Guest Post: A Quest for Treasures in the Stacks by Cindy Young-Turner
The bankruptcy of Borders puts another nail in the coffin of the big box bookstores. As a reader, there’s nothing better than browsing the stacks and looking for new books to discover. I admit, I love the sheer volume of books available in places like Borders and Barnes and Noble, and the combination of books and a café is appealing. But the cost of a new book is often a deterrent for me. And if you’re looking for an older, less popular book, or something by an indie publisher, you have little chance of finding it. Used bookstores, on the other hand, are a book lover’s paradise. Books for a quarter? I’ll take a dozen, please! I got hooked on SF/fantasy through used bookstores. I didn’t read much genre fiction as a kid, and I’m embarrassed to admit that when I initially picked up The Hobbit, it bored me (both The Hobbit and LOTR are now favorites, though). The first SF/fantasy books I tried to read were a jumble of confusing names and places, so I gave up on them for a while. Some friends in college successfully reintroduced me to the genre, and then after college a friend who shared my love of fantasy and creepy tales took me to his favorite used bookstore in Providence, Rhode Island. (Note: the year was 1996 or so, before Google and Amazon.) The best part about this bookstore was its amazing SF/fantasy section. What better place to be introduced to H.P. Lovecraft than in his hometown? I started with The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and At The Mountains of Madness and immediately became a fan, drawn in by the lush, descriptive language and bizarre and wondrous creatures. It’s sad to think that Lovecraft would probably never be published today, with the prevailing belief that readers don’t have the patience to wade through that kind of prose. I actually prefer reading authors who really care about the craft of language in addition to telling a great story. From Lovecraft, I moved onto Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes and The October Country, Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan, and C.L Moore’s Jirel of Joiry. This bookstore also had a number of books that had been part of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in the 60s and 70s, with beautiful cover art. I splurged on some of the short story collections edited by Lin Carter, partly because I loved the covers. Not only did these books make me a fan of the genre, they also raised the bar pretty high for used bookstores. After that, I tended to judge a used bookstore by the quality of its SF/fantasy section. I’ve found a few good ones over the years, including one in Boston that was solely devoted to genre fiction, but none that ever matched the store in Providence. Eventually my bookshelves filled up and the backlog of books to read became a bit overwhelming. I started to avoid the temptation of used bookstores. Then the big bookstores popped up everywhere, driving out the independents. Now the future of print books themselves seems to be at stake. You can download a book to your e-reader with the touch of a button without even getting up off your couch. I see the appeal in bringing an e-reader on vacation rather than lugging several books around, but I’ve rarely browsed for books online. It just doesn’t have the same appeal as perusing the musty shelves and pulling out a book to read the back cover blurb, admire the artwork, and flip through the pages. But I’m a throwback. I drive a stick shift, use a Mac (okay, maybe Macs are trendy these days), and I don’t even own an e-reader—yet. I’m a reader and an author and a book lover, and I’m proud to display my love for the genre in the form of well-worn paperbacks. Those pretty book covers don’t look nearly as nice on your Kindle. ————————————————— What about you? What kind of fun experiences have you had with used bookstores? Let us know in the comments! ————————————————— Cindy Young-Turner is the author of Thief of Hope, a fantasy novel published by Crescent Moon Press. Check out her website. Sydney, a street urchin and pickpocket in the town of Last Hope, has managed to evade the oppressive Guild for years, but there is no escaping fate when she’s sentenced to death for associating with the resistance. After she’s rescued by a wizard, Sydney is forced to accept that magic-long outlawed throughout the Kingdom of Thanumor-still exists, and the Tuatha, a powerful faery folk, are much more than ancient myth and legend. When the wizard offers a chance to fight the Guild and bring Willem, bastard prince and champion of the Tuatha, to the throne, Sydney embraces the cause as a way to find her own redemption. But Sydney’s fear of the Guild, distrust of authority, and surprising connection to the Tuatha threaten Willem’s success. Can she untangle the strange threads that entwine her life not only to the fate of the kingdom, but also to Willem himself?
Guest Post: “The Weird West Subgenre” by Lincoln Crisler
Your kind host has asked me to introduce you to the wonderful world of the Weird West (and in doing so, to the unassailably awesome aesthetics of the alliteration!). If you like steampunk or alternate history, you might like Weird West stories. That Wild Wild West movie that came out a decade or two ago could be held up as an example of either subgenre: steampunk because of the machinery and Weird West because of the setting and the machinery. There’s a bit of overlap with steampunk and Weird West because the time of the American West is pretty much the upper limit of the steampunk time period; that is, before the Industrial Revolution kicked into high gear in the United States and made steampunk-type technology not quite as farfetched anymore. But I digress. The untamed American West of the 1830s to 1920s is rife with possibilities for writers and readers of speculative fiction. You have an entire half-continent or so that’s just beginning to become habitable by Western European standards, you have unknown Native American tribes and people of Mexican descent with cultures, gods and rituals that no one understands and you have a sense of lawlessness that can’t quite be captured as thouroughly in any other milieu. You have people traveling west because they love to take risks, because they’re on the run from a shady past, because they’re greedy; all of which are excellent motivations for characters. Even better, you have lots of guns. So what separates the Weird West from a Louis L’Amour novel, you might be wondering. After all, most of the stuff I talked about in the above paragraph sounds like good material, but not exactly weird. This is where you extrapolate. The machines from Wild Wild West are Weird West material because robots in the Old West are pretty strange and even impossible, right? That’s the Weird West. Those indigenous tribes, with their strange gods and practices; what if they practice magic? What if they can raise the dead? What happens if you send a mysterious risk-taker and a greedy outlaw into a situation like that? Hell, you could even have a dead civilization story or disappearing colony a’la Roanoke; a society with technology at or below that of the Wild West could disappear without a trace in the matter of a couple hundred years, and there’s a lot of unexplored territory out there, pardner. It’s a setting that can breathe new life into old tropes; sure, you’ve read lots of books about wizards, but how many wizard vs. cowboy stories can you think of? The zombie apocalypse seems inescapable when depicted in modern times when people have kevlar and automatic weapons; how much worse would it be in a society that doesn’t even have penicillin? The Old West was a far more uncertain time than any era any living have survived yet, and writers can use this tension to create high-impact stories that readers will enjoy and found unique. How do I know all this, you might be wondering. The answer is my latest book, WILD, available starting this month from Damnation Books. A mysterious problem solver, a slippery outlaw, a dutiful deputy and a former Mexican Army medic find themselves in over their heads when they investigate the mysterious disappearance of a former war hero, legislator, prosecutor and tax collector. My would-be heroes find themselves face to face with the spellcraft of an unknown culture and face down the forces of darkness in their own little corner of the world. I even did a bit of that extrapolation stuff I preached a couple paragraphs ago; the whole shebang is loosely based on the real-life unsolved disappearance of a southwestern war hero, legislator, prosecutor and tax collector. So far, the result has earned some pretty good reviews. My book is available anywhere you could possibly want to buy it, and if you’d like to take your Weird West foray a bit farther, I suggest the Jonah Hex comics, the Dark Tower novel series by Stephen King and just about anything by Joe Lansdale, for starters. Thanks for reading! —————————————————- Lincoln Crisler’s debut novella, WILD, is due in March from Damnation Books. He has also authored a pair of short story collections, Magick & Misery (2009, Black Bed Sheet) and Despairs & Delights (2008, Arctic Wolf). A United States Army combat veteran and non-commissioned officer, Lincoln lives in Augusta, Georgia with his wife and two of his three children. You can visit his website at www.lincolncrisler.info.
Blog Tour Guest Post: A Humorous Script by Tia Nevitt
(Note: Tia is giving away a copy of her new book, The Sevenfold Spell, to one lucky commenter! All you need to do is leave a comment on this post.) Thanks, Shaun, for being the only guy to host me on this blog tour. For previous installments, and to read all the excerpts from The Sevenfold Spell in order, pop over to Jenny Schwartz’s Acquiring Magic blog (you might have to scroll down) and hop along. Here is the complete schedule. I wrote a script for a book trailer and I had a lot of fun with it. I got it perfected and ran it by my husband, who laughed in all the appropriate places. But then I realized that I had a problem. This funny script was totally out-of-sync with my somewhat melancholy story, even if the story does have some humorous moments. But! All is not wasted, because I thought it would be a fun blog post. Here it is, all formatted like a script! Well, kinda, because I don’t want to have to give poor Shaun fits trying to get the formatting right. *** INT: BEFORE TIA’S BOOKCASE TIA Ok! Here I am, filming my book trailer for The Sevenfold Spell! I’m all made up, wearing nice clothes and am sitting next to my overflowing bookcase, and I’m hoping this won’t be too embarrassing. Looks left, right, and left. TIA Ok, too late. Cut scene. TIA My name is Tia Nevitt, and I’m the author of The Sevenfold Spell. Hold up nook, preloaded with cover art. TIA Here it is on my nook. Because it’s an ebook, you know. As in digital! As in twenty-first century! As in cheap—it costs only 2.99, less than a cup of coffee! Looks offscreen. TIA Huh? Talk about the story? Oh, yeah. Good idea. The story. Got it. Cut scene. Holds up color flat of cover art. TIA The Sevenfold Spell is a retelling of the sleeping beauty story. Hence the spinning wheel. Actually, spinning wheels were the inspiration for this story. I have this little girl, you see, and like any modern mom, I’ve been filling her head with fairy tales. One day, we found an old VHS copy of Sleeping Beauty, made by a certain giant mogul movie company that I won’t name. We went home and put it in. It has this lengthy intro with an unbelievable amount of backstory and info-dumping. You know, the kind every writing book says to avoid. If it had gone across an editor’s desk, it would have been an instant reject. However, this was a Giant Mogul Movie Company, so it made it on screen. And in the purplest prose you can imagine, an intoning voice says something like this, Affecting deep voice. “The king, still fearful of his daughter’s life, did then and there decree that every spinning wheel in the kingdom should on that very day be burned.” Cut scene, normal voice. TIA So I’m left here, thinking. What? Burn all the spinning wheels? Isn’t the very word spinster derived from one who spins on spinning wheels? As in, most of them have no man to depend upon, and must spin to eat? What the hell are they supposed to do now? Cut scene. Closer up. TIA And besides, didn’t one spinster defy the ban? After all, despite the heartless law, Aurora still manages to find the only spinning wheel in the kingdom and prick her finger on it, which is about the most ridiculous manner of death ever invented in the history of fiction. Cut scene. Closer up. TIA So some spinster, somewhere, had to have a spinning wheel. And assuming she’s not a patsy of the evil fairy, she did it in defiance of the ban. Cut scene. Resume original distance. TIA And that’s who my story is about. Cut scene. Roll book credits to excerpt from Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty. INT: BACK BEFORE TIA’S BOOKCASE New scene. Thoughful look. You know, those fairies totally stole the movie from Princess Aurora. Final book credit. *** What do you think? Should I start filming? Stick to writing fiction? To help you decide, here’s an excerpt from The Sevenfold Spell. This excerpt will give you some idea of why the above script might have given you the wrong impression about the story. *** On one such day, shortly before I turned eighteen, he interrupted his own description of the birth of a calf to say, “We should get married, you know.” I gawked at him. “Why?” He shrugged, and then blushed to the tips of his ears. “We get on well. You don’t seem like a henpecker, and I’m not likely to be an adulterer.” I understood what he was trying to say. I was plain and he was homely. Neither of us was likely to find anyone else. As I considered his suggestion, I tried to imagine kissing him. It seemed like such a strange idea. Then I tried to imagine doing some of those other things that I had heard the young married women talk about, and failed. But still, he wanted me, even if it was only in an “I’ll never find anyone else” sort of way. And I knew how he felt. The savings for my dowry had, in recent years, transformed into saving for my future. Besides, as he pointed out, we got on well together. Many of the couples in and around Tallow’s End didn’t even have that much. “I guess it’s a good idea,” I said. He looked satisfied. And even—much to my surprise—happy. *** I’d love to hear what you think of either the script or the excerpt. Sometime tomorrow, I’ll pick a random commenter for a free ecopy of The Sevenfold Spell. *** For more info about Tia, check out her website. Here are some details about the book: Have you ever wondered what happens to the other people in the fairy tale? Things look grim for Talia and her mother.
National Identity in British science fiction
When I was asked to provide a guest post on British Sci Fi, I immediately called upon The Speculators, Leicester’s foremost group of short sci-fi writers, each of whom is a font of bizarre, random and extensive knowledge on the subject. At short notice I was joined by Catherine Digman, Will Ellwood and Daniel Ribot, so with huge thanks to them, I offer you some thoughts on British Sci Fi. I wanted to know what defines British Sci fi and makes it different from the US in content and tone.While any given work has its own style and mood, what general distinctions do people perceive between the UK & US? American SF heads into space with wide-eyed optimism and no-expense-spared military hardware, while here in the UK we are shaking our heads, convinced we are bringing about our own destruction on minimum wage. Even the science fiction magazines in the States demonstrated this sense of wonder, with titles like Amazing Stories & Astounding Science Fiction. It is perhaps telling of wider national attitudes, the Americans are often first to into any fray or exploration, with Britain pulled along in their wake (often tutting loudly). Not such a surprise then that our SF tends to be empire driven or inwards facing while the US is dashing off into outer space for shoot outs and show downs. Are the new imperialists now Britain’s empire has crumbled, or are they simply following on with that frontier spirit? Of course British SF isn’t all about gloom, it’s merely the side effect of stories that seek to provide social or political commentary without the shackles of real world situations. There is a subversive tension rarely found in the more apolitical American writing. Amongst those cited for this are HG Wells (socialist), Michael Moorcock (described as a radical anarchist) and Iain Banks who was part of a movement to have Tony Blair impeached for his part in the Iraq war. This is not just a British phenomenon, European writers take a similar approach. Polish author Stanislaw Lem (Solaris, His Master’s Voice, The Cyberiad), explored such themes as “speculation on technology, the nature of intelligence, the impossibility of mutual communication and understanding, despair about human limitations and humankind’s place in the universe” (wikipedia) There is a lighter side to British Sci Fi. This is thanks to likes of Douglas Adams. Toby Frost’s excellent Space Captain Smith series is not only only gleefully camp and silly, but also continues a grand tradition of the British sending themselves up. Certainly it should be included in our fiction legacy, offsetting the political gloom with a sense of humour. The difference is that rather than focussing on the larger scale issues of alien invasion and dying worlds, the lighter British SF tends to focus on the people, the relationships, while everything else simply forms an entertaining back drop. This suggests two strains of British SF. One reflects on large scale events, using characters to guide us through them, the second focusses on the personal melodrama of characters that could be anyone, anywhere… It’s just more fun to do it in space. A quick tweet asking ‘what do you think of when I say British SF?’ prompted more people to reply with TV shows – Red Dwarf, Blakes 7, Quartermass – alongside novelists such as Wyndham,. British SF in the worldwide twitter consciousness is largely visual. I had to specify books to get a few more suggestions. This is particularly interesting given my twitter stream is made up largely of authors, reviewers and avid readers, many of them in genre fiction. I would suggest this is because TV series and films are so immediately identifiable by their nation of origin, while books are selected and enjoyed and a casual reader is often not aware of the nationality of the writer. It’s not something I consider about a book. I may buy a book because I’ve come across the author on twitter and am entertained by them, or because I like the shiny cover, or the back blurb sounds interesting, but I do not enter a shop with the thought ‘today I want to buy dystopian sci fi by a british writer’ or ‘I absolutely must have American space opera’. It was only when I started considering this post I realised how few authors, particularly in sci fi, I could attribute a nationality to. I enjoy the tropes and a mix of approaches in my reading, so I read a mixture of styles, authors and nationalities, (Japan has produced some superb Sci Fi with it’s own distinctive style). I am more conscious of it now and will be looking for the patterns, for the tells in British writing that indicate the political and social concerns of the day, the passion for exploration from the US. Of course above all, what I shall be looking for is a good story. When all is said and done that’s what brings us all to the shelves in the end.
what’s the difference between fantasy and romance?
I am abusing Shaun’s hospitality now, but while he is winding his way across country I am playing here on his blog. Mwahaha haha ahaha umm, ok sorry, *cough* getting carried away. There are three major bookstores in Leicester (UK). In the city centre there are two Waterstone’s, the big one near work and the small one in the main mall. We also have a Borders near our huge out-of-city shopping park (individual stores arranged around the car parks). The Borders used to be an electronics warehouse, so it’s a strange place and I love it. I don’t get there much since we moved. Anyway, I love urban fantasy but I struggle to find what I am looking for. Waterstone’s, I think, have a pretty good idea that Urban Fantasy exists and throw it in the SFF or Horror sections, depending on whether is says Vampires in big letters or something. The stuff they have in their paranormal romance section I would generally say ok to being there. All in all, it varies between stores, but it’s usually in the same area as the rest of the fantasy so no biggie. I went to Borders recently and was excited because they sometimes stock books Waterstone’s doesn’t get. So off I dashed to the SFF / Horror section. It has become pitifully small for a start; I was appalled at the general lack of a section in the enourmous warehouse, but then I noticed something. Not a single Chris McGrath cover amongst the lot. Eep. Ok I looked again, more carefully. Nope not one single urban fantasy title. A suspicion started to settle itself in my mind and I slightly, sheepishly dragged my heels towards the romance section (yeah, British, easily embarrased, generally go the ebook route for my romance). Uh huh. The paranormal romance section was as big as the whole SFF area and sure enough there was all my urban fantasy. Now I know UF has a kind of kick ass chicks getting involved with supernatural types thing going on, but seriously, I think they misunderstood where Justin Gustainis was coming from calling his book Black Magic Woman–guys he means it in the “using the body parts of small children to do evil” way, not the “she cast a spell over my heart” way. Maybe I need to suck it up and learn to live with it, but it really bugs me that Urban Fantasy is seen as romance. Romance has it’s place and it’s genre and is it’s own thing; UF is something else and although there may be an audience overlap, UF also has an overlap with Horror and SFF. Twilight isn’t in paranormal romance; it’s in YA Fiction (it should be in the shredder, but that’s a different rant). I can’t help feeling that Borders are losing it, because really if I want kick ass girls smooching vamps I don’t think I’d be too pleased when I actually cracked open my shiny new Rob Thurman novel and found out the hot guys on the cover weren’t the love interest, they were the whole story. So what are your misfiling peeves? Are you riled up that sci fi bestsellers (Cloud Atlas?) deny their roots and sit in the fiction shelves while Robert Holdstock languishes on the SF shelf or that the Nadia Stafford books were next to the Otherworld series because they are all Kelley Armstrong with no consideration to genre?
I believe in Unicorns – Hagelrat
Hi, I am really hoping that my legendary lack of sense of time hasn’t cropped up again and I am doing this in y’know the right month. Shaun has kindly offered me the chance to guest blog here over the next few days.My permanent home if you don’t know is Un:Bound which I am neglecting a little this week due to my involvement in the Special Olympics in my city, fortunately I have others to hold the fort for me there as I am attempting to help with here.Anyway, my post for today: I joined a local book club six months ago. I wanted to read outside my comfort zone and meet other people in the village who read. It’s worked in that respect. We have read The Clockwork Orange, The Forgotten Garden, Cloud Atlas, The Gargoyle , Coraline & The life of Pi. Coraline was one I pushed for. The other books were all standard book club fair and there was nothing I adored so I made them read this spooky childrens book. They didn’t get it. They couldn’t see why button’s for eyes, the characters weren’t deep enough, they’d have liked to see the other father developed more. Umm the other father was a construct, he was supposed to be paper thin, that’s the whole point. Buttons for eyes because it’s abnormal and scary, y’know, creepy like a gingerbread cottage.The problem was I simply couldn’t understand why they didn’t get it. Do they not still enjoy fairy tales? Would they want Hansel and Gretel’s father to be a more complex character? Did they just accept that a wolf could get in, eat granny, don her clothes and then hold a conversation with Red? As children did these very lovely and intelligent women accept that it is possible to climb a tower using hair as a rope or to bring someone back with a kiss (well ok but even in my day fairy tales were a bit sanitised even if they weren’t full on disneyed)? Presumably they did. So why don’t they anymore?My book group don’t really do fantasy, they don’t really get Coraline. My conclusion? They are too grown up and just can’t believe in unicorns anymore. I think that’s kind of sad. How must the world look if you never see dragons? So having now experienced this problem I started looking at it more widely. Obviously some people are just literary snobs and unredeemable, but what of the others, the grown ups whose inner child has given up? I really think that not being able to believe like a twelve year old hiding under the duvet with a torch, is what is keeping these people from enjoying genre fiction. I don’t know how to fix them, they probably don’t realise they are broken. They think comics are just for kids and LARP’ing is for the socially inept (seriously, they have no clue how hard it is to exist in their world 9-5 then fully take on a whole other set of social norms and acceptable behaviour when you escape for a few days).So next time someone gets that expression on their face (the one that says ok you read at least 3 times more books in a month than I do, but it doesn’t count because you only read SFF, y’know the one) remember, it’s not their fault, there are no fairies at the bottom of their garden and we should be more tolerant and sympathetic. After all what could bring more pleasure than allowing yourself to believe in magic?