Category: Guest Post
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A Tale of Two Cons
by - May 9th, 2011
I was talking with my greengrocer about where I was disappearing off to over the Easter weekend, and he listened to the sort of stuff that goes on, raising a skeptical eyebrow. Then he said: “A few years ago, I would have said you were mad, but I caught myself looking at this advert in my tropical fish magazine for a Fish Fair in Germany and thinking whether I could afford to go.” Neon tetras or science fiction: a gathering of disparate people with a shared but niche interest, meeting together for a short but intense period of time to celebrate everything fishy/skiffy, and then go back home where no one understands you and you indulge in your passion either ignored or mocked.
Okay. Let’s talk about the paradigm-shifting elephant in the room from the outset. The internet. I’m pretty certain it’s been as revolutionary for the tropical fish community as it has been for fandom. I remember the first time as a baby scientist that I emailed someone whose paper I’d been reading, back in the early days of JANET, UNIX line commands and glowing green-screen terminals. I wanted some more technical information – before, it’d have been a letter, a formal barrier to communication, slow and time-consuming – now the answer came flashing back from half a world away. Anyone in my tiny specialisation was no further than a short walk down the corridor to the computer room. I was abruptly, immediately, not alone. Read the rest of this entry »
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It’s My Birthday, Too
by - May 6th, 2011
It’s My Birthday, Too is a short story from my new Dresden Files anthology Side Jobs (originally in Many Bloody Returns, edited by Charlaine Harris). The story takes place between White Night and Small Favour.
I’ve met people who are sweeter and nicer and more likeable than Charlaine Harris – but I really can’t remember when. Every author I’ve ever talked with who knows Charlaine just couldn’t be happier about the success of her books and the HBO series True Blood. She’s that nice. I can’t even bring myself to be jealous. She’s that nice. So when she invited me to contribute, I said, ‘Heck, yeah!’
Using a birthday theme (since the book, originally, was supposed to be published on Vlad Dracula’s somethinghundredth birthday) was sort of a challenge. Birthdays are about families. Whether they’re a biological family or one that’s come together by choice, it’s your family who gathers to celebrate the anniversary of you. It’s kind of a profound thing, when you think about it.
But Dresden hadn’t ever really associated his birthday with that kind of joy – only with the knowledge that he’d never really had a family. So I decided to do a story about Harry coping with the unfamiliar role of being the guy celebrating the life of his half brother. I found a very good mall in Chicago that I could demolish with the usual Dresdenesque shenanigans, set the story against the backdrop of a vampire-ish LARP, and knocked this one out over the course of about three weeks.
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Sympathy for Cthulhu
by - May 4th, 2011
A. Lee Martinez's latest novel, Chasing the Moon, out this month
H.P. Lovecraft suggested that reality as we know it is all the deranged fever dream of an incomprehensible horrific monster sitting at the center of creation. The monster’s named Azathoth, and he’s the closest thing to a benevolent force you’ll find in the Lovecraftian tradition.
The entire premise of Lovecraftian horror is built on this notion. The universe is too large and mysterious for the human mind to ever understand, and those who do understand even a piece of the real “truth” will eventually be driven to madness. And they’re the lucky ones. Insanity or ignorance. These are your choices, according to Lovecraft.
Choose wisely. Or whatever. Not like it really matters in the end.
Cheerful fellow, that Lovecraft. Read the rest of this entry »
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Feminine Fantasy
by - May 2nd, 2011
Anyone who’s ever read my books will discover, perhaps to their surprise, that I tend not to write heroines. And sure, this is a habit I’m currently in the process of breaking, but as it’s been such a long-running thing, I figured I’d take this time to talk about why.
Women and fantasy have always had a curious and complicated relationship. On the one hand, we’re a very large part of the reader’s market, but on the other hand, we tend not to embrace the geekiness in a particularly overt way. Certain aspects of the genre – zombies and spaceships, mainly – are still considered largely a male-dominated preserve, while others – women having unwise relationships with vampires, for example – rake in the female readers like hungry pigeons to breadcrumbs in the park. That said, at those few science fiction and fantasy events I’ve been to where writers are invited to mingle en mass, I’m regularly reminded of just how few female writers there are in this genre – or at least, how few turn up for the free crisps and bits of cheese on a stick. As a girl discovering her innate geek, I did indeed endure those painful teenage years where the idea that I might like science fiction and fantasy books somehow made me outside the accepted norm of youthful female behaviour. The cliché of the female fantasy fan is hardly a glorious one, often implying pale skin, bad hair, a dress sense worthy of a mortician and quite possibly a thing for Star Trek, only two of which I actually had – the dodgy complexion and bad hair – and that through too much time spent on the London underground and not enough sun. Even now, when I announce that I am an avid fantasy reader, I often find myself on the receiving end of comments from my non-genre counterparts along the lines of, ‘oh, like elves and stuff?’ and the explanation of why this is a ridiculous way of understanding the genre usually takes more time than we have. To go that one step further and declare that I’m not just a reader, but I write this stuff, for actual cash as well as glee, tends to produce an expression that I can only really summarise as ‘does not compute’ and usually a hasty retreat from further conversation on the subject.
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Love Hurts
by - April 27th, 2011
Love Hurts is a short story from my new Dresden Files anthology Side Jobs (originally in Songs of Love and Death, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois). It takes place between Turn Coat and Changes.
Gardner Dozois has a bunch of awards for his anthologies because he’s good at them, and I leapt at his invitation to contribute to the anthology he was working on with George R. R. Martin, originally titled Star-Crossed Lovers. Despite my enthusiasm, finding a starting point for a Dresden story was sort of a puzzler for me, since Harry Dresden might be in the top three Star-Influence-Free lovers in the whole contemporary-fantasy genre. How was I going to bring him into a story with a theme like that?
Answer: Get him into the thick of things next to Murphy when seemingly random love spells are running amok through the city. After that, all I had to do was apply his usual streak of luck and cackle madly to myself while typing. The title of the anthology changed to Songs of Love and Death after I had written the story, which is probably a good thing. Otherwise, I may have tried to find a way to fit a death-metal battle of the bands into the margins somewhere. No one deserves that.
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Something Borrowed
by - April 26th, 2011
Something Borrowed is a short story from my new Dresden Files anthology Side Jobs (originally in My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding, edited by P.N. Elrod). The story takes place between Dead Beat and Proven Guilty.
I wrote this for the very first anthology in which I’d ever been invited to participate. I’d met Pat Elrod at a convention and thought she was quite a cool person, and when she asked me to take part in her anthology, I was more than happy to do so.
When I wrote this story, I was thinking that the Alphas (a group of werewolves who often provide great backup for Harry at difficult moments) hadn’t gotten nearly enough stage time in the series thus far. It therefore seemed like a good opportunity to give them some more attention, while at the same time showing the progression of their lives since their college days, which I felt was best demonstrated by Billy and Georgia’s wedding.
Inane trivia: While I was in school writing the first three books of the Dresden Files, my wife, Shannon, watched Ally McBeal in the evenings, often while I was plunking away at a keyboard. I didn’t pay too much attention to the show, and it took me years to realize I had unconsciously named Billy and Georgia after those characters in Ally McBeal. Who knew? TV really does rot your brain!
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Why Fantasy?
by - April 22nd, 2011
I am sometimes asked – why fantasy? Of all the genres out there, why one that is often regarded as frivolous, clichéd, superficial and occasionally pornographic in a slightly weird way. And let’s face it, fantasy has had its off days. Glowing swords, ancient quests, and wizards who feel the need to talk in rhyme have traipsed across landscapes with more than a certain Tolkein-esque something about them, while, perhaps, lustful vampires deflower roaming princesses who curiously enough do wear white, even when mud is going to be a problem.
And I’m not here to defend this, particularly. I mean, the defences are obvious – escapism, powerful storytelling, worlds full of could be and should be and all that jazz. But for me, personally, it’s not why I love fantasy. Read the rest of this entry »
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Mercy and her Friends in my Back Yard
by - April 20th, 2011
Certain times of the year I have odd dreams. Just about the time I’m drifting off to sleep, I find myself in an outdoor tea party. You know the type. There are all these women in sleeveless dresses in spring colors that match the tasteful mid-heel pumps they are wearing. In the corner, over by a small fountain, a group of middle aged (like me) women are talking. I can’t hear what they are saying, but their harsh, high-pitched laugh rings through the garden.
“Oh,” I think, stirring in my bed and opening my bleary eyes. “The coyotes are singing us to sleep.”
They sound like the ladies in my dreams. Their laughing voices aren’t beautiful or powerful, the way a wolf’s is, but they are incredibly cheerful. There are several dens of coyotes who live in the field behind our house, eating the mice who live in the nearby orchards and vineyards. The pioneers used to call coyotes “prairie song-birds”. I keep their voices in my head as I write about my little coyote shapeshifter. There are other voices I hear as well.
In the remote valley my husband’s family used to live in, we would listen to the coyotes sing early in the evening. They were answered by any dogs nearby (usually the only ones in hearing range belonged to us). Then a lone voice would sound through the trees, maybe from miles away because that’s how sound carries out in the wilderness. And all the other noise would cease. Not a dog or a coyote would answer — only the wolves.
My poor words cannot convey the eerie majesty of their song. Safe on the porch of the big log house, we humans would smile as the wolves serenaded us. But we knew that if we’d been out walking in the dark woods, our reactions would have been a lot different. The songs of the wolves didn’t often last very long. Just a few minutes. When they were done, sometimes a single coyote would call its defiant, laughing answer before slinking off into the darkness.
*
Patricia Briggs is a bestselling urban fantasy author who’s perhaps best known for her Mercy Thompson series. This features the feisty Mercy Thompson who is a mechanic, a coyote shapeshifter and possesses a powerful sense of curiosity that sees her getting into more than her fair share of supernatural trouble.
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Reviewing the Reviewers
by - April 16th, 2011
When Ginia Bellafante at the New York Times and Troy Patterson at Slate condemn “Game of Thrones,” they are expressing something that genre writers and readers have experienced often with people who consider themselves the guardians of high culture. They condescend eloquently, but without convincing arguments. The disdain they have for the show is less for the execution or artistry of the production than for the genre it comes from. Ms. Bellafante manages to alienate women who read fantasy (who, in fairness she does agree exist). Mr. Patterson indulges in a couple opening paragraphs of his own fiction, padding out his wordcount with descriptions of his mail. Neither of them make a convincing case, and cover up the fact with biting but unfunny wit.
This happens all the time.
From the creative writing professor who won’t accept “that kind” of work to the friend who sneers at you for buying the latest Harry Dresden to the professional critic who will make grand generalizations instead of real arguments, people who are interested in high culture – and in gaining social status by what they read and who they look down on – have always found an easy target in fantasy and science fiction. If they were strapped down and shown the importance and relevance of Ursula Le Guin, Philip K Dick, Octavia Butler, Stephen King, and the other giants in the field, it wouldn’t help. Be angry at the sun for setting if these things anger you, (he says, quoting Robinson Jeffers).
But they bring up what is, to me, a more interesting question. The editors of Slate and the New York Times have selected these people and given them high-status venues from which to express their opinions. They expect me and their other readers to appreciate these reviews and to care what the reviewers think. My question is: why?
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The Enterprise of Art
by - April 11th, 2011
Niklaus Manuel Deutsch is an artist all but forgotten in the modern age. I’m not claiming this is some great travesty, for his work, while quite good, is not necessarily outstanding, nor was he particularly prolific. In fact, Manuel abandoned painting and etching in the last decade of his life to focus on poetry, play writing, and one of the trickiest arts of all, politics. Had he stuck with one or two disciplines perhaps he might have produced a single work that endured through the ages, as opposed to creating many worthy but unexceptional pieces that have been swept away in the great flood of history, occasionally bobbing to the surface in this coffee table book or that academic tome on plays of the Swiss Renaissance. Of course, that’s simple conjecture–it’s entirely possible that had Manuel lived an extra thirty years and painted every single day of every single one of them he may never have produced anything more memorable than what we already have of his work. It is possible, uncharitable an observation as it is to make about any artist, that the man was simply not a genius, not a savant, that he was as good an artist as he ever could have been. Read the rest of this entry »
