Reading Christopher Buelman’s Those Across the River
photo by Kristy Boyce
“The Color of Paradox”
The Color of Paradox
“The Cage”
The Cage
Category Archives: Books
Exquisite Words is back from VCON
This is my favorite paragraph from my favorite Erik Larson book, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
Other ballots followed. Daylight faded to thin broth. The sidewalks filled with men and women leaving work. Typewriters–the women who operated the latest business machines–streamed from the Rookery, the Montauk, and other skyscrapers wearing under their coats the customary white blouse and long black skirt that so evoked the keys of their Remingtons. A lamplighter scuttled along the edges of the crowd igniting the gas jets atop cast-iron poles. Abruptly there was color everywhere: the yellow streetcars and the sudden blues of telegraph boys jolting past with satchels full of joy and gloom; cab drivers lighting the red night-lamps at the backs of their hansoms; a large gilded lion crouching before the hat store across the street. In the high buildings above, gas and electric lights bloomed in the dusk like moonflowers.
Transitioning from news avoidance
I used to take a daily dose of news from CBC Radio–a small, thoughtful and sanely-chosen selection of what was going on in B.C., Canada, and the big wide world, handily delivered as I was making dinner. After 9/11, I stopped listening to those broadcasts, and for the decade that followed my exposure to current events was spotty. Mostly, I’d pass headlines on the street and thus know the bare minimum about what The Vancouver Sun thought was worthy of the top fold. On the rare occasions when something was happening and I wanted to know more, I’d surf up the details on the Internet. They were always there waiting.
I stopped with even the CBC broadcasts because the world was in a terrible space, at that time, and the news kept dragging me back into the mire of distress. Regular exposure to brutality, pollution, war and especially the rage-inducing stupidity of politicians was eating at my peace of mind.
I find myself having to explain and justify this, often.
“I’m a news avoider,” I learned, isn’t a statement many people hear–and it’s one they’re fundamentally inclined to disbelieve. It’s a bit like explaining to a little kid that it’s possible to live without a car. (Or without a TV, I’m told, though I haven’t been in that position.) So for the past decade, I’ve ended up telling someone, “No, really, I don’t watch the news or read the papers,” on the order of twice a month, minimum. In most cases, I have this conversation three times with any given individual before they actually take it on.
There was always a little nagging sense, in the back of my mind, that I was skating on an obligation of citizenship by ignoring the world as much as I possibly could. But, I’d remind myself, I don’t actually believe the newspapers or the TV folks do a terrific job of keeping one up-to-date anyway. Most of what they offer on a daily basis is partial narratives about ongoing stories. The idea seems to be to offer just enough new stuff to make you want to read more tomorrow… and the lack of depth drives me crazy.
(And that doesn’t even get into the question of accuracy–I know many of you question whether mainstream media can be trusted to deliver reliable facts. Or the opinion, held by some, that the point of the news is to not make us informed so much as to make us afraid.)
Anyway. I prefer the kind of coverage that comes from feature articles and long-form documentaries. So instead of breaking news, I read things like The Best American Science and Nature Writing
Social media has pulled me back into the news world, a bit. It started with Livejournal: occasionally my friends would post a link tantalizing enough to follow. And now the headlines stream by, along with the treasure and flotsam in my Twitter feed, and I cherry pick the stuff that interests me and run a minimal risk of hearing that our prime minister’s said something that makes my head explode. I follow CBC News and Peter Mansbridge and Mashable. But I’m still a feature reader at heart, and so mostly I have gotten entirely sucked into browsing–no surprise–the articles available at Longreads. That’s where the meaty stuff seems to be, and I heartily recommend it to you all.
Fine sifting and fall plans
I am reading through the Blue Magic page proofs this week (196 days until it’s released!) which means I am going through printed pages that are laid out as the book will be, looking for any small errors. I’ve already gone through the copy-edited manuscript, where all the big errors and inconsistencies have been found and vanquished.
After that, my current plan is to have a hard look at a short story that’s all but done. It’s provisionally titled “Losing Heart among the Tall.” As titles go, I’m not convinced that’s perfect. This polish is half about actually finishing the story, and partly to reacquaint myself with the details of the setting, a place called Stormwrack, which also appears in a number of other things I’ve been working on this year. This includes a story called “Among the Silvering Herd” that I’ve sold to Tor.com. (I’ll let you know when it’s gonna be up, as soon as I know myself!)
This weekend, I’ll be hopping off to VCon to rub elbows with fabulous people like the latest denizen of the Twitterverse, DD Barant, Mary Choo, and Julie McGalliardon. On Saturday evening, at our 9:00 p.m. group reading, I’ll read from my story “Wild Things,” which takes place in the Indigo Springs universe, between the events of the two novels.
Once “Losing Heart among the Tall”‘s events and details are fresh in my mind, I’ll dig into the other stuff set in Stormwrack, for all of October.
Finally, if that goes well and I can wrap up by Halloween, I’m thinking of joining a number of my Nanowrimo buddies-in-crime in November by setting myself a goal of 50,000 words of new short fiction. Since I mostly write novelettes in the 7500-8500 word range, that’d make for six stories. I thought another squid story about Ruthless, perhaps, to go with “The Town on Blighted Sea,” another Stormwrack story for sure, and I have a few other ideas. But I don’t as yet have six ideas, and I thought I might throw the floor open for prompts, requests, challenges, a contest… somesuch thing.
Have any of you done this, either opened the floor to challenges in this way or contributed to a call for prompts? How did it work? Was there a prize? Were you happy with the result?
Exquisite words revisits Eighties Horror
A nice little bit of stage-setting from Peter Straub’s Shadowland
Registration Day: 1958
A dark corridor, a staircase with an abrupt line of light bisecting it at one end, desks with candles dripping wax into saucers lined along a wall. A fuse had blown or a wire had died, and the janitor did not come until the next morning, when the rest of the school registered. Twenty new freshmen milled directionlessly in the long corridor, even the exceptinally suntanned faces looking pale and frightened in the candlelight.