal Rain by Tobias S. Buckell (2006) Ragamuffin by Tobias S. Buckell (2007) Sly Mongoose by Tobias S. Buckell (2008)(note: there is a fourth book coming out in this series, which I may add to this list at a later time) Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson (2000) Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord (2010) Theory, History, etc. (Spatial Theory) The Production of Space by Henri Lefebvre The Urban Experience by David Harvey The Road to Botany Bay: An Essay in Spatial History by Paul Carter The Archaeologies of the Future by Fredric Jameson The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard (Caribbean History, Postcolonial Theory, etc.) Writing in Limbo by Simon Gikandi Poetics of Relation by Edouard Glissant The Repeating Island: the Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective by Rojo Antonio Benitez The Pleasures of Exile by George Lamming The British Caribbean: From the Decline of Colonialism to the End of Federation by Elisabeth Wallace Yards in the City of Kingston by Erna Brodber ———————————————— Any suggested additions?
Live-writing: Experiments Be Fun
For the curious, I’ve been doing irregular live-writing sessions for a short story to appear on this blog called “Lendergross and Eaves” (a weird fantasy crime noir involving a toad-person drug lord and a female police inspecter–the latter of these is to be played by my friend Jen). Live-writing is more or less like it sounds: I create a Google Doc, share the link with everyone, and then for 30 minutes do nothing but write while random strangers watch me and read up on my progress. Thus far, the experiment has been fantastic. I’ve written a considerable amount (about 2,000 words in two sessions) and have decided to open up the comments feature so people can ask me questions while I’m writing. In other words, I’m loving it. For anyone interested in watching me work, or seeing my progress on your own time, all you have to do is go to this link. I will announce live-writing sessions on my Twitter and Google+ pages. And if you show up during one of those sessions, feel free to leave a comment with a question! Anywho!.
Adventures in Worldbuilding: Genealogical Obsessions
For those that don’t know (which might be almost all of you), I have jokingly said that I am working on a 25-novel (1,000-page per book) epic fantasy series. In truth, said series will likely be 4 or 5 books, but that depends on how many subplots I decide to include. Lately, I’ve been trying to build up the world, particularly the genealogical history of some of the main characters (it’s relevant, since one of the POVs is The Bespectacled King, whose family have only recently risen back to the King’s seat with said bespectacled person). This has no been easy, as there aren’t many software programs that I’ve found that make it easy to create a chart following the familial line visually first (Freemind sort of works, but it’s not designed to easily follow the lines of sons and marriages, and so on). And, of course, I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. Of the four most powerful families in one of the kingdoms of my fantasy world, the first generation of children consists of 20 true blood sons (haven’t started on the bastards yet…). No way to keep this all clear without better software (suggestions anyone?). What about all of you? What adventures are you having exploring other people’s worlds, or building your own?