It’s a real book!

Back in the beforetimes (early 2020), Dennis Wilson Wise reached out to me about using some of my alliterative poetry in a book he was assembling. We chatted at length, I helped him track down a couple of other authors, and now it’s a real book! (Coming to an academic library near you 15 Dec 2023)

I have four poems in it, plus a brief bio essay Dennis wrote. They are poems I wrote a very long time ago, but reading the intro material and corresponding with a couple of the other authors has got me thinking about poetry again.

Books for Writers

I buy writing books like a magpie! (There are several things I’m not allowed to buy – spices, pens, notebooks…. Writing books should probably be on that list.) My theory is that if I learn one thing from a writing book, then it was worth reading. Even if the book contains information I already knew, having it explained in a different way can be helpful.

It occurred to me that talking about the writing books I’ve read, and sharing what I’ve learned, might be helpful for other writers, so this will be an occasional series on writing books! If there’s a particular book you love (or hate) that you’d like me to read and discuss, let me know in the comments!

Interesting and Unusual Story Formats – part III

So, I was on a panel at Balticon last year (two years ago? What is time anyway?!) about Unusual Story Formats, and as a result I got turned on to some new (to me) unusual-format stories that I want to catalogue here (plus a couple that I missed in the last batch).

One of these is Wile E. Coyote v. Acme Company (Ian Frazier) in the New Yorker (!!) starring our favorite hapless coyote in his lawsuit against his mail order provider of various explosives, etc.

List of Items in Leather Valise Found On Welby Crescent (Alex Acks) published in the late and much-lamented Shimmer. I love me some listicles, especially ones like this where the whole story comes through the items, or at least you draw the connections between the items enough to satisfy your story-brain.

Bucket List Found In the Locker of Maddie Price, Age 14, Written Two Weeks Before the Great Uplifting of All Mankind (Erika L. Satifka) in Lightspeed. Another listicle, although very different from the previous one, but still a delight.

Unknown Number (Blue Neustifter) on Twitter, and subsequently nominated for the 2022 Short Story Hugo. This is a terrific use of a medium like this and is (in my mind) a homage to all the memes of bad text exchanges.

Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather (Sarah Pinsker) in Uncanny, which beat out Unknown Number for the 2022 Hugo for Best Short Story. Told in the comments on a music forum, with links to performances, this is such fun. I’m an old folkie so this hit me in the right spot.

Tweeting (Mari Ness) from Translunar Travelers Lounge. This is somehow sadder since the demise (or at least decline) of the Birdiverse but is still fun to read.

Ten Steps for Effective Mold Removal (Derrick Boden) from Apex Magazine. Right on up there with the listicle, a story written in product reviews just makes my day brighter.

Especially Heinous: 272 Views of Law & Order SVU (Carmen Maria Machado) This novella (!) was in The American Reader, and while it feels a little like fan fic, it’s also just a wild read, written entirely in descriptions of fictional episodes of the TV show.

Selections from the Aarne-Thompson Index for After the End of the World (Stewart C. Baker) I don’t know how I left this off either of my two earlier posts as it’s been one of my favorites forever. (But I am a nerd, and I recognize that.) It was originally in The Next Review, and reprinted in The Sockdolager (edited by my splendid friend Paul) which is where I first saw it.

Flash Fiction Online regularly publishes things in interesting formats; I may have to do an entire post on some of the stuff they’ve published. Check them out!

As always, if I’m missed a favorite of yours, please share! Here are links to Part I and Part II of this (exceedingly irregular) series.

NaNo Day 15

I had planned on updating this more regularly but… plans. The elections threw me off a little, and about halfway through week one, I realized I didn’t know enough to write that story. If I’ve learned nothing else from NaNoWriMo, it’s that if I don’t know enough of the story, I can’t write it fast.

So, on about Thursday of week one, I changed stories completely and things were going much better thereafter.

Until this Friday, when I realized that if I wanted to do “Words and Thunder” this week (timed writing sprints with some friends and colleagues) I needed to get some more outlining done, and that caused the story to go in a completely different direction. It’s still the same-ish overall story but the characters have changed dramatically.

So here we are on story 2b and I am enjoying the opportunities these new developments are providing in terms of emotional arcs and character conflict. And I am startlingly on track in terms of word count for the month – I will break 25,000 today (okay, I nearly did but got waylaid doing schoolwork) which is right on target for where I should be, being halfway through the month and halfway through 50,000 words.

(And no, I didn’t throw out the earlier words – I’ll use them later, and I’m still counting them towards my NaNo count.)

As I discovered a couple of years ago, 4theWords is a huge help for me in being consistent in meeting my daily word counts. I also enjoy sprints with folks on Zoom or Discord, especially since we can’t do any in-person NaNo events this year.

NaNo Day 1

Well, between staying up til midnight and a couple more sprints during the day, I managed to get 1866 words yesterday along with some additional outlining. Today there must be more outlining as I have found a couple of gaps in my preparation. (Okay, in truth yesterday’s entry looks like a Mad Lib with [TK tech jargon] and [TK Name] scattered throughout.

Yesterday’s progress might have been slightly impeded by having take the WRONG meds yesterday morning. (I took my PM meds not my AM meds). So my focus may not have been what it could have been.

Today I have some job applications to complete, and some house/life/adulthood chores to complete, and then I can get into the outline and see what’s missing. We’ll see how it goes!

It’s That Time Again!

Time when I and many of my likeminded friends are about to begin NaNoWriMo! I will try to periodically post updates on how I’m doing. If you’re doing NaNo this year (or some flavor), drop a note in the comments with what you’re working on! The more buddies and support the better!

This year, I’m writing a fairly ridiculous space opera with lots of things going on. We’ll see how it goes. I am better prepared than usual although not as well prepared as I’d hoped. Being currently unemployed may help with the word count, unless I go down some rabbit hole of research or something.

I’m also looking for work, which is a bit distracting, but hopefully I can balance both activities successfully! Here’s to a productive and prolific (words-wise) November!

Interesting Format Stories – part II

Previously I did a recap of some of my favorite ‘interesting format’ stories and thereafter I had several other really excellent ones recommended to me, so here are some new(ish) ones I’ve enjoyed!

The first of these was Nino Cipri’s Which Super Little Dead Girl™ Are You? Take Our Quiz and Find Out! (originally published in Nightmare magazine December, 2017). As the title indicates, this story (or set of parallel stories?) is offered in the form of one of those online quizzes which pairs you up with a member of the Super Little Dead Girls™ depending on which answers you select. It’s creepy but super fun!

Another one I really enjoyed is Nibedita Sen’s Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island (also in Nightmare, May, 2019).

Clearly I really like these sorts of things. One that is both creepy and made me howl out loud is by my friend Aimee Picchi called Search History for Elspeth Adair, Age 11 (Daily Science Fiction, July 8th, 2019).

I expect I will find (or write!) more of these but these are some I’d recommend checking out!

I sold a thing!

It’s a drabble – exactly 100 words, and it was part of the Quarantine Quanta contest. You can read it here!

https://maurayzmore.com/quarantine-quanta-a-drabble-contest/results-of-quarantine-quanta/quanta-of-levity/what-to-say-by-beth-morris-tanner/

Interestingly, I wrote this five and a half years ago and it accidentally came out to 100 words. It was written to a prompt, but I don’t even remember what the prompt was! But it was fun, and I still liked it, and now someone else liked it enough to give me some money for it!

The other winning drabbles are excellent – in this time of short attention spans, a book of 100 word stories is a pretty excellent item! Enjoy!

RIP Neil Peart; Thoughts on Music and Friendship

Last week, Neil Peart died, and since then, Deep Tracks on Sirius XM has been playing nothing but Rush music. This is (to my ears at least) fantastic. It’s particularly good because NPR has been covering the impeachment hearings, and frankly, I’d rather hear Rush.

I’ve been a fan of Rush since the late 70’s. Somewhere I have a cassette with Tom Sawyer on it that was taped for me off the radio sometime before 1981. I know for sure I fell in love with The Trees in late 1983 and it’s all Michael’s fault. Michael was my best friend at college, and my first friend there, and we stayed close friends until his death in 2016. Michael also played guitar, and brought an electric guitar and amp to college with him, which I remember amazed me.

I think of him particularly often these days. I’m now learning to play the guitar, slowly, which means I listen to a lot more ‘guitar rock’ than I did for a while, looking for things I want to learn to play. I’m learning to play in large part because of Michael. I have his guitar, and playing guitar reminds me of him. He tried to teach me back in college, but it didn’t really stick. Now, so many years later, my fingers not as nimble as they were, but sliding along the neck of his guitar, I feel him looking over my shoulder.

We were friends not quite as long as Neil and his bandmates, but a long time. Thirty-three years, more or less. And still when I hear certain opening chords, my mind goes back and I hear Michael’s voice.

Lucifer: Some Thoughts

It’s been a while since I’ve been actively involved in a Fandom. I’ve been a fan of lots of things over the years (Star Trek (TOS), Star Wars, Tolkien, etc.) but generally at the “hey, that’s cool” level, perhaps with a side of “let me watch other things these actors are in” or “let me read other things about this program/movie/book and the actors.” Probably NewWho was the last one I was really engaged in, and that was back during the Tennant years – I never really warmed to Matt Smith.

Well, now I’ve gotten the Lucifer bug, and I’ve been doing a little thinking about why I like it so much as we wait, not very patiently, for Season 4. (Coming to Netflix May 8th! #LuciferSaved)

First off, I find the writing amusing. I have a soft spot for stories where the audience has just a tiny bit more clue than the characters, and I find the dialogue (both the written and the ad lib bits) charming. I like wordplay, and I like humor at this level. It suits my combination of rude-ten-year-old and grown-up senses of humor. I also, when it comes down to it, like flirting. I don’t do it much anymore, and certainly Lucifer’s style is completely Over The Top, but it amuses me. The assorted sexual-tension-dynamics feel rather more realistic than in some other programs. The showrunners and writing room have done a great job of keeping the episodes different but keeping the overarching season arcs consistent.

I am a huge sucker for music used well in movies/TV. Forty years in, the initial New Hope crawl makes me tear up, and the music is the reason that I am still startled by the final ‘chase’ scene in Terminator (even though it’s been out for years as well.) Whoever selects the music for Lucifer is a genius and has fantastic wide-ranging musical tastes. The music in this show is used really well, and I have expanded my playlists a lot as a result.

This is going to sound like a weird thing, but they also have a genius running lights. They manage to light the characters brilliantly (ha ha) and really coordinate the lighting with the mood. They catch the characters’ expressions and their eyes gracefully, particular for the title character (who is the Lightbringer, after all.)

Speaking of characters, I really, really like a bunch of the characters, particularly the ‘secondary’ ones. Linda Martin (played by the incomparable Rachael Harris) provides a perfect foil for many of the other characters (Maze, Amenadiel, Lucifer, even Chloe occasionally) and her wisdom and insights provide a sensible contrast to Lucifer’s sometimes clueless and warped world view. Maze (played by the stunning Lesley-Ann Brandt) isn’t always a ‘good’ character (what do you expect from Hell’s greatest torturer?) but she’s sympathetic and her occasional inability to recognize and cope with human emotions is, well, sympathetic in its own way. Plus she kicks ass.

Trixie gets her own paragraph. I am not (generally) a ‘kid person’. However, Trixie (“That’s a hooker’s name”) has reached the age where she is smart but not too smart, can still be bought off with chocolate cake, is wise beyond her years one moment and utterly seven or eight the next moment. I haven’t seen Scarlett Estevez in anything else, but in this role, she knocks it out of the park (and if the behind-the-scenes shots are any indication, she’s just a sweet, smart, funny kid.)

Ella gets her own paragraph too, because I have a huge fangirl thing for the lovely Aimee Garcia (who I just found out is much older than I guessed!) I respect people who use their positions in the public eye for good, and she certainly does. She’s also super approachable and really connects with fans, which is fun to watch, and her character in the show as smartass, nerdy, funny forensic scientist Ella Lopez is a delight. Just a delight. Full stop. There are a lot of days where an Ella-hug would be great.

It took me a while to warm up to Lauren German‘s Chloe Decker and Kevin Alejandro‘s Dan Espinoza (aka Detective Douche), I think in part because they’re so often at the mercy of Lucifer’s hijinks and terrible joking. That said, I have warmed up to them, and they’re both funny and clever. Their attempts to navigate co-parenting and their respective relationship issues are both amusing and heartbreaking.

And of course, there’s Tom Ellis. Full disclosure, I’ve had my eye on him since his appearance in Doctor Who back in 2007, and he has matured into a funny, thoughtful actor. (If you haven’t seen Miranda, it’s cringeworthy and hilarious!) I’ve been listening to a lot of interviews with him, and he seems like a genuine person who loves his work, his family, etc. He’s also beautiful as the day is long.

The series is loosely based on the characters from the Neil Gaiman comic. It was dropped by Fox after three seasons, and picked up by Netflix last May after an impassioned campaign by fans and the cast. The first season from Netflix is dropping on May 8, and I can’t wait!