I just read Black Blade Blues, the debut urban fantasy novel by J. A. Pitts and first of a series of three from Tor, and it was a LOT of fun. The the book features left-handed lesbian blacksmith and martial arts expert Sarah Beauhall, who

• inadvertently reforges a magic sword,
• befriends a six-foot tall dwarf (the supernatural kind, not one of the Little People),
• works out some issues of internalized homophobia with the help of her equally kick-ass girlfriend Kate, and
• fights dragons, ogres and trolls to saves the world (naturlich) with the help of various friends from the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA).

Not necessarily in that order. Also, at one point she gets hit on by a Valkyrie (squee!).

It’s an imaginative story, the pacing and plotting are good,  and the main character is flawed enough to be interesting while still sympathetic (and not overly hard-boiled and wise-cracking, which seems to be the default first-person voice these days). Kudos are also due to Pitts for showing Sarah’s struggle with her religious fundamentalist upbringing in a realistic light, and showing some growth in her character on that front. There’s a lot more going on here than just broad-shouldered wimmin swinging swords and pounding steel with a big hammer.

The one criticism I would level is that the transitions between scenes told from Sarah’s point of view (in first person), and the other scenes (told in third person) were jarring for me. Maybe that’s because there wasn’t enough contrast between the two voices (the main character’s voice and the voice of the third person narrator), or maybe it’s just a challenge inherent in switching from first to third person, but I’ve read other books that were able to pull it off. (Anybody else care to weigh in on that?)

Regardless, I thought it was worth reading and enjoyed it a lot. I’m especially happy to read a book based on Norse mythology (though in modern setting) that has substantial queer content. In the old stories, Odin was queer in the broad sense and a gender outlaw in many ways (Loki too), so the stories that “straighten up” everything, even if they are really good (Diana Paxson’s books, for instance), are on some level unsatisfying. I mean, take Valkyries: unmarried, childless women warriors. Wouldn’t you expect at least some of them to be lesbians?

The book is just out in hardback, so I’m afraid I’m in for a long wait for the next installment of Sarah Beauhall’s (mis)adventures. O-well.

In the meantime, you can learn more from this guest posting from the J. A. Pitts on John Scalzi’s Whatever blog, and the author’s own web site.

Yes I did see this, and it ticked me off because it’s insipid. There’s too much poetry! The good stuff gets lost! MFA programs are cranking out too many writers! This is the sort of non-news, non-thinking blathering that pontificators of every generation seem to spout.

[CORRECTION: David Alpaugh himself has helpfully pointed out that the italicized portion of the preceding paragraph, which was originally placed in quotation marks, is not in fact a direct quote. He's absolutely correct; it's my characterization of the tone and main point of his op-ed. I hope the five other readers of my blog are not too disappointed in my lapse in rigor.]

Look a the final paragraph:

“Every now and then someone asks me, ‘Who are the best poets writing today?’ My answer? ‘I have no idea.’ Nor do I believe that anyone else does. I do have an uneasy feeling that a Blake and a Dickinson may be buried in the overgrowth, and I fear that neither current nor future readers may get to enjoy their art. That would be the most devastating result of the new math of poetry. The loss would be incalculable.”

No one has EVER had ANY idea who the best poets of their own times were. It is unknowable. Blake and Dickinson are perfect examples – they were both “buried in the overgrowth” IN THEIR OWN TIMES. Why should our time be any different? And why blame changes in media and publishing for it?

And why have an uneasy feeling about it? Relax, read the stuff you love, look around for more stuff that you might love, acknowledge the unalterable nature of Sturgeon’s Law, recognize the 95% of everything that is crud for what it is (fertilizer for the other 5%), and enjoy life.

That is all for now.

I’m confident that I’ll still get my fair share from each e-book sold. But as an author, I’m not after your money. Well, not only your money. I have my sights on a much more precious commodity: your time. We enter into an unspoken pact, you and I: Give me a few hours, stolen moments on the subway or after the kids are asleep, and I promise to inform and entertain you. Frankly, that’s always been a tough sell, given the sundry ways you can spend your time, but at least I had a fighting chance. Curled up with a pinot noir and my book, your attention was mine to lose. Not anymore. The new generation of e-books will, in essence, merge the laptop and the book. Now if my narrative starts to drag, or I digress, readers can click onto their favorite news site to see what’s up with health care, or click onto TMZ to see what’s up with Brangelina. How do I compete with that?

Is this a reasonable worry? How much time do most normal people spend curled up with a pinot noir (or in my case, decaf coffee or  maybe a good pale ale) and a book these days?

Well, as a matter of fact, I read a whole book uninterrupted just last night, a debut YA fantasy novel from a cracking good writer and storyteller, Malinda Lo (the book is Ash, and I highly recommend it). I read it in print, a hard copy edition that I borrowed from the library.

I’m also in the middle of reading SHE by H. Rider Haggard on my iPod touch. It’s a bit of a pain to keep flipping “pages” on that tiny screen, but when I’m waiting in a doctor’s office or yes, even when I’m in bed before I turn the light out, it’s very convenient. I got that book free, too, from Project Gutenberg.

Here’s the thing: I read at least one or two books every week, and I live in a two bedroom apartment with three large bookcases that are already full. Up to this point, I’ve had what amounts to a one-in, one-out rule for book purchases. (Ash is quite possibly good enough to qualify for a purchase–but I have to decide what I’m getting rid of. Back issues of Tin House, I’m looking at you.) With this fun new device and a downloaded app or two, however, I can exponentially expand my collection of books without running the risk of being featured on that hoarders show.

Here’s what that means to those in the publishing industry: I’m the customer you can get back with e-books, if you play your cards right. Also, an e-book (like that pale ale?) is not a purchase for me, it’s a rental, so please price it accordingly. If I have the choice between paying a buck or two to get instant access to a book I’m interested in reading, or waiting a few weeks (or months) to get it through the local library, that’s something I’d be willing to pay for. If the e-book in question is $10 or $20, well…there are plenty of fish in the sea, and a lot of other books I can get right now and read while I wait for the library’s copy.

Here’s what it means to authors: if you want me to buy your book in hard copy, it has to be one I will fall head over heels in love with and want to live with at least as long as a typical marriage lasts these days. But even if I don’t want to marry your book, I might not mind a fling (electronic, of course). Your chances are better if you make the first few chapters of your book available online, free. Consider it a first date. (Herman Melville, you had me at “Call me Ismael.”)

My birthday present to myself this year was a ballroom dancing class, taken with my sweetie. On the first day we arrived at the South Park Rec Building VERY nervous, being the only F/F couple in the group (of maybe a dozen or more couples), but our dance instructors Shirley and Blue (who are in their sixties or seventies, have been teaching for many decades and likely have seen it all and then some) quickly put us all at ease.

On the first night, they gave advice to the gents (and me — yes, I got to lead) about how to lead effectively, which is also really great writing advice:

1. Keep the frame.

In dance, this means keep your arms and shoulders firm and your elbows up. This makes it easier for your partner to follow you (and in fact, hard to do otherwise). I could tell whenever I let my frame slip, because at that point my lovely and talented dance partner would sort of go off in her own direction, doing her own thing, and the dancing-as-a-couple thing quickly disintegrated.

In writing, to me this means you have to build the world with enough convincing detail that your reader is carried along with you. You can always tell in workshops when this isn’t working, because all of a sudden the readers are veering off in all different directions, often reading very odd things into the story that (to you as the writer) aren’t there. You’ve lost them. Keeping the frame is about concrete and specific detail, but even more so it’s about voice. Readers will relax into a book with a solid and compelling voice, and allow themselves to be carried off wherever the author chooses to take them.

2. Dance your body.

In dance, this means concentrating on your own body in space and moving it where you want it to go. If you keep the frame, your partner will come along with you. If you try to direct your partner and “lead” them in that way (steering them around), it doesn’t work.

In writing, this advice translates into adages like, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” (Robert Frost said that.) Writing is not really a manipulative art, although good writing makes readers feel things, sometimes with the full intent and purpose of the author. But I would argue that to be successful, the author has to feel those things first, and even then, it’s cussed hard to bring that level of emotional reality to the page. When an author fails, you get purple prose, melodrama, or transparent attempts to tug at heartstrings.

I’m still thinking about that one.

It seems like there should be a third thing, but those were the only two bits of advice Shirley and Blue gave us! I would add, though…

3. If you are not afraid of looking foolish, being embarrassed, or tripping over your own feet, you can learn a lot in a short amount of time.

The writing and life applications of that one should be obvious. It hearkens back to a hobby horse of mine, permeability as a writerly virtue. Most of the successful writers I’ve met (I’m not talking in terms of book sales necessarily, although that is one measure of success) have this quality. Not only are they curious and interested in others and the world around them, they tend to be more open to their experiences. They are capable of changing their minds, and their hearts.

Another way of looking at this might be John Keats’ negative capability, that is, “capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”

At any rate, if you are closed off, the only way you can improve as a writer is under your own steam — it has to be your idea. You become sort of a closed system. If you were a plant, you’d be self-pollinating. Writers who are more permeable are better able to share and swap around ideas and learn from the feedback (and mistakes) of others. Plus, it’s less lonely.

Yes.

This essay is dear to my heart, as one who loves Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities just as much as Ursula K. le Guin’s Earthsea books. (Also as one who has an MFA in poetry, and an English literature degree, whose favorite magazine is Realms of Fantasy.) Luckily, just because critics have made artificial dominions and divvied up the turf in various ways doesn’t mean writers and readers aren’t free to roam. Unless they want to write about what they are reading and try to get tenure, of course.

Read the essay.

Back in the Bronze Age (when the books now known as the Old Testament were written), society was decidedly patriarchal. Sons were prized; daughters, not so much. I’m sure there were many reasons for this, but I want to point out one set of reasons in particular: the lack of medical knowledge and care and (as a result) the very real dangers of childbirth, which were not shared equally. If you had a son, you didn’t have to worry about him growing up to die in childbirth. Women who survived their childbearing years lived longer than men (just as they do now), but running that gauntlet meant there were a lot fewer of them at the other side.

So passing property patrilinearly at that time was not necessarily a bad idea; men were more likely to live longer to care for the children. In this light, tracing one’s lineage through the fathers’ lines isn’t so crazy, either (although still not as accurate as matrilineal).

Fast forward about four thousand years. Medical advances have not eliminated the risks of childbirth, but they have reduced them to a level that would have astonished our forebears. Women live longer than men, on average, and many of the patriarchal holdovers in our culture look quaint if not downright stupid. (Some of them weren’t the best choices 4,000 years ago.)

And there are still folks like the Quiverfulls around, trying to drag Bronze Age family values into the twenty-first century, because they a) want to and think it’s advantageous to them, and b) really feel like biblical literalism is the way to go.

What does this have to do with writing? Well, I’m working on a story right now that takes place in a culture not all that dissimilar from the one that produced the books of the Old Testament, and in studying some of those Mesopotamian cultures, I’m struck by what a practical people they were (for the most part). Even many of the behaviors that seem ridiculous to us had some utility. This is not the case, however, if you take those behaviors and just transplant them willy-nilly to another time and place — say, to the United States in 2009.

But even those throwbacks have some reason for wanting to roll back the cultural clock, even though the behaviors they advocate are no longer advantageous to the broader culture (and they are therefore likely doomed to fail in their efforts). Perhaps they want to regain power they think they’ve lost in the cultural changes of the last (cough) four thousand years.

Anyway, when world-building, the cultures will and should be messy and the practices they present to address practical problems (like death in childbed) may not be elegant, but they should be at least somewhat functional. And splinter/fringe cultures are interesting in that they directly oppose some practices of the mainstream culture and can serve to highlight some fracture or fault line in that dominant culture, some contested or shifting ground.

The Iowa Review has a sample of her poetry available here.

Got a present in the mail today (never mind it was from myself – those rarely disappoint): a much-worn copy of Amazons! edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. It’s a collection of high fantasy short stories featuring women, and has the now-classic story by Elizabeth A. Lynn, “The Woman Who Loved the Moon.” If you haven’t read that short story, go out now and find it; it’s just gorgeous. (You can find it in the Salmonson collection or in Lynn’s own collection of short stories.)

I remember finding this paperback long ago (it was published in 1979, but I got hold of it in a used bookstore maybe twenty years ago) and being thrilled to have a collection of heroic fantasy stories featuring women as more than cardboard cutout characters or buxom cover art. These were women who could and did kick ass. And a few of them loved other women.

Now I feel quite spoiled because I can find strong female characters in any issue of Realms of Fantasy (thanks to editor Shawna McCarthy), but I hadn’t ever forgotten this book or that story…now it’s back on my bookshelf!