I went to Narnes & Boble this week to find a particular magazine for a particular crochet pattern by a particular designer*, and along the way my boys and I found all kinds of wonders in that store, as usual. Older Son found a cool maze toy that changes mazes with a flick of a tab (no batteries required!) and I found not only my magazine, but a new summer book!

I love the show Fringe. For those of you who haven’t seen it, please go watch it. Netflix and other on demand companies have it available, all except the last season which should be out soon. It is the best show we have seen in years. It’s smart, scientific, funny, and the plot is amazing. Need more convincing? J.J. Abrams had a major and in it. So, there I go being a hipster. We knew JJ was awesome before he made Star Trek movies.

SO go watch it! You’ll love it! The downside is that it has finished its course. No more new episodes for us. Then I saw this on the shelf and N&B:

What?? Fringe fiction? I practically jumped up and down and may have spoken to a stranger walking past about how excited I was. This one came out this very month, and a new one comes out in late summer. Oh, yes please! So I dropped all my TBR stuff and other books scattered around and now I carry Bell and Walter with me everywhere. It is about the two of them, plus Nina Sharp, in 1969 as they track down the Zodiac Killer.

I really couldn’t have asked for a better summer book at a more appropriate time. It’s been so busy with life stuff, that a nice new author and a nice comfortable familiar world are just what I needed.

What are your current summer reads? Has anything jumped off the shelf at you lately?

-Kat

P.S. Last summer I read Jaws. It was awesome. We watched the movie after I finished and it just made it even more awesome. I highly recommend it.

*If you’re interested or curious, the magazine is Crochet Today July/August 2013 for Juicy Top by Shannon Mullett-Bowlsby. His patterns are fantastic. I mean, I ran out to buy a $7 magazine for a crocheted summer top. For srs. I’ve never wanted to crochet a top before. But oh how cute is this?

There I was in my local used bookstore perusing the vaguely alphabetized SF/F section when I came across a book by Michael Stackpole and here follows the conversation I had with myself.

“Hey, Michael Stackpole. I haven’t read any of his stuff. Hey, this is the first in a series, I should get this. People like him, right? Wait. Do people like him? Didn’t he say something that pissed people off a while ago? What was that? Is he the guy who hates gays? Or women! Does he hate women? Maybe he said something about immigration or guns or politics or religion that I disagree with. I can’t buy this.” And so, I put the book back.

It occurred to me on the way home that the Michael Stackpole hullabaloo was not about any of that stuff. It was this House Slaves blog post he made last year. Not about racial ethnic whatever, it was about old publishing vs. new publishing.  You probably remember this because you’re the sort of person who reads a book blog. And I remembered it, too.

Sort of.

I remembered that Stackpole said something controversial that some people got pissed about. A year latter, I saw his name and my only recall was that this guy was controversial. So I didn’t buy the book. No sale.

But here’s the thing. The only reason I picked up the book was because I recognized his name. In these tall, cramped isles with stacks of books on the floor, all I’m looking for is name recognition. There were tons of books and I bought none because I don’t want to read more Heinlein, Asimov, and Harrison.

There is a piece of advice given to musicians that goes like this: If your audience doesn’t know you, say your name (band name) seven time during the course of the show. If it’s less than seven, people won’t remember. In trying to remember a causal thing from a year ago, I have thought more about Michael Stackpole in a day than all last year. And it turns out, I agree with some of his controversial statements.

I’ll probably go back and buy that book.

Lou Anders is the Editorial Director of Pyr Books. He is super smart and has Pyr into a fantastic publisher of wonderful speculative fiction. I am a huge podcast fan and Mr. Anders is frequently popping up as a guest on shows like Adventures In SciFi Publishing, Functional Nerds, and, for purposes of this blog post, The Roundtable Podcast.

I was listening to The Roundtable Podcast episode 36 wherein Mr. Anders said the following about what, for him, makes a good story.

A sympathetic protagonist overcomes a series of increasingly difficult obstacles in pursuit of a compelling goal.

He also gave an easy to understand MadLib for putting together your story.

When a ______  ______ encounters a _______ ______ they are forced to ______ in order to ______.

I am near the end of third draft revisions on my novel which is either the best or worse time to get this kind of formula. I listened to the episode last night and lay away trying to plug my characters into this.

My first dilemma is that I have always thought of the three sisters at the heart of the story as being co-leads, and while they are all important, lovely people, there can be only one. Let’s face it, my protagonist is Victoria. So, let’s see if I can do this.

When a frustrated inventor (banned from practicing science due to her gender)  encounters a series of devastating crises (zombie plague, dueling mad scientists, invading confederate soldiers) she is forced to break the law (building illegal scientific devices) in order to save her city and free herself from oppressive scientific regulations.

Man, that took 15 minutes of staring at the screen to finish. Can I do this with the other two sisters?

-20 minutes later-

No, I can’t.

The other two sisters have personalities and goals and arcs but their actions do not drive the story. How about that? I do not think that this means that I should cut down on the scenes with the other two, nor does it mean that they are less important. Perhaps it does mean that I should do a polish that makes some of Victoria’s actions and choices a bit crisper. Perhaps she is the one who articulates the overall goals and determines how and where the novel ends. I’ve been thinking of this book as the first of three so perhaps in book 2 it is sister 2 who is the protagonist and in book 3 it is sister 3. Victoria is no less important but, the others may need time to shine.

Lou Anders is a smart guy. Every time I hear him speak I learn something about story. Luckily for me, he is one of my best friends that I’ve never met.

I recently played a club concert as a part of a Star Wars Day/Free Comic Book Day evening of geek music and I came away with this: venue is key.

When I play at a convention, the room may be a dull, hotel cube but, it is intimate and everyone in the room wants to be there. At a club, the room may look cool but, the people in the room are not necessarily there to see me. They are there to drink and hang out. That’s cool, but I don’t like it. This is why I don’t play bars, wineries, or coffee shops unless I have a good reason.

A few years ago, before the ghost, my goal was to play at least four shows a month and for a year, I did. In order to hit my four show goal, I accepted shows where I knew that no one would show up. There was one particular coffee shop/gelato stand that kept trying to have music, but nobody – NOBODY – ever came. I accepted the show because I only had three booked that month. They said I could have a free gelato but after two hours of a public rehearsal in an empty shop, I just wanted out.

I feel much better about playing one or two concerts a month for conventions and odd events than I did playing twice as often for inappropriate venues.

Which brings me to authors.

Authors have a similar dilemma for book signings and readings. Much like unfocused musicians, unfocused authors sometimes scramble about looking for anyone with a room and a chair. Like aimless musicians, aimless authors, after having a disappointing show, will go back to that venue with little to no adjustment in their approach.  Sometimes the poor experience has to do with the author not getting the word out, not telling friends, not doing a facebook/twitter/meetup event thing. But sometimes the venue just sucks for you. If the regulars at a club expect a rockin’ band and they find an acoustic guy (granted, a pretty awesome acoustic guy),  right away it’s a fight. If the shoppers in a book megamart just want a coffee and a quiet browse and they find an author staring at them with a “buy my book” look in their eyes, it hurts everyone.

Now that your event has failed, how do you change your strategy?

(…Insert Doctor Who Time Lord pun here…)

Armchair Archaeology time.

Here are two videos from National Geographic Live that I thought some of you might be interested in. The researchers present new information.

This one is from Bill Saturno. He explains about the different Mayan calendar counts, and the precision with which they counted the days forward. (And why the world didn’t end last December.)
http://youtu.be/YcJY22wFpFg

In this one, the researchers rattle the cage of Dogma, performing experimental archaeology to demonstrate a reasonable hypothesis as to how the Easter Islanders moved their giant heads.

http://youtu.be/J5YR0uqPAI8

Enjoy!

Alex Shvartsman is the editor of Unidentified Funny Objects, a Science Fiction and Fantasy humor anthology that was funded by Kickstarter, released late in 2012. I really respect his theory that not all humor strikes all audiences in the same way, that humor is subjective. Taking that theory into the method by which he ultimately selects the stories in the anthology makes for a very well-rounded discussion of humor in speculative fiction. I’m thrilled that he’s decided to run another Kickstarter campaign to fund a second anthology, here, and links again below his guest article. In this article he wrote for us Darkcargo readers, he gives us tips on writing (and thus, reading) humor.

FIVE PRACTICAL TIPS FOR WRITING HUMOR

By Alex Shvartsman

I’ve been thinking about humor writing a lot. Not only do I write (or attempt to write) funny science fiction stories, but I am also in my second year of reading submissions for the Unidentified Funny Objects, the speculative humor anthology series.

The most common reason a story is rejected from UFO isn’t because it’s bad – many are perfectly serviceable or even excellent – but because the writer’s idea of what makes a story humorous rather than merely light-hearted doesn’t match that of this editor.  I’m of the opinion that a story with a funny line or two thrown in is just that – a story with a few funny lines. That doesn’t make it comedy. A true humor story has a whimsical quality to it that, much like Potter Stewart’s description of pornography, is difficult to define but is immediately recognizable as such when you begin to read it.

In my quest to make everyone write funny stories I would enjoy, I have identified five practical strategies to writing humor in a speculative story, which I am now going to share with you. It may not necessarily be good advice, but I’ll make up for that in volume.

1)      Voice Matters

One of the most common ways in which a humor story fails is a writer coming up with a funny or cute premise, and then proceeding to tell it straighter than a straight face being shaved by a straight razor while setting the record.

You can’t rely on the premise for all of your funny. Can’t let your characters be the comedians with humor confined to dialog, either. You have to let the narrative voice do much of the heavy lifting. Consider the opening paragraphs of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”

In five measly lines, Adams does such a masterful job of establishing the irrelevance of humanity, H.P. Lovecraft must be turning over in his grave with jealousy. Not only does this opening serve his plot later on (Spoiler: Things don’t turn out so well for the Earth), the writing is amusing, engaging, and humorous, immediately setting up the tone for the rest of the book.

Here’s another example:

“One of the few redeeming facets of instructors, I thought, is that occasionally they can be fooled. It was true when my mother taught me to read, it was true when my father tried to teach me to be a farmer, and it’s true now when I’m learning magik.”

Robert Asprin opens his inaugural volume of the Myth series – “Another Fine Myth” – with a bit of observational humor, just like Adams. Yet could their humor styles be any more different from each other?

One doesn’t necessarily have to open with an observation. Here’s an example from “Timber!” by Scott Almes – a short story from Unidentified Funny Objects volume 1:

“I realized I was in trouble when my realm-appointed lawyer showed up drunk and asked for spare coins. He made a valiant effort to defend me in the courtroom, but his lack of judicial knowledge, poor grasp of language, and mispronunciation of my name proved futile against the realm’s brilliant case. It didn’t help that the prosecutor was an exceptional medium. He used my incorporeal, perpetually disappointed mother as a character witness.

I was sentenced to death. The executioner immediately wheeled out a guillotine to a short round of applause.”

Almes jumps right into the plot, but his opening is clearly indicative of the sort of wacky you can expect from the rest of the story.

Whatever style or sub-genre of humor you’re shooting for, be sure that your narrative voice is unique, entertaining, and interesting.

2)      Comparison Joke is Your Best Friend

Comedy is hard, but some aspects of it are easier than others. Arguably there is nothing easier than a Comparison Joke. They are effective, and reasonably easy to come up with. Comparison joke can be a well-placed and unexpected metaphor, or simply comparing a thing to another thing for comedic effect. Here’s one of my favorite examples, source unknown:

Game of Thrones is a lot like Twitter: There are 140 characters and terrible things are constantly happening.

This joke is asking a lot of its audience. You must be familiar with both Game of Thrones and Twitter in order to appreciate it. But if you happen to be a part of that target audience, you might find this hilarious. You will nod sagely, recognizing that the Game of Thrones book and/or TV series has an unwieldy cast of characters and something terribly unpleasant is happening to most of them at any given time. You won’t even stop to ponder whether terrible things are actually happening on Twitter. You won’t dissect it, chuckling at the comparison instead, because the joke works.

You can always spice up your description of absolutely anything with a comparison joke. Take care not to over-rely this tactic. Like everything else in life (with possible exceptions of coffee and chocolate), it is best used in moderation.

3)      Steal from Yourself

Many of my writer friends claim that they can’t write funny, yet they are incredibly witty when you talk to them in person or on social media. If you say something that’s an instant hit with your friends, why not write it down and save it for later?

I was chatting with some writers recently, and one of them said that he could use some advice on a certain subject. My immediate response?

“We can do advice. It might not be good, but we make up for it in volume.”

I was not trying to write a story, nor was pretending to be a humor-writing guru in a blog post, at that time. But the joke went over well, and so I saved it for later use. You may recognize it from the third paragraph of this article.

4)      The Secret to Humor is Surprise

Most humor relies on surprise, one way or another. It can be an unexpected comparison like those discussed above, a humorous observation (if the store is open 24/7, 365 days a year, why are there locks on the doors?), play on words (A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station), or a misleading setup (I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming and yelling, like the passengers in his car).

As a rule of thumb, if you can make the readers complete the sentence in their head before they finish reading it, and then pull the carpet from under them, you’ve got a good joke.

To do that, you can subvert a popular saying:

“I’m so hungry, I could ride a horse,” deadpans Chris on an episode of Family Guy.

“Don’t judge a book by its movie,” proclaims a t-shirt popular with many a writer.

5)      Humor is Subjective

No matter how hard you try, you can’t make everyone laugh. Humor is extremely subjective. What’s funny to me may fall flat to you, and vice versa. Fortunately, for fiction writers there is a workaround:

Make sure that your story works regardless of whether the reader finds it funny or not.

Some stories are so reliant on a joke that they utterly fail if the reader doesn’t laugh. These are more often than not very short stories that do nothing but set up a pun or a twist at the end which, the writer hopes, will be funny. This is stunt writing, and should be avoided in most cases.

Write a story with an interesting plot, engaging characters, and great pacing. This way, if the reader finds it to be funny, it’s a huge bonus. But if they don’t, there is still a good chance they will enjoy the story overall.

The Kickstarter link is here: http://kck.st/17bWO89

Wide Open
Deborah Coates

Ghosts in South Dakota. Weather magic. Rural, modern fantasy.

Deborah Coates’ guest post in Fantasy Book Cafe’s Women in SF and F month pinged my interest in this novel. I found a copy at the library.

Hallie is a soldier stationed in Afghanistan and brought home to South Dakota because her sister has committed suicide. As the story unfolds, we come to believe Hallie’s affirmation that there was malevolent intent, and the sad story soon becomes a thriller, a mystery guided by the ghosts of the murdered.

The most stunning thing about this novel is its spot-on depiction of the shock/anger/disbelief/despair of grief when it is youngest. If you’ve lost a loved one, this will reverberate with you. What I liked about it was that Coates doesn’t let Hallie turn on and off her grief, like a switch (which I’ve seen done before in novels). Hallie has to work this problem through the emotional distortion of her grief and the grief of those around her. Very well done.

Deborah Coates’ writing tone is fresh. She utilizes a very conversational style that required several pages for me to get around. Characters will leave a sentence unfinished, drop a statement into a question, etc. The fact that Coates is consistent throughout makes it work. Additionally, she uses very modern phrases, which gives the characters a young feel, totally appropriate for the novel as these people are in their early 20s.

“Not that Hallie was a constant fan of rational and sane, but a normal world where she didn’t see ghosts? Yeah, that would be awesome on a stick.”

(Interestingly, in relation to the novel’s modern phrasing, although Hallie does use an Internet search, none of the characters make an reference to social networking.)

The place setting is superbly done as well. This place is absolutely Rural West, with a single dingy bar sticking out at the intersection of Nowhere and Everyplace, everyone knows everyone else as is true of every small town in America, the characters drive by Mount Rushmore without looking at it, and drive along section roads.

However, I am left wondering why there are absolutely zero reference to Native American people or cultures in this novel. Is living in SD as a white person really this way, able to totally eclipse any presence of Native America? Entirely possible as it is in Ohio or Virginia. But I thought it was odd.

The magic system is straightforward and has an-again-modern concern. The weather! No more here about this, spoilers!

The ghosts are great. They are an element without being a character. They serve as a guiding force, a light touch of the paranormal.

Despite its heavy tones of sadness and grief, I found Wide Open to be a very digestible, enjoyable and fast read, with great characters and a happy-for-now romance.

So much the book love! I can’t believe it!

Some mighty fine book friends have seen to it that some mighty fine books arrived at my door. Thank you!

But! I have been crowned The Queen of Indecision and now, presented with three most excellent suggestions, which do I read first?

I’m part way through Alias, borrowed upon me by Chuck Parker, and mostly finished with a re-read of The Gambler’s Fortune by Juliet E. McKenna for the ePub forthcoming this summer. I’ve listened to Dust and Shadow by Lindsay Faye for the Sherlock Something or Other, and have read Secrets of the Sands by Leona Wisoker as a portion of my participation in the Mercury Retrograde Press Bloggy Love. I’ve also finished up another two books that came about recommended by Fantasy Book Cafe’s Women In SF/F month…reviews and discussions of all this forthcoming.

But! Which of these beauties do I get to know this weekend? Help! They have all had such rave reviews from you guys, I’m rather stuck.

Blue Skies from Pain, Stina Lecht
Heir of Night, Helen Lowe
Firebrand, Gillian Philip