I'm afraid I've mostly been reading series last year. Since I was going through cancer treatment I had a lot more time for reading, and that gave me a fair bit of catch-up time. That said though, I did manage to squeeze in a couple of stand alones.
These are the twelve books I enjoyed the most, and in the order I read them. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).
The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher
I was introduced to Ursula Vernon via her short fiction, and knew that she wrote her books for older readers as T. Kingfisher. She's always been a pleasure to read and from her Twitter I've become familiar with her sense of humor and passion for gardening, so when one of her books went on sale I figured I should pick it up. The Seventh Bride has a lot of funny asides and jumps in logic to dress up what is otherwise a retelling of the Bluebeard fairy tale. I never got entirely attached to the protagonist Rhea, but the narration was snappy enough to keep me moving along.
On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard *
I've been meaning to read this one ever since it came out, and finally got it as a Christmas present. It primarily follows two characters, Quyen and Linh, during their stay together at the rapidly fading Prosper Station. What's amazing is that both characters are sympathetic, but both of them are carrying such incredible amounts of baggage that it prevents them from ever fully understanding or wanting to understand the other's point of view. It's set in Bodard's Xuya universe, so it's a spacefaring future based on predominantly Vietnamese and Chinese culture. I really liked this one and I'm not surprised it was nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards.
The Legend of the Galactic Heroes Vol 2: Ambition by Yoshiki Tanaka *
I really enjoyed the first volume of LotGH last year and bought Vol 2 almost immediately after, not knowing when I'd get around to it. This time we see Reinhard and Yang operating on parallel tracks to do similar jobs in their respective nations, though for vastly different reasons. As such the core conflict isn't between the Galactic Empire and the Free Planet Alliance, so enjoyment may vary depending on which side you enjoy reading about more. I really loved Yang's chapters, but Reinhard's probably have more setup for what's going to happen later in the series. There's no cliffhanger though, so you won't be left hanging at the end, and I like that.
All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka *
I'd been wanting to read this for a while, even before the US movie adaptation came out as Edge of Tomorrow. Even if you've seen the movie, it's worth reading as it's tonally different (much less funny) and forgoes the Hollywood ending. Keiji is a hapless private set to head off into his first ever battle with the alien mimics when he finds himself caught in a time loop that always seems to end with him getting killed. Frustrustated with the whole thing, he decides that the only thing to do is become so damn good he can make it out of the meat grinder alive, and he spends well over a hundred attempts trying to do just that.
Baccano! Vol 5: 2001 The Children of Bottle by Ryohgo Narita
This is a rather odd time jump that brings the series up to modern day, though it's more understandable after you realize the author's notes and realize this could have been the second book instead what became the start of The Grand Punk Railroad duology. It doesn't make much use of the modern day setting, it probably could have been set in the 30s without much of a difference, but what the time skip allows is for many of the series' original immortals to reunite after they no longer have to fear being killed (since the source of that concern died in Vol 1). It's a decent stand alone, and we finally learn the number of surviving immortals from the ship, but I'm also looking forward to going back to the 30s in the next volume.
Full Fathom Five by Max Gladstone
Third book in the Craft Sequence. As always, Max Gladstone's world building is impeccable. I love the island setting for the third book and how such a small nation has to manage its power and security against more powerful, larger nations outside its borders. As in Two Serpents Rise, change and colonization by outsiders is very much a thing, with foreigners kicking back on this world's equivalent of a Hawaiian vacation. Kai and Izzy are good protagonists, and Teo comes back for a second round, though it took me a while to remember who she was.
Serpentine by Cindy Pon
This had been sitting in my Kindle backlog a while, but the Kindle is really nice for reading when you're not feeling up for the weight of a regular book. I don't read a lot of Chinese fantasies, but this is one of the better ones. I mostly found it weird how all the servant names are translated into their English meanings, but the other names are not. It's hard for me not to like a snake girl though, and Skybright is easily the highlight of the book. Not only can she take on a demonic half-snake form, but she figuratively kicks real ass with it too.
Sacrifice by Cindy Pon
This was a spur of the moment pick because I was still recovering from surgery while I finished reading Serpentine on Kindle, and it was literally a button push and $0.99 to get the sequel, so I figured I'd go ahead while the first book was fresh in my mind. It was a good choice. The change to multiple POVs was different, but I didn't mind too much except that I found I didn't care about Kai Shen enough to really enjoy gaining his POV scenes. What was going on around Skybright and Zhen Ni was always more interesting. There's a bit of a love triangle in this one and I don't quite like the way it resolves, but it implies that eventually the resolution I would have liked will happen.
Spice & Wolf Vol 14 by Isuna Hasekura
I picked this up because I still wasn't well enough for gaming and I realized that I really wanted to do a better job of catching up with Spice & Wolf since Vol 13 was just an anthology and reading Vol 14 would let me get back into the main story. Spice & Wolf is always at its best when Lawrence is fretting over a future with Holo, and now that the end of their journey is looming he finds himself daydreaming about one day living with her, while also assuming that once they part ways they will likely never see each other again. This is probably the best volume I've read since the first half of the series, and it helps that it takes place in Lenos, where Lawrence first told Holo that he loves her.
Spice & Wolf Vol 15: Coin of the Sun I by Isuna Hasekura
And then I couldn't stop, because I already had the book in my backlog and Vol 14 left me wanting to plunge into the two-part finale. For a two-parter it actually has a pretty good resolution except for the obvious cliffhanger dropped at the end of the last chapter. Though there are the usual economic shenanigans going on, it's nice that at one point Lawrence is encouraged to stop looking for everything that could potentially go wrong and take a step towards realizing his dream of owning his own shop.
Spice & Wolf Vol 16: Coin of the Sun II by Isuna Hasekura
Unfortunately this volume was a bit of a letdown. It would have been fine as a middle book, but a lot of the dramatics force Holo and Lawrence into reacting rather than acting themselves. While I understand the realistic message that there are some things that a single person cannot change, I think Hasekura was trying to up the stakes, but didn't do it in a way that really served the characters, making the final book a lot less personal despite all the callbacks and obvious trust the two leads display in each other.
The World Awakening by Dan Koboldt
The last book in the Gateways to Alissia trilogy. I was on the fence with this one, but had some Amazon ebook credit and a long wait at the DMV ahead of me so I picked it up for my Kindle. I was pleasantly surprised and this is definitely the best book of the series. Still got some nits, and the decision-making of most of the major characters from the Earth side of the portal is pretty predictable, but overall it was a fun read.
Monday, January 27, 2020
Monday, January 13, 2020
Remembering Mike Resnick
I first met Mike Resnick at the Writers of the Future workshop week the year I won. I didn't know who he was. I think he might have given a talk to the new writers as several of the judges do, but I don't remember a thing. I'd never heard of him before (or least I thought I hadn't) so for whatever reason, his presence just didn't register with me.
My first memory of Mike, really, was after I'd won the gold award (the grand prize) and was ferried off to do tons of autographing as the annual winners do. Mike came up to me when I had a break (though in retrospect I don't know how a break even existed) and said that he didn't want my autograph but did want to congratulate me. At some point, it finally sunk in that he was one of the judges.
When I got home from the event, I set up Facebook for the first time and friended everyone I'd met as well as all the judges, including Mike. I thanked him for judging the contest and picking my story as the grand prize winner (I knew he'd been on the final judging panel), and he wrote back encouraging me to keep writing. He said something that one else ever had, that it would be a loss for the field if I did not continue.
I still do not think I write at the level that Mike thought I could, but he always encouraged me and said I was free to e-mail him whenever I wanted. I tried not to bother him too often, but he always responded when I did, whether it was about which conventions to go to, how to behave at a convention, or where I should send a story.
Mike mentored a lot of writers. You'd know if you were one of Mike's "writer children" because he'd call you that and invite you the breakfasts he'd have for the writer kids at Worldcon. I only got to attend one, but it was surprising to see how many writer siblings I had, across such a range of ages and experience levels.
He had a lot of love for the history of the field, and I'd occasionally disappoint him by not reading some classic he'd enjoyed. To me, the field formed during my childhood, so there are few books I've read from before I was born, and I tend to be skeptical about how well they've aged. I think he wished we could have talked about the same authors, but when I refused to read them, he'd roll his eyes like a put-upon father and that would be the end of it.
At some point I discovered, years after I met him, that the first time I'd read any of Mike's work was actually back in high school. It's just that I hadn't known him at the time, so he was just another name in an anthology.
Mike was talking to a group of novice writers about themed anthologies, telling them about how it's good to have an unusual take on the theme, because it gives the editor something different to fill the volume with. As an example, he talked about a military science fiction anthology he submitted a story to. Obviously there are certain expectations in a military sf story; generally combat, daring missions, etc. So Mike sent in an off-kilter story about the military wanting to set up a base where they weren't wanted from the POV of the person trying to get rid of them. It was a comedy.
And this is how Mike inadvertently taught me a different lesson.
On hearing the name of the anthology series and the details of the story, I realized I'd read that story in high school and it was my least favorite in the volume, precisely because I was expecting some soldier or military-affiliated protagonists, and I didn't like the jerk who was trying to get the soldiers to piss off while they're busy trying to save the galaxy.
So being different is good, but don't be so different that the reader doesn't get what they signed up for.
And I know Mike was not much of a military sf reader or writer, which is likely why he took that tack in the first place.
But Mike's more serious works often had a lot of heart. You could feel the emotion behind his characters and their decisions. And whenever he decided to put on an editor's hat, I noticed that heart was what he looked for the most.
It's something I started doing whenever I struggled with a draft. What is the emotional heart of the story? What do I want the reader to feel when they get to the end?
This started to inform my writing, and is probably the biggest lesson I've taken away from him.
Though I didn't know the full extent of Mike's situation until his daughter Laura's post on his GoFundMe page, I'd known from his sporadic posting on Facebook that he'd been struggling with health issues for the past year, and even before then he'd had some bouts of illness due to his age. But the fact he lived long enough to deal with the symptoms of advanced age is a blessing itself.
I know he helped and encouraged a lot of people, and he didn't stop doing that throughout his career. I once asked him why he spent so much time doing this, and he told me that everyone who helped him get started was now either well off or dead, so he chose to pay it forward.
I last saw Mike two years ago, when he told me that "Living Rooms" was still the best story he'd seen through the Writers of the Future contest. The story has been a bit of an albatross for me as it continues to be one of my most read works, as if I haven't done anything in the ten years since I won the contest. Sometimes, I wished that Mike would have liked one of my later stories better, and he'd bought multiple from me, but still... Maybe it's because that was the story that introduced me to him, and him to me.
My first memory of Mike, really, was after I'd won the gold award (the grand prize) and was ferried off to do tons of autographing as the annual winners do. Mike came up to me when I had a break (though in retrospect I don't know how a break even existed) and said that he didn't want my autograph but did want to congratulate me. At some point, it finally sunk in that he was one of the judges.
When I got home from the event, I set up Facebook for the first time and friended everyone I'd met as well as all the judges, including Mike. I thanked him for judging the contest and picking my story as the grand prize winner (I knew he'd been on the final judging panel), and he wrote back encouraging me to keep writing. He said something that one else ever had, that it would be a loss for the field if I did not continue.
I still do not think I write at the level that Mike thought I could, but he always encouraged me and said I was free to e-mail him whenever I wanted. I tried not to bother him too often, but he always responded when I did, whether it was about which conventions to go to, how to behave at a convention, or where I should send a story.
Mike mentored a lot of writers. You'd know if you were one of Mike's "writer children" because he'd call you that and invite you the breakfasts he'd have for the writer kids at Worldcon. I only got to attend one, but it was surprising to see how many writer siblings I had, across such a range of ages and experience levels.
He had a lot of love for the history of the field, and I'd occasionally disappoint him by not reading some classic he'd enjoyed. To me, the field formed during my childhood, so there are few books I've read from before I was born, and I tend to be skeptical about how well they've aged. I think he wished we could have talked about the same authors, but when I refused to read them, he'd roll his eyes like a put-upon father and that would be the end of it.
At some point I discovered, years after I met him, that the first time I'd read any of Mike's work was actually back in high school. It's just that I hadn't known him at the time, so he was just another name in an anthology.
Mike was talking to a group of novice writers about themed anthologies, telling them about how it's good to have an unusual take on the theme, because it gives the editor something different to fill the volume with. As an example, he talked about a military science fiction anthology he submitted a story to. Obviously there are certain expectations in a military sf story; generally combat, daring missions, etc. So Mike sent in an off-kilter story about the military wanting to set up a base where they weren't wanted from the POV of the person trying to get rid of them. It was a comedy.
And this is how Mike inadvertently taught me a different lesson.
On hearing the name of the anthology series and the details of the story, I realized I'd read that story in high school and it was my least favorite in the volume, precisely because I was expecting some soldier or military-affiliated protagonists, and I didn't like the jerk who was trying to get the soldiers to piss off while they're busy trying to save the galaxy.
So being different is good, but don't be so different that the reader doesn't get what they signed up for.
And I know Mike was not much of a military sf reader or writer, which is likely why he took that tack in the first place.
But Mike's more serious works often had a lot of heart. You could feel the emotion behind his characters and their decisions. And whenever he decided to put on an editor's hat, I noticed that heart was what he looked for the most.
It's something I started doing whenever I struggled with a draft. What is the emotional heart of the story? What do I want the reader to feel when they get to the end?
This started to inform my writing, and is probably the biggest lesson I've taken away from him.
Though I didn't know the full extent of Mike's situation until his daughter Laura's post on his GoFundMe page, I'd known from his sporadic posting on Facebook that he'd been struggling with health issues for the past year, and even before then he'd had some bouts of illness due to his age. But the fact he lived long enough to deal with the symptoms of advanced age is a blessing itself.
I know he helped and encouraged a lot of people, and he didn't stop doing that throughout his career. I once asked him why he spent so much time doing this, and he told me that everyone who helped him get started was now either well off or dead, so he chose to pay it forward.
I last saw Mike two years ago, when he told me that "Living Rooms" was still the best story he'd seen through the Writers of the Future contest. The story has been a bit of an albatross for me as it continues to be one of my most read works, as if I haven't done anything in the ten years since I won the contest. Sometimes, I wished that Mike would have liked one of my later stories better, and he'd bought multiple from me, but still... Maybe it's because that was the story that introduced me to him, and him to me.
Monday, January 6, 2020
My Year in Review 2019
2019 was a rough year for me. Ever since the car accident last January that eventually led to me being diagnosed with cancer, to the surgery itself, to the radiation treatment afterwards, last year was rough, and a lot of it was whiled away playing video games. (If anything can be considered accomplished last year, it's putting a dent in my backlog.)
Between mid-January and September I hardly wrote anything, though I still put down a few paragraphs here and there. People told me not to feel guilty about it, that it's self-care, but sometimes I couldn't help wondering, was all this self-care needed? Maybe I was just being lazy?
But I did do a number of things!
I launched my Ko-fi for my blog, which ended up being the primary way friends reached out to help me with the financial costs of treatment. People contributed much more than I expected and I am extremely grateful for that, though if I'd known I probably would have set up a GoFundMe instead, since I suspect that everything that went through Ko-fi is going to be taxable.
Mostly, I want Ko-fi to be a place for my readers to drop a tip and then help choose which game I'm going to play next when I hit critical mass. I know that gaming has little to do with writing (other than the times a game inspires a story), but it's also my biggest hobby, and gives me something to write about when I have nothing fiction-related to post.
In additional to Ko-fi, I also set up Curious Fictions as the primary online repository for my reprint fiction. Though not everything is there, a fair number of my shorts and novelettes are available to monthly subscribers. You can read as much or little as you want, and there are five free stories as well if you'd just like to check it out.
Curious Fictions also saw the debut of my original novella Jack of Spades, which is currently only available to subscribers, though the first chapter is free for everyone. Jack of Spades is an older work of mine that I really enjoyed writing, but eventually pulled from the market since it needed a rework and the Hunger Games had come out (that shows you how old this is) and I felt people might find the two a little too similar. In retrospect, especially now that I have gone in and done the rewrites, I don't think the similarities are really what I needed to worry about it. It was fixing the plot!
Also, to push me back into writing, I participated and completed NaNoWriMo 2019, even though I took time to visit two local conventions and visit family over the Thanksgiving holiday. Completing my 50k even though I had all those other distractions going on was a good boost to my morale.
Moving into 2020, my health appears to be good. At least, there's no sign of the cancer returning, though of course I'm continuing my check-ups. Most of my health expenses from last year are taken care of now, though there's still the possibility of another bill floating around due to some doctors billing their work separately from the hospital.
I want to thank everyone for being so supportive during my illness last year, and here's to 2020 being better!
Between mid-January and September I hardly wrote anything, though I still put down a few paragraphs here and there. People told me not to feel guilty about it, that it's self-care, but sometimes I couldn't help wondering, was all this self-care needed? Maybe I was just being lazy?
But I did do a number of things!
I launched my Ko-fi for my blog, which ended up being the primary way friends reached out to help me with the financial costs of treatment. People contributed much more than I expected and I am extremely grateful for that, though if I'd known I probably would have set up a GoFundMe instead, since I suspect that everything that went through Ko-fi is going to be taxable.
Mostly, I want Ko-fi to be a place for my readers to drop a tip and then help choose which game I'm going to play next when I hit critical mass. I know that gaming has little to do with writing (other than the times a game inspires a story), but it's also my biggest hobby, and gives me something to write about when I have nothing fiction-related to post.
In additional to Ko-fi, I also set up Curious Fictions as the primary online repository for my reprint fiction. Though not everything is there, a fair number of my shorts and novelettes are available to monthly subscribers. You can read as much or little as you want, and there are five free stories as well if you'd just like to check it out.
Curious Fictions also saw the debut of my original novella Jack of Spades, which is currently only available to subscribers, though the first chapter is free for everyone. Jack of Spades is an older work of mine that I really enjoyed writing, but eventually pulled from the market since it needed a rework and the Hunger Games had come out (that shows you how old this is) and I felt people might find the two a little too similar. In retrospect, especially now that I have gone in and done the rewrites, I don't think the similarities are really what I needed to worry about it. It was fixing the plot!
Also, to push me back into writing, I participated and completed NaNoWriMo 2019, even though I took time to visit two local conventions and visit family over the Thanksgiving holiday. Completing my 50k even though I had all those other distractions going on was a good boost to my morale.
Moving into 2020, my health appears to be good. At least, there's no sign of the cancer returning, though of course I'm continuing my check-ups. Most of my health expenses from last year are taken care of now, though there's still the possibility of another bill floating around due to some doctors billing their work separately from the hospital.
I want to thank everyone for being so supportive during my illness last year, and here's to 2020 being better!
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